BY ELIZABETH WETHERELL,
AUTHOR OF "THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD."

I took a walk with my father last evening. Now the pleasure of this walk was so great that I will even jot down some notes of its history.

It was just the pretty time of a summer's day,—the sun's "parting smile," when he has a mind to leave a pleasant impression behind him: the hot hours were past; the remnant of a sweet north wind, which had been blowing all day, just filled the sails of one or two sloops, and carried them lazily down the bay; and the sun, having taken up his old trade of a painter, coloured their white canvass for the very spots it filled in the picture: the same witching pencil was upon a magnificent rose-bush at the foot of the lawn, tinting its flowers for fairy-land; and had laid little stripes of fairy light across the lately-mown grass; and, through a slight haze of the delicious atmosphere, the hills were mellowed to a painter's wish.

My father and I strolled down the walk, and took one or two turns almost in silence, tasting all this too keenly at first to say much about it. There were beauties near hand too. The rose-trees had shaken out all their luxuriance, and defied the eye to admire aught else. Yet, but for them, there was enough to be admired. The pure Campanulas looked modestly confident of attractions; little Gilias filled their place in the world passing well; the sweet double pinks gave us a most good-humoured face as we went by; the tall white lily-buds showed beautiful indications; and some rare geraniums, and my splendid English heart's-ease quietly disdained or declined competition. And in that evening-light, even the flowers of humbler name and lower pretension, looked as if they cared not for it. Sprawling bachelor's-buttons, and stiff sweet-williams, and pert chrysanthemums, all were pretty under the sun's blessing; I think none were overlooked.

"How much pleasure we take in at the eye!" said my father.

"Where the eye has been opened," said I.

"Ay. How many people go through the world with their eyes tight shut;—not certainly to every matter of practical utility, but shut to all beautiful ends."

"Oh, those practical eyes!—the eyes that have no vision but for the useful,—what wearisome things they are!"

"It is but a moderate portion of the useful that they see," said my father;—"it was not an empty gratuity that things were made 'pleasant to the eyes.'"

"But how the eye needs to be educated," said I.

"Rather the mind, Cary," said my father. "Let the mind be educated to bring its faculty and taste into full play, and it will train its own spies fast enough."

"It was that I meant, papa,—that cultivation of taste;—I was thinking, before you spoke what a blessing it is."

"Why, yes," said my father; "with that piece to bring down game, one is in less danger of mental starvation. But hush; here comes somebody that won't understand you."

And as he spoke, I saw the trim little figure of Mrs. Roberts, one of our neighbours, come in sight round a turn in the shrubbery.

"What a lovely evening, Mrs. Roberts," said I, as we met.

"Delicious!—such charming weather for the grass and the dairy, and everything. It was so fine, I told Mr. Roberts I would just run down and see your mamma for a minute; I wanted to ask her a question. I shall find her at home, shan't I?"

I satisfied Mrs. Roberts on that point, and my father and I turned to walk back to the house with her, thinking that our pleasure was over.

"The roses are in great beauty now," I remarked.

"Beautiful!—and what an immense quantity of them you have. I don't know what ails our roses, but we can't make them do, somehow. They seem to get a kind of blight when they're about half open, and what are not blighted are full of bugs. What do you do with the bugs? I don't see that you have any."

I suggested the effectiveness of daily hand-picking.

"Oh, but bless me! it's so much trouble. Mr. Roberts would never let the time be taken for it. How stout your grass is! It's a great deal stouter than ours. There's half as much again of it, I'm sure. And you're cutting it! We haven't begun to cut yet; Mr. Roberts thought he'd let it stand as long as he could, to give it a chance; but I'm sure it's time. What do you do with all your roses?—make rose-water?"

I said no.

"I never saw such a quantity! I'll tell you what—if you'll send me a basket or two of 'em, I'll make some rose-water, and you shall have half of it. Oh, what beautiful heart's-ease! My dear Caroline, you must just give me one of those for my girls, for a pattern; you know they are making artificial flowers, and they want some of these for their bonnets. Really, they are quite equal to the French ones, I think, and—thank you!—that is superb. Now, my dear Caroline, one more—that one with so much yellow in it;—want a little variety, you know. They will be delighted. You know it is just the fashion."

"I did not, indeed, Mrs. Roberts."

"Didn't you? They wear little open bonnets of some light straw—rice is the prettiest, or some kind of open-work—and here, at the side, just here, a bunch of heart's-ease, right against the side of the head;—it is very elegant."

"Caroline has bad taste," said my father gravely; "she never wears heart's-ease in a bonnet."

"O no, of course, not these,—she is too careful of them—but you know false heart's-ease, I mean. No, go on with your walk—you shall not come in—I am not going to stay a minute."

And my father and I quietly turned about and went down the walk again.

"False heart's-ease!" said my father.

"What a different thing all this scene is to those eyes, and to ours, papa."

"Yes," said my father. "Poor woman!—she carries a portable kitchen and store-closet in her head, I believe, and everything she sees goes into the one or the other."

"Poor Mrs. Roberts!" said I, laughing. "Now that is the want of cultivation, papa."

"Not entirely, perhaps. There must be soil first to cultivate, Cary."

"Well, her want is the same. And how much is lost for that want!"

"Lost?—what is lost?" said another voice behind us; and turning, we welcomed another and a very different neighbour, in our old friend Mr. Ricardo.

"What is lost?"

"Happiness," said I.

"For the want of what?"

"For the want of a cultivated taste."

"Pshaw!" said Mr. Ricardo, letting go my hand. "That has nothing to do with happiness."

"Do you think so, sir?"

"Certainly. What can a cultivated taste do for you, but create imaginary wants, that you would do just as well without?"

"If you have not them, you have not the exquisite pleasure of gratifying them."

"Well, and what if you haven't? How are you the worse off? The want that is not known is not felt."

"But the range of pleasure is a very different thing without them," said I.

"And character is a very different thing," said my father.

"Character?" said Mr. Ricardo.

"Yes," said my father.

"I should like to hear you make that out."

"And so should I," said I. "I was arguing only for enjoyment—I did not venture so far as that."

"Well, enjoyment," said Mr. Ricardo. "Do you think you have more enjoyment here now, than one of the plain sons of the soil, who would see nothing in roses but roses, and who would call 'Viola tricolor' a 'Johnny-jump-up?'"

"In the first place, learning is not taste; and, in the second place, you do not mean what you say, Mr. Ricardo. You know what Dr. Johnson says of the quart pot and the pint pot—both may be equally full, but the one holds twice as much as the other."

"Ah, Dr. Johnson!" said Mr. Ricardo, with an odd little flourishing wave of his hand; "you delude yourself! The quart pot is twice as likely to be spilled. If you have some pleasures that other people haven't, you have pains of your own, too, that they are exempt from. Now I suppose a little mal-adjustment of proportions—a little deviating from the exquisite line of correctness in men or things—would overturn your whole cup of enjoyment, while his or mine would stand as firm as ever."

"But perhaps a sip of mine would be worth his entire cupful."

"Now," said Mr. Ricardo, not minding me, "I fell in with a family once—it was at the West, when I was travelling there. They were good, plain, sensible, excellent people, happy in each other, and contented with the rest of the world. They had everything within themselves, and lived in the greatest comfort, and harmony, and plenty. I was with them several days, and it occurred to me that people could not be happier than they were."

"But for your bringing them up as instances, I suppose their having 'everything within themselves' did not include the pleasures of a cultivated intelligence?"

"Well, I don't suppose they would have quoted Dr. Johnson to me. But now of what use to them would be all that extra cultivation?"

"Of what use to you," said my father, "is that window you had cut in your library this spring, that looks to the west?"

"Of very little use," said Mr. Ricardo, "for my wife sits in it all the time."

"Ah, Mr. Ricardo!" said I, laughing.

"Well, now," said he, but his face gave way a little, "how are you any better off than those people?"

"I don't wish to make myself an example, sir; but put them down here this evening, and what would they see in all this that we have been enjoying?"

"They would see what you see, I suppose. They had reasonably good eyes—they were not microscopes or telescopes."

"Precisely," said my father. "They would see what mere ordinary vision could take in, without the quick discernment of finely trained sensibilities, and without the far-reaching and wide views of a mind rich in knowledge and associations. Where cultivated senses find a rare mingling of flavours, theirs would at best only perceive the difference of stronger or fainter—of more or less sweet."

"Senses literal or figurative, do you mean?"

"Both," said my father. "You rarely find the one cultivated without the other."

"You may find the other without the one," said Mr. Ricardo. "I knew a man once who had no aptness for anything but judging of wines, and he was curious at that. He did it mostly by the sense of smell, too. All the mind the man had seemed to reside in his nose."

"That is an instance of morbid development," said my father, smiling, "not in point."

"You would have thought it was in point, if you had seen him," said Mr. Ricardo, glancing at my father.

"But the pleasures of a cultivated taste, Mr. Ricardo," said I, "may be constantly enjoyed; and they are some of the purest, and most satisfying, and most unmixed that we have."

"And, I maintain, of the most useful," said my father.

"To the character," said Mr. Ricardo. "But I do not believe that, where they most prevail, are to be found in general the strongest minds or the most hopeful class of our population."

"My good sir," said my father, "do not confound things that have nothing to do with each other. That may be true, and it may be equally true of sundry other matters, such as correct pronunciation and the usages of polite society, Mocha coffee and fine broadcloth,—none of which, I hope, have any deleterious effect upon mind."

"Well, go on," said Mr. Ricardo, without looking at him, "let us hear how you make out your case."

"Learning to draw nice distinctions, to feel shades of difference, becoming alive to the perception and enjoyment of most fine and delicate influences, the mind acquires a habit of being which will discover itself in other matters than those of pure taste. This faculty of nice discrimination and quick feeling cannot be in high exercise in one department alone, without being applied more or less generally to other subjects. It will develope itself in the ordinary intercourse and relations of social and domestic life, and the tendency will be to the producing or perfecting of that nice sense of proprieties, that quick feeling of what is due to or from others, which we call tact."

"But tact cannot be given, papa," said I.

"And how is it useful if it could?" said Mr. Ricardo.

"Useful?" said my father, meditating—"why, sir, the want of it is a death-blow to I know not what proportion of the efforts that are made after usefulness. How many an appeal from the pulpit has been ruined, simply by bringing in a coarse or unhappy figure, which the speaker's want of cultivation did not allow him to appreciate! How many a word, intended for counsel or kindness, has fallen to the ground, because the kindly person did not know how to work out his intentions!"

"But, you cannot give tact, father," I repeated.

"No, Cary—that is true—tact cannot be given; it is the growth only of minds endowed with peculiarly fine sensibilities; but the mind trained to nice judging in one set of matters can exercise the same acumen upon others, so soon as its attention is fairly called out to them. Taste is a thing of particular growth and cultivation in each separate branch; but certainly the mind that has attained high excellence in one is finely prepared to take lessons in another."

"There may be something in that," said Mr. Ricardo, as if he thought there wasn't much.

"But, beyond that," said my father, "the cultivation of taste opens truly a new world of enjoyment utterly closed to every one destitute of it. Nature's stores of beauty and wonder, the fine analogies of moral truth that lie hidden under them, the new setting forth of nature which is Art's beautiful work,—how numberless, how measureless the sources of pleasure to the mind once quickened to see and taste them! Once quickened, it will not cease to rejoice in them, and more and more. And as the mind always assimilates itself to those objects with which it is very conversant, and as these sources of pleasure are all pure, it follows, that not only a refined but a purifying influence also is at work in all this; and the result should be, if nothing untoward counteract, that everything gross, everything improper, in the strict sense of the word, everything unseemly, unlovely, impure, becomes disgustful, and more and more. And whatever is the reverse of these meets with a juster appreciation, a keener relish, a truer love than could be felt for them by a mind not so cultivated. This refining and purifying effect will be seen in the whole character. It will make those solid qualities, which are, indeed, more worth in themselves, show with yet new lustre and tell with higher effect, and not the outward attire only, but the very inward graces of the mind will be worn with a more perfect adjustment."

"Hum—well," said Mr. Ricardo, about a minute after my father had done speaking, "you have made a pretty fair case of it."

My father smiled, and we all three paced up and down the walk in silence. I thought we had done with the subject.

"That's a beautiful sky!" said Mr. Ricardo, coming to a stand, with his face to the west.

"Look down yonder," said my father.

In the southwestern quarter lay a beautiful fleecy mass of cloud: the under edges touched with exquisite rose-colour, sailing slowly down the sky—pushed by that same faint north wind. Just over it—just over it, sat a little star, shining at us with its unchanging ray.

"Would your Tennessee friends see enough there to hold their thoughts for half a minute?" said I, when we had looked as long; but Mr. Ricardo did not answer me.

"That painted cloud," said my father, "is like the pleasures of earth—catching the eye with fair hues; the star, like the better pleasures, that have their source above the earth. That light fills, indeed, it may be, a much smaller space in our eye, or our fancy, than the colours on the cloud; but mark,—it is pure, bright, and undying, while the other is a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

I looked at the star, and I looked at my father, and my heart was full. I thought Mr. Ricardo had got enough, and I think he thought so too, for when we reached the far end of the walk, he left us, with a very hearty shake of the hand, indeed.

My father and I walked then, without talking any more, till glow after glow passed away and night had set in. The little cloud had lost all its fair colours, and had drifted far down into the southern sky, a soft rack of gray vapour, and the star was shining steadily and brightly as ever in the deepening blue.