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winding-sheet of snow, and eveiy thing seems to 

 indicate that vegetation has run its course, and 

 is annihilated. But, at the voice of spring, nature 

 revives the sun, which, skirting the verge of the 

 sky, had become feeble and cheerless, resumes 

 its genial influences, and takes a wider circuit in 

 the heavens ; young Spring walks forth again in 

 her beauty, gentle zephyrs fan her bosom, flowers 

 spring beneath her feet, and wherever she smiles, 

 the woods and lawns burst into life, and the 

 voice of joy resounds. 



May not this be an emblem of the destiny of 

 man ? As he undergoes the various vicissitudes 

 of growth, maturity, decay and death, like the 

 productions of the vegetable world ; may he not 

 also, like them, hear the creative voice of a new 

 spring, and live ? 



Analogies of this kind are not indeed so strik- 

 ing as that of those insects, which, after being 

 apparently dead and entombed, rise again, as it 

 were from the grave, and, waving their painted 

 wings, flutter from flower to flower, and seem to 

 live in a new world amidst a paradise of sweets ; 

 but they have at least furnished the poet and 

 philosopher with beautiful illustrations of im- 

 mortality. The truth however is, that the very 

 strongest of these analogies are nothing more 

 than illustrations, and cannot be dignified by the 

 name of solid arguments. They could not be so, 

 even if the analogy were complete ; but it fails 

 in its most important point. Go to the tomb of 

 the caterpillar it is empty. The same body, 



