THE YOUNG QUEENS 155 



who hits the black spot on the target will cause all the 

 figures to move in the elaborate mechanisms we see in our 

 village fairs. 



We might go lower still, and show, as Ruskin has shown 

 in his " Ethics of the Dust," the character, habits, and artifices 

 ot crystals ; their quarrels, and mode of procedure, when a 

 foreign body attempts to oppose their plans, which are more 

 ancient by far than our imagination can conceive ; the manner 

 in which they admit or repel an enemy, the possible victory 

 of the weaker over the stronger, as, for instance, when the 

 all-powerful quartz submits to the humble and wily epidote, 

 and allows this last to conquer it ; the struggle, terrible 

 sometimes and sometimes magnificent, between the rock- 

 crystal and iron ; the regular, immaculate expansion and 

 uncompromising purity of one hyaline block, which rejects 

 whatever is foul, and the sickly growth, the evident immorality 

 of its brother, which admits corruption, and writhes miserably 

 in the void ; as we might quote also the strange phenomena of 

 crystalline cicatrisation and reintegration mentioned by Claude 

 Bernard, &c. But the mystery here becomes too foreign to us. 

 Let us keep to our flowers, which are the last expression of 

 a life that has yet some kinship with our own. We are not 

 dealing now with animals or insects, to which we attribute 

 a special intelligent will, thanks to which they survive. 

 We believe, rightly or wrongly, that the flowers possess 

 no such will ; at least we cannot discover in them the 

 slightest trace of the organs wherein will, intellect, and 

 initiative of action are usually born, and reside. It follows, 

 therefore, that all that acts in them in so admirable a fashion 

 must proceed directly from what we elsewhere call nature. 



