The thing nearest us is our mental constitution, the world of consciousness. It is of it we first learn, though it be the last we understand. It is that through which we perceive and apprehend all other things; and nothing becomes part of our knowledge but as it has been shaped and coloured by its magic reflexion. Nay, more, it is not only our mirror but our archetype for every thing. So we spiritualise the material universe, and afterwards, by an incongruous consistency, anthropomorphise spirit. Reason in vain reclaims against this misuse of analogy. Feeling, imagination, instinct are too many for her; and any mood, from fun to earnest, from nonsense to sublimity, may hear a responsive note when this chord is touched. Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of the legs of her work-table,--she blushes--her lively fancy has given them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them, besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement, and with inexcusable warmth, I take shame to myself for having bestowed a kick upon a similar mahogany limb, which had, however, begun the contest by breaking my shin. To the poet's eye, nature is instinct with life. Greece may be "living Greece no more"--in the soul of her people; but her immortal plains, and streams, and hills have their own vitality. "The mountains _look_ on Marathon, And Marathon _looks_ on the sea." You go to visit them; they meet you half-way: "spectatum veniunt." Amid the Alps--with glacier, torrent, forest around--you still evoke the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but "To gaze upon her beauty--nothing more." And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhoetus or Enceladus of the West, and "over earth, air, wave, Glares with his Titan eye." This is but the calm, the dignified, the measured march of poetical conception. No wonder, when superstition steps in to prick on imagination, that all should vividly team with spirit life. Or that on Walpurgis' night, bush and streamlet and hill bustle and hurry, with unequal pace, towards the haunted Brocken: the heavy ones lag, indeed, a little, and are out of breath-- "The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho! How they snort and how they blow!" No wonder that to the dreamer's eye, in tranquil scenes of sylvan solitude the fawn of yore skipped in the forest dell, the dryad peeped from behind the shadowy oak, the fay tripped lightly over the moonlit sward. But enough, and too much, of "your philosophy." Yet there are those still who may be the wiser for it. Let me sketch you a believer in the creed it would dispel.