Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay on Nature in 1836:

“Nature never wears a mean appearance.  Neither does the wisest man extort all her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.  Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit.  The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected all the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood…The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood….Standing on the bare ground, –my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball.  I am nothing.  I see all.  The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God…I am the…