124 ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS 



pooh-pooh this Hue of argument as high-flown and 

 sickly — people who are ready to assert that hfe is 

 too stern, too serious a business for that we should 

 be expending our energies in defence of such 

 immaterial and sentimental luxuries as are the 

 flowers. The question, however, camiot be rightly 

 dismissed in this superficial manner ; it is far from 

 being the frivolous one which these good people 

 would have us believe. Subtleties are of the very 

 life-blood of creation ; and the subtle influence o± 

 the flowers upon the lives and characters of men, 

 lying largely as it does beneath the surface and 

 amongst the hidden vitalities of existence, escapes 

 the off-hand, hasty glance or the so-called matter- 

 of-fact view. Maybe we Europeans do not show 

 this influence so strongly as do, for instance, the 

 Japanese ; maybe our thought, our art, our lives, 

 are not so perceptibly affected ; maybe that our 

 philosophy has more of a personal character than 

 has that of tliis Eastern people, and that we are 

 more self-conscious and less abandoned children of 

 Nature. Be all this as it may. Goddess Flora sits 

 firmly and effectively enthroned within our fives, 

 subtly ruling us to our very great and very real 

 advantage. Ruskin was right, and ' Flowers seem 

 intended for the solace of ordinary humanity. 



