low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of Nature which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish petulance when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented those splendid ornaments, those rich conveniences; this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between; this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this four-fold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his workshop, his playground, his garden, his bed."

He goes on to say that "Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the ice on the other side of the planet condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal. And thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man." The useful arts, moreover, are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man of the same natural benefactors. Such are the steam-engine and the railroad. "The private man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his errands; to the bookshop, and the human race read and write of all that happens to him; to the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs." But he adds, pregnantly, "This mercenary benefit is one which

has respect to a further good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work."

BEAUTY.

"But Nature serves a much nobler want of man than any or all of these which are served by "Commodity." This nobler end is the love of Beauty, that orderly arrangement which led the Greeks to call the world 'Kosmos,' 'Beauty.' All the primary forms of Nature are capable of giving delight in and for themselves. This is partly owing to the eye itself; for the eye is the best of artists; and so, too, light is the best of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful; and the stimulus which it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. And besides this general grace diffused over Nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of them."

He goes on to distribute the aspects of Beauty into three categories. First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight, "although in its lowest functions this seems to lie on the confines of Commodity and Beauty. To the body and the mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, Nature is medicinal, and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.

We are never tired so long as we can see far enough." But he continues:

BEAUTY FOR ITSELF.

I seem to partake of

"In other hours Nature satisfies by its loveliness, without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look into that silent sea. its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.

"But this beauty of Nature, which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, become shows merely, if too eagerly hunted, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and it is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journeys. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who could ever clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone. It is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence."

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But in the mere matter of Beauty, Nature has a far higher function for the soul than that which it has for its own sake. This is its spiritual aspect.

THE SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF BEAUTY.

"The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual, element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty, which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark which God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all Nature for his dowry and estate. He himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate may divest his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. 'All those things for which men plow, build, or sail, obey virtue,' said Sallust. 'The winds and waves,' said Gibbon, 'are always on the side of the ablest navigators.' So are the moon and all the stars of heaven."

It will be borne in mind that Emerson, here and almost always elsewhere, uses the term "virtue," as Paul did the corresponding Greek word, in its primary etymological signification, equivalent to our word "manliness"; not as in its ordinary and more extended sense, as the summation of all good qualities and affections. Pursuing the same line of thought, he continues :

THE BEAUTY OF NOBLE ACTS.

"When a noble act is done-perhaps in a scene of great natural beauty; when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopyla; when Arnold Winkelreid, in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades: are not these heroes entitled to the beauty of the scene, to the beauty of the deed? When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America-before it the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane, the sea behind, and the purple mountains of the Indian archipelago around-can we separate the man from the living picture? Does not the New World clothe his form with her palm-groves and savannas, as fit drapery? Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelope great actions."

BEAUTY IN ASSOCIATION.

"Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the whole visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly with the geography and climate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus. And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will remark how easily he took all