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stimulate his curiosity ; the pleasures of taste will be 

 his, and the delights of knowledge will kindle in his 

 eye. Intellectual will blend with moral and religious 

 pleasures, for nature, to the seeing eye and thinking 

 mind, is full of God. 



There is nothing, — not the simplest and most famil- 

 iar of nature's processes, which, to the full mind, is in- 

 capable of affording pleasure, if a little attention and 

 thought are bestowed upon it. Take as an illustration 

 the fall of the dew. What sweet images are connected 

 with it in the poetry of all nations, — in sacred and 

 common literature ! And how beautiful is the pro- 

 vision made for its descent, and its deposit where most 

 needed ! Do you. say that it lights on the barren as 

 readily as on the fertile spot, — on particles of sterile 

 sand as abundantly as on the green earth and the 

 drooping leaf? No, it does not. A more beneficent 

 law is concerned in its formation. As the air cools off 

 in the absence of the sun, a portion of the watery 

 vapor it has hitherto held suspended, " descends in par- 

 ticles almost infinitely minute," collecting on " every 

 leaflet," and suspending themselves from every blade 

 of grass in " drops of pearly dew." But " mark," says 

 a scientific writer, " the adaptation. Different sub- 

 stances are endowed with the property of radiating 

 their heat, and of becoming cool with different degrees 

 of rapidity, and those substances which in the air be- 

 come cool first, also attract first and most abundantly 

 the particles of falling dew. Thus in the cool of a 

 summer's evening, the grass plot is wet, while the 

 gravel walk is dry ; and the thirsty pastures and every 

 green leaf are drinking in the descending moisture, 

 while the naked land and the barren highway are still 

 unconscious of its fall." This is only one of the thou- 

 sand illustrations which might be offered of the plea- 



