still star-worlds above, could do more than reveal.  At the farthest stretch of their faculty, they could only bring to light the life and immortality of those orbs which the human eye had never seen before.  They could not tint nor add a ray to one of them all.  They never could bring down to the reach of man’s unaided vision a single star that Noah could not see through the deck-lights of the ark.  It was a gift and a glory that well rewarded the science and genius of Newton and Herschel, of Adams and Le Verrier, that they could ladder these mighty perpendicular distances and climb the rounds to such heights and sweeps of observation, and count, measure, and name orbs and orbits before unknown, and chart the paths of their rotations and weigh them, as in scales, while in motion.  But this ge-astronomer, whose observatory is his conservatory, whose telescope and fluxions are his trowel and watering-pot, not only brings to light the hidden life of a thousand earth-stars, but changes their forms, colors their rays, half creates and transforms, until each differs as much from its original structure and tinting as the planet Jupiter would differ from its familiar countenance if Adams or Le Verrier could make it wear the florid face of Mars.  This man,—­and it is to be hoped he carries some devout and grateful thoughts to his work—­sets Nature new lessons daily in artistry, and she works out the new ideals of his taste to their joint and equal admiration.  He has got up a new pattern for the fern.  She lets him guide her hand in the delicate operation, and she crimps, fringes, shades or shapes its leaflets to his will, even to a thousand varieties.  He moistens her fingers with the fluids she uses on her easel, and puts them to the rootlets of the rose, and they transpose its hues, or fringe it or tinge it with a new glory.  He goes into the fen or forest, or climbs the jutting crags of lava-mailed mountains, and brings back to his fold one of Nature’s foundlings,—­a little, pale-faced orphan, crouching, pinched and starved, in a ragged hood of dirty muslin; and he puts it under the fostering of those maternal fingers, guided by his own.  Soon it feels the inspiration of a new life warming and swelling its shrivelled veins.  Its paralysed petals unfold, one by one.  The rim of its cup fills, leaf by leaf, to the brim.  It becomes a thing most lovely and fair, and he introduces it, with pride, to the court beauties of his crystal palace.

The agriculturist is taken into this co-partnership of Nature in a higher domain of her activities, measured by the great utilities of human life.  We have glanced at the joint-work in her animal kingdom.  In the vegetable, it is equally wonderful.  Nature contributes the raw material of these great and vital industries, then incites and works out human suggestions.  Thus she trains and obeys the mind and hand of man, in this grand sphere of development.  Their co-working and its result are just as perceptible in a common