Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/492

478 pleasure of observing the strange truths which they unfold, the beautiful laws which they reveal, and the resemblances and relations which they display. The false romanticism of vulgar fancy requires something pretentious and unnatural to gratify its taste; but, to the true poetical mind, the humblest moss on the wall, or the green slime that creams on the wayside pool, will suggest trains of pleasing and profitable reflection. He who has an observing eye and an appreciating mind for these minute wonders of Nature, need never be alone. Every nook and corner of the earth, however barren and dreary to superficial minds, has companions for him; and on every path he will find what the Indians call a rustawallah, a delightful road-fellow.

To the cryptogamic botanist Nature reveals herself in her wildest, and also in her fairest aspects. He enters into her guarded retreats—retiring spots of luxuriant, refreshing, and enticing beauty, that are hidden from every other eye; where the great world of strife and toil speaks not, and its cares and sorrows are forgotten, and Nature wakes up the dead divinity within, and rouses the soul to purer and nobler purposes. The peculiar haunts of the objects of his search are found on the sides and summits of lofty mountains, amid the dark, lonely recesses of forests; in the bright bosom of rivers, and lakes, and water-falls; on far-off, unvisited moors, where heaven's serene and passionless blue is the only thing of beauty; and in the mossy retreats of dell and dingle, where Titania and her fays might sport away the dreamy noontide hours. There he finds the pictures which the soul treasures most lovingly; and in these by-ways does he gain the truest insight into the mysteries of life. In thus penetrating into the very heart of Nature, with much toil and exertion it may be, he seems to win her confidence, and to earn the right to look into her areana. By minute contact and continued commune with her alone in the wilderness, he feels in all its fulness and depth the beautiful relationship that exists between the outer and the inner life of creation. To others the landscape may be the mere background of a picture, in the foreground of which human figures are acting; to him its charms are agencies and influences acting on his heart and mingling with his life. The sportsman in search of game frequently wanders into regions that seem primeval in their solitude, and where "human foot had ne'er or rarely been;" but so absorbing is the pursuit in which he is engaged, that he seldom pauses to watch the features of the surrounding scenery, or to notice combinations of objects and effects of light and shade which Nature never displays, except in such unfrequented spots. But to the cryptogamist, on the other hand, these very scenes of Nature lend a nameless charm and interest to the lowly plants he gathers, and are ever after indelibly associated with them in his memory, and are renewed every time he witnesses their faded remains. Hardly a moment passes over the solitary collector amid such secluded scenes, without some grand effect being produced in the surrounding