But I like to chase phantoms; I hate the plodding of the caravans.  I turn aside and spread my own tent apart.  Will you tarry awhile under its shadow, O serious and gentle stranger, and listen to some poor words of mine?

These memories of Eden!  Let us cherish them, for they are not worthless or deceitful.  We, who, when we can, carry our hearts in our eyes, know very well, and have often said it before, that Eden is not so many days’ journey away from our feet that we may not inhale its perfumes and press our brows against its sod whenever we wish.  It is not cant, I hope, to say that Eden is not lost entirely.  There stands no angel at its gates with naming sword; nor did it fade away with all its legendary beauties, drop its leaves into the melancholy streams, leaving no trace behind of its glades and winding alleys, its stretches of flowery mead, its sunny hill-sides, and valleys of happiness and peace.  But Eden still blooms wherever Beauty is in Nature; and Beauty, we know, is everywhere.  We cannot escape from it, if we would.  It is ever knocking at the door of our hearts in sweet and unexpected missions of grace and tenderness.  We are haunted by it in our loneliest walks.  Almost unconsciously, out of flowers and trees, earth and sky, sunrises and sunsets,—­out of mosses under the feet, mosses and pebbles and grasses,—­out of the loveliness of moon and stars, their harmonies and changes,—­out of sea-foam, and what sea-foam reveals to us of the rich and strange things beneath the waters far down,—­out of sweet human eyes,—­out of all these things creeps into our spirits the knowledge that God is Love, and His handiwork the expression of ineffable tenderness and affection.  I believe, indeed, that the principle of Beauty, philosophically speaking, pervades all material objects, all motions and sounds in Nature,—­that it enters intimately into the very idea of Creation.  But we, poor finite beings, do not seek for it, as we do for gold and gems.  We remain content with those conventional manifestations of it which are continually and instinctively touching our senses as we walk the earth.  Fearfully and wonderfully as we are made, there is no quality in our being so blessed as this sensitiveness to Beauty.  All the organs of our life are attuned by it to that vast universal symphony which, in spite of the warring elements of passion and prejudice, unites us in friendly sympathies with all mankind.  If

  “the meanest flower that blows can bring
  Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,”—­

if it can so move some of us, who have cared to open the portals of our hearts to receive and cherish the little waif,—­why, verily, the simple violet that blooms alike under every sky, the passing cloud that floats changing ever over every land, gathering equal glories from the sunsets of Italy and Labrador, are more potent missionaries of peace and good-will to all the earth than the most persuasive accents of human eloquence.