of the earth, and of the heart.  The parable drawn is that “the air is given us for our life, the rain for our thirst and baptism, the fire for our warmth, the sun for our light, and the earth for our meat and rest.”  Related to the work is “Ethics of the Dust” (1865), lectures to little housewives on mineralogy and crystallography, nature’s work in crystallization being the text for a diatribe against sordid living.  “Sesame and Lilies,” which belongs also to this period of the writer’s work, consists of three addresses, delivered at Manchester and at Dublin, designed specially for young girls, and treating in the main of good and improving literature.  The first of them, “Of Kings’ Treasuries,” deals with the treasures hidden in books, the writings of the world’s great men; its sequel, “Of Queens’ Gardens,” deals with the function and sphere of woman, and, by way of application, with the how and the what to read; the third lecture, on “The Mystery of Life and its Arts,” is a discursive but inspiring consideration of what life is and how most successfully to battle with it in the way of our work and of our appointed duty.  All three lectures, observes a commentator, “tell men and women of the ideals they should set before them; how to read and to build character under the inspiration of the nobility of the past, fitting one’s self for such great society; how to develop noble womanhood; how to bear one’s self toward the wonder of life, toward one’s work in the world, and toward one’s duty to others.”

Other lectures and brochures of or about this period are “Hortus Inclusus” (The Enclosed Garden), being “Messages from the Wood to the Garden sent in happy days to two sister ladies,” residing at Coniston, and collected in 1887; “Arrows of the Chace,” letters on various subjects to newspapers, gathered and edited in 1880; “The Two Paths,” lectures on art and its application to Decoration and Manufacture (1859); “Ariadne Florentina” (1873), a monograph on Italian wood and metal engraving; “Aratra Pentelici” (1872), on the elements and principles of sculpture; and “The Eagle’s Nest” (1872), on the relation of natural science to art.  Still pursuing his delightful methods of interpreting nature and teaching the world instructive lessons, even from the common things of mother earth, we have a series of three eloquent discourses, entitled (1) “Proserpina,” studies of Alpine and other wayside flowers, dwelling on the mystery of growth in plants and the tender beauty of their form; (2) “Deucalion,” a sort of glorified geological text-book, treating of stones and their life-history, and showing the wearing effect upon them of waves and the action of water; and (3) “Love’s Meinie” (1873), a rapture about birds and their feathered plumage, delivered at Eton and at Oxford.  This trilogy, dealing with botany, geology, and ornithology, was presented to his audiences with illustrative drawings, representing the flora met with in his travels or found in the neighborhood of his new home in the Lancashire