ods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of
wild beasts.

These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than
in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of
America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that
these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and
poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length,
perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the
American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For
I believe that climate does thus react on man--as there is something in
the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow
to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these
influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his
life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts
will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky--our
understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains--our
intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning,
our rivers and mountains and forests--and our hearts shall even
correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas.
Perchance there will appear to the traveller something, he knows not
what, of _laeta_ and _glabra_, of joyous and serene, in our very faces.
Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

To Americans I hardly need to say--

"Westward the star of empire takes its way."

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise
was more favourably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this
country.

Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though
we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There
is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took
to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying
Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of to-day.

Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a
dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in
something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and
repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were
music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There
were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew o