Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/157

Rh by picking them; or smiling—such a smile!—as she swung in the crescent moon over that Brook Farm of hers; yet the man she needed for this work was a slip she tended in another field.

They called him Downing the nursery-man's boy; that black-eyed, black-haired lad, sitting studious over his books in the Montgomery Academy, helping his father and elder brother in the nursery, or botanizing with affable, enthusiastic De Liederer, consul from the Netherlands, over the low-lying Newburgh hills. A poor boy, son of poor parents, with no advantages, few acquaintances, few books; this was nature's instrument to waken our people to a desire for beauty and grace. For, before these things can be, they must be desired. And Downing's books had much to do with teaching us to desire them.

Nature has a snubbing way with her at times; can do unkindest things. One has to put up with much from her, to forgive broken promises, to stand tearful or aghast over her double meanings found out too late; to be brave when she passes by with crowns for others twisted from the laurels he himself has planted. She played false to this boy of hers, as she has done with many another. She gave him a yearning desire for the true, the beautiful and the good; planted the seed deep in his heart, saw it burst the ground, saw leaf after leaf unfold, and then, as if she had wearied of the play, took wing, and left him, and went about her other errands. Thus deserted, young Downing had to look about him for what help lay nearest, and as ill-luck would have it, he found the very worst advisers close at his elbow. For he was not a genius; if he had been, then everything would have been different. Then Nature might have gone or stayed. He would have given her snub for snub: genius converts difficulties to helps, makes something out of nothing. Downing had not genius, but he had talent of a rare kind, and better, perhaps, than talent, he had a clear purpose, and a strong will. There were reasons why for some things he must be dependent on others. His education had been only partial. Things essential to success in the path he had chosen, he did not have. He could not draw, for instance; could not ever draw a straight line. Others then, must draw for him. Yet the mechanics who worked for him said that he could always describe with admirable clearness what he wanted made, and his eye was so true, that he spied faults without the aid of compass or rule. He had a nature of great sensitiveness to form and color; he had great self-reliance; he had a thirst to learn that he might teach; and it is no slight praise to say that from the first, no man can point to an opportunity within his reach and say, "This he missed, this he neglected."

The real value of Downing's work, was not in his positive teachings, for, if he had lived, he must have supplanted, not merely supplemented these by better teachings; it was in the impetus he gave