«SARTAGE” IN FINLAND. 405 
With the theological views generally accepted through- 
out Christendom we seem warranted to consider the 
creation of man, with the foreknowledge of all that man 
would do in seeking to create new homes, when the homes 
of childhood became too strait for him, as a part of the pro- 
vision made for the earth becoming what the Creator 
designed it to be. And thus may we be led to consider 
these primeval forests as one of the means designed and 
employed to prepare the soil for man’s use; occupying 
it till required, and all the while slowly but surely pre- 
paring it-for.this as an important, if. not. also_its final 
purpose ; and which, after having subserved this end, 
should gradually give way, and in a great measure dis- 
appear, before man’s industry and energy. 
On exposed rocks in Finland, as elsewhere, we still see, 
as 1 have stated, the lichen, the moss, the fern, the flower- 
since retired from the invading desert climate to the heights of the Arcadian Mountains, 
Where are the pastures now, where are the fields around the holy citadel of Dardanus,: 
which at the foot of the richly-watered Ida supported three thousand mares? Who can 
talk‘ now ofthe ‘‘ Xanthus” with its hurrying waters? Who would understand now the 
“ Argos feeder of horses ?”’ 
And Fries, of Lund, tells : ‘A broad band of waste land follows gradually in the steps of 
cultivation. If it expands, its centre and cradle dies, and on the outer borders only do 
we find green shoots. But it is not impossible, it is only difficult, for man, without 
renouncing the advantage of culture itself, one day to make reparation for the injury 
which he has inflicted, he is appointed lord of creation. True is it that ‘thorns and 
thistles, ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named by botanists, “ rubbish plants,” 
mark the-track which man has proudly traversed through the earth. Before him lay 
original nature in her wild and sublime beauty. Behind him he leaves the desert, a de~ 
formed and ruined land ; for childish desire. of destruction, or thoughtless squandering 
of vegetable treasures, have destroyed the-character of nature; and man himself flies 
terrified from the arena of his actions, leaving the impoverished earth to barbarous 
races or animals, so long as yet’ another spot in virgin beauty smiles before him. Here 
again, in selfish pursuit of profit, consciously or unconsciously, he begins anew the work 
of destruction. Thus did cultivation, driven out, leave the East, and the deserts per- 
haps previously robbed of their coverings ; like the wild hordes of old over beautiful: 
Greece, thus rolls this,conquest with fearful rapidity from east to west through ‘America, ' 
and the planter often now leaves the already exhausted land, the eastern climate 
become infertile through the demolition of the forests, to introduce a similar revolution: 
into the far west. But we see, too, that the nobler races, or truly cultivated men, even 
now raise their warning voices, put their small hand to the mighty work of restoring 
to nature her strength and fullness in a yet higher stage than that of wild nature ; one: 
dependent on the law of purpose given by man, arranged according to plans which are 
copied from the development of manhood itself. All this, indeed, remains at present: 
put a powerlesss, and for the whole, an insignificantly small enterprise, but it preserves- 
the faith in the vocation of man, and his power to fulfil:it. In future times-he will and: 
must, when he rules, leads, and protects the whole, free nature from the tyrannous’ 
slavery to which he now abages her, and in which he can only keep her by restless giant 
struggles against the eternally resisting. We'see ‘in the gray cloudy distance of the 
future a realm of peace and beauty‘on the earth and-in'nature, but to reach it-nrust 
man long study in the's¢hool of nature, and, before all, free himself from the bonds of 
that’ exclusive selfishness by which he is ‘actuated,’ 
