stres, as if one should use a fine picture
in a chromatic experiment, for its rich colors. 'Tis not Proclus, but a
piece of nature and fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see
the author's author, than himself. A higher pleasure of the same kind I
found lately at a concert, where I went to hear Handel's Messiah. As the
master overpowered the littleness and incapableness of the performers
and made them conductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe
what efforts nature was making, through so many hoarse, wooden, and
imperfect persons, to produce beautiful voices, fluid and soul-guided
men and women. The genius of nature was paramount at the oratorio.

This preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of that
deification of art, which is found in all superior minds. Art, in the
artist, is proportion, or a habitual respect to the whole by an eye
loving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity
in insanity which it denotes. Proportion is almost impossible to human
beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men
are encumbered with personality, and talk too much. In modern sculpture,
picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the artist works here
and there and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the
unit of his thought. Beautiful details we must have, or no artist; but
they must be means and never other. The eye must not lose sight for a
moment of the purpose. Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and the
cool reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in it. When they grow older,
they respect the argument.

We obey the same intellectual integrity when we study in exceptions the
law of the world. Anomalous facts, as the never quite obsolete rumors
of magic and demonology, and the new allegations of phrenologists and
neurologists, are of ideal use. They are good indications. Homoeopathy
is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism
on the hygeia or medical practice of the time. So with Mesmerism,
Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the Millennial Church; they are poor
pretensions enough, but good criticism on the science, philosophy, and
preaching of the day. For these abnormal insights of the adepts ought to
be normal, and things of course.

All things show us that on every side we are very near to the best.
It seems not worth while to execute with too much pains some one
intellectual, or aesthetical, or civil fe