TJie Wardian Case. 285 



There is no rule for the arrangement of a Wardian Case ; no talisman 

 but taste. A picturesque, tasteful disposition of plants is necessary to pro- 

 duce an effect of elegance. Any person of cultivation and refinement, 

 who can, with furniture, pictures, and books, give a refined atmosphere to 

 a room, will find no difficulty in making a Wardian Case a perpetual charm. 

 A Wardian Case should not be arranged upon the plan of " regulation 

 bouquets," where the flowers are compacted and jammed together, con- 

 fusing all ideas of individual identity, concealing all natural grace, and 

 producing only color effects, and a sort of costliness of idea, which quan- 

 tity provokes ; but rather a freedom of gayety and freshness and liveliness, 

 where the delicacy and grace and adornment of Nature, unencumbered, may 

 enjoy full play. Freshness is an essential element of beauty, — 



" Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields 

 Where freshness breathes ; " 



and it constitutes the chief charm of a Wardian Case. The delights of 

 reviving Nature, of renewed life, of vernal freshness, of tender hopes, are 

 constantly before the grateful sense. Can Mr. Church, Mr. James Hart, 

 or Mr. Kensett, paint upon canvas a landscape so perfect ? Can Birket 

 Foster draw, in water-colors, a scene so tenderly picturesque .-• I defy the 

 painter's art to rival my Wardian Case. 



The aim of mere naturalists is the ascertainment of species ; and bota- 

 nists entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling collect and gloat over dried speci- 

 mens of plants in herbariums : but the living vegetation in my Case puts to 

 aesthetic shame all these scientific dabblers in defunct vegetation, these 

 ghouls in vegetable death. They remind me of Sir Uvedale Price, who, in 

 writing upon the picturesque, mentions, as a case of perverted taste, an 

 anatomist, who declared he had received more pleasure from dead than 

 from living women ; and the writer proceeds, in his quaint way, to say in 

 reference to it, " Whatever may be the future refinements of painting and 

 anatomy, I believe young and live women will never have reason to be 

 jealous of old or dead rivals." 



My Wardian Case is a living picture, a tropical landscape, a quiet but 

 persuasive teacher, that satisfies while it stimulates the imagination. What 

 artist can paint such exquisite light and shadow ? To a mind expanded 

 by education, and love of Nature, it furnishes a constant delight and refined 



