birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

EXPERIENCE.

THE lords of life, the lords of life,→

I saw them pass,
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim,
Use and Surprise,

Surface and Dream,

Succession swift, and spectral Wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name ;-
Some to see, some to be guessed,
They marched from east to west:
Little man, least of all,

Among the legs of his guardians tall,
Walked about with puzzled look :—
Him by the hand dear nature took;
Dearest nature, strong and kind,
Whispered, ‹ Darling, never mind!
To-morrow they will wear another face,

The founder thou! these are thy race!'

(51)

ESSAY II.

EXPERIENCE.

WHERE do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghost-like we glide through nature, and should not know our place again. Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of