But lo! here is a wonderful little plant--touch it, and the leaves shrink on the instant: one leaf seeming to be in intimate sympathy with the rest, and the whole leaves in its neighborhood shrinking up at the touch of a foreign object. Or, take the simple pimpernel, which closes its eye as the sun goes down, and opens as he rises again--shrinks at the approach of rain, and expands in fair weather. The hop twines round the pole in the direction of the sun, and-- "The sunflower turns on her god when he sets, The same look that she turned when he rose." Do we know any thing about these things, further than they are so? A partridge chick breaks its shell and steps forth into its new world. Instantly it runs about and picks up the seeds lying about on the ground. It had never learned to run, or to see, or to select its food; but it does all these on the instant. The lamb of a few hours' old frisks about full of life, and sucks its dam's teat with as much accuracy as if it had studied the principle of the air-pump. Instinct comes full-grown into the world at once, and we know nothing about it, neither does the Mr. Dapperling above named. When we ascend to the higher orders of animated being--to man himself--we are as much in the dark as before--perhaps more so. Here we have matter arranged in its most highly-organized forms--moving, feeling, and thinking. In man the animal powers are concentrated; and the thinking powers are brought to their highest point. How, by the various arrangements of matter in man's body, one portion of the nervous system should convey volitions from the brain to the limbs and the outer organs--how another part should convey sensations with the suddenness of lightning--and how, finally, a third portion should collect these sensations, react upon them, store them up by a process called Memory, reproduce them in thought, compare them, philosophize upon them, embody them in books--is a great and unfathomable mystery! Life itself! how wonderful it is! Who can understand it, or unravel its secret! From a tiny vesicle, at first almost imperceptible to the eye, but gradually growing and accumulating about it fresh materials, which are in turns organized and laid down, each in their set places, at length a body is formed, becomes developed--passing through various inferior stages of being--those of polype, fish, frog, and animal--until, at length, the human being rises above all these forms, and the law of the human animal life is fulfilled. First, he is merely instinctive, then sensitive, then reflective--the last the greatest, the crowning work of man's development. But what do we _know_ of it all? Do we not merely see that it is so, and turn aside from the great mystery in despair of ever unraveling it?