selves with midges' wings,
fatigues the eye with a notion of unnecessary exertion. Wiser seems yon
glassy pool, moveless, under heavy, not melancholy, boughs. That is
reflecting--keeping one pleasant thought all the time--satisfying itself
with one picture for a whole morning, as we all did while the "Heart of
the Andes" was laid open to our longing gaze. The pool has the advantage
of us, too; for it receives into its waveless bosom the loveliness of sky
and tree without emotion, while we, gazing on the wondrous transcript made
by mortal man of these measureless glories, felt our souls stirred, even
to pain, with a sense of the artist's power, and of the amount of his
precious life that must have gone into such a creation.

By the way, if we had energy enough to-day to wish anything, it would be
to find ourselves far away amid flashing seas and wild winds, hunting
icebergs, with Church for our Columbus, his banner of _Excelsior_
streaming over us, his wondrous eye piercing the distant wreaths of spray,
in search of domes and pinnacles of opal and lapis lazuli, turned, now to
diamonds, now to marble, by sun and shade. One whose good fortune it was
to be with the young discoverer at Niagara, came away with the feeling of
having acquired a new sense, by the potent magic of genius.

But to-day, Art is nothing--genius is nothing--but no! that is
blasphemous. It is we that are nothing--if not stupid. Dullness is the
universe. The grasshoppers are too faint to sing, the birds sit still on
the boughs, waiting for the leaves to fan them. Children are wilted into
silence and slumberous nonentity; boys do not bathe to-day--they welter,
hour after hour, in the dark water near the shaded rock. Even they and the
tadpoles can hardly be seen to wriggle. The cow has found a shade, and,
preferring repose to munching, lies contented under the one great elm
mercifully left in the middle of her pasture.

A hot day in June is hotter than any other hot day. It finds us cruelly
unguarded. After we have been gently baked awhile, the crust thus acquired
makes us somewhat tortoise-like and quiescent. If we were condemned to
suffer thirty-nine stripes, or even only as many as belong to our flag,
would it or would it not be a privilege to take them by degrees, say one
on the first day, two on the second, four on the third, etc., in the
celebrated progression style, until the whole were accomplished? Or were
it better to have the whole at once, and