In
fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a
night's reflection induced him to abandon the idea. "Were I
misanthropic," he said, "such a locale would suit me. The thoroughness
of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and
egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not
Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression of solitude.
There must remain with me a certain control over the extent and
duration of my repose. There will be frequent hours in which I shall
need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have done. Let me
seek, then, a spot not far from a populous city- whose vicinity, also,
will best enable me to execute my plans."
In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for
several years, and I was permitted to accompany him. A thousand
spots with which I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation,
for reasons which satisfied me, in the end, that he was right. We came
at length to an elevated table-land of wonderful fertility and beauty,
affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that of
Aetna, and, in Ellison's opinion as well as my own, surpassing the
far-famed view from that mountain in all the true elements of the
picturesque.
"I am aware," said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep
delight after gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour,
"I know that here, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most
fastidious of men would rest content.
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