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ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 

 WORCESTERSHIRE.* 



Among the readers of " The Analyst " there are, we learn, many young 

 persons of very amiable dispositions, for whose amusement and instruc- 

 tion we are not a little anxious to provide materials. They live in an 

 age in which they enjoy many advantages that were unknown to their 

 fathers and mothers ; for on every hand the means of instruction have 

 accumulated, until no one can continue to grow up even wilfully ignorant. 

 Things were very different, we can assure our young readers, not longer 

 than five-and-thirty years ago. Who is there, now arrived at the sedate 

 age of forty, who does not retain in his memory some gloomy recollec- 

 tions of comfortable country houses, or of quiet and respectable houses 

 in country towns and villages, in which, although there was no fault to 

 be found with the arrangements for the nutrition and warmth of the 

 body, nothing ever suggested the notion that they were gifted witli a 

 mind to be provided for. The yearly almanack, full of absurdities, the 

 weekly newspaper, full of advertisements, an old gardening book, and 

 Burn's Justice, constituted, at that period, the available literature of 

 many a worthy family. Within a stately case, with doors of glass, lined 

 with dull green silk, there were other books, it is true, and some in 

 handsome bindings, but all under lock and key. By some rare chance a 

 stray volume of sermons, or perhaps of the Arabian Night's Entertain- 

 ments, might be found, or a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, or some 

 other story without an end, of the wearisome description then extravagantly 

 admired by polite readers, but only to be hastily secured among the rest. 

 It is no exaggeration to say, that in those days, young people were 

 sometimes rendered doubtful whether or not reading was quite a proper 

 occupation. In summer all were abroad in the sunshine, satisfied with 

 rural occupations, and pleased with mere bodily activity and the appetite 

 which followed it. On dismal winter days it was the habit of old persons 

 with strong constitutions to unsettle the young and delicate from the 

 warm parlour, often with some cutting remark on the beloved author 

 whose pages had been furtively indulged in, and to drive them forth into 

 the biting air without an object, and with no other ideas but those of the 

 general injustice and disagreeableness of elderly relatives. School itself, 

 although a prison, was better than this suffering ; for at school, books 

 were at least allowed ; and what was better, books could occasionally be 

 borrowed. Blessed be the memory of one of our old schoolfellows, with 

 a Dutch name, whom we have not heard of in the present century, 

 but who lent us, volume by volume, the whole of the Spectator. We 

 see the book now. Of goodly size was the copy, and marble coloured 

 was the back. By the fast fading light of winter afternoons, by lamp- 

 light and fire-light, we read those precious volumes, avoiding always, we 

 blush to recollect, the Saturday papers, as far too deep for us. We also see 

 again, through the long years, six beloved little volumes, entitled Evenings 

 at Home, which we discovered in a nursery, and read by stealth for a 

 time, and we think with some profit. Modern art has compressed these 

 into one, and the excellent work still remains a deserved favourite. 



* Illustrations of the Natural History of Worcestershire, with Information on 

 the Statistics, Zoology, and Geology of the County, including also a short account 

 of its Mineral Waters. By Charles Hastings, M.D. Published at the request of 

 the Council of the Worcestershire Natural History Society. London : Sherwood, 

 Gilbert, and Piper. 1834. 



