But still, for all the frost and the evil influences brought to bear against the chrysalis, if it is to be, its time comes, and we see the butterfly breaking from its gloomy death, and fluttering away gaily through the summer air, happy, careless, beautiful, every hour an effortless success, its sole mission pleasure, working good unconsciously, rocking in the breast of the rose, rising to light up some shady nook like a fleck of sunshine, hovering over the lemon-coloured grain fields like animated scarlet poppy flowers, settling down like winged pansies in our gardens, hovering overhead like the spirit of the lovely things it sports with a golden gleam upon the violet, a sapphire on the buttercup, a velvet page amongst the lilies, a giddy flirt with all, blending, harmonising, contrasting wherever it lights upon to kiss and beautify; thus it passes on, doing the duty of its creation, aspiration, and fitful fancy. And so with the painter. He may take up the traces of custom, chain himself with laws and methods, go out with his buckler of tinsel, and his bindings of green withes, to watch the sun setting, to reckon up its strength and classify its dyes, gauge all the glories with his measuring tapes, and bring his weak knowledge to the mighty test, when, even as he seeks for precedents, he is caught up by the spirit, as Philip was of old, and borne, not to the chariot of a great eunuch, but unto a chariot all his own, made of pure beaten gold, lined with purple and crimson, and studded over with the richest of gems, and thus rolled like a conqueror through the glowing gateways of the eternal space, his frame quivering with the intoxicating joy of that fleeting hour, his tinsel buckler and green withes shrivelled up and cast behind, and his unshackled mind sent bounding through the endless vistas of dreamland. [Illustration: A GARDEN SCENE] CHAPTER XIII NATURE WORSHIP [Illustration: L]ABOUR being done, we naturally look for reward, which is the legitimate termination of work. This reward may be rest, or wealth, or fame; it is the spur of our exertion, the caviare of our ambition; upon it we exist through the famishings and the anxieties, the hard roads and long miles; it is the destination which fills our imagination from the very first step of our journey, else would we have fainted twenty times over. It is the day's wage or week's wages which supports the toiler or the workman through all the hours between him and the hour of pay.