the solar system, between that and the earth, between the earth and his body and spirit, his mind and conscience, heart and soul, and then he turns and loves that God with all his understanding, with all his heart and strength;. nature from without leagues with spirit from within, and constrains him thus.

THE WORLD OF MATTER AS AFFECTING THE IMAGINATION.

THE world of matter affects the imagination: it offers us beauty. How beautiful are the common things about us! The trees,

"Their bole and branch, their lesser boughs and spray,

Now leafless, pencill'd on the wintry sky".

or the summer trees, with their leaves and flowers, or their autumnal jewels of fruit, how fair they are! Look at the grasses, whereon so many cattle feed, at the grains, which are man's bread, and note their beautiful color and attractive shape. Walnuts, apples, grapes, the peach, the pear, cherries, plums, cranberries from the meadow, chestnuts from the wood, how beautiful is all the family, bearing their recommendation in their very face! The commonest vegetables, cabbages, potatoes, onions, crooked squashes, have a certain homely beauty, which to man is grace before his meat. Nothing common is unclean. Then there is the sun all day, the light shifting clouds, which the winds pile into such curious forms, all night the stars, the moon walking in brightness through the sky, and how beautiful these things are! Then what heavenly splendor waits for and ushers in the day, and attends his departure when his work is done.

How our eye cradles itself in every handsome rose, and all the earth blossoms once each year.

How shape and color fit our fancy, and stars so far off that their distance is inconceivable impinge their beautiful light on every opening eye. What delight these things give us a joy above that of mere use! Even the rudest boy in Cove Street looks up at the stars, and learns to wonder and rejoice, and is inly fed. Set him down on the seashore next summer, and how the beauty of its sight and sound will steal into his rude, untutored heart, as the long waves roll toward the land, comb over and break with "the ocean wave's immeasurable laugh!" With what joy will he gather up the refuse which the sea casts upon the shore, the bright-colored weeds, the curiously-twisted shells, the nicely-colored pebbles, worn into so fair and elliptical a shape and polished off so smooth. Thus material nature comes close to the imagination of man, even in the rudest child. No North American savage but felt his heart leap at the bright sparkling water of the river, or the sunny lake, or the sublimity of the New Hampshire mountains; and in the names which he left there, has he set up his monument of the intimate relation between his imagination and the world of matter, which he felt and recognized. This passing delight in nature's beauty helps to refine and elevate all men. The boy who puts a dandelion in his button-hole, the girl who stains her cheek with wild strawberries in June-seeking not only to satisfy her mouth with their sweetness, but to ornament her face with their beauty, are both flying upward on these handsome wings.

But man is so in love with the transient beauty of nature that he captures it and seeks to hold it for ever. He puts the sound of nature into music, which he records in the human voice or in wooden or metallic instruments;

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he paints and carves out loveliness on canvas and in wood and stone. Patriarchal Jacob is in love with the rainbow, and so puts its colors into Joseph's coat to keep nature's beauty, while he also clothes Rachel's first-born and longed-for boy. Thought commands toil, and bids it preserve the precious but precarious beauty which the world of matter so lavishly spreads out on earth in flowers, or scatters over the " spangled heavens" in stars. Man is uplifted and made better by this effort. When find an Ojibbeway Indian with one stone copying the form of a blackbird upon another, depend upon it he is setting up a guide-board whose finger points upward to civilization, and the tribe of Ojibbeways will travel that way. Thus closely following the male arts of use come the feminine arts of beauty, - painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. "They weave and twine the heavenly roses in earthly life; they knit the bond of love which makes us blest, and in the chaste veil of the Graces, watchful, with holy hand, they cherish the eternal fire of delicate feelings." So nice is the relation between the world of matter and man's imagination that beauty, which is our next of kin on the material side, helps us up continually, takes us to school, softens our manners, and will not suffer them to be wild. The first house man ever entered was a hole in the rock, and the first he ever built was a burrow scooped out of the ground: look at your dwellings now, at the Crystal Palace, the Senate House at Washington, at these fair walls, so grateful to the eye, so welcome to the voice of man! Man's first dress, what a scant and homely patch it was! look at the ornamented fabrics which clothe Adam and Eve to-day, in such glory as Solomon never put on! Consider the art of music, which condenses all nature's sweet sounds! man's first voice was a cry; to-day that wild

shriek is an anthem of melody, a chain of "linked sweetness long drawn out." Consider the art of the painter and the sculptor, who in superficial colors, or in solid metal or stone, preserve some noble countenance for many an age, and a thousand years hence eyes not opened now shall look thereon, and be strengthened and gladdened. From this intimate relation of the world of matter to man's imagination come the great sculptors, painters, architects, and musicians, yea the great poets, Shakespeare, Milton, and their fair brotherhood and sisterhood of congenial souls,-softening the manners of man, and inspiring his heart, all round the many-peopled globe.

Now see on how nice an arrangement this relation rests. Matter furnishes food, shelter, medicine, tools; and the pursuit of these educates the understanding, which man did not ask for, and wisdom which he did not hope to have is thereby thrown in. There is beauty also; it is food for the imagination, shelter, medicine, and tools for subtler needs. This gives also a higher education to a nobler faculty. Beauty does not seem requisite to the understanding alone, it is not valuable to man's mere body, certainly it does not seem necessary to the world of matter itself; but it is requisite for the imagination, and this thread of beauty, whose shape and color so witches us, runs through all the cosmic web; it is tied in with the subtle laws of animation, vegetation, motion; it is woven up with attraction, affinity, heat, light, electricity; it is connected into the disposition of the three great parts of the earth, air, water, land, complicated with the subtle chemical character of each; it depends on the structural form of the earth, that on the solar system itself. So when you rejoice in a musical sound, in the sight of flowers, in the bloom on a maiden's cheek, when you look at a charcoal sketch or a bronze statue,

when you read a drama of Shakespeare, or listen to an essay of Emerson, then remember that the relation between matter and mind which made these things possible, depends on the structure of the solar system, and was provided for millions of millions of years before there was a man-child born into the world.

SPRING.

How mighty are the forces in the world of matter, attraction, affinity, light, heat, electricity, vegetation, the growth of plants, animation, the life of beast, bird, reptile, insect! Yet how delicate are the results thereof! It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in this monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. But so it is. Put a little atom of your butterfly's wing under a microscope, and what delicate wonders do you find! The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work. A thoughtful man for the first time goes to some carpet factory in Lowell. He looks out of the window, and sees dirty bales of wool lying confusedly about, as they were dropped from the carts that brought them there. Close at hand is the Merrimac River, one end of it pressed against the New Hampshire mountains and the sky far off, while the other crowds upon the mill-dam and is pouring through its narrow gate. Under the factory it drives the huge wheel, whose turning keeps the whole town ajar all day. Above is the great bell which rings the river to its work. Before him are pullies and shafts; the floor is thick-set with looms; there are rolls of various-colored woollen yarn,