r hum
of the tiniest insect, or to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his
gauze-wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to quench your thirst in
that little lucid well where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the
image of the evening star shining in some strange subterranean world? We
suspect that you would hold in your breath, and swear devoutly that it
was sublime. Dead on the very evening of her marriage day is that virgin
bride whose delicacy was so beautiful; and as she lies in her white
wedding garments that serve for a shroud, that emblem of eternity and of
eternal love, the ring, upon her finger--with its encased star shining
brightly now that her eyes, once stars, are closed--would, methinks, be
sublime to all Christian hearts. In comparison with all these beautiful
sublimities, Mount Aetna, the elephant, the man-of-war, Leviathan
swimming the ocean-stream, Saturn with his ring, and with his horrid
hair the comet--might be all less than nothings. Therefore beauty and
sublimity are twin-feelings--one and the same birth--seldom
inseparable;--if you still doubt it, become a fire-worshipper, and sing
your morning and evening orisons to the rising and the setting sun.

THE HOLY CHILD.

This house of ours is a prison--this Study of ours a cell. Time has laid
his fetters on our feet--fetters fine as the gossamer, but strong as
Samson's ribs, silken-soft to wise submission, but to vain impatience
galling as cankered wound that keeps ceaselessly eating into the bone.
But while our bodily feet are thus bound by an inevitable and inexorable
law, our mental wings are free as those of the lark, the dove, or the
eagle--and they shall be expanded as of yore, in calm or tempest, now
touching with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved earth, and now
aspiring heavenwards, beyond the realms of mist and cloud, even unto the
very core of the still heart of that otherwise unapproachable sky which
graciously opens to receive us on our flight, when, disencumbered of the
burden of all grovelling thoughts, and strong in spirituality, we exult
to soar

"Beyond this visible diurnal sphere,"

nearing and nearing the native region of its own incomprehensible being.

Now touching, we said, with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved
earth! How sweet that attraction to imagination's wings! How delightful
in that lower flight to skim along the green ground, or as now along the
soft-bosomed beauty of the virgin snow! W