THE POETRY OF CHEMISTRY. 93 



power of a magnet, under the direction of his own poet-mind, will be 

 looked upon with profound reverence ; and the names of Davy, Liehig, 

 Berzelius, and Dumas, will adorn the poetical annals of generations 

 now waiting to be born. The same scrutinizing power which detects 

 sulphur in the atmosphere, and in this way accounts for the peculiar 

 odour of the electric spark ; which traces out the analogy between that 

 same atmosphere and nitric acid ; which discovers the method of con- 

 verting old rags into sugar, and sawdust into bread ; which detects the 

 service of the humble moss in cleaving and crumbling the rugged 

 rocks on which it chances to grow, by means of the oxalic acid which 

 its roots contain ; which observes the effect of sunlight in elaborating 

 the juices of the fruits, and makes the same sunlight a painter of 

 pictures ; which compounds a material which acts as an antidote to 

 pain, and proves one of the greatest of auxiliaries in the service of 

 humanity, under the name of chloroform ; which not only finds 



Tongues in trees, 



Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones ; 

 but travels up 



Through the measureless fields, 



Where the silver moon and the comet wheels, 



and measures the magnitude of those lamps of God; will deal with 

 higher than physical things, and learn to attach its sympathies with a 

 moral law ; securing for itself a nobler salvation than from the choke- 

 damp of a mine, and inheriting a purer religion than the worship of 

 organic compounds. 



Meantime, the elements wait on man, and combine to do him service ; 

 he has made matter subservient to his will, and in this conquest of the 

 material by the immaterial, the world reads the idea of its advancing 

 humanity. The lesson is one which humbles, because it points to a 

 dependence on God, and suggests that there are regions into which 

 the mind will yet have to enter to learn its spiritual duties, and con- 

 nect them with its conquest of the world. 



" In whatever light we consider these matters, the argument of 

 benevolent design and contrivance deduced from the obvious facts 

 themselves remains unaltered. The care and benificence of the 

 Creator is not less shown in the connection he has established between 

 physical and moral health. The labour which a man is obliged to 



