that man was supernatu

geology contradicted and confuted it rally created, six thousand years ago, than to say he was at that time, or any other time, made out of materials that had been previously formed from nothing. The presumption for creative power must be, that it is unlimited. Power to form one thing from nothing, is power to form another thing from nothing. Power to form gas from nothing, is power to form man from nothing. Power to form man from nothing at any one time, is power to form man from nothing at any other time.

It is weakness, and not strength-loss, and not gain. that geologic-theologians have commenced this retreat,― making the admission that man was not created. When it is admitted that certain materials were necessary, and available conditions of these materials equally necessary, to the formation of man it being at the same time another necessary link of this philosophy, that the available conditions of these materials did not exist anterior to the moment they came into use frankly admitted that the whole has It may as well be admitted, in a word, that man could not have existed before grass; and that grass could not have existed before granite; and that granite could not have existed before gas. Finally, it may as well be admitted that it could not have been otherwise than it has been.

-it may as well be fully and been quite a natural process.

After all this, it may just as well be admitted for it must be that there is no power exterior to the Universe; that all materials are parts of Nature; that they have always existed, and will always exist. Whoever will say it is difficult to conceive of the eternal existence of the materials, in ceaseless changes, let him answer to himself the question how he can better conceive of their non-existence, in the past or in the future. Let him try to conceive of power to bring them out of nothing, and return them to nothing this power having existed eternally by itself alone, before it exerted itself in forming something from nothing; and then continuing eternally alone by itself, after uncreating the something and returning it to nothing. Think of such power existing and dwelling by itself unemployed! Cui bono?

How much easier, how much more rational, to think of the power and the materials running parallel, to think of the power inhering in the materials! Power in them we know of. Power out of them we know nothing of. The most dormant of them

are exerting their power perpetually. No two particles of them are ever in the same relations during two successive moments of time. This perpetual motion is confessedly manifest on magnificent scales. Less manifest, but not less a fact, in proportion as the scales lessen. In the whirling of the spheres, in the rotation of the seasons, in the doings of waters and fires- of earthquakes and volcanoes—in the organization and dissolution of man and other animals, and of vegetables, the change is recognizable, indicating the power. In the granite it is less manifest. In this, to the constant looker-on, it may not be manifest during days or weeks, scarcely may it be during months or years. But look now at a cathedral in Europe that has been standing unfinished during many centuries. High up on its unfinished walls the stones have changed to soil, to a depth that is producing luxuriant growths of sweet-briars and other vegetables. In time, these vast walls will all be soil so much of them as does not pass off into the atmosphere- and all their parts and particles, in the atmosphere and out, together with all the parts and particles of all other things, will exert their power, do their work, in the round of making vegetables, animals, planets and suns, as they have always been doing.

BLOSSOMS AND LEAVES.

A PARAMYTH BY RICHTER.

MAY came, and the blossoms, pale and thin, fell from the trees; then said the leaves: "Behold these puny things, how useless! hardly have they seen the light before they fade and die; but we, we grow stronger, enduring the heat of summer, which serves only to make us larger, more brilliant, and more luxuriant, until at last, after many months of usefulness, when we have raised the most beautiful fruit, and given it to the children of earth, we sink into our graves ornamented with the colors of many orders, while the thunders of autumnal storms roll over our heads." But the fallen blossoms said: "Willingly do we abandon life now, for we have fulfilled our mission; we have given birth to the fruit that is to live after us."

Be not discouraged, ye silent, unnoticed men of books, though ye pass away quickly! Ye little-esteemed martyrs in the school

room—ye noble benefactors of mankind, whose names are not inscribed upon the tablets of history and you, mothers, whose lot is to dwell in obscurity,-be not discouraged in the presence of the proud statesmen, the rich merchant princes, the haughty conquerors, be not discouraged, for you are the blossoms.

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THE ATTRIBUTE OF WINGS.

[From the French of Toussenel.]

In some interesting tribes of insects, as that of the ants, who hold virginity in high esteem, the right of bearing wings and rising into the air belongs only to the choir of vestals. She who has loved punishes herself for her innocent weakness by tearing with her own hands her virginal tunic. An analogous custom is observed in Eutopia, whence the incomparable purity of morals has always excluded deceptions in love. The crown of white roses is the sign of the vestalate: the young girl who has registered her departure from the vestalate, and bravely renounced the numerous privileges attached to this title, a little later reveals this to all by appearing at public ceremonies with her brow garlanded with a crown of red roses. I do not dissimulate my lively admiration of an institution which introduces loyalty into all social affections, and banishes falsehood and hypocrisy from the hearth of our intimate affections. Respect for the rights of happy love instinctively seeks an environment of shade and solitude.

I remark in passing, that it is the history of the Ant which has lent to modern mythology the myth of the Sylphidea graceful and charming myth, which Marie Taglioni, queen of the dance, formerly translated in immortal pirouettes on the choreographic scenes of the French Opera. The Sylphide is, like the winged Ant, a virgin of the air, whose wings fall at the first kiss of love. The history of the butterfly confirms still more vigorously than that of the Ant this view of the glorious attribute of wings.

When the foul caterpillar, which lives only for its belly, has devoured enough, the breath of the generative power which goes forth over the waters, the forests and the plains, to watch over the conservation of beings, warns the caterpillar that it is time to arrest the development of the individual, and to think of the interest of the species. The caterpillar, warned, stops cating, and fixing

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itself at the extremity of the stalk it has denuded, weaves the lid where its mysterious transformation is accomplished. After which the crawling insect, which has sloughed its dress of misery, darts from its silken prison under form of an aërial sylph, with gold and azure wings, which only lives upon perfume, sunshine and love, and asks its companion of all the corollas of flowers, less coquettish, less adorned than itself.

This metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly symbolizes the passage from the lymbic society, ruled by men and by constraint, into the harmonian society, where every one obeys only the sovereign of his choice, and where the perfumed nectar of flowers images the refined delights of labor in a suitable environment, and shared by woman, for whom Nature reserves her most elaborate toilet. Now in our time is the dark and mysterious period of incubation for the future harmony.

Analogy, which is the mother of poetry and science, has also long represented this metamorphosis as the image of the immortality of the soul, and of the transition from the miseries of the terrestrial life to the delights of the ultra-mundane life. I regret not being free to elucidate this interesting question; but I have sworn to keep to myself all that I know about the endless charms of the aromal life.

O men, my fellows, you who have only to stoop, in order to see and to learn from the humblest creatures the secret of happy destinies, how long still will the silly blindness of pride condemn you to crawl in the sewers of misery? What bloody lessons, and what painful experiences do you still await in order to proclaim the advent of your Queen Woman, and to confess attractive labor? But let us at last grant speech to the Bird which asks it, impatient to sing in his turn all the virtues of Spring. Few are as bold as the bird in the definition of their dominant passion. It calls love the torch of virtue. This definition is very just. The birds love much, some of them love always. It is the tribe of creatures privileged by the Lord; for the favor of Heaven is measured for each being by the power of loving which it has received.

And as God has done nothing by halves, he has taken care to lavish on these charming creatures the gifts which attract love. He has expanded profusion on the mantle of the colibri, of the peacock, of the bird of paradise and the golden pheasant: rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topazes, the most brilliant and best assorted

tints of the scale of colors. So likewise He has chosen, in the gamut of sounds, the sweetest notes to accentuate the voice of the humble song-bird. The bird is after man the only creature that can thank God by its joyous songs. But the heart of man and that of the bird must be satisfied before their voice can sing. To pray is to sing one's happiness.

And as love is a passion of luxury, whose integral expansion requires for its first conditions wealth, a warm air, a blue and limpid heaven, God has gifted the bird with the faculty of rapid locomotion, which permits it to accompany the sun in its course, and to realize the Utopia of eternal Spring. The swallow and the turtledove, those happy models of fidelity or conjugal tenderness, ignore the cold of seasons as that of the heart. A woman has written that "the sighs of Eolian harps resounding in the warm countries of the South are the accords with which amorous Nature accompanies the songs of lovers." Love's tasks are easy for the birds, among whom health and beauty and abundance are common as the air and sunshine-so it is among men in the period of harmony.

When Liberty, that incompressible spring of the soul towards happiness, enkindles a human breast, the first movement of the inspired is to raise his eye towards heaven, the domain of the bird, and to open the arms like wings, to take possession of space.

At the age of prolonged hopes and roseate visions, when the bells sound in the air the name of the angel beloved; when the stars write it on the vault of heaven; when the two halves of one being, tremulously floating on the currents of their opposite electricities, seck each other and conspire to return within their primordial unity-then the ardent imagination of the lover experiences the desire of incarnating in an aërial form the adored ideal. The poets who invented angels were lovers, since all angels are female.

At your twentieth year, you have sometimes felt in sleep your lightened body leave the sod and glide off into space, defended by invisible spirits against the law of gravitation. It was a revelation which God then made to you and a foretaste of the enjoy ments of the aromal life, that life whence we have issued and to which we shall one day return, at the end of this terrestrial existence, which is to the superior life what sleep is to waking. We envy the lot of the birds, and we lend wings to her whom we love, because we feel by instinct that in the sphere of happiness,