JULY 87 



water flung away by the photographer in washing his 

 utensils. I think this lesson of the fixed certainty 

 that with no real change, though with occasional short 

 interruptions, the order of life goes steadily on, is a 

 very valuable one. And it was a lesson which Henry 

 Vaughan, the Silurist, who was a keen observer of 

 Nature, and in some respects even surpassed George 

 Herbert in seeing good in, and drawing good lessons 

 from, the commonest objects in everyday life, has 

 brought out in his poem on 'Man,' in which he 

 moralised on the changeableness of man as compared 

 ^vith the unchangeableness of Nature, and from which 

 I will quote one stanza : — 



' The flowers, 

 Early as well as late, 

 Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers ; 



I would (said I) my God would give 

 The staidness of these things to man ; for these 

 To His Di\'iue appointment ever cleave, 

 And no new business breaks their peace.' 



That is not the only lesson that may be learned from 

 the long drought, producing a short appearance of 

 desolation, and ending in the full beauty of fresh life 

 and luxuriant vegetation ; but I must not alloAv myself 

 to moralise further, or to turn my Gloucestershire 

 garden into a pulpit. 



