cience, our Fairy Godmother, will, unless we perversely reject her
help, and refuse her gifts, so richly endow us, that fewer hours of
labour will serve to supply us with the material necessaries of life,
leaving us more time to ourselves, more leisure to enjoy all that makes
life best worth living.

Even now we all have some leisure, and for it we cannot be too grateful.

"If any one," says Seneca, "gave you a few acres, you would say that you
had received a benefit; can you deny that the boundless extent of the
earth is a benefit? If a house were given you, bright with marble, its
roof beautifully painted with colours and gilding, you would call it no
small benefit. God has built for you a mansion that fears no fire or
ruin ... covered with a roof which glitters in one fashion by day, and
in another by night. Whence comes the breath which you draw; the light
by which you perform the actions of your life? the blood by which your
life is maintained? the meat by which your hunger is appeased?... The
true God has planted, not a few oxen, but all the herds on their
pastures throughout the world, and furnished food to all the flocks; he
has ordained the alternation of summer and winter ... he has invented so
many arts and varieties of voice, so many notes to make music.... We
have implanted in us the seeds of all ages, of all arts; and God our
Master brings forth our intellects from obscurity."[10]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Choses Vues._

[2] Wordsworth.

[3] Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_.

[4] Thoreau.

[5] Spenser.

[6] Darwin's _Voyage of the Beagle_.

[7] Hamerton's _Landscape_.

[8] Shelley.

[9] Howitt's _Book of the Seasons_.

[10] Seneca, _De Beneficiis_.

CHAPTER II

ON ANIMAL LIFE

If thy heart be right, then will every creature be to thee a
mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine.

THOMAS A KEMPIS.

CHAPTER II

ON ANIMAL LIFE

There is no species of animal or plant which would not well repay, I
will not say merely the study of a day, but even the devotion of a
lifetime. Their form and structure, development and habits, geographical
distribution, relation to other living beings, and past history,
constitute an inexhaustible study.

When we consider how much we owe to the Dog, Man's faithful friend, to
the noble Horse, the patient Ox, the Cow, the Sheep, and our other
domestic animals, we cannot be too grateful to them; and if we cannot,