72 love's MEESriE. 



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

 — at what Ton 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 winces of ano-els, Avhich vou can't see. Know vour 

 o^vn world first — ^not denying any other, but being quite 

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

 with Avhich vou are now concerned ; and that it M'ill be 

 wiser in you to think the gods themselves may appear in 

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

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

 asjiect of gods. 



79. One sweet instance of such simj^le conception, in 

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

 in connection with our subject of to-day, but you may not 

 have noticed the recurrent manner in which Homer in- 

 sists on the thought. AYlien Ulysses first bends and 

 strings his I30W, 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 Ulvsses stands with 

 liis bow lifted, and Telemaclius has brought the lances, 

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

 encourage him, — do you recollect tlie 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 vou not fio-ht, then ? " And she herself 



