NATURE'S ALCHEMY. 293 



regions of unmeasured space upon all. We have co- 

 hesion, holding the particles of matter enchained, ope- 

 rating only at distances too minute for the mathematician 

 to measure ; and we have chemical attraction, different 

 from either of these, working no less mysteriously within 

 absolutely insensible distances, and, by the exercise of 

 its occult power, giving determinate and fixed forms to 

 every kind of material creation. 



The spiritual beings, which the poet of untutored 

 nature gave to the forest, to the valley, and to the 

 mountain, to the lake, to the river, and to the ocean, 

 working within their secret offices, and moulding for 

 man the beautiful or the sublime, are but the weak 

 creations of a finite mind, although they have for us a 

 charm which all men unconsciously obey, even when 

 they refuse to confess it. They are like the result of 

 the labours of the statuary, who, in his high dreams of 

 love and sublimated beauty, creates from the marble 

 block a figure of the most exquisite moulding which 

 mimics life. It charms us for a season ; we gaze and 

 gaze again, and its first charms vanish ; it is ever and 

 ever still the same dead heap of chiselled stone. It has not 

 the power of presenting to our wearying eyes the change 

 which life alone enables matter to give ; and we admit 

 the excellence of the artist, but we cease to feel at his 

 work. The creations of poetry are pleasing, but they 

 never affect the mind in the way in which the poetic 

 realities of nature do. . The sylph moistening a lily is 

 a sweet dream ; but the thoughts which rise when first 

 we learn that its broad and beautiful dark-green leaves, 

 and its pure and delicate flower, are the results of the 

 alchemy which changes gross particles of matter into 

 symmetric forms, of a power which is unceasingly at 

 work under the guidance of light, heat, and electrical 

 force, are, after our incredulity has passed away for 

 it is too wonderful for the untutored to believe at once 

 of an exalting character. 



