NATUEE AND HER HARMONIES. 
29 
step forth suddenly before tlie world's eye, cap-a-pie, in 
shining armor, becoming men of renown in the fight of faith, 
or the weary marches of science. We have a strong incli- 
nation to set up for one of these vulgar IN'ewtons ourselves, 
with the permission of the benevolent reader, as we are about 
to be guilty of an audacious speculation — and if we were not 
perhaps as much in joke as in earnest, we might be glad to dep- 
recate responsibility, on the plea of " unsophisticated genius," 
&c. ; but though one sense of " unsophisticated" may suit us 
well enough, yet we hardly dare to claim shelter under any 
other sense of a name so sacred in the mythos of human hope. 
It may be only one of those dreams which, like the poet's 
ideal, haunts men from and in boyhood. We were then, as 
is usual, much fonder of the great wide pages, shadowy, wav- 
ing, glittering and green, of nature's writing, than all the 
black-letter tomes that ever wearied eye of scholar. And 
while a scape-grace and hopeless truant, we paddled, bare-foot, 
through the pebbly brook, tore our juvenile trousers climb- 
ing for young squirrels, or winning a freckled necklace of 
birds' eggs for our blue-eyed sweetheart. We had a faint 
conception that the language we read there should be trans- 
lated ! Not that which we read in the blue eyes, specially, 
do we mean ; but on the general page of the Iivmg revela- 
tion ; for as we said our incorrigible visuals would not even 
then permit us to see that Eeason and Instinct were alto- 
gether unlike. 
We took in our hands a definition of Keason, accepted by 
the sages, and went out among these sentient, breathing 
forms of life, condemned by them to the blind guidance and 
fatality of Instinct, that we might compare the theory of one 
with the reality of the other. 
The song-bird twittered at us ; the wild deer turned to 
stare ; the squirrel sputtered from his nut-crammed jaws, and 
the insects buzzed curiously around us — for the story got out 
that there was " a chiel amang 'em takin' notes," and they 
did not understand but that we meant them some imperti- 
