heard talk about" the law of contradictories." I haven't the least idea what "the law of contradictories" means, but I think that, without serious trouble, I could define such a law. Ruskin says in this volume: "No touch or form is ever added to another by a good painter, without a mental determination and affirmation." The same day that I read this, I read in the introduction to "The Rosenthal Method of Practical Linguistry": "No action can be done well which is not done unconsciously." Both are true statements; this is an illustration of the many-sidedness of life. If you have read the late William M. Hunt's "Conversations upon Art," you will remember that he asserts at one moment the diametric opposite of that which he strenuously insists upon at another. He is right: we must view both sides of the shield, if we would know it for what it is.

But how can I contend that that which is the result of a mental determination can be unconscious? Easily. The time was, when the act could only be done consciously and painfully. But then, as Rosenthal says, it could not be well done. It must be "word upon word, line upon line, here a little and there a little," until both

mind and hand are trained, not to do the thing in a perfunctory way, but to do it in the right way; to do one thing after another because such is the necessary order and relation, as the player upon a musical instrument often does perfectly, without looking, that which he would stumble over horribly if he should try to follow, note by note, as he did in the times which are past. That which he has learned has become embodied in his mental structure; it is now a part of his endowment, like the faculty of breathing or walking without thought of the process.

OCTOBER 30, 1893.

VI.

THE frost this morning was not by any means the first of the season, but it was by much the most severe. The fields were almost as white as if a light snow had fallen, and each leaf and blade of grass was bordered with a delicate fringe of spicular crystals and encrusted with a coat of gems. The pools were frozen over, and here and there on the roadsides the ice took curious curly forms that seemed to defy explanation.

My morning stroll took me over the ledge and the hilltop, among the sumachs, cedars and young oak trees. My object was to ascertain whether the conical mountain upon our most distant horizon is actually that well-known peak which popular belief asserts it to be. But alas! it was the old story of the sun and the wind over again. Only here it was the delicate haze pervading the Indian summer air, which had effectually effaced the pile of rugged trap-rock of which I was in search, leaving for me alone but how large an alone! - the glo

rious dissolving view of valley and distant hills under the warm November sun.

From the pastures I heard the cawing of the crows; upon a tree trunk near me hammered a woodpecker; afar through the wood resounded the regular stroke of an axe; and the pleasant odour of burning leaves tickled my nostril. But alas! we must sometimes pay dearly for our pleasures. Yesterday in driving along a picturesque wood road among wild and rocky hills, I crossed a line of fire, fully a third of a mile long, steadily marching through the fallen leaves, and eating up in its path shrubs and herbs, and the surface of the soil itself, with the upper roots and the innumerable seeds which had been shed upon it and buried within it. Merely from the wad from a sportsman's gun probably, but it was wiping out acre after acre of sylvan beauty, damaging to some extent the trees themselves, and leaving an ashy waste beneath them and all to make an American holiday.

Then along comes the brave woodchopper, and down go the saplings and seedlings, chestnut and oak, maple and beach, pine and hickory, and for what? Firewood, simply. Cord wood takes the place of the

promising timber, which a little judgment would have left to attain respectable size, when by judicious selection and care it might be made to furnish a profitable annual crop, while the woodland should remain a beauty and a joy forever.

The wild flowers are now very scarce. This morning I found none but the witch hazel, the golden-rod, an aster, the wild carrot, chamomile, and pepper grass. A more extended and careful search would probably have been rewarded by buttercups and daisies (or white-weeds), among the

first to come and last to go,- by yarrow, chickweed and the mulleins, all of which I have found within two or three days. Even the fringed gentian showed a few of its lovely blue blossoms in a protected meadow only the day before yesterday, their third "last appearance for the season. Dandelions I have heard of, but have not seen for several weeks. Doubtless we shall have them from time to time throughout the year. I have found them in the Brooklyn park in January and February.

We have now one of the greatest pleasures of which the leafy summer deprives us, the sight of the graceful stems and branches of the trees, with all their won