50 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
cause lie cannot see tliem, 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 reverberatmg 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 m-ay know that it has leaped 
from its " 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 
