"The most helpful and sacred work which can at 

 present be done for humanity, is to teach people . . . not 

 'how to better themselves,' but how to 'satisfy them- 

 selves. ' . . . And in order to teach men how to be satis- 

 fied, it is necessary fully to understand the art of joy 

 and humble life . . . the life of domestic affection and 

 domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of 

 costless and kind pleasure ; therefore chiefly to the love- 

 liness of the natural world. . . . We shall find that the 

 love of nature, wherever it has existed, has been a faithful 

 and sacred element of feeling ; . . . Nature- worship will 

 be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and 

 power of a Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either 

 induce or controvert ; ... it becomes the channel of cer- 

 tain sacred truths, which by no other means can be con- 

 veyed. ' ' 



JOHN RUSKIN, Frondes Agrestes. 



