This is characteristic, and that is why I record it. People who observe flowers, and do not only buy them, will not be astonished that when this happened most--this severe review and condemnation--it was orchids, orchids only, that were in question. And this for several reasons. Some are beautiful, but some are ugly, almost morbid indeed--things for the delectation of Des Esseintes, the too neurotic hero of M. Huysman’s _À Rebours_; scarcely for healthy folk, whom mere strangeness may not fascinate. And then again, the extreme intricacy of the forms of some of them, tells in two ways against their employment as subjects for a painter. It is not only--it is not so much--that their intricacy adds to the difficulty of correctness; it is rather that it adds to the difficulty of their comprehension by the spectator of the draughtsman’s drawing. The public knows the rose and the geranium--it knows, besides, two score of flowers of English garden and hedgerow. But the intricacy of the orchid is as yet an unfamiliar intricacy, and it is infinitely various; and therefore, though the painting of the orchid in Francis James’s water-colours was an experiment interesting and courageous, and within reasonable limits successful, that work was but one phase--far from the most important--of a career and of a talent full already of individuality, distinction, charm. (_Studio_, January 1898.) THE END Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press Mr. Frederick Wedmore’s Short Stories _Each Vol. 3s. 6d._ =Pastorals of France.= Fourth Edition. ‘The publication of the “Pastorals” may be said to have revealed not only a new talent, but a new literary _genre_. The charm of the writing never fails.’--=Bookman.= ‘In their simplicity, their tenderness, their quietude, their truthfulness to the remote life they depict, “Pastorals of France” are almost perfect.’--=Spectator.= =Renunciations.= Third Edition. With Portrait by J. J. SHANNON, A.R.A. ‘Mr. Wedmore has gained for himself an enviable reputation. He has the poet’s secret, how to bring out the beauty of common things.... The “Chemist in the Suburbs,” in “Renunciations,” is his masterpiece.’--=Saturday Review.= ‘We congratulate Mr. Wedmore on his vivid, wholesome, and artistic work, so full of suppressed feeling and of quiet strength.’--=Standard.= =English Episodes.= Second Edition. ‘Distinction is the characteristic of Mr. Wedmore’s manner. These things remain upon the mind, as seen--not read of.’--=Daily News.= ‘A penetrating insight, a fine pathos. Mr. Wedmore is a peculiarly fine and carefully deliberate artist.’--=Westminster Gazette.= =Orgéas and Miradou.= With Other Pieces.