JUNE 145 



training of the mathematician, and he must be alive, 

 which I never heard w^as a necessity for mathematicians. 

 But not anatomy for all, perhaps; for some it might be 

 impossible, and a study of colours, curves, perfumes, 

 voices — a thousand things — might be substituted for it. 

 Yet Nature-study is not designed to produce naturalists, 

 any more than music is taught in order to make musicians. 

 If you produce nothing but naturalists you fail, and you 

 will produce very few. The aim of study is to widen 

 the culture of child and man, to do systematically what 

 Mark Pattison tells us in his dry way he did for himself, 

 by walking and outdoor sports, then — at the late age of 

 seventeen— by collecting and reading such books as The 

 Natural History of Selhorne^ and finally by a slow process 

 of transition from natural history into " the more abstract 

 poetic emotion ... a conscious and declared poetical 

 sentiment and a devoted reading of the poets." Geology 

 did not come for another ten years, " to complete the 

 cycle of thought, and to give that intellectual foundation 

 which is required to make the testimony of the eye, roam- 

 ing over an undulating surface, fruitful and satisfying. 

 When I came in after years to read The Prelude I recog- 

 nized, as if it were my own history which was being told, 

 the steps by which the love of the country boy for his 

 hills and moors grew into poetical susceptibility for all 

 imaginative presentations of beauty in every direction." 

 The botany, etc., would naturally be related to the neigh- 

 bourhood of school or home; for there is no parish or 

 district of which it might not be said, as Jefferies and 

 Thoreau each said of his own, that it is a microcosm. By 

 this means the natural history may easily be linked to a 

 preliminary study of hill and valley and stream, the posi- 



