An ugly, straight-edged, monotonous fir-plantation? Well, I like it,
outside and inside. I need no saw-edge of mountain peaks to stir up
my imagination with the sense of the sublime, while I can watch the
saw-edge of those fir peaks against the red sunset. They are my
Alps; little ones it may be: but after all, as I asked before, what
is size? A phantom of our brain; an optical delusion. Grandeur, if
you will consider wisely, consists in form, and not in size: and to
the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches
long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries
and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.
Have you eyes to see? Then lie down on the grass, and look near
enough to see something more of what is to be seen; and you will find
tropic jungles in every square foot of turf; mountain cliffs and
debacles at the mouth of every rabbit burrow: dark strids,
tremendous cataracts, 'deep glooms and sudden glories,' in every
foot-broad rill which wanders through the turf. All is there for you
to see, if you will but rid yourself of 'that idol of space;' and
Nature, as everyone will tell you who has seen dissected an insect
under the microscope, is as grand and graceful in her smallest as in
her hugest forms.
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