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do not always find expression, and only do so when they impress 
with sufficient power to form distinct conceptions. We may feign 
an appreciation and enjoyment of nature that we do not feel. 
There is an esthetic cant as nauseating as any other cant. The 
first hunter who saw Niagara was doubtless overpowered by its ter- 
rorizing sublimity, but, it may be, his uncultured mind soon recov- 
ered its ordinary apathy, and he saw nothing in the stupendous 
phenomenon to give him delight, and made his preparations to 
cook his dinner on the edge of the cataract as coolly as ever. With 
an Audubon it would have been different. 
“If the eye had not been sunny 
How could it look upon the sun?” 
I have, however, guarded against the theory that art exists solely 
in the mind, solely in the idea, and that there is no intrinsic beauty 
in natural objects but what the mind creates in them. 
2. Art is the interpretation of the significance and beauty of 
nature. The product of the subjective capacity when drawn forth 
by the beauty of nature becomes the Janguage of art. Some think 
of nature only for scientific and practical uses, but ‘‘ nature,’’ says 
Canon Mozley, ‘has two revelations—that of use and that of beauty. 
The beauty is just as much a part of nature as the use; they are 
only different aspects of the self-same facts, the usefulness on one 
side is on the other beauty. The colors of the landscape, the tints 
of spring and autumn, the lines of twilight and dawn—all that 
might seem the superfluity of nature—are only her most necessary 
operations under another view ; her ornament is another aspect of 
her work ; and, in the act of laboring as a machine, she also sleeps as a 
picture. The same lines which serve as the measure of distance to 
regulate all our motions also make the beauty of perspective.’’ But 
beyond this idea of Canon Mozley’s, itis my belief that there is actual 
contrivance in nature for an appeal to the zsthetic sense. Moun- 
tains that surround a valley ‘ like a chorus of hills,’’ by their fusion 
of noblest forms with finest tints, speak directly to the mind, as do 
the powerful words of a chorus in a Greek drama; and there is 
found also in nature every secret, even the subtlest, for the result of 
beauty, so as to produce the effect of beauty and power on the 
mind of the beholder. This is nature’s art. What Venetian blue 
is like the blue of the Rosenlaui glacier? What painting ever ex- 
celled the splendors of 
“ The fiery noon, and eve’s one star ?” 
i at ie 
