gift the inanimate things of creation with life, that he might find
in them that happiness which pertains to the living; hence the constant
_personification_ of all that is in his pages. He personifies, he
individualizes, he gifts creation with life and passion, not willingly
considering any creature as subordinate to any purpose quite out of
itself, for then some of the pleasure he feels in its beauty is lost,
for his sense of its happiness is in that case destroyed, as its
emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. Thus the bending trunk,
waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because
it seems happy, though it is, indeed, perfectly useless to us. The same
trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It
serves as a bridge--_it has become useful_, it lives no longer _for
itself_, and its pleasant beauty is gone, or that which it still retains
is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its
functions. Saw it into planks, and though now fitted to become
permanently _useful_, its whole beauty is lost forever, or is to be
regained only in part, when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again
from _use_, and left it to receive from the hand of Nature the velvet
moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent
happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. For the
Imagination, unperverted, is essentially _loving_, and abhors all
utility based on the pain or destruction of any creature. It takes
delight in such ministering of objects to each other as is consistent
with the essence and energy of both, as in the clothing of the rock by
the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.

We have seen that the soul rejects exaggeration or falsehood in Art, and
indeed all high Art, that which men will not suffer to perish, has no
food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever
looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no
majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence
is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and
substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to
trace to their farthest limits the _true laws_ and likelihoods even of
such fictitious creations.

As to its love, that is not only seen in its wish and struggle to
quicken all with the warm throb of happy life, but is also clearly
manifested in the lingeri