BIRDS AND POETS. 145 



ing before sunrise. Not one twisted fibre of the grass, one 

 knotted eccentric twig, one blue-eyed, dewy -lipped violet but 

 hung there upside down, to be sure but perfect as it came 

 from God's hand. 



" What is this? Does it not mock our pride of art, and 

 shame its dedicated altars ?" 



" It is God's handiwork through his natural laws !" 



" Ah ! But the picture is not always there. Does God 

 (in reverence) with his own personal hand paint the land- 

 scape in the lake whenever it is seen ? Is it a special act ?" 



" No ; it is consequential upon an arrangement of laws 

 fixed since the birth of time." 



" You are smiling ! was that smile now upon your face 

 pre-ordained since the same period ?" 



" So far as we know, it was, equally with the other, conse- 

 quential." 



"That smile was a physical expression of a mental con- 

 dition or humor in yourself, was it not ?" 



"Ay." 



" It might have been a frown, or varied by other external 

 modification ?" 



"Ay." 



" Might not the landscape in the lake have been a storm- 

 shaken blurr ?" 



" Granted." 



"Is it not quite as ' consequential,' then, that earth has her 

 physical expressions of certain conditions and humors of 

 the vital force in her which are affected by external rela- 

 tions?" 



" What external relations can you mean ?" 



" First, those to her solar system ; next, those to the other 

 systems which make up the universe. These relations may 

 determine in her all the action of elemental expression va- 

 riations of the seasons, &c., &c." 



"Pshaw! fogmatic!" 



" Guilty ; but still, we 'love similitudes.' " 



10 



