lion and
purple and gold under the waves, but are drab and ugly things when taken
out of the water. This applies to some books that one reads with
pleasure in early days, and wonders, later, how they were endured!

There were not so many outdoor books in the late '60's as there are now.
We were all sent to Thoreau's "Walden" and Dana's "Two Years Before the
Mast." "Walden" I learned to like, but I much preferred Fenimore
Cooper's description of nature. "Walden" struck me as the book of a man
playing at out-of-doors, imagining his wildness, and never really liking
to be too far from the town. Singularly enough, it was not until I
discovered Hamerton's "A Painter's Camp" that I began to see that nature
had beauties in all weathers. In truth, I hate to confess that nature
alone never appealed to me. A landscape without human beings seemed
deadly dull; and I did not understand until I grew much older that I had
really believed that good art was an improvement on nature.

I have not the slightest idea in what light the modern critics see the
works of Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I tried to read one of his novels
recently, and failed; but let me say that, allowing for receptivity and
what one may call temperament, I know of no book more revealing as to
the relations of nature and art than "A Painter's Camp." I recall
vividly the words of the beginning of the preface to the first edition:

It is known to all who are acquainted with the present condition of
the fine arts in England that landscape-painters rely less on
memory and invention than formerly, and that their work from nature
is much more laborious than it used to be.

I had seen so many pictures that seemed to be "made up" in the artist's
studio and I knew so well from my experience in the drawing classes at
school, how nature was neglected for artificial models, that I hailed
these words with great joy.

Everything in life was rather conventional, rather fixed, for the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, to which our country owes the
beginning of the aesthetic awakening, had not yet taken place. It may
seem strange to this generation that we were limited to the wood-cuts in
Godey's _Lady's Book_, the illustrations in _Harper's Magazine_, and an
occasional picture in some short-lived periodical. The reign of the
chromo had just begun. Rogers's groups were a fixture in nearly every
self-respecting house, though I am glad to say, in my own family,