Retrospect

of

Western Travel

Harriet Martineau

Contents

About this edition

Retrospect of Western Travel

Volume 1

Preface

The Voyage

First Impressions

The Hudson

Pine Orchard House

Weddings

High Road Travelling

Fort Erie

Niagara

Priestley

Prisons

First Sight of Slavery

Life at Washington

The Capitol

Mount Vernon

Volume 2

Madison

Jefferson’s University

Country Life in the South

City Life in the South

Restless Slaves

New Orleans

Mississippi Voyage

Compromise

Cincinnati

Probation

The Natural Bridge

Colonel Burr

Volume 3

Villages

Cambridge Commencement

The White Mountains

Channing

Mutes And Blind

Nahant

Signs of the Times in Massachusetts

Hot and Cold Weather

Originals

Lake George

Cemeteries

Colophon

About this edition

Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, the sixth of eight children, to a Unitarian family of Huguenot background. Despite being deaf for most of her life she was a prolific author and traveller, abolitionist, feminist, sociologist, and political commentator, and one of the first woman journalists. Her clear and simple style and her ability to explain complicated issues and to present her ideas in the form of stories gave her a wide readership and made her famous and wealthy; her first major series outsold Charles Dickens’ books.

She was incapacitated by illness from 1839-44, became very ill again in 1855 and wrote her Autobiography – though it was not published until her death in 1876.

In the early 1830s she published a series of stories on political economy which made her rich and famous.

In 1834, (about 50 years after the American Revolutionary War, around the time of the acquisition of Florida and Texas, and about 25 years before the begining of the American Civil War,) she made a two year visit to the United States. In 1837 she wrote Society in America, which gave an account with many statistics of her travels throughout America, her contacts with many and varied people, her generally favourable opinions of America, and her detestation of slavery. The book ran through several editions in two and three volume forms. Retrospect of Western Travel was published the following year ‘to communicate more of my personal narrative, … the lighter characteristics of men, and incidents of travel.’

The text was taken from the Online Library of Freedom site, and checked against the three volume Saunders and Otley edition in the Internet Archive and from the HathiTrust.org site. I have italicised the names of ships and books, set letters and documents off as blockquotes, and made changes to spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

Volume 1

Preface

When I finished my late work Society in America, I had not the most remote idea of writing any thing more on the subject of the New World. I have since been strongly solicited to communicate more of my personal narrative, and of the lighter characteristics of men, and incidents of travel, than it suited my purpose to give in the other work. It has also been represented to me that, as my published book concerns the Americans at least as much as the English, there is room for another which shall supply to the English what the Americans do not want, – a picture of the aspect of the country, and of its men and manners. There seems no reason why such a picture should not be appended to an inquiry into the theory and practice of their society: especially as I believe that I have little to tell which does not strengthen the feelings of respect and kindness with which the people of Great Britain are more and more learning to regard the inhabitants of the Western Republic. I have therefore willingly acceded to the desire of such my readers as have requested to be presented with my Retrospect of Western Travel.

Volume 1

The Voyage

“When the sun dawned, gay and glad,

We set the sail and plied the oar;

But when the night-wind blew like breath,

For joy of one day’s voyage more,

We sang together on the wide sea,

Like men at peace on a peaceful shore;

Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,

The helm made sure by the twilight star,

And in a sleep as calm as death

We the voyagers from afar

Lay stretched . . . . .”

Paracelsus, Part 4

The packet-ship in which my passage was taken, the United States, Captain Nathan Holdrege, was to have sailed from Liverpool on Friday the 8th of August, 1834, at eleven o’clock. At half past ten, my fellow traveller and I, with our friends, were on the way to the dock, in some doubt about our departure from the wind being directly against us, when we met a gentleman interested in the sailing of the vessel, who told us that we might turn back, as the Captain had given up all hope of getting out of port that day. This was uncomfortable news enough. We had bidden farewell to many friends, half the pain of parting was over, and there was little pleasure in having it all to go through again.

We resolved to proceed to the dock, to put our luggage on board, and see for ourselves the true state of affairs. It was not very agreeable. The deck was encumbered with water casks and chests; the Captain was fidgeting about, giving his orders in a voice rather less placid than ordinary; a great number of inquiring persons, who had come down to see us off, had to be told that we were not going today, and why; and several of the American passengers were on the spot, looking very melancholy. They had entered the 8th in their journals as the day of sailing, brought down their portmanteaus, paid their bills at the hotel, and taken leave of Boots and chambermaid. Here they were left with four-and-twenty dreary and expensive hours upon their hand – and who knew how many more than four-and-twenty? One declared that the wind appeared as if it had set in against us, and he should not be surprised if it was a week before we sailed. Their fate was so truly mournful, that I was ashamed of feeling any discomfiture on my own account, domesticated as I was in the nearest and dearest of homes, next to my own. Our disconsolate acquaintance among the passengers were invited to dispose of their evening with us; and we returned, to tell the children, and everybody whom we met, that we were not gone, and wherefore. Of course, we presently recollected several reasons why it was well that we had another day. There were two letters which it was highly desirable I should write from Liverpool rather than from New York; and the children had never before found leisure to show me the cupboards and shelves where they kept their playthings; so that if the wind had been fair, I should actually have gone away without seeing them.

We sauntered all the afternoon in the Zoological Gardens, and as we returned, caught each other looking up at every weathercock we passed. In the evening our visitors dropped in, each ready with a speculation as to how the wind would be tomorrow.

On the morrow, the weathercock told no better news; and a note was on the breakfast table which informed us that there was no chance of our sailing that day. I was now really sorry. It was Saturday; and I feared my host would write no sermon if I remained to keep his household in an unsettled state. Our sea dresses, too, would not serve for a Sunday in Liverpool, and our books and work were all on board, with our wardrobes. The tidings were therefore welcome which were brought early in the forenoon, that the Captain had engaged a steamboat to tow us out to sea. By eleven o’clock the carriage of a friend was at the door, with bouquets of flowers, and baskets of grapes and other acid refreshments, which it was thought might be welcome at sea.

“Have you no misgivings?” asked an intimate, before whose imagination the Western World now rose tremendous in its magnitude. “Have you no misgivings now?” I had none, and it was well. If I had such as would have made me draw back at the moment, what a world of good should I have foregone! Not only what knowledge, – but what a store of imagery! What intense and varied enjoyment! And, above all, what friends! When I now look back upon what I have gained, and at how small an expense of peril and inconvenience, I cannot but regard my setting foot on board ship as one of the most fortunate acts of my life.

When we arrived at the deck, we found there was really to be no further delay. The knots of friends, the crowds of gazers were gathering; the steamer was hissing and puffing in the river, and the song of the sailors was heard, as they were warping our ship out of the dock. In a few minutes, we and the other passengers were requested to step on board. I first carried my flowers down to my stateroom, intending to hide them there till we should be out of sight of land, when an apparition of fresh flowers upon deck might be more than commonly welcome. I then took my station by a window of the roundhouse, whence I could see all that passed on shore, without being much seen. Thence I could observe my brother and sisters speaking to each other, and pointing out things which I could easily interpret. It occurred to me that I could send them one more token, by means of the little waves which rolled away from the sides of our ship, and washed the pier on which the crowd was standing. I threw out a rose at a moment when I caught a watchful eye; and I saw it borne, after many vagaries, directly under their feet. Suddenly I missed them from the spot where they were standing, and supposed that they were quite tired, (as they well might have been,) and had gone home. But it was not so. They had withdrawn only in order to secure front places at the extreme end of the pier, whence they might watch us yet longer than from their former station. There they stood, as long as we could distinguish any forms from among the crowed. Then three cheers were exchanged between the crew and the shore, and the passengers strained their eyes no more.

The greater number then went below, to make arrangements in their staterooms; and afterwards ensued the ceremony of introducing the company to each other on deck. Our number was twenty-three, six of whom formed the party to which I belonged: or rather so it seemed to ourselves before we sent on board. The distinction was afterwards forgotten, for the company assembled was, with two or three exceptions, so exceedingly agreeable, and so wonderfully congenial, considering how accidentally we were brought together, that we mingled completely as one party. We had among us a Prussian physician; a New England divine; a Boston merchant, with his sprightly and showy young wife; a high-spirited young South Carolinian, fresh from a German University; a newly-married couple, whose station was not exactly discoverable while on board, but who opened a public house soon after their arrival in New York; a Scotch major, whose peculiarities made him the butt of the young men; an elderly widow lady; two amiable young ladies; and a Scotch lady, “of no particular age,” but of very particular placidity and good humour; and a youth out of Yorkshire, who was leaving his parents’ roof for the first time alone, and who was destined never to return to it. The number was made up by English and American merchants – young men so accustomed to pass between Liverpool and New York, that the voyage was little more to them than an expedition to Primrose Hill is to a cockney.

The cold dinner, and drinking of healths, customary on the day of sailing, succeeded. Then there was the library to look over, and trial to be made of a seat on the rail, whence we could see the dim shores, as we glided smoothly along in the wake of the steamer. By the time it was dusk, the latter had performed her engagement. We saw the payment handed over, and the shaking of hands of the two captains, and then the steamboat disengaged herself from us, and began ploughing her way to the north coast of Ireland. We felt very helpless when she was gone, the little wind there was being unfavourable. There was so little however, as to allow us novices a night of sound sleep at the outset.

On Sunday, we crept along in almost a calm, having a glimpse of the dim outline of the Isle of Man in the morning, and being still in sight of Holyhead in the evening. To me, it was a day of luxury; for jaded as I had been with business and novelty, there was no circumstance of the voyage that I valued so highly as the impossibility of receiving letters or news for three weeks or a month. The gliding on thus in a calm, with time to think and be still, was all that I wanted: but the Americans, who had home on the horizon before them, and longed to be at rest there, looked grave on this inauspicious beginning of their transit. On Monday, however, they felt, from another cause, a good deal worse. The wind had freshened; but I believe nobody cared which way, or how fast, it blew us. The only meal at which I was not present was that Monday’s dinner. I can testify to the breakfast and tea being quiet and sad enough, with a sprinkling of languid passengers at table, and a knowledge of how wretched all the rest were in their rooms.

On Tuesday began my experience of the pleasures of the sea. The wind had freshened to a strong breeze, which had so rocked us in our berths that I rose miserably ill. I was strongly persuaded of the necessity of exertion in seasickness, of having fresh air, and of getting out of the way of the sights and sounds of the cabin; and I therefore persevered in dressing and going up to the deck. There was the captain, with only one passenger to talk with, and heartily glad at the prospect of another being convalescent. He seated me on the rail, where I kept my eyes away from the helpless invalids who were strewed about the deck: and in half an hour I was quite well. We were careering along in most exhilarating style. The wind was so strong as to put the wearing a bonnet out of the question. I had happily been furnished with a sort of cap which no lady should go to sea without; – a black silk cap, well wadded. With the head thus defended, and a large warm cloak, a lady may abide almost any weather, and avoid the désagrémens and unwholesomeness of the cabin. My eye was never weary of watching of the dashing and boiling of the dark green waves, from the grey horizon to the ship’s side; and I know of no motion so gladsome as that of riding the high billows in a brisk breeze. The captain pointed out to me the first of the monsters of the deep that I ever saw; – a large black fish, tumbling about joyously by itself in the stormy sea, now throwing its thick body forward in ungainly gambols, and now rearing its forked tail perpendicularly, as it prepared to dive.

My flowers did not disappoint my expectations. They were still quite fresh on the Wednesday, when, as we were out of sight of land, I carried them up to the deck, and gave each passenger one, – that being precisely my supply. I never saw flowers give so much pleasure before, except in cases of long confinement from illness. Truly they were very like a message from home.

In two or three days more, all but two ladies and one gentleman had settled themselves into the routine of sea life. It was very desirable that they should do so, as on the 15th we were still little more than 300 miles from Liverpool. It would have been dismal to add idleness and unsettledness to the discouragement caused by such a beginning of our voyage. Our mode of life was very simple and quiet: to me, very delightful. I enjoyed it so much that I delayed beginning my letters home till we had been a week at sea, lest I should write some extravagance which I should afterwards have to qualify or retract. None of my subsequent experience, however, had altered my feeling that a voyage is the most pleasant pastime I have ever known.

The passengers showed themselves upon deck some time between seven and nine in the morning. Each one either made his way to the binnacle, to see for himself what course we were upon, or learned the important intelligence from some obliging individual who held the fact at the general service. We all asked the captain at first: but soon discontinued the practice, when we found that favourable answers were likely to be rare, and how it must vex him to tell us every morning that we were scarcely getting on at all.

After a brisk morning’s walk upon deck, no one was sorry to hear the breakfast bell. Breakfast was the most cheerful meal of the day. If ever there was any news to tell, it was then. The early risers could sometimes speak to the sluggards of a big fish, of a passing sail, of a frolic among the sailors. I was asked once by a passenger, it a tone whose laziness cannot be conveyed on paper, “What, did ye see the whale this mornin?”

“No. It came at four o’clock, when I was asleep: but the captain promises to have me called next time, whatever the hour may be.”

“What, d’ye want to see a whale?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Well, but I dare say you have seen a pictur’ o’ one.”

It was not apparent to him that this was not an equally good thing.

After breakfast, the gentlemen who kept journals produced their writing cases in the cabin. The ladies sat in sunny or shaded places on deck, netting, making table mats, or reading; or mounted the rail to talk or look abroad. I had a task to do; which is a thing that should be avoided on board ship. I had a long article to write; and nothing else would I do, on fine mornings, till it was finished. It is disagreeable writing in the cabin, with people flitting all about one. It is unwholesome writing in one’s stateroom, in the month of August. The deck is the only place. The first care after breakfast, of my clerical friend, the New Englander, was to find me a corner where the wind would not blow my paper about, where the sun would not dazzle me, and where I might be quiet: and then he took his seat behind the roundhouse, with a row of children from the steerage before him, to do their lessons. I wondered at first how he would leach them without books, slates, or any other visible implements of instruction: but when I saw him get a potato, and split it into two and four parts, to show the children what halves and quarters were, I was assured he would prosper with them. And so he did. They went to school to excellent purpose; and I dare say they will send back grateful thoughts, all through their lives, upon the kind gentleman who attended to them on the voyage.

For some time I was daily battled in my purpose of writing by the observation of persons who seemed not only entirely ignorant of the process of composition, but very anxious to learn it. Not only did the children from the steerage spy from behind chests and casks, and peep over my shoulder, but the inquirer about the whale was wont to place himself directly in front of me, with his arms akimbo, and his eyes fixed on the point of my pen. Somebody gave him a hint at last, and I was left in peace. By two o’clock, when the deck began to, fill again alter luncheon, my head and eyes had had enough of writing, and I joyfully mounted the rail. If I wanted to watch the sea undisturbed, I held a Shakspeare in my hand. If I carried no book, somebody came to talk. What fleets of Portuguese men-of-war did we see at those hours! I hardly know whether these little mariners of the deep are most beautiful when gliding, rich in their violet hues, along the calm sunny surface of the summer sea, or when they are tossed about, like toys, by rough dark waves. One day, when I was exclaiming on their beauty, a young lady, industriously working at her table mats, observed that it was very odd that she had crossed this ocean three times, and had never seen a Portuguese man-of-war. I concluded that she had never looked for them, and asked the favour of her to stand by my side for one half hour. She did so, and saw three. I strongly suspect that those who complain of the monotony of the ocean, do not use their eyes as they do on land. It seems to be the custom at sea to sit on deck, looking abroad only when the sun is setting, or the moon rising, or when there is a sail to be speculated upon. Some of the most beautiful sights I caught were when no one else was looking down quite into the deep – the only way to see most of the creatures that live there. One day I was startled, while thus gazing, with an exquisite radiance, like an expanse of brilliant rainbow, far down in the sunny deep under our bows. My exclamation brought one witness to behold, as I did, the distinct form of a dolphin come out of the light. It was a family of dolphins, – the only ones that were seen on the voyage. Many a flying fish darted from the crest of one wave into another. Many a minuet did Mother Carey’s chickens trip, with their slender web feet, on the momentary calm left between two billows. Many a shining visitor came up from the lowest deep, to exchange glances and be gone. I soon found it was in vain to call people to look. Those sights are too transient to be caught otherwise than by watching. When a shoal of porpoises came to race with the ship, every one on board was up on the rail to see; and an exhilarating sight it is, when the ship is going before the wind in a rough sea, and the porpoises that visibly though the midst of a billow, and pitch and rise, and cross each other’s path, swiftly and orderly, without ever relaxing their speed, till they are tired of play. It is impossible to help having a favourite among the shoal, and watching him with an interest and admiration which, upon consideration, are really ridiculous.

The most generally interesting sight, perhaps, was a sail; and we were never a day without seeing one or more. Sometimes three or four seemed to be peeping at us from the horizon. Sometimes our ship and another were nearing each other almost all day. Once or twice. I was startled with a sudden apparition of one close at hand, with all her sails set, black in a streak of moonlight, when I went up to bid the sea goodnight. One morning early I found the deck in a bustle, from a ship having signals of distress. “A ship in distress!” every body began shouting. “A ship in distress!” cried I to the ladies in the cabin, one of whom came up muffled in a cloak, and another with her nightcap under her bonnet, rather than miss the romance of the scene. The hearts of the novices were all ready to bleed; the faces of the gentlemen began to wear, in anticipation, an expression of manly compassion, as we hung out our colours, shortened sail (one of the first times we had been going right on our course), and were round, while all the people of both ships gathered on the decks, and the captains brandished their trumpets. She was French, and her distress was that she had lost her longitude! Our good captain, very angry at the loss of time from such a cause, said they ought to have lost their heads with it, shouted out the longitude, and turned into our course again. The ladies went back to finish their toilette in all ordinance mood of sensibility, and the French went on their way, we may conclude, rejoicing.

A distant sail was one day decided to be a merchant ship from the south of France, – to everybody’s apparent satisfaction but mine. I had a strong persuasion that she was not French, but felt how presumptuous it would be to say so. I watched her, however; and at the end of three hours, directed the captain’s attention again to her. He snatched his glass, and the next moment electrified us all by the vehemence of his directions to the helmsman, and other of the crew. It was a rival packet-ship, the Montreal, Which had left Portsmouth four days before we sailed. We were in for a race, which lasted three days, after which we lost sight of our rival, till she reached New York after us. Our captain left the dinner table three times this first day of the race, and was excessively anxious throughout. It was very exciting to us all. We concluded, after fair trial, that she beat in a light wind, and we in a strong one. Some weeks after our landing. I fell in with two passengers from the Montreal, who described the counterpart of the scene we had witnessed as having taken place on board their ship. There had been the same start of surprise on the part of their captain, who had also left the dinner table three times; the same excitement among the passengers; and the same conclusion as to the respective sailing merits of the two vessels.

From four to six we were dining. Some of us felt it rather annoying to be so long at table: but it is a custom established on board these packets, for the sake, I believe, of those who happen to find the day too long. Such persons need compassion; and their happier companions can afford to sacrifice something to their ease: so no one objects openly to devoting two of the best hours of the day to dinner and dessert. The rush up to the deck, however, when they are over, shows what the taste of the majority is. One afternoon the ladies were called down again, and found in their cabin a surprise at least as agreeable as my flowers. A dessert of pines and grapes had been sent in by a gentleman who found that a friend had put a basket of choice fruits on board for his use, but who preferred favouring the ladies with them. He was sent for to preside at the table he had thus spread, and was not a little rallied by his brother passengers on his privileges. These things seem trifles on paper, but they yield no trifling amusement on a voyage. Our afternoons were delightful. For the greater number of the forty-two days that we were at sea, the sun set visibly, with more or less lustre, and all eyes were watching his decline. There was an unusual quietness on board just about sunset. All the cabin passengers were collected on one side, except any two or three who might be in the rigging. The steerage passengers were to be seen looking out at the same sight, and probably engaged as we were in pointing out some particular bar of reddened cloud, or snowy mountain of vapours, or the crimson of golden light spattered on the swelling sides of the billows, as they heaved sunwards. Then came the last moment of expectation, – even to the rising on tiptoe, as if that would enable us to see a spark more of the sun: and then the revival of talk, and the bustle of pairing off to walk. This was the hour for walking the deck: and, till near teatime, almost the whole company might be seen parading like a school. I never grew very fond of walking on a heaving floor, on which you have to turn at the end of every thirty paces or so: but it is a duty to walk on board ship: and it is best to do it at this hour, and in full and cheerful company.

After tea, the cabin was busy with whist and chess parties, readers, and laughers and talkers. On damp and moonless evenings, I joined a whist party: but my delight was the deck at this time, when I had it all to myself, or when I could at least sit alone in the stern. I know no greater luxury than singing alone in the stern on fine nights, when there is no one within hearing but the helmsman, and sights of beauty meet the eye wherever it turns. Behind, the light from the binnacle alone gleams upon the deck; dim, shifting lights and shadows mark out the full sails against the sky, and stars look down between. The young moon drops silently into the sea afar. In our wake is a long train of pale fire, perpetually renewed as we hiss through the dark waves. On such a quiet night, how startling is a voice from the deck, or a shout of laughter from the cabin! More than once, when I heard the voices of children and the barking of a dog from the steerage, I wholly forgot for the moment that I was at sea, and looking up, was struck breathless at the sight of the dim, grey, limitless expanse. Never, however, did I see the march of the night so beautiful over hill, dale, wood, or plain as over the boundless sea, roofed with its complete arch. The inexpressible silence, the undimmed lustre, the steady visible motion of the sky, make the night what it can nowhere be on land, unless in the midst of the Great Desert, or on a high mountaintop. It is not the clear still nights alone that are beautiful. Nothing can be more chilling to the imagination than the idea of fog: yet I have seen exquisite sights in a night fog; – not in a pervading, durable mist; but in such a fog as is common at sea; thick and driving, with spaces through which the moon may shine down, making clusters of silvery islands on every side. This was on entirely new appearance to me; and the white Archipelago was a spectacle of great beauty. Then again, the action of the ship in a strong night breeze is fine; cutting her steady way through the seething waters, and dashing them from her sides so uniformly and strongly, that for half a mile on either hand, the sea is as a white marble floor, gemmed with stars; – just like a child’s idea of “the pavement of the heavenly courts.” Such are the hours when all that one has ever known or thought that is beautiful comes back softly and mysteriously; snatches of old songs, all one’s first loves in poetry and in the phantasmagoria of nature. No sleep is sweeter than that into which one sinks in such a mood, when one’s spirit drops anchor amidst the turbulence of the outward world, and the very power of the elements seems to shed stillness into the soul.

There must be many a set off against such hours, however, or the whole world would be rushing to sea. There would be parties to the Azores as there now are to Rome, and people would be doubling the Capes as they now cross the Simplon. There are disagreeable hours and days at sea: whole days, when the ship rolls so as to stop employment in the cabin; and the rain pours down so as to prevent any weary passenger from putting out his head upon deck: when the captain is to be seen outside in his sea coat, with the water streaming from nose, chin, hat, and every projection of his costume; when every one’s limbs are aching with keeping himself from tumbling over his neighbour; when the tea and coffee are cold, and all that is liquid is spilt, and everything solid thrown out of its place. The best thing to be done on such days is to sit in the roundhouse, each one well wedged in between two, the balustrade in front, and the wall behind; all as loquacious as possible, talking all manner of sense or nonsense that may occur; those who can joke, joking; those who can sing, singing: those who know any new games teaching them. This is better than the only other thing that can be done, – lying in one’s heaving berth; better, not only because it is more sociable, but because there is a fairer chance of appetite and sleep after the exercise of laughing (be the laughter about anything or nothing) than after a day of uncomfortable listlessness.

A calm is a much less disagreeable affair – though it is not common to say so. A dead calm affords a fine opportunity to the gentlemen for writing and reading: and to the ladies, for the repairs of the wardrobe. Sewing, which I think a pleasant employment everywhere else, is trying to the head at sea: and many omissions and commissions may be observed in the matter of costume, which the parties would be ashamed of on land. The difference after a calm is remarkable. The cap borders are spruce; the bonnets wear a new air; the gloves are whole: the married gentlemen appear with complete sets of buttons, and rectified stocks. The worst quality of a calm is that it tries tempers a little too far. If there be an infirmity of temper, it is sure to come out then. At such a time, there is much playing of shuffleboard upon deck; and the matches do not always end harmoniously. “You touched mine with your foot.” – “I did not, I declare.” “Now, don’t say so, &c., &c.” – “You are eight.” – “No, we are ten.” – “I can show you you are only eight.” – “Well, if you can’t count any better than that,” – and so on. After three days of calm, there may be heard a subdued tone of scolding from the whist party at the top of the table, and a stray oath from some checkmated person lower down: and while the ladies are brushing their hair in their cabin, certain items of information and apt to be given of how Mr A. looked when the lady’s partner turned up trumps, and how shockingly Mr B. pushed past Mr C. in going up the cabin to dinner. The first breath of favourable wind, however, usually blows all these offences away, and tempers turn into their right course with the ship.

I had heard so much at home of the annoyances on board ship, that I made a list of them at the time for the consolation of my friends at home, who were, I suspected, bestowing more compassion upon me than I had any title to. I find them noted down as follows:

Next to the sickness, – an annoyance scarcely to be exaggerated while it lasts, there is, first, the damp, clammy feel of everything you touch. Remedy, to wear gloves constantly, and clothes which are too bad to be spoiled. In this latter device, nearly the whole company were so accomplished, that it was hard to say who excelled.

Next, want of room. The remedy for this is a tight, orderly putting away of everything; for which there is plenty of time.

Thirdly, the candles flare, and look untidy from running down twice as fast as they burn. Remedy to go out of the way of them, – to the stern, for instance, where there are far better lights to be seen.

Fourthly, the seats and beds are all as hard as boards, – a grievance where one cannot always walk when one’s limbs want resting with exercise. Remedy, patience. Perhaps air-cushions may be better still.

Fifthly, warning is given to be careful in the use of water. Remedy, to bathe in seawater, and drink cider at dinner.

Sixthly, the cider is apt to get low. Remedy, take to soda water, ale, hock, or claret.

Seventhly, the scraping of the deck sets one’s teeth on edge. For this I know of no remedy but patience; for the deck must be scraped.

Eighthly, the rattling, stamping, and clattering overhead, when the sails are shifted in the night. Remedy, to go to sleep again.

Ninthly, sour bread. Remedy, to eat biscuit instead.

Tenthly, getting sunburnt. Remedy, not to look in the glass.

These are all that I can allow from my own experience. Some people talk of danger; but I do not believe there is more than in travelling on land. Some have called a ship a prison so often, that the saying seems to have become current. But, in my idea, the evils of a prison are, the being coerced by another person’s will; the being disgraced; the being excluded from the face of nature; and the being debarred from society, employment, and exercise. None of these objections apply to a ship as a residence. As for the one point of resemblance, the being unable to walk a mile or more out and back again, of how many persons is this the voluntary choice, who were never either in a prison or a ship? I would never take the responsibility of recommending any elderly, or nervous, or untravelled persons to put themselves into a place which will not keep still, nor anything in it, for a month or six weeks, and from which they cannot get out: but I cannot think the confinement, by itself, anything to be much complained of.

A bad captain must be the worst of annoyances, to judge by contrast from the comfort we enjoyed under the government of an exceedingly good one. We had all great faith in Captain Holdrege as an excellent sailor; and we enjoyed daily and hourly proofs of his kindness of heart, and desire to make everybody about him happy. It was amazing with what patience he bore the teasings of some who were perpetually wanting to know things that he could not possibly tell them; – when we should be at New York, and so forth. The gentleman who unconsciously supplied the most merriment to the party, waylaid the captain one busy morning, – one of the first when there had been anything for the captain to do, and he was in such a bustle that nobody else dreamed of speaking to him.

“Captain,” said the gentleman, “I want to speak to you.”

“Another time, sir, if you please. I am in a hurry now.”

“But, captain, I want to speak to you very much.”

“Speak then, sir, and be quick, if you please.”

“Captain, I am very glad you have a cow on board, – because of the milk.”

“Hmm,” said the captain, and went on with his business.

One Sunday morning, when we were on “the Banks,” this gentleman came to me with a doleful face, to tell me that he thought we should have been at New York today. I found that he had actually expected this up to the night before, because he had been told, previous to sailing, that we should probably spend our fourth Sunday at New York. It was proposed to tell him that we should probably be in the Pacific by the next morning, to see whether he would believe it: but I believe the experiment was not ventured upon. Some of the passengers, talking one day at dinner of percussion caps, asked him whether they were used in a regiment of which he had frequently spoken. He replied that he did not know, as he had not inquired much into the costume of the army.

By the 23rd of August we were only about 120 miles N. W. of the Azores. On the 1st of September, when our thoughts wandered homewards to the sportsmen all abroad in the stubble, to the readers of monthly periodicals in which we were interested, and to our families who were doubtless fancying us on the point of landing, we were not far from where we were a week ago. We had had beautiful weather, but every variety of westerly wind with it. The passengers began to flag. The novels were all read; the ladies’ work was all done; and shuffleboard and chess will not do for ever. The captain began to send up an occasional whet of cherrybounce to the ladies before dinner. For my own part, I was finishing my writing, and finding my first leisure for books; and I found myself forgetting New York, and losing sight of all I expected to see beyond it, in the pleasures of the sea. We were now scarcely half way. The turning point of the voyage came the next day, in the shape of a storm.

Before I went on board, I had said that I should like to witness a storm as fierce as we could escape from without fatal damage. Some passenger repented this wish of mine (very common in persons going to sea for the first time) in the hearing of the mate, who told the sailors; who, accordingly, were overheard saying one afternoon, that I had better come on deck, and see what I should see. My clerical friend took the hint, and called me hastily, to observe the crew make ready for a squall. I ran up, and perceived the black line advancing over the water from the horizon, – the remarkable indication of a coming squall. The sailors were running up the shrouds to get the sails in. The second mate was aloft, in the wind, while with us below all was calm. The sails were got in, just in time. The captain did not come down to dinner. Orders were give to “splice the main brace;” for the crew had been handling the ropes since four in the morning. I saw them come for their grog. And then wait for what might happen next. By sunset the sky was tremendous; the sea rising the wind moaning and whistling strangely. When I staggered to the stern, to bid the sea good night, according to custom, the waters were splendidly luminous. Floods of blue fire were dashed abroad from our bows, and beyond, the whole expanse sparkled as with diamonds.

All night the noises would have banished sleep, if we could have lain quiet. There was a roar of wind; the waves dashed against the sides of the ship, as if they were bursting in: water poured into our cabin, though the skylight was fastened down. A heavy fall was now and then heard from the other cabin; – some passenger heaved out of his berth. After five hours, I could hold in no longer, and a tremendous lurch tossed me out upon the floor, where I alighted upon my thimble and scissors, the ottoman I was working (and which I had felt confident was far enough off), my clothes, books, and the empty water bottle. All these things were lying in a wet heap. I traversed the ladies’ cabin to explore, holding by whatever was fastened to the floor. The only dry place in which I could lie down was under the table; and standing was out of the question; so I brought a blanket and pillow, lay down with a firm hold of the leg of the table, and got an hour’s welcome sleep; by which time the storm was enough to have wakened the dead. The state of our cabin was intolerable; – the crashing of glass, the complaining voices of the sick ladies, the creaking straining of the ship; and, above all, the want of air, while the winds were roaring over head. I saw no necessity for bearing all this: so, sick as I was, I put my clothes on, swathed myself in one cloak, and carried up another, wherewith to lash myself to something on deck.

There, all was so glorious that I immediately stumbled down again to implore the other ladies to come up and be refreshed: but no one would listen to me. They were too ill. I got the captain’s leave to fasten myself to the post of the binnacle, promising to give no trouble, and there I saw the whole of the never-to-be-forgotten scene.

We were lying in the trough of the sea, and the rolling was tremendous. The captain wished to wear round, and put out a sail, which, though quite new, was instantly split to ribands; so that we had to make ourselves where we were. The scene was perfectly unlike what I had heard of the ocean running mountains high, I thought it a mere hyperbolical expression. But here the scene was of huge wandering mountains, – wandering as if to find a resting place, – with dreary leaden vales between. The sky seemed narrowed to a mere slip overhead, and a long-drawn extent of leaden waters seemed to measure a thousand miles; and these were crested by most exquisite shades of blue and green where the foam was about to break. The heavens seemed rocking their masses of torn clouds, keeping time with the billows to the solemn music of the winds; the most swelling and mournful music I ever listened to. The delight of the hour I shall not forget: it was the only new scene I had ever beheld that I had totally and unsuspectingly failed to imagine.

It was impossible to remain longer than noon, unless we meant to be drowned. When two or three gentlemen had been almost washed off, and the ship had been once nearly half her length under water, it was time to go below, – sad as the necessity was. The gale gradually abated. In the afternoon the ladies obtained leave to have their skylight opened, their cabin mopped, and the carpets taken up and carried away to dry.

The sailors got the mate to inquire how I liked the storm. If I was not satisfied now, I never should be. I was satisfied, and most thankful. The only thing that surprised me much was, that there was so little terrific about it. I was not aware till the next day, when the captain was found to have set it down a hurricane in the logbook, how serious a storm it was. The vessel is so obviously buoyant, that it appears impossible to overwhelm her; and we were a thousand miles from any rocks. In the excitement of such an hour, one feels that one would as soon go down in those magnificent waters as die any other death; but there was nothing present which impressed me with the idea of danger but the terrors of two of the passengers. Of the poor ladies I can give no account; but one gentleman pulled his travelling cap forward over his eyes, clasped his hands on his knees, and sat visibly shaking in a corner of the roundhouse, looking shrunk to half his size. The fears of another I regarded with more respect, because he tried hard to hide them. He followed me throughout, talking in an artist-like style about the tints, and the hues, and many other things that were to be noted, but not talked about at the moment. If he succeeded in covering up his fears from himself, one may well excuse the bad taste of the means employed. My clerical friend did better. He was on the watch for others and for himself. In high exhilaration, he helped every body, saw every thing, and will, to the end of his days, I will answer for it, forget nothing of that glorious time.

After the storm, we met with few delays. A calm of nine hours enabled the crew to repair all damage sustained; the rest of the time we were making progress, though it was sometimes very slow. We went south of “the Banks,” and so missed something beside the fogs, – our hoped-for treat of fresh cod, and the spectacle of the fishermen’s boats. Hereabouts the dog in the steerage smelt land, and stood snuffing, with his paws on the rail. A wild pigeon flew on board, too, – supposed to be from Newfoundland; and the air was sensibly colder, as it becomes on approaching the shore. The lottery with which the gentlemen had amused themselves became now very interesting. It consisted of ten tickets, at a sovereign each, answering to the ten days during which it had been thought probable that we should land. The two earliest were now sold for a shilling and eighteen-pence; and the captain gave £5 for the last, which bore the date of the 11th. This seemed to indicate the captain’s expectation that our progress would still be slow; but we were scarcely more likely to land on the 11th than on the 4th or 5th.

A passenger beckoned the captain out of the cabin one evening, about this time, and asked him to look down into the hold, where a tallow candle, with a long wick, was seen leaning over the side of a candlestick, which was standing on a heap of loose cotton! Such are the perils that careless sailors will expose themselves and others to. The captain took care to impress his crew with his opinion on the matter.

I believe a regular piece of amusement on board these packet-ships is emptying the letter bags out on the deck. A fine morning is chosen for this; and to a person who sits on the rail it affords a pretty picture. The ladies draw their chairs round the immense heap of letters; the gentlemen lie at length, and scarcely an epistle escapes comment. A shout of mirth bursts forth now and then, at some singular name, or mode of address; commonly at some Irish epistle, addressed to an emigrant in some out-of-the-way place, which there is scarcely room to insert, though the direction runs from corner to corner, over the whole square.

About this time, a pedlar, who was among the steerage passengers, appeared on deck, with his wares. His pretence was, that some of his silk handkerchiefs and gloves had got slightly spotted at sea, and that he was not so anxious as before to carry them to New York. However this might be, the merchant showed himself a shrewd man. He saw that the pleasure of shopping, after being for some weeks out of sight of land, would open to him the purse of many a passenger. It was most amusing to see the eagerness of both gentlemen and ladies, and their pleasure in purchases which they would have disdained on shore. For the next two or three days the company was spruce in damaged handkerchiefs and ribands, and mildewed gloves, rending in all directions; while the pedlar escaped duties, and stepped ashore with a heavy purse and light pack.

On the 15th, we were still between five and six hundred miles from our port. A sheep had jumped overboard, and so cheated us of some of our mutton. The vegetables were getting very dry. It was found best not to look into the dishes of dried fruits which formed our dessert. All was done that care and cookery could do; but who could have anticipated such a length of voyage? Open declarations of ennui began to be made by not a few; and I was almost afraid to own, in answer to questions, that I was not tired of the sea: but I could not honestly say that I was. The gentlemen began to spar at table about the comparative merits of England and America: the Prussian could not find English in which to bemoan himself sufficiently, and shrugged. The cider, ale, soda water, and claret were all gone, and we were taking to porter, which must needs soon come to an end. Some show of preparation to land was this day made, and a lively bustle ensued on the first hint from the captain. He went round to take down the names of the passengers at length, in order to their being reported on arrival. The ages had to be affixed to the names; and as the captain could not ask the ladies for their ages, he committed it to the gentlemen to decide upon each. The ladies, who were quilling, trimming, and sorting their things in their own cabin, could not conceive the meaning of the shouts of laughter which came from the top of the gentlemen’s table, till the young Carolinian came and told what the fun was. The standing joke is to make the young ladies many years too old, and the old ladies ridiculously young: and this was done now, the ladies considering the affair no business of theirs. One lady, who had frequently crossed, told me that ten years before she had been set down as forty: she stood now as twenty-four.

On the 17th, we were surrounded with weed, and Mother Carey’s chickens began to disappear. Soundings were this day taken, and I was called to see and touch the first American soil, – the thimbleful deposited on the lead. The next day, Thursday, the wind continuing fair, we were within 100 miles of our port, and all was liveliness and bustle.

The American divine was requested by all the passengers to propose, after dinner, the health of Captain and Mrs Holdrege, using the opportunity to express our hearty thanks to the captain for the whole of his conduct towards us. The captain rose to speak in acknowledgment of the toast, but was so taken by surprise with his lady’s name being hailed with our good wishes, that after two words of thanks, he shot out of the cabin, every one understanding the cause of his brevity. In the evening we were told that we should see land on rising in the morning; and some of us requested to be called at five.

At five, on the morning of the 19th, I started up, and at the foot of the companionway was stopped by the Scotch lady, who told me I might go back again, as we were becalmed, and I might see the shore just as well two hours hence. This was being a little too cool about such a matter. I saw the dim shore – long line of the New Jersey coast, with distinguishable trees and white houses. By breakfast time our eyes were painfully strained. As only one could have the glass at a time, and I did not like to snatch it from those who were enjoying the pleasure of recognizing familiar objects, – tracing the first features of home. I was taken by surprise by my own emotions. All that I had heard of the Pilgrim Fathers, of the old colonial days, of the great men of the Revolution, and of the busy, prosperous succeeding days, stirred up my mind, while I looked upon the sunny reach of land on the horizon. All the morning I sat dreaming, interrupted now and then by the smiling but tearful young mother, who expected tidings of her child before the day was over; or by others, who had less cause for being deeply moved, who came to describe to me the pleasures of Long Branch, (the bathing place in view,) or to speculate on how long this tedious calm would last. All the morning I sat on the rail, or played sister Anne to the ladies below, when once the wind had freshened, and we glided slowly along towards Sandy Hook. “Now I see a large white house.” “Now I see Neversink. Come up and see Neversink!” “Now I see a flock of sheep on the side of a hill; and now a fisherman standing beside his boat:” and so forth.

What were the ladies below for? – They were dressing for the shore. The gentlemen too vanished from the deck, one by one, and reappeared in glossy hats, coats with the creases of the portmanteau upon them, and the first really black shoes and boots we had seen for weeks. The quizzing which was properly due to the discarded sea garments was now bestowed on this spruce costume; and every gentleman had to encounter a laugh as he issued from the companionway. We agreed to snatch our meals as we pleased this day. No one was to remain at table longer than he liked. Everything looked joyous. The passengers were in the most amiable mood: we were in sight of a score of ships crossing the bar at Sandy Hook: the last company of porpoises was sporting alongside, and shoals of glittering white fish rippled the water. The captain was fidgety, however. Those vessels crossing the bar might be rival packet-ships, and no pilot was yet to be seen. “Here he is!” cried a dozen voices at once; and an elegant little affair of a boat was seen approaching. A curious-looking old gentleman swung himself up, and seemed likely to be torn in pieces by the ravenous inquirers for news. He thrust an armful of newspapers among us, and beckoned the captain to the stern, where the two remained in grave consultation for a few minutes, when the captain called one of the lady passengers aside, to ask her a question. What the pilot wanted to know was, whether George Thompson, the Abolition missionary, was on board. He was to have been, but was not. The pilot declared that this was well, as he could not have been landed without the certainty of being destroyed within a week – the Abolition riots in New York having taken place just before. What the captain wanted to learn of the lady passenger was, what my opinions on slavery were, in order to know whether he might safely land me. She told him that I was an abolitionist in principle: but that she believed I went to America to learn and not to teach. So the good captain nodded, and said nothing to me on the subject.

Next arrived a boat from the newspaper office of the Courier and Inquirer, whose agent would not hear of dinner, or any other delay, but shouldered his bag of news, got the list of our names, and was off. The American passengers, all by this time good friends of mine, came to show me, with much mirth, paragraphs in the newspapers the pilot had brought, exhorting their readers not to chew tobacco or praise themselves in my presence, under penalty of being reported of in London for these national foibles.

After dinner, we were off Sandy Hook, and the hills of New Jersey Long Island, and Staten Island were growing purple in the cloudy sunset, when a small, shabby steamboat was seen emerging from the Narrows. O, the speculations and breathless suspense as to whether she was coming to us! In a few minutes, there remained no further doubt. Then there was a rush to the side, and one of the young ladies saw through her tears her two brothers, and other passengers other relations showing themselves on the bows of the steamer. They presently boarded us, we strangers having all retired to the other side. I never liked introductions better than those which followed. With broad smiles my passenger friends came up, saying. “I have the great pleasure of introducing to you my brother.” – “I am sure you will be glad to hear that my family are all well.” These are occasions when sympathy is very sweet, and when it is always ready.

Then was heard the captain’s loudest voice, crying, “All who wish to go up to the city tonight, get ready directly.” We had all previously agreed how much better it was that we should spend this night on board, as the harbour would be seen to much advantage by the morning light: but we forgot all this in a moment, and nobody dreamed of being left behind. Our little bundles were made up in trice, and we quitted our ship. The crew and steerage passengers assembled on deck, and gave us three parting cheers, which might be heard all over the harbour. Our gentlemen returned them, and our hearts yearned towards our beautiful ship, as she sat dark upon the evening waters, with all her sails majestically spread. “Does she not look well now?” “Does she not show herself beautifully now?” exclaimed one and another, in the hearing of the gratified captain.

The light was failing as we entered the Narrows. The captain and several other friends pointed out to me every headland, bay, and fortification as we passed. We were detained a long while at the quarantine ground. The doctor was three miles off, and nearly an hour elapsed before the great news reached him that we were all quite well, and we were therefore allowed to proceed. It now rained heavily, and we were obliged to crowd into the small cabin of the poorest steamer in the bay. There, by the light of one dim and dirty lamp, was the question first asked me in joke, which has since been repeated in so many moods, “How do you like America?” The weather cleared up in another half hour. We stood in the dark on the wet deck, watching the yellow lights and shadowy buildings of the shore we were rapidly nearing, till we felt the expected shock, and jumped upon the wharf amidst the warm welcomes of many friends, who, in their own joy at alighting on their native shore, did not forget to make it at once a home to us strangers.

This was at eight in the evening of the 19th of September, 1834, after a long but agreeable voyage of forty-two days.

Volume 1

First Impressions

“Navigia, atque agri culturas, mœnia, leges

Arma, vias, vesters, et ætera de genere horum

Praemia, delicias queque vitæ vitro funditus omneis.

Carmina, picturas, ne dædala signa, politus

Usus, of impigræ simul experientia mentis.

Paullatim docuit pedetentim progredienteis.”

Lucretius lib. 5

The moment of first landing in a foreign city is commonly spoken of as a perfect realization of forlornness. My entrance upon American life was anything but this. The spirits of my companions and myself were in a holiday dance while we were receiving our first impressions: and New York always afterwards bore an air of gaiety to me from the association of the early pleasures of foreign travel.

Apartments had been secured for us at a boarding house in Broadway, and a hackney coach was in waiting at the wharf. The moonlight was flickering through the trees of the battery, the insects were buzzing all about us the catydids were grinding, and all the sounds, except human voices, were quite unlike all we had heard for six weeks. One of my companions took the sound of the catydid for a noise in her head, for many hours after coming into their neighbourhood. As we rattled over the stones, I was surprised to find that the street we were in was Broadway: the lower and narrower end, however: but nothing that I saw, after all I had heard, and the panorama of New York that I had visited in London, disappointed me so much as Broadway. Its length is remarkable; but neither its width, nor the style of its houses. The trees with which it is lined gave it, this first evening, a foreign air.

Our hostess at the boarding house shook hands with us, and ordered tea. While we waited for it, and within ten minutes after I had crossed the first American threshold, three gentlemen introduced themselves to me, one of whom was the melancholy politician whom I have mentioned elsewhere[1] as having forewarned me of the total overthrow of the United States’ institutions, which would certainly take place while I was in the country. This gentleman afterwards became a dear and intimate friend: and we found that politics are, perhaps, the only subject on which we entertain irreconcileable differences of opinion. We often amused ourselves with recurring to this our first meeting. This gentleman afforded me an early specimen of the humour which I think one of the chief characteristics of the Americans. In the few minutes during which we were waiting for tea, he dropped some drolleries so new to me, and so intense, that I was perplexed what to do with my laughter.

While we were at tea, a few gentlemen dropped in, and read the newspapers at the long table at which we were seated. One fixed my attention at once. He had the carriage of a soldier, with an uncommonly fine countenance, bearing a general resemblance to the great men of the Revolution with whose portraits the English are most familiar. I think it is not a mere fancy that there is an air common to Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. This gentleman reminded me of them all: and the quietness with which he made his remarks, and his evident high breeding, piqued the curiosity of a stranger. He was General Mason, the father of the young Governor of Michigan, and the most eminent citizen of Detroit. From time to time in my travels. I met various members of his family, whose kindness always made me thankful that accident had placed me in the same house with them at the outset.

In our rooms, we found beds with four posts, looking as if meant to hang gowns and bonnets upon; for there was no tester. The washstand was without tumbler, glass, soap, or brush tray. The candlestick had no snuffers. There was, however, the luxury, sufficient for the occasion, that every article of furniture stood still in its place; and that the apartment itself did not rock up and down. The first few days after a voyage go far towards making one believe that some things have a quality of stability, however one may be metaphysically convinced that the sea affords a far truer hint of the incessant flux and change which are the law of the universe. If I had rejoiced in the emblem at sea, I now enjoyed the deception on land.

At five in the morning I threw up my sash, to see what I could see. I cannot conceive what travellers mean by saying that there is little that is foreign in the aspect of New York. I beheld nothing at this moment that I could have seen at home, except the sky and the grass of the courtyard. The houses were all neatly and brightly painted, had green outside blinds to every window, and an apparatus for drying linen on the roof. A young lady in black silk, with her hair neatly dressed, was mopping the steps of one house; and a similar young lady was dusting the parlour of another. A large locust tree grew in the middle of the courtyard of the house I was in; and under it was a truly American woodpile. Two negroes were at the pump, and a third was carrying musk melons.

When the breakfast bell rang, the long and cross tables in the eating room were filled in five minutes. The cross table, at which our hostess presided, was occupied by General Mason’s family, a party of Spaniards, and ourselves. The long one was filled up with families returning southwards from the Springs; married persons without children, who preferred boarding to housekeeping; and single gentlemen, chiefly merchants. I found this mode of living rather formidable the first day: and not all the good manners that I witnessed at public tables ever reconciled me to it.

From a trunk belonging to a lady of our party having been put on board a wrong ship, we had some immediate shopping to do. and to find a mantua-maker. We suspected we should soon be detained at home by callers, and therefore determined to transact our business at once, though our luggage had not arrived from the Custom House, and we were not “dressed for Broadway” as the phrase is.

In the streets. I was in danger of being run down by the fire engines, so busy were my eyes with the novelties about me. These fire engines run along the side pavement, stopping for nobody: and I scarcely ever walked out in New York without seeing one or more out on business, or for an airing. The novelties which amused me were the spruce appearance of all the people; the pervading neatness and brightness, and the businesslike air of the children. The carmen were all well dressed, and even two poor boys who were selling matches had clean shirt collars and whole coats, though they were barefooted. The stocks of goods seemed large and handsome, and we were less struck with the indifference of manner, commonly ascribed to American storekeepers, than frequently afterwards. The most unpleasant circumstance was the appearance and manner of the ladies whom we saw in the streets and stores. It was now the end of a very hot summer, and every lady we met looked as if she were emerging from the yellow fever; and the languid unsteady step betokened the reverse of health.

The heat was somewhat oppressive. We were in the warm dresses we had put on while yet at sea, as our trunks had not made their appearance. Trains of callers came in the afternoon and evening; members of Congress, candidates for State offices, fellow passengers and their friends, and other friends of our friends; and still we were not “dressed for Broadway.” In the evening, the luggage of my companions was brought up, but not mine. Special orders had been issued from the Custom House that my baggage should pass without examination; and it was therefore at this moment on board ship. Tonight it was too late: next morning it was Sunday, and everything in the hold was under lock and key, and unattainable till Monday. There seemed no hope of my getting out all day, and I was really vexed. I wanted to see the churches, and hear the preaching, and be doing what others were doing; but the heat was plainly too great to be encountered in any gown but a muslin one. A lady boarding in the house happened to hear of the case, and sent her servant to say that she believed her dresses would fit me, and that she should be happy to supply me with a gown and bonnet till my trunks should arrive. I accepted her kind offer without any scruple, feeling that a service like this was just what I should wish to render to any lady under the same circumstances: so I went to church equipped in a morning gown and second best bonnet of this neighbourly lady’s.

The church that we went to was the Unitarian church in Chambers Street. Its regular pastor was absent, and a professional brother from Philadelphia preached. We were most deeply impressed by the devotional part of his service, delivered in a voice which I have certainly never heard equalled for music and volume. His discourse moved us no less. We looked at one another in much delight. I warned my companion not to be too certain that this preaching was all we then felt it to be: we had been six Sundays at sea, and some of the impression might be owing to this being the renewal of the privilege of social worship in a church. I heard much of the same preaching afterwards, however; and I am now of the same opinion that I was this first day, – that it is the most true, simple, and solemn that I ever listened to. The moment the service was over, the minister came down from the pulpit, addressed me as an old friend, and requested me to accept the hospitality of his house when I should visit Philadelphia. Under the emotions of the hour, it was impossible to help giving a glad assent: and in his house I afterwards enjoyed many weeks of an intercourse as intimate as can ever exist between members of the same family. We kept up the most rapid and copious correspondence the whole time I was in America, and he and his wife were my American brother and sister, – the depositories of all those “impressions” on the mind of a stranger about which American society is so anxious.

General Mason introduced me to Governor Cass, then Secretary-at-War; now Ambassador at Paris. Governor Cass is a shrewd, hard-looking man, the very concentration of American caution. He is an accomplished and an honest man; but his dread of committing himself renders both his solid and ornamental good qualities of less value to society than they should be. The State of Michigan, which is under great obligations to him, is proud of her citizen; and it is agreed, I believe, on all hands, that his appointment is more satisfactory and honourable to his country than that of many who have been sent as ministers to foreign courts.

I feel some doubt about giving any account of the public men of the United States; I do not mean scruples of conscience; for when a man comes forward in political, or other kind of public life, he makes a present of himself to society at large, and his person, mind, and manners become a legitimate subject of observation and remark. My doubts arise from the want of interest in the English about the great men of America; a want of interest which arises from no fault in either party, I believe; but from the baseness of the newspapers, whose revilings of all persons in turn who fill a public station are so disgusting as to discourage curiosity, and set all friendly interest at defiance. The names of the English political leaders of the day are almost as familiar in the mouths of Americans as of natives, while people in London are asking who Mr Clay is, and what part of the Union Mr Calhoun comes from. The deeds of Mr Clay, and the aspirations of Mr Calhoun would be at least as interesting in London as the proceedings of French and German statesmen, if they could be fairly placed under observation: but every man of feeling and taste recoils from wading through such a slough of rancour, folly and falsehood as the American newspapers present as the only medium through which the object is to be attained.

Mr Gallatin’s name is, however, everywhere known and welcome. Mr Gallatin did me the honour of calling on me in New York, having heard that I desired to learn the precise grounds of the quarrel which was agitating the country about the Bank. I was delighted to listen to his full and luminous report of the question; and of many other matters, on which he spoke with a freedom and courtesy which would go far towards making the current of human affairs run smooth, if they were but general. He told me something of the early part of his career, which began in 1787; described his three visits to England, and sketched the character of the reigns of our two last kings, of Louis Philippe, and of President Jackson. He entered upon the philosophy of the Presidentship; exhibited the spirit of the three great divisions of the United States, the north, south, and west; explained the principles on which the letting of land proceeds; described the Germans and other agricultural population of the country, and showed the process by which the aristocratic class rises and is replenished in a democratic republic. While he was talking, I felt as if he was furnishing me with new powers of observation; and when he was gone, I hastened to secure what he had told me, lest its novelty and abundance should deceive my memory. I believe Mr Gallatin was at this time seventy-two: but he did not appear so old. He is tall, and looks dignified and courteous. He is a native of Switzerland, and speaks with a very slight foreign accent, but with a flow and liveliness which are delightful.

I was assured, at the outset, that the late abolition riots in New York were the work of the Irish immigrants, who feared the increase of a free black population, as likely to interfere with their monopoly of certain kinds of labour. This I afterwards found to be untrue. Some Irish may have joined in “the row,” but the mischief originated with natives. It is remarkable that I heard no more of abolition for many weeks; I think not till I was about leaving Philadelphia.

We obtained some “impressions” of the environs of New York, to add to those we had of the city itself, by going to spend an evening at Mr King’s, at High Wood, two miles beyond Hoboken, on the New Jersey side of the river. The frame cottages, with their thatched verandahs, struck me as very pretty. I could not say much for the beauty of the corn, whose plants, long since stripped of their cobs, were standing yellow and dry, and fast hastening to decay. There were ridges of grey rock, interspersed with woods which still flourished in their summer greenness. Above all, was a sunset which, if seen in England, would persuade the nation that the end of the world was come. The whole arch of the sky appeared lined with conflagration. It seemed strange to see the wagon driver talking with his bullocks, and the old Dutch dame spinning in the stoup, as quietly as if that scarlet sky had been of its usual summer blue.

I was shown, on the way, the spot where Hamilton received his death wound from Colonel Burr. It was once made a qualification for office that the candidate should never have fought a duel. Duelling is an institution not to be reached by such a provision as this. No man under provocation to fight would refrain from fear of disqualifying himself for office hereafter; and the operation of the restriction was accordingly found to be this; that duels were as frequent as ever, and that desirable candidates were excluded. The provision was got rid of on the plea that promissory oaths are bad in principle. The cure of duelling, as of every other encroachment of passion and selfishness on such higher principles as, being passive, cannot be embodied in acts, must be the natural result of the improved moral condition of the individual or of society. No one believes that the legal penalties of duelling have had much effect in stopping the practice; and it is an injury to society to choose, out of the ample range of penalties, disqualification for social duty as one.

The view from Mr King’s garden at High Wood is beautiful. From one opening, a reach of twelve miles of the Hudson is commanded, – from the Narrows upwards. A soft red light was resting on the waters, the last tinge from the late flaming sky, The dark sloops moored below were thus rendered visible, while the twilight shrouded the rocks. Opposite, there was a flare in the woods, from a glasshouse; and the lights of the city twinkled afar off, reflected in the waters.

One of the first impressions of a foreigner in New York is of the extreme insolence and vulgarity of certain young Englishmen, who thus make themselves very conspicuous. Well mannered Englishmen are scarcely distinguishable from the natives, and thus escape observation; while every commercial traveller who sneers at republicanism all day long, and every impertinent boy, leaving home for the first time, with no understanding or sympathy for anything but what he has been accustomed to see at home, obtrudes himself upon the notice, and challenges the congeniality of such countrymen and countrywomen as he can contrive to put himself in the way of. I was annoyed this evening, on my return home, by a very complete specimen of the last-mentioned order of travellers.

Need I say, after thus detailing the little incidents which followed my landing in America, that my first impressions of the country were highly agreeable?

Volume 1

The Hudson

“O, there is not lost

One of earth’s charms: upon her bosom yet,

After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies,

And yet shall lie.”

Bryant

I went three times up the Hudson; and if I lived at New York, should be tempted to ascend it three times a week during the summer. Yet the greater number of ladies on board the steamboat remained in the close cabin, among the crying babies, even while we were passing the finest scenery of the river. They do not share the taste of a gentleman who, when I was there, actually made the steamboat his place of abode during the entire summer season, sleeping on board at Albany and New York on alternate nights, and gazing at the shores all the day long, with apparently undiminishing delight.

The first time we went up, the early part of the morning was foggy, and the mist hung about the ridge of the Palisades, – the rocky western barrier of the river. There were cottages perched here and there, and trees were sprinkled in the crevices; and a little yellow strand, just wide enough for the fisherman and his boat, now and then intervened between the waters and the perpendicular rock. In the shadowy recesses of the shore were sloops moored. Seagulls dipped their wings in the gleams of the river, and the solitary fish hawk sailed slowly over the woods. I saw on the eastern bank, a wide flight of steps cut in the turf, leading to an opening in the trees, at the end of which stood a white house, apparently in deep retirement. Further on, the river widened into the Tappaan sea, and then the hills rose higher behind the banks, and wandering gleams lighted up a mountain region here and there. The captain admitted us, as strangers, (of course without any hint from us) into the wheel room, which was shady, breezy, roomy, and commanding the entire view. Hence we were shown Mr Irving’s cottage, the spot where André was captured, and the other interesting points of the scenery. Then the banks seemed to close, and it was matter for conjecture where the outlet was. The waters were hemmed in by abrupt and dark mountains, but the channel was still broad and smooth enough for all the steamboats in the republic to ride in safety. Ridges of rock plunged into the waters, garnished with trees which seemed to grow without soil: above them were patches of cultivation on the mountain sides, and slopes of cleared land, with white houses upon them. Doves flitted among the nearest trees, and gay rowboats darted from point to point; from one island to another.

West Point, beautiful as it is, was always visible too soon. Yet to leave the boat was the only way to remain in sight of the Highlands; and the charms of the place itself are scarcely to be surpassed. The hotel is always full of good company in the season. Mr Cozens keeps a table for the officers, and is permitted to add as many guests as his house will hold: but, under such circumstances, he takes pains to admit only such as are fit company for his permanent boarders. The views from the hotel are so fine, and there is such a provision of comfort and entertainment, that there would be no hardship in sitting within doors for a week: but we made the best use we could of our opportunities, and saw and achieved everything pertaining to the place, except mounting the Crow’s Nest; an expedition which the heat of the weather prevented our undertaking.

In some solitary spots of this settlement the stranger cannot help meditating on the vast materials of human happiness which are placed at the disposal of the real administrators of this great country. How great is the apparatus to be yet put to use! Here, where life is swarming all around, how few are the habitations of men! Here are woods climbing above woods, to the clouds and stretching to the horizon, in which myriads of creatures are chirping, humming, and sporting; clefts whence the waters gush out; green slopes ready for the plough and the sickle; flat meadows with a few haycocks lying at the foot of mountains as yet untouched. Grasshoppers spring at every step one takes in the rich grass, and many a blue dragonfly balances itself on the tips of the strongest blades; butterflies, green, black, white, and yellow, dazzle the eye that would follow them; yet how few men are near! A gay group on the steps of the hotel, a company of cadets parading on the green; the ferryman and his fare, and the owners of this and that and the other house perched upon the pinnacles of the hills; – these are all as yet visible in a region which will hereafter be filled with speech and busy with thought.

On the steep above the landing place I was introduced to Mr Irving, with whom I had a few minutes’ conversation before he stepped into the ferry boat which was to take him over to the Foundry to dinner. Many other persons with whom I was glad to have the opportunity of becoming acquainted were at the hotel. Mr and Mrs Morris were our guides to Fort Putnam, after dinner; walkers as active and resolute as ourselves. The beauty from this elevated platform is really oppressive to the sense. One is glad to divert one’s attention from its awful radiance by walking in precipitous places, by visiting the cell in which it is said, but doubtfully, that André was confined, or even by meditating on the lot of the solitary cow that has the honour of grazing in the midst of the only ruins that adorn American scenery.

A lady in the hotel offered to meet me on the housetop at five o’clock in the morning to see the sun rise. I looked out at three; there was a solitary light twinkling in the academy, and a faint gleam, out of a cloudy sky, upon the river. At five the sky was so thickly over spread with clouds, that the expedition to the housetop had to be abandoned. The morning afterwards cleared, and I went alone down to Kosciusko’s Garden. I loved this retreat at an hour when I was likely to have it to myself. It is a nook, scooped, as it were, out of the rocky bank of the river, and reached by descending several flights of steps from the platform behind the hotel and academy. Besides the piled rocks and the vegetation with which they are clothed, there is nothing but a clear spring, which wells up in a stone basin, inscribed with the hero’s name. This was his favourite retreat; and here he sat for many hours in a day, with his book and his thoughts. After fancying for some time that I was alone, and playing with the fountain and the leaves of the red beech and the maple, now turning into its autumnal scarlet, I found, on looking up, that one of the cadets was stretched at length on a high projection of rock, and that another was coming down the steps. The latter accosted me, offering to point out to me the objects of interest about the place. We had a long conversation about his academical life.

The student apply themselves to mathematics during the first and second years; during the third, to mathematics, chemistry, and philosophy; and during the fourth, to engineering. There is less literary pursuit than they or their friends would like; but they have not time for everything. Their work is from seven in the morning till four in the afternoon, with the exception of two hours for meals. Then come drill and recreation, and then the evening parade. During six weeks (I think) of the summer, they camp out, which some of the youths enjoy, while others like it so much less than living under a roof, that they take this time to be absent on furlough. The friends of others come to see them, while the pretty spectacle of a camp is added to the attraction of the place. Every care is used that the proficiency should be maintained at the highest point that it can be made to reach. The classes consist of not less than 140, of whom only 40 graduate. Some find the work too hard; some dislike the routine; others are postponed; and by this careful weeding out, the choicest are kept for the public service. This process may go some way towards accounting for the present unpopularity of the institution, and the consequent danger of its downfall. The number of disappointed youths, whose connexions will naturally bear a grudge against the establishment, must be great. There is a belief abroad that its principle and administration are both anti-republican; and in answer to an irresistible popular demand, a committee of congress has been engaged in investigating both the philosophy and practice of this national military academy; for some time previous to which there was difficulty in obtaining the annual appropriation for its support. I have not seen the Report of this Committee, but I was told that the evidence on which it is founded is very unfavourable to be conduct of the establishment, in a political point of view. The advantages of such an institution in securing a uniformity of military conduct in case of war, from the young soldiers of all the States having received a common education; in affording one meeting point where sectional prejudice may be dissolved; and in concentrating the attention of the whole union upon maintaining a high degree of proficiency in science, are so great, that it is no wonder that an indignant and honest cry is raised against those who would abolish it on account of its aristocratic tendencies. I rather think it is a case in which both parties are more than commonly right: that it is an institution which can scarcely be dispensed with, but which requires to be watched with the closest jealousy, that there may be no abuse of patronage, and no such combination as could lead to the foundation of a military aristocracy.

I saw the well-selected library, consisting of several thousand volumes, the spacious lecture rooms, and students’ apartments. I often wonder whether students are at all aware of the wistful longing – the envy – with which those who are precluded from academical life, view the arrangements of colleges. No library in a private house conveys any idea of the power of devotion to study which is suggested by the sight of a student’s apartment in a college. The sight of the snug solitary room, the bookshelves, the single desk and armchair, the larum, and even the flowerpot or two in the window, and the portrait of some favourite philosophical worthy, – these things send a thrill of envy through the heart of the thoughtful politician, or man of business, or woman, who cannot command such facilities for study. I know that the fallacy of attributing too much to external arrangements enters here: that many study to as much advantage under difficulties as any academical member in his retirement: I know too that the student shares the human weakness of finding evil in his lot, and supposing that he should be better in some other circumstances; – I know this by a revelation once made to me by a college student, for whose facilities I had been intensely thankful, – a revelation of his deep and incessant trouble because, he was living to himself, selfishly studying, and obliged to wait four or five years before he could bestir himself for his race; – yet, in spite of all this knowledge that the common equality of pleasures and pains subsists here, I never see the interior of a college without longing to impress upon its inmates how envied and enviable they are. It is difficult to remember that the stillness of the cell is of no avail without the intentness of the mind, and that there is no efficacious solitude in the deepest retirement, if the spirit is roving abroad after schemes of pleasure or ambition, – or even of piety and benevolence, which are not the appointed duty of the time. But I have wandered from my new acquaintance in Kosciusko’s garden.

I was surprised to learn the extraordinary high average of health the place can boast of. The young men enter at the age of from fourteen to twenty, stay three or four years, and number about 300 at a time. The mortality in the seventeen years preceding my visit was only five. For eight years before the winter of 1834, there had been no death, Within a few months after, the superintendent’s wife, a servant, and a cadet died; and this was, of course, considered an extraordinary mortality. I rather wondered at this account, for the young men look anything but robust, and the use of tobacco among them is very free indeed. It is prohibited, but not the less indulged in on that account, – nor from the absence of evil example in their superintendents. My new acquaintance made very frank confessions on this subject. He told me that he believed the free use of tobacco had extensively and irreparably injured his health, and that he bitterly mourned his first indulgence in it.

“Do not you mean to leave it off?” said I.

“No”

“Do you think you could not?”

“I could; but it would take three weeks to cure myself; and during that time I could do nothing: and I cannot afford that. I could not learn lessons without it, and the loss of three weeks would injure all my prospects in life.”

“Hardly so fatally as the ruin of your health, I should think. Is your case a common one here?”

“Too common. But I assure you I do all I can to prevent the bad consequences of my own example. I warn my juniors as they come in very seriously.”

“Do you find your warnings of much use?”

“I am afraid not much.”

“They have the usual fates of mere precept, I suppose?”

“Yes, I am afraid so.”

The manners of the cadets are excellent. They are allowed, under restrictions, to mix with the company at Mr Cozens’, and thus to be frequently in ladies’ society. There is a book kept at the hotel, where every cadet must, at each visit, enter his name at length, and the duration of his stay.

The second time I was at West Point was during the camping-out season. The artillery drill in the morning was very noisy and grand to ladies who had never seen anything of the “pomp and circumstance of glorious war.” Then the cadets retired to their tents; and the ladies flitted about all the morning, making calls on each other. When we had discharged this first of a traveller’s duties, we sauntered to the cemetery. Never did I see such a spot to be buried in. The green hill projects into the river so that the monumental pillar erected by the cadets to the comrade who was killed by the bursting of a gun in 1817 is visible from two long reaches. One other accident had occurred a little while before: a cadet had been killed by a comrade in fencing. The tombs are few, and the inscriptions simple. Broad, spreading trees overshadow the long grass, and the whole is so hemmed in, so intensely quiet, that no sound is to be heard but the plash of oars from below, and the hum of insects around, except when the evening gun booms over the height or the summer storm reverberates among the mountains.

Such a storm I had witnessed the evening before from the piazza of the hotel. I stayed from the parade to watch it. As the thick veil of rain came down, the mountains seemed to retire, growing larger as they receded. As the darkness advances the scene became strangely compound. A friend sat with me in the piazza, talking of the deepest subjects on which human thought can speculate. Behind us were the open windows of the hotel, where, by turning the head, we might see the dancing going on, – the gallant cadets and their pretty partners, while all the black servants of the house ranged their laughing faces in the rear. The music of the ballroom came to us mingling with the prolonged bursts of thunder: and other, and grander strains rose from the river where two large steamboats, with their lights, moved like constellations on the water, conveying a regiment from Pennsylvania which was visiting the soldiery of New York State. They sent up rockets into the murky sky, and poured new blasts of music from their band as they passed our promontory. Every moment the lighting burst; now illuminating the interior of a mass of clouds; now quivering from end to end of heaven: now shedding broad livid gleams which suddenly revealed a solitary figure on the terrace, a sloop on the waters, and every jutting point of rock. Still the dance went on till the hour struck which abruptly called the youths away from their partners, and bade them bide to their tents.

On returning from the cemetery, we found Mr and Mrs Kemble from the opposite side of the river, waiting to offer us their hospitality; and we agreed to visit them in the afternoon. Mr Kemble’s boat awaited us at the landing place by three o’clock, and we rowed about some time before landing on the opposite bank, so irresistible is the temptation to linger in this scene of magical beauty. The catholic chapel of Coldspring is well placed on a point above the river: and the village, hidden from West Point by a headland, is pretty. From Mr Kemble’s we were to be treated with a visit to the Indian Fall, and were carried within half a mile of it by water. We followed the brawling brook for that distance, when we saw the glistening of the column of water through the trees. No fall can be prettier for its size, which is just small enough to tempt one to climb. A gentleman of our party made the attempt; but the rocks were too slippery with wet weed, and he narrowly escaped a tumble of twenty feet into the dark pool below. The boys, after bringing us branches of the black cherry, clustered with the fruit, found a safe and dry way up, and appeared waving their green boughs in triumph at the top of the rocks. The tide had risen so that the river was brimming full as we returned, and soft with the mountain shadows: but we landed at West Point in time to see the sun set, – twice, as it happened. At the landing place we stood to see it drop behind the mountain: but just after we had bidden it good night I saw that a meditative cadet, lying at length upon a rock, was still basking in the golden light and I ran up the steep to the piazza. There, in a gap between two summits, was the broad disk, as round as ever; and once more we saw it sink in a tranquillity almost as grand as the stormy splendour of the preceding night. Then ensued the evening parade; guitar music in the hotel; and dancing in the camp.

This evening, a lady and her daughter steamed down from Fishkill with a request to us to spend a few days there; and a clergyman steamed up from New York with an invitation from Dr Hosack to visit him and his family at Hyde Park. We could not do both; and there was some difficulty in contriving to do either, anxiously as we desired it; but we presently settled that Fishkill must be given up. and that we must content ourselves with two days at Hyde Park.

The next morning, I experienced a sensation which I had often heard of, but never quite believed in: the certainty that one has wakened in another world. Those who have travelled much, know that a frequent puzzle, on waking from sound sleep in new places, is to know where one is, – even in what country of the world. This night, I left my window open close to my head, so that I could see the stars reflected in the river. When I woke, the scene was steeped in the light of the sunrise, and as still as death. Its ineffable beauty was all; I remarked no individual objects; but my heart stood still with an emotion which I should be glad to think I may feel again whenever I really do enter a new scene of existence. It was some time before my senses were separately roused: during the whole day. I could not get rid of the impression that I had seen a vision; and even now I can scarcely look back upon the scene as the very same which at other hours I saw clouded with earth-drawn vapours, and gilded by the common sun.

At eleven o’clock, we left West Point; and I am glad that we felt sure at the time that we should visit it again; – a design which we did not accomplish, as the place was ravaged by scarlet fever at the season of the next year that we had fixed for our visit. Mr Livingston, who had just returned from his French mission, was on board the boat. My letters of introduction to him were at the bottom of the my trunk; but we did not put off becoming acquainted till I could get at them.

Mr Livingston’s name is celebrated and honoured in England, (as over all Europe) through its connexion with the Louisiana Code, – this gentleman’s great work. He was born and educated in the State of New York. While pursuing his studies at Princeton College in 1779 and 1780, he was subject to strange interruptions; the professors being repeatedly driven from their chairs by incursions of the enemy, and their scholars on such occasions forming a corps to go out and fight. The library was scattered, the philosophical apparatus destroyed, and the college building shared with troops quartered in the establishment: yet young Livingston quitted college a good scholar. He was a member of the fourth Congress, and there made himself remarkable by his exertions to ameliorate the criminal code of the United States, then as sanguinary as those of the Old World. In 1801, he returned to the practice of his profession of the law in New York, but was not long permitted to decline public life. He was appointed attorney of the state of New York, and mayor of the city. He remained in the city, in the discharge of his duties, while the yellow fever drove away every one who could remove. He nearly died of the disease and was ruined in his private affairs by his devotion to the public service, In 1801, he resigned his offices, and retired to Louisiana, (then a new acquisition of the United States) to retrieve his fortunes: and from thence he discharged all his obligations, paying his debts, with interest upon them, to the last farthing. He was deprived, by a mistake of President Jefferson’s, of an immense property which he had acquired there, and was involved in expensive litigation of many years duration. The law decided in his favour, and the controversy ended in a manner the most honourable to both parties; in a reciprocation of hearty good will.

During the invasion of Louisiana by the British, Mr Livingston took a prominent part in the defence of the State: and when it was over, undertook, with two coadjutors, the formidable task of simplifying its laws, entangled as they were with Spanish prolixities, and all manner of unnecessary and unintelligible provisions. His system was adopted, and has been in use ever since. In 1820, the system of municipal law was revised at New Orleans, under the superintendence of Mr Livingston, and his amendments were put in practice in 1823. He was at the same time engaged, without assistance, in preparing his celebrated penal code. When it was all ready for the press, in 1824, he sat up late one night, to ascertain finally the correctness of the fair copy; and, having finished, retired to rest, in a state of calm satisfaction at his great work being completed. He was awakened by a cry of fire. The room where he had been employed was burning and every scrap of his papers was consumed. Not a note or memorandum was saved.

He appeared to be stunned for the hour; but before the day closed he had begun his labours again; and he never relaxed, till, in two years from the time of the fire, he presented his work to the legislature of Louisiana, improved by the reconsideration which he had been compelled to give it. Men of all countries who understand jurisprudence, seem to think that no praise of this achievement can be excessive.

He afterwards represented Louisiana in both Houses of Congress, became Secretary of State in 1831: and in 1833, Minister to France. His was a busy life, of doing, suffering, and, we may confidently add, enjoying: for his was a nature full of simplicity, modesty, and benevolence. His industry is, of itself, exhilarating to contemplate.

During the whole preceding year, I had heard Mr Livingston’s name, almost daily, in connexion with his extremely difficult negotiations between the United States and France, – or rather between President Jackson and Louis Philippe. I had read his despatches, (some of which were made public that were never designed to be so,) and had not been quite satisfied as to their straightforwardness, but concluded, on the whole, that he had done as much as human wits could well do in so absurd, and perplexed, and dangerous a quarrel, where the minister had to manage the temper of his own potentate, as well as baffle the policy of the European monarch. A desire for peace and justice was evident through the whole of Mr Livingston’s correspondence; and under all, a strong wish to get home. Here he was, – now ploughing his way up his own beloved river, whose banks were studded with the country seats of host of his relations. He came to me on the upper deck, and sat looking very placid, with his staff between his knees, and his strong, observing countenance melting into an expression of pleasure when he described to me his enjoyment in burying himself among the mountains of Switzerland. He said he would not now hear of mountains anywhere else, – at least not in either his own country or mine. He gave me some opinions upon the government of the King of the French, which I little expected to hear from the minister of a democratic republic. We were deep in this subject, when a great hissing of the steam made us look up and see that we were at Hyde Park, and that Dr Hosack and a party of ladies were waiting for me on the wharf. I repeatedly met Mr Livingston in society in New York, the next spring, when a deafness, which had been slight, was growing upon him, and impairing his enjoyment of conversation. The last time I saw him was at the christening of a grand-niece, when he looked well in health, but conversed little, and seemed rather out of spirits. Within a month of that evening, he was seized with pleurisy, which would in all probability have yielded to treatment; but he refused medicine, and was carried off, after a very short illness. Dr Hosack died some months before him. How little did I think, as I now went from the one to the other, that both these vigorous old men would be laid in their graves, even before my return home should call upon me to bid them farewell!

The aspect of Hyde Park from the river had disappointed me, after all I had heard of it. It looks little more than a white house upon a ridge. I was therefore doubly delighted when I found what this ridge really was. It is a natural terrace, overhanging one of the sweetest reaches of the river; and, though broad and straight at the top, not square and formal, like and artificial embankment, but undulating, sloping, and sweeping, between the ridge and the river, and dropped with trees; the whole carpeted with turf, tempting grown people, who happen to have the spirits of children, to run up and down the slopes, and play hide and seek in the hollows. Whatever we might be talking of as we paced the terrace, I felt a perpetual inclination to start off for play. Yet, when the ladies and our selves actually did something like it, threading the little thickets, and rounding every promontory, even to the farthest, (which they call Cape Horn) I felt that the possession of such a place ought to make a man devout, if any of the gifts of Providence can do so. To hold in one’s hand that which melts all strangers’ hearts is to be a steward in a very serious sense of the term. Most liberally did Dr Hosack dispense the means of enjoyment he possessed. Hospitality is inseparably connected with his name in the minds of all who ever heard it: and it was hospitality of the heartiest and most gladsome kind.

Dr Hosack had a good library, – I believe, one of the best private libraries in the country; some good pictures, and botanical and mineralogical cabinets of value. Among the ornaments of his house, I observed some biscuits and vases once belonging to Louis XVI, purchased by Dr Hosack from a gentleman who had them committed to his keeping during the troubles of the first French Revolution.

In the afternoon, Dr Hosack drove me in his gig round his estate, which lies on both sides of the high road; the farm on one side, and the pleasure grounds on the other. The conservatory is remarkable for America; and the flower garden all that it can be made under present circumstances, but the neighbouring country people have no idea of a gentleman’s pleasure in his garden, and of respecting it. On occasions of wedding and other festivities, the villagers come up into the Hyde Park grounds to enjoy themselves; and persons, who would not dream of any other mode of theft, pull up rare plants, as they would wild flowers in the woods, and carry them away. Dr Hosack would frequently see some flower that he had brought with much pains from Europe flourishing in some garden of the village below. As soon as he explained the nature of the case, the plant would be restored with all zeal and care: but the lessons were so frequent and provoking as greatly to moderate his horticultural enthusiasm. We passed through the poultry yard, where the congregation of fowls exceeded in number and bustle any that I had ever seen. We drove round his kitchen garden too, where he had taken pains to grow every kind of vegetable which will flourish in that climate. Then crossing the road, after paying our respects to his dairy of fine cows, we drove through the orchard, and round Cape Horn, and refreshed ourselves with the sweet river views on our way home. There we sat in the pavilion, and he told me much of De Witt Clinton, and showed me his own life of Clinton, a copy of which he said should await me on me return to New York. When that time came, he was no more; but his promise was kindly borne in mind by his lady, from whose hands I received the valued legacy.

We saw some pleasant society at Hyde Park: among the rest, some members of the wide spreading Livingston family, and the Rev. Charles Stewart, who lived for some years as missionary in the South Sea Islands, and afterwards published a very interesting account of his residence there. His manners, which are particularly gentlemanly and modest, show no traces of a residence among savages, or of the shift and disorder of a missionary life; nor of any bad effects from the sudden fame which awaited him on his return into civilized life. I remember with great pleasure a conversation we had by the riverside, which proved to me that he understands the philosophy of fame, knowing how to appropriate the good and reject the evil that it brings, and which deepened the respect I had entertained for him from the beginning of our acquaintance.

The Livingston family, one of the oldest, most numerous, and opulent in the States, has been faithful in the days of its greatness to its democratic principles. In Boston it seems a matter of course that the “first people” should be federalists; that those who may be aristocratic in station should become aristocratic in principle. The Livingstons are an evidence that this need not be. Amidst their splendid entertainments in New York, and in their luxurious retirement on the Hudson, they may be heard going further than most in defence of President Jackson’s idiosyncrasy. Their zeal in favour of Mr Van Buren was accounted for by many from the natural bias of the first family in the State of New York in favour of the first President furnished by that State: but there is no reason to find such cause. The Livingstons have consistently advocated the most liberal principles, through all changes; and that they retain their democratic opinions in the midst of their opulence and family influence is not the less honourable to them for their party having now the ascendancy.

Dr Hosack and his family accompanied us down to the wharf to see Mr Stewart off by one boat, and our party by another, when, on the third day of our visit, we were obliged to depart. Our hearts would have been more sorrowful that they were, if we had foreseen that we should not enjoy our promised meeting with this accomplished and amiable family at New York.

Dr Hosack was a native American, but his father was Scotch. After obtaining the best medical education he could in America, he studied in Edinburgh and London: and hence his affectionate relations with Great Britain, and the warmth with which he welcomed English travellers. He practised medicine in New York for upwards of forty years, and filled the Professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College for some time. He distinguished himself by his successful attention to the causes and treatment of yellow fever. But his services out of his profession were as eminent as any for which his fellow citizens are indebted to him. He rendered liberal aid to various literary, scientific and benevolent institutions, and was always willing and indefatigable in exertion for public objects. One of the most painful scenes of his life was the duel in which Hamilton perished. Dr Hosack was Hamilton’s second, and probably as well aware as his principal and others that the encounter could hardly end otherwise than as it did. Dr Hosack was in New York with his family, the winter after my visit to Hyde Park. He was one day in medical conversation with Dr McVickar of that city, and observed that it would not do for either of them to have an attack of apoplexy, as there would be small chance of their surviving it. Within two weeks both were dead of apoplexy. Dr Hosack lost property in the great fire at New York; he overexerted himself on the night of the fire; and the fatigue and anxiety brought on an attack of the disease he dreaded; under which he presently sank from amidst the well-earned enjoyments of a vigorous and prosperous old age. He was in his 67th year, and showed, to the eye of a stranger, no symptom of decline. His eye was bright, his spirits as buoyant, and his life as full of activity as those of most men of half his years. I always heard the death of this enterprising and useful citizen mentioned as heading the list of the calamities of the Great Fire.

Volume 1

Pine Orchard House

“But the new glory mixes with the heaven

And earth. Man, once descried, imprints for ever

It is presence on all lifeless things – the winds

Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,

A querulous matter or a quick gay laugh –

Never a senseless gust now Man is born.

The herded pines commune, and have deep thoughts,

A secret they assemble to discuss,

When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare

Like grates of hell: the peerless cup afloat

Of the lake lily is an urn some nymph

Swims bearing high above her head.

The morn has enterprise; – deep quiet droops

With evening; – triumph when the sun takes rest; –

Voluptuous transport when the cornfields ripen

Beneath a warm moon, like a happy face:

And this to fill us with regard for Man,

Deep apprehension of his passing worth.”

Paracelsus Part 5

However widely European travellers have differed about other things in America, all seem to agree in their love of the Hudson. The pens of all tourists dwell on its scenery, and their affections linger about it, like the magical lights which seem to have this river in their peculiar charge. Yet very few travellers have seen its noblest wonder. I may be singular; but I own that I was moved by what I saw from the Mountain House than by Niagara itself.

What is this Mountain House, – this Pine Orchard House? many will ask; for its name is not to be found in most books of American travels. “What is that white speck?” I myself asked, when staying at Tivoli, on the east bank of the Hudson, opposite to the Catskills, whose shadowy surface was perpetually tempting the eye. That white speck, visible to most eyes only when bright sunshine was upon it, was the Mountain House, – a hotel built for the accommodation of hardy travellers who may desire to obtain that complete view of the valley of the Hudson which can be had nowhere else. I made up my mind to go; and the next year I went, on leaving Dr Hosack’s. I think I had rather have missed the Hawk’s Nest, the Prairies, the Mississippi, and even Niagara, than this.

The steamboat in which we left Hyde Park landed us at Catskill (31 miles) at a little after three in the afternoon. Stages were waiting to convey passengers to the Mountain House; and we were off in a few minutes, expecting to perform the ascending journey of twelve miles in a little more than four hours. We had the same horses all the way, and therefore set off at a moderate pace, though the road was for some time level, intersecting rich bottoms, and passing flourishing farmhouses, where the men were milking, and the women looked up from their work in the piazzas as we passed. Haymaking was going on in fields which appeared to hang above us at first, but on which we afterwards looked down from such a height that the haycocks were scarcely distinguishable. It was the 25th of July, and a very hot day for the season. The roads were parched up, and every exposed thing that one handled on board the steamboat, or in the stage, made one flinch from the burning sensation. The panting horses, one of them bleeding at the mouth, stopped to drink at a house at the foot of the ascent; and we wondered how, exhausted as they seemed, they would drag us up the mountain. We did not calculate on the change of temperature which we were soon to experience.

The mountain laurel conveyed by association the first impression of coolness. Sheep were browsing among the shrubs, apparently enjoying the shelter of the covert. We scrambled through deep shade for three or four miles, heavy showers passing over us, and gusts of wind bowing the tree tops, and sending a shiver through us, partly from the sudden chillness, and partly from expectation, and awe of the breezy solitude. On turning a sharp angle of the steep road, at a great elevation, we stopped in a damp green neck, where there was an arrangement of hollow trees to serve for water troughs. While the horses were drinking, the gusts parted the trees to the left, and disclosed to me a vast extent of country lying below, chequered with light and shadow. This was the moment in which a lady in the stage said with a yawn, “I hope we shall find something at the top to pay us for all this.” Truly the philosophy of recompense seems to be little understood. In moral affairs, people seem to expect recompense for privileges; as when children, grown and ungrown, are told that they will be a rewarded for doing their duty: and here was a lady hoping for recompense for being carried up a glorious mountain side, in ease coolness, leisure and society, all at once. If it was recompense for the evil inborn ennui that she wanted, she was not likely to find it where she was going to look for it.

After another level reach of road and another scrambling ascent, I saw something on the rocky platform above our heads, like (to compare great things with small) an illumined fairy palace perched among clouds in opera scenery; – a large building, whose numerous window lights marked out its figure from amidst the thunderclouds and black twilight which overshadowed it. It was now half-past eight o’clock and a stormy evening. Everything was chill, and we were glad of lights and tea in the first place.

After tea, I went out upon the platform in front of the house, having been warned not to go too near the edge, so as to fall an unmeasured depth into the forest below. I sat upon the edge as a security against stepping over unawares. The stars were bright overhead, and had conquered half the sky, giving promise of what we ardently desired, a fine morrow. Over the other half, the mass of thunderclouds was, I supposed, heaped together, for I could at first discern nothing of the champaign which I knew must be stretched below. Suddenly, and from that moment incessantly, gushes of red lightning poured out from the cloudy canopy, revealing, not merely the horizon, but the course of the river, in all its windings through the valley. This thread of river, thus illuminated, looked like flash of lightning, caught by some strong hand, and laid along in the valley. All the principal features of the landscape might, no doubt, have been discerned by this sulphurous light; but my whole attention was absorbed by the river, which seemed to come out of the darkness, like an apparition, at the summons of my impatient will. It could be borne only for a short time, – this dazzling, bewildering alternation of glare and blackness, of vast reality and nothingness. I was soon glad to draw back from the precipice, and seek the candlelight within.

The next day was Sunday. I shall never forget, if I have to a hundred, how the world lay at my feet one Sunday morning. I rose very early, and looked abroad from my window, – two stories above the platform. A dense fog, exactly level with my eyes, as it appeared, roofed in the whole plain of the earth; a dusky firmament in which stars had hidden themselves for the day. Such is the account which an antediluvian spectator would probably have given of it. This solid firmament had spaces in it, however, through which gushes of sunlight were poured, lighting up the spires of white churches, and clusters of farm buildings too small to be otherwise distinguished; and especially the river, with its sloops, floating like motes in the sunbeam. The firmament rose and melted, or parted off into the likeness of snowy sky-mountains, and left the cool Sabbath to brood brightly over the land. What human interest sanctifies a bird’s eye view! I suppose this is its peculiar charm; for its charm is found to deepen in proportion to the growth of mind. To an infant, a champaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard square of gay carpet. To the rustic, it is less bewitching than a paddock with two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he casts his eye over its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its secluded homes, its mountain ranges, church spires, and untrodden forests, it is a picture of life; an epitome of the human universe; the complete volume of moral philosophy for which he has sought in vain in all libraries. On the left horizon are the green mountains of Vermont; and at the right extremity sparkles the Atlantic. Beneath lies the forest where the deer are hiding, and the birds rejoicing in song. Beyond the river, he sees spread the rich plains of Connecticut: there, where a blue expanse lies beyond the triple range of hills, are the churches of religious Massachusetts sending up their Sabbath psalms, – praise which he is too high to hear, while God is not. The fields and waters seem to him today no more truly property than the skies which shine down upon them; and to think how some below are busying their thoughts this Sabbath day about how they shall hedge in another field, or multiply their flocks on yonder meadows, gives him a taste of the same pity which Jesus felt in his solitude when his followers were contending about which should be greatest. It seems strange to him now that man should call anything his but the power which is in him, and which can create somewhat more vast and beautiful than all that this horizon encloses. Here he gains the conviction, to be never again shaken, that all that is real is ideal; that the joys and sorrows of men do not spring up out of the ground, or fly abroad on the wings of the wind, or come showered down from the sky; that good cannot be hedged in, nor evil barred out; even that light does not reach the spirit through the eye alone, nor wisdom through the medium of sound or silence only. He becomes of one mind with the spiritual Berkeley, that the face of nature itself, the very picture of woods and streams and meadows, is a hieroglyphic writing in the spirit itself, of which the retina is no interpreter. The proof is just below him, (at least it came under my eye) in the lady (not American) who, after glancing over the landscape, brings her chair into the piazza, and turning her back to the champaign, and her face to the wooden walls of the hotel, begins the study, this Sunday morning, of her lapfull of newspapers. What a sermon is thus preached to him at this moment, from a very hackneyed text! To him that hath much, – that hath the eye and ear and wealth of the spirit, shall more be given, – even a replenishing of this spiritual life from that which to others is formless and dumb: while from him that hath little, who trusts in that which lies about him rather than in that which lives within him, shall be taken away, by natural decline, the power of perceiving and enjoying what is within his own domain. To him who is already enriched with large divine and human revelations, this scene is, for all its stillness, musical with divine and human speech: while one who has been deafened by the din of worldly affairs can hear nothing in this mountain solitude.

The march of the day over the valley was glorious, and I was grieved to have to leave my window for an expedition to the Falls, a few miles off. The Falls are really very fine, – or rather their environment; but I could see plenty of waterfalls elsewhere; but nowhere else such a mountain platform. However, the expedition was a good preparation for the return to my window. The little nooks of the road, crowded with bilberries, cherries, and alpine plants, and the quiet tarn, studded with golden water lilies, were a wholesome contrast to the grandeur of what we had left behind us.

On returning, we found dinner awaiting us, and also a party of friends out of Massachusetts, with whom we passed the afternoon, climbing higher and higher, among the pines, ferns, and blueberries of the mountain, to get wider and wider views. They told me that I saw Albany; but I was by no means sure of it. This large city lay in the landscape like an anthill in a meadow. Long before sunset, I was at my window again, watching the gradual lengthening of the shadows and purpling of the landscape. It was more beautiful than the sunrise of this morning, and less so than that of the morrow. Of this last, I shall give no description; for I would not weary others with what is most sacred to me. Suffice it that it gave me a vivid idea of the process of creation, from the moment when all was without form and void to that when light was commanded, and there was light. Here again I humbled by seeing what such things are to some who which in vain for what they are not made to see. A gentleman and lady in the hotel intended to have left the place on Sunday. Having overslept that morning’s sunrise, and arrived too late for that on Saturday, they were persuaded to say till Monday noon; and I was pleased, on rising at four on Monday morning, to see that they were in the piazza below, with a telescope. We met at breakfast, all faint with hunger, of course.

“Well Miss M.,” said the gentleman, discontentedly, “I suppose you were disappointed in the sunrise.”

“No, I was not.”

“Why do you think the sun was any handsomer here than at New York?”

I made no answer; for what could one say? But he drove me by questions to tell what I expected to see in the sun.

“I did not expect to see the sun green or blue.”

“What did you expect then?”

I was obliged to explain that it was the effect of the sun on the landscape that I had been looking for.

“Upon the landscape! O! but we saw that yesterday.”

Then gentleman was perfectly serious – quite earnest in all this. When we were departing, a foreign tourist was heard to complain of the high charges! High charges! As if we were to be supplied for nothing on a perch where the wonder is if any but the young ravens get fed! When I considered what a drawback it is in visiting mountaintops that one is driven down again almost immediately by one’s bodily wants, I was ready to thank the people devoutly for harbouring us on any terms, so that we might think out our thoughts, and compose our emotions, and take our fill of that portion of our universal and eternal inheritance.

Volume 1

Weddings

“God, the best maker of all marriages,

Combine your hearts in one!”

Henry V

I was present at four weddings in the United States, and at an offer of marriage.

The offer of marriage ought hardly to be so called however. It was a petition from a slave to be allowed to wed (as slaves wed) the nursemaid of a lady in whose house I was staying. The young man could either write a little, or had employed some one who could, to prepare his epistle for him. It ran from corner to corner of the paper, which was daubed with diluted water, like certain love letters nearer home than Georgia. Here are the contents:

Miss Cunningham it is My wishes to companion in your Present and I hope you will Be peeze at it and I hope that you will not think Hard of Me I have Ben to the Doctor and he was very well satafide with Me and I hope you is and Miss Mahuw all so

“thats all I has to say now wiheshen you will grant Me that honor I will Be very glad.

S. B. Smith

The nursemaid was granted: and as it was a love match, and as the girl’s mistress is one of the tender – the sore hearted about having slaves, I hope the poor creatures are as happy as love in debasement can make them.

The first wedding I saw in Boston was very like the common run of weddings in England. It happened to be convenient that the parties should be married in church; and in the Unitarian church in which they usually worshiped we accordingly awaited them. I had no acquaintance with the family, but went on the invitation of the pastor who married them. The family connexion was large, and the church therefore about half full. The form of celebration is at the pleasure of the pastor; but by consent the administration by pastors of the same sect is very nearly alike. The promises of the married parties are made reciprocal, I observed. The service in this instance struck me as being very beautiful from its simplicity tenderness, and brevity. There was one variation from the usual method, in the offering of one of the prayers by a second pastor, who, being the uncle of the bridegroom was invited to take a share in the service.

The young people were to set out for Europe in the afternoon, the bride being out of health, – the dreary drawback upon almost every extensive plan of action and fair promise of happiness in America. The lady has, I rejoice to hear, been quite restored by travel: but her sickness threw a gloom over the celebration, even in the minds of strangers. She and her husband walked up the middle aisle to the desk where the pastors sat. They were attended by only one bridesmaid and grooms man, and where all in plain travelling dresses. They said steadily and quietly what they had to say. and walked down the aisle again as they came. Nothing could be simpler and better: for this was not a marriage where festivity could have place. If there is any natural scope for joy, let weddings. by all means, he joyous; but here there was sickness, with the prospect of a long family separation, and there was most truth in quietness.

The other wedding I saw in Boston was as gay an one as is often seen. The parties were opulent, and in the first rank of society. They were married in the drawing room of the bride’s house, at half-past eight in the evening, by Dr Channing. The moment the ceremony was over, crowds of company being to arrive: and the bride, young and delicate, and her maidens, were niched in a corner of one of the drawing rooms to curtsey to all comers. They were so formally placed, so richly and (as it then seemed) formally dressed, – for the present revived antique style of dress was then quite new, – that, in the interval of their curtseys, they looked like an old picture brought from Windsor Castle. The bride’s mother presided in the other drawing room, and the bridegroom flitted about, universally attentive, and on the watch to introduce all visitors to his lady. The transition from the solemnity of Dr Channing’s service to the noisy gaieties of a rout was not at all to my taste. I imagined that it was not to Dr Channing’s either for his talk with me was on matters very little resembling anything that we had before our eyes: and he soon went away. The noise became such as to silence all who were not inured to the gabble of an American party, – the noisiest kind of assemblage, I imagine (not excepting a Jew’s synagogue,) on the face of the globe. I doubt whether any Pagans in their worship can raise any hubbub to equal it. I constantly found in a large party, after trying in vain every kind of scream that I was capable of, that I must give up, and satisfy myself with nodding and shaking my head. If I was rightly understood, well and good: if not, I must let it pass. As the noise thickened and the heat grew more oppressive, I glanced towards the poor bride in her corner, still standing, still curtseying: her pale face growing paler; her nonchalant manner (perhaps the best she could assume) more indifferent. I was afraid that if all this went on much longer, she would faint or die upon the spot. It did not last much longer. By eleven, some of the company began to go away, and by a quarter before twelve all were gone but the comparatively small party (including ourselves) who were invited to stay to supper.

The chandelier and mantelpieces. I then saw, were dressed with flowers. There was a splendid supper; and before we departed, we were carried up to a large well-lighted apartment, where bride cake and the wedding presents were set out in bright array.

Five days afterwards we went, in common with all her acquaintance, to pay our respects to the bride. The courtyard of her mother’s house was thronged with carriages, though no one seemed to stay five minutes. The bridegroom received us at the head of the stairs, and led us to his lady, who curtsied as before. Cake, wine, and liqueurs were handed round, the visitors all standing. A few words on common subjects were exchanged, and we were gone, to make way for others.

A Quaker marriage which I witnessed at Philadelphia was scarcely less showy in its way. It took place at the Cherry Street church, belonging to the Hicksites. The reformed Quaker Church, consisting of the followers of Elias Hicks, bears about the same relation to the old Quakerism as the Church of England to that of Rome; and, it seems to me, the mutual dislike is as intense. I question whether religious enmity ever attained a greater extreme than among the orthodox Friends of Philadelphia. The Hicksites are more moderate, but are sometimes naturally worried out of their patience, by the meddling, the denunciations, and the calumnies of the old Quaker societies. The new church is thinking of reforming and relaxing a good deal further; and in the celebration of marriage among other things. It is under consideration, (or was when I was there) whether the process of betrothment should not be simplified, and marriage in the father’s house permitted to such as prefer it to the church. The wedding at which I was president was, however, performed with all the formalities.

A Quaker friend of mine, a frequent preacher, suggested, a few days previously, that a seat had better be reserved for me near the speakers, that I might have a chance of hearing, “in case there should be communications.” I had hopes from this that my friend would speak; and my wishes were not disappointed.

The spacious church was crowded; and for three or four hours the poor bride had to sit facing the assemblage, – aware, doubtless, that during the time of silence, the occupation of the strangers president, if not of the friends themselves, would be watching her and her party. She was pretty, and most beautifully dressed. I have seldom pitied anybody more than I did her, while she sat palpitating for three hours under the gaze of some hundreds of people; but, towards the end of the time of silence, my compassion was transferred to the bridegroom, For want of something to do, after suppressing many yawns, he looked up to the ceiling; and in the midst of an empty stare. I imagine he caught the eye of an acquaintance in the back seats, for he was instantly troubled with a most irrepressible and unseasonable inclination to laugh. He struggled manfully with his difficulty; but the smiles would come, broader and broader. If by dim of looking steadfastly into his hat for a few minutes, he attained a becoming gravity. it was gone the moment be raised his head. I was in a panic lest we should have a scandalous peal of merriment if something was not given him to do or listen to. Happily “there were communications,” and the course of his ideas was changed.

Of the five speakers, one was an old gentleman whose discourse was an entire perplexity to me. For nearly an hour, he discoursed on Jacob’s ladder: but in a style so rambling, and in a chant so singularly unmusical as to set attention and remembrance at defiance. Some parenthetical observations alone stood a chance of being retained, from their singularity; – one, for instance, which he introduced in the course of his narrative about Jacob setting a stone for a pillow; – “a very different,” cried the preacher, raising his chant to the highest pitch. “a very different pillow, by the way, from any that we – are – accommodated – with,” – What a contrast was the brief discourse of my Quaker friend which followed! Her noble countenance was radiant as the morning, her soft voice, thought low, so firm that she was heard to the furthest corner, and her little sermon as philosophical as it was devout, “Send forth thy light and thy truth,” was her text. She spoke gratefully of intellectual light as a guide to spiritual truth, and anticipated and prayed for an ultimate universal diffusion of both. The certificate of the marriage was read by Dr Parrish, an elderly physician of Philadelphia, the very realization of all my imaginings of the personal appearance of William Penn; with all the dignity and bonhomie that one fancies Penn invested with in his dealings with the Indians. Dr Parrish speaks with affection of the Indians, from the experience some ancestors of his had of the hospitability of these poor people, when they were in a condition to show hospitability. His grandfather’s family were shipwrecked; and the Indians took the poor lady and her children home to an inhabited cave, and fed them for many weeks or months. The tree stump round which they used to sit at meals is still standing; and Dr Parrish says that, let it stand as long as it will, the love of his family to the Indians shall outlast it.

The matrimonial promise was distinctly and well spoken by both the parties. At the request of the bride and bridegroom, Dr Parrish asked me to put the first signature, after their own, to the certificate of the marriage; and we adjourned for the purpose to an apartment connected with the church. Most ample sheets of parchment were provided for the signatures, and there was a prodigious array of names before we left, when a crowd was still waiting to testify. This multitudinous witnessing is the pleasantest part of being married by acclamation. If weddings are not to be private, there seems no question of the superiority of this Quaker method to that of the Boston marriage I witnessed, where there was all the publicity without the cooperation and sanction.

The last wedding which I have to give an account if is full of a melancholy interest to me now. All was so joyous, so simple, so right, that there seemed no suggestion to evil-boding, no excuse for anticipating such woe as has followed. On one of the latter days of July, 1835. I reached the village of Stockbridge, – the Sedgwick’s village, – for the second time, intending to stay four or five days with my friends there. I had heard of an approaching wedding in the family connexion, and was glad that I had planned to leave so as to be out of the way at a time when I supposed the presence of foreigners, though friends, might be easily dispensed with. But when Miss Sedgwick and I were sitting in her room, one bright morning, there was a tap at the door. It was the pretty black-eyed girl who was to be married the next week. She stood only a minute on the threshold to say, with grave simplicity, “I am come to ask you to join our friends at my father’s house, next Tuesday evening.” Being thus invited. I joyfully assented, and put off my journey.

The numerous children of the family connexion were in wild spirits all that Tuesday. In the morning, we went a strong party to the Ice Hole, – a defile between two hills, so perplexed and encumbered with rocks that none but practiced climbers need attempt the passage. It was a good way for the young people to work off their exuberant spirits. Their laughter was heard from amidst the nooks and hiding places of the labyrinth, and smiling faces might be seen behind every shrubby screen which sprang up from the crevices. How we tried to surpass each other in the ferns and mosses we gathered, rich in size and variety! What skipping and scrambling there was; what trunk bridges, and ladders of roots! How valiant the ladies looked with their stout sticks! How glad every one was to feast upon the wild raspberries when we struggled through the close define into the cool, green, breezy meadow on the banks of the Housatonic! During the afternoon, we were very quiet, reading one of Carlyle’s reviews aloud (for the twentieth time, I believe, to some of the party), and discussing it and other things. By eight o’clock, we were all dressed for the wedding, and some of the children ran over the green before us, but came back, saying that all was not quite ready: so we got one of the girls to sing to us for another half hour.

The house of the bride’s father was well lighted, and dressed with flowers. She had no mother: but her elder sisters aided their father in bidding us welcome. The drawing room was quite full; and while the grownup friends found it difficult to talk, and to repress the indefinable anxiety and agitation which always attend a wedding, the younger members of the party were amusing themselves with whispered mirth. The domestics looked as if the most joyous event of their lives were taking place, and the old father seemed placid and satisfied.

In a few minutes, we were summoned to another room, at the top of which stood the tall bridegroom, with his pretty little lady on his arm: on either side, the three gentlemen and three ladies who attended them; and in front the Episcopalian minister who was to marry them, and who has since been united to one of the sisters. It was the first time of his performing the ceremony; and his manner was solemn and somewhat anxious, as might be expected.

The bridegroom was a professor in a college in the neighbouring State of New York; a young man of high acquirements and character, to whom the old father might well be proud to give his daughter. His manners were remarkably pleasing, and there was a joyous, dignified serenity visible in them this evening which at once favourably prepossessed us, who did not previously know him. He was attended by a brother professor from the same college. When the service was over, we all kissed the grave and quiet bride. I trust that no bodings of the woes which awaited her cast a shadow over her spirits then. I think, though grave, she was not sad. She spoke with all her father’s guests in the course of the evening, as did her husband. How often have I of late tried to recall precisely what they said to me, and every look with which they said it!

We went back to the drawing room for cake and wine: and then ensued the search for the ring in the great wedding cake, with much merriment among those who were alive to all the fun of a festivity like this, and to none of the care. There was much moving about between the rooms, and dressing with flowers in the hall; and lively conversation, – as it must needs be where there are Sedgwicks. Then champagne and drinking of healths went round, the guests poured out upon the green, all the ladies with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. There we bade good night, and parted off to our several homes.

When I left the village, the next morning, two or three carriages full of young people were setting off, as attendants upon the bride and bridegroom, to Lebanon. After a few such short excursions in the neighbourhood, the young couple went home to begin their quiet college and domestic life.

Before a year had elapsed, – a year which to me seemed gone like a month, – I was at Stockbridge again, and found the young wife’s family in great trouble. She was in a raging fever, consequent on her confinement, and great fears were entertained for her life. Her infant seemed to have but a small chance, under the circumstances; and there was a passing mention of her husband being ill. Everyone spoke of him with a respect and affection which showed how worthy he was of this young creature’s love; and it was our feeling for him which made our prayers for her restoration so earnest as they were. The last I heard of her before I left the country was that she was slowly and doubtfully recovering, but had not yet been removed from her father’s house. The next intelligence that I received, after my return to England, was of her husband’s death: that he had died in a calm and satisfied state of mind; satisfied that if their reasonable hopes of domestic joy and usefulness had not been fulfilled, it was for wise and kind reasons; and that the strong hand which thus early divided them would uphold the gentle survivor. No one who witnessed and blessed their union can help beseeching and trusting, since all other hope is over, that it may be even thus.

Volume 1

High Road Travelling

“How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers, in this journey of it – the world must judge – but the traces of it, which are now all set o’vibrating together this moment, tell me it is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made no convention with my man with the gun as to time – by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in this journey – I was always in company, and with great variety too.”

Sterne

Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirableness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a half ago.

To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling, certain of our shipmates and their friends, and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New York in an “exclusive extra;” a stage hired, with the driver for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our fellow travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list of our shipmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany, on the 6th of October.

On our way from Stockbridge to Albany, we saw a few objects characteristic of the country. While the horses were being fed, we wandered into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis: another of Amasa and Polly Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were there too. The signs in the American streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman and Hebrew names as those of lrish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words. One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug. I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth. On a table in a little wayside inn, I found Fox’s Martyrs; and against the wall hung a framed sampler, with the following lines worked upon it.

“Jesus, permit thine awful name to stand

As the first offering of an infant’s hand:

And as her fingers o’er the canvas move,

O fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love.

With thy dear children let her bear a part,

And write thy name thyself upon her heart.”

In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking chairs, in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as severely as the tobacco chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a rocking chair. A common wedding present is a rocking chair. A beloved pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rocking chair by his grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a breeze. If such a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to leave off laughing at the Shaker worship.

As we approached Greenbush, which lies opposite to Albany, on the cast bank of the Hudson, we met riding horses, exercised by grooms, and more than one handsome carriage, – tokens that we were approaching some centre of luxury. The view of Albany rising from the river side, with its brownstone courthouse and white marble capitol, is fine; but it wants the relief of more trees within itself, or of a rural background. How changed is this bustling city, thronged with costly buildings, from the Albany of the early days of Mrs Grant of Laggan, when the children used to run up and down the green slope which is now State Street, – imposing from its width, and the massiveness of the houses seen behind its rows of trees! A tunnel is about to be made under the Hudson at Albany; meantime we crossed, as every body does, by a horse ferry boat; a device so cruel, as well as clumsy, that the sooner it is superseded the better. I was told that the strongest horses, however kept up with corn, rarely survive a year of this work.

We observed that, even in this city, the physicians have not always their names engraved on brass door plates. On the most conspicuous part of their houses, – perhaps on the angle of a corner house, – is nailed some glazed substance like floor cloth, with “Dr Such-an-one” painted upon it. At Washington I remember seeing MAGISTRATE thus affixed to a mere shed.

As we surmounted the hill leading to our hotel, we saw our two shipmates dancing down the steps to welcome us. There certainly is a feeling among shipmates, which does not grow out of any other relation. They are thrown first into such absolute dependence on one another, for better for worse, and are afterwards so suddenly and widely separated, that if they do chance to meet again, they renew their intimacy with a fervour which does not belong to a friendship otherwise originated. The glee of our whole party this evening is almost ridiculous to look back upon. Everything served to make a laugh, and we were almost intoxicated with the prospect of what we were going to see and do together. we had separated only a fortnight ago; but we had as much to talk over as if we had been travelling apart for six months. The Prussian had to tell his adventures; we our impressions; and the Southerner his comparisons of his own country with Europe. Then we had to arrange the division of labour by which the gentlemen were to lighten the cares of travelling. Dr J., the Prussian, was on all occasions to select apartments for us; Mr S., the Dutchman, to undertake the eating department; Mr H., the American, was paymaster, and Mr O., the German, took charge of the luggage. It was proposed that badges should be worn to designate their offices. Mr S. was to be adorned with a corn cob. Mr H. stuck a bank bill in front of his hat; and, next morning, when Mr O. was looking another way, the young men locked a small padlock upon his buttonhole, which he was compelled to carry there for a day or two till his comrades vouchsafed to release him from his badge.

The hotel was well furnished and conducted. I pointed out, with some complacency, what a handsome piano we had in our drawing room; but when, in the dark hour, I opened it in order to play, I found it empty of keys! – a disappointment, however, which I have met with in England.

Mr Van Buren and his son happened to be in Albany, and called on me this afternoon. There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of this gentleman, whom I afterwards saw frequently at Washington. He is small in person, with light hair, and blue eyes. I was often asked whether I did not think his manners gentlemanly. There is much friendliness in his manners, for he is a kind hearted man: he is also rich in information, and lets it come out on subjects in which he cannot contrive to see any danger in speaking. But his manners want the frankness and confidence which are essential to good breeding. He questions closely without giving anything in return. Moreover, he flatters to a degree which so cautious a man should long ago have found out to be disagreeable: and his flattery is not merely praise of the person he is speaking to, but a worse kind still, – a scepticism and ridicule of objects and persons supposed to be distasteful to the one he is conversing with. I fully believe that he is an amiable and indulgent domestic man, and a reasonable political master, a good scholar, and a shrewd man of business: but he has the scepticism which marks the lower orders of politicians. His public career exhibits no one exercise of that faith in men, and preference of principle to petty expediency by which a statesman shows himself to be great.

The consequence is that, with all his opportunities, no great deed has ever been put to his account, and his shrewdness has been at fault in some of the most trying crises of his career. The man who so little trusts others, and so intensely regards self as to make it the study of his life not to commit himself, is liable to a more than ordinary danger of judging wrong when compelled, by the pressure of circumstances, to act a decided part. It has already been so with Mr Van Buren, more than once; and now that he is placed in a position where he must sometimes visibly lead, and cannot always appear to follow, it will be seen whether a due reverence of men and a forgetfulness of self would not have furnished him with more practical wisdom than all his “sounding on his dim and perilous way.” Mr Calhoun is, I believe, Mr Van Buren’s evil genius. Mr Calhoun was understood to be in expectation of succeeding to the presidential chair when Mr Van Buren was appointed Minister to Great Britain. This appointment of President Jackson’s did not receive the necessary sanction from the Senate; and the new minister was recalled on the first possible day, Mr Calhoun being very active in bringing him back. Mr Calhoun was not aware that he was recalling one who was to prove a successful rival. Mr Calhoun has not been President; Mr Van Buren is so: but successful rival has a mortal dread of the great Nullifier – a dread so obvious, and causing such a prostration of all principle and all dignity, as to oblige observers to conclude that there is more in the matter than they see; that it will come out some day why the disappointed aspirant is still to be propitiated, when he seems to be deprived of power to do mischief. In Society in America I have given an account of the Nullification struggle, and of the irritation, the mysterious discontent, which it has left behind.[2]

Perhaps Mr Van Buren may entertain the opinion which many hold, that that business is not over yet, and that the slavery question is made a pretext by the Nullifiers of the South, for a line of action to which they are impelled by the disappointed personal ambition of one or two and the wounded pride of the many who cannot endure the contrast between the increase of the Free States of the North and the deterioration of the Slave states of the South. However this may be, to propitiate Mr Calhoun seems to have been Mr Van Buren’s great object for a long time past: an object probably hopeless in itself, and in the pursuit of which he is likely to lose the confidence of the North far faster than he could, at best, disarm the enmity of the South.

In the spring of 1836, when Mr van Buren was still Vice-President, and the Presidential election was drawing near, Mr Calboun brought forward in the Senate his Bill, (commonly called the Gag Bill,) to violate the post office function, by authorizing postmasters to investigate the contents of the mails, and to keep back all papers whatsoever relating to the subject of slavery. The Bill was, by consent, read the first and second times without debate; and the Senate was to be divided on the question whether it should go to a third reading. The votes were equal, – 18 to 18. “Where’s the Vice-President?” shouted Mr Calhoun’s mighty voice. The Vice-President was behind a pillar, talking. He was compelled to give the casting vote, – to commit himself for once; a cruel necessity to a man of his caution. He voted for the third reading and there was a bitter cry on the instant, – “The Northern States are sold.” The Bill was thrown out on the division on the third reading, and the Vice-President lost by his vote the goodwill of the whole body of abolitionists, who had till then supported him as the democratic and supposed anti-slavery candidate. As it was, most of the abolitionists did not vote at all, for want of a good candidate, and Mr Van Buren’s majority was so reduced as to justify a belief that if the people had had another year to consider his conduct in, or if another democratic candidate could have been put forward, he would have been emphatically rejected. Having once committed himself, he has gone further still, in propitiation of Mr Calhoun. On the day of his presidential installation, he declared that under no circumstances would he give his assent to any bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This declaration does not arise out of a belief that Congress has not power to abolish slavery in the District; for he did, not long before, when hard pressed, declare that he believed Congress to possess that power. He has therefore hazarded the extraordinary declaration that he will not, under any circumstances, assent to what may become the will of the people, constitutionally embodied. This is a bold intimation for a “non-committal man” to make. It remains to be seen whether Mr Calhoun, if really dangerous, can be kept quiet by such fawning as this; and whether the will of the people may not be rather stimulated than restrained by this sacrifice of them to the South, so as either to compel the President to retract his declaration before his four years are out, or to prevent his re-election.

How strange it is to recall one’s first impressions of public men in the midst of one’s matured opinions of them! How freshly I remember the chat about West Point and Stockbridge acquaintances that I had that afternoon at Albany, with the conspicuous man about whom I was then ignorant and indifferent, and whom I have since seen committed to the lowest political principles and practices, while elected as professing some of the highest! It only remains to be said that if Mr Van Buren feels himself aggrieved by the interpretation which is commonly put upon the facts of his political life, he has no one to blame but himself; for such misinterpretation (if it exist) is owing to his singular reserve; a reserve which all men agree in considering incompatible with the simple honesty, and cheerful admission of responsibility which democratic republicans have a right to require of their rulers.

Before breakfast, the next morning, we walked down to the Padroon’s house, – known by reputation, with the history of the estate, to everybody. We just caught a sight of the shrubbery, and took leave to pass through the courtyard, and hastened back to breakfast, immediately after which we proceeded by railroad to Schenectady. There we at once stepped into a canal boat for Utica. I would never advise ladies to travel by canal, unless the boats are quite new and clean; or at least far better kept than any that I saw or heard of on this canal. On fine days it is pleasant enough sitting outside, (except for having to duck under the bridges, every quarter of an hour, under penalty of having one’s head crushed to atoms) and in dark evenings the approach of the boat lights on the water is a pretty sight: but the horrors of night and of wet days more than compensate for all the advantages these vehicles can boast. The heat and noise, the known vicinity of a compressed crowd, lying packed like herrings in a barrel, the bumping against the sides of the locks, and the hissing of water therein like an inundation, startling one from sleep, – these things are very disagreeable. We suffered under an additional annoyance in the presence of sixteen Presbyterian clergymen, – some of the most unprepossessing of their class. If there be a duty more obvious than another on board a canal boat, it is to walk on the bank occasionally in fair weather, or at least to remain outside, in order to air the cabin, (close enough at best) and get rid of the scents of the table before the unhappy passengers are shut up to sleep there. These sixteen gentlemen, on their way to Convention at Utica, could not wait till they got there to begin their devotional observances, but obtruded them upon the passengers in a most unjustifiable manner. They were not satisfied with saving an almost interminable grace before and after each meal, but shut up the cabin for prayers before dinner; for missionary conversation in the afternoon, and for scripture reading and prayers quite late into the night, keeping tired travellers from their rest, and every one from his fair allowance of fresh air.

The passengers were all invited to listen to, and to question a missionary from China, who was of the party. The gentleman did not seem to have profited much by his travels, however; for he declared himself unable to answer some very simple inquiries. “Is the religion of the Christian missionaries tolerated by the Chinese government?” “I am not prepared to answer that question.” “Are the Chinese cannibals?” “I am not prepared to answer that question.” One requested that any brother would offer a suggestion as to how Government might be awakened to the sinfulness of permitting Sunday mails; during the continuance of which practice there was no hope of the Sabbath being duly sanctified. No one was ready with a suggestion, but one offered a story, which every head was bent to hear. The story was of two sheep-drovers, one of whom feared God, and the other did not. The profane drover set out with hid sheep, for a particular destination, two hours earlier than the other, and did not rest on Sunday like his pious comrade. What was the catastrophe? The God fearing drover, though he had stood still all Sunday, arrived at his destination two hours earlier than the other. “Ah!” “Ah!” resounded through the cabin in all conceivable tones of conviction, no one asking particulars of what had happened on the road, – of how and where the profane drover had been delayed. Temperance was, of course, a great topic with these divines, and they fairly provoked ridicule upon it. One passenger told me that they were so strict that they would not drink water out of the Brandywine river: and another remarked that they partook with much relish of the strong wine sauce served with our puddings.

In addition to other discomforts, we passed the fine scenery of Little Falls in the night. I was not aware what we had missed till I traversed the Mohawk valley by a better conveyance, nearly two years afterwards. I have described this valley in my other work on America,[3] and must therefore restrain my pen from dwelling on its beauties here.

The appearance of the berths in the ladies’ cabin was so repulsive, that we were seriously contemplating sitting out all might, when it began to rain so as to leave us no choice. I was out early in the misty morning, however: and was presently joined by the rest of my party, all looking eagerly for signs of Utica being near.

By eight o’clock we were at the wharf. We though Utica the most extempore place we had yet seen. The right-up shops, the daubed houses, the streets running into the woods, all seemed to betoken that the place had sprung up out of some sudden need. How much more ancient and respectable did it seem after my return from the west, where I had seen towns so much newer still! We were civilly received and accommodated at Bagg’s hotel, where we knew how to value cold water, spacious rooms and retirement, after the annoyances of the boat.

Our baggage master was fortunate in securing a neat, clean stage to take us to Trenton Falls (14 miles), where we promised each other to spend the whole day, on condition of being off by five the next morning, in order to accomplish the distance to Syracuse in the course of the day. The reason for our economy of time was not merely that it was late in the season, and every day which kept us from the Falls of Niagara, therefore, of consequence; but that our German friend, Mr O., was obliged to be back in New York by a certain day. We considered a little extra haste and fatigue a small tax to pay for the privilege of his companionship.

We clapped our hands at the sight of the “Rural Retreat.” the comfortable, hospitable house of entertainment at Trenton, – standing in its garden on the edge of the forest, – so unlike hotels on the high road.

As no other company was there, we could choose our own hours. We ordered a late dinner, and proceeded to the Falls. We had only to follow a path in the pine forest for a few paces, and we were at the edge of the ravine which encloses the cascades.

It is a pity that the Indian name is not retained. Trenton Falls are called Cayoharic by the Indians. They are occasioned by the descent of West Canada Creek through a ravine, where it makes a succession of leaps from platforms of rock; six of these falls being pretty easily accessible by travellers. Much has been said of the danger of the enterprise of ascending the ravine; but I saw no peril to persons who are neither rash nor nervous. The two accidents which have happened have, I believe, been owing, the one to extreme rashness, and the other to sudden terror.

From the edge of the ravine, the black water, speckled with white foam, is seen rushing below with a swiftness which already half turns the head of the stranger. We descended five flights of wooden steps, fixed against the sleep face of the rock, and at the bottom found ourselves at the brink of the torrent. I never was in so dark and chill a place in the open air: yet the sun was shining on the opposite face of the rock, lighting the one scarlet maple which stood out from among the black cedars and dark green elms. We selected our footing with a care which we were quite ready to ridicule when we came back: and were not above grasping the chain which is rivetted into the rock where the shelf which forms the pathway is narrowest, and where the angles are sharpest. The hollow is here so filled with the voice of many waters, that no other can be heard: and after many irreverent shouts had been attempted, we gave up all attempts to converse till we reached a quieter place. Being impatient to see the first fall, I went on before the rest, and having climbed the flight of wooden steps, so wetted with the spray of the fall as to be as slippery as ice. I stood on the platform under a covert of rock foaming with the thunder of the waters, and saw my companions, one by one turn the angle of the path, and pause in front of the sheet of liquid amber, sprinkled with snow. The path on which they stood seemed too narrow for human foot: and when, discerning me, they waved their hands. I trembled lest, disregarding their footing, they should be swept away by the furious torrent. When we found our heads turning with the rush of the dark waters, we amused ourselves with admiring the little wells in the rock, and the drip from the roots of a cedar projecting from the top of the ravine, – a never-failing, glittering shower. Between the fifth and sixth falls there is a long tranquil reach of water: and here we lingered to rest our bewildered senses, before entering upon the confusion of rocks through which the sixth forces its way. We see-sawed upon a fallen trunk, sent autumn leaves whirling down the stream, and watched the endless dance of the balls of foam which had found their way into the tiny creeks and bays opposite, and could not get out again.

Gay butterflies seemed quite at home in this ravine. They flit through the very spray of the Falls. It seemed wonderful that an insect could retain its frail life in the midst of such an uproar. When the sun, in its course, suddenly shone full into the glen through a chasm in its rocky wall, how the cascade was instantly dressed in glory! crowned with a rainbow, and invested with all radiant hues! How the poor banished Indians must mourn when the lights of their Cayoharic visit their senses again in the dreams of memory or of sleep! The recollection of these poor exiles was an ever-present saddening thought in the midst of all most beautiful scenes of the New World.

When we had surmounted the sixth fall we saw indeed that we could go no further. A round projection of rock, without trace of anything that I could call a foothold, barred us out from the privacy of the upper ravine. The Falls there are said to be as beautiful as any that we saw, and it is to be hoped that, by blasting a pathway, or by some other means, they also may be laid open to the affections of happy visitors.

They have been seen and reported of. A friend of mine has told me, since I was there, how Bryant, the poet, and himself behaved like two thoughtless boys in this place. Clambering about by themselves, one summer day, when their wives had gone back to the house, they were irresistibly tempted to pass the barrier, and see what lay beyond. They got round the rock, I cannot conceive how, by inequalities in its surface. They met with so many difficulties and so much beauty higher up, that they forgot all about time, till they found themselves in utter darkness. They hastened to grope their way homewards through the forest, and were startled, after a while, by shouts and moving lights. Till that moment, they never recollected how alarmed their wives must be. It was past ten o’clock, and the poor ladies had been in a state of uneasiness half the evening, and of mortal terror for the two last hours. They had got people from the neighbourhood to go out with torches, little expecting to see their husbands come walking home on their own feet, and with nothing the matter with them but hunger and shame. I hope the ladies were exceedingly angry when their panic was over.

The forest at the top of the ravine was a study to me, who had yet seen but little forest. Moss cushioned all the roots of the trees; hibiscus over spread the ground: among the pine stems there was a tangle of unknown shrubs; and a brilliant bird, scarlet except its black wings, hovered about as if it had no fear of us. I could learn nothing more about it than that the people called it the red robin. Before we returned, the moon hung like a gem over the darkness of the ravine. I spent another happy day among these Falls, some months after, and was yet more impressed with their singularity and beauty.

When we had exchanged our wet clothes, an excellent dinner was served, and our host himself waited upon us, sitting down by the window when nothing was wanted. In the course of dinner, Mr H. related to me some particulars of the slave insurrection at Charleston, a few years before, when upwards of thirty slaves were hanged at once. Some circumstance which he told led me to observe that I should have done as the thirty did, in their place. “Oh.” said he, “so should I.” I thanked him for his response, saying that no defence he could now make of slavery would stand against such an admission. He did not retract, but a long argument ensured, in which our host became deeply interested. He moved his chair forwarder and forwarder, till I saw him leaning over the table between two of the gentlemen, to listen. Every body had long done eating, and every dish on the table was quite cold, and the debate concluded, before our host remembered that we had not had pudding and started up to serve us.

We soon retired to our rooms, being in need of rest after the discomforts of the canal boat, and the fatigues of the day: but it was not too late for the neighbours to offer their hospitable welcomes. Just after I was undressed, the cards of visitors were brought me, with a friendly message: but it was too late to do more than send a message in return.

We left the place at a little after five in the morning, in a dismal rain. While breakfasting at Utica, we engaged an “exclusive extra” to carry us to Buffalo, for eighty dollars, the precise route being agreed upon, and the choice of times and seasons to remain with us. On going out to our carriage, we found the steps of the hotel occupied by a number of persons, some from Boston, who offered me welcome to the country, and any information or assistance I might need. One gentleman put into my hand of introduction to an influential friend of his at Cincinnati, as it was understood that I was going there. So from this strange place, where I had not spent above two hours, we drove off amidst a variety of friendly greetings.

This day I first saw a log house, and first felt myself admitted into the sanctuary of the forest. These things made the day full of interest to me, though the rain scarcely ceased from morning till night. Well settled farms were numerous along the road; but in the intervals were of forest, – dark thronging trees with their soft gay summits. Till now, the autumn woods had appeared at a distance too red and rusty: these, when looked into, were the melting of all harmonious colours. As for the forms, some were drooping, some lowering, their tall bare stems wreathed with crimson creepers. The cleared hollows and slopes, with the forest ever advancing or receding, are as fine to the imagination as any natural language can be. I looked for an Indian or two, standing on the forest verge, within a shade as dusky as himself; but for this I had to wait another day.

Just after dark we arrived at Syracuse, in time for the common supper. I was surprised at the size and style of the hotel. Land and building material being cheap, and there being no window tax, there is little inducement to economize space in the American houses: and the new hotels have the ambitious air which is given by spaciousness. The deficiency lies in furniture, and yet more in attendance: but I really think that if travellers will trouble themselves to learn a little of the ways of the house, so as not to run into opposition to other people’s convenience, much more comfort may be enjoyed in these places than unaccommodating tourists will believe. Our chambers were quite sufficiently furnished here: and I never in any place, found difficulty in obtaining as large a supply of water as I wished, by simply asking for it in good time. I observed that the hotel parlours, in various parts of the country, were papered with the old-fashioned papers. I believe French, which represent a sort of panorama, of a hunting party, a fleet, or some such diversified scene. I saw many such a hunting party the ladies in scarlet riding habits, as I remember the landlord of the inn at Bray, near Dublin, to have been proud of in his best parlour. At Schenectady, the bay of Naples, with its fishing boats on the water, and groups of lazzaroni on the shore, adorned our parlour walls. It seems to be an irresistible temptation to idle visitors. English, Irish, and American to put speeches into the mouths of the painted personages; and such hangings are usually seen deformed with scribblings. The effect is odd, in wild places, of seeing American witticisms put into the mouths of Neapolitan fishermen, ancient English ladies of quality, or of tritons and dryads.

There is taste quite as bad as this in a matter of far more importance – the naming of places. Syracuse in the State of New York! I often wonder whether it is yet too late to revert to the Indian names, – to undo the mischief which has been done by boys, fresh from their smattering of the classics, who have gone into the forest to hew out towns and villages, I heard many Americans say that the State of New York ought to be called Ontario, and the city, Manhattan. But so far from bringing back the nomenclature to a better state, we not only find Utica, Syracuse, Manlius, and Camillus, and the village of Geneva on Seneca Lake, with Ithaca at its other extremity, but the village of Chittenango actually baptized into Sullivan: and all this in the neighbourhood of the lakes Onondago, Cayuga, and Owasco. It is as bad as the English in Van Diemen’s Land, who, if I remember rightly, have got Palmyra, Richmond, and Jericho, all in a line.

Some curious associations arise from a new nation using the language of the old. While speculating sometimes on what the classical conceptions can be in the minds of youths who hear every day, in the most sordid connexion, of Rome, Utica, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra and Troy, it occurred to me that some of our commonest English writing must bear a different meaning to the Americans and to us. All that is written about cornfields, for instance, must call up pictures in their minds quite unlike any that the poets intended to create. “Waving corn” is not the true description to them: and one can scarcely bring one’s tongue to explain that it means “small grain.” Their poetical attachments are naturally and reasonably to their Indian corn, which is a beautiful plant, worthy of all love and celebration. But the consequence is that we have not their sympathy about our sheaves, our harvest wain, our gleaners: for though they have wheat, their harvest, par excellence, is of corn cobs, and their “small grain” bears about the same relation to poetry with them as turnips with us. Then, again, there is the month of May, about which we lose their sympathy. Over a great proportion of the country May is one of their worst months, – damp, drizzly, with intervals of biting winds, as little fit for the climate of a poem as our windy and dusty March. Many other such particulars might be mentioned, which it would be a new employment to trace out.

When I traversed New York State at a subsequent period with another party of friends, we saw many Indians before reaching Syracuse. It was at Oneida Castle, a village on the borders of the Oneida territory, which was once fortified after the Indian fashion: whence its formidable name. We saw in such close neighbourhood as to cause many strange reflections, the Episcopalian church built for the Indians of the vicinity, who are declared to be reclaimed from idolatry, and their ancient Council Grove, where they met to think their own thoughts and say their own sayings. This grove is a fine clump of twenty-seven butternut trees. We passed through the village on the day when the Indians had all come in to receive their annual government allowance of seven dollars a head. Two men were drunk: the rest looked sober enough. The squaws were neatly dressed in blue pantaloons edged with white, and had clean blankets over their shoulders. The babies looked fat and lively. One squaw had her infant lashed to a board at her back. When we stopped to water the horses, we saw several boys with bows and arrows, and Dr F. made them understand by signs that any one who could strike a quarter dollar which he would fix on a post, should have it. He made a notch in the post of a shed, and placed his coin, and forthwith the arrows flew like hail. One struck deep into a post, and we saw how easily fatal this weapon might be. An old Indian or two watched the sport, and assumed the superintendence. The coin fell, and Dr F. was going to deliver it to the claimant, when an old Indian came forward with “No, no.” He showed by signs that the coin had fallen, not from its being struck, but from the post having been shaken. The quarter dollar was put up again, and soon after struck and bent in the middle by the arrow of a youth who looked as happy with his prize as if he had regained a tract of his native wood. The party gave us some very bright looks as we drove away.

In a hotel on this road, I found a Sabbath School History of Lady Jane Grey, compiled obviously for the purpose of prejudicing the reader’s mind against the catholics. Among other wise things in it, there was an explanation that the heroine was called “Lady” because she was related to the king; and people are sometimes called so in England. A clear idea to give the American youth of our English peerage!

We left Syracuse at dawn; and this was the morning when, finding ourselves too hungry to proceed to Skaneatles without food, we were treated to that abundant breakfast, so characteristically served, which I have described in my other book.[4] No one likes to breakfast twice over in description, any more than in reality; and I therefore say nothing about Elbridge here. The greater part of this day, and some of the next, was spent at Auburn, in viewing the prison, walking about the town, and driving down the shores of the pretty Owasco Lake.

The cultivation of the country now began to show the improvement which increase all the way to Buffalo. At the head of Cayuga Lake, we travelled over the longest bridge I ever saw, – even a mile and eight rods long. It is wooden, of course, laid upon piles, and more conspicuous for usefulness than beauty. The great ornament of this route is the village of Geneva, reared on a terrace which overhangs Seneca Lake. The northern States abound in beautiful villages; but I know none more captivating than this. A long row of handsome white and red houses, each with its sloping garden, fronts the lake; and behind the dwelling, the road is bordered with locust trees, which seem to embower the place. The gardens are more carefully cultivated than is at all common in America, and they well repay the trouble bestowed on them. There is a college, standing on high ground above the lake, to which a natural lawn steeply descends from the open space in front of the building. Holstein, aide-de-camp to Bolivar, was professor of modern languages in this college when I was first at Geneva. Before my second visit he had removed to Albany. To crown the temptations of Geneva as a place of residence, it has a rather choice society. It has been charged with not being healthy; but I believe this is not true. It seems to be well and speedily supplied with literature. I saw a placard outside a bookseller’s store. “Two Old Men’s Tales, price 80 cents.” – that is, four shillings. One of my last interests, before I left England, had been watching over the publication of this work; and now here it was selling at four shillings, in the back of the State of New York! I remarked two things more about this village – that all the women I saw were pretty, and that a profusion of azalea grew wild in the neighbourhood.

The road to Canandaigua ascends for a considerable distance, after leaving Geneva, and the last view of the place from above was exquisite, embosomed as it lay in the autumn woods, and with its blue lake stretched behind it in the sunny atmosphere. One element in the exhilaration of such scenes in America is the universal presence of competence. The boys who gather about the stage do not come to beg, or even to sell, but to amuse themselves while eating their bread and meat, or on their way to the field. The young women all well dressed, the men all at work or amusement, the farms all held in fee simple, the stores all inadequate to their custom. these things are indescribably cheering to witness, and a never-failing source of pleasure to the traveller from Europe. It may be a questionable comfort, but it is a comfort to think “if these people are not happy, it is their own fault.” Whether their minds are as easy as their fortunes, it may not be safe to affirm; but at least the sin and sorrow of social injustice in regard to the first necessities of life are absent.

The moon was gleaming over Canandaigua Lake when we came in sight of it: and a golden planet dropped beneath the horizon when we took the turn towards the village. We found that Blossom’s hotel did not answer to the favourable description which had been given us of it. This had been a training day, and the house was so noisy with drunken soldiers that when we had attained the drawing room. we locked ourselves in till the house should be cleared, which happened as early as nine o’clock: but we still found the inn less comfortable than most upon the road.

The pretty village of Canandaigua is noted for its good society. It would have given me pleasure to have been able to accept the kind invitation of some of its inhabitants to prolong my stay now, or to revisit it the next year. But we had promised Mr O. to cause no delay in getting to Niagara, and we engaged, in return for his agreeing to stop this day, to travel all night: and I never was able to allot any future time to this place. We saw as much of it, however, as we could in one day.

There are many families of Scotch extraction at Canandaigua, and to this the village owes its superiority in gardens to almost any place in the country. We spent the greater part of the day with a gentleman who was born in Scotland, but had settled at Canandaigua thirty-four years before, when the place was almost a desert. He now sees himself surrounded by handsome dwellings, trim gardens, and a highly-cultivated society, able to command resources of books and other intellectual luxuries, to almost any extent, from the directness and ease of communication with New York. He had just taken possession of a splendid new dwelling, and had presented his old one to the Episcopalian church for a parsonage. He showed me, from the top of the house, where this dwelling had stood, where it stood now, and how it had been moved entire in a day and a half. I think the distance could not have been much under a mile.

After our early breakfast we were engaged till church time in receiving and making calls, as there was not time to be lost. We went to the Episcopalian church with our friends, and heard a sermon which could not please us, – it was so full of dogmatism and bitterness. Our friends insisted on entertaining the whole of our large party, and invited some agreeable guests in addition, so that we spent a very profitable as well as pleasant afternoon. We walked over the grounds, enjoyed the view of the lake from the housetop, and picked up a good deal of information about the place and neighbourhood, which might seem to the inhabitants scarcely worthy of the name of knowledge, but which is inestimable to the stranger as opening new departments of enquiry, and explaining much which he did not understand before.

The stage was ordered for nine, and we returned to Blossom’s for an hour’s rest before setting out on our rough night’s journey.

We reached Batavia to breakfast, and soon after found ourselves on the first piece of corduroy road we had encountered in the country. I mention this because corduroy roads appear to have made a deep impression on the imaginations of the English, who seem to suppose that American roads are all corduroy. I can assure them that there is a large variety in American roads. There are the excellent limestone roads which stretch out in three directions from Nashville, Tennessee, and some like them in Kentucky, on which the tourist might sketch almost without difficulty while travelling at a rapid rate. There is quite another sort of limestone road in Virginia, in traversing which the stage is dragged up from shelf to shelf, some of the shelves sloping so as to throw the passengers on one another, on either side alternately. Then there are the rich mud roads of Ohio, through whose deep red sloughs the stage goes slowly sousing after rain, and gently upsetting when the rut on the one or the other side proves to be of a greater depth than was anticipated. Then there are the sandy roads of the pine-barrens, of an agreeable consistency after rain, but very heavy in dry weather. Then there is the ridge road, running parallel with a part of Lake Ontario, and supposed to be the edge of what was once its basin. The level terrace thus provided by Nature offered the foundation of an admirable road, one of the best in the States. Lastly, there is the corduroy road, happily of rare occurrence, where, if the driver is merciful to his passengers, he drives them so as to give them the association of being on the way to a funeral, – their involuntary sobs on each jolt helping the resemblance; – or, if he be in a hurry, he shakes them like pills in a pill box. But the American drivers are a class of men marked by that merciful temper which naturally accompanies genius. They are men who command admiration equally by their perfection in their art, their fertility of resource, and their patience with their passengers. I was never upset in a stage but once during all my travels; and the worse the roads were, the more I was amused at the variety of devices by which we got on, through difficulties which appeared insurmountable, and the more I was edified at the gentleness with which our drivers treated female fears and fretfulness.

By this time a solitary Indian might be frequently seen standing on a heap of stones by the roadside, or sleeping under a fence. There is something which rivets the eye of the stranger in the grave gaze, the lank hair, the blanket-wrapped form of the savage, as he stands motionless. We were generally to be seen leaning out of every opening in the stage, as long as the figure remained in sight.

We issued from the corduroy road upon one on which we could easily have performed twelve miles an hour. Houses with porches of Ionic pillars began to be scattered by the roadside. We were obviously approaching Buffalo. Soon the lake was visible, and then we entered the long main street, and stopped at the entrance of the Eagle hotel.

Volume 1

Fort Erie

“That night a child might understand

The de’il had business on his hand.”

Burns

On consulting a good map, a little promontory may be seen jutting out into Lake Erie on the Canada shore, nearly opposite to Black Rock. Perhaps it may be marked Fort Erie, for there Fort Erie stood.

A lady of Buffalo, who happens to be a good walker, proposed that she and I should indulge in a ramble to Fort Erie, one fine day, towards the end of October. She showed me that she was provided with stout boots, in case of our having to cross swampy ground; and she said she believed we might trust to getting some sort of a dinner on the Canada side, and might therefore go unencumbered with provisions.

We set out from Buffalo soon after breakfast, and made our way over a waste, through brush, over fences, along a natural terrace once planted with guns, down to the ferry at Black Rock. On the way I saw one of the less prepossessing abodes of settlers, so frequently described; – its desolate appearance on the verge of the wood; its untidy garden, and the cool, uncomfortable manners, and the lank hair, and pale, dingy countenance of its mistress. I also heard, during our walk, some things which make me think that Buffalo is as undesirable a place of residence as any in the free States. It is the rendezvous of all manner of persons; the passage through which fugitives pass from the States to Canada, from Canada to the States, and from Europe and the Eastern States into the wild West. Runaway slaves come here, and their owners follow in hopes of recapturing them. Indian traders, land speculators, and poor emigrants come here, and the most debased Indians, the half-civilized, hang about the outskirts. No influence that the mass of respectable inhabitants can exert can neutralize the bad effects of a floating population like this; and the place is unavoidably a very vicious one. A sufficient proof of this is, that ladies cannot walk beyond the streets without the protection of a gentleman. Some excellent English ladies opened a school in Buffalo, and not being aware of the peculiarities of the place, followed, with their pupils, the English practice of taking country walks. They persevered for some time, hoping to obtain countenance for the wholesome practice, but were compelled, after a time, not only to give up walking, but to quit the place. It will be understood that I do not give this as any specimen of American towns. The corruption of Buffalo is owing chiefly to its frontier position, and consequent liability to a vicious, transient population.

After crossing the ferry at Black Rock, we pursued our walk in a south-west direction, sometimes treading a firm sand, and sometimes a greensward, washed by the fresh waters of the lake. Though we were on British ground, we were entertained by an American woman who lived on the lake shore, close by the fort. She treated us with negus and cake while preparing to get a dinner for us, and amused us with accounts of how butter and eggs are smuggled into Buffalo from her neighbourhood, these articles not being allowed to pass the Custom House. My eyes never rested on the Canada shore without my feeling how absurd it was that that poor country should belong to us, its poverty and hopeless inactivity contrasting, so much to our disgrace, with the prosperous activity of the opposite shore: but here was the climax of absurdity, – the prohibition of a free traffic in butter and eggs! What a worthy subject of contention between two great nations, – the one breaking the laws to provide Buffalo with butter and eggs, and the preventive force of the other exercised in opposition!

Our hostess was sewing when we went in, amusing herself meanwhile with snatches of reading from “Peter Parley,” which lay open before her. She put away her work to cook for us, conversing all the while, and by no means sorry, I fancy, to have the amusement of a little company. She gave us tea, beefsteak, hot rolls and butter, honeycomb, and preserved plums and crab apples. Immediately after dinner I went out to the fort, my friend promising to follow.

The thickness of the remaining fragments of the walls shows the fort to have been substantially built. It was held by the Americans to the last extremity, in the war of 1814, and then blown up by a brave man to prevent its falling into the hands of the British. He remained alone in the fort to do the deed; and as I now witnessed the desolation of the solitude in which it stands, I felt as if I could enter into what his feelings must have been on the last day of his life. At one moment, all had been dead silence; at the next, the windows in Buffalo were blown out by the explosion.

I sat alone beside a pool in the middle of the fort. Fragments of the building lay tumbled around, overgrown with tall grass, and bristling with shrubbery. Behind me was the grim forest, with the ruins of a single deserted house standing within its shadow. Before me lay the waste of waters, with gulls dipping and sailing. A single birch overhung the pool beside me, and a solitary snipe, which seemed to have no fear of me, vibrated on the top of a bulrush. I do not know that I was ever so oppressed with a sense of solitude; and I was really glad soon to see my friend standing on a pinnacle of the ruined wall, and beckoning me to come up.

This afternoon, she told me her wonderful story; a part of which, – that part in which the public may be said to have an interest, – I am going to relate.

At the time of the war of 1812, Mrs W. Lived in Buffalo, with her father, mother, brothers, and sisters. In 1814, just when the war was becoming terrific on the frontier, her father and eldest brother were drowned in crossing the neighbouring ferry. Six months after this accident, the danger of Buffalo was so great that the younger children of the family were sent away into the country with their married sister, under the charge of their brother-in-law, who was to return with his wagon for the mother and two daughters who were left behind, and for the clothes of the family. For three weeks there had been so strong an apprehension of a descent of the Indians, the barbarous allies of the British, that the ladies had snatched sleep with their clothes on, one watching while the others lay down. It was with some difficulty, and after many delays, that the wagon party got away, and there were still doubts whether it was the safer course to go or stay. Nothing was heard of them before night, however, and it was hoped that they were safe, and that the wagon would come for the remaining three the next morning.

The ladies put out their lights early, as they were desired; and at eight, two of the three lay down to sleep; Mrs W., then a girl of sixteen, being one. At nine, she was called up by the beating of a drum, the signal that the Indians were at hand. No description can give an idea of the loathing with which these savages were then regarded, – the mingled horror, disgust, dread and hatred. The Indians were insidious, dangerous, and cruel beyond example, even in the history of savage warfare. These poor ladies had been brought up to hate them with a deadly hatred; they were surrounded with persons burning with the injuries inflicted by Indian revenge and barbarity; for weeks they had lived in hourly dread of death by their hands; their strength was worn, and their nerves shaken by the long suspense; and now the hoarse drum woke them up with news that the hour was come. A deadly sickness over spread their hearts as they started from their beds. They looked from their windows, but could see nothing through the blank darkness. They listened, but they knew that if the streets had been quiet as death, the stealthy tread of the savages would have been inaudible. There was a bustle in the town. Was the fight beginning? No. It was an express sent by the scouts to say that it was a false alarm. The worn out ladies composed their spirits, and sank to sleep again. At four, they were once more wakened by the horrid drum, and now there was a mustering in the streets which looked as if this were no false alarm. In the same moment, the sister who was watching what passed in the street, saw by torchlight the militia part asunder and fly, and Mrs W., who was looking through the back window, perceived in the uncertain glimmer that a host of savages was leaping the garden fence, – leaping along the walks to the house, like so many kangaroos, – but painted, and flourishing their tomahawks. She cried out to her mother and sister, and they attempted to fly; but there was no time. Before they could open the front door, the back windows came crashing in, and the house was crowded with yelling savages. With their tomahawks, they destroyed everything but the ladies, who put on the most submissive air possible. The trunks containing the clothing of the whole family stood in the hall, ready to be carried away when the wagon should arrive. These were split to fragments by the tomahawk. These wretches had actually met the wagon, with the rest of the family, and turned it back; but the brother-in-law, watching his opportunity, wheeled off from the road when his savage guards were somehow engaged, and escaped.

The ladies were seized, and as Mrs W. claimed protection, they were delivered into the charge of some squaws to be driven to the British camp. It was unpleasant enough the being goaded on through such a scene by savage women, as insolent as the men were cruel; but the ladies soon saw that this was the best thing that could have happened to them; for the town was burning in various directions, and soon no alternative would be left between being in the British camp and in the thick of the slaughter in the burning streets. The British officer did not wish to have his hands full of helpless female prisoners. He sent them home again with a guard of an ensign and a private, who had orders to prevent their house being burned. The ensign had much to do to fulfil his orders. He stood in the doorway, commanding, persuading, struggling, threatening; but he saved the house, which was, in two days, almost the only one left standing. The whole town was a mass of smoking ruins, in many places slaked with blood. Opposite the door lay the body of a woman who in her despair had drunk spirits, and then defied the savages. They tomahawked her, in sight of the neighbours, and before her own door, and her body lay where it had fallen; for there were none to bury the dead. Some of the inhabitants had barricaded themselves in the jail, which proved, it was said, too damp to burn: the rest who survived were dispersed in the woods.

Before the fire was quite burned out, the Indians were gone, and the inhabitants began to creep back into the town, cold and half dead with hunger. The ladies kept up a large fire (carefully darkening the windows), and cooked for the settlers, till they were too weary to stand, and one at a time lay down to sleep before the fire. Mrs W. often during those dreary days used to fasten a blanket, Indian fashion, about her shoulders, and go out into the wintry night, to forage for food, – a strange employment for a young girl in the neighbourhood of a savage foe. She traced the hogs in the snow, and caught many fowls in the dark. On the third day, very early in the morning, six Buffalo men were enjoying a breakfast of her cooking, when the windows were again broken in, and the house once more full of savages. They had come back to burn and pillage all that was left. The six men fled, and, by a natural impulse, the girl with them. At some distance from the house, she looked behind her, and saw a savage leaping towards her, with his tomahawk already raised. She saw that the next instant it would be buried in her skull. She faced about, burst out a laughing, and held out both her hands to the savage. His countenance changed, first to perplexity; but he swerved his weapon aside, laughed, and shook hands, but motioned her homewards. She was full remorse for having quitted her mother and sister. When she reached her door, the house was so crowded that she could neither make her way in, nor learn anything of their fate. Under the persuasion that they lay murdered within, she flew to some British dragoons who were sitting on the ground at a considerable distance, watching the burning of the remainder of the town. They expressed their amazement that she should have made her way through the savages, and guarded her home, where they procured an entrance for her, so that she reached the arms of her patient and suffering mother and sister. That house was, at length, the only one left standing: and when we returned, Mrs W. pointed it out to me.

The settlers remained for some time in the woods, stealing in to a midnight warming and supper at the lone abode of the widow and her daughters. The ladies had nothing left but this dwelling. Their properly had been in houses which were burned, and their very clothes were gone. The settlers had, however, carried off their money with them safely into the woods. They paid the ladies for their hospitality, and afterwards for as much needlework as they could do; for every one was in want of clothes. By their industry those women raised themselves to independence, which the widow lived some tranquil years to enjoy. The daughter who told me the story is now the lady of a Judge. She never boasts of her bravery, and rarely refers to her adventures in the war; but preserves all her readiness and strength of mind, and in the silence of her own heart, or in the ear of a sympathizing friend, gratefully contrasts the perils of her youth with the milder discipline of her riper age.

Volume 1

Niagara

“Look back!

Lo! where it comes like an eternity.

As if to sweep down all things in its track,

Charming the eye with dread!”

Byron

It is not my intention to describe what we saw at Niagara, so much as to relate what we did. To offer an idea of Niagara by writing of hues and dimensions is much like representing the kingdom of Heaven by images of jasper and topazes.

I visited the Falls twice: first in October, 1834, in company with the party with whom we traversed the State of New York, when we stayed nearly a week; and again, with Dr and Mrs F. and other friends, in June, 1836, when we remained between two and three days. The first time, we approached the Falls from Buffalo; the next, from Lewiston and Queenston.

I expected to be disappointed in the first sight of the Falls, and did not relish the idea of being questioned, on the first day, as to my “impressions.” I therefore made a law, with the hearty agreement of the rest of the party, that no one should ask an opinion of the spectacle for twenty-four hours. We stepped into the stage at Buffalo at half-past eight in the morning on the 14th of October. At Black Rock we got out to cross the ferry. We looked at the green rushing waters we were crossing, and wondered whether they or we should be at the Falls first. We had to wait some minutes for the stage, on the Canada side, and a comely English woman invited us into her kitchen to warm ourselves. She was washing, as well as cooking; and such a log was blazing under her boilers as no fireplace in England would hold. It looked like the entire trunk of a pine, somewhat shortened. I could not help often wishing that some of the shivering poor of London could have supplies of the fuel which lies rotting in the American woods.

The road is extremely bad, all the way from the ferry to the Falls, and the bridges the rudest of the rude. The few farms looked decaying, and ill clad children offered us autumn fruit for sale. We saw nothing to flatter our national complacency; for truly the contrast with the other side of the river was mournful enough. It was not till we had passed the inn with the sign of the “Chippewa Battle Ground” that we saw the spray from the Falls. I believe we might have seen it sooner if we had known where to look. “Is that it?” we all exclaimed. It appeared on the left hand side, whereas we had been looking to the right; and instead of its being suspended in the air, like a white cloud, as we had imagined, it curled vigorously up, like smoke from a cannon, or from a replenished fire, The winding of the road presently brought this round to our right hand. It seemed very near: the river too was smooth as oil. The beginning of the Welland canal was next pointed out to me; but it was not a moment to care for canals. Then the little Round Island, covered with wood, and surrounded by rapids, lay close at hand, in a recess of the Canada shore. Some of the rapids, of eight or ten feet descent, would be called falls elsewhere. They were glittering and foamy, with spaces of green water between. I caught a glimpse of a section of the cataract, but not any adequate view, before we were driven briskly up to the door of the hotel. We ran quickly from piazza to piazza, till we reached the crown of the roof, where there is a space railed in for the advantage of the gazer who desires to reach the highest point. I think the emotion of this moment was never renewed or equalled. The morning had been cloudy, with a very few wandering gleams. It was now a little after noon; the sky was clearing, and at this moment the sun lit up the Horseshoe Fall. I am not going to describe it. The most striking appearance was the slowness with which the shaded green waters rolled over the brink. This majestic oozing gives a true idea of the volume of the floods; but they no longer look like water.

We wandered through the wood, along Table Rock, and to the ferry. We sat down opposite to the American falls, finding them, the first day or two, more level to our comprehension than the Great Horseshoe Cataract: yet throughout, the beauty was far more impressive to me than the grandeur. One’s imagination may heap up almost any degree of grandeur: but the subtle colouring of this scene, varying with every breath of wind, refining upon the softness of driven snow, and dimming all the gems of the mine, is wholly inconceivable. The woods on Goat Island were in their gaudiest autumn dress; yet, on looking up to them from the fall, they seemed one dust colour, This will not be believed; but it is true.

The little detached fall on the American side piqued my interest at once. It looks solitary in the midst of the crowd of waters, coming out of its privacy in the wood, to take its leap by itself. In the afternoon, as I was standing on Table Rock, a rainbow started out from the precipice, a hundred feet below me, and curved upwards as if about to alight on my head. Other such apparitions seemed to have a similar understanding with the sun. They went and came, blushed and faded, the floods rolling on, on, till the human heart, overcharged with beauty, could bear no more.

We crossed the ferry in the afternoon. Our boat was tossed like a cork in the writhing waves. We soon found that, though driven hither and thither by the currents, the ferryman always conquers at last, and shoots his boat into, the desired creek: but the tossing and whirling amidst the driving spray, seems a rather dubious a affair at first. To be carried down would be no better than to be sucked up the river, as there is a fatal whirlpool below, which forbids all navigation as peremptorily as the Falls.

I still think the finest single impression of all is half-way up the American Fall, seen, not from the staircase, but from the bank, on the very verge of the sheet. Here we stood, this first evening, and amidst the rapids above. In returning, we saw from the river the singular effect of the clouds of spray being in shadow, and the descending floods in light; while the evening star hung over one extremity of the Falls, and the moon over the other, and the little perpetual cloud, amber in the last rays from the west, spread its fine drizzle, like a silver veil, over the scene.

There is nothing like patient waiting in a place like this. The gazer, who sits for hours watching what sun and wind may be pleased to reveal, is sure to be rewarded, somewhat as Newton described himself as being, when he set a thought before him, and sat still to see what would come out of it. It is surprising what secrets of the thunder cavern were disclosed to me during a few days of still watching, – disclosed by a puff of wind clearing the spray for an instant, or by the lightest touch of a sunbeam. The sound of the waters is lulling, even on the very brink; but if one wishes for stillness there is the forest all around, where the eyes may become accustomed to common objects again. It is pleasant, after the high excitement, to stroll in the wild woods, and wonder what this new tree is and what that: and to gossip with the pigs, slim and spruce while fed on forest nuts and roots; and to watch the progress of a log house, sitting the while on a stump, or leaning over a snake fence; and then to return, with new wonder, to the ethereal vision.

The first evening, the gentlemen were all restless under the prohibition to ask about impressions: every one of them was eager to tell, but too proud to pour out till others did the same. What an outpouring it was when it did happen!

One morning, we found an old man, between seventy and eighty years old, gazing from Table Rock. He was an American. Being on a journey. he had walked from Queenston to see the Falls. He quietly observed that he was ashamed to think there had been wars near such a place, and that he hoped the English and Americans were grown wiser now, and would not think of fighting any more. This came in echo of my thought. I had been secretly wishing that all the enemies in the world could be brought together on this rock: they could not but love as brethren.

An English family at the hotel seemed marvellously skilled in putting away all the good influences of the place. The gentleman was so anxious about where he should settle, so incessantly pettish, so resolutely miserable, as to bespeak the compassion of all the guests for the ladies of his family, one of whom told me that she had forgotten all about the Falls in her domestic anxieties. As this gentleman found fault with everybody and everything, and ostentatiously proved that nothing could give him any pleasure, it was not surprising that the cataract itself failed to meet his approbation: yet I was not prepared for the question he put to me across the table, in the presence of both Canadians and Americans, whether I did not think the natives made a very silly fuss about the Falls, and whether the Falls of the Clyde were not much finer. Such are the persons by whom foreigners suppose themselves made acquainted with the English character. Such is the way in which not a few English study to mortify the inhabitants, and then come home and complain of American conceit. I told this gentleman that I perceived he was speaking of the rapids, and had not seen the Falls.

We wished, while we were in the neighbourhood, to obtain a glimpse of Lake Ontario, as we were not sure of being able to visit Canada at a future time. We took the opportunity of two of our party going northwards, to accompany them as far as Queenston, – seven miles off, – where we intended to see Brock’s monument, satisfy ourselves with the view from the top of it, and walk home through the woods in the afternoon. In the stage were an Irish gentleman and his wife. The lady amused me by the zeal with which she knitted all the way, just as if she were in a dark parlour in the Old Jewry; and the gentleman with some sentiments which were wholly new to me; for instance, he feared that the independence of the Americans made them feel themselves independent of God. This consequence of democratic government had not struck me before, and I never perceived any traces of its existence; but if it should occur, there will probably soon be an epidemic or a bad season to bring them to their senses again.

Before the door of the wretched, foul inn at Queenston, we sorrowfully shook hands with our Prussian and Dutch companions, hoping to meet them again in the course of our travels; which indeed happened more than once. We provided ourselves here with cider, cakes, and sandwiches; i.e. beefsteak laid between thick dry bread. With this provision, we ascended the hill to the foot of Brock’s monument, and found the portress, an active little Irish woman, waiting to let us in. She was delighted to meet ladies from the old country, and heartily invited us to spread our dinner in her cottage below. She told us all her affairs, and seemed unwilling to leave us when we told her we meant to stay a long while on the top of the monument, and would not detain her from her washtub, but would come down to her by-and-bye. She and her husband have, for showing the monument, sixty dollars a season, (that is, while the boats run) and all that they happen to take in the winter. They were soon to have a cottage built for them nearer the monument. When we went down to her cottage she had spread plates, knives, and pickles, and had her head full of questions and communications. She was grateful for a small payment for her trouble, and gave us the impression of her being a very amiable, contented person, whom we should like to see again.

Sir Isaac Brock fell at the battle of Queenston, in October, 1812, near the base of this monument. It is 145 feet high, and being built on a pretty steep hill, commands a fine view. To the left a prodigious sweep of forest terminates in blue Canadian hills. On the right is the American shore, at this time gaudy with autumn woods. There stands the village of Lewiston. with its winding descent to the ferry. At our feet lay Queenston, its sordidness being lost in distance, and its long street presenting the appearance of an English village. The green river rushes between its lofty wooded banks, which suddenly widen at Queenston, causing the waters to spread and relax their speed, while making their way, with three or four bends, to the lake. We saw the white church of Niagara, rising above the woods, some miles off, where the junction takes place: and beyond, the vast lake spreads its waters, grey on the horizon. There was life in this magnificent scene. The ferry boat was buffeted by the waves; groups were in waiting on either side the ferry; and teams were in the fields. The Irish woman was grieved that she had no telescope wherewith to enable us to see what was doing on the lake. She and her husband had provided one for the accommodation of visitors. Some travellers (English) had thrown it down from the top of the monument, and when she asked for payment, only bullied her; and her husband had not been able to afford to get another.

After dinner we sat on the top of the precipitous wooded bank of the river, looking down into its green eddies, and watching the family of white birds which hovered far beneath us, bat yet high over the stream. Meditating as we were, that we were now sitting on the spot where the Falls were pouring down their Hoods ages before Babylon was founded, or the Greek Mythology had arisen out of the elements of universal conviction, it was not surprising that we had no thoughts to spare for the weather.[5] We did not observe how the sky had been darkening. Two wagons driven by lads stopped in passing, and their drivers offered us seats to Niagara. We at first declined, being bent upon walking; but feeling heavy drops of rain at the moment, we retracted our refusal, and jumped into one of the vehicles. It was a mere box upon wheels – a barbarous machine, but of great service to us in the ensuing storm. Before we reached our hotel we were thoroughly wet, but had obtained a good deal of information from our driver about the condition of the Canadian settlers in the neighbourhood. He was the son of a Canadian father and Scotch mother, who were doing well in the world: as he said the English settlers do who set the right way to work. The land is not the best near the road; so that what is seen there is no fair specimen of the state of the settlers. The farms hereabout consist of about 100 acres generally, and are all the properly of the residents. Labourers live with the farmers, and receive, besides their board and lodging, about 120 dollars a year. A gentleman, a farmer and physician, from some distance called on me one day when I was out, and left messages for me with one of our party. He said he wished me to see and do justice to Canada. People go, he believes, with wrong expectations, and so are disappointed. He, his wife and daughters, went, expecting ease and comfort, and they have found it; but they have not wealth and luxury. He declared that civility and cheerfulness would always command good manners and service. As I had no opportunity of “seeing and doing justice to Canada.” I give this gentleman’s testimony. It is very agreeable, and I do not doubt its justness.

Another visitor, of a very different kind, came to our parlour as I was preparing for our departure. I looked up from my packing, and saw an extraordinary apparition in the doorway; – a lady bridling, winking, and attitudinizing in a wonderful manner. On my asking her to come in and sit down, she said she was deputed by a gentleman to ask my address, in order to his communicating with me before I should publish my account of the Falls. She seemed deeply grieved at finding that I did not contemplate any such publication, saying that it would be a serious disappointment to the gentleman, who hoped I might have been of essential service to him – by recommending his hotel! It appeared that a sharp competition was going on about the letting of this hotel, and the gentleman in question was in hopes of getting it, He seemed to have one great qualification – the determination to leave no stone unturned.

The second time I visited Niagara, I accomplished the feat of going behind the Fall. In October it was too cold: on, a sunny 8th of June there was no imprudence in it. When I descended the staircase with Dr and Mrs F, after breakfast, we had no such intention; but we were all tempted farther and farther over the rocks, nearer and nearer to the sheet, till the puffing away of the spray gave us glimpses of what was behind, and made us feel that this was the right day and hour. Mrs F’s chest was not very strong, and this was no enterprise for a child; so Dr F. and I were to be the favoured ones. We ascended to the guide’s house, and surveyed the extraordinary costume in which we were to make the expedition. Stout socks and shoes (but I would recommend ladies to go shod as usual), thick cotton garments reaching to the feet; green oilskin jackets and hats; – in this mountaineer sort of costume is the adventure to be gone through. As the guide’s wife was assisting me, she hoped I had enjoyed myself since I was last at the Falls.

“Were you aware that I had been here before?”

“Yes, madam, I remember you well.”

“Why, how is it possible that you should remember me among the thousands of people who have been here in two seasons? We were not acquainted, were we?”

“No, madam; but one evening you stopped and admired my cow.”

“Did not this trumpet help you to remember me?”

“No, madam; I never saw it before.”

How many ways there are to people’s hearts! I now remembered having remarked to a companion on the beauty and docility of a cow which a woman was milking. The good wife had treasured up my observation as a personal compliment.

Mrs F. and Charley accompanied us to the edge of the spray, when we sent them hack, charging them not to expect us too soon as we meant to look about us awhile.

We had a stout negro for a guide. He took me by the hand, and led me through the spray. I presently found the method of keeping myself at my case. It was to hold down the brim of my hat, so as to protect my eyes from the dashing water, and to keep my mouth shut. With these precautions, I could breathe and see freely in the midst of a tumult which would otherwise be enough to extinguish one’s being. A hurricane blows up from the cauldron; a deluge drives at you from all parts; and the noise of both wind and waters, reverberated from the cavern, is inconceivable. Our path was sometimes a wet ledge of rock, just broad enough to allow one person at a time to creep along: in other places we walked over heaps of fragments, both slippery and unstable.[6] If all had been dry and quiet, I might probably have thought this path above the boiling basin dangerous, and have trembled to pass it; but amidst the hubbub of gusts and floods, it appeared so firm a footing, that I had no fear of slipping into the cauldron. From the moment that I perceived that we were actually behind the cataract, and not in a mere cloud of spray, the enjoyment was intense. I not only saw the watery curtain before me like tempest-driven snow, but by momentary glances could see the crystal roof of this most wonderful of Nature’s palaces. The precise point where the flood quitted the rock was marked by a gush of silvery light, which of course was brighter where the waters were shooting forward than below, where they fell perpendicularly. There was light enough to see one another’s features by, and even to give a shadow to the side of the projecting rock which barred our farther progress. When we came within a few paces of this projection, our guide, by a motion of his hand (for speaking was out of the question), forbade my advancing further. But it was no time and place to be stopped by anything but impossibilities. I saw that though there was no regular path on the other side of the guide, there were two pieces of rock, wide enough for my feet, by standing on which I might touch the wall which limited our walk. I made the guide press himself back against the rock, and crossed between him and the cauldron, and easily gained my object – laying my hand on Termination Rock. When I returned to my place Dr F. passed both the guide and myself for the same purpose. In returning, my hat blew off, in spite of all my efforts to hold it on. The guide put his upon my head, and that was carried away in like manner. I ought to have been instructed to tie it well on, for mere holding will not do in a hurricane. It is a proof that we were well lighted in our cavern, that we all saw the outline of a hat which was jammed between two stones some way beneath us. The guide made for this, looking just as if he were coolly walking down into destruction; for the volumes of spray curled, thickly up, as if eager to swallow him. He grasped the hat, but found it too much beaten to pieces to be of any use.

Mrs F. says we looked like three gliding ghosts when her anxious eye first caught our forms moving behind the cloud. She was glad enough to see us; for some one passing by had made her expect us at least two minutes before we appeared. Dripping at all points as we were, we scudded under the rocks, and up the staircase to our dressing rooms, after which we wrote our names among those of the adventurers who have performed the same exploit, and received a certificate of our having visited Termination Rock. I was told that a fee and a wetting in the spray may secure such a certificate at anytime. Be this as it may, ours were honest.

When we came down in our own likeness, Mrs F. had found a glorious seat for us on a rock which jutted outwards and upwards, commanding the entire range of the Falls, with every advantage of light, and also of solitude; – no inconsiderable gain in a place where tourists may be heard discussing on Table Rock the probability of there being chickens for dinner. I felt some pain in my chest for a few hours, but was not otherwise injured by the expedition. When the other members of our party joined us, they were somewhat surprised to hear what we had done; and one of them followed our example another day.

I look back upon this morning as the very best of the many I spent at the Falls. We found several new points of view, and the weather was divine. We clambered down to the water’s edge, where men were gathering spars and other “curiosities.” We sat long amusing ourselves with watching the vain attempts of the tree trunks, which had been carried over from above, to get any farther down the river. They were whisked about like twigs in the boiling waters, and sometimes made a vigorous shoot, as if to get free of the eddies; but as often as they reached a particular spot, they were sure to be turned back, and sucked up the stream, to try again. I think they must be doing penance there still, unless, enormous logs as they are, they have been dashed to pieces. When the sun became too hot to be borne below, we came up to the foot of the staircase, and sat in the shade, drinking from the drip, – the soft shower which could not make itself heard amidst the solemn roar of the floods. Here Charley stood, placing spouts of reed which might convey water from the drip, wherewith to wash his spars. Not a word of wonder had we from him. He gloried in the scene, and feared nothing, climbing, with the help of his father’s strong hand, wherever it was practicable to set his little foot: but there was no wonder. The age of wonder has not arrived to children, savages, and other ignorant persons. They know too little of purposes, means, and obstructions to be aware of what either divine or human achievement is. A child believes you if you promise to take him into the moon; and a savage supposes that you eclipse the sun by firing a musket. An ignorant person annoys Mr Babbage, after much praise of his machine, by asking to know one thing more, – “If you put a question in wrong, will the answer come out right?” Charley would hardly have asked this question, child as he was; but he did not share our wonder at the cataract. He enjoyed the climbing, and the rainbows, and the emerald pillars based on clouds, which was the form the floods bore, this sultry noon; but he went on washing his spars as tranquilly as if he had been beside our favourite brook in the wood at Stockbridge. His pity was stirred up this morning, however, with a story of a bird which I saw perish. It had got bewildered in the circuit of the Horse Shoe Fall. I saw it driving and fluttering about for a minute or two in the spray, when it flew directly into the sheet, and was swallowed up.

The next day was devoted to Goat Island. Dr F., who learned English to the last degree of perfection in little more than two years, happened to say, one day, that there was one English word whose exact meaning he did not understand, – dawdle: We promised to afford him an exemplification of it this day. There was also a joke against me. I was now a practised traveller; and having found how the pleasures of travelling are economized by businesslike habits of arrangement. I was the prompter of our somewhat inexperienced party about ordering dinner, packing at convenient times, and so contriving as to have our thoughts at perfect liberty for pleasure while we were out-of-doors, instead of having to run or send to our lodgings about business which might as well have been settled while we were there. They asked me whether I could spend a whole day without thinking of time, meals, or the fitness of things in any way. No one was better pleased with such liberty than I; so we left behind us even our watches. It appears, however, that somebody must have carried money, for food was brought to us, and doubtless honestly paid for.

At some unknown hour of a bright morning, therefore, we set forth from our hotel, and in due time reached the ferry. The entire party paid sufficient attention to business to sit properly in the boat, which is no place for freak and frolic, while bobbing about among the eddies. We dawdled long about the American Fall. I had never before been fully aware of its power over the senses. Today, I saw a lady who was sitting on the bank, – as safe a seat as an armchair by the fireside, – convulsively turn away from the scene, and clasp the ground. Yet the water falls so tranquilly that I should not be afraid to stand in the flood, near the bank where it takes the leap. I tried the force of the water there, and found it very moderate. After completing the ascent, Mrs F. and I were standing looking at the rapids, when a letter was handed to me. Somebody had actually been mundane enough to remember the post office, and to go to it! I was glad it was not I. Further sins against the spirit of the day were presently committed. Of course, I cannot say what time it was, but, by the heat, probably about the middle of the day, when the ladies were sitting on the stem of a tree, in a tiny island, amidst the roaring rapids, – an interesting love story being their topic, – and the gentlemen were seen approaching with bread, biscuits, cheese, ale, and lemonade. They had not even forgotten glasses. We ate our dinner on a bench under the trees, – all except Charley, who niched himself in an ash, which parted from the root into many stems. The boy looked like a beautiful fairy, and for his own part declared that this was far better than dining in any house.

We dawdled hours away in Goat Island; now lying on the grassy bank with our feet almost into the rapids; now fanning ourselves in the translucent green shades of the wood, among rabbits and goats, and then gathering new wild flowers from the multitude which blossomed under our feet; the roar of the Falls solemnizing all. The timid ones sat in the alcove erected above the Horse Shoe Fall, while the rest went down to the Terrapin Bridge and Tower. The tower, forty feet high, is built on rocks in the midst of the rapids, and its summit affords an absolutely complete view of the scene. The bridge is built on logs which extend from rock to rock in the rapids, to the edge of the precipice, the flood gushing beneath in a dizzying whirl. At my first visit, this bridge had been complete, and to all appearance secure. I had stood on its extreme point, which projected over the precipice. There I hung suspended above the fall, – standing in the air on the extremity of a beam, and without any suspicion that I was not perfectly safe. It was there that I learned some of the secrets of the cataract. I saw there what can be seen nowhere else, – the emerald columns broken and forced up, and falling again in gushes of diamonds, which again were melted into wreaths of dazzling snow. It was now too late to see this any more. The bridge had broken down, some way from the end; the handrail was gone, and the brink of the precipice was no longer accessible. We got to the tower, however, and further; and Charley and his father stepped down from the bridge among the rocks, and stood amidst the water, very near the brink of the great Fall! Their position was shown to be perfectly safe by the verdure of these rocks. Slight shrubs, rooted in their crevices, were full of leaf. Their smallest twigs were tossed in the never-dying breeze, without being snapped, Yet we were glad when our friends were safe on the bridge again.

We descended the Biddle staircase, – the spiral staircase fixed against the perpendicular rock in Goat Island, – and pursued a narrow path from its foot back to the Fall, where we found a glacier! An enormous pile of snow and ice lay against the rock, so solid, under this intense June sun, that Charley climbed to the top of it. Here every successive pulse of the cataract was like a cannon shot a few yards off; so that there was no standing it long; there was much yet to do; and the party probably observed, though no one chose to mention it, that the sun was going down. We crossed the detached American Fall, by its rustic bridge, and hunted it back to its retreat in the wood. Our faces were now turned homewards; but we lingered long in the shades, and afterwards at Bath Island, where some one observed that it would be dusk before we could reach the ferry, and that the walk home on the Canada side was not of a kind to be prosecuted in the dark. The sun disappeared before we reached the ferry house, and the panorama from the river was seen in the magnitude and majesty of twilight. In the dark woods on the Canada side, we made ourselves visible to each other by catching fireflies and sticking them in our bonnets. They sat very still among our bows of ribbon, and really served our purpose very well.

Bad news awaited us at home, – news of Mr Van Buren’s casting vote in favour of the third reading of the Gag Bill; and of a fresh breaking out of the dreadful Creek war in Georgia: but now that that atrocious bill has long been thrown out, and the Creek war ended, (though with grievous suffering and humiliation to the poor Creeks) this day of delicious dawdling (a word which Dr F. by this time completely understood,) stands out bright enough to be worthy of the scene and of our human life.

Volume 1

Priestley

“Que l’homme done s’estime son prix, – il a en lui la capacité de connôitre la vérité, et d’etre heureux: mais il n’a point de vérité, ou constante, ou satisfaisante. Je voudrois donc porter l’homme à désirer d’en trouver; à être prèt et dégagé des passions pour la suivre où il la trouvera.”

Pascal

Among the select classes of men to whom the common race looks up with the heart-throb of mingled reverence and sympathy, none is perhaps so eminent as that of sufferers for opinion. If ever we are conscious of a breathing of the Godhead in man, it is in the sanctified presence, actual or ideal, of martyrs to truth. Such men, as a class, are liable to particular faults, are usually marked by the imperfections which attend their virtues, as shadows are a consequence of sunshine. But in no case are men in general so tolerant of faults as in theirs; – I do not mean in their own day, when they are not commonly recognised as confessors and martyrs, – but when they stand out from the records of time, complete characters in history. The turbulence, jealousy, and self-will of such men are allowed for more liberally than the same faults in other orders of men – more slightly noticed, – more eagerly extenuated. And why? Because, of all men, they most infallibly and extensively command sympathy. As truth is the one eternal good, the single pursuit of truth is the one eternal virtue which wins and elevates all human souls. But when, as in some rare instances, this devotion to truth is seen purified from the failings which elsewhere seem its natural accompaniments – when the hero is seen holy, harmless, and undefiled as the sage – when no regrets need mingle with the admiration of the disciple, as delicious a contemplation is afforded to the moral taste as the moral creation yields.

Such was Priestley, the single-minded martyr, but the meek inquirer: the intrepid confessor, but the humble Christian: the gentle philosopher, the sympathising friend. Circumstances have been unfavourable to a wide, but not to a full knowledge of his character. The comparatively few to whom his mind and heart have, been absolutely laid open, regard him with a love which is only not idolatrous because it is perfectly reasonable. The many know him as a man who was driven away from Birmingham by a mob who destroyed his house, papers. and philosophical apparatus, burned his church, and sought his life: and that he took refuge in America, and died there. Some go on to believe what was said at the time – that he was a turbulent man, a mischief-maker, and either a conceited smatterer in theology and philosophy, or a deep malignant infidel, – they do not know which. Others hold him to have been a good kind of man, who rashly drew upon his own head the tempests of his time, and had to bear only the natural though hard consequences of his own imprudence. But those whose knowledge of him is complete can tell that his imputed turbulence was intellectual activity; his conceit a simplicity too lofty for the apprehension of his enemies; his infidelity a devout constancy to truth. His depth was all of wisdom: his hatreds were of cant, hypocrisy, and designed obstruction of truth. He exposed himself to tribulation as innocently and unconsciously as he bore it meekly and heroically. He never sought martyrdom, for he loved life and its comforts in the bosom of his family and friends; he valued repose for his philosophical pursuits, and thought his daily probation sufficient for every man’s strength. He was playing backgammon with his wife after super when the mob came upon him: he was so wholly unprepared that his MSS. and private letters lay all exposed to the rioters; and the philosopher suffered – calmly and bravely suffered – the anguish of feeling himself a hated and an injured man. Yet, thus taken by surprise, his emotions were not for himself, or for the many near and dear friends who were being overwhelmed with him. While he stood looking over a garden hedge where he could see the flames devouring his church, and hear the shouts of the mob which was demolishing his house he dropped a natural expression of pity for the misery of those poor people when they should discover what mischief they had done. No word was ever heard from him about the effect which the sufferings of the day would have upon anybody’s mind. or upon any future time. He simply did the duty, and bore the probation of the hour, leaving unconsciously an example of sublime patience which has raised and kindled more minds than the highest order of good men ever dream of influencing, and whose force will not be spent while man are moved by disinterestedness, or thrilled by heroism.

Of his retirement in America we have many particulars, but still not enough. Enough can never be learned of the course of life of one whose more homely virtues were now put to the severest test after those which are commonly esteemed more lofty had well stood their trial. The following passage delivers over to us the impression of the philosopher’s latter days, which Priestley’s own correspondence, and the notices of his friends leave on the mind of an affectionate admirer of the man.

“There in one of its remote recesses, on the outer margin of civilization, he, who had made a part of the world’s briskest activity, who had led on the speed of its progress. whose mind had kept pace with its learning. and overtaken its science. and outstripped is freedom and its morality, gathered together his resources of philosophy and devotion: thence he looked forth on the vicissitudes and prospects of Europe, with melancholy, but hopeful interest, like the prophet from his mount, on the land whose glories he was not to see. But it was not for such an energetic sprit as his to pass instantaneously into the quietude of exile without an irrecoverable shock. He had not that dreamy and idle pietism which could enwrap itself in the mists of its own contemplations, and believe Heaven nearer in proportion as earth became less distinct. The shifting sights and busy murmurs that reached him from afar reminded him of the circulation of social toils which had plied his hand and heart. Year after year passed on, and bought him no summons of duty back into the stir of men; all that he did he had to devise and execute by his own solitary energies, apart from advice and sympathy, and with no hope but that of benefitting the world he was soon to quit. The effort to exchange the habits of the city for those of the cloister was astonishingly successful. But his mind was never the same again: it is impossible not to perceive a decline of power, a tendency to garrulity of style and eccentricity of speculation in his American publications. And yet,while this slight, though perceptible shade fell over his intellect, a softened light seemed to spread itself over his character. His feelings, his moral perceptions, were mellowed and ripened by years, and assumed a tenderness and refinement not observable before. Thanks to the genial and heavenly clime which Christianity sheds round the soul, the aged stem burst into blossom. And so it will always be when the mind is really pervaded by so noble a faith as Priestley’s. There is no law of nature, there are no frosts of time, to shed a snow-blight on the heart. The feelings die out when their objects come to an end; and if there be no future, and its treasures drop off. and its attractions are spent, and a few links only of its hours remain in the hand, well may there be no heart for effort, and no eye for beauty, and well may love gather itself up to die. But open perfection to its veneration, and immortality to its step; tell it of one who is and always will be the inspirer of genius, the originator of truth, the life of emotion; assure it that all which is known shall enlarge for ever, that all which is felt shall grow intenser for ever, and the proximity of death will quicken instead of withering the mind; the eye will grow dim on the open page of knowledge; the hand will be found clasping in death the instruments of human good; the heart’s last pulse will beat with some new emotion of benignity. In Priestley’s case there was not merely a sustainment, but a positive advancement of character in later years. The symptoms of restlessness gradually disappear without abatement of his activity; a quietude as of one who waits and listens comes over him; there are touches of sentiment and traces of tears in his letters, and yet an obvious increase of serenity and hope; there is a disposition to devise and accomplish more good for the world, and ply himself while an energy remained, and yet no anxiety to do what was beyond his powers. He successively followed to the grave a son and a wife; and the more he was left alone, the more did he learn to love to be alone; and in his study, surrounded by the books which had been his companions for half a century, and over half the earth, and sitting beneath the pictures of friends under the turf, he took his last survey of the world which had given him so long a shelter: like a grateful guest before his departure, he numbered up the bright and social, or the adventurous hours which had passed during his stay; and the philosophers who had welcomed him in his annual visits to London, – the broad, sagacious face of Franklin, the benignant intelligence of Price, rose up before him, and the social voices of the group of heretics round the fireside of Essex Street, floated on his ear; and as the full moon shone upon his table, and glistened in his electrical machine, his eye would dream of the dining philosophers of the Lunar Society, and glisten to greet again the doughty features of Darwin, and the clear, calculating eye of Watt. Yet his retrospective thoughts were but hints to suggest a train of prospective far more interesting. The scenes which he loved were in the past, but most of the objects which clothed them with associations of interest were already transferred to the future: there they were in reserve for him, to be recovered (to use his win favourite phrase, slightly tinged with the melancholy sprit of his solitude) under more favourable circumstances: and thither, with all his attachment to the world, whose boundary ocean already murmured beneath, he hoped soon to emigrate.”[7]

Priestley had much to suffer in America. His severest woes befell him there. There he lost his beloved son Harry; then his wife departed: and trials which exceeded even these put his Christian acquiescence to fullest proof. To an intimate friend he writes –

From how much trouble has my wife been relieved! She had a great mind, but the events that have taken place since her death would have affected her deeply. My trials, now towards the close of life, are as great as I can bear, though I doubt not that a wise and good Providence overrules all events, and I have daily a more habitual respect to it. Nothing else could support me… We are frail, imperfect beings, and our faith is at best but weak, and requires to be strengthened by reading and reflection. I never omit reading, and I do it with more satisfaction than ever, a considerable portion of Scripture every day, and by this means my mind is much relieved.

This is not the device of the devotee, the refuge of the disappointed man who takes to religion as the only resource left him. This is the declaration of a philosopher, whose youth and whose riper years were given to the close study of the book which was now the pillow of his age.

I know not how it may appear to persons less familiarised than myself with the sprit of the man, and the eloquent moderation of his language, but I have always regarded the letter on the death of his son Harry as an exquisite revelation of a healthy mind in sorrow:

To The Rev. T. Lindsey

Northumberland,

Dec. 17, 1795.

Dear Friend,

I think that in my last, of the 7th instant, I mentioned Harry’s being indisposed, we imagined, of his attending his limekiln in the night. It proved to be a more serious illness than we or the physician imagined. He grew worse till the 11th, when he died, it is now almost certain, of an inflammation and mortification of the stomach. Having had little or no apprehension of danger till near the time of his death, the shock, you may suppose, was very great; and being the first event of the kind, I am affected more than I thought I should have been, though I have unspeakable consolation in believing that nothing can befall us without the appointment of the best of Beings, and that we shall meet our departed children and friends in a better state.

He had recovered from an ague, which was common in this part of the country, this summer; but after this, he had frequent colds, from exposing himself to could and wet, and not taking proper care of himself afterwards, which certainly laid the foundation of his subsequent and last illness.

Had he been bred a farmer, he could not have been more assiduous than he was. He was admired by every body for his unremitting labour, as well as good judgement, in the management of his business, though only eighteen years old. With respect to his ardour in his pursuits, he was more like what I was at his age than any of my children, though our objects were very different. He was strictly virtuous, and was uncommonly beloved by all that worked under him; and it was always said that he was better served than any other farmer in this country. He had a sense of honour and generosity which, I am sorry to say, is not common here. I hope, therefore, that he had the foundation of something in his character, on which a good superstructure may be raised hereafter. We thought his temper, and even his looks, altered for the worse by the severe illness he had at Hackney; but it is remarkable, that some time before his death, (as his mother, who never left him, says,) and very visibly afterwards, he had the same sweet, placid, and even cheerful countenance, that he had when he was young; much like that of his sister, whom, at that time, he greatly resembled. I never saw the countenance of a dead person so pleasing; and so it continued till he was buried. Even this seemingly trifling circumstance gives me much satisfaction. I know you and Mrs Lindsey will excuse my writing so much about myself and family. I could not write so much to anybody else.

My wife is much affected, as you will suppose by the death of Harry; but, at the same time, discovers proper fortitude. By her constant attendance upon him, she has made herself ill, but seems to be getting better.[8]

This is the man whom Johnson dared to execrate. At a chemical lecture, he knit his brows, and displeased with the lecturer for citing so often the discoveries of Dr Priestley. When excuse was made that chemical lectures could not be faithfully given without citing Priestley’s discoveries, “Well,” said the moral Johnson, “I suppose we must give even the devil his due.” Thus may even great men revile greater, denouncing those to whom it would be well for them to kneel.

There are some who are as blind to Priestley’s merits as Johnson, without half his excuse. Before I went to American I was aware that the Unitarians there, who ought to know every thing about the apostle of their faith who took refuge in their country, were so far in the dark about him, as that they misapprehended his philosophy, and misrepresented its tendencies in a way and to a degree which seemed irreconcilable with the means of information within their reach. I knew that Dr Channing’s celebrated note on Priestley remained unretracted, – though rebuked on the spot[9] with much spirit and tenderness by a then young divine, who better understood the Christian sage. I knew that the tendency of this sect in America to lean upon authority, – with some other causes, – must indispose them to do justice to Priestley. But till I was among them, I had no idea that it was possible for those of them who were not ignorant of the character of the philosopher to allow their fear and dislike of some of his convictions to render them so insensible as they are to the majesty of the man. They themselves would deny the insensibility, and point to this and that testimony to Priestley being a well meaning man, which may be found in their publications. But facts show what the insensibility is. Dr Channing speaks of him now in a tone of patronage, admitting that he is under obligations to him for one or two detached sermons which breathe the true spirit. Another clergyman puts forth a small volume of selection from Priestley’s works, with an apologetical preface, which states, that whatever Priestley’s doctrines and writings may have been as a whole, there are portions which may be picked out for people to profit by. Such facts show that the character and mission of the man are not understood. Priestley was above most men, one who came at a right point of time to accomplish a particular service; to break up the reliance on authority in matters of opinion and conscience, and insensibly to show, in an age when prejudice and denial were at fierce war, how noble and touching is the free and fervent and disinterested pursuit of truth. His character is to everlasting; but his writings are, for the most part, suitable to only a particular position of affairs, a critical social state. Those who, like the Americans; are unprepared for – alienated form – his philosophy, and who are remarkable for their dependence on authority in matters of opinion, cannot possibly sympathise with Priestley’s convictions; and a full appreciation of him ought not to be expected of them. But they had better, in such a position of circumstances, let his works alone. It is not necessary or desirable that they should study writings to which no impulse of sympathy or admiration leads them; but it is most desirable that they should not speak and write apologetically and patronizingly of one of the largest-minded and most single-hearted of sages. In the transition which the religious and philosophical society of America has to make, reliance on authority to a state of individual research and conviction, the philosopher may or may not yet become an apostle to them. In their present condition, he cannot be so. The warmest friends of both see that it cannot be so. They only desire that his reputation should be left unvisited as his remains; and that while no traveller is drawn aside from his path to seek the philosopher’s tomb, no presumptuous hand should offer to endorse his merits, or push the claims to partial approbation of one who was created to command reverent discipleship; reverent discipleship in the pursuit of truth, if not in the reception of doctrine.

The first point of my travels fixed in my intentions was the retreat of Priestley; and my pilgrimage thither was accomplished within a few weeks after I landed. From Pittsburgh we crossed the Alleghenies by the road through Ebensburg, and in four days reached Youngmanstown, eighteen miles from Northumberland. We breakfasted at Lewisburg on the 11th of November, and were very glad to leave leave behind us the most fretful stage company we were shut up with in all out travels. We crossed the Susquehanna in peace in peace and quiet, and could freely enjoy our meditation, as every mile brought us nearer the philosopher’s resting place. I wish I could communicate to other of his disciples the harmony between the scenery and the man which new exists, and ever will exist, in my own mind. Priestley himself wrote, “I do not think there can be, in any part of the world, a more delightful situation than this and the neighbourhood;” and I revolved this in my thoughts as I gazed upon the broad, shoaly, and gleamy river bordered with pines, and the swelling hills and sloping fields which sometimes intervened between us and the river. The morning was one of lustrous clouds and mild gleams; and the whole scene was of the tranquil character, and dressed in the soft light, which is most accordant with the mood of those traversing the scenery with such reasons as mine. I was full of stronger emotions than when I found myself in sight of the spray of Niagara. There is nothing so sanctifying as the ideal presence of the pure in spirit; and not all the thronging images of what Niagara had witnessed since the earliest worship of an extinct race was paid there, before the ancient empires of the earth were heard of, affected me so much as the thought of the sage who came hither to forgive his enemies, and hope all things for the world, in the midst of his hourly privations and daily regrets.

Abrupt wooded rocks dignify the river banks near the town; and nothing can be much more beautiful than the situation of the place, in the fork of the Susquehanna. The town itself, however, would delight an improvement-hater. It has scarcely advanced at all since Priestley’s time. Some of the inhabitants complain that this stagnation is owing to the want of enterprise among their capitalists; but there would be enterprise there as elsewhere if there was an average prospect of reward, Others allege that the place is not healthy. It is certainly subject to fever and ague; but the causes are thought to be removable. Sunbury, on the other shore of the eastern branch of the river, is a rival, a thriving competitor of Northumberland; but the growth of neither is to be compared with that of most American towns. The only interest connected with Northumberland still is its being Priestley’s city of refuge.

We were hospitably received at the clean little inn; and I presently discovered that our hostess could give me more information about Priestley than anybody else in the place. Her father had, been intimately acquainted with the philosopher; had been his confidant in his latest and severest trials; and she herself remembered him well, and could relate many little incidents which delighted me as giving life to objects that were before my eyes. No words can convey the passionate admiration, the devoted love with which this good lady spoke of him. A power went out of him which melted his enemies, and converted those who came with hatred into his presence; and it exalted the love of his friends to the highest pitch that human affection can reach, “All that I have formerly said of Dr Priestley is nonsense,” declared a stiff religious bigot, after an accidental interview with the philosopher. “I have now seen him for myself, and you must let me see more of him.” Our good hostess told me how unequalled his preaching was, so simple and earnest and tender, quite unlike any other person’s preaching, and his looks so bright: she dwelt on his goodness to his neighbours, and told how inexhaustible were his charities, – so thoughtful, so steady, so perpetual. She laughed again at the remembrance of his childlike gaiety, bursting out in the midst of his heart soreness, and declared that he was never long depressed: he was so sure that all was right in reality, that he could never be dismayed at its seeming otherwise for a time. She remembered that “he was much thought of when he first came,” yet she never felt afraid of him. She was present at the only time when he was seen wholly overcome by grief, and will never forgot the oppression of heart, the anguish of seeing tears streaming down his face when no one could do anything to help him. But her recollections of him are chiefly joyous, – of his eagerness about his philosophical pursuits; the cheerful tone of his preaching; his sympathy with young people. Never was a lovelier picture of old age given, – of its virtues, nor, alas! of its privileges, – than by this affectionate observer. Her testimony is confirmed by every other that exists. I saw the gentleman who was with him when he received his Voltaic pile, and who told me how eagerly he pointed out the wire dissolving, and made his friend take a shock in his forefinger. All who conversed with him mentioned that his feelings became more sensitive towards the end of his life; his eyes were frequently seen to glisten in conversation, and he smiled oftener. A gentleman, now well known as an unbeliever of the last degree of bigotry, who shrinks with as much hatred and fear from the very mention of religion as persons of an opposite character from infidelity, bore a singular testimony to the state of Priestley’s mind in his latter days. The gentleman was observing to me that it was strange, considering how irritable Priestley’s temper was by nature, and that he died of a harassing and depressing illness that he was eminently placid during the last few months of his life. I observed that his religion was of a substaining nature, being no superstition, but a firmly grounded, long-tried faith; and that the natural explanation of his tranquillity was that he was in a thoroughly religious state of mind. “Religious! bless me, no!” cried the gentleman: “he was always very cheerful whenever I saw him.”

At the house of his grandson, cashier of the bank at Northumberland, I saw a delightful portrait of him. It is from a copy of this picture that the engraving in the “Gallery of Portraits,” published by the society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, is taken. The face and air are worthy of the man, – gentle and venerable. The philosopher’s house we found occupied by a Judge and his lady who are Quakers, while their children are orthodox: but this double difference of religious opinion does not impair their respect for the former inhabitant of their dwelling. They preserve, with an honourable reverence, every vestige of him and his pursuits. They show the willows that were planted in his time in the garden, and have preserved the round hole he made in the window shutter of his study, for the advantage of his optical experiments; and even the bit of wainscot which he scorched with his burning glasses. They took me to the corner of the library where he breathed his last, and to the balustrade on the top of the roof, where he went up to meditate at eventide. It commands a beautiful prospect of the course of the two branches of the Susquehanna, and of their junction.

Priestley’s Hill is so called from its vicinity to the lands held by his family. It is pleasant to know that he was possessed of abundance during the last years of his life. His own wants were few; almost all his expenditure being in charity and in his philosophical pursuits. He had enough for these, and to settle his sons on good farms. No man bestowed and accepted money with a better grace than he: his generous English friends, who had the best reasons for being aware of this, had the satisfaction of knowing that no pecuniary anxieties mingled with the trials of this closing years.

The tombs of the three, – of Priestley, his excellent wife, and his son Harry, – are in a family graveyard, which is on the outskirts of the little town, and some way from the family residence. It is walled round, and has an iron gate. I was familiar with the account of Harry’s funeral, written at the time, and could not understand how it happened that he lay in this place. It is clear, from the testimony of persons on the spot, that his body has never been moved; and as the place of interment is described as being woodland, we must suppose that the bare place where he lies was within the verge of the forest in 1795. A resident in the neighbourhood wrote thus: “I attended the funeral to the lonely spot. and there I saw the good old father perform the service over the grave of his son. It was an affecting sight, but he went through it with fortitude, and, after praying, addressed the attendants in a few words, assuring them that, though death had separated them here, they should meet again in another and a better world.”

How little did I think when, some years ago, I read and re-read the narrative of Harry’s death, – striving to extract from it something more, and yet something more to throw light on the character of father and son, – that I should stand by that very grave, and plant a rose upon it! Few feet have wandered that way; and no hands seem to have been busied about those graves; but I was thankful to be there, among the first of many pilgrims who will yet see the spot. For another pupil of the philosopher’s, whose homage I carried with any own, I planted a snow berry on Priestley’s grave. When that other and I were infants, caring for nothing but our baby plays, this grave was being dug for one who was to exert a most unusual influence over our minds and hearts, exercising our intellects, and winning our affections like a present master and parent, rather than a thinker who had passed away from the earth. Here I now stood by his grave, listening to tales which seemed as fresh as if he were living and walking yesterday, instead of having been wept before I knew any of the meanings of tears.

The inscription on Priestley’s tomb is singularly inappropriate – “Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. I will lay me down in peace and sleep, until I awake in the morning of the resurrection.” Phrases from the Old Testament, and about the soul, on the grave of Priestley!

I remained in the neighbourhood several days, and visited as many of the philosopher’s haunts as I could get pointed out to me; and when I was at length obliged to resume my journey down the Susquehanna, it was with a strong feeling of satisfaction in the accomplishment of my object. These are the places in which to learn what are the real, in distinction from the comparatively insignificant, objects of regard; – of approbation and hatred; – of desire and fear. This was the place to learn what survived of a well-exercised and much-tried man. He made mistakes: they are transient evils, for others have been sent to rectify them. He felt certain of some things still dubious: this is a transient evil; for he is gone where he will obtain greater clearness; and men have arisen, and will arise, to enlighten us, and those who will follow us. He exploded errors: this was a real, but second-rate good, which would have been achieved by another if not by him. He discovered new truths: this is a real good, and as eternal as truth itself. He made an unusual progress towards moral perfection: this is the highest good of all, and never ending. His mistakes will be rectified; the prejudices against him on their account will die out: the hands that injured him, the tongues that wounded him, are all or nearly all stilled in death: the bitter tears which these occasioned have long since been all wept. These things are gone or going by; they have reached, or are tending to the extinction which awaits all sins and sorrows. What remains? Whatever was real of the man and of the work given him to do. Whatsoever truth he discovered will propagate itself for ever, whether the honour of it he ascribed to him or not. There remain other things no less great, no less real, no less eternal, to be reckoned among the spiritual treasures of the race; things of which Priestley, the immortal, was composed, and in which he manifestly survives: a love of truth which no danger could daunt, and no toil relax: a religious faith which no severity of probation could shake: a liberality proof against prejudice from within and injury from without: a simplicity which no experience of life and men could corrupt: a charity which grew tenderer under persecution, and warmer in exile: a hope which flourished in disappointment, and triumphed in the grave. These are the things which remain, bearing, no relation to country or time; as truly here as there; now as hereafter.

These realities are the inheritance of those who sit at home, as well as of those who wander abroad: yet it may be forgiven to the weak, whose faith is dim-sighted, and whose affections crave a visible resting place, if they find their sense of privilege refreshed by treading the shores of the exile’s chosen Susquehanna.

Volume 1

Prisons

“In the prison of Coldbath Fields, in which the silent system is believed to be brought to the greatest degree of perfection, under the management of a highly intelligent and able governor, who has at his command every possible advantage for working the system, there were in the year 1836 no less than 5138 punishments ‘for talking and swearing.’”

Second Report of the Inspectors of Prisons of Great Britain, 1837.

“Silence and Secrecy!… Do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day; on the morrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties! what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out!”

Sartor Resartus.

I have shown in my account of Society in America that, after visiting several prisons in the United States, I was convinced that the system of solitary confinement pursued at Philadelphia is the best that has yet been adopted.[10] So much has been heard in England of the Auburn prison, its details look so complete and satisfactory on paper, and it is so much a better system than the English have been accustomed to see followed at home, that it has a high reputation among us. But I think a careful survey of the institution on the spot must lessen the admiration entertained for this mode of punishment.

The convicts are, almost without exception, pale and haggard. As their work is done either in the open air, or in well ventilated shops, and their diet is good, their unhealthy appearance is no doubt owing chiefly to the bad construction of their night cells. These cells are small and ill ventilated, and do not even answer the purpose of placing the prisoners in solitude during the night. The convicts converse with nearly as much ease, through the air pipes or otherwise, at night, as they do by speaking behind their teeth, without moving the lips, while at work in the day. In both cases, they feel that they are transgressing the laws of the prison by doing an otherwise innocent, and almost necessary act: a knowledge and feeling most unfavourable to reformation, and destructive of any conscientiousness which retribution may be generating in them. Their anxious and haggard looks may be easily accounted for. They are denied the forgetfulness of themselves and their miseries which they might enjoy in free conversation; and also the repose and the shelter from shame which are the privileges of solitary confinement. Every movement reminds them that they are in disgrace: a multitude of eyes (the eyes of the wicked, too) is ever upon them: they can neither live to themselves nor to society, and self-respect is rendered next to impossible. A man must be either hardened, or restless and wretched, under such circumstances; and the faces at Auburn are no mystery.

The finishing of the day’s work, and the housing for the night, are sights barely endurable. The governor saw my disgust, and explained that he utterly disapproved of strangers being allowed to be present at all this; but that the free Americans would not be debarred from witnessing the operation of any thing which they have decreed. This is right enough: the evil is in there being any such spectacle to witness. The prisoners are ranged in companies for the march from their workshops into the prison. Each fills his pail and carries it, and takes up the can with his supper as he passes the kitchen; and, when I was there, this was done in the presence of staring and amused strangers, who looked down smiling from the portico. Some of the prisoners turned their heads every possible way to avoid meeting our eyes, and were in an agony of shame; while the blacks, who, from their social degradation, have little idea of shame, and who are remarkable for exaggeration in all they do, figured away ridiculously in the march, stamping and gesticulating as if they were engaged in a game at romps. I do not know which extreme was the most painful to witness. It is clear that no occasion should be afforded for either: that men should not be ignominiously paraded because they are guilty.

The arrangements for the women were extremely bad at that time; but the governor needed no convincing of this, and hoped for a speedy rectification. The women were all in one large room, sewing. The attempt to enforce silence was soon given up as hopeless; and the gabble of tongues among the few who were there was enough to paralyze any matron. Some rather hopeful-looking girls were side by side with old offenders of their own colour, and with some most brutish looking black women. There was an engine in sight which made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes, – stocks of a terrible construction; a chair, with a fastening for the head and for all the limbs. Any lunatic asylum ought to be ashamed of such an instrument. The governor liked it no better than we: but he pleaded that it was his only means of keeping his refractory female prisoners quiet, while he was allowed only one room to put them all into. I hope these stocks have been used for firewood before this.

The first principle in the management of the guilty seems to me to be to treat them as men and women: which they were before they were guilty, and will be when they are no longer so; and which they are in the midst of it all. Their humanity is the principal thing about them; their guilt is a temporary state. The insane are first men, and secondary diseased men; and in a due consideration of this order of things lies the main secret of the successful treatment of such. The drunkard is first a man, and secondarily a man with peculiar weakness. The convict is, in like manner, first a man, and then a sinner. Now, there is something in the isolation of the convict which tends to keep this order of considerations right in the mind of his guardians. The warden and his prisoner converse like two men when they are face to face: but when the keeper watches a hundred men herded together in virtue of the one common characteristic of their being criminals, the guilt becomes the prominent circumstance, and there is an end of the brotherly faith in each, to which each must mainly owe his cure. This in our human weakness, is the great evil attendant upon the good of collecting together sufferers under any particular physical or moral evil. Visitors are shy of the blind, the deaf and dumb, and insane, when they see them all together, while they would feel little or nothing of this shyness if they met each sufferer in the bosom of his own family. In the one case, the infirmity, defying sympathy, is the prominent circumstance; in the other, not. It follows from this, that such an association of prisoners as that at Auburn must be more difficult to reform, more difficult to do the State’s duty by, than any number or kind of criminals who are classed by some other characteristic, or not classed at all.

The wonderfully successful friend of criminals, Captain Pillsbury, of Weathersfield prison, has worked on this principle and owes his success to it. His moral power over the guilty is so remarkable, that prison-breakers who can be confined nowhere else are sent to him, to be charmed into staying their term out. I was told of his treatment of two such. One was a gigantic personage, the terror of the country, who had plunged deeper and deeper in crime for seventeen years. Captain Pillsbury told him when he came, that he hoped he would not repeat the attempts to escape which he had made elsewhere. “It will be best,” said he, “that you and I should treat each other as well as we can. I will make you as comfortable as I possibly can, and shall be anxious to be your friend: and I hope you will not get me into any difficulty on your account. There is a cell intended for solitary confinement: but we never use it; and I should be very sorry ever to have to turn the key upon anybody in it. You may range the place as freely as I do if you will trust me as I shall trust you.” The man was sulky, and for weeks showed only very gradual symptoms of softening under the operation of Captain Pillsbury’s cheerful confidence. At length, information was given to the Captain of this man’s intention to break prison. The Captain called him, and taxed him with it: the man preserved a gloomy silence. He was told that it was now necessary for him to be locked up in the solitary cell, and desired to follow the Captain, who went first, carrying a lamp in one hand, and the key in the other. In the narrowest part of the passage, the Captain (who is a small, slight man) turned round and looked in the face of the stout criminal. “Now,” said he, “I ask you whether you have treated me as I deserve? I have done every thing I could think of to make you comfortable: I have trusted you, and you have never given me the least confidence in return, and have even planned to get me into difficulty. Is this kind? – And yet I cannot bear to lock you up. If I had the least sign that you cared for me…” The man burst into tears. “Sir,” said he, “I have been a very devil these seventeen years: but you treat me like a man.” – “Come, let us go back,” said the Captain. The convict had the free range of the prison as before. From this hour, he began to open his heart to the Captain, and cheerfully fulfilled his whole term of imprisonment, confiding to his friend, as they as they arose, all impulses to violate his trust, and all facilities for doing so which he imagined he saw.

The other case was of a criminal of the same character, who went so far as to make the actual attempt to escape. He fell, and hurt his ankle very much. The Captain had him brought in, and laid on his bed, and the ankle attended to: every one being forbidden to speak a word of reproach to the sufferer. The man was sullen, and would not say whether the bandaging of his ankle gave him pain or not. This was in the night; and every one returned to bed when all was done. But the Captain could not sleep. He was distressed at the attempt, and thought he could not have fully done his duty by any man who would make it. He was afraid the man was in great pain. He rose, threw on his gown, and went with a lamp to the cell. The prisoner’s face was turned to the wall, and his eyes were closed; but the traces of suffering were not to be mistaken. The Captain loosened and replaced the bandage, and went for his own pillow to rest the limb upon; the man neither speaking nor moving all the time. Just when he was shutting the door the prisoner started up, and called him back.

“Stop, Sir. Was it all to see after my ankle that you have got up?”

“Yes, it was. I could not sleep for thinking of you.”

“And you have never said a word of the way I have used you!”

“I do feel hurt with you, but I don’t want to call you unkind while you are suffering as I am sure you are now.”

The man was in an agony of shame and grief. All be asked was to be trusted again, when he should have recovered. He was freely trusted, and gave his generous friend no more anxiety on his behalf.

Captain Pillsbury is the gentleman who, on being told that a desperate prisoner had sworn to murder him speedily, sent for him to shave him, allowing no one to be present. He eyed the man, pointed to the razor, and desired him to shave him. The prisoner’s hand trembled; but he went through it very well. When he had done, the Captain said, “I have been told you meant to murder me: but I thought I might trust you.” “God bless you, Sir! you may,” replied the regenerated man. Such is the power of faith in man!

The greatest advantage of solitary confinement is, that it presents the best part of the prisoner’s mind to be acted upon by his guardians; and the next is, that the prisoner is preserved from the evil influences of vicious companionship, of shame within the prison walls, and of degradation when he comes out. I am persuaded that no system of secondary punishment has yet been devised that can be compared with this. I need not, at this time of day, explain that I mean solitary imprisonment with labour, and with frequent visits from the guardians of the prisoner. Without labour, the punishment is too horrible and unjust to be thought of. The reflective man would go mad, and the clown would sleep away his term; and none of the purposes of human existence could be answered. Work is, in prison as out of it, the grand equaliser, stimulus, composer and rectifier; the prime obligation, and; the prime privilege. It is delightful to see how soon its character is recognised there. In the Philadelphia penitentiary, work is forbidden to the criminal for two days subsequent to his entrance: he petitions for it before the two days are out, however doggedly he may have declared that he will never work. Small incidents show what a resource it is. A convict shoemaker mentioned to a visitor a very early hour of the winter day as that at which he began to work. “But how can you see at that time of a winter’s morning? it must be nearly dark.” – “I hammer my leather. That requires very little light. I get up and hammer my leather.”

On his entrance, the convict is taken to the bathroom, where he is well cleansed, and his state of health examined into and recorded by the physician and one who could in the least tell what the form of the central part of the prison was, or which of the radii his cell was placed in, though they make very accurate observations of the times at which the sun shines in. At the end of two days, during which the convict has neither book nor work, the warden visits him, and has a conversation with him, about the mode of life in the institution. If he asks for work, he is offered a choice of three or four kinds, of which weaving and shoemaking are the chief. He is told “that if he does a certain amount of work, he will have the full diet provided for hard labourers; if less, he will have what is sufficient for a moderate worker; if more, the price of it will be laid by to accumulate, and paid over to him on his leaving the prison. He is furnished with a Bible; and other books, provided by friends to the institution, circulate among the convict. Some who have books at home are allowed to have them brought. A convict gentleman whom I visited had a fine library at home, and was plentifully supplied from thence. It was difficult to find occupation for this unhappy man, who had never been used to labour. He was filling bobbins when I saw him; and he wrote a great deal in various languages. His story was a dreadful one; too horrible to be related. His crime was murder, but committed under such intense provocation, real or imaginary, that he had the compassion of every one who knew his history. He had been justice of the peace for twenty years; and his interest was so strong that he had little doubt of being able to obtain a pardon, and for some years was daily racked with expectation. He told me that it was opposed by political enemies only: and this belief did not, of course, tend to calm his mind. Pardon came at last, when nine years of the twelve for which he was sentenced had expired. He was released a year and a half after I saw him.

In his case there were peculiar disturbing influences, and his seclusion was doubtless more painful and less profitable than that of most prisoners. His case was public; his station and the singularity of the circumstances made it necessarily so: and the knowledge of this publicity is a great drawback upon reformation, and upon repose of mind. The most hopeful cases I met with were those of men who came from a distance, who were tried under a feigned name, or whose old connexions were, from other circumstances, unaware of their present condition. Of course I cannot publicly relate facts concerning any of these. They disclosed their stories to me in confidence. I can give nothing but general impressions, except in a few cases which are already notorious, or where death has removed the obligation to secrecy, by rendering it impossible for the penitent to be injured, while his reputation may be benefited by its being known what were the feelings of his latter days.

After a general survey of the establishment, which furnished me with all that the managers had to bring forward, I entered, by the kind permission of the Board, upon the yet more interesting inquiry of what the convicts had to say for themselves. I supposed that, from their long seclusion from all society but that of their guardians, they would be ready to communicate very freely; and also, judging from my own feelings, that they could not do this in the presence of any third person. I therefore requested, and was allowed, to go entirely alone, the turnkey coming at the end of a specified time to let me out. No one of them, except the gentleman above mentioned, had any notice whatever of my coming. Their door was unlocked at an unusual hour, and I stepped in. My reception was, in every case, the same. Every man of them looked up, transfixed with amazement, one with his shuttle, another with his awl suspended. I said that if my visit was not agreeable, I would call the turnkey before he was out of hearing, and go away. If the contrary, perhaps I might be favoured with a seat. In an instant the workman sprang up, wiped his stool with his apron for me, and sat down himself on his work bench. In a few cases I had to make a further explanation that I did not come for prayer and religious discourse. The conversation invariably took that turn before I left, as it naturally does with the anxious and suffering; but two or three rushed at once into such shocking cant, that I lost no time in telling them the real object of visit, – to learn what were the causes of crime in the United States. I also told them all that I could not give them news from the city, because this was against the rules of the prison. They were glad to converse with me on my own conditions, and I am confident that they presented me faithfully with their state of mind, as it appeared to themselves. I have never received confidence more full and simple than theirs; and much of it was very extraordinary. All, except two or three, voluntarily acknowledged their guilt – the last point, of course, on which I should have chosen to press them. It seemed a relief to them to dwell on the minutest particulars relating to their temptation to their crime, and the time and mode of its commission. One man began protesting his innocence early in our conversation; following the practice common among felons, of declaring himself a guilty fellow enough, but innocent of this particular crime. I stopped him, saying that I asked him no questions, and had no business with his innocence or guilt; and that I did not like such protestations as he was making: we would talk of something else. He looked abashed; and within half an hour he had communicated his first act of dishonesty in life, – the festering wound which I have reason to believe he never before laid open to human eye.

Several incidents of this nature which occurred persuade me that almost anything may be done with these sufferers by occasional intercourse and free sympathy. Each time that I went I was amazed at the effect of words that had passed, lightly enough, days or weeks before. I found them all expecting a pardon; and the most painful part of my duty to them was undeceiving them about this. It was dreadful to see the emotion of some: but I knew they would have no repose of mind, so necessary in their case, while racked with this hope: I therefore took pains to explain what punishment was for, and how rarely pardon could be justified. On my subsequent visits it was cheering to see how completely they had understood me, and how they had followed out the subject to their own entire conviction.

“Well, J.,” said I to a young man who had been rather languid about his work, making only three shoes a week while expecting a pardon, “how have you been since I saw you?”

“Very fairly indeed, madam. I make seven shoes a week now.”

“Ah! then you have left off fretting yourself about a pardon. You have made up your mind to your term, like a man.”

“Yes, I have been thinking about that, – and something more. I have been thinking that perhaps it is well that I am here now; for, madam, I got that that I took so easily that I believe, if I had not been caught. I should have gone back to the same place, and taken more; and so have come in for ten years instead of five.”

Twenty months afterwards I heard of this man from the warden. He was in health, cheerful, and industrious. I have no doubt of his doing well when he comes out.

A negro, in for a very serious offence, which he acknowledged, told me of another committed long before, which, since his imprisonment, had weighed much more heavily on his mind, perhaps because no one knew it, or suspected him; it was a theft of sixteen dollars, committed with some treachery. This subject had been entirely dismissed, and had even gone out of my mind when we talked over the expiration of his term, and his prospects in life. “Where do you mean to so first?” said I. “Stay in Philadelphia till I have worked for those sixteen dollars, and paid them,” said he. This was without the slightest leading on my part.

Several told me more about their mothers than about anything else in their former lives: and those who were tried under false names seemed more afraid of their mothers knowing where they were, than of any other consequence. In every case some heart-sore was at the bottom of the guilt. Many were as ignorant as Americans ever are, and had sought to get rid of their griefs, as ignorant people do, by physical excitement. First, passion, then drink, then crime: this is the descent. Most declared that the privation of tobacco was the first tremendous suffering within the prison; then the solitude; then the vain hope of pardon. The middle part of their term is the easiest. Near the end they grow restless and nervous. Every one that I asked could promptly tell me the day of the month.

“May I ask,” said I to one for whom I had much regard, “may I ask what all these black marks on your wall are for?” I was not without a conjecture, remembering that he was to go out on the 17th of the next August; this being the 1st of December.

He looked down, and said he had no secret in the matter: only that I should think him very silly. I told him that I did not think any amusement silly to one who had so few.

“Well, madam, I have been trying to find out what day of the week the 17th of next August will be: but I can’t quite make it out, because I don’t know whether the next is leap year.”

The holding out my hand to them at parting brought every one of them to tears: yet there was nothing unmanly in their bearing: there was no lack of health, no feebleness of spirits, though a quietness of manner such as might be anticipated in men under punishment, and subject to remorse. There was a degree of contentment (when the expectation of pardon was removed) which I did not look for. They spoke (such as were qualified) of other prisons with horror, and with approbation approaching to thankfulness of the treatment they met with in this, where they were not degraded as if they had done nothing but crime, – as if they were not still men. I was much moved by the temper of one; and much humbled (as I often was) at thinking for how little guilt some are heavily visited, when there is not one of us, perhaps, who may not justly feel that, however safe and honoured he may appear, he has done worse, and deserved a more fearful retribution.

A friend of mine, who knew that I was visiting the penitentiary, asked me to see two brothers who were in for forging and coining. The case was notorious, the elder brother being an old offender. I agreed to inquire for them; and upon this my friend somewhat imprudently told the mother of the convicts, and the wife of the younger one, what I had promised, and sent them to see me. I soon perceived that the wife was telling me a number of family particulars in the hope that I should communicate them to her husband. I felt myself obliged to put a stop to this, as I was upon honour, and could not think of violating any of the rules of the prison, one of which was that the convicts should receive no intelligence from without. The wife’s reply was heart-wringing. She said she did not wish to show disrespect to any rules; there was but one thing that she implored me to convey to her husband. He had expected a pardon in three months from his conviction: five months had now passed, and he would be wondering. She only wanted him to know that it was through no want of exertion on her part that he was still in prison. I was compelled to refuse to communicate anything, and even to let the young man know that I had seen any of his family. But in my own mind I resolved not to see the convict till the warden, who was absent, should return to Philadelphia, and to tell him the whole, that he might communicate what he thought proper. By these means I believe the prisoner heard some comfortable tidings after I saw him, and I am sure he had never a hard thought of his good wife. I promised her a most minute account of her husband’s situation, to which there could be no objection. She had done nothing wrong, and was not to be punished: though it appeared that some of the ladies of Philadelphia thought otherwise, as they took from her the needlework she had undertaken for the support of herself and her children during her husband’s imprisonment. These virtuous ladies could not think of countenancing anybody connected with forgers and coiners.

I found the young man weaving. After some talk about the work, during which I saw that his mind was full of something else, I obviated all danger of his putting questions which I could not answer, by asking him whether he had relations in the city. This put an end to all reserve. He mentioned his father, and the brother who had led him into crime, with a forbearance and delicacy of forgiveness which, were extremely touching. He was not aware that I knew how different a tone might have been excused, – might have been almost justified. But he spoke most of his wife. He told me that he had always been weak, too easily persuaded, from being afraid of some people about him; and that his wife, who had a nobler mind, always kept him up; yet managing to do it when they were alone, so as never to expose his weakness. He had unfortunately come to Philadelphia two days before her; and in that interval he had been threatened and persuaded into endeavouring to pass two counterfeit five-franc pieces. This was all. But be himself did not extenuate his offence, or appear to think it a trifle He observed indeed that at that time he was not aware what sins against property were: he used to think that if some people had so much more than they wanted, there was no great harm in those who have too little taking some from them. He had had much time for thought since, and now saw so plainly how necessary it was that men should be protected while living in society, that he believed no compulsion could now make him break the laws in any such way. But the mischief was done. He had made his wife wretched, and all was over. I convinced him that it was not. His term was five years; and when it was fulfilled, he would still be a young man, and might cherish his wife for many good years. It was well that we thought so at the time, for the hope gave him substantial comfort. He lifted up his head from his loom, where it had sunk down in his bitter weeping, and began to talk upon the subject I dreaded, – pardon. I saw what kind of mind I had to deal with, – reasoning and reflective. I led him to consider, as he had found out the purposes of law, the purposes of punishment; and at length put the question to him whether he thought he ought to be pardoned. Trembling from head to foot, and white as the wall, he bravely answered “No.” I asked him whether it would not be better to settle his mind to his lot than to be trembling, for four years, at every footstep that came near his cell, expecting deliverance, and expecting it in vain. He did not answer. I told him that when he was heartsick with expecting in vain, perhaps even some hard thought of his wife, – that she had not done all she could, – might rise up to trouble him. “O no, no, never!” he cried. I had now obtained what I wanted for her.

I told him I should endeavour to see his wife. He desired me to tell her that he was in health, and had brought himself to own to me what he had done; and that he should be pretty comfortable but for thinking how he had used her: but he would try to make up for it one day. He was quite cheerful when I left him.

The wife called on me the next day. She said she could not stay long, as she was about to set off, with her children, for a remote part of the country. It was a dreadful thing to her to leave her husband’s neighbourhood; but she had been deprived of the means of support by her work being taken from her, and no resource remained but going to her father’s house. She was surprised, and seemed almost sorry (no doubt from a jealousy for his reputation) that her husband had acknowledged his offence. She said he had not acknowledged it when he went in. I told her every particular about his cell and employments, as well as his looks and conversation, till, when I had done, she started up, saying that she was forgetting her children, and her journey, and everything. When we had parted, she came back again from the door, to ask “one thing more;” – whether I thought there would ever be anything in the world that she could do for me. I thought it very possible, in a world of change like this; and promised to rely upon her, if she could ever serve me or mine.

She settled herself at her father’s, and after a while drooped in spirits, and was sure something would happen. When bad news came, she cried, “There! I knew it.” As the turnkey passed her husband’s cell, one day, he heard some noise, and looked in. The young man was just falling from his loom in a fit of apoplexy. There was no delay in doing all that can be done in such cases; but in a few hours he died. There is no reason to suppose that his imprisonment had anything to do with the attack. It was probably a constitutional tendency, aggravated by anxiety of mind.

The prison must be tried some years longer before a complete comparison of it with others can be made: but it appears at present, that if there be some few diseases which may possibly be aggravated by the silence and thoughtfulness attendant on solitary confinement (which I do not know to be the case,) there are many more which disappear under the regularity of temperature and of hours, and the good diet of the establishment. There was a certainly less sallowness and anxiety in the faces of the inmates than struck me in the other prisons. One man amazed me by calling the four years he had passed here the most comfortable he had ever known; but when he told me the wretchedness of his previous life, I fully believed him.

I found, on visiting the elder of the brothers, how complete is the secrecy preserved in the prison. I had been repeatedly told that these brothers came in together, and therefore had no hesitation in mentioning the one to the other. I was thunderstruck with the vehemence with which the elder turned upon me with the question, “Is my brother in this prison?” “I was told you came in together,” replied I. “Then they put him in just after me,” cried he. “What did they find him guilty of? What part of the prison is he in? What work does he do? and a number of other questions; none of which, of course, I would answer. I was not very sorry that he was accidentally made acquainted with what he had led his young brother into. I fear he could bear it only too well. I had made, I found that the younger brother came in three weeks after the elder.

The cases I became acquainted with were not all hopeful. Some the convicts were so stupid as not to be relied upon, more or less. Others canted so detestably, and were (always in connexion with their cant) so certain that they should never sin more that I have every expectation that they will find themselves in prison again some day. One fellow, a sailor, notorious for having taken more lives than probably any man in the United States, was quite confident that he should be perfectly virtuous henceforth. He should never touch anything stronger than tea, or lift his hand against money or life. I told him I thought he could not be sure of all this till he was within sight of money and the smell of strong liquors; and that he was more confident than I should like to be. He shook his shock of red hair at me, and glared with his one ferocious eye, as he said he knew all about it, as he had been the worst of men, and Christ had mercy on his poor soul. When I had got him away from his cant, and upon subjects on which he could talk with some simplicity, I found that even his man preferred this prison to others that he had been in. It so happened that no conviction for murder had ever been procurable against him; his imprisonments were all for theft. His account of the old Walnut Street prison was dreadful. He there daily heard stories of crimes, from four in the winter afternoons till daylight. “Poor boasting! for the crimes they bragged of were never done.” I asked him how he got into that prison. “For a couple o’ larcenies, a grand and a little,” said he, with the most businesslike nonchalance. He was waylaid by two old burglars on his coming out, and on the spot agreed upon an enterprise for the next night. His mother died in his arms: he went and committed the burglary, was caught, and before midnight was in prison again. His accounts of his deeds were too scientific for my understanding; but I made out enough to be ready when he asked my advice what to do when he came out. I answered as if he were in earnest, advising him to leave Philadelphia and all towns, and settle in the woods, out of the way of grog shops, bad company, and other people’s property. But his keepers expect that he will end his days with them; and this is the hope of that part of society which fears his ferocity.

As the system of solitary imprisonment gains ground, I trust that the practise of prison visiting will gain ground too. It is most desirable that it should not be left wholly in the hands of proselyting religionists, but be shared by those who better understand human nature, and command a greater variety of influences. For the sake of religion itself this is desirable, to rescue it from becoming a mere prison solace; an excitement seized when no other can be had, and to be laid aside when old pursuits offer themselves for resumption. Kind-hearted persons will have an opportunity of doing extensive and unquestionable good by keeping up the social affections of the prisoners, giving them up the social affections of the prisoners, giving them new ideas, making them cheerful, and investing with pleasant associations whatever things are honest, pure, lovely, and of good report.

In other prisons, much might thus be done, though not, I think, with such extraordinary effect as under the system of solitary confinement. I was struck with something I saw at the Charleston prison (Massachusetts). Several convicts, black and white, who had behaved well, were practising singing, which is allowed as an indulgence. It seemed strange to hear “The heavens are telling” from such lips; but I listened to it with more pleasure than in some far finer places. Any kind person who can introduce a new innocent pursuit into a prison, as a solace to its inmates, cannot fail to be doing an important good.

This reminds me that a service may be rendered, not so much to the convicts as to society, by any persons who can supply the prisons where stonecutting is going on with a good set of epitaphs. At Auburn they are wanted, and much more at Nashville (Tennessee), where the stone-cutting department is superintended by an honest Englishman, whose stock of epitaphs is small, and of miserable quality. We half undertook to prepare and collect some for him, but found it a less easy task than we had supposed. We got out our pencils at three o’clock one summer morning, when our stage had broken down on a bad Tennessee road; but one of our party observing that this was the first time he had never heard of making epitaphs for amusement, there was an end of the attempt; and the Nashville prison remains unsupplied, unless somebody else has done better than we.

I suspect the fault lies in the supposition that epitaphs of general application can be made at all. An epitaph should be the breathing of emotion arising out of a particular case; and none made for stonecutters’ use can have much life or truth. Still, they may have grammar and general propriety, so as to be an advantageous substitute for some at present in use, if only persons can be found to compose them on such considerations.

I saw at the Charlestown prison a sight more impressive to me than all else that the walls contained; a man of might, but whose power has taken a wrong direction; his hand being against every man, and every man’s against him. He is a prison-breaker, so formidable as to be regarded and treated as if he were of Satanic race, and not as made up of flesh and blood, and blood, and emotions that may be roused, and affections subject to the touch. He seems indeed to have become somewhat of the Satanic kind, for he is now piqued to do all the harm he can. His pride is in for it: his reputation stands upon it. I was shown an enormous block of stone which he had displaced by the aid of a “gentleman” outside, who, for fear of the prison-breaker’s blabbing, committed suicide on his recapture. The strong man was heavily fettered, confined in a different cell every night, and conducted to it by a procession of turnkeys. As we stood aside in the echoing passage to let the array go by, there was something really grand in the air of the man who had virtually said to himself “Evil, be thou my good!” He stepped slowly, clanking his chains, and looking us full in the face as he passed. He cannot but have a calm sense of power when he nightly sees the irons, the bars and locks, and the six fellow men, all in requisition to keep him from working his will. As we saw him slowly turn into his cell, and heard lock after lock shot behind him, I could not help thinking that there was much true monarchical feeling within those four narrow walls.

Volume 1

First Sight of Slavery

“Ed io, ch’avea di riguardar desio

La condicion, che tal fortezza serra,

Com’i fù dentro, l’occhio intorno invio,

E veggio ad ogni man grande campagna

Piena ad duolo, e di tormento rio.”

Dante

From the day of my entering the States till that of my leaving Philadelphia, I had seen society basking in one bright sunshine of good will. The sweet temper and kindly manners of the Americans are so striking to foreigners, that it is some time before the dazzled stranger perceives that, genuine as is all this good, evils as black as night exist along with it. I had been received with such hearty hospitality everywhere, and had lived among friends so conscientious in their regard for human rights, that though I had heard of abolition riots, and had observed somewhat of the degradation of the blacks, my mind had not yet been really troubled about the enmity of the races. The time of awakening must come. It began just before I left Philadelphia.

I was calling on a lady whom I had heard speak with strong horror of the abolitionists (with whom I had then no acquaintance); and she turned round upon me with the question whether I would not prevent, if I could, the marriage of a white person with a person of colour. I saw at once the beginning of endless troubles in this inquiry, and was very sorry it had been made: but my determination had been adopted long before, never to evade the great question of colour; never to provoke it; but always to meet it plainly in whatever form it should be presented. I replied that I would never, under any circumstances, try to separate persons who really loved, believing such to be truly those whom God hath joined; but I observed that the case she put was one not likely to happen, as I believed the blacks were no more disposed to marry the whites than the whites to marry the blacks. “You are an amalgamationist!” cried she. I told her that the party term was new to me; but that she must give what name she pleased to the principle I had declared in answer to her question. This lady is an eminent religionist, and denunciations spread rapidly from her. The day before I left Philadelphia, my old shipmate, the Prussian physician, arrived there, and lost no time in calling to tell me, with much agitation, that I must not go a step further south; that he had heard on all hands, within two hours of his arrival, that I was an amalgamationist, and that my having published a story against slavery would be fatal to me in the slave States. I did not give much credit to the latter part of this news; and saw plainly that all I had to do was to go straight on. I really desired to see the working of the slave system, and was glad that my having published against its principles divested me altogether of the character of a spy, and gave me an unquestioned liberty to publish the results of what I might observe. In order to see things as they were, it was necessary that people’s minds should not be prepossessed by my friends as to my opinions and conduct; and I therefore forbade my Philadelphia friends to publish in the newspapers, as they wished, an antidote to the charges already current against me.

The next day I first set foot in a slave State, arriving in the evening at Baltimore. I dreaded inexpressibly the first sight of a slave, and could not help speculating on the lot of every person of colour I saw from the windows, the first few days, The servants in the house where I was were free blacks.

Before a week was over, I perceived that all that is said in England of the hatred of the whites to the blacks in America is short of the truth. The slanders that I heard of the free blacks were too gross to injure my estimation of any but those who spoke them. In Baltimore the bodies of coloured people exclusively are taken for dissection “because the whites do not like it, and the coloured people cannot resist.” It is wonderful that the bodily structure can be (with the exception of the colouring of the skin) thus assumed to be the pattern of that of the whites; that the exquisite nervous system, the instrument of moral as well as physical pleasures and pains, can be nicely investigated, on the ground of its being analogous with that of the whites; that not only the mechanism, but the sensibilities of the degraded race should be argued from to those of the exalted order, and that men come from such a study with contempt for these brethren in their countenances, hatred in their hearts, and insult on their tongues. These students are the men who cannot say that the coloured people have not nerves that quiver under moral injury, nor a brain that is on fire with insult, nor pulses that throb under oppression. These are the men who should stay the hand of the rash and ignorant possessors of power who crush the being of creatures, like themselves, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But to speak the right word, to hold out the helping band, these searchers into man have not light nor strength.

It was in Baltimore that I heard Miss Edgeworth denounced as a woman of no intelligence or delicacy, whose works could never be cared for again, because, in Belinda, poor Juba was married, at length, to an English farmer’s daughter! The incident is so subordinate that I had entirely forgotten it: but a clergyman’s lady threw the volume to the opposite corner of the floor when she came to the page. As I have said elsewhere, Miss Edgeworth is worshipped throughout the United States; but it is in spite of this terrible passage, – this clause of a sentence in Belinda, – which nobody in America can tolerate, while no one elsewhere ever, I should think, dreamed of finding fault with it.

A lady from New England, staying in Baltimore, was one day talking over slavery with me, her detestation of it being great, when I told her I dreaded seeing a slave. “You have seen one,” said she. “You were waited on by a slave yesterday evening.” She told me of a gentleman who let out and lent out his slaves to wait at gentlemen’s houses, and that the tall handsome mulatto who handed the tea at a party the evening before was one of these. I was glad it was over for once; but I never lost the painful feeling caused to a stranger by intercourse with slaves. No familiarity with them, mirth and contentment on their part ever soothed the miserable restlessness caused by the presence of a deeply-injured fellow being. No wonder or ridicule on the spot avails anything to the stranger. He suffers, and must suffer from this, deeply and long, as surely as he is human and hates oppression.

The next slave that I saw, knowing that it was a slave, was at Washington, where a little negro child took hold of my gown in the passage of our boarding house, and entered our drawing room with me. She shut the door softly, as asking leave to stay. I took up a newspaper. She sat at my feet, and began amusing herself with my shoestrings. Finding herself not discouraged, she presently begged play by peeping at me above and on each side the newspaper. She was a bright-eyed, merry-hearted child, – confiding, like other children, and dreading no evil, but doomed, hopelessly doomed to ignorance, privation, and moral degradation. When I looked at her, and thought of the fearful disobedience to the first of moral laws, the cowardly treachery, the cruel abuse of power involved in thus dooming to blight a being so helpless, so confiding, and so full of promise, a horror came over me which sickened my very soul. To see slaves is not to be reconciled to slavery.

At Baltimore and Washington again I was warned, in various stealthy ways, of perils awaiting me in the South. I had no means of ascertaining the justness of these warnings but by going on; and turning back for such vague reasons was not to be thought of. So I determined to say no word to my companions (who were in no danger), but to see the truth for myself. The threats proved idle, as I suspected they would. Throughout the South I met with very candid and kind treatment. I mention these warnings partly because they are a fact connected with the state of the country; and partly because it will afterwards appear that the stranger’s real danger lies in the north and west, over which the south had, in my case, greatly the advantage in liberality.

Volume 1

Life at Washington

“With studious thought observed the illustrious throng,

In Nature’s order as they passed along;

Their names, their fates.”

Dryden’s Æneid

Washington is no place for persons of domestic tastes. Persons who love dissipation, persons who love to watch the game of politics, and those who make a study of strong minds under strong excitements, like a season at Washington; but it is dreary to those whose pursuits and affections are domestic. I spent five weeks there, and was heartily glad when they were over, I felt the satisfaction, all the time, of doing something that was highly useful, – of getting knowledge that was necessary to me, and could not be otherwise obtained; but the quiet delights of my Philadelphia home (though there half our time was spent in visiting) had spoiled me for such a life as every one leads at the metropolis. I have always looked back upon the five weeks at Washington as one of the most profitable, but by far the least agreeable, of my residences in the United States.

Yet we were remarkably fortunate in our domestic arrangements there. We joined a party of highly esteemed and kind friends, – a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, his wife, and sister-in-law, and a Senator from Maine. We (the above party) had a drawing room to ourselves, and a separate table, at Mrs Peyton’s boarding house: so that we formed a quiet family group enough, if only we had had any quiet in which to enjoy the privilege.

We arrived at Washington on the 13th of January, 1835, – the year of the short session of Congress, which closes on the 4th of March; so that we continued to witness the proceedings of Congress at its busiest and most interesting time.

The approach to the city is striking to all strangers from its oddness. I saw the dome of the Capitol from a considerable distance, at the end of a straight road; but, though I was prepared by the descriptions of preceding travellers, I was taken by surprise on finding myself beneath the splendid building; so sordid are the enclosures and houses on its very verge. We wound round its base, and entered Pennsylvania Avenue, the only one of the grand avenues, intended to centre in the Capitol, which has been built up with any completeness. Our boarding house was admirably situated, being some little way down this avenue, a few minutes’ walk only from the Capitol, and a mile in a straight line from the White House, the residences of the Heads of Departments, and the British Legation.

In Philadelphia, I had found perpetual difficulty in remembering that I was in a foreign country. The pronunciation of a few words by our host and hostess, the dinner table, and the inquiries of visitors were almost all that occurred to remind me that I was not in a brother’s house. At Washington, it was very different. The city itself is unlike any other that ever was seen, – straggling out hither and thither, – with a small house or two, a quarter of a mile from any other; so that in making calls “in the city,” we had to cross ditches and stiles, and walk alternately on grass and pavements, and strike across a field to reach a street. Then the weather was so strange; sometimes so cold that the only way I could get any comfort was by stretching on the sofa drawn before the fire, up to the very fender; (on which days, every person who went in and out of the house was sure to leave the front door wide open:) then the next morning, perhaps, if we went out muffled in furs, we had to turn back, and exchange our wraps for a light shawl, Then, we were waited upon by a slave, appointed for the exclusive service of our party during our stay. Then, there were canvasback ducks, and all manner of other ducks on the table, in greater profusion than any single article of food, except turkeys, that I ever saw. Then, there was the society, singularly compounded from the largest variety of elements – foreign ambassadors, the American government, members of Congress, from Clay and Webster down to Davy Crockett, Benton from Missouri, and Cuthbert, with the freshest Irish brogue, from Georgia; flippant young belles, “pious” wives, dutifully attending their husbands, and groaning over the frivolities of the place; grave judges, saucy travellers, pert newspaper reporters, melancholy Indian chiefs, and timid New England ladies, trembling on the verge of the vortex, – all this was wholly unlike any thing that is to be seen in any other city in the world; for all these are mixed up together in daily intercourse, like the higher circle of a little village, and there is nothing else. You have this or nothing; you pass your days among these people, or you spend them alone. It is in Washington that varieties of manners are conspicuous. There the Southerners appear to the most advantage, and the New Englander to the least: the ease and frank courtesy of the gentry of the south, (with an occasional touch of arrogance, however,) contrasting favourably with the cautions, somewhat gauche, and too deferential air of the members from the north. One fancies one can tell a New England member in the open air by his deprecatory walk. He seems to bear in mind perpetually that he cannot fight a duel, while other people can. The odd mortals that wander in from the western border cannot be described as a class; for no one is like anybody else. One has a neck like a crane, making an interval of inches between stock and chin. Another wears no cravat, apparently because there is no room for one. A third has his lank black hair parted accurately down the middle, and disposed in bands in front, so that he is taken for a woman when only the head is seen in a crowd. A fourth puts an arm round the neck of a neighbour on either side as he stands, seeming afraid of his tall wire hung frame dropping to pieces if he tries to stand alone: a fifth makes something between a bow and a curtsey to everybody who comes near, and proses with a knowing air: all having shrewd faces, and being probably very fit for the business they come upon.

Our way of life was so diversified that it is difficult to given an account of our day; the only way in which one day resembled another being that none had any privacy. We breakfasted about nine, surrounded by the heaps of newspapers, documents and letters which the post and newsmen brought to the parliamentary members of our party. We amused ourselves with the different versions given by the Globe and the Intelligencer, – the administration and opposition papers, – to speeches and proceedings at which we had been present the day before; and were kindly made acquainted by our representative friend with the nature of much of his business, the petitions he had to present, the dilemmas in which he was placed by his constituents of different parties, and his hopes and fears about favourite measures in progress. The senator happened, from a peculiar set of circumstances, to be an idle man just now. He taught me many things, and rallied me on my asking him so few questions, while, in fact, my head was already so much too full with what was flowing in upon me from all sides, that I longed for nothing so much as to go to sleep for a week. This gentleman’s peculiar and not very agreeable position arose out of the troublesome question of Instructions to Representatives. Senators are chosen for a term of six years, one-third of the body going our every two years; the term being made thus long in order to ensure some stability of policy in the senate. If the government of the State from which the senator is sent changes its politics during his term, he may be annoyed by instructions to vote contrary to his principles, and, if he refuses, by a call to resign, on the ground of his representing the opinions of the minority. This had been the predicament of our companion; and the question of resigning or not under such circumstances had become generally a very important and interesting one; but one which there were no means of settling. Each member, in such a scrape, must act as his own judgment and conscience dictate under the circumstances of the particular case. Our companion made a mistake. When the attempt to instruct him was made, he said he appealed from the new legislature of his State to the people who chose him. He did appeal by standing candidate for the office of Governor of the State, and was defeated. No course then remained but resigning; which he did immediately, when his senatorial term was within half a session of its close. He had withdrawn from the Senate Chamber, and was winding up his political affairs at the time when we joined his party.

At a little before eleven, we usually set out for the Capitol, and passed the morning either in the Senate Chamber or the Supreme Court, unless it was necessary to make calls, or to sit to the artist who was painting my portrait, or to join a party in some excursion in the neighbourhood. We avoided spending the morning at home, when we could, as it was sure to be entirely consumed with callers: and we became too much exhausted before the fatigues of the evening began. Much amusement was picked up in the artist’s apartment in the Capitol: members and strangers dropped in, and the news of the hour circulated: but the Senate Chamber was our favourite resort. We returned home to dinner some time between four and six, and the cloth was seldom removed before visitors entered. The stream continued to flow in during the whole evening, unless we were all going out together. We disappeared, one by one, to dress for some ball, rout, levee, or masquerade, and went out, more or less willingly, according as we left behind us visitors more or less pleasant. The half-hour round our drawing room fire, after our return, was the pleasantest time of the day, weary as we were. Then our foreigners’ perplexities were explained for us: we compared impressions, and made common property of what had amused us individually; and, in some sort our overcharged minds in order, before we retired to rest.

Our pleasantest evenings were some spent at home in a society of the highest order. Ladies, literary, fashionable, or domestic, would spend an hour with us on their way from a dinner, or to a ball. Members of Congress would repose themselves by our fire side. Mr Clay, sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuffbox ever in his hand, would discourse for many an hour, in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr Webster, leaning back at his case, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one’s constitution, would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr Calhoun, the cast iron man, who looks as if he had never been born, and never could be extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our understandings upon a painful stretch for a short while, and leave us to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make of it. We found it usually more worth retaining as a curiosity than as either very just or useful. His speech abounds in figures, truly illustrative, if that which they illustrate were but true also. But his theories of government, (almost the only subject on which his thoughts are employed,) the squarest and compactest theories that ever were made, are composed out of limited elements, and are not therefore likely to stand service very well. It is at first extremely interesting to hear Mr Calhoun talk; and there is a never-failing evidence of power in all he says and does, which commands intellectual reverence: but the admiration is too soon turned into regret, – into absolute melancholy. It is impossible to resist the conviction that all this force can be at best but useless and is but too likely to be very mischievous. His mind has long lost all power of communicating with any other. I know no man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues them, by the fireside, as in the Senate: he is wrought, like a piece of machinery, set a going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer: he either passes by what you say, or twists it into a suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again. Of course, a mind like this can have little influence in the Senate, except by virtue, perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less eccentric day: but its influence at home is to be dreaded. There is no hope that an intellect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate itself to varying circumstances: and there is every danger that it will break up all that it can, in order to remould the materials in its own way. Mr Calhoun is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines; and those who know the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of modification by other minds,(after having gone through as remarkable a revolution of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experiences,) will no more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never saw any one who so completely gave the idea of possession. Half an hour’s conversation with him is enough to make a necessarian of anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his enemies. His moments of softness, in his family, and when recurring to old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement working of the intellectual machine; a relief equally to himself and others. Those moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of a soldier.

One incident befell during my stay which moved everybody. A representative from South Carolina was ill, a friend of Mr Calhoun’s; and Mr Calhoun parted from us, one day, on leaving the Capital, to visit this sick gentlemen. The physician told Mr Calhoun on his entrance that his friend was dying, and could not live more than a very few hours. A visitor, not knowing this, asked the sick man how he was. “To judge by my own feelings,” said he, “much better; but by the countenances of my friends, not.” And he begged to be told the truth. On hearing it, he instantly beckoned Mr Calhoun to him, and said, “I hear they are giving you rough treatment in the Senate. Let a dying friend implore you to guard your looks and words so as that no undue warmth may make you appear unworthy of your principles.” “This was friendship, – strong friendship,” said Mr Calhoun to me, and to many others; and it had its due effect upon him. A few days after, Colonel Benton, a fantastic senator from Missouri, interrupted Mr Calhoun in a speech, for the purpose of making an attack upon him, which would have been insufferable, if it had not been too absurdly worded to be easily made anything of. He was called to order; this was objected to; the Senate divided upon the point of order, being dissatisfied with the decision of the chair; – in short, Mr Calhoun sat for two full hours, hearing his veracity talked about, before his speech could proceed. He sat in stern patience, scarcely moving a muscle the whole time; and when it was all settled in his favour, merely observed that his friends need not fear his being disturbed by an attack of this nature from such a quarter, and resumed his speech at the precise point where his argument had been broken off. It was great, and would have satisfied the “strong friendship” of his departed comrade, if he could have been there to witness it.

Our active-minded, genial friend, Judge Story, found time to visit us frequently, though he is one of the busiest men in the world, – writing half-a-dozen great law books every year, having his full share of the business of the Supreme Court upon his hands; his professorship to attend to; the District Courts at home in Massachusetts, and a correspondence which spreads half over the world. His talk would gush out for hours, and there was never too much of it for us; it is so heartfelt, so lively, so various; and his face all the while, notwithstanding his grey hair, showing all the mobility and ingenuousness of a child’s. There is no tolerable portrait of Judge Story, and there never will be. I should like to bring him face to face with a person who entertains the common English idea of how an American looks and behaves. I should like to see what such an one would make of the quick smiles, the glistening eye, the gleeful tone, with passing touches of sentiment; the innocent self-complacency, the confiding, devoted affections of the great American lawyer. The preconception would be totally at fault.

With Judge Story sometimes came the man to whom he looked up with feelings little short of adoration; the aged Chief Justice Marshall. There was almost too much mutual respect in our first meeting: we knew something of his individual merits and services; and he maintained through life, and carried to his grave, a reverence for woman as rare in its kind as in its degree. It had all the theoretical fervour and magnificence of Uncle Toby’s, with the advantage of being grounded upon an extensive knowledge of the sex. He was the father and the grandfather of women; and out of this experience he brought, not only the love and pity which their offices and position command, and the awe of purity which they excite in the minds of the pure, but a steady conviction of their intellectual equality with men; and, with this, a deep sense of their social injuries. Throughout life he so invariably sustained their cause, that no indulgent libertine dared to flatter and humour, no sceptic, secure in the possession of power, dared to scoff at the claims of woman in the presence of Marshall, who, made clear-sighted by his purity, knew the sex far better than either.

How delighted we were to see Judge Story bring in the tall, majestic, bright-eyed old man! – old by chronology, by the lines on his composed face, and by his services to the republic; but so dignified, so fresh, so present to the time, that no feeling of compassionate consideration for age dared to mix with the contemplation of him. The first evening, he asked me much about English politics, and especially whether the people were not fast ripening for the abolition of our religious establishment – an institution which, after a long study of it, he considered so monstrous in principle, and so injurious to true religion in practice, that he could not imagine that it could be upheld for anything but political purposes. There was no prejudice here, on account of American modes being different; for he observed that the clergy were there, as elsewhere, far from being in the van of society, and lamented the existence of much fanaticism in the United States; but he saw the evils of an establishment the more clearly, not the less, from being aware of the faults in the administration of religion at home. The most animated moment of our conversation was when I told him I was going to visit Mr Madison, on leaving Washington. He instantly sat upright in his chair, and with beaming eyes began to praise Mr Madison. Madison received the mention of Marshall’s name in just the same manner: yet these men were strongly opposed in politics, and their magnanimous appreciation of each other underwent no slight or brief trial.

Judge Porter sometimes came, a hearty friend, and much like a fellow countryman, though he was a senator of the United States, and had previously been, for fourteen years, Judge of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. He was Irish by birth. His father was vindictively executed, with cruel haste, under martial law, in the Irish rebellion; and the sons were sent by their noble-minded mother to America, where Alexander, the eldest, has thus raised himself into a station of high honour. Judge Porter’s warmth, sincerity, generosity, knowledge, and wit are the pride of his constituents, and very, ornamental to the Senate. What their charm is by the fireside may be imagined.

Such are only a few among a multitude whose conversation filled up the few evenings we spent at home. Among the pleasantest visits we paid were dinners at the President’s, at the houses of Heads of Departments, at the British Legation, and at the southern members congressional mess. We highly enjoyed our dinings at the British Legation, where we felt ourselves at home among our countrymen. Once indeed we were invited to help to do the honours as English ladies, to the seven Judges of the Supreme Court, and seven great lawyers besides, when we had the merriest day that could well be. Mr Webster fell chiefly to my share, and there is no merrier man than he; and Judge Story would enliven a dinner table at Pekin. One laughable peculiarity at the British Legation was the confusion of tongues among the servants, who ask you to take fish, flesh, and fowl in Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Irish, or French. The foreign ambassadors are terribly plagued about servants. No American will wear livery: and there is no reason why any American should. But the British ambassador must have livery servants. He makes what compromise he can, allowing his people to appear without livery out of doors, except on state occasions; but yet he is obliged to pick up his domestics from among foreigners who are in want of a subsistence for a short time, and are sure to go away as soon as they can find any employment in which the wearing a livery is not requisite. The woes of this state of things, however, were the portion of the host, not of his guests; and the hearty hospitality with which we were ever greeted by the minister and his attaches, combined with the attractions of the society they brought together, made our visits to them some of the pleasantest hours we passed in Washington.

Slight incidents were perpetually showing, in an amusing way, the village-like character of some of the arrangements at Washington. I remember that some of our party went one day to dine at Mr Secretary Cass’s, and the rest of us at Mr Secretary Woodbury’s. The next morning a lady of the Cass party asked me whether we had candied oranges at the Woodburys’. “No.” “Then,” said she, “they had candied oranges at the Attorney General’s.” “How do you know?” “O, as we were on the way, I saw a dish carried; and, as we had none at the Cass’s, I knew they must be either for the Woodburys or the Attorney General.” There were candied oranges at the Attorney General’s.

When we became intimate, some time afterwards, with some southern friends with whom we now dined at their congressional mess, they gave us an amusing account of the preparations for our dinner. They boarded (from a really self-denying kindness) at a house where the arrangements were of a very inferior kind. Two sessions previous to our being there they had invited a large party of eminent persons to dinner, and had committed the ordering of the arrangements to a gentleman of their mess, advising him to engage a French cook, in order to ensure a good dinner. The gentleman engaged a Frenchman, concluding he must be a cook: which however he was not: and the dinner turned out so unfortunately, that the mess determined to ask no more dinner company while they remained in that house. When we arrived. however, it was thought necessary to ask us to dinner. There was little hope that all would go rightly: and the two senators of the mess were laughingly requested, in case of any blunder, to talk Nullification as fast as possible to us ladies. This was done so efficaciously, that when dinner was over, I could not have told a single dish that was on the table, except that a ham stood before me. which we were too full of Nullification to attack. Our hosts informed us, long afterwards, that it was bad dinner, badly served: but it was no matter.

At the President’s I met a very large party, among whom there was more stiffness than I witnessed in any other society in America. It was not the fault of the President or his family, but of the way in which the company was unavoidably brought together. With the exception of my party, the name of everybody present began with J, K, or L: that is to say, it consisted of members of Congress, who are invited alphabetically, to ensure none being left out. This principle of selection is not perhaps the best for the promotion of case and sociability: and well as I liked the day, I doubt whether many others could say they enjoyed it. When we went in, the present was standing in the middle of the room to receive his guests. After speaking a few words with me, he gave me into the charge of Major Donelson, his secretary, who seated me, and brought up for introduction each guest as he passed from before the present. A congressional friend of mine (whose name began with a J) stationed himself behind my chair, and gave me an account of each gentleman who was introduced to me; – where he came from, what his politics were, and how, if at all, he had distinguished himself. All this was highly amusing. At dinner, the president was quite disposed for conversation. Indeed, he did nothing but talk. His health is poor, and his diet of the sparest. We both talked freely of the governments of England and France; I, novice in American politics as I was, entirely forgetting that the great French question was pending, and that the president and the King of the French were then bandying very hard words. I was most struck and surprised with the President’s complaints of the American Senate, in which there was at that time a small majority against the administration. He told me that I must not judge of the body by what I saw it then; and that after the 4th of March I should behold a Senate more worthy of the country. After the 4th of March there was, if I remember rightly, a majority of two in favour of the Government. The ground of his complaint was, that the senators had sacrificed their dignity by disregarding the wishes of their constituents. The other side of the question is, that the dignity of the Senate is best consulted by its members following their own convictions, declining instructions for the term for which they are elected. It is a serious difficulty, originating in the very construction of the body, and not to be settled by dispute.

The President offered me bonbons for a child belonging to our party at home, and told me how many children (of his nephew’s and his adopted son’s) he had about him, with a mildness and kindliness which contrasted well with his tone upon some public occasions. He did the honours of his house with gentleness and politeness to myself, and, as far as I saw, to every one else. About an hour after dinner, he rose, and we led the way into the drawing room, where the whole company gentlemen as well as ladies, followed to take coffee; after which, every one departed; some homewards, some to make evening calls, and others, among whom were ourselves, to a splendid ball, at the other extremity of the city.

General Jackson is extremely tall and thin, with a slight stoop, betokening more weakness than naturally belongs to his years. He has a profusion of stiff grey hair, which gives to his appearance whatever there is of formidable in it. His countenance bears commonly an expression of melancholy gravity; though when roused, the fire of passion flashes from his eyes, and his whole person looks then formidable enough. His mode of speech is slow an quiet: and his phraseology sufficiently betokens that his time has not been passed among books. When I was at Washington, albums were the fashion and the plague of the day. I scarcely ever came home, but I found an album on my table, or requests for autographs; but some ladies went much further than petitioning a foreigner, who might be supposed to have leisure. I have actually seen them stand at the door of the Senate Chamber, and send the doorkeeper, with an album, and a request to write in it, to Mr Webster, and other eminent members. I have seen them do worse; stand at the door of the Supreme Court, and send in their albums to Chief Justice Marshall, while he was on the bench, hearing pleadings. The poor President was terribly persecuted; and to him it was a real nuisance, as he had no poetical resource but Watts’s hymns. I have seen verses and stanzas of a most ominous purport from Watts, in the President’s very conspicuous handwriting, standing in the midst of the crow quill compliments and translucent charades which are the staple of albums. Nothing was done to repress this atrocious impertinence of the ladies. I always declined writing more than name and date; but senators, Judges and statesmen submitted to write gallant nonsense at the request of any woman who would stoop to desire it.

Colonel Johnson, now Vice President of the United States, sat opposite to me at the President’s dinner table. This is the gentleman once believed to have killed Tecumseh, and to have written the Report on Sunday Mails, which has been the admiration of society ever since it appeared: but I believe Colonel Johnson is no longer supposed to be the author of either of these deeds. General Mason spoke of him to me at New York with much friendship, and with strong hope of his becoming President. I heard the idea so ridiculed by members of the federal party afterwards, that I concluded General Mason to be in the same case with hundreds more who believe their intimate friends sure of being President. But Colonel Johnson is actually Vice President, and the hope seems reasonable; though the slavery question will probably he the point on which the next election will turn, which may again be to the disadvantage of the Colonel. If he should become President, he will be as strange looking a potentate as ever ruled. His countenance is wild, though with much cleverness in it; his hair wanders all abroad, and he wears no cravat. But there is no telling how he might look if dressed like other people.

I was fortunate enough once to catch a glimpse of the invisible Amos Kendall, one of the most remarkable men in America. He is supposed to be the moving spring of the whole administration; the thinker, planner and doer; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued of an excellence which prevents their being attributed to persons who take the responsibility of them; a correspondence is kept up all over the country for which no one seems to be answerable; work is done, of goblin extent and with goblin speed, which makes men look about them with a superstitious wonder; and the invisible Amos Kendall has the credit of it all. President Jackson’s Letters to his Cabinet are said to be Kendall: the Letters sent from Washington to appear in remote country newspapers, whence they are collected and published in the Globe as demonstrations of public opinion are pronounced to be written by Kendall. Every mysterious paragraph in opposition newspapers relates to Kendall: and it is some relief to the timid that his having now the office of Postmaster General affords opportunity for open attacks upon this twilight personage; who is proved, by the faults in the Post Office administration, not to be able to do quite everything well. But he is undoubtedly a great genius. He unites with his “great talent for silence” a splendid audacity. One proof of this I have given elsewhere in the account of the bold stroke by which he obtained the sanction of the Senate to his appointment as Postmaster General.[11]

It is clear that he could not do the work he does (incredible enough in amount any way) if he went into society like other men. He did, however, one evening, – I think it was at the Attorney General’s. The moment I went in, intimations reached me from all quarters, amidst nods and winks. “Kendall is here:” “That is he.” I saw at once that his plea for seclusion, – bad health, – is no false one. The extreme sallowness of his complexion, and hair of such perfect whiteness as is rarely seen in a men of middle age, testified to disease. His countenance does not help the superstitious to throw off their dread of him. He probably does not desire this superstition to melt away; for there is no calculating how much influence was given to Jackson’s administration by the universal belief that there was a concealed eye and hand behind the machinery of government, by which everything could be foreseen, and the hardest deeds done. A member of Congress told me, this night, that he had watched through four sessions for a sight of Kendall, and had never obtained it till now. Kendall was leaning on a chair with head bent down, and eye glancing up at a member of Congress with whom he was in earnest conversation: and in a few minutes, he was gone.

Neither Mr Clay nor any of his family ever spoke a word to me of Kendall, except in his public capacity: but I heard elsewhere and repeatedly the well-known story of the connexion of the two men, early in Kendall’s life. Tidings reached Mr and Mrs Clay, one evening, many years ago, at their house in the neighbourhood of Lexington, Kentucky, that a young man, solitary and poor, lay ill of a fever in the noisy hotel in the town. Mrs Clay went down in the carriage without delay, and brought the sufferer home to her house, where she nursed him with her own hands till he recovered. Mr Clay was struck with the talent and knowledge of the young man (Kendall), and retained him as tutor to his sons, heaping benefits upon him with characteristic bounty. Thus far is notorious fact. As to the causes of their separation and enmity, I have not heard Kendall’s side of the question; and I therefore say nothing; but go on to the other notorious facts, that Amos Kendall quitted Mr Clay’s political party some time after Adams had been, by Mr Clay’s influence, seated in the Presidential chair, and went over to Jackson; since which time, he has never ceased his persecutions of Mr Clay through the newspapers. It was extensively believed, on Mr Van Buren’s accession, that Kendall would be dismissed from office altogether; and there was much speculation about how the administration would get on without him. But he appears to be still there. Whether he goes or stays, it will probably be soon apparent how much of the conduct of Jackson’s government is attributable to Kendall’s influence over the mind of the late President; as he is hardly likely to stand in the same relation to the present.

I was more vividly impressed with the past and present state of Ireland while I was in America than ever I was at home. Besides being frequently questioned as to what was likely to be done for the relief of her suffering millions – suffering to a degree that it is inconceivable to Americans that freeborn whites should ever be, – I met from time to time with refugee Irish gentry, still burning with the injuries they or their fathers sustained in the time of the rebellion. The subject first came up with Judge Porter: and I soon afterwards saw, at a country house where I was calling the widow of Theobald Wolfe Tone. The poor lady is still full of feelings which amazed me by their bitterness and strength; but which have indeed nothing surprising in them to those who know the whole truth of the story of Ireland in those dreadful days. The descendants of “the rebels” cannot be comforted with tidings of anything to be done for their country. Naturally believing that nothing good can come out of England – nothing good for Ireland, – they passionately ask that their country shall be left to govern herself. With tears and scornful laughter, they beg that nothing her with be “done for her” by hands that have ravaged her with gibbet, fire and sword, but that she may be left to whatever hopefulness may yet be smouldering under the ashes of her despair. Such is the representation of Ireland to America minds. It may be imagined what a monument of idiotcy the forcible maintenance of the Church of England in Ireland must appear to American statesmen. “I do not understand this Lord John Russell of yours,” said one of the most sagacious of them. “Is he serious in supposing that he can allow a penny of the revenues, a plait of the lawnsleeves of that Irish Church to be touched, and keep the whole from coming down, in Ireland first, and in England afterwards?” We fully agreed in the difficulty of supposing Lord John Russell serious. The comparison of various, but I believe pretty extensive American opinions about the Church of England yields rather a curious result. No one dreams of the Establishment being necessary, or being designed for the maintenance of religion: it is seen by Chief Justice Marshall and a host of others to be an institution turned to political purposes. Mr Van Buren, among many, considers that the Church has supported the State for many years. Mr Clay, and a multitude with him, anticipates the speedy fall of the Establishment. The result yielded by all this is a persuasion not very favourable (to use the American phrase) “to the permanence of our institutions.”

Among our casual visitors at Washington was a gentleman who little thought, as he sat by our fireside, what an adventure was awaiting him among the Virginia woods. If there could have been any anticipation of it, I should have taken more notice of him than I did: as it is, I have a very slight recollection of him. He came from Maine, and intended before his return to visit the Springs of Virginia, which he did the next summer. It seems that he talked in the stages rashly, and somewhat in a bragging style, – in a style at least which he was not prepared to support by a harder testimony, – about abolitionism. He declared that abolitionism was not so dangerous as people thought; that he avowed it without any fear; that he had frequently attended abolition meetings in the North, and was none the worse for it in the Slave States, &c. He finished his visit at the Springs prosperously enough: but on his return, when he and a companion were in the stage, in the midst of the forest, they met at a crossroad – Judge Lynch; that is, a mob with hints of cowhide and tar and feathers. The mob stopped the stage, and asked for the gentleman by name. It was useless to deny his being an abolitionist; he denied his having ever attended abolition meetings, and harangued against abolitionism, from the door of the stage, with so much effect that the mob allowed the steps to be put up, and the vehicle to drive off, – which it did at full speed. It was not long before the mob became again persuaded that this gentleman was a fit object of vengeance, and pursued him; but he was gone, as fast as horses could carry him. He did not relax his speed even when out of danger, but fled all the way into Maine. It was not on the shrinking at the moment that one would animadvert, so much as on the previous bragging. I have seen and felt enough of what peril from popular hatred is, in this martyr age of the United States, to find it easier to venerate those who can endure, than to despise those who flinch from the ultimate trial of their principles; but every instance of the infliction of Lynch punishment should be a lesson to the sincerest and securest, to profess no more than they are ready to perform.

One of our mornings was devoted to an examination of the library and curiosities of the State Department, which we found extremely interesting. Our imaginations were whirled over the globe at an extraordinary rate. There were many volumes of original letters of Washington’s and other revolutionary leaders, bound up, and ordered to be printed, for security, lest these materials of history should be destroyed by fire, or other accident. There were British parliamentary documents. There was a series of the Moniteur complete; wherein we found the black list of executions, during the reign of terror, growing longer every day; also the first mention of Napoleon; the tidings of his escape from Elba; the misty days immediately succeeding, when no telegraphic communication could be made; his arrival at Lyons, and the subsequent silence till the announcement became necessary, that the king and princes had departed during the night, and that his Majesty, the Emperor, had arrived at his palace of the Tuilleries at eight o’clock the next evening. Next we turned to Algerine (French) gazettes, publishing that mustaphas and such people were made colonels and adjutants. Then we lighted upon the journals of Arnold, during the revolutionary war, and read the postscript of his last letter previous to the accomplishment of his treason, in which he asks for hard cash, on pretence that the French had suffered so much by paper money, that he was unwilling to offer them any more. Then we viewed the signatures of treaties, and decreed Metternich’s to be the best; Don Pedro’s the worst for flourish, and Napoleon’s for illegibility. The extraordinary fact was then and there communicated to us that the Americans are fond of Miguel, from their dislike of Pedro; but that they hope to “get along” very well with the Queen of Portugal. The treaties with oriental potentates are very magnificent, – shining and unintelligible to the eyes of novices. The presents from potentates to American ambassadors are laid up here: gold snuffboxes set in diamonds, and a glittering array of swords and scimitars. There was one fine Damascus blade; but it seemed too blunt to do any harm. Then we lost ourselves in a large collection of medals and coins, – Roman gold coins, with fat old Vespasian and others; from which we were recalled to find ourselves in the extremely modern and democratic United States! It was a very interesting morning.

We took advantage of a mild day to ascend to the skylight of the dome of the Capital, in order to obtain a view of the surrounding country. The ascent was rather fatiguing, but perfectly safe. The residents at Washington declare the environs to be beautiful in all seasons but early winter; the meadows being gay with a profusion of wild flowers; even as early as February with several kinds of heartsease. It was a particularly cold season when I was there; but on the day of my departure, in the middle of February, the streets were one sheet of ice; and I remember we made a long slide from the steps of our boarding house to those of the stage. But I believe that that winter was no rule for others. From the summit of the Capital, we saw plainly marked out the basin in which Washington stands, surrounded by hills, except where the Potomac spreads its waters. The city was intended to occupy the whole of this basin and its seven theoretical avenues may be traced; but all except Pennsylvania avenue are bare and forlorn. A few mean houses dotted about, the sheds of a navy yard on one bank of the Potomac, and three or four villas on the other, are all the objects that relieve the eye in this space intended to be so busy and magnificent. The city is a grand mistake. Its only attraction is its being the seat of government; and it is thought that it will not long continue to be so. The far-western States begin to demand a more central seat for Congress; and the Cincinnati people are already speculating upon which of their hills or tablelands is to be the site of the new Capitol. Whenever this change takes place, all will be over with Washington: “thorns shall come up in her palaces, and the owl and the owl and the raven shall dwell in it,” while her sister cities of the east will be still spreading as fast as hands can be found to build them.

There was a funeral of a member of Congress on the 30th of January; – the interment of the representative from South Carolina whose death I mentioned in connexion with Mr Calhoun. We were glad that we were at Washington at the time, as a congressional funeral is a remarkable spectacle. We went to the Capitol at about half an hour before noon, and found many ladies already seated in the gallery of the Hall of Representatives. I chanced to be placed at the precise point of the gallery where the sounds from every part of the house are concentrated; so that I heard the whole service, while I was at such a distance as to command a view of the entire scene. In the chair were the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the Representatives. Below them sat the officiating clergyman; immediately opposite to whom were the President and the Heads of Departments on one side of the coffin, and the Judges of the Supreme Court and members of the Senate on the other. The Representatives sat in rows behind, each with crape round the left arm; some in black; many in blue coats with bright buttons. Some of the fiercest political foes in the country, – some who never meet on any other occasion, – the President and the South Carolina senators, for instance, – now sat knee to knee, necessarily looking into each others’ faces. With a coffin beside them, and such an event awaiting their exit, how out of place was hatred here!

After prayers, there was a sermon, in which warning of death was brought home to all, and particularly to the aged; and the vanity of all disturbances of human passion when in view of the grave was dwelt upon. There sat the grey-headed old President, at that time feeble, and looking scarcely able to go through this ceremonial. I saw him rise when it was over, and follow the coffin in his turn, somewhat feebly; I saw him disappear in the doorway; and immediately descended with my party to the Rotundo, in order to order to witness the departure of the procession for the grave. At the bottom of the stairs, a member of Congress met us, pale and trembling, with the news that the President had been twice fired at with a pistol, by an assassin who had waylaid him in the portico; but that both pistols had missed fire. At this moment the assassin rushed into the Rotundo where we were standing, pursued, and instantly surrounded by a crowd. I saw his hands and half-bare arms struggling above the heads of the crowd, in resistance to being handcuffed, He was presently overpowered, conveyed to a carriage, and taken before a magistrate. The attack threw the old soldier into a tremendous passion. He fears nothing; but his temper is not equal to his courage. Instead of his putting the event calmly aside, and proceeding with the business of the hour, it was found necessary to put him into his carriage and take him home.

We feared what the consequences would be. We had little doubt that the assassin Lawrence was mad; and as little that before the day was out, we should hear the crime imputed to more than one political party or individual. And so it was. Before two hours were over, the name of almost every eminent politician was mixed up with that of the poor maniac who caused the uproar. The President’s misconduct on the occasion was the most virulent and protracted. A deadly enmity had long subsisted between General Jackson and Mr Poindexter, a senator of the United States, which had been much aggravated since General Jackson’s accession by some unwarrantable language which he had publicly used in relation to Mr Poindexter’s private affairs. There was a prevalent expectation of a duel, as soon as the expiration of the President’s term of office should enable his foe to send him a challenge. Under these circumstances, the President thought proper to charge Mr Poindexter with being the instigator of Lawrence’s attempt. He did this in conversation so frequently and openly, that Mr Poindexter wrote a letter, brief and manly, stating that he understood this charge was made against him, but that he would not believe it till it was confirmed by the President himself; his not replying to this letter being understood to be such a confirmation. The President showed this letter to visitors at the White House, and did not answer it. He went further; obtaining affidavits (tending to implicate Poindexter) from weak and vile persons whose evidence utterly failed; having personal interviews with these creatures, and openly showing a disposition to hunt his foe to destruction at all hazards. The issue was that Lawrence was proved to have acted from sheer insanity; Poindexter made a sort of triumphal progress through the States; and an irretrievable stain was left upon President Jackson’s name.

Every one was anxiously anticipating the fierce meeting of these foes, on the President’s retirement from office, when Mr Poindexter, last year, in a fit either of somnambulism, or of delirium from illness, walked out of a chamber window in the middle of the night, and was so much injured that he soon died.

It so happened that we were engaged to a party at Mr Poindexter’s the very evening of this attack upon the President. There was so tremendous a thunder storm, that our host and hostess were disappointed of almost all their guests except ourselves; and we had difficulty in merely crossing the street, being obliged to have planks laid across the flood which pushed between the carriage and the steps of the door. The conversation naturally turned on the event of the morning. I know little of the quarrel which was now to be so dreadfully aggravated; but the more I afterwards heard, the more I admired the moderation with which Mr Poindexter spoke of his foe that night, and as often as I subsequently met him.

I had intended to visit the President the day after the funeral; but I heard so much of his determination to consider the attack a political affair, and I had so little wish to hear it thus treated, against the better knowledge of all the world, that I stayed away as long as I could. Before I went, I was positively assured of Lawrence’s insanity by one of the physicians who were appointed to visit him. One of the poor creature’s complaints was, that General Jackson deprived him of the British crown, to which he was heir. When I did go to the White House, I took the briefest possible notice to the President of the “insane attempt” of Lawrence: but the word roused his ire. He protested, in the presence of many strangers, that there was no insanity in the case. I was silent, of course. He protested that there was a plot, and that the man was a tool, and at length quoted the Attorney General as his authority. It was painful to hear a Chief Ruler publicly trying to persuade a foreigner that any of his constituents hated him to the death: and I took the liberty of changing the subject as soon as I could. The next evening I was at the Attorney General’s, and I asked him how he could let himself be quoted as saying that Lawrence was not mad. He excused himself by saying that he meant general insanity. He believed Lawrence insane in one direction, – that it was a sort of Ravaillac case. I besought him to impress the President with this view of the case as soon as might be.

It would be amusing, if it were possible, to furnish a complete set of the rumours, injurious (if they had not been too absurd) to all parties in turn, upon this single and very common act of a madman. One would have thought that no maniac had ever before attacked a Chief Magistrate. The act might so easily have remained fruitless! but it was made to bear a full and poisonous crop of folly, wickedness, and woe. I feared on the instant how it would be, and felt that, thought the President was safe, it was very bad news. When will it come to be thought possible for politicians to have faith in one another, though they may differ, and to be jealous for their rivals rather than for themselves?

Volume 1

The Capitol

“… You have unto the support of a true and natural aristocracy the deepest root of a democracy that hath been planted. Wherefore there is nothing in art or nature better qualified for the result than this assembly.”

Harrington’s Oceana

The places of resort for the stranger in the Capitol are the Library, the Supreme Court, the Senate Chamber, and the Hall of Representatives.

The former Library of Congress was burnt by the British in their atrocious attack upon Washington in 1814. Jefferson then offered his, and it was purchased by the nation. It is perpetually increased by annual appropriations. We did not go to the Library to read, but amused ourselves for many pleasant hours with the prints, and with the fine medals which we found there. I was never tired of the cabinet of Napoleon medals: the most beautifully composed piece of history that I ever studied. There is a cup carved by Benvenuto Cellini, preserved among the curiosities of the Capitol, which might be studied for a week before all the mysteries of its design are apprehended. How it found its way to so remote a resting place, I do not remember.

Judge Story was kind enough to send us notice when any cause was to be argued in the Supreme Court which it was probable we might be able to understand; and we passed a few mornings there. The apartment is less fitted for its purposes than any other in the building; the court being badly lighted and ventilated. The windows are at the back of the Judges, whose countenances are therefore indistinctly seen, and who sit in their own light. Visitors are usually placed behind the counsel and opposite the Judges, or on seats on each side. I was kindly offered the reporter’s chair, in a snug corner, under the Judges, and facing the counsel; and there I was able to hear much of the pleading, and to see the remarkable countenances of the Attorney General, Clay, Webster, Porter, and others, in the fullest light that could be had in this dim chamber.

At some moments this court presents a singular spectacle. I have watched the assemblage while the Chief Justice was delivering a judgment; – the three Judges on either hand gazing at him, more like learners than associates; – Webster standing firm as a rock, his large, deep-set eyes wide awake, his lips compressed, and his whole countenance in that intent stillness which instantly fixes the eye of the stranger; – Clay leaning against the desk in an attitude whose grace contrast strangely with the slovenly make of his dress, his snuffbox for the moment unopened in his hand, his small grey eye and placid half-smile conveying and expression of pleasure which redeems his face from its usual unaccountable commonness: the Attorney General, his fingers playing among his papers, his quick black eye, and thin tremulous lips for once fixed, his small face, pale with thought, contrasting remarkably with the other two; – these men, absorbed in what they are listening to, thinking neither of themselves, nor of each other, while they are watched by the groups of idlers and listeners around them, – the newspaper corps, the dark Cherokee chiefs, the stragglers from the far west, the gay ladies in their waving plumes, and the members of either house that have stepped in to listen, – all these have I seen at one moment constitute one silent assemblage, while the mild voice of the aged Chief Justice sounded through the Court.

Every one is aware that the wigs and gowns of counsel are not to be seen in the United States. There was no knowing, when leaned back against the table, his dreamy eyes seeming to see nothing about him, whether he would by-and-by take up his hat, and go away, or whether he would rouse himself suddenly, and stand up to address the Judges. For the generality there was no knowing; and to us. who were forewarned, it was amusing to see how the Court would fill after the entrance of Webster, and empty when he had gone back to the Senate Chamber. The chief interest to me in Webster’s pleading, and also in his speaking in the Senate, was from seeing one so dreamy and nonchalant roused into strong excitement. It seemed like having a curtain lifted up, through which it was impossible to pry; like hearing autobiographical secrets. Webster is a lover of ease and pleasure, and has an air of most unaffected indolence and careless self-sufficiency. It is something to see him moved with anxiety and the toil of intellectual conflict; to see his lips tremble, his nostrils expand, the perspiration start upon his brow: to hear his voice vary with emotion, and to watch the expression of laborious thought while he pauses, for minutes together, to consider his notes, and decide upon the arrangement of his argument. These are the moments when it becomes clear that this pleasure-loving man works for his honours and his gains. He seems to have the desire which other remarkable men have shown, to conceal the extent of his toils; and his wish has been favoured by some accidents, – some sudden, unexpected call upon him for a display of knowledge and power which has electrified the beholders. but on such occasions he has been able to bring into use acquisitions and exercises for other occasions, on which they may or may not have been wanted. No one will suppose that this is said in disparagement of Mr Webster. It is only saying that he owes to his own industry what he must otherwise owe to miracle.

What his capacity for toil is was shown, in one instance among many, in an affair of great interest to his own State. On the 7th of April, 1830, the town of Salem, Massachusetts, was thrown into a state of consternation by the announcement of a horrible murder. Mr White, a respectable and wealthy citizen of Salem, about eighty years of age, was found murdered in his bed. The circumstances were such as to indicate that the murder was not for common purposes of plunder: and suspicions arose which made every citizen shudder at the idea of the community in which he lived containing the monsters who would perpetrate such a deed. A patrol of the citizens was proposed and organized, and none were more zealous in propositions and in patrolling than Joseph and John Knapp, relatives of the murdered man. The conduct of these young men on the occasion exposed them to dislike before any one breathed suspicion. Several acquaintances of the family paid visits of condolence before the funeral. One of these told me, still with a feeling of horror, how one of the Kapps pulled his sleeve, and asked in an awkward whisper, whether he would go up stairs and see “the old devil.” The old gentleman’s housekeeper had slept out of the house that particular night; a back window had been left unfastened, with a plank placed against it on the outside; and a will of the old gentleman’s (happily a superseded one) was missing. Suspicious circumstances like these were found soon to have accumulated so as to justify the arrest of the two Knapps, and of two brothers of the name of Crowninshield. A lawyer was ready with testimony that Joseph Knapp, who had married a grand-nice of Mr White, had obtained legal information that if Mr White died intestate, Knapp’s mother-in-law would succeed to half the property. Joseph Knapp confessed the whole in prison, and Richard Crowninshield, doubtless the principal assassin, destroyed himself. The State prosecutors were in a great difficulty. Without the confession, the evidence was scarcely sufficient; and though Joseph Knapp was promised favour from Government if he would repeat his evidence on the side of the prosecution in court, it was not safe, as the event proved, to rely upon this in a case otherwise doubtful. The Attorney and Solicitor General of the State were both aged and feeble men; and as the day of trial drew on, it became more and more doubtful whether they would be equal to the occasion, and whether these ruffians, well understood to be the murderers, would not be let loose upon society again, from bad management of the prosecution. The prosecuting officers of the Government were prevailed upon, within three days of the trial, to send to seek out Mr Webster, and request his assistance.

A citizen of Salem, a friend of mine, was deputed to carry the request. He went to Boston: Mr Webster was not there, but at his farm by the seashore. Thither, in tremendous weather, my friend followed him. Mr Webster was playing chequers with his boy. The old farmer sat by the fire, his wife and two young women were sewing and knitting coarse stocking; one of these last, however, being no farmer’s daughter, but Mr Webster’s bride; for this was shortly after his second marriage. My friend was first dried and refreshed, and then lost no time in mentioning “business.” Mr Webster writhed at the word, saying that he came down hither to get out of hearing of it. He next declared that his undertaking anything more was entirely out of the question, and pointed, in evidence, to his swollen bag of briefs lying in a corner. However, upon a little further explanation and meditation, he agreed to the request with the same good grace with which he afterwards went through with his task. He was off through the woods, in the unabated storm, – no doubt mediating his speech by the way. He needed all the assistance that could be given him, of course; and my friend constituted himself Mr Webster’s fetcher and carrier of facts for these two days. He says he was never under orders before since his childish day; but in this emergency he was a willing servant, obeying such laconic instructions as “Go there;” “Learn this and that;” “Now go away;” and so forth.

At the appointed hour, Mr Webster was completely ready. His argument is thought one of the finest, in every respect, that he has produced. I read it before I knew anything of the circumstances which I have related; and I was made acquainted with them in consequence of my inquiry how a man could be hanged on evidence so apparently insufficient as that adduced by the prosecution. Mr Webster had made all that could be made of it; his argument was ingenious and close, and imbued with moral beauty; but the fact was, as I was assured, the prisoners were convicted on the ground of the confession of the criminal, more than on the evidence adduced by the prosecutors; though the confession could not, after all, be made open use of. The prisoners had such an opinion of the weakness of the case, that Joseph, who had been offered favour by Government, refused to testify, and the pledge of the Government was withdrawn. Both the Knapps were hanged.

The clearness with which, in this case, a multitude of minute facts is arranged, and the ingenuity with which a long chain of circumstantial evidence is drawn out, can be understood only through a reading of the entire argument. Even these are less remarkable than the sympathy by which the pleader seems to have possessed himself of the emotions, the peculiar moral experience, of the quiet good people of Salem, when thunderstruck with this event. While shut up at his task, Mr Webster found means to see into the hearts which were throbbing in all the homes about him. “One thing more.” said he to my friend, who was taking his leave of him on the eve of the trial. “Do you know of anything remarkable about any of the jury?” My friend had nothing to say, unless it was that the foreman was a man of a remarkably tender conscience. To this we doubtless owe the concluding passage of the argument, delivered, as I was told, in a voice and manner less solemn than easy and tranquil.

“Gentlemen, – Your whole concern should be to do your duty, and leave consequences to take care of themselves. You will receive the law from the Court. Your verdict, it is true, may endanger the prisoner’s life; but then it is to save other lives. If the prisoner’s guilt has been shown and proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, you will convict him. If such reasonable doubts still remain, you will acquit him. You are the judges of the whole case. You owe a duty to the public, as well as to the prisoner at the bar. You cannot presume to be wiser than the law. You duty is a plain, straightforward one. Doubtless, we would all judge him in mercy. Towards him, as an individual, the law inculcates no hostility; – but towards him, if proved to be a murderer, the law, and the oaths you have taken, and public justice, demand that you do your duty.

“With consciences satisfied with the discharge of duty, no consequences can harm you. There is no evil that we cannot face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded.

“A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us, so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.”

How must the mention of the tremendous “secret” have thrilled through the hearts of citizens who had for weeks been anxiously searching every man’s countenance to find it out. The picture given as from the pleader’s imagination, was, as every man knew, derived from the confession of the criminal.

“The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness, equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances, now clearly in evidence, spread on the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges, and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the grey locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin’s purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! he feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder, – no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe! Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that Eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything, as in the splendour of noon, – such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that ‘murder will out.’ True it is, that Providence bath so ordained, and doth so govern things that those who break the great law of heaven by shedding man’s blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place: a thousand cars catch every whisper, a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labours under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it does not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its working in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed: it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.”

Mr Webster was born in 1782, in New Hampshire. His father was a farmer who had retreated into the wilderness, and, as his son says, “had lighted his fire nearer to the North Pole than any other citizen of the States.” The good man had, however, come down into the meadows at the foot of the hills before his second son Daniel was born. By the means which are within reach of almost every child in his country, – the schools and colleges of easy access, – Daniel became qualified for an apprenticeship to law; and by industry, great intellectual power, and some few fortunate accidents, rose into notice, employment, and eminence. He has for some years been considered the head of the federal party; and he is therefore now on the losing side in politics. His last great triumph was his exposure of the Nullification doctrine, in 1833. Since that time, he has maintained his influence in Congress by virtue of his great talents and former services; but, his politics being in opposition to those of the great body of the people, he is unable to do more than head the opposition in the Senate. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the last Presidential election; and there seems little probability of his attainment of office, unless by his taking the lead of the abolition movement. For this it is probably now too late. The abolitionists have done the most difficult part of their work, in rousing the public mind; they are chiefly of the democratic side in politics; and they do not entertain, I believe, that faith in the great leader of the federalists, which would induce them to support his claims as the anti-slavery candidate for the next Presidentship.

Mr Webster owes his rise to the institutions under which he lives, – institutions which open the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong; but there is little in him that is congenial with them. He is aristocratic in his tastes and habits: and but little republican simplicity is to be recognized in him. Neither his private conversation nor his public transactions usually convey an impression that he is in earnest. When he is so, his power is majestic, irresistible; but his ambition for office, and for the good opinion of those who surround him, is seen too often in alternation with his love of case and luxury, to allow of his being confided in as he is admired. If it had been otherwise, if his moral had equalled his intellectual supremacy, if his aims had been as single as his reason is unclouded, he would long ago have carried all before him, and been the virtual monarch of the United States. But to have expected this would have been unreasonable. The very best men of any society are rarely or never to be found among its eminent statesmen; and it is not fair to look for them in offices which, in the present condition of human affairs, would yield to such no other choice than of speedy failure or protracted martyrdom. Taking great politicians as they are Mr Webster’s general consistency may be found not to have fallen below the average, though it has not been so remarkable as to ensure on his behalf a confidence at all to be compared with the universal admiration of his talents.

Mr Webster speaks seldom in the Senate. When he does, it is generally on some constitutional question, where his reasoning powers and knowledge are brought into play, and where his authority is considered so high, that he has the glorious satisfaction of knowing that he is listened to as an oracle by an assemblage of the first men in the country. Previous to such an exercise, he may be seen leaning back in his chair, not, as usual, biting the top of his pen, or twirling his thumbs, or bursting into sudden and transient laughter at Colonel Benton’s oratorical absurdities, but absent and thoughtful, making notes, and seeing nothing that is before his eyes. When he rises, his voice is moderate, and his manner quiet, with the slightest possible mixture of embarrassment; his right hand rests upon his desk and the left hangs by his side. Before his first head is finished, however, his voice has risen so as to fill the chamber and ring again, and he has fallen into his favourite attitude, with his left hand under his coat-tail, and the right in full action. At this moment, the eye rests upon him as upon one under the true inspiration of seeing the invisible, and grasping the impalpable. When the vision has passed away, the change is astonishing. He sits at his desk, writing letters or dreaming, so that he does not always discover when the Senate is going to a division. Some one of his party has not seldom to jog his elbow, and tell him that his vote is wanted.

There can scarcely be a stronger contrast than between the eloquence of Webster and that of Clay. Mr Clay is now my personal friend; but I have a distinct recollection of my impressions of his speaking, while he was yet merely an acquaintance. His appearance is plain in the extreme, being that of a mere west country farmer. He is tall and thin, with a weather-beaten complexion, small grey eyes, which convey an idea of something more than his well known sagacity, – even of slyness. It is only after much intercourse that Mr Clay’s personal appearance can be discovered to do him any justice at all. All attempts to take his likeness have been in vain, though upwards of thirty portraits of him, by different artists, were in existence when I was in America. No one has succeeded in catching the subtle expression of placid kindness, mingled with astuteness, which becomes visible to the eyes of those who are in daily intercourse with him. His mode of talking, deliberate and somewhat formal including sometimes a grave humour, and sometimes a gentle sentiment, very touching from the lips of a sagacious man of ambition, has but one fault, – its obvious adaptation to the supposed state of mind of the person to whom it is addressed. Mr Clay is a man of an irritable and impetuous nature, over which he has obtained a truly noble mastery. His moderation is now his most striking characteristic; obtained, no doubt, at the cost of prodigious self-denial, on his own part, and on that of his friends, of some of the case, naturalness, and self-forgetfulness of his manners and discourse. But his conversation is rich in information, and full charged with the spirit of justice and kindliness, rising, on occasion, to a moving magnanimity. By chances, of some of which he was totally unaware, I became acquainted with several acts of his life, political and private, which prove that his moderation is not the mere diffusion of oil upon the waves, but the true stilling of the storm of passion and selfishness. The time may come when these acts may be told; but it has not yet arrived.

Mr Clay is sometimes spoken of as a “disappointed statesman” and he would probably not object to call himself so; for it makes no part of his idea of dignity to pretend to be satisfied when he is sorry, or delighted with what he would fain have prevented: but he suffers only the genuine force of disappointment, without the personal mortification and loss of dignity which are commonly supposed to be included in it. He once held the to the losing party: he more than once expected to be President, and has now no chance of ever being so. Thus far he is a disappointed statesman; but at the same time, he is in possession of more than an equivalent for what he has lost – not only in the disciplined moderation of his temper, but in the imperishable reality of great deeds done. No possession of office could now add to his dignity, any more than the total neglect of the present generation of the people could detract from it. The fact that Mr Clay’s political opinions are not in accordance with those now held by the great body of the people, is no disgrace to him or them; while the dignity of his former services, supported by his present patience and quietness, places him far above compassion, and every feeling but respect and admiration. This admiration is exalted to enthusiasm in those who know how difficult it is to a man of Mr Clay’s nature, who has lived in public all his life, to fall back into obscurity, – an obscurity not relieved, alas! by the solace of a cheerful home. Few spectacles can be more noble than he is in that obscurity, discoursing of public men and affairs with a justice which no rivalry can impair, and a hopefulness which no personal disappointment can relax.

Mr Clay is the son of a respectable clergyman in Virginia, and was born in April, 1777. His father died when he was quite young; and he was in consequence left to the common educational chances which befriend all the young citizens of the United States. He studied law, after leaving the common school at which his education begin, and settled early at Lexington, in Kentucky, where his residence has ever since been fixed. His first important act was labouring diligently in favour of a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery in Kentucky, which was proposed in 1798. His exertions were, however, in vain. In 1803, he entered the legislature of his State, and in 1806 was sent, with the dignity of senator, to Washington, having not quite attained the requisite age. In 1809, he found occasion to advocate the principle of protection to domestic manufactures which he has since had the very questionable honour of embodying in his famous American System. In 1811, he became Speaker of the House of Representatives, and for three years exercised in that situation a powerful influence over the affairs of the country. In 1814, he was appointed one of the Commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Ghent; and when that business was concluded, he repaired to London, with his colleagues, Messrs. Adams and Gallatin, and there concluded the commercial convention which was made the basis of all the subsequent commercial arrangements between the United States and Europe. In 1825, Mr Clay accepted the appointment of Secretary of State under Mr Adams, an act for which he is still extensively and vehemently blamed, but with how much or how little reason, I do not pretend, from want of knowledge of the party politics of the time, to understand. While in this office, he did a great deal in procuring, with much labour and difficulty, a recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies in South America; a recognition which had the all-important effect of deterring the great European powers from their contemplated intervention on behalf of Spain. Mr Clay’s speeches were read at the head of the armies of the South American republics; and if his name were forgotten everywhere else, it would stand in the history of their independence. Mr Clay has since been a powerful advocate of internal improvements, and the framer of “the American System,” – the founder of the protective policy, which I believe he is more proud of than of any act of his public life, while many others are justly amazed that a man of his sagacity should not see the unsoundness of the principle on which the whole system is based. Much more honour is due to him for the Compromise Bill, by which he virtually surrendered his system, and immediately put an end to the Nullification struggle. Mr Webster victoriously exposed the badness of the Nullification principle; and Mr Clay removed the present cause of its exercise. The one humbled South Carolina to the dust on her Nullification ground; the other left her in triumphant possession of her principle of Free Trade, while disarming her by a wise and well-principled compromise.

The one act of Mr Clay’s public life, for which he must be held to require pardon from posterity, is that by which he secured the continuance of slavery in Missouri; and, in consequence, its establishment in Arkansas and Florida, – the one an admitted State, the other a Territory destined to be so. Mr Clay is not an advocate of Slavery, though, instead of being a friend to Abolition, he is a dupe to Colonization. When he held the destinies of American Slavery in his hand, he had unhappily more regard for precedent in human arrangements than for the spirit of the divine laws in the light of which such arrangements should be ever regarded. He acted to avert the conflict which cannot be averted. It has still to take place, – it is now taking place, – under less favourable circumstances; and his measure of expediency is already meeting with the retribution which ever follows upon the subordination of a higher principle to a lower. For many of his public acts, Mr Clay will be permanently honoured; with regard to others, the honour will be mingled with allowance for error in philosophy; for this one he will have to be forgiven.

Mr Clay married an excellent woman, who is still living, the survivor of six daughters, taken away, some of them in the bloom of promise, and one in the maturity of virtue. The great statesman’s house is very desolate. He must seek in his own strength of soul, and in the love and honour with which his friends regard him, that good which has been denied to him in the latter days of his political and domestic life.

His recollections of Europe are very vivid and pleasurable. We spent many an hour of my visit to him in Kentucky in talking over our mutual English friends, till we forgot the time and space we had both traversed since we parted from them, and looked up surprised to find ourselves, not at a London dinner table, but in the wild woods of the west. Mr Clay has not kept up his knowledge of British life and politics so accurately as some of his brother-statesmen; but he is still full of the sayings of Castlereagh and Canning, of Lords Eldon and Stowell, of Mackintosh and Sydney Smith.

The finest speech I heard from Mr Clay in the Senate was on the sad subject of the injuries of the Indians. He exposed the facts of the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia. He told how the lands in Georgia, guaranteed by solemn treaties to the Cherokees, had been surveyed and partitioned off to white citizens of the State; that, though there is a nominal right of appeal awarded to the complainants, this is a mere mockery, as an acknowledgment of the right of Georgia to divide the lands is made a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the right: in other words, the Indians must lay down their claims on the threshold of the courts which they enter for the purpose of enforcing these claims! The object of Mr Clay’s plea was to have the Supreme Court open to the Cherokees, their case being, he contended, contemplated by the constitution. A minor proposition was that Congress should assist, with territory and appliances, a body of Cherokees who desired to emigrate beyond the Mississippi.

It was known that Mr Clay would probably bring forward his great topic that day. Some of the foreign ambassadors might be seen leaning against the pillars behind the chair; and many members of the other House appeared behind, and in the passages: and one sat on the steps of the platform, his hands clasped, and his eyes fixed on Mr Clay, as if life hung upon his words. As many as could crowd into the gallery leaned over the balustrade; and the lower circle was thronged with ladies and gentlemen, in the centre of whom stood a group of Cherokee chief, listening immovably. I never saw so deep a moral impression produced by a speech. The best testimony to this was the general disgust excited by the empty and abusive reply of the senator from Georgia, – who, by the way, might be judged from his account to have been about three months from the Green Island. This gentleman’s speech, however, showed us one good thing, – that Mr Clay is as excellent in reply as in proposition; – prompt, earnest, temperate, and graceful. The chief characteristic of his eloquence is its earnestness. Every tone of his voice, every fibre of his frame bears testimony to this. His attitudes are, from the beginning to the close, very graceful. His first sentences are homely, and given with a little hesitation and repetition, and with an agitation shown by a frequent putting on and taking off of the spectacles, and a trembling of the hand among the document on the desk. Then as the speaker becomes possessed with his subject, the agitation changes its character, but does not subside. His utterance is still deliberate, but his voice becomes deliciously winning. Its higher tones disappointed me at first; by the lower ones, trembling with emotion, swelling and falling with the earnestness of the speaker, are very moving; and his whole manner become irresistibly persuasive. I saw tears, of which I am sure he was wholly unconscious, falling on his papers, as he vividly described the woes and injuries of the aborigines. I saw Webster draw his hand across his eyes; I saw every one deeply moved except two persons, – the Vice President, who yawned somewhat ostentatiously, and the Georgian senator, who was busy brewing his storm. I was amazed at the daring of this gentleman, – at the audacity which could break up such a moral impression as this Cherokee tale, so told, had produced, by accusing Mr Clay of securing an interest in opposition to Georgia “by stage starts and theatric gesticulation.” The audience were visibly displeased at having their feelings thus treated, in the presence even of the Cherokee chiefs: but Mr Clay’s replies both to argument and abuse were so happy, and the Georgian’s rejoinder was so outrageous, that the business ended with a general burst of laughter. The propositions were to lie till the next day; and, as I soon after left Washington, I never learned their ultimate fate.

The American Senate is a most imposing assemblage. When I first entered it, I thought I never saw a finer set of heads than the forty-six before my eyes: two only being absent, and the Union then consisting of twenty-four States. Mr Calhoun’s countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair; the stern brow; the inflexible mouth; – it is one of the most remarkable heads in the country. Next him sat his colleague, Mr Preston, in singular contrast, – stout in person, with a round, ruddy, good-humoured face, large blue eyes, and a wig, orange today, brown yesterday, and golden tomorrow. Near them sat Colonel Benton, a temporary people’s man, remarkable chiefly for his pomposity. He sat swelling amidst his piles of papers and books, looking like a being designed by nature to be a good-humoured barber or innkeeper, but forced by fate to make himself into a mock-heroic senator. Opposite sat the transcendent Webster, with his square forehead and cavernous eyes: and behind him the homely Clay, with the face and figure of a farmer, but something of the air of a divine, from his hair being combed straight back from his temples. Near them sat Southard and Porte; the former astute and rapid in countenance and gesture; the latter strangely mingling a boyish fun and lightness of manner and glance with the sobriety suitable to the Judge and the Senator. His keen eye takes in every thing that passes; his extraordinary mouth, with its overhanging upper lip, has but to unfold into a smile to win laughter from the sourest official or demagogue. Then there was the bright bonhomie of Ewing of Ohio, the most primitive-looking of senators; and the benign, religious gravity of Frelinghuysen; the gentlemanly air of Buchanan; the shrewdness of Poindexter; the somewhat melancholy simplicity of Silsbee, – all these, and many others were striking; and for nothing more than for their total unlikeness to each other. No English person who has not travelled over half the world, can from an idea of such differences among men forming one assembly for the same purposes, and speaking the same language. Some were descended from Dutch farmers, some from French huguenots, some from Scotch puritans, some from English cavaliers, some from Irish chieftains. They were brought together out of law courts, sugar fields, merchants’ stores, mountain farms, forests and prairies. The stamp of originality was impressed on every one, and inspired a deep, involuntary respect. I have seen no assembly of chosen men, and no company of the high-born, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled, full-grown, original men, brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse constituencies.

In this splendid chamber, thus splendidly inhabited, we spent many hours of many weeks. Here I was able to gain no little knowledge of the state, political and other, of various parts of the country, from my large acquaintance among the members of the Senate. When dull official reports were read, and uninteresting local matters were discussed, or when the one interminable speaker, Benton, was on his legs, one member or another of the body would come and talk with us. I have heard certain of the members, stalking from their seats towards those of the ladies compared to cranes in search of fish. The comparison is not a bad one.

I wished, every day, that the ladies would conduct themselves in a more dignified manner than they did, in the Senate. They came in with waving plumes, and glittering in all the colours of the rainbow, causing no little bustle in the place, no little annoyance to the gentlemen spectators; and rarely sat still for any length of time. I know that these ladies are no fair specimen of the women who would attend parliamentary proceedings in any other metropolis. I know that they were the wives, daughters and sisters of legislators, women thronging to Washington for purposes of convenience or pleasure, leaving their usual employments behind them, and seeking to pass away the time. I knew this, and made allowance accordingly; but I still wished that they could understand the gravity of such an assembly, and show so much respect to it as to repay the privilege of admission by striving to excite as little attention as possible, and by having the patience to sit still when they happened not to be amused, till some interruption gave them opportunity to depart quietly. If they had done this, Judge Porter would not have moved that they should be appointed seats in the gallery instead of below; and they would have been guiltless of furnishing a plea for the exclusion of women, who would probably make a better use of the privilege, from the galleries of other houses of parliament.

I was glad of an opportunity of hearing both the South Carolina senators, soon after my arrival in Washington. They are listened to with close attention; and every indication of their state of feeling is watched with the interest which has survived the Nullification struggle. Mr Calhoun on this occasion let us a little into his mind; Mr Preston kept more closely to the question before the body. The question was whether a vote of censure of the President, recorded in the minutes of the proceedings of the Senate, the preceding session, should be expunged. The motion for the expunging was made by Colonel Benton, and rejected, as it had been before, and has been since; though it was finally carried, to the agony of the opposition, at the end of last session. (February, 1837.)

Mr Preston was out of health, and unable to throw his accustomed force into his speaking; but his effort showed us how beautiful his eloquence is in its way. It is not solid. His speeches, if taken to pieces, will be found to consist of analogies and declamation; but his figure are sometimes very striking, and his manner is as graceful as anything so artificial can be. I never before understood the eloquence of action. The action of public speakers in England, as far as I have observed, (and perhaps I may be allowed to hint that deaf persons are peculiarly qualified to judge of the nature of such action) is of two kinds, – the involuntary gesture which is resorted to far the relief of the nerves, which may or may not be expressive of meaning; and the action which is wholly the result of study, – arbitrary and not the birth of the sentiment; and therefore, though pleasing perhaps to the eye, perplexing to the mind of the listener. Mr Preston’s manner unites the advantages of these two methods, and avoids most of their evils. It is to see that he could not speak without an abundant use of action; and that he has therefore done wisely in making it a study. To an unaccustomed eye it appears somewhat exuberant; but it is exquisitely graceful, and far more than commonly appropriate. His voice is not good, but his person is tall, stout and commanding, and his countenance animated.

Mr Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently modulated. But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Benton’s, that he wanted to be President, the force of his speaking become painful. He made protestation which it seemed to strangers had better have been spared, that he would not turn on his heel to be President; and that he had given up all for his brave, magnanimous little State of South Carolina. While thus protesting, his eyes flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the auditory that sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application of a very sudden mental force. I believe he little knew what a revelation he made in a few sentences. They were to us strangers the key, not only to all that was said done by the South Carolina party during the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and Columbia, which would otherwise have passed unobserved or unexplained.

I was less struck than some strangers appear to have been with the length and prosy character of the speeches in Congress. I do not remember hearing any senator (always excepting Colonel Benton) speak for more than an hour. I was seldom present in the other House, where probably the most diffuse oratory is heard; but I was daily informed of the proceedings there, by the representative who was of our party; and I did not find that there was much annoyance or delay from this cause. Perhaps the practice may be connected with the amount of business to be done. It is well known that the business of Congress is so moderate in quantity from the function of the general Government being few and simple, that it would be considered a mere trifle by any parliament in the Old World: and long speeches which would be a great annoyance elsewhere may be an innocent pastime in a assembly which may have leisure upon its hands.

The gallery of the splendid Hall of Representatives is not well contrived for hearing; and I rarely went into it for more than a passing view of what was going on: a view which might be taken without disturbance to anybody, as the gallery was generally empty, and too high raised above the area of the hall, to fix the eye of the members. My chief interest was watching Mr Adams, of whose speaking, however, I can give no account The circumstance of this gentleman being now a member of the representative body after having been President, fixes the attention of all Europeans upon him, with as much admiration as interest. He is one of the most remarkable men in America. He is an embodiment of the pure, simple morals which are assumed to prevail in the thriving young republic. His term of office was marked by nothing so much as by the subordination of glory to goodness – of showy objects moral ones. The eccentricity of thought and action in Mr Adams, of which his admirers bitterly or sorrowfully complain, and which renders him an impracticable member of a party, arises from the same honest simplicity which crowns his virtues, mingled with a faulty taste and an imperfect temper. His hastiness of assertion has sometimes placed him in predicaments so undignified as almost to be a set-off against the honours he wins by pertinacious and bold adherence to a principle which he considers sound. His occasional starts out of the ranks of his party, without notice, and without apparent cause, have been in vain attempted to be explained on suppositions of interest or vanity: they may be more easily accounted for in other ways. Between one day and another, some new idea of justice and impartiality may strike his brain, and send him to the House warm with invective against his party, and sympathy with their foes. He rises, and speaks out all his new mind, to the perplexity of the whole assembly, every man of whom bends to hear every syllable he says – perplexity which gives way to dismay on the one hand and triumph on the other. The triumphant party begins to coax and honour him; but before the process is well begun, he is off again, finding that he had gone too far: and the probability is that he finishes by placing himself between two fires. I now describe what I actually witnessed of his conduct in one instance; conduct which left no more doubt of his integrity than of his eccentricity. He was well described to me before I saw him. “Study Mr Adams.” Was the exhortation. “You will find him well worth it. He runs in veins; if you light upon one, you will find him marvellously rich; if not, you may chance to meet rubbish. In action, he is very peculiar. He will do ninety-nine things nobly, excellently: but the hundredth will be so bad in taste and temper, that it will drive all the rest out of your head, if you don’t lake care.” His countrymen will “take care.” Whatever the heats of party may be, however the tone of disappointment against Mr Adams may sometimes rise to something too like hatred, there is undoubtedly a deep reverence and affection for the man in the nation’s heart; and any one may safely prophecy that his reputation, half a century after his death, will he of a very honourable kind. He fought a stout and noble battle in Congress last session in favour of discussion of the Slavery question and in defence of the right of petition upon it, – on behalf of women as well as of men. While hunted, held at bay, almost torn to pieces by an outrageous majority, – leaving him. I believe, in absolute unity, – he preserved a boldness and coolness as amusing as they were admirable. Though he now and then vents his spleen with violence when disappointed in a favourite object, he seems able to bear perfectly well that which it is the great fault of Americans to shrink from. singularity and blame. He seems at times reckless of opinion: and this is the point of his character which his countrymen seem, naturally, least able to comprehend.

Such is the result of the observations I was able to make on this gentleman when at Washington. I was prevented seeing so much of him as I earnestly desired by his family circumstances. He had just lost a son, and did not appear in society. It is well known in America that Mr Adams will leave behind him papers of inestimable value. For forty years (I was told) he has kept a diary, full and exact. In this diary he every morning sets down not only the events of the preceding day. but the conversations he has had with foreigners, and on all subjects of interest. This immense accumulation of papers will afford such materials for history as the country has never yet been blessed with. Perhaps no country has ever possessed a public man of great powers, and involved in all the remarkable events of its most remarkable period, who has had industry enough to leave behind him a similar record of his times. This will probably turn out to be (whether he thinks so or not) the greatest and most useful of his deeds, and his most honourable monument.

Those whose taste is the contemplation of great and original men, may always have it gratified by going to Washington. Whatever may be thought of the form and administration of government there, – however certain it may be that the greatest men are not, in this age of the world, to be found in political life. it cannot be but that among the real representatives of a composite and self-governing nation there must be many men of power – power of intellect, of goodness, or, at least, of will.

Volume 1

Mount Vernon

“He might have been a king

But that he understood

How much it was a meaner thing

To be unjustly great than honourably good.”

Duke of Buckingham on Lord Fairfax

On the 2nd of February I visited Mount Vernon, in company with a large party of gentlemen and ladies. Of all places in America, the family seat and burial place of Washington is that which strangers are most eager to visit. I was introduced by Judge Story to the resident family, and was received by them, with all my companions, with great civility and kindness.

The estate of Mount Vernon was inherited by General Washington from his brother. For fifteen years prior to the assembling of the first general Congress in Philadelphia, Washington spent his time chiefly on this property, repairing to the provincial legislature when duty called him there, but gladly returning to the improvement of his lands. The house was, in those days, a very modest building, consisting of only four rooms on a floor, which form the centre of the present mansion. Mrs Washington resided there during the ten years’ absence of her husband, in the wars of the Revolution; repairing to headquarters at the close of each campaign, and remaining there till the opening of the next. The departure of an aide-de-camp from the camp, to escort the general’s lady, was watched for with much anxiety, as the echoes of the last shot of the campaign died away; for the arrival of “Lady Washington” (as the soldiers called her) was the signal for the wives of all the general officers to repair to their husbands in camp. A sudden cheerfulness diffused itself through the army when the plain chariot, with the postilions in their scarlet and white liveries, was seen to stop before the general’s door. Mrs Washington was went to say, in her latter years, that she had heard the first cannon at the opening, and the last at the close of every campaign of the revolutionary war. She was a strong-minded, even-tempered woman; and the cheerfulness of her demeanour, under the heavy and various anxieties of such a lot as hers, was no mean support to her husband’s spirits, and to the bravery and hopefulness of the whole army, whose eyes were fixed upon her. She retired from amidst the homage of the camp with serene composure, when the hid her fears and cares in her retired home. There she occupied herself industriously in the superintendence of the slaves, and in striving to stop the ravages which her husband’s public service was making in his private fortunes.

After the peace of 1783, she was joined by her husband, who made a serious pursuit of laying out gardens and grounds round his dwelling and building large additions to it. He then enjoyed only four years of quiet, being called in 1787 to preside in the convention which framed the Constitution; and in 1789 to fill the Presidential chair. Mrs Washington was now obliged to quit the estate with him; and it was eight years before they could take possession of it again. In 1797 Washington refused to be made President for a third term, and retired into as private a life as it was possible for him to secure. Trains of visitors sought him in his retreat, and Mrs Washington’s accomplishments as a Virginian housewife were found useful every day: but Washington was at home, and he was happy. In a little while he was once more applied to serve the State at the head of he armies. He did not refuse, but requested to be left in peace till there should be actual want of his presence. Before that time arrived he was no more. Two years after his retirement, while the sense of enjoyment of repose was still fresh, and his mind was full of such schemes as delight the imaginations of country gentlemen, death overtook him, and found him, though the call was somewhat sudden, ready and willing to go. In a little more than two years he was followed by his wife. From the appearance of the estate, it would seem to have been going to decay ever since.

Our party, in three carriages, and five or six on horseback, left Washington about nine o’clock, and reached Alexandria in an hour and a half, though our passage over the long bridge which crosses the Potomac was very slow, from its being in a sad state of dilapidation. Having ordered a late dinner at Alexandria, we proceeded on our way, occasionally looking behind us at the great dome of the Capitol, still visible above the low hills which border the grey, still Potomac, now stretching cold amidst the wintry landscape. It was one of the coldest days I ever felt; the bitter wind seeming to eat into one’s very life. The last five miles of the eight which lie between Alexandria and Mount Vernon wound through the shelter of the woods, so that we recovered a little from the extreme cold before we reached the house. The land appears to be quite impoverished; the fences and gates are in bad order; much of the road was swampy, and the poor young lambs, shivering in the biting wind, seemed to look round in vain for shelter and care. The conservatories were almost in rains, scarcely a single pane of glass being unbroken; and the house looked as if it had not been painted on the outside for years. Little negroes peeped at us from behind the pillars of the piazza as we drove up. We alighted in silence, most of us being probably occupied with the thought of who had been there before us, – what crowds of the noble, the wise, the good had come hither to hear the yet living voice of the most unimpeachable of patriots! As I looked up, I almost expected to see him standing in the doorway. My eyes had rested on the image of his remarkable countenance in almost every house I had entered; and here, in his own dwelling, one could not but look for the living face with something more that the eye of the imagination. I cared far less for less for any of the things that were shown me within the house than to stay in the piazza next the garden, and fancy how he here walked in meditation, or stood looking abroad over the beautiful river, and pleasing his eye with a far different spectacle from that of camps and conventions.

Many prints of British landscapes, residences, and events, are hung up in the apartments. The ponderous key of the Bastille still figures in the hall, in extraordinary contrast with everything else in this republican residence. The Bible in the library is the only book of Washington’s now left. The best likeness of the great man, known to all travellers from the oddness of the material on which it is preserved, is to be seen here, sanctioned thus by the testimony of the family. The best likeness of Washington happens to be on a common pitcher. As soon as this was discovered, the whole edition of pitchers was bought up. Once or twice I saw the entire vessel, locked up in a cabinet, or in some such way secured from accident: but most of its possessors have, like the family, cut out the portrait, and had it framed.

The walk, planned and partly finished during Washington’s life, – the winding path on the verge of the green slope above the river, must be very sweet in summer. The beauty of the situation of the place surprised me. The river was nobler, the terrace finer, and the swelling hills around more varied that I had imagined; but there is a painful air of desolation over the whole. I wonder how it struck the British officers in 1814, when, in passing up the river on their bandit expedition to burn libraries and bridges, and raze senate chambers, they assembled on deck, and uncovered their heads as they passed the silent dwelling of the great man who was not there to testify his disgust at the service they were upon. If they knew what it was that they were under orders to do, it would have been creditable to them as men to have mutinied in front of Mount Vernon.

The old tomb from which the body of Washington has been removed ought to be obliterated or restored. It is too painful to see it as it is now, – the brick work mouldering, and the paling broken and scattered. The red cedars still overshadow it; and it is a noble resting place. Every one would mourn to see the low house destroyed, and the great man’s chamber of dreamless sleep made no longer sacred from the common tread: but anything is better than the air of neglect which now wounds the spirit of the pilgrim. The body lies, with that of Judge Washington, in a vault near, in a more secluded, but far less beautiful situation than that on the verge of the Potomac. The river is not seen from the new vault.; and the erection is very sordid. It is of red brick, with an iron door, and looks more like an oven than anything else, except for the stone slab, bearing a funereal text, which is inserted over the door. The bank which rises on one side is planted with cedars, pines, and a sprinkling of beech and birch, so that the vault is overshadowed in summer, as the places of the dead should be. The President told me that the desolation about the tomb was a cause of uneasiness to himself and many others; and that he had urged the family, as the body had been already removed from its original bed, to permit it to be interred in the centre of the Capitol. They very naturally cling to the precious possession; and there is certainly something much more accordant with the spirit of the man in a grave under the trees of his own home than in a magnificent shrine: but, however modest the tomb may be, – were it only such a green hillock as every rustic lies under, – it should bear tokens of reverent care. The grass and shade which he so much loved are the only ornaments needed; the absence of all that can offend the eye and hurt the spirit of reverence, is all that the patriot and the pilgrim require.

Before we reached the crazy bridge, which it had been difficult enough to pass in the morning, the sweet Potomac lay in clear moonshine, and the lights round the Capitol twinkled from afar. On arriving at our fireside, we found how delightful a total change of mood sometimes is. Tea, letters, and English newspapers awaited us: and they were a surprising solace, chilled or feverish as we were with the intense cold and strong mental excitement of the day.

Volume 2

Madison

“For, neither by Reason, nor by her experience, is it impossible that a Commonwealth should he immortal: seeing the people, being the materials, never dies; and the form, which is motion, must, without opposition, be endless. The bowl which is thrown from your hand, if there be no rub, no impediment, shall never cease; for which cause the glorious luminaries, that are the bowls of God, were once thrown for ever.”

Harrington’s Oceana

While I was at Washington, I received a kind invitation from Mr and Mrs Madison, to visit them at their seat, Montpelier, Virginia. I was happy to avail myself of it. and paid the visit on my way down to Richmond. At six o’clock, in the morning of the 18th of February, my party arrived at Orange Court House, five, miles from Montpelier; and while two proceeded to Charlottesville, where we were to join them in three or four days, a friend and I stopped, first to rest for a few hours, and then to proceed to Mr Madison’s. After some sleep, and breakfast at noon, we took a carriage for the five miles of extremely bad road we had to travel. The people at the inn overcharged us for this carriage, and did not mention that Mr Madison had desired that a messenger should be sent over for his carriage, as soon as we should arrive. This was the only occasion but one, in our journey of 10,000 miles in the United States, that we were overcharged: while, I suspect, the undercharges, where any literary reputation is in the case, are more numerous than can be reckoned.

It was a sweet day of early spring. The patches of snow that were left under the fences and on the rising grounds were melting fast. The road was one continued slough, up to the very portico of the house. The dwelling stands on a gentle eminence, and is neat and even handsome in its exterior, with a flight of steps leading up to the portico. A lawn and wood, which must be pleasant in summer, stretch behind; and from the front there is a noble object on the horizon, – the mountain chain which traverses the State, and makes it eminent for its scenery. The shifting lights upon these blue mountains were a delightful refreshment to the eye after so many weeks of city life as we had passed.

We were warmly welcomed by Mrs Madison and a niece, a young lady who was on a visit to her; and when I left my room I was conducted to the apartment of Mr Madison. He had, the preceding season, suffered so severely from rheumatism, that, during this winter, he confined himself to one room, rising after breakfast, before nine o’clock, and sitting in his easy chair till ten at night. He appeared perfectly well during my visit, and was a wonderful man of eighty-three. He complained of one ear being deaf, and that his sight, which had never been perfect, prevented his reading much, so that his studies “lay in a nutshell:” but he could hear Mrs Madison read; and I did not perceive that he lost any part of the conversation. He was in his chair, with a pillow behind him, when I first saw him; his little person wrapped in a black silk gown; a warm grey and white cap upon his head, which his lady took care should always sit becomingly; and grey worsted gloves, his hands having been rheumatic. His voice was clear and strong, and his manner of speaking particularly lively, – often playful. Except that the face was smaller, and of course older, the likeness to the common engraving of him was perfect. He seemed not to have lost any teeth, and the form of the face was therefore preserved, without any striking marks of age. It was an uncommonly pleasant countenance.

His relish for conversation could never have been keener. I was in perpetual fear of his being exhausted; and at the end of every few hours I left my seat by the arm of his chair, and went to the sofa by Mrs Madison, on the other side of the room: but he was sure to follow, and sit down between us; so that when I found the only effect of my moving was to deprive him of the comfort of his chair, I returned to my station, and never left it but for food and sleep, – glad enough to make the most of my means of intercourse with one whose political philosophy I deeply venerated. There is no need to add another to the many eulogies of Madison: I will only mention that the finest of his characteristics appeared to me to be his inexhaustible faith, – faith that a well-founded Commonwealth may, as our motto declares, be immortal; not only because the people, its constituency, never dies; but because the principles of justice in which such a Commonwealth originates never die out of the people’s heart and mind. This faith shone brightly through the whole of Mr Madison’s conversation, except on one subject. With regard to slavery he owned himself to be almost in despair. He had been quite so till the institution of the Colonization Society. How such a mind as his could derive any alleviation to its anxiety from that source is surprising. I think it must have been from his overflowing faith; for the facts were before him that in eighteen years the Colonization Society had removed only between two and three thousand persons, while the annual increase of the slave population in the United States was upwards of sixty thousand.

He talked more on the subject of slavery than on any other, acknowledging without limitation or hesitation all the evils with which it has ever been charged. He told me that the black population in Virginia increases far faster than the white; and that the licentiousness only stops short of the destruction of the race; every slave girl being expected to be a mother by the time she is fifteen. He assumed from this, I could not make out why, that the negroes must go somewhere; and pointed out how the free States discourage the settlement of blacks; how Canada disagrees with them; how Haiti shuts them out; so that Africa is their only refuge. He did not assign any reason why they should not remain where they are when freed. He found, by the last returns from his estates, that one-third of his own slaves were under five years of age. He had parted with some of his best land to feed the increasing numbers, and had yet been obliged to sell a dozen of his slaves the preceding week. He observed that the whole bible is against negro slavery; but that the clergy do not preach this; and the people do not see it. He became animated in describing what I have elsewhere related[12] of the eagerness of the clergy of the four denominations to catch converts among the slaves, and the effect of religious teaching of this kind upon those who, having no rights, can have no duties. He thought the condition of slaves much improved in his time, and, of course, their intellects. This remark was, I think, intended to apply to Virginia alone; for it is certainly not applicable to the south-western States. He accounted for his selling his slaves by mentioning their horror of going to Liberia, a horror which he admitted to be prevalent among the blacks, and which appears to me decisive as to the unnaturalness of the scheme. The willing mind is the first requisite to the emigrant’s success. Mr Madison complained of the difficulty and risk of throwing an additional population into the colony, at the rate of two or three cargoes a year, complained of it because he believed it was the fault of the residents, who were bent upon trading with the interior for luxuries, instead of raising food for the new comers. This again seems fatal to the scheme; since the compulsory direction of industry, if it could be enforced, would be almost as bad as slavery at home; and there are no means of preventing the emigrants being wholly idle, if they are nor allowed to work in their own way for their own objects. Mr Madison admitted the great and various difficulties attending the scheme; and recurred to the expression that he was only “less in despair than formerly about slavery.” He spoke with deep feeling of the sufferings of ladies under the system, declaring that he pitied them even their negroes; and that the saddest slavery of all was that of conscientious Southern women. They cannot trust their slaves in the smallest particulars, and have to superintend the execution of all their own orders: and they know that their estates are surrounded by vicious free blacks, who induce thievery among the negroes, and keep the minds of the owners in a state of perpetual suspicion, fear, and anger.

Mr Madison spoke strongly of the helplessness of all countries cursed with a servile population, in a conflict with a people wholly free; ridiculed the idea of the Southern States being able to maintain a rising against the North: and wondered that all thinkers were not agreed in a thing so plain. He believed that Congress has power to prohibit the internal slave-trade. He mentioned the astonishment of some strangers, who had an idea that slaves were always whipped all day long, at seeing his negroes go to church one Sunday. They were gaily dressed, the women in bright-coloured calicoes; and when a sprinkling of rain came, up went a dozen umbrellas. The astonished strangers veered round to the conclusion that slaves were very happy; but were told of the degradation of their minds, – of their carelessness of each other in their nearest relations, and their cruelty to brutes.

Mrs Madison’s son by a former marriage joined us before dinner. We dined in the next room to Mr Madison, and found him eager for conversation again as soon as we had risen from table. Mrs M. is celebrated throughout the country for the grace and dignity with which she discharged the arduous duties which devolve upon the President’s lady. For a term of eight years she administered the hospitalities of the White House with such discretion, impartiality, and kindliness, that it is believed she gratified every one, and offended nobody. She is a strong-minded woman, fully capable of entering into her husband’s occupations and cares; and there is little doubt that he owed much to her intellectual companionship, as well as to her ability in sustaining the outward dignity of his office. When I was her guest, she was in excellent health and lively spirits; and I trust that though she has since lost the great object of her life, she may yet find interests enough to occupy and cheer many years of an honoured old age.

Mr Madison expressed his regret at the death of Mr Malthus, whose works he had studied which close attention. He mentioned that Franklin and two others had anticipated Malthus in comparing the rates of increase of population and food; but that Malthus had been the first to draw out the doctrine; – with an attempt at too much precision, however, in determining the ratio of the increase of food. He laughed at Godwin’s methods of accounting for the enormous increase of population in America by referring it to immigration, and having recourse to any supposition rather than the obvious one of an abundance of food. He declared himself very curious on the subject of the size of the Roman farms, and that he had asked many friends where the mistake lies in the accounts which have come down to us. Some Roman farms are represented as consisting of an acre and a quarter; the produce of which would be eaten up by a pair of oxen. The estate of Cincinnatus being three times this size, he could scarcely plough, after having lost half of it by being surety. Either there must be some great mistake about out notion of the measurement of Roman farms, or there must have been commons for grazing, and woods for fuel; the importation of grain from Sicily and other places not having taken place till long after. He asked by what influence our corn laws, so injurious to all, and so obviously so to the many, were kept up, and whether it was possible that they should continue long. He declared himself in favour of free trade, though believing that the freedom cannot be complete in any one country till universal peace shall afford opportunity for universal agreement.

He expressed himself strongly in favour of arrangements for the security of literary property all over the would, and wished that English authors should be protected from piracy in the United States, without delay. He believed that the utterance of the national mind in America would be through small literature, rather than large, enduring works. After the schools and pulpits of the Union are all supplied, there will remain an immense number of educated sons of men of small property, who will have things to say; and all who can write, will. He thought it of the utmost importance to the country, and to human beings everywhere, that the brain and the hands should be trained together; and that no distinction in this respect should be made between men and women. He remembered an interesting conversation on this subject with Mr Owen, from whom he learned with satisfaction that well educated women in his settlement turned with ease and pleasure from playing the harp to milking the cows.

The active old man, who declared himself crippled with rheumatism, had breakfasted, risen and was dressed before we sat down to breakfast. He talked a good deal about the American Presidents, and some living politicians, for two hours, when his letters and newspapers were brought in. He gaily threw them aside, saying he could read the newspapers every day, and must make the most of his time with us, if we would go away so soon as we talked of. He asked me, smiling, if I thought it too vast and anti-republican a privilege for the ex-Presidents to have their letters and newspapers free, considering that this was the only worldly benefit they carried away from their office.

I will not repeat his luminous history of the Nullification struggle; nor yet his exposition, simple and full, of the intricate questions involved in the anomalous institution of the American Senate, – about its power of sanctioning appointments to office, and whether its sanction necessary to removal from office; to which increase of power he was decidedly opposed. This part of his conversation, though very instructive to me at the time, would be uninteresting to the English reader, in this connexion.

He declared himself perfectly satisfied that there is in the United States a far more ample and equal prevision for pastors, and of religious instruction for the people, than could have been secured by a religious establishment of any kind; and that one of the greatest services which his country will be hereafter perceived to have rendered to the world, will be the having proved that religion is the more cared for, the more unreservedly it is committed to the affections of the people. He quoted the remark of Voltaire, that if there were only one religion in a country, it would be a pure despotism; if two, they would be deadly enemies; but half a hundred subsist in fine harmony. He observed that this was the case in America; and that so true and pregnant a remark as this ought to be accepted as an atonement for many that would die of untruth. He went on to notice the remarkable fact that creeds which oppose each other, and which in concatenation would seem to be most demoralizing, do, by virtue of some one common principle, agree in causing the moral elevation of those who hold them. He instanced Philosophical Necessity, as held by Hume, Kaimes, Edwards, and Priestley. He told me how he had once been prejudiced against Priestley, and how surprised he was, when he first met the philosopher at Philadelphia, to find him absolutely mild and candid.

The whole of this day was spent like the last, except that we went over the house, looking at the busts, and prints which gave an English air to the dwelling, – otherwise wholly Virginian. During all our conversations, one or another slave was perpetually coming to Mrs Madison for the great bunch of keys; two or three more lounged about in the room, leaning against the door posts or the corner of the sofa; and the attendance of others was no less indefatigable in my own apartment.

The next morning, we found our host in fine spirits. He described, with much vivacity, the variety of visits from strangers that he was subject to, saying that some were taxes and others bounties. He laughed about the ludicrous effect sometimes produced by an utter failure of sympathy in matters of grave pursuit; and told us of a ride he took with a young English geologist who was on a visit to him, and who spurred up to him in a lit of transport, holding a stone almost into his eyes, and exclaiming, “Greywacke, sir! greywacke, greywacke!” the host all the time being quite unable to understand or sympathize with this vehement rapture.

I glanced at the newspapers when they came in; and found them full of the subject of the quarrel with France, – the great topic of the day. Mr Madison gave me an account of the relations of the two countries, and of the grounds of his apprehensions that this quarrel might, in spite of its absurdity, issue in a war. This is all over now; but some of his observations remain. He said it would be an afflicting sight if the two representative governments which are in the van of the world should go to war; it would squint towards a confirmation of what is said of the restlessness of popular governments. If the people, who pay for war, are eager for it, it is quite a different thing from potentates being so, who are at no cost. He mentioned that George the Fourth, as Prince Regent, was a large gainer in the last war, from his share of the Droits of the Admiralty, amounting to £1,000,000. per annum: – a pretty premium, Mr Madison observed, to pay a king for going to war. He told me about the formation of the philosophical and humane agreement between Franklin and Frederick of Prussia, that merchant ships, unarmed, should go about their business as freely in the war as in peace. The Salem merchants, who were formerly in favour of war, and who suffered from captures in the course of it were, on the present occasion, petitioning against war, and for reprisals.

Franklin was near seventy when Mr Madison first knew him. He went to the Hall of Congress in a sedan, and sat all the time, writing what he had to say, and getting it read, because he could not stand. He was soon afterwards bedridden, when Madison was his frequent visitor. He had much self-command: and when seized by severe pain, soon roused himself to converse, almost as if it did not exist. One of the most striking points about him was his dislike of argument. He would listen to his adversary, and then overthrow him with an anecdote.

After avowing a very unfashionable admiration of Darwin’s poetry, and declaring that the splendour of the diction put his imagination into a very gay state; Mr Madison went into a speculation about what would eventually become of all existing languages and their literature; declaring that he had little hope of the stability of languages when terms of even classical derivation are perpetually changing their meanings with time. Then, by some channel, now forgotten, we got round to the less agreeable subject of national debts and taxation, when, as might be expected, Mr Madison expressed his horror of the machinery necessary under a system of indirect levy, and his attachment to a plan of moderate expenditure, provided for by direct taxation. He remarked upon Pitt’s success in obtaining revenue when every other man would rather have surrendered his plans than used the means he employed. He observed that King, Lords, and Commons, might constitute a government which would work a long while in a kingdom no bigger than Great Britain; but that it would soon become an absolute government in a country as large as Russia, from the magnitude of its executive power: and that it was a common but serious mistake to suppose that a country must be small to be a republic; since a republican form, with a federal head, can be extended almost without limits, without losing its proportions, – becoming all the while less, instead of more, subject to change. In a small republic there is much noise from the fury of parties; while in a spreading, but simply working republic, like that of the union, the silent influence of the federal head keeps down more quarrels than ever appear.

We were compelled to leave Montpelier while our intercourse was thus in full flow. Mr Madison would not say farewell seriously: he was so confident that we should visit him again on our return from the South and West. I need not say that we earnestly wished to do so: but we never saw him again: not having an opportunity in the summer to diverge from our route so as to approach his residence. We heard excellent reports of him, from time to time: of his vigour and cheerfulness, and of his application to political and literary pursuits. In the spring of the following year, however, he declined, and died on the 28th of June, 1836.

I have written of him under a strong desire to say nothing that he would have objected to have repeated, suppressing whatever he dropped relating to private persons, or to public men yet living, while attempting to afford what gratification I could to the strong interest felt in England about this virtuous statesman. It is something that, living under institutions framed by the few for the subordination of the many, the English feel the interest they do about such men as Jefferson and Madison, – men inspired by the true religion of statesmanship, faith in men, and in the principles on which they combine in an agreement to do as they would be done by. This political religion resembles personal piety in its effect of sustaining the spirit through difficulty and change, and leaving no cause for repentance, or even solicitude, when, at the close of life, all things reveal their values to the meditative sage. Madison reposed cheerfully, gaily, to the last, on his faith in the people’s power of wise self-government. As for Jefferson, he has left, in his last letter to Madison a few sentences which we may be thankful for, as golden links added to the chain by which the glorious memories of these two good men are indissolubly connected:

The friendship which has subsisted between us, now half a century, and the harmony of our political principles and pursuits, have been sources of constant happiness to me through that long period. It has been a great solace to me to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them.

If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it. – one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted. To myself, you have been a pillar of support through life. Take care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.[13]

Volume 2

Jefferson’s University

That the legislator should especially occupy himself with the education of youth, no one can dispute; for when this is not done in States, it is a cause of damage to the polity. For a State must be administered with reference to its polity: and that which is the peculiar characteristic of each polity is that which preserves and originally constitutes it; as, for instance, the democratical principle in a democracy, and the oligarchical in an oligarchy; and that which is the best principle always constitutes the best policy.

Aristotle, Politik: Book 8

The existence of the University of Virginia is scarcely recognized by British travellers. I was welcomed there as the first who had ever visited it. Charlottesville lies out of the ordinary route of tourists: but Monticello, the seat of Jefferson, is within sight of his favourite institution; and Mr Madison’s residence is only about thirty-five miles off; and it seems surprising that such a combination of interesting objects should not have drawn more pilgrim feet that way.

It was between five and six in the morning when we entered the stage at Orange Court House, which was to deposit us at Charlottesville before an early dinner. The snow had wholly disappeared; and I looked out eagerly to see what aspect the far famed Virginia wore. For the greater part of the way, all looked very desolate: the few dwellings were dingy: large mansions, with slave dwellings clustered near. The trees were bare: the soil one dull red; the fences shabby. The eye found a welcome relief in the woods of stone pine, and in an occasional apparition of the beautiful bluebird, perching upon a stump, or flitting over the fallows. We breakfasted at a farm, a little way off the road, whither we had to pick our way by a field path, which was a perfect slough. The hostess was friendly, and served an excellent breakfast to the stage passengers in a bedchamber.

From this point, the road improved. The mountains were before us: and as we approached them, the undulating surface of the country presented many beauties. It was Sunday. We mounted an eminence, all grown over with stone pine: and on the top found, in the heart of the grove, a small church, where worship was going on, while seventeen horses, two of them with side-saddles. were fastened to the trees around. This church was free to all sects: but at present used by the Presbyterians: they being the most numerous sect in the neighbourhood.

We arrived at Charlottesvile, at the foot of the mountains, by one o’clock, and joined the friends whom we found awaiting us at dinner at the hotel. A Unitarian clergyman was to preach in the Court House in the afternoon: a rare event, I imagine: for we heard afterwards that one of the Professor’s ladies could not sleep, the night before, from the idea of a Unitarian being so near. We attended the service, which was very spiritless. The whole burden fell upon the minister; there being no preparation for singing, and apparently no interest beyond more curiosity. Two long rows of students from the University were there: and I thought I never saw so fine a set of youths. Their demeanour was gentlemanly, to the last degree, except in the one particular of spitting: and the seriousness of their manner must have been gratifying to the preacher.

After the service, we walked to the University, at the distance, I think, of a little more than a mile from the town. The singular ranges of college buildings are visible from a considerable distance, as they advantageously crown an eminence, presenting the appearance of a piazza surrounding an oblong square, with the professors’ houses rising at regular intervals. We found that the low buildings connecting these larger dwellings were the dormitories of the students; ground floor apartments, opening into the piazza, and designed to serve as places of study as well as sleep. The professors’ houses are inconveniently small. Jefferson wished in the first instance, that the professors should be young men: and this fact, and the smallness of the dwellings, have given rise to the ridiculous belief, entertained by some people, that Jefferson made celibacy a condition of holding professorships in his University. Instead of this, ladies’ faces may be seen at many windows, and plenty of children tripping along in the piazzas. At one end of the quadrangle is the Rotunda, containing the lecture rooms, library, and other apartments: and outside the other end, a gothic chapel was about to be created. Well kept grass-plats and gravel walks fill up the quadrangle.

The number of students at the time of my visit was 206. They are not admitted under the age of sixteen, except in the case of a younger brother accompanying one above that age. Each dormitory is designed to accommodate two students: but when there is room, any student may rent a whole one, if he chooses. The ordinary expenses are so moderate as to be worth specifying:

Dollars

Board, including furniture, washing, and attendance

100

Fuel and candles

15

Rent of half a dormitory

8

Use of library and public rooms

15

Fees to Professors, say

75

Total

213

exclusive of books and stationery, clothing and pocket money. The students wear a uniform, which is very becoming, and not at all conspicuous being merely a coat of particularly simple fashion, and dark colour.

Of the 206 students whom I had the pleasure of seeing, 151 belonged to the State; 5 came from the Northern States; and the rest from the South and West; 6 from South Carolina, though there are colleges both at Charleston and Columbia. Professor Patterson spoke of the youths among whom he was living as being as steady and promising a set of young men as could be met with. We heard afterwards a somewhat different account in a stage coach: but, of course, the testimony of a resident professor is worth much more than that of two chance travellers; and all that I saw of the appearance and manners of the students was very creditable to the institution. Every student visits each professor’s house twice in the session; once to dinner, and once to a ball; and, I suppose, as much oftener as he may be asked. The session lasts ten months; the vacation being in the hot months of July and August.

The distinctive principle of this University is that each student is free to attend the schools of his choice, and no others; provided that, being under twenty-one years of age, he shall attend at least three professors. The professors highly approve of this arrangement, finding that it enables young men to qualify themselves rapidly and effectually for particular callings, in cases where time is valuable; and that the youths put vigour into their pursuits, in proportion as they are free, within a reasonable limit, to gratify their tastes, and fulfil their own purposes, in the choice of their studies.

There are nine professorships; and in each school there are three regular lectures a week, besides the instructions suited to the several classes into which the school is divided. The Professors, when I was there, were:

Professor Harrison; Ancient Languages and History. This gentleman must find himself fully occupied. He was the sole instructor, that session, of 75 young men in Latin and Greek, and, of such as desired it, in Hebrew. His qualifications are understood to be of a very high order.

Professor Blœttermann had 64 pupils in Modern Languages; viz., French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Anglo-Saxon: and was ready to teach, more over, the Danish, Swedish; Dutch, and Portuguese language.

Professor Bonnycastle (Mathematics) had a large attendance, consisting of 109, divided into five classes, beginning with the theory of Arithmetic, and concluding the course of pure Mathematics with the Integral Calculus. There is, moreover, a class of Mixed Mathematics, for such of the more advanced students as choose to pursue it; and another of Civil Engineering.

Professor Patterson undertakes the Natural Philosophy, having an attendance of 73 pupils. The apparatus provided for the use of this school is very extensive and complete; and an observatory, with the necessary astronomical instruments, is open to the students.

Professor Emmet, Chemistry and Materia Medica; 89 pupils.

Professor Magill, Medicine; 41 pupils.

Professor Warner, Anatomy and Surgery; 44 pupils. An extensive museum is attached to the Medical Department; and the anatomical school is regularly supplied with subjects, from which the lectures are delivered. The advantage claimed for this above all other medical schools in the country is that it session lasts ten months instead of four.

Professor Tucker, Moral Philosophy; 67 pupils, who are divided into two classes: the examinations of the junior class being in Rhetoric, Belles Lettres, Logic, and Ethics, from the Professor’s lectures, Blair’s and Campbell’s Rhetoric, and Stewart’s “Active and Moral Powers.” The senior class studies Mental Philosophy, and Political Economy; and the examinations are from the Professor’s lectures, Brown’s Lectures: Say’s and Adam Smith’s Political Economy.

Professor Davis. Law; 48 pupils. The students of this school have instituted a Law Society, at whose meetings the Professor presides, and where the business of every branch of the profession is rehearsed.

Three honorary distinctions are conferred in this University; a Certificate of Proficiency, conferred by the faculty on any proficient in a particular branch of study: that of Graduate in any school, and the third, of Master of Arts of the University of Virginia, is obtained by graduation, in the schools of Ancient and Modern Languages, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and Moral Philosophy. All these are obtained when deserved, and not in consequence of any prescribed term of study having been gone through. The title of Doctor of Medicine is conferred on the graduate in the Medical Department. The certificates and diplomas are delivered in the presence of all the members of the University, and of the public, on the last day of the session, in the Rotunda, amidst many observances and rites.

It will be observed that there is no Theological professorship. It was noticed by the religious North, at the time of the foundation of the University, that this was probably the first instance in the world of such an establishment exhibiting this kind of deficiency: and the experiment was denounced as a very hazardous one. The result seems to have been that, while theological instruction has been obtainable elsewhere, a greater number and variety of young men, of different religious persuasions, have been educated at this institution than would have been likely to resort to it if it had, by the choice of theological professor, identified itself with any single denomination. The reasons for the omission of professorship of Divinity are stated in the first Report of the Commissioners who met in August, 1818, at Rockfish Gap, on the Blue Ridge, for the purpose of organizing the plans of this institution. Jefferson was understood to be the author of the Report, which contains the following passage:

In conformity with the principles of our constitution, which places all sects of religion on an equal footing; with the jealousy of the different sects, in guarding that equality from encroachment and surprise; and with the sentiments of the legislature, in favour of freedom of religion, manifested on former occasions, we have proposed no professor of Divinity: and the rather, as the proofs of the being of a God, the Creator, Preserver, and supreme Ruler of the universe, the Author of all the relations of morality, and of the laws and obligations these infer, will be within the province of the professor of Ethics; to which, adding the developments of those moral obligations, of those in which all sects agree, with a knowledge of the languages of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, a basis will be formed, common to all sects. Proceeding thus far without offence to the constitution, we have thought it proper at this point to leave every sect to provide, as they think fittest, the means of further instruction in their own peculiar tenets.

There are no daily public prayers at this institution; but there are regular services on Sundays, administered by clergymen of the four denominations, in turns of a year each. These clergymen officiate on the invitation of the professors, officers, and students. The attendance upon public worship is purely voluntary; and, as might be expected as a consequence, it is regular and complete.

This institution may well be called Jefferson’s University. The first conception was his; the whole impulse and direction; the scheme of its studies, and the organization of its government. His letters to his intimate friends, during the last five years of his life, breathe a rational ardour about this enterprise which is very animating to those connected with the University, and which affords a fine stimulus to the students who are daily reminded of what they owe to him, and what were his expectations from them. “I fear not to say,” he writes,

that within twelve or fifteen years from this time, (1825) a majority of the rulers of our State will have been educated here. They shall carry hence the correct principles of our day; and you may count assuredly that they will exhibit their country in a degree of sound respectability it has never known, either in our days, or those of our forefathers. I cannot live to see it. My joy must only be that of anticipation.

In his last letter to Madison, a few months later, he says,

And if I remove beyond the reach of attentions to the University, or beyond the bourne of life itself, as I soon must, it is a comfort to leave that institution under your care, and an assurance that it will not be wanting.

The following passage in the same letter renders strangers curious to learn the politics of the University.

In the selection of our Law Professor, we must be rigorously attentive to his political principles. You will recollect that, before the Revolution, Coke-Littleton was the universal elementary book of law students; and a sounder whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the British constitution, or in what were called English liberties. You remember also, that our lawyers were then all whigs. But when his black-letter text, and uncouth but cunning learning got out of fashion, and the honeyed Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the student’s horn-book, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now are of that hue. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be whigs, because they no longer know what whigism or republicanism means. It is in our seminary that that vestal flame is to be kept alive; it is thence to spread anew over our own and the sister States.

On inquiry I found that, out of the 206 students, 7 held the principles of the democratic party. There seemed to be little or none of the federalism of the North; but a strong attachment to Calhoun on the part of the majority in the establishment. The evil influences of slavery have entered in to taint the work of the great champion of freedom. The political attachments of this once democratic institution are to the leader who, in order to uphold slavery, would, to judge him by himself, establish a Lacedemonian government throughout the South; making every white man a soldier, in order to preserve a false idea of honour, and to obviate danger from the oppressed servile class. To observing eyes it appears plain that the hour is approaching when these young men must, like all other American men, choose their part, and enter decisively into struggle, to maintain or overthrow the first principles of freedom. It will then be seen whether “the vestal flame” has been kept alive, or whether the name of him who cherished it has been honoured with mere lip worship, while the labours of his latter years have been despised and undone. The eyes of the world will be fixed on Jefferson’s University during the impending conflict between slaveholders and freemen.

To return to our Sunday afternoon. It was known that we should soon arrive at the University with our letters of introduction; and a truly hospitable welcome was prepared for us. We called first at Professor Patterson’s, where we found ourselves, in half an hour, as much at home as if we had been acquainted for months. We were obliged to decline taking up our abode there at once; but promised to return the next morning, and remain for as long a time as we could spare. Professor Tucker, long known in England, and at present more extensively so, through his very acceptable Life of Jefferson, was recovering from an illness which confined him to his room, and sent to ask me to visit him there. I was glad that he was well enough to see me; and that I had thus the benefit of a good deal of his lively, sensible, and earnest conversation.

A great disappointment awaited our rising on the Monday morning. On the Sunday afternoon the sun had been so hot that we threw off our shawls. The next morning we looked out upon a snow storm. There was, from the beginning, no hope of our getting to Monticello. Jefferson’s house upon the mountain was actually in sight and there was no possibility of our reaching it: and we were obliged to satisfy ourselves with the traces we found of him about the University. Professor Patterson’s carriage came for us early, and we passed a morning of the liveliest gossip with the ladies and children of the family, while the Professors were engaged in their duties. The frankness of the whole society was particularly winning; and so was the cordiality among themselves; a degree of mutual good understanding which is seldom found in the small society of a college, village-like in its seclusion and leisure, with added temptations to jealousy and censoriousness. The ladies of Professor Patterson’s family gave me a spirited and amiable description of their arrival as strangers at the University, and of the zeal and kind consideration with which they were welcomed and aided on every hand. Two facts struck me, in the course of our feminine talk on the subject of housekeeping; that chickens are there to be had for a dollar a dozen; plump fowls ready for the fire: and that Mrs Patterson’s coachman, a slave, could read. These ladies, seeing apparently only domestic slaves, kindly treated like their own, spoke lightly on the great subject, asking me if I did not think the slaves were happy: but their husbands used a very different tone, observing, with gloom, that it was a dark question every way.

Four of the Professors, and two or three students, fine, well-mannered young men, joined us at dinner; and many ladies, and others of the Professors, in the evening. I was amused and gratified by the interest shown in the living authors of England, especially the ladies. Every particular that I could tell about Mrs Somerville and Mrs Marcet was eagerly listened to. The Herschel family, Mr Malthus, and many more, were fully and affectionately discussed. The great treat of the evening to me was a long conversation with Professor Hamilton on the German language and literature, and on the mutual criticism of the Germans and the English. He offered a comparison of the genius of the Greek and German languages, which, for want of sufficient learning, I do not pretend to appreciate, but which impressed me strongly with admiration of his powers of conversation.

One of the ladies took an opportunity of asking me privately to request leave to attend a lecture with the Natural Philosophy class, in the morning. Ladies are excluded by rule: but she thought that the rule might for once be infringed without injury, in the case of foreign ladies. The Professor kindly made no difficulty; and my prompter highly enjoyed her single opportunity.

We breakfasted before eight, and went immediately to survey the large building, – the Rotunda. First we saw the library, a well chosen collection of books, the list of which was made out by Jefferson. The students read in the Rotunda, and take out books by order. In the gallery, above the books, the mineralogical collection, belonging to Professor Patterson, is arranged, and open to observation. Higher up still is a whispering gallery. The lecture to which we were admitted was on Heat. It was clear, fluent, and entertaining. The young men appeared to be good listeners; some wrote down almost all they heard; and many asked questions of the Professor at the conclusion of the lecture.

Mr Tucker begged us to go to his chamber to luncheon, as he was still unable to venture out of it. We had a delightful hour there. The sick gentleman’s room was crowded with guests, all busy with question and remark, our time being short, and the quantity we had to say, like old friends in a brief meeting, being inexhaustible. A serious request was made to us that we would stay a month, giving up a portion of our southern journey in exchange for the good offices of the University. We could not possibly do this; but there can be no doubt of what our enjoyment would have been, during a whole month of intimate intercourse with such stirring people as this graceful, kindly little society is composed of. Having said all that so many tongues could, in an hour’s time, about the Theory of Rent, Colonel Thompson, and Mr Malthus; the value of public censure and eulogy; Mrs Somerville again, Philadelphia ale, American politics, and a hundred other things, we were obliged to go. Keepsakes of the ladies’ work were put into our hands, and packets of sandwiches into the carriage; and a party escorted us to our inn, bad as the weather was. Letters of introduction were hastily prepared, and sent after us; and during our whole visit nothing was omitted which could concern our comfort, or enhance our pleasure. As I cast my last look from the window of the stage towards the University, it was with less regret than pleasurable astonishment at my own experience of the speed with which it is possible for foreign minds to communicate, and lasting regard to be established.

Volume 2

Country Life in the South

“For Nature here

Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will

Her virgin fancies.”

Milton

“These views of the degradation of the Southern States receive a melancholy and impressive confirmation from the general aspect and condition of the country, viewed in contrast with its former prosperity. With natural advantages more bountiful than were ever dispensed by a kind Providence to any other people upon the face of the globe, there is, from the mountains to the sea coast, one unbroken scene of cheerless stagnation and premature decay.”

Southern Review, vol. 2, p. 513.

There was no end to the kind cautions given me against travelling through the Southern States; not only on account of my opinions on slavery, but because of the badness of the roads, and the poverty of the wayside accommodations. There was so much of this, that my companion and I held a consultation one day, in our room at Washington, spreading out the map, and surveying the vast extent of country we proposed to traverse before meeting my relatives at New Orleans. We found that neither was afraid; and afterwards that there was no cause for fear, except to persons who are annoyed by irregularity and the absence of comfort. The evil prognostications went on multiplying as we advanced: but we learned to consider them as mere voices on the mountain of our enterprise, which must not deter us from accomplishing it. We had friends to visit at Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; and Mobile. At Richmond we were cautioned about the journey into South Carolina: at Charleston we met with dreadful reports of travelling in Georgia: in Georgia people spoke of the horrors of Alabama, and so on: and, after all, nothing could well be easier than the whole undertaking. I do not remember a single difficulty that occurred, all the way. There was much fatigue, of course. In going down from Richmond to Charleston, with a party of friends, we were nine days on the road, and had only three nights rest. Throughout the journey, we were obliged to accommodate ourselves to the stage hours, setting off sometimes in the evening, sometimes at midnight; or, of all uncomfortable seasons, at two or three in the morning. On a journey of many days, we had to inform ourselves of the longest time that the stage would stop at a supping or breakfasting place, so that we might manage to snatch an hour’s sleep. While the meal was preparing, it was my wont to lie down and doze, in spite of hunger: if I could find a bed or sofa, it was well: if not, I could wrap myself in my cloak, and make a pillow on the floor of my carpet bag. I found that a sleep somewhat louder than this, when I could go to bed for two hours, was more fatiguing than refreshing. The being waked up at two, when I had lain down at midnight, was the greatest discomfort I experienced. But little sleep can be obtained in the stage, from the badness of the roads. It was only when quite wearied out that I could forget myself for an hour or two, amidst the joltings and rollings of the vehicle. In Alabama, some of the passengers in the stage were Southern gentlemen, coming from New York, in comparison with whose fatigues ours were nothing. I think they had then travelled eleven days and nights, with very short intervals of rest; and the badness of the roads at the end of a severe winter had obliged them to walk a good deal. They looked dreadfully haggard and nervous; and we heard afterwards that one of them had become incessantly convulsed in the face, after we had left them. It is not necessary, of course, to proceed without stopping, in such a way as this; but it is necessary to be patient of fatigue to travel in the South at all.

Yet I was very fond of these long journeys. The traveller (if he be not an abolitionist) is perfectly secure of good treatment; and fatigue and indifferent fare are the only evils which need be anticipated. The toils of society in the cities were so great to me that I generally felt my spirits rise when our packing began; and, the sorrow of parting with kind hosts once over, the prospect of a journey of many days was a very cheerful one. The novelty and the beauty of the scenery seemed inexhaustible; and the delightful American stages, open or closed all round at the will of the traveller, allow of everything being seen.

The American can conceive of nothing more dismal than a pine-barren, on a rainy day: but the profound tranquillity made it beautiful to me, whose rainy days have been almost all passed in cities, amidst the rumbling of hackney-coaches, the clink of pattens, the gurgle of spouts, and the flitting by of umbrellas. It is very different in the pine-barrens. The sandy soil absorbs the rain, so that there is no mud: the pines stand meekly drooping, as if waiting to be fed: the drip is noiseless: and the brooks and pools are seen bubbling clear, or quietly filling, while not a wing cleaves the air, each bird nestling in the covert of its domestic tree. When the rain ceases, towards evening, the whole region undergoes a change. If a parting ray from the west pierces the woods, the stems look lilac in the moist light; the vines glitter before they shake off their last drops; the red-bird startles the eye; the butterflies come abroad in clouds; the frogs grow noisy, and all nature wakens up fresh as from her siesta. The planter may be seen on his pacing white horse, in a glade of the wood; or superintending the negroes who are repairing the fence of his estate. One black holds the large dibble, with which the holes for the stakes are made; others are warming their bands at the fire which blazes on the ground – many hands to do slovenly work. While any light is left, the driver is apt to shorten his road by cutting across a knoll, instead of winding round it: and then the wheels are noiseless on the turf; the branches crash as the vehicle is forced between the trees; and the wood pigeons, frightened from their roost, flutter abroad.

When the sun has gone down, all is still within the stage: the passengers grow drowsy, unless hunger keeps them awake. Each one nods upon his neighbour’s shoulder, till a red light, gradually illuminating all the faces, and every moment growing brighter, rouses the dullest. Each tells somebody else that we are coming to a fire in the woods. First there are lines of little yellow flames on each side the path – the blazing up of twigs too dry to have been made incombustible by the morning’s rain. Then there is a pond of red fire on either hand; and pillars of light rising from it, – tall burning stems, throwing out jets of flame on all sides, or emitting a flood of sparks when touched by the night breeze. The succeeding darkness is intense. The horses seem to feel it; for they slacken to a foot pace, and the grazing of a wheel against a pine stem, or the zigzag motion of the vehicle, intimates that the driver’s eyes have been dazzled. Presently the horses set off again; and the passengers sink once more into silence. They are next roused by the discordant horn of the driver, sending out as many distinct blasts as there are passengers; each blast more of a screech than the last; and the final flourish causing a shout of laughter in the coach; laughter animated a little, perhaps, by the prospect of supper. Right or left, soon appears the log house, its open shutters and door giving token that a large fire is blazing within. The gentlemen hand out the ladies at the door, and then stand yawning and stretching, or draw to the fire while they can – before the ladies take possession of the best place. The hostess, who is busy cooking, points to a lamp, with which the ladies light themselves to her chamber, to put up their hair under their bonnets for the night. Little impish blacks peep and grin from behind the stove, or shine in the heat of the chimney corner. If any one of them has ever received a compliment on his dexterity, he serves with most ostentations bustle, his eyes wide open, his row of white teeth all in sight, and his little body twisting about; with every affectation of activity. An observer may see some fun going on behind the mistress’s back; a whisk of the carrying knife across a companion’s throat; or a flourish of two plates like cymbals over the head.

At last, supper is ready – the broiled venison, the ham collops and eggs, and apple sauce; the infusion which is called tea or coffee; and the reeking cornbread. Before the clatter of knives had ceases, the stage, with its fresh horses, is at the door; the ladies snatch a final warming, while the driver finishes his protracted meal, their eyes, being now at liberty to study the apartment, looking round for some other object than the old story, – the six Presidents who smile from the walls of almost every log house in American, and the great map of the United States, with a thumb mark, amounting to an erasure, on the spot of the very territory where this particular log house happens to be. If we wanted to consult a map in a hurry, in such places as these, we never had to hunt out our present situation. There was always the worn spot, to serve as the centre to our investigations. The passengers, however wearily they might have descended from the stage, are pretty sure to enter it again with a spring – warm and satisfied, with a joke on their tongues, and a good supper to sleep or muse upon.

The sleep seldom lasts long. however. You are sure to come to a creek, where nobody has ever erected a bridge, or where a freshet has carried one away, and no measure have been taken to rebuild it. With drowsy groans, the passengers rouse themselves, and get out at the driver’s bidding, under the cold stars, or the drifting clouds. The ladies slip on their India rubber shoes; for their first step may be into soft mud. They stand upon a bank, if there be one, in order not to be run over in the dark; while the scow shows by the reflection of the light at her bow where the river is. When she touches the bank, the driver calls to everybody to keep out of the way, cracks his whip, and drives his lumbering carriage down the bank, and into the scow: the passengers follow; the scow is unchained, and the whole load is pushed across the stream, or pulled, if it happens to be a rope-ferry. When the expected shock tells you that have arrived at the other side, the driver again cracks his whip, and the horses scramble. If they should refuse to mount the steep bank, and back a step upon the passengers instead, every one would infallibly be driven into the river. A delicate coaxing is therefore employed; and I imagine the animals must be aware what a ticklish thing any freak of theirs would be in such a situation; for I never know them decline mounting the bank, without a single back step.

If the team bolt, or other fastening of equal consequence should happen to break, there is a chance of two hours rest, or so. Something snaps; the vehicle stops; the gentlemen get out; the ladies gaze from the windows, while somebody half-dressed comes out with a lantern from any dwelling that may be in sight, and goes back again for hammer and nail, or, at worst, a piece of cord: and you proceed at a slow foot pace to the nearest hotel. There, the slaves, roused from the floor, where they are lying like dogs, go winking about, putting fresh logs on the smouldering fire, and lighting a lamp or two. After repeated inquiries on the part of the ladies, who feel the first minutes of their two hours slipping away without any promise of rest, a female slave at last appears, staring as if she had never seen anybody before. The ladies have already taken out nightcap, soap and towel from their carpet bags. They motion the woman upstairs, and follow her. They find the water jug, if there be one, empty, of course. With coaxing, they get the attendant to fill it. Long after they are undressed, it comes, clear or “sort o’ muddy,” as may be. If there are no sheets, or yellow ones, the ladies spread their dressing gowns over the bed, and use their cloaks for a covering. As soon as they have lain down, a draught begins to blow in the strangest way on the top of their heads. They examine, and find a broken window behind the bed. They wrap up their heads, and lie down again. As soon as they are fairly dreaming that they are at home, and need not get up till they please, the horn startles them, they raise their heads, see a light under the door, and the black woman looks in to drawl out that they must please to make haste. It seems like a week since they down; but they are not rested, turn away sick and dizzy from the flickering light.

In the morning, you wonder where your fatigue is gone. As the day steals through the forest, kindling up beauty as it goes, the traveller’s whole being is refreshed. The young aloes under the fallen trunks glitter with dew; the grey moss, dangling from the trees, waves in the breath of the morning. The busy little chameleons run along the fences, and the squirrel erects his brush as you pass. While the crescent moon and the morning star glittered low down in the sky, you had longed to stay the sun beneath the horizon; but now that he is come, fresh vigour and enjoyment seem to be shed down with his rays.

At such an hour, you often come up with a family departing from the spot where they had “camped out” for the night. I never had the pleasure of camping out: but I know exactly what it must be like: for I have seen establishments of this sort in every stage of the process, – from the searching out a spot blessed with a running stream, a shelter to windward, a dry soil, and plenty of fuel, – to the piling the wagon with the pots, pans, and children, previous to starting at dawn. There is a striking air of cheer about the family when beginning their new day; leaving behind the desolation they have made; the scorched turf, the scattered brushwood, chips and meat bones, and setting forth in renewed strength in the fresh morning. I owe to these people many a picture such as will never meet my eye in the galleries of art.

Our stationary rural life in the South was various and pleasant enough: all shaded with the presence of slavery; but without any other drawback. There is something in the makeshift irregular mode of life which exists where there are slaves that is amusing when the cause is forgotten.

The waking in the morning is accomplished by two or three black women staring at you from the bedposts. Then it is five minutes’ work to get them out of the room. Perhaps before you are half dressed, you are summoned to breakfast. You look at your watch, and listen whether it has stopped; for it seems not to be seven o’clock yet. You hasten, however, and find your hostess making the coffee. The young people drop in when the meal is half done, and then it is discovered the breakfast has been served an hour too early, because the clock has stopped, and cook has ordered affairs according to her own conjectures. Every body laughs, and nothing ensues. After breakfast, a farmer in homespun – blue trousers and an orange-brown coat – or all over grey, – comes to speak with your host. A drunken white has shot one of his Negroes, and he fears no punishment can be obtained, because there were no witnesses of the deed but blacks. A consultation is held whether the affair shall go into court: and before the farmer departs, he is offered cake and liqueur.

Your hostess, meantime, has given her orders, and is now engaged in a back room, or out the piazza behind the house, cutting out clothes for her slaves; – very laborious work in warm weather. There may be a pretence of lessons among the young people; and something more than pretence, if they happen to have a tutor or governess: but the probability is that their occupations are as various as their tempers. Rosa cannot be found: she is lying on the bed in her own room, reading a novel: Clara is weeping for her canary, which has flown away while she was playing with it: Alfred is trying to ascertain how soon we may all go out to ride; and the little ones are lounging about the court, with their arms round the necks of blacks, of their own size. You sit down to the piano, or to read and one slave or another enters every half hour to ask what is o’clock. Your hostess comes in, at length; and you sit down to work with her; she gratifies your curiosity about her “people;” telling you how soon they burn out their shoes at the toes, and wear out their winter woolens, and tear up their summer cottons; and how impossible it is to get black women to learn to cut out clothes without waste; and how she never inquires when and where the whipping is done, as it is the overseer’s business, and not hers. She has not been seated many minutes when she is called away, and returns saying how babyish these people are, that they will not take medicine unless she gives it to them; and how careless of each other, so that she has been obliged to stand by and see Diana put clean linen upon her infant, and to compel Bet to get her sick husband some breakfast.

Morning visitors next arrive. It may be the clergyman, with some new book that you want to look at; and inquiries whether your host sees any prospect of getting the requisite number of professors for the new college; or whether the present head of the institution is to continue to fill all the chairs. It may be a lank judge from some raw district, with a quid in his cheek, a sword cane in his hand, and a legal doubt in his mind, which he wants your host to resolve. It may be a sensible woman, with courtesy in her countenance, and decision in her air, who is accustomed really to rule her household, and to make the host of such human material and such a human lot as are pressing around and upon her. If so, the conversation between her and your hostess becomes rapid and interesting, – full of tales of perplexity and trouble, of droll anecdotes, and serious and benevolent plans. Or it may be a lady of a different cast, who is delighted at the prospect of seeing you soon again. You look perplexed, and mention that you fear you shall be unable to return this way. O, but you will come and live here. You plead family, friends, and occupation in England, – to say nothing of England being your home. O, but you can bring your family and friends with you. You laughingly ask why. She draws up the replies, “for the honour and glory of living in a republic.”

Meantime, Clara has dried her tears, for some one has recovered her canary, and the door of the cage is shut. The carriage and saddle horses are scrambling on the gravel before the door, and the children run in to know if they may ride with you. Cake, fruit and liqueurs, or perhaps tea, are brought in; and then the ladies depart. The clergyman thinks he will ride round with your party, hearing that you are going to inspect Mr A.’s plantation. He warns you that it will not be “pleasant to see even the best plantations;” and your trembling heart fully agrees.

You admire the horsemanship of your host on his white horse, and the boys on their black ponies. The carriage goes at good speed, and yet the fast pace of the saddle horses enables the party to keep together. While you are looking out upon a picturesque log house, peeping forth from a blossomy thicket, or admiring a splendid hedge of the Cherokee rose, in straggling bloom. Rosa rouses herself from a reverie, and asks you to tell her all about Victoria.

“What shall I tell you?”

“What religion is she? A Unitarian, I suppose, like you.”

Church of Englandism and dissent being explained, Rosa resumes, in a plaintive voice, “Is she betrothed yet?”

“Not that I know of.”

“O, I hope she is! I wish I knew! When will she be queen? When she is eighteen, won’t she? – O, I thought she was to be of age, and be made queen at eighteen. How long will she be a queen?”

“As long as she lives.”

“As long as she lives! Why I thought – ”

Rosa has no idea of rulers not being changed every four or eight years. Even her imagination is almost overpowered at the idea of being set above every body else for life.

The carriage stops, and you are invited to step out, and view the ravages of a tornado, a season or two ago; you see how clear a path it made for itself in the forest; and how it swept across the river, tearing down an answering gap through the tall canebrake on the opposite bank. The prostrated trees lie sunk in swamp, half hidden by flowering reeds and bright mosses; while their stumps, twice as tall as yourself, are all cropped off, whatever may be their thickness, precisely at the same height; and so wrenched and twisted as to convince you that you never before conceived of the power of the winds. The boys show you a dry path down to the river side, that you may see the fish traps that are laid in the stream, and watch the couples of shad fishers – dark figures amidst the flashing waters, – who are pursuing their occupation in the glare of noon. The girls tell you how father remembers the time when there were bears in that canebrake, and there was great trouble in getting them to come out of their thick covert to be killed. When father first came here, this side of the river was all canebrake too. Is not a canebrake very ugly? – It may not have any picturesque beauty; but your eye rests upon it with satisfaction, as a tropical feature in the scene.

You proceed, and point out with admiration a beautifully situated dwelling, which you declare takes your fancy more than any you have seen. The children are amused that you should suppose any one lives there, overshadowed with trees as it is, so that its inhabitants would be devoured by mosquitoes. Your hostess tells you that it is called Mr B.’s Folly. He spent a good deal of money, and much taste upon it; but it is uninhabitable from being rather too near the river. The fever appeared so immediately and decisively that the family had to leave it in three months; and there it stands, to be called B.’s Folly.

Your host paces up to the carriage window, to tell you that you are now on A.’s plantation. You are overtaking a long train of negroes going to their work from dinner. They look all over the colour of the soil they are walking on: dusky in clothing, dusky in complexion. An old man, blacker than the rest, is indicated to you as a native African; and you point out a child so light as to make you doubt whether he be a slave. A glance at the long heel settles the matter. You feel that it would be a relief to be assured that this was a troop of monkeys dressed up for sport, rather than that these dull, shuffling animals should be human.

There is something inexpressibly disgusting in the sight of a slave woman in the field. I do not share in the horror of the Americans at the idea of women being employed in outdoor labour. It did not particularly gratify me to see the cows always milked by men (where there were no slaves); and the hay and harvest fields would have looked brighter in my eyes if women had been there to share the wholesome and cheerful toil; But a negro woman behind the plough presents a very different object from the English mother with her children in the turnip field, or the Scotch lassie among the reapers. In her pre-eminently ugly costume, the long, scanty, dirty woollen garment, with the shabby large bonnet at the back of her head, the perspiration streaming down her dull face, the heavy tread of the splay foot, the slovenly air with which she guides her plough, – a more hideous object cannot well be conceived; unless it be the same woman at home, in the negro quarter, as the cluster of slave dwellings is called.

You are now taken to the cotton gin, the building to your left, where you are shown how the cotton, as picked from the pods, is drawn between cylinders, so as to leave the seeds behind; and how it is afterwards packed, by hard pressure, into bales. The neighbouring creek is dammed up to supply the waterwheel by which this gin is worked. You afterwards sec the cottonseed laid in handfuls round the stalks of the young springing corn, and used in the cotton field as manure.

Meantime, you attempt to talk with the slaves. You ask how old that very aged man is, or that boy; they will give you no intelligible answer. Slaves never know, or never will tell, their ages; and this is the reason why the census presents such extraordinary reports on this point; declaring a great number to be above a hundred rears old. If they have a kind master, they will boast to you of how much he gave for each of them, and what sums he has refused for them. If they have a hard master, they will tell you that they would have more to eat, and be less flogged, but that massa is busy, and has no time to come down, and see that they have enough to eat. Your hostess is well known on this plantation, and her kind face has been recognized from a distance; and already a negro woman has come to her with seven or eight eggs, for which she knows she shall receive a quarter dollar You follow her to the negro quarter, where you see a tidy woman knitting, while the little children who are left in her charge are basking in the sun, or playing all kinds of antics in the road; little shining, plump, clear-eyed children, whose mirth makes you sad, when you look round upon their parents, and see what these bright creatures are to come to. You enter one of the dwellings, where every thing seems to be of the same dusky hue: the crib against the wall, the walls themselves, and the floor, all look one yellow. More children are crouched round the wood fire, lying almost in the embers. You see a woman pressing up against the wall, like an idiot, with her shoulder turned towards you, and her apron held up to her face. You ask what is the matter with her, and are told that she is shy. You see a woman rolling herself about in a crib, with her head tied up, You ask if she is ill, and are to told that she has not a good temper; that she struck at a girl she was jealous of with an axe; and the weapon being taken from her, she threw herself into the well, and was nearly drowned before she was taken out, with her head much hurt.

The overseer has, meantime, been telling your host about the fever having been more or less severe last season, and how well off he shall think himself if he has no more than so many days’ illness this summer: how the vegetation has suffered from the late frosts, pointing out how many of the oranges have been cut off, but that the great magnolia in the centre of the court is safe. You are then invited to see the house, learning by the way the extent and value of the estate you are visiting, and of the “force” upon it. You admire the lofty, cool rooms, with their green blinds, and the width of the piazzas on both sides the house, built to compensate for the want of shade from trees, which cannot be allowed near the dwelling, for fear of mosquitoes. You visit the icehouse, and find it pretty full, the last winter having been a severe one. You learn that for three or four seasons after this icehouse was built, there was not a spike of ice in the State; and a cargo had to be imported from Massachusetts.

When you have walked in the field as long as the heat will allow, you step into the overseer’s bare dwelling, within its bare enclosure, where fowls are strutting about, and refresh yourself with a small tumbler of milk, – a great luxury, which has been ordered for the party. The overseer’s fishing tackle and rifle are on the wall: and there is a medicine chest, and a shelf of books. He is tall, sallow, and nonchalant, dropping nothing more about himself and his situation than that he does not know that he has had more than his share of sickness and trouble in his vocation, and so he is pretty well satisfied.

Your hostess reminds the party that they are going out to dinner, and that it is quite time to be returning to dress. So you go straight home by a shorter road, stopping no more, but looking out, now at a glorious trumpet honeysuckle dangling from a branch; now at a lofty, spreading green tree, red hot close to the ground, while a sheet of flames is spreading all about its roots, the flames looking orange and blue in the bright sunshine.

You are glad to find, on arriving at home, that you have half an hour to lie down before you dress, and are surprised, on rising, to feel how you are refreshed. You have not very far to go to dinner, – only to Mr E.’s cottage on the Sand Hills. The E.’s have just come for the summer; the distant city being their winter residence. If you find the accommodations poor, you must excuse it, in consideration of their recent removal, The E.’s live in very good style in the city. The cottage is half way up a gentle ascent, with a deep, sandy road leading to the wooden steps of the front piazza, and pine forests in the rear. The entertainment today is not solely on your account: it is a parting dinner to young Mr and Mrs F., who are going to reside further west. They are leaving their parents and friends, and the family estate, and are to live in a log house, till a proper dwelling can be built. Mrs F. is rather low in spirits, but her mother means to send the old family nurse with her; so that she will have one comfort, at any rate, and will be able to trust her infant out of her sight now and then. As for Mrs E., she informs you that she has come out to the cottage sooner than she usually does, as she is expecting her confinement. She has all her five children in her presence always; and as she cannot trust them for an hour with her “people,” their noise and the heat would be intolerable in town; but here, where her room opens upon the piazza, she can have the children always in her sight or hearing, with less fatigue than in the city. You ask whether such a charge be not too much for her. Certainly; but there is no use in complaining, for it cannot be helped. She never had a nurse that was not more plague than use. It is not only that the servants tell the children improper things, and teach them falsehood, but it is impossible to get the little boys’ faces washed without seeing it done; and the infant may, as likely as not, be dropped into the fire or out of the window. Ladies must make the best of their lot, for they cannot help themselves.

The dinner is plentiful, including, of course, turkey, ham, and sweet potatoes; excellent claret, and large blocks of ice cream. A slave makes gentle war against the flies with the enormous bunch of peacocks’ feathers: and the agitation of the air is pleasant, while the ladies are engaged in eating, so that they cannot use their own fans, which are hung by loops on the backs of their chairs. The afternoon is spent in the piazza, where coffee is served. There the ladies sit, whisking their feather fans, jesting with the children, and talking over the last English poem, or American novel; or complaining bitterly of the dreadful incendiary publications which Mr E. heard from Mr H., who had heard it from Mr M., that Judge R. had said that somebody had seen circulated among the negroes, by some vile agent of the horrid abolitionists of the North.

You go in to tea, and find the table strewed with prints, and the piano open; and Mrs F. plays and sings. The gentlemen have done discussing the French war and the currency, and are praising the conduct of the Committee of Vigilance; frankly informing you, as a stranger, of the reasons of its formation, and the modes of its operation in deterring abolitionists from coming into the neighbourhood, in arresting them on any suspicion of tampering with the negroes, and in punishing them summarily, if any facts are established against them. While you are endeavouring to learn the nature of the crime and its evidence, you are summoned. There is going to be a storm, and your party must get home, if possible, before it comes on. In such a case, Mrs E. will say nothing in opposition to your leaving her so early. She would not be the means of exposing you to the storm. You hasten away, and reach home during the first explosion of thunder.

You find there a bouquet, sent to you with Miss G.’s compliments; a splendid bunch of quince, yellow jessamine, arbor vitæ, hyacinths, cherry, and other blossoms. It is not nearly bedtime yet; and you sit on the sofa, fanning yourself, with the table lamp, dimmed by the momentary glare of blue lightning. Your hostess learns from the servants that poor Miss Clara went to bed in great grief; the cat having killed her canary in the afternoon. It has been a sad day for poor Clara, from the adventures of her bird: but she is now fast asleep.

Your host amuses you with anecdotes of South country life. He asks you how you were struck with Mrs L., whose call you returned yesterday. You reply that she seems a cheerful, hearty personage, who makes the best of a poor lot; and you relate how pleased you were at the frankness with which she owned, pointing to the stocking she was darning, that she knew little of books nowadays, or of music, as she was making shirts and darning stockings for her sons, all the year round. You were sorry to see such evidences of poverty: chairs with broken backs, and a piano with three legs, and a cracked flute: but glad that Mrs L. seemed able to look on the bright side of things. Your host throws himself back, and laughs for three minutes: and when he recovers, informs you that Mrs L. is the wealthiest widow in the State. You protest that you looked upon her with respect as a meritorious widow, doing her best for a large family. Your host repeats that she is the richest widow in the State; and that she and all her family are odd about money. She has a sister in a neighbouring State, Mrs M., who is even more bent upon economy. Last year Mrs L. visited this sister, who lives in a country town. The sisters went out in Mrs M.’s carriage, to make calls and do shopping. Mrs L. observed that her sister’s carriage was attended by a little mulatto girl, who let down the steps, and put them up, and mounted behind very dexterously. “The child is clever enough,” said Mrs L.: “but, sister, your carriage should have a proper footman. You should not be seen in town with a girl behind your carriage.” Mrs M. promised to consider the matter. The next day, a spruce mulatto lad was in waiting, of whom Mrs L. fully approved. When she looked in his face, however, as he was letting down the steps at the entrance of a store, she was struck by his remarkable likeness to the girl of yesterday, and observed upon it. Mrs M. laughed, and owned she had got suit of boy’s clothes made since yesterday, for the girl to wear during morning drives: and she thought this an excellent plan. Many such a story does your host amuse you with; observing that, though America has fewer humorists than England, they may be met with in abundance in rare settlements and retired districts, where they can indulge their fancies without much suffering from public opinion.

The storm abates. You are the oracle as to what o’clock it is; and, as you are confident that it is near eleven, the chamber lights are brought. You dismiss your dusky attendants, and throw yourself on your ample sofa for half an hour, to recall what you have seen and heard this day, and meditate on the scope and tendencies of Country Life in the Southern States.

Volume 2

City Life in the South

“Ye thus hospitably live.

And strangers with good cheer receive.”

Prior

“Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Reverbs no hollowness.”

Shakspeare

The disasters of our railroad journey to Charleston have been described elsewhere.[14] We were to have arrived at the city about six P.M. of the 10th of March, when every object would have looked bright in the sunshine of a spring evening. As it was, we reached the railroad station at ten minutes past four the next morning. There was much delay in obtaining our luggage, and getting away from the station. We could not think of disturbing the slumbers of the friends whose hospitality we were about to enjoy; and we therefore proceeded in the omnibus which was in waiting, to the Planters’ Hotel. We were all hungry, having scarcely tasted food since noon the day before; and very weary, having travelled the whole of two nights, and enjoyed no sufficient rest since we left Richmond, nine days before. Every little event became a great one to persons so exhausted. The omnibus jolted and stopped, and we were told that an accident had happened. The gentlemen got out, but the darkness was total. A light was brought from a private house, and it appeared that a wheel had touched the kerbstone! It seemed as if horses were never backed in Charleston, so long were we in proceeding. When I afterwards saw what the streets of Charleston are like. I did not wonder at any extreme of caution in a driver. The soil is a fine sand, which after rain turns into a most deceptive mud; and there is very little pavement yet. The deficiency of stone is, however, becoming supplied by importation, and the inhabitants hope soon to be able to walk about the city in all weathers, without danger of being lost in crossing the streets. They told me, as an on dit, that a horse was drowned, last winter, in a mudhole, in a principal street.

At the hotel, all was dark and comfortless. We made a stir among the servants: the gentlemen got two men to light a fire, and fetch us wine and biscuits; and we persuaded two women to make up beds, and warm some water. We were foolish enough to be tempted to take wine and water, as we could have neither tea nor coffee; and when we rose from our unrefreshing sleep, an hour after noon, we formed such a dismal group of aching heads as could hardly be matched out of a hospital.

Two of us proceeded, in a light pretty hack-carriage, to the friend’s house where we were expected. Nothing could be more considerate than our reception. A pile of English and American letters and newspapers awaited us; and our hostess knew that we must be fatigued: a fire was therefore immediately lighted in my chamber, and we were told that the day was our own; that our dinner would be sent up to us, and that we should not be expected in the drawing room till we chose to join the family. I shall not soon forget the refreshment of lingering over family letters and London newspapers; of feeling that we were not liable to be called up in the dark for a fortnight at least; and of seeing my clothes laid in drawers, for the first time, I think, since I landed. A chest of drawers is seldom to be seen in the chambers, – or, at least, in the guest chambers of American houses. We were favoured in the article of closets, with rows of pegs; but I believe I had the use of a chest of drawers only two or three times during my travels.

A circumstance happened this day, which, as being illustrative of manners, may be worth relating. The day before I left Richmond, Virginia, two companions and myself had employed a hack-carriage, driven by a black, for some hours; and on dismissing him had paid the fare, which we thought reasonable – two dollars and a half. The proprietor of the carriage, and master of the driver, had by some means heard who it was that had been his customer. Finding that I had left Richmond, he took the trouble to send the two dollars and a half down to Charleston, five hundred miles, with a message that it was not for the honour of Virginia that I should pay carriage hire! and the money was awaiting me on my arrival.

I had soon reason to perceive that Charleston deserves its renown for hospitality. A lecturer on phrenology sent us tickets for his course: six carriages were immediately placed at my disposal, and the servants came every morning for orders for the day. The difficulty was to use them all and equally: but, by employing one for the morning drive, and another for the evening visiting, we contrived to show our friends that we were willing to avail ourselves of their kindness. I believe there was scarcely a morning during our stay when some pretty present did not arrive before I rose: sometimes it was a bouquet of hyacinths, which were extremely rare that year, from the lateness and severity of the frosts: sometimes it was a dish of preserve or marmalade; sometimes a feather fan. when the day promised to be hot; sometimes a piece of Indian work; sometimes of indigenous literary production. One morning, I found on my window seat a copy of the Southern Review, and a bouquet of hyacinths from General Hayne; and the next, a basket of wafers from Mrs P.; and the third, a set of cambric handkerchiefs, inimitably marked with complimentary devices, from Mrs W.

In the midst of all this, there was no little watchfulness among a totally different set of persons, about my proceedings with regard to the negroes, I had not been in the city twenty-four hours before we were amused with ridiculous reports of my championship on behalf of the blacks; and long after I had left the place, reported speeches of mine were in circulation which were remarkably striking to me when I at length heard them. This circumstance shows how irritable the minds of the people are upon this topic. I met with no difficulty, however, among my associates. I made it a rule to allow others to introduce the subject of slavery, knowing that they would not fail to do so, and that I might learn as much from their method of approaching the topic as from any thing they could say upon it. Before half an hour had passed, every man, woman or child I might be conversing with had entered upon the question. As it was likewise a rule with me never to conceal or soften my own opinions, and never to allow myself to be irritated by what I heard, (for it is too serious a subject to indulge frailties with) the best understanding existed between slaveholders and myself. We never quarrelled; while I believe we never failed to perceive the extent of the difference of opinion and feeling between us. I met with much more cause for admiration in their frankness than reason to complain of illiberality. The following may serve as a specimen of this part of our intercourse:

The first time I met an eminent Southern gentleman, a defender of slavery, he said to me (within the half hour) –

“I wish you would not be in such a hurry away. I wish you would stay a year in this city. I wish you would stay ten years; and then you would change your opinions.”

“What opinions?”

“Your opinions on slavery.”

“What do you know of my opinions on slavery?”

“Oh, we know them well enough: we have all read Demerara.”

“Very well: now we shall understand each other; for I must tell you that I think about slavery exactly as I did when I wrote that story. Nothing, that I have seen shows me that I have anything to qualify of what is said there. So now you do know my opinions.”

“Oh yes. I don’t want to know anything more of your opinions. I want you to know mine.”

“That is exactly what I want. When will you let me have them?”

We had engaged to dine with this gentleman the next week: it was now arranged that our party should go two hours earlier than the other guests, in order to hear this gentleman’s exposition of slavery. He was well prepared; and his statement of facts and reasons was clear, ready, and entertaining. The fault was in the narrowness of his premises; for his whole argument was grounded on the supposition that human rights consist in sufficient subsistence in return for labour. Before he began I told him that I fully understood his wish not to argue the question, and that I came to hear his statement, not to controvert it; but that I must warn him not to take my silence for assent. Upon this understanding we proceeded; with some little irritability on his part when I asked questions, but with no danger of any quarrel. I never found the slightest difficulty in establishing a similar clear understanding with every slaveholder I met. In the drawing room of the boarding house at Richmond, Virginia, three gentlemen, two of whom were entire strangers, attacked me in the presence of a pretty large company, one afternoon. This was a direct challenge, which I did not think fit to decline, and we had it all out. They were irritable at first, but softened as they went on; and when, at the end of three hours, we had exhausted the subject, we were better friends than when we began.

Some of the reports of my championship of the negroes arose from a circumstance which occurred the day after my arrival at Charleston. Our host proposed to take us up a church steeple, to obtain a view of the city and its environs. The key of the church was at the Guard House opposite; and our host said we might as well go for it ourselves, and thus get a sight of the Guard House. One of the city authorities showed us over it; and we stayed a few moments in a room where a lady was preferring a complaint against two negro boys for robbing a hen roost. They were proved guilty, and sentenced to be flogged at the place of punishment at the other end of the city.

The view from the church steeple was very fine; and the whole, steeped in spring sunshine, had an oriental air which took me by surprise. The city was spread out beneath us in a fan-like form, its streets converging towards the harbour. The heat and moisture of the climate give to the buildings the hue of age so as to leave nothing of the American air of spruceness in the aspect of the place. The sandy streets, the groups of mulattoes, the women with turbaned heads, surmounted with water-pots and baskets of fruit; the small panes of the house windows; the yucca bristling in the gardens below us, and the hot haze through which we saw the blue main and its islands, all looked so oriental, as to strike us with wonder. We saw Ashley and Cooper rivers, bringing down produce to the main, and were taught the principal buildings, – the churches, and the Custom House, built just before the Revolution, – and the leading streets, – Broad and Meeting Streets intersecting, and affording access to all that we were to see. It would be wise in travellers to make it their first business in a foreign city to climb the loftiest point they can reach, so as to have the scene they are to explore laid out as in a living map beneath them. It is scarcely credible how much time is saved, and confusion of ideas obviated by these means. I gained much by mounting the State House at Boston, Pennsylvania Hospital at Philadelphia; the new hotel at Baltimore; the Capitol at Washington; the high hills about Cincinnati; the college at Lexington; the hill where the State House is to be at Nashville; the Cotton press at New Orleans; and this church steeple at Charleston.

Another care of the traveller should be to glance at the local newspapers. This first morning I found a short newspaper article which told volumes. It was an Ordinance for raising ways and means for the city. Charitable and religious institutions were left free from taxation; as were the salaries of the clergy and schoolmasters. There was a direct levy on real property, on slaves, and on carriages, and a special tax on free people of colour: a class who, being precluded from obtaining taxable property and luxuries, were yet made to pay by means of a poll tax.

Our mornings were divided between receiving callers, and drives about the city, and in the country. The country is flat and sandy; and the only objects are planters’ mansions, surrounded with evergreen woods; the gardens exhibiting the tropical yucca, and fenced with hedges of the Cherokee rose. From the lower part of the city, glimpses of the main may be had; but the intervening space is very ugly, except at high tide; an expanse of reeking slime, over which large flocks of buzzards are incessantly hovering. On the top of each of the long row of stakes discovered at low water sits a buzzard. A fine is imposed for killing one of these birds, – the unsalaried scavengers of the moister districts of the city.

The houses which we visited in returning calls were generally handsome; with capacious piazzas, rich plants and bouquets, and good furniture. The political bias of the inhabitant was often discoverable from the books on the table, or the prints and casts on the walls. In no society in the world could the division of parties be more distinct, and their alienation more threatening than in Charleston, at the time I was there.[15] The Union gentlemen and ladies wore dispirited and timid. They asked one another’s opinion whether there was not some mysterious stir among the Nullifiers; whether they were not concerting measures for a new defiance of the General Government. This anxious watchfulness contrasted strangely with the arrogant bearing of the leading Nullifiers. During my stay, Mr Calhoun and his family arrived from Congress; and there was something very striking in the welcome he received, like that of a chief returned to the bosom of his clan. He stalked about like a monarch of the little domain; and there was certainly an air of mysterious understanding between him and his followers; whether there was really any great secret under it or not. One lady who had contributed ample amounts of money to the Nullification funds, and a catechism to Nullification lore, amused while she grieved me by the strength of her political feelings. While calling on her, one morning, the conversation turned on prints, and I asked an explanation of a strange-looking one which hung opposite my eye; the portrait of a gentleman, the top of the head and the dress visible, but the face obliterated or covered over. She was only too ready to explain. It was a portrait of President Jackson, which she had hung up in days when he enjoyed her favour. Since Nullification she had covered over the face, to show how she hated him. A stranger hardly knows what to think of a cause whose leaders will flatter and cherish the perpetrators of a piece of petty spite like this: yet this lady is treated as if she were a main pillar of the Nullification party.

Some of our mornings were spent in going with the Hayne and Calhoun families to the public library, to a panorama, and to the arsenal. The library is supported by private subscriptions, and is very creditable to the city, whose zeal about its books might well have been exhausted by the repeated destruction of the library by fire, and in the war. We amused ourselves with files of newspapers, which have survived all disasters, – old London Gazettes and colonial papers extending as far back as 1678.

We visited the arsenal twice; the second time with Mr Calhoun and Governor Hayne, when we saw the arms and ammunition, which were not visible the first time, because “the key was not on the premises;” a token that no invasion was immediately expected. There were two bombs brought in by Governor Hayne; and all the warlike apparatus which was made ready during the Nullification struggle. It is difficult to believe that Mr Calhoun seriously meant to go to war with such means as his impoverished State could furnish; but there is no doubt that he did intend it. The ladies were very animated in their accounts of their State Rights Ball, held in the area of the arsenal; and of their subscriptions of jewels to the war fund. They were certainly in earnest.

The soldiers were paraded in our presence, some eleven or twelve recruits, I believe: and then Mr Calhoun first, and Governor Hayne afterwards, uncovered and addressed them with us much gravity and effusion of patriotic sentiment, as if we had been standing on the verge of a battlefield. Some of our party were of Union politics; and they looked exceedingly arch during the speechifying. It will be too sad if this child’s play should be turned into bloodshed after all, for the gratification of any man’s restless ambition, or in the guilty hope of protracting slavery under the reprobation of the whole of society, except a small band of mercenaries.

My chief interest in these expeditions was in the personages who accompanied me. Governor Hayne’s name is well known in England, from his having furnished the provocation to Webster’s renowned speech, exhibiting the constitutional argument against Nullification: and from his being afterwards the leader of the struggle in South Carolina, while Mr Calhoun fulfilled the same function in Congress. He is descended from the Haynes whose cruel sufferings in the Revolutionary War are notorious, to the disgrace of the British: one of the two brothers having perished through the miseries of a British prison ship, and the other having been hanged by Lord Rawdon and Colonel Balfour, under circumstances which, I believe, justify the horror and reprobation with which the act is viewed by all who have heard the story. It is one of the most dreadful tales of the Revolutionary War; and the English have not been behind the Americans in their feeling with regard to the case. The circumstances are briefly these:

Colonel Isaac Hayne was a peaceful planter at the time of the breaking out of the war. He lived upon his estate all the year round, and was remarkably quiet and domestic in his temper and habits. He served in the American army during the siege of Charleston; and on the fall of the city returned to his plantation, under the guarantee of security to person and property, shared by all who had capitulated at Charleston. The smallpox broke out in his family; all his children had it; one was dead, and his wife dying, when Colonel Hayne received peremptory orders to repair to the British standard, to take up arms as a British subject, or to surrender himself prisoner at Charleston. He declared that no force should separate him from his dying wife and children, and asserted his inviolability under the capitulation of Charleston. The British officer, Colonel Bellingall, who brought the order, assured him of his immediate return home if he would repair to Charleston, to give an assurance that he would “demean himself as a British subject, while the country should be covered with a British army.” Colonel Hayne went, with the written agreement of Colonel Bellingall in his hand. He was, however, detained, and offered the alternative of lasting imprisonment, or of signing an unconditional promise to obey orders as a British subject. He declared that he never would bear arms against his country, and was assured that this act would never be required of him. There were several witnesses to his having signed under this protest and assurance. He returned to his family, finding another of his children dead, and his wife just expiring.

He observed the strictest neutrality while the promise under which he signed was kept. His house was alternately occupied by English and American troops, when the prospects of the republicans began to improve; and he is known to have refused to let his horses be used by friends in the American force, – in short, to have kept his engagement like a man of honour. His position was, however, considered too perilous an one, and he was summoned to join the British standard. He considered that this was such a violation of a promise on the part of the British officers as set him free. He joined his countrymen, fought, and was captured. He was imprisoned at Charleston for some weeks till Lord Rawdon came to town, and then, after two days’ notice, brought before a Court of Inquiry, consisting of four general officers and five captains. Having no idea that this was anything more than a preliminary measure, and finding that the members of the Court were not sworn, nor the witnesses examined on oath, Colonel Hayne called no witnesses, and the proceedings closed without his being aware that he had gone through an affair of life or death. He was wholly taken by surprise, therefore, at the news conveyed to him by letter that he was to die on the gibbet the next day but one. He was respited for forty-eight hours, in order that he might see his children, and in consideration of the “humane treatment shown by him to the British prisoners who fell into his hands;” and he spent the interval in the discharge of business and affectionate intercourse with his friends. His chief regret was, that this act would probably provoke retaliation, and so lead to the shedding of much innocent blood. He required his eldest son, a boy of thirteen, to be present at his execution, in order to receive his body, and see that it was laid in the family burial place. The boy, frantic with grief, declared that he should not long survive him: and it is not surprising that he shortly became insane, and died. Colonel Hayne met his fate with a tranquillity which convinced his enemies that (to use their own words) “though he did not die in a good cause, he must, at least, have acted from a persuasion of its being so.”

Such stories are very painful; but they ought not to be forgotten. The horrors of colonial war may not be over; and it is well that the conflicts of duty and affection which can take place only in wars of this character should be remembered, while Great Britain has colonies which she may oppress, and noble subjects, like Colonel Hayne, whom she may be even now alienating, and whose contrariety of affections she may be yet again driven or tempted to solve in blood.

The present representative of the family was made Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives at the age of twenty-seven. He was afterwards Attorney General of the State, a senator in Congress, and Governor of the State. During the preparations for war in 1832, he was the soul of every movement. He is now considered to be deeply involved in the Southern transactions relating to the acquisition of Texas, whatever these may in reality be, and to have linked his fortunes with the slavery question. When I saw him he was forty-four years of age, with a robust, active frame, a lively, pleasant countenance, and very engaging manners, – with much of the eagerness of the schoolboy, mixed with the ease of the gentleman. He can do everything better than reason, as appeared in the senatorial conflict, in which he was ground to powder by the tremendous weight and force of Webster’s constitutional argument and sound declamation. Governor Hayne can state clearly, enforce ardently, illustrate gracefully, and boast magnificently; but he cannot reason. His best friends are probably the most anxious to admit this; for there is such want of reason in his present course of opposition to the first principles on which society is founded, and in his attachment to worn out feudal institutions, that the observer, however friendly, finds himself reduced to the alternative of supposing this busy mind perverted by unholy passions, or by an unbalanced imagination.

Governor Hamilton is less known at a distance; but he is, perhaps, a yet more perfect representative of the Southern gentlemen. He is handsome, and his manners have all the grace, without much of the arrogance of the bearing of his class. I was much struck too with his generous appreciation of the powers and virtues of the great men of every party at Washington: a moral grace which I should have been glad to see shared in a greater degree by some of his neighbours. Governor Hamilton has done what he could to impair the favourable impressions he makes upon all who know him by the atrocious Report he issued in 1835, as Chairman of a Committee of the South Carolina Legislature appointed to consider what steps should be taken in defence of “the peculiar domestic institutions of the South.” This report is unconstitutional in its requisitions, and savage in its spirit towards the abolitionist.

With these gentlemen, their friends, and the ladies of their families, we saw many sights, and passed many pleasant hours: and with gentlemen and ladies of the opposite party we spent other portions of our leisure. I was told much of the Poorhouse, rather in a tone of boasting; and I was anxious to see what a Poorhouse could be in a region where all labourers are private property, and where pauperism would therefore seem to be obviated. Infirmity, vice, and orphanhood keep up a small amount of pauperism, even here; reducing capitalists to a state of dependence. There were about 120 inmates when I visited the institution; and the number was soon to be reduced by the periodical clearance made by sending the children to the Orphan House, and the insane to the State asylum at Columbia. The intemperate and vagrants were employed in coffin making and stone breaking. By a slight stretch of the law, persons found drunk are sent here and locked up for a month. We saw two respectable-looking men who had been brought in intoxicated the day before, and who looked duly ashamed of their situation.

The orphan House has been established about forty years; and it contained, at the time of my visit, 200 children. As none but whites are admitted, it is found to be no encouragement to vice to admit all destitute children whether orphans or not; for the licentiousness of the South takes the women of colour for its victims. The children in this establishment are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic; and the girls sewing: but the prejudice against work appears as much here as any where. No active labour goes on: the boys do not even garden. No employment is attempted which bears any resemblance to what is done by slaves. The boys are apprenticed out to trades at fourteen; and the girls to mantua-making; almost the only employment in which a white Southern woman can earn a subsistence. The children are taken in from the age of two years; but they generally enter at the ages of four, five, or six. I was rather surprised to see them badged; an anti-republican practice which had better be abolished; but I wondered the less when I observed the statue of Pitt still standing in the court-yard; with the right arm shot off in the war, however. There is a good-sized church connected with this establishment, which was well filled on the afternoon when I went with the family of a friend, who was taking his turn with his brother clergy to preach.

Charleston is the place in which to see those contrasting scenes of human life brought under the eye which moralists gather together for the purpose of impressing the imagination. The stranger has but to pass from street to street, to live from hour to hour in this city, to witness in conjunction the extremes between which there is everywhere else a wide interval. The sights of one morning I should remember if every other particular of my travels were forgotten. I was driven round the city by a friend whose conversation was delightful all the way. Though I did not agree in all his views of society, the thoughtfulness of his mind and the benevolence of his exertions betokened a healthy state of feeling, and gave value to all he said. He had been a friend of the lamented Grimké; and he showed me the house where Grimké lived and died, and told me much of him, – of the nobleness of his character, the extent of his attainments, and how, dying at fifty-four, he had lived by industry a long life. My mind was full of the contemplation of the heights which human beings are destined to reach, when I was plunged into a new scene – one which it was my own conscientious choice to visit, but for which the preceding conversation had ill-prepared me. I went into the slave market, – a place which the traveller ought not to avoid, to spare his feelings. There was a table, on which stood two auctioneers: one with a hammer, the other to exhibit “the article,” and count the bids. The slaves for sale were some of them in groups below; and some in a long row behind the auctioneers. The sale of a man was just concluding when we entered the market. A woman, with two children, one at the breast, and another holding by her apron, composed the next lot. The restless, jocose zeal of the auctioneer who counted the bids was the most infernal sight I ever beheld. The woman was a mulatto; she was nearly dressed, with a clean apron, and a yellow head-handkerchief. The elder child clung to her. She hung her head low, lower, and still lower on her breast, yet turning her eyes incessantly form side to side, with an intensity of expectation which showed that she had not reached the last stage of despair. I should have thought that her agony of shame and dread would have silenced the tongue of every spectator: but it was not so. A lady chose this moment to turn to me and say, with a cheerful air of complacency: “You know my theory, – that the one race must be subservient to the other. I do not care which; and if the blacks should ever have the upper hand, I should not mind standing on that table, and being sold with two of my children.” Who could help saying within himself. “Would you were! So that that mother were released!” Who could help seeing in vision the blacks driving the whites into the field, and preaching from the pulpits of Christian churches the doctrines now given out there, that God has respect of persons, that men are to hold each other as property, instead of regarding each other as brethren; and that the right interpretation of the golden rule by the slaveholder is, “Do unto your slaves as you would wish your master to do unto you, if you were a slave?” A little boy of eight or nine years old, apparently, was next put up alone. There was no bearing the child’s look of helplessness and shame. It seemed like an outrage to be among the starers from whom he shrunk; and we went away before he was disposed of.

We next entered a number of fine houses where we were presented with flowers, and entertained with lively talk about the small affairs of gay society which to little minds are great. To me every laugh had lost its gaiety, every courtesy had lost its grace, all intercourse had lost its innocence. It was a relief to think of Grimké in his grave, escaped from the hell in which we were pent. If there be a scene which might stagger the faith of the spirit of Christianity itself, – if there be an experience which might overthrow its serenity, it is the transition from the slave market to the abodes of the slave masters, bright with sunshine, and gay with flowers, with courtesies and mirth.

If the moral gloom which oppresses the spirit of the stranger were felt by the residents, of course this condition of society would not endure another day. Much trouble is experienced, and there are many sighs over the system; but the anxiety is not to any great number what it is to the sisters of Grimké, – such a poisoner of life as to induce them to sacrifice property, home, friends, and repose, in order to obtain ease of mind for themselves, and to do something towards destroying the curse by which their native region is blighted. Every day shows how many mansions there are in this hell; how variously the universally allowed evil visits minds of different strength and discernment. All suffer, from the frivolous and sophisticated child to the farseeing and disciplined saint. The difficulty is to have patience with the diversity, and to wait, as God waits, till the moral gloom strikes upon every heart, and causes every eye to turn for light where some already see it. At the same hour when the customary sins of the slave market were being perpetrated, hundreds of the little people of Charleston were preparing for their childish pleasures, – their merry dancing schools, their juvenile fancy balls, – ordering their little slaves about, and allowing themselves to be fanned by black attendants while reposing in preparation for the fatigues of the evening: ministers of the gospel were agreeing to deprive persons of colour of all religious education: a distant Lynch mob was outraging the person of a free and innocent citizen: elegant ladies were administering hospitality, and exchanging gossip and sentiment: and Angelina Grimké was penning the letter which contains the following passages; – a private letter to a friend who was shortly to undergo the strengthening process of being mobbed:

I can hardly express to thee the deep and solemn interest with which I have viewed the violent proceedings of the last few weeks. Although I expected opposition, yet I was not prepared for it so soon – it took me by surprise, and I greatly feared Abolitionists would be driven back in the first onset, and thrown into confusion. So fearful was I, that though I clung with unflinching firmness to our principles, yet I was afraid to even opening one of thy papers, lest I should see some indications of compromise, some surrender, some palliation. Under these feelings. I was urged to read thy Appeal to the citizens of Boston. Judge, then, what were my feelings on finding that my fears were utterly groundless, and that thou stoodest firm in the midst of the storm, determined to suffer and to die, rather than yield one inch.

Religious persecution always begins with mobs. It is always unprecedented in the age or country in which it commences, and therefore there are no laws by which Reformers can be punished: consequently, a lawless band of unprincipled men determine to take the matter into their own hands, and act out in mobs what they know are the principles of a large majority of these who are too high in Church and State to condescend to mingle with them, though they secretly approve and rejoice over their violent measures. The first Christian martyr was stoned by a lawless mob; and if we look at the rise of various sects. Methodists, Friends, &c., we shall find that mobs began the persecution against them, and that it was not until after the people had spoken out their wishes that laws were framed to fine, imprison, or destroy them. Let us then be prepared for the enactment of laws, even in our free States, against Abolitionists. And how ardently has the prayer been breathed, that God would prepare us for all that he is preparing for us!

My mind has been especially turned towards those who are standing in the forefront of the battle; and the prayer has gone up for their preservation – not the preservation of their lives, but the preservation of their minds in humility and patience, faith, hope, and charity. If persecution is the means which God has ordained for the accomplishment of this great end, – Emancipation, – then, in dependence upon him for strength to bear it, I feel as if I could say, ‘Let it come;’ for it is my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction, that this is a cause worth dying for.

At one time, I thought this system would be overthrown in blood, with the confused noise of the warrior; but a hope gleams across my mind, that our blood will be spilt, instead of the slaveholders’; our lives will be taken, and theirs spared. I say ‘a hope,’ for of all things I desire to be spared the anguish of seeing our beloved country desolated with the horrors of a servile war.

The writer of this letter was born into the system, under the same circumstances with the ladies who repeatedly asked me if I did not find that the slaves were very happy. So widely different are the influences of the same circumstances upon different minds!

Our evening engagements were as strangely contrasted as those of the morning. We were at parties where we heard loud talk of justice and oppression, – appeals to the eternal principles of the one, when the tariff was the subject, and expressions of the most passionate detestation of the other which might, but for the presence of black faces in the rooms, lead a stranger to suppose that he was in the very sanctuary of human rights. We were at a young heiress’s first ball, where every guest was presented with a bouquet on entering; where the young ladies waltzed, and the young gentlemen gave a loose to their spirits, and all who were present had kindly greetings for the stranger. Nothing could be gayer than the external aspect of these entertainments; but it is impossible for the stranger to avoid being struck with the anxiety which shows itself through it all. I think I never was in society in any of the southern cities without being asked what I would do if I had a legacy of slaves, or told, in vindictiveness or sorrow, that the prosperity of the North was obtained at the expense of the South. I was never in southern society without perceiving that its characteristic is a want of repose. It is restlessly gay, or restlessly sorrowful. It is angry, or exulting; it is hopeful, or apprehensive. It is never content; never in such a state of calm satisfaction as to forget itself. This peculiarity poisons the satisfaction of the stranger in the midst of the free and joyous hospitality to which he would otherwise surrender himself with inconsiderate delight. While every thing is done that can be conceived of to make you happy, there is a weight pulling at your heartstrings, because you see that other hearts are heavy; and the nobler the heavier. While the host’s little child comes to you at first sight, and holds up her mouth for a kiss, and offers to tell you a story, and pours out all her mirth and all her generosity upon you, the child’s father tells you that there is a dark prospect before these young creatures, and Heaven knows what lot is in store for them. Your vigilance is kept active by continual suggestions that society is composed of two classes which entertain a mortal dread of each other. If ever you forget this for an hour, it is recalled by the sight of a soldier at the corner of a street, of a decaying mansion or deserted estate, or of some anti-republican arrangement for social or domestic defence. You reproach yourself because you are anxious and cannot be deceived; and feel as if it were ingratitude to your entertainers not to think them the secure and happy people which, in alternation with their complaints of all the external world, they assure you they are.

Our evenings were diversified with attendance upon phrenological lectures, – which, however, soon ceases to be a variety, from the absolute sameness of all courses of lectures on that subject, – with readings at home, and with a visit to a scene which I was strongly urged not to omit, – the Saturday night’s market, held by the slaves.

I should have been sorry to miss this spectacle. The slaves enjoy the amusement and profit yielded by this market. They sit in rows, by lamp light, some with heaps of fruit and vegetables before them; or surrounded by articles of their own manufacture, – boxes, bedsteads, baskets, and other handiworks, very cheap, and of good workmanship. The bananas, pines, imported apples, and oranges, which are seen in threat abundance, are usually the property of the master: while the manufactured articles, made at spare hours, are nominally the slave’s own. Some are allowed to make use of their leisure in preparing for the market, on condition of bringing their masters six dollars each, per week, retaining whatever surplus they may gain. I could not learn the consequence of failing to bring in the six dollars per week. They enjoy the fun and bustle of the market, and look with complacency on any white customers who will attend it. Their activity and merriment at market were pointed out to me as an assurance of their satisfaction with their condition, their conviction that their present position is the one they were made for, and in which their true happiness is to be found.

At the very same moment, I was shown the ruins of the church of St Philip, destroyed by fire, as they frowned in the roar of the lamplight; and I was informed that the church had once before been on fire, but had been saved by the exertions of a slave, who “had his liberty given him for a reward.”

“A reward!” said I; “What! when the slaves are convinced that their true happiness lies in slavery?”

The conversation had come to an awkward pass. A lady advanced to the rescue, saying that some few, too many, were haunted by a pernicious fancy, put into their heads by others, about liberty; – a mere fancy, which, however, made them like the idea of freedom.

“So the benefactor of the city was rewarded by being indulged, to his own hurt, in a pernicious fancy?”

“Why… yes.”

My impressions of Charleston may easily be gathered from what I have said. It seems to me a place of great activity, without much intellectual result: of great gaiety, without much ease and pleasure, I am confident that, whatever might be the reason, the general mind was full of mystery and anxiety at the time of my visit; and that some hearts were glowing with ambitious hopes, and others sinking in fears, more or less clearly defined, of the political crisis which seems to be now at hand. These are the influences which are educating the youth of Charleston, more powerfully than all schools and colleges, and all books; inducing a reliance on physical rather than moral force, and strengthening attachment to feudal notions of honour, and of every kind of good, – notions which have no affinity with true republican morals. This prospects of the citizens are “dark every way;” as some declared: for the rising; generation must either ascend, through a severe discipline, and prodigious sacrifices, to a conformity with republican principles; or descend into a condition of solitary feudalism, neither sanctioned by the example nor cheered by the sympathy of the world; but, on the contrary, regarded with that compassion which is precisely the last species of regard which the feudal spirit is able to endure.

We left Charleston in company with Mr Calhoun and his family, The great Nullifier told me many and long stories of his early days. Not being aware of my strong impressions respecting his present views and purposes, he could have no idea of the intense interest with which I listened to his accounts of the first kindling of his burning mind. He was five years old, standing between his father’s knees, when his first political emotions stirred within him, awakened by his parent’s talk of the colony and of free times, just after the Revolution. If some good angel had at that moment whispered the parent, inspiring him to direct that young ambition to the ultimate grandeur of meek service; to animate that high spirit to a moral conflict with all human wrongs, we might already have owed to a mind so energetic the redemption of the negro race from the affliction, and of the Republic from the disgrace of slavery, instead of mourning over the dedication of such powers to the propagation and exasperation of the curse. I feared how it would be, – what part he would take in the present struggle between the two principles of greatness, physical force with territorial conquest, and moral power shown in self-conquest. I feared that Mr Calhoun would organise and head the feudal party, – as he has done: but I never had any fears that that party would prevail. When we parted at Branchville, he little knew, – he might have been offended if he had known, – with what affectionate solicitude those whom he left behind looked on into his perilous political path. I am glad we could not foresee how soon our fears would be justified. Mr Calhoun is at present insisting that the pirate colony of Texas shall be admitted into the honourable American Union; that a new impulse shall thereby be given to the slave trade, and a new extension to slavery: and that his country shall thereby surrender her moral supremacy among the nations for a gross and antiquated feudal ambition. He vows, taking the whole Union to witness, that these things shall be. The words have publicly passed his pen and his lips, “Texas shall be annexed to the United States.” His best friends must hope that the whole world will say, “It shall not.”

Volume 2

Restless Slaves

“O! das Leben, Valer,

Hat Reize, die wir nie gekamut – Wir haben

Des schönen Lebens öde Küste nur

Wie ein umirrend Räubervolk befharen

Was is den innern Thälern Köstliehes

Das land verbirgt, O! davon – davon ist

Auf unsrer wilden Fahrt uns niehts ersehienen.”

Schiller

“We ask

But to put forth our strength, our human strength,

All starting fairly, all equipped alike.

Gifted alike, and eagle-eyed, true-hearted,”

Paracelsus

The traveller in America hears, on every hand, of the fondness of slaves for slavery. If he points to the little picture of a runaway prefixed to advertisements of fugitives, and repeated down whole columns of the first newspaper that comes to hand, he is met with anecdotes of slaves who have been offered their freedom, and prefer remaining in bondage. Both aspects of the question are true; and yet more may be said on both sides. The traveller finds, as he proceeds, that suicides are very frequent among slaves; and that there is a race of Africans who will not endure bondage at all, and who, when smuggled from Africa into Louisiana, are avoided in the market by purchasers, though they have great bodily strength and comeliness. When one of this race is accidentally purchased and taken home, he is generally missed, before twenty-four hours are over, and found hanging behind a door, or drowned in the nearest pond. The Cuba slaveholders have volumes of stories to tell of his race proving their incapacity for slavery. On the other hand, the traveller may meet with a few negroes who have returned into slave-land from a state of freedom, and besought their masters to take them back.

These seeming contradictions admit of an easy explanation. Slaves are more or less degraded by slavery in proportion to their original strength of character, or educational discipline of mind. The most degraded are satisfied, the least degraded are dissatisfied with slavery. The lowest order prefer release from duties and cares to the enjoyment of rights and the possession of themselves; and the highest order have a directly opposite taste. The mistake lies in not perceiving that slavery is emphatically condemned by the conduct of both.

The stories on the one side of the question are all alike. The master offers freedom, – of course to the worst of his slaves, – to those who are more plague than profit. Perhaps he sends the fellow he wants to get rid of on some errand into a free State, hoping that he will not return. The man comes back; and if questioned as to or he did not stay where he might have been free, he replies that he knows better than to work hard for a precarious living when he can be fed by his master without anxiety of his own, as long as he lives. As for those who return after having been free, they are usually the weak-minded, who have been persuaded into remaining in a free State where they have been carried in attendance on their masters families, and who want courage to sustain their unprotected freedom. I do not remember ever hearing of the return of a slave who, having long nourished the idea and purpose of liberty, had absconded with danger and difficulty. The prosecution of such a purpose argues a strength of mind worthy of freedom.

The stories on this side of the question are as various as the characters and fortunes of the heroes of them. Many facts of this nature became known to me during my travels, most of which cannot be published, for fear of involving in difficulty either the escaped heroes, or those who assisted them in regaining their liberty. But a few may be safely related, which will show, as well as any greater number, the kind of restlessness which is the torment of the lives of “persons held to labour,” – the constitutional description of the slave class of the constituents of government.

Slavery is nowhere more hopeless and helpless than in Alabama. The richness of the soil and the paucity of inhabitants make the labourer a most valuable possession: while his distance from any free State, – the extent of country overspread with enemies which the fugitive has to traverse, – makes the attempt to escape desperate. All coloured persons travelling in the Slave States without a pass, – a certificate of freedom or of leave, – are liable to be arrested and advertised, and if unclaimed at the end of a certain time, sold in the market. Yet slaves do continue to escape from the farthest corners of Alabama or Mississippi. Two slaves in Alabama, who had from their early manhood cherished the idea of freedom, planned their escape in concert, and laboured for many years at their scheme. They were allowed the profits of their labour at over-hours: and by strenuous toil and self-denial, saved and hid a large sum of money. Last year, they found they had enough, and that the time was come for the execution of their purpose. They engaged the services of “a mean white:” – one of the extremely degraded class who are driven by loss of character to labour in the slave States, where, labour by whites being disgraceful, they are looked down upon by the slaves, no less than the slaves are by the superior whites. These two slaves hired a “mean white man” to personate a gentleman; bought him a suit of good clothes, a portmanteau, a carriage and horses, and proper costume for themselves. One night the three set off in style, as master, coachman and footman, and travelled rapidly through the whole country, without the slightest hindrance, to Buffalo. There the slaves sold their carriage, horses, and finery, paid off their white man, and escaped into Canada, where they now are in safety.

They found in Canada a society of their own colour prepared to welcome and aid them. In Upper Canada there are upwards of 10,000 people of colour, chiefly fugitive slaves, who prosper in the country which they have chosen for a refuge. Scarcely an instance is known of any of them having received alms, and they are as respectable for their intelligence as for their morals. One peculiarity in them is the extravagance of their loyalty. They exert themselves vehemently in defence of all the acts of the Executive, whatever they may be. The reason for this is obvious: – they exceedingly dread the barest mention of the annexation of Canada to the United States.

It is astonishing that, in the face of fact of daily occurrence, like that of the escape of these men, it can be pleaded in behalf of slavery, that negroes cannot take care of themselves, and that they prefer being held as property. A lady of a New York favoured me with some of her recollections of slavery in that State. She told me of a favourite servant who had been her father’s property for five-and-twenty years. I believe the woman was the family nurse. She was treated with all possible indulgence, and was the object of the attachment of the whole household. The woman was never happy. During all these dreary years she was haunted with the longing for freedom, and at last fell ill, apparently from anxiety of mind. From her sickbed she implored her master so movingly to make her free and her medical attendant was so convinced that her life depended on her request being granted, that her master made the desired promise – very unwillingly, as he thought freedom would be more of a care than a blessing to her. She immediately recovered and in spite of all entreaty, pecuniary inducement, and appeals to her gratitude, left the family. She shed many tears, mourned over parting with the children, and thanked the family for all the favour with which she had been treated but declared that she could not remain. Every thing savoured too strongly of the bondage she had been unable to endure. She took a service not far off, deposited her earnings with her old master, and frequently visited the family, but, to the last, shrank from all mention of returning to them.

While I was in the United States, a New York friend of mine was counsel for a native African who sued his mistress for his earnings of many years. This man had been landed in the South after the year 1808, the date fixed by the Constitution for the cessation of the importation of negroes. He was purchased by a lady to whom he proved very profitable, his services being of a superior kind. She let him out and he paid over to her all the money he earned. After many years, she visited New York, bringing this man with her, not anticipating that, in that free city, he would gain new lights as to his relation to her. He refused to return, and brought his mistress into court to answer his demand for the repayment of all the money he had earned abroad, with interest, and compensation for his services at home, during his illegal bondage. As a knowledge of the law was necessarily supposed on both sides, the counsel for the slave made compulsion his plea. This was not allowed. The slave’s maintenance was decided to be a sufficient compensation for his services at home; and he was decreed to receive only the earnings of his hired labour, without interest. His counsel had, however, the pleasure of seeing him in the strength of his manhood, free, and in possession of a large sum of money to begin life with, on his own account.

A woman once lived in Massachusetts, whose name ought to be preserved in all histories of the State, as one of its honours, though she was a slave, Some anecdotes of her were related in a Lyceum lecture delivered at Stockbridge in 1831. Others were told me by the Sedgwicks, who had the honour of knowing her best, by means of rendering her the greatest services. Mum Bett, whose real name was Elizabeth Freeman, was born, it is supposed, about 1742. Her parents were native Africans, and she was a slave for about thirty years. At an early age she was purchased, with her sister, from the family into which she was born, in the State of New York, by Colonel Ashley, of Sheffield, Massachusetts. The lady of the mansion, in a fit of passion, one day struck at Mum Bett’s sister with a heated kitchen shovel. Mum Bett interposed her arm, and received the blow, the scar of which she bore to the day of her death. “She resented the insult and outrage as a white person would have done,” leaving the house, and refusing to return. Colonel Ashley appealed to the law for the recovery of his slave. Mum Bett called on Mr Sedgwick, and asked him if she could not claim her liberty under the law. He inquired what could put such an idea into her head. She replied that the “Bill o’ Rights” said that all were born free and equal, and that as she was not a dumb beast, she was certainly one of the nation. When afterwards asked how she learned the doctrine and facts on which she proceeded, she replied. “By keepin’ still and mindin’ things.” It was a favourite doctrine of hers, that people might learn by keeping still and minding things. But what did she mean, she was asked, by keeping still and minding things? Why, for instance, when she was waiting at table, she heard gentlemen talking over the Bill of Rights and the new constitution of Massachusetts; and in all they said she never heard but that all people were born free and equal, and she thought long about it, and resolved she would try whether she did not come in among them.

Mr Sedgwick undertook her cause, which was tried at Great Barrington. Mum Bett obtained her freedom, and compensation for her services from twenty-one years of age. “What shall I do with all this money of yours?” said Mr Sedgwick, “Fee the lawyers handsomely, – pay ’em well,” said she, “and keep the rest till I want it.” She was offered every inducement to return to Colonel Ashley’s: but she recoiled from all that reminded her of slavery. She begged the Sedgwicks to take her into their family, which they did; and with them she spent twenty years of great, comfort. Her example was followed by many slaves; and from the day of her emancipation, in 1772. more and more claimants were decreed free under the Bill of Rights, till slavery was abolished in Massachusetts.

Her services to the Sedgwick family are gratefully remembered by them. She is believed to have saved her master’s life by following her own judgment in his treatment when she was nursing him in a dangerous fever. When her master was in Boston, and the rural districts were liable to nightly visitations from marauders after Shay’s war (as an insurrection in Massachusetts was called) the village of Stockbridge. in the absence of the gentlemen, depended on Mum Bett for its safety; so general was the confidence in her wisdom and courage. The practice of the marauders was to enter and plunder gentlemen’s houses in the night, on pretence of searching for ammunition and prisoners. Mum Bett declared that she could have no cowards in the village: as many as were afraid had better go up the hills to sleep. Several children and a few women went up the hills in the evening to farmhouses, which were safe from intrusion. All brought their valuables of small bulk to Mum Bett for security. Every body’s watches, gold chains, rings, and other trinkets were deposited in an iron chest in the garret where Mum Bett slept.

The marauders arrived one night when Mrs Sedgwick was very ill: and Mum Bett was unwilling to admit them. She quietly told her mistress that her pistols were loaded, and that, a few shots from the windows would probably send the wretches away, as they could not be sure but that there were gentlemen in the house. Her mistress, however, positively ordered her to let the people in, without delay. Mum Bett obeyed the order with much unwillingness. She appeared at the door with a large kitchen shovel in one hand, and a light in the other. and assured the strangers that they would find nothing of what they asked for, – neither Judge Sedgwick. nor ammunition and prisoners. They chose to search the house, however, as she had expected. Her great fear was that they would drink themselves intoxicated in the cellar, and become unmanageable; and she had prepared for this by putting rows of porter bottles in front of the wine and spirits, having drawn the corks to let the porter get flat, and put them in again. The intruders offered to take the light from her hand, but she held it back, saying that no one should carry the light but herself. Here was the way to the cellars, and there was the way to the chambers: she would light the gentlemen wherever they chose to go: but she would not let the house be set on fire over her sick mistress’s head. “The gentlemen” went down to the cellar first. One of the party broke the neck of a bottle of porter, for which she rebuked him, saying that if they wished to drink, she would fetch the corkscrew, and draw the cork, and they might drink like gentlemen: but that if any one broke the neck of another bottle, she would lay him low with her shovel. The flat porter was not to the taste of the visitors, who made wry faces, said, if gentlemen liked such cursed bitter stuff, they might keep it. and praised spirits in comparison; upon which Mum Bett coolly observed, that they were “sort o’ gentlemen that lived here that did not drink spirits.”

At the foot of the cellar stairs stood a barrel of pickled pork, out of which the intruders began helping themselves. In a tone of utter scorn, Mum Bett exclaimed. “Ammunition and prisoners, indeed! You come for ammunition and prisoners, and take up with pickled pork!” They were fairly ashamed, and threw back the pork into the barrel. They went through all the chambers, poking with their bayonets under the beds, lest Judge Sedgwick should be there. At last, to Mum Bett’s sorrow, they decided to search the garrets. In hers, the iron chest came into view. She hoped in vain that they would pass it over. One of the party observed that it looked as if it held something. Mum Bett put down the light, kneeled on the chest, and brandished her weapon, saying, “This is my chest, and let any man touch it at his peril.” The men considered the matter not worth contesting, and went down stairs. They were actually departing without having met with a single article of value enough to carry away, when a young lady, a niece of Judge Sedgwick’s, wishing to be civil to the wretches, asked them, at the hall door, whether they would like to see the stables. They were glad of the hint, and stole one horse (if I remember right) and ruined another with hard riding. Mum Bett’s expression of wrath was, “If I had thought the pesky fool would have done such a thing. I would have turned the horses loose overnight in the meadow: they would have come back at my call in the morning.”

She was considered as connected with Judge Sedgwick’s family after she had left their house for a home of her own. By her great industry and frugality she supported a large family of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There was nothing remarkable about her husband: and her descendants do not appear to have inherited her genius. Mum Bett lies in the Stockbridge graveyard, – in the corner where the people of colour lie apart. Her epitaph, written by a son of Judge Sedgwick. is as follows:

ELIZABETH FREEMAN

Known by the name of

MUM BETT

Died December 28th, 1829. Her supposed age was 85 years. She was born a slave, and remained a slave for nearly thirty years: she could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal: she neither wasted time nor property : she never violated a trust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial, she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend.

Good Mother, Farewell

As far as energy and talent are concerned. I should hesitate to say that in her own sphere Mum Bett “had no superior nor equal:” and the same may be said about the quality of fidelity. I know of a slave in Louisiana who picked up a parcel containing $10,000, and returned it. with much trouble, to its owner. I know of a slave in South Carolina, belonging to a physician, who drives his master’s gig, and has made a wonderful use of what he sees in the course of his morning’s duty. While waiting for his master at the doors of patients, this slave occupied himself with copying in the sandy soil the letters he saw on signs. When he believed he had caught the method, he begged a slate, or paper and pencil, and brought home his copies, coaxing the boys of the family to tell him the names of the letters. He then put them together, and thus learned to read and write, – without any further help whatever. Having once discovered his own power of doing and learning, he went on in the only direction which seemed open to him. He turned his attention to mechanism, and makes miniature violins and pianos of surprising completeness, but no use. Here he will most likely stop: for there is no probability of his ever ceasing to be a slave, or having opportunity to turn to practical account a degree of energy, patience, and skill which, in happier circumstances, might have been the instruments of great deeds.

The energies of slaves sometimes take a direction which their masters contrive to render profitable, – when they take to religion as a pursuit. The universal, unquenchable reverence for religion in the human mind is taken advantage of, when the imagination of the slave has been turned into the channel of superstition. It is a fact, that in the newspapers of New Orleans may be seen an advertisement, now and then, of a lot of “pious negroes.” Such “pious negroes” are convenient on a plantation where the treatment is not particularly mild; as they consider non-resistance a Christian duty, and are able to inspire a wonderful degree of patience into their fellow-sufferers.

The vigour which negroes show when their destiny is fairly placed in their own hands, is an answer to all arguments about their helplessness drawn from their dullness in a state of bondage. A highly satisfactory experiment upon the will, judgment, and talents of a large body of slaves was made, a few years ago, by a relative of Chief Justice Marshall. This gentleman and his family had attached their negroes to them by a long course of judicious kindness. At length, an estate at some distance was left to the gentleman, and he saw, with much regret, that it was his duty to leave the plantation on which he was living. He could not bear the idea of turning over his people to the tender mercies or unproved judgment of a stranger overseer. He called his negroes together, told them the case, and asked whether they thought they could manage the estate themselves. If they were willing to undertake the task, they must choose an overseer from among themselves, provide comfortably for their own wants, and remit him the surplus of the profits. The negroes were full of grief at losing the family, but willing to try what they could do. They had an election for overseer, and chose the man their master would have pointed out; decidedly the strongest head on the estate. All being; arranged, the master left them, with a parting charge to keep their festivals, and take their appointed holidays, as if he were present. Alter some time, he rode over to see how all went on, choosing a festival day, that he might meet them in their holiday gaiety. He was surprised, on approaching, to hear no merriment; and on entering his fields, he found his “force” all hard at work. As they flocked round him, he inquired why they were not making holiday. They told him that the crop would suffer in its present state by the loss of a day; and that they had therefore put off their holiday, which, however, they meant to take by-and-by. Not many days after, an express arrived to inform the proprietor that there was an insurrection, on his estate. He would not believe it; declared it impossible, as there was nobody to rise against; but the messenger, who had been sent by the neighbouring gentlemen, was so confident of the facts, that the master galloped, with the utmost speed, to his plantation, arriving as night was coming on. As he rode in, a cry of joy arose from his negroes, who pressed round to shake hands with him. They were in their holiday clothes, and had been singing and dancing. They were only enjoying the deferred festival. The neighbours, hearing the noise on a quiet working day, had jumped to the conclusion that it was an insurrection.

There is no catastrophe yet to this story. When the proprietor related it, he said that no trouble had arisen; and that for some seasons, ever since this estate had been wholly in the hands of his negroes, it had been more productive than it ever was while he managed it himself.

The finest harvest field of romance perhaps in the world is the frontier between the United States and Canada. The vowed student of human nature could not do better than take up his abode there, and hear what fugitives and their friends have to tell. There have been no exhibitions of the forces of human character in any political revolution, or religious reformation, more wonderful and more interesting than may almost daily be witnessed there. The impression on even careless minds on the spot is very strong. I remember observing to a friend in the ferry boat, when we were crossing the Niagara, from Lewiston to Queenston, that it seemed very absurd, on looking at the opposite banks of the river, to think that while the one belonged to the people who lived on it, the other was called the property of a nation three thousand miles off, – the shores looking so much alike as they do. My friend replied, with a smile, “Runaway slaves see a great difference.” “That they do!” cried the ferryman, in a tone of the deepest earnestness. He said that the leap ashore of an escaped slave is a sight unlike any other that can be seen.

On other parts of the frontier, I heard tales which I grieve that it is not in my power to tell, – so honourable are they to individuals of both races, – friends of the slaves. The time may come when no one will be injured by their being made public. Meantime, I will give one which happened many years ago, and which relates to a different part of the country.

A., now an elderly man, was accustomed in his youth to go up and down the Mississippi, on trading expeditions; and both in these, and in subsequent wanderings of many years, – to Haiti among other places, – he has had opportunity to study the character of the negro race; and he is decidedly of opinion that there is in them only a superinduced inferiority to the whites. In relating his experiences among the coloured people, he told the following story:

When he was a young man, he was going down the Mississippi in a boat, with a cargo of salt; when he stopped at a small place on the Kentucky shore, called Unity, opposite to a part of Arkansas. While he was there, a slave trader came up with his company of upwards of two hundred slaves, whom he was conveying to the New Orleans market. Among these, A. remarked a gigantic mulatto, – handsome in countenance, and proud in bearing, – who was nearly naked, and fettered. He had an iron band round his waist, and round each wrist, and these bands were connected by chains. The trader observed to A. that tins man was the most valuable slave he had ever had on sale. I think he said that he would not take two thousand dollars for him: he added that he was obliged to chain him, as he was bent on getting away. When the trader’s back was turned, the mulatto looked at A. as if wishing to talk with him.

“Why are you chained in this way?” asked A.

“Because my master is afraid of losing me. He knows that I am the most valuable slave he has; and that I mean to get away.”

“Have you told him so?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you mean to get away?”

“I don’t know: but I mean it.”

After a pause, he said in a low voice to A.,

“Could not you give me a file?”

“No,” said A., decidedly. “Do you think I don’t know the law? Do you think I am going to help you away, and get punished for it? No; I can’t give you a file.”

As A. went back to his boat he saw the slave looking wistfully after him, and his heart smote him for what he had said. He bethought himself that if he could manage to put an instrument of deliverance in the man’s way without touching it, he might keep within the letter of the law; and he acted upon this notion. He looked about his boat, and found a strong three-sided file, which he put between his coat and waistcoat, so that it would be sure to drop out when the coat was unbuttoned. He sauntered back on shore, and the mulatto, who watched all his movements, came up to him, eagerly whispering,

“Have you got a file? Are you going to give me a file?”

“No,” said A. “I told you that I knew better than to give you a file.”

The slave’s countenance fell.

“However,” continued A., “I should not wonder if I can tell you where to get one. If you look about by yonder woodpile, I think perhaps you may find a file. No, not now. Go back to your company now, and don’t look at me; and when I am gone on board my boat you can wander off to the woodpile.”

A. unbuttoned his coat as he appeared to be picking up the scattered wood round the pile, and presently returned to his boat, whence he saw the mulatto walk to the woodpile, and stoop down just at the right spot. A. watched all day, and late into the night: but he saw and heard nothing more.

In the morning, the slave-trader came on board the boat; exclaiming angrily that A. had a slave of his concealed there. A. desired him to search the boat, which he did, looking behind every bag of salt. He was confident that A. must have helped the man away: chained as he was, he could not have got off without help. As for himself, he had rather have lost thousands of dollars than this man: but he always knew it would be so: the fellow always said he would get away.

Thus grumbling, the trader departed, to make search in another direction. In an hour he returned, saying that the slave must either be drowned, or have got over into Arkansas. His irons and a strong file were lying on a point of land, projecting into the river, about a mile off; and the marks were visible where the fugitive had taken the water. A. went, and long did he stay, questioning and meditating: and during all the years that have since elapsed, it has been his frequent daily and nightly speculation whether the mulatto escaped or perished. Sometimes, when he remembers the gigantic frame of the man, and the force of the impulse which urged him, A. hopes that it may have been possible for him to reach the opposite shore. At other times, when he thinks of the width of the Mississippi at that part, and of the tremendous force of the current, which would warrant the assertion that it is impossible for a swimmer to cross, he believes himself convinced that the fugitive has perished Yet still the hope returns that the strong man may be living in wild freedom in some place where the sense of safety and peace may have taught him to forgive and pity his oppressors.

Volume 2

New Orleans

“Though everybody cried ‘Shame!’ and ‘Shocking!’ yet everybody visited them.”

Miss Edgeworth

When we arrived at the extreme south-west point of our journey, it was amusing to recur to the warnings of our kind friends about its inconveniences and dangers. We had brought away tokens of the hospitality of Charleston, in the shape of a large basket of provision which had been prepared, on the supposition that we should find little that we could eat on the road. There was wine, tea, and cocoa; cases of French preserved meat, crackers (biscuits), and gingerbread. All these good things, except the wine and crackers, we found it expedient to leave behind, from place to place. There was no use in determining beforehand to eat them at any particular meal: when it came to the point, we always found hunger or disgust so much more bearable than the shame of being ungracious to entertainers who were doing their best for us, that we could never bring ourselves to produce our stores. We took what was set before us, and found ourselves, at length, alive and well at New Orleans.

At Mobile I met some relatives who kindly urged my taking possession of their house at New Orleans, during my stay of ten days. I was thankful for the arrangement, as the weather was becoming hot, and we could secure more leisure and repose in a house of our own than in a boarding house, or as the guests of a family. With the house, we were, of course, to have the services of my friend’s slaves. He told me something of their history. He had tried all ways to obtain good service, and could not succeed. He had attempted wages, treating his people like free servants, &c. and all in vain. His present plan was promising them freedom and an establishment in a free State after a short term of years, in case of good desert. He offered to take care of the money they earned, during their leisure hours, and to pay them interest upon it; but they preferred keeping it in their own hands. One of them sewed up 150 dollars in her bed: she fell ill, and the person who nursed her is supposed to have got at the money; for when the poor slave recovered, her earnings were gone.

We left Mobile for New Orleans on the 24th of April. The portion of forest which we crossed in going down from Mobile to the coast was the most beautiful I had seen. There was fresh grass under foot, and the woods were splendid with myrtles, magnolias, and many shrubs whose blossoms were new to me, and their names unknown. We had plenty of time to look about us; for the hack which carried the four passengers whom the stage would not contain broke down every half hour, and the stage company had to stop till it could proceed. We had an excellent dinner in the gallery of a loghouse in the midst of the forest, where we were plentifully supplied with excellent claret. There had been showers all day, with intervals of sunshine, but towards sunset the settled gloom of the sky foreboded a night of storm. I was on the watch for the first sight of the Gulf of Mexico. I traced the line where the forest retires to give place to the marsh, and the whole scene assumes a sudden air of desolation. At this moment the thunder burst, sheets of lightning glared over the boiling sea, and the rain poured down in floods. Our umbrellas were found to be broken, of course; and we had to run along the pier to the steamboat in such a rain as I was never before exposed to: but it was well worth while getting wet for such a first sight of the Gulf of Mexico. It soon grew dark; and before morning we were in Lake Pontchartrain; so that this stormy view of the Gulf was the only one we had.

We amused ourselves in the morning with tracing the dim shores of the State of Mississippi to the north, and of Louisiana to the west. About nine o’clock we arrived in sight of the long piers which stretch out from the swamp into the lake, the mud-craft, the canoes, with blacks fishing for crabs; the baths, and the large Washington hotel, with its galleries and green blinds, built for coolness, where gentlemen from New Orleans go to eat fish and bathe. Next we saw the train of railroad cars waiting for us; and without the loss of a moment’s time we were whirled away to the city, – five miles in a quarter of an hour. I have expressed elsewhere[16] my admiration of the swamp through which our road lay, – an admiration which faded as we traversed the lower faubourg, and died away in the Champs Elysées. Before ten o’clock we were breaking the seals of our English letters in the drawing room of our temporary home.

When we had satisfied ourselves with home news, unpacked, dressed, and lunched, we took our seats by the window, in the intervals of visits from callers. All was very new, very foreign in its aspect. Many of the ladies in the streets wore caps or veils instead of bonnets; the negroes who passed shouted their very peculiar kind of French; and every thing seemed to tell us that we had plunged into the dog days. I never knew before how impressions of heat can be conveyed through the eye. The intensity of glare and shadow in the streets, and the many evidences that the fear of heat is the prevailing idea of the place, affect the imagination even more than the scorching power of the sun does the bodily frame.

I was presented with a pamphlet written by a physician, which denies the unhealthiness of New Orleans as strenuously as some of its inhabitants deny its immorality. To me it appears that everything depends on what is understood by Morals and Health. As to the morals of the city, I have elsewhere stated the principal facts on which my unfavourable judgment is founded.[17] In regard to another department of morals, the honourable fact of the generous charity of New Orleans to strangers should be stated. Great numbers of sick and destitute foreigners are perpetually thrown upon the mercy of the inhabitants; and that mercy is unbounded. I have reason to believe that the sick are not merely nursed and cured, but provided with funds before departing. When I visited the hospital, it contained 250 patients, not above 50 of whom were Americans. As to the health of the place, I believe the average is good among that portion of the population which can afford to remove northwards for the hot months: but very low if the total white population be included. The pamphlet which I read argues that though the fever is very destructive during a portion of the year, mortality from other diseases is much below the common average; that the variations of temperature are slight, though frequent; and that the average of children and old persons is high. All this may be true; but a place must be called peculiarly unhealthy whose inhabitants are compelled, on pain of death, to remove for three or four months of every year. Instead of arguing against such a fact as this, many citizens are hoping and striving to put an end to the necessity of such a removal. They hope, by means of draining and paving, to render their city habitable all the year round. Plans of drainage are under consideration, and I saw some importations of paving stones. The friends of the New Orleans people can hardly wish them a greater good than the success of such attempts: for the perpetual shifting about which they are subjected to by the dread of the fever is a serious evil to sober families of an industrious, domestic turn. It is very injurious to the minds of children, and to the habits of young people, and a great hardship to the aged. I was struck with a remark which fell from a lady about her children’s exercise in the open air. She said that she always took them out when the wind blew from over the lake, and kept them at home in warm weather when it blew from any other quarter, as it then only made them “more languid” to go out. This did not tend to confirm the doctrine of the pamphlet; but I was not surprised at the remark when I looked abroad over the neighbouring country from the top of the hospital. Thence I saw the marsh which was given to Lafayette, and which he sold, not long before his death to a London firm, who sold it again. On this marsh, most of which was under water, the city of New Orleans was begun. A strip of buildings was carried to the river bank, where the city spread. In the midst of the flooded lots of ground stood the gasworks: surrounded by stagnant ponds lay the Catholic cemetery. The very churches of the city seemed to spring up out of the water. The blossomy beauties of the swamp could not be seen at this height, and all looked hideously desolate in the glaring sun. The view from the turret of the Cotton Press is much more advantageous. It commands many windings of the majestic river, and the point where it seems to lose itself in the distant forest; while below appears everything that is dry in all the landscape, – the shipping, the Levée, the busy streets of the city, and the shady avenues of the suburbs.

The ladies of New Orleans walk more than their countrywomen of other cities, from the streets being in such bad order as to make walking the safest means of locomotion. The streets are not very numerous; they are well distinguished, and lie at right angles, and their names are clearly printed up; so that, strangers find no difficulty in going about, except when a fall of rain has made the crossings impassable. The heat is far less oppressive in the streets than in the open country, as there is generally a shady side. We were never kept within doors by the heat, though summer weather had fairly set in before our arrival. We made calls, and went shopping and sightseeing, much as we do in London; and moreover, walked to dinner visits, to the theatre, and to church, while the sun was blazing as if he had drawn that part of the world some millions of miles nearer to himself than that in which we had been accustomed to live. It is in vain to attempt describing what the moonlight is like. We walked under the long rows of Pride-of-India trees on the Remparts, amidst the picturesque low dwellings of the Quadroons, and almost felt the glow of the moonlight, so warm, so golden, so soft as I never saw it elsewhere. We were never tired of watching the lightning from our balcony, flashing through the first shades of twilight, and keeping the whole heaven in night-long conflagration. The mosquitoes were a great and perpetual plague, except while we were asleep. We found our mosquito curtains a sufficient protection at night: but we had to be on the watch against these malicious insects all day, and wage war against them during the whole evening. Many ladies are accustomed, during the summer months, to get after breakfast into a large sack of muslin tied round the throat, with smaller sacks for the arms, and to sit thus at work or book, fanning themselves to protect their faces. Other sit all the morning on the bed, within their mosquito curtains. I were gloves and prunella boots all day long: but hands and feet were stung through all the defences I could devise. After a while the sting of the mosquito ceases to irritate more than the English gnat sting; but to strangers the suffering is serious; to those of feverish habit, sometimes dangerous.

Sunday is the busiest day of the week to the stranger in New Orleans. There is first the negro market to be seen at five o’clock. We missed this sight as the mornings were foggy, and it was accounted unsafe to go out in the early damp. Then there is the cathedral to be attended, a place which the European gladly visits, as the only one in the United States where all men meet together as brethren. As he goes, the streets are noisy with traffic. Some of those who keep the Sunday sit at their doors or windows, reading the newspapers, or chatting with their acquaintance. Merchants are seen hastening to the counting house or the wharf, or busy in the stores. Others are streaming into the church doors. There are groups about the cathedral gates, the blacks and the whites parting company as if they had not been worshipping side by side. Within the edifice there is no separation. Some few persons may be in pews; but kneeling on the pavement may be seen a multitude, of every shade of complexion, from the fair Scotch woman or German to the jet black pure African. The Spanish eye flashes from beneath the veil; the French creole countenance, painted high, is surmounted by the neat cap or the showy bonnet; while between them may be thrust a grey-headed mulatto, following with his stupid eyes the evolutions of the priest; or the devout negro woman telling her beads, – a string of berries, – as if her life depended on her task. During the preaching, the multitude of anxious faces, thus various in tint and expression, turned up towards the pulpit, afforded one of those few spectacles which are apt to haunt the whole future life of the observer like a dream. Several Protestants spoke to me of the Catholic religion as being a great blessing to the ignorant negro, – viewing a ritual religion as a safe resting place between barbarism and truth. Nothing that I saw disposed me to agree with them. I saw among Catholics of this class only the most abject worship of things without meaning, and no comprehension whatever of symbols. I was persuaded that if a ritual religion be ever a good it is so in the case of the most not the least, enlightened: of those who accept the ritual as symbolical, and not of those who pay it literal worship. I could not but think that if the undisguised story of Jesus were presented to these last, as it was to the fishermen of Galilee, and the peasants on the reedy banks of Jordan, they would embrace a Christianity, in comparison with which their present religion is an unintelligible and ineffectual mythology. But such a primitive Christianity they, as slaves, never will and never can have, as its whole spirit is destructive of slavery.

Half a year before my visit to New Orleans, a great commotion had been raised in the city against a Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. Joel Parker, on account of some expressions which he had been reported to have used, while on a visit in New England, respecting the morals of New Orleans, and especially the desecration of the Sunday. Some meddlesome person had called a public meeting, to consider what should be done with the Rev. Joel Parker, for having employed his constitutional freedom of speech in declaring what almost everybody knew or believed to be true. Many gentlemen of the city were vexed at this encroachment upon the liberty of the citizen, and at the ridicule which such apparent sensitiveness about reputation would bring upon their society; and they determined to be present at the meeting, and support the pastor’s rights. Matters were proceeding fast towards a condemnation of the accused, and sentence of banishment, when these gentlemen demanded that he should be heard in his own defence, – a guarantee for his personal safety being first passed by the meeting. This was agree to, and Mr Parker appeared on the hustings. Unfortunately, he missed the opportunity, – a particularly favourable one, – of making a moral impressing which would never have been lost. A full declaration of what he had said, the grounds of it, and his right to say it, would have turned the emotions of the assemblage, already softened in his favour, towards himself and the right. As it was, he did nothing wrong; except in as far as that he did nothing very right: but there was a want of judgment and taste in his address which was much to be regretted. He was allowed to go free for the time; but the newspaper reported all the charges against him, suppressed his replies, and lauded the citizens for not having pulled the offender to pieces: and Mr Parker’s congregation were called upon, on the ground of the resolutions passed at the public meeting to banish their pastor. They refused, and appealed to all the citizens to protect them from such oppression as was threatened. No further steps were taken, I believe, against the pastor and his people: his church flourished under this little gust of persecution; and when I was there, a handsome new edifice was rising up to accommodate the increased number of his congregation. I wished to hear this gentleman; and was glad to find that his flock met, while the building was going on, in the vestry of the new church; a spacious crypt, which was crowded when he preached, I had not expected much from his preaching, and was therefore taken by surprise by the exceeding beauty of his discourse; – beauty, by the style, of spirit. The lofty and tender earnestness of both his sentiments and manner put the observer off his watch about the composition of the sermon. I was surprised to perceive in conversation afterwards tokens that Mr Parker was not a highly educated man. I was raised by the lofty tone of his preaching far above all critical vigilance.

I had much opportunity of seeing in the United States what is the operation of persecution on strong and virtuous minds; and I trust the lesson of encouragement will never be lost. As it is certain that the progression of the race must be carried on through persecution of some kind and degree, – as it is clear that the superior spirits to whom the race owes its advancement must, by their very act of anticipation, get out of the circle of general intelligence and sympathy, and be thus subject to the trials of spiritual solitude and social enmity, – since thus it has ever been, and thus, by the laws of human nature, it must ever be, – it is heart-cheering and soul-staying to perceive that the effects of persecution may be and often are, more blessed than those of other kinds of discipline. Many quail under the apprehension of persecution; some are soured by it; but some pass through the suffering, the bitter suffering of popular hatred, with a strength which intermits less and less; and come out of it with new capacities for enjoyment, with affections which can no longer be checked by want of sympathy, and with an object in life which can never be overthrown. Mr Parker’s case was not one of any high or permanent character: though, as far as his trial went, it seemed to have given calmness and vigour to his mind. (I judge from his manner of speaking of the affair to me.) The Abolitionists are the persons I have had, and always shall have, chiefly in view in speaking of the effects of persecution. They often reminded me of the remark, that you may know a philanthropist in the street by his face. The life, light, and gentleness of their countenances, the cheerful earnestness of their speech, and the gaiety of their manners, were enough to assure the unprejudiced foreign observer of the integrity of their cause, and the blessedness of their pilgrim lives.

The afternoon or evening Sunday walk in New Orleans run not fail to convince the stranger of the truth of the sayings of Mr Parker, for which he afterwards was subjected to so fierce a retribution. Whatever may be thought of the duty or expediency of a strict observance of the Sunday, no one can contend that in this city the observance is strict. In the market there is traffic in meat and vegetables, and the groups of foreigners make a Babel of the place with their loud talk in many tongues. The men are smoking outside their houses; the girls, with broad coloured ribbons streaming from the ends of their long braids of hair, are walking or flirting; while veiled ladies are stealing through the streets, or the graceful Quadroon women are taking their evening airing on the Levée. The river is crowded with shipping, to the hulls of which the walkers look up from a distance, the river being above the level of the neighbouring streets. It rushes along through the busy region, seeming to be touched with mercy, or to disdain its power of mischief. It might overwhelm in an instant the swarming inhabitants of the boundless level: it looks as if it could scarcely avoid doing so; yet it rolls on within its banks so steadily, that the citizens forget their insecurity. Its breadth is not striking to the eye; yet when one begins to calculate, the magnitude of the stream becomes apparent. A steamboat carries down six vessels at once; two on each side, and two behind; and this duster of seven vessels looks somewhat in the proportion of a constellation in the sky. From the Levée, the cathedral looks well, fronting the river, standing in the middle of a square, and presenting an appearance of great antiquity, hastened, no doubt, by the moisture of the atmosphere in which it stands.

The Levée continues to be crowded long after the sun has set. The quivering summer lightning plays over the heads of the merry multitude, who are conversing in all the tongues, and gay in all the costumes of the world.

Another bright scene is on the road to the lake, on a fine afternoon. This road winds for five miles through the swamp, and is bordered by cypress, flowering reeds, fleurs-de-lis of every colour, palmetto, and a hundred aquatic shrubs new to the eye of the stranger. The grey moss common in damp situations floats in streamers from the branches. Snakes abound, and coil about the negroes who are seen pushing their canoes through the rank vegetation, or towing their rafts, laden with wood, along the sluggish bayou. There is a small settlement, wholly French in its character, where the ancient dwellings, painted red, and with broad eaves, look highly picturesque in the green landscape. The winding white road is thronged with carriages, driven at a very rapid rate, and full of families of children, or gay parties of young people, or a company of smoking merchants, going to the lake to drink or to bathe. Many go merely as we did, – for the sake of the drive, and of breathing the cool air of the lake, while enjoying a glass of iced lemonade or sangaree.

It was along this road that Madame Lalaurie escaped from the hands of her exasperated countrymen, about five years ago. The remembrance or tradition of that day will always be fresh in New Orleans. In England the story is little if at all known. I was requested on the spot not to publish it as exhibiting a fair specimen of slave-holding in New Orleans: and no one could suppose it to be so: but it is a revelation of what, may happen in a slave-holding country, and can happen nowhere else. Even on the mildest supposition that the case admits of, – that Madame Lalaurie was insane, there remains the fact that the insanity could have taken such a direction, and perpetrated such deeds nowhere but in a slave country.

There is, as every one knows, a mutual jealousy between the French and American Creoles[18] in Louisiana. Till lately the French Creoles have carried every thing their own way, from their superior numbers. I believe that even yet no American expects to got a verdict, on any evidence, from a jury of French Creoles. Madame Lalaurie enjoyed a long impunity, from this circumstance. She was a French Creole, and her third husband, M. Lalaurie, was. I believe, a Frenchman. He was many years younger than his lady, and had nothing to do with the management of her property; so that he has been in no degree mixed up with her affairs and disgraces. It had been long observed that Madame Lalaurie’s slaves looked singularly haggard and wretched, except the coachman, whose appearance was sleek and comfortable enough. Two daughters by a former marriage, who lived with her, were also thought to be spiritless and unhappy-looking. But the lady was so graceful and accomplished, so charming in her manners, and so hospitable, that no one ventured openly to question her perfect goodness. If a murmur of doubt began among the Americans, the French resented it. If the French had occasional suspicions, they concealed them for the credit of their faction. “She was very pleasant to whites,” I was told; and sometimes to blacks; but so broadly so as to excite suspicions of hypocrisy. When she had a dinner party at home, she would hand the remains of her glass of wine to the emaciated negro behind her chair, with a smooth audible whisper, “Here, my friend, take this: it will do you good.” At length, rumours spread which induced a friend of mine, an eminent lawyer, to send her a hint about the law which ordains that slaves who can be proved to have been cruelly treated shall be taken from the owner, and sold in the market for the benefit of the State. My friend, being of the American party, did not appear in the matter himself, but sent a young French creole, who was studying law with him. The young man returned full of indignation against all who could suspect this amiable woman of doing anything wrong. He was confident that she could not harm a fly, or give pain to any human being.

Soon after this, a lady living in a house which joined the premises of Madame Lalaurie, was going up stairs, when she heard a piercing shriek from the next courtyard. She looked out, and saw a little negro girl, apparently about eight years old, flying across the yard towards the house, and Madame Lalaurie pursuing her, cowhide in hand. The lady saw the poor child run from story to story, her mistress following, till both came out upon the top of the house. Seeing the child about to spring over, the witness put her hands before her eyes; but she heard the fall, and saw the child taken up, her body bending, and limbs hanging, as if every bone was broken. The lady watched for many hours; and at night she saw the body brought out a shallow hole dug by torchlight in the corner of the yard, and the corpse covered over, No secret was made of what had been seen. Inquiry was instituted, and illegal cruelty proved in the case of nine slaves, who were forfeited according to law. It afterwards came out that this woman induced some family connexions of her own to purchase these slaves., and sell them again to her, conveying them back to her premises in the night. She must have desired to have them for purposes of torture; for she could not let them be seen in a neighbourhood where they were known.

During all this time, she does not appear to have lost caste, though it appears that she beat her daughters as often as they attempted in her absence to convey food to her miserable victims. She always knew of such attempts by means of the sleek coachman, who was her spy. It was necessary to have a spy, to preserve her life from the vengeance of her household: so she pampered this obsequious negro, and at length owed her escape to him.

She kept her cook chained within eight yards of the fireplace, where sumptuous dinners were cooked in the most sultry season. It is a pity that some of the admiring guests whom she assembled round her hospitable table could not see through the floor, and be made aware at what a cost they were entertained. One morning, the cook declared that they had better all be burned together than lead such a life; and she set the house on fire. The alarm spread over the city: the gallant French Creoles all ran to the aid of their accomplished friend, and the fire was presently extinguished. Many, whose curiosity had been roused about the domestic proceedings of the lady, seized the opportunity of entering those parts of the premises from which the whole world had been hitherto carefully excluded. They perceived that as often as they approached a particular outhouse, the lady became excessively uneasy lest some property in an opposite direction should be burned. When the fire was extinguished, they made bold to break open this outhouse. A horrible sight met their eyes. Of the nine slaves, the skeletons of two were afterwards found poked into the ground; the other seven could scarcely be recognised as human. Their faces had the wildness of famine, and their bones were coming through the skin. They were chained and tied in constrained postures; some on their knees, some with their hands above their heads. They had iron collars with spikes which kept their heads in one position. The cowhide, stiff with blood, hung against the wall; and there was a stepladder on which this fiend stood while flogging her victims, in order to lay on the lashes with more effect. Every morning, it was her first employment after breakfast to lock herself in with her captives, and flog them till her strength failed.

Amidst shouts and groans, the sufferers were brought out into the air and light. Food was given them, – with too much haste; for two of them died in the course of the day. The rest, maimed and helpless, are pensioners of the city.

The rage of the crowd, especially of the French Creoles, was excessive The lady shut herself up in the house, with her trembling daughters, while the street was filled, from end to end, with a yelling crowd of gentlemen. She consulted her coachman as to what she had best do. He advised that she should have her coach to the door after dinner, and appear to go forth for her afternoon drive, as usual; escaping or returning, according to the aspect of affairs. It is not told whether she ate her dinner that day, or prevailed on her remaining slaves to wait upon her. The carriage appeared at the door; she was ready, and stepped into it. Her assurance seems to have paralyzed the crowd. The moment the door was shut, they appeared to repent having allowed her to enter, and they tried to upset the carriage, – to hold the horses, – to make a snatch at the lady. But the coachman laid about him with his whip, made the horses plunge, and drove off. He took the road to the lake, where he could not be intercepted, as it winds through the swamp. He outstripped the crowd, galloped to the lake, bribed the master of a schooner which was lying there to put off instantly with the lady to Mobile. She escaped to France, and took up her abode in Paris under a feigned name; but not for long. Late one evening, a party of gentlemen called on her, and told her she was Madame Lalaurie, and that she had better be off. She fled that night, and is supposed to be now skulking about in some French province, under a false name.

The New Orleans mob met the carriage returning from the lake. What became of the coachman I do not know. The carriage was broken to pieces, and thrown into the swamp, and the horses stabbed, and left dead upon the road. The house was gutted, – the two poor girls having just time to escape from a window. They are now living, in great poverty, in one of the faubourgs. The piano, tables, and chairs were burned before the house. The feather beds were ripped up, and the feathers emptied into the street, where they afforded a delicate footing for some days. The house stands, and is meant to stand, in its ruined state. It was the strange sight of its gaping windows and empty walls, in the midst of a busy street, which excited my wonder, and was the cause of my being told the story, the first time. I gathered other particulars afterwards from eyewitnesses.

The crowd at first intended to proceed to the examination of other premises, whose proprietors were under suspicion of cruelty to their slaves; but the shouts of triumph which went up from the whose population of the city showed that this would not be safe. Fearing a general rising, the gentlemen organized themselves into a patrol, to watch the city, night and day, till the commotion should have subsided. They sent circulars to all proprietors suspected of cruelty, warning them that the eyes of the city were upon them. This is the only benefit the negroes have derived from the exposure. In reply to inquiries, I was told that it was very possible that cruelties like those of Madame Lalaurie might be incessantly in course of perpetration. It may be doubted whether any more such people exist: but if they do, there is nothing to prevent their following her example with impunity, as long as they can manage to preserve that secrecy which was put an end to by accident in her case.

I could never get out of the way of the horrors of slavery in this region. Under one form or another, they met me in every house, in every street, – everywhere but in the intelligence pages of newspapers, where I might read on in perfect security of exemption from the subject. In the advertising columns, there were offers of reward for runaways, restored dead or alive; and notices of the capture of a fugitive with so many brands on his limbs and shoulders, and so many scars on his back. But from the other half of the newspaper, the existence of slavery could be discovered only by inference. What I saw elsewhere was, however, dreadful enough. In one house the girl who waited on me with singular officiousness, was so white, with blue eyes and light hair, that it never occurred to me that she could be a slave. Her mistress told me afterwards that this girl of fourteen was such a depraved hussy that she must be sold. I exclaimed involuntarily, but was referred to the long heel, in proof of the child’s being of negro extraction. She had the long heel, sure enough. Her mistress told me that it is very wrong to plead in behalf of slavery; that families are rarely separated; and gave me, as no unfair example of the dealings of masters, this girl’s domestic history.

The family had consisted of father, mother, and four children; this girl being the eldest, and the youngest an infant at the breast. The father was first sold separately; and then the rest of the family were purchased in the market by the husband of my friend, – the mother being represented to be a good cook and house servant. She proved to be both; but of so violent a temper that it was necessary to keep her own children out of her way when she had a knife in her hand, lest she should murder them. The anxiety of watching such a temper was not to be borne, and the woman was sold with her infant. Here was the second division of this family. The behaviour of the eldest girl was so outrageously profligate, that she was about to be disposed of also. And yet she was only a fair illustration of the results of the education by circumstance that slaves receive. When detected in some infamous practices, this young creature put on an air of prudery, and declared that it gave her great pain to be thought immodest: that so far from her being what she was thought, she had no wish to have any other lover than her master. Her master vas so enraged at this, – being a domestic Northern man, and not a planter, – that he tied her to the whipping post, and flogged her severely with his own hands. The story of this dispersed and wretched family has nothing singular in it. With slight variations, it may be found repeated in every Southern settlement the traveller visits.

Just about the time that this was happening, a family in the neighbourhood was poisoned by a slave. I think one died, and the others had a narrow escape. The poisoner was sold in the market, as the proprietor could not afford to lose his human property by the law taking its course.

About the same time, the cashier of a bank in New Orleans sent one of his slaves out of the way, in order to be undisturbed in the violence which he meditated against the negro’s attached wife. The negro understood the case, but dared not refuse to go where he was bid. He returned unexpectedly soon, however; found his home occupied, and stabbed the defiler of it. The cashier was the stronger man: and in spite of his wound, he so maltreated the negro that he expired on the barrow on which he was being conveyed to goal. Nothing ensued on account of this affair; though, when the cashier was some time after found to be a defaulter, he absconded.

I would fain know what has become of a mulatto child in whom I became much interested at New Orleans. Ailsie was eight years old, perfectly beautiful, and one of the most promising children I ever saw. She was quick, obedient, and affectionate, to a touching degree. She had a kind master and mistress. Her mistress’s health was delicate; and the child would watch her countenance wistfully, in the constant hope of saving her trouble. She would look very grave if the lady went up stairs with a languid step, take hold of her gown, and timidly ask. “What, an’t ye well?” I used to observe her helping to dress her mistress’s hair, her little hands trembling with eagerness, her eye following every glance of the eye which ever tenderly upon her. Her master declared he did not know what to make of the child, she looked so scared, and trembled so if she was spoken to: and she was indeed the most sensitive of children. As she stood at the corner of the dinner table to fan away the flies, she was a picture from which it was difficult to turn away. Her little yellow headdress suited well with her clear brown complexion and large soft black eyes: nothing that she could at all understand of the conversation escaped her, while she never intermitted her waving of the huge brush of peacocks’ feathers. Her face was then composed in its intelligence, for she stood by her mistress’s elbow: a station where she seemed to think no harm could befall her. Alas! she has lost her kind mistress. Amidst the many sad thoughts which thronged into my mind when I heard of the death of this lady, one of the wisest and best of American women. I own that some of my earliest regrets were for little Ailsie; and when I think of her sensibility, her beauty, and the dreadful circumstances of her parentage, as told me by her mistress, I am almost in despair about her future lot; for what can her master, with all his goodness, do for the forlorn little creature’s protection? None but a virtuous mistress can fully protect a female slave – and that too seldom.

Ailsie was born on an estate in Tennessee. Her father is a white gentleman, not belonging to the family; her mother the family cook. The cook’s black husband cherished such a deadly hatred against this poor child, as to be for ever threatening her life: and she was thought to be in such danger from his axe, that she was sent down the river to be taken into the family where I saw her, What a cruel world – what a hard human life, must Ailsie find that she is born into!

Such facts, occurring at every step, put the stranger on the watch for every revelation of the feelings of the masters about the relation of the two races. Some minute circumstances surprised me in this connexion. At the American theatre in New Orleans, one of the characters in the play which my party attended was a slave, one of whose speeches was, “I have no business to think and feel.”

At a dinner party. where three negroes were waiting, and where Ailsie stood fanning, a gentleman of very high official rank told a facetious story, at which everybody laughed heartily – (being, indeed, quite unable to help it, the manner of the narrator was so droll) – except a gentleman next me, who had once been a slave trader. The senator told us of a couple from the Green Island, Pat and Nancy, who had settled on the Mississippi, and in course of time (to use the language of the region) “acquired six children and nine negroes.” Pat had a mind to better his fortunes and to go unencumbered higher up the river; and he therefore explained his plans to Nancy, finishing with,” and so, my darlin, I’ll lave you; but I’ll do my best by you: I’ll have you the six dear, nate, pretty little childer, and I’ll take the nine nasty dirty negroes.” While every other American at the table laughed without control, I saw my neighbour, the former slave trader, glance up at the negroes who were in attendance, and use a strong effort not to laugh.

The stranger has great difficulty in satisfying himself as to the bounds of the unconsciousness oppression which he finds urged as the exculpatory plea of the slaveholder, while he mourns over it as the great hindrance in the way of social reformation. It has been seen that an audience at the theatre will quietly receive a hit which would subject the author to punishment if he were an Abolitionist. When I listened to the stories told by ladies to each other, in their morning calls, showing the cleverness of their slaves. I often saw that they could not but be as fully convinced as I was that their slaves were as altogether human as themselves. I heard so many anecdotes, – somewhat of the character of the following, – that I began to suspect that one use of slaves is to furnish topics for the amusement of their owners.

Sam was sadly apt to get drunk, and had been often reproved by his muster on that account, One day his master found him intoxicated, and cried out, “What drunk again, Sam? I scolded you for being drunk last night: and here you are drunk again.” “No. massa. same drunk, massa: same drunk.”

But enough of this dark side of the social picture, I find myself dwelling long upon it, and frequently recurring to it, because all other subjects shrink into insignificance beside it: but these others must not be forgotten.

The gay visiting season at New Orleans was over before we arrived: but: we were in several parties. The division between the American and French factions is visible even in the drawing room. The French complain that the Americans will not speak French – will not meet their neighbours even half way in accommodation of speech. The Americans ridicule the toilette practices of the French ladies – their liberal use of rouge and pearl powder. If the French ladies do thus beautify themselves they do it with great art, I could not be quite sure of the fact in any one instance: while I am disposed to believe it from the clumsy imitation of the art which I saw in the countenance of an American rival or two. I witnessed with strong disgust the efforts of a young lady from Philadelphia to make herself as French as possible by these disagreeable means. She was under twenty, and would have been rather pretty if she had given herself a fair chance: but her coarsely-painted eyebrows, daubed cheeks, and powdered throat inspired a disgust which she must be singularly unwise not to have anticipated. If this were a single case, it would not be worth mentioning; but I was told by a resident that it is a common practice for young ladies to paint both white and red, under the idea of accommodating themselves to the French manners of the place. They bad better do it by practicing the French language, than by copying the French toilette. New Orleans is the only place in the United States where I am aware of having seen a particle of rouge.

Large parties are much alike everywhere; and they leave no very distinct impression. Except for the mixture of languages, and the ample provision of ices, fans, and ventilators, the drawing room, assemblages of New Orleans bear a strong resemblance to the routs and dinner parties of a country town in England. Our pleasantest days in the great Southern city were those which we spent quietly in the homes of intimate acquaintances. I vividly remember one which I was told was a true Louisiana day. We ladies carried our work bags, and issued forth by eleven o’clock, calling by the way for a friend, – Ailsie’s mistress. The house we were to visit was a small shaded dwelling, with glass doors opening into a pretty garden. In a cool parlour we sat at work, talking of things solemn and trivial of affairs native and foreign, till dinner, which was at two. We were then joined by the gentlemen. We left the dinner table early, and the gentlemen trundled rocking chairs and low stools into the garden, where we sat in the shade all the afternoon, the ladies working, the gentlemen singing Irish Melodies, telling good native stories and throwing us all into such a merry mood. That we positively refused the siesta, which we were urged to take, and forgot what a retribution we might expect from the mosquitoes for sitting so long under the trees. After tea we got to the piano, and were reminded. at last, by the darkness, of the number of hours which this delightful Louisiana visit had consumed. We all walked home together through the quiet streets, the summer lightning quivering through the thick trees, in singular contrast with the steady moonlight.

We should have liked to spend every day thus with friends who always made us forget that we were far from home; but a traveller’s duty is to see every variety of society which comes within his reach. I was sought by some, and met accidentally with other persons who were on the eve of departure for Texas. Attempts were made to induce me to go myself; and also to convince me of the eligibility of the country as a place of settlement for British emigrants, in the hope that the arrival of a cargo of settlers form England might afford to the Texans a plea of countenance form the British Government. The subject of Texas is now so well understood that there is no occasion to enlarge upon the state of the question as it was two years and a half ago; and besides, if I were to give a precise account of the conversations between myself and the friends of the Texan aggression, my story would not be believed. The folly and romance of some of the agents employed, and the villainy which people out of every admission extorted from the advocates of the scheme, would make my readers as astonished as I was myself, that any attempts should be made in the neighbourhood of the scene to gain the sympathy of strangers who were at all above the rank of knaves and fools. Suffice it that one class of advocates told me that I should be perfectly safe there, as the inhabitants were chiefly persons who could fight bravely against the Mexicans, from having nothing to lose, and from their having been compelled to leave the United States, by their too free use of arms; while the opposite species of agent enlarged, not only on the beauty of the sunsets, and the greenness of the savannahs, but on the delightful security of living under the same laws as the people of the United States, and amidst a condition of morals kept perfectly pure by Colonel Austin’s practice of having every person whom he conceived to have offended whipped at the cart’s tail; – the fact being carefully concealed that Colonel Austin was at that time, and had been for two years, in gaol in the Mexican capital.

Our friends indulged us in what they knew to be our favourite pleasure, – in country drives. There can be no great choice of drives in the neighbourhood of a city which stands in a swamp; but such place as were attainable we reached. One was a rope-walk, 1200 feet long, under a roof. It looked picturesque, like every other rope-walk that I ever saw: but what struck me most about it was the sudden and profound repose we plunged into from the bustle of the city. The cottages of the negroes were embowered in green, and the whole place had a tropical air, with its thickets of fig and catalpa, and its rows of Pride-of-India trees. This last tree looks to my eye like a shrub which has received mistaken orders to grow into a tree. Its fragrance is its great charm. The mixture of its lilac flowers with its green leaves impairs the effect of the foliage, as far as colour is concerned; and the foliage is besides not massy enough. A single sprig of it is beautiful and probably its fragrance propitiates the eyes of those who plant it, for I found it considered a beautiful tree. The dark shades of these thickets are enlivened by a profusion of roses; and the air fanned by myriads of insects wings. How the negroes make friendship with the tribes of insects which drive the white man to forego the blessing of natural shade. I could never understand; but the black never looks more contented than when he shrouds himself in rank vegetation, and lives in a concert of insect chirping, droning, and trumpeting.

We were taken to the Battleground, the native soil of General Jackson’s political growth. Seeing the Battleground was all very well; but my delight was in the drive to it. With the Mississippi on the right hand, and on the left gardens of roses which bewildered the imagination. I really believed at the time that I saw more roses that morning than during the whole course of my life before. Gardens are so rare in America, from want of leisure, and deficiency of labour, that when they do occur, they are a precious luxury to the traveller, especially when they are in their spring beauty. In the neighbourhood of Mobile, my relative, who has a true English love of gardening, had introduced the practice; and I there saw villas and cottages surrounded with a luxuriant growth of Cherokee roses, honeysuckles, and myrtles, while groves of orange trees appeared in the background: but not even these equalled what I saw, this warm 4th of May, on our way to the battleground. One villa, built by an Englishman, was obstinately inappropriate to the scene and climate; – red brick, without gallery, or even caves or porch, – the mere sight of it was scorching. All the rest were an entertainment to the eye as they stood, white and cool, amidst their flowering magnolias, and their blossoming alleys, hedges, and thickets of roses. In returning, we alighted at one of these delicious retreats, and wandered about, losing each other among the thorns, the ceringas, and the wilderness of shrubs. We met in a grotto, under the summer house, cool with a greenish light and veiled at its entrance with a tracery of creepers. There we lingered, amidst singing or silent dreaming. There seemed to be too little that was real about the place for ordinary voices to be heard speaking about ordinary things.

The river was rising, as we were told in a tone of congratulation. The eddies would be filled, and our voyage expedited. The canes in the sugar grounds were showing themselves above the soil; young sprouts that one might almost see grow. A negro was feed to gather flowers for us, and he filled the carriage with magnolia, honeysuckle, and roses, grinning the while at our pleasure, and at his own good luck in falling in with us.

The Battleground is rather more than four miles from the city. We were shown the ditch and the swamp by which the field of action was bounded on two sides, and some remains of the breastwork of earth which was thrown up. There has been great exaggeration about the cotton-bags, of which there were only a few in a line with the earthen defence, instead of an entire breastwork, as has been supposed in all the jokes and all the admiration which have been expended on the expedient. It was a deadly battlefield. It makes the spectator shudder to see the wide open space, the unsheltered level, over which the British soldiers were compelled to inarch to certain destruction. Never was greater bravery shown by soldiers; and never, perhaps, was bravery more abused by the unskilfulness of leaders. The result proves this. The British killed were nearly 3000: the Americans had six killed, and seven wounded. By all accounts, General Jackson showed consummate ability throughout the whole brief campaign; and the British leaders an imbecility no less remarkable.

I was shown a house on a plantation where, twelve days before the battle, the son of the proprietor was quietly dining at one o’clock, when a slave ran in, and told him that some men in red coats were in the yard. The young man instantly comprehended that the British had captured the American scouts. He bolted through the window, and into a canoe, and crossed the river amidst a shower of balls, seized a horse, and galloped to the city. The troops, dispersed on different points, were collected by drum and bell; and, between two o’clock and eleven at night, the city was made ready to abide the enemy’s approach. It is still incomprehensible to the Americans why the British, who actually did throw a party over the river, did not all step ashore on the opposite side of the Mississippi, and quietly march the four miles up to the city, and into it. It could have offered no defence; nor was there any impediment by the way.

The headquarters of both generals are very conspicuous on the plain. Sir Edward Pakenham and a party of his officers were spied by the Americans, standing in the balcony of the house they inhabited. A gunner was ordered to take aim at them. Seeing the importance of the shot, he was flurried, and struck the river, a mile off. He was ordered to retire. He knew that this was the crisis of his professional fate, and implored that he might be granted one more chance. He then hit the pillar which supported the balcony, immediately under the feet of the group of officers, who hurried pell-mell into the house.

After eleven days of housekeeping in New Orleans, we were obliged to depart, having been fortunate enough to secure berths in a capital boat which started northwards on the 6th of May. The slaves in our temporary abode had served us intelligently and well. Wishing to see what they could do, we did not give any orders about our table. We were rarely at home at dinner; but our breakfasts and occasional dinners were more luxurious than if we had provided for ourselves. Excellent coffee, French bread, radishes, and strawberries at breakfast; and at dinner, broth, fowls, beef-steak, with peas, young asparagus, salad, new potatoes, and spinach, all well cooked; claret at dinner, and coffee worthy of Paris after it, – this was the kind of provision with which we were favoured. Every thing was done to make us cool. The beds were literally as hard as the floor. We had a bath of the coldest water prepared morning and night: all the doors and windows were kept open, and the curtains drawn, to establish draughts and keep out the sun. There was ice in the water jug; ice on the lump of butter; ice in the wine glass; and ice cream for dessert.

Abroad, all was, as in every other American city, hospitality and gaiety. I had rather dreaded the visit to New Orleans, and went more from a sense of duty than from inclination. A friendship that I formed there, though already eclipsed by death, left me no feeling but rejoicing that I had gone: and I also learned much that was useful in helping me to interpret some things which met my observation both previously and subsequently. But my strongest impression of New Orleans is, that while it affords an instructive study, and yields some enjoyment to a stranger, it is the last place in which men are gathered together where one who prizes his Humanity would wish to live.

Volume 2

Mississippi Voyage

“That it was full of monsters who devoured canoes as well as men; that the devil stopped its passage, and sunk all those who ventured to approach the place where he stood; and that the river itself at last was swallowed up in the bottomless gulf of a tremendous whirlpool.”

Quarterly Review

“Hie ver purpureum: varios hie flumina circum

Fundit humus flores: hie candida populus antro

Imminet, et lentæ texunt umbracula vites.”

Virgil

About four o’clock in the afternoon of the 6th of May we were conveyed, by a large party of friends, to the “Henry Clay,” on board of which accommodations had been secured for us by great exertion on the part of a fellow voyager. The “Henry Clay” had the highest reputation of any boat on the river, having made ninety-six trips without accident; a rare feat on this dangerous river. As I was stepping on board, Judge P. said he hoped we were each provided with a life preserver. I concluded he was in joke; but he declared himself perfectly serious, adding that we should probably find ourselves the only cabin passengers unprovided with this means of safety. We should have been informed of this before: it was too late now. Mr E., of our party on board, told me all that this inquiry made me anxious to know. He had been accustomed to ascend and descend the river annually, with his family; and he made his arrangements according to his knowledge of the danger of the navigation. It was his custom to sit up till near the time of other people’s rising, and to sleep in the day. There are always companies of gamblers in these boats, who, being awake and dressed during the hours of darkness, are able to seize the boats, on the first alarm of an accident in the night, and are apt to leave the rest of the passengers behind. Mr E. was a friend of the captain; he was a man of gigantic bodily strength, and cool temper; every way fitted to be of use in an emergency: and the captain gave him the charge of the boats, in case of a night accident. Mr E. told me that, as we were particularly under his charge, his first thought, in a time of danger, would be of us. He had a life preserver, and was an excellent swimmer, so that he had little doubt of being able to save us, in any case. He only asked us to come the instant we were called; to do as we were bid; and to be quiet. As we looked at the stately vessel, with her active captain, her two pilots, the crowds of gay passengers, and all the provision for safety and comfort, it was scarcely possible to realize the idea of danger: but we knew that the perils of this extraordinary river, sudden and overwhelming, are not like those of the ocean, which can be, in a great measure, guarded against by skill and care. The utmost watchfulness cannot here provide against danger from squalls, from changes in the channel of the river, and from the snags, planters, and sawyers (trunks of trees brought down from above by the current, and fixed in the mud under water,) which may, at any moment, pierce the hull of the vessel.

Our New Orleans friends remained with us upwards of an hour, introducing us to the captain, and to such of the passengers as they knew. Among these were Mr and Mrs L., of Boston, Massachusetts. We little imagined, that afternoon, how close an intimacy would grow out of this casual meeting; how many weeks we should afterwards spend in each other’s society, with still increasing esteem and regard. The last thing one of my friends said was that he was glad we were going, as there had been forty cases of cholera in the city, the day before.

After five o’clock, the company on deck and in the cabins, who had bidden farewell to their friends some time before, began to inquire of one another why we were not setting off. We had found the sun too warm on deck, and had had enough of mutual staring with the groups on the wharf: we turned over the books, and made acquaintance with the prints in the ladies’ cabin; and then leisurely arranged our state rooms to our liking: and still there was no symptom of departure. The captain was obviously annoyed. It was the non-arrival of a party of passengers which occasioned the delay. A multitude of Kentuckians and other western men had almost forced their way on board, as deck passengers; men who had come down the river in flatboats with produce, who were to work their way up again by carrying wood at the wooding places, morning and evening, to supply the engine fire. These men, like others, prefer a well-managed to a perilous boat; and their eagerness to secure a passage was excessive. More thronged in, after the captain had declared that he was full; more were bustling on the wharf, and still the expected party did not come. The captain ordered the plank to be taken up which formed a communication with the shore. Not till six o’clock was it put down for the dilatory passengers, who did not seem to be aware of the inconvenience they had occasioned. They were English. A man on the wharf took advantage of the plank being put down, to come on board, in spite of prohibition. He went with his bundle to the spot on the second deck which he chose for a sleeping place, and immediately lay down, without attracting particular notice from any one.

We braved the heat on the hurricane dock, for the sake of obtaining last views of New Orleans. The city soon became an indistinguishable mass of buildings, lying in the swamp; yet with something of a cheerful air, from the brightness of the sun. The lofty Cotton Press, so familiar to the eye of every one acquainted with that region, was long visible, amidst the windings of the river, which seemed to bring us quite near the city again, when we thought we should see it no more.

At seven we were summoned to supper, and obtained a view of the company in whose society we were to pass the next ten days. There was a great mixture. There was a physician from New York, with his wife and a friend or two; an ultra exclusive party. There were Mr and Mrs B., also from New York, amiable elderly people, with some innocent peculiarities: and showing themselves not the less mindful of other people from taking great care of each other. There was the party that had kept the captain waiting, – some of them very agreeable: and the L.’s, whom it would have been a privilege to meet anywhere. There were long trains of young men, – so many as to extinguish all curiosity as to who they were, and where they came from: and a family party belonging to the West, father, mother, grandmother, and six children, who had a singular gift of squalling; and their nurses, – slaves. These are all that I distinctly remember among the multitude that surrounded the almost interminable table in the cabin. This table, long as it was, would not hold all the company. Many had to wait till seats were vacated; and yet we were to go on receiving passengers, all the way to Natchez.

We took in more this evening. After supper we hastened again to the hurricane deck, where the air was breathing cool, and, to our great joy, strong enough to relieve us from mosquitoes. The river was lined with plantations of cotton and sugar; as it continued to be for two hundred miles farther. Almost every turn of the mighty stream disclosed a sugar-house of red brick, with a centre and wings; – all much alike. Groups of slaves, most of them nearly naked, were chopping wood, or at other kinds of toil along the shore. As the twilight melted into the golden moonlight of this region, I saw sparkles among the reeds on the margin of the stream. It did not occur to me what they were, till I saw a horse galloping in a meadow, and apparently emitting gleams of fire. I then knew that I at length saw fireflies. One presently alighted on the linen coat of a gentleman standing beside me; where it spread its gleam over a space as large as the palm of my hand, making the finest of the threads distinctly visible.

In a dark recess of the shore a large fire suddenly blazed up, and disclosed a group of persons standing on the brink of the stream. Our boat neared the shore; for this was a signal from a party who had secured their passage with us. Night after night I was struck with the same singular combination of lights which I now beheld; – the moonlight, broad and steady; the blazing brands, sometimes on the shore, and sometimes on board the flatboats we met; and the glancing fireflies.

When we went down for the night, we had our first experience of the crying of the little H.’s. They were indefatigable children: when one became quiet, another began; and among them, they kept up the squall nearly the twenty-four hours round. Their mother scolded them; their nurses humoured them; and, between these two methods of management, there was no peace for anybody within hearing. There was a good deal of trampling overhead too. Many of the deck passengers had to sleep in the open air, on the hurricane deck, from there being no room for them below; and, till they had settled themselves, sleep was out of the question for those whose state rooms were immediately beneath. At length, however, all was quiet but the rumbling of the engine, and we slept.

When I went on deck in the morning, before six, I was privately told, by a companion, that the man who had last forced his way on board had died of cholera in the night, and had been laid under a tree, at the wooding-place, a few minutes before. Never was there a lovelier morning for a worn wretch to lie down to his long sleep. The captain particularly desired that the event should be passed over in entire silence, as he was anxious that there should be no alarm about the disease on board the boat. The poor man had, as I have mentioned, lain down in his place as soon as he came among us. He lay unobserved till two in the morning, when he roused the neighbour on each side of him. They saw his state at a glance, and lost not a moment in calling down the New York physician: but before this gentleman could get to him, the sick man died. His body was handed over to the people at the wooding-place, and buried in the cheerful morning sunshine. We sped away from that lonely grave as if we were in a hurry to forget it; and when we met at breakfast, there was mirth and conversation, and conventional observance, just as if death had not been among us in the night. This was no more than a quickening of the process by which man drops out of life, and all seems to go on as if he had never been: only seems, however. Even in this case, where the departed had been a stranger to us all, and had sunk from amidst us in eight hours, I believe there were few or no hearts untouched, – either by sorrow for him or fear for themselves. We were none of us as we should have been if this, his brief connexion with us, had never existed.

All the morning we were passing plantations; and there were houses along both banks, at short intervals: sometimes the mansions of planters; sometimes sugar-houses; sometimes groups of slave dwellings, painted or unpainted, standing under the shade of sycamores, magnolias, live oaks, or Pride-of-India trees. Many dusky gazing figures of men with the axe, and women with the pitcher, would have tempted the pencil of an artist. The field were level and rich-looking, and they were invariably bounded by the glorious forest. Towards noon, we perceived by the number of sailing boats that we were near some settlement, and soon came upon Donaldsonville, a considerable village, with a large unfinished State House, where the legislature of Louisiana once sat, which was afterwards removed to New Orleans, whence it has never come back. Its bayou boasts a steamer, by which planters in the south backcountry are conveyed to their estates, on quitting the Mississippi.

We now felt ourselves sufficiently at home to decide upon the arrangement of our day. The weather was too hot to let the fatigues of general conversation be endurable for many hours together; and there was little in the general society of the vessel to make us regret this. We rose at five, or a little later; the early morning being delicious. Breakfast was ready at seven: and after it I apparently went to my state room for the morning: but this was not exactly the case. I observed that the laundresses hung their counterpanes and sheets to dry in the gallery before my window, and that therefore nobody came to that gallery. It struck me that this must be the coolest part of the boat, such an evaporation as was perpetually going on. I therefore stepped out of my window, with my book, work, or writing; and, sitting under the shade of a counterpane, and in full view of the river and western shore, spent in quiet some of the pleasantest mornings I have ever known. I was now and then reminded of the poor parson, pitied by Mrs Barbauld:

“or crossing lines

Shall mar thy musings, as the wet cold sheet

Flaps in thy face abrupt;”

and sometimes an unsympathizing laundress would hang up an impenetrable veil between me and some object on shore that I was eagerly watching; but these little inconveniences were nothing in the way of counterbalance to the privilege of retirement. I took no notice of the summons to luncheon at eleven, and found that dinner, at half-past one, came far too soon. We all thought it our duty to be sociable in the afternoon, and therefore took our seats in the gallery on the other side of the boat, where we were daily introduced to members of our society who before were strangers, and spent two or three hours in conversation or at chess. It was generally very hot, and the conversation far from lively, consisting chiefly of complaints of the heat or the glare – of the children, or of the dullness of the river: varied by mutual interrogation about where everybody was going. A remark here and there was amusing; as when a lady described Canada as the place where people row boats and sing “Row, brothers, row,” and all that. When the heat began to decline, we went to the hurricane deck to watch the beauty of evening stealing on: and as no one but ourselves and our most esteemed acquaintance seemed to care for the wider view we here obtained, we had the place to ourselves; except that some giddy boys pursued their romps here, and kept us in a perprtual panic, lest, in their racing, they should run overboard. There is no guard whatever, and the leads overhang the water. Mr E. said he never allowed his boys to play here; but gave them the choice of playing below, or sitting still on the top.

After tea we came up again on fine evenings; walked for an hour or two, and watched the glories of the night, till the deck passengers appeared with their blankets, and compelled us to go down.

Nothing surprised me more than to see that very few of the ladies looked out of the boat, unless their attention was particularly called. All the morning the greater number sat in their own cabin, working collars, netting purses or doing nothing: all the evening they amused themselves in the other cabin, dancing or talking. And such scenery as we were passing! I was in perpetual amazement that, with all that has been said of the grandeur of this mighty river, so little testimony has been borne to its beauty.

On the evening of our first day on the Missisippi Mr E. told me of the imminent danger he and his lady had twice been in, on board steamboats. His stories give an idea of the perils people should make up their minds to, on such excursions as ours. On their wedding journey, the E.’s. accompanied by their relative, Judge H., went down the Alabama river. One night, when Mr E. was just concluding the watch I have described him as keeping, the boat ran foul of another and parted in two, beginning instantly to sink. Mr E. roused his lady from her sleep, made her thrust her feet into his boots, threw his cloak over her, and carried her up to the deck, not doubting that, from her being the only lady on board, she would be the first to be accommodated in the boat. But the boat had been seized by some gamblers who were wide awake, and ready dressed, when the accident happened, and they had got clear of the steamer. Mr E. shouted to them to take in the lady, – only the lady: he promised that neither Judge H, nor himself should enter the boat. They might have come back for every one on board with perfect safety: but he could not move them. Judge H. meanwhile had secured a plank on which he hoped to seat Mrs E., while Mr E. and himself, both good swimmers, might push it before them to the shore, if they could escape the eddy from the sinking vessel. Mr E. heard next the voice of an old gentleman whom he knew, who was in the boat, and trying to persuade the fellows to turn back. Mr E. shouted to him to shoot the wretches if they would not come. The old gentleman took the hint, and held a pistol (which however was not loaded) at the head of the man who was steering: upon which they turned back and took in, not only Mrs E., her party and their luggage, but everybody else; so that no lives were lost. Mrs E. lost nothing but the clothes she had left by her bedside. She was perfectly quiet and obedient to directions, the whole time. The vessel sank within a quarter of an hour.

A few years after, the E.’s went up the Mississippi with their little girl. Some fine ladies on board wondered at Mrs E. for shaking hands with a rude farmer, with whom she had some acquaintance: and it appears probable that the farmer was aware of what passed. When Mr E. was going down to bed, near day, he heard a deck passenger say to another, in a tone of alarm, “I say, John, look here!” “What’s the matter?” asked Mr E. “Nothing, Sir: only the boat’s sinking.” Mr E. ran to the spot, and found the news too true. The vessel had been pierced by a snag, and the water was rushing in by hogsheads. The boat seemed likely to be at the bottom in ten minutes. Mr E. handed the men a pole and bade them thrust their bedding into the breach which they did with much cleverness, till the carpenter was ready with a better plug. The horrid words, “the boat’s sinking,” had, however, been overhead: and the screams of the ladies were dreadful. The uproar above and below was excessive: but through it all was heard the voice of the rough farmer saying, “Where’s E.’s girl? I shall save her first.” The boat was run safely ashore, and the fright was the greatest damage sustained.

We passed Baton Rouge, on the cast Louisiana bank, on the afternoon of this day. It stands on the first eminence we had seen on these shores, and the barracks have a handsome appearance from the water. A summer house, perched on a rising ground, was full of people, amusing themselves with smoking and looking abroad upon the river; and truly they had an enviable station. A few miles farther on, we went ashore at the wooding-place, and I had my first walk in the untrodden forest. The height of the trees seemed incredible, as we stood at their foot, and looked up. I made us feel suddenly dwarfed. We stood in a crowd of locust and cottonwood trees, elm, maple, and live oak: and they were all bound together by an inextricable tangle of creepers, which seemed to forbid our penetrating many paces into the forest beyond where the woodcutters had intruded. I had a great horror of going too far; and was not sorry to find it impossible: it would he so easy for the boat to leave two or three passengers behind, without finding it out: and no fate could be conceived more desolate. I looked into the woodcutters’ dwelling, and hardly knew what to think of the hardihood of any one who could embrace such a mode of life for a single week, on any consideration. Amidst the desolation and abominable dirt, I observed a mosquito bar, – a muslin curtain, – suspended over the crib. Without this, the dweller in the wood would be stung almost to madness or death before morning. This curtain was nearly of a saffron colour; the floor of the hut was of damp earth, and the place so small that the wonder was how two men could live in it. There was a rude enclosure round it to keep off intruders; but the space was grown over with the rankest grass and yellow weeds. The ground was swampy all about, up to the wall of untouched forest which rendered this spot inaccessible except, from the river. The beautiful squills-flower grew plentifully; the only relief to the eye from the vastness and rankness. Piles of wood were built up on the brink of the river, and were now rapidly disappearing under the activity of our deck passengers, who were passing in two lines to and from the vessel. The bell from the boat tinkled through the wilderness, like a foreign sound. We hastened on board; and I watched the woodcutters, with deep pity, as they gazed after us for a minute or two, and then turned into their forlorn abode.

We were in hopes of passing the junction of the Red River with the Mississippi before dark; but found that we were not to see the Red River at all; a channel having been partly found and partly made between an island and the eastern shore, which saves a circuit of many miles. In this narrow channel the current ran strong against us; and as we laboured through it in the evening light, we had opportunity to observe every green meadow, every solitary dwelling, which presented itself in the intervals of the forest. We grew more and more silent as the shades fell, till we emerged from the dark channel into the great expanse of the main river, glittering in the moonlight. It was like putting out to sea.

Just before bedtime we stopped at Sarah Bayou to take in still more passengers. The steward complained that he was coming to an end of his mattresses, and that there was very little more room for gentlemen to lie down, as they were already ranged along the tables, as well as all over the floor. So much for the reputation of the “Henry Clay.”

The next morning, the 8th, I was up in time to witness the scramble for milk that was going on at the wooding-place. The moment we drew to the land, and the plank was put out, the steward leaped on shore, and ran to the woodcutters’ dwelling, pitcher in hand. The servants of the gentry on board followed, hoping to get milk for breakfast; but none succeeded, except the servant of an exclusive. This family had better have been without milk to their coffee than have been tempted by it to such bad manners as they displayed at the breakfast table. Two young ladies who had come on board the night before, who suspected nothing of private luxuries at a public table, and were not aware of the scarcity of milk, asked a waiter to hand them a pitcher which happened to belong to the exclusives. The exclusives’ servant was instantly sent round to take it from them; and not a word of explanation was offered.

The woodcutters’ dwelling before us was very different from the one we had seen the night before. It was a good-sized dwelling, with a cottonwood tree before it. casting a flickering shadow upon the porch; and behind it was a well cleared field. The children were decently dressed, and several slaves peeped out from the places where they were pursuing their avocations. A passenger brought me a beautiful bunch of dwarf roses which he had gathered over the garden paling. The piles of wood prepared for the steamboats were enormous; betokening that there were many stout arms in the household.

This morning, we seemed to be lost among islands, in a waste of waters. The vastness of the river now began to bear upon our imaginations. The flat boats we met looked as if they were at the mercy of the floods, their long oars bending like straws in the current. They are so picturesque, however, and there is something so fanciful in the canopy of green boughs under which the floating voyagers repose during the heat of the day, that some of us proposed building a flat boat on the Ohio, and floating down to New Orleans at our leisure.

Adams Fort, in the State of Mississippi, afforded the most beautiful view we had yet seen on the river. The swelling hills, dropped with wood, closed in a reach of the waters, and gave them the appearance of a lake. White houses nestled in the clumps; goats, black and white, browsed on the points of the many hills; and a perfect harmony of colouring dissolved the whole into something like a dream. This last charm is as striking to us as any in the vast wilderness, through which the “Father of Waters” takes his way. Even the turbid floods, varying their hues with the changes of light and shallow, are a fit element of the picture; and no one wishes them other than they are.

In the afternoon we ran over a log: the vessel trembled to her centre; the ladies raised their heads from their work; the gentlemen looked overboard; and I saw our yawl snagged, as she was careering at the stern. The sharp end of the log pricked through her bottom as if she had been made of brown paper. She was dragged after us, full of water, till we stopped at the evening wooding-place; when I ran to the hurricane deck, to see her pulled up on shore and mended. There I found the wind so high that it appeared to me equally impossible to keep my seat, and to get down: my feather fan blew away, and I expected to follow it myself, – so strangling was the gust, – one of the puffs which take the voyager by surprise amidst the windings of this forest-banked river. The yawl was patched up in a surprisingly short time. The deck passengers clustered round to lend a hand; and the blows of the mallet resounded along the shore, fitfully, as the gust came and passed over.

Every one wished to reach and leave Natchez before dark; and this was accomplished. As soon as we came in sight of the bluff on which the city is built, we received a hint from the steward to lock our state rooms, and leave nothing about; as there was no preventing the townspeople from coming on board. We went on shore. No place can be more beautifully situated; – on a bend of the Mississippi, with a low platform on which all the ugly traffic of the place can be transacted; bluffs on each side; a steep road up to the town; and a noble prospect from thence. The streets are sloping, and the drains are remarkably well built: but the place is far from healthy, being subject to the yellow fever. It is one of the oldest of the southern cities, though with a new, – that is, a perpetually shifting population. It has handsome buildings; especially the Agricultural Bank, the Court House, and two or three private dwellings. Main Street commands a fine view from the ascent, and is lined with Pride-of-India trees. I believe the landing place at Natchez has not improved its reputation since the descriptions which have been given of it by former travellers. When we returned to the boat, after an hour’s walk, we found the captain very anxious to clear his vessel of the townspeople, and get away. The cabin was half full of the intruders, and the heated, wearied appearance of our company at tea bore testimony to the fatigues of the afternoon.

In the evening, only one firefly was visible; the moon was misty, and faint lightning flashed incessantly. Before morning, the weather was so cold that we shut our windows; and the next day, there was a fire in the ladies’ cabin. Such are the changes of temperature in this region.

The quantity of driftwood that we encountered above Natchez was amazing. Some of it was whirling slowly down with the current; but much more was entangled in the bays of the islands, and detained, in incessant accumulation. It can scarcely be any longer necessary to explain that it is a mistake to suppose this driftwood to be the foundation of the islands of the Mississippi. Having itself no foundation, it could not serve any such purpose. The islands are formed by deposits of soil brought down from above by the strong force of the waters. The accumulation proceeds till it reaches the surface, when the seeds contained in the soil or borne to it by the winds, sprout, and bind the soft earth by a network of roots, thus providing a basis for a stronger vegetation every year. It is no wonder that superficial observers have fallen into this error respecting the origin of the new lands of the Mississippi; the rafts of driftwood look so like incipient islands; and when one is fixed in a picturesque situation, the gazer longs to heap earth upon it, and clothe it with shrubbery.

When we came in sight of Vicksburg, the little H.’s made a clamour for some new toys. Their mother told them how very silly they were; what a waste of money it would be to buy such toys as they would get at Vicksburg; that they would suck the paint, &c. Strange to say, none of these considerations availed anything. Somebody had told the children that toys were to be bought at Vicksburg; and all argument was to them worth less than the fact. The contention went on till the boat stopped, when the mother yielded, with the worst possible grace, and sent a slave nurse on shore to buy toys. An hour after we were again on our way, the lady showed me, in the presence of the children, the wrecks of the toys; horses’ legs, dogs’ heads, the broken body of a wagon, &c., all, whether green, scarlet, or yellow, sucked into an abominable daub. She complained bitterly of the children for their folly, and particularly for their waste of her money; as if the money were not her concern, and the fun theirs!

We walked through three or four streets of Vicksburg; but the captain could not allow us time to mount the hill. It is a raw-looking, straggling place, on the side of a steep ascent, the steeple of the Court House magnificently overlooking a huge expanse of wood, and a deep bend of the river. It was three months after this time that the tremendous Vicksburg massacre took place; a deed at which the whole country shuddered; and much of the world beyond. In these disorders, upwards of twenty persons were executed, without trial by jury, or pretence of justice. Some of the sufferers were gamblers, and men of bad character otherwise. Some were wholly innocent of any offence whatever; and I believe it is now generally admitted that the plot for rousing the slaves to insurrection, which was the pretext for the whole proceeding, never had any real existence. It was the product of that peculiar faculty of imagination which is now monopolized by the slaveholder, as of old by imperial tyrants. Among the sufferers in this disturbance was a young farmer, of Ohio, I think, who was proceeding to New Orleans on business, and was merely resting on the eastern bank of the river, on his way. I have seldom seen anything more touching than his brief letter to his parents, informing them that he was to be executed the next morning. Nothing could be quieter in its tone than this letter; and in it he desired that his family would not grieve too much for his sudden death, for he did not know that he could ever feel more ready for the event than then. His old father wrote an affecting appeal to the Governor of Mississippi, desiring, not vengeance, for that could be of no avail to a bereaved parent; but investigation, for the sake of his son’s memory, and the future security of innocent citizens. The Governor did not recognize the appeal. The excuse made for him was that he could not: that, if the citizens of the State preferred Lynch law to regular justice, the Governor could do nothing against the will of the majority. The effect of barbarism like this is not to justify the imputation of its excesses to the country at large; but to doom the region in which it prevails to be peopled by barbarians. The lovers of justice and order will avoid the places where they are set at naught.

Every day reminded us of the superiority of our vessel: for we passed every boat going the same way; and saw some so delayed by accidents that we wondered what was to become of the passengers; at least, of their patience. A disabled boat was seen on the morning of this day, the 9th, crowded with Kentuckians, some of whom tried to win their way on board the “Henry Clay” by witticisms; but our captain was inexorable, declaring that we could hold no more. Then we passed the Ohio steamboat, which left New Orleans three days before us, but was making her way very slowly, with cholera on board.

The 10th was Sunday. The children roared as usual: but the black damsels were dressed; there was no laundry work going on, nor fancy work in the cabin; and there was something of a Sunday look about the place. As I was sitting by my state room window, sometimes reading, and sometimes looking out upon the sunny river, green woods, and flat boats that keep no sabbath, a black servant entered to say that Mr E. desired me “to come to the preachin’.” I thought it unlikely that Mr E. should be concerned in the affair, and knew too well what the service was likely to be, in such a company, and conducted by such a clergyman as was to officiate, to wish to attend. I found afterwards that the service had been held against the wishes of the captain, Mr E., and many others; and that it had better, on all accounts, have been omitted. Some conversation which the young clergyman had thrust upon me had exhibited, not only his extreme ignorance of the religious feelings and convictions of Christians who differed from him, but no little bitterness of contempt towards them: and he was therefore the last person to conduct the worship of a large company whose opinions and sentiments were almost as various as their faces. This reminds me that an old lady on board asked an acquaintance of mine what my religion was. On being told that I was an Unitarian, she exclaimed, “She had better have done with that: she won’t find it go down with us.” It never occurred to me before to determine my religion by what would please people on the Mississippi.

Before breakfast, one morning, when I was walking on the hurricane deck, I was joined by a young man who had been educated at West Point, and who struck me as being a fair and creditable specimen of American youth. He told me that he was very poor, and described his difficulties from being disappointed of the promotion he had expected on leaving West Point. He was now turning to the law; and he related by what expedients he meant to obtain the advantage of two years study of law, before settling in Maine. His land travelling was done on foot; and there was no pretension to more than his resources could command. His manners were not so good as those of American youths generally; and he was not at first, very fluent; but expressed himself rather in schoolboy phrase. His conversation was, however, of a host of metaphysicians, as well as lawyers; and I thought he would never have tired of analyzing Bentham; from whom he passed on, like every one who talks in America about books or authors, to Bulwer, dissecting his philosophy and politics very acutely. He gave me clear and sensible accounts of the various operation of more than one of the United States institutions, and furnished me with some very acceptable information. Alter our walk and conversation had lasted an hour and a half, we were summoned to breakfast; and I thought we had earned it.

During the morning, I heard a friend of mine, in an earnest but amused tone, deprecating a compliment from two slave women, who were trying to look most persuasive. They were imploring her to cut out a gown for each of them like the one she wore. They were so enormously fat and slovenly, and the lady’s dress fitted so neatly, to make the idea of the pattern being transferred to them most ludicrous. As long as we were on board, however, I believe they never doubted my friend’s power of making them look like herself, if she only would; and they continued to cast longing glances on the gown.

On the 11th, we overtook another disabled steamboat, which had been lying forty-eight hours with both her cylinders burst; unable, of course, to move a yard. We towed her about two miles, to a settlement: and the captain agreed to take on board two young ladies who were anxious to proceed, and a few deck passengers.

The scenery was by this time very wild. These hundreds of miles of level woods and turbid, rushing waters, and desert islands, are oppressive to the imagination. Very few dwellings were visible. We went ashore in the afternoon, just for the sake of having been in Arkansas. We could penetrate only a little way through the young cottonwood and the tangled forest, and we saw nothing.

In the evening, we touched at Helena, and more passengers got on board, in defiance of the captain’s shouts of refusal. He declared that the deck was giving way under the crowd; and that he would not go near the shore again, but anchor in the middle of the river, and send his boats for provisions.

While I was reading on the morning of the 12th, the report of a rifle from the lower deck summoned me to look out. There were frequent rifle shots, and they always betokened our being near shore, – generally under the bank, where the eye of the sportsman was in the way of temptation from some object in the forest. We were close under the eastern bank, whence we could peep through the massy beech trunks into the dark recesses of the woods. For two days, our eves had rested on scenery of this kind: now it was about to change. We were approaching the fine Chickasaw bluffs, below Memphis, in the State of Tennessee. The captain expressed a wish that none of the passengers would go on shore at Memphis, where the cholera was raging. He intended to stay only a few minutes, for bread and vegetables, and would not admit a single passenger, on any consideration. We did not dream of disregarding his wishes, if indeed the heat had left us any desire to exert ourselves: but Mr B. was so anxious that his lady should mount the bluff, that she yielded to his request; though stout and elderly as she was, the ascent would have been a serious undertaking, on a cool afternoon, and with plenty of time. The entire company of passengers was assembled to watch the objects on shore; – the cotton bales piled on the top of the bluff; the gentleman on horseback on the ridge, who was eyeing us in return; the old steamer, fitted up as a store, and moored by the bank, for the chance of traffic with voyagers: and above all the slaves, ascending and descending the steep path with trays of provisions on their heads, – the new bread and fresh vegetables with which we were to be cheered. Of course, all eyes were fixed upon Mr and Mrs B. as they attempted the ascent. The husband lent his best assistance, and dragged his poor lady about one-third of the way up: when she suddenly found that she could not go a step forward or back: she stuck, in a most finished attitude of panic, with her face to the cliff, and her back to us, her husband holding her up by one arm, and utterly at a loss what to do next, I hope they did not hear the shout of laughter which went up from our vessel, A stout boatman ran to their assistance, and enabled the lady to urn round, after which she came down without accident, She won everybody’s esteem by her perfect good humour on the occasion. Heated and flurried as she was, she was perfectly contented with having tried to oblige her husband. This was her object, and she gained it; and more, – more than she was aware of unless indeed she found that her follow passengers were more eager to give her pleasure after this adventure than before.

The town of Memphis looked bare and hot; and the bluffs though a relief from the level vastness on which we had been gazing for two days are not so beautiful as the eminences four or five hundred miles below.

The air was damp and close this night; the moon dim the lightning blue, and glaring: incessantly and the wood ashes from the chimneys very annoying. It was not weather for the deck; and seeing that Mr E. and two other gentlemen wanted to make up a rubber. I joined them. In our well-lighted cabin, the lightning seemed to pour in in streams; and the thunder soon began to crack overhead. Mrs H. came to us, and rebuked us for playing cards while it thundered, which she thought very blasphemous. When our rubber was over, and I retired to the ladies cabin, I found that the lady had been doing something which had a least as much levity in it. After undressing, she had put on her life preserver, and floundered on the floor, to show how she should swim if the boat sank. Her slaves had got under the table to laugh, They little thought how near we might come to swimming for our lives before morning. I believe it was about three hours after midnight when I was awakened by a tremendous and unaccountable noise overhead. It was most like ploughing through a forest, and crashing all the trees down. The lady who shared my state room was up, pale and frightened; and lights were moving in the ladies’ cabin. I did not choose to cause alarm by inquiry; but the motion of the boat was so strange that I thought it must waken every one on board. The commotion lasted, I should think, about twenty minutes, when I suppose it subsided, for I fell asleep. In the morning. I was shown the remains of hailstones, which must have been of an enormous size, to judge by what was left of them at the end of three hours. Mr K. told me that we had been in the utmost danger, for above a quarter of an hour, from one of the irresistible squalls to which this navigation is liable. Both the pilots had been blown away from the helm, and were obliged to leave the vessel to its fate. It was impossible to preserve a footing for an instant on the top; and the poor passengers who lay there had attempted to come down, bruised with the tremendous hail, (which caused the noise we could not account for,) and seeing, with the pilot, no other probability than that the hurricane deck would be blown completely away: but there was actually no standing room for these men, and they had to remain above, and take their chance. The vessel drove madly from side to side of the dangerous channel; and the pilots expected every moment that she would founder. I find that we usually made much more way by night than by day, the balance of the boat being kept even while the passengers are equally dispersed and quiet, instead of running from side to side, or crowding the one gallery and deserting the other.

I was on the look out for alligators, all the way up the river, but could never see one. A deck passenger declared that a small specimen slipped off a log into the water one day when nobody else was looking: but his companions supposed he might be mistaken, as alligators are now rarely seen in this region. Terrapins were very numerous, sometimes sunning themselves on floating logs, and sometimes swimming, with only their pert little heads visible above water. Wood pigeons might be seen flitting in the forest when we were so close under the banks as to pry into the shades; and the beautiful blue jay often gleamed before our eyes. No object was more striking than the canoes which we frequently saw, looking fearfully light, and frail amidst the strong current. The rower used a spoon shaped paddle, and advanced with amazing swiftness; sometimes crossing before our bows; sometimes darting along under the bank; sometimes shooting across a track of moonlight. Very often there was only one person in the canoe; as in the instance I have elsewhere mentioned[19] of a woman who was supposed to be going on a visit, twenty or thirty miles up the stream. I could hardly have conceived of a solitude so intense as this appeared to me; – the being alone on that rushing sea of waters, shut in by untrodden forests; the slow fishhawk wheeling overhead; and perilous masses of driftwood whirling down the current, – trunks obviously uprooted by the forces of nature, and not laid low by the hand of man. What a spectacle must our boat, with its gay crowds, have appeared to such a solitary! what a revelation that there was a busy world still stirring somewhere: a fact which, I think, I should soon discredit, if I lived in the depths of this wilderness; for life would become tolerable there only by the spirit growing into harmony with the scene, – wild and solemn as the objects around it.

The morning after the storm the landscape looked its wildest. The clouds were drifting away, and a sun-gleam came out as I was peeping into the forest at the wooding-place. The vines look beautiful on the black trunks of the trees after rain. Scarcely a habitation was to be seen; and it was like being set back to the days of creation, we passed so many islands in every stage of growth. I spent part of the morning: with the L’s: and we were more than once alarmed by a fearful scream, followed by a trampling and scuffling in the neighbouring gallery. It was only some young ladies, with their work and guitar, who were in a state of terror because some green boughs would sweep over when we were close under the bank. They could not be reassured by the gentlemen who waited upon them: nor would they change their seats: so that we were treated with a long series of screams, till the winding of the channel carried us across to the opposite bank.

In the afternoon we came in sight of New Madrid, in the State of Missouri; a scattered small place, on a green table land. We sighed to think how soon our wonderful voyage would be over: and at every settlement we reached repined at being there so soon. While others went on shore, I remained on board to see how they looked, dispersed in the woods, grouped round the woodpiles and seated on logs. The clergyman urged my going, saying, “It’s quite a retreat to go on shore.” This gentleman is Vice President of an educational establishment for young ladies, where there are public exhibitions of their proficiency, and the poor ignorant little girls take degrees. Their heads must be so stuffed with vainglory, that there can be little room for any thing else.

There were threatenings of another night of storm. The vessel seemed to labour much; and the weather was gusty, with incessant lightnings. The pilots said that they were never in such danger on the river as for twenty minutes of the preceding night. The captain was, however, very thankful for a few hours of cold weather: for his boat was so overcrowded as to make him dread, above all things, the appearance of disease on board. Some of us went to bed early this night, expecting to be called up to see the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi, by such light as there might be two hours after midnight. Mr E. promised to have me called; and on the faith of this I went to sleep at the usual time. I had impressed him with my earnest desire not to miss this sight as I had seen no junction of large rivers, except that of the Tombigbee with the Alabama. Mrs B would not trust to being called, but sat up, telling her husband that it was now his turn to gratify her, and he must come for her in good time to see the spectacle. Both she and I were disappointed, however. When I awoke, it was five o’clock, and we were some miles into the Ohio. Mr E. had fallen asleep, and awaked just a minute too late to make it of any use to rouse me. Mr B. had put his head into his wife’s room, to tell her that the cabin floor was so completely covered with sleepers, that she could not possibly make her way to the deck; and he shut the door before she could open her lips to reply. Her lamentations were sad. “The three great rivers meeting and all: and the little place on the point called Trinity and all: and I having sat up for it and all! It is a bad thing on some accounts to be married. If I had been a single woman, I could have managed it all for myself, I know.”

However, junctions became frequent now, and we saw two small ones in the morning, to make up for having missed the large one in the night. When I went up on deck. I found the sun shining on the full Ohio, which was now as turbid as the Mississippi, from the recent storms. The stream stood in among the trees, on either bank, to a great depth and extent, it was so swollen. The most enormous willows I ever saw overhung our deck, and the beechen shades beyond, where the turf and unincumbered stems were dressed in translucent green, seemed like a palace of the Dryads. How some of us fixed our eyes on the shores of free Illinois! After nearly five months of sojourn in slave-land, we were now in sight of a free State once more. I saw a settler in a wild spot, looking very lonely among the tall trees; but I felt that I would rather be that man than the wealthiest citizen of the opposite State, who was satisfied to dwell there among his slaves.

At eleven o’clock, on this, the ninth and last day of our voyage, we passed Paducah, in Kentucky, a small neat settlement on the point of junction of the Tennessee and Ohio. Preparations were going on before our eyes for our leaving the boat; our luggage, and that of the L.’s, who joined company with us, was brought out: cold beef and negus were provided for us in the ladies’ cabin, the final sayings were being said, and we paid our fare; – fifty dollars each, for our voyage of 1200 miles. Smithland, at the mouth of the Cumberland river, soon appeared; and, as we wished to ascend to Nashville without delay, we were glad to see a small steamboat in waiting. We stepped on shore, and stood there, in spite of a shower, for some time, watching the “Henry Clay” ploughing up the river, and waving our handkerchiefs in answer to signals of farewell from several of the multitude who were clustered in every part of the noble vessel.

If there be excess of mental luxury in this life, it is surely in a voyage up the Mississippi, in the bright and leafy month of May.

Volume 2

Compromise

“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

Hosea, 8:7.

The greatest advantage of long life, at least to those who know how and wherefore to live, is the opportunity which it gives of seeing moral experiments worked out, of being present at the fructification of social causes; and of thus gaining a kind of wisdom which in ordinary cases seems reserved for a future life. An equivalent for this advantage is possessed by such as live in those critical periods of society when retribution is hastened, or displayed in clear connexion with the origin of its events. The present seems to be such an age. It is an age in which the societies of the whole world are daily learning the consequences of what their fathers did, the connexion of cause and effect being too palpable to be disputed; it is an age when the active men of the new world are witnessing the results of their own early counsels and deeds. It seems indeed as if the march of events were everywhere accelerated for a time, so as to furnish some who are not aged with a few complete pieces of experience. Some dispensation, – like the political condition of France, for instance, – will still be centuries in the working out: but in other cases, – the influence of eminent men, for example – results seem to follow more closely than in the slower and quieter past ages of the world. It is known to all how in England, and also in America, the men of the greatest intellectual force have sunk from a higher to a far lower degree of influence from the want of high morals. It seems as if no degree of talent and vigour can long avail to keep a man eminent in either politics or literature, unless his morals are also above the average. Selfish vanity, double-dealing, supreme regard to expediency, are as fatal to the most gifted men in these days, and almost as speedily fatal, as intellectual incapacity to a pretender. Men of far inferior knowledge and power rise over their heads in the strength of honesty; and by dint of honesty, (positive or comparative) retain the supremacy, even through a display of intellectual weakness and error of which the fallen make their sport. This is a cheering sign of the times, indicating that the days are past when men were possessed by their leaders, and that the time is coming when power will be less unfairly distributed, and held on a better tenure than it has been. It indicates that traitors and oppressors will not in future be permitted to work their will and compass their purposes at the expense of others, till guilty will and purpose are prostrated on the threshold of eternity. It indicates that that glorious and beautiful spectacle of judgment may be witnessed in this world which religious men have referred to another, when the lowly shall be exalted; when, unconscious of their dignity, they shall with amazement hear themselves greeted as the blessed of the Father, and see themselves appointed to a moral sovereignty in comparison with whose splendour

“grows dim and dies

All that this world is proud of. From their spheres

The stars of human glory are east down;

Perish the roses and the flowers of Kings,

Princes and Emperors, and the crowns and palms

of all the Mighty, withered and consumed.”

However long it may be before the last shred of tinsel may be cast into the fire, and the last chaff of false pretence winnowed away, the revolution is good and secure as far as it goes. Moral power has begun its long series of conquests over physical force and selfish cunning, and the diviner part of man is a guarantee that not one inch of the ground gained shall ever be lost. For our encouragement, we are presented with a more condensed evidence of retribution than has hitherto been afforded to the world. Moral causes seem to be quickened as well as strengthened in their operation by the new and more earnest heed which is given to them.

In the new world, however long some moral causes may be in exhibiting their results, there have been certain deeds done which have produced their consequences with extraordinary rapidity, and in indisputable clearness. May all men open their eyes to see them, and their hearts to understand them!

The people of the United States were never under a greater temptation to follow temporary expediency in preference to everlasting principle than in the case of the admission of Missouri, with slave-institutions, into the Union. To this temptation they yielded, by a small majority of their representatives. The final decision rested, as it happened, in the hands of one man, Mr Clay; but it is to the shame of the North, (which had abolished slavery) that it did so happen. The decision was made to prefer custom and expediency to principle; it was hoped that if the wind were once got under confinement, something would prevent its bursting forth as the whirlwind.

The plea of slaveholders, and a plausible one up to the year 1820, was that slavery was not an institution of their choice, or for which they were answerable: it was an inherited institution. Since the year 1820, this plea has become hypocrisy; for in that year, a deliberate vote was passed by Congress to perpetuate slavery in the Union, by admitting a new State whose institutions had this basis. This new States north-west of the Ohio were prohibited from introducing slavery, by the very act of cession of the land: and nothing could have been easier than to have procured the exclusion of slavery from Missouri by simply refusing to admit any new State whose distinguishing institution was one incompatible in principle with the principles on which the American Constitution was founded. Missouri would undoubtedly have surrendered slavery, been admitted, and virtuously flourished, like her neighbour, Illinois. But there was division of opinion, and because the political device of the Union seemed in danger, the eternal principles of justice were set aside, and protection was deliberately pledged to slavery, not only in Missouri, but, as a consequence, in Arkansas and Florida. The Constitution and Declaration of Rights of Missouri therefore exhibit the following singular mixture of declarations and provisions. It will be seen afterwards how they are observed.

The general assembly shall not have power to pass laws,

1. For the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners; or without paying them, before such emancipation, a full equivalent for such slaves so emancipated: and

2. To prevent bona fide emigrants to this State, or actual settlers therein, from bringing from any of the United States, or from any of their territories, such persons as may there be deemed to be slaves, so long as any persons of the same descriptions are allowed to be held as slaves by the laws of this State.

It shall be their duty, as soon as may be, to pass such laws as may be necessary,

1. To prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to, and settling in this State, under any pretext whatsoever.

Schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged in this State.

That the right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.

That the accused cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.

That cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted.

That the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and that every person may freely speak, write, and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.

The consequences of the compromise began to show themselves first in the difference between the character of the population in Missouri and Illinois; the latter of which is two years older than the former. They lie opposite each other on the Mississippi, and both are rich in advantages of soil, climate, and natural productions. They showed, however, social differences from the very beginning of their independent career which are becoming more striking every day. Rapacious adventurers, who know that the utmost profit of slaves is made by working them hard on a virgin soil, began flocking to Missouri; while settlers who preferred smaller gains to holding slaves sat down in Illinois. When it was found, as it soon was, that slavery does not answer so well in the farming parts of Missouri as on the new plantations of the South, a further difference took place. New settlers perceived that, in point of immediate interest merely, the fine lands of Missouri were less worth having, with the curse of slavery upon them, than those of Illinois without it. In vain has the price of land been lowered in Missouri as that in Illinois rose. Settlers go first and look at the cheaper land: some remain upon it; but many recross the river, and settle in the rival State. This enrages the people of Missouri. Their soreness and jealousy, combined with other influences of slavery, so exasperate their prejudices against the people of colour as to give a perfectly diabolical character to their hatred of negroes and the friends of negroes. That such is the temper of those who conduct poplar action in the State, is shown by some events which happened in the year 1836. In the very bottom of the souls of the American statesmen who admitted Missouri on unrighteous terms, these events must kindle a burning comparison between what the social condition of the frontier States of their honourable Union is and what it might have been.

A man of colour in St Louis was arrested for some offence, and rescued by a free man of his own colour, a citizen of Pennsylvania, named Mackintosh, who was steward on board a steamboat then at St Louis. Mackintosh was conveyed to gaol for rescuing his comrade, whose side of the question we have no means of knowing. Mackintosh appears to have been a violent man; or, at least, to have been in a state of desperation at the time that he was on his way to gaol, guarded by two peace officers. He drew a knife from his side (almost every man on the western frontier being accustomed to carry arms,) killed one of the officers, and wounded the other. He was immediately lodged in the prison. The wife and children of the murdered officer bewailed him in the street, and excited the rage of the people against Mackintosh. Some of the citizens acknowledged to me that his colour was the provocation which aggravated their rage so far beyond what it had ever been in somewhat similar cases of personal violence; and that no one would have dreamed of treating any white man as this mulatto was treated. The assembled round the gaol in the afternoon, demanding the prisoner; and the gaoler delivered him up. He was led into the city; and when there, they did not know what to do with him. While deliberating, they tied him to a tree. This seemed to suggest the act which tongues echoed the cry. Brush wood was rooted up, and a heap of green wood piled about the man. Who furnished the fire does not seem to be known. Between two and three thousand of the citizens of St Louis were present. Two gentlemen of the place assured me that the deed was done by the hands of not more than six; but they could give no account of the reasons why the two or three thousand stood by in silence to witness the act of the six, further than that they were afraid to interfere!

The victim appears to have made no resistance nor entreaty. He was, some say twenty minutes, some say half an hour, in dying; during the whole of which time he was praying or singing hymns, in a firm voice. This fact was the ground of an accusation, made by magistrates, of his being “connected with the abolitionists.” When his legs were consumed, so that his body dropped into the fire, and he was no longer seen, a bystander observed to another, “There! it is over with him: he does not feel any more now.” “Yes, I do,” observed the man’s quiet voice from out of the flames.

I saw the first notice which was given of this in the St Louis newspapers. The paragraph briefly related that a ruffian of colour had murdered a citizen, had been demanded by the indignant fellow citizens of the murdered man, and burned in the neighbourhood of the city: that this unjustifiable act was to be regretted; but that it was hoped that the veil of oblivion would be drawn over the deed. Some of the most respectable of the citizens were in despair when they found that the newspapers of the Union generally were disposed to grant the last request; and it is plain that on the spot, no one dared to speak out about the act. The charge of Judge Lawless (his real name) to the Grand Jury is a sufficient commentary upon the state of St Louis society. He told the jury that a bad and lamentable deed had been committed, in burning a man alive without trial; but that it was quite another question whether they were to take any notice of it. If it should be proved to be the act of the few, every one of those few ought undoubtedly to be indicted and punished: but if it should be proved to be the act of the many, incited by that electric and metaphysical influence which occasionally carries on multitude to do deeds above and beyond the law, it was no affair for a jury to interfere in. He spoke of Mackintosh as connected with the body of abolitionists. Of course, the affair was found to be electric and metaphysical, and all proceedings were dropped.

All proceedings in favour of law and order: other of an opposite character were vigorously instituted by magistrates, in defiance of some of those clauses of the Constitution which I have quoted above. The magistrates of St Louis prosecuted a domiciliary inquisition into the periodical publications of the city, visiting the newspaper offices, prying and threatening, and offering rewards for the discovery of any probability that the institution of slavery would be spoken against in print. In the face of the law, the press was rigidly controlled.

Information was given, while the city was in this excited state, of every indication of favour to the coloured people, and of disapprobation of slavery; and the savages of St Louis were on the alert to inflict vengeance. In Marion College, Palmyra, (Missouri) two students were undoubtedly guilty of teaching two coloured boys to read. These boys were carried by them to the college for service, the one being employed on the farm, and the other in the college, to clean shoes and wait on the young men. One afternoon, a large number of citizens from St Louis, well mounted, appeared on the Palmyra road; and they made no secret of their intention to lynch the two students who taught their servants to read. The venerable Dr Nelson, who was, I believe, at the head of the institution, came out of his house to implore the mob with tears not to proceed; and the ladies of his family threw themselves down in the road in the way of the horses. The way was forcibly cleared, and the persecutors proceeded. The young men came forth as soon as summoned. They were conducted to the edge of the forest, where it opens upon a prairie. There a circle was formed, and they were told that they stood in a Lynch court.

The younger one was first set in the midst. He acknowledged the act with which he was charged. He was offered the alternative of receiving twenty lashes with the horrid cowhide, (which was shown him) or of immediately leaving the State for ever. He engaged to leave the State for ever, and was set across the river into Illinois.

The elder student made his trial a longer one. He acknowledged the act of teaching his servant to read, and made himself heard while he defended it. He pleaded that he was a citizen of Missouri, being of age, and having exercised the suffrage at the last election. He demanded a fair trial in a court of law, and pledged himself to meet any accusation there. At last it came to their binding him to a tree, and offering him the choice of two hundred lashes with the cowhide, or of promising to leave the State, and never to return to it. He knew that a sentence of two hundred lashes meant death by torture: (it is so understood in Lynch courts:) and he knew that a promise thus extorted was not binding: so he promised. He was also set across the river, where he immediately published a narrative of the whole transaction, and declared his intention of returning to his State, to resume the duties and privileges of citizenship, as soon as he could be personally safe.

The St Louis Lynchers next ordered the heads of Marion College to hold a public meeting, and declare their convictions and feelings on the subject of slavery. They were obeyed, and they put pretty close questions to the Professors, especially Dr Ely who was a suspected man.

Dr Ely came from one of the eastern States, and was considered by the abolitionists of his own religious persuasion to be one of their body. Some time after he went into Missouri, it appeared incidentally in some newspaper communications that he had bought a slave. His friends at the east resented the imputation, and were earnest in his vindication; but were presently stopped and thrown into amazement by his coming out with an acknowledgment and defence of the act. He thought that the way in which lie could do most good was by purchasing negroes for purposes of enlightenment. So he bought his man Abraham, designing to enlighten him for nine years, and then set him free, employing the proceeds of his nine years’ labour in purchasing two other slaves, to be enlightened and robbed in the same manner, for the purpose of purchasing four more, at the expiration of another series of years; and so on. It seems astonishing that a clergyman should thus deliberately propose to confer his charities through the medium of the grossest injustice: but so it was. When, at the enforced meeting, he was questioned by the Lynchers as to his principles, he declared himself opposed to the unchristian fanaticism of abolitionism; spurned the imputation of being one of the body, and in proof of his sincerity, declared himself to be the master of one slave, and to be already contracting for more.

The Lynchers returned to St Louis without having committed murder. They had triumphantly broken the laws, and trodden under foot their Constitution of sixteen years old. If it could be made known at what expense they were saved from bloodshed, – if it could be revealed what violence they offered to conscience, what feelings they lacerated, what convictions they stifled, what passions they kindled, what an undying worm – they fixed at the core of many a heart, at the root of many a life, it might have been clear to all eyes that the halter and the cowhide would have been merry in comparison with the tortures with which they strewed their way.

I have told enough to show what comes of compromise. There is no need to lengthen out my story of persecutions. I will just mention that the last news from Missouri that I saw was in the form of an account of the proceedings of its legislature, but which yet seems to me incredible. It is stated to have been enacted that any person, of any complexion, coming into or found in the State of Missouri, who shall be proved to have spoken, written, or printed, a word in disapprobation of slavery, or in favour of abolition, shall be sold into slavery, for the benefit of the State. If, in the fury of the moment, such a law should really have been passed, it must speedily be repealed. The general expectation is that slavery itself will soon be abolished in Missouri, as it is found to be unprofitable and perilous, and a serious drawback to the prosperity of the region.

What a lesson is meantime afforded as to the results of compromise! Missouri might now have been a peaceful and orderly region, inhabited by settlers as creditable to their country as those of the neighboring free States, instead of being a nest of vagabond slave dealers, rapacious slave drivers, and ferocious rioters. If the inhabitants think it hard that all should be included in a censure which only some have deserved, they must bestir themselves to show in their legislature, and by their improved social order, that the majority are more respectable than they have yet shown themselves to be. At present, it seems as if one who might have been a prophet preaching in, the wilderness, had preferred the profession of a bandit of the desert. But it should never be forgotten whence came the power to inflict injury, – by a permission being given where there should have been a prohibition. Whatever danger there ever was to the Union from difference of opinion on the subject of the compromise is now increased. The battle has still to be fought at a greater disadvantage than when a bad deed was done to avert it.

Volume 2

Cincinnati

“‘Sir,’ said the custom house officer at Leghorn, ‘your papers are forged! there is no such place in the world! your vessel must be confiscated!’ The trembling captain laid before the officer a map of the United States, – directed him to the Gulf of Mexico, – pointing out the mouth of the Mississippi, – led him 1000 miles up it, to the mouth of the Ohio, – and thence, another 1000 to Pittsburgh. ‘There, sir, is the port whence my vessel cleared out.’ The astonished officer, before he saw the map, would as soon have believed that this ship had been navigated from the moon.”

Clay’s Speeches

We reached Cincinnati by descending the Ohio from Maysville, Kentucky, whence we took passage in the first boat going down to the great City of the West. It happened to be an inferior boat; but, as we were not to spend a night on board, this was of little consequence. We were summoned by the bell of the steamer at 9 a.m., but did not set off till past noon. The cause of the delay forbade all complaint, though we found our station in the sun, and out of any breeze that might be stirring, oppressively hot, in the hottest part of a midsummer day. The captain had sent nine miles into the country for his mother, whom he was going to convey to a place down the river where her other son was lying sick of the cholera. At noon the wagon with the old lady and her packages appeared. We were prepared to view her situation with the kindest feelings; but our pity scarcely survived the attempts she made to ensure it. I suppose the emotions of different minds must always have different modes of expression; but I could comprehend nothing of such a case as this. While there were apartments on board where the afflicted mother might have indulged her feelings in privacy, it was disagreeable to see the parade of hartshorn and water, and exclamations and sensibilities, in the presence of a company of entire strangers. Her son and a kind-hearted stewardess were very attentive to her, and it was much to be wished that she had been satisfied with their assiduities.

The scenery was fully equal to my expectations; and when we had put out into the middle of the river, we found ourselves in the way of a breeze which enabled us to sit outside, and enjoy the luxury of vision to the utmost. The sunny and shadowy hills, advancing and retiring, ribbed and crested with belts and clumps of gigantic beech: the rich bottoms always answering on the one shore to the group of hills on the other, – a perfect level, smooth, rich and green, with little settlements sprinkled over it: the shady crocks, very frequent between the hills, with sometimes a boat and figures under the trees which meet over it, – these were the spectacles which succeeded each other before our untiring eyes.

We touched at a number of small places on the banks, to put out and take in passengers. I believe we were almost as impatient as the good captain to get to Richmond, where his sick brother was lying, that the family might be out of suspense about his fate. A letter was put into the captain’s hand from the shore, which did not tend to raise his spirits. It told him of the death, by cholera, of a lady whom he had just brought up the river. The captain’s brother, however, was better. We were all committed to the charge of the clerk of the boat; and as we put out into the stream again, we saw the captain helping his mother up the hill, and looking a changed man, within a few minutes!

The moral plagues consequent on pestilence are an old subject; but one ever new to the spectator. The selfishness of survivors, the brutality of the well to the sick in a time of plague, have been held up to the detestation of the untried from the days of Defoe downwards, at least: but it seems as if the full horror of such a paroxysm of society had been left to be exhibited in America. Not that the ravages of the cholera were or could he fiercer there than in the plague seasons of the Old World: but that in a country so much more Christianised in its spirit of helpfulness than any other, examples of selfish desertion show a more ghastly aspect than elsewhere. The disease was met there, and its inflictions sustained in the noblest spirit of charity, courage, and wisdom. A thousand-and-one tales might be told of the devotion of the clergy to their flocks, of masters to their slaves, of physicians to the poor, of neighbours to each other: but, in fearful contrast to these, stood out some of the gloomy facts which belong to such a time. In the west, the disease was particularly fatal, and the panic was not stilled when I was there, two years after the most destructive season. In the vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, I saw a large white house, prettily placed, and was told of the dismal end of its late occupier, a lady who was beloved above everybody in the neighbourhood, and who, on account of her benevolent deeds, would have been previously supposed the last person likely to want for solace on her dying bed. In this house lived Mrs J., with her sister, Miss A. Miss A. died of cholera at nine in the evening, and was buried in the garden during the night by the servants. Mrs J. was taken ill before the next evening, and there was no female hand near to tend her. The physician, who knew how much he was wanted in the town, felt it right to leave her when the case became entirely hopeless. He told the men who were assisting that she could not survive the night, and directed them to bury her immediately after her death. As soon as the breath was out of her body, these men wrapped her in the sheet on which she was lying, put her into a large box, and dug a hole in the garden, where they laid her beside her sister. Forty-eight hours before, the sisters had been apparently in perfect health, and busy providing aid for their sick neighbours. Thus, and thus soon were they huddled into their graves.

From the time of our leaving Richmond, the boat went on at good speed. We ceased to wear round, to take in casks and deals, at the beck of everybody on shore. The dinner was remarkably disagreeable: tough beef, skinny chickens, grey-looking potatoes, gigantic radishes, sour bread, and muddy water in dirty tumblers. The only eatable thing on the table was a saucer full of cranberries; and we had a bottle of claret with us. It was already certain that we should not reach Cincinnati so as to have a daylight view of it: our hopes were bounded to not being obliged to sit down to another meal on board.

The western sky faded while we were watching the Hunter pursuing the Coquette, – two pretty little steamboats that were moving along under the shadow of the banks. Some time after dark, we came in sight of long rows of yellow lights, with a flaring and smoking furnace here and there, which seemed to occupy a space of nearly two miles from the wharf where we at length stopped I had little idea how beautiful this flaring region would appear in sunshine.

After waiting some time in the boat for the arrival of a hack, we proceeded up the steep pavement above the wharf to the Broadway Hotel and Boarding House. There we were requested to register our names, and were then presented with the cards of some of the inhabitants who had called to inquire for us. We were well and willingly served; and I went to rest, intensely thankful to be once more out of sight of slavery.

The next morning was bright, and I scarcely remember a pleasanter day during all my travels than this 16th of June. We found ourselves in a large boarding house, managed by a singularly zealous and kindly master. His care of us was highly amusing, during the whole time of our stay. His zeal may be judged of by a circumstance which happened one morning. At breakfast, he appeared healed and confused, and looked as if he had a bad headache. He requested us to excuse any forgetfulness that we might observe, and mentioned that he had, by mistake, taken a dangerous dose of laudanum. We begged he would leave the table, and not trouble himself about us, and hoped he had immediately taken measures to relieve himself of the dose. He replied that he had had no time to attend to himself till a few minutes ago. We found that he had actually put off taking an emetic till he had gone to market, and sent home all the provision for the day. He had not got over the consequences of the mistake the next morning. The ladies at the breakfast table looked somewhat vulgar; and it is undeniable that the mustard was spilled, and that the relics of the meal were left in some disorder by the gentlemen who were most in a hurry to be off to business. But every one was obliging; and I saw at that table a better thing than I saw at any other table in the United States; – a lady of colour breakfasting in the midst of us!

I looked out from our parlour window, and perceived that we were in a wide, well built street, with broad foot-pavements, and handsome houses. A house was at the moment going up the street, – a rather arduous task, as the ascent was pretty steep. There was an admirable apparatus of levers and pulleys; and it moved on, almost imperceptibly, for several yards, before our visitors began to arrive, and I had to give up watching its march. When the long series of callers came to an end, the strolling house was out of sight.

The first of our visitors was an English gentleman, who was settled in business in Cincinnati. He immediately undertook a commission of inquiry with which I had been charged from England, about a family of settlers, and sent me a pile of new books, and tickets for a concert which was to be held in Mrs Trollope’s bazaar the next evening but one. He was followed by a gentleman of whom much will be told in my next chapter; and by Dr Drake, the first physician in the place; and Miss Beecher, daughter of the Rev. Dr Beecher, Head of Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, then on his trial for heresy, and justly confident of acquittal. Miss Beecher is a lady eminent for learning and talents, and for her zeal in the cause of education. These were followed by several merchants, with their ladies, sisters, and daughters. The impression their visits left on our minds was of high respect for the society of Cincinnati, if these were, in manners, dress, and conversation, fair specimens. Dr Drake and his daughter proposed to call us for an afternoon drive, and take us home to tea with them; a plan to which we gladly agreed.

After dinner, we first arranged ourselves in a parlour which was larger and better furnished than the one we first occupied; and then walked down to the river while waiting for Dr Drake’s carriage. The opposite Kentucky shore looked rich and beautiful; and the bustle on the river, covered with every kind of craft; the steamboats being moored six or more abreast, gave us a highly respectful notion of the commerce of the place.

Dr Drake took us a delightful drive, the pleasure of which was much enhanced by his very interesting conversation. He is a complete and favourable specimen of a Westerner. He entered Ohio just forty-seven years before this time, when there were not above a hundred white persons in the State, and they all French, and when the shores were one expanse of canebrake, infested by buffalo. He had seen the foundations of the great city laid; he had watched its growth till he was now able to point out to the stranger, not only the apparatus for the exportation of 6,000,000 dollars worth a year of produce and manufactures, but things which he values far more, – the ten or twelve edifices erected for the use of the common schools, – the new church of St Paul, – the two fine banking houses, – and the hundred and fifty handsome private dwellings, – all the creations of the year 1835. He points to the periodicals, – the respectable monthlies, and the four daily, and six weekly papers of the city. He looks with a sort of paternal complacency on the 35,000 inhabitants, scarcely one of whom is without the comforts of life, the means of education, and a bright prospect for the future. Though a true Westerner, and devoutly believing the buckeyes (natives of Ohio) to be superior to all others of God’s creatures, he hails every accession of intelligent members to his darling society. He observed to me, with his calm enthusiasm (the concomitant of a conviction which has grown out of experience rather than books,) on the good effects of emigration on the posterity of emigrants; and told how, with the same apparent means of education, they surpass the descendants of natives. They combine the influences of two countries. Thus believing, he carries a cheerful face into the homes of his Welsh, Irish, English, German, and Yankee patients: he bids them welcome, and says, from the bottom of his heart, that he is glad to see them. His knowledge of the case of the emigrant enables him to alleviate, more or less, with the power which an honest and friendly physician carries about with him, an evil which he considers the worst that attends emigration. He told me that, unless the head of the emigrant family be timely and judiciously warned, the peace of the household is broken up by the pining of the wife. The husband soon finds interests in his new abode, – he becomes a citizen, a man of business, a man of consequence, with brightening prospects; while the poor wife, surrounded by difficulties or vexed with hardships at home, provided with no compensation for what she has left behind, pines away, and wonders that her husband can be so happy when she is so miserable. When there is an end of congeniality, all is over; and a couple who would in their own land have gone through life cheerily, hand in hand, become uneasy yoke-fellows, in the midst of a much improved outward condition or prospect.

Dr Drake must be now much older than he looks. He appears vigorous as ever, running beside his stout black gig-horse in difficult bits of forest road, head uncovered, and coat splashed, like any farmer making his way to market. His figure is spare and active; his face is expressive of shrewdness, humour, and kindliness. His conversation is of a high order; though I dare say it never entered his head that conversation is ever of any order at all. His sentences take whatever form fate may determine; but they bear a rich burden of truth hard won by experience, and are illumined by gleams of philosophy which shine up from the depths of his own mind. A slight degree of western inflation amuses the stranger; but there is something so much more loving than vain in the magniloquence, that it is rather winning than displeasing, – to strangers, – not to Yankees, who resent it as sectional prejudice, and in whose presence it might be as well forborne. The following passage, extracted from an Address delivered by Dr Drake, before the Literary Convention of Kentucky, gives some idea of the spirit of the man in one of its aspects, though it has none of the pithy character of his conversation:

“The relations between the upper and lower Mississippi States, established by the collective waters of the whole valley, must for ever continue unchanged. What the towering oak is to our climbing winter grape, the ‘Father of Waters’ must ever be to the communities along its trunk and countless tributary streams – an imperishable support, an exhaustless power of union. What is the composition of its lower coasts and alluvial plains, but the soil of all the upper States and territories, transported, commingled, and deposited by its waters? Within her own limits, Louisiana has, indeed, the rich mould of ten sister States, which have thus contributed to the fertility of her plantations. It might almost be said, that for ages this region has sent thither a portion of its soil, where, in a milder climate, it might produce the cotton, oranges, and sugar, which, through the same channel, we receive in exchange for the products of our cornfields, workshops, and mines; – facts which prepare the way, and invite to perpetual union between the West and South.

“The State of Tennessee, separated from Alabama and Mississippi on the south, and Kentucky on the north, by no natural barrier, has its southern fields overspread with floating cotton, wafted from the two first by every autumnal breeze; while the shade of its northern woods lies for half the summer day on the borders of the last. The songs and uproar of a Kentucky husking are answered from Tennessee; and the midnight racoon-hunt that follows, beginning in one State, is concluded in the other. The Cumberland, on whose rocky banks the capital of Tennessee rises in beauty, begins and terminates in Kentucky – thus bearing on its bosom at the same moment the products of the two States descending to a common market. Still further, the fine river Tennessee drains the eastern half of that State, dips into Alabama, recrosses the State in which it arose, and traverses Kentucky to reach the Ohio river; thus uniting the three into one natural and enduring commercial compact.

“Further north, the cotton trees, which fringe the borders of Missouri and Illinois, throw their images towards each other in the waters of the Mississippi: the toiling emigrant’s axe, in the depths of the leafless woods, and the crash of the falling rail-tree on the frozen earth, resound equally among the hills of both States – the clouds of smoke from their burning prairies mingle in the air above, and crimson the setting sun of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.

“The Pecan tree sheds its fruit at the same moment among the people of Indiana and Illinois, and the boys of the two States paddle their canoes and fish together in the Wabash, or hail each other from opposite banks. Even villages belong equally to Indiana and Ohio, and the children of the two commonwealths trundle their hoops together in the same street.

“But the Ohio river forms the most interesting boundary among the republics of the West. For a thousand miles its fertile bottoms are cultivated by farmers, who belong to the different States, while they visit each other as friends or neighbours. As the schoolboy trips or loiters along its shores, he greets his playmates across the stream, or they sport away an idle hour in its summer waters. These are to be among the future, perhaps the opposing statesmen of the different commonwealths. When, at low water, we examine the rocks of the channel, we find them the same on both sides. The plants which grow above, drop their seeds into the common current, which lodges them indiscriminately on either shore. Thus the very trees and flowers emigrate from one republic to another. When the bee sends out its swarms, they as often seek a habitation beyond the stream, as in their native woods. Throughout its whole extent, the hills of Western Virginia and Kentucky cast their morning shadows on the plains of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The thunder cloud pours down its showers on different commonwealths; and the rainbow resting its extremities on two sister States, presents a beautiful arch, on which the spirits of peace may pass and re-pass in harmony and love.

“Thus connected by nature in the great valley, we must live in the bonds of companionship, or imbrue our hands in each other’s blood. We have no middle destiny. To secure the former to our posterity, we should begin while society is still tender and pliable. The saplings of the woods, if intertwined, will adapt themselves to each other and grow together; the little bird may hang its nest on the twigs of different trees, and the dewdrop fall successively on leaves which are nourished by distinct trunks. The tornado strikes harmless on such a bower, for the various parts sustain each other; but the grown tree, sturdy and set in its way, will not bend to its fellow, and when uprooted by the tempest, is dashed in violence against all within its reach.

“Communities, like forests, grow rigid by time. To be properly trained, they must be moulded while young. Our duty, then, is quite obvious. All who have moral power should exert it in concert. The germs of harmony must be nourished, and the roots of present contrariety or future discord torn up and cast into the fire. Measures should be taken to mould a uniform system of manners and customs, out of the diversified elements which are scattered over the West. Literary meetings should be held in the different States; and occasional conventions in the central cities of the great valley, be made to bring into friendly consultation our enlightened and zealous teachers, professors, lawyers, physicians, divines, and men of letters, from its remotest sections. In their deliberations the literary and moral wants of the various regions might be made known, and the means of supplying them devised. The whole should successively lend a helping hand to all the parts, on the great subject of education, from the primary school to the university. Statistical facts, bearing on this absorbing interest, should be brought forward and collected; the systems of common school instruction should be compared, and the merits of different school books, foreign and domestic, freely canvassed. Plans of education, adapted to the natural, commercial, and social condition of the interior, should be invented; a correspondence instituted among all our higher seminaries of learning, and an interchange established of all local publications on the subject of education. In short, we should foster Western genius, encourage Western writers, patronize Western publishers, augment the number of Western readers, and create a Western heart.

“When these great objects shall come seriously to occupy our minds, the union will be secure, for its centre will be sound, and its attraction on the surrounding parts irresistible. Then will our State governments emulate each other in works for the common good; the people of remote places begin to feel as the members of one family; and our whole intelligent and virtuous population unite, heart and hand, in one long, concentrated, untiring effort, to raise still higher the social character, and perpetuate for ever the political harmony of the green and growing West.”

How strange is the feeling to the traveller in wild regions of having his home associations unexpectedly connected with the scene before him! Here, in this valley of the Mississippi, to my eye wild and luxuriant in beauty as I fancy Ceylon or Juan Fernandez, Dr Drake pointed out to me two handsome dwellings with gardens, built by artisans from Birmingham; and he presently alighted to visit a Welsh patient. What a vision of brass-founding, tea urns, and dingy streets, and then of beaver hats and mob caps did these incidents call up! And again, when we were buried in a beechen wood, where “a sunbeam that had lost its way” streaked the stems, and lighted up the wild vines, Dr Drake, in telling me of the cholera season in Cincinnati, praised a medical book on cholera which happened to be by a brother-in-law of mine. It was an amusing incident. The woods of Ohio are about the last place where the author would have anticipated that I should hear accidental praises of his book.

The Doctor had at present a patient in Dr Beecher’s house; so we returned by the Theological Seminary. Dr Beecher and his daughters were not at home. We met them on the road in their cart, – the ladies returning from their school in the city; and we spent an evening there the next week. The seminary (Presbyterian) was then in a depressed condition, in consequence of the expulsion of most of the pupils for their refusal to avoid discussion of the Slavery question. These expelled youths have since been founders and supporters of abolition societies; and the good cause has gained even more than the seminary has lost by the absurd tyranny practised against the students.

From this, the Montgomery road, there is a view of the city and surrounding country which defies description. It was of that melting beauty which dims the eyes and fills the heart, – that magical combination of all elements, – of hill, wood, lawn, river, with a picturesque city steeped in evening sunshine, the impression of which can never be lost, nor ever communicated. We ran up a knoll, and stood under a clump of beeches to gaze; and went down and returned again and again, with the feeling that if we lived upon the spot, we could nevermore see it look so beautiful.

We soon entered a somewhat different scene, passing the slaughterhouses on Deer Creek, the place where more thousands of hogs in a year than I dare to specify are destined to breathe their last. Deer Creek, pretty as its name is, is little more than the channel through which their blood runs away. The division of labour is brought to as much perfection in these slaughterhouses as in the pin manufactories of Birmingham. So I was told. Of course I did not verify the statement by attending the process. In my childhood I was permitted by the carelessness of a nursemaid to see the cutting up of the reeking carcase of an ox; and I can bear witness that one such sight is enough for a lifetime. But, – to tell the story as it was told to me, – these slaughterhouses are divided into apartments, communicating with each other: one man drives into one pen or chamber the reluctant hogs, to be knocked on the head by another whose mallet is for ever going. A third sticks the throats, after which they are conveyed by some clever device to the cutting-up room, and thence to the pickling, and thence to the packing and branding; a set of agents being employed for every operation. The exportation of pickled pork from Cincinnati is enormous. Besides supplying the American navy, shiploads are sent to the West India Islands, and many other parts of the world. Dr Drake showed me the dwelling and slaughterhouse of an Englishman who was his servant in 1818; who then turned pork-butcher, and was, in a few years, worth ten thousand dollars.

The tea table was set out in the garden at Dr Drake’s. We were waited upon, for the first time for many months, by a free servant. The long grass grew thick under our feet; fireflies were flitting about us, and I doubted whether I had ever heard more sense and eloquence at any old world tea table than we were entertained with as the twilight drew on.

As we walked home, through the busy streets, where there was neither the apathy of the South, nor the disorder consequent on the presence of a pauper class, I felt strongly tempted to jump to some hasty conclusions about the happiness of citizenship in Cincinnati. I made a virtuous determination to suspend every kind of judgment: but I found each day as exhilarating as the first; and when I left the city, my impressions were much like what they were after an observation of twenty-four hours.

The greater part of the next morning was occupied with visitors: but we found an interval to go out, under the guidance of friends, to see a few things which lay near at hand. We visited the Museum, where we found, as in all new museums whose rooms want filling up, some trumpery among much which is worthy to remain. There was a Mermaid, not very cleverly constructed, and some bad wax figures, posted like sentinels among the cases of geological and entomological specimens: but, on the whole, the Museum is highly creditable to the zeal of its contributors. There is, among other good things, a pretty complete collection of the currency of the country, from the earliest colonial days; and some of other countries with it. I hope this will be persevered in; and that the Cincinnati merchants will make use of the opportunities afforded by their commerce of collecting specimens of every kind of currency used in the world, from the gilt and stamped leather of the Chinese and Siberians to the last of Mr Biddle’s twenty dollar notes. There is a reasonable notion abroad that the Americans are the people who will bring the philosophy and practice of exchanges to perfection; and theirs are the museums in which should be found a full history of currency, in the shape of a complete set of specimens.

We visited Mr Flash’s bookstore, where we saw many good books, some very pretty ones, and all cheap. We heard there good accounts of the improved and improving literary taste of the place, shown in the increasing number of book societies, and the superior character of the works supplied to their orders. Mr Flash and his partner are in favour of the protection of foreign literary property, as a matter of interest as well as principle.

We next went to the painting room of a young artist, Mr Beard, whose works pleased me more than those of any other American artist. When I heard his story, and witnessed what he had already achieved, I could not doubt that, if he lived, he would run a noble career. The chief doubt was about his health, – the doubt which hangs over the destiny of almost every individual of eminent promise in America. Two years before I saw him, Beard had been painting portraits, at a dollar a head, in the interior of Ohio: and it was only a year since he suddenly and accidentally struck into the line in which he will probably show himself the Flamingo of the New World. It was just a year since he had begun to paint children. He had then never been out of his native state. He was born in the interior, where he began to paint without having ever seen a picture, except the daubs of itinerant artists. He married at nineteen, and came to Cincinnati, with wife, child, an empty purse, a head full of admiration of himself, and a heart full of confidence in this admiration being shared by all the inhabitants of the city. He had nothing to show, however, which could sanction his high claims; for his portraits were very bad. When he was in extreme poverty, he and his family were living, or rather starving, in one room, at whose open window he put up some of his pictures, to attract the notice of passengers. A wealthy merchant, Mr G., and a gentleman with him, stopped and made their remarks to each other, Mr G. observing “the fellow has talent, after all.” Beard was sitting behind his pictures, heard the remark, and knew the voice. He was enraged. Mr G. visited him, with a desire to encourage and assist him; but the angry artist long resisted all attempts to pacify him. At his first attempt to paint a child, soon after, all his genius shone forth, to the astonishment of every one but himself. He has proved to be one of the privileged order who grow gentle, if not modest, under appreciation; he forgave Mr G., and painted several pictures for him. A few wealthy citizens were desirous of sending him to Italy to study. His reply to every mention of the subject is, that he means to go to Italy, but that he shall work his own way there. In order to see how he liked the world, he paid a visit to Boston, while I was there, intending to stay some time. From a carriage window, I saw him in the street, stalking along like a chief among inferiors, his broad white collar laid over his coat, his throat bare, and his hair parted in the middle of his forehead, and waving down the sides of his face. People turned to look after him. He stayed only a fortnight, and went back to Ohio, expressing great contempt for cities. This was the last I heard of him.

I have a vivid remembrance of three of his pictures of children. One, of a boy trudging through a millstream to school, absolutely American, not only in the scenery, but in the air and countenance of the boy. which were exquisitely natural and fresh. Another was a boy about to go unwillingly to school: his satchel was so slung over his shoulder as to show that he had not put it on himself: the great bite in the slice of bread and butter intimated that breakfast was going on in the midst of the grief; and the face was distorted with the most ludicrous passion. Thus far all might have been done by the pencil of the mere caricaturist. The triumph of the painter was in the beauty and grace of the child shining through the ridiculous circumstances amidst which he was placed. It was obvious that the character of the face when undisturbed by passion was that of careless gaiety. The third was a picture of children and a dog; one beautiful creature astride of the animal, and putting his cap upon the head of the dog, who was made to look the sage of the party. I saw and liked some of his pictures of another character. Any one of his humorous groups might be thought almost worthy of Wilkie: but there was repetition in them; two favourite heads especially, were popped in, in situations too nearly resembling. The most wonderful perhaps of his achievements was a fine full-length portrait of a deceased lady, whom he had never seen. It was painted from a miniature, and under the direction of the widower, whom it fully satisfied in regard to the likeness. It was a breathing picture. He is strongly disposed to try his hand on sculpture. I saw a bust of himself which he had modelled. It was a perfect likeness, and had much spirit. All this, and much more, having been done in a single year, by one who had never seen a good picture, it seems reasonable to expect great things from powers so rapidly and profusely developed. Beard’s name was little, if at all, known beyond his native State, while I was in the country. If he lives, it will soon be heard of in Europe.

In the afternoon, a large party called us for an expedition into Kentucky. We crossed the river in the ferry boat, without leaving the carriages, drove through Covington, and mounted slowly through a wood. till we reached the foot of a steep hill, where we alighted. We climbed the hill, wild with tall grass and shrubs, and obtained the view of Cincinnati which is considered the completest. I now perceived that, instead of being shut in between two hills, the city stands on a noble platform, round which the river turns, while the hills rise behind. The platform is perfectly ventilated: and the best proof of this is the healthiness of the city, above all other American cities. A physician who had been seven years a resident told me that he had been very delicate in health, before he came, like many others of the inhabitants: and like many others, he had not had a day’s illness since his arrival. The average of deaths in the city during; the best season was seven per week: and. at the worst time of the year, the mortality was less than in any city of its size in the republic.

There is ample room on the platform for a city as large as Philadelphia, without encroaching at all on the hillsides. The inhabitants are already consulting as to where the Capitol shall stand, whenever the nation shall decree the removal of the General Government beyond the mountains. If it were not for the noble building at Washington, this removal would probably take place soon – perhaps after the opening of the great Southern railroad. It seems rather absurd to call senators and representatives to Washington, from Missouri and Louisiana, while there is a place on the great rivers which would save them half the journey, and suit almost everybody else just as well, and many much better. The peril to health at Washington in the winter season is great; and the mild and equable temperature of Cincinnati is an important circumstance in the case.

We hurried home to prepare for an evening party, and tea was brought up to us while we dressed. All the parties I was at in Cincinnati were very amusing, from the diversity in the company, and in the manners of the natives of the east and west. The endeavour seems to be to keep up, rather than to disuse distinctive observances; and this almost makes the stranger fancy that he has travelled a thousand miles between one evening and the next. The effect is entertaining enough to the foreign guest, but not very salutary to the temper of the residents: to judge by the complaints I heard about sectional exclusiveness. It appeared to me that the thing chiefly to be wished, in this connexion, was that the Easterners should make large concessions and allowance. It would be well for them to remember that it was they who chose the western city, and not the city them: and that if the elderly inhabitants are rather proud of their western deeds, and ostentatiously attached to their western symbols, this is a circumstance belonging to the place, and deliberately encountered, with other circumstances, by new residents: and that, moreover, all that they complain of is an indulgence of the feelings of a single generation. When the elderly members of the society drop off, the children of all residents will wear the buckeye, or forget it alike. And it certainly appeared to me that the cool assumption by Easterners of the superiority of New England over all other countries was, whether just or not, likely to be quite as offensive to the buckeyes, as any buckeye exultation could be to the Yankees.

At one evening party, the company sat round the drawing room, occasionally changing places, or forming groups without much formality. They were chiefly Yankees, of various accomplishments, from the learned who talked with enthusiasm about Channing, and with strong sense about every thing but politics, in which his aristocratic bias drew him aside into something like nonsense – to the sentimental young widow, who instantly began talking to me of her dear Mr— and who would return to the subject as often as I led away from it. Every place was remarkable for her dear Mr— having been better or worse there: and every event was measured by its having happened so long before or after her dear Mr— was buried. The conversation of the society was most about books, and society and its leaders at home and abroad. The manners of the lady of the house were, though slightly impaired by timidity, such as would grace any society of any country. The house, handsomely furnished, and adorned with some of the best of Beard’s pictures, stood on a terrace beautifully surrounded with shrubbery, and commanding a fine view of the city.

At another party there was a greater variety. An enormous buckeye bowl of lemonade, with a ladle of buckeye, stood on the hall table; and symbolical sprigs of the same adorned the walls. On entering the drawing room. I was presented with a splendid bouquet, sent by a lady by the hands of her brother, from a garden and conservatory which are the pride of the city. My first introduction was to the catholic bishop; my next to a lady whom I thought then and afterwards one of the cleverest women I met in the country. There was a slight touch of pedantry to be excused, and a degree of tory prejudice against the bulk of the human race which could scarcely be exceeded even in England: but there was a charming good humour in the midst of it all, and a power both of observation and reasoning which commanded high respect. One western gentleman sidled about in a sort of minuet step, unquestionably a gentleman as he as in all essential respects: and one young lady who was, I fancy, taking her first peep at the world, kept her eves earnestly fixed on the guests as they entered. bowing unconsciously in sympathy with every gentleman who bowed, and curtseying with every lady who curtsied. She must have been well practiced in salutation before the evening was over, for the party was a large one. All the rest, with the exception of a forward Scotchman, were well bred, and the evening passed off very pleasantly amidst brisk conversation, mirth, and excellent refreshments.

Another party was at the splendid house to which the above-mentioned garden and conservatory belong. The proprietor has a passion for gardening and his ruling taste seems likely to be a blessing to the city, He employs four gardeners, and toils in his grounds with his own hands. His garden is on a terrace which overlooks the canal, and the most park-like eminences form the background of the view. Between the garden and the hills extend his vineyards, from the produce of which he has succeeded in making twelve kinds of wine, some of which are highly praised by good judges. Mr Longworth himself is sanguine as to the prospect of making Ohio a wine growing region: and he has done all that an individual can to enhance the probability. In this house is West’s preposterous picture of Ophelia, the sight of which amazed me after all I had heard of it. It is not easy to imagine how it should have obtained the reputation of being his best, while his Cromwell is in existence. The party at this house was the largest and most elegant of any that I attended in Cincinnati, Among many other guests we met one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, a Member of Congress and his lady, two Catholic priests, Judge Hall, the popular writer, with divines, physicians, lawyers, merchants and their families. The spirit and superiority of the conversation were worthy of the people assembled.

The morning of the 19th shone brightly down on the festival of the day. It was the anniversary of the opening of the Common Schools. Some of the schools passed our windows in procession, their banners dressed with garlands, and the children gay with flowers and ribands. A lady who was sitting with me remarked, “this is our populace.” I thought of the expression months afterwards, when the gentlemen of Cincinnati met to pass resolutions on the subject of abolitionism, and when one of the resolutions recommended mobbing as a retribution for the discussion of the subject of slavery; the law affording no punishment for free discussion. Among those who moved and seconded these resolutions, and formed a deputation to threaten an advocate of free discussion, were some of the merchants who form the aristocracy of the place; and the secretary of the meeting was the accomplished lawyer whom I mentioned above, and who told me that the object of his life is law reform in Ohio! The “populace” of whom the lady was justly proud have in no case that I know of been the lawbreakers; and in as far as “the populace” means, not “the multitude” but the “vulgar,” I do not agree with the lady that these children were the populace, Some of the patrons and prize givers afterwards proved themselves the “vulgar” of the city.

The children were nearly and tastefully dressed. A great improvement has taken place in the costume of little boys in England, within my recollection; but I never saw such graceful children as the little boys in America: at least in their summer dress. They are slight, active, and free. I remarked that several were barefoot, though in other respects well clad: and I found that many put off shoes and stockings from choice during the three hot months. Others were barefoot from poverty, – children of t recent settlers, and of the poorest class of the community.

We set out for the church as soon as the procession had passed, and arrived before the doors were opened. A platform had been erected below the pulpit, and on it were seated the mayor and principal gentlemen of the city. The two thousand children then filed in. The Report was read, and proved very satisfactory. These schools were established by a cordial union of various political and religious parties: and nothing could be more promising than the prospects of the institution, as to funds, as to the satisfaction of the class benefited, and as to the continued union of their benefactors. Several boys then gave specimens of elocution, which were highly amusing. They seemed to suffer under no false shame, and to have no misgiving about the effect of the vehement action they had been taught to employ. I wondered how many of them would speak in Congress hereafter. It seems doubtful to me whether the present generation of Americans are not out in their calculations about the value and influence of popular oratory. They ought certainly to know best; but I never saw an oration produce nearly so much effect as books, newspapers, and conversation. I suspect that there is a stronger association in American minds than the times will justify between republicanism and oratory: and that they overlook the facts of the vast change introduced by the press – a revolution which has altered men’s tastes and habits of thought, as well as varied the methods of reaching minds. As to the style of oratory itself, reasoning is now found to be much more impressive than declamation, certainly in England, and I think also in the United States: and though, as every American boy is more likely than not to act some part in public life, it is desirable that all should be enabled to speak their minds clearly and gracefully. I am inclined to think it a pernicious mistake to render declamatory accomplishment so prominent a part of education as it now is. I trust that the next generation will exclude whatever there is of insincere and traditional in the practice of popular oratory; discern the real value of the accomplishment, and redeem. the reproach of bad taste which the oratory of the present generation has brought upon the people. While the Americans have the glory of every citizen being a reader, and having books to read, they cannot have, and need not desire, the glory of shining in popular oratory, – the glory of an age gone by.

Many prizes of books were given by the gentlemen on the platform; and the ceremony closed with an address from the pulpit which was true, and in some respects beautiful; but which did not appear altogether judicious to those who are familiar with children’s minds. The children were exhorted to trust their teachers entirely; to be assured that their friends would do by them what was kindest. Now, neither children nor grown people trust, any more than they believe, because they are bid. Telling them to have confidence is so much breath wasted. If they are properly trained, they will unavoidably have this trust and confidence, and the less that is said about it the better. If not, the less said the better, too; for confidence is then out of the question, and there is danger in making it an empty phrase. It would he well if those whose office it is to address children wore fully aware that exhortation, persuasion, and dissuasion are of no use in their case; and that there is immeasurable value in the opposite method of appeal. Make truth credible, and they will believe it: make goodness lovely, and they will love it: make holiness cheerful, and they will be glad in it: but remind them of themselves by threat, inducement, or exhortation, and you impair (if you do anything) the force of their unconscious affections: try to put them upon a task of arbitrary self-management, and your words pass over their ears only to be forgotten.

Before eight o’clock in the evening, the Cincinnati public was pouring into Mrs Trollope’s bazaar, to the first concert ever offered to them. This bazaar is the great deformity of the city. Happily, it is not very conspicuous, being squatted down among houses nearly as lofty as the summit of its dome. From my window at the boarding house, however, it was only too distinctly visible. It is built of brick, and has Gothic windows, Grecian pillars, and a Turkish dome, and it was originally ornamented with Egyptian devices, which have, however, all disappeared under the brush of the whitewasher. The concert was held in a large plain room, where a quiet, well-mannered audience was collected. There was something extremely interesting in the spectacle of the first public introduction of music into this rising city. One of the best performers was an elderly man, clothed from head to foot in grey homespun. He was absorbed in his enjoyment; so intent on his violin, that one might watch the changes of his pleased countenance, the whole performance through, without fear of disconcerting him. There was a young girl, in a plain white frock, with a splendid voice, a good ear, and a love of warbling which carried her through very well indeed, though her own taste had obviously been her only teacher. If I remember right, there were about five-and-twenty instrumental performers, and six or seven vocalists, besides a long row for the closing chorus. It was a most promising beginning. The thought came across me how far we were from the musical regions of the Old World, and how lately this place had been a canebrake, echoing with the bellow and growl of wild beasts; and here was the spirit of Mozart swaying and inspiring a silent crowd as if they were assembled in the chapel at Salzburg!

This account of our three first days at Cincinnati will convey a sufficient idea of a stranger’s impressions of the place. There is no need to give a report of its charitable institutions and its commerce: the details of the latter are well known to those whom they may concern; and in America, wherever men are gathered together, the helpless are aided, and the suffering relieved. The most threatening evil to Cincinnati is from that faithlessness which manifests itself in illiberality. The sectional prejudice of the two leading classes of inhabitants has been mentioned; and also the ill-principled character of the opposition made to abolitionism. The offence against freedom, not only of opinion, but of action was in this case so rank, that citizen of Louisville, on the slaveholding side of the Ohio, taunted the citizens of Cincinnati with persecuting men for opinion from mercenary interest; with putting down free discussion from fear of injury to their commerce. A third direction in which this illiberality shows itself is towards the Catholics. The Catholic religion spreads rapidly in many most of the recently settled parts of the United States, and its increase produces an almost insane dread among some Protestants, who fail to see that no evils that the Catholic religion can produce in the present state of society can be so afflictive and dangerous as the bigotry by which it is proposed to put it down. The removal to Cincinnati of Dr Beecher, the ostentatious and virulent foe of the Catholics, has much quickened the spirit of alarm in that region. It is to be hoped that Dr Beecher and the people of Cincinnati will remember what has been the invariable consequence in America of public denunciations of assumed offences which the law does not reach; namely, mobbing. It is to be hoped that all parties will remember that Dr Beecher preached in Boston three sermons vituperative of the Catholics, the Sunday before the burning down of the Charlestown convent by a Boston mob. Circumstances may also have shown them by this time how any kind of faith grows under persecution; and, above all, it may be hoped that the richer classes of citizens will become more aware than they have yet proved themselves to be of their republican (to say nothing of their human) obligation to refrain from encroaching, in the smallest particulars, on their brethren’s rights of opinion and liberty of conscience.

The roads in the interior of Ohio were in so bad a state from recent rains that I did not, at this time, attempt to visit the middle or northern parts of the State, where may be seen those monuments of an extinct race, about which much antiquarian inquiry is going forward. One of the large mounds, whose uses are yet unexplained, and in which are found specimens of the arts of life which are considered to show that their artificers were not of Indian race, still remains within the city. It was crumbling away when I saw it, being a tempting sport for children’s play. It is a pity it should not be carefully preserved; for the whole history of evidence, particularly the more recent portion of it, shows the impossibility of anticipating what revelations may emanate from a single object of historical interest.

A volume might presently be filled with descriptions of our drives about the environs of Cincinnati. There are innumerable points of view whence the city, with its masses of building and its spires, may be seen shining through the limpid atmosphere, like a cloud-city in the evening sky. There are many spots where it is a relief to lose the river from the view, and to be shut in among the brilliant green hills, which are more than can be numbered. But there is one drive which I almost wonder the inhabitants do not take every summer day, – to the Little Miami bottoms. We continued eastward along the bank of the river for seven miles, the whole scenery of which was beautiful: but the unforgotten spot was the level about the mouth of the Little Miami river, – the richest of plains, level valleys, studded with farmhouses, enlivened with clearings, and kept primitive in appearance by the masses of dark forest which filled up all the unoccupied spaces. Upon this scene we looked down from a great height, – a Niphates of the new world. On entering a little pass, between two grassy hills, crested with wood, we were desired to alight. I ran up the ascent to the right, and was startled at finding myself on the top of a precipice. Far beneath me ran the Little Miami, with a narrow white pebbly strand, arrow-like trees springing over from the brink of the precipice, and the long evening shadows making the current as black as night, while the green, up to the very lips of the ravine, was of the sunniest, in the last flood of western light.

For more reasons than one I should prefer Cincinnati as a residence to any other large city of the United States. Of these reasons, not the last would be that the “Queen of the West” is enthroned in a region of wonderful and inexhaustible beauty.

Volume 2

Probation

“Small is it that thou canst trample the earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee; thou canst love the earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a greater than Zeno was needed, and he, too, was sent. Knowest thou that ‘Worship of Sorrow?’ The temple thereof, opened some eighteen centuries ago, how lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures, Nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the altar still there, and its sacred lamp perennially burning.

Sartor Resartus

“I will tell you, scholar, I have heard a grave divine say that God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.”

Isaac Walton

Among the strongest of the fresh feelings excited by foreign travel, – those fresh feelings which are an actual reinforcement of life, – is that of welcome surprise at the sympathy the traveller is able to yield, as well as privileged to receive. We are all apt to lose faith in the general resemblance between human beings when we have remained too long amidst one set of circumstances, – all of us, nearly as weakly as the schoolgirl who thinks that the girl of another school cannot comprehend her feelings; or the statesman who is surprised that the lower classes appear sometimes to understand their own interests; or the moralist who starts back from the antique page where he meets the reflection of his own convictions; or the clergyman who has one kind of truth for his study, and another for his pulpit. Intellectual sympathy comes to the traveller in a distant land like a benignant rebuke of his narrowness; and when he meets with moral beauty which is a realization of his deep and secret dreams, he finds how true it is that there is no nationality in the moral creation, and that wherever grass grows and the sun shines, truth springs up out of the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. Those who bring home a deep, grateful, influential conviction of this have become possessed of the best results of travel: those who are not more assured than before of the essential sympathy of every human being they meet will be little the worse for staying at home all the rest of their lives. I was delighted with an observation of a Boston merchant who had made several voyages to China. He dropped a remark by his own fireside on the narrowness which causes us to conclude, avowedly or silently, that, however well men may use the light they have, they must be very pitiable, very far behind us, unless they have our philosophy, our Christianity, our ways of knowing the God who is the Father of us all, and the Nature which is the home of us all. He said that his thoughts often wandered back, with vivid pleasure, to the long conversation he had enjoyed with some of his Chinese friends on the deepest themes of philosophy, and the highest truths of religion, when he found them familiar with the convictions, the emotions, the hopes which, in religious New England, are supposed to be derivable only from the Christianity of the region. His observation gave me intense pleasure at the time I heard it; and now, thought I have no such outlandish friends as the Chinese appear to a narrow imagination, I can tell him, from a distance of three thousand miles, that his animating experience is shared by other minds.

The most extensive agreement that I have ever known to exist between three minds, is between two friends of mine in America and myself, Dr F. being German, Mrs F. American, and I English, – by birth, education, and (at least in one of the three,) prejudice. Before any of the three met, all had become as fixed as they were ever likely to be in habits of thought and feeling; and yet our differences were so slight, our agreements so extensive, that our intercourse was like a perpetual recognition, rather than a gradual revelation. Perhaps a lively imagination may conceive something of the charm of imparting to one another glimpses of our early life. While our years were passing amidst scenes and occupations as unlike as possible, our minds were converging through foreign regions of circumstance to a common centre of conviction. We have sat mutually listening for hours, day after day, week after week, to his account of early years spent in the range of a royal forester’s domain, and of the political struggles of later years: to her history of a youthful life nourished by all kinds of American influences; and to mine, as unlike both theirs as each was to the other.

The same sort of experience is yielded by every chapter of human history which comes under the mind’s eye in a foreign country. The indolence of the speculatist, however, generally prevents his making this use of any but the most extraordinary and eventful sections of this interminable history. Such contemplations rouse sympathy, extinguish nationality, and enlarge the spirit to admit new kindred by an irresistible assurance of the rightfulness of all claims of brotherhood. Every love tale has this effect; for true love is the same all over the wide earth. Most tales of woe have the same influence; for the deepest woes spring from causes universally prevalent. But above all, spectacles of moral beauty work miracles of reconciliation between foreign minds. The heart warms to every act of generosity, and the spirit sends out a fervent greeting to every true expression of magnanimity, whether it be meek intrepidity in doing, or unconscious bravery in suffering.

Many such a heart-warming must the stranger experience in America, where the diversities of society are as great as over the European Continent, and where all virtues can find the right soil to thrive in. If there are in some regions broader exhibitions of vice – of licentiousness and violence – than can be seen where slavery is not, in other regions, or amidst different circumstances, there are brighter revelations of virtue than are often seen out of a primitive state of society. One of these, one of many, may, I think, be spoken of without risk of hurting any feelings, or betraying any confidence; though I must refrain from throwing such light and beauty over the story as the letters of the parties would afford. I was never so tempted to impart a correspondence; and it is not conceivable that any harm could arise from it, beyond the mischief of violating the sacredness of private correspondence; but this is not to be thought of.

At Cincinnati, I became acquainted with the Rev. E. P., whom I found to be beloved, fervently but rationally, by his flock, some of whom think him not a whit inferior, as a preacher, to Dr Channing. He was from New England; and, till he spoke, he might have been taken for one of the old puritans risen from an early grave to walk the earth for awhile. He was tall, gaunt, and severe-looking, with rather long black hair, and very large black eyes. When he spoke, all the severity vanished; his countenance and voice expressed gentleness, and his quiet fun showed that the inward man was no puritan. His conversation was peculiar. His voice was somewhat hollow, and not quite manageable, and he was wont to express himself with schoolboy abruptness and awkwardness of phrase, letting drop gems of truth and flowers of beauty, without being in the least aware of the inequality of his conversation, or perhaps that he was conversing at all. Occasionally, when he had lighted on a subject on which he had bestowed much thought, all this inequality vanished, and his eloquence was of a very high order. He was a man who fixed the attention at once, and could not, after a single interview, be ever forgotten. The first time I saw him, he told me that his wife and he had hoped to had made their house my home in Cincinnati, but that she and the child had been obliged to set out on their summer visit to her parents in New England before my arrival. Whenever he spoke of his home, it was in a tone of the most perfect cheerfulness; so that I should not have imagined that any anxieties harboured there, but for the fervent though calm manner in which he observed in conversation one day, that outward evils are evils only as far as we think them so; and that our thinking them so may be wonderfully moderated by a full conviction of this. This was said in a tone which convinced me that it was not a fragment of preaching, but of meditation. I found that he had been about two Years married to a pretty, lively, accomplished girl from New England. Some of his friends were rather surprised at the match, for she had appeared hitherto only as a sprightly belle, amiable but a little frivolous. It was not, however, that he was only proud of her beauty and accomplishments, or transiently in love: for his young wife had soon occasion to reveal a strength of mind only inferior to his own. Her sight began to fail: it failed more and more rapidly, till, after the birth of her child, she was obliged to surrender to others all the nicer cares of maternal management. Her accomplishments became suddenly useless. Her favourite drawing was first given up; then her needle was laid aside; then she could neither write nor read, nor bear a strong light. In her state of enforced idleness (the greatest trial of all to the spirits), her cheerfulness never failed. Her step was as light, her voice as gay as ever. She said it was because her husband was as happy as ever. He aided her in every conceivable way; by doing all that was possible of what she was prevented from doing, and by upholding her conviction that the mind is its own place; and he thus proved that he did not desire for her or for himself indolent submission, but cheerful acquiescence.

As summer came on the child sickened in teething, and was sent with its mother to New England, in order to escape the greatest heats. They had set out, under good guardianship, the week before I arrived at Cincinnati. Mr P. could not leave his church for many weeks, but was to follow in August, so as to be in time to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge. Massachusetts, in Harvard Commencement week. I fancied that I saw him meditating this poem, more than once, during our drives through the splendid scenery round Cincinnati. I was uneasy about his health, and expressed some apprehensions to one of his friends, who however made light of what I said. I thought that, made for strength as he looked, he had little of it. He seemed incessantly struggling against exhaustion, and I was confident that he often joined in conversation with his eyes alone, because he was unequal to the exertion of talking. I was quite sure of all this, and wondered how others could help seeing it too, on the day of the procession of the free schools of Cincinnati, when he was appointed to address the children. His evident effort in the pulpit, and exhaustion afterwards, made me fear that there were more trials in store for his young wife. During their separation, she could neither write to him nor read his letters.

When, towards the end of August, I arrived at Cambridge for Commencement, one of my first inquiries was for the P.s. He had joined his wife, his poem was ready, and they were in cheerful spirits, though both her sight and the child’s health were rather worse than better. I did not see them among the assemblage on the great Commencement day. On the morrow, when the Phi Beta Kappa Society had marched in to music, and the oration had been delivered, and we all looked eagerly for Mr P. and his poem, a young clergyman appeared, with a roll of M.S. in his hand, and, with a faltering voice, and a countenance of repressed grief, told us that Mr P. had been seized with sudden and severe illness, and had requested from him, as an office of friendship, that he would read the poem which its author was prevented from delivering. The tidings ran in a mournful whisper through the assemblage that Mr P. had broken a blood vessel.

The poem was descriptive, with touches of human interest, many and strong. It related the passage of an emigrant family over the Alleghanies, and their settlement in the West. It was read with much modesty, truth and grace. At one part the reader’s voice failed him, – at a brief description of the burial of an infant in the woods: it was too like a recent scene at which the reader had been present as chief mourner.

The P.s were next at a country house within two miles of another where I was spending ten days, Mr P. was shut up, and condemned to the trial which his wife was bearing so well – enforced idleness. His bodily weakness made him feel it more, and he found it difficult to bear. He had been unused to sickness: and the only failure I ever saw in him was in obedience to the necessities of his situation, and the orders of his physician. He could not write a page of a letter: and reading fatigued his head: but he could not help trying to do what he had been accustomed to perform with case: and no dexterity of his visitors could prevent his clapping on his hat, and being at the carriage door before them. I thought once that I had fairly shut him into his parlour; but he was holding my stirrup before I had done my farewell to his wife. I was commissioned to carry him grapes and peaches from a friend’s hothouse: and I would fain have gone every day to read to him: but I found that he saw too many people, and I therefore went seldom. Nothing can be conceived more touching than the cheerfulness of his wife. Many would have inwardly called it cruel that she could now do almost nothing for her husband: or what she thought almost nothing. She could neither read to him, nor write for him the many passing thoughts, the many remembrances to absent friends, that it would have been a relief to his now restless mind to have had set down. But their common conviction completely sustained them both; and I never saw them otherwise than unaffectedly cheerful. The child was sometimes better, and sometimes worse. I saw him but once, but I should have known him again among a thousand. The full, innocent gaze of his bright black eyes, the upright carriage, so striking in a well-tended infant, and the attitude of repose in which he contemplated from his mother’s arms whatever went on about him, fixed the image of the child in my memory for over. In another month I heard, at a distance, of the child’s death. For a fortnight before, he had been quite blind, and had suffered grievously. In the common phrase, I was told that the parents supported themselves wonderfully.

As the cold weather approached, it became necessary for Mr P. to remove southwards. It was a weary journey over the Alleghanies into Ohio: but it had to be performed. Every arrangement of companionship, and about conveyance, resting places. &c., was made to lessen the fatigue to the utmost; but we all dreaded it for him. The party was to touch at Providence, Rhode Island, where the steamboat would wait a quarter of an hour. I was in Providence, and of course went down to the boat to greet them. Mr P. saw me from a distance, and ran ashore, and let down the steps of the carriage with an alacrity which filled me with joy and hope. He was not nearly so thin as when I last saw him, and his countenance was more radiant that ever. “I knew we should see you.” Said he, as he led me on board to his wife. She too was smiling. They were not in mourning. Like some other persons in America who disapprove of wearing mourning, they had the courage to break through the custom. It would indeed have been inconsistent with the conviction which was animating them all this time – the conviction that the whole disposal of us is wise and right and kind – to have made an external profession that any thing that befell them was to be lamented. I could not but observe the contrast between their maidservant, whose heart was doubtless aching at having to go back without the child. The mother’s feelings were any thing but deadened. The cheerfulness and the hearts mourning existed together. Tears trembled in her eyes, and her voice faltered. More than once; but then came the bright smile again, and an intimation given almost in a spirit of gaiety, that it was easy to bear any thing while he was always so strong in spirit and so happy.

This was the last I saw of them, Their travel companions wrote cheerlessly of his want of strength, and of the suffering the long journey caused him. They were taken into the house of a kind friend at Cincinnati, where there was a room fitted up with green for the sake of Mrs P.’s eyes, and every arrangement made in a similar spirit of consideration. But it would not do: there was yet to be no rest for the invalid. The excitement of being among his flock, while unable to do any thing in their service, was injurious to him. He was sent down the river to New Orleans; and his wife was not allowed to accompany him. The reasons were sufficient; but the separation at a time when he was nearly as anxious about her health as she about his, was a dreadful trial. I heard of it, and wrote him a long letter to amuse him, desiring him not to exert himself to answer it. After a while, however, he did so; and I shall never part with that letter. He spoke briefly of himself and his affairs, but I saw the whole state of his mind in the little he did say. He found himself in no respect better; in many much worse. He often felt that he was going down the dark valley, and longed intensely for the voices of his home to cheer him on his way. But still his happiest conviction was the uppermost. He knew that all things were ordered well, and he had no cares. He wrote more copiously of other things – of his voyage down the great river, of the state of mind and manners amidst the influences of slavery, which had converted his judgment and his sympathies to the abolition cause; and of the generous kindness of his people, the full extent of which he might never have known but for his present sickness. This letter left me little hope of his recovery: yet even here the spirit of cheerfulness, predominant through the whole, was irresistible; and it left me less anxious for them than before.

After this, I wandered about for some months, out of reach of any of the P.’s connexions, and could only procure general accounts of his being better. Just before I sailed, I received from Mr P. a letter full of good news, as calmly cheerful in its tone as any written in the depths of his adversity. He had ascended the river with the first warmth of spring; was so much better as to be allowed to preach once on the Sunday, and to be about to undertake it twice; and was now writing beside the cradle of his newborn daughter, whose mother sent me word that they were all well and happy.

The power of a faith like theirs goes forth in various directions, to work many wonders. It not only fortifies the minds of sufferers, but modifies the circumstances themselves from which they suffer, bracing the nerves in sickness, and equalising the emotions in sorrow: it practically asserts the supremacy of the real over the apparent, and the high over the low; and among other kindly operations, refreshes the spirit of the stranger with a revelation of true kindred in a foreign land; – for this faith is the fundamental quality in the brotherhood of the race.

Volume 2

The Natural Bridge

“Come on, sir; here’s the place – Stand still. How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!”

Shakspeare

“Desperate now

All farther course – yon beetling brow,

In craggy nakedness sublime,

What heart or foot shall dare to climb?”

Scott

The shrewd Yankee driver of the “extra exclusive return stage” which contained four out of six of our travelling party in Virginia was jocose about the approach to the Natural Bridge. Mr L. and I were on horseback, and the driver of the stage called after us when we were “going ahead” to warn us that we should get over the bridge without knowing it, if we went first. We, of course, determined to avoid looking so foolish as we should do, if we passed the Natural Bridge, – the little spot deemed important enough to be put in capital letters in maps of the American Union, – without knowing it. Heads were popped out of the stage window to shout the warning after us; and the jokes really seemed so extremely insulting that we were disposed to push on, and get our sight of Jefferson’s great wonder before our fellow travellers came up. For five miles we kept out of sight of the stage: but at this point there was a parting of the roads, and we could see no possible means of learning which we were to follow. We were obliged to wait in the shade till the distant driver’s whip pointed out the right-hand road to us. We were now not far from the object of our expectations, We agreed that we felt very quiet about it – that we were conscious of little of the veneration which the very idea of Niagara inspires. The intensity of force, combined with repose, is the charm of Niagara. No form of rock, however grand in itself, or however beautifully surrounded, can produce any thing like the same impression. Experience proved that we were right.

At a mile from the Bridge, the road turns off through a wood. While the stage rolled and jolted along the extremely bad road, Mr L. and I went prying about the whole area of the wood, poking our horses’ noses into every thicket, and between any two pieces of rock, that we might be sure not to miss our object; the driver smiling after us whenever he could spare attention from his own not very easy task of getting his charge along. With all my attention, I could see no precipice, and was concluding to follow the road without more vagaries, when Mr L., who was a little in advance, waved his whip, as he stood beside his horse, and said, “Here is the Bridge!” I then perceived that we were nearly over it, the piled rocks on either hand forming a barrier which prevents a careless eye from perceiving the ravine which it spans. I turned to the side of the road, and rose in my stirrup to look over: but I found it would not do. I went on to the inn, deposited my horse, and returned on foot to the Bridge.

With all my efforts I could not look down steadily into what seemed the bottomless abyss of foliage and shadow. From every point of the Bridge I tried, and all in vain. I was heated and extremely hungry, and much vexed at my own weakness. The only way was to go down and look up; though where the bottom could be was past my imagining, the view from the top seeming to be of foliage below foliage forever.

The way to the glen is through a field opposite the inn, and down a steep, rough, rocky path which leads under the Bridge, and a few yards beyond it. I think the finest view of all is from this path, just before reaching the Bridge. The irregular arch of rock, spanning a chasm of 160 feet in height, and from 60 to 90 in width, is exquisitely tinted with every shade of grey and brown; while trees encroach from the sides, and overhang from the top, between which and the arch there is an additional depth of 56 feet. It was now early in July; the trees were in their brightest and thickest foliage; and the tall beeches under the arch contrasted their verdure with the grey rock, and received the gilding of the sunshine as it slanted into the ravine, glittering in the drip from the arch, and in the splashing and tumbling waters of Cedar Creek, which ran by our feet. Swallows were flying about under the arch. What others of their tribe can boast of such a home?

We crossed and re-crossed the creek on stepping stones, searching out every spot to which any tradition belonged. Under the arch, thirty feet from the water, the lower part of the letters G. W. may be seen carved in the rock. When Washington was a young man, he climbed up hither, to leave this record of his visit. There are other inscriptions of the same kind, and above them a board, on which are painted the names of two persons, who have thought it worth while thus to immortalize their feat of climbing highest. But their glory was but transient, after all. They have been outstripped by a traveller whose achievement will probably never be rivalled, for he would not have accomplished it if he could by any means have declined the task. Never was a wonderful deed more involuntarily performed. There is no disparagement to the gentleman in saying this: it is only absolving him from the charge of foolhardiness.

This young man, named Blacklock, accompanied by two friends, visited the Natural Bridge, and, being seized with the ambition appropriate to the place, of writing his name highest, climbed the rock opposite to the part selected by Washington, and carved his initials. Others had perhaps seen what Mr Blacklock overlooked, – that it was a place easy to ascend, but from which it is impossible to come down. He was forty feet or more from the path; his footing was precarious; he was weary with holding on while carving his name, and his head began to swim when he saw the impossibility of getting down again. He called to his companions that his only chance was to climb up upon the Bridge, without hesitation or delay. They saw this, and with anguish agreed between themselves that the chance was a very bare one. They cheered him, and advised him to look neither up nor down. On he went, slanting upwards from under the arch, creeping round a projection on which no foothold is visible from below, and then disappearing in a recess filled up with foliage. Long and long they waited, watching for motion, and listening for crashing among the trees. He must have been now 150 feet above them. At length their eyes were so strained that they could sec no more, and they had almost lost all hope. There was little doubt that he had fallen while behind the trees, where his body would never be found. They went up to try the chance of looking for him from above. They found him lying insensible on the Bridge. He could just remember reaching the top, when he immediately fainted. One would like to know whether the accident left him a coward in respect of climbing, or whether it strengthened his confidence in his nerves.

The guide showed us a small cedar, which projected from a shelf of the rock about two hundred feet above our heads, and along whose stem a young lady climbed several feet, so as to court destruction in a very vain and foolish manner. If the support had failed, as might reasonably have been expected, her immortality of reputation would not have been of an enviable kind.

We remained in the ravine till we were all exhausted with hunger; but we had to wait for dinner still another hour, after arriving at the inn. By way of passing the time, one gentleman of our party fainted, and had to be laid along on the floor; which circumstance, I fancy, rather accelerated the announcement of our meal. The moment it was over, I hastened to the Bridge, and was pleased to find that, being no longer fatigued and hungry, I could look into the abyss, with perfect ease. I lay down on the rocks, and studied the aspect of the ravine, in its afternoon lights and shadows, from five different points of view. While thus engaged, I was called to see a handsome copperheaded snake; but it had gained its hole before I could reach the spot. We ladies so much preferred the view of the Bridge from the glen to the view of the glen from the Bridge, that we went down for another hour before departing. It looked most beautiful. The sunshine was slowly withdrawing from under the arch, and leaving us in the shadows of evening while all was glowing like noon in the region – to which we looked up from our lowly seats, – the stepping stones in the midst of the gushing creek.

The Natural Bridge is nearly in the centre of Virginia, and about half way between Fincastle and Lexington, which are about thirty-seven miles apart. The main central road of Virginia runs over the Bridge; so that no excuse is left for travellers who neglect to visit this work, framed by the strong hand of Nature,

“by wondrous art

Pontifical, a ridge of pendant rock

Over the vex’d abyss,”

– vexed, not by the tumults of Chaos, but by the screams of caverned birds, the battles of snakes with their prey, and the chafing of waters against opposing rocks.

Volume 2

Colonel Burr

“His extraordinary plans and expectations for himself might he of such a nature as to depend on other persons for their accomplishment, and might therefore be as extravagant as if other persons alone had been their object.”

Foster’s Essays.

The romance of political adventure is generally found to flourish in the regions of despotism; and it seems a matter of course that there can be no room for conspiracy in a democratic republic, where each man is a member of the government, and means are provided for the expression of every kind of political opinion and desire. Yet the United States can exhibit a case of conspiracy, and a political adventurer such as might rejoice the souls of the lovers of romance. Scattered notices of Colonel Aaron Burr and of his supposed schemes are before the English public; but no connected history which might be depended upon appeared during his life. He died last year, and has left no relations; so that no reason now exists why every thing that can be learned about him should not be made known.

In 1795, Aaron Burr had attained to eminence at the New York Bar. He was about the same age as Alexander Hamilton, who was born in 1757, and their professional reputation and practice were about equal. Hamilton was the leader of the federal party. He was in countenance eminently handsome, in manner engaging, in temper amiable and affectionate, in eloquence both persuasive and commanding; and his mind was so comprehensive, and his powers of application and execution so great as to cause him to be considered by the federal party the greatest man their country has produced. Burr was of democratic politics; he had a fiercely ambitious temper, which he hid under a gentle and seductive manner. He was usually so quiet and sedate that he might have been thought indifferent, but for the expression of his piercing black eyes. His face was otherwise plain, and his figure and gait were stooping and ungraceful. He assumed great authority of manner upon occasion. His speaking at the bar was brief and to the purpose. His most remarkable characteristic seems to have been his power of concealment. He not only carried on a conspiracy before the nation’s eyes which they to this day cannot more or less understand; but lived long years with the tremendous secret in his breast, and has gone down to the grave without affording any solution of the mystery. It may be doubted whether, in all the long private conversations he had with individuals, he ever committed himself, otherwise than apparently, to anybody. He seems to have been understood by Hamilton, however, from the beginning; and Hamilton never concealed his opinion that Burr was an ambitious and dangerous man.

Jefferson put a generous trust in Burr; and for many years they were intimate correspondents. It is very touching to read, after all that has since happened, such letters as the following, – written shortly after the two men had been rival candidates for the Presidentship, at a time of unexampled party excitement:

To Colonel Burr

Washington, February 1st, 1801.

Dear Sir

It was to be expected that the enemy would endeavour sow tares between us, that they might divide us and our friends. Every consideration satisfies me that you will be on your guard against this, as I assure you I am strongly. I hear of one stratagem so imposing and so base, that it is proper I should notice it to you. Mr Munford, who is here, says he saw at New York before he left it, an original letter of mine to Judge Breckinridge, in which are sentiments highly injurious to you. He knows my handwriting, and did not doubt that to be genuine. I enclose you a copy taken from a press copy of the only letter I ever wrote to Judge Breckinridge in my life: the press copy itself has been shown to several of our mutual friends here. Of consequence, the letter seen by Mr Munford must be a forgery, and if it contains a sentiment unfriendly or disrespectful to you, I affirm it solemnly to be a forgery; as also if it varies from the copy enclosed. With the common trash of slander I should not think of troubling you: but the forgery of one’s handwriting is too imposing to be neglected. A mutual knowledge of each other furnished us with the best test of the contrivances which will be practised by the enemies of both.

Accept assurances of my high respect and esteem.

Th. Jefferson

In the Presidential election of 1800, there were four candidates, – Jefferson, Burr, John Adams, and Pinckney. The votes were for Jefferson 73, for Burr 73, for Adams 65, for Pinckney 64. The numbers for Jefferson and Burr being equal, the choice devolved upon the House of Representatives, which voted to attend to no other business till the election was settled, and not to adjourn till the decision was effected. For seven days and nights the balloting went on, every member being present. Some who were ill or infirm were accommodated with beds and couches; and one sick member was allowed to be attended by his wife. Adams was, as President, on the spot, watching his impending political annihilation. Jefferson was at hand, daily presiding in the Senate. Burr was in the State of New York, anxiously expecting tidings, The federal party were in despair at having to choose between two republicans (as the democratic party was at that day called). It is said that Hamilton was consulted by his party; and that his advice was to choose Jefferson rather than Burr: a piece of counsel which affected the everlasting destinies of the country, and cost the counsellor his life. At the end of the seven days, Jefferson was elected President, and Burr Vice President; which office Burr held for a single term, – four years.

In the winter of 1804, Burr was proposed at Albany as a candidate for the office of Governor of the State of New York. Hamilton, at a public meeting of his party, strongly opposed the nomination, declaring that he would never join in supporting such a candidate. About this time, Dr Chas. D. Cooper wrote a letter in which he said “General Hamilton and — have declared in substance, that they looked upon Mr Burr as a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.” “I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr Burr.” This letter was published; and on the 18th of June, 1804, Burr sent a copy of it to Hamilton, with a demand that the expressions it contained should be acknowledged or denied. The correspondence which ensued is discreditable to both parties. To use the expression of a great man, “Hamilton went into it like a capuchin.” He knew that it was Burr’s determination to fix a deadly quarrel upon him; he knew that Burr was an unworthy adversary; he disapproved of the practice of duelling, but he feared the imputation of want of courage if he refused to meet his foe. He therefore explained and corresponded with an amplitude and indecision which expose his reputation to more danger from harsh judges than a refusal to fight would have done. As for Burr, he was savage in his pursuit of his enemy. He enlarged his accusations demands, as he saw the irresolution of his victim: and I believe there is no doubt that, though he was a good shot before, he employed the interval of twenty days which elapsed before the duel took place in firing at a mark, making no secret of the purpose of his practising.

This interval was occasioned by Hamilton’s refusal to go out till the Circuit Court, in the business of which he was engaged, should have closed its sittings. The Court rose on Friday, the 6th of July, and Burr received notice that General Hamilton would be ready at any time after the following Sunday.

On Wednesday morning, the 11th, the parties crossed the Hudson to the Jersey shore, arriving on the ground at seven o’clock. Burr was attended by Mr Van Ness and a surgeon; Hamilton by Mr Pendleton and Dr Hosack. It was Hamilton’s intention not to fire; but when his adversary’s ball struck him on the right side, he raised himself involuntarily on his toes, and turned a little to the left, his pistol going off with the movement. He observed to his physician. “This is a mortal wound, Doctor,” and then became insensible. He revived; however, in the boat, in the course of removal home: and cautioned his attendants about the pistol, which he was not aware of having discharged. He lived, in great agony, till two o’clock of the following day.

He left a paper which contained his statement of reasons for meeting Burr, notwithstanding his conscientious disapproval of the practice of duelling, and his particular desire to avoid an encounter with such an adversary, and in such a cause as the present. In this paper, he declares his resolution to reserve and throw away his first fire, and perhaps his second. His reasons for fighting are now, I believe, generally agreed to be unsatisfactory. As to the effect of his determination to spare his adversary, – I never could learn that Colonel Burr expressed the slightest regret for the pertinacity with which he hunted such an enemy – merely a political foe – to death. Neither did he appear to feel the execration with which he was regarded in the region of which Hamilton had been the pride and ornament.

To avoid the legal consequences of his deed, he wandered into the West, and remained so long in retreat, that some passing wonder was excited as to what he could be doing there. He was ensnaring more victims.

In the Ohio river, a few miles below Marietta, there is a beautiful island, finely wooded, but now presenting a dismal picture of ruin. This island was purchased, about thirty-five years ago, by an Irish gentleman, named Herman Blannerhassett, whose name the island has since borne. This gentleman took his beautiful and attached wife to his new property, and their united tastes made it such an abode as was never before, and has never since been seen in the United States. Shrubberies, conservatories and gardens ornamented the island; and within doors, there was a fine library, philosophical apparatus, and music room. Burr seems to have been introduced to this family by some mutual friends at the East, and to have been received as a common acquaintance at first. The intimacy grew: and the oftener he went to Blannerhassett’s Island, and the longer he stayed, the deeper was the gloom which overspread the unfortunate family. Blannerhassett himself seems to have withdrawn his interest from his children, his books, his pursuits, as Burr obtained influence over his mind, and poisoned it with some dishonest ambition. The wife’s countenance grew sad, and her manners constrained. It is not known how far she was made acquainted with what was passing between her husband and Burr.

The object of Burr’s conspiracy remains as much a mystery as over, while there is no doubt whatever of its existence. Some suppose that he intended to possess himself of Mexico; an enterprise less absurd than at first sight it appears. There was great hatred towards the Mexicans at that period, – the period of agitation about the acquisition of Louisiana: thousands of citizens were ready to march down upon Mexico on any pretence; and it is certain that Burr was so amply provided with funds from some unknown quarter, that he had active adherents carrying on his business, from the borders of Maine all down the course of the great Western rivers. Another supposition is that he designed the plunder of New Orleans, in the event of a war with Spain. A more probable one is that he proposed to found a great Western Empire, with the aid of Spain, making himself its Emperor, and drawing off the allegiance of all the countries west of the Alleghenies: and finally that, as a cover to, and final substitute for other designs, he meant to effect the colonization of the banks of the river Washita. Such are the various objects assigned as the end of Burr’s movements: but all that is known is that he engaged a number of men in his service, – supposed to be not less than a thousand, – under an assurance that the service required of them was one approved by the government: that he endeavoured to persuade Latrobe, the architect, to engage five hundred more labourers on pretext of their working on the Ohio canal, in which it turned out that he had no interest: that a guard was mounted round Blannerhassett’s Island: that boats, manned and furnished with arms, set forth from the island on the night of the 10th of December, 1806: that they were joined by Burr, with a reinforcement, at the mouth of the Cumberland; and that they all proceeded down the Mississippi together.

The government had become aware of secret meetings between Burr, the Spanish Yruyo, and Dr Bollman, one of the liberators of Lafayette; and the proper time was seized for putting forth proclamations which undeceived the people with regard to Burr’s movements, and caused them to rise against him wherever he had been acting. Orders to capture him and his party, and if necessary, to destroy his boats, were eagerly received. Burr did not venture to New Orleans. He caused himself to be put ashore in the territory of Mississippi, and thence found his way, attended by only one person, to the banks of the Tombigbee, which he reached on the 19th of February, 1807. At eleven at night, the wanderers passed a settlement called Washington Court House: Burr preceded his companion by some yards, and passed on quietly: but his companion enquired of a man standing at the door of a public house, about the dwelling of a Major Hinson; and, on receiving his answer, joined Burr. The person enquired of went to Hinson’s with the sheriff, and had his suspicions so confirmed that he proceeded to Fort Stoddart, and brought back an officer and four soldiers, who took Burr into custody. He was lodged, a prisoner, at Richmond, Virginia, by the end of March.

Burr had previously been brought to trial in Kentucky, on an accusation of illegal secret practices in that State. He was defended and brought off by Mr Clay and Colonel Allen, who were persuaded of his innocence, and refused a fee. Mr Clay was for long after his advocate, in public and in private, and asked him, for friendly purposes, for a full declaration that he was innocent, which Burr gave unhesitatingly and explicitly: and the note is now among Jefferson’s papers. When, some time subsequently, a letter of Burr’s in cipher came to light, Mr Clay found how he had been deceived; but his advocacy was, for the time, of great benefit to Burr.

On the 17th of August, Burr was brought to trial at Richmond, before Chief Justice Marshall. He was charged with having excited insurrection, rebellion, and war on the 10th of December, 1806, at Blannerhassett’s Island, in Virginia, Secondly, the same charge was repeated, with the addition of a traitorous intention of taking possession of the city of New Orleans with force and arms. The evidence established every thing but the precise charge. The presence of Burr in the island was proved: and his levies of men and provisions on the banks of the Ohio. The presence of armed men in the island, and the expedition of the 10th of December were also proved: but not any meeting of these men with Burr. The proof of the overt act completely failed. He was then tried at the same court on the indictment for misdemeanour, and acquitted. He was then ordered to be committed to answer an indictment in the State of Ohio. He was admitted to bail, and it does not appear that the State of Ohio meddled with him at all.

Bollman was one of the witnesses on the side of the prosecution. His certificate of pardon was offered to him in court by the counsel for the prosecution. He refused to accept it, but was sworn, and his evidence received.

It is impossible to suppose any bias on the part of the Court in favour of the prisoner. His acquittal seems to have arisen from unskilfulness in deducing the charges from the evidence; and to the trial having taken place before all the requisite evidence could be gathered from distant regions.

Blannerhassett and others were tried on the same charges as Burr; but what became of them I do not remember, further than that Blannerhassett was utterly ruined and disgraced.

Burr repaired to England. His connexion with Bentham appears wholly unaccountable. The story is, that he was in a bookseller’s shop one day, when Bentham entered and fixed his observation: that he wrote a letter to Bentham, as soon as he was gone, expressive of his high admiration of his works: that Bentham admitted him to an interview, invited him to stay with him, and urged the prolongation of his visit from time to time, till it ended in being a sojourn of two years. It is difficult to conceive how an agreeable intercourse could be kept up for so long a time between the single-minded philosopher and the crafty yet boastful, the vindictive yet smooth political adventurer.

In October, 1808, Jefferson wrote to a friend:

Burr is in London, and is giving out to his friends that that government offers him two millions of dollars, the moment he can raise an ensign of rebellion as big as a handkerchief. Some of his partisans will believe this because they wish it. But those who know him best will not believe it the more because he says it.[20]

He returned to America in 1812, being sent away from England on account of his too frequent, and very suspicious political correspondence with France.

He settled quietly at New York, and resumed practice at the bar, which he continued as long as his health permitted. He owed such practice as he had to his high legal ability, and not to any improved opinion of his character. When Mr Clay arrived in New York, from his English mission, he went the round of the public institutions, attended by the principal inhabitants. In one of the courts he met Burr, and, of course, after the affair of the cipher letter, cut him. Burr made his way to him, declared himself anxious to clear up every misapprehension which had alienated the regard of his benefactor, and requested to be allowed half an hour’s private conservation. Mr Clay readily agreed to this and the hour was named. Burr failed to keep his appointment, and never afterwards appeared in Mr Clay’s presence.

One pure light, one healthy affection, illumined and partially redeemed the life of the adventurer. He had an only child, a daughter, whom he loved with all the love of which he was capable, and which she fully deserved. She was early married to a Mr Alston, and lived at Charleston. I believe she was about five-and-twenty when she fell into ill health, and the strong soul of her father was shaken with the terror of losing her. He spared no pains or expense to obtain the best opinions on her case from Europe; and the earnestness of his appeals to the physicians, to whom he wrote full statements of her case, are very moving. While awaiting a decision as to what measures should be taken for her restoration, it was decided that she must leave Charleston before the summer heats; and he summoned her to his home at New York. To avoid fatigue, she went by sea with her child and the nurse. Her father had notice of her departure, and watched hour after hour for her arrival. The hours wore away, and days, and weeks, and years. The vessel never arrived, nor any tidings of her. She must have foundered, or, far worse, fallen into the hands of pirates. A pang went through the heart of every one for many years, as often as the thought recurred that Mrs Alston and her child might be living in slavery to pirates in some place inaccessible to the iniquities of even her wretched father. When all had been done that could be devised, and every one had ceased to hope, Burr closed his lips upon the subject. No one of the few who were about him ever heard him mention his daughter.

While I was in America, a foreign sailor died in an hospital; my memory fails me as to where it was. When near death, he made a confession which was believed to be true by all whom I heard speak on the subject. He confessed himself to have been a pirate, and to have served on board the vessel which captured that which was conveying Mrs Alston. He declared that she was shut up below while the captain and crew were being murdered on deck. She was then brought up, and was present at the decision that it would not be safe to spare her life. She was ordered to walk the plank, with her child in her arms; and, finding all quiet remonstrance vain, she did it, without hesitation or visible tremor. The recollection of it was too much for the pirate in his dying moments.

About a year before his death, Colonel Burr sanctioned the publication of a so-called life of himself; a panegyric which leaves in the reader’s mind the strongest conviction of the reality of his western adventures, and of the justice of every important charge against him. He died last year; and it will probably be soon known with exactness whether he took care that his secrets should be buried with him, or whether he made arrangements for some light being at length thrown on his eventful and mysterious history.

Volume 3

Villages

“These ample fields

Nourished their harvests: here their herds were fed,

When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,

And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.

From the ground

Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice

Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn

Of Sabbath worshippers.”

Bryant

The villages of New England are all more or less beautiful; and the most beautiful of them all is, I believe, Northampton. They have all the graceful weeping elm; wide roads overshadowed with wood; mounds or levels of a rich verdure; white churches and comfortable and picturesque frame dwellings. Northampton has these beauties and more. It lies in the rich meadows which border the Connecticut, beneath the protection of high wooded hills. The habitations of its gentry crown the green knolls and terraces on which the village stands: or are half buried in gay gardens, or hid under clumps of elm. The celebrated Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom are just at hand, and the Sugarloaf is in view: while the brimming Connecticut winds about and about in the meadows, as if unwilling, like the traveller, to leave such a spot.

The pilgrims were not long in discovering the promise of the rich alluvial lands amidst which Northampton stands: and their descendants established themselves there, as in the midst of a wilderness, long before there were any settlements between the spot on which they had sat down and the coast. The perils of such an abode were extreme: but so were its temptations; and here, for many years, did a handful of whites continue to live, surrounded by red neighbours, – now trafficking, now fighting; sometimes agreeing to render mutual service, but always on the watch against mutual injury. So early as 1658, the township of Northampton (then called Nonotue) was purchased at the price set upon it by the Indians; viz., for ninety square miles of land, the sellers demanded one hundred fathom of wampum by tale, and ten coats; and that the purchasers should plough for the Indians sixteen acres of land, on the east side of the river, the next summer. The making the purchase was the smallest part of the settlers’ business: the defending themselves in the wilderness, surrounded as they were by numerous tribes of Indians, was a far more serious matter. The usual arrangement of a village was planned with a regard to safety from plunder and massacre. The surviving effect is that of beauty, which the busy settlers cannot he supposed to have much regarded at the time. The dwellings were erected in one long street, each house within its own enclosure, and, in many cases, fortified. The street was bordered with trees; and in the midst stood the “meeting house,” often fortified also. This street was, when it was possible, built across the neck of a peninsula formed by the windings of the river; or from hill to hill in the narrowest part of a valley. The cattle which grazed during the day in the peninsula, or under the eye of the owners, were driven at night into the area between the rows of houses. Here and there a village was surrounded with palisades. But no kind of defence availed for any long period. From time to time disasters happened to the most careful and the most valiant. Fire was an agent of destruction which could not be always defied. When the village was burned, its inhabitants were helpless. The women and children were carried off into captivity, and the place lay desolate till a new party of adventurers arrived to clear away the ruins, and commence a fresh experiment.

Traditions of the horrors of the Indian wars spring up at every stop in this valley, and make the stranger speculate on what men and women were made of in the days when they could voluntarily fix their abode among savage foes, while there were safer places of habitation at their command on the coast. The settlers seem, by the testimony of all history, to have been possessed of spirit proportioned to their needs. We hear of women being employed in the cellars casting bullets, and handing them to their husbands during an onset of the savages; and of a girl plucking a saddle from under the head of a sleeping Indian, saddling a horse, and galloping off, swimming rivers, and penetrating forests till she reached her home. The fate of the family of the Rev. John Williams, who were living in the valley of the Connecticut, at the end of the seventeenth century, and were broken up by the Indians in an attack on the village of Deerfield, is a fair specimen of the chances to which residents in such lodges in the wilderness were exposed.

The enemy came over the snow, which was four feet deep, and hard enough to bear them up, and thus were enabled to surmount the palisades. Not being expected at that time of year, they met with no opposition. The inhabitants had not time to rouse themselves from sleep before they were tomahawked or captured. Out of a population of two hundred and eighty, forty-seven were killed, and one hundred and twelve made prisoners. Mr Williams was the minister of the settlement. Two of his children were killed on the threshold of his own door. His son Eleazer escaped, and was left behind. Mrs Williams was one of the Mathers of Northampton. She was marched off, with her husband and several remaining children, in the direction of Canada: but they were not allowed to be together and comfort each other. It was a weary march for sufferers who carried such heavy hearts into so horrible a captivity. Over wastes of snow, through thawing brooks, among rugged forest paths, they were goaded on, – not permitted to look back, or to loiter, or to stop, except at the pleasure of their captors. Mrs Williams presently fell behind. She was in delicate health, and unused to hardship like this. When her husband had passed Green River, he looked back and saw her faltering on the bank, and then stumbling into the water. He turned to implore the savage who guarded him to allow him to go back and help his wife. He was refused, and when he looked again she had disappeared. Having fallen into the water through weakness, an Indian had buried his tomahawk in her skull, stepped over her body, and passed on. Her remains were discovered and carried back to Deerfield for interment.

For a few moments the captives had been tantalised with a hope of release. The Indians were attacked during their retreat by a small body of settlers, and pressed hard. At this moment an Indian runner was despatched to the guard, with orders to put all the prisoners to death. A hall laid him low while he was on his errand: and the settlers being compelled to give way, the order about the prisoners was not renewed.

At night they encamped on the snow, digging away spaces to be down in, and spreading boughs of the spruce fir for couches. During the first night one of the captives escaped: and in the morning Mr Williams was ordered to tell his companions, that if any more made their escape the rest of the prisoners should be burned.

At the close of a day’s march, when they had advanced some way on their long journey, a maidservant belonging to Mr Williams’s family came to the pastor, requested his blessing, and offered her farewell. He inquired what she meant. She replied with great quietness of manner, that she perceived that all who lagged in the march were tomahawked: that she had kept up with great difficulty through this day; and that she felt she should perish thus on the morrow. Mr Williams examined into her state of body, and was convinced that she was nearly exhausted. He gave his blessing and this was all he could do for her. He watched her incessantly the next day. He saw her growing more feeble every hour, but still calm and gentle. She kept up till late in the afternoon, when she lagged behind: being urged, she fell, and was despatched with the tomahawk. Two of the prisoners were starved to death on the road; and fifteen others were murdered like Mrs Williams and her servant.

The pastor, with his remaining children, reached Canada, where he remained, suffering great hardships, for two years and a half. He was ransomed, with sixty-one others, and returned to Boston, where he was waited upon by a deputation from his old parish, and requested to resume his duties among the remnant of his people. He actually returned, and died in peace there twenty-three years afterwards. It appears that all his captive children but one were redeemed. Two besides Eleazer were educated at Harvard College. His little daughter, Eunice, was six years old when she was carried away. She grew up to womanhood among the Indians, and married a red man, retaining the name of Williams, and adopting the Romish faith. Being brought to Deerfield to see her family, she could not be persuaded to remain; nor would she accommodate herself to the habits of civilised life, preferring to sleep on the floor on a blanket, to using a bed. Some half-breed descendants of her’s are living on the borders of Lake Michigan.

The sufferers seem to have consoled themselves with turning their disasters into verse; sometimes piously, in hymns, and sometimes in a lighter ballad strain, like the following:

“Twas nigh unto Pigwacket, on the eighth day of May,

They spied a rebel Indian, soon after break of day;

He on a bank was walking, upon a neck of land,

Which leads into a pond, as we’re made to understand.

Then up spoke Captain Lovewell, when first the fight began,

‘Fight on, my valiant heroes! you see they fall like rain.’

For as we are inform’d, the Indians were so thick,

A man could scarcely fire a gun, and some of them not hit.”

Many of the half-breeds who have sprung from the wars between the settlers and the natives have been missionaries among the savages. Much doubt hangs over the utility of Indian missions: if good has been done, it seems to be chiefly owing to the offices of half-breeds, who modify the religion to be imparted, so as to suit it to the habits of mind and life of the new converts. As far as I could learn, the following anecdote is no unfair specimen of the way in which missionaries and their religion are primarily regarded by the savages to whom they are sent.

Mr K., a missionary among a tribe of northern Indians, was wont to set some simple refreshment, – fruit and cider, – before his converts, when they came from a distance to see him. An old man, who had no pretensions to be a Christian, desired much to be admitted to the refreshments, and proposed to some of his converted friends to accompany them on their next visit to the missionary. They told him he must be a Christian first. What was that? He must know all about the Bible. When the time came, he declared himself prepared, and undertook the journey with them. When arrived, he seated himself opposite the missionary, wrapped in his blanket, and looking exceedingly serious. In answer to an inquiry from the missionary, he rolled up his eyes, and solemnly uttered the following words, with a pause between each –

“Adam – Eve – Cain – Noah – Jeremiah – Beelzebub – Solomon – ”

“What do you mean?” asked the missionary.

“Solomon – Beelzebub – Noah – ”

“Stop, stop. What do you mean?”

“I mean – cider.”

This is one way in which an unintelligible religion is received by savages. Another resembles the mode in which they meet offers of traffic from suspicious parties: “the more you say bow and arrows, the more we won’t make them.” Where Christianity is received among them with any efficacy, it appears to be exactly in proportion to the skill of the missionary in associating the new truth he brings with that which was already sanctified in their hearts; in proportion as the new religion is made a sequel of the old one, instead of a substitution for it.

The dusky race was in my mind’s eye as we followed the windings of the river through the rich valley from Springfield to Northampton. The very names of the places, the hamlet of Hoccanum, at the foot of Mount Holyoke, and that of Pascommuc, lying below Mount Tom, remind the traveller how the possessors have been displaced from this fair land, and how their descendants must be mourning their lost Quonnecticut. Such sympathies soon wither away, however, amidst the stir and loveliness of the sunny village.

We had letters of introduction to some of the inhabitants of Northampton, and knew that our arrival was expected: but we little anticipated such eagerness of hospitality as we were met with. The stage was stopped by a gentleman who asked for me. It was Mr Bancroft, the historian, then a resident of Northampton. He cordially welcomed us as his guests, and ordered the stage up the hill to his house; such a house! It stood on a lofty terrace; and its balcony overlooked first the garden, then the orchard stretching down the slope; then the delicious village, and the river with its meadows; while opposite rose Mount Holyoke. Far off in the valley, to the left, lay Hadley, half hid among trees; and on the hills, still further to the left, was Amherst, with its college buildings conspicuous on the height.

All was in readiness for us, – the spacious rooms with their cool arrangements; (it was the 7th of August;) and the ladies of the family, with their ready merry welcome. It was past noon when we arrived; and before the early dinner hour we were as much at home as if we had been acquainted for months. The American mirth, common everywhere, was particularly hearty in this house; and as for us, we were intoxicated with the beauty of the scene. From the balcony we gazed as if it was presently to melt before our eyes. This day, I remember, we first tasted green corn – one of the most delicious of vegetables, and by some preferred to green peas. The greatest drawback is the way in which it is necessary to eat it. The cob, eight or ten inches long, is held at both ends, and, having been previously sprinkled with salt, is nibbled and sucked from end to end, till all the grains are got out. It looks awkward enough: but what is to be done? Surrendering such a vegetable from considerations of grace is not to be thought of.

After dinner, we walked in the blooming garden, till summoned within doors by callers. My host had already discovered my taste for rambling, and determined to make me happy during my short visit, by driving me about the country. He liked nothing better himself. His historical researches had stored his memory with all the traditions of the valley, of the State, and, I rather think, of the whole of New England. I find the entries in my journal of this and the next two days, the most copious of any during my travels.

Mr Bancroft drove me to Amherst this afternoon. He explained to me the construction of the bridge we passed, which is of a remarkably cheap, simple, and safe kind for a wooden one. He pointed out to me the seats and arrangements of the villages we passed through; and amused and interested me with many a tale of the old Indian wars. He surprised me by the light he threw on the philosophy of society in the United States; a light drawn from history, and shed into all the present relations of races and parties to each other. I had before been pleased with what I knew of the spirit of Mr Bancroft’s History of the United States, which, however, had not then extended beyond the first volume. I now perceived that he was well qualified, in more ways than one, for his arduous task.

We mounted the steep hill on which Amherst stands, and stopped before the red brick buildings of the college. When the horse was disposed of, Mr Bancroft left me to look at the glorious view, while he went in search of some one who would be our guide about the college. In a minute he beckoned me in, with a smile of great delight, and conducted me into a lecture room, where Professor Hitchcock was lecturing. In front of the lecturer was a large number of students; and on either hand as many as forty or fifty girls. These girls were from a neighbouring school, and from the houses of the farmers and mechanics of the village. The students appeared quite as attentive as if they had had the room to themselves. We found that the admission of girls to such lectures as they could understand (this was on Geology), was a practice of some years’ standing; and that no evil had been found to result from it. It was a gladdening sight, testifying both to the simplicity of manners, and the eagerness for education. I doubt whether such a spectacle is to be seen out of New England.

The professor showed us the Turkey Tracks, the great curiosity of the place; and distinct and gigantic indeed they were, deeply impressed in the imbedded stone. Professor Hitchcock’s name is well known among geologists, from his highly praised work. A Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts. We ascended to the observatory, whence we saw a splendid variety of the view I had been admiring all day, and we pronounced this college an enviable residence.

It is a presbyterian college, and is flourishing, as the presbyterian colleges of New England do, under the zeal of professors who are not content with delivering courses of lectures, but who work with the students, as much like companions as teachers. The institution had been at work only ten years; and at this time it contained two hundred and forty undergraduates, – a greater number than any in the state, except, perhaps, Harvard.

The next day was a busy one. We were called away from gazing from the balcony after breakfast, the carriage being at the door. Two more carriages joined us in the village, and we proceeded in the direction of Mount Holyoke. Our road lay through rich unfenced cornfields, and meadows where the mowers were busy. There was a great contrast between the agriculture here and in other parts of the State. Here an annual inundation spares much of the toil of the tiller. It seems as if little more were necessary than to throw in the seed and reap the produce; while, in less favoured regions, the farmer may be seen ploughing round the rocks which protrude from the soil, and bestowing infinite pains on his stony fields. The carriages conveyed us a good way up the far famed hill. When it became too steep for the horses we alighted, and found the ascent easy enough. There are rude but convenient ladders, broad and strong, at difficult turns of the path; and large stones, and roots of trees, afford a firm footing in the intervals. The most wayward imagination could not conjure up the idea of danger; and children may be led to the top in perfect safety.

On the summit is a building which affords shelter in case of rain, and lemonade and toddy in case of thirst. There is a fine platform of rock on which the traveller may rest himself while he looks around over a space of sixty miles in almost every direction. The valley is the most attractive object, the full river coiling through the meadows, and the spires of village churches being clustered at intervals along its banks: but smokes rise on the hill sides, from the Green Mountains in the north, to the fading distance beyond Springfield in the south. To the east the view extends nearly to Newhaven (Connecticut), seventy miles off. Mount Holyoke is eleven hundred feet above the river.

While I was absorbed in the contemplation of this landscape, I was tapped on the shoulder. When I turned, a shipmate stood smiling behind me. She highly enjoyed the odd meeting on this pinnacle, and so did we. The face of a pleasant shipmate is welcome everywhere, but particularly in a scene which contrasts so strongly with those in which we have lived together, as a mountaintop with the cabin of a ship. Some person who loves contrasts has entered a remarkable set of names in the album on Mount Holyoke as having just visited the spot, – Hannah More, Lord Byron, Martin Luther, & c.

We returned by a shorter, but equally pretty, road to dinner; and presently after, as we were not at all tired, we set off again for the Sugar Loaf, ten miles up the valley. We had a warm ride, and a laborious scramble up the Sugar Loaf; but we were rewarded by a view which I think finer than the one we saw in the morning, though not so various. It commanded the whole valley with its entire circle of hills. White dots of buildings on the hill sides spoke of civilization: Amherst, with its red buildings, glowed in the sun; and the river below was of a dark grey, presenting a perfect reflection of its fringed banks, of the ox team on the margin, and of boys fishing among the reeds. Smokes rose where brush was burning, indicating the foundation of new settlements. In one of these places, which was pointed out to me, an accident had happened the preceding spring, which affords another hint of what the hearts of emigrant mothers have sometimes to bear. A child of two years old wandered away one afternoon from its parents’ side, and was missing when the day’s work was done. The family and neighbours were out in the woods for hours with torches, but they only lost their own way without discovering the little one. In the morning it was found, at a considerable distance from home, lying under a bush as if asleep. It was dead, however: the cold of the night had seized it, and it was quite stiff.

The sun set as we returned homewards with all speed, – having to dress for an evening party. While the bright glow was still lingering in the valley, and the sky was beginning to melt from crimson to the pale sea green of evening, I saw something sailing in the air like a glistening golden balloon. I called the attention of my party to it just in time. It burst in a broad flash and shower of green fire. It was the most splendid meteor I ever saw. We pitied a quiet looking couple whom we met jogging along in a dearborn, and whose backs had, of course, been turned to the spectacle. They must have wondered at the staring and commotion among our party. I saw an unusual number of falling stars before we reached home.

The parties, on all the three evenings when I was at Northampton, were like the village parties throughout New England. There was an over proportion of ladies, almost all of whom were pretty, and all well dressed. There was a good deal of party spirit among the gentlemen, and great complaints of religious bigotry from the ladies. One inhabitant of the place, the son of a Unitarian clergyman, was going to leave it, chiefly on account, he told me, of the treatment his family received from their Calvinistic neighbours. While he was at home they got on pretty well; but he had to quit home sometimes, and could not bear to leave his wife to such treatment as she met with in his absence. This was the worst case I heard of: but instances of a bigotry nearly as outrageous reminded me painfully of similar cases of pious cruelty at home. The manners towards strangers in these social meetings are perfectly courteous, gay, and friendly. I had frequent occasion to wonder why a foreign Unitarian was esteemed so much less dangerous a person than a native.

There was endless amusement to me in observing village manners and ways of thinking. Sometimes I had to wait for explanations of what passed before my eyes, finding myself wholly at fault. At other times I was charmed with the upright simplicity which villagers not only exhibit at home, but carry out with them into the world.

In one Massachusetts village a large party was invited to meet me. At teatime I was busily engaged in conversation with a friend, when the tea tray was brought to me by a young person in a plain white gown. After I had helped myself, she still stood just before me for a long while, and was perpetually returning. Again and again I refused more tea; but she still came. Her pertinacity was afterwards explained. It was a young lady of the village who wished to see me, and knew that I was going away the next day. She had called on the lady of the house in the afternoon, and begged permission to come in a plain gown as a waiter. She was, of course, invited as a guest; but she would not accept the invitation, and she was allowed to follow her own fancy.

In another village I became acquainted with one of its most useful residents, the schoolmaster, who has a passion for music, and is organist of a church. It was delightful to hear him revelling in his own music, pouring his soul out over his organ. He has been to Rome, and indulged himself with listening to the Miserere. He told me that two monks whom he met in Italy, before reaching Rome, saw him reading his Bible, with a Commentary lying before him. In his own words,

“They told me I had better give over that. ‘Give over what?’ says I. ‘Why, reading your Bible, with that book to help you.’ ‘Why shouldn’t I read in my own Bible?’ says I. ‘Because the Pope won’t like it,’ said they. ‘In my humble opinion,’ says I, ‘it is far from plain what the Pope has to do with my duty and way of improving myself. It’s no wish of mine, I’m sure, to speak disrespectfully of the Pope, or to interfere with what he chooses to do in his own sphere; but I must save my own soul in the way I think right.’ Well, they talked about the Inquisition, and would fain have made me believe I was doing what was very unsafe: so, after a good deal more argument, I settled with myself what I would do. When I got to Rome, I put away the Commentary, thinking that that way of reading was not necessary, and might be left to another time: but I went on rending my Bible as usual.

“Well: when Passion Week came, I took care to see all that was going forward; and I was in the great square when the Pope came out to give the blessing. The square was as full as ever it could hold, and I stood near the middle of it. I found all the people were about to go down on their knees. Now, you know, it is against my principles altogether to go down on my knees before the Pope, or any man: so I began to think what I should do. I thought the right principle was to pay the same respect to the Pope that I would to any sort of chief ruler; but none in particular on religious grounds: so I settled to do just what I should do to the President of the United States. So, when the whole crowd dropped on their knees in one moment, there I stood, all alone, in the middle of the square. I knew the Pope must see me, and the people about him; but my hope was that the crowd would be so occupied with their own feelings that they would not notice me. Not so, however. One looked at me, and then another, and then it spread, till I thought the whole crowd was looking at nothing but me. Meantime I was standing with my body bent – about this much – and my hat off, which I held so, above my head. It happened the sun was very hot, and I got a bad headache with keeping my head uncovered; but that was not worth minding. Well, I was glad enough when the people all rose on their feet again. But it was by no means over yet. The Pope came down, and walked through the midst of the people; and as it happened, he came just my way. I was not sorry at the prospect of getting a near view of him, so I just stood still till he came by. The people kept dropping on their knees on either side of him as he approached. Some of them tugged at me to do the same; but, said I, ‘excuse me, I can’t.’ So, when the old Pope came as near to me as I am to you, he stopped, and looked full in my face, while I stood bent, and my hat raised as before, and thinking within myself, ‘Now, Sir, I am paying you the same respect I would show to the President of the United States, and I can’t show more to any one:’ so, after a good look at me, the old gentleman went on; and the people near seemed soon to have forgot all about me. And so I got off.”

On the last day of my visit at Northampton, I went into the graveyard. Some of the inhabitants smiled at Mr Bancroft for taking me there, there being no fine monuments, no gardens and plantations, as in more modern cemeteries; but there were things which my host knew I should consider more interesting. There were some sunken, worn, mossy stones, which bore venerable pilgrims’ names and pious inscriptions. Several of the original settlers lie here; and their graves, gay with a profusion of the golden rod, and waving with long grass, are more interesting to the traveller than if their remains reposed in a less primitive mode. The stranger is taken by surprise by finding how much stronger are the emotions excited among these resting places of the pilgrims, than by the institutions in which their spirit still lives. Their spirit lives in its faulty, as well as its nobler characteristics. I saw here the grave of a young girl who was as much murdered by fanaticism as Mary Dyar, who was hanged for her Antinomianism, in, the early days of the colony. The young creature, whose tomb is scarcely yet grass-grown, died of a brain fever, brought on by a revival.

I happened to be going the round of several Massachusetts villages when the marvellous account of Sir John Herschel’s discoveries in the moon was sent abroad. The sensation it excited was wonderful. As it professed to be a republication from the Edinburgh Journal of Science, it was some time before many persons, except professors of natural philosophy, thought of doubting its truth. The lady of such a professor, on being questioned by a company of ladies as to her husband’s emotions at the prospect of such an enlargement of the field of science, excited a strong feeling of displeasure against herself. She could not say that he believed it, and would gladly have said nothing about it: but her inquisitive companions first cross-examined her, and then were angry at her scepticism. A story is going, told by some friends of Sir John Herschel, (but whether in earnest, or in the spirit of the moon story I cannot tell,) that the astronomer has received at the Cape, a letter from a large number of Baptist clergymen of the United States, congratulating him on his discovery, informing him that it had been the occasion of much edifying preaching, and of prayer meetings for the benefit of brethren in the newly explored regions; and beseeching him to inform his correspondents whether science affords any prospects of a method of conveying the Gospel to residents in the moon. However it may be with this story, my experience of the question with regard to the other, “Do you not believe it?” was very extensive.

In the midst of our amusement at credulity like this, we must remember that the real discoveries of science are likely to be more faithfully and more extensively made known in the villages of the United States, than in any others in the world. The moon hoax, if advantageously put forth, would have been believed by a much larger proportion of any other nation than it was by the Americans; and they are travelling far faster than any other people beyond the reach of such deception. Their common and high schools, their Lyceums and cheap colleges are exciting and feeding thousands of minds, which in England would never get beyond the loom or the plough-tail. If few are very learned in the villages of Massachusetts, still fewer are very ignorant: and all have the power and the will to invite the learning of the towns among them, and to remunerate its administration of knowledge. The consequence of this is a state of village society in which only vice and total ignorance need hang the head, while (out of the desolate range of religious bigotry) all honourable tastes are as sure of being countenanced and respected, as all kindly feelings are of being reciprocated. I believe most enlightened and virtuous residents in the villages of New England are eager to acknowledge that the lines have fallen to them in pleasant places.

Volume 3

Cambridge

Commencement

“A good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of being, and, enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations.”

Sir Thomas Browne

The Pilgrim Fathers early testified to the value of education. “When New England was poor, and they were but few in number, there was a spirit to encourage learning.” One of their primary requisitions, first by custom and then by law, was, “That none of the brethren shall suffer so much barbarism in their families, as not to teach their children and apprentices; so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue.” They next ordered – “To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar school; the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University.”

This university was Harvard. In 1636, the General Court had voted a sum, equal to a year’s rate of the whole colony, towards the erection of a college. Two years afterwards, John Harvard, who arrived at the settlements only to die, left to the infant institution one-half of his estate and all his library. The State set apart for the college the rent of a ferry. The wealthiest men of the community gave presents which were thought profuse at the time; and beside their names in the record stand entries of humbler gifts; – from each family in the colonies twelve pence, or a peck of corn, or an equivalent in wampum-peag: and from individuals the sums of five shillings, nine shillings, one pound, and two pounds. There were legacies also; from one colonist, a flock of sheep; from another, cotton cloth worth nine shillings: from others, a pewter flagon worth ten shillings, a fruit dish, a sugar spoon, a silver tipped jug, one great salt, one small trencher salt. Afterwards, the celebrated Theophilus Gale bequeathed his library to the college; and in 1731. Bishop Berkeley, after visiting the institution, presented it with some of the Greek and Latin classics.

The year following John Harvard’s bequest the Cambridge printing press was set up: the only press in America north of Mexico. The General Court appointed licensers of this press, and did not scruple to interfere with the licensers themselves, when any suspicion of heresy occurred to torment the minds of the worthy fathers. Their supervision over other departments of management was equally strict. Mrs Eaton, wife of the first president of the college was examined before the General Court, on a complaint of short or disagreeable commons, urged by the students. “The breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue (or Q, quartus) of beer; and the evening commons were a pye.” What became of Mrs Eaton, further than that the blame of the dissensions rested on her bad housewifery. I do not know. Subsequently, a law was passed “for reforming the extravagances of Commencements,” by which it was provided that “henceforth no preparation nor provision of either plumb cake, or roasted, boyled or baked meates or pyes of any kind shall be made by any Commencer:” no such was to have “any distilled lyquours in his chamber, or any composition therewith.” under penalty of a forfeiture of the good things, and a fine of twenty shillings. There was another act passed. “that if any, who now doe or hereafter shall stand for their degrees, presume to doe anything contrary to the said act, or goe about to evade it by plain cake, they shall forfeit the honours of the college.” Yet another law was passed to prohibit “the costly habits of many of the scholars, their wearing gold or silver lace or brocades, silk nightgowns, &c. as tending to discourage persons from giving their children a college education and as inconsistent with the gravity and decency proper to be observed in this society.”

For a hundred years after its establishment. Harvard college enforced the practice, in those days common in Europe of punishing refractory students by corporal infliction. In judge Sewell’s manuscript diary the following entry is found, dated June 15th. 1674: “This was his sentence (Thos. Sargeant’s):

That being convicted of speaking blasphemous words concerning the H. G. he should be therefore publickly whipped before all the scholars.

“That he should be suspended as to taking his degree of bachelor. (This sentence read before him twice at the President’s before the Committee, and in the Library, before execution.)

“Sit by himself in the Hall uncovered at meals, during the pleasure of the President and Fellows, and being in all things obedient, doing what exercise was appointed him by the President, or else be finally expelled the college.

The first was presently put in execution in the Library before the scholars. He kneeled down, and the instrument, Goodman Hely, attended the President’s word as to the performance of his part in the work. Prayer was had before and after by the President.”

In 1733, a tutor was prosecuted for inflicting this kind of punishment; yet, in the revised body of laws, made in the next year, we find the following: “Notwithstanding the preceding pecuniary mulcts, it shall be lawful for the President, Tutors, and Professors, to punish undergraduates by Boxing, when they shall judge the nature or circumstances of the offence call for it.”

The times are not a little changed. Of late years the students have more than once appeared to have almost come up to the point of boxing their tutors.

If Harvard is ever to recover her supremacy, to resume her station in usefulness and in the affections of the people, it must be by a renovation of her management, and a change in some of the principles recognised by her. Every one is eager to acknowledge her past services. All American citizens are proud of the array of great men whom she has sent forth to serve and grace the country; but, like some other universities, she is falling behind the age. Her glory is declining, even in its external manifestations; and it must decline as long as the choicest youth of the community are no longer sent to study within her walls.

The politics of the managers of Harvard University are opposed to those of the great body of the American people. She is the aristocratic college of the United States. Her pride of antiquity, her vanity of pre-eminence and wealth, are likely to prevent her renovating her principles and management, so as to suit the wants of the period: and she will probably receive a sufficient patronage from the aristocracy, for a considerable time to come, to encourage her in all her faults. She has a great name: and the education she affords is very expensive, in comparison with all other colleges. The sons of the wealthy will therefore flock to her. The attainments usually made within her walls are inferior to those achieved elsewhere: her professors (poorly salaried, when the expenses of living are considered) being accustomed to lecture and examine the students, and do nothing more. The indolent and the careless will therefore flock to her. But, meantime, more and more new colleges are rising up, and are filled as fast as they rise, whose principles and practices are better suited to the wants of the time. In them living is cheaper; and the professors are therefore richer with the same or smaller salaries: the sons of the yeomanry and mechanic classes resort to them: and, where it is the practice of the tutors to work with their pupils, as well as lecture to them, a proficiency is made which shames the attainments of the Harvard students. The middle and lower classes are usually neither Unitarian nor Episcopalian, but “orthodox.” as their distinctive term is: and these, the strength and hope of the nation, avoid Harvard, and fill to overflowing the oldest orthodox colleges; and when these will hold no more, establish new ones.

When I was at Boston, the state of the University was a subject, of great mourning amongst its friends. Attempts had been made to obtain the services of three gentlemen of some eminence as professors; but in vain. The salaries offered were insufficient to maintain the families of these gentlemen in comfort, in such a place as Cambridge; though, at that very time, the managers of the affairs of the institution were purchasing lands in Maine. The Moral Philosophy chair had been vacant for eight years. Two of the professors were at the time laid by in tedious illnesses; a third was absent on a long journey; and the young men of the senior class were left almost unemployed. The unpopularity of the president among the young men was extreme; and the disfavour was not confined to them. The students had, at different times within a few years, risen against the authorities; and the last disturbances, in 1834, had been of a very serious character. Every one was questioning what was to be done next, and anticipating a further vacating of chairs which it, would be difficult to fill. I heard one merry lady advise that the professors should strike for higher wages, and thus force the council and supporters of the university into a thorough and serious consideration of its condition and prospects in relation to present and future times.

The salary of the president is above 2000 dollars. The salaries of the professors vary from 1500 dollars to 500; that is, from £375 to £125. Upon this sum they are expected to live like gentlemen, and to keep up the aristocratic character of the institution. I knew of one case where a jealousy was shown when a diligent professor, with a large family, made an attempt by a literary venture to increase his means. Yet Harvard college is in buildings, library, and apparatus, in its lands and money, richer than any other in the Union.

The number of undergraduates, in the year 1833-4, was two hundred and sixteen. They cannot live at Harvard for less than 200 dollars a year, independently of personal expenses. Seventy-five dollars must be contributed by each to the current expenses; fuel is dear; fifteen dollars are charged for lodging within the college walls, and eighty are paid for board by those who use their option of living in the college commons. The fact is, I believe, generally acknowledged, that the comparative expensiveness of living is a cause of the depression of Harvard in comparison with its former standing among other colleges; but this leads to a supposition which does not to all appear a just one, that if the expenses of poor students could be defrayed by a public fund, to he raised for the purpose, the sons of the yeomanry would repair once more to Harvard. A friend of the institution writes, with regard to this plan:

“It would probably have the immediate effect of bringing back that perhaps most desirable class of students, the sons of families in the middling ranks in respect of property, in town and country, who, we fear, were driven away in great numbers, by the change in the amount of tuition fees in or about 1807. They mean to pay to the full extent that others around them do for whatever they have. This is what they have been used to doing. It is their habit; perhaps it is their point of honour; – no matter which. But they are obliged strictly to consult economy. And the difference of an annual expense of twenty or thirty dollars, which their fathers will have to spare from the profits of a farm or a shop, and pinch themselves to furnish, is, and ought to be, with such, a very serious consideration. It is, in fact, a consideration, decisive, year by year, of the destination of numbers of youth, to whom the country owes, for its own sake, the best advantages of education it can afford; – of those who, in moral and intellectual structure, are the bone and sinew of the commonwealth, and on all accounts, personal and public, entitled to its best training.”[21]

It may be doubted whether; if a gratis education to poor students were to be dispensed from Harvard tomorrow, it would rival in real respectability and proficiency the orthodox colleges which have already surpassed her. Her management and population are too aristocratic, her movement too indolent, to attract young men of that class; and young men of that class prefer paying for the benefits they receive; they prefer a good education, economically provided, so as to be within reach of their means, to an equally good education furnished to them at the cost of their pride of independence. The best friends of Harvard believe that it is not by additional contrivances that her prosperity can be restored; but by such a renovation of the whole scheme of her management as shall bring her once more into accordance with the wants of the majority, the spirit of the country and of the time.

The first Commencement was held in August, 1642, only twenty years after the landing of the pilgrims. Mr Peirce, the historian of the University, writes: “Upon this novel and auspicious occasion, the venerable fathers of the land, the Governor, magistrates, and ministers from all parts, with others in great numbers, repaired to Cambridge, and attended with delight to refined displays of European learning, on a spot which but just before was the abode of savages. It was a day which on many accounts must have been singularly interesting.” In attending the Commencement of 1835 I felt that I was present at an antique ceremonial.

We had so arranged our movements as to arrive at Cambridge just in time for the celebration, which always takes place on the last Wednesday in August. We were the guests of the Natural Philosophy Professor and his lady; and we arrived at their house before noon on Monday the 24th. Next to the hearty greeting we received, came the pleasure of taking possession of my apartment – it looked so full of luxury. Besides the comfort of complete furniture of the English kind, and a pretty view from the windows, there was a table covered with books and flowers, and on it a programme of the engagements of the week. On looking at the books, I found among them a History and some Reports of the University; so that it was my own fault if I plunged into the business of the week without knowing the whence and the wherefore of its observances.

The aspect of Cambridge is charming. The college buildings have no beauty to boast of, it is true; but the professors’ houses, dropped around, each in its garden, give an aristocratic air to the place, which I saw in no other place of the size, and which has the grace of novelty. The green sward, the white palings, the gravel walks, are all well kept; and nowhere is the New England elm more flourishing. The noble old elm under which Washington first drew his sword, spreads a wide shade over the ground.

After refreshing ourselves with lemonade, we set out for the Botanic Garden, which is very prettily situated and well taken care of. Here I saw for the first time red water lilies. None are so beautiful to my eyes as the white; but the red mix in well with these and the yellow in a large pond. There were some splendid South American plants; but the head gardener seemed more proud of his dahlias than of any other individual of his charge. From a small cottage on the terrace at the upper end of the garden, came forth Mr Sparks, the editor of Washington’s Correspondence. While engaged in his great work, he lives in this delightful spot. He took me into his study, and showed me his parchment-bound collection of Washington’s papers, so fearful in amount that I almost wondered at the intrepidity of any editor who could undertake to go through them. When one looks at the shelf above shelf of thick folio volumes, it seems as if Washington could have done nothing but write, all his life. I believe Mr Sparks has now finished his arduous task, and given to the world the last of his twelve ample volumes. It is interesting to know that he received orders for the book from the remotest corners of the Union. A friend writes to me, “Two hundred copies have recently gone to the Red River; and in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama, the work is generously patronized. Can the dead letter of such a man’s mind be scattered through the land without carrying with it something of his spirit?”

From the Botanic Garden we proceeded to the College, where we visited a student’s room or two, the Museum, our host’s lecture room and apparatus, and the library.

The Harvard library was, in 1764, destroyed by fire (as everything in America seems to be, sooner or later). The immediate occasion of the disaster was the General Court having sat in the library, and (it being the month of January) had a large fire lighted there. One of the most munificent contributors to the lost library was the benevolent Thomas Hollis. He afterwards assisted to repair the loss, writing, “I am preparing, and going on with my mite to Harvard College, and lament the loss it has suffered exceedingly; but hope a public library will no more be turned into a council room.” On this occasion there was a great mourning. The Governor sent a message of condolence to the Representatives; the newspapers bewailed it as a “ruinous loss;” and the mother country and the colonies were stirred up to repair the mischief. Yet now, when the library consists of 40,000 volumes, some of them precious treasures, there seems as much carelessness as ever about fire. This is vehemently complained of on the spot, one honest reviewer declaring that he cannot sleep on windy nights for thinking of the risk arising from the library being within six feet of a building where thirty fires are burning, day and night, under the care of students only, who are required by their avocations to be absent three times a day. It is to be wished that the Cambridge scholars would take warning by the fate of the statue of Washington, by Canova. This statue was the property of the State of North Carolina, and was deposited at Raleigh, the ornament and glory of that poor State. A citizen expressed his uneasiness at such a work of art being housed under a roof of wood, and urged that a stone chapel should be built for it. He was only laughed at. Not long after, the statue was utterly destroyed by fire, and there was a general repentance that the citizen’s advice had not been attended to.

Thomas Hollis was the donor of a fine Polyglott Bible, which I saw in the library, inscribed with his hand, he describing himself a “citizen of the world.” With his contributions made before the fire he had taken great pains, lavishing his care, first on the selection of the books, which were of great value, and next on their bindings. He had emblematical devices cut, such as the Caduceus of Mercury, the Wand of Æsculapius, the Owl, the Cap of Liberty, &c.: and when a work was patriotic in its character, it had the cap of liberty on the back; when the book was of solid wisdom (I suppose on philosophy or morals), there was the owl; when on eloquence, the caduceus; when on medicine, the Æsculapian wand, and so forth. All this ingenuity is lost, except in tradition. Five and thirty years ago, Fisher Ames observed that Gibbon could not have written his history at Cambridge for want of works of reference. The library then consisted of less than 20,000 volumes. Seven years ago there was no copy of Kepler’s Works in the library. Much has been done since that time. The most obvious deficiencies have been supplied, and the number of volumes has risen to upwards of 40,000. There is great zeal on the spot for a further enlargement of this treasure; and the prevailing opinion is, that whenever a proper building is erected, the munificence of individuals will leave nothing to be complained of, and little to be desired. The names of the donors of books are painted up in the alcoves of the library; but the books are now assorted by their subjects. There are portraits of some of the patrons of the institution; two of which, by Copley, are good.

The rest of our first day at Cambridge was spent in society. This was the first time of my meeting Professor Norton, who, of all the theologians of America, impressed me, as I believe he has impressed the Unitarians of England generally, and certain other theologians, with the most respect. In reach of mind, in reasoning power, in deep devotional feeling, and, according to the universal testimony of better judges than myself, in biblical learning, he has no superior among the American divines; and in some of these respects no peer. He is regarded with grateful veneration by the worthiest of his pupils, for the invaluable guidance he afforded them, while professor, in their biblical studies; though they cannot but grieve that his philosophical prejudices, and his extreme dread and dislike of opposition to his own opinions, should betray him into a tone of arrogance, and excite in him a spirit of persecution, which, but for ages of proof to the contrary, would seem to be incompatible with so large a knowledge, and so humble and genuine a faith as his. His being duly reverenced is the reason of his having been hitherto unduly feared. His services to theological science and to religion are gratefully appreciated; and, naturally, more weight has, at least till lately, been allowed to his opinions of persons and affairs, than should ever be accorded to those of a man among men. But this is a temporary disadvantage. When the friends of free inquiry, and the champions of equal intellectual rights, have gone on a little longer in the assertion of their liberty, Professor Norton’s peculiarities will have lost their power to injure, and his great qualities, accomplishments, and services will receive a more ready and unmixed homage than ever.

On the Tuesday, several friends arrived to breakfast; and we filled up the morning with visiting the admirably conducted Lunatic Asylum at Charlestown, and with a drive to Fresh Pond, one of the pretty meres which abound in Massachusetts. We dined at the house of another professor, close at hand. The house was full in every corner with family connexions, arrived for Commencement. I remember there were eleven children in the house. We were a cheerful party at the long dinner table; and a host of guests filled the rooms in the evening. The ladies sat out on the piazza in the afternoon, and saw the smoke of a fire far off. Presently the fire bells rang, and the smoke and glow increased; and by dark it was a tremendous sight. It was the great Charlestown fire, which burned sixty houses. Some of us mounted to the garrets, whence we could see a whole street burning on both sides – stack after stack of chimneys falling into the flames. It is thought that the frequency of fires in America is owing partly to the practice of carrying wood ashes from room to room; perhaps from general carelessness about wood ashes; and partly to the houses being too hastily built, so that cracks ensue, sometimes in the chimneys, and beams are exposed.

The important morning rose dark and dull, and soon deepened into rain. It was rather vexatious that in a region where, at this time of year, one may, except in the valleys, put by one’s umbrella for three or four months, this particular morning should be a rainy one. Friend after friend drove up to the house, popped in, shook hands, and popped out again, till an hour after breakfast, when it was time to be setting out for the church. I was fortunate enough to be placed in a projecting seat at a corner of the gallery, over a flank of the platform, where I saw everything, and heard most of the exercises. The church is large, and was completely filled. The galleries and half the area were crowded with ladies, all gaily dressed; some without either cap or bonnet, which had a singular effect. We were sufficiently amused with observing the varieties of countenance and costume which are congregated on such occasions, and in recognising old acquaintances from distant places, till ten o’clock, when music was heard, the bar was taken down from the centre door of the church, and students and strangers poured in at the side entrances, immediately filling all the unoccupied pews. A student from Maryland was Marshal, and he ushered in the President, and attended him up the middle aisle and the steps of the platform. The Governor of the State and his aides, the Corporation and officers of the College, and several distinguished visitors, took their seats on either hand of the President. The venerable head of Dr Bowditch was seen on the one side, and Judge Story’s animated countenance on the other. The most eminent of the Unitarian clergy of Massachusetts were there, and some of its leading politicians. Mr Webster stole in from behind, when the proceedings were half over, and retired before they were finished. A great variety of exercises were gone through by the young men – orations were delivered, and poems, and dialogues, and addresses. Some of these appeared to me to have a good deal of merit; two or three were delivered by students who relied on their reputation at College, with a manner mixed up of pomposity and effrontery, which contrasted amusingly with the modesty of some of their companions, who did things much more worthy of honour. I discovered that many, if not most of the compositions, contained allusions to mob law – of course reprobating it. This was very satisfactory; particularly if the reprobation was accompanied with a knowledge of the causes, and a recognition of the real perpetrators of the recent illegal violences; – a knowledge that they have invariably sprung out of a conflict of selfish interests with eternal principles; and a recognition that their perpetrators have universally been, at first or second hand, aristocratic members of American society.

The exercises were relieved by music four times during the morning; and then everybody talked, and many changed places, and the intervals were made as refreshing as possible. Yet the routine must be wearisome to persons who are compelled to attend it every year. From my high seat I looked down upon the top of a friend’s head, – one of the reverend professors, – and was amused by watching the progress of his ennui. It would not do for a professor to look wearied or careless; so my friend had recourse to an occupation which gave him a sufficiently sage air, while furnishing him with entertainment. He covered his copy of the programme with an infinite number of drawings. I saw stars, laurel-sprigs, and a variety of other pretty devices, gradually spreading over the paper as the hours rolled on. I tried afterwards to persuade him to give me his handiwork, as a memorial of Commencement; but he would not. At length, a clever valedictory address, in Latin, drolly delivered by a departing student, caused the large church to re-echo with laughter and applause.

The president then got into the antique chair from which the honours of the University are dispensed, and delivered their diplomas to the students. During this process we departed, at half-past four o’clock, the business being concluded, except the final blessing, given by the oldest clerical professor.

At home we assembled, a party of ladies, without any gentlemen. The gentlemen were all to dine in the College Hall. Our hostess had happened to collect round her table a company of ladies more or less distinguished in literature, and all, on the present occasion at least, as merry as children; or, which is saying as much, as merry as Americans usually are. We had, therefore, a pleasant dining enough, during which one of these clever ladies agreed to go with us to the White Mountains, on our return from Dr Channing’s, in Rhode Island. It was just the kind of day for planning enterprises.

After dinner several of the gentlemen came in to tell us what had been done and said at the Hall. Their departure was a signal that it was time to be dressing for the president’s levee. It was the most tremendous squeeze I encountered in America, for it is an indispensable civility to the President and the University to be seen at the levee. The band which had refreshed us in the morning was playing in the hall; and in the drawing-rooms there was a splendid choice of good company. I believe almost every eminent person in the State, for official rank, or scientific and literary accomplishment, was there. I was presented with flowers as usual; and was favoured with some delightful introductions; so that I much enjoyed the brief hour of our stay. We were home by eight, o’clock, and felt ourselves quite at rest again in our hostess’s cool drawing room, where the family party sat refreshing themselves with champagne and conversation till the fatigues of Commencement were forgotten. My curiosity had been so roused by the spectacles of this showy day, that I could not go to rest till I had run over the history of the University, which lay on my table. On such occasions I found it best to defer till the early morning the making notes of what I had seen. Many things which appear confused when looked at so near, are, like the objects of the external world, bright and distinct at sunrise; but then the journal should be written before the events of a new day begin.

Mr Sparks breakfasted with us on the morning of the 27th. He brought with him the pass given by Arnold to André, and the papers found in André’s boots. He possesses also the Reports of the West Point fortifications in Arnold’s undisguised handwriting. The effect is singular of going from Andrés’s monument in Westminster Abbey to the shores of the Hudson, where the treachery was transacted, and to Mr Sparks’s study, where the evidence lies clear and complete.

After breakfast we proceeded once more to the church, in which were to be performed the rites of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. This society consists of the élite of the scholars who owe their education to Harvard, and of distinguished professional men. Its general object is to keep alive the spirit, and perpetuate the history of scholarship. Every member is understood to owe his election to some evidence of distinction in letters, though the number of members is so great as to prove that no such supposition has become a rule. The society holds an annual celebration in Cambridge the day after Commencement; when public exercises take place in the church, and the members dine together in the College Hall.

We saw the society march in to music, and take possession of the platform, as on the preceding day. They were, on the whole, a fine looking set of men, and interesting to a stranger, as being the élite of the lettered society of the republic. A traveller could not be expected to understand why they were so numerous, nor what were the claims of the greater number.

Prayers were said by the chaplain of the society; and then a member delivered an address. This address was, and is, to me a matter of great surprise. I do not know what was thought of it by the members generally; but if its doctrine and sentiments are at all sanctioned by them, I must regard this as another evidence, in addition to many, that the minority in America are, with regard to social principles, eminently in the wrong. The traveller is met everywhere among the aristocracy of the country with what seems to him the error of concluding that letters are wisdom, and that scholarship is education. Among a people whose profession is social equality, and whose rule of association is universal self-government, he is surprised to witness the assumptions of a class, and the contempt which the few express for the many, with as much assurance as if they lived in Russia or England. Much of this is doubtless owing to the minds of the lettered class having been nourished upon the literature of the old world, so that their ideas have grown into a conformity with those of the subjects of feudal institutions, and the least strong-minded and original indiscriminately adopt, not merely the language, but the hopes and apprehensions, the notions of good and evil which have been generated amidst the antiquated arrangements of European society: but, making allowance for this, as quite to be expected of all but very strong and original minds, it is still surprising that within the bounds of the republic, the insolence should be so very complacent, the contempt of the majority so ludicrously decisive as it is. Self-satisfied, oracular ignorance and error are always as absurd as they are mournful; but when they are seen in full display among a body whose very ground of association is superiority of knowledge and of the love of it, the inconsistency affords a most striking lesson to the observer. Of course, I am not passing a general censure on the Association now under notice; for I know no more of it than what I could learn from the public exercises of this day, and a few printed addresses and poems. I am speaking of the tone and doctrine of the orator of the day, who might be no faithful organ of the society, but whose ways of thinking and expressing himself were but too like those of many literary and professional men whom I met in New England society.

The subject of the address was the “Duties of Educated men in a Republic;” a noble subject, of which the orator seemed to be aware at the beginning of his exercise. He well explained that whereas, in all the nominal republics of the old world, men had still been under subjection to arbitrary human will, the new republic was established on the principle that men might live in allegiance to Truth under the form of Law. He told that the primary social duty of educated men was to enlighten public sentiment as to what truth is, and what law ought, therefore, to be. But here he diverged into a set of monstrous suppositions, expressed or assumed – that men of letters are the educated men of society in regard not only to literature and speculative truth, but to morals, politics, and the conduct of all social affairs – that power and property were made to go eternally together – that the “masses” are ignorant – that the ignorant masses naturally form a party against the enlightened few – that the masses desire to wrest power from the wealthy few – that, therefore, the masses wage war against property – that industry is to be the possession of the many, and property of the few – that the masses naturally desire to make the right instead of to find it – that they are, consequently, opposed to law – and that a struggle was impending in which the whole power of mind must be arrayed against brute force. This extraordinary collection of fallacies was not given in the form of an array of propositions; but they were all taken for granted when not announced. The orator made large reference to recent outrages in the country: but, happily for the truth, and for the reputation of “the masses,” the facts of the year supplied as complete a contradiction as could be desired to the orator of the hour. The violences were not perpetrated by industry against property, but by property against principle. The violators of law were, almost without an exception, members of the wealthy and “educated” class, while the victorious upholders of the law were the “industrious” masses. The rapid series of victories since gained by principle over the opposition of property, and without injury to property, – holy and harmless victories, – the failure of the lawbreakers in all their objects, and their virtual surrender to the sense and principle of the majority, are sufficient, one would hope, to enlighten the “enlightened;” to indicate to the lettered class of American society, that while it is truly their duty to extend all the benefits of education which it is in their power to dispense to “the masses,” it is highly necessary that the benefit should be reciprocated, and that the few should be also receiving an education from the many. There are a thousand mechanics shops, a thousand log houses where certain members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the orator of the day for one, might learn new and useful lessons on morals and politics, – on the first principles of human relations.

I have had the pleasure of seeing the address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at its last celebration, – an address differing most honourably from the one I was present at. The address of last August was by Mr R. Waldo Emerson a name which is a sufficient warrant on the spot for the absence from his production of all aristocratic insolence, all contempt of man or men, in any form and under any combination. His address breathes a truly philosophical reverence for Humanity, and exhibits an elevated conception of what are the right aims and the reasonable discipline of the mind of a scholar and thinker. Whatever the reader may conclude as to the philosophical doctrine of the address, and the mode in which it is conveyed, – whether he accuse it of mysticism or hail it as insight, – he cannot but be touched by the spirit of devotedness, and roused by the tone of moral independence which breathe through the whole. The society may be considered as having amply atoned, by this last address, for the insult rendered by its organ (however unconsciously), to republican morals by that of 1835.

The address was followed by the reading of the poem, whose delivery by its author I have before mentioned as being prevented by his sudden and alarming illness. The, whole assembly were deeply moved; and this was the most interesting part of the transactions of the day.

The society marched out of the church to music, and, preceded by the band, to the college, and up the steps of the hall to dinner, in the order of seniority as members.

We hastened home to dress for dinner at the president’s, where we met the Corporation of the University. My seat was between Dr Bowditch and one of the professors; and the entertainment, to us strangers, was so great and so novel, that we were sorry to return home, though it was to meet an evening party no less agreeable.

The ceremonial of Commencement week was now over; but not the bustle and gaiety. The remaining two days were spent in drives to Boston and to Bunker Hill, and in dinner and evening visits to Judge Story’s, to some of the professors, and to Mr Everett’s, since governor of the State.

The view from Bunker Hill is fine, including the city and harbour of Boston, the long bridges and the Neck, which connect the city with the mainland, the village of Medford, where the first American ship was built, and the rising grounds which advantageously limit the prospect. The British could scarcely have had much leisure to admire the view while they were in possession of the hill, for the colonists kept them constantly busy. I saw the remains of the work which was the only foothold they really possessed. They roamed the hills, and marched through the villages, but had no opportunity of settling themselves anywhere else. Their defeat of the enemy was more fatal to themselves than to the vanquished, as they lost more officers than the Americans had men engaged.

A monument is in course of erection: but it proceeds very slowly for want of funds. It is characteristic of the people that funds should fall short for this object, while they abound on all occasions when they are required for charitable, religious, or literary uses. The glory of the Bunker Hill struggle is immortal in the hearts of the nation, and the granite obelisk is not felt to be wanted as an expression. When it will be finished no one knows, and few seem to care, while the interest in the achievement remains as enthusiastic as ever.

While we were surveying the ground, a very old man joined us with his plan of the field. It was well worn, almost tattered: but he spread it out once more for us on a block of the monumental granite, and related once again, for our benefit, the thousand times told tale. He was in the battle with his musket, being then fifteen years old. Many were the boys who struck some of the first blows in that war; and of those boys one here and there still lives, and may be known by the air of serene triumph with which he paces the field of his enterprise, once soaked with blood, but now the centre of regions where peace and progress have followed upon the achievement of freedom.

Volume 3

The White Mountains

“Hast thou entered the storehouses of the snow?”

Book of Job

One of the charms of such travelling as that of the English in the United States, is its variety. The stopping to rest for a month at a farmhouse after a few weeks of progress by stage, with irregular hours, great fatigues and indifferent fare, is a luxury which those only can understand who have experienced it: and it is no less a luxury to hie away from a great city, leaving behind its bustle and formalities, and the fatigues of sightseeing and society, to plunge into the deepest mountain solitude. I have a vivid recollection of the dance of spirits amidst which we passed the long bridge at Boston, on our way out to New Hampshire, on the bright morning of the 16th of September. Our party consisted of four, two Americans and two English. We were to employ eight or ten days in visiting the White Mountains of New Hampshire, returning down the valley of the Connecticut. The weather was brilliant the whole time: and I well remember how gay the hedges looked this first morning, all starred over with purple, lilac, and white asters, and gay with golden rod; with which was intermixed, here and there, a late pale brier rose. The orchards were cheerful with their apple-cropping. There was scarcely one which had not its ladder against a laden tree, its array of baskets and troughs beneath, and its company of children picking up the fruit from the grass. What a contrast to the scenery we were about, to enter upon!

Of the earlier part of this trip, (our visit to Lake Winnepiscogee and the Red Mountain.) I gave an account in my former work[22], little supposing that I should ever return to the subject. My narrative must now be taken up from the point where I then dropped it.

From the summit of Red Mountain I had seen what kind of scenery we were to pass through on our road to Conway. It was first mountain and wild little valleys, and then dark pine scenery, – barrens, with some autumnal copses, and intervals of lake and stream. Lake Ossippee looked like what I fancy the wildest parts of Norway to be; a dark blue expanse, slightly ruffled, with pine fringing all its ledges; and promontories, bristling with pines, jutting into it; no dwellings, and no sign of life but a pair of wildfowl, bobbing and ducking, and a hawk perched on the tip-top of a scraggy blighted tree.

In the steamboat on Lake Winnepiscogee there was a party whom we at once concluded to be bride, bridegroom, and bridesmaid. They were very young, and the state of the case might not have occurred to us but for the obvious pride of the youth in having a lady to take care of. Our conjectures were confirmed by the peculiar tone in which he spoke of “my wife” to the people of the inn, in giving orders. It had a droll mixture of pride and awkwardness: of novelty with an attempt to make the words appear quite familiar. For some days we were perpetually meeting this party: and this afternoon they introduced themselves to me, on the ground of their having expected to see me at Portsmouth, on my way to the White Mountains. I imagine they would have been too busy with their wedding arrangements to have cared much about me if I had gone. I was glad we fell in with them, as it added an interest to the trip. We looked at the scenery with their eyes, and pleased ourselves with imagining what a paradise these landscapes must appear to the young people; what a sacred region it will be to them when they look back upon it in their old age, and tell the youth of those days what the White Mountains were when they towered in the midst of a wilderness.

We all took up our quarters at the inn at Conway; and the next morning we met again at breakfast, and improved our acquaintance by sympathizing looks about the badness of every thing on the table. Eggs were a happy resource; for the bread was not eatable. We did not start till ten, our party having bespoken a private conveyance, and the horses having to be sent for, to a distance of eight miles. So the wedding party had the companionship of our luggage instead of ourselves in the stage; and we four stepped merrily into our little open carriage, while the skirts of the morning mist were drawing off from the hilltops, and the valley was glowing in a brilliant autumn sunshine. This was to be the grand day of the journey – the day when we were to pass the Notch; and we were resolved to have it to ourselves, if we could procure a private conveyance from stage to stage.

We struck across the valley, which is intersected by the Saco river. Never did valley look more delicious; shut in all round by mountains, green as emerald, flat as water, and chumped and fringed with trees tinted with the softest autumnal hues. Every reach of the Saco was thus belted and shaded. We stopped at Pendexter’s, the pretty house well known to tourists: having watered the horses, we went on another stage, no less beautiful, and then entered upon the wilderness. For seven miles we did not see a single dwelling; and a head now and then popped out of the stage window, showing that our friends “the weddingers,” were making sure of our being near, as if the wildness of the scene made them relish the idea of society.

The mountains had opened and closed in every direction all the morning: they now completely shut us in, and looked tremendous enough, being exceedingly steep and abrupt, bare, and white where they had been seamed with slides, and in other parts dark with stunted firs. At the end of seven miles of this wilderness, we arrived at the elder Crawford’s, a lone house invested with the grateful recollections of a multitude of travellers. The Crawfords, who live twelve miles apart, lead a remarkable life; but one which seems to agree well with mind and body. They are hale, lively men, of uncommon simplicity of manners, dearly loving company, but able to make themselves happy in solitude. Their year is passed in alternations of throngs of guests with entire loneliness.[23] During the long dreary season of thaw no one comes in sight; or, if a chance visitor should approach, it is in a somewhat questionable shape – being no other than a hungry bear, the last of his clan. During two months, August and September, while the solitaries are trying to get some sort of harvest out of the impracticable soil, while bringing their grain from a distance, a flock of summer tourists take wing through the region. Then the Crawfords lay down beds in every corner of their dwellings, and spread their longest tables, and bustle from morning till night, the hosts acting as guides to every accessible point in the neighbourhood, and the women of the family cooking and waiting from sunrise till midnight. After the 1st of October comes a pause – dead silence again for three months, till the snow is frozen hard, and trains of loaded sleighs appear in the passes. Traders from many distant points come down with their goods, while the roads are in a state which enables one horse to draw the load of five. This is a season of great jollity; and the houses are gay with roaring fires, hot provisions, good liquor, loud songs, and romantic travellers’ tales – tales of pranking wild beasts, bold sleigh drivers, and hardy woodsmen.

The elder Crawford has a pet album, in which he almost insists that his guests shall write. We found in it some of the choicest nonsense and “brag” that can be found in the whole library of albums. We dined well on mutton, eggs, and huckleberries with milk. Tea was prepared at dinner as regularly as bread, throughout this excursion. While the rest of the party were finishing their arrangements for departure. I found a seat on a stone, on a rising ground opposite, whence I could look some way up and down the pass, and wonder at leisure at the intrepidity which could choose such an abode.

We proceeded in an open wagon, the road winding amidst tall trees, and the sunshine already beginning to retreat up the mountain sides. We soon entered the secluded valley where stands the dwelling of the Willeys – the unfortunate family who were all swept away in one night by a slide from the mountain in the rear of the house.[24] No one lives in that valley, now; and this is not to be wondered at, so desolate is its aspect. The platform on which the unharmed house stands is the only quiet green spot in the pass. The slides have stripped the mountains of their wood; and they stand tempest-beaten, seamed, and furrowed; while beneath lies the wreck of what was brought down by the great slide of 1826 – a heap of rock and soil, bristling with pine trunks and upturned roots, half hid by a rank new vegetation, which will in time turn all the chaos into beauty.

A dark pine hill at the end of this pass is the signal of the traveller’s approach to the Notch. We walked up a long ascent, the road overhanging a ravine, where rocks were capriciously tumbled together, brought down doubtless by a winter torrent. At present, instead of a torrent, there were two sparkling waterfalls leaping down the mountain. The Notch is, at the narrowest part, only twenty-two feet wide. The weather was so still that we were scarcely aware of the perpetual wind, which is one characteristic of the pass. There the wind is always north or south; and it ordinarily blows so strong as to impair the traveller’s pleasure in exploring the scene. It merely breathed cool upon us as we entered the tremendous gateway formed by a lofty perpendicular rock on the right hand, and a steep mountain on the left. When we were through, and had rejoined our wagon, my attention was directed to the Profile – an object which explains itself in being named. The sharp rock certainly resembles a human face – but what then? There is neither wonder nor beauty in it. I turned from it to see the infant Saco bubble forth from its spring among stones and bushes, under the shelter of the perpendicular rock, and in a semicircular recess of the greenest sward. Trees sprang from sharp projections, and wrenched themselves out of crevices – giving the last air of caprice to the scene.

We were just in time for the latest yellow light. Twilight stole on, and we grew silent. The stars appeared early to us on our shadowy way, and birds flitted by to their homes. A light still lingered on the mountain stream, when Sirius was tremblingly reflected in it. When the lights of Ethan Crawford’s dwelling were seen twinkling in the distance, we were deep in mutual recitation of poetry. As we drove up to the open door, Mr D. said, quietly, as he looked up into the heavens, “Shall we get out, or spend the evening as we are?” We got out, and then followed supper, fiddle and dancing, as I have elsewhere related.[25]

We proposed to ascend Mount Washington the next morning, if the weather should allow. It is a difficult and laborious ascent for all travellers; and few ladies venture upon the enterprise; but the American lady of our party was fully disposed to try her strength with me. I rose very early, and seeing that the mountain peak looked sharp and clear, never doubted that I ought to prepare myself for the expedition. On coming down, however, I was told that there was rather too much wind, and some expectation of rain. By noon, sure enough, while we were basking upon Mount Deception (so called from its real being so much greater than its apparent height), we saw that there was a tempest of wind and snow about the mountain top. This peak is the highest in the Union. It rises 6634 feet above the level of the sea: 4000 feet of this height being clothed with wood, and the rest being called the bald part of the mountain. We spent our day delightfully in loitering about Mount Deception, in tracking the stream of the valley through its meadows, and its thickets of alders, and in watching the course and explosion of storms upon the mountains. Some gay folks from Boston were at Crawford’s; and they were not a little shocked at seeing us pack ourselves and our luggage into a wagon, in the afternoon, for a drive of eighteen miles to Littleton. We should be upset – we should break down – we should be drowned in a deluge – they should pick us up on the morrow. We were a little doubtful ourselves about the prudence of the enterprise; but a trip to Franconia Defile was in prospect for the next day, and we wished that our last sight of the White Mountains should be when they had the evening sun upon them. Our expedition was wholly successful; we had neither storm, breakage, nor overturn; and it was not sunset when we reached and walked up the long hill which was to afford us the last view of the chain. Often did we stand and look back upon the solemn tinted mountains to the north, and upon the variegated range behind, sunny in places, as if angels were walking there, and shedding light from their presence.

We passed the town of Bethlehem, consisting, as far as we could see, of one house and two barns. It was no more than six o’clock when we reached Littleton: so, when we had chosen our rooms, out of a number equally tempting from their cleanliness and air of comfort, we walked out to see what the place looked like. Our attention was caught by the endeavours of a woman to milk a restless cow, and we inadvertently stood still to see how she would manage. When she at last succeeded in making the animal stand, she offered us milk. We never refused kindness which might lead to acquaintanceship; so we accepted her offer, and followed her guidance into her house, to obtain a basin to drink out of. It was a good interior. Two pretty girls, nicely dressed, sat, during the dusk, by a blazing fire. Their talkative father was delighted to get hold of some new listeners. He sat down upon the side of the bed, as if in preparation for a long chat, and entered at large into the history of his affairs. He told us how he went down to Boston, to take service, and got money enough to settle himself independently in this place; and how much better he liked having a house of his own than working for any amount of money in a less independent way. He told us how Littleton flourishes by the lumber trade; wood being cut from the hills around, and sent floating down the stream for five miles, till it reaches the Connecticut, with whose current it proceeds to Hartford. Twenty years ago there was one store and a tavern in the place; now it is a wide spreading village on the side of a large hill, which is stripped of its forest. The woods on the other bank of the river are yet untouched. Scarcely a field is to be seen under tillage; and the axe seems almost the only tool in use.

We were admirably cared for at Gibb’s house at Littleton, and we enjoyed our comforts exceedingly. It appeared that good manners are much regarded in the house; some of the family being as anxious to teach them to strangers as to practise them themselves. In the morning, one of my American friends and I, being disposed to take our breakfast at convenient leisure, sat down to table when all was ready, our companions (who could make more haste) not having appeared. A young lady stood at the side table to administer the steaming coffee and tea. After waiting some time, my companion modestly observed,

“I should like a cup of coffee, if you please.”

There was no appearance of the observation having taken effect; so my friend spoke again:

“Will you be so good as to give me a cup of coffee?”

No answer. After a third appeal, the young lady burst out with,

“Never saw such manners! To sit down to table before the other folks come!”

I hope she was pacified by seeing that our friends, when they at length appeared, did not resent our not having waited for them.

We set out early in an open wagon for a day’s excursion to Franconia Defile – a gorge in the mountains which is too frequently neglected by travellers who pass through this region. Before we reached Franconia, some part of our vehicle gave way. While it was in the hands of the blacksmith, we visited the large ironworks at Franconia, and sat in a boat on the sweet Ammonoosuc, watching the waters as they fell over the dam by the ironworks. When we set off again, our umbrellas were forgotten; and as we entered upon the mountain region, the misty, variegated peaks told that storm was coming. The mountain sides were more precipitous than any we had seen; and Mount Lafayette towered darkly above us to the right of our winding road. We passed some beautiful tarns, fringed with trees, and brimming up so close to the foot of the precipices as to leave scarcely a footpath on their margin. A pelting rain came on, which made us glad to reach the solitary dwelling of the pass, called the Lafayette Hotel. This house had been growing in the woods thirteen weeks before; and yet we were far from being among its first guests. The host, two boys, and a nice-looking, obliging girl, wearing a string of gold beads, did their best to make us comfortable. They kindled a blazing wood fire, and the girl then prepared a dinner of hot bread and butter, broiled ham, custards, and good tea. When the shower ceased, we went out and made ourselves acquainted with the principal features of the pass, sketching, reciting, and watching how the mists drove up and around the tremendous peaks, smoked out of the fissures, and wreathed about the woods on the ledges. The scene could not have been more remarkable, and scarcely more beautiful in the brightest sunshine. It was not various: its unity was its charm. It consisted of a narrow rocky road, winding between mountains which almost overhung the path, except at intervals, where there were recesses filled with woods.

After dinner, our host brought in the album of the house – for even this new house had already its album. When we had given an account of ourselves we set out, in defiance of the clouds, for the Whirlpool, four miles at least further on. On the way we passed a beautiful lake, overhung by ash, beech, birch, and pine, with towering heights behind. Hereabouts the rain came on heavily, and continued for three hours. The Whirlpool is the grand object of this pass; and it is a place in which to spend many a long summer’s day. A full mountain stream, issuing from the lake we had left behind, and brawling all along our road, here gushes through a crevice into a wide basin, singularly overhung by a projecting rock, rounded and smoothed as if by art. Here the eddying water, green as the Niagara floods, carries leaves and twigs round and round, in perpetual swift motion, a portion of the waters brimming over the lower edge of the great basin at each revolution, and the pool being replenished from above. I found a shelter under a ledge of rock; and here I could have stood for hours, listening to the splash and hiss, and watching the busy whirl. The weather, however, grew worse every moment; the driver could not keep the seats of the wagon dry any longer; and after finding to our surprise that we had stayed half an hour by the pool, we jumped into our vehicle, and returned without delay. There were no more wandering gleams among the mountains; but just as we descended to the plain, we saw the watery sun for a moment, and were cheered by a bright amber streak of sky above the western summits. By the time we recovered our umbrellas there was no further need of them.

It soon became totally dark; and if there had been any choice, the driver would have been as glad as ourselves to have stopped. But we were wet, and there were no habitations along the roads: so we amused ourselves with watching one or two fireflies, the last of the season, and the driver left the horses to find their own way, as he was unable to see a yard in any direction. At last, the lights of Littleton appeared, the horses put new spirit into their work, and we arrived at Gibb’s door before eight o’clock. The ladies of the house were kind in their assistance to get us dried and warmed, and to provide us with tea.

Our course was subsequently to Montpelier (Vermont), and along the White River, till we joined the Connecticut, along whose banks we travelled to Brattleborough, Deerfield, and Northampton. The scenery of New Hampshire and Vermont is that to which the attention of travellers will hereafter be directed, perhaps more emphatically than to the renowned beauties of Virginia. I certainly think the Franconia Defile the noblest mountain pass I saw in the United States.

Volume 3

Channing

“And let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.”

Isaac Walton

There is no task more difficult than that of speaking of one’s intimate friends in print. It is well that the necessity occurs but seldom; for it is a task which it is nearly impossible to do well. Some persons think it as dangerous as it is difficult: but I do not feel this. If a friendship be not founded on a mutual knowledge so extensive as to leave nothing to be learned by each of the opinions of the other regarding their relation; and if, moreover, either party, knowing what it is to speak to the public, – the act of all acts most like answering at the bar of eternal judgment, – can yet be injuriously moved by so much of the character and circumstances being made known as the public has an interest in, – such a friendship is not worthy of the name; and if it can be thus broken up, it had better be so. In the case of a true friendship, there is no such danger; for it is based upon something very different from mutual ignorance; and depends upon something much more stable than the ignorance of the world concerning the parties.

Dr Channing is, of all the public characters of the United States, the one in whom the English feel the most interest. After much consideration, I have decided that to omit, because the discussion is difficult to myself, the subject most interesting to my readers, and one on which they have, from Dr Channing’s position, a right to information, would be wrong. Accounts have already been given of him, – one, at least, to his disadvantage. There is no sufficient reason why a more friendly one should be withheld, while the account is strictly limited to those circumstances and appearances which might meet the observation of a stranger or a common acquaintance. All revelations made to me through the hospitalities of his family, or by virtue of friendship, will be, of course, carefully suppressed.

Dr Channing spends seven or eight months of the year in Rhode Island, at Oakland, six miles from Newport. There I first saw him, being invited by him and Mrs Channing to spend a week with them. This was in September, 1835. I afterwards stayed a longer time with them in Boston.

The last ten miles of the journey to Dr Channing’s house, from Boston, is very pretty in fine weather. The road passes through a watery region, where the whims of sunshine and cloud are as various and as palpable as at sea. The road passes over a long bridge to the island, and affords fine glimpses of small islands in the spreading river, and of the distant main with its breakers. The stage set me down at the garden gate at Oakland, whither my host came out to receive me. I knew it could be no other than Dr Channing; but his appearance surprised me. He looked younger and pleasanter than I had expected. The common engraving of him is undeniably very like; but it does not altogether do him justice. A bust of him was modelled by Persico, the next winter, which is an admirable likeness, – favourable, but not flattering. Dr Channing is short, and very slightly made. His countenance varies more than its first aspect would lead the stranger to suppose it could. In mirth, it is perfectly changed, and very remarkable. The lower part of other faces is the most expressive of mirth: not so with Dr Channing’s, whose muscles keep very composed, while his laughter pours out at his eyes. I have seen him laugh till it seemed doubtful where the matter would end; and I could not but wish that the expression of face could be dashed into the canvas at the moment. His voice is, however, the great charm. I do not mean in the pulpit: of what it is there I am not qualified to speak, for I could not hear a tone of his preaching: but in conversation his voice becomes delightful after one is familiarised with it. At first, his tones partake of the unfortunate dryness of his manner; but by use they grow, or seem to grow, more and more genial, till, at last, the ear waits and watches for them. Of the “repulsiveness” of his manners, on a first acquaintance, he is himself aware; though not, I think, of all the evil it causes, in compelling mere strangers to carry away a wrong idea of him, and in deterring even familiar acquaintances from opening their minds, and letting their speech run on as freely to him as he earnestly desires that it should.

It might not be difficult to account for this manner; but this is not the place in which we have to do with any but the facts of the case. The natural, but erroneous conclusion of most strangers is, that the dryness proceeds from spiritual pride; and all the more from there being an appearance of this in Dr Channing’s writings, – in the shape of rather formal declarations of ways of thinking as his own, and of accounts of his own views and states of mind, – still as his own. Any stranger thus impressed will very shortly be struck, be struck speechless, by evidences of humility, of generous truth, and meek charity, at such variance with the manner in which other things have been said as to overthrow all hasty conclusions. It was thus with me; and I know that it has been so with others. Those superficial observers of Dr Channing who, carrying in their own minds the idea of his being a great man, suppose that the same idea is in his, and even kindly account for his faults of manner on this ground, do him great injustice, – whatever may be his share of the blame of it. No children consulting about their plays were ever further from the idea of speaking like an oracle than Dr Channing: and the notion of condescending, – of his being in a higher, while others are in a lower spiritual state, – would be dismissed from his mind, if it ever got in, with the abhorrence with which the good chase away the shadows of evil from their souls. I say this confidently, the tone of his writings notwithstanding: and I say it, not as a friend, but from such being the result of a very few hours study of him. Whenever his conversation is not earnest, – and it is not always earnest, – it is for the sake of drawing out the person he is talking with, and getting at his views. This method of conversation is not to be defended, – even on the ground of expediency, – for a person’s real views are not to be got at in this way, – no one liking to be managed: but Dr Channing’s own part in this kind of conversation is not played in the spirit of condescension, but of inquiry. One proof of this is the use he makes of the views of the persons with whom he converses. Nothing is lost upon him. He lays up what he obtains for meditation; and it reappears, sooner or later, amplified, enriched, and made perfectly his own. I believe that he is, to a singular degree, unconscious of both processes, and unaware of his part in them; – both the drawing out of information, and the subsequent assimilation: but both are very evident to the observation of even strangers.

One of the most remarkable instances of all this is in the case of Mr Abdy’s visit to Dr Channing, and its results. Mr Abdy has thought fit to publish the conversation he had with Dr Channing, and had an undoubted right to do so, as he gave fair warning on the spot that he visited Dr Channing as a public character, and should feel himself at liberty to report the circumstances of his visit. It is not necessary to repeat the substance of the conversation as it stands in Mr Abdy’s book: but it is necessary to explain that Mr Abdy was not aware of his host’s peculiarities of manner and conversation, and that he misunderstood him; and that, on the other hand, no stranger could be expected to make allowance for the unconsciousness which Dr Channing expressed of the condition of the free coloured population of America. Some mutual friends of the two gentlemen tried to persuade Mr Abdy not to publish the conversation he had with Dr Channing till he knew him better; and Mr Abdy, very reasonably, thought that what was said was said, and might, honourable warning having been given, be printed.

Immediately after Mr Abdy’s departure, Dr Channing took measures to inform himself of the real state of the case of the blacks; and within the next month, preached a thoroughgoing abolition sermon. He laid so firm a grasp on the fundamental principles of the case as to satisfy the far-sighted and practised abolitionists themselves, who were among his audience. The subject was never again out of his mind; and during my visit, the next autumn, our conversation was more upon that topic than any other. Early in the winter after, he published his book on slavery. This has since been followed by his Letter to Birney, and by his noble Letter to Clay, on the subject of Texas, – of all his works the one by which his most attached friends and admirers would have him judged and remembered.

No one out of the United States can have an idea of the merit of taking the part which Dr Channing has adopted on this question. Abroad, whatever may be thought of the merits of the productions, the act of producing them does not seem great. It appears a simple affair enough for an influential clergyman to declare his detestation of outrageous injustice and cruelty, and to point out the duty of his fellow citizens to do it away. But it is not a very easy or simple matter on the spot. Dr Channing lives surrounded by the aristocracy of Boston, and by the most eminent of the clergy of his own denomination, whose lips are rarely opened on the question except to blame or ridicule the abolitionists. The whole matter was, at that time, considered “a low subject,” and one not likely therefore to reach his ears. He dislikes associations for moral objects: he dislikes bustle and ostentation: he dislikes personal notoriety; and, of course, he likes no better than other people to be the object of censure, of popular dislike. He broke through all these temptations to silence, the moment his convictions were settled; – I mean not his convictions of the guilt and evil of slavery, but of its being his duty to utter his voice against it. From his peaceful and honoured retirement he came out into the storm, which might and probably would be fatal to his reputation, his influence, his repose, – and perhaps to more blessings than even these. Thus the case appears to the eye of a passing traveller.

These bad consequences have only partially followed; but he could not anticipate that. As it has turned out, Dr Channing’s reputation and influence have risen at home and abroad precisely in proportion to his own progress on the great question, – to the measure of justice which he learned by degrees to deal out to the abolitionists, till, in his latest work, he reached the highest point of all. His influence is impaired only among those to whom it does not seem to have done good, – among those who were vain of him as a pastor, and a fellow citizen, but who have not strength and light to follow his guidance in a really difficult, and obviously perilous path. He has been wondered at and sighed over in private houses, rebuked and abused in Congress, and foamed at in the South: but his reputation and influence are far higher than ever before; and by his act of self-devotion, he has been on the whole a great gainer, though not, of course, holding a position so enviable, (though it may look more so) than that of some who moved earlier, and have risked and suffered more in the same cause.

Dr Channing bore admirably the wrath he drew upon himself by breaking silence on the slavery question. Popular hatred and the censure of men whom he respected were a totally new experience to one who had lived in the midst of something like worship; and though they reached him only from a distance, they must have made him feel that the new path he had at his years struck into, was a thorny one. He was not careless of censure, though he took it quietly. He read the remarks made in Congress on his book, re-examined the grounds of what he had said that was questioned, about the morals of the South, with the intention of retracting anything which he might have stated too strongly. Finding that he had in his assertions kept within the truth, he appeared satisfied. But he could feel for others who were exposed in the same cause. When I was staying in his house, at the end of the winter. I was one morning sealing up my papers in his presence, in order to their being put in a place of safety, news having reached us the night before of a design to lynch me in the West, where I had been about to take a journey. While I was sealing, Dr Channing told me that he hoped I should, on my return to England, boldly expose the fact that I was not allowed the liberty of going where I would in the United States. I told him I should not, while there was the far stronger fact that the natives of the country were not allowed to use this, their constitutional liberty. Dr Channing could not, at that time, have set his foot within the boundaries of half the States, without danger to his life: but he appeared more moved at my case than I ever saw him about his own. No doubt we both felt ashamed to be concerned about ourselves while others were suffering to the extremity, – to the loss of fortune, liberty, and life. Still, to Dr Channing, the change in the temper of a large portion of the nation towards him must have been no light trial.

He loves the country retirement in which I first saw him; for his habit of mind is not one which renders him indifferent to the objects about him. He never sits in his study for hours together, occupied with books and thoughts, but, even when most deeply engaged in composition, walks out into his garden frequently that the wonder to persons who use different methods is how, amidst so many interruptions, he keeps up any continuity of thought, or accomplishes any amount of composition at all. He rarely has his pen in his hand for more than an hour at a time, and does not therefore enter into the enjoyments of writers who find the second hour twice as productive and pleasurable as the first, and the third as the second; and who grudge moving under five or six hours. Instead of the delight of this continuous labour, Dr Channing enjoys the refreshment of a change of objects. In his last publication, as in some former ones, he affords an indication of this habit of his, which, to those who know him, serves as a picture of himself in his garden, sauntering alone in his grey morning; gown, or chatting with any of his family whom he may meet in the walks. “I have prepared this letter,” he says, “not amidst the goadings, irritations, and feverish tumults of a crowded city, but in the stillness of retirement, amid scenes of peace and beauty. Hardly an hour has passed in which I have not sought relief from the exhaustion of writing, by walking abroad amidst God’s works, which seldom fail to breathe tranquility, and which, by their harmony and beneficence, continually cheer me, as emblems and prophecies of a more harmonious and blessed state of human affairs than has yet been known.” He has frequently referred in conversation, even to strangers, and once at least in print, to the influence on his mind of having passed his boyhood on the seashore; and to this shore he lost no time in taking me. He liked that we should be abroad almost all day. In the morning we met early in the garden; at noon he drove me, or we went in the carriage, to some point of the shore; and in the afternoon we walked to the glen, – where, truly, any one might be thankful to go, every summer evening and autumn afternoon. The way was through a field, an orchard, a narrow glen, shadowy with rocks and trees, down to the shore, where the sea runs in between the island and the mainland. The little coves of clear blue water, the boats moving in the sunlight, the long distant bridge on the left hand, and the main opening and spreading on the right, made up a delicious scene – the favourite haunt of Dr Channing’s family. To the more distant shore of the ocean itself he drove me in his gig, – even to Purgatory.[26] By the way, he showed me Berkeley’s house, of grey stone, rather sunk among trees, – built by the bishop in a rather unpromising spot, selected on account of the fine view of Newport, the downs, the beach, and the sea, which is obtained from the ridge of the hill over which he must pass on his way to and from the town. The only beauty which the scene lacked, when I saw it, was a brighter verdure. It was the end of summer, and the downs were not green. They were sprinkled over with dwellings and clumps of trees; rocks jutted out for the waves to break upon, the spray dashing to a great height; on the interval of smooth sand, the silver waves spread noiselessly abroad, and retired; while flocks of running snipes and a solitary seagull were the only living things visible. This interval of smooth beach is bounded inland by the pile of rocks which was Berkeley’s favourite resort, and where the conversations in the Minute Philosopher are supposed to have taken place. They are not a lofty, but a shelvy, shadowy pile, full of recesses, where the thinker may sit sheltered from the heat; and of platforms, where he may lie basking in the sun.

Purgatory is a deep and narrow fissure in the rock, where the sea flows in; – one of those fissures which, as Dr Channing told me, are a puzzle to geologists. The surfaces of the severed rocks are as smooth as marble, though the split has taken place through the middle of very large stones. These rocks are considered remarkable specimens of pudding-stone. After fearfully looking down into the dark floods of Purgatory, we wandered about long among the piles of rocks, the spray dashing all around us. Birds and spiders have thought fit to make their homes amidst all the noise and commotion of these recesses. Webs were trembling under the shelves above the breakers, and swallows’ nests hung in the crevices. These are the spots in which Dr Channing passed his boyhood; and here were the everlasting voices which revealed to him the unseen things for which he is living.

The one remarkable thing about him is his spirituality; and this is shown in a way which must strike the most careless observer, but of which he is himself unconscious. He is not generally unconscious: his manner, indeed, betokens a remarkable self-consciousness: but he is not aware of what is highest in himself, though painfully so of some other things. Every one who converses with him is struck with his natural, supreme regard to the true and the right; with the absence of all suspicion that any thing can stand in competition with these. In this there is an exemption from all professional narrowness, – from all priestly prejudice. He is not a man of the world: anxious as he is to inform himself of matters of fact, and of the present condition of affairs every where, he does not succeed well; and this deficiency, and a considerable amount of prejudice on philosophical subjects are the cause of his being extensively supposed to be more than ordinarily professional in his views, judgments, and conduct. But in this I do not agree; nor does any one, I believe, who knows him. No one sees more clearly than he the necessity of proving and exercising principles by hourly action in all kinds of worldly business. No one is more free from attachment to forms, or more practically convinced that rules and institutions are mere means to an end. He showed this, in one instance out of a thousand, by proposing to his congregation, some time ago, that they should not always depend on their pastors for the guidance of their worship, but that any members who had any thing to say should offer to do so. As might have been foreseen, every one shrank from being concerned in so new an administration of religion; but Dr Channing was disappointed that the effort was not made. No one, again, is more free from all pride of virtue. His charity towards frailty is as singular as his reprobation of spiritual vices is indignant. The genial side of his nature is turned to the weak; and the sorely tempted and the fallen best know the real softness and meekness of his character. He is a high example of the natural union of lofty spirituality with the tenderest sympathy with those who are the least able to attain it. If the fallen need the help of one into whose face they would look without fear, Dr Channing is that one, – even though he may be felt to be “repulsive” by those who have no particular claim upon his kindness: and as for spiritual pride, – when it has once passed his credulity, and got within the observation of his shrewdness, it had better be gone out of the reach of his rebuke.

It may be seen that I feel the prevalent fear of him to be ill-grounded. There is little gratification to one’s self-complacency to be expected in his presence. He never flatters, and he is more ready to blame than to praise: but his blame, like every other man’s, should go for what it is worth; should be welcome in as far as it is deserved, and should pass for nothing where it is not. But there is no assumption and no bitterness in his blame: it is merely the expression of an opinion; and it leaves no sting. All intercourse with him proceeds on the supposition that the parties are not caring about their petty selves, but about truth and good; and that all are equal while engaged in this pursuit. There is no room for mutual fear in such a case. He one day asked an intimate friend, a woman of great simplicity and honesty, some question about a sermon he had just delivered. She replied that she could not satisfy him, because she had not been able to attend to the sermon after the first sentence or two; and he was far better pleased with the answer than with the flatteries which are sometimes addressed to him about his preaching. This lady’s method is that in which Dr Channing’s intimate friends speak to him, and not as to a man who is to be feared.

I have mentioned prejudice on philosophical subjects to be a drawback on his liberality. This might have been the remark of a perfect stranger, as long as his celebrated note on Priestley remains unretracted in public, – whatever he may say about it in private. His attachment to the poetry of philosophy, – the mysticism prevalent among the divines of New England who study philosophy at all, – and his having taken no means to review his early decisions against the philosophers of another school, are the cause of a prejudice as to the grounds, and an illiberality as to the tendencies of any other mental philosophy than his own, the results of which are exhibited in that note. This is not the only instance in Dr Channing’s life, as in the lives of other cautious men, where undue caution has led to rashness. His reason for writing that note was a fear lest, the American Unitarians being already too cold, they should be made colder by philosophical sympathy with the Unitarians of England. This fear led to the rashness of concluding the English Unitarians to be generally disciples of Priestley: of attributing to Priestley’s philosophy the coldness of the English Unitarians: and of concluding Priestley to be the perfect exponent of the philosophy which the American divines of Dr Channing’s way of thinking declare to be opposed to spiritualism.

Disposed as Dr Channing is to an excess of caution both by constitution and by education, he appears to be continually outgrowing the tendency. He has shown what his moral courage is, by proofs which will long outlast his indications of slowness in admitting the full merits of the abolitionists. Here again, his caution led him into rashness, – into the rashness of giving his sanction to charges and prejudices against them, the grounds of which he had the means of investigating. This is all over now, however; and it was always a trifle in comparison with the great services he was at the same time rendering to a cause which the abolitionists cared for far more than for what the whole world, or any part of it, thought of their characters. He is now completely identified with them in the view of all who regard them as the vanguard in the field of human liberties.

When I left his door, at the close of my first visit to him, and heard him talked of by the passengers in the stage, I was startled by the circumstance into a speculation on the varieties of methods and degrees in which eminent authors are revealed to their fellow men. There is, to be sure, the old rule, “by their fruits ye shall know them:” but the whole harvest of fruits is in some cases so long in coming in, that the knowledge remains for the present very imperfect. As a general rule, earnest writers show their best selves in their books: in the series of calm thoughts which they record in the passionless though genial stillness of their retirement, whence the things of the world are seen to range themselves in their right proportions, in their justest aspect; and where the glow of piety and benevolence is not damped by, but rather consumes fears and cares which relate to self, and discouragement arising from the faults of others. In such cases, a close inspection of the life impairs, more or less, the impression produced by the writings. In other cases, there is a pretty exact agreement between the two modes of action, – by living and writing. This is a rarer case than the other; and it happens either when the principles of action are so thoroughly fixed and familiarised as to rule the whole being; or when the faults of the mind are so intimately connected with its powers as to be kept in action by the exercise of those powers in solitude, as they are by temptations in the world.

There is another case rarer still; when an earnest writer, gifted and popular, still falls below himself, conveying an impression of faults which he has not, or not in the degree in which they seem to appear. In such an instance, a casual acquaintance may leave the impression what it was, while a closer inspection cannot but be most grateful to the observer. In my opinion, this is Dr Channing’s case. His writings are powerful and popular, abroad and at home; and have caused him to be revered wherever they are known: but revered as an exalted personage, a clerical teacher, conscious of his high station, and endeavouring to do the duties of it. A slight acquaintance with him must alter this impression, without, perhaps, improving it. When he becomes a companion, the change is remarkable and exhilarating. He drops glorious thoughts as richly as in his pages, while humble and gentle feelings shine out, and eclipse the idea of teaching and preaching. The ear listens for his step and his voice, and the eye watches for the appearance of more of his writings, not as for a sermon or a lesson, but as a new hint of the direction which that intellect and those affections are taking which are primarily employed in watching over the rights and tendencies, and ameliorating the experience of those who occupy his daily regards.

Volume 3

Mutes and Blind

“Another noble response to the battle-cry of the Prince of Peace, summoning his hosts to the conquest of suffering and the rescue of humanity.”

Rationale of religious Inquiry

“Vicaria linguæ manus.”

“Protected, say enlightened, by the ear.”

Wordsworth

Some weeping philosophers of the present day are fond of complaining of the mercenary spirit of the age, and insist that men are valued (and treated accordingly) not as men, but as producers of wealth; that the age is so mechanical, that individuals who cannot act as parts of a machine for creating material comforts and luxuries, are cast aside to be out of the way of the rest. What do such complainers make of the lot of the helpless in these days? How do they contrive to overlook or evade the fact that misery is recognized as a claim to protection and solace, not only in individual cases, which strike upon the sympathies of a single mind, but by wholesale, – unfortunates as a class being cared for on the ground of their misfortunes? Are deformed and deficient children now cast out into the wastes to perish? Is any one found in this age who is of Aristotle’s opinion, that the deaf and dumb must remain wholly brutish? Does any one approve the clause of the code of Justinian by which deaf mutes are deprived of their civil rights? Will any one now agree with Condillac that the deaf and dumb have no memory, and consequently are without reasoning power? If every one living is wiser than to believe these things, he owes his wisdom to the benevolent investigation which has been made into the condition of these isolated and helpless beings; an investigation purely benevolent, as it proceeded on the supposition that they were irremediably deficient. The testimony of their best benefactors goes to prove this. The Abbé de l’Epée, Sicard, Guyot of Groningen, Eschke of Berlin, Cæsar of Leipzig, all began their labours in behalf of the deaf and dumb with the lowest notion of the capabilities of the objects of their care, and the humblest expectations as to what could be done for them. Sicard acknowledged a change of views when his experience had become enlarged. He says, “It will be observed that I have somewhat exaggerated the sad condition of the deaf and dumb in their primitive state, when I assert that virtue and vice are to them without reality. I was conducted to these assertions by the fact that I had not yet possessed the means of interrogating them upon the ideas which they had before their education; or that they were not sufficiently instructed to understand and reply to my questions.”[27] It should be remembered, to Sicard’s honour, and that of other benefactors of the deaf and dumb, that their labours were undertaken more in pity than in hope, in benevolence which did not look for, though it found reward. None were more astonished than they at the revelation which took place of the minds of the dumb, when the power of expression was given them; when, for instance, one of them, Peter Desloges, declared, with regard to his deaf and dumb acquaintance, “There passes no event at Paris, in France, or in the four quarters of the globe, which does not afford matter of ordinary conversation among them.” The deaf and dumb are prone to hyperbolical expression; of which the above sentence may be taken as an instance; but it is founded in fact.

The benevolence which undertook the care of this class of unfortunates, when their condition was esteemed hopeless, has, in many cases, through a very natural delight at its own success, passed over into a new and opposite error, particularly in America, where the popular philosophy of mind comes in aid of the delusion. From fearing that the deaf and dumb had hardly any capacities, too many of their friends have come to believe them a sort of sacred, favoured class, gifted with a keener apprehension, a more subtle reason, and a purer spirituality than others, and shut out from little but what would defile and harden their minds. Such a belief may not be expressed in propositions, or allowed on a full statement; but much of the conversation on the condition of the class proceeds on such an idea; and, in my own opinion, the education of deaf mutes is and will be materially impaired by it. Not only does it give rise to mistakes in their treatment, but there is reason to fear bad effects from the disappointment which must sooner or later be occasioned. If this disappointment should act as a damper upon the exertions made in behalf of the deaf and dumb, it will be sad: for only a very small number are yet educated at all, in any country: and they are far more numerous than is generally supposed. In 1830 the total number of deaf and dumb, of all ages, in the United States, was 6106. Of a teachable age the number was 2000; of whom 466 were in course of education. The number of deaf mutes in Europe at the same time was 140,000. It is of great importance that the case of so large a class of society should be completely understood, and rescued from one extreme of exaggeration, as it has been from the other.

When at New York, I paid a visit one morning, in company with a clergyman, to the mother of a young lady who was deaf and dumb; and for whose education whatever advantages were obtainable by money and pains had been procured. My clerical friend shared, I believe, the popular notions about the privileged condition of the class the young lady belonged to. Occasion arose for my protesting against these notions, and declaring what I had reason to think the utmost that could be done for deaf mutes, in the present state of our knowledge. The clergyman looked amazed at my speaking thus in the presence of the mother; but I knew that experience had taught her to agree with me; and that her tenderness made her desire that her daughter’s situation should be fully understood, that she might receive due allowance and assistance from those who surrounded her. The mother laid her hand on mine, and thanked me for pleading the cause of the depressed against those who expected too much from them. She said that, after all that could be done, the knowledge of deaf mutes was generally confined and superficial; their tastes frivolous; their tempers wilful and hasty; their whole mental state puerile: and she added that, as long as all this was not allowed, they would be placed in positions to which they were unequal, and which they did not understand, and would not be so amply provided as they might be with enjoyments suited to their condition.

This is not the place in which to enter upon the interesting inquiry into the principles of the education of the deaf and dumb; a deep and wide subject, involving matters important to multitudes besides the class under notice. Degerando observed that the art of instructing deaf mutes, if traced back to its principles, terminates in the sciences of psychology and general grammar. A very superficial view of the case of the class shows something of what the privation really is, and consequently, furnishes hints as to the treatment by which it may be in part supplied. Many kind-hearted people in America, and not a few in Europe, cry out, “They are only deprived of one sense and one means of expression. They have the infinite human spirit within them, active and irrepressible, with infinite objects in its view. They lose the pleasures of the ear; they lose one great opportunity of spiritual action, both on the world of matter, and on human minds: but this is compensated for by the activity of the soul in other regions of thought and emotion; and their contemplation of their own objects is undisturbed, in comparison with what it would be if they were subject to the vulgar associations with which we have to contend.”

It is true that the deaf from birth are deficient in one sense only, while they are possessed of four: but the one in which they are deficient is beyond all estimate the most valuable in the formation of mind. The eye conveys, perhaps, more immediate and vivid pleasures of sense, and is more requisite to external and independent activity; so that, in the case of the loss of a sense after the period of education, the privation of sight is a severer misfortune, generally speaking, than the loss of hearing. But, in the case of deficiency from birth, the deaf are far more unfortunate than the blind, from the important power of abstraction being in them very feeble in its exercise, and sadly restricted in the material on which it has to work. The primary abstractions of the blind from birth will be less perfect than those of other children, the great class of elements from visual objects being deficient: but when they come to the second and more important class of abstractions, – when from general qualities of material objects they pass on to the ideas compounded from these, their disadvantages disappear at each remove; till, when intellectual and moral subjects open before them, they may be considered almost on equal terms with the generality of mankind. These intellectual and moral ideas, formed gradually out of lower abstractions, are continually corrected, modified, and enlarged by intercourse with the common run of minds, alternating with self-communion. This intercourse is peculiarly prized by the blind, from their being precluded from solitary employments and amusements; and the same preclusion impels them to an unusual degree of self-communion; so that the blind from birth are found to be, when well educated, disposed to be abstract in their modes of thought, literal in their methods of expression, and earnest and industrious in the pursuit of their objects. Their deficiencies are in general activity, in cheerfulness, and in individual attachments.

The case of the deaf from birth is as precisely opposite as can be imagined, and much less favourable. They labour under an equal privation of elementary experience; and, in addition, under an almost total absence of the means of forming correct abstractions of the most important kinds. Children in general learn far less of the most essential things by express teaching than by what comes to them in the course of daily life. Their wrong ideas are corrected, their partial abstractions are rectified and enriched by the incessant unconscious action of other minds upon theirs. Of this kind of discipline, the deaf mute is deprived; and the privation seems to be fatal to a healthy intellectual and moral growth. He is taught expressly what he knows of intellectual and moral affairs: of memory, imagination, science, and sagacity: of justice, fortitude, emotion, and conscience. And this through imperfect means of expression. Children in general learn these things unconsciously, better than they learn anything by the most complete express teaching. So that we find that the deaf mute is ready at defining what he little understands; while the ordinary child feelingly understands what he cannot define. This power of definition comes of express teaching, but by no means implies full understanding. Its ample use by the deaf and dumb has led to much of the error which exists respecting their degree of enlightenment. They are naturally imitative, from everything being conveyed to them by action passing before the eye: and those who observe them can scarcely avoid the deception of concluding that the imitative action, when spontaneous, arises from the same state of mind which prompted the original action. It is surprising how long this delusion may continue. The most watchful person may live in the same house with a deaf mute for weeks and months, conversing on a plain subject from time to time, with every conviction of understanding and being understood, and find at length a blank ignorance, or an astounding amount of mistake existing in the mind of his dumb companion, while the language had been fluent and correct, and every appearance of doubt and hesitation excluded. There need be no conceit and no hypocrisy, all this time, in the mind of the deaf mute. He believes himself in the same state of mind with those who say the same thing: and has no comprehension that that which is to him literal is to them a symbol. While nothing can be easier than to conduct the religious education of the blind, – since all the attributes of Deity are exercised towards them, in inferior degrees, by human invisible beings, it is difficult to ascertain what is gained by deaf mutes under a process of instruction in religion. No instance has been known, I understand, of a deaf mute having an idea of God prior to instruction. For a long time, at least, the conception is low, – the idea pictorial; and if it ceases to be so, the teacher cannot confidently pronounce upon it; the common language of religion being as easily accommodated by superficial minds to their own conceptions, as adopted by minds which mean by it something far higher and deeper. A pupil at Paris, who was considered to have been effectually instructed in the first principles of religion, was discovered, after a lapse of years, to have understood that God was a venerable old man, living in the clouds; that the Holy Spirit was a dove surrounded with light; and that the devil was a monster, dwelling in a deep place. Life, with its truths conveyed under appearances, is to them what German and other allegorical stories are to little children. They perceive and talk glibly about the pictorial part, innocently supposing it the whole; while they are as innocently supposed, by unpracticed observers, to perceive the philosophical truth convoyed in the picture.

It is often said that, if the blind have the advantage of communication with other minds by conversation, the deaf have it by books. This is true; but, alas! to books must be brought the power of understanding them. The grand disadvantage of the deaf is sustained antecedently to the use of books; and though they gain much knowledge of facts, and other advantages, by reading, books have no power to remedy the original faulty generalization by which the minds of deaf mutes are kept narrow and superficial. If a remedy be ever found, it seems as if it must be by rendering their intercourse by the finger alphabet and writing much more early than it is, and as nearly as possible general. If it could be general, and take place as early as speech usually does, they would still be deprived, not only of all inarticulate sounds, and the instruction which they bring, but of the immense amount of teaching which comes through the niceties of spoken language, and of all that is obtained by hearing conversation between others: but still, the change from almost total exclusion, or from intercourse with no minds but those suffering under the same privation, and those of three or four teachers, to communion with a variety of the common run of persons, would be so beneficial that it is scarcely possible to anticipate its results. But the finger alphabet is not yet practised, or likely to be practised, beyond the sufferers themselves and their teachers and families: and before a deaf and dumb child can be taught reading and writing the mischief to his mind is done.

As for the general intellectual and moral characteristics of deaf mutes, they are precisely what good reasoners would anticipate. The wisest of the class have some originality of thought; and most have much originality of combination. They are active, ingenious, ardent, impressible, and strongly affectionate towards individuals; but they are superficial, capricious, passionate, selfish, and vain. They are like a coterie of children, somewhat spoiled by self-importance, and prejudiced and jealous with regard to the world in whose intercourses they do not share. So far from their feeling ashamed of their singularity, generally speaking, they look down upon people who are not of their coterie. It is well known that deaf and dumb parents sometimes show sorrow that their children can hear and speak, – not so much from a selfish fear of alienation, as from an idea that they themselves are somehow a privileged class. The delight of mutes in a school is to establish a sign-language which their teachers cannot understand; and they keep up a strong esprit de corps. This is maintained among other means, by a copious indulgence in ridicule. Their very designations of individuals are derived from personal peculiarities, the remembrance of which is never lost. If any visitor folds his arms, sneezes, wears a wig, has lost a tooth, or, as in the case of Spurzheim, puts, his hand up for a moment to shade his eyes from the sun, the mark becomes his designation for ever.

Much has been said and written about whether people always think in words. Travellers in a foreign country are surprised to find how soon and constantly they detect themselves thinking in the language of that country. Degerando took pains to ascertain how deaf mutes think. The uninstructed can, of course, know nothing of words. It seems that their thoughts are few, and that they consist of the images of visual objects passing merely in the order of memory, – i.e., in the order in which they are presented. As soon as the pupils become acquainted with language, and with manual signs of abstract ideas, they use these signs as we do words. Degerando clearly ascertained that they use gesticulation in their private meditations; a remarkable fact.

The first efforts towards erecting an institution for the education of the deaf and dumb in America, were made in 1815, at Hartford, Connecticut. This institution, called the American Asylum, from its having been aided by the General Government, has always enjoyed a high reputation. I lament that I was prevented seeing it, by being kept from Hartford by bad weather. The Pennsylvania Institution followed in 1821; and the New York Asylum, opened in 1818, began to answer the hopes of its founders only in 1830. These two I visited. There are two or three smaller schools in different parts of the Union, and there must yet be many more before the benevolent solicitude of society will be satisfied.

The number of deaf mutes in Pennsylvania was, at the period of the last census, seven hundred and thirty; six hundred and ninety-four being whites, and thirty-six persons of colour. As usual, it is discovered on inquiry, that in a large majority of cases the hearing was lost in childhood, and not deficient from birth; so that it is to the medical profession that we must look for a diminution of this class of unfortunates. The number of pupils in the Institution, in 1833, was seventy-four; thirty-seven of each sex; and of deaf mute assistants six. The buildings, gardens, and arrangements are admirable, and the pupils look lively and healthy.

They went through some of their school exercises in the ordinary manner, for our benefit. Many of them were unintelligible to us, of course; but when they turned to their large slates, we could understand what they were about. A teacher told a class of them, by signs, a story of a Chinese who had fish in his pond, and who summoned the fish by ringing a bell, and then fed them by scattering rice. All told it differently, as regarded the minor particulars; and it was evident that they did not understand the connexion of the bell with the story. One wrote that the fishes came at the trembling of the bell: but the main circumstances were otherwise correct. They all understood that the fishes got the rice. When they were called upon to write what smooth meant, and to describe what things were smooth, they instanced marble, the sky, the ocean, and eloquence. This was not satisfactory: the generalization was imperfect, and the word eloquence meaningless to them. Nor did they succeed much better in introducing certain phrases, such as “on account of,” “at the head of,” into sentences; but one showed that he knew that the President was at the head of the United States. Then the word “glorious” was given, and their bits of chalk began to work with great rapidity. One youth thought that a woman governing the United States would be glorious: and others declared Lord Brougham to be glorious. The word “cow” was given; and out of a great number of exercises, there was not one which mentioned milk. Milk seemed almost the only idea which a cow did not call up. The ideas appeared so arbitrarily connected as to put all our associations at fault. One exercise was very copious. The writer imagined a cow amidst woods and a river, and a barn, whence the thought, by some imperceptible link, fastened upon Queen Elizabeth’s dress, which was glorious, as was her wisdom; and this, of course, brought in Lord Brougham again. He is the favourite hero of this institution. Prior to our visit, a youth of sixteen, who had been under instruction less than four years, was desired to prepare a composition, when he presented the following

Fable

Lord Chancellor Brougham remains in the city of London. He is the most honourable man in England, for his mind is very strong, excellent, and sharp. I am aware that I am beneath Brougham in great wisdom and influence. It afforded me great pleasure to receive a letter from Brougham, and I read in it that he wanted me to pay a visit to him, with astonishment. Soon after, I came to the conclusion that I would go to London and visit Brougham. I prepared all my neat clothes and some other things in my large trunk. After my preparation, I shook hands with all my relations and friends living in the town of C., and they looked much distressed, for they thought that I would be shipwrecked and eaten by a large and strong fish. But I said to them, I hope that I should reach London safely, and that I should return to the United States safely. They said yes, with great willingness, and they told me that I must go and see them again whenever I should return from London to the United States. I sailed in a large ship and saw many passengers, with whom I talked with much pleasure that I might get much advantage of improvement. I slept in the comfortable cabin, and it was agreeable to me to stay in it. I saw the waves very white, with great wonder, and I was astonished at the great noise of the storm, which was so gloomy that I could not endure the tempest of it. I perceived the country of England and I hoped I would reach there in great safety. Many passengers were much pleased to arrive at the country. I met Brougham unexpectedly in the street, and he went with me to his beautiful house, and I talked with him for a long time. He asked me to tarry with him several months, because he wished to converse with me about the affairs of the Institution and the pupils and teachers. He said that he loved all the pupils because he pitied them who were deaf and dumb, so that he wished that all of the pupils could go to his house and be at the large feast. I walked with Brougham through the different streets of London, and I saw many interesting curiosities and excellent houses. I had the pleasure of seeing William IV, in the palace by the favour of Brougham, and he was delighted to talk with me for a long time. At length Brougham parted with me with great regret. I reached the United States and I found myself very healthy. I went to my relations and friends again, and they were much pleased to talk with me about my adventures, the matter of London, and the character of Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham. I was struck with vast wonder at the city of London. I have made my composition of the fable of Brougham.

A pretty little girl told the pupils a humorous story by signs; and her action was so eloquent that, with little help from the teacher, we were able to make it all out. It was a story of a sailor and his bargain of caps; and the child showed a knowledge of what goes on on board a ship which we should scarcely have expected from her. Her imitation of heaving the lead, of climbing the rigging, and of exchanging jokes upon deck, was capital. It was an interesting things to see the eyes of all her companions fixed on her, and the bursts of laughter with which they greeted the points of the story.

The apparatus room is full of pretty things; and the diversity of the appeals to the eye is wonderful. A paper sail is enclosed in the receiver, from which the air is exhausted in the view of the pupils. As they cannot hear the air rushing back, the fluttering of this paper sail is made use of to convey the fact to them. The natural sciences afford a fine field of study for them, as far as they occasion the recognition of particular facts. The present limited power of generalization of the learners, of course, prevents their climbing to the heights of any science; but an immense range of facts is laid open to them by studies of this nature, in which they usually show a strong interest. The Philadelphia pupils are lectured to by a deaf and dumb teacher, who passes a happy life in the apparatus room. He showed us several mechanical contrivances of his own; among the rest, a beautiful little locomotive engine, which ran on a tiny railroad, round two large rooms. The maker testified infinite glee at the wonder and interest of a child who was with us, who raced after the engine, round and round the rooms, with a grave countenance, for as long as we could stay.

In the girls’ workroom there were rows of knitters, straw-plaiters, and needlewomen. The ingenuity they put into their work is great. The nicety of the plaiting of dolls’ straw bonnets cannot be surpassed; and I am in possession of a pair of worsted gloves, double knitted, of the size of my thumb-nail, of which every finger is perfect in its proportions. Perhaps this may be the class of American society destined to carry on the ingenuity of handiworks to perfection, as the Shakers seem to be appointed to show how far neatness can go. One little girl, who was knitting in the workroom, is distinguished from the rest by being able to speak. So the poor little thing understands the case. She can speak two words, “George” and “brother,” having become deaf when she had learned this much of language. She likes being asked to speak, and gives the two words in a plaintive tone, much like the inarticulate cry of a young animal.

I visited the New York Institution in company with several ladies, two of whom were deaf and dumb, and had been pupils in the school. One of these had married a teacher, and had been left a widow, with three children, the year before. She was a most vivacious personage, and evidently a favourite among the pupils. The asylum is a large building, standing on high ground, and with great advantages of space about it. It contains 140 out of the 1066 deaf mutes existing in the State of New York. The pupils are received up to the age of 25 years; and there was one of 27 from North Carolina, who was making great progress. The girls’ dormitory, containing 80 beds, was light, airy, and beautifully neat; the small philosophical apparatus, museum, and library, were in fine order, and a general air of cheerfulness pervaded the Institution.

I had frequent doubts whether nearly all the pupils in these asylums were perfectly deaf: on this occasion, I caused my trumpet to be tried on several, and found that some could hear, and some imitate the sounds conveyed through it. The teachers rather discouraged the trial, and put away all suggestions about the use of these means of getting at the minds of their pupils. They were quite sure that the manual methods of teaching were the only ones by which their charge can profit. It is natural that, wedded as they are to the methods which to a certain extent succeed in the asylum, they should not like any interference with these: but surely the guardians of these institutions should see that, while so few out of the large number of deaf mutes can be provided with education, those few should be of a class to whom no other means are open. The totally deaf should be first served, in all reason and humanity. And those who have any hearing at all should have the full advantage of the remains of the sense. The most meagre instruction by oral language is worth far more than the fullest that can be given by signs and the finger alphabet. In their case, the two should be united, where it is possible; but especially the ear should be made use of as long as there are any instruments by which it may be reached. My own belief is that there are, in these institutions and out of them, many who have been condemned to the condition of mutes who have hearing enough to furnish them with speech, imperfect to the listener, perhaps, but inestimable as an instrument of communication, and of accuracy and enlargement of thought. I would strongly urge upon the benevolent under whose notice the cases of deaf young children may come, that they should try experiments with every ear trumpet that has been invented, before they conclude that the children are perfectly deaf, and must therefore be dumb.

I may mention here that I some time ago discovered, by the merest accident, that I could perfectly hear the softest notes of a musical snuffbox by putting it on my head. The effect was tremendous, – at first intolerably delicious. It immediately struck me that this might be a resource in the case of deaf mutes. If the deafness of any was of a kind which would admit of the establishment of means of hearing anything, there was no saying how far the discovery might be improved. The causes and kinds of deafness vary almost as the subjects; and there might be no few who could hear as I did, and with whom some kind of audible communication might be established. I wrote to New York, and begged two of my friends to go out to the asylum with musical boxes, and try the effect. Their report was that they believed none of the pupils could hear at all by this method. But I am not yet fully satisfied. So few of them have the slightest idea of what hearing is, they show that their notion is so wide of the mark, and they are so inexpert at giving an account of their feelings, that I have not given up the matter yet. At any rate, no harm can be done by offering the suggestion to any who may be disposed to take it up.

We went to the New York asylum without notice, and walked immediately into one of the classrooms, where the pupils were at a historical lesson, each standing before a slate as tall as himself. In a minute, while the five ladies of our party were taking their seats, an arch-looking lad wrote down in the middle of his lesson about Richard I, and John, that I was there, describing me as the one next the lady in green, and giving a short account of me, for the edification of his companions. It was almost instantly rubbed out, before it was supposed we had seen it. We could not make out by what means he knew me.

The lessons here were no more satisfactory than elsewhere, as to any enlargement or accuracy of thought in the pupils. I doubt whether the means of reaching their wants have yet been discovered; for nothing can exceed the diligence and zeal with which the means in use are applied. Their repetition of what they had been taught was so far superior to what they could bring out of their own minds, as to convince us that the reproduction was little more than an act of memory. They told us the history of Richard I, and John with tolerable accuracy; but they gave us the strangest accounts of the seasons of the year that ever were seen. A just idea occurred, however, here and there. A boy mentioned swimming as a seasonable pleasure; and others fruits: and one girl instanced “convenience of studying” as an advantage of cool weather. In geography, but little if any progress had been made; and the arithmetic was not much more promising. Every thing that can be done, is zealously done, but that all is very little. The teachers declare that the greatest difficulty is with the tempers of their pupils. They are suspicious and jealous; and when they once get a wrong idea, and go into a passion upon it, there is no removing it: no possibility of explanation remains. They are strongly affectionate, however, towards individuals; and, as we could bear witness, very sudden in their attachments. We doubtless owed much to having two deaf and dumb ladies in our party: but, when we went away, they crowded round us to shake hands again and again, and waved their hats and kissed their hands from the windows and doors, as long as we remained in sight.

Among the exercises in composition which are selected for the annual Report of this institution, there is one which is no mere recollection of something read or told, but an actual account of a piece of personal experience; and so far superior to what one usually sees from the pens of deaf mutes that I am tempted to give a portion of it. It is an account, by a lad of fifteen, of a journey to Niagara Falls.

And soon we went into the steamboat. The steamboat stayed on the shore for a long time. Soon the boat left it and sailed away over the Lake Ontario. We were happy to view the Lake, and we stayed in the boat all night. The next morning we arrived at Lewiston, and after breakfast we entered one of the stages for Niagara Falls. About 12 o’clock we arrived at Niagara Falls and entered Mr B.’s uncle’s house. I was soon introduced to Mr B.’s uncle, aunt and cousins, by himself. After dinner, we left the house of his uncle for the purpose of visiting the Falls, which belong to his uncles, Judge and General Porter, and we crossed the Rapids; but we stopped at a part of the bridge and viewed the Rapids with a feeling of interest and curiosity. The Rapids appeared to us beautiful and violent and quarrelsome. Soon we left it, and went to one of the islands to see the Falls. When we arrived in a portion situated near the Falls, we felt admiration and interest, and went near the river and saw the Falls. We felt much wonder. The Falls seemed to us angry and beautiful. We stayed in the part near the Falls for a long time, and felt amazement. We went into the staircase and descended, and we were very tired of descending in it, and we went to the rock to view the Falls. The Falls’ are about 160 feet in height. We saw the beautiful rainbow of red, green, blue, and yellow colours. One day we went to the river and crossed it by means of a ferry boat, and left it. We went to the Canada side, and arrived at Table Rock. Mr B. dressed himself in some old coarse clothes, and then he descended and went under the sheet of the Falls. I felt earnest and anxious to go into it. In a few minutes he returned to me, and soon we went back to the river and crossed the river, and came home, and soon sat down and dined. We went to the island and found some plant whose name I did not know. I had never seen it. When we were on the United States side, we could see Canada. One day we again went to the ferry to cross the river, and went to Table Rock. We dressed ourselves in some old clothes, and entered under the Falls with curiosity and wonder. We stayed at Niagara Falls a week. I wonder how the water of the Niagara River never is exhausted.

That so much power of expression as this can be attained is, to those who reflect what grammar is, and what a variety of operations is required in putting it to use at all, a great encouragement to persevere in investigating the minds of the deaf and dumb, and in teaching them, in the hope that means may at length be found of so enlarging their intercourses at an early age as to create more to be expressed, as well as to improve the mode of expression. Those who may aid in such a conquest over difficulty will be great benefactors to mankind. Greater still will be the physicians who shall succeed in guarding the organ of hearing from early accident and decay. It should not be forgotten by physicians or parents that, in the great majority of cases, the infirmity of deaf mutes is not from birth.

The education of the blind is a far more cheering subject than that of the deaf and dumb. The experiments which have been made in regard to it are so splendid, and their success so complete, that it almost seems as if little improvement remained to be achieved. It appears doubtful whether the education of the blind has ever been carried on so far as at present in the United States; and there is one set of particulars, at least, in which we should do well to learn from the new country.

I am grieved to find in England, among some who ought to inform themselves fully on the subject, a strong prejudice against the discovery by which the blind are enabled to read, for their own instruction and amusement. The method of printing for the blind, with raised and sharp types, on paper thicker and more wetted than in the ordinary process of printing, is put to full and successful use at the fine institution at Boston. Having seen the printing and the books, heard the public readings, and watched the private studies of the blind, all the objections brought to the plan by those who have not witnessed its operation appear to me more trifling than I can express.

The pupils do the greater part of the printing, – the laying on the sheets, working off the impressions, &c. By means of recent improvements, the bulk of the Books, (one great objection) has been diminished two-thirds: the type remaining so palpable that new pupils learn to read with ease in a few weeks. Of course, the expense is lessened with the bulk; and a further reduction may be looked for as improvement advances, and the demand increases. Even now the expense is not great enough to be an objection in the way of materially aiding so small a class as the blind.

I have in my possession the alphabet, the Lord’s prayer, some hymns, and n volume on grammar, printed for the use of the blind: and six sets of all that has been printed at the Boston press, with the exception of the Testament, are on the way to me.[28] It is my wish to disperse this precious literature where it may have the fairest trial; and I shall be happy to receive any aid in the distribution which the active friends of the blind may be disposed to afford.

The common letters are used; and not any abbreviated language. I think this is wise; for thus the large class of persons who become blind after having been able to read are suited at once; and it seems desirable to make as little difference as possible in the instrument of communication used by the blind and the seeing. It appears probable that, before any very long time, all valuable literature may be put into the hands of the blind; and the preparation will take place with much more case if the common alphabet be used, than if works have to be translated into a set of arbitrary signs. It is easy for a blind person, previously able to read, to learn the use of the raised printing. Even adults, whose fingers’ ends are none of the most promising, soon achieve the accomplishment. An experiment has been made, on a poor washerwoman, with the specimens I brought over. She had lost her sight eight years; but she now reads, and is daily looking for a new supply of literature from Boston, which a kind friend has ordered for her.

It will scarcely be believed that the objection to this exercise which is most strongly insisted on, is that it is far better for the blind to be read to than that they should read, to themselves. It seems to me that this might just as well be said about persons who see; that it would save time for one member only of a family to read, while the others might thus be saved the trouble of learning their letters. Let the blind be read to as much as any benevolent person pleases: but why should they not also be allowed the privilege of private study? Private reading is of far more value and interest to them than to persons who have more diversified occupations in their power. None could start this objection who had seen, as I have, the blind at their private studies. Instead of poring over a book held in the hand, as others do, they lay their volume on the desk before them, lightly touch the lines with one finger of the right hand, followed by one finger of the left, and, with face upturned to the ceiling, show in their varying countenances the emotions stirred up by what they are reading. A frequent passing smile, an occasional laugh, or an animated expression of grave interest passes over the face, while the touch is exploring the meaning which it was till lately thought could enter only through the eye or the ear. They may be seen going back to the beginning of a passage which interests them, reading it three or four times over, dwelling upon it as we do upon the beauties of our favourite authors, and thus deriving a benefit which cannot be communicated by public reading.

One simple question seems to set this matter in its true light. If we were to become blind tomorrow, should we prefer depending on being read to, or having, in addition to this privilege, a library which we could read for ourselves?

As to the speed with which the blind become able to read, those whom I heard read aloud about as fast as the better sort of readers in a Lancastrian school; with, perhaps, the interval of a second between the longer words, and perfect readiness about the commonest little words.

Alphabetical printing is far from being the only use the Boston press is put to. The arithmetical, geometrical, and musical signs are as easily prepared: and there is an atlas which far surpasses any illustrations of geography previously devised. The maps made in Europe are very expensive, and exceedingly troublesome to prepare; the boundaries of sea and land being represented by strings glued on to the lines of a common map, pasted on a board. The American maps are embossed; the land being raised, and the water depressed; one species of raised mark being used for mountains, another for towns, another for boundaries; the degrees being marked by figures in the margin, and the most important names in the same print with their books. These maps are really elegant in appearance, and seem to serve all purposes.

“Do you think,” said I, to a little boy in the Blind School at Philadelphia, “that you could show me on this large map where I have been travelling in the United States?”

“I could, if you’d tell me where you have been,” replied he.

“Well, I will tell you my whole journey; and you shall show my friends here where I have been.”

The little fellow did not make a single mistake. Up rivers, over mountains, across boundaries, round cataracts, along lakes, straight up to towns wont his delicate finger, as unerringly as our eyes. This is a triumph. It brings out the love of the blind pupils for geography; and with this, the proof that there are classes of ideas which we are ignorant or heedless of, and which yield a benefit and enjoyment which we can little understand, to those to whom they serve instead of visual ideas. What is our notion of a map, and of the study of geography, putting visual ideas out of the question? The inquiry reminds one of Saunderson’s reply, from his deathbed, to the conversation of a clergyman, who was plying the blind philosopher with the common arguments in Natural Theology: “You would fain have me allow the force of your arguments, drawn from the wonders of the visible creation; but may it not be, that they only seem to you wonderful? for you and other men have always been wondering how I could accomplish many things which seem to me perfectly simple.”

The best friends and most experienced teachers of the blind lay down, as their first principle in the education of their charge, that the blind are to be treated in all possible respects like other people; and these respects are far more numerous than the inexperienced would suppose. One of the hardest circumstances in the lot of a blind child is that his spirits are needlessly depressed, and his habits made needlessly dependent. Form his birth, or from the period of his loss of sight, he never finds himself addressed in the everyday human voice. He hears words of pity from strangers, uttered in tones of hesitating compassion; and there is a something in the voices of his parents when they speak to him, which is different from their tone towards their other children. Everything is done for him. He is dressed, he is fed, he is guided. If he attempts to walk alone, some one removes every impediment which lies in his way. A worse evil than even helplessness arises out of this method of treatment. The spirits and temper are injured. The child is depressed when some one is not amusing him, and sinks into apathy when left to himself. If there is the slightest intermission or abatement of tenderness in the tone in which he is addressed, he is hurt. If he thinks himself neglected for a moment, he broods over the fancied injury, and in his darkness and silence nourishes bad passions. The experienced students of the case of the blind hint at worse consequences still, arising from this pernicious indulgence of the blind at home. Unless the mind be fully and independently exercised, and unless the blind be drawn off from the contemplation of himself as an isolated and unfortunate, if not injured being, the animal nature becomes too strong for control, and some species of sensual vice finishes the destruction which ill-judged indulgence began.

In the New England Institution at Boston, the pupils are treated, from the time of their entrance, like human beings who come to be educated. All there are on an equality, except a very few of the people about the house. The teachers are blind, and so all have to live on together on the same terms. It is a community of persons with four senses. It is here seen at once how inexpressibly absurd it is to be spending time and wasting energy in bemoaning the absence of a fifth power, while there are four existing to be made use of. The universe is around them to be studied, and life is before them to be conquered; and here they may be set vigorously on their way. At first, the pupils bitterly feel the want of the caressing and pampering they have been used to at home. Some few, who have come in too late, are found to have been irretrievably incapacitated by it: but almost all revive in a surprisingly short time, and experience so much enjoyment from their newly-acquired independence, their sense of safety, their power of occupation, the cessation of all pity and repining, and the novel feeling of equality with those about them, that they declare themselves to have entered upon a new life. Many drop expressions resembling that of one of the pupils, who declared that she never thought before that it was a happy thing to live.

Their zeal about their occupations appears remarkable to those who do not reflect that holiday is no pleasure to the blind, and idleness a real punishment, as it is the one thing of which they have had too much all their lives. They are eager to be busy from morning till night: and the care of their teachers is to change their employments frequently, as there is but little suspension of work. They have a playground, with swings and other means of exercise; but one of the greatest difficulties in the management is to cause these to be made a proper use of. The blind are commonly indisposed to exercise; and in the New England Institution, little is done in this way, though the pupils are shut out into the open air once, and even twice a day in summer; the house doors actually closed against them. They sit down in groups and talk, or bask in some sunny corner of the grounds, hurrying back at the first signal to their books, their music, their mat and basket making, sewing, and travels on the map.

Another great difficulty is to teach them a good carriage and manners. Blind children usually fall into a set of disagreeable habits while other children are learning to look about them. They wag their heads, roll their eyes, twitch their elbows, and keep their bodies in a perpetual see-saw, as often as they are left to themselves; and it is surprising how much time and vigilance are required to make them sit, stand, and walk like other people. As all directions to this purpose must appear to them purely arbitrary, their faith in their instructors has to be drawn upon to secure their obedience, in these particulars; and the work to be done is to break the habits of a life; so that it really seems easier to them to learn a science or a language than to hold up their heads and sit still on their chairs. The manners of the blind usually show a great bashfulness on the surface of a prodigious vanity. This is chiefly the fault of the seeing with whom they have intercourse. If their compassionate visitors would suppress all tears and sighs, make an effort to forget all about the sense that is absent, and treat them, on the ground of the other four, as they would treat all other pupils in any other school, the demeanour of the blind would nearly cease to be peculiar. Their manners are rectified easily enough by the only method which can ever avail for the cure of bad manners: by cultivating their kindly feelings and their self-respect, and by accustoming them to good society.

The studies at the institution at Boston are appointed according to the principles laid down in the valuable Report of the gentleman, Dr Howe, who studied the case of the blind in Europe, and who is now at the head of the establishment under our notice. Among other principles is this, “that the blind can attain as much excellence in mathematical, geographical, astronomical, and other sciences, as many seeing persons, and that he can become as good a teacher of music, language, mathematics, and other sciences: all this and yet more can he do.” The ambition, from the very beginning of the enterprise, was far higher than that of rescuing a few hundreds of blind persons from pauperism and dependent habits: it was proposed to try how noble a company of beings the blind might be made; and thus to do justice to the individuals under treatment, and to lift up the whole class of the sightless out of a state of depression into one of high honour, activity, and cheerfulness. The story, besides being a pleasant one, is a fair illustration of American charity, in its principles and in its methods: and I will therefore give it in brief. I do not believe there exists, in American literature, any work breathing a more exhilarating spirit of hopefulness, a finer tone of meek triumph, than the Reports of the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind.

It appears to be only about five-and-forty years since the education of the blind was first undertaken: and it is much more recently that any just idea has been formed by any body of the actual number of the blind. Even now few are aware how numerous they are. The born-blind are far fewer than those who lose their sight in infancy. Taken together, the numbers are now declared to be, in Egypt, one blind to every three hundred: in Middle Europe, one to every eight hundred: in North Europe, one in a thousand. In the United States, the number of blind is supposed to be eight thousand at the very least.

The announcement of this fact caused a great sensation in New England. The good folks there who had been accustomed to bestow their kindness each on some sightless old man or woman, or some petted blind child in his own village, had not thought of comparing notes, to ascertain how many such cases there were; and were quite unaware of the numbers who in towns sit wearing their cheerless lives away by their relations’ firesides: no immediate stimulus of want sending them forth into the notice of the rich and the philanthropic.

The first step was the passing of an act by the legislature of Massachusetts, incorporating trustees of the New England Asylum for the Blind. These trustees sent Dr Howe to Europe, to study the similar institutions there, and bring back the necessary teachers and apparatus. Dr Howe’s Report on his return is extremely interesting. He brought over a blind teacher from Paris, who, besides being skilled in the art of communicating knowledge, is learned in the classics, history, and mathematics. With him came a blind mechanic from Edinburgh, who instructs the pupils in the different kinds of manufacture, on which many of them depend for subsistence.

Six young persons were taken at random from different parts of the State of Massachusetts, and put under tuition. They were between the ages of six and twenty years. At the end of five months, all these six could read correctly by the touch; had proceeded further in arithmetic than seeing children usually do in the time; knew more of geography; had made considerable attainment in music; and offered for sale moccasins and doormats of as good quality and appearance as any sold in the shops of Boston. The legislature testified its satisfaction by voting an annual appropriation of 6000 dollars to the institution, on condition of its boarding and educating, free of cost, twenty poor blind persons from the State of Massachusetts.

The public was no less delighted. Every one began to inquire, what he could do. Money was given, objects were sought out; but some rallying point for all the effort excited was wanted. This was soon supplied. A wealthy citizen of Boston, Colonel Perkins, offered his mansion and outbuildings in Pearl Street as a residence for the pupils, if, within a given time, funds were raised to support the establishment. This act of munificence fully answered the purposes of the generous citizen who performed it. Within one month, upwards of fifty thousand dollars were contributed, and placed to the credit of the institution. The legislatures of three other New England States have made appropriations for the object; an estate joining Colonel Perkins’s has been purchased, and thrown into a playground; the establishment contains five officers and about fifty pupils; and it is in contemplation to increase the accommodations so as to admit more. The funds are ample, and the means of instruction of a very superior kind.

The business of the house is carried on by the pupils, as far as possible; and mechanical arts are taught with care and diligence; but the rule of the establishment is to improve the mental resources of the pupils to the utmost. Those who cannot do better, are enabled to earn their livelihood by the making of mats, baskets, and mattresses: but a higher destination is prepared for all who show ability to become organists of churches, and teachers of languages and science. I saw some of the pupils writing, some sewing, some practising music, some reading. I was struck with an expression of sadness in many of their faces, and with a listlessness of manner in some; but I am aware that, owing to the illness of the director, and some other circumstances, I saw the establishment to great disadvantage. I believe, however, that not a few of its best friends, among whom may perchance be included some of its managers themselves, would like to see more mirthful exercises and readings introduced in the place of some of the exclusively religious contemplations offered to the pupils. The best homage which the guardians of the blind could offer to Him whose blessing they invoke is in the thoroughly exercised minds of their charge; minds strong in power, gay in innocence, and joyous in gratitude.

The institution which I had the best means of observing, and which interested me more than any charitable establishment in America, was the Philadelphia Asylum for the Blind. It was humble in its arrangements and numbers when I first went; but before I left the country, it seemed in a fair way to flourish. It is impossible to overrate the merits of Mr Friedlander, its Principal, in regard to it. The difficulties with which he had to struggle, from confined space, deficient apparatus, and other inconveniences resulting from narrow means, would have deterred almost any one else from undertaking anything till better aid could be provided. But he was cheered by the light which beamed out daily more brightly from the faces of his little flock of pupils, and supported by the intellectual power which they manifested from period to period of their course. Of the eleven, he found, to his delight, that no fewer than “six were endowed with remarkable intellectual faculties, and three with good ones; while, with regard to the remaining two, the development of their minds might still be expected.” A larger dwelling was next engaged; the legislature showed an interest in the institution; and I have no doubt it is by this time flourishing.

Mr Friedlander and the matron, Miss Nicholls, had succeeded in rectifying the carriage and manners of nearly all their pupils. As to their studies, the aim is as high as in the New England Institution, and will, no doubt, be equally successful. The music was admirable, except for the pronunciation of words in the singing. It was a great pleasure to me to go and hear their musical exercises, they formed so good a band of instrumentalists, and sang so well. There were horns, flute, violins, and the piano. As for humbler matters, besides the ornamental works of the girls, the fringes, braids, lamp stands, &c., I saw a frock made by one of them, during the leisure hours of one week. The work was excellent, the gathers of the skirt being stocked into the waistband as evenly and regularly as by a common mantua-maker. The girls hair was dressed like that of other young ladies, only scarcely a hair was out of its place; and each blind girl dresses her own hair. They peel potatoes with the utmost accuracy, and as quickly as others. But, with all this care, their cultivation of mind is the most attended to. The girls stand as good an examination as the boys in mental arithmetic, geography, and reading aloud.

Before I left Philadelphia, the annual meeting of the public in the Music Hall, to witness the progress of Mr Friedlandcr’s pupils, took place. I was requested to write the Address to be delivered by one of the blind, in the name of the rest; and now I found what the difficulty is to an inexperienced person, of throwing one’s self into the mind of a being in such different circumstances, and uttering only what he might say with truth. I now saw that the common run of hymns and other compositions put into the mouths of the blind become no less cant when uttered by them, than the generality of the so-called religious tracts which are written for the poor. The blind do not know what they miss in not receiving the light of the sun; and they would never spontaneously lament about it: nor would they naturally try to be submissive and resigned about privations which they are only by inference aware of. Their resignation should be about evils whose pressure they actually feel. To a blind child it is a greater pain to have a thorn in its foot than not to have eyes: to a blind man it is a greater sorrow not to have got his temper under control than to be shut out from the face of nature. The joy of the sightless should, in the same manner, be for the positive powers they hold, and the achievements they grasp, and not for what others call compensations for what they do not miss. To bear all this in mind, and to conceive one’s thoughts accordingly; to root out of the expression of thought every visual image, and substitute such, derived from other senses, as may arise naturally from the state of mind of the blind, is no easy task; as any one may find who tries. It led me into a speculation on the vast amount of empty words which the blind must swallow while seeking from books their intellectual food. We are all apt in reading to take in, as true and understood, a great deal more than we verify and comprehend; but, in the intercourses of the blind, what a tremendous proportion does the unreal bear to the real which is offered them!

I saw at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Boston one of those unhappy beings, the bare mention of whose case excites painful feelings of compassion. I was told that a young man who was deaf, dumb, and blind was on the premises; and he was brought to us. Impossible as it was to hold communication with him, we were all glad when, after standing and wandering awkwardly about, he turned from us, and made his way out. He is not quite blind. He can distinguish light from darkness; but cannot be taught by any of the signs which are used with his deaf mute companions. His temper is violent, and there seems to be no way of increasing his enjoyments. His favourite occupation is piling wood; and we saw him doing this with some activity, mounted on the wood pile.

It is now feared that the cases of this tremendous degree of privation are not so few as has been hitherto supposed. In a Memorial of the Genoa Deaf and Dumb Institution, it is stated that there are seven such cases in the Sardinian States on the mainland of Italy: and the probability is that about the same proportion, as in other kinds of infirmity, exists among other nations. Copious accounts have been given of three sufferers of this class; and a fourth, Hannah Lamb, who was accidentally burned to death in London, at the age of nine years, has been mentioned in print. The three of whom we have been favoured with copious accounts are James Mitchell, who is described to us by Dugald Stewart; Victoria Morisseau, at Paris by M. Bébian; and Julia Brace, at Hartford, (Connecticut) by Mrs Sigourney. All these have given evidence of some degree of intellectual activity, and feeling of right and wrong; enough to constitute a most affecting appeal to those who are too late to aid them, but who may possibly be the means of saving others from falling into their state. The obligation lies chiefly on the medical profession. Every enlightened member of that profession laments that little is known about the diseases of the ear and their treatment. Whenever this organ, with its liabilities, becomes as well understood as that of sight, the number of deaf mutes will doubtless be much reduced; and such cases as that of poor Julia Brace will probably disappear. At least the chances of the occurrence of such will be incalculably lessened.

The generosity of American society, already so active and extensive, will continue to be exerted in behalf of sufferers from the privation of the senses, till all who need it will be comprehended in its care. No one doubts that the charity will be done. The fear is lest the philosophy which should enlighten and guide the charity should be wanting. Such sufferers are apt to allure the observer, by means of his tenderest sympathies, into the imaginative regions of philosophy. Science and generosity equally demand that the allurement should be resisted. If observers will put away all mere imaginations respecting their charge; if they will cease to approach them as superior beings in disguise, and look upon them as a peculiar class of children, more than ordinarily ignorant, and ignorant in a remarkable; direction, facts may be learned relative to the formation of mind and the exercise of intellect, which may give cause to the race of ordinary men to look upon their infirm brethren with gratitude and love, as the medium through which new and great blessings have been conferred. By a union of inquirers and experimenters, by the speculative and practical cordially joining to work out the cases of human beings with four senses, the number might perhaps be speedily lessened of those who seeing see not, and who hearing hear not, nor understand.

Volume 3

Nahant

“A breath of our free heaven and noble sires.”

Hemans

The whole coast of Massachusetts Bay is well worth the study of the traveller. Nothing can be more unlike than the aspect of the northern and southern extremities of the Bay. Of Cape Ann, the northern point, with its bold shores and inexhaustible granite quarries, I have given some account in another book.[29] Not a ledge of rock is to be seen near Cape Cod, the southern extremity; but instead of it, a sand so deep that travellers who have the choice of reaching it by horse or carriage, prefer going over the last twenty miles on horseback: but then the sandhills are of so dazzling a whiteness as to distress the eyes. The inhabitants are a primitive race of fishermen and saltmen, dwelling in ground floor houses, which are set down among the sand ridges without plan or order. Some communication is kept up between them and a yet more secluded race of citizens, – the inhabitants of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, – two islands which lie south of the southern peninsular of the Bay. I much regretted that I had no opportunity of visiting these islands. Some stories that are abroad about the simplicity of the natives are enough to kindle the stranger’s curiosity to see so fresh a specimen of human nature. In Nantucket, there is not a tree, and scarcely a shrub. It is said that a fisherman’s son, on accompanying his father for the first time to the mainland, saw a scrubby apple tree. In great emotion, he cried, “O father! look there! what a beautiful tree! And what are those beautiful things on it? Are they lemons?” It was not my fortune to see any citizen of the United States who did not know an apple tree at sight. It must be highly instructive to take a trip from this remarkable place across the Bay to Nahant, in the month of August.

It was October when I visited Nahant, and all the gay birds of the summer had flown. I was not sorry for this; for fine people may be seen just as well in places where they are less in the way than on this rock. Nahant is a promontory which stretches out into the Bay, a few miles north of Boston. Or it might rather be called two islands, connected with each other and with the mainland by ridges of sand and pebbles. The outermost of the islands is the larger, and it measures rather above a mile and a half in circumference. The whole promontory was bought, in the seventeenth century, by a certain farmer Dexter, of an Indian chief, Black Willy, for a suit of clothes. Probably the one party was as far as the other from foreseeing what use the place would be put to in the coming days. Nahant is now the resort of the Boston gentry in the hot months. Several of them have cottages on the promontory; and for those who are brought by the indefatigable steamboat, there is a stupendous hotel, the proportion of which to the place it is built on, is as a man-of-war would be riding in one of the lovely Massachusetts ponds. Some middle-aged gentlemen remember the time when there was only one house on Nahant; and now there are balls in this hotel, where the extreme of dress and other luxury is seen, while the beach which connects the rock with the mainland, is gay with hundreds of carriages and equestrians on bright summer mornings.

This beach consists of grey sand, beaten so hard by the action of the waves, from the harbour on one side and the bay on the other, that the wheels of carriages make no impression, and the feet of horses resound as on the hardest road. It is the most delightful place for a drive or a gallop that can be imagined, except to the timorous, who may chance to find their horses frightened when the waves are boisterous on either hand at once. We entered upon it when the water was nearly at its height, and the passage was narrow. We had passed through the busy town of Lynn, and left its many hundreds of shoemaking families at their work behind us. We had passed many a field where the shoemaker turned farmer, for the season, was manuring his land with fish heads and offal; and now we burst into a region where no sounds of labour were heard, few signs of vegetation seen. We were alone with our own voices and the dashing of the sea, which seemed likely to take us off our feet.

When we reached Great Nahant, several picturesque cottages of the gentry came into view. All had piazzas, and several were adorned with bright creeping plants. No inhabitants were visible. Some rows of miserable young trees looked as if they were set up in order to be blown down. Many attempts have been made to raise forest trees, but hitherto in vain. Some large willows grow in a partially sheltered spot; and under these are the boarding houses of the place. The verdure is scanty, of course; and this is not the kind of beauty to be looked for in Nahant. The charms of the place are in the distant views, and among the picturesque and intricate rocks.

The variety contained within the circuit of a mile and a half is fully known only to the summer residents; but we saw something of it. At one moment we were prying into the recesses of the Swallows’ Cave, listening to the rumbling of the waves within it, making discoveries of birds’ nests, and looking up through its dark chasms to the sky. At the next, we caught a view between two rising grounds of Boston, East Boston, and Chelsea, sitting afar off upon the sunny waters. Here and there was a quiet strip of beach, where we sat watching the rich crop of weed swayed to and fro by the spreading and retreating of the translucent waters; and then at intervals we came to where the waves boil among the caverns, making a busy roar in the stillest hour of the stillest day. Here all was so chill and shadowy that the open sea, with its sunny sail and canopy of pearly clouds looked as if it were quite another region, brought into view by some magic, but really lying on the other side of the world.

There is a luxurious bathing-place for ladies, – a little beach so shut in by rocks, along the top of which runs a high fence, that the retirement is complete. Near it is the Spouting Horn, where we sat an unmeasured time, watching the rising tide spouting more magnificently every moment from the recess called The Horn. Every wave rushed in, and splashed out again with a roar, the fragments of seaweed flying off like shot. A clever little boy belonging to our party was meantime abroad among the boarding houses, managing to get us a dinner. He saved us all the trouble, and came to summon us, and show us the way. His father could not have managed better than he did.

We rambled about in the afternoon till we could no longer conceal from ourselves that the sun was getting low. We intended to describe a circuit in returning, so as to make as much of our road as possible lie along the beach. Never was the world bathed in a lovelier atmosphere than this evening. The rocks, particularly the island called Egg Rock, were of that soft lilac hue which harmonizes with the green sea on sunny evenings. While this light was brightest, we suddenly came upon a busy and remarkable scene, – the hamlet of Swampscot, on the beach, – the place where novel readers go to look for Mucklebacket’s cottage, – so much does it resemble the beach scenes in the Antiquary. Boats were drawn up on the shore, – the smallest boats, really for use, that I ever saw. They are flat-bottomed, and are tenanted by one man, or at most two, when going out for cod. The men are much cramped in these tiny boats, and need exercise when they come to shore; and we saw a company playing at quoits at the close of their working day. Many children were at play, their little figures seen in black relief against the sea, or trailing long shadows over the washed and glistening sands. Women were coming homewards with their milkpans, or taking in their linen from the lines. All were busy, and all looked joyous. While my companions were bargaining for fish, I had time to watch the singular scene; and when it was necessary to be gone, and we turned up into the darkening lanes, away from the sea, we looked back to the last moment upon this busy reach of the bright shore.

The scenery of Massachusetts Bay is a treasure which Boston possesses over and above what is enjoyed by her sister cities of the East. New York has a host of beauties about her, it is true, – the North River, Hoboken, and Staten Island; but there is something in the singularity of Nahant, and the wild beauty of Cape Ann more captivating than the crowded, fully appropriated beauties round New York. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington have no environs which can compare with either of the Northern cities. The islands which lie off Charleston, and where the less opulent citizens repair for health in the hot months, are praised more for their freshness and fertility than for any romantic beauty; and the coasts of the South are flat and shoaly. The South has the advantage in the winter, when none but the hardiest fishermen can be abroad to watch the march of the wintry storms over the Northern sea and sky; but in summer and autumn, when the Southerners who cannot afford to travel are panting and sickening in the glare among sands and swamps, the poorest of the citizens of Massachusetts may refresh himself amidst the sea breezes on the bright promontories or cool caverns of his native shore.

Volume 3

Signs of the Times

in Massachusetts

“Il ne faut pas une bien grande force d’esprit pour comprendre que ni les richesses ni le pouvoir ne rendent heureux. Assez de gens sentent cette vérité. Mais de ceux qui la connoissent pleinement et se conduisent en conséquence, le nombre en est si petit qu’il semble que ce soit là l’effort le plus rare de la raison humaine.”

Paul Louis Courier

Some few years hence it will be difficult to believe what the state of the times was in some parts of the United States, and even in the maritime cities, in 1835. The system of terrorism seems now to be over. It did not answer its purpose, and is dropped: but in 1835 it was new and dreadful. One of the most hideous features of the times was the ignorance, and unconcern of a large portion of society about what was being done and suffered by other divisions of its members. I suppose while Luther was toiling and thundering, German ladies and gentlemen were supping and dancing as usual; and while the Lollards were burning, perhaps little was known or cared about it in warehouses and upon farms. So it was in America. The gentry with whom I chiefly associated in New York knew little of the troubles of the abolitionists in that city, and nothing about the state of the anti-slavery question in their own region. In Boston, I heard very striking facts which had taken place in broad daylight, vehemently and honestly denied by many who happened to be ignorant of what had been done in their very streets. Not a few persons applied to me, a stranger, for information about the grand revolution of the time which was being transacted, not only on their own soil, but in the very city of their residence. A brief sketch of what I saw and experienced in Boston, during the autumn of 1835, will afford some little information as to what the state of society actually was.

At the end of August, a grand meeting was held at Faneuil Hall, in Boston. The hall was completely filled with the gentry of the city; and some of the leading citizens took the responsibility, and conducted the proceedings of the day. The object of the meeting was to soothe the South, by directing public indignation upon the abolitionists. The pretext of the assembly was, that the Union was in danger; and though the preamble to the resolutions declared disapprobation of the institution of slavery, the resolutions themselves were all inspired by fear of, or sympathy with slaveholders. They reprobated all agitation of the question, and held out assurances to the South, that every consideration should be made subordinate to the grand one of preserving the Union. The speeches were a disgrace to the constituents of a democratic republic; pointed as they were against those rights of free discussion and association at the time acted upon by fellow citizens, and imbued with deference for the South. In the crowded assembly, no voice was raised in disapprobation, except when a speaker pointed to the portrait of Washington as “that slaveholder;” and even then the murmur soon died into silence. The gentlemen went home, trusting that they had put down the abolitionists, and conciliated the South. In how short a time did the new legislature of the State pass, in that very city, a series of thoroughgoing abolition resolutions, sixteen constituting the minority! while the South had already been long despising the half and half doctrine of the Faneuil Hall meeting!

Meantime, the immediate result of the proceeding was the mob of which I have elsewhere given an account.[30] After that mob, the regular meetings of the abolitionists were suspended, for want of a place to meet in. Incessant attempts were made to hire any kind of public building; but no one would take the risk of having his property destroyed by letting it to so obnoxious a set of people. For six weeks exertions were made in vain. At last, a Boston merchant, who had built a pleasant house for himself and his family, said that while he had a roof over his head, his neighbours should not want a place in which to hold a legal meeting for honest objects; and he sent an offer of his house to the ladies of the Anti-slavery Society. They appointed their meeting for three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 18th. They were obliged to make known their intentions as they best could; for no newspaper would admit their advertisements; and the clergy rarely ventured to give out their notices, among others, from the pulpit.

I was, at this time, slightly acquainted with three or four abolitionists; and I was distrusted by most or all of the body who look any interest in me at all. My feelings were very different from theirs about the slaveholders of the South; – naturally enough, as these southern slaveholders were nothing else in the eyes of abolitionists; while to me they were, in some cases, personal friends, and in more, hospitable entertainers. It was known, however, that I had declared my intention of attending an abolition meeting. This was no new resolution. From the outset of my inquiry into the question, I had declared that, having attended colonization meetings, and heard all that the slaveholders had to say for themselves and against the abolitionists, I felt myself bound to listen to the other side of the question. I always professed my intention of seeking acquaintance with the abolitionists, though I then fully and involuntarily believed two or three charges against them which I found to be wholly groundless. The time was now come for discharging this duty.

On the Monday, two friends, then only new acquaintances, called on me at the house of a clergyman where I was staying, three miles from Boston. A late riot at Salem was talked over – a riot in which the family of Mr Thompson had been driven from one house to another three times in one night, the children being snatched from their beds, carried abroad in the cold, and injuriously terrified. It was mentioned that the ladies of the Anti-slavery Society were going to attempt a meeting on the next Wednesday, and I was asked whether I was in earnest in saying that I would attend one of their meetings. Would I go to this one if I should be invited? I replied that it depended entirely on the nature of the meeting. If it was merely a meeting for the settlement of accounts, and the despatch of business, where I should not learn what I wanted, I should wait for a less perilous time: if it was a boná fide public meeting, a true reflection of the spirit and circumstances of the time and the cause, I would go. The matter was presently decided by the arrival of a regular official invitation to me to attend the meeting, and to carry with me the friend who was my travelling companion, and any one else who might be disposed to accompany me.

Trifling as these circumstances may now appear, they were no trifles at the time; and many considerations were involved in the smallest movement a stranger made on the question. The two first things I had to take care of were to avoid involving my host in any trouble I might get into, and to afford opportunity to my companion to judge for herself what she would do. My host had been reviled in the newspapers already for having read a notice, (among several others) of an anti-slavery meeting from Dr Channing’s pulpit, where he was accidentally preaching. My object was to prevent his giving an opinion on any thing that I should do; that he might not be made more or less responsible for my proceedings. I handed the invitation to my companion, with a hint not to speak of it. We separately made up our minds to go, and announced our determination to our host and hostess. Between joke and earnest, they told us we should be mobbed; and the same thing was repeated by many who were not in joke at all.

At two o’clock on the Wednesday, we arrived at the house of a gentleman where we were to meet a few of the leading abolitionists, and dine, previous to the meeting. Our host was miserably ill that day, – unfit to be out of his chamber: but he exerted himself to the utmost, being resolved to escort his wife to the meeting. During dinner, the conversation was all about the southern gentry; in whose, favour I said all I could, and much more than the party could readily receive; which was natural enough, considering that they and I looked at the people of the South from different points of view. Before we issued forth on our expedition, I was warned, once more, that exertions had been made to get up a mob, and that it was possible we might be dispersed by violence. When we turned into the street where the house of meeting stood, there were about a dozen boys hooting before the door, as they saw ladies of colour entering. We were admitted without having to wait an instant on the steps; and the door was secured behind us.

The ladies assembled in two drawing rooms, thrown into one, by the folding doors being opened. The total number was a hundred and thirty. The President sat at a small table by the folding doors: and before her was a large bible, paper, pens, and ink, and the secretary’s papers. There were only three gentlemen in the house, – its inhabitant, the gentleman who escorted us, and a clergyman who had dined with us. They remained in the hall, keeping the front door fastened, and the back way clear for our retreat, if retreat should be necessary. But the number of hooters in the streets at no time exceeded thirty, and they treated us to nothing worse than a few yells.

A lady who sat next me amused me by inquiring, with kindness, whether it revolted my feelings to meet thus in assembly with people of colour. She was as much surprised as pleased with my English deficiency of all feeling on the subject. My next neighbour on the other hand was Mrs Thompson, the wife of the anti-slavery lecturer, who had just effected his escape, and was then on the sea. The proceedings began with the reading of a few texts of Scripture by the President. My first impression was that the selection of these texts gave out a little vainglory about the endurance of persecution; but when I remembered that this was the reunion of persons who had been dispersed by a mob, and when I afterwards became aware how cruelly many of the members had been wounded in their moral sense, their domestic affections, and their prospects in life. I was quite ready to yield my too nice criticism. A prayer then followed, the spirit of which appeared to me perfect in hopefulness, meekness, and gentleness. While the secretary was afterwards reading her report, a note was handed to me, the contents of which sunk my spirits fathom deep for the hour. It was a short pencil note from one of the gentlemen in the hall; and it asked me whether I had any objection to give a word of sympathy to the meeting, fellow labourers as we had long been in behalf of the principles in whose defence they were met. The case was clear as daylight to my conscience. If I had been a mere stranger, attending with a mere stranger’s interest to the proceedings of a party of natives, I might and ought to have declined mixing myself up with their proceedings. But I had long before published against slavery, and always declared my conviction that this was a question of humanity, not of country or race; a moral, not a merely political question; a general affair, and not one of city, state, party, or nation. Having thus declared on the safe side of the Atlantic, I was bound to act up to my declaration on the unsafe side, if called upon. I thought it a pity that the call had been made, though I am now very glad that it was, as it was the means of teaching me more of the temper and affairs of the times than I could have known by any other means; and as it ripened the regard which subsisted between myself and the writer of the note into a substantial, profitable, and delightful friendship: but at the moment, I foresaw none of these good consequences, but a formidable array of very unpleasant ones. I foresaw that almost every house in Boston, except those of the abolitionists, would be shut against me; that my relation to the country would be completely changed, as I should be suddenly transformed from being a guest and an observer to being considered a missionary or a spy: and results even more serious than this might reasonably be anticipated. During the few minutes I had for consideration, the wife of the writer of the note came to me, and asked what I thought of it, begging me to feel quite at liberty to attend to it or not, as I liked. I felt that I had no such liberty. I was presently introduced to the meeting, when I offered the note as my reason for breaking the silence of a stranger, and made the same declarations of my abhorrence of slavery and my agreement in the principles of the abolitionists which I had expressed throughout the whole of my travels through the South.

Of the consequences of this simple affair it is not my intention to give any account; chiefly because it would be impossible to convey to my English readers my conviction of the smallness of the portion of American society which was concerned in the treatment inflicted upon me. The hubbub was so great, and the modes of insult were so various, as to justify distant observers in concluding that the whole nation had risen against me. I soon found how few can make a great noise, while the many are careless or ignorant of what is going on about a person or a party with whom they have nothing to do; and while not a few are rendered more hearty in their regard, and more generous in their hospitality, by the disgraces of the individual who is under the oppression of public censure. All that I anticipated at the moment of reading the note came to pass; but only for a time. Eventually nothing remained which in the slightest degree modified my opinions or impaired my hopes of the society I was investigating.

The Secretary’s Report was drawn up with remarkable ability, and some animating and beautiful letters were read from distant members of the Association. The business which had been interrupted by violence was put in train again; and when the meeting broke up, a strong feeling of satisfaction visibly pervaded it. The right of meeting was vindicated; righteous pertinacity had conquered violence, and no immediate check to the efforts of the Society was to be apprehended.

The trials of the abolitionists of Boston were, however, not yet over. Two months before, the Attorney General of the State had advocated in Council the expected demand of the South, that abolitionists should be delivered up to the Slave States for trial and punishment under Southern laws. This fact is credible to those, and perhaps to those only, who have seen the pamphlet in reply to Dr Channing’s work on Slavery, attributed to this gentleman. The South was not long in making the demand. Letters arrived from the Governors of Southern States to the new Governor of Massachusetts, demanding the passing of laws against abolitionism in all its forms. The Governor, as was his business, laid these letters before the legislature of his State. This was the only thing he could do on this occasion. Just before, at his entrance upon his office, he had aimed his blow at the abolitionists, in the following passages of his Address. The same delusion (if it be mere delusion) is visible here that is shared by all persons in power, who cannot deny that an evil exists, but have not courage to remove it, – a vague hope that “fate, or Providence, or something,” will do the work which men are created to perform, – men of principle, and men of peace, like the abolitionists; – victims, not perpetrators of violence. “As the genius of our institutions and the character of our people are entirely repugnant to laws impairing the liberty of speech and of the press, even for the sake of repressing its abuses, the patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invoked, to abstain from a discussion, which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave; and which, if not abandoned, there is great reason to fear, will prove the rock on which the Union will split.”... “A conciliatory forbearance,” he proceeds to say, “would leave this whole painful subject where the Constitution leaves it, with the States where it exists, and in the hands of an all-wise Providence, who in his own good time, is able to cause it to disappear, like the slavery of the ancient world, under the gradual operation of the gentle spirit of Christianity.” The time is at hand. The “gradual operation of the gentle spirit of Christianity” had already educated the minds and hearts of the abolitionists for the work they are doing, but which the Governor would fain have put off. It thus appears that they had the Governor and Attorney General of the State against them; and the wealth, learning, and power of their city. It will be seen how their legislature was affected towards them.

As soon as they were aware of the demands of the southern governors, they petitioned their legislature for a hearing; according to the invariable practice of persons who believe that they may be injured by the passing of any proposed law. The hearing was granted as a matter of course: and a committee of five members of the legislature was appointed to hear what the abolitionists had to say. The place and time appointed were the Senate Chamber, on the afternoon of Friday, the 4th of March.

The expectation had been that few or none but the parties immediately concerned would be present at the discussion of such “a low subject:” but the event proved that more curiosity was abroad than had been supposed. I went just before the appointed hour, and took my seat, with my party, in the empty gallery of the Senate Chamber. The abolitionists dropped in, one by one, – Garrison, May, Goodell, Follen, E. G. Loring, and others. The committee treated them with ostentatious neglect, dawdling away the time, and keeping them waiting a full hour beyond the appointed time. The gallery filled rapidly, and more and more citizens entered the room below. To our great delight, Dr Channing made his appearance there. At length it was manifest that the Senate Chamber was not large enough; and we adjourned to the Hall of Representatives, which was soon about two-thirds filled.

I could not have conceived that such conduct could have been ventured upon, as that of the chairman of the committee. It was so insulting as to disgust the citizens present, whatever might be their way of thinking on the question which brought them together. The chairman and another of the five were evidently predetermined. They spared no pains in showing it, twisting the meaning of expressions employed by the pleaders, noting down any disjointed phrase which could be made to tell against those who used it, conveying sarcasms in their questions, and insult in their remarks. Two others evidenced a desire to fulfil their function, – to hear what the abolitionists had to say. Dr Channing took his seat behind the pleaders; and I saw with pleasure that he was handing them notes, acting on their side as decisively, and almost as publicly as if he had spoken. After several unanswerable defences against charges had been made, and Mr Loring had extorted the respect of the committee, by a speech in which he showed that a legislative censure is more injurious than penal laws, it was Dr Follen’s turn to speak. He was presently stopped by the chairman, with a command that he should be respectful to the committee; with an intimation that the gentlemen were heard only as a matter of favour. They protested against this, their hearing having been demanded as a matter of right: they refused to proceed, and broke up the conference.

Much good was done by this afternoon’s proceedings. The feeling of the bystanders was, on the whole, decidedly in favour of the pleaders; and the issue of the affair was watched with much interest. The next day, the abolitionists demanded a hearing as a matter of right: and it was granted likewise as an affair of course. The second hearing was appointed for Tuesday the 8th, at the same place and hour.

Some well-meaning friends of the abolitionists had in the interval advised that the most accomplished, popular, and gentlemanly of the abolitionists should conduct, the business of the second day; that the speeches should be made by Dr Follen, Messrs Loring and Sewall, and one or two more; and that Garrison and Goodell, the homely, primitive, and eminently suffering men of the apostleship, should be induced to remain in the background. The advice was righteously rejected; and, as it happened, theirs were the speeches that went furthest in winning over the feeling of the audience to their side. I shall never forget the swimming eye and tremulous voice with which a noble lady of the persecuted party answered such a suggestion as I have mentioned. “O,” said she, “above all things, we must be just and faithful to Garrison. You do not know what we know, – that unless we put him, on every occasion, into the midst of the gentlemen of the party, he will be torn to pieces. Nothing can save him but his being made one with those whom his enemies will not dare to touch.” As for Mr Goodell, he had been frequently stoned. “He was used to it.” They appeared in the midst of the professional gentlemen of the Association, and did the most eminent service of the day.

The hall was crowded, and shouts of applause broke forth, as the pleaders demolished an accusation, or successfully rebutted the insolence of the chairman. Dr Follen was again stopped, as he was showing that mobs had been the invariable consequence of censures of abolitionism passed by public meetings in the absence of gag laws. He was desired to hold his tongue, or to be respectful to the committee: to which he replied in his gentlest and most musical voice, “Am I then to understand that in speaking ill of mobs, I am disrespectful to the committee?” The chairman looked foolish enough during the applauses which followed this question. Dr Follen fought his ground, inch by inch, and got out all he had to say. The conduct of the chairman became at last so insufferable that several spectators attempted a remonstrance. A merchant was silenced; a physician was listened to, his speech being seasoned with wit so irresistible as to put all parties into good humour.

The loudly expressed opinion of the spectators, as they dispersed, was that the chairman had ruined his political career, and probably filled the chair of a committee of the legislature for the last time. The result of the affair was that the Report of the committee “spoke disrespectfully” of the exertions of the abolitionists, but rejected the suggestion of penal laws being passed to control their operations. The letters from the South therefore remained unanswered.

The abolitionists held a consultation whether they should complain to the legislature of the treatment their statements had received, and of the impediments thrown in the way of their self-justification. They decided to let the matter rest, trusting that there were witnesses enough of their case to enlighten the public mind on their position. A member of the legislature declared in his place what he had witnessed of the treatment of the appellants by the chairman, and proposed that the committee should be censured. As the aggrieved persons made no formal complaint, however, the matter was dropped. But the faith of the abolitionists was justified. The people were enlightened as to their position; and in the next election they returned a set of representatives, one of whose earliest acts was to pass a series of anti-slavery resolutions by a majority of 378 to 16.

These were a few of the signs of the times in Massachusetts when I was there. They proved that while the aristocracy of the great cities were not to be trusted to maintain the great principles on which their society was based, the body of the people were sound.

Volume 3

Hot and Cold Weather

Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find

A way to measure out the wind;

Show me that world of stars, and whence

They noiseless spill their influence?

This if though canst.”

Herrick

“Sic vita”

I believe no one attempts to praise the climate of New England. The very low average of health there, the prevalence of consumption and of decay of the teeth, are evidences of an unwholesome climate which I believe are universally received as such. The mortality among children, throughout the whole country, is a dark feature of life in the United States. I do not know whether any investigation has been made into the numbers who die in infancy; but there can be no mistake in assuming that it is much greater than among the classes in Europe who are in a situation of equal external comfort. It was afflicting to meet with cases of bereavement which seem to leave few hopes or objects in life: it is afflicting to review them now, as they rise up before my mind. One acquaintance of mine had lost four out of six children; another five out of seven; another six out of seven; another thirteen out of sixteen; and one mourner tells me that a fatality seems to attend the females of his family, for, out of eighteen, only one little grand-daughter survives: and most of this family died very young, and of different kinds of disease. Never did I see so many woe-worn mothers as in America. Wherever we went in the North, we heard of “the lung fever” as of a common complaint; and children seemed to be as liable to it as grown persons. The climate is doubtless chiefly to blame for all this; and I do not see how any degree of care could obviate much of the evil. The children must be kept warm within doors; and the only way of affording them the range of the house is by warming the whole, from the cellar to the garret, by means of a furnace in the hall. This makes all comfortable within; but then the risk of going out is very great. There is far less fog and damp than in England; and the perfectly calm, sunny days of midwinter are endurable: but the least breath of wind seems to chill one’s very life. I had no idea what the suffering from extreme cold amounted to till one day, in Boston, I walked the length of the city and back again, in a wind, with the thermometer seven degrees and a half below zero. I had been warned of the cold, but was anxious to keep an appointment to attend a meeting. We put on all the merinos and furs we could muster; but we were insensible of them from the moment the wind reached us. My muff seemed to be made of ice; I almost fancied I should have been warmer without it. We managed getting to the meeting pretty well, the stock of warmth we had brought out with us lasting till then. But we set out cold on our return: and by the time I got home, I did not very well know where I was, and what I was about. The stupefaction from cold is particularly disagreeable, the sense of pain remaining through it: and I determined not to expose myself to it again. All this must be dangerous to children: and if, to avoid it, they are shut up during the winter, there remains the danger of encountering the ungenial spring.

It is a wretched climate. The old lines would run in my head, –

“And feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce:

From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.”

The fiery part of the trial, however, I did not much mind; for, after the first week of languor, I enjoyed the heat, except for the perpetual evidence that was before us of the mischief or fatality of its effects to persons who could not sit in the shade, and take it quietly, as we could. There were frequent instances of deaths in the streets: and the working people suffer cruelly in the hot months. But the cold is a real evil to all classes, and I think much the most serious of the two. I found the second winter more trying than the first, and I hardly know how I should have sustained a third.

Every season, however, has its peculiar pleasures; and in the retrospect these shine out brightly, while the evils disappear.

On a December morning you are awakened by the domestic scraping at your hearth. Your anthracite fire has been in all night; and now the ashes are carried away, more coal is put on, and the blower hides the kindly red from you for a time. In half an hour the fire is intense, though, at the other end of the room, every thing you touch seems to blister your fingers with cold. If you happen to turn up a corner of the carpet with your foot, it gives out a flash; and your hair crackles as you brush it. Breakfast is always hot, be the weather what it may. The coffee is scalding, and the buckwheat cakes steam when the cover is taken off. Your host’s little boy asks whether he may go coasting today; and his sisters tell you what day the schools will all go sleighing. You may see boys coasting on Boston Common all the winter day through; and too many in the streets, where it is not so safe. To coast is to ride on a board down a frozen slope; and many children do this in the steep streets which lead down to the Common, as well as on the snowy slopes within the enclosure where no carriages go. Some sit on their heels on the board; some on their crossed legs. Some strike their legs out, put their arms akimbo, and so assume an air of defiance amidst their velocity. Others prefer lying on their stomachs, and so going head-foremost; an attitude whose comfort I never could enter into. Coasting is a wholesome exercise for hardy boys. Of course they have to walk up the ascent, carrying their boards, between every feat of coasting; and this affords them more exercise than they are at all aware of taking.

As for the sleighing, I heard much more than I experienced of its charms. No doubt early association has something to do with the American fondness for this mode of locomotion; and much of the affection which is borne to music, dancing, supping, and all kinds of frolic, is transferred to the vehicle in which the frolicking parties are transported. It must be so, I think, or no one would be found to prefer a carriage on runners to a carriage on wheels, – except on an untrodden expanse of snow. On a perfectly level and crisp surface I can fancy the smooth rapid motion to be exceedingly pleasant; but such surfaces are rare in the neighbourhood of populous cities. The uncertain, rough motion in streets hillocky with snow, or on roads consisting for the season of a ridge of snow with holes in it, is disagreeable, and provocative of headache. I am no rule for others as to liking the bells; but to me their incessant jangle was a great annoyance. Add to this the sitting, without exercise, in a wind caused by the rapidity of the motion, and the list of désagrémens is complete. I do not know the author of a description of sleighing which was quoted to me, but I admire it for its fidelity. “Do you want to know what sleighing is like? You can soon try. Set your chair on a spring board out in the porch on Christmas Day: put your feet in a pail full of powdered ice: have somebody to jingle a bell in one ear, and somebody else to blow into the other with the bellows, – and you will have an exact idea of sleighing.”

I was surprised to find that young people whose health is too delicate to allow them to do many simple things, are not too delicate to go out sleighing, in an open sleigh. They put hot bricks under their feet, and wrap up in furs; but the face remains exposed; and the breathing the frosty air of a winter’s night, after dancing, may be easily conceived to be the cause of much of the “lung fever” of which the stranger hears. The gayest sleighing that I saw was on the day when all the schools in Boston have a holiday, and the pupils go abroad in a long procession of sleighs. The multitude of happy young faces, though pinched with cold, was a pretty sight.

If the morning be fine, you have calls to make, or shopping to do, or some meeting to attend. If the streets be coated with ice, you put on your India rubber shoes – unsoled – to guard you from slipping. If not, you are pretty sure to measure your length on the pavement before your own door. Some of the handsomest houses in Boston, those which boast the finest flights of steps, have planks laid on the steps during the season of frost; the wood being less slippery than stone. If, as sometimes happens, a warm wind should be suddenly breathing over the snow, you go back to change your shoes; India rubbers being as slippery in wet as leather soles are on ice. Nothing is seen in England like the streets of Boston and New York at the end of the season, while the thaw is proceeding. The area of the street had been so raised that passengers could look over the blinds of your ground floor rooms: when the sidewalks become full of holes and puddles, they are cleared, and the passengers are reduced to their proper level: but the middle of the street remains exalted, and the carriages drive along a ridge. Of course this soon becomes too dangerous; and for a season ladies and gentlemen walk; carts tumble, slip, and slide, and get on as they can; while the mass, now dirty, not only with thaw, but with quantities of refuse vegetables, sweepings of the poor people’s houses, and other rubbish which it was difficult to know what to do with while every place was frozen up, daily sinks and dissolves into a composite mud. It was in New York, and some of the inferior streets of Boston, that I saw this process in its completeness.

If the morning drives are extended beyond the city, there is much to delight the eye. The trees are cased in ice; and when the sun shines out suddenly, the whole scene looks like one diffused rainbow, – dressed in a brilliancy which can hardly be conceived of in England. On days less bright, the blue harbour spreads in strong contrast with the sheeted snow which extends to its very brink.

The winter evenings begin joyously with the festival of Thanksgiving Day, which is, if I remember rightly, held on the first Thursday of December. The festival is ordered by proclamation of the Governor of the State; which proclamation is read in all the churches. The Boston friends with whom we had ascended the Mississippi, and travelled in Tennessee and Kentucky, did not forget that we were strangers in the land; and many weeks before Thanksgiving Day, they invited us to join their family gathering on that great annual festival. We went to church in the morning, and listened to the thanksgiving for the mercies of the year, and to an exemplification of the truth that national prosperity is of value only as it is sanctified to individual progression; – an important doctrine, well enforced. This is the occasion chosen by the boldest of the clergy to say what they think of the faults of the nation, – and particularly to reprobate apathy on the slavery question. There are few who dare do this, though it seems to be understood that this is an occasion on which “particular preaching” may go a greater length than on common Sundays. Yet a circumstance happened in New York on this very day which shows that the clergy have, at least in some places, a very short tether, even on Thanksgiving Day. An episcopalian clergyman from England, named Pyne, who had been some years settled in America, preached a thanksgiving sermon in which he made a brief and moderate, even commonplace allusion to the toleration of slavery, among other national sins. For some weeks, he heard only the distant mutterings of the storm which was about to burst upon him; but within three months, he was not only dismissed from his office, but compelled to leave the country, though he had settled his family from England beside him. He was anxious to obey the wishes of his friends, and print verbatim the sermon which had caused his ruin; but no printer would print, and no publisher would agree to sell his sermon. At length, he found a printer who promised to print it, on condition of his name being kept secret; and the sermon was dispersed without the aid of a publisher. Mr Pyne sailed for England on the following 1st of April; as it happened, in the same ship with Mr Breckinridge, the presbyterian clergyman who put himself into unsuccessful opposition to Mr Thompson, at a public discussion at Glasgow, last year. The voyage was not a pleasant one, as might be supposed, to either clergyman. Nothing could be more mal-à-propos than that one who came over with a defence in his mouth of the conduct of the American clergy on the slavery question should be shut up for three weeks with a clergyman banished for opening his lips on the subject.

After service, Dr Channing took us to Persico’s studio, where the new bust of Dr Channing stood; and one, scarcely less excellent, of Governor Everett. We then spent an hour at Dr Channing’s, and he gave me his book on slavery, which was to be published two days afterwards. I was obliged to leave it unread till the festivities of the day were over; but that night, and two succeeding ones, I read it completely through before I slept. It is impossible to communicate an idea of the importance and interest of that book at the time it was published. I heard soon afterwards that there was difficulty in procuring it at Washington, – partly from the timidity of the booksellers, it having been called in Congress “an incendiary book.” It was let out at a high price per hour. Of course, as soon as this was understood at Boston, supplies were sent, otherwise than through the booksellers, so that members of Congress were no longer obliged to quote the book merely from the extracts contained in the miserable reply to it which was extensively circulated in the metropolis.

This book was in my head all the rest of the day, from whose observances all dark subjects seemed banished. At three o’clock, a family party of about thirty were assembled round two well spread tables. There was only one drawback, – that five of the children were absent, being ill of the measles. There was much merriment among us grown people at the long table; but the bursts of laughter from the children’s side table, where a kind aunt presided, were incessant. After dinner, we played hunt-the-slipper with the children, while the gentlemen were at their wine; and then went to spend an hour with a poor boy in the measles, who was within hearing of the mirth, but unable to leave his easy chair. When we had made him laugh as much as was good for him with some of our most ludicrous English Christmas games, we went down to communicate more of this curious kind of learning in the drawing rooms. There we introduced a set of games quite new to the company; and it was delightful to see with what spirit and wit they were entered into and carried on. Dumb Crambo was made to yield its ultimate rhymes; and the storytelling in Old Coach was of the richest. When we were all quite tired with laughing, the children began to go away: some fresh visitors dropped in from other houses, and music and supper followed. We got home by eleven o’clock, very favourably impressed with the institution of Thanksgiving Day. I love to dwell upon it now, for a new interest hangs over that festival. The friend by whose thoughtfulness we were admitted to this family gathering, and in whose companionship we went, – the beloved of every heart there, the sweetest, the sprightliest of the party, – will be among them no more.

Christmas evening was very differently passed, but in a way to me even more interesting. We were in a country village, Hingham, near the shores of Massachusetts Bay; and were staying in the house of the pastor, – our clerical shipmate. The weather was bad, – in the early part of the day extremely so; and the attendance at the church was therefore not large, and no one came to dinner. The church was dressed up with evergreens, in great quantity, and arranged with much taste. The organist had composed a new anthem, which was well sung by the young men and women of the congregation. At home, the rooms were prettily dressed with green, and an ample supply of lights was provided against the evening. Soon after dinner, some little girls arrived to play with the children of the house: and we resumed the teaching of English Christmas games. The little things were tired, and went away early enough to leave us a quiet hour before the doors were thrown open to “the parish.” whose custom it is to flock to the pastor’s house, to exchange greetings with him on Christmas night. What I saw makes me think this a delightful custom. There is no expensive or laborious preparation for their reception. The rooms are well lighted, and cake and lemonade are provided: and this is all.

The pastor and his wife received their guests as they came in: and then all moved on to offer the greetings of the season to me. Many remained to talk with me, to my great delight. There was the schoolmaster with his daughters. There was farmer B., who has a hobby. This place was colonised by English from Hingham in Norfolk; and farmer B.’s ancestors were among them. He has a passion for hearing about Old Hingham: and by dint of questioning every stranger, and making use of all kinds of opportunity, he has learned far more than I ever knew about the old place. His hopes rose high when he found I was a native of Norfolk; but I was obliged to depress them again by confessing how little I could tell of the old place, within a few miles of which my early years were spent. I was able, to give him some trifling fact, however, about, the direction in which the road winds; and for this he expressed fervent gratitude. I was afterwards told that he is apt to drive his oxen into the ditch, and to lose a sheep or two when his head is running on “the old place.” I have not yet succeeded in my attempts to obtain a sketch of Old Hingham, to send over to Farmer B.: but I wish I could, for I believe it would please him more than the bequest of a fortune.

Then came Captain L. with his five fine daughters. He looked too old to be their father; and well he might. When master of a vessel, he was set ashore by pirates, with his crew, on a desert island, where he was thirty-six days without food. Almost all his crew were dead, and he just dying, when help arrived, – by means of freemasonry. Among the pirates was a Scotchman, a mason, as was Captain L. The two exchanged signs. The Scotchman could not give aid at the moment: but, after many days of fruitless and anxious attempts, he contrived to sail back, at the risk of his life, and landed on the desert island, on the thirty-sixth day from his leaving it. He had no expectation of finding any of the party alive: but, to take the chance and lose no time, he jumped ashore with a kettle full of wine in his hand. He poured wine down the throats of the few whom he found still breathing, and treated them so judiciously that they recovered. At least, it was called recovery: but Captain L.’s looks are very haggard and nervous still. He took the Scotchman home, and cherished him to the day of his death.

Then there was an excellent woman, the general benefactress of the village, who is always ready to nurse the sick and help the afflicted, and to be of eminent service in another way to her young neighbours. She assembles them in the evenings, once or twice a week, and reads with them and to them; and thus the young women of the village are obtaining a knowledge of Italian and French, as well as English literature, which would have been unattainable without her help. The daughters of the fishermen, bucket and net makers, and farmers of Hingham, are far more accomplished than many a highbred young lady in England and New York. Such a village population is one of the true glories of America. Many such girls were at their pastor’s this evening, dressed in silk gowns of the latest make, with rich French pelerines, and their well-arranged hair bound with coloured ribbon; – as pretty a set of girls as could be collected anywhere.

When it appeared that the rooms were beginning to thin, the organist called the young people round him, and they sang the new Christmas anthem, extremely well. Finally, a Christmas hymn was sung by all to the tune of the Old Hundred: the pastor and his people exchanged the blessing of the season, and, in a few minutes, the house was cleared.

About this scene also hangs a tender and mournful interest. Our hostess was evidently unwell at this time; I feared seriously so; and I was not mistaken. She was one of the noblest women I have ever known; with a mind large in its reach, rich in its cultivation, and strong in its independence: yet never was there a spirit more yearning in its tenderness, more gay in its innocence. Just a year after this time, she wrote me tidings of her approaching death, cheerfully intimating the probability that she might live to hear from me once more. My letter arrived just as she was laid in her coffin. Her interest in the great objects of humanity, to which she had dedicated her best days, never failed. Her mind was active about them to the last. She was never deceived, as the victims of consumption usually are, about her state of health and chance of life, but saw her case as others saw it; only with far more contentment and cheerfulness. She left bright messages of love for all of us who knew what was in her mind, with an animating bidding to go on with our several works. Nothing could be more simple than the state of her mind, and the expression of it, – proving that she so knew how to live as to find nothing strange in dying.

I was present at the introduction into the new country of the spectacle of the German Christmas tree. My little friend Charley, and three companions, had been long preparing for this pretty show. The cook had broken her eggs carefully in the middle for some weeks past, that Charley might have the shells for cups; and these cups were gilt and coloured very prettily. I rather think it was, generally speaking, a secret out of the house; but I knew what to expect. It was a New Year’s tree, however; for I could not go on Christmas Eve; and it was kindly settled that New Year’s Eve would do as well. We were sent for before dinner; and we took up two round-faced boys by the way. Early as it was, we were all so busy that we could scarcely spare a respectful attention to our plum pudding. It was desirable that our preparations should be completed before the little folks should begin to arrive; and we were all engaged in sticking on the last of the seven dozen of wax-tapers, and in filling the gilt egg cups, and gay paper cornucopiæ with comfits, lozenges, and barley sugar. The tree was the top of a young fir, planted in a tub, which was ornamented with moss. Smart, dolls, and other whimsies, glittered in the evergreen; and there was not a twig which had not something sparkling upon it. When the sound of wheels was heard, we had just finished; and we shut up the tree by itself in the front drawing room, while we went into the other, trying to look as if nothing was going to happen. Charley looked a good deal like himself, only now and then twisting himself about in an unaccountable fit of giggling. It was a very large party; for besides the tribes of children, there were papas and mammas, uncles, aunts, and elder sisters. When all were come, we shut out the cold: the great fire burned clearly; the tea and coffee were as hot as possible, and the cheeks of the little ones grew rosier, and their eyes brighter every moment. It had been settled that, in order to cover our designs, I was to resume my vocation of teaching Christmas games after tea, while Charley’s mother and her maids went to light up the front room. So all found seats, many of the children on the floor, for Old Coach. It was difficult to divide even an American stagecoach into parts enough for every member of such a party to represent one: but we managed it without allowing any of the elderly folks to sit out. The grand fun of all was to make the clergyman and an aunt or two get up and spin round. When they were fairly practised in the game, I turned over my story to a neighbour, and got away to help to light up the tree.

It really looked beautiful; the room seemed in a blaze; and the ornaments were so well hung on that no accident happened, except that one doll’s petticoat caught fire. There was a sponge tied to the end of a stick to put out any supernumerary blaze; and no harm ensued. I mounted the steps behind the tree to see the effect of opening the doors. It was delightful. The children poured in; but in a moment, every voice was hushed. Their faces were upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested. Nobody spoke; only Charley leaped for joy. The first symptom of recovery was the children’s wandering round the tree. At last, a quick pair of eyes discovered that it bore something eatable; and from that moment the babble began again. They were told that they might get what they could without burning themselves; and we tall people kept watch, and helped them with good things from the higher branches. When all had had enough, we returned to the larger room, and finished the evening with dancing. By ten o’clock, all were well warmed for the ride home with steaming mulled wine, and the prosperous evening closed with shouts of mirth. By a little after eleven, Charley’s father and mother and I were left by ourselves to sit in the New Year. I have little doubt the Christmas tree will become one of the most flourishing exotics of New England.

The sky sights of the colder regions of the United States are resplendent in winter. I saw more of the aurora borealis, more falling stars and other meteors during my stay in New England than in the whole course of my life before. Every one knows that splendid and mysterious exhibitions have taken place in all the Novembers of the last four years, furnishing interest and business to the astronomical world. The most remarkable exhibitions were in the Novembers of 1833 and 1835, – the last of which I witnessed.

The persons who saw the falling stars of the 14th of November, 1833, were few; but the sight was described to me by more than one. It was seen chiefly by masters of steamboats, watchmen, and sick nurses. The little children of a friend of mine, who happened to sleep with their heads near a window, surprised their father in the morning with the question what all those sparks were that had been flying about in the night. Several country people, on their way to early market, saw the last of the shower. It is said that some left their carts, and kneeled in the road, thinking that the end of the world was come; – a very natural persuasion; for the spectacle must have been much like the heavens falling to pieces. About nine o’clock in the evening, several persons observed that there was an unusual number of falling stars; and went home, thinking no more about it. Others were surprised at the increase by eleven, but went to rest, notwithstanding. Those who were up at four, saw the grandest sight. There were then three kinds of lights in the heaven, besides the usual array of stars. There were shooting points of light, all directed from one centre to the circuit of the horizon, much resembling a thick shower of luminous snow. There were luminous bodies which hung dimly in the air: and there were falling fireballs, some of which burst, while others went out of sight. These were the meteors which were taken by the ignorant for the real stars, falling from the sky. One was seen, apparently larger than the full moon; and they shed so bright a light that the smallest objects became distinctly visible. One luminous body was like a serpent, coiling itself up; another “like a square table;” another like a pruning hook. Those which burst left trains of light behind them, some tinged with the prismatic colours. The preceding day had been uncommonly warm for the season: but before morning the frost was of an intensity very rare for the month of November. The temperature of the whole season was unusual. Throughout November and December, it was so warm about the Northern lakes that the Indians were making maple sugar at Mackinaw, while the orange trees were cut off by the frost in Louisiana. A tremendous succession of gales at the same time set in along the Eastern coast. Those may explain these mysteries who can.

It is exceedingly easy to laugh at men who, created to look before and after, walking erect, with form “express and admirable” under the broad canopy of heaven, yet contrive to miss the sights which are hung out in the sky: but which of us does not deserve to be thus laughed at? How many nights in the year do we look up into the heavens? How many individuals of a civilized country see the stars on any one night of the year? Some of my friends and I had a lesson on this, during the last April I spent in America. I was staying at a house in the upper part of New York. My host and hostess had three guests at dinner that day, – three persons sufficiently remarkable for knowing how to use their eyes, – Miss Sedgwick, Mr Bryant, and the author of the Palmyra Letters. During dinner, we amused ourselves with pitying some persons who had actually walked abroad on the night of the last 17th of November without seeing the display. Our three friends walked homewards together, two miles down Broadway, and did exactly the same thing, – failed to look up while an aurora borealis, worthy of November, was illuminating the heavens. We at home failed to look out, and missed it too. The next time we all met, we agreed to laugh at ourselves before we bestowed any more of our pity upon others.

On the 17th of November in question, that of 1835, I was staying in the house of one of the Professors of Harvard University, at Cambridge. The Professor and his son John came in from a lecture at nine o’clock, and told us that it was nearly as light as day, though there was no moon. The sky presented as yet no remarkable appearance; but the fact set us telling stories of sky-sights. A venerable Professor told us of a blood-red heaven which shone down on a night of the year 1789; when an old lady interpreted the whole French revolution from what she saw. None of us had any call to prophesying, this night. John looked out from time to time while we were about the piano; but our singing had come to a conclusion before he brought us news of a very strange sky. It was now near eleven. We put cloaks and shawls over our heads, and hurried into the garden. It was a mild night, and about as light as with half a moon. There was a beautiful rose-coloured flush across the entire heaven, from south-east to north-west. This was every moment brightening, contracting in length, and dilating in breadth. My host ran off, without his hat, to call the Natural Philosophy Professor. On the way, he passed a gentleman who was trudging along, pondering the ground. “A remarkable night, sir,” cried my host. “Sir! how, sir?” replied the pedestrian. “Why, look above your head!” The startled walker ran back to the house he had left, to make every body gaze. There was some debate about ringing the college bell; but it was agreed that it would cause too much alarm.

The Natural Philosophy Professor came forth, in curious trim: and his household and ours joined in the road. One lady was in her nightcap; another with a handkerchief tied over her head, while we were cowled in cloaks. The sky was now resplendent. It was like a blood-red dome, a good deal pointed. Streams of a greenish white light radiated from the centre in all directions. The colours were so deep, especially the red, as to give an opaque appearance to the canopy; and as Orion and the Pleiades, and many more stars could be distinctly seen, the whole looked like a vast dome inlaid with constellations. These sky sights make one shiver, – so new are they, so splendid, so mysterious. We saw the heavens grow pale, and before midnight believed that the mighty show was over; but we had the mortification of hearing afterwards that at one o’clock it was far brighter than ever, and as light as day.

Such are some of the wintry characteristics of New England.

If I lived in Massachusetts, my residence during the hot months should be beside one of its ponds. These ponds are a peculiarity in New England scenery, very striking to the traveller. Geologists tell of the time when the valleys were chains of lakes; and in many parts the eye of the observer would detect this without the aid of science. There are many fields, and clusters of fields, of remarkable fertility, lying in basins, the sides of which have much the appearance of the greener and smoother of the dykes of Holland. These suggest the idea of their having been ponds at the first glance. Many remain filled with clear water, – the prettiest meres in the world. A cottage on Jamaica Pond, for instance, within an easy ride of Boston, is a luxurious summer abode. I know of one, unequalled in its attractions, – with its flower garden, its lawn, with banks shelving down to the mere; banks dark with rustling pines, from under whose shade the bright track of the moon may be seen, lying cool on the rippling waters. A boat is moored in the cove at hand. The cottage itself is built for coolness; and its broad piazza is draperied with vines, which keep out the sun from the shaded parlours.

The way to make the most of a summer’s day in a place like this is to rise at four, mount your horse, and ride through the lanes for two hours, finding breakfast ready on your return. If you do not ride, you slip down to the bathing-house, on the creek; and, once having closed the door, have the shallow water completely to yourself, carefully avoiding going beyond the deep water mark, where no one knows how deep the mere may be. After breakfast you should dress your flowers, before those you gather have quite lost the morning dew. The business of the day, be it what it may, housekeeping, study, teaching, authorship, or charity, will occupy you till dinner at two. You have your dessert carried into the piazza, where, catching glimpses of the mere through the wood on the banks, your watermelon tastes cooler than within, and you have a better chance of a visit from a pair of hummingbirds. You retire to your room, all shaded with green blinds, lie down with a book in your hand, and sleep soundly for two hours at least. When you wake and look out, the shadows are lengthening; on the lawn, and the hot haze has melted away. You hear a carriage behind the fence, and conclude that friends from the city are coming to spend the evening with you. They sit within till after tea, telling you that you are living in the sweetest place in the world. When the sun sets, you all walk out, dispersing in the shrubbery, or on the banks. When the moon shows herself above the opposite woods, the merry voices of the young people are heard from the cove, where the boys are getting out the boat. You stand, with a companion or two, under the pines, watching the progress of the skiff, and the receding splash of the oars. If you have any one, as I had, to sing German popular songs to you, the enchantment is all the greater. You are capriciously lighted home by fireflies; and there is your table covered with fruit and iced lemonade. When your friends have left you, you would fain forget it is time to rest; and your last act before you sleep is to look out once more from your balcony upon the silvery mere and moonlit lawn.

The only times when I felt disposed to quarrel with the inexhaustible American mirth was on the hottest days of summer. I liked it as well as ever; but European strength will not stand more than an hour or two of laughter in such seasons. I remember one day when the American part of the company was as much exhausted as the English. We had gone, a party of six, to spend a long day with a merry household in a country village; and, to avoid the heat, had performed the journey of sixteen miles before ten o’clock. For three hours after our arrival, the wit was in full flow; by which time we were all begging for mercy, for we could laugh no longer with any safety. Still, a little more fun was dropped all round, till we found that the only way was to separate; and we all turned out of doors. I cannot conceive how it is that so little has been heard in England of the mirth of the Americans: for certainly nothing in their manners struck and pleased me more. One of the rarest characters among them, and a great treasure to all his sportive neighbours, is a man who cannot take a joke.

The prettiest playthings of summer are the hummingbirds. I call them playthings because they are easily tamed, and are not very difficult to take care of for a time. It is impossible to attend to book, work, or conversation, while there is a hummingbird in sight; its exercises and vagaries are so rapid and beautiful. Its prettiest attitude is vibrating before a blossom which is tossed in the wind. Its long beak is inserted in the flower, and the bird rises and falls with it, quivering its burnished wings with dazzling rapidity. My friend E, told me how she had succeeded in taming a pair. One flew into the parlour where she was sitting, and perched. E’s sister stepped out for a branch of honeysuckle, which she stuck up over the mirror. The other bird followed, and, the pair alighted on the branch, flew off, and returned to it. E, procured another branch, and held it on the top of her head; and hither also the little creatures came without fear. She next held it, in her hand, and still they hovered and settled. They bore being shut in for the night, a nest of cotton wool being provided. Of course it was impossible to furnish them with honeysuckles enough for food; and sugar and water was tried, which they seemed to relish very well. One day, however, when E, was out of the room, one of the little creatures was too greedy in the saucer; and when E, returned, she found it lying on its side, with its wings stuck to its body, and its whole little person clammy with sugar. E, tried a sponge and warm water; it was too harsh: she tried old linen, but it was not soft enough: it then occurred to her that the softest of all substances is the human tongue. In her love for her little companion, she thus cleansed it, and succeeded perfectly, so far as the outward bird was concerned. But though it attempted to fly a little, it never recovered, but soon died of its surfeit. Its mate was, of course, allowed to fly away.

Some Boston friends of mine, a clergyman and his wife, told me of a pleasant summer adventure which they had, – quite against their will. The lady had been duly inoculated or vaccinated, (I forget which) in her childhood, but nevertheless had the smallpox, in a way, after her marriage. She was slightly feverish, and a single spot appeared on her hand. The physician declared “that is it,” and, as good citizens are bound to do, they gave information of this fearful smallpox to the authorities. The lady and her husband were ordered into quarantine: the city coach came for them, and they were transported to the wharf, and then to the little quarantine island in the harbour, where they spent a particularly pleasant week. My friend was getting well when she went, and she was quite able to enjoy the charms of her new residence. Her husband read to her in the piazza as she worked: he bathed, and was spared a Sunday’s preaching; she looked abroad over the sea, and laughed as often as she imagined what their friends supposed their situation to be. They had the establishment all to themselves, except that there was a tidy Scotchwoman to wait on them. Was ever quarantine so performed before?

The reader may think, at the end of this chapter, that there is something far more pleasant than worthy of complaint in the extremes of the seasons in the United States. It would be so if health were not endangered by them; but the incessant regard to the physical welfare which prudence requires is a great drawback to ease and pleasure; and the failure of health, which is pretty sure to come, sooner or later, is a much worse. In my own opinion, the dullest climate and scenery may be turned to more pleasurable account by vigour of body and mind, than all the privileges of American variety and beauty by languid powers. All that the people of New England can do is to make the best of their case. Those who are blessed with health should use every reasonable endeavour to keep it; and it may be hoped that an improved settlement and cultivation of the country will carry on that amelioration of its climate, which many of its inhabitants are assured has already begun.

Volume 3

Originals

“The Ideal is in thyself; thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of. What matters whether such stuff be of this sort or of that; so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic?”

Sartor Resartus.

Every state of society has, happily, its Originals; men and women who, in more or fewer respects, think, speak, and act, naturally and unconsciously in a different way from the generality of men. There are several causes from which this originality may arise; particularly in a young community, less gregarious than those of the civilized countries of the Old World.

The commonest of these causes in a society like that of the United States is, perhaps, the absence of influences to which almost all other persons are subject. The common pressure being absent in some one direction, the being grows out in that direction, and the mind and character exhibit more or less deformity to the eyes of all but the individual most concerned. The back States afford a full harvest of originals of this class; while in England, where it is scarcely possible to live out of society, such are rarely to be found.

Social and professional eccentricity comes next. When local and professional influences are inadequately balanced by general ones, a singularity of character is produced, which is not so agreeable as it is striking and amusing. Of this class of characters, few examples are to be seen at home; but instead of them, something much worse, which is equally rare in America. In England we have confessors to tastes and pursuits, and martyrs to passions and vices, which arise out of a highly artificial state of society. In England we have a smaller proportion of grave, innocent, professional buffoons; but in America there are few or no fashionable ingrained profligates; few or no misers.

In its possession of a third higher class, it is reasonable and delightful to hope that there is no superiority in the society of any one civilized country over that of any other. Of men and women who have intellectual power to modify the general influences to which, like others, they are subject, every nation has its share. In every country there have been beings who have put forth more or less of the godlike power involved in their humanity, whereby they can stem the current of circumstance, deliberately form the purpose of their life, and prosecute it, happen what may. The number is not large anywhere; but the species is nowhere unknown.

A yet smaller class of yet nobler originals remains: those who, with the independent power of the last-mentioned, are stimulated by strong pressure of circumstance, to put forth their whole force, and form and achieve purposes in which not only their own life, but the destiny of others, is included. Such, being the prophets and redeemers of their age and country, rise up when and where they are wanted. The deed being ripe for the doing, the doer appears. The field being while for harvest, the reaper shows himself at the gate, – whether the song of fellow reapers cheers his heart, or lions are growling in his solitary path.

Many English persons have made up their minds that there is very little originality in America, except in regions where such men as David Crockett grow up. In the wilds of Tennessee and Kentucky, twenty years ago, and now in Arkansas and Missouri, where bear hunting and the buffalo chase are still in full career, it is acknowledged that a man’s natural bent may be seen to advantage, and his original force must be fully tested. But it is asked, with regard to America, whether there is not much less than the average amount of originality of character to be found in the places where men operate upon one another? It is certain that there is an intense curiosity in Americans about English oddities; and a prevailing belief among themselves that England is far richer in humorists than the United States. It is also true that the fickleness and impressibleness of the Americans (particularly of the New Englanders) about systems of science, philosophy, and morals, exceeds anything ever seen or heard of in the sober old country: but all this can prove only that the nation and its large divisions are not original in character; and not that individuals of that character are wanting.

It should be remembered that one great use of a metropolis, if not the greatest, is to test every thing for the benefit of the whole of the rest of the country. The country may, according to circumstances, be more or less ready to avail itself of the benefit; but the benefit exists, and waits for acceptance. Now, the Americans have no metropolis. Their cities are all provincial towns. It may be, in their circumstances, politically good that they should have the smallest possible amount of centralization; but the want of this centralization is injurious to their scientific and philosophical progress and dignity, and therefore to their national originality. A conjurer’s trip through the English counties is very like the progress of a lecturer, or newly imported philosopher, through the American cities. The wonder, the excitement, the unbounded credulity, are much alike in the two cases; but in the English village there may be an old man under the elm smiling good-naturedly at the show without following after it; or a sage young man who could tell how the puppets are moved, as well as if he saw the wires. And so it is in the American cities. The crowd is large, but every body is not in it: the believers are many; but there are some who foresee how soon the belief will take a new turn.

When Spurzheim was in America, the great mass of society became phrenologists in a day, wherever he appeared; and ever since, itinerant lecturers have been reproducing the same sensation, in a milder way, by retailing Spurzheimism, much deteriorated, in places where the philosopher had not been. Meantime, the light is always going out behind, as fast as it blazes up round the steps of the lecturer. While the world of Richmond and Charleston is working at a multiplication of the fifteen casts (the same fifteen or so) which every lecturer carries about, and all caps and wigs are pulled off, and all fair tresses dishevelled, in the search after organization, Boston has gone completely round to the opposite philosophy, and is raving about spiritualism to an excess which can scarcely be credited by any who have not heard the Unknown Tongues. If a phrenological lecturer from Paris, London, or Edinburgh, should go to Boston, the superficial, visible portion of the public would wheel round once more, so rapidly and with so clamorous a welcome on their tongues, that the transported lecturer would bless his stars which had guided him over to a country whose inhabitants are so candid, so enlightened, so ravenous for truth. Before five years are out, however, the lecturer will find himself superseded by some professor of animal magnetism, some preacher of homeopathy, some teacher who will undertake to analyze children, prove to them that their spirits made their bodies, and elicit from them truths fresh from heaven. All this is very childish, very village-like; and it proves anything rather than originality in the persons concerned. But it does not prove that there is not originality in the bosom of a society whose superficial movement is of this kind; and it does not prove that national originality may not arise out of the very tendencies which indicate that it does not at present exist.

The Americans appear to me an eminently imaginative people. The unprejudiced traveller can hardly spend a week among them without being struck with this every day. At a distance, it is seen clearly enough that they do not put their imaginative power to use in literature and the arts; and it does certainly appear perverse enough to observers from the Old World that they should be imitative in fictions (whether of the pen, the pencil, stone, or marble), and imaginative in their science and philosophy, applying their sober good sense to details, but being sparing of it in regard to principles. This arbitrary direction of their imaginative powers, or rather its restriction to particular departments, is, I believe and trust, only temporary. As their numbers increase, and their society becomes more delicately organized; when, consequently, the pursuit of literature, philosophy, and art, shall become as definitely the business of some men as politics and commerce now are of others, I cannot doubt that the restraints of imitation will be burst through, and that a plenitude of power will be shed into these departments as striking as that which has made the organization of American commerce (notwithstanding some defects) the admiration of the world, and vindicated the originality of American politics, in theory and practice.

However this may be, it is certain that there are individuals existing everywhere, in the very heart of Boston itself, as original as Sam Weller and David Crockett, or any other self-complacent mortal who finds scope for his humours amidst the kindly intricacies of London, or the canebrakes of Tennessee.

Some of the most extraordinary instances I met with of persons growing mentally awry were among the scholars who are thinly sprinkled through the Southern and Western settlements. When these gentlemen first carried their accomplishments into the wilderness, they were probably wiser than any living and breathing being they encountered. The impression of their own wisdom was deep from the beginning; and it continues to be deepened by every accident of intercourse with persons who are not of their way of thinking; for, to differ from them is to be wrong. At the same time, their ways of thinking are such as are not at all likely to accord with other people’s; so that their case of delusion is complete. I saw a charming pair of professors in a remote State, most blest in their opinions of themselves. They were able men, or would have been so amidst the discipline of equal society; but their self-esteem had sprouted out so luxuriantly as to threaten to exhaust all the better part of them. One of the most remarkable circumstances in the case was that they seemed aware of their self-complacency, and were as complacent about it as about anything else. One speaking of the other says – “A, has been examining my cranium. He says I am the most conceited man in the States, – except himself.”

The exception was a fair one. When I saw B., I thought that I had seen the topmost wonder of the world for self-complacency; but upon this Alp another was to arise, as I found when I knew A. The only point of inferiority in A, is that he is not quite immovably happy in himself. His feet are far from handsome; and no boot-maker at the West End could make them look so. This is the bitter drop in A.’s cup. This is the vulnerable point in his peace. His pupils have found it out, and have obtained a hold over him by it. They have but to fix their eyes upon his feet to throw him into disturbance: but, if they have gone too far, and desire to grow into favour again, they need only compliment his head, and all is well again. He lectures to them on Phrenology; and when on the topic of Galen’s skull, declares that there is but one head known which can compare with Galen’s in its most important characteristics. The students all raise their eyes to the professor’s bald crown, and the professor bows. He exhibits a cast of Burke’s head, mentioning that it combines in the most perfect manner conceivable all grand intellectual and moral characteristics; and adding that only one head has been known perfectly to resemble it. Again the students fix their gaze on the summit of the professor, and he congratulates them on their scientific discernment.

This gentleman patronizes Mrs Somerville’s scientific reputation. He told me one morning, in the presence of several persons whom he wished to impress with the highest respect for Mrs Somerville, the particulars of a call he once made upon her, during a visit to England. It was a long story: but the substance of it was that he found her a most extraordinary person, for that she knew more than he did. He had always thought himself a pretty good mathematician: but she had actually gone further. He had prided himself upon being a tolerable chemist, but he found she could teach him something there. He had reason to think himself a good mineralogist: but when he saw her cabinet, he found that it was possible to get beyond him. On entering her drawing room, he was struck by some paintings which he ascertained to be done by her hand: while he could not pretend to be able to paint at all. He acknowledged that he had, for once, met his superior. Two days after, among a yet larger party, he told me the whole story over again. I fell into an absent fit, in planning how I could escape from the rest of his string of stories, to talk with some one on the opposite side of the room. When he finally declared – “In short, I actually found that Mrs Somerville knows more than I do,” I mechanically answered. “I have no doubt of it.” A burst of laughter from the whole party roused me to a sense of what I had done in taking the professor at his word. His look of mortification was pitiable.

It was amusing to see him with the greatest statesman in the country, holding him by the button for an hour together, while lecturing in the style of a master to a hopeful schoolboy. The pompous air of the professor, and the patient snuff-taking of the statesman under instruction made a capital caricature subject. One of the professor’s most serious declarations to me was that the time had long been past when he believed he might be mistaken. He had once thought that he might be in the wrong, like other people; but experience had taught him that he never erred. As, therefore, he and I did not agree on the point we were conversing about, I must be mistaken. I might rely upon him that it was so.

It is not to be expected that women should resist dangers of position which men, with their wider intercourses, cannot withstand. The really learned and able women of the United States are as modest and simple as people of sound learning and ability are: but the pedantry of a few bookish women in retired country situations exceeds anything I ever saw out of novels and farces.

In a certain region of the United States, there are two sisters, living at a considerable distance from each other, but united (in addition to their undoubted sisterly regard,) by their common belief that they are conspicuous ornaments of their country. It became necessary for me to make a call on one of these ladies. She knew when I was going, and had made preparation for my reception. I was accompanied by three ladies, one of whom was an avowed authoress: a second was a deep and thoroughly exercised scholar, and happened to have published; which the pedantic lady did not know. The third was also a stranger to her, but a very clever woman. We were treated with ludicrous precision, according to our supposed merits; the third-mentioned lady being just honoured with a passing notice, and the fourth totally neglected. There was such an unblushing insolence in the manner in which the blue-stocking set people who had written books above all the rest of the world, that I could not let it pass unrebuked: and I treated her to my opinion that they are not usually the cleverest women who write: and that far more general power and wisdom are required to conduct life, and especially to educate a family of children well, than to write any book or number of books. As soon as there was a pause in the conversation. I rose to go. Some weeks afterwards, when I was on a journey, a lady drove up from a distance on two miles, to make an afternoon call upon me. It was the sister. She told me that she came to carry me home with her for the night, “in order,” said she, “that you may see how we who scribble can keep house.” As I had never had any doubt of the compatibility of the two things, it was of little consequence that I could not go. She informed me that she lectured on Mental and Moral Philosophy to young ladies. She talked with much admiration of Mr Brown as a metaphysician. I concluded this gentleman to be some American worthy, with whom I had to become acquainted: but it came out to be Dr Thomas Brown whom she was praising. She appeared not to know even the names of metaphysicians out of the Scotch school; and if the ghosts of the Scotch schoolmen were present, they might well question whether she understood much of them. She told me that she had a great favour to ask of me: she wanted permission to print, in a note to the second edition of her Lectures on Mental and Moral Philosophy, a striking observation of mine made to her sister, which her sister had transmitted to her by the next post. I immediately assured her that she might print anything that I had said to her sister. She then explained that the observation was that they are not usually the cleverest women who write. I recommended her to make sure of the novelty of the remark before she printed it: for I was afraid that Shakspeare or somebody had had it first. What was the fate of the opinion I do not know; but it may be of use to the sisters themselves if it suggests that they may be mistaken in looking down upon all their sex who do not “scribble.”

I think it must have been a pupil of theirs who wrote me a letter which I threw into the fire in a fit of disgust, the moment I had read it. A young lady, who described herself as “an ambitious girl,” sent me some poetry in a magazine and an explanation in writing of her own powers and aspirations. No one likes aspiration better than I, if only there be any degree of rational self-estimate connected with it. This young lady aspired to enter the hallowed precincts of the temple where Edgeworth, More, and others were immortalized. As for how she was to do it, her case seemed to be similar to that of a West Indian lady who once complained to me that while she was destined by her innate love of the sublime and the beautiful to be distinguished, Providence would not let her. The American young lady, however, hoped that a friendship with me might persuade the world to recognize her powers: and she informed me that she had come to town from a distance, and procured an invitation to a house where I was to spend the evening, that we might begin our friendship. The rooms happened to be so tremendously crowded that I was not obliged to see any more persons than those immediately about me. I was told that the “ambitious girl” was making herself very conspicuous by standing on tiptoe, beaming and fluttering; but I did not look that way and never saw her. I hope she may yet read her own poetry again with new eyes, and learn that the best “ambition” does not write about itself, and that the strongest “powers” are the least conscious of their own operation.

In two of the eastern cities. I met with two ladies who had got a twist in opposite directions. It has been represented in England that a jealousy of English superiority, even in natural advantages, is very prevalent in the United States. I do not think so: and I am by no means sure that it is not nearly as rare as the opposite extreme. One instance of each kind of prejudice came under my notice, and I am not aware of more. At a party at Philadelphia, a lady asked me if I had not crossed the Alleghenies, and whether I did not think them stupendous mountains. I admired the views they presented, and said all I could for the Alleghenies; but it was impossible to agree that they were stupendous mountains. The lady was so evidently mortified, that I began to call the rivers stupendous, which I could honestly do: but this was not the same thing. She said, in a complaining tone,

“Well, I cannot think how you can say there are no high mountains in the United States.”

“You mistake me.” I said. “I have not seen the White Mountains yet; and I hear they are very grand.”

“You English boast so of the things you have got at home!” said she. “Why, I have seen your river Avon, that you make so much of. I stood by the Avon, under Warwick Castle, and I said to my husband that it was a mighty small thing to be talked of at such a distance. Why, if I had been ten years younger. I could almost have jumped over it.”

I told her that I believed the Avon was not so celebrated for the quantity of water in it as on some other accounts.

The lady, who went on the opposite tack, is not very old; and I suppose, therefore, that her loyalty to the crown of England is hereditary. She made great efforts to see me, that she might enjoy my British sympathies. With a grieved countenance she asked me whether the folly and conceit of her countrymen in separating themselves from the crown were not lamentable. She had hoped that before this they would have become convinced of the guilt and silliness of their rebellion, and have sought to be taken back; but she hoped it was not yet too late. I fear she considered me a traitor to my country in not condemning hers. I was sorry to deprive her of her last hope of sympathy; but what could one do in such a case?

There must be many local and professional oddities in a country like America, where individuals fill a larger space in society, and are less pressed upon by influences, other than local and professional, than in Old World communities. A judge in the West is often a remarkable personage to European eyes. I know one who unites all the odd characteristics of the order so as to be worth a close study. Before I left home, a friend desired me to bring her something, she did not care what, that should be exclusively American, – something which could not be procurable any where else. When I saw this judge. I longed to pack him up, and direct him, per next packet from New York to my friend; for he was the first article I met with that could not by possibility have been picked up any where out of the United States. He was about six feet high, lank as a flail, and seeming to be held together only by the long-tailed drab greatcoat into which he was put. He had a quid in his cheek whenever I saw him, and squirted tobacco juice into the fireplace or elsewhere, at intervals of about twenty seconds. His face was long and solemn, his voice monotonous, his manner dogmatical to a most amusing degree. He was a dogged republican, with an uncompromising hatred of the blacks, and with an indifferent sort of pity for all foreigners. This last feeling probably induced him to instruct me on various matters. He fixed his eyes on the fire, and talked on for my edification, but without taking express notice of the presence of any one; so that his lecture had the droll appearance of being a formal soliloquy. In the same speech he declared that no man was made by God to run wild through a forest who was not able to comprehend Christianity at sight; missions to the heathen being therefore sanctioned from heaven itself; and that men with a dark skin cannot, in three years, learn the name of a rope or a point of the compass, and that they are therefore meant to be slaves. It seemed to me that he was bound to suspend the operation of the law against all coloured persons on the ground of their incapacity, – their lack of understanding of the common affairs of life. But the ground of their punishment in this life seemed to be that they might be as wise as they pleased about the affairs of the next. He proceeded with his enunciations, however, without vouchsafing an explanation of these mysteries. It must be an awkward thing to be either a heathen or a negro under his jurisdiction, if he acts upon his own doctrines.

Country doctors are not unlike wild country judges. Being obliged to call in the aid of a village doctor to a companion, I found we had fallen in with a fine specimen of the class. I was glad of this afterwards; but much annoyed at the time by the impossibility of extracting from him the slightest information as to my friend’s state and prospects in regard to her health. I detained him in conversation day after day to no purpose; and varied my questions with as much American ingenuity as I could command; but all in vain. He would neither tell me what was the matter with her, nor whether her illness was serious or trifling, or whether it was likely to be long or short. He would give me no hint which could enable me to form my plans, or to give my distant friends an idea whether or when they might expect to see us. All that he would say was, “Hope your friend will be better:” – “hope she will enjoy better health:” – “will make her better if we can:” – “must try to improve her health:” and so on. I was informed that this was all that I should extract, if the illness were to last a twelvemonth. He took a blue paper with some white powder in it out of one pocket, and a white paper with some other powder out of another pocket; spilled some at random into smaller papers, and gave directions when they should be taken; and my friend speedily and entirely recovered. I never was so completely in the dark about the nature of any illness I witnessed; and I am completely in the dark still. I fancy I hear now the short, sharp, conceited tones of the doctor, doggedly using his power of exasperating my anxiety. Such was not his purpose, however. The country doctors themselves and their patients believe that they cure with far more certainty than any other doctors: the profession are probably convinced that they owe much to the implicit faith of their charge, and are resolved to keep up this faith by being impenetrable; allowing no part of their practice to be made a subject of discussion which can possibly be rendered mysterious. The chief reason of the success of country doctors is, doubtless, that they have to treat chiefly diseases of local prevalence, about which they employ long experience and practised sagacity, without having much account to give of their method of proceeding.

A country physician of higher pretensions than the one who tormented me while curing my friend, told me that Yankee inquisitiveness is the plague of the life of a country doctor. The querists seem to forget that families may object to have domestic sickness made the talk of the village or hamlet, and that the doctor must dislike to be the originator of news of this kind. They stop him on his rounds, to ask whom he is visiting in this direction, and whom in that, and who could be sick on the road in which he was seen going yesterday morning; and what such a one’s complaint is called, and how it is going to be cured, &c. The physician told me that he was driven to invent modes of escape. If he was riding, he appeared to see some acquaintance at a distance, clapped spurs to his horse, and was off: if he was walking, he gave a name of six syllables to the disease asked about, and one of seven syllables to the remedy; thus defying repetition. If our doctor took me to be one of this class of querists, I could easily forgive his reserve.

I was told a story of an American physician which is characteristic, (if it be true) showing how patriotic regards may enter into the practice of medicine. But I give it only as an on dit. It is well known that Adams and Jefferson died on the 4th of July of one year, and Monroe of another. Mr Madison died on the 28th of June, last year. It is said that the physician who attended Mr Monroe expressed regret that he had not the charge of Mr Madison, suspecting that he might have found means to keep him alive (as he died of old age) till the 4th of July. The practice in Mr Monroe’s case is said to have been this: – When he was sinking, some one observed what a remarkable thing it would be if he should die on the anniversary, like Adams and Jefferson. The physician determined he would give his patient the chance of its ending so. He poured down brandy and other stimulants, and omitted no means to keep life in the failing body. On the 3rd of July, the patient was sinking so rapidly that there seemed little chance of his surviving the day. The physician’s exertions were redoubled; and the consequence was that, on the morning of the 4th, there seemed every probability of the patient’s living to the 5th; which was not exactly desired. He died (just as if he wished to oblige his friends to the last,) late in the afternoon of the 4th. So the story runs.

It is astonishing what may be done by original genius, in availing itself of republican sentiment for professional purposes. The drollery infused into the puffing system in America would command the admiration of Puff himself. It may be doubted whether he would have been up to the invention of a recommendation of a certain oil for the hair which I saw at Washington; and which threw us into such a convulsion of laughter that the druggist behind the counter had to stand waiting some time before we could explain our business to him. A regiment of persons were represented walking up to a perfumer’s counter with bald skulls of all degrees of ugliness; and walking away from it graced with flowing tresses of every hue, which they were showing off with gestures of delight. This was an ingenious device, but not perfectly wise, as it contained no appeal to patriotic feelings. I saw one at an optician’s at Baltimore, of a decidedly more elevated character. There were miniature busts in the window of Franklin, Washington, and Lafayette, each adorned with a tiny pair of spectacles, which made the busts appear as sage as life. Washington’s spectacles were white; Franklin’s green; and Lafayette’s neutral tint.

I acknowledge myself indebted for a new professional idea to an original in the bookselling line, in a large American city. I am not sure that his originality extended beyond the frankness of his professional discourse; but that was infinitely striking. He told me that he wanted to publish for me, and would offer as good terms as anybody. I thanked him, but objected that I had nothing to publish. He was sure I must have a book written about America. I had not, and did not know that I ever should have. His answer, given with a patronizing air of suggestion, was, “Why, surely, madam, you need not be at a loss about that. You must have got incident plenty by this time: and then you can Trollopize a bit, and so make a readable book.”

In the West, we were thrown into the society of a girl, about whom we were completely puzzled. Our New England friends could only conclude, with us, that she had been trained amidst the usages of some retired district, to a freedom which is certainly very unusual in the country. In a stage which took up our party at a country hotel, near the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, was a girl, of about two-and-twenty, oddly dressed. She got out and breakfasted with the other passengers, looking perfectly at her ease. We concluded that she belonged to one of two gentlemen in the stage; and we rather wondered that any gentleman should like to travel with a companion so untidily dressed as she was. She had a good black silk gown; but over it was pinned a square net handkerchief, unhemmed, and therefore looking ragged. She had black stockings; but shabby shoes, of some dark-coloured leather, not black; and they were tied on with twine, where the strings had given way. Her straw bonnet was shabby. She had nothing with her but a basket which she carried on her knees. She joined freely and pleasantly in conversation; and showed none of the common troublesome timidity, amidst the disasters of the day and of the ensuing night. It was very sultry weather. One of the horses fell from heat, in the midst of the Barrens; and we all had to walk up the hills, and no short distance in the forest. The roads were so bad that the driver tried his utmost to alarm the passengers, in order to induce some to lighten his vehicle by remaining behind; but the girl seemed not in the least daunted. In the course of the night we were overturned, and had no light but what was afforded by the gentlemen walking before the stage, holding tallow candles which they had bought by the roadside; but nothing disconcerted the young lady. She was a girl of nerve and of patience, it was clear. She refused to sit down to the first meal we had on the road; and the reason of her abstinence appeared before the day was over. When we changed coaches, and it was necessary to pay, on striking into a new route, she coolly inquired if any gentleman would ask a free passage for her, till she could send the money out of Indiana, where she was going. It was now evident that she was alone; every passenger having supposed that she was of the party of somebody else. She gave no further explanation than that she had “come off in a hurry,” no one knowing of it but two of the slaves; and that she should send the money out of Indiana. There was not the slightest confusion in her manner; nor any apparent consciousness that she was behaving strangely. One of the gentlemen made himself answerable for her fare, and she proceeded with us.

At Elizabeth’s Town, the next morning, she refused breakfast, with the utmost cheerfulness; but our friend Mr L. invited her to sit down with us; which she did with a good grace. At seven in the evening we arrived at Louisville, and alighted at the great hotel; one of the largest, handsomest, and most luxurious in the United States, and of course expensive. We chose apartments while Mr L. ordered supper in a private room for our party. Almost before my companion and I could turn ourselves round in our chamber, the lone girl, who had followed us about like a ghost, was taking her hair down at my dressing table. Mrs L. hastened to inform her that this room was engaged; but, pointing out that there were three beds, she said she should like to lodge here. Of course this could not be allowed; and, as soon as she found that we wished to be alone, she went away. When we descended with Mrs L. to her room, we found the poor girl dressing there. Mrs L. now took upon her to advise. She observed to the young person that she would probably be more comfortable in a less expensive hotel; to which she agreed. The same elderly gentleman who answered for her fare took her to a respectable hotel near at hand, and commended her to the care of the landlady, who promised to see her off for Indiana in the morning. We quitted Louisville at dawn, and heard no more of the lone girl, of whom we have often since thought and spoken. The odd circumstances of the case were her freedom from all embarrassment, and her cheerfulness on the road and while fasting, from want of money. There was not a trace of insanity in her manners, though her dress at first suggested the idea; and we could perceive no symptoms of the fear of pursuit or hurry of spirits which would have been natural consequences of a clandestine flight. Yet, by her own account, she must have done something of the kind.

Though the freedom of travelling is not such as to admit of young ladies making their way about quite alone, in a way so unceremonious as this, the liberty of intercourse on the road is very great, and highly amusing to a stranger. One day in Virginia, on entering our parlour at a hotel where we were merely stopping to dine, I was amused to see our lawyer companion, Mr S., in grave consultation with the hostess, while Mrs S., her silk bonnet on her knee, and a large pair of scissors in hand, was busy cutting, slashing, and rending a newspaper on which the bonnet peak was spread. There was evidently so much more show than use in what she was doing, that I could not understand her proceedings. “What are you about?” asked I. Mrs S. pointed to the landlady, and, trying to help laughing, told me that the hostess had requested the pattern of her bonnet. While this pretence of a pattern was in course of preparation by the lady, the hostess was getting a legal opinion out of the gentleman about a sum of 800 dollars which was owing to her. If we had only stayed to tea, I doubt not our landlady would have found some employment for every one of us, and have favoured us, in return, with all the rest of her private affairs.

Originals who are so in common circumstances, through their own force of soul, ruling events as well as being guided by them, yield something far better than amusement to the observer. Some of these, out of almost every class, I saw in America, from the divine and statesman down to the slave. I saw a very old lady whom I consider to be one, not on account of her extraordinary amiability and sympathy with all ages (which cause her to be called Grandmama by all who know her), but because this temper of mind is the result of something higher than an easy disposition and prosperous circumstances. It is the accomplishment of a long-settled purpose. When Grandmama J. was eight years old, she was in company with an old lady who was jealous, exacting, and peevish. On returning home, the child ran to her mother and said, “If I am ever an old lady, I will be a good-tempered old lady.” This was not said and forgotten, like many childish resolutions formed under the smart of elderly people’s faults. It was a real purpose. She knew that in order not to be cross when old, it is necessary to be meek, patient, and cheerful when young. She was so; and the consequence is, that Grandmama J.’s popularity is unbounded. She is cherished by the whole community to whom she is known. The children want to have her at their dances; and the youths and maidens are always happiest where she is. She looks as if no shadow of care had been cast over her bright spirit for many a long year; and as if she might yet have many sunny years to come. She is preacher, prophet, and dispenser of amiability, all in one.

The venerable Noah Worcester is an original. I am thankful to have seen this aged apostle, – for so he should be considered, – having had a mission, and honourably discharged it. He is the founder of Peace Societies in America. Noah Worcester was a minister of the Gospel, of orthodox opinions. By the time he was surrounded by a family of young children, he had changed his opinions, and found himself a Unitarian. He avowed the change, resigned his parish, and went forth with his family, without a farthing in the world, or any prospect of being able to obtain a subsistence. He wrote diligently, but on subjects which were next his heart, and on which he would have written, in like manner, if he had been the wealthiest of American citizens. He set up the “Christian Disciple,” – a publication which has done honour to its supporters, both under its original title, and its present one of “The Christian Examiner.” He devoted his powers to the promotion of Peace principles, and the establishment of Peace Societies. Whatever may be thought of the practical effects, in a narrow view, of such societies, they seem to have well answered a prodigious purpose in turning men’s contemplations full on the subject of true and false honour, and in inducing a multitude of glorious experiments of living strictly according to a principle which happens to be troublesome in its application. The number of peace-men, practisers of non-resistance, out of the Quaker body, is considerable in America; and their great living apostle is Noah Worcester. The leaders of the abolition movement are for the most part peace-men; an inestimable circumstance, as it takes out the sting from the worst of the slanders of their enemies, and gives increased effect to their moral warfare. Human nature cannot withstand the grandeur of the spectacle of men who have all the moral power on their side, and who abide unresistingly all that the physical power of the other side can inflict. The boldest spirits tremble, hearts the most hardened in prejudice melt, when once they come into full view of this warfare; and the victory vests with the men of peace, – who all love the name of Noah Worcester. Nearly twenty years ago he was encompassed with distresses for a time. Indeed, his life has been one of great poverty till lately. He is not one of the men made to be rich, or to spend his thoughts on whether he was happy or not. He was sent into the world for a very different purpose, with which, and with its attendant enjoyments, poverty could but little interfere. But, in the midst of his deep poverty came sickness. His two daughters were at once prostrated by fever, and a severe struggle it was before they got through. Two friends of mine nursed them; and in the discharge of their task learned lessons of faith which they will be for ever thankful for; and of those graces which accompany the faith of the heart, – cheerfulness of spirits, and quietude and simplicity of manner. My friends were not at the beginning fully aware of the condition of the household. They were invited to table at the early dinner hour. On the table stood a single brown loaf and a pitcher of water. Grace was said, and they were invited to partake with the utmost ease and cheerfulness; and not a word passed in reference to the restriction of the fare. This was what God had been pleased to provide, and it was thankfully accepted and hospitably shared. The father went from the one sick room to the other, willing to receive what tidings might await him, but tender to his daughters, as they have since been to him. On one evening, when all looked threatening, he asked the friendly nurse whether the voice of prayer would be injurious to his sick children: finding that they desired to hear him, he set open the doors of their chambers, kneeled in the passage between, and prayed – so calmly, so thankfully, that the effect was, to compose the spirits of the invalids. One now lives with him, and cherishes him. She has changed her religious opinions, and become orthodox; but she has not changed towards him. They are as blessed in their relation as ever.

Noah Worcester was seventy-six when I saw him, in the autumn of 1835. He was very tall, dressed in a grey gown, and with long white hair descending to his shoulders. His eye is clear and bright; his manner serious but cheerful. His evening meal was on the table, and he invited us to partake, with the same grace with which he offered his harder fare to the guests of former years. He lives at Brighton, a short distance from Boston, where his daughter manages the post office; by which their humble wants are supplied. He had lately published, and he now presented me with his “Last Thoughts,” on some religious subjects which had long engaged his meditations. I hope his serene old age may yet be prolonged, gladsome to himself and eloquent to the world.

There is a remarkable man in the United States, without knowing whom it is not too much to say that the United States cannot be fully known. I mean by this, not only that he has powers and worth which constitute him an element in the estimate to be formed of his country, but that his intellect and his character are the opposite of those which the influences of his country and his time are supposed almost necessarily to form. I speak of the author of the Oration which I have already mentioned as being delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society last August, – Mr Emerson. He is yet in the prime of life. Great things are expected from him; and great things, it seems, he cannot but do, if he have life and health to prosecute his course. He is a thinker and a scholar. He has modestly and silently withdrawn himself from the perturbations and conflicts of the crowd of men, without declining any of the business of life, or repressing any of his human sympathies. He is a thinker without being solitary, abstracted, and unfitted for the time. He is a scholar without being narrow, bookish, and prone to occupy himself only with other men’s thoughts. He is remarkable for the steadiness and fortitude with which he makes those objects which are frequently considered the highest in their own department subordinate to something higher still, whose connexion with their department he has clearly discovered. There are not a few men, I hope, in America, who decline the pursuit of wealth: not a few who refrain from ambition: and some few who devote themselves to thought and study from a pure love of an intellectual life. But the case before us is a higher one than this. The intellectual life is nourished from a love of the diviner life of which it is an element. Consequently, the thinker is ever present to the duty, and the scholar to the active business of the hour: and his home is the scene of his greatest acts. He is ready at every call to action. He lectures to the factory people at Lowell when they ask it. He preaches when the opportunity is presented. He is known at every house along the road he travels to and from home, by the words he has dropped and the deeds he has done. The little boy who carries wood for his household has been enlightened by him; and his most transient guests owe to him their experience of what the highest grace of domestic manners may be. He neglects no political duty, and is unmindful of nothing in the march of events which can affect the virtue and peace of men. While he is far above fretting himself because of evil-doers, he has ever ready his verdict for the right, and his right hand for its champions. While apart from the passions of all controversies, he is ever present with their principles, declaring himself and taking his stand, while appearing to be incapable of contempt of persons, however uncompromising may be his indignation against whatever is dishonest and harsh. Earnest as is the tone of his mind, and placidly strenuous as is his life, an exquisite spirit of humour pervades his intercourse. A quiet gaiety breathes out of his conversation: and his observation, as keen as it is benevolent, furnishes him with perpetual material for the exercise of his humour. In such a man, it is difficult to point out any one characteristic; but if, out of such a harmony, one leading quality is to be distinguished, it is in him modest independence. A more entire and modest independence I am not aware of having ever witnessed; though in America I saw two or three approaches to it. It is an independence equally of thought, of speech, of demeanour, of occupation, and of objects in life: yet without a trace of contempt in its temper, or of encroachment in its action. I could give anecdotes; but I have been his guest, and I restrain myself. I have spoken of him in his relation to society; and have said only what may be and is known to common observers.

Such a course of life could not have been entered upon but through discipline. It has been a discipline of calamity as well as of toil. As for the prospect, it is to all appearance very bright. Few persons are apparently placed so favourably for working out such purposes in life. The condition seems hard to find fault with; and as to the spirit which is to work upon it, – though I differ from some of the views of the thinker, and do not sympathize with all of those tastes of the scholar which I am capable of entering into, – I own that I see no defect, and anticipate nothing short of triumph in the struggle of life.

Something may be learned of this thinker and his aims from a few passages of his address; though this is the last purpose, I doubt not, that he dreamed of his work being used for. He describes the nature of the occasion. “Our holiday has been, simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more.” His topic is, the American scholar; and he describes the influences which contribute to form or modify him: – the influence of Nature; the mind of the past; and action in life. He concludes with a consideration of the duty of the scholar.

“There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, – as unfit for any handiwork or public labour as a penknife for an axe. The so-called ‘practical men’ sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy, – who are always more universally than any other class, the scholars of their day, – are addressed as women; that the rough spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised: and, indeed, there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice; but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know as I have lived.

“… The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness, – he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.

“The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? He can still fall back on this elemental force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those ‘far from fame’ who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display. Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his instinct screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not out of those on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkers, come at last Alfred and Shakspeare. I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labour to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labour is every where welcome: always we are invited to work: only be this limitation observed, that, a man shall not, for the sake of wider activity, sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.

“… They (the duties of the scholar) are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be comprised in self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonoured, and unpaid task of observation. Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed observatory, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and the results being splendid and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, – watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts: correcting still his old records; must relinquish display and immediate fame. In the long period of his preparation, he must, betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept – how often! poverty and solitude. For the case and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty, and loss of time which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself form private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart in all emergencies, in all solemn hours has uttered as its commentary on the world of actions, – these he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of today, – this he shall hear and promulgate. These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honourable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation; patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time, – happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone that this day he has seen something truly.

“… I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming days as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and science; through Church and State. One of these signs is the fact that the same movement which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the State, assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the low the common was explored and poetized. That which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to the richer than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign – is it not? – of new vigour, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy and Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common. I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; – show me the ultimate reason of these matters; – show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; – and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

“… Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement, is, the new importance given to the single person. Everything that tends to insulate the individual, – to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign State with a sovereign State, – tends to true union as well as greatness. ‘I learned,’ said the melancholy Pestalozzi, ‘that no man in God’s wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.’ Help must come, from the bosom alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one lesson more than another which should pierce his ear, it is, – The world is nothing: the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare all. Mr President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, – but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, – some of them suicides. What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career, do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience – patience; – with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work, the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be a unit? – not to be reckoned one character; – not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear; but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the North or the South. Not so, brothers and friends, – please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

Of the last class of originals, – those who are not only strong to form a purpose in life and fulfil it, but who are driven by pressure of circumstance to put forth their whole force for the control of other destinies than their own, – there is no more conspicuous example than Father Taylor, as he is called. In America there is no need to explain who Father Taylor is. He is known in England, but not extensively. Father Taylor is the seamen’s apostle. He was a sailor boy himself; and at twenty years old was unable to read. He rose in his calling, and at length became full of some religious convictions which he longed to express. He has found a mode of expression, and is happy. He is one of the busiest and most cheerful of men; and of all preachers living, probably the most eloquent to those whom his preaching suits. So it would appear from events. I heard him called a second, homely Jeremy Taylor: and I certainly doubt whether Jeremy Taylor himself could more absolutely sway the minds and hearts of the learned and pious of his day than the seamen’s friend does those of his flock. He has a great advantage over other preachers in being able to speak to his hearers from the ground of their common experience; in being able to appeal to his own sea life. He can say, “You have lodged with me in the forecastle; did you ever know me profane?” “You have seen me land from a long voyage. Where did I betake myself? Am not I a proof that a sea life need not be soiled with vice on land?” All this gives him some power; but it would be little without the prodigious force which he carries in his magnificent intellect and earnest heart.

A set of institutions is connected with the Boston Port Society, whose agent Mr Taylor is. There is the Seamen’s Bethel, in North Square, where Mr Taylor preaches: a Reading room, and a Nautical School; a Temperance Society, and the Bethel Union; the last being an association of seamen and masters of vessels, for the purpose chiefly of settling disputes without litigation and scandal, promoting the just and kind treatment of seamen, and watching over their rights. There is also a Clothing Society, the object of which is economy rather than charity: and a Savings’ Bank for seamen, the merits of which are sufficiently indicated by the title.

Father Taylor is the life and soul of all this. Some help him liberally with the purse, and many with head and hands: but he is the animating spirit of the whole. His chapel is filled, from year’s end to year’s end, with sailors. He has no salary, and will not hear of one. He takes charge of all the poor connected with his chapel. To many this must look like an act of insanity. No class is more exposed to casualties than that of seamen; and when a life is lost, an entire helpless family comes upon the charity of society. Father Taylor speaks of his ten thousand children: and all the woes and faults of a multitude are accumulated upon his hands: and yet he retains the charge of all his poor, though he has no fixed income whatever. He does it by putting his charge in the way of helping each other and themselves. He encourages sobriety and economy in all their habits, and enforces them with a power which it would be vain to attempt to give an idea of. He uses the utmost openness about his plans: and thereby obtains valuable co-operation. He has a collection of money made twice every Sunday in his church. The sums are given by the seamen, almost exclusively, and are in very small coin; but the amount has gone on increasing, from first to last, except during intervals when Father Taylor was absent for his health. Between the years 1828 and 1835, the annual sum thus contributed rose from 98 to 1079 dollars.

Boston owes to Mr Taylor, and to Dr Tuckerman, its convictions of the pernicious operation of some of the old methods of charity by almsgiving; and the names of these gentlemen ought ever to be held in honour, for having saved the young community in which they dwell from the curse of such pauperism in kind, – (the degree could never have become very formidable,) – as has afflicted the kingdoms of the old world. Mr Taylor owns that he little foresaw what he was undertaking in assuming the charge of all his poor, under such liabilities as those who follow the seaman’s calling are exposed to: but he does it. The funds are, as it has been seen, provided by the class to be benefited; and they have proved hitherto sufficient, under the wise administration of the pastor and his wife, and under the animating influence of his glowing spirit, breathed forth from the pulpit and amidst their dwellings. It seems as if his power was resorted to in difficult and desperate cases, like that of a superior being; such surprising facts was I told of his influence over his flock. He was requested to visit an insane man, who believed himself to be in heaven, and therefore to have no need of food and sleep. The case had become desperate, so long had the fasting and restlessness continued. Father Taylor prevailed at once: the patient was presently partaking of “the feast of the blessed,” with Father Taylor, and enjoying the “saints’ rest on a heavenly couch.” From carrying a single point like this to redeeming a whole class from much of the vice and woe which had hitherto afflicted it, the pastor’s power seems universally to prevail.

I have not mentioned all this time what Father Taylor’s religion is, – or, rather, what sect he belongs to. This is one of the last considerations which, in his case, occurs to an observer. All the essentials of his faith must be so right, to produce such results, that the separate articles of belief do not present themselves for inquiry. He is “orthodox,” (Presbyterian:) but so liberal as to be in some sort disowned by the rigid of his sect. He opens his pulpit to ministers of any protestant denomination; and Dr Beecher, and other bigots of his own sect, refused to preach thence after Unitarians. When this opposition of theirs diminished the contributions of his people, during his absence, they twitted him with it, and insultingly asked whether he cheated the Unitarians, or they him? to which he replied, that they understood one another, and left all unfair proceedings to a third party.

Mr Taylor has a remarkable person. He is stoutly built, and looks more like a skipper than a preacher. His face is hard and weather-beaten, but with an expression of sensibility, as well as acuteness, which it is wonderful that features apparently so immovable can convey. He uses a profusion of action. His wife told me that she thought his health was promoted by his taking so much exercise in the shape of action, in conversation as well as in the pulpit. He is very loud and prodigiously rapid. His splendid thoughts come faster than he can speak them; and at times he would be totally overwhelmed by them, if, in the midst of his most rapid utterance of them, a burst of tears, of which he is wholly unconscious, did not aid in his relief. I have seen them streaming, bathing his face, when his words breathed the very spirit of joy, and every tone of his voice was full of exhilaration. His pathos, shed in thoughts and tones so fleeting as to be gone like lightning, is the most awful of his powers. I have seen a single clause of a short sentence call up an instantaneous flush on the hundreds of hard faces turned to the preacher; and it is no wonder to me that the widow and orphan are cherished by those who hear his prayers for them. The tone of his petitions is importunate, – even passionate; and his sailor hearers may be forgiven for their faith, that Father Taylor’s prayers cannot be refused. Never, however, was anything stranger than some particulars of his prayers. I have told elsewhere,[31] how importunately he prayed for rain, in fear of conflagration, – and as it happened, the Sunday before the great New York fire. With such petitions, urged with every beauty of expression, he mixes up whatever may have struck his fancy during the week, whether mythology, politics, housewifery, or anything else. He prayed one day, when dwelling on the moral perils of seamen, “that Bacchus and Venus might be driven to the end of the earth, and off of it.” I heard him pray that Members of Congress might be preserved from buffoonery. Thence he passes to supplication, offered in a spirit of sympathy which may appear bold at another moment, but which is true to the emotion of the hour. “Father! look upon us! We are a widow.” “Father! the mother’s heart thou knowest: the mother’s bleeding heart thou pitiest. Sanctify to us the removal of this lamb!”

The eloquence of his sermons was somewhat the less amazing to me from my feeling that, if there be inspiration in the world, it arises from being so listened to. It was not like the preaching of Whitfield; for all was quiet in Father Taylor’s church. There were no groans, few tears, and those unconsciously shed, rolling down the upturned face, which never for a moment looked away from the preacher. His voice was the only sound, – now tremendously loud and rapid, overpowering the senses; now melting into a tenderness like that of a mother’s wooings of her infant. The most striking discourse I heard from him was on the text, “That we, through the comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.” A crew from among his hearers were going to sail in the course of the week. He gave me a totally new view of the great trial of the seaman’s life, – the pining for rest. Never, among the poets of the earth, was there finer discourse of the necessity of hope to man; and never a more tremendous picture of the state of the hopeless. Father Taylor is no reader, except of his Bible; and probably never heard of any poem on the subject on which he was speaking: and he therefore went unhesitatingly into a picture of what hope is to the mariner in his midnight watches, and amidst the tossing of the storm; and if Campbell had been there, he would have joyfully owned himself outdone. But then the preacher went off into one of his strange descriptions of what people resort to when longing for a home for their spirits, and not finding the right one. “Some get into the stomach, and think they can make a good home of that: but the stomach is no home for the spirit:” and then followed some particular reasons why. Others nestle down into people’s good opinion, and think if they can get praise enough, they shall be at peace. “But opinion is sometimes an easy trade wind, and sometimes a contrary hurricane.” Some wait and wait upon change; but the affairs of Providence go on while such are standing still, “and God’s chronometer loses no time.” After a long series of pictures of forlornness, and pinings for home, he burst forth suddenly upon the promise, “I will give you rest.” He was for the moment the wanderer finding rest; his flood of tears and of gratitude, his rapturous account of the change from pining to hope and rest were real to himself and to us for the time. The address to the departing seamen was tender and cheerful; with a fitting mention of the chances of mortality, but nothing which could be ever construed by the most superstitious of them, in the most comfortless of their watches, into a foreboding.

Such preaching exerts prodigious power over an occasional hearer; and it is an exquisite pleasure to listen to it: but it does not, for a continuance, meet the religious wants of any but those to whom it is expressly addressed. The preacher shares the mental and moral characteristics, as well as the experience in life of his nautical hearers; their imaginative cast of mind, their superstition, their strong capacity for friendship and love, their case about the future, – called recklessness in some, and faith in others. This is so unlike the common mind of landsmen, that the same expression of worship will not suit them both. So Father Taylor will continue to be the seaman’s apostle; and, however admired and beloved by the landsman, not his priest. This is as it should be, and as the good man desires. His field of labour is wide enough for him. No one is more sensible than he of its extent. He told me what he tells seamen themselves, – that they are the eyes and the tongues of the world, – the seed carriers of the world – the winged seeds from which good or evil must spring up on the wildest shores of God’s earth. His spirit is so possessed with this just idea of the importance of his work, that praise and even immediate sympathy are not necessary; though the last is, of course, pleasant to him. One Christmas Day there was a misunderstanding as to whether the chapel would be open; and not above twenty people were present: but never did Father Taylor preach more splendidly.

There is one great drawback in the religious services of his chapel. There is a gallery just under the roof for the people of colour; and “the seed carriers of the world” are thus countenanced by Father Taylor in making a root of bitterness spring up beside their homes, which, under his care, a better spirit should sanctify. I think there can be no doubt that an influence so strong as his would avail to abolish this unchristian distinction of races within the walls of his own church: and it would elevate the character of his influence if the attempt were made.

No one doubts Garrison’s being an original. None who know him can wonder that the coloured race of Americans look upon him as raised up to be their deliverer, as manifestly as Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage.

William Lloyd Garrison was, not many years ago, a printer’s boy. The time will come when those who worked by his side will laboriously recall the incidents of the printing office in those days, to make out whether the poor boy dropped expressions or shot glances which indicated what a spirit was working within him, or prophesied of the work which awaited him. By some accident his attention was turned to the condition of the coloured race, and to colonization as a means of rescue. Like all the leading abolitionists, Garrison was a colonizationist first; but before his clear mind, enlightened by a close attachment to principles, and balanced by his being of a strong practical turn, the case soon appeared in its true aspect.

Garrison, then a student in some country college, I believe, engaged to deliver a lecture on colonization; and, in order to prepare himself, he went down to Baltimore to master the details of the scheme, on the spot where it was in actual operation. His studies soon convinced him of the fallacies and iniquities involved in the plan; and he saw that nothing short of the abolition of the slave system would redeem the coloured race from their social depression. A visitation of persecution came at this time in aid of his convictions. A merchant of Newburyport, Massachusetts, gave permission to the master of a vessel of which he was the owner to freight the ship with slaves at Baltimore, and carry them down to the New Orleans market. Garrison commented upon this transaction in a newspaper, in the terms which it deserved, but which were libellous, and was in consequence brought to a civil and criminal trial, thrown into prison, and fined 1000 dollars, which he had not the remotest prospect of being able to pay. When he had been imprisoned three months, he was released by the fine being paid by Arthur Tappan, of New York; a gentleman who was an entire stranger to Garrison, and who did this act (the first of a long series of munificent deeds) for the sake of the principle involved in the case.

Of this gentleman a few words before we proceed. He is one of the few wealthy original abolitionists; and his money has been poured out freely in the cause. He has been one of the most persecuted, and his nerves have never appeared to be shaken. He has been a mark for insult from the whole body of his countrymen (except a handful of abolitionists) for a series of years; and he has never, on this account, altered his countenance towards man or woman. His house was attacked in New York, and his family driven from the city: he quietly took up his abode on Long Island. His lady and children are stared at like wild beasts on board a steamboat: he tranquilly observes on the scenery. His partners early remonstrated with him on the injury he was doing to his trade by publicly opposing slavery, and supported one another in declaring to him that he must give up his connexion with the abolitionists. He heard them to an end: said, “I will be hanged first,” and walked off. When I was in America, immense rewards for the head, and even for the ears of Mr Tappan, were offered from the South, through advertisements in the newspapers, and handbills. Whether these rewards were really offered by any Committee of Vigilance or not was the same thing to Mr Tappan: he was in either case in equal danger from wretches who would do the deed for money. But it cannot be thought improbable that a Committee of Vigilance should commit an act of any degree of eccentricity at a time of such panic that a meeting was called in a new settlement in Alabama, for the purpose of voting Mr O’Connell a nuisance. Mr Tappan’s house on Long Island is in an exposed situation: but he hired no guard, and lost not an hour’s sleep. When some one showed him one of these handbills, he glanced from the sum promised to the signatures; – “Are these good names?” said he. A cause involving a broad principle, and supported to the point of martyrdom by men of this make, is victorious from the beginning. Its complete triumph is merely a question of time.

Garrison lectured in New York, in favour of the abolition of slavery, and in exposure of the colonization scheme; and was warmly encouraged by a few choice spirits. He went to Boston for the same purpose: but in the enlightened and religious city of Boston, every place in which he could lecture was shut against him. He declared his intention of lecturing on the Common if he could get no door opened to him: and this threat procured for him what he wanted. At his first lecture he fired the souls of some of his hearers; among others, of Mr May, the first Unitarian clergyman who embraced the cause. On the next Sunday Mr May, in pursuance of the custom of praying for all distressed persons, prayed for the slaves; and was asked, on descending from the pulpit, whether he was mad.

Garrison and his fellow workman, both in the printing office and the cause, – his friend Knapp, – set up the Liberator, – in its first days a little sheet of shabby paper, printed with old types, and now a handsome and flourishing newspaper. These two heroes, in order to publish their paper, lived for a series of years in one room, on bread and water, “with sometimes,” when the paper sold unusually well, “the luxury of a bowl of milk.” In course of time twelve men formed themselves into an abolition society at Boston, and the cause was fairly afoot.

It was undergoing its worst persecutions just before I entered Boston for the winter. I had resolved, some time before, that having heard every species of abuse of Garrison, I ought in fairness to see him. The relation of the above particulars quickened my purpose; and I mentioned my wish to the relator, who engaged that we should meet, mentioning that he supposed I was aware what I should encounter by acknowledging a wish to see Garrison. I was staying at the house of a clergyman in Boston, when a note was brought in which told me that Mr Garrison was in town, and would meet me at any hour, at any friend’s house, the next day. My host arrived at a knowledge of the contents of the note, quite against my will, and kindly insisted that Mr Garrison should call on me at home. At ten o’clock he came, accompanied by his introducer. His aspect put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in me. I was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance glowing with health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation, and gentleness. I did not now wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop window, without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it, as the most saint-like of countenances. The end of the story is, that when the citizen found whose portrait he had been hanging up in his parlour, he took the print out of the frame and huddled it away. Garrison has a good deal of a Quaker air; and his speech is deliberate like a Quaker’s, but gentle as a woman’s. The only thing that I did not like was his excessive agitation when he came in, and his thanks to me for desiring to meet one “so odious” as himself. I was, however, as I told him, nearly as odious as himself at that time; so it was fit that we should be acquainted. On mentioning afterwards to his introducer my impression of something like a want of manliness in Garrison’s agitation, he replied that I could not know what it was to be an object of insult and hatred to the whole of society for a series of years: that Garrison could bear what he met with from street to street, and from town to town; but that a kind look and shake of the hand from a stranger unmanned him for the moment. How little did the great man know our feelings towards him on our meeting; – how we, who had done next to nothing, were looking up to him who is achieving the work of an age, and, as a stimulus, that of a nation!

His conversation was more about peace principles than the great subject. It was of the most practical cast. Every conversation I had with him confirmed my opinion that sagacity is the most striking attribute of his conversation. It has none of the severity, the harshness, the bad taste of his writing: it is as gladsome as his countenance, and as gentle as his voice. Through the whole of his deportment breathes the evidence of a heart at ease: and this it is, I think, more than all his distinct claims, which attaches his personal friends to him with an almost idolatrous affection.

I do not pretend to like or to approve the tone of Garrison’s printed censures. I could not use such language myself towards any class of offenders; nor can I sympathise in its use by others. But it is only fair to mention that Garrison adopts it warily; and that I am persuaded that he is elevated above passion, and has no unrighteous anger to vent in harsh expressions. He considers his task to be the exposure of fallacy, the denunciation of hypocrisy, and the rebuke of selfish timidity. He is looked upon by those who defend him in this particular, as holding the branding iron: and it seems true enough that no one branded by Garrison ever recovers it. He gives his reasons for his severity with a calmness, meekness, and softness which contrast strongly with the subject of the discourse, and which convince the objector that there is principle at the bottom of the practice. One day, when he was expressing his pleasure at Dr Channing having shaken hands with him the preceding day, he spoke with affectionate respect of Dr Channing. I asked him who would have supposed he felt thus towards Dr Channing, after the language which had been used about him and his book in the Liberator of the last week. His gentle reply was,

“The most difficult duty of an office like mine is to find fault with those whom I love and honour most. I have been obliged to do it about —, who is one of my best friends. He is clearly wrong in a matter important to the cause; and I must expose it. In the same way, Dr Channing, while aiding our cause, has thought fit to say that the abolitionists are fanatical; in other words, that we set up our wayward wills in opposition to the will we profess to obey. I cannot suffer the cause to be injured by letting this pass: but I do nonetheless value Dr Channing for the things he has done.”

I was not yet satisfied of the necessity of so much severity as had been used. Garrison bore with me with a meekness too touching to be ever forgotten.

He never speaks of himself or his persecutions unless compelled; and his child will never learn at home what a distinguished father he has. He will know him as the tenderest of parents, before he becomes aware that he is a great hero. I found myself growing into a forgetfulness of the deliverer of a race in the friend of the fireside. One day, in Michigan, two friends (who happened to be abolitionists) and I were taking a drive with the Governor of the State, who was talking of some recent commotion on the slavery question. “What is Garrison like?” said he. “Ask Miss M.,” said one smiling friend: “Ask Miss M.,” said the other. I was asked accordingly: and my answer was that I thought Garrison the most bewitching personage I had met in the United States. The impression cannot but be strengthened by his being made such a bugbear as he is: but the testimony of his personal friends, the closest watchers of his life, may safely be appealed to as to the charms of his domestic manners.

Garrison gaily promised me that he would come over whenever his work is done in the United States, that we may keep jubilee in London. I believe it would be safe to promise him a hundred thousand welcomes as warm as mine.

Volume 3

Lake George

“Those now by me as they have been,

Shall never more be heard or seen;

But what I once enjoy’d in them,

Shall seem hereafter as a dream.”

G. Wither

Everybody who has heard of American scenery has heard of Lake George. At one time I was afraid I should have to leave the States without having visited the lake of all others which I most desired to see; so many hindrances had fallen in the way of my plans. A few weeks before I left the country, however. I was fortunate enough to be included in a party of four, who made a trip to the Springs and the Lake. It was not in the fashionable season: and for this I was not sorry. I had seen the Virginia Springs and Rockaway in the plenitude of their fashionable glory: and two such exhibitions are enough for one Continent.

It was about noon on the 12th of May when we alighted shivering from the rail car at Saratoga. We hastened to the Adelphi: and there found the author of Major Jack Downing’s Letters, and two other gentlemen, reading the newspapers round a stove. We had but little time to spare; and as soon as we had warmed ourselves, and ascertained the dinner hour, we set forth to view the place, and taste the Congress Water. There is nothing to be seen but large white frame houses, with handsome piazzas, festooned with creepers – (at this time only the sapless remains of the garlands of the last season). These houses and the wooden temple over the principal spring are all that is to be seen, – at least by the bodily eye. The imagination may amuse itself with conjuring up the place as it was less than half a century ago, when these springs bubbled up amidst the brush of the forest. their qualities being discovered by the path through the woods worn by the deer in their resort to it. In those days, the only edifices were a single log hut and a bear pound: a space enclosed with four high walls, with an extremely narrow entrance, where it was hoped that bears might get in during the dark hours, and be unable to find their way out again. Times are much changed now. There are no bears at Saratoga but a two-legged species from Europe, dropping in, one or two in a season, among the gentry at the Springs.

The process of bottling the Congress Water was in full activity when we took our first draught of it. Though the utmost celerity is used, the water loses much of its virtue and briskness by bottling. The man and boy whom we saw filling and corking the bottles with a dexterity which only practice can give, are able to dispatch a hundred dozen per day. There are several other springs, shedding waters of various medicinal virtues: but, the Congress fountain is the only one from which the stranger would drink as a matter of taste.

The waterworks are just at hand, looking like a giant’s shower bath. At the top of the eminence close by, there is a pleasure railroad, – a circular track, on which elderly children may take a ride round and round in a self-moving chair; an amusement a step above the old merry-go-round in gravity and scientific pretension. But for its vicinity to some tracts of beautiful scenery Saratoga must be a very dull place to persons shaken out of their domestic habits, and deprived of their usual occupations: and the beauties of the scenery must be sought, Saratoga Lake lying three miles, Glen’s Falls eighteen, and Lake George twenty-seven miles from the Springs.

At dinner, Mr R., the gentleman of our party, announced to us that he had been able to engage a pretty double gig, with a pair of brisk ponies, for ourselves, and a light cart for our luggage. The day was very cold for an open carriage; but it was not improbable that, before twenty-four hours were over, we might be panting with heat: and it was well to be provided with a carriage in which we might most easily explore the lake scenery, if we should be favoured with fine weather.

The cart preceded us. On the road, a large white snake made a prodigious spring from the grass at the driver, who, being thus challenged, was not slow in entering into combat with the creature. He jumped down, and stoned it for some time with much diligence, before it would lie down so that he might drive over it. As we proceeded, the country became richer, and we had fine views of the heights which cluster round the infant Hudson, and of the Green Mountains of Vermont.

We were all astonished at the splendour of Glen’s Falls. The full though narrow Hudson rushes along amidst enormous masses of rock, and leaps sixty feet down the chasms and precipices which occur in the passage, sweeping between dark banks of shelving rocks below, its current speckled with foam. The noise is so tremendous that I cannot conceive how people can fix their dwellings in the immediate neighbourhood. There is a long bridge over the roaring floods, which vibrates incessantly; and clusters of sawmills deform the scene. There is stone-cutting as well as planking done at these mills. The fine black marble of the place is cut into slabs, and sent down to New York to be polished. It was the busiest scene that I saw near any water-power in America.

Lake George lies nine miles beyond Glen’s Falls. We saw the lake while we were yet two miles from Caldwell, the pretty village at its southern extremity. It stretched blue among the mountains in the softening light; and we anticipated what our pleasures were to be, as we looked upon the framework of mountains in which this gem is set. We had just emerged from a long and severe winter. We had been walking streets in every stage of thaw; and it was many months since we had loitered about in the full enjoyment of open air and bright verdure, as we hoped to do here. This trip was to be a foretaste of a long summer and autumn of outdoor delights.

The people at the inn were busy cleaning, in preparation for summer company: but they gave us a welcome, and lodged and tended us well. Our windows and piazza commanded a fine view of the lake, (here just a mile broad,) of the opposite mountains, and of the white beach which sweeps round the southern extremity of the sheet of waters, – as transparent as the sea about the Bermudas.

As we had hoped, the next morning was sunny and warm. We employed it in exploring the ground about Fort William Henry, which stands on an eminence a little way back from the water, and is now merely an insignificant heap of ruins. The French and Indians used to pour down upon the settlements in the plains by the passes of the lakes Champlain and George; and near these passes were fought some of the severest battles recorded in American history. The mountain opposite our windows at the Lake House is called French Mountain, from its being the point where the French showed themselves on the bloody 8th of September, 1755, when three battles were fought in the neighbourhood on the same day. It was two years later, when the Marquis of Montcalm conducted an army of 10,000 men to invest Fort William Henry. Colonel Monroe, who held it for the British, was obliged, after a gallant defence, to capitulate. He marched out with 3000 men, and many women and children. The Indians attached to the French army committed outrages which it is thought the Marquis might have prevented. But it is probable that when the guilt of taking savages for allies in offensive warfare is once incurred, any amount of mischief may ensue, which no efforts of the commander can control. Every one knows the horrible story of Miss McCrea, the young lady who was on the way to be married to her lover in the British army, and was tomahawked and scalped by the Indians in whose charge she was travelling. During the recrimination between the commanders on this occasion, General Burgoyne explained his inability to control the movements of passionate savages: and it must be supposed that Montcalm had no more power over the Indians who plundered and then murdered almost the whole number of the British who evacuated Fort William Henry. It was a horrible scene of butchery. We went over the ground, now waste and still, tangled with bushes, and inhabited only by birds and reptiles.

After wandering for some hours on the beach, and breaking our way through the thick groves which skirt it, dwelling upon the exquisite scene of the blue lake, with its tufted islands, shut in by mountains, we wished to find some place where we might obtain an equally good distant view, and yet enjoy the delights of the margin of the water. By climbing a fence, we got to a green bank, whence we could reach a log in the water; and here we basked, like a party of terrapins, till dinner time. The foliage of the opposite woods, on French Mountain, seemed to make great progress under the summer warmth of this day; and by the next morning, the soft green tinge was perceptible on them, which, after the dry hardness of winter, is almost as beautiful as the full leaf.

After dinner, we took a drive along the western bank of the lake. The road wound in and out, up and down on the mountainous barrier of the waters; for there was no beach or other level. One of the beauties of Lake George is that the mountains slope down to its very margin. Our stout ponies dragged us up the steep ascents, and rattled us down on the other side in charming style; and we were so enchanted with the succession of views of new promontories and islands, and new aspects of the opposite mountains, that we should have liked to proceed while any light was left, and to have taken our chance for getting back safely. But Mr R. pointed to the sinking sun, and reminded us that it was Saturday evening. If the people at the inn were Yankees, they would make a point of all the work of the establishment ceasing at sunset, according to the Sabbath customs of New England; and we must allow the hostler a quarter of an hour to put up the ponies. So we unwillingly turned, and reached Caldwell just as the shutters of the stores were in course of being put up, and the last rays of the sun were gushing out on either side the mountain in the rear of the village. At the Lake House, the painters were putting away their brushes, and the scrubbers emptying their pails; and by the time twilight drew on, the place was in a state of Sunday quietness. We had descried a church standing under the trees close by; and the girl who waited on us was asked what services there would be the next day. She told us that there was regular service during the summer season, when the place was full, but not at present: she added, “We have no regular preacher just now; but we have a man who can make a very smart prayer.”

The next day was spent in exploring the eastern side of the lake for some distance, on foot; and in sitting on a steep grassy bank under the pines, with our feet overhanging the clear waters glancing in the sun. Here we read and talked for some hours of a delicious summer Sunday. I spent part of the afternoon alone at the fort, amidst a scene of the profoundest stillness. I could trace my companions as they wound their way at a great distance, along the little white beaches, and through the pine groves: the boat in the cove swayed at the end of its tether, when the wind sent a ripple across its bows: the shadows stole up the mountain sides; and an aged labourer sauntered along the beach, with his axe on his shoulder, crossed the wooden bridge over a brook which flows into the lake, and disappeared in the pine grove to the left. All else was still as midnight. My companions did not know where I was, and were not likely to look in the direction where I was sitting: so when they came within hail, – that is, when from mites they began to look as big as children, – I sang as loud as possible to catch their attention. I saw them speak to each other, stop, and gaze over the lake. They thought it was the singing of fishermen; and it was rather a disappointment when they found it was only one of ourselves.

On the Monday we saw the lake to the best advantage by going upon it. We took boat, directly after breakfast, having a boy to row us; – a stout boy he must be; for he can row twenty-eight miles on the hottest summer’s day. The length of the lake is thirty-six miles; a long pull for a rower; but accomplished by some who are accustomed to the effort. First, we went to Tea Island. I wish it had a better name; for it is a delicious spot, just big enough for a very lazy hermit to live in. There is a teahouse to look out from; and, far better, a few little reposing places on the margin, – recesses of rock and dry roots of trees, made to hide one’s self in for thought or dreaming. We dispersed; and one of us might have been seen by any one who rowed round the island, perched in every nook. The breezy side was cool, and musical with the waves. The other side was warm as July, and the waters so still that the cypress twigs we threw in seemed as if they did not mean to float away. Our boatman laid himself down to sleep, as a matter of course; thus bearing testimony to the charms of the island; for he evidently took for granted that we should stay some time. We allowed him a long nap, and then steered our course to Diamond Island. This gay handful of earth is not so beautiful as Tea Island, not being so well tufted with wood; but it is literally carpeted with forget-me-not. You tread upon it as upon clover in a clover field.

We coasted the eastern shore as we returned, winning our way in the still sunshine, under walls of rock, overhung by projecting trees; and round promontories, across little bays, peeping into the glades of the shore, where not a dwelling is to be seen, and where the human foot seems never to have trod. What a wealth of beauty is there here, for future residents yet unborn! The transparency of the waters of this lake is its great peculiarity. It abounds with fish, especially fine red trout. It is the practice of the fishermen to select the prime fish from a shoal; and they always get the one they want. I can easily believe this; for I could see all that was going on in the deep water under our keel, when we were out of the wind; every ridge of pebbles, every tuft of weed, every whim of each fish’s tail I could mark from my seat. The bottom seemed to be all pebbles where it was not too deep to be clearly seen. In some parts the lake is of unmeasured depth.

It was three o’clock before we returned; and, as it is not usual for visitors to spend six or seven hours of a morning on the lake, the good people at the Lake House had been for some time assuring one another that we must have been cast away. The kind-hearted landlady herself had twice been out on the top of the house to look abroad for our boat. I hope the other members of my party will be spared to visit this scene often again. I can hardly hope to do so; but they may be assured that I shall be with them in spirit: for the time will never come when my memory will not be occasionally treated with some flitting image of Lake George.

Volume 3

Cemeteries

“Diis manibus.”

Ancient Inscription

As might have been predicted, one of the first directions in which the Americans have indulged their taste, and indicated their refinement, is in the preparation and care of their burial places. This might have been predicted by any one who meditates upon the influences under which the mind of America is growing. The pilgrim origin of the New England population, whose fathers seemed to think that they lived only in order to die, is in favour of all thoughts connected with death filling a large space in the people’s minds. Then, in addition to the moving power of common human affections, the Americans are subject to being more incessantly reminded than others how small a section of the creation is occupied by the living in comparison with that engrossed by the dead. In the busy, crowded empires of the old world, the invisible are liable to be forgotten in the stirring presence of visible beings, who inhabit every corner, and throng the whole surface on which men walk. In the new world, it is not so. Living men are comparatively scarce, and the general mind dwells more on the past and the future, (of both which worlds death is the atmosphere,) than in the present. By various influences death is made to constitute a larger element in their estimate of collective human experience, a more conspicuous object in their contemplation of the plan of Providence than it is to, perhaps, any other people. As a natural consequence, all arrangements connected with death occupy much of their attention, and engage a large share of popular sentiment.

I have mentioned that family graveyards are conspicuous objects in country abodes in America. In the valley of the Mohawk, on the heights of the Alleghenies, in the centre of the north-western prairie, wherever there is a solitary dwelling there is a domestic burying place, – generally fenced with neat white palings, and delicately kept, however full the settler’s hands may be, and whatever may be the aspect of the abode of the living. The new burial places which are laid out near the towns may already be known from a distance, by the air of finish and taste about their plantations: and I believe it is allowed that Mount Auburn is the most beautiful cemetery in the world.

Before visiting Mount Auburn, I had seen the Catholic cemetery at New Orleans; and the contrast was remarkable enough. I never saw a city churchyard, however damp and neglected, so dreary as the New Orleans cemetery. It lies in the swamp, glaring with its plastered monuments in the sun, with no shade but from the tombs. Being necessarily drained, it is intersected by ditches of weedy stagnant water, alive with frogs, dragonflies, and mosquito hawks. Irish, French, and Spanish, are all crowded together, as if the ground could scarcely be opened fast enough for those whom the fever lays low; an impression confirmed by a glance at the dates. The tombs of the Irish have inscriptions which provoke a kind of smile, which is no pleasure in such a place. Those of nuns bear no inscription but the monastic name, – Agathe, Serabine, Thérèse, – and the date of death. Wooden crosses, warped in the sun, or rotting with the damp, are in some places standing at the heads of graves, in others are leaning or fallen. Glass boxes containing artificial flowers, and tied with faded ribands stand at the foot of some of these crosses. Elsewhere, we saw pitchers with bouquets of natural flowers; the water dried up and the blossoms withered. One enclosure, surrounding a monument, was adorned with cypress, arbor vitæ, roses, and honeysuckles; and this was a relief to the eye, while the feet were treading the hot dusty walks, or the parched grass. The first principle of a cemetery was here violated, – necessarily, no doubt; but by a sad necessity. The first principle of a cemetery, – beyond the obligation of its being made safe and wholesome, – is that it should be cheerful in its aspect. For the sake of the dead this is right, – that their memories may be as welcome as possible to survivors: for the sake of the living, that superstition may be obviated, and that death may be brought into the most familiar connexion with life that the religion and philosophy of the times will allow; that, at least, no hindrance to this may be interposed by the outward preparations for death.

It has sometimes occurred to me to wonder where a certain class of persons find sympathy in their feelings about their dead friends, or whether they have to do without it; – those, and they are not a few, who are entirely doubtful about a life beyond the grave. There are not a few Christians, I believe, and certainly many who are Christians only nominally or not at all, who are not satisfied about whether conscious life ends here, or under what circumstances it will be continued, or resumed, if this life be but a stage of being. Such persons can meet nothing congenial with their emotions in any cemeteries that I know of; and they must feel doubly desolate when, as bereaved mourners, they walk through rows of inscriptions which all breathe more than hope, certainty of renewed life and intercourse, under circumstances which seem to be reckoned on as ascertained. How strange it must be to such to read of the trumpet and the clouds, of the tribunal and the choirs of the saints, as literal realities, expected like the next morning’s sunrise, and awaited as undoubtedly as the stroke of death, – while they are sending their thoughts abroad meekly, anxiously, imploringly, through the universe, and diving into the deepest abysses of their own spirits to find a resting place for their timid hopes! For such there is little sympathy anywhere, and something very like mockery in the language of the tombs.

Evidences of the two extremes of feeling on this matter are found, I am told, in Père la Chaise and Mount Auburn. In Père la Chaise, every expression of mourning is to be found; few or none of hope. The desolate mother, the bereaved brother, the forlorn child, the despairing husband, all breathe their complaint, with more or less of selfishness or of tenderness; but there is no light from the future shining over the place. In Mount Auburn, on the contrary, there is nothing else. A visitor from a strange planet, ignorant of mortality, would take this place to be the sanctum of creation. Every step teems with the promise of life. Beauty is about to “spring up out of ashes, and life out of the dust:” and Humanity seems to be waiting, with acclamations ready on its lips, for the new birth. That there has been any past is little more than matter of inference. All the woes of bereavement are veiled; all sighs hushed; all tears hidden or wiped away; and thanksgiving and joy abound instead. Between these two states of mind, the seriously, innocently doubtful stand alone, and most desolate. They are speechless, for none question them, or care to know their solicitudes: for they are an unsupposed class in a Christian community. In no consecrated ground are there tombs bearing an expression of doubt or fear; yet with the mind’s eye I always see such, while treading the paths of a cemetery. It cannot be but that among the diversity of minds, diversely trained, there must be some less easily satisfied than others, some sceptical in proportion to the intensity of their affection for the departed; and it is to these that the sympathies of the happier should be given. If the rich should be mindful of the poor, if those who are ashore during the storm cannot but look out for the tempest driven bark, those who part with their friends in sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection, should bear in mind with all tenderness such as have to part with their friends without the solace of that hope. Not that anything can be done for them beyond recognising them as fellow mourners laid under a deeper burden of grief, and needing, therefore, a larger liberty of expression than themselves.

While rambling about in the cheerful glades of Mount Auburn, such thoughts occurred to me, as I hope they often do to others. To us, in whom education, reason, the prophecies of natural religion, and the promises of the gospel unite their influence to generate a perfect belief in a life beyond the grave, it is scarcely possible to conceive how these scenes must appear to one whose prospects are different or doubtful. But it is good for our human sympathies and for our mutual reverence to make the attempt. The conclusion would probably be, with others as with me, that the consecration of this place to hope and triumph would make it too sad for the hesitating and hopeless: and that such probably turn away from the spot where all is too bright and lovely for the desolate of heart.

It is indeed a place for the living to delight in, while watching the sleep of the dead. There is no gloom about it to any but those who look abroad through the gloom of their own minds. It is a mazy paradise, where every forest tree of the western continent grows; and every bird to which the climate is congenial builds its nest. The birds seem to have found out that within that enclosure they are to be unmolested: and there is a twittering in every tree. The clearings are few: the woods preside, with here and there a sunny hillside, and a shady dell; and a gleaming pond catching the eye at intervals. From the summit of the eminence, the view abroad over the woods is wonderfully beautiful, – of the city of Boston on an opposite hill; of Fresh Pond on another side; of the University; and of the green country, studded with dwellings, and terminating in cloud-like uplands. Every aspect of busy life seems to be brought full into the view of the gazer from this “place of sleep.” If he looks immediately below him, he sees here and there a monument shining among the trees; and he can hide himself in a moment in the shades where, as the breeze passes, the birch twinkles among the solemn pines.

As the burial lots have to be described with reference to different portions of the enclosure, every hill, every avenue, footpath and dell must have its name. This naming might have spoiled all, if it had been mismanaged; but this has been skilfully guarded against. The avenues and hills are called after forest trees; the footpaths after shrubs and flowers. Beech, Cypress, and Poplar Avenues; Hazel, Vine, and Jasmine Paths; and on. The monuments must, of course, be ordered by the taste of the holders of lots: and the consequence necessarily is occasional incongruity.

This place arose out of a happy union between two societies; one which had long wished to provide a private rural cemetery, and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. It occurred to some of the members of the latter that the objects of the two associations might be advantageously united; and upon a tract of ground, fit for the purpose, being offered, no time was lost in carrying the scheme into execution. This was seven years ago. The tract of ground lay at a distance of four miles from Boston, and consisted of seventy-two acres. The protection of the legislature was secured at its session in 1831. A large number of lots was immediately taken, and a day was fixed for the consecration of the ground by a public religious service. The day fixed was the 24th of September, 1831. The weather was delicious, and the day one which will never be forgotten by those who assisted in its services.

A deep dell, almost circular, was fitted up with seats. The speakers stood at the bottom, with a pine wood behind them, and at their feet a pond shining with water lilies. From the form of the place, every tone of the speakers voices was heard by the topmost row of persons on the verge of the dell. After instrumental music by the Boston band, there was a prayer, by a venerable Professor of the University; and a hymn, written for the occasion, was sung by all the persons present to the tune of the Old Hundred. Judge Story delivered the Address, – a beautiful composition, full of the feelings natural to one who was about to deposit here a rich heart’s treasure, and who remembered that here he and all who heart him were probably to lie down to their rest.

Judge Story had made me promise at Washington that I would not go to Mount Auburn till he could take me there. The time arrived, the next August; and early on a warm afternoon, we set forth. Several carriages were at the gate; for the place is a favourite resort on other accounts besides its being a “place of sleep.” The gate at the entrance is of imitation granite; for which it is to be hoped the real stone will soon be substituted. The structure is Egyptian, as are the emblems, – the winged globe, the serpent, and the lotus. It is rather strange that the inscription should be taken from the Old Testament, even from Ecclesiastes: “Then shall the dust return to the earth, and the spirit unto God who gave it.”

One of the most conspicuous monuments is Spurzheim’s, – visible almost immediately on entering the place. It is a facsimile of Scipio’s tomb! I could not understand its idea, nor did I meet with any one else who did: nor is it easy to conceive how any thing appropriate to Scipio could suit Spurzheim. I was informed that the fact was that the monument happened to arrive just at the time of Spurzheim’s death: and that the Committee appointed to dispense his funeral honours saved themselves trouble by purchasing the marble. It stands well, on a green mound, on the left hand side of the avenue. Mrs Hannah Adams, the historian of the Jews, had the honour of being the first to be interred in this cemetery. The white obelisk is frequent, and looks well in a place so thickly wooded. Under one of these lie five children of Judge Story removed from another place of sepulture to this beautiful spot. The Connecticut free-stone is much in use, and its reddish hue harmonizes well with what surrounds it. It is particularly fit for the Egyptian fronts to vaults hollowed out of the hillsides. The objection to it for tombs which have to receive an inscription is that it will bear none but gold letters. The granite fronts of Egyptian tombs look well. I thought them the most beautiful burial places I ever saw, – the grass growing thick on the hillside above and on either hand: and, in some instances, a little blooming garden smiling in front. I saw many lots of ground well tended, and wearing the air of luxuriant gardens: some surrounded with palings: some with posts and chains: and others with hedges of cypress or belts of acacia. Many separate graves were studded with flowers: the narrowest and gayest of gardens. Of all the inscriptions, the one which pleased me most was on a monument erected by an only surviving sister to her brother: “Jesus saith unto her, ‘Thy brother shall rise again.’”

While writing. I have been struck by the strong resemblance between the retrospect of travel from home, and that of life from the cemetery. In each contemplation the hosts of human beings who have been seen acting, suffering, and meditating, rise up before the mind’s eye as in a kind of judgment scene, except that they rise up, not to be judged, but to instruct. The profit of travel is realized at home, in the solitude of the study; and the true meaning of human life (as far as its meaning can become known to us here) is best made out from its place of rest. While busy among strangers, one is carried away by sympathy and by prejudice from the point whence foreign society can be viewed with any thing like impartiality: one cannot but hear the mutual recriminations of parties: one cannot but be perplexed by the mutual misrepresentations of fellow citizens: one cannot but sympathize largely with all in turn, since there is a large mixture of truth in all views about which people are strongly persuaded. It is only after sitting down alone at home that the traveller can separate the universal truth from the partial error with which he has sympathized, and can make some approximation towards assurance as to what he has learned, and what he believes. So it is in the turmoil of life. While engaged in it, we are ignorantly persuaded, and liable therefore to be shaken from our certainty: we are disproportionately moved, and we sympathize with incompatibilities; so as to be sure of disappointment and humiliation, inflicted through our best sensibilities. In the place of retrospect we may find our repose again in contemplating our ignorance and weakness, and ascertaining the conviction and strength which they have wrought out for us.

What is gained by living and travelling?

One of the most striking, and even amusing, results is the perception of the transient nature of troubles. The thoughtful traveller feels something like wonder and amusement at himself for being so depressed by evils as he finds himself in the midst of long-idealized objects. He is surprised at his own sufferings from hunger, cold, heat, and weariness; and at his being only prevented by shame from passing some great object unseen, if he has to rouse himself from sleep to look at it, or to forego a meal for its sake. The next time he is refreshed, he wonders how his troubles could ever so affect him: and when at home he looks through the picture gallery of his memory, the afflictions of past hours would have vanished, – their very occurrence would be denied but for the record in the journal. The contemptible entries about cold, hunger, and sleepiness stand, ludicrously enough, among notices of cataracts and mountains, and of moral conflicts in the senates of nations. And so with life. We look back upon our pangs about objects of desire, as if it were the object and not the temper of pursuit which was of importance. We look back on our suffering from disease, from disappointment, from suspense, in times when the great moral events of our lives, or even of the age, were impending, and we disregarded them. We were mourning over some petty loss or injury while a new region of the moral universe was about to be disclosed to us: or fretting about our “roast chicken and our little game at cards,” while the liberties of an empire were being lost or won.

Worse than our own little troubles; probably, has been the fear and sorrow of hurting others. One of the greatest of a traveller’s hardships is the being aware that he must be perpetually treading on somebody’s toes. Passing from city to city, from one group of families to another, where the divisions of party and of sect, the contrariety of interests, and the world of domestic circumstance, are all unknown to him, he can hardly open his lips without wounding somebody; and it makes him all the more anxious if, through the generosity of his entertainers, he never hears of it. No care of his own can save him from his function of torturer. He cannot speak of religion, morals and politics: he cannot speak of insanity, intemperance, or framing, or even of health, riches, fair fame and good children, without danger of rousing feelings of personal remorse or family shame in some, or the bitter sense of bereavement in others. Little or nothing has been said of this as one of the woes of travelling; but in my own opinion, this is the direction in which the fortitude of the traveller is the most severely tried. Yet in the retrospect, it seems even good that we should have been obliged thus to call the generosity and forbearance of our hosts into exercise. They are doubtless benefited by the effort; and we may perhaps be gainers, – the direct operation of forbearance and forgiveness being to enhance affection. The regard of those whom we have wounded may perhaps be warmer than if we had never hurt them. It is much the same with men’s mutual inflictions in life. None of us, especially none who are frank and honest, can speak what we think, and act according to what we believe, without giving pain in many directions. It is very painful, but quite unavoidable. In the retrospect, however, we are able to smile on the necessity, and to conclude that, as we have been willing to bear our share of the wounding from others, and should perhaps have been sorry if it had not happened, it is probable that others may have regarded us and our inflictions in the same way.

Nothing is more conspicuous in the traveller’s retrospect than the fact how little external possession has to do with happiness. As he wanders back over city and village, plantation and prairie, he sees again care on the brow of the merchant, and mirth in the eyes of the labourer: the soulless faces of the rich Shakers rise up before him, side by side with the gladsome countenance of the ruined abolitionist. Each class kindly pities the one below it in power and wealth: the traveller pities none but those who are wasting their energies in the exclusive pursuit of either. Generally speaking, they have all an equal endowment of the things from which happiness is really derived. They have, in pretty equal distribution, health, senses and their pleasures, homes, children, pursuits, and successes. With all these things in common, the one point of difference in their respective amounts of possession of more than they can at present eat, use, and enjoy, seems to him quite unworthy of all the compassion excited by it: though the compassion, having something: amiable in it, is of a kindly use, as far as it goes. In a cemetery, the thoughtless are startled into the same perception. How destitute are the dead in their graves! How naked is the spirit gone from its warm housings and environment of luxuries! This is the first thought. The next is, was it ever otherwise? Had these luxuries ever anything to do with the peace of the spirit, except as affording a pursuit for the employment of its energies? Is not as vigorous and gladsome a mind to be found abroad in the fields, or singing at the mill, as doing the honours of the drawing room? and, if it were not so, what words could we find strong enough for the cruelty of the decree under which every human being is compelled to enter his grave solitary and destitute? In the retrospect of the recent traveller in America, the happiest class is clearly that small one of the original abolitionists, – men and women wholly devoted to a lofty pursuit, and surrendering for it much that others most prize: and in the retrospect of the traveller through life, the most eminently blessed come forth from among all ranks and orders of men, – some being rich and others poor; some illustrious and others obscure; but all having one point of resemblance, that they have not staked their peace on anything so unreal as money or fame.

As for the worth of praise, the traveller cannot have gone far without finding it out. He has been praised and blamed at every turn: and he soon sees that what people think of him matters to themselves and not to him. He applies this to himself, and finds confirmation. It is ludicrous to suppose that what he thinks of this man and that, whose motives and circumstances he can never completely understand, should be of lasting importance to the subjects of his observation; while he feels it to be very important to his own peace and state of temper that he should admire as much and despise as little as reason will allow. That this is not more felt and acted upon is owing to the confined intercourses of the majority of men. If, like the traveller, they were for a long time exposed to a contrariety of opinions respecting themselves, they would arrive at the conviction which rises “by natural exhalation” from the field of graves, that men’s mutual judgements are almost insignificant to the objects of them, while immeasurably important to those who form them. When we look about us upon this obelisk and that urn, what matter the applauses and censures of the neighbours of the departed, in the presence of the awful facts here declared, that he has lived and is gone? In this mighty transaction between himself and his Maker, how insignificant to him are the comments of beings between whom and himself there could exist no complete understanding in this life! But there is no overrating the consequences to himself of having lived with high or low models before his eyes; in a spirit of love or a spirit of contempt; in a process of generous or disparaging interpretation of human actions. His whole future condition and progress may be affected by it.

Out of this matter of mutual opinion arises a cheering emotion, both to the retrospective traveller and to the thinker among the tombs. Each foreign companion of the one, and each who lies buried about the path of the other, has had his hero, and even succession of heroes, among the living. I know not what those who despise their kind can make of this fact, – that every human being whom we know has found in every stage of his conception of moral beauty, some living exemplification which satisfied him for the time. The satisfaction is only temporary, it is true; and the admiration fades when the satisfaction is impaired; but this only shows the vigour of the moral nature, and its capacity of progress. The fact that every man is able to make idols, though he must “find them clay,” is a proof of the vast amount of good which human character presents to every observer. The reality of this is very striking in the existence of villagers, who find so much excellence round about them that they cannot believe any other part of God’s world is so good as their village: but the effect to the traveller of going from village to village, from city to city, during his wanderings of ten thousand miles, and finding the same worship, the same prejudice, born of mutual reverence and love, wherever he goes, is exhilarating to his heart of hearts. The testimony at the same time to the love and existence of goodness is so overpowering, that it must subdue misanthropy itself, if only misanthropy could be brought into the presence of a large number of the human race; which, it may be suspected, has never been done. When we extend our view from the field of travel to the world of the dead, and remember that every one of the host has had his succession of heroes and demigods, and probably of worshippers also, what words can express the greatness of the homage rendered to goodness? It drowns all the praises practically offered to the powers of evil, from the first hour of sin and sorrow till now.

The mysterious pain of partings presses upon the returned traveller and the survivor, with nearly equal force, I do not know whether this woe is usually taken into the estimate of travellers when they are counting the cost of their scheme before setting out; but I know that it deserves to be. I believe that many would not go if they could anticipate the misery of such partings as those which must be encountered in a foreign country, in long dreary succession, and without more hope than in parting with the dying. The chances of meeting again are small. For a time, the grief soothes itself by correspondence; but this cannot last, as one family group after another opens its arms to the stranger, and gives him a home, only that he must vacate it for another. The correspondence slackens, fails, and the parties are to one another as if they were dead, with the sad difference that there is somewhat less faith in each other than if they were in circumstances in which it is physically impossible that they could communicate. To the survivor of intercourse, in either place of meditation, there remains the heart-soreness from the anguish of parting, – that pain which, like physical pain, takes us by surprise with its bitterness at each return, and disposes us at length to either cowardice or recklessness: and each of these survivors may be conscious of some visitations of jealousy, – jealousy lest the absent should be learning to forget the past in new interests and connexions.

The strongest point of resemblance in the two contemplations of the life which lies behind, is this; that a scene is closed, and another is opening. The term of existence in a foreign land, and the somewhat longer term spent on this planetary island, are viewed as over; and the fatigues, enjoyments, and perplexities of each result in an amount of calm experience. The dead, it is hoped, are entering on a new region in which they are to act with fresh powers and a wiser activity. The refreshed traveller has the same ambition. I have surveyed my experience, and told my tale; and, though often visiting America in thought, can act no more with reference to my sojourn there, but must pass over into a new department of inquiry and endeavour. Friendships are the grand gain of travel over a continent or through life: and these may be carried forward into new regions of existence here, as we hope they may be into the unexplored hereafter, to give strength and delight to new exertions, and to unite the various scenes of our being by the strongest ties we know.

Endnotes

[1] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 10

[2] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 91

[3] Society in America, vol. 2, p. 188

[4] Society in America, vol. 3, p. 87

[5] It is familiar to all that the cataract of Niagara is supposed to have worn its way back from the point of the narrowing of its channel (the spot where we now sat), and that there is an anticipation of its continuing to retire the remaining twelve miles to Lake Erie. Unless counteracting agencies should meantime have been at work, the inundation of the level country which must then take place will be almost boundless. The period is, however, too remote for calculation. An American told me, smiling, that the apprehension has not yet affected the title to land. And no one knows what secret barriers may be building up, or drains opening.

[6] A rope has since been stretched along the rock to serve for a hand rail. This must render the expedition far less formidable than before.

[7] Monthy Repository, New Series vol. 7, p. 235

[8] Rutt’s Life, Correspondence, and Works of Priestley, Vol. 1, Part 2, p. 237

[9] In the “Christian Disciple.”

[10] Society in America part 3, chapter 4.

[11] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 60

[12] Society in America, vol. 2, p. 160

[13] Jefferson’s Memoir and Correspondence, vol. 4, p. 428. February 17th, 1826

[14] Society in America, vol. 2, p. 183

[15] For an explanations of Nullification, and a short history of the struggle for the Nullifiers, see Society in America, vol. 1, p. 92-109

[16] Society in America, vol. 2, p. 179

[17] Society in America, vol. 2, p. 326

[18] Creole means native. French and American creoles are natives of French and American extraction

[19] Society in America, vol. 2, p. 101

[20] Jefferson’s Correspondence, vol. 4, p. 115

[21] Christian Examiner, for September, 1834

[22] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 220-225

[23] The region however must be less desolate than it was. The land in the neighbourhood had been worth only twenty-five cents per acre, and was now worth just six times as much.

[24] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 227

[25] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 227

[26] “Purgatories. I know not what fancied resemblances have applied this whimsical name to several extensive fissures in the rocks of New England.” – Professor Hitchcock’s Geology, &c., of Massachusetts. p. 114

[27] Théorie des Signes, pour servir d’introduction à l’étude des langues.” Avertissement.

[28] I have just received the following works, printed at the Boston press for the use of the blind. I shall be thankful for assistance in getting them into use, – in securing a fair trial of them by blind pupils:

Six copies of the Book of Psalms, Pilgrim’s Progress, Dairyman’s Daughter, Life of Philip Melancthon; and An Atlas of the United States.

[29] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 281

[30] Society in America, vol. 1, p. 169-176

[31] Society in America, vol. 2 p. 264

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