TRAVELLER.

Oh who can say
Where lies the boundary?  What solid things
That daily mock our senses, shall dissolve
Before the might within, while shadowy forms
Freeze into stark reality, defying
The force and will of man.  These forms I see,
They may go with me through eternity,
And bless or curse with ceaseless company,
While yonder man, that I met yesternight,
Where is he now?  He passed before my eyes,
He is gone, but these stay with me ever.

  That night the young man rested with the old,
  And, grave or gay, in laughter or in tears,
  They wore the night in converse.  Morning came,
  The dreamer took his solitary way;
  And, as he pressed the old man’s hand, he sighed,
  Must this too be a dream?

Afterwards, of the rolling prairie.  “There was one of twenty miles in extent, not flat, but high and rolling, so that when you arrived at a high part, by gentle ascents, the view was beyond measure grand; as far as the eye could reach, nothing but the green, rolling plain, and at a vast distance, groves, all looking gentle and cultivated, yet all uninhabited.  I think it would impress you, as it does me, that these scenes are truly sublime.  I have a sensation of vastness which I have sought in vain among high mountains.  Mountains crowd one sensation on another, till all is excitement, all is surprise, wonder, enchantment.  Here is neither enchantment or disappointment, but expectation fully realized.  I have always had an attachment for a plain.  The Roman Campagna is a prairie.  Peoria is in a most lovely situation.  In fact I am so delighted that I am as full of superlatives as the Italian language.  I could, however, find fault enough, if you ask what I dislike.”

But no one did ask; it is not worth while where there is so much to admire.  Yet the following is a good statement of the shadow side.

“As to the boasts about the rapid progress here, give me rather the firm fibre of a slow and knotty growth.  I could not help, thinking as much when I was talking to E. the other day, whom I met on board the boat.  He quarrelled with Boston for its slowness; said it was a bad place for a young man.  He could not make himself felt, could not see the effects of his exertions as he could here.—­To be sure he could not.  Here he comes, like a yankee farmer, with all the knowledge that our hard soil and laborious cultivation could give him, and what wonder if he is surprised at the work of his own hands, when he comes to such a soil as this.  But he feeds not so many mouths, though he tills more acres.  The plants he raises have not so exquisite a form, the vegetables so fine a flavor.  His cultivation becomes more negligent, he is not so good a farmer.  Is not this a true view?  It strikes me continually.  The traces of a man’s hand in a new country are rarely productive of beauty.  It is a cutting down of forest trees to make zigzag fences.”