ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 106 



sure of one thing : poems, landscapes, pic- 

 tures, and all other works of art (art human 

 or superhuman) are never to be exhausted 

 by one look, or by a hundred. If a man is 

 good for anything, and the poem or the land- 

 scape is good for anything, he will find new 

 meanings with new perusals. In other words, 

 we may turn upon Emerson and say : " Yes, 

 but then, you know, we never do see a pic- 

 ture a picture that is a picture." 



As was related a week ago, I spent the 

 12th of October on the North Shore. I 

 brought back the remembrance of a glorious 

 piece of the world's beauty. In outline, I 

 had it in my mind. But I knew perfectly, 

 both at the time and afterward, that I had 

 not really made it my own. I had been too 

 much taken up with other things. The eye 

 does not see the landscape ; nor does the mind 

 see it. The eye is the lens, the mind is the 

 plate. The landscape prints itself upon the 

 mind, through the eye. But the mind must 

 be sensitive and still, and what is of tener 

 forgotten the exposure must be sufficiently 

 prolonged. The clearest-eyed genius ever 

 born never saw a landscape in ten minutes. 



