40 A MANUAL 



going to moralize, and so I shall not make any 

 remarks about the wonderful, and perhaps, un- 

 expected beauty which we have discovered in these 

 lower forms of creation. If a man cannot discover 

 for himself the evident beauty and design and 

 knowledge which exist in ever}^ rock-pool and on 

 every weed-covered stone, no amount of talking or 

 writing will drive the palpable fact into his head ; 

 and if, after such an excursion as ours of to-day, he 

 do not return home a wiser and a better man, he 

 must lay the fault where only it is due — at his own 

 door. But I must add, as we stroll homewards, that 

 one great benefit to be derived from the pursuit of 

 Natural History at the sea- side, is the intense relief 

 and the renewed buoyancy which it grants to a mind 

 wearied and overtasked by the realities of daily life. 

 Do you remember how mournfully Keats sings of 



" The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

 Here where men sit and hear each other groan ; 



Where palsy shakes a few sad, last, gray hairs ; 



Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies ; 

 Where hut to think is to be full of sorrow " ? 



Poor Keats ! I wish I could have taken him out 

 anemone -hunting after these sad lines had struggled 

 out of the recesses of his heart. There is no " com- 

 panion of our solitude" like the sea: 



" There is a rapture on a lonely shore, 

 There is society, where none intrudes, 

 By the deep sea, and music in its roar." 



