if its heat radiated from it rapidly. But radiation take place most freely from dark colours-from black, from the stronglydefined greens, and blues, and reds. In hot weather, flowers and leaves so coloured cool more readily at night, and form upon their surface the healing dew. The delicate spring flowers are, therefore, of a colour that is least ready to encourage radiation. For the same reason-because white substances give out least freely the heat that they contain or cover-arctic animals are white as their native snows. For the same reason, too, the snow itself is white. When cold becomes severe, snow falls, and hangs like a fur mantle about the soil. If snow were black, or red, or blue, it would still let some of the heat escape which is retained under its whiteness. In regions subject to a cold almost incessant, a short summer produces flowers of extremely vivid colouring. The summer, although short, is fierce, and the plants radiate fast, that they may escape destruction. The dark verdure of the northern pines would cause them to lose heat with great rapidity. For compensation, they are made to grow in pyramids, that catch a cone of snow so cleverly as to form an overcoat during the hard weather. Birch trees that grow in the same forests rise among the pines like silver columns; and they are not shaped to catch the snow, because they do not want it. They have their own light clothing of a brilliant whiteness."

III. If we turn our thoughts now to the beautiful things of MOTION, with which all nature abounds, we shall find no lack of interest. Take first the falling snow. Who has seen anything more graceful than the graceful flake descending, with more or less rapidity and directness, but with steady certainty, to the lap of earth? A puff of wind puts the pure, white, glistening little strangers into a frolic, and they race about in the air as children in their nursery, and yet so noiselessly and gently do they indulge their sport, that the face of the earth, for hundreds of miles in extent, may be found covered a foot or two deep with them, during the silent watches of a single night, without so much sound as is made by the breathing of a healthy infant.

"Silently gentle, softly slow,

With buoyant fluttering,

Flake upon flake, the feathery snow,

Rests upon everything.

The rough strong branch; each twig and spray;

Smooth leaf of holly-tree;

Grass, hedgerow, housetop, busy way;

All white as white can be.

How all God's doings manifold,
His power and wisdom teach,

The Beauties of Motion.

Sunshine and rain, and heat and cold,
A loving kindness each.

And all this gently falling snow
Has symbol sweet to me;

How, without pause, his mercies flow,
Silently, tenderly."

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From the beauty of motion in the falling of snow we cannot easily separate the beauty of the substance itself. The falling of soot, or the floating of thistle down, were it equally graceful, would not be equally agreable. The very purity of it, as it comes down from the vault of heaven, is fitted to make one's thoughts pure. It was a rude, but scarcely a fantastic notion of the Barbadoes girl, who, seeing snow for the first time, thought it must be angels emptying their beds of down upon the earth.

We will venture to say that few persons could watch without admiring the career of the wind attending or succeeding a fall of light snow. Perhaps the black massive clouds are still upon the skirts of the horizon, or the sun may have come forth and turned every crystal flake into a glittering gem. But suddenly the wind rises, and the air is soon filled with eddies of the pure white snow, or gathered in crested drifts by the roadside and along the borders of the fields. A beautiful description of such a scene we have from Roger Ascham, Secretary of State under three successive British sovereigns. From the glare of courts and the turmoil of politics he turned not unwillingly to note the humours of the wind and its gambols with the snow.

"To see the wind with a man's eye it is impossible-the nature of it is so fine and subtle; yet this experience of the wind had l'once myself. I rode in a highway, being somewhat trodden before by wayfaring men. The fields on both sides were plain, and lay almost a yard deep with snow. The night before had been a little frosty, so that the snow was hard and crusted above; so, as the wind blew, it took the loose snow with it, and made it so slide upon the snow in the fields, which was hard and crusted by reason of the frost over night, that thereby I might see very well the whole nature of the wind as it blew that day; and I had great delight and pleasure to mark it. Sometimes the wind would not be past two yards broad, and so it would carry the snow as far as I could see. Another time it would sweep over half the field at once. Sometimes the snow would tremble softly-by and by it would fly wonderful fast. And this I perceived also, that the wind goeth by streams, and not all together-sometimes slowlier, sometimes swifter; sometimes broader, sometimes narrower, so far as I could see. And then it flew not straight, but sometimes this

way, and then that way; and sometimes it ran round about in a compass; and sometimes the snow would be lift clear from the ground up in the air; and by and by it would be all clapped to the ground as though there had been no wind at all. And again I could hear the wind blow in the air when nothing was stirred on the ground; and then, all at once, it would lift up the snow again wonderfully. This experience made me more marvel at the nature of the wind than it made me cunning in the knowledge of it."

Perhaps few objects are more beautiful for motion than running water. There is a wild brook flowing along the base of one of the mountains that overhang Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, which we have followed with inexpressible delight. Its fall, in the course of three or four miles, may be several hundred feet, while no single fall is more than five or six inches. Our first glimpse of it is as it lies motionless in a little shady nook, where it seems to have been arranging the plan of its expedition. It sets out with wonderful glee, sparkles in the sunlight for a few rods, and then, seeming to be seized with a sudden fit of timidity or modesty, retires within a thick-leafed arch, but soon shews itself again, though with more calm and sedate manners, flowing on with scarcely a gurgle or a ripple. By and by some little obstruction impedes and excites it, when forthwith it pitches and tumbles its little volume hither and thither, over this and that, and then slipping triumphantly along upon a bed of smooth stones, seems to forget its struggles. And now it frolics in sunshine and shade; sometimes quiet, and then restless and noisy; and we follow it as we would a frisky companion, with a mixture of curiosity and anxiety, to see what the end of its wild career will be.

"By thirsty hills it hurries down,
Or slips between the ridges;
By twenty thorps*-a little town-
And half a dozen bridges.

It chatters over stony ways
In little sharps and trebles,
Or bubbles into eddying ways,

And babbles on the pebbles."

The motion of the sea is not more grave than beautiful. The ebbing and flowing tides give us the idea of power and grandeur, but the motion of the waves that of beauty. Unlike the brook and the river,-its tributaries,-the waters of the sea are at rest. The series of ridges and hollows, which we call waves, seem to us to advance towards the shore, till they break

* Hamlets.

The Beauties of Motion.

189

with a dash of spray upon the beach, but it is a mere appearance. The water may be perfectly composed except this surface-motion, and the mighty billows, so lofty as to hide from each other's view the largest vessels when only a few rods apart, are merely bodies of water at rest, as it regards horizontal motion, and only depressed on one side and elevated on the other by the action of the wind.

"The wave behind impels the wave before.”

The motion of a vessel upon this undulating surface is surpassingly beautiful. With inimitable grace she sits upon the treacherous throne, descending upon the falling and rising upon the ascending wave; and now and then, as if to shew off, she gently reclines, first on the one side and then on the other, while her snow-white sails, proudly bent, "receive the humble service of the winds."

And while by the sea-side, we may notice that in air as well as upon water are objects conspicuous for beauty of motion. The fish-hawk poises himself in midheaven, sails slowly and serenely round and round for minutes together, flapping his wings but once or twice, and ending his graceful gyration by suddenly darting to the surface of the water, and with almost unerring certainty seizing his scaly prey.

The branches of trees, so graceful in their form and position, are beautiful in motion. There is a stateliness and grandeur in the lofty forest tree, independent of motion, which strikes the observing eye, leading the fancy of the poet to conceive of those

Green-robed senators of mighty woods-tall oaks."

But the seeming animation with which motion endues them. is a source of constant pleasure. We have known an invalid lady, whose tedious hours of confinement were inexpressibly relieved by watching the movements of a young maple, which grew at the distance of several rods from her window. The topmost twigs only were visible above the roofs of intervening houses, and yet their motions were various and beautiful enough to delight the weary eyes that gazed upon them.

But perhaps the clouds may be regarded as among the most beautiful of all natural objects, so far as motion is concerned. We suppose biblical critics will be slow to allow such an interpretation, but we sometimes think the passage, "he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap," might perhaps intimate to us, among other things, that the observation of their endless shapes and beautiful motions would so absorb a contemplative or imaginative husbandman, if he should give himself up to it, that he would forego his labour, and so lose his harvest.

The clouds furnish the sacred poets and orators with some of their most sublime and impressive images. Among the achievements of Omnipotence, it is said, "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them.” By another the clouds are represented as the "chariots of the Almighty," and by a third, as " the dust of his feet.” Beautiful indeed are these gigantic masses of vapour that force themselves above the earth, and carry in their bosom the treasures of animal and vegetable life.

"When the lofty and barren mountain was first up-heaved into the sky," says a legend of India, "and from its elevation looked down on the plains below, and saw its own valley and the less elevated hills around it covered with verdure and fruitful trees, it sent up to Brahma something like a murmur of complaint, Why am I thus barren? Why these naked and scarred sides exposed to the eye of man?'

"And Brahma answered, The very light shall clothe thee, and the shadow of a passing cloud shall be thy royal mantle. With more verdure there would be less light. Thou shalt share in the azure of heaven, and the youngest and fairest cloud of a summer sky shall nestle in thy bosom. Thou belongest half to us.'

"So was the mountain dowered, and so have the loftiest minds of men in all ages been dowered. To lower elevations have been given the pleasant verdure, the vine, and the olive. Light! light alone, and the deep shadow of the passing cloud, these are the gifts bestowed on the prophets of the race.'

"The sky," says a popular writer, "is the part of creation in which nature" (or nature's God) "has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any part of her" (his) "works, and it is just the fact which man regards with least attention. Every essential purpose of the sky might be answered, so far as we know, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud were brought up over the blue sky, and everything well watered, and then all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. But instead of this, there is not a moment or day in any of our lives when nature" (or her God) "is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. Yes, the sky is for all. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful-never the same for two moments together

* Ruskin.