332 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



a thunder cloud; and there, too, is the birch, a tree 

 evidently of the gentler sex, with her long flowing tresses 

 falling down to her knee ; there, also, is the lime, and 

 the larch, and the beech, and the silver fir. What a 

 combination of pleasing forms ! See in that vista to the 

 right which appears so exquisitely beautiful, every out- 

 line is a wavy one, without any mixture of broken angles 

 or straight lines, while in the darker recess beside it 

 there is a harsher, stiffer assemblage of forms ; it is full 

 of cross lines and angles. But do not the deformities 

 of that recess render the scene, considered as a whole, 

 more perfect than it would be without them ? Do they 

 not enable me to appreciate what is exquisite in the rest 

 of it ? If there existed no such thing as deformity, we 

 could have known nothing of beauty ; just as if there was 

 no such thing as sickness, health would not be a word 

 in our vocabulary, or as if there were no such thing as 

 shade or darkness, no one would ever have said, " It is 

 a good thing to behold the light." 



' And is it not true that the scene now spread out 

 before me, with its many beauties and its few deform- 

 ities, is a work of the Deity? that it was foreknown 

 of Him at a period when the very earth of which it 

 forms so minute a part, was but a portion of empty 

 space in an infinitely extended vacuum ; nay, that it 

 was foreknown of Him from all eternity, and that this 

 His idea of it, as forming a portion of His infinite 

 knowledge and co-existent with Himself, may be re- 

 garded as forming, with its apparent defects, a part of 

 Himself, though He be perfect and indefectible ? At 

 least, is it not true that the sentiment of beauty and the 

 sense of deformity, as they exist in the human mind, are 

 effects of which He is the cause, that the scene before 

 me is marked by traits that arouse this sentiment in me, 



