THE BLOOD ENTERING PUBLIC LIFE. 207 



roof, or in the friendly conclave j but love has located them afresh, 

 and gives them its own new names. This is a needful memorandum 

 in the laws of the heart and the blood. We have feeling, the fire 

 of life, already given by fact in this organ ; we need not endeavor 

 to import it; the business is, to see it in its place. 



The grasp of the right ventricle, by which it gratifies its friend- 

 ship, throws the*life upon the lungs, where the blood and the 

 larger world first meet, and here the humane chaos, which is at its 

 height in the pulmonary artery, begins to be discriminated into a 

 new order. The spirit of consideration comes in the spaces of the 

 lungs. In these reservoirs of the voice, the blood hears and takes 

 part in the public murmur expressed by the breathing. It speaks 

 forth its obstacles, and puts them off, telling its mind, and regula- 

 ting its attachments. Thought and breath, as we have already seen, 

 are the united spirit of the lungs j thought and breath only sub- 

 sisting by virtue of supplies from the world. The blood raised to 

 the height of breathing, is full of public imaginations; it has 

 thrown aside childish things, and is polar to a new and vast ideal ; 

 the private robes and windy latitudes of its childhood are put aside 

 in expirations, and the virile or public toga is put on, with the new 

 airs, imaginations or liberties that belong to adolescence. It is 

 inspired with the service of the corporate body. The transition 

 from the veins to the arteries is an incarnation of the passing over 

 of life or feeling from the private to the public stage j of mankind 

 meeting the world, and flaming with a new lustre of eye when the 

 great objects are recognized. The public air is thenceforth inserted 

 into the feelings, whereof each goes round with an oxygen mirror 

 that shows it the universal in the individual, and makes it shape its 

 face and gestures into historic parallels. Every globule of blood 

 thence conceits itself that it is a man-maker and a world-maker, 

 and it is braced with the girdle of the public strength. The 

 feeling in the lungs, accordingly, is one of inspiration and erection, 

 in which the heart's proper feelings swim as in a new atmosphere 

 of power. 



The change of the blood, from venous to arterial, takes place in 

 the lungs; a change which is ably represented in the countenance 

 under the influence of enlarging or enlivening passions. The glow 



