objects. Even in those parts of decoration. in which pictorial effects are necessarily used, the analogy holds good in this respect, at least, that perfect harmony requires the elimination of every false note; so the perfect keeping equally indispensable to every real work of art requires the complete elimination of whatever is foreign to the purpose. The study of the artist should be structure and not mere shape, which is, indeed, but the representative, the symbol, the result of form. The forces that mold the higher forms of to us, perhaps, through inherited and acquired bias, appears repulsive or terrible. The only real ugliness is that which is the result of the perversion of natural growth and structure. Squeamishness and a Miss Moffit-like antipathy to certain forms of life have dwarfed the expressiveness of our decorative art. The Japanese, to whom such a sentiment is unknown, employs quaint and curious reptiles and insects to decorate his choicest work, certainly with an effect the reverse of repulsive. To the true artist, at least, is orthodox natural life are many and diverse. The | the sublime doctrine of Plato which ascribes original impulse tends to make a perfect expression of a certain type, but the dynamics of accident and varying circumstance interrupting, divert the current, and the result is imperfection, distortion, or actual deformity. It is the province of the artist from each defaced and partial image to restore the true type of beauty which is its perfect self,-for every individual creation, be sure, is born in beauty, even that which the original pattern after which all things were fashioned to the eternal ideas of the divine mind. A human expression ends in inert material when once said or written, carved in stone or painted in a picture; but each thought of God lives, and on every plane of being finds infinite expression in giving birth to myriad creatures that help to people His fair worlds. A noble quality in man or woman finds its way to our apprehension in a pel lucid gem, in a lily, in a lamb, in a little | ened to serve as a foil, and show the smooth babe: we call it innocence. The most advanced scientists can tell us nothing more than the very little we know of it. It is not at all in the line of their investigations, but it is the province of the artist to trace it through all its expressions, and to use its types when he has occasion. I know a picturesque old house that has a many-shelved pantry devoted to the exhibition and sale of shells, collected in many a long voyage to the remotest parts of the five oceans. Apart from their scientific interest, their associations with alien races and far-off countries, how beautiful these shells are in themselves! and how readily might the prevailing vulgarities and absurdities in the decoration of glass and porcelain be corrected by studying the ceramics of nature! How, for instance, is our sense of cleanliness served and our appetite wooed by the extreme smoothness, hardness of surface, and pearly white of the oystershell! What decoration in the part that receives the viand, what metallizing the surface or changing it into artificial marble, or covering it up with pictures, would take the place of the pure, colorless shell? "Roughen or color the outside as you will," says the oyster to the decorator, "the inside of the platter, at least, must be kept pure and clean." The lesson of every shell on these shelves is: "Superficies should be so decorated as to show their intrinsic qualities to the best advantage." Sometimes parts of a shell will be rough and polished surface more smooth and polished by contrast, but the whole surface is never robbed of its brilliancy by grinding, surface-cutting, and picture-work. For instance, the polish of olive-shells (see page 821), far superior to that of the finest porcelain, is decorated by minute, delicate, clean lines, so indicative of a smooth and perfect surface, while, on the contrary, the ribbed and closely wrinkled pteroceras is mottled with vague markings that do not in the least interfere with or confuse the play of light and shadow of the corrugated surface. Every species of these shells has a principle of growth, or law of form, peculiar to itself and yet based upon some more general law of form common to other species. This truth is allied to the scientific laws of organism, but is equally applicable to artistic laws, which have reference entirely to external appearances and the principle of form that generates them. In the comb of Venus, for instance, the initial impulse of structure tends to produce a series of spines of a peculiar curvature, and arranged after a certain order that involves the use of similar curves. It is interesting to study the development of this simple principle into the complex and singular form of beauty comprised in the shell itself, the idea being carried into the most minute particulars-even the dark markings at the mouth being shaped like spines, and every small projection on the surface evi SEA-COMET (APOLENNA CONTORTA), TWO-THIRDS NATURAL SIZE. dently being an arrested development of spines. In the M rex Haustellum, on the contrary, nodules take the place of spines (see page 821). In the M. Endivia ar entirely different idea is developed Notice the cross striations; instead of prolonging themselves into cylindrical pointed spines, as in case of the Venus comb, or bunch themselves into knobs, as in the Haustellum, they expand into w derful foliated projections, the ed of which are beautifully fluted, 1 the leaves of the lettuce. Anot fine effect is afforded by the differ texture of the inside and outside: faces, down to the smallest fo tion, the inner parts exhibiting polished pearly white and the side gray and wrinkled skin. |