158 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
corruption and death the creatures of a new creation. 
The story of the Phoenix is the story of the world, and 
as one form crumbles into ashes, another starts from its 
dust, to continue the chain of beauty, and push on the 
series of utilities. 
“ Where is the dust that has not been alive ? 
The spade, the plough disturb our ancestors; 
From human mould we reap our daily bread; 
The globe around earth’s hollow surface shakes, 
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons : 
O’er devastation we blind revels keep ; 
Whole buried towns support the dancer’s heel.” 
Young. 
Of the sixty simple elements to which all the varieties 
of dead and living matter are reducible, some fifteen or 
twenty play the chief parts in the chemistry of the world. 
All the phenomena which take place around us, whether 
it be the upheaval of volcanic masses, or the floating of 
a gossamer in the summer air; the sweeping hurricane 
which tears up forests by the roots, or the blushing 
promise of the springes first flowers; the forked light¬ 
ning, and the tramping thunder which shakes heaven 
with deep pulsations, or the golden belts upon the body 
of the bee, and the fairy song he chants among the 
flowers ; the trickling of molten metals into the fissures 
of the earth, or the passage of an idea through the brain 
of man; are dependent upon the separation and re-com- 
bination of various of these elementary principles ; with¬ 
out the movements or metamorphoses of which, the 
whole world would be one scene of darkness and desola¬ 
tion. Chemical laws operate upon the minute atoms of 
