I am looking forward with much joy to once more ‘experiencing a European spring. What is called spring here, is like a leap of Nature from the cold shivers into fever heat. In these transitions Nature is unnatural; and it is neither conducive to health, nor is it aesthetic. American nature, like American humanity, is much more inhuman than the European, even where culture has come to its aid; and we, with our European depth of feeling, remain orphaned, because we nowhere meet with any response. In order to infuse our own life into a local landscape, we must either first transform it, or become bound to it by the most painful recollections. But even then one must not live near too many people. In Germany, or Switzerland, I felt at home in every pretty spot, even when I had been there but a few days. Here, even the flowers, that I myself have planted, remain strangers to me. Last year I had a couple of crickets about my fireplace. They were the only thing that could really create an illusion for me; but I do not understand how they came here.
This American world is made for homesickness. But what a condition to be in, always to be homesick and never to have a home!
I believe that all those whom you count among the despairing are the homesick, homeless wanderers. There is a sort of intellectual or ideal gypsydom, and we all belong to it. But we are worse off than the gypsies, for they at least hold together, and
