which the world counts most worthy of its pursuit, — 

 and our minds were dark, and our hearts dead within us, 

 instead of kindling with the glowing earth, as, radiant 

 with brightness and beauty, she smiles to meet the em- 

 braces of the returning Spring. 



The very savage, indeed, must derive some moral ele- 

 vation from the contemplation of external nature. For 

 his untutored soul, as well as for the mind of the most 

 cultivated student of the works of creation, that orient 

 pavilion, flushed with a thousand gorgeous and shifting 

 hues, from out whose dazzling portals issue the outgoings 

 of the morning; the deepened loveliness of that softer 

 heaven, which ushers universal nature to repose ; the 

 changing year, as its advancing seasons ripen into mel- 

 lower beauty ; — yes, all and each, within the rudest re- 

 cesses of the primeval wilderness as well as amidst the 

 refinements of a more polished taste, in their turn have 

 given wing to a sublimer imagination, widened the sphere 

 of intellectual exertion, and dignified the reflections and 

 aspirations of the moral being. The Indian maiden, who 

 decks her jetty tresses with the wild flowers plucked by 

 the margin of the forest brook, drinks in from them the 

 same images of grace, fragility and beauty, which they 

 are fitted to inspire in the proudest bosom that beats in 

 regal halls ; where every silken tint that art has curiously 

 embroidered, and every radiant gleam that glitters from 

 clustered gems, were incomplete without these simpler 

 charms, furnished by the cheap provision of nature, yet 

 more resplendent in their freshness than the array of Solo- 

 mon in all his glory ! 



But if such be the universal influence of natural beau- 

 ty ; if over even the soul of a barbarian it exerts this in- 

 wrought power to charm the imagination and elevate the 

 mind ; surely, amidst the hourly cares which, in more 



