icious conceptions of the ignorant."

"True," replied Eric, "in the infancy of nations, as in the childhood of
the individual, there is a graceful poetry, an ideal and intellectual
understanding of nature, which does not resist grave impressions or the
reason of mature age. Thus, amid the wild nations of North America, the
poor mother who has lost a child, fancies that she scents the perfume of
its breath in the flowers, and hears its sigh in the voices of the birds.
Thus is it that our Lapland neighbors attach a touching faith to many
physical incidents.

"When one of them becomes ill, they say that his soul has been called to
a better world by the loving beings he has lost; and that his soul is
about to depart to yield to their prayers, and seek its final home with
them. Then they send for a sorcerer, who casts himself on his face on the
ground, and in mysterious words beseeches the wandering soul to return.
If it yields to the supplications, if it returns to the tabernacle it has
inhabited, the invalid recovers breath and strength; if not, he dies.
Such, and a variety of other examples, we find in every direction, in the
wonderful tales of the east, in the popular traditions of the north, and
they prove clearly enough that there are flowers of poetry and
spring-like perfumes full of inimitable grace in all primitive societies,
even where gross ignorance and coarse usages distress us.

"Think you though that science also is without poetry? If you understand
by poetry, what I think you do, every ennobling of thought, every
exaltation of mind, do you think there is no lofty and grand poetry in
that geology which searches into the bowels of the earth, and exhibits to
you the different layers of which it is composed, and the revolutions it
has undergone; in the researches of the naturalist, who exhibits the
creations of an antediluvian world; in the observations of the
astronomer, who explains the configuration and harmonious movements of
those luminous orbs removed millions of miles from that on which we
dwell? Do you think there is no poetry in the material development of
civilized societies, in the industrious activity which digs canals,
pierces mountains, subdues the elements, and moves all to man's will?"

"Ah, certainly I experience a very agreeable emotion, when in an old
custom I find the traces of the religious spirit of our fathers, and
listen to their legends and songs. This emotion, however, does not
preven