their individuality is not distinguished, on the contrary, it is slightly impaired in most cases, when they mix with others and sing their music. I can explain this better with a Japanese picture drawn on a silk scroll; suppose you have right before you a picture of the autumnal moon whose golden light is reflected on a stream below. I am sure that neither the moon nor the stream do show their own best as when you look upon them separately; but is there not an unmistakable love and beautiful kindship as a whole? The true harmony is only gained from the very sacrifice of a certain individuality; it is so in nature as in human life. “Therefore I said that the Nature is at its height of worth when it commands silence, solitariness and independence; I mean when it is all by itself, alone and separately, I remember I was given by my teacher of art, when I began art lessons in my boyhood days, the pictures of an orchid, or bamboo, or pine tree, to copy; they were the pictures of single objects. I see no great wisdom in it; and it is the most difficult sort of subject for a picture when I come to think of it to-day. Oh, what
