42 BY-WAVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
spring, beside a brook, and see how many of 
them will bear reading in the light and pres- 
ence of nature. How tasteless become the 
polished bits of conventional art when we at- 
tempt to enjoy them in the open air, where the 
violets grow, and the wild vine hangs its fes- 
toons! 
There is another test of the force and vital- 
ity of nature’s suggestions known to every ob- 
servant artist. For instance, a sketch of some 
out-door scene, made on the spot, will appear 
to have scarcely any value so long as it can be 
readily compared with the original; but no 
sooner is the portfolio opened in the studio 
than the sketch discloses, in a marked degree, 
many of the subtlest beauties or peculiarities 
of the living scene. How different in the case 
of asketch made from the flat! How diluted 
the power of nature becomes! 
I was once enjoying a luncheon with a gay 
sylvan party, when the earth served as table 
and a sward of blue-grass as table-cloth. <A 
lady who gloried in her collection of rare hand- 
painted china was serving tea to us in cups 
worth more than their weight in gold; and yet 
when one of these chanced to be set down in 
the midst of a tuft of wild violets it was so 
dulled by contrast with the living blooms that 
it really appeared coarse and crude. ‘To study 
nature is the surest way to a knowledge of 
what art ought to be. Nature is the standard. 
I have little respect for the judgment of the 
critic who measures one man’s work by that of 
another. The main question, when any art- 
work is to be critically considered should be, 
Has it the symmetry, force, and vital beauty 
of nature ? | 
