THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 159 



the merely mitered head or crowned brow or 

 imperial form that would vaunt its own deeds. 



The greatest of physical paradoxes is a sun- 

 beam. It is the most potent and versatile force 

 we have, yet it ever behaves as if the gentlest 

 and most accommodating. Nothing can fall 

 more softly upon the earth, not even the feath- 

 ery flakes of snow which thread their way so 

 delicately through the atmosphere as if too 

 filmy to yield to the demands of gravitation. 

 The eye, tenderest of human organs, is pierced 

 hourly by thousands of sunbeams, yet suffers 

 no pain, rather rejoices in the sweet inflowing 

 tides. Yet a few of those rays, insinuating 

 themselves into a mass of iron like the "Brit- 

 tania Tubular Bridge," will compel the closely 

 knit particles to separate and will sway the 

 vast structure very sensibly. The glory of 

 sunbeams upon our great sheets of water lift 

 up innumerable tons into atmospheric cisterns, 

 only to drop them again in snows upon the 

 mountains or in fresh showers upon thirsty 

 plains, or in the nightly dew. The marvel is, 

 as we think it, that a power so capable of 

 assuming such a diversity of forms and produc- 

 ing such stupendous results, should come to us 

 in a most gentle way and be so easy of man- 

 agement. How it types the work of the Di- 



