356 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



Val d'Arno or the Plain of Marathon. It is the light from the 

 past which gives these scenes their abiding dignity; but this 

 light does not shine forth from the pages of the guide-book ; it 

 must come from the ancient wealth of the mind." The low- 

 lying hills and subtle gradation of outline on Martha's Vineyard 

 were a perpetual delight to him and furnished material for study 

 in the values of form and color. He somewhere says, " If a moun- 

 tain or hill goes about it aright, it can get an amazing dignity 

 without assaulting the heavens in its efforts." In one of his 

 note-books he writes, "No other landscape known to me has 

 so many contrasted slopes in an equal amount of profile; the 

 result is the impression of height and dignity totally dispro- 

 portioned to the actual altitudes : nowhere else in this country 

 do I know anything like the variety of scenic effect that is ex- 

 hibited in this hundred or so square miles." 



Furthermore he discovered that, owing to the beneficent in- 

 fluence of the Gulf Stream, there was in southeast Massachu- 

 setts a seasonal condition akin to the Old World spring, and 

 that people there were justified in accepting the English tradi- 

 tion, embodied in verse and prose, concerning the vernal time 

 of the year. He notes the fact that on the island " spring begins 

 in February, the ferns awakening to the uplifting noonday 

 sun within a month of the winter solstice. April the first always 

 brings the daffodils; on May 15th, however, the life is at least 

 a fortnight behind that of Cambridge. 'Seven Gates' has a real 

 European spring which is characteristically long, with arrests 

 which seem retardations." 



Mr. Shaler might have been a good farmer, for he was well 

 acquainted with all the processes, had he undertaken to 

 supervise details. When, however, he visited his farm, he was 

 generally weary of practical considerations and longed to es- 

 cape from the application of theories as well as from the burden 

 of administration. The intense nature of his college work en- 

 titled him to a free play of mind untrammelled by the need of 

 looking too closely to the execution of ideas. He therefore called 



