on the beholder. A particular picture or copy of
verses, if it do not awaken the same train of images,
will yet superinduce the same sentiment as some wild
mountain walk, although the resemblance is nowise
obvious to the senses, but is occult and out of the
reach of the understanding. Nature is an endless
combination and repetition of a very few laws. She
hums the old well-known air through innumerable
variations.

Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout
her works, and delights in startling us with resemblances
in the most unexpected quarters. I have seen the head of
an old sachem of the forest which at once reminded the
eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the brow
suggested the strata of the rock. There are men whose
manners have the same essential splendor as the simple
and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon and
the remains of the earliest Greek art. And there are
compositions of the same strain to be found in the books
of all ages. What is Guido's Rospigliosi Aurora but a
morning thought, as the horses in it are only a morning
cloud? If any one will but take pains to observe the
variety of actions to which he is equally inclined in
certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse,
he will see how deep is the chain of affinity.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree
without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child
by studying the outlines of its form merely,--but,