It is one of Goethe's profound aphorisms, that ‘Every day we should in some way renew our impressions of the true and the beautiful by a verse from some great poet, the sight of a painting or a statue, or by a noble thought from some heroic mind; for the spiritual within is ever in danger of being choked and suffocated by the rank luxuriance of the weeds and thorns that crowd our daily life.’ In this country, however, Art has but few temples wherein lessons of grace and beauty can be taught the people; nor can even the glorious book of Nature be enjoyed by those who, with toiling hands and ever lowered eyes, work day and night at the loom of life to earn the scanty bread of subsistence.

The poor in these rough northern climes have little time for the dreamy musings over the illuminated pages of Nature, to which the luxurious indolence of a southern existence gives such full facility. The sunset and the cloud, the spiritual influence of dying day, or of night with her starry host; the grandeur of the lonely mountain, the song of waters, the choral music of the waving trees—all the beauty and melody of the world, is, in a great degree, mute and veiled to our weary toiling slaves of civilisation. But literature, in the full plenitude of its ennobling influence, can reach all classes, the lowest as the highest.