tion, however impenetrable they may appear. His counsels are marvellous, his plans past finding out; but they are always formed and executed with supreme wisdom: and let us in silent reverence adore our God, and question not his ways, though affliction may visit, and misfortune bear heavy upon us. AUGUST XXX. HARVEST HYMN. Our fields, crowned with blossoms and ears of corn, are as a hymn of praise to the Creator; the joy which sparkles in the eyes of the reaper is a hymn to the God of nature. It is he who causes bread to spring out of the earth, and who loads us with his blessings. Come, let us assemble and sing unto our God; let his praise ever be the subject of our songs; let us listen to the glad voice which rises from the bosom of our fields, the year shall crown thee with its blessings, O world, whose happiness is my work. I have called forth the spring, the harvest is the work of my power; the fields which support thee, and the little hills covered with corn, are mine.' O Lord, we behold thy majesty, and feel the value of thy beneficence. By thee we exist; our life and preservation are thy gifts. Blessed be the fields that nourish man! Flourish, ye beautiful meadows! Be covered with thick foliage, ye forests! And thou, great God of nature, be ever beneficent towards thy creatures, and suffer thy children to repeatthe God of heaven is their Father! AUGUST XXXI. THANKSGIVING FOR GOD'S PROVIDENTIAL CARE OF HIS CREATURES. Lord God! my redeemer, my rock, and sure protector! Thou alone art worthy to receive glory, honour, and praise! My soul blesses thee, and I will declare thy wonders. I will rejoice and be glad in thee, and will celebrate the name of the most high God. I thank thee for that immortal soul which thou hast given me ; which thou hast redeemed by thy blessed Son, and sanctified by thy grace. Eternal Source of life and happiness! it is by thee that I exist, and I will for ever bless thy holy name. I thank thee for that parental care which provides my daily support, and for all thy numberless blessings. I thank thee for those dear connexions thou hast enabled me to form; and for the glorious hope of finally experiencing, when my mortal career is terminated, the blessed inheritance of the just in the everlasting kingdom of joy and celestial beatitude, where my now feeble accents will join the loud anthem swelling from my. riads of angels that harmonious sing thy praise in endless felicity. SEPTEMBER I. HYMN IN PRAISE OF THE MOST HIGH. Sing with holy rapture, sing a new song to our God. The Lord is great! Let us for ever celebrate that Being who is all good, all wise, and from whose eyes nothing can be hid. He has extended the starry sky, as a pavilion over our heads. There, encompassed by the radiance of innumerable suns, he has established his throne; there he dwells in light inaccessible to mortals. O God, I am lost in this splendour: but thou, in thy infinite goodness, art continually present. Ravished with the wisdom of thy ways, and penetrated with admiration, I praise and exalt thy holy name. I glorify thee, who governest the earth with paternal care, who enlightenest it by the beams of the star of day, who waterest it by the rains, who refreshest it by the dew. Thou coverest it with smiling verdure; thou crownest it with flowers; thou enrichest it with harvests; and thou renewest its ornaments and blessings year by year. Thy cares extend to all that exists, and the least of thy creatures is the object of thy benevolence. The young raven, which cries to thee from the summit of the snow-capped rock, is sustained by thy hand. Thou commandest the cooling stream to flow from the bosom of the desert mountains: thou orderest the sun to mature the vines which adorn our hills, and to ripen the fruits which enrich our orchards; thou sendest the breeze through our forests. When thy sun arises to enliven the world with the splendour of his fires, he invites thy creatures to labour; every thing is active in nature till the moment in which the shade and the silence of night bring the desired repose. But when the day begins to dawn, the choir of birds breaks the stillness of the grove with songs of gratitude and joy: then all the nations of the world, all the regions under heaven, lift up one concert of praise unto thee. To thee they raise the voice of thanksgiving, Father of all beings! thou lovest them all, thou loadest them with thy gifts, thou hast designed all men for happiness, provided that they themselves wish to be happy. May thy name be glorified throughout all the worlds which form thy empire! and let every voice conspire in one universal hymn to extol thee, the all-wise, the all-beneficent Deity! SEPTEMBER II. THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD. Thou art every where present, O Almighty God! Yes, thou art here, thou art afar off, thou fillest the universe. Here grows a flower; there shines a sun; thou art there, thou art also here. Thou art in the breeze and in the tempest; in the light and in the darkness; in an atom and in a world. Thou art here in this flowery valley; thou lendest thine ear to my feeble accents, and thou hearest from the foot of thy throne the sublime songs which accompany the harps of the seraphim. O thou, who art the God of the seraphim; thou art also my God, thou hearest also the joyful notes which pervade the air from yonder lark, and the humming of this young bee which flutters on the rose. Omnipresent Being, as thou hearest me, deign likewise to grant my request; may I never forget that I am in thy sight; may I always think and act as being in thy presence, to the end that when summoned to appear at the tribunal of my Judge with the whole world of spirits, I may not be constrained to flee from before the face of the Holy of holies. SEPTEMBER III. THE BEAUTY AVD VARIETY OF BUTTERFLIES. Let us observe these beautiful creatures whilst they yet enjoy their transitory existence; the examination may perhaps be interesting both to the mind and to the heart. The first thing which attracts our attention on beholding these aerial inhabitants, is the clothing with which they are adorned. Yet some of them have nothing very striking in this respect to engage our notice; their vestment is plain and simple; others have a few ornaments on the wings; but with some those ornaments amount to profusion, and they are covered with them all over. Let us reflect. awhile upon this last species. How beautiful are the gradations of colour which decorate them! What harmony in those spots which relieve the other parts of their attire! With what delicacy has nature pencilled them! But whatever may be my admiration when I consider this insect by the naked eye, how greatly is it augmented when I behold this beautiful object through the medium of the microscope! Would any one ever have imagined that the wings of butterflies were furnished with feathers? Nothing however is more true, and what we commonly call dust is found in reality to be feathers. Their structure and arrangement are as full of symmetry as their colours are soft and brilliant. The parts which form the centre of those little feathers, and which immediately touch the wing, are the strongest ; those, on the contrary, which compose the exterior circumference are much more delicate and of an extraordinary fineness. All these feathers have a quill at their base, but the superior part is more transparent than the quill from which it proceeds. If we lay hold of the wing too rudely, we destroy the most delicate part of the feathers; but if we remove all that we term dust, there remains only a thin transparent skin, where may be distinguished the little orifices in which the quill of each feather was lodged. This skin, from the nature of its texture, may be as easily discerned from the rest of the wing as a fine gauze from the cloth on which it is fastened: it is more porous, more delicate, and seems as if embroidered by the needle; to complete its beauty, its extremity finishes by a fringe whose minute threads succeed each other in the most regular order. What are our most elegant dresses, what is all their boasted ornament, in comparison of that refined tissue with which nature has invested this simple insect? Our finest laces are only like coarse cloth when brought to vie with that luxuriant clothing which covers the wings of the butterfly, and our smallest thread, compared with their infinitely delicate fibres, appears like hempen cord. Such is the wonderful difference to be observed between the works of nature and those of art, when viewed through a microscope. The former are finished to all imaginable perfection; the others, even the most beautiful of their species, appear incomplete and coarsely wrought. How fine a piece of delicate cambric appears to us! Nothing more slender than the threads, nothing more uniform than the texture; and yet, in the microscope, these threads resemble hempen strings, and we should rather be tempted to believe that they had been interlaced by the hand of a basket-maker, than wrought on the loom of a skilful weaver. What is most astonishing in this brilliant insect, is, that it proceeds from a worm whose appearance is mean and vile. Behold how the butterfly displays its gay wings before the sun; how it sports in his rays, how it rejoices in its existence, and flutters from flower to flower. Its wings present to us the magnificence of the rainbow. How beautiful is the butterfly now, which but a little while ago crept in the form of a worm in the dust, in perpetual danger of being crushed to death! Who has raised it above the earth? Who has given it the faculty of inhabiting the ethereal regions? Who has furnished it with its painted wings? It is God; that sovereign Lord who is its creator and mine. In this extraordinary insect we are presented with an emblem of that transformation which awaits the righteous. Yes, the day will come, when quitting their present form, they shall cease to grovel upon the earth; when, holy and glorious, they shall be lifted above the clouds, and, nothing limiting their flight, they shall soar beyond the stars. SEPTEMBER IV. THE GROWTH OF TREES Every tree, however luxuriant its branches may be, receives its principal nourishment from its lower parts; and it is probable that its juices circulate in a manner analogous to that of the blood in animals. The extremities of the roots form a prodigious mass of spongy fibres and of globules of air, which are constantly open to imbibe the juice which the earth affords them. This juice is at first only water impregnated with earthy matter; then, by means of a sort of milky substance, which is peculiar to each tree, and which distinguishes it from others, the juice acquires a nutritive quality before it ascends into those parts of the tree which are elevated above the surface of the earth. We find, by the aid of the microscope, that wood, notwithstanding its hardness, is nothing more than an assemblage of an infinite number of minute, hollow fibres. The greater part of them, especially in shrubs, ascend perpendicularly; but in order to give more consistence to these fibres, there are in certain trees, particularly in such as are designed to be more strong and hard, tubes which extend horizontally from the centre to the circumference. Influenced by the heat of the sun, the sap rises, by degrees, into the branches and into all their minute and multiplied ramifications; in the same manner as the blood, issuing from the heart, is carried by the arteries and the veins into the most distant extremity of the animal body. When the sap has been sufficiently diffused through all the parts which required its circulation, the remainder of it fills certain large vessels which are placed between the inner and outer bark; and hence arises the annual growth and consequent thickness of the tree. To be convinced of this, it is sufficient to cut a branch transversely, by which we shall ascertain the age of the tree. Whilst the trunk from time to time increases in height and bulk, the roots continue a proportional growth, and gradually strike a deeper hold and multiply their supporting fibres. As to the exterior bark, it seems destined to serve as a kind of garment to the tree, to unite securely together its component parts, and to preserve its more delicate but essential ones from external accidents, and from the inclemency of the air. Thus has the all-wise Creator formed an admirable system of solid and fluid matter in order to give life and growth to those trees which adorn our plains, which lend their friendly shade to our flocks, to our shepherds, and to our cottages, and which afterward serve so many purposes useful to man. Here we discover a wisdom which never fails, whilst it prescribes to nature laws in certain prospects, immutable, which act without interruption under the eye of Providence. A wisdom so profound, a skill so marvellous, so many preparations and combinations for each tree, ought to excite us more and more fervently to admire and venerate the creative hand. The contemplation of this wisdom is a most delightful study, and we shall find |