Art Out-of-Doors 
he refused to know either, he was always a 
discontented lover of Nature. Finding no 
outlet for his passion except through the in- 
adequacy of words, he felt that his obser- 
vation had no purpose : he was continually 
questioning why beauty exists, what it im- 
plies, and how it can be as beneficial as he 
blindly felt it must be. In the essay called 
“Wild Flowers” there are curiously con- 
tradictory passages. “The first conscious 
thought about wild flowers,” he says, “was 
to find out their names — the first conscious 
pleasure ; and then I began to see many that 
I had not previously noticed. Once you 
wish to identify them there is nothing es- 
capes, down to the little white chick-weed 
of the path and the moss of the wall. . . . 
Plants everywhere, hiding behind every tree, 
under the leaves, in the shady places, beside 
the dry furrows of the field ; they are only 
just behind something, hidden openly. The 
instant you look for them they multiply a 
hundred-fold.” 
Once you wish to identify them , he says; 
does it not seem as though he would imme- 
diately have turned to books for their ready 
340 
