TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 43 
It is easy to write about nature ; but to write 
in the spirit of nature, to keep within the limit 
of her rules, is not so easy. So to copy all the 
salient features of a landscape is within the 
power of any painter, but how few can get their 
brushes to spill upon the canvas even a modi- 
cum of what we all may see in the sky, and 
sea, and shore! Greening hedgerows, and 
blooming orchards, the songs of the cat-bird 
and brown thrush, always have something new 
in them. We never see or hear them twice 
from the same point of observation. ‘The 
brook’s voice has an infinite variety of tones. 
The sunlight and the cloud shadows are con- 
tinually changing. And so if one can hoard 
up the impressions made by the thousand pass- 
ing moods of spring, they will prove richly 
suggestive when reviewed in the quiet of the 
study. ‘The fine mass of such impressions will 
be found a fresh and fragrant matrix, enclosing 
the perfect crystals of original thought. If it 
is true that one grows like what one contem- 
plates nothing but good can come of lonely 
rambles with nature, and especially in the sea- 
son of quickening germs and tender impulses. 
Those who assert that there is nothing espe- 
cially picturesque or strikingly interesting in 
our rural scenery seem to me deficient either 
in judgment or in the power of observing 
closely. The fact is, it is hard for the profes- 
sional artist or literary man to cut loose from 
an hereditary old-country taint. The far-away, 
the dim, the old in literature and art are 
shrouded in the blue enchantment that hovers 
so tantalizingly on all heights. Standing on 
one mountain-top we look to another longingly ; 
reclining on one bank of a river we dream of 
