to it, the side turned away from it, and held by something behind.


It will have blood; they say blood win have blood:
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.


This meeting of concrete and abstract, of sense and thought, keeps
the eye travelling along the utmost skyline of speculation, where
the heavens are interfused with the earth. In short, the third and
greatest virtue of words is no other than the virtue that belongs
to the weapons of thought,--a deep, wide, questioning thought that
discovers analogies and pierces behind things to a half-perceived
unity of law and essence. In the employ of keen insight, high
feeling, and deep thinking, language comes by its own; the
prettinesses that may be imposed on a passive material are as
nothing to the splendour and grace that transfigure even the
meanest instrument when it is wielded by the energy of thinking
purpose. The contempt that is cast, by the vulgar phrase, on "mere
words" bears witness to the rarity of this serious consummation.
Yet by words the world was shaped out of chaos, by words the
Christian religion was established among mankind. Are these
terrific engines fit play-things for the idle humours of a sick
child?

And now it begins to be apparent that no adequate description of
the art of language can be drawn from the technical terminology of