50 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



cause lie cannot see them, nor the application of the laws of 

 life which he can see in sensible existences to them ; nor 

 would any such man deny the same application at the other 

 end of the scale to spiritual, especially, since he has higher 

 order of proof, independent of revelation, that they are ! 



Though each of these two natures in man is a unit capable 

 of separate existence, yet the imagination is only apparent 

 through the material, as electricity through the atmosphere, 

 which conveys to us the flash and sound. We do not argue that 

 electricity is a property of atmosphere, because we only hear 

 and see it through this medium ; nor do we argue that elec- 

 tricity is not, because it is not always apparent. We know it 

 to be above us and around us, nevertheless, and gentle and 

 familiar as the airs of home ; but if we should forget ! then, 

 shaken with grandeur through the last quivering fibre, we are 

 reminded that it is. 



Though it sleeps now with silence, in its "old couch of 

 space," yet its articulations are all of the sublime, and the 

 awed earth, and the reverberating heavens rock beneath its 

 stunning shout, when it answers the far-spaces in laughter at 

 man's vain presumptuous doubts. 



As electricity to nature, so imagination is to man's material 

 or reasoning part. It is not always apparent to his drowsy 

 consciousness ; yet it always is subtle and silent^ refining his 

 coarse passions or making them more terrible ; and its articu- 

 lations, too, are all of the sublime ; and when the gathering 

 nations, with rapture on their multitudinous tongues, swell 

 the huzza to glorious deeds, you may know that it has leaped 

 fronrits "dumb cradle!" 



All that is grand, magnificent, sublime, the Past has to 

 tell the Future has no hope : Imagination wrought or must 

 create. The Chieftain, the Architect, the Sculptor, the Paint- 

 er, the Poet, are her slaves and at her bidding, the world is 

 showered with splendors. In a word, Imagination is the Soul. 



The cause of that gradual physical deterioration we notice 

 from the times before the flood to the present, evidently may 



