miniature swamp,--this last
being intensely and luridly green, yet overlaid with the pale gray of
last year's reeds, and absolutely flaming with the gayest yellow light
from great clumps of cowslips. The illumination seemed perfectly weird
and dazzling; the spirit of the place appeared live, wild, fantastic,
almost human. Now open your Tennyson:--

"_And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire
in swamps and hollows gray_."

Our cowslip is the English marsh-marigold.

History is a grander poetry, and it is often urged that the features of
Nature in America must seem tame because they have no legendary wreaths
to decorate them. It is perhaps hard for those of us who are untravelled
to appreciate how densely even the ruralities of Europe are overgrown
with this ivy of associations. Thus, it is fascinating to hear that
the great French forests of Fontainebleau and St. Germain are full of
historic trees,--the oak of Charlemagne, the oak of Clovis, of Queen
Blanche, of Henri Quatre, of Sully,--the alley of Richelieu,--the
rendezvous of St. Herem,--the star of Lamballe and of the Princesses,
a star being a point where several paths or roads converge. It is said
that every topographical work upon these forests has turned out a
history of the French monarchy. Yet surely we lose nearly as much as
we gain by this subordination of imperishable beauty to the perishable
memories of man. It may not be wholly unfortunate, that, in the
absence of those influences which come to older nations from ruins and
traditions, we must go more directly to Nature. Art may either rest upon
other Art, or it may rest directly upon the original foundation; the one
is easier, the other more valuable. Direct dependence on Nature leads
to deeper thought and affords the promise of far fresher results. Why
should I wish to fix my study in Heidelberg Castle, when I possess the
unexhausted treasures of this out-door study here?

The walls of my study are of ever-changing verdure, and its roof and
floor of ever-varying blue. I never enter it without a new heaven above
and new thoughts below. The lake has no lofty shores and no level ones,
but a series of undulating hills, fringed with woods from end to end.
The profaning axe may sometimes come near the margin, and one may hear
the whetting of the scythe; but no cultivated land abuts upon the main
lake, though beyond the narrow woods there are here and there glimpses
of rye-fields that wave like rolli