ect or condition or
combination or process exhibits a beauty ... the multiplication table
its--old age its--the carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the
hugehulled cleanshaped New-York clipper at sea under steam or full
sail gleams with unmatched beauty.... the American circles and large
harmonies of government gleam with theirs ... and the commonest
definite intentions and actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos
advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and
stratagems to first principles. They are of use ... they dissolve
poverty from its need and riches from its conceit. You large
proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than any one
else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it
having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of the
library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues
and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease and take
residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple
and powerful and rich and large.... These American states strong and
healthy and accomplished shall receive no pleasure from violations of
natural models and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings
or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books and
newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of
woven stuffs or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes,
or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of
ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that
which distorts honest shapes or which creates unearthly beings or
places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human
form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous.
Of ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allowed ... but those
ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the
open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work and come
irrepressibly from it and are necessary to the completion of the work.
Most works are most beautiful without ornament ... Exaggerations
will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are
jetted and conceived only in those communities where the models of
natural forms are public every day ... Great genius and the people of
these states must never be demeaned to romances. As soon as histories
are properly told there is no more need of romances.

The great poets are also