Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/43

 and unlooked for, a sense of the beauty of the Greek mythology was awakened in me, more vivid, more real than I had ever before experienced. As the poet says, I could, while looking

of dryad hiding among the trees; of nymph gazing at her own beauty in the lucid wave; of an immortal race—in short, the innocent offspring of nature, whose existence was love and enjoyment; who, freed from the primæval curse, might haunt this solitary spot. Why should not such be? If the earthly scales fell from our eyes, should we not perceive that “all the regions of nature swarm with spirits, ” and affirm, with Milton, that—

It is easier for the imagination to conjure such up in spots untrod by man, so to people with love and gratitude what would otherwise be an unsentient desert. Not that I would throw contempt on the pleasures of the animal creation, nor even on those of tree, or herb, or flower, which merely enjoys a conscious life, and in its pride of beauty feels happy, and, as it decays, peacefully resigns existence. But this does not satisfy us, who are born to look beyond