Those who first built it, coming from old France, with the memory and tradition of feudal days and customs weighing on them, were unquestionably behind their age, and those who now inhabit it and repair it are behind their ancestors. It is as if the inhabitants of Boston should go down to Fort Independence, or the inhabitants of New York should go over to Castle William, to live. I rubbed my eyes to be sure that I was in the Nineteenth Century. That would be a good place to read Froissart’s Chronicles, I thought. It is a specimen of the Old World in the New. It is such a reminiscence of the Middle Ages as one of Scott’s novels. Those old chevaliers thought they could transplant the feudal system to America. It has been set out, but it has not thriven.[316] Might I not walk a little further, till I hear new crickets, till their creak has acquired some novelty, as if they were a new species whose habitat I had reached?[317] The air is filled with mist, yet a transparent mist, a principle in it you might call _flavor_, which ripens fruits. This haziness seems to confine and concentrate the sunlight, as if you lived in a halo. It is August. A flock of forty-four young turkeys with their old [_sic_], half a mile from a house on Conantum by the river, the old faintly gobbling, the half-grown young peeping. Turkey-men! _Gerardia glauca_ (_quercifolia_, says one), tall gerardia, one flower only left; also _Corydalis glauca_. _Aug. 30. Saturday._ I perceive in the Norway cinquefoil (_Potentilla Norvegica_), now nearly out of blossom, that the alternate five leaves of the calyx are closing over the seeds to protect them. This evidence of forethought, this simple _reflection_ in a double sense of the term, in this flower, is affecting to me, as if it said to me: “Even I am doing my appointed work in this world faithfully. Not even do I, however obscurely I may grow among the other loftier and more famous plants, shirk my work, humble weed as I am. Not even when I have blossomed, and have lost my painted petals and am preparing to die down to my root, do I forget to fall with my arms around my babe, faithful to the last, that the infant may be found preserved in the arms of the frozen mother.” That thus all the Norway cinquefoils in the world had curled back their calyx leaves, their warm cloaks, when now their flowering season was past, over their progeny, from the time they were created! There is one door closed, of the closing year. Nature ordered this bending back of the calyx leaves, and every year since this plant was created her order has been faithfully obeyed, and this plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. I am not ashamed to be contemporary with the Norway cinquefoil. May I perform my part as well![318] There is so much done toward closing up the year’s accounts. It is as good as if I saw the great globe go round. It is as if I saw the Janus doors of the year closing. The fall