RODERICK HUDSON
and seem graceful to many persons even when they should be least convenient. Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke, listened to the gurgle of the river and sniffed the balsam of the pines. A gentle breeze had begun to tickle their summits and brought the smell of the mown grass across from the elm-dotted river-meadows. He sat up beside his companion and looked away at the far-spreading view, which affected him as melting for them both into such vast continuities and possibilities of possession. It touched him to the heart; suddenly a strange feeling of prospective regret took possession of him. Something seemed to tell him that later, in a foreign land, he should be haunted by it, should remember it all with longing and regret.
"It 's a wretched business," he said, "this virtual quarrel of ours with our own country, this everlasting impatience that so many of us feel to get out of it. Can there be no battle then, and is one's only safety in flight? This is an American day, an American landscape, an American atmosphere. It certainly has its merits, and some day when I 'm shivering with ague in classic Italy I shall accuse myself of having slighted them."
Roderick rose on still lighter wings to this genial flight, declaring that America was quite good enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it on. He had evidently thought nothing whatever about it—he was launching his doctrine on the inspiration of the moment. The doctrine expanded with the occasion, and he declared that
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