THE ALERT EYE. 13 



out-door life, and yet be so indifferent to the en- 

 chanting section of the natural world before his 

 very eyes. An engaging book on nature at once 

 overcomes my physical inertia, and quickly sends 

 me with wide-open eyes across the fields. There 

 are students who will sit in a darkened room and 

 read Milton's " L'Allegro " in a kind of mental 

 ecstasy ; but for my part, such a perusal makes 

 every fiber tingle with a desire to fly to the wild- 

 wood or the meadow. Truly, we are not all cast 

 in the same mould. 



We cannot, I admit, all be specialists in natural 

 history or any of its numerous branches, else where 

 would be our laborers, our law-makers, our classi- 

 cists, our philosophers, our theologians? Candor 

 compels me to say that the friend of whom I have 

 spoken was a man of no mean abilities. In some 

 lines of study he was an acute thinker, and in 

 many respects a most excellent and useful citizen. 

 I am only expressing surprise that a student of 

 such wide culture and such a generous spirit 

 should care so little for nature. When she 

 throngs us so ; when, as Whittier says, — 



" Her many hands reach out to us, 

 Her many tongues are garrulous," 



