The Project Gutenberg EBook of Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume II (of 2), by Harriet Martineau This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume II (of 2) Author: Harriet Martineau Release Date: July 19, 2012 [EBook #40281] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL, VOL II *** Produced by Julia Miller, Steven Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
BY
HARRIET MARTINEAU,
AUTHOR Of "SOCIETY IN AMERICA," "ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY," ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY SAUNDERS AND OTLEY
NEW-YORK:
SOLD BY HARPER & BROTHERS
1838.
About four o'clock in the afternoon of the 6th of May we were convoyed, 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 [Pg 6] 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 upward 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 afterward 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 [Pg 7] staterooms 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 deck 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 amid 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 [Pg 8] 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 moschetoes. 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 sugarhouse 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. [Pg 9] 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 their being no room for them below; and, till they had settled themselves, sleep was out of the question for those whose staterooms 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 amid 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 sugarhouses, 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 [Pg 10] tempted the pencil of an artist. The fields 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 Statehouse, where the legislature of Louisiana once sat, which was afterward removed to New-Orleans, whence it has never come back. Its bayou boasts a steamer, by which planters in the south back-country are conveyed to their estates on leaving 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 stateroom 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:—
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 [Pg 11] 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 dulness 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 perpetual 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 Mississippi, 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 [Pg 12] 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 overheard, 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. [Pg 13]
We passed Baton Rouge, on the east 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. It 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 be 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. Amid the desolation and abominable dirt, I observed a moscheto 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 [Pg 14] 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 see 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 [Pg 15] 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 flatboats 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 flatboat 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 shadow, 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 amid 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 fitfully along the shore 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 [Pg 16] sight of the bluff on which the city is built, we received a hint from the steward to lock our staterooms 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 Courthouse, 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 deposites 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 [Pg 17] 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 Courthouse 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 upward 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 [Pg 18] 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 recognise 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 stateroom window, sometimes reading and sometimes looking out upon the sunny river, green woods, and flatboats 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 afterward that the service had been held against the wishes of the captain, Mr. E., and many others; and that it had better, on all [Pg 19] 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 a 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. After 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 [Pg 20] slovenly, and the lady's dress fitted so neatly, as 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 eyes 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 [Pg 21] 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 eying 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 turn 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 fellow-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 woodashes 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 [Pg 22] that the lady had been doing something which had at 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 stateroom 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. E. 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 lookout 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 [Pg 23] 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 amid 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[1] 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 sungleam 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 [Pg 24] 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 tableland. 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 anything 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. [Pg 25] "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 unencumbered 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 slaveland, 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 twelve hundred 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 [Pg 26]
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 beholding 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 capacity 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 comparitive) retain the supremacy, even through a display [Pg 27] 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 beheld 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
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 an 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 [Pg 28] 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. The new states northwest 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 procure 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 afterward 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 bonâ 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 [Pg 29] same description 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 farther 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 [Pg 30] diabolical character to their hatred of negroes and the friends of negroes. That such is the temper of those who conduct popular 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 jail 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 jail, 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 citizens assembled round the jail in the afternoon, demanding the prisoner, and the jailer delivered him up. He was led into the woods on the outskirts of 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 followed. A voice cried out, "Burn him!" Many tongues echoed the cry. Brushwood 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 behold the act of the six, further than that they were afraid to interfere! [Pg 31]
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 a 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; others 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 [Pg 32] 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 [Pg 33] 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 to 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 he 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 [Pg 34] all eyes that the halter and the cowhide would have been mercy 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 neighbouring free states, instead of being a nest of vagabond slavedealers, rapacious slavedrivers, 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.
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 [Pg 36] 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 creeks, 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 survivers, 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 downward 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 be fiercer there than in the plague-seasons of the Old World; but that, in a country so much more Christianized in a 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 [Pg 37] 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, gray-looking potatoes, gigantic radishes, sour bread, and muddy water in dirty tumblers. The only eatable thing on the table was a saucerful 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 [Pg 38] 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 heated 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 provisions 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 [Pg 39] 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 bazar 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 for us for an afternoon's 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 [Pg 40] 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 [Pg 41] 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 exhaust-less 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 first two 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 farther, the fine river Tennessee drains the eastern half of that state, dips into [Pg 42] 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.
"Farther 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 repass 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 [Pg 43] 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 germes 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 schoolbooks, 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, patronise 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 [Pg 44] 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 brassfounding, teaurns, 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 [Pg 45] 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 never more see it look so beautiful.
We soon entered a somewhat different scene, passing the slaughter-houses 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 slaughter-houses 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 carcass 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 slaughter-houses 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 slaughter-house 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 teatable 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 teatable 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 [Pg 46] 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 visiters; 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 saw 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 [Pg 47] 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 [Pg 48] 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 amid which he was placed. It was obvious that the character of the face, when undisturbed by passion, was that of careless gayety. 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 on us for an expedition into Kentucky. We crossed the river in the ferryboat 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 [Pg 49] 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; [Pg 50] 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 lawyer who talked with enthusiasm about Channing, and with strong sense about everything 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 great 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 afterward 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 [Pg 51] in a sort of minuet step, unquestionably a gentleman as he was in all essential respects; and one young lady, who was, I fancy, taking her first peep at the world, kept her eyes earnestly fixed on the guests as they entered, bowing unconsciously in sympathy with every gentleman who bowed, and courtesying with every lady who courtesied. She must have been well practised 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 amid 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 parklike 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 afterward, when the gentlemen [Pg 52] 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 law-breakers; 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 prizegivers afterward proved themselves "the vulgar" of the city.
The children were neatly 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 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 [Pg 53] 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 be well if those whose office it is to address children were 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 [Pg 54] 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 bazar, to the first concert ever offered to them. This bazar 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 gray 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 beast; 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 first three 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 [Pg 55] 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 the citizens 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 or 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 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 [Pg 56] 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 spot 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 or 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.
Among the strongest of the fresh feelings excited by foreign travel—those fresh feelings which are an actual re-enforcement 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 amid 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 [Pg 58] 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 conversations 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 this region. His observation gave me intense pleasure at the time I heard it; and now, though 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 amid 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 [Pg 59] 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 lovetale has this effect, for true love is the same all over the wide earth. Most tales of wo 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 heartwarming 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 amid 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 a while. 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 [Pg 60] 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 have 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; [Pg 61] 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 freeschools of Cincinnati, when he was appointed to address the children. His evident effort in the pulpit and exhaustion afterward 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 MS. in his hand, and with a faltering voice, and a countenance of repressed grief, told us that Mr. P. had been seized with a 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 bloodvessel. [Pg 62]
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 ease; and no dexterity of his visiters 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 ever. In another month I heard, at a distance, of the child's death. For a [Pg 63] 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 southward. 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 than 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 anything that befell them was to be lamented. I could not but observe the contrast between their countenances and that of their maidservant, whose heart was doubtless aching at having to go back without the child. The mother's feelings were anything but deadened. The cheerfulness and the heart's 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 gayety, that it was easy to bear anything while he was always so strong in spirit and so happy.
This was the last I saw of them. Their travelling 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 anything in their service, was [Pg 64] 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 amid 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 equalizing 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.
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 anything 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 [Pg 66] 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 for ever.
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 sixty to ninety in width, is exquisitely tinted with every shade of gray and brown; while trees encroach from the sides and overhang from the top, between which and the arch there is an additional depth of fifty-six 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 gray 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 recrossed the creek on stepping-stones, searching out every spot to which any tradition belonged. [Pg 67] 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 upward 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 see 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 [Pg 68] 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 copper-headed 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,
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.
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 everything 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 [Pg 70] 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:—
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 ballotting 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 [Pg 72] 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 and 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. [Pg 73]
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 Blennerhassett, 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 Blennerhassett's Island, and the longer he stayed, the deeper was the gloom which overspread the unfortunate family. Blennerhassett 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 ever, 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 [Pg 74] the countries west of the Alleghanies; 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 Blennerhassett'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 re-enforcement, 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 Courthouse: Burr preceded his companion by some yards, and passed on quietly; but his companion inquired 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 inquired 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 [Pg 75] 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 Blennerhassett'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 everything 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 an 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.
Blennerhassett and others were tried on the same charges as Burr; but what became of them I do not remember, farther than that Blennerhassett 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 [Pg 76] 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."[2] 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, and requested to be allowed half an hour's private conversation. Mr. Clay readily agreed to this, and the hour was named. Burr failed to keep his appointment, and never afterward 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 [Pg 77] 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 inquiries 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 a 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 tremour. 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.
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 half buried in gay gardens, or hidden 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 amid which Northampton stands; and their descendants established themselves here, 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 Nonotuc) 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 [Pg 79] 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 be 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 step 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 [Pg 80] 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 scull, 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 tantalized 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 ball 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 lie down in, and spreading boughs of the spruce-fir for [Pg 81] 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 afterward. 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 civilized life, preferring to sleep on the floor on a blanket to using a bed. Some half-breed descendants of hers are living on the borders of Lake Michigan.
The sufferers seemed to have consoled themselves with turning their disasters into verse; sometimes piously, in hymns, and sometimes in a lighter ballad strain, like the following: [Pg 82]—
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 being 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 [Pg 83] 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, amid 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 hidden among trees; and on the hills, still farther 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, [Pg 84] 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 the 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, [Pg 85] 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 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 houses, 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 [Pg 86] 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 hillsides, from the Green Mountains in the north to the fading distance beyond Springfield in the south. To the east the view extends nearly to New-Haven (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 mountain-top with the cabin of a ship. Some person who loves contrast 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 Sugarloaf, ten miles up the valley. We had a warm ride and a laborious scramble up the Sugarloaf; 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 hillsides spoke of civilization; Amherst, with its red buildings, glowed in the sun; and the river below was of a dark gray, 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, [Pg 87] however: the cold of the night had seized it, and it was quite stiff.
The sun set as we returned homeward 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 seagreen 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 go from 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 teatray was brought to me by a [Pg 88] 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 afterward 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 reading 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 [Pg 89] 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 that 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 any more to any one:' so, after a good look at me, the old gentleman went on and the people near seemed soon to have forgotten 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 [Pg 90] than if their remains reposed in a less primitive mode. The stranger is taken by surprise at 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 skepticism. 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 [Pg 91] 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 nation 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 ploughtail. 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.
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, [Pg 92] 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 afterward, 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 twelvepence, 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. Afterward 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 extravagancies 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 [Pg 93] chamber, or any composition therewith," under the 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 corporeal infliction. In Judge Sewell's manuscript diary the following entry is found, dated June 15, 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 [Pg 94] 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. [Pg 95]
When I was at Boston the state of the University was a subject of great mourning among 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 375l. to 125l. 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 years 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 [Pg 96] 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 be 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."[3]
It may be doubted whether, if a gratis education to poor students were to be dispensed from Harvard to-morrow, 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. [Pg 97]
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 greensward, the white palings, and 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 [Pg 98] 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 patronised. 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 afterward 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 [Pg 99] 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 upward 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 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 [Pg 100] 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 firebells 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 [Pg 101] 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 woodashes from room to room; perhaps from general carelessness about woodashes; 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 gayly 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 aids, the corporation and officers of the college, and several distinguished visiters, 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 [Pg 102] 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 afterward 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 [Pg 103] 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 André'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 [Pg 104] 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 behold 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 amid 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 [Pg 105] 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 [Pg 106] 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 law-breakers 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 loghouses 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 [Pg 107] 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 gayety. 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 [Pg 108] 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.
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 amid 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, lilach, and white asters, and gay with golden rod; with which was intermixed, [Pg 109] 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 Winnipiseogee and the Red Mountain) I gave an account in my former work,[4] 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 tiptop of a scraggy blighted tree.
In the steamboat on Lake Winnipiseogee there was a party whom we at once concluded to be bride, bridegroom, and bridemaid. 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 [Pg 110] 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 everything 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 wilderness 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, [Pg 111] but able to make themselves happy in solitude. Their year is passed in alternations of throngs of guests with entire loneliness.[5] During the long dreary season of thaw no one comes in sight; or, if a chance visiter 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 whortleberries 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 amid 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 [Pg 112] from the mountain in the rear of the house.[6] 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 hidden 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 the mutual recitation of poetry. As we drove up to the open door, Mr. D. said, quietly, as he looked up [Pg 113] 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.[7]
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 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 [Pg 114] 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 practice 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." [Pg 115]
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 [Pg 116] 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 farther on. On the way we passed a beautiful lake, overhung by ash, beech, birch, and pine, with towering heights behind. Hereabout 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 rocks, 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 farther 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 road; 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), [Pg 117] 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.
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 [Pg 118] 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 afterward 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 canvass 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 familiarized 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. [Pg 119] 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 farther 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. The 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 [Pg 120] 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 thorough-going abolition sermon. He laid so firm a grasp on the fundamental principles of the case as to satisfy the farsighted 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 [Pg 121] 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 to 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) as that of some who moved earlier, and have risked and suffered more in the same cause. [Pg 122]
Dr. Charming 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 so frequently, that the wonder to persons who use different methods is how, amid so many interruptions, he keeps up any continuity of thought or accomplishes any amount of composition at all. He rarely has his pen in [Pg 123] 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 gray morning-gown, or chatting with any of his family whom he may meet in the walks. "I have prepared this letter," he says, "not amid 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 amid God's works, which seldom fail to breathe tranquillity, 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.[8] By-the-way, he showed me Berkeley's house, of gray stone, rather sunk [Pg 124] 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 amid 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 [Pg 125] the absence of all suspicion that anything 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 everywhere, 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 anything 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 [Pg 126] 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 [Pg 127] 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 familiarized 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 [Pg 128] 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 steps 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.
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 recognised 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 [Pg 129] 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 Leipsic, 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."[9] 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 [Pg 130] 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 subtile 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 [Pg 131] 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 [Pg 132] 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 growth. He is taught expressly what he knows of intellectual and moral affairs; of memory, imagination, science, and sagacity; of justice, fortitude, emotion, [Pg 133] 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 [Pg 134] 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 unpractised observers, to perceive the philosophical truth conveyed 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, [Pg 135] 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 visiter 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. [Pg 136]
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 amid woods and a river, and a barn, whence the thought, by some [Pg 137] 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
"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 hoped 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 those who were deaf and dumb, so that he wished that all of the pupils could go to his house and be at the [Pg 138] 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 thing 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.[Pg 139]
In the girls' workroom there were rows of knitters, straw-platters, and needle-women. The ingenuity they put into their work is great. The nicety of the platting 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 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; [Pg 140] 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 meager 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 eartrumpet 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. [Pg 141] 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 archlooking 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. Everything 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 [Pg 142] 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 Lewistown, 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 one hundred and sixty 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 ferryboat, 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." [Pg 143]
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 seen 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 [Pg 144] 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 a 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.[10] 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 ease 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 [Pg 145] 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 to-morrow, 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 Lancasterian 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.[Pg 146]
"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 went his delicate fingers, 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 dependant. From his birth, or from the period of his loss of sight, he never finds himself addressed in the every-day 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 [Pg 147] 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 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 holyday 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 [Pg 148] 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 seesaw 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 instructers 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 visiters 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 [Pg 149] 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 dependant 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 anybody 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 [Pg 150] 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 a 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 farther in arithmetic than seeing children usually do in the same 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 six thousand 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 upward 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 [Pg 151] 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 [Pg 152] 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, flutes, violins, and the piano. As for humbler matters, besides the ornamental works of the girls, the fringes, braids, lampstands, &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 mantuamaker. 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 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 see the progress of Mr. Friedlander'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 [Pg 153] 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 woodpile.
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, [Pg 154] 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.
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.[11] 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 private 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 peninsula 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, "Oh 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, [Pg 156] 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 gray 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 fishheads 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 [Pg 157] 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 [Pg 158] 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 lilach 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 flatbottomed, 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 homeward 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 [Pg 159] 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 amid the seabreezes on the bright promontories or cool caverns of his native shore.
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.[Pg 160]
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 sooth 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 thorough-going 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.[12] 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 [Pg 161] 18. 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 took 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 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 bonâ 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 [Pg 162] 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 anything 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 [Pg 163] 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 afterward 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 afterward 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 [Pg 164] 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 [Pg 165] 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 [Pg 166] 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 [Pg 167] 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 farthest 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. "Oh," 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 [Pg 168] 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 seen 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.[Pg 169]
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.
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 granddaughter survives; and most of this family died very young, and of different kinds of disease. Never did I see so many wo-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, [Pg 170] 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 merinoes 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,
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 death 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 [Pg 171] 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, everything 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 to-day, 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 a-kimbo, and so assume an air of defiance amid their velocity. Others prefer lying on their stomachs, and so going headforemost; 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 [Pg 172] 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 springboard out in the porch on Christmas day; put your feet in a pailful 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 holyday, 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 [Pg 173] 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 [Pg 174] 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 afterward. 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 afterward 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 [Pg 175] 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 wellspread 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 visiters 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 [Pg 176] 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 colonized 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 afterward 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 [Pg 177] 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 kettleful 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 netmakers, 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 riband; 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 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, [Pg 178] 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 gilded 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 Newyear's tree, however; for I could not go on Christmas-eve, and it was kindly settled that Newyear'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 gilded 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, [Pg 179] 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 Newyear. I have little doubt the Christmas-tree will become one of the most flourishing exotics of New-England.
The skysights of the colder regions of the United States are resplendent in winter. I saw more of the aurora borealis, [Pg 180] 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 saw.
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 [Pg 181] 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 homeward 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 skysights. 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. [Pg 182] 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 southeast to northwest. 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 everybody 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 skysights 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 afterward, that at one o'clock it was 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 dikes 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 [Pg 183] 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 humming-birds. 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 [Pg 184] 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 humming-birds. 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 humming-bird 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. [Pg 185] 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 [Pg 186] 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.
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. [Pg 187] 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 white 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, exceed anything [Pg 188] 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 everything 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 everybody 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 [Pg 189] 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 homœopathy, 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 [Pg 190] self-complacent mortal who finds scope for his humours amid 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 blessed in their opinions of themselves. They were able men, or would have been so amid 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 immoveably happy in himself. His feet are far from handsome, and no bootmaker 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 scull, 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 [Pg 191] 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 patronises 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 chymist, 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 snufftaking 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, [Pg 192] 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 afterward, when I was on a journey, a lady drove up from a distance of 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 [Pg 193] 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 recognise 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 [Pg 194] 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 Alleghanies, and whether I did not think them stupendous mountains. I admired the views they presented, and said all I could for the Alleghanies; 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 [Pg 195] 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 anywhere 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 anywhere 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 [Pg 196] 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 afterward, 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 saw, 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 [Pg 197] 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 talked 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 3d 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 [Pg 198] 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 sculls 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 patronising 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 amid 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, [Pg 199] 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 amid 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 Elizabethtown the next morning she refused breakfast with the utmost cheerfulness; but our friend Mr. L. invited [Pg 200] 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 left 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 [Pg 201] 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 eight hundred 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 grandmamma 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 Grandmamma 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 Grandmamma 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. [Pg 202] 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 peacemen, practisers of nonresistance, 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 peacemen; 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 rests 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 [Pg 203] 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 gray 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 postoffice, 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 [Pg 204] 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 [Pg 205] 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 gayety 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 holyday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters among 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.[Pg 206]
"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. While 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 germe 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 [Pg 207] nature, out of terrible Druids and Bersirkirs 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 everywhere 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 amid appearances. He plies the slow, unhonoured, and unpaid task of observation. Flamstead and Herschel, in their glazed observatory, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and useful, honour 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 ease 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 from 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 [Pg 208] 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 to-day, 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 be 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 to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really [Pg 209] 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 leger 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 a 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 [Pg 210] 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 [Pg 211] speak to his hearers from the ground of their common experience; in being able to appeal to his own sealife. 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 sealife 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 [Pg 212] 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 amid 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 wo 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 [Pg 213] 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 immoveable 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[13] 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 it." I heard him pray that the members of Congress might be preserved from buffoonery. Thence he passes to supplication, offered in a [Pg 214] 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 amid 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 tradewind, 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 [Pg 215] 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 ease 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 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.[Pg 216]
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 he 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 [Pg 217] 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 [Pg 218] 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 saintlike 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. [Pg 219] 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 afterward 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 sympathize 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 [Pg 220] 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 not the less 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 gayly 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.
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 which, of all others, I most desired to see, so many hinderances 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 Rock-away 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 railcar 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 amid 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 loghut and a bearpound; 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 [Pg 222] 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 despatch 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 [Pg 223] 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 amid 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 stonecutting 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 [Pg 224] 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 who 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 dinnertime. 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 [Pg 225] 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, amid 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 [Pg 226] 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 [Pg 227] 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 visiters 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 sure 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.
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 [Pg 228] 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 on 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 Alleghanies, in the centre of the northwestern 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, dragon-flies, and moscheto-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, Seraphine, 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, [Pg 229] 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, arbour 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 survivers; 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 hinderance 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 [Pg 230] 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 visiter 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 skeptical 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 [Pg 231] 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 cloudlike 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 so 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. [Pg 232] 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 Old Hundred. Judge Story delivered the address; a beautiful composition, full of the feelings natural to one who was about to deposite here a rich heart's treasure, and who remembered that here he and all who heard 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 fac-simile of Scipio's tomb! I could not understand its [Pg 233] idea, nor did I meet with any one else who did; nor is it easy to conceive how anything 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 freestone 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 anything like impartiality; one cannot but hear the mutual [Pg 234] criminations 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 sufferings 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 [Pg 235] 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 gaming, 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 [Pg 236] 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 environs 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, a 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 [Pg 237] 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 judgments 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 [Pg 238] 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 surviver with nearly equal force. I do not know whether this wo 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 grief sooths 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 surviver of intercourse, in either place of meditation, there remains the heartsoreness 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 survivers 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 [Pg 239] 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.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon, Esq. Complete in 4 vols. 8vo. With Maps and Engravings.
The History of Modern Europe: with a View of the Progress of Society, from the Rise of the Modern Kingdoms to the Peace of Paris, in 1763. By William Russel, LL.D.: and a Continuation of the History to the present Time, by William Jones, Esq. With Annotations by an American. In 3 vols. 8vo. With Engravings &c.
The Historical Works of William Robertson, D.D. In 3 vols. 8vo. With Maps, Engravings, &c.
The History of the Discovery and Settlement of America. By William Robertson, D.D. With an Account of his Life and Writings. To which are added, Questions for the Examination of Students. By John Frost, A.M. In one volume, 8vo. With a Portrait and Engravings.
The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V.; with a View of the Progress of Society in Europe, from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century. By William Robertson, D.D. To which are added, Questions for the Examination of Students. By John Frost, A.M. In one volume, 8vo. With Engravings.
The History of Scotland, during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI., till his Accession to the Crown of England. With a Review of the Scottish History previous to that Period. Including the History of India.
The Pilgrim's Progress. With a Life of Bunyan, by Robert Southey, LL.D. New and beautiful Edition, splendidly illustrated with fifty Engravings by Adams, and elegantly bound. In one volume, 12mo.
Rollin.—The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Grecians and Macedonians; including the History of the Arts and Sciences of the Ancients. By Charles Rollin. With a Life of the Author, by James Bell. First complete American Edition. In 2 vols. 8vo. Embellished with nine Engravings, including three Maps. [Pg 242]
View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages. By Henry Hallam. From the Sixth London Edition. Complete in one volume, 8vo.
The Dramatic Works and Poems of William Shakspeare. With Notes, original and selected, and Introductory Remarks to each Play, by Samuel Weller Singer, F.S.A., and a Life of the Poet, by Charles Simmons, D.D. Complete in one volume, 8vo. With numerous Engravings.
The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Dr. Johnson, G. Steevens, and others. Revised by Isaac Reed, Esq. In 6 vols. crown 8vo. With a Portrait and other Engravings.
Prideaux's Connexions; or, the Old and New Testaments connected, in the History of the Jews and neighbouring Nations; from the Declension of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the Time of Christ. By Humphrey Prideaux, D.D., Dean of Norwich. New Edition. To which is prefixed the Life of the Author, containing some Letters which he wrote in Defence and Illustration of certain Parts of his Connexions. In 2 vols. 8vo. With Maps and Engravings.
Plutarch's Lives. Translated from the original Greek, with Notes, critical and historical, and a Life of Plutarch. By John Langhorne, D.D., and William Langhorne, A.M. A new Edition, carefully revised and corrected. In one volume, 8vo. With Plates.
The same Work in 4 elegant 12mo. volumes, large type.
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Sermons of the Rev. James Saurin, late Pastor of the French Church at the Hague. From the French, by the Rev. Robert Robinson, Rev. Henry Hunter, D.D., and Rev. Joseph Shutcliffe, A.M. A new Edition, with additional Sermons. Revised and corrected by the Rev. Samuel Burder, A.M. With a Likeness of the Author, and a general Index. From the last London Edition. With a Preface, by the Rev. J.P.K. Henshaw, D.D. In 2 vols. 8vo.
The Works of John Dryden, in Verse and Prose. With a Life, by the Rev. John Mitford. In 2 vols. 8vo. With a Portrait. [Pg 243]
The Works of Hannah More. In 7 vols. 12mo. Illustrations to each volume.
The same Work, in 2 vols. royal 8vo., with Illustrations.
Also an Edition in two volumes, royal 8vo. With a Portrait.
Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More. By William Roberts, Esq. With a Portrait.
Midwifery Illustrated. By J.P. Maygrier, M.D. Translated from the French, with Notes. By A. Sidney Doane, A.M., M.D. With 82 Plates.
The Study of Medicine. By John Mason Good, M.D., F.R.S. Improved from the Author's Manuscripts, and by Reference to the latest Advances in Physiology, Pathology, and Practice. By Samuel Cooper, M.D. With Notes, by A. Sidney Doane, A.M., M.D. To which is prefixed, a Sketch of the History of Medicine, from its Origin to the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century. By J. Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. In 2 vols. 8vo.
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English Synonymes. With copious Illustrations and Explanations, drawn from the best Writers. By George Crabb, M.A. 8vo. [Pg 244]
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. With Notices of his Life. By Thomas Moore, Esq. In 2 vols. 8vo. With a Portrait.
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[1] Society in America, vol. ii., p. 101.
[2] Jefferson's Correspondence, vol. iv., p. 115.
[3] Christian Examiner for September, 1834.
[4] Society in America, vol. i., p. 220-225.
[5] The region must, however, 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.
[6] Society in America, vol. i., p. 227.
[7] Society in America, vol. i., p. 227.
[8] "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.
[9] "Théorie des Signes, pour servir d'introduction à l'étude des langues." Avertissement.
[10] 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.
An Atlas of the United States.
[11] Society in America, vol. i., page 281.
[12] Society in America, vol. i., p. 169-176.
[13] Society in America, vol. ii., p. 264.
Transcriber's notes
Spelling has been made consistent throughout but kept to author's original format except where noted below.
Page 7 nonarrival of a party changed to non-arrival
Page 23 . added to neighbouring gallery.
Page 43 typo litle bird changed to little bird
Page 49 hill-sides changed to hillsides
Page 50 splendid boquet changed to splendid bouquet
Page 65 . added to Shakspeare.
Page 83 Hount Holyoke changed to Mount Holyoke
Page 85 under-graduates changed to undergraduates
Page 88 down on my kness changed to go down on my knees
Page 95 1833, 4 changed to 1833 - 4
Page 100 saw the of smoke changed to saw the smoke of
Page 108 typo New-Hamphire changed to New-Hampshire
Page 114 sidetable changed to side-table
Page 121 injustice and cruely changed to cruelty
Page 131 kindhearted changed to kind-hearted
Page 155 groundfloor changed to ground-floor
Page 157 The vendure changed to The verdure
Page 174 Glascow changed to Glasgow
Page 200 , added to busy cutting,
Page 225 sorrow of hurling changed to sorrow of hurting
Page 230 Pere changed to Père
Page 244 Testaments By the changed to Testaments. By the
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