IDEALIZATION OF TRUTH. 381 



lior wand, we have, in all these creations, foreshadowings 

 of the discovery of those powers which science has shown 

 are essential to vegetable life. A power from without 

 influences the plant but the animal is dependent upon 

 a higher agency wliich is potent within -him. 



The poet's dream pleases the imaginative .mind ; and, 

 associating in our ideas all that is graceful and loveable 

 in the female form, with that diviner feeling which 

 impresses the soul with the sense of some unseen 

 spirituality, we perceive in the goddess, the enchantress, 

 or the sylph, pure idealizations of the physical powers. 

 The spirit floating over these forms of beauty, and 

 adorning them with all the richness of colour painting 

 the rose, and giving perfume to the violet is, in the 

 poet's mind, one which ascends to nearly the highest 

 point of etherealization, and which becomes, indeed, to 

 him a spirit of light ; they ride upon the zephyrs, and 

 they float, in all the luxury of an empyreal enjoyment, 

 down to the earth upon a sunbeam. Such is the work 

 of the imagination. What is the result of the search of 

 plodding science after truth? The sunbeam has been 

 torn into rays, and every ray tasked to tell of its 

 ministry. 



Nature has answered to some of the interrogations ; 

 and, passing over all the earth, echoed from plant to 

 plant, we have one universal cry proclaiming that every 

 function of vegetable life is due to the spirits of the 

 sun. 



The mighty Adansonia of Senegal, hoary with the 

 mosses of five thousand years, the Pohon upas in their 

 deadly valleys, the climbing lianas of the Guiana 

 forests, the contorted serpent-cactus on the burning 

 hills, the oaks, which spread their branches in our 

 tempered climes, the glorious flowers of the inter- 

 tropical regions, and those which gem our virent plains, 

 the reindeer lichen of northern lands, and the confervas 

 of the silent pool, the greatest and humblest creations' 



