CHAPTER II. 

 WHAT MA Y BE SEEN UPON THE EARTH. 



" There lives and works 

 A soul in all things, and that soul is God." 



COWPER. 



E have returned, at least in an astronomical 

 sense, to the budding, happy, radiant spring; 

 the sun, in its apparent course, crosses the 

 equinoctial line ; the duration of the day, transiently 

 equal to that of the night, will augment in propor- 

 tion as the great luminary describes above our 

 horizon greater and yet greater arcs of a circle. 

 Yet this is not the budding, happy, radiant spring 

 of the poets. No, if it be spring according to the 

 law of universal gravitation, it is winter still by the 

 law of life. The forest trees, such as the oak, the 

 ash, the fir, and the beech, continue to present the 

 image of death; and the sap which should reani- 

 mate them has not awakened from its winter sleep. 



