Evi] AND SYMBOLS. 107 



The Eternal Cycle. 



On the surface of our globe there moves an eternal cycle of 

 interchanges. The inorganic is continually being fashioned into 

 the organic, and this, after passing through successive changes, 

 and after having displayed the manifestations of life, is ever 

 passing again into the inorganic, ever again giving .up its 

 fashioning forces. The crude and formless mass of the air 

 gradually organised in vegetables, passes without change into 

 animals, and becomes the instrument of sensation and thought ; 

 then vanquished by this effort, and, as it were, broken, it 

 returns as crude matter to the source whence it had come. 

 Thus is the mysterious cycle of organic life upon the surface 

 of the globe completed and maintained. The air contains or 

 engenders the oxidised substances required carbonic acid, water, 

 nitric acid, and ammonia. Vegetables, true reducing apparatus, 

 seize upon the radicals of these, carbon, hydrogen, azote, ammo- 

 nium, and with them they fashion all the variety of organic or 

 organizable matter which they supply to animals. Animals, 

 again, true apparatuses of combustion, reproduce from them 

 carbonic acid, water, oxide of ammonium, and azotic or nitric 

 acid, which return to the air to reproduce the same phenomena 

 to the end of time. BL. 



Eventide Favourable to Meditation. 



The dimness of evening is favourable to meditation, because 

 much light stimulates the optic nerve to a degree that distracts 

 the attention from remembered ideas, and impresses realities 

 too forcibly to permit imagination free exercise. u. 



The Good of Evil. 



When the minarets of Asia sparkle in the morning's rays, 

 the vultures, crows, storks, ibises, set out from their balconies 

 on their various missions ; some to the fields to destroy tho 

 insect and the serpent ; others, alighting in the streets of Alex- 

 andria or Cairo, hasten to accomplish their task of municipal 

 scavengering. Did they but take the briefest holiday, the 

 plague would soon be the only inhabitant of the country. If 



