[Boston—Wednesday, 17 June 1868]
June 17th. Wednesday. Our first excessively (if “empty” were not there) warm day this season. Left home for Lebanon Springs, driving over from Pittsfield in the afternoon. The country was looking green and fresh, the recent and continued rains having kept back every thing but the grass and things that love the wet.
Found the fine hotel empty except the Schlesingers who were just departing with six horses, grooms, carriages, baby, etc. etc. but their gay equipages once fairly down the valley the place was left “to silence & to me” i.e. us.
We have been reading Landor’s Pericles and Aspasia; although the weather is intense the fine poise of those natures actually gives one a sense of coolness such is their repose. We have enjoyed it intensely. Aspasia says Sappho was a prey to all the passions. Æschylus & Euripides were their lords. Speaking again of a certain truth she has expressed, “Strong attachments are strong allies,” she says, “this truth is so clear as to be colorless.”—Indeed the whole book lifts us into a fine region of clear-aired poetry.
