opposite, it appears to us like the dead hand of a clock which was once
wound up, and will some day cease to strike. There is no retreat for
the soul, which feels itself alone and forsaken even among the stars,
or in the heavenly world itself. One thought brings us a little
consolation: the repose, the regularity, the immensity, and the
unavoidableness of nature. Here, where the waterfall has clothed the
gray rocks on either side with green moss, the eye suddenly recognizes
a blue forget-me-not in the cool shade. It is one of millions of
sisters now blossoming along all the rivulets and in all the meadows of
earth, and which have blossomed ever since the first morning of
creation shed its entire inexhaustible wealth over the world. Every
vein in its leaves, every stamen in its cup, every fibre of its roots,
is numbered, and no power on earth can make the number more or less.
Still more, when we strain our weak eyes and, with superhuman power,
cast a more searching glance into the secrets of nature, when the
microscope discloses to us the silent laboratory of the seed, the bud
and the blossom, do we recognize the infinite, ever-recurring form in
the most minute tissues and cells, and the eternal unchangeableness of
Nature's plans in the most delicate fibre. Could we pierce still
deeper, the same form-world would reveal itself, and the vision would
lose itself as in a hall hung with mirrors. Such an infinity as this
lies hidden in this little flower. If we look up to the sky, we see
again the same system--the moon revolving around the planets, the
planets around suns, and the suns around new suns, while to the
straining eye the distant star-nebulae themselves seem to be a new and
beautiful world. Reflect then how these majestic constellations
periodically revolve, that the seasons may change, that the seed of
this forget-me-not may shed itself again and again, the cells open, the
leaves shoot out, and the blossoms decorate the carpet of the meadow;
and look upon the lady-bug which rocks itself in the blue cup of the