432 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
luxuriant forests draperied with pendent parasites, 
and milk-white mosses enveloping the ground, and 
clothing old, rotten-looking stumps with beauty, 
all busy in the fulfilment of their offices, lengthen- 
ing and swelling, and falling, and scattering their 
minute seeds in little white clouds up and down 
upon the surrounding air. He who is privileged 
to feast his eyes on such a witching spectacle as 
this, must deeply feel that the Spirit of beauty is 
working everywhere, covering the obscurest nooks 
with the same glory as the grandest scenes, and 
using the same pencil to deck the humblest fungi 
that redeem the decay of the grave from its hope- 
lessness, and to gild with living radiance the con- 
stellations that light up the spacious avenues 
between this world and the unseen. 
