148 GRALL.E. 



cultivated places, even the sterile heath and the stagnant 

 pool, though adverse to our cultivation, have their uses in 

 wild nature ; and but for these, in a climate like ours, and 

 in the absence of culture, the chain of life would speedily be 

 broken. 



Upon such a day, it is not unpleasant to ramble towards 

 the abode of the bittern ; and, to those especially who dwell 

 where all around is art, and where the tremulous motion of 

 the ever-trundling wheel of society dizzies the understanding, 

 till one fancies that the stable laws of nature turn round in 

 concert with the minor revolutions of our pursuits, it is far 

 from being unprofitable. Man, so circumstanced, is apt to 

 descend in intellect, as low, or even lower, than those unclad 

 men of the woods whom he despises ; and there is no better 

 way of enabling him to win back his birthright as a rational 

 and reflective being, than a taste of the cup of wild nature, 

 even though its acerbity should make him writhe at the 

 time. That is the genuine medicine of the mind, far better 

 than all the opiates of the library ; and the bounding pulse 

 of glowing and glorious thought returns all the sooner for its 

 being a little drastic. 



None, perhaps, acts more speedily than a taste of the sea. 

 Take a man who has never been beyond the hum of the 

 city, or the chime of the village clock, and whose thoughts 

 float along with the current of public news in the one, or 

 stagnate with the lazy pool of village chancings in the other ; 

 put him on ship-board on a fine evening, when the glassy 

 water has that blink of greenish purple which landsmen 

 admire, and seamen understand ; give him offing till the 

 turn of the night ; then let the wind be loosed at once, and 

 the accumulating waves heave fathoms up and sink fathoms 

 down ; let there be sea-room, and trim the bark to drive, 

 now vibrating on the ridge of the unbroken wave, now 

 plunging into the thick of that which has been broken by 



