mightiest movements are made and her 

 sublimest tasks accomplished. Throughout 

 the whole range of her activity one never 

 comes upon any trace of effort, any sign 

 of weariness ; one is always impressed as 

 Ruskin said long ago of works of genius 

 that he is standing in the presence, not of a 

 great effort, but of a great power ; that what 

 has been done is only a single manifesta- 

 tion of the play of an inexhaustible force. 

 There is somewhere in the universe an 

 infinite fountain of life and beauty which 

 overflows and floods all worlds with divine 

 energy and loveliness. When the tide re- 

 cedes it pauses but a moment, and then the 

 music of its returning waves is heard along 

 all shores, and its shining edges move 

 irresistibly on until they have bathed the 

 roots of the solitary flower on the highest 

 Alp. 



It is this divine method of growth which 

 Nature opposes to our mechanisms; it is 

 this inexhaustible life, overflowing in uncon- 

 sciousness and boundless fulness, that she 

 forever reveals. The truth which underlies 

 48 



fa^*& 



