WITH RUSKIN. 31 



again, for we are idlers and health-hunters, 

 lounging along the gulf shore and reading for 

 pleasure, not for profit. 



Indeed, one must read for pleasure when 

 one would thoroughly enjoy Buskin, and then 

 what a charming outdoor companion he is. 

 His theories and quirks and carpings all dis- 

 appear in his brilliant phrasing and musical 

 cadences. Color, color, color, harmony, finely- 

 sketched outlines, impressions set against the 

 most witching backgrounds, and above all a 

 rare sincerity ever present, and saturating 

 the whole like the juice in ripe fruit, or like 

 the sunshine in summer air. One must mix 

 one's figures in attempting to characterize 

 Buskin's style, for it is as changeable and 

 curious as the inside of a kaleidoscope. He 

 sees things from an isolated and exceptional 

 point of view, but he is never purposely ec- 

 centric or odd in his ways of expression. He 

 is original, and, more, he is always strikingly 

 picturesque, so that when you read his works 

 in the open air, or hear them read there, it is 

 almost as if his figures and thoughts stood out 

 upon the landscape against the sky or the sea, 

 for above all he is an artist of the best sort 

 and harmonizes his creations with the great 

 scheme of nature. He believes that he is a 

 realist of the pre-Baphaelite kind, but he is, 

 nevertheless, a romancer, a thorough-going 

 idealist, always glorifying and beautifying 

 something common and vulgar till it shines 

 like a sunlit cloud. Indeed, even nature is 

 not a realist of the analytical, microscopic 

 sort in her best work, for she is not content 

 with showing things just as they are, but 

 must hang a luminous atmosphere about them 

 and touch them with heavenly colors. She 

 knows the blue enchantment of distance, the 



