Now I will not maintain, with Frederick the Great, that all our systems of education are wrong, because they aim to make men students or clerks, whereas the mere shape of the body shows (so thought King Frederick) that we are primarily designed for postilions, and should spend most of our lives on horseback.  But it is very certain that all the physical universe takes the side of health and activity, wooing us forth into Nature, imploring us hourly, and in unsuspected ways, to receive her blessed breath into body and soul, and share in her eternal youth.  For this are summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, given; for this do violet and bloodroot come, and gentian and witch-hazel go; for this do changing sunsets make yon path between the pines a gateway into heaven; for this does day shut us down within the loneliness of its dome of light, and night, lifting it, make us free of the vast fellowship of stars; for this do pale meteors wander nightly, soft as wind-blown blossoms, down the air; for this do silent snows transform the winter woods to feathery things, that seem too light to linger, and yet too vast to take their flight; for this does the eternal ocean follow its queen with patient footsteps round earth’s human shores; for this does all the fair creation answer to every dream or mood of man, so that we receive but what we give;—­all is offered to us, to call us from our books and our trade, and summon us into Nature’s health and joy.  To study, with the artist, the least of her beauties,—­to explore, with the man of science, the smallest of her wonders,—­or even simply to wander among her exhaustless resources, like a child, needing no interest unborrowed from the eye,—­this feeds body and brain and heart and soul together.

But I see that your attention is wandering a little, Dolorosus, and perhaps I ought not to be surprised.  I think I hear you respond, impatiently, in general terms, that you are not “sentimental.”  I admit it; never within my memory did you err on that side.  You also hint that you never did care much about weeds or bugs.  The phrases are not scientific, but the opinion is intelligible.  Perhaps my ardor has carried me too fast for my audience.  While it would be a pleasure, no doubt, to see you transformed into an artist or a savant, yet that is scarcely to be expected, and, if attained, might not be quite enough.  The studies of the naturalist, exclusively pursued, may tend to make a man too conscious and critical,—­patronizing Nature, instead of enjoying her.  He may even grow morbidly sensitive, like Buffon, who became so impressed with the delicacy and mystery of the human organization, that he was afraid to stoop even to pick up his own pen, when dropped, but called a servant to restore it.  The artist, also, becomes often narrowed and petty, and regards the universe as a sort of factory, arranged to turn out “good bits of color” for him.  Something is needed to make us more free and unconscious, in our out-door