You
think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of
the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear
groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground on every
side.
Everything is on a large scale in these mighty forests. The horizon of
your life noiselessly widens, rolls gradually back into immeasurable
distances, and "deepens on and up." There is elasticity and stretch in
your thoughts. If you have read Richter, his towering, godlike dreams
of time and eternity here find their fit interpretation. He had his
Fichtelgebirge, and you have your hemlock mountains. Life seems heroic
once more: you exult in existence, and fondly think that here you could
be happy for ever. To live far away from the cruel, hurrying world in a
sweet little hamlet you wot of, sunk in the heart of the mountains at
the bottom of a deep, mossy mountain-chalice--a chalice of richest
chasing and filled with the pure wine of God, the mountain-air; to live
there during the long summer days; to stand in the flush of dawn with
bared head and inhale the fragrance of the dew-drenched grass and the
scarlet balsams; to walk with hushed step through the wide forests,
communing with the powerful sylvan spirits that labor there, watching
with what miraculous delicacy of touch their unseen fingers weave the
rich fantastic shrouds of fern and moss that deck the dead and fallen
trees or anon give to the living their faint and mottled tints of green
and gray;--to live thus through the summer hours, and through autumn,
winter, spring watch the unrolling of the gorgeous scroll of
Time,--this, you think, were living to some purpose!--WILLIAM SLOANE
KENNEDY.
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