109 
THE INNER LIFE. 
Emerson remarks in his beautiful essay on “ Gifts/* 
that “ Flowers and fruits are always fit presents,—- 
flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of 
beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These 
gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern counte¬ 
nance of ordinary nature; they are like music heard out 
of a workhouseand it is in the sympathy which all 
natural objects have for the best sentiments of our 
nature which makes them always acceptable. Man is 
something more than a bundle of petty cares and 
jealousies: he has within him a world of living beauty, 
and an existence ever seeking for closer sympathy with 
moral worth, and anxiously striving after higher states of 
perfection. But m the intercourse of men with each 
other the tendencies, and desires, and passions, which 
have been implanted within them for purposes of beauty 
—and beauty is the highest form of utility—get pushed 
beyond the legitimate sphere of their action, and become 
characterized in their development as vices. Hence, in 
all cities and large aggregations of men, the true nobility 
and intrinsic stamp of human character is sunk below 
the duplicities which float upon the surface of customs 
