hold communion with him—and the lizard talked of Schelling and Hegel! He spoke in vain to the eagle and to other birds; only the lizard came, to talk of man and man's wisdom, and not of Nature.

And you sit in the greenwood in long bands of swaying light and shade which enliven or darken the forest grass, and hear the rivulet-voice laughing among the rocks, through fibry roots, jumping up all too like a living, thinking thing-leaping with an arch, merry bound over the rude rock; there is a soul in such curves and lines of action—a faint, delicious feeling of love for it and for all things steals over you; oh! keep that love alive, cherish it, yield your heart passively and calmly to it, for it bears the purest truth to you which this world knows.

Reader, the world is asking earnestly when we are to have a real Art, a real Poetry-an expression of the beautiful-free from intense self-consciousness and torment and littleness? We shall have it when people think and feel naturally and frankly, vigorously and proudly. We shall have it when men and women go into the woods and by the surging sea, and through fields and gardens, and into each others' hearts, and deep into each others' longings and capacities for joy, and in all these study Nature absolutely and closely, in phenomena single or associated. Are there many, are there any who do this thoroughly? The painter draws fifty times as much from his studio as from his studies, the poet sings after

those who sung before; they are not directly inspired by long, patient, passionate, heart-yearning love of Nature. O mother of all true souls! O fountain of life beyond which none have gone! how few know thee as thou wert known of old by the rivers of Arcady, among oaks and olives.

What a deep longing and endless love of beauty must have been in the heart of the old German poet who sang "Zum Wald, zum Wald!"

"O FOREST fair! for thee I yearn;

Alone I'll go, alone return!
There all is pleasant, glad and gay,

And life an endless holiday.

Do you understand it, this deep love for the forest, like that of bridegroom for bride; that love which is all of truth, and which lets nothing in but goodness and beauty? Have you ever gone so far as to know that simply in visible and audible Nature among leaves and waters, and without going further, there is a consolation

and infinite thrilling rapture to him or to her who has once penetrated it? Oh! learn that great secret of freedom and of joyousness. To those who have deciphered the magic word, the glory of the olden time returns again, the white immortals wander once more among men, Olympus is no longer a dim, forgotten dream. To them the great god Pan is alive again, the cherishing father lives by reedy streams and amid the rose-crowned mountains. Rejoice, for he that was dead is alive, and he that was lost is found! The fauns sport with the nymphs, the Muses live a new life, gentle Venus, the sweet mother of all beauty and life, rises again star-lighted on high, and dove-crested as of old from the waters; yes, every incarnation of freshness and beauty and strength and health which ever man knew; every myth expressing the thousands of fascinations of beautiful reality, will come again, not as idols, but as heart-felt truths to men, when they learn, to the right or the left, to draw out the pure, unchanged, unchanging, immortal and reviving truth from Nature.

To him or to her who understands-greeting! But many there be who do not understand, who play with. toys and rags, yes, who would perhaps chat of "la Nature," and write songs to her, and set them to Verdi tunes, or point out in lectures how edifying and moral it. is to study her, and how apparent it is from the "adaptations" in her laws that their salaries ought to be paid, and how plainly she guarantees that, as we are all a

selfish set of wretches, we shall all be paid up squarely for every good impulse and act. To them Nature is indeed very fine; "so improving, so elevating," and so very useful! And every generation has seen them trying to take in Nature, in a modified, diluted form, and treating her as a partial, limited existence, not knowing her as she is the one infinite circle, the beauty and life unending-TIBI SOLA DEA ISIS.

CHAPTER TENTH.

"WHAT Worlds or what vast regions hold

The immortal soul that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook?"-MILTON.

It is often urged against the seeking of sources for inspiration of poetry or art in Nature alone, that the latter is limited. "After this life, Nature will all fade away as a dream," say the sentimentalists and mystics, "and since it is limited to time, it must grow feebler even in time itself! It is finite."

Finite! Was there ever yet a truly finite manifestation of GOD! Is there any end to the constant possible unfoldings of beauty and joy as they gleam and color forth, and sound in endlessly new music, and woo us with soft caress, and burn in the inexhaustible sense of love? While Man lives on Earth, Nature will ever be to him fresh in joy, though he advance even to the Son of GODhood of early days.

Thinking this over, I once wove together a half-grotesque, half-serious dream whose object should be to show how far the soul might go in drawing pleasure from Na