A WET AND HEAVY SNOW 

 "You glance up these paths, closely embraced by bent trees, as through the side aisles of a cathedral, and expect to 

 hear a choir chanting from their depths. (Jan. 30) ... What a comment on our life is the least strain of music I It 

 lifts me above all the dust and mire of the universe. . . . Almost all, perhaps all, our life is, speaking comparatively, a 

 stereotyped despair, i.e., we never at any time realize the full grandeur of our destiny. We habitually, forever and ever, 

 underrate our fate. (Jan. 13) ... There are in music such strains as far surpass any faith which man ever had in the 

 loftiness of his destiny. He must be very sad before he can comprehend them. . . . Music hath caught a higher pace than 

 any virtue that I know. It is the arch reformer. It hastens the sun to his setting. It invites him to his rising. It is the 

 sweetest reproach, a measured satire. (Jan. 8) ... When we are so poor that the howling of the wind shaU have a 

 music in it . . ." (Jan. iS)— Thoeeau 



