38 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



sounds faintly the shriek of the locomotive on the 

 main roads tearing its way to the metropolis with 

 ocean mails from the peoples beyond the sea. In 

 the little station the travellers bear the marks of 

 many occupations and of residence in distant lands. 

 The starlings fly overhead with food in their beaks 

 close by the spot where the coiners in the days of 

 the Roman occupation imitated in these swamps 

 the imperial coinage and left their coin-moulds 

 to this day. Around lie the silent hills scarred with 

 the works of the unknown and forgotten races. 

 And everywhere eternal nature. How old the world 

 is ! Nay, but rather how young ; in what callow 

 infancy ! The morning and the evening are as yet 

 scarcely the first day. The conscious history of the 

 race has as yet hardly circled the earth in its spread 

 from east to west. 



