THE BOY-HUNTER. 35 



The picture of that snowy creature, with its "pink eyne," 

 and long ears laid back, couched and trembling amidst the 

 tow on which it had been placed, in its rough wicker cage, is 

 to this hour as distinct as a scene of yesterday. It was the 

 sweet surprise of that soft vision that startled my new life 

 into full awakening. I have no memory of the dull dawn 

 before ; it is here my actual being commenced. 



They tell me I had already vegetated a few months, but it 

 must have been as a sprawling negation, dim-eyed and dream- 

 less, clutching feebly the untenanted air; for now was my 

 first amazed recognition of separate being ; now was that 

 vague Infinite first made palpable to me through sense in 

 form. 



Ah ! the miracle of that mysterious outer world, where 

 such shapes of wondrous beauty grew ! I now felt the sun- 

 shine, and saw all things glitter. How strange and vivid 

 'familiar things around me seemed ; the rough fence, the old 

 trees and house wore golden halos on them ; the green earth 

 was glorified in splendors that entered to possess me in warm 

 thrills ; and a creeping joy, mingled of I know not what 

 delicious pains, glowed through my life, until it swooned in 

 love ! Ah, the ecstatic influx of that sensuous birth ! would it 

 might hold my heart to nature in that sacred glow forever ! 



There is a philosophy which takes man for the highest and 

 purest exhibition of the divisible, for that type of being in 

 which all organism is perfected ; it recognizes him also as 

 linking this being with the indivisible, as the penultimate of 

 forms a part of heaven and a part of earth. 



This being accepted, his relations towards inferior creatures 

 become beautifully dignified, and constitute a sort of arch- 

 archangelship under the sun, drawn by the common ties of 

 common sympathy towards all things that breathe and move, 

 yet holding an awful throne by right of its spiritual lineage. 

 Then doth he become, to their material nature, a " God made 

 visible," the palpable, immediate expression of that mystery 



