s. It has no personality
because it has so many. It is a salt abstraction. You might as well
think of loving a glittering generality like "the American woman." One
would be more to the purpose.

Mountains are more satisfying because they are more individual. It is
possible to feel a very strong attachment for a certain range whose
outline has grown familiar to our eyes, or a clear peak that has looked
down, day after day, upon our joys and sorrows, moderating our passions
with its calm aspect. We come back from our travels, and the sight of
such a well-known mountain is like meeting an old friend unchanged.
But it is a one-sided affection. The mountain is voiceless and
imperturbable; and its very loftiness and serenity sometimes make us the
more lonely.

Trees seem to come closer to our life. They are often rooted in our
richest feelings, and our sweetest memories, like birds, build nests
in their branches. I remember, the last time that I saw James Russell
Lowell, (only a few weeks before his musical voice was hushed,) he
walked out with me into the quiet garden at Elmwood to say good-bye.
There was a great horse-chestnut tree beside the house, towering above
the gable, and covered with blossoms from base to summit,--a pyramid of
green supporting a thousand smaller pyramids of white. The poet looked
up at it with his gray, pain-furrowed face, and laid his trembling hand
upon the trunk. "I planted the nut," said he, "from which this tree
grew. And my father was with me and showed me how to plant it."

Yes, there is a good deal to be said in behalf of tree-worship; and when
I recline with my friend Tityrus beneath the shade of his favourite oak,
I consent in his devotions. But when I invite him with me to share my
orisons, or wander alone to indulge the luxury of grateful, unlaborious
thought, my feet turn not to a tree, but to the bank of a river, for
there the musings of solitude find a friendly accompaniment, and human
intercourse is purified and sweetened by the flowing, murmuring water.
It is by a river that I would choose to make love, and to revive old
friendships, and to play with the children, and to confess my faults,
and to escape from vain, selfish desires, and to cleanse my mind from
all the false and foolish things that mar the joy and peace of living.
Like David's hart, I pant for the water-brooks. There is wisdom in the
advice of Seneca, who says, "Where a spring rises, or a river flows,
there should w