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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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breaks the verdant , rootless , tuftless ., weedless surface : an upholsterer would not have nailed his green baize or drugget more evenly on your parlour carpet , nor glued his billiard-table cloth more wrinklelessly : so lies this verdant carpet , this fixed curve of the sea , till the uprising , crowning crest of the billow , ruffled with g orse , with its millions of yellow blossoms , —the ocean spray
changed into bright and burning gold , which mingles its glory with the bending blue of heaven . That is the barrier ridge which completely conceals the universes beyond : and is it not a gorgeous barrier ? It is so resplendenrtn its beauty that your heart throbs in loving worship of it . Here pause at its foot , and drink in the joy which it pours forth abundantly ; and having done so , look upward to the ridge , and without pausing in your step as you
wind to the summit , do but mark how those hoary-headed giants march up , forward upon , into your vision—and from the ridge bound down that gently inclining slope . In twenty steps the world is quite shut out : you are in a strange and solemn and old universe . You have passed from time to eternity—No—you have leaped out of the present , back a thousand years . Your dull lump of earth—your hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois ,
more or less , of clay , is at once exhaled , or has dropped off , away from your existence : you are become unweighable essence , ethereality . You are all air—a bird—a spirit—you feel that you could leap like a cricket , with less than a cricket ' s ponderosity ankle-deep you are enclosed in elastic moss , from which you rebound with the lightness of cork , or a ball of caoutchouc . Do not yet look around you , nor above you : close your eyes , and
you breathe bliss—you float— -sail—fly : you are in heaven . Not yet—the chirping of the jackdaws tells you this still is earthfor it is not yet said whether jackdaws go to heaven . Still this is heaven ; and you love it all the better on finding that it teems with the creatures of earth—living , breathing , voiced creatures—and their speech-chirping here is delicious harmony—glorious concord .
Bound a few steps more—r-you must bound , leap—you are full charged with electric fluid , and cannot walk . Stop : lift up your head , and gaze and gasp in the overpoweriug inspiration—which penetrates litnbs—heart—and soul ! and holds you mute awhile . A magnificent temple—the ruined Palmyra of the forest , roofed by the wide arch of heaven ! beautifully grand—awful , solemn , and deeply , intensely affecting : while it bows you down in adoration , it fills your spirit with love . There is nothing dark ,
nothing fearful , nothing sad in your soul while you gaze—you do love it—it wraps you in a sublimity of affection—you feel it is all your friend—your parent , your guardian—it blesses you , while you worship it ; and you bless it for the blessing it bestows . You feel that it was not the pride of man—nor the mockery of a false religion which reared this wondrous temple—that neither fraud nor oppression mingled in the design—nor has fcumaa vanity ever desecrated the holy place with monuments to
Untitled Article
A Peep into Sherwood Forest , 425
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 425, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/43/
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