often does It is too

His faculty is creative. So he can and heighten the actual beauty of nature. the necessity of his genius that he should strive to make things more beautiful than any thing that can be found in actual nature. But I would not say that his creations must needs be so, to be true works of art yet certainly his function is to make things that have no exact counterpart in nature. Otherwise his faculty is not creative; he is not a true maker. But the creative imagination can work only with materials furnished by nature, with images derived from sense either directly or through the fancy. The maker, the finite maker at leastwhether poet, or painter, or sculptor, or musician -cannot create out of nothing. He must have sensible means-words, colors, forms, tones-to embody and express his thought. By the way, is curious that the word poet-which means only a maker-should have come to be exclusively appropriated to the maker of word creations. All artists are makers too, and eminently such. Yet there was a time in which the word maker in our Saxon speech was used instead of the word poet, and was applied to word artists in the same exclusive or eminent way as the term poet is now. It seems to indicate a general feeling, as if word

it

poetry were the highest order of artistic creation."

"It seems to me," said Mrs. Oldham, “unnecessary and something invidious thus to put into comparison things that are different, rather than of unequal rank. But as to that Beautiful in itself, which is embodied in the finite maker's forms what is it?"

"What else is it"-said the Doctor in reply"what else can it be, but the reflection, more or less faint but always faint, of the infinite in the finite? What is all Art but an attempt at the impossible? No sum of finites can equal the infinite. The Almighty artist himself needs eternity and immensity to disclose the riches of His mind and thought. When will the disclosure be complete ? When will the Infinite pass fully out into the finite ? Eternally unfolding, but eternally undisclosed, is the infinite substance and source of Truth, Beauty and Goodness."

"Husband," said Mrs. Oldham, "when did creation begin, and what was God's purpose in it ?"

"We will ask Professor Clare about it some time," replied the Doctor.

CHAPTER XII.

PROFESSOR CLARE. THE DOCTOR'S TALK ABOUT THE STARRY HEAVENS.-ADDISON AND SHAKSPEARE. WORD-PAINTING AND OTHER PAINTING.-WHERE THE UNIVERSE ENDS AND HOW IT IS FILLED. -MRS. OLDHAM'S TWO QUESTIONS ARE NOT ANSWERED.

PROFESSOR CLARE came in that evening to tea. He is the Doctor's neighbor, an alert little man with curly black hair and bright eyes, who, besides knowing Greek (his special profession), knows pretty nearly every thing else that is going on in the neighborhood, and in the world at large, for that matter, so far as a daily reading of the New York Daily Times can keep a man up with the times. He is a fluent utterer of the current common-places of opinion and sentiment upon all such things as are made matters of opinion and sentiment in his world and among those he has mostly lived with; and also thinks he has a thought or two upon profounder matters of theology and philosophy gained many years ago-dur

ing his last year at college in fact, where he went in succession through Locke, Edwards and Paley, Reid, Stewart, and Butler, making daily recitations out of them to the President, the Reverend Doctor Dort, but without getting much clear insight into the differences that divide those celebrated writers-owing, perhaps, to the fact that the venerable President appeared to hold all those authors as thinkers of equal and harmonious authority, requiring of the students a respectful recollection of their words, rather than encouraging any perplexing inquiries about their meaning and agreement with each other. Venerable Doctor Dort! He slept well through life; and has slept peacefully in the resting-place where his reverend head has reposed for nearly thirty years, in the cemetery of W- College-where (not in the cemetery, but in the college) Mr. Clare afterwards for some years held the professorship of Greek— cherishing a filial reverence for the venerable slumberer as the "guide, philosopher, and friend,” through whose guidance, philosophy, and friendship, he explored the deepest regions of the world of thought, and brought back specimens and mementoes which he sometimes takes pleasure (like most travellers) in showing to his friends.

;,

But Greek was his profession; and Greek is his great love-a love that betrays itself at times in mixed society, at dinner and tea parties, where he is a little given to favoring the company with illustrations of whatever may be the topic of conversation drawn from those old sources, the sayings of famous Greek writers or the doings of famous Greek great men. But then he is such a thoroughly amiable good-natured man, and so full of pleasant chat that everybody likes him, and his absence from the tea-parties would be felt as a great loss.

"Friendly persons," the Doctor says, speaking of him, “always make friends, certainly among all right-hearted people; and as to the rest, we all have our little foibles, as the Frenchman said when ETC.; and for my part, I think I like a friendlyhearted man the better for having a foible or two -provided, of course, that they imply no meanness, nothing dishonorable, but rather spring from warmth of heart, simplicity, confiding frankness, and an unaffected love for some respectable or harmless hobby."

The ETCETERA above refers (I may observe by the way) to the Frenchman's particular foible-a remarkable taste in the matter of bouilli-which cannot be considered either as respectable or harm