THE WONDERS OF THE SHOEE. 15 



But if you seek, reader, rather for pleasure than 

 for wisdom, you can find it in such studies, pure 

 and undefiled. 



Happy, truly, is the naturalist. He has no time 

 for melancholy dreams. The earth becomes to him 

 transparent ; everywhere he sees significancies, har- 

 monies, laws, chains of cause and effect endlessly 

 interlinked, which draw him out of the narrow sphere 

 of self-interest and self-pleasing, into a pure and 

 wholesome region of solemn joy and wonder. He 

 goes up some Snowdon valley ; to him it is a solemn 

 spot (though unnoticed by his companions), where 

 the sta2f's-horn clubmoss ceases to strasfole across 

 the turf, and the tufted alpine clubmoss takes its 



of geology, will not be tempted to say — If Scripture can only be 

 vindicated by snch an outrage to common sense and fact, then I 

 will give up Scripture, and stand by common sense ? For my part, 

 I have seen no book for some years past, which I should more 

 carefully keep out of the hands of the young. I am sorry to have 

 to say this of the work of a friend, both because he is my friend, 

 and because there are thoughts therein, about the creative workings 

 of the Divine mind, which however misapplied, are full of deep 

 truth and beauty, and are too much forgotten now-a-days. But, as 

 Aristotle says where he differs from Plato, " Truth and Plato are 

 both my friends ; hut it is a sacred duty to prefer Truth" 



