104 BY-WAVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
olent of the odors and essences of buds and 
flowers, and sweet, mossy solitudes. Theirs 
had been the oil of nuts instead of the oil of 
the lamp. 
There is no safety in culture if it leads to 
artificiality. There must be a safety-valve to 
any high-pressure system, social, moral, or in- 
tellectual. The connection with the sources 
of nature must be ‘kept pertect, “Poetry, 
painting, sculpture, and all the cognate ele- 
ments of high education and sweet intellectual 
attainment, must become mere manifestations 
of a diseased fancy and imagination whenever 
this connection shall be permanently severed. 
It matters little by what slender streams na- 
ture feeds us, so that we get the food at first 
hand. History seems to teach us that utter 
artificiality is the forerunner of decadence. On 
the other hand, in the flowering time of a peo- 
ple’s youth come their geniuses. England 
can have no Shakespeare now, Germany no 
Goethe, Italy no Dante. Culture has gone 
too far. The wires are down between nature 
and the leaders of fashion in fine art. True, 
we have the microscope in the hands of hun- 
dreds of analysts and fact-gatherers; but this 
serves only the turn of the men who despise 
every element of nature that cannot be con- 
trolled for the furtherance of the demands of 
artificial life. 
Reader, let us go out occasionally to browse 
and nibble, and gather the savage sweets of 
primeval things; to revel in the crude mate- 
rials of creation ; to get the essential oils, the 
spices, the fragrance, the pungent elements 
of originality. 
