Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/296

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BEAUTY IN THE WORLD OF MATTER.
283


hearted Mr Welltodo might spend his Sunday as profitably in Friedriksstad as in his native town, for the Divine in Nature looks out everywhere, and means Love in torrid zones or frigid.

"Then looke, who list thy gazefull eyes to feed
With sight of that is faire, looke on the frame
Of this wyde universe, and therein reed
The endlesse kinds of creatures which by name
Thou canst not count, much less their nature's aime;
All which are made with wondrous wise respect,
And all with admirable beautie deckt"

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T. P.

Friedriksstad, Santa Cruz, March 15, 1859.


SERMON

All things are double, and he hath made nothing imperfect. —Ecclesiasticus xlii. 24.

Late at night of a Saturday the milliner's girl shuts up the close-pent shop, and, through such darkness as the city allows, walks to her home in the narrow street. All day long, and all the week, she has been busy with bonnets and caps, crowns and fronts, capes and lace and ribbons; with gauze, muslin, tape, wire, bows, and artificial flowers; with fits and misfits, bearings and unbearings, fixings and unfixings, tryings on and takings off; with looking in the glass at "nods, becks, and wreathed smiles,"—till now the poor girl's head swims with the heat of the day and the bad air of the shop, and her heart aches with weary loneliness. Now, thankful for the coming Sunday, she sits down in her little back chamber, opens the blinds, and looks out at the western sky, taking a long breath. Over her head what a spectacle! In the western horizon there yet linger some streaks of day; a pale red hue, toned up with a little saffron-coloured light, lies over Brighton and Cambridge and Watertown,—a reflection it seems from the great sea of day which tosses there far below the horizon, where the people are yet at their work; for with them it is still the hot, bustling Saturday afternoon, and the welcome night has not yet