"Le navigateur, qui, la nuit, voit l'océan étinceler de lumière, danser en guirlandes de feu, s'égaye d'abord de ce spectacle. Il fait dix lieues; la guirlande s'allonge indéfiniment, elle s'agite, se tord, se noue, aux mouvements de la lame; c'est un serpent monstrueux qui va toujours s'allongeant, jusqu'à trente lieues, quarante lieues. Et tout cela n'est qu'une danse d'animalcules imperceptibles. En quel nombre? A cette question l'imagination s'effraye; elle sent là une nature de puissance immense, de richesse epouvantable.... Que sont ces petits des petits? Rien moins que les constructeurs du globe où nous sommes. De leurs corps, de leurs débris, ils ont préparé le sol qui est sous nos pas.... Et ce sont les plus petits qui ont fait les plus grandes choses. L'imperceptible rhizopode s'est bâti un monument bien autre que les pyramides, pas moins que l'Italie centrale, une notable partie de la chaîne des Apennins. Mais c'était trop peu encore; les masses énormes du Chili, les prodigieuses Cordillères, qui regardent le monde à leurs pieds, sont le monument funéraire où cet être insaisissable, et pour ainsi dire, invisible, a enseveli les débris de son espèce dïsparue."--(Michelet: _L'Insecte_.) § 5. In these passages, and those connected with them in the chapter from which they are taken, itself so vast in scope, and therefore so sublime, we may perhaps find the true relations of minuteness, multitude, and magnitude. We shall not feel that there is no such thing as littleness, or no such thing as magnitude. Nor shall we be disposed to confuse a Volvox with the Cordilleras; but we may learn that they both are bound together by links of eternal life and toil; we shall see the vastest thing noble, chiefly for what it includes; and the meanest for what it accomplishes. Thence we might gather--and the conclusion will be found in experience true--that the sense of largeness would be most grateful to minds capable of comprehending, balancing, and comparing; but capable also of great patience and expectation; while the sense of minute wonderfulness would be attractive to minds acted upon by sharp, small, penetrative sympathies, and apt to be impatient, irregular, and partial. This fact is curiously shown in the relations between the temper of the great composers and the modern pathetic school. I was surprised at the first rise of that school, now some years ago, by observing how they restrained themselves to subjects which in other hands would have been wholly uninteresting (compare Vol. IV., p. 19); and in their succeeding efforts, I saw with increasing wonder, that they were almost destitute of the power of feeling vastness, or enjoying the forms which expressed it. A mountain or great building only appeared to them as a piece of color of a certain shape. The powers it represented, or included, were invisible to them. In general they avoided subjects expressing space or mass, and fastened on confined,