er before had Mr. Emerson given free utterance to the passion with
which the aspects of nature inspired him. He had recently for the first
time been at once master of himself and in free communion with all the
planetary influences above, beneath, around him. The air of the country
intoxicated him. There are sentences in "Nature" which are as exalted
as the language of one who is just coming to himself after having been
etherized. Some of these expressions sounded to a considerable part of
his early readers like the vagaries of delirium. Yet underlying these
excited outbursts there was a general tone of serenity which reassured
the anxious. The gust passed over, the ripples smoothed themselves, and
the stars shone again in quiet reflection.

After a passionate outbreak, in which he sees all, is nothing, loses
himself in nature, in Universal Being, becomes "part or particle of
God," he considers briefly, in the chapter entitled _Commodity_, the
ministry of nature to the senses. A few picturesque glimpses in pleasing
and poetical phrases, with a touch of archaism, and reminiscences of
Hamlet and Jeremy Taylor, "the Shakspeare of divines," as he has
called him, are what we find in this chapter on Commodity, or natural
conveniences.

But "a nobler want of man is served by Nature, namely, the love
of _Beauty_" which is his next subject. There are some touches of
description here, vivid, high-colored, not so much pictures as hints and
impressions for pictures.

Many of the thoughts which run through all his prose and poetry may be
found here. Analogy is seen everywhere in the works of Nature. "What is
common to them all,--that perfectness and harmony, is beauty."--"Nothing
is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole."--"No
reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty." How easily
these same ideas took on the robe of verse may be seen in the Poems,
"Each and All," and "The Rhodora." A good deal of his philosophy comes
out in these concluding sentences of the chapter:--

"Beauty in its largest and profoundest sense is one expression for
the universe; God is the all-fair. Truth and goodness and beauty are
but different faces of the same All. But beauty in Nature is not
ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not
alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must therefore stand as a
part and not as yet the highest expression of the final cause of
Natu