with what passes around them.

It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that
lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire
scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite -- how delightful
to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of
rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite
valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst
them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance,
my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our
souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our
vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being,
that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one
glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object,
when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed:
we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still
languish for unattainable happiness.

So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find
in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of
his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that
happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world.

When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my
own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for
my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during
the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen,
fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit
down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the
illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing