2 February 1852 – 8 February 1852

Sir Francis Head says that in America “the moon looks larger” than in Europe. Here, then, more moonshine is to be expected. Perhaps the sun looks larger also. Such are the advantages of the New World. The same writer says, “the heavens of America ap- pear infinitely higher,” “the stars are brighter.” ‘These, too, are encouraging facts, 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 will appear as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man, and that there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. We shall be more imaginative; we shall be clearer, as our sky, bluer, fresher; broader and more compre- hensive in our understanding, like our plains; our in- tellect on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and our lakes, and mountains and forests. Are not these advantages ? 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?! Sir F. Head thinks that the greater cold — equal to thirteen degrees of latitude — in this country is owing to the extensive forests, which prevent the sun and wind from melting the snows, which therefore accumulate on the ground and create a cold stratum of air, which, blown to warmer ones by the northwest wind, con- denses the last into snow. But, in Concord woods at any rate, the snow (in the winter) melts faster, and beside is not so deep as in the fields. Not so toward spring, on the north sides of hills and in hollows. At any rate I think he has not allowed enough for the warmth of the woods. The moose (and beaver?) will, perchance, one day become extinct, but how naturally would a future poet imagine or sculptor carve a fabulous animal with such branching and leafy horns, when this will in fact exist as a fossil relic! His horns a sort of fucus in bone, or a lichen. The elk (moose) may stand with the gryphon and dragon and dodo, etc., ete. The fireflies and bright-plumaged birds! do not they too indicate the peculiarities of the future American ? Head “felt that there was something indescribably awful and appalling in all these bestial, birdal, and piscal precautions” at the approach of winter, — going into winter quarters, migrating, etc. Head, coming to Canada in the winter, to a house in the fields covered with snow, did not know that he was surrounded by a lawn and garden, with gravelled walks, flowers, and shrubbery, till the spring thawed the snow. The race that settles and clears the land has got to deal with every tree in the forest in succession. It must be resolute and industrious, and even the stumps must be got out, — or are. It is a thorough process, this war with the wilderness, — breaking nature, taming the soil, feeding it on oats. The civilized man regards the pine tree as his enemy. He will fell it and let in the light, grub it up and raise wheat or rye there. It is no better than a fungus to him.

Mrs. Buttrick says that she has five cents for making a shirt, and that if she does her best she can make one in a day. It is interesting to see loads of hay coming down from the country nowadays, — within a week. 'They make them very broad and low. They do not carry hay by railroad yet. ‘The spoils of up-country fields. A mountain of dried herbs. I had forgotten that there * [Excursions, pp. 66, 67; Riv. 83, 84.] ever was so much grass as they prove. And all these horses and oxen and cows, then, are still fed on the last summer’s grass which has been dried! They still roam in the meads. One would think that some people regarded charac- ter in man as the botanist regards character in flowers, who says, “Character characterem non antecellit nisi constantia,” but this is well explained, and so that it becomes applicable to man, by this parallel aphorism of Linnzeus, “Character non est, ut genus fiat, sed ut genus noscatur.”’ It is apparently Fries who is made to say of his own system — or it may be Tuckerman who says it — that “By this key, I have not yet found that any plants, manifestly and by consent of all allied, are sundered.” Tuckerman says cunningly, “If the rapt admirer of the wonders and the beauties of life and being might well come to learn of our knowledge the laws and the history of what he loves, let us remember that we have the best right to all the pleasure that he has discovered, and that we are not complete if we do not possess it all. Linneeus was as hearty a lover and admirer of nature as if he had been nothing more.” Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on. It is pleasant to walk over the fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new. Is not all music a hum more or less divine? I hear something new at every telegraph-post. I have not got out of hearing of one before I hear a new harp. Thoughts of different dates will not cohere. Carried a new cloak to Johnny Riordan. I found that the shanty was warmed by the simple social relations of the Irish. On Sunday they come from the town and stand in the doorway and so keep out the cold. One is not cold among his brothers and sisters. What if there is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the heart! These Irish are not succeeding so ill after all. The little boy goes to the primary school and proves a for- ward boy there, and the mother’s brother, who has let himself in the village, tells me that he takes the Flag oj our Union (if that is the paper edited by an Irish- man). Itis musical news to hear that Johnny does not love to be kept at home from school in deep snows. In this winter often no apparent difference between rivers, ponds, and fields.

When I review the list of my acquaintances from the most impartial point of view, and.consider each one’s excesses and defects of character, — which are the subject of mutual ridicule, astonishment, and pity, — and I class myself among them, —I cannot help asking myself, “If this is the sane world, what must a madhouse be?” It is only by a certain flattery and an ignoring of their faults that even the best are made available for society. I have been to the libraries (yesterday) at Cambridge and Boston. It would seem as if all things compelled us to originality. How happens it that I find not in the country, in the fields and woods, the works even of like- minded naturalists and poets. ‘Those who have ex- pressed the purest and deepest love of nature have not recorded it on the bark of the trees with the lichens; they have left no memento of it there; but if I would read their books I must go to the city, — so strange and repul- sive both to them and to me, — and deal with men and institutions with whom I have no sympathy. When I have just been there on this errand, it seems too great a price to pay for access even to the works of Homer, or Chaucer, or Linnzeus. Greece and Asia Minor should henceforth bear Tliads and Odysseys as their trees lichens. But no! if the works of nature are to any extent collected in the forest, the works of man are to a still greater extent collected in the city. I have sometimes imagined a library, 2. e. a collection of the works of true poets, philosophers, naturalists, etc., deposited not in a brick or marble edifice in a crowded and dusty city, guarded by cold-blooded and methodical officials and preyed on. by bookworms, in which you own no share, and are not likely to, but rather far away in the depths of a prim- itive forest, like the ruins of Central America, where you can trace a series of crumbling alcoves, the older books protecting the most modern from the elements, partially buried by the luxuriance of nature, which the heroic student could reach only after adventures in the wilderness amid wild beasts and wild men. That, to my imagination, seems a fitter place for these inter- esting relics, which owe no small part of their interest to their antiquity, and whose occasion is nature, than the well-preserved edifice, with its well-preserved offi- cials on the side of a city’s square. More terrible than lions and tigers these Cerberuses. Access to nature for original observation is secured by one ticket, by one kind of expense, but access to the works of your predecessors by a very different kind of expense. All things tend to cherish the originality of the original. Nature, at least, takes no pains to in- troduce him to the works of his predecessors, but only presents him with her own Opera Omnia.