his trowel and watering-pot, not only brings to light the hidden
life of a thousand earth-stars, but changes their forms, colors
their rays, half creates and transforms, until each differs as much
from its original structure and tinting as the planet Jupiter would
differ from its familiar countenance if Adams or Le Verrier could
make it wear the florid face of Mars. This man,--and it is to be
hoped he carries some devout and grateful thoughts to his work--sets
Nature new lessons daily in artistry, and she works out the new
ideals of his taste to their joint and equal admiration. He has got
up a new pattern for the fern. She lets him guide her hand in the
delicate operation, and she crimps, fringes, shades or shapes its
leaflets to his will, even to a thousand varieties. He moistens her
fingers with the fluids she uses on her easel, and puts them to the
rootlets of the rose, and they transpose its hues, or fringe it or
tinge it with a new glory. He goes into the fen or forest, or
climbs the jutting crags of lava-mailed mountains, and brings back
to his fold one of Nature's foundlings,--a little, pale-faced
orphan, crouching, pinched and starved, in a ragged hood of dirty
muslin; and he puts it under the fostering of those maternal
fingers, guided by his own. Soon it feels the inspiration of a new
life warming and swelling its shrivelled veins. Its paralysed
petals unfold, one by one. The rim of its cup fills, leaf by leaf,
to the brim. It becomes a thing most lovely and fair, and he
introduces it, with pride, to the court beauties of his crystal
palace.

The agriculturist is taken into this co-partnership of Nature in a
higher domain of her activities, measured by the great utilities of
human life. We have glanced at the joint-work in her animal
kingdom. In the vegetable, it is equally wonderful. Nature