THE KEYS TO KNOWLEDGE. 2^ 



which only the subject can be bound in the volume 

 of thought, so that it shall never fail in returning 

 to suggestion when it is required. The bird, for 

 instance, which is known only as so many coloured 

 feathers, and naked skin, and horning bill and claws, 

 thus or thus formed, has no connexion with nature, 

 and is not a subject of science of any sort ; and, 

 therefore, unless we constantly trace over the written 

 words, or con them by rote, and thus have that spu- 

 rious and useless memory which we have of other 

 things of which substantially we are ignorant, there 

 is nothing whereby it can be suggested to the mind. 

 But, if we know the live bird in its bush, we have the 

 bush, and the soil where it grows, and the season at 

 which it buds and blossoms, and the caterpillar that 

 feeds on its leaves ; and the fields and farm-houses 

 which are around, with all their reared animals and 

 their cultivated plants ; and the bird stands frontis- 

 piece to a volume on rural economy, any one part of 

 which readily suggests all the rest. Then if the bush 

 is by the margin of the brook, now murmuring over 

 an opposing stone, now settling in a little glassy pool, 

 and anon trundling down a little run among pebbles, 

 with its minnows and its may- flies, the chance is 

 that it will steal our thoughts to its gentle tide, and 

 we will pass the mill-pond with its geese, the church 

 tower with its ivies and its owls, and onward to the 

 river, nor quit the course, till the rolling water has 

 carried us fairly round the globe, and the little bird 

 of the bush has become the key to nature's universal 

 museum. 



Thus, if in our study of nature, we take that order 

 in which the objects of nature present themselves to 

 our observation, that is, first, the general view, and 

 then proceed to the details by analysis, success be- 



