A SUMMER AFTERNOON 119 
bank, on this ripple-marked shore, are the true 
literary models. How many living authors have 
ever attained to writing a single page which 
could be for one moment compared, for the 
simplicity and grace of its structure, with this 
green spray of wild woodbine or yonder white 
wreath of blossoming clematis? A finely or- 
ganized sentence should throb and palpitate 
like the most delicate vibrations of the summer 
air. We talk of literature as if it were a mere 
matter of rule and measurement, a series of pro- 
cesses long since brought to mechanical perfec- 
tion: but it would be less incorrect to say that 
it all lies in the future; tried by the outdoor 
standard, there is as yet no literature, but only 
glimpses and guideboards; no writer has yet 
succeeded in sustaining, through more than 
some single occasional sentence, that fresh and 
perfect charm. If by the training of a life- 
time one could succeed in producing one con- 
tinuous page of perfect cadence, it would bea 
life well spent, and such a literary artist would 
fall short of nature’s standard in quantity only, 
not in quality. 
It is one sign of our weakness, also, that we 
commonly assume Nature to be a rather fragile 
and merely ornamental thing, and suited for 
a model of the graces only. But her seduc- 
tive softness is the last climax of magnificent 
