The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.

Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!