72 



Emerson sjiys, in his Humble Bee 



"All was picture as he passed." 



This is true of the Japanese. They get a subject out of 

 nothinof. In a collection of ivories at the Burlinoftou 

 Club, there seemed an epitome of human life : nature 

 feeling, art feeling, poetic feeling, the grotesque, gothic 

 creativeness, the sentiment of Dutch pictures, incident, — 

 a world in little, a Shakespearian range. We have only 

 to examine fans to see their sensibilities to the impression. 

 In my last talk with Mr. Hunt, I saw how much he was 

 drawn to Japanese, and in the beautiful Gloucester harbor 

 I think I see the influence of it. They have naturalistic 

 feeling as the Greeks had design. They have changed 

 ornamentation everywhere. A friend of mine, who has a 

 collection gathered on the principle of poetic motive, tells 

 me, he never takes a walk, but he sees grasses and w^eeds, 

 and a hundred aspects of nature, Japanese have taught him. 

 Whether this virginal island will now be destroyed for 

 naivete of motive and unspoilt feelings, remains to be 

 seen. The Greeks wdien they lost their great art were 

 conquered. The Japanese are springing on. 



Since I was last here we have lost Mr. Very. A 

 genius, as rare as Hawthorne, suddenly stopped in his 

 early years. It is the quality of his work that transmits 

 a man. The only analogue I can find for Very is Fra 

 Angelico. No two men were ever purer-hearted, and so 

 consecrated. It made their genius. Fra Angelico is 

 worth whole ao-es afterward. Corot illustrates this. He 

 outweighs the whole American landscape. Gray is the 

 truest poet of the last century. How little he wrote ! 

 Very may remind us of Blake too. Spontaneity is the 

 secret of genius. In Wendell Phillips' speeches, in Miss 

 Preston's translation of Mireio is this quality. It is as 

 easy as breathing. The old diction is very threadbare. 



