JUNE 143 



" There was never a tutor that did professly teach 

 Feh'city, though that be the mistress of all other sciences. 

 Nor did any of us study these things but as aliena, which 

 we ought to have studied as our enjoyments. We studied 

 to inform our Knowledge, but knew not for what end 

 we so studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end 

 we erred in the manner." 



If we cannot somehow have a professor of Felicity we 

 are undone. Perhaps Nature herself will aid. Her pre- 

 sence will certainly make for felicity by enlarging her 

 pupil for a time from the cloistered life which modern 

 towns and their infinite conveniences and servitudes en- 

 courage. Tolstoy has said that in the open air " new 

 relations are formed between pupil and teacher : freer, 

 simpler and more trustful "; and certainly his walk on 

 a winter night with his pupils, chatting and telling tales 

 (see The School at Yasnaya Polyana^ by Leo Tolstoy), 

 leaves an impression of electrical activity and felicity in 

 the young and old minds of that party which is hardly to 

 be surpassed. And how more than by Nature's noble and 

 uncontaminated forms can a sense of beauty be nourished ? 

 Then, too, the reading of great poetry might well be 

 associated with the study of Nature, since there is no 

 great poetry which can be dissevered from Nature, while 

 modern poets have all dipped their pens in the sunlight 

 and wind and great waters, and appeal most to those who 

 most resemble them in their loves. The great religious 

 books, handed down to us by people who lived in closer 

 intercourse with Nature than many of us, cannot be 

 understood by indoor children and adults. Whether con- 

 nected with this or that form of religion or not, whether 

 taken as " intimations of immortality " or not, the most 

 profound and longest remembered feelings are often those 



