The variety of beautiful forms which cover the surface of this sphere, serve, beyond the physical purposes to which we have already alluded, to influence the mind, and give character to the inhabitants of every locality. There are men who appear to be dead to the mild influences of flowers; but these sweet blossoms--the stars of our earth--exert a power as diffusive as their pervading odours. The poet tells us of a man to whom The primrose on the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. But it was something more. He, perhaps, attended not to the eloquent teaching of its pure, pale leaves: he might not have been conscious of the mysterious singing of that lowly flower: he might, perchance, have crushed it beneath his rude foot rather than quaff the draught of wisdom which it secreted in its cell; but the flower still ministered to that mere sensualist, and in its strange, tongueless manner, reproved his passions, and kept him “a wiser and a better man,“ than if it had pleased God to have left the world without the lovely primrose. The psychology of flowers has found many students--than whom not one read them more deeply than that mild spirit who sang of the Sensitive Plant, and in wondrous music foreshadowed his own melancholy fate.[248] That martyr to sensibility, Keats, who longed to feel the flowers growing above him, drew the strong inspiration of his volant muse from those delicate creations which exhibit the passage of inorganic matter into life; and other poets will have their sensibilities awakened by the æsthetics of flowers, and find a mirror of truth in the crystal dew-drop which clings so lovingly to the purple violet, and draws fresh beauties from its coloured petals. If we examine carefully all the conditions of matter which we have made the subject of our studies, we cannot but perceive how gradual is the progress of the involved action of the physical forces, as we advance from the molecule--the mere particle of matter--up to the organic combination. At first we detect only the action of cohesion in forming the rude mass; then we have the influence of the crystallogenic powers giving a remarkable regularity to bodies; we next discover the influences of heat and electrical force in determining condition, and of chemical action as controlled by them. Yet, still we have a body without organization. Light exerts its mysterious powers, and the same elements assume an organized form; and, in addition to the recognized agencies, we dimly perceive others on which vitality evidently depends. These empyreal influences become more and more complicated to us: ascending in the scale, they rise beyond our science; and, at length, we find them guiding the power of intelligence, while instinct and reason are exhibited in immediate dependence upon them.