A profound silence reigned, as in all the wilderness of North America, interrupted only by the monotonous cooing of the wood pigeons or by the tapping of the green woodpeckers on the bark of trees. I was far indeed from believing that this place had once been inhabited, so much did nature still seem abandoned to itself; but when I reached the center of the island, I suddenly believed I had encountered the vestiges of man. Then I carefully examined all the surrounding objects, and soon I no longer doubted that a European had come to seek refuge in this place. But how his work had changed face! The wood that he had formerly cut in haste to make a shelter had since pushed up shoots; its fences had become live hedges, and his hut had been transformed into a grove. In the midst of these shrubs, one still perceived some stones blackened by fire around a small heap of cinders; doubtless this place was the hearth: the chimney, in crumbling, had covered it with debris. For some time I admired in silence the resources of nature and the weakness of man; and when finally I had to leave these enchanted places, I kept repeating sadly: What! already in ruins!

Gotta be Thoreau, right? Nope, but his last name is just as French. Alexis de Tocqueville penned this paragraph, which makes a surprise, sublime appearance in Volume I of Democracy in America. This little woodsy ramble doesn’t really fit into the chapter in which it appears, but I liked it so much on its own terms that I thought I’d share. I like its sensibility, the effortless shift from pigeons and huts to nature and man, and I’m tickled by the author’s pre-industrial ejaculations (”How his work had changed face!” “Already in ruins!”). I don’t know that a twenty-first century author could write a passage like that and be taken seriously; but it’s worth contemplating a time when nobility, poetry, and truth were considered to be achievable aims of discursive prose.