beauty upon his dark details. He never dreams of its existence. The mysterious phenomena of beauty and love are not recognized in his unnatural classifications. The world to him is a museum, full of complicated skeletons, but there is no life in it, no exhilerating, soul-preserving sympathy; and in spite of his discoveries he profanes the name of Naturalist, because he is not therefore a child of God.

But to the soul accustomed from its early days to associate with natural scenery and the facts of science, the touching thoughts, the wonderful imaginings, the pure and noble aspirations of true poetry, Nature by degrees unlocks her holiest recesses. That which she denied to stubborn intellect alone, she gives with boundless grace when intellect comes hand in hand with love; and while she opens to the wondering soul the mysteries of her great heart, and shows how all its pulses beat with a religious fervour-how she "rests upon the bosom of her God," and draws from the fountain of His love her untold beauty, there is created in that soul a new life; the central truth of all religious sentiment takes root, and will continually grow, and be for all the ages after a purifying and ennobling power.

I have learned

To look on Nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

WORDSWORTH." Tintern Abbey."

For complete details of the Natural History of Charnwood and its neighbourhood, inquirers are referred to the

66

History of Charnwood Forest," by Mr. T. R. POTTER, of Wymeswold; to the "Flora of Leicestershire," by the Misses KIRBY; to "The Physical Geography and Geology of Leicestershire," by Professor ANSTED; and to "Geological Facts of the Ashby Coal Field," by Mr. MAMMATT. These details are beyond the scope of a Handbook, and if I skim, as it were, the cream from their surface, pointing out the most notable curiosities which belong to the district, I shall probably write as much as the majority of visitors will care to read.

For practical knowledge of the very interesting and curious Geology of Charnwood, Mr. James PLANT, of Leicester, is probably the best living authority.

The men

Whom nature's works can charm, with God himself

Hold converse; grown familiar, day by day,

With His conceptions, act upon His plan;

And form to His the relish of their souls.

AKENSIDE.

NOTES GEOLOGICAL.

The following rocks—a large variety for so limited a space—may be studied in this district, viz.:

Granite, Syenite, Greenstone, Porphyry, and Quartz Rock.

Gneiss.

Metamorphic Slates.

Carboniferous Limestone.

Millstone Grit.

Coal.

Volcanic Trap.

Permian Breccia.

Lower New Red Conglomerate (Bunter.)

Upper New Red or Keuper (Sandstones and

Marls.)

White Lias, or upper Rhotic Beds.

Blue Lias (Clay and Limestone.)

Drift beds and Boulders.

Granite, Syenite, Greenstone, Porphyry, and Quartz Rock, are all of them varieties of those Crystalline Formations which have been called

Primary, and have usually been looked upon as of igneous origin,—as having been once in a state of fusion, and as having crystallized on coolingGranite being the original and fundamental form, while the others were forced up, at different periods, through cracks in the Earth's crust, produced by volcanic eruptions.

Gneiss has been regarded as the earliest stratified rock, the produce of the first mud washed from the crystalline rocks by the breakers of the first sea; while the Slates have been supposed to belong to a third period, and to be derived from the Gneiss and the Primaries combined. Professor Ansted, the latest writer on the Geology of Charnwood, repudiates this theory, and maintains that all these rocks, from the Granite to the Slates inclusive, were originally aqueous and therefore stratified deposits, and that those which are now crystalline have become so by the metamorphic effect of heat and pressure acting through long periods. He points, in confirmation of this theory, to the inextricable confusion of crystalline and slaty masses in Charnwood Forest, which no possible scheme of successive eruptions seems to account for. The fact that the fibrous iron of Railway axles changes its character under certain