Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

fore no internal evidence is neceffary for the reception of divine truth, but the foftening of the human heart. Job, xxiii. 16, For God maketh my heart foft, and the Almighty troubleth me. The Pfalmift alfo fpeaking of the earth, and the cause of its fruitfulness, afcribes it to the power of God, Pfalm lxv. 10. Thou makeft it foft with fhowers, thou blefleft the fpringing thereof. You may eafily perceive that this fubject may be enlarged to a very great extent; but if you think these few hints may be of any ufe either to your correfpondent or the public, they are at your service. I am, Sir, with great respect,

Yours, &c.

JOHN CUE,

SIR,

To the Editor of the UNIVERSALIST'S MISCELLANY.

I HAVE fent you the following piece, extracted from the Selections from Foreign Literary Journals, lately publifhed, which, if you judge worthy of a place in your ufeful Mifcellany, will, I hope, afford entertainment and inftruction to many who have not the opportunity of feeing the above work.

Yours, &c.

PHILOMATH.

LITTLE WORLDS WITHIN THE GREAT ONE.

Nto

O attentive glance on nature is ever totally unprofitable to the thinking spectator. It always prefents fomething for both his heart and his mind to feed on. He either gains from it an occafion for enlarging his views, or an opportunity for admiring the Creator, or materials for rational and wife conclufions, or all of them put together. Even the creeping worms in the furrow---even the scattered particles of fhells in a broken ftone---even the tender bud of a plant, fills the philofophic votary of truth with improving fentiments; though they do not enter the heart of the fimple fhepherd, who tends his flocks upon the mountains, and might be far better acquainted with nature, but whofe attention is only awakened by the lightnings that burft from the clouds, or the thunders that roll along the sky.

In a fhady grove that was fufficiently enlightened for perceiving a thousand wonders of nature, my eye cafually defcried

a leaf

a leaf on which a reptile had drawn his crooked ferpentine line in various forms. I broke off the leaf, held it to the open fky, and faw the little folitary ftill at work-unconcerned, though in the hand whofe flighteft preffure could have deftroyed his whole habitation, together with himself. So then, thought I, this is the little world in which thou art born, in which thou liveft, in which thou gaineft thy fubfiftence, and followeft thy natural instincts, till the time of thy transformation arrives. Is it poffible that two films of a leaf can contain a store of wealth for a creature which has, who can tell how many, wonderful organs? a wealth of which it can fcarcely confume the fiftieth part in the support of its exiftence for feveral days! I will not caft thee away, thou poor infignificant creature! When I meet with fome difcontented being of my own fpecies, I will fetch thee forth, and fhew thy ftructures to his murmuring heart. Perhaps an unnoticed worm may be able to shame him, whom fublimer leffons cannot move.

But then, how much smaller worlds may be comprised in the larger! In this thicket alone what a fucceffive diverfity of creatures! what an order and connection in this variety! what a multitude of means, and aims, and ends! what a display of creative wisdom! From this oak, that raises its haughty head fo high, to the minutest herb that grows beneath its fhade, what a number of vegetables! and all these vegetables peopled with fuch a variety of living beings, to fome of which, perhaps, the breadth of a hand may appear as a distance of miles to us! How many republics of animals may inhabit this copfe, and fill up the round of their deftination! Ye feathered fongfters of the foreft, fay, are ye ftrangers, or are ye the inhabitants of this grove? Ye are its inhabitants; for this bush that over fhades the neft of your young, was alfo the place of your birth; here is the academy in which you were trained to all you know; on this branch you courted your mates, and in this mofly tree you paffed your nights; at this rill you flaked your thirst, and with thefe falling feeds you appeafed your hunger; till at length, perhaps, after three fummers and two winters, a powerful fportsman, or a crook-beaked hawk, puts an end to your harmlefs lives, and thus makes room for your offspring. How many grand revolutions in your ftates, ye inhabitants of the earth, in the moft proper fenfe, who crawl beneath my feet! Let an ant-hill be ever fo artificially conftituted, yet a cunning bird can foon commit horrid devastation in it, or the hand that rummages for your eggs for food to the pecking nightingale in the gilded cage of a lady of quality. What, in the fight of heaven,

heaven, are the mightiest human states of this world but anthills, if yet fo great! Indeed, more highly efteemed, more nobly regulated, more gloriously deftined; but in magnitude,--only like a bee-hive with its cells.

I came into my garden, and found a fnail of gaudy colour; I looked farther; and within the compafs of ten paces I met with ten others: I examined fome mole-hills, and found in them three or four little habitations of those curious animals. I compared the fize of this space with the whole dimenfions of my garden; and the refult of my comparison was that many thousand fnails dwell in this circuit alone. I now turned my attention to the other living creatures that refided in this imperceptible spot of the earth. I faw on a dwarf apple-tree four or five different species of caterpillars. How eafy would it have been for me to have found twenty more. Admirable creatures! whole books might be written of you, wonderful reptiles! of your economy, of your various hues, your organs, your modes of life, your webs, your transformations---and they have been written. I went farther, and was met by a diligent golden beetle, bearing fome little prey to his dwelling. I traced his abode in the earth, but found him not there, and, in his ftead, only the larve of a may-chaffer. I found earth-fpiders of a brilliant red; I found little worms, whose wonderful ftructure threw me into aftonifhment. Great God! how replete is this earth with the creatures of thy hands! I broke a twig from a rofe-bush, and fpied a whole republic of wine-fretters, whofe work of propagation forms fo weighty an objection to the ordinary rules of nature. I fpied into the hollow of the bark of a tree, and counted in one alone five different kinds of worms. I feized a butterfly, pafturing on a flower with expanded wings; and hundreds of bees, who had left their hives, juft by, humming round the bloffomed trees. Gnats fwarmed in infinite hofts; wafps and hornets, flies and ichneumons, and who knows what other beings, peopled the air. I paffed a verdant hedge, and found in it the neft of a little bird, with the mother still fitting on the eggs. On! what an infcrutable multitude of living beings! of great and fmall, of beautiful and ugly, Aying and creeping, noxious and innoxious creatures in this garden alone! what variety in their forms! what difference in their colours! what diverfity in their food! What fluggifhnefs in thefe! what fwiftnefs in those! What peculiar inftincts! what induftry! what inceflant motion! Art in their works, cunning and forelight against their foes. Here war rages among individuals---there between whole nations. Here free booters, that fall VOL. III. I

upon

the

innocent

'nnocent by furprize---there the mighty, overpowering the defencelefs---one kingdom ever bordering on another! And what else is the whole garden, but a little world within the greater?

They fay, that man himself is a little world; and he had reason on his fide who first conceived this thought. Pure microcosmic scenes in the nature, in the actions, in the relations of every particular man. Day and night, light and darkness, alternately fucceed in his fortunes, as in the larger world; and if they do not always happen in equal periods, yet, are there not likewife countries that have longer day or longer night than others? ebb and flood in all the undertakings of mortals? In their intellect---at times what drought! and again, at times what a flight that foars above the clouds! In their paffions--now a placid calin, and now a raging ftorm. In their animal fpirits---to-day a flow and feeble pulfe, to morrow a feverish heat that mounts almoft to frenzy. Kingdoms are exalted, and again decline; and the prevalence of human wifhes and defires undergo the fame revolutions. In blooming youth paffion and joy and jollity bear fway. Age overturns their reign, and sets gloomy care and discontent, and fpleen upon the throne; juft as the fyftems of whole nations alter. In the times of the bards and druids, England was ftill fo favage as to be called a barbarous land; it is now the moft brilliant gem in the crown of Europe. Thus it frequently happens, that a man fhines in his fiftieth year, who in his twentieth afforded but little hopes. In Newton's mind, at his fourteenth or fifteenth year, that only dawned which in his fortieth was a dazzling light. And as towering states fall back, fo may the fame wife mind return to childhood at eighty, that at prefent admits fo much light. Say Fwrong that each man is a little world, full of good and bad fcenes, full of happy and unhappy revolutions, till the rotation. ceases, and the clock-work ftops? Wretched reflection! What is the confequence, then, of my confidering myself as a world in miniature? No; prolific thought! matter enough for important meditations. Can the world fubfift if it be not adequately governed? Can a fhip proceed happily on its voyage, if it has no fkilful pilot, no compafs, no prudent commander on board? Can a kingdom ftand if it has no laws, or only bad ones? no ramparts, or only fuch as are badly supplied? no ruler, only an ignorant one? Hence deduce thy rules, O man! if thou wifheft thy monarchy to be wifely governed. Provide thee with Ariadne's clue in thy labyrinth; put a Lycurgus in thy council; place a skilful pilot at thy helm, a wife,

brave, and yet fteady moderator, on thy throne, if thou wishest thy government to subsist.

But the microscopic world, with which the modern investigators of nature have been fo much employed-this is completely a little one in the midst of a great one; a world that was almost entirely concealed from our fathers, till immenfe miracles of the Deity were discovered in the fouth and the north, and even in the heart of Europe, with a very small magnifying glafs.I crofs a pond: what is that to the Ocean ! And yet a world replete with thousands of living creatures, that derive their fuftenances from this liquid element, follow their inftincts in it, and multiply their kinds; carry on wars, and make peace; are fick and again in health. I take a glass full of water, and get a world with who knows how many wonderful creatures! I faw water-fleas, and water-chafers, water-bugs, and water-gnats, larves for future winged infects, and worms in multitudes, carrying them about. They lived in this glass as free, as contented, as if it were the whole world to them. I took a drop from this water, and put it under a magnifying-glafs. What was one drop to the whole veffel? and yet a little world of creatures. I will leave to the learned to call them all by their names---the animals that swim about in one drop of water, as in a fea---vorticella and globular ani.. mals, and however elfe they may be called. Only this I will affirm---minute, scarcely perceptible, points, were, under the glass, animals with curious organs; and others, at times darting by them, fo fmall, that the former were of gigantic fize in comparison of them. Immenfe Creator! thus unbounded is Thy World, as well the great, as the leaft among the little! Knew we nothing further of thy works, than the amazing economy of the minuteft animals, which Reaumur and Bonnet, Lyonet and Tremblet, and others, have examined and described, must we not even then be astonished at THY GREATNESS in the LEAST! But ftill farther from one boundary' to another; from the almoft imperceptible polype to the kraken; from the water-flea to the whale; from the mite to the elephant; from Venus to Saturn; from the point whereon I stand to the remoteft fixt ftar. Oh! how the understanding turns giddy, when it ventures to think beyond this sphere!

For in fact, this whole globe, with all its mountains and hills, its feas and rivers, forefts and plains, kingdoms and empires, armies and fleets, towns and villages, palaces and cottages, diamonds and brick-bats, is but a very little world in comparison of the greater that composes the universe. How many

I 2

fuch

« AnteriorContinuar »