aid artistic criticism, it does far more than this and yet not all.
Other books which might seem desirable are less so because they are
still more distinctly meant to teach or assist artists or amateurs. What
is yet wanted is a little treatise on the methods of observing exterior
nature. Above all it should be adapted to our own woods, skies, and
waters. What to look for as a matter of pleasure, and how to see and
record it, is a thing apart from such observation as leads to
classification, and is scientific in its aims. It is somewhat remote
also from the artist's study, which is a more complex business, and
tends to learn what can be rendered by pencil or brush and what cannot.
Its object at first is merely to give intelligent joy to the senses, to
cultivate them into acuteness, and to impress on the mind such records
as they ought to give us at their best.

[Footnote 13: "Frondes Agrestes," Ruskin, is a more handy book than
"Modern Painters," but is only selections from the greater volumes
recommended. "Deucalion" is yet harder reading, but will repay the
careful reader.]

Presuming the pupil to be like myself, powerless to use the pencil, she
is to learn how to put on paper in words what she sees. The result will
be what I may call _word-sketches_. Observe these are not to be for
other eyes. They make her diary of things seen and worthy of note.
Neither are they to be efforts to give elaborate descriptions. In the
hands of a master, such use of words makes a picture in which often he
sacrifices something, as the artist does, to get something else, and
strives chiefly to leave on the mind one dominant emotion just as did
the scene thus portrayed. A few words may do this or it may be an
elaborate work. The gift is a rare and great one. The word-paintings of
Ruskin hang forever in one's mental gallery, strong, true, poetical, and