Alleluiah!" went up like the roar of many waters from all the cities of
our land, as if they themselves had been delivered from the new
Sennacherib; yet, after a short season of rest, like one of our Western
prairies after having been over-swept with fire, he began to flower
anew, and from his innermost nature, like some great aboriginal plant of
our Northern wilderness suddenly transferred to a tropical region, roots
and all, by some convulsion of nature,--by hurricane, or drift, or
shipwreck. And always thereafter, with a very few brief exceptions,
instead of echoing and re-echoing the musical thunders of a buried
past,--instead of imitating, oftentimes unconsciously (the worst kind of
imitation, by the way, for what can be hoped of a man whose
individuality has been tampered with, and whose own perceptions mislead
him?)--instead of counterfeiting the mighty minstrels he had most
reverenced, and oftentimes ignorantly worshipped, as among the unknown
gods, in his unquestioning, breathless homage, he began to look upward
to the Source of all inspiration, while

"Princely visions rare
Went stepping through the air,"

and to walk abroad with all his "singing robes about him," as he had
never done before. Hitherto it had been otherwise. Campbell had opened
the "Pleasures of Hope" with

"Why to yon mountains turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summits mingle with the sky?"

and _therefore_ Pierpont began his "Portrait" with

"Why does the eye with greater pleasure rest