Oh, Shakespeare, archangel of poetry! The light from thy wings drowns the stars and flashes thy glory on the civilizations of the whole world! "Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined, Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind; No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight; But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light." All honor to the poets and philosophers and painters and sculptors and musicians of the world! They are its honeybees; its songbirds; its carrier doves, its ministering angels. VISIONS OF DEPARTED GLORY. [Illustration] I walked with Gibbon and Hume, through the sombre halls of the past, and caught visions of the glory of the classic Republics and Empires that flourished long ago, and whose very dust is still eloquent with the story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius lingers there still like the fragrance of roses faded and gone. I thought I heard the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in his academic shades. The canvas spoke and the marble breathed when Apelles painted and Phidias carved. I stood with Michael Angelo and saw him chisel his dreams from the marble. I saw Raphael spread his visions of beauty in immortal colors. I sat under the spirit of Paganini's power. The flow of his melody turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are the very fountain heads of music. I believe that Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling billows of the angry ocean. NATURE'S MUSICIANS. [Illustration] I sat on the grassy brink of a mountain stream in the gathering twilight of evening. The shadowy woodlands around me became a great theatre. The greensward before me was its stage.