Eat] AND SYMBOLS. 145 



means certain that the very defiant-looking creatures are the 

 most invulnerable. Quiet men and peaceable nations are often 

 quite as well able to defend themselves as those who swagger 

 about their defensive power. Inoffensiveness does not mean 

 helplessness, though the cur thinks it does when he essays to 

 worry the hedgehog, and cur-natures think so under all circum- 

 stances. A. 



Harmony where least Expected. 



Before Captain Maury's researches, ocean appeared to the 

 most judicious observers as nothing more than a grand mass of 

 water, inert, passive, obedient to blind and changeful forces. 

 He has demonstrated, however, that there, as in all other parts 

 of the economy of Nature, harmony and order reign ; that every- 

 thing is planned, weighed, and compensated; and more, that 

 ocean is endowed with a combination of movements similar to 

 those which nourish life in the plant and the animal ; that it has 

 a circulation, free and regular as that of the blood ; a pulse ever 

 throbbing and beating; veins and arteries, 'ay, and a heart; and 

 that beyond the purely physical causes to which we may attribute 

 this circulation, there exists an essential agent which we should 

 seek in vain elsewhere, a vital force that of the myriads of 

 invisible beings which are born, live, multiply, and die in the 

 teeming womb of its waters. Each of these imperceptible 

 existences changes the equilibrium of the ocean ; they also help 

 to regulate the climates of the earth and to preserve the purity 

 of the seas. The principal agents of this circulation are three 

 in number. The first and most apparent is caloric, the solar 

 radiation ; but of itself this would be insufficient. The second, 

 and most important, is the salt. The third is the animal life 

 the " living infinite of the sea," as Michelet calls it the infu- 

 soria. Truly, as we contemplate this wonderful arrangement 

 we may say, " He divideth the sea with His power." MY. 



Through the Hateful to the Happy. 



Few of our joys are ever reached until we have journeyed 

 through much that is vexing and hateful. To endure the vex- 

 ing and the hateful, moreover, we often need to think of the 



K 



