Lydia H. Sigourney on the importance of wild nature

    Why preserve the little bits of wild nature that remain? Of dozens of reasons, Lydia H. Sigourney wrote of this one more than 150 years ago:

Dark passion and debasing crimes, destroy the fine edge of the soul, and eat into it, like a corroding canker. Assuming, therefore, that a pure taste is one of the tests of a healthful moral condition, we shall prize it, not only as a source of pleasure, but as an adjunct to virtue, an ally of religion. . . . The fragrant flower, the whitening harvest, the umbrageous grove, the solemn mountain, the mighty cataract, are they not all teachers? or text-books, in the hand of the Great Teacher? (Quoted from The Natural Paradise: Painting in America 1800-1950, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.)
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    For a brief biography of Lydia H. Sigourney, click  here.