But, however paradoxical it may seem, these men do dwell in the grand universe of God--and they do possess inexhaustible minds: and they have been compelled to quench the brightest flames and to prevent the swelling of the purest fountains of their existence, in order to descend to the condition of which they complain. The Creator doomed them to no such degradation. The truth is, they know nothing of themselves. They do not understand their relations to the creation that surrounds them. They do not comprehend the great purpose to which all their labors should tend. They waste those hours which might be devoted to the elevation of their being, in practices that render them insensible to the glories of the universe in which they dwell, and to the sublime destiny for which they were created. They deny themselves to be the workmanship of God.
The sultry heat of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movement of the crowd, and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet, the quiet seclusion of the grove, and the gossip of a woodland brook.
It was a feeling of this kind that prompted me, during my residence in the north of France, to pass one of the summer months at Auteuil--the pleasantest of the many little villages that lie in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. It is situated on the outskirts of the _Bois de Boulogne_--a wood of some extent, in whose green alleys the dusty cit enjoys the luxury of an evening drive, and gentlemen meet in the morning to give each other satisfaction in the usual way. A cross-road, skirted with green hedge-rows, and over-shadowed by tall poplars, leads you from the noisy highway of St. Cloud and Versailles to the still retirement of this suburban hamlet. On either side the eye discovers old chateaux amid the trees, and green parks, whose pleasant shades recall a thousand images of La Fontaine, Racine, and Moliere; and on an eminence, overlooking the windings of the Seine, and giving a beautiful though distant view of the domes and gardens of Paris, rises the village of Passy, long the residence of our countrymen Franklin and Count Rumford.