132 THE RAINBOW. 



Sunbeams are indeed wonderful things. It has 

 been remarked that we have no means of finding 

 out whether they be things at all or only appear- 

 ances of other things. But that does not in any 

 way lessen either the instruction or the pleasure that 

 they give us. We can divide and subdivide all our 

 " somethings" till they be very small by the line, 

 and very light in the balance ; and we can follow 

 the operation mentally till we lose them all on the 

 verge of " nothing ;" and that whether we trace 

 backward the real succession in nature, or imagine 

 an artificial one of our own. But they do not serve 

 and please us the less on that account ; so neither is 

 light, nor the beauties which light brings to reward 

 our observation, altered one jot in their power of 

 pleasing, whether the light be a substance spreading 

 over them, or merely an agency which calls their 

 properties so into action as that we can see the 

 results. 



The sunbeam, when divided by passing a small 

 parcel of it through a triangular prism of glass, 

 which gives in a smaller space, and therefore with 

 greater brightness and perfection, all the colours 

 which are seen in the rainbow, and which on a very 

 dark cloud, opposite to the sun when nearly setting, 

 is almost half a circle and very beautiful, is found 

 to have other properties than its bright colours. 

 These cannot be found in the rainbow^ for that re- 

 cedes as we approach it ; and though the rain-drops 

 on the verdure sometimes bring it apparently to our 

 very feet, all our speed cannot come up with it. 

 We may follow it into the cloud, but we cannot gain 

 upon it ; and though the cloud seems dark before us, 

 the passage of the sunbeams is so easy that we can 

 follow the bow till we lose it; and "chasing the 

 rainbow through ths shower" is (or once was) a 

 summer amusement with the hind-boys on the moors, 

 who took to the observation of nature, because they 

 had few other amusements. 



