minor organisms, which are the lowliest
members of the vegetable kingdom are each
in themselves an individual cell, having life
and activity, nutrition and reproduction, so
the highest plants are only congeries of such
individuals, heaped one upon another, moulded
into a thousand shapes, and adapted to different
purposes. It was then that he enunciated
the principle, that the life-story of a plant is
to be studied through the vital history of its
composing cell-elements; and, proclaiming
the microscopic vegetable cell as the unit of
vegetable creation, exalted it to the place of
honour among the objects of microscopic
research. It was no small thing that this
key to the cabinet of vegetable physiology
should be so discovered, and placed in our
hands; but his researches led to yet another
result, for Schwann proceeded to apply to
the animal world, the same method of inquiry
which Schleiden had inaugurated
among plants; and, at the close of two years,
he made known, in his turn, the sublime
truth that the law of formation and
reproduction which prevails in the vegetable, rules
also over the animal creation. He showed
that the scheme is the same, and the cell still
the primordial element of being. Bones,
cartilages, muscles, nerves, and every tissue,
were traced to their origin in cell-growth;
man himself appears as a congeries of cells:
his growth the expression of the sum of their
growth: the vital processes of his body
carried on by cell-action: secretion, absorption,
exhalation, nutrition, chemical change,
and vital change; so many names which
only indicate phases in the history of cell-life,
that epitome of all organic life. These
splendid researches were the result of
observations made with very imperfect and
inoffensive instruments; they should
encourage the poorest and simplest student of
microscopic nature to think and to examine
for himself. They should inspire an abiding
faith in the noble simplicity of the innermost
mysteries of nature, and the power of
the human intellect to master the difficulties
of all mere material problems in the exercise
of its heaven-descended reason. Greatly
should the microscopist rejoice to find, in his
favourite instrument, a facile power of
unveiling these high secrets. The most
inexpensive microscope gives him the power to
interrogate all surrounding objects on this
head, and to draw from them the confession
of their obedience to cell-power. Sitting in
the poorest room, even on the dullest day,
he may cut a chip from the floor, take a
leaf from a flower, a thread from the carpet,
a hair from the chair, a fragment from his
food, a coal-chip from the fire, or a drop of
blood from the finger, and they will all speak
to him in this same language. Their variety
will show up a higher uniformity, their
complexity a simple cellular unit. Their
multiform shapes will betray one common
type. Uttering many voices, they sing one
grace and canticle of the same purport; the
vastness and variety of the results produced
by modifications of the same unvarying
means; the universality of cell-power; the
pervading existence of cell-growth, the
million development of its resources, its shapes,
its functions, its labours, and its value.

This high law of unity stretches yet
further. It has other applications, and has
found other as illustrious exponents. While
Schleiden and Schwann were working humbly
in their vocation amid the mysteries of structure
in far parts of Germany, our own
countryman, Owen, was studying the law of
form here in the heart of London. The
one was busied with his microscope and
his needles, searching into the tissues of
plants, questioning their stem, their fibres,
and their pollen. The other, arranging
ill-smelling bones, dissecting neglected carcases
of wasted creatures, scorning nothing that
once had life, and still possessed organisation;
making light of labour when it promised a
new fact, or a fresh illustration: looking for
order amidst confusion; waiting for light in
the darkness. At either end of the web,
patient workers were unravelling the plaited
thread of science; each followed a widely
separate clue, but in the end, as they held
fast to the right, their paths have met, and
they stand, centrally amidst the toiling,
scattered crowd of scientific labourers, the apostles
of a great truth.

What Schleiden had done for structural
anatomy, Owen did for the anatomy of form.
The man, the bird, the reptile, and the fish,
the uncouth saurian, and the strange griffin
of pre- Adamite times, seemed to be separated
by as wide an interval as any that distinguished
the structure of the lichen from
that of the palm-tree. But, the secret once
fathomed, and the type established, their
visible connection is read off from them as
from Nature's own primer. Owen has
demonstrated to the satisfaction of the world,
that, by changes of one form alone, the
archetypal vertebra, all world-wide varieties
have been effected. This is the key of the
mammoth frame—it is the secret of the shape
of the fishy tribe. Those are expanded
vertebrae which inclose the brain of man; they
are vertebral appendages which wall round
his heart, which afford levers of action for
the arms,—which supply bases of support,
and cavities of protection for the organs of
motion and sense, so multiform and variously
endowed. The paddle of the seal, the wing
of the bird, and the fin of the fish, are new
forms of the same element. Thus it is, that
truth harmonises with truth, and law combines
with law.

This grand demonstration of unity in
creation is a new bulwark to religion. The
proofs of design have long been a potent
weapon of defence, and an earnest source of
delight in the hands of rational and religious
men. But there were many things in nature