is turning, the shafts yield, and already a dim glory
shines through.

While the strides of a positive philosophy are crippled by enthusiastic
rhapsodies about intuition and instinct, her footsteps are still
indelible, and her progress is certain and accelerating. Reason is
written on her brow; she appeals to the universal gift, and denies the
authoritative dictations of fallible genius, as much as a moral equality
disallows the divine right of kings. Speculators among stars,
speculators among sounds and colors, are the skirmishers in front of an
intellectual post, whose tread reverberates but little in their rear.
Accoutred with a few empiric facts and inductive minds, they aspire to
beautiful and stable theories, whence they may descend, by deductive
steps, accurate even to mathematical absoluteness, to the very arcana of
what has been the inexplicable. To them the true, the beautiful, must be
facts, defined, realized, and vigorously analyzed. Visible embodiments
of an incomprehensible grace must be disintegrated, and the thinnest
essences escape not the analytical rack whereon they confess the causal
entity of their composition. 'Broad-browed genius' may toss his locks in
the studio redolent of art; his eye may light, and his nervous fingers
print the grand creation on the canvas. The divine afflatus is in his
nostrils; it is his spirit, and his picture is the reflex of his soul.
But keen-eyed Science lays a shadowy hand upon the 'holy coloring,' and
says: 'Truly, the harmony is beautiful; it has pleased a sympathetic
instinct from the first. Yet, from the first, my laws have been upon
it--inexorable laws, which answer to the mind as instinct echoes to the
soul.'

The august simile of the philosopher, who likened the world to a vast
animal, is appearing each day as too real for poetry. The ocean lungs
pulse a gigantic breath at every tide, her continental limbs vibrate
with light and electricity, her Cyclopean fires burn within, and her
atmosphere, ever giving, ever receiving, subserves the stupendous
equilibrium, and betrays the universal motion. Motion is material life;
from the molecular quiverings in the crystal diamond, to the light
vibrations of a meridian sun--from the half-smothered sound of a
whispered love, to the whirl of the uttermost orb in space, there is
life in moving matter, as perfect in particulars, and as magnificent in
range, as the animation which swells the tiny lung of the polyp, or
vitalize