ONLY A VINE-SLIP. 541 



devoured and displaced the Indians ; and some think the plucky English 

 sparrow, after whipping all birds of its weight, is destined in the fu- 

 ture to take their place. The law which permits such strange invasions 

 of foreign seeds and insects is evidently not a demand for them in a 

 place where they strike. It is no part of a scheme of use or benefi- 

 cence ; they are a law unto themselves, and attach where they can find 

 a foothold. They ravage as a fire does where the air or the earth is 

 ready to flame like tinder, and they challenge man, as yet victoriously, 

 to match his newly acquired knowledge, his microscope, and his chem- 

 istry, with the vivacity of their attack. The renowned M. Pasteur 

 vainly fights for his silk-worm, nor is the battle yet decided ; soon all 

 the resources of science, all the skill of the naturalist, will be needed 

 to beat back the invading armies. Man has made, in so much, Nature 

 his slave. He bridges the ocean, he pierces the Appian barrier, he 

 trains the lightning to fetch and carry for him, he pierces stellar space, 

 he analyzes the sun, and, when he feels an obstacle, he forces his way ; 

 neither the sands of Suez nor the marshes of Panama delay him ; but 

 he stands baffled before his invisible enemy. A breath of air can poi- 

 son his cities, or devastate his harvests. Nature thus comes back with 

 an unexpected boomerang. Entre nous, deux mainteyiant. And, 

 though proud man clearly anticipates his final triumph, cholera and 

 yellow fever come and go at their own sweet will. The Colorado 

 beetle journeys comfortably to visit foreign parts. A new plague 

 of locusts, the grasshopper of the West, leaves famine behind him 

 as he moves, and even the Gascon wine, into which the nose of 

 Thackeray once dij)ped, feels an unholy presence, the blight of a new 

 disease. 



But there are other things which fly on the wings of the wind 

 besides the seed-capsule which nourishes, the flower-germ which orna- 

 ments : thought also goes with them as they fly. Never was it so vol- 

 atile, not as once hoarded in some vast brain, packed into folios by the 

 weary hand, buried in the silence of cloisters through long ages, and 

 at last fructifying suddenly in a thousand lives. Thought now is ever 

 active, omnipresent ; an idea now germinates in San Francisco, and a 

 week later is stale in India. The solidest creeds get their edges frit- 

 tered away by these clouds of passing thought. Custom secures a 

 little the stability of things, but much of it is automatic the heart is 

 gone out of it. The monarchist is often a better democrat than his 

 American brother, the priest who intones his service is tampering with 

 agnostic infidelities, the Arab sheik presents you with his photograph, 

 and the King of Siam adds a lift to his palace. There is hardly such a 

 thing as discussion ; assertion usurps the hour, and there is no reply. 

 Everybody could be on either side of the questions which once dis- 

 tracted the world ; and as we see the Prince of Wales over a cigar, 

 trifling with democratic notions, the old noble humbled before the 

 feudality he represents, the priest meshed in a network of hypocrisies 



