DIGNITY OF LABOR. G9 



records of bearded kings, but the secrets of life, the secrets of 

 creation, mystic signs and symbols, the keys of which are lost 

 to earth, and are read only in heaven. Ages upon ages ago it 

 received the command to bring forth seed after its kind, and 

 it has never forgotten its trust ; buried, like Egypt's wheat, 

 with its mummy reaper, for three thousand years, it never for- 

 gets its duty. No human power can make it produce aught 

 from its tiny seed, excepting " after its kind ;" and to-day it 

 rears its beautiful shaft crowned with waving, graceful flowers 

 and tasselled seed vessels, as of old. Do we know any thing, 

 after all, of this slighted, unnoticed grass ? Have you really 

 read one of its mysteries ? It grows from the seed, you say — 

 but how, and why ? What is hidden in that small shell, which 

 brings forth this strange organization ? Explain if you can, 

 one mystery of its existence, one secret of its growth and change, 

 one of the hidden sources of its beauty, its strength, and its 

 usefulness to man, and then go to Italy if you will, to wonder 

 at the obelisk which the sorrowful Nile sent to imperial Rome, 

 and study its mysterious secrets. This is but one example 

 which I have selected, on account of its humility ; but the 

 world is overflowing with this wonder and mystery, which, for 

 want of another name, we call beauty, and the beautiful. We 

 see it in the fading sunset, the vanishing clouds, in the haunted- 

 shadows of the forest, in the delicate wild flowers, more beauti- 

 ful and more rare, if we would but examine them, than our 

 coarser garden flowers. It is heard in the sounds of the lonely 

 wind, mourning among the pine boughs, in the music of the 

 wandering brooks, in that morning concert of the birds, when 

 in full orchestra they welcome in the dawn, in the voice of the 

 solitary thrush, singing alone amid the woods, in the deep quiet 

 of noontide. The ancients in their beautiful fables symbolized 

 this beauty, and told of nymphs who dwelt in the shadows, and 

 who haunted the trees, the mountains, and the waters. That 

 beautiful fable has vanished, but the more beautiful reality 

 remains ; we hear every where voices from the spirit land, we 

 recognize every where the footsteps of angels ; all around lie 

 those manifestations of Divine power which refine, and elevate, 

 and purify. 



One of England's true poets, Gerald Massey, who indeed 

 learned in suffering, what he taught in song — himself a poor 



