d wholesome suggestion from milder influences of air and sunshine?
Brighter may be, perhaps, the child's vision than ours; as it grows
for the toil and work for which it is destined, there comes another
picture of a stern and new reality, and that which brought the smile
of joy upon the face, is but as a dissolving view; and then he becomes
fully fitted for humanity, of which he was before but the embryo. And
even in his progress, if he keep charge of his mind, in purity and in
love, seem there not ministering spirits, that spread before him, in
the mirage of the mind, scenes that look like a new creation? and
pedants, in their kind, call this the poet's fancy, his imagination.

Lately I have spent a month by the sea: the silent rocks seemed
significant in their overhanging look, and silence, as listening to
the incessant sea. It would be painful to think every thing insensible
about us, but ourselves. I wonder not that the rocks, the woods, and
wilds, were peopled by ancient Mythologists; and with beings, too,
with whom humanity could sympathize. I would not think that the
greater part of the earth's islands and continents were given up to
hearts insensate; that there were nothing better than wildernesses of
chattering apes--no sounds more rational than

"The wolf's wild howl on Ulalaski's shore."

I would rather think that there are myriads of beings of higher nature
than ourselves, whose passage is [Greek: hoste noema], and whose home
is ubiquity; and such as these may have their missions to us, and may
sometimes take the dying breath of father or of brother in far-off
seas, and instinct with, and maintaining in themselves, made visible,
that poor remnant of life, stand at a moment at the bedside of beloved
relatives, even in most distant lands, and give to each a blessed
interchange and intelligence. In every sense, indeed, we "see but in
part." In the dulness of the day, we see not a tenth part of the
living things that people the ground; a gleam of sunshine instantly
discovers to us in leaf and flower a little world; and could we but
remove this outward fog, this impure atmosphere of our mortal senses,
that which may be occasionally granted at dying hour, we might behold
all space peopled with the glory of created beings. There is a
beautiful truth of best feeling hidden in the superstition, that at
one particular moment on Christmas Eve, all the beasts of the field go
down on their knees amidst the darkness