The Editor of this work, by Her Majesty's Artiste, Mrs. Peachey, fairly entitled the Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling, would fain leave the introduction, written by the same hand which rivals nature in her varying adornments, to unfold its historic, its poetic, its moral, and its suggestive graces—for it combines these; but having accepted the part, without which, since the days of Plato, no book is deemed complete, he essays a few prefatory observations and remarks.

            Brevity, it has been said, is the soul of wit; but we may be brief when we know what is to follow, and for whom the following pages are designed.

            Our fair readers will intuitively perceive that the scope of the instructive portion of this self-commending little volume is to facilitate their acquisition of an accomplishment at once royal and feminine in its origin and progress, and therefore worthy of their attention.

            This elegant art requires but the fairy touch of a delicate hand to fill each available space in the chamber or drawing-room with the most perfect and beautiful imitations of the flower-garden.

  "The morning flowers display their sweets, And gay their silken leaves unfold, As careless of the noontide heats, As fearless of the winter cold. "Nipped by the wind's unkindly blast, Parched by the sun's directer ray, The momentary glories waste, The short-lived beauties die away."