It is something for a man to look on the same scenes he looked on in his childhood, among the same fields and trees and household ways his forefathers tilled and planted, and knew before him. There is a sanctity grows round them year by year, enriching the heart, that cannot be broken through nor profaned without a loss never to be repaired. The exile can still listen to the whispering of the woods and the sound of the streams, but he remembers the woods and waters of his native land with tears. In twenty years I have grown old and an exile where I was born. Huge piles have covered the green where I played. The roar of busy streets insults the memory of the green lanes where I strolled at evening.
There is no country now. The city has invaded the solitude, and vice and impudent folly march in its rear. The bumpkin imitates the swagger of the citizen--the ploughman talks politics--the haymaker shakes the swathe and discourses of political economy--the reaper questions the revenue.
The mountains yet remain! I can see them, still, from my door; I can see them from the city streets. I can climb up their rugged sides still, and bless God that no discoverer as yet has uprooted the hills.
My heart is with them, for they have not changed. With them I have still a sovereign sympathy, for I can look on them and renew the fancies of my infancy. There is not a torrent pouring down their sides, not a crag nor a bramble, that is not reverend in my eye.
The world is drunk, and raves. Come away from these reeling bacchanals, and let us fare among the hills! Long ago, before the time of history, some naked savage here has worshipped the sunrise; some Druid sacrificed his victims; some barbarian Spartacus, lurking among the wild deer and the wolves, has defied his nation; some young warrior, with tears on his hardy cheek, has pointed up thither, whispering to one beside him dearer than his name, his clan, or his life, and sped away on the wings of love to the peace and safety of the mountains.
These noble fronts have never varied. The clouds float here over the same ridges on which the eyes of our childhood rested, and of the men of old time. The clank of monstrous engines has never yet dismayed the primeval stillness.