S| " C c *" c\ ccc THE. ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



we have to return to the great masters of all ages, who are always 

 distinguished for truth to Nature, and who show their strength by 

 getting nearer to her. 



The actual beauty of a thing in all its fulness and subtlety is 



almost the whole of the question, but the critics of the day will not 



take the trouble to see this, and write essays on 



" Realism " and art in which many long words occur, but in 



" Idealism." which we do not once meet with the word truth. 

 " Realism " and " idealism " are words freely used 

 and bad pictures are shown us as examples of " realism," which 

 leave out all the refinement, subtlety, truth of tone, and perhaps 

 even the very light and shade in which all the real things we see 

 are set. 



There are men so blind to the beauty of the things set before 

 their eyes in sky, sea, or earth, that they would seek to idealise 

 the eyes of a beautiful child or the clouds of heaven ; while all who 

 see natural beauty in landscape know that no imagining can come 

 near to the beauty of things seen, art being often powerless to 

 seize their full beauty, and the artist has often to let the brush fall in 

 despair. There are more pictures round the year in many a parish 

 in England than all the landscape painters of Europe could paint in 

 a century. Only a little, indeed, of the beauty that concerns us most 

 that of the landscape can be seized for us except by the very 

 greatest masters. Of things visible flower, tree, landscape, sky r 

 or sea to see the full and every varied beauty is to be saved for 

 ever from any will-o'-the-wisp of the imaginary. 



But many people do not judge pictures by Nature, but by 

 pictures, and therefore they miss her subtleties and delicate realities 

 on which all true work depends. Some sneer at those who " copy 

 Nature," but the answer to such critics is for ever there in the work 

 of the great men, be they Greeks, Dutchmen, Italians, French, or 

 English. 



It is part of the work of the artist to select beautiful or memorable 

 things, not the first that come in his way. The Venus of Milo is 

 from a noble type of woman not a mean Greek. The horses 

 of the Parthenon show the best of Eastern breed, full of life and 

 beauty. Great landscape painters like Crome, Corot, and Turner 

 seek not things only because they are natural, but also beautiful ; 

 selecting views and waiting for the light that suits the chosen subject 

 best, they give us pictures, working always from faithful study of 

 Nature and from stores of knowledge gathered from her, and that, 

 too, is the only true path for the gardener. 



Why say so much here about art? Because when we see the 

 meaning of true " art " we cannot endure what is ugly and false in art, 



