396 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



await us in every rock-pool ; and we have seen how a mere 

 amusement will naturally lead us into the solemn temples 

 of Pliilosophy. 



The naturalist may be anything, everything. He may 

 yield to the charm of shnple observation ; he may study the 

 habits and habitats of animals, and moralise on their ways ; 

 he may use them as starting-points of laborious research ; 

 he may carry his newly-observed facts into the highest region 

 of speculation ; and whether roaming amid the lovely nooks 

 of Nature in quest of varied specimens, or fleeting the quiet 

 hour in observation of his pets — whether he make Natural 

 History an amusement, or both amusement and serious work 

 — it will always offer him exquisite delight. From the 

 schoolboy to the philosopher, all gi-ades find in it something 

 acbnirably suited to their minds. It brings us into closer 

 jiresence of the great mysteries of life ; and while quicken- 

 ina; our sense of the infinite marvels which surromid the 

 simplest object, teaches us many and pregnant lessons 

 which may help us through our daily needs. 



In suggestive but untranslatable verse, Goethe asks what 

 higher aim can we have here on earth than to trace the 

 revelation of the Divine in Nature ; how Fact becomes 

 etherealised into Thought, and how Thought in turn becomes 

 incorporate in Fact — as Greece, which was once a mere 

 geographical boundary, containing a handful of men, has 

 been ever since a spiritual influence moulding the destinies 

 of the world ; or, conversely, as the mere idea of a loco- 

 motive engine which arose in the mind of George Stephenson, 

 passed into the gigantic fact of the Eailway system. 



