"Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the
cedars of Lebanon, saying. 'Since thou art gone down to the grave, no
feller is come up against us.'"[66] So, still more, the thought of the
presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment.
"The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into
singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."[67]
But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by the
strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not
cause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere
affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost
always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful
metaphorical expressions as a sort of current coin; yet there is even
a worse, at least a more harmful condition of writing than this, in
which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up,
but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately
wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make
an old lava-stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead
leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost.
When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a
truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be
overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim--
Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.
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