202 ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 



him make sure that his acquaintance with 

 out-of-door life is sympathetic, and not 

 merely curious or scientific. All honor to 

 the new science and its votaries ; we run 

 small risk of too much learning; but it 

 should be kept in mind that the itch for 

 finding out secrets is to be accounted no- 

 ble or ignoble, according as the spirit that 

 prompts the research is liberal or petty. 

 Curiosity and love of the truth are not yet 

 identical, however it may flatter our self- 

 esteem to ignore the distinction. One may 

 spend one's days and nights in nothing else 

 but in hearing or telling some new thing, 

 and after all be no better than a gossip. It 

 would prove a sorry exchange for such of 

 us as have entered, in any degree, into the 

 feeling of Wordsworth's lines, 



" To me, the meanest flower that blows can give 

 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," 



and I believe the capacity for such moods 

 to be less uncommon than many suppose, 

 it would be a sorry bargain, I say, for us 

 to lose this sensitiveness to the charm of 

 living beauty, though meanwhile we were 

 to grow wiser than all the moderns touch- 

 ing the morphology and histology of every 

 blossom under the sun. 



