208 FOREST CEEATUHES. 



it is this which causes the unpleasant sensation we 

 experience, when reading an account of any process with 

 which we are familiar by one who is not so. It jars 

 upon our ear to hear incorrect terms applied to our 

 favourite pursuit : a gap is felt to exist between our- 

 selves and him who uses them, and, wrongly or rightly, 

 we are sensible of a movement of estrangement in our- 

 selves and want of sjruipathy towards him. And though 

 each one finds this an exaggeration in another, when it 

 occurs in his own favourite occupation or pastime he is 

 not a whit less susceptible. 



As we observed above, genius will enable a man to 

 behold with his mental vision much that his bodity eye 

 has never seen ; and it is just the prerogative of genius 

 to know by intuition what it has not learned by the 

 ordinary steps to knowledge. Hence every man of 

 genius is more or less a seer. But in characteristic 

 detail even genius would be at fault, nor would know 

 of it without having been a veritable eye-witness. 

 Grenius, for example, could not describe the peculiarities 

 of the wild-duck ; of its flight, its rising from the water 

 when disturbed, and its manner of alighting again on 

 the mere, unless these things had actually been seen. 

 A single epithet may furnish a completer picture than 

 an elaborate description ; but he only can find such 

 epithet to whom the event so described is a familiar, 

 oft-seen thing. No dweller in a country where there 



