20 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



diation is particularly beneficial, from the 

 deposition of moisture which it determines 

 upon the foilage ; and it is only to tender 

 plants artificially trained to resist the ri- 

 gors of an unnatural situation, that this ex- 

 tra degree of cold proves injurious." It may 

 be observed, also, that trees of lofty growth 

 frequently escape being injured by frost, 

 when plants nearer the ground are quite de- 

 stroyed. 



POETRY. 



Poetry is the language of the imagination and 

 the passions. It relates to whatever gives imme- 

 diate pleasure or pain to the human mind It 

 comes home to the bosoms and businesses of 

 men; for nothing but what so comes home to 

 them in the most general and intelligible shape 

 can be a subject for poetry. 



Poetry is the universal language which the 

 heart holds with nature and itself. He who has 

 a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect 

 for himself, or for anything else. It is not a 

 mere frivolous accomplishment (as some persons 

 have been led to imagine), the trifling amusement 

 of a few idle readers, or leisure hours— it has 

 been the study and delight of mankind in all 

 ages. Many people suppose that poetry is 

 something to be found only in books, contained 

 in lines of ten syllables, with like endings; but 

 wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or 

 harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, 

 in the growth of a flower that "spreads its sweet 

 leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the 

 sun," — there is poetry, in its birth. 



Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetiy, 

 hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, 

 admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, 

 are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within 

 us that expands, rarities, refines, raises our 

 whole being; without it, " man's life is poor as 

 beasts." Man is a poetical animal ; and those of 

 us who do not study the principles of poetry, act 

 upon them all our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois 

 Gentilhomme, who had always spoken prose with- 

 out knowing it. 



The child is a poet, when he first plays at 

 hide and -seek, or repeats the story of Jack the 

 Giant-killer; the shepherd boy is a poet, when he 

 first crowns his mistress with a garland of flow- 

 ers ; the countryman, when he stops to look at 

 the rainbow; the city-apprentice, when he goes 

 after the Lord Mayor's show; the miser, when 

 he hngs his gold; the courtier, who builds his 

 hopes upon a smile ; the savage, who paints his 

 idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, 

 or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god; — the 

 vain, the ambitions, the proud, the choleric man, 

 the hero and, the coward, the beggar and 

 the king, the rich and the poor, the young 

 and the old — all live in a world of their own 

 making; and the poet does no more than de- 

 scribe what all others think and act. — Hazi.itt. 



Futurity. — Truly and beautifully has it been 

 said, that the veil which covers futurity has been 

 woven by the hand of mercy. 



THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



We are now in the frequent receipt of Papers 

 from America, and other foreign parts, containing 

 extracts from Our Journal ; and we take this 

 opportunity of thanking the senders. One of 

 them, connected with the New York " Christian 

 Advocate," has calLed our attention to an article 

 in the last named paper, and wishes to see it 

 transferred to Our Own. We give it a ready 

 insertion. It is entitled the " Uniformity of 

 Nature : " — 



The lark now carols the same song, and in the 

 same key, as when Adam first turned his en- 

 raptured ear to catch the moral. The owl first 

 hooted in B flat ; it still loves the key, and screams 

 through no other octaves. In the same key has 

 ever ticked the death-watch ; while all the three 

 noted chirps of the cricket have ever been in B 

 since Tubal-Cain first heard them in his smithy, 

 or the Israelites in their ash-ovens. 



Never has the buzz of the gnat risen above the 

 second A ; nor that of the house-fly's wing sunk 

 below the first F. Sound had at first the same 

 connection with color as it has now, and the right 

 angle of light's incidence might as easily produce 

 a sound on the first turrets of Cain's city, as it 

 is now said to do on one of the pyramids. The 

 tulip, in its first bloom in Noah's garden, emitted 

 heat, four and a half degrees above the atmos- 

 phere, as it does at the present day. The stormy 

 petrel as much delighted to sport amongst the first 

 billows which the Indian Ocean ever raised, as it 

 does now. 



In the first migration of birds, they passed from 

 north to south, and fled over the narrowest part 

 of the seas, as they will this autumn. The cuckoo 

 and the nightingale first began their song together, 

 analogous to the beginning of our April, in the 

 days of Nimrod. Birds that lived on flies laid 

 blueish eggs in the days of Joseph, as they will 

 two thousand years hence — if the sun should not 

 fall from his throne, or the earth not break her 

 harness from the planetary car. The first bird 

 that was caged, oftener sung in adagio than in 

 the natural spirit. 



Corals have ever grown edgeways to the ocean 

 stream. Eight millions, two hundred and eighty 

 thousand anhxtalcuke, could as well live in a drop 

 of water in the days of Seth as now. Flying 

 insects had on their coats of mail in the days of 

 Japheth ; over which they have ever waved plumes 

 of more gaudy feathers than the peacock ever 

 dropped. The bees that afforded Eve her first 

 honey made their combs hexagonal ; and the first 

 house-fly produced twenty millions, eighty-three 

 hundred and twenty eggs, in one year, as she does 

 at present. The first jump of the first flea was 

 two hundred times its own length, as it was the 

 last summer. 



There was iron enough in the blood of the first 

 forty-two men to make a ploughshare, as there is 

 to-day, from whatever country you collect them. 

 The lungs of Abel contained a coil of vital matter 

 one hundred and fifty-nine feet square, as mine ; 

 and the first inspiration of Adam consumed seven- 

 teen cubic inches of air, as do those of every adult 

 reader. The cat and the robin followed the foot- 

 steps of Noah, as they do ours. 



