62 love's meinie. 



the beautiful caprice in which she gave to the 

 silver its frost and to the opal its fire, would 

 not be subdued under the slow influences of 

 accident and time, when she wreathed the 

 swan with snow, and bathed the dove in irides- 

 cence. That the infinitely more exalted powers 

 of life must exercise more intimate influence 

 over matter than the reckless forces of co- 

 hesion ; — and that the loves and hatreds of the 

 now conscious creatures would modify t^ieir 

 forms into parallel beauty and degradation, we 

 might have anticipated by reason, and we 

 ought long since to have known by observation. 

 But this law of its spirit over the substance^of 

 the creature involves, necessarily, the indis- 

 tinctness of its type, and the existence of 

 inferior and of higher conditions, which whole 

 aeras of heroism and affection — whole seras 

 of misery and misconduct, — confirm into 

 glory, or confuse into shame. Collecting the 

 causes of changed form, in lower creatures, by 

 distress, or by adaptation, — by the disturbance 

 or intensifying of the parental strength, and 

 the native fortune — the wonder is, not that 

 species should sometimes be confused, but 

 that the greater number of them remain so 



