Flow’rs and their fruit, Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed To vital spirits aspire, to animal, To intellectual; give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding; whence the soul Reason receives. 943. Secondly, the particles thrown off by organized bodies are rendered, in the very act of their dissipation, subservient to purposes of utility and pleasure. How these poisonous elements are converted into the pabulum of life and health has been shown. To a being with the senses and faculties of man, how loathsome might these particles have been rendered during the period of their transition from one organized kingdom to the other! And if disagreeable at all, how constantly forced upon his sense, wherever he might be, during every moment of his waking hours, must these objects of disgust have been! But how does the matter actually stand? The excretions of the plant are the very particles that, poured “Into the blissful field through groves of myrrh, And flow’ring odours, cassia, nard, and balm,” create “a wilderness of sweets.” It is as these exhalations are passing off from the economy to which, if retained, they would be noxious (851), that they become “Exhalations of all sweets That float o’er vale and upland;” and which refresh and delight even more than the forms and colours of the “aery leaf” or “the bright consummate flower.” 944. And the human body, when the functions of its economy are sound and vigorous, is fresh and fragrant as the flower (862); and by that intellectual faculty by which man is capable of associating his conception of beauty and delight with whatever object has been the source of exquisite gratification, the fragrance of the flower is but suggestive of what, to him, is inexpressibly sweeter and dearer. “As new waked from soundest sleep, Soft on the flow’ry herb I found me laid In balmy sweat, which with his beams the sun Soon dry’d—— By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, ——— And upright Stood on my feet.—— ——— All things smiled With fragrance, and with joy my heart o’erflow’d. Myself I then perused, and limb by limb Survey’d, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran. With supple joints, as lively vigour led.” MILTON. ——Fresh lily, ’Tis her breathing that Perfumes her chamber thus. SHAKSPEARE. —— The very air With her sweet presence is impregnate richly, As in a mead that’s fresh with youngest green Some fragrant shrub exhales—— Ambrosial odours—— Charming present sense, And sure of memory;—so her person bears A natural balm—distilling incense. “Death of Marlowe,” by R. H. HORNE. CHAPTER XIV. OF NUTRITION.