Not so, however, has mlt\\ the Divine Makku. All that is useful is indeed around us, 

 but how mueh luoro is there beside. We stroll out of a morning, and lo ! birds are 

 singing, and waters iniirnniring, and the sun is rising with a cool brightness tliat makes 

 evervthing look young, — dancing like dazzling silver on tlic wavelets of the brook, 

 and filling the skies witli a joyous splendor, and the heart witli an ethereal merriment. 

 Who has not felt in the bright hours of all seasons, but especially in the radiant days 

 of summer, what the poet has well called 



"The strange, superfluous glory of the uirl" 



as if, beside all tlie combined gasses needful for our respiration, there were present 

 some ethereal nectarine clement, baffling the analysis of the cliemist, yet revealing its 

 power in the thrill of exuberant life whieh it excites in the human frame, — a true 

 elixi)' vitce, a " superfluous glory " added for the sole purpose of producing joy ? Enter 

 the garden, and fortliwith the eye is charmed with the sight of flowers, — the nostrils 

 tJirill with the scents floating on the morning air, — and Peaches and all manner of 

 fruit are there, pleasing both eye and palate fur more than utility demands. The very 

 hedgerows and woody dells of nature's own planting are full of beauty, — bright and 

 sweet with the Ilawthom, the Sweetbrier, and the Honeysuckle. Hill and valley meet 

 each oilier by picturesque gradation ; and brooks and rivers leap and run in courses 

 which please all the more because dissimilar from the rectilinearism of utility. All 

 things proclaim that the Divine Auchitect, while amply providing for tlie wants, has 

 not forgotten the enjoyment of his creatures ; and having implanted in the human soul 

 a yearning after the beautiful, has surrounded us with a thousand objects by whose 

 presence that yearning may be gratified. 



Perhaps the most striking example of this Divine care for human enjoyment is to be 

 seen in the lovely mantle of color in which the earth is robed. Like all things very 

 common, we do not half prize this robe of beauty which nature puts on for our gratifi- 

 cation. It is in such complete harmony with our visual sense, that — like musical har- 

 mony also, when long continued — its sweetness fails to impress us if not broken at times 

 by a discord. But suppose the case of a man born blind, and to whom the aspect of the 

 outer world — nay, the very meaning of the word "color" has remained a mystery until 

 he has reached the years of reflection. Fancy such a man's eye at length released 

 from darkness, and endeavor to imagine his impressions. A thrill passes through him 

 as the colored beams first rush in, and awaken the emotions of a new sense. Ail around 

 he beholds a tinted mass ; earth and sky, land and water, are seen by him only as 

 expanses of varied color. Everything is colored, and the forms of nature are to him 

 but tinted smfaces, whose outline consists simply of the bordering of one color upon 

 another. Below and around him is a far-reaching expanse of green, — above him, a 

 miti-litv canopy of blue; and he feels that nothing could suit so well, for wide and per- 

 manent beholding, as this lively green of the earth, and the cool, calm azure of the 

 skies.* But variegating those vast surfaces of blue and green, he sees spots and 



• Lord Jeffrey held that mankind liked blue and green simply because we see them everywhere in nature, instead 

 of perceiving the great truth, that it is because these colors are agreeable toman's nature that the Creator ha^ clothed 

 with them the earth and sky. Jeffrey's idea of cosmogony evidently was, that the earth is a haphazard creation, 

 made without any particular regard to the tastes of its tenant, man, and to whose phenomena we get accustomed by 

 sheer dint of habit ; instead of perceiving (what would have knocked his fallacious theory of beauty to pieces) 

 earth and man are made ex-jtressly for each other, and that our beniflcent Maker has caused the general aspect 

 world around us to give us pleasure by being in harmony with our physical and mental constitution. 



