Nature, the God of nature, has proportioned the period of existence of every creature to the means of its support. Duration, perhaps, is as much a comparative quality as magnitude; and these atoms of being as they appear to us, may have organs that lengthen minutes, to their perception, into years. In a flower, destined to remain but a few days, length of life, according to our ideas, could not be given to its inhabitants; but it may be, according to theirs. I saw, in the course of observation of this new world, several succeeding generations of the creatures it was peopled with; they passed under my eye, through the several successive states of the egg and the reptile form, in a few hours. After these, they burst forth, at an instant, into full growth and perfection in their wing form. In this, they enjoyed their span of being as much as we do years; feasted, sported, revelled in delights; fed on the living fragrance that poured itself out at a thousand openings at once before them; enjoyed their loves; laid the foundation for their succeeding progeny, and, after a life thus happily filled up, sunk in an easy dissolution. With what joy in their pleasures did I attend the first and the succeeding broods through the full period of their joyful lives! With what enthusiastic transport did I address to each of these yet happy creatures, Anacreon’s gratulations to the cicada: Blissful insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s sweetest wine, Nature waits upon thee still, And thy fragrant cup does fill; All the fields that thou dost see, All the plants, belong to thee; All that summer hours produce, Fertile made with ripening juice. Man for thee does sow and plough, Farmer he, and landlord thou. Thee the hinds with gladness hear, Prophet of the ripened year; To thee alone, of all the earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy creature! happy thou Dost neither age nor winter know; But when thou’st drank, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flowery leaves among, Sated with the glorious feast, Thou retir’st to endless rest. While the pure contemplative mind thus almost envies what the rude observer would treat unfeelingly, it naturally shrinks into itself, on the thought that there may be, in the immense chain of beings, many, though as invisible to us as we to the inhabitants of this little flower whose organs are not made for comprehending objects larger than a mite, or more distant than a straw’s breadth, to whom we may appear as much below regard as these to us. With what derision should we treat those little reasoners, could we hear them arguing for the unlimited duration of the carnation, destined for the extent of their knowledge, as well as their action. And yet, among ourselves there are reasoners who argue, on no better foundation, that the earth which we inhabit is eternal.