And our own dear Monticello; where has nature spread so
rich a mantle under the eye?--mountains, forests rocks, rivers. With
what majesty do we there ride above the storms! How sublime to look
down into the workhouse of nature to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain,
thunder, all fabricated at our feet! and the glorious sun when rising as
if out of a distant water, lust gilding the tops of the mountains, and
giving life to all nature! 1 hope in God, no circumstance may ever make
either seek an asylum from grief! With what sincere sympathy I would
open every cell of my composition, to receive the effusion of their
woes!
I would pour my tears into their wounds; and if a drop of balm could be
found on the top of the Cordilleras, or at the remotest sources of the
Missouri, I would go thither myself to seek and to bring it. Deeply
practised in the school of affliction, the human heart knows no joy
which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have not drank! Fortune can
present no grief of unknown form to me! Who, then, can so softly bind
up the wound of another, as he who has felt the same wound himself? But
Heaven forbid, they should ever know a sorrow! Let us turn over another
leaf, for this has distracted me.
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