ul for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters
up. And the one question for _you_, remember, is not 'dark or light?'
but 'tidy or untidy?' Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be
sure it is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones
at his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black.

LECTURE VI.

_CRYSTAL QUARRELS._

_Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at
crystallisation in the morning, of which various account has
to be rendered. In particular, everybody has to explain why
they were always where they were not intended to be._

L. (_having received and considered the report_). You have got on pretty
well, children: but you know these were easy figures you have been
trying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some crystals of
snow!

MARY. I don't think those will be the most difficult:--they are so
beautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they are
all regular, and in stars: it is those twisty oblique ones we are afraid
of.

L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and learn
Freidrich's 'oblique order.' You will 'get it done for once, I think,
provided you _can_ march as a pair of compasses would.' But remember,
when you can construct the most difficult single figures, you have only
learned half the game--nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the
crystals themselves play it.

MARY. Indeed; what else is there?

L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually two or
three, under quite different crystalline laws, form together. They do
this absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in fine temper: and
observe what this signifies. It signifies that the two, or more,
minerals of different natures agree, somehow, between themselves, how
much space each will want;--agree which of them shall give away to the
other at their junction; or in what measure each will accommodate itself
to the other's shape! And then each takes its permitted shape, and
allotted share of space; yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds,
till each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to its
differently-natured neighbour. So that, in order to practise this, in
even the simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearing
different colours; each must choose a different figure to construct; and
you must form one of these figures through the other, both going on at
the same