plastic, are most durable? or because youth is that golden age
bounding the confines of memory and floating forever--an alluring
mirage as we recede farther from it?

The imagination of the man who roams the solitary pastures of Concord,
or floats, dreaming, down its river, will easily see its landscape
upon Emerson's pages. "That country is fairest," he says, "which is
inhabited by the noblest minds". And although that idler upon the
river may have leaned over the Mediterranean from Genoese and
Neapolitan villas, or have glanced down the steep green valley of
Sicilian Enna, seeking "herself the fairest flower", or walked the
shores where Cleopatra and Helen walked, yet the charm of a landscape
which is felt rather than seen will be imperishable. "Travelling is a
fool's paradise," says Emerson. But he passed its gates to learn that
lesson. His writings, however, have no imported air. If there be
something Oriental in his philosophy and tropical in his imagination,
they have yet the strong flavor of his mother earth--the underived
sweetness of the open Concord sky, and the spacious breadth of the
Concord horizon.




HAWTHORNE


Hawthorne has himself drawn the picture of the Old Manse in Concord.
He has given to it that quiet richness of coloring which ideally
belongs to an old country mansion. It seemed so fitting a residence
for one who loves to explore the twilight of antiquity--and the