1 8 The Garden Beautiful 



Choice essential. 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 natural, but 

 also because 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 ; that 

 also is the only true path for the gardener, all true art 

 being based on her eternal laws. All deviation from the 

 truth of nature, whether it be at the hands of Greek, 

 Italian, or other artist, though it may pass for a time, is 

 in the end — it may be ages after the artist is dead — 

 classed as debased art. 



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 it, and we cannot have the foregrounds 

 of beautiful English scenery daubed with flower-gardens 

 like coloured advertisements. Many see the right way 

 from their own sense being true, but others may wish 

 for proof of what is urged here, as to the true source of 

 lasting work in art, in the work of the great artists of all 

 time ; and we may be as true artists in the garden and 

 home landscape as anywhere else. 



Artists in planting. There is no good picture which 

 does not give us the beauty of natural things, and why 

 not begin with these and be artists in their growth and 

 grouping? For one reason, among others, that we have 

 the living things around us, and not merely representa- 

 tions of them, as in the other arts. 



