Wbo paintefc tbe 3f lowers ? 



IT may, I suppose, be without question assumed that 

 flowers are beautiful. Whatever else the caprice of 

 taste may command us or forbid us to admire, there is 

 one fashion which, though every season repeated, is 

 yet found to be ever fresh the fashion of the Violet 

 and the Rose; and there is no truth to which the 

 common observation and the common-sense of man- 

 kind have given a readier assent, than they have to 

 the declaration that the most splendid of monarchs in 

 all his glory was not arrayed as are the lilies of the 

 field. 



So far there is agreement. But in these days of ours 

 it will not do to rest satisfied with the fact : it must 

 needs be asked how the fact came to be. That 

 these beautiful flowers were made beautiful, simply as 

 they are, that their gracefulness came to them as it 

 comes to a copy of themselves on a Christmas card or 

 in an artificial bouquet, directly from the hand of an 

 artist, is not the sort of explanation of which contem- 

 porary science will take account. But as the fact has to 

 be somehow explained, science is ready to explain it, 

 and that particular school of science for which there are 

 no puzzles, for which the making of an apple is an 

 operation nowise more mysterious than the making of 

 an apple-dumpling, is here, as everywhere, ready with a 

 full, true, and particular account of the process of their 

 adornment and of every step and stage in the same. As 

 usual, too, the explanation offered is not likely to err 

 through any morbid deference towards the ideas of 

 previous generations. It has hitherto been supposed 

 that flowers are not only the most beautiful but also the 

 ii. 



