November, 1867. The Wykehamist No. 11
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The Wykehamist
The Wykehamist’ s Archive
November, 1867. The Wykehamist No. 11
‘ ye the land,’ on whose downs and in whose woods and meadows scarce flowers and ferns yearly are born and die; where some of the rarest butterflies and most of the hawk-moths are to be caught; where big black chrysalises sleep all the winter among the leaves at the feet of the poplars; where the chalk-pits are full of fossils and the river of big trouts; where peewhits screech on the bleak hills, and kingfishers flit on the banks of the chalk streams? Yes, you all know this land, it is the land whose metropolis is Winchester; you know it, but you do not know its treasures, and, what is more, you will not look for them. Maga speaks to present Wykehamists, and yet not even to all of them; she is convinced that they do not know the pleasure of some knowledge, however slight, of Nature in her various shapes. If they did, Maga is sure that there would be less‘ small football’ in the slush of a corner of Meads and more naturalists abroad on half-holidays. Some smile, and sneer too, at the idea of there being any enjoyment to be had from such things. But they smile and sneer because they are ignorant. No wonder that a walk into the country is‘ slow’, and to be condemned to‘ go on hills’, unbearable! Maga would tell them that they are missing one of the greatest blessings and comforts of a man’ s life, that they are putting aside one of the few things on which, in these days, it is possible to pause and think with any degree of satisfaction. It is Nature that they must study if they would see mechanism more wonderful than any machine that is made, beauty beyond all that was ever put on canvass; then insensibly their mind would unfold as some bursting bud, and breathe a fresher atmosphere, they would learn to recognise the beauty and necessity of a perfect law of harmony, and would be induced to ask themselves why it was that they, who were made by the same hand, should live so much less harmoniously; they would learn from the flowers to turn their faces heavenwards and follow the songs of the skylarks. It is only the ignorant who sneer; for who ever heard of a naturalist that spoke ill of his study? unless indeed this be to speak ill of it, [...] unless it be repenting of a study begun, to follow the example of the great naturalist of Sweden, who, when he first saw the English heaths blazing with the common yellow gorse
‘ Knelt before it on the sod, For its beauty thanking God.’
Are then the flints in the quadrangle to be the amount of geology, the grass on‘ turf’ the limit of the botany, and some huge spider of the genus‘ Wykehamist’ to be the ultimum of zoology that Maga’ s brothers are to have heard of? Indeed, she hopes not; she would see them leave for a short time their idols,( a wooden bat and a leathern ball), to explore what will far better repay their trouble— works that are divine. She will warrant that they will hit with twice the strength if their hearts have learnt from the flowers to be light and bright; their singing will become more than the mere utterance of notes, their verse-tasks will not be mere lines. If, then, Maga can persuade her younger brothers, at least those who do not yet hold the reins and have but themselves to improve, to withhold their sneers and endeavour to learn some few lessons from Nature, if she can rouse their hearts to appreciate what a lovely world they live in, she will be happy in having done a good deed; but if she cannot, she would fain leave them alone, she would hie her hence to the loneliest stream among the wildest hills of Derbyshire, where she might watch the mist roll off from the glistening grass, and, pushing her way among flowers that offer their necks to her foot in obeisance, would whisk her fly among golden-bellied trouts that love to come to her hook. For there she would be happy, and bury in oblivion her cradle and her race for ever and an aye!
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