After some silence, Sylvester began; "You would probably like to be at Eisenach among your friends. Your parents, the excellent countess, your father's upright neighbors, and the old chaplain make a fair social circle. Their conversation must have produced an early influence upon you, particularly as you were the only child. I also imagine the country to be very striking and agreeable." "I learn for the first time," said Henry, "to esteem my native country properly, since my absence, and the sight of many other lands. Every plant, every tree, every hill and mountain has its own horizon, its peculiar landscape, which belongs to it, and explains its whole structure and nature. Only men and animals can visit all countries; all countries are theirs. Thus together they form one great region, one infinite horizon, whose influence upon men and animals is just as visible, as that of a more narrow circuit upon the plant. Hence men who have travelled, birds of passage, and beasts of prey, are distinguished among other faculties, for a remarkable intelligence. Yet they certainly possess more or less susceptibility to the influence of these circles, and of their varied contents and arrangement. The attention and composure necessary to contemplate properly the alternation and connexion of things, and then to reflect upon and compare them, are in fact wanting to most men. I myself often feel how my native land has breathed upon my earliest thoughts imperishable colors, and how its image has become a peculiar feature of my mind, which I am ever better explaining to myself, the deeper I perceive that fate and mind are but names of one idea." "Upon me," said Sylvester, "living nature, the emotive outer-garment of a landscape, has always produced a most powerful effect. Especially I am never tired of examining most carefully the different natures of plants. All productions of the earth are its primitive language; every new leaf, every particular flower, is everywhere a mystery, which presses outward; and since it cannot move itself at love and joy, nor come to words, becomes a mute, quiet plant. When we find such a flower in solitude, is it not as if everything about it were glorified, and as if the little feathered songsters loved most to linger near it? One could weep for joy, and separated from the world, plant hand and foot in the earth, to give it root, and never abandon the happy neighborhood. Over all the sterile world is spread this green, mysterious carpet of love. Every Spring it is renewed, and its peculiar writing is legible only to the loved one, like the nosegay of the East; he will read forever, yet never enough, and will perceive daily new meanings, new delightful revelations of loving nature. This infinite enjoyment is the secret charm, which the survey of the earth's surface has for me, while each region solves other riddles, and has always led me to divine whence I came and whither I go."