The observation of the world around them in those early poets, clear and transparent, was instinctive, almost unconscious. It proceeded not by rules or method, but was spontaneous, prompted by love. What Mrs. Hemans finely says of Walter Scott among his own woods at Abbotsford, may be said of all the great poets in their converse with Nature— “Where every tree had music of its own, To his quick ear of knowledge taught by love.” Likely enough it will be said, that spontaneous, child-like kind of observation was all well enough in the pre-scientific era. But now, in this day of trained observation and experiment, have not the magnifying-glass of the botanist and the crucible of the chemist quite put out the poet’s vocation as an observer of natural things? Have not these taught us truth about Nature, so much more close, exact, and penetrating, as to have discredited altogether that mere surface observation which is all that is possible to the poet? In the presence of this newer, more sifting investigation, can the imagery of the poets any longer live? Has not the rigorous analysis of modern times, and the knowledge thence accruing, abolished the worth and meaning of that first random information gathered by the eye? In reply, may it not be said the observations of the poet have real meaning and truth, but it is a different kind of truth which the poet and the man of science extract from the same object? The poet, in as far as he is an observer at all, must be as true and as accurate in the details he gives as the man of science is, but the end which each seeks in his observation is different. In examining a flower, the botanist, when he has noted the number of stamens and petals, the form of the pistil, the corolla, the calyx, and other floral organs,—when he has registered these, and so given the flower its place in his system, his work is done. These things, too, the poet observes, and in his descriptions, if he does not give them a place, he must at least not contravene them; but he observes them as means to a further end. That end is to see and express the loveliness that is in the flower, not only the beauty of color and of form, but the sentiment which, so to speak, looks out from it, and which is meant to awaken in us an answering emotion. For this end he must observe accurately, since the form and hues of the flower discerned by the eye are a large part of what gives it relation and meaning to the soul. The outward facts of the wild-flowers he must not distort, but reverently observe them; but, when observed, he must not rest in them, but see them as they stand related to the earth out of which they grow, to the wood which surrounds them, to the sky above them, which waits on them with its ministries of dew, rain, and sunshine,—indeed, to the whole world, of which they are a part, and to the human heart, to which they tenderly appeal.