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 



