38 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
Since Jubal's pipe awakened tlie young echo, so have the 
sage poets sung. 
The poets ! Who were the poets ? The kings of mind ! 
Always their white swift feet have led the van of science, 
and the quick flash of their luminous eyes has startled the 
darkness of caverns where treasures were, and showed to 
the gaping crowd the heaps of gems ! 
It is their mission to discover. They leave to those who 
follow them now, to drag the riches forth to day, classify, 
name, arrange, and add to the treasury of general science. 
In many a measured legend and guise of graphic allegory, 
they have said, and sung that harmony, — order — was the su- 
preme law of God's created universe — ^the highest revelation 
of himself — the garment that we know him by, woofed of stars 
and clouds, colored by the many tints of the moon and sun, 
when they play on these, or on the shining earth, with her 
waters, mountains, trees, and herbs, and myriad forms that 
creep, and walk, and run, and fly, and swim — many and di- 
vers — a life and will to each, yet all softly and sweetly 
blending in those mellow hues which make it beautiful when 
seen from heaven — worthy to robe the limbs of Infinite 
might. 
Well then, if the laws of gradation be necessary to these 
harmonies, and as applied to organization and form, consist- 
ent with them, must not the same law apply to all forms of 
animal life, when introduced into these grades of organized 
matter ? 
One general principle, animal life, must animate them all. 
Why are they differently organized ? Why are they not each 
after the same structure, size, and shape ? 
The harmonious diversity of creation requires it should be 
so. The principle of life, passing into this variety of struc- 
ture, gives this required diversity of result. Though the 
principle be the same, the machine acted upon is different 
— in the higher forms of organization, the principle of life is 
active : in the lower, passive. 
