CLXXII.

Garden Thoughts-Insect Life.

"Gradual from these what numerous kinds deseend,

Evading even the microscopic eye.

Full nature swarms with life; one wondrous mass
Of animals or atoms organized."-THOMSON.

God dwells not only in the vast and grand, Thunder and storms, and in the pathless sea, The high sun riding in its majesty,

And stars as countless as the sea-shore sand;
But in the infinitely small His hand

Is ever present: His the honey bee
Probing the summer cowslip: His the free
Bold commonwealth of ants, a workman band:
His the lens-open'd world of insect life;
And doubtless tinier myriad forms that fill
Water and air; each with distinctive frame,
And organs all appropriate; fit for strife,
Labour, enjoyment.* All to being came,
And have their ends from one Almighty Will.

*See Note 18.

Garden Thoughts—Chance.

"Pulchritudo mundi, ordo rerum cœlestium, conversio solis siderumque omnium indicant satis aspectu ipso ea omnia non esse fortuita."-CICERO.

"Grant that the Sun had happened to prefer

A foot askant but one diameter,

Lost to the light by that unhappy space

This globe had lain a frozen lonesome mass."-BLACKMORE.

"All Nature is but art unknown to thee,

And Chance, direction which thou can'st not see."-POPE.

"Nothing useless is or low,

Each thing in its place is best."-LONGFELLOW.

"Totam infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem."-VIRGIL.

"Vel capellus habet umbram suam."-PUBL. SYRIUS.

"Hanc igitur in stellis constantiam, hanc tantam tam variis curribus in omni æternitate convenientiam non possum intelligere sine mente, ratione, consilio."-CICERO.

"With Earth's first clay They did the last man knead,

And then of the last harvest sowed the seed:

Yea, the first morning of Creation wrote

What the last dawn of reckoning shall end."-OMAR KHAYOON.

"The Heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insistance, course, proportion, season form,

Office and custom in all line of order."-SHAKESPEARE.

"The lowest round on earth, the topmost on the sky."-DRYDEN.

"Un seul pas trouble souvent la marche du Tems."-CONDORCET. 66 χωρὶς γὰρ ταύτης, οὔτε τῶν κατὰ λόγον, οὔτε τῶν παρὰ λόγον εἶναι δοκούντων οὐδὲν οἷόν τε συντελεσθῆναι.”

POLYBIUS.

Throughout the Universe is Chance unknown:
Less near or nearer to the Sun, this Earth
Were all unfitted for man's place of birth:
Suns and their systems, stars and comets own
One law; to each was its own orbit shown.
All seeming accidents of little worth,
All deeds, events; each thought of woe or mirth,
Springs from its sire, since Adam walk'd alone
In Paradise, as man succeeds to man,
In Time's complete though ravell❜d pedigree.
There is but one first cause: more cannot be:
Such unity and harmony of plan

Are His, that e'en a pebble's shifting here
Is felt through all Creation's boundless sphere.

See Note 19.

Garden Thoughts-Free-will and Destiny.

"Man is free, like a bird in a cage; he can move within certain limits."

LAVATER.

"It may be offensive to our pride, but it is none the less true, that, in his social progress, the free-will of which man so boasts himself in his individual capacity disappears as an active influence, and the domination of general and inflexible laws becomes manifest. The free-will of the individual is supplanted by instinct and automatism in the race. To each individual bee the career is open; he may taste of this flower, and avoid that; he may be industrious in the garden, or idle away his time in the air; but the history of one hive is the history of another hive; there will be a predestined organization-the queen, the drones, the workers. In the midst of a thousand unforeseen, uncalculated, variable acts, a definite result, with unerring certainty, emerges; the combs are built in a preordained way, and filled with honey at last. From bees, and wasps, and ants, and birds-from all that low animal life on which he looks with such supercilious contempt, man is destined one day to learn what in truth he really is."-DRAPER.

To men hath been vouchsafed Free-will; but Man,
Whate'er his age or race, works out by force
Of universal laws his destined course :

From Faith, through Doubt, to Reason, hath he ran,
And runneth-Infancy, Youth, Age-his span :---
Fate's puppet and automaton, his source

Of action lies beyond ken or remorse,
And ruined Empires monument God's plan.
Yet is the Individual fancy-free

To shape and round at will his little hour

Even so, the comb still swelleth in the hives,
Pattern'd by Order, though each honey-bee
Kisseth or scorneth at his choice each flower,
Murmurs on thyme, or in the fox-glove dives.

Garden Thoughts-Swedenborg.

"Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark, what discord follows."-SHAKESPEARE.

"From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike."-POPE. "Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris."-LUCAN.

"The man whose universal eye

Hath swept at once the unbounded scheme of things."-THOMSON.

"It is to the praise and glory of God, and for the benefit of our brethren that we study the nature of created things. In all of them, not only in the harmonious formation of every single creature, but likewise in the beauty of different forms, we can and we ought to admire the majesty and the wisdom of God."-ALBERTUS MAGNUS.

How just his view, the mystic Swede who saw
Nature in all her forms herself repeat;

And, dragging from its innermost retreat

Each faint resemblance, traced harmonious law
Run, like a single thread without a flaw,
Throughout creation; uniform, complete;
And so clomb, strand by strand, unto the seat
Of perfect Godhead, through all things that are.
All the material was to him unfurl'd,

The flag, type, symbol, of the viewless world.

He read in stones, plants, man, sun, moon, stars, climes, The same face many-mask'd; Nature's own rhymes; Close linking by form, series, degree,

The soul to Heav'n, in sweet philosophy.*

*The chain of Being is not by any means an accurate term. Creation cannot be traced link by link. It has been justly and beautifully likened to chain armour, where each link has, as it were, a certain connexion with all the others.

Garden Thoughts-The Telescope and Microscope.

"In the vast and the minute we see

The unambiguous footsteps of the God
Who gives its lustre to the insect's wing,

And wheels his throne upon the rolling world."-COWPER.
"See though this air, this Ocean and this Earth
All matter quick and bursting into birth:
Above, how high progressive life may go,
Around, how wide; how deep extend below!
Vast chain of Being, which from God began,
Nature's etherial, human; angel, man ;

Beast, bird, fish, insect, which no eye may see,
No glass can reach from Infinite to Thee,
From Thee to nothing."-POPE.

"Say not then I will hide myself from the Lord: shall any remember me from above? I shall not be remembered among so many people, for what is my soul among an infinite number of creatures ?"-ECCL. chap. xvi. v. 17.

"Animalia sunt jam partim tantula, eorum

Tertia pars nulla est possit ratione videri

Horum intestinum quodvis quale esse putandum est?

Quid cordis globus aut oculi? quid membra, quid artus ?

Quantula sunt? quid præterea primordia quæque

Unde anima atque animi constet natura, necesse est."-LUCRetus.

There are no limits to God's works: the bound

Is but man's ignorance: new lenses yield
New stars in myriads: pool, tree, flower, and field,
Search'd by the subtle Microscope around,

With life, invisible before, abound,

In radiant plumage cloth'd, or burnish'd shield.
The drop of water stands a World reveal'd,
Teeming with creatures like the Deep profound.
Pilgrims of Science! as ye forward press,
No frontier wall your progress on denies;
The hazy distance clears; the horizon flies:-
Though 'mid Creation's widening circle, man
Feels his pride sink, and dwarfs to nothingness,
No atom is uncared for in Love's plan.