"The human race," said I, laughing, "is very much obliged to the pity which would thus exterminate them; but as one of them, I should decidedly object to so sweeping a mode of improving the picturesque. Besides, I suppose you make an exception in favor, yourself, otherwise the picturesque would vanish just when it was brought to perfection. I am often inclined to say with Paley, though I remember well having sometimes felt as you do, 'It is a happy world after all.' I admit, however, that a buoyant, cheerful, habitual conviction of this will depend on the constitution of the mind, and even vary with the same in its different moods. But I am sure it may be a really happy world, whatever its sorrows, to any one who will view it as he ought." "I wish you could teach me the art." "It is," said I, "to exercise the faith and the hope of a Christian, humbly to regard this life as what it is,--a scene of discipline and schooling, a pilgrimage to a better. It is an old remedy, but it has been often tried; and to millions of our race has made this world more than tolerable, and death tranquil, nay, triumphant. Do you remember Schiller's 'Walk among the Linden-Trees'?" "Perfectly well." "Do you not remember how the two youths differ in their estimate of the beautiful in nature? 'Is it possible,' says Edwin, 'you can thus turn from the cup of joy, sparkling and overflowing as it is?'--'Yes,' said Wollmar, 'when one finds a spider in it; and why not? In your eyes, to be sure, Nature decks herself out like a rosy-checked maiden on her bridal day. To me she appears an old, withered beldame, with sunken eyes, furrowed cheeks, and artificial ornaments in her hair. How she seems to admire herself in this her Sunday finery! But it is the same worn and ancient garment, put off and on some hundreds of thousands of times.' But how natural is the explanation of all given at the beautiful close of the dialogue! 'Here,' said the jocund Edwin, 'I first met my Juliet.'--'And it was under these linden-trees,' says Wollmar, 'that I lost my Laura' It was their mood of mind, and not the outward world, that made all the difference. All nature, innocent thing! must consent to take her hue from it. You have, I fear, lost your Laura,"--simply alluding to his early faith; "or shall I suppose, from your present mood, that you have just met with your Juliet?" I spoke, of course, of his philosophy. He was looking out of the window; but on my turning my gaze towards him, I saw such a look of peculiar anguish, that I felt I had inadvertently touched a terrible chord indeed. I turned the conversation hastily, by remarking (almost without thinking of what I said) on the beautiful contrast between the light blue of the sky and the green of the lawn and trees; and proceeded to remark on the degree in which the mere organic or sensational pleasures of vision formed an ingredient in the pleasurable associations of the complex "beautiful."