AT NATURAL BRIDGE 233 



the hunt for names does quicken observa- 

 tion and help to relate and classify things." 

 That was a qualification well put in. The 

 whole truth was never written on one side 

 of the leaf. If all our botany were Latin 

 names, as Emerson says, we should have 

 little to boast of; yet even that would be 

 one degree better than nothing, as Emerson 

 himself felt when he visited a museum and 

 saw the cases of shells. " I was hungry for 

 names," he remarks ; and so have all men of 

 intelligence been since the day of the first 

 systematic, name-conferring naturalist, the 

 man who dwelt in Eden. Let us be thank- 

 ful for manuals, I say, that offer on easy 

 terms a speaking acquaintance, if nothing 

 more, with the world of beauty about us. 

 Things take their value from comparison, 

 and my own ignorance was but a little while 

 ago so absolute that now I am proud to 

 know so much as a name. 



Meanwhile, to come back to Natural 

 Bridge, I had found the country of a most 

 engaging sort. In truth, while the bridge 

 itself is the " feature " of the place, as we 

 speak in these days, it is by no means its 

 only, or, as I should say, its principal attrac- 



