o fancy the fair Castles that stood
sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns,
and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the
straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with
her children round her:--all hidden and protectingly folded up in the
valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to
see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my
mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by
their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather,
proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a
culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the
smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were
boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the
air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as
plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready
here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its
love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as
in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide
Way-farings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in
its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general
propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.

"Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the
Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying
vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad
witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear
sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor
had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great
fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O
Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not thou
the 'Living Garment of God'? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE, then,
that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives
and loves in me?

"Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of that Truth, and
Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than
Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice
to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults;
like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated
heart, came tha