378 HOW LUCY LOVED INSECTS. 



orders, families, and species, believed himself, from the acqui- 

 sition of these scanty chips, to have become a deacon in ento- 

 mologic craft. 



To the little Lucy the painting of the science, or the paint- 

 ing of its objects as displayed in the beautiful moths and 

 butterflies and beetles of her father's cabinet, or the splendid 

 plates of his illustrated works, was, of course, its most inviting 

 feature, excepting, perhaps, its poetry, eagerly drunk in by 

 her childish spirit, as it responded in innocent delight to the 

 murmur of insect voices, followed gaily their painted or their 

 iridescent wings from flower to flower, or rose suspended in 

 joyous ecstasy with the May-fly of the morning. Then, as to 

 Dolly Dove, nurse, housekeeper, nay cook besides, as she 

 sometimes was, it was in a modified form of the same spirit, 

 picture -loving and poetic, that she had followed with a flight 

 much bolder than his own, the leading of the family's head in 

 the flowery field of entomology. Scarcely less delightedly 

 than Lucy, had she often admired, through her spectacles, the 

 gems of my uncle's cabinet, or, walking out with us in the 

 pleasant meadows, noticed the winged revellers at their sum- 

 mer sports. But it was chiefly as objects of her simple super- 

 stition that certain insects held in the estimation of Dolly an 

 adventitious rank, raised, instead of lowered, since the remote 

 commencement of her service in the minister's family. She 

 was accustomed to regard her master under a twofold aspect 

 of devoted affection and profound respect. As the man whose 



