“Happy is he who lives to understand, Not human nature only, but explores All natures--to the end that he may find The law that governs each; and where begins The union, the partition where, that makes Kind and degree, among all visible beings; The constitutions, powers, and faculties, Which they inherit--cannot step beyond, And cannot fall beneath; that do assign To every class its station and its office, Through all the mighty commonwealth of things; Up from the creeping plant to sovereign man. Such converse, if directed by a meek, Sincere, and humble spirit, teaches love: For knowledge is delight; and such delight Breeds love; yet, suited as it rather is For thought and to the climbing intellect, It teaches less to love than to adore: If that be not indeed the highest love.” WORDSWORTH.
As in the world of human life, so in the world of nature--from the humblest and meekest the greatest lessons may be learned; and there is often as much worthy of admiration and study in the neglected as in the known and appreciated. The pure metal lies not on the surface, but the gold is extracted from the solid rock, or picked up, after much labour, among the common sands; and many things lie out of the beaten path from which the artist and the student might gather fresh fancies. Twice a day rises and falls the great tide of ocean, and its heavings were not less constant when the trilobite and astrolepis were inhabitants of primordial depths; still twice a day it ebbs and flows, and the stony mountains have treasured the fragments of the weeds it plucked from pre-Adamic shores in memory of its ancient toil.
Bright are the flowers of the earth, the first and choicest of ornaments. Pure, simple, and holy, their charms can never decay, though familiarity and inconsistency may vulgarise, and innumerable misappropriations make us sometimes wish for the contrasts that other less showy objects would afford. While the fields are radiant with their beauty, and the gentle zephyrs fragrant with their scented odours, the great tide ebbs and flows over the flowerless plants of the sea. Around the huge rocks the perennial fringes of olive fuci undulate in graceful folds among the swelling waves, and the tall tangle bows its pliant stem as
