But we are at the close of our volume. Like the traveller at the end of his day’s journey, or the husbandman when the sun has sunk behind the hills, we willingly stop for repose, not without thoughts mainly, and perhaps necessarily, retrospective, but agreeable.
Reader! our barks have glided together for a period on the great stream which carries us alike to our future destiny. Thou hast been to me as a companion most pleasant, and an encourager. We have chatted, not always, perhaps, with sufficient reverence, or possibly sometimes frivolously, of the magnificence of our pathway,—of the mountain and the forest,—even of the birds that sing in the branches. By no means without dignity of subject,—the highest dignity attaches to all created things as the realized ideas of Omnipotence.
We could wish that some passages in our book were more clearly stated; but there is little that we would erase. We aspire to no perfection, much less have we accomplished any. Imperfection is a characteristic of mankind. Man exists in this world as an intellectual being, in a rudimental condition only.
Trust not too implicitly in the delights of the wilds, nor of solitude. They are temporary, and only to be as a teacher,—we must return ever to social life as the ark of safety, bringing, we may hope, the olive-branch of peace with knowledge. For all that I have said, or that any one else has said, our greatest and truest interests are in society. There only we acquire true cultivation and elevation. Science, Literature, Art, the great civilizers, there only flourish. Betake thyself not to the wilderness, or for a period only, and never longer than forty days,—never!—if there is any help for it.
We part now,—I would that it may be lover-like, oft promising to meet again, and hoping ever,—parted already, as it were, and distant, perhaps, by the length and breadth of our native land, or by the wide waters of the Atlantic,—from my heart I waft to thee a blessing and a farewell.
FOOTNOTES
[1]This name Kelp is applied to species of marine plants of the genus Macrocystis which grow profusely in the sea on the Pacific coast of the American continent. The species particularly alluded to as abounding on the coast of California is one of the most gigantic of plants, having been observed upwards of three hundred feet in length, and occurs in such immense and dense masses as to present formidable difficulties to the navigator. For this reason many localities of this extraordinary plant have been carefully marked in the charts containing the results of the Coast Survey now being made by order of the Government of the United States. All the recent travellers in California represent it as being cast on the shore in large quantities by the action of the sea, and it could probably be as readily applied to the production of Barilla (carbonate of soda) as any other marine species of the vegetable kingdom from which, in other countries, this important article of commerce is manufactured.
[2]Nearly the whole of the Zoological portion of this important work is omitted in the English edition (Quarto, London, 1843.)
[3]Dec. 1853.
[4]The works of this naturalist (who is Director of the Zoological Museum in Dresden) are in the highest degree important, and in fact indispensable to the ornithologist. In his great work, “The Complete Natural History” (Die Volstandigate Naturgeschichte, Dresden and Leipsic, now in the course of publication in parts), he has undertaken to give plates of all known species of birds, and has already published several thousand figures.