Come on, up the field, under the great generous sun, who quarrels with no one, grudges no one, but shines alike upon the evil and the good. What a gay picture he is painting now, with his light-pencils; for in them, remember, and not in the things themselves the colour lies. See how, where the hay has been already carried, he floods all the slopes with yellow light, making them stand out sharp against the black shadows of the wood; while where the grass is standing still, he makes the sheets of sorrel-flower blush rosy red, or dapples the field with white oxeyes.

But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?

What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?

Dark.

That is, no colour. The very grass is not green at night.

Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.

No, no. It is the light of the lantern, which happens to be strong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not strong enough to make a geranium look red.

Not red?

No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaves look green. If you don't believe me, we will try.

But why is that?

Why, I cannot tell: and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall, if you ever have the honour of meeting him.

But now—hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night-jar. Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it shears the long grass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it seems to have merely fallen flat, and you must move it before you find that it has been cut off.

Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them. There is that boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre. And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again. There are fresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in next week.

But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have nothing to do.

Not so. They are all busy enough elsewhere. There is plenty of other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easier work than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallons of beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, till they lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in their old age. You delight in machinery because it is curious: you should delight in it besides because it does good, and nothing but good, where it is used, according to the laws of Lady Why, with care, moderation, and mercy, and fair-play between man and man. For example: just as the mowing-machine saves the mowers, the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,—which they used to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn's floor. And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women, instead of being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as I have seen ere now.

A live manure-cart?

Yes, child. If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands, poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would have said, as I have said, "Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance! Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism! Oh that Madam How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run than human muscles and nerves! Oh that Lady Why would teach them that a woman is the most precious thing on earth, and that if she be turned into a beast of burden, Lady Why—and Madam How likewise—will surely avenge the wrongs of their human sister!" There, you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not care that you should. It is good for little folk that big folk should now and then "talk over their heads," as the saying is, and make them feel how ignorant they are, and how many solemn and earnest questions there are in the world on which they must make up their minds some day, though not yet. But now we will talk about the hay: or rather do you and the rest go and play in the hay and gather it up, build forts of it, storm them, pull them down, build them up again, shout, laugh, and scream till you are hot and tired. You will please Madam How thereby, and Lady Why likewise.

How?

Because Madam How naturally wants her work to succeed, and she is at work now making you.

Making me?

Of course. Making a man of you, out of a boy. And that can only be done by the life-blood which runs through and through you. And the more you laugh and shout, the more pure air will pass into your blood, and make it red and healthy; and the more you romp and play—unless you overtire yourself—the quicker will that blood flow through all your limbs, to make bone and muscle, and help you to grow into a man.

But why does Lady Why like to see us play?

She likes to see you happy, as she likes to see the trees and birds happy. For she knows well that there is no food, nor medicine either, like happiness. If people are not happy enough, they are often tempted to do many wrong deeds, and to think many wrong thoughts: and if by God's grace they know the laws of Lady Why, and keep from sin, still unhappiness, if it goes on too long, wears them out, body and mind; and they grow ill and die, of broken hearts, and broken brains, my child; and so at last, poor souls, find "Rest beneath the Cross."

Children, too, who are unhappy; children who are bullied, and frightened, and kept dull and silent, never thrive. Their bodies do not thrive; for they grow up weak. Their minds do not thrive; for they grow up dull. Their souls do not thrive; for they learn mean, sly, slavish ways, which God forbid you should ever learn. Well said the wise man, "The human plant, like the vegetables, can only flower in sunshine."

So do you go, and enjoy yourself in the sunshine; but remember this—You know what happiness is. Then if you wish to please Lady Why, and Lady Why's Lord and King likewise, you will never pass a little child without trying to make it happier, even by a passing smile. And now be off, and play in the hay, and come back to me when you are tired.

* * * * *

Let us lie down at the foot of this old oak, and see what we can see.

And hear what we can hear, too. What is that humming all round us, now that the noisy mowing-machine has stopped?

And as much softer than the noise of mowing-machine hum, as the machines which make it are more delicate and more curious. Madam How is a very skilful workwoman, and has eyes which see deeper and clearer than all microscopes; as you would find, if you tried to see what makes that "Midsummer hum" of which the haymakers are so fond, because it promises fair weather.

Why, it is only the gnats and flies.

Only the gnats and flies? You might study those gnats and flies for your whole life without finding out all—or more than a very little—about them. I wish I knew how they move those tiny wings of theirs—a thousand times in a second, I dare say, some of them. I wish I knew how far they know that they are happy—for happy they must be, whether they know it or not. I wish I knew how they live at all. I wish I even knew how many sorts there are humming round us at this moment.

How many kinds? Three or four?

More probably thirty or forty round this single tree.

But why should there be so many kinds of living things? Would not one or two have done just as well?

Why, indeed? Why should there not have been only one sort of butterfly, and he only of one colour, a plain brown, or a plain white?

And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the garden at once? Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches, and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits.

And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember: but we may go on with such talk for ever. Wiser men than we have asked the same question: but Lady Why will not answer them yet. However, there is another question, which Madam How seems inclined to answer just now, which is almost as deep and mysterious.

What?

How all these different kinds of things became different.

Oh, do tell me!

Not I. You must begin at the beginning, before you can end at the end, or even make one step towards the end.

What do you mean?

You must learn the differences between things, before you can find out how those differences came about. You must learn Madam How's alphabet before you can read her book. And Madam How's alphabet of animals and plants is, Species, Kinds of things. You must see which are like, and which unlike; what they are like in, and what they are unlike in. You are beginning to do that with your collection of butterflies. You like to arrange them, and those that are most like nearest to each other, and to compare them. You must do that with thousands of different kinds of things before you can read one page of Madam How's Natural History Book rightly.

But it will take so much time and so much trouble.

God grant that you may not spend more time on worse matters, and take more trouble over things which will profit you far less. But so it must be, willy-nilly. You must learn the alphabet if you mean to read. And you must learn the value of the figures before you can do a sum. Why, what would you think of any one who sat down to play at cards—for money too (which I hope and trust you never will do)—before he knew the names of the cards, and which counted highest, and took the other?

Of course he would be very foolish.

Just as foolish are those who make up "theories" (as they call them) about this world, and how it was made, before they have found out what the world is made of. You might as well try to find out how this hay- field was made, without finding out first what the hay is made of.

How the hay-field was made? Was it not always a hay-field?

Ah, yes; the old story, my child: Was not the earth always just what it is now? Let us see for ourselves whether this was always a hay-field.

How?

Just pick out all the different kinds of plants and flowers you can find round us here. How many do you think there are?

Oh—there seem to be four or five.

Just as there were three or four kinds of flies in the air. Pick them, child, and count. Let us have facts.

How many? What! a dozen already?

Yes—and here is another, and another. Why, I have got I don't know how many.

Why not? Bring them here, and let us see. Nine kinds of grasses, and a rush. Six kinds of clovers and vetches; and besides, dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain, and buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear hawkweed, too, which nobody wants.

Why?

Because they are a sign that I am not a good farmer enough, and have not quite turned my Wild into Field.

What do you mean?

Look outside the boundary fence, at the moors and woods; they are forest, Wild—"Wald," as the Germans would call it. Inside the fence is Field—"Feld," as the Germans would call it. Guess why?

Is it because the trees inside have been felled?

Well, some say so, who know more than I. But now go over the fence, and see how many of these plants you can find on the moor.

Oh, I think I know. I am so often on the moor.

I think you would find more kinds outside than you fancy. But what do you know?

That beside some short fine grass about the cattle-paths, there are hardly any grasses on the moor save deer's hair and glade-grass; and all the rest is heath, and moss, and furze, and fern.

Softly—not all; you have forgotten the bog plants; and there are (as I said) many more plants beside on the moor than you fancy. But we will look into that another time. At all events, the plants outside are on the whole quite different from the hay-field.

Of course: that is what makes the field look green and the moor brown.

Not a doubt. They are so different, that they look like bits of two different continents. Scrambling over the fence is like scrambling out of Europe into Australia. Now, how was that difference made? Think. Don't guess, but think. Why does the rich grass come up to the bank, and yet not spread beyond it?

I suppose because it cannot get over.

Not get over? Would not the wind blow the seeds, and the birds carry them? They do get over, in millions, I don't doubt, every summer.

Then why do they not grow?

Think.

Is there any difference in the soil inside and out?

A very good guess. But guesses are no use without facts. Look.

Oh, I remember now. I know now the soil of the field is brown, like the garden; and the soil of the moor all black and peaty.

Yes. But if you dig down two or three feet, you will find the soils of the moor and the field just the same. So perhaps the top soils were once both alike.

I know.

Well, and what do you think about it now? I want you to look and think. I want every one to look and think. Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking. And I do not want you to be miserable.

But shall I be miserable if I do not find out such little things as this.

You will be miserable if you do not learn to understand little things: because then you will not be able to understand great things when you meet them. Children who are not trained to use their eyes and their common sense grow up the more miserable the cleverer they are.

Why?

Because they grow up what men call dreamers, and bigots, and fanatics, causing misery to themselves and to all who deal with them. So I say again, think.

Well, I suppose men must have altered the soil inside the bank.

Well done. But why do you think so?

Because, of course, some one made the bank; and the brown soil only goes up to it.

Well, that is something like common sense. Now you will not say any more, as the cows or the butterflies might, that the hay-field was always there.

And how did men change the soil?

By tilling it with the plough, to sweeten it, and manuring it, to make it rich.

And then did all these beautiful grasses grow up of themselves?

You ought to know that they most likely did not. You know the new enclosures?

Yes.

Well then, do rich grasses come up on them, now that they are broken up?

Oh no, nothing but groundsel, and a few weeds.

Just what, I dare say, came up here at first. But this land was tilled for corn, for hundreds of years, I believe. And just about one hundred years ago it was laid down in grass; that is, sown with grass seeds.

And where did men get the grass seeds from?

Ah, that is a long story; and one that shows our forefathers (though they knew nothing about railroads or electricity) were not such simpletons as some folks think. The way it must have been done was this. Men watched the natural pastures where cattle get fat on the wild grass, as they do in the Fens, and many other parts of England. And then they saved the seeds of those fattening wild grasses, and sowed them in fresh spots. Often they made mistakes. They were careless, and got weeds among the seed—like the buttercups, which do so much harm to this pasture. Or they sowed on soil which would not suit the seed, and it died. But at last, after many failures, they have grown so careful and so clever, that you may send to certain shops, saying what sort of soil yours is, and they will send you just the seeds which will grow there, and no other; and then you have a good pasture for as long as you choose to keep it good.

And how is it kept good?

Look at all those loads of hay, which are being carried off the field. Do you think you can take all that away without putting anything in its place?

Why not?

If I took all the butter out of the churn, what must I do if I want more butter still?

Put more cream in.

So, if I want more grass to grow, I must put on the soil more of what grass is made of.

But the butter don't grow, and the grass does.

What does the grass grow in?

The soil.

Yes. Just as the butter grows in the churn. So you must put fresh grass- stuff continually into the soil, as you put fresh cream into the churn. You have heard the farm men say, "That crop has taken a good deal out of the land"?

Yes.

Then they spoke exact truth. What will that hay turn into by Christmas? Can't you tell? Into milk, of course, which you will drink; and into horseflesh too, which you will use.

Use horseflesh? Not eat it?

No; we have not got as far as that. We did not even make up our minds to taste the Cambridge donkey. But every time the horse draws the carriage, he uses up so much muscle; and that muscle he must get back again by eating hay and corn; and that hay and corn must be put back again into the land by manure, or there will be all the less for the horse next year. For one cannot eat one's cake and keep it too; and no more can one eat one's grass.

So this field is a truly wonderful place. It is no ugly pile of brick and mortar, with a tall chimney pouring out smoke and evil smells, with unhealthy, haggard people toiling inside. Why do you look surprised?

Because—because nobody ever said it was. You mean a manufactory.

Well, and this hay-field is a manufactory: only like most of Madam How's workshops, infinitely more beautiful, as well as infinitely more crafty, than any manufactory of man's building. It is beautiful to behold, and healthy to work in; a joy and blessing alike to the eye, and the mind, and the body: and yet it is a manufactory.

But a manufactory of what?

Of milk of course, and cows, and sheep, and horses; and of your body and mine—for we shall drink the milk and eat the meat. And therefore it is a flesh and milk manufactory. We must put into it every year yard-stuff, tank-stuff, guano, bones, and anything and everything of that kin, that Madam How may cook it for us into grass, and cook the grass again into milk and meat. But if we don't give Madam How material to work on, we cannot expect her to work for us. And what do you think will happen then? She will set to work for herself. The rich grasses will dwindle for want of ammonia (that is smelling salts), and the rich clovers for want of phosphates (that is bone-earth): and in their places will come over the bank the old weeds and grass off the moor, which have not room to get in now, because the ground is coveted already. They want no ammonia nor phosphates—at all events they have none, and that is why the cattle on the moor never get fat. So they can live where these rich grasses cannot. And then they will conquer and thrive; and the Field will turn into Wild once more.

Ah, my child, thank God for your forefathers, when you look over that boundary mark. For the difference between the Field and the Wild is the difference between the old England of Madam How's making, and the new England which she has taught man to make, carrying on what she had only begun and had not time to finish.

That moor is a pattern bit left to show what the greater part of this land was like for long ages after it had risen out of the sea; when there was little or nothing on the flat upper moors save heaths, and ling, and club-mosses, and soft gorse, and needle-whin, and creeping willows; and furze and fern upon the brows; and in the bottoms oak and ash, beech and alder, hazel and mountain ash, holly and thorn, with here and there an aspen or a buckthorn (berry-bearing alder as you call it), and everywhere—where he could thrust down his long root, and thrust up his long shoots—that intruding conqueror and insolent tyrant, the bramble. There were sedges and rushes, too, in the bogs, and coarse grass on the forest pastures—or "leas" as we call them to this day round here—but no real green fields; and, I suspect, very few gay flowers, save in spring the sheets of golden gorse, and in summer the purple heather. Such was old England—or rather, such was this land before it was England; a far sadder, damper, poorer land than now. For one man or one cow or sheep which could have lived on it then, a hundred can live now. And yet, what it was once, that it might become again,—it surely would round here, if this brave English people died out of it, and the land was left to itself once more.

What would happen then, you may guess for yourself, from what you see happen whenever the land is left to itself, as it is in the wood above. In that wood you can still see the grass ridges and furrows which show that it was once ploughed and sown by man; perhaps as late as the time of Henry the Eighth, when a great deal of poor land, as you will read some day, was thrown out of tillage, to become forest and down once more. And what is the mount now? A jungle of oak and beech, cherry and holly, young and old all growing up together, with the mountain ash and bramble and furze coming up so fast beneath them, that we have to cut the paths clear again year by year. Why, even the little cow-wheat, a very old- world plant, which only grows in ancient woods, has found its way back again, I know not whence, and covers the open spaces with its pretty yellow and white flowers. Man had conquered this mount, you see, from Madam How, hundreds of years ago. And she always lets man conquer her, because Lady Why wishes man to conquer: only he must have a fair fight with Madam How first, and try his strength against hers to the utmost. So man conquered the wood for a while; and it became cornfield instead of forest: but he was not strong and wise enough three hundred years ago to keep what he had conquered; and back came Madam How, and took the place into her own hands, and bade the old forest trees and plants come back again—as they would come if they were not stopped year by year, down from the wood, over the pastures—killing the rich grasses as they went, till they met another forest coming up from below, and fought it for many a year, till both made peace, and lived quietly side by side for ages.

Another forest coming up from below? Where would it come from?

From where it is now. Come down and look along the brook, and every drain and grip which runs into the brook. What is here?

Seedling alders, and some withies among them.

Very well. You know how we pull these alders up, and cut them down, and yet they continually come again. Now, if we and all human beings were to leave this pasture for a few hundred years, would not those alders increase into a wood? Would they not kill the grass, and spread right and left, seeding themselves more and more as the grass died, and left the ground bare, till they met the oaks and beeches coming down the hill? And then would begin a great fight, for years and years, between oak and beech against alder and willow.

But how can trees fight? Could they move or beat each other with their boughs?

Not quite that; though they do beat each other with their boughs, fiercely enough, in a gale of wind; and then the trees who have strong and stiff boughs wound those who have brittle and limp boughs, and so hurt them, and if the storms come often enough, kill them. But among these trees in a sheltered valley the larger and stronger would kill the weaker and smaller by simply overshadowing their tops, and starving their roots; starving them, indeed, so much when they grow very thick, that the poor little acorns, and beech mast, and alder seeds would not be able to sprout at all. So they would fight, killing each other's children, till the war ended—I think I can guess how.

How?

The beeches are as dainty as they are beautiful; and they do not like to get their feet wet. So they would venture down the hill only as far as the dry ground lasts, and those who tried to grow any lower would die. But the oaks are hardy, and do not care much where they grow. So they would fight their way down into the wet ground among the alders and willows, till they came to where their enemies were so thick and tall, that the acorns as they fell could not sprout in the darkness. And so you would have at last, along the hill-side, a forest of beech and oak, lower down a forest of oak and alder, and along the stream-side alders and willows only. And that would be a very fair example of the great law of the struggle for existence, which causes the competition of species.

What is that?

Madam How is very stern, though she is always perfectly just; and therefore she makes every living thing fight for its life, and earn its bread, from its birth till its death; and rewards it exactly according to its deserts, and neither more nor less.

And the competition of species means, that each thing, and kind of things, has to compete against the things round it; and to see which is the stronger; and the stronger live, and breed, and spread, and the weaker die out.

But that is very hard.

I know it, my child, I know it. But so it is. And Madam How, no doubt, would be often very clumsy and very cruel, without meaning it, because she never sees beyond her own nose, or thinks at all about the consequences of what she is doing. But Lady Why, who does think about consequences, is her mistress, and orders her about for ever. And Lady Why is, I believe, as loving as she is wise; and therefore we must trust that she guides this great war between living things, and takes care that Madam How kills nothing which ought not to die, and takes nothing away without putting something more beautiful and something more useful in its place; and that even if England were, which God forbid, overrun once more with forests and bramble-brakes, that too would be of use somehow, somewhere, somewhen, in the long ages which are to come hereafter.

And you must remember, too, that since men came into the world with rational heads on their shoulders, Lady Why has been handing over more and more of Madam How's work to them, and some of her own work too: and bids them to put beautiful and useful things in the place of ugly and useless ones; so that now it is men's own fault if they do not use their wits, and do by all the world what they have done by these pastures—change it from a barren moor into a rich hay-field, by copying the laws of Madam How, and making grass compete against heath. But you look thoughtful: what is it you want to know?

Why, you say all living things must fight and scramble for what they can get from each other: and must not I too? For I am a living thing.

Ah, that is the old question, which our Lord answered long ago, and said, "Be not anxious what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal you shall be clothed. For after all these things do the heathen seek, and your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." A few, very few, people have taken that advice. But they have been just the salt of the earth, which has kept mankind from decaying.

But what has that to do with it?

See. You are a living thing, you say. Are you a plant?

No.

Are you an animal?

I do not know. Yes. I suppose I am. I eat, and drink, and sleep, just as dogs and cats do.

Yes. There is no denying that. No one knew that better than St. Paul when he told men that they had a flesh; that is, a body, and an animal's nature in them. But St. Paul told them—of course he was not the first to say so, for all the wise heathens have known that—that there was something more in us, which he called a spirit. Some call it now the moral sentiment, some one thing, some another, but we will keep to the old word: we shall not find a better.

Yes, I know that I have a spirit, a soul.

Better to say that you are a spirit. But what does St. Paul say? That our spirit is to conquer our flesh, and keep it down. That the man in us, in short, which is made in the likeness of God, is to conquer the animal in us, which is made in the likeness of the dog and the cat, and sometimes (I fear) in the likeness of the ape or the pig. You would not wish to be like a cat, much less like an ape or a pig?

Of course not.

Then do not copy them, by competing and struggling for existence against other people.

What do you mean?

Did you never watch the pigs feeding?

Yes, and how they grudge and quarrel, and shove each other's noses out of the trough, and even bite each other because they are so jealous which shall get most.

That is it. And how the biggest pig drives the others away, and would starve them while he got fat, if the man did not drive him off in his turn.

Oh, yes; I know.

Then no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and grudge, and struggle with each other, which shall get most money, most fame, most power over their fellow-men. They will tell you, my child, that that is the true philosophy, and the true wisdom; that competition is the natural law of society, and the source of wealth and prosperity. Do not you listen to them. That is the wisdom of this world, which the flesh teaches the animals; and those who follow it, like the animals, will perish. Such men are not even as wise as Sweep the retriever.

Not as wise as Sweep?

Not they. Sweep will not take away Victor's bone, though he is ten times as big as Victor, and could kill him in a moment; and when he catches a rabbit, does he eat it himself?

Of course not; he brings it and lays it down at our feet.

Because he likes better to do his duty, and be praised for it, than to eat the rabbit, dearly as he longs to eat it.

But he is only an animal. Who taught him to be generous, and dutiful, and faithful?

Who, indeed! Not we, you know that, for he has grown up with us since a puppy. How he learnt it, and his parents before him, is a mystery, of which we can only say, God has taught them, we know not how. But see what has happened—that just because dogs have learnt not to be selfish and to compete—that is, have become civilised and tame—therefore we let them live with us, and love them. Because they try to be good in their simple way, therefore they too have all things added to them, and live far happier, and more comfortable lives than the selfish wolf and fox.

But why have not all animals found out that?

I cannot tell: there may be wise animals and foolish animals, as there are wise and foolish men. Indeed there are. I see a very wise animal there, who never competes; for she has learned something of the golden lesson—that it is more blessed to give than to receive; and she acts on what she has learnt, all day long.

Which do you mean? Why, that is a bee.

Yes, it is a bee: and I wish I were as worthy in my place as that bee is in hers. I wish I could act up as well as she does to the true wisdom, which is self-sacrifice. For whom is that bee working? For herself? If that was all, she only needs to suck the honey as she goes. But she is storing up the wax under her stomach, and bee-bread in her thighs—for whom? Not for herself only, or even for her own children: but for the children of another bee, her queen. For them she labours all day long, builds for them, feeds them, nurses them, spends her love and cunning on them. So does that ant on the path. She is carrying home that stick to build for other ants' children. So do the white ants in the tropics. They have learnt not to compete, but to help each other; not to be selfish, but to sacrifice themselves; and therefore they are strong.

But you told me once that ants would fight and plunder each other's nests. And once we saw two hives of bees fighting in the air, and falling dead by dozens.

My child, do not men fight, and kill each other by thousands with sharp shot and cold steel, because, though they have learnt the virtue of patriotism, they have not yet learnt that of humanity? We must not blame the bees and ants if they are no wiser than men. At least they are wise enough to stand up for their country, that is, their hive, and work for it, and die for it, if need be; and that makes them strong.

But how does that make them strong?

How, is a deep question, and one I can hardly answer yet. But that it has made them so there is no doubt. Look at the solitary bees—the governors as we call them, who live in pairs, in little holes in the banks. How few of them there are; and they never seem to increase in numbers. Then look at the hive bees, how, just because they are civilised,—that is, because they help each other, and feed each other, instead of being solitary and selfish,—they breed so fast, and get so much food, that if they were not killed for their honey, they would soon become a nuisance, and drive us out of the parish.

But then we give them their hives ready made.

True. But in old forest countries, where trees decay and grow hollow, the bees breed in them.

Yes. I remember the bee tree in the fir avenue.

Well then, in many forests in hot countries the bees swarm in hollow trees; and they, and the ants, and the white ants, have it all their own way, and are lords and masters, driving the very wild beasts before them, while the ants and white ants eat up all gardens, and plantations, and clothes, and furniture; till it is a serious question whether in some hot countries man will ever be able to settle, so strong have the ants grown, by ages of civilisation, and not competing against their brothers and sisters.

But may I not compete for prizes against the other boys?

Well, there is no harm in that; for you do not harm the others, even if you win. They will have learnt all the more, while trying for the prize; and so will you, even if you don't get it. But I tell you fairly, trying for prizes is only fit for a child; and when you become a man, you must put away childish things—competition among the rest.

But surely I may try to be better and wiser and more learned than everybody else?

My dearest child, why try for that? Try to be as good, and wise, and learned as you can, and if you find any man, or ten thousand men, superior to you, thank God for it. Do you think that there can be too much wisdom in the world?

Of course not: but I should like to be the wisest man in it.

Then you would only have the heaviest burden of all men on your shoulders.

Why?

Because you would be responsible for more foolish people than any one else. Remember what wise old Moses said, when some one came and told him that certain men in the camp were prophesying—"Would God all the Lord's people did prophesy!" Yes; it would have saved Moses many a heartache, and many a sleepless night, if all the Jews had been wise as he was, and wiser still. So do not you compete with good and wise men, but simply copy them: and whatever you do, do not compete with the wolves, and the apes, and the swine of this world; for that is a game at which you are sure to be beaten.

Why?

Because Lady Why, if she loves you (as I trust she does), will take care that you are beaten, lest you should fancy it was really profitable to live like a cunning sort of animal, and not like a true man. And how she will do that I can tell you. She will take care that you always come across a worse man than you are trying to be,—a more apish man, who can tumble and play monkey-tricks for people's amusement better than you can; or a more swinish man, who can get at more of the pig's-wash than you can; or a more wolfish man, who will eat you up if you do not get out of his way; and so she will disappoint and disgust you, my child, with that greedy, selfish, vain animal life, till you turn round and see your mistake, and try to live the true human life, which also is divine;—to be just and honourable, gentle and forgiving, generous and useful—in one word, to fear God, and keep His commandments: and as you live that life, you will find that, by the eternal laws of Lady Why, all other things will be added to you; that people will be glad to know you, glad to help you, glad to employ you, because they see that you will be of use to them, and will do them no harm. And if you meet (as you will meet) with people better and wiser than yourself, then so much the better for you; for they will love you, and be glad to teach you when they see that you are living the unselfish and harmless life; and that you come to them, not as foolish Critias came to Socrates, to learn political cunning, and become a selfish and ambitious tyrant, but as wise Plato came, that he might learn the laws of Lady Why, and love them for her sake, and teach them to all mankind. And so you, like the plants and animals, will get your deserts exactly, without competing and struggling for existence as they do.

And all this has come out of looking at the hay-field and the wild moor.

Why not? There is an animal in you, and there is a man in you. If the animal gets the upper hand, all your character will fall back into wild useless moor; if the man gets the upper hand, all your character will be cultivated into rich and fertile field. Choose.

Now come down home. The haymakers are resting under the hedge. The horses are dawdling home to the farm. The sun is getting low, and the shadows long. Come home, and go to bed while the house is fragrant with the smell of hay, and dream that you are still playing among the haycocks. When you grow old, you will have other and sadder dreams.



CHAPTER XI—THE WORLD'S END

Hullo! hi! wake up. Jump out of bed, and come to the window, and see where you are.

What a wonderful place!

So it is: though it is only poor old Ireland. Don't you recollect that when we started I told you we were going to Ireland, and through it to the World's End; and here we are now safe at the end of the old world, and beyond us the great Atlantic, and beyond that again, thousands of miles away, the new world, which will be rich and prosperous, civilised and noble, thousands of years hence, when this old world, it may be, will be dead, and little children there will be reading in their history books of Ancient England and of Ancient France, as you now read of Greece and Rome.

But what a wonderful place it is! What are those great green things standing up in the sky, all over purple ribs and bars, with their tops hid in the clouds?

Those are mountains; the bones of some old world, whose poor bare sides Madam How is trying to cover with rich green grass.

And how far off are they?

How I should like to walk up to the top of that one which looks quite close.

You will find it a long walk up there; three miles, I dare say, over black bogs and banks of rock, and up corries and cliffs which you could not climb. There are plenty of cows on that mountain: and yet they look so small, you could not see them, nor I either, without a glass. That long white streak, zigzagging down the mountain side, is a roaring cataract of foam five hundred feet high, full now with last night's rain; but by this afternoon it will have dwindled to a little thread; and to- morrow, when you get up, if no more rain has come down, it will be gone. Madam How works here among the mountains swiftly and hugely, and sometimes terribly enough; as you shall see when you have had your breakfast, and come down to the bridge with me.

But what a beautiful place it is! Flowers and woods and a lawn; and what is that great smooth patch in the lawn just under the window?

Is it an empty flower-bed?

Ah, thereby hangs a strange tale. We will go and look at it after breakfast, and then you shall see with your own eyes one of the wonders which I have been telling you of.

And what is that shining between the trees?

Water.

Is it a lake?

Not a lake, though there are plenty round here; that is salt water, not fresh. Look away to the right, and you see it through the opening of the woods again and again: and now look above the woods. You see a faint blue line, and gray and purple lumps like clouds, which rest upon it far away. That, child, is the great Atlantic Ocean, and those are islands in the far west. The water which washes the bottom of the lawn was but a few months ago pouring out of the Gulf of Mexico, between the Bahamas and Florida, and swept away here as the great ocean river of warm water which we call the Gulf Stream, bringing with it out of the open ocean the shoals of mackerel, and the porpoises and whales which feed upon them. Some fine afternoon we will run down the bay and catch strange fishes, such as you never saw before, and very likely see a living whale.

What? such a whale as they get whalebone from, and which eats sea-moths?

No, they live far north, in the Arctic circle; these are grampuses, and bottle-noses, which feed on fish; not so big as the right whales, but quite big enough to astonish you, if one comes up and blows close to the boat. Get yourself dressed and come down, and then we will go out; we shall have plenty to see and talk of at every step.

Now, you have finished your breakfast at last, so come along, and we shall see what we shall see. First run out across the gravel, and scramble up that bank of lawn, and you will see what you fancied was an empty flower-bed.

Why, it is all hard rock.

Ah, you are come into the land of rocks now: out of the land of sand and gravel; out of a soft young corner of the world into a very hard, old, weather-beaten corner; and you will see rocks enough, and too many for the poor farmers, before you go home again.

But how beautifully smooth and flat the rock is: and yet it is all rounded.

What is it like?

Like—like the half of a shell.

Not badly said, but think again.

Like—like—I know what it is like. Like the back of some great monster peeping up through the turf.

You have got it. Such rocks as these are called in Switzerland "roches moutonnees," because they are, people fancy, like sheep's backs. Now look at the cracks and layers in it. They run across the stone; they have nothing to do with the shape of it. You see that?

Yes: but here are cracks running across them, all along the stone, till the turf hides them.

Look at them again; they are no cracks; they do not go into the stone.

I see. They are scratched; something like those on the elder-stem at home, where the cats sharpen their claws. But it would take a big cat to make them.

Do you recollect what I told you of Madam How's hand, more flexible than any hand of man, and yet strong enough to grind the mountains into paste?

I know. Ice! ice! ice! But are these really ice-marks?

Child, on the place where we now stand, over rich lawns, and warm woods, and shining lochs, lay once on a time hundreds, it may be thousands, of feet of solid ice, crawling off yonder mountain-tops into the ocean there outside; and this is one of its tracks. See how the scratches all point straight down the valley, and straight out to sea. Those mountains are 2000 feet high: but they were much higher once; for the ice has planed the tops off them. Then, it seems to me, the ice sank, and left the mountains standing out of it about half their height, and at that level it stayed, till it had planed down all those lower moors of smooth bare rock between us and the Western ocean; and then it sank again, and dwindled back, leaving moraines (that is, heaps of dirt and stones) all up these valleys here and there, till at the last it melted all away, and poor old Ireland became fit to live in again. We will go down the bay some day and look at those moraines, some of them quite hills of earth, and then you will see for yourself how mighty a chisel the ice-chisel was, and what vast heaps of chips it has left behind. Now then, down over the lawn towards the bridge. Listen to the river, louder and louder every step we take.

What a roar! Is there a waterfall there?

No. It is only the flood. And underneath the roar of that flood, do you not hear a deeper note—a dull rumbling, as if from underground?

Yes. What is it?

The rolling of great stones under water, which are being polished against each other, as they hurry toward the sea. Now, up on the parapet of the bridge. I will hold you tight. Look and see Madam How's rain-spade at work. Look at the terrible yellow torrent below us, almost filling up the arches of the bridge, and leaping high in waves and crests of foam.

Oh, the bridge is falling into the water!

Not a bit. You are not accustomed to see water running below you at ten miles an hour. Never mind that feeling. It will go off in a few seconds. Look; the water is full six feet up the trunks of the trees; over the grass and the king fern, and the tall purple loose-strife—

Oh! Here comes a tree dancing down!

And there are some turfs which have been cut on the mountain. And there is a really sad sight. Look what comes now.

One—two—three.

Why, they are sheep.

Yes. And a sad loss they will be to some poor fellow in the glen above.

And oh! Look at the pig turning round and round solemnly in the corner under the rock. Poor piggy! He ought to have been at home safe in his stye, and not wandering about the hills. And what are these coming now?

Butter firkins, I think. Yes. This is a great flood. It is well if there are no lives lost.

But is it not cruel of Madam How to make such floods?

Well—let us ask one of these men who are looking over the bridge.

Why, what does he say? I cannot understand one word. Is he talking Irish?

Irish-English at least: but what he said was, that it was a mighty fine flood entirely, praised be God; and would help on the potatoes and oats after the drought, and set the grass growing again on the mountains.

And what is he saying now?

That the river will be full of salmon and white trout after this.

What does he mean?

That under our feet now, if we could see through the muddy water, dozens of salmon and sea-trout are running up from the sea.

What! up this furious stream?

Yes. What would be death to you is pleasure and play to them. Up they are going, to spawn in the little brooks among the mountains; and all of them are the best of food, fattened on the herrings and sprats in the sea outside, Madam How's free gift, which does not cost man a farthing, save the expense of nets and rods to catch them.

How can that be?

I will give you a bit of political economy. Suppose a pound of salmon is worth a shilling; and a pound of beef is worth a shilling likewise. Before we can eat the beef, it has cost perhaps tenpence to make that pound of beef out of turnips and grass and oil-cake; and so the country is only twopence a pound richer for it. But Mr. Salmon has made himself out of what he eats in the sea, and so has cost nothing; and the shilling a pound is all clear gain. There—you don't quite understand that piece of political economy. Indeed, it is only in the last two or three years that older heads than yours have got to understand it, and have passed the wise new salmon laws, by which the rivers will be once more as rich with food as the land is, just as they were hundreds of years ago. But now, look again at the river. What do you think makes it so yellow and muddy?

Dirt, of course.

And where does that come from?

Off the mountains?

Yes. Tons on tons of white mud are being carried down past us now; and where will they go?

Into the sea?

Yes, and sink there in the still water, to make new strata at the bottom; and perhaps in them, ages hence, some one will find the bones of those sheep, and of poor Mr. Pig too, fossil—

And the butter firkins too. What fun to find a fossil butter firkin!

But now lift up your eyes to the jagged mountain crests, and their dark sides all laced with silver streams. Out of every crack and cranny there aloft, the rain is bringing down dirt, and stones too, which have been split off by the winter's frosts, deepening every little hollow, and sharpening every peak, and making the hills more jagged and steep year by year.

When the ice went away, the hills were all scraped smooth and round by the glaciers, like the flat rock upon the lawn; and ugly enough they must have looked, most like great brown buns. But ever since then, Madam How has been scooping them out again by her water-chisel into deep glens, mighty cliffs, sharp peaks, such as you see aloft, and making the old hills beautiful once more. Why, even the Alps in Switzerland have been carved out by frost and rain, out of some great flat. The very peak of the Matterhorn, of which you have so often seen a picture, is but one single point left of some enormous bun of rock. All the rest has been carved away by rain and frost; and some day the Matterhorn itself will be carved away, and its last stone topple into the glacier at its foot. See, as we have been talking, we have got into the woods.

Oh, what beautiful woods, just like our own.

Not quite. There are some things growing here which do not grow at home, as you will soon see. And there are no rocks at home, either, as there are here.

How strange, to see trees growing out of rocks! How do their roots get into the stone?

There is plenty of rich mould in the cracks for them to feed on—

"Health to the oak of the mountains; he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts. Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone."

How many sorts of trees there are—oak, and birch and nuts, and mountain- ash, and holly and furze, and heather.

And if you went to some of the islands in the lake up in the glen, you would find wild arbutus—strawberry-tree, as you call it. We will go and get some one day or other.

How long and green the grass is, even on the rocks, and the ferns, and the moss, too. Everything seems richer here than at home.

Of course it is. You are here in the land of perpetual spring, where frost and snow seldom, or never comes.

Oh, look at the ferns under this rock! I must pick some.

Pick away. I will warrant you do not pick all the sorts.

Yes. I have got them all now.

Not so hasty, child; there is plenty of a beautiful fern growing among that moss, which you have passed over. Look here.

What! that little thing a fern!

Hold it up to the light, and see.

What a lovely little thing, like a transparent sea-weed, hung on black wire. What is it?

Film fern, Hymenophyllum. But what are you staring at now, with all your eyes?

Oh! that rock covered with green stars and a cloud of little white and pink flowers growing out of them.

Aha! my good little dog! I thought you would stand to that game when you found it.

What is it, though?

You must answer that yourself. You have seen it a hundred times before.

Why, it is London Pride, that grows in the garden at home.

Of course it is: but the Irish call it St. Patrick's cabbage; though it got here a long time before St. Patrick; and St. Patrick must have been very short of garden-stuff if he ever ate it.

But how did it get here from London?

No, no. How did it get to London from hence? For from this country it came. I suppose the English brought it home in Queen Bess's or James the First's time.

But if it is wild here, and will grow so well in England, why do we not find it wild in England too?

For the same reason that there are no toads or snakes in Ireland. They had not got as far as Ireland before Ireland was parted off from England. And St. Patrick's cabbage, and a good many other plants, had not got as far as England.

But why?

Why, I don't know. But this I know: that when Madam How makes a new sort of plant or animal, she starts it in one single place, and leaves it to take care of itself and earn its own living—as she does you and me and every one—and spread from that place all round as far as it can go. So St. Patrick's cabbage got into this south-west of Ireland, long, long ago; and was such a brave sturdy little plant, that it clambered up to the top of the highest mountains, and over all the rocks. But when it got to the rich lowlands to the eastward, in county Cork, it found all the ground taken up already with other plants; and as they had enough to do to live themselves, they would not let St. Patrick's cabbage settle among them; and it had to be content with living here in the far-west—and, what was very sad, had no means of sending word to its brothers and sisters in the Pyrenees how it was getting on.

What do you mean? Are you making fun of me?

Not the least. I am only telling you a very strange story, which is literally true. Come, and sit down on this bench. You can't catch that great butterfly, he is too strong on the wing for you.

But oh, what a beautiful one!

Yes, orange and black, silver and green, a glorious creature. But you may see him at home sometimes: that plant close to you, you cannot see at home.

Why, it is only great spurge, such as grows in the woods at home.

No. It is Irish spurge which grows here, and sometimes in Devonshire, and then again in the west of Europe, down to the Pyrenees. Don't touch it. Our wood spurge is poisonous enough, but this is worse still; if you get a drop of its milk on your lip or eye, you will be in agonies for half a day. That is the evil plant with which the poachers kill the salmon.

How do they do that?

When the salmon are spawning up in the little brooks, and the water is low, they take that spurge, and grind it between two stones under water, and let the milk run down into the pool; and at that all the poor salmon turn up dead. Then comes the water-bailiff, and catches the poachers. Then comes the policeman, with his sword at his side and his truncheon under his arm: and then comes a "cheap journey" to Tralee Gaol, in which those foolish poachers sit and reconsider themselves, and determine not to break the salmon laws—at least till next time.

But why is it that this spurge, and St. Patrick's cabbage, grow only here in the west? If they got here of themselves, where did they come from? All outside there is sea; and they could not float over that.

Come, I say, and sit down on this bench, and I will tell you a tale,—the story of the Old Atlantis, the sunken land in the far West. Old Plato, the Greek, told legends of it, which you will read some day; and now it seems as if those old legends had some truth in them, after all. We are standing now on one of the last remaining scraps of the old Atlantic land. Look down the bay. Do you see far away, under, the mountains, little islands, long and low?

Oh, yes.

Some of these are old slate, like the mountains; others are limestone; bits of the old coral-reef to the west of Ireland which became dry land.

I know. You told me about it.

Then that land, which is all eaten up by the waves now, once joined Ireland to Cornwall, and to Spain, and to the Azores, and I suspect to the Cape of Good Hope, and what is stranger, to Labrador, on the coast of North America.

Oh! How can you know that?

Listen, and I will give you your first lesson in what I call Bio-geology.

What a long word!

If you can find a shorter one I shall be very much obliged to you, for I hate long words. But what it means is,—Telling how the land has changed in shape, by the plants and animals upon it. And if you ever read (as you will) Mr. Wallace's new book on the Indian Archipelago, you will see what wonderful discoveries men may make about such questions if they will but use their common sense. You know the common pink heather—ling, as we call it?

Of course.

Then that ling grows, not only here and in the north and west of Europe, but in the Azores too; and, what is more strange, in Labrador. Now, as ling can neither swim nor fly, does not common sense tell you that all those countries were probably joined together in old times?

Well: but it seems so strange.

So it is, my child; and so is everything. But, as the fool says in Shakespeare—

"A long time ago the world began, With heigh ho, the wind and the rain."

And the wind and the rain have made strange work with the poor old world ever since. And that is about all that we, who are not very much wiser than Shakespeare's fool, can say about the matter. But again—the London Pride grows here, and so does another saxifrage very like it, which we call Saxifraga Geum. Now, when I saw those two plants growing in the Western Pyrenees, between France and Spain, and with them the beautiful blue butterwort, which grows in these Kerry bogs—we will go and find some—what could I say but that Spain and Ireland must have been joined once?

I suppose it must be so.

Again. There is a little pink butterwort here in the bogs, which grows, too, in dear old Devonshire and Cornwall; and also in the south-west of Scotland. Now, when I found that too, in the bogs near Biarritz, close to the Pyrenees, and knew that it stretched away along the Spanish coast, and into Portugal, what could my common sense lead me to say but that Scotland, and Ireland, and Cornwall, and Spain were all joined once? Those are only a few examples. I could give you a dozen more. For instance, on an island away there to the west, and only in one spot, there grows a little sort of lily, which is found I believe in Brittany, and on the Spanish and Portuguese heaths, and even in North-west Africa. And that Africa and Spain were joined not so very long ago at the Straits of Gibraltar there is no doubt at all.

But where did the Mediterranean Sea run out then?

Perhaps it did not run out at all; but was a salt-water lake, like the Caspian, or the Dead Sea. Perhaps it ran out over what is now the Sahara, the great desert of sand, for, that was a sea-bottom not long ago.

But then, how was this land of Atlantis joined to the Cape of Good Hope?

I cannot say how, or when either. But this is plain: the place in the world where the most beautiful heaths grow is the Cape of Good Hope? You know I showed you Cape heaths once at the nursery gardener's at home.

Oh yes, pink, and yellow, and white; so much larger than ours.

Then it seems (I only say it seems) as if there must have been some land once to the westward, from which the different sorts of heath spread south-eastward to the Cape, and north-eastward into Europe. And that they came north-eastward into Europe seems certain; for there are no heaths in America or Asia.

But how north-eastward?

Think. Stand with your face to the south and think. If a thing comes from the south-west—from there, it must go to the north-east-towards there. Must it not?

Oh yes, I see.

Now then—The farther you go south-west, towards Spain, the more kinds of heath there are, and the handsomer; as if their original home, from which they started, was somewhere down there.

More sorts! What sorts?

How many sorts of heath have we at home?

Three, of course: ling, and purple heath, and bottle heath.

And there are no more in all England, or Wales, or Scotland, except—Now, listen. In the very farthest end of Cornwall there are two more sorts, the Cornish heath and the Orange-bell; and they say (though I never saw it) that the Orange-bell grows near Bournemouth.

Well. That is south and west too.

So it is: but that makes five heaths. Now in the south and west of Ireland all these five heaths grow, and two more: the great Irish heath, with purple bells, and the Mediterranean heath, which flowers in spring.

Oh, I know them. They grow in the Rhododendron beds at home.

Of course. Now again. If you went down to Spain, you would find all those seven heaths, and other sorts with them, and those which are rare in England and Ireland are common there. About Biarritz, on the Spanish frontier, all the moors are covered with Cornish heath, and the bogs with Orange-bell, and lovely they are to see; and growing among them is a tall heath six feet high, which they call there bruyere, or Broomheath, because they make brooms of it: and out of its roots the "briar-root" pipes are made. There are other heaths about that country, too, whose names I do not know; so that when you are there, you fancy yourself in the very home of the heaths: but you are not. They must have come from some land near where the Azores are now; or how could heaths have got past Africa, and the tropics, to the Cape of Good Hope?

It seems very wonderful, to be able to find out that there was a great land once in the ocean all by a few little heaths.

Not by them only, child. There are many other plants, and animals too, which make one think that so it must have been. And now I will tell you something stranger still. There may have been a time—some people say that there must—when Africa and South America were joined by land.

Africa and South America! Was that before the heaths came here, or after?

I cannot tell: but I think, probably after. But this is certain, that there must have been a time when figs, and bamboos, and palms, and sarsaparillas, and many other sorts of plants could get from Africa to America, or the other way, and indeed almost round the world. About the south of France and Italy you will see one beautiful sarsaparilla, with hooked prickles, zigzagging and twining about over rocks and ruins, trunks and stems: and when you do, if you have understanding, it will seem as strange to you as it did to me to remember that the home of the sarsaparillas is not in Europe, but in the forests of Brazil, and the River Plate.

Oh, I have heard about their growing there, and staining the rivers brown, and making them good medicine to drink: but I never thought there were any in Europe.

There are only one or two, and how they got there is a marvel indeed. But now—If there was not dry land between Africa and South America, how did the cats get into America? For they cannot swim.

Cats? People might have brought them over.

Jaguars and Pumas, which you read of in Captain Mayne Reid's books, are cats, and so are the Ocelots or tiger cats.

Oh, I saw them at the Zoological Gardens.

But no one would bring them over, I should think, except to put them in the Zoo.

Not unless they were very foolish.

And much stronger and cleverer than the savages of South America. No, those jaguars and pumus have been in America for ages: and there are those who will tell you—and I think they have some reason on their side—that the jaguar, with his round patches of spots, was once very much the same as the African and Indian leopard, who can climb trees well. So when he got into the tropic forests of America, he took to the trees, and lived among the branches, feeding on sloths and monkeys, and never coming to the ground for weeks, till he grew fatter and stronger and far more terrible than his forefathers. And they will tell you, too, that the puma was, perhaps—I only say perhaps—something like the lion, who (you know) has no spots. But when he got into the forests, he found very little food under the trees, only a very few deer; and so he was starved, and dwindled down to the poor little sheep-stealing rogue he is now, of whom nobody is afraid.

Oh, yes! I remember now A. said he and his men killed six in one day. But do you think it is all true about the pumas and jaguars?

My child, I don't say that it is true: but only that it is likely to be true. In science we must be cautious and modest, and ready to alter our minds whenever we learn fresh facts; only keeping sure of one thing, that the truth, when we find it out, will be far more wonderful than any notions of ours. See! As we have been talking we have got nearly home: and luncheon must be ready.

* * * * *

Why are you opening your eyes at me like the dog when he wants to go out walking?

Because I want to go out. But I don't want to go out walking. I want to go in the yacht.

In the yacht? It does not belong to me.

Oh, that is only fun. I know everybody is going out in it to see such a beautiful island full of ferns, and have a picnic on the rocks; and I know you are going.

Then you know more than I do myself.

But I heard them say you were going.

Then they know more than I do myself.

But would you not like to go?

I might like to go very much indeed; but as I have been knocked about at sea a good deal, and perhaps more than I intend to be again, it is no novelty to me, and there might be other things which I liked still better: for instance, spending the afternoon with you.

Then am I not to go?

I think not. Don't pull such a long face: but be a man, and make up your mind to it, as the geese do to going barefoot.

But why may I not go?

Because I am not Madam How, but your Daddy.

What can that have to do with it?

If you asked Madam How, do you know what she would answer in a moment, as civilly and kindly as could be? She would say—Oh yes, go by all means, and please yourself, my pretty little man. My world is the Paradise which the Irishman talked of, in which "a man might do what was right in the sight of his own eyes, and what was wrong too, as he liked it."

Then Madam How would let me go in the yacht?

Of course she would, or jump overboard when you were in it; or put your finger in the fire, and your head afterwards; or eat Irish spurge, and die like the salmon; or anything else you liked. Nobody is so indulgent as Madam How: and she would be the dearest old lady in the world, but for one ugly trick that she has. She never tells any one what is coming, but leaves them to find it out for themselves. She lets them put their fingers in the fire, and never tells them that they will get burnt.

But that is very cruel and treacherous of her.

My boy, our business is not to call hard names, but to take things as we find them, as the Highlandman said when he ate the braxy mutton. Now shall I, because I am your Daddy, tell you what Madam How would not have told you? When you get on board the yacht, you will think it all very pleasant for an hour, as long as you are in the bay. But presently you will get a little bored, and run about the deck, and disturb people, and want to sit here, there, and everywhere, which I should not like. And when you get beyond that headland, you will find the great rollers coming in from the Atlantic, and the cutter tossing and heaving as you never felt before, under a burning sun. And then my merry little young gentleman will begin to feel a little sick; and then very sick, and more miserable than he ever felt in his life; and wish a thousand times over that he was safe at home, even doing sums in long division; and he will give a great deal of trouble to various kind ladies—which no one has a right to do, if he can help it.

Of course I do not wish to be sick: only it looks such beautiful weather.

And so it is: but don't fancy that last night's rain and wind can have passed without sending in such a swell as will frighten you, when you see the cutter climbing up one side of a wave, and running down the other; Madam How tells me that, though she will not tell you yet.

Then why do they go out?

Because they are accustomed to it. They have come hither all round from Cowes, past the Land's End, and past Cape Clear, and they are not afraid or sick either. But shall I tell you how you would end this evening?—at least so I suspect. Lying miserable in a stuffy cabin, on a sofa, and not quite sure whether you were dead or alive, till you were bundled into a boat about twelve o'clock at night, when you ought to be safe asleep, and come home cold, and wet, and stupid, and ill, and lie in bed all to- morrow.

But will they be wet and cold?

I cannot be sure; but from the look of the sky there to westward, I think some of them will be. So do you make up your mind to stay with me. But if it is fine and smooth to-morrow, perhaps we may row down the bay, and see plenty of wonderful things.

But why is it that Madam How will not tell people beforehand what will happen to them, as you have told me?

Now I will tell you a great secret, which, alas! every one has not found out yet. Madam How will teach you, but only by experience. Lady Why will teach you, but by something very different—by something which has been called—and I know no better names for it—grace and inspiration; by putting into your heart feelings which no man, not even your father and mother, can put there; by making you quick to love what is right, and hate what is wrong, simply because they are right and wrong, though you don't know why they are right and wrong; by making you teachable, modest, reverent, ready to believe those who are older and wiser than you when they tell you what you could never find out for yourself: and so you will be prudent, that is provident, foreseeing, and know what will happen if you do so-and-so; and therefore what is really best and wisest for you.

But why will she be kind enough to do that for me?

For the very same reason that I do it. For God's sake. Because God is your Father in heaven, as I am your father on earth, and He does not wish His little child to be left to the hard teaching of Nature and Law, but to be helped on by many, many unsought and undeserved favours, such as are rightly called "Means of Grace;" and above all by the Gospel and good news that you are God's child, and that God loves you, and has helped and taught you, and will help you and teach you, in a thousand ways of which you are not aware, if only you will be a wise child, and listen to Lady Why, when she cries from her Palace of Wisdom, and the feast which she has prepared, "Whoso is simple let him turn in hither;" and says to him who wants understanding—"Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled."

"Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness."

Yes, I will try and listen to Lady Why: but what will happen if I do not?

That will happen to you, my child—but God forbid it ever should happen—which happens to wicked kings and rulers, and all men, even the greatest and cleverest, if they do not choose to reign by Lady Why's laws, and decree justice according to her eternal ideas of what is just, but only do what seems pleasant and profitable to themselves. On them Lady Why turns round, and says—for she, too, can be awful, ay dreadful, when she needs—

"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would have none of my reproof—" And then come words so terrible, that I will not speak them here in this happy place: but what they mean is this:—

That these foolish people are handed over—as you and I shall be if we do wrong wilfully—to Madam How and her terrible school-house, which is called Nature and the Law, to be treated just as the plants and animals are treated, because they did not choose to behave like men and children of God. And there they learn, whether they like or not, what they might have learnt from Lady Why all along. They learn the great law, that as men sow so they will reap; as they make their bed so they will lie on it: and Madam How can teach that as no one else can in earth or heaven: only, unfortunately for her scholars, she is apt to hit so hard with her rod, which is called Experience, that they never get over it; and therefore most of those who will only be taught by Nature and Law are killed, poor creatures, before they have learnt their lesson; as many a savage tribe is destroyed, ay and great and mighty nations too—the old Roman Empire among them.

And the poor Jews, who were carried away captive to Babylon?

Yes; they would not listen to Lady Why, and so they were taken in hand by Madam How, and were seventy years in her terrible school-house, learning a lesson which, to do them justice, they never forgot again. But now we will talk of something pleasanter. We will go back to Lady Why, and listen to her voice. It sounds gentle and cheerful enough just now. Listen.

What? is she speaking to us now?

Hush! open your eyes and ears once more, for you are growing sleepy with my long sermon. Watch the sleepy shining water, and the sleepy green mountains. Listen to the sleepy lapping of the ripple, and the sleepy sighing of the woods, and let Lady Why talk to you through them in "songs without words," because they are deeper than all words, till you, too, fall asleep with your head upon my knee.

But what does she say?

She says—"Be still. The fulness of joy is peace." There, you are fast asleep; and perhaps that is the best thing for you; for sleep will (so I am informed, though I never saw it happen, nor any one else) put fresh gray matter into your brain; or save the wear and tear of the old gray matter; or something else—when they have settled what it is to do: and if so, you will wake up with a fresh fiddle-string to your little fiddle of a brain, on which you are playing new tunes all day long. So much the better: but when I believe that your brain is you, pretty boy, then I shall believe also that the fiddler is his fiddle.



CHAPTER XII—HOMEWARD BOUND

Come: I suppose you consider yourself quite a good sailor by now?

Oh, yes. I have never been ill yet, though it has been quite rough again and again.

What you call rough, little man. But as you are grown such a very good sailor, and also as the sea is all but smooth, I think we will have a sail in the yacht to-day, and that a tolerably long one.

Oh, how delightful! but I thought we were going home; and the things are all packed up.

And why should we not go homewards in the yacht, things and all?

What, all the way to England?

No, not so far as that; but these kind people, when they came into the harbour last night, offered to take us up the coast to a town, where we will sleep, and start comfortably home to-morrow morning. So now you will have a chance of seeing something of the great sea outside, and of seeing, perhaps, the whale himself.

I hope we shall see the whale. The men say he has been outside the harbour every day this week after the fish.

Very good. Now do you keep quiet, and out of the way, while we are getting ready to go on board; and take a last look at this pretty place, and all its dear kind people.

And the dear kind dogs too, and the cat and the kittens.

* * * * *

Now, come along, and bundle into the boat, if you have done bidding every one good-bye; and take care you don't slip down in the ice-groovings, as you did the other day. There, we are off at last.

Oh, look at them all on the rock watching us and waving their handkerchiefs; and Harper and Paddy too, and little Jimsy and Isy, with their fat bare feet, and their arms round the dogs' necks. I am so sorry to leave them all.

Not sorry to go home?

No, but—They have been so kind; and the dogs were so kind. I am sure they knew we were going, and were sorry too.

Perhaps they were. They knew we were going away, at all events. They know what bringing out boxes and luggage means well enough.

Sam knew, I am sure; but he did not care for us. He was only uneasy because he thought Harper was going, and he should lose his shooting; and as soon as he saw Harper was not getting into the boat, he sat down and scratched himself, quite happy. But do dogs think?

Of course they do, only they do not think in words, as we do.

But how can they think without words?

That is very difficult for you and me to imagine, because we always think in words. They must think in pictures, I suppose, by remembering things which have happened to them. You and I do that in our dreams. I suspect that savages, who have very few words to express their thoughts with, think in pictures, like their own dogs. But that is a long story. We must see about getting on board now, and under way.

* * * * *

Well, and what have you been doing?

Oh, I looked all over the yacht, at the ropes and curious things; and then I looked at the mountains, till I was tired; and then I heard you and some gentleman talking about the land sinking, and I listened. There was no harm in that?

None at all. But what did you hear him say?

That the land must be sinking here, because there were peat-bogs everywhere below high-water mark. Is that true?

Quite true; and that peat would never have been formed where the salt water could get at it, as it does now every tide.

But what was it he said about that cliff over there?

He said that cliff on our right, a hundred feet high, was plainly once joined on to that low island on our left.

What, that long bank of stones, with a house on it?

That is no house. That is a square lump of mud, the last remaining bit of earth which was once the moraine of a glacier. Every year it crumbles into the sea more and more; and in a few years it will be all gone, and nothing left but the great round boulder-stones which the ice brought down from the glaciers behind us.

But how does he know that it was once joined to the cliff?

Because that cliff, and the down behind it, where the cows are fed, is made up, like the island, of nothing but loose earth and stones; and that is why it is bright and green beside the gray rocks and brown heather of the moors at its foot. He knows that it must be an old glacier moraine; and he has reason to think that moraine once stretched right across the bay to the low island, and perhaps on to the other shore, and was eaten out by the sea as the land sank down.

But how does he know that the land sank?

Of that, he says, he is quite certain; and this is what he says.—Suppose there was a glacier here, where we are sailing now: it would end in an ice cliff, such as you have seen a picture of in Captain Cook's Voyages, of which you are so fond. You recollect the pictures of Christmas Sound and Possession Bay?

Oh yes, and pictures of Greenland and Spitzbergen too, with glaciers in the sea.

Then icebergs would break off from that cliff, and carry all the dirt and stones out to sea, perhaps hundreds of miles away, instead of letting it drop here in a heap; and what did fall in a heap here the sea would wash down at once, and smooth it over the sea-bottom, and never let it pile up in a huge bank like that. Do you understand?

I think I do.

Therefore, he says, that great moraine must have been built upon dry land, in the open air; and must have sunk since into the sea, which is gnawing at it day and night, and will some day eat it all up, as it would eat up all the dry land in the world, if Madam How was not continually lifting up fresh land, to make up for what the sea has carried off.

Oh, look there! some one has caught a fish, and is hauling it up. What a strange creature! It is not a mackerel, nor a gurnet, nor a pollock.

How do you know that?

Why, it is running along the top of the water like a snake; and they never do that. Here it comes. It has got a long beak, like a snipe. Oh, let me see.

See if you like: but don't get in the way. Remember you are but a little boy.

What is it? a snake with a bird's head?

No: a snake has no fins; and look at its beak: it is full of little teeth, which no bird has. But a very curious fellow he is, nevertheless: and his name is Gar-fish. Some call him Green-bone, because his bones are green.

But what kind of fish is he? He is like nothing I ever saw.

I believe he is nearest to a pike, though his backbone is different from a pike, and from all other known fishes.

But is he not very rare?

Oh no: he comes to Devonshire and Cornwall with the mackerel, as he has come here; and in calm weather he will swim on the top of the water, and play about, and catch flies, and stand bolt upright with his long nose in the air; and when the fisher-boys throw him a stick, he will jump over it again and again, and play with it in the most ridiculous way.

And what will they do with him?

Cut him up for bait, I suppose, for he is not very good to eat.

Certainly, he does smell very nasty.

Have you only just found out that? Sometimes when I have caught one, he has made the boat smell so that I was glad to throw him overboard, and so he saved his life by his nastiness. But they will catch plenty of mackerel now; for where he is they are; and where they are, perhaps the whale will be; for we are now well outside the harbour, and running across the open bay; and lucky for you that there are no rollers coming in from the Atlantic, and spouting up those cliffs in columns of white foam.

* * * * *

"Hoch!"

Ah! Who was that coughed just behind the ship?

Who, indeed? look round and see.

There is nobody. There could not be in the sea.

Look—there, a quarter of a mile away.

Oh! What is that turning over in the water, like a great black wheel? And a great tooth on it, and—oh! it is gone!

Never mind. It will soon show itself again.

But what was it?

The whale: one of them, at least; for the men say there are two different ones about the bay. That black wheel was part of his back, as he turned down; and the tooth on it was his back-fin.

But the noise, like a giant's cough?

Rather like the blast of a locomotive just starting. That was his breath.

What? as loud as that?

Why not? He is a very big fellow, and has big lungs.

How big is he?

I cannot say: perhaps thirty or forty feet long. We shall be able to see better soon. He will come up again, and very likely nearer us, where those birds are.

I don't want him to come any nearer.

You really need not be afraid. He is quite harmless.

But he might run against the yacht.

He might: and so might a hundred things happen which never do. But I never heard of one of these whales running against a vessel; so I suppose he has sense enough to know that the yacht is no concern of his, and to keep out of its way.

But why does he make that tremendous noise only once, and then go under water again?

You must remember that he is not a fish. A fish takes the water in through his mouth continually, and it runs over his gills, and out behind through his gill-covers. So the gills suck-up the air out of the water, and send it into the fish's blood, just as they do in the newt-larva.

Yes, I know.

But the whale breathes with lungs like you and me; and when he goes under water he has to hold his breath, as you and I have.

What a long time he can hold it.

Yes. He is a wonderful diver. Some whales, they say, will keep under for an hour. But while he is under, mind, the air in his lungs is getting foul, and full of carbonic acid, just as it would in your lungs, if you held your breath. So he is forced to come up at last: and then out of his blowers, which are on the top of his head, he blasts out all the foul breath, and with it the water which has got into his mouth, in a cloud of spray. Then he sucks in fresh air, as much as he wants, and dives again, as you saw him do just now.

And what does he do under water?

Look—and you will see. Look at those birds. We will sail up to them; for Mr. Whale will probably rise among them soon.

Oh, what a screaming and what a fighting! How many sorts there are! What are those beautiful little ones, like great white swallows, with crested heads and forked tails, who hover, and then dip down and pick up something?

Terns—sea-swallows. And there are gulls in hundreds, you see, large and small, gray-backed and black-backed; and over them all two or three great gannets swooping round and round.

Oh! one has fallen into the sea!

Yes, with a splash just like a cannon ball. And here he comes up again, with a fish in his beak. If he had fallen on your head, with that beak of his, he would have split it open. I have heard of men catching gannets by tying a fish on a board, and letting it float; and when the gannet strikes at it he drives his bill into the board, and cannot get it out.

But is not that cruel?

I think so. Gannets are of no use, for eating, or anything else.

What a noise! It is quite deafening. And what are those black birds about, who croak like crows, or parrots?

Look at them. Some have broad bills, with a white stripe on it, and cry something like the moor-hens at home. Those are razor-bills.

And what are those who say "marrock," something like a parrot?

The ones with thin bills? they are guillemots, "murres" as we call them in Devon: but in some places they call them "marrocks," from what they say.

And each has a little baby bird swimming behind it. Oh! there: the mother has cocked up her tail and dived, and the little one is swimming about looking for her! How it cries! It is afraid of the yacht.

And there she comes up again, and cries "marrock" to call it.

Look at it swimming up to her, and cuddling to her, quite happy.

Quite happy. And do you not think that any one who took a gun and shot either that mother or that child would be both cowardly and cruel?

But they might eat them.

These sea-birds are not good to eat. They taste too strong of fish-oil. They are of no use at all, except that the gulls' and terns' feathers are put into girls' hats.

Well they might find plenty of other things to put in their hats.

So I think. Yes: it would be very cruel, very cruel indeed, to do what some do, shoot at these poor things, and leave them floating about wounded till they die. But I suppose, if one gave them one's mind about such doings, and threatened to put the new Sea Fowl Act in force against them, and fine them, and show them up in the newspapers, they would say they meant no harm, and had never thought about its being cruel.

Then they ought to think.

They ought; and so ought you. Half the cruelty in the world, like half the misery, comes simply from people's not thinking; and boys are often very cruel from mere thoughtlessness. So when you are tempted to rob birds' nests, or to set the dogs on a moorhen, or pelt wrens in the hedge, think; and say—How should I like that to be done to me?

I know: but what are all the birds doing?

Look at the water, how it sparkles. It is alive with tiny fish, "fry," "brett" as we call them in the West, which the mackerel are driving up to the top.

Poor little things! How hard on them! The big fish at them from below, and the birds at them from above. And what is that? Thousands of fish leaping out of the water, scrambling over each other's backs. What a curious soft rushing roaring noise they make!

Aha! The eaters are going to be eaten in turn. Those are the mackerel themselves; and I suspect they see Mr. Whale, and are scrambling out of the way as fast as they can, lest he should swallow them down, a dozen at a time. Look out sharp for him now.

I hope he will not come very near.

No. The fish are going from us and past us. If he comes up, he will come up astern of us, so look back. There he is!

That? I thought it was a boat.

Yes. He does look very like a boat upside down. But that is only his head and shoulders. He will blow next.

"Hoch!"

Oh! What a jet of spray, like the Geysers! And the sun made a rainbow on the top of it. He is quite still now.

Yes; he is taking a long breath or two. You need not hold my hand so tight. His head is from us; and when he goes down he will go right away.

Oh, he is turning head over heels! There is his back fin again. And—Ah! was that not a slap! How the water boiled and foamed; and what a tail he had! And how the mackerel flew out of the water!

Yes. You are a lucky boy to have seen that. I have not seen one of those gentlemen show his "flukes," as they call them, since I was a boy on the Cornish coast.

Where is he gone?

Hunting mackerel, away out at sea. But did you notice something odd about his tail, as you call it—though it is really none?

It looked as if it was set on flat, and not upright, like a fish's. But why is it not a tail?

Just because it is set on flat, not upright: and learned men will tell you that those two flukes are the "rudiments"—that is, either the beginning, or more likely the last remains—of two hind feet. But that belongs to the second volume of Madam How's Book of Kind; and you have not yet learned any of the first volume, you know, except about a few butterflies. Look here! Here are more whales coming. Don't be frightened. They are only little ones, mackerel-hunting, like the big one.

What pretty smooth things, turning head over heels, and saying, "Hush, Hush!"

They don't really turn clean over; and that "Hush" is their way of breathing.

Are they the young ones of that great monster?

No; they are porpoises. That big one is, I believe, a bottle-nose. But if you want to know about the kinds of whales, you must ask Dr. Flower at the Royal College of Surgeons, and not me: and he will tell you wonderful things about them.—How some of them have mouths full of strong teeth, like these porpoises; and others, like the great sperm whale in the South Sea, have huge teeth in their lower jaws, and in the upper only holes into which those teeth fit; others like the bottle-nose, only two teeth or so in the lower jaw; and others, like the narwhal, two straight tusks in the upper jaw, only one of which grows, and is what you call a narwhal's horn.

Oh yes. I know of a walking-stick made of one.

And strangest of all, how the right-whales have a few little teeth when they are born, which never come through the gums; but, instead, they grow all along their gums, an enormous curtain of clotted hair, which serves as a net to keep in the tiny sea-animals on which they feed, and let the water strain out.

You mean whalebone? Is whalebone hair?

So it seems. And so is a rhinoceros's horn. A rhinoceros used to be hairy all over in old times: but now he carries all his hair on the end of his nose, except a few bristles on his tail. And the right-whale, not to be done in oddity, carries all his on his gums.

But have no whales any hair?

No real whales: but the Manati, which is very nearly a whale, has long bristly hair left. Don't you remember M.'s letter about the one he saw at Rio Janeiro?

This is all very funny: but what is the use of knowing so much about things' teeth and hair?

What is the use of learning Latin and Greek, and a dozen things more which you have to learn? You don't know yet: but wiser people than you tell you that they will be of use some day. And I can tell you, that if you would only study that gar-fish long enough, and compare him with another fish something like him, who has a long beak to his lower jaw, and none to his upper—and how he eats I cannot guess,—and both of them again with certain fishes like them, which M. Agassiz has found lately, not in the sea, but in the river Amazon; and then think carefully enough over their bones and teeth, and their history from the time they are hatched—why, you would find out, I believe, a story about the river Amazon itself, more wonderful than all the fairy tales you ever read.

Now there is luncheon ready. Come down below, and don't tumble down the companion-stairs; and by the time you have eaten your dinner we shall be very near the shore.

* * * * *

So? Here is my little man on deck, after a good night's rest. And he has not been the least sick, I hear.

Not a bit: but the cabin was so stuffy and hot, I asked leave to come on deck. What a huge steamer! But I do not like it as well as the yacht. It smells of oil and steam, and—

And pigs and bullocks too, I am sorry to say. Don't go forward above them, but stay here with me, and look round.

Where are we now? What are those high hills, far away to the left, above the lowlands and woods?

Those are the shore of the Old World—the Welsh mountains.

And in front of us I can see nothing but flat land. Where is that?

That is the mouth of the Severn and Avon; where we shall be in half an hour more.

And there, on the right, over the low hills, I can see higher ones, blue and hazy.

Those are an island of the Old World, called now the Mendip Hills; and we are steaming along the great strait between the Mendips and the Welsh mountains, which once was coral reef, and is now the Severn sea; and by the time you have eaten your breakfast we shall steam in through a crack in that coral-reef; and you will see what you missed seeing when you went to Ireland, because you went on board at night.

* * * * *

Oh! Where have we got to now? Where is the wide Severn Sea?

Two or three miles beyond us; and here we are in narrow little Avon.

Narrow indeed. I wonder that the steamer does not run against those rocks. But how beautiful they are, and how the trees hang down over the water, and are all reflected in it!

Yes. The gorge of the Avon is always lovely. I saw it first when I was a little boy like you; and I have seen it many a time since, in sunshine and in storm, and thought it more lovely every time. Look! there is something curious.

What? Those great rusty rings fixed into the rock?

Yes. Those may be as old, for aught I know, as Queen Elizabeth's or James's reign.

But why were they put there?

For ships to hold on by, if they lost the tide.

What do you mean?

It is high tide now. That is why the water is almost up to the branches of the trees. But when the tide turns, it will all rush out in a torrent which would sweep ships out to sea again, if they had not steam, as we have, to help them up against the stream. So sailing ships, in old times, fastened themselves to those rings, and rode against the stream till the tide turned, and carried them up to Bristol.