* * * * *
TO HER BROTHER, R.
_Cambridge, August_ 6, 1842.
My dear R.: I want to hear how you enjoyed your journey, and what you
think of the world as surveyed from mountain-tops. I enjoy exceedingly
staying among the mountains. I am satisfied with reading these bolder
lines in the manuscript of Nature. Merely gentle and winning scenes
are not enough for me. I wish my lot had been cast amid the sources of
the streams, where the voice of the hidden torrent is heard by night,
where the eagle soars, and the thunder resounds in long peals from
side to side; where the grasp of a more powerful emotion has rent
asunder the rocks, and the long purple shadows fall like a broad wing
upon the valley. All places, like all persons, I know, have beauty;
but only in some scenes, and with some people, can I expand and feel
myself at home. I feel all this the more for having passed my earlier
life in such a place as Cambridgeport. There I had nothing except the
little flower-garden behind the house, and the elms before the door. I
used to long and sigh for beautiful places such as I read of. There
was not one walk for me, except over the bridge.
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