As children, we
none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it.
Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-
changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most
universally insensible to every aspect of Nature not directly
associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity
of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth,
one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn as an Art;
and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by any of us
except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How
much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the
pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little
narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of
mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass,
all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal
certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in
the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth
can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn
sympathy between the creature and the creation around it, a reason
which may perhaps be found in the widely-differing destinies of
man and his earthly sphere.
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