b'PS 2318 \n.A1 \n\n\n\nsi 111 \nIII 11 \n\niliil \n\n\n\niiii \n\n\n\n\n\n^^^^^Hp -HA^DY- ^ \n^^^^^H -VOLUME- \n\n\nI \n\n\n\n\nClass TS g3|g \nBook . r\\ \\ \n\n\n\nCOPYRK.HT DEPOSIT. \n\n\n\nFIRESIDE TRAVELS \n\n\n\nBY \n\n\n\nJAMES RUSSELL LOWELL \n\n\n\nWITH INTRODUCTION \nBY \n\nWILLIAM P. TRENT \n\n\n\n" Travelling makes a man sit still in his old age ivith satis- \nfaction, and travel over the world again in his chair and bed \nby discourse and thoughts." \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 The Voyage of Italy, by Richard Lassels, Gent, \n\n\n\nNEW YORK \n\nTHOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. \n\nPUBLISHERS \n\n\n\nIfRRARYovCONGRFSS \n\nTwo Conies Received \n\nJUL 25 \xc2\xbb906 \n\n\'Gr.;ypn,r\\u Hr.try \niA3^ CL XXc, No. \n\n/cr/6 7/ \n\n\n\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1906, \nBy THOMAS Y. CROWELL \n\n\n\nCO. \n\n\n\nTo \n\nw. w. s. \n\nWho carves his thought in marble will not scorn \nThese pictured bubbles, if so far they fly; \nThey will recall clays ruddy but with morn, \nNot red like these late past or drawing nigh ! \n\n\n\nThe greater part of this volume was printed ten \nyears ago in Ptitnams Monthly and Grahajfi\'s Maga- \nzme. The additions (most of them about Italy) \nhave been made up, as the original matter was, from \nold letters and journals written on the spot. My \nwish was to describe not so much what I went to see. \nas what I saw that was most unlike what one sees at \nhome. If the reader find entertainment, he will find \nall I hoped to give him. \n\n1864. \n\n\n\nCONTENTS. \n\nPAGE \n\nCambridge Thirty Years Ago .... 3 \n\nA MoosEHEAD Journal 58 \n\nLeaves from my Journal in Italy and Elsewhere. \n\nAt Sea loi \n\nIn the Mediterranean 114 \n\nItaly 122 \n\nA Few Bits of Roman Mosaic . . .182 \n\n\n\nvii \n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION. \n\nOne would scarcely guess from its peaceful, at- \ntractive title and its genial contents that the little \nvolume here presented began its existence as a book \n\xe2\x80\x94 and existence as a book, it should be remembered, \nis something very different from existence in the form \nof scattered articles in magazines \xe2\x80\x94 in the fourth \nyear of that great war between the States in which \nthe intensely patriotic Lowell took so fervid an in- \nterest. The \'\'Fireside Travels" of such a man at \nsuch a time must have been actually turned to the \nfields and thickets and swamps of Virginia, where \nLee with his diminishing forces was bravely but \nvainly contesting the advance of Grant and his well- \nrecruited army. "The President\'s PoHcy," "Mc- \nClellan\'s Report," "The Rebellion: its Causes and \nConsequences," these items from Lowell\'s bibliog- \nraphy for the year of grace \xe2\x80\x94 or, less ironically, the \nyear of strife \xe2\x80\x94 1864 seem much more appropriate \nto the epoch than a sketch of by-gone Cambridge, \na journal of woodland life, a collection of traveller\'s \nnotes. Newly assumed editorial duties on the old \nand influential North American Review, where he \ncould display some at least of the energy and acumen \nhe had shown as a journalist in the anti-slavery cause, \nhad in their selves nothing incompatible with the \n\n\n\nX INTR OD UC TION. \n\ncharacter of the times or of the versatile man \xe2\x80\x94 part \npoet, part professor, part critic, part publicist; but \nextracting articles from ten -year-old magazines, re- \nvising them, and seeing them through the press in a \nnew form would seem to be, mutatis mutandis^ the \noccupation of a Herrick rather than of a Lowell \nduring a great civil war. \n\nA moment\'s reflection, however, shows us that this \nis an entirely superficial view of the matter. Lowell \nwas no exception to the rule that in times of stress \nthe spirit craves and needs the contrast and relaxation \nafforded by excursions of the imagination or the \nmemory or both into the enchanted regions of the \nideal, whether of the golden past or of the golden \nfuture. Perhaps, as he corrected the proofs of his \nnew volume \xe2\x80\x94 practically his seventh appearance be- \ntween boards, but only his second as a writer of prose \n\xe2\x80\x94 Lowell\'s thoughts turned to old Cambridge,\' where \nmen destined to prominence in field or rouncil had \nstrolled as careless and happy college youths, or to \na little grave in Rome, where a tiny boy ^ lay buried \nwho could never sport under the Harvard elms and \nadd academic lustre to an honored name. \n\nWhy "Fireside Travels" was published when it \nwas, and what Lowell thought about the book at the \ntime, are matters upon which his correspondence and \n\n1 The use of this phrase at once recalls the " Old Cam- \nbridge " of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, to which \nreaders of the first of the essays in this volume will do well to \nturn. \n\n2 Walter Lowell, James Russell Lowell\'s only son, born \n22d Dec, 1850; died gih June, 1852. Scudder\'s "James \nRussell Lowell," IL, 418. \n\n\n\nINTR OD UCTION. xi \n\nthe chief biographical sources of information appear \nto throw no light whatsoever. His letters of 1864 \nshow plainly that his active mind frequently turned \naway from thoughts of politics and carnage. He \ncongratulates Mr. Howells on the latter\'s "Venetian \nletters in the Advertiser. " He tells Professor Norton \nthat he is enjoying his vacation with proofs every day \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 the proofs being those of the first volume of a \nfrustrated series of select old plays. He drops, with \nhis accustomed facility, into doggerel \xe2\x80\x94 of the inten- \ntional and somewhat bearable variety \xe2\x80\x94 but nowhere \ndoes he say a word about "Fireside Travels." Mr. \nScudder\'s index does not record any mention of it in \nthe two chapters of one hundred and fifty pages \ndevoted to Lowell\'s hfe between 1S58 and 1872. Nor \nis the case much improved when we turn back ten \nyears to learn something about the component parts \nof the volume when they first appeared. \n\n"A Moosehead Journal" was published in Novem- \nber, 1853, in that promising but short-lived periodical, \nPutnam\'s Magazine^ of which Lowell\'s friend, C. F. \nBriggs, was one of the editors. Mr. Scudder tells us \nthat Briggs received the contribution enthusiastically \nand that it "was in effect a journal, sent home" to \nLowell\'s wife, "of an excursion made by Lowell in \nthe summer of 1853 with his nephew Charles." \' In \nSeptember the author, writing to his editor, remarked : \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 "Don\'t cut it in halves. It will make but eleven \n\n1 The " Young Telemachus," General Charles Russell \nLowell, Jr., who fell at the battle of Cedar Creek. His widow, \nMrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, became one of the best-known \nphilanthropists of New York City. \n\n\n\nXll INTK OD UC TION. \n\npages/ and is much better all together. If it is dull, \nthe public won\'t thank you for making two doses of it; \nif entertaining, they will be glad to have it all at once." \nOne scarcely believes that Lowell really thought his \narticle dull; one has no doubt whatsoever as to his \neditorial sagacity. \n\n"Cambridge Thirty Years Ago" appeared in \nPutnairCs for April and May, 1854. It then bore \nthe title which ten years later Lowell reserved for his \nentire volume \xe2\x80\x94 those seductive words, "Fireside \nTravels." According to Mr. Scudder, the germ of \nthe paper was a sketch of the painter -poet Washington \nAUston, which, in September, 1853, Lowell began for \nPutnani\'s, but did not put to separate use. The \nverses to Menenius, happily few in number, were \ntaken from another contribution intended for Put- \nnani\'s, the unprinted portion of the long serio-comic \npoem "Our Own," which Mr. Scudder, curiously \nenough, conceived to have been written in Alexan- \ndrines, and the readers of Putnam^ s in 1853, less \ncuriously, wished discontinued as soon as possible. \nWriting to Briggs, Lowell affirmed, as well he might \nwithout conceit, that his sketch of Cambridge was \ndone as nobody but he could do it, for no one else \nknew the old town so well. "It is better than that \nMoosehead thing," he wrote, "and Maria liked it." \nThe last three words have a pathos of their own, when \nwe remember that the lovely and talented wife, who \nhad done so much to keep Lowell\'s genius from \ndiffusing itself in flats and shallows, "went home," to \n\n1 It made over twelve. \n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION. Xlll \n\nuse her husband\'s words, on October 27, 1853. She \nnever saw in print the dehghtful essay that had \ncharmed her in its unfinished state. \n\nNeither did she see the printed records of the \nItaHan journey she had made with her husband and \nchildren in 185 1 and 1852, for they were first published \nas \'\'Leaves from my Italian Journey" in Graham\'s \nMagazine for April, May, and July, 1854. But she \nhad seen the land of romance with him, even if she \nhad buried her little son there, and Lowell had doubt- \nless read to her the interesting letters to friends at \nhome which served as first sketches for some pages of \nthe essays. She had also seen her husband and the \nEdelmann Storg (the sculptor William Wetmore Story) \nwith their friends act in two amateur representations \nof "A Midsummer Night\'s Dream," and to have seen \nLowell, in the Eternal City, taking the parts of Pyra- \nmus and Bottom must have afiforded much more \nentertainment than anybody ever got or is likely to \nget out of Lowell\'s writings about Italy, full of clever- \nness though these undoubtedly are. \n\nIt was not to be expected that when he gathered \nthem into a book, Lowell would leave his articles \nprecisely as they stood ten years before. On the \nwhole, however, he made comparatively few changes \nof importance in "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago" and \nin "A Moosehead Journal," nor in later revisions was \nanything essential added. A reference to Beowulf, a \nquotation from Fuller, may be present or absent with- \nout the average reader being the wiser or thinking of \nLowell as much less than the widest ranger among \n\n\n\nXIV INTR OD UC TION. \n\nbooks and the best quoter from them to be found in \nthe ranks of American men of letters. With "Leaves \nfrom my Journal in Italy and Elsewhere" the case is \nsomewhat different. The two sections entitled "At \nSea" and "In the Mediterranean" do not appear to \nhave been printed in Graham\'\' s, and they are not to \nbe identified, at least under those titles, in Mr. Scud- \nder\'s bibliography. Of the remainder, about twenty- \nfive pages that pleased the reader of 1864 were denied, \nfor some reason or other, to the reader of 1854. \nAmong the added pages were the reflections on \n"material antiquity" that close "A Few Bits of Roman \nMosaic," the characteristically bold confession with \nregard to Michael Angelo in the same essay, and the \namusing incident of the Italian and the dead parrot \nwhich he was willing to give up to the customs officer, \nnot the least diverting digression in "Italy." Later, \nLowell added a few pages and omitted one of the most \natrocious of all his witticisms, that about Milton\'s \ncataract, which, however, was revived to plague the \nAmerican poet\'s memory in an article devoted to him \nnearly thirty years afterwards by a noted British \ncritic. We may now put bibliography behind us \nwith the remark that, when he collected his essays, \nthe Harvard professor was enabled to correct his \nItalian, and, in at least one case, to get rid of a false \ngender in Latin by using an equivalent EngHsh noun. \nLinguistic facility is a great blessing, but it has its \ndrawbacks. \n\nWhat now is to be said in praise of a book which \nfor more than forty years has charmed thousands of \n\n\n\nINTR OD UC TION. XV \n\nreaders who never saw Lowell, nearly as much as it \ndid the artist Story when, at the close of 1864, he read \nit in a London edition and recalled the dehghtful ex- \ncursions he had taken with its author? Certainly \nthere is nothing new to say about it. The Lowell who \nhad already revealed himself as a poet, a humorist, \xe2\x80\x94 \nthere are many people who think "The Biglow \nPapers" his greatest achievement, \xe2\x80\x94 a lover of books, \nshowed himself h.ere again in these three roles and in \na fourth already familiar and the most natural of all, \nthat of a genuinely patriotic American, who could \nappreciate what Europe had to offer without waver- \ning in his belief that his native land was the fairest \nand most favored under the sun. This Lowell, as \nwell as Lowell the brilliant journahst and editor and \nthe wide-awake traveller and genial companion, had \nbeen known for years before "Fireside Travels" ap- \npeared, and was to be known as a favorite figure to \nAmericans for many a year to come. As has been \nsaid, however, a book makes a different sort of im- \npression from that produced by magazine articles, and \nit is probable that the publication of "Fireside \nTravels" did something to reveal Lowell, the essayist, \nto the world. When "Among my Books" appeared \nin 1870 and "My Study Windows" in 1872, the role \nof authoritative critic was added to that of essayist, \nand American Hterature could boast another piose \nwriter of eminence. Perhaps the success of "Fire- \nside Travels" had something to do with the writing of \n"A Great Public Character," "My Garden Acquaint- \nance," and "A Good Word for Winter," which would \n\n\n\nXVi INTR ODUC TION. \n\nnot seem out of place in that volume, as well as with \nthe writing of the more technically critical essays on \nDryden and Chaucer that appeared in the later \ncollections. \n\nSo much at least we can say with safety. It is \nprobably still too early to pronounce with confidence \nhow much of these volumes will weather all the shocks \nof time, or how far Lowell, whose brilliance no one \ncan doubt, will prove a satisfying and so a standard \nor classic writer of prose. It is hard, indeed, to \nimagine that a time will ever come when the essential \nportions of "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago" \xe2\x80\x94 the \npictures of the barber and the deacons and the vener- \nable artist and the old President and the Greek Pro- \nfessor crossed in love \xe2\x80\x94 will cease to delight. As long \nas Harvard is Harvard and New England is New Eng- \nland, and as long as men and women in other parts \nof America reverence them for the contributions they \nhave made to the national life, so long, it would seem, \nwill Lowell\'s exquisitely loyal and tenderly humorous \npages be read with affectionate reverence. It would \nbe a little rash, however, to say as much, or nearly as \nmuch, about the journal and the notes of the ebullient \ntraveller. In 1864 they had their value. They con- \ntinued, though in a very individual fashion, the work \nbegun by Irving and Cooper and Willis and Long- \nfellow and Bryant \xe2\x80\x94 the work of spreading before \neager American eyes the treasures of European cul- \nture and of opening those same eyes to the natural \nbeauties of the new world itself. Lowell was a man \nof wider and richer culture, of more active imagina- \n\n\n\nINTR OD UC TION. XVll \n\ntion, of livelier fancy, and, it is needless to say, of \nmore exuberant humor than any of his predecessors, \nor of his contemporaries, like Bayard Taylor and \nCurtis. But what he did in "A Moosehead Journal" \nand in his Italian notes, while it differed immensely \nin manner, did not differ essentially in purpose from \nwhat they had done and were doing. Their work has \naged, mainly because a better-educated and a more \nwidely travelled generation has outgrown it, or at \nleast has need for new interpreters. It seems no \ntreason to Lowell\'s memory to say that probably his \nsimilar work will be outgrown, if it has not been \nsuperseded already. Its form, sprightly and clever \nas it is, can hardly save it, for each generation has its \nown standards of sprightliness and cleverness. \n\nThere is a point, however, that must be considered \nin this connection before we can be warranted in \nrelying to any great extent upon the above line of \nreasoning. Lowell\'s descriptions of his experiences \nin Maine and Italy may belong to a category of litera- \nture that speedily becomes obsolete ; but they are full \nof an element that is far from perishable and that has \nsaved many a piece of writing the form and general \nsubstance of which seemed to doom it to destruction. \nIt was not the beauties and mysteries of nature or \nthe charm and power of an old civilization that \nspecially riveted the eyes and stimulated the thoughts \nof Lowell the traveller. It was the men end women \nhe met. Just as with "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," \nit is the human interest of "A Moosehead Journal" \nand "Leaves from My Journal," that keeps one read- \n\n\n\nXVIU INTRODUCTION. \n\ning them to the last page. It is Uncle Zeb, and Mr. \nX, and Leopoldo, and the stout Itahan landlady that \nstand out, with the old Cambridge worthies, when we \nhave closed the book. They seem as human to us as \nthey doubtless did to the magazine readers of 1854.^ \nBut if they are human to us, will they not, in all proba- \nbility, be human to our grandchildren ? Probably they \nwill be, to such at least of them as turn to this book \nof Lowell\'s; but questions of style and of the propor- \ntion of interesting to uninteresting material will enter \ninto the determination of the number of readers \'\'Fire- \nside Travels" will have two generations hence. That, \nhowever, is a long time to look ahead. \n\nIt is almost needless to say that the most interest- \ning exhibition of human nature given in "Fireside \nTravels" is made by Lowell himself. How irresist- \nible he is in his good spirits and his wit; how im- \npossible it is for him to check his poetic fancy, which \nsuggests figures of speech altogether too numerous \nand unrestrained for the comfort of sober, decorous \nprose; how generous to a fault he is in quoting from \nthe old books he loves and wishes to recommend to \nhis readers. It is fortunate that "Fireside Travels" \nis not included among the classics that must be an- \nnotated for the use of schools, since it would be diffi- \ncult to find editors sufficiently widely read to track \nthe divagating Lowell into all his by-paths of learn- \ning. Probably if he had quoted less, if he had for- \n\nMt is a pleasure to find that Mr. Leon H. Vincent in his \nrecent book, " American Literary Masters," has emphasized \nthis point, which Lowell himself made at the close of "A \nMoosehead Journal." \n\n\n\nINTR OD UC TION. xix \n\nborne to drop into verse of his own composing, if he \nhad ruthlessly cut out the more facile of his epigrams, \nsuch as "our glass of naval fashion and our mould of \naquatic form," he might have given us a book less \namenable to critical censure; but, then, would he \nhave given us so much of his irresponsible, attractive \nself? He might easily have improved his prose style, \nyet in making it what it is now the fashion to call \n"distinguished," he might still more easily have de- \nprived it of the human, unaffected qualities that \nrender it alluring to many readers, despite its technical \nimperfections. For one phrase like "the ever-renew- \ning unassuetude" that we have to forgive, there are \ndozens that we wish to remember. We continue, after \nLowell, to assert that "hitherto Boswell is quite as \nunique as Shakespeare." We admire the epigram- \nmatic power displayed in "Morals can never be safely \nembodied in the constable," and we forget that a few \nlines lower the humor of "that model of the hospitable \nold English gentleman, Mr. Comus!" is very forced \nand thin. \n\nLowell was unfortunate in this book on two occa- \nsions, when dealing with Milton, because he forgot \nthat there are times when the instincts of the gentle- \nman must act as a posse to apprehend and restrain \nthe lawless sallies of the wit. But, as a rule, his \nreferences to writers and books show what a sure \ninstinct and what a sound equipment he had for \ncriticism, and the independence with which he ex- \npresses his judgments is often truly comforting. He \ngives proofs of his genuine democracy, of his sym- \n\n\n\nXX INTR OD UC TION. \n\npathy with the higher features of mediaeval civihza- \ntion, of his interest in poHtical reform, of his fine \ncapacity for friendship. In short, the Lowell of the \n"Fireside Travels" is in all essential respects a large, \ngenial nature full of life and imagination and culture, \nand ready to ripen into the critic, scholar, and pub- \nlicist, who, in his old age, commanded the respect of \nthe English-speaking world. \n\nW. P. Trent. \n\n\n\nFIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n\n\nFIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. \n\nA MEMOIR ADDRESSED TO THE EDELMANN STORG IN \nROME, \n\nIn those quiet old winter evenings, around our \nRoman fireside, it was not seldom, my dear Storg, \nthat we talked of the advantages of travel, and in \nspeeches not so long that our cigars would forget their \nfire (the measure of just conversation) debated the \ncomparative advantages of the Old and New Worlds. \nYou will remember how serenely I bore the imputa- \ntion of provinciaHsm, while I asserted that those \nadvantages were reciprocal; that an orbed and bal- \nanced life would revolve between the Old and the \nNew as opposite, but not antagonistic poles, the true \nequator lying somewhere midway between them. I \nasserted also, that there were two epochs at which \na man might travel, \xe2\x80\x94 before twenty, for pure enjoy- \nment, and after thirty, for instruction. At twenty, \nthe eye is sufificiently delighted with merely seeing; \nnew things are pleasant only because they are not \nold; and we take everything heartily and naturally \nin the right way, \xe2\x80\x94 for even mishaps are like knives, \n3 \n\n\n\n4 . FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nthat either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the \nblade or the handle. After thirty, we carry along \nour scales, with lawful weights stamped by experi- \nence, and our chemical tests acquired by study, with \nwhich to ponder and assay all arts, institutions, and \nmanners, and to ascertain either their absolute worth \nor their merely relative value to ourselves. On the \nwhole, I declared myself in favor of the after thirty \nmethod, \xe2\x80\x94 was it partly (so difhcult is it to distin- \nguish between opinions and personalities) because I \nhad tried it myself, though with scales so imperfect \nand tests so inadequate? Perhaps so, but more be- \ncause I held that a man should have travelled thor- \noughly round himself and the great terra incognita \njust outside and inside his own threshold, before \nhe undertook voyages of discovery to other worlds. \n" Far countries he can safest visit who himself is \ndoughty," says Beowulf. Let him first thoroughly \nexplore that strange country laid down on the maps \nas Seauton; let him look down into its craters, and \nfind whether they be burnt-out or only smouldering; \nlet him know between the good and evil fruits of its \npassionate tropics; let him experience how health- \nful are its serene and high-lying table-lands; let him \nbe many times driven back (till he wisely consent to \nbe baffied) from its speculative northwest passages \nthat lead mostly to the dreary solitudes of a sunless \nworld, before he think himself morally equipped for \ntravels to more distant regions. But does he com- \nmonly even so much as think of this, or, while buying \namplest trunks for his corporeal apparel, does it once \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 5 \n\noccur to him how very small a portmanteau will \ncontain all his mental and spiritual outfit? It is \nmore often true that a man who could scarce be in- \nduced to expose his unclothed body even to a village \nof prairie-dogs, will complacently display a mind as \nnaked as the day it was born, without so much as a \nfig-leaf of acquirement on it, in every gallery of \nEurope, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n" Not caring, so that sumpter-horse, the back, \nBe hung with gaudy trappings, in what coarse. \nYea, rags most beggarly, they clothe the soul." \n\nIf not with a robe dyed in the Tyrian purple of imagi- \nnative culture, if not with the close-fitting, work-day \ndress of social or business training, \xe2\x80\x94 at least, my \ndear Storg, one might provide himself with the merest \nwaist-clout of modesty ! \n\nBut if it be too much to expect men to traverse \nand survey themselves before they go abroad, we might \ncertainly ask that they should be familiar with their \nown villages. If not even that, then it is of little \nimport whither they go; and let us hope that, by \nseeing how calmly their own narrow neighborhood \nbears their departure, they may be led to think \nthat the circles of disturbance set in motion by the \nfall of their tiny drop into the ocean of eternity, will \nnot have a radius of more than a week in any direc- \ntion; and that the world can endure the subtraction \nof even a justice of the peace with provoking equa- \nnimity. In this way, at least, foreign travel may do \nthem good, \xe2\x80\x94 may make them, if not wiser, at any \nrate less fussy. Is it a great way to go to school, \n\n\n\n6 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nand a great fee to pay for the lesson ? We cannot give \ntoo much for the genial stoicism which, when life flouts \nus, and says. Put that in your pipe and smoke it 1 can \npuff away with as sincere a relish as if it were tobacco \nof Mount Lebanon in a narghileh of Damascus. \n\nAfter all, my dear Storg, it is to know things that \none has need to travel, and not men. Those force us \nto come to them, but these come to us, \xe2\x80\x94 sometimes \nwhether we will or no. These exist for us in every \nvariety in our own town. You may find your an- \ntipodes without a voyage to China; he lives there, \njust round the next corner, precise, formal, the slave of \nprecedent, making all his teacups with a break in the \nedge, because his model had one, and your fancy \ndecorates him with an endlessness of airy pigtail. \nThere, too, are John Bull, Jean Crapaud, Hans \nSauerkraut, Pat Murphy, and the rest. \n\nIt has been well said: \n\n" He needs no ship to cross the tide, \nWho, in the lives around him, sees \nFair window-] )rospects opening wide \nO\'er history\'s fields on every side, \nRome, Egypt, England, Ind, and Greece. \n\n" Whatever moulds of various brain \nE\'er shaped tlie world to weal or woe, \nWhatever empires\' wax and wane, \nTo him who hath not eyes in vain, \nHis village-microcosm can show." \n\nBut things are good for nothing out of their natural \nhabitat. If the heroic Barnum had succeeded in \ntransplanting Shakespeare\'s house to America, what \ninterest would it have had for us, torn out of its appro- \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. y \n\npriate setting in softly-hilled Warwickshire, which \nshowed us that the most English of poets must be born \nin the most English of counties? I mean by a Thing \nthat which is not a mere spectacle, that which some \nvirtue of the mind leaps forth to, as it also sends forth \nits sympathetic flash to the mind, as soon as they come \nwithin each other\'s sphere of attraction, and, with \ninstantaneous coalition, form a new product, \xe2\x80\x94 \nknowledge. \n\nSuch, in the understanding it gives us of early \nRoman history, is the little territory around Rome, \nthe gentis cunahula, without a sight of which Livy \nand Niebuhr and the maps are vain. So, too, \none must go to Pompeii and the Mtiseo Borbonico, to \nget a true conception of that wondrous artistic nature \nof the Greeks, strong enough, even in that petty \ncolony, to survive foreign conquest and to assimilate \nbarbarian blood, showing a grace and fertility of in- \nvention whose Roman copies Rafaello himself could \nonly copy, and enchanting even the base utensils of \nthe kitchen with an inevitable sense of beauty to which \nwe subterranean Northmen have not yet so much as \ndreamed of climbing. Mere sights one can see quite \nas well at home. Mont Blanc does not tower more \ngrandly in the memory than did the dream-peak \nwhich loomed afar on the morning horizon of hope, \nnor did the smoke-palm of Vesuvius stand more erect \nand fair, with tapering stem and spreading top, in that \nParthenopean air, than under the diviner sky of \nimagination. I know what Shakespeare says about \nhomekeeping youths, and I can fancy what you will \n\n\n\n8 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nadd about America being interesting only as a phe- \nnomenon, and uncomfortable to live in, because we \nhave not yet done with getting ready to live. But \nis not your Europe, on the other hand, a place where \nmen have done living for the present, and of value \nchiefly because of the men who had done living in it \nlong ago ? And if in our rapidly-moving country one \nfeel sometimes as if he had his home on a railroad \ntrain, is there not also a satisfaction in knowing that \none is going jow^where? To what end visit Europe, \nif people carry with them, as most do, their old paro- \nchial horizon, going hardly as Americans even, much \nless as men ? Have we not both seen persons abroad \nwho put us in mind of parlor gold-fish in their vase, \nisolated in that little globe of their own element, in- \ncapable of communication with the strange world \naround them, a show themselves, while it was always \ndoubtful if they could see at all beyond the limits of \ntheir portable prison ? The wise man travels to dis- \ncover himself; it is to find himself out that he goes \nout of himself and his habitual associations, trying \neverything in turn till he find that one activity, that \nroyal standard, sovran over him by divine right, \ntoward which all the disbanded powers of his nature \nand the irregular tendencies of his life gather joyfully, \nas to the common rallying-point of their loyalty. \n\nAll these things we debated while the ilex logs upon \nthe hearth burned down to tinkling coals, over which \na gray, soft moss of ashes grew betimes, mocking the \npoor wood with a pale travesty of that green and \ngradual decay on forest-floors, its natural end. Al- \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 9 \n\nready the clock at the Cappuccini told the morning \nquarters, and on the pauses of our talk no sound \nintervened but the muffled hoot of an owl in the near \nconvent-garden, or the rattling tramp of a patrol of \nthat French army which keeps him a prisoner in his \nown city who claims to lock and unlock the doors of \nheaven. But still the discourse would eddy round \none obstinate rocky tenet of mine, for I maintained, \nyou remember, that the wisest man was he who \nstayed at home; that to see the antiquities of the Old \nWorld was nothing, since the youth of the world was \nreally no farther away from us than our own youth; \nand that, moreover, we had also in America things \namazingly old, as our boys, for example. Add, that \nin the end, this antiquity is a matter of comparison, \nwhich skips from place to place as nimbly as Emer- \nson\'s Sphinx, and that one old thing is good only till \nwe have seen an older. England is ancient till we go \nto Rome; Etruria dethrones Rome, but only to pass \nthis sceptre of antiquity which so lords it over our \nfancies to the Pelasgi, from whom Egypt straight- \nway wrenches it, to give it up in turn to older India. \nAnd whither then? As well rest upon the first step, \nsince the effect of what is old upon the mind is single \nand positive, not cumulative. As soon as a thing is \npast, it is as infinitely far away from us as if it had \nhappened millions of years ago. And if the learned \nHuet be correct, who reckoned that all human thoughts \nand records could be included in ten folios, what so \nfrightfully old as we ourselves, who can, if we choose, \nhold in our memories every syllable of recorded time. \n\n\n\n10 FIRESIDE TRAVELS, \n\nfrom the first crunch of Eve\'s teeth in the apple \ndownward, being thus ideally contemporary with \nhoariest Eld? \n\n" The pyramids built up with newer might \nTo us are nothing novel, nothing strange." \n\nNow, my dear Storg, you know my (what the phren- \nologists call) inhabitiveness and adhesiveness, \xe2\x80\x94 how \nI stand by the old thought, the old thing, the old \nplace, and the old friend, till I am very sure I have \ngot a better, and even then migrate painfully. Re- \nmember the old Arabian story, and think how hard \nit is to pick up all the pomegranate-seeds of an oppo- \nnent\'s argument, and how, as long as one remains, \nyou are as far from the end as ever. Since I have you \nentirely at my mercy, (for you cannot answer me under \nfive weeks,) you will not be surprised at the advent of \nthis letter. I had always one impregnable position, \nwhich was, that, however good other places might be, \nthere was only one in which we could be born, and \nwhich therefore possessed a quite peculiar and in- \nalienable virtue. We had the fortune, which neither \nof us have had reason to call other than good, to \njourney together through the green, secluded valley \nof boyhood; together we climbed the mountain wall \nwhich shut in, and looked down upon, those Italian \nplains of early manhood; and, since then, we have \nmet sometimes by a well, or broken bread together at \nan oasis in the arid desert of Hfe, as it truly is. With \nthis letter I propose to make you my fellow-traveller \nin one of those fireside voyages which, as we grow \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. II \n\nolder, we make oftener and oftener through our own \npast. Without leaving your elbow-chair, you shall \ngo back with me thirty years, which will bring you \namong things and persons as thoroughly preterite as \nRomulus or Numa. For so rapid are our changes \nin America, that the transition from old to new, the \nshifting from habits and associations to others entirely \ndifferent, is as rapid almost as the passing in of one \nscene and the drawing out of another on the stage. \nAnd it is this which makes America so interesting to \nthe philosophic student of history and man. Here, \nas in a theatre, the great problems of anthropology \xe2\x80\x94 \nwhich in the Old World were ages in solving, but which \nare solved, leaving only a dry net result \xe2\x80\x94 are com- \npressed, as it were, into the entertainment of a few \nhours. Here we have I know not how many epochs \nof history and phases of civilization contemporary \nwith each other, nay, within five minutes of each \nother, by the electric telegraph. In two centuries we \nhave seen rehearsed the dispersion of man from a \nsmall point over a whole continent; we witness with \nour own eyes the action of those forces which govern \nthe great migration of the peoples now historical in \nEurope; we can watch the action and reaction of \ndifferent races, forms of government, and higher or \nlower civilizations. Over there, you have only the \ndead precipitate, demanding tedious analysis; but \nhere the elements are all in solution^ and we have only \nto look to know them all. History, which every day \nmakes less account of governors and more of man, \nmust find here the compendious key to all that picture- \n\n\n\n12 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwriting of the Past. Therefore it is, my dear Storg, \nthat we Yankees may still esteem our America a place \nworth Hving in. But calm your apprehensions; I \ndo not propose to drag you with me on such an his- \ntorical circumnavigation of the globe, but only to show \nyou that (however needful it may be to go abroad for \nthe study of aesthetics) a man who uses the eyes of his \nheart may find here also pretty bits of what may be \ncalled the social picturesque, and little landscapes \nover which that Indian-summer atmosphere of the \nPast broods as sweetly and tenderly as over a Roman \nruin. Let us look at the Cambridge of thirty years \nsince. \n\nThe seat of the oldest college in America, it had, of \ncourse, some of that cloistered quiet which charac- \nterizes all university towns. Even now delicately- \nthoughtful A. H. C. tells me that he finds in its intel- \nlectual atmosphere a repose which recalls that of \ngrand old Oxford. But, underlying this, it had an \nidiosyncrasy of its own. Boston was not yet a city, \nand Cambridge was still a country village, with its own \nhabits and traditions, not yet feeling too strongly the \nforce of suburban gravitation. Approaching it from \nthe west by what was then called the New Road (it is \ncalled so no longer, for we change our names when- \never we can, to the great detriment of all historical \nassociation), you would pause on the brow of Symonds\' \nHill to enjoy a view singularly soothing and placid. \nIn front of you lay the town, tufted with elms, lin- \ndens, and horse-chestnuts, which had seen Massa- \nchusetts a colony, and were fortunately unable to \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 13 \n\nemigrate with the Tories by whom, or by whose \nfathers, they were planted. Over it rose the noisy \nbelfry of the College, the square, brown tower of the \nchurch, and the slim, yellow spire of the parish meet- \ning-house, by no means ungraceful, and then an \ninvariable characteristic of New England religious \narchitecture. On your right, the Charles slipped \nsmoothly through green and purple salt-meadows, \ndarkened, here and there, with the blossoming black - \ngrass as with a stranded cloud-shadow. Over these \nmarshes, level as water, but without its glare, and with \nsofter and more soothing gradations of perspective, \nthe eye was carried to a horizon of softly-rounded hills. \nTo your left hand, upon the Old Road, you saw some \nhalf-dozen dignified old houses of the colonial time, \nall comfortably fronting southward. If it were early \nJune, the rows of horse-chestnuts along the fronts \nof these houses showed, through every crevice of their \ndark heap of foliage, and on the end of every drooping \nlimb, a cone of pearly flowers, while the hill behind \nwas white or rosy with the crowding blooms of various \nfruit-trees. There is no sound, unless a horseman \nclatters over the loose planks of the bridge, while his \nantipodal shadow glides silently over the mirrored \nbridge below, or unless, \n\n" O wingt^d rapture, feathered soul of spring, \nBlithe voice of woods, fields, waters all in one, \nPipe blown throu<jh by the warm, mild breath of June, \nShepherding her white flocks of woolly clouds. \nThe bobolink has come, and climbs the wind \nWith rippling wings that quiver not for flight, \nBut only joy, or, yielding to its will. \nRuns down, a brook of laughter, through the air." \n\n\n\n14 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nSuch was the charmingly rural picture which he \nwho, thirty years ago, went eastward over Symonds\' \nHill had given him for nothing, to hang in the Gallery \nof Memory. But we are a city now and Common \nCouncils have yet no notion of the truth (learned long \nago by many a European hamlet) that picturesqueness \nadds to the actual money value of a town. To save a \nfew dollars in gravel, they have cut a kind of dry ditch \nthrough the hill, where you suffocate with dust in sum- \nmer, or flounder through waist-deep snow-drifts in \nwinter, with no prospect but the crumbling earth-walls \non either side. The landscape was carried away \ncart-load by cart-load, and, dumped down on the \nroads, forms a part of that unfathomable pudding, \nwhich has, I fear, driven many a teamster and pedes- \ntrian to the use of phrases not commonly found in \nEnglish dictionaries. \n\nWe called it "the Village" then (I speak of Old \nCambridge), and it was essentially an English village, \nquiet, unspeculative, without enterprise, sufficing to \nitself, and only showing such differences from the \noriginal type as the public school and the system of \ntown government might superinduce. A few houses, \nchiefly old, stood around the bare Common, with \nample elbow-room, and old women, capped and spec- \ntacled, still peered through the same windows from \nwhich they had watched Lord Percy\'s artillery rumble \nby to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome \nVirginia General who had come to wield our home- \nspun Saxon chivalry. People were still living who \nregretted the late unhappy separation from the mother \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 1 5 \n\nisland, who had seen no gentry since the Vassalls went, \nand who thought that Boston had ill kept the day of \nher patron saint, Botolph, on the 17th of June, 1775. \nThe hooks were to be seen from which had swung the \nhammocks of Burgoyne\'s captive redcoats. If mem- \nory does not deceive me, women still washed clothes \nin the town spring, clear as that of Bandusia. One \ncoach sufficed for all the travel to the metropolis. \nCommencement had not ceased to be the great holiday \nof the Puritan Commonwealth, and a fitting one it \nwas, \xe2\x80\x94 the festival of Santa Scholastica, whose tri \numphal path one may conceive strewn with leaves of \nspelling-book instead of bay. The students (scholars \nthey were called then) wore their sober uniform, not \nostentatiously distinctive or capable of rousing demo- \ncratic envy, and the old lines of caste were blurred \nrather than rubbed out, as servitor was softened into \nbeneficiary. The Spanish king was sure that the \ngesticulating student was either mad or reading Don \nQuixote, and if, in those days, you met a youth swing- \ning his arms and talking to himself, you might conclude \nthat he was either a lunatic or one who was to appear \nin a "part" at the next Commencement. A favorite \nplace for the rehearsal of these orations was the re- \ntired amphitheatre of the Gravel-pit, perched unre- \ngarded on whose dizzy edge, I have heard many a \nburst of plusquam Ciceronian eloquence, and (often \nrepeated) the regular saluto vos, prastantissimcB, etc., \nwhich every year (with a glance at the gallery) causes \na flutter among the fans innocent of Latin, and delights \nto applauses of conscious superiority the youth almost \n\n\n\n1 6 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nas innocent as they. It is curious, by the way, to note \nhow plainly one can feel the pulse of self in the plaudits \nof an audience. At a political meeting, if the enthu- \nsiasm of the lieges hang fire, it may be exploded at \nonce by an allusion to their intelligence or patriotism ; \nand at a literary festival, the first Latin quotation \ndraws the first applause, the clapping of hands being \nintended as a tribute to our own familiarity with that \nsonorous tongue, and not at all as an approval of the \nparticular sentiment conveyed in it. For if the orator \nshould say, "Well has Tacitus remarked, Americani \nomnes quddani vi natura jurcd dignissimi,\'\'^ it would \nbe all the same. But the Gravel-pit was patient, if \nirresponsive; nor did the declaimer always fail to \nbring down the house, bits of loosened earth falling \nnow and then from the precipitous walls, their cohe- \nsion perhaps overcome by the vibrations of the voice, \nand happily satirizing the effect of most popular dis- \ncourses, which prevail rather with the earthy than the \nspiritual part of the hearer. Was it possible for us \nin those days to conceive of a greater potentate than \nthe President of the University, in his square doctor\'s \ncap, that still filially recalled Oxford and Cambridge ? \nIf there was a doubt, it was suggested only by the \nGovernor, and even by him on artillery-election days \nalone, superbly martial with epaulets and buckskin \nbreeches, and bestriding the war-horse, promoted to \nthat solemn duty for his tameness and steady habits. \nThirty years ago, the town had indeed a character. \nRailways and omnibuses had not rolled flat all little \nsocial prominences and pecuHarities, making every \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 1/ \n\nman as much a citizen everywhere as at home. No \nCharlestown boy could come to our annual festival \nwithout fighting to avenge a certain traditional porcine \nimputation against the inhabitants of that historic \nlocality, and to which our youth gave vent in fanciful \nimitations of the dialect of the sty, or derisive shouts \nof "Charlestown hogs!" The penny newspaper had \nnot yet silenced the tripod of the barber, oracle of \nnews. Everybody knew everybody, and all about \neverybody, and village wit, whose high \'change was \naround the little market-house in the town square, \nhad labelled every more marked individuality with \nnicknames that clung like burs. Things were estab- \nlished then, and men did not run though all the fig \nures on the dial of society so swiftly as now, when \nhurry and competition seem to have quite unhung \nthe modulating pendulum of steady thrift and compe- \ntent training. Some slow-minded persons even fol \nlowed their father\'s trade, \xe2\x80\x94 a humiliating spectacle, \nrarer every day. We had our established loafers, \ntopers, proverb-mongers, barber, parson, nay, post- \nmaster, whose tenure was for life. The great political \nengine did not then come down at regular quadrennial \nintervals, like a nail-cutting machine, to make all \nofficial lives of a standard length, and to generate lazy \nand intriguing expectancy. Life flowed in recog- \nnized channels, narrower perhaps, but with all the \nmore individuality and force. \n\nThere was but one white-and-yellow-washer, whose \nown cottage, fresh-gleaming every June through \ngrape-vine and creeper, was his only sign and adver- \n\n\n\n1 8 FIRESIDE TRAVELS, \n\ntiscment. He was said to possess a secret, which died \nwith him Hke that of Luca della Robbia, and certainly \nconceived all colors but white and yellow to savor of \nsavagery, civilizing the stems of his trees annually with \nliquid lime, and meditating how to extend that candent \nbaptism even to the leaves. His pie-plants (the best \nin town), compulsory monastics, blanched under bar- \nrels, each in his little hermitage, a vegetable Certosa. \nHis fowls, his ducks, his geese, could not show so much \nas a gray feather among them, and he would have \ngiven a year\'s earnings for a white peacock. The \nflowers which decked his little door-yard were whitest \nChina-asters and goldenest sunflowers, which last, \nbacksliding from their traditional Parsee faith, used \nto puzzle us urchins not a little by staring brazenly \nevery way except towards the sun. Celery, too, he \nraised, whose virtue is its paleness, and the silvery \nonion, and turnip, which, though outwardly conform- \ning to the green heresies of summer, nourish a purer \nfaith subterraneously, like early Christians in the \ncatacombs. In an obscure corner grew the sanguine \nbeet, tolerated only for its usefulness in allaying the \nasperities of Saturday\'s salt-fish. He loved winter \nbetter than summer, because Nature then played the \nwhitewasher, and challenged with her snows the \nscarce inferior purity of his overalls and neck-cloth. \nI fancy that he never rightly liked Commencement, \nfor bringing so many black coats together. He \nfounded no school. Others might essay his art and \nwere allowed to try their prentice hands on fences an 1 \nthe like coarse subjects, but the ceiling of every house- \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 1 9 \n\nwife waited on the leisure of Newman {ichneumon \nthe students called him for his diminutiveness), nor \nwould consent to other brush than his. There was \nalso but one brewer, \xe2\x80\x94 Lewis, who made the village \nbeer, both spruce and ginger, a grave and amiable \nEthiopian, making a discount always to the boys, and \nwisely, for they were his chiefest patrons. He wheeled \nhis whole stock in a white-roofed handcart, on whose \nfront a sign-board presented at either end an insur- \nrectionary bottle; yet insurgent after no mad Gallic \nfashion, but soberly and Saxonly discharging itself \ninto the restraining formulary of a tumbler, symbolic \nof orderly prescription. The artist had struggled \nmanfully with the difficulties of his subject, but had \nnot succeeded so well that we did not often debate in \nwhich of the twin bottles Spruce was typified, and in \nwhich Ginger. We always believed that Lewis men- \ntally distinguished between them, but by some pecul- \niarity occult to exoteric eyes. This ambulatory chapel \nof the Bacchus that gives the colic, but not inebriates, \nonly appeared at the Commencement holidays, and the \nlad who bought of Lewis laid out his money well, \ngetting respect as well as beer, three sirs to every glass, \n\xe2\x80\x94 "Beer, sir? yes, sir: spruce or ginger, sir?" I \ncan yet recall the innocent pride with which I walked \naway after that somewhat risky ceremony, (for a \nbottle sometimes blew up,) dilated not alone with car- \nbonic-acid gas, but with the more ethereal fixed air \nof that titular flattery. Nor was Lewis proud. When \nhe tried his fortunes in the capital on Election-days, \nand stood amid a row of rival venders in the very \n\n\n\n20 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nflood of custom, he never forgot his small fellow- \ncitizens, but welcomed them with an assuring smile, \nand served them with the first. \n\nThe barber\'s shop was a museum, scarce second to \nthe larger one of Greenwood in the metropohs. The \nboy who was to be clipped there was always accom- \npanied to the sacrifice by troops of friends, who thus \ninspected the curiosities gratis. While the watchful \neye of R. wandered to keep in check these rather un- \nscrupulous explorers the unpausing shears would \nsometimes overstep the boundaries of strict tonsorial \nprescription, and make a notch through which the \nphrenological developments could be distinctly seen. \nAs Michael Angelo\'s design was modified by the \nshape of his block, so R., rigid in artistic proprieties, \nwould contrive to give an appearance of design to this \naberration, by making it the key-note to his work, and \nreducing the whole head to an appearance of prema- \nture baldness. What a charming place it was, \xe2\x80\x94 \nhow full of wonder and delight! The sunny little \nroom, fronting southwest upon the Common, rang \nwith canaries and Java sparrows, nor were the familiar \nnotes of robin, thrush, and bobolink wanting. A \nlarge white cockatoo harangued vaguely, at intervals, \nin what we believed (on R.\'s authority) to be the \nHottentot language. He had an unveracious air, but \nwhat inventions of former grandeur he was indulging \nin, what sweet South-African Argos he was remem- \nbering, what tropical heats and giant trees by uncon- \njectured rivers, known only to the wallowing hippo- \npotamus, we could only guess at. The walls were \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 21 \n\ncovered with curious old Dutch prints, beaks of alba- \ntross and penguin, and whales\' teeth fantastically \nengraved. There v^as Frederick the Great, with head \ndrooped plottingly, and keen side-long glance from \nunder the three-cornered hat. There hung Bona- \nparte, too, the long-haired, haggard general of Italy, \nhis eyes sombre with prefigured destiny; and there \nwas his island grave ; \xe2\x80\x94 the dream and the fulfilment. \nGood store of sea-fights there was also; above all, \nPaul Jones in the Bonhomme Richard: the smoke \nrolling courteously to leeward, that we might see him \ndealing thunderous wreck to the two hostile vessels, \neach twice as large as his own, and the reality of the \nscene corroborated by streaks of red paint leaping from \nthe mouth of every gun. Suspended over the fire- \nplace, with the curling-tongs, were an Indian bow and \narrows, and in the corners of the room stood New \nZealand paddles and war-clubs, quaintly carved. The \nmodel of a ship in glass we variously estimated to be \nworth from a hundred to a thousand dollars, R. \nrather favoring the higher valuation, though never \ndistinctly committing himself. Among these wonders, \nthe only suspicious one was an Indian tomahawk, \nwhich had too much the peaceful look of a shingling- \nhatchet. Did any rarity enter the town, it gravitated \nnaturally to these walls, to the very nail that waited to \nreceive it, and where, the day after its accession, it \nseemed to have hung a lifetime. We always had \na theory that R. was immensely rich, (how could he \npossess so much and be otherwi.se?) and that he pur- \nsued his calling from an amiable eccentricity. He \n\n\n\n22 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwas a conscientious artist, and never submitted it to \nthe choice of his victim whether he would be perfumed \nor not. Faithfully was the bottle shaken and the \nodoriferous mixture rubbed in, a fact redolent to the \nwhole school-room in the afternoon. Sometimes the \npersuasive tonsor would impress one of the attendant \nvolunteers, and reduce his poll to shoe-brush crisp- \nness, at cost of the reluctant ninepence hoarded for \nFresh Pond and the next half-holiday. So purely \nindigenous was our population then, that R. had a \ncertain exotic charm, a kind of game flavor, by being \na Dutchman. \n\nShall the two groceries want their vales sacer, where \nE. & W. I. goods and country prodooce were sold \nwith an energy mitigated by the quiet genius of the \nplace, and where strings of urchins waited, each with \ncent in hand, for the unweighed dates (thus giving an \nordinary business transaction all the excitement of a \nlottery), and buying, not only that cloying sweetness, \nbut a dream also of Egypt, and palm-trees, and Arabs, \nin which vision a print of the Pyramids in our geog- \nraphy tyrannized like that taller thought of Cowper\'s? \n\nAt one of these the unwearied students used to ply \na joke handed down from class to class. Enter A, \nand asks gravely, "Have you any sour apples. \nDeacon?" \n\n"Well, no, I have n\'t any just now that are exactly \nsour; but there \'s the bell-flower apple, and folks that \nlike a sour apple generally like that." {Exit A.) \n\nEnter B. "Have you any sweet apples, Deacon?" \n\n"Well, no, I have n\'t any just now that are exactly \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 23 \n\nsweet; but there\'s the bell-flower apple, and folks \n\nthat like a sweet apple generally like that." {Exit B.) \n\nThere is not even a tradition of any one\'s ever \n\nhaving turned the wary Deacon\'s flank and his \n\nLaodicean apples persisted to the end, neither one \n\nthing nor another. Or shall the two town-constables \n\nbe forgotten, in whom the law stood worthily and \n\namply embodied, fit either of them to fill the uniform \n\nof an English beadle? Grim and silent as Ninevite \n\nstatues they stood on each side of the meeting-house \n\ndoor at Commencement, propped by long staves of \n\nblue and red, on which the Indian with bow and arrow \n\nand the mailed arm with the sword, hinted at the \n\ninvisible sovereignty of the state ready to reinforce \n\nthem, as \n\n" For Achilles\' portrait stood a spear \nGrasped in an armed hand." \n\nStalwart and rubicund men they were, second only, \nif second, to S., champion of the county, and not in- \ncapable of genial unbendings when the fasces were \nlaid aside. One of them still survives in octogenarian \nvigor, the Herodotus of village and college legend, and \nmay it be long ere he depart, to carry with him the \npattern of a courtesy, now, alas ! old-fashioned, but \nwhich might profitably make part of the instruction \nof our youth among the other humanities! Long \nmay R. M. be spared to us, so genial, so courtly, the \nlast man among us who will ever know how to lift a hat \nwith the nice graduation of social distinction ! Some- \nthing of a Jeremiah now, he bewails the decline of our \nmanners. **My children," he says, "say, \'Yes sir,\' \n\n\n\n24 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nand \'No sir\'; my grandchildren, \'Yes\' and \'No\'; \nand I am every day expecting to hear *D \xe2\x80\x94 n your \neyes!\' for an answer when I ask a service of my \ngreat-grandchildren. Why, sir, I can remember \nwhen more respect was paid to Governor Hancock\'s \nlackey at Commencement, than the Governor and all \nhis suite get now." M. is one of those invaluable \nmen who remember your grandfather, and value you \naccordingly. \n\nIn those days the population was almost wholly \nwithout foreign admixture. Two Scotch gardeners \nthere were, \xe2\x80\x94 Rule, whose daughter (glimpsed per- \nhaps at church, or possibly the mere Miss Harris of \nfancy) the students nicknamed Anarchy or Miss Rule, \n\xe2\x80\x94 and later Fraser, whom whiskey sublimed into a \npoet, full of bloody histories of the Forty-twa, and \nshowing an imaginary French bullet, sometimes in \none leg, sometimes in the other, and sometimes, \ntoward nightfall, in both. With this claim to military \ndistinction he adroitly contrived to mingle another to a \nnatural one, asserting double teeth all round his jaws, \nand, having thus created two sets of doubts, silenced \nboth at once by a single demonstration, displaying \nthe grinders to the confusion of the infidel. \n\nThe old court-house stood then upon the square. \nIt has shrunk back out of sight now, and students box \nand fence where Parsons once laid down the law, \nand Ames and Dexter showed their skill in the fence \nof argument. Times have changed, and manners, \nsince Chief Justice Dana (father of Richard the First, \nand grandfather of Richard the Second) caused to be \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE rillRTY YEARS AGO. 25 \n\narrested for contempt of court a butcher who had \ncome in without a coat to witness the administration \nof his country\'s laws, and who thus had his curiosity \nexemplarily gratified. Times have chan(];ed also \nsince the cellar beneath it was tenanted by the twin- \nbrothers Snow. Oyster men were they indeed, \nsilent in their subterranean burrow, and taking the \nebbs and flows of custom with bivalvian serenity. \nCareless of the months with an R in them, the maxim \nof Snow (for we knew them but as a unit) was, \'\'When, \n\'ysters are good, they air good; and when they ain\'t, \nthey is w\'/." Grecian F. (may his shadow never be \nless !) tells this, his great laugh expected all the while \nfrom deep vaults of chest, and then coming in at the \nclose, hearty, contagious, mounting with the meas- \nured tread of a jovial but stately butler who brings \nancientest good-fellowship from exhaustless bins, \nand enough, without other sauce, to give a flavor of \nstalled ox to a dinner of herbs. Let me preserve here \nan anticipatory elegy upon the Snows, written years \nago by some nameless college rhymer. \n\nDIFFUGERE NIVES. \n\nHere lies, or lie, \xe2\x80\x94 decide the question, you, \n\nIf they were two in one or one in two, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nP. & S. Snow, whose memory shall not fade. \n\nCastor and Pollux of the oyster-trade : \n\nHatched from one egg, at once the shell they burst, \n\n(The last, perhaps, a P. S. to the first,) \n\nSo homoousian both in look and soul, \n\nSo undiscernibly a single whole, \n\nThat whether P. was S., or S. was P., \n\nSurpassed all skill in etymology; \n\nOne kept the shop at once, and all we know \n\n\n\n26 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n\n\nIs that together they were the Great Snow, \n\nA snow not deep, yet with a crust so thick \n\nIt never melted to the son of Tick ; \n\nPerpetual ? nay, our region was too low. \n\nToo warm, too southern, for perpetual Snow; \n\nStill, like fair Leda\'s sons, to whom \'t was given \n\nTo take their turns in Hades and in Heaven, \n\nOur new Dioscuri would bravely share \n\nThe cellar\'s darkness and the upper air; \n\nTwice every year would each the shades escape, \n\nAnd, like a sea-bird, seek the wave-washed Cape, \n\nWhere (Rumor voiced) one spouse sufficed for both; \n\nNo bigamist, for she upon her oath. \n\nUnskilled m letters, could not make a guess \n\nAt any difference twixt P. and S. \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nA thing not marvellous, since Fame agrees \n\nThey were as little different as two peas, \n\nAnd she, like Paris, when his Helen laid \n\nHer hand \'mid snows from Ida\'s top conveyed \n\nTo cool their wine of Chios, could not know, \n\nBetween those rival candors, which was Snow. \n\nWhiche\'er behind the counter chanced to be \n\nOped oysters oft, his clam-shells seldom he ; \n\nIt e\'er he laughed, \'t was with no loud guffaw, \n\nThe fun warmed through him with a gradual thaw; \n\nThe nicer shades of wit were not his gift. \n\nNor was it hard to sound Snow\'s simple drift; \n\nHis were plain jokes, that many a time before \n\nHad set his tarry messmates in a roar. \n\nWhen floundering cod beslimed the deck\'s wet planks, \n\nThe humorous specie of Newfoundland banks. \n\nBut Snow is gone, and, let us hope, sleeps well, \nBuried (his last breath asked it) in a shell ; \nFate with an oyster-knife sawed off his thread, \nAnd planted him upon his latest bed. \n\nHim on the Stygian shore my fancy sees \nNoting choice shoals for oyster colonies, \nOr, at a board stuck full of ghostly forks, \nOpening for practice visionary Yorks. \nAnd whither he has gone, may we too go, \xe2\x80\x94 \nSince no hot place were fit for keeping Snow I \n\n\n\nJam satis nivis. \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 2 J \n\nCambridge has long had its port, but the greater part \nof its maritime trade was, thirty years ago, intrusted \nto a single Argo, the sloop Harvard, which belonged \nto the College, and made annual voyages to that vague \nOrient known as Down East, bringing back wood \nthat, in those days, gave to winter life at Harvard a \ncrackle and a cheerfulness, for the loss of which the \ngreater warmth of anthracite hardly compensates. \nNew England life, to be genuine, must have in it some \nsentiment of the sea, \xe2\x80\x94 it was this instinct that printed \nthe device of the pine-tree on the old money and the \nold flag, \xe2\x80\x94 and these periodic ventures of the sloop \nHarvard made the old Viking fibre vibrate in the \nhearts of all the village boys. What a vista of mystery \nand adventure did her sailing open to us ! With what \npride did we hail her return ! She was our scholiast \nupon Robinson Crusoe and the mutiny of the Bounty. \nHer captain still lords it over our memories, the greatest \nsailor that ever sailed the seas, and we should not \nlook at Sir John Franklin himself with such admiring \ninterest as that with which we enhaloed some larger \nboy who had made a voyage in her, and had come \nback without braces {gallowses we called them) to his \ntrousers, and squirting ostentatiously the juice of that \nweed which still gave him little private returns of \nsomething very like sea-sickness. All our shingle \nvessels were shaped and rigged by her, who was our \nglass of naval fashion and our mould of aquatic form. \nWe had a secret and wild delight in believing that \nshe carried a gun, and imagined her sending grape and \ncanister among the treacherous savages of Oldtown. \n\n\n\n28 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nInspired by her were those first essays at navigation \non the Winthrop duck -pond, of the plucky boy who \nwas afterwards to serve two famous years before the \nmast. The greater part of what is now Cambridge \nport was then (in the native dialect) a huckleberry \npastur. Woods were not wanting on its outskirts, of \npine, and oak, and maple, and the rarer tupelo with \ndownward limbs. Its veins did not draw their bloo I \nfrom the quiet old heart of the village, but it had a \ndistinct being of its own, and was rather a great cara- \nvansary than a suburb. The chief feature of the \nplace was its inns, of which there were five, with vast \nbarns and court -yards, which the railroad was to make \nas silent and deserted as the palaces of Nimroud. \nGreat white-topped wagons, each drawn by double \nfiles of six or eight horses, with its dusty bucket swing- \ning from the hinder axle, and its grim bull-dog trotting \nsilent underneath, or in midsummer panting on the \nlofty perch beside the driver, (how elevated thither \nbafiled conjecture,) brought all the wares and products \nof the country to their mart and seaport in Boston. \nThese filled the inn -yards, or were ranged side by \nside under broad-roofed sheds, and far into the night \nthe mirth of their lusty drivers clamored from the red- \ncurtained bar-room, while the single lantern, swaying \nto and fro in the black cavern of the stables, made a \nRembrandt of the group of ostlers and horses below. \nThere were, besides the taverns, some huge square \nstores where groceries were sold, some houses, by \nwhom or why inhabited was to us boys a problem, \nand, on the edge of the marsh, a currier\'s shop, where \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 29 \n\nat high tide, on a floating platform, men were always \nbeating skins in a way to remind one of Don Quixote\'s \nfulling mills. Nor did these make all the Port. As \nthere is always a Coming Man who never comes, so \nthere is a man who always comes (it may be only a \nquarter of an hour) too early. This man, so far as the \nPort is concerned, was Rufus Davenport. Looking \nat the marshy flats of Cambridge, and considering \ntheir nearness to Boston, he resolved that there should \ngrow up a suburban Venice. Accordingly, the \nmarshes were bought, canals were dug, ample for the \ncommerce of both Indies, and four or five rows of \nbrick houses were built to meet the first wants of the \nwading settlers who were expected to rush in \xe2\x80\x94 \nWHENCE? This singular question had never occurred \nto the enthusiastic projector. There are laws which \ngovern human migrations quite beyond the control \nof the speculator, as many a man with desirable \nbuilding-lots has discovered to his cost. Why mortal \nmen will pay more for a chess-board square in that \nswamp, than for an acre on the breezy upland close \nby, who shall say? And again, why, having shown \nsuch a passion for your swamp, they are so coy of \nmine^ who shall say? Not certainly any one who, \nlike Davenport, had got up too early for his genera- \ntion. If we could only carry that slow, imperturbable \nold clock of Opportunity, that never strikes a second \ntoo soon or too late, in our fobs, and push the hands \nforward as we can those of our watches! With a \nforeseeing economy of space which now seems ludi- \ncrous, the roofs of this forlorn-hope of houses were \n\n\n\n30 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nmade flat, that the swarming population might have \nwhere to dry their clothes. But A.u.c. 30 showed \nthe same view as a.u.c. i, \xe2\x80\x94 only that the brick \nblocks looked as if they had been struck by a malaria. \nThe dull weed upholstered the decaying wharves, and \nthe only freight that heaped them was the kelp and \neel grass left by higher floods. Instead of a Venice, \nbehold a Torzelo ! The unfortunate projector took \nto the last refuge of the unhappy \xe2\x80\x94 book-making, \nand bored the reluctant public with what he called a \nright-aim Testament, prefaced by a recommendation \nfrom General Jackson, who perhaps, from its title, \ntook it for some treatise on ball -practice. \n\nBut even Cambridgeport, my dear Storg, did not \nwant associations poetic and venerable. The stranger \nwho took the "Hourly" at Old Cambridge, if he were \na physiognomist and student of character, might per- \nhaps have had his curiosity excited by a person who \nmounted the coach at the Port. So refined was his \nwhole appearance, so fastidiously neat his apparel, \xe2\x80\x94 \nbut with a neatness that seemed less the result of care \nand plan, than a something as proper to the man as \nwhiteness to the lily, \xe2\x80\x94 that you would have at once \nclassed him with those individuals, rarer than great \ncaptains and almost as rare as great poets, whom \nNature sends into the world to fill the arduous office \nof Gentleman. Were you ever emperor of that \nBarataria which under your peaceful sceptre would \npresent, of course, a model of government, this re \nmarkable person should be Duke of Bienseance and \nMaster of Ceremonies. There are some men whom \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 3 1 \n\ndestiny has endowed with the faculty of external neat- \nness, whose clothes are repellent of dust and mud, \nwhose unwithering white neck-cloths persevere to the \nday\'s end, unappeasably seeing the sun go down upon \ntheir starch, and whose linen makes you fancy them \nheirs in the maternal line to the instincts of all the \nwasherwomen from Eve downward. There are \nothers whose inward natures possess this fatal clean- \nness, incapable of moral dirt spot. You are not long \nin discovering that the stranger combines in himself \nboth these properties. A nimbus of hair, fine as an \ninfant\'s, and early white, showing refinement of organ- \nization and the predominance of the spiritual over the \nphysical, undulated and floated around a face that \nseemed like pale flame, and over which the flitting \nshades of expression chased each other, fugitive and \ngleaming as waves upon a field of rye. It was a \ncountenance that, without any beauty of feature, was \nvery beautiful. I have said that it looked like pale \nflame, and can find no other words for the impression \nit gave. Here was a man all soul, whose body seemed \na lamp of finest clay, whose service was to feed with \nmagic oils, rare and fragrant, that wavering fire which \nhovered over it. You, who are an adept in such mat- \nters, would have detected in the eyes that artist-look \nwhich seems to see pictures ever in the air, and \nwhich, if it fall on you, makes you feel as if all \nthe world were a gallery, and yourself the rather \nindifferent Portrait of a Gentleman hung therein. \nAs the stranger brushes by you in alighting, you \ndetect a single incongruity, \xe2\x80\x94 a smell of dead tobacco- \n\n\n\n32 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nsmoke. You ask his name, and the answer is, \n"Mr. Allston." \n\n"Mr. Allston!" and you resolve to note down at \nonce in your diary every look, every gesture, every \nword of the great painter? Not in the least. You \nhave the true Anglo-Norman indifference, and most \nlikely never think of him again till you hear that one \nof his pictures has sold for a great price, and then \ncontrive to let your grandchildren know twice a week \nthat you met him once in a coach, and that he said, \n"Excuse me, sir," in a very Titianesque manner, when \nhe stumbled over your toes in getting out. Hitherto \nBoswell is quite as unique as Shakespeare. The \ncountry-gentleman, journeying up to London, in- \nquires of Mistress Davenant at the Oxford inn the \nname of his pleasant companion of the night before. \n"Master Shakespeare, an \'t please your worship." \nAnd the Justice, not without a sense of the unbending, \nsays, "Truly, a merry and conceited gentleman !" It \nis lucky for the peace of great men that the world \nseldom finds out contemporaneously who its great \nmen are, or, perhaps, that each man esteems himself \nthe fortunate he who shall draw the lot of memory \nfrom the helmet of the future. Had the eyes of some \nStratford burgess been achromatic telescopes, capable \nof a perspective of two hundred years! But, even \nthen, would not his record have been fuller of says Vs \nthan says he\'s? Nevertheless, it is curious to con- \nsider from what infinitely varied points of view we \nmight form our estimate of a great man\'s character, \nwhen we remember that he had his points of contact \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 33 \n\nwith the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick- \nmaker, as well as with the ingenious A, the sublime \nB, and the Right Honorable C. If it be true that no \nman ever clean forgets everything, and that the act \nof drowning (as is asserted) forthwith brightens up all \nthose o\'er-rusted impressions, would it not be a curious \nexperiment, if, after a remarkable person\'s death, the \npublic, eager for minutest particulars, should gather \ntogether all who had ever been brought into relations \nwith him, and, submerging them to the hair\'s-breadth \nhitherward of the drowning-point, subject them to \nstrict cross-examination by the Humane Society, as \nsoon as they become conscious between the resusci- \ntating blankets? All of us probably have brushed \nagainst destiny in the street, have shaken hands with \nit, fallen asleep with it in railway carriages, and knocked \nheads with it in some one or other of its yet unrecog- \nnized incarnations. \n\nWill it seem like presenting a tract to a colporteur, \nmy dear Storg, if I say a word or two about an artist \nto you over there in Italy? Be patient, and leave \nyour button in my grasp yet a litde longer. A person \nwhose opinion is worth having once said to me, that, \nhowever one\'s notions might be modified by going to \nEurope, one always came back with a higher esteem \nfor Allston. Certainly he is thus far the greatest \nEnglish painter of historical subjects. And only con- \nsider how strong must have been the artistic bias in \nhim, to have made him a painter at all under the cir- \ncumstances. There were no traditions of art, so \nnecessary for guidance and inspiration. Blackburn, \n\n\n\n34 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nSmibert, Copley, Trumbull, Stuart, \xe2\x80\x94 it was, after \nall, but a Brentford sceptre which their heirs could \naspire to, and theirs were not names to conjure with, \nlike those from which Fame, as through a silver trum- \npet, had blown for three centuries. Copley and \nStuart were both remarkable men; but the one \npainted like an inspired silk mercer, and the other \nseems to have mixed his colors with the claret of which \nhe and his generation were so fond. And what could a \nsuccessful artist hope for, at that time, beyond the \nmere wages of his work ? His picture would hang in \ncramped back parlors, between deadly cross-fires of \nlights, sure of the garret or the auction -room erelong, \nin a country where the nomad population carry no \nhousehold gods with them but their five wits and \ntheir ten fingers. As a race, we care nothing about \nArt; but the Puritan and the Quaker are the only \nEnglishmen who have had pluck enough to confess it. \nIf it were surprising that AUston should have become \na painter at all, how almost miraculous that he should \nhave been a great and original one ! We call him \noriginal deliberately, because, though his school is \nessentially Italian, it is of less consequence where a \nman buys his tools than v/hat use he makes of them. \nEnough English artists went to Italy and came back \npainting history in a very Anglo-Saxon manner, and \ncreating a school as melodramatic as the French, \nwithout its perfection in technicalities. But Allston \ncarried thither a nature open on the southern side, \nand brought it back so steeped in rich Italian sun- \nshine that the east winds (whether physical or intel- \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 35 \n\nlectual) of Boston and the dusts of Cambridgeport \nassailed it in vain. To that bare wooden studio one \nmight go to breathe Venetian air, and, better yet, \nthe very spirit wherein the elder brothers of Art \nlabored, etherealized by metaphysical speculation, \nand sublimed by religious fervor. The beautiful old \nman ! Here was genius with no volcanic explosions \n(the mechanic result of vulgar gunpowder often), \nbut lovely as a Lapland night; here was fame, not \nsought after nor worn in any cheap French fashion as \na ribbon at the button-hole, but so gentle, so retiring, \nthat it seemed no more than an assured and em- \nboldened modesty; here was ambition, undebased by \nrivalry and incapable of the sidelong look; and all \nthese massed and harmonized together into a purity \nand depth of character, into a tone, which made the \ndaily life of the man the greatest masterpiece of the \nartist. \n\nBut let us go back to the Old Town. Thirty years \nsince, the Muster and the Cornwallis allowed some \nvent to those natural instincts which Puritanism \nscotched, but not killed. The Cornwallis had entered \nupon the estates of the old Guy-Fawkes procession, \nconfiscated by the Revolution. It was a masquerade, \nin which that grave and suppressed humor, of which \nthe Yankees are fuller than other people, burst through \nall restraints, and disported itself in all the wildest \nvagaries of fun. Commonly the Yankee in his pleas- \nures suspects the presence of Public Opinion as a \ndetective, and accordingly is apt to pinion himself \nin his Sunday suit. It is a curious commentary on \n\n\n\n36 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nthe artificiality of our lives, that men must be dis- \nguised and masked before they will venture into the \nobscurer corners of their individuality, and display the \ntrue features of their nature. One remarked it in \nthe Carnival, and one especially noted it here among \na race naturally self-restrained; for Silas and Ezra \nand Jonas were not only disguised as Redcoats, Con- \ntinentals, and ladians, but not unfrequently disguised \nin drink also. It is a question whether the Lyceum \nwhere the public is obliged to comprehend all vagrom \nmen, supplies the place of the old popular amuse- \nments. A hundred and fifty years ago, Cotton Mather \nbewails the carnal attractions of the tavern and the \ntraining-field, and tells of an old Indian who imper- \nfectly understood the Enghsh tongue, but desperately \nmastered enough of it (when under sentence of death) \nto express a desire for instant hemp rather than listen \nto any more ghostly consolations. Puritanism \xe2\x80\x94 I \nam perfectly aware how great a debt we owe it \xe2\x80\x94 tried \nover again the old experiment of driving out nature \nwith a pitchfork, and had the usual success. It was \nlike a ship inwardly on fire, whose hatches must be \nkept hermetically battened down ; for the admittance \nof an ounce of Heaven\'s own natural air would ex- \nplode it utterly. Morals can never be safely embodied \nin the constable. Polished, cultivated, fascinating \nMephistopheles ! it is for the ungovernable breakings- \naway of the soul from unnatural compressions that \nthou waitest with a deprecatory smile. Then it is \nthat thou offerest thy gentlemanly arm to unguarded \nyouth for a pleasant stroll through the City of De- \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 37 \n\nstruction, and, as a special favor, introducest him \nto the bewitching Miss Circe, and to that model \nof the hospitable old English gentleman, Mr. \nComus ! \n\nBut the Muster and the Cornwallis were not \npeculiar to Cambridge. Commencement-day was. \nSaint Pedagogus was a worthy whose feast could be \ncelebrated by men who quarrelled with minced-pies, \nand blasphemed custard through the nose. The \nholiday preserved all the features of an English fair. \nStations were marked out beforehand by the town \nconstables, and distinguished by numbered stakes. \nThese were assigned to the different venders of small \nwares and exhibitors of rarities, whose canvas booths, \nbeginning at the market-place, sometimes half en- \ncircled the Common with their jovial embrace. Now \nall the Jehoiada-boxes in town were forced to give \nup their rattling deposits of specie, if not through the \nlegitimate orifice, then to the brute force of the ham- \nmer. For hither were come all the wonders of the \nworld, making the Arabian Nights seem possible, and \nwhich we beheld for half price; not without min- \ngled emotions, \xe2\x80\x94 pleasure at the economy, and shame \nat not paying the more manly fee. Here the mummy \nunveiled her withered charms, \xe2\x80\x94 a more marvellous \nNinon, still attractive in her three-thousandth year. \nHere were the Siamese twins ; ah ! if all such forced \nand unnatural unions were made a show of! Here \nwere the flying horses (their supernatural effect in- \njured \xe2\x80\x94 like that of some poems \xe2\x80\x94 by the visibility \nof the man who turned the crank), on which, as we \n\n\n\n38 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ntilted at the ring, we felt our shoulders tingle with the \naccolade, and heard the clink of golden spurs at our \nheels. Are the realities of life ever worth half so \nmuch as its cheats? And are there any feasts half so \nfilling at the price as those Barmecide ones spread \nfor us by Imagination? Hither came the Canadian \ngiant, surreptitiously seen, without price, as he \nalighted, in broad day, (giants were always foolish,) \nat the tavern. Hither came the great horse Columbus, \nwith shoes two inches thick, and more wisely intro- \nduced by night. In the trough of the town-pump \nmight be seen the mermaid, its poor monkey\'s head \ncarefully sustained above water, to keep it from drown- \ning. There were dwarfs, also, who danced and sang, \nand many a proprietor regretted the transaudient \nproperties of canvas, which allowed the frugal public \nto share in the melody without entering the booth. Is \nit a slander of J. H., who reports that he once saw a \ndeacon, eminent for psalmody, Hngering near one of \nthose vocal tents, and, with an assumed air of abstrac- \ntion, furtively drinking in, with unhabitual ears, a \nsong, not secular merely, but with a dash of libertin- \nism? The New England proverb says, "All deacons \nare good, but \xe2\x80\x94 there \'s odds in deacons." On these \ndays Snow became superterranean, and had a stand \nin the square, and Lewis temperately contended with \nthe stronger fascinations of egg-pop. But space \nwould fail me to make a catalogue of everything. \nNo doubt, Wisdom also, as usual, had her quiet booth \nat the corner of some street, without entrance-fee, \nand, even at that rate, got never a customer the whole \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 39 \n\nday long. For the bankrupt afternoon there were \npeep-shows, at a cent each. \n\nBut all these shows and their showmen are as clean \ngone now as those of Caesar and Timour and Napo- \nleon, for which the world paid dearer. They are \nutterly gone out, not leaving so much as a snuff be- \nhind, \xe2\x80\x94 as little thought of now as that John Robins, \nwho was once so considerable a phenomenon as to be \nesteemed the last great Antichrist and son of perdi- \ntion by the entire sect of Muggletonians. Were \nCommencement what it used to be, I should be \ntempted to take a booth myself, and try an experi- \nment recommended by a satirist of some merit, whose \nworks were long ago dead and (I fear) deedeed to \nboot. \n\n" Menenius, thou who fain wouldst know how calmly men can \n\npass \nThose biting portraits of themselves, disguised as fox or \n\nass, \xe2\x80\x94 \nGo borrow coin enough to buy a full-length psyche-glass, \nEng.ige a rather darkish room in some well-sought position \nAnd let the town break out with bills, so much per head \n\nadmission, \xe2\x80\x94 \nGreat natural curiosity! ! The biggest living \n\nfool! ! \nArranije your mirror cleverly, before it set a stool. \nAdmit the public one by one, place each upon the seat. \nDraw up the curtain, let him look his fill and then retreat. \nSmith mounts and takes a thorough view, then comes \n\nserenely down. \nGoes home and tells his wife the thing is curiously like \n\nBrown ; \nBrown goes and stares, and tells his wife the wonder\'s core \n\nand pith \nIs that "t is just the counterpart of that conceited Smith, \nLife calls us all to such a show : Menenius, trust in me, \nWhile thou to see thy neighbor smil\'st, he does the same \n\nfor thee." \n\n\n\n40 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nMy dear Storg, would you come to my show, and, \ninstead of looking in my glass, insist on taking your \nmoney\'s worth in staring at the exhibitor? \n\nNot least among the curiosities which the day \nbrought together were some of the graduates, pos- \nthumous men, as it were, disentombed from country \nparishes and district schools, but perennial also, in \nwhom freshly survived all the college jokes, and who \nhad no intelligence later than their Senior year. \nThese had gathered to eat the College dinner, and to \nget the Triennial Catalogue (their lihro d\'oro), re- \nferred to oftener than any volume but the Concordance. \nAspiring men they were certainly, but in a right un- \nworldly way ; this scholastic festival opening a peace- \nful path to the ambition which might else have devas- \ntated mankind with Prolusions on the Pentateuch, \nor Genealogies of the Dormouse Family. For since \nin the academic processions the classes are ranked in \nthe order of their graduation, and he has the best \nchance at the dinner who has the fewest teeth to eat \nit with, so, by degrees, there springs up a competition \nin longevity, \xe2\x80\x94 the prize contended for being the \noldest surviving graduateship. This is an office, it \nis true, without emolument, but having certain ad- \nvantages, nevertheless. The incumbent, if he come \nto Commencement, is a prodigious lion, and com- \nmonly gets a paragraph in the newspapers once a \nyear with the (fiftieth) last survivor of Washington\'s \nLife-Guard. If a clergyman, he is expected to ask \na blessing and return thanks at the dinner, a function \nwhich he performs with centenarian longanimity, as \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 4 1 \n\nif he reckoned the ordinary life of man to be fivescore \nyears, and that a grace must be long to reach so far \naway as heaven. Accordingly, this silent race is \nwatched, on the course of the Catalogue, with an \ninterest worthy of Newmarket ; and as star after star \nrises in the galaxy of death, till one name is left alone, \nan oasis of Hfe in the stellar desert, it grows solemn. \nThe natural feeling is reversed, and it is the solitary \nlife that becomes sad and monitory, the Stylites there \non the lonely top of his century-pillar, who has heard \nthe passing-bell of youth, love, friendship, hope, \xe2\x80\x94 \nof everything but immitigable eld. \n\nDr. K. was President of the University then, a man \nof genius, but of genius that evaded utilization, \xe2\x80\x94 a \ngreat water-power, but without rapids, and flowing \nwith too smooth and gentle a current to be set turning \nwheels and whirling spindles. His was not that rest- \nless genius of which the man seems to be merely the \nrepresentative, and which wreaks itself in literature or \npoHtics, but of that milder sort, quite as genuine, and \nperhaps of more contemporaneous value, which is \nthe man, permeating the whole life with placid force, \nand giving to word, look, and gesture a meaning only \njustifiable by our belief in a reserved power of latent \nreinforcement. The man of talents possesses them \nlike so many tools, does his job with them, and there \nan end ; but the man of genius is possessed by it, and \nit makes him into a book or a life according to its \nwhim. Talent takes the existing moulds, and makes \nits castings, better or worse, of richer or baser metal, \naccording to knack and opportunity; but genius is \n\n\n\n42 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nalways shaping new ones, and runs the man in them, \nso that there is always that human feel in its results \nwhich gives us a kindred thrill. What it will make, \nwe can only conjecture, contented always with know- \ning the infinite balance of possibility against which it \ncan draw at pleasure. Have you ever seen a man \nwhose check would be honored for a million pay his \ntoll of one cent? and has not that bit of copper, no \nbigger than your own, and piled with it by the careless \ntoll-man, given you a tingling vision of what golden \nbridges he could pass, \xe2\x80\x94 into what Elysian regions of \ntaste and enjoyment and culture, barred to the rest \nof us? Something like it is the impression made by \nsuch characters as K.\'s on those who come in contact \nwith them. \n\nThere was that in the soft and rounded (I had \nalmost said melting) outlines of his face which re- \nminded one of Chaucer. The head had a placid yet \ndignified droop like his. He was an anachronism, \nfitter to have been Abbot of Fountains or Bishop \nGolias, courtier and priest, humorist and lord spiritual, \nall in one, than for the mastership of a provincial \ncollege, which combined, with its purely scholastic \nfunctions, those of accountant and chief of police. \nFor keeping books he was incompetent (unless it were \nthose he borrowed), and the only discipline he exer- \ncised was by the unobtrusive pressure of a gentle- \nmanliness which rendered insubordination to him \nimpossible. But the world always judges a man \n(and rightly enough, too) by his little faults, which he \nshows a hundred times a day, rather than by his great \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 43 \n\nvirtues, which he discloses perhaps but once in a Hfe- \ntime, and to a single person, \xe2\x80\x94 nay, in proportion as \nthey are rarer, and he is nobler, is shyer of letting their \nexistence be known at all. He was one of those mis- \nplaced persons whose misfortune it is that their lives \noverlap two distinct eras, and are already so impreg- \nnated with one that they can never be in healthy sym- \npathy with the other. Born when the New England \nclergy were still an establishment and an aristocracy, \nand when office was almost always for life, and often \nhereditary, he lived to be thrown upon a time when \navocations of all colors might be shuffled together in \nthe life of one man, like a pack of cards, so that you \ncould not prophesy that he who was ordained to-day \nmight not accept a colonelcy of filibusters to-morrow. \nSuch temperaments as his attach themselves, like \nbarnacles, to what seems permanent; but presently \nthe good ship Progress weighs anchor, and whirls \nthem away from drowsy tropic inlets to arctic waters \nof unnatural ice. To such crustaceous natures, \ncreated to cling upon the immemorial rock amid \nsoftest mosses, comes the bustling Nineteenth Century \nand says, "Come, come, bestir yourself and be prac- \ntical! get out of that old shell of yours forthwith!" \nAlas ! to get out of the shell is to die ! \n\nOne of the old travellers in South America tells of \nfishes that built their nests in trees {piscium et summa \nhcBsit genus nlmo), and gives a print of the mother fish \nupon her nest, while her mate mounts perpendicularly \nto her without aid of legs or wings. Life shows plenty \nof such incongruities between a man\'s place and his \n\n\n\n44 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nnature, (not so easily got over as by the traveller\'s \nundoubting engraver,) and one cannot help fancying \nthat K. was an instance in point. He never en- \ncountered, one would say, the attraction proper to \ndraw out his native force. Certainly, few men who \nimpressed others so strongly, and of whom so many \ngood things are remembered, left less behind them to \njustify contemporary estimates. He printed nothing, \nand was, perhaps, one of those the electric sparkles \nof whose brains, discharged naturally and healthily \nin conversation, refuse to pass through the noncon- \nducting medium of the inkstand. His ana would \nmake a delightful collection. One or two of his official \nones will be in place here. Hearing that Porter\'s flip \n(which was exemplary) had too great an attraction \nfor the collegians, he resolved to investigate the matter \nhimself. Accordingly, entering the old inn one day, \nhe called for a mug of it, and, having drunk it, said, \n"And so, Mr. Porter, the young gentlemen come to \ndrink your flip, do they?" "Yes, sir, \xe2\x80\x94 sometimes." \n"Ah, well, I should think they would. Good day, \nMr. Porter," and departed, saying nothing more; for \nhe always wisely allowed for the existence of a certain \namount of human nature in ingenuous youth. At \nanother time the "Harvard Washington" asked leave \nto go into Boston to a collation which had been offered \nthem. "Certainly, young gentlemen," said the Presi- \ndent, "but have you engaged any one to bring home \nyour muskets?" \xe2\x80\x94 the College being responsible for \nthese weapons, which belonged to the State. Again, \nwhen a student came with a physician\'s certificate, \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 45 \n\nand asked leave of absence, K. granted it at once, and \nthen added, "By the way, Mr. , persons inter- \nested in the relation which exists between states of the \natmosphere and health have noticed a curious fact in \nregard to the climate of Cambridge, especially within \nthe College limits, \xe2\x80\x94 the very small number of deaths \nin proportion to the cases of dangerous illness." This \nis told of Judge W., himself a wit, and capable of en- \njoying the humorous delicacy of the reproof. \n\nShall I take Brahmin x\\lcott\'s favorite word, and \ncall him a daemonic man? No, the Latin genius is \nquite old-fashioned enough for me, means the same \nthing, and its derivative geniality expresses, moreover, \nthe base of K.\'s being. How he suggested cloistered \nrepose, and quadrangles mossy with centurial asso- \nciations ! How easy he was, and how without creak \nwas every movement of his mind ! This life was good \nenough for him, and the next not too good. The \ngentleman -like pervaded even his prayers. His were \nnot the manners of a man of the world, nor of a man \nof the other world either; but both met in him to \nbalance each other in a beautiful equilibrium. Pray- \ning, he leaned forward upon the pulpit-cushion as for \nconversation, and seemed to feel himself (without \nirreverence) on terms of friendly but courteous, \nfamiliarity with Heaven. The expression of his face \nwas that of tranquil contentment, and he appeared \nless to be supplicating expected mercies than thankful \nfor those already found, \xe2\x80\x94 as if he were saying the \ngratias in the refectory of the Abbey of Theleme. \nUnder him flourished the Harvard Washington Corps, \n\n\n\n46 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nwhose gyrating banner, inscribed Tarn Marti quant \nMercurio {atqui magis LycEO should have been added), \non the evening of training-days was an accurate \ndynamometer of Willard\'s punch or Porter\'s flip. \nIt was they who, after being royally entertained by a \nmaiden lady of the town, entered in their orderly book \na vote that Miss Blank was a gentleman. I see them \nnow, returning from the imminent deadly breach of \nthe law of Rechab, unable to form other than the ser- \npentine line of beauty, while their officers, brotherly \nrather than imperious, instead of reprimanding, tear, \nfully embraced the more eccentric wanderers from \nmilitary precision. Under him the Med. Facs. took \ntheir equal place among the learned societies of \nEurope, numbering among their grateful honorary \nmembers, Alexander, Emperor of all the Russias, who \n(if College legends may be trusted) sent them in \nreturn for their diploma a gift of medals confiscated \nby the authorities. Under him the College fire- \nengine was vigilant and active in suppressing any \ntendency to spontaneous combustion among the \nFreshmen, or rushed wildly to imaginary confla- \ngrations, generally in a direction where punch was to \nbe had. All these useful conductors for the natural \nelectricity of youth, dispersing it or turning it harm- \nlessly into the earth, are taken away now, \xe2\x80\x94 wisely \nor not, is questionable. \n\nAn academic town, in whose atmosphere there is \nalways something antiseptic, seems naturally to draw \nto itself certain varieties and to preserve certain \nhumors (in the Ben Jonsonian sense) of character, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 4/ \n\nmen who come not to study so much as to be studied. \nAt the head-quarters of Washington once, and now \n\nof the Muses, hved C , but before the date of these \n\nrecollections. Here for seven years (as the law was \nthen) he made his house his castle, sunning himself \nin his elbow-chair at the front-door, on that seventh \nday, secure from every arrest but Death\'s. Here long \nsurvived him his turbaned widow, studious only of \nSpinoza, and refusing to molest the canker-worms \nthat annually disleaved her elms, because we were all \nvermicular alike. She had been a famous beauty \nonce, but the canker years had left her leafless, too; \nand I used to wonder, as I saw her sitting always alone \nat her accustomed window, whether she were ever \nvisited by the reproachful shade of him who (in spite \nof Rosalind) died broken-hearted for her in her \nradiant youth. \n\nAnd this reminds me of J. F., who, also crossed in \nlove, allowed no mortal eye to behold his face for many \nyears. The eremitic instinct is not peculiar to the \nThebais, as many a New England village can testify; \nand it is worthy of consideration that the Romish \nChurch has not forgotten this among her other points \nof intimate contact with human nature. F. became \npurely vespertinal, never stirring abroad till after dark. \nHe occupied two rooms, migrating from one to the \nother, as the necessities of housewifery demanded, \nthus shunning all sight of womankind, and being \npractically more solitary in his dual apartment than \nMontaigne\'s Dean of St. Hilaire in his single one. \nWhen it was requisite that he should put his signature \n\n\n\n48 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nto any legal instrument, (for he was an anchorite of \nample means,) he wrapped himself in a blanket, allow- \ning nothing to be seen but the hand which acted as \nscribe. What impressed us boys more than any- \nthing else was the rumor that he had suffered his beard \nto grow, \xe2\x80\x94 such an anti-Sheffieldism being almost \nunheard of in those days, and the peculiar ornament \nof man being associated in our minds with nothing \nmore recent than the patriarchs and apostles, whose \neffigies we were obliged to solace ourselves with weekly \nin the Family Bible. He came out of his oysterhood \nat last, and I knew him well, a kind-hearted man, who \ngave annual sleigh-rides to the town-paupers, and \nsupphed the poor children with school-books. His \nfavorite topic of conversation was Eternity, and, like \nmany other worthy persons he used to fancy t!iat \nmeaning was an affair of aggregation, and that he \ndoubled the intensity of what he said by the sole aid \nof the multiplication -table. "Eternity!" he used to \nsay, "it is not a day; it is not a year; it is not a hun- \ndred years; it is not a thousand years; it is not a \nmillion years; no, sir," (the sir being thrown in to \nrecall wandering attention,) "it is not ten million \nyears!" and so on, his enthusiasm becoming a mere \nfrenzy when he got among his sextillions, till I some- \ntimes wished he had continued in retirement. He \nused to sit at the open window during thunder-storms, \nand had a Grecian feeling about death by lightning. \nIn a certain sense he had his desire, for he died sud- \ndenly, \xe2\x80\x94 not by fire from heaven, but by the red flash \nof apoplexy, leaving his whole estate to charitable uses. \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 49 \n\nIf K. were out of place as President, that was not \nP. as Greek Professor. Who that ever saw him can \nforget him, in his old age, like a lusty winter, frosty \nbut kindly, with great silver spectacles of the heroic \nperiod, such as scarce twelve noses of these degen- \nerate days could bear? He was a natural celibate, \nnot dwelling "like the fly in the heart of the apple," \nbut like a lonely bee rather, absconding himself in \nHymettian flowers, incapable of matrimony as a soli- \ntary palm-tree. There was, to be sure, a tradition of \nyouthful disappointment, and a touching story which \n\nL. told me perhaps confirms it. When Mrs. \n\ndied, a carriage with blinds drawn followed the funeral \ntrain at some distance, and, when the coffin had been \nlowered into the grave, drove hastily away to escape \nthat saddest of earthly sounds, the first rattle of earth \nupon the lid. It was afterwards known that the car- \nriage held a single mourner, \xe2\x80\x94 our grim and un- \ndemonstrative Professor. Yet I cannot bring myself \nto suppose him susceptible to any tender passion after \nthat single lapse in the immaturity of reason. He \nmight have joined the Abderites in singing their mad \nchorus from the Andromeda; but it would have been \nin deference to the language merely, and with a silent \nprotest against the sentiment. I fancy him arrang- \ning his scrupulous toilet, not for Amaryllis or Neaera, \nbut, like Machiavelli, for the society of his beloved \nclassics. His ears had needed no prophylactic wax \nto pass the Sirens\' isle ; nay, he would have kept them \nthe wider open, studious of the dialect in which they \nsang, and perhaps triumphantly detecting the ^olic \n\n\n\n50 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ndigamma in their lay. A thoroughly single man, single- \nminded, single-hearted, buttoning over his single \nheart a single-breasted surtout, and wearing always a \nhat of a single fashion, \xe2\x80\x94 did he in secret regard the \ndual number of his favorite language as a weakness? \nThe son of an ofiicer of distinction in the Revolutionary \nWar, he mounted the pulpit with the erect port of a \nsoldier, and carried his cane more in the fashion of a \nweapon than a staff, but with the point lowered, in \ntoken of surrender to the peaceful proprieties of his \ncalling. Yet sometimes the martial instincts would \nburst the cerements of black coat and clerical neck- \ncloth, as once, when the students had got into a fight \nupon the training-field, and the licentious soldiery, \nfurious with rum, had driven them at point of bayonet, \nto the College gates, and even threatened to hft their \narms against the Muses\' bower. Then, like Major \nGoflfe at Deerfield, suddenly appeared the gray- \nhaired P., all his father resurgent in him, and shouted: \n"Now, my lads, stand your ground, you \'re in the \nright now ! Don\'t let one of them set foot within the \nCollege grounds!" Thus he allowed arms to get \nthe better of the toga, but raised it, like the Prophet\'s \nbreeches, into a banner, and carefully ushered re- \nsistance with a preamble of infringed right. Fidelity \nwas his strong characteristic, and burned equably in \nhim through a life of eighty-three years. He drilled \nhimself till inflexible habit stood sentinel before all \nthose postern-weaknesses which temperament leaves \nunbolted to temptation. A lover of the scholar\'s herb \nyet loving freedom more, and knowing that the animal \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. $1 \n\nappetites ever hold one hand behind them for Satan \nto drop a bribe in, he would never have two cigars in \nhis house at once, but walked every day to the shop \nto fetch his single diurnal solace. Nor would he \ntrust himself with two on Saturdays, preferring (since \nhe could not violate the Sabbath even by that infini- \ntesimal traffic) to depend on Providential ravens, \nwhich were seldom wanting in the shape of some \nblack-coated friend who knew his need, and honored \nthe scruple that occasioned it. He was faithful, also, \nto his old hats, in which appeared the constant service \nof the antique world, and which he preserved forever, \npiled like a black pagoda under his dressing-table. \nNo scarecrow was ever the residuary legatee of his \nbeavers, though one of them in any of the neighboring \npeach-orchards would have been sovereign against \nan attack of Freshmen. He wore them all in turn, \ngetting though all in the course of the year, like the \nsun through the signs of the zodiac, modulating them \naccording to seasons and celestial phenomena, so that \nnever was spider-web or chickweed so sensitive a \nweather-gauge as they. Nor did his political party \nfind him less loyal. Taking all the tickets, he would \nseat himself apart, and carefully compare them with \nthe list of regular nominations as printed in his Daily \nAdvertiser, before he dropped his ballot in the box. \nIn less ambitious moments, it almost seems to me \nthat I would rather have had that slow, conscientious \nvote of P.\'s alone, than to have been chosen Alderman \nof the Ward ! \n. If you had walked to what was then Sweet Auburn \n\n\n\n52 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nby the pleasant Old Road, on some June morning \nthirty years ago, you would very likely have met two \nother characteristic persons, both phantasmagoric \nnow, and belonging to the past. Fifty years earlier, \nthe scarlet-coated, rapiered figures of Vassall, Lech- \nmere, Oliver, and Brattle creaked up and down there \non red-heeled shoes, lifting the ceremonious three- \ncornered hat, and ofifering the fugacious hospitalities \nof the snuff-box. They are all shadowy alike now, \nnot one of your Etruscan Lucumos or Roman Consuls \nmore so, my dear Storg. First is W., his queue slender \nand tapering, like the tail of a violet crab, held out \nhorizontally by the high collar of his shepherd\'s-gray \novercoat, whose style was of the latest when he studied \nat Leyden in his hot youth. The age of cheap clothes \nsees no more of those faithful old garments, as proper \nto their wearers and as distinctive as the barks of \ntrees, and by long use interpenetrated with their very \nnature. Nor do we see so many Humors (still in the \nold sense) now that every man\'s soul belongs to the \nPublic, as when social distinctions were more marked, \nand men felt that their personalities were their castles, \nin which they could intrench themselves against the \nworld. Nowadays men are shy of letting their true \nselves be seen, as if in some former life they had com- \nmitted a crime, and were all the time afraid of dis- \ncovery and arrest in this. Formerly they used to \ninsist on your giving the wall to their peculiarities, and \nyou may still find examples of it in the parson or the \ndoctor of retired villages. One of W.\'s oddities was \ntouching. A little brook used to run across the street, \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 53 \n\nand the sidewalk was carried over it by a broad stone. \nOf course there is no brook now. What use did that \nhttle gUmpse of a ripple serve, where the children used \nto launch their chip fleets? W., in going over this \nstone, which gave a hollow resonance to the tread, \nhad a trick of striking upon it three times with his \ncane, and muttering, "Tom, Tom, Tom!" I used \nto think he was only mimicking with his voice the \nsound of the blows, and possibly it was that sound \nwhich suggested his thought, for he was remembering \na favorite nephew, prematurely dead. Perhaps Tom \nhad sailed his boats there; perhaps the reverberation \nunder the old man\'s foot hinted at the hollowness of \nlife ; perhaps the fleeting eddies of the water brought \nto mind the jiigaces annos. W., like P., wore amazing \nspectacles, fit to transmit no smaller image than the \npage of mightiest folios of Dioscorides or Hercules de \nSaxonia, and rising full-disked upon the beholder \nlike those prodigies of two moons at once, portending \nchange to monarchs. The great collar disallowing \nany independent rotation of the head, I remember he \nused to turn his whole person in order to bring their \njoci to bear upon an object. One can fancy that \nterrified nature would have yielded up her secrets at \nonce, without cross-examination, at their first glaje. \nThrough them he had gazed fondly into the great \nmare\'s-nest of Junius, publishing his observations \nupon the eggs found therein in a tall octavo. It v/as \nhe who introduced vaccination to this Western World. \nMalicious persons disputing his claim to this distinc- \ntion, he published this advertisement: "Lost, a gold \n\n\n\n54 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nsnuff-box, with the inscription, \'The Jenner of the \nOld World to the Jenner of the New.\' Whoever shall \nreturn the same to Dr. shall be suitably re- \nwarded." It was never returned. Would the search \nafter it have been as fruitless as that of the alchemist \nafter his equally imaginary gold? Mahcious persons \npersisted in believing the box as visionary as the claim \nit was meant to buttress with a semblance of reality. \nHe used to stop and say good morning kindly, and pat \nthe shoulder of the blushing school-boy who now, \nwith the fierce snow-storm wildering without, sits \nand remembers sadly those old meetings and partings \nin the June sunshine. \n\nThen there was S., whose resounding \'\'Haw, haw, \nhaw! by George!" positively enlarged the income \nof every dweller in Cambridge. In downright, honest \ngood cheer and good neighborhood, it was worth five \nhundred a year to every one of us. Its jovial thunders \ncleared the mental air of every sulky cloud. Perpetual \nchildhood dwelt in him, the childhood of his native \nSouthern France, and its fixed air was all the time \nbubbling up and sparkling and winking in his eyes. \nIt seemed as if his placid old face were only a mask \nbehind which a merry Cupid had ambushed himself, \npeeping out all the while, and ready to drop it when \nthe play grew tiresome. Every word he uttered \nseemed to be hilarious, no matter what the occasion. \nIf he were sick, and you visited him, if he had met \nwith a misfortune, (and there are few men so wise \nthat they can look even at the back of a retiring sor- \nrow with composure,) it was all one; his great laugh \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 55 \n\nwent off as if it were set like an alarm-clock, to run \ndown, whether he would or no, at a certain tick. \nEven after an ordinary Good morning! (especially \nif to an old pupil, and in French,) the wonderful Haw, \nhaw, haw! hy George! would burst upon you unex- \npectedly, like a salute of artillery on some holiday \nwhich you had forgotten. Everything was a joke to \nhim, \xe2\x80\x94 that the oath of allegiance had been admin- \nistered to him by your grandfather, \xe2\x80\x94 that he had \ntaught Prescott his first Spanish (of which he was \nproud), \xe2\x80\x94 no matter\' what. Everything came to \nhim marked by Nature Right side up, with care, and \nhe kept it so. The world to him, as to all of us, was \nlike a medal, on the obverse of which is stamped the \nimage of Joy, and on the reverse that of Care. S. \nnever took the foolish pains to look at that other side, \neven -if he knew its existence ; much less would it have \noccurred to him to turn it into view, and insist that his \nfriends should look at it with him. Nor was this a \nmere outside good-humor; its source was deeper, in \na true Christian kindliness and amenity. Once, when \nhe had been knocked down by a tipsily-driven sleigh, \nand was urged to prosecute the offenders, "No, no," \nhe said, his wounds still fresh, "young blood, young \nblood! it must have its way; I was young myself." \nWas! few men come into life so young as S. went out. \nHe landed in Boston (then the front door of America) \nin \'93, and, in honor of the ceremony, had his head \npowdered afresh, and put on a suit of court-mourning \nbefore he set foot on the wharf. My fancy always \ndressed him in that violet silk, and his soul certainly \n\n\n\n56 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwore a full court-suit. What was there ever like his \nbow? It was as if you had received a decoration, \nand could write yourself gentleman from that day \nforth. His hat rose, regreeting your own, and, having \nsailed through the stately curve of the old regime, \nsank gently back over that placid brain, which har- \nbored no thought less white than the powder which \ncovered it. I have sometimes imagined that there \nwas a graduated arc over his head, invisible to other \neyes than his, by which he meted out to each his right- \nful share of castorial consideration. I carry in my \nmemory three exemplary bows. The first is that of \nan old beggar, who, already carrying in his hand a \nwhite hat, the gift of benevolence, took off the black \none from his head also, and profoundly saluted me \nwith both at once, giving me, in return for my alms, \na dual benediction, puzzling as a nod from Janus \nBifrons. The second I received from an old Cardinal, \nwho was taking his walk just outside the Porta San \nGiovanni at Rome. I paid him the courtesy due to \nhis age and rank. Forthwith rose, first, the Hat; \nsecond, the hat of his confessor ; third, that of another \npriest who attended him; fourth, the fringed cocked- \nhat of his coachman; fifth and sixth, the ditto, ditto, \nof his two footmen. Here was an investment, \nindeed; six hundred per cent interest on a single \nbow ! The third bow, worthy to be noted in \none\'s almanac among the other mirahilia, was that \nof S., in which courtesy had mounted to the \nlast round of her ladder, \xe2\x80\x94 and tried to draw it up \nafter her. \n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 57 \n\nBut the genial veteran is gone even while I am \nwriting this, and I will play Old Mortality no longer. \nWandering among these recent graves, my dear friend, \n\nwe may chance upon ; but no, I will not end my \n\nsentence. I bid you heartily farewell! \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. \n\nADDRESSED TO THE EDELMANN STORG AT THE \nBAGNI DI LUCCA. \n\nThursday, nth August. \xe2\x80\x94 I knew as little yester- \nday of the interior of Maine as the least penetrating \nperson knows of the inside of that great social mill- \nstone which, driven by the river Time, sets impera- \ntively agoing the several wheels of our individual \nactivities. Born while Maine was still a province of \nnative Massachusetts, I was as much a foreigner to it \nas yourself, my dear Storg. I had seen many lakes, \nranging from that of Virgil\'s Cumaean to that of Scott\'s \nCaledonian Lady; but Moosehead, within two days \nof me, had never enjoyed the profit of being mirrored \nin my retina. At the sound of the name, no remi- \nniscential atoms (according to Kenelm Digby\'s \nTheory of Association, \xe2\x80\x94 as good as any) stirred and \nmarshalled themselves in my brain. The truth is, \nwe think lightly of Nature\'s penny shows, and esti- \nmate what we see by the cost of the ticket. Em- \npedocles gave his life for a pit-entrance to iEtna, and \nno doubt found his account in it. Accordingly, the \nclean face of Cousin Bull is imaged patronizingly in \nLake George, and Loch Lomond glasses the hurried \ncountenance of Jonathan, diving deeper in the streams \nof European association (and coming up drier) than \n58 \n\n\n\nA MiOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 59 \n\nany other man. Or is the cause of our not caring to \nsee what is equally within the reach of all our neigh- \nbors to be sought in that aristocratic principle so \ndeeply implanted in human nature ? I knew a pauper \ngraduate who always borrowed a black coat, and came \nto eat the Commencement dinner, \xe2\x80\x94 not that it was \nbetter than the one which daily graced the board of \nthe public institution in which he hibernated (so to \nspeak) during the other three hundred and sixty-four \ndays of the year, save in this one particular, that none \nof his eleemosynary fellow-commoners could eat it. \nIf there are unhappy men who wish that they were as \nthe Babe Unborn, there are more who w^ould aspire \nto the lonely distinction of being that other figurative \npersonage, the Oldest Inhabitant. You remember \nthe charming irresolution of our dear Esthwaite, (like \nMacheath between his two doxies,) divided between \nhis theory that he is under thirty, and his pride at \nbeing the only one of us who witnessed the September \ngale and the rejoicings at the Peace ? Nineteen years \nago I was walking through the Franconia Notch, and \nstopped to chat with a hermit, who fed with gradual \nlogs the unwearied teeth of a saw-mill. As the pant- \ning steel slit off the slahs of the log, so did the less \nwilling machine of talk, acquiring a steadier up-and- \ndown motion, pare away that outward bark of con- \nversation which protects the core, and which, like \nother bark, has naturally most to do with the weather, \nthe season, and the heat of the day. At length I asked \nhim the best point of view for the Old Man of the \nMountain. \n\n\n\n6o FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n"Dunno, \xe2\x80\x94 never see it." \n\nToo young and too happy either to feel or affect the \nJuvenaUan indifference, I was sincerely astonished, \nand I expressed it. \n\nThe log-compelling man attempted no justifica- \ntion, but after a Httle asked, "Come from Bawsn?" \n\n\'\'Yes" (with peninsular pride). \n\n"Goodie to see in the vycinity o\' Bawsn." \n\n"O yes!" I said, and I thought, \xe2\x80\x94 see Boston \nand die ! see the State-Houses, old and new, the cat- \nerpillar wooden bridges crawling with innumerable \nlegs across the flats of Charles ; see the Common, \xe2\x80\x94 \nlargest park, doubtless, in the world, \xe2\x80\x94 with its files \nof trees planted as if by a drill-sergeant, and then for \nyour nunc dimittis ! \n\n"I should like, \'awl, I should like to stan\' on Bunker \nHill. You\'ve ben there offen, likely?" \n\n"N \xe2\x80\x94 o \xe2\x80\x94 o," unwillingly, seeing the little end of \nthe horn in clear vision at the terminus of this Socratic \nperspective. \n\n\'"Awl, my young frien\', you\'ve larned neow thet \nwut a man kin see any day for nawthin\', childern half \nprice, he never doos see. Nawthin\' pay, nawthin\' \nvally." \n\nWith inis modern instance of a wise saw, I departed, \ndeeply revolving these things with myself, and con- \nvinced that, whatever the ratio of population, the \naverage amount of human nature to the square mile \nis the same the world over. I thought of it when I \nsaw people upon the Pincian wondering at the Al- \nchemist sun, as if he never burned the leaden clouds \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 6 1 \n\nto gold in sight of Charles Street. I thought of it when \nI found eyes first discovering at Mont Blanc how \nbeautiful snow was. As I walked on, I said to myself. \nThere is one exception, wise hermit, \xe2\x80\x94 it is just these \ngratis pictures which the poet puts in his show-box, \nand which we all gladly pay Wordsworth and the rest \nfor a peep at. The divine faculty is to see what every- \nbody can look at. \n\nWhile every well-informed man in Europe, from \nthe barber down to the diplomatist, has his view of \nthe Eastern Question, why should I not go personally \ndown East and see for myself? Why not, like Tan- \ncred, attempt my own solution of the mystery of the \nOrient, \xe2\x80\x94 doubly mysterious when you begin the two \nwords with capitals? You know my way of doing \nthings, to let them simmer in my mind gently for \nmonths, and at last do them impromptu in a kind of \ndesperation, driven by the Eumenides of unfulfilled \npurpose. So, after talking about Moosehead till \nnobody believed me capable of going thither, I found \nmyself at the Eastern Railway station. The only \nevent of the journey hither (I am now at Waterville) \nwas a boy hawking exhilaratingly the last great rail- \nroad smash, \xe2\x80\x94 thirteen lives lost, \xe2\x80\x94 and no doubt \ndevoutly wishing there had been fifty. This having \na mercantile interest in horrors, holding stock, as it \nwere, in murder, misfortune, and pestilence, must \nhave an odd eiTect on the human mind. The birds of \nill-omen, at whose sombre flight the rest of the world \nturn pale, are the ravens which bring food to this \nlittle outcast in the wilderness. If this lad give \n\n\n\n62 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nthanks for daily bread, it would be curious to inquire \nwhat that phrase represents to his understanding. If \nthere ever be a plum in it, it is Sin or Death that puts \nit in. Other details of my dreadful ride I will spare \nyou. Suffice it that I arrived here in safety, \xe2\x80\x94 in \ncomplexion like an Ethiopian serenader half got-up, \nand so broiled and peppered that I was more like a \ndevilled kidney than anything else I can think of. \n\nlo P.M. \xe2\x80\x94 The civil landlord and neat chamber at \nthe "Elmwood House" were very grateful, and after \ntea I set forth to explore the town. It has a good \nchance of being pretty ; but, like most American \ntowns, it is in a hobbledehoy age, growing yet, and \none cannot tell what may happen. A child with \ngreat promise of beauty is often spoiled by its second \nteeth. There is something agreeable in the sense of \ncompleteness which a walled town gives one. It is \nentire, like a crystal, \xe2\x80\x94 a work which man has suc- \nceeded in finishing. I think the human mind pines \nmore or less where everything is new, and is better for \na diet of stale bread. The number of Americans who \nvisit the Old World is beginning to afford matter of \nspeculation to observant Europeans, and the deep \ninspirations with which they breathe the air of an- \ntiquity, as if their mental lungs had been starved with \ntoo thin an atmosphere. For my own part, I never \nsaw a house which I thought old enough to be torn \ndown. It is too like that Scythian fashion of knock- \ning old people on the head. I cannot help thinking \nthat the indefinable something which we call char- \nacter is cumulative, \xe2\x80\x94 that the influence of the same \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 63 \n\nclimate, scenery, and associations for several genera- \ntions is necessary to its gathering head, and that the \nprocess is disturbed by continual change of place. \nThe American is nomadic in religion, in ideas, in \nmorals, and leaves his faith and opinions with as \nmuch indifference as the house in which he was born. \nHowever, we need not bother: Nature takes care \nnot to leave out of the great heart of society either of \nits two ventricles of hold-back and go-ahead. \n\nIt seems as if every considerable American town \nmust have its one specimen of everything, and so there \nis a college in Waterville, the buildings of which are \nthree in number, of brick, and quite up to the average \nugliness which seems essential in edifices of this de- \nscription. Unhappily, they do not reach that extreme \nof ugliness where it and beauty come together in the \nclasp of fascination. We erect handsomer factories, \nfor cottons, woollens, and steam-engines, than for \ndoctors, lawyers, and parsons. The truth is, that, \ntill our struggle with nature is over, till this shaggy \nhemisphere is tamed and subjugated, the workshop \nwill be the college whose degrees will be most valued. \nMoreover, steam has made travel so easy that the \ngreat university of the world is open to all comers, and \nthe old cloister system is falling astern. Perhaps it is \nonly the more needed, and, were I rich, I should like to \nfound a few lazyships in my Alma Mater as a kind of \ncounterpoise. The Anglo-Saxon race has accepted \nthe primal curse as a blessing, has deified work, and \nwould not have thanked Adam for abstaining from \nthe apple. They would have dammed the four rivers \n\n\n\n64 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nof Paradise, substituted cotton for fig-leaves among \nthe antediluvian populations, and commended man\'s \nfirst disobedience as a wise measure of political \neconomy. But to return to our college. We cannot \nhave fine buildings till we are less in a hurry. We \nsnatch an education like a meal at a railroad-station. \nJust in time to make us dyspeptic, the whistle shrieks, \nand we must rush, or lose our places in the great train \nof life. Yet noble architecture is one element of \npatriotism, and an eminent one of culture, the finer \nportions of which are taken in by unconscious ab- \nsorption through the pores of the mind from the \nsurrounding atmosphere. I suppose we must wait, \nfor we are a great bivouac as yet rather than a nation, \n\xe2\x80\x94 on the march from the Atlantic to the Pacific, \xe2\x80\x94 \nand pitch tents instead of building houses. Our \nvery villages seem to be in motion, following west- \nward the bewitching music of some Pied Piper of \nHamelin. We still feel the great push toward sun- \ndown given to the peoples somewhere in the gray \ndawn of history. The cliff-swallow alone of all ani- \nmated nature emigrates eastward. \n\nFriday, 12th. \xe2\x80\x94 The coach leaves Waterville at \nfive o\'clock in the morning, and one must breakfast \nin the dark at a quarter past four, because a train \nstarts at twenty minutes before five, \xe2\x80\x94 the passengers \nby both conveyances being pastured gregariously. \nSo one must be up at half past three. The primary \ngeological formations contain no trace of man, and \nit seems to me that these eocene periods of the day \nare not fitted for sustaining the human forms of life. \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 6$ \n\nOne of the Fathers held that the sun was created to be \nworshipped at his rising by the Gentiles. The more \nreason that Christians (except, perhaps, early Chris- \ntians) should abstain from these heathenish cere- \nmonials. As one arriving by an early train is wel- \ncomed by a drowsy maid with the sleep scarce brushed \nout of her hair, and finds empty grates and polished \nmahogany, on whose arid plains the pioneers of break- \nfast have not yet encamped, so a person waked thus \nunseasonably is sent into the world before his faculties \nare up and dressed to serve him. It might have been \nfor this reason that my stomach resented for several \nhours a piece of fried beefsteak which I forced upon \nit, or, more properly speaking, a piece of that leathern \nconveniency which in these regions assumes the name. \nYou will find it as hard to believe, my dear Storg, as \nthat quarrel of the Sorbonists, whether one should \nsay ego amat or no, that the use of the gridiron is un- \nknown hereabout, and so near a river named after \nSt. Lawrence, too ! \n\nTo-day has been the hottest day of the season, yet \nour drive has not been unpleasant. For a consider- \nable distance we followed the course of the Sebasti- \ncook River, a pretty stream with alternations of dark \nbrown pools and wine-colored rapids. On each side \nof the road the land has been cleared, and little one- \nstory farm-houses were scattered at intervals. But \nthe stumps still held out in most of the fields, and the \ntangled wilderness closed in behind, striped here and \nthere with the slim white trunks of the elm. As yet \nonly the edges of the great forest have been nibbled \n\n\n\n66 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\naway. Sometimes a root-fence stretched up its \nbleaching antlers, Hke the trophies of a giant hunter. \nNow and then the houses thickened into an unsocial- \nlooking village, and we drove up to the grocery to \nleave and take a mail-bag, stopping again presently \nto water the horses at some pallid little tavern, whose \none red-curtained eye (the bar-room) had been put \nout by the inexorable thrust of Maine Law. Had \nShenstone travelled this road, he would never have \nwritten that famous stanza of his; had Johnson, he \nwould never have quoted it. They are to real inns \nas the skull of Yorick to his face. Where these vil- \nlages occurred at a distance from the river, it was \ndifficult to account for them. On the river-bank, a \nsaw-mill or a tannery served as a logical premise, and \nsaved them from total inconsequentiality. As we \ntrailed along, at the rate of about four miles an hour, \nit was discovered that one of our mail-bags was miss- \ning. "Guess somebody \'11 pick it up," said the \ndriver coolly: \'"t any rate, likely there\'s nothin\' in \nit." Who knows how long it took some Elam D. \nor Zebulon K. to compose the missive intrusted to \nthat vagrant bag, and how much longer to persuade \nPamela Grace or Sophronia Melissa that it had really \nand truly been written? The discovery of our loss \nwas made by at all man who sat next to me on the top \nof the coach, every one of whose senses seemed to be \nprosecuting its several investigation as we went along. \nPresently, sniffing gently, he remarked: \'"Pears to \nme \'s though I smelt sunthin\'. Ain\'t the aix het, \nthink?" The driver pulled up, and, sure enough. \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 6/ \n\nthe off fore-wheel was found to be smoking. In three \nminutes he had snatched a rail from the fence, made \na lever, raised the coach, and taken off the wheel, \nbathing the hot axle and box with water from the \nriver. It was a pretty spot, and I was not sorry to \nlie under a beech-tree (Tityrus-like, meditating over \nmy pipe) and watch the operations of the fire-annihi- \nlator. I could not help contrasting the ready help- \nfulness of our driver, all of whose wits were about \nhim, current, and redeemable in the specie of action \non emergency, with an incident of travel in Italy, \nwhere, under a somewhat similar stress of circum- \nstances, our vetturino had nothing for it but to dash \nhis hat on the ground and call on Sant\' Antonio, the \nItalian Hercules. \n\nThere being four passengers for the Lake, a vehicle \ncalled a mud-wagon was detailed at Newport for our \naccommodation. In this we jolted and rattled along \nat a liveHer pace than in the coach. As we got \nfarther north, the country (especially the hills) gave \nevidence of longer cultivation. About the thriving \ntown of Dexter we saw fine farms and crops. The \nhouses, too, became prettier; hop-vines were trained \nabout the doors, and hung their clustering thyrsi \nover the open windows. A kind of wild rose (called \nby the country folk the primrose) and asters were \nplanted about the door-yards, and orchards, com- \nmonly of natural fruit, added to the pleasant home- \nlook. But everywhere we could see that the war \nbetween the white man and the forest was still fierce, \nand that it would be a long while yet before the axe \n\n\n\n6S FIRESIDE T RAVE IS. \n\nwas buried. The haying being over, fires blazed or \nsmouldered against the stumps in the fields, and the \nblue smoke widened slowly upward through the quiet \nAugust atmosphere. It seemed to me that I could \nhear a sigh now and then from the immemorial pines, \nas they stood watching these camp-fires of the inex- \norable invader. Evening set in, and, as we crunched \nand crawled up the long gravelly hills, I sometimes \nbegan to fancy that Nature had forgotten to make the \ncorresponding descent on the other side. But ere \nlong we were rushing down at full speed; and, in- \nspired by the dactylic beat of the horses\' hoofs, I \nessayed to repeat the opening lines of Evangeline. \nAt the moment I was beginning, we plunged into a \nhollow, where the soft clay had been overcome by a \nroad of unhewn logs. I got through one fine to this \ncorduroy accompaniment, somewhat as a country \nchoir stretches a short metre on the Protestant rock \nof a long-drawn tune. The result was like this: \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n" Thihis ihis thehe fohorest prihihimeheval ; thehe murhur- \nmuring pihines hahand thehe hehemlohocks! " \n\nAt a quarter past eleven, p.m., we reached Greenville, \n(a little village which looks as if it had dripped down \nfrom the hills, and settled in the hollow at the foot of \nthe lake,) having accomplished seventy-two miles in \neighteen hours. The tavern was totally extinguished. \nThe driver rapped upon the bar-room window, and \nafter a while we saw heat-lightnings of unsuccessful \nmatches followed by a low grumble of vocal thunder, \nwhich I am afraid took the form of imprecation. \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 69 \n\nPresently there was a great success, and the steady \nblur of Hghted tallow succeeded the fugitive brilliance \nof the pine. A hostler fumbled the door open, and \nstood staring at but not seeing us, with the sleep \nsticking out all over him. We at last contrived to \nlaunch him, more like an insensible missile than an \nintelligent or intelhgible being, at the slumbering \nlandlord, who came out wide-awake, and welcomed \nus as so many half-dollars, \xe2\x80\x94 twenty-five cents each \nfor bed, ditto breakfast. O Shenstone, Shenstone ! \nThe only roost was in the garret, which had been made \ninto a single room, and contained eleven double-beds, \nranged along the walls. It was like sleeping in a \nhospital. However, nice customs curtsy to eighteen- \nhour rides, and we slept. \n\nSaturday, i;^th. \xe2\x80\x94 This morning I performed my \ntoilet in the bar-room, where there was an abundant \nsupply of water, and a halo of interested spectators. \nAfter a sufficient breakfast, we embarked on the little \nsteamer Moosehead, and were soon throbbing up \nthe lake. The boat, it appeared, had been chartered \nby a party, this not being one of her regular trips. \nAccordingly we were mulcted in twice the usual fee, \nthe philosophy of which I could not understand. \nHowever, it always comes easier to us to comprehend \nwhy we receive than why we pay. I dare say it was \nquite clear to the captain. There were three or four \nclearings on the western shore; but after passing \nthese, the lake became wholly primeval, and looked \nto us as it did to the first adventurous Frenchman \nwho paddled across it. Sometimes a cleared point \n\n\n\n70 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwould be pink with the blossoming willow-herb, "a \ncheap and excellent substitute" for heather, and, \nlike all such, not quite so good as the real thing. On \nall sides rose deep-blue mountains, of remarkably \ngraceful outHne, and more fortunate than common \nin their names. There were the Big and Little Squaw, \nthe Spencer and Lily-bay Mountains. It was de- \nbated whether we saw Katahdin or not, (perhaps \nmore useful as an intellectual exercise than the assured \nvision would have been,) and presently Mount Kineo \nrose abruptly before us, in shape not unlike the island \nof Capri. Mountains are called great natural fea- \ntures, and why they should not retain their names long \nenough for them also to become naturalized, it is hard \nto say. Why should every new surveyor rechristen \nthem with the gubernatorial patronymics of the cur- \nrent year? They are geological noses, and, as they \nare aquiline or pug, indicate terrestrial idiosyncrasies. \nA cosmical physiognomist, after a glance at them, \nwill draw no vague inference as to the character of the \ncountry. The word nose is no better than any other \nword; but since the organ has got that name, it is \nconvenient to keep it. Suppose we had to label our \nfacial prominences every season with the name of our \nprovincial governor, how should we like it? If the \nold names have no other meaning, they have that of \nage ; and, after all, meaning is a plant of slow growth, \nas every reader of Shakespeare knows. It is well \nenough to call mountains after their discoverers, for \nNature has a knack of throwing doublets, and some- \nhow contrives it that discoverers have good names. \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. yi \n\nPike\'s Peak is a curious hit in this way. But these \nsurveyors\' names have no natural stick in them. They \nremind one of the epithets of poetasters, which peel \noff like a badly gummed postage-stamp. The early \nsettlers did better, and there is something pleasant in \nthe sound of Graylock, Saddleback, and Great Hay- \nstack. \n\n" I love those names \nWherewith the e.xiled farmer tames \nNature down to companionship \n\nWith his old world\'s more homely mood, \nAnd strives the shaggy wild to clip \n\nWith arms of familiar habitude." \n\nIt is possible that Mount Marcy and Mount Hitch- \ncock may sound as well hereafter as Hellespont and \nPeloponnesus, when the heroes, their namesakes, \nhave become mythic with antiquity. But that is to \nlook forward a great way. I am no fanatic for Indian \nnomenclature, \xe2\x80\x94 the name of my native district \nhaving been Pigsgusset, \xe2\x80\x94 but let us at least agree on \nnames for ten years. \n\nThere were a couple of loggers on board, in red \nflannel shirts, and with rifles. They were the first I \nhad seen, and I was interested in their appearance. \nThey were tall, well-knit men, straight as Robin Hood, \nand with a quiet, self-contained look that pleased me. \nI fell into talk with one of them. \n\n"Is there a good market for the farmers here in the \nwoods?" I asked. \n\n"None better. They can sell what they raise at \ntheir doors, and for the best of prices. The lum- \nberers want it all, and more." \n\n\n\n72 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n"It must be a lonely life. But then we all have to \npay more or less life for a living." \n\n"Well, it is lonesome. Shouldn\'t like it. After \nall, the best crop a man can raise is a good crop of \nsociety. We don\'t live none too long, anyhow; and \nwithout society a fellow could n\'t tell more \'n half the \ntime whether he was alive or not." \n\nThis speech gave me a glimpse into the life of the \nlumberers\' camp. It was plain that there a man \nwould soon find out how much alive he was, \xe2\x80\x94 there \nhe could learn to estimate his quality, weighed in the \nnicest self-adjusting balance. The best arm at the \naxe or the paddle, the surest eye for a road or for \nthe weak point of a ]am^ the steadiest foot upon the \nsquirming log, the most persuasive voice to the tug- \nging oxen, \xe2\x80\x94 all these things are rapidly settled, and \nso an aristocracy is evolved from this democracy of the \nwoods, for good old mother Nature speaks Saxon still, \nand with her either Canning or Kenning means King. \n\nA string of five loons was flying back and forth in \nlong, irregular zigzags, uttering at intervals their wild, \ntremulous cry, which always seems far away, like the \nlast faint pulse of echo dying among the hills, and \nwhich is one of those few sounds that, instead of dis- \nturbing the solitude, only deepen and confirm it. On \nour inland ponds they are usually seen in pairs, and I \nasked if it were common to meet five together. My \nquestion was answered by a queer-looking old man, \nchiefly remarkable for a pair of enormous cowhide \nboots, over which large blue trousers of frock in g \nstrove in vain to crowd themselves. \n\n\n\nA MOOSE HEAD JOURNAL. 73 \n\n"Wahl, \'t ain\'t ushil," said he, \'\'and it \'s called a \nsign o\' rain comin\', that is." \n\n" Do you think it will rain ? " .^^^ j^w^u-t\xe2\x80\x94 \n\nWith the caution of a veteran auspex, he evaded a \ndirect reply. "Wahl, they du say it \'s a sign o\' rain \ncomin\',\'\' said he. \n\nI discovered afterward that my interlocutor was \nUncle Zeb. Formerly, every New England town had \nits representative uncle. He was not a pawnbroker, \nbut some elderly man who, for want of more defined \nfamily ties, had gradually assumed this avuncular \nrelation to the community, inhabiting the border- \nland between respectability and the almshouse, with \nno regular calling, but working at haying, wood- \nsawing, whitewashing, associated with the demise of \npigs and the ailments of cattle, and possessing as much \npatriotism as might be implied in a devoted attach- \nment to "New England" \xe2\x80\x94 with a good deal of sugar \nand very httle water in it. Uncle Zeb was a good \nspecimen of this palaeozoic class, extinct among us \nfor the most part, or surviving, like the Dodo, in the \nBotany Bays of society. He was ready to contribute \n(somewhat muddily) to all general conversation; but \nhis chief topics were his boots and the \'Roostick war. \nUpon the lowlands and levels of ordinary palaver he \nwould make rapid and unlooked-for incursions; but \nprovision failing, he would retreat to these two fast- \nnesses, whence it was impossible to dislodge him, and \nto which he knew innumerable passes and short cuts \nquite beyond the conjecture of common woodcraft. \nHis mind opened naturally to these two subjects, like \n\n\n\n74 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\na book to some favorite passage. As the ear accus- \ntoms itself to any sound recurring regularly, such as \nthe ticking of a clock, and, without a conscious effort \nof attention, takes no impression from it whatever, \nso does the mind find a natural safeguard against this \npendulum species of discourse, and performs its \nduties in the parliament by an unconscious reflex \naction, like the beating of the heart or the movement \nof the lungs. If talk seemed to be flagging, our \nUncle would put the heel of one boot upon the toe of \nthe other, to bring it within point-blank range, and \nsay, "Wahl, I stump the Devil himself to make that \n\'ere boot hurt my foot," leaving us no doubt whether \nit were the virtue of the foot or its case which set at \nnaught the wiles of the adversary; or, looking up \nsuddenly, he would exclaim, "Wahl, we eat some beans \nto the \'Roostick war, I tell yon!\'" When his poor old \nclay was wet with gin, his thoughts and words ac- \nquired a rank flavor from it, as from too strong a \nfertilizer. At such times, too, his fancy commonly \nreverted to a prehistoric period of his life, when he \nsingly had settled all the surrounding country, sub- \ndued the Injuns and other wild animals, and named \nall the towns. \n\nWe talked of the winter-camps and the life there. \n"The best thing is," said our Uncle, \'\'to hear a long \nsqueal thru the snow. Git a good, cole, frosty \nmornin\', in Febuary say, an\' take an\' hitch the \ncritters on to a log that \'11 scale seven thousan\', an\' \nit \'11 squeal as pooty as an\'thin\' you ever hearn, I tell \nyouP \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 75 \n\nA pause. \n\n"Lessee, \xe2\x80\x94 seen Cal Hutchins lately?" \n\n\'\'No." \n\n\'\'Seems to me \'s though I hed n\'t seen Cal sence the \n\'Roostick war. Wahl," etc., etc. \n\nAnother pause. \n\n"To look at them boots you \'d think they was too \nlarge; but kind o\' git your foot into \'em, and they \'re \nas easy \'s a glove." (I observed that he never seemed \nreally to get his foot in, \xe2\x80\x94 there was always a quali- \nfying kind o\\) "Wahl, my foot can play in \'em like \na young hedgehog." \n\nBy this time we had arrived at Kineo, \xe2\x80\x94 a flourish- \ning village of one house, the tavern kept by \'Squire \nBarrows. The \'Squire is a large, hearty man, with a \nvoice as clear and strong as a northwest wind and a \ngreat laugh suitable to it. His table is neat and well \nsupplied, and he waits upon it himself in the good old \nlandlordly fashion. One may be much better off \nhere, to my thinking, than in one of those gigantic \nColumbaria which are foisted upon us patient Ameri- \ncans for hotels, and where one is packed away in a \npigeon-hole so near the heavens that, if the comet \nshould flirt its tail (no unlikely thing in the month of \nflies), one would be in danger of being brushed away. \nHere one does not pay his diurnal three dollars for an \nundivided five-hundredth part of the pleasure of \nlooking at gilt gingerbread. Here one\'s relations are \nwith the monarch himself, and one is not obliged to \nwait the slow leisure of those "attentive clerks" whose \npraises are sung by thankful deadheads, and to whom \n\n\n\n^6 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nthe slave who pays may feel as much gratitude as \nmight thrill the heart of a brown-paper parcel toward \nthe express-man who labels it and chucks it under his \ncounter. \n\nSunday, 14th. \xe2\x80\x94 The loons were right. About \nmidnight it began to rain in earnest, and did not hold \nup till about ten o\'clock this morning. "This is a \nMaine dew," said a shaggy woodman cheerily, as he \nshook the water out of his wide-awake, "if it don\'t \nlook out sharp, it \'11 begin to rain afore it thinks on \'t." \nThe day was mostly spent within doors ; but I found \ngood and intelligent society. We should have to be \nshipwrecked on Juan Fernandez not to find men who \nknew more than we.. In these travelling encounters \none is thrown upon his own resources, and is worth \njust what he carries about him. The social currency \nof home, the smooth-worn coin which passes freely \namong friends and neighbors, is of no account. We \nare thrown back upon the old system of barter; and, \neven with savages, we bring away only as much of the \nwild wealth of the woods as we carry beads of thought \nand experience, strung one by one in painful years, \nto pay for them with. A useful old jackknife will buy \nmore than the daintiest Louis Quinze paper-folder \nfresh from Paris. Perhaps the kind of intelligence \none gets in these out-of-the-way places is the best, \xe2\x80\x94 \nwhere one takes a fresh man after breakfast instead \nof the damp morning paper, and where the magnetic \ntelegraph of human sympathy flashes swift news from \nbrain to brain. \n\nMeanwhile, at a pinch, to-morrow\'s weather can be \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. J J \n\ndiscussed. The augury from the flight of birds is \nfavorable, \xe2\x80\x94 the loons no longer prophesying rain. \nThe wind also is hauling round to the right quarter, \naccording to some, to the wrong, if we are to believe \nothers. Each man has his private barometer of hope, \nthe mercury in which is more or less sensitive, and \nthe opinion vibrant with its rise or fall. Mine has an \nindex which can be moved mechanically. I fixed it \nat set fair, and resigned myself. I read an old volume \nof the Patent-Office Report on Agriculture, and \nstored away a beautiful pile of facts and observations \nfor future use, which the current of occupation, a I its \nfirst freshet, would sweep quietly off to blank oblivion. \nPractical application is the only mordant which will \nset things in the memory. Study, without it, is gym- \nnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual \nbread. One learns more metaphysics from a single \ntemptation than from all the philosophers. It is curious, \nthough, how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and \nwhat shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no \nbore we dread being left alone with so much as our \nown minds. I have seen a sensible man study a stale \nnewspaper in a country tavern, and husband it as he \nwould an old shoe on a raft after shipwreck. Why \nnot try a bit of hibernation? There are few brains \nthat would not be better for living on their own fat a \nlittle while. With these reflections, I, notwithstand- \ning, spent the afternoon over my Report. If our own \nexperience is of so little use to us, what a dolt is he who \nrecommends to man or nation the experience of others ! \nLike the mantle in the old ballad, it is always too \n\n\n\n2S FIRESIDE TRAVELS, \n\nshort or too long, and exposes or trips us up. \'\'Keep \nout of that candle," says old Father Miller, "or you \'11 \nget a singeing." "Pooh, pooh, father, I\'ve been \ndipped in the new asbestos preparation," and jrozz! \nit is all over vi^ith young Hopeful. How many warn- \nings have been drawn from Pretorian bands, and \nJanizaries, and Mamelukes, to make Napoleon III. \nimpossible in 185 1 ! I found myself thinking the \nsame thoughts over again, when we walked later on \nthe beach and picked up pebbles. The old time- \nocean throws upon its shores just such rounded and \npolished results of the eternal turmoil, but we only \nsee the beauty of those we have got the headache in \nstooping for ourselves, and wonder at the dull brown \nbits of common stone with which our comrades have \nstuffed their pockets. Afterwards this little fable \ncame of it. \n\nDOCTOR LOBSTER. \n\nA PERCH, who had the toothache, once \nThus moaned, like any human dunce : \n" Why must great souls exhaust so soon \nLife\'s thin and unsubstantial boon ? \nExistence on such scuipin terms, \xe2\x80\x94 \nTheir vulgar loves and hard-won worms, \xe2\x80\x94 \nWhat is it all but dross to me, \nWhose nature craves a larger sea; \nWhose inches, six from head to tail, \nEnclose the spirit of a whale ; \nWho, if great baits were still to win. \nBy watchful eye and fearless fin \nMight with the Zodiac\'s awful twain \nRoom for a third immortal gain? \nBetter the crowd\'s unthinking plan, \xe2\x80\x94 \nThe hook, the jerk, the frying-pan ! \nO Deatli, thou ever roaming shark, \nIngulf me in eternal dark ! " \n\n\n\nA MOOSE HEAD JOURNAL. 79 \n\nThe speech was cut in two by flight : \n\nA real shark had come in sight; \n\nNo metaphoric monster, one \n\nIt soothes despair to call upon, \n\nBut stealthy, sidelong, grim, I wis, \n\nA bit of downright Nemesis ; \n\nWhile it recovered from the shock, \n\nOur fish took shelter \'neath a rock : \n\nThis was an ancient lobster\'s house, \n\nA lobster of prodigious nous. \n\nSo old that barnacles had spread \n\nTheir white encampments o\'er its head, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nAnd of experience so stupend. \n\nHis claws were blunted at the end, \n\nTurning life\'s iron pages o\'er. \n\nThat shut and can be oped no more. \n\nStretching a hospitable claw, \n\n" At once,\'\' said he, " the point I saw ; \n\nMy dear young friend, your case I rue. \n\nYour great-great-grandfather I knew; \n\nHe was a tried and tender friend \n\nI know, \xe2\x80\x94 I ate him in the end : \n\nIn this vile sea a pilgrim long. \n\nStill my sight\'s good, my memory strong; \n\nThe only sign that age is near \n\nIs a slight deafness in this ear; \n\nI understand your case as well \n\nAs this my old familiar shell ; \n\nThis sorrow \'s a new-fangled notion, \n\nCome in since first I knew the ocean; \n\nWe had no radicals, nor crimes. \n\nNor lobster-pots, in good old times; \n\nYour traps and nets and hooks we owe \n\nTo Mrssieurs Louis Blanc and Co. ; \n\nI say to all my sons and daughters, \n\nShun Red Republican hot waters ; \n\nNo lobster ever cast his lot \n\nAmong the reds, but went to pot: \n\nYour trouble \'s in the jaw, you said ? \n\nCome, let me just nip off your head, \n\nAnd, when a new one comes, the pain \n\nWill never trouble you again : \n\nNay, nay, fear naught : \'t is nature\'s law. \n\nFour times I \'ve lost this starboard claw; \n\nAnd still, erelong, another grew. \n\nGood as the old, \xe2\x80\x94 and better too ! " \n\n\n\n80 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\n\n\nThe perch consented, and next day \nAn osprey, marketing that way, \nPicked up a fish without a head. \nFloating with belly up, stone dead. \n\nMORAL. \n\nSharp are the teeth of ancient saws, \nAnd sauce for goose is gander\'s sauce; \nBut perch\'s heads are n\'t lobster\'s claws. \n\n\n\nMonday, 15///. \xe2\x80\x94 The morning was fine, and we \nwere called at four o\'clock. At the moment my door \nwas knocked at, I was mounting a giraffe with that \ncharming nil admirari which characterizes dreams, to \nvisit Prester John. Rat-tat-tat-tat ! upon my door \nand upon the horn gate of dreams also. I remarked \nto my skowhegan (the Tatar for giraffe -driver) that \nI was quite sure the animal had the raps, a com- \nmon disease among them, for I heard a queer knock- \ning noise inside him. It is the sound of his joints, O \nTambourgi ! (an Oriental term of reverence,) and \nproves him to be of the race of El Keirat. Rat-tat - \ntat-too! and I lost my dinner at the Prester\'s, em- \nbarking for a voyage to the Northwest Carry instead. \nNever use the word canoe, my dear Storg, if you wish \nto retain your self-respect. Birch is the term among \nus backwoodsmen. I never knew it till yesterday; \nbut, like a true philosopher, I made it appear as if I \nhad been intimate with it from childhood. The \nrapidity with which the human mind levels itself to \nthe standard around it gives us the most pertinent \nwarning as to the company we keep. It is as hard \nfor most characters to stay at their own average point \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 8 I \n\nin all companies, as for a thermometer to say 65\xc2\xb0 for \ntwenty-four hours together. I like this in our friend \nJohannes Taurus, that he carries everywhere and \nmaintains his insular temperature, and will have \neverything accommodate itself to that. Shall I con- \nfess that this morning I would rather have broken the \nmoral law, than have endangered the equipoise of the \nbirch by my awkwardness? that I should have been \nprouder of a compliment to my paddling, than to \nhave had both my guides suppose me the author of \nHamlet? Well, Cardinal Richelieu used to jump \nover chairs. \n\nWe were to paddle about twenty miles; but we \nmade it rather more by crossing and recrossing the \nlake. Twice we landed, \xe2\x80\x94 once at a camp, where we \nfound the cook alone, baking bread and gingerbread. \nMonsieur Soyer would have been startled a little \nby this shaggy professor, \xe2\x80\x94 this Pre-Raphaelite of \ncookery. He represented the salceratus period of the \nart, and his bread was of a brilliant yellow, like those \ncakes tinged with saflfron, which hold out so long \nagainst time and the flies in little water-side shops of \nseaport towns, \xe2\x80\x94 dingy extremities of trade fit to \nmoulder on Lethe wharf. His water was better, \nsqueezed out of ice-cold granite in the neighboring \nmountains, and sent through subterranean ducts to \nsparkle up by the door of the camp. \n\n"There \'s nothin\' so sweet an\' hulsome as your real \nspring water," said Uncle Zeb, "git it pure. But it \'s \ndreffle hard to git it that ain\'t got sunthin\' the matter \nof it. Snow-water \'11 burn a man\'s inside out, \xe2\x80\x94 I \n\n\n\n82 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nlarned that to the \'Roostick war, \xe2\x80\x94 and the snow \nlays terrible long on some o\' thes\'ere hills. Me an\' \nEb Stiles was up old Ktahdn once jest about this time \no\' year, an\' we come acrost a kind o\' holler like, \nas full o\' snow as your stockin \'s full o\' your \nfoot. / see it fust, an\' took an\' rammed a settin\'- \npole; wahl, it was all o\' twenty foot into \'t, an\' \ncould n\'t fin\' no bottom. I dunno as there \'s snow- \nwater enough in this to do no hurt. I don\'t somehow \nseem to think that real spring water \'s so plenty as it \nused to be." And Uncle Zeb, with perhaps a little \nover-refinement of scrupulosity, applied his Hps to the \nEthiop ones of a bottle of raw gin, with a kiss that \ndrew out its very soul, \xe2\x80\x94 a hasia that Secundus might \nhave sung. He must have been a wonderful judge \nof water, for he analyzed this, and detected its latent \nsnow simply by his eye, and without the clumsy \nprocess of tasting. I could not help thinking that \nhe had made the desert his dwelling-place chiefly \nin order to enjoy the ministrations of this one fair \nspirit unmolested. \n\nWe pushed on. Little islands loomed trembling \nbetween sky and water, Hke hanging gardens. Grad- \nually the filmy trees defined themselves, the aerial \nenchantment lost its potency, and we came up with \ncommon prose islands that had so late been magical \nand poetic. The old story of the attained and un- \nattained. About noon we reached the head of the \nlake, and took possession of a deserted wongen, in \nwhich to cook and eat our dinner. No Jew, I am \nsure, can have a more thorough dislike of salt pork \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 83 \n\nthan I have in a normal state, yet I had already eaten \nit raw with hard bread for lunch, and relished it \nkeenly. We soon had our tea-kettle over the fire, \nand before long the cover was chattering with the es- \ncaping steam, which had thus vainly begged of all \nmen to be saddled and bridled, till James Watt one \nday happened to overhear it. One of our guides shot \nthree Canada grouse, and these were turned slowly \nbetween the fire and a bit of salt pork, which dropped \nfatness upon them as it fried. Although my fingers \nwere certainly not made before knives and forks, yet \nthey served as a convenient substitute for those more \nancient inventions. We sat round, Turk-fashion, and \nate thankfully, while a party of aborigines of the Mos- \nquito tribe, who had camped in the wongen before \nwe arrived, dined upon us. I do not know what the \nBritish Protectorate of the Mosquitoes amounts to; \nbut, as I squatted there at the mercy of these blood- \nthirsty savages, I no longer wondered that the classic \nEverett had been stung into a willingness for war on \nthe question. \n\n"This \'ere \'d be about a complete place for a camp, \nef there was on\'y a spring o\' sweet water handy. \nFrizzled pork goes wal, don\'t it? Yes, an\' sets wal, \ntoo," said Uncle Zeb, and he again tilted his bottle, \nwhich rose nearer and nearer to an angle of forty -five \nat every gurgle. He then broached a curious dietetic \ntheory: "The reason we take salt p)ork along is cos \nit packs handy : you git the greatest amount o\' board \nin the smallest compass, \xe2\x80\x94 let alone that it \'s more \nnourishin\' than an\' thin\' else. It kind o\' don\'t disgest \n\n\n\n84 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nso quick, but stays by ye, anourishin\' ye all the \nwhile. \n\n"A feller can live wal on frizzled pork an\' good \nspring-water, git it good. To the \'Roostick war we \ndid n\'t ask for nothin\' better,\' \xe2\x80\x94 on\'y beans." {Tilt, \ntilt, gurgle, gurgle.) Then, with an apparent feeling \nof inconsistency, "But then, come to git used to a par- \nticular kind o\' spring-water, an\' it makes a feller hard \nto suit. Most all sorts o\' water taste kind o\' insipid \naway from home. Now, I \'ve gut a spring to my \nplace that \'s as sweet \xe2\x80\x94 wahl, it \'s as sweet as maple \nsap. A feller acts about water jest as he does about \na pair o\' boots. It \'s all on it in gittin\' wonted. Now, \nthem boots," etc., etc. {Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, \nsmack !) \n\nAll this while he was packing away the remains of \nthe pork and hard bread in two large firkins. This \naccomplished, we reembarked, our uncle on his way \nto the birch essaying a kind of song in four or five \nparts, of which the words were hilarious and the tune \nprofoundly melancholy, and which was finished, and \nthe rest of his voice apparently jerked out of him in \none sharp falsetto note, by his tripping over the root \nof a tree. We paddled a short distance up a brook \nwhich came into the lake smoothly through a httle \nmeadow not far off. We soon reached the Northwest \nCarry, and our guide, pointing through the woods, \nsaid : \'\'That \'s the Cannydy road. You can travel that \nclearn to Kebeck, a hunderd an\' twenty mile," \xe2\x80\x94 \na privilege of which I respectfully declined to avail \nmyself. The offer, however, remains open to the \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 85 \n\npublic. The Carry is called two miles; but this is \nthe estimate of somebody who had nothing to lug. I \nhad a headache and all my baggage, which, with a \ntraveller\'s instinct, I had brought with me. (P. S. \xe2\x80\x94 \nI did not even take the keys out of my pocket, and \nboth my bags were wet through before I came back. \nMy estimate of the distance is eighteen thousand six \nhundred and seventy-four miles and three quarters, \xe2\x80\x94 \nthe fraction being the part left to be travelled after \none of my companions most kindly insisted on re- \nlieving me of my heaviest bag. I know very well that \nthe ancient Roman soldiers used to carry sixty pounds\' \nweight, and all that; but I am not, and never shall be, \nan ancient Roman soldier, \xe2\x80\x94 no, not even in the \nmiraculous Thundering Legion. Uncle Zeb slung \nthe two provender firkins across his shoulder, and \ntrudged along, grumbling that \'\'he never see sech a \ncontrairy pair as them." He had begun upon a sec- \nond bottle of his "particular kind o\' spring-water," \nand, at every rest, the gurgle of this peripatetic foun- \ntain might be heard, followed by a smack, a frag- \nment of mosaic song, or a confused clatter with the \ncowhide boots, being an arbitrary symbol, intended \nto represent the festive dance. Christian\'s pack gave \nhim not half so much trouble as the firkins gave Uncle \nZeb. It grew harder and harder to sling them, and \nwith every fresh gulp of the Batavian elixir, they got \nheavier. Or rather, the truth was, that his hat grew \nheavier, in which he was carrying on an extensive \nmanufacture of bricks without straw. At last affairs \nreached a crisis, and a particularly favorable pitch \n\n\n\n86 FIRESIDE TRAVELS, \n\noffering, with a puddle at the foot of it, even the boots \nafforded no sufficient ballast, and away went our uncle, \nthe satellite firkins accompanying faithfully his head- \nlong flight. Did ever exiled monarch or disgr. ced \nminister find the cause of his fall in himself? Is there \nnot always a strawberry at the bottom of our cup of \nlife, on which we can lay all the blame of our devia- \ntions from the straight path? Till now Uncle Zeb \nhad contrived to give a gloss of volition to smaller \nstumblings and gyrations, by exaggerating them into \nan appearance of playful burlesque. But the present \ncase was beyond any such subterfuges. He held a \nbed of justice where he sat, and then arose slowly, with \na stern determination of vengeance stiffening every \nmuscle of his face. But what would he select as the \nculprit? "It\'s that cussed firkin," he mumbled to \nhimself. "I never knowed a firkin cair on so, \xe2\x80\x94 no, \nnot in the \'Roostehicick war. There, go long, will \nye? and don\'t come back till you \'ve larned how to \nwalk with a genelman!" And, seizing the unhappy \nscapegoat by the bail, he hurled it into the forest. It \nis a curious circumstance, that it was not the firkin \ncontaining the bottle which was thus condemned to \nexile. \n\nThe end of the Carry was reached at last, and, as \nwe drew near it, we heard a sound of shouting and \nlaughter. It came from a party of men making hay \nof the wild grass in Seboomok meadows, which lie \naround Seboomok pond, into which the Carry empties \nitself. Their camp was near, and our two hunters set \nout for it, leaving us seated in the birch on the plashy \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 8/ \n\nborder of the pond. The repose was perfect. An- \nother heaven hallowed and deepened the polished \nlake, and through that nether world the fish-hawk\'s \ndouble floated with balanced wings, or, wheeling \nsuddenly, flashed his whitened breast against the sun. \nAs the clattering kingfisher flew unsteadily across, \nand seemed to push his heavy head along with ever- \nrenewing effort, a visionary mate flitted from down- \nward tree to tree below. Some tall alders shaded us \nfrom the sun, in whose yellow afternoon light the \ndrowsy forest was steeped, giving out that wholesome \nresinous perfume, almost the only warm odor which \nit is refreshing to breathe. The tame hay-cocks in \nthe midst of the wildness gave one a pleasant remi- \nniscence of home, like hearing one\'s native tongue in a \nstrange country. \n\nPresently our hunters came back, bringing with \nthem a tall, thin, active-looking man, with black eyes, \nthat glanced unconsciously on all sides, like one of \nthose spots of sunlight which a child dances up and \ndown the street with a bit of looking-glass. This was \nM., the captain of the hay-makers, a famous river- \ndriver, and who was to have fifty men under him next \nwinter. I could now understand that sleepless vigi- \nlance of eye. He had consented to take two of our \nparty in his birch to search for moose. A quick, \nnervous, decided man, he got them into the birch, and \nwas ofi^ instantly, without a superfluous word. He \nevidently looked upon them as he would upon a \ncouple of logs which he was to deliver at a certain \nplace. Indeed, I doubt if Hfe and the world pre- \n\n\n\n88 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nsented themselves to Napier himself in a more loga- \nrithmic way. His only thought was to do the imme- \ndiate duty well, and to pilot his particular raft down \nthe crooked stream of life to the ocean beyond. The \nbirch seemed to feel him as an inspiring soul, and \nslid away straight and swift for the outlet of the \npond. As he disappeared under the over-arching \nalders of the brook, our two hunters could not repress \na grave and measured applause. There is never any \nextravagance among these woodmen; their eye, ac- \ncustomed to reckoning the number of feet which a \ntree will scale, is rapid and close in its guess of the \namount of stuff in a man. It was laudari a laudato, \nhowever, for they themselves were accounted good \nmen in a birch. I was amused, in talking with them \nabout him, to meet with an instance of that tenden:y \nof the human mind to assign some utterly improbable \nreason for gifts which seem unaccountable. After \ndue praise, one of them said, "I guess he \'s got some \nInjun in him," although I knew very well that the \nspeaker had a thorough contempt for the red-man, \nmentally and physically. Here was mythology in a \nsmall way, \xe2\x80\x94 the same that under more favorable \nauspices hatched Helen out of an egg and gave Merlin \nan Incubus for a father. I was pleased with all I saw \nof M. He was in his narrow sphere a true ai/a^ avhpoiv, \nand the ragged edges of his old hat seemed to become \ncoronated as I looked at him. He impressed me \nas a man really educated, \xe2\x80\x94 that is, with his aptitudes \ndrawn out and ready for use. He was A. M. and \nLL. D. in Woods College, \xe2\x80\x94 Axe Master and Doc- \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 89 \n\ntor of Logs. Are not our educations commonly like \na pile of books laid over a plant in a pot? The com- \npressed nature struggles through at every crevice, but \ncan never get the cramp and stunt out of it. We \nspend all our youth in building a vessel for our voy- \nage of life, and set forth with streamers flying; but \nthe moment we come nigh the great loadstone moun- \ntain of our proper destiny, out leap all our carefully \ndriven bolts and nails, and we get many a mouthful \nof good salt brine, and many a buffet of the rough \nwater of experience, before we secure the bare right \nto live. \n\nWe now entered the outlet, a long-drawn aisle of \nalder, on each side of which spired tall firs, spruces, \nand white cedars. The motion of the birch reminded \nme of the gondola, and they represent among the \nwater-craft the jelidce, the cat* tribe, stealthy, silent, \ntreacherous, and preying by night. I closed my eyes \nand strove to fancy myself in the dumb city, whose \nonly horses are the bronze ones of St. Mark. But \nNature would allow no rival, and bent down an alder \nbough to brush my cheek and recall me. Only the \nrobin sings in the emerald chambers of these tall sylvan \npalaces, and the squirrel leaps from hanging balcony \nto balcony. \n\nThe rain which the loons foreboded had raised the \nwest branch of the Penobscot so much, that a strong \ncurrent was setting back into the pond ; and, when at \nlast we brushed through into the river, it was full to \nthe brim, \xe2\x80\x94 too full for moose, the hunters said. \nRivers with low banks have always the compensation \n\n\n\n90 FIRESIDE TRAVELS, \n\nof giving a sense of entire fulness. The sun sank \nbehind its horizon of pines, whose pointed summits \nnotched the rosy west in an endless black sierra. At \nthe same moment the golden moon swung slowly up \nin the east, like the other scale of that Homeric bal- \nance in which Zeus weighed the deeds of men. Sun- \nset and moonrise at once ! Adam had no more in \nEden \xe2\x80\x94 except the head of Eve upon his shoulder. \nThe stream was so smooth, that the floating logs we \nmet seemed to hang in a glowing atmosphere, the \nsTiadow-half being as real as the solid. And gradu- \nally the mind was etherized to a like dreamy placidity, \ntill fact and fancy, the substance and the image, float- \ning on the current of reverie, became but as the upper \nand under halves of one unreal reaHty. \n\nIn the west still lingered a pale-green light. I do \nnot know whether it be from greater familiarity, but \nit always seems to me that the pinnacles of pine-trees \nmake an edge to the landscape which tells better \nagainst the twilight, or the fainter dawn before the \nrising moon, than the rounded and cloud-cumulus \noutline of hard-wood trees. \n\nAfter paddling a couple of miles, we found the \narbored mouth of the little Malahoodus River, famous \nfor moose. We had been on the look-out for it, and \nI was amused to hear one of the hunters say to the \nother, to assure himself of his familiarity with the spot, \n"You drove the West Branch last spring, didn\'t \nyou?" as one of us might ask about a horse. We did \nnot explore the Malahoodus far, but left the other \nbirch to thread its cedared solitudes, while we turned \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 91 \n\nback to try our fortunes in the larger stream. We \npaddled on about four miles farther, lingering now \nand then opposite the black mouth of a moose-path. \nThe incidents of our voyage were few, but quite as \nexciting and profitable as the items of the newspapers. \nA stray log compensated very well for the ordinary \nrun of accidents, and the floating carkiss of a moose \nwhich we met could pass muster instead of a singular \ndiscovery of human remains by workmen in digging a \ncellar. Once or twice we saw what seemed ghosts \nof trees; but they turned out to be dead cedars, in \nwinding-sheets of long gray moss, made spectral by \nthe moonlight. Just as we were turning to drift back \ndown-stream, we heard a loud gnawing sound close \nby us on the bank. One of our guides thought it a \nhedgehog, the other a bear. I inclined to the bear, as \nmaking the adventure more imposing. A rifle was \nfired at the sound, which began again with the most \nprovoking indifference, ere the echo, flaring madly at \nfirst from shore to shore, died far away in a hoarse \nsigh. \n\nHalf past Eleven, p.m. \xe2\x80\x94 No sign of a moose yet. \nThe birch, it seems, was strained at the Carry, or the \npitch was softened as she lay on the shore during dinner, \nand she leaks a little. If there be any virtue in the \nsitzbad, I shall discover it. If I cannot extract green \ncucumbers from the moon\'s rays, I get something \nquite as cool. One of the guides shivers so as to \nshake the birch. \n\nQuarter to Twelve. \xe2\x80\x94 Later from the Freshet/ \xe2\x80\x94 \nThe water in the birch is about three inches deep, but \n\n\n\n92 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nthe dampness reaches already nearly to the waist. I am \nobliged to remove the matches from the ground floor \nof my trousers into the upper story of a breast-pocket. \nMeanwhile, we are to sit immovable, \xe2\x80\x94 for fear of \nfrightening the moose, \xe2\x80\x94 which induces cramps. \n\nHal] past Twelve. \xe2\x80\x94 A crashing is heard on the \nleft bank. This is a moose in good earnest. We are \nbesought to hold our breaths, if possible. My fingers \nso numb, I could not, if I tried. Crash! crash! \nagain, and then a plunge, followed by dead stillness. \n\'\'Swimmin\' crik," whispers guide, suppressing all \nunnecessary parts of speech, \xe2\x80\x94 "don\'t stir." I, for \none, am not likely to. A cold fog which has been \ngathering for the last hour has finished me. I fancy \nmyself one of those naked pigs that seem rushing out \nof market-doors in winter, frozen in a ghastly attitude \nof gallop. If I were to be shot myself, I should feel \nno interest in it. As it is, I am only a spectator, having \ndeclined a gun! Splash ! again ; this time the moose \nis in sight, and click ! click ! one rifle misses fire after \nthe other. The fog has quietly spiked our batteries. \nThe moose goes crashing up the bank, and presently \nwe can hear it chewing its cud close by. So we lie in \nwait, freezing. \n\nAt one o\'clock, I propose to land at a deserted \nwongen I had noticed on the way up, where I will \nmake a fire, and leave them to refrigerate as much \nlonger as they please. Axe in hand, I go plunging \nthrough waist-deep weeds dripping with dew, haunted \nby an intense conviction that the gnawing sound we \nhad heard was a bear, and a bear at least eighteen \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 93 \n\nhands high. There is something pokerish about a \ndeserted dwelling, even in broad daylight; but here \nin the obscure wood, and the moon filtering unwill- \ningly through the trees! Well, I made the door at \nlast, and found the place packed fuller with darkness \nthan it ever had been with hay. Gradually I was \nable to make things out a little, and began to hack \nfrozenly at a log which I groped out. I was relieved \npresently by one of the guides. He cut at once into \none of the uprights of the building till he got some dry \nsplinters, and we soon had a fire like the burning of a \nwhole wood-wharf in our part of the country. My \ncompanion went back to the birch, and left me to \nkeep house. First I knocked a hole in the roof (which \nthe fire began to lick in a relishing way) for a chimney, \nand then cleared away a damp growth of "pison- \nelder," to make a sleeping place. When the unsuc- \ncessful hunters returned, I had everything quite \ncomfortable, and was steaming at the rate of about \nten horse-power a minute. Young Telemachus was \nsorry to give up the moose so soon, and, with the \nteeth chattering almost out of his head, he declared \nthat he would like to stick it out all night. However, \nhe reconciled himself to the fire, and, making our \nbeds of some "splits" which we poked from the roof, \nwe lay down at half past two. I, who have inherited \na habit of looking into every closet before I go to bed, \nfor fear of fire, had become in two days such a stoic \nof the woods, that I went to sleep tranquilly, certain \nthat my bedroom would be in a blaze before morning. \nAnd so, indeed, it was; and the withes that bound \n\n\n\n94 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nit together being burned off, one of the sides fell in \nwithout waking me. \n\nTuesday^ i6th. \xe2\x80\x94 After a sleep of two hours and a \nhalf, so sound that it was as good as eight, we started \nat half past four for the haymakers\' camp again. We \nfound them just getting breakfast. We sat down \nupon the deacon-seat before the fire blazing between \nthe bedroom and the salle a manger, which were \nsimply two roofs of spruce-bark, sloping to the ground \non one side, the other three being left open. We found \nthat we had, at least, been luckier than the other party, \nfor M. had brought back his convoy without even see- \ning a moose. As there was not room at the table for \nall of us to breakfast together, these hospitable wood- \nmen forced us to sit down first, although we resisted \nstoutly. Our breakfast consisted of fresh bread, fried \nsalt pork, stewed whortleberries, and tea. Our kind \nhosts refused to take money for it, nor would M. \naccept anything for his trouble. This seemed even \nmore open-handed when I remembered that they had \nbrought all their stores over the Carry upon their \nshoulders, paying an ache extra for every pound. If \ntheir hospitality lacked anything of hard external \npolish, it had all the deeper grace which springs only \nfrom sincere manliness. I have rarely sat at a table \nd\'hote which might not have taken a lesson from them \nin essential courtesy. I have never seen a finer race \nof men. They have all the virtues of the sailor, with- \nout that unsteady roll in the gait with which the ocean \nproclaims itself quite as much in the moral as in the \nphysical habit of a man. They appeared to me to \n\n\n\nA MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 95 \n\nhave hewn out a short northwest passage through \nwintry woods to those spice-lands of character which \nwe dwellers in cities must reach, if at all, by weary \nvoyages in the monotonous track of the trades. \n\nBy the way, as we were embirching last evening for \nour moose-chase, I asked what I was to do with my \nbaggage. "Leave it here," said our guide, and he \nlaid the bags upon a platform of alders, which he bent \ndown to keep them beyond reach of the rising water. \n\n"Will they be safe here?" \n\n"As safe as they would be locked up in your house \nat home." \n\nAnd so I found them at my return; only the hay- \nmakers had carried them to their camp for greater \nsecurity against the chances of the weather. \n\nWe got back to Kineo in time for dinner; and in \nthe afternoon, the weather being fine, went up the \nmountain. As we landed at the foot, our guide \npointed to the remains of a red shirt and a pair of \nblanket trousers. "That," said he, "is the reason \nthere \'s such a trade in ready-made clo\'es. A suit gits \npooty well wore out by the time a camp breaks up in \nthe spring, and the lumberers want to look about right \nwhen they come back into the settlements, so they buy \nsomethin\' ready-made, and heave ole bust-up into the \nbush." True enough, thought I, this is the Ready- \nmade Age. It is quicker being covered than fitted. \nSo we all go to the slop-shop and come out uniformed, \nevery mother\'s son with habits of thinking and doing \ncut on one pattern, with no special reference to his \npecuHar build. \n\n\n\n96 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nKineo rises 1750 feet above the sea, and 750 above \nthe lake. The climb is very easy, with fine outlooks \nat every turn over lake and forest. Near the top is a \nspring of w^ater, which even Uncle Zeb might have \nallowed to be wholesome. The little tin dipper was \nscratched all over with names, showing that vanity, \nat least, is not put out of breath by the ascent. O \nOzymandias, King of kings! We are all scrawling \non something of the kind. "My name is engraved \non the institutions of my country," thinks the states- \nman. But, alas! institutions are as changeable as \ntin-dippers; men are content to drink the same old \nwater, if the shape of the cup only be new, and our \nfriend gets two lines in the Biographical Dictionaries. \nAfter all, these inscriptions, which make us smile up \nhere, are about as valuable as the Assyrian ones which \nHincks and Rawlinson read at cross-purposes. Have \nwe not Smiths and Browns enough, that we must \nransack the ruins of Nimroud for more? Near the \nspring we met a Bloomer ! It was the first chronic \none I had ever seen. It struck me as a sensible cos- \ntume for the occasion, and it will be the only wear in \nthe Greek Kalends, when women believe that sense \nis an equivalent for grace. \n\nThe forest primeval is best seen from the top of a \nmountain. It then impresses one by its extent, like \nan Oriental epic. To be in it is nothing, for then an \nacre is as good as a thousand square miles. You \ncannot see five rods in any direction, and the ferns, \nmosses, and tree-trunks just around you are the best \nof it. As for solitude, night will make a better one \n\n\n\nA MOOSE HEAD JOURNAL. 97 \n\nwith ten feet square of pitch dark ; and mere size is \nhardly an element of grandeur, except in works of \nman, \xe2\x80\x94 as the Colosseum. It is through one or the \nother pole of vanity that men feel the sublime in moun- \ntains. It is either. How small great I am beside it ! \nor, Big as you are, little I\'s soul will hold a dozen of \nyou. The true idea of a forest is not a selva selvaggia, \nbut something humanized a little, as we imagine the \nforest of Arden, with trees standing at royal intervals, \n\xe2\x80\x94 a commonwealth, and not a communism. To \nsome moods, it is congenial to look over endless \nleagues of unbroken savagery without a hint of man. \n\nWednesday. \xe2\x80\x94 This morning fished. Telemachus \ncaught a laker of thirteen pounds and a half, and I an \novergrown cusk, which we threw away, but which I \nfound afterwards Agassiz would have been glad of, \nfor all is fish that comes to his net, from the fossil \ndown. The fish, when caught, are straightway \nknocked on the head. A lad who went with us seem- \ning to show an over-zeal in this operation, we re- \nmonstrated. But he gave a good, human reason for \nit, \xe2\x80\x94 "He no need to ha\' gone and been a fish if he \ndid n\'t Hke it," \xe2\x80\x94 an excuse which superior strength \nor cunning has always found sufficient. It v/as some \ncomfort, in this case, to think that St. Jerome believed \nin a limitation of God\'s providence, and that it did \nnot extend to inanimate things or creatures devoid of \nreason. \n\nThus, my dear Storg, I have finished my Oriental \nadventures, and somewhat, it must be owned, in the \ndiffuse Oriental manner. There is very little about \n\n\n\n98 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nMoosehead Lake in it, and not even the Latin name \nf jr moose, which I might have obtained by sufficient \nresearch. If I had killed one, I would have given you \nhis name in that dead language. I did not profess to \ngive you an account of the lake; but a journal, and, \nmoreover, my journal, with a little nature, a little \nhuman nature, and a great deal of I in it, which last \ningredient I take to be the true spirit of this species \nof writing ; all the rest being so much water for tendei \nthroats which cannot take it neat. \n\n\n\nLEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL \nIN ITALY AND ELSE- \nWHERE, \n\n\n\nAT SEA. \n\nThe sea was meant to be looked at from shore, as \nmountains are from the plain. Lucretius made this \ndiscovery long ago, and was blunt enough to blurt it \nforth, romance and sentiment \xe2\x80\x94 in other words, the \npretence of feeling what we do not feel \xe2\x80\x94 being in- \nventions of a later day. To be sure, Cicero used to \ntwaddle about Greek literature and philosophy, much \nas people do about ancient art nowadays; but I \nrather sympathize with those stout old Romans who \ndespised both, and believed that to found an empire \nwas as grand an achievement as to build an epic or to \ncarve a statue. But though there might have been \ntwaddle (as why not, since there was a Senate?) I \nrather think Petrarch was the first choragus of that \nsentimental dance which so long led young folks away \nfrom the reahties of life like the piper of Hamelin, and \nwhose succession ended, let us hope, with Chateau- \nbriand. But for them, Byron, whose real strength lay \nin his sincerity, would never have talked about the \n"sea bounding beneath him like a steed that knows \nhis rider," and all that sort of thing. Even if it had \nbeen true, steam has been as fatal to that part of the \nromance of the sea as to hand-loom weaving. But \nwhat say you to a twelve days\' calm such as we dozed \nthrough in mid-Atlantic and in mid-August? I \nknow nothing so tedious at once and exasperating \n\n\n\n102 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS, \n\nas that regular slap of the wilted sails when the ship \nrises and falls with the slow breathing of the sleeping \nsea, one greasy, brassy swell following another, slow, \nsmooth, immitigable as the series of Wordsworth\'s \n"Ecclesiastical Sonnets." Even at his best, Neptune, \nin a iHe-a-lHe, has a way of repeating himself, an \nobtuseness to the ne quid nimis, that is stupefying. \nIt reminds me of organ music and my good friend \nSebastian Bach. A fugue or two will do very well; \nbut a concert made up of nothing else is altogether \ntoo epic for me. There is nothing so desperately \nmonotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the \ncruelty of pirates. Fancy an existence in which the \ncoming up of a clumsy finback whale, who says Pooh ! \nto you solemnly as you lean over the taffrail is an \nevent as exciting as an election on shore ! The damp- \nness seems to strike into the wits as into the lucifer- \nmatches, so that one may scratch a thought half a \ndozen times and get nothing at last but a faint sputter, \nthe forlorn hope of fire, which only goes far enough to \nleave a sense of suflPocation behind it. Even smoking \nbecomes an employment instead of a solace. Who \nless likely to come to their wit\'s end than W. M. T. \nand A. H. C. ? Yet I have seen them driven to five \nmeals a day for mental occupation. I sometimes sit \nand pity Noah; but even he had this advantage over \nall succeeding navigators, that, wherever he landed, \nhe was sure to get no ill news from home. He should \nbe canonized as the patron-saint of newspaper cor- \nrespondents, being the only man who ever had the \nvery last authentic intelligence from everywhere. \n\n\n\nAT SEA. 103 \n\nThe finback whale recorded just above has much \nthe look of a brown-paper parcel, \xe2\x80\x94 the whitish \nstripes that run across him answering for the pack- \nthread. He has a kind of accidental hole in the top \nof his head, through which he pooh-poohs the rest of \ncreation, and which looks as if it had been made by \nthe chance thrust of a chestnut rail. He was our first \nevent. Our second was harpooning a sunfish, which \nbasked dozing on the lap of the sea, looking so much \nlike the giant turtle of an alderman\'s dream, that I am \npersuaded he would have made mock-turtle soup \nrather than acknowledge his imposture. But he broke \naway just as they were hauling him over the side, and \nsank placidly through the clear water, leaving behind \nhim a crimson trail that wavered a moment and was \ngone. \n\nThe sea, though, has better sights than these. \nWhen we were up with the Azores, we began to meet \nflying-fish and Portuguese men-of-war beautiful as \nthe galley of Cleopatra, tiny craft that dared these \nseas before Columbus. I have seen one of the former \nrise from, the crest of a wave, and, glancing from \nanother some two hundred feet beyond, take a fresh \nflight of perhaps as long. How Calderon would have \nsimilized this pretty creature had he ever seen it! \nHow would he have run him up and down the gamut \nof simile ! If a fish, then a fish with wings ; if a bird, \nthen a bird with fins ; and so on, keeping up the poor \nshuttlecock of a conceit as is his wont. Indeed, the \npoor thing is the most killing bait for a comparison, \nand I assure you I have three or four in my inkstand ; \n\n\n\nI04 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 but be calm, thcv shall stay there. Moore, who \nlooked on all nature as a kind of Gradus ad Parnas- \nsum, a thesaurus of similitude, and spent his life in a \ngame of What is my thought like? with himself, did \nthe flying-fish on his way to Bermuda. So I leave \nhim in peace. \n\nThe most beautiful thing I have seen at sea, all the \nmore so that I had never heard of it, is the trail of a \nshoal of fish through the phosphorescent water. It \nis like a flight of silver rockets, or the streaming of \nnorthern lights through that silent nether heaven. I \nthought nothing could go beyond that rustling star- \nfoam which was churned up by our ship\'s bows, or \nthose eddies and disks of dreamy flame that rose and \nwandered out of sight behind us. \n\n\'T was file our slii]-) was plunsring tlirough, \nCold fiiv that o\'er the quarter Hew ; \nAnd wandering moons of idle flame \nGrew full ami waned, and went and came, \nDappling with light tlie huge sea snake \nThat slid behind\'us in the wake. \n\nBut there was something even more delicately rare \nin the apparition of the fish, as they turned up in \ngleaming furrows the latent moonshine which the \nocean seemed to have hoarded against these vacant \ninterlunar nio;hts. In the Mediterranean one day, as \nwe were lying becalmed, I observed the water freckled \nwith dingy specks, which at last gathered to a pink- \nish scum on the surface. The sea had been so phos- \nphorescent for some nights, that when the Captain \ngave me my bath, by dousing me with buckets from \nthe house on deck, the spray flew off my head and \n\n\n\nAT SEA. 105 \n\nshoulders in sparks. It occurred to me that this dirty- \nlooking scum might be the luminous matter, and I had \na pailful dipped up to keep till after dark. When I \nwent to look at it after nightfall, it seemed at first \nperfectly dead; but when I shook it, the whole broke \nout into what I can only liken to milky flames, whose \nlambent silence was strangely beautiful, and startled \nme almost as actual projection might an alchemist. I \ncould not bear to be the death of so much beauty; so \nI poured it all overboard again. \n\nAnother sight worth taking a voyage for is that of \nthe sails by moonlight. Our course was "south and \nby east, half south," so that we seemed bound for the \nfull moon as she rolled up over our wavering horizon. \nThen I used to go forward to the bowsprit and look \nback. Our ship was a clipper, with every rag set, \nstunsails, sky-scrapers, and all; nor was it easy to \nbelieve that such a wonder could be built of canvas as \nthat white many-storied pile of cloud that stooped \nover me, or drew back as we rose and fell with the \nwaves. \n\nThese are all the wonders I can recall of my five \nweeks at sea, except the sun. Were you ever alone \nwith the sun? You think it a very simple question; \nbut I never was, in the full sense of the word, till I was \nheld up to him one cloudless day on the broad buckler \nof the ocean. I suppose one might have the same \nfeeling in the desert. I remember getting something \nlike it years ago, when I climbed alone to the top of a \nmountain, and lay face up on the hot gray moss, \nstriving to get a notion of how an Arab might feel. It \n\n\n\nI06 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwas my American commentary of the Koran, and not \na bad one. In a New England winter, too, when \neverything is gagged with snow, as if some gigantic \nphysical geographer were taking a cast of the earth\'s \nface in plaster, the bare knob of a hill will introduce \nyou to the sun as a comparative stranger. But at sea \nyou may be alone with him day after day, and almost \nall day long. I never understood before that nothing \nshort of full daylight can give the supremest sense of \nsolitude. Darkness will not do so, for the imagina- \ntion peoples it with more shapes than ever were poured \nfrom the frozen loins of the populous North. The \nsun, I sometimes think, is a little grouty at sea, espe- \ncially at high noon, feeling that he wastes his beams on \nthose fruitless furrows. It is otherwise with the moon. \nShe "comforts the night," as Chapman finely says, \nand I always found her a companionable creature. \n\nIn the ocean-horizon I took untiring delight. It \nis the true magic-circle of expectation and conjecture \n\xe2\x80\x94 almost as good as a wishing-ring. What will rise \nover that edge we sail toward daily and never over- \ntake? A sail? an island? the new shore of the Old \nWorld ? Something rose every day, which I need not \nhave gone so far to see, but at whose levee I was a \nmuch more faithful courtier than on shore. A cloud- \nless sunrise in mid-ocean is beyond comparison for \nsimple grandeur. It is like Dante\'s style, bare and \nperfect. Naked sun meets naked sea, the true classic \nof nature. There may be more sentiment in morning \non shore, \xe2\x80\x94 the shivering fairy-jewelry of dew, the \nsilver point-lace of sparkling hoar-frost, \xe2\x80\x94 but there \n\n\n\nAT SEA. 107 \n\nis also more complexity, more of the romantic. The \none savors of the elder Edda, the other of the Minne- \nsingers. \n\nAnd I thus floating, lonely elf, \n\nA kind of planet by myself, \n\nThe mists draw up and furl away, \n\nAnd in the east a warming gray, \n\nFaint as the tint of oaken woods \n\nWhen o\'er their buds Way breathes and broods, \n\nTells that the golden sunrise-tide \n\nIs lapsing up earth\'s thirsty side. \n\nEach moment purpling on the crest \n\nOf some stark billow farther west : \n\nAnd as the sea-moss droops and hears \n\nThe gurgling flood that nears and nears. \n\nAnd then with tremulous content \n\nFloats out each thankful filament. \n\nSo waited I until it came, \n\nGod\'s daily miracle, \xe2\x80\x94 O shame \n\nThat 1 had seen so many days \n\nUnthankful, without wondering praise. \n\nNot recking more this bliss of earth \n\nThan the cheap fire that lights my hearth! \n\nBut now glad thoughts and holy pour \n\nInto my heart, as once a year \n\nTo San Miniato\'s open door, \n\nIn long procession, chanting clear. \n\nThrough slopes of sun, through shadows hoar, \n\nThe coupled monks slow-climbing sing, \n\nAnd like a golden censer swing \n\nFrom rear to front, from front to rear \n\nTheir alternating bursts of praise. \n\nTill the roof\'s fading seraphs gaze \n\nDown through an odorous mist, that crawls \n\nLingeringly up the darkened walls \n\nAnd the dim arches, silent long. \n\nAre startled with triumphant song. \n\nI wrote yesterday that the sea still rimmed our \nprosy lives with mystery and conjecture. But one \nis shut up on shipboard like Montaigne in his tower, \nwith nothing to do but to review his own thoughts and \n\n\n\nI08 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ncontradict himself. Dire^ redire, et me contredire, \nwill be the staple of my journal till I see land. I say \nnothing of such matters as the montagna hruna on \nwhich Ulysses wrecked; but since the sixteenth cen- \ntury could any man reasonably hope to stumble on one \nof those wonders which were cheap as dirt in the days \nof St. Saga? Faustus, Don Juan, and Tanhauser are \nthe last ghosts of legend, that lingered almost till the \nGallic cock-crow of universal enliglitenment and dis- \nillusion. The Public School has done for Imagina- \ntion. What shall I see in Outre-Mer, or on the way \nthither, but what can be seen with eyes? To be \nsure, I stick by the sea-serpent, and would fain believe \nthat science has scotched, not killed him. Nor is he \nto be lightly given up, for, like the old Scandinavian \nsnake, he binds together for us the two hemispheres \nof Past and Present, of Belief and Science. He is the \nlink which knits us seaboard Yankees with our Norse \nprogenitors, interpreting between the age of the dragon \nand that of the railroad-train. We have made ducks \nand drakes of that large estate of wonder and delight \nbequeathed to us by ancestral vikings, and this alone \nremains to us unthrift heirs of Linn. \n\nI feel an undefined respect for a man who has seen \nthe sea-serpent. He is to his brother-fishers what \nthe poet is to his fellow-men. Where they have seen \nnothing better than a school of horse-mackerel, or the \nidle coils of ocean around Half-way Rock, he has \ncaught authentic glimpses of the withdrawing mantle- \nhem of the Edda age. I care not for the monster him- \nself. It is not the thing, but the belief in the thing, \n\n\n\nAT SEA, 109 \n\nthat is dear to me. May it be long before Professor \nOwen is comforted with the sight of his unfleshed \nvertebra, long before they stretch many a rood behind \nKimball\'s or Barnum\'s glass, reflected in the shallow \norbs of Mr. and Airs. Public, which stare, but see not ! \nWhen we read that Captain Spalding, of the pink- \nstern Three Follies, has beheld him rushing through \nthe brine like an infinite series of bewitched mackerel \ncasks, we feel that the mystery of old Ocean, at least, \nhas not yet been sounded, \xe2\x80\x94 that Faith and Awe \nsurvive there tinevaporate. I once ventured the \nhorse-mackerel theory to an old fisherman, browner \nthan a tomcod. *\'Hos-mackril !" he exclaimed in- \ndignantly, "hos-mackrilbe \xe2\x80\x94 " (here he used aphrase \ncommonly indicated in laical literature by the same \nsign which serves for Doctorate in Divinity), "don\'t \nyer spose I know a hos-mackril?" The intonation \nof that "/" would have silenced Professor Monk- \nbarns Owen with his provoking phoca forever. What \nif one should ask him if he knew a trilobite ? \n\nThe fault of modern travellers is, that they see \nnothing out of sight. They talk of eocene periods \nand tertiary formations, and tell us how the world \nlooked to the plesiosaur. They take science (or \nnescience) with them, instead of that soul of generous \ntrust their elders had. All their senses are sceptics and \ndoubters, materialists reporting things for other scep- \ntics to doubt still further upon. Nature becomes a \nreluctant witness upon the stand, badgered with geolo- \ngist hammers and phials of acid. There have been \nno travellers since those included in Hakluyt and \n\n\n\nno FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nPurchas, except Martin, perhaps, who saw an inch \nor two into the invisible at the Orkneys. We have \nperipatetic lecturers, but no more travellers. Trav- \nellers\' stories are no longer proverbial. We have \npicked nearly every apple (wormy or otherwise) \nfrom the world\'s tree of knowledge, and that without \nan Eve to tempt us. Two or three have hitherto \nhung luckily beyond reach on a lofty bough shadow- \ning the interior of Africa, but there is a German Doc- \ntor at this very moment pelting at them with sticks and \nstones. It miay be only next week, and these too, \nbitten by geographers and geologists, will be thrown \naway. \n\nAnalysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is \nsubjected to chemic tests. We must have exact \nknowledge, a cabinet stuck full of facts pressed, dried, \nor preserved in spirits, instead of the large, vague \nworld our fathers had. With them science was \npoetry; with us, poetry is science. Our modern \nEden is a hortus siccus. Tourists defraud rather \nthan enrich us. They have not that sense of aesthetic \nproportion which characterized the elder traveller. \nEarth is no longer the fine work of art it was, for noth- \ning is left to the imagination. Job Hortop, arrived \nat the height of the Bermudas, thinks it full time to \nindulge us in a merman. Nay, there is a story told \nby Webster, in his "Witchcraft," of a merman with a \nmitre, who, on being sent back to his watery diocese \nof finland, made what advances he could toward an \nepiscopal benediction by bowing his head thrice. \nDoubtless he had been consecrated by St. Antony of \n\n\n\nA r SEA. I I I \n\nPadua. A dumb bishop would be sometimes no \nunpleasant phenomenon, by the way. Sir John \nHawkins is not satisfied with telling us about the \nmerely sensual Canaries, but is generous enough to \nthrow us in a handful of \'\'certain flitting islands" to \nboot. Henry Hawkes describes the visible Mexican \ncities, and then is not so frugal but that he can give \nus a few invisible ones. Thus do these generous \nancient mariners make children of us again. Their \nsuccessors show us an earth effete and past bearing, \ntracing out with the eyes of industrious fleas every \nwrinkle and crowfoot. \n\nThe journals of the elder navigators are prose \nOdysseys. The geographies of our ancestors were \nworks of fancy and imagination. They read poems \nwhere we yawn over items. Their world was a huge \nwonder-horn, exhaustless as that which Thor strove \nto drain. Ours would scarce quench the small \nthirst of a bee. No modern voyager brings back the \nmagical foundation stones of a Tempest. No Marco \nPolo, traversing the desert beyond the city of Lok, \nwould tell of things able to inspire the mind of Milton \nwith \n\n" Calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire, \nAnd airy tongues that syllable men\'s names \nOn sands and shores and desert wildernesses." \n\nIt was easy enough to believe the story of Dante, \nwhen two thirds of even the upper-world were yet un- \ntraversed and unmapped. With every step of the \nrecent traveller our inheritance of the wonderful is \ndiminished. Those beautifully pictured notes of the \n\n\n\n112 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nPossible are redeemed at a ruinous discount in the \nhard and cumbrous coin of the Actual. How are we \nnot defrauded and impoverished? Does California \nvie with El Dorado ? or are Bruce\'s Abyssinian kings \na set-ofif for Prester John? A bird in the bush is \nworth two in the hand. And if the philosophers have \nnot even yet been able to agree whether the world \nhas any existence independent of ourselves, how do \nwe not gain a loss in every addition to the catalogue \nof Vulgar Errors? Where are the fishes which nidi- \nficated in trees? Where the monopodes sheltering \nthemselves from the sun beneath their single um- \nbrella-like foot, \xe2\x80\x94 umbrella-like in everything but \nthe fatal necessity of being borrowed? Where the \nAcephali, with whom Herodotus, in a kind of ecstasy, \nwound up his climax of men with abnormal top- \npieces? Where the Roc whose eggs are possibly \nboulders, needing no far-fetched theory of glacier or \niceberg to account for them? Where the tails of the \nmen of Kent ? Where the no legs of the bird of para- \ndise ? Where the Unicorn, with that single horn of his, \nsovereign against all manner of poisons ? Where the \nFountain of Youth? Where that Thessalian spring, \nwhich, without cost to the country, convicted and \npunished perjurers? Where the Amazons of Orel- \nlana? All these, and a thousand other varieties, we \nhave lost, and have got nothing instead of them \nAnd those who have robbed us of them have stolen \nthat which not enriches themselves. It is so much \nwealth cast into the sea beyond all approach of diving- \nbells. We owe no thanks to Mr. J. E. Worcester, \n\n\n\nAT SEA. 113 \n\nwhose Geography we studied enforcedly at school. \nYet even he had his relentings, and in some softer \nmoment vouchsafed us a fine, inspiring print of \nthe Maelstrom, answerable to the twenty-four mile \ndiameter of its suction. Year by year, more and \nmore of the world gets disenchanted. Even the icy \nprivacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is invaded. \nOur youth are no longer ingenious, as indeed no \ningenuity is demanded of them. Everything is ac- \ncounted for, everything cut and dried, and the world \nmay be put together as easily as the fragments of a \ndissected map. The Mysterious bounds nothing \nnow on the North, South, East, or West. We have \nplayed Jack Horner with our earth, till there is never \na plum left in it. \n\n\n\nIN THE MEDITERRANEAN. \n\nThe first sight of a shore so historical as that of \nEurope gives an American a strange thrill. What \nwe always feel the artistic want of at home, is back- \nground. It is all idle to say we are Englishmen, and \nthat English history is ours too. It is precisely in \nthis that we are not Englishmen, inasmuch as we only \npossess their history through our minds, and not by \nlife-long association with a spot and an idea we call, \nEngland. History without the soil it grew in, is more \ninstructive than inspiring, \xe2\x80\x94 an acquisition, and not \nan inheritance. It is laid away in our memories, and \ndoes not run in our veins. Surely, in all that concerns \naesthetics, Europeans have us at an immense advan- \ntage. They start at a point which we arrive at after \nweary years, for literature is not shut up in books, nor \nart in galleries: both are taken in by unconscious \nabsorption through the finer pores of mind and char- \nacter in the atmosphere of society. We are not yet \nout of our Crusoe-hood, and must make our own \ntools as best we may. Yet I think we shall find the \ngood of it one of these days, in being thrown back \nmore wholly on nature; and our literature, when we \nhave learned to feel our own strength, and to respect \nour own thought because it is ours, and not because \nthe European Mrs. Grundy agrees with it, will have \n114 \n\n\n\nIN THE MEDITERRANEAN. II5 \n\na fresh flavor and a strong body that will recommend \nit, especially as what we import is watered more and \nmore liberally with every vintage. \n\nMy first glimpse of Europe was the shore of Spain. \nSince we got into the Mediterranean, we have been \nbecalmed for some days within easy view of it. All \nalong are fine mountains, brown all day, and with a \nbloom on them at sunset like that of a ripe plum. \nHere and there at their feet little white towns are \nsprinkled along the edge of the water, like the grains \nof rice dropped by the princess in the story. Some- \ntimes we see larger buildings on the mountain slopes, \nprobably convents. I sit and wonder whether the \nfarther peaks may not be the Sierra Morena (the \nrusty saw) of Don Quixote. I resolve that they shall \nbe, and am content. Surely latitude and longitude \nnever showed me any particular respect, that I should \nbe over-scrupulous with them. \n\nBut after all. Nature, though she may be more \nbeautiful, is nowhere so entertaining as in man, and \nthe best thing I have seen and learned at sea is our \nChief Mate. My first acquaintance with him was \nmade over my knife, which he asked to look at, and, \nafter a critical examination, handed back to me, say- \ning, "I should n\'t wonder if that \'ere was a good piece \no\' stuff." Since then he has transferred a part of his \nregard for my knife to its owner. I like folks who \nlike an honest bit of steel, and take no interest what- \never in "your Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." \nThere is always more than the average human nature \nin a man who has a hearty sympathy with iron. It \n\n\n\nlib FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nis a manly metal, with no sordid associations like gold \nand silver. My sailor fully came up to my expecta- \ntion on further acquaintance. He might well be called \nan old salt who had been wrecked on Spitzbergen \nbefore I was born. He was not an Amierican, but I \nshould never have guessed it by his speech, which was \nthe purest Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good \ntaster of dialects. Nor was he less Americanized in \nall his thoughts and feelings, a singular proof of the \nease with which our omnivorous country assimilates \nforeign matter, provided it be Protestant, for he was \na man ere he became an American citizen. He used \nto walk the deck with his hands in his pockets, in \nseeming abstraction, but nothing escaped his eye. \nHow he saw, I could never make out, though I had a \ntheory that it was with his elbows. After he had taken \nme (or my knife) into his confidence, he took care \nthat I should see whatever he deemed of interest to a \nlandsman. Without looking up, he would say, sud- \ndenly, "Ther \'s a whale blowin\' clearn up to win\'ard," \nor, "Them \'s porpises to leeward: that means change \no\' wind." He is as impervious to cold as a polar bear, \nand paces the deck during his watch much as one of \nthose yellow hummocks goes slumping up and down \nhis cage. On the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale \nfrom the northeast, and it was cold as an EngHsh \nsummer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt and \ntrousers, his furzy brown chest half bare, and slippers, \nwithout stockings. But lest you might fancy this to \nhave chanced by defect of wardrobe, he comes out \nin a monstrous pea-jacket here in the Mediterranean, \n\n\n\nIN THE MEDITERRANEAN. \\\\J \n\nwhen the evening is so hot that Adam would have \nbeen glad to leave off his fig-leaves. *\'It \'s a kind o\' \ndamp and unwholesome in these ere waters," he says, \nevidently regarding the Midland Sea as a vile standing \npool, in comparison with the bluff ocean. At meals \nhe is superb, not only for his strengths, but his weak- \nnesses. He has somehow or other come to think me \na wag, and if I ask him to pass the butter, detects an \noccult joke, and laughs as much as is proper for a mate. \nFor you must know that our social hierarchy on ship- \nboard is precise, and the second mate, were he present, \nwould only laugh half as much as the first. Mr. X. \nalways combs his hair, and works himself into a black \nfrock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waistcoat) before \nhe comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and pain- \nfully to the social proprieties. The second mate, on \nthe other hand, who eats after us, enjoys the privilege \nof shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier man of \nthe two. We do not have seats above and below the \nsalt, as in old time, but above and below the white \nsugar. Mr. X. always takes brown sugar, and it is \ndelightful to see how he ignores the existence of cer- \ntain delicates which he considers above his grade, \ntipping his head on one side with an air of abstraction, \nso that he may seem not to deny himself, but to omit \nhelping himself from inadvertence or absence of mind. \nAt such times he wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar \nmanner, inscrutable at first as a cuneiform inscrip- \ntion, but as easily read after you once get the key. \nThe sense of it is something like this: "I, X., know \nmy place, a height of wisdom attained by few. What- \n\n\n\nIl8 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\never you may think, I do not see that currant jelly, \nnor that preserved grape. Especially, a kind Provi- \ndence has made me blind to bowls of white sugar, and \ndeaf to the pop of champagne corks. It is much that \na merciful compensation gives me a sense of the \ndingier hue of Havana, and the muddier gurgle of \nbeer. Are there potted meats? My physician has \nordered me three pounds of minced salt-junk at every \nmeal." There is such a thing, you know, as a ship\'s \nhusband: X. is the ship\'s poor relation. \n\nAs I have said, he takes also a below-the-white- \nsugar interest in the jokes, laughing by precise point \nof compass, just as he would lay the ship\'s course, all \nyawing being out of the question with his scrupulous \ndecorum at the helm. Once or twice, I have got the \nbetter of him, and touched him off into a kind of com- \npromised explosion, like that of damp fireworks, that \nsplutter and simmer a little, and then go out with pain- \nful slowness and occasional relapses. But his fuse \nis always of the unwillingest, and you must blow your \nmatch, and touch him off again and again with the \nsame joke. Or rather, you must magnetize him \nmany times to get him en rapport with a jest. This \nonce accomplished, you have him, and one bit of fun \nwill last the whole voyage. He prefers those of one \nsyllable, the a-h abs of humor. The gradual fattening \nof the steward, a benevolent mulatto with whiskers \nand ear-rings, who looks as if he had been meant for \na woman, and had become a man by accident, as in \nsome of those stories of the elder physiologists, is an \nabiding topic of humorous comment with Mr. X. \n\n\n\nIN THE MEDITERRANEAN. I19 \n\n"That \'ere stooard," he says, with a brown grin Hke \nwhat you might fancy on the face of a serious and aged \nseal, *"s agittin\' as fat \'s a porpis. He was as thin \'s \na shingle when he come aboord last v\'yge. Them \ntrousis \'11 bust yit. He don\'t darst take \'em off \nnights, for the whole ship\'s company could n\'t git \nhim into \'em agin." And then he turns aside to enjoy \nthe intensity of his emotion by himself, and you hear \nat intervals low rumblings, an indigestion of laughter. \nHe tells me of St. Elmo\'s fires, Marvell\'s corposants, \nthough with him the original corpos santos has suf- \nfered a sea change, and turned to comepleasants, \npledges of fine weather. I shall not soon find a \npleasanter companion. It is so delightful to meet a \nman who knows just what you do not. Nay, I think \nthe tired mind finds something in plump ignorance \nlike what the body feels in cushiony moss. Talk of \nthe sympathy of kindred pursuits ! It is the sympathy \nof the upper and nether millstones, both forever grind- \ning the same grist, and wearing each other smooth. \nOne has not far to seek for book -nature, artist- \nnature, every variety of superinduced nature, in \nshort, but genuine human nature is hard to find. \nAnd how good it is ! Wholesome as a potato, fit \ncompany for any dish. The freemasonry of culti- \nvated men is agreeable, but artificial, and I like \nbetter the natural grip with which manhood recog- \nnizes manhood. \n\nX. has one good story, and with that I leave him, \nwishing him with all my heart that little inland farm \nat last which is his calenture as he paces the windy \n\n\n\nI20 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\ndeck. One evening, when the clouds looked wild \nand whirling, I asked X. if it was coming on to blow. \n"No, I guess not," said he; "bumby the moon \'11 \nbe up, and scoff away that \'ere loose stuff." His \nintonation set the phrase "scoff away" in quotation- \nmarks as plain as print. So I put a query in each \neye, and he went on. "Ther\' was a Dutch cappen \nonct, an\' his mate come to him in the cabin, where \nhe sot takin\' his schnapps, an\' says, \'Cappen, it\'s \nagittin\' thick, an\' looks kin\' o\' squally; hed n\'t we \'s \ngood\'s shorten sail?\' \'Gimmy my alminick,\' says \nthe cappen. So he looks at it a spell, an\' says he, \n\' The moon \'s due in less \'n half an hour, an\' she \'11 \nscoff away ev\'ythin\' clare agin.\' So the mate he goes, \nan\' bumby down he comes agin, an\' says, \'Cappen, \nthis \'ere \'s the allfiredest, powerfullest moon \'t ever \nyou did see. She \'s scoffed away the maintogallants\'l, \nan\' she \'s to work on the foretops\'l now. Guess you \'d \nbetter look in the alminick agin, an\' fin\' out when this \nmoon sets.\' So the cappen thought \'t was \'bout \ntime to go on deck. Dreadful slow them Dutch \ncappens be." And X. walked away, rumbhng in- \nwardly, like the rote of the sea heard afar. \n\nAnd so we arrived at Malta. Did you ever hear \nof one of those eating-houses, where, for a certain fee, \nthe guest has the right to make one thrust with a fork \ninto a huge pot, in which the whole dinner is bubbling, \ngetting perhaps a bit of boiled meat, or a potato, or else \nnothing ? Well, when the great caldron of war is \nseething, and the nations stand round it striving to \nfish out something to their purpose from the mess, \n\n\n\nIN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 121 \n\nBritannia always has a great advantage in her trident. \nMalta is one of the titbits she has impaled with that \nawful implement. I was not sorry for it, when I \nreached my clean inn, with its kindly English land- \nlady. \n\n\n\nITALY. \n\nThf impulse which sent the Edelmann Storg and \nme to Subiaco was given something hke two thousand \nyears ago. Had we not seen the Ponte Sant\' Antonio, \nwe should not have gone to Subiaco at this particular \ntime; and had the Romans been worse masons, or \nmore ignorant of hydrodynamics than they were, we \nshould never have seen the Ponte Sant\' Antonio. \nBut first we went to TivoH, \xe2\x80\x94 two carriage -loads of \nus, a very agreeable mixture of English, Scotch, and \nYankees, \xe2\x80\x94 on Tuesday, the 20th April. I shall not \nsay anything about Tivoli. A water-fall in type is \nlikely to be a trifle stiffish. Old association and \nmodern beauty; nature and artifice; worship that \nhas passed away and the religion that abides forever; \nthe green gush of the deeper torrent and the white \nevanescence of innumerable cascades, delicately pal- \npitant as a fall of northern Hghts; the descendants \nof Sabine pigeons flashing up to immemorial dove- \ncots, for centuries inaccessible to man, trooping with \nnoisy rooks and daws : the fitful roar and the silently \nhovering iris, which, borne by. the wind across the \nface of the cliff, transmutes the travertine to momen- \ntary opal, and whose dimmer ghost haunts the moon- \nlight, \xe2\x80\x94 as well attempt to describe to a Papuan \nsavage that wondrous ode of Wordsworth which \nrouses and stirs in the soul all its dormant instincts \n122 \n\n\n\nITALY. 123 \n\nof resurrection as with a sound of the last trumpet. \nNo, it is impossible. Even Byron\'s pump sucks \nsometimes, and gives an unpleasant dry wheeze, es- \npecially, it seems to me, at Terni. It is guide-book \npoetry, enthusiasm manufactured by the yard, which \nthe hurried traveller (John and Jonathan are always \nin a hurry when they turn peripatetics) puts on when \nhe has not a rag of private imagination to cover his \nnakedness withal. It must be a queer kind of love \nthat could "watch madness with unalterable mien," \nwhen the patient, whom any competent physician \nwould have ordered into a strait-waistcoat long ago, \nhas shivered himself to powder down a precipice. \nBut there is no madness in the matter. Velino goes \nover in his full senses, and knows perfectly well that \nhe shall not be hurt, that his broken fragments will \nreunite more glibly than the head and neck of Orrilo. \nHe leaps exultant, as to his proper doom and fulfil- \nment, and out of the mere waste and spray of his glory \nthe god of sunshine and song builds over the crown- \ning moment of his destiny a triumphal arch beyond \nthe reach of time and of decay. But Milton is the \nonly man who has got much poetry out of a cataract, \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 and that was a cataract in his eye. \n\nThe first day we made the Giro, coming back to a \nmerry dinner at the Sibilla in the evening. Then we \nhad some special tea, \xe2\x80\x94 for the Italians think tea- \ndrinking the chief religious observance of the Inglesi, \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 and then we had fifteen pauls\' worth of illumina- \ntion, which wrought a sudden change in the scenery, \nlike those that seem so matter-of-course in dreams, \n\n\n\n124 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nturning the Claude we had seen in the morning into a \nkind of Piranesi-Rembrandt. The illumination, by \nthe way, which had been preiigured to us by the en- \nthusiastic Italian who conducted it as something \nsecond only to the Girandola, turned out to be one \nblue-light, and two armfuls of straw. \n\nThe Edelmann Storg is not fond of pedestrian \nlocomotion, \xe2\x80\x94 nay, I have even sometimes thought \nthat he looked upon the invention of legs as a private \nand personal wrong done to himself. I am quite sure \nthat he inwardly believes them to have been a conse- \nquence of the fall, and that the happier Pre-Adam- \nites were monopodes, and incapable of any but a \nvehicular progression. A carriage, with horses and \ndriver complete, he takes to be as simple a production \nof nature as a potato. But he is fond of sketching \nand after breakfast, on the beautiful morning of Wed- \nnesday, the 2ist, I persuaded him to walk out a mile \nor two and see a fragment of aqueduct ruin. It is a \nsingle glorious arch, buttressing the mountain -side \nupon the edge of a sharp descent to the valley of the \nAnio. The old road to Subiaco passes under it, and \nit is crowned by a crumbling tower built in the Mid- \ndle Ages (whenever that was) against the Gaetani. \nWhile Storg sketched, I clambered. Below you, \nwhere the valley widens greenly toward other moun- \ntains, which the ripe Italian air distances with a \nbloom like that on unplucked grapes, are more arches, \nossified arteries of what was once the heart of the \nworld. Storg\'s sketch was highly approved of by \nLeopoldo, our guide, and by three or four peasants, \n\n\n\nITALY. 125 \n\nwho, being on their way to their morning\'s work in the \nfields, had, of course, nothing in particular to do, and \nstopped to see us see the ruin. Any one who has re- \nmarked how grandly the Romans do nothing will be \nslow to believe them an effete race. Their style is \nas the colossal to all other, and the name of Eternal \nCity fits Rome also, because time is of no account \nin it. The Roman always waits as if he could afford \nit amply, and the slow centuries move quite fast \nenough for him. Time is to other races the field of a \ntask -master, which they must painfully till; but to \nthe Roman it is an entailed estate, which he enjoys \nand will transmit. The Neapohtan\'s laziness is that \nof a loafer ; the Roman\'s is that of a noble. The poor \nAnglo-Saxon must count his hours, and look twice at \nhis small change of quarters and minutes; but the \nRoman spends from a purse of Fortunatus. His \n\xe2\x96\xa0piccolo quarto d\'ora is like his grosso, a huge piece of \ncopper, big enough for a shield, which stands only \nfor a half-dime of our money. We poor fools of time \nalways hurry as if we were the last type of man, the \nfull stop with which Fate was closing the Colophon \nof her volume, \xe2\x80\x94 as if we had just read in our news- \npaper, as we do of the banks on holidays, f^^The \nworld will close to-day at twelve o\'clock, an hour \nearlier than usual. But the Roman is still an Ancient, \nwith a vast future before him to tame and occupy. \nHe and his ox and his plough are just as they were in \nVirgil\'s time or Ennius\'s. We beat him in many \nthings; but in the impregnable fastness of his great \nrich nature he defies us. \n\n\n\n126 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS. \n\nWe got back to Tivoli, \xe2\x80\x94 Storg affirming that he \nhad walked fifteen miles. We saw the Temple of \nCough, which is not the Temple of Cough, though it \nmight have been a votive structure put up by some \nTiburtine Dr. Wistar. We saw the villa of Mecaenas, \nwhich is ;:j/ the villa of Mecsenas, and other equally \nsatisfactory antiquities. All our Enghsh friends \nsketched the Citadel, of course, and one enthusiast \nattempted a likeness of the fall, which I unhappily \nmistook afterward for a semblance of the tail of on? \nof the horses on the Monte Cavallo. Then we wc;it \nto the Villa d\' Este, famous on Ariosto\'s account, \xe2\x80\x94 \nand which Ariosto never saw. But the laurels were \nworthy to have made a chaplet for him, and the \ncypresses and the views were as fine as if he had seen \nthem every day of his life. \n\nPerhaps something I learned in going to see one of \nthe gates of the town is more to the purpose, and may \nassist one in erecting the horoscope of Italia Unita. \nWhen Leopoldo first proposed to drag me through \nthe mud to view this interesting piece of architecture, \nI demurred. But as he was very earnest about it, and \nas one seldom fails getting at a bit of character by sub- \nmitting to one\'s guide, I yielded. Arrived at the spot, \nhe put me at the best point of view, and said, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n"Behold, Lordship!" \n\n**I see nothing out of the common," said I. \n\n"Lordship is kind enough here to look at a gate, \nthe like of which exists not in all Italy, nay, in the \nwhole world, \xe2\x80\x94 I speak not of England," for he \nthought me an Inglese. \n\n\n\nITALY. 127 \n\n" I am not blind, Leopoldo ; where is the \nmiracle?" \n\n" Here we dammed up the waters of the Anio, first \nby artifice conducted to this spot, and, letting them \nout upon the Romans, who stood besieging the town, \ndrowned almost a whole army of them. (Lordship \nconceives?) They suspected nothing till they found \nthemselves all torn to pieces at the foot of the hill \nyonder. (Lordship conceives?) Eh! per Bacco! we \nwatered their porridge for them." \n\nLeopoldo used we as Lord Buchan did /, meaning \nany of his ancestors. \n\n"But tell me a little, Leopoldo, how many years is \nit since this happened?" \n\n"Non saprei, signoria; it was in the antiquest \ntimes, certainly; but the Romans never come to our \nFair, that we don\'t have blows about it, and perhaps a \nstab or two. Lordship understands?" \n\nI was quite repaid for my pilgrimage. I think I \nunderstand Italian politics better for hearing Leo- \npoldo speak of the Romans, whose great dome is in \nfull sight of TivoU, as a foreign nation. But what \nperennial boyhood the whole story indicates ! \n\nStorg\'s sketch of the morning\'s ruin was so success- \nful that I seduced him into a new expedition to the \nPonte Sant\' Antonio, another aqueduct arch about \neight miles off. This was for the afternoon, and I \nsucceeded the more easily, as we were to go on horse- \nback. So I told Leopoldo to be at the gate of the \nVilla of Hadrian, at three o\'clock, with three horses. \nLeopoldo\' s face, when I said three, was worth seeing; \n\n\n\n128 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nfor the poor fellow had counted on nothing more than \ntrotting beside our horses for sixteen miles, and getting \nhalf a dollar in the evening. Between doubt and \nhope, his face seemed to exude a kind of oil, which \nmade it shine externally, after having first lubricated \nall the muscles inwardly. \n\n\'\'With three horses, Lordship?" \n\n"Yes, ihreer \n\n"Lordship is very sagacious. With three horses \nthey go much quicker. It is finished, then, and they \nwill have the kindness to find me at the gate with the \nbeasts, at three o\'clock precisely." \n\nLeopoldo* and I had compromised upon the term \n"Lordship." He had found me in the morning cele- \nbrating due rites before the Sibyl\'s Temple with strange \nincense of the nicotian herb, and had marked me for \nhis prey. At the very high tide of sentiment, when \nthe traveller lies with oyster-like openness in the soft \nooze of reverie, do these parasitic crabs, the ciceroni^ \ninsert themselves as his inseparable bosom companions. \nUnhappy bivalve, lying so softly between thy two \nshells, of the actual and the possible, the one sustain- \ning, the other widening above thee, till, oblivious of \nnative mud, thou fanciest thyself a proper citizen only \nof the illimitable ocean which floods thee, -^ there is \nno escape ! Vain are thy poor crustaceous efforts at \nself-isolation. The foe henceforth is a part of thy \nconsciousness, thy landscape, and thyself, happy only \nif that irritation breed in thee the pearl of patience \nand of voluntary abstraction. \n\n"Excellency wants a guide, very experienced, who \n\n\n\nITALY. 129 \n\nhas conducted with great mutual satisfaction many of \nhis noble compatriots." \n\nPuff, puff, and an attempt at looking as if I did not \nsee him. \n\n"Excellency will deign to look at my book of testi- \nmonials. When we return. Excellency will add his \nown." \n\nPuff, puff. \n\n"Excellency regards the cascade, prcEceps Anio, as \nthe good Horatius called it." \n\nI thought of the dissolve frigus of the landlord in \nRoderick Random, and could not help smiling. Leo- \npoldo saw his advantage. \n\n"Excellency will find Leopoldo, when he shall \nchoose to be ready." \n\n"But I will positively not be called Excellency. I \nam not an ambassador, nor a very eminent Christian, \nand the phrase annoys me." \n\n"To be sure, Excell \xe2\x80\x94 Lordship." \n\n"I am an American." \n\n"Certainly, an American, Lordship," \xe2\x80\x94 as if that \nsettled the matter entirely. If I had told him I was a \nCaff re, it would have been just as clear to him. He \nsurrendered the "Excellency," but on general prin- \nciples of human nature, I suppose, would not come a \nstep lower than "Lordship." So we compromised on \nthat. \xe2\x80\x94 P.S. It is wonderful how soon a republican \near reconciles itself with syllables of this description. \nI think citizen would find greater difficulties in the \nway of its naturalization, and as for brother \xe2\x80\x94 ah ! \nwell, in a Christian sense, certainly. \n\n\n\nI30 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nThree o\'clock found us at the Villa of Hadrian. \nWe had explored that incomparable ruin, and conse- \ncrated it, in the Homeric and Anglo-Saxon manner, by \neating and drinking. Some of us sat in the shadow \nof one of the great walls, fitter for a city than a palace, \nover which a Nile of ivy, gushing from one narrow \nsource, spread itself in widening inundations. A \nhappy few listened to stories of Bagdad from Mrs. \n, whose silver hair gleamed, a palpable anachro- \nnism, like a snow-fall in May, over that ever youthful \nface, where the few sadder lines seemed but the signa- \nture of Age to a deed of quitclaim and release. Dear \nTito, that exemplary traveller who never lost a day, \nhad come back from renewed explorations, convinced \nby tlie eloquent custode that Serapeion was the name \nof an off\'icer in the Praetorian Guard. I was explain- \ning, in addition, that Natimachia, in the Greek tongue, \nsignified a place artificially drained, when the horses \nwere announced. \n\nThis put me to reflection. I felt, perhaps, a little \nas Mazeppa must, when told that his steed was at the \ndoor. For several years I had not been on the back \nof a horse, and was it not more than likely that these \nmountains might produce a yet more refractory breed \nof these ferocious animals than common ? Who could \ntell the effect of grazing on a volcanic soil like that \nhereabout? I had vague recollections that the saddle \nnullified the laws governing the impulsion of inert \nbodies, exacerbating the centrifugal forces into a \nvirulent activity, and proportionably narcotizing the \ncentripetal. The phrase ratio proportioned to the \n\n\n\nITALY. 131 \n\nsquares of the distances impressed me with an awe \nwliich explained to me how the laws of nature had \nbeen of old personified and worshipped. Meditating \nthese things, I walked with a cheerful aspect to \nthe gate, where my saddled and bridled martyrdom \nawaited me. \n\n\'\' Eccomi qua!\'\'^ said Leopoldo, hilariously. "Gen- \ntlemen will be good enough to select from the three \nbest beasts in Tivoli." \n\n"O, this one will serve me as well as any," said I, \nwith an air of indifiference, much as I have seen a \ngentleman help himself inadvertently to the best \npeach in the dish. I am not more selfish than becomes \na Christian of the nineteenth century, but I looked \non this as a clear case of tabula in naufragio, and had \nnoticed that the animal in question had that tremulous \ndroop of the lower Hp which indicates senility, and \nthe abdication of the wilder propensities. Moreover, \nhe was the only one provided with a curb bit, or rather \nwith two huge iron levers which might almost have \nserved Archimedes for his problem. Our saddles \nwere fia;t cushions covered with leather, brought by \nyears of friction to the highest state of polish. In- \nstead of a pommel, a perpendicular stake, about ten \ninches high, rose in front, which, in case of a stumble, \nwould save one\'s brains, at the risk of certain eviscera- \ntion. Behind, a glary slope invited me constantly to \nslide over the horse\'s tail. The selfish prudence of my \nchoice had well-nigh proved the death of me, for this \npoor old brute, with that anxiety to oblige a joresticro \nwhich characterizes everybody here, could never make \n\n\n\n132 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nup his mind which of his four paces (and he had the \nrudiments of four \xe2\x80\x94 walk, trot, rack, and gallop) \nwould be most agreeable to me. The period of tran- \nsition is always unpleasant, and it was all transition. \nHe treated me to a hodge-podge of all his several gaits \nat once. Saint Vitus was the only patron saint I could \nthink of. My head jerked one way, my body another, \nwhile each of my legs became a pendulum vibrating \nfuriously, one always forward while the other was \nback, so that I had all the appearance and all the \nlabor of going afoot, and at the same time was bumped \nwithin an inch of my life. Waterton\'s alligator was \nnothing to it ; it was like riding a hard-trotting arma- \ndillo bare-backed. There is a species of equitation \npeculiar to our native land, in which a rail from the \nnearest fence, with no preliminary incantation of \nHorse and hattock ! is converted into a steed, and this \nalone may stand the comparison. Storg in the mean- \nwhile was triumphantly taking the lead, his trousers \nworking up very pleasantly above his knees, an insur- \nrectionary movement which I also was unable to sup- \npress in my own. I could bear it no longer. \n\n"Le-e-o-o-p-o-o-o-l-l-l-d-d-o-o-o !" jolted I. \n\n"Command, Lordship ! " and we both came to a stop. \n\n"It is necessary that we change horses immediately, \nor I shall be jelly." \n\n"Certainly, Lordship" ; and I soon had the pathetic \nsatisfaction of seeing him subjected to all the excruci- \nating experiments that had been tried upon myself. \nFiat experimentum in corpore vili, thought his ex- \ntempore lordship, Christopher Sly, to himself. \n\n\n\nITALY. 133 \n\nMeanwhile all the other accessories of our ride were \ndelicious. It was a clear, cool day, and we soon left \nthe high road for a bridle-path along the side of the \nmountain, among gigantic olive-trees, said to be five \nhundred years old, and which had certainly employed \nall their time in getting into the weirdest and wonder- \nfullest shapes. Clearly in this green commonwealth \nthere was no heavy roller of public opinion to flatten \nall character to a lawn-like uniformity. Everything \nwas individual and eccentric. And there was some- \nthing fearfully human, too, in the wildest contortions. \nIt was some such wood that gave Dante the hint of his \nhuman forest in the seventh circle, and I should have \ndreaded to break a twig, lest I should hear that voice \ncomplaining, \n\n" Perche mi scerpi ? \nNon hai tu spirto di pietate alcuno ? " \n\nOur path lay along a kind of terrace, and at every \nopening we had glimpses of the billowy Campagna, \nwith the great dome bulging from its rim, while on our \nright, changing ever as we rode, the Alban mountain \nshowed us some new grace of that sweeping outline \npeculiar to volcanoes. At intervals the substructions \nof Roman villas would crop out from the soil like \nmasses of rock, and deserving to rank as a geological \nformation by themselves. Indeed, in gazing into these \ndark caverns, one does not think of man more than at \nStaffa. Nature has adopted these fragments of a race \nwho were dear to her. She has not suffered these \nbones of the great Queen to lack due sepulchral rites, \nbut has flung over them the ceremonial handfuls of \n\n\n\n134 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nearth, and every year carefully renews the garlands of \nmemorial flowers. Nay, if what they say in Rome \nbe true, she has even made a new continent of the \nColosseum, and given it a jiora of its own. \n\nAt length, descending a little, we passed through \nfarm-yards and cultivated fields, where, from Leo- \npoldo\'s conversations with the laborers, we discov- \nered that he himself did not know the way for which \nhe had undertaken to be guide. However, we pres- \nently came to our ruin, and very noble it was. The \naqueduct had here been carried across a deep gorge, \nand over the little brook which wimpled along below \ntowered an arch, as a bit of Shakespeare bestrides \nthe exiguous rill of a discourse which it was intended \nto ornament. The only human habitation in sight \nwas a little casetta on the top of a neighboring hill. \nWhat else of man\'s work could be seen was a ruined \ncastle of the Middle Ages, and, far away, upon the \nhorizon, the eternal dome. A valley in the moon \ncould scarce have been lonelier, could scarce have sug- \ngested more strongly the feeling of preteriteness and \nextinction. The stream below did not seem so much \nto sing as to murmur sadly, Conclusum est; periisti! \nand the wind, sighing through the arch, answered, \nPeriisti ! Nor was the silence of Monte Cavi without \nmeaning. That cup, once full of fiery wine, in which \nit pledged Vesuvius and .-^tna later born, was brimmed \nwith innocent water now. Adam came upon the \nearth too late to see the glare of its last orgy, lighting \nthe eyes of saurians in the reedy Campagna below. I \nalmost fancied I could hear a voice like that which cried \n\n\n\nITALY. 135 \n\nto the Egyptian pilot, Great Pan is dead! I was look- \ning into the dreary socket where once glowed the eye \nthat saw the whole earth vassal. Surely, this was the \nworld\'s autumn, and I could hear the feet of Time \nrustling through the wreck of races and dynasties, \ncheap and inconsiderable as fallen leaves. \n\nBut a guide is not engaged to lead one into the \nworld of imagination. He is as deadly to sentiment as \na snifif of hartshorn. His position is a false one, Hke \nthat of the critic, who is supposed to know everything, \nand expends himself in showing that he does not. If \nyou should ever have the luck to attend a concert of \nthe spheres, under the protection of an Italian cicerone, \nhe will expect you to listen to him rather than to it. \nHe will say: "Ecco, Signoria, that one in the red \nmantle is Signor Mars, eh ! what a noblest basso is \nSignor Mars ! but nothing (Lordship understands ?) \nto what Signor Saturn used to be, (he with the golden \nbelt, Signoria,) only his voice is in ruins now, \xe2\x80\x94 \nscarce one note left upon another; but Lordship can \nsee what it was by the remains, Roman remains, \nSignor m, Roman remains, the work of giants. (Lord- \nship understands?) They make no such voices now. \nCertainly, Signor Jupiter (with the yellow tunic, there) \nis a brave artist and a most sincere tenor; but since \nthe time of the Republic" (if he think you an oscu- \nrante, or since the French, if he suspects you of being \nthe least red) "we have no more good singing." And \nso on. \n\nIt is a well-known fact to all persons who are in the \nhabit of climbing Jacob\'s-ladders, that, if any one \n\n\n\n136 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nspeak to you during the operation, the fabric collapses, \nand you come somewhat uncomfortably to the ground. \nOne can be hit with a remark, when he is beyond the \nreach of more material missiles. Leopoldo saw by \nmy abstracted manner that I was getting away from \nhim, and I was the only victim he had left, for Storg \nwas making a sketch below. So he hastened to fetch \nme down again. \n\n"Nero built this arch, Lordship." (He did n\'t, \nbut Nero was Leopoldo\'s historical scape-goat.) \n"Lordship sees the dome? he will deign to look the \nleast little to the left hand. Lordship has much in- \ntelligence. Well, Nero always did thus. His works \na,lways, always,, had Rome in view." \n\nHe had already shown me two ruins, which he \nascribed equally to Nero, and which could only have \nseen Rome by looking through a mountain. How- \never, such trifles are nothing to an accomplished guide. \n\nI remembered his quoting Horace in the morning. \n\n"Do you understand Latin, Leopoldo?" \n\n"I did a httle once. Lordship. I went to the \nJesuits\' school at Tivoli. But what use of Latin to a \npoverino hke me?" \n\n"Were you intended for the church? Why did \nyou leave the school?" \n\n"Eh, Lordship!" and one of those shrugs which \nmight mean that he left it of his own free will, or that \nhe was expelled at point of toe. He added some con- \ntemptuous phrase about the priests. \n\n"But, Leopoldo, you are a good Catholic?" \n\n"Eh, Lordship, who knows? A man is no blinder \n\n\n\nITALY. 137 \n\nfor being poor, \xe2\x80\x94 nay, hunger sharpens the eyesight \nsometimes. The cardinals (their Eminences !) tell \nus that it is good to be poor, and that, in proportion \nas we lack on earth, it shall be made up to us in Para- \ndise. Now, if the cardinals (their Eminences !) be- \nlieve what they preach, why do they want to ride in \nsuch handsome carriages?" \n\n"But are there many who think as you do?" \n\n\'\'Everybody, Lordship, but a few women and \nfools. What imports it what the fools think?" \n\nAn immense deal, I thought, an immense deal; \nfor of what material is public opinion manufactured ? \n\n"Do you ever go to church?" \n\n"Once a year. Lordship, at Easter, to mass and \nconfession." \n\n"Why once a year?" \n\n"Because, Lordship, one must have a certificate \nfrom the priest. One might be sent to prison else, \nand one had rather go to confession than to jail. Eh, \nLordship, it is a porcheria.^^ \n\nIt is proper to add, that in what Leopoldo said of \nthe priests he was not speaking of his old masters, the \nJesuits. One never hears anything in Italy against \nthe purity of their lives, or their learning and ability, \nthough much against their unscrupulousness. Nor \nwill any one who has ever enjoyed the gentle and \ndignified hospitality of the Benedictines be ready to \nbelieve any evil report of them. \n\nBy this time Storg had finished his sketch, and we \nremounted our grazing steeds. They were brisker \nas soon as their noses were turned homeward, and we \n\n\n\n138 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ndid the eight miles back in an hour. The setting sun \nstreamed through and among the Michael Angelesque \nolive-trunks, and, through the long colonnade of the \nbridle-path, fired the scarlet waistcoats and bodices \nof homeward villagers, or was sullenly absorbed in the \nlong black cassock and flapped hat of a priest, who \ncourteously saluted the strangers. Sometimes a min- \ngled flock of sheep and goats (as if they had walked \nout of one of Claude\'s pictures) followed the shepherd \nwho, satyr-like, in goat-skin breeches, sang such songs \nas were acceptable before Tubal Cain struck out the \nlaws of musical time from his anvil. The peasant, in \nhis ragged brown cloak, or with blue jacket hanging \nfrom the left shoulder, still strides Romanly, \xe2\x80\x94 incedit \nrex, \xe2\x80\x94 and his eyes have a placid grandeur, inherited \nfrom those which watched the glittering snake of the \nTriumph, as it undulated along the Via Sacra. By \nhis side moves with equal pace his woman-porter, the \ncaryatid of a vast entablature of household-stuff, and \nlearning in that harsh school a sinuous poise of body \nand a security of step beyond the highest snatch ot the \nposture-master. \n\nAs we drew near Tivoli the earth was fast swinging \ninto shadow. The darkening Campagna, climbing \nthe sides of the nearer Monticelli in a gray belt of \nolive-spray, rolled on towards the blue island of \nSoracte, behind which we lost the sun. Yes, we had \nlost the sun; but in the wide chimney of the largest \nroom at the Sibilla there danced madly, crackling \nwith ilex and laurel, a bright ambassador from Sun- \nland, Monsieur Le Feu, no pinchbeck substitute for \n\n\n\nITALY, 139 \n\nhis royal master. As we drew our chairs up, after \nthe dinner due to Leopoldo\'s forethought, \'\'Behold," \nsaid I, "the Resident of the great king near the court \nof our (this-day-created) Hogan Moganships." \n\nWe sat looking into the fire, as it wavered from \nshining shape to shape of unearthliest fantasy, and \nboth of us, no doubt, making out old faces among the \nembers, for we both said together, "Let us talk of old \ntimes." \n\n"To the small hours," said the Edelmann: "and \ninstead of blundering off to Torneo to intrude chatter- \ningly upon the midnight privacy of Apollo, let us pro- \nmote the fire, there, to the rank of sun by brevet, and \nhave a kind of undress rehearsal of those night \nwanderings of his here upon the ample stage of the \nhearth." \n\nSo we went through the whole catalogue of Do you \nremembers? and laughed at all the old stories, so \ndreary to an outsider. Then we grew pensive, and \ntalked of the empty sockets in that golden band of \nour young friendship, \xe2\x80\x94 of S., with Grecian front, \niDut unsevere, and Saxon M., to whom laughter wls \nas natural as for a brook to ripple. \n\nBut Leopoldo had not done with us. We were \nto get back to Rome in the morning, and to that end \nmust make a treaty with the company which ran the \nTivoli diligence, the next day not being the regular \nperiod of departure for that prodigious structure. \nWe had given Leopoldo twice his fee, and, setting a \nmean value upon our capacities in proportion, he ex- \npected to bag a neat percentage on our bargain. \n\n\n\nI40 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nAlas! he had made a false estimate of the Anglo- \nNorman mind, which, capable of generosity as a com- \npliment to itself, will stickle for the dust in the balance \nin a matter of business, and would blush at being done \nby Mercury himself. \n\nAccordingly, at about nine o\'clock there came a \nknock at the door, and, answering our Favorisca! in \nstalked Leopoldo, gravely followed by the two com- \nmissioners of the company. \n\n"Behold me returned. Lordship, and these men are \nthe Vetturini.\'^ \n\nWhy is it that men who have to do with horses are \nthe sam^ all over Christendom? Is it that they \nacquire equine characteristics, or that this particular \nmystery is magnetic to certain sorts of men? Cer- \ntainly they are marked unmistakably, and these two \nworthies would have looked perfectly natural in York- \nshire or Vermont. They were just alike, \xe2\x80\x94 for- \ntemque Gyan, jortemque Cloanthum, \xe2\x80\x94 and you could \nnot split an epithet between them. Simultaneously \nthey threw back their large overcoats, and displayed \nspheroidal figures, over which the strongly pronounced \nstripes of their plaided waistcoats ran like parallels \nof latitude and longitude over a globe. Simul- \ntaneously they took off their hats and said, "Your \nservant, gentlemen." In Italy it is always necessary \nto make a comhinazione beforehand about even the \nmost customary matters, for there is no fixed highest \nprice for anything. For a minute or two we stood \nreckoning each other\'s forces. Then I opened the \nfirst trench with the usual, "How much do you wish \n\n\n\nITALY. 141 \n\nfor carrying us to Rome at half past seven to-morrow \nmorning?" \n\nThe enemy glanced one at the other, and the \nresult of this ocular witenagemot was that one said, \n"Four scudi, gentlemen." \n\nThe Edelmann Storg took his cigar from his mouth \nin order to whistle, and made a rather indecorous \nallusion to four gentlemen in the diplomatic service \nof his Majesty, the Prince of the Powers of the Air. \n\n"Whe-ew! quattro diavolif" said he. \n\n"Macehef^ exclaimed I, attempting a flank move- \nment, "I had rather go on foot!" and threw as much \nhorror into my face as if a proposition had been made \nto me to commit robbery, murder, and arson all \ntogether. \n\n"For less than three scudi and a half the diligence \nparts not from Tivoli at an extraordinary hour," \nsaid the stout man, with an imperturbable gravity, \nintended to mask his retreat, and to make it seem that \nhe was making the same proposal as at first. \n\nStorg saw that they wavered, and opened upon \nthem with his flying artillery of sarcasm. \n\n"Do you take us for Inglesi? We are very well \nhere, and will stay at the Sibilla," he snififed scornfully. \n\n"How much will Lordship give?" (This was \nshowing the white feather.) \n\n"Fifteen pauls," (a scudo and a half,) "buonamano \nincluded." \n\n"It is impossible, gentlemen; for less than two \nscudi and a half the diligence parts not from Tivoli at \nan extraordinary hour." \n\n\n\n142 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n"Fifteen pauls." \n\n\'\'Will Lordship give two scudi?" (with a slight \nflavor of mendicancy.) \n\n"Fifteen pauls," (growing firm as we saw them \nwaver.) \n\n"Then, gentlemen, it is all over; it is impossible, \ngentlemen." \xe2\x96\xa0 \n\n"Very good; a pleasant evening to you !" and they \nbowed themselves out. \n\nAs soon as the door closed behind them, Leopoldo, \nwho had looked on in more and more anxious silence \nas the chance of plunder was whittled shmmer and \nslimmer by the sharp edges of the parley, saw instantly \nthat it was for his interest to turn state\'s evidence \nagainst his accomplices. \n\n"They will be back in a moment," he said know- \ningly, as if he had been of our side all along. \n\n"Of course; we are aware of that." \xe2\x80\x94 It is always \nprudent to be aware of everything in travelling. \n\nAnd, sure enough, in five minutes re-enter the stout \nmen, as gravely as if everything had been thoroughly \nsettled, and ask respectfully at what hour we would \nhave the diligence. \n\nThis will serve as a specimen of Italian bargain- \nmaking. They do not feel happy if they get their \nfirst price. So easy a victory makes them sorry they \nhad not asked twice as much, and, besides, they love \nthe excitement of the contest. I have seen as much \ndebate over a little earthen pot (value two cents) on \nthe Ponte Vecchio, in Florence, as would have served \nfor an operation of millions in the funds, the demand \n\n\n\nITALY, 143 \n\nand the offer alternating so rapidly that the litigants \nmight be supposed to be playing the ancient game \n\xe2\x96\xa0 of morra. It is a part of the universal fondness for \ngaming, and lotteries. An English gentleman once \nasked his Italian courier how large a percentage he \nmade on all of his employer\'s money which passed \nthrough his hands. "About five per cent; some- \ntimes more, sometimes less," was the answer. "Well, \nI will add that to your salary, in order that I maybe \nrid of this uncomfortable feehng of being cheated." \nThe courier mused a moment, and said, "But no, sir, \nI should not be happy ; then it would not be sometimes \nmore, sometimes less, and I should miss the excite- \nment of the game." \n\n2 id. \xe2\x80\x94 This morning the diligence was at the door \npunctually, and, taking our seats in the coupe, we bade \nfarewell to La Sibilla. But first we ran back for a \nparting glimpse at the water-fall. These last looks, \nlike lovers\' last kisses, are nouns of multitude, and \npresently the povero stalliere, signori, waited upon us, \ncap in hand, telling us that the vettiirino was impa- \ntient, and begging for drink -money in the same \nbreath. Leopoldo hovered longingly afar, for these \nvultures respect times and seasons, and while one is \nfleshing his beak upon the foreign prey, the others \nforbear. The passengers in the diligence were not \nvery lively. The Romans are a grave people, and \nmore so than ever since \'49. Of course, there was \none priest among them. There always is; for the \nmantis religiosa is as inevitable to these public con- \nveyances as the curculio is to the plum, and one could \n\n\n\n144 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nalmost fancy that they were bred in the same way, \xe2\x80\x94 \nthat the egg was inserted when the vehicle was green, \nbecame developed as it ripened, and never left it till \nit dropped withered from the pole. There was noth- \ning noticeable on the road to Rome, except the strings \nof pack-horses and mules which we met returning \nwith empty lime-sacks to Tivoli, whence comes the \nsupply of Rome. A railroad was proposed, but the \ngovernment would not allow it, because it would inter- \nfere with this carrying-trade, and wisely granted \ninstead a charter for a road to Frascati, where there \nwas no business whatever to be interfered with. \nAbout a mile of this is built in a style worthy of ancient \nRome ; and it is possible that eventually another mile \nmay be accomphshed, for some half-dozen laborers \nare at work upon it with wheelbarrows, in the leisurely \nRoman fashion. If it is ever finished, it will have \nnothing to carry but the conviction of its own useless- \nness. A railroad has been proposed to Civita Vecchia ; \nbut that is out of the question because it would be \nprofitable. On the whole, one does not regret the \nfailure of these schemes. One would not approach \nthe soHtary emotion of a lifetime, such as is the first \nsight of Rome, at the rate of forty miles an hour. It \nis better, after painfully crawhng up one of those long \npaved hills, to have the postilion turn in his saddle \nand, pointing with his whip, (without looking, for he \nknows instinctively\' where it is,) say, Ecco San Pietro ! \nThen you look tremblingly, and see it hovering vision- \nary on the horizon\'s verge, and in a moment you are \nrattling and rumbling and wallowing down into the \n\n\n\nITALY. 145 \n\nvalley, and it is gone. So you play hide-and-seek \nwith it all the rest of the way, and have time to con- \nverse with your sensations. You fancy you have got \nused to it at last ; but from the next hill-top, lo, there \nit looms again, a new wonder, and you do not feel \nsure that it will keep its tryst till you find yourself \nunder its shadow. The Dome is to Rome what \nVesuvius is to Naples; only a greater wonder, for \nMichael Angelo hung it there. The traveller climbs \nit as he would a mountain, and finds the dwellings \nof men high up on its sacred cliffs. It has its annual \neruption, too, at Easter, when the fire trickles and \npalpitates down its mighty shoulders, seen from far- \noff Tivoh. \xe2\x80\x94 No, the locomotive is less impertinent \nat Portici, hailing the imprisoned Titan there with a \nkindred shriek. Let it not vex the solemn Roman \nghosts, or the nobly desolate Campagna, with whose \nsoHtudes the shattered vertebrae of the aqueducts are \nin truer sympathy. \n\n2/\\th. \xe2\x80\x94 To-day our journey to Subiaco properly \nbegins. The jocund morning had called the beggars \nto their street -corners, and the women to the win- \ndows; the players of morra (a game probably as old \nas the invention of fmgers), of chuck-farthing, and of \nbowls, had cheerfully begun the labors of the day; \nthe plaintive cries of the chair-seaters, frog-venders, \nand certain other peripatetic merchants, the meaning \nof whose vocal advertisem.ents I could never pene- \ntrate, quaver at regular intervals, now near and now \nfar away ; a solitary Jew with a sack over his shoulder, \nand who never is seen to stop, slouches along, every \n\n\n\n146 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nnow and then croaking a penitential Cenci! as if he \nwere somehow the embodied expiation (by some post- \nOvidian metamorphosis) of that darkest Roman \ntragedy; women are bargaining for lettuce and \nendive; the slimy Triton in the Piazza Barberina \nspatters himself with vanishing diamonds; a peasant \nleads an ass on which sits the mother with the babe in \nlier arms, \xe2\x80\x94 a living flight into Egypt ; in short, the \nbeautiful spring day had awakened all of Rome that \ncan awaken yet (for the ideal Rome waits for another \nmorning), when we rattled along in our carrettella on \nthe way to Palestrina. A carrettella is to the per- \nfected vehicle, as the coracle to the steamship; it is \nthe first crude conception of a wheeled carriage. \nDoubtless the inventor of it was a prodigious genius \nin his day, and rode proudly in it, envied by the more \nfortunate pedestrian, and cushioned by his own in- \nflated imagination. If the chariot of Achilles were \nlike it, then was Hector happier at the tail than the son \nof Thetis on the box. It is an oblong basket upon \ntwo wheels, with a single seat rising in the middle. \nWe had not jarred over a hundred yards of the Quattro \nFontane, before we discovered that no elastic pro- \npugnaculum had been interposed between the body \nand the axle, so that v/e sat, as it were, on paving- \nstones, mitigated only by so much as well -seasoned \nilex is less flinty-hearted than tiijo or breccia. If there \nwere any truth in the theory of developments, I am \ncertain that we should have been furnished with a \npair of rudimentary elliptical springs, a I least, before \nhalf our day\'s journey was over. However, as one of \n\n\n\nITALY. 147 \n\nthose happy illustrations of ancient manners, which \none meets with so often here, it was instructive; for \nI now clearly understand that it was not merely by \nreason of pomp that Hadrian used to be three days \nin getting to his villa, only twelve miles off. In spite \nof the author of "Vestiges," Nature, driven to ex- \ntremities, can develop no more easy cushion than a \nblister, and no doubt treated an ancient emperor and \na modern republican with severe impartiality. \n\nIt was difficult to talk without biting one\'s tongue; \nbut as soon as we had got fairly beyond the gate, and \nout of sight of the last red-legged French soldier, and \ntightly-buttoned doganiere, our driver became loqua- \ncious. \n\n"I am a good Cathohc, \xe2\x80\x94 better than most," said \nhe, suddenly. \n\n"What do you mean by that?" \n\n"Eh! they say Saint Peter wrought miracles, and \nthere are enough who don\'t believe it; but / do. \nThere \'s the Barberini Palace, \xe2\x80\x94 behoM one miracle \nof Saint Peter ! There \'s tlie Farnese, \xe2\x80\x94 behold \nanother ! There \'s the Borghcse, \xe2\x80\x94 behold a third ! \nBut there \'s no end of them. No saint, nor all tlie \nsaints put together, ever worked so many wonders as \nhe; and then, per Bacco ! he is the uncle of so many \nfolks, \xe2\x80\x94 why, that \'s a miracle in itself, and of the \ngreatest!" \n\nPresently he added : "Do you know how we shall treat \nthe priests when v/e make our next revolution? Vv^\'e \nshall treat them as they treat us, and that is after the \nfashion of the buffalo. For the buffalo is not content \n\n\n\n148 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwith getting a man down, but after that he gores him \nand thrusts him, always, always, as if he wished to \ncram him to the centre of the earth. Ah, if I were only \nkeeper of hell-gate ! Not a rascal of them all should \never get out into purgatory while I stood at the \ndoor!" \n\nWe remonstrated a little, but it only exasperated \nhim the more. \n\n\'* Blood of Judas! they will eat nothing else than \ngold, when a poor fellow\'s belly is as empty as San \nLorenzo yonder. They \'11 have enough of it one of \nthese days \xe2\x80\x94 but melted ! How do you think they \nwill Hke it for soup?" \n\nPerhaps, if our vehicle had been blessed with springs \nour vetturino would have been more placable. I con- \nfess a growing moroseness in myself, and a wander- \ning speculation or two as to the possible fate of the \nbuilder of our chariot in the next world. But I am \nmore and more persuaded every day, that, as far as \nthe popular mind is concerned, Romanism is a dead \nthing in Italy. It survives only because there is noth- \ning else to replace it with, for men must wear their old \nhabits (however threadbare and out at the elbows) \ntill they get better. It is literally a superstition, \xe2\x80\x94 \na something left to stand over till the great commercial \nspirit of the nineteenth century balances his accounts \nagain, and then it will be banished to the limbo of \nprofit and loss. The Papacy lies dead in the Vatican, \nbut the secret is kept for the present, and government \nis carried on in its name. After the fact gets abroad, \nperhaps its ghost will terrify men a little while longer, \n\n\n\nITAL V. 149 \n\nbut only while they are in the dark, though the ghost \nof a creed is a hard thing to give a mortal wound to, \nand may be laid, after all, only in a Red Sea of blood. \n\nSo we rattled along till we came to a large albergo \njust below the village of Colonna. While our horse \nwas taking his rinfresco, we climbed up to it, and \nfound it desolate enough, \xe2\x80\x94 the houses never rebuilt \nsince Consul Rienzi sacked it five hundred years ago. \n1l was a kind of gray incrustation on the top of the \nhill, chiefly inhabited by pigs, chickens, and an old \nwoman with a distaff, who looked as sacked and \nruinous as ever}^thing around her. There she sat in \nthe sun, a dreary, doting Clotho, who had outlived \nher sisters, and span endless destinies which none \nwas left to cut at the appointed time. Of course she \npaused from her work a moment, and held out a \nskinny hand, with the usual, "Noblest gentlemen, \ngive me something for charity." We gave her \nenough to pay Charon\'s ferriage across to her sisters, \nand departed hastily, for there was something un- \ncanny about the place. In this climate even the \nfinger-marks of Ruin herself are indelible, and the \nwalls were still blackened with Rienzi\' s fires. \n\nAs we vvaited for our carreUella, I saw four or five \nof the lowest-looking peasants come up and read the \nhandbill of a tombola (a kind of lottery) which was \nstuck up beside the inn-door. One of them read it \naloud for our benefit, and with remarkable propriety \nof accent and emphasis. This benefit of clergy, how- \never, is of no great consequence where there is nothing \nto read. In Rome, this morning, the walls were \n\n\n\nI50 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nspattered with placards condemning the works of \nGeorge Sand, Eugene Sue, Gioberti, and others. \nBut in Rome one may contrive to read any book he \nhkes; and I know Itahans who are famiHar with \nSwedenborg, and even Strauss. \n\nOur stay at the albergo was illustrated by one other \nevent, \xe2\x80\x94 a nightingale singing in a full-blossomed \nelder-bush on the edge of a brook just across the road. \nSo hquid were the notes, and so full of spring, that the \ntwig he tilted on seemed a conductor through which \nthe mingled magnetism of brook and blossom flowed \ninto him and were precipitated in music. Nature \nunderstands thoroughly the value of contrasts, and \naccordingly a donkey from a shed hard by, hitched \nand hesitated and agonized through his bray, so that \nwe might be conscious at once of the positive and \nnegative poles of song. It was pleasant to see with \nwhat undoubting enthusiasm he went through his \nsolo, and vindicated Providence from the imputation \nof weakness in making such trifles as the nightingale \nyonder. *\' Give ear, O heaven and earth ! " he seemed \nto say, *\'nor dream that good, sound common-sense \nis\xc2\xab extinct or out of fashion so long as / live." I sup- \npose Nature made the donkey half abstractedly, while \nshe was feeling her way up to her ideal in the horse, \nand that his bray is in like manner an experimental \nsketch for the neigh of her iinished animal. \n\nWe drove on to Palestrina, passing for some dis- \ntance over an old Roman road, as carriageable as \nwhen It was built. Palestrina occupies the place of \nthe once famous Temple of Fortune, v/hose ruins \n\n\n\nITAL Y. 151 \n\nare perhaps a fitter monument of the fickle goddess \nthan ever the perfect fane was. \n\nCome hither, weary ghosts tliat wail \nO\'er buried Nimroud\'s carven walls, \n\nAnd ye whose nightly footsteps frail \n\nFrom the dread hu--.h of Memphian halls \nLead forth tlie whispering funerals ! \n\nCome hither, shade of ancient pain \nThat, muffled sitting, hear\'st the foam \n\nTo death-deaf Carthage shout in vain, \nAnd thou that in the Sibyl\'s tome \nTear-stain\'st the never after Rome ! \n\nCome, Marius, Wolsey, all ye great \n\nOn whom proud Fortime stamped her heel, \n\nAnd see herself the sport of Fate, \n\nHerself discrowned and made to feel \nThe treason of her slippery wheel ! \n\nOne climbs through a great part of the town by \nstone steps, passing fragments of Pelasgic wall, (for \nhistory, like geology, may be studied here in succes- \nsive rocky strata,) and at length reaches the inn, called \nthe Cappellaro, the sign of which is a great tin cardi- \nnal\'s hat, swinging from a small building on the other \nside of the street, so that a better view of it may be \nhad from the hostelry itself. The landlady, a stout \nwoman of about sixty years, welcomed us heartily, \nand burst forth into an eloquent eulogy on some fresh \nsea-fish which she had just received from Rome. She \npromised everything for dinner, leaving us to choose; \nbut as a skilful juggler flitters the cards before you, \nand, while he seems to offer all, forces upon you the \none he wishes, so we found that whenever we under- \ntook to select from her voluble bill of fare, we had in \n\n\n\n152 FIRESIDE TRAVEIS, \n\nsome unaccountable manner always ordered sea- \nfish. Therefore, after a few vain efforts, we con- \ntented ourselves, and, while our dinner was cooking, \nclimbed up to the top of the town. Here stands the \ndeserted Palazzo Barberini, in which is a fine Roman \nmosaic pavement. It was a dreary old place. On \nthe ceilings of some of the apartments were fading out \nthe sprawling apotheoses of heroes of the family, \n(themselves long ago faded utterly,) who probably went \nthrough a somewhat different ceremony after their \ndeaths from that represented here. One of the rooms \non the ground-floor was still occupied, and from its \nhuge grated windows there swelled and subsided at \nintervals a confused turmoil of voices, some talking, \nsome singing, some swearing, and some lamenting, as \nif a page of Dante\'s Inferno had become suddenly \nalive under one\'s eye. This was the prison, and in \nfront of each window a large stone block allowed tHe- \nci\'tete discourses between the prisoners and their \nfriends outside. Behind the palace rises a steep, \nrocky hill, with a continuation of ruined castle, the \ninnocent fastness now of rooks and swallows. We \nwalked down to a kind of terrace, and watched the \nAlban Mount (which saw the sunset for us by proxy) \ntill the bloom trembled nearer and nearer to its sum- \nmit, then went wholly out, we could not say when, \nand day was dead. Simultaneously we thought of \ndining, and clattered hastily down to the Cappellaro. \nWe had to wait yet half an hour for dinner, and from \nwhere I sat I could see through the door of the dining- \nroom a kind of large hall into which a door from the \n\n\n\nITALY. 153 \n\nkitchen also opened. Presently I saw the landlady- \ncome out with a little hanging lamp in her hand, and \nseat herself amply before a row of baskets ranged \nupside-down along the wall. She carefully lifted the \nedge of one of these, and, after she had groped in it a \nmoment, I heard that hoarse choking scream peculiar \nto fowls when seized by the leg in the dark, as if their \nthroats were in their tibiae after sunset. She took out \na fine young cock and set him upon his feet before \nher, stupid with sleep, and blinking helplessly at the \nlamp, which he perhaps took for a sun in reduced \ncircumstances, doubtful whether to crow or cackle. \nShe looked at him admiringly, felt of him, sighed, \ngazed sadly at his coral crest, and put him back again. \nThis ceremony she repeated with five or six of the \nbaskets, and then went back into the kitchen. I \nthought of Thessalian hags and Arabian enchantresses, \nand wondered if these were transformed travellers \xe2\x80\x94 \nfor travellers go through queer transformations some- \ntimes. Should Storg and I be crowing and scratching \nto-morrow morning, instead of going to Subiaco? \nShould we be Plato\'s men, with the feathers, instead \nof without them? I would probe this mystery. So, \nwhen the good woman came in to lay the table, I asked \nwhat she had been doing with the fowls. \n\n"I thought to kill one for the gentlemen\'s soup; \nbut they were so beautiful my heart failed vna. Still, \nif the gentlemen wish it \xe2\x80\x94 only I thought two pigeons \nwould be more delicate." \n\nOf course we declined to be accessory to such a \nmurder, and she went off delighted, returning in a \n\n\n\n154 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nfew minutes with our dinner. First we had soup, \nthen a roasted kid, then boiled pigeons, (of which the \nsoup had been made,) and last the pesci di mare, which \nwere not quite so great a novelty to us as to our good \nhostess. However, hospitality, like so many other \nthings, is reciprocal, and the guest must bring his half, \nor it is naught. The prosperity of a dinner lies in the \nheart of him that eats it, and an appetite twelve miles \nlong enabled us to do as great justice to the fish as if \nwe were crowding all Lent into our merl. The land- \nlady came and sat by us; a large and serious cat, \nwinding her great tail around her, settled herself com- \nfortably on the table, licking her paws now and then, \nwith a poor relation\'s look at the fish; a small dog \nsprang into an empty chair, and a large one, with \nvery confidential manners, would go from one to the \nother of us, laying his paw upon our arms as if he had \nan important secret to communicate, and alternately \npricking and drooping his ears in hope or despond- \nency. The albergatrice forthwith began to tell us her \nstory, \xe2\x80\x94 how she was a widow, how she had borne \nthirteen children, twelve still living, and how she re- \nceived a pension of sixty scudi a year, under the old \nRoman law, for her meritoriousness in this respect. \nThe portrait of the son she had lost hung over the \nchimney-place, and, pointing to it, she burst forth into \nthe following dro\'l threnody. The remarks in paren- \nthesis v/ere screamed through the kitchen -door, v/hich \nstood ajar, or addressed personally to us. \n\n\'\'O my son, my son ! the doctors killed him, just as \ntruly as if they had poisoned him ! O how beautiful \n\n\n\nITALY. 155 \n\nhe was! beautiful! beautiful !! beautiful!!! (Are \nnot those fish done yet?) \'Look, that is his Hkeness, \xe2\x80\x94 \nbut he was handsomer. He was as big as that" (ex- \ntending her arms), \xe2\x80\x94 "big breast, big shoulders, big \nsides, big legs! (Eat \'em, eat \'em, they won\'t hurt \nyou, fresh sea-fish, fresh! fresh /I fresh!!!) I told \nthem the doctors had murdered him, when they car- \nried him with torches! He had been hunting, and \nbrought home some rabbits, I remember, for he was \nnot one that ever came empty-handed, and got the \nfever, and you treated him for consumption, and killed \nhim ! (Shall I come out there, or will you bring some \nmore fish?)" So she went on, talking to herself, to \nus, to the little serva in the kitchen, and to the medi- \ncal profession in general, repeating every epithet three \ntimes, with increasing emphasis, till her voice rose to\' \na scream, and contriving to mix up her living children \nwith her dead one, the fish, the doctors, the serva, and \nthe rabbits, till it was hard to say whether it was the \nfish that had large legs, whether the doctors had killed \nthem, or the serva had killed the doctors, and whether \nthe bello! hello!! hello!!! referred to her son or a \nparticularly fine rabbit. \n\n2^th. \xe2\x80\x94 Having engaged our guide and horses the \nnight before, we set out betimes this morning for Ole- \nvano. From Palestrina to Cavi the road winds along \na narrow valley, following the course of a stream which \nrustles rather than roars below. Large chestnut-trees \nlean every way on the steep sides of the hills above us, \nand at every opening we could see great stretches of \nCampagna rolling away and away toward the bases of \n\n\n\n156 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\npurple mountains streaked with snow. The sides of \nthe road were drifted with* heaps of wild hawthorn \nand honeysuckle in full bloom, and bubbling with in- \nnumerable nightingales that sang unseen. Overhead \nthe sunny sky tinkled with larks, as if the frost in the \nair were breaking up and whirling away on the swollen \ncurrents of spring. \n\nBefore long we overtook a little old man hobbling \ntoward Cavi, with a bag upon his back. This was the \nmail ! Happy country, which Hurry and Worry have \nnot yet subjugated ! Then we clattered up and down \nthe narrow paved streets of Cavi, through the market \nplace, full of men dressed all alike in blue jackets, blue \nbreeches, and white stockings, who do not stare at \nthe strangers, and so out at the farther gate. Now \noftener and oftener we meet groups of peasants in \ngayest dresses, ragged pilgrims with staff and scallop, \nsinging (horribly) ; then processions with bag-pipes \nand pipes in front, droning and squealing (horribly) ; \nthen strings of two-wheeled carts, eight or nine in \neach, and in the first the priest, book in hand, setting \nthe stave, and all singing (horribly). This must be \ninquired into. Gigantic guide, who, splendid with \nblue sash and silver knee-buckles, has contrived, by \nincessant drumming with his heels, to get his mule in \nfront, is hailed. \n\n"Ho, Petruccio, what is the , meaning of all this \npress of people?" \n\n\'^Festa, Lordship, at Genezzano." \n\n"What /^5to.?" \n\n"Of the Madonna, Lordship," and touches his hat, \n\n\n\nITALY. 157 \n\nfor they are all dreadfully afraid of her for some reason \nor other. \n\nWe are in luck, this being the great ]esla of the year \namong the mountains, \xe2\x80\x94 a thing which people go out \nof Rome to see. \n\n"Where is Genezzano?" \n\n\'\'Just over yonder, Lordship," and pointed to the \nleft, where was what seemed like a monstrous crystal- \nlization of rock on the crown of a hill, with three or \nfour taller crags of castle towering in the midst, and \nall gray, except the tiled roofs, whose wrinkled sides \nwere gold -washed with a bright yellow lichen, as if \nripples, turned by some spell to stone, had contrived \nto detain the sunshine with which they were touched \nat the moment of transformation. \n\nThe road, wherever it came into sight, burned with \nbrilliant costumes, like an illuminated page of Frois- \nsart. Gigantic guide meanwhile shows an uncom- \nfortable and fidgety reluctance to turn aside and enter \nfairyland, which is wholly unaccountable. Is the huge \nearthen creature an Afrite, under sacred pledge to Sol- \nomon, and in danger of being sealed up again, if he \nventure near the festival of our Blessed Lady ? If so, \nthat also were a ceremony worth seeing, and we insist. \nHe wriggles and swings his great feet with an evident \nimpulse to begin kicking the sides of his mule again \nand fly. The wa^ over the hills from Genezzano to \nOlevano he pronounces scomodissima, demanding of \nevery peasant who goes by if it be not entirely impass- \nable. This leading question, put in all the tones of \nplausible entreaty he can command, meets the inva- \n\n\n\n158 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nriable reply, "\xc2\xa3 scomoda, davvero ; ma per le bestie \xe2\x80\x94 \ne/i/" (it is bad, of a truth, but for the beasts \xe2\x80\x94 eh !) \nand then one of those indescribable shrugs, unintelli- \ngible at first as the compass to a savage, but in which \nthe expert can make twenty hair\'s-breadth distinc- \ntions between N. E. and N. N. E. \n\nFinding that destiny had written it on his forehead, \n:he guide at last turned and went cantering and kick- \ning toward Genezzano, we following. Just before \nyou reach the town, the road turns sharply to the right, \nand, crossing a little gorge, loses itself in the dark gate- \nway. Outside the gate is an open space, which formi- \ncated with peasantry in every variety of costume that \nwas not Parisian. Laughing women were climbing \nupon their horses (which they bestride like men) ; \npilgrims were chanting, and beggars (the howl of an \nItalian beggar in the country is something terrible) \nhowling in discordant rivalry. It was a scene lively \nenough to make Heraclitus shed a double allowance of \ntears; but our giant was still discomforted. As soon \nas we had entered the gate, he dodged into a litde back \nstreet, just as we were getting out of which the mys- \ntery of his unwillingness was cleared up. He had \nbeen endeavoring to avoid a creditor. But it so \nchanced (as Fate can hang a man with even a rope of \nsand) that the enemy was in position just at the end \nof this very lane, where it debouched into the Piazza \nof the town. \n\nThe disputes of Italians are very droll things, and I \nwill accordingly bag the one which is now imminent, \nas a specimen. They quarrel as unaccountably as \n\n\n\nITAL V. 159 \n\ndogs, who put their noses together, dislike each other\'s \nkind of smell, and instantly tumble one over the other, \nwith noise enough to draw the eyes of a whole street. \nSo these people burst out, without apparent prelimina- \nries, into a noise and fury and war-dance which would \nimply the very utmost pitch and agony of exasperation, \nAnd the subsidence is as sudden. They explode each \nother on mere contact, as if by a law of nature, like \ntwo hostile gases. They do not grow warm, but leap \nat once from zero to some degree of white-heat, to in- \ndicate which no Anglo-Saxon thermometer of wrath \nis highly enough graduated. If I were asked to name \none universal characteristic of an Italian town, I \nshould say, two men clamoring and shaking them- \nselves to pieces at each other, and a woman leaning \nlazily out of a window, and perhaps looking at some- \nthing else. Till one gets used to this kind of thing, one \nexpects some horrible catastrophe; but during eight \nmonths in Italy I have only seen blows exchanged \nthrice. In the present case the explosion was of harm\' \nless gunpowder. \n\n"Why- haven\'t - you-paid-those-fifty-five-bajocchi at \nthe-pizzicarolo\'s?\'\' began the adversary, speakino; \nwith such inconceivable rapidity that he made only \none word, nay, as it seemed, one monosyllable, of the \nwhole sentence. Our giant, with a controversial gen \nius which I should not have suspected in him, immc \ndiately, and with great adroitness, changed the grounl \nof dispute, and, instead of remaining an insolvent \ndebtor, raised himself at once to the ethical position of \na moralist resisting an unjust demand from principle. \n\n\n\nl60 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\n"It was only }orty-fiye,\'\' roared he. \n\n\'\'But I say fifty-five," screamed the other, and \nshook his close-cropped head as a boy does an apple \non the end of a switch, as if he meant presently to jerk \nit ofif at his antagonist. \n\n\'\'BirboneT\' yelled the guide, gesticulating so furi- \nously with every square inch of his ponderous body \nthat I thought he would throw his mule over, the poor \nbeast standing all the while with drooping head and \nears while the thunders of this man-quake burst over \nhim. So feels the tortoise that sustains the globe \nwhen earth suffers fiery convulsions. \n\n"Birbantef retorted the creditor, and the oppro- \nbrious epithet clattered from between his shaking jaws \nas a refractory copper is rattled out of a Jehoiada-box \nby a child. \n\n\'\'Andate vi jar jriggere!" howled giant. \n\n\'\'Andate ditto, ditto!" echoed creditor, \xe2\x80\x94 and be- \nhold, the thing is over ! The giant promises to attend \nto the affair when he comes back, the creditor returns \nto his booth, and we ride on. \n\nSpeaking of Italian quarrels, I am tempted to paren- \nthesize here another which I saw at Civita Vecchia.\' \nWe had been five days on our way from Leghorn in a \nFrench steamer, a voyage performed usually, I think, \nin about thirteen hours. It was heavy weather, blow- \ning what a sailor would call half a gale of wind, and \nthe caution of our captain, not to call it fear, led him \nto put in for shelter first at Porto Ferrajo in Elba, and \nthen at Santo Stefano on the Italian coast. Our little \nblack water-beetle of a mail-packet was knocked \n\n\n\nITALY. 1 61 \n\nabout pretty well, and all the Italia^ passengers dis- \nappeared in the forward cabin before we were out of \nport. When we were fairly at anchor within the har- \nbor of Civita Vecchia, they crawled out again, sluggish \nas winter flies, their vealy faces mezzotinted with soot. \nOne of them presently appeared in the custom- \nhouse, his only luggage being a cage closely covered \nwith a dirty red handkerchief, which represented his \nHnen. \n\n"What have you in the cage?" asked the doganiere. \n\n"Eh! nothing other than a parrot." \n\n"There is a duty of one scudo and one bajoccho, \nthen." \n\n\'^ Santo diavolo! but what hoggishness ! " \n\nThereupon instant and simultaneous blow-up, or \nrather a series of explosions, like those in honor of a \nNeapolitan saint\'s-day, lasting about ten minutes, and \nfollowed by as sudden quiet. In the course of it, the \nowner of the bird, playing irreverently on the first half \nof its name (pappagRllo), hinted that it would be a \nhigh duty for his Holiness himself {Papay. After a \npause for breath, he said quietly, as if nothing had \nhappened, "Very good, then, since I must pay, I will," \nand began fumbling for the money. \n\n"Meanwhile, do me the politeness to show me the \nbird," said the officer. \n\n"With all pleasure," and, lifting a corner of the \nhandkerchief, there lay the object of dispute on his \nback, stone-dead, with his claws curled up helplessly \non each side of his breast. I believe the owner would \nhave been pleased had it even been his grandmother \n\n\n\n1 62 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nwho had thus evaded duty, so exquisite is the pleasure \nof an ItaHan in escaping payment of anything. \n\n"I make a present of the poor bird," said he \nblandly. \n\nThe publican, however, seemed to feel that he had \nbeen somehow cheated, and I left them in high debate, \nas to whether the bird were dead when it entered the \ncustom-house, and, if it had been, whether a dead \nparrot were dutiable. Do not blame me for being en- \ntertained and trying to entertain you with these trifles. \nI remember Virgil\'s stern \n\n"Che p<.n- poco e che teco non mi risso," \n\nbut Dante\'s journey was of more import to himself \nand others than mine. \n\nI am struck by the freshness and force of the pas- \nsions in Europeans, and cannot help feeling as if there \nwere something healthy in it. When I think of the \nversatile and accommodating habits of America, it \nseems like a land without thunder-storms. In pro- \nportion a?S man grows commercial, does he also be- \ncome dispassionate and incapable of electric emotions? \nThe driving-wheels of all-powerful nature are in the \nback of the head, and, as man is the highest type of \norganization, so a nation is better or worse as it ad- \nvances toward the highest type of man, or recedes from \nit. But it is ill with a nation when the cerebrum sucks \nthe cerebellum dry, for it cannot live by intellect alone. \nThe broad foreheads always carry the day at last, but \nonly when they are based on or buttressed with massive \nhind-heads. It would be easier to make a people \n\n\n\nITALY. 163 \n\ngreat in whom the animal is vigorous, than to keep one \nso after it has begun to spindle into over-intellectuality. \nThe hands that have grasped dominion and held it \nhave been large and hard; those from which it has \nslipped, delicate, and apt for the lyre and the pencil. \nMoreover, brain is always to be bought, but passion \nnever comes to market. On the whole, I am rather \ninclined to like this European impatience and fire, \neven while I laugh at it, and sometimes find myself \nsurmising whether a people who, like the Americans, \nput up quietly with all sorts of petty personal imposi- \ntions and injustices, will not at length find it too great \na bore to quarrel with great public wrongs. \n\nMeanwhile, I must remember that I am in Genez- \nzano, and not in the lecturer\'s desk. We walked \nabout for an hour or two, admiring the beauty and \ngrand bearing of the women, and the picturesque vi- \nvacity and ever-renewing unassuetude of the whole \nscene. Take six of the most party-colored dreams, \nbreak them to pieces, put them into a fantasy-kaleido- \nscope, and when you look through it you will see some- \nthing that for strangeness, vividness, and mutability \nlooked like the little Piazza of Genezzano seen from \nthe church porch. As we wound through the narrow \nstreets again to the stables where we had left our \nhorses, a branch of laurel or ile.x would mark a wine- \nshop, and, looking till our eye cooled and toned itself \ndown to dusky sympathy with the crypt, we could see \nthe smoky interior sprinkled with white head-cloths \nand scarlet bodices, with here and there a yellow spot \nof lettuce or the red inward gleam of a wine-flask. \n\n\n\n164 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nThe head-dress is precisely of that most ancient pat- \ntern seen on Egyptian statues, and so colossal are \nmany of the wearers, that you might almost think you \nsaw a party of young sphinxes carousing in the sunless \ncore of a pyramid. \n\nWe remounted our beasts, and, for about a mile, \ncantered gayly along a fine road, and then turned into \na by-path along the flank of a mountain. Here the \nguide\'s strada scomodissima began, and we were forced \nto dismount, and drag our horses downward for a mile \nor two. We crossed a small plain in the valley, and \nthen began to climb the opposite ascent. The path \nwas perhaps four feet broad, and was paved with \nirregularly shaped blocks of stone, which, having been \nraised and lowered, tipped, twisted, undermined, and \ngenerally capsized by the rains and frosts of centuries, \npresented the most diabolically ingenious traps and \npit-falls. All the while the scenery was beautiful. \nMountains of every shape and hue changed their slow \noutlines ever as we moved, now opening, now closing \naround us, sometimes peering down solemnly at us \nover each other\'s shoulders, and then sinking slowly \nout of sight, or, at some sharp turn of the path, seem- \ning to stride into the valley and confront us with their \ncraggy challenge, \xe2\x80\x94 a challenge which the little val- \nleys accepted, if we did not, matching their rarest tints \nof gray and brown, and pink and purple, or that royal \ndye to make which all these were profusely melted \ntogether, for a moment\'s ornament, with as many \nshades of various green and yellow. Gray towns \ncrowded and clung on the tops of peaks that seemed \n\n\n\nITALY. 165 \n\ninaccessible. We owe a great deal of picturesqueness \nto the quarrels and thieveries of the barons of the \nMiddle Ages. The traveller and artist should put up \na prayer for their battered old souls. It was to be out \nof their way and that of the Saracens that people were \ndriven to make their homes in spots so sublime and \ninconvenient that the eye alone finds it pleasant to \nclimb up to them. Nothing else but an American \nland-company ever managed to induce settlers upon \nterritory of such uninhabitable quality. I have seen \nan insect that makes a mask for himself out of the \nlichens of the rock over which he crawls, contriving \nso to deceive the birds; and the towns in this wild \nregion would seem to have been built on the same prin- \nciple. Made of the same stone with the cliffs on which \nthey perch, it asks good eyesight to make them out at \nthe distance of a few miles, and every wandering \nmountain-mist annihilates them for the moment. \n\nAt intervals, I could hear the giant, after digging at \nthe sides of his mule with his spurless heels, growling \nto himself, and imprecating an apoplexy (accidente) \nupon the path and him who made it. This is the uni- \nversal malediction here, and once it was put into \nrhyme for my benefit. I was coming down the rusty \nsteps of San Gregorio one day, and having paid no \nheed to a stout woman of thirty odd who begged some- \nwhat obtrusively, she screamed after me, \n\n" Ah, vi pigli un accidente, \nVoi che non date niente ! " \n\nAh, may a sudden apoplexy, \n\nYou who give not, come and vex ye ! \n\n\n\n1 66 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nOur guide could not long appease his mind with this \nmilder type of objurgation, but soon intensified it into \naccidentaccio, which means a selected apoplexy of un- \ncommon size and ugliness. As the path grew worse \nand worse, so did the repetition of this phrase (for he \nwas slow of invention) become more frequent, till at \nlast he did nothing but kick and curse, \xe2\x80\x94 mentally, \nI have no doubt, including us in his malediction. I \nthink it would have gratified Longinus or Fuseli (both \nof whom commended swearing) to have heard him. \nBefore long we turned the flank of the hill by a little \nshrine of the Madonna, and there was Olevano just \nabove us. Like the other towns in this district, it was \nthe diadem of an abrupt peak of rock. From the \nmidst of it jutted the ruins of an old stronghold of the \nColonna. Probably not a house has been built in it \nfor centuries. To enter the town, we literally rode \nup a long flight of stone steps, and soon found our- \nselves in the Piazza. We stopped to buy some cigars, \nand the zigararo, as he rolled them up, asked if we did \nnot want dinner. We told him we should get\' it at \nthe inn. Benissimo, he would be there before us. \nWhat he meant, we could not divine; but it turned \nout that he was the landlord, and that the inn only \nbecame such when strangers arrived, relapsing again \nimmediately into a private dwelling. We found our \nhost ready to receive us, and went up to a large room \non the first floor. . After due instructions, we seated \nourselves at the open windows, \xe2\x80\x94 Storg to sketch, and \nI to take a mental calotype of the view. Among the \nmany lovely ones of the day, this was the loveliest, \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n\n\nITALY. 167 \n\nor was it only that the charm of repose was added? \nOn our right was the silent castle, and beyond it the \nsilent mountains. . To the left we looked down over \nthe clustering houses upon a campagna-valley of \npeaceful cultivation, vineyards, oHve-orchards, grain- \nfields, in their earliest green, and dark stripes of new- \nploughed earth, over which the cloud-shadows melted \ntracklessly toward the hills which round softly up- \nward to Monte Cavi. \n\nWhen our dinner came, and with it a flask of drowsy \nred Aleatico, like ink with a suspicion of life-blood in \nit, such as one might fancy Shakespeare to have dipped \nhis quill in, we had our table so placed that the satis- \nfaction of our hunger might be dissensualized by the \nview from the windows. Many a glutton has eaten \nup farms and woodlands- and pastures, and so did we, \naesthetically, saucing our jrittata and flavoring our \nAleatico with landscape. It is a fine thing when we \ncan accustom our animal appetites to good society, \nwhen body and soul (like master and servant in an \nArab tent) sit down together at the same board. This \nthought is forced upon one very often in Italy, as one \npicnics in enchanted spots, where Imagination and \nFancy play the parts of the unseen waiters in the fairy \nstory, and serve us with course after course of their \nethereal dishes. Sense is satisfied with less and sim- \npler food when sense and spirit are fed together, and \nthe feast of the loaves and fishes is spread for us anew. \nIf it be important for a state to educate its lower classes, \nso is it for us personally to instruct, elevate, and refine \nour senses, the lower classes of our private body-politic, \n\n\n\n1 68 FIRESIDE TRAVELS, \n\nand which, if left to their own brute instincts, will dis- \norder or destroy the whole commonwealth with flam- \ning insurrection. \n\nAfter dinner came our guide to be paid. He, too, \nhad had his jrittata and his fiasco (or two), and came \nback absurdly comic, reminding one of the giant who \nwas so taken in by the little tailor. He was not in the \nleast tipsy; but the wine had excited his poor wits, \nwhose destiny it was (awkward servants as they were !) \nto trip up and tumble over each other in proportion \nas they became zealous. He was very anxious to do \nus in some way or other; he only vaguely guessed how, \nbut felt so gigantically good-natured that he could not \nkeep his face sober long enough. It is quite clear why \nthe Italians have no word but recitare to express acting, \nfor their stage is no more theatric than their street, and \nto exaggerate in the least would be ridiculous. We \ngraver tempered and mannered Septentrions must give \nthe pegs a screw or two to bring our spirits up to nat- \nure\'s concert-pitch. Storg and I sat enjoying the ex- \nhibition of our giant, as if we had no more concern in \nit than as a comedy. It -was nothing but a spectacle \nto us, at which we were present as critics, while he \ninveighed, expostulated, argued, and besought, in a \nbreath. Finding all his attempts miscarry, or result- \ning in nothing more solid than applause, he said, \n^^Forse non capiscono?" (Perhaps you don\'t under- \nstand?) "Capiscono pur\' troppo,\'\' (They understand \nonly too well,) replied the landlord, upon which terrce \n-filius burst into a laugh, and began begging for more \nhuonamano. Failing in this, he tightened his sash, \n\n\n\nITALY. 169 \n\noffered to kiss our lordships\' hands, an act of homage \nwhich we decHned, and departed, carefully avoiding \nGenezzano on his return, I make no doubt. \n\nWe paid our bill, and went down to the door, where \nwe found our guides and donkeys, the host\'s hand- \nsome wife and handsomer daughter, with two of her \ndaughters, and a crowd of women and children wait- \ning to witness the exit of the foreigners. We made all \nthe mothers and children happy by a discriminating \nlargesse of copper among the little ones. They are a \ncharming people, the natives of these out-of-the-way \nItalian towns, if kindness, courtesy, and good looks \nmake people charming. Our beards and felt hats, \nwhich make us pass for artists, were our passporis to \nthe warmest welcome and the best cheer everywhere. \nReluctantly we mounted our donkeys, and trotted \naway, our guides (a man and a boy) running by the \nflank (true henchmen, haunchmen, flanquiers or flun- \nkeys) and inspiring the little animals with pokes in the \nside, or with the even more effectual ahrrrrrrr ! Is \nthere any radical affinity between this rolling fire of \nr\'s and the word arra, which means hansel or earnest \nmoney? The sound is the same, and has a marvel- \nlous spur-power over the donkey, who seems to under- \nstand that full payment of goad or cudgel is to follow. \nI have known it to move even a Sicilian mule, the \nleast sensitive and most obstinate of creatures with \nears, except a British church-warden. \n\nWe wound along under a bleak hill, more desolate \nthan anything I had ever seen. The old gray rocks \nseemed not to thrust themselves out of the rusty soil, \n\n\n\nI/O FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nbut rather to be stabbed into it, as if they had been \nhailed down upon it by some volcano. There was \nnearly as much look of design as there is in a druidical \ncircle, and the whole looked like some graveyard in an \nextinguished world, the monument of mortality itself, \nsuch as Bishop Wilkins might have found in the moon, \nif he had ever got thither. The path grew ever wilder, \nand Rojate, the next town we came to, grim and \ngrizzly, under a grim and grizzly sky of low-trailing \nclouds, which had suddenly gathered, looked drearier \neven than the desolations we had passed. It was easy \nto understand why rocks should like to live here well \nenough; but what could have brought men hither, \nand then kept them here^ was beyond all reasonable \nsurmise. Barren hills stood sullenly aloof all around, \nincapable of any crop but lichens. \n\nWe entered the gate, and found ourselves in the \nmidst of a group of wild-looking men gathered about \nthe door of a wine-shop. Some of them were armed \nwith long guns, and we saw (for the first time in situ) \nthe tall bandit hat with ribbons wound round it, \xe2\x80\x94 such \nas one is familiar with in operas, and on the heads of \nthose inhabitants of the Scalimata in Rome, who have \na costume of their own, and placidly serve as models \nthrough the whole pictorial range of divine and hu- \nman nature, from the Padre Eterno to Judas. Twenty \nyears ago, when my notion of an Italian was divided \nbetween a monk and a bravo, the first of whom did \nnothing but enter at secret doors and drink your health \nin poison, while the other lived behind corners, support- \ning himself by the productive industry of digging your \n\n\n\nITALY. 171 \n\nperson all over with a stiletto, I should have looked \nfor instant assassination from these carousing \nruffians. But the only blood shed on the Occasion \nwas that of the grape. A ride over the mountains for \ntwo hours had made us thirsty, and two or three ba- \njocchi gave a tumbler of vino asciutto to all four of us. \n"You are welcome," said one of the men, "we are \nall artists after a fashion; we are all brothers." The \nmanners here are more republican, and the title of \nlordship disappears altogether. Another came up and \ninsisted that we should drink a second flask of wine \nas his guests. In vain we protested ; no artist should \npass through Rojate without accepting that token of \ngood-will, and with the liberal help of our guides we \ncontrived to gulp it down. He was for another; but \nwe protested that we were entirely full, and that it \nwas impossible. I dare say the poor fellow would \nhave spent a week\'s earnings on us, if we would have \nallowed it. We proposed to return the civility, and \nto leave a paul for them to drink a good journey to us \nafter we were gone; but they would not listen to it. \nOur entertainer followed us along to the Piazza, beg- \nging one of us to let him serve as donkey-drivet to \nSubiaco. When this was denied, he said that there \nwas a jesta here also, and that we must stop long \nenough to see the procession of zitelle (young girls), \nwhich would soon begin. But evening was already \ngathering, the clouds grew momently darker, and \nfierce, damp gusts, striking us with the suddenness \nof a blow, promised a wild night. We had still eight \nmiles of mountain-path before us, and we struggled \n\n\n\n1/2 I\' I RESIDE TRAVELS. \n\naway. As we crossed the next summit beyond the \ntown, a sound of chanting drifted by us on the wind, \nwavered hither and thither, now heard, now lost, then \na doubtful something between song and gust, and, \nlingering a few moments, we saw the white head-dresses, \ngliding two by two, across a gap between the houses. \nThe scene and the music were both in neutral tints, a \nsketch, as it were, in sepia a little blurred. \n\nBefore long the clouds almost brushed us as they \neddied silently by, and then it began to rain, first mist- \nily, and then in thick, hard drops. Fortunately there \nwas a moon, shining placidly in the desert heaven \nabove all this turmoil, or we could not have found our \npath, which in a few moments became a roaring tor- \nrent almost knee-deep. It was a cold rain, and far \nabove us, where the mountain -peaks tore gaps in the \nclouds, we could see the white silence of new-fallen \nsnow. Sometimes we had to dismount and wade, \xe2\x80\x94 \na circumstance which did not make our saddles more \ncomfortable when we returned to them and could \nhear them go crosh^ crosh, as the water gurgled out of \nthem at every jolt. There was no hope of shelter \nnearer than Subiaco, no sign of man, and no sound \nbut the multitudinous roar of waters on every side. \nRivulet whispered to rivulet, and water-fall shouted \nto water -fall, as they leaped from rock to rock, all \nhurrying to reinforce the main torrent below, which \nhummed onward toward the Anib with dilated heart. \nSo gathered the hoarse Northern swarms to descend \nupon sunken Italy; and so forever does physical and \nintellectual force seek its fatal equilibrium, rushing \n\n\n\nITALY. 173 \n\nin and occupying wherever it is drawn by the attrac- \ntion of a lower level. \n\nWe forded large streams that had been dry beds an. \nhour before; and so sudden was the creation of the \nfloods, that it gave one almost as fresh a feeling of \nwater as if one had been present in Eden when the \nfirst rock gave birth to the first fountain. I had a \nsevere cold, I was wet through from the hips down- \nward, and yet I never enjoyed anything more in my \nHfe, \xe2\x80\x94 so different is the shower-bath to which we \ndoom ourselves from that whose string is pulled by \nthe prison-warden compulsion. After our little bear- \ners had tottered us up and down the dusky steeps of a \nfew more mountain-spurs, where a misstep would \nhave sent us spinning down the fathomless black no- \nwhere below, we came out upon the high-road, and \nfound it a fine one, as all the great Italian roads are. \nThe rain broke off suddenly, and on the left, seeming \nabout half a mile away, sparkled the hghts of Subiaco, \nflashing intermittently hke a knot of fire-flies in a \nmeadow. The town, owing to the necessary wind- \nings of the road, was still three miles off, and just as \nthe guides had progued and ahrred the donkeys into \na brisk joggle, I resolved to give up my saddle to the \nboy, and try Tom Coryate\'s compasses. It was \npartly out of humanity to myself and partly to him, \nfor he was dred and I was cold. The elder guide \nand I took the lead, and, as I looked back, I laughed \nto see the lolling ears of Storg\'s donkey thrust from \nunder his long cloak, as if he were coming out from a \nblack Arab tent. We soon left them behind, and \n\n\n\n174 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\npaused at a bridge over the Anio till we heard the \npatter of little hoofs again. The bridge is a single \narch, bent between the steep edges of a gorge through \nwhich the Anio huddled far below, showing a green \ngleam here and there in the struggling moonlight, as \nif a fish rolled up his burnished flank. After another \nmile and a half, we reached the gate, and awaited our \ncompanions. It was dreary enough, \xe2\x80\x94 waiting al- \nways is, \xe2\x80\x94 and as the snow-chilled wind whistled \nthrough the damp archway where we stood, my legs \nillustrated feelingly to me how they cool water in the \nEast, by wrapping the jars with wet woollen, and set- \nting them in a draught. At last they came; I re- \nmounted, and we went sliding through the steep, wet \nstreets till we had fairly passed through the whole \ntown. Before a long building of two stories, without \na symptom of past or future light, we stopped. "" Ecco \nla PalettaV said the guide, and began to pound furi- \nously on the door with a large stone, which he some \ntime before provided for the purpose. After a long \nperiod of sullen irresponsiveness, we heard descending \nfootsteps, light streamed through the chinks of the \ndoor, and the invariable "C/^i <?.?" which precedes \nthe unbarring of all portals here, came from within. \n^^Due forestieri," answered the guide, and the bars \nratded in hasty welcome. \'\'Make us," we exclaimed, \nas we stiffly climbed down from our perches, "your \nbiggest fire in your biggest chimney, and then we will \ntalk of supper!" In five minutes two great laurel- \nfagots were spitting and crackling in an enormous \nfire-place; and Storgand I were in the costume which \n\n\n\nITALY. 175 \n\nDon Quixote wore on the Brown Mountain. Of \ncourse there was nothing for supper but a jrittata; \nbut there are worse things in the world than a jrittata \ncol prosciutto, and we discussed it like a society just \nemerging from barbarism, the upper half of our per- \nsons presenting all the essentials of an advanced civ- \nilization, while our legs skulked under the table as \nfree from sartorial impertinences as those of the noblest \nsavage that ever ran wild in the woods. And so eccoci \nfinalmente arrivati ! \n\n2\'jth. \xe2\x80\x94 Nothing can be more lovely than the scen- \nery about Subiaco. The town itself is built on a kind \nof cone rising from the midst of a valley abounding \nin olives and vines, with a superb mountain horizon \naround it, and the green Anio cascading at its feet. As \nyou walk to the high-perched convent of San Bene \ndetto, you look across the river on your right just after \nleaving the town, to a cliff over which the ivy pours in \ntorrents, and in which dwellings have been hollowed \nout. In the black doorway of every one sits a woman \nin scarlet bodice and white head -gear, with a distaff \nspinning, while overhead countless nightingales sing \nat once from the fringe of shrubbery. The glorious \ngreat white clouds look over the mountain -tops into \nour enchanted valley, and sometimes a lock of their \nvapory wool would be torn off, to lie for a while in \nsome inaccessible ravine like a snow-drift; but it \nseemed as if no shadow could fly over our privacy of \nsunshine to-day. The approach to the monastery is \ndelicious. You pass out of the hot sun into the green \nshadows of ancient ilexes, leaning and twisting every \n\n\n\n176 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nway that is graceful, their branches velvety with bril- \nHant moss, in which grow feathery ferns, fringing \nthem with a halo of verdure. Then comes the con- \nvent, with its pleasant old monks, who show their \nsacred vessels (one by Cellini) and their relics, among \nwhich is a finger-bone of one of the Innocents. Lower \ndown is a convent of Santa Scolastica, where the first \nbook was printed in Italy. \n\nBut though one may have daylight till after twenty- \nfour o\'clock in Italy, the days are no longer than ours, \nand I must go back to La Paletta to see about a vettura \nto Tivoli. I leave Storg sketching, and walk slowly \ndown, lingering over the ever-changeful views, lin- \ngering opposite the nightingale-cliff, but get back to \nSubiaco and the veUurino at last. The growl of a \nthunder-storm soon brought Storg home, and we leave \nSubiaco triumphantly, at five o\'clock, in a light car- \nriage, drawn by three gray stallions (harne\'ssed \nabreast) on the full gallop. I cannot describe our \ndrive, the mountain-towns, with their files of girls \nwinding up from the fountain with balanced water- \njars of ruddy copper, or chattering around it bright- \nhued as parrots, the ruined castles, the green gleams \nof the capricious river, the one great mountain that \nsoaked up all the rose of sunset, and, after all else grew \ndim, still glowed as if with inward fires, and, later, the \nwhite spray smoke of Tivoli that drove down the \nvalley under a clear cold moon, contrasting strangely \nwith the red glare of the lime-furnace on the opposite \nhillside. It is well that we can be happy sometimes \nwithout peeping and botanizing in the materials that \n\n\n\nITALY. 177 \n\nmake us so. It is not often that we can escape the \nevil genius of analysis that haunts our modern day- \nlight of self- consciousness {wir hahen ja aujgekldrt!) \nand enjoy a day of right Chaucer. \n\nP.S. Now that I am printing this, a dear friend \nsends me an old letter, and says, \'\'Slip in somewhere, \nby way of contrast, what you wrote me of your visit \nto Passawampscot." It is odd, almost painful, to be \nconfronted with your past self and your past self\'s \ndoings, when you have forgotten both. But here is \nmy bit of American scenery, such as it is. \n\nWhile we were waiting for the boat, we had time to \ninvestigate P. a little. We wandered about with no \none to molest us or make us afraid. No cicerone was \nlying in wait for us, no verger expected with funeral \nsolemnity the more than compulsory shilling. I re- \nmember the whole population of Cortona gathering \nround me, and beseeching me not to leave their city \ntill I had seen the lampadone, whose keeper had un- \nhappily gone out to walk, taking the key with him. \nThank Fortune, here were no antiquities, no galleries \nof Pre-Raphaelite art, every lank figure looking as if \nit had been stretched on a rack, before which the \nAnglo-Saxon writhes because he ought to like them \nand cannot for the soul of him. It is a pretty little \nvillage, cuddled down among the hills, the clay soil \nof which gives them, to a pilgrim from the parched \ngravelly inland, a look of almost fanatical green. \nThe fields are broad, and wholly given up to the graz- \ning of cattle and sheep, which dotted them thickly \n\n\n\n1/8 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nin the breezy sunshine. The open doors of a barn, \nthrough which the wind flowed rusthng the loose locks \nof the mow, attracted us. Swallows swam in and out \nwith level wings, or crossed each other, twittering in \nthe dusky mouth of their hay-scented cavern. Two \nor three hens and a cock (none of your gawky Shang- \nhais, long-legged as a French peasant on his stilts, \nbut the true red cock of the ballads, full-chested, coral- \ncombed, fountain -tailed) were inquiring for hay -seed \nin the background. What frame in what gallery ever \nenclosed such a picture as is squared within the \ngroundsel, side-posts, and lintel of a barn-door, \nwhether for eye or fancy ? The shining floor suggests \nthe flail-beat of autumn, that pleasantest of monoto- \nnous sounds, and the later husking-bee, where the lads \nand lasses sit round laughingly busy under the swing- \ning lantern. \n\nHere we found a fine, stalwart fellow shearing sheep. \nThis was something new to us, and we watched him \nfor some time with many questions, which he an- \nswered with off-hand good-nature. Going away, I \nthanked him for having taught me something. He \nlaughed, and said, "Ef you \'11 take off them gloves o\' \nyourn, I \'11 give ye a try at the practical part on \'t." \nHe was in the right of it. I never saw anything hand- \nsomer than those brown hands of his, on which the \nsinews stood out, as he handled his shears, tight as a \ndrawn bow-string. How much more admirable is \nthis tawny vigor, the badge of fruitful toil, than the \ncrop of early muscle that heads out under the forcing- \nglass of the gymnasium ! Foreigners do not feel easy \n\n\n\nITALY. 179 \n\nin America, because there are no peasants and under- \nlings here to be humble to them. The truth is, that \nnone but those who feel themselves only artificially \nthe superiors of our sturdy yeomen see in their self- \nrespect any uncomfortable assumption of equality. It \nis the last thing the yeoman is hkely to think of. They \ndo not like the "I say, ma good fellah" kind of style, \nand commonly contrive to snub it. They do not value \ncondescension at the same rate that he does who \nvouchsafes it to them. If it be a good thing for an \nEnglish duke that he has no social superiors.. I think \nit can hardly be bad for a Yankee farmer. If it be a \nbad thing for the duke that he meets none but infe- \nriors, it cannot harm the farmer much that he never \nhas the chance. At any rate, there was no thought \nof incivility in my friend Hobbinol\'s jibe at my kids, \nonly a kind of jolly superiority. But I did not Hke to \nbe taken for a city gcnt^ so I told him I was born and \nbred in the country as well as he. He laughed again, \nand said, "Wal, anyhow, I\'ve the advantage of ye, \nfor you never see a sheep shore, an\' I \'ve ben to the \nOpery and shore sheep myself into the bargain." He \ntold me that there were two hundred sheep in the \ntown, and that his father could remember when there \nwere four times as many. The sea laps and mumbles \nthe soft roots of the hills, and licks away an acre or \ntwo of good pasturage every season. The father, an \nold man of eighty, stood looking on, pleased with his \nson\'s wit, and brown as if the Passawampscot fogs \nwere walnut-juice. \n\nWe dined at a little tavern, with a gilded ball hung \n\n\n\nl80 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nout for sign, \xe2\x80\x94 a waif, I fancy, from some shipwreck. \nThe landlady was a brisk, amusing little body, who \nsoon informed us that her husband was own cousin to \na Senator of the United States. A very elaborate \nsampler in the parlor, in which an obelisk was wept \nover by a somewhat costly willow in silver thread, \nrecorded the virtues of the Senator\'s maternal grand- \nfather and grandmother. After dinner, as we sat \nsmoking our pipes on the piazza, our good hostess \nbrought her little daughter, and made her repeat \nverses utterly unintelligible, but conjecturally moral, \nand certainly depressing. Once set agoing, she ran \ndown like an alarm-clock. We awaited her subsi- \ndence as that of a shower or other inevitable natural \nphenomenon. More refreshing was the talk of a tall \nreturned Californian, who told us, among other things, \nthat "he should n\'t mind Panahmy\'s bein\' sunk, oilers \nprovidin\' there warn\'t none of our folks onto it when \nit went down !" \n\nOur landlady\'s exhibition of her daughter puts me \nin mind of something similar, yet oddly different, \nwhich happened to Storg and me at Palestrina. We \nhappened to praise the beauty of our stout locandiera\' s \nlittle girl. "Ah, she is nothing to her elder sister just \nmarried," said the mother. "If you could see her! \nShe is bella, hclla, bella!" We thought no more of \nit; but after dinner, the good creature, with no warn- \ning but a tap at the door and a humble con permesso, \nbrought her in all her bravery, and showed her off \nto us as simply and naturally as if she had been a \npicture. The girl, who was both beautiful and mod- \n\n\n\nITALY. l8l \n\nest, bore it with the dignified aplomh of a statue. She \nknew we admired her, and Hked it, but with the in- \ndifference of a rose. There is something very charm- \ning, I think, in this wholly unsophisticated conscious- \nness, with no alloy of vanity or coquetry. \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. \n\nByron hit the white, which he often shot very wide \nof in his ItaHan Guide-Book, when he called Rome \n"my country." But it is a feeling which comes to \none slowly, and is absorbed into one\'s system during \na long residence. Perhaps one does not feel it till he \nhas gone away, as things always seem fairer when \nwe look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible \ntower of the past that Longing leans and beckons. \nHowever it be. Fancy gets a rude shock at entering \nRome, which it takes her a great while to get over. \nShe has gradually made herself believe that she is ap- \nproaching a city of the dead, and has seen nothing on \nthe road from Civita Vecchia to disturb that theory. \nMilestones, with "Via Aurelia" carved upon them, \nhave confirmed it. It is eighteen hundred years ago \nwith her, and on the dial of time the shadow has not \nyet trembled over the line that marks the beginning of \nthe first century. She arrives at the gate, and a dirty, \nblue man, with a cocked hat and a white sword-belt, \nasks for her passport. Then another man, as like \nthe first as one spoon is like its fellow, and having, \nlike him, the look of being run in a mould, tells her \nthat she must go to the custom-house. It is as if a \nghost, who had scarcely recovered from the jar of \nhearing Charon say, "I\'ll trouble you for your \n182 \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 83 \n\nobolus, if you please," should have his portmanteau \nseized by the Stygian tide-waiters to be searched. Is \nthere anything, then, contraband of death? asks poor \nFancy of herself. \n\nBut it is the misfortune (or the safeguard) of the \nEnglish mind that Fancy is always an outlaw, liable \nto be laid by the heels wherever Constable Common \nSense can catch her. She submits quietly as the \npostilion cries, "Yee-ipf" and cracks his whip, and \nthe rattle over the pavement begins, struggles a mo- \nment when the pillars of the colonnade stalk ghostly \nby in the moonlight, and finally gives up all for lost \nwhen she sees Bernini\'s angels polking on their pedes- \ntals along the sides of the Ponte Sant\' Angelo with the \nemblems of the Passion in their arms. \n\nYou are in Rome, of course ; the sbirro said so, the \ndoganiere bowed it, and the postilion swore it; but it \nis a Rome of modern houses, muddy streets, dingy \ncajjes, cigar-smokers, and French soldiers, the mani- \nfest junior of Florence. And yet full of anachronisms, \nfor in a little while you pass the column of Antoninus, \nfind the Dogana in an ancient temple whose furrowed \npillars show through the recent plaster, and feel as \nif you saw the statue of Minerva in a Paris bonnet. \nYou are driven to a hotel where all the barbarian \nlanguages are spoken in one wild conglomerate by the \nCommissionnaire, have your dinner wholly in French, \nand wake the next morning dreaming of the Tenth \nLegion, to see a regiment of Chasseurs de Vincennes \ntrotting by. \n\nFor a few days one undergoes a tremendous recoil. \n\n\n\n1 84 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nOther places have a distinct meaning. London is \nthe visible throne of King Slock; Versailles is the \napotheosis of one of Louis XIV. \'s cast periwigs; \nFlorence and Pisa are cities of the Middle Ages ; but \nRome seems to be a parody upon itself. The ticket \nthat admits you to see the starting of the horses at \ncarnival has S. P. Q. R. at the top of it, and you give \nthe custode a paul for showing you the wolf that suckled \nRomulus and Remus. The Senatus seems to be a \nscore or so of elderly gentlemen in scarlet, and the \nPopulusque Romanus a swarm of nasty friars. \n\nBut there is something more than mere earth in the \nspot where great deeds have been done. The sur- \nveyor cannot give the true dimensions of Marathon \nor Lexington, for they are not reducible to square \nacres. Dead glory and greatness leave ghosts behind \nthem, and departed empire has a metempsychosis, if \nnothing else has. Its spirit haunts the grave, and \nwaits and waits, till at last it finds a body to its mind, \nslips into it, and historians moralize on the fluctuation \nof human affairs. By and by, perhaps, enough ob- \nservations will have been recorded to assure us that \nthese recurrences are firmamental, and historionomers \nwill have measured accurately the sidereal years of \nraces. When that is once done, events will move \nwith the quiet of an orrery, and nations will consent \nto their peridynamis and apodynamis with planetary \ncomposure. \n\nBe this as it may, you become gradually aware of \nthe presence of this imperial ghost among the Roman \nruins. You receive hints and startles of it through \n\n\n\nA FEJV BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 85 \n\nthe senses first, as the horse always shies at the appari- \ntion before the rider can see it. Then, Httle by Kttle, \nyou become assured of it, and seem to hear the brush \nof its mantle through some hall of Caracalla\'s baths, \nor one of those other solitudes of Rome. And those \nsolitudes are without a parallel ; for it is not the mere \nabsence of man, but the sense of his departure, that \nmakes a profound loneliness. Musing upon them, \nyou cannot but feel the shadow of that disembodied \nempire, and, remembering how the foundations of the \nCapitol wTre laid where a head was turned up, you \nare impelled to prophesy that the Idea of Rome will \nincarnate itself again as soon as an Italian brain is \nfound large enough to hold it, and to give unity to \nthose discordant members. \n\nBut, though I intend to observe no regular pattern \nin my Roman mosaic, which will resemble more what \none finds in his pockets after a walk, \xe2\x80\x94 a pagan cube \nor two from the palaces of the Caesars, a few Byzan- \ntine bits, given with many shrugs of secrecy by a lay \nbrother at San Paolo jiiori le mura, and a few more \n(quite as ancient) from the manufactory at the Vati- \ncan, \xe2\x80\x94 it seems natural to begin what one has to say \nof Rome with something about St. Peter\'s; for the \nsaint sits at the gate here as well as in Paradise. \n\nIt is very common for people to say that they are \ndisappointed in the first sight of St. Peter\'s ; and one \nhears much the same about Niagara. I cannot help \nthinking that the fault is in themselves ; and that if the \nchurch and the cataract were in the habit of giving \naway their thoughts with that rash generosity which \n\n\n\n1 86 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ncharacterizes tourists, they might perhaps say of their \nvisitors, "Well, if you are those men of whom we have \nheard so much, we are a little disappointed, to tell the \ntruth!" The refined tourist expects somewhat too \nmuch when he takes it for granted that St. Peter\'s will \nat once decorate him with the order of imagination, \njust as Victoria knights an alderman when he presents \nan address. Or perhaps he has been getting up a little \narchitecture on the road from Florence, and is dis- \ncomfited because he does not know whether he ought \nto be pleased or not, which is very much as if he should \nwait to be told whether it was fresh water or salt which \nmakes the exhaustless grace of Niagara\'s emerald \ncurve, before he benignly consented to approve. It \nwould be wiser, perhaps, for him to consider whether, \nif Michael Angelo had had the building of him^ his \nown personal style would not have been more im- \npressive. \n\nIt is not to be doubted that minds are of as many \ndifferent orders as cathedrals, and that the Gothic \nimagination is vexed and discommoded in the vain \nendeavor to flatten its pinnacles, and fit itself into the \nround Roman arches. But if it be impossible for a \nman to like everything, it is quite possible for him to \navoid being driven mad by what does not please him; \nnay, it is the imperative duty of a wise man to find \nout what that secret is which makes a thing pleasing \nto another. In approaching St. Peter\'s, one must \ntake his Protestant shoes off his feet, and leave them \nbehind him, in the Piazza Rusticucci. Otherwise the \ngreat Basilica, with those outstretching colonnades \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 8/ \n\nof Bramante, will seem to be a bloated spider lying \nin wait for him, the poor Reformed fly. As he lifts \nthe heavy leathern flapper over the door, and is dis- \ncharged into the interior by its impetuous recoil, let \nhim disburden his mind altogether of stone and mor- \ntar, and think only that he is standing before the \nthrone of a dynasty which, even in its decay, is the \nmost powerful the world ever saw. Mason-work is \nall very well in itself, but it has nothing to do with the \naflfair at present in hand. \n\nSuppose that a man in pouring down a glass of \nclaret could drink the South of France, that he could \nso disintegrate the wine by the force of imagination \nas to taste in it all the clustered beauty and bloom of \nthe grape, all the dance and song and sunburnt jollity \nof the vintage. Or suppose that in eating bread he \ncould transubstantiate it with the tender blade of \nspring, the gleam-flitted corn-ocean of summer, the \nroyal autumn, with its golden beard, and the merry \nfunerals of harvest. This is what the great poets do \nfor us, we cannot tell how, with their fatally-chosen \nwords, crowding the happy veins of language again \nwith all the life and meaning and music that had been \ndribbling away from them since Adam. And this is \nwhat the Roman Church does for religion, feeding \nthe soul not with the essential religious sentiment, not \nwith a drop or two of the tincture of worship, but \nmaking us feel one by one all those original elements \nof which worship is composed ; not bringing the end \nto us, but making us pass over and feel beneath our \nfeet all the golden rounds of the ladder by which the \n\n\n\n1 88 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nclimbing generations have reached that end; not \nhanding us dryly a dead and extinguished Q.E.D., \nbut letting it rather declare itself by the glory with \nwhich it interfuses the incense-clouds of wonder and \naspiration and beauty in which it is veiled. The \nsecret of her power is typified in the mystery of the \nReal Presence. She is the only church that has been \nloyal to the heart and soul of man, that has clung to \nher faith in the imagination, and that would not give \nover her symbols and images and sacred vessels to the \nperilous keeping of the iconoclast Understanding. \nShe has never lost sight of the truth, that the product \nhuman nature is composed of the sum of flesh and \nspirit, and has accordingly regarded both this world \nand the next as the constituents of that other world \nwhich we possess by faith. She knows that poor \nPanza, the body, has his kitchen longings and visions, \nas well as Quixote, the soul, his ethereal, and has wit \nenough to supply him with the visible, tangible raw \nmaterial of imagination. She is the only poet among \nthe churches, and, while Protestantism is unrolling a \npocket surveyor\' s-plan, takes her votary to the pin- \nnacle of her temple, and shows him meadow, upland, \nand tillage, cloudy heaps of forest clasped with the \nriver\'s jewelled arm, hillsides white with the perpetual \nsnow of flocks, and, beyond all, the interminable \nheave of the unknown ocean. Her empire may be \ntraced upon the map by the boundaries of races; the \nunderstanding is her great foe ; and it is the people \nwhose vocabulary was incomplete till they had in- \nvented the arch-word Humbug that defies her. With \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 89 \n\nthat leaden bullet John Bull can bring down Senti- \nment when she flies her highest. And the more the \npity for John Bull. One of these days some one \nwhose eyes are sharp enough will read in the Times a \nstanding advertisement, \xe2\x80\x94 \'\'Lost, strayed, or stolen \nfrom the farm-yard of the subscriber the valuable \nhorse Pegasus. Probably has on him part of a new \nplough-harness, as that is also missing. A suitable \nreward, etc. J. Bull." \n\nProtestantism reverses the poetical process I have \nspoken of above, and gives not even the bread of life, \nbut instead of it the alcohol, or distilled intellectual \nresult. This was very well so long as Protestantism \ncontinued to protest; for enthusiasm sublimates the \nunderstanding into imagination. But now that she \nalso has become an establishment, she begins to per- \nceive that she made a blunder in trusting herself to \nthe intellect alone. She is beginning to feel her way \nback again, as one notices in Puseyism, and other \nsuch hints. One is put upon reflection when he sees \nburly Englishmen, who dine on beef and porter every \nday, marching proudly through Saint Peter\'s on Palm \nSunday, with those frightfully artificial palm-branches \nin their hands. Romanism wisely provides for the \nchildish in men. \n\nTherefore I say again, that one must lay aside his \nProtestantism in order to have a true feehng of Saint \nPeter\'s. Here in Rome is the laboratory of that mys- \nterious enchantress, who has known so well how to \nadapt herself to all the wants, or, if you will, the weak- \nnesses of human nature, making the retirement of the \n\n\n\nI go FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nconvent-cell a merit to the solitary, the scourge or the \nfast a piety to the ascetic, the enjoyment of pomp and \nmusic and incense a religious act in the sensual, and \nfurnishing for the very soul itself a confidante in that \near of the dumb confessional, where it may securely \ndisburden itself of its sins and sorrows. And the \ndome of St. Peter\'s is the magic circle within which \nshe works her most potent incantations. I confess \nthat I could not enter it alone without a kind of awe. \n\nBut, setting entirely aside the effect of this church \nupon the imagination, it is wonderful, if one con- \nsider it only materially. Michael Angelo created a \nnew world in which everything was colossal, and it \nmight seem that he built this as a fit temple for those \ngigantic figures with which he peopled it to worship in. \nHere his Moses should be high -priest, the service \nshould be chanted by his prophets and sibyls, and \nthose great pagans should be brought hither from \nSan Lorenzo in Florence, to receive baptism. \n\nHowever unsatisfactory in other matters, statistics \nare of service here. I have seen\' a refined tourist who \nentered, Murray in hand, sternly resolved to have \nSt. Peter\'s look small, brought to terms at once by \nbeing told that the canopy over the high altar (looking \nvery like a four-post bedstead) was ninety-eight feet \nhigh. If he still obstinates himself, he is finished by \nbeing made to measure one of the marble putti, which \nlook like rather stoutish babies, and are found to be \nsix feet, every sculptor\'s son of them. This ceremony \nis the more interesting, as it enables him to satisfy the \nguide of his proficiency in the Italian tongue by calling \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 191 \n\nthem putty at every convenient opportunity. Other- \nwise both he and his assistant terrify each other into \nmutual unintelHgibiHty with that lingua franca of the \nEnghsh-speaking traveller, which is supposed to bear \nsome remote affinity to the French language, of which \nboth parties are as ignorant as an American Am- \nbassador. \n\nMurray gives all these little statistical nudges to the \nAnglo-Saxon imagination ; but he knows that its finest \nnerves are in the pocket, and accordingly ends by \ntelling you how much the church cost. I forget how \nmuch it is; but it cannot be more, I fancy, than the \nEnglish national debt multiplied into itself three hun- \ndred and sixty-five times. If the pilgrim, honestly \nanxious for a sensation, will work out this little sum, \nhe will be sure to receive all that enlargement of the \nimaginative faculty which arithmetic can give him. \nPerhaps the most dilating fact, after all, is that this \narchitectural world has also a separate atmosphere, \ndistinct from that of Rome by some ten degrees, and \nunvarying through the year, \n\nI think that, on the whole, Jonathan gets ready to \nbe pleased with St. Peter\'s sooner than Bull. Ac- \ncustomed to our lath and plaster expedients for \nchurches, the portable sentry-boxes of Zion, mere \nsolidity and permanence are pleasurable in them- \nselves; and if he get grandeur also, he has Gospel \nmeasure. Besides, it is easy for Jonathan to travel. \nHe is one drop of a fluid mass, who knows where his \nhome is to-day, but can make no guess of where it \nmay be to-morrow. Even in a form of government \n\n\n\n192 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nhe only takes lodgings for the night, and is ready to \npay his bill and be off in the morning. He should take \nhis motto from Bishop Golias\'s \'\'Mihi est propositum \nin tabernd mori,\'\' though not in the sufistic sense of \nthat misunderstood Churchman. But Bull can sel- \ndom be said to travel at all, since the first step of a \ntrue traveller is out of himself. He plays cricket and \nhunts foxes on the Campagna, makes entries in his \nbetting-book while the Pope is giving his benediction, \nand points out Lord Calico to you awfully during the \nSistine Miserere. If he let his beard grow, it always \nhas a startled air, as if it suddenly remembered its \ntreason to Sheffield and only makes him look more \nEnglish than ever. A masquerade is impossible to \nhim, and his fancy balls are the solemnest facts in the \nworld. Accordingly, he enters St. Peter\'s with the \ndome of St. Paul\'s drawn tight over his eyes, like a \ncriminal\'s cap, and ready for instant execution rather \nthan confess that the English Wren had not a stronger \nwing than the Itahan Angel. I like this in Bull, and \nit renders him the pleasantest of travelling com- \npanions; for he makes you take England along with \nyou, and thus you have two countries at once. And \none must not forget in an Italian inn that it is to Bull \nhe owes the clean napkins and sheets, and the privi- \nlege of his morning bath. Nor should Bull himself \nfail to remember that he ate with his fingers till the \nItalian gave him a fork. \n\nBrowning has given the best picture of St. Peter\'s \non a festival day, sketching it with a few verses in his \nlarge style. And doubtless it is the scene of the \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 93 \n\ngrandest spectacles which the world can see in these \nlatter days. Those Easter pomps, where the antique \nworld marches visibly before you in gilded mail and \ncrimson doublet, refresh the eyes, and are good so \nlong as they continue to be merely spectacle. But \nif one think for a moment of the servant of the ser- \nvants of the Lord in cloth of gold, borne on men\'s \nshoulders, or of the children receiving the blessing of \ntheir Holy Father, with a regiment of French soldiers \nto protect the father from the children, it becomes a \nlittle sad. If one would feel the full meaning of those \nceremonials, however, let him consider the coinci- \ndences between the Romish and the Buddhist forms \nof worship, and remembering that the Pope is the \ndirect heir, through the Pontifex IMaximus, of rites \nthat were ancient when the Etruscans were modern, he \nwill look with a feeling deeper than curiosity upon \nforms which record the earliest conquests of the In- \nvisible, the first triumphs of mind over muscle. \n\nTo me the noon silence and solitude of St. Peter\'s \nwere most impressive, when the sunlight, made visible \nby the mist of the ever-burning lamps in which it was \nentangled, hovered under the dome like the holy dove \ngoldenly descending. Very grand also is the twilight, \nwhen all outlines melt into mysterious vastness, and \nthe arches expand and lose themselves in the deepen- \ning shadow. Then, standing in the desert transept, \nyou hear the far-off vespers swell and die like low \nbreathings of the sea on some conjectured shore. \n\nAs the sky is supposed to scatter its golden star- \npollen once every year in meteoric showers, so the \n\n\n\n194 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ndome of St. Peter\'s has its annual efflorescence of fire. \nThis illumination is the great show of Papal Rome. \nJust after sunset, I stood upon the Trinita dei Monti \nand saw the little drops of pale light creeping down- \nward from the cross and trickling over the dome. \nThen, as the sky darkened behind, it seemed as if the \nsetting sun had lodged upon the horizon and there \nburned out, the fire still clinging to his massy ribs. \nAnd when the change from the silver to the golden \nillumination came, it was as if the breeze had fanned \nthe embers into flame again. \n\nBitten with the Anglo-Saxon gadfly that drives us \nall to disenchant artifice, and see the springs that fix \nit on, I walked down to get a nearer look. My next \nghmpse was from the bridge of Sant\' Angelo; but \nthere was no time nor space for pause. Foot-pas- \nsengers crowding hither and thither, as they heard \nthe shout of Avantil from the mile of coachmen \nbehind, dragoon -horses curtsying backward just \nwhere there were most women and children to be \nflattened, and the dome drawing all eyes and thoughts \nthe wrong way, made a hubbub to be got out of at any \ndesperate hazard. Besides, one could not help feeling \nnervously hurried ; for it seemed quite plain to every- \nbody that this starry apparition must be as momentary \nas it was wonderful, and that we should find it van- \nished when we reached the piazza. But suddenly \nyou stand in front of it, and see the soft travertine of \nthe front suffused with a tremulous, glooming glow, a \nmildened glory, as if the building breathed, and so \ntransmuted its shadow into soft pulses of light. \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 95 \n\nAfter wondering long enough, I went back to the \nPincio, and watched it for an hour longer. But I did \nnot wish to see it go out. It seemed better to go home \nand leave it still trembling, so that I could fancy a \nkind of permanence in it, and half believe I should \nfind it there again some lucky evening. Before \nleaving it altogether, I went away to cool my eyes with \ndarkness, and came back several times; and every \ntime it was a new miracle, the more so that it was a \nhuman piece of faery-work. Beautiful as fire is in \nitself, I suspect that part of the pleasure is meta- \nphysical, and that the sense of playing with an ele- \nment which can be so terrible adds to the zest of the \nspectacle. And then fire is not the least degraded by \nit, because it is not utilized. If beauty were in use, \nthe factory would add a grace to the river, and we \nshould turn from the fire-writing on the wall of \nheaven to look at a message printed by the magnetic \ntelegraph. There may be a beauty in the use itself; \nbut utilization is always downward, and it is this feel- \ning that makes Schiller\'s Pegasus in yoke so univer- \nsally pleasing. So long as the curse of work clings to \nman, he will see beauty only in play. The capital of \nthe most frugal commonwealth in the world burns \nup five thousand dollars a year in gunpowder, and \nnobody murmurs. Provident Judas wished to utilize \nthe ointment, but the Teacher would rather that it \nshould be wasted in poem. \n\nThe best lesson in aesthetics I ever got (and, like \nmost good lessons, it fell from the lips of no regular \nprofessor) was from an Irishman on the day the \n\n\n\n196 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nNymph Cochituate was formally introduced to the \npeople of Boston. I made one with other rustics in \nthe streets, admiring the dignitaries in coaches with \nas much Christian charity as is consistent with an \nelbow in the pit of your stomach and a heel on that \ntoe which is your only inheritance from two excellent \ngrandfathers. Among other allegorical phenomena, \nthere came along what I should have called a hay-cart, \nif I had not known it was a triumphal car, filled with \nthat fairest variety of mortal grass which with us is \napt to spindle so soon into a somewhat sapless woman- \nhood. Thirty-odd young maidens in white gowns, \nwith blue sashes and pink wreaths of French crape, \nrepresented the United States. (How shall we limit our \nnumber, by the way, if ever Utah be admitted ?) The \nship, the printing-press, even the wondrous train of \nexpress-wagons, and other solid bits of civic fantasy, \nhad left my Hibernian neighbor unmoved. But this \nbrought him down. Turning to me, as the most ap- \npreciative public for the moment, with face of as much \ndelight as if his head had been broken, he cried, \n"Now this is raly beautiful! Tothally regyardless \nuv expinse!" Methought my shirt-sleeved lecturer \non the Beautiful had hit at least one nail full on the \nhead. Voltaire but epigrammatized the same thought \nwhen he said, Lc superflu, chose tres-necessaire. \n\nAs for the ceremonies of the Church, one need not \nwaste time in seeing many of them. There is a dreary \nsameness in them, and one can take an hour here \nand an hour there, as it pleases him, just as sure of \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 1 97 \n\nfinding the same pattern as he would be in the first \nor last yard of a roll of printed cotton. For myself, I \ndo not like to go and look with mere curiosity at what \nis sacred and solemn to others. To how many these \nRoman shows are sacred, I cannot guess; but cer- \ntainly the Romans do not value them much. I \nwalked out to the grotto of Egeria on Easter Sunday* \nthat I might not be tempted down to St. Peter\'s to \nsee the mockery of Pio Nono\'s benediction. Jt is \ncertainly Christian, for he blesses them that curse him, \nand does all the good which the waving of his fingers \ncan do to people who would use him despitefully if \nthey had the chance. I told an Italian servant she \nmight have the day; but she said she did not care \nfor it. \n\n"But," urged I, "will you not go to receive the \nblessing of the Holy Father?" \n\n"No, sir." \n\n"Do you not wish it?" \n\n"Not in the least: his blessing would do me no \ngood. If I get the blessing of Heaven, it will serve \nmy turn." \n\nThere were three families of foreigners in our house, \nand I believe none of the Italian servants went to St. \nPeter\'s that day. Yet they commonly speak kindly \nof Pius. I have heard the same phrase from several \nItalians of the working-class. "He is a good man," \nthey said, "but ill-led." \n\nWhat one sees in the streets of Rome is worth more \nthan what one sees in the churches. The churches \nthemselves are generally ugly. St. Peter\'s has \n\n\n\n198 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ncrushed all the life out of architectural genius, and \nall the modern churches look as if they were swelling \nthemselves in imitation of the great Basilica. There \nis a clumsy magnificence about them, and their \nheaviness oppresses you. Their marble incrusta- \ntions look like a kind of architectural elephantiasis, \nand the parts are puffy with a dropsical want of pro- \nportion. There is none of the spring and soar which \none#may see even in the Lombard churches, and a \nRoman column standing near one of them, slim and \ngentleman-like, satirizes silently their tawdry parvenu- \nism. Attempts at mere bigness are ridiculous in a \ncity where the Colosseum still yawns in crater-hke \nruin, and where Michael Angelo made a noble church \nout of a single room in Diocletian\'s baths. \n\nShall I confess it? Michael Angelo seems to me, \nin his angry reaction against sentimental beauty, to \nhave mistaken bulk and brawn for the antithesis of \nfeebleness. He is the apostle of the exaggerated, the \nVictor Hugo of painting and sculpture. I have a \nfeeling that rivalry was a more powerful motive with \nhim than love of art, that he had the conscious inten- \ntion to be original, which seldom leads to anything \nbetter than being extravagant. The show of muscle \nproves strength, not power; and force for mere force\'s \nsake in art makes one think of Milo caught in his own \nlog. This is my second thought, and strikes me as \nperhaps somewhat niggardly toward one in whom \nyou cannot help feeling there was so vast a possibility. \nAnd then his Eve, his David, his Sibyls, his Prophets, \nhis Sonnets ! Well, I take it all back, and come round \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN- MOSAIC. 1 99 \n\nto St. Peter\'s again just to hint that I doubt about \ndomes. In Rome they are so much the fashion that \nI felt as if they were the goitre of architecture. Gen- \nerally they look heavy. Those on St. Mark\'s in Ven- \nice are the only light ones I ever saw, and they look \nalmost airy, like tents puffed out with wind. I sup- \npose one must be satisfied with the interior effect, \nwhich is certainly noble in St. Peter\'s. But for im- \npressiveness both within and without there is nothing \nlike a Gothic cathedral for me, nothing that crowns \na city so nobly, or makes such an island of twilight \nsilence in the midst of its noonday clamors. \n\nNow as to what one sees in the streets, the beggars \nare certainly the first things that draw the eye. Beg- \ngary is an institution here. The Church has sancti- \nfied it by the establishment of mendicant orders, and \nindeed it is the natural result of a social system where \nthe non-producing class makes not only the laws, but \nthe ideas. The beggars of Rome go far toward prov- \ning the diversity of origin in mankind, for on them \nsurely the curse of Adam never fell. It is easier to \nfancy that Adam Vaiirien, the first tenant of the Fool\'s \nParadise, after sucking his thumbs for a thousand \nyears, took to wife Eve Faniente, and became the \nprogenitor of this race, to whom also he left a calendar \nin which three hundred and sixty-five days in the year \nwere made feasts, sacred from all secular labor. \nAccordingly, they not merely do nothing, but they do \nit assiduously and almost with religious fervor. I \nhave seen ancient members of this sect as constant at \ntheir accustomed street-corner as the bit of broken \n\n\n\n200 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\ncolumn on which they sat ; and when a man does this \nin rainy weather, as rainy weather is in Rome, he has \nthe spirit of a fanatic and martyr. \n\nIt is not that the Itahans are a lazy people. On the \ncontrary, I am satisfied that they are industrious so \nfar as they are allowed to be. But, as I said before, \nwhen a Roman does nothing, he does it in the high \nRoman fashion. A friend of mine was having on ^ \nof his rooms arranged for a private theatre, and sent \nfor a person who was said to be an expert in the busi- \nness to do it for him. After a day\'s trial, he was sat- \nisfied that his lieutenant was rather a hindrance tha:i \na help, and resolved to dismiss him. \n\n"What is your charge for your day\'s services?" \n\n"Two scudi, sir." \n\n"Two scudi! Five pauls would be too much. \nYou have done nothing but stand with your hands \nin your pockets and get in the way of other people." \n\n"Lordship is perfectly right; but that is my way of \nworking." \n\nIt is impossible for a stranger to say who may not \nbeg in Rome. It seems to be a sudden madness that \nmay seize any one at the sight of a foreigner. You \nsee a very respectable looking person in the street, \nand it is odds but, as you pass him, his hat comes off, \nhis whole figure suddenly dilapidates itself, assuming \na tremble of professional weakness, and you hear the \neverlasting qualche cosa per carita? You are in \ndoubt whether to drop a bajoccho into the next car- \ndinal\'s hat which offers you its sacred cavity in answer \nto your salute. You begin to believe that the hat was \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 201 \n\ninvented for the sole purpose of ingulfing coppers, and \nthat its highest type is the great Triregno itself, into \nwhich the pence of Peter rattle. \n\nBut you soon learn to distinguish the established \nbeggars, and to the three professions elsewhere con- \nsidered liberal you add a fourth for this latitude, \xe2\x80\x94 \nmendicancy. Its professors look upon themselves as \na kind of guild which ought to be protected by the \ngovernment. I fell into talk with a woman who \nbegged of me in the Colosseum. Among other things \nshe complained that the government did not at all \nconsider the poor. \n\n"Where is the government that does?" I said. \n\n"Eh giaf Excellency; but this government lets \nbeggars from the country come into Rome, which is \na great injury to the trade of us born Romans. There \nis Beppo, for example ; he is a man of property in his \nown town, and has a dinner of three courses every \nday. He has portioned two daughters with three \nthousand scudi each, and left Rome during the time \nof the Republic wdth the rest of the nobility." \n\nAt first, one is shocked and pained at the exhibition \nof deformities in the street. But by and by he comes \nto look upon them with little more emotion than is \nexcited by seeing the tools of any other trade. The \nmelancholy of the beggars is purely a matter of busi- \nness; and they look upon their maims as Fortunatus \npurses, which will always give them money. A \nwithered arm they present to you as a highwayman \nwould his pistol; a goitre is a Hfe-annuity; a St. \nVitus dance is as good as an engagement as prima \n\n\n\n202 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nballerina at the Apollo; and to have no legs at all is \nto stand on the best footing with fortune. They are \na merry race, on the whole, and quick-witted, like the \nrest of their countrymen. I believe the regular fee \nfor a beggar is a quattrino, about a quarter of a cent; \nbut they expect more of foreigners. A friend of mine \nonce gave one of these tiny coins to an old woman; \nshe delicately expressed her resentment by exclaim- \ning, "Thanks, signoria. God will reward even you !" \n\nA begging friar came to me one day with a sub- \nscription for repairing his convent. "Ah, but I am \na heretic," said I. "Undoubtedly," with a shrug, \nimplying a respectful acknowledgment of a foreigner\'s \nright to choose warm and dry lodgings in the other \nworld as well as in this, "but your money is perfectly \northodox." \n\nAnother favorite way of doing nothing is to exca- \nvate the Forum. I think the Fanientes like this all \nthe better, because it seems a kind of satire upon work, \nas the witches parody the Christian offices of devotion \nat their Sabbath. A score or so of old men in volu- \nminous cloaks shift the earth from one side of a large \npit to the other, in a manner so leisurely that it is posi- \ntive repose to look at them. The most bigoted anti- \nFourierist might acknowledge this to be attractive \nindustry. \n\nOne conscript father trails a small barrow up to \nanother, who stands leaning on a long spade. Ar- \nriving, he fumbles for his snuff-box, and offers it de- \nliberately to his friend. Each takes an ample pinch, \nand both seat themselves to await the result. If one \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 203 \n\nshould sneeze, he receives the Felicital of the other; \nand, after allowing the titillation to subside, he re- \nplies, Grazia ! Then follows a little conversation, and \nthen they prepare to load. But it occurs to the \nbarrow-driver that this is a good opportunity to fill \nand light his pipe ; and to do so conveniently he needs \nhis barrow to sit upon. He draws a few whiffs, and \na little more conversation takes place. The barrow \nis now ready; but first the wielder of the spade will \nfill his pipe also. This done, more whiffs and more \nconversation. Then a spoonful of earth is thrown \ninto the barrow, and it starts on its return. But \nmidway it meets an empty barrow, and both stop to \ngo through the snuff-box ceremonial once more, and \nto discuss whatever new thing has occurred in the \nexcavation since their last encounter. And so it goes \non all day. \n\nAs I see more of material antiquity, I begin to \nsuspect that my interest in it is mostly factitious. The \nrelations of races to the physical world (only to be \nstudied fruitfully on the spot) do not excite in me an \ninterest at all proportionate to that I feel in their in- \nfluence on the moral advance of mankind, which one \nmay as easily trace in his own library as on the spot. \nThe only useful remark I remember to have made \nhere is, that, the situation of Rome being far less \nstrong than that of any city of the Etruscan league, it \nmust have been built where it is for purposes of com- \nmerce. It is the most defensible point near the mouth \nof the Tiber. It is only as rival trades-folk that Rome \n\n\n\n204 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nand Carthage had any comprehensible cause of quar- \nrel. It is only as a commercial people that we can \nunderstand the early tendency of the Romans towards \ndemocracy. As for antiquity, after reading history, \none is haunted by a discomforting suspicion that the \nnames so painfully deciphered in hieroglyphic or \narrow-head inscriptions are only so many more \nSmiths and Browns masking it in unknown tongues. \nMoreover, if we Yankees are twitted with not know- \ning the difference between big and great, may not \nthose of us who have learned it turn round on many \na monument over here with the same reproach? I \nconfess I am beginning to sympathize with a country- \nman of ours from Michigan, v/ho asked our Minister \nto direct him to a specimen ruin and a specimen gallery, \nthat he might see and be rid of them once for all. I \nsaw three young Englishmen going through the Vati- \ncan by catalogue and number, the other day, in a \nfashion which John Bull is apt to consider exclusively \nAmerican. "Number 300!" says the one with cata- \nlogue and pencil, "have you seen it?" "Yes," \nanswer his two comrades, and, checking it off, he \ngoes on with Number 301. Having witnessed the \nunavailing agonies of many Anglo-Saxons from both \nsides of the Atlantic in their effort to have the correct \nsensation before many hideous examples of antique \nbad taste, my heart warmed toward my business-like \nBritish cousins, who were doing their aesthetics in this \nthrifty auctioneer fashion. Our cart-before-horse \neducation, which makes us more famihar with the \nhistory and literature of Greeks and Romans than with \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 20 5 \n\nthose of our own ancestry, (though there is nothing in \nancient art to match Shakespeare or a Gothic min- \nster,) makes us the gulls of what we call classical \nantiquity. In sculpture, to be sure, they have us on \nthe hip. Europe were worth visiting, if only to be \nrid of this one old man of the sea. \n\nI am not ashamed to confess a singular sympathy \nwith what are known as the Middle Ages. I cannot \nhelp thinking that few periods have left behind them \nsuch traces of inventiveness and power. Nothing \nis more tiresome than the sameness of modern cities; \nand it has often struck me that this must also have \nbeen true of those ancient ones in which Greek archi- \ntecture or its derivatives prevailed, \xe2\x80\x94 true at least \nas respects public buildings. But mediaeval towns, \nespecially in Italy, even when only fifty miles asunder, \nhave an individuality of character as marked as that \nof trees. Nor is it merely this originality that attracts \nme, but likewise the sense that, however old, they are \nnearer to me in being modern and Christian. I find \nit harder to bridge over the gulf of Paganism than of \ncenturies. Apart from any difference in the men, I \nhad a far deeper emotion when I stood on the Sasso \ndi Dante, than at Horace\'s Sabine farm or by the tomb \nof Virgil. The latter, indeed, interested me chiefly \nby its association with comparatively modern legend; \nand one of the buildings I am most glad to have seen \nin Rome is the Bear Inn, where Montaigne lodged on \nhis arrival. \n\nI think it must have been for some such reason that \nI liked my Florentine better than my Roman walks, \n\n\n\n206 . FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nthough I am vastly more contented with merely being \nin Rome. Florence is more noisy; indeed, I think \nit the noisiest town I was ever in. What with the \ncontinual jangling of its bells, the rattle of Austrian \ndrums, and the street-cries, Ancora mi raccapriccia. \nThe Italians are a vociferous people, and most so \namong the Florentines. Walking through a back \nstreet one day, I saw an old woman higgling with a \nperipatetic dealer, who, at every interval afforded him \nby the remarks of his veteran antagonist, would tip \nhis head on one side, and shout, with a kind of won- \ndering enthusiasm, as if he could hardly trust the \nevidence of his own senses to such loveliness, O, che \nhellezza! che helle-e-ezza ! The two had been con- \ntending as obstinately as the Greeks and Trojans \nover the body of Patroclus, and I was curious to know \nwhat was the object of so much desire on the one side \nand admiration on the other. It was a half-dozen \nof weazeny baked pears, beggarly remnant of the \nday\'s traffic. Another time I stopped before a stall, \ndebating whether to buy some fine-looking peaches. \nBefore I had made up my mind, the vender, a stout \nfellow, with a voice like a prize-bull of Bashan, opened \na mouth round and large as the muzzle of a blunder- \nbuss, and let fly into my ear the following pertinent \nobservation: ^^ Belle pesche! belle pe-e-esche!^\' (cres- \ncendo). I stared at him in stunned bewilderment; \nbut, seeing that he had reloaded and was about to fire \nagain, took to my heels, the exploded syllables rattling \nafter me like so many buckshot. A single turnip is \nargument enough with them till midnight; nay, I \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 20/ \n\nhave heard a ruffian yelhng over a covered basket, \nwhich, I am convinced, was empty, and only carried \nas an excuse for his stupendous vocahsm. It never \nstruck me before what a quiet people Americans are. \nOf the pleasant places within easy walk of Rome, I \nprefer the garden of the Villa Albani as being most \nItalian. One does not go to Italy for examples of \nPrice on the Picturesque. Compared with land- \nscape-gardening, it is Racine to Shakespeare, I grant; \nbut it has its own charm, nevertheless. I like the \nbalustraded terraces, the sun-proof laurel walks, the \nvases and statues. It is only in such a climate that it \ndoes not seem inhuman to thrust a naked statue out \nof doors. Not to speak of their incongruity, how \ndreary do those white figures look at Fountains Abbey \nin that shrewd Yorkshire atmosphere ! To put them \nthere shows the same bad taste that led Prince Polonia, \nas Thackeray calls him, to build an artificial ruin \nwithin a mile of Rome. But I doubt if the Italian \ngarden will bear transplantation. Farther north, or \nunder a less constant sunshine, it is but half-hardy at \nthe best. Within the city, the garden of the French \nAcademy is my favorite retreat, because little fre- \nquented ; and there is an arbor there in which I have \nread comfortably (sitting where the sun could reach \nme) in January. By the way, there is something very \nagreeable in the way these people have of making a \nkind of fireside of the sunshine. With us it is either \ntoo hot or too cool, or we are too busy. But, on the \nother hand, they have no such thing as a chimney- \ncorner. \n\n\n\n2C8 FIRESIDE TRAVELS. \n\nOf course I haunt the collections of art faithfully; \nbut my favorite gallery, after all, is the street. There \nI always find something entertaining, at least. The \nother day, on my way to the Colonna Palace, I passed \nthe Fountain of Trevi, from which the water is now \nshut off on account of repairs to the aqueduct. A \nscanty rill of soap-sudsy water still trickled from one \nof the conduits, and, seeing a crowd, I stopped to find \nout what nothing or other had gathered it. One \ncharm of Rome, is that nobody has anything in par- \nticular to do, or, if he has, can always stop doing it on \nthe slightest pretext. I found that some eels had been \ndiscovered, and a very vivacious hunt was going on, \nthe chief Nimrods being boys. I happened to be the \nfirst to see a huge eel wriggling from the mouth of a \npipe, and pointed him out. Two lads at once rushed \nupon him. One essayed the capture with his naked \nhands, the other, more provident, had armed him- \nself with a rag of woollen cloth with which to maintain \nhis grip more securely. Hardly had this latter ar- \nrested his slippery prize, when a ragged rascal, watch- \ning his opportunity, snatched away the prize, and \ninstantly secured it by thrusting the head into his \nmouth, and closing on it a set of teeth like an ivory \nvice. But alas for ill-got gain ! Rob Roy\'s \n\n" Good old plan, \nThat he should take who has the power \nAnd he should keep who can," \n\ndid not serve here. There is scarce a square rood \nin Rome without one or more stately cocked hats in it, \nemblems of authority and police. I saw the flash of \n\n\n\nA FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC. 209 \n\nthe snow-white cross-belts, gleaming through that \ndingy crowd like the panache of Henry Quatre at \nIvry, I saw the mad plunge of the canvas-shielded \nhead-piece, sacred and terrible as that of Gessler; \nand while the greedy throng were dancing about the \nanguilliceps, each taking his chance twitch at the \nundulating object of all wishes, the captor dodging \nhis head hither and thither, (vulnerable, like Achilles, \nonly in his \'eel, as a British tourist would say,) a pair \nof broad blue shoulders parted the assailants as a \nship\'s bows part a wave, a pair of blue arms, ter- \nminating in gloves of Berlin thread, were stretched \nforth, not in benediction, one hand grasped the \nslippery Briseis by the waist, the other bestowed a \ncuff on the jaw-bone of Achilles, which loosened \n(rather by its authority than its physical force) the \nhitherto refractory incisors, a snufTy bandanna was \nproduced, the prisoner was deposited in this tempo- \nrary watch-house, and the cocked hat sailed majes- \ntically away with the property thus sequestered for \nthe benefit of the state. \n\n" Gaudeant anguillae si mortuus sit homo illo, \nQui, quasi morte reas, excruciabat eas ! " \n\nIf you have got through that last sentence without \nstopping for breath, you are fit to begin on the Homer \nof Chapman, who, both as translator and author, has \nthe longest wind, (especially for a comparison,) with- \nout, being long-winded, of all writers I know anything \nof, not excepting Jeremy Taylor. \n\n\n\nJUL 25 1906 \n\n\n\nLIBRARY OF CONGRESS \n\n015 762 625 5 i \n\n\n\n\'HJ^^^^^^^H \n\n\nliii \n\n\nmm^i \n\n\ni ;\xe2\x96\xa0, ii i\xc2\xab \n\n\n\'"" \n\n\nm i \n\niimuu ii \n\n\n\n\nliiidiUlilihiti \n\n\n\n'