242 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



sound-board, against which the distant end of the rod 

 presses. Thought ends in amazement when it seeks 

 to realise the motions of that rod as the music flows 

 through it. I turn to my tree and observe its roots, 

 its trunk, its branches, and its leaves. As the rod 

 conveys the music, and yields it up to the distant air, 

 so does the trunk convey the matter and the motion 

 the shocks and pulses and other vital actions which 

 eventually emerge in the umbrageous foliage of the 

 tree. I went some time ago through the greenhouse of 

 a friend. He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches of 

 which were in some cases not much thicker than an 

 ordinary pin hard, smooth, and cylindrical often 

 leafless for a foot or more. But at the end of every 

 one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exuberant 

 beauty hidden within it, and broke forth into a mass of 

 fronds, almost large enough to fill the arms. We stand 

 here upon a higher level of the wonderful: we are 

 conscious of a music subtler than that of the piano, 

 passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issu- 

 ing in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the 

 ' clustered magnificence ' of the leaves. Does it lessen 

 my amazement to know that every cluster, and every 

 leaf their form and texture lie, like the music in the 

 rod, in the molecular structure of these apparently in- 

 significant stems? Not so. Mr. Martineau weeps for 

 * the beauty of the flower fading into a necessity/ I 

 care not Avhether it comes to me through necessity or 

 through freedom, my delight in it is all the same. I 

 see what he sees with a wonder superadded. To me, as 

 to him, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed 

 like one of these. 



I have spoken above as if the assumption of a soul 

 would save Mr. Martineau from the inconsistency of 

 crediting pure matter with the astonishing building 



