So Jupiter has his triple thunderbolt, Neptune his trident, Pluto his three-headed dog: there were three fates, three furies, thrice three muses: even primeval nature had its Triad, Ægæon, Briareus, and Gyges: and whole volumes have been written on the various trinities which the Greeks and Egyptians adored. So also in India: so, in fact, wherever there has been a system of religious worship at all.

PISTUS. From whence, I suppose, you would gather that the impress of external nature is found in these trinities; the great mystery of the one ever blessed Trinity having moulded and informed them: which is the point of our consideration.

SOPHRON. Just so; yet I confess that to myself the Cross is more wonderfully set forth in nature -and the difference of the manifestations of these two mysteries is in itself most striking. Things, as considered in their essence, present the former; things as presenting themselves, and taken in reference to us, the latter. It is extraordinary how almost all human arts bring out this form strikingly, and how new inventions are every day bringing it out in new ways.

EUSEBIA. And also, I think, in many of these instances, the idea of resistance and self-denial, that is, the very doctrine of the Cross, is exhibited. A bird, for example, while perched on the bough represents no particular figure;-but he cannot rise from the earth and struggle up

through the air, except by making the sign of the Cross.

PISTUS. It is the same thing with swimming: make an effort against the water, and you must do it in the form of the Cross. The same thing also in rowing. Let a boat fall down the stream, and you may steer her onward: make her ascend against it, or struggle with the sea, and again you represent the Cross.

SOPHRON. And, of course, every one knows that the masts of a ship are most striking figures of the same thing. I never saw this more wonderfully exemplified, than once in walking from Queenborough to Sheerness. It is a low marshy tract of country; and on that day a haze hung over the landscape, and seemed completely to blot out every feature of interest that the scene might otherwise have presented. But to the left, a low embankment ran along the side of the Medway; and above that rose the bare lower masts of six or eight men of war laid up in ordinary in the river. Without sails, cordage, or upper yards, the central mast on each rising above the mizen and foremast, they looked exactly like a series of those Calvaries which you see in foreign lands;—three black Crosses, standing out against the white mist of a hot August sky.

PISTUS. I remember that, on a still autumn afternoon, I was hurrying homewards through one of the pleasant valleys of Surrey. The grass was beginning to grow crisp ; the shadows, half an

hour before so well defined, to melt into a grey confusion; a frosty purple hue to steal over the sky; a solemn, yet not melancholy stillness to draw in over the scene. Before me was the west, kindled into such a fiery redness, that you wondered how such tints could look so deadly cold; half the sun's orb was below the horizon; half, dilated to twice its natural size, was cradled among the distant hills; but between me and that scene of splendour, and cresting the top of a low knoll, the sails of an old windmill seemed to impress the sign of the Cross on the whole landscape, and to tell, as with an audible voice, by what means only we can attain those bright worlds of which the western sky is a type and a promise.

EUSEBIA. And it is strange that the very means of procuring earthly food should be in the figure of that which has procured us all our spiritual sustenance.

THEODORA. So again, a barn is almost of necessity built in the form of a Cross, as if it would set forth the means by which the faithful shall be gathered up into the everlasting garner hereafter

EUSEBIA. A curious illustration connected with sound has not, that I am aware of, been ever noticed. If on a thin metal plate you sprinkle sand, and then strike, on a stringed instrument, that note which is the fundamental sound,-the key note, if we may use the expression, of the plate, the sand will immediately arrange itself in

the form of a Cross, as if the metal could not bear to be impressed with any other sign.

SOPHRON. Look at crystallization, again. Into what exquisite crosses do congealing substances form themselves! He that should desire some new ideas for the gable crosses of his church, could hardly do better than study a book of crystallography.

PISTUS. That the same holy form is marked on the petals of almost every flower, all botanists know. I remember once, in an African mountain, that jutted out into the calm tropical sea, I was wandering on with a friend in the heat of the day, and exploring the various crags and ravines by which it descended to the shore. There was a burning sky above,-not a single cloud tempered the rays of the sun,-the barren soil, volcanic in its origin, and every where shooting up its red crumbling rocks through the thin layers and patches of mould that were scattered upon them, produced neither trees nor grass,-nothing but dwarf thistles, that on all sides were sending out their downy little seed vessels on the bosom of the wind. We longed for water,-we longed for some cooling fruit; and to all appearance we might as well have longed for ice and snow. At length we discovered, loosely anchoring itself among the hot and detached rocks, a pleasant little plant, with leaves and berries not unlike that of the mallow. "We may, however," said my

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friend, "eat of these with safety: it is a cruciferous plant." "Why so?" said I, who am no botanist, and could not see the connexion between his statement and his reason. "Are you not aware," returned he, "that all cruciferous plants bear fruit which may be eaten, to say the least, with impunity, and which is often singularly nutritious and wholesome?" "Is it not wonderful," answered I, "that the sign of the Cross impressed on the leaves of a plant should proclaim to man that it will not hurt him? Is it not as if there went forth such virtue out of the bare form, that no evil thing had power to endure its presence?"

EUSEBIA. Nor is this the case where the hand of GOD has immediately impressed the sign, but where the hand of man has done so too; as if Providence would have him, choose he or not, make use of the same form by which he was saved from perdition.

SOPHRON. It is proved in many modern inventions and contrivances, in none more so than, where you would least expect to find it,in railways. Is it not curious that in the best managed of them the signals should be made by this form? Most conspicuous, on a high embankment, is the tall Cross that stretches forth its arms to warn of danger; hallowing, as it were, those long lines of traffic, and seeming to promise security in the whirl and hurry of almost inconceivable speed.