The power, therefore...

§ 7. The power, therefore, of thus fully perceiving any natural object depends on our being able to group and fasten all our fancies about it as a centre, making a garland of thoughts for it, in which each separate thought is subdued and shortened of its own strength, in order to fit it for harmony with others; the intensity of our enjoyment of the object depending,abstract oil paintings for sale, first, on its own beauty, and then on the richness of the garland. And men who have this habit of clustering and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too apt to look scornfully upon the harder workers who tear the bouquet to pieces to examine the stems. This was the chief narrowness of Wordsworth's mind; he could not understand that to break a rock with a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes be an act not disgraceful to human nature, and that to dissect a flower may sometimes be as proper as to dream over it; whereas all experience goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. It is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along the starry crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural beauty—or at least its expression—has been more or less checked by them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching ofhuman nature. Thus in all the classical and mediæval periods, it was, as we have seen, subordinate to agriculture, war, and religion; and in the modern period, in which it has become far more powerful, observe in what persons it is chiefly manifested. oil painting reproductions

(1.)	It is subordinate in	(2.)	It is intense in
	Bacon.		Mrs. Radclyffe.
	Milton.		St. Pierre.
	Johnson.		Shenstone.
	Richardson.		Byron.
	Goldsmith.		Shelley.
	Young.		Keats.
	Newton.		Burns.
	Howard.		Eugene Sue.
	Fenelon.		George Sand.
	Pascal.		Dumas.