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thus a nation lives through its literature, and its mental life is immortal.

The power of Plato passed not away with his corporeal frame. The translator of the silent language of nature to the world is the poet, who addresses the finer instincts of our nature with a voice winning and gentle; develops and encourages all the elevated and thoughtful tendencies of the mind, and so purifies as well as pleases. The poet is paid not by external praise or fortune or fame, but by the deep bliss of those inward moods from which his creations spring. The pleasure they give to others is nothing compared with the rapture they give to him.

The spirit of poetry is music and harmony. Love of beauty and refinement are poetic. There is much confusion produced in criticism by not discriminating between the form and essence of poetry-whatever broadens the imagination and stirs the faculties is essential poetry.

The test of poetry is truth to the nature of things. It is impossible to represent character without a vivid insight into their relations to right and wrong. Homer did not write the Iliad according to any theory of poetry. He sang his thoughts from the impulse of a heart inspired with the love of nature and of life; from the imagination sensitive to the least touch of beauty and reality, plastic and organizing ; and, hence, his poetry took the most perfect form.

Poetry is the perfume of thought. Memory is the prime fountain of thought. Poetry is said to preserve and purify language, cultivate good taste and help memory, fill the mind with fair images and high unselfish thoughts, wondrously increase our perception and enjoyment of natural beauty, relieve the pain of our usual lack or poverty of expression, shaping and bringing within compass multiform thoughts and feelings otherwise inexpressible. It enlarges and emanci

pates the soul-it is not despondent; when it treats of sorrow or pain, it is sympathetic and not gloomy. The true poet is a reformer-a refiner and elevator of the spirit; his mission is to promote harmony in families, societies and nations.

Of all outward forms of beauty, literary pictures are the most refreshing, where reason, feeling and conviction are the guides to truth and utterance. He who has a beautiful mind,

makes beautiful speech.

When he spoke, what tender words he used!

So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow,
They melted as they fell.

He is a poet, artist and singer in spite of himself. His broad, sweet soul has lived into the deeper truth of things; and when he speaks, as he always does, out of his experience, his dainty lips refuse all superfluous or unfit words, while tender, Burns-like images cluster round his thoughts, and his voice, full of tears, melts into a kind of song, that, without the periods and pauses of ordinary speech, flows into the ear and heart with the effect of a fugue by Bach. All is but lip-wisdom which wants experience and the sanction of conscience.

Conscience, what art thou? thou tremendous power!
Who do'st inhabit us without ourleave;

And art within ourselves, another self.

Yet still there whispers the small voice within,

Heard through gain's silence, and o'er glory's din.
Whatever creed be taught or land be trod,

Man's conscience is the oracle of God!

No man ever offended his own conscience, but first or last it recoiled upon him and became a self-punishing regenerator. O Conscience! Conscience! Man's most faithful friend.

There is a voice of singing birds,

Merry, bright and glad;

There is a voice of running streams,

That sounds both sweet and sad.

There is a loud and fearful voice
Of thunder in the sky;
There is a voice among the leaves
Of breezes passing by.

There is a mother's voice of love,
To hush her little child;
There is a father's voice of praise,

Earnest, kind and mild.

There is yet another voice

That speaks in gentle tone.

I think that we can hear it best
When we are quite alone.

It is a still small holy voice,

The voice of God Most high,
That whispers always in our heart,

And says that He is nigh.

This voice will blame us when we're wrong,
And praise us when we're right;

We hear it in the light of day,

And in the quiet night.

And even they whose ears are deaf

To every other sound,

When they have listened in their hearts,
This little voice have found.

And they have felt that God is good,

And thanked Him for this voice

That taught them what was right and true,
And made their hearts rejoice.

THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY IS EVERYWHERE.

The spirit of beauty is in the life of all; but the life of beauty, thus animating creation, is the spirit of goodnessthe spirit of God. Moral beauty is also in human life; in the affections that sweeten it, in the sentiments that expand it, in the charities that bless it, in the principles that ennoble and sustain it, in every generous deed of love and mercy, in the tenderest and sweetest sympathy, from the cup of cold

water bestowed to the chalice of martyrdom accepted. The spirit of beauty is vital in action, lovely in manifestation, grand and pure to the eye, pleasant to the ear, genial to the feelings, calming to the brain, a cordial for the vexed spirit, ease for the tired senses, a deathless desire in the hope of a deathless life.

Beauty fills the soul with purest joy. It is one of the purest and most elevating of sentiments. It is an element of true religion, a redemptive power, administering to the highest faculties. Love of the beautiful in nature, art and character, is one of the noblest qualities of our being, and is essential to a high order of excellence. Love of the beautiful makes the poet's heart a harp, swept by the Divine Spirit. It makes every heart poetic; and, as it grows, lifts the soul into communion with Infinite Beauty.

I have been to the woods, I have trod the green dell.

And the spirit of beauty was there;

I saw her fair form in the snow-drop's white bell,
I heard her soft voice in the air.

She danced in the aspen, she sighed in the gale,
She wept in the shower, she blushed in the vale;
Her mantle was thrown o'er the misty brake;
Her splendor shown on the sparkling lake;
I felt her breath in the breezes of even;
Her robe floated over the blue vault of heaven.
Wherever I roved, over vale, wood or hill,
The spirit of beauty would follow me still.
Not a wild-brier rose its fragrance breathed,
Not an elm its clustering foliage wreathed,
Not a violet opened its eyes of blue,.
Not a plant or flower in the valley grew,
Not an ivy caressing the rock or the wall,
But the spirit of beauty was over them all.

Love of the beautiful heightens enjoyment. As a glimpse of life beyond the grave and a glance of the eye into the

depths of space are adapted to calm stormy passions, so a tranquil resting of the soul on whatever form of beauty tends to impart cheerfulness, elasticity of spirits and mute thankfulness.

Every sense of the mind should be regaled with delight. The spiritual forces in the soul seek for beauty and a finer ordering of life. Some minds are wild in their unrestrained adoration of beauty. They yearn with all their hearts to possess beauty, and to personify its every divine secret and attractive excellence; their aspirations for the artistically beautiful are boundless and exacting. The dull level of every laborious life ought to be relieved with a rich embossment of beauty, liberty and progress.

We ought to put more dignity and ideal interest into our ordinary work. The poet, a born interpreter of nature's soul, has a power of idealizing the most trifling incident. They who derive the greatest pleasure from any given object are people of taste. Delicacy, sensibility, refinement and taste belong to genius. To unduly magnify and enjoy the common little things near at hand are the felicitous illusions of superior minds.

These outward beauties are but the props and scaffolds on which we build our love. Between inward bodies and principles, there is invariably a well-defined outward correspondence. Subjective beauty, that is, beauty in the spiritual constitution, expresses itself objectively, or, beautiful external objects produce corresponding internal effects. Mental culture brings mental wants, and these wants bring animation and its attendant beauty.

Any material object which can give us pleasure in the simple contemplation of its outward qualities, without any direct and definite exertion of the intellect, we may call in some way or some degree beautiful.

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