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    all this diffusive loveliness to its mere appendage and accompaniment ; and man has not marred the plan of nature . There is no city or town even ,, with its congregated roofs , spires , and towers to transfix the eye in its wandering , and shine with a false glitter in the sun , as it broods over the indistinct expanse of meadows ,

    glades , and groves . The artist would want an object and a foreground ; Canova would have called for crags , as he did at Kichmond ; but we do quite as well without , as the citizens of Berne said when their bear was dead . Why should scenery be constructed on the monarchical principle . In the thousand unobtrusive lovelinesses , there is harmony and unity , without the

    erection of a central pyramid to refer them all to ; it would but throw ^ ver them an artificial shade , and give them an unnatural insignificance . We should not then see the valley , but the pyramid that stood in the valley . The loss would be greater than the gain . That unbroken expanse gives one the idea of equality in enjoyment , and infinity of extent . It looks like a

    fraternal world , blessed , and basking in the smile of Providence . If you want more diversity , there it is in the lights and shadows which can only exhibit themselves in such an ample scene . How strange are the forms of clouds projected on the earth ; but there are yet stranger forms at hand . Come back by this lane , which is such a trenchant wound on the fair earth ' s bosom .

    . This is the deepest cut of all , and has laid bare and left in air the projecting roots of those fine old trees , which resemble , not the Elgin marbles indeed , but similar fragments of the sculpture of some more antique race of artists . They must have lived too in some prse-Adamite state of the world , when form and organization were subject to other laws , or while nature was yet experimenting . This approaches towards a colossal human figure ; but one side is twisted like a boa constrictor , as if it were the

    father of that deceitful lady , who wrought such woe to the guileless Christabelle . That has a griffin front , the tail going off into the flourish of a weary painter with his brush , when his hired and toilsome copy of a worthless picture is completed . Here are figures like those with which Blake adorned the ' Night Thoughts . ' Did they but break the second commandment , how well would they

    exhibit at a missionary meeting , in lon ^ procession , as the idols of some Antipodean or Hyperborean region , or of beings that inhabit the inner crust of the globe , the next of those concentric surfaces of which some say the world , like a Chinese puzzle ball , consists , and which would , I suppose , have been lawfully seizable , as

    property or prize , had Captain Parry succeeded in his patriotic enterprise , and nailed the royal standard of Britain to the pole of the earth . Tree-roots are a class of beings but little known . They are like nothing else upon , below , or out of , the earth . One might suppose the Frankenstein family had set un a manufactory of monsters here , and in haste to pack up the raw mate-

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    Local Logic . 419

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 419, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/59/