Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 | Page 7

This statement will do at least to
set against Buffon's account of this part of the world and its
productions.
Linnaeus said long ago, "Nescio quae facies laeta, glabra plantis
Americanis: I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the
aspect of American plants"; and I think that in this country there are no,
or at most very few, Africanae bestice, African beasts, as the Romans
called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the
habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the centre of
the East-Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually
carried off by tigers; but the traveller can lie down in the woods at night
almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts.
These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than

in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of
America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that
these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and
poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length,
perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the
American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I
believe that climate does thus react on man,--as there is something in
the mountain-air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to
greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these
influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his
life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be
clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky,--our understanding more
comprehensive and broader, like our plains,--our intellect generally on
a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and
mountains and forests,--and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth
and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear
to the traveller something, he knows not what, of laeta and glabra, of
joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world
go on, and why was America discovered?
To Americans I hardly need to say,--
"Westward the star of empire takes its way."
As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise
was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in
this country.
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England;
though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the
West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the
Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to
be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang
of to-day.
Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a
dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in
something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans,

and repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names
were music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend.
There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I
knew only in history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There
seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a
hushed music as of Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated
along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an
heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.
Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I
worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the
steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh
ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream,
and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio
and the Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's
Cliff,--still thinking more of the future than of the past or present,--I
saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the
foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were
yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age
itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest
and obscurest of men.
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I
have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the
world. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities
import it at any price. Men plough and sail for it.