258 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



There are unnumbered mysterious sources from which 

 our ideas and sentiments are obtained; and the capacity 

 of any thing in nature to produce a pleasing or a dis- 

 pleasing thought or sentiment, constitutes the expression 

 of that object. As light produces cheerfulness, and 

 darkness gloom, it may be that all the different colors 

 have a similar natural association with some certain 

 mood of mind, and are capable of arousing certain 

 trains of thought which may lead to some definite ideas 

 and images. Nature, who creates nothing in vain, and 

 who, by the songs of birds, inspires the human heart 

 with the sentiment of adoration, may, by this spectacle 

 of empyrean beauty, lift the mind above a purely sen- 

 sual philosophy, to the contemplation of that infinite 

 wisdom that pervades the universe. 



Men of the world may praise the effects of certain 

 medical excitants that serve, by benumbing the out- 

 ward senses, to exalt the soul into reveries of bliss and 

 untried exercises of thought. But the only truly 

 divine exhilaration proceeds from contemplating the 

 beautiful and sublime scenes of nature, as beheld on 

 the face of the earth and the heavens. It is under this 

 vast canopy of celestial splendors, more than in any 

 other situation, that the faculties may become inspired, 

 without madness, and exalted without subsequent de- 

 pression. I never believe so much in the immortality 

 ■of the soul as when, at sunset, I look through a long 

 ■vista of luminous clouds, far down into that mystic 

 region of light in which, we are fain to imagine, are 

 deposited the secrets of the universe. I cannot believe 

 that all this panorama of unimaginable loveliness, 

 which is spread out over earth, sea, and sky, is without 

 some moral signification. The blue heavens are the 



