PICTURES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2085, 8 February 1894, Page 46

PICTURES.

"What an imagination God hasl" said Tennyson one day, after he had been bending over a brook to watch the marvellous animal life disporting itself before him. He found something to wonder at where most of us would have passed coldly by. His nature was so delicately attuned that he found beauty, perfect of its kind, even in a weed. For him it held the mystery of life and of humauity — If I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. But the hidden is hidden still, albeit the pcet has interpreted as far as his vision pierced. Though we are not all poets we all love pictures — we all love beauty; and just in proportion as we gratify this love will our own natures be purified. There is such a fascination about a true picture — a something in it which we are drawn to discover for ourselves. For a picture is like a poemeach one reads his own meaning into it, and mine is as different from yours as our natures are different. But we need not go far to our picture,

gallery. It lies all about our very door. Patiently waiting, it is ever ready for us with its sun-wrought hues and its everchanging beauty. You have but to look toward the purple mountains sharp outlined against the opal evening sky. Gold, clear, but firm in purpose and changelessness, they stand like the firm, unswerving will of a strong soul ; and as I look, lam conscious of a new vitalising power, of a singleness of aim, of a desire to " grow straight in the strength of my spirit, and live out my life as the light." I vow myself afresh to my work ; I absorb heroic strength, and for a space the complexity of life's problems ceases to harass. And did not George Eliot know that

... in moments high Space widens in the soul 7

These are th 3 moments of insight — the times when we truly live and plan. Afterwards comes the work with its routine; but even if the days grow weary, we know that our inspiration was true, and we toil on to the accomplishing through the gloom as through the sunshine.

Still another picture shows me a wide valley that opens out to the sea in the distance. From where I stand I see the rounded Blopes of many hilU that fall into the vulley, and merge their rich curves into its gentle sweep among the sheltered homes and waiting trees and lowing cows and playing children. From the road that trails its whiteness over the hill the distant thud-thud-thud of a horse's hoofs rings out clear at first, then dies away, while the evening shadows flutter their grey skirts over the hills. Soon the laughing children are hushed, the cows are dreaming among the fragrant hay, the far lights ahine out among the homes ; all things are still, and the valley lies "wrapt in a dream of God."

And it enters into me. I breathe the infinite balm of rest into the seed field of my soul. All the weariness of the day ha? fled as though it had not existed, and the healing palm of the Angel of Peace glides over my brow. It is a nepenthe indeed, but a conscious healing nepenthe, that is better than all the drags and simples brewed by witches or distilled by scientists. No friend, nor lover, nor husband could soothe me thus; their words are alien compared with the sweetness of this sympathy. And even to the bravest, to the most joyous, to the stoutest heart their comes a day when such consolation is the only healer — the only sane reality on which they may rely. If we could early accustom ourselves to gather strength and nourishment from a reverent understanding of Mother Nature, she would be ever ready to nurse us when we turn to her in our time of need.

For, after all, we permit ourselves to lose our sense of proportion in life — we miss the relativity of things. Our interests, our thoughts, move ever in too confined a circle ; we cannot trace cause and effect. The child is terrified by the thunder. " God is angry," he says, and he covers his face with trembling bands. We know that the thunder cannot hurt; it is the lightning that is to be feared. But though we see a little, understand a little, we are for the most part children still. The present calamity absorbs us, it is an isolated fact, and we are stuuned by its very isolation. We think our troubles are superlative ; nobody else could suffer as we do. Ah I step out of your cottage into the city ; enter some sordid hut, and if you do not read for yourself the story of trouble worse than ever dared to approach your home, you have still much to grow through. And a love of Nature — a reverent contemplation of her beauties — does this for us. We are first struck dumb before the evidence of such a vast plan and of such perfection in the small as in the great ; and then we are brought down to our own level by a humility that has nothing of shame in it, but rather of pride — that we, too, are a part of this plan whose plainest outlines we just begin to trace. A great silence seems to fill vs — a silence that is worship — and straightway ail the worry, all the care, all the pain, have fallen away from us. The clouds begin to lift, and around our restlessness there flows God's infinite rest. Nor is it so mudi that we need — if only it is something that man's hands have not been able to spoil. And here is a picture in miniature — a bit of rough grey rock covered with lichen. How often have you set foot on it — how often despised it 1 Humblest of all the plants, it yet has a beauty that is as well worth your study as the giant pine of California. Note the delicate grey-green tint. At a distance it might be a piece of filmy lace work wrought by the fairies in the light of the moon. Look closely — there are stars of crimson dotted through it — here a rich gold, as though it had prisoned a sunbeam, there a shimmer of green, and the dainty caps surmounting the whole might serve as chalices for Queen Titania herself. Bat leave the rock with its forest mimicry and its stranger warp and woof. Look down into the grassy growth beside you. It; seemed so still when you sat down. Bend low now— put your ear down ! It is not so still as you thought. There is actually the faintest sound of humming. Now part the blades quite down to the sweet brown earth. It is a perfect hive of animation. Tiny beetles creep sedately from blade to blade ; red spiders career madly to and fro; tiny black ants are everywhere, while hundreds of infinitesimal things ure moving over the soil up the blades of grass — down, around, and everywhere. And you are looking at one tiny spot only. Truly, " God has an imagination 1" If you were to select one of those beetles merely, and set yourself to study its life history, adaptations, habits, as well as , its variations, you may consider your work well done if from the brink of the grave you could affirm that you had exhausted even a fraction of your subject. i And it is Nature's richest charm that we can never exhaust her. I look out to-day on the familiar hills, but they are not the same as yesterday. Their aspect has changed — I discover new tints, new shadows, new meanings, and yesterday's thought laid the foundation for a richer harvest of thought to-day. I have grown past yesterday's experience, just as to-morrow I shall have grown past that of to-day. I am the better, stronger, richer. Henceforth I can never be lonely nor sad, for the chrism of Nature's balm awaits but my mute request, and I am content. i Fiona.