Page:The Hunterian Oration for 1850.djvu/56

40 from the sun ?—or more sublime than the boiling thunder of a cataract, or the broad expanse of the boundless ocean,—

“ That glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form Glasses itself in tempests, in all time Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime, The image of Eternity,—the throne Of the Invisible.” *

The relish for such enjoyments has a tendency to adorn the solid acquisitions of the student. His mind awakening as from a trance to new existence, becomes conscious of infinite sources of delightful speculations, and objects around that have met his daily gaze for years, start into existence and disclose charms, hitherto unknown, and he may be said to breathe a new existence in the novel associations of every day, and hour.

The transition of the beauty of nature to that of art, is easy ; and here the painter, and the sculptor, and the archi- tect, exhibit all that is beautiful to the eye in composition, and elaborate in artistic skill. |

But nature is still the prototype from which are reflected the efforts of the artist, and from her simplicity we dare not stray.

Doubtless, the aptitude for these studies—I mean for the perception of the beauty of art—is possessed in various degrees of perfection by different individuals, but probably the germ is dormant in all; and in many, or in most, by early develop- ment and early cultivation, it may be rendered competent to perceive and to enjoy the highest perceptions of artistic


 * Lord Byron.