he fibres of a perennial
endurance; and, during countless subsequent centuries, declining, or
rather let me say, rising to repose, finishes the infallible lustre of
its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of law which are wholly
beneficent, because wholly inexorable.

(_The children seem pleased, but more inclined to think over
these matters than to talk._)

L. (_after giving them a little time_). Mary, I seldom ask you to read
anything out of books of mine; but there is a passage about the Law of
Help, which I want you to read to the children now, because it is of no
use merely to put it in other words for them. You know the place I mean,
do not you?

MARY. Yes (_presently finding it_); where shall I begin?

L. Here; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at the piece
which comes just before this.

MARY (_reads_):

* * * * *

'A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are
helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and
the other name of life, is therefore, "help." The other name of death is
"separation." Government and co-operation are in all things, and
eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in
all things, the laws of death.

'Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take of
the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible
changes in the dust we tread on.

'Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type
of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, over-trodden path, in the
outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because
that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the
blackest slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a
manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of
clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with soot, a little sand
and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and
destroy reciprocally each other's nature and power: competing and
fighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay,
and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling
the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect
rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their
atoms may get into the closest relations possible.

'Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of al