stream in something more than imagination, under bridges built by
the Romans, and repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles
whose very names were music to my ears, and each of which was the
subject of a legend. There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck
and Coblentz, which I knew only in history. They were ruins that
interested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from its waters
and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed music as of
Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under the
spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic
age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.

Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I
worked my way up the river in the light of today, and saw the
steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the
fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the
stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up
the Ohio and the Missouri and heard the legends of Dubuque and of
Wenona's Cliff--still thinking more of the future than of the
past or present--I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a
different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be
laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the
river; and I felt that THIS WAS THE HEROIC AGE ITSELF, though we
know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest
of men.

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and
what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the
preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in
search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow
and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics