A PLACE FOR THOUGHT. 
47 
It is an admirable place to cure you of the great 
malady of the day—its shiftiness, its empty agitation. 
The time does not know its own disease; men say that 
they are clogged and cloyed, when they have scarcely 
skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive 
notion that the best of everything is superficial and 
external, and that it is sufficient to put their lips to 
the cup. But the surface is frequently froth. Lower 
down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must 
penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with 
things, willingly and by habit, so as to discover their 
harmony, in which lies true happiness and strength. 
The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of 
concentration. 
I love those spots which confine and limit the field 
of thought. Here, in this narrow circle of hill and 
wood, every change is purely external and wholly 
optical. With so many points of shelter, the winds, 
necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the 
atmosphere furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not 
certain that our ideas would here be strongly stimu¬ 
lated ; but he who comes with them fully aroused may 
long preserve and cherish them, without any interrup¬ 
tion of his dream; may seize and relish all the outer 
accidents, as well as the inner mysteries. The soul 
may here put forth its roots, and find that the true, 
the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface, 
but to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth. 
This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motion¬ 
less beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very 
