In his strivings, who arrived at, the clearest light, who came 

 nearest the core or heart of the truth, the humble Potter, the pious 

 Mystic, or the philosophical Poet? 



The true Naturalist should not possess in excess any spiritual 

 endowment. With too much imagination and sensibility, he floats 

 off into the region of Transcendental Idealism, intoxicated with the 

 gorgeous ineffability of the "grotto of dreams;" or overwhelmed by 

 the infinite suggestiveness of Nature which must remain forever unutter- 

 able and incommunicable by words, he babbles like one mad. On the 

 other hand, with too much of the senses and understanding, he congeals 

 Creation into the "concrete" under the "wintry moonlight of the 

 Intellect." and the profound necessities revealed in the inseparable 

 connection of Life, Form, and Substance, are lost in a ghastly for- 

 mula of Mechanism, Chemistry, and Death. The Naturalist must 

 not be the bird that never alights on his feet, and sleeps on his wings, 

 but rather the mole of the ground, or true creature of the earth, 

 penetrated and held by earthly affinities. 



Let him, in the blackness that enshrouds him, creep like the humble 

 caterpillar, measuring-worm, or serpent prone, touching Nature lov- 

 ingly on all her points, rather than leap like the salient grasshopper 

 into unknown spaces, or plunge like an eyeless fish through cavernous 



deeps of the world. 



EGBERT SMITH. 



68 



