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Show 128 THE SHADOW. without which the mere gravitating matter of the earth would be of very little value. Where they have been for some time absent, nature sa~dens and languishes ; life becomes dormant or extm~t; _and there is no motion, save those general motwns of the earth which still have reference to the sun; and would in' all probability cease if the earth wer9 de~ prived of that luminary. But the return of the sun is a time of revival,-the bonds o~ nature are loos~ ened, and all her tribes are in .mo~IOn: . No matter how brief the pnvatwn Is. ~e It only the passing of a dense cloud, how n:tuch It sad.dens the face of Nature, in all the more. a1ry and delicate parts of her kingdoms. The P?hshed leaves and petals and the glassy waters glitter no mo~e ; the myriads that were, but. the instant bef~re, wmn?wing the air with tiny wmgs,. and breakmg th~ light into all the shades of the rambow, are sportmg no more. There is not a chirp in the grass, not a b.uzz in the air, not a hum over t~e flo~er~. ~he buds of the free air are silent, as If the mspuahon ~f the sky were away. The skylark drops dow!! h~e a stone to the covert of the clods ; not a bud smgs from those sprays that erewhile were so son~rous as well as so sunny ; and the only sounds t~at Issue from the grove are the wood-pigeon moanmg from her tent of leaves, and the owl answering dismally from the ho1low tree. The chickweeds, and oth~r little plants of delicate texture, fold togethe.r their leaves and the daisy vails its golden eye, as If both were hiding their precious germes from the effects of the impending gloom. But still those temporary absences of the sun, though they have a gloomy influence upon the merry sounds and the gay colours of nature, an.d thoug:h they drive for a moment the very odours mto theu dells and hollows, or make them stagnate among the sources that produce them, until they concentrate there into rankness ; there are other parts of nature USE OF THE SHADOW. 129 that derive relief from the temporary gloom. The leaves of the trees, which the joint action of the lio-ht and heat had caused to droop, and if continued wo~ld have worn out by excessive action and withered in premature decay, have the draining of their juices suspended, so that without dew or rain they have their strength recruited through the vessels of the plant, and they stand up and are ready for new ex~ ertions, not only in bringing the fruits of the passing season to maturity, but in preparing the germes from which new leaves and flowers and fruits are to be evolved by the suns of future seasons, when the leaves, that are in the mean time replenished, shall have fallen and been dissolved ; and the very same matter which this year is stinging in the little prickle of a nettle, may next year be glowing in a tulip, perfuming in a rose, luscious in a peach, or refresh~ .ing to the spirits in a grape. Nor is there in the suspended action refreshment only to the leaves of plants, there is a preservation of beauty to their flowers. Those agencies of matter, which we are unable to trace, saving in the effects they produce, and of which, apart from the substances in which those eftects are displayed, we can obtain no knowledge~ are all too mighty for the matter on which they act; and the same light which gives us so much pleasure and so much information through the medium of our eyes may be so concen~ trated, or its action so long continued, as that it mav instantly strike the eyes blind in the one case, o·r waste them beyond all power of recovery in the other. So also the same heat and light, and other less perceptible, but not on that account less curious, agencies of the sunbeams, which communicate all the fine tints to the petals of the flowers, have far more intensity than those little pieces of delicately for~ed matter can bear ; and if they are too long or too Immediately exposed to the direct action of the inn, the sunbeams are instrumental in destroying |