I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries,
poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer glories?
There is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East Main, which
no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal are these
States. If there were no other vicissitudes than the seasons, our interest
would never tire. Much more is adoing than Congress wots of. What journal
do the persimmon and the buckeye keep, and the sharp-shinned hawk? What is
transpiring from summer to winter in the Carolinas, and the Great Pine
Forest, and the Valley of the Mohawk? The merely political aspect of the
land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the
members of a political organization. On this side all lands present only
the symptoms of decay. I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing, the District
of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a few avenues connecting them. But
paltry are they all beside one blast of the east or the south wind which
blows over them.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at
least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid.
Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so. There is no scent
in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating
and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. I would keep
some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading
of which should restore the tone of the system. To the sick, indeed,
nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health. To him who
contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can
come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or
servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.
Surely good courage will not flag here on the Atlantic border, as long as
we are flanked by the Fur Countries. There is enough in that sound to