whole, Concord River
is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so
near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it
without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and
in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green
meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance.
Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over
its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows
the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it.
Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along the brink,
sometimes sheltering himself behind a tuft of bushes, and trailing his
line along the water, in hopes to catch a pickerel. But, taking the
river for all in all, I can find nothing more fit to compare it with,
than one of the half-torpid earth-worms which I dig up for bait. The
worm is sluggish, and so is the river,--the river is muddy, and so is
the worm. You hardly know whether either of them be alive or dead; but
still, in the course of time, they both manage to creep away. The best
aspect of the Concord is when there is a northwestern breeze curling its
surface, in a bright, sunshiny day. It then assumes a vivacity not its
own. Moonlight, also, gives it beauty, as it does to all scenery of
earth or water.

* * * * *

_Sunday, August 7._--At sunset, last evening, I ascended the hill-top
opposite our house; and, looking downward at the long extent of the
river, it struck me that I had done it some injustice in my remarks.
Perhaps, like other gentle and quiet characters, it will be better
appreciated the longer I am acquainted with it. Certainly, as I beheld
it then, it was one of the loveliest features in a scene of great rural
beauty. It was visible through a course of two or three miles, sweeping
in a semicircle round the hill on which I stood, and being the central
line of a broad vale on either side. At a distance, it looked like a
strip of sky set into the earth, which it so etherealized and idealized
that it seemed akin to the upper regions. Nearer the base of the hill, I
could discern the shadows of every tree and rock, imaged with a
distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality;
because, knowing them to be unsubstantial, they assumed the ideality
which the soul always craves in the contemplation of earthly beauty. All
the sky, to