ving power which he feels to be there present. No
imitation or playing of these things would content him; he loves the
earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. A
beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the
end of. It is nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural,
body overflowed by life which he worships with coarse but sincere rites.

The inwardness and mystery of this attachment drives men of every class
to the use of emblems. The schools of poets and philosophers are not
more intoxicated with their symbols than the populace with theirs. In
our political parties, compute the power of badges and emblems. See
the great ball which they roll from Baltimore to Bunker hill! In the
political processions, Lowell goes in a loom, and Lynn in a shoe,
and Salem in a ship. Witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the
hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. See the
power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a
lion, an eagle, or other figure which came into credit God knows how, on
an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at the ends of
the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest or the most
conventional exterior. The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are
all poets and mystics!

Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of
the divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world is a
temple whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and commandments
of the Deity,--in this, that there is no fact in nature which does not
carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinctions which we make in
events and in affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear when
nature is used as a symbol. Thought makes everything fit for use. The
vocabulary of an omniscient man would embrace words and images excluded
from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the
obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought. The
piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is
an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. Small
and mean things serve as well as great symbols. The meaner the type by
which a law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting
in the memories of men: just as we choose the smallest box or case in
which any needful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are foun