Thunder and lightning are also his transmitted strength.  Every fire that burns and every flame that glows, dispenses light and heat which originally belonged to the sun.  In these days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock and every charge is an application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun.  He blows the trumpet, he urges the projectile, he bursts the bomb.  And, remember, this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth.

He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.  He forms the muscles, he urges the blood, he builds the brain.  His fleetness is in the lion’s foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake.  He builds the forest and hews it down, the power which raised the tree, and which wields the ax, being one and the same.  The clover sprouts and blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation of the same force.

The sun digs the ore from our mines, he rolls the iron; he rivets the plates, he boils the water; he draws the train.  He not only grows the cotton, but he spins the fiber and weaves the web.  There is not a hammer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that is not raised, and turned, and thrown by the sun.

His energy is poured freely into space, but our world is a halting place where this energy is conditioned.  Here the Proteus works his spells; the selfsame essence takes a million shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form.  The sun comes to us as heat; he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear.  They are all special forms of solar power—­the molds into which his strength is temporarily poured in passing from its source through infinitude.

Note.—­Proteus (pro.  Pro’te-us) was a mythological divinity.  His distinguishing characteristic was the power of assuming different shapes.

CIV.  COLLOQUIAL POWERS OF FRANKLIN. (366)

William Wirt, 1772-1834, an American lawyer and author, was born at Bladensburg, Maryland.  Left an orphan at an early age, he was placed in care of his uncle.  He improved his opportunities for education so well that he became a private tutor at fifteen.  In 1792 he was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law in Virginia; he removed to Richmond in 1799.  From 1817 to 1829 he was Attorney-general of the United States.  His last years were spent in Baltimore.  Mr. Wirt was the author of several books; his “Letters of a British Spy,” published in 1803, and “Life of Patrick Henry,” published in 1817, are the best known of his writings. ###