Where
thou art not, is happiness." At last the sight of men, whom I
continually met laughing, rejoicing and exulting in this glorious
nature, became so intolerable that I slept by day, and pursued my
journey from place to place in the clear moonlight nights. There was
at least one emotion which dispelled and dissipated my thoughts: it was
fear. Let any one attempt to scale mountains alone all night long in
ignorance of the way--where the eye, unnaturally strained, beholds
distant shapes it cannot solve--where the ear, with morbid acuteness,
hears sounds without knowing whence they come--where the foot suddenly
stumbles, it may be over a root which forces its way through the rocks,
or on a slippery path which the waterfall has drenched with its
spray--and besides all this, a disconsolate waste in the heart, no
memory to cheer us, no hope to which we may cling--let any one attempt
this, and he will feel the cold chill of night both outwardly and
inwardly. The first fear of the human heart arises from God forsaking
us; but life dissipates it, and mankind, created after the image of
God, consoles us in our solitariness. When even this consolation and
love, however, forsake us, then we feel what it means to be deserted by
God and man, and nature with her silent face terrifies rather than
consoles us. Even when we firmly plant our feet upon the solid rocks,
they seem to tremble like the mists of the sea from which they once
slowly emerged. When the eye longs for the light, and the moon rises
behind the firs, reflecting their tapering tops against the bright rock
opposite, it appears to us like the dead hand of a clock which was once
wound up, and will some day cease to strike. There is no retreat for
the soul, which feels itself alone and forsaken even among the stars,
or in the heavenly world itself. One thought brings us a little
consolation: the repose, the regularity, the immensity, and the
unavoidableness of nature. Here, where the waterfall has clothed the
gray rocks on either side with green moss, the eye suddenly recognizes
a blue forget-me-not in the cool shade. It is one of millions of
sisters now blossoming along all the rivulets and in all the meadows of
earth, and which have blossomed ever since the first morning of
creation shed its entire inexhaustible wealth over the world. Every
vein in its leaves, every stamen in its cup, every fibre of its roots,
is numbered, and no power on earth can make the nu