each framing some luminous and divine essence, as a telescope frames a star; and something of their inalienable distinction and firmness seems to linger in our minds, though in the exigencies of our hurried life we must turn away from each of them and forget them. 7 CROSS-LIGHTS They say the sun is a very small star, and the thing is plausible enough in itself, without the proofs which presumably the astronomers can give of it. That which nature produces she is apt to produce in crowds; what she does once, if she has her way, she will do often, with a persistency and monotony which would be intolerable to her if she were endowed with memory; but hers is a life of habit and automatic repetition, varied only when there is some hitch in the clockwork, and she begins hurriedly beating a new tune. Accordingly, what any creature calls the present time, the living interest, the ruling power, or the true religion is almost always but as one leaf in a tree. The same plastic stress which created it creates a million comparable things around it. Yet it is easy for each to ignore its neighbours, and to be shocked at the notion of loving them as itself; for they all have their separate places or seasons, and bloom on their several stems, so that an accident that overwhelms one of them may easily leave the others unscathed. But for all that, they are as multitudinous and similar as the waves of the sea. Take any star at random, like our sun, or any poet, or any idea, and whilst certainly it will be the nearest and warmest to somebody, it is not at all likely to be the greatest of its kind, or even very remarkable.