THE RAINBOW. 
257 
down, but I see the rainbow still; not in the heavens, 
but in the hues of the deep green leaf, grey bark, tawny 
gravel, and thin mist rolling eastward. The world seems 
to be made of rainbows, and every one arches up to heaven, 
and invites me to try my trembling footsteps thither. 
That old apple tree yonder has been living on rainbows 
eighty years. If I cut it down and burn it to charcoal, 
I shall only learn that it abstracted charcoal from air 
and water by the agency of the sunbeams. And as the 
eye involuntarily resolves things into parts, so the mys¬ 
tical number of the rainbow is evidently written out. 
I can see but three parts therein. I believe in Goethe's 
theory of vegetable morphology, and that the tree is, 
therefore, an expanded leaf. It is all leaf, root, bark, 
branch, and ripened fruit stem. Its oneness is in har¬ 
mony with its parent rainbow. But the oneness divides 
into three without force. The root is the leaf absorbing; 
the stem and branches are the leaf elaborating; the leaf 
itself is the leaf breathing; the blossoms are but leaves 
coloured; and the fruit only leaves gorged with acid and 
saccharine juices : it is a threefold being, and in har¬ 
mony with the rest of the world, in which it has but 
a humble place. I look out into the vast space which 
evening has darkened, and on which the stars begin to 
glimmer, and can mentally pierce it only horizontally 
and vertically, and then the mind insists on a circum¬ 
ference. So space, in the midst of which the rainbow 
plants itself as if it would endure to the end of the 
world, has but three properties, and I can find no more. 
It is the same with tangible objects : they have length, 
breadth, and thickness—the last is their circumference; 
