Yes. I am very rich, as every man may be who will. In the doings of
our little country neighbourhood I find tragedy and comedy, too
fantastic, sometimes too sad, to be written down. In the words of
those whose talk is of bullocks, I find the materials of all possible
metaphysic, and long weekly that I had time to work them out. In
fifteen miles of moorland I find the materials of all possible
physical science, and long that I had time to work out one smallest
segment of that great sphere. How can I be richer, if I have lying
at my feet all day a thousand times more wealth than I can use?

Some people--most people--in these run-about railway days, would
complain of such a life, in such a 'narrow sphere,' so they call it,
as monotonous. Very likely it is so. But is it to be complained of
on that account? Is monotony in itself an evil? Which is better, to
know many places ill, or to know one place well? Certainly--if a
scientific habit of mind be a gain--it is only by exhausting as far
as possible the significance of an individual phenomenon (is not that
sentence a true scientific one in its magniloquence?) that you can
discover any glimpse of the significance of the universal. Even men
of boundless knowledge, like Humboldt, must have had once their
speciality, their pet subject, or they would have, strictly speaking,
no knowledge at all. The volcanoes of Mexico, patiently and
laboriously investigated in his youth, were to Humboldt, possibly,
the key of the whole Cosmos. I learn more, studying over and over
again the same Bagshot sand and gravel heaps, than I should by
roaming all Europe in search of new geologic wonders. Fifteen years
have I been puzzling at the same questions and have only guessed at a
few of the answers. What sawed out the edges of the moors into long
narrow banks of gravel? What cut them off all flat atop? What makes
Erica Tetralix grow in one soil, and the bracken in another? How did