Painting and Music have most power over the mind; and
how do you apply this influence? In what direction is it forced? Why,
for the last, you sit in your drawing-rooms, and listen to a quantity
of tinkling of brazen marches of going to war; but you never see
before your very eyes, the palpable victory of leading nature by her
own power, to a conquest of blessings; and when the music is over,
you turn to each other, and enthusiastically whisper, "How
fine!"--You point out to others, (as if they had no eyes) the
sentiment of a flowing river with the moon on it, as an emblem of the
after-peace, but you see not this in the long white cloud of steam,
the locomotive pours forth under the same moon, rushing on; the
perfect type of the same, with the presentment of the struggle
beforehand. The strong engine is never before you, sighing all night,
with the white cloud above the chimney-shaft, escaping like the
spirits Solomon put his seal upon, in the Arabian Tales; these
mightier spirits are bound in a faster vessel; and then let forth, as
of little worth, when their work is done.

The Earth shakes under you, from the footfall of the Genii man has
made, and you groan about the noise. Vast roads draw together the
Earth, and you say how they spoil the prospect, which you never cared
a farthing about before.

You revel in Geology: but in chemistry, the modern science,
possessing thousands of powers as great as any used yet, you see no
glory:--the only thought is so many Acids and Alkalies. You require a
metaphor for treachery, and of course you think of our puny old
friend the Viper; but the Alkaline, more searching and more unknown,
that may destroy you and your race, you have never heard of,--and yet
this possesses more of the very quality required, namely, mystery,
than any other that is in your hands.

The only ancient character you have retained in its proper force is
Love; but you seem never to see any light about the results of long
labour of mind, the most intense Love. Devotedness, magnanimity,
generosity, you seem to think have left the Earth since the Crusades.
In fact, you never go out into Life: living only in the past world,
you go on repeating in new combinations the same elements for the
same effect. You have taught an enlightened Public, that the province
of Poetry is to reproduce the Ancients; not as Keats did, with the
living heart of our own Life; but so as to cause the impression that
you are not aware th