RIVER GARDENS, ETC. 
hibitions, and art treatises, and art novels, and even 
art sermons, tbe laws of taste—pnre taste—can no 
longer be vitiated with impunity. Even the placing 
of coral branches or sea shells in fresh water would 
be sufficient to shock the very fastidiously accurate 
taste of our art critics, and the affected semblance of 
birds existing under water would be denounced in 
some cotemporary journal of “art, science, and lite¬ 
rature,” in language of “ crushing force and biting 
sarcasm.” 
The bad taste, however, was not the only defi¬ 
ciency exhibited by a past generation of lovers of 
domestic pets. The principle by means of which 
fish could be kept in a healthy state in a confined 
space, when living plants are cultivated in the same 
water, was not then understood; and consequently* 
notwithstanding the greatest care and the changing 
of the water very frequently, the fish, in most cases, 
very soon perished, which was the main cause of 
their going “ out of fashion.” 
But now that we have mastered the necessary 
secret, and can keep aquatic animals in a glass ves¬ 
sel, arranged as a true miniature lake, we can re¬ 
sume our chamber intercourse with our old friends 
under more auspicious circumstances. We need no 
longer see them pursuing their interminable circuit 
81 Q 
