As I said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw. It is a strange life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat, and not too heavy a dose of marching. So severe a time as we had is terribly _physical_, and benumbs the brain somewhat. The campaign was short, but the utmost was crowded into those thirty days. The first portion was advance work, always arduous. General Knipe's work was to check the rebel advance. He did so by going to the front and meeting them, and then retreating slowly before them, making a stand and demonstration of fight, at which their advance would fall back on the main body, at whose approach he would up stakes, run a few miles, and make another show. Thus he gained ten days' time, which enabled General Couch, in command of the department, to fortify, and collect and organize troops, and probably saved Harrisburg. And for the manner in which he did it, without, too, the loss of a man, he deserves credit. On the whole, did I like it? Well, I am glad I have been. But the exact answer to that question is a sentence of Winthrop's, in his paper 'Washington as a Camp': 'It is monotonous, it is not monotonous, it is laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it is half war, half peace, and totally attractive, and not to be dispensed with from one's experience in the nineteenth century.' REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM. CHAPTER VI.--TRUTH AND LOVE. The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art. Art must be based upon a study of Nature, upon a clear and comprehensive knowledge of natural laws. No man was ever yet a _great_ poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher, for Poetry is the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, and human emotions. The poet must have the ability to observe things as they really are, in order to depict them with accuracy, unchanged by any passion in the mind of the describer, whether the things to be depicted are actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory. Nature may be regarded either as the home of man, and consequently associated with all the phases of his existence; or as an assemblage of symbols, manifesting the thoughts of the Creator. In accordance with the first view, the poet may give it its place in the different scenes of human life, animated with our passions, sympathizing with us, and expressing our feelings; in the second, he must try to interpret this divine language, to seize the idea gleaming through the veil of the material envelope, for there is an established harmony between material nature and intellectual. Every thought has its reflection in a visible object which repeats it like an echo, reflects it like a mirror, rendering it sensible first to the senses by the visible image, then to the thought by the thought.