Let us then cherish and protect the thoughts and aspirations which these mighty minds have bequeathed us. Never did I think to find Wilson depreciating German literature. He is old, and should almost fear that posterity will retort upon him! A remnant of the old worshippers of the Ideal yet remain, haunting the ploughed fields of modern improvement, like the scattered and timid deer which are sometimes seen bounding along the margin of civilization. Like the White Lady of Avenel, they are year by year fading away—the golden zone which binds their misty drapery is becoming smaller and smaller—the clack of the useful mill, or the clashing of machinery, drowns their voices at their favorite fountains; and they are forced to shut up the beautiful visions which haunt their breasts, in the deep sources of emotion which glow and bubble in silence. The source of our most exquisite happiness is the cause of our keenest sufferings. The constant and feverish search after perfection soon disgusts the seeker. Expecting every thing for which the heart panteth, we rush onward from disappointment to despair. Hope’s false mirror is reversed; and pleasure appears as much diminished as it was before enlarged. He who is blest with an organization in which Ideality holds a conspicuous place, will be sure to form a complete system of metaphysics, graduated upon its impulses. If he be permitted to inhale the odor of the German Ideology, or of Platonism in its sublime beauty, he will thence be satisfied; and will yield up his own dreamings to the more powerful enchantments which the beautiful dead have thrown around him—for Ideality is the least conceited of the feelings. It is only proud of its _capacity to enjoy_. It was my fortune to be born and educated on the banks of the Hudson, where the noble river makes a long sweep westward, affording now an excellent landing for steamboats; but which, when I first snuffed up the free mountain air, resounded to nought but the wild warbling of the merry birds, or the occasional halloo of the far-off husbandman, as he urged his reluctant plough through the rich soil. There is now a nail-factory on the very spot where I used to stand, watching the glorious sunrise as its golden light filtered through the trees which crowned the eastern hill, and lit up the joyous brook which danced at my feet—while I _felt_ that the broad and whirling river at my back, was leaping and quivering in the gleam. Each tiny grot and harbor which my young imagination erst peopled with denizens from the land of dreams, now resounds to the uncouth “clink of hammers,” or the sacrilegious wheezing of a steam-engine! When I last visited my native village—’tis ten years ago—to seek once more the remembered haunts of childhood, I found a railroad dépôt on the very spot where the church in which I was christened once stood, and a cotton factory on my former bathing-ground by the margin of my dear old lake.