THE POETRY OP CHEMISTRY. 
157 
bubble on the surface of a brook admits us to the secret 
of the mechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach 
is a key to it. A little water made to rotate in a cup 
explains the formation of the simpler shells; the addi¬ 
tion of matter from year to year, arrives at last at the 
most complex forms; and yet so poor is Nature with all 
her craft, that, from the beginning to the end of the 
universe, she has but one stuff—but one stuff with its 
two ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. Com¬ 
pound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, 
it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties/^ 
When men woke up from barbarism and night, and 
began to contemplate the beauty of the world, they saw 
that amid the multiplicity of colours and of forms, and 
in the endless metamorphoses of things around them, 
whether they looked upon the granite peaks piercing the 
blue heaven with their hoary pinnacles; the wild sea 
with its midnight moans and summer laughter; the blue 
heaven with its storms and starlight beauty; or the 
green earth with its clustering woods and waving grasses, 
blossoming all over from pole to pole with a garment of 
living verdure; still the same invisible forces were at 
work, weaving all things in a web of unity, and connect¬ 
ing the most incongruous things together. Hence, in 
their mystic worship, and in the poetic utterances of 
their untamed hearts, they pictured nature under the 
various forms of Buddha, Vishnu, Osiris, Proteus, and 
Pan ; all of them symbols of the same thought, and 
representing the creative power which for ever and ever 
transmutes one form into another, and evokes from 
♦ Emerson’s Essays,” Second Series, p. 121. 
