CONTRAST OF THE ERROR. 23 



Other, and more readily brings along with it all 

 the relations of its locality, and all the phenomena 

 of the time when it is observed. On this account, 

 he who knows all the birds of the British islands, 

 in their connexions and relations, can, whenever 

 he is so minded, live mentally in all the varied 

 scenes of the British islands, and, therefore, en- 

 joy all the pleasure of them, be his bodily locality 

 where it may. He may be on the bleak moor where 

 there is not a shrub, in the close lane of the city 

 where even the sky is barely seen, in the solitude of 

 a prison-house, or laid on a bed of sickness, deprived 

 of the use of sight, and with all his senses dull and 

 indifferent to present objects. But still, if his former 

 study has been true to nature, nature will not desert 

 him in the hour of affliction, or even at the moment 

 of dissolution. Even then, the eagle and the ptarmi- 

 gan shall fetch him to the mountain, and he shall 

 climb, with bounding heart and sinewed limbs, and 

 the healthful breeze shall play around him, and he 

 shall look down upon a hundred valleys, scan all 

 their inhabitants, and taste aU their freshness, till 

 the grief of the body become clean forgotten in the 

 enjoyment of the mind. Or, if other scenes please 

 him more, the warbler shall lead him to the groves 

 and bowery glades of the forest, and the green leaves 

 shall play in the scented breeze, and the flowers shall 

 blow, and the song of nature shall be sweet and 

 varied, and he shall anew be "the happy boy" even 

 in the extremity of decrepitude. Or the sea-bird 

 shall conduct him to the cliff, against whose caverned 

 base the waves of ten thousand seas have thundered 

 in vain; and he shall look upon the majesty of the 

 waters ; and the ship shall appear, and he shall men- 

 tally get on board, girdle the world, and visit every 

 scene and every tribe of men under the sun. 



