But the dahlia itself--what was that in its first estate, in the country in which it was first found in its aboriginal structure and complexion?
As plain and unpretending as the hollyhock; as thinly dressed as the short-kirtled daisy in a Connecticut meadow.

It is wonderful, and passing wonder, how teachable and quick of perception and prehension is Nature in the studio of Art.

She, the oldest of painters, that hung the earth, sea, and sky of the antediluvian world with landscapes, waterscapes, and cloudscapes manifold and beautiful, when as yet the human hand had never lifted a pencil to imitate her skill; she, with the colors wherewith she dyed the fleecy clouds that spread their purple drapery over the first sunset, and in which she dipped the first rainbow hung in heaven, and the first rose that breathed and blushed on earth; she that has embellished every day, since the Sun first opened its eye upon the world, with a new gallery of paintings for every square mile of land and sea, and new dissolving views for every hour--she, with all these artistic antecedents, tastes, and faculties, comes modestly into the conservatory of the floriculturist, and takes lessons of him in shaping and tinting plants and flowers which the Great Master said were "all very good" on the sixth-day morning of the creation! This is marvellous, showing a prerogative in human genius almost divine, and worthy of reverent and grateful admiration.

How wide-reaching and multigerent is this prerogative! In how many spheres of action it works simultaneously in these latter days! See how it manipulates the brute forces of Nature! See how it saddles the winds, and bridles and spurs the lightning! See how it harnesses steam to the plough, the flood to the spindle, the quick cross currents of electricity to the newsman's phaeton! Then ascend to higher reaches of its faculty.

In the hands of a Bakewell or Webb, it gives a new and creative shaping to multitudinous generations of animal life.