320 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIKDS. 



day veils or else a pot of ochre streaked with indigo, is 

 turned over on the canvas to " represent" for you an Italian 

 sky and sunset ! 



Nature is not always volcanic neither does she day by 

 day go into convulsions of the picturesque, as do her "Great 

 Masters !" I suppose they must be recognized as such, of 

 course, since they are responsible for the agorising monstros- 

 ities of their too literal disciples. Nature is altogether too 

 serene in her habitual moods for these Fire Worshippers of 

 Art, whose softest shadows are of smoke and storm clouds. 



Such minds do not comprehend sublimity they cannot 

 understand that as music is rolled up from the abyss, filling 

 Silence with the gradual volume of its awful symphonies, so 

 Art must rear its solemn forms upon the plane of vast Ke- 

 pose! 



How simple the accessaries of her grandest pictures 1 



Behold a tropical forest! Beneath its deep shadows a 

 herd of elephants! They browse on the dark green and 

 glossy leaves, or lean their sage heads in heavy quiet against 

 the great stems around them ! 



What association ! 



The far Orient the Magii the ivory and gold of Ophir 

 the Barbarian Po, and the world conquering Macedonian, 

 Darius, Xerxes, with their swarming millions, Xenophon, 

 the subtle, with his hardy handful, Marathon, Thermopylae 

 the pageantry, the glory, the decay all rise in quick com- 

 ing shadows to the spell of that simple picture. 



The slimy Nile beneath a burning sun a crocodile an 

 Ibis! 



And pyramids loom along the sky-rimmed desert 

 Sphynx-guarded palaces, mightier than the very dreams of 

 man's ambition since, and Hecatombs of mummied nations, 

 come all unbidden with the scene. 



A few ostriches, a clump of palm trees 1 



Jacob's Well Hagar in the wilderness the fire-eyed 

 barb, tireless and swift of foot the tinkling bells of the long 



