EXERCISE CXXXIV.

BEAUTY. R. W. Emerson.

BEAUTY is ever that divine thing the ancients esteemed it. It is, they said, the flowering of virtue. Who can analyze the nameless charm which glances from one and another face and form? We are touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency; but we cannot find whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to any relations of friendship or love, that society knows and has, but, as it seems to me, to a quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy and sweetness, -a true fairy land; - to what roses and violets hint and foreshow.

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We cannot get at beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, "Away! away! thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless life I have found not, and shall not find."

The same fact may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is then beautiful, when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor, is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable. Concerning it, Landor inquires "whether it is not to be referred to some purer state of sensation and existence."

So must it be with personal beauty, which love worships. Then first is it charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when

it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it seems

"too bright and good,

For human nature's daily food;"

when it n akes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Cæsar; he cannot feel more right to it, than to the firmament, and the splendours of a sunset.

Hence arose the saying, "If I love you, what is that to you?" We say so, because we feel that what we love, is not in your will, but above it. It is the radiance of you, and not you. It is that which you know not in yourself, and can never know.

This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty, which the ancient writers delighted in; for they said, that the soul of man, imbodied here on earth, went roaming up and down in quest of that other world of its own, out of which it came into this, but was soon stupified by the light of the natural sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of this world, which are but shadows of real things. Therefore, the Deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies, as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex, runs to her, and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, movement, and intelligence of this person, because it suggests to him the presence of that which, indeed, is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty.

If, however, from too much conversing with material objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through the body, and falls to admire strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, then, they pass to the true palace of Beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lovely and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of the n. Then, he passes from loving them in

one, to loving them in all; — and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate, he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint, which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and hinderances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And, beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which they have contracted in the world, the lover ascends ever to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls.

Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch, and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo, and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is eternally boring down into the cellar, so that its gravest discourse has ever a slight savour of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when the snout of this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching, that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.

EXERCISE CXXXV.

THE FLOWER-STEALERS.

Laman Blanchard.

FOLLOWING the gardener through some of the loveliest portions of the ducal demesne, we all entered the conservatory. The heat was oppressive. As we passed out of the fresh air, although the light breeze that crept about had just before appeared to serve no other purpose than that of blowing the sunshine into our eyes, the atmospheric change was strikingly perceptible. The uneasy sensation, however, was but momentary; for as soon as the rapid glance, startled and delighted, had taken in the full display of flower and leaf,

trophy! The gust is coming, lighting here and there on the tree-tops, and rolling blackness and tempest before it. Far off the commotion begins. How the roar swells as it approaches, rushing, driving athwart the ivied stems, and whistling among the tossing boughs above!

The terrified birds come fluttering, each from its domestic tree. How that boy's light laugh mingles with the uproar, as he rocks fearlessly in his lofty seat! He feels not, more than I, that these are tokens of wrath around us, or that these heavy drops are signs of Nature's sorrow. Human joy overflows in tears; and why should not the oppression of Her solemn joy be removed in like manner? What a brimming shower! and the sun already gleaming again on the thousand tricklings from the shining leaves, which refuse to retain their liquid burden! The whole grove glitters, as if beneath the spray of Niagara. In a moment the chill is gone; and but for the pearls which gem those pendent crowns, the gust and the shower might be supposed the dream of a spring noon, the creation of preceding thoughts.

Thus may end, thus will end, the storms of the spirit; and in bright and harmonious praise, like that which greets my senses now, shall man bear his part, when the vicissitudes of his early day are passed. Praise, praise alone shall be the end, as it ought to be the beginning, of devotion, though praise must change and advance its character as the mind of the worshipper advances.

The infant's first communion should be praise. He knows, or ought to know, no fear; he knows, or ought to know, no want for what then should he petition? When he learns that others have wants, he begins to petition for them, and in time for himself. When he becomes a subject of conscience, he is led to confession and to intercession. All this time, praise should be the beginning and end of his communion: praise first for the low good of which alone he is sensible; then for each new glimpse of glory which his opening vision reveals, till his thanksgivings reach the ends of the earth, and compass the starry heavens.

Of the more sacred heights and depths, which teem with realities instead of shadows, he knows not yet, nor has learned to praise creative and preserving power, as manifested in the external creation, for its true grandeur and ulterior purposes. Of the spiritual creation he knows nothing till long after he has been accustomed to adore the Maker of unnumbered worlds. When the rich mysteries of the sublimer

creation, become dimly discerned, he petitions less fervently for external good. As they wax clearer, his fears perish, his desires subside, his hopes pass through perpetual mutations till they become incorruptible; and his praise is of a kindred nature, however far inferior to that of the unseen world.

He henceforth regards the moving heavens only as they send their melodies through the soul; the forms of the earth only as they are instinct with life; and, no longer calling inanimate forms to witness his praises, he appeals from the infant on his bosom to the archangel who suspends new systems in the farthest void, for sympathy in his adoration of the Father of his spirit. Of higher subjects of praise, man knows not, nor can conceive. It is bliss enough to discern the end of human worship, (in kind, if not in degree,) and in some rare moments, in occasional glimpses of a celestial Sabbath, to reach it.

Oh! that our earthly Sabbaths could bear something of this character! But as long as so many ranks of mind join in its services, these services must be too high for some, and too low for others. Blessed is the season to multitudes, and holy its rites to innumerable worshippers. But its benefits are of a specific kind; its devotion is peculiar, and can in no degree supply the place of private communion. Alas! then, for those who join not in its rites; and alas! also for those who look not beyond its rites! Strange, that any should turn away coldly from the divinely-kindled altar, where multitudes are thronging to cast in their incense, and returning with the reflection of its glory in their faces! Yet more strange that any should avoid the still solitude where the fount of this glory welleth up forever!

EXERCISE CLV.

A CONNECTICUT FARM-HOUSE OF THE OLDEN TIME. Mrs. Sigourney.

Ir was a long, low, unpainted house, with narrow casements, situated about half a mile from the main road. Near it was a substantial barn, surrounded by a large yard, where a number of animals, assembled, exhibited an appearance of comfort, which denoted, at once, a kind and careful master.