THE OPEN FIELDS. 27 



from which they shrink ; one plays as the bird 

 sings and the brook runs and the sun shines not 

 with conscious purpose, but from the simple over 

 flow. In this sense Nature never works, she is 

 always at play. In perfect unconsciousness, with 

 out friction or effort, her mightiest movements are 

 made and her sublimest tasks accomplished. 

 Throughout the whole range of her activity one 

 never comes upon any trace of effort, any sign of 

 weariness ; one is always impressed as Ruskin 

 said long ago of works of genius that he is stand 

 ing in the presence, not of a great effort, but of a 

 great power ; that what has been done is only a 

 single manifestation of the play of an inexhaustible 

 force. There is somewhere in the universe an in 

 finite fountain of life and beauty which overflows 

 and floods all worlds with divine energy and loveli 

 ness. When the tide recedes it pauses but a mo 

 ment, and then the music of its returning waves is 

 heard along all shores, and its shining edges move 

 irresistibly on until they have bathed the roots of 

 the solitary flower on the highest Alp. 



It is this divine method of growth which Nature 

 opposes to our mechanisms ; it is this inexhaustible 

 life, overflowing in unconsciousness and boundless 

 fulness, that she forever reveals. The truth which 

 underlies these two great facts needs no application 

 to human life. Blessed, indeed, are they who live 

 in it, and have caught from it something of the joy, 

 the health, and the perennial beauty of Nature. 



