I have read of Alpine flowers leaning their cheeks on the snow. I wonder if any flowers grow near enough to that snow to touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went; there, sure enough, my little fringed purple bell, to which I had give the name of “suspirium,” was growing, not only close to the snow but in it. Thus God’s grace, shining steadily on the waste places of the human heart, brings up heavenward sighings and aspirations, which pierce through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that there is yet life beneath. * * * * * [Sidenote: God as an artist.] I was glad to walk on alone: for the scenery was so wonderful that human sympathy and communion seemed to be out of the question. The effect of such scenery to our generally sleeping and drowsy souls, bound with a double chain of earthliness and sin, is like the electric touch of the angel on Peter, bound and sleeping. They make us realize that we were not only made to commune with God, but also what a God He is with whom we may commune. We talk of poetry, we talk of painting, we go to the ends of the earth to see the artists and great men of this world; but what a poet, what an artist, is God! Truly said Michel Angelo, “The true painting is only a copy of the divine perfections—a shadow of his pencil.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Soul-striving.] The human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is strength in it, as of suffocated flame, finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and fissures, but the flame is one. * * * * * [Sidenote: Shadow.] What a curious kind of thing shadow is,—that invisible veil, falling so evenly and so lightly over all things, bringing with it such thoughts of calmness and rest. I wonder the old Greeks did not build temples to Shadow, and call her the sister of Thought and Peace. The Hebrew writers speak of the “overshadowing of the Almighty;” they call his protection “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Even as the shadow of Mont Blanc falls like a Sabbath across this valley, so falls the sense of his presence across our weary life-road. * * * * * [Sidenote: Heimweh.] Why? why this veil of dim and indefinable anguish at sight of whatever is most fair, at hearing whatever is most lovely? Is it the exiled spirit, yearning for its own? Is it the captive, to whom the ray of heaven’s own glory comes through the crevice of his dungeon wall? * * * * * [Sidenote: Seeing and feeling.] It is not enough to open one’s eyes on scenes; one must be able to be “en rapport” with them. Just so in the spiritual world, we sometimes _see_ great truths,—see that God is beautiful and surpassingly lovely; but at other times we _feel_ both nature and God, and O, how different _seeing_ and _feeling_!