454 Study of Nature. [October, 



honors of a venerable age, it would be a miglity corrective to tlie 

 ipanners and habits of the artificial present. Nature opens to us 

 ten thousand sources of pleasure and profit. Every shrub and plant 

 and flower, has a voice and a language for the contemplative and in- 

 quiring mind. The impressions they leave upon the soul are pure, 

 the feelings they produce are those of pleasure. All nature is but 

 one vast temple of undeveloped science, inviting the beholder to 

 study and improve, to reverence and adore its grand and glorious 

 Architect. And when earth with her myriads of trees, and shrubs, 

 and plants; her rocks, and fossils, and metals; her reptiles, and 

 beasts, and birds; yes, when animate and inanimate nature have been 

 exhausted and cease to afi"ord pleasure and profit, let the eye be 

 turned above to the starry vault, and the mind be led forth into the 

 field of astronomical science, or in contemplation of the sublimities 

 there presented, and you have wherewith ever to instruct and delight. 

 In yonder distant empire the imagination has opportunity to expand, 

 full pinioned, and to catch the spirit of beauty and perfection with 

 which the heavenly hosts are radiant, and the heart will almost sure- 

 ly be won by the harmony which they make to Him who gave them 

 their orbits and appointed their goings. Surely, in such studies and 

 pursuits as call directly the mind's energies away from the numerous 

 excitants furnished by artificial society, in its innumerable artificial 

 rounds of pleasure, in its gilded equipage and lieing vanities, we 

 shall be led to embrace the ennobling sentiment, that 



"Earth on whose lap a thousand nations tread, 

 An ocean brooding with prolific bed, 

 Night's changeful orbs — blue poles and silver zones. 

 Where other worlds encircle other suns. 

 One mind inhabits — one diffusive soul 

 Wields the large limbs, and mingles with the whole." 



Who will say that such studies and such pursuits as lead men of- 

 ten from "Nature up to nature's Grod" will not refine the soul and 

 purify the heart's best affections? Through this medium we are led to 

 lay hold on eternity, and prepare for our eternal destiny. 



The mind thus chastened and exalted by the study and contempla- 

 tion of nature, mounts higher into the regions of thought, where the 

 sacredness of heaven will clothe the spirit, and awaken the heart to 

 universal afi'ections. If this be so — and of its truth none can reason- 

 ably doubt — we feel assured that the study of the sciences, inconnec- 

 tion with their applications, will operate as a powerful corrective to 



