But my song has grown too advent'rous. Let us descend th'Aonian mount.--This, however, let me say: If to somewhat abstruse ontological speculations such as these you like to add scientific or other knowledge of the region of your walk--something of the geology, palæontology, mineralogy, zoology, botany, archæology, history, well and good. No sort of knowledge but is profitable for doctrine. The interest and pleasure of walking are greatly enhanced by noting and being able to account for the thousand and one natural phænomena which greet the eye even in the shortest stroll; and few things sooner oust petty worries from the mind than such occupation. Happy is the man who can do this. I, alas, cannot help you here. I have but a bowing acquaintance with Science, though it is always with a deep reverence that I doff my hat to her. Nevertheless, with this I console myself; it seems to matter but little with what sort of eyes you look on Nature, provided you really look. Give her but the seeing eye and the understanding heart, and she is lavish of her gifts.--And (let me roun this in thine ear) perhaps she prefers (woman-like) the understanding heart to the seeing eye; though (woman-like again) she likes to be admired as well as understood--though never (and here most woman-like) does she like to be too curiously regarded.--Sometimes, I confess, I have envied him gifted with the scientific eye: him in whom a granite boulder in a grassy mead rouses long geological trains of thought; to whom the dwarfed horse-tails by lacustrine shores paint pictures of dense equisetaceous forests; for whom a fossil trilobite calls up visions of Silurian seas; him too have I envied who can classify common plants or recognise and name the stones at his feet: can tell us why the lowly daisy is superior to the lordly oak; can expatiate on crystallographic angles; and learnedly descant on amphibole or pyroxene. For myself, I am not versed in the mechanism of Nature. I have never asked to see the wheels go round. I like to see her smile, and am not careful as to what oral or buccal muscles are brought into play for that smile. That she has an anatomy I suppose. But I bethink me of Actæon's fate, he who saw Dian's naked loveliness too near. So thou, beware lest thine eye see so much that thy heart understand too little. Keep thy mind "in a just equipoise of love." Accomplish that, and no knowledge is too high for thee. § 63