270 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



drawing out the work for the ensuing night." 

 With such painstaking endeavour as this of 

 Holman Hunt and Millais to get the truth 

 and the whole truth of natural facts we now 

 make acquaintance for the first time. 



Are we not here again brought up against 

 the problem of the relation of art to nature ? 

 Yes, but we are not concerned, for the purpose 

 of this book, to argue for or against the legi- 

 timacy, as art, of the intensely realistic methods 

 of the Pre- Raphael ites. We have only to find 

 what help, if any, they have procured for us in 

 our study of tree-life. It matters not to us if 

 Holman Hunt and Millais mistook, and led 

 others to mistake, the imitation of nature for 

 art, so long as we find, after looking at their 

 paintings, that they prove once more the truth 

 of Browning's 



We're made so that we love 

 First when we see them painted, things we have passed 

 Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see ; 

 And so they are better painted — better to us, 

 Which is the same thing. Art was given for that ; 

 God uses us to help each other so, 

 Lending our minds out. 



Art has been given for other ends besides 

 this ; but we will not despise art that serves 



