owy, cold,
grey-haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at
their feet, muttering and whispering to us garrulously in broken and
dreaming fits, as it were, about their childhood,--is it not a strange
type of the things which "out of weakness are made strong"? If one of
these little flakes of mica sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along
the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to
float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it
as it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of
the stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless
eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble
of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down
there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to
build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it
have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength
as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame,
out of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should
hew that Alpine tower?--that against _it_--poor, helpless mica
flake!--the wild north winds should rage in vain; beneath
_it_--low-fallen mica flake!--the snowy hills should lie bowed like
flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded
blue; and around _it_--weak, wave-drifted mica flake!--the great war
of the firmament should burst in thunder and yet stir it not; and the
fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it
into the air; and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one
by one as they rose, new cressets upon the points of snow that fringed
its abiding-place on the imperishable spire?

SECTION VI.

ILLUSTRATIVE: STONES.

38. There are no natural objects out of which more can be learned than
out of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a
patient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen to
some extent without patience, and are pleasant even in being half
seen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless;
but the stone under his foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but
stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor
good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart, and the
unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and
watchfulness, and there is bread of