THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 133 
yond the wildest dreams of the Poet? Mystery 
inexplicable on the conceited notion which, making 
man forsooth the centre of the universe, dares 
to believe that this variety of forms has existed 
for countless ages in abysmal sea-depths and un- 
trodden forests, only that some few individuals of 
the Western races might, in these latter days, at last 
discover and admire a corner here and there of the 
boundless realms of beauty. Inexplicable, truly, if 
man be the centre and the object of their existence ; 
explicable enough to him who believes that God has 
created all things for Himself, and rejoices in His 
own handiwork, and that the material universe is, 
as the wise man says, “A platform whereon His 
Eternal Spirit sports and makes melody.” Of all 
the blessings which the study of nature brings to the 
patient observer, let none, perhaps, be classed higher 
than this: that the further he enters into those 
fairy gardens of life and birth, which Spenser saw 
and described in his great poem, the more he learns _ 
the awful and yet most comfortable truth, that they 
co not belong to him, but to One greater, wiser, 
