102 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



is no monopoly of the world's beauty, no preemption, 

 no petty sovereignty to curtail the absolute rights of every 

 intelligence to enjoy it. You cannot destroy it, you can- 

 not conceal it. Even destruction and death put on hues 

 of beauty, and stir our souls with exquisite emotions. 

 There is none so poor that he is not a proprietor of 

 the world's beauty; none so unlearned that he does not 

 understand and discern and enjoy the beautiful. The 

 beauty which blesses life does not depart when sun- 

 light retires behind the mountain, and leaves the voice- 

 less stars glinting down, like Raphael's cherubs from the 

 casements of heaven; nor when the blazing sun arouses 

 us to the labors and cares of real life, with the sights 

 and sounds of the landscape to cheer us, or the tender 

 evidences of some beautiful love to kindle a heaven in 

 our hearts. Not when our eyes are closed, even with 

 the seal of blindness, can we be robbed of all the beauty 

 of the world, for love, which so often enters through the 

 eyes, will find some other avenue to our souls; and the 

 mind's eye will not be blind, but will contemplate the 

 serene beauty of truth; and the eye of religious faith will 

 even grow clearer, and the strings of the soul will become 

 more perfectly attuned to the influences of heaven, and 

 the whole nature will be pervaded by a harmony which 

 is both music and light. Nay, when we pass from the 

 light of the heaven of stars, do we not enter the light 

 of the serener heaven of blessed spirits? 



The world has been made beautiful to make man 

 happy, and art is the translation of the world's beauty 

 to man's intelligence. The soul, with its wonderful play 

 of faculties and its consummate system of interactions 

 with the material world, has been made beautiful, to at- 



