ave faces as he looks on them. The trees of the forest,
the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he
almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite.
Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a
dearer home than with men:--

"Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves,
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are safely housed, save bats and owls,
A midnight bell, a passing groan,--
These are the sounds we feed upon."

Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet sounds
and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he
soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of
the violet, the clover and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the
brook that wets his foot.

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made
him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have
written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write
well under any other circumstances.

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the
sentiment; it makes the clown gentle and gives the coward heart. Into
the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy
the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In
giving him to another it still more gives him to himself. He is a new
man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious
solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his
family and society; he is somewhat; he is a person; he is a soul.

And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence
which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revelation to
man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine,
which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient
to itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and
solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing
loveliness is society for itself; and she teaches his eye why Beauty was
pictured with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her existence makes
the world rich. Though she extrudes all other persons from his attention
as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out her own being
into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that the ma