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of all organized beings, nor to look upon her with the eyes of affectionate children. 

 The case is not altered when they are sent to any of the schools, whether suburban or 

 remote from the city of their birth ; for in the walks which are then taken, as a part 

 of the system, they are made to march, during the stated period, only for the health 

 of the body, in formal columns, and not allowed to delay to examine any natural 

 object, nor even to turn their eyes either to the right side or the left. And thus 

 they quit these seminaries as ignorant of the operations of nature as if they had 

 continued to dwell in the centre of the most crowded metropolis, or had been 

 denied all use of the organ of sight. This important period of life, when they are 

 so susceptible of receiving beneficial impressions from the examination of the 

 works of creation, being allowed to pass unimproved, the parent imagines he has 

 discharged his duty to his children if he then places them at the entrance of the 

 paths which lead to wealth, to honour, to glory, or to power. But the fondest 

 hopes may be disappointed, the best laid schemes for arriving at distinction may 

 be frustrated, and the unsuccessful candidate may be compelled to retire from the 

 busy mart, and to close those books and correspondence which he trusted would 

 have proved the instruments of his gain, and betake himself to an obscure or soli- 

 tary abode, far from the smoke of cities and the hum of men. How irksomely 

 must pass his days, what a dreary and desolate void must be his existence, if, from 

 ignorance of its alphabet, the book of natural wisdom lies open before him in vain, 



" where, beneath the white-armed beach, 



By valley's stream, or hillock's verdant crown, 

 Her simple lesson nature waits to teach." 



But suppose the greatest success to have attended his efforts, and that he has 

 become the possessor of " woods, and lawns, and long-withdrawing vales." His 

 bosom may dilate when his eye surveys the fruit of his toil and his gratified ambi- 

 tion, and his ear may be regaled with the lowing of his cattle on a thousand hills ; 

 but all these he must leave to another, nor can it be said that while in possession 

 of them his mind was more improved, or even as much, as that of the ploughman 

 who tilled his acres, or the herd who tended his flocks, if the latter, and not the 

 former, saw and understood, and traced to their source, the operations of nature 

 continually taking place around them, and which could alone render his lands pro- 

 ductive, and his position an object of vulgar envy. 



An able divine (the Rev. W. Jones, of Nayland) has well observed — " Let a 

 man have all the world can give him, he is still miserable, if he has a grovelling, 

 unlettered, indevout mind. Let him have his gardens, his fields, his woods, his 

 lawns, for grandeur, plenty, ornament, and gratification : while at the same 

 time God is not in all his thoughts ; and let another have neither field nor gar- 

 den, let him only look at nature with an enlightened mind — a mind which can see 

 and adore the Creator in his works, can consider them as demonstrations of his 



