Art Out-of-Doors 



value to most of us until we have learned to 

 use them. And the best way to learn to 

 use our eyes is not idly to cast them about, 

 even though this may give us pleasure, but 

 to try to discover what there is to be seen 

 in the world, and then to try to perceive it 

 all. Only thus can we grow wise in Nat- 

 ure's beauty ; but, I say, to grow wise in 

 this sense we need not grow learned in a 

 scientific sense. A mere smattering of 

 knowledge, if it is accurate as far as it goes, 

 will open the eyes to facts and the beauty of 

 facts, and will make a solid basis for the fur- 

 ther knowledge which will be almost uncon- 

 sciously acquired. Once a little science has 

 been learned in love," once the channels 

 of the soul, the feeders of the imagination, 

 have been opened to Nature's voice, we 

 surely go on, by a process of instinctive see- 

 ing, to a stage in aesthetic development 

 which would never have been reached had 

 we wandered idly about the world, thinking 

 perhaps of beauty, but not thinking of the 

 laws which govern it, or of the individuality 

 of the myriad threads with which Nature 

 weaves it on her mysterious loom. 



348 



