The Young Queens 
circumstances she has not herself foreseen? 
But is there anything she does foresee, 
anything she does intend to preserve? 
Nature, some may say, is a word wherewith 
we clothe the unknowable; and few things 
authorise our crediting it with intelligence, 
or with aim. That is true. We touch 
here the hermetically sealed vases that 
furnish our conception of the universe. 
Reluctant over and over again to label 
these with the inscription ‘ Unknown,” 
that disheartens us and compels us to 
silence, we engrave upon them, in the 
degree of their size and grandeur, the 
words ‘Nature, life, death, infinite, selec- 
tion, spirit of the race,” and many others, 
even as those who went before us affixed 
the words “God, Providence, destiny, re- 
ward,” &c. Let it be so, if one will, and 
no more. But, though the contents of the 
vases remain obscure, there is gain at least 
in the fact that the inscriptions to-day 
convey less menace to us, that we are able 
therefore to approach them and touch them, 
and lay our ears close to them and listen, 
with wholesome curiosity. 
229 
