If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because, always present, they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts――that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other――who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common in snow-puddles at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of his life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees