28 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



eighteenth, we merely mean that science has so widened 

 the bounds of knowledge about common things, and 

 deepened the interest in them, that the ordinary all-round 

 culture of to-day, even when not particularly or very con- 

 sciously poetical in its spirit, is more deeply imbued with 

 the poetry of common things than the best culture of the 



eighteenth century It was not given to the 



man of culture in the eighteenth century to know the 

 thousandth part of the interest which lies in the commonest 

 objects a drop of water, a snow-flake, a glacier, rounded 

 rock, a fossil, a plant, or an insect. 



' A primrose by a river's brim, 

 A simple primrose was to him.' 



And it may have been this much more than by the power 

 of memory and association it suggested thoughts which 

 were denied, perhaps, to the next observer. But to the 

 man of all-round culture to-day the man of insight as 

 well as knowledge in the commonest weed or clump of 

 moss there lies a mine of historical and poetical wealth. 

 And to the study of the commonest objects what guidance 

 he has ! A Kingsley to teach him the way to study the 

 pebbles of the street, the slates of the roof, and the coal 

 in the mine ; a Darwin to show how the earth-worm has 

 contributed to agriculture ; a Faraday to make the common 

 candle shine more wonderfully than the genii's lamp ; a 

 Lubbock, to observe the ways of the ant ; and a Huxley, 

 to surround the cray-fish with the deepest intellectual 

 interest. And to the list of science popularisers may we 

 not add the Canadian names of Sir William Dawson and 

 Grant Allen ? 



" But if the nineteenth centurv has these advantages, it 



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must be remembered that only culture the literary culture 



