capable of stirring you as the scenes described would have done, nay,
even more, for a great word-master has stood interpretative between you
and nature.

Miss Brontë was mistress of this art. Blackmore has it also. In some
writers it is so lightly managed as to approach the sketch, and is more
suggestive than fully descriptive. To see what I mean read the first few
chapters of "Miss Angel," by Anna Thackeray. But a sketch by a trained
and poetical observer is one thing; a sketch by a less gifted person is
quite another. My pupil must be content with the simplest, most honest,
unadorned record of things seen. Her training must look to this only.

What she should first seek to do is to be methodical and accurate and by
and by fuller. If wise she will first limit herself to small scenes, and
try to get notes of them somewhat in this fashion. She is, we suppose,
on the bank of a stream. Her notes run as follows:

Date, time of day, place. Hills to either side and their character; a
guess at their height; a river below, swift, broken, or placid; the
place of the sun, behind, in front, or overhead. Then the nature of the
trees and how the light falls on them or in them, according to their
kind. Next come color of wave and bank and sky, with questions as to
water-tints and their causes. Last of all, and here she must be simple
and natural, what mood of mind does it all bring to her, for every
landscape has its capacity to leave you with some general sense of its
awe, its beauty, its sadness, or its joyfulness.

Try this place again at some other hour, or in a storm, or under early
morning light, and make like notes. If she should go on at this pleasant
work, and one day return to the same spot, she will wonder how much more