we win
gold and renown, and where we often are obliged to stand in our own
light, and watch our own shadows as they glide, huge and misshapen,
across the inner gloom; let us come out betimes with our gold, that we
may spend it and get "goods" for it, and when we can look forth on that
ample world of daylight which we can never hope to overrun, and into
that overarching heaven where, amid clouds and storms, lightning and
sudden tempest, there is revealed to those who look for them, lucid
openings into the pure, deep empyrean, "as it were the very body of
heaven in its clearness;" and when, best of all, we may remember Who it
is who stretched out these heavens as a tent to dwell in, and on whose
footstool we may kneel, and out of the depths of our heart cry aloud,--

_Te Deum veneramur,
Te Sancte Pater!_

we shall return into our cave, and to our work, all the better of such a
lesson, and of such a reasonable service, and dig none the worse.

Science which ends in itself, or still worse, returns upon its maker,
and gets him to worship himself, is worse than none; it is only when it
makes it more clear than before who is the Maker and Governor, not only
of the objects, but of the subjects of itself, that knowledge is the
mother of virtue. But this is an endless theme. My only aim in these
desultory hints is to impress parents and teachers with the benefits of
the _study_, the personal engagement--with their own hands and eyes, and
legs and ears--in some form or another of natural history, by their
children and pupils and themselves, as counteracting evil, and doing
immediate and actual good. Even the immense activity in the
Post-Office-stamp line of business among our youngsters has been of
immense use in many ways, besides being a diversion and an interest. I
myself came to the knowledge of Queensland, and a great deal more,
through its blue twopenny.

If any one wishes to know how far wise and clever and patriotic men may
occasionally go in the way of giving "your son" a stone for bread, and a
serpent for a fish,--may get the nation's money for that which is not
bread, and give their own labor for that which satisfies no one;
industriously making sawdust into the shapes of bread, and chaff into
the appearance of meal, and contriving, at wonderful expense of money
and brains, to show what can be done in the way of feeding upon
wind,--let him take a turn through certain galleries of the Kensington
Museum.

"Yest