Chapter III: Part 3

He appeared to be stunned for the hour; but, before the day closed, he had begun his labours again, and he never relaxed till, in two years from the time of the fire, he presented his work to the legislature of Louisiana, improved by the reconsideration which he had been compelled to give it. Men of all countries who understand jurisprudence seem to think that no praise of this achievement can be excessive.

He afterward represented Louisiana in both Houses of Congress; became Secretary of State in 1831; and, in 1833, minister to France. His was a busy life, of doing, suffering, and, we may confidently add, enjoying; for his was a nature full of simplicity, modesty, and benevolence. His industry is of itself exhilarating to contemplate.

During the whole preceding year I had heard Mr. Livingston's name almost daily in connexion with his extremely difficult negotiations between the United States and France, or, rather, between President Jackson and Louis Philippe. I had read his despatches (some of which were made public that were never designed to be so), and had not been quite satisfied as to their straightforwardness, but concluded, on the whole, that he had done as much as human wits could well do in so absurd, and perplexed, and dangerous a quarrel, where the minister had to manage the temper of his own potentate as well as baffle the policy of the European monarch. A desire for peace and justice was evident through the whole of Mr. Livingston's correspondence; and under all, a strong wish to get home. Here he was, now ploughing his way up his own beloved river, whose banks were studded with the country-seats of a host of his relations. He came to me on the upper deck, and sat looking very placid with his staff between his knees, and his strong, observing countenance melting into an expression of pleasure when he described to me his enjoyment in burying himself among the mountains of Switzerland. He said he would not now hear of mountains anywhere else; at least not in either his own country or mine. He gave me some opinions upon the government of the King of the French which I little expected to hear from the minister of a democratic republic. We were deep in this subject when a great hissing of the steam made us look up and see that we were at Hyde Park, and that Dr. Hosack and a party of ladies were waiting for me on the wharf. I repeatedly met Mr. Livingston in society in New-York the next spring, when a deafness, which had been slight, was growing upon him, and impairing his enjoyment of conversation. The last time I saw him was at the christening of a grand-niece, when he looked well in health, but conversed little, and seemed rather out of spirits. Within a month of that evening he was seized with pleurisy, which would in all probability have yielded to treatment; but he refused medicine, and was carried off after a very short illness. Dr. Hosack died some months before him. How little did I think, as I now went from the one to the other, that both these vigorous old men would be laid in their graves even before my return home should call upon me to bid them farewell!

The aspect of Hyde Park from the river had disappointed me, after all I had heard of it. It looks little more than a white house upon a ridge. I was therefore doubly delighted when I found what this ridge really was. It is a natural terrace, overhanging one of the sweetest reaches of the river; and, though broad and straight at the top, not square and formal, like an artificial embankment, but undulating, sloping, and sweeping between the ridge and the river, and dropped with trees; the whole carpeted with turf, tempting grown people, who happen to have the spirits of children, to run up and down the slopes, and play hide-and-seek in the hollows. Whatever we might be talking of as we paced the terrace, I felt a perpetual inclination to start off for play. Yet, when the ladies and ourselves actually did something like it, threading the little thickets and rounding every promontory, even to the farthest (which they call Cape Horn), I felt that the possession of such a place ought to make a man devout if any of the gifts of Providence can do so. To hold in one's hand that which melts all strangers' hearts is to be a steward in a very serious sense of the term. Most liberally did Dr. Hosack dispense the means of enjoyment he possessed. Hospitality is inseparably connected with his name in the minds of all who ever heard it; and it was hospitality of the heartiest and most gladsome kind.

Dr. Hosack had a good library; I believe, one of the best private libraries in the country; some good pictures, and botanical and mineralogical cabinets of value. Among the ornaments of his house I observed some biscuits and vases once belonging to Louis XVI., purchased by Dr. Hosack from a gentleman who had them committed to his keeping during the troubles of the first French Revolution.

In the afternoon Dr. Hosack drove me in his gig round his estate, which lies on both sides of the high road; the farm on one side and the pleasure-grounds on the other. The conservatory is remarkable for America; and the flower-garden all that it can be made under present circumstances, but the neighbouring country people have no idea of a gentleman's pleasure in his garden, and of respecting it. On occasions of weddings and other festivities, the villagers come up into the Hyde Park grounds to enjoy themselves; and persons who would not dream of any other mode of theft, pull up rare plants, as they would wild flowers in the woods, and carry them away. Dr. Hosack would frequently see some flower that he had brought with much pains from Europe flourishing in some garden of the village below. As soon as he explained the nature of the case, the plant would be restored with all zeal and care; but the losses were so frequent and provoking as greatly to moderate his horticultural enthusiasm. We passed through the poultry-yard, where the congregation of fowls exceeded in number and bustle any that I had ever seen. We drove round his kitchen-garden too, where he had taken pains to grow every kind of vegetable which will flourish in that climate. Then crossing the road, after paying our respects to his dairy of fine cows, we drove through the orchard, and round Cape Horn, and refreshed ourselves with the sweet river views on our way home. There we sat in the pavilion, and he told me much of De Witt Clinton, and showed me his own Life of Clinton, a copy of which he said should await me on my return to New-York. When that time came he was no more; but his promise was kindly borne in mind by his lady, from whose hands I received the valued legacy.

We saw some pleasant society at Hyde Park: among the rest, some members of the wide-spreading Livingston family, and the Rev. Charles Stewart, who lived for some years as missionary in the South Sea Islands, and afterward published a very interesting account of his residence there. His manners, which are particularly gentlemanly and modest, show no traces of a residence among savages, or of the shifts and disorder of a missionary life; nor of any bad effects from the sudden fame which awaited him on his return into civilized life. I remember with great pleasure a conversation we had by the river-side, which proved to me that he understands the philosophy of fame, knowing how to appropriate the good and reject the evil that it brings, and which deepened the respect I had entertained for him from the beginning of our acquaintance.

The Livingston family, one of the oldest, most numerous, and opulent in the States, has been faithful in the days of its greatness to its democratic principles. In Boston it seems a matter of course that the "first people" should be federalists; that those who may be aristocratic in station should become aristocratic in principle. The Livingstons are an evidence that this need not be. Amid their splendid entertainments in New-York, and in their luxurious retirements on the Hudson, they may be heard going further than most in defence of President Jackson's idiosyncracy. Their zeal in favour of Mr. Van Buren was accounted for by many from the natural bias of the first family in the state of New-York in favour of the first president furnished by that state; but there is no reason to find any such cause. The Livingstons have consistently advocated the most liberal principles through all changes; and that they retain their democratic opinions in the midst of their opulence and family influence is not the less honourable to them for their party having now the ascendency.

Dr. Hosack and his family accompanied us down to the wharf to see Mr. Stewart off by one boat and our party by another, when, on the third day of our visit, we were obliged to depart. Our hearts would have been more sorrowful than they were if we had foreseen that we should not enjoy our promised meeting with this accomplished and amiable family at New-York.

Dr. Hosack was a native American, but his father was Scotch. After obtaining the best medical education he could in America, he studied in Edinburgh and London, and hence his affectionate relations with Great Britain, and the warmth with which he welcomed English travellers. He practised medicine in New-York for upward of forty years, and filled the Professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College for some time. He distinguished himself by his successful attention to the causes and treatment of yellow fever. But his services out of his profession were as eminent as any for which his fellow-citizens are indebted to him. He rendered liberal aid to various literary, scientific, and benevolent institutions, and was always willing and indefatigable in exertion for public objects. One of the most painful scenes of his life was the duel in which Hamilton perished. Dr. Hosack was Hamilton's second, and, probably, as well aware as his principal and others that the encounter could hardly end otherwise than as it did. Dr. Hosack was in New-York with his family the winter after my visit to Hyde Park. He was one day in medical conversation with Dr. M'Vickar of that city, and observed that it would not do for either of them to have an attack of apoplexy, as there would be small chance of their surviving it. Within two weeks both were dead of apoplexy. Dr. Hosack lost property in the great fire at New-York; he over-exerted himself on the night of the fire, and the fatigue and anxiety brought on an attack of the disease he dreaded, under which he presently sank from amid the well-earned enjoyments of a vigorous and prosperous old age. He was in his 67th year, and showed to the eye of a stranger no symptom of decline. His eye was bright, his spirits as buoyant, and his life as full of activity as those of most men of half his years. I always heard the death of this enterprising and useful citizen mentioned as heading the list of the calamities of the Great Fire.

PINE ORCHARD HOUSE.

"But the new glory mixes with the heaven
And earth. Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things; the winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,
A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh;
Never a senseless gust now man is born.
The herded pines commune, and have deep thoughts,
A secret they assemble to discuss,
When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare
Like grates of hell; the peerless cup afloat
Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph
Swims bearing high above her head.

* * * * *

The morn has enterprise; deep quiet droops
With evening; triumph when the sun takes rest;
Voluptuous transport when the corn-fields ripen
Beneath a warm moon, like a happy face;
And this to fill us with regard for man,
Deep apprehension of his passing worth."

_Paracelsus_, Part v.

However widely European travellers have differed about other things in America, all seem to agree in their love of the Hudson. The pens of all tourists dwell on its scenery, and their affections linger about it like the magic lights which seem to have this river in their peculiar charge. Yet very few travellers have seen its noblest wonder. I may be singular; but I own that I was more moved by what I saw from the Mountain House than by Niagara itself.

What is this Mountain House? this Pine Orchard House? many will ask; for its name is not to be found in most books of American travels. "What is that white speck?" I myself asked, when staying at Tivoli, on the east bank of the Hudson, opposite to the Catskills, whose shadowy surface was perpetually tempting the eye. That white speck, visible to most eyes only when bright sunshine was upon it, was the Mountain House; a hotel built for the accommodation of hardy travellers who may desire to obtain that complete view of the valley of the Hudson which can be had nowhere else. I made up my mind to go; and the next year I went, on leaving Dr. Hosack's. I think I had rather have missed the Hawk's Nest, the Prairies, the Mississippi, and even Niagara, than this.

The steamboat in which we left Hyde Park landed us at Catskill (thirty-one miles) at a little after three in the afternoon. Stages were waiting to convey passengers to the Mountain House, and we were off in a few minutes, expecting to perform the ascending journey of twelve miles in a little more than four hours. We had the same horses all the way, and therefore set off at a moderate pace, though the road was for some time level, intersecting rich bottoms, and passing flourishing farmhouses, where the men were milking, and the women looked up from their work in the piazzas as we passed. Haymaking was going on in the fields, which appeared to hang above us at first, but on which we afterward looked down from such a height that the haycocks were scarcely distinguishable. It was the 25th of July, and a very hot day for the season. The roads were parched up, and every exposed thing that one handled on board the steamboat or in the stage made one flinch from the burning sensation. The panting horses, one of them bleeding at the mouth, stopped to drink at a house at the foot of the ascent; and we wondered how, exhausted as they seemed, they would drag us up the mountain. We did not calculate on the change of temperature which we were soon to experience.

The mountain laurel conveyed by association the first impression of coolness. Sheep were browsing among the shrubs, apparently enjoying the shelter of the covert. We scrambled through deep shade for three or four miles, heavy showers passing over us, and gusts of wind bowing the tree-tops, and sending a shiver through us, partly from the sudden chillness, and partly from expectation and awe of the breezy solitude. On turning a sharp angle of the steep road, at a great elevation, we stopped in a damp green nook, where there was an arrangement of hollow trees to serve for water-troughs. While the horses were drinking, the gusts parted the trees to the left, and exposed to me a vast extent of country lying below, checkered with light and shadow. This was the moment in which a lady in the stage said, with a yawn, "I hope we shall find something at the top to pay us for all this." Truly the philosophy of recompense seems to be little understood. In moral affairs people seem to expect recompense for privileges, as when children, grown and ungrown, are told that they will be rewarded for doing their duty; and here was a lady hoping for recompense for being carried up a glorious mountainside, in ease, coolness, leisure, and society, all at once. If it was recompense for the evil of inborn _ennui_ that she wanted, she was not likely to find it where she was going to look for it.

After another level reach of road and another scrambling ascent I saw something on the rocky platform above our heads like (to compare great things with small) an illumined fairy palace perched among the clouds in opera scenery; a large building, whose numerous window-lights marked out its figure from amid the thunder-clouds and black twilight which overshadowed it. It was now half past eight o'clock and a stormy evening. Everything was chill, and we were glad of lights and tea in the first place.

After tea I went out upon the platform in front of the house, having been warned not to go too near the edge, so as to fall an unmeasured depth into the forest below. I sat upon the edge as a security against stepping over unawares. The stars were bright overhead, and had conquered half the sky, giving promise of what we ardently desired, a fine morrow. Over the other half the mass of thunder-clouds was, I supposed, heaped together, for I could at first discern nothing of the champaign which I knew must be stretched below. Suddenly, and from that moment incessantly, gushes of red lightning poured out from the cloudy canopy, revealing not merely the horizon, but the course of the river, in all its windings through the valley. This thread of river, thus illuminated, looked like a flash of lightning caught by some strong hand and laid along in the valley. All the principal features of the landscape might, no doubt, have been discerned by this sulphurous light; but my whole attention was absorbed by the river, which seemed to come out of the darkness like an apparition at the summons of my impatient will. It could be borne only for a short time; this dazzling, bewildering alternation of glare and blackness, of vast reality and nothingness. I was soon glad to draw back from the precipice and seek the candlelight within.

The next day was Sunday. I shall never forget, if I live to a hundred, how the world lay at my feet one Sunday morning. I rose very early, and looked abroad from my window, two stories above the platform. A dense fog, exactly level with my eyes, as it appeared, roofed in the whole plain of the earth; a dusky firmament in which the stars had hidden themselves for the day. Such is the account which an antediluvian spectator would probably have given of it. This solid firmament had spaces in it, however, through which gushes of sunlight were poured, lighting up the spires of white churches, and clusters of farm buildings too small to be otherwise distinguished; and especially the river, with its sloops floating like motes in the sunbeam. The firmament rose and melted, or parted off into the likeness of snowy sky-mountains, and left the cool Sabbath to brood brightly over the land. What human interest sanctifies a bird's-eye view! I suppose this is its peculiar charm, for its charm is found to deepen in proportion to the growth of mind. To an infant, a champaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard square of gay carpet. To the rustic it is less bewitching than a paddock with two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he casts his eye over its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its secluded homes, its mountain ranges, church spires, and untrodden forests, it is a picture of life; an epitome of the human universe; the complete volume of moral philosophy, for which he has sought in vain in all libraries. On the left horizon are the Green Mountains of Vermont, and at the right extremity sparkles the Atlantic. Beneath lies the forest where the deer are hiding and the birds rejoicing in song. Beyond the river he sees spread the rich plains of Connecticut; there, where a blue expanse lies beyond the triple range of hills, are the churches of religious Massachusetts sending up their Sabbath psalms; praise which he is too high to hear, while God is not. The fields and waters seem to him to-day no more truly property than the skies which shine down upon them; and to think how some below are busying their thoughts this Sabbath-day about how they shall hedge in another field, or multiply their flocks on yonder meadows, gives him a taste of the same pity which Jesus felt in his solitude when his followers were contending about which should be greatest. It seems strange to him now that man should call anything _his_ but the power which is in him, and which can create somewhat more vast and beautiful than all that this horizon encloses. Here he gains the conviction, to be never again shaken, that all that is real is ideal; that the joys and sorrows of men do not spring up out of the ground, or fly abroad on the wings of the wind, or come showered down from the sky; that good cannot be hedged in, nor evil barred out; even that light does not reach the spirit through the eye alone, nor wisdom through the medium of sound or silence only. He becomes of one mind with the spiritual Berkeley, that the face of nature itself, the very picture of woods, and streams, and meadows, is a hieroglyphic writing in the spirit itself, of which the retina is no interpreter. The proof is just below him (at least it came under my eye), in the lady (not American) who, after glancing over the landscape, brings her chair into the piazza, and, turning her back to the champaign, and her face to the wooden walls of the hotel, begins the study, this Sunday morning, of her lapful of newspapers. What a sermon is thus preached to him at this moment from a very hackneyed text! To him that hath much; that hath the eye, and ear, and wealth of the spirit, shall more be given; even a replenishing of this spiritual life from that which to others is formless and dumb; while from him that hath little, who trusts in that which lies about him rather than in that which lives within him, shall be taken away, by natural decline, the power of perceiving and enjoying what is within his own domain. To him who is already enriched with large divine and human revelations this scene is, for all its stillness, musical with divine and human speech; while one who has been deafened by the din of worldly affairs can hear nothing in this mountain solitude.

The march of the day over the valley was glorious, and I was grieved to have to leave my window for an expedition to the Falls a few miles off. The Falls are really very fine, or, rather, their environment; but I could see plenty of waterfalls elsewhere, but nowhere else such a mountain platform. However, the expedition was a good preparation for the return to my window. The little nooks of the road, crowded with bilberries, cherries, and alpine plants, and the quiet tarn, studded with golden water-lilies, were a wholesome contrast to the grandeur of what we had left behind us.

On returning, we found dinner awaiting us, and also a party of friends out of Massachusetts, with whom we passed the afternoon, climbing higher and higher among the pines, ferns, and blue-berries of the mountain, to get wider and wider views. They told me that I saw Albany, but I was by no means sure of it. This large city lay in the landscape like an anthill in a meadow. Long before sunset I was at my window again, watching the gradual lengthening of the shadows and purpling of the landscape. It was more beautiful than the sunrise of this morning, and less so than that of the morrow. Of this last I shall give no description, for I would not weary others with what is most sacred to me. Suffice it that it gave me a vivid idea of the process of creation, from the moment when all was without form and void, to that when light was commanded, and there was light. Here, again, I was humbled by seeing what such things are to some who watch in vain for what they are not made to see. A gentleman and lady in the hotel intended to have left the place on Sunday. Having overslept that morning's sunrise, and arrived too late for that on Saturday, they were persuaded to stay till Monday noon; and I was pleased, on rising at four on Monday morning, to see that they were in the piazza below, with a telescope. We met at breakfast, all faint with hunger, of course.

"Well, Miss M.," said the gentleman, discontentedly, "I suppose you were disappointed in the sunrise."

"No, I was not."

"Why, do you think the sun was any handsomer here than at New-York?"

I made no answer; for what could one say? But he drove me by questions to tell what I expected to see in the sun.

"I did not expect to see the sun green or blue."

"What did you expect, then?"

I was obliged to explain that it was the effect of the sun on the landscape that I had been looking for.

"Upon the landscape! Oh! but we saw that yesterday."

The gentleman was perfectly serious; quite earnest in all this. When we were departing, a foreign tourist was heard to complain of the high charges! High charges! As if we were to be supplied for nothing on a perch where the wonder is if any but the young ravens get fed! When I considered what a drawback it is in visiting mountain-tops that one is driven down again almost immediately by one's bodily wants, I was ready to thank the people devoutly for harbouring us on any terms, so that we might think out our thoughts, and compose our emotions, and take our fill of that portion of our universal and eternal inheritance.

WEDDINGS.

"God, the best maker of all marriages,
Combine your hearts in one!"

_Henry V._

I was present at four weddings in the United States, and at an offer of marriage.

The offer of marriage ought hardly to be so called, however. It was a petition from a slave to be allowed to wed (as slaves wed) the nursemaid of a lady in whose house I was staying. The young man could either write a little, or had employed some one who could to prepare his epistle for him. It ran from corner to corner of the paper, which was daubed with diluted wafer, like certain love-letters nearer home than Georgia. Here are the contents:

"Miss Cunningham it is My wishes to companion in your Present and I
hope you will Be peeze at it and I hope that you will not think Hard
of Me I have Ben to the Doctor and he was very well satafide with Me
and I hope you is and Miss Mahuw all so

"thats all I has to say now wiheshen you will grant Me that honour I
will Be very glad.

"S.B. SMITH."

The nursemaid was granted; and as it was a love-match, and as the girl's mistress is one of the tender, the sore-hearted about having slaves, I hope the poor creatures are as happy as love in debasement can make them.

The first wedding I saw in Boston was very like the common run of weddings in England. It happened to be convenient that the parties should be married in church; and in the Unitarian church in which they usually worshipped we accordingly awaited them. I had no acquaintance with the family, but went on the invitation of the pastor who married them. The family connexion was large, and the church, therefore, about half full. The form of celebration is at the pleasure of the pastor; but, by consent, the administration by pastors of the same sect is very nearly alike. The promises of the married parties are made reciprocal, I observed. The service in this instance struck me as being very beautiful from its simplicity, tenderness, and brevity. There was one variation from the usual method, in the offering of one of the prayers by a second pastor, who, being the uncle of the bridegroom, was invited to take a share in the service.

The young people were to set out for Europe in the afternoon, the bride being out of health, the dreary drawback upon almost every extensive plan of action and fair promise of happiness in America. The lady has, I rejoice to hear, been quite restored by travel; but her sickness threw a gloom over the celebration, even in the minds of strangers. She and her husband walked up the middle aisle to the desk where the pastors sat. They were attended by only one bridesmaid and one groomsman, and were all in plain travelling dresses. They said steadily and quietly what they had to say, and walked down the aisle again as they came. Nothing could be simpler and better, for this was not a marriage where festivity could have place. If there is any natural scope for joy, let weddings by all means be joyous; but here there was sickness, with the prospect of a long family separation, and there was most truth in quietness.

The other wedding I saw in Boston was as gay a one as is often seen. The parties were opulent, and in the first rank in society. They were married in the drawing-room of the bride's house, at half past eight in the evening, by Dr. Channing. The moment the ceremony was over, crowds of company began to arrive; and the bride, young and delicate, and her maidens, were niched in a corner of one of the drawing-rooms to courtesy to all comers. They were so formally placed, so richly and (as it then seemed) formally dressed, for the present revived antique style of dress was then quite new, that, in the interval of their courtesies, they looked like an old picture brought from Windsor Castle. The bride's mother presided in the other drawing-room, and the bridegroom flitted about, universally attentive, and on the watch to introduce all visiters to his lady. The transition from the solemnity of Dr. Channing's service to the noisy gayeties of a rout was not at all to my taste. I imagined that it was not to Dr. Channing's either, for his talk with me was on matters very little resembling anything that we had before our eyes; and he soon went away. The noise became such as to silence all who were not inured to the gabble of an American party, the noisiest kind of assemblage, I imagine (not excepting a Jew's synagogue), on the face of the globe. I doubt whether any pagans in their worship can raise any hubbub to equal it. I constantly found in a large party, after trying in vain every kind of scream that I was capable of, that I must give up, and satisfy myself with nodding and shaking my head. If I was rightly understood, well and good; if not, I must let it pass. As the noise thickened and the heat grew more oppressive, I glanced towards the poor bride in her corner, still standing, still courtesying; her pale face growing paler; her nonchalant manner (perhaps the best she could assume) more indifferent. I was afraid that if all this went on much longer, she would faint or die upon the spot. It did not last much longer. By eleven some of the company began to go away, and by a quarter before twelve all were gone but the comparatively small party (including ourselves) who were invited to stay to supper.

The chandelier and mantelpieces, I then saw, were dressed with flowers. There was a splendid supper; and, before we departed, we were carried up to a well-lighted apartment, where bride cake and the wedding presents were set out in bright array.

Five days afterward we went, in common with all her acquaintance, to pay our respects to the bride. The courtyard of her mother's house was thronged with carriages, though no one seemed to stay five minutes. The bridegroom received us at the head of the stairs, and led us to his lady, who courtesied as before. Cake, wine, and liqueurs were handed round, the visiters all standing. A few words on common subjects were exchanged, and we were gone to make way for others.

A Quaker marriage which I saw at Philadelphia was scarcely less showy in its way. It took place at the Cherrystreet church, belonging to the Hicksites. The reformed Quaker Church, consisting of the followers of Elias Hicks, bears about the same relation to the old Quakerism as the Church of England to that of Rome; and, it seems to me, the mutual dislike is as intense. I question whether religious enmity ever attained a greater extreme than among the orthodox Friends of Philadelphia. The Hicksites are more moderate, but are sometimes naturally worried out of their patience by the meddling, the denunciations, and the calumnies of the old Quaker societies. The new church is thinking of reforming and relaxing a good deal farther, and in the celebration of marriage among other things. It is under consideration (or was when I was there) whether the process of betrothment should not be simplified, and marriage in the father's house permitted to such as prefer it to the church. The wedding at which I was present was, however, performed with all the formalities.

A Quaker friend of mine, a frequent preacher, suggested, a few days previously, that a seat had better be reserved for me near the speakers, that I might have a chance of hearing "in case there should be communications." I had hopes from this that my friend would speak, and my wishes were not disappointed.

The spacious church was crowded; and for three or four hours the poor bride had to sit facing the assemblage, aware, doubtless, that during the time of silence the occupation of the strangers present, if not of the friends themselves, would be watching her and her party. She was pretty, and most beautifully dressed. I have seldom pitied anybody more than I did her, while she sat palpitating for three hours under the gaze of some hundreds of people; but, towards the end of the time of silence, my compassion was transferred to the bridegroom. For want of something to do, after suppressing many yawns, he looked up to the ceiling; and in the midst of an empty stare, I imagine he caught the eye of an acquaintance in the back seats; for he was instantly troubled with a most irrepressible and unseasonable inclination to laugh. He struggled manfully with his difficulty; but the smiles would come, broader and broader. If, by dint of looking steadfastly into his hat for a few minutes, he attained a becoming gravity, it was gone the moment he raised his head. I was in a panic lest we should have a scandalous peal of merriment if something was not given him to do or listen to. Happily "there were communications," and the course of his ideas was changed.

Of the five speakers, one was an old gentleman whose discourse was an entire perplexity to me. For nearly an hour he discoursed on Jacob's ladder; but in a style so rambling, and in a chant so singularly unmusical as to set attention and remembrace at defiance. Some parenthetical observations alone stood a chance of being retained, from their singularity; one, for instance, which he introduced in the course of his narrative about Jacob setting a stone for a pillow; "a very different," cried the preacher, raising his chant to the highest pitch, "a very different pillow, by-the-way, from any that we--are--accommodated--with." What a contrast was the brief discourse of my Quaker friend which followed! Her noble countenance was radiant as the morning; her soft voice, though low, so firm that she was heard to the farthest corner, and her little sermon as philosophical as it was devout. "Send forth thy light and thy truth," was her text. She spoke gratefully of intellectual light as a guide to spiritual truth, and anticipated and prayed for an ultimate universal diffusion of both. The certificate of the marriage was read by Dr. Parrish, an elderly physician of Philadelphia, the very realization of all my imaginings of the personal appearance of William Penn; with all the dignity and bonhommie that one fancies Penn invested with in his dealings with the Indians. Dr. Parrish speaks with affection of the Indians, from the experience some ancestors of his had of the hospitality of these poor people when they were in a condition to show hospitality. His grandfather's family were shipwrecked, and the Indians took the poor lady and her children home to an inhabited cave, and fed them for many weeks or months. The tree stump round which they used to sit at meals is still standing; and Dr. Parrish says that, let it stand as long as it will, the love of his family to the Indians shall outlast it.

The matrimonial promise was distinctly and well spoken by both the parties. At the request of the bride and bridegroom, Dr. Parrish asked me to put the first signature, after their own, to the certificate of the marriage; and we adjourned for the purpose to an apartment connected with the church. Most ample sheets of parchment were provided for the signatures; and there was a prodigious array of names before we left, when a crowd was still waiting to testify. This multitudinous witnessing is the pleasantest part of being married by acclamation. If weddings are not to be private, there seems no question of the superiority of this Quaker method to that of the Boston marriage I beheld, where there was all the publicity, without the co-operation and sanction.

The last wedding which I have to give an account of is full of a melancholy interest to me now. All was so joyous, so simple, so right, that there seemed no suggestion to evil-boding, no excuse for anticipating such wo as has followed. On one of the latter days of July, 1835, I reached the village of Stockbridge; the Sedgwicks' village, for the second time, intending to stay four or five days with my friends there. I had heard of an approaching wedding in the family connexion, and was glad that I had planned to leave, so as to be out of the way at a time when I supposed the presence of foreigners, though friends, might be easily dispensed with. But when Miss Sedgwick and I were sitting in her room one bright morning, there was a tap at the door. It was the pretty black-eyed girl who was to be married the next week. She stood only a minute on the threshold to say, with grave simplicity, "I am come to ask you to join our friends at my father's house next Tuesday evening." Being thus invited, I joyfully assented, and put off my journey.

The numerous children of the family connexion were in wild spirits all that Tuesday. In the morning we went a strong party to the Ice Hole; a defile between two hills, so perplexed and encumbered with rocks that none but practised climbers need attempt the passage. It was a good way for the young people to work off their exuberant spirits. Their laughter was heard from amid the nooks and hiding-places of the labyrinth, and smiling faces might be seen behind every shrubby screen which sprang up from the crevices. How we tried to surpass each other in the ferns and mosses we gathered, rich in size and variety! What skipping and scrambling there was; what trunk bridges and ladders of roots! How valiant the ladies looked with their stout sticks! How glad every one was to feast upon the wild raspberries when we struggled through the close defile into the cool, green, breezy meadow on the banks of the Housatonic! During the afternoon we were very quiet, reading one of Carlyle's reviews aloud (for the twentieth time, I believe, to some of the party), and discussing it and other things. By eight o'clock we were all dressed for the wedding; and some of the children ran over the green before us, but came back, saying that all was not quite ready; so we got one of the girls to sing to us for another half hour.

The house of the bride's father was well lighted, and dressed with flowers. She had no mother; but her elder sisters aided her father in bidding us welcome. The drawing-room was quite full; and while the grown-up friends found it difficult to talk, and to repress the indefinable anxiety and agitation which always attend a wedding, the younger members of the party were amusing themselves with whispered mirth. The domestics looked as if the most joyous event of their lives were taking place, and the old father seemed placid and satisfied.

In a few minutes we were summoned to another room, at the top of which stood the tall bridegroom, with his pretty little lady on his arm; on either side, the three gentlemen and three ladies who attended them; and in front, the Episcopalian minister who was to marry them, and who has since been united to one of the sisters. It was the first time of his performing the ceremony, and his manner was solemn and somewhat anxious, as might be expected.

The bridegroom was a professor in a college in the neighbouring State of New-York; a young man of high acquirements and character, to whom the old father might well be proud to give his daughter. His manners were remarkably pleasing; and there was a joyous, dignified serenity visible in them this evening, which at once favourably prepossessed us who did not previously know him. He was attended by a brother professor from the same college. When the service was over, we all kissed the grave and quiet bride. I trust that no bodings of the woes which awaited her cast a shadow over her spirits then. I think, though grave, she was not sad. She spoke with all her father's guests in the course of the evening, as did her husband. How often have I of late tried to recall precisely what they said to me, and every look with which they said it!

We went back to the drawing-room for cake and wine; and then ensued the search for the ring in the great wedding cake, with much merriment among those who were alive to all the fun of a festivity like this, and to none of the care. There was much moving about between the rooms, and dressing with flowers in the hall; and lively conversation, as it must needs be where there are Sedgwicks. Then Champagne and drinking of healths went round, the guests poured out upon the green, all the ladies with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. There we bade good-night, and parted off to our several homes.

When I left the village the next morning two or three carriages full of young people were setting off, as attendants upon the bride and bridegroom, to Lebanon. After a few such short excursions in the neighbourhood, the young couple went home to begin their quiet college and domestic life.

Before a year had elapsed, a year which to me seemed gone like a month, I was at Stockbridge again and found the young wife's family in great trouble. She was in a raging fever, consequent on her confinement, and great fears were entertained for her life. Her infant seemed to have but a small chance under the circumstances, and there was a passing mention of her husband being ill. Every one spoke of him with a respect and affection which showed how worthy he was of this young creature's love; and it was our feeling for him which made our prayers for her restoration so earnest as they were. The last I heard of her before I left the country was that she was slowly and doubtfully recovering, but had not yet been removed from her father's house. The next intelligence that I received after my return to England was of her husband's death; that he had died in a calm and satisfied state of mind; satisfied that if their reasonable hopes of domestic joy and usefulness had not been fulfilled, it was for wise and kind reasons; and that the strong hand which thus early divided them would uphold the gentle surviver. No one who beheld and blessed their union can help beseeching and trusting, since all other hope is over, that it may be even thus.

HIGH ROAD TRAVELLING.

"How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers in
this journey of it, the world must judge; but the traces of it,
which are now all set o'vibrating together this moment, tell me it
is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made
no convention with my man with the gun as to time--by seizing every
handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in
this journey--I was always in company, and with great variety
too."--STERNE.

Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New-York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirablness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a half ago.

To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling, certain of our shipmates and their friends and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New-York in an "exclusive extra;" a stage hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our fellow-travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list of our shipmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany on the 6th of October.

On our way from Stockbridge to Albany we saw a few objects characteristic of the country. While the horses were baiting we wandered into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis; another of Amasa and Polly Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were there too. The signs in the American streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew names, as those of Irish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words. One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug. I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth. On a table in a little wayside inn I found Fox's Martyr's; and against the wall hung a framed sampler, with the following lines worked upon it:--

"Jesus, permit thine awful name to stand
As the first offering of an infant's hand:
And as her fingers o'er the canvass move,
Oh fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love,
With thy dear children let her bear a part,
And write thy name thyself upon her heart."

In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking-chairs, in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as severely as the tobacco-chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a rocking-chair. A common wedding-present is a rocking-chair. A beloved pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rocking-chair by his grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a breeze. If such a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to leave off laughing at the Shaker worship.

As we approached Greenbush, which lies opposite to Albany, on the east bank of the Hudson, we met riding horses, exercised by grooms, and more than one handsome carriage; tokens that we were approaching some centre of luxury. The view of Albany rising from the river side, with its brown stone courthouse and white marble capitol, is fine; but it wants the relief of more trees within itself, or of a rural background. How changed is this bustling city, thronged with costly buildings, from the Albany of the early days of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, when the children used to run up and down the green slope which is now State-street, imposing from its width and the massiveness of the houses seen behind its rows of trees! A tunnel is about to be made under the Hudson at Albany; meantime we crossed, as everybody does, by a horse ferryboat; a device so cruel as well as clumsy, that the sooner it is superseded the better. I was told that the strongest horses, however kept up with corn, rarely survive a year of this work.

We observed that, even in this city, the physicians have not always their names engraved on brass doorplates. On the most conspicuous part of their houses, perhaps on the angle of a corner house, is nailed some glazed substance like floorcloth, with "Dr. Such-an-one" painted upon it. At Washington I remember seeing "MAGISTRATE" thus affixed to a mere shed.

As we surmounted the hill leading to our hotel, we saw our two shipmates dancing down the steps to welcome us. There certainly is a feeling among shipmates which does not grow out of any other relation. They are thrown first into such absolute dependance on one another, for better for worse, and are afterward so suddenly and widely separated, that if they do chance to meet again, they renew their intimacy with a fervour which does not belong to a friendship otherwise originated. The glee of our whole party this evening is almost ridiculous to look back upon. Everything served to make a laugh, and we were almost intoxicated with the prospect of what we were going to see and do together. We had separated only a fortnight ago, but we had as much to talk over as if we had been travelling apart for six months. The Prussian had to tell his adventures, we our impressions, and the Southerner his comparisons of his own country with Europe. Then we had to arrange the division of labour by which the gentlemen were to lighten the cares of travelling. Dr. J., the Prussian, was on all occasions to select apartments for us; Mr. S., the Dutchman, to undertake the eating department; Mr. H., the American, was paymaster; and Mr. O., the German, took charge of the luggage. It was proposed that badges should be worn to designate their offices. Mr. S. was to be adorned with a corncob. Mr. H. stuck a bankbill in front of his hat; and, next morning, when Mr. O. was looking another way, the young men locked a small padlock upon his button-hole, which he was compelled to carry there for a day or two, till his comrades vouchsafed to release him from his badge.

The hotel was well furnished and conducted. I pointed out, with some complacency, what a handsome piano we had in our drawing-room; but when, in the dark hour, I opened it in order to play, I found it empty of keys! a disappointment, however, which I have met with in England.