Chapter XII: Section IV

They skirt the wood, and narrowly inspect the dewy grass, to find new foot-prints of beast or heavy bird, seeking, with returning light, their accustomed food. No fairy ring, no shape of naiad or of dryad, no gnome, no sprite, met their pure vision, to turn them from their way; for not yet had the mind of man built up a superstition unto itself, and peopled the clefts of the earth, the water, and the air, giving to nothingness forms innumerable. Truth was too near and palpable, to be lost in imagination; to be moulded and cast anew, so changed as not to know itself; and poetry, the juggler and soul’s cheat, lay hid in matter, where God placed it, to be drawn thence for other purposes than those of error. It was not until man forgot his origin, that he sought out a new creator, even Beauty, the prime element in all God’s works, and so wrought with it, as to give strange life to all that is, and is not.

The wily hunters, skilled in their life’s trade, turn on every side, observe the lower boughs, fresh cropped, imitate the call of birds, the cry of deer, peer through the thick underwood which stood here and there in clumps, and plunged into the forest upon a trail which promised success.