24–30 September 1838

Nature a Resource. — Nature is the beautiful asylum to which we look in all the years of striving and conflict as the assured resource when we shall be driven out of society by ennui or chagrin or persecution or defect of char- acter. I say, as I go up the hill and through the wood and see the soliciting plants, I care not for you, mosses and lichens, and for you, fugitive birds, or secular rocks! Grow, fly, or sleep there in your order, which I know is beautiful, though I perceive it not; I am con- tent not to perceive it. Now have I entertain- ment enough with things nearer, homelier. Things wherein passion enters, and hope and fear have not yet become too dangerous, too insipid, for me to handle. But by and by, if men shall drive me out, if books have become stale, I see gladly that the door of your palace of magic stands ajar, and my age Shall find the antique hermitage The hairy gown and mossy cell.

The kiss of the Dryads is not soft; the kiss of the Oreads is still. A good woodland day or two with John Lewis Russell who came here, and showed me mushrooms, lichens and mosses, a man in whose mind things stand in the order of cause and effect, and not in the order of a shop, or even of a cabinet.

Like-minded. — Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood." . . .

Nearness and distinctness seem to be con- vertible. A noise, a jar, a rumble, is infinitely far off from my nature, though it be within a few inches of the tympanum, but a voice speaking the most intelligible of propositions is so near as to be already a part of myself.