inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it
more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had
I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little
desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country had
the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty
lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their
bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility;
her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her
boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad,
deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her
trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its
magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds
and glorious sunshine;--no, never need an American ok beyond his
own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint
peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was
full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated
treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the times
gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to
wander over the scenes of renowned achievement--to tread, as it
were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to loiter about the ruined
castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to escape, in short,
from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself
among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men
of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not