I believe that if God were to make a man, a full-grown man in a moment, and were to set him down in the midst of the world, to look upon it with new eyes, and for the first time, instead of letting him grow up from a child, _to become accustomed to it_--for it is true, as Mr. Lowell says, that "we glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades,"--I believe that that man would be in danger of delirium from his overwhelming joy and wonder at the beauty and the boundlessness of that which he saw around. Even this grim old London is full of beauty and of boundlessness; of beauty which strikes me breathless, and of boundlessness of life, and sky; for in what slum of it, be it never so stifling, are we quite shut out from view of the stars or the sunshine, or of the human faces that come and go in the streets? But a moment ago, while looking out from my window upon a crowded, choking city thoroughfare, I caught one glimpse of a woman's profile, as she passed with her head poised, and half-turned towards me; and though the vision was gone in an instant, the sweep of the queenly neck, ivory-white and stately as a lily-stem, set my senses vibrating with a thrill of exquisite pleasure. And yonder, looking into a window, I see another face, the sweet pure face of a maiden. I run my eye like a finger along the profile, I follow the flowing line of the hair; but even as I look, she turns, is gone and is forgotten, for her place is taken by a girl with a basket of flowers, the flowers that I love as I love nothing else but poetry. It is Emerson, I think, who tells us that God's loveliest gifts are the commonest; and that sun and sky and flowers are scarce denied to a beggar's call; and it is pitiful, as he says in another passage, the things by which we call ourselves rich or poor. Why, I have gone home from my morning's walk, feeling richer in the possession of a handful of honey-suckle than if I had found a purse of sovereigns by the wayside; nor could all the art-treasures of Bond Street (not that I fail to appreciate them, either) give me a more exquisite thrill of sweetly-saddened pleasure than does the tender perfume of a bunch of violets.