It is, as Isaac Taylor remarks, by her diversities,—her gay adornments, her copious fund of forms, and her sportive freaks of shape and colour, that Nature allures the eye of man, while she draws him on toward the more arduous, but more noble pursuit of her hidden analogies. An insensible process goes on, the effect of which is gradually to invest general truths with a sort of majesty, as well as beauty; so that, at length, this new charm is found to prevail over the graces and attractions of the exterior diversity of things.
Even philosophy, however, has been said to teach us that nature scatters the lavish beauties of form and colour not always with a utilitarian purpose; or rather, that beauty—merely to display beauty—is often, as in birds and flowers and shells and crystals, the object of material organization. “There is no special use in the metallic lustre on the plumage of the humming-bird, and tropical blossoms blaze for the mere sake of being splendid.” Yet is it owned to be noticeable that only in the lower ranks of the kingdom of being is nature lavish of beauty for the mere sake of the beautiful; and that as we advance upward in the scale of created things, a certain severity and reserve seem to grow upon nature itself.
Shenstone—a now all but forgotten poet—in a now quite forgotten ode, asserts, as in duty bound, the uses beyond use of Nature’s fancy work:
“Search but the garden or the wood,
Let yon admired carnation own
Not all was meant for raiment, or for food,
Not all for needful use alone;
There while the seeds of future blossoms dwell,
’Tis colour’d for the sight, perfumed to please the smell.
“Why knows the nightingale to sing?