NATURE AND BOOKS. 23 



marked tints, but the Latin names of these agarics are 

 not pleasant Butterfly blue but there are several 

 varieties ; and this plan is interfered with by two things : 

 first, that almost every single item of nature, however 

 minute, has got a distinctly different colour, so th.it the 

 dictionary of tints would be immense ; and next, so very 

 few would know the object itself that the colour attached 

 to it would have no meaning. The power of language 

 has been gradually enlarging for a great length of time, 

 and I venture to say that the English language at the 

 present time can express more, and is more subtle, flex- 

 ible, and, at the same time, vigorous, than any of which 

 we possess a record. When people talk to me about 

 studying Sanscrit, or Greek, or Latin, or German, or, 

 still more absurd, French, I feel as if I could fell them 

 with a mallet happily. Study the Knglish, and you 

 will find everything there, I reply. With such a lan- 

 guage I fully anticipate, in years to come, a great de- 

 velopment in the power of expressing thoughts and 

 feelings which arc now thoughts and feelings only. 

 How many have said of the sea, ' It makes me feel some- 

 thing I cannot say ' ! Hence it is clear there exists in 

 the intellect a layer, if I may so call it, of thought yet 

 dumb chambers within the mind which require the key 

 of new words to unlock. Whenever that is done a fresh 

 impetus is given to human progress. There are a mil- 

 lion books, and yet with all their aid I cannot tell you 

 the colour of the May dandelion. There are three 

 greens at this moment in my mind : that of the leaf of 

 the flower-de-luce, that of the yellow iris leaf, and that 

 of the bayonet-like leaf of the common flag. With 

 admission to a million books, how am I to tell you the 

 difference between these tints ? So many, many books, 

 and such a very, very little bit of nature in them 1 



