THE REV. JAMES MA&T1NUAU. 521 



corresponding objects of thought, and of seeing these in 

 their proper relations, without the interior haze and soft 

 penumbral borders which the theologian loves. To this 

 mode of " interpreting nature," I shall to the best of my 

 ability now adhere. 



Neither of us, I trust, will be afraid or ashamed to begin 

 at the alphabet of this question. Our first effort must be 

 to understand each other, and this mutual understanding 

 can only be ensured by beginning low down. Physically 

 speaking, however, we need not go below the sea-level. 

 Let us then travel in company to the Caribbean Sea, and 

 halt upon the heated water. What is that sea, and what 

 is the sun that heats it? Answering for myself, I say that 

 they are both matter. I fill a glass with the sea-water and 

 expose it on the deck of the vessel; after some time the 

 liquid has all disappeared, and left a solid residue of salt 

 in the glass behind. We have mobility, invisibility 

 apparent annihilation. In virtue of 



The glad and secret aid 

 The sun unto the ocean paid, 



the water has taken to itself wings and flown off as vapor. 

 From the whole surface of the Caribbean Sea such vapor is 

 rising; and now we must follow it not upon our legs, 

 however, nor in a ship, nor even in a balloon, but by the 

 mind's eye in other words, by that power of Vorstellung 

 which Mr. Martineau knows so well, and which he so 

 justly scorns when it indulges in loose practices. 



Compounding, then, the northward motion of the vapor 

 with the earth's axial rotation, we track our fugitive 

 through the higher atmostpheric regions, obliquely across 

 the Atlantic Ocean to Western Europe, and on to our 

 familiar Alps. Here another wonderful metamorphosis 

 occurs. Floating on the cold calm air, and in presence of 

 the cold firmament, the vapor condenses, not only to 

 particles of water, but to particles of crystalline water. 

 These coalesce to stars of snow, which fall upon the moun- 

 tains in forms so exquisite that, when first seen, they never 

 fail to excite rapture. As to beauty, indeed, they put the 

 work of the lapidary to shame, while as to accuracy they 

 render concrete the abstractions of the geometer. Are these 

 crystals "matter?" Without presuming to dogmatize, I 

 answer for mvself in the affirmative. 



