delicately baffled, detain for an instant the
image that puzzles them, and so dally with the
bright progress of a meteor, and part slowly
from the slender course of the already fallen
raindrop, whose moments are not theirs. There
seems to be such a difference of instants as in-
vests all swift movement with mystery in man's
eyes, and causes the past, a moment old, to be
written, vanishing, upon the skies.

The visible world is etched and engraved with
the signs and records of our halting apprehen-
sion; and the pause between the distant wood-
man's stroke with the axe and its sound upon
our ears is repeated in the impressions of our
clinging sight. The round wheel dazzles it, and
the stroke of the bird's wing shakes it off like
a captivity evaded. Everywhere the natural
haste is impatient of these timid senses; and
their perception, outrun by the shower, shaken
by the light, denied by the shadow, eluded by
the distance, makes the lingering picture that is
all our art. One of the most constant causes of
all the mystery and beauty of that art is surely
not that we see by flashes, but that nature
flashes on our meditative eyes. There is no
need for the impressionist to make haste, nor
would haste avail him, for mobile nature doubles

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