which, perhaps, from the heedless or the happy, would 

 scarcely have attracted a passing glance. It was a small 

 moss, of extraordinary beauty, in the process of germina- 

 tion ; and, as he contemplated the delicate conformation 

 of its roots and leaves, the thought forced itself irresisti- 

 bly upon his mind, that the same bountiful and eternal 

 Providence, which protected this minute but lovely object 

 in obscurity so complete, and in the region of perpetual 

 barrenness, could not be unmindful of one of his intelli- 

 gent beings, the highest in the order of intellectual crea- 

 tion. It was the reflection thus suggested which banished 

 his despair, and nerved his heart to those renewed efforts 

 which secured his eventual return to his native land. 



There could be no more striking illustration than this 

 of the benevolent order of the universe ; which so often 

 vindicates itself under circumstances apparently fortui- 

 tous, by demonstrating the purpose and value of those 

 things, whose utility a cold philosophy had endeavored to 

 discover in vain. It were, indeed, too much to say, that 

 the minutest atom which floats in infinite space, or the 

 meanest flower that blows upon the bosom of nature, 

 have been created for no valuable end. If the purposes 

 of existence were less than they really are in the eye of 

 reason and enlightened philosophy, we might have been 

 subjected to a very different constitution of external na- 

 ture. To surround us merely with those things which 

 might minister to our actual necessities, were to deprive 

 our senses themselves of their very noblest attributes, and 

 to contract within the narrowest limits the circle of our 

 capacities and desires. Take from us, indeed, those love- 

 ly manifestations of the external world ; those sweet, and 

 graceful and glorious things, which tend much more, per- 

 haps, to the promotion of our present happiness, as well 

 as to the perfection of our immortal destiny, than all 



