"But besides the phase of Nature-communion which we call physical science, there is the other, artistic phase. Day by day we find that the mystic influence of Nature on our human personality grows more intense and individual. Who can walk alone in your beautiful Druid Hill Park, among those dear and companionable oaks, without a certain sense of being in the midst of a sweet and noble company of friends? Who has not shivered, wandering among these trees, with a certain sense that the awful mysteries which the mother earth has brought with her out of the primal times are being sucked up through those tree-roots and poured upon us out of branch and leaf in vague showers of suggestions that have no words in any language? Who, in some day when life has seemed TOO bitter, when man has seemed too vile, when the world has seemed all old leather and brass, when some new twist of life has seemed to wrench the soul beyond all straightening, -- who has not flown, at such a time, to the deep woods, and leaned against a tree, and felt his big arms outspread like the arms of the preacher that teaches and blesses, and slowly absorbed his large influences, and so recovered one's self as to one's fellow-men, and gained repose from the ministrations of the Oak and the Pine?"*

--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 72.
--

"In the sweet old stories of ascetics who by living pure and simple lives in the woods came to understand the secrets of Nature, the conversation of trees, the talk of birds, do we not find but the shadows of this modern communion with Nature to keep ourselves simple and pure, to cultivate our moral sense up to that point of insight that we see all Nature alive with energy, that we hear the whole earth singing like a flock of birds, yet so that we remember Death with Mr. Darwin, so that nothing is any more commonplace, so that death has its place and life its place, so that even a hasty business walk along the street to pay a bill is a walk in fairyland amidst unutterable wonders as long as the sky is above and the trees in sight, -- in other words, to be natural . . . natural in our art, natural in our dress, natural in our behavior, natural in our affections, -- is not that a modern consummation of culture? For to him who rightly understands Nature she is even more than Ariel and Ceres to Prospero; she is more than a servant conquered like Caliban, to fetch wood for us: she is a friend and comforter; and to that man the cares of the world are but a fabulous `Midsummer Night's Dream', to smile at -- he is ever in sight of the morning and in hand-reach of God."*

--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 73.
--

The lectures close, as they began, with an estimate of the value of the poet to the world and with a word of greeting to his audience: --

"Just as our little spheres of activity in life surely combine into some greater form or purpose which none of us dream of, and which no one can see save some unearthly spectator that stands afar off in space and looks upon the whole of things, -- I was impressed anew with the fact that it is the poet who must get up to this point and stand off in thought at the great distance of the ideal, look upon the complex swarm of purposes as upon these dancing gnats, and find out for man the final form and purpose of man's life. In short, -- and here I am ending this course with the idea with which I began it, -- in short, it is the poet who must sit at the centre of things here, as surely as some great One sits at the centre of things Yonder, and who must teach us how to control, with temperance and perfect art and unforgetfulness of detail, all our oppositions, so that we may come to say with Aristotle, at last, that poetry is more philosophical than philosophy and more historical than history.

"Permit me to thank you earnestly for the patience with which you have listened to many details that must have been dry to you; and let me sincerely hope that, whatever may be your oppositions in life, whether of the verse kind or the moral kind, you may pass, like Shakspere, through these planes of the Dream Period and the Real Period, until you have reached the ideal plane from which you clearly see that wherever Prospero's art and Prospero's love and Prospero's forgiveness of injuries rule in behavior, there a blue sky and a quiet heaven full of sun and stars are shining over every tempest."*

--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. ii, p. 328. I have quoted freely from these lectures because they are in a form not easily accessible to the general reader, and because, more than any other of his prose works, they reveal the inner man.
--

One of the things which enabled Lanier to produce the effect that he did in teaching literature was the fact that he was an excellent reader. He had a singularly clear and resonant voice and a power to enter so into the spirit of a work of art that he had no trouble in keeping a large audience thoroughly interested. The following account by one of his hearers, written a short time after his death, gives the effect produced by his readings: --

"Mr. Lanier did not lay claim to any extraordinary power as a reader; indeed, he once, when first requested to instruct a class of ladies in poetic lore, modestly demurred, on the ground of his inability to read aloud. `I cannot read,' he said simply; `I have never tried.' All, however, who afterwards heard him read such scenes from Shakespeare as he selected to illustrate his lectures were thrilled by his vivid realization of that great dramatist. His voice, though distinct, was never elevated above a moderate tone; he rarely made use of a gesture; certainly, there was no approach to action or to the adaptation of his voice to the varied characters of the play; yet many scenes which I have heard him read, I can hardly believe that I have never seen produced on the stage, so truly and vividly did he succeed in presenting them to my imagination. At the time I used to wonder in what element lay the charm. Partly, of course, in his own profound appreciation of the author's meaning, partly also in his clear and correct emphasis, but most of all in the wonderful word-painting with which, by a few masterly strokes, he placed the whole scene before the mental vision. In theatrical representation, a man with a bush of thorn and lantern must `present moonshine' and another, with a bit of plaster, the wall which divides Pyramus from his Thisbe; but in Mr. Lanier's readings, a poet's quick imagination brought forth in full perfection all the accessories of the play. When he read, in the Johns Hopkins lecture hall, that scene from `Pericles' in which Cerimon restores Thaisa's apparently lifeless body to animation, a large audience listened with breathless attention. His graphic comments caused the whole rapidly moving scene to engrave itself on the memory."*

--
* Letter of Mrs. Arthur W. Machen to the author.
--

Such readings and lectures are treasured in the minds of those who heard them. In addition to his work at the Peabody Institute Lanier taught in various schools, and so extended his influence. It is easy to overstate the good he accomplished, but it is within bounds to say that his efforts to develop the culture life of the city bore fruit, and that he has his place among those who have contributed to the new Baltimore. He shared in all the advantages made possible by the philanthropy of George Peabody and Johns Hopkins, and in such aesthetic influences as the Allston Art Association and the Walters collection of French and Spanish pictures. In turn he promoted a love of music and poetry. The successive invasions of Baltimore by people from New England, Virginia, and Georgia had added a cosmopolitan and cultured society. By a wide circle Lanier was much beloved. His admiration for the city and his ideals for its future are well expressed in his "Ode to the Johns Hopkins University": --

    And here, O finer Pallas, long remain, --
    Sit on these Maryland hills, and fix thy reign,
    And frame a fairer Athens than of yore
     In these blest bounds of Baltimore. . . .

    Yea, make all ages native to our time,
     Till thou the freedom of the city grant
     To each most antique habitant
      Of Fame, -- . . .

    And many peoples call from shore to shore,
    `The world has bloomed again at Baltimore!'