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 one was assigned her upon the
ground-floor of the building, near the fountains. Upon her work
being complete, she was directed to place it in the gallery. This
Mrs. Peachey considered would be to jeopardise it, from the danger
so fragile a production would probably sustain in being taken up
stairs, and still more from the heat of the sun, to which the wax
would in that situation be exposed, and which would speedily produce
Icarian results destructive to the work. We are not disposed to
enter into the question in any spirit of censure. We know too well
the _innumerable difficulties_ with which the Executive Committee
have had to contend in arranging the contents of the enormous
building, to cavil at any decision they may have arrived at; but we
have now had the opportunity of seeing two very beautiful works of
English industry which would have been a credit to the
Exhibition.--_Morning Chronicle._

* * * * *

Those forms which our continental neighbours take such wondrous care
in imitating in the perishable material of muslin, Mrs. Peachey, Her
Majesty's artiste, of 35, Rathbone-place, endeavours to perpetuate
i