122 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
the burnished beauty of these golden beetles, 
or enriches the veery’s song. It is only out of 
doors that even death and decay become beau- 
tifull The model farm, the most luxurious 
house, have their regions of unsightliness ; but 
the fine chemistry of nature is constantly 
clearing away all its impurities before our eyes, 
and yet so delicately that we never suspect the 
process. The most exquisite work of literary 
art exhibits a certain crudeness and coarseness, 
when we turn to it from nature,—as the 
smallest cambric needle appears rough and 
jagged when compared through the magnifier 
with the tapering fineness of the insect’s sting. 
Once separated from nature, literature re- 
cedes into metaphysics, or dwindles into novels. 
How ignoble seems the current material of 
London literary life, for instance, compared 
with the noble simplicity which, a century ago, 
made the Lake Country an enchanted land 
forever. Compare the “enormity of pleasure” 
which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived 
from the simplest natural object, with the seri- 
ous protest of Wilkie Collins against the affec- 
tation of caring about nature at all. “Is it not 
strange,” says this unhappy man, “to see how 
little real hold the objects of the natural world 
amidst which we live can gain on our hearts 
and minds? We go to nature for comfort in 
