he is bound heavenward; and I, being myself a novice,
am slow in perceiving that he does not know the way
into the heavens, and is merely bent that I should admire
his skill to rise like a fowl or a flying fish, a little
way from the ground or the water; but the all-piercing,
all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven that man shall
never inhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old nooks,
and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have
lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who can
lead me thither where I would be.

But, leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with
new hope, observe how nature, by worthier impulses,
has ensured the poet's fidelity to his office of
announcement and affirming, namely by the beauty of
things, which becomes a new and higher beauty when
expressed. Nature offers all her creatures to him as
a picture-language. Being used as a type, a second
wonderful value appears in the object, far better
than its old value; as the carpenter's stretched
cord, if you hold your ear close enough, is musical
in the breeze. "Things more excellent than every
image," says Jamblichus, "are expressed through
images." Things admit of being used as symbols
because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in
every part. Every line we can draw in the sand has
expression; and there is no body without its spirit
or genius. All form is an effect of character; all
condition, of the quality of the life; all harmony,
of health; and for this reason a perception of beauty