shows, by saying in the essay upon "Nature", "My house stands in low
land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go
with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke
of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and
the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a
delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted
man to enter without novitiate and probation. We penetrate bodily this
incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes
are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a
royal-revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor
and beauty, power and taste ever decked and enjoyed, establishes
itself upon the instant". And again, as indicating where the true
charm of scenery lies: "In every landscape the point to astonishment
is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the
first hillock, as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars
stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual
magnificence which they shed on the Campagna or on the marble deserts
of Egypt." He is speaking here, of course, of the spiritual excitement
of Beauty, which crops up everywhere in nature, like gold in a rich
region; but the quality of the imagery indicates the character of the
scenery in which the essay was written.

Concord is too far from Boston to rival in garden cultivation its
neighbors, West Cambridge, Lexington, and Waltham; nor can it boast,
with Brookline, Dorchester, and Cambridge, the handsome summer homes
of city wealth. But it surpasses them all, perhaps, in a genuine
country freshness and feeling, derived from its loneliness. If not
touched by city elegance, neither is it infected by city
meretriciousness; it is sweet, wholesome country. By climbing one of
the hills, your eye sweeps a wide, wide landscape, until it rests upon