E are arrived at the last region of this forest, and at the crossing of other roads, answering to those which bear a heavenly name,
"A silvis silvas, et ab arvis arva ego cerno;"
but, though we had promise of a happy change on quitting the last road, the impressions caused by such tracts as we have been lately traversing do not yield all at once on leaving them. There we passed through scenes of ruin, that might recall the lines of the old poet, who views them as symbolical :
"Beeches and broad oaks
Were blowen to the ground,
Turned upward their roots,
In tokening of dread."
It is with the moral as with the forest journey that represents it. There are pauses in life, and times of transition, when, without being directly influenced by any of the many forms of evil, there is an experience of distress, a consciousness of having caught infection from the air one breathed, occasioned by a general retrospect of them all. Human kindness, divine charity, wise moderation, all must have suffered from having been placed in hostility to others. We resemble at present travellers who have not yet recovered from the effects of visiting those cypress swamps in the states of Delaware and of Maryland, which are also called dismal swamps, and swamps of distress; where the cedar and the bald cypress cover vast marshes, in which only bears and serpents live. The description given by Marbois in his letter to Malesherbes might convey an idea of