bed in the preceding passages of this section, are founded on
trust in the beneficence and rule of an Omnipotent Spirit.

15. In the highest poetry, there is no word so familiar, but a great
man will "bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him,
and answer some end for which no other word would have done equally
well. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to
apply the word 'whelp' to anyone, with a view of flattering him. There
is a certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
agreeableness, but it seems difficult, at first hearing it, to use it
complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
seems increased; and when farther he is at one and the same moment to
be called a 'whelp' and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common
idealist might well be brought to a pause! But hear Shakespeare do
it:--

"Awake his warlike spirit,
And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
While his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility."

16. Although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree
of simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses
us most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty.
That beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and
glittering streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing
that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may
be a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space
of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand
bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but
because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work,
and the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet
high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly
impressed by the aspect of it, and yet all the while the thoughts and
knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure
that we are not conscious of them.

17. Examine the nature of your own emotion, (if you feel it,) at the
sight of the Alps; and you find all the brightness of that emotion
hanging, like dew on a gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and
imperfect knowledge. First you have a vague idea of its