It teaches us thus the touching lesson that the grandest things in nature may be made more beautiful and picturesque by the simplest—as the greatest man may be indebted for his chief happiness to the smiles and prattle of the little children that climb on his knee. And how open to all the flowers and shrubs of the wild wood are its wide-spreading arms! The grass may grow up to the very foot of its trunk unreproved by any dark frowning shadow cast by its leaves. The hyacinth may make a fragrant mist of blue about its roots, and the primrose need not blanch its sunny cheek as it creeps up to its venerable bole. Royal as it is, its dignity consists in its hospitality; and its nobility is indicated by its freeness of access and kindly generous welcome to all that may hold within it the sacred principle of life. The gates of its hospitality, like the Bukharian nobleman’s, are “nailed open.” Sturdy and independent as it is, there is thus no object that is more closely linked with the genial life of nature, that blends more harmoniously with the operations which different creatures carry on for their own advantage, and makes of them one genial system of mutual benefit.—London Sunday Magazine.
PERPLEXITIES.
“Nothing can possibly fail, because the sole true end or object is redemption of man; and this is attained ever and for ever, with no exception, in good and evil, in each largest and most trivial thing.”—James Hinton.
How crooked is our life! Its ins and outs
We can not scan;
How often do we say, “That’s just too late
And spoils our plan.”
How often we perplex ourselves, because