NATURE IN MOTION. 43 



portion. Each river fills its bed ; each naiad her shell. 

 And the winds themselves, what busy travellers are not 

 they in their own great realm of the air! They blow 

 where they list atyl we hear the sound thereof, but we 

 cannot tell whence they come and whither they go. A 

 merry life they lead, these sailors of the air. Now they 

 chase golden clouds high up in the blue ether, and now 

 they descend to rock in merry sport gigantic oaks and 

 Northern firtrees. As pleasant pastime they give life to 

 wandering shadows, wake the slumbering echo, and gather 

 rich perfumes from the flowery meadow. To-day they 

 bend down vast oceans of gracefully waving corn-fields; 

 to-morrow they peep under the branches of trees to look 

 for golden fruit, or they strip them of their leaves to 

 show to man through their bare arms, the blue heavens 

 above. On sultry days they cool themselves in the floods 

 of the ocean, and carry refreshing dew back to the 

 parched land. Passing on their manifold errands, they 

 trace their characters in a thousand ways on the liquid 

 plains of the sea. Some scarcely wrinkie the placid 

 surface, others furrow it deeply with azure waves, or toss 

 it up in raging billows and cover their crests with white 

 foam. 



Such are evidences of motion in Inorganic Nature. If 

 organic bodies travel faster and more visibly, they leave, 

 on the other hand, fewer great marks behind them. 

 Rocks, when they wander, remain themselves as milestones, 

 by which we may count the distance from which they 

 came. Men keep in sagas and myths a certain hold on 

 the past, or erect, with their own hands, monuments of 



