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THE COMPLETE WRITINGS OF 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 Coition tie llure 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 AND FACSIMILES 
 
 IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES 
 VOLUME I 
 
FIRESIDE TRAVELS 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 at tty Hitomtoe 
 
 MCMIV 
 
COPYRIGHT 1864 AND 1871 BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1892 AND 1899 BY MABEL LOWELL BURNETT 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1904 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 EDITION LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES 
 THIS IS NUMBER ..7$3 
 
PUBLISHERS NOTE 
 
 THE present edition of the collected 
 writings of James Russell Lowell has 
 been enriched by the addition of three 
 volumes containing his " Letters," edited by 
 Charles Eliot Norton. In these three volumes 
 are included many letters hitherto unpublished, 
 which have been here inserted by Professor 
 Norton in their proper chronological order. In 
 one other respect it will be noted that this edi 
 tion varies from the Riverside Edition of 1890: 
 namely, in the retention of the original titles 
 of the various volumes of prose essays. These 
 titles have endeared themselves to many readers 
 and have grown familiar through long use. To 
 secure a practical uniformity of size through 
 out the edition, however, it has been thought 
 advisable, with Professor Norton s approval, to 
 transfer to the first volume, " Fireside Travels," 
 three of the shorter essays originally printed in 
 " My Study Windows." They are " My Gar 
 den Acquaintance," " On a Certain Conde 
 scension in Foreigners," and " A Good Word 
 for Winter." 
 
 4 PARK STREET, 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . .. . . xi 
 
 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO . . i 
 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL .... 69 
 
 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN ITALY AND 
 ELSEWHERE . . . . . . .119 
 
 I. AT SEA . . . . . . 121 
 
 II. IN THE MEDITERRANEAN . .136 
 
 III. ITALY . . . . . ; I44 
 
 IV. A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC . 222 
 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE . . 257 
 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOR 
 EIGNERS . . ... . . .291 
 
 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER . . . 333 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Frontispiece 
 
 From a crayon drawing in 1857 by S. W. Rowse, 
 in the possession of Professor Charles Eliot Norton 
 
 CAMBRIDGE IN 1824 . . . . .16 
 From a drawing by Charles Copeland 
 
 LITTLE SQUAW AND BIG SQUAW MOUN 
 TAINS . . . . * . . . 86 
 From a photograph by H. W. Gleason 
 
 TIVOLI . . , 54 
 
 From a photograph 
 
 VILLA DI LANTE . . . . . . . 252 
 
 From a photograph 
 
 BALTIMORE ORIOLE 266 
 
 From a drawing by L. A. Fuertes 
 
 FRESH SNOW . . . . . .360 
 
 From a photograph by lr(. W. Gleason 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 HAWTHORNE makes somewhere the 
 observation that the portrayal of the 
 external events of an author s life often 
 serves to hide the man instead of revealing him. 
 The remark has a singular pertinency when 
 applied to Hawthorne himself, but it is scarcely 
 less true of James Russell Lowell. Full and 
 various as was Lowell s intellectual and spiritual 
 experience, his life was for the most part barren 
 of outward adventure, and to insist too closely 
 upon its mere chronology and circumstance is to 
 miss the secret of its inner spirit. He was born 
 in 1819 in that Old Cambridge which he and 
 other men have described so charmingly ; was 
 graduated at Harvard College ; soon adopted 
 literature as his calling; won a deserved repu 
 tation as a poet ; became professor of modern 
 languages at his alma mater, but never lost touch 
 with American public life ; was appointed Min 
 ister to Spain and afterwards to Great Britain ; 
 wrote prose and poetry to the very end of a life 
 rich in friendship and affection and patriotism ; 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 and he died in 1891, one of the most honored 
 and representative figures in American letters, 
 in the homestead where he was born. In one 
 sense, that is all there is to say. Lovers of litera 
 ture need not greatly concern themselves with 
 the exact dates of publication of Lowell s books, 
 or with the precise limits of his service as pro 
 fessor, editor, and diplomat. Such facts are not 
 without interest, but too much emphasis upon 
 them is likely to hide the real Lowell instead of 
 revealing him. 
 
 Yet in issuing this new edition of his col 
 lected works, now rounded out, for the first time, 
 by the inclusion of his " Letters," it has been 
 thought advisable to provide the reader with 
 such easily told facts about Lowell s life and 
 literary career as may be essential to an intelli 
 gent enjoyment of his writings. Mr. Horace E. 
 Scudder has written Lowell s biography in two 
 ample, scholarly volumes ; other men of letters 
 have engaged themselves with briefer biograph 
 ical sketches, and there is no danger that the 
 reading public will be left ignorant of the career 
 of a man of such personal vitality and fascina 
 tion. All that is here attempted, therefore, is to 
 set down for convenient reference a few memo 
 randa concerning the outward course of Lowell s 
 life, indicating those changes in circumstance and 
 
INTRODUCTION ami 
 
 varieties of experience which are reflected in his 
 books. 
 
 In " Fireside Travels," the first volume of the 
 present edition, there is a whimsical and delight 
 ful sketch, written in 1 854, entitled " Cambridge 
 Thirty Years Ago." It paints the village of 
 Lowell s boyhood. In the westernmost of those 
 " half dozen dignified old houses of the colonial 
 time," on the leisurely winding Tory Row, lived 
 his father, the Reverend Charles Lowell, min 
 ister of the West Congregational Church in 
 Boston, some four miles away. In this house, 
 Elmwood, was born James Russell Lowell, the 
 youngest of five children, on Washington s 
 Birthday, 1819. The boy was drilled for col 
 lege in due time, with W. W. Story and T. W. 
 Higginson, at Mr. William Wells s school in 
 Cambridge. In 1 834 he entered Harvard, as his 
 father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had 
 done before him. He read widely in college, 
 and contributed to the student magazine prose 
 and rhyme neither better nor worse than most 
 undergraduate writing. But he must be charac 
 terized, upon the whole, as Stevenson said of 
 his own career at Edinburgh, as an " idle and 
 unprofitable" though surely far from an "ugly " 
 student. An unlucky rustication for " contin 
 ued neglect of his college duties " kept him from 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 delivering his class poem upon his graduation 
 in 1838. The poem, which was promptly pub 
 lished, is naturally prized by collectors, but it 
 affords scanty prophecy of a notable literary 
 career. 
 
 Poetry, however, became for the next half 
 dozen years the young man s chief concern. 
 He studied law, indeed, while continuing to 
 reside under his father s roof, and took his de 
 gree in 1840, but he manifested about as much 
 veritable zeal for the profession as Thackeray 
 had shown in London, a few years before. Like 
 Thackeray, too, Lowell made some brief and 
 disastrous incursions into the field of journalism. 
 But the real record of his ardent emotional life 
 in this period is to be traced in the volume now 
 entitled "Earlier Poems," which includes the 
 material published in his first book, "A Year s 
 Life," 1 841, and in his "Poems," issued in 1 843, 
 although dated 1844. In all this verse, together 
 with much that is uncertain in thought and 
 troubled in mood, there is abundant evidence 
 of the beneficent influence of Maria White, the 
 beautiful and gifted girl, herself a poet, whom 
 Lowell married in December, 1 844, after a five 
 years betrothal. 
 
 The delicacy of the young wife s health, as 
 well as a casual opportunity for bread-winning, 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 drew them at once to Philadelphia, where for a 
 few months Lowell found editorial employment 
 upon the Pennsylvania "Freeman," an anti- 
 slavery paper which had been edited for a time 
 by Whittier. Returning the next summer to 
 Elmwood, Lowell identified himself more and 
 more completely with the abolitionists. In 1846 
 he began to write both editorial articles and verse 
 for the "National Anti-Slavery Standard" of 
 New York. To the columns of the " Standard " 
 were transferred, in 1848, the first series of 
 "Biglow Papers," which had begun to appear 
 in the Boston " Courier " in 1 846. They were 
 published in book form in 1848, a year memor 
 able in the history of Lowell s literary reputation, 
 since it also witnessed the publication of his 
 "Fable for Critics" and of a new volume of 
 poems containing " The Vision of Sir Launfal." 
 These three productions, written before Lowell 
 had reached the age of thirty, were proof not 
 merely of an extraordinary facility, variety, and 
 brilliancy in composition, but also of a nature 
 capable of being profoundly moved by moral 
 questions, tremulously sensitive to beauty, and 
 trained to a sound perception of literary values. 
 These natural capacities were destined to ripen, 
 and to receive a steadily widening recognition 
 for more than forty years to come, but they are 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 as fully and perhaps even more strikingly appar 
 ent in the three books issued in 1848 than in 
 the literary productions of any subsequent year. 
 But how dull are all formal records of Lowell s 
 achievements compared with the clear image of 
 the man as it shines in the " Letters " which 
 his friend Professor Norton has edited ! Between 
 1848 and 1855, when he was appointed Long 
 fellow s successor in the Smith Professorship of 
 Modern Languages at Harvard, Lowell s bio 
 graphers have comparatively little to record, 
 except events of private joy and sorrow. Indeed 
 in those years sorrow was the more frequent vis 
 itant. Of the three daughters born to the Low 
 ells, but one survived babyhood, and in 1852 an 
 only son, Walter, died in Rome, where his par 
 ents were then sojourning. Mrs. Lowell, whose 
 physical strength had always been fragile, died at 
 Elmwood the following year. The " Letters " 
 reveal something of Lowell s secret despondency 
 as well as his outward bravery. In the winter 
 of 1 854-55 the preparation of what proved to be 
 a masterly course of lectures on poetry before 
 the Lowell Institute in Boston served as a tonic 
 for his mind, and the prompt appointment 
 to the Harvard professorship gave him keen 
 pleasure. He spent a year in Europe in special 
 preparation for his new duties, which he assumed 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 in the fall of 1856. A year later he married 
 Frances Dunlap, a woman of great charm, who 
 had had the care of his motherless daughter 
 Mabel. In the words of his friend, W. J. Still- 
 man, " She was to him healing from sorrow 
 and a defence against all trouble, a very spring 
 of life and hope." In that same year of 1857 
 Lowell became editor of the newly founded " At 
 lantic Monthly." For the next twenty years he 
 was largely occupied with teaching, editing, and 
 essay writing ; with prose, in short, rather than 
 with poetry. 
 
 Lowell s editorship of "The Atlantic" con 
 tinued until May, 1861, when he transferred it 
 to James T. Fields, one of the members of the 
 publishing-house into whose hands the magazine 
 had passed. Mr. Scudder has an admirable 
 chapter upon Lowell as an editor of "The Atlan 
 tic," and he describes also, though with less par 
 ticularity, Lowell s connection with the " North 
 American Review." The " Review " was then 
 a dignified quarterly, published in Boston, and 
 Lowell held a joint editorship of it, with Pro 
 fessor Norton as colleague, for about ten years, 
 beginning with 1863. -^ or a man constitution 
 ally impatient of details and restless under rou 
 tine labor, Lowell carried his double load, of 
 teaching and editing, with a commendably stout 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 heart, although his " Letters " are not without 
 sighings and groanings most humorously uttered. 
 His work as a college teacher has been vividly 
 described by Professor Barrett Wendell and 
 other pupils. It was highly unconventional in 
 method, useful to some of his students, inspiring 
 to a few, and was at least faithfully performed. 
 Whether it really interfered with his creative 
 activity, as Lowell often, both then and later, 
 was inclined to think it did, is not so easy to 
 determine. Too many unknown quantities are 
 always involved in that particular equation. 
 
 Lowell s reputation as a prose writer, how 
 ever it might have been affected by a greater 
 freedom for production, rests upon the essays 
 produced between his assumption of the edito 
 rial chair in 1857 and his appointment as Min 
 ister to Spain in 1877. Any characterization of 
 their learning, wit, and robust humanism would 
 be out of place here, and is in any case super 
 fluous. If Lowell s essays do not attract by 
 their own inherent and evident qualities, praise 
 of them is useless. It should be noted that 
 many of the longest and most ambitious of the 
 essays appeared first in the " North American 
 Review." Five volumes of the present edition 
 represent this period of purely literary prose : 
 "Fireside Travels," 1864; "Among My Books," 
 
INTRODUCTION xk 
 
 1870 and 1876, the two original volumes here 
 appearing in three, and " My Study Windows," 
 1871. The volume entitled " Political Essays " 
 is made up of articles written for " The Atlan 
 tic " and the " North American Review " upon 
 topics presented by the Civil War and Recon 
 struction. It is to Lowell s patriotic fervor, 
 kindled to new flame by the war, that we owe, 
 furthermore, his best known poetical work of 
 this period. The second series of " Biglow 
 Papers " began in "The Atlantic " in 1862. In 
 1865 he wrote the "Commemoration Ode" in 
 memory of the Harvard men some of them 
 near kinsmen of his own who had fallen in 
 the great struggle : a poem wonderful in its 
 improvisation, memorable for its noble sorrow, 
 its passionate and exalted patriotism. " Few 
 poets/ says Professor Norton, " have ever ren 
 dered such service to their country as Lowell 
 rendered in those years." 
 
 It was this consistent devotion to the highest 
 interests of America, apparent indeed in Low 
 ell s earliest anti-slavery verse, but more and 
 more generally acknowledged as he reached the 
 maturity of his career, which marked him, in 
 an auspicious hour, for his country s diplomatic 
 service. His active interest in politics since 
 the close of the war had been chiefly exhibited 
 
xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 in that movement for independence of party 
 control which contributed to the defeat of Mr, 
 Elaine as a candidate for the nomination for the 
 Presidency in 1876. Lowell had been a dele 
 gate to the Republican National Convention. In 
 1877 President Hayes, acting upon the friendly 
 solicitation of Mr. Howells, offered to Lowell 
 the post of Minister to Austria, and upon 
 Lowell s declining this proposal, the appoint 
 ment as Minister to Spain, which he accepted. 
 After an honorable service of over three years, 
 he was transferred to the more important post 
 at London, to the great satisfaction of most of 
 his countrymen, and to the pleasure of count 
 less friends in England. Lowell served as Min 
 ister to Great Britain until 1885, manifesting 
 unfailing tact in many trying circumstances, 
 cementing good will between the two countries, 
 and acquitting himself on all public occasions 
 with distinction. The volume entitled " Lit 
 erary and Political Addresses" is made up 
 mainly of the sagacious, witty, and graceful ad 
 dresses which he was called upon to make dur 
 ing his sojourn in England, the most significant 
 being the noteworthy address on " Democracy," 
 delivered at Birmingham in 1884. 
 
 Lowell was sixty-six when a change of ad 
 ministration brought him home. His health, 
 
INTRODUCTION x 
 
 never absolutely robust, was somewhat broken. 
 Mrs. Lowell had died during his stay in Lon 
 don, and he now made his residence temporar 
 ily with his daughter, Mrs. Burnett, in the re 
 tired village of Southboro, Massachusetts. His 
 letters to his old friends continued, as always, 
 to be charming, but they betray the inevitable 
 pathos which the sight of a narrowing circle 
 brings. Whenever it was possible, he spent his 
 summers in England. He busied himself with 
 a few tasks, like the preparation of a uniform 
 edition of his writings. He wrote verse, win 
 ning and grave, and with all the old pleasure 
 in composition. He made addresses upon not 
 able occasions, such as the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of Harvard, in 1886, and 
 the celebration of the centenary of Washington s 
 inauguration, in 1889. Honors kept coming to 
 him, and his tried friends, in this country and 
 abroad, were unfailing in their loyalty. At last 
 he had the happiness of going back to live at 
 Elmwood, and the fortune rare in our no 
 madic America of closing a life fortunate in 
 so many of its endeavors under the roof which 
 had sheltered him as a dreaming boy. The end 
 came on the twelfth of August, 1891. 
 
 B. P. 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 A MEMOIR ADDRESSED TO THE EDELMANN 
 STORG IN ROME 
 
 IN those quiet old winter evenings, around 
 our Roman fireside, it was not seldom, my 
 dear Storg, that we talked of the advantages 
 of travel, and in speeches not so long that our 
 cigars would forget their fire (the measure of 
 just conversation) debated the comparative ad 
 vantages of the Old and New Worlds. You will 
 remember how serenely I bore the imputation 
 of provincialism, while I asserted that those ad 
 vantages were reciprocal ; that an orbed and bal 
 anced life would revolve between the Old and 
 the New as opposite, but not antagonistic poles, 
 the true equator lying somewhere midway be 
 tween them. I asserted also, that there were two 
 epochs at which a man might travel, before 
 twenty, for pure enjoyment, and after thirty, for 
 instruction. At twenty, the eye is sufficiently 
 delighted with merely seeing ; new things are 
 pleasant only because they are not old ; and we 
 take everything heartily and naturally in the 
 
4 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 right way, for even mishaps are like knives, 
 that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them 
 by the blade or the handle. After thirty, we carry 
 along our scales, with lawful weights stamped 
 by experience, and our chemical tests acquired by 
 study, with which to ponder and essay all arts, 
 institutions, and manners, and to ascertain either 
 their absolute worth or their merely relative 
 value to ourselves. On the whole, I declared 
 myself in favor of the after thirty method, 
 was it partly (so difficult is it to distinguish be 
 tween opinions and personalities) because I had 
 tried it myself, though with scales so imperfect 
 and tests so inadequate ? Perhaps so, but more 
 because I held that a man should have travelled 
 thoroughly round himself and the great terra 
 incognita just outside and inside his own thresh 
 old, before he undertook voyages of discovery 
 to other worlds. " Far countries he can safest 
 visit who himself is doughty," says Beowulf. 
 Let him first thoroughly explore that strange 
 country laid down on the maps as SEAUTON ; 
 let him look down into its craters, and find 
 whether they be burnt out or only smoulder 
 ing ; let him know between the good and evil 
 fruits of its passionate tropics; let him experience 
 how healthful are its serene and high-lying table 
 lands ; let him be many times driven back (till 
 he wisely consent to be baffled) from its specu- 
 latively inquisitive northwest passages that lead 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 5 
 
 mostly to the dreary solitudes of a sunless world, 
 before he think himself morally equipped for 
 travels to more distant regions. So thought 
 pithy Thomas Fuller. " Who," he says, " hath 
 -sailed about the world of his own heart, sounded 
 each creek, surveyed each corner, but that still 
 there remains therein much c terra incognita 
 to himself? " l But does he commonly even so 
 much as think of this, or, while buying amplest 
 trunks for his corporeal apparel, does it once 
 occur to him how very small a portmanteau will 
 contain all his mental and spiritual outfit ? It is 
 more often true that a rftan who could scarce be 
 induced to expose his unclothed body even to 
 a village of prairie-dogs, will complacently dis 
 play a mind as naked as the day it was born, 
 without so much as a fig-leaf of acquirement on 
 it, in every gallery of Europe, 
 
 " Not caring, so that Sumpter-horse, the back, 
 Be hung with gaudy trappings, in what coarse, 
 Yea, rags most beggarly, they clothe the soul." 
 
 If not with a robe dyed in the Tyrian purple 
 of imaginative culture, if not with the close- 
 fitting, work-day dress of social or business 
 training, at least, my dear Storg, one might 
 provide himself with the merest waist-clout of 
 modesty ! 
 
 But if it be too much to expect men to tra 
 verse and survey themselves before they go 
 1 Holy State: The Constant Virgin. 
 
6 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 abroad, we might certainly ask that they should 
 be familiar with their own villages. If not even 
 that, then it is of little import whither they 
 go, and let us hope that, by seeing how calmly 
 their own narrow neighborhood bears their 
 departure, they may be led to think that the 
 circles of disturbance set in motion by the fall 
 of their tiny drop into the ocean of eternity will 
 not have a radius of more than a week in any 
 direction; and that the world can endure the 
 subtraction of even a justice of the peace with 
 provoking equanimity. In this way, at least, for 
 eign travel may do them good, may make them, 
 if not wiser, at any rate less fussy. Is it a great 
 way to go to school, and a great fee to pay for 
 the lesson? We cannot give too much for the 
 genial stoicism which, when life flouts us and 
 says, Put that in your pipe and smoke it ! can puff 
 away with as sincere a relish as if it were tobacco 
 of Mount Lebanon in a narghileh of Damascus. 
 It has passed into a scornful proverb, that it 
 needs good optics to see what is not to be seen ; 
 and yet I should be inclined to say that the first 
 essential of a good traveller was to be gifted with 
 eyesight of precisely that kind. All his senses 
 should be as delicate as eyes; and, above all, he 
 should be able to see with the fine eye of imagi 
 nation, compared with which all the other organs 
 with which the mind grasps and the memory 
 holds are as clumsy as thumbs. The demand for 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 7 
 
 this kind of traveller and the opportunity for him 
 increase as we learn more and more minutely the 
 dry facts and figures of the most inaccessible 
 corners of the earth s surface. There is no hope 
 of another Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, with his 
 statistics of Dreamland, who makes no difficulty 
 of impressing " fourscore thousand rhinocerots " 
 to draw the wagons of the king of Tartary s 
 army, or of killing eight hundred and fifty thou 
 sand men with a flourish of his quill, for what 
 were a few ciphers to him, when his inkhorn 
 was full and all Christendom to be astonished ? 
 but there is all the more need of voyagers who 
 give us something better than a census of popu 
 lation, and who know of other exports from 
 strange countries than can be expressed by 
 
 $ . Give me the traveller who makes me 
 
 feel the mystery of the Figure at Sai s, whose veil 
 hides a new meaning for every beholder, rather 
 than him who brings back a photograph of the 
 uncovered countenance, with its one unvarying 
 granite story for all. There is one glory of the 
 Gazetteer with his fixed facts, and another of 
 the Poet with his variable quantities of fancy. 
 
 After all, my dear Storg, it is to know things 
 that one has need to travel, and not men. Those 
 force us to come to them, but these come to us, 
 sometimes whether we will or no. These 
 exist for us in every variety in our own town. 
 You may find your antipodes without a voyage 
 
8 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 to China ; he lives there, just round the next 
 corner, precise, formal, the slave of precedent, 
 making all his teacups with a break in the edge, 
 because his model had one, and your fancy de 
 corates him with an endlessness of airy pigtail. 
 There, too, are John Bull, Jean Crapaud, Hans 
 Sauerkraut, Pat Murphy, and the rest. 
 It has been written : 
 
 " He needs no ship to cross the tide, 
 Who, in the lives around him, sees 
 Fair window-prospects opening wide 
 O er history s fields on every side, 
 Rome, Egypt, England, Ind, and Greece. 
 
 Whatever moulds of various brain 
 E er shaped the world to weal or woe, 
 Whatever empires wax and wane, 
 To him who hath not eyes in vain, 
 His village-microcosm can show." 
 
 But every thing is not a Thing, and all things 
 are good for nothing out of their natural habitat. 
 If the heroic Barnum had succeeded in trans 
 planting Shakespeare s house to America, what 
 interest would it have had for us, torn out of 
 its appropriate setting in softly hilled Warwick 
 shire, which showed us that the most English 
 of poets must be born in the most English of 
 counties ? I mean by a Thing that which is not 
 a mere spectacle, that which some virtue of the 
 mind leaps forth to, as it also sends forth its 
 sympathetic flash to the mind, as soon as they 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 9 
 
 come within each other s sphere of attraction, 
 and, with instantaneous coalition, form a new 
 product, knowledge. 
 
 Such, in the understanding it gives us of early 
 Roman history, is the little territory around 
 Rome, the gentis cunabula, without a sight of 
 which Livy and Niebuhr and the maps are vain. 
 So, too, one must go to Pompeii and the Museo 
 Borbonico, to get a true conception of that won 
 drous artistic nature of the Greeks, strong 
 enough, even in that petty colony, to survive 
 foreign conquest and to assimilate barbarian 
 blood, showing a grace and fertility of invention 
 whose Roman copies Rafaello himself could 
 only copy, and enchanting even the base uten 
 sils of the kitchen with an inevitable sense of 
 beauty to which we subterranean Northmen 
 have not yet so much as dreamed of climbing. 
 Mere sights one can see quite as well at home. 
 Mont Blanc does not tower more grandly in the 
 memory than did the dream-peak which loomed 
 afar on the morning horizon of hope, nor did 
 the smoke-palm of Vesuvius stand more erect 
 and fair, with tapering stem and spreading top, 
 in that Parthenopean air, than under the diviner 
 sky of imagination. I know what Shakespeare 
 says about homekeeping youths, and I can fancy 
 what you will add about America being inter 
 esting only as a phenomenon, and uncomfort 
 able to live in, because we have not yet done 
 
io CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 with getting ready to live. But is not your Eu 
 rope, on the other hand, a place where men have 
 done living for the present, and of value chiefly 
 because of the men who had done living in it 
 long ago ? And if, in our rapidly moving coun 
 try, one feel sometimes as if he had his home 
 on a railroad train, is there not also a satisfac 
 tion in knowing that one is going somewhere ? 
 To what end visit Europe, if people carry with 
 them, as most do, their old parochial horizon, 
 going hardly as Americans even, much Jess as 
 men ? Have we not both seen persons abroad 
 who put us in mind of parlor goldfish in their 
 vase, isolated in that little globe of their own 
 element, incapable of communication with the 
 strange world around them, a show themselves, 
 while it was always doubtful if they could see 
 at all beyond the limits of their portable prison ? 
 The wise man travels to discover himself; it 
 is to find himself out that he goes out of him 
 self and his habitual associations, trying every 
 thing in turn till he find that one activity, that 
 royal standard, sovran over him by divine right, 
 toward which all the disbanded powers of his 
 nature and the irregular tendencies of his life 
 gather joyfully, as to the common rallying-point 
 of their loyalty. 
 
 All these things we debated while the ilex 
 logs upon the hearth burned down to tinkling 
 coals, over which a gray, soft moss of ashes grew 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO u 
 
 betimes, mocking the poor wood with a pale 
 travesty of that green and gradual decay on for 
 est floors, its natural end. Already the clock at 
 the Cappuccini told the morning quarters, and 
 on the pauses of our talk no sound intervened 
 but the muffled hoot of an owl in the near con 
 vent-garden, or the rattling tramp of a patrol of 
 that French army which keeps him a prisoner in 
 his own city who claims to lock and unlock the 
 doors of heaven. But still the discourse would 
 eddy round one obstinate rocky tenet of mine, 
 for I maintained, you remember, that the wisest 
 man was he who stayed at home ; that to see 
 the antiquities of the Old World was nothing, 
 since the youth of the world was really no far 
 ther away from us than our own youth ; and 
 that, moreover, we had also in America things 
 amazingly old, as our boys, for example. Add, 
 that in the end this antiquity is a matter of 
 comparison, which skips from place to place 
 as nimbly as Emerson s Sphinx, and that one 
 old thing is good only till we have seen an older. 
 England is ancient till we go to Rome ; Etruria 
 dethrones Rome, but only to pass this sceptre 
 of antiquity which so lords it over our fancies 
 to the Pelasgi, from whom Egypt straightway 
 wrenches it, to give it up in turn to older India. 
 And whither then ? As well rest upon the first 
 step, since the effect of what is old upon the 
 mind is single and positive, not cumulative* As 
 VINHOdnVD JO 
 
12 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 soon as a thing is past, it is as infinitely far 
 away from us as if it had happened millions of 
 years ago. And if the learned Huet be correct, 
 who reckoned that all human thoughts and re 
 cords could be included in ten folios, what so 
 frightfully old as we ourselves, who can, if we 
 choose, hold in our memories every syllable of 
 recorded time, from the first crunch of Eve s 
 teeth in the apple downward, being thus ideally 
 contemporary with hoariest Eld ? 
 
 "Thy pyramids built up with newer might 
 To us are nothing novel, nothing strange." 
 
 Now, my dear Storg, you know my (what 
 the phrenologists call) inhabitiveness and ad 
 hesiveness, how I stand by the old thought, 
 the old thing, the old place, and the old friend, 
 till I am very sure I have got a better, and 
 even then migrate painfully. Remember the 
 old Arabian story, and think how hard it is to 
 pick up all the pomegranate-seeds of an oppo 
 nent s argument, and how, so long as one re 
 mains, you are as far from the end as ever. 
 Since I have you entirely at my mercy (for you 
 cannot answer me under five weeks), you will 
 not be surprised at the advent of this letter. I 
 had always one impregnable position, which was, 
 that, however good other places might be, there 
 was only one in which we could be born, and 
 which therefore possessed a quite peculiar and 
 inalienable virtue. We had the fortune, which 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 13 
 
 neither of us have had reason to call other than 
 good, to journey together through the green, se 
 cluded valley of boyhood ; together we climbed 
 the mountain wall which shut in, and looked 
 down upon, those Italian plains of early man 
 hood ; and, since then, we have met sometimes 
 by a well, or broken bread together at an oasis 
 in the arid desert of life, as it truly is. With 
 this letter I propose to make you my fellow 
 traveller in one of those fireside voyages which, 
 as we grow older, we make oftener and oftener 
 through our own past. Without leaving your 
 elbow-chair, you shall go back with me thirty 
 years, which will bring you among things and 
 persons as thoroughly preterite as Romulus or 
 Numa. For so rapid are our changes in Amer 
 ica that the transition from old to new, the 
 shifting from habits and associations to others 
 entirely different, is as rapid almost as the pass 
 ing in of one scene and the drawing out of an 
 other on the stage. And it is this which makes 
 America so interesting to the philosophic stu 
 dent of history and man. Here, as in a theatre, 
 the great problems of anthropology which in 
 the Old World were ages in solving, but which 
 are solved, leaving only a dry net result are 
 compressed, as it were, into the entertainment 
 of a few hours. Here we have I know not 
 how many epochs of history and phases of civ 
 ilization contemporary with each other, nay, 
 
H CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 within five minutes of each other, by the electric 
 telegraph. In two centuries we have seen re 
 hearsed the dispersion of man from a small 
 point over a whole continent ; we witness with 
 our own eyes the action of those forces which 
 govern the great migration of the peoples now 
 historical in Europe ; we can watch the action 
 and reaction of different races, forms of govern 
 ment, and higher or lower civilizations. Over 
 there, you have only the dead precipitate, de 
 manding tedious analysis ; but here the elements 
 are all in solution, and we have only to look to 
 see how they will combine. History, which 
 every day makes less account of governors and 
 more of man, must find here the compendious 
 key to all that picture-writing of the Past. 
 Therefore it is, my dear Storg, that we Yankees 
 may still esteem our America a place worth liv 
 ing in. But calm your apprehensions ; I do not 
 propose to drag you with me on such an his 
 torical circumnavigation of the globe, but only 
 to show you that (however needful it may be to 
 go abroad for the study of aesthetics) a man who 
 uses the eyes of his heart may find here also 
 pretty bits of what may be called the social 
 picturesque, and little landscapes over which that 
 Indian-summer atmosphere of the Past broods 
 as sweetly and tenderly as over a Roman ruin. 
 Let us look at the Cambridge of thirty years 
 since. 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 15 
 
 The seat of the oldest college in America, it 
 had, of course, some of that cloistered quiet 
 which characterizes all university towns. Even 
 now delicately thoughtful A. H. C. tells me 
 that he finds in its intellectual atmosphere a re 
 pose which recalls that of grand old Oxford. 
 But, underlying this, it had an idiosyncrasy of 
 its own. Boston was not yet a city, and Cam 
 bridge was still a country village, with its own 
 habits and traditions, not yet feeling too strongly 
 the force of suburban gravitation. Approaching 
 it from the west by what was then called the 
 New Road (so called no longer, for we change 
 our names as readily as thieves, to the great de 
 triment of all historical association), you would 
 pause on the brow of Symonds Hill to enjoy 
 a view singularly soothing and placid. In front 
 of you lay the town, tufted with elms, lindens, 
 and horse-chestnuts, which had seen Massachu 
 setts a colony, and were fortunately unable to 
 emigrate with the Tories, by whom, or by whose 
 fathers, they were planted. Over it rose the 
 noisy belfry of the College, the square, brown 
 tower of the church, and the slim, yellow spire 
 of the parish meeting-house, by no means un 
 graceful, and then an invariable characteristic of 
 New England religious architecture. On your 
 right, the Charles slipped smoothly through 
 green and purple salt-meadows, darkened, here 
 and there, with the blossoming black-grass as 
 
16 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 with a stranded cloud-shadow. Over these 
 marshes, level as water, but without its glare, 
 and with softer and more soothing gradations 
 of perspective, the eye was carried to a horizon 
 of softly rounded hills. To your left hand, 
 upon the Old Road, you saw some half dozen 
 dignified old houses of the colonial time, all 
 comfortably fronting southward. If it were 
 early June, the rows of horse-chestnuts along 
 the fronts of these houses showed, through every 
 crevice of their dark heap of foliage, and on the 
 end of every drooping limb, a cone of pearly 
 flowers, while the hill behind was white or rosy 
 with the crowding blooms of various fruit-trees. 
 There is no sound, unless a horseman clatters 
 over the loose planks of the bridge, while his 
 antipodal shadow glides silently over the mir 
 rored bridge below, or unless, 
 
 " O winged rapture, feathered soul of spring, 
 Blithe voice of woods, fields, waters, all in one, 
 Pipe blown through by the warm, mild breath of June 
 Shepherding her white flocks of woolly clouds, 
 The bobolink has come, and climbs the wind 
 With rippling wings that quiver not for flight, 
 But only joy, or, yielding to its will, 
 Runs down, a brook of laughter, through the air.* 
 
 Such was the charmingly rural picture which 
 he who, thirty years ago, went eastward over 
 Symonds Hill had given him for nothing, to 
 hang in the Gallery of Memory. But we are a 
 city now, and common councils have as yet no 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 17 
 
 notion of the truth (learned long ago by many 
 a European hamlet) that picturesqueness adds 
 to the actual money value of a town. To save 
 a few dollars in gravel, they have cut a kind of 
 dry ditch through the hill, where you suffocate 
 with dust in summer, or flounder through waist- 
 deep snowdrifts in winter, with no prospect but 
 the crumbling earth-walls on either side. The 
 landscape was carried away cart-load by cart 
 load, and, dumped down on the roads, forms a 
 part of that unfathomable pudding, which has, 
 I fear, driven many a teamster and pedestrian 
 to the use of phrases not commonly found in 
 English dictionaries. 
 
 We called it " the Village" then (I speak of 
 Old Cambridge), and it was essentially an Eng 
 lish village, quiet, unspeculative, without enter 
 prise, sufficing to itself, and only showing such 
 differences from the original type as the public 
 school and the system of town government 
 might superinduce. A few houses, chiefly old, 
 stood around the bare Common, with ample 
 elbow-room, and old women, capped and spec 
 tacled, still peered through the same windows 
 from which they had watched Lord Percy s ar 
 tillery rumble by to Lexington, or caught a 
 glimpse of the handsome Virginia General who 
 had come to wield our homespun Saxon chiv 
 alry. People were still living who regretted 
 the late unhappy separation from the mother 
 
1 8 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 island, who had seen no gentry since the Vas- 
 salls went, and who thought that Boston had ill 
 kept the day of her patron saint, Botolph, on 
 the 1 7th of June, 1775. The hooks were to be 
 seen in Massachusetts Hall from which had 
 swung the hammocks of Burgoyne s captive 
 redcoats. If memory does not deceive me, 
 women still washed clothes in the town spring, 
 clear as that of Bandusia. One coach sufficed 
 for all the travel to the metropolis. Commence 
 ment had not ceased to be the great holiday of 
 the Puritan Commonwealth, and a fitting one 
 it was, the festival of Santa Scholastica, whose 
 triumphal path one may conceive strewn with 
 leaves of spelling-book instead of bay. The stu 
 dents (scholars they were called then) wore their 
 sober uniform, not ostentatiously distinctive or 
 capable of rousing democratic envy, and the old 
 lines of caste were blurred rather than rubbed 
 out, as servitor was softened into beneficiary. 
 The Spanish king felt sure that the gesticulating 
 student was either mad or reading " Don Qui 
 xote," and if, in those days, you met a youth 
 swinging his arms and talking to himself, you 
 might conclude that he was either a lunatic or 
 one who was to appear in a " part " at the next 
 exhibition or commencement. A favorite place 
 for the rehearsal of these orations was the retired 
 amphitheatre of the Gravel-pit, perched unre 
 garded on whose dizzy edge, I have heard many 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 19 
 
 a burst of plusquam Ciceronian eloquence, and 
 (often repeated) the regular saluto vos, praestan- 
 tissimae, etc., which every year (with a glance at 
 the gallery) causes a flutter among the fans inno 
 cent of Latin, and delights to applauses of con 
 scious superiority the youth almost as innocent 
 as they. It is curious, by the way, to note how 
 plainly one can feel the pulse of self in the plau 
 dits of an audience. At a political meeting, if 
 the enthusiasm of the lieges hang fire, it may be 
 exploded at once by an allusion to their intelli 
 gence or patriotism ; and at a literary festival, 
 the first Latin quotation draws the first applause, 
 the clapping of hands being intended as a trib 
 ute to our own familiarity with that sonorous 
 tongue, and not at all as an approval of the 
 particular sentiment conveyed in it. For if 
 the orator should say, "Well has Tacitus re 
 marked, Americani omnes quadam vi naturae 
 furca dignissimi" it would be all the same. But 
 the Gravel-pit was patient, if irresponsive ; 
 nor did the declaimer always fail to bring down 
 the house, bits of loosened . earth falling now 
 and then from the precipitous walls, their cohe 
 sion perhaps overcome by the vibrations of the 
 voice, and happily satirizing the effect of most 
 popular discourses, which prevail rather with 
 the earthy than the spiritual part of the hearer. 
 Was it possible for us in those days to conceive 
 of a greater potentate than the president of the 
 
20 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 University, in his square doctor s cap, that still 
 filially recalled Oxford and Cambridge ? If there 
 was a doubt, it was suggested only by the gov 
 ernor, and even by him on artillery-election days 
 alone, superbly martial with epaulets and buck 
 skin breeches, and bestriding the war-horse, 
 promoted to that solemn duty for his tameness 
 and steady habits. 
 
 Thirty years ago, the town had indeed a char 
 acter. Railways and omnibuses had not rolled 
 flat all little social prominences and peculiari 
 ties, making every man as much a citizen every 
 where as at home. No Charlestown boy could 
 come to our annual festival without fighting to 
 avenge a certain traditional porcine imputation 
 against the inhabitants of that historic spot, to 
 which our youth gave vent in fanciful imitations 
 of the dialect of the sty, or derisive shouts of 
 " Charlestown hogs ! " The penny newspaper 
 had not yet silenced the tripod of the barber, 
 oracle of news. Everybody knew everybody, 
 and all about everybody, and village wit, whose 
 high change was around the little market-house 
 in the town square, had labelled every more 
 marked individuality with nicknames that clung 
 like burs. Things were established then, and 
 men did not run through all the figures on the 
 dial of society so swiftly as now, when hurry 
 and competition seem to have quite unhung 
 the modulating pendulum of steady thrift 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 21 
 
 and competent training. Some slow-minded 
 persons even followed their father s trade, a 
 humiliating spectacle, rarer every day. We had 
 our established loafers, topers, proverb-mongers, 
 barber, parson, nay, postmaster, whose tenure 
 was for life. The great political engine did not 
 then come down at regular quadrennial inter 
 vals, like a nail-cutting machine, to make all 
 official lives of a standard length, and to gener 
 ate lazy and intriguing expectancy. Life flowed 
 in recognized channels, narrower perhaps, but 
 with all the more individuality and force. 
 
 There was but one white-and-yeliow-washer, 
 whose own cottage, fresh-gleaming every June 
 through grapevine and creeper, was his only 
 sign and advertisement. He was said to pos 
 sess a secret, which died with him like that of 
 Luca della Robbia, and certainly conceived all 
 colors but white and yellow to savor of sav 
 agery, civilizing the stems of his trees annually 
 with liquid lime, and meditating how to extend 
 that candent baptism even to the leaves. His 
 pie-plants (the best in town), compulsory mo 
 nastics, blanched under barrels, each in his lit 
 tle hermitage, a vegetable Certosa. His fowls, 
 his ducks, his geese, could not show so much 
 as a gray feather among them, and he would 
 have given a year s earnings for a white pea 
 cock. The flowers which decked his little door- 
 yard were whitest China-asters and goldenest 
 
22 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 sunflowers, which last, backsliding from their 
 traditional Parsee faith, used to puzzle us ur 
 chins not a little by staring brazenly every way 
 except towards the sun. Celery too, he raised, 
 whose virtue is its paleness, and the silvery 
 onion, and turnip, which, though outwardly 
 conforming to the green heresies of summer, 
 nourish a purer faith subterraneously, like early 
 Christians in the catacombs. In an obscure 
 corner grew the sanguine beet, tolerated only 
 for its usefulness in allaying the asperities of 
 Saturday s salt-fish. He loved winter better 
 than summer, because Nature then played the 
 whitewasher, and challenged with her snows 
 the scarce inferior purity of his overalls and 
 neck-cloth. I fancy that he never rightly liked 
 Commencement, for bringing so many black 
 coats together. He founded no school. Others 
 might essay his art, and were allowed to try 
 their prentice hands on fences and the like 
 coarse subjects, but the ceiling of every house 
 wife waited on the leisure of Newman (ichneu 
 mon the students called him for his diminutive- 
 ness), nor would consent to other brush than 
 his. There was also but one brewer, Lewis, 
 who made the village beer, both spruce and 
 ginger, a grave and amiable Ethiopian, making 
 a discount always to the boys, and wisely, for 
 they were his chiefest patrons. He wheeled 
 his whole stock in a white-roofed handcart, on 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 23 
 
 whose front a signboard presented at either end 
 an insurrectionary bottle ; yet insurgent after no 
 mad Gallic fashion, but soberly and Saxonly 
 discharging itself into the restraining formulary 
 of a tumbler, symbolic of orderly prescription. 
 The artist had struggled manfully with the dif 
 ficulties of his subject, but had not succeeded so 
 well that we did not often debate in which 
 of the twin bottles Spruce was typified, and in 
 which Ginger. We always believed that Lewis 
 mentally distinguished between them, but by 
 some peculiarity occult to exoteric eyes. This 
 ambulatory chapel of the Bacchus that gives 
 the colic, but not inebriates, only appeared 
 at the Commencement holidays, and the lad 
 who bought of Lewis laid out his money well, 
 getting respect as well as beer, three sirs to 
 every glass, " Beer, sir ? yes, sir : spruce or 
 ginger, sir?" I can yet recall the innocent 
 pride with which I walked away after that 
 somewhat risky ceremony (for a bottle some 
 times blew up), dilated not alone with carbonic 
 acid gas, but with the more ethereal fixed air 
 of that titular flattery. Nor was Lewis proud. 
 When he tried his fortunes in the capital on 
 election days, and stood amid a row of rival 
 venders in the very flood of custom, he never 
 forgot his small fellow citizens, but welcomed 
 them with an assuring smile, and served them 
 with the first. 
 
24 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 The barber s shop was a museum, scarce 
 second to the larger one of Greenwood in the 
 metropolis. The boy who was to be clipped 
 there was always accompanied to the sacrifice 
 by troops of friends, who thus inspected the 
 curiosities gratis. While the watchful eye of 
 R. wandered to keep in check these rather 
 unscrupulous explorers, the unpausing shears 
 would sometimes overstep the boundaries of 
 strict tonsorial prescription, and make a notch 
 through which the phrenological developments 
 could be distinctly seen. As Michael Angelo s 
 design was modified by the shape of his block, 
 so R., rigid in artistic proprieties, would con 
 trive to give an appearance of design to this 
 aberration, by making it the keynote to his 
 work, and reducing the whole head to an 
 appearance of premature baldness. What a 
 charming place it was, how full of wonder 
 and delight! The sunny little room, fronting 
 southwest upon the Common, rang with cana 
 ries and Java sparrows, nor were the familiar 
 notes of robin, thrush, and bobolink wanting. 
 A large white cockatoo harangued vaguely, at 
 intervals, in what we believed (on R. s author 
 ity) to be the Hottentot language. He had 
 an unveracious air, but in what inventions of 
 former grandeur he was indulging, what sweet 
 South- African Argos he was remembering, 
 what tropical heats and giant trees by uncon- 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 25 
 
 jectured rivers, known only to the wallowing 
 hippopotamus, we could only guess at. The 
 walls were covered with curious old Dutch 
 prints, beaks of albatross and penguin, and 
 whales teeth fantastically engraved. There was 
 Frederick the Great, with head drooped plot- 
 tingly, and keen sidelong glance from under 
 the three-cornered hat. There hung Bonaparte, 
 too, the long-haired, haggard general of Italy, 
 his eyes sombre with prefigured destiny ; and 
 there was his island grave; the dream and 
 the fulfilment. Good store of sea-fights there 
 was also ; above all, Paul Jones in the Bon- 
 homme Richard : the smoke rolling courteously 
 to leeward, that we might see him dealing thun 
 derous wreck to the two hostile vessels, each 
 twice as large as his own, and the reality of the 
 scene corroborated by streaks of red paint leap 
 ing from the mouth of every gun. Suspended 
 over the fireplace, with the curling-tongs, were 
 an Indian bow and arrows, and in the corners 
 of the room stood New Zealand paddles and 
 war-clubs, quaintly carved. The model of a 
 ship in glass we variously estimated to be worth 
 from a hundred to a thousand dollars, R. 
 rather favoring the higher valuation, though 
 never distinctly committing himself. Among 
 these wonders, the only suspicious one was an 
 Indian tomahawk, which had too much the 
 peaceful look of a shingling-hatchet. Did any 
 
26 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 rarity enter the town, it gravitated naturally to 
 these walls, to the very nail that waited to re 
 ceive it, and where, the day after its accession, 
 it seemed to have hung a lifetime. We always 
 had a theory that R. was immensely rich (how 
 could he possess so much and be otherwise ?) 
 and that he pursued his calling from an amiable 
 eccentricity. He was a conscientious artist, and 
 never submitted it to the choice of his victim 
 whether he would be perfumed or not. Faith 
 fully was the bottle shaken and the odoriferous 
 mixture rubbed in, a fact redolent to the whole 
 school-room in the afternoon. Sometimes the 
 persuasive tonsor would impress one of the at 
 tendant volunteers, and reduce his poll to shoe- 
 brush crispness, at cost of the reluctant nine- 
 pence hoarded for Fresh Pond and the next half 
 holiday. So purely indigenous was our popula 
 tion then, that R. had a certain exotic charm, a 
 kind of game flavor, by being a Dutchman. 
 
 Shall the two groceries want their vates sacer, 
 where E. & W. I. goods and country prodooce 
 were sold with an energy mitigated by the quiet 
 genius of the place, and where strings of urchins 
 waited, each with cent in hand, for the unweighed 
 dates (thus giving an ordinary business transac 
 tion all the excitement of a lottery), and buying, 
 not only that cloying sweetness, but a dream 
 also of Egypt, and palm-trees, and Arabs, in 
 which vision a print of the Pyramids in our 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 27 
 
 geography tyrannized like that taller thought 
 of Cowper s ? 
 
 At one of these the unwearied students used 
 to ply a joke handed down from class to class. 
 Enter A> and asks gravely, " Have you any 
 sour apples, Deacon ? " 
 
 " Well, no, I have n t any just now that are 
 exactly sour ; but there s the bell-flower apple, 
 and folks that like a sour apple generally like 
 that/ 1 (Exit 4.) 
 
 Enter B. " Have you any sweet apples, 
 Deacon ? " 
 
 " Well, no, I have n t any just now that are 
 exactly sweet ; but there s the bell-flower ap 
 ple, and folks that like a sweet apple generally 
 like that." (Exit B.) 
 
 There is not even a tradition of any one s 
 ever having turned the wary deacon s flank, and 
 his Laodicean apples persisted to the end, neither 
 one thing nor another. Or shall the two town 
 constables be forgotten, in whom the law stood 
 worthily and amply embodied, fit either of them 
 to fill the uniform of an English beadle ? Grim 
 and silent as Ninevite statues they stood on 
 each side of the meeting-house door at Com 
 mencement, propped by long staves of blue and 
 red, on which the Indian with bow and arrow, 
 and the mailed arm with the sword, hinted at 
 the invisible sovereignty of the state ready to 
 reinforce them, as 
 
28 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 " For Achilles* portrait stood a spear 
 Grasped in an armed hand." 
 
 Stalwart and rubicund men they were, second 
 only, if second, to S., champion of the county, 
 and not incapable of genial unbendings when the 
 fasces were laid aside. One of them still sur 
 vives in octogenarian vigor, the Herodotus of 
 village and college legend, and may it be long 
 ere he depart, to carry with him the pattern of 
 a courtesy, now, alas ! old-fashioned, but which 
 might profitably make part of the instruction of 
 our youth among the other humanities ! Long 
 may R. M. be spared to us, so genial, so courtly, 
 the last man among us who will ever know how 
 to lift a hat with the nice graduation of social 
 distinctions. Something of a Jeremiah now, he 
 bewails the decline of our manners. " My chil 
 dren," he says, " say, Yes sir/ and c No sir ; 
 my grandchildren, c Yes/ and No ; and I am 
 every day expecting to hear c D n your eyes ! 
 for an answer when I ask a service of my great 
 grandchildren. Why, sir, I can remember when 
 more respect was paid to Governor Hancock s 
 lackey at Commencement, than the governor 
 and all his suite get now." M. is one of those 
 invaluable men who remember your grandfather, 
 and value you accordingly. 
 
 In those days the population was almost 
 wholly without foreign admixture. Two Scotch 
 gardeners there were, Rule, whose daughter 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 29 
 
 (glimpsed perhaps at church, or possibly the 
 mere Mrs. Harris of fancy) the students nick 
 named Anarchy or Miss Rule, and later Fra- 
 ser, whom whiskey sublimed into a poet, full of 
 bloody histories of the Forty-twa, and showing 
 an imaginary French bullet, sometimes in one 
 leg, sometimes in the other, and sometimes, to 
 ward nightfall, in both. He asserted that he had 
 been at Coruna, calling it by its archaic name 
 of the Groyne, and thus raising doubts in the 
 mind of the young listener who could find no 
 such place on his map. With this claim to a 
 military distinction he adroitly contrived to 
 mingle another to a natural one, asserting double 
 teeth all round his jaws, and, having thus created 
 two sets of doubts, silenced both at once by a 
 single demonstration, displaying the grinders to 
 the confusion of the infidel. 
 
 The old court-house stood then upon the 
 square. It has shrunk back out of sight now, 
 and students box and fence where Parsons once 
 laid down the law, and Ames and Dexter showed 
 their skill in the fence of argument. Times have 
 changed, and manners, since Chief Justice Dana 
 (father of Richard the First, and grandfather of 
 Richard the Second) caused to be arrested for 
 contempt of court a butcher who had come in 
 without a coat to witness the administration of 
 his country s laws, and who thus had his curi 
 osity exemplarily gratified. Times have changed 
 
30 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 also since the cellar beneath it was tenanted by 
 the twin brothers Snow. Oyster-men were they 
 indeed, silent in their subterranean burrow, and 
 taking the ebbs and flows of custom with bivalv- 
 ian serenity. Careless of the months with an 
 R in them, the maxim of Snow (for we knew 
 them but as a unit) was, " When ysters are 
 good, they air good ; and when they ain t, they 
 is n t." Grecian F. (may his shadow never be 
 less !) tells this, his great laugh expected all the 
 while from deep vaults of chest, and then com 
 ing in at the close, hearty, contagious, mounting 
 with the measured tread of a jovial but stately 
 butler who brings ancientest goodfellowship 
 from exhaustless bins, and enough, without 
 other sauce, to give a flavor of stalled ox to a 
 dinner of herbs. Let me preserve here an an 
 ticipatory elegy upon the Snows, written years 
 ago by some nameless college rhymer. 
 
 DIFFUGERE NIVES 
 
 Here lies, or lie, decide the question, you, 
 
 If they were two in one or one in two, 
 
 P. & S. Snow, whose memory shall not fade, 
 
 Castor and Pollux of the oyster-trade: 
 
 Hatched from one egg, at once the shell they burst 
 
 (The last, perhaps, a P. S. to the first), 
 
 So homoousian both in look and soul, 
 
 So undiscernibly a single whole, 
 
 That whether P. was S., or S. was P., 
 
 Surpassed all skill in etymology; 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 31 
 
 One kept the shop at once, and all we know 
 
 Is that together they were the Great Snow, 
 
 A snow not deep, yet with a crust so thick 
 
 It never melted to the son of Tick; 
 
 Perpetual ? nay, our region was too low, 
 
 Too warm, too southern, for perpetual Snow; 
 
 Still, like fair Leda s sons, to whom t was given 
 
 To take their turns in Hades and in Heaven, 
 
 Our Dioscuri new would bravely share 
 
 The cellar s darkness and the upper air; 
 
 Twice every year would each, the shades escape, 
 
 And, like a sea-bird, seek the wave-washed Cape, 
 
 Where (Rumor voiced) one spouse sufficed for both; 
 
 No bigamist, for she upon her oath, 
 
 Unskilled in letters, could not make a guess 
 
 At any difference twixt P. and S. 
 
 A thing not marvellous, since Fame agrees 
 
 They were as little different as two peas, 
 
 And she, like Paris, when his Helen laid 
 
 Her hand mid snows from Ida s top conveyed 
 
 To cool then" wine of Chios, could not know, 
 
 Between those rival candors, which was Snow. 
 
 Whiche er behind the counter chanced to be 
 
 Oped oysters oft, his clam-shells seldom he; 
 
 If e er he laughed, t was with no loud guffaw, 
 
 The fun warmed through him with a gradual thaw: 
 
 The nicer shades of wit were not his gift, 
 
 Nor was it hard to sound Snow s simple drift; 
 
 His were plain jokes, that many a time before 
 
 Had set his tarry messmates in a roar, 
 
 When floundering cod beslimed the deck s wet planks, 
 
 The humorous specie of Newfoundland Banks. 
 
 But Snow is gone, and, let us hope, sleeps well, 
 Buried (his last breath asked it) in a shell; 
 
32 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 Fate with an oyster-knife sawed off his thread, 
 And planted him upon his latest bed. 
 
 Him on the Stygian shore my fancy sees 
 Noting choice shoals for oyster colonies, 
 Or, at a board stuck full of ghostly forks, 
 Opening for practice visionary Yorks. 
 And whither he has gone, may we too go, 
 Since no hot place were fit for keeping Snow! 
 
 Jam satis nivis. 
 
 Cambridge has long had its port, but the 
 greater part of its maritime trade was, thirty 
 years ago, intrusted to a single Argo, the sloop 
 Harvard, which belonged to the College, and 
 made annual voyages to that vague Orient 
 known as Down East, bringing back the wood 
 that, in those days, gave to winter life at Har 
 vard a crackle and a cheerfulness, for the loss 
 of which the greater warmth of anthracite hardly 
 compensates. New England life, to be genuine, 
 must have in it some sentiment of the sea, it 
 was this instinct that printed the device of the 
 pine-tree on the old money and the old flag, 
 and these periodic ventures of the sloop Har 
 vard made the old Viking fibre vibrate in the 
 hearts of all the village boys. What a perspec 
 tive of mystery and adventure did her sailing 
 open to us ! With what pride did we hail her 
 return ! She was our scholiast upon Robinson 
 Crusoe and the mutiny of the Bounty. Her 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 33 
 
 captain still lords it over our memories, the great 
 est sailor that ever sailed the seas, and we should 
 not look at Sir John Franklin himself with such 
 admiring interest as that with which we enhaloed 
 some larger boy who had made a voyage in her, 
 and had come back without braces (gallowses 
 we called them) to his trousers, and squirting 
 ostentatiously the juice of that weed which still 
 gave him little private returns of something very 
 like seasickness. All our shingle vessels were 
 shaped and rigged by her, who was our glass of 
 naval fashion and our mould of aquatic form. 
 We had a secret and wild delight in believing 
 that she carried a gun, and imagined her send 
 ing grape and canister among the treacherous 
 savages of Oldtown. Inspired by her were those 
 first essays at navigation on the Winthrop duck- 
 pond, of the plucky boy who was afterwards to 
 serve two famous years before the mast. 
 
 The greater part of what is now Cambridge- 
 port was then (in the native dialect) a huckleberry 
 pastur. Woods were not wanting on its out 
 skirts, of pine, and oak, and maple, and the 
 rarer tupelo with downward limbs. Its veins did 
 not draw their blood from the quiet old heart 
 of the village, but it had a distinct being of its 
 own, and was rather a great caravansary than a 
 suburb. The chief feature of the place was its 
 inns, of which there were five, with vast barns 
 and courtyards, which the railroad was to make 
 
34 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 as silent and deserted as the palaces of Nim- 
 roud. Great white-topped wagons, each drawn 
 by double files of six or eight horses, with its 
 dusty bucket swinging from the hinder axle, and 
 its grim bull-dog trotting silent underneath, or 
 in midsummer panting on the lofty perch beside 
 the driver (how elevated thither baffled conjec 
 ture), brought all the wares and products of the 
 country to their mart and seaport in Boston. 
 These filled the inn-yards, or were ranged side 
 by side under broad-roofed sheds, and far into 
 the night the mirth of their lusty drivers clam 
 ored from the red-curtained bar-room, while the 
 single lantern, swaying to and fro in the black 
 cavern of the stables, made a Rembrandt of the 
 group of ostlers and horses below. There were, 
 beside the taverns, some huge square stores 
 where groceries were sold, some houses, by 
 whom or why inhabited was to us boys a pro 
 blem, and, on the edge of the marsh, a currier s 
 shop, where, at high tide, on a floating platform, 
 men were always beating skins in a way to re 
 mind one of Don Quixote s fulling-mills. Nor 
 did these make all the Port. As there is always 
 a Coming Man who never comes, so there is a 
 man who always comes (it may be only a quar 
 ter of an hour) too early. This man, so far as 
 the Port is concerned, was Rufus Davenport. 
 Looking at the marshy flats of Cambridge, and 
 considering their nearness to Boston, he resolved 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 35 
 
 that there should grow up a suburban Venice. 
 Accordingly, the marshes were bought, canals 
 were dug, ample for the commerce of both In 
 dies, and four or five rows of brick houses were 
 built to meet the first wants of the wading set 
 tlers who were expected to rush in WHENCE ? 
 This singular question had never occurred to 
 the enthusiastic projector. There are laws which 
 govern human migrations quite beyond the con 
 trol of the speculator, as many a man with de 
 sirable building-lots has discovered to his cost. 
 Why mortal men will pay more for a chess 
 board square in that swamp than for an acre 
 on the breezy upland close by, who shall say? 
 And again, why, having shown such a passion 
 for your swamp, they are so coy of mine, who 
 shall say ? Not certainly any one who, like 
 Davenport, had got up too early for his gener 
 ation. If we could only carry that slow, im 
 perturbable old clock of Opportunity, that never 
 strikes a second too soon or too late, in our fobs, 
 and push the hands forward as we can those 
 of our watches ! With a foreseeing economy of 
 space which now seems ludicrous, the roofs 
 of this forlorn hope of houses were made flat, 
 that the swarming population might have where 
 to dry their clothes. But A. u. c. 30 showed 
 the same view as A. u. c. i, only that the 
 brick blocks looked as if they had been struck 
 by a malaria. The dull weed upholstered the 
 
36 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 decaying wharves, and the only freight that 
 heaped them was the kelp and eel-grass left by 
 higher floods. Instead of a Venice, behold aTor- 
 zelo ! The unfortunate projector took to the last 
 refuge of the unhappy book-making, and 
 bored the reluctant public with what he called a 
 right-aim Testament, prefaced by a recommen 
 dation from General Jackson, who perhaps, from 
 its title, took it for some treatise on ball-practice. 
 But even Cambridgeport, my dear Storg, did 
 not want associations poetic and venerable. The 
 stranger who took the "Hourly" at Old Cam 
 bridge, if he were a physiognomist and student 
 of character, might perhaps have had his cu 
 riosity excited by a person who mounted the 
 coach at the Port. So refined was his whole ap 
 pearance, so fastidiously neat his apparel, but 
 with a neatness that seemed less the result of 
 care and plan than a something as proper to the 
 man as whiteness to the lily, that you would 
 have at once classed him with those individuals, 
 rarer than great captains and almost as rare as 
 great poets, whom Nature sends into the world 
 to fill the arduous office of Gentleman. Were 
 you ever emperor of that Barataria which under 
 your peaceful sceptre would present, of course, 
 a model of government, this remarkable person 
 should be Duke of Bienseance and Master of 
 Ceremonies. There are some men whom destiny 
 has endowed with the faculty of external neat- 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 3? 
 
 ness, whose clothes are repellent of dust and 
 mud, whose unwithering white neck-cloths per 
 severe to the day s end, unappeasably seeing the 
 sun go down upon their starch, and whose linen 
 makes you fancy them heirs in the maternal 
 line to the instincts of all the washerwomen 
 from Eve downward. There are others whose 
 inward natures possess this fatal cleanness, in 
 capable of moral dirt-spot. You are not long 
 in discovering that the stranger combines in him 
 self both these properties. A nimbus of hair, 
 fine as an infant s, and early white, showing re 
 finement of organization and the predominance 
 of the spiritual over the physical, undulated and 
 floated around a face that seemed like pale flame, 
 and over which the flitting shades of expression 
 chased each other, fugitive and gleaming as 
 waves upon a field of rye. It was a countenance 
 that, without any beauty of feature, was very 
 beautiful. I have said that it looked like pale 
 flame, and can find no other words for the im 
 pression it gave. Here was a man all soul, his 
 body seeming a lamp of finest clay, whose ser 
 vice was to feed with magic oils, rare and fra 
 grant, that wavering fire which hovered over it. 
 You, who are an adept in such matters, would 
 have detected in the eyes that artist-look which 
 seems to see pictures ever in the air, and which, 
 if it fall on you, makes you feel as if all the 
 world were a gallery, and yourself the rather 
 
38 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 indifferent Portrait of a Gentleman hung therein. 
 As the stranger brushes by you in alighting, 
 you detect a single incongruity, a smell of 
 dead tobacco-smoke. You ask his name, and 
 the answer is, " Mr. Allston." 
 
 " Mr. Allston ! " and you resolve to note 
 down at once in your diary every look, every 
 gesture, every word of the great painter ? Not 
 in the least. You have the true Anglo-Norman 
 indifference, and most likely never think of 
 him again till you hear that one of his pictures 
 has sold for a great price, and then contrive to 
 let your grandchildren know twice a week that 
 you met him once in a coach, and that he said, 
 " Excuse me, sir," in a very Titianesque man 
 ner, when he stumbled over your toes in get 
 ting out. Hitherto Boswell is quite as unique 
 as Shakespeare. The country gentleman, jour 
 neying up to London, inquires of Mistress 
 Davenant at the Oxford inn the name of 
 his pleasant companion of the night before. 
 " Master Shakespeare, an t please your wor 
 ship." And the Justice, not without a sense 
 of the unbending, says, " Truly, a merry and 
 conceited gentleman ! " It is lucky for the peace 
 of great men that the world seldom finds out 
 contemporaneously who its great men are, or, 
 perhaps, that each man esteems himself the for 
 tunate he who shall draw the lot of memory 
 from the helmet of the future. Had the eyes 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 39 
 
 of some Stratford burgess been achromatic 
 telescopes, capable of a perspective of two hun 
 dred years ! But, even then, would not his re 
 cord have been fuller of says T s than of says 
 he s? Nevertheless, it is curious to consider 
 from what infinitely varied points of view we 
 might form our estimate of a great man s char 
 acter, when we remember that he had his points 
 of contact with the butcher, the baker, and the 
 candlestick-maker, as well as with the ingenious 
 A, the sublime B, and the Right Honorable C. 
 If it be true that no man ever clean forgets 
 everything, and that the act of drowning (as is 
 asserted) forthwith brightens up all those o er- 
 rusted impressions, would it not be a curious 
 experiment, if, after a remarkable person s death, 
 the public, eager for minutest particulars, should 
 gather together all who had ever been brought 
 into relations with him, and, submerging them 
 to the hair s-breadth hitherward of the drown- 
 ing-point, subject them to strict cross-examina 
 tion by the Humane Society, as soon as they 
 become conscious between the resuscitating 
 blankets ? All of us probably have brushed 
 against destiny in the street, have shaken hands 
 with it, fallen asleep with it in railway carriages, 
 and knocked heads with it in some one or other 
 of its yet unrecognized incarnations. 
 
 Will it seem like presenting a tract to a col 
 porteur, my dear Storg, if I say a word or two 
 
40 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 about an artist to you over there in Italy ? Be 
 patient, and leave your button in my grasp yet 
 a little longer. T. G. A., a person whose opin 
 ion is worth having, once said to me, that, how 
 ever one s notions might be modified by going 
 to Europe, one always came back with a higher 
 esteem for Allston. Certainly he is thus far the 
 greatest English painter of historical subjects. 
 And only consider how strong must have been 
 the artistic bias in him, to have made him a 
 painter at all under the circumstances. There 
 were no traditions of art, so -necessary for guid 
 ance and inspiration. Blackburn, Smibert, Cop 
 ley, Trumbull, Stuart, it was, after all, but a 
 Brentford sceptre which their heirs could aspire 
 to, and theirs were not names to conjure with, 
 like those from which Fame, as through a silver 
 trumpet, had blown for three centuries. Copley 
 and Stuart were both remarkable men ; but the 
 one painted like an inspired silk-mercer, and 
 the other, though at his best one of the great 
 est of portrait painters, seems sometimes to have 
 mixed his colors with the claret of which he 
 and his generation were so fond. And what 
 could a successful artist hope for, at that time, 
 beyond the mere wages of his work? His pic 
 ture would hang in cramped back parlors, be 
 tween deadly cross-fires of lights, sure of the 
 garret or the auction-room ere long, in a coun 
 try where the nomad population carry no house- 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 41 
 
 hold gods with them but their five wits and 
 their ten fingers. As a race, we care nothing 
 about Art ; but the Puritan and the Quaker 
 are the only Englishmen who have had pluck 
 enough to confess it. If it were surprising that 
 Allston should have become a painter at all, 
 how almost miraculous that he should have 
 been a great and original one ! I call him origi 
 nal deliberately, because, though his school be 
 essentially Italian, it is of less consequence 
 where a man buys his tools than what use he 
 makes of them. Enough English artists went 
 to Italy and came back painting history in a 
 very Anglo-Saxon manner, and creating a school 
 as melodramatic as the French, without its per 
 fection in technicalities. But Allston carried 
 thither a nature open on the southern side, and 
 brought it back so steeped in rich Italian sun 
 shine that the east winds (whether physical or 
 intellectual) of Boston and the dusts of Cam- 
 bridgeport assailed it in vain. To that bare 
 wooden studio one might go to breathe Vene 
 tian air, and, better yet, the very spirit wherein 
 the elder brothers of Art labored, etherealized 
 by metaphysical speculation, and sublimed by 
 religious fervor. The beautiful old man ! Here 
 was genius with no volcanic explosions (the 
 mechanic result of vulgar gunpowder often), but 
 lovely as a Lapland night ; here was fame, not 
 sought after nor worn in any cheap French 
 
42 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 fashion as a ribbon at the buttonhole, but so 
 gentle, so retiring, that it seemed no more than 
 an assured and emboldened modesty; here was 
 ambition, undebased by rivalry and incapable 
 of the sidelong look ; and all these massed and 
 harmonized together into a purity and depth 
 of character, into a tone, which made the daily 
 life of the man the greatest masterpiece of the 
 artist. 
 
 But let us go back to the Old Town. Thirty 
 years since, the Muster and the Cornwallis al 
 lowed some vent to those natural instincts which 
 Puritanism scotched, but not killed. The Corn 
 wallis had entered upon the estates of the old 
 Guy Fawkes procession, confiscated by the Re 
 volution. It was a masquerade, in which that 
 grave and suppressed humor, of which the Yan 
 kees are fuller than other people, burst through 
 all restraints, and disported itself in all the wild 
 est vagaries of fun. Commonly the Yankee in 
 his pleasures suspects the presence of Public 
 Opinion as a detective, and accordingly is apt 
 to pinion himself in his Sunday suit. It is a 
 curious commentary on the artificiality of our 
 lives that men must be disguised and masked 
 before they will venture into the obscurer cor 
 ners of their individuality, and display the true 
 features of their nature. One remarked it in 
 the Carnival, and one especially noted it here 
 among a race naturally self-restrained ; for Silas 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 43 
 
 and Ezra and Jonas were not only disguised as 
 Redcoats, Continentals, and Indians, but not 
 unfrequently disguised in drink also. It is a 
 question whether the Lyceum, where the public 
 is obliged to comprehend all vagrom men, sup 
 plies the place of the old popular amusements. 
 A hundred and fifty years ago, Cotton Mather 
 bewails the carnal attractions of the tavern and 
 the training-field, and tells of an old Indian who 
 imperfectly understood the English tongue, but 
 desperately mastered enough of it (when under 
 sentence of death) to express a desire for in 
 stant hemp rather than listen to any more 
 ghostly consolations. Puritanism I am per 
 fectly aware how great a debt we owe it tried 
 over again the old experiment of driving out 
 nature with a pitchfork, and had the usual suc 
 cess. It was like a ship inwardly on fire, whose 
 hatches must be kept hermetically battened 
 down ; for the admittance of an ounce of 
 Heaven s own natural air would explode it 
 utterly. Morals can never be safely embodied 
 in the constable. Polished, cultivated, fasci 
 nating Mephistopheles ! it is for the ungov 
 ernable breakings-away of the soul from un 
 natural compressions that thou waitest with a 
 deprecatory smile. Then it is that thou offerest 
 thy gentlemanly arm to unguarded youth for a 
 pleasant stroll through the City of Destruction, 
 and, as a special favor, introducest him to the 
 
44 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 bewitching Miss Circe, and to that model of 
 the hospitable old English gentleman, Mr. 
 Comus. 
 
 But the Muster and the Cornwallis were not 
 peculiar to Cambridge. Commencement day 
 was. Saint Pedagogus was a worthy whose feast 
 could be celebrated by men who quarrelled with 
 minced-pies, and blasphemed custard through 
 the nose. The holiday preserved all the fea 
 tures of an English fair. Stations were marked 
 out beforehand by the town constables, and dis 
 tinguished by numbered stakes. These were 
 assigned to the different venders of small wares 
 and exhibitors of rarities, whose canvas booths, 
 beginning at the market-place, sometimes half 
 encircled the Common with their jovial embrace. 
 Now all the Jehoiada-boxes in town were forced 
 to give up their rattling deposits of specie, if 
 not through the legitimate orifice, then to the 
 brute force of the hammer. For hither were 
 come all the wonders of the world, making the 
 Arabian Nights seem possible, and these we be 
 held for half price ; not without mingled emo 
 tions, pleasure at the economy, and shame 
 at not paying the more manly fee. Here the 
 mummy unveiled her withered charms, a 
 more marvellous Ninon, still attractive in her 
 three-thousandth year e Here were the Siamese 
 twins ; ah ! if all such forced and unnatural 
 unions were made a show of! Here were the 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 45 
 
 flying horses (their supernatural effect injured 
 like that of some poems by the visibility of 
 the man who turned the crank), on which, as 
 we tilted at the ring, we felt our shoulders 
 tingle with the accolade^ and heard the clink of 
 golden spurs at our heels. Are the realities 
 of life ever worth half so much as its cheats ? 
 And are there any feasts half so filling at the 
 price as those Barmecide ones spread for us 
 by Imagination ? Hither came the Canadian 
 giant, surreptitiously seen, without price, as he 
 alighted, in broad day (giants were always fool 
 ish), at the tavern. Hither came the great horse 
 Columbus, with shoes two inches thick, and 
 more wisely introduced by night. In the trough 
 of the town-pump might be seen the mermaid, 
 its poor monkey s head carefully sustained 
 above water, to keep it from drowning. There 
 were dwarfs, also, who danced and sang, and 
 many a proprietor regretted the transaudient 
 properties of canvas, which allowed the frugal 
 public to share in the melody without entering 
 the booth. Is it a slander of J. H., who reports 
 that he once saw a deacon, eminent for psalm 
 ody, lingering near one of those vocal tents, 
 and, with an assumed air of abstraction, fur 
 tively drinking in, with unhabitual ears, a song, 
 not secular merely, but with a dash of libertin 
 ism ? The New England proverb says, " All 
 deacons are good, but there s odds in dea- 
 
46 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 cons." On these days Snow became superter- 
 ranean, and had a stand in the square, and 
 Lewis temperately contended with the stronger 
 fascinations of egg-pop. But space would fail 
 me to make a catalogue of everything. No 
 doubt, Wisdom also, as usual, had her quiet 
 booth at the corner of some street, without en 
 trance-fee, and, even at that rate, got never a 
 customer the whole day long. For the bank 
 rupt afternoon there were peep-shows, at a cent 
 each. 
 
 But all these shows and their showmen are as 
 clean gone now as those of Caesar and Timour 
 and Napoleon, for which the world paid dearer. 
 They are utterly gone out, not leaving so much 
 as a snuff behind, as little thought of now as 
 that John Robins, who was once so consider 
 able a phenomenon as to be esteemed the last 
 great Antichrist and son of perdition by the en 
 tire sect of Muggletonians. Were Commence 
 ment what it used to be, I should be tempted 
 to take a booth myself, and try an experiment 
 recommended by a satirist of some merit, 
 whose works were long ago dead and (I fear) 
 deedeed to boot. 
 
 " Menenius, thou who fain wouldst know how calmly men 
 
 can pass 
 Those biting portraits of themselves, disguised as fox or 
 
 ass, 
 Go borrow coin enough to buy a full-length psyche-glass, 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 47 
 
 Engage a rather darkish room in some well-sought position, 
 And let the town break out with bills, so much per head ad 
 mission, 
 
 GREAT NATURAL CURIOSITY ! ! THE BIGGEST LIVING FOOL ! ! 
 Arrange your mirror cleverly, before it set a stool, 
 Admit the public one by one,, place each upon the seat, 
 Draw up the curtain, let him look his fill, and then retreat. 
 Smith mounts and takes a thorough view, then comes serenely 
 
 down, 
 
 Goes home and tells his wife the thing is curiously like Brown; 
 Brown goes and stares, and tells his wife the wonder s core 
 
 and pith 
 
 Is that t is just the counterpart of that conceited Smith. 
 Life calls us all to such a show: Menenius, trust in me, 
 While thou to see thy neighbor smil st, he does the same for 
 thee." 
 
 My dear Storg, would you come to my 
 show, and, instead of looking in my glass, in 
 sist on taking your money s worth in staring at 
 the exhibitor ? 
 
 Not least among the curiosities which the 
 day brought together were some of the gradu 
 ates, posthumous men, as it were, disentombed 
 from country parishes and district schools, but 
 perennial also, in whom freshly survived all the 
 College jokes, and who had no intelligence later 
 than their Senior year. These had gathered to 
 eat the College dinner, and to get the Triennial 
 Catalogue (their libro tToro), referred to oftener 
 than any volume but the Concordance. Aspir 
 ing men they were certainly, but in a right 
 unworldly way; this scholastic festival opening 
 
48 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 a peaceful path to the ambition which might 
 else have devastated mankind with Prolusions 
 on the Pentateuch, or Genealogies of the Dor 
 mouse Family. For since in the academic pro 
 cessions the classes are ranked in the order of 
 their graduation, and he has the best chance at 
 the dinner who has the fewest teeth to eat it 
 with, so, by degrees, there springs up a com 
 petition in longevity, the prize contended for 
 being the oldest surviving graduateship. This 
 is an office, it is true, without emolument, but 
 having certain advantages, nevertheless. The 
 incumbent, if he come to Commencement, is a 
 prodigious lion, and commonly gets a paragraph 
 in the newspapers once a year with the (fiftieth) 
 last survivor of Washington s Life Guard. If 
 a clergyman, he is expected to ask a blessing 
 and return thanks at the dinner, a function 
 which he performs with centenarian longanim 
 ity, as if he reckoned the ordinary life of man 
 to be fivescore years, and that a grace must be 
 long to reach so far away as heaven. Accord 
 ingly, this silent race is watched, on the course 
 of the Catalogue, with an interest worthy of 
 Newmarket ; and as star after star rises in the 
 galaxy of death, till one name is left alone, an 
 oasis of life in the stellar desert, it grows solemn. 
 The natural feeling is reversed, and it is the 
 solitary life that becomes sad and monitory, the 
 Stylites there on the lonely top of his century 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 49 
 
 pillar, who has heard the passing bell of youth, 
 love, friendship, hope, of everything but im 
 mitigable eld. 
 
 Dr. K. was president of the University then, a 
 man of genius, but of genius that evaded utiliza 
 tion, a great water-power, but without rapids, 
 and flowing with too smooth and gentle a current 
 to be set turning wheels and whirling spindles. 
 His was not that restless genius of which the 
 man seems to be merely the representative, and 
 which wreaks itself in literature or politics, but 
 of that milder sort, quite as genuine, and per 
 haps of more contemporaneous value, which is 
 the man, permeating the whole life with placid 
 force, and giving to word, look, and gesture a 
 meaning only justifiable by our belief in a re 
 served power of latent reinforcement. The man 
 of talents possesses them like so many tools, 
 does his job with them, and there an end ; but 
 the man of genius is possessed by it, and it 
 makes him into a book or a life according to 
 its whim. Talent takes the existing moulds, 
 and makes its castings, better or worse, of richer 
 or J)aser metal, according to knack and oppor 
 tunity ; but genius is always shaping new ones, 
 and runs the man in them, so that there is al 
 ways that human feel in its results which gives 
 us a kindred thrill. What it will make, we can 
 only conjecture, contented always with knowing 
 the infinite balance of possibility fegainst which 
 
50 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 it can draw at pleasure. Have you ever seen 
 a man whose check would be honored for a 
 million pay his toll of one cent ? and has not 
 that bit of copper, no bigger than your own, 
 and piled with it by the careless toll-man, given 
 you a tingling vision of what golden bridges he 
 could pass, into what Elysian regions of 
 taste and enjoyment and culture, barred to the 
 rest of us ? Something like it is the impression 
 made by such characters as K. s on those who 
 come in contact with them. 
 
 There was that in the soft and rounded (I 
 had almost said melting) outlines of his face 
 which reminded one of Chaucer. The head 
 had a placid yet dignified droop like his. He 
 was an anachronism, fitter to have been Abbot 
 of Fountains or Bishop Golias, courtier and 
 priest, humorist and lord spiritual, all in one, 
 than for the mastership of a provincial college, 
 which combined, with its purely scholastic func 
 tions, those of accountant and chief of police. 
 For keeping books he was incompetent (unless 
 it were those he borrowed), and the only dis 
 cipline he exercised was by the unobtrusive 
 pressure of a gentlemanliness which rendered 
 insubordination to him impossible. But the 
 world always judges a man (and rightly enough, 
 too) by his little faults, which he shows a hun 
 dred times a day, rather than by his great vir 
 tues, which he discloses perhaps but once in a 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 51 
 
 lifetime, and to a single person, nay, in pro 
 portion as they are rarer, and he is nobler, is 
 shyer of letting their existence be known at all. 
 He was one of those misplaced persons whose 
 misfortune it is that their lives overlap two dis 
 tinct eras, and are already so impregnated with 
 one that they can never be in healthy sym 
 pathy with the other. Born when the New 
 England clergy were still an establishment and 
 an aristocracy, and when office was almost al 
 ways for life, and often hereditary, he lived to 
 be thrown upon a time when avocations of all 
 colors might be shuffled together in the life of 
 one man, like a pack of cards, so that you 
 could not prophesy that he who was ordained 
 to-day might not accept a colonelcy of filibus 
 ters to-morrow. Such temperaments as his at 
 tach themselves, like barnacles, to what seems 
 permanent ; but presently the good ship Pro 
 gress weighs anchor, and whirls them away from 
 drowsy tropic inlets to arctic waters of unnatural 
 ice. To such crustaceous natures, created to 
 cling upon the immemorial rock amid softest 
 mosses, comes the bustling Nineteenth Cen 
 tury and says, " Come, come, bestir yourself 
 and be practical ! get out of that old shell of 
 yours forthwith ! " Alas ! to get out of the 
 shell is to die ! 
 
 One of the old travellers in South Amer 
 ica tells of fishes that built their nests in trees 
 
52 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 (piscium et summa haesit genus ulmo), and gives a 
 print of the mother fish upon her nest, while her 
 mate mounts perpendicularly to her without aid 
 of legs or wings. Life shows plenty of such in 
 congruities between a man s place and his nature 
 (not so easily got over as by the traveller s un- 
 doubting engraver), and one cannot help fancying 
 that K. was an instance in point. He never en 
 countered, one would say, the attraction proper 
 to draw out his native force. Certainly, few men 
 who impressed others so strongly, and of whom 
 so many good things are remembered, left less 
 behind them to justify contemporary estimates. 
 He printed nothing, and was perhaps one of 
 those the electric sparkles of whose brains, dis 
 charged naturally and healthily in conversation, 
 refuse to pass through the non-conducting me 
 dium of the inkstand. His ana would make a 
 delightful collection. One or two of his official 
 ones will be in place here. Hearing that Porter s 
 flip (which was exemplary) had too great an at 
 traction for the collegians, he resolved to inves 
 tigate the matter himself. Accordingly, entering 
 the old inn one day, he called for a mug of it, 
 and, having drunk it, said, " And so, Mr. Porter, 
 the young gentlemen come to drink your flip, 
 do they?" "Yes,sir, sometimes." "Ah, well, 
 I should think they would. Good-day, Mr. 
 Porter," and departed, saying nothing more ; 
 for he always wisely allowed for the existence of 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 53 
 
 a certain amount of human nature in ingenuous 
 youth. At another time the " Harvard Wash 
 ington " asked leave to go into Boston to a col 
 lation which had been offered them. "Certainly, 
 young gentlemen," said the president, " but 
 have you engaged any one to bring home your 
 muskets ? >; the College being responsible for 
 these weapons, which belonged to the state. 
 Again, when a student came with a physician s 
 certificate, and asked leave of absence, K. granted 
 it at once, and then added, " By the way, Mr. 
 
 , persons interested in the relation which 
 
 exists between states of the atmosphere and 
 health have noticed a curious fact in regard to 
 the climate of Cambridge, especially within the 
 College limits, the very small number of 
 deaths in proportion to the cases of dangerous 
 illness." This is told of Judge W., himself 
 a wit, and capable of enjoying the humorous 
 delicacy of the reproof. 
 
 Shall I take Brahmin Alcott s favorite word, 
 and call him a daemonic man ? No, the Latin 
 genius is quite old-fashioned enough for me, 
 means the same thing, and its derivative geniality 
 expresses, moreover, the base of K. s being. 
 How he suggested cloistered repose, and quad 
 rangles mossy with centurial associations ! How 
 easy he was, and how without creak was every 
 movement of his mind ! This life was good 
 enough for him, and the next not too good. 
 
54 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 The gentleman-like pervaded even his prayers. 
 His were not the manners of a man of the world, 
 nor of a man of the other world either ; but both 
 met in him to balance each other in a beautiful 
 equilibrium. Praying, he leaned forward upon 
 the pulpit-cushion as for conversation, and 
 seemed to feel himself (without irreverence) on 
 terms of friendly, but courteous, familiarity with 
 Heaven. The expression of his face was that of 
 tranquil contentment, and he appeared less to 
 be supplicating expected mercies than thankful 
 for those already found, as if he were saying 
 the gratias in the refectory of the Abbey of 
 Theleme. Under him flourished the Harvard 
 Washington Corps, whose gyrating banner, in 
 scribed Tarn Marti quam Mercurio (atqui magis 
 Lyaeo should have been added), on the evening 
 of training-days, was an accurate dynamometer 
 of Willard s punch or Porter s flip. It was they 
 who, after being royally entertained by a maiden 
 lady of the town, entered in their orderly book 
 a vote that Miss Blank was a gentleman. I see 
 them now, returning from the imminent deadly 
 breach of the law of Rechab, unable to form other 
 than the serpentine line of beauty, while their 
 officers, brotherly rather than imperious, instead 
 of reprimanding, tearfully embraced the more 
 eccentric wanderers from military precision. 
 Under him the Med. Facs. took their equal place 
 among the learned societies of Europe, number- 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 55 
 
 ing among their grateful honorary members 
 Alexander, Emperor of all the Russias, who (ifi 
 College legends may be trusted) sent them in 
 return for their diploma a gift of medals confis 
 cated by the authorities. Under him the Col 
 lege fire-engine was vigilant and active in sup 
 pressing any tendency to spontaneous combus 
 tion among the Freshmen, or rushed wildly to 
 imaginary conflagrations, generally in a direc 
 tion where punch was to be had. All these 
 useful conductors for the natural electricity of 
 youth, dispersing it or turning it harmlessly into 
 the earth, are taken away now, wisely or not, 
 is questionable. 
 
 An academic town, in whose atmosphere there 
 is always something antiseptic, seems naturally 
 to draw to itself certain varieties and to preserve 
 certain humors (in the Ben Jonsonian sense) of 
 character, men who come not to study so 
 much as to be studied. At the headquarters of 
 Washington once, and now of the Muses, lived 
 C , but before the date of these recollec 
 tions. Here for seven years (as the law was 
 then) he made his house his castle, sunning 
 himself in his elbow-chair at the front door, on 
 that seventh day, secure from every arrest but 
 Death s. Here long survived him his turbaned 
 widow, studious only of Spinoza, and refusing 
 to molest the canker-worms that annually dis- 
 leaved her elms, because we were all vermicular 
 
56 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 alike. She had been a famous beauty once, but 
 the canker years had left her leafless, too ; and 
 I used to wonder, as I saw her sitting always 
 turbaned and always alone at her accustomed 
 window, whether she were ever visited by the 
 reproachful shade of him who (in spite of 
 Rosalind) died broken-hearted for her in her 
 radiant youth. 
 
 And this reminds me of J. F., who, also 
 crossed in love, allowed no mortal eye to be 
 hold his face for many years. The eremitic in 
 stinct is not peculiar to the Thebai s, as many 
 a New England village can testify; and it is 
 worthy of consideration that the Romish 
 Church has not forgotten this among her other 
 points of intimate contact with human nature. 
 F. became purely vespertinal, never stirring 
 abroad till after dark. He occupied two rooms, 
 migrating from one to the other, as the neces 
 sities of housewifery demanded, thus shunning 
 all sight of womankind, and being practically 
 more solitary in his dual apartment than Mon 
 taigne s Dean of St. Hilaire in his single one. 
 When it was requisite that he should put his 
 signature to any legal instrument (for he was 
 an anchorite of ample means), he wrapped him 
 self in a blanket, allowing nothing to be seen 
 but the hand which acted as scribe. What im 
 pressed us boys more than anything else was 
 the rumor that he had suffered his beard to 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 5? 
 
 grow, such an anti-Sheffieldism being almost 
 unheard of in those days, and the peculiar or 
 nament of man being associated in our minds 
 with nothing more recent than the patriarchs 
 and apostles, whose effigies we were obliged to 
 solace ourselves with weekly in the Family 
 Bible. He came out of his oysterhood at last, 
 and I knew him well, a kind-hearted man, who 
 gave annual sleigh-rides to the town paupers, 
 and supplied the poorer children with school- 
 books. His favorite topic of conversation was 
 Eternity, and, like many other worthy persons, 
 he used to fancy that meaning was an affair of 
 aggregation, and that he doubled the intensity 
 of what he said by the sole aid of the multipli 
 cation-table. " Eternity ! " he used to say, " it 
 is not a day ; it is not a year ; it is not a hun 
 dred years ; it is not a thousand years ; it is not 
 a million years ; no, sir " (the sir being thrown 
 in to recall wandering attention), " it is not ten 
 million years ! " and so on, his enthusiasm be 
 coming a mere frenzy when he got among his 
 sextillions, till I sometimes wished he had con 
 tinued in retirement. He used to sit at the 
 open window during thunder-storms, and had a 
 Grecian feeling about death by lightning. In 
 a certain sense he had his desire, for he died 
 suddenly, not by fire from heaven, but by the 
 red flash of apoplexy, leaving his whole estate 
 to charitable uses. 
 
58 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 If K. were out of place as president, that 
 was not P. as Greek professor. Who that ever 
 saw him can forget him, in his old age, like a 
 lusty winter, frosty but kindly, with great silver 
 spectacles of the heroic period, such as scarce 
 twelve noses of these degenerate days could 
 bear? He was a natural celibate, not dwelling 
 " like the fly in the heart of the apple," but 
 like a lonely bee rather, absconding himself in 
 Hymettian flowers, incapable of matrimony as 
 a solitary palm-tree. There was, to be sure, a 
 tradition of youthful disappointment, and a 
 touching story which L. told me perhaps con 
 firms it. When Mrs. died, a carriage with 
 
 blinds drawn followed the funeral train at some 
 distance, and, when the coffin had been lowered 
 into the grave, drove hastily away to escape 
 that saddest of earthly sounds, the first rattle 
 of earth upon the lid. It was afterward known 
 that the carriage held a single mourner, our 
 grim and undemonstrative professor. Yet I 
 cannot bring myself to suppose him susceptible 
 to any tender passion after that single lapse in 
 the immaturity of reason. He might have 
 joined the Abderites in singing their mad chorus 
 from the Andromeda ; but it would have been 
 in deference to the language merely, and with 
 a silent protest against the sentiment. I fancy 
 him arranging his scrupulous toilet, not for 
 Amaryllis or Neaera, but, like Machiavelli, for 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 59 
 
 the society of his beloved classics. His ears 
 had needed no prophylactic wax to pass the 
 Sirens isle ; nay, he would have kept them the 
 wider open, studious of the dialect in which 
 they sang, and perhaps triumphantly detecting 
 the JEoYic digamma in their lay. A thoroughly 
 single man, single-minded, single-hearted, but 
 toning over his single heart a single-breasted 
 surtout, and wearing always a hat of a single 
 fashion, did he in secret regard the dual 
 number of his favorite language as a weakness ? 
 The son of an officer of distinction in the Revo 
 lutionary War, he mounted the pulpit with 
 the erect port of a soldier, and carried his cane 
 more in the fashion of a weapon than a staff, 
 but with the point lowered, in token of surren 
 der to the peaceful proprieties of his calling. 
 Yet sometimes the martial instincts would burst 
 the cerements of black coat and clerical neck 
 cloth, as once, when the students had got into 
 a fight upon the training-field, and the licen 
 tious soldiery, furious with rum, had driven 
 them at point of bayonet to the College gates, 
 and even threatened to lift their arms against 
 the Muses bower. Then, like Major Goffe at 
 Deerfield, suddenly appeared the gray-haired 
 P., all his father resurgent in him, and shouted : 
 " Now, my lads, stand your ground, you re in 
 the right now ! Don t let one of them set foot 
 within the College grounds ! " Thus he allowed 
 
60 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 arms to get the better of the toga ; but raised it, 
 like the Prophet s breeches, into a banner, and 
 carefully ushered resistance with a preamble of 
 infringed right. Fidelity was his strong charac 
 teristic, and burned equably in him through a 
 life of eighty-three years. He drilled himself 
 till inflexible habit stood sentinel before all 
 those postern weaknesses which temperament 
 leaves unbolted to temptation. A lover of the 
 scholar s herb, yet loving freedom more, and 
 knowing that the animal appetites ever hold 
 one hand behind them for Satan to drop a bribe 
 in, he would never have two cigars in his house 
 at once, but walked every day to the shop to 
 fetch his single diurnal solace. Nor would he 
 trust himself with two on Saturdays, preferring 
 (since he could not violate the Sabbath even 
 by that infinitesimal traffic) to depend on Provi 
 dential ravens, which were seldom wanting in 
 the shape of some black-coated friend who 
 knew his need, and honored the scruple that 
 occasioned it. He was faithful, also, to his old 
 hats, in which appeared the constant service of 
 the antique world, and which he preserved for 
 ever, piled like a black pagoda under his dress 
 ing-table. No scarecrow was ever the residu 
 ary legatee of his beavers, though one of them 
 in any of the neighboring peach-orchards would 
 have been sovereign against an attack of Fresh 
 men. He wore them all in turn, getting through 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 61 
 
 all in the course of the year, like the sun 
 through the signs of the zodiac, modulating 
 them according to seasons and celestial pheno 
 mena, so that never was spider-web or chick- 
 weed so sensitive a weather-gauge as they. Nor 
 did his political party find him less loyal. 
 Taking all the tickets, he would seat himself 
 apart, and carefully compare them with the list 
 of regular nominations as printed in his Daily 
 Advertiser, before he dropped his ballot in the 
 box. In less ambitious moments, it almost 
 seems to me that I would rather have had that 
 slow, conscientious vote of P. s alone, than to 
 have been chosen Alderman of the ward ! 
 
 If you had walked to what was then Sweet 
 Auburn by the pleasant Old Road, on some 
 June morning thirty years ago, you would very 
 likely have met two other characteristic persons, 
 both phantasmagoric now, and belonging to 
 the past. Fifty years earlier, the scarlet-coated, 
 rapiered figures of Vassall, Lechmere, Oliver, 
 and Brattle creaked up and down there on red- 
 heeled shoes, lifting the ceremonious three-cor 
 nered hat, and offering the fugacious hospitali 
 ties of the snuff-box. They are all shadowy alike 
 now, not one of your Etruscan Lucumos or 
 Roman Consuls more so, my dear Storg. First 
 is W., his queue slender and tapering, like the 
 tail of a violet crab, held out horizontally by 
 the high collar of his shepherd s-gray overcoat, 
 
62 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 whose style was of the latest when he studied 
 at Leyden in his hot youth. The age of cheap 
 clothes sees no more of those faithful old gar 
 ments, as proper to their wearers and as dis 
 tinctive as the barks of trees, and by long use 
 interpenetrated with their very nature. Nor do 
 we see so many Humors (still in the old sense) 
 now that every man s soul belongs to the 
 Public, as when social distinctions were more 
 marked, and men felt that their personalities 
 were their castles, in which they could intrench 
 themselves against the world. Nowadays men 
 are shy of letting their true selves be seen, as 
 if in some former life they had committed a 
 crime, and were all the time afraid of discovery 
 and arrest in this. Formerly they used to insist 
 on your giving the wall to their peculiarities, 
 and you may still find examples of it in the par 
 son or the doctor of retired villages. One of 
 W. s oddities was touching. A little brook used 
 to run across the street, and the sidewalk was 
 carried over it by a broad stone. Of course 
 there is no brook now. What use did that little 
 glimpse of a ripple serve, where the children used 
 to launch their chip fleets ? W., in going over 
 this stone, which gave a hollow resonance to the 
 tread, had a trick of striking upon it three times 
 with his cane, and muttering, " Tom, Tom, 
 Tom ! " I used to think he was only mimick 
 ing with his voice the sound of the blows, and 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 63 
 
 possibly it was that sound which suggested his 
 thought, for he was remembering a favorite 
 nephew, prematurely dead. Perhaps Tom had 
 sailed his boats there ; perhaps the reverbera 
 tion under the old man s foot hinted at the hol- 
 lowness of life ; perhaps the fleeting eddies of 
 the water brought to mind the fugaces annos. 
 W., like P., wore amazing spectacles, fit to trans 
 mit no smaller image than the page of mightiest 
 folios of Dioscorides or Hercules de Saxonia, 
 and rising full-disked upon the beholder like 
 those prodigies of two moons at once, portend 
 ing change to monarchs. The great collar dis 
 allowing any independent rotation of the head, 
 I remember he used to turn his whole person 
 in order to bring their foci to bear upon an ob 
 ject. One can fancy that terrified Nature would 
 have yielded up her secrets at once, without 
 cross-examination, at their first glare. Through 
 them he had gazed fondly into the great mare s- 
 nest of Junius, publishing his observations upon 
 the eggs found therein in a tall octavo. It was 
 he who introduced vaccination to this Western 
 World. Malicious persons disputing his claim 
 to this distinction, he published this advertise 
 ment : " Lost, a gold snuff-box, with the inscrip 
 tion, f The Jenner of the Old World to the 
 Jennerof the New/ Whoever shall return the 
 
 same to Dr. shall be suitably rewarded." 
 
 It was never returned. Would the search after 
 
64 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 it have been as fruitless as that of the alchemist 
 after his equally imaginary gold ? Malicious 
 persons persisted in believing the box as vision 
 ary as the claim it was meant to buttress with a 
 semblance of reality. He used to stop and say 
 good-morning kindly, and pat the shoulder of 
 the blushing school-boy who now, with the 
 fierce snow-storm wildering without, sits and 
 remembers sadly those old meetings and part 
 ings in the June sunshine. 
 
 Then there was S., whose resounding " Haw, 
 haw, haw ! by Shorge ! " positively enlarged the 
 income of every dweller in Cambridge. In 
 downright, honest good cheer and good neigh 
 borhood, it was worth five hundred a year to 
 every one of us. Its jovial thunders cleared the 
 mental air of every sulky cloud. Perpetual 
 childhood dwelt in him, the childhood of his 
 native Southern France, and its fixed air was all 
 the time bubbling up and sparkling and wink 
 ing in his eyes. It seemed as if his placid old 
 face were only a mask behind which a merry 
 Cupid had ambushed himself, peeping out all 
 the while, and ready to drop it when the play 
 grew tiresome. Every word he uttered seemed 
 to be hilarious, no matter what the occasion. If 
 he were sick, and you visited him, if he had met 
 with a misfortune (and there are few men so 
 wise that they can look even at the back of a 
 retiring sorrow with composure), it was all one; 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 65 
 
 his great laugh went off as if it were set like an 
 alarm-clock, to run down, whether he would or 
 no, at a certain nick. Even after an ordinary 
 Good-morning ! (especially if to an old pupil, and 
 in French), the wonderful "Haw, haw, haw! by 
 Shorge!" would burst upon you unexpectedly, 
 like a salute of artillery on some holiday which 
 you had forgotten. Everything was a joke to 
 him, that the oath of allegiance had been 
 administered to him by your grandfather, 
 that he had taught Prescott his first Spanish (of 
 which he was proud), no matter what. Every 
 thing came to him marked by Nature Right 
 side up, with care, and he kept it so. The world 
 to him, as to all of us, was like a medal, on the 
 obverse of which is stamped the image of Joy, 
 and on the reverse that of Care. S. never took 
 the foolish pains to look at that other side, even 
 if he knew its existence ; much less would it 
 have occurred to him to turn it into view, and 
 insist that his friends should look at it with him. 
 Nor was this a mere outside good humor ; its 
 source was deeper, in a true Christian kindliness 
 and amenity. Once, when he had been knocked 
 down by a tipsily driven sleigh, and was urged 
 to prosecute the offenders, " No, no," he said, 
 his wounds still fresh, " young blood ! young 
 blood ! it must have its way ; I was young my 
 self." Was I few men come into life so young 
 as S. went out. He landed in Boston (then the 
 
66 CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 front door of America) in 93, and, in honor of 
 the ceremony, had his head powdered afresh, 
 and put on a suit of court-mourning for Louis 
 XVI. before he set foot on the wharf. My fancy 
 always dressed him in that violet silk, and his 
 soul certainly wore a full court-suit. What was 
 there ever like his bow ? It was as if you had 
 received a decoration, and could write yourself 
 gentleman from that day forth. His hat rose, 
 regreeting your own, and, having sailed through 
 the stately curve of the old regime, sank gently 
 back over that placid brain, which harbored no 
 thought less white than the powder which cov 
 ered it. I have sometimes imagined that there 
 was a graduated arc over his head, invisible to 
 other eyes than his, by which he meted out to 
 each his rightful share of castorial consideration. 
 I carry in my memory three exemplary bows. 
 The first is that of an old beggar, who, already 
 carrying in his hand a white hat, the gift of 
 benevolence, took off the black one from his 
 head also, and profoundly saluted me with both 
 at once, giving me, in return for my alms, a 
 dual benediction, puzzling as a nod from Janus 
 Bifrons. The second I received from an old 
 cardinal, who was taking his walk just outside 
 the Porta San Giovanni at Rome. I paid him 
 the courtesy due to his age and rank. Forth 
 with rose, first, the Hat ; second, the hat of his 
 confessor ; third, that of another priest who 
 
CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO 67 
 
 attended him ; fourth, the fringed cocked hat 
 of his coachman; fifth and sixth, the ditto, ditto, 
 of his two footmen. Here was an investment, 
 indeed; six hundred per cent, interest on a 
 single bow ! The third bow, worthy to be noted 
 in one s almanac among the other mirabilia, was 
 that of S., in which courtesy had mounted to 
 the last round of her ladder, and tried to 
 draw it up after her. 
 
 But the genial veteran is gone even while I 
 am writing this, and I will play Old Mortality 
 no longer. Wandering among these recent 
 graves, my dear friend, we may chance upon 
 
 ; but no, I will not end my sentence. I 
 
 bid you heartily farewell ! 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 1853 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE EDELMANN STORG AT THE 
 BAGNI DI LUCCA 
 
 THURSDAY, nth August. I knew 
 as little yesterday of the interior of 
 Maine as the least penetrating person 
 knows of the inside of that great social mill 
 stone which, driven by the river Time, sets 
 imperatively a-going the several wheels of our 
 individual activities. Born while Maine was 
 still a province of native Massachusetts, I was 
 as much a foreigner to it as yourself, my dear 
 Storg. I had seen many lakes, ranging from 
 that of Virgil^ Cumaean to that of Scott s Cale 
 donian Lady ; but Moosehead, within two days 
 of me, had never enjoyed the profit of being 
 mirrored in my retina. At the sound of the 
 name, no reminiscential atoms (according to 
 Kenelm Digby s Theory of Association, as 
 good as any) stirred and marshalled themselves 
 in my brain. The truth is, we think lightly of 
 Nature s penny shows, and estimate what we 
 see by the cost of the ticket. Empedocles gave 
 
72 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 his life for a pit entrance to JEtna, and no doubt 
 found his account in it. Accordingly, the clean 
 face of Cousin Bull is imaged patronizingly in 
 Lake George, and Loch Lomond glasses the 
 hurried countenance of Jonathan, diving deeper 
 in the streams of European association (and 
 coming up drier) than any other man. Or is the 
 cause of our not caring to see what is equally 
 within the reach of all our neighbors to be 
 sought in that aristocratic principle so deeply 
 implanted in human nature ? I knew a pauper 
 graduate who always borrowed a black coat, 
 and came to eat the Commencement dinner, 
 not that it was better than the one which daily 
 graced the board of the public institution in 
 which he hibernated (so to speak) during the 
 other three hundred and sixty-four days of the 
 year, save in this one particular, that none of 
 his eleemosynary fellow commoners could eat 
 it. If there are unhappy men who wish that 
 they were as the Babe Unborn, there are more 
 who would aspire to the lonely distinction of 
 being that other figurative personage, the Old 
 est Inhabitant. You remember the charming 
 irresolution of our dear Esthwaite (like Mac- 
 heath between his two doxies), divided between 
 his theory that he is under thirty, and his pride 
 at being the only one of us who witnessed the 
 September gale and the rejoicings at the Peace ? 
 Nineteen years ago I was walking through the 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 73 
 
 Franconia Notch, and stopped to chat with a 
 hermit, who fed with gradual logs the unwearied 
 teeth of a saw-mill. As the strident steel slit 
 off the slabs of the log, so did the less willing 
 machine of talk, acquiring a steadier up-and- 
 down motion, pare away that outward bark of 
 conversation which protects the core, and which, 
 like other bark, has naturally most to do with 
 the weather, the season, and the heat of the 
 day. At length I asked him the best point of 
 view for the Old Man of the Mountain. 
 
 " Dunno, never see it." 
 
 Too young and too happy either to feel or 
 affect the Horatian indifference, I was sincerely 
 astonished, and I expressed it. 
 
 The log-compelling man attempted no justi 
 fication, but after a little asked, " Come from 
 Baws n ? " 
 
 " Yes " (with peninsular pride). 
 
 " Goodie to see in the vycinity o Baws n." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " I said ; and I thought, see 
 Boston and die ! see the State Houses, old and 
 new, the caterpillar wooden bridges crawling with 
 innumerable legs across the flats of Charles ; see 
 the Common, largest park, doubtless, in the 
 world, with its files of trees planted as if by 
 a drill-sergeant, and then for your nunc dimittis! 
 
 " I should like, awl, I should like to stan on 
 Bunker Hill. You Ve ben there offen, likely ? " 
 
 " N-o-o," unwillingly, seeing the little end of 
 
74 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 the horn in clear vision at the terminus of this 
 Socratic perspective. 
 
 " Awl, my young frien , you Ve larned neow 
 thet wut a man kin see any day for nawthin , 
 childern half price, he never doos see. Nawthin 
 pay, nawthin vally." 
 
 With this modern instance of a wise saw, I 
 departed, deeply revolving these things with 
 myself, and convinced that, whatever the ratio 
 of population, the average amount of human 
 nature to the square mile differs little the world 
 over. I thought of it when I saw people upon 
 the Pincian wondering at the alchemist sun, as 
 if he never burned the leaden clouds to gold in 
 sight of Charles Street. I thought of it when I 
 found eyes first discovering at Mont Blanc how 
 beautiful snow was. As I walked on, I said to 
 myself, There is one exception, wise hermit, 
 it is just these gratis pictures which the poet 
 puts in his show-box, and which we all gladly 
 pay Wordsworth and the rest for a peep at. 
 The divine faculty is to see what everybody 
 can look at. 
 
 While every well-informed man in Europe, 
 from the barber down to the diplomatist, has 
 his view of the Eastern Question, why should 
 I not go personally down East and see for my 
 self? Why not, like Tancred, attempt my own 
 solution of the Mystery of the Orient, - 
 doubly mysterious when you begin the two 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 75 
 
 words with capitals ? You know my way of 
 doing things, to let them simmer in my mind 
 gently for months, and at last do them im 
 promptu in a kind of desperation, driven by the 
 Eumenides of unfulfilled purpose. So, after 
 talking about Moosehead till nobody believed 
 me capable of going thither, I found myself at 
 the Eastern Railway station. The only event 
 of the journey hither (I am now at Waterville) 
 was a boy hawking exhilaratingly the last great 
 railroad smash, thirteen lives lost, and no 
 doubt devoutly wishing there had been fifty. 
 This having a mercantile interest in horrors, 
 holding stock, as it were, in murder, misfortune, 
 and pestilence, must have an odd effect on the 
 human mind. The birds of ill omen, at whose 
 sombre flight the rest of the world turn pale, 
 are the ravens which bring food to this little 
 outcast in the wilderness. If this lad give thanks 
 for daily bread, it would be curious to inquire 
 what that phrase represents to his understanding. 
 If there ever be a plum in it, it is Sin or Death 
 that puts it in. Other details of my dreadful 
 ride I will spare you. Suffice it that I arrived 
 here in safety, in complexion like an Ethio 
 pian serenader half got-up, and so broiled and 
 peppered that I was more like a devilled kid 
 ney than anything else I can think of. 
 
 10 P. M. The civil landlord and neat 
 chamber at the " Elmwood House " were very 
 
76 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 grateful, and after tea I set forth to explore the 
 town. It has a good chance of being pretty ; 
 but, like most American towns, it is in a hob 
 bledehoy age, growing yet, and one cannot tell 
 what may happen. A child with great promise 
 of beauty is often spoiled by its second teeth. 
 There is something agreeable in the sense of 
 completeness which a walled town gives one. 
 It is entire, like a crystal, a work which man 
 has succeeded in finishing. I think the human 
 mind pines more or less where everything is 
 new, and is better for a diet of stale bread. The 
 number of Americans who visit the Old World, 
 and the deep inspirations with which they 
 breathe the air of antiquity, as if their mental 
 lungs had been starved with too thin an atmo 
 sphere, is beginning to afford matter of specu 
 lation to observant Europeans. For my own 
 part, I never saw a house which I thought old 
 enough to be torn down. It is too like that 
 Scythian fashion of knocking old people on the 
 head. I cannot help thinking that the indefin 
 able something which we call character is cumu 
 lative, that the influence of the same climate, 
 scenery, and associations for several generations 
 is necessary to its gathering head, and that the 
 process is disturbed by continual change of 
 place. The American is nomadic in religion, in 
 ideas, in morals, and leaves his faith and opinions 
 with as much indifference as the house in which 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 77 
 
 he was born. However, we need not bother : 
 Nature takes care not to leave out of the great 
 heart of society either of its two ventricles of 
 hold-back and go-ahead. 
 
 It seems as if every considerable American 
 town must have its one specimen of everything, 
 and so there is a college in Waterville, the build 
 ings of which are three in number, of brick, and 
 quite up to the average ugliness which seems 
 essential in edifices of this description. Un 
 happily, they do not reach that extreme of ugli 
 ness where it and beauty come together in the 
 clasp of fascination. We erect handsomer fac 
 tories for cottons, woollens, and steam-engines, 
 than for doctors, lawyers, and parsons. The 
 truth is, that, till our struggle with Nature is 
 over, till this shaggy hemisphere is tamed and 
 subjugated, the workshop will be the college 
 whose degrees will be the most valued. More 
 over, steam has made travel so easy that the 
 great university of the world is open to all 
 comers, and the old cloister system is falling 
 astern. Perhaps it is only the more needed, 
 and, were I rich, I should like to found a few 
 lazyships in my Alma Mater as a kind of 
 counterpoise. The Anglo-Saxon race has ac 
 cepted the primal curse as a blessing, has deified 
 work, and would not have thanked Adam for 
 abstaining from the apple. They would have 
 dammed the four rivers of Paradise, substituted 
 
7 8 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 cotton for fig-leaves among the antediluvian 
 populations, and commended man s first dis 
 obedience as a wise measure of political econ 
 omy. But to return to our college. We cannot 
 have fine buildings till we are less in a hurry. 
 We snatch an education like a meal at a rail 
 road station. Just in time to make us dyspep 
 tic, the whistle shrieks, and we must rush, or 
 lose our places in the great train of life. Yet 
 noble architecture is one element of patriotism, 
 and an eminent one of culture, the finer portions 
 of which are taken in by unconscious absorp 
 tion through the pores of the mind from the 
 surrounding atmosphere. I suppose we must 
 wait, for we are a great bivouac as yet, rather 
 than a nation on the march from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific, and pitch tents instead of build 
 ing houses. Our very villages seem to be in 
 motion, following westward the bewitching 
 music of some Pied Piper of Hamelin. We 
 still feel the great push toward sundown given 
 to the peoples somewhere in the gray dawn of 
 history. The cliff-swallow alone of all animated 
 nature emigrates eastward. 
 
 Friday, I2th. The coach leaves Waterville 
 at five o clock in the morning, and one must 
 breakfast in the dark at a quarter past four, be 
 cause a train starts at twenty minutes before 
 five, the passengers by both conveyances be 
 ing pastured gregariously. So one must be up 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 79 
 
 at half past three. The primary geological for 
 mations contain no trace of man, and it seems 
 to me that these eocene periods of the day are 
 not fitted for sustaining the human forms of 
 life. One of the Fathers held that the sun was 
 created to be worshipped at his rising by the 
 Gentiles. The more reason that Christians (ex 
 cept, perhaps, early Christians) should abstain 
 from these heathenish ceremonials. As one ar 
 riving by an early train is welcomed by a drowsy 
 maid with the sleep scarce brushed out of her 
 hair, and finds empty grates and polished ma 
 hogany., on whose arid plains the pioneers of 
 breakfast have not yet encamped, so a person 
 waked thus unseasonably is sent into the world 
 before his faculties are up and dressed to serve 
 him. It might have been for this reason that 
 my stomach resented for several hours a piece 
 of fried beefsteak which I forced upon it, or, 
 more properly speaking, a piece of that leathern 
 conveniency which in these regions assumes the 
 name. You will find it as hard to believe, my 
 dear Storg, as that quarrel of the Sorbonists, 
 whether one should say ego amat or no, that the 
 use of the gridiron is unknown hereabout, and 
 so near a river named after St. Lawrence, too ! 
 To-day has been the hottest day of the sea 
 son, yet our drive has not been unpleasant. 
 For a considerable distance we followed the 
 course of the Sebasticook River, a pretty stream 
 
8o A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 with alternations of dark brown pools and wine- 
 colored rapids. On each side of the road the 
 land had been cleared, and little one-story farm 
 houses were scattered at intervals. But the 
 stumps still held out in most of the fields, and 
 the tangled wilderness closed in behind, striped 
 here and there with the slim white trunks of 
 the elm. As yet only the edges of the great 
 forest have been nibbled away. Sometimes a 
 root-fence stretched up its bleaching antlers, 
 like the trophies of a giant hunter. Now and 
 then the houses thickened into an unsocial- 
 looking village, and we drove up to the grocery 
 to leave and take a mail-bag, stopping again 
 presently to water the horses at some pallid 
 little tavern, whose one red-curtained eye (the 
 bar-room) had been put out by the inexorable 
 thrust of Maine Law. Had Shenstone travelled 
 this road, he would never have written that 
 famous stanza of his; had Johnson, he would 
 never have quoted it. They are to real inns as 
 the skull of Yorick to his face. Where these 
 villages occurred at a distance from the river, it 
 was difficult to account for them. On the river- 
 bank, a saw-mill or a tannery served as a logical 
 premise, and saved them from total inconse 
 quentially. As we trailed along, at the rate of 
 about four miles an hour, it was discovered that 
 one of our mail-bags was missing. " Guess 
 somebody 11 pick it up," said the driver coolly ; 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 81 
 
 " t any rate, likely there s nothin in it." Who 
 knows how long it took some Elam D. or 
 Zebulon K. to compose the missive intrusted 
 to that vagrant bag, and how much longer to 
 persuade Pamela Grace or Sophronia Melissa 
 that it had really and truly been written ? The 
 discovery of our loss was made by a tall man 
 who sat next to me on the top of the coach, 
 every one of whose senses seemed to be prose 
 cuting its several investigation as we went 
 along. Presently, sniffing gently, he remarked : 
 " Pears to me J s though I smelt sunthin . 
 Ain t the aix het, think ? " The driver pulled 
 up, and, sure enough, the off fore wheel was 
 found to be smoking. In three minutes he had 
 snatched a rail from the fence, made a lever, 
 raised the coach, and taken off the wheel, bath 
 ing the hot axle and box with water from the 
 river. It was a pretty spot, and I was not sorry 
 to lie under a beech-tree (Tityrus-like, meditat 
 ing over my pipe) and watch the operations of 
 the fire-annihilator. I could not help contrast 
 ing the ready helpfulness of our driver, all of 
 whose wits were about him, current, and re 
 deemable in the specie of action on emergency, 
 with an incident of travel in Italy, where, under 
 a somewhat similar stress of circumstances, our 
 vetturino had nothing for it but to dash his hat 
 on the ground and call on Sant Antonio, the 
 Italian Hercules. 
 
82 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 There being four passengers for the Lake, a 
 vehicle called a mud-wagon was detailed at New 
 port for our accommodation. In this we jolted 
 and rattled along at a livelier pace than in the 
 coach. As we got farther north, the country 
 (especially the hills) gave evidence of longer 
 cultivation. About the thriving town of Dex 
 ter we saw fine farms and crops. The houses, 
 too, became prettier ; hop-vines were trained 
 about the doors, and hung their clustering thyrsi 
 over the open windows. A kind of wild rose 
 (called by the country folk the primrose) and 
 asters were planted about the door-yards, and 
 orchards, commonly of natural fruit, added to 
 the pleasant home-look. But everywhere we 
 could see that the war between the white man 
 and the forest was still fierce, and that it would 
 be a long while yet before the axe was buried. 
 The haying being over, fires blazed or smoul 
 dered against the stumps in the fields, and the 
 blue smoke widened slowly upward through the 
 quiet August atmosphere. It seemed to me that 
 I could hear a sigh now and then from the im 
 memorial pines, as they stood watching these 
 camp-fires of the inexorable invader. Evening 
 set in, and, as we crunched and crawled up the 
 long gravelly hills, I sometimes began to fancy 
 that Nature had forgotten to make the corre 
 sponding descent on the other side. But ere long 
 we were rushing down at full speed ; and, in- 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 83 
 
 spired by the dactylic beat of the horses hoofs, 
 I essayed to repeat the opening lines of Evan- 
 geline. At the moment I was beginning, we 
 plunged into a hollow, where the soft clay had 
 been overcome by a road of unhewn logs. I 
 got through one line to this corduroy accom 
 paniment, somewhat as a country choir stretches 
 a short metre on the Procrustean rack of a long- 
 drawn tune. The result was like this : 
 " Thihis ihis thehe fohorest prihihimeheval; thehe murhur- 
 muring pihines hahand thehe hehemlohocks ! " 
 
 At a quarter past eleven, p. M., we reached 
 Greenville (a little village which looks as if it 
 had dripped down from the hills, and settled in 
 the hollow at the foot of the lake), having ac 
 complished seventy-two miles in eighteen hours. 
 The tavern was totally extinguished. The driver 
 rapped upon the bar-room window, and after 
 a while we saw heat-lightnings of unsuccessful 
 matches followed by a low grumble of vocal 
 thunder, which I am afraid took the form of 
 imprecation. Presently there was a great suc 
 cess, and the steady blur of lighted tallow suc 
 ceeded the fugitive brilliance of the pine. A 
 hostler fumbled the door open, and stood staring 
 at but not seeing us, with the sleep sticking out 
 all over him. We at last contrived to launch him, 
 more like an insensible missile than an intelligent 
 or intelligible being, at the slumbering landlord, 
 who came out wide awake, and welcomed us as 
 
84 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 so many half dollars, twenty-five cents each 
 for bed, ditto breakfast. O Shenstone, Shen- 
 stone ! The only roost was in the garret, which 
 had been made into a single room, and contained 
 eleven double beds, ranged along the walls. It 
 was like sleeping in a hospital. However, nice 
 customs curtsy to eighteen-hour rides, and we 
 slept. 
 
 Saturday, ijth. This morning I performed 
 my toilet in the bar-room, where there was an 
 abundant supply of water, and a halo of inter 
 ested spectators. After a sufficient breakfast, we 
 embarked on the little steamer Moosehead, and 
 were soon throbbing up the lake. The boat, it 
 appeared, had been chartered by a party, this 
 not being one of her regular trips. Accordingly 
 we were mulcted in twice the usual fee, the phi 
 losophy of which I could not understand. How 
 ever, it always comes easier to us to comprehend 
 why we receive than why we pay. I dare say it 
 was quite clear to the captain. There were three 
 or four clearings on the western shore ; but after 
 passing these, the lake became wholly primeval, 
 and looked to us as it did to the first adventur 
 ous Frenchman who paddled across it. Some 
 times a cleared point would be pink with the 
 blossoming willow-herb, " a cheap and excellent 
 substitute " for heather, and, like all such, not 
 quite so good as the real thing. On all sides 
 rose deep-blue mountains, of remarkably grace- 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 85 
 
 ful outline, and more fortunate than common in 
 their names. There were the Big and Little 
 Squaw, the Spencer and Lily-bay Mountains. 
 It was debated whether we saw Katahdin or not 
 (perhaps more useful as an intellectual exercise 
 than the assured vision would have been), and 
 presently Mount Kineo rose abruptly before us, 
 in shape not unlike the island of Capri. Moun 
 tains are called great natural features, and why 
 they should not retain their names long enough 
 for these also to become naturalized, it is hard 
 to say. Why should every new surveyor re- 
 christen them with the gubernatorial patro 
 nymics of the current year ? They are geological 
 noses, and as they are aquiline or pug, indicate 
 terrestrial idiosyncrasies. Acosmical physiogno 
 mist, after a glance at them, will draw no vague 
 inference as to the character of the country. 
 The word nose is no better than any other word ; 
 but since the organ has got that name, it is con 
 venient to keep it. Suppose we had to label 
 our facial prominences every season with the 
 name of our provincial governor, how should 
 we like it ? If the old names have no other 
 meaning, they have that of age ; and, after all, 
 meaning is a plant of slow growth, as every 
 reader of Shakespeare knows. It is well enough 
 to call mountains after their discoverers, for 
 Nature has a knack of throwing doublets, and 
 somehow contrives it that discoverers have good 
 
86 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 names. Pike s Peak is a curious hit in this 
 way. But these surveyors names have no 
 natural stick in them. They remind one of 
 the epithets of poetasters, which peel off like 
 a badly gummed postage-stamp. The early 
 settlers did better, and there is something plea 
 sant in the sound of Graylock, Saddleback and 
 Great Haystack. 
 
 * I love those names 
 Wherewith the exiled farmer tames 
 Nature down to companionship 
 
 With his old world s more homely mood, 
 And strives the shaggy wild to clip 
 
 In the arms of familiar habitude. 
 
 It is possible that Mount Marcy and Mount 
 Hitchcock may sound as well hereafter as Hel 
 lespont and Peloponnesus, when the heroes, 
 their namesakes, have become mythic with an 
 tiquity. But that is to look forward a great way. 
 I am no fanatic for Indian nomenclature, the 
 name of my native district having been Pigs- 
 gusset, but let us at least agree on names for 
 ten years. 
 
 There were a couple of loggers on board, in 
 red flannel shirts, and with rifles. They were 
 the first I had seen, and I was interested in 
 their appearance. They were tall, well-knit 
 men, straight as Robin Hood, and with a quiet, 
 self-contained look that pleased me. I fell into 
 talk with one of them. 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 87 
 
 "Is there a good market for the farmers here 
 in the woods ? " I asked. 
 
 " None better. They can sell what they raise 
 at their doors, and for the best of prices. The 
 lumberers want it all, and more." 
 
 " It must be a lonely life. But then we all 
 have to pay more or less life for a living." 
 
 " Well, it is lonesome. Should n t like it. 
 After all, the best crop a man can raise is a 
 good crop of society. We don t live none too 
 long, anyhow ; and without society a fellow 
 could n t tell more n half the time whether he 
 was alive or not." 
 
 This speech gave me a glimpse into the life 
 of the lumberers camp. It was plain that there 
 a man would soon find out how much alive he 
 was, there he could learn to estimate his qual 
 ity, weighed in the nicest self-adjusting balance. 
 The best arm at the axe or the paddle, the sur 
 est eye for a road or for the weak point of ^jam^ 
 the steadiest foot upon the squirming log, the 
 most persuasive voice to the tugging oxen, 
 all these things are rapidly settled, and so an 
 aristocracy is evolved from this democracy of 
 the woods, for good old mother Nature speaks 
 Saxon still, and with her either Canning or 
 Kenning means King. 
 
 A string of five loons was flying back and 
 forth in long, irregular zigzags, uttering at in 
 tervals their wild, tremulous cry, which always 
 
88 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 seems far away, like the last faint pulse of echo 
 dying among the hills, and which is one of 
 those few sounds that, instead of disturbing 
 solitude, only deepen and confirm it. On our 
 inland ponds they are usually seen in pairs, and 
 I asked if it were common to meet five together. 
 My question was answered by a queer-looking 
 old man, chiefly remarkable for a pair of enor 
 mous cowhide boots, over which large blue 
 trousers of frocking strove in vain to crowd 
 themselves. 
 
 " Wahl, t ain t ushil," said he, " and it s 
 called a sign o rain comin , that is." 
 
 " Do you think it will rain ? " 
 
 With the caution of a veteran auspex, he 
 evaded a direct reply. " Wahl, they du say it s 
 a sign o rain comin ," said he. 
 
 I discovered afterward that my interlocutor 
 was Uncle Zeb. Formerly, every New Eng 
 land town had its representative uncle. He was 
 not a pawnbroker, but some elderly man who, 
 for want of more defined family ties, had grad 
 ually assumed this avuncular relation to the 
 community, inhabiting the border-land between 
 respectability and the almshouse, with no regu 
 lar calling, but ready for odd jobs at haying, 
 wood-sawing, whitewashing, associated with the 
 demise of pigs and the ailments of cattle, and 
 possessing as much patriotism as might be im 
 plied in a devoted attachment to " New Eng- 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 89 
 
 land" with a good deal of sugar and very 
 little water in it. Uncle Zeb was a good speci 
 men of this palaeozoic class, extinct among us 
 for the most part, or surviving, like the Dodo, 
 in the Botany Bays of society. He was ready 
 to contribute (somewhat muddily) to all gen 
 eral conversation; but his chief topics were his 
 boots and the Roostick war. Upon the low 
 lands and levels of ordinary palaver he would 
 make rapid and unlooked-for incursions ; but, 
 provision failing, he would retreat to these two 
 fastnesses, whence it was impossible to dislodge 
 him, and to which he knew innumerable passes 
 and short cuts quite beyond the conjecture of 
 common woodcraft. His mind opened natu 
 rally to these two subjects, like a book to some 
 favorite passage. As the ear accustoms itself to 
 any sound recurring regularly, such as the tick 
 ing of a clock, and, without a conscious effort 
 of attention, takes no impression from it what 
 ever, so does the mind find a natural safeguard 
 against this pendulum species of discourse, and 
 performs its duties in the parliament by an un 
 conscious reflex action, like the beating of the 
 heart or the movement of the lungs. If talk 
 seemed to be flagging, our Uncle would put 
 the heel of one boot upon the toe of the other, 
 to bring it within point-blank range, and say, 
 " Wahl, I stump the Devil himself to make 
 that ere boot hurt my foot," leaving us in doubt 
 
90 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 whether it were the virtue of the foot or its case 
 which set at naught the wiles of the adversary; 
 or, looking up suddenly, he would exclaim, 
 "Wahl, we eat some beans to the Roostick war, 
 I tell you I " When his poor old clay was wet 
 with gin, his thoughts and words acquired a rank 
 flavor from it, as from too strong a fertilizer. 
 At such times, too, his fancy commonly re 
 verted to a prehistoric period of his life, when 
 he singly had settled all the surrounding coun 
 try, subdued the Injuns and ether wild animals, 
 and named all the towns. 
 
 We talked of the winter-camps and the life 
 there. " The best thing is," said our Uncle, 
 " to hear a log squeal thru the snow. Git a 
 good, col , frosty mornin , in February say, an* 
 take an* hitch the critters on to a log that 11 
 scale seven thousan , an* it 11 squeal as pooty 
 as an thin ^0^ ever hearn, I tellj0#." 
 
 A pause. 
 
 " Lessee, seen Cal Hutchins lately ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Seems to me s though I hed n t seen Cal 
 sence the Roostick war. Wahl," etc., etc. 
 
 Another pause. 
 
 " To look at them boots you d think they 
 was too large ; but kind o git your foot into 
 em, and they re as easy s a glove." (I ob 
 served that he never seemed really to get his 
 foot in, there was always a qualifying kind 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 91 
 
 o .) " Wahl, my foot can play in em like a 
 young hedgehog." 
 
 By this time we had arrived at Kineo, a 
 flourishing village of one house, the tavern kept 
 by Squire Barrows. The Squire is a large, 
 hearty man, with a voice as clear and strong as 
 a northwest wind, and a great laugh suitable to 
 it. His table is neat and well supplied, and he 
 waits upon it himself in the good old landlordly 
 fashion. One may be much better off here, to 
 my thinking, than in one of those gigantic 
 Columbaria which are foisted upon us patient 
 Americans for hotels, and where one is packed 
 away in a pigeon-hole so near the heavens that, 
 if the comet should flirt its tail (no unlikely 
 thing in the month of flies), one would run 
 some risk of being brushed away. Here one 
 does not pay his diurnal three dollars for an 
 undivided five-hundredth part of the pleasure 
 of looking at gilt gingerbread. Here one s re 
 lations are with the monarch himself, and one 
 is not obliged to wait the slow leisure of those 
 " attentive clerks " whose praises are sung by 
 thankful deadheads, and to whom the slave 
 who pays may feel as much gratitude as might 
 thrill the heart of a brown-paper parcel toward 
 the expressman who labels it and chucks it 
 under his counter. 
 
 Sunday, ifth. The loons were right. About 
 midnight it began to rain in earnest, and did 
 
92 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 not hold up till about ten o clock this morning. 
 " This is a Maine dew," said a shaggy wood 
 man cheerily, as he shook the water out of his 
 wide-awake; "if it don t look out sharp, it ll 
 begin to rain afore it thinks on t." The day 
 was mostly spent within doors ; but I found 
 good and intelligent society. We should have 
 to be shipwrecked on Juan Fernandez not to 
 find men who knew more than we. In these 
 travelling encounters one is thrown upon his 
 own resources, and is worth just what he carries 
 about him. The social currency of home, the 
 smooth-worn coin which passes freely among 
 friends and neighbors, is of no account. We are 
 thrown back upon the old system of barter ; and, 
 even with savages, we bring away only as much 
 of the wild wealth of the woods as we carry 
 beads of thought and experience, strung one by 
 one in painful years, to pay for them with. A 
 useful old jackknife will buy more than the 
 daintiest Louis Quinze paper-folder fresh from 
 Paris. Perhaps the kind of intelligence one gets 
 in these out-of-the-way places is the best, 
 where one takes a fresh man after breakfast in 
 stead of the damp morning paper, and where the 
 magnetic telegraph of human sympathy flashes 
 swift news from brain to brain. 
 
 Meanwhile, at a pinch, to-morrow s weather 
 can be discussed. The augury from the flight 
 of birds is favorable, the loons no longer 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 93 
 
 prophesying rain. The wind also is hauling 
 round to the right quarter, according to some, 
 to the wrong, if we are to believe others. Each 
 man has his private barometer of hope, the mer 
 cury in which is more or less sensitive, and the 
 opinion vibrant with its rise or fall. Mine has 
 an index which can be moved mechanically. I 
 fixed it at set fair, and resigned myself. I read 
 an old volume of the Patent-Office Report on 
 Agriculture, and stored away a beautiful pile of 
 facts and observations for future use, which the 
 current of occupation, at its first freshet, would 
 sweep quietly off to blank oblivion. Practical 
 application is the only mordant which will set 
 things in the memory. Study, without it, is 
 gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get 
 intellectual bread. One learns more metaphy 
 sics from a single temptation than from all the 
 philosophers. It is curious, though, how tyran 
 nical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we 
 make to escape thinking. There is no bore 
 we dread being left alone with so much as our 
 own minds. I have seen a sensible man study 
 a stale newspaper in a country .tavern, and hus 
 band it as he would an old shoe on a raft after 
 shipwreck. Why not try a bit of hiberna 
 tion ? There are few brains that would not be 
 better for living on their own fat a little while. 
 With these reflections, I, notwithstanding, spent 
 the afternoon over my Report. If our own 
 
94 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 experience is of so little use to us, what a dolt 
 is he who recommends to man or nation the 
 experience of others ! Like the mantle in the 
 old ballad, it is always too short or too long, 
 and exposes or trips us up. " Keep out of that 
 candle/ says old Father Miller, " or you ll get 
 a singeing." " Pooh, pooh, father, I Ve been 
 dipped in the new asbestos preparation," and 
 frozz I it is all over with young Hopeful. How 
 many warnings have been drawn from Pretorian 
 bands, and Janizaries, and Mamelukes, to make 
 Napoleon III. impossible in 1851 ! I found 
 myself thinking the same thoughts over again, 
 when we walked later on the beach and picked 
 up pebbles. The old time-ocean throws upon 
 its shores just such rounded and polished results 
 of the eternal turmoil, but we only see the beauty 
 of those we have got the headache in stooping 
 for ourselves, and wonder at the dull brown 
 bits of common stone with which our comrades 
 have stuffed their pockets. Afterwards this lit 
 tle fable came of it. 
 
 DOCTOR LOBSTER 
 
 A perch, who had the toothache, once 
 Thus moaned, like any human dunce: 
 Why must great souls exhaust so soon 
 Life s thin and unsubstantial boon ? 
 Existence on such sculpin terms, 
 Their vulgar loves and hard-won worms, 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 95 
 
 What is it all but dross to me, 
 Whose nature craves a larger sea; 
 Whose inches, six from head to tail, 
 Enclose the spirit of a whale; 
 . Who, if great baits were still to win, 
 By watchful eye and fearless fin 
 Might with the Zodiac s awful twain 
 Room for a third immortal gain ? 
 Better the crowd s unthinking plan, 
 The hook, the jerk, the frying-pan ! 
 
 Death, thou ever roaming shark, 
 Engulf me in eternal dark ! 
 
 The speech was cut in two by flight: 
 
 A real shark had come in sight; 
 
 No metaphoric monster, one 
 
 It soothes despair to call upon, 
 
 But stealthy, sidelong, grim, i-wis, 
 
 A bit of downright Nemesis; 
 
 While it recovered from the shock, 
 
 Our fish took shelter neath a rock: 
 
 This was an ancient lobster s house, 
 
 A lobster of prodigious nous, 
 
 So old that barnacles had spread 
 
 Their white encampments o er his head, 
 
 And of experience so stupend, 
 
 His claws were blunted at the end, 
 
 Turning life s iron pages o er, 
 
 That shut and can be oped no more. 
 
 Stretching a hospitable claw, 
 "At once," said he, " the point I saw; 
 My dear young friend, your case I rue, 
 Your great-great-grandfather I knew; 
 He was a tried and tender friend 
 
 1 know, I ate him in the end : 
 
96 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 In this vile sea a pilgrim long, 
 
 Still my sight s good, my memory strong; 
 
 The only sign that age is near 
 
 Is a slight deafness in this ear; 
 
 I understand your case as well 
 
 As this my old familiar shell; 
 
 This Welt-schmerz is a brand-new notion, 
 
 Come in since first I knew the ocean; 
 
 We had no radicals, nor crimes, 
 
 Nor lobster-pots, in good old times; 
 
 Your traps and nets and hooks we owe 
 
 To Messieurs Louis Blanc and Co. ; 
 
 I say to all my sons and daughters, 
 
 Shun Red Republican hot waters; 
 
 No lobster ever cast his lot 
 
 Among the reds, but went to pot: 
 
 Your trouble s in the jaw, you said ? 
 
 Come, let me just nip off your head, 
 
 And, when a new one comes, the pain 
 
 Will never trouble you again : 
 
 Nay, nay, fear naught: tis nature s law. 
 
 Four times I J ve lost this starboard claw; 
 
 And still, ere long, another grew, 
 
 Good as the old, and better too ! " 
 
 The perch consented, and next day 
 An osprey, marketing that way, 
 Picked up a fish without a head, 
 Floating with belly up, stone dead. 
 
 MORAL 
 
 Sharp are the teeth of ancient saws, 
 And sauce for goose is gander s sauce; 
 But perch s heads are n t lobster s claws. 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 97 
 
 Monday , ijth. The morning was fine, and 
 we were called at four o clock. At the moment 
 my door was knocked at, I was mounting a 
 giraffe with that charming nil admirari which 
 characterizes dreams, to visit Prester John. 
 Rat-tat-tat-tat ! upon my door and upon the 
 horn gate of dreams also. I remarked to my 
 skowhegan (the Tatar for giraffe-driver) that I 
 was quite sure the animal had the raps, a com 
 mon disease among them, for I heard a queer 
 knocking noise inside him. It is the sound of 
 his joints, O Tambourgi ! (an Oriental term 
 of reverence) and proves him to be of the 
 race of El Keirat. Rat-tat-tat-too ! and I lost 
 my dinner at the Prester s, embarking for a voy 
 age to the Northwest Carry instead. Never use 
 the word canoe > my dear Storg, if you wish to re 
 tain your self-respect. Birch is the term among 
 us backwoodsmen. I never knew it till yester 
 day ; but, like a true philosopher, I made it ap 
 pear as if I had been intimate with it from child 
 hood. The rapidity with which the human mind 
 levels itself to the standard around it gives us 
 the most pertinent warning as to the company 
 we keep. It is as hard for most characters to 
 stay at their own average point in all companies, 
 as for a thermometer to say 65 for twenty- 
 four hours together. I like this in our friend 
 Johannes Taurus, that he carries everywhere and 
 maintains his insular temperature, and will have 
 
98 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 everything accommodate itself to that. Shall I 
 confess that this morning I would rather have 
 broken the moral law than have endangered the 
 equipoise of the birch by my awkwardness ? 
 that I should have been prouder of a compli 
 ment to my paddling than to have had both 
 my guides suppose me the author of Hamlet ? 
 Well, Cardinal Richelieu used to jump over 
 chairs. 
 
 We were to paddle about twenty miles ; but we 
 made it rather more by crossing and recrossing 
 the lake. Twice we landed, once at a camp, 
 where we found the cook alone, baking bread 
 and gingerbread. Monsieur Soyer would have 
 been startled a little by this shaggy professor, 
 this Pre-Raphaelite of cookery. He repre 
 sented the salseratus period of the art, and his 
 bread was of a brilliant yellow, like those cakes 
 tinged with saffron, which hold out so long 
 against time and the flies in little water-side 
 shops of seaport towns, dingy extremities of 
 trade fit to moulder on Lethe wharf. His water 
 was better, squeezed out of ice-cold granite in 
 the neighboring mountains, and sent through 
 subterranean ducts to sparkle up by the door 
 of the camp. 
 
 " There s nothin so sweet an hulsome as 
 your real spring-water/ said Uncle Zeb, " git 
 it pure. But it s dreffle hard to git it that ain t 
 got sunthin the matter of it. Snow-water 11 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 9 9 
 
 burn a man s inside out, I lamed that to the 
 Roostick war, and the snow lays terrible 
 long on some o thes ere hills. Me an Eb Stiles 
 was up old Ktahdn onct jest about this time o 
 year, an* we come acrost a kind o holler like, 
 as full o snow as your stockin s full o your 
 foot. / see it fust, an took an rammed a set- 
 tin -pole wahl, it was all o twenty foot into 
 t, an could n t fin no bottom. I dunno as 
 there s snow-water enough in this to do no 
 hurt. I don t somehow seem to think that real 
 spring-water s so plenty as it used to be." And 
 Uncle Zeb,with perhaps a little over-refinement 
 of scrupulosity, applied his lips to the Ethiop 
 ones of a bottle of raw gin, with a kiss that drew 
 out its very soul, a basia that Secundus might 
 have sung. He must have been a wonderful 
 judge of water, for he analyzed this, and de 
 tected its latent snow simply by his eye, and 
 without the clumsy process of tasting. I could 
 not help thinking that he had made the desert 
 his dwelling-place chiefly in order to enjoy the 
 ministrations of this one fair spirit unmolested. 
 We pushed on. Little islands loomed trem 
 bling between sky and water, like hanging gar 
 dens. Gradually the filmy trees defined them 
 selves, the aerial enchantment lost its potency, 
 and we came up with common prose islands 
 that had so late been magical and poetic. The 
 old story of the attained and unattained. About 
 
ioo A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 noon we reached the head of the lake, and took 
 possession of a deserted wongen, in which to 
 cook and eat our dinner. No Jew, I am sure, 
 can have a more thorough dislike of salt pork 
 than I have in a normal state, yet I had already 
 eaten it raw with hard bread for lunch, and rel 
 ished it keenly. We soon had our tea-kettle 
 over the fire, and before long the cover was 
 chattering with the escaping steam, which had 
 thus vainly begged of all men to be saddled and 
 bridled, till James Watt one day happened 
 to overhear it. One of our guides shot three 
 Canada grouse, and these were turned slowly 
 between the fire and a bit of salt pork, which 
 dropped fatness upon them as it fried. Al 
 though my fingers were certainly not made before 
 knives and forks, yet they served as a conven 
 ient substitute for those more ancient inventions. 
 We sat round, Turk-fashion, and ate thankfully, 
 while a party of aborigines of the Mosquito 
 tribe, who had camped in the wongen before we 
 arrived, dined upon us. I do not know what the 
 British Protectorate of the Mosquitoes amounts 
 to ; but, as I squatted there at the mercy of 
 these bloodthirsty savages, I no longer wondered 
 that the classic Everett had been stung into a 
 willingness for war on the question. 
 
 " This ere d be about a complete place for a 
 camp, ef there was on y a spring o sweet water 
 handy. Frizzled pork goes wal, don t it ? Yes, 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 101 
 
 an sets wal, too/ said Uncle Zeb, and he again 
 tilted his bottle, which rose nearer and nearer 
 to an angle of forty-five at every gurgle. He 
 then broached a curious dietetic theory : " The 
 reason we take salt pork along is cos it packs 
 handy : you git the greatest amount o board 
 in the smallest compass, let alone that it s more 
 nourishin than an thin else. It kind o don t 
 disgest so quick, but stays by ye, a-nourishin 
 ye all the while. 
 
 "A feller can live wal on frizzled pork an* 
 good spring-water, git it good. To the Roostick 
 war we did n t ask for nothin better, on y 
 beans." (TV//, tilt, gurgle, gurgle.} Then, with an 
 apparent feeling of inconsistency, " But then, 
 come to git used to a particular kind o spring- 
 water, an it makes a feller hard to suit. Most 
 all sorts o water taste kind o insipid away from 
 home. Now, I ve gut a spring to my place that s 
 as sweet wahl, it s as sweet as maple sap. A 
 feller acts about water jest as he doos about a 
 pair o boots. It s all on it in gittin wonted. 
 Now, them boots," etc., etc. (Gurgle, gurgle, 
 gurgle, smack /) 
 
 All this while he was packing away the re 
 mains of the pork and hard bread in two large 
 firkins. This accomplished, we reembarked, our 
 Uncle on his way to the birch essaying a kind of 
 song in four or five parts, of which the words 
 were hilarious and the tune profoundly melan- 
 
102 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 choly, and which was finished, and the rest of his 
 voice apparently jerked out of him in one sharp 
 falsetto note, by his tripping over the root of a 
 tree. We paddled a short distance up a brook 
 which came into the lake smoothly through a 
 little meadow not far off. We soon reached 
 the Northwest Carry, and our guide, pointing 
 through the woods, said : cc That s the Cannydy 
 road. You can travel that clearn to Kebeck, a 
 hunderd an* twenty mile," a privilege of which 
 I respectfully declined to avail myself. The 
 offer, however, remains open to the public. The 
 Carry is called two miles ; but this is the esti 
 mate of somebody who had nothing to lug. I 
 had a headache and all my baggage, which, with 
 a traveller s instinct, I had brought with me. 
 (P. S. I did not even take the keys out of my 
 pocket, and both my bags were wet through be 
 fore I came back.) My estimate of the distance 
 is eighteen thousand six hundred and seventy- 
 four miles and three quarters, the fraction 
 being the part left to be travelled after one of 
 my companions most kindly insisted on relieving 
 me of my heaviest bag. I know very well that 
 the ancient Roman soldiers used to carry sixty 
 pounds weight, and all that ; but I am not, and 
 never shall be, an ancient Roman soldier, no, 
 not even in the miraculous Thundering Legion. 
 Uncle Zeb slung the two provender firkins across 
 his shoulder, and trudged along, grumbling that 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 103 
 
 " he never see sech a contrairy pair as them." 
 He had begun upon a second bottle of his " par 
 ticular kind o spring-water," and, at every rest, 
 the gurgle of this peripatetic fountain might be 
 heard, followed by a smack, a fragment of mosaic 
 song, or a confused clatter with the cowhide 
 boots, being an arbitrary symbol, intended to re 
 present the festive dance. Christian s pack gave 
 him not half so much trouble as the firkins gave 
 Uncle Zeb. It grew harder and harder to sling 
 them, and with every fresh gulp of the Batavian 
 elixir, they got heavier. Or rather, the truth was, 
 that his hat grew heavier, in which he was carry 
 ing on an extensive manufacture of bricks with 
 out straw. At last affairs reached a crisis, and a 
 particularly favorable pitch offering, with a pud 
 dle at the foot of it, even the boots afforded no 
 sufficient ballast, and away went our Uncle, the 
 satellite firkins accompanying faithfully his head 
 long flight. Did ever exiled monarch or disgraced 
 minister find the cause of his fall in himself? Is 
 there not always a strawberry at the bottom of 
 our cup of life, on which we can lay all the blame 
 of our deviations from the straight path ? Till 
 now Uncle Zeb had contrived to give a gloss of 
 volition to smaller stumblings and gyrations, by 
 exaggerating them into an appearance of playful 
 burlesque. But the present case was beyond any 
 such subterfuges. He held a bed of justice where 
 he sat, and then arose slowly, with a stern deter- 
 
104 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 mination of vengeance stiffening every muscle of 
 his face. But what would he select as the culprit ? 
 " It s that cussed firkin," he mumbled to him 
 self. " I never knowed a firkin cair on so, no, 
 not in the Roostehicick war. There, go long, 
 will ye? and don t come back till you Ve larned 
 how to walk with a genelman ! " And, seizing 
 the unhappy scapegoat by the bail, he hurled it 
 into the forest. It is a curious circumstance that 
 it was not the firkin containing the bottle which 
 was thus condemned to exile. 
 
 The end of the Carry was reached at last, and, 
 as we drew near it, we heard a sound of shout 
 ing and laughter. It came from a party of men 
 making hay of the wild grass in Seboomok mead 
 ows, which lie around Seboomok Pond, into 
 which the Carry empties itself. Their camp was 
 near, and our two hunters set out for it, leaving 
 us seated in the birch on the plashy border of the 
 pond. The repose was perfect. Another heaven 
 hallowed and deepened the polished lake, and 
 through that nether world the fish-hawk s double 
 floated with balanced wings, or, wheeling sud 
 denly, flashed his whitened breast against the 
 sun. As the clattering kingfisher flew unsteadily 
 across, and seemed to push his heavy head along 
 with ever-renewing effort, a visionary mate flit 
 ted from downward tree to tree below. Some 
 tall alders shaded us from the sun, in whose yel 
 low afternoon light the drowsy forest was steeped, 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 105 
 
 giving out that wholesome resinous perfume, al 
 most the only warm odor which it is refreshing 
 to breathe. The tame hay-cocks in the midst of 
 the wildness gave one a pleasant reminiscence 
 of home, like hearing one s native tongue in 
 a strange country. 
 
 Presently our hunters came back, bringing 
 with them a tall, thin, active-looking man, with 
 black eyes, that glanced unconsciously on all 
 sides, like one of those spots of sunlight which 
 a child dances up and down the street with a 
 bit of looking-glass. This was M., the captain 
 of the hay-makers, a famous river-driver, and 
 who was to have fifty men under him next 
 winter. I could now understand that sleepless 
 vigilance of eye. He had consented to take 
 two of our party in his birch to seek for moose. 
 A quick, nervous, decided man, he got them 
 into the birch, and was off instantly, without a 
 superfluous word. He evidently looked upon 
 them as he would upon a couple of logs which 
 he was to deliver at a certain place. Indeed, I 
 doubt if life and the world presented themselves 
 to Napier himself in a more logarithmic way. 
 His only thought was to do the immediate duty 
 well, and to pilot his particular raft down the 
 crooked stream of life to the ocean beyond. 
 The birch seemed to feel him as an inspiring 
 soul, and slid away straight and swift for the 
 outlet of the pond. As he disappeared under 
 
io6 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 the overarching alders of the brook, our two 
 hunters could not repress a grave and measured 
 applause. There is never any extravagance 
 among these woodmen ; their eye, accustomed 
 to reckoning the number of feet which a tree 
 will scale, is rapid and close in its guess of the 
 amount of stuff in a man. It was laudari a 
 laudato , however, for they themselves were ac 
 counted good men in a birch. I was amused, 
 in talking with them about him, to meet with 
 an instance of that tendency of the human mind 
 to assign some utterly improbable reason for 
 gifts which seem unaccountable. After due 
 praise, one of them said, " I guess he s got some 
 Injun in him," although I knew very well that 
 the speaker had a thorough contempt for the 
 red man, mentally and physically. Here was 
 mythology in a small way, the same that 
 under more favorable auspices hatched Helen 
 out of an egg and gave Merlin an Incubus for 
 his father. I was pleased with all I saw of M. 
 He was in his narrow sphere a true ava dvSpwv, 
 and the ragged edges of his old hat seemed to 
 become coronated as I looked at him. He im 
 pressed me as a man really educated, that is, 
 with his aptitudes drawn out and ready for use. 
 He was A. M. and LL. D. in Woods College, 
 Axe-master and Doctor of Logs. Are not 
 our educations commonly like a pile of books 
 laid over a plant in a pot? The compressed 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 107 
 
 nature struggles through at every crevice, but 
 can never get the cramp and stunt out of it. 
 We spend all our youth in building a vessel for 
 our voyage of life, and set forth with streamers 
 flying ; but the moment we come nigh the 
 great loadstone mountain of our proper destiny, 
 out leap all our carefully driven bolts and nails, 
 and we get many a mouthful of good salt brine, 
 and many a buffet of the rough water of experi 
 ence, before we secure the bare right to live. 
 
 We now entered the outlet, a long-drawn 
 aisle of alder, on, each side of which spired tall 
 firs, spruces, and white cedars. The motion of 
 the birch reminded me of the gondola, and they 
 represent among water-craft the felidae, the cat 
 tribe, stealthy, silent, treacherous, and preying 
 by night. I closed my eyes, and strove to fancy 
 myself in the dumb city, whose only horses are 
 the bronze ones of St. Mark and that of Col- 
 leoni. But Nature would allow no rival, and 
 bent down an alder-bough to brush my cheek 
 and recall me. Only the robin sings in the 
 emerald chambers of these tall sylvan palaces, 
 and the squirrel leaps from hanging balcony to 
 balcony. 
 
 The rain which the loons foreboded had 
 raised the West Branch of the Penobscot so 
 much that a strong current was setting back 
 into the pond ; and when at last we brushed 
 through into the river, it was full to the brim, 
 
io8 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 too full for moose, the hunters said. Rivers 
 with low banks have always the compensation 
 of giving a sense of entire fulness. The sun 
 sank behind its horizon of pines, whose pointed 
 summits notched the rosy west in an endless 
 black sierra. At the same moment the golden 
 moon swung slowly up in the east, like the 
 other scale of that Homeric balance in which 
 Zeus weighed the deeds of men. Sunset and 
 moonrise at once ! Adam had no more in Eden 
 
 except the head of Eve upon his shoulder. 
 The stream was so smooth that the floating 
 logs we met seemed to hang in a glowing atmo 
 sphere, the shadow-half being as real as the 
 solid. And gradually the mind was etherized 
 to a like dreamy placidity, till fact and fancy, 
 the substance and the image, floating on the 
 current of reverie, became but as the upper and 
 under halves of one unreal reality. 
 
 In the west still lingered a pale-green light. 
 I do not know whether it be from lifelong 
 familiarity, but it always seems to me that the 
 pinnacles of pine-trees make an edge to the 
 landscape which tells better against the twilight, 
 or the fainter dawn before the rising moon, than 
 the rounded and cloud-cumulus outline of hard 
 wood trees. 
 
 After paddling a couple of miles, we found 
 the arbored mouth of the little Malahoodus 
 River, famous for moose. We had been on the 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 109 
 
 lookout for it, and I was amused to hear one 
 of the hunters say to the other, to assure him 
 self of his familiarity with the spot, " You drove 
 the West Branch last spring, did n t you ? " as 
 one of us might ask about a horse. We did 
 not explore the Malahoodus far, but left the 
 other birch to thread its cedared solitudes, while 
 we turned back to try our fortunes in the larger 
 stream. We paddled on about four miles far 
 ther, lingering now and then opposite the black 
 mouth of a moose-path. The incidents of our 
 voyage were few, but quite as exciting and pro 
 fitable as the items of the newspapers. A stray 
 log compensated very well for the ordinary run 
 of accidents, and the floating carkiss of a moose 
 which we met could pass muster instead of a 
 singular discovery of human remains by work 
 men in digging a cellar. Once or twice we saw 
 what seemed ghosts of trees ; but they turned 
 out to be dead cedars, in winding-sheets of long 
 gray moss, made spectral by the moonlight. 
 Just as we were turning to drift back down 
 stream, we heard a loud gnawing sound close 
 by us on the bank. One of our guides thought 
 it a hedgehog, the other a bear. I inclined to 
 the bear, as making the adventure more impos 
 ing. A rifle was fired at the sound, which began 
 again with the most provoking indifference, ere 
 the echo, flaring madly at first from shore to 
 shore, died far away in a hoarse sigh. 
 
no A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 Half past Eleven, p. m. No sign of a 
 moose yet. The birch, it seems, was strained 
 at the Carry, or the pitch was softened as she 
 lay on the shore during dinner, and she leaks 
 a little. If there be any virtue in the sitzbad, I 
 shall discover it. If I cannot extract green cu 
 cumbers from the moon s rays, I get something 
 quite as cool. One of the guides shivers so as 
 to shake the birch. 
 
 Quarter to Twelve. Later from the Freshet ! 
 - The water in the birch is about three inches 
 deep, but the dampness reaches already nearly 
 to the waist. I am obliged to remove the 
 matches from the ground-floor of my trousers 
 into the upper story of a breast-pocket. Mean 
 while, we are to sit immovable, for fear of 
 frightening the moose, which induces cramps. 
 
 Half past Twelve. A crashing is heard on 
 the left bank. This is a moose in good ear 
 nest. We are besought to hold our breaths, if 
 possible. My fingers so numb, I could not, 
 if I tried. Crash ! crash ! again, and then a 
 plunge, followed by dead stillness. " Swimmin 
 crik," whispers guide, suppressing all unneces 
 sary parts of speech, " don t stir." I, for 
 one, am not likely to. A cold fog which has 
 been gathering for the last hour has finished 
 me. I fancy myself one of those naked pigs 
 that seem rushing out of market-doors in win 
 ter, frozen in a ghastly attitude of gallop. If I 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL in 
 
 were to be shot myself, I should feel no in 
 terest in it. As it is, I am only a spectator, 
 having declined a gun. Splash ! again ; this 
 time the moose is in sight, and click ! click ! 
 one rifle misses fire after the other. The fog 
 has quietly spiked our batteries. The moose 
 goes crashing up the bank, and presently we 
 can hear it chawing its cud close by. So we lie 
 in wait, freezing. 
 
 At one o clock, I propose to land at a de 
 serted wongen I had noticed on the way up, 
 where I will make a fire, and leave them to re 
 frigerate as much longer as they please. Axe 
 in hand, I go plunging through waist-deep 
 weeds dripping with dew, haunted by an in 
 tense conviction that the gnawing sound we 
 had heard was a bear, and a bear at least eight 
 een hands high. There is something pokerish 
 about a deserted dwelling, even in broad day 
 light; but here in the obscure wood, and the 
 moon filtering unwillingly through the trees! 
 Well, I made the door at last, and found the 
 place packed fuller with darkness than it ever 
 had been with hay. Gradually I was able to 
 make things out a little, and began to hack 
 frozenly at a log which I groped out. I was re 
 lieved presently by one of the guides. He cut 
 at once into one of the uprights of the build 
 ing till he got some dry splinters, and we soon 
 had a fire like the burning of a whole wood 
 
ii2 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 wharf in our part of the country. My compan 
 ion went back to the birch, and left me to keep 
 house. First I knocked a hole in the roof 
 (which the fire began to lick in a relishing way) 
 for a chimney, and then cleared away a damp 
 growth of " pison-elder," to make a sleeping- 
 place. When the unsuccessful hunters returned, 
 I had everything quite comfortable, and was 
 steaming at the rate of about ten horse-power a 
 minute. Young Telemachus 1 was sorry to give 
 up the moose so soon, and, with the teeth chat 
 tering almost out of his head, he declared that 
 he would .like to stick it out all night. How 
 ever, he reconciled himself to the fire, and, mak 
 ing our beds of some " splits " which we poked 
 from the roof, we lay down at half past two. 
 I, who have inherited a habit of looking into 
 every closet before I go to bed, for fear of fire, 
 had become in two days such a stoic of the 
 woods, that I went to sleep tranquilly, certain 
 that my bedroom would be in a blaze before 
 morning. And so, indeed, it was ; and the 
 withes that bound it together being burned off, 
 one of the sides fell in without waking me. 
 
 Tuesday, i6th. After a sleep of two hours 
 and a half, so sound that it was as good as eight, 
 we started at half past four for the hay-makers 
 camp again. We found them just getting break- 
 
 1 This was my nephew, Charles Russell Lowell, who fell 
 at the head of his brigade in the battle of Cedar Creek. 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 113 
 
 fast. We sat down upon the deacon-seat before 
 the fire blazing between the bedroom and the 
 salle a manger, which were simply two roofs of 
 spruce-bark, sloping to the ground on one side, 
 the other three being left open. We found 
 that we had, at least, been luckier than the 
 other party, for M. had brought back his con 
 voy without even seeing a moose. As there 
 was not room at the table for all of us to break 
 fast together, these hospitable woodmen forced 
 us to sit down first, although we resisted 
 stoutly. Our breakfast consisted of fresh bread, 
 fried salt pork, stewed whortleberries, and tea. 
 Our kind hosts refused to take money for it, 
 nor would M. accept anything for his trouble. 
 This seemed even more open-handed when I 
 remembered that they had brought all their 
 stores over the Carry upon their shoulders, 
 paying an ache extra for every pound. If their 
 hospitality lacked anything of hard external 
 polish, it had all the deeper grace which springs 
 only from sincere manliness. I have rarely sat 
 at a table tfhote which might not have taken a 
 lesson from them in essential courtesy. I have 
 never seen a finer race of men. They have all 
 the virtues of the sailor, without that unsteady 
 roll in the gait with which the ocean proclaims 
 itself quite as much in the moral as in the phy 
 sical habit of a man. They appeared to me to 
 have hewn out a short northwest passage through 
 
iH A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 wintry woods to those spice-lands of character 
 which we dwellers in cities must reach, if at all, 
 by weary voyages in the monotonous track of 
 the trades. 
 
 By the way, as we were embirching last even 
 ing for our moose-chase, I asked what I was to 
 do with my baggage. " Leave it here," said our 
 guide, and he laid the bags upon a platform of 
 alders, which he bent down to keep them be 
 yond reach of the rising water. 
 
 " Will they be safe here ? " 
 
 " As safe as they would be locked up in your 
 house at home." 
 
 And so I found them at my return ; only 
 the hay-makers had carried them to their camp 
 for greater security against the chances of the 
 weather. 
 
 We got back to Kineo in time for dinner ; 
 and in the afternoon, the weather being fine, 
 went up the mountain. As we landed at the 
 foot, our guide pointed to the remains of a red 
 shirt and a pair of blanket trousers. " That," 
 said he, " is the reason there s such a trade in 
 ready-made clo es. A suit gits pooty well wore 
 out by the time a camp breaks up in the spring, 
 and the lumberers want to look about right 
 when they come back into the settlements, so 
 they buy somethin ready-made, and heave ole 
 bust-up into the bush." True enough, thought 
 I, this is the Ready-made Age. It is quicker 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 115 
 
 being covered than fitted. So we all go to the 
 slop-shop and come out uniformed, every mo 
 ther s son with habits of thinking and doing cut 
 on one pattern, with no special reference to his 
 peculiar build. 
 
 Kineo rises 17 50 feet above the sea, and 750 
 above the lake. The climb is very easy, with 
 fine outlooks at every turn over lake and for 
 est. Near the top is a spring of water, which 
 even Uncle Zeb might have allowed to be whole 
 some. The little tin dipper was scratched all 
 over with names, showing that vanity, at least, 
 is not put out of breath by the ascent. O Ozy- 
 mandias, King of kings ! We are all scrawling 
 on something of the kind. " My name is en 
 graved on the institutions of my country/ thinks 
 the statesman. But, alas ! institutions are as 
 changeable as tin dippers ; men are content to 
 drink the same old water, if the shape of the 
 cup only be new, and our friend gets two lines 
 in the Biographical Dictionaries. After all, these 
 inscriptions, which make us smile up here, are 
 about as valuable as the Assyrian ones which 
 Hincks and Rawlinson read at cross-purposes. 
 Have we not Smiths and Browns enough, that 
 we must ransack the ruins of Nimroud for more ? 
 Near the spring we met a Bloomer ! It was the 
 first chronic one I had ever seen. It struck me 
 as a sensible costume for the occasion, and it 
 will be the only wear in the Greek Kalends, 
 
n6 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 
 
 when women believe that sense is an equivalent 
 for grace. 
 
 The forest primeval is best seen from the top 
 of a mountain. It then impresses one by its 
 extent, like an Oriental epic. To be in it is no 
 thing, for then an acre is as good as a thousand 
 square miles. You cannot see five rods in any 
 direction, and the ferns, mosses, and tree-trunks 
 just around you are the best of it. As for soli 
 tude, night will make a better one with ten feet 
 square of pitch dark ; and mere size is hardly 
 an element of grandeur, except in works of man, 
 as the Colosseum. It is through one or the/ 
 other pole of vanity that men feel the sublime 
 in mountains. It is either, How small great I 
 am beside it ! or, Big as you are, little I s soul 
 will hold a dozen of you. The true idea of a 
 forest is not a seha sefoaggia, but something 
 humanized a little, as we imagine the forest of 
 Arden, with trees standing at royal intervals, 
 a commonwealth, and not a communism. To 
 some moods, it is congenial to look over end 
 less leagues of unbroken savagery without a hint 
 of man. 
 
 Wednesday. This morning fished. Telema- 
 chus caught a laker of thirteen pounds and a half, 
 and I an overgrown cusk, which we threw away, 
 but which I found afterwards Agassiz would 
 have been glad of, for all is fish that comes to 
 his net, from the fossil down. The fish, when 
 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 117 
 
 caught, are straightway knocked on the head. 
 A lad who went with us seeming to show an 
 over-zeal in this operation, we remonstrated. 
 But he gave a good human reason for it, 
 " He no need to ha gone and been a fish if he 
 did n t like it," an excuse which superior 
 strength or cunning has always found sufficient. 
 It was some comfort, in this case, to think that 
 St. Jerome believed in a limitation of God s 
 providence, and that it did not extend to inani 
 mate things or creatures devoid of reason. 
 
 Thus, my dear Storg, I have finished my 
 Oriental adventures, and somewhat, it must be 
 owned, in the diffuse Oriental manner. There 
 is very little about Moosehead Lake in it, and 
 not even the Latin name for moose, which I 
 might have obtained by sufficient research. If 
 I had killed one, I would have given you his 
 name in that dead language. I did not profess to 
 give you an account of the lake ; but a journal, 
 and, moreover, my journal, with a little nature, 
 a little human nature, and a great deal of I in 
 it, which last ingredient I take to be the true 
 spirit of this species of writing ; all the rest 
 being so much water for tender throats which 
 cannot take it neat. 
 
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN 
 ITALY AND ELSEWHERE 
 
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL IN 
 ITALY AND ELSEWHERE 
 
 1854 
 i 
 
 AT SEA 
 
 THE sea was meant to be looked at from 
 shore, as mountains are from the plain. 
 Lucretius made this discovery long 
 ago, and was blunt enough to blurt it forth, 
 romance and sentiment in other words, the 
 pretence of feeling what we do not feel being 
 inventions of a later day. To be sure, Cicero 
 used to twaddle about Greek literature and 
 philosophy, much as people do about ancient 
 art nowadays ; but I rather sympathize with 
 those stout old Romans who despised both, and 
 believed that to found an empire was as grand 
 an achievement as to build an epic or to carve 
 a statue. But though there might have been 
 twaddle (as why not, since there was a Senate ?), 
 I rather think Petrarch was the first choragus 
 of that sentimental dance which so long led 
 young folks away from the realities of life like 
 
122 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 the piper of Hamelin, and whose succession 
 ended, let us hope, with Chateaubriand. But 
 for them, Byron, whose real strength lay in his 
 sincerity, would never have talked about the 
 " sea bounding beneath him like a steed that 
 knows his rider," and all that sort of thing. 
 Even if it had been true, steam has been as fatal 
 to that part of the romance of the sea as to hand- 
 loom weaving. But what say you to a twelve 
 days calm such as we dozed through in mid- 
 Atlantic and in mid- August ? I know nothing 
 so tedious at once and exasperating as that regu 
 lar slap of the wilted sails when the ship rises 
 and falls with the slow breathing of the sleeping 
 sea, one greasy, brassy swell following another, 
 slow, smooth, immitigable as the series of 
 Wordsworth s " Ecclesiastical Sonnets." Even 
 at his best, Neptune, in a tete-a-tete, has a way 
 of repeating himself, an obtuseness to the ne 
 quid nimis, that is stupefying. It reminds me of 
 organ-music and my good friend Sebastian Bach. 
 A fugue or two will do very well ; but a con 
 cert made up of nothing else is altogether too 
 epic for me. There is nothing so desperately 
 monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder 
 at the cruelty of pirates. Fancy an existence in 
 which the coming up of a clumsy finback whale, 
 who says Pooh ! to you solemnly as you lean 
 over the taffrail, is an event as exciting as an 
 election on shore ! The dampness seems to 
 
AT SEA 123 
 
 strike into the wits as into the lucifer-matches, 
 so that one may scratch a thought half a dozen 
 times and get nothing at last but a faint sputter, 
 the forlorn hope of fire, which only goes far 
 enough to leave a sense of suffocation behind it. 
 Even smoking becomes an employment instead 
 of a solace. Who less likely to come to their 
 wit s end than W. M. T. and A. H. C. ? Yet 
 I have seen them driven to five meals a day for 
 mental occupation. I sometimes sit and pity 
 Noah ; but even he had this advantage over all 
 succeeding navigators, that, wherever he landed, 
 he was sure to get no ill news from home. He 
 should be canonized as the patron saint of news 
 paper correspondents, being the only man who 
 ever had the very last authentic intelligence from 
 everywhere. 
 
 The finback whale recorded just above has 
 much the look of a brown-paper parcel, the 
 whitish stripes that run across him answering 
 for the pack-thread. He has a kind of acci 
 dental hole in the top of his head, through which 
 he pooh-poohs the rest of creation, and which 
 looks as if it had been made by the chance 
 thrust of a chestnut rail. He was our first event. 
 Our second was harpooning a sunfish, which 
 basked dozing on the lap of the sea, looking 
 so much like the giant turtle of an alderman s 
 dream, that I am persuaded he would have let 
 himself be made into mock-turtle soup rather 
 
i2 4 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 than acknowledge his imposture. But he broke 
 away just as they were hauling him over the 
 side, and sank placidly through the clear water, 
 leaving behind him a crimson trail that wavered 
 a moment and was gone. 
 
 The sea, though, has better sights than these. 
 When we were up with the Azores, we began 
 to meet flying-fish and Portuguese men-of-war 
 beautiful as the galley of Cleopatra, tiny craft 
 that dared these seas before Columbus. I have 
 seen one of the former rise from the crest of a 
 wave, and, glancing from another some two 
 hundred feet beyond, take a fresh flight of per 
 haps as far. How Calderon would have simi 
 lized this pretty creature had he ever seen it ! 
 How would he have run him up and down the 
 gamut of simile ! If a fish, then a fish with 
 wings ; if a bird, then a bird with fins ; and so 
 on, keeping up the light shuttle-cock of a con 
 ceit as is his wont. Indeed, the poor thing is 
 the most killing bait for a comparison, and I 
 assure you I have three or four in my inkstand ; 
 but be calm, they shall stay there. Moore, 
 who looked on all nature as a kind of Gradus 
 ad Parnassum, a thesaurus of similitude, and 
 spent his life in a game of What is my thought 
 like ? with himself, did the flying-fish on his way 
 to Bermuda. So I leave him in peace. 
 
 The most beautiful thing I have seen at sea, 
 all the more so that I had never heard of it, is 
 
AT SEA 125 
 
 the trail of a shoal of fish through the phospho 
 rescent water. It is like a flight of silver rock 
 ets, or the streaming of northern lights through 
 that silent nether heaven. I thought nothing 
 could go beyond that rustling star-foam which 
 was churned up by our ship s bows, or those 
 eddies and disks of dreamy flame that rose and 
 wandered out of sight behind us. 
 
 Twas fire our ship was plunging through, 
 Cold fire that o er the quarter flew; 
 And wandering moons of idle flame 
 Grew full and waned, and went and came, 
 Dappling with light the huge sea-snake 
 That slid behind us in the wake. 
 
 But there was something even more delicately 
 rare in the apparition of the fish, as they turned 
 up in gleaming furrows the latent moonshine 
 which the ocean seemed to have hoarded against 
 these vacant interlunar nights. In the Mediter 
 ranean one day, as we were lying becalmed, I 
 observed the water freckled with dingy specks, 
 which at last gathered to a pinkish scum on the 
 surface. The sea had been so phosphorescent 
 for some nights, that when the captain gave 
 me my bath, by dousing me with buckets from 
 the house on deck, the spray flew off my head 
 and shoulders in sparks. It occurred to me that 
 this dirty-looking scum might be the luminous 
 matter, and I had a pailful dipped up to keep 
 till after dark. When I went to look at it after 
 
i26 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 nightfall, it seemed at first perfectly dead ; but 
 when I shook it, the whole broke out into what 
 I can only liken to milky flames, whose lambent 
 silence was strangely beautiful, and startled me 
 almost as actual projection might an alchemist. 
 I could not bear to be the death of so much 
 beauty ; so I poured it all overboard again. 
 
 Another sight worth taking a voyage for is 
 that of the sails by moonlight. Our course was 
 " south and by east, half south," so that we 
 seemed bound for the full moon as she rolled 
 up over our wavering horizon. Then I used to 
 go forward to the bowsprit and look back. Our 
 ship was a clipper, with every rag set, stunsails, 
 sky-scrapers, and all ; nor was it easy to believe 
 that such a wonder could be built of canvas as 
 that white many-storied pile of cloud that 
 stooped over me or drew back as we rose and 
 fell with the waves. 
 
 These are all the wonders I can recall of my 
 five weeks at sea, except the sun. Were you 
 ever alone with the sun ? You think it a very 
 simple question ; but I never was, in the full 
 sense of the word, till I was held up to him one 
 cloudless day on the broad buckler of the ocean. 
 I suppose one might have the same feeling in 
 the desert. I remember getting something like 
 it years ago, when I climbed alone to the top 
 of a mountain, and lay face up on the hot gray 
 moss, striving to get a notion of how an Arab 
 
AT SEA 127 
 
 might feel. It was my American commentary 
 of the Koran, and not a bad one. In a New 
 England winter, too, when everything is gagged 
 with snow, as if some gigantic physical geo 
 grapher were taking a cast of the earth s face in 
 plaster, the bare knob of a hill will introduce 
 you to the sun as a comparative stranger. But 
 at sea you may be alone with him day after day, 
 and almost all day long. I never understood 
 before that nothing short of full daylight can 
 give the supremest sense of solitude. Darkness 
 will not do so, for the imagination peoples it 
 with more shapes than ever were poured from 
 the frozen loins of the populous North. The 
 sun, I sometimes think, is a little grouty at sea, 
 especially at high noon, feeling that he wastes 
 his beams on those fruitless furrows. It is other 
 wise with the moon. She cc comforts the night," 
 as Chapman finely says, and I always found her 
 a companionable creature. 
 
 In the ocean horizon I took untiring delight. 
 It is the true magic circle of expectation and 
 conjecture, almost as good as a wishing-ring. 
 What will rise over that edge we sail towards 
 daily and never overtake ? A sail ? an island ? 
 the new shore of the Old World ? Something 
 rose every day, which I need not have gone so 
 far to see, but at whose levee I was a much 
 more faithful courtier than on shore. A cloud 
 less sunrise in mid-ocean is beyond comparison 
 
128 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 for simple grandeur. It is like Dante s style, 
 bare and perfect. Naked sun meets naked sea, 
 the true classic of nature. There may be more 
 sentiment in morning on shore, the shivering 
 fairy-jewelry of dew, the silver point-lace of 
 sparkling hoar-frost, but there is also more 
 complexity, more of the romantic. The one 
 savors of the elder Edda, the other of the Min 
 nesingers. 
 
 And I thus floating, lonely elf, 
 
 A kind of planet by myself, 
 
 The mists draw up and furl away, 
 
 And in the east a warming gray, 
 
 Faint as the tint of oaken woods 
 
 When o er their buds May breathes and broods, 
 
 Tells that the golden sunrise-tide 
 
 Is lapsing up earth s thirsty side, 
 
 Each moment purpling on the crest 
 
 Of some stark billow farther west: 
 
 And as the sea-moss droops and hears 
 
 The gurgling flood that nears and nears, 
 
 And then with tremulous content 
 
 Floats out each thankful filament, 
 
 So waited I until it came, 
 
 God s daily miracle, O shame 
 
 That I had seen so many days 
 
 Unthankful, without wondering praise, 
 
 Not recking more this bliss of earth 
 
 Than the cheap fire that lights my hearth! 
 
 But now glad thoughts and holy pour 
 
 Into my heart, as once a year 
 
 To San Miniato s open door, 
 
 In long procession, chanting clear, 
 
AT SEA 129 
 
 Through slopes of sun, through shadows hoar, 
 
 The coupled monks slow-climbing sing, 
 
 And like a golden censer swing 
 
 From rear to front, from front to rear 
 
 Their alternating bursts of praise, 
 
 Till the roof s fading seraphs gaze 
 
 Down through an odorous mist, that crawls 
 
 Lingeringly up the darkened walls, 
 
 And the dim arches, silent long, 
 
 Are startled with triumphant song. 
 
 I wrote yesterday that the sea still rimmed 
 our prosy lives with mystery and conjecture. 
 But one is shut up on shipboard like Montaigne 
 in his tower, with nothing to do but to review 
 his own thoughts and contradict himself. Dire, 
 redire, et me contredire, will be the staple of my 
 journal till I see land. I say nothing of such 
 matters as the montagna bruna on which Ulysses 
 wrecked ; but since the sixteenth century could 
 any man reasonably hope to stumble on one of 
 those wonders which were cheap as dirt in the 
 days of St. Saga ? Faustus, Don Juan, and 
 Tannhauser are the last ghosts of legend, that 
 lingered almost till the Gallic cock-crow of uni 
 versal enlightenment and disillusion. The Pub 
 lic School has done for Imagination. What 
 shall I see in Outre-Mer, or on the way thither, 
 but what can be seen with eyes ? To be sure, I 
 stick by the sea-serpent, and would fain believe 
 that science has scotched, not killed him. Nor 
 is he to be lightly given up, for, like the old 
 
130 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 Scandinavian snake, he binds together for us 
 the two hemispheres of Past and Present, of 
 Belief and Science. He is the link which knits 
 us seaboard Yankees with our Norse progeni 
 tors, interpreting between the age of the dragon 
 and that of the railroad train. We have made 
 ducks and drakes of that large estate of wonder 
 and delight bequeathed to us by ancestral Vik 
 ings, and this alone remains to us unthrift Heirs 
 of Linne. 
 
 I feel an undefined respect for a man who has 
 seen the sea-serpent. He is to his brother fishers 
 what the poet is to his fellow men. Where they 
 have seen nothing better than a school of horse- 
 mackerel, or the idle coils of ocean round Half 
 way Rock, he has caught authentic glimpses of 
 the withdrawing mantle-hem of the Edda age. I 
 care not for the monster himself. It is not the 
 thing, but the belief in the thing, that is dear to 
 me. May it be long before Professor Owen is 
 comforted with the sight of his unfleshed verte 
 brae, long before they stretch many a rood behind 
 Kimball s or Barnum s glass, reflected in the 
 shallow orbs of Mr. and Mrs. Public, which 
 stare, but see not ! I speak of him in the sin 
 gular number, for I insist on believing that there 
 is but one left, without chance of duplicate. 
 When we read that Captain Spalding, of the 
 pink-stern Three Pollies, has beheld him rushing 
 through the brine like an infinite series of be- 
 
AT SEA 131 
 
 witched mackerel-casks, we feel that the mystery 
 of old Ocean, at least, has not yet been sounded, 
 that Faith and Awe survive there unevapo- 
 rate. I once ventured the horse-mackerel theory 
 to an old fisherman, browner than a tomcod. 
 " Hos-mackril ! " he exclaimed indignantly ; 
 " hos-mackril be " (here he used a phrase 
 commonly indicated in laical literature by the 
 same sign which serves for Doctorate in Divin 
 ity), " don t yer spose / know a hos-mackril? " 
 The intonation of that " /" would have silenced 
 Professor Monkbarns Owen with his provoking 
 phoca forever. What if one should ask him if 
 he knew a trilobite ? 
 
 The fault of modern travellers is, that they 
 see nothing out of sight. They talk of eocene 
 periods and tertiary formations, and tell us how 
 the world looked to the plesiosaur. They take 
 science (or nescience) with them, instead of that 
 soul of generous trust their elders had. All 
 their senses are sceptics and doubters, material 
 ists reporting things for other sceptics to doubt 
 still further upon. Nature becomes a reluctant 
 witness upon the stand, badgered with geologist 
 hammers and phials of acid. There have been 
 no travellers since those included in Hakluyt 
 and Purchas, except Martin, perhaps, who saw 
 an inch or two into the invisible at the Western 
 Islands. We have peripatetic lecturers, but no 
 more travellers. Travellers stories are no longer 
 
132 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 proverbial. We have picked nearly every apple 
 (wormy or otherwise) from the world s tree of 
 knowledge, and that without an Eve to tempt 
 us. Two or three have hitherto hung luckily 
 beyond reach on a lofty bough shadowing 
 the interior of Africa, but there is a German 
 Doctor at this very moment pelting at them 
 with sticks and stones. It may be only next 
 week, and these too, bitten by geographers and 
 geologists, will be thrown away. 
 
 Analysis is carried into everything. Even 
 Deity is subjected to chemic tests. We must 
 have exact knowledge, a cabinet stuck full of 
 facts pressed, dried, or preserved in spirits, in 
 stead of the large, vague world our fathers had. 
 With them science was poetry ; with us, poetry 
 is science. Our modern Eden is a hortus siccus. 
 Tourists defraud rather than enrich us. They 
 have not that sense of aesthetic proportion which 
 characterized the elder traveller. Earth is no 
 longer the fine work of art it was, for nothing is 
 left to the imagination. Job Hortop, arrived 
 at the height of the Bermudas, thinks it full 
 time to indulge us in a merman. Nay, there is a 
 story told by Webster, in his " Witchcraft," of 
 a merman with a mitre, who, on being sent back 
 to his watery diocese of finland, made what ad 
 vances he could toward an episcopal benediction 
 by bowing his head thrice. Doubtless he had 
 been consecrated by St. Anthony of Padua. A 
 
AT SEA 133 
 
 dumb bishop would be sometimes no unplea 
 sant phenomenon, by the way. Sir John Haw 
 kins is not satisfied with telling us about the 
 merely sensual Canaries, but is generous enough 
 to throw us in a handful of " certain flitting 
 islands " to boot. Henry Hawkes describes the 
 visible Mexican cities, and then is not so frugal 
 but that he can give us a few invisible ones. 
 Thus do these generous ancient mariners make 
 children of us again. Their successors show us 
 an earth effete and in a double sense past bear 
 ing, tracing out with the eyes of industrious fleas 
 every wrinkle and crowfoot. 
 
 The journals of the elder navigators are prose 
 Odysseys. The geographies of our ancestors 
 were works of fancy and imagination. They 
 read poems where we yawn over items. Their 
 world was a huge wonder-horn, exhaustless as 
 that which Thor strove to drain. Ours would 
 scarce quench the small thirst of a bee. No 
 modern voyager brings back the magical foun 
 dation-stones of a Tempest. No Marco Polo, 
 traversing the desert beyond the city of Lok, 
 would tell of things able to inspire the mind of 
 Milton with 
 
 " Calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire, 
 And airy tongues that syllable men s names 
 On sands and shores and desert wildernesses." 
 
 It was easy enough to believe the story of 
 Dante, when two thirds of even the upper- 
 
134 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 world were yet untraversed and unmapped. 
 With every step of the recent traveller our in 
 heritance of the wonderful is diminished. Those 
 beautifully pictured notes of the Possible are 
 redeemed at a ruinous discount in the hard and 
 cumbrous coin of the Actual. How are we not 
 defrauded and impoverished ? Does California 
 vie with El Dorado ? or are Bruce s Abyssinian 
 kings a set-off for Prester John ? A bird in the 
 bush is worth two in the hand. And if the 
 philosophers have not even yet been able to 
 agree whether the world has any existence in 
 dependent of ourselves, how do we not gain a 
 loss in every addition to the catalogue of Vulgar 
 Errors ? Where are the fishes which nidificated 
 in trees ? Where the monopodes sheltering 
 themselves from the sun beneath their single 
 umbrella-like foot, umbrella-like in every 
 thing but the fatal necessity of being borrowed ? 
 Where the Acephali, with whom Herodotus, 
 in a kind of ecstasy, wound up his climax of 
 men with abnormal top-pieces ? Where the 
 Roc whose eggs are possibly boulders, needing 
 no far-fetched theory of glacier or iceberg to 
 account for them ? Where the tails of the men 
 of Kent ? Where the no legs of the bird of 
 paradise ? Where the Unicorn, with that single 
 horn of his, sovereign against all manner of 
 poisons ? Where that Thessalian spring, which, 
 without cost to the country, convicted and pun- 
 
AT SEA 135 
 
 ished perjurers ? Where the Amazons of Orel- 
 lana ? Where, in short, the Fountain of Youth ? 
 All these, and a thousand other varieties, we 
 have lost, and have got nothing instead of 
 them. And those who have robbed us of them 
 have stolen that which not enriches themselves. 
 It is so much wealth cast into the sea beyond 
 all approach of diving-bells. We owe no thanks 
 to Mr. J. E. Worcester, whose Geography we 
 studied enforcedly at school. Yet even he had 
 his relentings, and in some softer moment 
 vouchsafed us a fine, inspiring print of the 
 Maelstrom, answerable to the twenty-four mile 
 diameter of its suction. Year by year, more and 
 more of the world gets disenchanted. Even the 
 icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is 
 invaded. Our youth are no longer ingenuous, 
 as indeed no ingenuity is demanded of them. 
 Everything is accounted for, everything cut and 
 dried, and the world may be put together as 
 easily as the fragments of a dissected map. The 
 Mysterious bounds nothing now on the North, 
 South, East, or West. We have played Jack 
 Homer with our earth, till there is never a 
 plum left in it. 
 
136 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 II 
 
 IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 
 
 The first sight of a shore so historical as that 
 of Europe gives an American a strange thrill. 
 What we always feel the artistic want of at 
 home is background. It is all idle to say we 
 are Englishmen, and that English history is 
 ours too. It is precisely in this that we are not 
 Englishmen, inasmuch as we only possess their 
 history through our minds, and not by life-long 
 association with a spot and an idea we call Eng 
 land. History without the soil it grew in is 
 more instructive than inspiring, an acquisi 
 tion, and not an inheritance. It is laid away in 
 our memories, and does not run in our veins. 
 Surely, in all that concerns aesthetics, Europeans 
 have us at an immense advantage. They start 
 at a point which we arrive at after weary years, 
 for literature is not shut up in books, nor art in 
 galleries : both are taken in by unconscious ab 
 sorption through the finer pores of mind and 
 character in the atmosphere of society. We are 
 not yet out of our Crusoe-hood, and must make 
 our own tools as best we may. Yet I think we 
 shall find the good of it one of these days, in 
 being thrown back more wholly on Nature ; 
 and our literature, when we have learned to feel 
 our own strength, and to respect our own 
 
IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 13? 
 
 thought because it is ours, and not because the 
 European Mrs. Grundy agrees with it, will 
 have a fresh flavor and a strong body that will 
 recommend it, especially as what we import is 
 watered more and more liberally with every 
 vintage. 
 
 My first glimpse of Europe was the shore 
 of Spain. One morning a cream-colored blur 
 on the now unwavering horizon s edge was 
 pointed out to me as Cadiz. Since we got into 
 the Mediterranean, we have been becalmed for 
 some days within easy view of land. All along 
 are fine mountains, brown all day, and with a 
 bloom on them at sunset like that of a ripe 
 plum. Here and there at their feet little white 
 towns are sprinkled along the edge of the water, 
 like the grains of rice dropped by the princess 
 in the story. Sometimes we see larger build 
 ings on the mountain slopes, probably con 
 vents. I sit and wonder whether the farther 
 peaks may not be the Sierra Morena (the rusty 
 saw) of Don Quixote. I resolve that they shall 
 be, and am content. Surely latitude and longi 
 tude never showed me any particular respect, 
 that I should be over-scrupulous with them. 
 
 But after all, Nature, though she may be 
 more beautiful, is nowhere so entertaining as 
 in man, and the best thing I have seen and 
 learned at sea is our chief mate. My first ac 
 quaintance with him was made over my knife, 
 
138 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 which he asked to look at, and, after a critical 
 examination, handed back to me, saying, " I 
 should n t wonder if that ere was a good piece 
 o stuff." Since then he has transferred a part 
 of his regard for my knife to its owner. I like 
 folks who like an honest bit of steel, and take 
 no interest whatever in "your Raphaels, Cor- 
 reggios, and stuff." There is always more than 
 the average human nature in a man who has a 
 hearty sympathy with iron. It is a manly metal, 
 with no sordid associations like gold and silver. 
 My sailor fully came up to my expectation on 
 further acquaintance. He might well be called 
 an old salt who had been wrecked on Spitz- 
 bergen before I was born. He was not an 
 American, but I should never have guessed it 
 by his speech, which was the purest Cape Cod, 
 and I reckon myself a good taster of dialects. 
 Nor was he less Americanized in all his 
 thoughts and feelings, a singular proof of the 
 ease with which our omnivorous country as 
 similates foreign matter, provided it be Pro 
 testant, for he was a grown man ere he became 
 an American citizen. He used to walk the deck 
 with his hands in his pockets, in seeming ab 
 straction, but nothing escaped his eye. How he 
 saw, I could never make out, though I had a 
 theory that it was with his elbows. After he 
 had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence, 
 he took care that I should see whatever he 
 
IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 139 
 
 deemed of interest to a landsman. Without 
 looking up, he would say, suddenly, " Ther s 
 a whale blowin clearn up to win ard," or, 
 " Them s porpises to leeward : that means 
 change o wind." He is as impervious to cold 
 as a polar bear, and paces the deck during his 
 watch much as one of those yellow hummocks 
 goes slumping up and down his cage. On 
 the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale from the 
 northeast, and it was cold as an English sum 
 mer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt 
 and trousers, his furzy brown chest half bare, 
 and slippers, without stockings. But lest you 
 might fancy this to have chanced by defect of 
 wardrobe, he comes out in a monstrous pea- 
 jacket here in the Mediterranean, when the 
 evening is so hot that Adam would have been 
 glad to leave off his fig-leaves. " It s a kind o* 
 damp and unwholesome in these ere waters," 
 he says, evidently regarding the Midland Sea 
 as a vile standing pool, in comparison with the 
 bluff ocean. At meals he is superb, not only 
 for his strengths, but his weaknesses. He has 
 somehow or other come to think me a wag, 
 and if I ask him to pass the butter, detects an 
 occult joke, and laughs as much as is proper 
 for a mate. For you must know that our social 
 hierarchy on shipboard is precise, and the sec 
 ond mate, were he present, would only laugh 
 half as much as the first. Mr. X. always combs 
 
1 40 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 his hair, and works himself into a black frock- 
 coat (on Sundays he adds a waistcoat) before he 
 comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and 
 painfully to the social proprieties. The second 
 mate, on the other hand, who eats after us, en 
 joys the privilege of shirt-sleeves, and is, I 
 think, the happier man of the two. We do not 
 have seats above and below the salt, as in old 
 time, but above and below the white sugar. 
 Mr. X. always takes brown sugar, and it is de 
 lightful to see how he ignores the existence of 
 certain delicates which he considers above his 
 grade, tipping his head on one side with an air 
 of abstraction, so that he may seem not to deny 
 himself, but to omit helping himself from inad 
 vertence or absence of mind. At such times he 
 wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar manner, in 
 scrutable at first as a cuneiform inscription, but 
 as easily read after you once get the key. The 
 sense of it is something like this : " I, X., 
 know my place, a height of wisdom attained by 
 few. Whatever you may think, I do not see 
 that currant jelly, nor that preserved grape. 
 Especially, a kind Providence has made me 
 blind to bowls of white sugar, and deaf to the 
 pop of champagne corks. It is much that a 
 merciful compensation gives me a sense of the 
 dingier hue of Havana, and the muddier gurgle 
 of beer. Are there potted meats ? My phy 
 sician has ordered me three pounds of minced 
 
IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 141 
 
 salt-junk at every meal." There is such a thing, 
 you know, as a ship s husband : X. is the ship s 
 poor relation. 
 
 As I have said, he takes also a below-the- 
 white-sugar interest in the jokes, laughing by 
 precise point of compass, just as he would lay 
 the ship s course, all yawing being out of the 
 question with his scrupulous decorum at the 
 helm. Once or twice I have got the better of 
 him, and touched him off into a kind of com 
 promised explosion, like that of damp fireworks, 
 that splutter and simmer a little, and then go 
 out with painful slowness and occasional re 
 lapses. But his fuse is always of the unwilling- 
 est, and you must blow your match, and touch 
 him off again and again with the same joke. Or 
 rather, you must magnetize him many times to 
 get him en rapport with a jest. This once ac 
 complished, you have him, and one bit of fun 
 will last the whole voyage. He prefers those of 
 one syllable, the a-b abs of humor. The grad 
 ual fattening of the steward, a benevolent mu 
 latto with whiskers and ear-rings, who looks 
 as if he had been meant for a woman, and had 
 become a man by accident, as in some of those 
 stories of the elder physiologists, is an abiding 
 topic of humorous comment with Mr. X. 
 " That ere stooard," he says, with a brown grin 
 like what you might fancy on the face of a seri 
 ous and aged seal, " s a-gittin as fat s a porpis. 
 
H2 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 He was as thin s a shingle when he come aboord 
 last v yge. Them trousis 11 bust yit. He don t 
 darst take em off nights, for the whole ship s 
 company could n t git him into em agin." And 
 then he turns aside to enjoy the intensity of his 
 emotion by himself, and you hear at intervals 
 low rumblings, an indigestion of laughter. He 
 tells me of St. Elmo s fires, Marvell s corposants, 
 though with him the original corpos santos has 
 suffered a sea change, and turned to comeplea- 
 sants, pledges of fine weather. I shall not soon 
 find a pleasanter companion. It is so delightful 
 to meet a man who knows just what you do not. 
 Nay, I think the tired mind finds something in 
 plump ignorance like what the body feels in 
 cushiony moss. Talk of the sympathy of kin 
 dred pursuits ! It is the sympathy of the upper 
 and nether millstones, both forever grinding the 
 same grist, and wearing each other smooth. 
 One has not far to seek for book-nature, artist- 
 nature, every variety of superinduced nature, in 
 short, but genuine human-nature is hard to find. 
 And how good it is ! Wholesome as a potato, 
 fit company for any dish. The freemasonry of 
 cultivated men is agreeable, but artificial, and I 
 like better the natural grip with which manhood 
 recognizes manhood. 
 
 X. has one good story, and with that I leave 
 him, wishing him with all my heart that little 
 inland farm at last which is his calenture as he 
 
IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 143 
 
 paces the windy deck. One evening, when the 
 clouds looked wild and whirling, I asked X. if 
 it was coming on to blow. " No, guess not/ 
 said he ; " bumby the moon 11 be up, and scoff 
 away that ere loose stuff." His intonation set 
 the phrase " scoff away " in quotation-marks as 
 plain as print. So I put a query in each eye, and 
 he went on. " Ther was a Dutch cappen onct, 
 an his mate come to him in the cabin, where he 
 sot takin his schnapps, an says, ( Cappen, it s 
 a-gittin thick, an looks kin o squally ; hed n t 
 we s good s shorten sail ? c Gimmy my al- 
 minick, says the cappen. So he looks at it a 
 spell, an says he, c The moon s doo in less n 
 half an hour, an she 11 scoff away ev ythin clare 
 agin/ So the mate he goes, an bumby down 
 he comes agin, an says, c Cappen, this ere s the 
 allfiredest, powerfullest moon t ever you did 
 see. She s scoffed away the maintogallants l, 
 an she s to work on the foretops l now. Guess 
 you d better look in the alminick agin, an fin 
 out when this moon sets. So the cappen thought 
 t was bout time to go on deck. Dreadful slow 
 them Dutch cappens be." And X. walked away, 
 rumbling inwardly, like the rote of the sea heard 
 afar. 
 
 And so we arrived at Malta. Did you ever 
 hear of one of those eating-houses, where, for a 
 certain fee, the guest has the right to make one 
 thrust with a fork into a huge pot, in which the 
 
H4 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 whole dinner is bubbling, getting perhaps a bit 
 of boiled meat, or a potato, or else nothing? 
 Well, when the great caldron of war is seething, 
 and the nations stand round it striving to fish 
 out something to their purpose from the mess, 
 Britannia always has a great advantage in her 
 trident. Malta is one of the titbits she has im 
 paled with that awful implement. I was not 
 sorry for it, when I reached my clean inn, with 
 its kindly English landlady. 
 
 Ill 
 ITALY 
 
 The father of the celebrated Mr. Jonathan 
 Wild was in the habit of saying, that cc travel 
 ling was travelling in one part of the world as 
 well as another ; it consisted in being such a 
 time from home, and in traversing so many 
 leagues ; and he appealed to experience whether 
 most of our travellers in France and Italy did 
 not prove at their return that they might have 
 been sent as profitably to Norway and Green 
 land." Fielding himself, the author of this sar 
 casm, was a very different kind of traveller, as 
 his Lisbon journal shows ; but we think he told 
 no more than the truth in regard to the far 
 greater part of those idle people who powder 
 
ITALY H5 
 
 themselves with dust from the highways and 
 blur their memories with a whirl through the 
 galleries of Europe. They go out empty, to 
 come home unprofitably full. They go abroad 
 to escape themselves, and fail, as Goethe says 
 they always must, in the attempt to jump away 
 from their own shadows. And yet even the 
 dullest man, if he went honestly about it, might 
 bring home something worth having from the 
 dullest place. If Ovid, instead of sentimentaliz 
 ing in the " Tristia," had left behind him a trea 
 tise on the language of the Getas which he learned, 
 we should have thanked him for something 
 more truly valuable than all his poems. Could 
 men only learn how comfortably the world can 
 get along without the various information which 
 they bring home about themselves ! Honest 
 observation and report will long continue, we 
 fear, to be one of the rarest of human things, 
 so much more easily are spectacles to be had 
 than eyes, so much cheaper is fine writing than 
 exactness. Let any one who has sincerely en 
 deavored to get anything like facts with regard 
 to the battles of our civil war only consider how 
 much more he has learned concerning the splen 
 did emotions of the reporter than the events of 
 the fight (unless he has had the good luck of 
 a peep into the correspondence of some price- 
 lessly uncultivated private), and he will feel that 
 narrative, simple as it seems, can be well done 
 
146 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 by two kinds of men only, those of the 
 highest genius and culture, and those wholly 
 without either. 
 
 It gradually becomes clear to us that the 
 easiest things can be done with ease only by 
 the very fewest people, and those specially en 
 dowed to that end. The English language, for 
 instance, can show but one sincere diarist, 
 Pepys ; and yet it should seem a simple matter 
 enough to jot down the events of every day for 
 one s self without thinking of Mrs. Posterity 
 Grundy, who has a perverse way, as if she were 
 a testatrix and not an heir, of forgetting pre 
 cisely those who pay most assiduous court to 
 her. One would think, too, that to travel and 
 tell what you have seen should be tolerably 
 easy ; but in ninety-nine books out of a hun 
 dred does not the tourist bore us with the sen 
 sations he thinks he ought to have experienced, 
 instead of letting us know what he saw and 
 felt ? If authors would only consider that the 
 way to write an enlivening book is not by see 
 ing and saying just what would be expected of 
 them, but precisely the reverse, the public would 
 be gainers. What tortures have we not seen 
 the worthiest people go through in endeavoring 
 to get up the appropriate emotion before some 
 famous work in a foreign gallery, when the only 
 sincere feeling they had was a praiseworthy de 
 sire to escape ! If one does not like the Venus 
 
ITALY H7 
 
 of Melos, let him not fret about it, for he may 
 be sure she never will. 
 
 Montaigne felt obliged to separate himself 
 from travelling-companions whose only notion 
 of their function was that of putting so many 
 leagues a day behind them. His theory was 
 that of Ulysses, who was not content with see 
 ing the cities of many men, but would learn 
 their minds also. And this way of taking time 
 enough, while we think it the best everywhere, 
 is especially excellent in a country so much the 
 reverse of fast as Italy, where impressions need 
 to steep themselves in the sun and ripen slowly 
 as peaches, and where carpe diem should be 
 translated take your own time. But is there any 
 particular reason why everybody should go to 
 Italy, or, having done so, should tell everybody 
 else what he supposes he ought to have seen 
 there ? Surely, there must be some adequate 
 cause for so constant an effect. 
 
 Boswell, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, 
 says that, if he could only see Rome, " it would 
 give him talk for a lifetime." The utmost 
 stretch of his longing is to pass " four months 
 on classic ground," after which he will come 
 back to Auchinleck uti conviva satur, a con 
 dition in which we fear the poor fellow returned 
 thither only too often, though unhappily in no 
 metaphorical sense. We rather think, that, 
 apart from the pleasure of saying he had been 
 
148 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 there, Boswell was really drawn to Italy by the 
 fact that it was classic ground, and this not so 
 much by its association with great events as with 
 great men, for whom, with all his weaknesses, he 
 had an invincible predilection. But Italy has a 
 magnetic virtue quite peculiar to her, which com 
 pels alike steel and straw, rinding something in 
 men of the most diverse temperaments by which 
 to draw them to herself. Like the Siren, she 
 sings to every voyager a different song, that 
 lays hold on the special weakness of his nature. 
 The German goes thither because Winckelmann 
 and Goethe went, and because he can find there 
 a sausage stronger than his own ; the French 
 man, that he may flavor his infidelity with a 
 bitter dash of Ultramontanism, or find fresher 
 zest in his chattering boulevard after the sombre 
 loneliness of Rome ; the Englishman, because 
 the same Providence that hears the young 
 ravens when they cry is careful to furnish prey 
 to the courier also, and because his money will 
 make him a Milor in partibus. But to the 
 American, especially if he be of an imaginative 
 temper, Italy has a deeper charm. She gives 
 him cheaply what gold cannot buy for him at 
 home, a Past at once legendary and authentic, 
 and in which he has an equal claim with every 
 other foreigner. In England he is a poor re 
 lation whose right in the entail of home tra 
 ditions has been docked by revolution; of 
 
ITALY H9 
 
 France his notions are purely English, and he 
 can scarce help feeling something like con 
 tempt for a people who habitually conceal their 
 meaning in French ; but Rome is the mother 
 country of every boy who has devoured Plu 
 tarch or taken his daily doses of Florus. Italy 
 gives us antiquity with good roads, cheap living, 
 and, above all, a sense of freedom from respon 
 sibility. For him who has escaped thither there 
 is no longer any tyranny of public opinion ; 
 its fetters drop from his limbs when he touches 
 that consecrated shore, and he rejoices in the 
 recovery of his own individuality. He is no 
 longer met at every turn with " Under which 
 king, bezonian? Speak, or die!" He is not 
 forced to take one side or the other about table- 
 tipping, or the merits of General Blank, or the 
 constitutionality of anarchy. He has found an 
 Eden where he need not hide his natural 
 self in the livery of any opinion, and may be as 
 happy as Adam, if he be wise enough to keep 
 clear of the apple of High Art. This may 
 be very weak, but it is also very agreeable to 
 certain temperaments ; and to be weak is to 
 be miserable only where it is a duty to be 
 strong. 
 
 Coming from a country where everything 
 seems shifting like a quicksand, where men 
 shed their homes as snakes their skins, where 
 you may meet a three-story house, or even a 
 
i5o LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 church, on the highway, bitten by the univer 
 sal gadfly of bettering its position, where we 
 have known a tree to be cut down merely be 
 cause " it had got to be so old," the sense 
 of permanence, unchangeableness, and repose 
 which Italy gives us is delightful. The oft-re 
 peated non e piu come era prima may be true 
 enough of Rome politically, but it is not true 
 of it in most other respects. To be sure, gas 
 and railroads have got in at last ; but one may 
 still read by a lucerna and travel by vettura, if 
 he like, using Alberti as a guide-book, and put 
 ting up at the Bear as a certain keen-eyed Gas 
 con did three centuries ago. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no country with which we 
 are so intimate as with Italy, none of which 
 we are always so willing to hear more. Poets 
 and prosers have alike compared her to a beau 
 tiful woman ; and while one finds nothing but 
 loveliness in her, another shudders at her fatal 
 fascination. She is the very Witch-Venus of 
 the Middle Ages. Roger Ascham says, " I was 
 once in Italy myself, but I thank God my 
 abode there was but nine days ; and yet I saw 
 in that little time, in one city, more liberty to 
 sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble city 
 of London in nine years." He quotes tri 
 umphantly the proverb, Inglese italianato^di- 
 avolo incarnato. A century later, the entertain 
 ing " Richard Lassels, Gent., who Travelled 
 
ITALY 151 
 
 through Italy Five times as Tutor to several 
 of the English Nobility and Gentry/ and who 
 is open to new engagements in that kind, de 
 clares, that, " For the Country itself, it seemed 
 to me to be Nature s Darling, and the Eldest 
 Sister of all other Countries ; carrying away 
 from them all the greatest blessings and favours, 
 and receiving such gracious looks from the Sun 
 and Heaven, that, if there be any fault in Italy, 
 it is, that her Mother Nature hath cockered her 
 too much, even to make her become Wanton." 
 Plainly, our Tannhauser is but too ready to go 
 back to the Venus-berg ! 
 
 Another word about Italy seems a dangerous 
 experiment. Has not all been told and told 
 and told again ? Is it not one chief charm of 
 the land, that it is changeless without being 
 Chinese? Did not Abbot Samson, in 1159, 
 Scotti habit um induens (which must have shown 
 his massive calves to great advantage), probably 
 see much the same popular characteristics that 
 Hawthorne saw seven hundred years later? 
 Shall a man try to be entertaining after Mon 
 taigne, aesthetic after Winckelmann, wise after 
 Goethe, or trenchant after Forsyth ? Can he 
 hope to bring back anything so useful as the 
 fork, which honest Tom Coryate made prize of 
 two centuries and a half ago, and put into the 
 greasy fingers of Northern barbarians ? Is not 
 the " Descrittione " of Leandro Alberti still a 
 
152 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 competent itinerary ? And can one hope to 
 pick up a fresh Latin quotation, when Addison 
 and Eustace have been before him with their 
 scrap-baskets ? 
 
 If there be anything which a person of even 
 moderate accomplishments may be presumed 
 to know, it is Italy. The only open question 
 left seems to be whether Shakespeare were the 
 only man that could write his name who had 
 never been there. I have read my share of 
 Italian travels, both in prose and verse, but, as 
 the nicely discriminating Dutchman found that 
 " too moch lager-beer was too moch, but too 
 moch brahndee was jost hright," so I am in 
 clined to say that too much Italy is just what 
 we want. After Des Brosses, we are ready for 
 Henri Beyle, and Ampere, and Hillard, and 
 About, and Gallenga, and Julia Kavanagh ; 
 " Corinne " only makes us hungry for George 
 Sand. That no one can tell us anything new is 
 as undeniable as the compensating fact that no 
 one can tell us anything too old. 
 
 There are two kinds of travellers, those 
 who tell us what they went to see, and those 
 who tell us what they saw. The latter class are 
 the only ones whose journals are worth the sift 
 ing ; and the value of their eyes depends on 
 the amount of individual character they took 
 with them, and of the previous culture that had 
 sharpened and tutored the faculty of observa- 
 
ITALY 153 
 
 tion. In our conscious age the frankness and 
 naivete of the elder voyagers is impossible, and 
 we are weary of those humorous confidences 
 on the subject of fleas with which we are favored 
 by some modern travellers, whose motto should 
 be (slightly altered) from Horace, Flea-bit, 
 et toto cantabitur urbe. A naturalist self-sacrific 
 ing enough may have this experience nearer 
 home. 
 
 The impulse which sent the Edelmann Storg 
 and me to Subiaco was given something like 
 two thousand years ago. Had we not seen the 
 Ponte Sant Antonio, we should not have gone 
 to Subiaco at this particular time ; and had the 
 Romans been worse masons, or more ignorant 
 of hydrodynamics than they were, we should 
 never have seen the Ponte Sant Antonio. But 
 first we went to Tivoli, two carriage-loads of 
 us, a very agreeable mixture of English, Scots, 
 and Yankees, on Tuesday, the 2Oth April. 
 I shall not say anything about Tivoli. A water 
 fall in type is likely to be a trifle stifHsh. Old 
 association and modern beauty ; nature and ar 
 tifice ; worship that has passed away and the 
 religion that abides forever; the green gush of 
 the deeper torrent and the white evanescence 
 of innumerable cascades, delicately palpitant as 
 a fall of northern lights ; the descendants of 
 Sabine pigeons flashing up to immemorial dove- 
 
154 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 cots, for centuries inaccessible to man, trooping 
 with noisy rooks and daws ; the fitful roar and 
 the silently hovering iris, which, borne by the 
 wind across the face of the cliff, transmutes the 
 travertine to momentary opal, and whose dim 
 mer ghost haunts the moonlight, as well at 
 tempt to describe to a Papuan savage that won 
 drous ode of Wordsworth which rouses and stirs 
 in the soul all its dormant instincts of resur 
 rection as with a sound of the last trumpet. 
 No, it is impossible. Even Byron s pump sucks 
 sometimes, and gives an unpleasant dry wheeze, 
 especially, it seems to me, at Terni. It is guide 
 book poetry, enthusiasm manufactured by the 
 yard, which the hurried traveller (John and 
 Jonathan are always in a hurry when they turn 
 peripatetics) puts on when he has not a rag of 
 private imagination to cover his nakedness 
 withal. It must be a queer kind of love that 
 could " watch madness with unalterable mien/ 
 when the patient, whom any competent physi 
 cian would have ordered into a strait-waistcoat 
 long ago, has shivered himself to powder down 
 a precipice. But there is no madness in the 
 matter. Velino goes over in his full senses, and 
 knows perfectly well that he shall not be hurt, 
 that his br6ken fragments will reunite more 
 glibly than the head and neck of Orrilo. He 
 leaps exultant, as to his proper doom and ful 
 filment, and out of the mere waste and spray 
 
ITALY 155 
 
 of his glory the god of sunshine and song builds 
 over the crowning moment of his destiny a tri 
 umphal arch beyond the reach of time and of 
 decay. 
 
 The first day we made the Giro, coming back 
 to a merry dinner at the Sibilla in the evening. 
 Then we had some special tea, for the Ital 
 ians think tea-drinking the chief religious ob 
 servance of the Ing/esi, and then we had fif 
 teen pauls worth of illumination, which wrought 
 a sudden change in the scenery, like those that 
 seem so matter-of-course in dreams, turning 
 the Claude we had seen in the morning into a 
 kind of Piranesi-Rembrandt. The illumination, 
 by the way, which had been prefigured to us by 
 the enthusiastic Italian who conducted it as 
 something second only to the Girandola^ turned 
 out to be one blue-light and two armfuls of 
 straw. 
 
 The Edelmann Storg is not fond of pedes 
 trian locomotion, nay, I have even sometimes 
 thought that he looked upon the invention of 
 legs as a private and personal wrong done to 
 himself. I am quite sure that he inwardly be 
 lieves them to have been a consequence of the 
 Fall, and that the happier Pre- Adamites were 
 monopodes, and incapable of any but a ve 
 hicular progression. A carriage, with horses and 
 driver complete, he takes to be as simple a pro 
 duction of nature as a potato. But he is fond of 
 
156 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 sketching, and after breakfast, on the beautiful 
 morning of Wednesday, the 2ist, I persuaded 
 him to walk out a mile or two and see a frag 
 ment of aqueduct ruin. It is a single glorious 
 arch, buttressing the mountain-side upon the 
 edge of a sharp descent to the valley of the Anio. 
 The old road to Subiaco passes under it, and 
 it is crowned by a crumbling tower built in the 
 Middle Ages (whenever that was) against the 
 Gaetani. While Storg sketched, I clambered. 
 Below you, where the valley widens greenly to 
 wards other mountains, which the ripe Italian 
 air distances with a bloom like that on un- 
 plucked grapes, are more arches, ossified arte 
 ries of what was once the heart of the world. 
 Storg s sketch was highly approved of by Leo- 
 poldo, our guide, and by three or four peasants, 
 who, being on their way to their morning s 
 work in the fields, had, of course, nothing in 
 particular to do, and stopped to see us see the 
 ruin. Any one who has remarked how grandly 
 the Romans do nothing will be slow to believe 
 them an effete race. Their style is as the co 
 lossal to all other, and the name of Eternal City 
 fits Rome also, because time is of no account in 
 it. The Roman always waits as if he could 
 afford it amply, and the slow centuries move 
 quite fast enough for him. Time is to other 
 races the field of a taskmaster, which they must 
 painfully till ; but to the Roman it is an en- 
 
ITALY 157 
 
 tailed estate, which he enjoys and will transmit. 
 The Neapolitan s laziness is that of a loafer ; 
 the Roman s is that of a noble. The poor 
 Anglo-Saxon must count his hours, and look 
 twice at his small change of quarters and min 
 utes ; but the Roman spends from a purse of 
 Fortunatus. His piccolo quarto cTora is like his 
 grossoy a huge piece of copper, big enough for 
 a shield, which stands only for a half dime 
 of our money. We poor fools of time always 
 hurry as if we were the last type of man, the 
 full stop with which Fate was closing the colo 
 phon of her volume, as if we had just read in 
 our newspaper, as we do of the banks on holi 
 days, IfCST 3 The world will close to-day at 
 twelve o clock, an hour earlier than usual. But 
 the Roman is still an Ancient, with a vast future 
 before him to tame and occupy. He and his ox 
 and his plough are just as they were in Virgil s 
 time or Ennius s. We beat him in many 
 things ; but in the impregnable fastness of his 
 great rich nature he defies us. 
 
 We got back to Tivoli, Storg affirming 
 that he had walked fifteen miles. We saw the 
 Temple of Cough, which is not the Temple of 
 Cough, though it might have been a votive 
 structure put up by some Tiburtine Dr. Wistar. 
 We saw the villa of Maecenas, which is not the 
 villa of Maecenas, and other equally satisfactory 
 antiquities. All our English friends sketched 
 
158 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 the Citadel, of course, and one enthusiast at 
 tempted a likeness of the fall, which I unhap 
 pily mistook afterward for a semblance of the 
 tail of one of the horses on the Monte Cavallo. 
 Then we went to the Villa d Este, famous on 
 Ariosto s account, and which Ariosto never 
 saw. But the laurels were worthy to have made 
 a chaplet for him, and the cypresses and the 
 views were as fine as if he had seen them every 
 day of his life. 
 
 Perhaps something I learned in going to 
 see one of the gates of the town is more to the 
 purpose, and may assist one in erecting the 
 horoscope of Italia Unita. When Leopoldo 
 first proposed to drag me through the mud to 
 view this interesting piece of architecture, I de 
 murred. But as he was very earnest about it, 
 and as one seldom fails getting at a bit of char 
 acter by submitting to one s guide, I yielded. 
 Arrived at the spot, he put me at the best point 
 of view, and said, 
 
 " Behold, Lordship ! " 
 
 " I see nothing out of the common," said I. 
 
 " Lordship is kind enough here to look at a 
 gate, the like of which exists not in all Italy, 
 nay, in the whole world, I speak not of Eng 
 land," for he thought me an Inglese. 
 
 " I am not blind, Leopoldo ; where is the 
 miracle ? " 
 
 " Here we dammed up the waters of the 
 
ITALY 159 
 
 Anio, first by artifice conducted to this spot, 
 and letting them out upon the Romans, who 
 stood besieging the town, drowned almost a 
 whole army of them. (Lordship conceives ?) 
 They suspected nothing till they found them 
 selves all torn to pieces at the foot of the hill 
 yonder. (Lordship conceives ?) Eh I per Bacco ! 
 we watered their porridge for them/* 
 
 Leopoldo used we as Lord Buchan did /, 
 meaning any of his ancestors. 
 
 " But tell me a little, Leopoldo, how many 
 years is it since this happened ? " 
 
 " Non saprei, signoria ; it was in the antiquest 
 times, certainly ; but the Romans never come 
 to our Fair, that we don t have blows about it, 
 and perhaps a stab or two. Lordship under 
 stands ? " 
 
 I was quite repaid for my pilgrimage. I think 
 I understand Italian politics better for hearing 
 Leopoldo speak of the Romans, whose great 
 dome is in full sight of Tivoli, as a foreign na 
 tion. But what perennial boyhood the whole 
 story indicates ! 
 
 Storg s sketch of the morning s ruin was so 
 successful that I seduced him into a new expe 
 dition to the Ponte Sant Antonio, another aque 
 duct arch about eight miles off. This was for 
 the afternoon, and I succeeded the more easily, 
 as we were to go on horseback. So I told Leo 
 poldo to be at the gate of the Villa of Hadrian, 
 
160 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 at three o clock, with three horses. Leopoldo s 
 face, when I said three, was worth seeing ; for 
 the poor fellow had counted on nothing more 
 than trotting beside our horses for sixteen miles, 
 and getting half a dollar in the evening. Be 
 tween doubt and hope, his face seemed to exude 
 a kind of oil, which made it shine externally, 
 after having first lubricated all the muscles in 
 wardly. 
 
 " With three horses, Lordship ? " 
 
 " Yes, three." 
 
 " Lordship is very sagacious. With three 
 horses they go much quicker. It is finished, 
 then, and they will have the kindness to find 
 me at the gate with the beasts, at three o clock 
 precisely." 
 
 Leopoldo and I had compromised upon the 
 term " Lordship." He had found me in the 
 morning celebrating due rites before the Sibyl s 
 Temple with strange incense of the nicotian 
 herb, and had marked me for his prey. At the 
 very high tide of sentiment, when the traveller 
 lies with oyster-like openness in the soft ooze 
 of reverie, do these parasitic crabs, the ciceroni, 
 insert themselves as his inseparable bosom com 
 panions. Unhappy bivalve, lying so softly 
 between thy two shells, of the actual and the 
 possible, the one sustaining, the other widening 
 above thee, till, oblivious of native mud, thou 
 fanciest thyself a proper citizen only of the 
 
ITALY 161 
 
 illimitable ocean which floods thee, there is 
 no escape ! Vain are thy poor crustaceous efforts 
 at self-isolation. The foe henceforth is a part 
 of thy consciousness, thy landscape, and thy 
 self, happy only if that irritation breed in thee 
 the pearl of patience and of voluntary abstrac 
 tion. 
 
 " Excellency wants a guide, very experienced, 
 who has conducted with great mutual satisfac 
 tion many of his noble compatriots." 
 
 Puff, puff, and an attempt at looking as if I 
 did not see -him. 
 
 " Excellency will deign to look at my book 
 of testimonials. When we return, Excellency 
 will add his own." 
 
 Puff, puff. 
 
 " Excellency regards the cascade, praeceps 
 AniO) as the good Horatius called it." 
 
 I thought of the dissolve frigus of the land 
 lord in Roderick Random, and could not help 
 smiling. Leopoldo saw his advantage. 
 
 " Excellency will find Leopoldo, when he 
 shall choose to be ready." 
 
 " But I will positively not be called Excellency. 
 I am not an ambassador, nor a very eminent 
 Christian, and the phrase annoys me." 
 
 " To be sure, Excell Lordship." 
 
 " I am an American." 
 
 " Certainly, an American, Lordship," as if 
 that settled the matter entirely. If I had told 
 
1 62 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 him I was a Caffre, it would have been just as 
 clear to him. He surrendered the " Excel 
 lency," but on general principles of human 
 nature, I suppose, would not come a step lower 
 than " Lordship." So we compromised on that. 
 P. S. It is wonderful how soon a republican 
 ear reconciles itself with syllables of this descrip 
 tion. I think citizen would find greater diffi 
 culties in the way of its naturalization, and as 
 for brother ah ! well, in a Christian sense, 
 certainly. 
 
 Three o clock found us at the Villa of Ha 
 drian. We had explored that incomparable ruin, 
 and consecrated it, in the Homeric and Anglo- 
 Saxon manner, by eating and drinking. Some 
 of us sat in the shadow of one of the great walls, 
 fitter for a city than a palace, over which a Nile 
 of ivy, gushing from one narrow source, spread 
 itself in widening inundations. A happy few 
 listened to stories of Bagdad from Mrs. Rich, 
 whose silver hair gleamed, a palpable anachron 
 ism, like a snow-fall in May, over that ever- 
 youthful face, where the few sadder lines seemed 
 but the signature of Age to a deed of quitclaim 
 and release. Dear Tito, that exemplary traveller 
 who never lost a day, had come back from re 
 newed explorations, convinced by the eloquent 
 custode that Serapeion was the name of an officer 
 in the Praetorian Guard. I was explaining, in 
 addition, that Naumachia, in the Greek tongue, 
 
ITALY 163 
 
 signified a place artificially drained, when the 
 horses were announced. 
 
 This put me to reflection. I felt, perhaps, a 
 little as Mazeppa must, when told that his steed 
 was at the door. For several years I had not 
 been on the back of a horse, and was it not 
 more than likely that these mountains might 
 produce a yet more refractory breed of these 
 ferocious animals than common ? Who could 
 tell the effect of grazing on a volcanic soil like 
 that hereabout ? I had vague recollections that 
 the saddle nullified the laws governing the 
 impulsion of inert bodies, exacerbating the cen 
 trifugal forces into a virulent activity, and pro- 
 portionably narcotizing the centripetal. The 
 phrase ratio proportioned to the squares of the 
 distances impressed me with an awe which ex 
 plained to me how the laws of nature had been 
 of old personified and worshipped. Meditating 
 these things, I walked with a cheerful aspect to 
 the gate, where my saddled and bridled martyr 
 dom awaited me. 
 
 " Eccomi qua ! " said Leopoldo hilariously. 
 " Gentlemen will be good enough to select 
 from the three best beasts in Tivoli." 
 
 " Oh, this one will serve me as well as any," 
 said I, with an air of indifference, much as I 
 have seen a gentleman help himself inadvert 
 ently to the best peach in the dish. I am not 
 more selfish than becomes a Christian of the 
 
164 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 nineteenth century, but I looked on this as a 
 clear case of tabula in naufragio, and had noticed 
 that the animal in question had that tremulous 
 droop of the lower lip which indicates senility, 
 and the abdication of the wilder propensities. 
 Moreover, he was the only one provided with 
 a curb bit, or rather with two huge iron levers 
 which might almost have served Archimedes 
 for his problem. Our saddles were flat cushions 
 covered with leather, brought by years of fric 
 tion to the highest state of polish. Instead of a 
 pommel, a perpendicular stake, about ten inches 
 high, rose in front, which, in case of a stum 
 ble, would save one s brains, at the risk of cer 
 tain evisceration. Behind, a glary slope invited 
 me constantly to slide over the horse s tail. The 
 selfish prudence of my choice had well-nigh 
 proved the death of me, for this poor old brute, 
 with that anxiety to oblige a forestiero which 
 characterizes everybody here, could never make 
 up his mind which of his four paces (and he had 
 the rudiments of four walk, trot, rack, and 
 gallop) would be most agreeable to me. The 
 period of transition is always unpleasant, and it 
 was all transition. He treated me to a hodge 
 podge of all his several gaits at once. Saint 
 Vitus was the only patron saint I could think 
 of. My head jerked one way, my body an 
 other, while each of my legs became a pen 
 dulum vibrating furiously, one always forward 
 
ITALY 165 
 
 while the other was back, so that I had all the 
 appearance and all the labor of going afoot, and 
 at the same time was bumped within an inch of 
 my life. Waterton s alligator was nothing to it ; 
 it was like riding a hard-trotting armadillo bare 
 backed. There is a species of equitation pecul 
 iar to our native land, in which a rail from the 
 nearest fence, with no preliminary incantation 
 of Horse and hattock I is converted into a steed, 
 and this alone may stand the comparison. Storg 
 in the mean while was triumphantly taking the 
 lead, his trousers working up very pleasantly 
 above his knees, an insurrectionary movement 
 which I also was unable to suppress in my own. 
 I could bear it no longer. 
 
 " Le-e-o-o-p-o-o-o-l-l-l-d-d-o-o-o ! "jolted I. 
 
 " Command, Lordship ! " and we both came 
 to a stop. 
 
 "It is necessary that we change horses im 
 mediately, or I shall be jelly." 
 
 " Certainly, Lordship ; " and I soon had the 
 pathetic satisfaction of seeing him subjected to 
 all the excruciating experiments that had been 
 tried upon myself. Fiat experimentum in cor- 
 fore viliy thought his extempore lordship, Chris 
 topher Sly, to himself. 
 
 Meanwhile all the other accessories of our 
 ride were delicious. It was a clear, cool day, 
 and we soon left the high-road for a bridle-path 
 along the side of the mountain, among gigantic 
 
1 66 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 olive-trees, said to be five hundred years old, 
 and which had certainly employed all their time 
 in getting into the weirdest and wonderfullest 
 shapes. Clearly in this green commonwealth 
 there was no heavy roller of public opinion to 
 flatten all character to a lawn-like uniformity. 
 Everything was individual and eccentric. And 
 there was something fearfully human, too, in 
 the wildest contortions. It was some such wood 
 that gave Dante the hint of his human forest in 
 the seventh circle, and I should have dreaded to 
 break a twig, lest I should hear that voice com 
 plaining, 
 
 " Perch e mi scerpi ? 
 Non hai tu spirto di pietate alcuno ? " 
 
 Our path lay along a kind of terrace, and at 
 every opening we had glimpses of the billowy 
 Campagna, with the great dome bulging from 
 its rim, while on our right, changing ever as we 
 rode, the Alban Mountain showed us some new 
 grace of that sweeping outline peculiar to volca 
 noes. At intervals the substructions of Roman 
 villas would crop out from the soil like masses 
 of rock, and deserving to rank as a geological 
 formation by themselves. Indeed, in gazing 
 into these dark caverns, one does not think of 
 man more than at Staffa. Nature has adopted 
 these fragments of a race who were dear to her. 
 She has not suffered these bones of the great 
 Queen to lack due sepulchral rites, but has flung 
 
ITALY 167 
 
 over them the ceremonial handfuls of earth, and 
 every year carefully renews the garlands of 
 memorial flowers. Nay, if what they say in 
 Rome be true, she has even made a new conti 
 nent of the Colosseum, and given it a flora of 
 its own. 
 
 At length, descending a little, we passed 
 through farm-yards and cultivated fields, where, 
 from Leopoldo s conversations with the labor 
 ers, we discovered that he himself did not know 
 the way for which he had undertaken to be 
 guide. However, we presently came to our 
 ruin, and very noble it was. The aqueduct had 
 here been carried across a deep gorge, and over 
 the little brook which wimpled along below 
 towered an arch, as a bit of Shakespeare bestrides 
 the exiguous rill of a discourse which it was 
 intended to ornament. The only human habita 
 tion in sight was a little casetta on the top of 
 a neighboring hill. What else of man s work 
 could be seen was a ruined castle of the Middle 
 Ages, and, far away upon the horizon, the eter 
 nal dome. A valley in the moon could scarce 
 have been lonelier, could scarce have suggested 
 more strongly the feeling of preteriteness and 
 extinction. The stream below did not seem so 
 much to sing as to murmur sadly, Conclusum 
 est ; perils ti ! and the wind, sighing through the 
 arch, answered, Periisti ! Nor was the silence of 
 Monte Cavi without meaning. That cup, once 
 
1 68 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 full of fiery wine, in which it pledged Vesuvius 
 and jEtna later born, was brimmed with inno 
 cent water now. Adam came upon the earth too 
 late to see the glare of its last orgy, lighting the 
 eyes of saurians in the reedy Campagna below. 
 I almost fancied I could hear a voice like that 
 which cried to the Egyptian pilot, Great Pan is 
 dead! I was looking into the dreary socket 
 where once glowed the eye that saw the whole 
 earth vassal. Surely, this was the world s au 
 tumn, and I could hear the feet of Time rus 
 tling through the wreck of races and dynasties, 
 cheap and inconsiderable as fallen leaves. 
 
 But a guide is not engaged to lead one into 
 the world of imagination. He is as deadly to 
 sentiment as a sniff of hartshorn. His position 
 is a false one, like that of the critic, who is sup 
 posed to know everything, and expends him 
 self in showing that he does not. If you should 
 ever have the luck to attend a concert of the 
 spheres, under the protection of an Italian cice 
 rone, he will expect you to listen to him rather 
 than to it. He will say : " Ecco, Signoria, that 
 one in the red mantle is Signor Mars, eh ! 
 what a noblest basso is Signor Mars ! but no 
 thing (Lordship understands ?) to what Signor 
 Saturn used to be (he with the golden belt, 
 Signoria)) only his voice is in ruins now, 
 scarce one note left upon another; but Lord 
 ship can see what it was by the remains, Ro- 
 
ITALY 169 
 
 man remains, Signoria, Roman remains, the 
 work of giants. (Lordship understands ?) They 
 make no such voices now. Certainly, Signer 
 Jupiter (with the yellow tunic, there) is a brave 
 artist and a most sincere tenor ; but since the 
 time of the Republic " (if he think you an os- 
 curante^ or since the French, if he suspect you 
 of being the least red] " we have no more good 
 singing. And so on. 
 
 It is a well-known fact to all persons who 
 are in the habit of climbing Jacob s-ladders, 
 that, if any one speak to you during the opera 
 tion, the fabric collapses, and you come some 
 what uncomfortably to the ground. One can 
 be hit with a remark, when he is beyond the 
 reach of more material missiles. Leopoldo saw 
 by my abstracted manner that I was getting 
 away from him, and 1 was the only victim he 
 had left, for Storg was making a sketch below. 
 So he hastened to fetch me down again. 
 
 "Nero built this arch, Lordship." (He 
 did n t, but Nero was Leopoldo s historical 
 scapegoat.) " Lordship sees the dome ? he will 
 deign to look the least little to the left hand. 
 Lordship has much intelligence. Well, Nero 
 always did thus. His works always, always, 
 had Rome in view." 
 
 He had already shown me two ruins, which 
 he ascribed equally to Nero, and which could 
 only have seen Rome by looking through a 
 
1 70 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 mountain. However, such trifles are nothing to 
 an accomplished guide. 
 
 I remembered his quoting Horace in the 
 morning. 
 
 " Do you understand Latin, Leopoldo ? " 
 
 " I did a little once, Lordship c I went to 
 the Jesuits school at Tivoli. But what use of 
 Latin to a poverino like me ? " 
 
 " Were you intended for the Church ? Why 
 did you leave the school ? " 
 
 " Eh, Lordship ! " and one of those shrugs 
 which might mean that he left it of his own 
 free will, or that he was expelled at point of 
 toe. He added some contemptuous phrase 
 about the priests. 
 
 " But, Leopoldo, you are a good Catho 
 lic?" 
 
 " Eh, Lordship, who knows ? A man is no 
 blinder for being poor, nay, hunger sharpens 
 the eyesight sometimes. The cardinals (their 
 Eminences ! ) tell us that it is good to be poor, 
 and that, in proportion as we lack on earth, it 
 shall be made up to us in Paradise. Now, if 
 the cardinals (their Eminences !) believe what 
 they preach, why do they want to ride in such 
 handsome carriages ? " 
 
 " But are there many who think as you 
 do?" 
 
 " Everybody, Lordship, but a few women and 
 fools. What imports it what the fools think?" 
 
ITALY 171 
 
 An immense deal, I thought, an immense 
 deal ; for of what material is public opinion 
 manufactured ? 
 
 " Do you ever go to church ? " 
 
 " Once a year, Lordship, at Easter, to mass 
 and confession." 
 
 " Why once a year ? " 
 
 " Because, Lordship, one must have a cer 
 tificate from the priest. One might be sent to 
 prison else, and one had rather go to confes 
 sion than to jail. Eh, Lordship, it is a for- 
 cheriar 
 
 It is proper to add that in what Leopoldo 
 said of the priests he was not speaking of his 
 old masters, the Jesuits. One never hears any 
 thing in Italy against the purity of their lives, or 
 their learning and ability, though much against 
 their unscrupulousness. Nor will any one who 
 has ever enjoyed the gentle and dignified hos 
 pitality of the Benedictines be ready to believe 
 any evil report of them. 
 
 By this time Storg had finished his sketch, 
 and we remounted our grazing steeds. They 
 were brisker as soon as their noses were turned 
 homeward, and we did the eight miles back in 
 an hour. The setting sun streamed through 
 and among the Michael Angelesque olive- 
 trunks, and, through the long colonnade of the 
 bridle-path, fired the scarlet waistcoats and 
 bodices of homeward villagers, or was sullenly 
 
i?2 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 absorbed in the long black cassock and flapped 
 hat of a priest, who courteously saluted the 
 strangers. Sometimes a mingled flock of sheep 
 and goats (as if they had walked out of one of 
 Claude s pictures) followed the shepherd, who, 
 satyr-like, in goat-skin breeches, sang such 
 songs as were acceptable before Tubal Cain 
 struck out the laws of musical time from his 
 anvil. The peasant, in his ragged brown cloak, 
 or with blue jacket hanging from the left 
 shoulder, still strides Romanly, incedit rex y 
 and his eyes have a placid grandeur, inherited 
 from those which watched the glittering snake 
 of the Triumph, as it undulated along the Via 
 Sacra. By his side moves with equal pace his 
 woman porter, the caryatid of a vast entabla 
 ture of household stuff, and learning in that 
 harsh school a sinuous poise of body and a 
 security of step beyond the highest snatch of 
 the posture-master. 
 
 As we drew near Tivoli the earth was fast 
 swinging into shadow. The darkening Cam- 
 pagna, climbing the sides of the nearer Monti- 
 celli in a gray belt of olive-spray, rolled on 
 towards the blue island of Soracte, behind 
 which we lost the sun. Yes, we had lost the 
 sun ; but in the wide chimney of the largest 
 room at the Sibilla there danced madly, crack 
 ling with ilex and laurel, a bright ambassador 
 from Sunland, Monsieur Le Feu, no pinch- 
 
ITALY 173 
 
 beck substitute for his royal master. As we 
 drew our chairs up, after the dinner due to 
 Leopoldo s forethought, " Behold," said I, 
 " the Resident of the great king near the 
 court of our (this-day-created) Hogan Mogan- 
 ships." 
 
 We sat looking into the fire, as it wavered 
 from shining shape to shape of unearthliest 
 fantasy, and both of us, no doubt, making out 
 old faces among the embers, for we both said 
 together, " Let us talk of old times." 
 
 " To the small hours," said the Edelmann ; 
 "and instead of blundering off to Torneo to 
 intrude chatteringly upon the midnight privacy 
 of Apollo, let us promote the fire, there, to 
 the rank of sun by brevet and have a kind of 
 undress rehearsal of those night wanderings of 
 his here upon the ample stage of the hearth." 
 
 So we went through the whole catalogue of 
 Do you remembers ? and laughed at all the old 
 stories, so dreary to an outsider. Then we grew 
 pensive, and talked of the empty sockets in that 
 golden band of our young friendship, of S., 
 with Grecian front, but unsevere, and Saxon 
 M., to whom laughter was as natural as for a 
 brook to ripple. 
 
 But Leopoldo had not done with us. We 
 were to get back to Rome in the morning, and 
 to that end must make a treaty with the com 
 pany which ran the Tivoli diligence, the next 
 
i?4 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 day not being the regular period of departure 
 for that prodigious structure. We had given 
 Leopoldo twice his fee, and, setting a mean 
 value upon our capacities in proportion, he ex 
 pected to bag a neat percentage on our bargain. 
 Alas ! he had made a false estimate of the An 
 glo-Norman mind, which, capable of generosity 
 as a compliment to itself, will stickle for the 
 dust in the balance in a matter of business, and 
 would blush at being done by Mercury him 
 self. 
 
 Accordingly, at about nine o clock there 
 came a knock at the door, and, answering our 
 Favorisca ! in stalked Leopoldo, gravely fol 
 lowed by the two commissioners of the com 
 pany. 
 
 " Behold me returned, Lordship, and these 
 men are the Vetturini" 
 
 Why is it that men who have to do with 
 horses are the same all over Christendom ? Is 
 it that they acquire equine characteristics, or 
 that this particular mystery is magnetic to cer 
 tain sorts of men ? Certainly they are marked 
 unmistakably, and these two worthies would 
 have looked perfectly natural in Yorkshire or 
 Vermont. They were just alike, fortemque 
 Gyan,fortemque Cloanthum^ and you could not 
 split an epithet between them. Simultaneously 
 they threw back their large overcoats, and dis 
 played spheroidal figures, over which the strongly 
 
ITALY 175 
 
 pronounced stripes of their plaided waistcoats 
 ran like parallels of latitude and longitude over 
 a globe. Simultaneously they took off their hats 
 and said, " Your servant, gentlemen." In Italy 
 it is always necessary to make a combinazione 
 beforehand about even the most customary 
 matters, for there is no fixed highest price for 
 anything. For a minute or two we stood reck 
 oning each other s forces. Then I opened the 
 first trench with the usual, " How much do you 
 wish for carrying us to Rome at half past seven 
 to-morrow morning ? " 
 
 The enemy glanced one at the other, and the 
 result of this ocular witenagemot was that one 
 said, " Four scudi, gentlemen." 
 
 The Edelmann Storg took his cigar from his 
 mouth in order to whistle, and made a rather 
 indecorous allusion to four gentlemen in the 
 diplomatic service of his Majesty, the Prince of 
 the Powers of the Air. 
 
 " Whe-ew ! quattro diavoli ! " said he. 
 
 " Macche ! " exclaimed I, attempting a flank 
 movement, " I had rather go on foot!" and 
 threw as much horror into my face as if a propo 
 sition had been made to me to commit robbery, 
 murder, and arson all together. 
 
 " For less than three scudi and a half the 
 diligence parts not from Tivoli at an extraordi 
 nary hour," said the stout man, with an imper 
 turbable gravity, intended to mask his retreat, 
 
1 76 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 and to make it seem that he was making the 
 game proposal as at first. 
 
 Storg saw that they wavered,and opened upon 
 them with his flying artillery of sarcasm. 
 
 "Do you take us for Ingle si ? We are very 
 well here, and will stay at the Sibilla," he sniffed 
 scornfully. 
 
 " How much will Lordship give ? " (This 
 was showing the white feather.) 
 
 " Fifteen pauls " (a scudo and a half), " buo- 
 namano included." 
 
 " It is impossible, gentlemen ; for less than 
 two scudi and a half the diligence parts not from 
 Tivoli at an extraordinary hour." 
 
 " Fifteen pauls." 
 
 " Will Lordship give two scudi ? " (with a 
 slight flavor of mendicancy). 
 
 " Fifteen pauls " (growing firm as we saw 
 them waver). 
 
 " Then, gentlemen, it is all over ; it is im 
 possible, gentlemen." 
 
 " Very good ; a pleasant evening to you ! " 
 and they bowed themselves out. 
 
 As soon as the door closed behind them, 
 Leopoldo, who had looked on in more and 
 more anxious silence as the chance of plunder 
 was whittled slimmer and slimmer by the sharp 
 edges of the parley, saw instantly that it was for 
 his interest to turn state s evidence against his 
 accomplices. 
 
ITALY i77 
 
 " They will be back in a moment," he said 
 knowingly, as if he had been of our side all 
 along. 
 
 " Of course ; we are aware of that." It is 
 always prudent to be aware of everything in 
 travelling. 
 
 And, sure enough, in five minutes reenter the 
 stout men, as gravely as if everything had been 
 thoroughly settled, and ask respectfully at what 
 hour we would have the diligence. 
 
 This will serve as a specimen of Italian bar 
 gain-making. They do not feel happy if they 
 get their first price. So easy a victory makes 
 them sorry they had not asked twice as much, 
 and, besides, they love the excitement of the 
 contest. I have seen as much debate over a 
 little earthen pot (value two cents) on the 
 Ponte Vecchio, in Florence, as would have 
 served for an operation of millions in the funds, 
 the demand and the offer alternating so rapidly 
 that the litigants might be supposed to be play 
 ing the ancient game of morra. It is a part of 
 the universal fondness for gaming, and lotteries. 
 An English gentleman once asked his Italian 
 courier how large a percentage he made on all 
 of his employer s money which passed through 
 his hands. " About five per cent. ; sometimes 
 more, sometimes less," was the answer. " Well, 
 I will add that to your salary, in order that I 
 may be rid of this uncomfortable feeling of 
 
1 78 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 being cheated." The courier mused a moment, 
 and said, " But no, sir, I should not be happy ; 
 then it would not be sometimes more, some 
 times less, and I should miss the excitement of 
 the game." 
 
 22d. This morning the diligence was at 
 the door punctually, and, taking our seats in 
 the coupe, we bade farewell to La Sibilla. But 
 first we ran back for a parting glimpse at the 
 waterfall. These last looks, like lovers last 
 kisses, are nouns of multitude, and presently 
 the povero stalliere^ signori y waited upon us, 
 cap in hand, telling us that the vetturino was 
 impatient, and begging for drink-money in the 
 same breath. Leopoldo hovered longingly afar, 
 for these vultures respect times and seasons, 
 and while one is fleshing his beak upon the 
 foreign prey, the others forbear. The passengers 
 in the diligence were not very lively. The 
 Romans are a grave people, and more so than 
 ever since 49. Of course, there was one priest 
 among them. There always is ; for the mantis 
 religiosa is as inevitable to these public convey 
 ances as the curculio is to the plum, and one 
 could almost fancy that they were bred in the 
 same way, that the egg was inserted when 
 the vehicle was green, became developed as it 
 ripened, and never left it till it dropped withered 
 from the pole. There was nothing noticeable 
 on the road to Rome, except the strings of 
 
ITALY 179 
 
 pack-horses and mules which we met returning 
 with empty lime-sacks to Tivoli, whence comes 
 the supply of Rome. A railroad was proposed, 
 but the government would not allow it, because 
 it would interfere with this carrying-trade, and 
 wisely granted instead a charter for a road to 
 Frascati, where there was no business whatever 
 to be interfered with. About a mile of this is 
 built in a style worthy of ancient Rome; and it is 
 possible that eventually another mile may be ac 
 complished, for some half dozen laborers are at 
 work upon it with wheelbarrows, in the leisurely 
 Roman fashion. If it be ever finished, it will 
 have nothing to carry but the conviction of its 
 own uselessness. A railroad has been proposed 
 to Civita Vecchia ; but that is out of the ques 
 tion, because it would be profitable. On the 
 whole, one does not regret the failure of these 
 schemes. One would not approach the solitary 
 emotion of a lifetime, such as is the first sight 
 of Rome, at the rate of forty miles an hour. 
 It is better, after painfully crawling up one of 
 those long paved hills, to have the postilion 
 turn in his saddle, and, pointing with his whip 
 (without looking, for he knows instinctively 
 where it is), say, Ecco San Pietro ! Then you 
 look tremblingly, and see it hovering visionary 
 on the horizon s verge, and in a moment you 
 are rattling and rumbling and wallowing down 
 into the valley, and it is gone. So you play 
 
i8o LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 hide-and-seek with it all the rest of the way, 
 and have time to converse with your sensations. 
 You fancy you have got used to it at last ; but 
 from the next hill-top, lo, there it looms again, 
 a new wonder, and you do not feel sure that it 
 will keep its tryst till you find yourself under 
 its shadow. The Dome is to the Eternal City 
 what Vesuvius is to Naples ; only a greater 
 wonder, for Michael Angelo hung it there. 
 The traveller climbs it as he would a mountain, 
 and finds the dwellings of men high up on its 
 sacred cliffs. It has its annual eruption, too, at 
 Easter, when the fire trickles and palpitates 
 down its mighty shoulders, seen from far-off 
 Tivoli. No, the locomotive is less impertinent 
 at Portici, hailing the imprisoned Titan there 
 with a kindred shriek. Let it not vex the solemn 
 Roman ghosts, or the nobly desolate Campagna, 
 with whose solitudes the shattered vertebrae of 
 the aqueducts are in truer sympathy. 
 
 24th. To-day our journey to Subiaco pro 
 perly begins. The jocund morning had called 
 the beggars to their street-corners, and the 
 women to the windows; the players of morra 
 (a game probably as old as the invention of 
 fingers), of chuck-farthing, and of bowls, had 
 cheerfully begun the labors of the day ; the 
 plaintive cries of the chair-seaters, frog-venders, 
 and certain other peripatetic merchants, the 
 meaning of whose vocal advertisements I could 
 
ITALY 181 
 
 never penetrate, quaver at regular intervals, 
 now near and now far away ; a solitary Jew with 
 a sack over his shoulder, and who never is seen 
 to stop, slouches along, every now and then 
 croaking a penitential Cenci ! as if he were 
 somehow the embodied expiation (by some 
 post-Ovidian metamorphosis) of that darkest 
 Roman tragedy ; women are bargaining for 
 lettuce and endive ; the slimy Triton in the 
 Piazza Barberina spatters himself with vanishing 
 diamonds ; a peasant leads an ass on which sits 
 the mother with the babe in her arms, a liv 
 ing flight into Egypt ; in short, the beautiful 
 spring day had awakened all of Rome that can 
 awaken yet (for the ideal Rome waits for an 
 other morning), when we rattled along in our 
 carrettella on the way to Palestrina. A carret- 
 tella is to the perfected vehicle as the coracle 
 to the steamship ; it is the first crude conception 
 of a wheeled carriage. Doubtless the inventor 
 of it was a prodigious genius in his day, and 
 rode proudly in it, envied by the more fortunate 
 pedestrian, and cushioned by his own inflated 
 imagination. If the chariot of Achilles were 
 like it, then was Hector happier at the tail 
 than the son of Thetis on the box. It is an 
 oblong basket upon two wheels, with a single 
 seat rising in the middle. We had not jarred 
 over a hundred yards of the Quattro Fontane, 
 before we discovered that no elastic propug- 
 
1 82 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 naculum had been interposed between the body 
 and the axle, so that we sat, as it were, on pav 
 ing-stones, mitigated only by so much as well- 
 seasoned ilex is less flinty-hearted than tufo or 
 breccia. If there were any truth in the theory 
 of developments, I am certain that we should 
 have been furnished with a pair of rudimentary 
 elliptical springs, at least, before half our day s 
 journey was over. However, as one of those 
 happy illustrations of ancient manners, which 
 one meets with so often here, it was instructive ; 
 for I now clearly understand that it was not 
 merely by reason of pomp that Hadrian used 
 to be three days in getting to his villa, only 
 twelve miles off. In spite of the author of 
 "Vestiges," Nature, driven to extremities, can 
 develop no more easy cushion than a blister, 
 and no doubt treated an ancient emperor and 
 a modern republican with severe impartiality. 
 
 It was difficult to talk without biting one s 
 tongue ; but as soon as we had got fairly beyond 
 the gate, and out of sight of the last red-legged 
 French soldier, and tightly buttoned doganiere^ 
 our driver became loquacious. 
 
 " I am a good Catholic, better than most," 
 said he suddenly. 
 
 cc What do you mean by that ? " 
 
 " Eh ! they say Saint Peter wrought miracles, 
 and there are enough who don t believe it ; but 
 / do. There s the Barberini Palace, behold 
 
ITALY 183 
 
 one miracle of Saint Peter ! There s the Far- 
 nese, behold another ! There s the Borghese, 
 behold a third ! But there s no end of them. 
 No saint, nor all the saints put together, ever 
 worked so many wonders as he ; and then, per 
 Bacco ! he is the uncle of so many folks, 
 why, that s a miracle in itself, and of the great 
 est ! " 
 
 Presently he added : " Do you know how 
 we shall treat the priests when we make our 
 next revolution ? We shall treat them as they 
 treat us, and that is after the fashion of the 
 buffalo. For the buffalo is not content with get 
 ting a man down, but after that he gores him and 
 thrusts him, always, always, as if he wished to 
 cram him to the centre of the earth. Ah, if I 
 were only keeper of hell-gate ! Not a rascal of 
 them all should ever get out into purgatory 
 while I stood at the door ! " 
 
 We remonstrated a little, but it only exas 
 perated him the more. 
 
 " Blood of Judas ! they will eat nothing else 
 than gold, when a poor fellow s belly is as 
 empty as San Lorenzo yonder. They 11 have 
 enough of it one of these days but melted ! 
 How do you think they will like it for 
 soup ? " 
 
 Perhaps, if our vehicle had been blessed with 
 springs, our vetturino would have been more 
 placable. I confess a growing moroseness in 
 
1 84 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 myself, and a wandering speculation or two as 
 to the possible fate of the builder of our chariot 
 in the next world. But I am more and more 
 persuaded every day that, as far as the popular 
 mind is concerned, Romanism is a dead thing 
 in Italy. It survives only because there is no 
 thing else to replace it with, for men must wear 
 their old habits (however threadbare and out at 
 elbows) till they get better. It is literally a su 
 perstition, a something left to stand over till 
 the great commercial spirit of the nineteenth 
 century balances his accounts again, and then it 
 will be banished to the limbo of profit and loss. 
 The Papacy lies dead in the Vatican, but the 
 secret is kept for the present, and government 
 is carried on in its name. After the fact gets 
 abroad, perhaps its ghost will terrify men a little 
 while longer, but only while they are in the 
 dark, though the ghost of a creed is a hard thing 
 to give a mortal wound to, and may be laid, 
 after all, only in a Red Sea of blood. 
 
 So we rattled along till we came to a large 
 albergo just below the village of Colonna. 
 While our horse was taking his rinfresco, we 
 climbed up to it, and found it desolate enough, 
 the houses never rebuilt since Consul Rienzi 
 sacked it five hundred years ago. It was a kind 
 of gray incrustation on the top of the hill, chiefly 
 inhabited by pigs, chickens, and an old woman 
 with a distaff, who looked as sacked and ruin- 
 
ITALY 185 
 
 ous as everything around her. There she sat in 
 the sun, a dreary, doting Clotho, who had out 
 lived her sisters, and span endless destinies 
 which none was left to cut at the appointed 
 time. Of course she paused from her work a 
 moment, and held out a skinny hand, with the 
 usual, " Noblest gentlemen, give me something 
 for charity." We gave her enough to pay 
 Charon s ferriage across to her sisters, and de 
 parted hastily, for there was something uncanny 
 about the place. In this climate even the fin 
 ger-marks of Ruin herself are indelible, and 
 the walls were still blackened with Rienzi s 
 fires. 
 
 As we waited for our carrettella, I saw four 
 or five of the lowest-looking peasants come up 
 and read the handbill of a tombola (a kind of 
 lottery) which was stuck up beside the inn- 
 door. One of them read it aloud for our bene 
 fit, and with remarkable propriety of accent and 
 emphasise This benefit of clergy, however, is of 
 no great consequence where there is nothing to 
 read. In Rome, this morning, the walls were 
 spattered with placards condemning the works 
 of George Sand, Eugene Sue, Gioberti, and 
 others. But in Rome one may contrive to 
 read any book he likes ; and I know Italians 
 who are familiar with Swedenborg, and even 
 Strauss. 
 
 Our stay at the albergo was illustrated by one 
 
1 86 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 other event, a nightingale singing in a full- 
 blossomed elder-bush on the edge of a brook 
 just across the road. So liquid were the notes, 
 and so full of spring, that the twig he tilted on 
 seemed a conductor through which the mingled 
 magnetism of brook and blossom flowed into 
 him and were precipitated in music. Nature 
 understands thoroughly the value of contrasts, 
 and accordingly a donkey from a shed hard-by, 
 hitched and hesitated and agonized through his 
 bray, so that we might be conscious at once of 
 the positive and negative poles of song. It was 
 pleasant to see with what undoubting enthusiasm 
 he went through his solo, and vindicated Pro 
 vidence from the imputation of weakness in 
 making such trifles as the nightingale yonder. 
 " Give ear, O heaven and earth ! " he seemed 
 to say, " nor dream that good, sound common- 
 sense is extinct or out of fashion so long as / 
 live." I suppose Nature made the donkey half 
 abstractedly, while she was feeling her way up 
 to her ideal in the horse, and that his bray is 
 in like manner an experimental sketch for the 
 neigh of her finished animal. 
 
 We drove on to Palestrina, passing for some 
 distance over an old Roman road, as carriage 
 able as when it was built. Palestrina occupies 
 the place of the once famous Temple of Fortune, 
 whose ruins are perhaps a fitter monument of 
 
ITALY 187 
 
 the fickle goddess than ever the perfect fane 
 was. 
 
 Come hither, weary ghosts that wail 
 O er buried Nimroud s carven walls, 
 
 And ye whose nightly footsteps frail 
 
 From the dread hush of Memphian halls 
 Lead forth the whispering funerals! 
 
 Come hither, shade of ancient pain 
 That, muffled sitting, hear st the foam 
 
 To death-deaf Carthage shout in vain, 
 And thou that in the Sibyl s tome 
 Tear-stain st the never after Rome! 
 
 Come, Marius, Wolsey, all ye great 
 
 On whom proud Fortune stamped her heel, 
 
 And see herself the sport of Fate, 
 
 Herself discrowned and made to feel 
 The treason of her slippery wheel! 
 
 One climbs through a great part of the town 
 by stone steps, passing fragments of Pelasgic 
 wall (for history, like geology, may be studied 
 here in successive rocky strata), and at length 
 reaches the inn, called the Cappellaro, the sign 
 of which is a great tin cardinal s hat, swinging 
 from a small building on the other side of the 
 street, so that a better view of it may be had from 
 the hostelry itself. The landlady, a stout woman 
 of about sixty years, welcomed us heartily, and 
 burst forth into an eloquent eulogy on some 
 fresh sea-fish which she had just received from 
 
1 88 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 Rome. She promised everything for dinner^ 
 leaving us to choose ; but as a skilful juggler 
 flitters the cards before you, and, while he seems 
 to offer all, forces upon you the one he wishes, 
 so we found that whenever we undertook to se 
 lect from her voluble bill of fare, we had in some 
 unaccountable manner always ordered sea-fish. 
 Therefore, after a few vain efforts, we contented 
 ourselves, and, while our dinner was cooking, 
 climbed up to the top of the town. Here stands 
 the deserted Palazzo Barberini, in which is a 
 fine Roman mosaic pavement. It was a dreary 
 old place. On the ceilings of some of the apart 
 ments were fading out the sprawling apotheoses 
 of heroes of the family (themselves long ago 
 faded utterly), who probably went through a 
 somewhat different ceremony after their deaths 
 from that represented here. One of the rooms 
 on the ground-floor was still occupied, and from 
 its huge grated windows there swelled and sub 
 sided at intervals a confused turmoil of voices, 
 some talking, some singing, some swearing, and 
 some lamenting, as if a page of Dante s " In 
 ferno " had become suddenly alive under one s 
 eye. This was the prison, and in front of each 
 window a large stone block allowed tete-a-tete 
 discourses between the prisoners and their friends 
 outside as well as the passing in of food. Eng 
 lish jails were like this in Queen Elizabeth s 
 time and later. In Heywood s "Woman killed 
 
ITALY 189 
 
 with Kindness," Acton says of his enemy 
 Mountford, in prison for debt, 
 
 " shall we hear 
 
 The music of his voice cry from the grate, 
 Meat, for the Lord s sake ? " 
 
 Behind the palace rises a steep, rocky hill, with 
 a continuation of ruined castle, the innocent 
 fastness now of rooks and swallows. We walked 
 down to a kind of terrace, and watched the Alban 
 Mount (which saw the sunset for us by proxy) 
 till the bloom trembled nearer and nearer to its 
 summit, then went wholly out, we could not 
 say when, and day was dead. Simultaneously 
 we thought of dining, and clattered hastily 
 down to the Cappellaro. We had to wait yet 
 half an hour for dinner, and from where I sat 
 I could see through the door of the dining-room 
 a kind of large hall into which a door from the 
 kitchen also opened. Presently I saw the land 
 lady come out with a little hanging-lamp in her 
 hand, and seat herself amply before a row of 
 baskets ranged upside down along the wall. She 
 carefully lifted the edge of one of these, and, 
 after she had groped in it a moment, I heard 
 that hoarse choking scream peculiar to fowls 
 when seized by the leg in the dark, as if their 
 throats were in their tibiae after sunset. She 
 took out a fine young cock and set him 
 upon his feet before her, stupid with sleep, 
 and blinking helplessly at the lamp, which 
 
190 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 he perhaps took for a sun in reduced circum 
 stances, doubtful whether to crow or cackle. 
 She looked at him admiringly, felt of him, 
 sighed, gazed sadly at his coral crest, and put him 
 back again. This ceremony she repeated with 
 five or six of the baskets, and then went back 
 into the kitchen. I thought of Thessalian hags 
 and Arabian enchantresses, and wondered if 
 these were transformed travellers, for travel 
 lers go through queer transformations some 
 times. Should Storg and I be crowing and 
 scratching to-morrow, instead of going to Su- 
 biaco ? Should we be Plato s men, with the 
 feathers, instead of without them ? I would 
 probe this mystery. So, when the good woman 
 came in to lay the table, I asked what she had 
 been doing with the fowls. 
 
 " I thought to kill one for the gentlemen s 
 soup ; but they were so beautiful my heart failed 
 me. Still, if the gentlemen wish it only I 
 thought two pigeons would be more delicate." 
 
 Of course we declined to be accessory to such 
 a murder, and she went off delighted, returning 
 in a few minutes with our dinner. First we had 
 soup, then a roasted kid, then boiled pigeons 
 (of which the soup had been made), and last the 
 pesci di mare, which were not quite so great a 
 novelty to us as to our good hostess. However, 
 hospitality, like so many other things, is recip 
 rocal, and the guest must bring his half, or it 
 
ITALY 191 
 
 is naught. The prosperity of a dinner lies in 
 the heart of him that eats it, and an appetite 
 twelve miles long enabled us to do as great 
 justice to the fish as if we were crowding all 
 Lent into one meal. The landlady came and sat 
 by us ; a large and serious cat, winding her great 
 tail round her, settled herself comfortably on the 
 table, licking her paws now and then, with a 
 poor relation s look at the fish ; a small dog 
 sprang into an empty chair, and a large one, with 
 very confidential manners, would go from one 
 to the other of us, laying his paw upon our arms 
 as if he had an important secret to communicate, 
 and alternately pricking and drooping his ears 
 in hope or despondency. The albergatrice forth 
 with began to tell us her story, how she was 
 a widow, how she had borne thirteen children, 
 twelve still living, and how she received a pen 
 sion of sixty scudi a year, under the old Roman 
 law, for her meritoriousness in this respect. 
 The portrait of the son she had lost hung over 
 the chimney-place, and, pointing to it, she 
 burst forth into the following droll threnody. 
 The remarks in parentheses were screamed 
 through the kitchen-door, which stood ajar, or 
 addressed personally to us. 
 
 " O my son, my son ! the doctors killed him, 
 just as truly as if they had poisoned him ! O 
 how beautiful he was! beautiful! beautiful!! 
 BEAUTIFUL ! ! ! (Are not those fish done yet ?) 
 
192 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 Look, that is his likeness, but he was hand 
 somer. He was as big as that " (extending her 
 arms), " big breast, big shoulders, big sides, 
 big legs ! (Eat em, eat em, they won t hurt you, 
 fresh sea-fish, fresh ! fresh 1 1 FRESH ! ! !) I told 
 them the doctors had murdered him, when they 
 carried him with torches ! He had been hunt 
 ing, and brought home some rabbits, I remem 
 ber, for he was not one that ever came empty- 
 handed, and got the fever, and you treated him 
 for consumption, and killed him ! (Shall I come 
 out there, or will you bring some more fish ?) " 
 So she went on, talking to herself, to us, to the 
 little serva in the kitchen, and to the medical 
 profession in general, repeating every epithet 
 three times, with increasing emphasis, till her 
 voice rose to a scream, and contriving to mix up 
 her living children with her dead one, the fish, 
 the doctors, the serva, and the rabbits, till it was 
 hard to say whether it was the fish that had large 
 legs, whether the doctors had killed them, or the 
 serva had killed the doctors, and whether the 
 bello I bello ! ! hello ! ! ! referred to her son or a 
 particularly fine rabbit. 
 
 2 $th. Having engaged our guide and horses 
 the night before, we set out betimes this morn 
 ing for Olevano. From Palestrina to Cavi the 
 road winds along a narrow valley, following the 
 course of a stream which rustles rather than roars 
 below. Large chestnut-trees lean every way on 
 
ITALY 193 
 
 the steep sides of the hills above us, and at 
 every opening we could see great stretches of 
 Campagna rolling away and away toward the 
 bases of purple mountains streaked with snow. 
 The sides of the road were drifted with heaps of 
 wild hawthorn and honeysuckle in full bloom, 
 and bubbling with innumerable nightingales that 
 sang unseen. Overhead the sunny sky tinkled 
 with larks, as if the frost in the air were break 
 ing up and whirling away on the swollen cur 
 rents of spring. 
 
 Before long we overtook a little old man hob 
 bling toward Cavi, with a bag upon his back. 
 This was the mail ! Happy country, which 
 Hurry and Worry have not yet subjugated ! 
 Then we clattered up and down the narrow 
 paved streets of Cavi, through the market-place, 
 full of men dressed all alike in blue jackets, 
 blue breeches, and white stockings, who do not 
 stare at the strangers, and so out at the farther 
 gate. Now oftener and oftener we meet groups 
 of peasants in gayest dresses, ragged pilgrims 
 with staff and scallop, singing (horribly) ; then 
 processions with bag-pipes and pipes in front, 
 droning and squealing (horribly); then strings 
 of two-wheeled carts, eight or nine in each, and 
 in the first the priest, book in hand, setting the 
 stave, and all singing (horribly). This must be 
 inquired into. Gigantic guide, who, splendid 
 with blue sash and silver knee-buckles, has con- 
 
194 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 trived, by incessant drumming with his heels, 
 to get his mule in front, is hailed. 
 
 " Ho, Petruccio, what is the meaning of all 
 this press of people ? " 
 
 " Festa, Lordship, at Genezzano." 
 
 " What Festa ? " 
 
 " Of the Madonna, Lordship," and touches 
 his hat, for they are all dreadfully afraid of her 
 for some reason or other. 
 
 We are in luck, this being the great festa of 
 the year among the mountains, a thing which 
 people go out of Rome to see. 
 
 " Where is Genezzano ? " 
 
 " Just over yonder, Lordship," and pointed 
 to the left, where was what seemed like a mon 
 strous crystallization of rock on the crown of a 
 hill, with three or four taller crags of castle tow 
 ering in the midst, and all gray, except the tiled 
 roofs, whose wrinkled sides were gold-washed 
 with a bright yellow lichen, as if ripples, turned 
 by some spell to stone, had contrived to detain 
 the sunshine with which they were touched at 
 the moment of transformation. 
 
 The road, wherever it came into sight, burned 
 with brilliant costumes, like an illuminated page 
 of Froissart. Gigantic guide meanwhile shows an 
 uncomfortable and fidgety reluctance to turn 
 aside and enter fairyland, which is wholly un 
 accountable. Is the huge earthen creature an 
 Afrite, under sacred pledge to Solomon, and in 
 
ITALY 195 
 
 danger of being sealed up again, if he venture 
 near the festival of our Blessed Lady ? If so, 
 that also were a ceremony worth seeing, and we 
 insist. He wriggles and swings his great feet 
 with an evident impulse to begin kicking the 
 sides of his mule again and fly. The way over 
 the hills from Genezzano to Olevano he pro 
 nounces scomodissima, demanding of every pea 
 sant who goes by if it be not entirely impassable. 
 This leading question, put in all the tones of 
 plausible entreaty he can command, meets the 
 invariable reply, "E scomoda, davvero ; ma per le 
 bestie eh! " (it is bad, of a truth, but for the 
 beasts eh !) and then one of those indescrib 
 able shrugs, unintelligible at first as the compass 
 to a savage, but in which the expert can make 
 twenty hair s-breadth distinctions between N. E. 
 and N. N. E. 
 
 Finding that destiny had written it on his 
 forehead, the guide at last turned and went 
 cantering and kicking toward Genezzano, we 
 following. Just before you reach the town, the 
 road turns sharply to the right, and, crossing 
 a little gorge, loses itself in the dark gateway. 
 Outside the gate is an open space, which formi 
 cated with peasantry in every variety of costume 
 that was not Parisian. Laughing women were 
 climbing upon their horses (which they bestride 
 like men) ; pilgrims were chanting, and beggars 
 (the howl of an Italian beggar in the country 
 
196 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 is something terrible) howling in discordant 
 rivalry. It was a scene lively enough to make 
 Heraclitus shed a double allowance of tears ; 
 but our giant was still discomforted. As soon 
 as we had entered the gate, he dodged into a 
 little back street, just as we were getting out 
 of which the mystery of his unwillingness was 
 cleared up. He had been endeavoring to avoid 
 a creditor. But it so chanced (as Fate can hang 
 a man with even a rope of sand) that the enemy 
 was in position just at the end of this very lane, 
 where it debouched into the Piazza of the town. 
 The disputes of Italians are very droll things, 
 and I will accordingly bag that which is now 
 imminent, as a specimen. They quarrel as un 
 accountably as dogs, who put their noses to 
 gether, dislike each other s kind of smell, and 
 instantly tumble one over the other, with noise 
 enough to draw the eyes of a whole street. So 
 these people burst out, without apparent pre 
 liminaries, into a noise and fury and war-dance 
 which would imply the very utmost pitch and 
 agony of exasperation. And the subsidence is 
 as sudden. They explode each other on mere 
 contact, as if by a law of nature, like two hos 
 tile gases. They do not grow warm, but leap 
 at once from zero to some degree of white-heat, 
 to indicate which no Anglo-Saxon thermometer 
 of wrath is highly enough graduated. If I were 
 asked to name one universal characteristic of 
 
ITALY 19? 
 
 an Italian town, I should say, two men clamor 
 ing and shaking themselves to pieces at each 
 other, and a woman leaning lazily out of a win 
 dow, and perhaps looking at something else. 
 Till one gets used to this kind of thing, one 
 expects some horrible catastrophe ; but during 
 eight months in Italy I have only seen blows 
 exchanged thrice. In the present case the ex 
 plosion was of harmless gunpowder. 
 
 " Why-haven t-you-paid-those-fifty-five-ba- 
 jocch i-zt-the-pizzicarolo s ? " began the adver 
 sary, speaking with such inconceivable rapidity 
 that he made only one word, nay, as it seemed, 
 one monosyllable, of the whole sentence. Our 
 giant, with a Controversial genius which I should 
 not have suspected in him, immediately, and 
 with great adroitness, changed the ground of 
 dispute, and, instead of remaining an insolvent 
 debtor, raised himself at once to the ethical 
 position of a moralist, resisting an unjust de 
 mand from principle. 
 
 " It was only /br/jy-five," roared he. 
 
 " But I say J^jy-five," screamed the other, 
 and shook his close-cropped head as a boy 
 does an apple on the end of a switch, as if he 
 meant presently to jerk it off at his antagonist. 
 
 " Birbone ! " yelled the guide, gesticulating 
 so furiously with every square inch of his pon 
 derous body that I thought he would throw his 
 mule over, the poor beast standing all the while 
 
198 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 with drooping head and ears while the thunders 
 of this man-quake burst over him. So feels the 
 tortoise that sustains the globe when earth suf 
 fers fiery convulsions. 
 
 " Eirbante ! " retorted the creditor, and the 
 opprobrious epithet clattered from between his 
 shaking jaws as a refractory copper is rattled 
 out of a Jehoiada-box by a child. 
 
 ^ And ate <vi far f rigger e I " howled giant. 
 
 " Andate ditto, ditto I " echoed creditor, 
 and behold, the thing is over ! The giant pro 
 mises to attend to the affair when he comes 
 back, the creditor returns to his booth, and we 
 ride on. 
 
 Speaking of Italian quarrels, I am tempted 
 to parenthesize here another which I saw at 
 Civita Vecchia. We had been five days on our 
 way from Leghorn in a French steamer, a 
 voyage performed usually, I think, in about 
 thirteen hours. It was heavy weather, blowing 
 what a sailor would call half a gale of wind, and 
 the caution of our captain, not to call it fear, 
 led him to put in for shelter first at Porto Fer- 
 rajo in Elba, and then at Santo Stefano on the 
 Italian coast. Our little black water-beetle of 
 a mail-packet was knocked about pretty well, 
 and all the Italian passengers disappeared in 
 the forward cabin before we were out of port. 
 When we were fairly at anchor within the har 
 bor of Civita Vecchia 3 they crawled out again, 
 
ITALY 199 
 
 sluggish as winter flies, their vealy faces mezzo 
 tinted with soot. One of them presently ap 
 peared in the custom-house, his only luggage 
 being a cage closely covered with a dirty red 
 handkerchief, which represented his linen. 
 
 " What have you in the cage ? " asked the 
 doganlere. 
 
 " Eh ! nothing other than a parrot." 
 
 " There is a duty of one scudo and one ba- 
 joccho, then." 
 
 " Santo diavolo ! but what hoggishness ! " 
 
 Thereupon instant and simultaneous blow 
 up, or rather a series of explosions, like those 
 in honor of a Neapolitan saint s-day, lasting 
 about ten minutes, and followed by as sudden 
 quiet. In the course of it, the owner of the 
 bird, playing irreverently on the first half of 
 its name (pappagaAlo), hinted that it would be 
 a high duty for his Holiness himself (Papa). 
 After a pause for breath, he said quietly, as if 
 nothing had happened, " Very good, then, since 
 I must pay, I will," and began fumbling for 
 the money. 
 
 " Meanwhile, do me the politeness to show 
 me the bird," said the officer. 
 
 " With all pleasure," and, lifting a corner of 
 the handkerchief, there lay the object of dis 
 pute on his back, stone dead, with his claws 
 curled up helplessly on each side his breast. I 
 believe the owner would have been pleased had 
 
200 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 it even been his grandmother who had thus 
 evaded duty, so exquisite is the pleasure of an 
 Italian in escaping payment of anything. 
 
 " I make a present of the poor bird/ said he 
 blandly. 
 
 The publican, however, seemed to feel that 
 he had been somehow cheated, and I left them 
 in high debate, as to whether the bird were dead 
 when it entered the custom-house, and, if it had 
 been, whether a dead parrot were dutiable. Do 
 not blame me for being entertained and trying 
 to entertain you with these trifles. I remember 
 Virgil s stern 
 
 " Che per poco e che teco non mi risso," 
 
 but Dante s journey was of more import to him 
 self and others than mine. 
 
 I am struck by the freshness and force of the 
 passions in Europeans, and cannot help feeling 
 as if there were something healthy in it. When 
 I think of the versatile and accommodating 
 habits of America, it seems like a land without 
 thunder-storms. In proportion as man grows 
 commercial, does he also become dispassionate 
 and incapable of electric emotions ? The driv 
 ing-wheels of all-powerful natures are in the 
 back of the head, and, as man is the highest 
 type of organization, so a nation is better or 
 worse as it advances toward the highest type 
 of man, or recedes from it. But it is ill with a 
 
ITALY 201 
 
 nation when the cerebrum sucks the cerebellum 
 dry, for it cannot live by intellect alone. The 
 broad foreheads always carry the day at last, but 
 only when they are based on or buttressed with 
 massive hind-heads. It would be easier to make 
 a people great in whom the animal is vigorous 
 than to keep one so after it has begun to spin 
 dle into over-intellectuality. The hands that 
 have grasped dominion and held it have been 
 large and hard ; those from which it has slipped, 
 delicate, and apt for the lyre and the pencil. 
 Moreover, brain is always to be bought, but 
 passion never comes to market. On the whole, 
 I am rather inclined to like this European im 
 patience and fire, even while I laugh at it, and 
 sometimes find myself surmising whether a peo 
 ple who, like the Americans, put up quietly 
 with all sorts of petty personal impositions and 
 injustices, will not at length find it too great a 
 bore to quarrel with great public wrongs. 
 
 Meanwhile, I must remember that I am in 
 Genezzano, and not in the lecturer s desk. We 
 walked about for an hour or two, admiring the 
 beauty and grand bearing of the women, and 
 the picturesque vivacity and ever-renewing un- 
 assuetude of the whole scene. Take six of the 
 most party-colored dreams, break them to pieces, 
 put them into a fantasy-kaleidoscope, and when 
 you look through it you will see something that 
 for strangeness, vividness, and mutability looked 
 
202 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 like the little Piazza of Genezzano seen from 
 the church porch. As we wound through the 
 narrow streets again to the stables where we had 
 left our horses, a branch of laurel or ilex would 
 mark a wine-shop, and, looking till our eye 
 cooled and toned itself down to dusky sympathy 
 with the crypt, we could see the smoky interior 
 sprinkled with white head-cloths and scarlet 
 bodices, with here and there a yellow spot of 
 lettuce or the red inward gleam of a wine-flask. 
 The head-dress is precisely of that most ancient 
 pattern seen on Egyptian statues, and so colos 
 sal are many of the wearers that you might al 
 most think you saw a party of young sphinxes 
 carousing in the sunless core of a pyramid. 
 
 We remounted our beasts, and, for about a 
 mile, cantered gayly along a fine road, and then 
 turned into a by-path along the flank of a 
 mountain. Here the guide s strada scomodissima 
 began, and we were forced to dismount, and 
 drag our horses downward for a mile or two. 
 We crossed a small plain in the valley, and then 
 began to climb the opposite ascent. The path 
 was perhaps four feet broad, and was paved with 
 irregularly shaped blocks of stone, which, hav 
 ing been raised and lowered, tipped, twisted, 
 undermined, and generally capsized by the rains 
 and frosts of centuries, presented the most dia 
 bolically ingenious traps and pitfalls. All the 
 while the scenery was beautiful. Mountains of 
 
ITALY 203 
 
 every shape and hue changed their slow outlines 
 ever as we moved, now opening, now closing 
 round us, sometimes peering down solemnly at 
 us over each other s shoulders, and then sinking 
 slowly out of sight, or, at some sharp turn of 
 the path, seeming to stride into the valley and 
 confront us with their craggy challenge, a 
 challenge which the little valleys accepted, if we 
 did not, matching their rarest tints of gray and 
 brown, and pink and purple, or that royal dye 
 to make which all these were profusely melted 
 together for a moment s ornament, with as 
 many shades of various green and yellow. Gray 
 towns crowded and clung on the tops of peaks 
 that seemed inaccessible. We owe a great deal 
 of picturesqueness to the quarrels and thieveries 
 of the barons of the Middle Ages. The trav 
 eller and artist should put up a prayer for their 
 battered old souls. It was to be out of their 
 way and that of the Saracens that people were 
 driven to make their homes in spots so sublime 
 and inconvenient that the eye alone finds it 
 pleasant to climb up to them. Nothing else but 
 an American land company ever managed to in 
 duce settlers upon territory of such uninhabit 
 able quality. I have seen an insect that makes 
 a mask for himself out of the lichens of the 
 rock over which he crawls, contriving so to de 
 ceive the birds ; and the towns in this wild re 
 gion would seem to have been built on the same 
 
2o 4 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 principle. Made of the same stone with the 
 cliffs on which they perch, it asks good eyesight 
 to make them out at the distance of a few miles, 
 and every wandering mountain-mist annihilates 
 them for the moment. 
 
 At intervals, I could hear the giant, after dig 
 ging at the sides of his mule with his spurless 
 heels, growling to himself, and imprecating an 
 apoplexy (accident e) upon the path and him who 
 made it. This is the universal malediction here, 
 and once it was put into rhyme for my benefit. 
 I was coming down the rusty steps of San Gre- 
 gorio one day, and having paid no heed to a 
 stout woman of thirty-odd who begged some 
 what obtrusively, she screamed after me, 
 
 " Ah, vi pigli un accidente, 
 
 Voi che non date niente ! 
 
 Ah, may a sudden apoplexy, 
 
 You who give not, come and vex ye! 
 
 Our guide could not long appease his mind 
 with this milder type of objurgation, but soon 
 intensified it into accident accio, which means a se 
 lected apoplexy of uncommon size and ugliness. 
 As the path grew worse and worse, so did the re 
 petition of this phrase (for he was slow of in 
 vention) become more frequent, till at last he did 
 nothing but kick and curse, mentally, I have no 
 doubt, including us in his malediction. I think it 
 would have gratified Longinus or Fuseli (both of 
 
ITALY 205 
 
 whom commended swearing) to have heard him. 
 Before long we turned the flank of the hill by 
 a little shrine of the Madonna, and there was 
 Olevano just above us. Like the other towns 
 in this district, it was the diadem of an abrupt 
 peak of rock. From the midst of it jutted the 
 ruins of an old stronghold of the Colonna. Prob 
 ably not a house has been built in it for cen 
 turies. To enter the town, we literally rode up 
 a long flight of stone steps, and soon found our 
 selves in the Piazza. We stopped to buy some 
 cigars, and the zigararo, as he rolled them up, 
 asked if we did not want dinner. We told him 
 we should get it at the inn. Benissimo, he would 
 be there before us. What he meant, we could 
 not divine ; but it turned out that he was the 
 landlord, and that the inn only became such 
 when strangers arrived, relapsing again imme 
 diately into a private dwelling. We found our 
 host ready to receive us, and went up to a large 
 room on the first floor. After due instructions, 
 we seated ourselves at the open windows, 
 Storg to sketch, and I to take a mental calotype 
 of the view. Among the many lovely ones of 
 the day, this was the loveliest, or was it only 
 that the charm of repose was added ? On our 
 right was the silent castle, and beyond it the 
 silent mountains. To the left we looked down 
 over the clustering houses upon a campagna- 
 valley of peaceful cultivation, vineyards, olive- 
 
206 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 orchards, grain-fields in their earliest green, and 
 dark stripes of new-ploughed earth, over which 
 the cloud-shadows melted tracklessly toward 
 the hills which round softly upward to Monte 
 Cavi. 
 
 When our dinner came, and with it a flask of 
 drowsy red Aleatico, like ink with a suspicion 
 of life-blood in it, such as one might fancy Shake 
 speare to have dipped his quill in, we had our 
 table so placed that the satisfaction of our hun 
 ger might be dissensualized by the view from the 
 windows. Many a glutton has eaten up farms 
 and woodlands and pastures, and so did we, 
 aesthetically, saucing our frittata and flavoring 
 our Aleatico with landscape. It is a fine thing 
 when we can accustom our animal appetites to 
 good society, when body and soul (like master 
 and servant in an Arab tent) sit down together 
 at the same board. This thought is forced upon 
 one very often in Italy, as one picnics in en 
 chanted spots, where Imagination and Fancyplay 
 the parts of the unseen waiters in the fairy-story, 
 and serve us with course after course of their 
 ethereal dishes. Sense is satisfied with less and 
 simpler food when sense and spirit are fed to 
 gether, and the feast of the loaves and fishes is 
 spread for us anew. If it be important for a 
 state to educate its lower classes, so is it for us 
 personally to instruct, elevate, and refine our 
 senses, the lower classes of our private body 
 
ITALY 207 
 
 politic, which, if left to their own brute instincts, 
 will disorder or destroy the whole common 
 wealth with flaming insurrection. 
 
 After dinner came our guide to be paid. He, 
 too, had had hisfrittata and hisjiasco (or two), 
 and came back absurdly comic, reminding one 
 of the giant who was so taken in by the little 
 tailor. He was not in the least tipsy ; but the 
 wine had excited his poor wits, whose destiny 
 it was (awkward servants as they were !) to trip 
 up and tumble over each other in proportion 
 as they became zealous. He was very anxious 
 to do us in some way or other; he only vaguely 
 guessed how, but felt so gigantically good- 
 natured that he could not keep his face sober 
 long enough. It is quite clear why the Italians 
 have no word but redtare to express acting, for 
 their stage is no more theatric than their street, 
 and to exaggerate in the least would be ridicu 
 lous. We graver tempered and mannered Sep- 
 tentrions must give the pegs a screw or two to 
 bring our spirits up to nature s concert-pitch. 
 Storg and I sat enjoying the exhibition of 
 our giant, as if we had no more concern in it 
 than as a comedy. It was nothing but a spec 
 tacle to us, at which we were present as critics, 
 while he inveighed, expostulated, argued, and 
 besought, in a breath. Finding all his attempts 
 miscarry, or resulting in nothing more solid 
 than applause, he said, " Forse non capiscono? " 
 
208 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 (Perhaps you don t understand ?) " Capiscono 
 fur troppo " (They understand only too well), 
 replied the landlord, upon which terrae filius 
 burst into a laugh, and began begging for more 
 buonamano. Failing in this, he tightened his 
 sash, offered to kiss our lordships hands, an act 
 of homage which we declined, and departed, 
 carefully avoiding Genezzano on his return, I 
 make no doubt. 
 
 We paid our bill, and after I had written in 
 the guest-book, 
 
 Bere Aleatico 
 
 Mi e molto simpatico, 
 
 went down to the door, where we found our 
 guides and donkeys, the host s handsome wife 
 and handsomer daughter, with two of her daugh 
 ters, and a crowd of women and children waiting 
 to witness the exit of the foreigners. We made 
 all the mothers and children happy by a dis 
 criminating largesse of copper among the little 
 ones. They are a charming people, the natives 
 of these out-of-the-way Italian towns, if kind 
 ness, courtesy, and good looks make people 
 charming. Our beards and felt hats, which make 
 us pass for artists, were our passports to the 
 warmest welcome and the best cheer every 
 where. Reluctantly we mounted our donkeys, 
 and trotted away, our guides (a man and a boy) 
 running by the flank (true henchmen, haunch- 
 men, flanquiers or flunkeys) and inspiring the 
 
ITALY 209 
 
 little animals with pokes in the side, or with the 
 even more effectual ahrrrrrr /Is there any radi 
 cal affinity between this rolling fire of r s and 
 the word arra y which means hansel or earnest- 
 money ? The sound is the same, and has a mar 
 vellous spur-power over the donkey, who seems 
 to understand that full payment of goad or 
 cudgel is to follow. I have known it to move 
 even a Sicilian mule, the least sensitive and most 
 obstinate of creatures with ears, except a British 
 church-warden. 
 
 We wound along under a bleak hill, more 
 desolate than anything I had ever seen. The 
 old gray rocks seemed not to thrust themselves 
 out of the rusty soil, but rather to be stabbed 
 into it, as if they had been hailed down upon 
 it by some volcano. There was nearly as much 
 look of design as there is in a druidical circle, 
 and the whole looked like some graveyard in 
 an extinguished world, the monument of mor 
 tality itself, such as Bishop Wilkins might have 
 found in the moon, if he had ever got thither. 
 The path grew ever wilder, and Rojate, the 
 next town we came to, grim and grizzly under 
 a grim and grizzly sky of low-trailing clouds 
 which had suddenly gathered, looked drearier 
 even than the desolations we had passed. It was 
 easy to understand why rocks should like to 
 live here well enough ; but what could have 
 brought men hither, and then kept them here, 
 
210 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 was beyond all reasonable surmise. Barren hills 
 stood sullenly aloof all around, incapable of any 
 crop but lichens. 
 
 We entered the gate, and found ourselves 
 in the midst of a group of wild-looking men 
 gathered about the door of a wine-shop. Some 
 of them were armed with long guns, and we 
 saw (for the first time in situ) the tall bandit hat 
 with ribbons wound round it, such as one 
 is familiar with in operas, and on the heads of 
 those inhabitants of the Scalinata in Rome, who 
 have a costume of their own, and placidly serve 
 as models through the whole pictorial range 
 of divine and human nature, from the Padre 
 Eterno to Judas. Twenty years ago, when my 
 notion of an Italian was divided between a monk 
 and a bravo, the first of whom did nothing but 
 enter at secret doors and drink your health in 
 poison, while the other lived behind corners, 
 supporting himself by the productive industry 
 of digging your person all over with a stiletto, 
 I should have looked for instant assassination 
 from these carousing ruffians. But the only 
 blood shed on the occasion was that of the grape. 
 A ride over the mountains for two hours had 
 made us thirsty, and two or three bajocchi gave a 
 tumbler of vino asciutto to all four of us. " You 
 are welcome," said one of the men, " we are all 
 artists after a fashion ; we are all brothers." The 
 manners here are more republican, and the title 
 
ITALY 211 
 
 of lordship disappears altogether. Another came 
 up and insisted that we should drink a second 
 flask of wine as his guests. In vain we protested ; 
 no artist should pass through Rojate without 
 accepting that token of good will, and with the 
 liberal help of our guides we contrived to gulp 
 it down. He was for another; but we protested 
 that we were entirely full, and that it was im 
 possible. I dare say the poor fellow would 
 have spent a week s earnings on us, if we would 
 have let him. We proposed to return the civil 
 ity, and to leave a paul for them to drink a 
 good journey to us after we were gone ; but 
 they would not listen to it. Our entertainer 
 followed us along to the Piazza, begging one of 
 us to let him serve as donkey-driver to Subi- 
 aco. When this was denied, he said that there 
 was a festa here also, and that we must stop 
 long enough to see the procession of zitelle 
 (young girls), which would soon begin. But 
 evening was already gathering, the clouds grew 
 momently darker, and fierce, damp gusts, striking 
 us with the suddenness of a blow, promised a 
 wild night. We had still eight miles of moun 
 tain-path before us, and we struggled away. As 
 we crossed the next summit beyond the town, 
 a sound of chanting drifted by us on the wind, 
 wavered hither and thither, now heard, now 
 lost, then a doubtful something between song 
 and gust, and, lingering a few moments, we saw 
 
212 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 the white head-dresses, gliding two by two, 
 across a gap between the houses. The scene 
 and the music were both in neutral tints, a 
 sketch, as it were, in sepia a little blurred. 
 
 Before long the clouds almost brushed us as 
 they eddied silently by, and then it began to 
 rain, first mistily, and then in thick, hard drops. 
 Fortunately there was a moon, shining placidly 
 in the desert heaven above all this turmoil, or 
 we could not have found our path, which in 
 a few moments became a roaring torrent al 
 most knee-deep. It was a cold rain, and far 
 above us, where the mountain-peaks tore gaps 
 in the clouds, we could see the white silence of 
 new-fallen snow. Sometimes we had to dis 
 mount and wade, a circumstance which did 
 not make our saddles more comfortable when 
 we returned to them and could hear them go 
 crosh, croshy as the water gurgled out of them 
 at every jolt. There was no hope of shelter 
 nearer than Subiaco, no sign of man, and no 
 sound but the multitudinous roar of waters on 
 every side. Rivulet whispered to rivulet, and 
 water-fall shouted to water-fall, as they leaped 
 from rock to rock, all hurrying to reinforce the 
 main torrent below, which hummed onward 
 toward the Anio with dilated heart. So gathered 
 the hoarse Northern swarms to descend upon 
 sunken Italy ; and so forever does physical and 
 intellectual force seek its fatal equilibrium, rush- 
 
ITALY 213 
 
 ing in and occupying wherever it is drawn by 
 the attraction of a lower level. 
 
 We forded large streams that had been dry 
 beds an hour before ; and so sudden was the 
 creation of the floods, that it gave one almost 
 as fresh a feeling of water as if one had been 
 present in Eden when the first rock gave birth 
 to the first fountain. I had a severe cold, I was 
 wet through from the hips downward, and yet I 
 never enjoyed anything more in my life, so 
 different is the shower-bath to which we doom 
 ourselves from that whose string is pulled by 
 the prison-warden compulsion. After our little 
 bearers had tottered us up and down the dusky 
 steeps of a few more mountain-spurs, where a 
 misstep would have sent us spinning down the 
 fathomless black nowhere below, we came out 
 upon the high-road, and found it a fine one, as 
 all the great Italian roads are. The rain broke 
 off suddenly, and on the left, seeming about 
 half a mile away, sparkled the lights of Subiaco, 
 flashing intermittently like a knot of fireflies in 
 a meadow. The town, owing to the necessary 
 windings of the road, was still three miles off, 
 and just as the guides had prodded and ahrred 
 the donkeys into a brisk joggle, I resolved to 
 give up my saddle to the boy, and try Tom 
 Coryate s compasses. It was partly out of hu 
 manity to myself and partly to him, for he was 
 tired and I was cold. The elder guide and I 
 
2i 4 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 took the lead, and, as I looked back, I laughed 
 to see the lolling ears of Storg s donkey thrust 
 from under his long cloak, as if he were coming 
 out from a black Arab tent. We soon left them 
 behind, and paused at a bridge over the Anio 
 till we heard the patter of little hoofs again. The 
 bridge is a single arch, bent between the steep 
 edges of a gorge through which the Anio hud 
 dled far below, showing a green gleam here and 
 there in the struggling moonlight, as if a fish 
 rolled up his burnished flank. After another mile 
 and a half, we reached the gate, and awaited our 
 companions. It was dreary enough, waiting 
 always is, and as the snow-chilled wind 
 whistled through the damp archway where we 
 stood, my legs illustrated feelingly to me how 
 they cool water in the East, by wrapping the jars 
 with wet woollen and setting them in a draught. 
 At last they came ; I remounted, and we went 
 sliding through the steep, wet streets till we 
 had fairly passed through the whole town. Be 
 fore a long building of two stories, without a 
 symptom of past or future light, we stopped. 
 " Ecco la Paletta ! " said the guide, and began to 
 pound furiously on the door with a large stone, 
 which he some time before had provided for 
 the purpose. After a long period of sullen irre- 
 sponsiveness, we heard descending footsteps, 
 light streamed through the chinks of the door, 
 and the invariable " Chi e ? " which precedes 
 
ITALY 215 
 
 the unbarring of all portals here, came from 
 within. " Due forestieri" answered the guide, 
 and the bars rattled in hasty welcome. " Make 
 us," we exclaimed, as we stiffly climbed down 
 from our perches, " your biggest fire in your 
 biggest chimney, and then we will talk of sup 
 per ! " In five minutes two great laurel fagots 
 were spitting and crackling in an enormous fire 
 place ; and Storg and I were in the costume 
 which Don Quixote wore on the Brown Moun 
 tain. Of course there was nothing for supper 
 but ^frittata; but there are worse things in the 
 world than ^frittata con prosciutto, and we dis 
 cussed it like a society just emerging from bar 
 barism, the upper half of our persons presenting 
 all the essentials of an advanced civilization, 
 while our legs skulked under the table as free 
 from sartorial impertinences as those of the 
 noblest savage that ever ran wild in the woods. 
 And so eccoci finalmente arrivati ! 
 
 2jth. Nothing can be more lovely than 
 the scenery about Subiaco. The town itself is 
 built on a kind of cone rising from the midst 
 of a valley abounding in olives and vines, with 
 a superb mountain horizon around it, and the 
 green Anio cascading at its feet. As you walk 
 to the high-perched convent of San Benedetto, 
 you look across the river on your right just 
 after leaving the town, to a cliff over which the 
 ivy pours in torrents, and in which dwellings 
 
216 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 have been hollowed out. In the black door 
 way of every one sits a woman in scarlet bodice 
 and white head-gear, with a distaff, spinning, 
 while overhead countless nightingales sing at 
 once from the fringe of shrubbery. The glo 
 rious great white clouds look over the moun 
 tain-tops into our enchanted valley, and some 
 times a lock of their vapory wool would be 
 torn off, to lie for a while in some inaccessible 
 ravine like a snow-drift ; but it seemed as if 
 no shadow could fly over our privacy of sun 
 shine to-day. The approach to the monastery 
 is delicious. You pass out of the hot sun into 
 the green shadows of ancient ilexes, leaning 
 and twisting every way that is graceful, their 
 branches velvety with brilliant moss, in which 
 grow feathery ferns, fringing them with a halo 
 of verdure. Then comes the convent, with its 
 pleasant old monks, who show their sacred 
 vessels (one by Cellini) and their relics, among 
 which is a finger-bone of one of the Innocents. 
 Lower down is a convent of Santa Scholastica, 
 where the first book was printed in Italy. 
 
 But though one may have daylight till after 
 twenty-four o clock in Italy, the days are no 
 longer than ours, and I must go back to La 
 Paletta to see about a vettura to Tivoli. I 
 leave Storg sketching, and walk slowly down, 
 lingering over the ever-changeful views, linger 
 ing opposite the nightingale-cliff, but get back 
 
ITALY 217 
 
 to Subiaco and the vetturino at last. The growl 
 of a thunder-storm soon brought Storg home, 
 and we leave Subiaco triumphantly, at five 
 o clock, in a light carriage, drawn by three gray 
 stallions (harnessed abreast) on the full gallop. 
 I cannot describe our drive, the mountain 
 towns, with their files of girls winding up from 
 the fountain with balanced water-jars of ruddy 
 copper, or chattering round it bright-hued as 
 parrots, the ruined castles, the green gleams of 
 the capricious river, the one great mountain 
 that soaked up all the rose of sunset, and, after 
 all else grew dim, still glowed as if with inward 
 fires, and, later, the white spray-smoke of Tivoli 
 that drove down the valley under a clear cold 
 moon, contrasting strangely with the red glare 
 of the lime-furnace on the opposite hillside. It 
 is well that we can be happy sometimes with 
 out peeping and botanizing in the materials 
 that make us so. It is not often that we can 
 escape the evil genius of analysis that haunts 
 our modern daylight of self-consciousness (wir 
 haben ja aufgeklart !) and enjoy a day of right 
 Chaucer. 
 
 P. S. Now that I am printing this, a dear 
 friend sends me an old letter, and says, " Slip 
 in somewhere, by way of contrast, what you 
 wrote me of your visit to Passawampscot." It 
 is odd, almost painful, to be confronted with 
 
218 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 your past self and your past self s doings, when 
 you have forgotten both. But here is my bit 
 of American scenery, such as it is. 
 
 While we were waiting for the boat, we had 
 time to investigate P. a little. We wandered 
 about with no one to molest us or make us 
 afraid. No cicerone was lying in wait for us, no 
 verger expected with funeral solemnity the more 
 than compulsory shilling. I remember the 
 whole population of Cortona gathering round 
 me, and beseeching me not to leave their city 
 till I had seen the lampadone, whose keeper had 
 unhappily gone out for a walk, taking the key 
 with him. Thank Fortune, here were no anti 
 quities, no galleries of Pre-Raphaelite art, every 
 lank figure looking as if it had been stretched 
 on a rack, before which the Anglo-Saxon writhes 
 because he ought to like them and cannot for 
 the soul of him. It is a pretty little village, 
 cuddled down among the hills, the clay soil of 
 which gives them, to a pilgrim from the parched 
 gravelly inland, a look of almost fanatical green. 
 The fields are broad, and wholly given up to 
 the grazing of cattle and sheep, which dotted 
 them thickly in the breezy sunshine. The open 
 doors of a barn, through which the wind flowed 
 rustling the loose locks of the mow, attracted 
 us. Swallows swam in and out with level wings, 
 or crossed each other, twittering in the dusky 
 mouth of their hay-scented cavern. Two or 
 
ITALY 219 
 
 three hens and a cock (none of your gawky 
 Shanghais, long-legged as a French peasant on 
 his stilts, but the true red cock of the ballads, 
 full-chested, coral-combed, fountain-tailed) were 
 inquiring for hay-seed in the background. 
 What frame in what gallery ever enclosed such 
 a picture as is squared within the groundsel, 
 side-posts, and lintel of a barn-door, whether 
 for eye or fancy ? The shining floor suggests 
 the flail-beat of autumn, that pleasantest of 
 monotonous sounds, and the later husking-bee, 
 where the lads and lasses sit round laughingly 
 busy under the swinging lantern. 
 
 Here we found a fine, stalwart fellow shear 
 ing sheep. This was something new to us, and 
 we watched him for some time with many ques 
 tions, which he answered with off-hand good 
 nature. Going away I thanked him for having 
 taught me something. He laughed, and said, 
 " Ef you 11 take off them gloves o yourn, I 11 
 give ye a try at the practical part on t." He 
 was in the right of it. I never saw anything 
 handsomer than those brown hands of his, on 
 which the sinews stood out, as he handled his 
 shears, tight as a drawn bowstring. How much 
 more admirable is this tawny vigor, the badge of 
 fruitful toil, than the crop of early muscle that 
 heads out under the forcing-glass of the gymna 
 sium ! Foreigners do not feel easy in America, 
 because there are no peasants and underlings 
 
220 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 here to be humble to them. The truth is, that 
 none but those who feel themselves only ar 
 tificially the superiors of our sturdy yeomen 
 see in their self-respect any uncomfortable as 
 sumption of equality. It is the last thing the 
 yeoman is likely to think of. They do not like 
 the " I say, ma good fellah " kind of style, and 
 commonly contrive to snub it. They do not 
 value condescension at the same rate that he does 
 who vouchsafes it to them. If it be a good thing 
 for an English duke that he has no social su 
 periors, I think it can hardly be bad for a Yan 
 kee farmer. If it be a bad thing for the duke 
 that he meets none but inferiors, it cannot harm 
 the farmer much that he never has the chance. 
 At any rate, there was no thought of incivility 
 in my friend Hobbinol s gibe at my kids, only 
 a kind of jolly superiority. But I did not like 
 to be taken for a city gent, so I told him I was 
 born and bred in the country as well as he. He 
 laughed again, and said, " Wai, anyhow, I Ve 
 the advantage of ye, for you never see a sheep 
 shore, and I Ve be n to the Opery and shore 
 sheep myself into the bargain." He told me that 
 there were two hundred sheep in the town, and 
 that his father could remember when there were 
 four times as many. The sea laps and mumbles 
 the soft roots of the hills, and licks away an 
 acre or two of good pasturage every season. 
 The father, an old man of eighty, stood looking 
 
ITALY 221 
 
 on, pleased with his son s wit, and brown as if 
 the Passawampscot fogs were walnut-juice. 
 
 We dined at a little tavern, with a gilded 
 ball hung out for sign, a waif, I fancy, from 
 some shipwreck. The landlady was a brisk, 
 amusing little body, who soon informed us that 
 her husband was own cousin to a Senator of 
 the United States. A very elaborate sampler in 
 the parlor, in which an obelisk was wept over 
 by a somewhat costly willow in silver thread, 
 recorded the virtues of the Senator s maternal 
 grandfather and grandmother. After dinner, as 
 we sat smoking our pipes on the piazza, our 
 good hostess brought her little daughter, and 
 made her repeat verses utterly unintelligible, 
 but conjecturally moral, and certainly depress 
 ing. Once set a-going, she ran down like an 
 alarm-clock. We awaited her subsidence as that 
 of a shower or other inevitable natural pheno 
 menon. More refreshing was the talk of a tall 
 returned Californian, who told us, among other 
 things, that " he should n t mind Panahmy s 
 bein sunk, oilers providin there warn t none 
 of our folks onto it when it went down ! " 
 
 Our landlady s exhibition of her daughter 
 puts me in mind of something similar, yet 
 oddly different, which happened to Storg and 
 me at Palestrina. We jointly praised the beauty 
 of our stout locandiera s little girl. " Ah, she is 
 nothing to her eldest sister just married," said 
 
222 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 the mother. " If you could see her I She is 
 bella, bella, BELLA ! " We thought no more of 
 it ; but after dinner, the good creature, with no 
 warning but a tap at the door and a humble con 
 permesso, brought her in all her bravery, and 
 showed her off to us as simply and naturally 
 as if she had been a picture. The girl, who 
 was both beautiful and modest, bore it with the 
 dignified aplomb of a statue. She knew we ad 
 mired her, and liked it, but with the indifference 
 of a rose. There is something very charming, 
 I think, in this wholly unsophisticated con 
 sciousness, with no alloy of vanity or coquetry. 
 
 IV 
 
 A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 
 
 Byron hit the white, which he often shot 
 very wide of in his Italian Guide-Book, when 
 he called Rome " my country." But it is a feel 
 ing which comes to one slowly, and is absorbed 
 into one s system during a long residence. Per 
 haps one does not feel it till one has gone away, 
 as things always seem fairer when we look back 
 at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower 
 of the past that Longing leans and beckons. 
 However it be, Fancy gets a rude shock at en 
 tering Rome, which it takes her a great while 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 223 
 
 to get over. She has gradually made herself be 
 lieve that she is approaching a city of the dead, 
 and has seen nothing on the road from Civita 
 Vecchia to disturb that theory. Milestones, with 
 " Via Aurelia " carved upon them, have con 
 firmed it. It is eighteen hundred years ago with 
 her, and on the dial of time the shadow has not 
 yet trembled over the line that marks the be 
 ginning of the first century. She arrives at the 
 gate, and a dirty, blue man, with a cocked hat 
 and a white sword-belt, asks for her passport. 
 Then another man, as like the first as one spoon 
 is like its fellow, and having, like him, the look 
 of being run in a mould, tells her that she must 
 go to the custom-house. It is as if a ghost, who 
 had scarcely recovered from the jar of hearing 
 Charon say," I 11 trouble you for your obolus, 
 if you please," should have his portmanteau 
 seized by the Stygian tide-waiters to be searched. 
 Is there anything, then, contraband of death ? 
 asks poor Fancy of herself. 
 
 But it is the misfortune (or the safeguard) 
 of the English mind that Fancy is always an 
 outlaw, liable to be laid by the heels wherever 
 Constable Common Sense can catch her. She 
 submits quietly as the postilion cries, " Tee-ip ! " 
 cracks his whip, and the rattle over the pave 
 ment begins, struggles a moment when the pil 
 lars of the colonnade stalk ghostly by in the 
 moonlight, and finally gives up all for lost when 
 
224 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 she sees Bernini s angels polking on their ped 
 estals along the sides of the Ponte Sant Angelo 
 with the emblems of the Passion in their arms. 
 
 You are in Rome, of course ; the sbirro said 
 so, the doganiere bowed it, and the postilion swore 
 it ; but it is a Rome of modern houses, muddy 
 streets, dingy cajfes, cigar-smokers, and French 
 soldiers, the manifest junior of Florence. And 
 yet full of anachronisms, for in a little while you 
 pass the column of Antoninus, find the Dogana 
 in an ancient temple whose furrowed pillars show 
 through the recent plaster, and feel as if you saw 
 the statue of Minerva in a Paris bonnet. You 
 are driven to a hotel where all the barbarian lan 
 guages are spoken in one wild conglomerate by 
 the Commissionnaire, have your dinner wholly in 
 French, and wake the next morning dreaming 
 of the Tenth Legion, to see a regiment of Chas 
 seurs de Vincennes trotting by. 
 
 For a few days one undergoes a tremendous 
 recoil. Other places have a distinct meaning. 
 London isthevisible throneof King Stock ; Ver 
 sailles is the apotheosis of one of Louis XIV. s 
 cast periwigs ; Florence and Pisa are cities of the 
 Middle Ages ; but Rome seems to be a parody 
 upon itself. The ticket that admits you to 
 see the starting of the horses at carnival has 
 S. P. Q. R. at the top of it, and you give the cus- 
 tode a paul for showing you the wolf that suckled 
 Romulus and Remus. The Senatus seems to be 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 225 
 
 a score or so of elderly gentlemen in scarlet, and 
 the Populusque Romanus a swarm of nasty friars. 
 
 But there is something more than mere earth 
 in the spot where great deeds have been done. 
 The surveyor cannot give the true dimensions 
 of Marathon or Lexington, for they are not re 
 ducible to square acres. Dead glory and great 
 ness leave ghosts behind them, and departed 
 empire has a metempsychosis, if nothing else 
 has. Its spirit haunts the grave, and waits, and 
 waits till at last it finds a body to its mind, slips 
 into it, and historians moralize on the fluctuation 
 of human affairs. By and by, perhaps, enough 
 observations will have been recorded to assure 
 us that these recurrences are firmamental, and 
 historionomers will have measured accurately 
 the sidereal years of races. When that is once 
 done, events will move with the quiet of an or 
 rery, and nations will consent to their peridyna- 
 mis and apodynamis with planetary composure. 
 
 Be this as it may, you become gradually aware 
 of the presence of this imperial ghost among the 
 Roman ruins. You receive hints and startles of 
 it through the senses first, as the horse always 
 shies at the apparition before the rider can see 
 it. Then, little by little, you become assured 
 of it, and seem to hear the brush of its mantle 
 through some hall of Caracalla s baths, or one 
 of those other solitudes of Rome. And those 
 solitudes are without a parallel ; for it is not the 
 
2z6 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 mere absence of man, but the sense of his de 
 parture, that makes a profound loneliness. Mus 
 ing upon them, you cannot but feel theshadowof 
 that disembodied empire, and, remembering how 
 the foundations of the Capitol were laid where 
 a human head was turned up, you are impelled 
 to prophesy that the Idea of Rome will incar 
 nate itself again as soon as an Italian brain is 
 found large enough to hold it, and to give unity 
 to those discordant members. 
 
 But, though I intend to observe no regular 
 pattern in my Roman mosaic, which will re 
 semble more what one finds in his pockets after 
 a walk, a pagan cube or two from the palaces 
 of the Caesars, a few Byzantine bits, given with 
 many shrugs of secrecy by a lay-brother at San 
 Paolo fuori le mura, and a few more (quite as 
 ancient) from the manufactory at the Vatican, 
 it seems natural to begin what one has to say 
 of Rome with something about St. Peter s ; for 
 the saint sits at the gate here as well as in Para 
 dise. 
 
 It is very common for people to say that they 
 are disappointed in the first sight of St. Peter s ; 
 and one hears much the same about Niagara. 
 I cannot help thinking that the fault is in them 
 selves ; and that if the church and the cataract 
 were in the habit of giving away their thoughts 
 with that rash generosity which characterizes 
 tourists, they might perhaps say of their visitors, 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 227 
 
 " Well, if you are those Men of whom we have 
 heard so much, we are a little disappointed, to 
 tell the truth ! " The refined tourist expects 
 somewhat too much when he takes it for granted 
 that St. Peter s will at once decorate him with 
 the order of imagination, just as Victoria knights 
 an alderman when he presents an address. Or 
 perhaps he has been getting up a little architec 
 ture on the road from Florence, and is discom 
 fited because he does not know whether he ought 
 to be pleased or not, which is very much as if 
 he should wait to be told whether it was fresh 
 water or salt which makes the exhaustless grace 
 of Niagara s emerald curve, before he benignly 
 consented to approve. It would be wiser, per 
 haps, for him to consider whether, if Michael 
 Angelo had had the building of him, his own 
 personal style would not have been more im 
 pressive. 
 
 It is not to be doubted that minds are of as 
 many different orders as cathedrals, and that 
 the Gothic imagination is vexed and discom 
 moded in the vain endeavor to flatten its pin 
 nacles, and fit itself into the round Roman 
 arches. But if it be impossible for a man to like 
 everything, it is quite possible for him to avoid 
 being driven mad by what does not please him ; 
 nay, it is the imperative duty of a wise man to 
 find out what that secret is which makes a thing 
 pleasing to another. In approaching St. Peter s, 
 
228 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 one must take his Protestant shoes off his feet, 
 and leave them behind him, in the Piazza 
 Rusticucci. Otherwise the great Basilica, with 
 those outstretching colonnades of Bramante, 
 will seem to be a bloated spider lying in wait 
 for him, the poor heretic fly. As he lifts the 
 heavy leathern flapper over the door, and is 
 discharged into the interior by its impetuous 
 recoil, let him disburthen his mind altogether 
 of stone and mortar, and think only that he is 
 standing before the throne of a dynasty which, 
 even in its decay, is the most powerful the 
 world ever saw. Mason-work is all very well 
 in itself, but it has nothing to do with the affair 
 at present in hand. 
 
 Suppose that a man in pouring down a glass 
 of claret could drink the South of France, that 
 he could so disintegrate the wine by the force 
 of imagination as to taste in it all the clustered 
 beauty and bloom of the grape, all the dance 
 and song and sunburnt jollity of the vintage. 
 Or suppose that in eating bread he could tran 
 substantiate it with the tender blade of spring, 
 the gleam-flitted corn-ocean of summer, the 
 royal autumn, with its golden beard, and the 
 merry funerals of harvest. This is what the 
 great poets do for us, we cannot tell how, with 
 their fatally chosen words, crowding the happy 
 veins of language again with all the life and 
 meaning and music that had been dribbling 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 229 
 
 away from them since Adam. And this is what 
 the Roman Church does for religion, feeding 
 the soul not with the essential religious senti 
 ment, not with a drop or two of the tincture 
 of worship, but making us feel one by one 
 all those original elements of which worship 
 is composed ; not bringing the end to us, but 
 making us pass over and feel beneath our feet 
 all the golden rounds of the ladder by which 
 the climbing generations have reached that end ; 
 not handing us drily a dead and extinguished 
 Q. E. D., but letting it rather declare itself by 
 the glory with which it interfuses the incense- 
 clouds of wonder and aspiration and beauty in 
 which it is veiled. The secret of her power is 
 typified in the mystery of the Real Presence. 
 She is the only Church that has been loyal to 
 the heart and soul of man, that has clung to 
 her faith in the imagination, and that would not 
 give over her symbols and images and sacred 
 vessels to the perilous keeping of the iconoclast 
 Understanding. She has never lost sight of the 
 truth, that the product human nature is com 
 posed of the sum of flesh and spirit, and has ac 
 cordingly regarded both this world and the next 
 as the constituents of that other world which 
 we possess by faith. She knows that poor 
 Panza, the body, has his kitchen longings and 
 visions, as well as Quixote, the soul, his ethe 
 real, and has wit enough to supply him with 
 
2 3 o LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 the visible, tangible raw material of imagination. 
 She is the only poet among the churches, and, 
 while Protestantism is unrolling a pocket sur- 
 veyor s-plan, takes her votary to the pinnacle 
 of her temple, and shows him meadow, upland, 
 and tillage, cloudy heaps of forest clasped with 
 the river s jewelled arm, hillsides white with the 
 perpetual snow of flocks, and, beyond all, the 
 interminable heave of the unknown ocean. 
 Her empire may be traced upon the map by 
 the boundaries of races ; the understanding is 
 her great foe ; and it is the people whose vo 
 cabulary was incomplete till they had invented 
 the archword Humbug that defies her. With 
 that leaden bullet John Bull can bring down 
 Sentiment when she flies her highest. And the 
 more the pity for John Bull. One of these days 
 some one whose eyes are sharp enough will 
 read in the Times a standing advertisement, 
 " Lost, strayed, or stolen from the farm-yard of 
 the subscriber the valuable horse Pegasus. 
 Probably has on him part of a new plough- 
 harness, as that is also missing. A suitable re 
 ward, etc. J. BULL." 
 
 Protestantism reverses the poetical process I 
 have spoken of above, and gives not even the 
 bread of life, but instead of it the alcohol, or 
 distilled intellectual result. This was very well 
 so long as Protestantism continued to protest ; 
 for enthusiasm sublimates the understanding 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 231 
 
 into imagination. But now that she also has 
 become an establishment, she begins to perceive 
 that she made a blunder in trusting herself to 
 the intellect alone. She is beginning to feel her 
 way back again, as one notices in Puseyism, 
 and other such hints. One is put upon reflec 
 tion when one sees burly Englishmen, who dine 
 on beef and porter every day, marching proudly 
 through St. Peter s on Palm Sunday, with those 
 frightfully artificial palm-branches in their hands. 
 Romanism wisely provides for the childish in 
 men. 
 
 Therefore I say again, that one must lay 
 aside his Protestantism in order to have a true 
 feeling of St. Peter s. Here in Rome is the 
 laboratory of that mysterious enchantress, who 
 has known so well how to adapt herself to all 
 the wants, or, if you will, the weaknesses of 
 human nature, making the retirement of the 
 convent-cell a merit to the solitary, the scourge 
 or the fast a piety to the ascetic, the enjoyment 
 of pomp and music and incense a religious act 
 in the sensual, and furnishing for the very soul 
 itself a confidante in that ear of the dumb con 
 fessional, where it may securely disburthen 
 itself of its sins and sorrows. And the dome of 
 St. Peter s is the magic circle within which she 
 works her most potent incantations. I confess 
 that I could not enter it alone without a kind 
 of awe. 
 
2 3 2 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 But, setting entirely aside the effect of this 
 church upon the imagination, it is wonderful, 
 if one consider it only materially. Michael 
 Angelo created a new world in which every 
 thing was colossal, and it might seem that he 
 built this as a fit temple for those gigantic 
 figures with which he peopled it to worship 
 in. Here his Moses should be high-priest, the 
 service should be chanted by his prophets 
 and sibyls, and those great pagans should be 
 brought hither from San Lorenzo in Florence, 
 to receive baptism. 
 
 However unsatisfactory in other matters, sta 
 tistics are of service here. I have seen a refined 
 tourist who entered, Murray in hand, sternly 
 resolved to have St. Peter s look small, brought 
 to terms at once by being told that the canopy 
 over the high altar (looking very like a four- 
 post bedstead) was ninety-eight feet high. If 
 he still obstinates himself, he is finished by 
 being made to measure one of the marble putti, 
 which look like rather stoutish babies, and are 
 found to be six feet, every sculptor s son of 
 them. This ceremony is the more interesting, 
 as it enables him to satisfy the guide of his pro 
 ficiency in the Italian tongue by calling them 
 putty at every convenient opportunity. Other 
 wise both he and his assistant terrify each other 
 into mutual unintelligibility with that lingua 
 franca of the English-speaking traveller, which 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 233 
 
 is supposed to bear some remote affinity to the 
 French language, of which both parties are as 
 ignorant as an American Ambassador. 
 
 Murray gives all these little statistical nudges 
 to the Anglo-Saxon imagination ; but he knows 
 that its finest nerves are in the pocket, and ac 
 cordingly ends by telling you how much the 
 church cost. I forget how much it is ; but it 
 cannot be more, I fancy, than the English na 
 tional debt multiplied into itself three hundred 
 and sixty-five times. If the pilgrim, honestly 
 anxious for a sensation, will work out this little 
 sum, he will be sure to receive all that enlarge 
 ment of the imaginative faculty which arithme 
 tic can give him. Perhaps the most dilating 
 fact, after all, is that this architectural world has 
 also a separate atmosphere, distinct from that 
 of Rome by some ten degrees, and unvarying 
 through the year. 
 
 I think that, on the whole, Jonathan gets 
 ready to be pleased with St. Peter s sooner than 
 Bull. Accustomed to our lath and plaster ex 
 pedients for churches, the portable sentry-boxes 
 of Zion, mere solidity and permanence are plea 
 surable in themselves ; and if he get grandeur 
 also, he has Gospel measure. Besides, it is easy 
 for Jonathan to travel. He is one drop of a 
 fluid mass, who knows where his home is to 
 day, but can make no guess of where it may be 
 to-morrow. Even in a form of government he 
 
234 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 only takes lodgings for the night, and is ready 
 to pay his bill and be off in the morning. He 
 should take his motto from Bishop Golias s 
 " MM est propositum in taberna mori" though 
 not in the sufistic sense of that misunderstood 
 Churchman. But Bull can seldom be said to 
 travel at all, since the first step of a true travel 
 ler is out of himself. H e plays cricket and hunts 
 foxes on the Campagna, makes entries in his 
 betting-book while the Pope is giving his bene 
 diction, and points out Lord Calico to you 
 awfully during the Sistine Miserere. If he let 
 his beard grow, it always has a startled air, as 
 if it suddenly remembered its treason to Shef 
 field, and only makes him look more English 
 than ever. A masquerade is impossible to him, 
 and his fancy balls are the solemnest facts in 
 the world. Accordingly, he enters St. Peter s 
 with the dome of St. Paul s drawn tight over 
 his eyes, like a criminal s cap, and ready for 
 instant execution rather than confess that the 
 English Wren had not a stronger wing than 
 the Italian Angel. I like this in Bull, and it 
 renders him the pleasantest of travelling-com 
 panions ; for he makes you take England along 
 with you, and thus you have two countries at 
 once. And one must not forget in an Italian 
 inn that it is to Bull he owes the clean napkins 
 and sheets, and the privilege of his morning 
 bath. Nor should Bull himself fail to remem- 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 235 
 
 ber that he ate with his fingers till the Italian 
 gave him a fork. 
 
 Browning has given the best picture of St. 
 Peter s on a festival-day, sketching it with a few 
 verses in his large style. And doubtless it is the 
 scene of the grandest spectacles which the world 
 can see in these latter days. Those Easter 
 pomps, where the antique world marches vis 
 ibly before you in gilded mail and crimson 
 doublet, refresh the eyes, and are good so long 
 as they continue to be merely spectacle. But 
 if one think for a moment of the servant of the 
 servants of the Lord in cloth of gold, borne on 
 men s shoulders, or of the children receiving 
 the blessing of their Holy Father, with a regi 
 ment of French soldiers to protect the father 
 from the children, it becomes a little sad. If 
 one would feel the full meaning of those cere 
 monials, however, let him consider the coinci 
 dences between the Romish and the Buddhist 
 forms of worship, and remembering that the 
 Pope is the direct heir, through the Pontifex 
 Maximus, of rites that were ancient when the 
 Etruscans were modern, he will look with a 
 feeling deeper than curiosity upon forms which 
 record the earliest conquests of the Invisible, 
 the first triumphs of mind over muscle. 
 
 To me the noon silence and solitude of St. 
 Peter s were most impressive, when the sunlight, 
 made visible by the mist of the ever-burning 
 
236 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 lamps in which it was entangled, hovered under 
 the dome like the holy dove goldenly descend 
 ing. Very grand also is the twilight, when all 
 outlines melt into mysterious vastness, and the 
 arches expand and lose themselves in the deep 
 ening shadow. Then, standing in the desert 
 transept, you hear the far-off vespers swell and 
 die like low breathings of the sea on some con 
 jectured shore. 
 
 As the sky is supposed to scatter its golden 
 star-pollen once every year in meteoric showers, 
 so the dome of St. Peter s has its annual efflo 
 rescence of fire. This illumination is the great 
 show of Papal Rome. Just after sunset, I stood 
 upon the Trinita dei Monti and saw the little 
 drops of pale light creeping downward from the 
 cross and trickling over the dome. Then, as 
 the sky darkened behind, it seemed as if the 
 setting sun had lodged upon the horizon and 
 there burned out, the fire still clinging to his 
 massy ribs. And when the change from the 
 silver to the golden illumination came, it was 
 as if the breeze had fanned the embers into 
 flame again. 
 
 Bitten with the Anglo-Saxon gadfly that 
 drives us all to disenchant artifice, and see the 
 springs that fix it on, I walked down to get a 
 nearer look. My next glimpse was from the 
 bridge of Sant Angelo ; but there was no time 
 nor space for pause. Foot-passengers crowding 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 237 
 
 hither and thither, as they heard the shout of 
 Avanti ! from the mile of coachmen behind, 
 dragoon-horses curtsying backward just where 
 there were most women and children to be 
 flattened, and the dome drawing all eyes and 
 thoughts the wrong way, made a hubbub to be 
 got out of at any desperate hazard. Besides, 
 one could not help feeling nervously hurried ; 
 for it seemed quite plain to everybody that this 
 starry apparition must be as momentary as it 
 was wonderful, and that we should find it van 
 ished when we reached the piazza. But sud 
 denly you stand in front of it, and see the soft 
 travertine of the front suffused with a tremu 
 lous, glooming glow, a mildened glory, as if the 
 building breathed, and so transmuted its shadow 
 into soft pulses of light. 
 
 After wondering long enough, I went back 
 to the Pincio, and watched it for an hour longer. 
 But I did not wish to see it go out. It seemed 
 better to go home and leave it still trembling, 
 so that I could fancy a kind of permanence in 
 it, and half believe I should find it there again 
 some lucky evening. Before leaving it alto 
 gether, I went away to cool my eyes with dark 
 ness, and came back several times ; and every 
 time it was a new miracle, the more so that it 
 was a human piece of faery-work. Beautiful 
 as fire is in itself, I suspect that part of the 
 pleasure is metaphysical, and that the sense of 
 
238 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 playing with an element which can be so ter 
 rible adds to the zest of the spectacle. And then 
 fire is not the least degraded by it, because it is 
 not utilized. If beauty were in use, the factory 
 would add a grace to the river, and we should 
 turn from the fire-writing on the wall of heaven 
 to look at a message printed by the magnetic 
 telegraph. There may be a beauty in the use 
 itself; but utilization is always downward, and 
 it is this feeling that makes Schiller s Pegasus 
 in yoke so universally pleasing. So long as the 
 curse of work clings to man, he will see beauty 
 only in play. The capital of the most frugal 
 commonwealth in the world burns up five thou 
 sand dollars a year in gunpowder, and nobody 
 murmurs. Provident Judas wished to utilize 
 the ointment, but the Teacher would rather that 
 it should be wasted in poem. 
 
 The best lesson in aesthetics I ever got (and, 
 like most good lessons, it fell from the lips of 
 no regular professor) was from an Irishman on 
 the day the Nymph Cochituate was formally 
 introduced to the people of Boston. I made 
 one with other rustics in the streets, admiring 
 the dignitaries in coaches with as much Chris 
 tian charity as is consistent with an elbow in the 
 pit of one s stomach and a heel on that toe 
 which is your only inheritance from two excel 
 lent grandfathers. Among other allegorical phe 
 nomena, there came along what I should have 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 239 
 
 called a hay-cart, if I had not known it was a 
 triumphal car, filled with that fairest variety of 
 mortal grass which with us is apt to spindle 
 so soon into a somewhat sapless womanhood. 
 Thirty-odd young maidens in white gowns, with 
 blue sashes and pink wreaths of French crape, 
 represented the United States. (How shall we 
 limit our number, by the way, if ever Utah be 
 admitted ?) The ship, the printing-press, even 
 the wondrous train of express-wagons, and other 
 solid bits of civic fantasy, had left my Hiber 
 nian neighbor unmoved. But this brought him 
 down. Turning to me, as the most appreciative 
 public for the moment, with face of as much 
 delight as if his head had been broken, he cried, 
 " Now this is raly beautiful ! Tothally regyard- 
 less uv expinse ! " Methought my shirt-sleeved 
 lecturer on the Beautiful had hit at least one 
 nail full on the head. Voltaire but epigramma- 
 tized the same thought when he said, Le superflu, 
 chose tres-necessaire. 
 
 As for the ceremonies of the Church, one 
 need not waste time in seeing many of them. 
 There is a dreary sameness in them, and one 
 can take an hour here and an hour there, as it 
 pleases him, just as sure of finding the same 
 pattern as he would be in the first or last yard 
 of a roll of printed cotton. For myself, I do 
 not like to go and look with mere curiosity at 
 
2 4 o LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 what is sacred and solemn to others. To how 
 many these Roman shows are sacred, I cannot 
 guess ; but certainly the Romans do not value 
 them much. I walked out to the grotto of Egeria 
 on Easter Sunday, that I might not be tempted 
 down to St. Peter s to see the mockery of Pio 
 Nono s benediction. It is certainly Christian, 
 for he blesses them that curse him, and does all 
 the good which the waving of his ringers can 
 do to people who would use him despitefully 
 if they had the chance. I told an Italian servant 
 she might have the day ; but she said she did 
 not care for it. 
 
 " But," urged I, " will you not go to receive 
 the blessing of the Holy Father?" 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Do you not wish it ? " 
 
 " Not in the least : his blessing would do me 
 no good. If I get the blessing of Heaven, it 
 will serve my turn." 
 
 There were three families of foreigners in our 
 house, and I believe none of the Italian servants 
 went to St. Peter s that day. Yet they com 
 monly speak kindly of Pius. I have heard the 
 same phrase from several Italians of the work 
 ing-class. " He is a good man," they said, " but 
 ill led." 
 
 What one sees in the streets of Rome is worth 
 more than what one sees in the churches. The 
 churches themselves are generally ugly. St. 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 241 
 
 Peter s has crushed all the life out of architec 
 tural genius, and all the modern churches look 
 as if they were swelling themselves in imitation 
 of the great Basilica. There is a clumsy mag 
 nificence about them, and their heaviness op 
 presses. Their marble incrustations look like a 
 kind of architectural elephantiasis, and the parts 
 are puffy with a dropsical want of proportion. 
 There is none of the spring and soar which one 
 may see even in the Lombard churches, and a 
 Roman column standing near one of them, slim 
 and gentlemanlike, satirizes silently their taw 
 dry parvenulsm. Attempts at mere bigness are 
 ridiculous in a city where the Colosseum still 
 yawns in crater-like ruin, and where Michael 
 Angelo made a noble church out of a single 
 room in Diocletian s baths. 
 
 Shall I confess it ? Michael Angelo seems to 
 me, in his angry reaction against sentimental 
 beauty, to have mistaken bulk and brawn for 
 the antithesis of feebleness. He is the apostle 
 of the exaggerated, the Victor Hugo of paint 
 ing and sculpture. I have a feeling that rivalry 
 was a more powerful motive with him than love 
 of art, that he had the conscious intention to be 
 original, which seldom leads to anything better 
 than being extravagant. The show of muscle 
 proves strength, not power ; and force for mere 
 force s sake in art makes one think of Milo 
 caught in his own log. This is my second 
 
242 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 thought, and strikes me as perhaps somewhat 
 niggardly toward one in whom you cannot help 
 feeling there was so vast a possibility. And then 
 his Eve, his David, his Sibyls, his Prophets, his 
 Sonnets ! Well, I take it all back, and come 
 round to St. Peter s again just to hint that I 
 doubt about domes. In Rome they are so much 
 the fashion that I felt as if they were the goitre 
 of architecture. Generally they look heavy. 
 Those on St. Mark s in Venice are the only 
 light ones I ever saw, and they look almost airy, 
 like tents puffed out with wind. I suppose one 
 must be satisfied with the interior effect, which 
 is certainly noble in St. Peter s. But for im- 
 pressiveness both within and without there is 
 nothing like a Gothic cathedral for me, nothing 
 that crowns a city so nobly, or makes such an 
 island of twilight silence in the midst of its noon 
 day clamors. 
 
 Now as to what one sees in the streets, the 
 beggars are certainly the first things that draw 
 the eye. Beggary is an institution here. The 
 Church has sanctified it by the establishment of 
 mendicant orders, and indeed it is the natural 
 result of a social system where the non-produc 
 ing class makes not only the laws, but the ideas. 
 The beggars of Rome go far toward proving the 
 diversity of origin in mankind, for on them 
 surely the curse of Adam never fell. It is easier 
 to fancy that Adam Vaurien^ the first tenant of 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 243 
 
 the Fool s Paradise, after sucking his thumbs 
 for a thousand years, took to wife Eve Faniente, 
 and became the progenitor of this race, to whom 
 also he left a calendar in which three hundred 
 and sixty-five days in the year were made feasts, 
 sacred from all secular labor. Accordingly, they 
 not merely do nothing, but they do it assidu 
 ously and almost with religious fervor. I have 
 seen ancient members of this sect as constant at 
 their accustomed street-corner as the bit of bro 
 ken column on which they sat ; and when a 
 man does this in rainy weather, as rainy weather 
 is in Rome, he has the spirit of a fanatic and 
 martyr. 
 
 It is not that the Italians are a lazy people. 
 On the contrary, I am satisfied that they are in 
 dustrious so far as they are allowed to be. But, as 
 I said before, when a Roman does nothing, he 
 does it in the high Roman fashion. A friend of 
 mine was having one of his rooms arranged for 
 a private theatre, and sent for a person who was 
 said to be an expert in the business to do it for 
 him. After a day s trial, he was satisfied that 
 his lieutenant was rather a hindrance than a 
 help, and resolved to dismiss him. 
 
 " What is your charge for your day s ser 
 vices ? " 
 
 " Two scudi, sir." 
 
 " Two scudi ! Five pauls would be too 
 much. You have done no|hing but stand with 
 
244 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 your hands in your pockets and get in the way 
 of other people." 
 
 " Lordship is perfectly right ; but that is my 
 way of working." 
 
 It is impossible for a stranger to say who may 
 not beg in Rome. It seems to be a sudden mad 
 ness that may seize any one at the sight of a 
 foreigner. You see a very respectable-looking 
 person in the street, and it is odds but, as you 
 pass him, his hat comes off, his whole figure 
 suddenly dilapidates itself, assuming a tremble 
 of professional weakness, and you hear the ever 
 lasting qualche cos a per carita ! You are in doubt 
 whether to drop a bajoccho into the next car 
 dinal s hat which offers you its sacred cavity in 
 answer to your salute. You begin to believe 
 that the hat was invented for the sole purpose 
 of ingulfing coppers, and that its highest type 
 is the great Triregno itself, into which the pence 
 of Peter rattle. 
 
 But you soon learn to distinguish the estab 
 lished beggars, and to the three professions 
 elsewhere considered liberal you add a fourth 
 for this latitude, mendicancy. Its professors 
 look upon themselves as a kind of guild which 
 ought to be protected by the government. I 
 fell into talk with a woman who begged of me 
 in the Colosseum. Among other things she 
 complained that the government did not at all 
 consider the poor. 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 245 
 
 " Where is the government that does ? " I 
 said. 
 
 " Eh gia ! Excellency ; but this government 
 lets beggars from the country come into Rome, 
 which is a great injury to the trade of us born 
 Romans. There is Beppo, for example ; he is 
 a man of property in his own town, and has a 
 dinner of three courses every day. He has 
 portioned two daughters with three thousand 
 scudi each, and left Rome during the time of 
 the Republic with the rest of the nobility." 
 
 At first, one is shocked and pained at the 
 exhibition of deformities in the street. But by 
 and by he comes to look upon them with little 
 more emotion than is excited by seeing the tools 
 of any other trade. The melancholy of the beg 
 gars is purely a matter of business ; and they 
 look upon their maims as Fortunatus purses, 
 which will always give them money. A with 
 ered arm they present to you as a highwayman 
 would his pistol ; a goitre is a life-annuity ; a 
 St. Vitus dance is as good as an engagement 
 as prlma ballerina at the Apollo ; and to have 
 no legs at all is to stand on the best footing with 
 fortune. They are a merry race, on the whole, 
 and quick-witted, like the rest of their country 
 men. I believe the regular fee for a beggar is a 
 quattrino, about a quarter of a cent; but they 
 expect more of foreigners. A friend of mine 
 once gave one of these tiny coins to an old 
 
246 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 woman ; she delicately expressed her resentment 
 by exclaiming, " Thanks, signoria. God will re 
 ward even you ! " 
 
 A begging friar came to me one day with a 
 subscription for repairing his convent. cc Ah, 
 but I am a heretic," said I. " Undoubtedly," 
 with a shrug, implying a respectful acknow 
 ledgment of a foreigner s right to choose warm 
 and dry lodgings in the other world as well as 
 in this, " but your money is perfectly orthodox." 
 
 Another favorite way of doing nothing is to 
 excavate the Forum. I think the Fanientes like 
 this all the better, because it seems a kind of 
 satire upon work, as the witches parody the 
 Christian offices of devotion at their Sabbath. 
 A score or so of old men in voluminous cloaks 
 shift the earth from one side of a large pit to 
 the other, in a manner so leisurely that it is pos 
 itive repose to look at them. The most bigoted 
 anti-Fourierist might acknowledge this to be 
 attractive industry. 
 
 One conscript father trails a small barrow up 
 to another, who stands leaning on a long spade. 
 Arriving, he fumbles for his snuff-box, and 
 offers it deliberately to his friend. Each takes 
 an ample pinch, and both seat themselves to 
 await the result. If one should sneeze, he 
 receives the Felicita ! of the other ; and, after 
 allowing the titillation to subside, he replies, 
 Grazia ! Then follows a little conversation, and 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 247 
 
 then they prepare to load. But it occurs to the 
 barrow-driver that this is a good opportunity 
 to fill and light his pipe ; and to do so conven 
 iently he needs his barrow to sit upon. He 
 draws a few whiffs, and a little more conversa 
 tion takes place. The barrow is now ready ; but 
 first the wielder of the spade will fill his pipe 
 also. This done, more whiffs and more conver 
 sation. Then a spoonful of earth is thrown into 
 the barrow, and it starts on its return. But 
 midway it meets an empty barrow, and both stop 
 to go through the snuff-box ceremonial once 
 more, and to discuss whatever new thing has 
 occurred in the excavation since their last en 
 counter. And so it goes on all day. 
 
 As I see more of material antiquity, I begin 
 to suspect that my interest in it is mostly facti 
 tious. The relations of races to the physical 
 world (only to be studied fruitfully on the spot) 
 do not excite in me an interest at all proportion 
 ate to that I feel in their influence on the moral 
 advance of mankind, which one may as easily 
 trace in his own library as on the spot. The 
 only useful remark I remember to have made 
 here is, that, the situation of Rome being far 
 less strong than that of any city of the Etruscan 
 league, it must have been built where it is for 
 purposes of commerce. It is the most defens 
 ible point near the mouth of the Tiber. It is 
 
248 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 only as rival trades-folk that Rome and Car 
 thage had any comprehensible cause of quarrel. 
 It is only as a commercial people that we can 
 understand the early tendency of the Romans 
 towards democracy. As for antiquity, after read 
 ing history, one is haunted by a discomforting 
 suspicion that the names so painfully deciphered 
 in hieroglyphic or arrow-head inscriptions are 
 only so many more Smiths and Browns mask 
 ing it in unknown tongues. Moreover, if we 
 Yankees are twitted with not knowing the differ 
 ence between big and great, may not those of 
 us who have learned it turn round on many a 
 monument over here with the same reproach ? 
 I confess I am beginning to sympathize with a 
 countryman of ours from Michigan, who asked 
 our Minister to direct him to a specimen ruin 
 and a specimen gallery, that he might see and 
 be rid of them once for all. I saw three young 
 Englishmen going through the Vatican by cata 
 logue and number, the other day, in a fashion 
 which John Bull is apt to consider exclusively 
 American. " Number 300 ! " says the one with 
 catalogue and pencil ; " have you seen it ? " 
 " Yes," answer his two comrades, and, checking 
 it off, he goes on with Number 301. Having 
 witnessed the unavailing agonies of many Anglo- 
 Saxons from both sides of the Atlantic in their 
 effort to have the correct sensation before many 
 hideous examples of antique bad taste, my heart 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 249 
 
 warmed toward my business-like British cousins, 
 who were doing their aesthetics in this thrifty 
 auctioneer fashion. Our cart-before-horse edu 
 cation, which makes us more familiar with the 
 history and literature of Greeks and Romans 
 than with those of our own ancestry (though 
 there is nothing in ancient art to match Shakes 
 peare or a Gothic minster), makes us the gulls 
 of what we call classical antiquity. Europe were 
 worth visiting, if only to be rid of this one old 
 man of the sea. In sculpture, to be sure, they 
 have us on the hip. 
 
 I am not ashamed to confess a singular sym 
 pathy with what are known as the Middle 
 Ages. I cannot help thinking that few periods 
 have left behind them such traces of inventive 
 ness and power. Nothing is more tiresome than 
 the sameness of modern cities ; and it has often 
 struck me that this must also have been true of 
 those ancient ones in which Greek architecture 
 or its derivatives prevailed, true at least as 
 respects public buildings. But mediaeval towns, 
 especially in Italy, even when only fifty miles 
 asunder, have an individuality of character as 
 marked as that of trees. Nor is it merely this 
 originality that attracts me, but likewise the 
 sense that, however old, they are nearer to me 
 in being modern and Christian. Far enough 
 away in the past to be picturesque, they are still 
 so near through sympathies of thought and 
 
250 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 belief as to be more companionable. I find it 
 harder to bridge over the gulf of Paganism than 
 of centuries. Apart from any difference in the 
 men, I had a far deeper emotion when I stood 
 on the Sasso di Dante than at Horace s Sabine 
 farm or by the tomb of Virgil. The latter, in 
 deed, interested me chiefly by its association 
 with comparatively modern legend ; and one of 
 the buildings I am most glad to have seen in 
 Rome is the Bear Inn, where Montaigne lodged 
 on his arrival. 
 
 I think it must have been for some such 
 reason that I liked my Florentine better than 
 my Roman walks, though I am vastly more 
 contented with merely being in Rome. Flor 
 ence is more noisy ; indeed, I think it the 
 noisiest town I was ever in. What with the 
 continual jangling of its bells, the rattle of 
 Austrian drums, and the street-cries, Ancora 
 mi raccafriccia. The Italians are a vociferous 
 people, and most so among them the Floren 
 tines. Walking through a back street one day, 
 I saw an old woman higgling with a peripatetic 
 dealer, who, at every interval afforded him by 
 the remarks of his veteran antagonist, would 
 tip his head on one side, and shout, with a 
 kind of wondering enthusiasm, as if he could 
 hardly trust the evidence of his own senses to 
 such loveliness, O, che bellezza! che belle-e- 
 ezza ! The two had been contending as obsti- 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 251 
 
 nately as the Greeks and Trojans over the body 
 of Patroclus, and I was curious to know what 
 was the object of so much desire on the one 
 side and admiration on the other. It was a 
 half dozen of weazeny baked pears, beggarly 
 remnant of the day s traffic. Another time I 
 stopped before a stall, debating whether to buy 
 some fine-looking peaches. Before I had made 
 up my mind, the vender, a stout fellow, with 
 a voice like a prize-bull of Bashan, opened 
 a mouth round and large as the muzzle of a 
 blunderbuss, and let fly into my ear the fol 
 lowing pertinent observation : " Belle fesche ! 
 belle pe-e-esche ! " (crescendo). I stared at him 
 in stunned bewilderment ; but, seeing that he 
 had reloaded and was about to fire again, took 
 to my heels, the exploded syllables rattling 
 after me like so many buckshot. A single tur 
 nip is argument enough with them till mid 
 night ; nay, I have heard a ruffian yelling over 
 a covered basket, which, I am convinced, was 
 empty, and only carried as an excuse for his 
 stupendous vocalism. It never struck me be 
 fore what a quiet people Americans are. 
 
 Of the pleasant places within easy walk of 
 Rome, I prefer the garden of the Villa Albani, 
 as being most Italian. One does not go to 
 Italy for examples of Price on the Picturesque. 
 Compared with landscape-gardening, it is Ra 
 cine to Shakespeare, I grant ; but it has its own 
 
252 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 charm, nevertheless. I like the balustraded 
 terraces, the sun-proof laurel walks, the vases 
 and statues. It is only in such a climate that 
 it does not seem inhuman to thrust a naked 
 statue out of doors. Not to speak of their in 
 congruity, how dreary do those white figures 
 look at Fountains Abbey in that shrewd York 
 shire atmosphere ! To put them there shows 
 the same bad taste that led Prince Polonia, as 
 Thackeray calls him, to build an artificial ruin 
 within a mile of Rome. But I doubt if the 
 Italian garden will bear transplantation. Far 
 ther north, or under a less constant sunshine, 
 it is but half hardy at the best. Within the 
 city, the garden of the French Academy is my 
 favorite retreat, because little frequented ; and 
 there is an arbor there in which I have read 
 comfortably (sitting where the sun could reach 
 me) in January. By the way, there is some 
 thing very agreeable in the way these people 
 have of making a kind of fireside of the sun 
 shine. With us it is either too hot or too cool, 
 or we are too busy. But, on the other hand, 
 they have no such thing as a chimney-corner. 
 
 Of course I haunt the collections of art faith 
 fully ; but my favorite gallery, after all, is the 
 street. There I always find something enter 
 taining, at least. The other day, on my way to 
 the Colonna Palace, I passed the Fountain of 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 253 
 
 Trevi, from which the water is now shut off on 
 account of repairs to the aqueduct. A scanty 
 rill of soap-sudsy liquid still trickled from one 
 of the conduits, and, seeing a crowd, I stopped 
 to find out what nothing or other had gathered 
 it. One charm of Rome is that nobody has 
 anything in particular to do, or, if he has, can 
 always stop doing it on the slightest pretext. 
 I found that some eels had been discovered, 
 and a very vivacious hunt was going on, the 
 chief Nimrods being boys. I happened to be 
 the first to see a huge eel wriggling from the 
 mouth of a pipe, and pointed him out. Two 
 lads at once rushed upon him. One essayed 
 the capture with his naked hands ; the other, 
 more provident, had armed himself with a rag 
 of woollen cloth with which to maintain his grip 
 more securely. Hardly had this latter arrested 
 his slippery prize, when a ragged rascal, watch 
 ing his opportunity, snatched it away, and in 
 stantly secured it by thrusting the head into 
 his mouth, and closing on it a set of teeth like 
 an ivory vice. But alas for ill-got gain ! Rob 
 Roy s 
 
 " Good old plan, 
 
 That he should take who has the power, 
 And he should keep who can," 
 
 did not serve here. There is scarce a square 
 rood in Rome without one or more stately 
 
254 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL 
 
 cocked hats in it, emblems of authority and 
 police. I saw the flash of the snow-white cross- 
 belts, gleaming through that dingy crowd like 
 the panache of Henri Quatre at Ivry, I saw the 
 mad plunge of the canvas-shielded head-piece, 
 sacred and terrible as that of Gessler ; and 
 while the greedy throng were dancing about 
 the anguilliceps, each taking his chance twitch 
 at the undulating object of all wishes, the cap 
 tor dodging his head hither and thither (vul 
 nerable, like Achilles, only in his eel, as a 
 Cockney tourist would say), a pair of broad 
 blue shoulders parted the assailants as a ship s 
 bows part a wave, a pair of blue arms, termi 
 nating in gloves of Berlin thread, were stretched 
 forth, not in benediction, one hand grasped 
 the slippery Briseis by the waist, the other be 
 stowed a cuff on the jaw-bone of Achilles, 
 which loosened (rather by its authority than its 
 physical force) the hitherto refractory incisors, 
 a snuffy bandanna was produced, the prisoner 
 was deposited in this temporary watch-house, 
 and the cocked hat sailed majestically away with 
 the property thus sequestered for the benefit 
 of the state. 
 
 " Gaudeant anguillae si mortuus sit homo ille, 
 Qui, quasi morte reas, excruciabat eas ! * 
 
 If you have got through that last sentence 
 without stopping for breath, you are fit to begin 
 
A FEW BITS OF ROMAN MOSAIC 255 
 
 on the Homer of Chapman, who, both as trans 
 lator and author, has the longest wind (espe 
 cially for a comparison), without being long- 
 winded, of all writers I know anything of, not 
 excepting Jeremy Taylor. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 1869 
 
 ONE of the most delightful books in my 
 father s library was White s " Natural 
 History of Selborne." For me it has 
 rather gained in charm with years. I used to 
 read it without knowing the secret of the plea 
 sure I found in it, but as I grow older I begin 
 to detect some of the simple expedients of this 
 natural magic. Open the book where you will, 
 it takes you out of doors. In our broiling July 
 weather one can walk out with this genially 
 garrulous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment 
 instead of fatigue. You have no trouble in 
 keeping abreast of him as he ambles along on 
 his hobby-horse, now pointing to a pretty view, 
 now stopping to watch the motions of a bird or 
 an insect, or to bag a specimen for the Hon 
 ourable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. 
 In simplicity of taste and natural refinement he 
 reminds one of Walton ; in tenderness toward 
 what he would have called the brute creation, 
 of Cowper. I do not know whether his descrip 
 tions of scenery are good or not, but they have 
 made me familiar with his neighborhood. Since 
 
260 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 I first read him, I have walked over some of 
 his favorite haunts, but I still see them through 
 his eyes rather than by any recollection of actual 
 and personal vision. The book has also the 
 delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White 
 seems never to have had any harder work to 
 do than to study the habits of his feathered 
 fellow townsfolk, or to watch the ripening of 
 his peaches on the wall. No doubt he looked 
 after the souls of his parishioners with official 
 and even friendly interest, but, I cannot help 
 suspecting, with a less personal solicitude. For 
 he seems to have lived before the Fall. His 
 volumes are the journal of Adam in Paradise, 
 " Annihilating all that *s made 
 To a green thought in a green shade.* 
 
 It is positive rest only to look into that garden 
 of his. It is vastly better than to 
 
 " See great Diocletian walk 
 In the Salonian garden s noble shade ; " 
 
 for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with 
 them the noises of Rome, while here the world 
 has no entrance. No rumor of the revolt of 
 the American Colonies appears to have reached 
 him. " The natural term of an hog s life" has 
 more interest for him than that of an empire. 
 Burgoyne may surrender and welcome ; of what 
 consequence is that compared with the fact that 
 we can explain the odd tumbling of rooks in 
 the air by their turning over " to scratch them- 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 261 
 
 selves with one claw " ? All the couriers in 
 Europe spurring rowel-deep make no stir in 
 Mr. White s little Chartreuse ; but the arrival 
 of the house-martin a day earlier or later than 
 last year is a piece of news worth sending ex 
 press to all his correspondents. 
 
 Another secret charm of this book is its in 
 advertent humor, so much the more delicious 
 because unsuspected by the author. How 
 pleasant is his innocent vanity in adding to the 
 list of the British, and still more of the Sel- 
 bornian, fauna ! I believe he would gladly have 
 consented to be eaten by a tiger or a crocodile, 
 if by that means the occasional presence within 
 the parish limits of either of these anthropopha 
 gous brutes could have been established. He 
 brags of no fine society, but is plainly a little 
 elated by "having considerable acquaintance 
 with a tame brown owl." Most of us have 
 known our share of owls, but few can boast of 
 intimacy with a feathered one. The great events 
 of Mr. White s life, too, have that dispropor 
 tionate importance which is always humorous. 
 To think of his hands having actually been 
 thought worthy (as neither Willoughby s nor 
 Ray s were) to hold a stilted plover, the Chara- 
 drius himantopus, with no back toe, and therefore 
 "liable, in speculation, to perpetual vacilla 
 tions " ! I wonder, by the way, if metaphysi 
 cians have no hind toes. In 1770 he makes 
 
262 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 the acquaintance in Sussex of " an old family 
 tortoise/ which had then been domesticated 
 for thirty years. It is clear that he fell in love 
 with it at first sight. We have no means of 
 tracing the growth of his passion ; but in 1780 
 we find him eloping with its object in a post- 
 chaise. " The rattle and hurry of the journey 
 so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it 
 out in a border, it walked twice down to the 
 bottom of my garden." It reads like a Court 
 Journal : " Yesterday morning H. R. H. the 
 Princess Alice took an airing of half an hour 
 on the terrace of Windsor Castle." This tor 
 toise might have been a member of the Royal 
 Society, if he could have condescended to so 
 ignoble an ambition. It had but just been dis 
 covered that a surface inclined at a certain angle 
 with the plane of the horizon took more of the 
 sun s rays. The tortoise had always known 
 this (though he unostentatiously made no pa 
 rade of it), and used accordingly to tilt himself 
 up against the garden wall in the autumn. He 
 seems to have been more of a philosopher than 
 even Mr. White himself, caring for nothing 
 but to get under a cabbage-leaf when it rained, 
 or when the sun was too hot, and to bury him 
 self alive before frost, a four-footed Diogenes, 
 who carried his tub on his back. 
 
 There are moods in which this kind of his 
 tory is infinitely refreshing. These creatures 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 263 
 
 whom we affect to look down upon as the 
 drudges of instinct are members of a common 
 wealth whose constitution rests on immovable 
 bases. Never any need of reconstruction there ! 
 They never dream of settling it by vote that 
 eight hours are equal to ten, or that one creature 
 is as clever as another and no more. They do 
 not use their poor wits in regulating God s 
 clocks, nor think they cannot go astray so long 
 as they carry their guide-board about with 
 them, a delusion we often practise upon our 
 selves with our high and mighty reason, that 
 admirable finger-post which points every way, 
 as we choose to turn it, and always right. It is 
 good for us now and then to converse with a 
 world like Mr. White s, where Man is the least 
 important of animals. But one who, like me, 
 has always lived in the country and always on 
 the same spot, is drawn to his book by other 
 occult sympathies. Do we not share his indig 
 nation at that stupid Martin who had graduated 
 his thermometer no lower than 4 above zero 
 of Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest weather 
 ever known the mercury basely absconded into 
 the bulb, and left us to see the victory slip 
 through our fingers just as they were closing 
 upon it ? No man, I suspect, ever lived long in 
 the country without being bitten by these me 
 teorological ambitions. He likes to be hotter 
 and colder, to have been more deeply snowed 
 
264 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 up, to have more trees, and larger, blown down 
 than his neighbors. With us descendants of the 
 Puritans especially, these weather competitions 
 supply the abnegated excitement of the race 
 course. Men learn to value thermometers of 
 the true imaginative temperament, capable of 
 prodigious elations and corresponding dejec 
 tions. The other day (5th July) I marked 98 
 in the shade, my high-water mark, higher by 
 one degree than I had ever seen it before! 1 
 happened to meet a neighbor ; as we mopped 
 our brows at each other, he told me that he had 
 just cleared 100, and I went home a beaten 
 man. I had not felt the heat before, save as a 
 beautiful exaggeration of sunshine ; but now it 
 oppressed me with the prosaic vulgarity of an 
 oven. What had been poetic intensity became 
 all at once rhetorical hyperbole. I might sus 
 pect his thermometer (as indeed I did, for we 
 Harvard men are apt to think ill of any gradua 
 tion save our own) ; but it was a poor consola 
 tion. The fact remained that his herald Mer 
 cury, standing a-tiptoe, could look down on 
 mine. I seem to glimpse something of this 
 familiar weakness in Mr. White. He, too, has 
 shared in these mercurial triumphs and defeats. 
 Nor do I doubt that he had a true country 
 gentleman s interest in the weathercock ; that 
 his first question on coming down of a morning 
 was, like Barabas s, 
 
 " Into what quarter peers my halcyon s bill ? " 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 265 
 
 It is an innocent and healthful employment 
 of the mind, distracting one from too contin 
 ual study of oneself, and leading one to dwell 
 rather upon the indigestions of the elements than 
 one s own. " Did the wind back round, or go 
 about with the sun ? " is a rational question that 
 bears not remotely on the making of hay and 
 the prosperity of crops. I have little doubt that 
 the regulated observation of the vane in many 
 different places, and the interchange of results 
 by telegraph, would put the weather, as it were, 
 in our power, by betraying its ambushes before 
 it is ready to give the assault. 1 At first sight, 
 nothing seems more drolly trivial than the lives 
 of those whose single achievement is to record 
 the wind and the temperature three times a day. 
 Yet such men are doubtless sent into the world 
 for this special end, and perhaps there is no 
 kind of accurate observation, whatever its ob 
 ject, that has not its final use and value for 
 some one or other. It is even to be hoped that 
 the speculations of our newspaper editors and 
 their myriad correspondents upon the signs of 
 the political atmosphere may also fill their ap 
 pointed place in a well-regulated universe, if it 
 be only that of supplying so many more jack- 
 o -lanterns to the future historian. Nay, the 
 observations on finance of an M. C. whose sole 
 knowledge of the subject has been derived from 
 
 1 This was written before we had a Weather Bureau. 
 
266 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 a lifelong success in getting a living out of the 
 public without paying any equivalent therefor, 
 will perhaps be of interest hereafter to some 
 explorer of our cloaca maxima^ whenever it is 
 cleansed. 
 
 For many years I have been in the habit of 
 noting down some of the leading events of my 
 embowered solitude, such as the coming of cer 
 tain birds and the like a kind of memoires 
 pour servir, after the fashion of White, rather 
 than properly digested natural history. I think 
 it not impossible that a few simple stories of my 
 winged acquaintances might be found enter 
 taining by persons of kindred taste. 
 
 There is a common notion that animals are 
 better meteorologists than men, and I have little 
 doubt that in immediate weather-wisdom they 
 have the advantage of our sophisticated senses 
 (though I suspect a sailor or shepherd would 
 be their match), but I have seen nothing that 
 leads me to believe their minds capable of erect 
 ing the horoscope of a whole season, and letting 
 us know beforehand whether the winter will be 
 severe or the summer rainless. Their foresight 
 is provincial or even parochial, 
 
 " By nature knew he ech ascensioun 
 Of equinoxial in thilke toun." 
 
 I more than suspect that the Clerk of the 
 Weather himself does not always know very 
 long in advance whether he is to draw an order 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 267 
 
 for hot or cold, dry or moist, and the musquash 
 is scarce likely to be wiser. I have noted but 
 two days difference in the coming of the song- 
 sparrow between a very early and a very back 
 ward spring. This very year I saw the linnets 
 at work thatching, just before a snow-storm 
 which covered the ground several inches deep 
 for a number of days. They struck work and 
 left us for a while, no doubt in search of food. 
 Birds frequently perish from sudden changes in 
 our whimsical spring weather of which they had 
 no foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a 
 cherry tree, then in full bloom, near my window, 
 was covered with humming-birds benumbed by 
 a fall of mingled rain and snow, which probably 
 killed many of them. It should seem that their 
 coming was dated by the height of the sun, 
 which betrays them into unthrifty matrimony ; 
 
 So nature pricketh hem in their corages ; 
 
 but their going is another matter. The chim 
 ney-swallows leave us early, for example, appar 
 ently so soon as their latest fledglings are firm 
 enough of wing to attempt the long rowing- 
 match that is before them. On the other hand, 
 the wild-geese probably do not leave the North 
 till they are frozen out, for I have heard their 
 bugles sounding southward so late as the middle 
 of December. What may be called local migra 
 tions are doubtless dictated by the chances of 
 
268 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 food. I have once been visited by large flights 
 of cross-bills ; and whenever the snow lies long 
 and deep on the ground, a flock of cedar-birds 
 comes in midwinter to eat the berries on my 
 hawthorns. I have never been quite able to 
 fathom the local, or rather geographical partiali 
 ties of birds. Never before this summer ( 1 870) 
 have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, 
 built in my orchard ; though I always know 
 where to find them within half a mile. The rose- 
 breasted grosbeak has been a familiar bird in 
 Brookline (three miles away), yet I never saw 
 one here till last July, when I found a female 
 busy among my raspberries and surprisingly 
 bold. I hope she was prospecting with a view to 
 settlement in our garden. She seemed, on the 
 whole, to think well of my fruit, and I would 
 gladly plant another bed if it would help to win 
 over so delightful a neighbor. 
 
 The return of the robin is commonly an 
 nounced by the newspapers, like that of eminent 
 or notorious people to a watering-place, as the 
 first authentic notification of spring. And such 
 his appearance in the orchard and garden un 
 doubtedly is. But, in spite of his name of 
 migratory thrush, he stays with us all winter, 
 and I have seen him when the thermometer 
 marked 15 degrees below zero of Fahrenheit, 
 armed impregnably within, like Emerson s Tit 
 mouse, and as cheerful as he. The robin has a 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 269 
 
 bad reputation among people who do not value 
 themselves less for being fond of cherries. 
 There is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, 
 and his song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, 
 too largely ballasted with prose. His ethics are 
 of the Poor Richard school, and the main chance 
 which calls forth all his energy is altogether of 
 the belly. He never has those fine intervals 
 of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird 
 and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a that 
 and twice as muckle s a that, I would not ex 
 change him for all the cherries that ever came 
 out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he 
 has not wholly forfeited that superiority which 
 belongs to the children of nature. He has a 
 finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from 
 many successive committees of the Horticultural 
 Society, and he eats with a relishing gulp not 
 inferior to Dr. Johnson s. He feels and freely 
 exercises his right of eminent domain. His is 
 the earliest mess of green peas ; his all the mul 
 berries I had fancied mine. But if he get also 
 the lion s share of the raspberries, he is a great 
 planter, and sows those wild ones in the woods, 
 that solace the pedestrian and give a momentary 
 calm even to the jaded victims of the White 
 Hills. He keeps a strict eye over one s fruit, 
 and knows to a shade of purple when your 
 grapes have cooked long enough in the sun. 
 During the severe drought a few years ago, 
 
270 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 the robins wholly vanished from my garden. I 
 neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. 
 Meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather 
 shy of bearing, seemed to find the dusty air 
 congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet 
 Argos across the sea, decked itself with a score 
 or so of fair bunches. I watched them from day 
 to day till they should have secreted sugar 
 enough from the sunbeams, and at last made 
 up my mind that I would celebrate my vintage 
 the next morning. But the robins too had some 
 how kept note of them. They must have sent 
 out spies, as did the Jews into the promised 
 land, before I was stirring. When I went with 
 my basket, at least a dozen of these winged 
 vintagers bustled out from among the leaves, 
 and alighting on the nearest trees interchanged 
 some shrill remarks about me of a derogatory 
 nature. They had fairly sacked the vine. Not 
 Wellington s veterans made cleaner work of a 
 Spanish town ; not Federals or Confederates 
 were ever more impartial in the confiscation of 
 neutral chickens. I was keeping my grapes a 
 secret to surprise the fair Fidele with, but the 
 robins made them a profounder secret to her 
 than I had meant. The tattered remnant of a 
 single bunch was all my harvest-home. How 
 paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket, 
 as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in an 
 eagle s nest ! I could not help laughing ; and 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 271 
 
 the robins seemed to join heartily in the merri 
 ment. There was a native grape-vine close by, 
 blue with its less refined abundance, but my 
 cunning thieves preferred the foreign flavor. 
 Could I tax them with want of taste ? 
 
 The robins are not good solo singers, but 
 their chorus, as, like primitive fire-worshippers, 
 they hail the return of light and warmth to the 
 world, is unrivalled. There are a hundred sing 
 ing like one. They are noisy enough then, and 
 sing, as poets should, with no afterthought. 
 But when they come after cherries to the tree 
 near my window, they muffle their voices, and 
 their faint pip, pip, pop ! sounds far away at the 
 bottom of the garden, where they know I shall 
 not suspect them of robbing the great black- 
 walnut of its bitter-rinded store. 1 They are 
 feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure, but then how 
 brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby 
 in the sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the 
 dark green of the fringe-tree ! After they have 
 pinched and shaken all the life out of an earth 
 worm, as Italian cooks pound all the spirit out 
 of a steak, and then gulped him, they stand up 
 in honest self-confidence, expand their red waist 
 coats with the virtuous air of a lobby member, 
 and outface you with an eye that calmly chal- 
 
 1 The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one 
 of the sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same 
 way with the most beguiling mockery of distance. 
 
272 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 lenges inquiry. " Do I look like a bird that 
 knows the flavor of raw vermin ? I throw my 
 self upon a jury of my peers. Ask any robin 
 if he ever ate anything less ascetic than the fru 
 gal berry of the juniper, and he will answer that 
 his vow forbids him." Can such an open bosom 
 cover such depravity ? Alas, yes ! I have no 
 doubt his breast was redder at that very mo 
 ment with the blood of my raspberries. On the 
 whole, he is a doubtful friend in the garden. 
 He makes his dessert of all kinds of berries, 
 and is not averse from early pears. But when 
 we remember how omnivorous he is, eating his 
 own weight in an incredibly short time, and that 
 Nature seems exhaustless in her invention of 
 new insects hostile to vegetation, perhaps we 
 may reckon that he does more good than harm. 
 For my own part, I would rather have his 
 cheerfulness and kind neighborhood than many 
 berries. 
 
 For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still 
 warmer regard. Always a good singer, he some 
 times nearly equals the brown thrush, and has 
 the merit of keeping up his music later in the 
 evening than any bird of my familiar acquaint 
 ance. Ever since I can remember, a pair of 
 them have built in a gigantic syringa, near our 
 front door, and I have known the male to sing 
 almost uninterruptedly during the evenings of 
 early summer till twilight duskened into dark. 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 273 
 
 They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all have 
 a delightful way of crooning over, and, as it 
 were, rehearsing their song in an undertone, 
 which makes their nearness always unobtrusive. 
 Though there is the most trustworthy witness 
 to the imitative propensity of this bird, I have 
 only once, during an intimacy of more than 
 forty years, heard him indulge it. In that case, 
 the imitation was by no means so close as to 
 deceive, but a free reproduction of the notes of 
 some other birds, especially of the oriole, as a 
 kind of variation in his own song. The catbird 
 is as shy as the robin is vulgarly familiar. Only 
 when his nest or his fledglings are approached 
 does he become noisy and almost aggressive. I 
 have known him to station his young in a thick 
 cornel-bush on the edge of the raspberry-bed, 
 after the fruit began to ripen, and feed them 
 there for a week or more. In such cases he 
 shows none of that conscious guilt which makes 
 the robin contemptible. On the contrary, he 
 will maintain his post in the thicket, and sharply 
 scold the intruder who ventures to steal his 
 berries. After all, his claim is only for tithes, 
 while the robin will bag your entire crop if he 
 get a chance. 
 
 Dr. Watts s statement that " birds in their 
 little nests agree," like too many others in 
 tended to form the infant mind, is very far from 
 being true. On the contrary, the most peaceful 
 
274 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 relation of the different species to each other is 
 that of armed neutrality. They are very jealous 
 of neighbors. A few years ago, I was much in 
 terested in the house-building of a pair of sum 
 mer yellow-birds. They had chosen a very 
 pretty site near the top of a tall white lilac, 
 within easy eye-shot of a chamber window. A 
 very pleasant thing it was to see their little home 
 growing with mutual help, to watch their in 
 dustrious skill interrupted only by little flirts 
 and snatches of endearment, frugally cut short 
 by the common sense of the tiny housewife. 
 They had brought their work nearly to an end, 
 and had already begun to line it with fern-down, 
 the gathering of which demanded more dis 
 tant journeys and longer absences. But, alas ! 
 the syringa, immemorial manor of the catbirds, 
 was not more than twenty feet away, and these 
 " giddy neighbors " had, as it appeared, been 
 all along jealously watchful, though silent, wit 
 nesses of what they deemed an intrusion of 
 squatters. No sooner were the pretty mates 
 fairly gone for a new load of lining, than 
 " To their unguarded nest these weasel Scots 
 Came stealing. * 
 
 Silently they flew back and forth, each giving 
 a vengeful dab at the nest in passing. They did 
 not fall to and deliberately destroy it, for they 
 might have been caught at their mischief. As 
 it was, whenever the yellow-birds came back, 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 275 
 
 their enemies were hidden in their own sight- 
 proof bush. Several times their unconscious 
 victims repaired damages, but at length, after 
 counsel taken together, they gave it up. Per 
 haps, like other unlettered folk, they came to 
 the conclusion that the Devil was in it, and 
 yielded to the invisible persecutions of witch 
 craft. 
 
 The robins, by constant attacks and annoy 
 ances, have succeeded in driving off the blue- 
 jays who used to build in our pines, their gay 
 colors and quaint noisy ways making them 
 welcome and amusing neighbors. I once had 
 the chance of doing a kindness to a household 
 of them, which they received with very friendly 
 condescension. I had had my eye for some 
 time upon a nest, and was puzzled by a constant 
 fluttering of what seemed full-grown wings in it 
 whenever I drew nigh. At last I climbed the 
 tree, in spite of angry protests from the old birds 
 against my intrusion. The mystery had a very 
 simple solution. In building the nest, a long 
 piece of pack-thread had been somewhat loosely 
 woven in. Three of the young had contrived 
 to entangle themselves in it, and had become 
 full grown without being able to launch them 
 selves upon the air. One was unharmed ; an 
 other had so tightly twisted the cord about its 
 shank that one foot was curled up and seemed 
 paralyzed ; the third, in its struggles to escape, 
 
276 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 had sawn through the flesh of the thigh and so 
 much harmed itself that I thought it humane 
 to put an end to its misery. When I took out 
 my knife to cut their hempen bonds, the heads 
 of the family seemed to divine my friendly in 
 tent. Suddenly ceasing their cries and threats, 
 they perched quietly within reach of my hand, 
 and watched me in my work of manumission. 
 This, owing to the fluttering terror of the pris 
 oners, was an affair of some delicacy ; but ere 
 long I was rewarded by seeing one of them fly 
 away to a neighboring tree, while the cripple, 
 making a parachute of his wings, came lightly 
 to the ground, and hopped off as well as he 
 could with one leg, obsequiously waited on by 
 his elders. A week later I had the satisfaction 
 of meeting him in the pine-walk, in good spirits, 
 and already so far recovered as to be able to 
 balance himself with the lame foot. I have no 
 doubt that in his old age he accounted for his 
 lameness by some handsome story of a wound 
 received at the famous Battle of the Pines, 
 when our tribe, overcome by numbers, was 
 driven from its ancient camping-ground. Of 
 late years the jays have visited us only at in 
 tervals ; and in winter their bright plumage, set 
 off by the snow, and their cheerful cry, are es 
 pecially welcome. They would have furnished 
 .^Esop with a fable, for the feathered crest in 
 which they seem to take so much satisfaction is 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 277 
 
 often their fatal snare. Country boys make a 
 hole with their finger in the snow-crust just large 
 enough to admit the jay s head, and, hollowing 
 it out somewhat beneath, bait it with a few ker 
 nels of corn. The crest slips easily into the 
 trap, but refuses to be pulled out again, and he 
 who came to feast remains a prey. 
 
 Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted 
 a settlement in my pines, and twice have the 
 robins, who claim a right of preemption, so 
 successfully played the part of border ruffians 
 as to drive them away, to my great regret, for 
 they are the best substitute we have for rooks. 
 At Shady Hill (now, alas ! empty of its so long- 
 loved household) they build by hundreds, and 
 nothing can be more cheery than their creaking 
 clatter (like a convention of old-fashioned tav 
 ern-signs) as they gather at evening to debate 
 in mass meeting their windy politics, or to gos 
 sip at their tent-doors over the events of the 
 day. Their port is grave, and their stalk across 
 the turf as martial as that of a second-rate ghost 
 in Hamlet. They never meddled with my 
 corn, so far as I could discover. 
 
 For a few years I had crows, but their nests 
 are an irresistible bait for boys, and their settle 
 ment was broken up. They grew so wonted as 
 to throw off a great part of their shyness, and to 
 tolerate my near approach. One very hot day 
 I stood for some time within twenty feet of a 
 
278 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 mother and three children, who sat on an elm 
 bough over my head, gasping in the sultry air, 
 and holding their wings half spread for cool 
 ness. All birds during the pairing season be 
 come more or less sentimental, and murmur 
 soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding- 
 organ repetition and loudness of their habitual 
 song. The crow is very comical as a lover, and 
 to hear him trying to soften his croak to the 
 proper Saint Preux standard has something the 
 effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tenny 
 son. Yet there are few things to my ear more 
 melodious than his caw of a clear winter morn 
 ing as it drops to you filtered through five 
 hundred fathoms of crisp blue air. The hos 
 tility of all smaller birds makes the moral 
 character of the crow, for all his deaconlike 
 demeanor and garb, somewhat questionable. 
 He could never sally forth without insult. The 
 golden robins, especially, would chase him as 
 far as I could follow with my eye, making him 
 duck clumsily to avoid their importunate bills. 
 I do not believe, however, that he robbed any 
 nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the gas 
 works, which, in our free-and-easy community, 
 is allowed to poison the river, supplied him 
 with dead alewives in abundance. I used to 
 watch him making his periodical visits to the 
 salt-marshes and coming back with a fish in his 
 beak to his young savages, who, no doubt, like 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 279 
 
 it in that condition which makes it savory to 
 the Kanakas and other corvine races of men. 
 
 Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have 
 seen seven males flashing about the garden at 
 once. A merry crew of them swing their ham 
 mocks from the pendulous boughs. During one 
 of these latter years, when the canker-worms 
 stripped our elms as bare as winter, these birds 
 went to the trouble of rebuilding their unroofed 
 nests, and chose for the purpose trees which 
 are safe from those swarming vandals, such as 
 the ash and the button-wood. One year a pair 
 (disturbed, I suppose, elsewhere) built a second 
 nest in an elm, within a few yards of the house. 
 My friend Edward E. Hale told me once that 
 the oriole rejected from his web all strands of 
 brilliant color, and I thought it a striking ex 
 ample of that instinct of concealment noticeable 
 in many birds, though it should seem in this 
 instance that the nest was amply protected by 
 its position from all marauders but owls and 
 squirrels. Last year, however, I had the fullest 
 proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken. A pair of 
 orioles built on the lowest trailer of a weeping- 
 elm, which hung within ten feet of our drawing- 
 room window, and so low that I could reach it 
 from the ground. The nest was wholly woven 
 and felted with ravellings of woollen carpet in 
 which scarlet predominated. Would the same 
 thing have happened in the woods r Or did the 
 
28o MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 nearness of a human dwelling perhaps give the 
 birds a greater feeling of security ? They are 
 very bold, by the way, in quest of cordage, and 
 I have often watched them stripping the fibrous 
 bark from a honeysuckle growing over the very 
 door. But, indeed, all my birds look upon me 
 as if I were a mere tenant at will, and they were 
 landlords. With shame I confess it, I have been 
 bullied even by a humming-bird. This spring, 
 as I was cleansing a pear-tree of its lichens, 
 one of these little zigzagging blurs came purr 
 ing toward me, couching his long bill like a 
 lance, his throat sparkling with angry fire, to 
 warn me off from a Missouri-currant whose 
 honey he was sipping. And many a time he 
 has driven me out of a flower-bed. This sum 
 mer, by the way, a pair of these winged emer 
 alds fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a 
 bough of the same elm which the orioles had 
 enlivened the year before. We watched all their 
 proceedings from the window through an opera- 
 glass, and saw their two nestlings grow from 
 black needles with a tuft of down at the lower 
 end, till they whirled away on their first short 
 experimental flights. They became strong of 
 wing in a surprisingly short time, and I never 
 saw them or the male bird after, though the 
 female was regular as usual in her visits to our 
 petunias and verbenas. I do not think it ground 
 enough for a generalization, but in the many 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 281 
 
 times when I watched the old birds feeding 
 their young, the mother always alighted, while 
 the father as uniformly remained upon the wing. 
 The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, 
 tinkling through the garden in blossoming-time, 
 but this year, owing to the long rains early in 
 the season, their favorite meadows were flooded, 
 and they were driven to the upland. So I had 
 a pair of them domiciled in my grass-field. The 
 male used to perch in an apple-tree, then in full 
 bloom, and, while I stood perfectly still close 
 by, he would circle away, quivering round the 
 entire field of five acres, with no break in his 
 song, and settle down again among the blos 
 soms, to be hurried away almost immediately 
 by a new rapture of music. He had the volu 
 bility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like 
 him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits 
 of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try- 
 T) odor-Lincoln s-opodeldoc ! he seemed to repeat 
 over and over again, with a rapidity that would 
 have distanced the deftest-tongued Figaro that 
 ever rattled. I remember Count Gurowski say 
 ing once, with that easy superiority of know 
 ledge about this country which is the monopoly 
 of foreigners, that we had no singing-birds ! 
 Well, well, Mr. Hepworth Dixon has found 
 the typical America in Oneida and Salt Lake 
 City. Of course, an intelligent European is the 
 best judge of these matters. The truth is there 
 
282 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 are more singing-birds in Europe because there 
 are fewer forests. These songsters love the 
 neighborhood of man because hawks and owls 
 are rarer, while their own food is more abun 
 dant. Most people seem to think, the more 
 trees, the more birds. Even Chateaubriand, 
 who first tried the primitive-forest-cure, and 
 whose description of the wilderness in its im 
 aginative effects is unmatched, fancies the " peo 
 ple of the air singing their hymns to him." So 
 far as my own observation goes, the farther one 
 penetrates the sombre solitudes of the woods, 
 the more seldom does one hear the voice of any 
 singing-bird. In spite of Chateaubriand s mi 
 nuteness of detail, in spite of that marvellous 
 reverberation of the decrepit tree falling of its 
 own weight, which he was the first to notice, I 
 cannot help doubting whether he made his way 
 very deep into the wilderness. At any rate, in 
 a letter to Fontanes, written in 1 804, he speaks 
 of mes chevaux paissants a quelque distance. To 
 be sure Chateaubriand was apt to mount the 
 high horse, and this may have been but an after 
 thought of the grand seigneur, but certainly one 
 would not make much headway on horseback 
 toward the druid fastnesses of the primeval pine. 
 The bobolinks build in considerable numbers 
 in a meadow within a quarter of a mile of us. 
 A houseless lane passes through the midst of 
 their camp, and in clear westerly weather, at 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 283 
 
 the right season, one may hear a score of them 
 singing at once. When they are breeding, if I 
 chance to pass, one of the male birds always 
 accompanies me like a constable, flitting from 
 post to post of the rail fence, with a short note 
 of reproof continually repeated, till I am fairly 
 out of the neighborhood. Then he will swing 
 away into the air and run down the wind, gurg 
 ling music without stint over the unheeding 
 tussocks of meadow-grass and dark clumps of 
 bulrushes that mark his domain. 
 
 We have no bird whose song will match the 
 nightingale s in compass, none whose note is so 
 rich as that of the European blackbird ; but for 
 mere rapture I have never heard the bobolink s 
 rival. Yet his opera-season is a short one. The 
 ground and tree sparrows are our most constant 
 performers. It is now late in August, and one 
 of the latter sings every day and all day long in 
 the garden. Till within a fortnight, a pair of 
 indigo-birds would keep up their lively duo for 
 an hour together. While I write, I hear an 
 oriole gay as in June, and the plaintive may-be 
 of the goldfinch tells me he is stealing my let 
 tuce-seeds. I know not what the experience 
 of others may have been, but the only bird I 
 have ever heard sing in the night has been the 
 chip-bird. I should say he sang about as often 
 during the darkness as cocks crow. One can 
 hardly help fancying that he sings in his dreams. 
 
284 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 " Father of light, what sunnie seed, 
 What glance of day hast thou confined 
 Into this bird ? To all the breed 
 This busie ray thou hast assigned; 
 Their magnetism works all night 
 And dreams of Paradise and light. J 
 
 On second thought, I remember to have heard 
 the cuckoo strike the hours nearly all night with 
 the regularity of a Swiss clock. 
 
 The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare 
 to that end, bring us the flicker every summer, 
 and almost daily I hear his wild scream and 
 laugh close at hand, himself invisible. He is a 
 shy bird, but a few days ago I had the satis 
 faction of studying him through the blinds as 
 he sat on a tree within a few feet of me. Seen 
 so near and at rest, he makes good his claim 
 to the title of pigeon-woodpecker. Lumberers 
 have a notion that he is harmful to timber, dig 
 ging little holes through the bark to encourage 
 the settlement of insects. The regular rings of 
 such perforations which one may see in almost 
 any apple-orchard seem to give some prob 
 ability to this theory. Almost every season a 
 solitary quail visits us, and, unseen among the 
 currant-bushes, calls Bob White, Bob White, as 
 if he were playing at hide-and-seek with that 
 imaginary being. A rarer visitant is the turtle 
 dove, whose pleasant coo (something like the 
 muffled crow of a cock from a coop covered 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 285 
 
 with snow) I have sometimes heard, and whom 
 I once had the good luck to see close by me in 
 the mulberry-tree. The wild-pigeon, once nu 
 merous, I have not seen for many years. 1 Of 
 savage birds, a hen-hawk now and then quar 
 ters himself upon us for a few days, sitting 
 sluggish in a tree after a surfeit of poultry. 
 One of them once offered me a near shot from 
 my study-window one drizzly day for several 
 hours. But it was Sunday, and I gave him the 
 benefit of its gracious truce of God. 
 
 Certain birds have disappeared from our 
 neighborhood within my memory. I remember 
 when the whippoorwill could be heard in Sweet 
 Auburn. The night-hawk, once common, is 
 now rare. The brown thrush has moved farther 
 up country. For years I have not seen or heard 
 any of the larger owls, whose hooting was one 
 of my boyish terrors. The cliff-swallow, strange 
 emigrant, that eastward takes his way, has come 
 and gone again in my time. The bank-swallows, 
 well-nigh innumerable during my boyhood, no 
 longer frequent the crumbly cliff of the gravel- 
 pit by the river. The barn-swallows, which once 
 swarmed in our barn, flashing through the dusty 
 sunstreaks of the mow, have been gone these 
 many years. My father would lead me out to 
 see them gather on the roof, and take counsel 
 before their yearly migration, as Mr. White 
 
 1 They made their appearance again this summer (1870). 
 
286 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 used to see them at Selborne. Eheu^fugaces! 
 Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and 
 rolls his distant thunders night and day in the 
 wide-throated chimneys, still sprinkles the even 
 ing air with his merry twittering. The popu 
 lous herony in Fresh Pond meadows has been 
 well-nigh broken up, but still a pair or two 
 haunt the old home, as the gypsies of Ellan- 
 gowan their ruined huts, and every evening fly 
 over us riverwards, clearing their throats with 
 a hoarse hawk as they go, and, in cloudy wea 
 ther, scarce higher than the tops of the chim 
 neys. Sometimes I have known one to alight 
 in one of our trees, though for what purpose I 
 never could divine. Since this was written, they 
 began in greater numbers to spend the day in a 
 group of pines just within my borders. Once, 
 when my exploring footstep startled them, I 
 counted fifty flashing in circles over my head. 
 By watchful protection I induced two pairs of 
 them to build, and, as if sensible of my friend 
 ship, they made their nests in a pine within a 
 hundred feet of the house. They shine forever 
 in Longfellow s verse. Kingfishers have some 
 times puzzled me in the same way, perched at 
 high noon in a pine, springing their watchman s 
 rattle when they flitted away from my curiosity, 
 and seeming to shove their top-heavy heads 
 along as a man does a wheelbarrow. 
 
 Some birds have left us, I suppose, because 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 287 
 
 the country is growing less wild. I once found 
 a summer duck s nest within quarter of a mile 
 of our house, but such a trouvaille would be im 
 possible now as Kidd s treasure. And yet the 
 mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite 
 satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, 
 on my way to bathe in the river, I saw every 
 day a brace of woodcock, on the miry edge of 
 a spring within a few rods of a house, and con 
 stantly visited by thirsty cows. There was no 
 growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet 
 these ordinarily shy birds were almost as indif 
 ferent to my passing as common poultry would 
 have been. Since bird-nesting has become sci 
 entific, and dignified itself as oology, that, no 
 doubt, is partly to blame for some of our losses. 
 But some old friends are constant. Wilson s 
 thrush comes every year to remind me of that 
 most poetic of ornithologists. He flits before 
 me through the pine-walk like the very genius 
 of solitude. A pair of pewees have built imme- 
 morially on a jutting brick in the arched entrance 
 to the ice-house. Always on the same brick, and 
 never more than a single pair, though two broods 
 of five each are raised there every summer. 
 How do they settle their claim to the home 
 stead ? By what right of primogeniture P Once 
 the children of a man employed about the place 
 oologized the nest, and the pewees left us for 
 a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the 
 
288 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 messmates of the Ancient Mariner did towards 
 him after he had shot the albatross. But the 
 pewees came back at last, and one of them is 
 now on his wonted perch, so near my window 
 that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps 
 a fly on the wing with the unerring precision 
 a stately Trasteverina shows in the capture of 
 her smaller deer. The pewee is the first bird to 
 pipe up in the morning ; and, during the early 
 summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation 
 of pewee with a slender whistle, unheard at any 
 other time. He saddens with the season, and, 
 as summer declines, he changes his note to eheu y 
 pewee ! as if in lamentation. Had he been an 
 Italian bird, Ovid would have had a plaintive 
 tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as often 
 to pursue a fly through the open window into 
 my library. 
 
 There is something inexpressibly dear to me 
 in these old friendships of a lifetime. There is 
 scarce a tree of mine but has had, at some time 
 or other, a happy homestead among its boughs, 
 and to which I cannot say, 
 
 " Many light hearts and wings, 
 Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers." 
 
 My walk under the pines would lose half its 
 summer charm were I to miss that shy anchor 
 ite, the Wilson s thrush, nor hear in haying- 
 time the metallic ring of his song, that justifies 
 his rustic name of scythe-whet. I protect my 
 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 289 
 
 game as jealously as an English squire. If any 
 body had oologized a certain cuckoo s nest I 
 know of (I have a pair in my garden every year), 
 it would have left me a sore place in my mind 
 for weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back 
 to the mansuetude they showed to the early 
 voyagers, and before (forgive trie involuntary 
 pun) they had grown accustomed to man and 
 knew his savage ways. And they repay your 
 kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate 
 ever to breed contempt. I have made a Penn- 
 treaty with them, preferring that to the Puritan 
 way with the natives, which converted them to 
 a little Hebraism and a great deal of Medford 
 rum. If they will not come near enough to me 
 (as most of them will), I bring them close with 
 an opera-glass, a much better weapon than a 
 gun. I would not, if I could, convert them from 
 their pretty pagan ways. The only one I some 
 times have savage doubts about is the red squir 
 rel. I think he oologizes. I know he eats cher 
 ries (we counted five of them at one time in a 
 single tree, the stones pattering down like the 
 sparse hail that preludes a storm), and that he 
 gnaws off the small end of pears to get at the 
 seeds. He steals the corn from under the noses 
 of my poultry. But what would you have ? 
 He will come down upon a limb of the tree I 
 am lying under till he is within a yard of me. 
 He and his mate will scurry up and down the 
 
290 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 great black-walnut for my diversion, chattering 
 like monkeys. Can I sign his death-warrant 
 who has tolerated me about his grounds so 
 long? Not I. Let them steal, and welcome. I 
 am sure I should, had I had the same bringing 
 up and the same temptation. As for the birds, 
 I do not believe there is one of them but does 
 more good than harm ; and of how many fea- 
 therless bipeds can this be said ? 
 
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION 
 IN FOREIGNERS 
 
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION 
 IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 1869 
 
 WALKING one day toward the Vil 
 lage, as we used to call it in the good 
 old days, when almost every dweller 
 in the town had been born in it, I was enjoying 
 that delicious sense of disenthralment from the 
 actual which the deepening twilight brings with 
 it, giving as it does a sort of obscure novelty to 
 things familiar. The coolness, the hush, broken 
 only by the distant bleat of some belated goat, 
 querulous to be disburthened of her milky load, 
 the few faint stars, more guessed as yet than seen, 
 the sense that the coming dark would so soon 
 fold me in the secure privacy of its disguise, 
 all things combined in a result as near absolute 
 peace as can be hoped for by a man who knows 
 that there is a writ out against him in the hands 
 of the printer s devil. For the moment, I was 
 enjoying the blessed privilege of thinking with 
 out being called on to stand and deliver what 
 I thought to the small public who are good 
 enough to take any interest therein. I love old 
 
294 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 ways, and the path I was walking felt kindly 
 to the feet it had known for almost fifty years. 
 How many fleeting impressions it had shared 
 with me ! How many times I had lingered to 
 study the shadows of the leaves mezzotinted 
 upon the turf that edged it by the moon, of 
 the bare boughs etched with a touch beyond 
 Rembrandt by the same unconscious artist on 
 the smooth page of snow! If I turned round, 
 through dusky tree-gaps came the first twinkle 
 of evening lamps in the dear old homestead. 
 On Corey s Hill I could see these tiny pharoses 
 of love and home and sweet domestic thoughts 
 flash out one by one across the blackening salt- 
 meadow between. How much has not kerosene 
 added to the cheerfulness of our evening land 
 scape! A pair of night-herons flapped heavily 
 over me toward the hidden river. The war was 
 ended. I might walk townward without that 
 aching dread of bulletins that had darkened the 
 July sunshine and twice made the scarlet leaves 
 of October seem stained with blood. I remem 
 bered with a pang, half proud, half painful, how, 
 so many years ago, I had walked over the same 
 path and felt round my finger the soft pressure 
 of a little hand that was one day to harden with 
 faithful grip of sabre. On how many paths, 
 leading to how many homes where proud Mem 
 ory does all she can to fill up the fireside gaps 
 with shining shapes, must not men be walking 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 295 
 
 in just such pensive mood as I ? Ah, young 
 heroes, safe in immortal youth as those of 
 Homer, you at least carried your ideal hence 
 untarnished ! It is locked for you beyond moth 
 or rust in the treasure-chamber of Death. 
 
 Is not a country, I thought, that has had such 
 as they in it, that could give such as they a brave 
 joy in dying for it, worth something, then ? And 
 as I felt more and more the soothing magic of 
 evening s cool palm upon my temples, as my 
 fancy came home from its reverie, and my senses, 
 with reawakened curiosity, ran to the front win 
 dows again from the viewless closet of abstrac 
 tion, and felt a strange charm in finding the old 
 tree and shabby fence still there under the 
 travesty of falling night, nay, were conscious of 
 an unsuspected newness in familiar stars and 
 the fading outlines of hills my earliest horizon, 
 I was conscious of an immortal soul, and could 
 not but rejoice in the unwaning goodliness of 
 the world into which I had been born without 
 any merit of my own. I thought of dear Henry 
 Vaughan s rainbow, " Still young and fine ! " 
 I remembered people who had to go over to 
 the Alps to learn what the divine silence of 
 snow was, who must run to Italy before they 
 were conscious of the miracle wrought every day 
 under their very noses by the sunset, who must 
 call upon the Berkshire Hills to teach them what 
 a painter autumn was, while close at hand the 
 
296 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 Fresh Pond meadows made all oriels cheap with 
 hues that showed as if a sunset-cloud had been 
 wrecked among their maples. One might be 
 worse off than even in America, I thought. 
 There are some things so elastic that even the 
 heavy roller of democracy cannot flatten them 
 altogether down. The mind can weave itself 
 warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts and 
 dwell a hermit anywhere. A country without 
 traditions, without ennobling associations, a 
 scramble of parvenus, with a horrible conscious 
 ness of shoddy running through politics, man 
 ners, art, literature, nay, religion itself? I 
 confess, it did not seem so to me there in that 
 illimitable quiet, that serene self-possession of 
 nature, where Collins might have brooded his 
 " Ode to Evening," or where those verses on 
 Solitude in Dodsley s Collection, that Haw 
 thorne liked so much, might have been com 
 posed. Traditions ? Granting that we had none, 
 all that is worth having in them is the common 
 property of the soul, an estate in gavelkind 
 for all the sons of Adam, and, moreover, if 
 a man cannot stand on his two feet (the prime 
 quality of whoever has left any tradition behind 
 him), were it not better for him to be honest 
 about it at once, and go down on all fours? 
 And for associations, if one have not the wit to 
 make them for himself out of native earth, no 
 ready-made ones of other men will avail much. 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 297 
 
 Lexington is none the worse to me for not be 
 ing in Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name 
 is not Marathon. " Blessed old fields," I was 
 just exclaiming to myself, like one of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe s heroes," dear acres, innocently secure 
 from history, which these eyes first beheld, may 
 you be also those to which they shall at last 
 slowly darken ! " when I was interrupted by a 
 voice which asked me in German whether I was 
 the Herr Professor, Doctor, So-and-so ? The 
 " Doctor " was by brevet or vaticination, to 
 make the grade easier to my pocket. 
 
 One feels so intimately assured that one is 
 made up, in part, of shreds and leavings of the 
 past, in part of the interpolations of other people, 
 that an honest man would be slow in saying yes 
 to such a question. But " my name is So-and- 
 so " is a safe answer, and I gave it. While I had 
 been romancing with myself, the street-lamps 
 had been lighted, and it was under one of these 
 detectives that have robbed the Old Road of its 
 privilege of sanctuary after nightfall that I was 
 ambushed by my foe. The inexorable villain 
 had taken my description, it appears, that I 
 might have the less chance to escape him. Dr. 
 Holmes tells us that we change our substance, 
 not every seven years, as was once believed, but 
 with every breath we draw. Why had I not the 
 wit to avail myself of the subterfuge, and, like 
 Peter, to renounce my identity, especially, as in 
 
298 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 certain moods of mind, I have often more than 
 doubted of it myself? When a man is, as it 
 were, his own front door, and is thus knocked 
 at, why may he not assume the right of that 
 sacred wood to make every house a castle, by 
 denying himself to all visitations ? I was truly 
 not at home when the question was put to me, 
 but had to recall myself from all out-of-doors, 
 and to piece my self-consciousness hastily to 
 gether as well as I could before I answered it. 
 
 I knew perfectly well what was coming. It 
 is seldom that debtors or good Samaritans way 
 lay people under gas-lamps in order to force 
 money upon them, so far as I have seen or 
 heard. I was also aware, from considerable ex 
 perience, that every foreigner is persuaded that, 
 by doing this country the favor of coming to it, 
 he has laid every native thereof under an obli 
 gation, pecuniary or other, as the case may be, 
 whose discharge he is entitled to on demand 
 duly made in person or by letter. Too much 
 learning (of this kind) had made me mad in the 
 provincial sense of the word. I had begun life 
 with the theory of giving something to every 
 beggar that came along, though sure of never 
 finding a native-born countryman among them. 
 In a small way, I was resolved to emulate Ha- 
 tem Tai s tent, with its three hundred and sixty- 
 five entrances, one for every day in the year, 
 I know not whether he was astronomer enough 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 299 
 
 to add another for leap-years. The beggars were 
 a kind of German-silver aristocracy ; not real 
 plate, to be sure, but better than nothing. 
 Where everybody was overworked, they sup 
 plied the comfortable equipoise of absolute lei 
 sure, so aesthetically needful. Besides, I was but 
 too conscious of a vagrant fibre in myself, which 
 too often thrilled me in my solitary walks with 
 the temptation to wander on into infinite space, 
 and by a single spasm of resolution to emanci 
 pate myself from the drudgery of prosaic serfdom 
 to respectability and the regular course of things. 
 This prompting has been at times my familiar 
 demon, and I could not but feel a kind of re 
 spectful sympathy for men who had dared what 
 I had only sketched out to myself as a splendid 
 possibility. For seven years I helped maintain 
 one heroic man on an imaginary journey to 
 Portland, as fine an example as I have ever 
 known of hopeless loyalty to an ideal. I assisted 
 another so long in a fruitless attempt to reach 
 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, that at last we grinned 
 in each other s faces when we met, like a couple 
 of augurs. He was possessed by this harmless 
 mania as some are by the North Pole, and I 
 shall never forget his look of regretful compas 
 sion (as for one who was sacrificing his higher 
 life to the fleshpots of Egypt) when I at last 
 advised him somewhat strenuously to go to the 
 D , whither the road was so much travelled 
 
300 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 that he could not miss it. General Banks, in 
 his noble zeal for the honor of his country, 
 would confer on the Secretary of State the power 
 of imprisoning, in case of war, all these seekers 
 of the unattainable, thus by a stroke of the pen 
 annihilating the single poetic element in our 
 humdrum life. Alas ! not everybody has the 
 genius to be a Bobbin-Boy, or doubtless all 
 these also would have chosen that more pro 
 sperous line of life ! But moralists, sociologists, 
 political economists, and taxes have slowly con 
 vinced me that my beggarly sympathies were 
 a sin against society. Especially was the Buckle 
 doctrine of averages (so flattering to our free 
 will) persuasive with me ; for as there must be 
 in every year a certain number who would be 
 stow an alms on these abridged editions of the 
 Wandering Jew, the withdrawal of my quota 
 could make no possible difference, since some 
 destined proxy must always step forward to fill 
 my gap. Just so many misdirected letters every 
 year and no more ! Would it were as easy to 
 reckon up the number of men on whose backs 
 fate has written the wrong address, so that they 
 arrive by mistake in Congress and other places 
 where they do not belong ! May not these wan 
 derers of whom I speak have been sent into the 
 world without any proper address at all ? Where 
 is our Dead-Letter Office for such ? And if wiser 
 social arrangements should furnish us with some- 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 301 
 
 thing of the sort, fancy (horrible thought !) how 
 many a workingman s friend (a kind of in 
 dustry in which the labor is light and the wages 
 heavy) would be sent thither because not called 
 for in the office where he at present lies ! 
 
 But I am leaving my new acquaintance too 
 long under the lamp-post. The same Gano 
 which had betrayed me to him revealed to me 
 a well-set young man of about half my own 
 age, as well dressed, so far as I could see, as I 
 was, and with every natural qualification for 
 getting his own livelihood as good, if not bet 
 ter, than my own. He had been reduced to the 
 painful necessity of calling upon me by a series 
 of crosses beginning with the Baden Revolution 
 (for which, I own, he seemed rather young, 
 but perhaps he referred to a kind of revolution 
 practised every season at Baden-Baden), con 
 tinued by repeated failures in business, for 
 amounts which must convince me of his entire 
 respectability, and ending with our civil war. 
 During the latter, he had served with distinc 
 tion as a soldier, taking a main part in every 
 important battle, with a rapid list of which he 
 favored me, and no doubt would have admitted 
 that, impartial as Jonathan Wild s great ances 
 tor, he had been on both sides, had I baited 
 him with a few hints of conservative opinions 
 on a subject so distressing to a gentleman wish 
 ing to profit by one s sympathy and unhappily 
 
302 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 doubtful as to which way it might lean. For 
 all these reasons, and, as he seemed to imply, 
 for his merit in consenting to be born in Ger 
 many, he considered himself my natural cred 
 itor to the extent of five dollars, which he 
 would handsomely consent to accept in green 
 backs, though he preferred specie. The offer 
 was certainly a generous one, and the claim 
 presented with an assurance that carried convic 
 tion. But, unhappily, I had been led to re 
 mark a curious natural phenomenon. If I was 
 ever weak enough to give anything to a peti 
 tioner of whatever nationality, it always rained 
 decayed compatriots of his for a month after. 
 Post hoc ergo propter hoc may not always be safe 
 logic, but here I seemed to perceive a natural 
 connection of cause and effect. Now, a few 
 days before I had been so tickled with a paper 
 (professedly written by a benevolent American 
 clergyman) certifying that the bearer, a hard 
 working German, had long "sofered with rheu 
 matic paints in his limps," that, after copying 
 the passage into my note-book, I thought it 
 but fair to pay a trifling honorarium to the au 
 thor. I had pulled the string of the shower- 
 bath ! It had been running shipwrecked sailors 
 for some time, but forthwith it began to pour 
 Teutons, redolent of lager-bier. I could not 
 help associating the apparition of my new friend 
 with this series of otherwise unaccountable phe- 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 303 
 
 nomena. I accordingly made up my mind to 
 deny the debt, and modestly did so, pleading a 
 native bias towards impecuniosity to the full as 
 strong as his own. He took a high tone with 
 me at once, such as an honest man would nat 
 urally take with a confessed repudiator. He 
 even brought down his proud stomach so far 
 as to join himself to me for the rest of my 
 townward walk, that he might give me his 
 views of the American people, and thus inclu 
 sively of myself. 
 
 I know not whether it is because I am 
 pigeon-livered and lack gall,, or whether it is 
 from an overmastering sense of drollery, but I 
 am apt to submit to such bastings- with a pa 
 tience which afterwards surprises me, being not 
 without my share of warmth in the blood. 
 Perhaps it is because I so often meet with 
 young persons who know vastly more than 
 I do, and especially with so many foreigners 
 whose knowledge of this country is superior 
 to my own. However it may be, I listened 
 for some time with tolerable composure as my 
 self-appointed lecturer gave me in detail his 
 opinions of my country and its people. Amer 
 ica, he informed me, was without arts, science, 
 literature, culture, or any native hope of sup 
 plying them. We were a people wholly given 
 to money-getting, and who, having got it, knew 
 no other use for it than to hold it fast. I am 
 
3 o 4 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 fain to confess that I felt a sensible itching of 
 the biceps, and that my fingers closed with such 
 a grip as he had just informed me was one of 
 the effects of our unhappy climate. But hap 
 pening just then to be where I could avoid 
 temptation by dodging down a by-street, I has 
 tily left him to finish his diatribe to the lamp 
 post, which could stand it better than I. That 
 young man will never know how near he came 
 to being assaulted by a respectable gentleman 
 of middle age, at the corner of Church Street. 
 I have never felt quite satisfied that I did all 
 my duty by him in not knocking him down. 
 But perhaps he might have knocked me down, 
 and then ? 
 
 The capacity of indignation makes an essen 
 tial part of the outfit of every honest man, but 
 I am inclined to doubt whether he is a wise one 
 who allows himself to act upon its first hints. 
 It should be rather, I suspect, a latent heat in 
 the blood, which makes itself felt in character, 
 a steady reserve for the brain, warming the 
 ovum of thought to life, rather than cooking it 
 by a too hasty enthusiasm in reaching the boil 
 ing-point. As my pulse gradually fell back to 
 its normal beat, I reflected that I had been un 
 comfortably near making a fool of myself, a 
 handy salve of euphuism for our vanity, though 
 it does not always make a just allowance to 
 Nature for her share in the business. What 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 305 
 
 possible claim had my Teutonic friend to rob me 
 of my composure? I am not, I think, specially 
 thin-skinned as to other people s opinions of 
 myself, having, as I conceive, later and fuller 
 intelligence on that point than anybody else 
 can give me. Life is continually weighing us 
 in very sensitive scales, and telling every one 
 of us precisely what his real weight is to the 
 last grain of dust. Whoever at fifty does not 
 rate himself quite as low as most of his ac 
 quaintance would be likely to put him, must 
 be either a fool or a great man, and I humbly 
 disclaim being either. But if I was not smart 
 ing in person from any scattering shot of my 
 late companion s commination, why should I 
 grow hot at any implication of my country 
 therein ? Surely her shoulders are broad enough, 
 if yours or mine are not, to bear up under a 
 considerable avalanche of this kind. It is the 
 bit of truth in every slander, the hint of like 
 ness in every caricature, that makes us smart. 
 "Art thou there, old Truepenny?" How did 
 your blade know its way so well to that one 
 loose rivet in our armor ? I wondered whether 
 Americans were over-sensitive in this respect, 
 whether they were more touchy than other 
 folks. On the whole, I thought we were not. 
 Plutarch, who at least had studied philosophy, 
 if he had not mastered it, could not stomach 
 something Herodotus had said of Bceotia, and 
 
306 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 devoted an essay to showing up the delightful 
 old traveller s malice and ill breeding. French 
 editors leave out of Montaigne s Travels 
 some remarks of his about France, for reasons 
 best known to themselves. Pachydermatous 
 Deutschland, covered with trophies from every 
 field of letters, still winces under that question 
 which Pere Bouhours put two centuries ago, Si 
 un Allemand peut etre bel-esprit ? John Bull 
 grew apoplectic with angry amazement at the 
 audacious persiflage of Piickler-Muskau. To 
 be sure, he was a prince, but that was not all 
 of it, for a chance phrase of gentle Hawthorne 
 sent a spasm through all the journals of Eng 
 land. Then this tenderness is not peculiar to 
 us? Console yourself, dear man and brother, 
 whatever else you may be sure of, be sure at 
 least of this, that you are dreadfully like other 
 people. Human nature has a much greater 
 genius for sameness than for originality, or the 
 world would be at a sad pass shortly. The sur 
 prising thing is that men have such a taste for 
 this somewhat musty flavor that an English 
 man, for example, should feel himself defrauded, 
 nay, even outraged, when he comes over here 
 and finds a people speaking what he admits to 
 be something like English, and yet so very 
 different from (or, as he would say, to) those 
 he left at home. Nothing, I am sure, equals 
 my thankfulness when I meet an Englishman 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 30? 
 
 who is not like every other, or, I may add, an 
 American of the same odd turn. 
 
 Certainly it is no shame to a man that he 
 should be as nice about his country as about 
 his sweetheart, and who ever heard even the 
 friendliest appreciation of that unexpressive she 
 that did not seem to fall infinitely short ? Yet 
 it would hardly be wise to hold every one an 
 enemy who could not see her with our own 
 enchanted eyes. It seems to be the common 
 opinion of foreigners that Americans are too 
 tender upon this point. Perhaps we are ; and 
 if so, there must be a reason for it. Have we 
 had fair play ? Could the eyes of what is called 
 Good Society (though it is so seldom true either 
 to the adjective or noun) look upon a nation of 
 democrats with any chance of receiving an un- 
 distorted image ? Were not those, moreover, 
 who found in the old order of things an earthly 
 paradise, paying them quarterly dividends for 
 the wisdom of their ancestors, with the punc 
 tuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed 
 to misunderstand if not to misrepresent us ? 
 Whether at war or at peace, there we were, a 
 standing menace to all earthly paradises of that 
 kind, fatal underminers of the very credit on 
 which the dividends were based, all the more 
 hateful and terrible that our destructive agency 
 was so insidious, working invisible in the ele 
 ments, as it seemed, active while they slept, 
 
308 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 and coming upon them in the darkness like an 
 armed man. Could Laius have the proper feel 
 ings of a father towards CEdipus, announced as 
 his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and 
 felt to be such by every conscious fibre of his 
 soul ? For more than a century the Dutch were 
 the laughing-stock of polite Europe. They were 
 butter-firkins, swillers of beer and schnaps, and 
 their vrouws from whom Holbein painted the 
 ail-but loveliest of Madonnas, Rembrandt the 
 graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee in 
 Dresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, 
 were the synonymes of clumsy vulgarity. Even 
 so late as Irving the ships of the greatest navi 
 gators in the world were represented as sailing 
 equally well stern-foremost. That the aristo 
 cratic Venetians should have 
 
 " Riveted with gigantic piles 
 Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,* 
 
 was heroic. But the far more marvellous achieve 
 ment of the Dutch in the same kind was ludi 
 crous even to republican Marvell. Meanwhile, 
 during that very century of scorn, they were the 
 best artists, sailors, merchants, bankers, printers, 
 scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen in Europe, 
 and the genius of Motley has revealed them to 
 us, earning a right to themselves by the most 
 heroic struggle in human annals. But, alas! 
 they were not merely simple burghers who had 
 fairly made themselves High Mightinesses, and 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 309 
 
 could treat on equal terms with anointed kings, 
 but their commonwealth carried in its bosom 
 the germs of democracy. They even unmuz 
 zled, at least after dark, that dreadful mastiff, 
 the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so 
 keen for wolves in sheeps clothing and for cer 
 tain other animals in lions skins. They made 
 fun of Sacred Majesty, and, what was worse, 
 managed uncommonly well without it. In an 
 age when periwigs made so large a part of the 
 natural dignity of man, people with such a turn 
 of mind were dangerous. How could they seem 
 other than vulgar and hateful ? 
 
 In the natural course of things we succeeded 
 to this unenviable position of general butt. The 
 Dutch had thriven under it pretty well, and 
 there was hope that we could at least contrive 
 to worry along. And we certainly did in a very 
 redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved some 
 of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predeces 
 sors in office. We had nothing to boast of in 
 arts or letters, and were given to bragging over 
 much of our merely material prosperity, due 
 quite as much to the virtue of our continent as 
 to our own. There was some truth in Carlyle s 
 sneer, after all. Till we had succeeded in some 
 higher way than this, we had only the success 
 of physical growth. Our greatness, like that of 
 enormous Russia, was greatness on the map, 
 barbarian mass only ; but had we gone down, 
 
310 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 like that other Atlantis, in some vast cataclysm, 
 we should have covered but a pin s point on 
 the chart of memory, compared with those ideal 
 spaces occupied by tiny Attica and cramped 
 England. At the same time, our critics some 
 what too easily forgot that material must make 
 ready the foundation for ideal triumphs, that 
 the arts have no chance in poor countries. But 
 it must be allowed that democracy stood for 
 a great deal in our shortcoming. The Edin 
 burgh Review never would have thought of 
 asking, " Who reads a Russian book ? " and 
 England was satisfied with iron from Sweden 
 without being impertinently inquisitive after her 
 painters and statuaries. Was it that they ex 
 pected too much from the mere miracle of Free 
 dom ? Is it not the highest art of a Republic to 
 make men of flesh and blood,and not the marble 
 ideals of such? It may be fairly doubted whether 
 we have produced this higher type of man yet. 
 Perhaps it is the collective, not the individual, 
 humanity that is to have a chance of nobler de 
 velopment among us. We shall see. We have 
 a vast amount of imported ignorance, and, still 
 worse, of native ready-made knowledge, to di 
 gest before even the preliminaries of such a con 
 summation can be arranged. We have got to 
 learn that statesmanship is the most compli 
 cated of all arts, and to come back to the ap 
 prenticeship system too hastily abandoned. At 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 311 
 
 present, we trust a man with making constitu 
 tions on less proof of competence than we should 
 demand before we gave him our shoe to patch. 
 We have nearly reached the limit of the reac 
 tion from the old notion, which paid too much 
 regard to birth and station as qualifications for 
 office, and have touched the extreme point in 
 the opposite direction, putting the highest of 
 human functions up at auction to be bid for by 
 any creature capable of going upright on two 
 legs. In some places, we have arrived at a 
 point at which civil society is no longer possi 
 ble, and already another reaction has begun, not 
 backwards to the old system, but towards fitness 
 either from natural aptitude or special training. 
 But will it always be safe to let evils work their 
 own cure by becoming unendurable ? Every 
 one of them leaves its taint in the constitution 
 of the body politic, each in itself, perhaps, tri 
 fling, yet altogether powerful for evil. 
 
 But whatever we might do or leave undone, 
 we were not genteel, and it was uncomfortable 
 to be continually reminded that, though we 
 should boast that we were the Great West till 
 we were black in the face, it did not bring us 
 an inch nearer to the world s West-End. That 
 sacred enclosure of respectability was tabooed 
 to us. The Holy Alliance did not inscribe us 
 on its visiting-list. The Old World of wigs 
 and orders and liveries would shop with us, 
 
3 i2 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 but we must ring at the area-bell, and not ven 
 ture to awaken the more august clamors of the 
 knocker. Our manners, it must be granted, 
 had none of those graces that stamp the caste 
 of Vere de Vere, in whatever museum of Brit 
 ish antiquities they may be hidden. In short, 
 we were vulgar. 
 
 This was one of those horribly vague accusa 
 tions, the victim of which has no defence. An 
 umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist. 
 It envelops you, it penetrates at every pore, it 
 wets you through without seeming to wet you 
 at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin, added 
 to the list in these latter days, and worse than 
 all the others put together, since it perils your 
 salvation in this world, far the more impor 
 tant of the two in the minds of most men. It 
 profits nothing to draw nice distinctions be 
 tween essential and conventional, for the con 
 vention in this case is the essence, and you may 
 break every command of the decalogue with 
 perfect good breeding, nay, if you are adroit, 
 without losing caste. We, indeed, had it not 
 to lose, for we had never gained it. " How 
 am I vulgar ? " asks the culprit, shudderingly. 
 " Because thou art not like unto Us/ answers 
 Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and there is no 
 more to be said. The god of this world may 
 be a fallen angel, but he has us there I We 
 were as clean, so far as my observation goes, 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 313 
 
 I think we were cleaner, morally and physically, 
 than the English, and therefore, of course, than 
 everybody else. But we did not pronounce the 
 diphthong ou as they did, and we said eether 
 and not eyther^ following therein the fashion of 
 our ancestors, who unhappily could bring over 
 no English better than Shakespeare s ; and we 
 did not stammer as they had learned to do from 
 the courtiers, who in this way flattered the 
 Hanoverian king, a foreigner among the peo 
 ple he had come to reign over. Worse than 
 all, we might have the noblest ideas and the 
 finest sentiments in the world, but we vented 
 them through that organ by which men are led 
 rather than leaders, though some physiologists 
 would persuade us that Nature furnishes her 
 captains with a fine handle to their faces, that 
 Opportunity may get a good purchase on them 
 for dragging them to the front. 
 
 This state of things was so painful that ex 
 cellent people were not wanting who gave their 
 whole genius to reproducing here the original 
 Bull, whether by gaiters, the cut of their whis 
 kers, by a factitious brutality in their tone, or 
 by an accent that was forever tripping and fall 
 ing flat over the tangled roots of our common 
 tongue. Martyrs to a false ideal, it never oc 
 curred to them that nothing is more hateful 
 to gods and men than a second-rate English 
 man, and for the very reason that this planet 
 
3H CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 never produced a more splendid creature than 
 the first-rate one, witness Shakespeare and the 
 Indian Mutiny. Witness that truly sublime 
 self-abnegation of those prisoners lately among 
 the bandits of Greece, where average men gave 
 an example of quiet fortitude for which all the 
 stoicism of antiquity can show no match. Wit 
 ness the wreck of the Birkenhead, an example 
 of disciplined heroism, perhaps the most pre 
 cious, as the rarest, of all. If we could con 
 trive to be not too unobtrusively our simple 
 selves, we should be the most delightful of 
 human beings, and the most original ; whereas, 
 when the plating of Anglicism rubs off, as it al 
 ways will in points that come to much wear, we 
 are liable to very unpleasing conjectures about 
 the quality of the metal underneath. Perhaps 
 one reason why the average Briton spreads 
 himself here with such an easy air of superior 
 ity may be owing to the fact that he meets 
 with so many bad imitations as to conclude 
 himself the only real thing in a wilderness of 
 shams. He fancies himself moving through an 
 endless Bloomsbury, where his mere apparition 
 confers honor as an avatar of the court-end 
 of the universe. Not a Bull of them all but 
 is persuaded he bears Europa upon his back. 
 This is the sort of fellow whose patronage is 
 so divertingly insufferable. Thank Heaven he 
 is not the only specimen of cater-cousinship 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 315 
 
 from the dear old Mother Island that is shown 
 to us ! Among genuine things, I know no 
 thing more genuine than the better men whose 
 limbs were made in England. So manly-tender, 
 so brave, so true, so warranted to wear, they 
 make us proud to feel that blood is thicker 
 than water. 
 
 But it is not merely the Englishman ; every 
 European candidly admits in himself some right 
 of primogeniture in respect of us, and pats this 
 shaggy continent on the back with a lively 
 sense of generous unbending. The German who 
 plays the bass-viol has a well-founded contempt, 
 which he is not always nice in concealing, for a 
 country so few of whose children ever take that 
 noble instrument between their knees. His 
 cousin, the Ph. D. from Gottingen, cannot help 
 despising a people who do not grow loud and 
 red over Aryans and Turanians, and are indif 
 ferent about their descent from either. The 
 Frenchman feels an easy mastery in speaking 
 his mother tongue, and attributes it to some 
 native superiority of parts that lifts him high 
 above us barbarians of the West. The Italian 
 prima donna sweeps a curtsy of careless pity to 
 the over-facile pit which unsexes her with the 
 bravo I innocently meant to show a familiarity 
 with foreign usage. But all without exception 
 make no secret of regarding us as the goose 
 bound to deliver them a golden egg in return 
 
3 i6 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 for their cackle. Such men as Agassiz, Guyot, 
 and Goldwin Smith come with gifts in their 
 hands ; but since it is commonly European 
 failures who bring hither their remarkable gifts 
 and acquirements, this view of the case is some 
 times just the least bit in the world provoking. 
 To think what a delicious seclusion of contempt 
 we enjoyed till California and our own ostenta 
 tious parvenus, flinging gold away in Europe that 
 might have endowed libraries at home, gave us 
 the ill repute of riches ! What a shabby down 
 fall from the Arcadia which the French officers 
 of our Revolutionary War fancied they saw here 
 through Rousseau-tinted spectacles ! Some 
 thing of Arcadia there really was, something of 
 the Old Age; and that divine provincialism 
 were cheaply repurchased could we have it back 
 again in exchange for the tawdry upholstery 
 that has taken its place. 
 
 For some reason or other, the European has 
 rarely been able to see America except in cari 
 cature. Would the first Review of the world 
 have printed the niaiseries of M. Maurice Sand 
 as a picture of society in any civilized country ? 
 M. Sand, to be sure, has inherited nothing of 
 his famous mother s literary outfit, except the 
 pseudonym. But since the conductors of the 
 Revue could not have published his story be 
 cause it was clever, they must have thought 
 it valuable for its truth. As true as the last- 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 317 
 
 century Englishman s picture of Jean Crapaud ! 
 We do not ask to be sprinkled with rosewater, 
 but may perhaps fairly protest against being 
 drenched with the rinsings of an unclean im 
 agination. The next time the Revue allows such 
 ill-bred persons to throw their slops out of its 
 first-floor windows, let it honestly preface the 
 discharge with a gare Feau ! that we may run 
 from under in season. And M. Duvergier de 
 Hauranne, who knows how to be entertaining ! 
 I know that le Fran^ais est plutot indiscret que 
 confiant, and the pen slides too easily when in 
 discretions will fetch so much a page ; but should 
 we not have been tant-soit-peu more cautious 
 had we been writing about people on the other 
 side of the Channel ? But then it is a fact in 
 the natural history of the American, long famil 
 iar to Europeans, that he abhors privacy, knows 
 not the meaning of reserve, lives in hotels be 
 cause of their greater publicity, and is never so 
 pleased as when his domestic affairs (if he may 
 be said to have any) are paraded in the news 
 papers. Barnum, it is well known, represents 
 perfectly the average national sentiment in this 
 respect. However it be, we are not treated like 
 other people, or perhaps I should say like 
 people who are ever likely to be met with in 
 society. 
 
 Is it in the climate ? Either I have a false 
 notion of European manners, or else the atmo- 
 
3 i8 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 sphere affects them strangely when exported 
 hither. Perhaps they suffer from the sea voyage 
 like some of the more delicate wines. During 
 our civil war an English gentleman of the 
 highest description was kind enough to call 
 upon me, mainly, as it seemed, to inform me 
 how entirely he sympathized with the Confed 
 erates, and how sure he felt that we could never 
 subdue them, " they were the gentlemen of 
 the country, you know." Another, the first 
 greetings hardly over, asked me how I accounted 
 for the universal meagreness of my countrymen. 
 To a thinner man than I, or from a stouter 
 man than he, the question might have been of 
 fensive. The Marquis of Hartington 1 wore a 
 secession badge at a public ball in New York. 
 In a civilized country he might have been 
 roughly handled ; but here, where the bienseances 
 are not so well understood, of course nobody 
 minded it. A French traveller told me he 
 had been a good deal in the British colonies, 
 and had been astonished to see how soon the 
 people became Americanized. He added, with 
 
 1 One of Mr. Lincoln s neatest strokes of humor was his 
 treatment of this gentleman when a laudable curiosity induced 
 him to be presented to the President of the Broken Bubble. 
 Mr. Lincoln persisted in calling him Mr. Partington. Surely 
 the refinement of good breeding could go no further. Giving 
 the young man his real name (already notorious in the news 
 papers) would have made his visit an insult. Had Henri IV. 
 done this, it would have been famous. 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 319 
 
 delightful bonhomie, and as if he were sure it 
 would charm me, that " they even began to 
 talk through their noses, just like you !" I was 
 naturally ravished with this testimony to the 
 assimilating power of democracy, and could only 
 reply that I hoped they would never adopt our 
 democratic patent method of seeming to settle 
 one s honest debts, for they would find it pay 
 ing through the nose in the long run. I am 
 a man of the New World, and do not know 
 precisely the present fashion of May-Fair, but 
 I have a kind of feeling that if an American 
 (mutato nomine, de te is always frightfully pos 
 sible) were to do this kind of thing under a 
 European roof, it would induce some disagree 
 able reflections as to the ethical results of de 
 mocracy. I read the other day in print the remark 
 of a British tourist who had eaten large quanti 
 ties of our salt, such as it is (I grant it has not 
 the European savor), that the Americans were 
 hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly be 
 cause they longed for foreign visitors to relieve 
 the tedium of their dead-level existence, and 
 partly from ostentation. What shall we do ? 
 Shall we close our doors ? Not I, for one, if I 
 should so have forfeited the friendship of L. S., 
 most lovable of men. He somehow seems to 
 find us human, at least, and so did Clough, 
 whose poetry will one of these days, perhaps, 
 be found to have been the best utterance in 
 
320 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 verse of this generation. And T. H., the mere 
 grasp of whose manly hand carries with it the 
 pledge of frankness and friendship, of an abid 
 ing simplicity of nature as affecting as it is rare ! 
 The fine old Tory aversion of former times 
 was not hard to bear. There was something 
 even refreshing in it, as in a northeaster to a 
 hardy temperament. When a British parson, 
 travelling in Newfoundland while the slash of 
 our separation was still raw, after prophesying 
 a glorious future for an island that continued 
 to dry its fish under the aegis of Saint George, 
 glances disdainfully over his spectacles in part 
 ing at the U. S. A., and forebodes for them a 
 cc speedy relapse into barbarism," now that they 
 have madly cut themselves off from the human 
 izing influences of Britain, I smile with barbarian 
 self-conceit. But this kind of thing became by 
 degrees an unpleasant anachronism. For mean 
 while the young giant was growing, was begin 
 ning indeed to feel tight in his clothes, was 
 obliged to let in a gore here and there in Texas, 
 in California, in New Mexico, in Alaska, and 
 had the scissors and needle and thread ready 
 for Canada when the time came. His shadow 
 loomed like a Brocken-spectre over against 
 Europe, the shadow of what they were com 
 ing to, that was the unpleasant part of it. Even 
 in such, misty image as they had of him, it was 
 painfully evident that his clothes were not of 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 321 
 
 any cut hitherto fashionable, nor conceivable by 
 a Bond Street tailor, and this in an age, too, 
 when everything depends upon clothes, when, 
 if we do not keep up appearances, the seeming- 
 solid frame of this universe, nay, your very God, 
 would slump into himself, like a mockery king 
 of snow, being nothing, after all, but a prevail 
 ing mode, a make-believe of believing. From 
 this moment the young giant assumed the re 
 spectable aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid 
 of if possible, but at any rate as legitimate a 
 subject of human study as the glacial period or 
 the silurian what-d ye-call-ems. If the man of 
 the primeval drift-heaps be so absorbingly inter 
 esting, why not the man of the drift that is just 
 beginning, of the drift into whose irresistible 
 current we are just being sucked whether we 
 will or no ? If I were in their place, I confess 
 I should not be frightened. Man has survived 
 so much, and contrived to be comfortable on 
 this planet after surviving so much ! I am some 
 thing of a protestant in matters of government 
 also, and am willing to get rid of vestments and 
 ceremonies and to come down to bare benches, 
 if only faith in God take the place of a general 
 agreement to profess confidence in ritual and 
 sham. Every mortal man of us holds stock in 
 the only public debt that is absolutely sure of 
 payment, and that is the debt of the Maker 
 of this Universe to the Universe he has made. 
 
322 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 I have no notion of selling out my shares in 
 a panic. 
 
 It was something to have advanced even to 
 the dignity of a phenomenon, and yet I do not 
 know that the relation of the individual Ameri 
 can to the individual European was bettered by 
 it; and that, after all, must adjust itself com 
 fortably before there can be a right understand 
 ing between the two. We had been a desert, 
 we became a museum. People came hither for 
 scientific and not social ends. The very cock 
 ney could not complete his education without 
 taking a vacant stare at us in passing. But the 
 sociologists (I think they call themselves so) 
 were the hardest to bear. There was no escape. 
 I have even known a professor of this fearful 
 science to come disguised in petticoats. We 
 were cross-examined as a chemist cross-examines 
 a new substance. Human? yes, all the elements 
 are present, though abnormally combined. Civ 
 ilized ? Hm ! that needs a stricter assay. No 
 entomologist could take a more friendly interest 
 in a strange bug. After a few such experiences, 
 I, for one, have felt as if I were merely one of 
 those horrid things preserved in spirits (and 
 very bad spirits, too) in a cabinet. I was not the 
 fellow being of these explorers : I was a curi 
 osity ; I was a specimen. Hath not an American 
 organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, 
 even as a European hath? If you prick us, do 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 323 
 
 we not bleed ? If you tickle us, do we not laugh ? 
 I will not keep on with Shylock to his next 
 question but one. 
 
 Till after our civil war it never seemed to 
 enter the head of any foreigner, especially of any 
 Englishman, that an American had what could 
 be called a country, except as a place to eat, 
 sleep, and trade in. Then it seemed to strike 
 them suddenly. " By Jove, you know, fellahs 
 don t fight like that for a shop-till ! " No, I 
 rather think not. To Americans America is 
 something more than a promise and an expec 
 tation. It has a past and traditions of its own. 
 A descent from men who sacrificed everything 
 and came hither, not to better their fortunes, 
 but to plant their idea in virgin soil, should be 
 a good pedigree. There was never colony save 
 this that went forth, not to seek gold, but God. 
 Is it not as well to have sprung from such as 
 these as from some burly beggar who came over 
 with Wilhelmus Conquestor, unless, indeed, a 
 line grow better as it runs farther away from 
 stalwart ancestors ? And for our history, it is 
 dry enough, no doubt, in the books, but, for all 
 that, is of a kind that tells in the blood. I have 
 admitted that Carlyle s sneer had a show of 
 truth in it. But what does he himself, like a 
 true Scot, admire in the Hohenzollerns ? First 
 of all, that they were canny, a thrifty, forehanded 
 race. Next, that they made a good fight from 
 
324 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 generation to generation with the chaos around 
 them. That is precisely the battle which the 
 English race on this continent has been pushing 
 doughtily forward for two centuries and a half. 
 Doughtily and silently, for you cannot hear in 
 Europe " that crash, the death-song of the per 
 fect tree," that has been going on here from 
 sturdy father to sturdy son, and making this 
 continent habitable for the weaker Old World 
 breed that has swarmed to it during the last 
 half century. If ever men did a good stroke 
 of work on this planet, it was the forefathers of 
 those whom you are wondering whether it would 
 not be prudent to acknowledge as far-off cou 
 sins. Alas, man of genius, to whom we owe 
 so much, could you see nothing more than 
 the burning of a foul chimney in that clash of 
 Michael and Satan which flamed up under your 
 very eyes ? 
 
 Before our war we were to Europe but a huge 
 mob of adventurers and shopkeepers. Leigh 
 Hunt expressed it well enough when he said 
 that he could never think of America without 
 seeing a gigantic counter stretched all along the 
 seaboard. And Leigh Hunt, without knowing 
 it, had been more than half Americanized, too ! 
 Feudalism had by degrees made commerce, the 
 great civilizer, contemptible. But a tradesman 
 with sword on thigh and very prompt of stroke 
 was not only redoubtable, he had become re- 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 325 
 
 spectable also. Few people, I suspect, alluded 
 twice to a needle in Sir John Hawkwood s pre 
 sence, after that doughty fighter had exchanged 
 it for a more dangerous tool of the same metal. 
 Democracy had been hitherto only a ludicrous 
 effort to reverse the laws of nature by thrusting 
 Cleon into the place of Pericles. But a demo 
 cracy that could fight for an abstraction, whose 
 members held life and goods cheap compared 
 with that larger life which we call country, was 
 not merely unheard of, but portentous. It was 
 the nightmare of the Old World taking upon 
 itself flesh and blood, turning out to be sub 
 stance and not dream. Since the Norman cru 
 sader clanged down upon the throne of the 
 forphyro-gcnitiy carefully draped appearances 
 had never received such a shock, had never been 
 so rudely called on to produce their titles to 
 the empire of the world. Authority has had its 
 periods not unlike those of geology, and at last 
 comes Man claiming kingship in right of his 
 mere manhood. The world of the Saurians 
 might be in some respects more picturesque, but 
 the march of events is inexorable, and that world 
 is bygone. 
 
 The young giant had certainly got out of 
 long clothes. He had become the enfant terrible 
 of the human household. It was not and will 
 not be easy for the world (especially for our 
 British cousins) to look upon us as grown up. 
 
3 z6 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 The youngest of nations, its people must also be 
 young and to be treated accordingly, was the 
 syllogism, as if libraries did not make all na 
 tions equally old in all those respects, at least, 
 where age is an advantage and not a defect. 
 Youth, no doubt, has its good qualities, as people 
 feel who are losing it, but boyishness is another 
 thing. We had been somewhat boyish as a na 
 tion, a little loud, a little pushing, a little brag 
 gart. But might it not partly have been because 
 we felt that we had certain claims to respect that 
 were not admitted ? The war which established 
 our position as a vigorous nationality has also 
 sobered us. A nation, like a man, cannot look 
 death in the eye for four years without some 
 strange reflections, without arriving at some 
 clearer consciousness of the stuff it is made of, 
 without some great moral change. Such a 
 change, or the beginning of it, no observant per 
 son can fail to see here. Our thought and our 
 politics, our bearing as a people, are assuming 
 a manlier tone. We have been compelled to see 
 what was weak in democracy as well as what was 
 strong. We have begun obscurely to recognize 
 that things do not go of themselves, and that 
 popular government is not in itself a panacea, is 
 no better than any other form except as the vir 
 tue and wisdom of the people make it so, and 
 that when men undertake to do their own king 
 ship, they enter upon the dangers and responsi- 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 327 
 
 bilities as well as the privileges of the function. 
 Above all, it looks as if we were on the way to 
 be persuaded that no government can be carried 
 on by declamation. It is noticeable also that 
 facility of communication has made the best 
 English and French thought far more directly 
 operative here than ever before. Without being 
 Europeanized, our discussion of important ques 
 tions in statesmanship, in political economy, in 
 aesthetics, is taking a broader scope and a higher 
 tone. It had certainly been provincial, one 
 might almost say local, to a very unpleasant ex 
 tent. Perhaps our experience in soldiership has 
 taught us to value training more than we have 
 been popularly wont. We may possibly come to 
 the conclusion, one of these days, that self-made 
 men may not be always equally skilful in the 
 manufacture of wisdom, may not be divinely 
 commissioned to fabricate the higher qualities 
 of opinion on all possible topics of human inter 
 est. 
 
 So long as we continue to be the most com 
 mon-schooled and the least cultivated people in 
 the world, I suppose we must consent to endure 
 this condescending manner of foreigners toward 
 us. The more friendly they mean to be, the 
 more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They 
 can never appreciate the immense amount of 
 silent work that has been done here, making 
 this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, 
 
328 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 and which will demonstrate itself, let us hope, 
 in the character of the people. Outsiders can 
 only be expected to judge a nation by the 
 amount it has contributed to the civilization of 
 the world ; the amount, that is, that can be seen 
 and handled. A great place in history can only 
 be achieved by competitive examinations, nay, 
 by a long course of them. How much new 
 thought have we contributed to the common 
 stock ? Till that question can be triumphantly 
 answered, or needs no answer, we must continue 
 to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be 
 studied as a problem, and not respected as an 
 attained result or an accomplished solution. 
 Perhaps, as I have hinted, their patronizing 
 manner toward us is the fair result of their fail 
 ing to see here anything more than a poor 
 imitation, a plaster cast of Europe. And are 
 they not partly right? If the tone of the un 
 cultivated American has too often the arrogance 
 of the barbarian, is not that of the cultivated 
 as often vulgarly apologetic? In the America 
 they meet with is there the simplicity, the man 
 liness, the absence of sham, the sincere human 
 nature, the sensitiveness to duty and implied 
 obligation, that in any way distinguishes us 
 from what our orators call " the effete civiliza 
 tion of the Old World " ? Is there a politician 
 among us daring enough (except a Dana here 
 and there) to risk his future on the chance of 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 329 
 
 our keeping our word with the exactness of 
 superstitious communities like England ? Is it 
 certain that we shall be ashamed of a bankruptcy 
 of honor, if we can only keep the letter of our 
 bond ? I hope we shall be able to answer all 
 these questions with a frank yes. At any rate, 
 we would advise our visitors that we are not 
 merely curious creatures, but belong to the 
 family of man, and that, as individuals, we are 
 not to be always subjected to the competitive 
 examination above mentioned, even if we ac 
 knowledged their competence as an examining 
 board. Above all, we beg them to remember 
 that America is not to us, as to them, a mere 
 object of external interest to be discussed and 
 analyzed, but in us, part of our very marrow. 
 Let them not suppose that we conceive of our 
 selves as exiles from the graces and amenities 
 of an older date than we, though very much at 
 home in a state of things not yet all it might be 
 or should be, but which we mean to make so, 
 and which we find both wholesome and plea 
 sant for men (though perhaps not for dilettanti) 
 to live in. cc The full tide of human existence " 
 may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at 
 Charing Cross, and in a larger sense. I know 
 one person who is singular enough to think 
 Cambridge the very best spot on the habitable 
 globe. " Doubtless God could have made a 
 better, but doubtless he never did." 
 
330 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 It will take England a great while to get over 
 her airs of patronage toward us, or even passably 
 to conceal them. She cannot help confounding 
 the people with the country, and regarding us 
 as lusty juveniles. She has a conviction that 
 whatever good there is in us is wholly English, 
 when the truth is that we are worth nothing 
 except so far as we have disinfected ourselves 
 of Anglicism. She is especially condescending 
 just now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if 
 we had not outgrown them. I am no believer 
 in sudden conversions, especially in sudden 
 conversions to a favorable opinion of people 
 who have just proved you to be mistaken in 
 judgment and therefore unwise in policy. I 
 never blamed her for not wishing well to de 
 mocracy, how should she? but Alabamas 
 are not wishes. Let her not be too hasty in 
 believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson s pleasant 
 words. Though there is no thoughtful man in 
 America who would not consider a war with 
 England the greatest of calamities, yet the feel 
 ing toward her here is very far from cordial, 
 whatever our Minister may say in the effusion 
 that comes after ample dining. Mr. Adams, 
 with his famous " My Lord, this means war/ 1 
 perfectly represented his country. Justly or 
 not, we have a feeling that we have been 
 wronged, not merely insulted. The only sure 
 
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 33 
 
 way of bringing about a healthy relation be 
 tween the two countries is for Englishmen to 
 clear their minds of the notion that we are 
 always to be treated as a kind of inferior and 
 deported Englishman whose nature they per 
 fectly understand, and whose back they accord 
 ingly stroke the wrong way of the fur with 
 amazing perseverance. Let them learn to treat 
 us naturally on our merits as human beings, as 
 they would a German or a Frenchman, and not 
 as if we were a kind of counterfeit Briton whose 
 crime appeared in every shade of difference, and 
 before long there would come that right feeling 
 which we naturally call a good understanding. 
 The common blood, and still more the com 
 mon language, are fatal instruments of misap 
 prehension. Let them give up trying to under 
 stand us, still more thinking that they do, and 
 acting in various absurd ways as the necessary 
 consequence, for they will never arrive at that 
 devoutly-to-be-wished consummation till they 
 learn to look at us as we are and not as they 
 suppose us to be. Dear old long-estranged 
 mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we 
 parted. Since 1660, when you married again, 
 you have been a step-mother to us. Put on 
 your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we have 
 grown, and changed likewise. You would not 
 let us darken your doors, if you could help it. 
 
332 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 
 
 We know that perfectly well. But pray, when 
 we look to be treated as men, don t shake that 
 rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us any 
 longer. 
 
 " Do, child, go to it grandam, child; 
 
 Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
 Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig ! 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 1870 
 
 MEN scarcely know how beautiful fire 
 is," says Shelley ; and I am apt to 
 think there are a good many other 
 things concerning which their knowledge might 
 be largely increased without becoming burden 
 some. Nor are they altogether reluctant to be 
 taught, not so reluctant, perhaps, as unable, 
 and education is sure to find one fulcrum 
 ready to her hand by which to get a purchase 
 on them. For most of us, I have noticed, are 
 not without an amiable willingness to assist at 
 any spectacle or entertainment (loosely so called) 
 for which no fee is charged at the door. If 
 special tickets are sent us, another element of 
 pleasure is added in a sense of privilege and 
 preeminence (pitiably scarce in a democracy) 
 so deeply rooted in human nature that I have 
 seen people take a strange satisfaction in being 
 near of kin to the mute chief personage in a fu 
 neral. It gave them a moment s advantage over 
 the rest of us whose grief was rated at a lower 
 place in the procession. But the words "admis 
 sion free " at the bottom of a handbill, though 
 holding out no bait of inequality, have yet a 
 
336 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 singular charm for many minds, especially in 
 the country. There is something touching in the 
 constancy with which men attend free lectures, 
 and in the honest patience with which they 
 listen to them. He who pays may yawn or 
 shift testily in his seat, or even go out with an 
 awful reverberation of criticism, for he has 
 bought the right to do any or all of these and 
 paid for it. But gratuitous hearers are anaesthe 
 tized to suffering by a sense of virtue. They 
 are performing perhaps the noblest, as it is one 
 of the most difficult, of human functions in 
 getting Something (no matter how small) for 
 Nothing. They are not pestered by the awful 
 duty of securing their money s worth. They 
 are wasting time, to do which elegantly and 
 without lassitude is the highest achievement of 
 civilization. If they are cheated, it is, at worst, 
 only of a superfluous hour which was rotting 
 on their hands. Not only is mere amusement 
 made more piquant, but instruction more pal 
 atable, by this universally relished sauce of 
 gratuity. And if the philosophic observer finds 
 an object of agreeable contemplation in the 
 audience, as they listen to a discourse on the 
 probability of making missionaries go down 
 better with the Feejee-Islanders by balancing 
 the hymn-book in one pocket with a bottle of 
 Worcestershire in the other, or to a plea for 
 arming the female gorilla with the ballot, he 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 337 
 
 also takes a friendly interest in the lecturer, and 
 admires the wise economy of Nature who thus 
 contrives an ample field of honest labor for her 
 bores. Even when the insidious hat is passed 
 round after one of these eleemosynary feasts, 
 the relish is but heightened by a conscientious 
 refusal to disturb the satisfaction s completeness 
 with the rattle of a single contributory penny. 
 So firmly persuaded am I of this ^r^/V-instinct 
 in our common humanity that I believe I could 
 fill a house by advertising a free lecture on 
 Tupper considered as a philosophic poet, or on 
 my personal recollections of the late James K. 
 Polk. This being so, I have sometimes won 
 dered that the peep-shows which Nature pro 
 vides with such endless variety for her children, 
 and to which we are admitted on the bare con 
 dition of having eyes, should be so generally 
 neglected. To be sure, eyes are not so common 
 as people think, or poets would be plentier, 
 and perhaps also these exhibitions of hers are 
 cheapened in estimation by the fact that in en 
 joying them we are not getting the better of 
 anybody else. Your true lovers of nature, how 
 ever, contrive to get even this solace ; and 
 Wordsworth, looking upon mountains as his 
 own peculiar sweethearts, was jealous of any 
 body else who ventured upon even the most 
 innocent flirtation with them. As if such fellows, 
 indeed, could pretend to that nicer sense of 
 
338 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 what-d ye-call-it which was so remarkable in 
 him ! Marry come up ! Mountains, no doubt, 
 may inspire a profounder and more exclusive 
 passion, but on the whole I am not sorry to have 
 been born and bred among more domestic 
 scenes, where I can be hospitable without a 
 pang. I am going to ask you presently to take 
 potluck with me at a board where Winter shall 
 supply whatever there is of cheer. 
 
 I think the old fellow has hitherto had scant 
 justice done him in the main. We make him 
 the symbol of old age or death, and think we 
 have settled the matter. As if old age were never 
 kindly as well as frosty ; as if it had no reverend 
 graces of its own as good in their way as the 
 noisy impertinence of childhood, the elbowing 
 self-conceit of youth, or the pompous medio 
 crity of middle life ! As if there were anything 
 discreditable in death, or nobody had ever longed 
 for it ! Suppose we grant that Winter is the sleep 
 of the year, what then ? I take it upon me to 
 say that his dreams are finer than the best reality 
 of his waking rivals. 
 
 "Sleep, Silence* child, the father of soft Rest," 
 
 is a very agreeable acquaintance, and most of us 
 are better employed in his company than any 
 where else. For my own part, I think Winter 
 a pretty wide-awake old boy, and his bluff sin 
 cerity and hearty ways are more congenial to 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 339 
 
 my mood, and more wholesome for me, than 
 any charms of which his rivals are capable. 
 Spring is a fickle mistress, who either does not 
 know her own mind, or is so long in making it 
 up, whether you shall have her or not have her, 
 that one gets tired at last of her pretty miffs and 
 reconciliations. You go to her to be cheered up 
 a bit, and ten to one catch her in the sulks, 
 expecting you to find enough good humor for 
 both. After she has become Mrs. Summer she 
 grows a little more staid in her demeanor ; and 
 her abundant table, where you are sure to get 
 the earliest fruits and vegetables of the season, 
 is a good foundation for steady friendship ; but 
 she has lost that delicious aroma of maidenhood, 
 and what was delicately rounded grace in the 
 girl gives more than hints of something like 
 redundance in the matron. Autumn is the poet 
 of the family. He gets you up a splendor that 
 you would say was made out of real sunset ; but 
 it is nothing more than a few hectic leaves, when 
 all is done. He is but a sentimentalist, after 
 all ; a kind of Lamartine whining along the an 
 cestral avenues he has made bare timber of, and 
 begging a contribution of good spirits from your 
 own savings to keep him in countenance. But 
 Winter has his delicate sensibilities too, only he 
 does not make them as good as indelicate by 
 thrusting them forever in your face. He is a 
 better poet than Autumn, when he has a mind, 
 
340 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 but, like a truly great one as he is, he brings 
 you down to your bare manhood, and bids you 
 understand him out of that, with no adventi 
 tious helps of association, or he will none of 
 you. He does not touch those melancholy 
 chords on which Autumn is as great a master as 
 Heine. Well, is there no such thing as thrum 
 ming on them and maundering over them till 
 they get out of tune, and you wish some manly 
 hand would crash through them and leave them 
 dangling brokenly forever ? Take Winter as you 
 find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly 
 honest fellow, with no nonsense in him, and 
 tolerating none in you, which is a great comfort 
 in the long run. He is not what they call a 
 genial critic ; but bring a real man along with 
 you, and you will find there is a crabbed gen 
 erosity about the old cynic that you would not 
 exchange for all the creamy concessions of 
 Autumn. " Season of mists and mellow fruitful- 
 ness," quotha ? That J s just it ; Winter soon 
 blows your head clear of fog and makes you 
 see things as they are ; I thank him for it ! The 
 truth is, between ourselves, I have a very good 
 opinion of the whole family, who always wel 
 come me without making me feel as if I were 
 too much of a poor relation. There ought to 
 be some kind of distance, never so little, you 
 know, to give the true relish. They are as good 
 company, the worst of them, as any I know, and 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 341 
 
 I am not a little flattered by a condescension 
 from any one of them ; but I happen to hold 
 Winter s retainer, this time, and, like an honest 
 advocate, am bound to make as good a show 
 ing as I can for him, even if it cost a few slurs 
 upon the rest of the household. Moreover, 
 Winter is coming, and one would like to get on 
 the blind side of him. 
 
 The love of Nature in and for herself, or as 
 a mirror for the moods of the mind, is a mod 
 ern thing. The fleeing to her as an escape from 
 man was brought into fashion by Rousseau ; for 
 his prototype Petrarch, though he had a taste 
 for pretty scenery, had a true antique horror for 
 the grander aspects of nature. He got once to 
 the top of Mont Ventoux, but it is very plain 
 that he did not enjoy it. Indeed, it is only 
 within a century or so that the search after the 
 picturesque has been a safe employment. It is 
 not so even now in Greece or Southern Italy. 
 Where the Anglo-Saxon carves his cold fowl, 
 and leaves the relics of his picnic, the ancient 
 or mediaeval man might be pretty confident 
 that some ruffian would try the edge of his knife 
 on a chicken of the Platonic sort, and leave more 
 precious bones as an offering to the genius of the 
 place. The ancients were certainly more social 
 than we, though that, perhaps, was natural enough, 
 when a good part of the world was still covered 
 with forest. They huddled together in cities as 
 
342 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 well for safety as to keep their minds warm. 
 The Romans had a fondness for country life, 
 but they had fine roads, and Rome was always 
 within easy reach. The author of the Book of 
 Job is the earliest I know of who showed any 
 profound sense of the moral meaning of the out 
 ward world ; and I think none has approached 
 him since, though Wordsworth comes nearest 
 with the first two books of the Prelude. But their 
 feeling is not precisely of the kind I speak of as 
 modern, and which gave rise to what is called 
 descriptive poetry. Chaucer opens his Clerk s 
 Tale with a bit of landscape admirable for its 
 large style, and as well composed as any Claude. 
 
 " There is right at the west end of Itaille, 
 Down at the root of Vesulus the cold, 
 A lusty plain abundant of vitaille, 
 Where many a tower and town thou mayst behold, 
 That founded were in time of fathers old, 
 And many an other delectable sight; 
 And Saluces this noble country hight." 
 
 What an airy precision of touch there is here, 
 and what a sure eye for the points of character 
 in landscape ! But the picture is altogether sub 
 sidiary. No doubt the works of Salvator Rosa 
 and Gaspar Poussin show that there must have 
 been some amateur taste for the grand and ter 
 rible in scenery ; but the British poet Thomson 
 (" sweet-souled " is Wordsworth s apt word) was 
 the first to do with words what they had done 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 343 
 
 partially with colors. He was turgid, no good 
 metrist, and his English is like a translation from 
 one of those poets who wrote in Latin after it 
 was dead ; but he was a man of sincere genius, 
 and not only English, but European literature 
 is largely in his debt. He was the inventor of 
 cheap amusement for the million, to be had of 
 All-out-doors for the asking. It was his impulse 
 which unconsciously gave direction to Rousseau, 
 and it is to the school of Jean Jacques that we 
 owe St. Pierre, Cowper, Chateaubriand, Words 
 worth, Byron, Lamartine, George Sand, Rus- 
 kin, the great painters of ideal landscape. 
 
 So long as men had slender means, whether 
 of keeping out cold or checkmating it with ar 
 tificial heat, Winter was an unwelcome guest, 
 especially in the country. There he was the 
 bearer of a lettre de cachet, which shut its vic 
 tims in solitary confinement with few resources 
 but to boose round the fire and repeat ghost- 
 stories, which had lost all their freshness and 
 none of their terror. To go to bed was to lie 
 awake of cold, with an added shudder of fright 
 whenever a loose casement or a waving cur 
 tain chose to give you the goose-flesh. Bussy 
 Rabutin, in one of his letters, gives us a notion 
 how uncomfortable it was in the country, with 
 green wood, smoky chimneys, and doors and 
 windows that thought it was their duty to make 
 the wind whistle, not to keep it out. With fuel 
 
344 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 so dear, it could not have been much better in 
 the city, to judge by Menage s warning against 
 the danger of our dressing-gowns taking fire, 
 while we cuddle too closely over the sparing 
 blaze. The poet of Winter himself is said to 
 have written in bed, with his hand through a 
 hole in the blanket ; and we may suspect that 
 it was the warmth quite as much as the company 
 that first drew men together at the coffee-house. 
 Coleridge, in January, 1800, writes to Wedge- 
 wood : " I am sitting by a fire in a rug great 
 coat. ... It is most barbarously cold, and 
 you, I fear, can shield yourself from it only by 
 perpetual imprisonment." This thermometrical 
 view of Winter is, I grant, a depressing one ; for 
 I think there is nothing so demoralizing as cold. 
 I know of a boy who, when his father, a bitter 
 economist, was brought home dead, said only, 
 " Now we can burn as much wood as we like." 
 I would not off-hand prophesy the gallows for 
 that boy. I remember with a shudder a pinch 
 I got from the cold once in a railroad-car. A 
 born fanatic of fresh air, I found myself glad 
 to see the windows hermetically sealed by the 
 freezing vapor of our breath, and plotted the 
 assassination of the conductor every time he 
 opened the door. I felt myself sensibly barba 
 rizing, and would have shared Colonel Jack s 
 bed in the ash-hole of the glass-furnace with 
 a grateful heart. Since then I have had more 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 345 
 
 chanty for the prevailing ill opinion of Winter. 
 It was natural enough that Ovid should mea 
 sure the years of his exile in Pontus by the num 
 ber of winters. 
 
 TJt sumus in Ponto, ter frigore constitit Ister, 
 Facta est Euxini dura ter unda maris: 
 
 Thrice hath the cold bound Ister fast, since I 
 In Pontus was, thrice Euxine s wave made hard. 
 
 Jubinal has printed an Anglo-Norman piece of 
 doggerel in which Winter and Summer dis 
 pute which is the better man. It is not without 
 a kind of rough and inchoate humor, and I like 
 it because old Whitebeard gets tolerably fair 
 play. The jolly old fellow boasts of his rate of 
 living, with that contempt of poverty which is 
 the weak spot in the burly English nature. 
 
 Ja Dieu ne place que me avyenge 
 Que ne face plus honour 
 Et plus despenz en un soul jour 
 Que vus en tote vostre vie: 
 
 Now God forbid it hap to me 
 That I make not more great display, 
 And spend more in a single day 
 Than you can do in all your life. 
 
 The best touch, perhaps, is Winter s claim for 
 credit as a mender of the highways, which was 
 not without point when every road in Europe 
 was a quagmire during a good part of the year 
 unless it was bottomed on some remains of Ro 
 man engineering. 
 
346 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 Je su, fet-il, seignur et mestre 
 Et a bon droit le dey estre, 
 Quant de la bowe face cauce 
 Par un petit de geele: 
 
 Master and lord I am, says he, 
 And of good right so ought to be, 
 Since I make causeys, safely crost, 
 Of mud, with just a pinch of frost. 
 
 But there is no recognition of Winter as the 
 best of out-door company. 1 
 
 Even Emerson, an open-air man, and a 
 bringer of it, if ever any, confesses, 
 
 " The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, 
 Sings in my ear, my hands are stones, 
 Curdles the blood to the marble bones, 
 Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense, 
 And hems in life with narrowing fence." 
 
 Winter was literally " the inverted year," as 
 Thomson called him ; for such entertainments 
 as could be had must be got within doors. What 
 cheerfulness there was in brumal verse was that 
 of Horace s dissolve frigus ligna super foe o large 
 reponens, so pleasantly associated with the clever 
 est scene in " Roderick Random." This is the 
 
 1 Mais vous Yver, trop estes plain 
 De nege, vent, pluye, e grezil; 
 Ou vous deust bannir en exil; 
 Sans point flater, je parle plain, 
 Yver vous n estes qu un vilain. 
 
 Ch. d* Orleans, Chans, xciv. 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 347 
 
 tone of that poem of Walton s friend Cotton, 
 which won the praise of Wordsworth : 
 
 " Let us home, 
 Our mortal enemy is come; 
 Winter and all his blustering train 
 Have made a voyage o er the main. 
 
 " Fly, fly, the foe advances fast; 
 Into our fortress let us haste, 
 Where all the roarers of the north 
 Can neither storm nor starve us forth. 
 
 " There underground a magazine 
 Of sovereign juice is cellared in, 
 Liquor that will the siege maintain 
 Should Phoebus ne er return again. 
 
 " Whilst we together jovial sit 
 
 Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit, 
 Where, though bleak winds confine us home, 
 Our fancies round the world shall roam." 
 
 Thomson s view of Winter is also, on the whole, 
 a hostile one, though he does justice to his 
 .grandeur. 
 
 " Thus Winter falls, 
 
 A heavy gloom oppressive o er the world, 
 Through Nature shedding influence malign." 
 
 He finds his consolations, like Cotton, in the 
 house, though more refined : 
 
 " While without 
 
 The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat 
 Between the groaning forest and the shore 
 Beat by the boundless multitude of waves, 
 
348 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 A rural, sheltered, solitary scene, 
 Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join 
 To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit 
 And hold high converse with the mighty dead." 
 
 Doctor Akenside, a man to be spoken of with 
 respect, follows Thomson. With him, too, 
 " Winter desolates the year," and 
 
 " How pleasing wears the wintry night 
 Spent with the old illustrious dead ! 
 While by the taper s trembling light 
 I seem those awful scenes to tread 
 Where chiefs or legislators lie," etc. 
 
 Akenside had evidently been reading Thom 
 son. He had the conceptions of a great poet 
 with less faculty than many a little one, and is 
 one of those versifiers of whom it is enough to 
 say that we are always willing to break him off 
 in the middle (as I have ventured to do) with 
 an etc., well knowing that what follows is but 
 the coming-round again of what went before, 
 marching in a circle with the cheap numerosity 
 of a stage army. In truth, it is no wonder that 
 the short days of that cloudy northern climate 
 should have added to Winter a gloom borrowed 
 of the mind. We hardly know, till we have 
 experienced the contrast, how sensibly our win 
 ter is alleviated by the longer daylight and the 
 pellucid atmosphere. I once spent a winter in 
 Dresden, a southern climate compared with 
 England, and really almost lost my respect for 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 349 
 
 the sun when I saw him groping among the 
 chimney-pots opposite my windows as he de 
 scribed his impoverished arc in the sky. The 
 enforced seclusion of the season makes it the 
 time for serious study and occupations that de 
 mand fixed incomes of unbroken time. This is 
 why Milton said " that his vein never happily 
 flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the 
 vernal," though in his twentieth year he had 
 written, on the return of spring, 
 
 Pallor ? an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires 
 Ingeniumque mini munere veris adest ? 
 
 Err I ? or do the powers of song return 
 To me, and genius too, the gifts of Spring ? 
 
 Goethe, so far as I remember, was the first 
 to notice the cheerfulness of snow in sunshine. 
 His Cf Harz-reise im Winter " gives no hint of it, 
 for that is a diluted reminiscence of Greek tragic 
 choruses and the Book of Job in nearly equal 
 parts. In one of the singularly interesting and 
 characteristic letters to Frau von Stein, however, 
 written during the journey, he says : " It is 
 beautiful indeed ; the mist heaps itself together 
 in light snow-clouds, the sun looks through, and 
 the snow over everything gives back a feeling 
 of gayety." But I find in Cowper the first re 
 cognition of a general amiability in Winter. The 
 gentleness of his temper, and the wide charity 
 of his sympathies, made it natural for him to 
 
350 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 find good in everything except the human heart. 
 A dreadful creed distilled from the darkest 
 moments of dyspeptic solitaries compelled him 
 against his will to see in that the one evil thing 
 made by a God whose goodness is over all his 
 works. Cowper s two walks in the morning and 
 noon of a winter s day are delightful, so long as 
 he contrives to let himself be happy in the gra- 
 ciousness of the landscape. Your muscles grow 
 springy, and your lungs dilate with the crisp 
 air as you walk along with him. You laugh 
 with him at the grotesque shadow of your 
 legs lengthened across the snow by the just- 
 risen sun. I know nothing that gives a purer 
 feeling of outdoor exhilaration than the easy 
 verses of this escaped hypochondriac. But Cow- 
 per also preferred his sheltered garden-walk to 
 those robuster joys, and bitterly acknowledged 
 the depressing influence of the darkened year. 
 In December, 1780, he writes : " At this season 
 of the year, and in this gloomy uncomfortable 
 climate, it is no easy matter for the owner of a 
 mind like mine to divert it from sad subjects, 
 and to fix it upon such as may administer to its 
 amusement." Or was it because he was writing 
 to the dreadful Newton ? Perhaps his poetry 
 bears truer witness to his habitual feeling, for 
 it is only there that poets disenthral themselves 
 of their reserve and become fully possessed of 
 their greatest charm, the power of being 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 351 
 
 franker than other men. In the Third Book 
 of " The Task " he boldly affirms his preference 
 of the country to the city even in winter : 
 
 " But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed 
 By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt, 
 And groves, if inharmonious, yet secure 
 From clamor, and whose very silence charms, 
 To be preferred to smoke ? . . . 
 They would be, were not madness in the head 
 And folly in the heart; were England now 
 What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, 
 And undebauched. " 
 
 The conclusion shows, however, that he was 
 thinking mainly of fireside delights, not of the 
 blusterous companionship of Nature. This ap 
 pears even more clearly in the Fourth Book : 
 " O Winter, ruler of the inverted year " ; 
 
 but I cannot help interrupting him to say how 
 pleasant it always is to track poets through the 
 gardens of their predecessors and find out their 
 likings by a flower snapped off here and there to 
 garnish their own nosegays. Cowper had been 
 reading Thomson, and " the inverted year " 
 pleased his fancy with its suggestion of that 
 starry wheel of the zodiac moving round 
 through its spaces infinite. He could not help 
 loving a handy Latinism (especially with elision 
 beauty added), any more than Gray, any more 
 than Wordsworth, on the sly. But the mem 
 ber for Olney has the floor : 
 
352 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 O Winter, ruler of the inverted year, 
 Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled, 
 Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
 Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 
 Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds, 
 A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
 A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, 
 But urged by storms along its slippery way, 
 I love thee all unlovely as thou seem st, 
 And dreaded as thou art ! Thou hold st the sun 
 A prisoner in the yet undawning east, 
 Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 
 And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 
 Down to the rosy west, but kindly still 
 Compensating his loss with added hours 
 Of social converse and instructive ease, 
 And gathering at short notice, in one group, 
 The family dispersed, and fixing thought, 
 Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
 I crown thee king of intimate delights, 
 Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness, 
 And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
 Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours 
 Of long uninterrupted evening know." 
 
 I call this a good human bit of writing, im 
 aginative, too, not so flushed, not so ... 
 highfaluting (let me dare the odious word !) as 
 the modern style since poets have got hold of a 
 theory that imagination is common sense turned 
 inside out, and not common sense sublimed, 
 but wholesome, masculine, and strong in the 
 simplicity of a mind wholly occupied with its 
 theme. To me Cowper is still the best of our 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 353 
 
 descriptive poets for every-day wear. And what 
 unobtrusive skill he has ! How he heightens, 
 for example, your sense of winter evening se 
 clusion, by the twanging horn of the postman 
 on the bridge ! That horn has rung in my 
 ears ever since I first heard it, during the con 
 sulate of the second Adams. Wordsworth 
 strikes a deeper note ; but does it not some 
 times come over one (just the least in the world) 
 that one would give anything for a bit of nature 
 pure and simple, without quite so strong a fla 
 vor of W. W. ? W. W. is, of course, sublime 
 and all that but ! For my part, I will make 
 a clean breast of it, and confess that I can t look 
 at a mountain without fancying the late lau 
 reate s gigantic Roman nose thrust between me 
 and it, and thinking of Dean Swift s profane 
 version of Romanos rerum dominos into Roman 
 nose I a rare un ! domyour nose ! But do I judge 
 verses, then, by the impression made on me 
 by the man who wrote them ? Not so fast, my 
 good friend, but, for good or evil, the character 
 and its intellectual product are inextricably in 
 terfused. 
 
 If I remember aright, Wordsworth himself 
 (except in his magnificent skating-scene in the 
 Prelude) has not much to say for winter out 
 of doors. I cannot recall any picture by him 
 of a snow-storm. The reason may possibly be 
 that in the Lake Country even the winter 
 
354 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 storms bring rain rather than snow. He was 
 thankful for the Christmas visits of Crabb Rob 
 inson, because they " helped him through the 
 winter." His only hearty praise of Winter is 
 when, as General Fevrier, he defeats the 
 French : 
 
 " Humanity, delighting to behold 
 A fond reflection of her own decay, 
 Hath painted Winter like a traveller old, 
 Propped on a staff, and, through the sullen day, 
 In hooded mantle, limping o er the plain 
 As though his weakness were disturbed by pain: 
 Or, if a juster fancy should allow 
 An undisputed symbol of command, 
 The chosen sceptre is a withered bough 
 Infirmly grasped within a withered hand. 
 These emblems suit the helpless and forlorn; 
 But mighty Winter the device shall scorn." 
 
 The Scottish poet Grahame, in his " Sab 
 bath/ says manfully : 
 
 " Now is the time 
 To visit Nature in her grand attire "; 
 
 and he has one little picture which no other 
 poet has surpassed : 
 
 " High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached 
 The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch: 
 Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried. * 
 
 Even in our own climate, where the sun shows 
 his winter face as long and as brightly as in 
 central Italy, the seduction of the chimney cor 
 ner is apt to predominate in the mind over the 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 355 
 
 severer satisfactions of muffled fields and peni 
 tential woods. The very title of Whittier s 
 delightful " Snow-Bound " shows what he was 
 thinking of, though he does vapor a little about 
 digging out paths. The verses of Emerson, 
 perfect as a Greek fragment (despite the archa 
 ism of a dissyllabic fire), which he has chosen 
 for his epigraph tell us, too, how the 
 
 ff Housemates sit 
 
 Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
 In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 
 
 They are all in a tale. It is always the tristis 
 Hiems of Virgil. Catch one of them having a 
 kind word for old Barbe Fleurie, unless he 
 whines through some cranny, like a beggar, to 
 heighten their enjoyment while they toast their 
 slippered toes. I grant there is a keen relish of 
 contrast about the bickering flame as it gives an 
 emphasis beyond Gherardo della Notte to loved 
 faces, or kindles the gloomy gold of volumes 
 scarce less friendly, especially when a tempest 
 is blundering round the house. Wordsworth 
 has a fine touch that brings home to us the com 
 fortable contrast of without and within, during 
 a storm at night, and the passage is highly char 
 acteristic of a poet whose inspiration always has 
 an undertone of bourgeois : 
 
 " How touching, when, at midnight, sweep 
 Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark, 
 To hear, and sink again to sleep ! 
 
356 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 J. H., one of those choice poets who will not 
 tarnish their bright fancies by publication, al 
 ways insists on a snow-storm as essential to the 
 true atmosphere of whist. Mrs. Battles, in her 
 famous rule for the game, implies winter, and 
 would doubtless have added tempest, if it could 
 be had for the asking. For a good solid read 
 also, into the small hours, there is nothing like 
 that sense of safety against having your even 
 ing laid waste, which Euroclydon brings, as he 
 bellows down the chimney, making your fire 
 gasp, or rustles snow-flakes against the pane 
 with a sound more soothing than silence. 
 Emerson, as he is apt to do, not only hit the 
 nail on the head, but drove it home, in that 
 last phrase of the " tumultuous privacy." 
 
 But I would exchange this, and give some 
 thing to boot, for the privilege of walking out 
 into the vast blur of a north-northeast snow 
 storm, and getting a strong draught on the fur 
 nace within, by drawing the first furrows through 
 its sandy drifts. I love those 
 
 " Noontide twilights which snow makes 
 With tempest of the blinding flakes. " 
 
 If the wind veer too much toward the east, you 
 get the heavy snow that gives a true Alpine 
 slope to the boughs of your evergreens, and 
 traces a skeleton of your elms in white ; but 
 you must have plenty of north in your gale if 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 357 
 
 you w&nt those driving nettles of frost that 
 sting the cheeks to a crimson manlier than that 
 of fire. During the great storm of two winters 
 ago, the most robustious periwig-pated fellow 
 of late years, I waded and floundered a couple 
 of miles through the whispering night, and 
 brought home that feeling of expansion we 
 have after being in good company. " Great 
 things doeth He which we cannot comprehend ; 
 for he saith to the snow, * Be thou on the 
 earth/ " 
 
 There is excellent snow scenery in Judd s 
 " Margaret," but some one has confiscated my 
 copy of that admirable book, and, perhaps, 
 Homer s picture of a snow-storm is the best 
 yet in its large simplicity : 
 
 " And as in winter-time, when Jove his cold sharp javelins 
 
 throws 
 Amongst us mortals, and is moved to white the earth with 
 
 snows, 
 
 The winds asleep, he freely pours till highest prominents, 
 Hill-tops, low meadows, and the fields that crown with 
 
 most contents 
 The toils of men, seaports and shores, are hid, and every 
 
 place, 
 But floods, that fair snow s tender flakes, as their own 
 
 brood, embrace." 
 
 Chapman, after all, though he makes very 
 free with him, comes nearer Homer than any 
 body else. There is nothing in the original of 
 that fair snow s tender flakes, but neither Pope 
 
35 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 nor Cowper could get out of their heads the 
 Psalmist s tender phrase, " He giveth his snow 
 like wool/ for which also Homer affords no 
 hint. Pope talks of " dissolving fleeces," and 
 Cowper of a " fleecy mantle." But David is 
 nobly simple, while Pope is simply nonsensical, 
 and Cowper pretty. If they must have pretti- 
 ness, Martial would have supplied them with it 
 in his 
 
 Densum tacitarum vellus aquarum, 
 
 which is too pretty, though I fear it would have 
 pleased Dr. Donne. Eustathius of Thessa- 
 lonica calls snow $>o>p epuoSes, woolly water, which 
 a poor old French poet, Godeau, has amplified 
 into this : 
 
 Lorsque la froidure inhumaine 
 De leur verd ornement depouille les forets 
 Sous une neige epaisse il couvre les guerets, 
 Et la neige a pour eux la chaleur de la laine. 
 
 In this, as in Pope s version of the passage in 
 Homer, there is, at least, a sort of suggestion 
 of snow-storm in the blinding drift of words. 
 But, on the whole, if one would know what 
 snow is, I should advise him not to hunt up 
 what the poets have said about it, but to look 
 at the sweet miracle itself. 
 
 The preludings of Winter are as beautiful as 
 those of Spring. In a gray December day, 
 when, as the farmers say, it is too cold to snow, 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 359 
 
 his numbed fingers will let fall doubtfully a 
 few star-shaped flakes, the snow-drops and 
 anemones that harbinger his more assured reign. 
 Now, and now only, may be seen, heaped on 
 the horizon s eastern edge, those "blue clouds" 
 from forth which Shakespeare says that Mars 
 " doth pluck the masoned turrets." Sometimes 
 also, when the sun is low, you will see a sin 
 gle cloud trailing a flurry of snow along the 
 southern hills in a wavering fringe of purple. 
 And when at last the real snow-storm comes, 
 it leaves the earth with a virginal look on it 
 that no other of the seasons can rival, com 
 pared with which, indeed, they seem soiled and 
 vulgar. 
 
 And what is there in nature so beautiful as 
 the next morning after such confusion of the 
 elements ? Night has no silence like this of 
 busy day. All the batteries of noise are spiked. 
 We see the movement of life as a deaf man sees 
 it, a mere wraith of the clamorous existence 
 that inflicts itself on our ears when the ground 
 is bare. The earth is clothed in innocence as 
 a garment. Every wound of the landscape is 
 healed ; whatever was stiff has been sweetly 
 rounded as the breasts of Aphrodite ; what was 
 unsightly has been covered gently with a soft 
 splendor, as if, Cowley would have said, Nature 
 had cleverly let fall her handkerchief to hide 
 it. If the Virgin (Notre Dame de la Neige) were 
 
360 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 to come back, here is an earth that would not 
 bruise her foot nor stain it. It is 
 
 . " The fanned snow 
 
 That s bolted by the northern blasts twice o er" 
 (Soffiata e stretta dai vend Schiavi), 
 Winnowed and packed by the Sclavonian winds, 
 
 packed so hard sometimes on hill-slopes that 
 it will bear your weight. What grace is in all 
 the curves, as if every one of them had been 
 swept by that inspired thumb of Phidias s jour 
 neyman ! 
 
 Poets have fancied the footprints of the wind 
 in those light ripples that sometimes scurry 
 across smooth water with a sudden blur. But 
 on this gleaming hush the aerial deluge has left 
 plain marks of its course ; and in gullies through 
 which it rushed torrent-like, the eye finds its 
 bed irregularly scooped like that of a brook in 
 hard beach-sand, or, in more sheltered spots, 
 traced with outlines like those left by the slid 
 ing edges of the surf upon the shore. The air, 
 after all, is only an infinitely thinner kind of 
 water, such as I suppose we shall have to drink 
 when the state does her whole duty as a moral 
 reformer. Nor is the wind the only thing whose 
 trail you will notice on this sensitive surface. 
 You will find that you have more neighbors 
 and night visitors than you dreamed of. Here 
 is the dainty footprint of a cat ; here a dog has 
 looked in on you like an amateur watchman to 
 
lip 
 
 Sf "* 
 %u^v // 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 361 
 
 see if all is right, slumping clumsily about in 
 the mealy treachery. And look ! before you 
 were up in the morning, though you were a 
 punctual courtier at the sun s levee, here has 
 been a squirrel zigzagging to and fro like a 
 hound gathering the scent, and some tiny bird 
 searching for unimaginable food, perhaps for 
 the tinier creature, whatever it is, that drew this 
 slender continuous trail like those made on the 
 wet beach by light borderers of the sea. The 
 earliest autographs were as frail as these. Posei 
 don traced his lines, or giant birds made their 
 mark, on preadamite sea-margins ; and the 
 thunder-gust left the tear-stains of its sudden 
 passion there ; nay, we have the signatures of 
 delicatest fern-leaves on the soft ooze of aeons 
 that dozed away their dreamless leisure before 
 consciousness came upon the earth with man. 
 Some whim of Nature locked them fast in stone 
 for us afterthoughts of creation. Which of us 
 shall leave a footprint as imperishable as that 
 of the ornithorhynchus, or much more so than 
 that of these Bedouins of the snow-desert? 
 Perhaps it was only because the ripple and the 
 rain-drop and the bird were not thinking of 
 themselves, that they had such luck. The 
 chances of immortality depend very much on 
 that. How often have we not seen poor mor 
 tals, dupes of a season s notoriety, carving their 
 names on seeming-solid rock of merest beach- 
 
362 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 sand, whose feeble hold on memory shall be 
 washed away by the next wave of fickle opin 
 ion ! Well, well, honest Jacques, there are bet 
 ter things to be found in the snow than ser 
 mons. 
 
 The snow that falls damp comes commonly 
 in larger flakes from windless skies, and is the 
 prettiest of all to watch from under cover. 
 This is the kind Homer had in mind ; and 
 Dante, who had never read him, compares the 
 dilatate falde> the flaring flakes, of his fiery rain, 
 to those of snow among the mountains without 
 wind. This sort of snow-fall has no fight in it, 
 and does not challenge you to a wrestle like that 
 which drives well from the northward, with all 
 moisture thoroughly winnowed out of it by the 
 frosty wind. Burns, who was more out of doors 
 than most poets, and whose barefoot Muse got 
 the color in her cheeks by vigorous exercise in 
 all weathers, was thinking of this drier deluge, 
 when he speaks of the "whirling drift," and 
 tells how 
 
 " Chanticleer 
 Shook off the powthery snaw. J 
 
 But the damper and more deliberate falls have 
 a choice knack at draping the trees ; and about 
 eaves or stone walls, wherever, indeed, the 
 evaporation is rapid, and it finds a chance to 
 cling, it will build itself out in curves of won 
 derful beauty. I have even one of these dumb 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 363 
 
 waves, thus caught in the act of breaking, curl 
 four feet beyond the edge of my roof and hang 
 there for days, as if Nature were too well 
 pleased with her work to let it crumble from 
 its exquisite pause. After such a storm, if you 
 are lucky enough to have even a sluggish ditch 
 for a neighbor, be sure to pay it a visit. You 
 will find its banks corniced with what seems pre 
 cipitated light, and the dark current down be 
 low gleams as if with an inward lustre. Dull 
 of motion as it is, you never saw water that 
 seemed alive before. It has a brightness, like 
 that of the eyes of some smaller animals, which 
 gives assurance of life, but of a life foreign and 
 unintelligible. 
 
 A damp snow-storm often turns to rain, and, 
 in our freakish climate, the wind will whisk 
 sometimes into the northwest so suddenly as to 
 plate all the trees with crystal before it has 
 swept the sky clear of its last cobweb of cloud. 
 Ambrose Philips, in a poetical epistle from Co 
 penhagen to the Earl of Dorset, describes this 
 strange confectionery of Nature, for such, I 
 am half ashamed to say, it always seems to me, 
 recalling the " glorified sugar-candy " of Lamb s 
 first night at the theatre. It has an artificial 
 air, altogether beneath the grand artist of the 
 atmosphere, and besides does too much mischief 
 to the trees for a philodendrist to take unmixed 
 pleasure in it. Perhaps it deserves a poet like 
 
364 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 Philips, who really loved Nature and yet liked 
 her to be mighty fine, as Pepys would say, with 
 a heightening of powder and rouge : 
 
 "And yet but lately have I seen e en here 
 The winter in a lovely dress appear. 
 Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow, 
 Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow, 
 At evening a keen eastern breeze arose, 
 And the descending rain unsullied froze. 
 Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew, 
 The ruddy noon disclosed at once to view 
 The face of Nature in a rich disguise, 
 And brightened every object to my eyes; 
 For every shrub, and every blade of grass, 
 And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass; 
 In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show, 
 And through the ice the crimson berries glow; 
 The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield, 
 Seem polished lances in a hostile field; 
 The stag in limpid currents with surprise 
 Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise; 
 The spreading oak, the beech, the towering pine, 
 Glazed over in the freezing ether shine; 
 The frighted birds the rattling branches shun, 
 Which wave and glitter in the distant sun, 
 When, if a sudden gust of wind arise, 
 The brittle forest into atoms flies, 
 The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends 
 And in a spangled shower the prospect ends." 
 
 It is not uninstructive to see how tolerable 
 Ambrose is, so long as he sticks manfully to 
 what he really saw. The moment he undertakes 
 to improve on Nature he sinks into the mere 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 365 
 
 court poet, and we surrender him to the jeal 
 ousy of Pope without a sigh. His " rattling 
 branches," " crackling wood," and crimson ber 
 ries glowing through the ice are good, as truth 
 always is after a fashion ; but what shall we say 
 of that dreadful stag which, there is little doubt, 
 he valued above all the rest, because it was 
 purely his own ? 
 
 The damper snow tempts the amateur archi 
 tect and sculptor. His Pentelicus has been 
 brought to his very door, and if there are boys 
 to be had (whose company beats all other re 
 cipes for prolonging life) a middle-aged Master 
 of the Works will knock the years off his ac 
 count and make the family Bible seem a dealer 
 in foolish fables, by a few hours given heartily 
 to this business. First comes the Sisyphean toil 
 of rolling the clammy balls till they refuse to 
 budge farther. Then, if you would play the 
 statuary, they are piled one upon the other to 
 the proper height ; or if your aim be masonry, 
 whether of house or fort, they must be squared 
 and beaten solid with the shovel. The material 
 is capable of very pretty effects, and your young 
 companions meanwhile are unconsciously learn 
 ing lessons in aesthetics. From the feeling of 
 satisfaction with which one squats on the damp 
 floor of his extemporized dwelling, I have been 
 led to think that the backwoodsman must get 
 a sweeter savor of self-sufficingness from the 
 
366 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 house his own hands have built than Bramante 
 or Sansovino could ever give. Perhaps the fort 
 is the best thing, for it calls out more masculine 
 qualities and adds the cheer of battle with that 
 dumb artillery which gives pain enough to test 
 pluck without risk of serious hurt. Already, as 
 I write, it is twenty-odd years ago. The balls fly 
 thick and fast. The uncle defends the waist- 
 high ramparts against a storm of nephews, his 
 breast plastered with decorations like another 
 Radetsky s. How well I recall the indomitable 
 good humor under fire of him who fell in front 
 at Ball s Bluff, the silent pertinacity of the 
 gentle scholar who got his last hurt at Fair 
 Oaks, the ardor in the charge of the gallant 
 gentleman who, with the death-wound in his 
 side, headed his brigade at Cedar Creek ! 
 How it all comes back, and they never come ! 
 I cannot again be the Vauban of fortresses in 
 the innocent snow, but I shall never see children 
 moulding their clumsy giants in it without long 
 ing to help. It was a pretty fancy of the young 
 Vermont sculptor to make his first essay in this 
 evanescent material. Was it a figure of Youth, 
 I wonder ? Would it not be well if all artists 
 could begin in stuff as perishable, to melt away 
 when the sun of prosperity began to shine, and 
 leave nothing behind but the gain of practised 
 hands ? It is pleasant to fancy that Shakespeare 
 served his apprenticeship at this trade, and 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 367 
 
 owed to it that most pathetic of despairing 
 wishes, 
 
 " O, that I were a mockery-king of snow, 
 Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, 
 To melt myself away in water-drops ! " 
 
 I have spoken of the exquisite curves of snow 
 surfaces. Not less rare are the tints of which 
 they are capable, the faint blue of the hol 
 lows, for the shadows in snow are always blue, 
 and the tender rose of higher points, as you 
 stand with your back to the setting sun and 
 look upward across the soft rondure of a hill 
 side. I have seen within a mile of home effects 
 of color as lovely as any iridescence of the Sil- 
 berhorn after sundown. Charles II., who never 
 said a foolish thing, gave the English climate 
 the highest praise when he said that it allowed 
 you more hours out of doors than any other, 
 and I think our winter may fairly make the 
 same boast as compared with the rest of the year. 
 Its still mornings, with the thermometer near 
 zero, put a premium on walking. There is 
 more sentiment in turf, perhaps, and it is more 
 elastic under the foot ; its silence, too, is well- 
 nigh as congenial with meditation as that of 
 fallen pine-tassel ; but for exhilaration there is 
 nothing like a stiff snow-crust that creaks like 
 a cricket at every step, and communicates its 
 own sparkle to the senses. The air you drink 
 is frappty all its grosser particles precipitated, 
 
368 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 and the dregs of your blood with them. A purer 
 current mounts to the brain, courses sparkling 
 through it, and rinses it thoroughly of all de 
 jected stuff. There is nothing left to breed an 
 exhalation of ill humor or despondency. They 
 say that this rarefied atmosphere has lessened 
 the capacity of our lungs. Be it so. Quart pots 
 are for muddier liquor than nectar. To me, the 
 city in winter is infinitely dreary, the sharp 
 street-corners have such a chill in them, and 
 the snow so soon loses its maidenhood to be 
 come a mere drab, " doing shameful things," 
 as Steele says of politicians, " without being 
 ashamed." I pine for the Quaker purity of my 
 country landscape. I am speaking, of course, 
 of those winters that are not niggardly of snow, 
 as ours too often are, giving us a gravelly dust 
 instead. Nothing can be unsightlier than those 
 piebald fields where the coarse brown hide of 
 Earth shows through the holes of her ragged 
 ermine. But even when there is abundance of 
 snow, I find as I grow older that there are not 
 so many good crusts as there used to be. When 
 I first observed this, I rashly set it to the ac 
 count of that general degeneracy in nature (keep 
 ing pace with the same melancholy phenomenon 
 in man) which forces itself upon the attention 
 and into the philosophy of middle life. But 
 happening once to be weighed, it occurred to 
 me that an arch which would bear fifty pounds 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 369 
 
 could hardly be blamed for giving way under 
 more than three times the weight. I have some 
 times thought that if theologians would remem 
 ber this in their arguments, and consider that 
 the man may slump through, with no fault of 
 his own, where the boy would have skimmed the 
 surface in safety, it would be better for all par 
 ties. However, when you do get a crust that 
 will bear, and know any brooklet that runs down 
 a hillside, be sure to go and take a look at him, 
 especially if your crust is due, as it commonly 
 is, to a cold snap following eagerly on a thaw. 
 You will never find him so cheerful. As he 
 shrank away after the last thaw, he built for 
 himself the most exquisite caverns of ice to run 
 through, if not "measureless to man" like those 
 of Alph, the sacred river, yet perhaps more 
 pleasing for their narrowness than those for 
 their grandeur. What a cunning silversmith is 
 Frost ! The rarest workmanship of Delhi or 
 Genoa copies him but clumsily, as if the fin 
 gers of all other artists were thumbs. Fernwork 
 and lacework and filigree in endless variety, and 
 under it all the water tinkles like a distant gui 
 tar, or drums like a tambourine, or gurgles like 
 the Tokay of an anchorite s dream. Beyond 
 doubt there is a fairy procession marching along 
 those frail arcades and translucent corridors. 
 
 " Their oaten pipes blow wondrous shrill, 
 The hemlocks small blow clear." 
 
370 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 And hark ! is that the ringing of Titania s 
 bridle, or the bells of the wee, wee hawk that 
 sits on Oberon s wrist ? This wonder of Frost s 
 handiwork may be had every winter, but he can 
 do better than this, though I have seen it but 
 once in my life. There had been a thaw with 
 out wind or rain, making the air fat with gray 
 vapor. Towards sundown came that chill, the 
 avant-courier of a northwesterly gale. Then, 
 though there was no perceptible current in the 
 atmosphere, the fog began to attach itself in 
 frosty roots and filaments to the southern side 
 of every twig and grass-stem. The very posts 
 had poems traced upon them by this dumb min 
 strel. Wherever the moist seeds found lodg 
 ment grew an inch-deep moss fine as cobweb, a 
 slender coral reef, argentine, delicate, as of some 
 silent sea in the moon, such as Agassiz dredges 
 when he dreams. The frost, too, can wield a 
 delicate graver, and in fancy leaves Piranesi far 
 behind. He covers your window-pane with 
 Alpine etchings, as if in memory of that sanc 
 tuary where he finds shelter even in midsum 
 mer. 
 
 Now look down from your hillside across the 
 valley. The trees are leafless, but this is the 
 season to study their anatomy, and did you ever 
 notice before how much color there is in the 
 twigs of many of them ? And the smoke from 
 those chimneys is so blue it seems like a feeder 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 371 
 
 of the sky into which it flows. Winter refines 
 it and gives it agreeable associations. In sum 
 mer it suggests cookery or the drudgery of 
 steam-engines, but now your fancy (if it can 
 forget for a moment the dreary usurpation of 
 stoves) traces it down to the fireside and the 
 brightened faces of children. Thoreau is the 
 only poet who has fitly sung it. The wood 
 cutter rises before day and 
 
 " First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad 
 His early scout, his emissary, smoke, 
 The earliest, latest pilgrim from his roof, 
 To feel the frosty air; . . . 
 And, while he crouches still beside the hearth, 
 Nor musters courage to unbar the door, 
 It has gone down the glen with the light wind 
 And o er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath, 
 Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill, 
 And warmed the pinions of the early bird; 
 And now, perchance, high in the crispy air, 
 Has caught sight of the day o er the earth s edge, 
 And greets its master s eye at his low door 
 As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky." 
 
 Here is very bad verse and very good imagi 
 nation. He had been reading Wordsworth, or 
 he would not have made tree-tops an iambus. 
 In reading it over again I am bound to say that 
 I have never seen smoke that became a reful 
 gent cloud in the upper sky anywhere but in 
 London. In the Moretum of Virgil (or, if not 
 his, better than most of his) is a pretty picture 
 
372 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 of a peasant kindling his winter morning fire. 
 He rises before dawn, 
 
 Sollicitaque manu tenebras explorat inertes 
 Vestigatque focum laesus quern denique sensit. 
 Parvulus exusto remanebat stipite fumus, 
 Et cinis obductae celabat lumina prunae. 
 Admovet his pronam submissa fronte lucernam, 
 Et producit acu stupas humore carentes, 
 Excitat et crebris languentem flatibus ignem; 
 Tandem concepto tenebrae fulgore recedunt, 
 Oppositaque manu lumen defendit ab aura. 
 
 With cautious hand he gropes the sluggish dark, 
 Tracking the hearth which, scorched, he feels ere long. 
 In burnt-out logs a slender smoke remained, 
 And raked-up ashes hid the cinders eyes; 
 Stooping, to these the lamp outstretched he nears, 
 And, with a needle loosening the dry wick, 
 With frequent breath excites the languid flame. 
 Before the gathering glow the shades recede, 
 And his bent hand the new-caught light defends. 
 
 Ovid heightens the picture by a single touch : 
 Ipse genu posito flammas exsuscitat aura. 
 Kneeling, his breath calls back to life the flames. 
 
 If you walk down now into the woods, you 
 may find a robin or a bluebird among the red- 
 cedars, or a nuthatch scaling deviously the trunk 
 of some hardwood tree with an eye as keen as 
 that of a French soldier foraging for the pot-au- 
 feu of his mess. Perhaps a blue-jay shrills cah 
 cah in his corvine trebles, or a chickadee 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 373 
 
 " Shows feats of his gymnastic play, 
 
 Head downward, clinging to the spray. * 
 
 But both him and the snow-bird I love better 
 to see, tiny fluffs of feathered life, as they scurry 
 about in a driving mist of snow, than in this 
 serene air. 
 
 Coleridge has put into verse one of the most 
 beautiful phenomena of a winter walk : 
 
 " The woodman winding westward up the glen 
 At wintry dawn, where o er the sheep-track s maze 
 The viewless snow-mist weaves a glistening haze, 
 Sees full before him, gliding without tread, 
 An image with a halo round its head." 
 
 But this aureole is not peculiar to winter. I 
 have noticed it often in a summer morning, 
 when the grass was heavy with dew, and even 
 later in the day, when the dewless grass was still 
 fresh enough to have a gleam of its own. 
 
 For my own part I prefer a winter walk that 
 takes in the nightfall and the intense silence 
 that ere long follows it. The evening lamps look 
 yellower by contrast with the snow, and give 
 the windows that hearty look of which our se 
 cretive fires have almost robbed them. The stars 
 seem 
 
 " To hang, like twinkling winter lamps, 
 Among the branches of the leafless trees," 
 
 or, if you are on a hill-top (whence it is sweet 
 to watch the home-lights gleam out one by one), 
 
374 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 
 
 they look nearer than in summer, and appear 
 to take a conscious part in the cold. Especially 
 in one of those stand-stills of the air that fore 
 bode a change of weather, the sky is dusted 
 with motes of fire of which the summer watcher 
 never dreamed. Winter, too, is, on the whole, 
 the triumphant season of the moon, a moon 
 devoid of sentiment, if you choose, but with the 
 refreshment of a purer intellectual light, the 
 cooler orb of middle life. Whoever saw any 
 thing to match that gleam, rather divined than 
 seen, which runs before her over the snow, a 
 breath of light, as she rises on the infinite silence 
 of winter night? High in the heavens, also she 
 seems to bring out some intenser property of 
 cold with her chilly polish. The poets have 
 instinctively noted this. When Goody Blake 
 imprecates a curse of perpetual chill upon Harry 
 Gill, she has 
 
 " The cold, cold moon above her head " ; 
 
 and Coleridge speaks of 
 
 " The silent icicles, 
 Quietly gleaming to the quiet moon." 
 
 As you walk homeward, for it is time that 
 we should end our ramble, you may per 
 chance hear the most impressive sound in na 
 ture, unless it be the fall of a tree in the forest 
 during the hush of summer noon. It is the 
 stifled shriek of the lake yonder as the frost 
 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 375 
 
 throttles it. Wordsworth has described it (too 
 much, I fear, in the style of Dr. Armstrong) : 
 
 " And, interrupting oft that eager game, 
 From under Esthwaite s splitting fields of ice, 
 The pent-up air, struggling to free itself, 
 Gave out to meadow -grounds and hills a loud 
 Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves 
 Howling in troops along the Bothnic main." 
 
 Thoreau (unless the English lakes have a 
 different dialect from ours) calls it admirably 
 well a " whoop." But it is a noise like none 
 other, as if Demogorgon were moaning inar 
 ticulately from under the earth. Let us get 
 within doors, lest we hear it again, for there is 
 something bodeful and uncanny in it. 
 
 END OF VOLUME I 
 
I