234 SPRING. 



from a distance so vast, find out the egg of a gnat in 

 a little pool by the Tornea, or the Tana, warm it into 

 life there, and bid it dance its hour, prepare its brood, 

 and die ? The agents that combine in the producing 

 of this effect, are more dissimilar in magnitude than 

 any of which we have experience, and the distance at 

 which they are from each other the hundred millions 

 of miles is an extent altogether beyond the limits of 

 our comprehension ; and yet their joint action is as 

 certain and unerring, as if their sizes were so adjusted, 

 and their distance so small, that we could examine 

 both without moving the eye. Men have often been in 

 the habit of viewing with admiration those instances in 

 which they have found there was some imitation of hu- 

 man art, looking, for example, at the joint formed by 

 the articulation of one bone with another ; and they 

 have very sincerely and firmly (though not without a 

 little of the voluntary leaven of idolatry) exclaimed, 

 " Mark that ! Here is divine power : a carpenter could 

 not have done it better !" (!) But if they would forego 

 their microscopic view, and behold the working of the 

 living system, their feelings and their faith would rise 

 far above " the carpenter ;" and they would see, in 

 those general laws and parts of the system which man 

 cannot imitate, proofs of a wisdom and a power wholly 

 different, not in degree merely, but absolutely in kind, 

 from that which the utmost effort of human skill can, 

 in the humblest manner, imitate. And even in those 

 matters in which there is an imitation, (not Nature imi- 

 tating man, but man imitating Nature), the imitation is 

 confined to the mere surface; and while the form is 

 praised, the formation, which is the wonder of the 



