292 THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS. 



another, be likened, in effect on the observer, to comets in the 

 firmament, which attract the gaze of the most incurious, while 

 the glorious stars and brilliant planets are suspended motionless, 

 or keep their equal courses without an eye or a thought uplifted 

 towards their far-off mysteries ? From these curious outward 



/ 



resemblances, so obvious to the common eye, and striking even 

 to the common mind, we are led, naturally, to consider other 

 likenesses or more properly analogies which subsist, not 

 only between the insect and the vegetable, but between all other 

 orders of created being. In the delightful work of Kirby and 

 Spence,* it has been justly noticed that "whichever way we turn 

 our eyes on the objects of creation above, below, athw art- 

 analogies meet us in every direction ; and it appears clear that 

 the book of Nature is a book of symbols, in which one thing 

 represents another in endless succession/' And how speaks the 

 eloquent Coleridge the metaphysician and the poet of the 

 same exhaustless volume ? " That, in its obvious sense and 

 literal interpretation, it declares the being and attributes of the 

 Almighty Father, none but the fool in heart has ever dared to 

 gainsay ; but it has been the music of gentle and pious minds 

 in all age -^ ; it is the poetry of all human nature to read it 

 likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspon- 

 dences and symbols of the spiritual world." 



Suppose we now con over, though but a child's lesson, out 

 of this universal volume, trying, however imperfectly, to spell 



* Introduction to Entomology. 



