when the mere local
habitation has seemed to me to afford so fair a chance of happiness as
this. To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford
stimulus enough. But with it would be naturally associated all kinds of
wild sports, experiments, and the studies of natural history. In these
regards, the poet, the sportsman, the naturalist, would alike rejoice in
this wide range of untouched loveliness.

Then, with a very little money, a ducal estate may be purchased, and by
a very little more, and moderate labor, a family be maintained upon it
with raiment, food and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a
city life are not yet to be had without effort disproportionate to their
value. But, where there is so great, a counterpoise, cannot these be
given up once for all? If the houses are imperfectly built, they can
afford immense fires and plenty of covering; if they are small, who
cares?--with such fields to roam in. In winter, it may be borne; in
summer, is of no consequence. With plenty of fish, and game, and wheat,
can they not dispense with a baker to bring "muffins hot" every morning
to the door for their breakfast?

Here a man need not take a small slice from the landscape, and fence it
in from the obtrusions of an uncongenial neighbor, and there cut down
his fancies to miniature improvements which a chicken could run over in
ten minutes. He may have water and wood and land enough, to dread no
incursions on his prospect from some chance Vandal that may enter his
neighborhood. He need not painfully economise and manage how he may use
it all; he can afford to leave some of it wild, and to carry out his own
plans without obliterating those of nature.

Here, whole families might live together, if they would. The sons might
return from their pilgrimages to settle near the parent hearth; the
daughters might find room near their mother. Those painful separations,
which already desecrate and desolate the Atlantic coast, are not
enforced here by the stern need of seeking bread; and where they are
voluntary, it is no matter. To me, too, used to the feelings which haunt
a society of struggling men, it was delightful to look upon a scene
where nature still wore her motherly smile and seemed to promise room
not only for those favored or cursed with the qualities best adapting
for the strifes of competition, but for the delicate, the thoughtful,
even the indolent or eccentric. She did not say, Fight or starve