310 
BRAMBLES AhX) BAY LEAVES. 
and usages. Thus civilization, viewed in a narrow and 
partial light, has all the appearance of soul-murder; but, 
seen through the “ optic glass ” of a transcendental 
philosophy, simply indicates a necessary phase of the 
human mind in its progress upward; and is a manifes¬ 
tation, not of the destruction and annihilation of virtue, 
but of the perversion and distortion of our legitimate 
aims and actions. To look at modern society in its 
existing state of complexity and petty warfare, it has all 
the semblance of a huge mad-house; but, seen as a neces¬ 
sary condition of the human mind in its transition from 
a rugged barbarity to a high and exalted morality and 
beauty, it appears as a plain fact, but significant of the 
multiform changes and modifications of the same iden¬ 
tical purpose, still striving to evolve itself through all 
the ages of the world. 
But when we leave this inclosed world of antipodean 
and twisted interests, where we are eternally compelled 
to hedge and dodge, and dance a shapeless game of 
evasion, and go into the pine woods or mountain soli¬ 
tudes, where Nature still wears the freshness of a 
primeval morning, and awaits with complacent brow, 
and meekly folded hands, the appeals of her repentant 
children; we come into the sheen and lustre of a new- 
made life, and grow young again in the beauty and sim¬ 
plicity of a rugged and heroic virtue. The soul, tat¬ 
tered and despoiled, and weather-beaten in the strife 
and storm of petty contentions and mean and degrading 
tendencies, awakens again to the vigour and freshness of 
its true life, and seems to have been made anew. With 
men, the true soul seems ever in the presence of a blight 
