in the scene. The very sweetness of its reality
only helps to give it that story-book quality which persuades us we have
known it in youth.

And yet such scenes may well have been constructed for the despair of
the Colonial; for they remind us, at every glance, of that perfection to
which there is no short cut--not even "unexampled prosperity "--and
to which time is the only guide. Mr. Parsons' pictures speak of many
complicated things, but (in what they tell us of his subjects) they
speak most of duration. Such happy nooks have grown slowly, such
fortunate corners have had a history; and their fortune has been
precisely that they have had time to have it comfortably, have not been
obliged to try for character without it.

Character is their strong point and the most expensive of all
ingredients. Mr. Parsons' portraiture seizes every shade of it, seizes
it with unfailing sympathy. He is doubtless clever enough to paint
rawness when he must, but he has an irrepressible sense of ripeness.
Half the ripeness of England--half the religion, one might almost
say--is in its gardens; they are truly pious foundations. It is
doubtless because there are so many of them that the country seems so
finished, and the sort of care they demand is an intenser deliberation,
which passes into the national temper. One must have lived in other
lands to observe fully how large a proportion of this one is walled in
for growing flowers. The English love of flowers is inveterate; it
is the most, unanimous protest against the grayness of some of the
conditions, and it should receive justice from those who accuse the race
of taking its pleasure too sadly. A good garden is an organized revel,
and there is no country in which there are so many.

Mr. Parsons had therefore only to choose, at his leisure, and one might
heartily have envied him the process, scarcely knowing which to prefer
of all the pleasant pilgrimages that would make up such a quest. He had.
fortunately, the knowledge which could easily lead to more, and a career
of discovery behind him. He knew the right times for the right things,
and the right things for the right places. He had innumerable memories
and associations; he had painted up and down the land and looked over
many walls. He had followed the bounty of the year from month to month
and from one profusion to another. To follow it with him, in this
admirable series, is to see that he is master of the subject. There
will be no