146 A Walk from 



line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a 

 little," it may be truly and gratefully said, these roots, 



internetted with the very life-fibres of human suste- 

 nance, have been brought to their present perfection 

 and value. The great governments and peoples of 

 the world should give admiring and grateful thought 

 to this fact. Here nature co-works with the most 

 common and inartistic of human industries, as they are 

 generally held, with faculties as subtle and beautiful as 

 those which she brings to bear upon the choicest flowers. 

 The same is true of grains and grasses for man and 

 beast. They come down to us from a kind of heathen 

 parentage, receiving new forms and qualities from age 

 to age. The wheats, which make the bread of all the 

 continents, now exhibit varieties which no one has 

 undertaken to enumerate. Fruits follow the same rule, 

 and show the same joint-working of Nature and Art as 

 in the realm of flowers. 



The wheel within wheel, the circle within circle 

 expand and ascend until the last circumferential line 

 sweeps around all the world of created being, even 

 taking in, upon the common radius, the highest and 

 oldest of the angels. From the primrose peering from 

 the hedge to the premier seraph wearing the coronet 

 of his sublime companionship ; from the lowest forms of 

 vegetable existence to the loftiest reaches of moral 



