ITER DALECARLIUM 227 



and wooden walls of their houses ; like asbestos, it will 

 neither light nor retain light.' The young men's evenings 

 spent quietly in the barns were as pleasant as those occu- 

 pied in dancing. * With them talk was what it ought to 

 be an exchange of information, thought, and argument.' 

 The party exchanged their news, having again formed a 

 junction : the eager enjoyment of novelty was still felt by 

 all. While waiting eagerly for their turn to write their 

 notes in the journal they came outside and left the place 

 silent and undisturbed to the immediate writer, while 

 they relished that greatest enjoyment in life, ' intercom- 

 munion of equal minds and sympathetic hearts.' They 

 had passed a studious winter, and ' headwork demands 

 physical relaxation.' l How to develop the physical 

 powers sufficiently for making the very best of life's work 

 ' without engendering brutality and coarseness,' is the 

 puzzle of this age. Linnaeus, the Kingsley of his time, 

 seems early to have solved it. t Plant-hunting was to 

 him what sports are to other persons.' 2 While himself 

 ' in ecstasies of observant study,' ' this robust genius, 

 born to grapple with the whole army of nature and to 

 marshal it,' was yet able to train the young men who 

 formed his school an anticipation of his future court 

 to guide rather than to rule them by the life, the plea- 

 sure, the intensity of interest he infused into every 

 object, and by his sympathy with the opening of this 

 revelation to them, and with their new enjoyment of the 

 ' magnificent smile of mother nature, most genial but 

 1 Kingsley. 2 Bain on Mill. 



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