WAX AND ITS USES. 167 



tribute of a thousand flowers, collected and transmuted by a 

 thousand Bees. Of all substances for the illumination of holy 

 fanes, wax certainly is the most appropriate so sweet, so pure, 

 and, in its origin, leading back the thoughts to beautiful fields 

 and groves and gardens. But through the groves, which were 

 "God's first temples," the intercepted sunbeams cast but a 

 " dim religious light;" neither perhaps in temples made with 

 hand, is an excess of illumination most in harmony with meek 

 devotion, when, from the spiritual darkness within and around, 

 (best typified by a measure of surrounding gloom,) it would 

 humbly look upwards towards the source and centre of all 

 light, created or revealed. In the halls of festive splendour, no 

 less conspicuously though less appropriately, shines the pro- 

 duce of the Bee's rustic labour. Or walk we along the streets, 

 or enter the lounges for amusement, does not waxen imagery, 

 from the shaven Blue-Beards and pink Fatimas of the barber's 

 window, to the noted and notorious of the earth, the monarchs 

 and the murderers of Madame Tussaud's show, remind us of 

 the busy Insects, who were the first workers of the plastic paste. 

 Nor, among the curious works of art, whose basis is this work 

 of nature, must we overlook the waxen flowers which, in their 

 fadeless bloom and exquisite imitative beauty, bring a garden 

 (in all but perfume) within the walls of the Pantheon. This is 

 an interesting as well as elegant use of the rifled riches of 

 "buds and bells," thus paid back by perpetuation of their 

 fleeting loveliness. It is needless to enumerate a variety of 

 VOL. I 11. 



