Upon an isolated hill-top, in an open country,
we seem to ourselves to be standing on the boss of an immense
shield, the immediate landscape being apparently depressed below
the more remote, and rising gradually to the horizon, which is
the rim of the shield, villas, steeples, forests, mountains, one
above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens. The
most distant mountains in the horizon appear to rise directly
from the shore of that lake in the woods by which we chance to be
standing, while from the mountain-top, not only this, but a
thousand nearer and larger lakes, are equally unobserved.
Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works of the farmer, his
ploughing and reaping, had a beauty to our eyes which he never
saw. How fortunate were we who did not own an acre of these
shores, who had not renounced our title to the whole. One who
knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the
poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is what he has
bought. What I see is mine. I am a large owner in the Merrimack
intervals.
Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend,
Who yet no partial store appropriate,
Who no armed ship into the Indies send,
To rob me of my orient estate.
He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer
and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
