Inness (the best American painter Of Nature in her moods of real human feeling) once said, NO man can do anything in art, unless he has intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collecting the materials out of which intuitions are made. The truth could not be bit off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intui tions are the ?owers which grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched and worked. It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, now gathered up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that the author has long employed his eyes, his ears, and his under standing, in Observing and considering the facts Of Nature, and in weaving curious analogies.