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preserves forever the balance of her stupendous harmonies. 

 Nothing loses a function except to gain one. Nothing comes 

 to an end which is not a beginning. Every state is a stage of 

 transition. All things flow with the tide of time, and the 

 current is continually returning upon itself. The trees grow 

 old and at last decay. Their mould builds up the ascending 

 columns of another wood. By the processes of growth, the 

 dust of the earth is upraised in grains of wheat and corn. 

 Wheat and corn, as food, are assimilated by the organisms of 

 animal life. Upon man and bird and beast alike descends the 

 inevitable decree, " Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt 

 return ;" and so the cycle of transformation is renewed. 



Lawrence and Lowell and Manchester have been built upon 

 the banks of the INIerrimac in the futh that its current would 

 never cease to flow. For ages it has flowed, and it flows on 

 forever. And yet no inexhaustible, unreplenished fountain 

 supplies it. With the cubical dimensions of the whole planet 

 for a reservoir, no such fountain could have supplied it. The 

 guaranty of the constant tide is in the equipoise of nature's 

 self-sustaining system of compensations. Drop by drop falls 

 the rain upon the hills and mountains of New Hampshire. 

 Dripping from the trees, oozing from the ground, it trickles in 

 tiny rills, it gathers in brooks, which gather in larger streams. 

 Down the slopes, in the swift torrent, through the rocky 

 gorges, by waterfalls and cataracts, it is poured into the val- 

 leys below. It passes from the valleys and becomes the ma- 

 jestic river, which after toiling in three manufacturing cities at 

 the wheels whose mighty revolutions turn nine hundred thou- 

 sand spindles, and throw the shuttles of twenty-four thousand 

 looms, glides on untroubled to find its level in the broad At- 

 lantic. It finds its level, but it finds no rest. By the potent 

 action of the sun, in subtle distillations it is raised upon the 

 currents of an invisible sea, and borne again into the regions 

 of the upper air. It collects and drifts upon the winds in 

 vapory clouds, and finally again descends upon the sources of 

 the spring and stream. To supply continually the rivers of 



