The Open Air 



The English girl who loves her horse and English 

 girls do love their horses most intensely is infinitely 

 more artistic in that fact than the cleverest painter 

 on enamel. They who love nature are the real 

 artists; the " artists " are copyists. St. John the 

 naturalist, when exploring the recesses of the High- 

 lands, relates how he frequently came in contact with 

 men living in the rude Highland way forty years 

 since, no education then whom at first you would 

 suppose to be morose, unobservant, almost stupid. 

 But when they found out that their visitor would 

 stay for hours gazing in admiration at their glens and 

 mountains, their demeanour changed. Then the truth 

 appeared: they were fonder than he was himself of 

 the beauties of their hills and lakes ; they could see 

 the art there, though perhaps they had never seen a 

 picture in their lives, certainly not any blue-and- 

 white crockery. The Frenchman flings his fingers 

 dexterously over the canvas, but he has never had 

 that in his heart which the rude Highlander had. 



The path across the arable field was covered with 

 a design of bird's feet. The reversed broad arrow of 

 the fore-claws, and the straight line of the hinder 

 claw, trailed all over it in curving lines. In the dry 

 dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal on 

 wax their trails wound this way and that, and 

 crossed as their quick eyes had led them to turn to 

 find something. For fifty or sixty yards the path 

 was worked with an inextricable design; it was a 

 pity to step on it and blot out the traces of those 

 little feet. Their hearts so happy, their eyes so 

 observant, the earth so bountiful to them with its 

 supply of food, and the late warmth of the autumn 

 sun lighting up their life. They know and feel the 

 different loveliness of the seasons as much as we do. 



224 



