which converted the sixpence paid for it in New Orleans to three guineas in London.

"The pugnacious habits of this species are common, in a great degree, to the whole family of Sparrows. Like the most daring, the common House Sparrow of Europe, they may be observed in spring time, in little groups of four, five, or six, fighting together-moving round each other so as to secure an advantageous position, pecking and pulling at each other's feathers with all the violence and animosity to which their small degree of strength can give effect."

CHAPTER XV.

OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE.

OUT of doors! We weary of this unceasing labor—are choking to death of the stagnant air of heaped up cities, which, with their gutter-defiled trigonometries, set at defiance, of assoilation, the straight currents of Heaven's fresh airleaving us to moan and swelter amidst pestilential stagnations! Let us go, O ye who yearn for purer odors than the steam of the kitchen! Let us go forth-out of doors with Nature! Aye! and when her fresh breath shall come upon our seamed and heated brows, it shall be with an alchemy more strange than the Elixir of vain Cagliostro-more marvellous than all Spells, Philosophers' Stones, and Fortunatus' Caps-more potent than the wizard edicts of that eldest brother of shadowy science-hoar Astrology!

To be sure we ought all of us to be astrologists-perhaps minus the science; for should we not feel humbly-that, as we are children of the earth, so we may be moved as she is moved, in that of us which is earthy ?—and that, as the stars are God's flowers of thought-so are those meek wild flowers which we find upon her bosom, the starry bloomings of the thought of earth! Should we not learn, too, to read their teachings?—perhaps thus the blossoming of Life may be renewed in us.

Be this as it may-these flowers, and trees, and birds—we love them best and dearly "out of doors!"

We know that these Stars may speak drear things to us,

they when we are untrue to ourselves that the icy points dropt in gazing from their dim far homes into our souls, may freeze us into shudderings of awe!-but these FlowStars of Earth-they do not so! They are no deadly-eyed and distant strangers-but with meek upward faces they soothe us with soft eyes, and in the warm breath of sweetest odors, exhale their loving lives in tenderness for us! This is the Astrology of Love that cannot lie-the Alchemy, Elixir, Spell that shall renew our Youth forever.

Then let us go forth-out of doors with Nature!

See how even art has sold her birthright!--for after all that has been said in a pompous criticism about Art, old mother nature sets our learning at nought, in "mere simplicity." The Human Artist, working under terror of the "Rules," attempts too much. He does not deign to look at Her as his great teacher, but turning in veneration towards some "Name"-weak as his own except in notoriety-he incarnates nature in a school, and tamely strives rather to reproduce its errors to perpetuate its dogmas-than to search for living truths himself.

Thus he attempts too much-if he have one instinct of art in him-for in the effort to serve both nature and the "Master," he confounds the two-crowds and over works his picture, and utterly destroys all unity and directness of effect.

The fact is, men are afraid of nature-so accustumed are they to the regalia of honor and of state, that her plainness repells them. They do not understand dignity or greatness, or nobility, divested of and separate from the "tricksey pomps" of "ribbons," "garters," gew gaws, &c.

They convey this morbid appetite into landscape unconsciously, and hence the horrid array of blazing pictures we find on the walls of our exhibitions. The scenes must be all Autumn-loaded with garish colors-trees like hay-ricks on fire; or, Indian Summer-all haze-with red sunsets, like the flaming faces of market women from behind their Sun

day veils or else a pot of ochre streaked with indigo, is turned over on the canvas to "represent" for you an Italian sky and sunset!

Nature is not always volcanic-neither does she day by day go into convulsions of the picturesque, as do her "Great Masters!" I suppose they must be recognized as such, of course, since they are responsible for the agorising monstrosities of their too literal disciples. Nature is altogether too serene in her habitual moods for these Fire Worshippers of Art, whose softest shadows are of smoke and storm clouds.

Such minds do not comprehend sublimity-they cannot understand that as music is rolled up from the abyss, filling Silence with the gradual volume of its awful symphonies, so Art must rear its solemn forms upon the plane of vast Repose!

How simple the accessaries of her grandest pictures!

Behold a tropical forest! Beneath its deep shadows a herd of elephants! They browse on the dark green and glossy leaves, or lean their sage heads in heavy quiet against the great stems around them!

What association!

The far Orient-the Magii-the ivory and gold of Ophir— the Barbarian Po, and the world conquering Macedonian, Darius, Xerxes, with their swarming millions, Xenophon, the subtle, with his hardy handful, Marathon, Thermopylæ -the pageantry, the glory, the decay-all rise in quick coming shadows to the spell of that simple picture.

The slimy Nile beneath a burning sun-a crocodile-an Ibis!

And pyramids loom along the sky-rimmed desertSphynx-guarded palaces, mightier than the very dreams of man's ambition since, and Hecatombs of mummied nations, come all unbidden with the scene.

A few ostriches, a clump of palm trees!

Jacob's Well-Hagar in the wilderness-the fire-eyed barb, tireless and swift of foot-the tinkling bells of the long

caravan--the solitary vulture coming out of the cloudless distance the green oasis-the dread simoon-we see them all!

An eagle wheeling through the mists above Niagara !

The loosened thunder of that great river's fall coming through the silence of a new creation to chord the bass of northern storms through mighty lakes and groaning mountain pines-Freedom cleaving through the mists of struggle with the sun upon its golden wing-the Home of a great people!

It is thus that the true mystery of art lies in suggestion! But your modern painter is not content with this; he must fill up he must be, to us, a "better nature," and leave us no scope for memory or imagination. He is poorly jealous of the power of the wand he has presumed to wield, and must compel us to be its slaves. But, in spite of the terrors of his denunciation, we shall introduce you to yet another of those wondrous, but simple pictures.

In traversing, during the winter months, the vast prairies of Texas and the Southwest, you frequently realize all the solitary grandeur of Zahara. The eye aches through the weary stretching distance-not an object! One little cloud holds with the sun the blue heavens above-beneath and around you, the grass!-the brown waving grass!—away!— away!-with its dreamy undulating surface-it widens, widening till blended in a hazy meeting with the sky, the infinite seems just begun, and boundless space yet stretched before you.

You begin to feel strangely and hear your heart beat very loud. It seems awful to be the only thing alive to breathe within this vast expanse-the world seems dead-a parched blank with only one warm vital centre in your own breast.

You gasp for companionship-anything!-anything that moves and has a being, for it is crushing thus to stand alone before the God of this dumb moveless nature! When suddenly, a hoarse cry, "Kewrrooh! Kewrrooh! Keurrooh!"