130 LIGHT OF THE SUN. 



those very beauties of which their own action is the 

 cause. Cultivators of auriculas, and tulips, and car- 

 nations, and other blooms of the richest tints, are 

 aware of that fact, and take precautions against their 

 consequences. The beds of auriculas, whose finely 

 dusted purples and greens are the admiration of 

 their fond cultivators, are matted up; the tulips, 

 if their tints are to be of the most brilliant lustre, 

 are shaded with awnings ; and for a similar purpose 

 little caps or helmets of paper are suspended over 

 the carnations. Thus it is not in either extreme of 

 the beauty-producing energy that the perfection of 

 beauty, either in intensity or in duration, is to be 

 found, there is a fading towards each of them, and 

 so the best state the point of maximum, is some- 

 where between them, 



There are few, if any, instances in nature, in 

 which that is not the case ; and the knowledge that 

 the case is so is very pleasing and encouraging to 

 us, and it shows how admirably nature is fitted for 

 our instruction and enjoyment. We cannot reach 

 the extreme limit either way, and so if knowledge 

 and pleasure had been in the one extreme or the 

 other, we could never have hoped to reach either ; 

 and thus we should have been dispirited, and have 

 slackened in our exertions. But knowing, as we 

 always can do, the limits between which the per- 

 fection must lie, we know and are in possession of 

 the field in which we are sure to get it ; and so we 

 labour in hope, and if we do it but skilfully and dili- 

 gently enough, we are certain of success. 



It is in consequence of this knowledge of the limits 

 that we are able to cultivate the plants and the ani- 

 mals, and turn all the productions and agencies in 

 nature to our purposes. It is thus that men, by 

 means of the observations and discoveries of suc- 

 cessive generations, and the applications of those 

 discoveries in such a manner as to make each one 

 an improvement on the one before it, have been able 



