persuasive, he foresees the arts some day popularising science. Until
that day dawns, science will continue to be lame and poetry blind. He
himself cannot smooth or even point out the way, though he thinks that "a
really prudent people would be greedy of beauty," and their public
authorities "as careful of the sense of comfort as of sanitation."

As the writer of those remarkable rustic note-books, _The Bettesworth
Book_ and _Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer_, the author has a claim upon our
attention. But his seriousness, his patience, his almost touching
sincerity, can only command the respect of his readers and nothing more.
He is obsessed by science, haunted and shadowed by it, until he has been
bewildered into awe. He knows, indeed, that art owes its triumphs and
its subtle influence to the fact that it issues straight from our organic
vitality, and is a movement of life-cells with their matchless
unintellectual knowledge. But the fact that poetry does not seem
obviously in love with science has never made him doubt whether it may
not be an argument against his haste to see the marriage ceremony
performed amid public rejoicings.

Many a man has heard or read and believes that the earth goes round the
sun; one small blob of mud among several others, spinning ridiculously
with a waggling motion like a top about to fall. This is the Copernican
system, and the man believes in the system without often knowing as much
about it as its name. But while watching a sunset he sheds his belief;
he sees the sun as a small and useful object, the servant of his needs
and the witness of his ascending effort, sinking slowly behind a range of
mountains, and then he holds the system of Ptolemy. He holds it without
knowing it. In the same way a poet hears, reads, and believes a thousand
undeniable truths which have not yet got into his blood, nor will do
after reading Mr. Bourne's book; he writes, therefore, as if neither