ddenly,
that he had hardly settled upon anything. Then there was so much to be
discussed with his mother, deciding what he would take with him, and
what he would leave behind, that they postponed all to a future
arrangement by letter.

When temporary order was established, Eric complied with Roland's
request to go with him upon the platform of the tower. They sat down
here, and looked about, for a long time, in every direction. Eric could
not restrain himself from telling the boy how new and beautiful all
life appeared to him. They had formerly built castles upon the heights,
for strife, for feuds, and for robbery of travellers upon the highway;
but we, we work with the powers of nature, we endeavor to gain wealth,
and then we withdraw, and place our dwelling upon an elevated site, in
some lovely valley, and desire to take in only the eternal beauty,
which no one can take away. The great river becomes a highway, along
which industrious and noble men erect their habitations. The
generations after us will be obliged to say that, at this time, men
began to pay loyal homage to nature, as had never before been paid in
the history of humanity; this is a new religion, even if it has no
outward form, and shall never acquire any.

"Go on speaking, go on, on further," said Roland, nestling up to Eric;
he could not say that he would like to hear just the sound of his
voice; he closed his eyes and cried again: "Go on speaking!" Eric
understood the imploring call, and went on to relate, how, when he
stood for the first time upon the Righi, looking at the setting sun, he
had been impressed with the thought whether there might not be some
form, some service, by which the devotional feelings of these assembled
spectators, in this temple of nature, might find expression. He had
learned that this was impossible, and perhaps was not needful: nature
imparts to each one a joy of his own, and joy in nature to each a
private feeling of devotion, in which no others can share. Then
extolling the happiness of being able thus in one's own house, on a
tower erected by one's self, to appropriate the world, and the beauty
of the earth, he showed how wealth, its pursuit, and its possession
might be the basis of a grand moral and social benefit. Riches, he
explained, were only a result of freedom, of the unfettered employment
of activities, and must have only freedom as their resultant product.

Roland was happy; he did not comprehend the whole, bu