MATJDSLEY ON HEREDITARY DESCENT. 35 



The forests grow out of the air much more than 

 from the soil. Spiritual atmospheres, and not our 

 external literary fashions, build poems. When we 

 see in the short turf of the upland pastures the fil- 

 tering threads of rain-water in the summer shower, 

 we know that they come out of the sky, and that 

 they nourish the roots of the mighty pines. So with 

 the poetic forests that lift their sable, resounding 

 spires of evergreen into the heavens, and cast their 

 brown sheddings upon the scented gloom of sacred 

 study and emotion beneath them. They are the chil- 

 dren of the air. Great poetry has always been the 

 offspring of deep ethical convictions. The mood 

 which produces poetry of permanent power has thus 

 far in history been closely connected with the reli- 

 gious spirit. Natural scenery is not the important 

 matter for poets, but the scenery of high belief is. 

 It America is to be a Sahara, if a sirocco of doubt 

 is to wither her olives, if we are really to be so 

 frightened when sectarists sneer at illiberality, as to 

 fear to call God, God, and to say that it is wrong to 

 steal, then there will be no pine-forests, however per- 

 fect the soil. It is the air, it is empyrean thought, it 

 is emotions rained out of the azure, which nourish 

 the deep heart of aesthetics. More and more our 

 American civilization will need to build itself out of 

 the rains and dews, and therefore more and more 

 out of its ethical, scientific thought, if the harp of 

 America is to be heard around the world. A new 

 Muse is set before the ages. The Court has many 

 quite settled standards, ethical, aesthetic, social; and 



