THE WONDERS OF THE SIIOHE. 49 



Seriously, if we wisli rural walks to do our 

 children any good, we must give them a love for 

 rural sights, an object in every walk ; we must 

 teach them — and we can teach them — to find 

 wonder in every insect, sublimity in every hedge- 

 row, the records of past worlds in every pebble, 

 and boundless fertility upon the barren shore ; 

 and so, by teaching them to make full use of that 

 limited sphere in which they now are, make them 

 faithful in a few things, that they may be fit here- 

 after to be rulers over much. 



I may seem to exaggerate the advantages of 

 such studies ; but the question after all is one of 

 experience ; and I have had experience enough 

 and to sj)arc, that what I say is true. I have 

 seen the young man of fierce passions, and un- 

 controlhible daring, expend healtliily that energy 

 which threatened daily to plunge him into reck- 

 lessness, if not into sin, upon hunting out and 

 collecling, through rock and bog, snow and tem- 

 pest, every bird and egg of the neigliboring 

 forest. I liave seen tlie cultivated man, craving 

 for travel arnl for success in life, pent up in the 

 drudgery of Lotulm work, and yet keeping his 

 spirit calm, and perhaps his morals all the more 

 righteous, by spending over his microscope cven- 

 4 



