just what
there is in it and nothing more. Why does any one see more? It has been
a puzzle to me, the undefinable longing I have sometimes felt in looking
at a beautiful scene; a feeling akin to this, though lower, is that
awakened by the fragrance of some flowers--it is so unsatisfactory, you
wish to _taste_ them. These somethings bring up a shadow of 'shadowy
recollections,' an echo of an echo of a past so indistinct, so dimly
distant, that it seems to have been a part of another life.

It may be that all earthly things are but types of spiritual things in a
future spiritual existence--hence the yearning; or they may be
expressions of spiritual things in a past spiritual existence--hence the
'shadowy recollections.' One thing is certain: all beauty and grandeur
are faint expressions of the ideas of the All-Father; therefore, O
utilitarian! you do wrong to ask of them: 'What use?' Better cultivate a
taste for them, and with this taste an earnest desire to look into that
Mind and read there thoughts of which Mont Blanc and the exquisite
flowers are but feeble utterances.

How the Great Teacher has lavished on us illustrations of his goodness,
as if he would in some way make it plain to all, '_what use_.' There
_must_ be a use in every thing he creates. Every dew-drop that the
meanest weed has wooed and won from the atmosphere, is as tenderly cared
for by him, as the stream is that supplies your mill-pond; every briny
tear on the infant's cheek, as the ocean that bears on its bosom your
merchant-vessels. What use? Have not some things been made useless--in
your sense of the term--that they might be preserved from destruction?
The gorgeous-plumed birds, and brightly-enameled fish of the tropics,
are unfit for food--so, to your mind, of no use. I wonder if this holds
good in cannibal countries; if so, it would be no protection to poor
Molly O'Molly if she were there.

I, too, am a believer in the real and the useful; but to me, the sphere
of both is almost infinite. Are not the feelings awakened on viewing a
beautiful sunset, as real as your satisfaction after eating roast-beef?
Though I acknowledge that no one can thoroughly enjoy the one, who feels
the need of the other; if then weighed in the scale, the sunset would
'kick the beam.' All things 'by season seasoned are to their right
praise and true perfection.' It would, for instance, be rather out of
place to talk of the beauty of the stars to the houseless wanderer,