32S STUDIES OF NATURE. 



It is fingularly remarkable, that the moft beauti- 

 ful harmonies are thofe which have the moft con- 

 fonances. Nothing in the World, for example, 

 is more beautiful than the Sun, and nothing in 

 nature is fo frequently repeated as his form, and 

 his light. He is refleded in a thoufand different 

 manners by the refradions of the air, which every 

 day exhibit him above all the horizons of the 

 Globe, before he is adlually rifen, and for fome 

 time after he has fet ; by the parhelia which refleft 

 his difk, fometimes twice or thrice, in the mifty 

 clouds of the North ; by the rainy clouds, in 

 which his refradted rays trace an arch fhaded with 

 a thoufand various colours j and by the waters, 

 whofe reflexes exhibit him in an infinite number 

 of places where he is not, in the bofom of mea- 

 dows, amidft flowers befprinkled with dew, and in 

 the fliade of green forefts. The dull and inert 

 earth, too, reflefts him in the fpecular particles of 

 gravels, of micas, of cryftals, and of rocks. It 

 prefents to us the form of his dilk, and of his rays, 

 in the difks and petals of the myriads of radiated 

 flowers with which it is covered. In a word, this 

 beautiful fl:ar has multiplied himfelf to infinity, 

 with varieties of which we know nothing, in the 

 innumerable fl:ars of the firmament, which he dif- 

 covers to us, as foon as he quits our Horizon ; 

 as if he had withdrawn himfelf from the confo- 



nances 



