of the way—­where the eye, unnaturally strained, beholds distant shapes it cannot solve—­where the ear, with morbid acuteness, hears sounds without knowing whence they come—­where the foot suddenly stumbles, it may be over a root which forces its way through the rocks, or on a slippery path which the waterfall has drenched with its spray—­and besides all this, a disconsolate waste in the heart, no memory to cheer us, no hope to which we may cling—­let any one attempt this, and he will feel the cold chill of night both outwardly and inwardly.  The first fear of the human heart arises from God forsaking us; but life dissipates it, and mankind, created after the image of God, consoles us in our solitariness.  When even this consolation and love, however, forsake us, then we feel what it means to be deserted by God and man, and nature with her silent face terrifies rather than consoles us.  Even when we firmly plant our feet upon the solid rocks, they seem to tremble like the mists of the sea from which they once slowly emerged.  When the eye longs for the light, and the moon rises behind the firs, reflecting their tapering tops against the bright rock opposite, it appears to us like the dead hand of a clock which was once wound up, and will some day cease to strike.  There is no retreat for the soul, which feels itself alone and forsaken even among the stars, or in the heavenly world itself.  One thought brings us a little consolation:  the repose, the regularity, the immensity, and the unavoidableness of nature.  Here, where the waterfall has clothed the gray rocks on either side with green moss, the eye suddenly recognizes a blue forget-me-not in the cool shade.  It is one of millions of sisters now blossoming along all the rivulets and in all the meadows of earth, and which have blossomed ever since the first morning of creation shed its entire inexhaustible wealth over the world.  Every vein in its leaves, every stamen in its cup, every fibre of its roots, is numbered, and no power on earth can make the number more or less.  Still more, when we strain our weak eyes and, with superhuman power, cast a more searching glance into the secrets of nature, when the microscope discloses to us the silent laboratory of the seed, the bud and the blossom, do we recognize the infinite, ever-recurring form in the most minute tissues and cells, and the eternal unchangeableness of Nature’s plans in the most delicate fibre.  Could we pierce still deeper, the same form-world would reveal itself, and the vision would lose itself as in a hall hung with mirrors.  Such an infinity as this lies hidden in this little flower.  If we look up to the sky, we see again the same system—­the moon revolving around the planets, the planets around suns, and the suns around new suns, while to the straining eye the distant star-nebulae themselves seem to be a new and beautiful world.  Reflect then how these majestic constellations periodically revolve, that the seasons