Yr friend,
G.W.C.
P.S. If you loved some one ardently who wonderfully
resembled personally some one you hated ardently what
would you do? It is not my case, but a question
some evil genius whispered to make me perspire in these
torrid days.
CONCORD, Sept. 14, 1845.
My dear Friend,—I returned last week from
a long and beautiful visit to the mountains, among
which I had never been before. I went in the middle
of July to Berkshire, and returned home for two or
three days to set off for the White Hills, and back
again through the length of Berkshire. In all
about seven weeks. The garden served us very well.
We had weeded so faithfully that weeds did not trouble
us, and Burrill stayed in Concord a part of the time
I was in New Hampshire.
When I first came towards the mountains it was twilight,
and they looked very cold and grim; their outline
traced against the sky, and seemingly made of some
other material than earth or sky—too dense
for the one and too ethereal for the other. But
when I came to them in broad day, they had lost their
terror, as any other night phantom would have done.
When I could scale them with my eye, and stand upon
their highest peak, I seemed to have subdued them.
But as I retreated, and looked back, they resumed
their twilight majesty; and I could not realize I had
been so proud among them. Yet, after all, they
did not command me as the sea does. The charm
of that is not robbed by being in it or upon it.
All night and all day its murmur sounds an infinite
bass to all that is done and said; and in the night,
when you awake, it holds you still in thrall.
Like the song of the locust in a summer noon, which
fills the air with music and intensifies the heat,
so the sound of the sea constantly draws thought and
life to its depth and sweetness. Among the hills
I was haunted with the vague desire of some corresponding
sound. They were like a dumb Apollo, a thunderless
Jupiter.
In Berkshire they are less grand than in New Hampshire,
but high enough to cease to be hills, and wooded quite
to the summit. They give an endless variety to
the landscape, and are full everywhere of beautiful
places and commanding prospects through the openings.
The aspect of the country and the character of the
people were so different from the country and people
near a city, that it seemed to be more recently created.
Frank Parley is there in Stockbridge, and seems to
be very happy. At Williamstown, the northern
town in the county, we saw George Wells. He has
only changed to become more entirely a collegian, but
retains the same cordiality and carelessness that
made us love him at Brook Farm. I have so many
things to say about my wanderings that I cannot write
any more, for I mean to come to Brook Farm and see
you some day during the autumn. In the late autumn
we are going to New York to pass the winter.
