sumptuous and insolent ignorance, which is
often total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have
for many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiar
with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, and
set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and
perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a
system in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion with
nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied--nor is he anything else than a
slave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons in the
fields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation everywhere
displays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder,
and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. The
rich boy is to be envied, nor is he anything else than a king. The one
sits bewildered among words, the other walks enlightened among things;
the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substance--the
very essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve years old he may be a
better naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to
outlive old Tommy Balmer.

In education--late or early--for heaven's sake let us never separate
things and words! They are married in nature; and what God hath put
together let no man put asunder--'tis a fatal divorce. Without things,
words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than drag
out an useless existence in the dark; without words, their stay and
support, things unaccountably disappear out of the store-house, and may
be for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, stronger
than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for
ever happy in its bright prison-house. On this principle, it is indeed
surprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the most
interesting parts of natural history--ay, even a babe in arms. Remember
Coleridge's beautiful lines to the Nightingale:--

"That strain again!
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! _and I deem it wise
To make him Nature's child_."

How we come to love the Birds of Bewick, and White, and the two Wilsons,
and Montague, and Mudie, an