re you will be an
outline of a laurel leaf. You will find in the opening sentence of
Lionardo's treatise, our present text-book, that you must not at first
draw from nature, but from a good master's work, "per assuefarsi a buone
membra," to accustom yourselves, that is, to entirely good
representative organic forms. So your first exercise shall be the top of
the laurel sceptre of Apollo, drawn by an Italian engraver of Lionardo's
own time; then we will draw a laurel leaf itself; and little by little,
I think we may both learn ourselves, and teach to many besides, somewhat
more than we know yet, of the wild olives of Greece, and the wild roses
of England.

108. Next, in Geology, which I will take leave to consider as an
entirely separate science from the zoology of the past, which has lately
usurped its name and interest. In geology itself we find the strength of
many able men occupied in debating questions of which there are yet no
data even for the clear statement; and in seizing advanced theoretical
positions on the mere contingency of their being afterwards tenable;
while, in the meantime, no simple person, taking a holiday in
Cumberland, can get an intelligible section of Skiddaw, or a clear
account of the origin of the Skiddaw slates; and while, though half the
educated society of London travel every summer over the great plain of
Switzerland, none know, or care to know, why that is a plain, and the
Alps to the south of it are Alps; and whether or not the gravel of the
one has anything to do with the rocks of the other. And though every
palace in Europe owes part of its decoration to variegated marbles, and
nearly every woman in Europe part of her decoration to pieces of jasper
or chalcedony, I do not think any geologist could at this moment with
authority tell us either how a piece of marble is stained, or what
causes the streaks in a Scotch pebble.

109. Now, as soon as you have obtained the power of drawing, I do not
say a mountain, but even a stone, accurately, every question of this
kind will become to you at once attractive and definite; you will find
that in the grain, the lustre, and the cleavage-lines of the smallest
fragment of rock, there are recorded forces of every order and
magnitude, from those which raise a continent by one volcanic effort, to
those which at every instant are polishing the apparently complete
crystal in its nest, and conducting the apparently motionless metal in
its vein; and