116 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
best thoughts and purposes seem ordained to 
come to human beings beneath the open sky, 
as the ancients fabled that Pan found, when he 
was engaged in the chase, the goddess Ceres, 
whom no other of the gods could find when 
seeking seriously. The little I have gained 
from colleges and libraries has certainly not 
worn so well as the little I learned in child- 
hood of the habits of plant, bird, and insect. 
That “weight and sanity of thought,” which 
Coleridge so finely makes the crowning attri- 
bute of Wordsworth, is in no way so well ma- 
tured and cultivated as in the society of nature. 
There may be extremes and affectations, and 
Mary Lamb declared that Wordsworth held it 
doubtful if a dweller in towns had a soul to be 
saved. During the various phases of tran- 
scendental idealism among ourselves in the last 
fifty years, the love of nature has at times as- 
sumed an exaggerated and even a pathetic 
aspect, in the morbid attempts of youths and 
maidens to make it a substitute for vigorous 
thought and action,—a lion endeavoring to 
dine on grass and green leaves. In some cases 
this mental chlorosis reached such a height as 
almost to nauseate one with nature, when in 
the society of the victims ; and surfeited com- 
panions felt inclined to rush to the treadmill 
immediately, or get chosen on the Board of 
