42 



But we must remember that God made man, and that man is his 

 noblest work. The discoveries and inventions of the human mind are 

 really the most wonderful developments of nature. Shakspeare has 



truly said, that 



— " nature is made better by no mean, 

 But nature marie that mean. So ev'n that art, 

 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 

 That nature makes! * * * 

 * * » The art itself is nature." — (Winter's Tale.) 



Our ships, beautiful and picturesque objects often in themselves, which 

 come and go across the mighty ocean, between this port and the most 

 distant climes, laden with the various produce and manufactures of all 

 lands ; our railways, stretching to all parts of the country, the engines 

 snorting like living monsters, and, with the speed of a bu-d, conveying 

 hundreds of human beings on their various errands of business, joy 

 or sorrow ; the post-office, communicating cheaply and swiftly between 

 us and our friends, however distant, so that we approximate to the 

 divine attribute of omnipresence, " knowing their thoughts afar off ;" 

 the clectiic telegraph, which reduces space to notbing, and enables 

 men to speak to one another at a distance of hundreds of miles as if 

 they were close together ; —all these, and many other arts which busy 

 man has invented, abound in elements of true poetical iuterest, moving 

 the imagination with mysterious wonder. Shakspeare makes a fairy 

 messenger exclaim — 



" I'll put a girdle round about the earth 

 In forty minutes." 

 Should the electric telegraph be extended, as we cannot doubt that 

 it ultimately will be, from continent to continent, this dream of the 

 poet will be more than realised, for we should then actually be able to 

 send a message round the earth in forty seconds ! It is sometimes 

 interesting to read descriptions of things and scenes that we are 

 familiar with, as they appear to men of genius, who seize upon their 

 characteristic features and present them again to us with freshness and 

 yet with strict truth. I remember reading a description of England 

 by Emerson, addressed to an American audience, which was very 

 striking in this way. I seemed never to have fully realised the wonders 

 and beauties of my own country before. Of this kind, too, was a des- 

 cription in " Frazer's Magazine," of the General Post Office in Loudon, 

 just before the time of despatching the mails. To the writer's fancy it 

 seemed like a huge animal, devouring in its capacious maw the heaps 

 of letters and newspapers, "the process of sorting which was likened to 

 the digestion of the food, preparatory to its circulation through the 

 system. 



