MODELS FROM VEGETATION. 
505 
either in its general outline, form, or color, or in some lesser de- 
tails. Look at the chair on which your friend is sitting, at the 
carpet beneath your feet, at the paper on the walls, at the cur- 
tains which shut out the wintry landscape, at the table near you, 
at the clock, the candlesticks, nay, the very fire-irons — or it may 
be the iron mouldings upon your stove — at the picture-frames, 
the book-case, the table-covers, the work-box, the inkstand, in 
short, at all the trifling knick-knacks in the room, and on all these 
you may see, in bolder or fainter lines, a thousand proofs of the 
debt we owe to the vegetable world, not only for so many of the 
fabrics themselves, but also for the beautiful forms, and colors, 
and ornaments we seek to imitate. Branches and stems, leaves 
and tendrils, flowers and fruits, nuts and berries, are everywhere 
the models. 
As for our clothing, in coloring as in its designs, it is a studied 
reflection of the flowers, and fruits, and foliage ; nay, even tlie 
bark, and wood, and the decayed leaves are imitated ; feuille 
morte was a very fashionable color in Paris, once upon a time. 
Madame Cottin, the authoress of the Exiles of Siberia, had a 
"feuille morte" dress, which figured in some book or other, 
thirty or forty years ago. The patterns with which our dresses 
and shawls are stamped or woven, whether from the looms of 
France, Italy, or Persia, are almost wholly taken from the fields 
and gardens. Our embroidery, whether on lace, or muslin, or 
silk, whether it be the work of a Parisian, a Swiss, a Bengalee, or 
a Chinese, bears witness to the same fact. Our jewelry shows 
the same impression. In short, the richest materials and the 
cheapest, the lightest and the heaviest, are alike covered with 
blossoms, or vines, or leaves, in ten thousand varied combinations. 
22 
