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outward phenomena. "He is," it was said, "a born metaphysician; perhaps the most of a thinker, and the least of an observer, for his age, to be found."

Outdoor and Indoor Thoughts - Our impressions usually relate to what is visible to us. Outdoor thoughts are therefore apt to be more comprehensive than indoor thoughts. Again: Our indoor thoughts are usually subjective, introspective, or retrospective; our outdoor thoughts objective or prospective, and healthier in their tone. Indeed, Emerson well observes that "we go out daily and nightly to feed the eye on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath." "The blue zenith," he adds, "is the point in which romance and reality meet."

* Following this is a passage of such exceeding beauty that I am tempted to transcribe it, as Leigh Hunt has done before me especially as it finely sustains what I have elsewhere said of the admirable union, in certain of Mr. Emerson's Essays, of poetry with philosophy. 'It seems as if the day was not wholly profane," says he, "in which we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snow-flakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving ryefield; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the mu

A

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

LTERNATIONS of city and country life deepen the interest of both. Therefore,

sical, streaming, odorous south wind, which converts all trees to wind-harps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames; or of pine logs which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sitting-room-these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. My house stands on low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without noviciate and probation. These sunset clouds,

those delicately-emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify and proffer much. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. I am overinstructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am growing expensive and sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance; but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of the world have called in Nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging gardens, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to back their faulty personality with these strong accessories. I do not wonder that the landed interest should be invincible in the state with these

dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe and invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We have heard what the

persons of competent means, having business in large cities, should have their residences a short distance out of them, where, in the quiet and retirement of a rural home, they can review the events of each busy day, and link the life contemplative to the life practical.

In town we grow active-minded; in the country, large minded. Cities afford more incitements to thought; but the country more opportunities for it. Life in the country is a continual appeal to the sense of the beautiful; a want of expansion characterizes life in a metropolis. In large cities men are like a crowd of angels, so closely packed together that, wanting to fly, they cannot find room in which to outstretch their wings. Cities, too, yield more of the material of thought, but thought of an inferior character. The country, then, is best as a thinking place-its harmonies of sound, color, and

rich man said, we knew of his villa, of his wine, of his com pany, but the provocation and point of the invitation came out of these beguiling stars. In their soft glances, I see what men strove to realize in some Versailles, or Paphos, or Ctesiphon. When the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they should consider the effect of men reputed to be the possessors of Nature on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were rich, as the poor fancy riches!"

proportion, its grateful retirement and sweet repose, dispose to juster thought and purer feeling, and to more vivid conceptions of beauty and of grace.

And yet, the experiment of retiring altogether into the country to live, after many years passed in a great city, is seldom attended with success. A city is a museum of a larger size a cabinet of curiosities—a strange collection of curious men and still more curious women of objects and incidents infinite in their number and variety. Few, who have once lived altogether in them, can afterwards be content to live altogether out of them.

TRAVELLING.

EW situations inspire new thoughts. Here
In

NEW

is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.

People who live stationary in one spot see the great world through a very small window, and

acquire a feeling that space extends to the outskirts of their city or township, and there stops. Not so with the traveller. Moving from place to place, here to-day and there to-morrow, he "catches the manners living as they rise" of different peoples, sees and becomes one with Nature in her different moods, sheds his local personality, as the bird its plumage for one of brighter tints and more varied coloring, and comes round to his starting-point with more enlarged views, a more catholic spirit, and a newer and a fresher conception of the mysterious and infinite universe that lies around and about him. The reason why there are so many narrowminded people in the world is, because there is so little travelling in it.*

* "Almost all men are over-anxious," says the poet Rogers. "No sooner do they enter the world, than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood. Now travel, and foreign travel more particularly, restores to us in a great degree what we have lost. When the anchor is heaved, we double down the leaf; and The old cares are left for a while at least all effort is over. clustering round the old objects; and at every step, as we proceed, the slightest circumstance amuses and interests. All is new and strange. We surrender ourselves, and feel once again as children."