As the audience whom I addressed consisted mainly of young persons whose chief employments lay elsewhere than in libraries, I felt that I had no right to reckon on any wide acquaintance with English literature. This will account for the occurrence in the later chapters of many well-known passages of English Poetry, which to persons at all conversant with letters may seem too familiar even for quotation. If, however, the passages quoted served to illustrate the views I wished to impress, I was not desirous to travel beyond well-worn paths. In treating of a subject which has in recent years engaged the thoughts of many distinguished men, it could not but be that I should often come across and use the thoughts of others. No doubt it is not easy always to discriminate between thoughts that have risen spontaneously to one’s own mind, and those which have been suggested by other writers. Whenever I have been aware that I was using thoughts not my own, I have tried to make due acknowledgment of this in the text. At the same time I would wish to acknowledge here more expressly how much I am conscious of obligation to three living writers,—to Canon Mozley of Oxford, for suggestions received from his sermon on “Nature,” and incorporated in my chapter on “the mystical side of Nature;” to Mr. Stopford Brooke for suggestive generalizations contained in his “Theology in the English Poets;” and to Mr. Leslie Stephen for some true and new thoughts in his recent Essay on Wordsworth’s Ethics; some thoughts derived from the two latter writers I have tried to interweave into the last chapter of my book. As to the book itself, I am well aware how small a portion of how vast a subject it has even attempted to deal with. But, as the original lectures were written, so this book is meant, mainly for the young. If, however, it should induce any of these to look on the outward world with more heedful and thoughtful eyes, and to win thence for themselves finer observations, and deeper delight, it will have served a good end. ST SALVATOR’S COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS, _June 12, 1877_. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. THE SOURCES OF POETRY 11 CHAPTER II. THE POETIC FEELING AWAKENED BY THE WORLD OF NATURE 32 CHAPTER III. POETIC AND SCIENTIFIC WONDER 46 CHAPTER IV. WILL SCIENCE PUT OUT POETRY? 57 CHAPTER V. HOW FAR SCIENCE MAY MODIFY POETRY 64 CHAPTER VI. THE MYSTICAL SIDE OF NATURE 77 CHAPTER VII.