&quot; Where Nature Reigns &quot; 51 



It is only the infinite that is silent, says a poet, it 

 is the finite that must speak. But is not their 

 speech that of the infinite, through its myriad 

 tongues ? How otherwise reach our own dull 

 finite senses ? Does it not teach us what has been 

 so well said by William Mountford, a religious 

 soul that loved Nature and knew well her se 

 crets : 



&quot; Nature about us is a companionship, which our 

 souls feel, and were meant to feel, for there is to 

 be caught from it a tone so peculiar as to be in 

 tentional. Cheerful is what Nature would make 

 us, not merry, nor melancholy. Now it is in 

 cheerfulness that our moral faculties are freest, 

 that we most readily trust, and are kind, and con 

 trol ourselves. . . . And then, in itself, this 

 earth is what we ought to die out of triumphantly. 

 For in this world, has not God s presence been 

 what rightly makes us long for a manifestation of 

 of it, higher and still plainer ? &quot; 



The flowers of Easter were for the most part 

 of the trees and the shrubs ; yet there is an amaz 

 ing forwardness in the saxifrages, whose little 

 flower bunches so far swell out amid the pretty 

 rosettes of foot leaves with their bronze and reddish 

 hues, that another week will see them open. The 

 arbutus is much slower to respond, and will wait 

 awhile. But the wonderful discovery was of hun- 



