How different is our action in other directions. In horticultural nurseries, for instance, progress is not sluggish. Scientific discovery and methods of practice are applied and promptly produce definite results. The composite plants are distinguished from simple plants, and while all are secured in necessary conditions of healthy life—good soil, air, light, etc.—those receive from the gardener a special fostering care. He studies the laws of differentiation, the peculiarities of each organism with its hidden possibilities of varied efflorescence, and by fitting environment to wider issues, watching them day by day, nourishing every tendency favourable, checking every tendency unfavourable, he induces an outburst of blossom as varied in colour and form as it is marvellous in beauty or grace, and that in spite of the fact that unaided by natural forces he is utterly powerless to make a blade of grass grow. That human plants give promise of blossoming into a _moral_ beauty as yet undreamed of by the British public is patent to any wise observer of the confused social life of to-day. Our greatest realists in fiction note the point. We have George Meredith putting into the mouth of his hero, Matthew Weyburn, these significant words: “Eminent station among men doesn’t give a larger outlook ... I have come now and then across people we call common, slow-minded, but hard in their grasp of facts and ready to learn and logical. They were at the bottom of wisdom, for they had in their heads the delicate sense of justice upon which wisdom is founded ... that is what their rulers lack. Unless we have the sense of justice abroad like a common air there’s no peace and no steady advance. But these humble people had it. I felt them to be my superiors. On the other hand, I have not felt the same with our senators, rulers and lawgivers. They are for the most part deficient in the liberal mind.” (_Lord Ormont and his Aminta._)