92 MORE POT-POURRI 



same way ; only that did not stand the moving and pot- 

 ting up nearly so well as this Aster does. I dare say I 

 did not manage it rightly. 



November Qth. There is a famous seller of old books 

 in Frankfort named Baer. He lives in the Eossmarkt, and 

 some of my best old flower-books I have had from him. 

 I brought home this time one of those books that delight 

 a collector's heart, a really very fine one. I have been 

 told by an artist who saw it here that it must have cost 

 more than 2,OOOZ. to bring it out. The book consists of 

 two elephant folios bound in old stamped white vellum, 

 and bringing them back as a parcel was not exactly easy. 

 There is no letterpress at all in the first volume. It has 

 two handsome frontispieces in the Dutch manner, with 

 Flora and another goddess holding a large straw bee- 

 hive. In the middle is the title, written in Latin and 

 printed on what is supposed to represent a sheet of 

 parchment hung from a classical building with columns 

 on each side. At the bottom is a representation of the 

 Garden of Eden with trees and various animals, all well 

 drawn. Adam is walking with the Almighty, who is 

 represented by the figure of an old man surrounded by 

 what in early Italian art is called a mandorla or almond- 

 shaped glory. Miss Hope Eea, in ' Tuscan Artists/ says of 

 this almond-shaped glory : ' In Christian symbolism and art 

 it is reserved for Christ, and has a profound signification. 

 Though called a mandorla, or almond, it is really intended 

 to represent the form of a fish ; and this, from the days of 

 the Church of the Catacombs, was the accepted symbol of 

 Christ, because the letters of the Greek ichthus=fLsh, give 

 the initials for the Greek words ' Jesus Christ, Son of God, 

 the Saviour.' Mrs. Jameson, in ' Sacred and Legendary 

 Art,' gives the Latin name, vesica piscis, for the" oblong 

 glory surrounding the whole person. She says that it is 

 ' confined to figures of Christ and the Virgin, or Saints 



