2 The Gifts 179 3 Person 181 4 Choice 184 III. GENESIS. 1 Vestiges 189 2 Serpent Symbol 191 3 Embryons 193 4 Temperament 195 IV. METAMORPHOSES. 1 Sleep 201 2 Reminiscence 203 3 Immortality 205 TABLETS BOOK I PRACTICAL "Philosophy, the formatrix of judgment and manners, has the privilege of having a hand in everything."--MONTAIGNE. I. THE GARDEN. "If Eden be on earth at all, 'Tis that which we the country call." HENRY VAUGHAN. [Illustration: Decorative banner of bird among grapes and leaves] THE GARDEN I.--ANTIQUITY. "I never had any desire so strong and so like to covetousness," says Cowley, "as that one which I have had always that I might be master at last of a small house and ample garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there to dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature. Virgil's first wish was to be a wise man, the second to be a good husbandman. But since nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to very few the opportunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to wisdom, the best mixture of human affairs we can make, are the employments of a country life. It is, as Columella calls it, the nearest neighbor or next in kindred to philosophy. And Varro says the principles of it are the same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature; earth, water, air, and the sun. There is no other sort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a panegyrist; the utility of it to a man's self, the usefulness or rather necessity of it to all the rest of mankind, the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity." This wish of the poet's appears to be nearly universal. Almost every one is drawn to the country, and takes pleasure in rural pursuits. The citizen hopes to become a countryman, and contrives to secure his cottage or villa, unless he fail by some reverse of fortune or of character. 'Tis man's natural position, the Paradise designed for him, and wherein he is placed originally in the Sacred Books of the cultivated peoples; their first man being conceived a gardener and countryman by inspiration as by choice.