Motion generally is expressive or suggestive of beauty: "Thou canst not wave thy staff in the air, Or dip thy padde in the lake, But it form the bow of beauty tans, And the ripples in rhymes the oat forsake,"

After a survey of the glories of creation, the thought that first suggests itself to a reflective mind is the general indifference of mankind to it. The beautiful in nature, like the beautiful in art, has too few, and among these, too many lukewarm worshippers. For too many, nature may be said to waste its loveliness on the desert air. Beauty is above, around, and beneath us, and we do not heed it. We tread on beauty and know-it not. Many are born, live, and pass away, with scarce a glance on the beautiful world in which they live. There are many fossils, plants, and other works of nature, that we scarcely notice, or at beat with indifference, which, if they were produced by art, would be preserved as treasures, and admired without bounds. We think little of nature's beauties, perhaps, from their being SO commonly about US. How often do we find men who would stand in apparent rapture before a painted landscape, that would pass the original with indifference; and be unmoved by the sublimest effect of sunshine and shadow when presented by nature! Showing, however, that it was a conventional, rather than a true and genuine feeling for the beautiful, by which they were excited.

How often do we find the physiologist in extacies with the scientific beauty of a subject, while utterly heedless of the charms that address him through the medium of form! The botanist, also, whilst busy defining and classifying, too frequently loses some part of his enjoyment, by by the uon-contcinplation of the (esthetic, along with the structural grace; forgetting the marriage of beauty and science; forgetting thai nature speaks through these creatures to the eye and the heart, as well as to the reason and intellect, by their transcendant beauty of form and color. At the same time it must be granted that the pleasure of the artist would be enhanced by the scientific knowledge of fitness. - adaptation of menus to end. - and the union of the various parts to the accomplishment of the contemplated result, which natural objects exhibit. Like poetry and music, the (esthetic and scientific beauties of objects may be said to stimulate each other, raise the thoughts, and eHlutncc the pleasure of the spectator.

In truly great minds, however, in all ages of the world, there has existed a deep-rooted love and veneration of nature. Milton considered it an injury and sullenness against nature, not to go out and see her riches, and partake of her rejoicings with heaven and earth." "Here," exclaims an old English poet, in reference to woods - " Here is the trite Parnassus, Castalia, and the Muses." And so charmed were the classic poets, with the natural shade of trees, that they gave to temples the names of groves. In the vistas and shades of trees, poets have composed verses which animated their countrymen to heroic and glorious actions. Here orators have delivered their discourses, and the profoundest philosophers have been so enamoured of nature's beauties as to be content to pass their lives in her bosom, in repose and contemplation. Among the luminaries of the middle ages, how prized must have been flowers, since we find them named after whatever was most valued. Nature is the great storehouse of art, and in the infancy of the latter, and prior to the refined pleasures which art affords, being extensively diffused among any country or people, the innate love of the beautiful would, of course, be more concentrated upon nature.

Accordingly, in the early period of mankind, as also in the infancy of different states, large use was made of beautiful natural objects in seasons of festivity, as emblems of happiness and rejoicing. "Let us crown ourselves," says the author of the Book of Wisdom, "with rose-buds and flowers before they wither." Early nations in all their ceremonies, whether of the banquet, the altar, or the tomb, made large use of flowers as decorations. Among the classical ancients, the wreath of the victor, and other rewards of merit, were arboraceous, and this led to their extensive employment, as symbols, in architectural decorations.

I come now to the second branch of my subject, viz: - the beautiful in the Human Mind or Imagination.

"Every star in Heaven," says Emerson, "is disconcerted and insatiable; gravitation and chemistry cannot content them; ever they woo and court the eye of every beholder; every man that comes into the world they seek to fascinate and possess. - to pass into his mind, for they desire to republish themselves in a more delicate world than that they occupy. It is not enough that they are Jove, Mars, Orion, and the North star, in the gravitating firmament; they would have such poets as Newton, Herschell, and Laplace, that they may re-exist in the finer world of rational souls, and fill that realm with their fame. These beautiful basilisks set their brute, glorious eyes, on the eye of every child, and, if they can, cause their natures to pass through his wondering eyes into him, and so all things are mixed." And so through the wondering eyes of every man, all external objects seek to pass. The aspect of nature operates insensibly upon the soul of every rational creature in proportion to his natural susceptibility, and the images reflected there, whilst modified by the original disposition and current of his being, become invigorated by his intellectual power, and enriched by the stream of education.

Impressions and influences operate also from other sources, until his mind becomes

"A mansion for all lovely forms, His memory a dwelling place For at sweet sounds and harmenies."

A feeling, more or less, of the beatiful in nature, is common to all, but only the artist, who from superior intellectual power, and greater strength of imagination, has a fresher, deeper insight into the inexhaustible life around, possesses the capacity to form his ideal, and give it expression. All have the aesthetic feeling, which means sensitiveness, or susceptibility of the impress or influence of the beautiful and poetic, but few have the creative power which belongs to the artist, viz: the faculty for reproducing and embodying the feeling in some form of art. - a picture, * statue, a building, or a poem. This is what is properly termed genius, than which there is perhaps nothing more difficult to define. It has been said to consist of a refined love of nature, "a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture, or copy of the same." Sir Joshua Rey faculty than reason; for the creative faculty is certainly beyond those which merely per ccive and compare. It is the chief part of genius. - genius, to which all creation admin isters.