Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/155

Rh Thus all things are indifferently bodies or clothes, and these clothes are themselves created and living. Analogy is indeed the breadth of truth, because it shows how the true is true diversely in many things or parallel fields; and, in continuity with that analogy which consists in the relation between parallel streams of existence, there is that mere likeness which appears every now and then on the very surface of nature, and proclaims a connection where its reason and principle are at present inscrutable. By such points of likeness everything is surrounded, and becomes a plenary mean even in visible appearance to other things all around it: as between the stag's antlers and forest-trees; between flowers and insects, butterflies and papilionacæ, &c. &c. Thus, at the very bottom of the vegetable kingdom, a substance, the mushroom, fungi, &c. blazes out precisely like animal substance.

-looking individual makes his bow, and addresses the public. In my daily walks along the principal street of my native town, it has often occurred to me, that, if its growth from infancy upward, and the vicissitude of characteristic scenes that have passed along this thorough fare, during the more than two centuries of its existence, could be presented to the eye in a shifting panorama, it would be an exceedingly effective method of illustrating the march of time. Acting on this idea, I have contrived a certain pictorial exhibition, somewhat in the nature of a puppet-show, by means of which I propose to call up the multiform and many-colored Past before the spectator, and show him the ghosts of his forefathers, amid a succession of historic incidents, with no greater trouble than the turning of a crank. Be pleased, therefore, my indulgent patrons, to walk into the show-room, and take your seats before yonder mysterious curtain. The little wheels and springs of my machinery have been well oiled; a multitude of puppets are