EFFECTS OF WINTER'S WORKINGS. 409 



of what has been ordained and fabricated in these 

 dull months. All these advances require Omnipo- 

 tent wisdom and power to perfect; but perhaps 

 a more exalted degree of wisdom and power has 

 been requisite to call them into a state of being 

 from nothing. The branch of that old pear tree 

 now extended before me is denuded and bare, pre- 

 senting no object of curiosity or of pleasure ; but, 

 had we the faculty to detect, and power to observe, 

 what was going forward in its secret vessels, be- 

 neath its rugged, unsightly covering, what wonder 

 and admiration would it create ! the materials 

 manufacturing there for its leaf and its bark ; for 

 the petals and parts of its flowers ; the tubes and 

 machinery that concoct the juices, modify the fluids, 

 and furnish the substance of the fruit, with multi- 

 tudes of other unknown operations and contri- 

 vances, too delicate and mysterious to be seen, or 

 even comprehended, by the blindness, the defecti- 

 bility of our nature things of which we have no 

 information, being beyond the range of any of the 

 works or the employments of mankind. We may 

 gather our pear, be pleased with its form or its 

 flavour ; we may magnify its vessels, analyze its 

 fluids, yet be no more sensible of its elaborate 

 formation, and the multiplicity of influences and 

 operations requisite to conduct it to our use, than 

 a wandering native of a polar clime could be of the 

 infinite number of processes that are necessary to 

 furnish a loaf of bread, from ploughing the soil to 



