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two in their extremes.
Mr. Ellison's first step regarded, of course, the choice of a locality,
and scarcely had he commenced thinking on this point, when the luxuriant
nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention. 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.
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