Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as
physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many
foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more
imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more
ethereal, as our sky--our understanding more comprehensive and
broader, like our plains--our intellect generally on a grander
seale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains
and forests-and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and
depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will
appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of laeta and
glabra, of joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end
does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

To Americans I hardly need to say--

"Westward the star of empire takes its way."

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in
paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the
backwoodsman in this country.

Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England;
though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the
West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the
Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is
too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to
understand even the slang of today.

Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was
like a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic