XVI MEMOIR. 



eyes first looked upon the mountains and the river. Those 

 silent companions of his childhood claimed their own in 

 the spirit with which the youth entered upon his profes- 

 sion. To the poet's eye began to be added the philoso- 

 pher's mind ; and the great spectacle of Nature which he 

 had loved as beauty, began to enrich his life as knowledge. 

 Yet I remember, as showing that with all his accurate 

 science he was always a poet, he agreed in many con- 

 versations that the highest enjoyment of beauty was 

 quite independent of use ; and that while the pleasure of 

 a botanist who could at once determine the family and 

 species of a plant, and detail all the peculiarities and fit- 

 ness of its structure, was very great and inappreciable, 

 yet that it was upon a lower level than the instinctive 

 delight in the beauty of the same flower. The botanist 

 could not have the highest pleasure in the flower if he were 

 not a poet. The poet would increase the variety of his 

 pleasure, if he were a botanist. It was this constant sub- 

 jection of science to the sentiment of beauty that made 

 him an artist, and did not leave him an artisan ; and his 

 science was always most accurate and profound, because 

 the very depth and delicacy of his feeling for beauty gave 

 him the utmost patience to learn, and the greatest rapidity 

 to adapt, the means of organizing to the eye the ideal 

 image in his mind. 



About this time the Baron de Liderer, the Austrian 

 Consul General, who had a summer retreat in Newburgh, 

 began to notice the youth, whose botanical -and mineral- 

 ogical tastes so harmonized with his own. Nature keeps 

 fresh the feelings of her votaries, and the Baron, although 

 an old man, made hearty friends with Downing ; and they 

 explored together the hills and lowlands of the neighbor- 

 hood, till it had no more vegetable nor mineral secrets from 



