Page:Language of the Eye.djvu/46

28 European. The savage can detect the footsteps of wild animals or his enemy, o'er mountain pass, o'er gloomy moor, and midst deep jungles, which would entirely elude the eye of civilized man. Here also is an evidence of the provident hand of the Creator, whose ample benevolence includes creation round, and not a child of man has been forgotten in his love.

Perhaps a summary of the ability of sight and hearing may be thus stated:—

Sight is adapted to light, colours, form, shape, numbers, &c.; written language, the works of art and nature.

Hearing is adapted to music, tones of all sorts, matter, quality, rest and motion in time; speech, the feelings, the sympathies, the finite and temporal.

There are some useful observations in Lord Malmesbury's Philosophy, and in Oken, of the German school; also in a more familiar, but very valuable work on natural philosophy, by the late Golding Bird.

We fear we are becoming tedious, and too abstracted; but, truth demands a basis; and we rejoice to say, that whenever we investigate the attributes of nature, we look upon eternal beauty and excellence. If we are able to test them by one or all the sciences, we award them the highest approval, and feel the sweetest interest in the investigation. Perhaps no subject is so full of excitement and interest as the economy of our own nature: its anatomy and physiology, its fashion and mechanical appliances are so truly in harmony with the strictest principles of science, whilst its sensibilities have a constant relation to the qualities of things external; indeed, we discern such a proportion of harmony and exact fitness, that the pains of the body, equally with its pleasures, seem appointed to balance and protect its delicate and wonderful structure. We must also observe