THE BROOK. 341 



how much more must it exalt and find delight in those 

 transitions with which the study of nature abounds ! 



The bodily pleasure, and the mental delight, which 

 we feel in changing from one posture and one study to 

 another, are given to us for the most wise and bene- 

 ficent purposes ; they are among the most powerful 

 incitements to study ; and were it not that we are apt 

 to dissipate and misapply our faculties, we should 

 never think of being idle, but during those hours when 

 the body needs refreshment or sleep, and them we 

 should make as few as possible. 



Of those scenes which are alike calculated to bring 

 us v down from over excitement, or rouse us from the 

 exhaustion of lassitude, none is better than the margin 

 of a brook. There is not an indication of any thing 

 either disposed or fitted to destroy : those elevated 

 banks, with their alternating glades and coppices, for- 

 bid the action of such winds as sweep the hill-side 

 and the heath, lash the shore in sounds like thunder, 

 make the lake curl its white crusted billows, and even 

 the river run foaming to the sea. That small and 

 gentle stream, now stealing unseen under beds of the 

 sweetest wild flowers, which, like a kind modest friend, 

 it nourishes in secret and in silence, now curling round 

 the large pebble, as if it would not disturb the repose 

 of even a stone, then gliding away into some stagnant 

 angle, where it woos the wild plants to come and quench 

 their thirst, and seems more a garden of herbs, than 

 even an appendage of running water ; and yet again, as 

 if it would not derange the little bank of gravel which 

 has found a resting-place in its bed, it broadens out into 

 a little pool where the gentle water-fowl may swim in 

 2 G3 



