72 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



utilitarian everything on a scale of splendid waste. 

 Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious 

 to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as 

 " Enough is as good as a feast." Give me the feast ; 

 give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets 

 of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The greater 

 the waste, the greater the enjoyment the nearer the 

 approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the 

 fact is obvious ; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs 

 them with open lips along on every breeze, piles up 

 lavish layers of them in the free open air, packs count- 

 less numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. 

 Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything 

 she does. The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the 

 grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth 

 offers to us far more than we can consume the grain?, 

 the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding pro- 

 ducts are beyond the power of all the human race to 

 devour. They can, too, be multiplied a thousandfold. 

 There is no natural lack. Whenever there is lack 

 among us it is from artificial causes, which intelligence 

 should remove. 



From the littleness, and meanness, and niggardli- 

 ness forced upon us by circumstances, what a relief 

 to turn aside to the exceeding plenty of Nature '; 

 There are no bounds to it, there is no comparison 

 to parallel it, so great is this generosity. No 

 physical reason exists why every human being should 

 not have sufficient, at least, of necessities. For any 

 human being to starve, or even to be in trouble about 

 the procuring of simple food, appears, indeed, a strange 

 and unaccountable thing, quite upside down, and con- 



