FLORAL ART 5 



though, even amid these borrowed glories, we still 

 long for those flowers which are the true harbingers 

 of the seasons. It is a curious fact that the worship 

 of colour has permeated nearly all of us in late years. 

 The terrible period of so-called " high art," with its 

 sickly colours and still more sickly worshippers, has 

 happily passed from us. We have again taken the 

 gorgeous tints and tones of the fifteenth and six- 

 teenth centuries into our dress, our furniture, and 

 our flowers ; in short, we now worship colours and 

 are not afraid of having them massed together for 

 our wonderment, knowing that if we follow the 

 primitive mixings of Nature's own colourings we 

 cannot be far away from truth in Art. 



As Mr. Clay observes in his admirable treatise 

 on the origin of the sense of Beauty : " The word 

 Art "- without any qualifying epithet "signifies 

 effort and skill devoted to the expression and 

 creation of the beautiful. ..." " This skill is 

 engaged at one moment in the creation of the 

 useful, at another of the artistic, or very often of 

 the two together, in such a way that it is hardly 

 possible to draw a line of demarcation. ..." 



Our sensations and love of colour are based 

 on the laws of physics. The brain can only form 

 conceptions based on objective experience, but 



