The Country Is Not Priest-ridded,

Ah, How Wonderful Is The Advent Of The Spring!—the Great Annual Miracle.... Which No Force Can Stay, No Violence Restrain, Like Love, That Wins Its Way And Cannot Be Withstood By Any Human Power, Because Itself Is Divine Power. If Spring Came But Once In A Century, Instead Of Once A Year, Or Burst Forth With The Sound Of An Earthquake, And Not In Silence, What Wonder And Expectation Would There Be In All Hearts To Behold The Miraculous Change!... We Are Like Children Who Are Astonished And Delighted Only By The Second-hand Of The Clock, Not By The Hour-hand.

Authors Have A Greater Right Than Any Copyright, Though It Is Generally Unacknowledged Or Disregarded. They Have A Right To The Reader's Civility. There Are Favorable Hours For Reading A Book, As For Writing It, And To These The Author Has A Claim. Yet Many People Think That When They Buy A Book They Buy With It The Right To Abuse The Author.

A Spirit Of Criticism, If Indulged In, Leads To A Censoriousness Of Disposition That Is Destructive Of All Nobler Feeling. The Man Who Lives To Find Faults Has A Miserable Mission.

Like A French Poem Is Life; Being Only Perfect In Structure When With The Masculine Rhymes Mingled The Feminine Are.

The Bells Themselves Are The Best Of Preachers, Their Brazen Lips Are Learned Teachers, From Their Pulpits Of Stone, In The Upper Air, Sounding Aloft, Without Crack Or Flaw, Shriller Than Trumpets Under The Law, Now A Sermon And Now A Prayer.