range of the Adirondacks, Baldface and Mount
Seward close at hand, and far in the south the
cone of Marcy. That night we slept at a
loghouse, on the Indian carrying-place. Next day
we crossed the carry at daybreak, took the
Stony Creek Ponds, and entered the Racquette,
twenty miles above Tupper's Lake. Near
Tupper's Lake we passed the clearing of an
old hunter named Symonds, who lived forty
years a hermit in these wilds, and died here all
alone. He retired from place to place before
the approach of men, traversed the woods without
compass or blaze (a mark made by the
hunters upon trees to indicate the way), and
procured the few articles of necessity which the
forest could not afford, in exchange for skins.

Tupper's Lake is the most romantic and
picturesque spot in the Adirondacks. But, all the
Adirondack forests, lakes, and mountains are
for me invested with the same charm which,
as a boy, I used to feel in the woods where I
passed my school vacations.

            Strange and awful fears begin to press
            The bosom with a stern solemnity

in the presence of those whispering pines and
frowning mountains.

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

BEING in a humour for complete solitude and
uninterrupted meditation this autumn, I have
taken a lodging for six weeks in the most
unfrequented part of England—in a word, in
London.

The retreat into which I have withdrawn
myself, is Bond-street. From this lonely spot I
make pilgrimages into the surrounding wilderness,
and traverse extensive tracts of the Great
Desert. The first solemn feeling of isolation
overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of
profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that
sense of freedom, and feel reviving within me
that latent wildness of the original savage,
which has been (upon the whole somewhat
frequently) noticed by Travellers.

My lodgings are at a hatter's—my own
hatter's. After exhibiting no articles in his
window for some weeks, but sea-side wide-
awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of rough
waterproof head-gear for the moors and mountains,
he has put upon the heads of his family as
much of this stock as they could carry, and has
taken them off to the Isle of Thanet. His
young man alone remains—and remains alone—
in the shop. The young man has let out the
fire at which the irons are heated, and, saving
his strong sense of duty, I see no reason why
he should take the shutters down.

Happily for himself and for his country, the
young man is a Volunteer; most happily for
himself, or I think he would become the prey
of a settled melancholy. For, to live surrounded
by human hats, and alienated from human
heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance.
But the young man, sustained by practising his
exercise, and by constantly furbishing up his
regulation plume (it is unnecessary to observe
that, as a hatter, he is in a cock's-feather corps),
is resigned, and uncomplaining. On a Saturday,
when he closes early and gets his knickerbockers
on, he is even cheerful. I am gratefully
particular in this reference to him, because he is
my companion through many peaceful hours.
My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind
his counter, enclosed like the clerk's desk at
Church. I shut myself into this place of seclusion,
after breakfast, and meditate. At such
times, I observe the young man loading an
imaginary rifle with the greatest precision, and
maintaining a most galling and destructive fire
upon the national enemy. I thank him publicly
for his companionship and his patriotism.

The simple character of my life, and the calm
nature of the scenes by which I am surrounded,
occasion me to rise early. I go forth in my
slippers, and promenade the pavement. It is
pastoral to feel the freshness of the air in the
uninhabited town, and to appreciate the
shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who
purvey so little milk that it would be worth
nobody's while to adulterate it, if anybody were
left to undertake the task. On the crowded
sea-shore, the great demand for milk, combined
with the strong local temptation of chalk, would
betray itself in the lowered quality of the article.
In Arcadian London, I derive it from the cow.

The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis
altogether, and the primitive ways into which it
has fallen in this autumnal Golden Age, make it
entirely new to me. Within a few hundred
yards of my retreat, is the house of a friend who
maintains a most sumptuous butler. I never,
until yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine
black broadcloth. Until yesterday, I never saw
him off duty, never saw him (he is the best of
butlers) with the appearance of having any mind
for anything but the glory of his master and his
master's friends. Yesterday morning, walking
in my slippers near the house of which he is the
prop and ornament—a house now a waste of
shutters—I encountered that butler, also in his
slippers, and in a shooting suit of one colour,
and in a low-crowned straw hat, smoking an
early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met
in another state of existence, and that we were
translated into a new sphere. Wisely and well,
he passed me without recognition. Under his
arm he carried the morning paper, and shortly
afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the
pleasant open landscape of Regent-street, perusing
it at his ease under the ripening sun.

My landlord having taken his whole establishment
to be salted down, I am waited on by an
elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff,
who, at the shadowy hour of half-past nine
o'clock of every evening, gives admittance at
the street door to a meagre and mouldy old man
whom I have never yet seen detached from a
flat pint of beer in a pewter pot. The meagre
and mouldy old man is her husband, and the
pair have a dejected consciousness that they
are not justified in appearing on the surface of
the earth. They come out of some hole when