REFLECTIONS OF THINGS UNSEEN. 293 



and put together a few of its living characters as they stand 

 connected by similitude, by mutual uses, or as mutually 

 symbolic. By their similitudes we recognise them for the work 

 of one Great Creator ; in their adaptations for mutual use we read 

 his skill and beneficence and providing care ; and, in as much 

 as we can decipher of their symbolic meaning, we adore the 

 condescending goodness which, through the correspondent 

 beauties of created objects, has surrounded us by images, faint 

 but faithful, of all the qualities of that Divine Mind from 

 whence they spring. Nor this alone ; for, reflected in the same 

 natural mirror, numerous also are the images for- which we 

 must seek originals not in the attributes of the Divine Mind 

 nor yet in the corresponding features, which (marred though 

 they be) still pronounce the human to have been moulded 

 "after its likeness." Destroying instincts and hideous forms 

 are, no less than their opposites, reflections of things unseen ; 

 and where do these exist but within ourselves? in those 

 spiritual evils (made natural) which have been permitted, in 

 accordance with a law not more mysterious than unerring, to 

 stamp with defacing impress a portion of every inferior order 

 of Creation? 



Our subject was commenced by a notice of a few remarkable 

 objects in the insect world, which bear a particular resemblance 

 to others in the vegetable kingdom. Let us now point out, as 

 equally worthy of notice, though less likely to excite it, a few 



resemblances of a more general kind between these two 

 VOL. II. 18. 



