28 September–4 October 1840

Yes, I resent this intrusion of a few persons on my airy fields of existence. Shall our conver- sation when we meet, O wife, or sister Eliza- beth, still return, like a chime of seven bells, to six or seven names, nor we freemen of nature be able long to travel out of this narrowed orbit ? Rather I would never name these names again. They are beautiful, and therefore we have given them place; but they affront the sun and moon and the seven stars when they are remembered once too often. Beware of Walls ; let me keep the open field. Douglas-like, I had rather hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep. Yet though I start like a wild Arab at the first suspicion of confinement, I have drank with great joy the contents of this golden cup hitherto. With great pleasure I heard George Bradford say, that this romance ' took from the lustre of the Reform- ers who alone had interested him before. I felt that what was private and genuine in these rare relations was more real, and so more public and universal than conventions for debate, and these weary speculations on reform. The call of a heart to a heart, the glad beholding of a new trait of character, — freedom (derived from the friendly presence of a fellow being) to do somewhat we have never done, — freedom to speak what I could never say, — these are discoveries in the Ocean of life, they are Perus, Brazils, and Ply- mouth Rocks, which to me were the more in- estimable that I had been such a homekeeper, and knew nothing beyond the limits of my own forest and village fair.