I 20 April-Nettles. only too long in the spring landscape. There are great quantities of dead light-brown rushes, which for my part I am weary of, and should like to see hidden away under fresher and greener growths. It is consoling that so many plants come vigorously forward at this season. The enormous roots of the bryony, hidden away in so many places where no one suspects their existence, begin to prove their vigor by sending forth a few green leaves, which give promise of graceful festoons. Nettles are growing in great abundance under the hedges, which they border with a fresh and beautiful green; and many wild places are adorned with the richer and better coloring of the ground ivy, which the peasants in France, I know not wherefore, have chosen to dedicate to St. John. The great mullein sprouts handsomely in April, with his fine large cottony leaves, and it is a pleasure to meet with him again when we remember his summer grandeur. Contemporary with the great mullein, the barbed leaves of the arum, smooth and glistening, with their irregular spots of dark, grow quickly in their shady retreats. By the streams no April-flowering plant is prettier than the meadow bittercress, and I know some places where it clusters in splendid constellations that bend over the water, and are reflected on it 'Like stars on the sea When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.' The flowers being of the purest possible white, or else just delicately tinted with pinkish purple, show strongly in the evening when the first approaches of twilight have darkened the damp recesses behind them. You will find, too, in similar situations, the marsh marigold, often in the most splendid abundance, making a rich yellow foreground color, and those more modest little plants, the creeping bugle and the small-flowered calamint, both which are good and agreeable in hue, and some places are known to me where the small purple flowers of the calamint are sufficiently powerful from their quantity to deserve the attention of a painter. I suppose that no prudent artist would undertake to paint a field of broom in full flower, as we see them towards the end of April. The broom is certainly less objectionable than a field of flowering rape, for the yellow is more supportable and not so unmixed with green; besides, the green is much richer and darker than that of the rape plant, even if the latter were visible; but the broom yellow is too powerful to be acceptable in landscape-painting unless in very moderate quantity. It is conceivable that an artist might admit a broom amongst other plants in his foreground, but only with the greatest care and moderation as to the painting of its flowers; and in saying this I do not wish to maintain the authority of the brown masters, but that of sober and right judgment, which in art, as in other matters, must always predominate in the end. Whenever an artist admits any glaring and positive color in quantity relatively great, he incurs the risk of not being able to harmonize it with the quieter hues of which the rest of his picture is composed; and I may add that Nature herself, from the artistic point of view, 122 April-Criticism of Nature. does not always succeed in doing so. I have met with people who consider any criticism of Nature as a sort of heresy, who, having adopted the theory that Nature is infallible, will not listen to any reasoning on the subject, and tell you that a field of cabbages is a finer sight than a gallery of masterpieces in painting; but if such persons could understand what art is they would abandon this fanaticism. All who have practised art are well aware that natural composition, though a suggestion of artistic composition, is never quite good of itself, and has always to be altered by the artist; and why should Nature be more artistic in her color? I believe the truth to be, that artistic color is as far removed from natural color as artistic composition is from natural composition, and that it will be found on investigation impossible to produce what artists call fine color by the simple copyism of Nature. It has been a vulgar error of the uneducated, whether practically painters or not, to imagine that things in Nature were suitable for painting which in fact were altogether outside its province, to believe that they had only to paint whatever struck their fancy out-of-doors, and that toute verité was bonne à dire. There could not be a greater mistake. It is true that Art finds her materials in nature, but she chooses them as we choose mushrooms for the table, and if she were not careful in her selection it would be at her own great peril. And even when the material has been judiciously chosen it is only raw material still, but the finished work of art is material that has been both modified and reorganized by human taste, intelligence, and invention. XXIV. Early Rising-Not a virtue, but a Compensation - Chaucer's Early RisHis passionate Love of Daisies -Chaucer's way of observing How Etymology may be Poetical. ing Nature IF early rising were so much of a virtue as its practi tioners generally assume, then indeed, in this respect at least, should we be eminently virtuous in the Val Ste. Véronique. We are all of us up and stirring before the dawn, not for any particularly laudable passion for an ideally perfect life, but in the case of the poor peasants and servants who surround us from immemorial tradition simply, and the daily necessities of existence; and in my own case from taste and choice, and the love of a kind of pleasure which is blameless, and no more. Indeed, I think that early rising is not so much a virtue in people who live in the country as one of the many pleasant compensations of their existence. They cannot go to the opera in the evening, and they miss a hundred delights and advantages of great cities; but they have certain pleasures of their own which it is wise to enjoy to the utmost, and early rising is one of them. We had kept late hours at Paris, as every one must who lives with and in the life of a great capital; but here in the Val Ste. Véronique we followed the life of Nature. 124 May - Chaucer. Of all early risers that ever witnessed the beautiful Aurora, surely old Chaucer was the happiest, and the most keenly conscious of his happiness. What seemed to him sweetest and purest of pleasant hours was that cool, calm hour of the early morning, at the beginning of the dawn, when having put on his 'gear and his array' he walked forth into the fields and woods with the serenest cheerfulness in all his well-tuned feelings. If it is true that Nature with all her beauty is mere desolation until reflected in the eyes and soul of man, then there must be gradations in the beauty of the image according to the brightness or imperfection of the living mirror; and if so, how fortunate were those dawns, and those dewy fields and flowers, that were in the deep, clear, happy, poet-soul of Chaucer! If it were possible to go back into the past, and enjoy the companionship of the illustrious dead, I should like two things most of all—a drinking-bout with Socrates (not for the wine's sake) and a very early walk in the morning with Dan Chaucer, yet not perhaps on the morning immediately following the before-mentioned Athenian symposium: 'Wherefore I mervaile greatly of my selfe About the springen of the day; And on I put my gear and mine array, Such was Chaucer's way in the pleasant spring-time, |