192 THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
their daily bfiad, there would have been much less 
time or opportunity for anyone to study science, or 
literature, or history, or to provide themselves with 
comforts and refinements of life. 
All this then, those plants and trees of the far-off 
ages, which seemed to lead such useless lives, have 
o * 
done and are doing for us. There are many people 
in the world who complain that life is dull, that they 
do not see the use of it, and that there seems no work 
specially for them to do. I would advise such people, 
whether they are grown up or little children, to read 
the story of the plants which form the coal. These 
saw no results during their own short existences, they 
only lived and enjoyed the bright sunshine, and did 
their work, and were content. And now thousands, 
probably millions, of years after they lived and died, 
England owes her greatness, and we much of our 
happiness and comfort, to the sunbeams which those 
plants wove into their lives. 
They burst forth again in our fires, in our brilliant 
lights, and in our engines, and do the greater part of 
our work ; teaching us 
That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 
In Memoriam, liv. 
