d actions in nature, is so needful to man,
that, in its lowest functions, it seems to lie on the confines of
commodity and beauty. To the body and mind which have been
cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and
restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din
and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man
again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye
seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can
see far enough.

But in other hours, Nature satisfies by its loveliness, and without any
mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spectacle of morning from the
hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sun-rise, with
emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of
cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as
a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid
transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I
dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify
us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I
will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria;
the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of
faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the
understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy
and dreams.

Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the afternoon,
was the charm, last evening, of a January sunset. The western clouds
divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with
tints of unspeakable softness; and the air had so much life and
sweetness, that it was a pain to come within doors. What was it that
nature would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose of the
valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakspeare could not
reform for me in words? The leafless trees become spires of flame in
the sunset, with the blue east for their back-ground, and the stars of
the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble
rimed with frost, contribute something to the mute music.

The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country landscape is
pleasant only half the year. I please myself with the graces of the
winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by
the genial influences of summer. To the attentive eye, each moment
of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beho