llet appropriated it: its sweetness was wasted until he began to
distil and bottle it. He disinterred the treasure, and with impetuous
liberality made us sharers in his fortune. His own work, moreover,
betrays him, as well as the gratitude of participants, as I could easily
prove if it did not perversely happen that he has commemorated most of
his impressions in color. That excludes them from the small space here
at my command; otherwise I could testify to the identity of old nooks
and old objects, those that constitute both out-of-door and in-door
furniture.

[Illustration: The village-green, Broadway]

In such places as Broadway, and it is part of the charm of them to
American eyes, the sky looks down on almost as many "things" as
the ceiling, and "things" are the joy of the illustrator. Furnished
apartments are useful to the artist, but a furnished country is still
more to his purpose. A ripe midland English region is a museum of
accessories and specimens, and is sure, under any circumstances,
to contain the article wanted. This is the great recommendation of
Broadway; everything in it is convertible. Even the passing visitor
finds himself becoming so; the place has so much character that it rubs
off on him, and if in an old garden--an old garden with old gates and
old walls and old summer-houses--he lies down on the old grass (on
an immemorial rug, no doubt), it is ten to one but that he will be
converted. The little oblong sheaves of blank paper with elastic straps
are fluttering all over the place. There is portraiture in the air and
composition in the very accidents. Everything is a subject or an effect,
a "bit" or a good thing. It is always some kind of day; if it be not one
kind it is another. The garden walls, the mossy roofs, the open doorways
and brown interiors, the old-fashioned flowers, the bushes in figures,
the geese on the green, the patches, the jumbles, the glimpses, the
color, the surface, the general complexion of things, have all a value,
a reference and an application. If they are a matter of appreciation,
that is why the gray-brown houses are perhaps more brown than gray, and
more yellow than either. They are various things in turn, according to
lights and days and needs. It is a question of color (all consciousness
at Broadway is that), but the irresponsible profane are not called upon
to settle the tint.

It is delicious to be at Broadway and to _be_ one of the irresponsible
profane--not to