11 
had failed, that is, to qualify as a teacher from the book of nature, 
by studying the grammar of its language. Like his contemporaries 
Southey, Moore, Keble, Scott—though unlike Crabbe, who alone 
amongst the brotherhood was an accomplished geologist and botanist 
—he gazed on nature with an uneducated eye, stumbling now and 
then upon a scientific truth, and handling it with tantalising power; 
but missing at every turn lessons, suggestions, principles, pregnant 
with poetic force. One graceful poem he disfigures by a sneer at 
botanists, unconscious that though a primrose by a river's brim 
was vastly more to Peter Bell’s creator than to Peter Bell, the one 
was as ignorant as the other of the wondrous life-history which the 
flower unfolds to the humblest botanical student. Yet we may be 
deeply thankful for that which he has given us; for the primrose 
tuft veiling the wren’s nest, for the circlet of snowdrops edging the 
orchard rock, and the somewhat thin sonnet to the same flower— 
for Love lies Bleeding, for the Oak and Broom—for the exquisite 
picture of the Osmunda, so often quoted, so rarely quoted rightly 
for the delicate Pantheism evolved from the torn hazel boughs 
_for the belief, repeated oftentimes in varied words, that “the 
meanest flower enjoys the air it preathes”—for the awful grandeur 
of thought and diction which has apotheosised the Borrowdale 
yew trees—the plea for strawberry blossoms—the rustic hats 
trimmed with stag-horn moss—the glorification of the lesser 
celandine—the daisy protecting the dewdrop, and embroidering its 
star-shaped shadow on the stone—the three special odes to the 
daisy—the loving description of the moss campion ; above all, the 
delightful poem on the daffodils, instinct and resonant in every 
line with the rustling toss of the flowers and the crisping ripple of 
the Ullswater waves, and containing the two perfect lines ascribed 
to Mrs. Wordsworth, the only two, apparently, which she ever 
contributed to his creations. [Here followed a description of the 
Lake plants, whose English names were suggestive of interesting 
facts, historical, mythical, scientific. | 
Let me end with two practical suggestions. One, that you 
should form a society not only for the preservation of your 
precious flora, with the diffusion of your rare species, but also for 
| 
