4 
NATURE AND BOOKS. 23 
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marked tints, but the Latin names of these -agarics are 
not pleasant. Butterfly blue—but there are several 
varieties ; and this plan is interfered with by two things : 
first, that almost every single item of nature, however 
minute, has got a distinctly different colour, so that the 
dictionary of tints would be immense ; and next, so very 
few would know the object itself that the colour attached 
to it would have no meaning. The power of language 
has been gradually enlarging for a great length of time, 
and I venture to say that the English language at the 
present time can express more, and is more subtle, flex- 
ible, and, at the same time, vigorous, than any of which 
we possess a record. When people talk to me about 
studying Sanscrit, or Greek, or Latin, or German, or, 
still more absurd, French, I feel as if I could fell them 
with a mallet happily. Study the English, and you 
will find everything there, I reply. With such a lan- 
guage I fully anticipate, in years to come, a great de- 
velopment in the power of expressing thoughts and 
feelings which are now thoughts and feelings only. 
How many have said of the sea, ‘It makes me feel some- 
thing I cannot say’! Hence it is clear there exists in 
the intellect a layer, if I may so call it, of thought yet 
dumb—chambers within the mind which require the key 
of new words to unlock. Whenever that is done a fresh 
impetus is given to human progress. There area mil- 
lion books, and yet with all their aid I cannot tell you 
the colour of the May dandelion. There are three 
greens at this moment in my mind : that of the leaf of 
the flower-de-luce, that of the yellow iris leaf, and that 
of the bayonet-like leaf of the common flag. With 
admission to a million books, how am I to tell you the 
difference between these tints? So many, many books, 
- and such a very, very little bit of nature in them! 
