"For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake."
But, as I say, the recantation of beauty, by transcendentalists, realists, and impressionists alike, is the search for her in some other of her many Impressionism.realms. Whatsoever kingdom the impressionist enters, he still finds her on the throne. For him she may veil herself in twilight and half-tints,—or at rare instants of perception in still more witching drapery worn for him alone. The individual impressions enrich our museum of her portraitures. The impressionist depicts her not as she was known to Pheidias, or Raphael, or Velasquez, but as she appears to his own favored vision. This is the truth that makes impressionism a brave factor in modern art and poetry. What lessens its vantage is the delusion, absurd as Malvolio's, of incompetents, each of whom fancies that he is in special favor and that myopic vision and eccentric technic result in impressions that are worth recording.
Whenever there is a notable break from that mediocrity falsely termed "correct," which lurks in academic arras, it is not a rebellion but a just revo-
