ntic region, pouring out his sweet music amid
the bustle and din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which
had been familiar to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into
the clear atmosphere of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face
forgotten, for the poet had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand
enough to have been uttered by its own majestic lips. This man of
genius, we may say, had come down from heaven with wonderful
endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of all mankind beheld a
mightier grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring to its summit,
than had before been seen there. If his theme were a lovely lake, a
celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to gleam forever on its
surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity of its
dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by the emotions of
the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better aspect from the
hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The Creator had
bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork. Creation was
not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.

The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were
the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust
of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in
it, were glorified if he beheld them in his mood of poetic faith. He
showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with
an angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial
birth that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who
thought to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all
the beauty and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's
fancy. Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to
have been spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she
having plastered them up out of her refuse stuff, after all the swine
were made. As respects all things else, the poet's ideal was the truest
truth.

The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after
his customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where
for such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by
gazing at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused
the soul to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast
countenance beaming on him so benignantly.

"O majest