120 FINENESS OF LIGHT. 



productions of the earth into the sea ; nor is there 

 the least doubt that if a spider's thread of suffi- 

 cient length, and no thicker than those threads 

 generally are, could be borne onward against the 

 globe with sufficient velocity, it would cleave the 

 globe asunder more easily, and in less time than 

 the arrow of Tell cleft the arrow on the head of 

 his son. 



If light and heat (for in the beams of the sun 

 they come together, and have many curious com- 

 binations in them) be matter, they must be matter 

 in a state of far more minute division than we can 

 ever observe with all our artificial helps. Were 

 they of the size of the most minute grains of dust, 

 even of that which floats invisibly when the im- 

 mediate rays of the sun are not admitted into the 

 best-lighted room, but which those direct rays 

 disclose as " the light motes that dance in the 

 beam," they would tell upon the earth like cannon- 

 shot, and it would have been long ere now pounded 

 to dust; but instead of that, they are the most 

 kindly as well as the swiftest messengers that visit 

 our abodes ; and though they bring us no matter 

 that we can know by bringing it to the test of 

 matter, they bring us active energy, without which 

 the mere gravitating matter of the earth would be 

 of very little value. Where they have been for 

 some time absent, nature saddens and languishes ; 

 life becomes dormant or extinct ; and there is no 

 motion, save those general motions of the earth, 

 which still have reference to the sun ; and would, 

 in all probability cease if the earth were deprived 

 of that luminary. But the return of the sun is a 

 time of revival, the bonds of nature are loosened, 

 and all her tribes are in motion. 



