844 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



and youth into the holier calms of full contentment, had now 

 become so morbidly distorted that this solitude was terrible, 

 unless filled with the action and excitement of danger. My 

 late adventure, from the still farther confusion in which it 

 involved my spiritual and mental sense, proved only the 

 incentive to yet more blind and headlong plunges, into — I 

 knew and cared not what — desperate extremes of adventure. 



I hurriedly parted with my friend C , determined to 



push on to the uttermost verge of settlement, or even beyond 

 if might be ! 



Now, by way of parenthesis, as to this novel metaphysics, 

 upon an exposition of which I am about to enter, I would say, 

 if there be sermons in stones, and the minnow-rippled, silvery- 

 gabbling brooks be all oracular, and the mute trees yet panto- 

 mime of homilies, — not to speak of the obstreperous tongue, 

 nimble-stroked, of " cross, quick lightning," which, " in the 

 dead vast, and middle of the night" doth fright us with its 

 ethics,— ^if, I say, these have, every one, high teachings of 

 their own, why may there not be more in the metaphysics 

 of bear-hunting than has been dreamed of in any fire-side 

 philosophy ? 



I am human enough to love this linking of the invisible 

 with forms ; this association with the material gives it to the 

 palpable. Every thought of mirth, or vision of delight, is 

 ours forever, when, clothed in fit habiliments, we have given 

 it "a local habitation and a name." 



" These are the adept's doctrines ; every element 

 Is peopled with its separate race of spirits ; 

 The airy sylph on the blue ether floats, ' 



Deep in the earthy caverns skulks the gnome, 

 The sea-green Naiad skims the ocean billow, 

 And the fierce fire is yet a friendly home 

 To its peculiar sprite, the Salamander !" 



Now, though I have no special dealing at present with the 

 Sylph, Naiad, Gnome, or Salamander, I would submit whether 



