beauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles,
wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is beauty.
It expects us at the dawn; it is about us, "an hourly neighbor,"
through the day; at night it looks down on us from star-peopled
immensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing in sunsets, flashing
through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, irradiating sleep, it
is ever around, within us, eager to sweeten our labors, to purify our
thoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty, whereof the key
is in the human heart.

But many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose
the precious key enfolded in their depths. Whole peoples are at this
moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. As with them now, so
in the remote primitive times of our own race, before history was,
nature was almost speechless to man. The earth was a waste, or but a
wide hunting ground or pasturage; and human life a round of petty
animal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond the field of the senses;
until there gradually grew up the big-eyed Greek and the deep-souled
Hebrew. Then, through creative thought,--that is, thought quickened
and exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful,--one little corner
of Europe became radiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens
of Parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their
eyes--opened from long sleep by inward stirring--were become as
mirrors, and gave back the light of nature:

"Auxiliar light
Came from their minds, which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendor."[1]

[1] Wordsworth.