the elephant, and other game, at the Cape, and study the botany and natural history of these prolific wilds. Let their ideas shoot while they recline under the lone magnificence of the primeval forest, while they gallop over the unappropriated desert, free as the Bedouin, or lie down composedly to sleep, serenaded by the hyena and jackal’s howl, and lion’s roar. Let them learn geology and mineralogy on the Andes and Himalaya, and around every shore where the strata are denuded. Let them wind about among those abrupt rocks and craggy precipices, where they may contemplate the sea-bird’s household economy—the wild herbs of the cliff—the vegetation and shells and monsters of the ocean—the solitary white sail from distant land—the vestiges of olden time, the exuviæ of former worlds, in the {247} exposed strata—the abrasion of the rocky land by the continued battering of the numberless pebbles moved backward and forward by the heaving of the ceaseless wave. Let them study the currents, and winds, and meteorology on the ocean, and enjoy the sublime feeling of riding over it in its wildest mood. Let them join the ranks of freedom in any quarter of the world where freedom is opposed to tyranny. Let them head the savage horde, and introduce the morality and arts of Britain among the ignorant barbarian; or lead out colonies of our starved operatives to new lands of high agricultural capability, where for centuries no population-preventive checks would be necessary. No other employment of life could be so abounding in heart-stirring emotion, as leading out the enthusiastic emigrants, with their huddled groups of children, whom you know you have rescued from the irksome unhealthy toil and wretchedness of the city manufactory; no occupation could be more delightful than cherishing the new-born settlement during the privations and hardships of infancy; in procuring a supply of food, when through mistakes, owing to ignorance of the climate and other circumstances, success had not attended their industry; and in leading them on to an effective self government. One would gladly leave {248} this old world, whose surface is disfigured all over by man’s patched drilled deformities, and pass on to a new one, where inviolated nature has produced and reared her own children after her own fashion, where every plant occupies its own place and blossoms in its own time. This order must afford intense delight to the naturalist, independent of the novelty of every thing, from the constellation in the sky to the lichen on the stone. In such a place, one should feel remorse to suffer the hatchet to work, or the ploughshare to enter in.