n the language created by the primary writers of the
country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature.

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to
visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding
certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and
God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of
familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it
clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his
intellectual processes, will find that a material image, more or less
luminous, arises in his mind, cotemporaneous with every thought,
which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing
and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is
spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action
of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original
Cause through the instruments he has already made.

These facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life
possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life
of cities. We know more from nature than we can at will
communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget
its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses
have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after
year, without design and without heed,--shall not lose their lesson
altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter,
amidst agitation and terror in national councils,--in the hour of
revolution,--these solemn images shall reappear in their morning
lustre, as fit symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing
events shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again the
woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the
cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his
infancy. And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of
power are put into his hands.

3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of
particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such
pepper-corn informations! Did it need such noble races of creatures,
this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man
with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst
we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle,
we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are