"But the new glory mixes with the heavenAnd earth. Man, once descried, imprints for everHis presence on all lifeless things; the windsAre henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh;Never a senseless gust now man is born.The herded pines commune, and have deep thoughts,A secret they assemble to discuss,When the sun drops behind their trunks which glareLike grates of hell; the peerless cup afloatOf the lake-lily is an urn some nymphSwims bearing high above her head.
The morn has enterprise; deep quiet droopsWith evening; triumph when the sun takes rest;Voluptuous transport when the corn-fields ripenBeneath a warm moon, like a happy face;And this to fill us with regard for man,Deep apprehension of his passing worth."
Paracelsus, Part v.
However widely European travellers have differed about other things in America, all seem to agree in their love of the Hudson. The pens of all tourists dwell on its scenery, and their affections linger about it like the magic lights which seem to have this river in their peculiar charge. Yet very few travellers have seen its noblest wonder. I maybe singular; but I own that I was more moved by what I saw from the Mountain House than by Niagara itself.
What is this Mountain House? this Pine Orchard House? many will ask; for its name is not to be found in most books of American travels. "What is that white speck?" I myself asked, when staying at Tivoli, on the east bank of the Hudson, opposite to the Catskills, whose shadowy surface was perpetually tempting the eye. That white speck, visible to most eyes only when bright sunshine was upon it, was the Mountain House; a hotel built for the accommodation of hardy travellers who may desire to obtain that complete view of the valley of the Hudson which can be had nowhere else. I made up my mind to go; and the next year I went, on leaving Dr. Hosack's. I think I had rather have missed the Hawk's Nest, the Prairies, the Mississippi, and even Niagara, than this.
The steamboat in which we left Hyde Park landed us at Catskill (thirty-one miles) at a little after three in the afternoon. Stages were waiting to convey passengers to the Mountain House, and we were off in a few minutes, expecting to perform the ascending journey of twelve miles in a little more than four hours. We had the same horses all the way, and therefore set off at a moderate pace, though the road was for some time level, intersecting rich bottoms, and passing flourishing farmhouses, where the men were milking, and the women looked up from their work in the piazzas as we passed. Haymaking was going on in the fields, which appeared to hang above us at first, but on which we afterward looked down from such a height that the haycocks were scarcely distinguishable. It was the 25th of July, and a very hot day for the season. The roads were parched up, and every exposed thing that one handled on board the steamboat or in the stage made one flinch from the burning sensation. The panting horses, one of them bleeding at the mouth, stopped to drink at a house at the foot of the ascent; and we wondered how, exhausted as they seemed, they would drag us up the mountain. We did not calculate on the change of temperature which we were soon to experience.
The mountain laurel conveyed by association the first impression of coolness. Sheep were browsing among the shrubs, apparently enjoying the shelter of the covert. We scrambled through deep shade for three or four miles, heavyshowers passing over us, and gusts of wind bowing the tree-tops, and sending a shiver through us, partly from the sudden chillness, and partly from expectation and awe of the breezy solitude. On turning a sharp angle of the steep road, at a great elevation, we stopped in a damp green nook, where there was an arrangement of hollow trees to serve for water-troughs. While the horses were drinking, the gusts parted the trees to the left, and exposed to me a vast extent of country lying below, checkered with light and shadow. This was the moment in which a lady in the stage said, with a yawn, "I hope we shall find something at the top to pay us for all this." Truly the philosophy of recompense seems to be little understood. In moral affairs people seem to expect recompense for privileges, as when children, grown and ungrown, are told that they will be rewarded for doing their duty; and here was a lady hoping for recompense for being carried up a glorious mountainside, in ease, coolness, leisure, and society, all at once. If it was recompense for the evil of inbornennuithat she wanted, she was not likely to find it where she was going to look for it.
After another level reach of road and another scrambling ascent I saw something on the rocky platform above our heads like (to compare great things with small) an illumined fairy palace perched among the clouds in opera scenery; a large building, whose numerous window-lights marked out its figure from amid the thunder-clouds and black twilight which overshadowed it. It was now half past eight o'clock and a stormy evening. Everything was chill, and we were glad of lights and tea in the first place.
After tea I went out upon the platform in front of the house, having been warned not to go too near the edge, so as to fall an unmeasured depth into the forest below. I sat upon the edge as a security against stepping over unawares. The stars were bright overhead, and had conquered half the sky, giving promise of what we ardently desired, a fine morrow. Over the other half the mass of thunder-clouds was, I supposed, heaped together, for I could at first discern nothing of the champaign which I knew must be stretched below. Suddenly, and from that moment incessantly, gushes of red lightning poured out from the cloudy canopy, revealing not merely the horizon, but the course of the river, in all its windings through the valley. This thread of river, thus illuminated, looked like a flash of lightning caught by somestrong hand and laid along in the valley. All the principal features of the landscape might, no doubt, have been discerned by this sulphurous light; but my whole attention was absorbed by the river, which seemed to come out of the darkness like an apparition at the summons of my impatient will. It could be borne only for a short time; this dazzling, bewildering alternation of glare and blackness, of vast reality and nothingness. I was soon glad to draw back from the precipice and seek the candlelight within.
The next day was Sunday. I shall never forget, if I live to a hundred, how the world lay at my feet one Sunday morning. I rose very early, and looked abroad from my window, two stories above the platform. A dense fog, exactly level with my eyes, as it appeared, roofed in the whole plain of the earth; a dusky firmament in which the stars had hidden themselves for the day. Such is the account which an antediluvian spectator would probably have given of it. This solid firmament had spaces in it, however, through which gushes of sunlight were poured, lighting up the spires of white churches, and clusters of farm buildings too small to be otherwise distinguished; and especially the river, with its sloops floating like motes in the sunbeam. The firmament rose and melted, or parted off into the likeness of snowy sky-mountains, and left the cool Sabbath to brood brightly over the land. What human interest sanctifies a bird's-eye view! I suppose this is its peculiar charm, for its charm is found to deepen in proportion to the growth of mind. To an infant, a champaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard square of gay carpet. To the rustic it is less bewitching than a paddock with two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he casts his eye over its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its secluded homes, its mountain ranges, church spires, and untrodden forests, it is a picture of life; an epitome of the human universe; the complete volume of moral philosophy, for which he has sought in vain in all libraries. On the left horizon are the Green Mountains of Vermont, and at the right extremity sparkles the Atlantic. Beneath lies the forest where the deer are hiding and the birds rejoicing in song. Beyond the river he sees spread the rich plains of Connecticut; there, where a blue expanse lies beyond the triple range of hills, are the churches of religious Massachusetts sending up their Sabbath psalms; praise which he is too high tohear, while God is not. The fields and waters seem to him to-day no more truly property than the skies which shine down upon them; and to think how some below are busying their thoughts this Sabbath-day about how they shall hedge in another field, or multiply their flocks on yonder meadows, gives him a taste of the same pity which Jesus felt in his solitude when his followers were contending about which should be greatest. It seems strange to him now that man should call anythinghisbut the power which is in him, and which can create somewhat more vast and beautiful than all that this horizon encloses. Here he gains the conviction, to be never again shaken, that all that is real is ideal; that the joys and sorrows of men do not spring up out of the ground, or fly abroad on the wings of the wind, or come showered down from the sky; that good cannot be hedged in, nor evil barred out; even that light does not reach the spirit through the eye alone, nor wisdom through the medium of sound or silence only. He becomes of one mind with the spiritual Berkeley, that the face of nature itself, the very picture of woods, and streams, and meadows, is a hieroglyphic writing in the spirit itself, of which the retina is no interpreter. The proof is just below him (at least it came under my eye), in the lady (not American) who, after glancing over the landscape, brings her chair into the piazza, and, turning her back to the champaign, and her face to the wooden walls of the hotel, begins the study, this Sunday morning, of her lapful of newspapers. What a sermon is thus preached to him at this moment from a very hackneyed text! To him that hath much; that hath the eye, and ear, and wealth of the spirit, shall more be given; even a replenishing of this spiritual life from that which to others is formless and dumb; while from him that hath little, who trusts in that which lies about him rather than in that which lives within him, shall be taken away, by natural decline, the power of perceiving and enjoying what is within his own domain. To him who is already enriched with large divine and human revelations this scene is, for all its stillness, musical with divine and human speech; while one who has been deafened by the din of worldly affairs can hear nothing in this mountain solitude.
The march of the day over the valley was glorious, and I was grieved to have to leave my window for an expedition to the Falls a few miles off. The Falls are really very fine, or,rather, their environment; but I could see plenty of waterfalls elsewhere, but nowhere else such a mountain platform. However, the expedition was a good preparation for the return to my window. The little nooks of the road, crowded with bilberries, cherries, and alpine plants, and the quiet tarn, studded with golden water-lilies, were a wholesome contrast to the grandeur of what we had left behind us.
On returning, we found dinner awaiting us, and also a party of friends out of Massachusetts, with whom we passed the afternoon, climbing higher and higher among the pines, ferns, and blue-berries of the mountain, to get wider and wider views. They told me that I saw Albany, but I was by no means sure of it. This large city lay in the landscape like an anthill in a meadow. Long before sunset I was at my window again, watching the gradual lengthening of the shadows and purpling of the landscape. It was more beautiful than the sunrise of this morning, and less so than that of the morrow. Of this last I shall give no description, for I would not weary others with what is most sacred to me. Suffice it that it gave me a vivid idea of the process of creation, from the moment when all was without form and void, to that when light was commanded, and there was light. Here, again, I was humbled by seeing what such things are to some who watch in vain for what they are not made to see. A gentleman and lady in the hotel intended to have left the place on Sunday. Having overslept that morning's sunrise, and arrived too late for that on Saturday, they were persuaded to stay till Monday noon; and I was pleased, on rising at four on Monday morning, to see that they were in the piazza below, with a telescope. We met at breakfast, all faint with hunger, of course.
"Well, Miss M.," said the gentleman, discontentedly, "I suppose you were disappointed in the sunrise."
"No, I was not."
"Why, do you think the sun was any handsomer here than at New-York?"
I made no answer; for what could one say? But he drove me by questions to tell what I expected to see in the sun.
"I did not expect to see the sun green or blue."
"What did you expect, then?"
I was obliged to explain that it was the effect of the sun on the landscape that I had been looking for.
"Upon the landscape! Oh! but we saw that yesterday."
The gentleman was perfectly serious; quite earnest in all this. When we were departing, a foreign tourist was heard to complain of the high charges! High charges! As if we were to be supplied for nothing on a perch where the wonder is if any but the young ravens get fed! When I considered what a drawback it is in visiting mountain-tops that one is driven down again almost immediately by one's bodily wants, I was ready to thank the people devoutly for harbouring us on any terms, so that we might think out our thoughts, and compose our emotions, and take our fill of that portion of our universal and eternal inheritance.
"God, the best maker of all marriages,Combine your hearts in one!"
Henry V.
I was present at four weddings in the United States, and at an offer of marriage.
The offer of marriage ought hardly to be so called, however. It was a petition from a slave to be allowed to wed (as slaves wed) the nursemaid of a lady in whose house I was staying. The young man could either write a little, or had employed some one who could to prepare his epistle for him. It ran from corner to corner of the paper, which was daubed with diluted wafer, like certain love-letters nearer home than Georgia. Here are the contents:
"Miss Cunningham it is My wishes to companion in your Present and I hope you will Be peeze at it and I hope that you will not think Hard of Me I have Ben to the Doctor and he was very well satafide with Me and I hope you is and Miss Mahuw all so"thats all I has to say now wiheshen you will grant Me that honour I will Be very glad.
"S.B. Smith."
The nursemaid was granted; and as it was a love-match, and as the girl's mistress is one of the tender, the sore-hearted about having slaves, I hope the poor creatures are as happy as love in debasement can make them.
The first wedding I saw in Boston was very like the common run of weddings in England. It happened to be convenient that the parties should be married in church; and in the Unitarian church in which they usually worshipped we accordingly awaited them. I had no acquaintance with the family, but went on the invitation of the pastor who married them. The family connexion was large, and the church, therefore, about half full. The form of celebration is at the pleasure of the pastor; but, by consent, the administration by pastors of the same sect is very nearly alike. The promises of the married parties are made reciprocal, I observed. The service in this instance struck me as being very beautiful from its simplicity, tenderness, and brevity. There was one variation from the usual method, in the offering of one of the prayers by a second pastor, who, being the uncle of the bridegroom, was invited to take a share in the service.
The young people were to set out for Europe in the afternoon, the bride being out of health, the dreary drawback upon almost every extensive plan of action and fair promise of happiness in America. The lady has, I rejoice to hear, been quite restored by travel; but her sickness threw a gloom over the celebration, even in the minds of strangers. She and her husband walked up the middle aisle to the desk where the pastors sat. They were attended by only one bridesmaid and one groomsman, and were all in plain travelling dresses. They said steadily and quietly what they had to say, and walked down the aisle again as they came. Nothing could be simpler and better, for this was not a marriage where festivity could have place. If there is any natural scope for joy, let weddings by all means be joyous; but here there was sickness, with the prospect of a long family separation, and there was most truth in quietness.
The other wedding I saw in Boston was as gay a one as is often seen. The parties were opulent, and in the first rank in society. They were married in the drawing-room of the bride's house, at half past eight in the evening, by Dr. Channing. The moment the ceremony was over, crowdsof company began to arrive; and the bride, young and delicate, and her maidens, were niched in a corner of one of the drawing-rooms to courtesy to all comers. They were so formally placed, so richly and (as it then seemed) formally dressed, for the present revived antique style of dress was then quite new, that, in the interval of their courtesies, they looked like an old picture brought from Windsor Castle. The bride's mother presided in the other drawing-room, and the bridegroom flitted about, universally attentive, and on the watch to introduce all visiters to his lady. The transition from the solemnity of Dr. Channing's service to the noisy gayeties of a rout was not at all to my taste. I imagined that it was not to Dr. Channing's either, for his talk with me was on matters very little resembling anything that we had before our eyes; and he soon went away. The noise became such as to silence all who were not inured to the gabble of an American party, the noisiest kind of assemblage, I imagine (not excepting a Jew's synagogue), on the face of the globe. I doubt whether any pagans in their worship can raise any hubbub to equal it. I constantly found in a large party, after trying in vain every kind of scream that I was capable of, that I must give up, and satisfy myself with nodding and shaking my head. If I was rightly understood, well and good; if not, I must let it pass. As the noise thickened and the heat grew more oppressive, I glanced towards the poor bride in her corner, still standing, still courtesying; her pale face growing paler; her nonchalant manner (perhaps the best she could assume) more indifferent. I was afraid that if all this went on much longer, she would faint or die upon the spot. It did not last much longer. By eleven some of the company began to go away, and by a quarter before twelve all were gone but the comparatively small party (including ourselves) who were invited to stay to supper.
The chandelier and mantelpieces, I then saw, were dressed with flowers. There was a splendid supper; and, before we departed, we were carried up to a well-lighted apartment, where bride cake and the wedding presents were set out in bright array.
Five days afterward we went, in common with all her acquaintance, to pay our respects to the bride. The courtyard of her mother's house was thronged with carriages, though no one seemed to stay five minutes. The bridegroomreceived us at the head of the stairs, and led us to his lady, who courtesied as before. Cake, wine, and liqueurs were handed round, the visiters all standing. A few words on common subjects were exchanged, and we were gone to make way for others.
A Quaker marriage which I saw at Philadelphia was scarcely less showy in its way. It took place at the Cherrystreet church, belonging to the Hicksites. The reformed Quaker Church, consisting of the followers of Elias Hicks, bears about the same relation to the old Quakerism as the Church of England to that of Rome; and, it seems to me, the mutual dislike is as intense. I question whether religious enmity ever attained a greater extreme than among the orthodox Friends of Philadelphia. The Hicksites are more moderate, but are sometimes naturally worried out of their patience by the meddling, the denunciations, and the calumnies of the old Quaker societies. The new church is thinking of reforming and relaxing a good deal farther, and in the celebration of marriage among other things. It is under consideration (or was when I was there) whether the process of betrothment should not be simplified, and marriage in the father's house permitted to such as prefer it to the church. The wedding at which I was present was, however, performed with all the formalities.
A Quaker friend of mine, a frequent preacher, suggested, a few days previously, that a seat had better be reserved for me near the speakers, that I might have a chance of hearing "in case there should be communications." I had hopes from this that my friend would speak, and my wishes were not disappointed.
The spacious church was crowded; and for three or four hours the poor bride had to sit facing the assemblage, aware, doubtless, that during the time of silence the occupation of the strangers present, if not of the friends themselves, would be watching her and her party. She was pretty, and most beautifully dressed. I have seldom pitied anybody more than I did her, while she sat palpitating for three hours under the gaze of some hundreds of people; but, towards the end of the time of silence, my compassion was transferred to the bridegroom. For want of something to do, after suppressing many yawns, he looked up to the ceiling; and in the midst of an empty stare, I imagine he caught the eye of an acquaintance in the back seats; for he was instantly troubledwith a most irrepressible and unseasonable inclination to laugh. He struggled manfully with his difficulty; but the smiles would come, broader and broader. If, by dint of looking steadfastly into his hat for a few minutes, he attained a becoming gravity, it was gone the moment he raised his head. I was in a panic lest we should have a scandalous peal of merriment if something was not given him to do or listen to. Happily "there were communications," and the course of his ideas was changed.
Of the five speakers, one was an old gentleman whose discourse was an entire perplexity to me. For nearly an hour he discoursed on Jacob's ladder; but in a style so rambling, and in a chant so singularly unmusical as to set attention and remembrace at defiance. Some parenthetical observations alone stood a chance of being retained, from their singularity; one, for instance, which he introduced in the course of his narrative about Jacob setting a stone for a pillow; "a very different," cried the preacher, raising his chant to the highest pitch, "a very different pillow, by-the-way, from any that we—are—accommodated—with." What a contrast was the brief discourse of my Quaker friend which followed! Her noble countenance was radiant as the morning; her soft voice, though low, so firm that she was heard to the farthest corner, and her little sermon as philosophical as it was devout. "Send forth thy light and thy truth," was her text. She spoke gratefully of intellectual light as a guide to spiritual truth, and anticipated and prayed for an ultimate universal diffusion of both. The certificate of the marriage was read by Dr. Parrish, an elderly physician of Philadelphia, the very realization of all my imaginings of the personal appearance of William Penn; with all the dignity and bonhommie that one fancies Penn invested with in his dealings with the Indians. Dr. Parrish speaks with affection of the Indians, from the experience some ancestors of his had of the hospitality of these poor people when they were in a condition to show hospitality. His grandfather's family were shipwrecked, and the Indians took the poor lady and her children home to an inhabited cave, and fed them for many weeks or months. The tree stump round which they used to sit at meals is still standing; and Dr. Parrish says that, let it stand as long as it will, the love of his family to the Indians shall outlast it.
The matrimonial promise was distinctly and well spokenby both the parties. At the request of the bride and bridegroom, Dr. Parrish asked me to put the first signature, after their own, to the certificate of the marriage; and we adjourned for the purpose to an apartment connected with the church. Most ample sheets of parchment were provided for the signatures; and there was a prodigious array of names before we left, when a crowd was still waiting to testify. This multitudinous witnessing is the pleasantest part of being married by acclamation. If weddings are not to be private, there seems no question of the superiority of this Quaker method to that of the Boston marriage I beheld, where there was all the publicity, without the co-operation and sanction.
The last wedding which I have to give an account of is full of a melancholy interest to me now. All was so joyous, so simple, so right, that there seemed no suggestion to evil-boding, no excuse for anticipating such wo as has followed. On one of the latter days of July, 1835, I reached the village of Stockbridge; the Sedgwicks' village, for the second time, intending to stay four or five days with my friends there. I had heard of an approaching wedding in the family connexion, and was glad that I had planned to leave, so as to be out of the way at a time when I supposed the presence of foreigners, though friends, might be easily dispensed with. But when Miss Sedgwick and I were sitting in her room one bright morning, there was a tap at the door. It was the pretty black-eyed girl who was to be married the next week. She stood only a minute on the threshold to say, with grave simplicity, "I am come to ask you to join our friends at my father's house next Tuesday evening." Being thus invited, I joyfully assented, and put off my journey.
The numerous children of the family connexion were in wild spirits all that Tuesday. In the morning we went a strong party to the Ice Hole; a defile between two hills, so perplexed and encumbered with rocks that none but practised climbers need attempt the passage. It was a good way for the young people to work off their exuberant spirits. Their laughter was heard from amid the nooks and hiding-places of the labyrinth, and smiling faces might be seen behind every shrubby screen which sprang up from the crevices. How we tried to surpass each other in the ferns and mosses we gathered, rich in size and variety! What skipping and scrambling there was; what trunk bridges andladders of roots! How valiant the ladies looked with their stout sticks! How glad every one was to feast upon the wild raspberries when we struggled through the close defile into the cool, green, breezy meadow on the banks of the Housatonic! During the afternoon we were very quiet, reading one of Carlyle's reviews aloud (for the twentieth time, I believe, to some of the party), and discussing it and other things. By eight o'clock we were all dressed for the wedding; and some of the children ran over the green before us, but came back, saying that all was not quite ready; so we got one of the girls to sing to us for another half hour.
The house of the bride's father was well lighted, and dressed with flowers. She had no mother; but her elder sisters aided her father in bidding us welcome. The drawing-room was quite full; and while the grown-up friends found it difficult to talk, and to repress the indefinable anxiety and agitation which always attend a wedding, the younger members of the party were amusing themselves with whispered mirth. The domestics looked as if the most joyous event of their lives were taking place, and the old father seemed placid and satisfied.
In a few minutes we were summoned to another room, at the top of which stood the tall bridegroom, with his pretty little lady on his arm; on either side, the three gentlemen and three ladies who attended them; and in front, the Episcopalian minister who was to marry them, and who has since been united to one of the sisters. It was the first time of his performing the ceremony, and his manner was solemn and somewhat anxious, as might be expected.
The bridegroom was a professor in a college in the neighbouring State of New-York; a young man of high acquirements and character, to whom the old father might well be proud to give his daughter. His manners were remarkably pleasing; and there was a joyous, dignified serenity visible in them this evening, which at once favourably prepossessed us who did not previously know him. He was attended by a brother professor from the same college. When the service was over, we all kissed the grave and quiet bride. I trust that no bodings of the woes which awaited her cast a shadow over her spirits then. I think, though grave, she was not sad. She spoke with all her father's guests in the course of the evening, as did her husband. How often haveI of late tried to recall precisely what they said to me, and every look with which they said it!
We went back to the drawing-room for cake and wine; and then ensued the search for the ring in the great wedding cake, with much merriment among those who were alive to all the fun of a festivity like this, and to none of the care. There was much moving about between the rooms, and dressing with flowers in the hall; and lively conversation, as it must needs be where there are Sedgwicks. Then Champagne and drinking of healths went round, the guests poured out upon the green, all the ladies with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. There we bade good-night, and parted off to our several homes.
When I left the village the next morning two or three carriages full of young people were setting off, as attendants upon the bride and bridegroom, to Lebanon. After a few such short excursions in the neighbourhood, the young couple went home to begin their quiet college and domestic life.
Before a year had elapsed, a year which to me seemed gone like a month, I was at Stockbridge again and found the young wife's family in great trouble. She was in a raging fever, consequent on her confinement, and great fears were entertained for her life. Her infant seemed to have but a small chance under the circumstances, and there was a passing mention of her husband being ill. Every one spoke of him with a respect and affection which showed how worthy he was of this young creature's love; and it was our feeling for him which made our prayers for her restoration so earnest as they were. The last I heard of her before I left the country was that she was slowly and doubtfully recovering, but had not yet been removed from her father's house. The next intelligence that I received after my return to England was of her husband's death; that he had died in a calm and satisfied state of mind; satisfied that if their reasonable hopes of domestic joy and usefulness had not been fulfilled, it was for wise and kind reasons; and that the strong hand which thus early divided them would uphold the gentle surviver. No one who beheld and blessed their union can help beseeching and trusting, since all other hope is over, that it may be even thus.
"How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers in this journey of it, the world must judge; but the traces of it, which are now all set o'vibrating together this moment, tell me it is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made no convention with my man with the gun as to time—by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in this journey—I was always in company, and with great variety too."—Sterne.
Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New-York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirablness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a half ago.
To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling, certain of our shipmates and their friends and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New-York in an "exclusive extra;" a stage hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our fellow-travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list of our shipmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany on the 6th of October.
On our way from Stockbridge to Albany we saw a few objects characteristic of the country. While the horses were baiting we wandered into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis; another of Amasa and Polly Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were theretoo. The signs in the American streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew names, as those of Irish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words. One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug. I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth. On a table in a little wayside inn I found Fox's Martyr's; and against the wall hung a framed sampler, with the following lines worked upon it:—
"Jesus, permit thine awful name to standAs the first offering of an infant's hand:And as her fingers o'er the canvass move,Oh fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love,With thy dear children let her bear a part,And write thy name thyself upon her heart."
In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking-chairs, in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as severely as the tobacco-chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a rocking-chair. A common wedding-present is a rocking-chair. A beloved pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rocking-chair by his grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a breeze. If such a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to leave off laughing at the Shaker worship.
As we approached Greenbush, which lies opposite to Albany, on the east bank of the Hudson, we met riding horses, exercised by grooms, and more than one handsome carriage; tokens that we were approaching some centre of luxury. The view of Albany rising from the river side, with its brown stone courthouse and white marble capitol, is fine; but it wants the relief of more trees within itself, or of a rural background. How changed is this bustling city,thronged with costly buildings, from the Albany of the early days of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, when the children used to run up and down the green slope which is now State-street, imposing from its width and the massiveness of the houses seen behind its rows of trees! A tunnel is about to be made under the Hudson at Albany; meantime we crossed, as everybody does, by a horse ferryboat; a device so cruel as well as clumsy, that the sooner it is superseded the better. I was told that the strongest horses, however kept up with corn, rarely survive a year of this work.
We observed that, even in this city, the physicians have not always their names engraved on brass doorplates. On the most conspicuous part of their houses, perhaps on the angle of a corner house, is nailed some glazed substance like floorcloth, with "Dr. Such-an-one" painted upon it. At Washington I remember seeing "Magistrate" thus affixed to a mere shed.
As we surmounted the hill leading to our hotel, we saw our two shipmates dancing down the steps to welcome us. There certainly is a feeling among shipmates which does not grow out of any other relation. They are thrown first into such absolute dependance on one another, for better for worse, and are afterward so suddenly and widely separated, that if they do chance to meet again, they renew their intimacy with a fervour which does not belong to a friendship otherwise originated. The glee of our whole party this evening is almost ridiculous to look back upon. Everything served to make a laugh, and we were almost intoxicated with the prospect of what we were going to see and do together. We had separated only a fortnight ago, but we had as much to talk over as if we had been travelling apart for six months. The Prussian had to tell his adventures, we our impressions, and the Southerner his comparisons of his own country with Europe. Then we had to arrange the division of labour by which the gentlemen were to lighten the cares of travelling. Dr. J., the Prussian, was on all occasions to select apartments for us; Mr. S., the Dutchman, to undertake the eating department; Mr. H., the American, was paymaster; and Mr. O., the German, took charge of the luggage. It was proposed that badges should be worn to designate their offices. Mr. S. was to be adorned with a corncob. Mr. H. stuck a bankbill in front of his hat; and, next morning, when Mr. O. was looking another way, theyoung men locked a small padlock upon his button-hole, which he was compelled to carry there for a day or two, till his comrades vouchsafed to release him from his badge.
The hotel was well furnished and conducted. I pointed out, with some complacency, what a handsome piano we had in our drawing-room; but when, in the dark hour, I opened it in order to play, I found it empty of keys! a disappointment, however, which I have met with in England.
Mr. Van Buren and his son happened to be in Albany, and called on me this afternoon. There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of this gentleman, whom I afterward saw frequently at Washington. He is small in person, with light hair and blue eyes. I was often asked whether I did not think his manners gentlemanly. There is much friendliness in his manners, for he is a kind-hearted man; he is also rich in information, and lets it come out on subjects in which he cannot contrive to see any danger in speaking. But his manners want the frankness and confidence which are essential to good breeding. He questions closely, without giving anything in return. Moreover, he flatters to a degree which so cautious a man should long ago have found out to be disagreeable; and his flattery is not merely praise of the person he is speaking to, but a worse kind still; a skepticism and ridicule of objects and persons supposed to be distasteful to the one he is conversing with. I fully believe that he is an amiable and indulgent domestic man, and a reasonable political master, a good scholar, and a shrewd man of business; but he has the skepticism which marks the lower order of politicians. His public career exhibits no one exercise of that faith in men and preference of principle to petty expediency by which a statesman shows himself to be great.
The consequence is, that, with all his opportunities, no great deed has ever been put to his account, and his shrewdness has been at fault in some of the most trying crises of his career. The man who so little trusts others, and so intensely regards self as to make it the study of his life not to commit himself, is liable to a more than ordinary danger of judging wrong when compelled, by the pressure of circumstances, to act a decided part. It has already been so with Mr. Van Buren more than once; and now that he is placed in a position where he must sometimes visibly lead, and cannot always appear to follow, it will be seen whether a due reverenceof men and a forgetfulness of self would not have furnished him with more practical wisdom than all his "sounding on his dim and perilous way." Mr. Calhoun is, I believe, Mr. Van Buren's evil genius. Mr. Calhoun was understood to be in expectation of succeeding to the presidential chair when Mr. Van Buren was appointed minister to Great Britain. This appointment of President Jackson's did not receive the necessary sanction from the Senate, and the new minister was recalled on the first possible day, Mr. Calhoun being very active in bringing him back. Mr. Calhoun was not aware that he was recalling one who was to prove a successful rival. Mr. Calhoun has not been president; Mr. Van Buren is so; but the successful rival has a mortal dread of the great nullifier; a dread so obvious, and causing such a prostration of all principle and all dignity, as to oblige observers to conclude that there is more in the matter than they see; that it will come out some day why the disappointed aspirant is still to be propitiated, when he seems to be deprived of power to do mischief. In "Society in America" I have given an account of the nullification struggle, and of the irritation, the mysterious discontent which it has left behind.[2]
Perhaps Mr. Van Buren may entertain the opinion which many hold, that that business is not over yet, and that the slavery question is made a pretext by the nullifiers of the South for a line of action to which they are impelled by the disappointed personal ambition of one or two, and the wounded pride of the many, who cannot endure the contrast between the increase of the free states of the North and the deterioration of the slave states of the South. However this may be, to propitiate Mr. Calhoun seems to have been Mr. Van Buren's great object for a long time past; an object probably hopeless in itself, and in the pursuit of which he is likely to lose the confidence of the North far faster than he could, at best, disarm the enmity of the South.
In the spring of 1836, when Mr. Van Buren was still vice-president, and the presidential election was drawing near, Mr. Calhoun brought forward in the Senate his bill (commonly called the Gag Bill) to violate the postoffice function, by authorizing postmasters to investigate the contents of the mails, and to keep back all papers whatsoever relating to the subject of slavery. The bill was, by consent,read the first and second times without debate; and the Senate was to be divided on the question whether it should go to a third reading. The votes were equal, 18 to 18. "Where's the vice-president?" shouted Mr. Calhoun's mighty voice. The vice-president was behind a pillar, talking. He was compelled to give the casting vote, to commit himself for once; a cruel necessity to a man of his caution. He voted for the third reading, and there was a bitter cry on the instant, "The Northern States are sold." The bill was thrown out on the division on the third reading, and the vice-president lost by his vote the good-will of the whole body of abolitionists, who had till then supported him as the democratic and supposed anti-slavery candidate. As it was, most of the abolitionists did not vote at all, for want of a good candidate, and Mr. Van Buren's majority was so reduced as to justify a belief, that if the people had had another year to consider his conduct in, or if another democratic candidate could have been put forward, he would have been emphatically rejected. Having once committed himself, he has gone further still in propitiation of Mr. Calhoun. On the day of his presidential installation he declared that under no circumstances would he give his assent to any bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This declaration does not arise out of a belief that Congress has not power to abolish slavery in the District; for he did, not long before, when hard pressed, declare that he believed Congress to possess that power. He has therefore hazarded the extraordinary declaration that he will not, under any circumstances, assent to what may become the will of the people constitutionally imbodied. This is a bold intimation for a "non-committal man" to make. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Calhoun, if really dangerous, can be kept quiet by such fawning as this; and whether the will of the people may not be rather stimulated than restrained by this sacrifice of them to the South, so as either to compel the president to retract his declaration before his four years are out, or to prevent his re-election.
How strange it is to recall one's first impressions of public men in the midst of one's matured opinions of them! How freshly I remember the chat about West Point and Stockbridge acquaintances that I had that afternoon at Albany, with the conspicuous man about whom I was then ignorantand indifferent, and whom I have since seen committed to the lowest political principles and practices, while elected as professing some of the highest! It only remains to be said, that if Mr. Van Buren feels himself aggrieved by the interpretation which is commonly put upon the facts of his political life, he has no one to blame but himself; for such misinterpretation (if it exists) is owing to his singular reserve; a reserve which all men agree in considering incompatible with the simple honesty and cheerful admission of responsibility which democratic republicans have a right to require of their rulers.
Before breakfast the next morning we walked down to the Padroon's house, known by reputation, with the history of the estate, to everybody. We just caught a sight of the shrubbery, and took leave to pass through the courtyard, and hastened back to breakfast, immediately after which we proceeded by railroad to Schenectady. There we at once stepped into a canalboat for Utica. I would never advise ladies to travel by canal, unless the boats are quite new and clean; or, at least, far better kept than any that I saw or heard of on this canal. On fine days it is pleasant enough sitting outside (except for having to duck under the bridges every quarter of an hour, under penalty of having one's head crushed to atoms), and in dark evenings the approach of the boatlights on the water is a pretty sight; but the horrors of night and of wet days more than compensate for all the advantages these vehicles can boast. The heat and noise, the known vicinity of a compressed crowd, lying packed like herrings in a barrel, the bumping against the sides of the locks, and the hissing of water therein like an inundation, startling one from sleep; these things are very disagreeable. We suffered under an additional annoyance in the presence of sixteen Presbyterian clergymen, some of the most unprepossessing of their class. If there be a duty more obvious than another on board a canalboat, it is to walk on the bank occasionally in fair weather, or, at least, to remain outside, in order to air the cabin (close enough at best) and get rid of the scents of the table before the unhappy passengers are shut up to sleep there. These sixteen gentlemen, on their way to a Convention at Utica, could not wait till they got there to begin their devotional observances, but obtruded them upon the passengers in a most unjustifiable manner. They werenot satisfied with saying an almost interminable grace before and after each meal, but shut up the cabin for prayers before dinner; for missionary conversation in the afternoon, and for scripture reading and prayers quite late into the night, keeping tired travellers from their rest, and every one from his fair allowance of fresh air.
The passengers were all invited to listen to and to question a missionary from China who was of the party. The gentleman did not seem to have profited much by his travels, however; for he declared himself unable to answer some very simple inquiries. "Is the religion of the Christian missionaries tolerated by the Chinese government?" "I am not prepared to answer that question." "Are the Chinese cannibals?" "I am not prepared to answer that question." One requested that any brother would offer a suggestion as to how government might be awakened to the sinfulness of permitting Sunday mails; during the continuance of which practice there was no hope of the Sabbath being duly sanctified. No one was ready with a suggestion, but one offered a story, which every head was bent to hear. The story was of two sheep-drovers, one of whom feared God, and the other did not. The profane drover set out with his sheep for a particular destination two hours earlier than the other, and did not rest on Sunday like his pious comrade. What was the catastrophe? The Godfearing drover, though he had stood still all Sunday, arrived at his destination two hours earlier than the other. "Ah!" "Ah!" resounded through the cabin in all conceivable tones of conviction, no one asking particulars of what had happened on the road; of how and where the profane drover had been delayed. Temperance was, of course, a great topic with these divines, and they fairly provoked ridicule upon it. One passenger told me that they were so strict that they would not drink water out of the Brandywine river; and another remarked that they partook with much relish of the strong wine-sauce served with our puddings.
In addition to other discomforts, we passed the fine scenery of Little Falls in the night. I was not aware what we had missed till I traversed the Mohawk valley by a better conveyance nearly two years afterward. I have described this valley in my other work on America,[3]and must therefore restrain my pen from dwelling on its beauties here.
The appearance of the berths in the ladies' cabin was so repulsive, that we were seriously contemplating sitting out all night, when it began to rain so as to leave us no choice. I was out early in the misty morning, however, and was presently joined by the rest of my party, all looking eagerly for signs of Utica being near.
By eight o'clock we were at the wharf. We thought Utica the most extempore place we had yet seen. Theright-upshops, the daubed houses, the streets running into the woods, all seemed to betoken that the place had sprung up out of some sudden need. How much more ancient and respectable did it seem after my return from the West, where I had seen towns so much newer still! We were civilly received and accommodated at Bagg's hotel, where we knew how to value cold water, spacious rooms, and retirement, after the annoyances of the boat.
Our baggage-master was fortunate in securing a neat, clean stage to take us to Trenton Falls (14 miles), where we promised each other to spend the whole day, on condition of being off by five the next morning, in order to accomplish the distance to Syracuse in the course of the day. The reason for our economy of time was not merely that it was late in the season, and every day which kept us from the Falls of Niagara, therefore, of consequence, but that our German friend, Mr. O., was obliged to be back in New-York by a certain day. We all considered a little extra haste and fatigue a small tax to pay for the privilege of his companionship.
We clapped our hands at the sight of the "Rural Retreat," the comfortable, hospitable house of entertainment at Trenton, standing in its garden on the edge of the forest, so unlike hotels on the high road.
As no other company was there, we could choose our own hours. We ordered a late dinner, and proceeded to the Falls. We had only to follow a path in the pine forest for a few paces, and we were at the edge of the ravine which encloses the cascades.
It is a pity that the Indian name is not retained. Trenton Falls are called Cayoharic by the Indians. They are occasioned by the descent of West Canada Creek through a ravine, where it makes a succession of leaps from platformsof rock, six of these falls being pretty easily accessible by travellers. Much has been said of the danger of the enterprise of ascending the ravine; but I saw no peril to persons who are neither rash nor nervous. The two accidents which have happened have, I believe, been owing, the one to extreme rashness, and the other to sudden terror.
From the edge of the ravine the black water, speckled with white foam, is seen rushing below with a swiftness which already half turns the head of the stranger. We descended five flights of wooden steps fixed against the steep face of the rock, and at the bottom found ourselves at the brink of the torrent. I never was in so dark and chill a place in the open air; yet the sun was shining on the opposite face of the rock, lighting the one scarlet maple which stood out from among the black cedars and dark green elms. We selected our footing with a care which we were quite ready to ridicule when we came back; and were not above grasping the chain which is riveted into the rock where the shelf which forms the pathway is narrowest, and where the angles are sharpest. The hollow is here so filled with the voice of many waters, that no other can be heard; and after many irreverent shouts had been attempted, we gave up all attempts to converse till we reached a quieter place. Being impatient to see the first fall, I went on before the rest, and having climbed the flight of wooden steps, so wetted with the spray of the fall as to be as slippery as ice, I stood on the platform under a covert of rock foaming with the thunder of the waters, and saw my companions, one by one, turn the angle of the path, and pause in front of the sheet of liquid amber sprinkled with snow. The path on which they stood seemed too narrow for human foot; and when, discerning me, they waved their hands, I trembled lest, disregarding their footing, they should be swept away by the furious torrent. When we found our heads turning with the rush of the dark waters, we amused ourselves with admiring the little wells in the rock, and the drip from the roots of a cedar projecting from the top of the ravine, a never-failing, glittering shower. Between the fifth and sixth fall there is a long tranquil reach of water; and here we lingered to rest our bewildered senses before entering upon the confusion of rocks through which the sixth forces its way. We seesawed upon a fallen trunk, sent autumn leaves whirling down the stream, and watched the endless dance of the balls of foamwhich had found their way into the tiny creeks and bays opposite, and could not get out again.
Gay butterflies seemed quite at home in this ravine. They flit through the very spray of the falls. It seemed wonderful that an insect could retain its frail life in the midst of such an uproar. When the sun, in its course, suddenly shone full into the glen through a chasm in its rocky wall, how the cascade was instantly dressed in glory! crowned with a rainbow, and invested with all radiant hues! How the poor banished Indians must mourn when the lights of their Cayoharic visit their senses again in the dreams of memory or of sleep! The recollection of these poor exiles was an ever-present saddening thought in the midst of all the most beautiful scenes of the New World.
When we had surmounted the sixth fall, we saw indeed that we could go no farther. A round projection of rock, without trace of anything that I could call a foothold, barred us out from the privacy of the upper ravine. The falls there are said to be as beautiful as any that we saw, and it is to be hoped that, by blasting a pathway or by some other means, they also may be laid open to the affections of happy visiters.
They have been seen and reported of. A friend of mine has told me, since I was there, how Bryant the poet and himself behaved like two thoughtless boys in this place. Clambering about by themselves one summer day, when their wives had gone back to the house, they were irresistibly tempted to pass the barrier, and see what lay beyond. They got round the rock, I cannot conceive how, by inequalities in its surface. They met with so many difficulties and so much beauty higher up, that they forgot all about time, till they found themselves in utter darkness. They hastened to grope their way homeward through the forest, and were startled, after a while, by shouts and moving lights. Till that moment they never recollected how alarmed their wives must be. It was past ten o'clock, and the poor ladies had been in a state of uneasiness half the evening, and of mortal terror for the last two hours. They had got people from the neighbourhood to go out with torches, little expecting to see their husbands come walking home on their own feet, and with nothing the matter with them but hunger and shame. I hope the ladies were exceedingly angry when their panic was over.