. This method is classic
and authoritative, being used by many of the greatest masters, (by Holbein
continually;) and it is much the best which the general student can adopt
for expression of the action and muscular power of plants.

The goodness or badness of such work depends absolutely on the truth of the
single line. You will find a thousand botanical drawings which will give
you a {116} delicate and deceptive resemblance of the leaf, for one that
will give you the right convexity in its backbone, the right perspective of
its peaks when they foreshorten, or the right relation of depth in the
shading of its dimples. On which, in leaves as in faces, no little
expression of temper depends.

Meantime we have yet to consider somewhat more touching that temper itself,
in next chapter.

* * * * *

{117}

CHAPTER VII.

THE PARABLE OF JOTHAM.

1. I do not know if my readers were checked, as I wished them to be, at
least for a moment, in the close of the last chapter, by my talking of
thistles and dandelions changing into seaweed, by gradation of which,
doubtless, Mr. Darwin can furnish us with specious and sufficient
instances. But the two groups will not be contemplated in our Oxford system
as in any parental relations whatsoever.

We shall, however, find some very notable relations existing between the
two groups of the wild flowers of dry land, which represent, in the widest
extent, and the distinctest opposition, the two characters of material
serviceableness and unserviceableness; the groups which in our English
classification will be easily remembered as those of the Thyme, and the
Daisy.

The one, scented as with incense--medicinal--and in all gentle and humble
ways, useful. The other, scentless--helpless for ministry to the body;
infinitely dear as the bringer of light, ruby, white and gold; the three
colours of the Day, with no hue of shade in it. Therefore I {118} take it
on the coins of St. George for the symbol of the splendour or light of
heaven, which is dearest where humblest.

2. Now these great two orders--of which the types are the thyme and the
daisy--you are to remember generally as the 'Herbs' and the 'Sunflowers.'
You are not to call them Lipped flowers, nor Composed flowers; because the
first is a vulgar term; for when you once come to be able to draw a lip,
or, in noble duty, to kiss one, you will know that no other flower in earth
is like that: and the seco