I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the
      gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests
      that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains
      that look down upon all,—I love to regard these as themselves but
      the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole—a
      whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and
      most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets;
      whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign is the
      sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of a God;
      whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in
      immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own
      cognizance of the animalculae which infest the brain—a being
      which we, in consequence, regard as purely inanimate and material
      much in the same manner as these animalculae must thus regard us. Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on
      every hand—notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the
      priesthood—that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important
      consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which
      the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without
      collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms
      of those bodies are accurately such as, within a given surface,
      to include the greatest possible amount of matter;—while the
      surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser
      population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces
      otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an
      object with God, that space itself is infinite; for there may be
      an infinity of matter to fill it. And since we see clearly that
      the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—indeed, as
      far as our judgments extend, the leading principle in the
      operations of Deity,—it is scarcely logical to imagine it
      confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it,
      and not extending to those of the august. As we find cycle within
      cycle without end,—yet all revolving around one far-distant
      centre which is the God-head, may we not analogically suppose in
      the same manner, life within life, the less within the greater,
      and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring,
      through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or
      future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that
      vast “clod of the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to
      which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he
      does not behold it in operation. (*2)

      These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my
      meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the rivers
      and the ocean, a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail
      to term fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many,
      and far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with
      which I have strayed through many a dim, deep valley, or gazed
      into the reflected Heaven of many a bright lake, has been an
      interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and
      gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion
      to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that, “la solitude est une
      belle chose; mais il faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la
      solitude est une belle chose?” The epigram cannot be gainsayed;
      but the necessity is a thing that does not exist. It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant
      region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and
      melancholy tarn writhing or sleeping within all—that I chanced
      upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in
      the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath the
      branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I
      contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon
      it—such was the character of phantasm which it wore. On all sides—save to the west, where the sun was about
      sinking—arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river
      which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost
      to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be
      absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east—while
      in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length
      and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and
      continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall
      from the sunset fountains of the sky. About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in,
      one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the
      bosom of the stream. So blended bank and shadow there
      That each seemed pendulous in air—

      so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely
      possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf
      its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to include in a single view both the
      eastern and western extremities of the islet; and I observed a
      singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all
      one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed
      beneath the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with
      flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and
      asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful,
      erect—bright, slender, and graceful,—of Eastern figure and
      foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There
      seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no
      airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thing had motion
      through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable
      butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings. (*4)

      The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest
      shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded
      all things. The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form
      and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral
      shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its
      blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many
      small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that
      had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all
      about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the
      trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself
      therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness.