Art-Studies from Nature, as Applied to Design For the use of architects, designers, and manufacturers — Edition Insights

fe, so in the world of nature--from the humblest and meekest the greatest lessons may be learned; and there is often as much worthy of admiration and study in the neglected as in the known and appreciated. The pure metal lies not on the surface, but the gold is extracted from the solid rock, or picked up, after much labour, among the common sands; and many things lie out of the beaten path from which the artist and the student might gather fresh fancies. Twice a day rises and falls the great tide of ocean, and its heavings were not less constant when the trilobite and astrolepis were inhabitants of primordial depths; still twice a day it ebbs and flows, and the stony mountains have treasured the fragments of the weeds it plucked from pre-Adamic shores in memory of its ancient toil.

Bright are the flowers of the earth, the first and choicest of ornaments. Pure, simple, and holy, their charms can never decay, though familiarity and inconsistency may vulgarise, and innumerable misappropriations make us sometimes wish for the contrasts that other less showy objects would afford. While the fields are radiant with their beauty, and the gentle zephyrs fragrant with their scented odours, the great tide ebbs and flows over the flowerless plants of the sea. Around the huge rocks the perennial fringes of olive fuci undulate in graceful folds among the swelling waves, and the tall tangle bows its pliant stem as

“The ocean old,-- Centuries old,-- Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Paces restless to and fro, Up and down the sands of gold.”

For ages have the weeds of the sea been heedlessly disregarded or despised. The vilest epithet the polished Roman knew was _alga projecta vilior_. Horace, too, wrote _alga inutilis_; and there may yet be many to exclaim with the Scotch professor of the last century, “Pooh, pooh, sir! only a bundle of sea-weeds!” But when the apostle Peter slept at the house of Simon the tanner he dreamt a great dream--a dream memorable to the end of time--a dream that was a waking truth to be set in golden letters, and engraven on the hearts of rich and poor, wise and unwise--“There is nothing common nor unclean.”

The Chinese believe there is one word expressive of all excellence, so exquisite that no one can pronounce it, although it can be written and perceived by the eyes. That word is stamped alike on “the vile sea-weed” and on the lovely flower. I do not claim for both an equal rank,--the cottage may be charming, and not vie with the palace; and “the pride of the village” may want the grace of “the ladye of high degree,”--but I do claim for the neglected vegetation of the seaside an elegance of form, and structure, a suggestiveness of mathematical designs, a poetry of association and typical expression, a simplicity and modest gracefulness, which will entitle it to the best consideration of the designer.

World-wide in distribution, the sea-weeds are accessible to every one; and it is not the rarest that are, for ornamental purposes, the most valuable. The beauty of a manuscript tempted England’s greatest monarch to the acquirement of letters, and the commonest weed may be the incentive to the perusal of one of Nature’s choicest books. Wherever the briny waters wash the coasts, in marshes even where the salt sea penetrates but seldom in the year, on rocks and stones, and piers and piles, winter or summer, from the land of gold to the Canaries, from the soil of the Hottentot and Caffre to the ice-bound country of the Lapp, from the floating meadows of the tropics to the snowy regions of the poles--there grow the crisp sea-weeds--there may be gathered in endless variety the chastest patterns of simplicity. All the associations of the sea are grand and glorious, and the goddess of beauty came from the foam of its waves. In the sublime language of ancient mythology, the Ocean was the first-born of Heaven and Earth, that was wedded to the child of the land and the sky. Are there no gems of classic imagery in the bronzed belt that girdles its giant form? Have the thousand daughters of Atlas and Tethys all taken to groves and cities, and have the Nereides become the attendants of Flora? Are the tears of Calypso and the loves of Amphitrite forgotten? Has the memory of Sappho passed for ever away, and have the green and olive nurslings of the surge no affinity with the crystal phœnix that arose from their ashes in the Phœnicians’ fire?