parish, moorland though it
be, over which he is let loose to play--Paradise. It is barely possible
there may be such a substance as matter, but all its qualities worth
having are given it by mind. By a necessity of nature, then, we are all
poets. We all make the food we feed on; nor is jealousy, the green-eyed
monster, the only wretch who discolours and deforms. Every evil thought
does so--every good thought gives fresh lustre to the grass--to the
flowers--to the stars. And as the faculties of sense, after becoming
finer and more fine, do then, because that they are earthly, gradually
lose their power, the faculties of the soul, because that they are
heavenly, become then more and more and more independent of such
ministrations, and continue to deal with images, and with ideas which
are diviner than images, nor care for either partial or total eclipse of
the daylight, conversant as they are, and familiar with a more
resplendent--a spiritual universe.

You still look incredulous and unconvinced of the truth of our
position--but it was established in our first three paragraphs; and the
rest, though proofs too, are intended merely for illustrations. Age
alone understands the language of old Mother Earth--for Age alone, from
his own experience, can imagine its meanings in trouble or in
rest--often mysterious enough even to him in all conscience--but
intelligible though inarticulate--nor always inarticulate; for though
sobs and sighs are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and groans and
gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and cries, as if the old Earth were
undergoing a violent death--yet many a time and oft, within these few
years, have we heard her slowly syllabling words out of the Bible, and
as in listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed stars responded to
their truth, and, like Mercy visiting Despair, the Moon bore it into the
heart of the stormy clouds.

And are there not now--have there never been young Poets? Many; for
Passion, so tossed as to leave, perhaps to give, the sufferer power to
reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical because creative, and loves to
express itself in "Prose or numerous verse," at once its nutriment and
relief. Nay, Nature sometimes gifts her children with an imaginative
spirit, that, from slight experiences of passion, rejoices to idealise
intentions, and incidents, and characters all coloured by it, or subject
to its sway; and these are Poets, not with old heads on young shoulders,
but with o