When the religious Cowper confesses in the opening lines of his address to the famous Yardley oak, that the sense of awe and reverence it inspired in him would have made him bow himself down and worship it but for the happy fact that his mind was illumined with the knowledge of the truth, he is but saying what many feel without in most cases recognizing the emotion for what it is—the sense of the supernatural in nature.

Of all the people I have ever known you are the only one I don't know.

In going back we must take our present selves with us: the mind has taken a different colour, and this is thrown back upon our past.

The British boy suffers the greatest restraint during the period when the call of nature, the instincts of play and adventure, are most urgent. Naturally, he looks eagerly forward to the time of escape, which he fondly imagines will be when his boyhood is over and he is free of masters.

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.

My feathered friends were so much to me that I am constantly tempted to make this sketch of my first years a book about birds and little else.