sed
in that immense gratitude which throws open the gates of the spirit as
we contemplate some example of her loveliness or grandeur. Who that
has stood by some still lake and watched a stretch of water-lilies
opening in the dawn but has sent out somewhere into space a profound
thankfulness to "whatever gods there be" that he has been allowed to
gaze on so fair a sight. Whatever the struggle or sorrow of our lives,
we feel in such moments our great good fortune at having been born into
a world that contains such marvels. It is sufficient success in life,
whatever our minor failures, to have beheld such beauty; and mankind at
large witnesses to this feeling by the value it everywhere attaches to
scenes in Nature exceptionally noble or exquisite. Though the American
traveller does not so express it, his sentiment toward such natural
spectacles as the Grand Canon or Niagara Falls is that of an intense
reverence. Such places are veritable holy places, and man's heart
instinctively acknowledges them as sacred. His repugnance to any
violation of them by materialistic interests is precisely the same
feeling as the horror with which Christendom regarded the Turkish
violation of the Holy Sepulchre. And this feeling will increase rather
than decrease in proportion as religion is recognized as having its
shrines and oracles not only in Jerusalem, or in St. Peter's, but
wherever Nature has erected her altars on the hills or wafted her
incense through the woodlands.

After all, are not all religions but the theological symbolization of
natural phenomena; and the sacraments, the festivals, and fasts of all
the churches have their counterparts in the mysterious processes and
manifestations of Nature? and is the contemplation of the resurrection
of Adonis or Thammuz more edifying to the soul than to meditate the
strange return of the spring which their legends but ecclesiastically
celebrate? He who has watched and waited at the white grave of winter,
and hears at last the first faint singing among the boughs, or the first
strange "peeping" of frogs in the marshes; or watches the ghost-like
return of insects, stealing, still half asleep, from one knows not
where--the first butterfly suddenly fluttering helplessly on the
window-pane, or the first mud-wasp crawling out into the sun in a dazed,
bewildered way; or comes upon the violet in the woods, shining at the
door of its wintry sepulchre: he who meditates these marvels, and all
the ma