derive and bestow great benefits therefrom.

But sad and sickening to the enthusiast who comes to these shores,
hoping the tranquil enjoyment of intellectual blessings, and the
pure happiness of mutual love, must be a part of the scene that he
encounters at first. He has escaped from the heartlessness of courts,
to encounter the vulgarity of the mob; he has secured solitude, but
it is a lonely, a deserted solitude. Amid the abundance of nature,
he cannot, from petty, but insuperable obstacles, procure, for a long
time, comforts or a home.

But let him come sufficiently armed with patience to learn the new
spells which the new dragons require, (and this can only be done
on the spot,) he will not finally be disappointed of the promised
treasure; the mob will resolve itself into men, yet crude, but of good
dispositions, and capable of good character; the solitude will become
sufficiently enlivened, and home grow up at last from the rich sod.

In this transition state we found one of these homes. As we
approached, it seemed the very Eden which earth might still afford to
a pair willing to give up the hackneyed pleasures of the world for a
better and more intimate communion with one another and with beauty:
the wild road led through wide, beautiful woods, to the wilder and
more beautiful shores of the finest lake we saw. On its waters,
glittering in the morning sun, a few Indians were paddling to and fro
in their light canoes. On one of those fair knolls I have so often
mentioned stood the cottage, beneath trees which stooped as if
they yet felt brotherhood with its roof-tree. Flowers waved, birds
fluttered round, all had the sweetness of a happy seclusion; all
invited to cry to those who inhabited it, All hail, ye happy ones!

But on entrance to those evidently rich in personal beauty, talents,
love, and courage, the aspect of things was rather sad. Sickness had
been with them, death, care, and labor; these had not yet blighted
them, but had turned their gay smiles grave. It seemed that hope and
joy had given place to resolution. How much, too, was there in them,
worthless in this place, which would have been so valuable
elsewhere! Refined graces, cultivated powers, shine in vain before
field-laborers, as laborers are in this present world; you might as
well cultivate heliotropes to present to an ox. Oxen and heliotropes
are both good, but not for one another.

With them were some of the old means of enjoyment, the boo