Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.

Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses; and the brute degenerates in man's society.

Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress us as an older country than the States, unless because her institutions are old? All things appeared to contend there, as I have implied, with a certain rust of antiquity, such as forms on old armor and iron guns,--the rust of conventions and formalities. It is said that the metallic roofs of Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was on the inhabitants and their institutions.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.