THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS 



chilled and all benumbed. Yet the 

 forest was still beautiful. There was 

 no day that we did not, all of us, glance 

 out at it and admire it, and say some- 

 thing about it. Harder and harder grew 

 the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills 

 possessed a something that drew the 

 mind open to their largeness and 

 grandeur. Earth is always beautiful— 

 always. Without colour, or leaf or sun- 

 shine, or song of bird and flutter of 

 butterfly's wing ; without anything sen- 

 suous, without advantage or gilding of 

 summer— the power is ever there. Or 

 shall we not say that the desire of the 

 mind is ever there, and will satisfy itself, 

 in a measure at least, even with the 

 barren wild? The heart from the 

 moment of its first beat instinctively 

 longs for the beautiful; the means we 

 possess to gratify it are limited — we are 

 always trying to find the statue in the 

 rude block. Out of the vast block of 



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