approaching the kitchen-garden, and was
made out of it. Hundreds of times have I here watched the dancing of
shadows amid a press of sunshine, and other beautiful appearances of
light and shade, flowers and shrubs. What a contrast between this and
the cabbages and onions and carrots that used to grow there on a piece
of ugly-shaped unsightly ground! No reflection, however, either upon
cabbages or onions. The latter, we know, were worshipped by the
Egyptians; and he must have a poor eye for beauty who has not observed
how much of it there is in the form and colour which cabbages and plants
of this genus exhibit through the various stages of their growth and
decay. A richer display of colour in vegetable nature can scarcely be
conceived than Coleridge, my sister, and I saw in a bed of potatoe
plants in blossom near a hut upon the moor between Inversneyd and Loch
Katrine. These blossoms were of such extraordinary beauty and richness
that no one could have passed them without notice. But the sense must be
cultivated through the mind before we can perceive those inexhaustible
treasures of Nature--for such they truly are--without the least
necessary reference to the utility of her productions, or even to the
laws whereupon, as we learn by research, they are dependent. Some are of
opinion that the habit of analysing, decomposing, and anatomising, is
inevitably unfavourable to the perception of beauty. People are led into
this mistake by overlooking the fact that such processes being to a
certain extent within the reach of a limited intellect, we are apt to
ascribe to them that insensibility of which they are in truth the
effect, and not the cause. Admiration and love, to which all knowledge
truly vital must tend, are felt by men of real genius in proportion as
their discoveries in Natural Philosophy are enlarged; and the beauty in
form of a plant or an animal is not made less but more apparent as a
whole by a more accurate insight into its constituent properties and
powers. A _Savant_, who is not also a poet in soul and a religionist in
heart, is a feeble and unhappy creature.

446. *_Humanity_. [XXX.]

These verses and the preceding ones, entitled 'Liberty,' were composed
as one piece, which Mrs. W. complained of as unwieldy and
ill-proportioned; and accordingly it was divided into two, on her
judicious recommendation.

[Printed notes: 'The rocking-stones alluded to in the beginning of the
following verses are supposed