USE OF THE SHADOW. 129 



that derive relief from the temporary gloom. The 

 leaves of the trees, which the joint action of the light 

 and heat had caused to droop, and if continued would 

 have worn out by excessive action and withered in 

 premature decay, have the draining of their juices 

 suspended, so that without dew or rain they have 

 their strength recruited through the vessels of the 

 plant, and they stand up and are ready for new ex- 

 ertions, not only in bringing the fruits of the passing 

 season to maturity, but in preparing the germes from 

 which new leaves and flowers and fruits are to be 

 evolved by the suns of future seasons, when the 

 leaves, that are in the mean time replenished, shall 

 have fallen and been dissolved ; and the very same 

 matter which this year is stinging in the little prickle 

 of a nettle, may next year be glowing in a tulip, 

 perfuming in a rose, luscious in a peach, or refresh- 

 ing to the spirits in a grape. 



Nor is there in the suspended action refreshment 

 only to the leaves of plants, there is a preservation 

 of beauty to their flowers. Those agencies of 

 matter, which we are unable to trace, saving in the 

 effects they produce, and of which, apart from the 

 substances in which those effects are displayed, We 

 can obtain no knowledge, are all too mighty for the 

 matter on which they act ; and the same light which 

 gives us so much pleasure and so much information 

 through the medium of our eyes may be so concen- 

 trated, or its action so long continued, as that it may 

 instantly strike the eyes blind in the one case, or 

 waste them beyond all power of recovery in the 

 other. So also the same heat and light, and other 

 less perceptible, but not on that account less curious, 

 agencies of the sunbeams, which communicate all 

 the fine tints to the petals of the flowers, have far 

 more intensity than those little pieces of delicately 

 formed matter can bear ; and if they are too long or 

 too immediately exposed to the direct action of the 

 sun, the sunbeams are instrumental in destroying 



