TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 
1G 
In the season of nest-building, which is also 
the season of song-singing, the by-ways of 
American rural districts offer many attractions 
to the student of nature, and especially to the 
student who hopes to turn his discoveries to 
account in any field of art. Of mere descrip- 
tive matter, so far as it may go in literature, 
and of mere conventionalization, so far as dec- 
orative drawing and painting are concerned, 
the most that was ever possible has, probably, 
already been done; but the higher forms of art, 
which we have agreed to call creative, must 
get the germs of all new combinations from 
the suggestions of nature. I often have 
thought that even criticism in our country 
would have more virility in it if the critics had 
more time and more inclination to study nature 
outside of cities and greenhouses. How can 
Wordsworth be studied with true critical in- 
sight by one who but vaguely remembers the 
outlines of the woods and fields, the shady 
lanes, and the fine aerial effects of hilly land- 
scape? When one with open eyes and ears 
goes out into the unshorn ways of nature in the 
creative season—spring—the fine fervor at 
work in birds, and trees, and plants, in the air, 
the earth, and the water, is so manifest that 
one cannot doubt that some subtle element of 
originality is easily obtainable therefrom by in- 
fection. Of course one must be susceptible to 
