1. The lecturers that usually appeared in the place he occupied that evening were the greatest philosophers of the age, and the deepest truths and the latest discoveries of science were the engrossing topics on which they dwelt. But no such high interest attached to what he had to say on this occasion. All he should endeavour to do would be to point out the connection between the laws of nature and those of art, the aspects of nature and the aspects of art. He had only elementary truths to tell—he could hardly say to teach, as they were already known, although perhaps sometimes forgotten.

By little twigs the most important fabric on the face of the earth was woven. Of iron and many other substances so useful to our race, so abundant in nature, we see nothing of the elaborations; but of trees, timber, wood, we see the workmanship daily carried on before us. The flowers of the field neither toil nor spin, but the leaves of the forest are ceaseless toilers; all their existence long they are spinners, and weavers, and miners; and the timber of our largest trees displays the warp and woof of the multiple threads which the ever-working leaves have elaborated.