vancing in triangular order, like the English column
at the battle of Fontenoy. I saw them traverse the sky from cloud to
cloud.--Ah! how well they fly, said I to myself. With what assurance
they seem to glide along the viewless path which they follow.--Shall I
confess it? alas! may I be forgiven! the horrible feeling of envy for
once, once only, entered my heart, and it was for the cranes. I pursued
them, with jealous gaze, to the boundaries of the horizon. For a long
while afterwards, motionless in the midst of the crowd which was moving
about me, I kept observing the rapid movement of the swallows, and I was
astonished to see them suspended in the air, just as if I had never
before seen that phenomenon. A feeling of profound admiration, unknown
to me till then, lighted up my soul. I seemed to myself to be looking
upon nature for the first time. I heard with surprise the buzzing of the
flies, the song of the birds, and that mysterious and confused noise of
the living creation which involuntarily celebrates its Author. Ineffable
concert, to which man alone has the sublime privilege of adding the
accents of gratitude! Who is the author of this brilliant mechanism? I
exclaimed in the transport which animated me. Who is He that, opening
his creative hand, let fly the first swallow into the air? It is He who
gave commandment to these trees to come forth from the ground, and to
lift their branches toward the sky!"

Here is a charming page, and containing, though apparently trivial in
style, a good and sound philosophy. Let us translate this delightful
description into the heavier language of science.

The intellect is one of the things with which we are best acquainted;
logic is the science of thought, and logic is perhaps, among all the
sciences, the one best settled on its bases. The intellect discovers
itself to us in the exercise of our activity. We pursue an object, we
combine the means for attaining it, and it is the intellect which
operates this combination. What happens if we compare the results of our
activity with the results of the power manifested in the world? When we
consider in their vast _ensemble_ the means of which nature disposes,
when we remark the infinite number of the relations of things, the
marvellous harmony of which universal life is the produce, we are
dazzled by the splendor of a wisdom which surpasses our own as much as
boundless space surpasses the imperceptible spot which we occupy upon
the