vi.] THE SLATES ON THE ROOF. 151 



for that very reason, all that can be given should be 

 given; he should have every facility for learning 

 what he can about this earth, its composition, its 

 capabilities ; lest his intellect, crushed and fettered by 

 that artificial drudgery which we for a time miscall 

 civilisation, should begin to fancy, as too many do 

 already, that the world is composed mainly of bricks 

 and deal, and governed by acts of parliament. If I 

 shall have awakened any townsmen here and there to 

 think seriously of the complexity, the antiquity, the 

 grandeur, the true poetry, of the commonest objects 

 around them, even the stones beneath their feet ; if I 

 shall have suggested to them the solemn thought that 

 all these things, and they themselves still more, are 

 ordered by laws, utterly independent of man's will 

 about them, man's belief in them; if I shall at all 

 have helped to open their eyes that they may see, and 

 their ears that they may hear, the great book which is 

 free to all alike, to peasant as to peer, to men of 

 business as to men of science, even that great book of 

 nature, which is, as Lord Bacon said of old, the "Word 

 of God revealed in facts then I shall have a fresh 

 reason for loving that science of geology, which has 

 been my favourite study since I was a boy. 



