LECTURE II. TRAVELS IN AMERICA. It may be known to some of those whom I have the pleasure to see around me, that when circumstances to which I need not further allude, occasioned a breach, temporary indeed, and soon repaired, in my connection with the West Riding of Yorkshire,-when, as the phrase goes, some of your neighbours, and probably of yourselves, had given me leave to go upon my travels,-I thought I could make no better use of this involuntary leisure than by acquiring some personal knowledge of the United States of America. I accordingly embarked in the autumn of the year 1841, and spent about one whole year in North America, having within that period passed nearly over the length and breadth of the Republic, trod at least the soil of twenty-two out of the twenty-six States of which the Union was then composed, and paid short visits to the Queen's dominions in Canada, and to the Island of Cuba. I determined to keep a journal during my travels, and only at the end of them to decide what should become of it when it was completed. I found it was written in too burried and desultory a manner, and was too much confined to my own daily proceedings, to make it of interest to the public at large; still more strongly I felt that after having been received with uniform civility and attention, nay, I may say, with real warmth and openness of heart, I should not wish, even where I had nothing but what was most favourable to communicate, immediately to exhibit myself as an inquisitive observer of the interior life to which I had been admitted; and this very feeling would probably have disqualified me for the office of an impartial critic. Now, however, that above eight years have elapsed since my return, in turning over the pages then written, it has seemed to me allowable to endeavour, for a purpose like the present, to convey a few of the leading impressions which I derived from the surface of nature and society as they exhibited themselves in the New World. It must follow necessarily from such limits as could be allowed to me on an occasion of this kind, that any account which I can put together from materials so vast and so crowded, must be the merest superficial skimming of the subject that can be conceived. All I can answer for is, that it shall be faithful to the feelings excited at the moment, and perfectly honest as far as it goes. I must premise one point with reference to what I have just now glanced at, the use of individual names. I came in contact with several of the public men, the historical men they will be, of the American Republic. I shall think myself at liberty occasionally to depart in their instance from the rule of strict D abstinence which I have otherwise prescribed to myself, and to treat them as public property, so long as I say nothing to their disadvantage. On the other hand, the public men of the United States are not created faultless beings, any more than the public men of other countries; it must not, therefore, be considered when I mention with pleasure anything which redounds to their credit, that I am intending to present you with their full and complete portraits. ment. It was on the 21st day of October, upon a bright crisp morning, that the Columbia steam-packet, upon which I was a passenger, turned the lighthouse outside the harbour of Boston. The whole effect of the scene was cheerful and pleasing; the bay is studded with small islands, bare of trees, but generally crowned with some sparkling white building, frequently some public establishThe town rises well from the water, and the shipping and the docks wore the look of prosperous commerce. As I stood by some American friends acquired during the voyage, and heard them point out the familiar villages, and villas, and institutions, with patriotic pleasure, I could not altogether repress some slight but not grudging envy of those who were to bring so long a voyage to an end in their own country, amidst their own family, within their own homes. I am not aware I ever again experienced, during my whole American sojourn, the peculiar feeling of the stranger. It was, indeed, dispelled at the moment, when their flag ship, the Columbus, gave our Columbia a distinguished, and, 1 thought, touching reception; the crew manned the yards, cheered, and then the band played, first " God Save the Queen," and then " Yankee Doodle." I spent altogether, at two different intervals, about a month in Boston. I look back with fond recollection to its well-built streets-the swelling dome of its State-house-the pleasant walks on what is termed the common-a park, in fact, of moderate size, in the centre of the city, where I made my first acquaintance with the bright winter sunsets of America, and the peculiar transparent green and opal tints which stripe the skies around them-the long wooden causeways across the inner harbour, which rather recalled St. Petersburgh to my recollection-the newly-erected granite obelisk on a neighbouring height, which certainly had no affinity with St. Petersburgh, as it was to mark the spot, sacred to an American, of the battle of Bunker's Hill-the old elm tree, at the suburban university of Cambridge, beneath which Washington drew his sword in order to take command of the national army-the shaded walks and glades of Mount Auburn, the beautiful cemetery of Boston, to which none that we yet have can be compared, but which I trust before long our Chadwicks and Paxtons may enable us to imitate, and perhaps to excel. These are some of my external recollections of Boston; but there are some fonder still, of the most refined and animated social intercourse-of hospitalities which it seemed impossible to exhaust-of friendships which I trust can never be effaced. Boston appears to me, certainly, on the whole, the American town in which an Englishman of cultivated and literary tastes, or of philanthropic pursuits, would feel himself most at home. The residence here was rendered peculiarly agreeable to me by a friendship with one of its inhabitants, which I had previously made in England; he hardly yet comes within my rule of exception, but I do not give up the notion of his becoming one of the historical men of his country. However, it is quite open for me to mention some of those with whom, mainly through his introduction, I here became acquainted. There was Mr. Justice Story, whose reputation and authority as a commentator and expounder of law, stand high wherever law is known or honoured, and who was, what at least is more generally attractive, one of the most generous and single-hearted of men. He was an enthusiastic admirer of this country, especially of its lawyers; how he would kindle up and flow on if he touched upon Lord on the Hardwick or Lord Mansfield-" Sir," as an American always begins, prairies of Illinois this day Lord Mansfield administers the law of commerce." He had also a very exalted opinion of the judgments of Lord Stowell, which his own studies and practice had led him thoroughly to appreciate; and I may permit myself to say that he had formed a high estimate of the judicial powers of Lord Cottenham. I must admit one thing, when he was in the room few others could get in a word; but it was impossible to resent this, for he talked evidently not to bear down others, but because he could not help it. Then there was Dr. Channing. I could not hear him preach, as his physical powers were nearly exhausted; but on one or two occasions I was admitted to his house. You found a fragile frame, and a dry manner, but you soon felt that you were in a presence in which nothing that was impure, base, or selfish could breathe at ease. There was the painter, Alston, a man of real genius, who suffices to prove that the domain of the fine arts, though certainly not hitherto the most congenial to the American soil, may be successfully brought, to use their current phrase, into annexation with it. These, alas! have since my visit, all been taken away. In the more immediate department of letters there are happily several who yet remain-Mr. Bancroft, the able and accomplished historian of his own country -Mr. Ticknor, who has displayed the resources of a well-stored and accomplished mind in his recent work on the literature of Spain-Mr. Longfellow, with whose feeling and graceful poetry many must be acquainted-Mr. Emerson, who has been heard and admired in this country-and I crown my list with Mr. Prescott, the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Mexico and of Peru, with respect to whom, during the visit he paid to England in the past summer, I had the satisfaction of witnessing how all that was most eminent in this country confirmed the high estimate I had myself formed of his head, and the higher one of his heart. The public institutions of Boston are admirably conducted. The Public or Common Schools there, as I believe in New England generally, are supported by a general rate, to which all contribute, and all may profit by. I am not naturally now disposed to discuss the question, how far this system would bear being transplanted and engrafted on our polity; but it would be uncandid if I did not state that the universality of the instruction, and the excellence of what fell under my own observation, presented to my mind some mortifying points of contrast with what we have hitherto effected at home. It is well known that a large proportion of the more wealthy and cultivated part of the society of Boston belong to the Unitarian persuasion; but a considerable number of the middle classes, and especially of the rural population of New England, comprising the six Northern States of the Union, still retain much of the Puritan tenets and habits of their immediate ancestors,-their Pilgrim Fathers. Before I leave Boston, let me add one observation on a lighter topic. I lodged at the Tremont Hotel, which was admirably conducted, like very many of those imposing establishments in the chief cities of the Union. Here I learnt that one is apt to receive false impressions at first; I was struck with the clean, orderly, agile appearance of the waiters. "The Americans beat us hollow in waiters," was my inner thought; on inquiring I found that of the twenty-five waiters in the house, four were English and twenty-one Irish. I could not help wishing that a large number of the Irish might come and be waiters for a little while. Within three or four days of my landing I grew impatient to see the Falls of Niagara without loss of time; if any sudden event should have summoned me home, I felt how much I should have grudged crossing the Atlantic without having been at Niagara, and I also wished to look upon the autumn tints of the American Forest, before the leaves, already beginning to fall, had entirely disapD 2 peared. The Western Railway, which appeared to me the best constructed that I saw in America, took me to Albany, a distance of 200 miles. The railway carriages, always there called cars, consist of long rooms, rather like a dining-room of a steam packet, with a stove inside, often a most desirable addition in the American winter, and you can change your seat or walk about as you choose. They are generally rougher than our railways, and the whole getting-up of the line is of a ruder and cheaper character; they do not impede the view as much as with us, as they make no scruple of dashing across or alongside of the main street in the towns or villages through which they pass. But I ought to remark about this as about every thing else, that the work of progress and transformation goes on with such enormous rapidity, that the interval of eight years since my visit will probably have made a large portion of my remarks thoroughly obsolete. The New England country through which we passed looks cheerful, interspersed with frequent villages and numerous churches-bearing the mark at the same time of the long winter and barren soil with which the stout Puritan blood of Britain has so successfully contended; indeed, the only staple productions of a district which supplies seamen for all the Union, and ships over all the world, are said to be ice and granite. Albany is the capital of the state of New York,-the Empire State, as its inhabitants love to call it, and it is a name which it deserves, as fairly as our own old Yorkshire would deserve to be called the Empire County of England. It is rather an imposing town, rising straight above the Hudson river, gay with some gilded domes, and many white marble columns, only they are too frequently appended to houses of very staring red brick. From Albany to Utica the railroad follows the stream of the Mohawk, which recalls the name of the early Indian dwellers in that bright valley, still retaining its swelling outline of wood-covered hills, but gay with prosperous villages and busy cultivation. more struck the next evening, though it was a more level country, where the railway passes in the midst of the uncleared or clearing forest, and suddenly bursts out of a pine glade or cedar swamp into the heart of some town, probably four, three, or two years old, with tall white houses, well lighted shops, billiard-rooms, &c.; and emerging, as we did, from the dark shadows into the full moonlight, the wooden spires, domes, and porticos of the infant cities looked every bit as if they had been hewn out of the marble quarries of Carrara. I am aware that it is not the received opinion, but there is something both in the outward aspect of this region and the general state of society accompanying it, which to me seemed eminently poetical. What can be more striking or stirring, despite the occasional rudeness of the forms, than all this enterprise, energy, and life welling up in the desert? At the towns of Syracuse, of Auburn, and of Rochester, I experienced the sort of feeling which takes away one's breath; the process seemed actually going on before one's eyes, and one hardly knows whether to think it as grand as the Iliad, or as quaint as a harlequin farce. I will quote the words I wrote down at the time: I was perhaps still "The moment is not come for me yet, if it ever should come, to make me feel myself warranted in forming speculations upon far results, upon guarantees for future endurance and stability: all that I can now do is to look and to marvel at what is before my eyes. I do not think I am deficient in relish for antiquity and association; I know that I am English, not in a pig-headed adhesion to everything there, but in heart to its last throb. Yet I cannot be unmoved or callous to the soarings of Young America, in such legitimate and laudable directions too; and I feel that it is already not the least bright, and may be the most enduring title of my country to the homage of mankind, that she has produced such a people. May God employ them both for his own high glory !" I am bound here in candour to state that I think what I first saw in America was, with little exception, the best of its kind; such was the society of Boston -such was the energy of progress in the western portion of the State of New York. At Rochester, an odd coincidence occurred to me, striking enough I think to be mentioned, though it only concerned myself. After the arrival of the railway carriage, and the usual copious meal of tea and meat that ensues, I had been walking about the town, which dates only from 1812, and then contained 20,000 inhabitants, and as I was returning to the hotel, I saw the word Theatre written up. Wishing to see everything in a new country, I climbed up some steep stairs into what was little better than a garret, where I found a rude theatre, and ruder audience, consisting chiefly of boys, who took delight in pelting one another. There was something, however, at which I had a right to feel surprised. In a playhouse of strollers, at a town nearly five hundred miles in the interior of America, which, thirty years before, had no existence, thus coming in by the merest chance, I saw upon the drop-scene the most accurate representation of my own house, Naworth Castle, in Cumberland. A great improvement has recently occurred in the nomenclature of this district; formerly a too classical surveyor of the State of New York had christened -I used the wrong term, had heathenised, to make a new one, all the young towns and villages by the singularly inapplicable titles of Utica, Ithaca, Palmyra, Rome they are now reverting to the far more appropriate, and, I should say, more harmonious Indian names, indigenous to the soil, such as Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga. : I thought my arrival at Niagara very interesting, We had come to Lockport, where there is a chain of magnificent locks, on the Erie Canal, one of the great public works of America, and which has done much to enrich this Empire State of New York. The surplus of the receipts enabled them to execute a variety of other public works. We arrived too late for the usual public conveyance. The proprietor of the stage coach agreed to give me, with one or two other Englishmen, a lumber waggon to convey us to the falls. The Colonel, for he was one, as I found the drivers of the coaches often were, drove his team of four horses himself. I generally found the stage-coach driving in the United States indescribably rough, but the drivers very adroit in their steerage, and always calling their horses by their names, and addressing them as reasonable beings, to which they seemed quite to respond. Altogether, the strangeness of the vehicle, the cloudless beauty of the night, the moonlight streaming through the forest glades, the meeting a party of the Tuscarora Indians, who still have a settlement here, the first hearing the noise of Niagara about seven miles off, and the growing excitement of the nearer approach, gave to the whole drive a most stirring and enjoyable character. When I arrived at the hotel, the Cataract House, I would not anticipate by any moonlight glimpses the full disclosures of the coming day, but reserved my first visit for the clear light and freshened feelings of the morning. I staid five days at Niagara on that occasion; I visited it again twice, having travelled several thousands of miles in each interval. I have thus looked upon it in the late autumn, in the early spring, and in the full summer. Mrs. Butler, in her charming work on America, when she comes to Niagara, says only, "Who can describe that sight?" and, with these words, finishes her book. There is not merely the difficulty of finding adequate words, but there is a simplicity and absence, as I should say, of incidents in the scenery, or, at least, so entire a subordination of them to the main great spectacle, that attempts at description would seem inapplicable as well as impotent. Never |