No More Learning

When first we
climb their summits and observe their lesser irregularities, we do not
give credit to the comprehensive intelligence which shaped them; but
when afterward we behold their outlines in the horizon, we confess
that the hand which moulded their opposite slopes, making one to
balance the other, worked round a deep centre, and was privy to the
plan of the universe. So is the least part of nature in its bearings
referred to all space. These lesser mountain ranges, as well as the
Alleghanies, run from northeast to southwest, and parallel with these
mountain streams are the more fluent rivers, answering to the general
direction of the coast, the bank of the great ocean stream itself.
Even the clouds, with their thin bars, fall into the same direction by
preference, and such even is the course of the prevailing winds, and
the migration of men and birds. A mountain chain determines many
things for the statesman and philosopher. The improvements of
civilization rather creep along its sides than cross its summit. How
often is it a barrier to prejudice and fanaticism! In passing over
these heights of land, through their thin atmosphere, the follies of
the plain are refined and purified; and as many species of plants do
not scale their summits, so many species of folly, no doubt, do not
cross the Alleghanies; it is only the hardy mountain-plant that creeps
quite over the ridge, and descends into the valley beyond.

We get a dim notion of the flight of birds, especially of such as fly
high in the air, by having ascended a mountain. We can now see what
landmarks mountains are to their migrations; how the Catskills and
Highlands have hardly sunk to them, when Wachusett and Monadnock open
a passage to the northeast; how they are guided, too, in their course
by the rivers and valleys; and who knows but by the stars, as well as
the mountain ranges, and not by the petty landmarks which we use. The
bird whose eye takes in the Green Mountains on the one side, and the
ocean on the other, need not be at a loss to find its way.

At noon we descended the mountain, and, having returned to the abodes
of men, turned our faces to the east again; measuring our progress,
from time to time, by the more ethereal hues which the mountain
assumed. Passing swiftly through Stillwater and Sterling, as with a
downward impetus, we found ourselves almost at home again in the green
meadows of Lancaster, so like our own Concord, for both are watered by
two streams which unite near their centres, and have many other
features in common. There is an unexpected refinement about this
scenery; level prairies of great extent, interspersed with elms and
hop-fields and groves of trees, give it almost a classic appearance.
This, it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs.
Rowlandson's
capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but from this July
afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed as remote
as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New England.
On beholding a picture of a New England village as it then appeared,
with a fair open prospect, and a light on trees and river, as if it
were broad noon, we find we had not thought the sun shone in those
days, or that men lived in broad daylight then. We do not imagine the
sun shining on hill and valley during Philip's war, nor on the
war-path of Paugus, or Standish, or Church, or Lovell, with serene
summer weather, but a dim twilight or night did those events transpire
in. They must have fought in the shade of their own dusky deeds.

At length, as we plodded along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as
dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or
proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the
confused material of thought, and we found ourselves mechanically
repeating some familiar measure which timed with our tread; some verse
of the Robin Hood ballads, for instance, which one can recommend to
travel by:--

"Sweavens are swift, sayd lyttle John,
As the wind blows over the hill;
For if it be never so loud this night,
To-morrow it may be still. "

And so it went, up-hill and down, till a stone interrupted the line,
when a new verse was chosen:--

"His shoote it was but loosely shott,
Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,
For it mett one of the sheriffe's men,
And William a Trent was slaine. "

There is, however, this consolation to the most wayworn traveler, upon
the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly
symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into
the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon,
from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his
old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it
is yet sincere experience.

Leaving the Nashua, we changed our route a little, and arrived at
Stillriver Village, in the western part of Harvard, just as the sun
was setting. From this place, which lies to the northward, upon the
western slope of the same range of hills on which we had spent the
noon before, in the adjacent town, the prospect is beautiful, and the
grandeur of the mountain outlines unsurpassed. There was such a repose
and quiet here at this hour, as if the very hillsides were enjoying
the scene; and as we passed slowly along, looking back over the
country we had traversed, and listening to the evening song of the
robin, we could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the
bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume always a
crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.

And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let
us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We
will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level
life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest
valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour,
as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen
from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command
an uninterrupted horizon.