326 THE AESTHETICS OF 



the more universal, mostly indiscriminately occurring pecu- 

 liarities of appearance and structure, on which depends 

 their physiognomical importance to the composition of the 

 botanical formation and, with this, of the landscape. By 

 taking note of these peculiarities of plants, we are next able 

 to conceive for them certain universal Forms, according to 

 which, without reference to the naturally more intimate 

 relationship, the plants are merely so arranged together as 

 they make a similar common ^Esthetic impression upon us, 

 and at the same time come forward as defining the 

 character of the Formations, or the physiognomy of the 

 landscape in general. 



Thus, instead of some 300 families which Botanists 

 have now established and distinguished according to finer 

 and more carefully investigated characters, we obtain a 

 comparatively small number of Vegetable Forms. 



Generally grey and withered, scurfily smooth or spiny, 

 interwoven like gigantic snow-crystals, causing a chilly 

 shudder, the Lichen-form clothes the barren confines of 

 vegetation, forming as it were the transition from this to 

 inorganic Nature ; while the Form of Mosses produces a 

 mostly silky-lustred layer, like a cushion over soil and rock, 

 with its densely crowded, delicate, yellowish-green leaflets. 

 Resembling these, yet attaining not to free shapes but 

 scarcely more than a mere naked surface, clothing not 

 the earth but the waters, developes the Form of the Water 

 Lilies,* of great importance to the Beauty of all landscapes. 

 Large broad leaves, with rounded outline, floating flat upon 

 the water, or in a dish-like form, elevating themselves a little 

 way above it, flowers of splendid colour, beautifully formed 

 and of great circumference, scarcely dipping into the liquid 



* The most splendid of all, the Victoria regina, with leaves fifteen 

 feet, and white and rosy blossoms four feet in circumference, is re- 

 presented in the middle of the frontispiece. 



