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                       ART-STUDIES FROM NATURE,

                         As applied to Design:

                           _FOR THE USE OF_

               ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS, AND MANUFACTURERS.


                      COMPRISED IN FOUR PAPERS BY

                     F. E. HULME, F.L.S., F.S.A.;

                         J. GLAISHER, F.R.S.;

                     S. J. MACKIE, F.G.S., F.S.A.;

                          ROBERT HUNT, F.R.S.


               REPRINTED FROM THE ART-JOURNAL.


                _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD._


                                LONDON:
             VIRTUE & CO., 26, IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW.
                                 1872.


                                LONDON:
                      PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO.,
                              CITY ROAD.




PREFACE.


Nature may be studied in many aspects; her wealth of service and beauty
is freely open to all who seek; and while the man of science, by patient
study and assiduous toil, may learn something of her mystery, and gather
from her not unwilling hands rich treasure of knowledge for the benefit
of humanity (for without the midnight watch and the elaborate
calculation of the astronomer navigation would yet be in its infancy;
without the enthusiasm of the botanist as he toils in the tropic forest
the virtues of many a healing plant would be unknown; without the keen
perception of the geologist the miner’s task would be in vain), so the
man of art in no less degree may find in her study richest elements of
beauty, loveliest suggestions of colour, forms of infinite grace. A
delight in the study of Nature, a desire to realise something of its
grandeur, is a source of unbounded pleasure to its possessor, for to him
no walk can be a weariness, no season of the year dreary, no soil so
sterile as to be barren of interest:--

    “The meanest flow’ret of the vale,
     The simplest note that swells the gale,
     The common sun, the air, the skies,
     To him are opening Paradise.”

The lichen on the rock, the wayside grass, the many-coloured fungi, are
no less full of beauty than the forms that more ordinarily attract
attention, and are no less worthy of study. “The works of the Lord are
great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein;” and Nature
has ever to the devout mind, from its own inherent beauty and its
testimony to Him its creator and sustainer, been a study of the deepest
interest. Some who glance over these opening remarks before entering
upon the search for such material in the body of the book as may seem
available for their immediate purpose, may consider that this view of
the subject is unpractical; but we would remind such that all art,
pictorial, sculptural, decorative, or what not, is only noble and worthy
of the name so far as it affords food for thought in the spectator, and
testifies to thought in the artist, and that the nobility of the work is
in direct proportion to such evidence of inner life. Art that is
æsthetic and sensuous, though pleasing to the eye, must ever in the
nature of things hold a subordinate place to that art which is symbolic,
to those forms in which an inner meaning