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ARCADIAN DAYS 
 
 AMERICAN LANDSCAPES 
 
 IN 
 
 NATURE AND ART 
 
 BY 
 
 W. H. DOWNES > ,"> } 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY A. H. BICKNELL 
 
 BOSTON 
 ESTES & LAURIAT 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1891, 
 BY ESTES & LAURIAT. 
 
 GIFT 0? 
 
 PRESSWORK BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
TO 
 
 THE GROUP" 
 
 OF KINDRED SPIRITS WHO USED TO MEET IN BICKNELL S 
 
 STUDIO TO TALK ABOUT ART, IN AN ATMOSPHERE 
 
 OF GOOD FELLOWSHIP AND TOBACCO SMOKE. 
 
 M9443 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN these sketches, which were written out of 
 doors, I have first endeavored to record in 
 appropriate words the impressions caused by 
 the actual landscapes spread out before my 
 eyes, somewhat as the landscape painter would 
 record his impressions in his language. Then 
 I have ventured to recall the works of certain 
 painters whose canvases have been brought to 
 mind by a sight of Nature. It may be consid 
 ered rash to bring together in this way famous 
 names and some which are almost unknown to 
 the great world ; but an art critic should be 
 ready to incur such a risk, if he has any convic 
 tions, and surely he may never feel safer than 
 when judging men s works by the standard of 
 Nature. 
 
 It would not be the easiest thing in the world 
 to determine which method of suggesting Nature 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 is the more difficult, the painter s or the writer s. 
 At best, no one can give more than a hint. 
 Cold types and rebellious pigments alike are 
 inadequate means of expression. 
 
 The simplest rustic subjects have seemed the 
 best, because they are the most familiar. It is 
 hoped that some of these sketches may appeal 
 by their truthfulness to the reader s pleasant 
 memories. But the whole value of the work, if 
 it has any value, lies in its tendency, in what it 
 merely hints at, the great desirability, for in 
 stance, of using one s own eyes and of cultivat 
 ing one s powers of observation ; for how much 
 of pleasure and profit this might add to the lives 
 of most people, no matter in what particular 
 sphere of action they may be placed! 
 
 We see what we look for. It is best to be 
 on the watch for beauty, and to let none of it 
 escape our vigilance. 
 
 W. H. D. 
 
 SUTHERLAND ROAD, 
 
 BOSTON, April, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A DAY IN JUNE 17 
 
 ON THE RIVER 30 
 
 THE EVERLASTING HILLS 43 
 
 BY THE SHORE 54 
 
 THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE ....... 67 
 
 IN FIELD AND MEADOW 76 
 
 THE THUNDER STORM 89 
 
 SUNSET EFFECTS 102 
 
 IN THE WOODS 115 
 
 MOODS OF THE SEA 129 
 
 NOCTURNE 145 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS 159 
 
 THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART . 170 
 
A DAY IN JUNE 
 
 The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colors and their forms, were then to me 
 An appetite: a feeling and a love, 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, or any interest 
 Unborrowed from the eye. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
A DAY IN JUNE. 
 
 IT has stormed at intervals during six days 
 and nights. The wind has been blowing 
 more or less sourly from the east. Heavy 
 rains have fallen ; thick fogs hung over the 
 water ; the surf roared loudly in the night, and 
 a gale, swept in from the Atlantic, howled about 
 the house most dismally and monotonously for 
 twenty-four hours. The whole world seemed 
 
 17 
 
\ ; : t8 ; i l i l ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 dark ancl , chilly ; the summer s face was hid; 
 and: ^-very-one longed for the light and warmth 
 of the sun. 
 
 This morning, lo ! a dazzling, sparkling, flash 
 ing, glittering stream of welcome sunlight flooded 
 the glad earth and the laughing ocean ; the birds 
 sang with an unwonted exuberance on all sides ; 
 and the scent of sweetness and the softness of 
 the airs that blew over the meadows proclaimed 
 unmistakably that the wind was in the west. 
 Thus began this day of rare beauty. The rain 
 has refreshed the grass and foliage, which have 
 taken on richer tints of green ; the face of the 
 landscape appears washed clean ; in all the roads 
 the dust has been laid ; and there is a wonderful 
 clarity in the atmosphere, which to breathe is a 
 joy. 
 
 Great masses of white clouds move across the 
 sky. At one moment the sun is obscured, the 
 next it bursts forth again brighter than before. 
 Between the ragged lines of the flying vapors 
 the blue upper sky is bluer than men dare paint 
 it. One exquisite effect of light and shade 
 after another comes and goes from moment 
 
A DAY IN JUNE. 
 
 to moment. The gentle breeze rustles softly 
 
 through the grove; the tall trees whisper a 
 
 liquid lullaby, and swing their topmost branches 
 
 in a capricious rhythm, as 
 
 full of natural grace as the 
 
 rise and fall of the sea s 
 
 waves or the undulations of 
 
 a field of rye. Down in the 
 
 swamp the flenrs de Us are 
 
 royally adorning the bright 
 
 day, and beneath the rank 
 
 tufts of verdure the frogs 
 
 twang out their cello solos 
 
 of batrachian satisfaction. 
 
 How handsome the moist 
 brown earth is in a ploughed 
 field ! This one has a color 
 richer than chocolate in some lights, 
 and the slope is fine. On one edge of the field 
 is a row of low quince trees still in blossom, and 
 at the base of the rickety rail fence grow ferns 
 and wild geraniums among the tall grasses and 
 weeds. An unpainted barn, of proportions more 
 generous than those of the owner s house, shows 
 
20 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 its weather-stained walls 
 and roof above the hill, 
 and higher still rise the 
 noble aged forms of two 
 tall cottonwood trees whose 
 leaves are full of murmur 
 ous confidences. Here is 
 the familiar spot where the 
 road to the shore makes a 
 pretty bend, and, descend 
 ing a little hill, forks, and 
 is lost to view. A group of 
 scraggy apple-trees stands, 
 or rather crouches, along 
 side the stone-wall at the 
 bend, and casts pleasant shades 
 upon the inviting grassy bank beneath. 
 As their limbs overhang the highway, it may be 
 presumed that they furnish more fruit to the 
 vagrant, and the perpetually hungry small boy, 
 than to their owner. In good apple years, how 
 ever, the farmers are glad to have all comers 
 help themselves ; for apples are then almost as 
 cheap as water in many parts of New England. 
 
A DAY IN JUNE. 
 
 
 Down where the big willow trees droop over 
 the little pond, the cows have come to take their 
 morning cocktails. Their rich red hides make 
 superb pictures, wherever they go, against the 
 
24 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 green background. If cows are more contented 
 at any one given time than at another, this must 
 be a season of especial comfort for them, before 
 the voracious flies and the great heats of mid 
 summer have come to torment their patient 
 souls. I never see a group of these decorative 
 philosophers under a tree without thinking of 
 Johnny Johnston, and it is the same with all 
 who are familiar with his masterly cattle pic 
 tures. Nothing could testify more eloquently 
 to the truth of his works than this involuntary 
 reference to them in the very presence of 
 Nature. 
 
 Near midday, without warning, arrives a sud 
 den shower, which passes quickly. Now the 
 sky assumes new shapes of wonder in the south, 
 hangs out fresh banners of glorious hues. Stately 
 cumuli sail eastward, luminous like sun-touched 
 snowbanks as to their tops, purple and blue 
 and lilac beneath, with spaces of unspeakably 
 delicate gray. Reaches of tender blue appear 
 between the shining peaks of this aerial Ober- 
 land ; the cloud-shadows chase one another across 
 the fields and across the water ; the distant 
 
A DAY IN JUNE. 25 
 
 shower slants its azure veil athwart the hills, 
 while on either side the lovely amber sunlight 
 falls on the brilliant damp green fields, the 
 sombre mass of the forest, the white sand of 
 the beach, and the far-off red lighthouse at the 
 end of the breakwater. What a pageant, what 
 a treat for the eyes ! Everything shines. The 
 air is full of life. Turn which way you will, 
 the pictures are full of beauty. This is June, the 
 youngest of the sisterhood of summer months, 
 capricious, changeful, and adorable. 
 
 Among all the landscape artists known to 
 fame, there is none capable of translating all 
 the freshness, the sweetness, the intoxication of 
 such a day. Corot got up early in the morn 
 ing and was at work before the night fog had 
 cleared away, consequently he saw everything 
 through gray spectacles ; moreover, he never 
 saw New England at all, and had he seen her 
 in such a vivid, gay, chromatic aspect as she 
 wears to-day, I suspect he would have thought 
 her loud. Constable was one of the few men 
 who could paint changeable weather, and came 
 very close to the truth of England s fickle cli- 
 
26 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 mate ; were he living Yankee instead of dead 
 Briton, I would sooner commission him to paint 
 an impression of the celestial carnival going on 
 to-day than Claude Lorrain or Turner. Not 
 even Ruysdael, giant as he was, whose name I 
 never hear without mentally taking off my hat, 
 not even the great Ruysdael could cope with 
 Nature in such a frolicsome mood. We might 
 recall a long list of names, and after all shake 
 our heads at the end of it. Hobbema, Pous- 
 sin, Gainsborough, Rousseau, Dupre, Daubigny, 
 Courbet, Hunt, Inness, marshal them all in 
 imposing array, and say whether they are great 
 enough to paint the song of a bird, the scent 
 of a hawthorn blossom, the breezy call of 
 incense-breathing morn. It is surely no depre 
 ciation of their well-earned fame to pronounce 
 them unequal to the task. All of these land- 
 scapists are men of great achievements in their 
 respective fields, yet I dare say they all have 
 known at times what it is to wrestle mightily 
 with Nature and to be thrown. For my part, 
 I am devoutly thankful to each and all of them 
 for the few shreds and fragments they have 
 
A DAY IN JUNE. 2/ 
 
 been able to preserve for us of the boundless, 
 indescribable, and transcendent beauties of the 
 rural world. It is enough glory for the greatest 
 of them that they could merely suggest a gleam 
 of sunlight, or the flutter of a leafy bough, or 
 the slow, lifting movement of a billow on the 
 sea. If you were to ask one of these painters 
 what he had accomplished in his lifetime of 
 toil and study and observation, he would prob 
 ably say that he had been enabled to give a 
 few slight hints as to the true aspect of Nature. 
 That is enough, and the verdict must be : Well 
 done. 
 
 The golden hours of the afternoon go by with 
 magic rapidity, and the evening s approach is 
 hardly perceived. The going-down of the sun 
 is a quiet affair, with no flame of color ; in the 
 west is a modest, ruddy token of good night, 
 and interlacing bars of brass tremble in the 
 level backgrounds of the sea for a while, till 
 presently the moon peers from beyond the rim 
 of the southeast, and disputes with vagrant 
 clouds the rule of the night. Over the vast 
 bosom of the waters hangs a mysterious half- 
 
28 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 light, in which the bats wheel their devious 
 ways, as busily, as blindly, and as aimlessly, 
 perchance, as we mortals pursue our progress 
 through the mystery of our life. There is 
 something so unreal in the quality of moon 
 shine that it makes our hold upon the material 
 facts of the world seem feebler than by day. 
 Nevertheless, it is always pleasant to see the 
 moon prevail in its contest with the clouds. So 
 now it comes forth full and clear, sending its 
 silver track across the waves, gleaming pale 
 upon the sail of yonder ghostly sloop, caressing 
 the lawns and grassy slopes, making deeper the 
 shadows everywhere. "Even the little valleys 
 joy to glisten in her sight." 
 
 I know three pictures of moonlight in which 
 the naked truth seems to have been caught on 
 the wing. Alexander Harrison s "Crepuscule" 
 and D. Jerome Elwell s " Moonrise, Holland," 
 are honors to American art. Daubigny painted 
 a fine moonrise, which was among the pictures 
 sold by M. Achille Oudinot in Boston in 1886; 
 this was one of those marvels of rapid work in 
 which Daubigny showed himself the peer of the 
 
A DAY IN JUNE. 
 
 2 9 
 
 greatest landscapists that ever lived, and seemed 
 to reveal, as by an intuition, the inmost secrets 
 of the country s heart. 
 
ON THE RIVER. 
 
 THE sun has got behind the long, wood- 
 covered range of hills that borders the 
 western bank of the river, so that nearly half 
 the stream flows in an opulent shadow, where 
 my boat drifts with a delicious leisure. From 
 north to south the river makes a wide and grace 
 ful bend, sweeping in majestic silence seaward. 
 Of the eastern shore I will say nothing except 
 that there is a railroad there. The trees and 
 30 
 
ON THE RIVER. 31 
 
 grass have done their best to hide the unseemly 
 gashes cut by shovel and pick in the virgin 
 slopes. There are places where the woods 
 stoop over to see themselves reflected in dis 
 torted shapes in the looking-glass that Mother 
 
 Eve used. 
 
 " Inverted in the tide 
 Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw, 
 
 And the fair trees look over, side by side, 
 And see themselves below." 
 
 At one point a little brook, hardly stout 
 enough to babble, slides down over mossy 
 ledges from a neighboring spring, and loses it 
 self in the bigger waters. I am downright sorry 
 that truth obliges me to refrain from calling 
 it a babbling brook, and that a conscientious 
 regard for literal fact compels the acknowledg 
 ment that it is so insignificant as not even to 
 gurgle or murmur or purl. Nevertheless tis a 
 pretty brooklet, and may not always be so 
 dumb. There is mention in the first act of 
 " Les Huguenots" of a certain ruisseau which 
 munnures a peine. Near by is a steep, rocky 
 promontory from which the boys dive. The 
 
32 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 channel makes close by the shore, and the water 
 is more than twenty feet deep here. Its sur 
 face is black and smooth, and it looks treach 
 erous. A boy was drowned here once, but that 
 does not prevent the thoughtless youngsters of 
 to-day from enjoying their swimming baths in 
 the same sombre spot. It is a fine, exhilarating 
 sight to watch their supple young bodies as 
 they plunge from the top of the rock, cleave the 
 dark water, and shoot downward till they are 
 lost to view in the depths, only to emerge, 
 buoyant as corks and noisy with animal spirits, 
 grasping a handful of mud or sand to prove 
 that they have been to the bottom. Hunt s 
 painting of "The Bathers" is a very vivid reali 
 zation of such a scene, where the rich darkness 
 of a well-shaded pool sets off the handsome 
 lustre of the wet flesh of a couple of athletic 
 youths. The associations connected with the 
 place where one took the first swimming les 
 sons are likely to be agreeable. How these 
 rocks and hills were wont to echo our splash- 
 ings and our shouts of boyish glee in the old 
 days ! Now there is a new set of boys, with a 
 
ON THE RIVER. 
 
 33 
 
 new assortment of natatorial tricks, a fresh 
 vocabulary of slang, strange faces. Stay, there 
 is one sturdy fellow who has the features and 
 the gait of Ned T., who was killed at Spottsyl- 
 vania. Can it be his grandson? It seems not 
 longer ago than yesterday when Ned and I were 
 sporting together in this familiar locality : 
 
 " Cease ; thou know st, 
 He dies to me again, when talk d of." 
 
 Now let the boat go with the current down 
 to where the stream runs between broad mead 
 ows in which elms grow, the hills recede, and 
 gray farmhouses and barns dot the broad peace 
 ful intervale. Between low shores like these, 
 the river meanders more lazily, fringed with 
 
34 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 rushes, flags, and rank-smelling weeds, among 
 which water-fowl hide. Beyond this wide and 
 placid reach the bed of the stream narrows, 
 and a gradual acceleration in the current s 
 movement marks the approach to a tortuous, 
 rough defile, hemmed in by rocky heights. 
 Deep and swift the water glides between the 
 stern granite gates of the gorge, washing the 
 base of the cliff called Lover s Leap which rises 
 abruptly on the west bank. The vague legend, 
 of pretended Indian origin, which gives this ro 
 mantic name to the steep, is slimly " founded 
 on fact," it is to be suspected ; and in this 
 respect it is like many similar tales of the 
 aborigines. The wild character of the scene is 
 suggestive of Fenimore Cooper s stories, how 
 ever, and this would be a fitting place to read 
 of the adventures of the Pathfinder. From a 
 pictorial point of view, the roughness of the 
 country, the density of the primitive woods that 
 crown the rocks, and the strength of the torrent 
 that rushes and tumbles over its harsh bed 
 below, recall the rude and sturdy landscapes of 
 Gustave Courbet among the Vosges mountains. 
 
ON THE RIVER. 
 
 35 
 
 There is more than one cove where the sunlight 
 never comes, and black pools, haunted by in 
 
 numerable fish, sleep in perpetual shadow. In 
 the seams and crannies of the precipice, mosses, 
 fern, and stunted cedars find a precarious foot- 
 
36 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 hold. It would hardly surprise one to see 
 golden-haired Lorelei emerge from the twilight 
 depths of the stream to lure the traveller to 
 amorous death in the dark swirl of the rapids. 
 . Another corner is turned, and the flood lies 
 shining once more in full sunlight, for so sud 
 denly does the scene change : it is with the 
 river as with mortals it is ever the same, 
 yet none of its days or hours are alike. 
 
 What means this slow advance, this expanding 
 of the shores, and the dull roar that comes to 
 our ears from below ? The round-topped hills 
 encircle no less than a lake ; trees stand a 
 fathom deep under water ; and the basin seems 
 fuller than nature meant it to be. Down the 
 stream there is an abrupt and untimely end to 
 all this placidity, where a long curved dam lets 
 fall the unsuspecting sheet of water and breaks 
 its smooth face into a foamy chaos, noisy, law 
 less, turbulent, a vulgar Niagara. The dull 
 roar has grown into a continuous and mighty 
 thunder. From the apron of the dam the dis 
 concerted river flees wildly in a thousand amber 
 eddies, and in shame and confusion slips between 
 
ON THE RIVER. 
 
 37 
 
 foal banks lined with clattering mills whose sub 
 terranean race-ways discharge their prostituted, 
 soiled, and enslaved contents back to the indig 
 nant bosom of the mother-stream. Thus is the 
 river subjugated by man s arts and turned to 
 the uses of business : its purity sullied, its peace 
 destroyed, its beauty disregarded, its power alone 
 respected. But it has within itself that blessed 
 faculty of letting bygones be bygones, of filter 
 ing away and leaving behind it all noisome sedi 
 ments, that forgetfulness of evil characteristic 
 of healthy temperaments. Every surrounding 
 soon becomes rustic and cleanly again. Limpid 
 brooks bring their icy tribute ; the sun sends 
 down its tenderest shafts of warmth to cheer 
 the ill-used waters; soft westerly breezes stir 
 the grave face of the saddened stream to a reluc 
 tant smile. Flowing so through many miles of 
 wood and farm and hill, under consoling skies, 
 the river comes at last to the lovely village of 
 Wapawoag, where no wonder it is content to lin 
 ger long. A perpetual Sabbath reigns in Wapa 
 woag, and the river is its prophet. No mills, no 
 dams, no noise, no dirt, no business here. At 
 
38 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 intervals the plainest of wooden bridges spans 
 the river, and there is usually a motionless, rapt, 
 credulous fisherman fishing from each bridge, 
 from which he dangles his ill-shod feet. In 
 round-shouldered expectancy he hangs over the 
 particular pool presumed to contain countless 
 perch, and yet who has ever seen him catch 
 anything ? 
 
 On one side of the river a wide, elm-shaded 
 road runs north and south, lined with houses 
 built in the eighteenth century, several of which 
 are the homes of retired sea-captains. The long, 
 sloping roof, the heavy timbers, the absence of 
 verandas, the unhewn stone which serves as the 
 lower step to the narrow porch, the grotesque, 
 old knocker, and the bit of tin which makes 
 rusty proclamation that the dwelling is insured, 
 all this announces plainly that we are in the 
 presence of an old settler. The unkempt gar 
 den, all overgrown with vagabond vines, rasp 
 berry bushes, and shaggy weeds, extends back 
 of such a venerable mansion to the edge of the 
 river, where a century-old willow bends over 
 the water, with a crazy skiff moored to a ring 
 
ON THE RIVER. 41 
 
 in its scarred trunk. Just above this neglected 
 garden, which the bees have all to themselves 
 through long days together, stands the ancient 
 store, which stood in the same spot in the year 
 1776, and doubtless held the same variegated 
 stock of goods, including the best of New 
 England rum, the same that the sea-captains 
 used to drink as they sat in the back room 
 stormy nights and spun yarns of their prodig 
 ious exploits in the war of 1812, when Wapa- 
 woag was a thriving seaport and fitted out 
 privateers to prey upon the commerce of Eng 
 land. There is a picturesque, irregular foot 
 bridge near the store, connecting that centre 
 of trade and local news with the handsome 
 "place" of a rich Bostonian who passes the 
 six months from April till October on the west 
 shore of the river, in a red villa surrounded 
 by wide verandas, from which a smooth-shaven 
 lawn slopes very gradually down to the water. 
 Pretty maidens and athletic manly youths play 
 tennis here, in becoming white flannel costumes, 
 and wake the echoes with their cries and laugh 
 ter. On moonlight evenings the river overhears 
 
42 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 some foolish talk in the coquettish Whitehall 
 boat, but it never betrays these summer secrets 
 confided to it, maintaining to the end its sage 
 policy of forgetfulness. I would that my poor 
 pen were capable of describing in adequate 
 terms the hundred beautiful pictures made by 
 the river in its progress through the sweet old 
 town, that last ttape in its march to the sea. 
 All its memories at last are drowned in the 
 ocean, its identity is lost, it becomes a mere 
 drop in the world s bucket, a, nameless part of 
 the infinite deep. 
 
THE EVERLASTING HILLS. 
 
 ALL generous natures love the hills. The 
 love of liberty flourishes in high places. 
 Tyrants could never enslave the mountaineers. 
 Switzerland must ever be a republic. The 
 Scotch highlanders are invincible friends of 
 freedom. In our own country slavery and 
 
 43 
 
44 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 rebellion could not get a foothold in the loyal 
 mountains of West Virginia and East Ten 
 nessee. It is useless to multiply instances, 
 because history is so full of eloquent illustrations 
 that volumes would be needed to set forth the 
 virtue and liberality of the dwellers on the 
 heights. It is not hard to appreciate and pity 
 the proverbial homesickness of the wandering 
 Swiss ; and who, except a railroad contractor, 
 does not abhor a flat country ? Thank Heaven 
 that New England is no dreary, endless prairie, 
 no monotonous plain. Surely no one can accuse 
 our domain of a want of diversity. From the 
 St. Lawrence to Long Island Sound it is an 
 almost uninterrupted succession of rugged hills, 
 with peaceful valleys lying between. All our 
 hills have certain characteristics in common, and 
 the giants of the Presidential range are but 
 exaggerated types of their kind. Their pre 
 eminence, however, is undisputed and indispu 
 table. There is nothing finer in all the poetry 
 relating to mountains than that proud soliloquy 
 which Emerson puts into the mouth of Mount 
 Monadnock, beginning : 
 
THE EVERLASTING HILLS. 
 
 45 
 
 "Every morn I lift my head, 
 Gaze on New England underspread. ..." 
 
 The conscious 
 ness of might, the 
 superb calm of ac 
 knowledged power 
 and dominion, the 
 lofty disdain of a 
 Titan for the pig 
 mies that fret and 
 fume at his feet, all 
 this and more is ex 
 pressed in the grim, 
 quaint speech of the 
 mountain. Every 
 thing is relative, so 
 that Mount Wash 
 ington, who would 
 be a very petty 
 prince indeed among 
 the Alps, is every 
 inch a king in New 
 Hampshire. I pity 
 all those persons 
 
46 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 who do not know the White Mountain re 
 gion. It is not the height in feet and inches 
 of these overgrown hills, nor their supply of 
 midsummer snow, which is apt to run short 
 in a hot August ; it is the nameless charm of 
 a locality unlike any other, at once wild and 
 suave, full of piquant contrasts, affording oppor 
 tunities for ambitious alpestrians to break their 
 necks ; for mediocre landscape-painters to betray 
 their incompetency ; for meditative people to 
 "loaf, and invite their souls " ; for amateur pedes 
 trians to discover how long a mile is ; and for 
 all comers to breathe an air as exhilarating as 
 champagne and a vast deal purer. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that the highest 
 mountains do not command the most pleasing 
 prospects, nor are they always imposing in 
 proportion to their size. A tumble from the 
 cliff that frowns over Tuckerman s Ravine would 
 doubtless be just as fatal as a fall from the 
 top of the Matterhorn. What is sublimity ? 
 I have been more frightened by a thunder 
 storm on the summit of Mount Clinton than I 
 was on the precarious peak of the Wetterhorn ; 
 
THE EVERLASTING HILLS. 49 
 
 and there is no reason for doubting that the dis 
 charge of a pailful of suds on to an ant-hill is as 
 grave an event for the ants as the flood was to 
 Noah and his contemporaries. 
 
 The mountains excite the imagination more 
 deeply than any other natural objects ; not be 
 cause of their dimensions and forms so much 
 as because there is always a farther side to 
 them which we do not see. The mind is 
 affected by the unknown, and eagerly believes 
 it to be more wonderful, more pleasant, than 
 the known. After you have ascended to the 
 top of a hill, it has no more secrets for you, 
 and you are desilhisione. When clouds hide the 
 upper part of a mountain, it seems higher than 
 when all the peak is visible. I remember see 
 ing, in the valley which leads up to the village 
 of Zermatt, the lower portion of a great glacier 
 nearly overhead which had the appearance of 
 hanging from the very sky, a spectacle so 
 startling and awful that in the few minutes it 
 was visible it became more vividly impressed 
 upon my memory than the aspect of Monte 
 Rosa itself in all its majesty. Probably one of 
 
ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 the reasons that 
 almost all pic 
 tures of moun 
 tains are so un 
 satisfactory is 
 the want of this 
 potent element 
 of mystery. It 
 is not the only 
 reason, and yet 
 it is not easy to 
 explain in so 
 many words 
 why objects, 
 grand in them 
 selves, should 
 not be success 
 fully painted, 
 provided always 
 that the artist 
 attempting the 
 
 task be fitly inspired. Our hills have tempted 
 many capable pencils, but the results of all en 
 deavors have not added to the fame of American 
 
THE EVERLASTING HILLS. 51 
 
 art, nor have they exalted the glory of the hills. 
 Church travelled to the Andes, Bierstadt to the 
 Rocky Mountains, as if the humblest hummock 
 of our land would not have been enough to give 
 them pause. The best impression of a moun 
 tainous district that I have seen was a large study 
 by Daubigny, which represented the sterile slope 
 of a huge eminence in the Pyrenees. It was 
 a suggestion. Without trying to be a picture, 
 it gave the massive structure of the subject. 
 There was nothing in the least scenic in it ; it 
 was not even agreeable ; but to one who knows 
 the austere solitude, the solemn grandeur of 
 such high places, it was striking for its simple 
 and unalloyed truthfulness. It conveyed a sense 
 of isolation which was almost oppressive. 
 
 The once inaccessible tops of the loftiest 
 peaks among the Alps were peopled, in the 
 fancy of the peasants, with imps and gnomes, 
 who rolled down stones and started frightful 
 avalanches to scare away climbers who at 
 tempted to scale those accursed heights. Rip 
 Van Winkle found Hudson s phantom crew 
 among the granite fastnesses of the Catskills, 
 
ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 where they diverted 
 themselves with hob 
 goblin ten-pins, making 
 ghostly thunder. Every 
 considerable mountain- 
 peak, from Teneriffe to 
 Fujiyama, has its le 
 gend, be it more or less 
 romantic. One is never 
 alone on a hill-top. 
 
 It is odd how the lay 
 of the land causes a 
 small elevation to command a handsome view. 
 Nothing is so genial and pretty to look down 
 on as a wide valley watered by a sinuous creek 
 and cut up into a patchwork of cultivated fields, 
 
THE EVERLASTING HILLS. 53 
 
 with here and there a farm-house surrounded 
 by its cluster of barns and outbuildings, and 
 shaded by its great trees. A crop of buckwheat 
 or a freshly ploughed field gives a pleasant ac 
 cent of variety among the rich greens of past 
 ures and of woods. The white steeple of the 
 meeting-house is seldom lacking in the view. 
 I have heard an artist say that white buildings 
 did not look well in a landscape, but I must 
 disagree with him on that point. There was 
 a time when all country houses in New England 
 were painted white with green blinds that is, 
 all those that were painted at all. The custom 
 was so nearly universal that, when the reaction 
 came, it was too violent ; and to-day, white is 
 the least popular of paints for outside work ; 
 but it is not a risky prophecy to say that the 
 day will come when white will not be so scorned. 
 There are already indications that the absolute 
 rule of red and yellow is becoming wearisome. 
 The old-fashioned, rambling, manorial farm 
 house, as white as paint can make it, never 
 looks out of place either embowered in green 
 foliage, or lifting its dazzling fagade to meet 
 the deep blue of the morning sky. 
 
BY THE SHORE. 
 
 THE sound of the surf upon the rocks at 
 times is soothing and musical ; but there 
 are other times when it becomes almost fright 
 ful, and the solid earth itself seems to tremble 
 under its regular blows. The days of fair 
 weather, of sunshine, and soft southwesterly 
 breezes are most becoming to the shore, and 
 bring out its colors best. Ours is, as Mrs. 
 Hemans very justly remarked, "a stern and 
 rock-bound coast " ; and harsh as those lofty 
 and jagged cliffs, with the white line of break 
 ers at their feet, must appear to mariners in 
 54 
 
BY THE SHORE. 
 
 55 
 
 danger of com 
 ing ashore, 
 they are really 
 as picturesque, 
 and often as 
 grandiose, as 
 anything in 
 our scenery. 
 The sea has 
 
 slowly eaten away their soft 
 spots, thereby modelling most 
 fantastical protuberances 
 which occasionally take on the 
 likeness of things both vegeta 
 ble and animal. Caverns there 
 are wherein a strange light 
 penetrates, and as the tide 
 rises strange wild noises issue 
 thence. A curtain of marvel 
 lous texture, from mermaids 
 looms, waves in graceful wel 
 come at the portal. Divers 
 see wondrous sights at the 
 bottom of the sea, but, after 
 
56 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 all, not more beautiful than those we see on the 
 surface. 
 
 The alternation of rock with sand and an occa 
 sional headland where woods rise above smooth 
 pastures at a short distance from the shore form 
 the most attractive kind of coast, though there 
 are those that are bolder and grander. Cape 
 Ann is a good type of the class, and, take it all 
 in all, the North Shore has no superior, though 
 no part of the New England seaboard is wanting 
 in agreeable features of its own. A long, wide, 
 level sweep of hard, white sand is a perpetual 
 delight, particularly for the fanatical bather, but 
 its glare is nearly intolerable in the middle of a 
 cloudless day, and one willingly seeks the nooks 
 that abound among the gray barnacled granite 
 chaos that re-echoes the salute of the sounding 
 main. In such a spot the ebb and flow of the 
 tides seems doubly rapid and mysterious. Pen 
 insulas become islands, and islands vanish, as 
 the eager waters climb, swirling in sombre cran 
 nies, retreating only to advance higher. The 
 flood tide gives the neater aspect of affairs, but 
 low tide is richer in matters for study, and un- 
 
BY THE SHORE. 57 
 
 covers a wealth of colors in brown and yellow 
 sea-weed and red rock and blue mud and bed 
 of vivid eel-grass. It is interesting to watch 
 the work of the salt water and its creatures 
 upon the neutral zone betwixt high and low 
 water marks ; to walk over countless pebbles 
 
 polished smooth as pearls, of forms more varied 
 than the art of man might invent, and of colors 
 dull and bright to rival gems of purest ray 
 serene ; treasures which the children, more wise 
 than we, collect and value as if they were the 
 peers of the Koh-i-noor diamond ; to inhale the 
 dank odor of the kelp, uprooted from its deep 
 home and flung upon the sands to be devoted to 
 
58 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 the most ignoble uses ; to startle to wriggling 
 life the myriad little dwellers in the warm 
 shallows ; to shake the well-knit cerulean ooze, 
 whence shoots in a thin stream theyV/ d eau of 
 the clam ; to mark the gradual encroachment of 
 barnacles and slime and rock-weed by which 
 the sea writes its careless signature upon its 
 
 conquests. What is there, of all things, that is 
 not, sooner or later, washed ashore on a sea- 
 beach ? There are whole communities upon our 
 coast subsisting, a good part of the year round, 
 upon the sad business of wrecking ; and I have 
 heard of a British brig which came ashore in 
 Maine, being prematurely abandoned by the 
 
BY THE SHORE. 59 
 
 crew, which was " cleaned out " by the wreckers 
 in a night, while the sailors were hospitably 
 entertained at the houses of the honest toilers 
 of the sea. Many innocent-looking fishermen 
 live less upon their ostensible catch than upon 
 the more or less lawful flotsam and jetsam com 
 ing their way. Dwellers inland can have but a 
 faint idea of the amount of " plunder" fetched 
 ashore by almost every tide, even in pleasant 
 weather, on certain favored shores. The lives 
 of some lighthouse keepers would possibly be a 
 trifle monotonous if it were not for this source 
 of excitement ; but think of a day which yielded 
 one twenty-pound tub of butter (in good condi 
 tion) ; one straw mattress (suspected and turned 
 afloat again) ; one huge tree trunk direct from 
 South America or the Antilles, riddled with 
 thousands of worm-holes ; one section of a ma 
 hogany cabin table, with a finely carved leg; 
 one empty beer bottle; a part of a jointed fish 
 pole ; enough wood to light fires for a week 
 in easterly weather; and a broken book-cover 
 with the following remnant of a title : 
 
60 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 VOY 
 
 OF 
 SCHOO 
 
 ELIZA J 
 RICHARD COGGE 
 
 OF 
 NEW 
 FROM 
 
 1789 TO 
 
 What voyages the schooner Eliza Jane sailed 
 between 1789 and the year of her demise may 
 be imagined only, for the fragment of binding 
 contains no pages of the narrative which once 
 filled the volume. No doubt her bones lie rot- 
 ting on some foreign coast, and her master s 
 fill a peaceful Yankee grave within view of the 
 blue water. The deeds of both may be sur 
 mised. He was a big, bluff, hearty man, was 
 Captain Richard ; a mighty drinker of Medford 
 rum ; a terror to English merchantmen in the 
 war of 1812 ; and I warrant you he fetched 
 more than one prize into port in the brave 
 days of old, when schooners of two hundred 
 and fifty tons used to go round the Horn, and 
 
BY THE SHORE. 6 1 
 
 privateers no bigger than our Puritans and 
 Mayflowers of to-day would chase and board 
 and capture British ships right under the noses 
 of their frigates. I do not cite the list of 
 things picked up alongshore because of their 
 great value, though there are worse finds than 
 a tub of butter, A I, "gilt-edged" Vermont 
 butter, worth at least thirty cents a pound, 
 but mainly because things thrown up by the 
 chances of wind, tide, and current on the 
 beach are so suggestive, having histories and 
 a look of having travelled far, many of them, 
 and of having seen strange sights and passed 
 through odd vicissitudes. Most of them, too, 
 are incomplete, and such tales as they tell are 
 very sketchy. One has to supply a good deal 
 of the color for one s self. Still, the yarn of the 
 carved table-leg would, if written out properly, 
 be very interesting. So you see the light- 
 keeper s time does not hang heavily on his 
 hands : far from it. The difference in impor 
 tance between his daytime occupations and 
 the duties of a bank president or a newspaper 
 editor is purely arbitrary : a matter of mere 
 
62 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 convention. At night, it is needless to say, 
 he holds the destinies of so many husbands, 
 brothers, fathers, and sons in his hands, and 
 his responsibility is so great and so well borne, 
 that he has passed into literature as an example 
 of fidelity to duty. 
 
 The sanitary advantages of living by the sea 
 shore in the summer are now so well under 
 stood, especially by parents who wish their 
 children to grow up well and strong, that it 
 is only a question of time for the New England 
 water-front to be lined in its entire length with 
 houses, cottages, and hotels. Newport is, and 
 probably will be always, our most elegant coast 
 resort. Uncommonly well favored by nature, 
 man has seconded instead of masking the orig 
 inal beauties of a picturesque locality rich in 
 historic associations. Cooper s " Red Rover " 
 and Higginson s "Malbone" and "Oldport 
 Days " contain many pages of great interest 
 respecting this summer metropolis of wealth 
 and fashion. Henry James s " International 
 Episode " also gives an amusing glimpse of 
 life and society there as seen through an Eng- 
 
BY THE SHORE. 65 
 
 lish eye-glass. Martha s Vineyard offers a curi 
 ous contrast to such a place as Newport ; and 
 Nahant, which Tom Appleton called cold roast 
 Boston, has a character all its own. The most 
 beautiful harbors of our coast are those of New 
 port, Gloucester, New London, Eastport, Boston, 
 and Portland. Hunt s painting of Gloucester 
 
 harbor has been made widely known by Stephen 
 Parrish s etching after it. It was not more than 
 a sketch, done at one sitting, but the effect was 
 happy. Speaking of Gloucester, every one who 
 likes a well-told, pathetic story should read Eliz 
 abeth Stuart Phelps s " Madonna of the Tubs." 
 It makes fish and codfish at that seem 
 
66 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 rather too dear, to think of the number of 
 widows and orphans left in Gloucester every 
 year by the cruelty of the sea. Just around 
 the tip of Cape Ann lies that great stretch 
 of dazzling white sand called Ipswich Beach, 
 making away to the north. The picture of it, 
 by W. Lo Picknell, belonging to the Boston 
 Museum of Fine Arts, is naked truth itself, 
 the very breath of nature. If this were a book 
 of places, as perhaps it ought to be, I would 
 like nothing better than to describe the Isles 
 of Shoals, Nantucket, Provincetown, Greenwich, 
 Narragansett Pier, Watch Hill, Bath, New Bed 
 ford, Rye, York, Scituate, Campobello, Grand 
 Menan, Stonington, Bristol, Hampton, Ply 
 mouth, Marblehead, Salem, Portsmouth, Man- 
 chester-by-the-Sea, Beverly, Swampscott, Lynn, 
 Cohasset, and the many other charming spots 
 islands, ports, and summer resorts, some of 
 them less known but not a whit less attractive 
 and interesting that embroider the eastern 
 and southern frontiers of blessed New England. 
 
THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE. 
 
 THERE are many abandoned farmhouses in 
 New England, but the particular one to 
 which I wish to refer is situated on a hill-top, 
 not more than three miles from a city, yet in 
 one of the loneliest localities that can be imag 
 ined. No other house stands near, and the 
 place is well wooded. The house commands a 
 fine prospect in two directions. Towards the 
 east, looking over the belt of thick woods which 
 girdles the hill, lies the town, so embowered in 
 trees that its church spires only and its tallest 
 mill chimneys rise into view. Beyond it is the 
 
 67 
 
68 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 red face of a steep hill, and, at the right, the masts 
 of vessels in the unseen harbor ; towards the 
 west, orchards, pasture lands, and fields of grain, 
 a fat and sleek agricultural basin, evidently the 
 property of the farmer whose multitudinous 
 barns and granaries cover the crest of the neigh 
 boring hill more than half a mile distant, the 
 house being so small in comparison with the 
 barns that it would scarcely be noticed at the 
 first glance. The views are pleasant and wide ; 
 that towards the town, panoramic, reminding one 
 of an old-fashioned landscape by Thomas Cole 
 or Asher B. Durand ; that towards the country, 
 sunny, cheerful, agrestic. This hill-top must 
 have been a beautiful home when it was inhab 
 ited. Why was the old house deserted ? I do 
 not know whether the old people died without 
 issue, or whether the children "went to New 
 York " to starve in an attic ; and I have never 
 asked the neighbors. It is quite as well to leave 
 these matters to speculation. No doubt the in 
 mates were worthy commonplace folk whose 
 histories would add no glimmer of romance to 
 the spot, already sufficiently melancholy in its 
 
THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE. 
 
 6 9 
 
 solitude and decay. No sound comes up to the 
 hill-top to-day save the busy, hot rattle of a dis 
 tant mowing-machine, and the occasional roar 
 of a locomotive from afar. Neither mowing- 
 machine nor locomotive existed when this house 
 
 te!&&jkwm --te^T\-. .}:] 
 
 I" i: "- ;. , ; , ." - f*^...i/ .. x , .. ,.\ t\^\ 
 
 
 **^^?(?^MW>. Si$bt> $ 
 
 V. 
 
 
 was built. There was such a thing as silence in 
 those days. 
 
 The house has, or rather had, two stories and 
 a small wing, which was probably added some 
 time after the building of the main part of the 
 edifice. In the centre of the structure there was 
 a huge chimney, having open fire-places on three 
 
/O ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 sides. The rooms were low, but large, well 
 lighted, and pleasant. The cellar extended under 
 all parts of the building, and now serves as its 
 sepulchre ; for day by day morsels of plaster, of 
 wood, of brick, and of stone drop one by one 
 through the gaping floors and form a mass of 
 debris where once the cider and the apples were 
 hoarded. The doorstep was a great, flat, unhewn 
 stone, slightly worn in the middle, where many 
 feet have trod. The window sashes and the 
 doors have all gone, and boards have been nailed 
 up in places to keep the rain and wind from the 
 tramps who have slept on the floor of the best 
 room. At the rear, the whole wall is in a state 
 of complete ruin, and a coach and four might be 
 driven right into the kitchen, through the hid 
 eous breach which grows wider with each tem 
 pest. The capacious ovens and the spit where 
 the housewife was wont to cook in the generous 
 style of yore are the sole relics of the departed 
 occupants. The greater part of the floor has 
 caved in ; that which is left is undulating, and 
 shakes unpleasantly when walked upon. The 
 falling plaster has left the laths bare here and 
 
THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE. 71 
 
 there, like the flesh leaving the bones that have 
 upheld it. Steadily the work of decay and dis 
 solution goes on ; the rain and the heat rot ; the 
 frost cracks, and the wind racks and tears ; the 
 days of the poor old house are numbered. In 
 the full sunlight of a perfect summer day it has 
 a sad dignity, and, among its lovely surround 
 ings, a beauty of its own, which belongs to all 
 things old, decrepit, forlorn, and soon to be 
 gone. But in a September gale, as I have seen 
 it, when the breath of the storm was boisterous, 
 and the voice of the southeast wind filled the 
 woods with strange cries, under sombre skies 
 which sent down torrents of rain, the venerable 
 dwelling was a grewsome place. Under such 
 circumstances it would not need a very active 
 fancy to conjure up all sorts of spectres in its 
 deserted chambers, particularly at those times 
 when a loosened board, swayed by a gust of 
 more than ordinary force, beat a ghostly reveille 
 against the rafters. 
 
 All around the house are rank growths of 
 bushes, weeds, and wild flowers. Near the 
 front door is a rose vine, and in their seasons 
 
ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 one may gather rasp- 
 " berries, blackberries, 
 
 gooseberries, cur 
 rants, close by the little wing. The yard is 
 full of milkweed, and at intervals stand apple- 
 trees of considerable age, some of which bear 
 good fruit. The old well is dismantled, and 
 planks cover it up. Not far from the rear 
 of the house there is a magnificent oak ; and 
 farther still a dense wood of chestnuts, hicko 
 ries, and larches, without undergrowth, worthy 
 to be the pleasure park of a royal residence. I 
 have never seen any living things except cows 
 
THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE. 
 
 73 
 
 and birds enjoying the usufruct of this unten- 
 anted domain, where one is tempted to " lose 
 
 and neglect the creeping hours of time." Some 
 day a wealthy man of taste will take this estate, 
 and, in the place of the ruined farmhouse, will 
 build a new home for himself and his children, 
 will lay out walks and drives, fence in his 
 grounds, and make a little Fontainebleau or 
 Saint Cloud of this solitude. Lawn-mowers, 
 instead of vagrant cattle, will crop the turf ; 
 brilliant exotics will bloom under glass where 
 
74 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 now the lurid hollyhock, the decorous hydrangea, 
 the "dear common flower" that gilds the fields 
 and byways with such an honest yellow, and the 
 still more common field daisy, grow in untutored 
 luxuriance ; shining equipages will roll up to the 
 doors over well-kept roads where to-day a rick 
 ety farmer s wagon creeps by with the rattle 
 and squeak of vehicular senility. Carriages, by 
 the way, have done much to destroy the roman 
 ticism which flourished when men travelled on 
 horseback ; and I doubt whether a solitary 
 bicycler, even at twilight, would have the same 
 interest for novel-readers as the cloaked cavalier 
 ascending the hill in the rain. What a scene 
 for a story of adventure and intrigue ! Would 
 that Hawthorne might have known the place : 
 he would have made it immortal. This fit 
 theatre for a drama of human passions reminds 
 me, though different, of a little picture by Ruys- 
 dael, with figures by Wouvermans, in the Bos 
 ton Museum of Fine Arts. The subject is a 
 ruined farmhouse, where a party of travellers 
 have halted to rest and breathe their horses. 
 The painting is rather dark, and the figures are 
 
THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE. 
 
 75 
 
 very small, but it is astonishing how complete 
 is the unity of the persons and animals with the 
 landscape : all being enveloped in the same 
 air and illuminated by the same light. An in 
 explicable impression emanates from the canvas, 
 
 of vague romance : it is as intangible as the 
 odor of faded violets, but inspires a personal 
 interest in the fortunes of the horseman, and 
 hangs the work forever on the line in memory s 
 picture-gallery. 
 

 IN FIELD AND MEADOW. 
 
 HAYMAKING, apart from its utilitarian 
 aspects, which need not concern us, is 
 from beginning to end one of the most pictu 
 resque of the farmer s multifarious occupations. 
 At first there is the great field full of tall, ripe 
 grass, itself a handsome sight as it waves in 
 the breeze and shines in the sun. The hot and 
 cloudless morning comes when the metallic 
 drone of the mowing-machine announces the 
 downfall of the savory crop. No sound is more 
 76 
 
ft 
 
IN FIELD AND MEADOW. // 
 
 intimately associated with the warm season in 
 the country than this drowsy music of the 
 knives, as there is no odor more thoroughly 
 rustic than that of the new-mown hay. Now 
 the sweating steeds toil steadily from corner to 
 corner of the diminishing square of living ver 
 dure, and the long ranks of timothy and herds- 
 grass fall like brave battalions before the deadly 
 charge of a superior foe. Next appears that 
 prosaic successor to Whittier s "Maud Muller" 
 the horse-rake, which so easily performs its 
 function that " The Rake s Progress " seems a 
 veritable play. Then the laborers with hand- 
 rakes swiftly heap the sun-cured haycocks at 
 regular intervals to await the wain. It is com 
 mon now for the signs of a shower to be shown 
 in the north, "to spur their expedition," and 
 all hands must work in lively fashion to get the 
 last load home before the rain falls. As Troyon 
 knew full well, a huge load of hay drawn by an 
 ox team is an object to make a noble picture 
 of. There was a delightful painting of a hay 
 making scene by Julien Dupre in the Paris 
 Salon of 1 88 1. Blue-black clouds gave a broad 
 
?8 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 hint of coming wet, and a group of men in 
 blouses, and women in blue cotton gowns, with 
 gaudy colored head-dresses, hastily raked the 
 hay and pitched it upon the already enormous 
 cartload which formed an effective mass of 
 golden brown against the lowering sky. It is 
 not often that women participate in the hay 
 making in New England, and the men would 
 sooner suffer almost any indignity than wear 
 the uniform of a peasantry, no matter how 
 comfortable or becoming it might be. 
 
 Into the generous portals of the big barn 
 the fragrant load is hauled in time, and then, 
 hardest and hottest task of all, the rustling hay 
 is stowed in the mows in immense forkfuls, 
 and "mowed " (i.e. distributed evenly) in all the 
 shadowy, dusty, stifling, cobwebbed recesses of 
 its winter quarters. This done, the heated 
 laborers may cease, the day s work being ended, 
 with the exception of the " chores." In the 
 half-night of the cattle-sheds, the cows, just 
 driven home from the pasture by a barefooted 
 boy, stand blandly chewing their cuds and 
 switching off the flies with their never-quiet 
 
IN FIELD AND MEADOW. 8 1 
 
 tails, as they wait to be milked. The oxen 
 now are turned into the barn-yard to be fed 
 and watered ; they are superb there in repose, 
 as the light falls on their lustrous flanks, and 
 Troyon himself might feel his incompetency 
 to cope with such royal hues and majestic 
 masses. The horses must be fed, watered, 
 bedded : there they stand in the twilight of 
 the stable, as Gericault represented a row of 
 them the bay, the black, the roan rear view, 
 every line speaking of life. The pigs inap- 
 peasable appetites are to be mitigated by some 
 gallons of swill ; the hens are to have their 
 hour to cluck, to scramble, to peck, to fight, 
 to greedily grab their fill of corn ; and so the 
 cheerful routine of the farm goes on. 
 
 What a charming landscape is framed soberly 
 by the great open doorways of the red barn ! 
 Across the dusty highway, bordered by wide 
 strips of glossy turf rich in clover, the apple 
 orchard arrays its aisles and bowers of green 
 shadow, and its grotesque arabesques of gnarled 
 limbs, down the long gradual slope to where 
 the big meadow lies. The meadow ! there is 
 
82 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 something sunny, large, and calm about the 
 very word. Every farmer has a favorite meadow 
 in some corner of his domain, known as " The 
 Meadow," or qualified according to circumstances 
 as the Big, the Long, the Hillside, the Swamp, 
 etc. From year to year there is very little 
 change jn the appearance of the meadow. The 
 
 boy who drives home the cattle becomes a man, 
 and, led by the auri sacra fames, goes away ; 
 but, whether it be in Chicago, Valparaiso, Rome, 
 Calcutta, Cape Town, or Melbourne, that he 
 elects to pass his last days on earth, let me ask 
 if you think that he ever forgets the meadow ; 
 the spring in the corner where the willows 
 grow, where the moist earth is marked by the 
 
IN FIELD AND MEADOW. 83 
 
 hoofprints of the cows, where the low stone-wall 
 makes such a pleasant seat in the shade, where 
 the call of the quail, " Bob White ! More 
 
 wet ! " the note of the blackbird, the song of 
 the thrush, and the zigzag flight of a thousand 
 butterflies are but memories of long ago, that 
 revive with a strange persistency and sweet- 
 
84 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 ness in the wanderer s tough old heart ? The 
 rough rocky slopes, the sandy soil, the rugged 
 faces of the hills, yield but a lean supply in 
 comparison with the inexhaustible crops of the 
 rich Western lands ; but how infinitely supe 
 rior are our horizons, albeit they profit only 
 our eyes. However much o a clod a man may 
 be, he perceives such things as these, often 
 without knowing it : they are felt in the blood. 
 Constant usage may dull, but not extinguish, 
 the faculty of observation ; and it is not true of 
 our country population, whatever may be said 
 of the European, that it has no soul for any 
 thing higher than the petty material interests 
 of a narrow life of toil. A man may indeed live 
 among fine pictures all his life, like the police 
 man in the National Gallery, and yet be not an 
 authority upon the fine arts ; but Nature s lan 
 guage is more universal, and her eloquence is 
 more readily understood of all men, so that the 
 poorest rustic is not so poor but he receives 
 impressions which, had he the means of trans 
 lating them, would go to swell the world s fund 
 of poetry. Millet made his peasants pathetic fig- 
 
IN FIELD AND MEADOW. 85 
 
 ures ; but we have no peasant class ; and surely 
 his lot is not so pitiable who lives outdoors, is 
 never idle, has no fear of want, and can possess 
 those homely joys which are, after all, the best, 
 the most lasting, and the most wholesome. In 
 our complicated cockney civilization, the most 
 dignified personality is his who stands apart, 
 with a background of landscape. He is not 
 bending over a ticker to read the latest stock 
 quotations ; nor pursuing the gold-bug, Tantalus- 
 like, from railroad to railroad and from steamer 
 to steamer ; neither is he feeding a printing- 
 press with horrors and nastiness ; he is not in 
 war nor politics ; and, for all that he is not, he is 
 entitled to our most sincere admiration. Millet 
 saw that the peasant was most like the ancient 
 men, because his life was simple and his char 
 acter had repose ; this is why the rough, stolid 
 rustic, in his setting of fields and meadows, 
 has something in him that reminds us of the 
 strength, the soundness, the freedom, and the 
 unconscious dignity of classic models in old art. 
 Next to the manly calling of the sailor stands 
 that of the farmer ; in both, man and nature are 
 
86 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 forever tete-a-tete. Contact with the elements 
 is what humanity needs, and not to be hived in 
 mills, stores, and offices. More outdoor life, 
 and fewer physicians ! More sun and wind, and 
 less physic ! 
 
 ^^l^^^]^f^^^^. ! ^^ ^^ :;: ^ 
 
 -^mron-Cp,,,-.,,,, (to&a* ~~ -y- ~"~ : ~* ~^~J - : 
 
 "Who doth ambition shun, 
 And loves to live i the sun, 
 Seeking the food he eats, 
 And pleased with what he gets, 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither; 
 Here shall he see 
 No enemy 
 But winter and rough weather." 
 
 The most delightful description of country 
 life that I know of is that in Blackmore s 
 
IN FIELD AND MEADOW. 8/ 
 
 "Lorna Doone," the hero of which is a superb 
 specimen of the old-fashioned race of farmers. 
 There are some fine pictures of agricultural 
 life also in Hardy s " Far from the Madding 
 Crowd "; and I would be at a loss to say where 
 more poetical prose could be found than in some 
 of Andre Theuriet s stories of rural France. 
 Once in a while George Sand gives you a 
 splendid word-picture of some favorite scenery. 
 William Black in his earliest works was fond 
 of painting landscapes with his pen, but he 
 rather overloads his colors, and approaches 
 perilously near the chromo. Old Dumas could 
 be great in almost any province, and occasion 
 ally he dashes off a landscape sketch of wonder 
 ful reality, as witness the account of a storm 
 among the mountains in the opening pages 
 of " Le Trou de 1 Enfer," though perhaps you 
 will say that sort of scene-painting is of the 
 theatre, and is intended only as a background 
 for the figures that strut upon the stage. Well, 
 who has not seen remarkably fine landscapes, 
 pastoral as well as romantic, in the scenery of 
 the playhouse ? And what is landscape in its 
 
88 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 widest sense but a vast background for human 
 ity ? a background of infinite variety, gran 
 deur, and beauty, worthy of its purpose, but 
 forever secondary, for the reason that nothing 
 can be so interesting to men as Man. 
 

THE THUNDER STORM. 
 
 BROTHER to the western cyclone, the 
 thunder storm, usually more sedate in 
 its demeanor, is not always less harmful. The 
 almanac makes but small account of what it 
 calls local storms, yet these events are fright 
 ful enough in New England during the dog- 
 days to scare thousands of people each season, 
 killing a few, maiming others, and doing a sum 
 
 89 
 
90 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 of damage to real property which, if calculated 
 in round figures, would make an appalling to 
 tal. My meteorological vade mecum informs 
 me that thunder storms are " apt to occur" 
 wherever warm, moist, ascending currents meet 
 with cold, descending currents ; twelve or thir 
 teen hours in advance they are announced 
 by a stratus of cumulus having innumerable 
 tufts or turrets on the top ; they are " most 
 likely to occur " between the hours of three and 
 four o clock in the afternoon ; and it is the 
 theory of the weather-wise that when the 
 cumuli appear during the heat of the day, and 
 pass away in the evening, continued fair weather 
 may be expected ; but when they increase rap 
 idly, sink into the lower part of the atmosphere, 
 and remain as the evening approaches, rain is 
 at hand. These are a small part of the great 
 system of signs which enables close observers 
 to make good guesses as to the weather. It 
 is certain that, though the cumuli, commonly 
 known as cotton-bales or thunder-heads, seldom 
 fail to put in their appearance in the lower part 
 of the sky during the hot days of July and 
 
THE THUNDER STORM. 91 
 
 August, they are not the infallible forerunners 
 of rain by any means. These are the hand 
 somest of clouds, and assume the greatest 
 variety of forms and colors, especially towards 
 night. Nothing more celestially innocent, peace 
 ful, beatific, in the skies, than yon bank of 
 splendid gray vapor, sailing slowly above the 
 horizon, assuming from moment to moment a 
 hundred indescribable shapes, alive with subtle 
 lights ; a vision of purity and grace and leisure. 
 Domes and towers, summits of snow shining aloft 
 like Pyrenean peaks, range upon range of intan 
 gible Alps, glorious in their inaccessible altitude, 
 they move in state like airy gods, glow with 
 golden and rosy fires, and cause the heart of 
 man to leap up when he beholds them. Who 
 would suppose that havoc lurked in the bosom 
 of so much loveliness ? 
 
 It is a sultry afternoon. The air is lifeless, 
 stifling, torrid. The wind has died out, and a 
 complete calm broods over the simmering fields 
 and the glassy water. The flies bite with un 
 common malignancy. The trees and flowers 
 droop, as if waiting for something. As the 
 
92 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 afternoon draws on, there is a prolonged distant 
 rumbling, now broken by a louder accent, now 
 dying away in a subdued growl. Sometimes the 
 far sound of the thunder will be almost inces 
 sant for one or two hours before the storm 
 
 comes near enough to make its lightnings visi 
 ble. Then in the northwest rises a portentous 
 blue-black bank of clouds, spreading rapidly and 
 steadily over the tenderer blue of the open sky, 
 sending its skirmish-line forward in brisk puffs 
 of wind to relieve the heavy and oppressive 
 calm that hangs over the earth in front of the 
 
THE THUNDER STORM. 93 
 
 tempest. The foremost edge of the revolving 
 cloud-bank is a long, crescent line, broken into 
 shorter scallops, embroidered with a woolly gray 
 vapor, curling and wreathing like smoke in 
 minor circles as it comes. Beneath this busy 
 advance-guard extends the dense, flat face of 
 dark-blue rain-cloud, now at intervals seared by 
 the zigzag signature of the lightning bolt ; and 
 finally beneath the storm s farthest skirt, a 
 brazen gleam from the sun-touched west. The 
 measure of the dance grows more tempestuous. 
 Now the smoky tufts of the storm s high cor 
 nice are whirling overhead. The first large 
 drops of rain patter noisily on the roof. The 
 first full-fledged blast of the furious squall lays 
 low the trembling treetops, rends here a sapling 
 and there a feeble branch, and sends a panic- 
 stricken host of loose leaves trooping through 
 the air. 
 
 Now shorten all sail, skipper, and stand by to 
 luff ! Shut windows, housewife, and make all 
 snug alow and aloft ! Bend patiently your head, 
 belated traveller, and draw your cloak closer ! 
 To your coops, pretty chicks ! For here it 
 comes. 
 
94 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 With a stentorian, 
 exultant roar the pa 
 rent blast is upon 
 us, and all the air 
 is vocal with the 
 shrill holiday chorus 
 of his fi end-family,! 
 madly rollicking in 
 the trees, savagely 
 whipping the vines 
 and shrubs, yelling 
 down the chimneys, 
 and piping a dia 
 bolic dance tune all 
 about the house. Down 
 falls the solid, slanting flood 
 of rain, with its splendid diapason of 
 battle, no dainty drizzle, but a drenching, 
 drowning downpour, a soaking, cats -and -dogs 
 torrent, finding instantly all leaks, washing out 
 highways, swelling springs to brooks, brooks to 
 creeks, and creeks to rivers, flattening the fair 
 growing grain, undermining culverts, bursting 
 dams, submerging cities, and making merry over 
 
THE THUNDER STORM. 95 
 
 its carnival of moist mischief with a wild wet joy. 
 Above even its mighty uproar laughs the deep- 
 chested wind ; the thunder god claps his colossal 
 hands in Olympian glee ; and myriad echoes 
 among the clouds send back the applause of 
 the elements in long-drawn reverberations, as 
 it were the rolling of titanic drums calling the 
 powers of the upper air to mortal combat. The 
 lightning seems to draw nearer. Tis a fear 
 ful guest, that comes unbidden and strikes 
 home with merciful speed, Death s fleetest 
 agent. Bolts fall in forked lines of blinding 
 brilliancy, shooting shafts of infernal fabrica 
 tion at that scarred old target, the earth, rend 
 ing the atmosphere into fiery shreds and sec 
 tions, running a race with old Time and 
 beating him, eating up the darkness, and etch-, 
 ing crazy sketches on the shield of the night- 
 black heavens. 
 
 What a little creature a man is now ! how 
 helpless, how overawed ! The figure in this 
 landscape is a petty thing, and wishes it were 
 smaller yet. 
 
 By almost imperceptible degrees the crisis of 
 
96 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 the storm passes and its rage abates. The 
 downpour dwindles to a fine, thin rain. The 
 winds wail more weakly. The thunder strug^ 
 gles and howls in its reluctant retreat. Belated 
 
 lightnings dart fiercely through the sweetened 
 air. In a moment the sun will burst forth in a 
 rift of the clouds, and set the million drops of 
 water on leaves and grass to shining, not like 
 diamonds, as some poets would have it, but 
 much more heartily than any such heartless 
 stones. Foul puddles clear up their mirror- 
 faces to reflect the blue sky that will soon be 
 uncurtained. Step outdoors and inhale the 
 
THE THUNDER STORM. 
 
 97 
 
 freshness of the well-washed world. The birds 
 are fairly outdoing themselves in the exuberance 
 of their carols. From the trees and bushes and 
 from the eaves of the house there is a smart 
 and rhythmical dripping. The rain has passed ; 
 all is clean and cool ; Nature emerges from her 
 bath, sparkling, refreshed, rejuvenated. 
 
 Over in the south the storm can be seen pur 
 suing its progress out to sea. It is grand to 
 watch the sight-outrunning lightning in its 
 gambols over the water, now that it has retired 
 to a safe distance. The sun sets, night falls, 
 and in the darkness of the evening the specta 
 cle becomes more vivid and marvellous. A 
 vast rack of cumulus clouds, upheaved in bulg 
 ing masses, with towering alabaster domes, 
 overhangs the horizon, and -stands out momen 
 tarily in perfect distinctness as "Jove s light 
 nings, the precursors o the dreadful thunder 
 claps," illuminate it with a pink light. The 
 play of the flashes is almost incessant, for 
 several storms are raging out there at once. 
 The rosy lines leap from dome to dome, or, 
 more often, dive from some lofty cloud-summit 
 
98 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 into the very depths of the black ocean. Those 
 flames that are borne down beyond the nearest 
 clouds, and shine from their vaporous valley 
 upon the second range, make its flanks appear 
 like some immense canopy, through which they 
 send the intense reflection of their unseen fires. 
 Too far removed from the storm centre to hear 
 the thunder, the spectator may sit and watch 
 such a Witch s Sabbath half through the night, 
 with the stars winking overhead. 
 
 In the famous Morgan collection there was 
 a splendid picture of the coming-on of a thunder 
 storm. It was by Diaz. A man wearing a 
 cloak was crossing a wide plain, where the rising 
 wind already swept with great violence, bend 
 ing and twisting trees and bushes in its path, 
 and making the traveller s farther progress a 
 matter of no slight difficulty. Over a large part 
 of the sky was spread a cloud-bank of inky 
 bluish-black, with an undertone of coppery green, 
 suggestive of tornadoes and windy ruin. The 
 clouds had not the funnel-form, however, which 
 is supposed to characterize the cyclone, and 
 doubtless what Diaz had witnessed was nothing 
 
THE THUNDER STORM. ; > - , J,C ; r 
 
 more than an effete European squall travelling 
 at the moderate rate of fifteen and one-half 
 miles an hour, instead of an American storm 
 which has an average speed of twenty-six and 
 one-tenth miles an hour. Isabey has described a 
 stormy day with much skill, too, in his "Embark 
 ation," a work full of nerve, conveying an 
 admirable impression of " dirty" weather. Hunt 
 undertook to paint a thunder storm once, but 
 with indifferent success ; it was not one of his 
 good days. I suppose that nobody has ever illus 
 trated showery weather so faithfully as Consta 
 ble weather which means "take your umbrella 
 with you when you go out to-day," or in 
 other words, the sort of weather alluded to in 
 the classic legend: 
 
 " Open and shet, 
 The day 1 !! be wet." 
 
SUNSET EFFECTS. 
 
 WHEN the Almighty hung the sun in the 
 heavens, and gave men eyes wherewith 
 to see its light, he offered one capital proof of 
 his kindness toward his children ; yet how few 
 of them ever lift their eyes from their hideous 
 ledgers long enough to observe the beauty of 
 the sky, land, and sea, all animated by the ever- 
 shifting sunlight, which paints silver and golden 
 pictures everywhere from hour to hour, and, in 
 departing from the world at night, sends up a 
 chromatic hymn of praise which makes glorious 
 the firmament from west to east. A world 
 
SUNSET EFFECTS. 103 
 
 without light and color is not to be conceived. 
 The moon is a paradox, not fit for man to live 
 on. How can night be without day ? 
 
 There is a sweet melancholy in the sunset 
 hour, like that of the fall of the year, or of the 
 parting of friends who hope to meet again. 
 The day is ended, with its tasks, and one more 
 etapc in the long march is done : a few hours 
 rest, and then on again ! The time invites 
 meditation. Since man does not live by bread 
 alone, the eyes should be fed as well as the stom 
 ach, and in the optical diet of each day s round, 
 so full of variety, the setting of the sun may be 
 regarded as the dessert, or the after-dinner cof 
 fee, which is to leave its taste longest on the 
 palate of the sight. 
 
 Though no two sunsets are exactly alike, 
 there is not one of them but has some hand 
 some features in it ; as a general rule those that 
 are most admired because of their extreme bril 
 liancy of coloring are even less beautiful than 
 the quieter sort which often pass unnoticed. 
 One reason is that a vast number of people 
 dwell in towns, in valleys, or among trees, where 
 
104 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 they can see only a small part of the sky, and 
 naturally they do not take much interest in 
 what is going on up there unless it is something 
 altogether extraordinary. They will admire, 
 most probably, a sunset of the sanguinary sort, 
 where the clouds are dyed a blood red, as 
 depicted in the well-known paintings of Mr. 
 Vermilion which are all so much alike ; not that 
 his pictures are untruthful, either, as pictures 
 go : he saw that effect once, and has been paint 
 ing it ever since, unmindful of the fact that 
 Nature s programme is eternally diversified. A 
 flaming debauch of warm color, such as Dela 
 croix or Turner would have hardly dared to re 
 produce in all its riotous intensity, this just 
 suited Vermilion, who, without a thought of 
 difficulty, translated it into a thoroughly bour 
 geois and hopelessly prosaic picture, after a 
 snug little recipe of his own, the gods not hav 
 ing made him poetical. There is less art enters 
 into the making of such paintings than Aunt 
 Matilda uses in the compounding of her mince- 
 pies, for she varies the flavor by adding more 
 or less of this or that ingredient in each batch, 
 
SUNSET EFFECTS. 105 
 
 and follows no invariable rule, relying upon in 
 stinct, and taking an artist s pleasure in the 
 soundness of the work ; whereas Mr. Vermilion, 
 and those other mechanical painters, Messrs. 
 Ultramarine and Chrome Yellow, have forgot 
 the youthful inspiration which gave them their 
 first start in the profession, and blindly adhere 
 to established formulae for the manufacture of 
 ruddy sunsets, cerulean Venices, and summer 
 twilights. The worthy citizen who buys these 
 ready-made mediocrities is rather pleased than 
 otherwise to know that his acquisitions are so 
 similar to all the rest of the trio s productions 
 that visitors never fail to recognize the pater 
 nity of his treasures, and it is a comfort in these 
 days to feel that one owns something genuine 
 if not unique. Nor have we any right to com 
 plain, for Vermilion, Ultramarine, and Chrome 
 Yellow are good fellows : and it is not wholly 
 their fault that there are so many artists in the 
 world still awaiting recognition in the obscurity 
 of their sixth-floor-back studios. And then 
 to return to our sunsets perhaps a part of my 
 prejudice against effects of Mr. Vermilion s 
 
106 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 kind is literary ; certainly it is hard to find a 
 novel, a poem, or a book of travel without its 
 description of at least one remarkable red sun 
 set. However, there is no cheapness, thank 
 Heaven ! about the real article, be it in any 
 combination of the primary colors. Words and 
 pictures may grow hackneyed, tiresome, and 
 stale, but the things they stand for lose nothing 
 by age and repetition. In Nature, says Emer 
 son, all is useful, all is beautiful. There is no 
 crudity in the most brilliant of real effects, 
 no fever in the warmest coloring, no excess of 
 frigidity in the coolest. The atmosphere is a 
 magical tonist, and never falsifies a value. 
 Harmony is everywhere except on your medio 
 cre painter s palette ; yet, strangely enough, it 
 is he who is forever prating about realism, as if 
 photography were the highest form of pictorial 
 art, and the world were dead and colorless. 
 Away with a realism which has nothing real 
 about it except its pretensions ; let it go the 
 same way as the impressionism devoid of im 
 pressions. The truths that were good enough 
 for Raphael and Correggio, for Rembrandt and 
 
SUNSET EFFECTS. 
 
 109 
 
 Velasquez, are good enough for us ; and we are 
 free to seek them where they sought and found 
 them, in the heart of Nature, without interme 
 diaries. The schools have never yet made a 
 great painter, and never will. 
 
 The handsomest part of a handsome sunset is 
 
 often in the region of the sky farthest removed 
 from the light, that is to say, the east ; although 
 it is true that the whole expanse of the sky is 
 likely to assist in the radiant pageant, each sec 
 tion having its own peculiar beauties, from a 
 flaming fiery centre outward through countless 
 gradations to the last faint reflection of warm 
 
1 10 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 color lingering on the crest of some mysterious 
 low-lying cloud. My western horizon is admir 
 able, and no landscapist could see it at sundown 
 without wishing to paint it. At the left is a 
 village with here and there a red roof ; then a 
 group of healthy cherry trees about one-eighth 
 of a mile distant ; full a mile beyond is the well- 
 defined ridge of a very respectable hill, crowned 
 by a fine thick wood ; now fancy nearer trees in 
 tervening, and then a reach of still more distant 
 hill, almost bare of trees. Two large apple- 
 trees not far away lift a mass of dark foliage to 
 the sky. To the extreme right the crest of a 
 gentle slope makes away in the middle distance 
 to the northward. These lines are suave and 
 smiling, but not insipid. There is something 
 very distinctive and piquant about the shape of 
 the bluish-green wood in the first distance ; it is 
 " backed like a weasel " ; and that is where the 
 sun goes down. When it goes down in a gilt- 
 edged edition, leaving the sky clothed in an 
 effulgent livery of amber and brass, that mass 
 of trees is full as sombre, impenetrable, and 
 dusky as any ever painted by Daubigny. When 
 
SUNSET EFFECTS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 it goes down from out a clear field of pale 
 greenish blue, and leaves a film of dusty purple 
 over it, with slate-colored cirri trailing above, 
 only their lower edges tinted by faintest pink, 
 and when the clear sky underneath changes to 
 
 luminous pale gold lightly washed with a coppery 
 bronze, as the clouds darken and spread, till up 
 towards the zenith their drab patches relieve 
 depths of fast-fading rose, then, shades of great 
 Rousseau, you are here ! There are times when 
 
112 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 the humor of the sunset is all soft and mellow 
 and full of sober amiability, when the sky seems 
 to melt away in a golden mist, and the level 
 rays of light touching the western slope of a 
 field are like a benediction on the happy earth ; 
 the commonest things bathed in this sweet flood 
 are transformed to objects of beauty. It was so 
 that Claude Lorrain would see his world. Then 
 comes a day of storm, and the heavy rain clouds 
 darken all the landscape, till at evening the west 
 suddenly runs up its signal of clearing weather, 
 and in a twinkling the sad gray curtains are 
 whisked from before the gates of the Occident 
 in time to reveal an orange and green chamber 
 of more than royal magnificence in which the 
 sun has gone to bed. The other night, a huge 
 array of slate-gray clouds had been piled up over 
 there by some aerial architect, with horizontal 
 strata projected on purpose to catch reflections 
 of fiery scarlet in long bars of unutterable bril 
 liancy. It was, perhaps, a bed of celestial cin 
 ders, glowing with their last life, the debris of 
 the day s full fire. Many a sunset has flamed 
 and faded over my horizon that words are but 
 
SUNSET EFFECTS. 
 
 poor means of sketching ; some were portents, 
 and some were prodigies, and others still were 
 as a mother s good-night kiss. They are, all in 
 all, as near indescribable as anything on earth 
 may be. We have our little stock of phrases, 
 our metaphors, and what then ? Are all the 
 gems known to the jeweller equal to the colors 
 
 
 i*. ! 
 
 in the sky which we hope to praise by compar 
 ing with them ? It is a sheer waste of powder 
 to fire volleys of adjectives which, from the con- 
 
114 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 stant abuse of them, have come to mean any 
 thing or nothing. Is it not rather sacrilegious 
 to speak of the finest sights in life in terms 
 which the school-girl applies to her caramels ? 
 
 Art has a curious progressive effect on the 
 serious mind : at the outset it seems to respect 
 nothing, and it ends by becoming a religion. 
 So a work of art is something done in love and 
 faith : and because these exalted feelings can 
 not be well counterfeited, their absence being 
 easily detected, the world refuses to be moved 
 by a picture which has cost its maker no real 
 emotion. To look upon an actual scene and 
 say, That is like a painting by my friend, this is 
 indeed a genuine tribute to genius ; for the art 
 of which Nature strongly reminds us must be 
 well born and nobly inspired. 
 
IN THE WOODS. 
 
 FEW men really love solitude, and this is one 
 of the reasons that it is pleasant to be in 
 the woods, where, although alone, one is never 
 solitary. They are sham hermits who take up 
 their abode in cabins in the forest ; for in such a 
 home there must be plenty of company. It is a 
 brave kingdom, where the inhabitants have their 
 music for nothing, " sounds, and sweet airs, that 
 give delight and hurt not." The free spirit 
 of the woods seems somehow to penetrate the 
 least poetical natures. Men go down in Maine 
 
 "5 
 
Il6 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 to hunt and fish, and mayhap bring down better 
 game than they seek. The tuneful voice of 
 Nature is continually audible in the shadowy 
 solitudes. The lonely glen, and wild rocky dell, 
 the high canopy of moving boughs, the solemn 
 fastnesses where the light of day is tempered to 
 a perpetual dusk, school the eyes, to quiet con 
 templation, and solace the restless mind with 
 balmy day-dreams. Sky and distance are ban 
 ished from the scene, and all is either foreground 
 or mystery. 
 
 Mystery ! that is the name for this leafy city, 
 whose tangled avenues begin nowhere and lead 
 to the unknown. The fancy roves in a laby 
 rinth of bosky byways, now charmed, now awed. 
 There is no Oriental rug to equal the pine 
 needles, dead twigs, and fallen leaves that strew 
 the fragrant, endless alleys of the forest ; it is a 
 carpet elastic under the tread, grateful to the 
 nostrils, and of a tone and pattern that never 
 weary the sight, brown beneath, and diapered 
 with the exquisitely delicate shapes of ferns 
 and mosses in many shades of green, with 
 weeds which deserve more honorable names. 
 
IN THE WOODS. 119 
 
 The gray of granite boulders makes cool spots 
 in this harmonious field, flecked by moving 
 points of sunlight, and variegated by a thousand 
 caprices of brier and vine, bush and sapling. 
 No two square yards are like, but all are in per 
 fect accord. The light is colored a golden 
 green by the multitude of reflections from the 
 foliage ; it is the despair of literal painters, and 
 no picture is adequate to suggest its peculiar 
 quality except in a remote manner when the 
 mid-summer sun hangs high and vegetation is 
 at its fullest life. 
 
 Our trees are being felled at such a rate that 
 the grand old woods that once covered a large 
 part of the country are already, with a few 
 exceptions, things of the past, and in time we 
 may be obliged to go to Europe or to South 
 America to see a forest worthy of the name. 
 Such a wood as that of Fontainebleau, easily 
 accessible from Paris, would undoubtedly "pay" 
 in the neighborhood of large towns here, but 
 though we have cut down scores of them, it is 
 not so easy to make them. Shall Americans in 
 the future have to go to the suburbs of Paris 
 
120 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 and London when they wish to see a good bit 
 of woods ? Let Boston at least earn a new 
 title to distinction (it is time) by guarding from 
 real-estate vandalism the wild tract known as 
 the Middlesex Fells, which, improving with age 
 like wine, if preserved in all its integrity, will 
 be the finest ornament of a district which does 
 not lack natural charms, and which can be 
 spoiled only by the vulgarity and greed of the 
 citizens. Indeed, one must travel far now to 
 find more picturesque horizons than those of 
 historic Middlesex County, with her dense, luxu 
 riant woods and her rolling purple hills. Wood 
 man, spare that tree ! As the amiable M. Oudi- 
 not has said, " Celui qui aime vraiment la nature 
 ne pent guere etre qu un honnete homme " ; 
 and surely he who loves trees cannot be all 
 wrong-hearted. 
 
 It is no easy matter nowadays in the greater 
 part of this New England to get lost in the 
 woods. At the moment the explorer is con 
 vinced that he has penetrated to the holy of 
 holies, and contemplates taking formal posses 
 sion of the heart of the place, a stronger light 
 
IN THE WOODS. 12 1 
 
 breaks upon his way, and a few steps bring him 
 to the farther edge of the wood, within view of 
 a barn and a haystack. A few repetitions of 
 this experience are enough to extinguish all 
 sense of personal heroism in the adventurer. 
 However, the Pemigewasset forest in New 
 Hampshire may be considered a very respect 
 able wilderness for these times ; at all events 
 when a party of us tramped through it there 
 were no paths, tracks, nor "blazes," for some 
 thirty miles, and to find the way it was cus 
 tomary to follow the sinuous courses of the 
 streams. In this virgin forest, as we liked to 
 call it, everything was entirely natural and 
 inviolate ; there were no traces of human beings 
 except two deserted, ill-smelling wood-cutters 
 cabins at far intervals. The general aspect of 
 these trackless wilds was not widely different 
 from that of a snug little wood of ten acres, in 
 the centre of which one may momentarily fancy 
 the nearest house a thousand miles away ; yet 
 the sense of hearing testified otherwise. There 
 were no sounds save those that might be heard 
 here by the savage before Columbus broke the 
 
122 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 egg, the birds careless improvisations, the 
 jovial confidences of the brooks, the light foot 
 fall of some invisible animal, the soft rustling 
 of the foliage far overhead, the fall of a dead 
 limb ; and, at dead of night, when we tired way 
 farers lay outstretched on our pine-bough beds, 
 the sudden and startling challenge of the owl. 
 There seems to be no such thing as absolute 
 silence in this world, but the sounds of the 
 wilderness (like its sights and smells) are mostly 
 sweet, and it is no slight pleasure to be for 
 a while beyond hearing of the locomotive s 
 harsh whoop, the din of mills and traffic, and all 
 the nerve-racking noises of town and trade. 
 Then how good is plainest fare eaten by the 
 camp-fire, how sound and refreshing the sleep 
 of the bivouac, and what a relish for life and 
 work the keen morning air imparts ! The cas 
 cades which abound in the Pemigewasset forest 
 are of surpassing beauty, and all along the East 
 Branch there are charming bits of the wildest 
 character, as the rapid stream winds its devious 
 way among myriads of mossy, spray-sprinkled 
 boulders and stones of every hue, hemmed in 
 
IN THE WOODS. 
 
 123 
 
 by massive walls of undergrowth and towering 
 trees. Emerging from the forest, the pedes- 
 
 trian s arduous enterprise is crowned finally by 
 a wonderful spectacular view of the White 
 Mountain Notch from the steep slope of Mount 
 Willey. 
 
124 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 In every wood there are miniature woods, 
 and so on, down to the smallest visible growth 
 of starry moss. One need not be a naturalist 
 to distinguish a huckleberry bush 
 from an elm ; but in the rich month 
 of August the display of wild flow 
 ers, vines, and ferns is something 
 to make one long for more knowl 
 edge of these gracious things. 
 Asters, clematis, sumac, tansy, 
 snapdragon, golden-rod, althea, 
 marshmallow, pride-of- 
 the-meadow, and many 
 like them, warm the 
 pathway s side, and 
 deck the swamp and 
 woodland with more 
 than the decorous 
 beauty of cultivated 
 flowers. The crushed 
 leaves of sweet-fern, 
 trodden down by some passer, fill the air with 
 the warm, languid odor of summer. Along the 
 weedy lane the deep, honest, bricky red of the 
 
IN THE WOODS. 125 
 
 sumac glows prodigally, and in the homely gar 
 den of the farmer s daughter the now famous 
 sunflower lifts its lavish disk of gold, down 
 there by the long grape-vine arbor of rustic 
 cedar, a tunnel of generous verdure, paved with 
 a mosaic of wavering light and shade, such a 
 foyer as Paul Baudry could not match. 
 
 The most solemn wood is that of tall, straight 
 pines, which stand in nearly regular ranks, 
 forming stately aisles, and suggesting the spon 
 taneous architecture of sylvan cathedral builders. 
 In Courbet s great picture of "The Quarry" 
 the verdant twilight of the pine forest is richly 
 translated, and the magnificent coloring, equal 
 to that of a Veronese, is worthy of the theme. 
 Yet a Belgian critic wittily wanted to know in 
 what Parisian studio Courbet had found such 
 a neat grove. It is well enough for all of us 
 to take some things for granted, among which 
 (the Belgian safely might have assumed) the 
 French iconoclast s knowledge of his native 
 Vosges woods and hills was not open to ques 
 tion ; and it must be mortifying for an author 
 ity who sets the petty masters of Antwerp 
 
126 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 and Brussels above Courbet, to think that "the 
 laugh is on himself," instead of on the outcast 
 whose arrogance was so cruelly humbled in his 
 last days. 
 
 To jump from the Vosges to Vermont, well- 
 named state, I think that the complexion and 
 character of our own green woods have never 
 been more faithfully reported than in the paint 
 ings of Marcus Waterman, an artist of singular 
 merit and originality, whose power of acute 
 observation is extraordinarily developed, and 
 whose execution is broad without wanting in 
 particularity. 
 
 Among the most eloquent descriptions of 
 woods in our language, certain lines in the 
 " Alastor" of Shelley are pre-eminently inspired. 
 There are no more apt touches in all the litera 
 ture of the subject than such as occur in the 
 passage beginning : - 
 
 "The noonday sun 
 
 Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass 
 Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence 
 A narrow vale embosoms. . . ." 
 
IN THE WOODS. 127 
 
 The observation of Nature disclosed by this 
 extremely beautiful passage is as intimate and 
 loving as ever a painter employed, and is enough 
 
 * 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ , ^/K^^f^r 
 
 to show with what reason this poet shares with 
 Wordsworth the regard of so many landscapists. 
 The little forest of Mormal, described so 
 prettily by Robert Louis Stevenson in his " In - 
 land Voyage," was perfumed with sweet-brier, 
 and he thought it the most imposing piece in 
 
128 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 Nature s repertory. The smell of trees he con 
 siders the sweetest and most fortifying of all 
 smells. Like Heine, and like Merlin, he would 
 be buried under the oaks. De Musset preferred 
 to lie among the willow s roots ; for its pallor 
 was dear to him, and he fancied that its shade 
 would rest lightly on the earth above him ; 
 this harmless ambition has been gratified. 
 
MOODS OF THE SEA. 
 
 THE sea is spoken of as if it were a free 
 agent, and blamed or praised accordingly. 
 In fact it is the slave of the winds and the 
 moon, and acts only in obedience to their power. 
 It is sullen only when the clouds are heavy 
 above it, and cheerfully reflects the gladness of 
 blue skies. Its passion is borrowed from the 
 madness of the airs that blow upon it, and it is 
 in no degree responsible. For poetry s sake, 
 however, and because of ancient associations 
 stronger than we realize, the sea will not only 
 
 129 
 
130 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 be personified by generations yet unborn, but 
 Neptune will still be scolded for the mischief 
 wrought by Boreas, ^Eolus, Luna, and all the 
 crew of wind-gods that roam over the sounding 
 main, as ready for wicked work now as they 
 were in the days of Ulysses. 
 
 So the moods of the sea are largely due to 
 external influences, as the moods of men are. 
 It is simply a huge instrument of destiny ; 
 mighty with a higher might than its own ; Om 
 nipotence uses it to work out its inscrutable 
 
MOODS OF THE SEA. 131 
 
 designs on the individual and on nations ; the 
 vast theatre of countless tragedies, changeful 
 yet ever essentially the same, it is the most 
 beautiful and the most mysterious element in 
 this world of beauty and of mystery. When a 
 light breeze is blowing from the east in the 
 early morning, and a white haze dulls the out 
 lines of the shore, the whole surface of the sea 
 is a tremulous array of dazzling flashes, quiver 
 ing with points of molten silver ; each ripple 
 fires its little sunbeam of intolerable radiance at 
 the sight ; it is a shining world without shade. 
 The local color of the water is pale blue, 
 approaching a greenish hue, but the sun makes 
 the whole expanse a crystal carnival of light. 
 So joyous and peaceful is this holiday aspect of 
 the sea, that, seeing it thus on the morning 
 after a great storm, it is natural to accuse it of 
 the basest hypocrisy ; for has it not within the 
 twenty-four hours swallowed up most cruelly 
 many brave ships and men ? and how can it put 
 on at once this heavenly smile ? is it not a mon 
 strous lie to say all is well ? 
 
 A northeaster in the autumn clothes every- 
 
132 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 thing in dull grays. The water is of a dirty, 
 dull light brown ; on the crests of the waves 
 where they break, the brown becomes a dirty, 
 dull yellow, then dissolves in a dirty, dull white 
 
 foam. The sky is purple at the east, with 
 vague forms of cold, smoky gray against it. 
 The line of the horizon is lost in mist. Every 
 hue and every form is inexpressibly dull. In 
 such weather it is easy to understand why 
 Henri Regnault swore an eternal haine au gris. 
 
MOODS OF THE SEA. 135 
 
 Such are our New England winter storms 
 gray, gray, gray. One almost forgets what the 
 blessed sun looks like, so persistently do the 
 leaden clouds hatefully hang over the frozen 
 earth. Haine au gris ! 
 
 In a warm southerly storm, when the taste of 
 the wind is soft and briny, the sea is a dun 
 color, or cream-brown ; the white horses race 
 merrily as far out as the sight carries ; fitful 
 gleams of sunshine illuminate long streaks 
 of tossing greenish water, bounded by sober 
 shadows where dense rain scuds over the deep. 
 A sudden burst of light reveals a brig s upper 
 spars above the corrugated horizon ; then all s 
 closed in again, the mist enwraps the foam- 
 bordered rocks, the rain beats spitefully and 
 stings like sleet, the wind renews its uproar 
 with augmented energy, the surf grinds and 
 pulsates in hollow rhythm on the sands. On 
 such a day as this, it is not hard to sympathize 
 with Byron s virile apostrophe to the ocean. It 
 is exhilarating to inhale deeply the breath of a 
 summer tempest ; to be in it and of it ; to feel 
 its wetness and rude violence ; to laugh at the 
 
136 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 gale s fury. Rough and boisterous, not tt> be 
 trifled with, the sea is a hearty, wholesome fel 
 low, whose qualities grow on acquaintance, 
 and, within the wide bounds of a servitude 
 borne so easily that it takes on the appearance 
 of freedom, it is a good friend to man. 
 
 Statistics might be made to prove how it 
 clothes and feeds many men, and kills but a 
 small proportion of the host that lives on it ; 
 what pestilences would sweep away multitudes 
 if it were not for the sanitary services of the 
 tides ; how many lives are saved yearly by the 
 purity and tonic properties of its air. Thus, 
 though the individual victim cannot console 
 himself by any such philosophy, the romantic 
 story of averages pleads for the ocean. Some 
 times, it must be confessed, the elements seem 
 to be moved by a curious perversity that makes 
 of them the most implacable foes to humanity. 
 The solitary, hand-to-hand struggle of a man 
 with the sea, the one animated by love, the 
 other by blind hate, this was the splendid 
 theme of Victor Hugo s "Toilers of the Sea," 
 in which the man, after unheard-of efforts, pre- 
 
MOODS OF THE SEA. 137 
 
 vailed, only to be conquered at last by a maid s 
 unkindness. And so he sought that deep har 
 bor of storm-beaten souls which Ariel sings : 
 
 Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 
 Of his bones are coral made ; 
 Those are pearls that were his eyes : 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 The imagination of all poets has been affected 
 by that great unexplored graveyard of nations, 
 the bottom of the ocean. We know that there 
 are high mountains, and deep valleys, caves, 
 rocks, meadows, and impenetrable forests, where 
 wondrous marine monsters rove down there, 
 a whole unknown world, forever hid from mortal 
 sight, of which the most fantastic dreams can 
 hardly furnish a parallel. The future explorer 
 who shall carry out the ingenious suggestion of 
 Jules Verne will see through the windows of 
 his submarine vessel such beauties and such 
 horrors as fancy has never painted. It is no 
 wonder that sailors are superstitious. Who does 
 
138 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 not believe in mermaids ? I do not mean the 
 kind for many years exhibited in Boston and 
 Amsterdam museums, but the genuine musical 
 and green-haired sirens, thefemmes marines of 
 the old traditions. One of these was caught by 
 a Dutch seaman, who married her : at least 
 Dumas says so in " Les Manages du Pere 
 Olifus," and a terrible dowry of trouble she 
 brought to the old reprobate. 
 
 Few subjects present so many difficulties to 
 the painter as the sea, because it will not keep 
 still. This country has given birth to a consid 
 erable number of marine artists who have dis 
 tinguished themselves in their arduous specialty. 
 I need refer only to Winslow Homer ; and he is 
 to be set above many that are honorable in that 
 he has the imagination to cope with immensity. 
 By some artful touch he suggests the unspeak 
 able extent of unseen ocean stretching leagues 
 on leagues away beyond the horizon ; with a few 
 brush strokes he converts Winsor and Newton 
 inanimate into the living buoyancy, the perpet 
 ual motion, and the baffling light-glances of the 
 waves ; and finally in dramatic contrast with all 
 

MOODS OF THE SEA. 141 
 
 this brute bulk and untamable power he places 
 the physical insignificance of man, who, by his 
 ingenuity and bravery, is enabled to profit by 
 the forces of Nature. Ships and sailors, and all 
 things that have to do with the blue water, he 
 knows well, and paints with hearty sympathy in 
 a manly style. There is a fearful loneliness and 
 desolation in his picture of a Gloucester fisher 
 man lost in his dory at nightfall on the Grand 
 Banks. High and cold the black waves toss all 
 about the little craft, and the last light is fading 
 from the sky, even as hope fades from the poor 
 fellow s heart. The worst of it is that it is so true. 
 In just this awful way hundreds of Gloucester 
 men go to their death every year ; and still 
 in spite of danger and foreign malice the hunt 
 for codfish and dollars goes on, while the army 
 of widows and orphans grows apace. 
 
 Those who remember the comical controversy 
 which raged over the " Slave Ship " of Turner, 
 when it was exhibited in Boston, will perhaps 
 appreciate the following anecdote, as illustrating 
 a vulgar form of lay criticism : A person stand 
 ing in front of an excellent marine painting in 
 
142 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 a picture-gallery turned to an acquaintance, and 
 said, dogmatically, "Well, I have never seen 
 sea water of that color, and I do not believe 
 that any one ever has." The reply, which 
 struck me as very sensible, was to this effect : 
 " I have seen the water of so many colors under 
 various conditions of light, that I should have 
 no doubt of the truth of the picture, even if I 
 had never noticed this particular effect. I see 
 
 that Mr. painted it, and as he has been 
 
 studying the sea for the last forty years, I pre 
 sume that he has seen a good many things that 
 you and I have never observed." The rebuke 
 was gently expressed, and well deserved. It is 
 capable of wide application. 
 
 Speaking of Turner reminds me of the 
 " Fighting Temeraire," and of how naval archi 
 tecture has degenerated, since the day of that 
 vessel, in a pictorial sense. The old wooden 
 ships were royally handsome under sail, but this 
 iron age in which we live is sadly non-pictur 
 esque, and what could be uglier than a Mon 
 itor unless it were a Merrimac? There is 
 something about a square-rigged vessel that is 
 
MOODS OF THE SEA. 143 
 
 majestic ; even a little brig looks more imposing 
 than a three-masted schooner of thrice her ton 
 nage. Perhaps this is prejudice : there are glo 
 rious memories for us Americans connected with 
 the old type of ships. New England has been 
 a nursery for hardy mariners in the past, and it 
 may be hoped that the race of the Yankee sail 
 ors has not wholly died out. The brave old 
 salts who made our flag respected wherever it 
 waved, the bold skippers of New Bedford, Nan- 
 tucket, the Vineyard, Provincetown, and New 
 London, who unfurled the stars and stripes amid 
 the icy solitudes of the Antarctic Circle and the 
 surges of the South Pacific, are gone ; but it is 
 not certain that their grandsons will rest con 
 tented always to live ashore. 
 
 In Clark Russell s best stories there are 
 some well-studied word-pictures of the broad 
 ocean, though he piles on the adjectives almost 
 too profusely when he comes to a storm, and 
 one does lay down such books as "The Wreck 
 of the Grosvenor " with the impression that 
 the author has had more than his fair share 
 of rough weather. There is no mistaking his 
 
144 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 knowledge of his subject, nor his enthusiasm 
 for it; but a sailor should have no aversion to a 
 little dulness, and there is nothing more fasci 
 nating than certain pages in " Two Years before 
 the Mast" and "The Red Rover," where a per 
 
 fect trade-wind monotony reigns supreme, and 
 the reader feels that he may drop asleep at any 
 moment, hearing the swish of the water alongside 
 and feeling the soft salt wind fanning his face. 
 Happy are those sailors who have no history. 
 
NOCTURNE. 
 
 NIGHT in the country, starless, moonless, 
 rayless, unmitigated night. Darkness 
 which can be touched, smelt, breathed ; a 
 pelting rain-storm raging ; a blind-man s buff 
 bandage bound over the earth ; blank, bottom 
 less blackness everywhere. 
 
 In the very dead of such a night as this, 
 imagine the old-school country doctor of New 
 England, summoned urgently to the bedside of 
 a distant patient, setting forth in his chaise. 
 Accustomed to perambulate the lonely roads at 
 all hours, in all seasons, and in all sorts of 
 weather, he is soon nodding drowsily over the 
 loose reins, the intelligent horse being better 
 able than his driver to find the way, and full as 
 anxious to get to his destination. The veteran 
 nag has something of the faculty of a nyctolo- 
 pus; he holds a steady jog-trot through the end- 
 
146 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 less shadows, splashing unconcernedly through 
 the mud and the pools, head down, but with 
 never a stumble. Over the hills where the 
 night wind blows keen and damp ; through the 
 woods where the carriage-hood brushes showers 
 of spray from overhanging boughs ; thundering 
 over shaky, unseen, wooden bridges beneath 
 which black streams are rolling swiftly ; past 
 the village tavern from which the hoarse voices 
 of belated revellers come vaguely in profane 
 song ; by the shore whose breakers mingle 
 their voices in the storm s wild chorus ; now 
 with creaks and groans of ancient axles the 
 patient steed s freight is hauled up a lengthy 
 slope ; a dim silhouette of barns and haystacks, 
 woods and fields, appears against the murky 
 sky ; a tallow-dip gleams feebly through a farm 
 house window; "Ah, doctor, how glad I am 
 that you have come at last ! " 
 
 The visit concluded, the physician starts for 
 home. Midway a thick forest stands on one 
 side of the road, and on the other side meadows 
 slope easily down to the edge of a swamp. The 
 rain has ceased, and at this point begins an 
 
NOCTURNE. 
 
 147 
 
 impromptu exhi 
 bition of fire 
 works, or fireflies 
 festival. Low 
 and high, near 
 and far, among 
 the trees and 
 down over the 
 meadows, in the 
 road and every 
 where, it is noth 
 ing but a bewil 
 dering succession 
 of quick flashes, j 
 made the brighter 
 by the dense darkness. A wanton 
 whirl of fiery caprices envelops the vehicle, 
 weaves a weird fabric of dizzy insect lightning, 
 dances a furious zigzag ballet of living sparks 
 all around. No feu de joie in imperial capital, 
 exalting the pomp of conquering monarch, could 
 ever eclipse the extraordinary activity and bril 
 liancy of this display. 
 
 The majesty of the night, says Balzac, is 
 
 \ \, 
 
148 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 truly contagious ; it awes and it inspires ; there 
 is an indescribable potency in the thought, 
 "everything slumbers, and I am awake." Sup 
 pose the good doctor s homeward road now 
 brings him by the sea, as the clouds are break 
 ing away. There is a sudden glow beyond the 
 eastern horizon, warm and ruddy ; it grows 
 deeper, and may be a ship on fire. Now, where 
 is your almanac-wisdom, dull-eyed doctor ? Do 
 you not recognize that familiar flushed pate 
 emerging from the brine, that ghost of a leer 
 in the fat countenance, where extinct volcanoes 
 and dried-up ocean-beds write their seams of 
 dissipation on the lunar cheek and brow ? The 
 chin appears at length, drippingly, as it seems ; 
 and the flush fades to a most delectable amber. 
 In a moment the magic path of winking light 
 grows across the water that unstable road by 
 which our reeling fancy alone can walk to a dead 
 world. The moon rides higher, and pales as it 
 climbs ; the amber tint gives way to silver ; it 
 shines with a cool and chastened light. The 
 solitary spectator watches it as it dodges in and 
 out among the clouds, now sailing fast before 
 
NOCTURNE. 149 
 
 the west wind. It fringes the ragged rack with 
 a clear pearly radiance, playing a stately game 
 of phantom hide-and-seek with the scurrying 
 vapors. What is it that Shelley makes the 
 cloud say ? 
 
 " That orbed maiden with white fire laden 
 
 Whom mortals call the Moon 
 Glides glimmering o er my fleece-like floor 
 By the midnight breezes strewn." 
 
 The quality of moonlight defies all analysis ; 
 it is cool, but not hard ; white, but not colorless; 
 passionless, but a great breeder of poetry and 
 sentiment. In a picture of a farmyard at night 
 which Millet drew, and which is an epitome of 
 silence made visible, the moonlight falls like 
 a heavenly caress on the rustic scene, bathing 
 it in a soft splendor of peace. A cat is seen 
 crawling up a ladder which stands against the 
 open door of the hayloft, and the sly, noiseless 
 movement of this midnight prowler only empha 
 sizes the slumberous quietude that broods over 
 the farm. The mind s ear harks, and hears 
 mayhap a distant watch-dog baying the moon. 
 The world s asleep, past snoring. 
 
ISO 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 Down on the dark shore, where now a soft 
 breeze hints at the sweet languor of southern 
 nights, the waves, as they break on the rocks, 
 
 throw up a spray of silvery light, dying away 
 only to be incessantly renewed. The sea is 
 alive with phosphorescence, and the shining 
 jelly may be picked up in the hand where the 
 surf rolls it up on the beach. Afloat, gently 
 
NOCTURNE. I 5 I 
 
 rocked by the illuminated swell, one might feel 
 as if suspended in space, for there are stars 
 beneath as well as overhead. The oarsman 
 dips his blades into molten silver, and lifts from 
 the water at each recovery a dripping marvel of 
 pale evanescent fire. 
 
 !-. 
 
 - 
 
 It is commonly said that an astronomer must 
 be a deist or a madman, and no doubt he who 
 spends his nights in the observation and study 
 of other worlds should have a healthy and rev 
 erent imagination. How much there is to know, 
 and how little the wisest know ! In the pres 
 ence of the stars science is very humble. Old 
 as the universe seems, are we not at the very 
 beginning of things ? The vast unknown looms 
 
152 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 in the night, above, beneath, beyond, within ; 
 the Sphinx s ancient riddle is still unguessed ; 
 but it is certain that all this phantasmal scene 
 is no less beautiful than amazing. While manly 
 Science halts, groping its way upon the thresh 
 old of things, the heedless child Art enters 
 boldly in, with its happy intuitions enjoys 
 the visible universe, and listens in raptures to 
 the music of the spheres. Unconcerned as to the 
 inhabitants of Jupiter, not even knowing its 
 name nor its course in the heavens, it sees with 
 unalloyed pleasure the regal planet s lustre; for 
 appearances, not facts, are the subject of its 
 contemplation. The full absurdity of Vedder s 
 picture, "The Fates gathering in the Stars," 
 would not be likely to strike any one so forcibly 
 as an astronomer, who is in the habit of regard 
 ing these little twinklers as worlds de facto. Let 
 savans smile at the illogical fancies of painters 
 and poets ; perhaps these latter have the best of 
 it, after all. Who has drunk deep enough from 
 the Pierian spring to be beyond the danger-line ? 
 It is just as well to consider the stars simply as 
 stars, or even, if you please, as jewels on Night s 
 
NOCTURNE. 
 
 153 
 
 Ethiopian forehead. Meanwhile, a smattering 
 of astronomy is excellent, and goes a long way, 
 on the veranda, of a balmy August evening. 
 The outlines of the Virgin, the Serpent, the 
 
 
 ^jSii*^ 
 - /t- -^ 
 
 Archer, the Swan, the Eagle, the Harp, the 
 Bear, and those other figures suggested to the an 
 cients by the groupings of the stars, from which 
 the several constellations take their names, are 
 easily learned, though rather fantastical, and 
 
154 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 there is no small accomplishment which yields 
 better dividends of simple pleasure than the 
 ability to recognize Venus and Jupiter, the red 
 Arcturus, blue Altair, and that constant mid 
 summer friend Vega, which will, one night, a 
 trifle of twelve thousand years hence, become 
 the polar star. One comes to have preferences 
 among the stars, and Vega, which has hung 
 nearly overhead through so many pleasant warm 
 evenings, is one of my favorites up there. Orion 
 and the Pleiades are forever associated with the 
 voluble lover of Locksley Hall, who gazed on 
 them through love-sick eyes from his ivied case 
 ment. Venus doubtless presided over the for 
 tunes of Hardy s smitten astronomer in his 
 picturesque nocturnal romance of "Two on a 
 Tower." In the long run and theirs is surely 
 a long run the far-sighted stars witness a 
 good many strange doings on our little foot 
 stool. Above the big New England towns, for 
 instance, they see a broad pallid glare in the 
 atmosphere, the reflection of thousands of elec 
 tric lamps ; while between these centres, rushing 
 headlong through the darkness, rumbling, fiery- 
 
NOCTURNE. 155 
 
 eyed, snake-like monsters crawl over the coun 
 try ; up and down the bays and sounds ply giant 
 night-birds, the regular throbbing of whose 
 watery pinions is carried afar by the wind. In 
 the city interminable lines of gas-lamps, yellow 
 and flickering, cast their unsteady reflections on 
 the black pavements ; colored lights of car and 
 shop make festive bouquets of brilliancy ; and 
 when passing showers have wet the streets, the 
 black cabs shine resplendent in their moist 
 varnish. " It was but yesternight," says Castor 
 to Pollux, "that the sunless side of yon busy 
 sphere slept while we watched ; now is it be 
 come owlish, and insomnia turns it inside out. 
 It matters little ; let the worldlings fret ; their 
 speck will be consumed in a million years and 
 blotted out. Tis well : I hate to shine on 
 sordid fools. The experiment of placing men 
 on that star has turned out ill." 
 
 " Wherefore concluded so rashly, neighbor ? 
 Perhaps the sun fails to warm and cheer the 
 day-side of all that hapless ball, and man is 
 driven to brighten his sleeping time by facti 
 tious rays." 
 
156 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 "Aye, but I hear that the race has cut down 
 trees to build ugly houses withal; fouled the 
 rivers ; made huge towns of brick ; painted bad 
 pictures ; set up kings ; maintained armies and 
 navies, and waged bloody wars for conquest ; 
 and finally that it now worships the base metal 
 called gold so fervently that, the day not being 
 long enough, it turns night into day by fiendish 
 
NOCTURNE. 
 
 157 
 
 arts to pursue its cult. Decidedly the experi 
 ment has failed. Look now at Aldebaran: no 
 men there ! the trees and rivers are unspoiled, 
 there are no houses nor towns, no bad pictures, 
 armies, navies, kings, nor wars ; in fact, nothing 
 but universal peace and sobriety, since man has 
 never been nor ever will be there." 
 
 " True, most sapient Castor, many sad deeds 
 are done on that star ; yet I have been told a 
 time was when the arts were living forces there, 
 and one man there was in particular who, like 
 a lantern in a shadowy place, made their rude, 
 
158 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 dull ways glorious. It may be that many before 
 him had perceived how life is born of contrasts, 
 so that darkness gives worth to light ; but the 
 world waited for this man to reveal in its com 
 pleteness the mystic poetry of the dark. He 
 touched with no uncertain hand a minor chord, 
 till then mute, which vibrated with a melan 
 choly melodiousness ; and the world discovered 
 through Rembrandt s art that night no less 
 than day was clothed in beauty ; the half-seen 
 held its potent suggestions of loveliness ; and 
 rich gems of the imagination could be dug from 
 the dim mines of evening. It was this sombre 
 Dutch recluse, in fine, who first found a material 
 rhyme and correspondence for the twilight mood 
 of the soul." 
 

THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS. 
 
 TO eyes rightly trained, common things are 
 as beautiful as any conceivable grand, 
 splendid, extraordinary objects in the world ; 
 but because the faculty of observation is either 
 wholly or almost undeveloped in the vast ma 
 jority of individuals, this truth seems incom 
 prehensible to most men, and must probably 
 always remain so. The reason that artists are 
 happy beings, in spite of whatever want of appre 
 ciation and encouragement may be their lot, is 
 chiefly this : that they draw enjoyment from a 
 
160 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 source inaccessible to the mass of mankind, but 
 for them inexhaustible, eternal, without price. 
 The extent to which the faculty of seeing form 
 and color in Nature may be cultivated, appears 
 as boundless as the relish for the exercise of it ; 
 so that a lifetime is all too short for the study. 
 It is a road which lengthens out before us as 
 we advance, with constant variety in its vistas, 
 fresh delights each hour, and new worlds to 
 conquer from day to day. The ardent spirit 
 of the student animates the artist to the end of 
 his career ; he is always learning ; and knowl 
 edge, which is power, is also his greatest pleas 
 ure. This ruling passion fills his cup to the 
 brim. Corot, in his last moments, grasped in 
 fancy a brush, and cried out, " How beautiful ! " 
 saying he had never seen such admirable land 
 scapes. 1 I have a notion that the old man is 
 still painting landscapes somewhere. The ap 
 preciation of Nature grows by what it feeds on, 
 and becomes an instinct and an enduring love. 
 
 1 Dumesnil, " Souvenirs intimes de Corot." Troyon and 
 Michel, in their final delirium, had similar visions of incom 
 parably fine landscapes. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS. l6l 
 
 The cockney sees nothing to look at in the 
 country, and by the same law the animals that 
 live in Mammoth Cave have no eyesight. To a 
 whole and healthy temperament, everything in 
 the world is interesting, and there is nothing 
 so mean but it has some qualities worth observ 
 ing. Art is intensely democratic, as well as 
 immensely aristocratic. It is for the few, the 
 elect, to comprehend in its fulness ; but its sym 
 pathies are world-wide and all-embracing. This 
 need be no paradox : let us look into things 
 as well as on their surface. Is there a dividing 
 line between beauty and ugliness ? Sometimes 
 it seems doubtful. Homely things are unutter 
 ably fine when looked at through sympathetic 
 spectacles. Sacred associations beautify and 
 enrich the wrinkled features of age, and sanc 
 tify the crumbling walls of the humble cottage. 
 Memory tints with divine hues some of the 
 most forlorn and obscure corners of the earth. 
 I have seen a painting of a pig-pen which was 
 truly handsome, and it did not need to lie to be 
 so. When Ruskin referred contemptuously to 
 Murillo s " Beggar Boy" in the Louvre, as an evi- 
 
1 62 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 dence of the painter s love of dirt, he betrayed a 
 strain of English philistinism in his own make-up 
 which he has been ready enough to condemn in 
 
 his compatriots. Troyon made known his wish 
 to make a sketch of a certain heifer ; and when 
 the well-pleased owner washed and groomed the 
 
THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS. 163 
 
 animal for the occasion, the painter was so dis 
 gusted that he refused to paint her picture at 
 all. Priggishness and prudery are more vulgar 
 and more hateful, in the light of art, than any 
 other forms of affectation. All artificiality is at 
 war with Nature, and art too. The secret of 
 beauty is fitness. Whatever is in the scene 
 should belong there. There is nothing super 
 fluous in the woods and fields : everything has 
 its place and is adapted to its part. 
 
 Though the beauty of common things is no 
 modern discovery, we are constantly under the 
 necessity of justifying to ourselves by the light 
 of to-day our re-discoveries and re-castings of 
 old truths ; and in landscape-painting, the prac 
 tice of this age has departed more widely from 
 the track of tradition than in most other depart 
 ments of the art. Landscape in the days of 
 the Carracci was mainly employed as back 
 ground for figures, and a stretch of far hills 
 usually sufficed, details, with occasional excep 
 tions, being neither desired nor desirable. 
 When figures and buildings in turn became 
 accessories to landscape in Claude s time, the 
 
164 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 study of trees 
 and other ob 
 jects in outdoor 
 light was seri 
 ously begun, as 
 we have ample 
 proof in the 
 ~ 7 - t . "Liber Verita- 
 
 tis " ; but this 
 study was not carried to its 
 logical conclusions in the fin 
 ished work, which was a glow 
 ing synthesis, or abstract vision, in which the 
 distance drew the eye towards a golden dream 
 land, and nothing seemed near and familiar. On 
 the other hand, the Dutchmen, who were noth 
 ing if not close to the ground, so to say, painted 
 the brown dirt, the gray tree-trunks and rocks, 
 the blue and white skies of their country, with 
 such loyalty, sturdy unadorned truth, and sound 
 ness of workmanship, that the most admirable 
 externals of modern landscape-painting may be 
 
THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS. 165 
 
 said to be their inventions, which, in common 
 with many valuable inventions, are so simple 
 that it seems surprising that no one had thought 
 of them before. Constable was not slow to 
 catch his cue, and to adapt the excellent foreign 
 formulae to English conditions ; and all the 
 France of 1830, thrilling with a new impulse, 
 turned promptly to the ways of Nature, and 
 inaugurated such a prodigious revival of land 
 scape art that the receding waves of its influ 
 ence have reached even these distant shores. 
 The art has grown nearer to Nature and less 
 conventional. Among the most remarkable 
 changes in the practice of it is that from the 
 representation of the general to the particular, 
 from the scenic and the panoramic to the 
 intimate and actual. It is less picturesque and 
 more studied. There is less interest in the 
 distance and more in the foreground. Men 
 were wont to run off to the Alps, the Andes, 
 Niagara, for stupendous views ; now they paint 
 their own village dooryards. I confess to enjoy 
 ing both classes of subjects, but with a posi 
 tive preference for the modest dooryard ; for 
 
1 66 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 there can be no doubt that is difficult enough 
 for most of our talents, and that artists nowa 
 days study very hard. 
 
 If New England rural life is in any manner 
 barren, it is because the people make it so ; 
 
THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS. l6/ 
 
 but let us not be too ready to accept the popu 
 lar literary view of the matter. The Yankee 
 character, Lowell says, has wanted neither open 
 maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies 
 in the persons of those unskilful painters who 
 have given to it that hardness, angularity, 
 and want of proper perspective, which in truth 
 belonged, not to their subject, but to their own 
 niggard and unskilful pencil. The same may 
 be said of the outside aspects of the country 
 in which Mr. Biglow lives. It is good to guard 
 against falling into the heresy that the familiar 
 scenes are ugly because they are familiar. 
 Insist on it that beauty is everywhere ; for so 
 it is ; aye, even the toad, ugly and venomous, 
 "wears yet a precious jewel in his head." Not 
 only the hills and mountains, plains and valleys, 
 woods and groves, brooks and rivers, bays and 
 cliffs, flowers and weeds, ponds and lakes, greens 
 and gardens, highways and byways, bushes and 
 vines, cascades and pools, and all the natural 
 objects in New England, but also the houses, 
 barns, sheds, fences, bridges, mills, railroads, 
 steamboats, wharves, taverns, stores, meeting- 
 
1 68 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 houses, burial-grounds, wagons, ploughs, barn 
 yards, beehives, pig-pens, hen-coops ; in a word, 
 all that man has added to the scene should 
 deserve the study of the realist who looks with 
 his own eyes, regardless of what conventional 
 ism calls prosaic, vulgar, and commonplace. 
 
 i i" iiilr H 
 :Tk; If : * 
 ^iiM |l / C 
 
 These things are of the soil, and distinguish 
 our landscape from that of France or England : 
 thus if a man with the lofty soul, loyal nature, 
 and tender sympathy of a Jean Francois Millet 
 should one day paint rustic New England some 
 what with the spirit in which he painted rustic 
 
THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS. 169 
 
 France, I for one would very much like to see 
 the results, and would not be astonished if he 
 touched a very soft place in the American heart. 
 "We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes 
 have no clear vision," said the Concord seer. 
 The man who makes us see it where we saw 
 none before, is our benefactor. 
 
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN LAND- 
 SCAPE ART. 
 
 IN his noble essay on Art, Emerson says that 
 no man can quite emancipate himself from 
 his age and country : " It is in vain that we look 
 for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old 
 arts ; it is its instinct to find beauty and holi 
 ness in new and necessary facts, in the field 
 and roadside, in the shop and mill." It has 
 occurred to some of the most completely alien 
 ated sons of America that "it s a wretched 
 business, this virtual quarrel of ours with our 
 own country, this everlasting impatience to get 
 out of it." 1 And as Rowland "looked along 
 the arch of silvered shadow and out into the 
 lucid air of the American night ... he felt 
 like declaring that here was beauty too beauty 
 sufficient for an artist not to starve upon it." 
 
 1 " Roderick Hudson," by Henry James. 
 170 
 
FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART. 171 
 
 This has a charming touch of condescension in 
 it, of that condescension which formed the text 
 for one of the finest essays in the language, 
 prompted by righteous indignation, and having 
 in it the ring of manly independence and hearty 
 
 patriotism. Then here is another quotation 
 to illustrate my theme : it is from Edward 
 Strahan s whimsical account of his wanderings 
 abroad, "The New Hyperion," in which he 
 remarks that there are two things the Amer 
 ican-born, however long a resident abroad, 
 never forgives the lack of in Europe, the 
 
ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 perpetual street-mending of an American town, 
 and the wooden bridges. " Far away," he 
 writes, "in my native meadows gleams the 
 silver Charles : the tramp of horses hoofs comes 
 to my ears from the timbers of the bridge. 
 Here, with a pelt and a scramble, your bridge 
 is crossed ; nothing addresses the heart from 
 its stony causeway. But the low, arched tubes 
 of wood that span the streams of my native 
 land are so many bass-viols, sending out mellow 
 thunders with every passing wagon, to blend 
 with the rustling stream and the sighing woods. 
 Shall I never hear them again ? " This strikes 
 me as a very pretty touch of sentiment, but it 
 is quoted mainly to prove how true Emerson s 
 words are, that no man can quite emancipate 
 himself from his country. 
 
 In the incomparable month of October, the 
 golden month, when the morning air tastes 
 pure and sweet, and the trees have donned 
 their splendid fall attire ; when a thin blue haze 
 veils the far brown hills and the russet groves, 
 and the roads are carpeted with a rich occidental 
 rug of dead leaves which rustles crisply under 
 
FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART. 173 
 
 foot ; when the 
 days growing 
 shorter make 
 themselves 
 most regret 
 ted ; and the 
 chill which de 
 scends with 
 the coming of 
 dusk hints of 
 frosts; when 
 the odor of 
 brush-fires fills 
 the sharp air 
 with its sug 
 gestion of No- 
 v e m b e r s 
 harsher grip; 
 and small boys 
 make the 
 
 woods resound with the eager outcries of the 
 chestnut-hunter, in these October days there 
 is no country like this New England of ours. 
 Words are but poor things to describe what any 
 
 
 fc^ 4i pw. a * 
 
 u &^ -^ 
 
174 
 
 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 one may see of its store of beauty. There 
 are delightful quiet villages perched on airy 
 hilltops, overlooking panoramas of vast com 
 pass, bounded by range upon range of moun 
 tains so distant that their undulating outlines 
 
 of pale blue almost melt into the sky ; here 
 are the quaint homes of a frugal, contented, 
 simple people, who have no histories, and so 
 must be happy ; there are ocean-like stretches 
 of forest, solitudes of a well-nigh primeval 
 silence, broken by singing streams, great sheets 
 of water whose names recall the aborigines ; 
 
FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART. 175 
 
 farmhouses which look thoroughly like homes, 
 as permanent as the hills on which they stand, 
 and as congenial with their surroundings as 
 the trees and rocks : not like intruders and 
 impertinences, they form parts of the land 
 scape, and are more than mere irrelevancies 
 and warts upon it. For as there is no non 
 sense about Nature, a sensible building, how 
 ever plain, always harmonizes with it. Does 
 not good sense form the durable base of 
 all good art? This is the explanation of the 
 fact that wherever in New England enlighten 
 ment builds its home, there is now a return to 
 solidity of construction, simplicity of form, and 
 the wise adaptation of means to end. Thus, 
 from the aesthetic point of view, New England 
 is growing more and more attractive every year. 
 As the taste for country life becomes stronger 
 among refined people, this improvement will 
 be more marked. There is a fine significance 
 in the good old adage that God made the 
 country, and man made the town. 
 
 The early stages of aesthetic education are 
 naturally attended by some painful barbarities, 
 
1 76 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 but we cannot afford to despise any steps, how 
 ever tottering, in that direction. The feminine 
 instinct for decoration is a force which must be 
 counted upon in this struggle. If the father is 
 proud of his daughter s skill in the so-called or 
 namentation of screens and placques, it is quite 
 possible that his grandchildren may start in life 
 with a snug capital of good taste. After another 
 generation or two, the arts of design will be 
 regarded as something more than child s play, 
 and will stand at least on a par with banking, 
 railroading, wool, and leather. There is a vast 
 deal of good sense among the "common people," 
 as the politicians call them, and, now that we 
 are beginning to get over our hurry, and to 
 realize that time and art are both long, and con 
 sequently that anything worth doing at all is 
 worth doing well, the inquiry is often made, 
 What is the quarrel between the artists and 
 the public? which party is in the right? and 
 why don t Americans back up their artists? 
 These are interesting questions, which are not 
 easily answered in a satisfactory way, but I 
 shall try to suggest one of the chief causes of 
 
FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART. 177 
 
 the trouble and the means by which it may be 
 overcome. 
 
 The main quarrel between the people at large 
 and the artists is that the artists are at heart 
 Europeans. Is there not ground for this belief? 
 To ninety-nine of every hundred Americans it 
 means more than a mere lack of patriotism too : 
 it means something like dilettanteism ; and when 
 you look at certain works of art so-called, this 
 suspicion seems only too well founded. This 
 being still a tremendously busy country, and 
 very much in earnest, anything of that sort is 
 especially detestable. I shall be told that there 
 is narrow-mindedness and prejudice back of this 
 feeling, and that may be very true. Patriotism 
 is a narrow-minded virtue, but who would be the 
 man without a country ? 
 
 If there be one thing absolutely certain about 
 the future of our art, it is this : that it must be 
 more and more American. It can never amount 
 to much without sending its roots deeper and 
 deeper down into our own native soil. The 
 familiar talk about the European art atmosphere 
 is becoming tiresome cant. The time is come 
 
1/8 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 to forswear Rome, Paris, and London, and give 
 our energies to our country. This is more than 
 mere sentimentality ; it is policy, it is reason, 
 it is logic. Athens and Tokio made their at 
 mosphere by staying at home. Here, at home, 
 
 where we were born, we are to fight out our bat 
 tles, nowhere else ; and if ever we are to have a 
 national art, this is the ground from which it 
 must grow. Paris and Munich and Antwerp 
 have done about all they can for us. The babe 
 must be weaned, and learn to trust his own legs 
 too. America is the place for Americans, and 
 
FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART. 179 
 
 being an artist does not make one an exception 
 to this rule. 
 
 To paint our country well, we must first love 
 it well ; to love it we have but to know it, and to 
 know it we must live in it. With new matter 
 must come a new manner. As the treatment 
 should be adapted to the distinctive peculiarities 
 of the theme, not only our American subjects, 
 but the style of description also, must be our 
 own. A man cannot be quite ingenuous in his 
 work when he is constantly looking over his 
 shoulder to see how others do theirs. As for 
 the approval of foreigners, the surest way to 
 secure the respect of the world is to respect our 
 selves. 
 
 Let the American artist go forth alone, in the 
 fields, in the woods, on the rivers, and forget that 
 any man has lived, looked, loved, and painted 
 before him. Let him abjure all the inflexible 
 recipes of the academy, unlearn all uncongenial 
 imported rules, throw away his useless baggage 
 of preconceptions ; let him strive not to con 
 sider so much how his picture will look as how 
 the subject does look; let him look longer and 
 
180 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 paint less; is not this a serious business? 
 The way to create a personal style is not to 
 think of the style so much as the matter. 
 Take a good shot at the truth, and lo ! you 
 have brought down beauty. 
 
 Let the heart yearn for the end, and the 
 head will find the means. Let the passion to 
 publish deeply felt truths move the intellect, 
 and inspire the obedient hand. What is needed 
 is the uncounterfeitable candor, the touching 
 ingenuousness, the holy and great-hearted sim 
 plicity of the Raphaels and Angelicos of old 
 
FUTURE OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ART. l8l 
 
 not borrowed from them, but born anew, here 
 and now, out of totally different conditions ; and 
 if it be not too chimerical, might not an Ameri- 
 
 can sky and an American hillside, painted with 
 the love and piety that they should evoke, give 
 a sensation as fine and produce an impression 
 as durable as was ever derived from classic can 
 vas inspired by fifteenth century faith ? 
 
1 82 ARCADIAN DAYS. 
 
 Art has no country, it has been said, and truly 
 its essence is universal ; but so long as men 
 have homes and associations which are more or 
 less precious to them, why not paint the sub 
 jects they know and love ? Destiny casts each 
 man s lot in a certain place, for some purpose ; 
 well for him if he can say, This is the best place 
 for me to live and die ; for saying so, he creates 
 his own paradise. 
 
 It is impossible for a wanderer to be original ; 
 when he is in Rome, he must do as the Romans. 
 Our chameleon-like adaptability makes us pecu 
 liarly susceptible to foreign influences, for we 
 have little or none of the lofty independence of 
 our British forefathers. It must be allowed that 
 we are clever at imitation, but it is a pitiable 
 distinction. How would it do to try staying at 
 home awhile ? 
 
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