and human feeling, unity, and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its
principle and fountain, who is alone truly one. Various are the workings
of this the greatest faculty of the human mind, both passionate and
tranquil. In its tranquil and purely pleasurable operation, it acts
chiefly by creating out of many things, as they would have appeared in
the description of an ordinary mind, detailed in unimpassioned
succession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon
us, when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect. Thus the flight of
Adonis in the dusk of the evening:-


Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky;
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye!


How many images and feelings are here brought together without effort
and without discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his
flight, the yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamored gazer, while a
shadowy ideal character is thrown over the whole! Or this power acts by
impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on inanimate or
mere natural objects:-


Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty,
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.