era of
Noah to that of Napoleon! The private poor man hath cities, ships,
canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the
human race run on his errands; to the book-shop, and the human
race read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house,
and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and
the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow,
and cut a path for him.

But there is no need of specifying particulars in this class of uses.
The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that I shall
leave them to the reader's reflection, with the general remark, that
this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a farther good. A
man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work.

CHAPTER III.

BEAUTY.

A NOBLER want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of
Beauty.

The ancient Greeks called the world _kosmos_, beauty. Such is the
constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye,
that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal,
give us a delight _in and for themselves_; a pleasure arising from
outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the
eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its
structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which
integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a
well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects
are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is
round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light
is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light
will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and
a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all
matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this
general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms
are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of
some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear,
the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the
serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and
the forms of many trees, as the palm.

For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of Beauty in
a threefold manner.

1. First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. The
influence of the forms an