These essays deal for the most part with Science in Arcady. 'Tis mynative country: for I am not of those who 'praise the busy town.' Onthe contrary, in the words of the great poet who has just departed tojoin Milton and Shelley in a place of high collateral glory, I 'love torail against it still,' with a naturalist's bitterness. For the town isalways dead and lifeless. There are who admire it, they say—poorpurblind creatures—because, forsooth, 'there is so much life there.'So much life, indeed! No grass in the streets; no flowers in the lanes;no beetles or butterflies on the dull stone pavements! Brick and mortarhave killed out all life over square miles of Middlesex. For myself, Ilove better the densely-peopled fields than this human desert, thisbeflagged and macadamised man-made solitude. The country teems withlife on every hand; a thousand different plants and flowers in thespangled meadows; a thousand varied denizens of pond, and air, andheath, and copses. Their ways are endless. They attract me far morewith their infinite diversity than the grey and gloomy haunts of thecab-horse and the stock-broker.
But my Arcady, as you will se