The Love of Nature 



Nature as those men did and all true artists 

 do, or if he ever learns the beneficent 

 lesson, the quietest scenes vvill impress him, 

 the most familiar will be ever new. The 

 shadow of a blackberry- vine as it trails over 

 a gray rock, will give him as delightful an 

 emotion as the sight of a great mountain ; 

 and custom will not stale his pleasure, for it 

 will be as infinitely varied, as perpetually 

 renewed, as the leaves on the trees, the 

 blades of grass in the fields, the tints in the 

 sunset skies. 



People who run about, summer after sum- 

 mer, in search of new landscapes to admire, 

 will often tell you that it is because they 

 love Nature. But if they did they vvould 

 be much less apt to run about ; they could 

 exercise their passion within narrower limits, 

 and they would be likely to content them- 

 selves within such limits because a particu- 

 lar love for particular beauties would result 

 from long acquaintance with them. 



In Mrs. Robbins's Rescue of an old Old 

 Place," she rightly says that one of the 

 great benefits which spring from the posses- 

 ses 



