1.  There are days[470] which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts.  These halcyons[471] may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of Indian Summer.[472] The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields.  To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough.  The solitary places do not seem quite lonely.  At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.  The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes into these precincts.  Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes.  Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her.  We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom.  How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us.  The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic.  The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us.  The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye.  The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles.  Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year.  How easily we might walk onward into opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature.

2.  These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us.  These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us.  We come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise.  We never can part with it; the mind loves its old home:  as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet.  It is firm water:  it is cold flame:  what health, what affinity!  Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother, when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our nonsense.  Cities