Did Sir Isaac think what he
was saying when he made HIS speech about the ocean,--the child and
the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of a
pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its
compartment of space before the stone that became the pyramids had
grown solid, and has watched it until now! A body which knows all
the currents of force that traverse the globe; which holds by
invisible threads to the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion! A
body from the contemplation of which an archangel could infer the
entire inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A throne
of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided its every atom since the
rosary of heaven was strung with beaded stars!
So,--to return to OUR walk by the ocean,--if all that poetry has
dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that maddening narcotics
have driven through the brains of men, or smothered passion nursed
in the fancies of women,--if the dreams of colleges and convents
and boarding-schools,--if every human feeling that sighs, or
smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their
innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat,--
the epic which held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac,
would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and
analogies that rolls through the universe.
[The divinity-student honored himself by the way in which he
received this.
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