THE OPEN SECRET

A stranger, entering a royal palace crowded with treasures on wall and cdUng, in chamber and corridor, will eulogize much that he sees and go near to exhausting his vocabulary in order to describe the magie and magnificence of it ail ; ail the more so, if he happen to be of a much lower rank and station in Ufe, and unfamiliar with such splendid circmnstance. The son of the royal house, however, will speak of the same things — no less aware of their beauty and value— in a différent way.

There are great poets whose descriptions of Nature are in the manner of the stranger' s ecstasies over the royal treasures. Carpenter's, on the contrary, are Ihose of one who is as a son in his father's house. He has the facile touch of the boon companion moving among his intimâtes. It is enough for him to give the hint, knowing that the whole unspeakable splendour is there as part of the mind-texture of those to whom he speaks. He knows that the thing itself , plainly and vividly indicated, is far mofe lovely than any added vesture of words can make it. In other words, Carpenter does not speak to us of Nature, but rather allows us to overhear him speaking of it to himself .

In this he follows his own canon of Art :

Art can now no longer be separated from life ;

Her tutelage completed, she becomes équivalent to Nature, and hangs her curtains continuons with the douds and waterfalls.^