INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. It ought to be the leading resolve, the great living and actuating desire of every man who has arrived at the maturity of his powers, of every man especially who has received the blessing of a good education, to do something which shall tend to the prosperity of his country and of his species-something beyond the mere routine of those duties which belong to the ordinary life of every good citizen, and which yet may be achieved without the neglect of those duties, or without forsaking that sphere in which Nature and Providence have cast his lot; something, however small, which shall advance, or at least aim to advance, the refinement and moral elevation of his race. This is the only mode by which we can discharge, greatly and fully, that debt of blessings which we receive from God, our parents, and the community in which we live; for mere thankfulness of heart, unseconded by deeds of beneficence and the virtuous exercise of an enlightened intellect, pays nothing, but leaves unsatisfied the highest claims of our nature, and that natural longing after the enjoyment and the diffusion of happiness which fills every healthful bosom. Such a desire, I do not hesitate to confess, has long haunted me; has mingled itself with my cogitations, and, however trivial may appear the result, has been a principal cause of my putting together this work; as it must be the desire of every enlightened mind to look round him and consider in what way he can best promote the national welfare. For my own part, reflecting how many are effectively making known the sublime truths of our religion, how many are gloriously labouring in the fair fields of literature, I am rather desirous to turn the eyes of those whose attention I may be so happy as to gain on the loveliness and influence of Nature; believing, that in so doing, I am subserving religion and literature also. In truth, there is no spirit which it is more important to cherish in a commercial people, as we are, than a spirit of attachment to Nature. Were it not that it had been fostered by our inestimable literature a literature which has caught its noble tone from the Christian faith—there can be no doubt that the calculating spirit of trade would long ago have quenched in the national heart those lofty sentiments which have borne it proudly in the eyes of an admiring world above all mean contamination; and that we should have sunk into that sordid narrowness of soul which has regularly marked commercial states. It is a spirit which, however, as commerce advances, becomes more and more endangered by the very circumstance of our population being engulphed in great towns. Books can and do penetrate into every nook of our most extended and crowded cities; but every day these cities and towns enlarge their boundaries, and the sweet face of Nature is hidden from the inhabitants. We should, therefore, not only make our books breathe into the depth of every street, court, and alley, the natural aliment of human hearts-the love of Naturebut, rouse them, like a trumpet, to get out at times, and renew that animating fellowship which God designed to be maintained between the soul of man and the beauty of the universe. It is a principle undoubtedly implanted in every breast; it is one which cannot, perhaps, be utterly extinguished. We see it under the most unfavourable circumstances, after years of oppression and alienation, struggling through its barriers and exhibiting itself in some miserable specimens of plants in pots, in the little nooks of dreary and smoke-blighted gardens in the centre of the densest cities, and in the lowest habitations of poverty and ignorance. But it is a principle which requires, like all others, culti vation. Let it once be lit up, and it will never die! Let the mind, in which it has once been excited, become enlightened and expanded with knowledge, and it "will grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength." Thus it is that it has ever been found the most intense in the greatest minds: the poets especially, (who are, if truly entitled to that glorious name, particularly accustomed to cherish in their spirits pure and lofty sentiments, liberal opinions, warm and generous emotions, that their writings being eminently imbued with those qualities may diffuse them through society in counteraction of the deadening spirit of the world,) are found invariably ardent lovers of Nature. To them it is a passion and an appetite—their voice sounds from antiquity in Flumina amem sylvasque inglorius. Need I advert to our older poets, who are full of it? To Chaucer, to Gawain Douglas, to the picturesque and Arcadian Spenser, to the universal Shakspeare, to the solemn majesty of Milton? What a beauty and a freshness mark the poetry of the last great man whenever he touches on Nature! We feel, as expressed in his own simile : As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, |