The old romance is dead. Yet--yet--as Kingsley cried, when he landed
on a West Indian island, 'At last!' so I, also, when I found myself in
New England, was ready to cry. 'At last!' The old romance is not
everywhere dead, since there can be found one Englishman who, when he
stands for the first time on New England soil, feels that one more
desire of his life has been satisfied. To see the East; to see India
and far Cathay; to see the tropics and to live for a while in a
tropical island; to be carried along the Grand Canal of Venice in a
gondola; to see the gardens of Boccaccio and the cell of Savonarola;
to camp and hunt in the backwoods of Canada, and to walk the streets
of New York, all these things have I longed, from youth upwards, to
see and to do--yea, as ardently as ever Drake desired to set an
English sail upon the great and unknown sea, and all these things, and
many more, have been granted to me. One great thing--perhaps more than
one thing, one unsatisfied desire--remained undone. I would set foot
on the shore of New England. It is a sacred land, consecrated to me
long years ago, for the sake of the things which I used to read--for
the sake of the long-yearning thoughts of childhood and the dim and
mystic splendours which played about the land beyond the sunset, in
the days of my sunrise.
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