What time and labour does it not require for the mind to disengage, to free itself from the fetters and incumbrances of sensorial appearances, the illusions of the senses, and to rise sufficiently high to seize at a glance all the dynamics of the world! It is this faculty, however, which distinguishes the intellect from the imagination. That he may abandon himself to the enjoyment of those pleasures which, like Dead Sea apples, crumble to ashes on his lips, the fool puts aside all mental toil, and disregards the shortness of his time,--ignores the brief period allowed for the development of the understanding. But, at least, let Imagination abstain from substituting its idle dreams for the assured results which can be only the reward of reason, conscientiousness, and labour! Unfortunately, here as elsewhere, it is _vox clamantis_, and we preach in the desert! FOOTNOTE: [Footnote 57: No one, I think, has ever before attempted to reconcile, in this way, the two principal theories which have been put forth on the propagation of light.] [Illustration] CHAPTER II. _WHAT MAY BE SEEN ON THE EARTH._ "Now the shining meads Do boast the pansy, lily, and the rose, And every flower doth laugh as zephyr blows." --BEN JONSON. [Illustration] The Flower seems to have been created expressly to say to men:--"Listen! Those things which most attract your glance are but subordinate, and the principal escape you." That the warning is true, all history attests. It is only, so to speak, from yesterday that the discovery of the sex of plants is to be dated; the tiny organs occupying the centre of the flower having always appeared so insignificant that they had passed, for some thousands of years, completely unnoticed. The eye of the spectator was caught by the calyx and the corolla; these envelopes, though of secondary importance so far as the reproduction of the vegetable is concerned, seemed to eyes dazzled by their glowing colours the true flower,--in fact, the _entire_ flower. Science, which is the slow elaboration of thought matured by the study of objects of no human origin, has completely swept aside this premature judgment. THE PERIANTH.