*     MILWAUKIE.                                         75
especiaUy, Good Sense, because where you do not go yourself,
you do not object to another's going, if he will. You are really
Uberal. You, Old Church, are of use, by keeping unforgot the
effigies of old reUgion, and reviving the tone of pure Spenserian
sentiment, which this time is apt to stifle in its childish haste.
But you are very faulty in censuring and wishing to limit, others
by your own standard. You, Self-Poise, fiU a priestly office.
Could but a larger intelUgence of the vocations of others, and a
tender sympathy with their individual natures, be added, had you
more of love, or more of apprehensive genius, (for either would
give you the needed expansion and delicacy,) you would command
my entire reverence. As it is, I must at times deny and oppose
you, and so must others, for you tend, by your influence, to ex-
clude us from our fuU, free Ufe. We must be content when you
censure, and rejoiced when you approve ; always admonished to
good by your whole being, and sometimes by your judgment
Do not blame me that I have written so much suggested by
the German seeress, whUe you were looking for news of the West
Here on the pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the Norwe-
gians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old
legendary lore, of modern wonder, they have already planted
amid the Wisconsin forests ? Soon, their tales of the origin of
things, and the Providence which rules them, will be so mingled
with those of the Indian, that the very oak-tree will not know
them apart, — wiU not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid,
or a Winnebago oak.
Some seeds of all growths that have ever been known in this
world might, no doubt, already be found in these Western wilds,
if we had the power to call them to life.
I saw, in the newspaper, that the American Tract Society
boasted of their agent's having exchanged, at a Western cabin
door, tracts for the "DevU on Two Sticks," and then burnt that
more entertaining than edifying volume. No wonder, though,
they study it there.    Could one but have the gift of reading the