XIV PLAN OF THE WORK. 



by the aid of my book, the pretty bright blue flowered 

 germander speedwell, and one or two more plants of 

 easy discovery, which I happily met with ; and from 

 that day to the present moment, when I am just 

 returned from botanising in the place so splendidly 

 described by Lord Byron, where, 



" The castelPd crag of Drachenfels 

 Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine, " 



CHILDE HAROLD. 



I have never felt more simple and unalloyed pleasure 

 than in the study of Botany. 



By widening the field of thought, if such an expres- 

 sion be allowable, this study- adds much to the plea- 

 sures of a traveller, even when wandering among the 

 sublimest scenery of Nature ; and though Akenside, in 

 a fine burst of poetry, exclaims, 



" Who, that from Alpine heights, his labouring eye 



Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey 



Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave 



Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade, 



And continents of sand : will turn his gaze 



To mark the windings of a scanty rill 



That murmurs at his feet ? " 



PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 



yet this does not agree with my own experience ; for 

 while on our British " Alpine heights," when admiring, 

 as I have done, a glorious sunset from the top of 

 Skiddaw, and while watching the thick mustering of 

 thunder-clouds from the summit of Snowdon ; and no 

 less in Switzerland, when viewing, as I have done, 

 the unclouded majesty of Mont Blanc in the bright 

 sunshine of summer, from the lofty ridge of the Col de 

 Balm, I have always found my thoughts expanded 

 rather than narrowed ; my fancy elevated rather than 

 brought low, by turning from the magnificence and 

 grandeur around me, to the minute plants growing and 

 blooming at my feet. In all such circumstances, while 

 studying the look, the aspect, the countenance of 

 things, as I may call it, from the tiniest moss, or the 



