Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/122

 —Nature abroad must be its desire, and its chosen enjoyment, and Piety must be its aspiration. From Poetry that has no correspondence with these conditions of a Paradise we turn in dull despair to resume the heavy task of life; for if so, then beyond its austere conditions there is nothing in prospect of humanity:—the path we tread must be a continuity of care in sullen progress to the grave.

We take, then, the Mosaic Paradise as the germ of all Poetry; and unless this first chapter of human history be regarded as real—as true—it could stand in no relationship to those deep-seated instincts—those slumbering beliefs of possible felicity, which this tradition has fed and conserved in the human soul. If this first chapter be a fable, then we reject this belief also as a delusion. But it is not a delusion; and as often as a group of children, with ruddy cheek and glistening eye, is seen sporting in a meadow, filling their chubby hands with cowslips—laughing in sunshine — instinct with blameless glee—then and there, if we will see it, we may find a voucher for the reality of a Paradise which has left an imprint of itself in the depth of every heart: the same truth is attested with the emphasis of a contrast when—infancy and childhood, sporting and merry at the entrance of a city den, and still snatching from the pavement a faded handful of flowers, speaks of this instinct, and exhibits the pertinacity of a belief which no pressure of actual wretchedness can entirely dispel.