286 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



herself, and to show us what our own art ought to 

 be, and would be, if we could purify it of sick fancies 

 and disgusts, and vain subtleties and ambitions, and 

 affectations. 



But so soon as flowers are altered and developed 

 by men there is something in their beauty that pro- 

 vokes criticism at once. For they are connected, 

 like works of art, with men's ideas and purposes; and 

 therefore we like or dislike them according as we 

 like or dislike those ideas and purposes. Of course 

 all flowers, even those which have suffered the great- 

 est garden change, have still something of wild na- 

 ture in them. They are children of the earth and 

 only pupils of the gardener; and, though they may 

 express for us a phase of taste which we dislike, they 

 do not express it so merely as furniture or pictures. 

 But, still, they do express it; and we cannot look 

 upon whatever beauty they may possess with disin- 

 terested eyes. There are flowers, for instance, like 

 the prim double Dahlias and Ranunculuses which 

 remind us of the blossoms on Dresden china, and 

 which have, no doubt, been developed by the same 

 kind of taste that produced those blossoms. If we 

 like Dresden china, we shall like these flowers; and 

 there are a hundred subtle causes connected with 

 our whole view and experience of life which affect 

 our taste in such things. The artificiality of a few 

 years ago is always distasteful to us. We have just 

 escaped from it and see only its absurdities. But the 

 artificiality of a remoter past often has some romance 



