364 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Turn 



marvellous as are the ways by which, seeds get dispersed and 

 preserved, surely the varied methods by which truth is disse- 

 minated from zone to zone, and tribe to tribe, are still more 

 wondrous. They baffle all description. The germs never die 

 tinder any hostile influence ; nor does age impair their vitality. 

 !No sect or organisation is specially employed as the vehicle for 

 their dissemination. The song, the book, the life of the noble, 

 the death of the tyrant, the kind word, the heroic struggle 

 these, and a thousand other noble agencies, seen and unseen, 

 are among the mystic forces by which the truth is scattered all 

 the wide world over, taking root wherever it touches. v. 



New Truth Bewildering to Some. 



Men who have lived in traditional knowledge do not thank 

 you for a new truth. It dazes and confounds their dim vision, 

 which is unsuited to its reception. Their bewilderment at the 

 light is similar to that of the cricket. As the cricket lives chiefly 

 in the dark, so its eyes seem formed for the gloominess of its 

 abode ; and you have only to light a candle unexpectedly, and 

 it becomes so dazzled that it cannot find its way back to its 

 retreat. A. 



The Tumultuous may Occasion the Sublime. 



Not only in individual experience and in national history is 

 it true that tumultuous events may give rise to a sublime sequel, 

 but in the material world the same sort of result may be seen. 

 Most of the sublime and the beautiful in the scenery -of a 

 country depends upon some powerful disturbing agency, by 

 which the earth's crust has been disturbed, broken, and over- 

 turned. Mountainous countries exhibit this action most 

 strikingly. Beautiful as vegetable nature is, how tame is a 

 landscape where only a dead level is covered with it, and no 

 swelling hills, or jutting rocks, or murmuring waters, relieve 

 the monotonous scene ! And how does the interest increase 

 with the wildness and ruggedness of the surface, and reach its 

 maximum only where the disturbance and dislocation have been 

 most violent ! R G. 



