IV. TIME AND CHANGE. (131)
Sir Humphry Davy, 1778-1829, was an eminent chemist of England. He made many important chemical discoveries, and was the inventor of the miner's safety lamp. ###
Time is almost a human word, and Change entirely a human idea; in the system of nature, we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures: even when they are destroyed so as to produce only dust, Nature asserts her empire over them; and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, in a period of annual successions, by the labors of man—providing food, vitality, and beauty—upon the wrecks of monuments which were raised for the purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.
V. THE POET. (132)
William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842, was a distinguished clergyman and orator. He took a leading part in the public affairs of his day, and wrote and lectured eloquently on several topics. ###
It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys; and in this he does well, for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being.
VI. MOUNTAINS. (132)
William Howitt, 1795-1879, was an English author. He published many books, and was associated with his wife, Mary Howitt, in the publication of many others. ###
There is a charm connected with mountains, so powerful that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features, kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! How the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our hearts bound to the music of their solitary cries, to the tinkle of their gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts! How inspiriting are the odors that breathe from the upland turf, from the rock-hung flower, from the hoary and solemn pine! How beautiful are those lights and shadows thrown abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower slopes, as over a vast, inimitable picture!