OUR ARTISTS. 69 



these matters than Mr. Ruskin, and how little 

 even now have they profited by his teaching ! 

 They catch hold of a suggestion, as when he once 

 told them (showed them, we might say) that a 

 spray of pink apple-blossom against a blue sky 

 was beautiful, and the next exhibition or two 

 abounded in blossoming apple-boughs: but they 

 seem unable to grasp a principle. It was in 1851, 

 in his tract on " Pre-Raphaelitism," that he urged 

 the painting of " the heather as it grows, and 

 the foxglove and the harebell as they nestle in 

 the clefts of the rocks;" and this last' year, while 

 speaking of the same artist, Mr. Hunt, he has had 

 to repeat the same lesson, that plants that grow 

 are pleasanter objects than flowers that are 

 gathered. And, indeed, the reason is not far to 

 seek. A bunch of garden-roses thrown carelessly 

 down upon a mossy bank and there is scarcely 

 an exhibition without one not only gives one a 

 feeling of incongruity (as though the fashionable 

 flowers were out at a picnic), but a stronger 

 feeling still of coming death. We know those 

 roses must wither and die, almost, we fancy, as 



