26 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
clothed with rainbow-hued lichens, and its summit 
enveloped in verdure. In the smallest and most 
insignificant of these objects, there is as much of 
beauty of form and colour and ingenuity of struc- 
ture displayed as though it were the only object 
in the universe. Nay, God seems to bestow more 
abundant honour upon those objects whose small- 
ness and insignificance would otherwise catse 
them to be overlooked. 
Of all the minute flowerless plants with which 
Nature, as it were, points her flowery sentences, 
fills up her vacant spaces, and balances and tones 
her landscapes, mosses are by far the loveliest and 
the most interesting. As regards form and struc- 
ture they are the most beautiful of all plants; 
Nature having bestowed upon them this compen- 
sation for want of the varied and gorgeous colour- 
ing imparted to the higher tribes of vegetation. 
Their beauty is not of a glaring or obvious char- 
acter, but refined and spiritual, consisting in deli- 
cacy of tint, in the imperceptible gradation with 
which one hue is blended with another, in the 
filmy transparency of the structure, and in the 
endless diversity and perfection of the form, It is 
invisible to the careless or the casual observer, but 
brightens like a star upon the view when atten- 
tively and minutely examined, finding an uncon- 
scious interpreter in every heart, and affording, 
