THE STUDY OF NATURE. 



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f,p| templation. At the bottom of my dreams 1 began to 

 Ijjj^ feel the Infinite : I had glimpses of God, of the paternal 

 divinity of nature, which regards with equal tenderness 

 the blade of grass and the star. In this I found the 

 chief source of consolation ; nay, more, let me say, of 

 happiness. 



" Our abode would have offered to an observant mind 

 a veiy agreeable field of study. All creatures under its 

 benevolent protection seemed to find an asylum. We 

 had a fine fish-pond near the house, but no dove-cot ; 

 for my parents could not endure the idea of dooming 

 creatures to slavery whose life is all movement and 

 freedom. Dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, lived together 

 in concord. The tame chickens, the pigeons, followed 

 my mother everywhere, and fed from her hand. The 

 sparrows built their nests among us ; the swallows 

 even brooded under our barns ; they flew into our very 

 chambers, and returned with each succeeding spring to 

 the shelter of our roof. 



" How often, too, have I found, in the goldfinches' 

 nests torn from our cypress-trees by rude autumnal 

 winds, fragments of my summer-robes buried in the 

 sand ! Beloved birds, which I then sheltered all unwit- 

 tingly in a fold of my vestment, ye have to-day a surer 

 shelter in my heart, but ye know it not ! 



" Our nightingales, less domesticated, wove their T , 

 nests in the lonely hedge-rows ; but, confident of a ^ 

 generous welcome, they came to our threshold a hundred 

 times a-day, and besought from my mother, for them- 

 selves and their family, the silk-worms which had 

 perished. 



