No. III.
The influence of moral feeling tends to heighten the pleasure which we
derive from beholding the works of nature.
“Our sight,” says Addison, “is the most perfect and most delightful of
all our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas,
converses with its object at the greatest distance, and continues the
longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper
enjoyments.” Hence those pleasures of the imagination which are
perceived through the medium of this sense, must necessarily be of a
high order. Besides, they have this advantage above their fellows, that
they are more obvious, and more easy to be acquired. We have but to
open our eyes, and the scene in all its beauty and power enters. The
colors paint themselves on the fancy, with scarcely a single effort of
thought, and each object in the view, as it catches our glance, sends
its appropriate impression to the mind, with an approach as gentle, and
almost as imperceptible as the dawn of the morning.
This exhibition of nature is free to all. It is unfolded with equal
beauty and variety to the humble peasant, as he treads homeward his
weary way from the labors of the field, and the man of science and
taste who can enjoy it at his leisure. For each the same glorious sun
rises and sets, the same landscape of hill and valley and river is
spread out, the same rich colors glow, the same fragrance perfumes the
air.--In its full and ever changing variety, there is something to
suit the disposition and character of every one. The sons of sorrow,
whose only inheritance is melancholy and gloom, and in whose minds the
bright things of earth meet no response, may find in the still sadness
of the lonely vale, or in the steeps of the giant hill, a spirit in
unison with their own. And they, over whose fair visions the cloud of
disappointment has never flung its shade, whose souls are radiant with
the hope and gladness of life’s young morn, may find their companions
too in the joyous revels of nature. The gentle whisperings of the
summer breeze, the gay sparkle and the rushing fall of the cascade,
the mellow richness of the grove, the gorgeous drapery of sunset, with
these, with every thing that breathes the spirit of joy, they can claim
a kindred feeling.
The scene is ever before us in its unchanging beauty. It is not like
the bright shadows that charm us on in boyhood and youth, only to
vanish for ever from the sober realities of manhood. The breeze,
that cooled the brow of the child in his early sports, plays with the
same freshness around the wrinkles of age--the meadows wear as rich a
green--the flowers bloom with equal loveliness--and nature, still fair
and attractive, as when the morning stars first sang together, feels no
decay from the lapse of years. What a barren and cheerless waste would
be presented to the eye of man, were all this world of coloring to
disappear with its ever varying distinctions of light and shade--what
a rich source of innocent gratification had been wanting, if these had
never been created. But
“The feet of hoary time
Through their eternal course, have traveled o’er
No speechless, lifeless desert;”
and the confidence of the future is founded upon the promise that seed
time and harvest, summer and winter, shall never fail.
This power in the beauties of the natural world to excite and gratify
the imagination, is emphatically the poetry of nature, sending out its
appeal from every object which greets the eye. There is poetry in the
pathless wood, when the summer breeze sweeps over the waves of its dark
green foliage--in the bold scenery of the mountain’s height, inspiring
the soul with feelings of grandeur and sublimity--in the green valley
throwing a charm of hallowed tranquility around the spirit. It dwells
in the rising and the setting sun, in the wild flowers of the forest,
in the mighty winds, in the dark blue skies, in the golden and silver
clouds of heaven, in the rainbow, in the seasons.
“Coming ever more and going still, all fair,
And always new with bloom and fruit,
And fields of hoary grain.”
It is written like a legible language on the broad face of the
unsleeping ocean. It dwells among the stars of heaven. It is abroad
in the tempest, girt with the stern magnificence of the storm-cloud,
careering on the vollied lightning, and uttering its voice of sublimity
in the deep-toned thunder.
“’Tis in the gentle moonlight--
’Tis floating mid day’s setting glories; night
Wrapt in her sable robe, with silent step
Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears.”
In all these dwells the spirit of poetry, and it is the highest office
of the imagination, to extract from these the divine element. Is she
the less able to do this, when from nature’s works she looks up with
filial awe to nature’s God? By our admiration of the character and
attributes of the Great Creator, are we led to regard the works of
his hand, with emotions less enthusiastic and poetical? Strike out
of our minds, when contemplating the features of the natural world,
those ideas of system, order, and adaptation to wise and beneficent
purposes so clearly expressed by them all--bid us ascribe all this
glorious mechanism, so exquisitely formed and so skillfully arranged,
to the unguided instinct of blind chance--and the tie that bound us in
such an endearing relation to the scenes of earth, and sanctioned the
communion of our better feelings with their ever eloquent spirit, is
sundered for ever. There is a religion in every thing around us--and
the spirit of poetry, that spirit which carries home to the imagination
the pleasures of uncorrupted taste, is almost one and the same with the
former. It is a religion which the creeds of men have never perverted,
or their superstitions overshadowed. It is fresh from the hands of the
Author, and is ever reminding us, with its still small voice, of the
Great Spirit, whose presence pervades and quickens it. It glows from
every star that sparkles in the far concave. It is among the hills
and the vallies of the earth, where the desert mountain-top rears his
snow-crowned summit into the frosts of an eternal winter, or the lowly
dell slumbers in the quiet of a summer’s sun. It is this, uttering its
appeal from the unbreathing things of nature with an ever faithful
voice, that fills the spirit with lofty aspirings, until it struggles
to cast off the chains which this earthly has thrown around her giant,
though infant energies, and soar away beyond the influence of the
cold sluggish atmosphere of sense--to attain something etherial and
thrilling--something which shall satisfy her large desires, and open to
the imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness.
And he, who reads the volume of nature’s works, a stranger to this
blessed influence, does not read aright. He is blind to that peculiar
grace and loveliness which characterize them as a part of the great
system of universal order and harmony. It is to the imagination,
chastened and elevated by moral feeling alone, that nature makes her
choicest revelations. Indeed it is a libel upon the Author of the human
mind to suppose that He has endowed it with powers that are to receive
their most exquisite gratification without the pale of virtue. We are
of those, who believe that the intellect of man is to receive its
highest and noblest, as well as purest energies, in its nearest moral
conformity to the first, infinite and eternal Intellect. And if the
character of this creating Mind is impressed on the visible creation,
he who sees the most excellence in the former will feel the strongest
love for the latter. Those aspects of nature, which to the unsanctified
taste are without form or comeliness, are to him invested with a most
religious charm.
“Not a breeze
Flies o’er the meadow, not a cloud imbibes
The setting sun’s effulgence, not a strain
From all the tenants of the warbling shade
Ascends, but whence his bosom can partake
Fresh pleasure unreproved.”