The Open Air 



frequented it; the time when the moorhen's young 

 crept after their mother through its recesses; from 

 the singing of the cuckoo by the river, till now 

 brown and yellow leaves strew the water. They 

 strew, too, the dry brown grass of the land, thick 

 tuffets, and lie even among the rushes, blown hither 

 from the distant trees. The wind works its full will 

 over the exposed waste, and drives through the reed- 

 grass, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce giving 

 them time to spring together again, when the following 

 blast a second time divides them. 



A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal 

 in its unsightly holes, could not be found; and yet, 

 because of the reed-grass, it is made as it were full 

 of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom there 

 are so many nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not 

 sometimes take these scraps of earth and render into 

 them the idea which fills a clod with beauty. In one 

 such dismal pit not here I remember there grew 

 a great quantity of bulrushes. Another was sur- 

 rounded with such masses of swamp-foliage that it 

 reminded those who saw it of the creeks in semi- 

 tropical countries. But somehow they do not seem 

 to see these things, but go on the old mill-round of 

 scenery, exhausted many a year since. They do not 

 see them, perhaps, because most of those who have 

 educated themselves in the technique of painting are 

 city-bred, and can never have the feeling of the 

 country, however fond they may be of it. 



In those fields of which I was writing the other 

 day, I found an artist at work at his easel; and a 

 pleasant nook he had chosen. His brush did its 

 work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated 

 command of his materials. He could delineate what- 

 ever he selected with technical skill at all events. 



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