THE STUDY OF NATURE. 28 
templation, At the bottom of my dreams I began to 
“feel the Infinite: I had glimpses of God, of the paternal 
divinity of nature, which regards with equal tenderness 
the blade of grass and the star. In this I found the 
chief source of consolation; nay, more, let me say, of 
happiness. 
“Our abode would have offered to an observant mind 
a very agreeable field of study. All creatures under its 
benevolent protection seemed to find an asylum. We 
had a fine fish-pond near the house, but no dove-cot ; 
for my parents could not endure the idea of dooming 
creatures to slavery whose life is all movement and 
freedom. Dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, lived together 
in concord. The tame chickens, the pigeons, followed 
my mother everywhere, and fed from her hand. The 
sparrows built their nests among us; the swallows 
even brooded under our barns ; they flew into our very 
chambers, and returned with each sueceeding spring to ¥ 
the shelter of our roof. 
“ How often, too, have I found, in the goldfinches’ 
nests torn from our cypress-trees by rude autumnal 
/ winds, fragments of my summer-robes buried in the 
aa sand! Beloved birds, which I then sheltered all unwit- 
\e tingly in a fold of my vestment, ye have to-day a surer 
shelter in my heart, but ye know it not! 
“Our nightingales, less domesticated, wove their 
nests in the lonely hedge-rows ; but, confident of a 
: generous welcome, they came to our threshold a hundred 
times a-day, and besought from my mother, for them- 
selves and their family, the silk-worms which had- 
perished. 
