Here its voice resounds within the hollow
crags; there it goes onward; talking to itself, with babbling din, of its
own wild thoughts and fantasies,--the voice of solitude and the
wilderness,--loud and continual, but which yet does not seem to disturb
the thoughtful wanderer, so that he forgets there is a noise. It talks
along its storm-strewn path; it talks beneath tall precipices and high
banks,--a voice that has been the same for innumerable ages; and yet, if
you listen, you will perceive a continual change and variety in its
babble, and sometimes it seems to swell louder upon the ear than at
others,--in the same spot, I mean. By and by man makes a dam for it, and
it pours over it, still making its voice heard, while it labors. At one
shop for manufacturing the marble, I saw the disk of a sun-dial as large
as the top of a hogshead, intended for Williams College; also a small
obelisk, and numerous gravestones. The marble is coarse-grained, but of
a very brilliant whiteness. It is rather a pity that the cave is not
formed of some worthless stone.
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