much grandeur in the following conception of Long-fellow's:—
"And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven.
Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them."
One would think that, as it is the business of their lives to look up to this inverted hand of God, they would be habitually impressed with His glorious presence. But an object of grandeur depends, for its effect, altogether on the point of view from which we contemplate it. A stone mason might have spent a good part of his life in helping to build St Paul's, and yet, though constantly on the building, with square and plumb-line in hand, he would not occupy so favourable a position for appreciating its proportions, and the sublime ideas which it embodies, as the man who might know nothing about hewing and polishing, but who contemplated it at a distance. The sailor on the mast-head of a ship-of-war, at the mouth of the Alma, was in a better position for forming a right judgment of the battle-field and the glory of the victory, than the man who was in the thick of the fight. In like manner, the mere unprofessional man may be in a much better position for drawing from astronomy its divine teachings, than the man who spends his days and nights in the details of the science. The latter may be so absorbed with these details, that he may never think of withdrawing to a proper distance to contemplate the grandeur of the temple on which he is engaged. It is only the man
