or the weary tracks by which "Little Nell" wandered; or the haunted way in Sydney Dobell's ballad,
"Ravelstone, Ravelstone,
The merry path that leads
Down the golden morning hills,
And through the silver meads";
or the few American paths that genius has yet idealized; that where Hawthorne's "David Swan" slept, or that which Thoreau found upon the banks of Walden Pond, or where Whittier parted with his childhood's playmate on Ramoth Hill. It is not heights, or depths, or spaces that make the world worth living in; for the fairest landscape needs still to be garlanded by the imagination,—to become classic with noble deeds and romantic with dreams.
Go where we please in nature, we receive in proportion as we give. Ivo, the old Bishop of Chartres, wrote, that "neither the secret depth of woods nor the tops of mountains make man blessed, if he has not with him solitude of mind, the sabbath of the heart, and tranquillity of conscience." There are many roads, but one termination; and Plato says, in his "Republic," that the point where all paths meet is the soul's true resting-place and the journey's end.
The End.