physical form only a low shore over which it breaks. Beauty is the rule,
exceptions melt away. There is no face in which Raphael cannot see more
than I see in any face; the dullest landscape is to Turner a fairer
vision than I can find in the world; Byron in his blackguards shows a
kind of magnanimity which refreshes the victims of respectability and
routine. The individuality of men is deformity, a departure from the
human type; yet this fault makes each necessary to each, founds society,
love, and friendship. So wherever a break appears in the plan, we
anticipate a larger purpose, and sound down through the water, certain
to find under that also a continuation of land. Genius first named our
system a universe to mark its consistency, and goes on reconciling,
showing how creatures and men are made of one stuff and that not so bad.
Let the thing be what it may, press on it a little with the mind, and
order begins to ooze. There is nothing on which we cannot feed with good
enough teeth and digestion, for the elements of meat are given also in
brick and bark. Natural objects are explored to their roots in man, and
through him in the Cause: each is what it is in kindness to him, has its
soul in his breast, grows out of him as truly as his hair, and the
out-world is only a larger body shaped by his needs. Each thing is a
passive man, and personification does no more than justice to the
joint-stool and the fence or whatever creature talks and suffers in
verse.

What is the meaning of my day and relations? I suspect an advantage
designed for me, but not yet extracted, in marriage and the family-life,
in books, in politics, in business, in the garden, in music. How much of
each, as I know them, is chaff? how much is life coming in from the deep
by these low doors? What is society? An eating and drinking together? a
bit of gossip? a volley of jokes? Do men meet in these exercises, or in
hope and humanity? We are all superior to amusement. The cowardly host