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affording a grand undertone, in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendor indescribable; yet something haughty, almost supercilious, in the night. Never did I realize more latent sentiment, almost passion, in those silent interminable stars up there. One can understand, such a night, why, from the days of the Pharaohs or Job, the dome of heaven, sprinkled with planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism on human pride, glory, ambition.

AN ULSTER COUNTY WATERFALL

I jot this mem. in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy what I call weather-beaten and let-alone-a rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle from the hoarse impetuous copious fall-the greenish - tawny, darkly transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the rocks, with patches of milk - white foam a stream of hurrying

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amber, thirty feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with volume - every hundred rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in that distance. primitive forest, druidical, solitary and savage-not ten visitors a year broken rocks everywhere - shade overhead, thick underfoot with leaves-a just palpable wild and delicate aroma.

HUDSON RIVER SIGHTS

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But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercest driving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appear over the river, now soaring with steady and now overbended wings always confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times literally sitting upon it. It is like reading some first-class natural tragedy or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendid bird enjoys the hubbub — is adjusted and equal to it— finishes it so artistically. His pinions just oscillating -the position of his head and neck—his resistless,

occasionally varied flight now a swirl, now an upward movement - the black clouds driving the angry wash below the hiss of rain, the wind's piping (perhaps the ice colliding, grunting) he tacking or jibing now, as it were, for a change, abandoning himself to the gale, moving with it with such velocity and now, resuming control, he comes up against it, lord of the situation and the storm – lord, amid it, of power and savage joy.

HUMAN AND HEROIC NEW YORK

The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn -(will not the time hasten when the two shall be municipally united in one, and named Manhattan ?) —- what I may call the human interior and exterior of these great seething oceanic populations, as I get it in this visit, is to me best of all. After an absence of many years, (I went away at the outbreak of the secession war, and have never been back to stay since,) again I resume with curiosity the crowds, the streets, I knew so well, Broadway, the ferries, the west side of the city, democratic Bowery - human appearances and manners as seen in all these, and along the wharves, and in the perpetual travel of the horse-cars, or the crowded excursion steamers, or in Wall or Nassau streets by day in the places of amusement at night bubbling and whirling and moving like its own environment of waters endless humanity in all phases - No Brooklyn also taken in for the last three weeks. need to specify minutely enough to say that (making all allowances for the shadows and side-streaks of a millionheaded city) the brief total of the impressions, the human qualities, of these vast cities, is to me comforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine physique, clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combination of reticence and self-possession, with good nature and friendliness-a prevailing range of according manners, taste and intellect, surely beyond any elsewhere upon earth

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and a palpable out-cropping of that personal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest future hold of this many-item'd Union - are not only constantly

visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average. To-day, I should say - defiant of cynics and pessimists, and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions- an appreciative and perceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet of successful Democracy, and of the solution of that paradox, the eligibility of the free and fully developed individual with the paramount aggregate. In old age, lame and sick, pondering for years on many a doubt and danger for this republic of ours fully aware of all that can be said on the other side I find in this visit to New York, and the daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, on the scale of the oceans and tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken the grandest physical habitat and surroundings of land and water the globe affords namely, Manhattan island and Brooklyn, which the future shall join in one city-city of superb democracy, amid superb surroundings.

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NEW SENSES: NEW JOYS

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We follow the stream of amber and bronze brawling along its bed, with its frequent cascades and snow-white foam. Through the cañon we fly-mountains not only each side, but seemingly, till we get near, right in front of us every rood a new view flashing, and each flash defying description on the almost perpendicular sides, clinging pines, cedars, spruces, crimson sumach bushes, spots of wild grass but dominating all, those towering rocks, rocks, rocks, bathed in delicate vari-colors, with the clear sky of autumn overhead. New senses, new joys, seem develop'd. Talk as you like, a typical Rocky Mountain cañon, or a limitless sea-like stretch of the great Kansas or Colorado plains, under favoring circumstances, tallies, perhaps expresses, certainly awakes, those grandest and subtlest element-emotions in the human soul, that all the marble temples and sculptures from Phidias to Thorwaldsen -all paintings, poems, reminiscences, or even music, probably never can.

THE PRAIRIES AND GREAT PLAINS IN POETRY (After traveling Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado)

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Grand as is the thought that doubtless the child is already born who will see a hundred millions of people, the most prosperous and advanc'd of the world, inhabiting these Prairies, the great Plains, and the valley of the Mississippi, I could not help thinking it would be grander still to see all those inimitable American areas fused in the alembic of a perfect poem, or other esthetic work, entirely western, fresh and limitless altogether our own, without a trace or taste of Europe's soil, reminiscence, technical letter or spirit. My days and nights, as I travel here— what an exhilaration! not the air alone, and the sense of vastness, but every local sight and feature. Everywhere something characteristic — the cactuses, pinks, buffalo grass, wild sage-the receding perspective, and the far circleline of the horizon all times of day, especially forenoon the clear, pure, cool, rarefied nutriment for the lungs, previously quite unknown- the black patches and streaks left by surface-conflagrations — the deep-plough'd furrow of the "fire-guard"—the slanting snow-racks built all along to shield the railroad from winter drifts- the prairie-dogs and the herds of antelope- the curious "dry rivers " occasionally a "dug-out" or corral - Fort Riley and Fort Wallace those towns of the northern plains, (like ships on the sea,) Eagle-Tail, Coyoté, Cheyenne, Agate, Monotony, Kit Carson - with ever the ant-hill and the buffalo-wallow ever the herds of cattle and the cow-boys ("cowpunchers") to me a strangely interesting class, bright-eyed as hawks, with their swarthy complexions and their broadbrimm'd hats apparently always on horseback, with loose arms slightly raised and swinging as they ride.

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A HINT OF WILD NATURE

Feb. 13.—As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flock of wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital though momentary view of them, and then of their course on and on southeast, till

gradually fading(my eyesight yet first rate for the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading.) Queer thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing these creatures cleaving the sky- the spacious, airy realm—even the prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no sun shining)—the waters below-the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for a minute-flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with her eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of sea, sky, shore — and then disappearing in the distance.

ONLY A NEW FERRY-BOAT

Jan. 12, '82.- Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour before sundown yesterday evening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden, is worth weaving into an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze from the southwest, the water of a pale tawny color, and just enough motion to make things frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset of unusual splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and profusion of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear drab of the afternoon light, there steam'd up the river the large, new boat, "the Wenonah," as pretty an object as you could wish to see, lightly and swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, cover'd with flags, transparent red and blue, streaming out in the breeze. Only a new ferry-boat, and yet in its fitness comparable with the prettiest product of Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High up in the transparent ether gracefully balanced and circled four or five great sea hawk, while here below, amid the pomp and picturesqueness of sky and river, swam this creation of artificial beauty and motion and power, in its way no less perfect.

THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART

My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-day in solitude and half-shade by the creekreturning mainly to two principal centres. One of my cherish'd themes for a never-achiev'd poem has been the two impetuses of man and the universe-in the latter, creation's incessant unrest, exfoliation, (Darwin's evolu

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