CARNATION, LILY, IRIS, AND THE NOBLER SUMMER FLOWERS. 129 



" ideals " whatever, but be allowed to draw what he sees. This all 

 conscientious artists expect, and it is the barest justice. If we 

 raise new forms, or what we consider "perfect" flowers, let the 

 artist see them as they are, and draw them as he sees them, without 

 the confusion of drawing impossible hybrids between what he sees 

 and what he is told is perfection in a flower. It was the want of 

 this artistic honesty which left us so worthless a record in illus- 

 trated journals of the past century, where the artist was always told 



Carnations and Roses at Gravetye. 



to keep to the florists' " ideal " as to what the flower should be, 

 hence the number of plates of flowers of many kinds all "drawn" 

 with the compass. Behind the florists' plates of this century we 

 have the pictures of the Dutch flower painters containing fine 

 Carnations, well grown and admirably drawn after nature. These 

 artists were not confused by any false ideal, and so we have a 

 true record of what the Carnation was three hundred years ago. 

 In these pictures we generally see the finer striped and flaked kinds 

 given the first place, which is natural, as such varieties are apt to 

 strike people the most; and in those days little consideration had 



I 



