e forms of flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the
mind, and build science upon ideas. In a cabinet of natural history,
we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in
regard to the most unwieldly and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and
insect. The American who has been confined, in his own country, to
the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on
entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that
these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible
archetype. Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the
naturalist overlooks that wonderful congruity which subsists
between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is
the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and
finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every
mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or
atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open. A
perception of this mystery inspires the muse of George Herbert, the
beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth century. The following lines
are part of his little poem on Man.

"Man is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And to all the world besides.
Each part may call the farthest, brother;
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.

"Nothing hath got so far
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey;
His eyes dismount the highest star;
He is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.

"For us, the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow;
Nothing we see, but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure;
The whole is either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.

"The stars have us to bed:
Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws.
Music and light attend our head.
All things unto our flesh are kind,
In their descent and being; to our mind,
In their ascent and cause.

"More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of. In every path,
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh mighty love! Man is one world