In the aspect of visible nature, with its wonderful diversity of form and its charm of colour, we find the Beautiful; and in the operations of these principles, which are ever active in producing and maintaining the existing conditions of matter, we discover the Sublime. The form and colour of a flower may excite our admiration; but when we come to examine all the phenomena which combine to produce that piece of symmetry and that lovely hue,--to learn the physiological arrangement of its structural parts,--the chemical actions by which its woody fibre and its juices are produced,--and to investigate those laws by which is regulated the power to throw back the white sunbeam from its surface in coloured rays,--our admiration passes to the higher feeling of deep astonishment at the perfection of the processes, and of reverence for their great Designer. There are, indeed, “tongues in trees;” but science alone can interpret their mysterious whispers, and in this consists its poetry. To rest content with the bare enunciation of a truth, is to perform but one half of a task. As each atom of matter is involved in an atmosphere of properties and powers, which unites it to every mass of the universe, so each truth, however common it may be, is surrounded by impulses which, being awakened, pass from soul to soul like musical undulations, and which will be repeated through the echoes of space, and prolonged for all eternity. The poetry which springs from the contemplation of the agencies which are actively employed in producing the transformation of matter, and which is founded upon the truths developed by the aids of science, should be in no respect inferior to that which has been inspired by the beauty of the individual forms of matter, and the pleasing character of their combinations. The imaginative view of man and his world--the creations of the romantic mind--have been, and ever will be, dwelt on with a soul-absorbing passion. The mystery of our being, and the mystery of our ceasing to be, acting upon intelligences which are for ever striving to comprehend the enigma of themselves, leads by a natural process to a love for the Ideal. The discovery of those truths which advance the human mind towards that point of knowledge to which all its secret longings tend, should excite a higher feeling than any mere creation of the fancy, how beautiful soever it may be. The phenomena of Reality are more startling than the phantoms of the Ideal. Truth is stranger than fiction. Surely many of the discoveries of science which relate to the combinations of matter, and exhibit results which we could not by any previous efforts of reasoning dare to reckon on, results which show the admirable balance of the forces of nature, and the might of their uncontrolled power, exhibit to our senses subjects for contemplation truly poetic in their character.