unworthy of investigation. Acting upon this belief two or three
summers ago, when making, in company with my sister, a little
excursion into the hill-country of New Hampshire, I turned my
horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose of seeing these
semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and returning, once
for all, their numerous visits. Taking leave of our hospitable
cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may
suppose Major Laing(1) parted with his friends when he set out
in search of desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles
over a rough road, passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed
a fretful little streamlet noisily working its way into a valley,
where it turned a lonely, half-ruinous mill, and, climbing a
steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide, sandy level, skirted on
the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and
there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this desolate
region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped
together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced,
unguarded, open to all comers and goers, stood that city of the
beggars,--no wall or paling between the ragged cabins to
remind one of the jealous distinctions of property. The great
idea of its founders seemed visible in its unappropriated
freedom. Was not the whole round world their own? and
should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For
them, on distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in
far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for them, if they
had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on her garniture
of beauty, and over them hung the silent mystery of heaven and
its stars. That comfortable philosophy which modern
transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic
agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real