little past is it and capable of record that it is but the hint of a prophecy. It is the history of gravitation. It has no history more than God. It circulates and resounds forever, and only flows like the sea or air. . . . . Why, if I should sit down to write its story, the west wind would rise to refute me. Properly speaking there can be no history but natural history, for there is no past in the soul, but in nature. . . . . I might as well write the history of my aspirations. Does not the last and highest contain them all? Do the lives of the great composers contain the facts which interested them? What is this music? why, thinner and more evanescent than ether? Subtler than sound, for it is only a disposition of sound. It is to sound what color is to matter. It is the color of a flame, or of the rainbow, or of water. Only one sense has known it. The least profitable, the least tangible fact, which cannot be bought or cultivated but by virtuous methods, and yet our ears ring with it like shells left on the shore.
March 8, 1853. 10 a. m. Rode to Saxonville with F. B. to look at a small place for sale, via Wayland. Return by Sudbury. On wheels in snow. A spring sheen on the snow. The melting snow running and sparkling down hill in the ruts was quite spring-like. . . . . Saw a mink run across the road in Sudbury, a
