All true Poets have felt and known this, although they have not always acknowledged it; sometimes it was but a dim confused perception of the truth which they obtained; being dazzled by the blaze of their own genius, they have mistaken that for a divine effluence, and worshipped it in the place of that greater glory, of which it was but a faint reflex and emanation. Sometimes it was pride of intellect which forbade them to bow down to any other God than that which bore the impress of self: sometimes it was a kind of pantheistic worship of nature, as an abstract divinity; so enamoured were they of the fair face of creation, that they forgot the Creator; the works, how beautiful! how perfect! But the workman, what of Him? We have spoken in the past tense, and it might be thought that our remarks were meant to apply to poets of pagan lands, and of benighted ages of the world’s history; but alas! they are equally applicable to all ages, and to all lands; and especially to our own country and age of Christian enlightenment. Many of the most gifted singers of the present day, of the most fervent and devoted spirits, might have served as high-priests in the temple of Apollo, and offered adoration at the shrine of Flora, Ceres, and the Bona Dea, and other pagan impersonifications of the sun, and the earth, with its beauties and riches. To such as these the flowers, those stars of earth, are not the living, glowing, breathing “charactery” in which the Almighty writes instructive lessons of His wisdom and goodness, telling the sick, the weary, and the sad at heart, that “Whoso careth for the flowers Will care much more for them.” To such the stars, those flowers of heaven, are not bright revelations of the Deity who sustains and directs them in their courses. “For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.” To such the whispering gales, the rustling boughs, the humming insects, the singing rills, and the warbling birds, speak not of an ever watchful, ever wakeful Power, to which in every emergency the prayerful soul may turn. Calm and soothing as is doubtless the influence of nature, upon the troubled souls of all who submit themselves to her gentle teachings, yet with how much greater satisfaction and delight must those contemplate her beauties and share her calm enjoyments, who see in her various changes and aspects but so many revelations of Almighty love, and read in her fair lineaments the wondrous story of redeeming grace. “Alas! that mankind sees Him not,--the Great And Everlasting Framer of all worlds; Who paints himself upon the leaves of flowers, And flings his portrait on the breasted clouds, And sheds his syllogisms in the shape Of suns, and moons, and planetary systems,”