BUTLER PLACE, February 16th, 1840.

I have just been looking over a letter of yours, dearest Harriet, as old
as the 19th of last September, describing your passage over the Spluegen.
About four days ago I was looking over some engravings of the passes of
the Alps, in a work called "Switzerland Illustrated," by Bartlett, and
lingered over those attempts of human art with the longing I have for
those lands, which I always had, which has never died away entirely, but
seems now reviving again in some of its earliest strength: I can compare
it to nothing but the desire of thirst for water, and I must master it
as I may, for of those mountain-streams I fear I never shall drink, or
look upon their beauty, but in the study of my imagination.

In the hill-country of Berkshire, Massachusetts, where I generally spend
some part of the summer among my friends the Sedgwicks, there is a line
of scenery, forming part of the Green Mountain range, which runs up into
the State of Vermont, and there becomes a noble brotherhood of
mountains, though in the vicinity of Stockbridge and Lenox, where I
summer, but few of them deserve a more exalted title than hill. They are
clothed with a various forest of oak, beech, chestnut, maple, and fir;
and down their sides run wild streams, and in the valleys between them
lie exquisite lakes. Upon the whole, it is the most picturesque scenery
I have ever seen; particularly in the neighborhood of a small town
called Salisbury, thirty miles from Lenox. This is situated in a plain
surrounded by mountains, and upon the same level in its near
neighborhood lie four beautiful small lakes; close above this valley
rises Mount Washington, or, as some Swiss charcoal-burners, who have
emigrated thither, have christened it, Mount Rhigi.

In a recess of this mountain lies a deep ravine and waterfall; and a
precipice, where an arch of rock overhangs a basin, where, many hundred
feet below, the water boils in a mad cauldron, and then plunges away, by
leaps of forty, twenty, and twelve feet, with the intermediate runs
necessary for such jumps, through a deep chasm in the rocks, to a narrow
valley, the whole character of which, I suppose, may represent Swiss
scenery in _very small_.

A week ago J---- B---- and ---- left Philadelphia for the South; and
yesterday I received a letter giving a most deplorable account of their
progress, if progress it could be called, which consisted in going _nine
miles in four hou