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The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1837

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Title: The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1837

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KNICKERBOCKER, VOL. 10, NO. 5, NOVEMBER 1837 ***

    THE KNICKERBOCKER.

    VOL. X.      NOVEMBER, 1837.       NO. 5.




'NURSERIES OF AMERICAN FREEMEN.'

NUMBER ONE.


GENERAL EDUCATION is the attribute and glory of republican America.
It constitutes one of the strongest pledges of the success of
that interesting experiment in politics, which has astonished and
enlightened the nations of the eastern continent, and which promises,
in future times, to be the grand means of extending the blessings
of freedom to the civilized world. Education, in some of the most
enlightened European countries, is like the sun rising in majesty,
and gilding with surpassing brightness a few mountain tops. Education
in the United States is like the sun pouring his cheering radiance
over every hill, and into every valley.

The peculiar importance of universal and well-conducted education,
in a republican government, must be evident from the slightest
consideration. Every American citizen is a juror, before whom each
officer of the government is on trial, in regard to his capacity and
fidelity. The public prints are the pleaders, oftentimes very artful,
and sometimes not altogether honest; and these jurors need to be well
furnished with an enlightened understanding, that they may not be
imposed upon by misrepresentation and sophistry. Universal suffrage
can never be safely trusted but in the hands of an intelligent and
virtuous population. And it is questionable whether another country
can now be found, beside the United States, where education is
sufficiently general, and conducted upon such principles, as to form
a sufficient basis on which to rest the structure of a republican
government.

The want of a well-educated population has been the occasion of
most of the difficulties and disorders which have agitated the
South American republics, where one stormy revolution has succeeded
another, and where a strong tendency has been evinced to return to
the death-like calm of despotism. This is a great reason why France,
with all her aspirations after freedom, and all her toil, and sweat,
and blood, to obtain it, has had no more success in securing its
substantial blessings. This is one reason why reform in the English
government is a work of such immense difficulty, and why it cannot be
obtained but by a severe struggle, and, as it were, by inches. Some
master-spirits in that country, in which there is much to admire, and
to approve, and to imitate, have recently engaged in a noble effort
to advance the cause of popular education. These men, whether they
may be aware of it or not, are firing a train that may eventually
produce an explosion, which will shake the lordly aristocracy of
that country to its base. There is reason, however, to hope, that
in England arbitrary power will gradually give way to liberal
principles, and that the desired end may be at length attained,
without violent convulsion. This may be hoped for with greater
confidence, since intelligence is always friendly to order.

But aside from its political bearing, a general and well-conducted
education is a matter of vast importance. Every man has a mind, which
can never take its proper rank, and secure its highest enjoyment,
without being enlightened; without a proper development of its power,
and a suitable direction in applying them to practical purposes. A
fire-side in Iceland, a land of frost and of poverty, becomes a scene
of contentment and happiness, because it is surrounded by a reading
population; and the long and dreary winter's nights pass pleasantly
away, in the entertainment afforded by historical narration, or
native poetry, or other means of mental cultivation. Every family is
a school, and every child receives the rudiments of an education by
his own fire-side. In civilized countries, valuable books constitute
one of the cheapest, most domestic, and noblest amusements, for the
enjoyment of which, however, a good education is an indispensable
requisite.

But leaving this strain of general remark, it is proposed to give the
subject a practical bearing, by a brief consideration, in the present
number, of the importance of a legislative provision for the support
of schools, and for the qualification and preparation of teachers.

A legislative provision for the support of schools is a matter of
great importance. Every free government is bound by the principle
of self-preservation to afford every necessary facility for the
education of its whole population. And the most substantial aid which
it has in its power to afford is, to furnish pecuniary assistance,
by setting apart adequate funds, to bring the means of instruction
alike within the reach of the poor and the rich. Schools, and
especially common schools, are the _Nurseries of Freemen_; and not
merely of those who are to exercise the important right of suffrage,
but also, to an unknown extent, of those who are to sustain the
weight of magistracy, and to wield the destinies of the nation. Many
a man, during the short continuance of the American republic, who
has risen to the highest stations of honor and of trust, who has
surrounded his own name and that of his country with distinguished
honor, and filled both continents with his fame, has grown up from
the humblest circumstances in life, and has been indebted to the
common schools of the country for the elements of his reputation and
his usefulness; and but for the system of universal education, might
have lived in obscurity, and never extended his influence beyond
his native village. FRANKLIN, the statesman and the philosopher,
was once a humble printer's boy; and had he lived in a country
where the aspirations of genius are checked by the principle that
every man must keep his place, and not attempt to rise above the
condition in which he was born, he might have lived and died a
merely respectable setter of types. DAVID RITTENHOUSE, the son of a
plain farmer, was educated a goldsmith; and by his extraordinary
mechanical genius, he invented a planetarium, which may justly be
regarded as one of the mechanical wonders of the world. Pursuing
his researches, he became one of the first practical astronomers of
his time, and he succeeded the venerable Franklin as President of
the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia. ROGER SHERMAN,
until the age of twenty-three, occupied a shoemaker's bench. To him
it would have been injurious to apply the adage, '_Ne sutor ultra
crepidam_.' To the acquirements of a good common school education,
he added, to a respectable extent, the higher attainments of legal
and political science; and no man brought into the councils of this
country, at the trying period of the revolution, a sounder head, or
a more patriotic heart. To these distinguished examples, hundreds of
others might be added, who, if they have not fully equalled those
that have been mentioned, in fame, have perhaps not fallen behind
them in respectability and usefulness. And what has been true in
this respect, in time past, is true at present, and is likely to be
equally true in time to come. No man now fills a greater space in the
national councils, than the son of a plain farmer in New-Hampshire,
who commenced his brilliant career on the benches of a common school,
in his native town. And no man can tell what future farmers' or
mechanics' sons may occupy the highest and most responsible posts of
the nation. In the free government of the United States, every man
is, to a great extent, the artificer of his own fortune and fame.
Common schools are the means by which native genius is to be, in the
first instance, taught to put forth its strength, and by which it is
to be raised from its obscurity.

The people of the United States are, to a good degree, awake to the
importance of affording legislative aid to the common and higher
schools of the country; and in every state in the Union, public funds
are, to a greater or less extent, devoted to this object. The new
states seem likely, in this respect, to equal, if not to surpass, the
old. The funds which they have appropriated to this purpose, have
been chiefly new lands, which are constantly rising in value, and
which, in many instances, promise, in a future day, to swell to a
very respectable amount.

But while the means of education are brought within the reach of all,
it is important that they be not made too cheap. Men are prone to set
a small value on that which costs them nothing; and a provision too
abundant, instead of stimulating to exertion, may but minister to
negligence. The state of Connecticut has, it is believed, at present
a greater productive school-fund, in proportion to its population,
than any other state in the Union. It amounts to about the sum of two
millions of dollars. This fund was not produced by the contributions
of its inhabitants, but originated principally from the sale of the
Western Reserve, an important part of the state of Ohio, to which
it laid claim on the ground of its original charter, and which, by
way of compromise, was ceded to it by the United States. In no state
could the experiment of an abundant public provision for the support
of schools have been tried with greater prospect of success, than
in this. Previously to this endowment, the cause of education there
was in a prosperous condition, and its population had been taught,
from their childhood, to hold it in high estimation. Although
no enlightened and patriotic inhabitant of that state would wish
that this fund should be reduced in its amount, it is questionable
whether the cause of education there has advanced in proportion to
the abundance of its resources, and whether the largeness of this
provision has not, in some instances, if not generally, contributed
to keep the public mind less awake to the subject, than if its
inhabitants had been compelled to rely more extensively on their own
resources and exertions.

Without some legislative aid, there is reason to apprehend that
the advantages of education will not be universally enjoyed; and
therefore, every enlightened state will be inclined to make a
competent provision for this object. If the common schools of the
country need this aid, the higher schools and academies need it
still more, as their expenses must necessarily be greater. They are
required to carry on the work which is begun in common schools, to
prepare members for the higher seminaries of learning, and especially
to raise up a generation of teachers for the inferior schools. A
number of academies, scattered over every state, should be placed
on a respectable and permanent foundation, by a competent pecuniary
endowment. This subject has not been overlooked by the legislatures
of the respective states. A portion of the public revenue, which has
been distributed among the several states of the Union, has been
wisely set apart for the advancement of the cause of education. What
species of internal improvement can be compared to this? Canals and
rail-roads, and other similar works, are indeed of great importance.
But these things have a principal reference to the physical wants of
men. But physical wants are of minor importance, compared with the
intellectual and moral elevation of the human mind. Republics, in
a particular manner, must depend upon this intellectual and moral
elevation for their highest prosperity. Legislative aid should be
so afforded that, instead of producing apathy and indifference on
the subject of schools, it may but stimulate to greater exertion. In
proportion to the munificence of a public provision, the standard of
education should be raised; competent teachers should be employed,
and all the preparations for instruction should be on an extended
scale. Much on this subject remains to be done; and availing
themselves of the legislative aid, there is pressing need that the
most gifted minds in the country should combine their strength to
bring the schools of the nation, of every grade, and particularly the
common schools, to answer the high purposes of their institution.

While it is important that adequate funds should be provided for
the support of schools, it is still more important, that due care
should be taken that these funds be employed in a prudent, wise,
and efficient manner. Thousands and tens of thousands of dollars
may easily be wasted, from year to year, and rendered of no avail,
for the want of a proper management. That schools should answer the
object for which they are designed, nothing is more essential, than
that they should be under the instruction of competent teachers; and
that suitable provision be made for the preparation and support of
such teachers.

The government of a school is a matter of no small difficulty and
importance; and to conduct it successfully, requires great sagacity,
and a knowledge of human nature, the fruit of much observation and
experience. The government of a school is unlike that of any other
community. It should be neither despotic nor republican; it should be
patriarchal. It bears a greater resemblance to the government of a
family than to any other, and yet it differs, in many respects, from
this. Children have grown up under the authority of their parents;
and where parental government has been in any measure what it should
be, obedience to it has become a matter of habit. Children are,
moreover, dependent on their parents for their comfort and support,
and therefore the authority of a parent is supported by a powerful
consideration, which teachers of schools have not at command. If the
proper government of a family is a difficult work, as every parent
will be ready to acknowledge, the suitable government of a school is
a work of still greater difficulty.

Without the maintenance of silence, diligence, and order, it is
impossible that the business of education should be successfully
prosecuted in schools. But to bring the volatility, and
thoughtlessness, and love of ease and of play, so natural to children
and youth, to a thorough subjection to these principles, is no easy
task. The nature and dispositions of children must be carefully and
philosophically studied; different modes of management must be tried,
and those which are found by experience to be most successful, must
be adopted. Every teacher of a school needs much of the patience of
Job, and the meekness of Moses, suitably blended with dignity and
authority. He should have an entire control over his own passions;
and if he has a natural attachment to children, it will greatly aid
him in his work. It should be his aim, by an amiable, dignified, and
discreet deportment, to secure both the affection and respect of
those committed to his charge.

But a talent for government, however important, will not alone fit
a teacher of a school for his station. He needs not only a gifted,
but a well-furnished mind. He should not only possess a thorough
acquaintance with the text-books which he uses, and be able to
explain all their intricacies, and to unravel all their difficulties,
but he needs, in addition, a great variety of collateral information,
which he may bring to bear on all the subjects of instruction. He
should be himself a living, walking, speaking text-book. Every
system of teaching which is what it should be, will be a course of
familiar lecturing. The teacher should possess a fund of information
on a great variety of subjects, and should be perpetually bringing
forth, from the treasury of a well-furnished mind, the varied riches
of literature and science. The qualifications which have been
mentioned are important, not only in the higher seminaries, but also
in common schools. The amount of instruction which will be given by
a thoroughly qualified teacher, will greatly exceed that which is
given by a person of inferior qualifications, even where very young
children are concerned, and the time of the pupil, and the money of
the parent, will be saved by the employment of such teachers.

In this view of the proper qualifications of teachers, we need only
inquire what is the character of those who are usually employed,
to discover the great deficiency which exists on this subject.
The common schools of the country are extensively taught, in the
winter season, by a set of intelligent and enterprising young men,
who, in the summer season, are engaged in agricultural or other
employments, not connected with literature; or in the neighborhood of
colleges, in some instances, by young men who are in them receiving
an education, and who resort to this means to help them to sustain
the expenses which they necessarily incur. Far be it from the writer
to speak lightly of those farmers' sons who have more taste for
literature than the generality of their fellows, and have better
improved the advantages which they have enjoyed, and who aspire to
the office of teachers; or of those young men in colleges, who are
conflicting with the disadvantages of poverty, and by diligence and
perseverance, are raising themselves to usefulness, and perhaps to
fame. Many a man, who has been an honor to his country, and sustained
with reputation the higher offices of the state, has been, in early
life, a teacher of a common school. The academies of the country
have hitherto been chiefly taught by young men, who have completed
a collegiate course, and having exhausted their patrimony, have
resorted to this means to provide themselves with the funds necessary
for the study of a profession. Before they have had time to become
thoroughly acquainted with their business, they have relinquished
it for another employment. In a large proportion of instances, the
teachers of schools have labored under the disadvantages of youth and
inexperience, and to a great extent, of a contracted education.

In the summer season, the common schools of the country have
been chiefly taught by a fine collection of amiable, virtuous,
and intelligent females, in many respects well adapted to the
instruction of those younger children who, at that busy period, are
alone extensively found in common schools. But these teachers have
generally labored under the disadvantage of a very limited education.

In the cities, teaching has been more extensively a profession, and
has received a more liberal patronage; and from these circumstances,
it might be expected that the schools of the cities would have
risen to a highly respectable standing. This has been, in some
instances, true, but is by no means a general fact. Mere pretension
and display, on the part of a teacher, often command more patronage
than solid and unostentatious merit. The advertisements of teachers,
of almost every description, in the cities, will be found to contain
a catalogue of studies nearly sufficient for a collegiate course;
studies, many of which some of these teachers do not thoroughly, if
at all, understand. And in order that illiterate parents may have
a high idea of the proficiency of their children, they are hurried
through this course with a most unprofitable rapidity. The hurry
and bustle and thousand diversions of a city are not favorable to
mental cultivation. Show extensively occupies the place of substance;
and even an intelligent teacher will often be found sacrificing
his own better judgment to a perverted public taste. Fashionable
accomplishments, particularly in the education of females, have been
suffered to throw into the back-ground those intellectual pursuits,
which can alone raise the mind to its proper dignity, and produce a
full development of its powers. If most of the teachers of the cities
would pretend to less, and attempt less, they would accomplish more,
in the substantial business of education. Like some farmers in the
country, they should cultivate a less extent of ground, and they
would produce greater crops.

The interests of schools imperiously require that something effectual
should be done, to raise up a different generation of teachers from
those who have hitherto held in their hands the destinies of American
youth. In order to do this, teaching must become more extensively
a permanent profession; and such must be the support afforded to
teachers, that it shall constitute a sufficient inducement to them
not only to devote themselves to this employment, but to undertake
the labor and expense of acquiring the requisite qualifications for
this important trust; and the community must learn to distinguish
between the well-furnished teacher and the mere pretender to
literature and science.

Suppose, for a moment, that the mechanic arts were learned and
practised as the profession of teaching has extensively been. Let
us take the trade of a shoe-maker, for example. Let us suppose that
farmers' sons, of a strong mechanical turn, during the leisure of
the winter season, should begin with mending their own shoes, and,
pleased with the efforts of their untaught ingenuity, should take in
hand the shoes of the rest of the family; and having gained a little
skill by practice, should set up as cobblers for their neighbors.
What kind of shoes, can it be thought, would be worn by the
community, if such were the common shoe-makers of the land? And does
it require less education to become a competent teacher of youth,
than a good shoe-maker? That person must think very highly of his
feet, and very meanly of his head, who can entertain such an idea.

The community have, in some measure, yet to learn, that they will
never practice a true economy in the business of education, until
they are willing, at a reasonable expense, to secure the services of
a thoroughly-furnished instructor. It must come to be considered,
that a little smattering of information is not sufficient to prepare
a person for a teacher of a common school. A collegiate education is
not essential to this purpose, because many of the branches taught in
a college will not be required to be taught in common schools. But in
those branches which _are_ taught, the education should not be less
thorough than that which is acquired within the walls of a college.

The academies of the country are, at present, the seminaries in which
the great body of teachers for common schools must be prepared; and
in order that the academies should become suitable seminaries for
teachers, they must be universally taught by able and experienced
men, and the business of conducting them should no longer be made
by young men a stepping stone to some other employment. These
institutions should be, especially, under the charge of men who
make teaching a permanent profession. But something beyond this is
necessary, that a supply of competent teachers of common schools
should be raised up. Seminaries should be instituted for the express
purpose of preparing teachers. Such institutions, established on a
broad foundation, and sustained by a liberal endowment, would be of
incalculable importance to the interests of common schools. The
instruction given in them, being specially directed to this object,
would be more appropriate and more effectual. Connected with such
institutions, should be model-schools, in which the most approved
methods of instruction may be exemplified, and in conducting which,
those educating for teachers should occasionally bear a part.
The clerical, the legal, and the medical professions have been
most essentially benefitted, and their character has been greatly
elevated, by the establishment of institutions expressly for the
preparation of young men for these professions; and the same result
might be expected from a similar course in regard to the preparation
of teachers.

In a subsequent number, we shall offer some observations upon
text-books; the importance of a systematic arrangement and inspection
in the management of schools; the illustration of the sciences
by appropriate apparatus; and the cheering prospect which the
advancement of education holds out, in regard to the stability and
permanence of the American government.

                                                          H.




SADNESS.

    'I cannot but remember such things were,
    That were most pleasant to me.'

                                                 SHAKSPEARE.


I.

    I KNOW not why!--but oft a deep gloom shading,
      Steals o'er my gayest mood, my happiest hours;
    The glory from my ardent soul is fading--
      A tempest withers Hope's reviving flowers!
                I know not why!


II.

    I know not why!--but oft, when laughter thrilling,
      Leaves its light echo joyously behind,
    Tears from their secret founts mine eyes are filling;
      I shudder, as the leaf shakes in the wind--
                I know not why!


III.

    Do I not know? Can Fate her stern course alter?
      Are they not shadows of the brightness gone,
    Which make the fond heart faint, the red lip falter,
      Leaving me mournful memories alone--
                _They_ tell me why!


IV.

      They are past and gone!
    Those days that were so glad and bright,
      Oh, can we call back one?
    Ah, never!--would we might!
      The memories of our early years,
    Shall hallow still this cherish'd spot--
    And hopes, though faded, ne'er forgot,
      Whose light is quenched in tears!

                                                L. B. SMITH.




YOUNG LOVE.

AN EXTRACT: BY J. G. PERCIVAL.


      WHY are we not like Nature, ever new,
      Freshening with every season? It is pain
      To gaze, when sick and wasted, on the blue
      Arching as purely o'er us, and the stain
      Of the curled clouds, that gather in the train,
      Which the low sun makes glorious with his smile;
      To see the light Spring weave her rosy chain,
      And sow her pearls, no longer can beguile,
    When age, and want, and sin, our sinking hearts defile.

      Youth is the season when we most enjoy,
      If we would know the sweets of life; the mind
      Is then pure feeling, for no base alloy
      Of gain hath blended with the ore refined
      By the wise hand of Nature, who designed
      The beautiful years to be alone the time
      When we can fondly love, and loving find
      In the adored the same glad passion chime,
    As if two spirits met in one most tuneful rhyme.

      O! there are eyes that have a language--sweet
      Comes their soft music round us, till the air
      Is one intensest melody; we beat
      Through every pulse, as if a spring were there
      To buoy us into upper worlds, and bear
      Our fond hearts with link'd arms, on whitest wings,
      To a far island, where we two may share
      Eternal looks, such as the live eye flings
    When it collects all fire, and as it blesses, stings.

      O! could we stop at this glad hour the wheels
      Of Time, and make this point eternity;
      Could check that onward flight, which ever steals
      Hues, forms, and soul, as the twined colors flee,
      Which are above the seven-fold Harmony,
      Whose perfect concord meets in the soft light
      That sits upon a wave of clouds--a sea
      Of rolling vapor, pearled and purely white,
    That as a curtain hangs the pale-lit throne of Night.

      O! could we dwell in rapture thus forever,
      Hearts burning with a high empyreal flame,
      Whose blended cones no reckless storm could sever,
      But they should tremble upward, till the same
      Fine point of centred heat should ever aim
      Higher and higher to the perfect glow;
      As Dante saw from that celestial Dame
      Once loved, now worshipped, Heaven's own splendors flow,
    And gather in her smile, that looked so calm below.

      It is not in us; we were fashioned here
      For a more tranquil feeling, such as home
      Sheds on two hearts, whose true and lasting sphere
      Is round the holy hearth; hearts do not roam,
      When they are pledged by the young shoots that come,
      Like the green root-twigs, sweetly to renew
      Our life in their dear lives, which are the sum
      Of all our after being, where we view
    Heaven, as the soul's fond smile those rose-lips tremble through.




WILSON CONWORTH.

NUMBER SEVEN.


I HAVE already described setting out for the law school at L----.
After a long and tedious ride over rocky hills, we arrived late in
the evening at the town. It is situated on a river, on each side of
which are meadows of the most fertile soil, one mile in breadth. On
the east side of this river, a short range of mountains rise, grand
and imposing, from the generally level face of the country about
them. Here is perhaps the finest scenery in New-England. You have
a great variety within one half hour's walk. Gardens of exotics,
well-tilled farms, more resembling gardens than farms, mountains, a
river, woods, cottages, princely edifices; here a street like a city,
and the next turn brings you into something simply rural.

Here too might be found, at a later day, the finest school in the
country, perhaps in the world, if we may judge from the talent
employed in its management, and the splendor of the scale upon
which it was got up. The founders of this school are probably in
our country the only instance on record of men who had gained high
places in the literary world, leaving all their hard-bought honors,
and the ease of professorships in the first literary institution
in the country, to embark in the thankless task of keeping school.
This school has not succeeded according to its merits--as what
school does? It enjoyed a temporary reputation and success, as long
as it was the fashion and a novelty; and after the curiosity of
the public was satisfied, it diminished, and no longer numbers its
three hundred pupils. It is the same with our clergymen. People in
our country are for ever changing their ministers. It is so with
servants, ploughs, and all machinery, moral and physical. Variety,
curiosity, experiment, are the words that govern. We are forever
tearing things to pieces, to see what they are made of, and how they
are constructed. There is not and never has been a permanent private
school in America; and our endowed academies sink and rise, and only
continue to exist, because from their legal nature they cannot die.

In the town of L---- you might have found, at the time I write of,
a race peculiar to the soil of New-England; the descendants of old
families, who have inherited wealth from their fathers, and with
it a set of feelings that attaches them to old customs and habits.
The furniture of their houses is antique, and they themselves are
a little tinctured with puritanical manners. There are few places
so aristocratic as this. They do not show their pride in equipage
and dress, like new-born gentility, but in the distance of their
manners, and the seclusion of their lives. A race has grown up and
flocked in around these moss-covered families, which is thriving and
industrious, but the line is strictly marked between them and the old
settlers, who yet consider the land as their own, and themselves as
the pillars of the place.

Some of the old men wear gold-headed canes and white-topped boots and
cues, though the cocked-hat is obsolete; and the old ladies appear
upon gala-days in brocade gowns, worn by their great-grand-mothers,
for aught I know, with heads carried as none but old prim, stiff
ladies know how to carry their heads: a little in the style, we may
suppose, Jupiter carries his head, when he walks among the clouds,
where there is no vulgar earth to look upon.

The morning after my arrival, I called upon Judge H----, the
principal of the law school, and found him, Cincinnatus like, digging
in his garden. He rested upon his spade, as I approached him; took my
letter and read it; gave me his hand, when he had finished, and as I
looked in his face, and saw his clear eye and benevolent countenance,
I loved him. He was a spare man, with the air of a student about
him; his face was pale, and worn with much thinking; his manners
kind and winning, with the least affectation any one can imagine. He
introduced me to his lovely family, and they made me feel at home in
a moment, by the sincerity and unostentatiousness of their reception.

Some people, when a stranger is introduced to them, are chiefly
occupied in making an impression upon him of their importance and
dignity, while the best bred only think how _he_ may be made easy and
comfortable.

The judge pointed a boarding-house out to me, and appointed a time to
talk farther with me, and I took my leave, thoroughly impressed with
the idea that I was the happiest man in the world, and the judge and
his family the best and most agreeable people. 'Now for a look at
law-students at a law school,' thinks I.

I found a fine set of fellows here, from all parts of the United
States. Here was a student from the West, with his dark eye and
coal-black hair, and Indian-red cheeks. He was remarkable for his
independence and fearlessness; for his up-and-down dealing, and for
the originality of his figures, and the indifference all western men
feel to weather, domestic comfort, and the elegancies of life. Then
comes the hot-blooded Southerner, contending between his ignorance
and his pride; for the Southerners, (although there are honorable
exceptions,) who come to the North for an education, are too much
gentlemen in their own sense, to be able to handle any thing heavier
than a cigar; though now and then bolstered up to holding a pistol
at some friend they have injured, for the sake of the _éclat_
of the thing. We see enough of this race of spoiled children at
college, where they attempt to lord it over the institution and its
members. They mistake the contempt which permits their folly to pass
unnoticed, for submission.

Here, too, appeared the yankee, with his honest phiz, from the green
mountains of Vermont; with his heart in his hand; telling every
body who will listen to him all his family affairs and domestic
arrangements. Nevertheless he has his points of shrewdness. You are
off your guard by his honest and simple confidence in you: find him
at a nine-pin alley, and he is your man, as he says, ''at can knock
'em down.' Put him down to '_all fours_,' and he will play _game_;
but he does not aspire to whist or billiards; of the latter perhaps
he never heard. But if you would see him in his glory, look at him
at a scrub-race, mounted on one of his father's colts, taken without
leave from the pasture; his hat a little on one side; his neck begirt
with a colored handkerchief, the ends flying; the skirts of his coat
pinned about in front, and he is in his element. A Vermonter is
rarely a drunkard, away from his native state; but to him, and the
smooth-faced, precise inhabitant of Connecticut, we are indebted for
the bad odor in which yankees are held in the middle and southern
states, among the lower order of people, by their sharp bargains, by
biting those who intended to eat them up; for they are not always the
aggressors in a bargain, beyond the latitude of trade law.

The strongest attachments of the Vermonter are for his horses and
cattle, for he was brought up among them, and is taught to regard
them as the sources of profit. Until the age of twenty-one, he is
buckled close to the barn-yard and stables; but at that age, he is
free, and goes from home to seek his fortune in the capacity of
pedlar, clerk, student at medicine or law, or to college, if he has a
bookish turn, but never as a servant.

Vermont is the most republican of any state in the Union. There,
people are more upon an equality than elsewhere; the rate of
intelligence, education, property, are more upon a par. It has no
clownish aristocracy, like New-Hampshire; no mushroom importance,
like New-York; no _golden privileges_, like Massachusetts; but
simple and contented, intelligent and industrious, hospitable and
honest, without pretensions and disdaining show, running into no
wild chimeras of improvement, and only a little mad upon masonry, it
stands firm as its own Green Mountains, full of the purest American
character.

Here was the inhabitant of the coast, the polished New-Englander from
sea-board, with his literature and his sectional pride, his love of
the arts, his belief that Cambridge College is the first institution
in the country, and the Unitarian doctrine the most splendid of
religious speculation. He is small in stature, for the most part,
and has an intellectual face, and a head full of bumps. His dress is
simple and neat; his feet and hands are small, but his fingers are
short and clumpish, showing that he is not anxious to talk of his
grand-father. His manners are retiring and unobtrusive, not as if he
lacked self-respect, but as if he feared others would not estimate
him properly. It is his pride of character that keeps him silent,
and causes him to stand aloof among strangers; for he would not be
thought guilty of the vulgar habit of presumption, for his right
hand. Show him that you respect him, and he is transformed in an
instant; he is all openness and sociability, ready to be obliged,
or to bestow favors. He sympathizes with you, till you almost love
him like a brother--so aptly does he glide into the bent of your
feelings. You will find him more literary than scientific; he writes
better than he talks; judges better than he acts; for he is much
given to impulse and enthusiasm of the subdued kind, which works like
fire around his heart, while the exterior man--the surface of his
demeanor--is calm and passionless; he thinks more than he says, and
reads more than you have any idea of. His taste is refined, and his
sensibility acute.

Science belongs to Yale College, with her grand professor Silliman;
but fine writing, criticism, and moral philosophy, belong to
Cambridge. Cambridge sends forth eloquent divines, poets, sculptors,
and painters; Yale breeds sound lawyers, scientific doctors, and
superstitious theologians.

The tall Virginian, with his rakish air, his big mouth, his large
teeth, his long legs, and profuse hair, was next pointed out to me.
He may be known the world over, by his independent way of chewing
tobacco. He squirts out the juice, black as your hat, by the gill, as
he walks the streets, or stands at the door of the hotel. He seems
as if surrounded by slaves, so towering is his look. He is rarely a
student, except in inventing strange oaths or a new-fashioned hat
and cane. His family descent is his hobby; and this, in his opinion,
makes up for all deficiencies.

Any one may single out the Georgian and the inhabitants of any of
the Gulf-states. They are small, dark, men, who look as if they wore
daggers. Their air is indolent and careless, when unexcited; but if
they receive some slight or opposition, their dark eyes flash, and
their lips close tight, with the intensest passion. They are confused
by northern manners and yankee plainness. You rarely see them laugh,
though they sneer most bitterly at things they dislike, or which
are foreign to their own customs. As they come to the North to be
educated, they herd with the Carolinians at our colleges and schools;
continually quarreling among themselves, and slandering each other,
they only agree to hate the 'd----d yankees.'


CHAPTER XV.

I FOUND among the students many whom I had known at college slightly.
They received me with the greatest kindness and cordiality. They
knew enough of my struggles, and thought well enough of my good
intentions, to do all they could to heal the wounds I had received.
Beside, they knew they had misjudged me at college. I certainly
had some good qualities; I was very sincere; spoke my sentiments,
any thing that came into my head, right out, without regard to
consequences. However imprudent such a course is, we cannot help
liking a person who possesses a quality so rare. It was not a
virtue in me, but I did it from a wild impulse, a recklessness of
consequences; and finding that it gained me friends, and raised
a good-natured laugh, I carried it to excess; criticizing my own
faults, confessing every weakness, and telling people just what I
thought of them.

I do not know when I have passed a more delightful evening than the
first after my arrival in this place. With me were C----, and F----,
and L----, and D----, all old friends, who had always clung to me,
and predicted my reformation. We were all changed, as men always
change after leaving college, and mingling in the world, and getting
rid of the hateful jealousy, the struggle for rank, the boyish pride,
and hot blood, which characterizes students at college, pitted
against each other for the prize of parts. We sat together at a spot
overlooking the finest landscape I know of. It was a calm summer
evening, and the holy rest of nature poured quietness and complacency
into our hearts. We silently regarded each other, and let fall the
easy remark, each word opening to us the fact that we were different
beings from what we were when we parted.

Men educated in the same way, do not talk in round sentences, like
the characters in a novel. They interchange ideas by a word, a look,
a smile, a gesture; even in silence they hold communion, in looking
at a picture or a prospect. Observe how the Indians talk; this is a
perfect instance of the near sympathy they have for one another. A
shrug of the shoulder, a grunt, or a gesture, a movement of the head
or hand, is sufficient to convey their meaning.

My friends saw that I had a good room; they let me into the habits
of the place, and drew a fascinating picture of the life they led.
I never was so happy. All the dark spots in my life vanished, and I
looked only upon bright and joyous anticipations. I was away from
scenes of hateful remembrance, and seemed to have began anew. I felt
grateful for the chance that brought me there.

I do not intend to dwell long upon this law school; and I have
introduced it more for the sake of showing the effect of character
upon character, than any thing else, and to illustrate how our very
best sympathies, unless properly guarded, may lead us into error.

Law was pursued in this institution with all the plan and regularity
with which any school is conducted. Recitations were held every day,
and the lessons marked out. I admire this way of getting into the dry
details of an uninteresting profession by the beginner. By getting
lessons, short lessons, every day, at the end of a few months the
student finds himself the master of much information and technical
knowledge which he never would have attained by himself, without the
severest self-control and discipline.

It is every thing to the student at law to get a right start; to
lay the foundation well for future reading and practice. Very many
lawyers, particularly in the state of New-York, get a knowledge of
their profession after they are admitted. The time of their clerkship
is spent in copying legal instruments, and attending to the matter of
practice, while principles, and the origin and reason of these forms
and technicalities, are regarded with indifference. Surely, no man
can be a good lawyer--useful, protecting the poor, and guarding the
rights of the widow and the orphan, exposing crime and supporting
straight-forwardness and virtue--who is not also a good scholar, a
general reader, a nice observer, and sound reasoner. Certainly, a
mere machine to hold a pen, and bully in pettifogging suits, cannot
be this.

My friend C---- kept a friend's eye upon me, for he soon saw
my failing; and so he dragged me to my duty by the gentle and
strong persuasion of a friend; the kind and well-meant hint, more
influential upon a generous mind than rivets of iron, or the
severest authority. I _was_ a good student here for three months.
My self-satisfaction and confidence, my reasonings in my own favor,
(most dangerous to our peace are such) put me off my guard, and----
But I will tell you.

I had frequently observed a tall, thin, pale, and very genteel
young man passing the street. I had seen him once or twice at a law
lecture. He evidently belonged to the school. I was surprised, too,
that he seemed to know no one, and none of the students bowed to him,
as they passed each other in the way. The first time I saw him, his
back was toward me. He was elegantly, fastidiously dressed. His walk
was very fine, and was the gait of a gentleman. I felt a strong
interest to see his face; and when I came to look upon his pale,
melancholy countenance, haggard with care and disappointment, I felt
my heart lean toward him; I pitied him from the bottom of my soul.

I discovered that our study-rooms were contiguous, and determined to
work myself, by some means, into an acquaintance with him. One night,
as I was sitting late at my window, looking at the moon, and thinking
of by-gone times, when I had one beside me to enjoy such scenes with,
the sweetest and most melancholy voice met my ear I had ever heard.
The song it sung was plaintive, and the sounds seemed like breathings
out of the heart. This feast continued for hours. Now I could only
hear a low chant, and then a wild burst of melody, that seemed to
pierce the sky; varied again and again, with the most astonishing
skill.

I found out, by some means, that the voice was that of Collins, the
name of the young man whom I was so anxious to know.

I could not be satisfied, until I had his acquaintance. I wished to
become his friend. I knew what it was to be wretched and lonely, and
I felt criminal in neglecting him. I talked with particular friends
about him, but they answered equivocally. 'They did not know why
Collins did not associate more with them. His distance was his own
work; he was a singular young man, and they believed he lived upon
opium; that he was strange and eccentric, and chose to be alone.'
C---- said: 'You had better let him alone; he can do you no good; his
case is a hopeless one, and as for his melancholy, it is all fudge.'
All I heard, only determined me to seek him out, and find what could
occasion such habitual sadness.

Collins received my advances in a very gentlemanly way, though he
showed no disposition to palm himself off upon me. He had been
absent, until a short time before I saw him, from the school, and
treated me as a new-comer; spoke very handsomely of the students,
and seemed to know the character and course of every man in the
institution. I was charmed with the elegance of his manners, the
acuteness of his mind, and his general acquaintance with literature.
He soon returned my civility, and we gradually became acquainted.

He pursued his usual habits without any secrecy, and apparently as if
there was no harm in such courses. His mornings were usually spent
in a deep sleep, more resembling a lethargy than refreshing rest,
from which nothing could rouse him. He rose about mid-day and read
until night, hardly taking any nourishment. At night he seemed to
revel in a world of his own creation; he would sit for hours in one
position, chanting low airs, his spirits kept alive by opium and
worse stimulus. I never could discover the least mark of intoxication
in Mr. Collins, as every body called him. His person was scrupulously
neat, his dress always adjusted with the nicest regard to fashion and
elegance. His language was at all times proper, and his sentiments
refined. His mien was dignified and graceful. Had it not been for
his haggard cheek, and the unnatural brightness of his eye, sensual
indulgence would be the last vice one could have attributed to him.

The mind of this young man was radically wrong. He had no fixed
principle, and if he did right, it was to be in good taste, not to be
in opposition to error. Blackstone says, that 'to do right is only
to pursue one's own substantial happiness;' and it may be said, that
to do right, is to pursue good taste, elegance, refinement, true
pleasure, and pure happiness.

Collins was unhappy; he hardly knew why. Possessed of a poetic
temperament--nurtured in the lap of ease and wealth--every thing
provided for him, he had never learned _to think_, to reason, but
gave free scope to any impulse that came across him. Misfortune
he could not bear, for he had never calculated for its inevitable
coming; disappointment unmanned him, for he esteemed that wealth
exempted him from the common lot of mortality. He had had an
unfortunate attachment--as what young man has not?--and he thought he
must be melancholy and wretched, to be Byronic and sentimental.

He was, as I found out upon a longer acquaintance, for my own
foolish fancies made me singularly acute in tracing the rhapsodies
of feeling in others, in a false and unnatural state of mind; a
maniac, a madman, unsound. We are apt only to attach the name of
madness to extravagant actions and incoherent words, but there is a
madness which escapes the common eye--a madness of the soul, which
as effectually destroys the balance and contracts the usefulness of
man's life, as the wildest inconsistencies of conduct.

With every means of happiness within his reach, but for a strange and
ridiculous fancy; with riches, the highest connexions, a fine person
and good education, this young man indulged the idea that he was soon
to die. It was impossible to shake off this illusion. Considering
himself as doomed, he told me that he thought he was bound to make
the most of the little time that remained for him, and he supported
himself under this idea, so terrific to an ill-regulated mind, by
opium, brandy, and any kind of stimulus.

Now his disease was this: Having taken by some accident this
impression, he resorted to a bad remedy to drive it away. Each
application only drove the poison still deeper into his system. He
allowed himself no lucid interval. Could he have been prostrated by a
fit of sickness, and placed under proper care, and recovered slowly
from his disease, his mind might have been restored. But once in,
he continued to weaken his strength by artificial stimulus, and his
mind had no opportunity to resume its natural tone. The drunkard only
can recover from his malady by going through the ordeal of a trial
by water. He must expect to be prostrated. He must suffer intense
agony for days, and perhaps weeks, but if he perseveres, his cure is
certain.

Collins visited at some houses, and was caressed by a few, as 'a
character.' He enjoyed the reputation of being an elegant scholar,
among persons to whom he had never given the slightest evidence of
scholarship, and who probably did not know what the classics were.
This is very common. Who ever knew a case of a young man's throwing
himself away, particularly if his connections are respectable, when
it was not said: 'What a pity! He is the flower of the family; might
be any thing, only----'

The ladies, dear souls! saw in him a desolated genius. It would be
laughable to tell the thousand and one stories circulated about his
love affair. They used to get him to sing his plaintive airs, and
how it went to their hearts to hear the tones of a broken heart.
He, under the influence of powerful doses of opium, enjoyed this. He
yielded to the idea that he was what they thought him, and was happy
in the luxury of wo. After one of these displays, he would ask me to
relate to him what occurred the evening before, for he did not know,
though all the time he appeared to the company as perfectly rational.

The students did not expose him, though they saw pretty nearly what
he was. I, I cannot tell why, was with him constantly, and took
pleasure in his society. It was something new to me, and gave me an
opportunity of studying myself.

The example of this man constantly before me, the fact that I
associated with him, contrary to the wishes of my friends, in the
course of time alienated from me the good feeling of my former
friends; or they felt bound to resent my neglect of them, by
corresponding coldness. I did feel bitterly toward them, for their
neglect of Collins, and always took his part; and when lightly spoken
of, resented it as an insult to myself.

In this way, I lost the confidence and friendship of those men who
could have still been, would I have permitted it, of inestimable
advantage to me in healing my own distempered mind.

Collins and myself at last were constantly together, and each other's
only companions. I gradually fell into his habits. Certain it is,
that we enjoyed some Elysian hours. In the lonely still nights,
when all else seemed lost in sleep, and the sound of labor broke
not upon the ear to remind us that we were in a toiling world, we
used to sally forth and wander through the meadows that skirt the
river in this delightful region. Under the soothing influence of
that drug, which creates first a heaven and then a hell, we talked
and sang to the stars, and the beautiful earth, and the bright moon,
and thought we were happy. A man must be far gone for this world,
who goes straight about such an excitement of his system, when he
knows, as we did, the agony that was to follow, after the charm had
ceased. I was the greatest sufferer. My constitution was naturally
strong; capable of great action and rëaction. While Collins was
left in dull apathy and lethargy, I woke from the trance of joy to
excessive nervous pain. My mind was filled with dismal images. I
had horrid forebodings. My broken vows to my father--the probable
misery I had caused her who really loved me--the days of quiet and
peaceful happiness I might have enjoyed by a different course--my
ruin--glimpses of what I am--all came to my mind, and inflicted
the keenest torture. I lived over again all the pains I had ever
suffered. It seemed as if miseries were accumulated to crush me. I
meditated self-destruction. I prayed for death. This frame of mind
would continue for days, during which time I kept my room, and lived
upon the most simple diet. But when recovered in body and mind,
and going out with strongest resolution, as I thought, some new
temptation would assail me, and the same scene, the same agony, the
same remorse, were acted over and over again; and what makes it more
astonishing, there was a sincerity in this resistance, which repeated
failure could not lead me to doubt.

My only object in forming this acquaintance, was pity for Collins'
solitary state, and a desire to alleviate the pain he seemed to
suffer. My motive, if I know my own heart, was good. Even believers
in human depravity will give me credit for honesty of intention. 'The
way to hell is paved with good intentions,' says the preacher. How
true!

In one of my fits of voluntary seclusion, I read 'Hope Leslie.' Let
me here give the evidence of my own experience in favor of that
book. The study of the law was relinquished, and I read only works
of feverish interest, when I read any thing. After the indulgence
of irregular passions, every one who has suffered, knows that the
mind is left in a flighty state; we have strange visions, and think
strange thoughts; in short, we are quite poetic. Poetry, novels,
music! how grateful they are! They lead us away from ourselves, and
we are just unsound enough to yield entirely to the illusion. Under
such circumstances, I read 'Hope Leslie.' I was a week about it, and
I read all the time too. I was so enchanted with the book, that I
consumed it as the child eats his sugar-plums, by little and little,
to make it last the longer, dwelling over each passage; reading a
scene, and then walking the room, and picturing out the lofty Indian,
the heroic Magawisca, the generous youth, and the gentle mother. How
I revelled! Beside, I felt strengthened and elevated by the high tone
of moral sentiment contained in that work. It was the happiest week I
ever lived, infinitely surpassing all possible reality.




LINES

IN HUMBLE IMITATION OF AN INIMITABLE SCOTTISH POET.


    I WOULD I were the slight fern growing
      Beneath my Highland Mary's tread;
    I would I were the green tree throwing
      Its shadow o'er her gentle head:
    I would I were a wild flower springing
      Where my sweet Mary loves to rest,
    That she might pluck me while she's singing,
      And place me on her snowy breast!

    I would I were in yonder heaven,
      A silver star, whose soft dim light
    Would rise to bless each summer even,
      And watch my Mary all the night:
    I would beneath those small white fingers
      I were the lute her breath has fanned--
    The plaintive lute, whose soft note lingers,
      As loath to leave her fairy hand.

    Ah, happy things! ye may not wander
      From Scotland to some darker sky,
    But ever live unchanging yonder,
      To happiness and Mary nigh;
    While I at midnight, sadly weeping,
      Upon its deep transparent blue
    Can only gaze, while all are sleeping,
      And dream my Mary watches too!




SONNET: TO MRS. ---- ---- ----

BY W. GILMORE SIMMS.


    SWEET Lady! in the name of one no more,
    Both of us loved, and neither can forget,
    Make me thy brother, though our hearts before,
    Perchance have never in communion met:
    Give me thy gentle memories, though there be,
    Between our forms, some thousand miles of sea,
    Wild tract, and weary desert: let me still,
    Whate'er the joy that warms me, or the thrill
    That tortures, and from which I may not flee--
    Hold a sweet, sacred place within thy breast!
    In this, my spirit shall be more than blest;
    And, in my prayers, if haply prayers of mine
    Be not a wrong unto a soul like thine,
    There shall be blessings from the skies for thee.




RANDOM PASSAGES

FROM ROUGH NOTES OF A VISIT TO ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, FRANCE,
SWITZERLAND, AND GERMANY.

NUMBER SIX.

SWITZERLAND, (CONCLUDED) GERMANY.


LAUSANNE, AUGUST 26.--We left St. Bernard, well pleased with our
hosts, and hastened back to Martigny, where we procured an open
carriage, and proceeded directly to St. Maurice, there to lodge.
The ride along the banks of the Rhone, in the cool of the evening,
was delicious. As it grew dark, the bonfires of the chamois-hunters
were lit up here and there on the distant mountains; and among other
things, we passed a beautiful cascade, seven hundred feet high,
flowing out of a solid rock. At half past three this morning, we
were aroused from our slumbers at St. Maurice, to take the omnibus
for Villeneuve, at the head of the Lake of Geneva. It was just after
sunrise, on another soft and lovely morning, when we stepped on board
the steamer 'Le Leman' to sail down this glorious lake, now placid
and smooth as a mirror. The boat was well filled, principally with
English tourists. We passed near the walls of the famous Castle of
Chillon, where Bonnivard, Byron's 'Prisoner,' lingered in chains:

    'Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
      And thy sad floor an altar--for 'twas trod,
    Until his very steps have left a trace,
      Worn as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
    By Bonnivard!--May none those marks efface,
      For they appeal from tyranny to God!'

The castle is at the foot of the hill, on the very margin of the
lake, and seems almost to rise out of the water. The poet has finely
pictured in his 'Prisoner' a striking scene of loneliness, amidst
nature's fairest works. We passed Clarens, too, the 'sweet Clarens'
of the author of 'Helöise:'

    ''Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot,
    Peopling it with affections. 'Tis lone,
    And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound,
    And sense, and sight of sweetness: here the Rhone
    Hath spread himself a couch,[1] the Alps have reared a throne.'

At eleven o'clock we arrived at Lausanne, _via_ its port, Ouchi,
for the town is a fourth of a mile up the hill. This is a large but
irregularly-built town, and is much frequented by the English. The
house where Gibbon lived yet remains, and is now occupied by an
English family. Here I took leave of the friendly party, and am to
proceed alone to regions as yet to me unknown.

       *       *       *       *       *

BERNE, AUGUST 28.--Had a moonlight night-ride from Lausanne, whence
we departed at seven, P. M. I am now coming to the Cantons where
German is usually spoken, so I suppose I must play deaf and dumb,
and talk by signs, _guessing_ the import of what they say to me, as
I did, for example, at the diligence office, when I paid my fare;
but in this case I was left in a non-plus. When I took my seat, they
motioned me _out_; and I stood patiently waiting to be disposed of.
My luggage was put on, the diligence was filled and started off,
leaving me there, solus, in deep cogitation. Well, 'thinks I to
myself,' they are _very_ polite! Presently, however, a smart buggy
came along, and the driver civilly beckoned me to take a seat.
Feeling very cool and good-natured, in I jumped, at the risk of going
where 'the d----l drives;' for I really was somewhat in the dark,
and I couldn't be positive whether it was not the 'old gentleman'
himself. Soon, however, these dismal doubts were dispelled by our
overtaking the diligence, and receiving an English gentleman into the
buggy; and then the simple truth flashed upon me, that the diligence
was full, and they were 'forwarding' me in an extra, as they are
obliged to do, by law of the land, all who apply before the time.

In some learned discussions about England, I happened to say that
the law securing the descent of property of the nobility, there,
exclusively to the oldest son, seemed to me very unjust. My companion
said he 'gloried in it;' though he himself was a 'younger son, he
abhorred democracy and equality.' And with some more talk, I fell
asleep, and left him to his cigar.

I was somewhat diverted with a prevalent custom of the Germans--that
of embracing and _kissing_ each other, when taking leave. I refer, of
course, to the _men_; for an affectionate salutation of this sort to
the _ladies_, it would be unpardonable to omit. But to see the 'grave
and reverend seignors' bussing each other, is a little queer.

At two, A. M., we stopped at a place called Peterlinden, and got some
coffee in a 'loft.' About daylight, we were riding in sight of Lake
Neufchatel, and passed the little village of Morat, where the Swiss
heroically defeated an invasion of the Burgundians, in 1440: of which
Byron says:[2]

    'There is a spot should not be passed in vain,
    Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man
    May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,[3]
    Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain.
           *       *       *       *       *
    While Waterloo with Cannæ's carnage vies,
    Morat and Marathon, twin names shall stand.'

It is vastly amusing and edifying to observe the 'whims and oddities'
of the various people one meets with on these routes, or indeed any
where. The English and Germans generally like each other, while
both dislike the French; and all are equally prejudiced against
we poor Americans--perhaps not without reason. There are too many
young Americans, who ape the worst traits of the English character,
abroad, and make themselves ridiculous, by an affected hauteur and
reserve. There were two such at ----, whom our Scotchman pronounced
'contemptible puppies; for they considered themselves too good to
speak to the Misses ----, because they kept a _pension_;' and he
added, rather rudely and illiberally, that 'all Americans are alike,
when they think they have got money enough to act the aristocrat.'
This sweeping charge was not worth notice, and would never be made by
the better class of English or Scotch; but it must be owned, there is
_some_ ground for it; and it is too bad, that a few dandy upstarts
abroad should excite prejudice against the whole of us.

At nine this morning, we rode through a long shady avenue, lined with
elms, into the handsome town of Berne, the capital of Switzerland. It
is built on a peninsula, formed by the windings of a little stream
called the Aar, in the midst of an extensive and fertile plain. The
two principal streets are long and uniform, the buildings being all
of gray stone, projecting on heavy arches over the side-walks. In
the Rue Grand are several public fountains, adorned with grotesque
figures. At the city-gate, a couple of wooden 'grisly bears,' (the
arms of the Canton,) look down upon all visitors, with a scrutinizing
but rather inviting glance. The cathedral is a very curious piece of
antique architecture, especially the great door, which is elaborately
ornamented with emblematical sculpture. But the most attractive
spot in Berne is the public promenade, by the side of the river,
from whence you have a magnificent prospect of the whole range of
the Oberland Alps, covered with perpetual snows, probably the most
imposing array of mountains in the world, at least the finest to be
seen at one view. A visit to some of this range, through the valleys
of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunen, is usually a prominent object to the
Swiss tourist. Near the summit of one of these peaks, where 'winter
reigns supreme,' the Jung Frau, is the awful precipice where Byron's
'Manfred' was stopped by the chamois hunter from taking a final leap.

The city and canton of Berne have always been noted as the most
aristocratic of the confederacy, both in laws and in the spirit of
the people. Each canton, it seems, has a different costume:[4]
That of the Berne damsels is marked by white starched over-sleeves,
extending to the elbows, and a broad black lace ruffle stuck up over
the head, which makes them look like Peter Wilkins' flying islanders.

29TH.--Like Mr. Cooper, we patronize 'Le Fauçon;' and the Rev. Mr.
Cunningham has invited me among the _Anglaise_ to hear the church
service read in his room. The principal topic of the day in Berne
is the dispute with Louis Phillipe, which at present looks rather
squally.

       *       *       *       *       *

ALPNACH, LAKE OF LUZERNE, 30TH.--The ride from Berne to Thun was very
agreeable, notwithstanding I was obliged to take the _interieur_,
among some inveterate smokers. The scenery continued to be beautiful,
but very different from that we had passed a few days since--the
'lofty heights' being in full view, but far distant.

Thun is a picturesque little village situated in an enchanting place
on the Aar, near the head of the lake of the same name, which forms
one of a series of the most charming sheets of water in Europe.
Instead of the diligence route to Luzerne, I was tempted to enjoy
the luxury of a sail over these lakes; and accordingly left Thun
yesterday morning in a little steamer, which plies on the 'Thuner
See' to Interlachen, another pretty village, situated, as its name
implies, between two lakes, Thun and Brientz. It contains several
good _pensions_, and is much frequented by tourists in search of
health; and well it may be; for the region round about is a paradise.
'The air itself is a nosegay, the coarse bread a banquet, and the
simple whey of the Alps is worth all the elixirs of the apothecary.'
You may not sympathize, perhaps, in my enjoyment of this Swiss
tour--would you were here to enjoy it with me!--for I know it is
tantalizing to _read_ of the 'fairest places of the earth,' when one
must long in vain to be in them; and yet, it is pleasant to tell
those we love of the pleasant things we have had the good fortune to
fall in with.

On our way to Interlachen, from the boat, we passed through the queer
and romantic old town of Unterseen. Interlachen is near the Lake
of Brientz; and there, with the assistance of an obliging French
gentleman, who volunteered as my interpreter, I hired a small boat
with four rowers, to take me over the lake to the town of Brientz,
a distance of ten miles. There I got 'some lunch,' and hired a
horse and guide for my luggage, to Lungern, going myself, by way of
variety, on foot, over the Brunig Alp. A violent thunder-storm, which
had closely pursued us on the lake, overtook me on the summit of the
rugged Brunig, and, at the expense of a thorough drenching, I had a
fine chance to observe the sublime commotion of the elements; and
sure enough,

                          ----'Far along
    From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
    Leaped the live thunder!'

The movements of the clouds beneath me, after the shower, were
extremely beautiful and grand; rising in detached masses, gracefully
and majestically up the sides of the mountains, and parting slowly
from their summits, or from the green vales below, like a veil
which had covered a mystery. Huge masses of rock overhang the path
in several places, threatening to tumble suddenly upon the unwary
traveller, or the cottages below; and abundant are the proofs that
'such things have been.'

I have said so much about fine prospects, that the one from the
Brunig shall only be referred to, and you may read of it elsewhere.
At Lungern, I dined, and hired a chaise to take me, solus, to the
Lake of the Four Cantons. The ride was along the banks of two more
lakes, Lungern and Sarnen, both of which are of a sea-green color,
deep as the blue of the 'Leman.' There was little to remark, except
an occasional water-fall, or the ruddy peasant girls on the banks,
spinning flax.

At sunset, after traversing four lakes, and a mountain of no mean
dimensions, since breakfast, I was received by mine host at the
'Cheval-Blanc,' at Alpnach, who is much noted, it seems, as an
honest, attentive, and eccentric Swiss publican 'of the old school.'
The hotels, be it observed, throughout Switzerland, are generally
excellent. The plain but substantial fare which they give you, among
the mountains, may be partaken of, after a ramble in those regions
of pure and bracing air, with better relish than a princely feast
in courtly halls; and in the larger towns they will spread a _table
d'hôte_ which would do credit to Meurice, of the Rue Rivoli, or
Boyden, of the Astor House. At all the inns, visitors are expected
and even required to write in the 'Book of Chronicles' not only
their name and residence, but occupation, destination, and 'where
from:' and in the 'highland tour' they usually add 'remarks,' scraps
of doggerel, and praise or abuse of the last visited inn; such as
'Avoid the '_Epee_' at Zurich;' 'Go by all means to the '_Cygne_'
at Luzerne.' Italy being blockaded by cholera and quarantines, this
season, its neighbor Switzerland is more than usually swarmed with
tourists; and a good many American names may be found recorded in the
medley albums.

       *       *       *       *       *

LUZERNE, AUGUST 30.--In company with a couple of very agreeable
English gentlemen, who had just returned from Italy, we took a boat
at Alpnach, and were rowed down the Lake of the Four Cantons to this
beautiful place. This lake is one of the largest, and certainly the
most picturesque, in Switzerland, being irregular in its shape,
indented with little bays, and affording, in its whole extent, every
variety of scenery. After doubling several of its promontories, in a
sail of two hours, we landed almost on the very steps of the favorite
'Hotel de Cygne' at Luzerne. It is a capital house, close to the
water, and as we sit at dinner, we have on one side a fine panoramic
view of the Bay of Naples, and, on the other, the _real_ panorama of
this beautiful lake and surrounding mountains.

We dined sumptuously at the _table d'hôte_, and then walked out to a
garden in the suburbs to see a famous piece of sculpture from a model
by Thorwaldsen, the Swedish artist. It is a colossal lion, pierced
with a barb, cut out on the side of a hill of rock, and under it
are inscribed the names of the Swiss guards who fell in the French
revolutions of '89 and '30. It is remarkable that Swiss soldiers
are yet employed as the body-guards of the kings of France, Naples,
etc., as more trustworthy than their own people. These guards are
formally 'let out' by the Swiss government; but how such a proceeding
is compatible with national honor, I am at a loss to conceive. There
are two covered wooden bridges at Luzerne, each fourteen hundred feet
long: the interiors are adorned with curious old paintings, of the
Dutch school, comprising a regular series of scripture subjects.

You will recollect that this is the place from whence the travellers
set out in the graphic opening scene of 'Anne of Gierstein.' It is in
the vicinity of the scenes of Tell's exploits, of the battle-field
of Sempach, and many other interesting spots. The gloomy and
'cloud-capt' brow of Mount Pilatus, where tradition says Pontius
Pilate threw himself into the lake! is a conspicuous object on one
side; and opposite, is the isolated Mount Rhigi, on the top of which
we propose to lodge to-night, as all faithful travellers here do, for
the sake of 'the most magnificent sunset and sunrise prospect which
the world affords.'

       *       *       *       *       *

SUMMIT OF THE RHIGI, SEPTEMBER 1.--Yesterday, at eleven, A. M., I
took boat with my companion, (an intelligent young student from
Cambridge, Eng.,) and we pushed across the lake to Kusnacht, near
William Tell's chapel, and the place where he escaped from Gesler.
Thence we proceeded without a guide, the ascent appearing to be
quite easy; but we had the luck to lose our way and lose each
other: nevertheless, we pressed forward to the goal, like Bunyan's
'Pilgrim,' tugging and climbing under an intensely hot sun, up, up,
up, every step seeming to be the last, until I for one almost gave
up in despair, when the friendly halloo! of some peasants pointed me
to the path. At length we met each other near the top, on the side
toward Altorf; and at six P. M. arrived at the inn, almost fainting
with hunger and fatigue, and well able to do justice to a good supper.

Much as report had raised my anticipations, the view from the Rhigi
Kulm far exceeded them: yet perhaps that from some points half-way to
the summit, if not so extensive, is more pleasing and beautiful.[5]
From the top, the eye takes in too much; and large towns and lakes
appear like baby's play-houses and frog-ponds, and much as they would
from a balloon. But the grand _whole_ is certainly magnificent; a
view of the _whole of Switzerland_ could not be otherwise:

    'Lakes, rivers, long drawn vales, towns, hamlets, towers,
    From Gothard's glacier-snows to Swabia's bowers.'

Thirteen lovely lakes, of which those of Luzerne, Zug and Zurich are
the nearest and most conspicuous; with a hundred villages scattered
along their banks. On the south, the sublime and gigantic array of
the snowy Alps of Unterwald and the Grisons, even to the borders
of Italy; while on the other hand, 'the view extends into the very
centre of Swabia, presenting a richly-colored relief, over which the
eye of the spectator roves in silent rapture, as the eagle, hovering
in mid air or from his aërie, in some isolated pinnacle of the Alps,
looks down upon the states and kingdoms scattered at his feet. The
sound of sheep-bells from the pastures, mingling with others that,
with a deeper and more distant chime, call the villagers to matins;
the smoke of the first fires, curling in light blue wreaths above
their sheltering woods; the lowing of herds, rushing to their morning
pasture; the mountain peaks, varying in tint and distinctness as
the light oversteps their summits; the glaciers, gradually changing
their snowy glare into a purple, and then a rosy glow; spires and
pinnacles catching the first ray of light, and assuming their wonted
station as land-marks in the scene; sails, half in shade and half in
sunshine, skimming the lakes with their rural produce and population;
the Alpine horn, pealing its signals from the pastoral bergs around;
the pilgrim-troop, with solemn chant and motley costume, bringing
their donations to the confessional of 'Our Lady;' the screams
of the vulture in pursuit of his prey, and many other sights and
sounds which it would be tedious to enumerate, strike the eye and
imagination of the stranger so forcibly, that he feels for a time as
if transported into the mysteries of a new world.'

_This_ is in the early morning; but the most beautiful sight this
evening was a _sea of clouds_ resting on the minor hills, far beneath
us, the peaks just peeping above, like so many little islands in the
ocean. Bodies of vapor also hung, like a canopy, over a part of the
lakes; but with us the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun went down
in cloudless glory; and when the last morsel disappeared, the Germans
of the party doffed their beavers, and made him a low parting bow.

       *       *       *       *       *

ZURICH, SEPTEMBER 1.--Cooling as was the change of air on the Rhigi,
after such a _warm_ ascent, I never felt brighter than after my
nap in that high position, five thousand seven hundred feet above
the tide. By-the-by, the announcement at nine, of '_La lune! la
lune!_' produced a rush from the supper table, but the keen, bracing
atmosphere soon compelled the ladies to retreat to their rooms. At
'four-and-a-half,' we were roused from our slumbers by a 'trumpet's
martial sound,' announcing the approach of the 'king of day.' It
was beautiful to watch the changing tints of the sky, for an hour
before the sun appeared. Not a cloud was to be seen in the horizon,
for we were far above them; but when the sun's dazzling rays began
to be reflected on the hill-tops, and on the sea of vapor beneath
us, and the mists began to roll away from over the lakes, gradually
disclosing their varied outline, or lifting the canopy from the quiet
towns, the scene was truly exquisite to look upon.

I left the 'Kulm' alone, at six, and came down in an hour and a half,
on the side toward Goldau. This is the village that was destroyed
in 1806, by the fall of a part of Mount Rossberg, when nearly five
hundred persons, and property to the amount of half a million,
were suddenly buried under a mass of earth, which our Mr. Cooper
ascertained to be equal in bulk to all the buildings in New-York put
together![6] From thence I walked along the banks of the Zuder See,
to the curious old town of Zug. This lake is nine miles long. The
road on its banks is lined with fruit trees, and I filled my pockets
with nice fresh prunes for the gathering. Blackberries in profusion
are there also. It was another delicious day, and I experienced none
of the miseries so elegantly described, à la Wordsworth, in the Album
at Alpnach:

    'I wandered 'midst the untrodden ways
      Beside the banks of Zug;
    And there I met with scores of fleas,
      And there with many a bug,' etc.

There was ringing of bells, and firing of cannon, which made a
tremendous echo across the lake, but for what cause I did not learn.
At Zug I got dinner, and a direction to a by-path 'across lots' of
potatoe-fields to Horgern, on the Zurich See, where I was to take
the steam-boat to this place. I was alone, and not a soul on the way
could speak any thing but vulgar German. I was stared at as if from
the clouds; and albeit not conscious, like the third Richard, of any
special deformity, yet,

    'As I passed, the dogs did bark at me.'

At one village, a cur at the first house commenced the salute, which
was continued to the last, by every

    'Mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
    And cur of low degree.'

The folks did not know what I meant by Horgern, because I did not
_roll_ it out with their horrid nasal pronunciation. I stopped to
fill my flask at a spring, and had the luck to learn of a farmer
that I was going just the wrong way. At length, after achieving
another mountain, a splendid landscape was spread out before me; the
beautiful Lake of Zurich, bordered with vineyards, and neat villages,
flanked by another range of snow-capped Alps. With staff in hand, and
knapsack on back, as I approached

    'The margin of fair Zurich's waters,'

I met a posse of 'fair Zurich's daughters,' and of course doffed my
beaver to the fairest, whereat they were all vastly tickled, and
perhaps a little jealous of the 'favored one' (a-hem!) but _bon
jour_, or 'alack-well-a-day,' was all I could say, so I proceeded
to the 'margin,' found there was no steam-boat, hired a boat, took
in a lady, who applied for a passage, and pushed off for Zurich. It
was a lovely afternoon, and as pretty a sail as I have yet had. I
had this morning seen the sun rise from the summit of the Rhigi; and
now, after walking thirty-five miles in nine hours, under his hottest
beams, I saw him set on the Lake of Zurich. This lake is nearly
twenty miles long. As we came near the town, we passed several
charming pleasure-gardens, on the very margin of the water. Zurich
is situated much like Geneva, being built on both sides of the rapid
stream which flows out at the head of the lake. It is quite a large
and city-like place, and evidently a flourishing one. I saw several
large buildings in the course of erection. The walks and rides in its
environs, and the sail on its waters, are delightful in the extreme.

It was eight o'clock, P. M., when my boatmen landed me on the dock,
and it was with no little trouble that I found the _Gastoff Zum
Schwardt_, or Hotel de L'Epèe, for my pronunciation of the name would
not pass. It is a good inn, near the lake, but always full, and very
dear. Mine host politely gave me a ticket for the town museum and
reading-room. I had sent my luggage here by diligence from Luzerne,
and expected to meet my Rhigi companion; but he does not appear,
and I must proceed alone to the Rhine and Germany, 'unknowing and
unknown.'

       *       *       *       *       *

SCHAFFHAUSEN, SEPTEMBER 2. * * * In the ride to this place, I had
my first glimpse of the Rhine, at the village of Eglisan; and now
I have been out to see the celebrated FALLS OF THE RHINE, near
Schaffhausen. I came to them from _above_, and was disappointed; but
I found the right view is from the _bend_, on the other side. The
falls are certainly beautiful and picturesque, but not very grand
or marvellous. If the falls even of the Androscoggin at good old
Brunswick were in Europe, they would be quite a 'lion' in their way.

Having now 'done Switzerland,' you may ask, 'Have we not scenery at
home, equal to any in that land of wonders?' And, at the risk, as Mr.
Cooper says, of being called unpatriotic and 'spoiled by travelling,'
I must say _no_--at least so far as my knowledge goes. The 'Notch'
at the White Mountains is _equal_ in wildness and grandeur to any
scenery in _Scotland_; of course it exceeds any in England, and
probably, the rest of Europe, which is saying a good deal; but
_Swiss_ scenery, _i.e._, among the higher Alps, you must bear in
mind is on a vastly _larger scale_ than either. Think of mountains
two or three times as high as Mount Washington, in some cases rising
almost perpendicularly, or overhanging valleys eight or ten thousand
feet below, their summits tapering off in fantastic shapes, and
pyramids of rock. It is scenery of a different character, probably,
from any other; unique in its wild sublimity. So also with extensive
prospects. Our Catskill Mountain House is scarcely half as high as
the Rhigi Kulm, and as to the relative merits and variety of the
view, I would again refer you to Mr. Cooper's comparison. But with
these exceptions, we need not go abroad to discover 'the beauties of
nature.' Our rivers and river scenery are as much superior to those
of Europe as Niagara is to the Falls of Trenton: even the far-famed
Rhine, if I may judge from this portion of it, is not worthy to be
named with the Connecticut, far less with our noble Hudson.

The Swiss views, recently published, with letter press by Dr.
Beattie, are very correct as well as beautiful specimens of art. They
will give you a much better notion of the country than any book I
know of. You will perceive I visited most of the originals, having
passed through the cantons of Geneva, Wallis, Waadt, Freyburg, Berne,
Luzerne, Unterwalden, Schwyz, Zug, Zurich, and Schaffhausen, beside
an excursion to Savoy and Piedmont. How much Knowles' Mariana says in
the simple exclamation;

    'Switzerland is a dear country--Switzerland!'

The name will always recall to me many pleasant associations.

I am not a little puzzled in choosing my route through Germany.
I desire to go through the Tyrol to Bavaria, Munich, Prague, and
Dresden; but it is a long tour, and little travelled. 'The Glyptique'
collection of the fine arts at Munich, and the great Dresden Gallery,
are doubtless worthy of a visit; but on the whole, I think I shall
content myself with the 'sights' of Frankfort, Leipsic, Mayence, the
sail down the Rhine to Coblentz and Cologne, and thence to Aix la
Chapelle, and the cities of Belgium.

       *       *       *       *       *

    GERMANY--THE RHINE.

CARLSRHUE, DUCHY OF BADEN, SEPTEMBER 5.--I was somewhat amused
by a good-looking Irish gentleman, who, after paying some pretty
sensible compliments to the flavor of the _bon vins_ of mine
host at Schaffhausen, very kindly offered me his confidence and
friendship, 'free gratis for nothing,' and proposed a walk to the
falls, observing by the way, while telling me this, that, and the
other, in the between-you-and-me sort of a way, that a rascal,
whom he had unsuspectingly made his bosom friend and room-mate at
Aix-la-Chapelle, had, with equal good nature, very benevolently
relieved him of the care of his purse and gold watch. Poor Pat! I
fear he was in a fair way to be operated upon again, with equal
efficacy.

Schaffhausen is a queer old Germanized town, quiet and dull. The
Hibernian and myself were the only guests at the principal hotel. I
had another dreary night-ride from thence to the frontier of this
duchy, where passports and luggage were duly inspected. At sunset,
I arrived at Offenbourg, a decent town, where I found a very nice
inn, kept by a nice man, who deals in wines and broken English. He
entertained me excellently well, and sent me on to this place this
morning in an extra. We stopped to dine at a town, which I took for
our ultimatum, and leisurely disposed myself accordingly, when lo!
by mere accident, I observed the carriage starting off, with my
portmanteaus safely behind. 'Ou allez vous?'--'à Carlsrhue!' So much
for being among people of a strange tongue.

There seemed to be a uniformity of costume in several of the towns.
Red vests and breeches and broad-brimmed, hats, were universal
among men and boys; _i.e._, of the peasantry only, for _they_ are a
distinct order of beings on the continent. The most laborious part
of farming, etc., is performed by the women; the 'fair sex' here are
expected to hold the plough, rake the hay, and dig the potatoes. What
brutes must the men be!

Carlsrhue, the duke of Baden's capital and residence, is one of the
neatest towns I have seen on the continent. The streets are broad,
straight, and well-paved, and the buildings all of stone, painted
cream-color. The chateau of the duke is in the form of a crescent,
opposite a block of private houses in similar style, thus making an
elegant circle, with a garden and orangery in the centre. In the rear
of the chateau, is an extensive hunting-park. The whole of this duchy
appears to be one level plain, not specially fertile; and there is
little to remark in riding over it, except the extensive squadrons of
geese, tended by the lasses like a flock of sheep, and the battalions
of _ganders_, in the shape of the duke's soldiers.

Our introduction to his Serene Lowness, the Rhine, did not give us
the most favorable impression of his majesty. If one should see that
part of the river between Switzerland and Mayence, and no more,
he would pronounce its far-famed beauties all a joke. It passes
here through this flat uninteresting duchy, the banks affording
nothing more attractive than pine bushes, six feet high; and the
river itself has lost its primitive attraction at Schaffhausen, for
here it is of a brown muddy color, instead of its once transparent
green. Occasionally, however, the monotony of the shores is relieved
by a pretty town, which, the atmosphere being clear, and the view
unobstructed, may be seen from a great distance. Among others, we
passed Spires and Worms, noted for their cathedrals, which are
very conspicuous objects from the river; and Manheim, a handsome
town, with a fine palace, (now chiefly in ruins,) in the midst of
a beautiful park. Near Manheim is Heidelberg, celebrated for its
university, which is the oldest in Germany. These places are in the
'Grand Duchy' of Hesse-Darmstadt, which adjoins that of Baden. The
boat stopped a short time at Manheim, and we went on shore to see the
palace.

It was dusk when we came in sight of the famous and very pretty town
of Mayence, our steamer passing _through_ the bridge of boats over
the Rhine, which was promptly opened to admit it. The spires, and
domes of the town, as seen from the river, give it quite an imposing
appearance. We stepped on the quay, with very little bustle, and
without any obstruction or examination. The hotels near the river
were all full, but we found good lodgings at the 'Trois Courounes'
in the interior. I shall proceed to-morrow to Frankfort and Leipsic,
with the intention of returning here to take the Rhine to Cologne.

       *       *       *       *       *

FRANKFORT ON THE MAINE, SEPTEMBER 7.--The ride from Mayence to this
city occupied three hours and a half. The approach to Frankfort is
not remarkable, except for the beautiful grounds and gardens laid out
on the site of the ancient walls and fortifications in the environs.
Frankfort, you know, is one of the four free cities of Germany,[7]
(Hanse-Towns,) and is entirely independent of any other state, being
a co-equal member of the Germanic confederation, and important also
as the seat of the Diet. Some parts of the city are very handsome,
and the whole has an air of busy prosperity: it seems to be very like
Paris, on a smaller scale. The hotels are renowned for their size
and excellence; and as the great semi-annual Fair is in operation,
they are at present abundantly well patronized. This _Fair_ is quite
an important affair to the city: all the public squares, quays,
etc., are filled with temporary stalls and 'magazines' of articles,
manufactured in different parts of Germany, the merchant announcing
himself 'from Berlin,' or Dresden, or Leipsic. They often bring
samples, only, of their wares, and from them make extensive 'package
sales.' I should think that one half, at least, of these were filled
with pipes--a fair illustration of the smoking propensities of the
Germans. These pipes are long and clumsy, but most of them are very
prettily ornamented. The Germans are verily inveterate lovers of the
weed. They smoke every where and on all occasions; the toll-keeper
puffs away while he opens the gate, the conducteur, regulating the
diligence, the shop-keeper, while he makes your bill. All classes and
degrees are alike in this respect--the duke, the 'professor,' the
peasant. The charms of the practice are especially exemplified in
the interior of a crowded diligence on a hot day, when three fourths
of the passengers are doing their best to suffocate one another with
fumes of smoke from pipes, and brimstone from matches. Remonstrance
from a novice in the science is vain, for though otherwise polite and
obliging, they seem to think smoking so much a matter of course, to
prize it above their meat and drink, even above their wine, that they
do not imagine it _can_ be disagreeable.

The river Maine, which falls into the Rhine at Mayence, or Mainz, is
an insignificant stream, only navigable by flat boats which go _down_
with the current, and are drawn up by horses, as in canals. Frankfort
is built on both sides of the river, but the greater part is on the
north. The quays are broad, and afford a handsome architectural
display, the buildings being all of a light cream color, like those
of the French capital. I observed no very splendid public buildings,
but the principal street, containing several of the great hotels, is
very spacious and stately. In the Hotel de Ville is preserved, among
other archives, the original of the celebrated '_Golden Bull_.'

       *       *       *       *       *

LEIPSIC, SEPTEMBER 10.--Here am I, in the very heart of Germany, in
the centre of Europe, within ten hours' ride of Dresden, one day of
Berlin, two of Prague, three of Munich, four of Warsaw, ten of St.
Petersburgh, and a few more of Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem,
all of which I would fain honor with a visit, did time and the
'needful' permit; at present, however, this will be my ultimatum,
and to-morrow I shall commence what the Frenchman said Napoleon did,
after the memorable battle of this same Leipsic, not a retreat, but a
_mouvement retrograde_ toward home. My journeyings will now be toward
the setting instead of the rising sun.

The ride to this city proved, as I expected, extremely tedious and
disagreeable. We left Frankfort at half past nine, P. M., and were
forty-one hours, including two nights, on the way; the distance being
two hundred and twenty miles. I was again doomed to the _interieur_,
amid five smokers, as usual, neither of whom could speak English
or French; and the idea of the mistakes and vexations to which my
solitary ignorance exposed me, was any thing but comfortable. I
escaped, however, with nothing worse than the loss of a cloak in the
Frankfort diligence; for on coming to the Prussian dominions, we were
transferred to a respectable vehicle, on which was inscribed:

    'Konig. Preuss,
     Schnell Post.'

(Query, mail or snail? It does not merit the latter appellation so
well as some of the French, to say the least.) The public conveyances
on the continent are all driven by a postillion, in a kind of
livery, with 'seven league boots,' a trumpet with tawdry tassels,
and a leathern hat: he always rides the 'nigh' horse, and never goes
more than one post, as each 'team' has its own postillion. Every
diligence is superintended by a _conducteur_, who has the best seat
in the coupé, but does nothing himself, except delivering the mails
and small parcels on the way. The French and Swiss conducteurs are
often surly and uncivil, but those in Prussia are very attentive,
good-looking, and even well-educated. The most learned doctors of the
university will converse with them on familiar terms, with deference
and respect.

There is evidently much less exclusiveness in grades, and less show
of haughty superiority in the wealthy, and even the noble, in these
_despotic_ countries, than in _liberal_ and enlightened England.
From the Grand Duke downward, it is usual to give a bow and a '_bon
jour_,' or '_adieu_,' to the meanest servant in return for the
same salutations: and these courtesies certainly do not seem to be
misconstrued into that familiarity which breeds contempt, but rather
to strengthen respect and attachment to the superior.

In coming to Leipsic from Switzerland, I passed through no less
than eight independent states and principalities, viz.: the 'Grand
Duchies' of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Gotha,
Hesse-Cassel, the free city of Frankfort, and the kingdoms of Prussia
and Saxony. The boundaries of these great-little duchies are marked
by a plain stone on the way-side, inscribed, 'Weimar,' 'Gotha,' etc.,
as the case may be. I observed nothing else to indicate that the
country was governed by so many different masters. There is nothing
on the route deserving the name of scenery: even a gentle hill to
relieve the dull, tame prospect of long and often barren plains,
occurs but seldom. Of the towns I shall see more on my return.

I was sorry to find that the noted book-publisher, Mr. TAUCHNITZ,
Senior, died of apoplexy, very suddenly, a few months since. His son,
who continues the business, is a very courteous and intelligent man,
and speaks English fluently. He received me very kindly, and invited
me to dine with him at twelve o'clock, M.! In England, I was several
times invited to dine at seven, P. M. The usual dinner hour at hotels
in Germany is one.

Before dinner, Mr. T. escorted me to the lions. In the principal
Lutheran church, I was a little surprised to see paintings, altars
and images!--things opposed, as I thought, to the very spirit of
Lutheranism.

The 'booksellers' have just completed a handsome 'Exchange,'
where the brethren of the 'trade' from all parts of Germany
assemble semi-annually, at the Easter and Michaelmas fairs, to
settle accounts, and make sales of new books, etc., by sample. The
book-trade is carried on here very extensively, and with a great deal
of system. Leipsic is the head-quarters for the business in all the
German states, and all publishers in other places have their agents
here. You will be surprised, perhaps, at the fact, that the number of
new books published annually in Germany, is greater than all issued
during the same time in Great Britain and France put together.[8]
What a nation of book-makers! What a mass of intellect in active
exercise! In a country not much exceeding in extent the single state
of New-York, there are six thousand _new works_, comprising _nine
millions of volumes_, printed every year, beside reprints of old
works, and all pamphlets and periodicals! One would think the Germans
_ought_ to be a learned people!

Mr. Tauchnitz's establishment is one of the most extensive in the
trade. He showed me the stereotype plates of his well-known editions
of the Greek and Latin classics, of which he publishes a complete
series, in an economical, _pure text_ form, one set filling a box
twenty inches square. So you may easily ascertain the exact _bulk_ of
all the intellect of antiquity!

The Leipsic University, which is one of the oldest in Germany, is
also about to occupy a neat and extensive edifice just completed.
The ancient fortifications of Leipsic, like those of Frankfort, have
been removed, and the space they occupied is laid out in gardens
and public promenades; a change decidedly for the better, as every
peaceable man will say.[9] As to beauty of architecture, this city
has little remarkable; the buildings are mostly antique and uncouth,
and the streets narrow, and without side-walks.

At dinner to-day, at Mr. ----, the second dish consisted of thin
slices of two sorts of fish, literally _raw_. It seemed to be
regarded as a rare delicacy, but I could not stretch my politeness
enough to do justice to it. The dinner, otherwise, was excellent. You
know the old man who made the 'Bubbles from the Brunens,' feelingly
describes his consternation at the never-ending courses of a German
public table; but he does not mention two-thirds of the dishes I have
tasted at a single sitting. The feast commences, all the world over,
with soup; then comes the dry _soup-meat_, 'which a Grosvenor-Square
cat would not touch with his whiskers!' but which is nevertheless
rendered quite palatable by a highly-seasoned gravy; then, cutlets,
omelets, and _messes_ of various sorts; followed by poultry, wild
fowls, beef, etc.; fifthly, pudding, which with _us_ is a sign that
the meat is disposed of; but lo! 'sixthly and lastly' comes a huge
quarter of veal, roast chickens, _young_ lobsters, salad, etc.;
seventhly, tarts and confectionary; 'and, to conclude, a dessert of
prunes, grapes, peaches, cakes, etc., the whole capped by sundry
nibbles at a fair, round cheese, or peradventure, as to-day, with
coffee, in Lilliputian cups, which I took for baby's play-things.
Verily, one has a chance of finding _something_ to his taste in this
variety.

After dinner, Mr. Tauchnitz ordered his barouche, with two beautiful
bays, and a footman in livery, (Mr. T. is a book-seller,) and we
rode out to the field of the memorable battle of 1813, about a mile
from the town. The whole vicinity of Leipsic, for several miles, is
one vast plain, which has always been, and probably will continue to
be, the theatre of battles, when the nations of Europe see fit to
fight at all. We walked to a slight elevation, where Napoleon had
his head-quarters during the battle. The French had garrisoned the
town for six years previous; consequently they had their choice of
position. Napoleon had made a _mouvement retrograde_ from Dresden,
after giving up his second expedition to Russia; he was followed
by the allied army, and here they met. Three days' hard fighting,
and the slaughter of twenty thousand men, was the consequence. The
French were routed; but their possession of the town enabled them to
proceed in their retrograde toward Frankfort, (the same route I had
come,) and on the fourth day the allies entered Leipsic. Mr. T. was
on the field during the fight, and he gave me a graphic description
of it. '_Here_ stood Blucher, with his Prussians; _there_, Prince
Swartzenberg and the Austrians.' What a scene of horror must that
field have been, when twenty thousand human beings lay there, bloody
corpses, and half as many more had fallen, wounded and mangled,
sighing for death as a relief from their misery!

Otho, the young king of Greece, is now in Leipsic on a visit. He
is shortly to be married to a German princess, whose name I have
forgotten.

       *       *       *       *       *

MAYENCE, SEPT. 13.--At six, P. M., on the tenth, I was again in the
diligence. There were but three passengers; one of them asked me in
German to sit with him in the interior, but having persuaded him
in English into a _coupé_ seat, he complacently remarked that he
was pretty sure, from the first, that I was English. I declined the
honor, with equal good nature. 'Scotch?' No. 'Irish?' No. He looked
puzzled. 'You must have spoken English from childhood?' 'Yes. I never
spoke any other language.' 'Perhaps you have resided some time in
England?' Never was there but three months.' Curious whether he would
discover me, I kept mum.

'From the East Indies?' No. 'But you are a British subject?' Oh, no.
I acknowledge no king whatever.

'South America?'(!) No.

And, strange to say, I was the first, after all, to hint that there
was a republic usually called the United States of America. It did
not occur to him, at the moment, that the English language was known
to _some_ extent in 'our country;' but singularly enough, when the
happy land was mentioned, I found him far from being ignorant of it.
He had read of our 'manners' from his own Duke of Saxe-Weimar down
to Captain Hall and the Trollope; and he was now writing a critical
essay on American poetry. In short, he was Dr. O. L. B. WOLFF,
professor of belles-lettres in the University of Jena; the author,
you will recollect, of the History of German Literature in the
London Athenæum, and of other essays which have made his name well
known with us. He seemed a good deal interested in our literature,
and we beguiled the hours far into the night, in learned talk,
parting near the battle-field of Jena, with mutual promises of future
correspondence.

The road lies over several memorable fields. Near Lutzen, they
pointed to a stone, '_Voila la, Gustave tombeau!_' It was the spot
where the 'Great Gustavus' Adolphus fell, in the thirty years' war.
We passed the house where Charles XII. of Sweden signed his treaty
with the Elector of Saxony. At Erfurt is the cell where Martin Luther
lived when he was an Augustine friar. At Gotha, Weimar, Eisenbach,
and Fulda, the capitals of their respective duchies, are the
'chateaux de residence.'

The approaches to most of the continental towns are through long
avenues, shaded by elms or poplars, extending sometimes a couple of
miles. One naturally looks for something handsome, after passing such
an imposing portal; but it does not always follow. One of the finest
of these triumphal arches leads to a filthy hamlet, which would
disgrace our backwoods.

They have a peculiar costume, at one of these towns; but in general,
there is no costume in Germany. Both at Frankfort and Leipsic, I
noticed two remarkable items, the Jews and the pretty girls. The
Jews wear long black gowns and girdles, with beards of nearly equal
length. They seem to be here a distinct and 'peculiar people.' As to
the German ladies, there is certainly more beauty among them than I
have seen elsewhere in Europe.

My second entrance into Frankfort was from a better point of view,
crossing the stone bridge over the Main. I had been riding four
nights, _sans_ sleep, and in the vulgar phrase, was 'quite done up.'
It was of course delightful to find that the 'fair' had so thoroughly
filled the domicils of every publican in the place, that not a nook
or a corner in all those immense hotels was to be had for love or
money. I wandered here and there, houseless and alone, till dusk,
with a fair prospect of a loafer-like lodging in the street! This was
actually the only alternative to going off at ten, P. M., to Mayence.
There were probably at least ten thousand strangers in the place at
that moment.

The entrance into Mayence, at one o'clock at night, was quite
_impressive_. On the opposite side of the river, in Cassel, is an
extensive military establishment, through the gates and court of
which we had to pass. The postillion sounded a martial air on his
trumpet, and the sentinel, opening the ponderous gates, admitted us
to the bridge of boats on which we crossed the Rhine to the city.
Every thing was still and quiet, but our rumbling diligence; the
stars and the lights of the town were looking at their portraits in
the river. At the city portals, another blast of the trumpet[10]
procured us admission, but no living thing was to be seen, except
the military 'guardians of the night.'

To-day it rains torrents. So I will merely tell you, in guide-book
style, that Mayence, as well as Cologne, owes its origin to the
Romans, and was occasionally the residence of some of the emperors.
The city has also been an electorate of the German empire, but at
present it belongs to Prussia; and it is remarkable, that with a
population of thirty-two thousand, it has a garrison of twelve
thousand soldiers. It claims the honor of being the birth-place of
Guttenberg, one, at least, of the inventors of printing, of whom
there is a statue in one of the squares. I have been to see the
cathedral, noted only for antiquity, and for the numerous monuments
and statues of church dignitaries in the interior.

       *       *       *       *       *

COBLENTZ, (ON THE RHINE,) SEPTEMBER.--The steam-boat left the quay
at Mayence this morning at six, with about one hundred passengers,
mostly English, on their homeward retreat. For two or three miles,
the banks of the river continued to be low and tame. We passed the
palace of the Grand Duke of Nassau, a fine edifice, near the river
The classical Brunnens of Langen-Schwalbach are a few miles in the
interior.

We were this day to see the only interesting part of the 'glorious
Rhine,' that between Mayence and Cologne. Along here, there are a
plenty of little islands, and the banks of the river abound with
picturesque rocky crags, capped by ruins of castles, and relieved
here and there by a green meadow, a vineyard, or a neat village.
Johannisberg, a chateau belonging to Prince Metternich, is one of the
first from Mayence. This estate has fifty-five acres of vine-grounds,
from whence comes the most celebrated of the Rhenish wines.
Speaking of Metternich, I need not remind you of his portraiture
as 'Beckendorf,' in that unique production, 'Vivian Grey.' Then we
passed the ruins of Klopp and Ehrenfels,[11] Vantsberg castle, at
present occupied, from which we were saluted with a gun; the ruins
of Falkenberg, Guttenfels, Schöenberg, and the rocks of 'the Seven
Sisters' in the river;[12] Sternberg and Liebenstein, 'the Brothers,'
etc., all famed by many a pathetic legend. There are also the pretty
villages of Rudesheim, Geisenheim, Bingen, Oberwesel, Saint Goar, and
others, too tedious to mention; and the rock of Lureley, with an echo
which repeats seven times.

I am now before the castle of Ehrenbreitstein, the strongest fortress
in Europe, built on a rocky elevation, commanding the river for
several miles. The city of Coblentz, nearly opposite, and connected
with it by a floating bridge, is strongly fortified, and garrisoned
by five thousand Prussian soldiers. It was founded by Drusus, the
Roman general, thirteen years before Christ.

       *       *       *       *       *

COLOGNE, 14TH.--I am now in the ancient and honorable city of 'Les
Trois Rois,' and of the eleven thousand virgins.

On leaving Coblentz, the shores are again 'flat and stale,' (though
perhaps not 'unprofitable' to the vinters,) until thou comest unto
Remagen, when there are a few miles of the picturesque, and then the
_scenery_ of the Rhine is finished. On the score of natural beauty,
it would take a good many Rhines to make a Hudson; but, as Willis
says, _here_ we are constantly reminded of the _past_; history,
tradition, and song, have given every thing a charm, and even these
rough old ruins are tinted with a _couleur de rose_; but amidst the
hills, and streams, and forests, of the so-called _new_ world, our
thoughts stretch forward to the future. We have already the rich
material, and perhaps the time will come when Europe may not claim
superiority, even in works of art, or in historical associations
and reminiscences; albeit we have no princely palaces or baronical
strongholds, and, thanks to our democratic rulers! we are in no
immediate danger of them.

But the Rhine is interesting--intensely so; and I can only regret, my
dear ----, that you are not here to share with me this long-wished
for pleasure.

    'The castled crag of Drachenfels
      Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
    Whose breast of waters broadly swells
      Between the banks which bear the vine,
    And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,
      And fields which promise corn and wine,
    And scatter'd cities crowning these,
      Whose far white walls along them shine,
    Have strew'd a scene which I should see
    With double joy, wert _thou_ with me.

    'And peasant girls with deep blue eyes,
      And hands which offer early flowers,
    Walk smiling o'er this paradise;
      Above, the frequent feudal towers
    Through green leaves lift their walls of gray,
      And many a rock which steeply lowers,
    And noble arch in proud decay,
      Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;
    But one thing want these banks of Rhine--
    Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine.

    'The river nobly foams and flows,
      The charm of this enchanted ground,
    And all its thousand turns disclose
      Some fresher beauty varying round;
    The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
      Through life to dwell delighted here;
    Nor could on earth a spot be found
      To nature and to me more dear,
    Could thy dear eyes, in following mine,
    Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine.'

If misery loves company, as the proverb says, why should not
happiness be also sociably disposed? There is to me a special
loneliness in being in these regions of song, with a crowd of
strangers, but with no 'congenial spirit' who in after days would
recall to us the fond recollection of happy hours passed together in
the distant land; who with a single word might bring vividly before
us a glowing panorama of scenes remembered as a dream. And is there
not as much or more enjoyment in these remembrances, than in the
'first impression?'

Beside the Drachenfels, there are a score of ruins this side of
Coblentz, such as Rolandzeck, Godesberg, and other hard names; and
we also passed the pretty town of Bonn, the seat of an ancient and
well-endowed university. From one of the castles, near the river, we
were saluted with three cheers by the garrison.

To-morrow I shall write from Aix-la-Chapelle, for here I must say,
albeit not in the Byronic vein,

      'Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted
      The stranger fain would linger on his way;
      Thine is a scene alike where souls united,
      Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray;
      And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey
      On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
      Where nature, not too sombre nor too gay,
      Wild, but not rude, awful, but not austere,
    Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.'

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Flowing in and from the lake.

[2] See also 'Anne of Gierstein.'

[3] A heap of bones of the vanquished remain to this day on the field.

[4] The costume is worn only by the peasantry.

[5] The Rhigi is not remarkable for its height, being but five
thousand seven hundred feet above the plain; but being isolated from
the great range, it affords much the widest view.

[6] See his calculation in figures, in 'Sketches of Switzerland.'

[7] The others are Hamburgh, Bremen, and Lubeck.

[8] The average number of new works per annum, issued for the first
time in Great Britain in the last three years, is about 1200; in
France, 4,000; in Germany, 6,000.

[9] A happy combination of safety, beauty, and convenience, is shown
in the ramparts of the city of Geneva.

[10] The 'Old Man' of the Bubbles denounces these trumpets, but
verily they are preferable to the long tin horns of the English
'guards,' which are indeed enough to

            ----'break his bands of sleep asunder
    And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder!
        Hark, hark! the horrid sound;
    He raises his head as if waked from the dead,
        And amazed he stares around!'

[11] Among the Rhenish legends, versified by Planche, is one of the
'Mouse-Tower,' near Ehrenfels, commencing:

    'The Bishop of Mentz was a wealthy prince.
      Wealthy and proud was he;
    He had all that was worth a wish on earth,
      But he had not charitie!

    He would stretch out his _empty_ hands to _bless_,
      Or lift them both to _pray_;
    But, alack! to lighten man's distress,
      They moved no other way.'

A famine came; the poor begged in vain for aid, 'till he 'opened his
granaries free,' and then locked them in, and 'burned them every
one.' 'The merry mice! how shrill they squeak!' said the prelate:

    'But mark what an awful judgment soon
      On the cruel bishop fell!
    With so many mice his palace swarm'd,
      That in it he could not dwell.
    They gnaw'd the arras above and beneath,
      They eat each savory dish up,
    And shortly their sacrilegious teeth
      Begun to nibble the bishop!

    'He flew to the castle of Ehrenfels,
      By the side of the Rhine so fair,
    But they found the road to his new abode,
      And came in legions there!
    He built him in haste a tower tall
      In the tide, for his better assurance,
    But they swam the river, and scal'd the wall,
      And worried him past endurance!

    'One morning his skeleton there was seen,
      By a load of flesh the lighter!
    They had pick'd his bones uncommonly clean,
      And eaten his very mitre!
    Such was the end of the Bishop of Mentz;
      And oft at midnight hour,
    He comes in the shape of a fog so dense,
      And sits on his old 'Mouse-Tower.'


[12] Perhaps you may be amused by this legend. It runs as follows:

    'THE Castle of Schöenberg was lofty and fair,
    And seven countesses ruléd there:
    Lovely, and noble, and wealthy I trow--
    Every sister had suitors enow.
    Crowned duke and belted knight
    Sigh'd at the feet of those ladies bright:
    And they whispered hope to every one,
    While they vow'd in their hearts they would have none!

      Gentles, list to the tale I tell;
      'Tis many a year since this befel:
      Women are altered now, I ween,
      And never say what they do not mean!

    'At the Castle of Schöenberg 'twas merriment all--
    There was dancing in bower, and feasting in hall;
    They ran at the ring in the tilt-yard gay,
    And the moments flew faster than thought away!
    But not only moments--the days fled too--
    And they were but as when they first came to woo;
    And spake they of marriage or bliss deferr'd,
    They were silenced by laughter and scornful word!

      Gentles, list to the tale I tell;
      'Tis many a year since this befel:
      And ladies now so mildly reign,
      They never sport with a lover's pain!

    'Knight look'd upon knight with an evil eye--
    Each fancied a favored rival nigh;
    And darker every day they frowned,
    And sharper still the taunt went round;
    Till swords were drawn, and lances in rest,
    And the blood ran down from each noble breast;
    While the sisters sat in their chairs of gold,
    And smiled at the fall of their champions bold!

      Gentles, lift to the tale I tell;
      'Tis many a year since this befel;
      Times have changed, and we must allow,
      Countesses are not so cruel now.

    'Morning dawn'd upon Schöenberg's towers,
    But the sisters were not in their wonted bowers;
    Their damsels sought them the castle o'er--
    But upon earth they were seen no more;
    Seven rocks are in the tide,
    Ober-wesel's walls beside,
    Baring their cold brows to heaven:
    They are called, 'The Sisters Seven.'

      Gentles, list to the tale I tell;
      'Tis many a year since this befel:
      And ladies now may love deride,
      And their suitors alone be petrified!'




THE SONGS OF OUR FATHERS.

    'THEIR voice shall be heard in other ages,
    When the kings of Temora have failed.'

                                                     OSSIAN.


    YE say, we sing no household songs,
      To those beside our hearths at play;
    No minstrelsy to us belongs,
      No legends of our by-gone day:
    No old traditions of the hills,
    Our giant land no memory fills--
      We have no proud heroic lay!
    Ye ask the time-worn storied page--
    Ye ask the things of other age,
      From us--a race of yesterday!

    Of yore, in Britain's feudal halls,
      Where many a warlike trophy hung,
    With shield and banner on the walls,
      The bard's high harp was sternly strung
    To praise of war--its fierce delights--
    To 'heroes of an hundred fights,'
      Ever the 'sounding shell' outrung!
    Gone is the ancient Bardic race--
    Their song hath found perpetual place
      Their country's proud archives among!

    The warlike Norsemen of the isles,
      Erst o'er the wave held sovereignty--
    A sound is swelling where, erewhile,
      Their ringing spears made melody:
    Rude hunters of the seal and whale
    Are chaunting out the Saga's tale,
      To the wild winds sweeping by--
    How their heroes heard the Valkyriur call
    To the feast and song in Odin's hall--
      To the white mead foaming high!

    The stirring Scottish border tale,
      Pealed from the chords in chieftain's hall--
    The wild traditions of the Gäel,
      The wandering harper's lays recall:
    All have their legends, and their songs--
    Records of glory, feud, and wrongs.
      What nerved the fair chivalric Gaul,
    When woke the bold 'Parisienne?'
    The 'Marsellois?' _what_ foeman then
      Roused him to conquer or to fall?

    What thought the Switzer's bosom thrills,
      When sounds the 'Ranz de Vache' on high;
    A race as ancient as their hills,
      Still echoes their wild mountain cry:
    He springs along the rocky height--
    He marks the lammergeyer's flight--
      The chamois bounding by:
    He snuffs the mountain breeze of morn--
    He winds again the mountain horn,
      And the loud Alps reply!

    Our fathers bore from Albion's isle,
      No stories of her sounding lyres--
    They left the old baronial pile--
      They left the harp of ringing wires!
    Ours are the legends old and dim,
    The household song--the evening hymn,
      Sung by your bright hearth-fires!
    Each tree that in your soft wind stirs,
    Waves o'er our ancient sepulchres--
      The ashes of our sires!

    Yea, forth they went, nerved to forsake
      Home, and the chains they might not bear--
    And woman's heart was strong, to break
      The links of love which bound her there.
    Here, free to worship and believe,
    From many a log-built hut, at eve,
      Went up the suppliant voice of prayer.
    Is it not writ on history's page,
    How the strong arm claimed _our heritage_?--
      Of the lion claimed his lair!

    Our people sang no loud war-songs,
      They shouted no loud battle-cry--
    A burning memory of their wrongs
      Lit up their path to victory!
    With prayer to God to aid the right,
    The yeoman girded him for fight,
      To free the land he tilled, or die!
    They bore no proud escutcheon'd shield--
    No blazoned banners to the field--
      Nought but their motto--'LIBERTY!'

    Their sons--when after years shall fling
      O'er these romance--when time hath cast
    The mighty shadow of his wing
      Between them and the stoned past--
    Will tell of foul oppression's heel,
    Of hands which bore the avenging steel,
      And battled sternly to the last--
    By their hearth-fires--on the hill-side free,
    Till the swell is caught by the echöing sea,
      And hymned by the wandering blast!

                                                       IONE.




THE DEAD HUSBAND.[13]

BY ALPHONSO WETMORE, ESQ., AUTHOR OF THE 'GAZETTEER OF MISSOURI.'


MORE than one half of the inhabitants of the globe have an imperfect
idea of the sufferings that are endured by their kindred, even in
the vicinity of their own dwellings. The same laudable sentiment
that induces display of the elegancies of life, causes concealment
of our miseries, or humiliating misfortunes. The social feeling
which induces us to lend aid to a neighbor in peril, or in the full
tide of prosperous action, tends to the exhibition of our good
fortune; it is sympathy in both instances. It is the sufferer who
seeks concealment, having no flattering prospects to offer for the
congratulations of the sympathetic. It is the jealous distrust of our
natures that induces the pedestrian, who is toiling onward with a
humid brow, to cast a nervous and discontented glance at the tenants
of the post-coach, as it darts onward; and he welcomes the cloud of
dust that insures concealment of his woes, created only by contrast.
It is only when crime brings suffering on the innocent kindred of the
criminal, that there exists serious cause of discontent.

JOSEPH JOPLIN was one of half a dozen sons of a tavern-keeper in
the county of Buncombe, North Carolina; and consequently he became
initiated in early life into the ways of the world; by which general
expression, it may be in this case understood, an acquaintance with
whiskey and tar-kilns, long rifles, and quarter-races. When this
younger son of the publican of the 'Piny Woods' had nearly attained
the stature of the family standard, six feet three inches, and a
few months before he had reached his twentieth year, he led up
before the township justice of the peace a hope-inspired damsel. She
vowed herself his partner, in weal and wo, in life and death. His
circumstances at the time were only middling. He owned 'a likely
young nag, a dollar bill, and a good rifle-gun.'

A few months after the festivities of the nuptials had left the
sober realities of life in bold relief, the young couple began to
look beyond the precincts of the paternal double cabins, in order to
fix the trace leading to the most inviting region. Their departure
was accelerated by 'a small scrimmage,' in which Mr. Joplin was
unfortunately a principal actor, at a shooting-match. His antagonist
had darkened the manly disc of our hero a little; but then the young
bridegroom boasted that he had taken an 'under bit out of his left
ear, and stove two of his front teeth down his throat.'

The young couple departed with the buoyancy of hope, (that flattering
endorser of accommodation paper,) for the western district; the
husband on foot, leading in the devious pathway of his bride, who was
mounted on the nag. This animal was well laden with household stuffs,
consisting principally of quilts and 'kiverlids.'

The adventurers reached the point of destination, six miles from the
last cabin, on the borders of the Indian country, in season to make
a crop. When the corn was gathered in, the fall hunt half finished,
the venison drying, and the 'bear bacon' cured, the Indian Summer,
with its mild haze, shed a soft and cheering influence upon the
new-beginners.

On one of the quiet evenings, made more interesting by the
tranquillity of the day of rest, the settlers were entertaining a
neighboring family with a happy display of the best the house could
afford, with 'a streak of fat and a streak of lean.' While the
children of their guests were playing antic gambols about the door,
a scream of infantile alarm arrested the attention and deep interest
of the settlers. As the three males of the party snatched their arms,
the anticipated war-cry rang responsive in the precincts of the
cabin. The foremost of the assailants fell, and another shot wounded
and arrested the advance of the leading warrior, while the affrighted
mothers drew in their fugitive infants. As the cabin-door was closed
against the foe, a distracted mother saw her youngest child snatched
up by a retreating brave, while his comrades dragged off their dead
leader. A gun had been hastily charged, and the fearless Joplin,
having thrown open the door, drew it to his face; but the wary
savage held up, to shield his person, the little captive. 'Fire!'
screamed the distracted mother; 'better dead than a prisoner!' At the
critical instant when the little sufferer parted asunder its legs,
the sharp report of the rifle of the white man was heard, and the
crimson current, of a deeper hue than the painted skin of the savage,
rippled down his naked trunk. He reeled, and hesitated, and ere the
smoke of the rifle had blown away, the frantic mother, with knife in
hand, was seen flying to the rescue. The savage, cool and collected,
even in the agonies of death, interposed the infant between the
thrust of the Amazon and his person, and the unhappy mother plunged
her weapon into the bosom of her own child!

The warrior's knife closed the scene as he fell, and was bathed in
the heart's blood of the fearless woman, the wife of Joplin's nearest
neighbor. The Indians fled without a single scalp.

After the funeral obsequies of the mother and child had been hastily
performed, and they were consigned to the same unostentatious grave,
the neighboring settlers assembled, and rendezvoused at Joplin's
cabin. They elected him their captain. Here they continued during
the autumn and winter, with various fortune in sharp skirmishes with
their unrelenting and always vigilant enemy.

Early in the spring, they broke up their little settlement, and
retired back to the more populous part of the country. Captain Joplin
returned to the paternal mansion in the Piny Woods, to exhibit the
beginning of the third generation, in the person of young Buckeye
Joplin. After lingering awhile in his old haunts, and recounting the
perils he had cheerfully met and overcome, he looked out again upon
the land of promise, the western expanse, for another channel of
enterprise.

The second expedition of our hero was undertaken by water. Having
packed his family across to the Tennessee river, and exchanged
his 'nag' for a canoe, or 'dug-out,' he embarked in his long and
devious voyage to the Mississippi. Joplin occupied the stern as
steersman, but his spouse was provided with a paddle, which she
plied alternately with her knitting, as they glided onward to an
unknown land. The voyage was barren of incident, and only varied by
fishing and hunting for the subsistence of the family. They entered
the Mississippi, and descended this river to the mouth of White
river; and as this was backed up by the spring freshets, the voyagers
turned their course up the stream, and crossed the connecting cut,
or bayou, to the Arkansas river. They continued their voyage, until
they found a landing-place of an inviting aspect, near Little Rock.
Here the emigrants landed and pitched their half-face camp. After a
year or two of hardship and privation, incident to the settlement
of a new country, the Joplin family, somewhat increased in numbers,
began to enjoy the fruits of industry. The improved condition of the
captain's pecuniary affairs afforded him the means of indulging in
his ardent propensity for attendance on all the gatherings, which he
had never dismissed from his mind while his necessities restrained
him. In the absence of her husband, the pains-taking woman kept the
shuttle flying, or sung an accompaniment to the instrumental music of
the spinning-wheel. From these gatherings Joplin sometimes returned
with marks of personal rencounters; and time, and the soothing care
of the even-tempered woman, were requisite to soften the exasperated
backwoodsman, and to obliterate the signs of the feud on the
distorted visage of her husband. On these occasions, the ferocity of
his disposition predominated on the first day after the gathering;
on the second, he was moody and thoughtful; and the third brought on
repentance, and promises of reformation.

The great races at length came on; and Captain Joplin's colt,
sired by Chain-Lightning, out of the celebrated full-blooded dam
Earthquake, had been entered for the jockey purse, and the owner was
'obliged to be present.' This he promised should be his last race,
and his last fight on any race-course. The good woman ventured, as
she handed him his holy-day jeans, to urge his return home at an
earlier hour than usual. Very fair promises were made; but, about the
hour of midnight, the 'whole team of bear-dogs' opened a boisterous
greeting as the roistering captain approached his cabin. The cold
bacon, and cabbage, and buttermilk, were set out by the flickering
light of a _Corinthian_ tallow peach-wicked candle, and the meal was
despatched in silence. When the gentleman from Buncombe had picked
his teeth with his pocket-knife, he whispered an appalling secret in
the ear of his wife. She drew a long sigh of resignation, wiped her
eyes with a corner of her apron, and began packing his saddle-bags,
while Joseph Joplin cleaned his 'rifle-gun,' which he called 'Patsy,'
after his wife. He had finished trimming the bullets he had cast,
when, all things being ready, he rose to depart.

'Joseph Joplin,' said his wife, 'I always allowed it would come to
this; but the Lord's will be done!'

In reply, the captain briefly remarked:

'If he don't die of the stab I give him, Mike Target will pass me
word, when the boys go out into the bee-woods. I leave you every
thing but the colt and my bear-dog, _Gall-buster_; and, so as I never
comes back, tell the boys 'tis my wish that they never gives the lie,
nor takes it.'

The period of Joplin's absence was more than three years; during
which space of time his patient spouse kept up the monotonous music
of her wheel, and the regular vibrations of the shuttle. Her hearth
was kept warm and clean, and her children were amply clad in cleanly
attire, and well fed. Every Sunday was set apart for extra washing of
faces, combing of tow-heads, reading a chapter or two, and chanting a
hymn. She had rented her field, so as to secure her bread-stuffs; and
her little stock of cattle had increased, while they supplied milk
and butter for the subsistence of her children. Each tedious year
had she spun, wove, and made up for her absent husband a new suit of
jeans, which she hung in the cabin beside her own holiday apparel,
that she carefully abstained from wearing, until she could attire
herself and husband in their best, on some joyous day of meeting.
His Sunday hat hung on the hook where the breech of his rifle had
rested. Every day of rest she made it a point to brush the dust from
the smooth beaver, and drop a tear into the crown. From the day of
his departure, no account had ever been received of him. The sheriff,
with a rude posse, had searched the premises on the day after the
affray, and the neighboring country had been scoured in vain. The
racer had outstripped all pursuers, and the fugitive was secure in
the unexplored regions at the foot of the Ozark mountains.

The wounded sportsman who had defrauded our hero, contrary to the
most flattering hope, had been effectually cured of the wound that
Joplin, in his intoxicated rage, had inflicted. The wife, rejoicing
in this piece of good fortune, had resorted to every device within
the compass of female ingenuity to convey intelligence to the unknown
region, the abode of her husband; but she had almost despaired of
ever seeing him again, when an old bee-hunter disembarked from
his pirogue opposite her cabin, on the Arkansas river, to dry his
blankets after a hard storm. Of this old adventurer Mrs. Joplin
learned that he had met a trapper on the head waters of White river,
who called himself Griffin, and the description of his person induced
the fond wife to think it might be Captain Joplin himself. On his way
out to the bee-woods the following season, the old hunter carried
with him a letter to the following effect:

    'DEER CAPTING JOE JOPLING; arter my best respects, hoping these
    lines may find you: he arn't dead no more nor you and mee; you
    mout come home, I reckon; the childrin all right smartly groin;
    you would never know the baby.

                          'PATSY JOPLING, at the Piny Bend.'

Long and anxiously did the poor affectionate wife wait the return
of the father of her little brood, and often in the train of her
flattering imagination start as some stranger entered her cabin,
with the exclamation, 'I thought it was Capting Jopling!' In her
leisure moments, too, she was in the habit of fixing her ardent and
steady gaze on the point of rocks behind which she had seen him
depart. In all the torture of delay, not a reproachful exclamation
was ever uttered by the sufferer. A sigh hastily drawn, and a
rudely-constructed prayer, evinced the emotion she deeply felt. The
fond woman could perceive, as her children increased in growth,
strong resemblances of their father developed in every lineament. But
the likeness in 'the baby' was absolutely wonderful. 'If,' said she,
'little Joe was grown, and daddy war here present, they would never
know themselves apart.'

It was on one of those mild and sunny days of rest, in the Indian
Summer of autumn, that the wanderer returned. The careful mother was
surrounded with her children, and was, at the moment he entered the
cabin, giving the last touches to the flaxen locks of the youngest
child.

'You had as well give my hair a little combing, Patsy,' was the calm
salutation of our hero.

'Capting Joseph Jopling!' exclaimed the half-frantic wife, 'ar it you
at last!' She smoothed down the folds of her garments as she arose,
and, with a smile of welcome, as she gave her hand, said, 'Howdy,
Joseph?'

On a close and more deliberate scrutiny of his person, Patsy seemed
to think, with her husband, that his hair needed the comb. His locks
were matted together like the wool on the forehead of a buffalo; not
a comb or an intrusive pair of scissors had interrupted the wild
luxuriance of its growth, in a period of more than three years.
When his hat had given way to the irritation of cane-brakes and
green briars, and the peltings of the storms of summer and winter,
he had cultivated the covering with which nature had bountifully
provided his cranium. By occasional cropping of his locks with his
butcher-knife, as they grew out so as to obstruct his vision, he
left his upper-works with a singular aspect; and when the growth of
three years' beard is considered, with the bears' oil glistening on
its uncombed surface, it is not strange that his charitable wife
should give him some ironical compliments, such as these:

'Jopling, you're a beauty! Sally, bring the soap. Joseph, you are a
picture! The poor baby don't know its daddy; did he think daddy was
a painter? Get your daddy's razor out of mammy's box; put on the
tea-kettle, Sally, and heat some water, while I make up a pone of
bread. Josey, did you cook for yourself all this time?' and as she
bustled about, she began to sing a long-neglected air, to which she
had trod a measure in the joyous days of early youth, in the Piny
Woods of Buncombe.

The first six months after his return home, Captain Joplin was
diligently occupied in repairing his farm, which had fallen into a
slovenly condition. He was content with the society of his domestic
circle, and remained quietly at home. But, when the great annual
races came on, he was tempted to spend a day, only as a spectator, on
the track, and accordingly appeared there early on the first morning.
He had many acquaintances there, all of whom were thirsty beings; and
before the sun went down he felt rich, and generous, and glorious.
The ferocious stage of the disease came on after dark.

The return of the husband to his cabin that night was at an earlier
hour than usual. He was pale and nervous, and blood was on his
hand, and his garments were discolored. He notified his wife of
the necessity of his immediate departure. She insisted on leave to
accompany him, which was readily granted. Such of their effects as
could be speedily packed, were hastily put in portable form. In
an hour, the family were mounted on their riding animals, and in
the road leading down the river. Few words were exchanged among
the fugitives; and the place of destination was never mentioned.
On reaching the first ferry, at about the hour of midnight, they
turned shortly to the left, and crossed to the opposite bank of the
river, without requiring the aid of ferrymen. On landing, Joplin
scuttled and sunk the ferry-flat, to cut off pursuit. They continued
their route until about ten o'clock, with little regard to road or
trace; and having found a deep ravine, apparently untrodden by human
footsteps, they halted for refreshment. After a brief repast of
dried venison, the party continued their route, and at sunset were
fifty miles from their habitation. It should have been observed,
that the fugitives left their cabin in a blaze, with a hope that in
the neighborhood a belief would prevail that the whole family had
been consumed. To strengthen this belief, the cunning woodsman had
deposited the carcasses of two deer he had killed the day before,
and several joints of bacon, in the corner where the family usually
slept, that these might be mistaken for their bones. The impression
which it was policy to make, on examination of the ashes, obtained
currency to a great extent, and it delayed pursuit. When the doubts
that were entertained by some of the destination of the fugitives
finally induced search, it was too late to discover any trace of
the Joplin family. It was believed by many, who supposed they had
fled, that they departed down the river in the ferry-boat that had
disappeared.

In the mean time the flight was continued, until Joplin reached his
old haunts, in a cane-bottom on Flat Creek, a small tributary of
White River. Here security was made doubly sure by the bear-rough
that sheltered them, and by the distance they had removed from the
settlement in Arkansas. They had, moreover, taken the precaution to
locate within the boundaries of Missouri. The fugitive from justice
was likewise in the vicinity of a cave, known only to himself and the
red hunters who had formerly resided in this quarter of the country.
In this subterranean chamber, the dry bones from a neighboring
battle-field had been deposited by the tribe who had been the
greatest sufferers in a sanguinary conflict. As cheerless as this
place might appear, Joplin had reposed in it alone many nights on
his former visit to this region of country; and in this place he had
_cached_ his furs and peltries, which now constituted his surplus for
his new beginning in the world. The erection of a cabin was a task
not easily completed, without the aid of neighbors for the raising;
but, when the roof had been placed over their heads, and fastened
there with weight-poles, and the puncheons composing the floor laid
down, the mother of this little colony began to sing, and spin, and
bustle about over the irregular surface with cautious footsteps, and
stealthily, in her daily task. She had not forgotten the essential
portions of her wheel and loom in her departure from the ruin of her
old habitation, and the mechanical ingenuity of the woodsman, with
his axe, augur, hand-saw, and butcher-knife, supplied the deficiency.
The good woman continued still to indulge on Sunday in a clean apron,
a chapter, and a comb. These were luxuries she could not readily
dispense with. In his former visit to this wild region, Joplin
esteemed it no hardship to refrain from the use of bread-stuffs; but
he was constrained to make some apology to his wife and children for
the privation he would be obliged to impose, until he could raise a
crop. He however assured them, that with a mixture of bear-meat and
venison, and a 'sprinkle' of turkey-breast, they would do very well
without bread, provided they could get time to cut bee-trees.

This isolated family had innocence and contentment in full
possession, and independence prospectively within reach. The
disturber, known in the west by the name of 'long green' and 'blue
ruin,' in Pennsylvania, 'old rye' and 'cider royal,' and by the
Indians appropriately named 'fire-water,' and more emphatically
'fool-water,' was happily beyond their reach. The only race-path
known in this new settlement was that on which the husband and wife
contended for the prize of domestic comfort. In this, the fabrication
of jeans by one party, and the dressing of buck-skins by the other,
furnished profitable amusement. The only visit made by the daring
woodsman to the settlements secured him the patriarch of a flock,
and a few meek companions, from the fleeces of which 'the winter of
his discontent' was made comfortable. In their retreat, the Joplin
family were in a fair way to make their circumstances easy, by such
skill as is usually acquired in frontier experience, when a hard
winter, attended with much variable weather, set in earlier than
was anticipated. The woodsman had exerted himself violently in the
chase, to secure his supply of 'bear bacon,' while the Indian Summer
lasted. To this cause he attributed the 'dumb ague,' that laid him up
when the first snow-storm commenced. With this disease he lingered
a few weeks. The only medicine within reach of the settlers was a
small parcel of walnut pills. Whether the bark of which these were
composed had been scraped up or down the tree, so as to fit it for an
emetic or a cathartic, does not appear; but no relief was afforded
by administering even 'a double dose,' and he grew weaker as much
with the repetition as by discontinuance of the remedy. When he could
no longer rise without assistance, or stand alone, the anxious and
confiding wife inquired, for the first time, how far it might be
to the residence of the nearest neighbor. When she was told it was
one hundred and sixty miles, it is uncertain which predominated in
her mind, hope or despair. She continued silently and thoughtfully
to minister to his wants, to the extent of her circumscribed means,
until, when, late at night, the wintry winds were rudely perforating
the openings around the cabin-door, and the house-dogs growled a
dignified response to the dismal howlings of the wolf, the hoarse
death-rattle in the throat of the sufferer was perceived. This added
consternation to alarm. To the earnest and almost unconscious inquiry
now uttered by the trembling wife, 'Shall I send for a doctor?' no
answer was given. Her husband had expired!

The embarrassing position now occupied by the widow had never been
anticipated. If her strength could have overcome the resistance of
the hard-frozen earth that would enable her to say to the Indian
deity of the wilderness, 'With pious sacrilege a grave I stole,'
her force, and that of her infant children united, was insufficient
for the removal of the body. Widowed destitution was never more
complete. There was her dead husband on one side, and her weeping and
distracted babes on the other. A single night of bitter wakefulness
and watching was the last that she ventured to linger out in her
dreary abode; and it seemed to her an eternity of darkness. Early on
the morning after the death of her husband, the lone widow packed
up a supply of provision, and, with her children, mounted, left her
cabin and unburied husband to search for a neighbor. She carried
the rifle with her, in order to make fire at her encampments on the
journey. On closing the door on the house of mourning, the distress
of parting was made doubly agonizing by an inquiry of one of the
children, made in these words: 'Are you going to leave daddy?'

The first day's route lay up through the valley, and along the
bank of the creek on which her dwelling was situated; and she was
therefore guided by it. After the first night's encampment, where
she had been surrounded with wolves, and nervously agitated by their
howlings, and occasionally the startling scream of a panther, she
resumed her journey. The little family of wanderers had marched a
short distance from their place of lodging, when all knowledge of
their route failed. After wandering sometimes in one direction, and
then retracing their steps and striking off at some other point of
the compass, the bewildered mother encamped for the second night.
The next morning the half-distracted traveller determined to retrace
her steps. Two days brought her back to the dreary and desolate
abode. The cabin was surrounded with a snarling pack of wolves,
which were contending for the remains of her little flock of sheep.
These were scared away by the faithful dogs that had followed the
family. The interior presented the frightful evidence of mortality.
A cat had made horrid inroads on the face of the deceased, and was
still feeding on the mutilated corpse! The necessity of burial was in
no manner diminished by this horrid spectacle. The afflicted woman
scarcely knew why she had returned. She passed another long winter
night in her house of mourning, hovering with her little brood around
the cheerless hearth.

When morning at last arrived, the family again departed, having
confined the cat under a tub, to prevent a repetition of her cannibal
feast. After a journey of five days in a southwardly direction, and
when the widow began to hope she was approaching a settlement, she
was cheered with the view of smoke arising from a hunter's camp. He
was out in search of game, but there was an abundance of venison
hanging over the embers of his camp fire. This proved a seasonable
supply, for the poor woman had that morning given the last morsel of
her stock of food to her children, while she piously fasted herself.
The hunter was as much gratified, on his return to his camp that
evening, to find it so well peopled, as he had been in the successful
hunt of the day. The hospitality of the camp was profusely urged
upon the strangers, and bear-meat, venison, and turkey, and elk
marrow-bones, were proffered with the frank and liberal manner of a
woodsman.

This camp was sixty miles from the nearest settlement; and it was
speedily arranged that the hunter should accompany the family back
to the house, to inter the dead husband. As the party approached
the cabin, the family halted, and the hunter advanced to look into
the condition of the interior, before the mourners ventured to take
another gaze of horror. Hunters, as well as sailors, have their
superstitions, which deduct somewhat from their general fearless
bearing. They believe in charms on their rifles, and sometimes employ
a person skilled in magical incantations to 'take off the spell.' It
is not, therefore, unaccountable, that this woodsman felt greater
apprehension in approaching the cabin where a dead body lay, than he
would in conflict with an Indian, or in a close hug with an 'old he
bear,' provided his butcher-knife was stiff, of approved temper, and
sharp at the point. He 'laid out' an old she wolf with his rifle,
that was scratching at the door of the desolate habitation, and was
on the point of raising the latch, when he heard issuing from within
a low moaning sound. Venturing to peep through an opening where
the chinking had fallen out, a single glance at the frightful and
mutilated corpse satisfied his heated imagination that the sound
proceeded from the dead husband. He ran off with wild affright, under
a full conviction that the house was haunted. The earnest entreaties
of the widow induced him, in company with herself, to approach the
cabin once more. They looked in at the same moment, and beheld, as
their superstitious imaginations severally painted the scene before
them, in the conception of the hunter, a black, cloven-footed beast,
sitting on the body of the deceased, while the widow insisted that
something like a swan was hovering over the remains of her dead
husband. The moaning was renewed; the confinement of the cat was
not remembered, and the spectators of the horrors within ran away
in despair. The hunter once more ventured near enough to the cabin
to throw a torch upon its roof. When the flames had spread, and were
rapidly reducing the house to a mass of vivid ruin, the funeral party
mounted their horses, and turned their backs upon the ashes of the
DEAD HUSBAND.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] THE writer of this very spirited sketch of western life, assures
us that it is essentially true, having been narrated to him by a
respectable citizen, only six miles from the closing scene of the
tragic adventure. A fictitious name has been substituted, out of
delicacy to the survivors of the family.

                                         EDS. KNICKERBOCKER.




THE DYING BOY.

BY THE LATE J. HUNTINGTON BRIGHT, ESQ.


    IT must be sweet in childhood to give back
    The spirit to its Maker, ere the heart
    Hath grown familiar with the paths of sin,
    And soon to gather up its bitter fruits.
    I knew a boy, whose infant feet had trod
    Upon the blossoms of some seven springs,
    And when the eighth came round, and called him out
    To revel in its light, he turned away,
    And sought his chamber to lie down and die.
    'Twas night; he summoned his accustomed friends,
    And on this wise bestowed his last request:

          'Mother, I'm dying now!
    There's a deep suffocation on my breast,
    As if some heavy hand my bosom pressed,
    And on my brows I feel the cold sweat stand.
          Say, mother, is this death?
            Mother, your hand!
          Here, lay it on my wrist,
    And place the other thus, beneath my head;
    And say, sweet mother, say, when I am dead,
          Shall I be missed?

          'Never beside your knee
    Shall I kneel down at night and pray,
    Nor in the morning wake, and sing the lay
            You taught to me.
          Oh! at the time of prayer,
    When you look round and see a vacant seat,
    You will not wait then for my coming feet--
          You'll miss me there!

          'Father, I'm going home!
    To that great home you spoke of, that blessed land,
    Where there is one bright summer, always bland,
            And tortures do not come;
          From faintness and from pain,
    From troubles, fears, you say I shall be free--
    That sickness does not enter there, and we
          Shall meet again!

          'Brother, the little spot
    I used to call my garden, where long hours
    We've stay'd to watch the coming buds and flowers--
            Forget it not!
          Plant there some box or pine,
    Something that lives in winter, and will be
    A verdant offering to my memory,
          And call it mine.

          'Sister, the young rose-tree,
    That all the spring has been my pleasant care,
    Just putting forth its leaves so green and fair,
            I give to thee;
          And when its roses bloom,
    I shall be gone away--my short course run--
    And will you not bestow a single one
          Upon my tomb?

          'Now, mother, sing the tune
    You sang last night; I'm weary, and must sleep:
    _Who was it called my name?_ Nay, do not weep--
          You'll all come soon!'

    Morning spreads over earth her rosy wings,
    And that meek sufferer, cold and ivory pale,
    Lay on his couch asleep. The morning air
    Came through the open window, freighted with
    The fragrant odors of the lovely spring.
    He breathed it not. The laugh of passer-by
    Jarred like a discord in some mournful note,
    But worried not his slumber. He was dead!




A FEW THOUGHTS ON PHRENOLOGY.

IN TWO PARTS.--PART ONE.

    'Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear.'

                                           --'JULIUS CÆSAR.'


WHATEVER conflicts with the opinions or prejudices of mankind, must
commend itself to public favor by something more than its simple
truth, or according to the world's estimate of its danger or folly,
persecution or ridicule will ever wait upon its progress to general
belief.

The phrenologist has not been compelled to ascend the scaffold,
nor has he been tortured with 'a slow fire of green wood,' for
his heretical opinions; and for this mercy, he is indebted to
the enlightenment of the age in which he first proclaimed his
discoveries: but he has been preserved, in order to be 'roasted'
by the burning satire of his contemporaries, and to be 'served up'
for the gratification of those epicures in wit, who, with the aid
of a good tailor, can do more for the cause of truth by a look and
a laugh, than a Gall or a Spurzheim, by the labors of a life. To
these laughing philosophers, your phrenologist is a very eccentric
man indeed--very; to their humble apprehensions, his science appears
quite stupid--quite; and all he converses about, appears to them to
be nothing more nor less than 'bumpology,' positively. Moreover, they
have heard some amusing anecdotes upon the subject. A travelling
disciple of this wonderful science, who wrote out characters for
eighteen pence per head, once departed from the scene of his labors
without paying his bill, and his landlord was represented as so far
becoming a convert to his guest's theory, as to believe in the organ
of '_unpayativeness_!'

These philosophers ill conceal their mirth at the frequent occurrence
of mistakes made by those gentlemen termed practical phrenologists,
and have been known to violate every rule for the suppression of
ungentlemanly laughter, when the fact has been related, that a
manipulator of heads, supposing himself (being blindfolded,) to be
in a prison, pronounced the wealthy mayor of a city to be a thief;
a retired butcher to be a murderer; and a minister of the gospel to
have been convicted of rape!

More important opponents have been found among the traders in the
current literature of the day; as well your 'penny-a-liner,' as the
man who has had the courage to write a book, and the good fortune to
vend a copy-right, have been unmercifully witty at the expense of my
brethren; and without waiting to inquire whether any important truth
was concerned in phrenological investigation, they have only sought
to know whether any thing ludicrous could be derived from it. These
oracles Ignorance consulted, and the response was--a laugh.

One American author, whose writings denote the combined action of
mirthfulness and destructiveness, very magnanimously allowed the
phrenologist the distinction of being one of the 'Three Wise Men of
Gotham.' He is portrayed as sallying forth with no less enthusiasm
than La Mancha's renowned knight, nor with less 'rueful visage,'
upon a forlorn pilgrimage to some Golgotha, in quest of specimens to
illustrate the truths of his mighty discovery; while one of his high
compeers sails in quest of the great central hole of the earth; and
the other stands in a glow of intense rapture, viewing the sudden
perfectability of human nature. But alas for such noble enthusiasm!
If our grave author's relation of the facts be genuine, (and who
doubts his historical accuracy?) the

    'Three little boys that a-sliding went,
    All on a summer's day,'

met with an enviable fate, compared with that of these children
of wisdom. The captain's boat never entered the wished-for haven;
the philanthropist failed to make the lion and the lamb lie down
together in peace and safety; and the unhappy phrenologist, in his
'meditations among the tombs,' erred in pronouncing upon the traits
of mind that once inhabited the poor fragments he had gathered up;
and he found his science blown to atoms, because he mistook the
cranium of a fool for that of a philosopher!--a mistake which the
vanity of an author might possibly make in his own case, with far
better opportunities of judging aright.

A science that could survive an attack like this, must have had
_brains_ indeed to support it; and he who ventured to proclaim its
truth, after a world's laugh had announced its folly, must have
possessed more than an ordinary share of moral courage.

But the science of Human Nature survived this satire, and having
outlived the sneers of learned prejudice, and the obstreperous mirth
of vulgar ignorance, now commands much of the serious attention of
mankind.

The world had long known the principal facts which suggested
phrenological inquiry, but had omitted to pursue the investigation
necessary to form a correct conclusion from them. Established
theories in government, civil and moral, and in mental philosophy,
presented great obstacles to such an inquiry as has finally been
made. For many centuries, man had been regarded as a depraved moral
being--instinctively inclined to do wrong--without a countervailing
good sentiment; and the phrenologist has not yet been forgiven, in
certain quarters, for his refutation of this slander. To him it was
obvious, that no man could be found devoid of any good attribute.
One is condemned for injustice; may he not be benevolent? Another
professes to hate mankind, and yet loves his own offspring, and
cherishes them with the most tender solicitude and care. One is a
coward, but nevertheless benevolent and just; another is cruel, and
yet he is enthusiastic and brave. Here is a prodigal; but he is kind
and noble in his dispositions, and may yet return to paternal love,
with forgiveness and blessings upon his head. There, again, is a
thorough hater, and yet by the influence of the same temperament,
a most ardent lover, whom no maiden would despise. Who had failed
to observe as much as this?--and yet where was the apologist of his
race--the defender of man's moral nature against the charge of total
depravity?

Again: The intellects of men varied in activity and strength, and
this difference was known to be early developed in persons born
and nurtured under the same roof, and subjected to the same mental
and moral discipline. The father who discovered that his son could
not easily acquire a knowledge of words, but could nevertheless
demonstrate with readiness the most difficult problem in mathematics,
observed the fact in profitless silence. The phrenologist pointed
the father to the conformation of his child's brain as the origin
of his mental peculiarity; and demonstrated, that the effect which
the parent had observed in silent wonder, had an adequate cause. For
this he was ridiculed; while he who stupidly believed in the effect
without the cause, was reverently regarded as both orthodox and wise.

The world knew that the genius of Fulton was not adapted to the
writing of romance, while no one ever supposed that Sir Walter
Scott was possessed of mechanical skill; yet it was regarded as
mere accident, or great good fortune, that these distinguished
men stumbled into a career of thought which demanded the world's
admiration; and few dreamed that the causes of their varied
excellence were as great and different, as the effects were
dissimilar. Burns walked a poet behind his plough; and yet no other
Scottish farmer seemed a poet 'ready made,' although he may have been
as strong, as tall, and equally handsome. There _must_ have been
some difference in the head of Scotia's own bard--something that
elevated his nature, and lifted him above his walk in life. To adopt
his own language, he must have been 'one of Nature's noblemen, who
derived the patent for his honors directly from the Almighty;' and
yet, by what _outward seal_ the patent was impressed which conferred
the native title to distinction, the world knew not, and but for
phrenology, never would have known. Pope

    'Lisped in numbers, _for the numbers came_;'

and so did Zerah Colburn; and yet how different their _numbers_ were!
So wonderful was this latter individual, when a mere child, that he
was esteemed by his friends as an intellectual prodigy; and parental
love, fondly doting on its gifted child, and admiring

    ----'such wisdom in an earthly shape,
    Showed up a 'Colburn' as we show an ape.'

People had not ceased to wonder at the brilliancy of the boy, when
his mediocrity as a man produced a second surprise. He excelled in
nothing but numbers--and that was very mysterious indeed!

Woman has three characteristics, in great perfection and strength, to
wit: fear, attachment, and veneration; so much so, that a wag might
define woman to be 'a timid, affectionate, and religious animal.' Now
the phrenologist has observed, that at certain points where he has
located the organs of cautiousness, adhesiveness, and veneration,
woman's head is much fuller than man's. The most ordinary observer
will admit this to be the fact, upon inspection; but the answer he
will be likely to make, will be, that this is so, because she is
a woman; whereas she happens to be a woman, _because this is so_!
Without the full manifestations of these organs of the mind, woman's
nature would be radically changed; her gentle dependence upon man
for safety and protection would cease; her meek reliance upon her
Creator, and her distinguished reverence for sacred things, would
fail; and the gentleness, grace, and piety of her sex would depart
from her. Ambition would usurp the place of loveliness; the lord of
the creation would have to bear a _sister_ 'near the throne;' and a
rough contest for dominion would as much distinguish the sexes, as
they are at present characterized by the fullest manifestation, of
mutual courtesy and kindness.

Before phrenological investigation and discovery, man's moral and
intellectual nature seemed destined to perpetual mal-treatment. The
passion of fear was appealed to alike, to quicken the intellectual
faculties and moral sentiments of youth. If one failed to acquire
a lesson in a particular study with the same facility as another,
it was set down to his indolence; if one betrayed an unruly
propensity, which another did not manifest, it was charged to the
general corruption of human nature; and the lash, in either case,
was regarded as the blessed quickener of mental and moral dulness.
The lesson was no better acquired, nor was the dangerous propensity
diminished in activity, after the application of this remedy; and yet
the rod and the delinquent urchin remained inseparable companions.

The youth who, under the influence of angry excitement, had
taken vengeance on his fellow, was never found to have had his
destructiveness attempered with benevolence through the influence
of scourging; nor has he who neglected mathematics, for the love of
poetry, ever been flogged into an admiration of the exact sciences.
The world was wondering at the reason of the failure, when the
phrenologist stepped forth and informed them; but they laughed at
him, and whipped the children still!

Again: The man who was never forbidden to steal, may never have
stolen; while another, to whom has been repeated every day of his
life the command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' may nevertheless commit
murder; and yet both have been treated as though they possessed the
same sentiments and passions in an equal degree; and so of course
they have received the same moral discipline. In him who knows no
fear, how vain the attempt to inspire terror as the preventor of
crime! And yet how readily would a noble sentiment respond to your
appeal, and come to the rescue, when his virtue was at its greatest
need, had it been trained to do so? Pride often concedes what cannot
be obtained from a love of justice, while love of approbation will
bestow in charity such sums as put benevolence to the blush for her
scanty gifts. Cautiousness often gives to vice the fair aspect of
virtue; while ingenuousness and courage often expose the purest man
to accusation and censure. The love of glory may stimulate to deeds
of heroism, which the dauntless patriot cannot excel; and people may
worship the hero for braving danger in their behalf, when it was only
his vanity he designed most particularly to serve.

The courtier approaches the minister of state with flattery, and
obtains power and place; the robber awaits his sojourn through a
lonely wood, and by putting in bodily fear, obtains his gold; while
the thief secretly creeps into his mansion, and carries off his
choicest plate and richest jewelry. Would the minister, the courtier,
the robber, and the thief, profit by the same moral lecture, and the
like mental discipline? Men often possess great religious reverence,
who are as often detected at cheating in trade. Is the world right
in denouncing such as hypocrites? May not great veneration and
acquisitiveness, with moderate conscientiousness, produce this
result? What correction has been applied to defects like these? Not
the right one, surely. The patient wants no more religion than he has
got, but a little more integrity. Quicken his conscientiousness, and
he is cured.

Whose benevolence is heightened by fear? Who refrains from theft for
the hope of reward? The just man tells you he has no _desire_ to
steal. Will the fear of punishment inspire devotion? The devout man
'_feels_ to adore' his Creator. Will fear convince the atheist of
his error?--or the hope of reward convert him to a reasonable faith?
Both of these have been lavishly dealt out to him, with very little
effect. There are those who love contention better than truth. Will
argument convince such? They avoid nothing so much as conviction,
which puts an end to contention, and of course to all the pleasure
derived from it. Such interpose combativeness between your argument
and their reason, and your blows fall thick upon the shield only,
and arouse it to more and more resistance. Why spin out the night in
fruitless argument? Let them alone, and they will be convinced as
soon as the spirit of strife slumbers, and reason assumes her throne.

The phrenologist observed all this, and much more; and he could not
fail to conclude, that men's intellectual and moral natures varied
almost indefinitely. Here was one distinguished for passion, there
another for philosophy; one was celebrated for the brilliancy of
his fancy, another for the solidity of his judgment. Here was a
mathematician, there a poet; here a mechanic, and there a musician;
and those who resembled each other in mental dispositions, still
varied in activity and strength; so that there was as much difference
in their intellectual as in their physical power. Again, as we have
seen, their sentiments were unlike. Benevolence was contrasted with
meanness in every condition of human life, and conscientiousness
warred with injustice, wherever man was found; so that the moral
aspects of men, differed no less than their countenances.




A PRACTITIONER, HIS PILGRIMAGE

PART ONE.


INVOCATION.

    HAIL, great Hygeïa! Healing Goddess, hail![14]
    And lend one moment to a touching tale;
    One moment stay thy pestle-driving hand,
    And let thy half-compounded physic stand:
    That tale is this: I have a subject here,
    Not anatomical--but very near;
    A starving vot'ry of the 'healing art,'
    Who shows its wond'rous power in every part:
    But cannot find the language to describe,
    In proper guise, a member of thy tribe.
    Oh! then vouchsafe me a '_composing_ draught,'
    Potent as ever willing patient quaff'd!

           *       *       *       *       *

    I thank thee, for I feel it working now,
    And _composition_ flows, no matter how.


THE PILGRIMAGE.

'FELIX QUI POTUIT RERUM COGNOSCERE CAUSAS.'

    THE doctor sate sole in his easy chair,
    And his visage was stamped with the marks of care,
    And his vacant eye said, as plain as eye could,
    That his mind was digesting but meagre food.
    At all events, it were safe to say,
    That his own wise thoughts were its food that day.
    What ails thee, doctor?[15] Are patients thin?
    Nay, I know what you mean by that ready grin:
    Don't suppose I thought physic would make a man thrive,
    When he's specially blessed, if it leaves him alive:
    No; I knew that the veriest wretch that lies
    On street-pick'd straw, and with wistful eyes
    Covets the _steam_ of the baker's bread,
    With which he could never afford to be fed,
    If he puts in his stomach one nauseous pill,
    Will make himself only more _retchéd_ still:
    All this I can fathom; but now I mean,
    Are your '_visits_,' like angels', far between?

    The _Angel of Death_, that is, of course,
    That rides the pale steed, alias '_Pallida Mors_?'
    Pray have you not 'cases' enough, to pay
    For your coat of black and your breeches of gray?
    Your perpetual mourning for visiting-friends,
    Who, (alas for your purse!) met untimely ends?

    Or art sad, that the dose, 'hora _somni_ sumendum,'
    Which was meant to soothe suff'rings, should very soon end 'em?
    And lamentest, with tears such as doctors weep,
    That the patient, in consequence, slept his _long sleep_?
    Or art thinking, if longer you could not have kept him,
    If your dose had been '_pilulæ, numero septem_?'
    Now don't be down-hearted; for people enough
    Still live who will patronize medical stuff;
    And to whom do you think that a man would come quicker
    To find out his ailment--in short, be 'made sicker?'[16]

    But softly! It's wasting one's breath to ply
    A doctor with questions, and get no reply;
  { And indeed, as he's sitting companionless,
  { For a wiser man 't would be hard to guess
  { That I had been making a _mental_ address:
    So I'll call into service that eye of the mind,
    Which can see though its owner be never so blind,
    And in my own absence can safely depend
    On the word of my fancy--a poet's best friend;
    And will venture to say my report shall compare
    With the best ever written, it matters not where.
    For the truest reporter, (his minutes will show,)
    Though he uses 'short hand,' often draws 'the long bow.'

    The doctor, alone, as I said before,
    Was pond'ring some mystical subject o'er;
    It puzzled him sorely to know what to think,
    And, the scales being even, which side to make sink.

    Now made he a gesture, with eloquent hand,
    As one who explains what he can't understand;
    And anon, with his finger laid fast by his nose,
    Impatiently heard what he meant to oppose;
    Then, with sagest look and a lengthened face,
    He seem'd to maintain t' other side of the case;
    But however he view'd it, before or behind,
    He never could see it at all to his mind;
    And he made a wry face, as a doctor will,
    When he sets the example of taking a pill.
    But one thing he determin'd--at once to set out,
    And fathom the matter beyond a doubt.

    'The long and the short of the matter is this:
    I'll visit this personage--vis-à-vis!
    Come, saddle me up my snow-white horse,
    That looks like some phthisical donkey's corse,
    When, surmounted by me, with my 'phials of wrath,'
    He carries me round on my death-dealing path,
  { Hobbling along in the murky night,
  { And glimmering pale through the dim twilight,
  { With a little more spirit, an excellent sprite.

    'But alas! he will travel no road beside
    The road to that patient's--the last who died!
    In that case, to be sure, I used exquisite skill,
    But--it's rather too early to carry my bill:
    Let him stand--for I'll own he has duty enough,
    And '_Recipiat_ pabuli quantum suff.''

           *       *       *       *       *

    NO MAN who inhabits the smallest room
    That ever had tenant, (this side of the tomb,)
    Let its shape or its furniture be what they may,
    If his seat have been in it for day after day;
    If its little odd corners, the hardest to find,
    Were familiar as bosom-friends, time out of mind;
    If his coat have hung here and his boots lain there,
    And his breeches been toss'd about any where;
    No man ever left such a well-known spot,
    Uncertain if soon to return or not,
    But he stopped at the door, though he knew not why,
    And took a last look, and perhaps heav'd a sigh.
    So the doctor paused at the open door,
    With his hat in his hand that he always wore;
    (Its crown was low and its brim was wide,
    And an old prescription was stuck inside.)

    It seemed as the sight of his elbow-chair
    Embodied each lurking shade of care;
    'What a thankless life is this we lead!'
    He murmur'd, as murmurs the broken reed,
    That whispers low at the river's side,
    To the wind that is ravaging far and wide.
    But bless me! where am I? I ought to compare
    A Doctor Despondent to something less fair.
    'Tis strange what a walk a man's fancy will take
    To find out a figure, for simile's sake.
    But he said, in a very sad tone indeed,
    'What a thankless life is this we lead;[17]
    The good Samaritan's part is mine--
    Like him I administer 'oil and wine;'[18]
    But those who see me depart to-day,
    Will think me an incubus, passing away:
    Oh!--speaking of incubi--would not a wife
    Make something less bitter this dose of a life?
    She would clean out my phials, and make out my bills,
    And would do to experiment on with my pills:
  { I'll consider----' he said, as he shut the door,
  { And put on the hat that he always wore,
  { In his haste precipitate, 'hind side before.

    He hurried on foot to the car-dépôt;
    The engine was puffing, in haste to go.
    He seated himself on the hindmost seat,
    And he lean'd back his head, and he put out his feet,
    And he looked a peculiar look with his eye,
    And the man who sat opposite, wondered why;
    And he wondered more, when he heard him say
    That _steam_ locomotion had had its day;
    But what he was thinking, or what he could mean,
    That man did not know: it remains to be seen.

END OF PART FIRST.


FOOTNOTES:

[14] For parallel passages, naturally to be expected in distinguished
authors treating of similar subjects, I give a general reference to
_all_ great poets, _passim_.

[15] '_Quam viram aut heroa?_' may the reader ask; wherefore, for
his benefit, we will declare, that the original of our hero was
a Scottish physician, whom we heard at a 'public,' describing a
miraculous visit to a 'weird woman.' After finishing his story, and
a generous glass of whiskey-toddy, he went his way upon a sorry
gray mare, whose acquaintance, I am confident, would have been cut
by Rosinante, or Hudibras's famed Bucephalus, if she had solicited
a passing recognition. The only change in the _circumstantia_, is
his translation to another locality, and making the object of his
pilgrimage one more immediately interesting here.

[16] The motto of the Kirkpatrick family, derived from the answer
of one of their 'forbears' to Robert Bruce, when he 'doubted he had
slain the red Comyn'--'I make sicker'--we commend to the especial
attention of the 'Faculty,' in the event of their application to the
herald's college for a new blazonry of the professional arms.

[17] 'Medicé vivere, est miseré vivere.'

[18] Oleum Ricini, and Vinum Antimonii: Castor oil, and Wine of
Antimony.




OUR VILLAGE POST-OFFICE.[19]

BY MISS SEDGWICK.

    'WHY weep ye then, for him, who, having won
      The bound of man's appointed years, at last,
    Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done,
      Serenely to his final rest has passed;
    While the soft memory of his virtues yet
    Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set.'

                                                     BRYANT.


THE master of our village post-office for many years past was an old
man; but the real dispenser of its joys and sorrows was his son, a
youth who performed its duties with intelligence, exactness, and
delicacy. Some persons may not be aware how much the last quality
is called into requisition in a village post-master. Having the
universal country acquaintance with his neighbors' affairs, he holds
the key to all their correspondences. He knows, long before the news
transpires, when the minister receives a call, when the speculator's
affairs are vibrating; he can estimate the conjugal devotion of the
absent husband; but most enviable is his knowledge of those delicate
and uncertain affairs so provoking to village curiosity. Letters,
directed in well-known characters, and written with beating hearts
within locked apartments, pass through his hands. The blushing
youth steals in at twilight to receive from him his doom; and to
him is first known the results of a village belle's foray through a
neighboring district. Our young deputy post-master rarely betrayed
his involuntary acquaintance with the nature of the missives he
dispersed; but, whenever sympathy was permitted, his bright smile and
radiating or tearful eye would show how earnest a part he took in all
his neighbors suffered or enjoyed. Never was there a kinder heart
than Loyd Barnard's--never a truer mirror than his face.

Every family, however insignificant in the stranger's eye, has a
world of its own. The drama and the epic have their beginning, their
middle, and their end, in the material world. The true story of human
relations never ends, and this seal of immortality it is, that gives
a dignity and interest to the affections of the humble and unknown,
beyond that which fiction and poetry, even when it makes gods and
heroes its actors, can attach to qualities and passions that are
limited to this world's stage. This intrinsic dignity I claim for the
subjects of my humble village tale.

Loyd Barnard's father, Colonel Jesse Barnard, belonged to that
defunct body, the aristocracy of our country. He served in the
revolutionary war, he did good service to the state in the subsequent
Shay's rebellion, and, though he afterward inexplicably fell into the
ranks of the popular or democratic party, he retained the manners
and insignia of his caste--the prescribed courtesies of the old
_régime_, with the neatly tied cue, and the garment that has given
place to the levelling pantaloon. He even persevered in the use of
powder till it ceased to be an article of merchandise; and to the
very last he maintained those strict observances of politeness, that
are becoming, among us, subjects of tradition and history. These,
however, are merely accidents of education and usage. His moral
constitution had nothing aristocratic or exclusive. On the contrary,
his heart was animated with what we would fain believe to be the
spirit of our democratic institutions, a universal good will. The
colonel was remarkably exempt (whether fortunately or unfortunately
each according to his taste must decide) from the virtue or mania
of his age and country; and consequently, at threescore and ten,
instead of being the proprietor of lands in the West, or ships on the
sea, he possessed nothing but his small paternal estate in B----, a
pretty, cottage-looking dwelling, with a garden and an acre of land.
As far back as the administration of Jefferson, he had received
the appointment of post-master; and, as the village grew with the
prosperity of manufactures and agriculture, the income of the office
has of late amounted to some five or six hundred dollars. This,
with the addition of his pension as a revolutionary officer, made
the colonel 'passing rich;' for by this time his sons and daughters
were married, and dispersed from Maine to Georgia, and the youngest
only, our friend Loyd, remained at home. 'Passing rich' we say, and
repeat it, was the colonel. Those who have never seen an income of
a few hundred dollars well administered in rural life, can have no
conception of the comfort and independence, nay, luxury, it will
procure. In the first place, the staples of life, space, pure air,
sweet water, and a continual feast for the eye, are furnished in the
country, in unmeasured quantity, by the bounty of Providence. Then
when, as with the colonel, there are no vices to be pampered, no
vanities to be cherished, no artificial distinctions to be sustained,
no conventional wants to be supplied, the few hundred dollars do
all for happiness that _money_ can do. The king who has to ask his
Commons for supplies, and the Croesuses of our land who still desire
more than they have, might envy our contented colonel, or rather
might have envied him, till, after a life of perfect exemption from
worldly cares, he came, for the first time, to feel a chill from the
shadows of the coming day--a distrustful fear that the morrow might
_not_ take care of itself.

Among other luxuries of a like nature, (the colonel was addicted to
such indulgences,) he had allowed himself to adopt a little destitute
orphan-girl, Paulina Morton. She came to the old people after all
their own girls were married and gone, and proved so dutiful and so
helpful, that she was scarcely less dear to them than their own flesh
and blood. Paulina, or Lina--for by this endearing diminutive they
familiarly called her--was a pretty, very pretty girl, in spite of
red hair, which, since it has lost the favor some beauty, divine or
mortal, of classic days, won for it, is considered, if not a blemish,
certainly not an attribute of beauty. Paulina's friends and lovers
maintained that hers was getting darker every day, and that even were
it fire-red, her soft, blue eyes, spirited, sweet mouth, coral lips,
and exquisitely tinted skin would redeem it. Indeed, good old Mrs.
Barnard insisted it was only red in certain lights, and those certain
Ithuriel lights Loyd Barnard never saw it in; for he often expressed
his surprise that any one could be so blind as to call _auburn_ red!
In these days of reason's supremacy, we have found out there are no
such 'dainty spirits' as Ariel, Puck, and Oberon. Still the lover is
not disenchanted.

'Lina, my child,' said the old lady, one evening, just at twilight,
while the burning brands sent a ruddy glow over the ceiling, and were
reflected by the tea-things, our 'neat-handed lass was arranging,'
'Lina, do you expect Mr. Lovejoy this evening?'

'No, ma'am.'

'To-morrow evening, then?'

'No, ma'am; I never expect him again.'

'You astonish me, Lina. You don't mean you have given him his answer?'

Lina smiled, and Mrs. Barnard continued; 'I fear you have not duly
considered, Lina.'

'What is the use of considering, ma'am, when we know our feelings?'

'We can't afford always, my child, to consult feelings. Nobody can
say a word against Mr. Lovejoy; he made the best of husbands to his
first wife.'

'That was a very good reason why _she_ should love him, ma'am.'

Mrs. Barnard proceeded, without heeding the emphasis on _she_. 'He
has but three children, and two of them are out of the way.'

'A poor reason, as I have always thought, ma'am, to give either to
father or children for taking the place of mother to them.'

'But there are few that are calculated for the place; you are cut out
for a step-mother, Lina--just the right disposition for step-mother,
or step-daughter.'

Paulina's ideas were confused by the compliment, and she was on the
point of asking whether step-daughter and daughter-in-law expressed
the same relation, but some feeling checked her, and instead of
asking she blushed deeply. The good old lady continued her soundings.

'I did not, Lina, expect you to marry Mr. Lovejoy for love.'

'For what then, ma'am, should I marry him?' asked Lina, suspending
her housewife labors, and standing before the fire while she tied and
untied the string of her little black silk apron.

'Girls often do marry, my child, to get a good home.'

'_Marry_ to get a home, Mrs. Barnard! I would wash, iron, sweep,
scrub, beg to get a home, sooner than marry to get one; and, beside,
have I not the pleasantest home in the world?--thanks to your bounty
and the colonel's.'

Mrs. Barnard sighed, took Lina's fair, chubby hand in hers, stroked
and pressed it. At this moment, the colonel, who had, unperceived by
either party, been taking his twilight nap on his close-curtained
bed in the adjoining bedroom, rose, and drew up to the fire. He had
overheard the conversation, and now, to poor Paulina's embarrassment,
joined in it.

'I am disappointed, Lina,' he said; 'it is strange it is so difficult
to suit you with a husband; you are easily suited with every thing
else.'

'But I don't want a husband, Sir.'

'There's no telling how soon you may, Lina; I feel myself to be
failing daily, and when I am gone, my child, it will be all poor Loyd
can do to take care of his mother.'

'Can I not help him? Am I not stronger than Loyd? Would it not be
happiness enough to work for Loyd, and Loyd's mother?' thought
Paulina; but she hemmed, and coughed, and said nothing.

'It would be a comfort to me,' continued the old man, 'to see you
settled in a home of your own before I die.' He paused, but there
was no reply. 'I did not say a word when William Strong was after
you--I did not like the stock; nor when the young lawyer sent his
fine presents--as Loyd said, 'he had more gab than wit;' nor when
poor Charles Mosely was, as it were, dying for you, for, though his
prospects were fine in Ohio, I felt, and so did Mrs. Barnard, and so
did Loyd, as if we could not have you go so far away from us; but
now, my child, the case is different. Mr. Lovejoy has one of the
best estates in the county; he is none of your flighty, here to-day
and gone to-morrow folks, but a substantial, reliable person, and
I think, and Loyd said--' Here the brands fell apart; and, while
Paulina was breathless to hear what Loyd said, the old colonel rose
to adjust them. He had broken the thread, and did not take it up in
the right place. 'As I was saying, my child,' he resumed, 'my life is
very uncertain, and I think, and Loyd thinks--'

What Loyd thought Paulina did not learn, for at this moment the door
opened, and Loyd entered.

Loyd Barnard was of the Edwin or Wilfred order; one of those humble
and generous spirits that give all, neither asking nor expecting
a return. He seemed born to steal quietly and alone through the
shady paths of life. A cast from a carriage in his infancy had,
without producing any mutilation or visible injury, given a fatal
shock to his constitution. He had no disease within the reach of
art, but a delicacy, a fragility, that rendered him incapable of
continuous exertion or application of any sort. A merciful Providence
provides compensations, or, at least, alleviations, for all the
ills that flesh is heir to; and Loyd Barnard, in abundant leisure
for reading, which he passionately loved, in the tranquillity of a
perfectly resigned temper, and in a universal sympathy with all that
feel, enjoy, and suffer, had little reason to envy the active and
prosperous, who are bustling and struggling through the chances and
changes of this busy life. His wants were few, and easily supplied by
the results of the desultory employments he found in the village, in
the intervals of his attention to the post-office. As much of what we
call virtue is constitutional, so we suppose was Loyd's contentment;
if it was not virtue, it was happiness, for, till of late, he had
felt no more anxiety for the future than nature's commoners--the
birds and flowers.

'Ah, my son,' said the old gentleman, 'you have come just in the
right time--but where is Lina gone?'

'She went out as I came in, Sir, and I thought she looked as if she
had been weeping.'

'Weeping!' echoed the colonel; and 'Weeping!' reëchoed the old lady;
and 'could we have hurt her feelings?' asked both in the same breath.

'Why, what, in the world have you been saying to her, mother?'

'Nothing, Loyd--nothing--nothing--don't look so scared. We were only
expostulating a little, as it were, and urging her to accept Mr.
Lovejoy's offer.'

Loyd looked ten times paler than usual, and kept his eye rivetted on
his mother, till she added, 'But somehow it seems as if she could not
any way feel to it.'

'Thank God!' murmured Loyd, fetching a long breath. Both parents
heard the unwonted exclamation, and to both it was a revelation.
The Colonel rose, walked to the window, and, though the blinds
were closed, stood as if gazing out, and the old lady jerked her
knitting-needle from the sheath, and rolled up the knitting-work,
though she was not in the seam-needle.

It is difficult in any case for parents to realize how soon their
children pass the bounds of childhood, and how soon, among other
thoughts incident to maturity, love and marriage enter their heads.
But there were good reasons why the Colonel and his wife should have
fancied the governing passions and objects of ordinary lives had
never risen above their son's horizon. They considered him perfectly
incompetent to provide for the wants of the most frugal family, and
they had forgotten that love takes no counsel from prudence. It was
too late now to remember it.

The Colonel, after repeated clearings of his throat, taking off
his spectacles, wiping and putting them on again, said, 'Are you
_attached_ to Lina, my son?' He used the word in its prescriptive
rustic sense.

'Yes, Sir.'

'Strange I never mistrusted it!--How long have you been so, Loyd?'

'Ever since I was old enough to understand my feelings; but I did
not, till very lately, know that I could not bear the thoughts of her
becoming attached to another.'

'Do you know what Lina's feelings are?'

'No, Sir.'

'But surely you can _guess_, Loyd,' interrupted his mother.

'I can _hope_, mother--and I do.'

'The sooner, my son, you both get over it the better, for there is no
kind of a prospect for you.'

'My child,' said the good old man, gently laying his hand on the
shoulder of his companion of fifty years, 'trust in Providence;
our basket and store have been always full, and why should not our
children's be? Loyd now does the business of the post-office; while I
live they can share with us, and, when I am gone, it may so be, that
the heart of the ruler will be so overruled, that the office will be
continued to Loyd.'

Loyd, either anticipating his mother's opposing arguments, or
himself impelled irresistibly to the argument of love, disappeared,
and the old lady, who, it must be confessed, lived less by faith than
her gentle spouse, replied:

'The office continued to Loyd! Who ever heard of old Jackson's heart
being overruled to do what he had not a mind to?'

'My dear child!'

'Well, my dear, do hear me out; don't the loaves and fishes _all_ go
on one side of the table?'

'Why, we have had our plates filled a pretty while, my dear.'

'Well, my dear, old Jackson could not take the bread and butter out
of the mouth of a revolutionary officer.'

'I am sure he has proved that he _would_ not.'

'No, my dear, _could_ not. Why, even his own party--and we all know
what his party are in old Massachusetts--'

'About like the other party, my dear.'

'My dear! how can you say so! Why, his own party are the most
violent, given-over, as it were, and low-lived people; yet they would
be ashamed to see you turned out of office.'

'They would be sorry, I know; for we have many good friends, and
kind neighbors among them; there's Mr. Loomis, Harry Bishop, and Mr.
Barton.'

'Mr. Barton! Lyman Barton! My dear, every body knows, and every body
says, Lyman Barton has been waiting this last dozen years to step
into your shoes. The post-office is just what he wants. To be sure
he is a snug man, and lives within his means; but then he has a
large growing family, and they are obliged to be prudent, and there
would be enough to say he _ought_ to have the office. And, beside,
is he not always working for the party? writing in the paper? and
serving them every way? And who was ever a Jackson man, but for
what he expected to get for it? No, no, my dear, mark my words! you
won't be cold, before Lyman Barton will be sending off a petition to
Washington for the office, and signed by every Jackson man in town.'

'I don't believe it, my dear; I don't feel as if Lyman Barton would
ask for the office.'

'Well, my dear, you'll see, after you are dead and gone, how it will
be--you may laugh--I mean _I_ shall see, if I am spared--you always
have, colonel, just such a blind faith in every body.'

'My faith is founded on reason and experience, my dear. Through life
I have found friends kind to me beyond my deservings, and far beyond
my expectations. I have got pretty near the other shore, and I can't
remember that ever I had an enemy.'

While this conversation was in progress, there was a _tête-à-tête_,
on which we dare not intrude, in another apartment of the house. The
slight veil that had covered the hearts of our true lovers dropped
at the first touch, and both, finding a mine of the only riches
they coveted, 'dared be poor' in this world's poor sense. Secured
by the good colonel's indulgence, for the present they were too
happy to look beyond the sunshine that played around them for any
dark entanglements to which their path might conduct them. In any
event, they did not risk the miseries of dependence, nor the pains
of starvation. Nature, in our land, spreads an abundant table; and
there is always a cover awaiting the frugal and industrious laborer
(or even gleaner) in her fruitful fields. Any thing short of absolute
want, perhaps even that, it seemed to our young friends happiness to
encounter together.

Oh ye perjured traffickers in marriage vows! ye buyers and sellers of
hearts--hearts! they are not articles of commerce--buyers and sellers
of the bodies that might envelope and contain celestial spirits, eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die! To-morrow your home, that
temple of the affections, which God himself has consecrated, shall be
their tomb, within whose walls shall be endured the torpor of death
with the acute consciousness of life!

Our simple friends wotted not of the miseries of artificial life.
These had never even crossed the threshold of their imaginations.
The colonel gave his hearty consent for the asking, and his prudent
help-mate was too true-hearted a woman to withhold hers. There are
those wise as serpents, if not harmless as doves, in village life;
and such shook their heads, and wondered if the colonel calculated
to live and be post-master for ever! or if Loyd could be such a
fool as to expect to succeed to the office, when every body knew it
was just as good as promised to Mr. Barton! Loyd Barnard, a steady,
_consistent_ (our own side is always consistent) whig, expect the
tender mercies of the Jackson party! No, Loyd Barnard indulged no
such extravagant expectation. He had stood by 'old Massachusetts'
through her obstinate or her _consistent_ opposition to the general
government, and he expected to reap the customary reward of such
firmness or--prejudice. To confess the truth, he thought little about
the future, and not all of the Malthusian theories. His present
happiness was enough, and it was brightened with the soft and equal
light of the past. As to Paulina, it was her nature,

    'Ne'er to forgather wi' sorrow and care,
    But gie them a skelp as they're creepin alang.'

The preliminaries being adjusted, it was agreed on all hands that the
wedding should not be deferred. Quilts were quilted--the publishment
pasted on the church door--and the wedding-cake made. Never had the
colonel seemed better and brighter; his step was firmer, his person
more erect than usual; and his face reflected the happiness of his
children, as the leafless woods warm and kindle in a spring sunshine.

At this moment came one of those sudden changes that mock at human
calculations. An epidemic influenza, fatal to the feeble and the
old, was passing over the whole country. Colonel Barnard was one of
its first victims. He died after a week's illness; and though he was
some years beyond the authorized period of mortality, his death at
this moment occasioned a general shock, as if he had been cut off in
the prime of life. All--even his enemies, we should have said, but
enemies he had none--spoke of the event in a subdued voice, and with
the sincerest expressions of regret. The grief of his own little
family we have not space to describe, or, if we had, how could we
depict the desolation of a home from which such a fountain of love
and goodness was suddenly removed? Notwithstanding the day of the
funeral was one of the coldest of a severe January, the mercury
being some degrees below cipher, and the gusty, cutting wind driving
the snow into billows, numbers collected from the adjoining towns to
pay the last tribute of respect to the good colonel.

There is a reality in the honor that is rendered at a rustic funeral
to a poor, good man, a touching sincerity in sympathy where every
follower is a mourner.

The custom, growing in some of our cities, of private funerals, of
limiting the attendants to the family and nearest friends of the
deceased, is there in good taste. The parade of ceremony, the pomp
of numbers, the homage of civility, and all the show and tricks of
hollow conventional life, are never more out of place, never more
revolting, than where death has come with its resistless power and
awful truth. But a country funeral has, beside its quality of general
sorrow, somewhat of the nature of the Egyptian court that sat upon
the merits of the dead. The simplicity and frankness of country life
has truly exhibited the character of the departed, and if judged
in gentleness (as all human judgments should be rendered) it is
equitably judged.

The colonel's humble home was filled to overflowing, so that there
were numbers who were obliged to await the moving of the procession
in the intense cold on the outside of the house; and they did wait,
patiently and reverently--no slight testimony of their respect.

The coffin was placed in the centre of the largest apartment, in
country phrase, the 'dwelling-room.' Within the little bedroom sat
the 'mourners;' but a stranger, who should have seen the crowd as
they pressed forward one after another, for a last look at their
departed friend, might have believed they were all mourning a father.
They were remembering a parent's offices. There was the widow, whom
he had visited in her affliction; there the orphans, now grown to be
thriving men and women, fathers and mothers, whom he had succored,
counselled, and watched over; there were those whom he had visited
in prison; there were sometime enemies converted to friends by his
peace-making intervention; there was the young man reclaimed by
his wise counsel and steady friendship, for the good colonel had
a 'sk

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