e that the
keenest of imaginative pleasures is keener than the keenest of
emotional, and still less that the keenest of intellectual is so. The
very reverse is the truth. The supremest delight attainable in fancy's
most romantic flight is, I suspect, faint in comparison with the sort of
ecstasy into which a child of freshly-strung nerves is sometimes thrown
by the mere brilliance or balminess of a summer's day, and with which
even we, dulled adults, provided we be in the right humour, and that all
things are in a concatenation accordingly, are now and then momentarily
affected while listening to the wood-notes wild of a nightingale, or a
Jenny Lind, or while gazing on star-lit sky or moon-lit sea, or on the
snowy or dolomite peaks of a mountain range fulgent with the violet and
purple glories of the setting sun. And yet the choicest snatches of such
beatitude with which--at least, after the fine edge of our
susceptibilities has been worn away by the world's friction--we
creatures of coarse human mould are ever indulged, are but poor in
comparison with the rich abundance of the same in which some more
delicately-constituted organisms habitually revel. If we would
understand of what development emotional delight is capable, we should
watch the skylark. As that 'blithe spirit' now at heaven's gate 'poureth
its full heart,' and anon can

Scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shakes his song together as he nears
His happy home, the ground,

what poet but must needs confess with Shelley, that in his most
rapturous dream, his transport never came nigh the bird's? And yet what
poet would change conditions with the lark? Nay, what student or
philosopher would? albeit the utmost gratification ever earned by either
of these in the prosecution of his special calling--in acquiring
knowledge, in solving knotty problems, or in scaling the heights of
abstract contemplation--is probably as inferior in keenness of zest to
that which the poet knows, as the best prose is inferior in charm to the
best poetry. It may even be that both poet and philosopher owe, on the
whole, more unhappiness than happiness--the one to his superior
sensibility, the other to his superior enlightenment, and yet neither
would exchange his own lesser happiness for the greater happiness of the
lark. Why would he not? It is no sufficient answer to say that in the
lark's happiness there are few, if any, imaginative or intellectual
ingredients; that it