cause he cannot see them, nor the application of the laws of life which he can see in sensible existences to them; nor would any such man deny the same application at the other end of the scale to spiritual, especially, since he has higher order of proof, independent of revelation, that they are!

Though each of these two natures in man is a unit capable of separate existence, yet the imagination is only apparent through the material, as electricity through the atmosphere, which conveys to us the flash and sound. We do not argue that electricity is a property of atmosphere, because we only hear and see it through this medium; nor do we argue that electricity is not, because it is not always apparent. We know it to be above us and around us, nevertheless, and gentle and familiar as the airs of home; but if we should forget! then, shaken with grandeur through the last quivering fibre, we are reminded that it is.

Though it sleeps now with silence, in its "old couch of space," yet its articulations are all of the sublime, and the awed earth, and the reverberating heavens rock beneath its stunning shout, when it answers the far-spaces in laughter at man's vain presumptuous doubts.

As electricity to nature, so imagination is to man's material or reasoning part. It is not always apparent to his drowsy consciousness; yet it always is subtle and silent, refining his coarse passions or making them more terrible; and its articulations, too, are all of the sublime; and when the gathering nations, with rapture on their multitudinous tongues, swell the huzza to glorious deeds, you may know that it has leaped from its "dumb cradle!"

All that is grand, magnificent, sublime, the Past has to tell-the Future has no hope: Imagination wrought or must create. The Chieftain, the Architect, the Sculptor, the Painter, the Poet, are her slaves-and at her bidding, the world is showered with splendors. In a word, Imagination is the Soul.

The cause of that gradual physical deterioration we notice from the times before the flood to the present, evidently may

be traced to the unceasing antagonism of these two opposite elements of man's nature. Each successive generation marks the victorious progress of the spiritual in the declension of mere animal bulk; the more delicate and sensitive texture of nervous tissue, and greater frontal development, a falling off in the actual numerical span of life, but a corresponding accession in that which constitutes its true measurement-the number, variety and intensity of emotions and thoughts-in short, an every-day and increasing recognition of all higher truths.

Men are beginning now to appreciate the true offices of Imagination, and to separate them from the monstrous and unnatural paternity of mere machine rhyming! and to know and feel that

"A drainless shower

Of light is Poesy! 'Tis the Supreme Power-
'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm.
The very arching of its eye-lids charm

A thousand willing agents to obey;

And still she governs with the mildest sway!"

Now, while we write, in a retired corner of the great city, at a late hour of the night, there is an entire lull of the rumble of dray, hack and omnibus wheels, and the glance of the large-eyed moon reflexes coldly from the white cathedral spire that copples sharp in the distance before our window. It ought to be the hour of profound repose-when the puls ings of this mighty heart should be quiet.

It ought to be, but is it so? We hear through the open windows of the marble palace opposite the favorite air of "Miss Lucy Long," fashionably parodied and a cultivated, clear, manly voice accompanies the soft, shrill treble of some fair warbler. In the street beneath, an unwashed, ragged loafer whistles a vehement "third," and thrums the interlude with his bare heels upon a pine box, which will probably be his roosting-place for the night!

Jewels, silks, "the pouncet box," and music! Dirt, vice, tatters, wretchedness, and music! Silence-over the jangling roar of trampling, rushing, striving men-lifted up into a Presence Godlike, "walking the clear billows of sweet sound." What contrasts! O thou Omnipotence of Music! Majestic soother!-before whose smile the fiery mane of Storms, careering thunder-hoofed along the mountains of the world, is laid!—whose touch has

"Smoothed

The raven down of Darkness till it smiled!

Thou voice of God's Love! how beneficent art thou! All pleasant objects, natures, forms, are tones of thee! Moonlight is the silver tone of thy calm, radiant blessing-and

"Oldest shades 'mong oldest trees

Feel palpitations when thou lookest in.
O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din
The while they feel thine airy fellowship.
Thou dost bless everywhere, with silver lip
Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,

Couch'd in thy brightness, dream of fields divine:

Innumerable mountains rise, and rise,
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;

And yet thy benediction passeth not

One obscure hiding-place, one little spot

Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren
Has thy fair face within its tranquil den,
And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf
Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief
To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps
Within its pearly house."

Ay! and that poor human oyster-the Loafer from out his motley painted shell of filth and rags "takes glimpses of thee! The largess of thy benediction falleth over him! The fellow is happy there, and his whistle is as blithesome as the

song of yon more favored twain! Can he be glad with all his misery, his piteous unrecking shame upon him?

Here we reluctantly pause. A voice from the printer"No more space! all closed!" falls like a sudden shower upon the thin wings of our "Reverie," and damps them back to earth. They will soon dry and grow glossy again, and be rollicking madly on the fitful winds as if the envious clouds had never wept.

CHAPTER II.

BOYHOOD AND BIRDS.

THE Hunter Naturalist is formed in childhood. "The little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump," commenceth its strange ferment in that unconscious time when the sun is yet the golden wonder, and all of earth's apparelings glitter in the splendor of the dew.

Why is it that with our scathed brows relaxed we watch the gambols of the "little ones" with such pleasure? Is it not that the sweet simplicity and natural grace of every im pulse and movement of the healthy child recalls our earliest associations of the lovable, the piquant and the pleasing, as exhibited in the life of the Natural World?

We may grow to be paste-board, and painted men and women, to be sure, and learn to admire the antics of bedizened monkeys, which would be even miscalled "Human Brats!" -but such terrific perversions, thanks to the illimitable blue that is universed in the deep eye of one true child of God and Nature! can do little harm. We pity while we despiseyet, in the other, the chubby insolence of exuberant fun provokes the laughter of deep joy. Ha! ha! we laugh, and let our sides go quaking with the tranquil stir of bliss that God has left us something natural even in the children of our loins as well as in his "unhoused wilds !"

If I feel now that the sanctifying pleasure of renewing the reminiscences of my earlier life in connection with Birds, and Flowers, and wild scenes, can afford to others a proxi