tanager (Pyranga rubra, Vieillot), or watches hovering over the wayside thistles the "Painted Lady" (Cynthia Cardui, Fab.), he stops delighted and lets his heart feed on the picture, so it is when one comes upon these brilliant and fascinating word-pictures scattered through the pages of the poets. Not all readers will take the same delight. Tastes differ; but the mountain and the squirrel need not quarrel. "What does that prove?" asked the celebrated mathematician d'Alembert, apropos of the "Iphigénie" of Racine. Wordsworth may say of Peter Bell, a type of one class of readers,

"A primrose by the river's brim,

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more,"

but he will say of himself, type of another class,

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

The greatest of the English poets have shared something of Wordsworth's own spirit. Chaucer, Spencer, Shakspere, Milton, Cowper, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Tennyson, not to mention others, show this intense feeling for Nature. The echo of Chaucer's praise of the little English daisy resounds in our ears,

"That well by reason it men callen may
The daisie, or else the eye of day";

and Burns' little song rises to the lips while we see in the mind's eye the

"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower."

The daisy is highly favored among flowers in having two such laureates.

It would be pleasant to show Shakspere's deep insight into, and love of, Nature, and how excellently well Shelley has voiced the feeling of those who "hold communion with her visible forms," and how delicately Tennyson has painted the varying landscapes in his "Mariana," "(Enone," "The Lotos-Eaters" and "The Idylls of the King," but I feel as Homer felt before he began the catalogue of the ships:

"For I

Should fail to number and to name them all,
Had I ten tongues, ten throats, a voice unapt
To weary, uttered from a heart of brass,

Unless the Muses aided me."

The novelists do not fall far behind their brethren, the poets, in their descriptive powers. The picture of the English forest in Scott's "Ivanhoe," of the western coast of Scotland in Black's "Macleod of Dare," of tropic life in Kingsley's "Westward Ho," of Australian scenery in Reade's "Never too Late to Mend," and Hardy's woodland scenes are samples of their skill. It

is this part which the reader, anxious to see how the plot ends, passes quickly and thoughtlessly over, yet not without loss to himself, for he thus neglects some of the author's best work. It is the setting to the gem, the frame to the picture, the binding to the book; it enhances its value and beauty.

Our American literature is so recent that its names are fewer, but they hold a high place. As types I will mention only Thoreau and Burroughs among our prose writers, and Bryant and Emerson among our poets. There has yet been no finer description of a naturalist as distinguished from a biologist than that given by Emerson of Thoreau:

"And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,

Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,

A lover true who knew by heart

Each joy the mountain dales impart."

Thoreau led the way, and the number of his disciples is increasing, though they follow the master with unequal steps. Where a hundred persons read one of Thoreau's books on their publication, a thousand have now learned to look forward with pleasure to a new outdoor book by Burroughs. It is one of the signs of the times.

Emerson's "Rhodora," "Monadnoc," "The Snowstorm," "May-day" and "Wood-notes" are favorites with lovers of Nature, and so, too, are Bryant's "Thanatopsis," "The Painted Cup," "The Fringed Gentian" and "Lines to a Waterfowl." The influences of life at Concord speak in the former, and of the quiet and peace at Cummington in the latter. The high-water mark of poetry, to rise beyond which some "Storm and Stress" period of a later civilization will be needed, was reached in "Thanatopsis," a marvellous production for a youth of eighteen. American poetry may be said to begin with this poem as its spring, and the stream has rolled on with ever-widening course.

easy.

Access to the best literature is now comparatively

The reading of it properly may open our eyes to see for ourselves the beauties which such guides. point out. Herein lies the value of a good book. It stimulates its readers to self-activity. And so, a good outdoor book may be to its readers a gateway through which they may pass into the Elysian Fields of Naturestudy and Life.

THE MARCH WOODS.

The long white lines which stretch along the brown hillsides are the relics of the snowdrifts which still lie on the shady side of the stone walls, at this distance invisible. If we could forget for a while that this is March we might think it some late October day or some longbelated bit of Indian summer arrived at its destination. The air is calm but with a chill in it suggestive of snowfields yet lingering about us. The sky is almost serene, in pleasant contrast with the most of March hitherto. This, with the cheery warbling of the bluebird and the robin, reminds us that it is time to be away to the woods again to see what signs are visible of the awakening of Nature from her winter sleep. We can hardly expect blossoms as yet, but feel sure we shall not be without some reward of our labors.

The prospect from the top of our favorite hill has much in it which reminds us of the late autumn. The nearer hills are for the most part robed in brown, with