I would gladly devote more space than I can here spare to a review of this little book, so perfectly does it corroborate every word which I have said already as to the moral and intellectual value of such studies. Richard Shield, making himself a first-rate “lepidopterist,” while working with his hands for a pound a week, is the antitype of Mr. Peach, the coast-guardsman, among his Cornish tide-rocks. But more than this, there is about Shield’s book a tone as of Izaak Walton himself, which is very delightful; tender, poetical, and religious, yet full of quiet quaintness and humour; showing in every page how the love for Natural History is in him only one expression of a love for all things beautiful, and pure, and right. If any readers of these pages fancy that I over-praise the book, let them buy it, and judge for themselves. They will thus help the good man toward pursuing his studies with larger and better appliances, and will be (as I expect) surprised to find how much there is to be seen and done, even by a working-man, within a day’s walk of smoky Babylon itself; and how easily a man might, if he would, wash his soul clean for a while from all the turmoil and intrigue, the vanity and vexation of spirit of that “too-populous wilderness,” by going out to be alone a while with God in heaven, and with that earth which He has given to the children of men, not merely for the material wants of their bodies, but as a witness and a sacrament that in Him they live and move, and have their being, “not by bread alone, but by _every_ word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Thus I wrote some twenty years ago, when the study of Natural History was confined mainly to several scientific men, or mere collectors of shells, insects, and dried plants.