Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/108

Rh into the country, we may safely say it is taking the town along with us.

Oh, never let such an insult be offered to the trusting heart of youth, as to call that nature, which the "glass of fashion" offers to our view! If young people go to breathe the invigorating sea-breezes, let them, in justice to nature, see the great ocean as it really is, broad, bold, and deep, without the fringe of fashion on its shores. Let them listen to the roaring waves, and run before the sparkling foam, and watch the hollow breakers rise and curl, and dash themselves to rest. Or let them, on still evenings, see the moonlight on the water, her silver pathway over the great deep crossed at intervals by the fisherman's lonely bark, while his rugged form appears for a moment in dark relief, as if contrasting the corporeal with the spiritual. And then let music break the silence—music soft and sweet, and long remembered; for these are pictures graven on the mind; and the sounds then whispered to the soul, are like the language it was born with for the utterance of its secret joys.

Let parents sometimes take their children to the wild hills, where the foot of fashion has never trod. Let them pluck the forest flowers, and weave garlands of the purple heather, and spread their arms to catch the breeze, and look abroad from the bold height, on, far away—away into the distance, until they see the littleness of intervening things. Let them descend into the valley, go into the cottages of the poor, and talk with the shepherd of the phenomena of winds and clouds. Let them learn of him what observations he. has made in his lone watchings among the hills. Let them ask of the peasant about seed-time and harvest; let them taste of his household bread; let them listen to the legends of the place, the old wife's story, the history of the fairy-ring, or of the castle where the great lord dwelt in the ancient times. Let them trace the course of the mountain-stream from the far heights where it falls into a stony basin drop by drop, down the cataract steps by which it leaps into the plain; and then show them the same stream in the distance, a calm deep river winding its silvery way toward the sea.

Nor let them overlook the beautiful and no less wonderful minutiae of nature—the grasshopper in the rich meadow, the wild beet among the broom, or the trout in the