plates an angel, or regards a humming-bird; whether he looks up to the full and far heights of a star, or bends in the long grass for the glowworm's light; whether he contemplates heaven or earth-the one with its kindling and glowing sapphires, or the other with its blooming and fragrant flowers;-in all, high and low, great and small, he discovers the signs of soul, the presence of spirit.

In this communion, his soul not only sees, but it hears. A listening soul is like a temple of minstrelsy. Where others would walk unmoved, the listening soul is arrested and enwrapped by the overflows and droppings, or stealings of heaven. And where others would be terror-stricken, and smitten with fear even unto death,-the listening soul would be entranced and inspired. Nature's whispers, and nature's full and sudden choruses, are alike to him-Music. His soul hums "a quiet tune" to the cricket's chirp, or song of the bee, and swells its music from all its chords in harmony with the tempest's howl, or the thunder's crash. He will touch his harp in sweet accompaniment to an evening breeze, or wind the shrill blast of his horn into the hurricane chambers of the tempest. See! our beautiful vignette. "Well, I see it," says one. What think you of it? "It's a pretty picture." No-but what think you of its subject-its ideal? "Well, it's a pretty poem." Beauty is both truth and its blessing, whether in ideal, or in art; in a painting, or in a poem; yet the poem is more beautiful than the painting, even as the soul is more beautiful than that form in which it is contained.

The pearl nestles away in a shell; the diamond sparkles

where no eye can see it; and the finest gold is beneath the sand. What is a shell? or a rock? or the sand? The first you throw to the wave again, not knowing that the waves have borne to you in their generous hands a treasure; the second you stumble over, or with a selfish thoughtfulness roll it aside from your path; the third, you trample on, or if you do more, the height of your thought is, to write your name on a spot where the grains are levelled by the tide, and await the return of the next wave to wash out the imprint, that you may say,—the sands are nothing.

I think again :-some will snare a wren in the midst of its song, and imprison it-forever songless; leaving the free air which wafted it along as its emblem-blessing, to sigh among the long grass, or wail around the hill-slope, for the loss of its light-hearted music-charm. And some will chain an eagle, the child of the sun, the brother of heights, the familiar of mountains, the friend of storms, flapping its wings on the skirts of tempests, plunging breast-wise into the bosom of upper whirlwinds, screaming over the thunder's bolt, right near to its path, and opening the inner fire of its eye in kindred glances to the lightning's flash. The wren may languish, and pant away its little life; and the eagle may droop to the dust, to which it is not kindred, and die away. He who caged the one, and chained the other, has all along wondered that the one had no song, and the other no scream, and that both should die.

I will not introduce the range of illustration; let what has been given suffice. That proper communion with

nature, on the part of the soul of man; that communion which looks farther than the form, however attractive the form may be, and discerns the spirit in all forms; that communion, which, while it hears the first and holiest language of nature, interprets all its hidden meanings, and appropriates the happy thoughts and glowing words; that communion which is exclusive of selfishness, and is reciprocal,-blessing and being blest;-such communion is an exalted attainment, and raises every dream into the palpable, turns every thought into joy, and every sentiment into a fountain of bliss. It is an attainment, that attests our truest nature, and foreshadows our happiest destiny. It is, so to speak, the ascent of the reality of life, to the highest ideal of the spirit; the lifting up of experience to the full measure of the truest hope. This attainment, though possible, is rarely exhibited. The examples of consecrate communion between the spirit within, and the spirit without, are but here and there, though their influence and blessing are everywhere. The highest worth of a fountain,―sound it never so sweetly, and flow it never so purely, is, to many, discovered in the accidents of the banks, through which its streams run, affording eligible sites for dams, and yielding forces for mill-wheels. Flowers-tinted by the sun, kissed by stealing winds, gemmed with dewy pearls, and with fragrance making the air redolentare chiefly to be prized, for the sensesubduing odour which their leaves constrainedly yield, as their dying breath, to the laces, silks and satins of misses, or for the expressed, distilled, exquisite drop, tortured out,

to perfume the glove, or mouchoirs of disinterested gallants. To be sure, nature is utilitarian, in the more common sense of that term, and was designed so to be. Nature can and does administer to the demand of every natural necessity, and also to the calls of every sensual fancy. But the employments of nature in these provinces, are always subordinate and secondary, and though in themselves useful and important, become, in comparison with her higher ranges and diviner appropriateness, scarcely noticeable. The sun is the light of our sphere; and when the clouds distil their rains, the soil is generous to the seed; but is the sun nothing more? and are the rains nothing more?

For more, far more than this, the sun, great orb
Resplendent shines; for more than this the clouds
Their dews distil. Each beam a spirit is-
A bright-eyed spirit, and each ray

Its path of glory. And each drop that falls,
Though falling on the thirsty seeded earth,

Or on the verdant hill, or barren rock,

Or on the mountain-spring, or woodland rill,

Seems as a tear,-though not from sadness well'd

A tender pledge of sympathy with life.

It is this discernment of the spirit, that lives and breathes in, and inspires the form, throughout all the ranges and provinces of nature, that blesses the man of soul, and crowns and attests the true poet. He who can translate the song of a fountain, the humming of a bee, the voice of a bird, or the talk of the rustling forest-leaves; he who can converse with every ripple of a rill, as it looks