bravement, et, parmi les myriades d’hiéroglyphes inextricablement entassés et entrelacés, recueillent par des combinaisons adroites quelques lettres en écriture vulgaire qu’ils mettent ensemble pour en former une ou deux recettes économiques fort utiles dans la pratique 1. » Croient-ils par hasard « que la nature n’est qu’un monceau de ces sortes de recettes, quelque énorme livre de cuisine ? » Ote les écailles de tes yeux, et regarde. « Tu verras que ce sublime univers, dans la moindre de ses
ding domain of Mystery, which is everywhere, under, over feet and aniong our hands ; to whom the Universe is an oracle and temple, as well as a kitchen and cattle stall, he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him tliou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy Hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it ?
1. We speak of the volume of Nature : and truly a volume it is, — whose author and writer is God. To read it ! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof ? With its words, sentences, and grand descriptive pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and thousands of years, we shall not try thee. It is a volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred writing ; of which even Prophets are Iiappyth.it they can read hère a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Académies of science, they strive bravely ; and, from amid the thickcrowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some letters in the vulgar character, and therefrom put together this and the other économie recipe, of high avail in practice. That Nature is more than some boundless volume of such recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustiblc domestic cookery-book, of which the whole secret will in this nianner one day evolve itself.
And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor’s in the Arabian taie) set in a basin, to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — but one oiher of ihe mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a soûl in it) is too noble an organ ? I mean that Thought without révérence is barren, perhaps poisonous.
