What is that volume, red-bound and glittering with golden tooling, more brilliant than the highest reach of Art has ever approached; dazzling with its illuminated pages, which none can read but the eagle-eye of him who has learned to gaze upon the living light of heavenly Truth, as written by the finger of the Almighty Omniscient? It is the volume of _Fire_--Nature's _Philosophy_. That beautiful volume, delicately bound in soft cerulean, sparkling with starry splendors, and redolent of "that odor within the sense, so delicate, soft, and intense," which gives its pages the fragrance no less than the shining beauty of Paradise--that volume is _Air_--and it is Nature's _Music and Poetry_. See Nature's _History_ in those two immense volumes, _Earth_ and _Water_. In them read the History of Empires, their rise, decline, and fall: the History of Man; his birth, his life, and death: the History of Passion; its conception, development, and disappointment: the History of Evil; its origin, dominion, and decay: the History of Good; its slow and steady, yet neglected and uncultured growth--its secret yet secure and strong dominion--its lasting and undying strength: and the History of all Nature and her works--recording all her beauties, all her glories, all her triumphs, all her lessons, all her immortal lore! 5. "Not only by the warmth, And soothing sunshine of delightful things, Do minds grow up and flourish."--_Akenside_. No more than flowers grow up and flourish best, when reared in a hot-house. Those flowers may have more beauty, but where is the strength which the free blowing blossom of the wilderness alone possesses? The corolla is delicate, its petals each a separate loveliness: but where is the noble stalk sustaining many and more voluminous, though less gaudy blossoms, which rears its enduring head aloft, living when the other is dead--fragrant when the other is withered upon the dewless earth around its drooping stem? Adversity has been the parent of master minds. Homer and Milton, and Shakspeare, and Burns--these were no hot-house plants in Nature's garden: they were born in obscurity; their upward growth was watered with the dew-like tears of adversity; they were reared in the great wilderness of the world, amid its storms, its tempests, and its fitful gleams of sunshine: and _so_ "do minds grow up and flourish." 6. "Renewed friendships are to be conducted with greater nicety than such as have never been broken."--_Rochefoucault_. Yes: just as one should handle a porcelain vase, once fractured and repaired, more carefully than before it was injured. 7. "I do not subscribe to the notion that poets are _born_," said Herbert.--_Private Life_.