Like Faustus, he was permitted to look into her deep bosom, as into the bosom of a friend,--to find his brothers in the still wood, in the air, and in the water,--to see himself and the mysterious wonders of his own breast in the movements of the elements. And so he took Nature as a figurative exponent of humanity, and extracted the symbolic truths from her productions, and used them nobly in his Art. Garbett, an English aesthetical writer, assures us that the _Anthemion_ bears not the slightest resemblance to the Honeysuckle or any other plant, "being no representation of anything in Nature, but simply the necessary result of the complete and systematic attempt to combine unity and variety by the principle of _gradation_." But here he speaks like a geometer, and not like an artist. He seeks rather for the resemblance of form than the resemblance of spirit, and, failing to realize the object of his search, he endeavors to find a cause for this exquisite effect in pure reason. With equal perversity, Poe endeavored to persuade the public that his "Raven" was the result of mere aesthetical deductions! And here the old burden of our song must once again be heard: If we would know the golden secret of the Greek Ideal, we must ourselves first learn how to _love_ with the wisdom and chastity of old Hellenic passion. We must sacrifice Taste and Fancy and Prejudice, whose specious superficialities are embodied in the errors of modern Art,--we must sacrifice these at the shrine of the true Aphrodite; else the modern Procrustes will continue to stretch and torture Greek Lines on geometrical beds, and the aesthetic Pharisees around us will still crucify the Greek Ideal. [To be continued.] THE ROSE ENTHRONED. It melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow To adamant beneath the house of life: In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go To meet intenser strife. And ere that fever leaves the granite veins, Down thunders o'er the waste a torrid sea: Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,-- Immortal foes to be. Built by the warring elements, they rise, The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier, Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes Their hideous heads uprear. The building of the world is not for you That glare upon each other, and devour: Race floating after race fades out of view, Till beauty springs from power Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun; The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath Of richer life begun,-- Richer and sweeter far than aught before, Though rooted in the grave of what has been. Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor, Ere she her heir shall win; And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand For nourishment of that which is to come: While 'mid the ruins of the work she planned Sits Nature, blind and dumb.