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78. At the whole of nature, I say, not at ^i^^r-natnre 

 — at what yon suppose to be above the visible nature 

 about you. If you are not inclined to look at the wings 

 of birds, which God has given you to handle and to see, 

 much less are you to contemplate, or draw imaginations 

 of, the wings of angels, which you can't see. Kno^v your 

 own world first — not denying any other, but being quite 

 sure that the place in which you are now put is the place 

 with which you are now concerned ; and that it will be 

 wiser in you to think the gods themselves may appear in 

 the form of a dove, or a swallow, than that, by false theft 

 from the form of dove or swallow, you can represent the 

 aspect of gods. 



79. One sweet instance of such simple conception, in 

 the end of the Odyssey, must surely recur to your minds 

 in connection with our subject of to-day, but you may uot 

 have noticed the recurrent manner in which Homer in- 

 sists on the thought. When Ulysses first bends and 

 strings his bow, the vibration of the chord is shrill, " like 

 the note of a swallow." A poor and unwarlike simile, it 

 seems ! But in the next book, when Ulysses stands with 

 his bow lifted, and Telemachus has brought the lances, 

 and laid them at his feet, and Athena comes to his side to 

 encourage him, — do you recollect the gist of her speech? 

 " You fought," she says, " nine years for the sake of 

 Helen, and for another's house : — now, returned, after all 

 those wanderings, and under your own roof, for it, and 

 its treasures, will you not fight, then ? " And she herself 



