46 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
If this be true, then have we been right to regard the 
earth as a living revelation, and the dumb trees, and stocks, 
and stones, articulate language. Bat like that other Holy 
Eevelation, the types and symbols here must be devoutly 
studied, with a pious and earnest zeal. 
Though, perhaps, not very strictly pious in the common 
acceptation, zeal enough has not been wanting. Uncon- 
sciously, our translations — occasional glimpses of the sense 
which visited us — began to assume definiteness and connec- 
tion ; the indigested chaos of rude forms to take on order ; and 
before we were aware, an absorbing idea had possessed us. The 
result of all our readings might then be summed up under the 
single head, " Life is one linked continuous chain, from, what 
we can know of God, to the atom ;" and patiently we continue 
to delve among the rocks, the shells, the bugs, all creeping 
things, the flowers, the birds, the brutes, and arrowy fishes, 
to see if we may trace these links distinctly to the bounds of 
sense. We think we can ! 
Then comes the inquiry — if this linked gradation be a ma- 
terial law, the law of forms^ may it not apply also to the im- 
material essence which in such varied phases constitutes the 
life — the soul of these ? Here we meet with the hoary dog- 
matisms of the schools, and are rebuffed. Here we veil our 
eyes in humility before such names as Bacon, Locke, Hume, 
Beattie, Brown. We reverence these high Priests in the 
temple of the Most High ! But reverence need not be blind. 
They say Eeason and Instinct are altogether unlike; that 
Imagination is a mere faculty or adjunct of Eeason, and 
Eeason is the supremest function of the mind. How dare 
we think or say otherwise ? We do not do it daringly, we 
do it humbly, inquiringly. We say we cannot help it that 
our eyes will not see as theirs have. Our's are poor, weak 
visuals at the best, and but that there is something curious in 
the obstinacy of the hallucinations they have persisted in all 
our lives long, we should not presume to trouble any one 
