As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, — its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, — we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest.

The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.

Travelers find virtue in a seeming minority in all other countries, and forget that they have left it in a minority at home.

Fields are won by those who believe in the winning.

Life is as inexorable as the sea.

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.