AS RELATED TO TASTE. 89 



another world ; he beholds trees of forms and char- 

 acters now unknown upon the surface of the earth, 

 presented to his senses almost in the beauty and 

 vigor of their primeval life; their scaly stems and 

 bending branches, with their delicate apparatus 

 of foliage, are all spread forth before him, little 

 impaired by the lapse of countless ages, and bearing 

 faithful records of extinct systems of vegetation 

 which began and terminated in times of which 

 these relics are the infallible historians." 



But we are told that the Naturalist loses all the 

 poetry of Nature. There is no greater mistake than 

 this. He has become so accustomed to the beauties 

 of nature that he is not ready, like the novice, to 

 utter exclamations of surprise. Bring into a fine 

 gallery of paintings or of statuary one entirely 

 unaccustomed to such works, and he is constantly 

 manifesting his surprise at the novelties, and is 

 perhaps equally delighted with the coarse daub and 

 the work of the greatest master. Think you he 

 enjoys more than the artist, who stands silently 

 drinking in the beauties for the hundredth time from 



the fine touches which the other never perceives ? 



8 



