Think of it. What a world of images, of sentiments, of thoughts at once distinct and confused, are excited within us by this one word--country! and by this other word, brief and immense,--God! What is more clear and altogether more profound and vast! Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the musician, to call forth also by a single stroke all the powers of nature and the soul! They cannot, and by that they acknowledge the superiority of speech and poetry. They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for their own measure; they esteem their own works, and demand that they should be esteemed, in proportion as they approach the poetic ideal. And the human race does as artists do: a beautiful picture, a noble melody, a living and expressive statue, gives rise to the exclamation--How poetical! This is not an arbitrary comparison; it is a natural judgment which makes poetry the type of the perfection of all the arts,--the art _par excellence_, which comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none can reach. When the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, they usually err, losing their own genius, without robbing poetry of its genius. But poetry constructs according to its own taste palaces and temples, like architecture; it makes them simple or magnificent; all orders, as well as all systems, obey it; the different ages of art are the same to it; it reproduces, if it pleases, the classic or the Gothic, the beautiful or the sublime, the measured or the infinite. Lessing has been able, with the exactest justice, to compare Homer to the most perfect sculptor; with such precision are the forms which that marvellous chisel gives to all beings determined! And what a painter, too, is Homer! and, of a different kind, Dante! Music alone has something more penetrating than poetry, but it is vague, limited, and fugitive. Besides its clearness, its variety, its durability, poetry has also the most pathetic accents. Call to mind the words that Priam utters at the feet of Achilles while asking him for the dead body of his son, more than one verse of Virgil, entire scenes of the _Cid_ and the _Polyeucte_, the prayer of Esther kneeling before the Lord, the choruses of _Esther_ and _Athalie_. In the celebrated song of Pergolese, _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_, we may ask which moves most, the music or the words. The _Dies irae, Dies illa_, recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In those fearful words, every blow tells, so to speak; each word contains a distinct sentiment, an idea at once profound and determinate. The intellect advances at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn. Human speech idealized by poetry has the depth and brilliancy of musical notes; it is luminous as well as pathetic; it speaks to the mind as well as to the heart; it is in that inimitable, unique, and embraces all extremes and all contraries in a harmony that redoubles their reciprocal effect, in