Imagination enriches every thing. A great library contains not only
books, but “the assembled souls of all that men held wise.” The moon is
Homer’s and Shakspeare’s moon, as well as the one we look at. The sun
comes out of his chamber in the east, with a sparkling eye, “rejoicing
like a bridegroom.” The commonest thing becomes like Aaron’s rod, that
budded. Pope called up the spirits of the Cabala to wait upon a lock of
hair, and justly gave it the honours of a constellation; for he has hung
it, sparkling for ever, in the eyes of posterity. A common meadow is a
sorry thing to a ditcher or a coxcomb; but by the help of its dues from
imagination and the love of nature, the grass brightens for us, the air
soothes us, we feel as we did in the daisied hours of childhood. Its
verdures, its sheep, its hedge-row elms,--all these, and all else which
sight, and sound, and association can give it, are made to furnish a
treasure of pleasant thoughts. Even brick and mortar are vivified, as of
old at the harp of Orpheus. A metropolis becomes no longer a mere
collection of houses or of trades. It puts on all the grandeur of its
history, and its literature; its towers, and rivers; its art, and
jewellery, and foreign wealth; its multitude of human beings all intent
upon excitement, wise or yet to learn; the huge and sullen dignity of
its canopy of smoke by day; the wide gleam upwards of its lighted lustre
at night-time; and the noise of its many chariots, heard, at the same
hour, when the wind sets gently towards some quiet suburb.--_Leigh
Hunt._
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