“Frail, but a work divine: Made so fairily well, So exquisitely minute, A miracle of design”--
have a charm of their own no less than the higher forms, while to give but one other example from the many that present themselves, the _Foraminifera_--animal remains met with in chalk cliffs--though only visible with high microscopic power, have the curves of their shells as graceful, designs as varied, markings as intricate, as perhaps any other natural objects whatsoever. We therefore appreciate the quaint fancy, the studied thought of the designer who in some old glass that we have noticed at Ockham Church, in Surrey, while making some of his quarry designs of columbine, rose, and other lovely forms, chose for one of them a little fungus surrounded by cup moss, and springing from the turf; frail creatures of a day, meet emblems--like the withering grass, the fading flower--of the short estate of man, the transience of all his glory.
In the endeavour to suggest something of these humbler types of beauty to the artist, the designer, the architect, and the manufacturer, the following papers have been collected from the pages of the _Art-Journal_, the periodical in which they originally appeared, and after careful revision by their several writers, have been published in this detached form, in order that they may be still more commonly accessible.
The first article is an endeavour on the part of the author to indicate something of the profusion of beautiful form that may be met with in our hedges and skirting our roadsides, to point out the source from whence the mediæval artists gathered their inspiration, and to plead for its greater use by their successors, that by a like loving appreciation we too may create like forms of beauty.
The second essay deals with marine forms of vegetable life, and dwells on the immense variety of form that may be met with in the sea-weeds that surround our shores, and the applicability of many of the species to the varied purposes of the designer. It is curious that these wonderful forms should not have been employed more largely in the decorative work of any people. With the exception of the singularly waved and bossed foliage seen in the stone carving and metal-work of the later years of the Decorated period of Gothic, and which may possibly have been originally suggested by the _Fucus vesiculosus_, one of our commonest shore weeds, we know of no instance of their introduction into ornamental art. Hence here at once a wide field is open to the designer, and this essay cannot fail to be full of valuable material.