XXIV INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



through vernal lanes, or prying into a thousand 

 sylvan, leafy nooks, b) r the liquid music of 

 running waters, amidst the fragrant heath, or 

 on the flowery lap of the meadow, occupied 

 with winged wonders without end. Oh ! that 

 I could but baptize every heart with the sym- 

 pathetic feeling of what the city-pent child is 

 condemned to lose ; how blank, and poor, and 

 joyless must be the images which fill its infant 

 bosom to that of the country one, whose mind 



Will be a mansion for all lovely forms, 

 His memory be a dwelling-place 

 For all sweet sounds and harmonies ! 



I feel however, an animating assurance that 

 Nature will exert a perpetually increasing in- 

 fluence, not only as a most fertile source of pure 

 and substantial pleasures ; pleasures which, un- 

 like many others, produce instead of satiety de- 

 sire ; but also as a great moral agent : and what 

 effects I anticipate from this growing taste may 

 be readily inferred, when I avow it as one of 

 the most fearless articles of my creed, that it 

 is scarcely possible for a man, in whom its 

 power is once firmly established, to become 

 utterly debased in sentiment or abandoned in 

 principle. His soul may be said to be brought 

 into habitual union with the Author of Na- 

 ture ; 



Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind. 



