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wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wis-
est man extort her secret, and lost his curiosity by
finding out all her perfection. Nature never be-
came a toy to wise spirit. The flowers, the ani-
mals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best
hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity
of his childhood.

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have
a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We
mean the integrity of impression made by manifold
natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the
stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of
the poet. The charming landscape which I saw
this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty
or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that,
and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of
them owns the landscape, There is a property in
the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can
integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is
the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their
warranty-deeds give no title.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.
Most persons do not see the sun. At least they
have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates
only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and
the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he
whose inward and outward senses are still truly ad-
justed to each other; who has retained the spirit

-288-

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Publication Information: Book Title: Representative Men: Nature, Addresses and Lectures. Contributors: Ralph Waldo Emerson - author. Publisher: Houghton Mifflin. Place of Publication: Boston. Publication Year: 1883. Page Number: 288.
    
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