For the most part we are inclined to doubt the prevalence of gross superstition among the civilized ancients,—whether the Greeks, for instance, accepted literally the mythology which we accept as matchless poetry,—but we have only to be reminded of the kind of respect paid to the Sabbath as a holy day here in New England, and the fears which haunt those who break it, to see that our neighbors are the creatures of an equally gross superstition with the ancients. I am convinced that there is no very important difference between a New-Englander’s religion and a Roman’s. We both worship in the shadow of our sins : they erect the temples for us. Jehovah has no superiority to Jupiter . . .

  P.M.—To Mason’s pasture.

  The world now full of verdure and fragrance and the air comparatively clear (not yet the constant haze of the dog-days), through which the distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wetgreen, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green. May is the bursting into leaf and early flowering, with much coolness and wet and a few decidedly warm days, ushering in summer; June, verdure and growth with not intolerable, but agreeable, heat.