PEAR-TREE. 137 



tion of leaves and fruit, are no longer subjects of unsatis- 

 factory inquiry. 



Life is developed throughout the vegetable world ; but 

 inert matter has no self-producing quality no power of 

 enlargement. That which happens continually in trees, 

 would in an unhewn stone become a miracle. A magni- 

 ficent oak, with its spreading branches, rises from an acorn; 

 but a cathedral owes its existence to the hands of man. 

 Neither columns, porticoes, fretted windows, nor sculp- 

 tured doors can unfold from out the rock ; but a vast 

 vegetable column silently, imperceptibly, goes on from 

 year to year, till its magnificent proportions become fully 

 manifested. The same Creative Power which gives life to 

 the acorn, might have similarly endowed a block of stone, 

 and, had he thus willed, it would have been nothing to 

 wonder at. Yet the emerging of an oak from its acorn 

 cradle, if such a phenomenon had never before occurred, 

 would excite equal astonishment in the minds of men as if it 

 had pleased Omnipotence that a cathedral should gradually 



