In context, this passage carries many times the weight of any ordinary nature-notes: the book is already half over, a splitting head of steam has been built up and the reader is by now in no doubt that the luxury of summer is being withdrawn from the writer himself, from the historical district in which he writes, from all the artists he has ever personally known and from the America which he has for so long chronicled and which he is now ceasing even to distrust—Upstate shivers with the portent of an advancing ice-cap. Wilson’s monumental curiosity and zest of mind have not grown less, but by now they are like Montaigne’s, exiled within their own country and awaiting, without real hope, a better age which will know how to value them. Self-confidence remains, but confidence in one’s function ebbs; one’s books do not seem to have been much use; the public weal has proved itself an illusion and private life is running out of time. “C’est icy un livre de bonne foy, lecteur,”
