104 BY- WA YS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



olent of the odors and essences of buds and 

 flowers, and sweet, mossy solitudes. Theirs 

 had been the oil of nuts instead of the oil of 

 the lamp. 



There is no safety in culture if it leads to 

 artificiality. There must be a safety-valve to 

 any high-pressure system, social, moral, or in- 

 tellectual. The connection with the sources 

 of nature must be kept perfect. Poetry, 

 painting, sculpture, and all the cognate ele- 

 ments of high education and sweet intellectual 

 attainment, must become mere manifestations 

 of a diseased fancy and imagination whenever 

 this connection shall be permanently severed. 

 It matters little by what slender streams na- 

 ture feeds us, so that we get the food at first 

 hand. History seems to teach us that utter 

 artificiality is the forerunner of decadence. On 

 the other hand, in the flowering time of a peo- 

 ple's youth come their geniuses. England 

 can have no Shakespeare now, Germany no 

 Goethe, Italy no Dante. Culture has gone 

 too far. The wires are down between nature 

 and the leaders of fashion in fine art. True, 

 we have the microscope in the hands of hun- 

 dreds of analysts and fact-gatherers ; but this 

 serves only the turn of the men who despise 

 every element of nature that cannot be con- 

 trolled for the furtherance of the demands of 

 artificial life. 



Reader, let us go out occasionally to browse 

 and nibble, and gather the savage sweets of 

 primeval things ; to revel in the crude mate- 

 rials of creation ; to get the essential oils, the 

 spices, the fragrance, the pungent elements 

 of originality. 



