the lieutenant— free and easy as were the
latter— had fascinated me, and I accepted his
invitation.

NATURE'S GREATNESS IN SMALL
THINGS.

To the imagination of man, magnitude
presents itself as one of the noblest and most
impressive attributes with which material
objects are clothed. The colossal grandeur
of the Alps, amid the wonders of nature; or
of the Pyramids among the master-pieces of
Art, affects the sensuous nature of the beholder
with unmingled reverence and awe. But
the refined intelligence seeks for a higher
standard of value than size can afford. Sense
bows before the majesty of sublime proportion;
reason first seeks to investigate all the
relations of material things, and, in the end,
exalts to the highest place those which a
searching test has declared to possess the
loftiest significance. Not unfrequently it is
seen that forms the most minute are most
essential. They were the Titanic forces and
grander features of nature which evoked the
admiration and the worship of the earliest
tribes of men. As we descend along the
stream of time, we may discover a growing
perception of the greatness of small things;
the marvellous power of minor organisms to
work immeasurable changes, and the exquisite
beauty of minute structures.

Many centuries ago, thoughtful men
foreshadowed the full expression of this ripening
truth, and anticipated the results of modern science
in a profound axiom—tota natura in
minimis—in smallest things is nature greatest.
It was reserved for this century to develop a
saying of the schools into a household precept.
This age has cast down barriers that walled
round the human vision, and has spread out
before us a whole universe of created things,
of which no man knew before our time. We
see now, by the aid of the microscope, that
greatness has no existence but as composed
of infinite littleness. Who that bowed before
the oak could have thought the lord of the
forest to be a compound mass of many
millions of independent organisms, of which
thousands are combined within an acorn?
Who that looked upon the mountain chains
of western Asia, or the white cliffs of Dover,
could surmise that they were the handiwork
of infusorial animalcules, whose shells make
up the mass in numbers of thirty millions to
a cubic inch? These are the revelations of
the microscope.

Gifted with this new power, the naturalist
has traversed the material universe as though
armed with a magician's wand; and beneath
all diverse shapes, amid all various structures
he has found one simple and invariable unit
the beginning of all form; the first and main
element of attenuated organisms. It is the
organic cell. The loftiest trees have bowed
their heads, and confessed this strange secret
of their structure.* The stubborn rock has
not withheld the same tale of antediluvian
lore. The highest animal, and the lowliest
plant have narrated the same self-imprinted
story of their birth. Flowers have whispered
it,—the rustling leaves have breathed
it. The butterfly has borne it on the dust of
its wings, the fish upon its scales. It is
written in the blood that circulates in our
veins,— it is imprinted on the muscle which
gives motion, and the bones which afford
support to our frame. All nature testifies to it.
One secret that is the key of all shapely
beauty, or deformed ugliness. A hidden
unity amidst all variety. A common type for
every form. One word which all creation
perpetually utters; a witness to the one
source whence all derives.

* See Household Words, Volume the Eighth, pages 354 and 483.

The waters teem with dissimilar forms
of life. The air is darkened with inhabitants,
not one of which has its exact counterpart.
The mind actually shrinks from the
contemplation of endless dissimilarity,
and apparently inharmonious difference.
What a chasm gapes between the shape and
function of the stately old chesnut-tree of
Etna, whom time has not subdued and age has
not withered, and the ephemeral fungus that
springs up to-day, flowers to-morrow, and dies
ere another sun has visited it! A wider interval
appears between the noble form of man
himself and the green mould that clothes his
tomb. But the microscope resolves this
complexity, and bridges easily this chasm.
It resolves them alike into simplest elements,
and finds beneath all the same type of
creation. It shows always, at the foundation,
that common origin in cell-growth which
binds all created things in one sublime
connection; and proclaims a common law of
growth, and a pervading fiat of creative
power as vice-regent over organic nature.

It was our own distinguished countryman,
Robert Brown, who initiated the observations
whose fruitful results have led to the
perception of this universal law. But not until the
researches of Schleiden, in eighteen hundred
and thirty-seven, was any useful generalisation
obtained. The efforts of naturalists had,
before that time, been chiefly directed towards
the perception of differences, and the creation
of species. But Schleiden saw that the philosophy
of nature was darkened by our ignorance
of the laws of natural development;
and bravely devoting himself to the patient
study of growth, and the laws which control
it, he travelled through a tangled forest of
prickly and entwined facts, till at last he saw
the light, and could proclaim it. He watched
the secret processes of plants; traced them in
their reproduction and their birth, analysed
their structures, and observed the process of
their functional activities.

At the end of a long course of labour,
he was able to tell to the world, that, as the