_Feb. 11, '80_.--At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the opera house, Philadelphia--the band a small but first-rate one. Never did music more sink into and soothe and fill me--never so prove its soul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in the rendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by the well-chosen and perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello and contrabass,) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders. Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods--but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless--often the sentiment of the postures of naked children playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly--every motion a study. I allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own pensiveness, joyousness. A HINT OF WILD NATURE _Feb. 13_.--As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flock of wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital though momentary view of them, and then of their course on and on southeast, till gradually fading--(my eyesight yet first rate for the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading.) Queer thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing these creatures cleaving the sky--the spacious, airy realm--even the prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no sun shining)--the waters below--the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for a minute--flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with her eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of sea, sky, shore--and then disappearing in the distance. LOAFING IN THE WOODS