CHAPTER XV. 



OUT OF BOOKS WITH NATUKE. 



OUT of doors ! "We weary of this unceasing labor are 

 choking to death of the stagnant air of heaped up cities, 

 which, with their gutter-defiled trigonometries, set at defiance, 

 of assoilation, the straight currents of Heaven's fresh air 

 leaving us to moan and swelter amidst pestilential stagnations ! 



Let us go, O ye who yearn for purer odors than the steam 

 of the kitchen ! Let us go forth out of doors with Nature ! 

 Aye ! and when her fresh breath shall come upon our seamed 

 and heated brows, it shall be with an alchemy more strange 

 than the Elixir of vain Cagliostro more marvellous than all 

 Spells, Philosophers' Stones, and Fortunatus' Caps more 

 potent than the wizard edicts of that eldest brother of shad- 

 owy science hoar Astrology ! 



To be sure we ought all of us to be astrologists perhaps 

 minus the science ; for should we not feel humbly that, as 

 we are children of the earth, so we may be moved as she is 

 moved, in that of us which is earthy ? and that, as the stars 

 are God's flowers of thought so are those meek wild flowers 

 which we find upon her bosom, the starry bloomings of the 

 thought of earth 1 Should we not learn, too, to read their 

 teachings? perhaps thus the blossoming of Life may be 

 renewed in us. 



Be this as it may these flowers, and trees, and birds we 

 love them best and dearly " out of doors !" 



We know that these Stars may speak drear things to us, 



