CS9]
of his last letters. Writing out of doors he
says : —
" I feel in every part of each second that
Nature is almost too beautiful — all of it,
every millionth part of it, light and color and
shapes. . . . Each little or big blade of grass
in front of me, and there are millions, has its
shape and its composition. The colors are ex-
quisite. ... As I lift my eyes from the won-
derful green (never painted yet by man) I
see a pale blue sky with pale cumulus clouds,
white, with violet shadows, and on the other
side the blue is deep, and, in an hour, shall be
deeper yet."
Before visions like that, and his life was
full of them, he was truly humble, reverent
before the miracles of nature, and imbued,
too, with a sense of the sacredness of his call-
ing. He knew what desperate difficulties he
between the painter and the adequate expres-
sion of even a tithe of what he sees in the end-
less pageant of earth. But he knew, too, what
his gifts were, the singleness of his purpose,
and, above all, the rapture of achievement.
These and other emotions, analysis of which
belongs more properly to a later phase of my
study, confirmed in him that respect for him-