at length I
surely see it. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare
plants, which I could name. A man sees only what concerns him. A
botanist absorbed in the study of grasses does not distinguish the
grandest Pasture Oaks. He, as it were, tramples down Oaks unwittingly in
his walk, or at most sees only their shadows. I have found that it
required a different intention of the eye, in the same locality, to see
different plants, even when they were closely allied, as _Juncaceoe_ and
_Gramineoe_: when I was looking for the former, I did not see the latter
in the midst of them. How much more, then, it requires different
intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments
of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at
objects!

Take a New-England selectman, and set him on the highest of our hills,
and tell him to look,--sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting
on the glasses that suit him best, (ay, using a spy-glass, if he
likes,)--and make a full report. What, probably, will he _spy_?--what
will he _select_ to look at? Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre of
himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps,
that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since he has so
handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or
a Fegee-Islander, and set him up there. Or suppose all together, and let
them compare notes afterward. Will it appear that they have enjoyed the
same prospect? What they will see will be as different as Rome was from
Heaven or Hell, or the last from the Fegee Islands. For aught we know,
as strange a man as any of these is always at our elbow.

Why, it takes a sharp-shooter to bring down even such trivial game as
snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what he
is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance, if he fired at random
into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so is it
with him that shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky falls, he
will not bag any, if he does not already know its seasons and haunts,
and the color of its wing,--if he has not dreamed of it, so that he can
_anticipate_ it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step, shoots
double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in cornfields. The
sportsman trains himself, dresses and watches unweariedly, and loads and
primes for his particular game. He prays for it, and offers sac