is the loveliest little home in all the world.
And we go out from this island home of ours to every land. We have
unrivalled opportunities, therefore, of seeing innumerable types of
natural objects. By observing Nature in so many different aspects,
and by comparing our impressions with one another, we ought to
understand Nature better than any other race. And by entering more
readily into communion with her we, better than others, should
realise the Beauty she possesses.

I am conscious of having myself made most inadequate use of the
splendid opportunities my travels afforded me of seeing the Beauty
of Nature. So I am all the more anxious that those following after
me should not, by like omission, commit the same sin against
themselves and against our country. We owe it to ourselves and to
mankind to give full rein to our instinctive love of Natural Beauty,
and to train and refine every inclination and capacity we have for
appreciating it till we are able to see all those finer glories of which
we now discern only the first faint glow.

And if any other country excel us in appreciation, then it behoves us
to brace ourselves up to emulate and surpass that country, and learn
how to understand Nature better and see more Beauty. For in love of
Natural Beauty, and in capacity for communicating that love,
England ought to be preeminent. She above every other country
should come nearest to the Heart of Nature.

F. E. Y.
_June,_ 1921.

INTRODUCTION

Town children let loose in a meadow dash with shouts of joy to
pluck the nearest flowers. They ravenously pick handfuls and
armfuls as if they could never have enough. They are exactly like
animals in the desert rushing to water. They are satisfying a great
thirst in their souls--the thirst for Beauty. Some of us remember, too,
our first sight of snowy mountains in the Alps or in the Himalaya.
We recall how our spirits _leaped_ to meet the mountains, how we
gasped in wonder and greedily feasted our eyes on the glorious
spectacle. In such cases as these there is something in the natural
object that appeals to something in us. Something in us rushes out to
meet the something in the natural object. A responsive chord is
struck. A relationship is established. We and the natural object come
into harmony with one another. We have recognised in the flower,
the mountain, the landscape, something that is the same as what is in
ourselves. We fall in love with the natural obj