LOVE OF NATURE. 53 



that greatest of all comforts, the means of acquiring 

 information, has placed the peasant of the present 

 day in circumstances more favourable than those of 

 the peer two centuries ago ; which has now rooted 

 itself firmly throughout the country, and is like a 

 goodly tree, ever verdant and ever fruitful, rearing 

 its top to the heavens, and spreading its boughs to 

 the uttermost ends of the earth. Well should we 

 love that, and dear to us all should be that country, 

 those fathers, and those institutions which have 

 brought it forward, and preserved it for our use ; and 

 gladly should we bestow our brightest thought and 

 our best nerved arm upon the farther spread and 

 perfection of it ; so that we may not have the ignoble 

 name of the " idle generation ;" but make our chil- 

 dren still more indebted to us than we are to our 

 fathers. 



But though the obligation on us to do that be of 

 the clearest and, at the same time, of the most im- 

 perative and binding character, it does not thence 

 follow that we too should not have our full share of 

 enjoyment. Indeed, that is absolutely necessary to 

 the successful execution of the other ; for it is mat- 

 ter of common observation, that the miserable work 

 miserably, and spread misery around them, as an 

 unclean thing spreads corruption. 



And we really have the key to that enjoyment, 

 in the character and conduct of those mountain 

 races to whom allusion has been made, inasmuch 

 as their love of nature, and nature which is barren 

 as compared with ours, is really greater than our 

 love of all the nature and all the art which we pos- 

 sess. The Grecian fable of Antaeus, the earthly 

 giant, wrestling with Hercules, the giant of celestial 

 descent, is far from an uninstructing one ; because it 

 may show us, and probably was intended to show us, 

 how we may most successfully wrestle with the giant 

 of our cares, under what form or circumstances so- 

 ever that giant may assail us. When Antaeus was 

 E2 



