epresenting water. From the centre of this fairy lake rises a
glass column supporting a golden basket. In this is placed a bouquet
some two feet high, and of proportionate girth, in which are
clustered all the flowers we ever saw, and a great many which we
never saw--from the humble favorites of our _Rigolettes_ and _Fleur
de Maries_, up to the floral aristocracy of the conservatory. There
they are exquisitely reproduced in all their graces of form and
colour, and arranged with the attention to contrast and general
effect which bespeaks the superintending eye of the real artist. We
are afraid to say how many hundred wax flowers compose this splendid
bouquet; but we can safely say that, after having walked round and
round it, and, as we thought, having completely examined it, the eye
continually insisted on detecting some new variety, and we finally
abandoned the hope of ever becoming acquainted with the whole. From
the corners of the imitative waters rise various superb specimens of
water plants, fresh, cool, opaque-looking, productions; and at the
foot of the glass column, as if planted by accident, spring a few of
our more common and very beautiful garden flowers. The whole is
covered by an enormous bent glass shade, from the centre of which
rises a pretty copy of Her Majesty's crown. Nothing can be more
beautiful or in better taste than the object we have described. Near
it is another vase, not so large, and filled with wax fruit of every
kind--the bloom of the grape, the blush of the apple, the rich brown
of the nut, the velvet of the apricot, the glow of the orange, and
the characteristics of a hundred other fruits being represented with
a tantalizing fidelity. We would have flogged the fellow who broke
the Portland Vase, but we did not feel so sure, while gazing upon
these admirable imitations of the most delicious fruits, that we
should have been so severe upon some earnest gourmand who might dash
down the vase of which we speak, in wrath that his eye and his
palate had been so nobly cheated. The two vases, one of flowers, the
other of fruits, are certainly the most sumptuous specimens of wax
composition we ever saw.

As we have said, these works were intended by Her Majesty's artiste
for the Great Exhibition. On her applying for a site, that lady
states that a very admirable