se of Cosmos as this footed intelligence,--nothing
less than all out-of-doors sufficing his genius and scopes, and, day by
day, through all weeks and seasons, the year round.

If one would find the wealth of wit there is in this plain man, the
information, the sagacity, the poetry, the piety, let him take a walk
with him, say of a winter's afternoon, to the Blue Water, or anywhere
about the outskirts of his village-residence. Pagan as he shall
outwardly appear, yet he soon shall be seen to be the hearty worshipper
of whatsoever is sound and wholesome in Nature,--a piece of russet
probity and sound sense that she delights to own and honor. His talk
shall be suggestive, subtile, and sincere, under as many masks and
mimicries as the shows he passes, and as significant,--Nature choosing
to speak through her chosen mouth-piece,--cynically, perhaps, sometimes,
and searching into the marrows of men and times he chances to speak of,
to his discomfort mostly, and avoidance. Nature, poetry, life,--not
politics, not strict science, not society as it is,--are his preferred
themes: the new Pantheon, probably, before he gets far, to the naming of
the gods some coming Angelo, some Pliny, is to paint and describe. The
world is holy, the things seen symbolizing the Unseen, and worthy of
worship so, the Zoroastrian rites most becoming a nature so fine as ours
in this thin newness, this worship being so sensible, so promotive of
possible pieties,--calling us out of doors and under the firmament,
where health and wholesomeness are finely insinuated into our
souls,--not as idolaters, but as idealists, the seekers of the Unseen
through images of the Invisible.

I think his religion of the most primitive type, and inclusive of all
natural creatures and things, even to "the sparrow that falls to the
ground,"--though never by shot of his,--and, for whatsoever is manly
in man, his worship may compare with that of the priests and heroes
of pagan times. Nor is he false to these traits under any
guise,--worshipping at unbloody altars, a favorite of the Unseen,
Wisest, and Best. Certainly he is better poised and more nearly
self-reliant than other men.

Perhaps he deals best with matter, properly, though very adroitly with
mind, with persons, as he knows them best, and sees them from Nature's
circle, wherein he dwells habitually. I should say he inspired the
sentiment of love, if, indeed, the sentiment he awakens did not seem to
partake of a yet