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Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; 
There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims. 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Both grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”* 
If for u Druidical faitli 3> we substitute the term “ natural 
religion/* we shall find many of our noblest minds devoted 
to it. Byron, who, it is to be feared, profited little by the 
Scotch sermons of his education, thus speaks of the matter 
in hand : — 
“ All heaven and earth are still — tho’ not in sleep, 
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most 
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep — 
All heaven and earth are still ; from the high host 
Of stars, to the lull’d lake and mountain coast. 
All is concentred in a life intense, 
Where not a beam, nor air, nor life is lost, 
But hath a part of being, and a sense 
Of that which is of all Creator and Defence. 
Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt 
In solitude, when we are least alone ; 
A truth, which thro’ our being then doth melt 
And purifies from self ; it is a tone 
The soul and source of music, which makes known 
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm 
Like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone, 
Binding all things with beauty ; — ’t would disarm 
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm. 
Nor vainly did the early Persian make 
His altar the high places and the peak 
Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take 
A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek 
The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak 
Upreared of human hands. Come and compare 
Columns and idol dwellings, Goth or Greek, 
With Nature’s realms of worship, earth and air, 
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer.”+ 
The inability to understand how worship could be possible 
on a cold mountain summit, with no protection from draughts, 
or provision to keep out the rain, is very characteristic of the 
age. 
* Merchant of Venice , Act v. 
f Childe Harold, canto iii. 
