VERONICA. 83 



largely interwoven with hard technicalities 

 concerning rotate corollas and pedicellate 

 racemes ; and I for my part am not ashamed 

 to confess that I like sometimes to see the 

 dry light of science diversified with some 

 more fallacious scintillations of the literce 

 kumaniores or even with some will-o'-the-wisp 

 of pure poetical imagination. After all, these 

 things too are themselves matter for the high- 

 est science ; and that kind of scientific man 

 who cannot recognise their use and interest 

 is himself as yet but a one-sided creature, a 

 chemical or biological Gradgrind, still spelling 

 away blunderingly at the weak and beggarly 

 elements of knowledge, instead of skimming 

 the great book of nature easily through, with 

 a free glance from end to end. Surely there 

 are more things in heaven and earth than are 

 dreamt of in Gradgrind's philosophy. 



For example, there is the beauty of the 

 veronica. Even if the Gradgrinds do not 

 see it, you and I do ; and it is clearly the 

 business of science to explain this difference 



G 2 



