The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the mean while have seen a brown hawk, or a woodchuck, or a musquash creeping under the alders.

We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or a willow, and drew forth a melon for our refreshment, while we contemplated at our leisure the lapse of the river and of human life; and as that current, with its floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in review before us, while far away in cities and marts on this very stream, the old routine was proceeding still.  There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate, and the ebb always balances the flow.  All streams are but tributary to the ocean, which itself does not stream, and the shores are unchanged, but in longer periods than man can measure.  Go where we will, we discover infinite change in particulars only, not in generals.  When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth.  I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race.  But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable to-day.  “Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be performed, and is delayed in the execution.”  So says Veeshnoo Sarma; and we perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor.  Such is the evidence of history.

   “Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
   And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the Suns.”

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

There are many skilful apprentices, but few master workmen.  On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.  Who does not see that heresies have some time prevailed, that reforms have already taken place?  All this worldly wisdom might be regarded as the once unamiable heresy of some wise man.  Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.  Even they who first built these barns and cleared the land thus, had some valor.  The abrupt epochs and chasms are smoothed down in history as the inequalities of the plain are concealed by distance.  But unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.

Now that we are casting away these melon seeds, how can we help feeling reproach?  He who eats the fruit, should at least plant the seed; aye, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.  Seeds! there are seeds enough which need only to be stirred in with the soil where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor.  O thou spendthrift!  Defray thy debt to the world; eat not the seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but plant it rather, while thou devourest the pulp and tuber for thy subsistence; that so, perchance, one variety may at last be found worthy of preservation.