The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
There is something truly grand and impressive in forest scenery. The
lofty trees stretching high toward heaven; the graceful and majestic
waving of the branches, breathing nature's own soft music, which
scarcely removes the impression of profound silence--or which, to
parody the words of Milton, "just makes silence audible;" the deep,
and seemingly "boundless contiguity of shade," and the awful solitude,
make man shrink into himself, and feel that he is in the presence of
the Eternal. The weak spirit of a creature frail as man, is soon
overpowered, if it give itself up to the impressions naturally
produced by contemplating, in solitude, the grandeur of creation. The
first feeling is delight,--next admiration,--then wonder,--then
awe,--and then oppression;--and when it arrives at this point, the
sight of such a little cart-path as I have mentioned, is a great
relief to the feelings: for it shows that a being having passions, and
feelings, and sympathies like his own--as short lived, as dependant,
as insignificant as himself, is, or has been near. The deep shade has
been penetrated; the solitude has been interrupted; and an unbroken
and eternal silence has not forever reigned in the forest.
If the reader wishes, we will follow this path, and see whither it
will conduct us. Its course is a little devious, probably to avoid the
trunks of the trees, for not one appears to have been felled to
shorten the distance, which is about three fourths of a mile, under
the unbroken shade of the same noble woodland. Now the path begins to
descend a little, and by almost imperceptible degrees, you arrive in a
valley lying between two lofty ridges, that become more and more
abrupt as you advance; and when you have proceeded about the fourth of
a mile, they seem nearly perpendicular on either side. And their
summits being crowned by the lofty trees of the same far stretching
forest, adds much to the apparent depth of the valley, and you feel as
if verging towards the centre of the earth. That little ripling stream
in the valley, beside which we have been walking, now begins to widen,
and presently expands itself into a mimic lake, restrained on the one
hand and on the other by the mountain side, leaving just room enough
on the left for the unbroken cart-path. Your ear is now assailed by
the sound of rushing waters, and a roof appears beyond the lake--so
that a habitation of man is near. No, it is a mill; the dwelling house
is sixty rods below: there it lies, on a beautiful swell in the narrow
valley, made, it would seem, on purpose for its site--and the again
diminished stream is softly murmuring by its side. That is the Cottage
in the Glen. If you please, we will descend, and take our station in
front of it. Before we turned that angle to attain this spot, you were
about to exclaim, "This is the very home of solitude, shut out from
the rest of creation." But look straight down the valley, and far--far
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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