But, then, there are the brighter features of humanity, which sometimes hang across the wanderer's pathway like the beautiful tints of a summer evening bow; and which, as they are oftenest met reposing beneath the cool, sequestered shades of {64} retirement, where the roar and tumult of a busy world are as the heavy swing of the distant wave, so there, oftener than elsewhere, they serve to cheer the pilgrim traveller's heart. Ah! it is very sweet, from the dull Rembrandt shades of which human character presents but too much, to turn away and dwell upon these green, beautiful spots in the wastes of humanity; these _oases_ in a desert of barrenness; to hope that man, though indeed a depraved, unholy being, is not that _thing_ of utter detestation which a troubled bosom had sometimes forced us to believe. At such moments, worth years of coldness and distrust, how inexpressibly grateful is it to feel the young tendrils of the heart springing forth to meet the proffered affection; curling around our race, and binding it closer and closer to ourselves. But your pardon, reader: my wayward pen has betrayed me into an episode upon poor human nature most unwittingly, I do assure thee. I was only endeavouring to present a few ideas circumstances had casually suggested, which I was sure would commend themselves to every thinking mind, and which some incidents of my wayfaring may serve to illustrate, when lo! forth comes an essay on human nature. It reminds one of Sir Hudibras, who _told the clock by algebra_, or of Dr. Young's satirised gentlewoman, who _drank tea by stratagem_. "How little do men realize the loveliness of this visible world!" is an exclamation which has oftentimes involuntarily left my lips while gazing upon the surpassing splendour of a prairie-sunrise. This is at all times a glorious hour, but to a lonely traveller {65} on these beautiful plains of the departed Illini, it comes on with a charm which words are powerless to express. We call our world a RUIN. Ah! it _is_ one in all its moral and physical relations; but, like the elder cities of the Nile, how vast, how magnificent in its desolation! The astronomer, as he wanders with scientific eye along the sparkling galaxy of a summer's night, tells us that among those clustering orbs, far, far away in the clear realms of upper sky, he catches at times a glimpse of _another_ world! a region of untold, unutterable brightness! the high empyrean, veiled in mystery! And so is it with our own humbler sphere; the glittering fragment of a world _we_ have never known ofttimes glances before us, and then is gone for ever.