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something different. A lover of nature may have very little 
science and be very little the worse for it. If we go botanising 
or geologising we are busy and interested in observing certain 
things we find in nature. The occupation is absorbing, bunt 
suddenly, at a moment of pause or rest, there flashes upon the 
mind a sense of something beyond the immediate subjects of 
interest, some sudden revelation of beauty, or calm, or grandeur, 
and we feel as if we had been defrauded by the pursuit of the day 
of something of quite infinite value and loveliness. <A quiet nook 
in a wood, a mountain set in sunshine and azure, like a gem, the 
bend of a river, a little wilderness of wild-flowers and waving 
grass, or far-off a great amphitheatre of white clouds, piled and 
terraced as for a congregation of seraphim. ‘These are some of 
the aspects of that nature which is so precious to the poet—and 
by that name I do not mean the writer of poetry, but the soul 
sensitive to the spiritual loveliness of the world. I say spiritual, 
because it may well be a question that this exceeding loveliness 
in which we seem to live, and which seems to be ever waiting 
upon the footsteps of those who are worthy of it, is not a light 
thrown from without upon the soul, but rather a light of our 
own, reflected back from what are called material objects upon 
its source within ourselves. The truth of this we may all know, 
although we may not understand the mystery. Weneed not go far to 
seek this cosmic beauty, which seems to have brooded on the world 
for millenniums ere it was fully recognised, or if recognised 
uncertainly and dimly and at rare intervals, and till recent times 
finding little direct expression in art or literature. For the sense 
of this beauty seems to have grown with man; so that it is a 
question with idealists whether it exists without man. Carlyle 
says there are still a good many men whose eyes are only 
adapted for catching mice. But if any have eyes to find this 
serene charm they need not go far. It is not far to Heasand- 
Ford, and there at any hour of the day we may see it. It is not 
far to Healey Height, or Marsden Height, or Ightenhill, or Black 
Hambleton, or Boulsworth, or Pendle, or any of the high moor- 
lands, and from all of these we may see visions, such as that 
which made Shelley exclaim, 
“ How glorious art thou Earth! and if thou be 
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, 
Like its creation weak yet beautiful, 
I could fall down and worship that and thee!” 
Nay, from the dusky highway, from the windows of the railway 
carriage, from streets that open out upon the country, or those 
which have a glimpse of morning or of evening skies, we see it, 
as well as from the Alps or the sea shore, and there is not so 
much difference as travellers would have us believe. I have seen 
from a neighbouring hill at sunrise a sea of white mist from 
in* 
