is bathed in sunlight. Is not this fact also recognized in other arts? In
painting, the great picture is without marked outline; in music, the
truest and deepest is undefined. Beethoven is greater than Haydn. The
precision which offends in manner is as disagreeable everywhere else. Is
it not because when named as Precision, the depth which necessarily means
a graceful form is absent? As when we say a woman has beautiful eyes we
indirectly acknowledge her want of universal beauty. Certainly a man of
elegant manners is admired not for himself, but what he represents.
Indeed, all society is only thus endurable. Nature, and to me particularly
the ocean, makes no such partial impression; and therefore the poet who
sits nearest to the great heart sings rather the sense of vague beauty and
aspiration, of tender remembrance and gentle hope, than a bald description
of the sight. The ocean is not fathomless water nor the woods green trees
to him, but a presence, and a key that unlocks the chambers of his soul
where the diamonds are. Therefore, when I have been into nearer
conversation with Nature I have little to say, but my life is deepened.
The poet is he who with deepened life chants also a flowing hymn which
utters the music of that life. You will understand why the little poem
seems to me so fine, therefore. This water I also see; but not in me lies
the power of the due expression of its influence.

There was another pleasant aspect in Newport, of persons. I walked one
evening towards the town (for I was boarding in the outskirts), and passed
an encampment of soldiers, who in their gay uniforms glittered among the
lighted tents like soldier fays. The band in the shadow of the camp was
playing very sweetly airs proper for that fading light, half-mournful,
half-tender and hopeful. I passed by the houses brilliantly lighted and
filled with finely dressed people, who also thronged the streets. Before
one of the principal hotels was a band from the fort serenading, and
surrounded with a crowd of easy listeners. The ice-cream resort was