The probable future value of this mineral—
which, long known, has, until now, been
considered worthless, might furnish the text of
a discourse upon the hidden treasures of
nature, and the possible sources of material
prosperity to our descendants; a discourse in
which no flight of imagination could be called
visionary by sober men, and which might
exhaust the dreams of an enthusiast without
approaching to the events that will be seen.
Professor Sedgwick long ago epitomised the
accomplished labour of geologists, by
comparing those philosophers, in their relation
to the earth's crust, to "an old hen, scratching
in the corner of a ten-acre field." It is
probable that his contemptuous parallel falls
even short of expressing our ignorance of the
riches scattered beneath our very feet—and
just hinted at, or foreshadowed to our fancy,
by the gold-fields of California and Australasia,
and by the discovery of the sources and
the utility of aluminium.

We have spoken, in the opening paragraph,
of the suggestive character of the phenomena
of crystallisation. In the regularity of their
occurrence—by virtue of a law which we can
discern only in its operation, and define only by
describing its results—they appear to show,
even to minds the least accustomed to such a
train of thought, the direct and visible working
of that Mighty Hand, by which the order of the
universe is sustained. In many departments
of science and of art, as in many of the walks
of daily life, the great first cause is obscured
by the presence of subordinate, but nearer,
human agencies. But, in contemplating the
characteristic forms of crystals of which
the dissevered particles have united
themselves—whether they were separated yesterday,
by the hand of an experimenter, or countless
ages ago, when the world was convulsed
by forces of whose power we can form some
faint conjecture from the visible traces of their
effects—in such contemplation the student is
brought, as it were, face to face with Him who
is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

PAN.

The Ancients have exquisitely described Nature
under the person of Pan.—BACON'S WISDOM OF THE
ANCIENTS.

I AM the All—the soul created One—
The solitary Life beside the Life
Which fashion'd me from gusty darkness, flaw'd
With uproar of pre-natal elements:
And thus I dwell through all the quiet years,
A loneliness within a loneliness,
Myself sufficient to myself, and lull'd
By that most ancient silence in my heart,
Answering the silence over all; whereto
The babbling of my multitudinous tongues
Is as the voice of leaves in stillest night.

All aspects, sounds and movements, dwell in me.
The knotty forests, and the mountains old,
And the rich valleys, and the cataracts,
Dancing like youth eternal, and the wealth
Of the unmaster'd and rebellious sea,
And flowers, and herbs, and roots, and leaves, and seeds,
With whatsoever in the gorgeous gloom
Of mines and central chasms may be hid;
Man, and the high-tower'd cities which he builds;
All lower forms of animal life—beasts, birds,
The swift, cold shapes of oceans, streams, and pools,
Dull reptiles and obscure vitalities,
Monstrous developments, and prodigious births,
Motes of intense existence, beyond sight,
And the pale race of ante-natal germs,
Faint atoms on sensation's utter verge;—
All these are parts of me: yea, more than these.
All central suns,—even to that which is
The centre of all centres, bright and vast,—
Lighten, and burn, and orb their golden fires,
In me for ever: all attendant moons,
Kindling their white souls in the dreadful dark,
Are quicken'd by the life that is in me:
Mine are the lapsing planets, beamy-faced,
The lucid children of the suns, for aye
Peopling my vasts of silence and old Night:
Mine are those swift and haggard wanderers
Of the abyss, comets, drawn on through space
By strong enchantment of the unknown sun;
And mine are all the drifting nebulæ
Of shapeless slime and mist, wherefrom new stars,
The happy homes of life and love, shall rise,
And warm the unilluminated gulfs
With spheres of rapid splendour. Meteor-shapes
Of the red storm, and acres of colour'd light
Built by the sun and rain across the voids,
And vaporous stars, perishing utterly,
And the swift lightning's momentary noon,
Sky-flames, and visions in the homeless clouds
(The brief and rich enchantments of the heaven,
Dying in their height of glory), ghostly fogs,
And singing rains out of immensity,
And noiseless snow-falls, and the iron showers
Of hail and sleet, black Winter's javelins,
And billowy thunders, rolling into space,
And dews, and winds, and the diaphonous air;—
These, too, are in my universal round.

My lower frame is rough, and wild, and grim;
Brute matter, torn with savage energies;
The old rebellion of swart Chaos, still
Struggling with Love, the always-youthful god,
The Reconciler. But, far up, I bask
For ever in the long celestial calm.
Behold! the stars are quivering on my breast!
Behold! my face is golden-bright with fire!
And upward from my head two horny beams
Stretch lengthening into heaven, with thrill on thrill
Of endless aspiration, deathless hope.
So is it with all individual life:—
Below all forms are diverse, opposite,
Confounded with their contraries, cross-cut
With wranglings and with jealousies, grotesque,
Irreconcilable, and reeling back
To their original atoms: higher up,
Come fitness and consent of part with part.
Making one harmony; while, at the peak
Of the ever-sharpening pyramid of things,
The mystery of the unincarnate Jove
Lies like a consummation; into which
All figures sharpen upward, and are lost,—