course.

NATURE.

by its proper cause. Nature sometimes means the established course of things corporeal; as, nature makes the night succeed the day. This may be termed established order, or settled Nature sometimes means the aggregate of the powers belonging to a body, especially a living one; as when physicians say that nature is strong, or, nature left to herself will do the cure. For this may be used, constitution, temperament, or structure of the body. Nature is put likewise for the system of the corporeal works of God; as, there is no phœnix or chimera in nature. For nature, thus applied, we may use, the world, or the universe. Nature is sometimes, indeed, taken for a kind of semi-deity. In this sense it is better not to use it at all.

NATURE-free from Melancholy.

Boyle.

Midnight-when asleep so still and silentseems inspired with the joyous spirit of the owls in their revelry-and answers to their mirth and merriment through all her clouds. The moping owl, indeed!--the boding owl, forsooth! the melancholy owl, you blockhead! why, they are the most cheerful, joy-portending, and exulting of God's creatures. Their flow of animal spirits is incessant-crowing cocks are a joke to them-blue devils are to them unknown-not one hypochondriac in a thousand barns and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one of them utter a complaint. Professor Wilson.

NATURE-Obedience to.

The more a man follows Nature, and is obedient to her laws, the longer he will live; the farther he deviates from these, the shorter will be his existence.

NATURE-Philosophy of.

Hufeland.

The true philosophy of nature is a religious philosophy-that is, a philosophy binding us to God. Nature rightly studied must disclose the Creator, but the sights which we see are according to the spirit that we bring to the investigation. Standing within a cathedral, and looking through its stained and figured windows towards the light, we behold the forms and colours by the light. Standing outside, and gazing at the same windows, we see nothing but a blurred and indistinct enamelling. Thus the soul, standing within the great cathedral of God's material world, and looking through it upward to the light, beholds the meaning of its forms and colours; but standing without, and studying nature in detail, not with reference to the light pouring through it from God, but for itself alone, there is nothing better seen than the mere material enamelling.

NATURE-Power of.
There was a boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander! - Many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely, palm to palm, and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hooting to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. --And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again
Responsive to his call-with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of mirth and jocund din! And, when it chanced
That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

NATURE-Religion of.

Wordsworth.

There is religion in everything around us a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of nature, which man would do well to imitate. It is a meek and blessed influence, stealing in, as it were, unawares upon the heart; it comes quietly, and without excitement; it has no terror, no gloom in its approaches; it does not rouse up the passions; it is untrammelled by the creeds, and unshadowed by the superstitions of man; it is fresh from the hands of its Author, glowing from the immediate presence of the Great Spirit, which pervades and quickens it; it is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star; it is on the sailing cloud and in the invisible wind; it is among the hills and valleys of the earth, where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty forest fluctuates, before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage; it is spread out, like a legible language, upon the broad face of the unsleeping ocean; it is the poetry of nature; it is this which uplifts the spirit within us, until it is strong enough to overlook the

NATURE.

shadows of our place of probation; which breaks, link after link, the chain that binds us to materiality; and which opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness. Ruskin.

NATURE-Spirit of.

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Wordsworth.

NATURE-Exquisite Subtlety of.

Light passes from the sun to the earth, a space of ninety-five millions of miles, in eight minutes, and the beams of the smallest taper are visible at sea, in a dark night, for at least three miles: so that the particles of light instantaneously fill a spherical space of six miles in diameter, or 1,130,976 cubical miles.

Instances of the exquisite subtlety of nature are infinite. That so small a drop of ink in a pen should be drawn out into so many letters or lines, as we find it; that silver, gilt upon its external surface, should be drawn to such a vast length of gilded wire; that so very small a worm as that found in the skin should have a spirit, and a peculiar structure and organisation of different parts; that a little saffron should tinge a whole hogshead of water; that a little civet or musk should fill a large chamber with its odour; that such a great cloud of smoke should be raised from a little incense; that the exact differences of sounds should be every way conveyed through the air, and even through the holes and pores of wood and water, (though much weakened, indeed, in the passage), and be reflected with great distinctness and velocity; that light and colour should so suddenly pass through such a bulk of solid matter, as glass; or of a fluid, as water; yet so as at the same time to convey a great and exquisite variety of images, even though the light suffers refraction and reflection; that the loadstone should operate through all kinds of bodies, even the most compact and solid; and what is still more wonderful, that in all these cases the action of one thing does not greatly hinder the action of another, in a neutral or indifferent medium, such as the air is. Thus cold, heat, and magnetical virtues, all pass through the air at once, without obstructing one another, as if each of them

When I look into my garden, there I see first a small spire look out of the earth, which in some months' time, grows into a stalk; then, after many days' expectation, branches forth into some leaves; at last appears the hope of a flower, which, ripened with many suns and showers, arises to its perfection, and at last puts forth its seed for a succeeding multiplication.

If I look into my orchard, I see the wellgrafted scions yield at first a tender bud; itself after many years is bodied to a solid stock, and under patience of many hard winters, spreads forth large arms; at last being | grown to a meet age of vegetation: it begins to grace the spring with some fair blossoms, which falling off kindly, give way to a weak embryo of fruit; every day now adds something to the growth, till it attains in autumn its full maturity. The Great God of Heaven who can do all things in an instant, hath | thought good to produce all the effects of natural agency, not without a due succession of time. Bishop Hall.

NATURE-a Teacher of Truth.

Read Nature: Nature is a friend to truth: Nature is Christian: preaches to mankind; And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.

Young.

From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes The grand transition, that there lives and works

A soul in all things, and that soul is God. Corper.

NATURE--Undeceptiveness of.

Nature never deceives us; the rocks, the mountains, the streams, always speak the same language; a shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunder-storm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient: in a few hours, or at most in a few days, all the sources of beauty are renovated. And nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud, no beings, full of life, beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy and sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones, so common in the life of man, and so

!

In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills, the whole;
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains,
Itself unseen, but in th' effect remains. Pope.

NATURE-Unsympathizing.

A comely face hath Nature, but no heart. None! Are you sad? she smiles. Is your grief past,

And gladness come? Her skies are overcast,
In your chameleon moods she hath no part.
Praise her your warmest words will ne'er
impart

A flush the more to her full loveliness-
Flout her, and she will offer you, no less,
Flowers, fruitage, all the effluence of her art.
Die, she will send her merriest birds to sing
Outside your window, and upon your brow
Shed showers of sunbeams, in bright overflow:
Go down into your grave no cloud will fling
Its shade, in sorrow that your tale is told :
She is a comely mother, but stone-cold.

NATURE-Variety in.

A. Lionel Westwood.

We see a beautiful and infinite variety everywhere presented to us in the works of nature, and man seeks for primary causes of this exuberant effect, but if he forget that First Great Cause on which all others depend, he is quickly surrounded by doubts and difficulties, and finds his reasoning degenerate into conjecture. We sometimes look on the effect, and discover the agent by which it was produced-the human mind is then too frequently satisfied. True philosophy would pursue the subject still further: and thus we should not stop short of that admiration of Divine Power, and humiliation of our own wisdom, which is becoming our present state of dependence-a dependence notwithstanding, under which all may so freely enjoy the boundless riches and beauty everywhere presented to their contemplation. Maund.

NATURE-Voices of.

The world is full of beauty, like other worlds above.

And if we do our duty it might be full of love. Massey.

NATURE AND ART.

Formerly, it was the fashion to preach the natural; now it is the ideal. People too often forget that these things are profoundly compatible; that, in a beautiful work of imagination, the natural should be ideal, and the ideal natural. A. W. Von Schlegel.

Nature is the chart of God, mapping out all His attributes; art is the shadow of His wisdom, and copieth His resources. Tupper.

NATURE AND ART - Relations between.

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest-trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade, as the bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one can walk in a road cut through pine-woods without being struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, when the bareness of all other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the woods, on a winter afternoon, one will see as readily the origin of the stained-glass window, with which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colours of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest; nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and plane, still reproduced its forms, its spikes of flowers, its locust, its pine, its oak, its fir, its spruce. The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial

proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.

Emerson.

NATURE AND REVELATION
Works of.

The works of nature, and the works of revelation, display religion to mankind in chaare not quite blind may in them see and read

of the sod,

Locke.

Negligence is a crime.

Shakspeare.

NEGLIGENCE-Evil Results of.

The best ground untilled, soonest runs out into rank weeds. A man of knowledge that is either negligent or uncorrected, cannot but grow wild and godless. Bishop Hall.

NEGOCIATION-Caution in.

It is better to sound a person with whom one deals afar off, than to fall upon the point at first. Bacon

NEGOCIATION-Use of the right Men

in.

The negro is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has deep in his heart a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on him the ridicule of the colder and more correct white race. Mrs. Stowe.

NERVES-Sympathy of the.

When the nerves, from long habit, have been accustomed to transmit their messages from distinct parts, and are suddenly cut off frota them, they still retain along their trunks the sympathetic or sensational actions. Thus, a man who has had a leg amputated will feel distinctly along the course of the trunk of the nerve sensations from toes which no longer exist. The mind also is influenced by this; and frequently this peculiar direct nervous action can only be allayed by that which is negative and reflex. A curious instance occurred