My whole life has lost the feeling of reality; I cannot tell why. Alike in the city, by the seashore, and here on the levels of this now leafless flat-land, I feel as if I were “moving about in worlds unrealized.” I know well enough the theory of life; what principles must sustain me; what great objects there are to live for; and still there remains the same emptiness, the same wonder in everything I do. I feel as I imagine the world might have felt, when going through some of its slow transitions from chaos into habitable earth,--waiting for sunshine, and bursting buds, and running rivers. I suppose I am not ready for full life yet. December 16. To-day there are rumors of a possible war with England, on account of the affair of Mason and Slidell, now prisoners in Boston harbor. It will be an outrage on humanity, a proof that England’s pompous declamations against slavery are all hypocritical, if this should be done; for all good authorities have declared that a war on this account would never be, unless a pretext for war was wanted. Perhaps Providence intends that this shall be brought out definitely as a struggle for principles; I think the nation and the army need some such lesson, and they will not learn it unless it is made very plain. December 22. I have found what are to be my two books of Bible study,--my two Sabbath books for the term. They are Neander’s “History of the Church,” and Conybeare and Howson’s “Life of St. Paul.” I have commenced them both, and find that satisfaction in them that is only met with by coming in contact with a character,--gifted, scholarly and Christian. How I should like to live a free life with nature one year through! out in the bracing winds, the keen frosty air, and over the crackling snowcrust, wherever I would; and then in summer, seek the mountains or the sea, as I chose; no study, no thoughts, but what came as a thing of course; no system, except nature’s wild ways, which have always their own harmony, evident enough when one enters into them, though understood by no mere observer. December 28. A pretty table found its way into my room Christmas morning, a gift contributed from two classes: I was half sorry and half glad to receive it; I don’t think I appreciate this kind of a present--it represents so many persons, some vaguely and some clearly fixed in memory--so much as a simpler token from the heart of one friend. And yet I feel the kindness which prompted the gift, and am grateful for it, I am sure. How ashamed one is obliged to be just now of the “mother country”! _Step-mother Country_ England ought to be called, for her treatment of us in our trouble. It is hard to believe that all she has said against slavery was insincere, and that she would really like to see the slave-power established and flourishing on the ruins of our free Republic; but her actions say so.