He is out collecting
rents from the naked-skinned reptiles, his brethren; in default
thereof, taking the bodies of the aforesaid. Or behold No. 5, Plate
VI., bewailing the wretchedness of those who have no roofs to cover
them. Or No. 2, of the same plate, bestowing an archiepiscopal
benediction on the houseless multitudes, before he retires for the
night to slumber between his tessellated floor and his frescoed
ceiling.
Of the smooth, white eggs, with their rounded reliefs and tenderly
graduated light and shadow, all eyes are judges. But of the
exquisite figures showing the various stages of development and the
details of structural arrangement, the uninitiated must take the
opinions of a microscopic expert: and if they will accept our
testimony as that of one not unfamiliar with the instrument and the
mysteries it reveals, we can assure them that these figures are of
supreme excellence. The hazy semitransparency of the embryonic
tissues, the halos, the granules, the globules, the cell-walls, the
delicate membranous expansions, the vascular webs, are expressed
with purity, softness, freedom, and a conscientiousness which
reminds us of Donne's microscopic daguerreotypes, while in many
points the views are literally truer to nature,--just as a
sculptor's bust of a living person is often more really like him in
character than a cast moulded on his features.
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