ere are two lines from the "Essay on
Man."

"Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind."

"Untutored!" The poor Indian could have taught Pope many
things, and perhaps made a nobler man of him! For the poetry
and mystic influence of the winds were experienced and
expressed with a fullness of experience and feeling to which the
town-bred poet was all too great a stranger. The range, the
beauty and vigour of the myth of the four winds as developed
among the native races of America (says Tylor) had scarcely a
rival elsewhere in the mythology of the world. They evolved
"the mystic quaternion"--the wild and cruel North Wind--the
lazy South, the lover--the East Wind, the morning bringer--and
the West, Mudjekeewis, the father of them all. Outside the
quaternion were the dancing Pauppukkeewis, the Whirlwind,
and the fierce and shifty hero, Monobozho, the North-West
Wind. The spirit of these legends, if not their accurate detail,
can be appreciated in Longfellow's "Hiawatha."

The magnificent imagery of the Hebrew psalmists should have
given to Pope at least a touch of sympathy with "the untutored
mind"; for they love to represent God making "the winds His
messengers," or as Himself "flying on the wings of the wind."
Or the prophet Ezekiel could have brought home to him some of
the deeper thoughts that the winds have stirred in the soul of
man. "Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy,
son of man, and say to the wind: . . . Come from the four winds,
O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." The
Indian undoubtedly lacked tuition, but not exactly of the kind
his would-be tutor could bestow. Man, says Browning,

"imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things: the winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,
A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh."

That is better. But why "lifeless"? Why "imprints"? Best is the
Hebrew apostrophe--"come from the four winds, O breath, and
breathe--that we may live. Give us of the life that is in you."
And that is the mystic's prayer.

The winds of heaven were bound to make indelible impressions
on the primitive mind. But few will be prepared for Max
Mueller's statement that the wind, next to fire, is the
most important phenomenon in nature which has led to the
conception of a divine being. But our surprise ceases when we
realise how manifest and universal are the parts p