The domination of unyielding law in the puny affairs of men--the unfathomableness of Mœra, the lot no man can escape--comes upon one afresh upon this hill-top. What clay we are in the hands of fate! “ἅπαντα τíχτει χθὼν πάλιν τε λαμβáνει,” cried Euripides--“all things the earth puts forth and takes again.” But why should the efforts of men to build a human hive have here been wiped away--here where all nature is wholesome and in seeming unison with regulated human life? The air sparkles buoyantly up to your very eyes--and almost intoxicates you with its life and joy. Through its day-translucence crows cut their measured flight and brisker birds flitter, and when the young moon shines out of a warm west elegiac whippoorwills cry to the patient night. Neither volcanic ashes nor flood, whirlwind nor earthquake--mere decay has here nullified men’s efforts for congregated life and work. The soil of the hill, porous and sandy, is of moderate fertility. Native oaks and chestnuts, slender birches and fragrant hemlocks, with undergrowths of coral-flowering laurel, clothe its slopes. Over its sandstone ledges brooks of soft water treble minor airs--before they go loitering among succulent grasses and spearmint and other thirsty brothers of the distant meadows. Nearly two hundred years ago pioneers of a Roundhead, independent type--the type which led William of Orange across the Channel for preservation of that liberty which Englishmen for hundreds of years had spoken of as “antient”--such men broke this sod, till then untouched by axe or plough. They made clearings, and grouped their hand-hewn houses just where in cool mornings of summer they could see the mists roll up from their hill-locked pond to meet the rosy day; just where, when the sun sank behind the distant New York mountains, they could catch within their windows his last shaft of gold. Here they laid their hearths and dwelt in primitive comfort. Their summers were unspeakably beautiful--and hard-working. Their autumns indescribably brilliant, hill-side and valley uniting to form a radiance God’s hand alone could hold. Their winters were of deep snows and cold winds and much cutting and burning of wood. The first voice of their virid spring came in the bird-calls of early March, when snow melted and sap mounted, and sugar maples ran syrup; when ploughs were sharpened, and steaming and patient oxen rested their sinews through the long, pious Sabbath.