1 16 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



Drifting might be condensed into that one 

 line — 



" Infinis bercements du loisir embaume." 



In fact, the few poems worthy the name, writ- 

 ten by Baudelaire, were made out of the sweet, 

 warm shreds of his out-door life, while on a 

 voyage in the far East. Even in France, this 

 freshness of Nature is recognized and relished. 

 In Numa Roumestan M. Daudet has, as orie 

 might say, wafted the odors of Provence 

 through the streets of Paris. The critics felt 

 the atmospheric change, and went to the win- 

 dows to see the mistral flurrying along the 

 boulevards. So, in America, when Bret Harte 

 and Joaquin Miller sent their stories and poems 

 over the mountains and deserts from our far 

 Pacific coast, it was their freshness — their 

 woodsy, dewy, out-door flavor that recom- 

 mended them. A happy blending of the 

 bucolic with the latest fashionable tendencies 

 — a welding together 'of the pastoral and the 

 ultra-urban, made a great success of An Earn- 

 est Trifler. It would be easy, to multiply in- 

 stances. The proofs are perfect that the in- ' 

 fluences of out-door life upon literature are of 

 the subtlest and most interesting nature. 

 Whilst every one must admit the paramount 

 importance of human life in every form of lit- 

 erary composition, still the side-light of out- 

 door nature is absolutely necessary to the his- 

 torian, the poet, and the novelist, and he who 

 neglects it fails in one of the prime require- 

 ments of the best art. As well might the 

 painter draw a group of figures without color, 

 atmosphere, or background, and expect to 

 win the highest fame, as for the novelist or the 



