LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 169 



from each, and affording, year after year, for ever, 

 each its own peculiar product, with unerring exac- 

 titude the vine the grape, the oak the acorn, the 

 brier the rose, the foxglove its purple bells, the 

 holly its berries of red; when, with more inqui- 

 sitive glance, he penetrates the thicker veil with 

 which nature lias curtained the chemical world, and 

 watches the several phenomena resulting from che- 

 mical operations combustion, putrefaction, vege- 

 table fermentation, &c., and observes the anfailiny 

 exactitude with which all these render obedient 

 homage to the one great law of affinity; then, 

 when he looks inward, and contemplates his own 

 system beautiful as the most beautiful, and not 

 less worthy of Omnipotent Wisdom than the most 

 worthy when he looks inward, I say, and beholds 

 there all confusion and imperfection when he per- 

 ceives, that, of all the systems of nature, that of 

 man alone is liable to derangement, and is the only 

 one of all which ever fails of fulfilling its intention 

 .when he sees, that while all others always go 

 right, his own goes almost always icrony ; when, 

 moreover, he reflects that his own system is the 

 work of the same Almighty hand which fashioned 

 and gave being to all the others when the eye 

 remarks all this, the mind cannot but be irresistibly 



