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Show 180 STREAMS "wash" of the season rolls onward to the sea, bearing the corruption along with it. There the unplea· sant and pernicious substances continue united with it ; but no sooner has it passed the inconceivably fine but hardly discernible filter of the atmo"phere, than all its impurities are removed, and the water alone and unadulterated, remains there, till, by the working of that very atmosphere which has lifted it up, it shall descend more soft and limpid than the sweetest spring that ever flowed from the rock. lt is owing to this property of the atmosphere that we have springs, and streams, and rivers. The Thames, for all its wealth, and the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, notwithstanding their majesty and the immense volume of waters which they constantly roll to the sea, all originate in the clouds, and may be said to flow from the heavens. But the real sources of them are in those places from which the evaporative power of the atmosphere drinks them up, or rather perhaps in those natural operations by which the elements of water are loosened from other connexions, and left free to combine and form that all-refreshing substance. While therefore we cannot avoid being pleased with the bright and lively rill which dances from rock to rock to the murmuring cadences of its own music; while we cannot avoid lingering " to pore upon the brook which babbles by" the gnarled root of the aged tree, which winds round the churchyard with its gray stones, which steals through the shade of the osiers, with softer and more silent wing than the owl does through the coppice, which slumbers in the mill-pond, until obedient to the control of man it leaps in glittering pearls over the wheel to assist him in his labours; which steals through the meadows, now holding its glassy mirror to the sky, and now hidden by the bright iris and the bristling sword flag; and which after it has run its course, the ornament and the fertilizer of its own native valley, AND RIVERS. 181 mi~gles with the more copious flood of the river which sweeps gallantly by, and on the banks whereof Weal~h builds his palace, and Science his temple, and ~ehg~on her sacred fane ; we cann.ot help regardmg With lofty emotion that river when it thunders ov~r the steep, an.d stuns the country round with its nmse, ~ut keeps It green and fresh with its evershowen! lg drops, and whose estuary tempts man to ... found his m?st goodly city, and harbour his most powerful, his most wealth-collecting his most peace-compellin~ fleet; but though thes~ powerfully d~aw the attentiOn of the senses, and mightily excite and elevate the mind, there is an unseen return of ~he wate~s which outdoes them all in the wonders of Its workmg. The atmosphere is usually and justly styled "~he breath" of every living thing; but it is some~ hmg more e~tensive and anterior to that ; and were 1t to.suspen.d 1ts ge~eral evaporative power for even a bnef penod of time,. the very beginnings of life would be cu~ off and Its fountains dried up. All the water which the rivers of the world roll to the sea, all ~hat slumb_ers in ponds and expands in lakes, ?-11 that IS caught m fountains, drawn from wells, or In any way appropriated to the processes of the arts or the pur.roses of life, all that supplies drink to the whol~ am mal ra?e, . and is. breath, and life, and clothmg, and habitatiOn to mnumerable tribes · all that waters the fields, and sustains the . existenc~ of every vegetable from the moss on the wall to the monarch of the forest ; all that enters into the structure ~f plan~s and of animals, or which bears their more Immediate nourishment on its tide, or cleanses, softens, and. comforts them by its ablution; nay, all that enters ~nto those stones or gems which glitter so much,-Is brought on the wings of the wind ~ounts up through the viewless air; and the mor~ VIgorously that the countless thousands of active powers, natural or artificial, are working the more Q ' |
