Year: 1872

It is a strange thing how little in gen


eral people know about the sky. It'll the


part of creation in which nature has done


more for the sake Of pleasing man, more


for the sole and evident purpose Of talking


to him and teaching him, than in any other


of her works, and 1t is just the part in


which we least attend to her. There are


not many other works ID which some more


material or essential purpose than the mere
pleasing of man is not answered by every


part of their organization but every es-
sental purpose of the sky might, so far
as we know, be answered, if once in three
days or thereabout great ugly black rain
cloud were brought up over the blue, and
everything well watered, and SO all left


blue again till next time, with perhaps o


film of morning and evening mist for dew.


And instead of this, there is not moment
Of any day of our lives when nature is not
producing scene after scene, picture after
picture, glory after glory, and working
still upon such exquisite and constant
principles of the most perfect beauty. that
it is quite certain it is all done for US. and
intended for our perpetual pleasure. And
every man, wherever placed, however far
from other sources of interest or of beauty,
has this doing for him constantly. The
noblest scenes of the earth can be seen
and known but by few !; it is not intended
that man should live always. in the midst
of them. he Injuries them by his presence,
be ceases to feel them if he be always with
them but the sky is for all; bright as it
is, it is not too bright and good for hu-
man natures daily food = it is fitted in
all its functions for the perpetual comfort
and'exalting of the heart. for the soothing
and purifying it from its dross and dust.
Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious,
sometimes awful, never the same for two
moments together; almost human in its
passions. almost spiritual in its tenderness.
almost divine in its in6nity, its appeal to
what is immortal in us is as distinct as its
ministry of chastisement or of blessing to-
what is mortal is essential. Aud yet we
never attend to it, we never make it a
subject of thought, but as it has to do with
our animal sensations; we look upon all
by which it speaks to'us more clearly than
to brutes, upon all which bears witness of
the intention of the Supreme, that we are
to receive more from the covering vault
than the light and the dew which we share
with the weed and the worm, only as a
succession of meaningless and monotonous
accidents too common and too vain to be
worthy of a moment of watchfullness, or
a glance of admiration. If .in our mo-
ments of utter idleness and insipidity, we
turn to the sky as a last resource. which
of its phenomena do We speak of? One
says it has been vet. and another it has
been windy, aud another it has been warm.
Who, among the whole chattering crowd,
can tell me of the forms and the precipi-
ces of the chain Of tall white mountains
that girded the horizon at noon yesterday?
Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came
out of the south and smote upon their
SUBMITS until they melted and moldered
away in dust of blue rain? Who saw
the dance of the dead clouds when the sun
light left them last night, and the west
wind blue, them before it like withered