292 THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS. 



another, be likened, in effect on the observer, to comets in the 

 firmament, which attract the gaze of the most incurious, while 

 the glorious stars and brilliant planets are suspended motion- 

 less, or keep their equal courses without an eye or a thought 

 uplifted towards their far-off mysteries ? From these curious 

 outward resemblances, so obvious to the common eye, and 

 striking even to the common mind, we are led, naturally, to 

 consider other likenesses or more properly analogies which 

 subsist, not only between the insect and the vegetable, but be- 

 tween all other orders of created being. In the delightful work 

 of Kirby and Spence,* it has been justly noticed that " which- 

 ever way we turn our eyes on the objects of creation above, 

 below, athwart analogies meet us in every direction ; and it 

 appears clear that the book of Nature is a book of symbols, in 

 which one thing represents another in endless succession." 

 And how speaks the eloquent Coleridge the metaphysician 

 and the poet of the same exhaustless volume ? " That, in its 

 obvious sense and literal interpretation, it declares the being 

 and attributes of the Almighty Father, none but the fool in 

 heart has ever dared to gainsay ; but it has been the music of 

 gentle and pious minds in all ages ; it is the poetry of all hu- 

 man nature to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find 

 therein correspondences and symbols of the spiritual world." 



Suppose we now con over, though but a child's lesson, out 

 of this universal volume, trying, however, imperfectly, to spell 



* Introduction to Entomology. 



