THE RESTORATIVE PRINCIPLE IN NATURE. PERHAPS there is nothing in the ongoings of Nature more clearly discernible, or that strikes the reflecting mind as a greater display of infinite wisdom and power, than the Restorative Principle. Nature never ceases her silent work. Amid wars and rumors of wars, the fall of empires and establishment of dynasties, her course remains the same. And though continual and innumerable changes are progressing throughout her vast domain, the results are always conditioned by her unchangeable laws, and the lessons which they convey are those of economy, combined with utility and beauty. While contemplating the processes of combustion and reduction, the adaptation of each to the wants of the other, the elements necessary for their maintenance, the mutual dependencies of animal and vegetable life, we cannot help perceiving the economy which Nature employs, and admiring the greatness of her works. The plant, first pointing through the earth, then spreading its leaves to procure nourishment, then rearing its stately stalk bearing blossom and fruit, and finally withering and sinking to the earth, is a fit emblem of the routine ever progressing in all her thousand departments. Nor are these changes uninstructive to the attentive student who minutely observes their bearings and reciprocal influences, who traces effects to their true causes, and judges of the adequacy of causes from their respective effects. He that views, only in the light of the physical sciences, the successive changes in the plant, its growth, decay, recombination, and the effect produced upon it by the imponderable bodies, must derive useful lessons, and be impressed with the truth of the existence of that wonderful and to us incomprehensible agency, the Restorative Principle. Neither is it to the learned alone that Nature discloses her treasures and imparts her instruction, for all can experiment in her laboratory and search out her hidden wealth; but it is those who labor assiduously, under the combined light of science and inspiration, that receive those manifestations of her wisdom, her exhaustless resources, and her grandeur. Every individual views his own art or science as more admirable in proportion as he attains eminence in that art or science. The charms of music are most inspiring to the musician; the flower seems most beautiful to the botanist; the bird to the ornithologist; earth, sea, and air most entertaining to the natural philosopher; and the revolutions and transits of the heavenly bodies to the astronomer, as the ultimatum of precision and harmony. A knowledge of these sciences, and far more than these, is necessary to an adequate idea of the riches of the natural world. In beauty Nature surpasses all else. The lovely expanse of landscape adorned with verdant covering; the placid waters with their delightful scenery tinged by the rays of the setting sun; the majestic forest waving under the western breeze; the hill with its gentle acclivity, where shadows play as if in childish sport; the valley with its meandering stream and grazing herd, are scenes of which the orator can give only a very imperfect description. The pen of the artist fails in the attempt; nor can the brush of the painter do justice to the original. The poet, whose imagination glows with unusual brilliancy as he expatiates on the beauteous realms of Nature, depicting every thing grand, every thing bold, and every thing remote, only sets forth his inadequacy to perform the task. Æsthetic sentiments are embodied in her picturesque forms, elegance in her rudely-finished workmanship, and her labyrinthian wilds evince grace, the image of freedom ever speaking to the cultured soul that moral element of a rational mind. Yet there is a principle of economy underlying the very foundation of her beauty; a law fixed, unchangeable, and inexorable, governing every process of development, and providing for the support of one by the dissolution of another. This is the law that sustains Nature in her onward course. This is the law that maintains her vegetation and preserves her beauty in pristine purity, enabling her not only to afford us the bodily comforts of food and shelter which necessity has bound us to require, but also, when war has departed from our land, and our hearts and hands are turned to peace, neglecting and suffering to die the rude arts of violence and barbarity, to minister to the wants of the spirit, spreading over her extensive surface images of what is true and sacred, thus making earth itself a present Paradise. The water in its circulating system, passing from earth to sea and from sea to earth, affords a proof of the existence of this law. The tall oak, whose stately trunk has endured the storms of cen turies, as it spreads its branches heavenward, asserting its strength, proclaims, in inaudible accents, the Restorative Principle. The little brook that winds beneath the hill flows onward over the pebbles which line its channel; yet, in the low sound of its distant murmurings, is heard the Restorative Principle. The raging tempest that sweeps along, leaving desolation in its path, sinks gradually to the gentle breeze which cautiously approaches to whisper in our ear: Restorative Power. Do you ask why the birds, singing among the leaves, pour forth such joyous and enchanting strains? they answer, by the sweetness of their notes, Restorative Principle. Or why the lightning bursts from the darkened cloud, tearing asunder every thing that opposes its rapid velocity? the answer comes in tones of thunder, Restorative Power. Every blade of grass sparkling with the morning dew, every flower whose fragrance perfumes the surrounding air, every form of existence, animate or inanimate, which bears the impress of Nature's hand, is the material expression of this all-pervading law. AN ORIENTAL POET. DURING the thirteenth century of our era lived and died Shekh Sadi, of Shiraz, one of Persia's most memorable sons. While Europe was sunk in barbarism, or rather was just beginning to emerge from her long sleep, as 'the ten dumb centuries' which were to make 'the speaking Dante,' drew to their close, Sadi, with his keen sense and poet's heart, was wandering in his derwish dress from city to city throughout the Mohammedan world, everywhere studying manners and mankind, and everywhere gathering wisdom and experience. He travelled in Barbary, Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, Arabia, Tartary, and India; fourteen times he made the pilgrimage to Mecca; and this wide knowledge of the world leaves its traces in every page that he wrote. 'Long,' he tells us in one of his poems, 'have I wandered in the various regions of the earth, and everywhere I have spent my days with every body: I have found a gain in every corner, and gleaned an ear from every harvest.' His long* life was checkered with every variety of fortune; for in those days war was abroad in the earth, and rapid changes were sweeping over the fair face of Asia. The Franks still held part of Palestine, though the enthusiasm of the early Crusades had *SADI was born at Shiraz, A.D. 1175, and died there, A.d. 1290. long since passed away; and the fierce hordes of the Tartars and Moguls, which had burst forth under Zingis Khan from the wilds of Scythia, were laying waste, under his generals or successors, the fairest seats of Asiatic civilization; and in 1258 his grandson, Holagou Khan, took Bagdad by storm, and put to death the feeble Mostasem, whose name closes the long and glorious line of the Abbasside dynasty of the Caliphs. Amidst this shaking of empires, individuals of course could not escape. Life and property were fearfully insecure, and a shadow must have darkened every home. Sadi, who long resided at Bagdad, where he held a fellowship in the Nizamiah College, has commemorated in one of his elegies the devastation of the city by Holagou; and in his travels in Syria he fell into the hands of the Crusaders, who set him to work with other slaves in repairing the fortifications of Tripolis. But Sadi carried a brave heart in his bosom, which no threats of adverse fortune could subdue. The dangers of travel but added a keener zest to his enjoyment; for the world in those days was still fresh to the traveller, and every forest and every hill had its adventure and its romance. Science had not then mapped out sea and land, and stripped travel of its wonder and danger; and Nature rewarded her votary with a far deeper relish for her charms. Life to the traveller was fuller and richer, and his feelings were stronger and deeper; nor was it merely the hills and the woods that breathed their fuller life into his heart, but he learned a deeper sympathy with his fellow-man. The fellow-travellers of the caravan were linked by their community of hardship and danger, and heart answered to heart in their intercourse; for the desert solitudes annihilate fashions, and leave men bare as nature around them. These influences wrought deeply on Sadi's character, and it is these which lend such a living charm to his books. the two on which his fame chiefly rests are the 'Gulistan,' or Rose-Garden, and the 'Bostan,' or Orchard. The former, to which we would invite our readers to accompany us, is one of those books which are thoroughly Eastern in every part. Its form, its matter, its style, its thoughts, all wear an Oriental coloring; everywhere we breathe in an Oriental atmosphere. In itself it is a book of morals; but this description could never convey to the American reader the faintest idea of its real character. It is a book of morals, but written for the story-loving East, that native home of romance in every age; and instead of labored disquisitions and logical systems, we have everywhere life and human interest. Morality descends from the universal to the individual; she steps from the schools to the bazaar; and, instead of dealing with words and abstractions, clothes her thoughts with flesh and blood in the forms of living men. The work is divided into eight sections, seven of which are so many series of stories and apologues to illustrate some leading point, which gives the title to the section, and unites, as by a thread, the otherwise unconnected series of which it is composed. The book is written in prose; but distichs and tetrastichs, and sometimes longer poems, are continually introduced to vary the narrative, and also to give force and piquancy to the lessons which it may be intended to convey. In no other book is the beauty of the Persian language so fully displayed; no other author has ever wielded the instrument so well, or tried, like Sadi, all its capabilities to their full. And yet the style is generally simple, and singularly free from that rank luxuriance of ornament which in later times disfigured Persian poetry, and which indeed is the chief characteristic that the bare mention of Oriental poetry, alas! too often suggests to the English reader. From this fault Sadi is generally free, and his language Sadi has written many works, but is usually pointed and concise; indeed, one of his peculiar characteristics is the poignant brevity of many of his sayings, which stamps them with a kind of proverbial significance. His poetry is always graceful and easy, with no great power of imagination, but an inexhaustible flow of imagery and fancy; and we frequently find that tender pathos which wins its way to the reader's heart by no forced appeals of rhetorical art, but by its native simplicity and home-felt truth. But one great charm of the book, as we said, is its being so thoroughly unWestern and new. The characters who flit before us in its stories, and the scenery which forms the background as they move, are alike Oriental; the moment we open the volume we find ourselves in another clime. It reminds us of the view which Mr. Curzon describes from the window of the Alexandrian hotel, when he gazed on the street and bazaar below: 'Here my companion and I stationed ourselves, and watched the novel and curious scene; and strange indeed to the eye of the European, when for the first time he enters an Oriental city, is all he sees around him. The picturesque dresses, the buildings, the palmtrees, the camels, the people of various nations, with their long beards, their arms and turbans, all unite to form a picture which is indelibly fixed in the memory.'* To Sadi indeed these were but the every-day scenes in the midst of which his life was passed; and much that now charms us with its beauty may have been but commonplace to him, for the distance of time and space alike 'lend enchantment to the view; and the very events and scenes which were so familiar to him, it requires now the true poet's imagination to recover from the past: Adown the Tigris was I borne, For it was in the golden prime Of good HAROUN AL RASCHID.' * Yet not the less did it need the seeing eye in Sadi to portray so vividly these familiar scenes around him -to catch their evanescent features as they flitted past in life's quick procession, and daguerreotype them forever in his book. And not the less was it the poet's insight which detected under this everyday disguise the latent beauty and truth, and thus made 'THE barren commonplaces break To full and kindly blossom.' The 'Gulistan' is one of those books which are never written but by the poetic temperament, when saddened (shall we say darkened ?) by a deeper insight into life and the world. The glowing visions of genius in its youth have faded in life's cold daylight; the Philoctetes, with his chivalrous generosity, has himself become the Ulysses whose voice he once refused to hear; yet with the cold wisdom of the world, some gleams of his former self still linger, and shed a softening hue on what would else be stern and repulsive in his character. It is not the old age of one who has never known a genial youth, for this were indeed gloomy to the heart's core; but here, under all the mask of cynicism, if we pierce through the incrustation which years have left, we shall find the warm true heart beating as of old. Thus the Horace who in his youth had sung of Lalage and Cinara, in his riper years writes of man and the world; the poet's gift of insight, which had once seen Bacchus 'WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew and his satyrs among the hills, now free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flowed back with me, * CURZON'S 'Monasteries in the Levant,' p. 8. turns to life and society, *TENNYSON's 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights.' Perhaps in 'Maud' we have a still more striking instance, where the hero is recalling that dreamy memory of infancy, and hears his father |