The ideal plan would include two walks: one in the morning for observation, with every sense alert; the other toward night, for a mood of "wise passiveness," wherein Nature should be left free to have her own way with the heart and the imagination. Then the laureate's prayer might be fulfilled:—
"Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music, as before."
But this strict division of time is too often out of the question, and we must contrive, as best we can, to unite the two errands,—study and reverie: using our eyes and ears, but not abusing them; and, on the other hand, giving free play to fancy and imagination, without permitting ourselves to degenerate into impotent dreamers. Every walker ought to be a faithful student of at least one branch of natural history, not omitting Latin names and the very latest discoveries and theories. But, withal, let
him make sure that his acquaintance with out-of-door life is sympathetic, and not merely curious or scientific. All honor to the new science and its votaries; we run small risk of too much learning; but it should be kept in mind that the itch for finding out secrets is to be accounted noble or ignoble, according as the spirit that prompts the research is liberal or petty. Curiosity and love of the truth are not yet identical, however it may flatter our self-esteem to ignore the distinction. One may spend one's days and nights in nothing else but in hearing or telling some new thing, and after all be no better than a gossip. It would prove a sorry exchange for such of us as have entered, in any degree, into the feeling of Wordsworth's lines,—
"To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,"—
and I believe the capacity for such moods to be less uncommon than many suppose,—it would be a sorry bargain, I say, for us to lose this sensitiveness to the charm of living beauty, though meanwhile we were to grow wiser than all the moderns touching the morphology and histology of every blossom under the sun.
"Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail against her beauty?"
Not we, certainly; but we will be bold to add, with Tennyson himself,—
"Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first."
In treating a theme of this kind, it is hard not to violate Nature's own method, and fall into a strain of exhortation. Our intercourse with her is so good and wholesome, such an inexhaustible and ever-ready resource against the world's trouble and unrest, that we would gladly have everybody to share it. We say, over and over, with Emerson,—