our brows against its sod whenever we wish. It is not cant, I hope, to
say that Eden is not lost entirely. There stands no angel at its gates
with naming sword; nor did it fade away with all its legendary beauties,
drop its leaves into the melancholy streams, leaving no trace behind of
its glades and winding alleys, its stretches of flowery mead, its sunny
hill-sides, and valleys of happiness and peace. But Eden still blooms
wherever Beauty is in Nature; and Beauty, we know, is everywhere. We
cannot escape from it, if we would. It is ever knocking at the door of
our hearts in sweet and unexpected missions of grace and tenderness. We
are haunted by it in our loneliest walks. Almost unconsciously, out of
flowers and trees, earth and sky, sunrises and sunsets,--out of mosses
under the feet, mosses and pebbles and grasses,--out of the loveliness
of moon and stars, their harmonies and changes,--out of sea-foam, and
what sea-foam reveals to us of the rich and strange things beneath the
waters far down,--out of sweet human eyes,--out of all these things
creeps into our spirits the knowledge that God is Love, and His
handiwork the expression of ineffable tenderness and affection. I
believe, indeed, that the principle of Beauty, philosophically speaking,
pervades all material objects, all motions and sounds in Nature,--that
it enters intimately into the very idea of Creation. But we, poor finite
beings, do not seek for it, as we do for gold and gems. We remain
content with those conventional manifestations of it which are
continually and instinctively touching our senses as we walk the earth.
Fearfully and wonderfully as we are made, there is no quality in our
being so blessed as this sensitiveness to Beauty. All the organs of our
life are attuned by it to that vast universal symphony which, in spite
of the warring elements of passion and prejudice, unites us in friendly
sympathies with all mankind. If

"the meanest flower that blows can bring