'342 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



CHAPTER XV. 



nature's school-room. 



Where, in tliese days of tyrannical wliipjoings, 

 mortal rods, and coersive laws all running against 

 the natural and growing grain, and getting at 

 anything but the bottom of mischief, shall we 

 find a better school than that so long' ordained 

 by a creative power wdiich passes all compre- 

 hension, and sits enthroned, in contemptuous 

 silence, far, far above the puny efforts of ^'the 

 feeble tenants of an hour," or the struggles of 

 ^^the degraded mass of animated dust," whicli 

 seeks to cover its own liideousness with a veil 

 of liypocrisy more easily seen through than a 

 London mist ? 



Vast, unapproachable, and mysteriously beautiful, 

 some strange j^ower presides, awfully and mightil}^ 

 magnificent in the frozen iceberg as in tlie 

 splendour of the glorious sun, yet none can tell 



