, is only a crude symbol
in the life of nature, by which God designs to interpret, and also
to foreshadow, the higher love of religion,--nature's gentle
Beatrice, who puts her image in the youthful Dante, by that to attend
him afterwards in the spirit-flight of song, and be his guide up through
the wards of Paradise to the shining mount of God. What then are we to
think, but that God will sometime bring us up out of the literature of
the lower love, into that of the higher?--that as the age of passion
yields to the age of reason, so the crude love of instinct will give
place to the loftier, finer, more impelling love of God? And then around
that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of literature, as
much more gifted as the inspiration is purer and more intellectual.
Beauty, truth, and worship; song, science, and duty, will all be
unfolded together in this common love.

FROM 'THE AGE OF HOMESPUN'

Most of all to be remembered are those friendly circles gathered so
often round the winter's fire; not the stove, but the fire, the brightly
blazing, hospitable fire. In the early dusk, the home circle is drawn
more closely and quietly round it; but a good neighbor and his wife drop
in shortly from over the way, and the circle begins to spread. Next, a
few young folk from the other end of the village, entering in brisker
mood, find as many more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to
receive them also. And then a friendly sleighful of old and young that
have come down from the hill to spend an hour or two, spread the circle
again, moving it still farther back from the fire; and the fire blazes
just as much higher and more brightly, having a new stick added for
every guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of style.
They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and gay by
turns, or the young folks go on with some play, while the fathers and
mothers are discussing some hard point of theology in the minister's
last sermon, or perhaps the great danger coming to sound morals from the
multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Meantime the good housewife
brings out her choice stock of home-grown exotics, gathered from three
realms--doughnuts from the pantry, hickory-nuts from the chamber, and
the nicest, smoothest apples from the cellar; all which, including, I
suppose I must add, the rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid
smack to the ancient hospitality, are discussed as freel