106 BY-WAYVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
the true maker’s /abor ime may appear in 
their works. Even Poe and Hawthorne dis- 
close too heavy a trace of the must and mould 
of the closet. Each stands alone, inimitable, 
in his field, but lacking that balmy, odorous 
freshness of the morning woods and pastures, 
when the convolvulus and the violet are in 
bloom. We should have little faith in the 
bird-song described by either one of those 
wizards of romance. 
“The skies they were ashen and sober, 
‘The leaves they were crisped and sere,” 
in all their works. Cheerfulness and enthusi- 
asm have always seemed to me to belong of 
right to the best genius. Shakespeare exempli- 
fies it; the sublime audacity of Napoleon I. 
instances it. But Shakespeare was a poacher, 
and Napoleon loved to dwell out of doors. I 
hold that communion with Nature generates 
lofty ideas, feeds noble ambitions. The only 
way to lengthen a yard-measure is to gauge 
each new length of cloth by the preceding one, 
and not by the yardstick. The growth will be 
slow, but amazingly sure. So in Art, if we 
cast aside the standards and permit such ac- 
cretion as Nature suggests. 
But there must be some excuse for going 
out alone with Nature other than the avowed . 
purpose of filching her secrets and accumulat- 
ing her suggestions; for, as a matter of fact, 
nearly or quite all of the available literary or 
artistic materials caught from her great reset- 
voirs come without the asking, and at the 
moment when they are least expected. Then, 
too, the human mind seems to have no volun- 
tary receptivity. The power of taking in new 
