Chapter VIII: Part 8

“It’s no part of my business to defend them; they were mean, I allow, but their business was, as they supposed, and as all of you agree, to make money; besides, after all, who fought your battle better than Cobden, Bright, Forster, and such men as Kirkman-Hodson, and Tom Baring?” Then they fell back on the general position that our Government was hostile to them, and I went through what had really happened in Parliament, and made them admit that if we had listened to Louis Napoleon, and the blockade had been broken, it would have been a narrow squeak for the Union. On the whole, I think, I made a good deal of impression on most of them. General Meade and the soldiers were on my side throughout, and admitted at once that, after all the abuse their press heaped on our governing classes, it was childish to cry out when they proved that they knew of the abuse and didn’t love the abusers. We all parted the warmest friends, and I went off to tea at Mrs. W------s’, where we met Dr. Mitchell, a scientific man, and his sister, and other very pleasant folk, and heard many interesting stories of the war. The next morning we started for Gettysburg. I had always made a point with myself of seeing this one at any rate of the great battlefields. It was the real turning-point of the war, fought on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July 1863, after the series of defeats and failures under M’Clellan, Pope Hooker, Burnside. I well remember what a long breath we (the Abolitionists) drew in England when the news came of Lee’s defeat at the farthest point he had ever made to the North, and felt sure, for the first time, that the war would be put through, and slavery be abolished right down to the Gulf of Mexico. We had the best escort possible in the person of Rosengarten, who was aide-decamp to General Reynolds, commander of the corps which came up first and sustained the whole weight of battle on the first day. Field also “came along,” and we had a first-rate time on our journey over the Susquehanna bridge, which the Northern militia burnt behind them as they escaped from Lee’s advance. Then we stopped for an hour or two, waiting for a train at York, a nice shady quiet country town of 11,000 inhabitants. The rebels had occupied the place for three days and levied a matter of 80,000 dollars on the people; in all other respects they seem to have behaved excellently and to have been well under command. The old Episcopalian clergyman, a warm friend of England, who had been Rosengarten’s tutor, and to whom we paid a visit, gave us a capital description of the three days’ occupation, and of the relief the York folk experienced when the poor ragged rebels marched off for Gettysburg, and left the town very little poorer than they had found it. We didn’t get to our inn, a huge wooden building on the first day’s battlefield, till after sunset. Tea over, we came out on the wooden platform which runs all round the house, and saw the most glorious sight I have ever seen, I think, in the skies. Steaming up Memphremagog we saw the aurora borealis splendidly, but that was nothing to this. In Canada there was no colour in the pure flashes of light which lit and pulsed over the whole sky, but on Saturday the changes of colour were splendid, and I should say for half an hour the heavens were throbbing with the most lovely rose-coloured streamers and sheets and flashes. With my view of the importance to the poor old world of the struggle which was descending there, you can fancy that such an introduction to it was welcome and impressive. Next day we devoted to the battlefield: began at the beginning where, on Thursday the 1st July 1863, Rosengarten himself, as Reynolds’s aide-decamp, had ridden forward and placed the first Federal regiments which came on the ground in position between the town of Gettysburg, which contains about 3000 inhabitants and lies in a hollow, and the advancing rebels. Gettysburg is at the junction of three roads and was a point which both armies were bent on seizing. The fight on this the north-east side of the town began early on Thursday. Rosengarten, after carrying out his orders, rode back, and was just in time to see his General fall from his horse, shot through the neck by a sharpshooter, and helped to carry him off the field. After many hours’ hard fighting the Federals were driven back through the town with heavy loss. Our friend, General Barlow, who commanded a brigade, was also badly wounded. Luckily, during the day two more corps of the army of the Potomac had come up and been placed in position on a hill just to the south of the town, on part of which the cemetery now stands, which was made immortal by Lincoln’s glorious speech at the inauguration. Behind these fresh troops the broken 1st and 11th corps rallied and prepared for the next day. Reinforcements came up to Lee also, and in the town the shopkeepers and other inhabitants heard them making certain of an easy victory in the morning. Meade is evidently a man who gains and holds the confidence of his troops; but as he was slightly outnumbered, and the rebels had the prestige of the first day’s victory, I take it he must have been beaten but for the splendid position he had selected. His troops lay along two lines of hills, covered in many places with wood which sloped away from the point overlooking the town, leaving a space between them secure from fire, in which he could move his troops without being seen, while every move of Lee’s was open to him. The Confederates began attacks early and kept them up throughout the day, but could not force the position except at one point, where, after dark, they succeeded in making a lodgment and spent the night within Meade’s lines. In the morning they were driven out after a desperate struggle, and later in the day Lee made a determined attempt with Longstreet’s corps to break the line again. He lost three generals and about 4000 men in the great effort, and when it failed, and he had to fall back to his own lines, the back of the Rebellion was broken and the doom of slavery sealed for ever in North America. At night he went away south, leaving most of his wounded, but Meade was too much exhausted to do more than follow slowly. I am writing in hot haste to catch the post, so can give you no clear idea, I fear, of the great day. The hotel was a nice, clean, reasonable place, with a landlord and servants really civil, and we enjoyed our excursion more than I can tell you.

Next day we came on to Baltimore, drove as usual in the beautiful park and about the town in a carriage sent for us by some patriotic citizen, dined at the Union Club, to which they gave us the _entrée_, and came on to Washington.

Washington, Friday.

You ask whether I read our papers and the news from Europe. No, except just so far as to keep abreast of the bare facts. You know how I hate details of battlefields, and that I have never got over my intense dislike to the glowing and semi-scientific descriptions of “our own correspondents,” sitting down in the midst of dying and agonised men to do their penny or guinea a line. The dry report of a general or staff officer, whose sad duty it is to be there, I follow with the deepest interest, and recognise a battlefield as one of the very noblest places from which a true man may make a “bee-line track” to heaven. The noblest death in our times was Robert Shaw’s at the attack on Fort Wagner, at the head of his niggers, under whom he was buried; but, for all that, war and its details are a ghastly and horrible evil, which the faith of our Master is going yet to root out of this silly old world, and which none of His servants should touch unless it is the clear path of supreme duty.

I pity the poor French, utterly unmanned as they seem to be by this nineteen years of the rule of Mammon, and heartily wish they could find their manhood again, though I see no glimmer of it yet. Trochu seems a fine fellow, and I can’t help believing that many of my acquaintance and the members of the Paris associations, will be found ready to die like men on the walls of the city if they get a chance. By the way, where is N------? I wonder if he has gone back? If so, there is another brave and true man in Paris, and perhaps ten may save it. But I must be getting back to my journal or I shall be dropping stitches. If I don’t forget, my last brought you with us to Willard’s Hotel, Washington, a great three-hundred-roomed hotel, mixed, if not of Southern proclivities during the war, before the door of which more than one duel was fought in those searching times. At breakfast we found ourselves next the Wards, father and son, G. B------‘s friends, to whom I had given some letters. I found they had been even farther west than we; in fact, up to Denver City, in the bosom of the Rocky Mountains, and had also managed to get into four or five Southern states; but they had done it at the sacrifice not only of comfort but of the chance of seeing the home-life of the Americans, and I value the latter infinitely higher than mere sight-seeing, so do not regret the least that we didn’t get through the extra 1500 miles, which at the cost of five days’ more travel would have let us see the Rocky Mountains and shoot at buffaloes.

We went after breakfast to leave some of my letters, and over the White House, a fine residence of white marble splendidly situated some one and a half miles from the Capitol, with which it is connected by Pennsylvania avenue, wider than Portland Place. I shall keep the details till we meet; the house is as big as the Mansion House I should say, and not very unlike it. Luckily, soon after we got outside we were recognised (at least I was) in the street by Blackie, who was over in England with the Harvard crew. He is in the attorney-general’s office, and consequently has the run of all the public apartments, and he took us in hand and lionised us splendidly. The Capitol Patent Office and Treasury I shall bring you photographs of, and describe at leisure in our winter evenings. The view from the top, over the city and Maryland to the north, and across the Potomac over Virginia to the south, is as fine as any I ever saw, General Lee’s house at Arlington Heights, now a national cemetery, being the most conspicuous point in the southern view. The thing that struck one most was the staff of women, mostly young and many pretty, serving in the Treasury. They say there are upwards of two thousand, and that for counting, sorting, and repairing the paper currency, they are far superior to men. They earn one thousand dollars (or £200) a year on an average. Fancy the boon to the orphan girls of soldiers and sailors. One of the first we saw was the daughter of a very distinguished Colonel of Marines, who had left her quite destitute, as ladylike, pretty-looking a girl as you ever saw, and she was running over bundles of dollar notes with her fingers as fast as if she were playing the overture to _Semiramide_ with you on the piano. It nearly took my breath away, and yet I was assured she never made an error in counting. I wish we could get off a lot of our poor girls in some such way in Somerset House, and send a lot of our Government clerks to till the ground or hammer or do some hard, productive work.

Perhaps, however, the pleasantest part of the day was the end, when he took us off on the street-cars down to the Potomac, where we found a boating club, with their boat-house, etc., just like an Oxford or Cambridge College. There were eight or ten of them down there who received us with open arms, and in a few minutes manned a heavy eight-oared boat with room enough for me and R------ to sit in the stern, and away we went up under the long bridge, over which the armies used to cross in the war time, and saw a glorious sunset on the river, with the stars and stripes floating proudly over our stern. I enjoyed the row vastly and liked the men, who are just training for a race with the Potomac club. Boating flourishes all over the states I have been in, and they have learnt a lesson from their defeat two years ago and pull now in just as good style as our boys. Oxford and Cambridge must mind their hits, for they will have a tough job of it the next time they have to meet a crew from this side.

Next morning I called on our minister after breakfast, having heard by chance that he was in town. I am very glad I did, as I had the pleasure of hearing him praise C------, his ability, willingness, and capacity for work, in a strain which would have rejoiced the heart of poor, dear R. F------ and of the F------ family. He seems to think C------ will come back here, and desires it most earnestly. I got from him Lord Clarendon’s last despatch on the Alabama claims, which will be most useful to me in my stump in the Boston Music Hall on the 11th. It is the room and the course in which Wendell Phillips, Emerson, and all the orators and philosophers figure. I have taken for my subject, “John to Jonathan,” suggested by Lowell’s famous “Jonathan to John.” They won’t get any eloquence or oratory out of me, as you know; but I am sure I can say some things in a plain, straightforward way which will do good and help to heal wounded pride and other sorely irritating places in the over-sensitive, but simple and gallant Yankee mind. They have treated me so like a spoilt child from Boston to Omaha and back, that I know they will let me say anything and will listen to it affectionately. I really love them too well to say anything that will really hurt them, and when they see that this kind of feeling and appreciation is genuine, the more thorough John Bull you are the better they like it; that is, all the best of them, who rule the nation in the long run though not directly. When I got back from our embassy, it was just time to be starting for the train to Philadelphia, and lo! there were a dozen folk, from secretaries of state downwards, waiting to offer lodgings, dinners, excursions, lecturings, every sort of kindness in creation. It was hard work to get off, but I managed somehow to make tracks, suppressing, I fear, the fact that I was not likely to get to Washington again. The journey to Philadelphia is very interesting along the coast, though seldom within sight of the sea, but crossing huge inlets and rivers (the abode of canvas-backs) on spider bridges. We didn’t change cars at Baltimore, but were dropped by our engine in the outskirts of the town. Six fine horses in a string were then hitched on to each long car, and away we went through the crowded streets along the tramway rails, our driver, or rather, conductor, for he had no reins, blowing his horn loudly to warn all good people, and shouting to the train of horses who trotted along by instinct between the rails. How we missed fifty collisions I can’t conceive; at last we had one--crash into a confusion of carts and drays, driven by shouting negroes who had got them all into a hopeless jam as we bore down on them. Bang we went into the nearest; I saw the comical, scared look of the grisly old Sambo who was driving, as he was shot from his seat, but no harm was done except knocking off our own step, and as we shot past I saw his face light up into a broad grin as he sat on the bottom of his cart. We had cleared him right away from his dead-lock with two other vehicles, and he went on his way delighted. At Philadelphia we found our kindest of hosts, Field, waiting supper for us in his delightful house, where he is living for a few days’ business as a bachelor. Quiet evening, with talk till eleven o’clock on all manner of places, people, and things, mostly English. Lippincott, the great American publisher, and Rosengarten to breakfast, then a visit from Morrison’s friend Welsh, reproachful that we had not occupied his house, and full of interesting stories of the Indian commission, of which he is the moving spirit. Then more schools, workmen’s houses, etc., with Rosengarten, and a drive in the park, five miles long on both sides of the river Schuylkill (as broad as the Thames at Putney), and with views combining Richmond Hill and Oxford. The Central Park is nothing to it, or any other I ever saw on heard of. The Quaker city of white marble and red brick fascinated me more and more. A most interesting dinner at Dr. Mitchell’s, a scientific man--talk of the war, prairie stories, Yankee stories, wonderful old Madeira and excellent cigars. This morning, after seeing Lippincott’s store, and a most interesting talk with Sheridan’s adjutant-general on the last campaigns (he came to breakfast), we literally tore ourselves away from Philadelphia and came on here to this splendid, great, empty house, to be received most hospitably by Maria, the big, handsome, good-natured Irishwoman in charge.

Everything is getting so crowded with me that I have hardly time to turn round. All sorts of kind friends urging me to stop just for one day here or there, a few hundred miles making no difference with them, hundreds (almost) of applications for lectures or addresses, and the engagements already made driving me nearly wild to know how I am to get through with them. I shall never get my journal straight. Where was I? With dear old Peter Cooper, the simplest, most utterly guileless of old men who ever made a big fortune in this world or any other, I should think. That I remember, but can’t the least get further. Nothing, however, very particular happened, except that I was again caught and had to speak a few words to the Normal Training School of New York, consisting of nine hundred girls. I managed to get out of going with the beautiful Miss P------ to her school, but thought I should be safe in going with the dear old gentleman to the Normal School to be present at the morning service. We were of course on the dais, and Mr. Cooper, after the singing of a hymn, read a chapter of the Bible, then another hymn, and then, instead of the adjournment to their classes at once, as I had expected, I was called upon. You must imagine what I said, for I really don’t remember. Then I was photographed alone, and with Mr. Cooper. I enclose a proof of the latter which, I hope, will not quite fade on the way. They tell me the prints will be very good, and I hope to have several to bring home. We left on Wednesday by the afternoon boat to Fall River, the finest boat in the States, the great cabin of which I shall bring you a photograph, all the family grouped round the door breaking one down with their kindness. I slept as usual famously on board the _Bristol,_ and waked at Fall River about three, and so on by rail to Boston, and by car up here, where I feel quite at home. Miss Mabel appeared at breakfast, and produced her photographs made at the time of our last visit with great triumph. They are excellent, and I shall bring you lots of them. At eleven was the Harvard memorial ceremony on the laying of the corner-stone of the hall they are building in honour of the members who died in the war. I walked in with Mr A------ and heard a good account of his wife and family. They want me to go out there for a quiet day or two, but, I fear, it is quite impossible. Two of his sons, the Colonel, and our friend Henry, who is just named as one of the lecturers, were there also, and Emerson, Dana, and a number of old and new friends. The ceremony was very simple, Luther’s hymn, a short _extempore_ prayer, a report, and two addresses, and the benediction, and then we just broke up and left the great tent as we pleased. The point of greatest interest was, of course, the gathering of some seventy or eighty of those who had been in the army, almost all in their old uniforms, and many of them carrying the marks of war about them too plainly. Colonel Holmes amongst them as nice as ever, and young F------ and General M------, with half a dozen other generals.

Lunch afterwards at a very quaint and attractive little club founded in 1792, and recruited by a few of the best fellows in each year, like the Apostles at our Cambridge. Longfellow and our friend Field came to dine here, and the poet was fascinating, full of his English doings, and genial and modest as a big man should be. To-day I have been preparing for my lecture, “John to Jonathan,” which comes off next Tuesday, as to which I am considerably anxious, as it is exceedingly difficult to get a line which will have the healing effect I intend. Let us hope for the best. I go for Sunday to Lowell’s brother’s school, twenty miles away. On Monday evening I meet the Harvard undergraduates, and on Wednesday spend the day with Emerson at Concord. On Thursday I hope to get away, but where? All our plans are changing. We now propose, if it can be so arranged, to go first to Montreal for two or three days to pick up our things, returning to Ithaca to Goldwin Smith for a long day about the 18th, and so to New York, from which we should sail about the 22nd. You will, I daresay, be glad that we don’t go from Quebec; but I don’t believe there is the least more danger at this time of year by this route than any other. All I have resolved on is, that nothing shall keep me beyond my time.

St. Mark’s School, Southborough, Mass., Tuesday, 9th October.

We have had a very charming visit to this little village, twenty miles from Boston, in which is established a Church of England boarding-school, modelled as nearly as possible on our public school system, and intended to do for American boys precisely what Eton, Rugby, etc., do for ours. I am not sure that such schools are wanted here.

Were I living here I should certainly try the public schools first for my boys. But they say that the teaching there is too forcing in the earlier stages, and afterwards not liberal enough in the direction of “_the humanities_,” so that the boys get trained more into competitive money-making machines than into thinking cultivated men. There is a very considerable demand at any rate for this kind of school, as this is only one of several in New England. There is an objection too amongst New England mothers. I find that the high schools (as I ought to call them, and not public schools) being open to every one, a large class of Irish and other recent arrivals go there whose manners and language make them dangerous class-mates for their own children. At any rate, St. Mark’s school is a successful fact, and seeing how fast they go ahead here I shouldn’t be astonished to hear that in a few years it is as big as Rugby. Dr. Lowell is the principal, and a first-rate one, a High Church of England clergyman, not a ritualist. The school is founded as a denominational one, with a little chancel, which opens from the end of the big schoolroom, and in which the doctor, in his robes, reads our prayers morning and evening to the boys. He and his family live entirely with the boys, taking all their meals in the hall, and there is no fagging, the monitors having no power or responsibility, except just to keep order in the schoolroom at certain hours. They have a monthly reception of the friends from the neighbourhood, which took place on Saturday evening. All the boys were there, and handed round ices, cakes, and tea to some thirty ladies and gentlemen who came in, including several of the trustees, a judge whom I had met in England, a neighbouring squire (Boston merchant by profession), who is farming largely down there, reclaiming the stony lands and getting up a most beautiful herd of cattle. Of course I had to “address a few words” to them, all which they took most kindly. On Sunday we had two Church of England services in the pretty parish church, a copy of one in England, the plans of which the Squire, Bartlett, had brought over. We dined in the middle of the day at his house, which would be a good squire’s house at home. The family were very nice--a sweet, pretty wife, a strapping great eldest son now at Harvard, and good in all ways. He is bent on going out West as soon as he is through college, and, as a preparation, hired himself out to a farmer this summer vacation, earned ten dollars a week for some two months at hoeing and other hard work, and then had a sporting run to Canada. Two more big sons and any number of younger children. The house was tastefully furnished with some really good pictures, and altogether it was as nice a home as I have seen here. On Monday we got back to dear Elmwood, and I went hard at work on my lecture. Newspaper men came buzzing about all day and seizing my MS. as I got through with it. Also came up Julian H------, one of the Chartist prisoners of 1848. I had known him in the socialist times, and I had always a respect and liking for him, but he had quite slipped out of sight for some eighteen years. His errand touched me. He reminded me (which I had entirely forgotten) that he had applied to Lord R------ in 1851 for a loan of £20 which had been advanced to him through me. He told the long story of his life since, full of interest; I must keep it till we meet. At last he landed in the Massachussets state house, where he is a Government clerk, on a small salary for this country, but out of it he has saved a few hundred dollars, and the object of his visit was to say that he was now anxious to pay his old debt with many hearty thanks to Lord R------. Would I settle whether he should pay for interest, and he would go and draw it out and send it by me? I said I couldn’t say whether our friend would take interest, or at what rate, but promised to let him know when I got back, so that he can remit the exact amount to London. Even he has never taken up his citizenship here, but remains an Englishman, and means at any rate to come back and die in the old country. In the evening we went down to a gathering of all the Harvard students who had petitioned me to come and talk to them. They were gathered some five hundred strong in the Massachusetts Hall, and a finer and manlier set of boys I have never seen. I talked to them on Muscular Christianity and its proper limits, as they are likely to run into professional athletics like our boys at home. Told them they lived in a land which had “struck ile” and was so overflowing with wealth that every one was hasting to get rich too quick. Exhorted to patience and thoroughness; read to them Lowell’s “Hebe” (you remember the little gem of a poem); told them they ought to take more part in public affairs than their class usually do. All which they swallowed devoutly, and cheered vehemently, like good boys, and then sang a lot of their college songs: “Marching through Georgia” splendid, the rest much like our own. The war has given a magnificent lift to all the young men and boys of this country, and I think the rising generation will put America in a very different place from that which she holds now. Last night I gave my lecture in the Music Hall, which was crammed, and the whole affair a brilliant success. “John to Jonathan” is printed verbatim in the morning newspapers, so you will probably see it before I get back, and I think like it. No more time for the moment.

Ithaca, N.Y., 16th October 1870.

I missed the last mail through stress of work, chiefly on my lecture, which I mentioned in my last. The applications for lectures were so numerous and urgent that I really felt that I ought not to leave the country without giving one at any rate, and all my friends said that the Music Hall at Boston was the place if I only spoke once. It is the largest room in New England, holds nearly three thousand people, is easy to speak in, though it has great deep galleries running round three sides, and in it all the big folk talk and lecture, Wendell Phillips and Sumner follow me, so you see the class of thing at once. Well, as I was in for it much against my will, I was determined to talk out with the whole Yankee nation the controversy which. I had been carrying on already with many of them in private. I was anxious not to leave them with any false impressions, and to let them see clearly that in our national differences I think that we have a very good case, and that even if I didn’t think so, I am too good a John Bull not to stand by my own country. Lowell agreed as to the title and object, but I think had serious misgivings as to how the affair might turn out. Mundella thought it very risky and so did most other folk. However, as you know, I don’t care a straw for applause, and do care about speaking my own mind, so whether it made me unpopular or not I determined to have my say. In order that I might say nothing on the spur of the moment, I wrote out the whole address carefully, and I am very glad I did, as the reporters all copied from my MS., and consequently I was thoroughly well reported. The _Tribune and Boston Advertiser_ printed it in full, and I will bring you home copies. I was a little nervous myself when I got to the hall. Two ex-Governors and the present Governor of the State were on the platform, the two Senators (Sumner and Wilson), Longfellow, Judge Hoare, Dana, Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, and, in short, pretty nearly all the Boston big wigs. The great organ played “God save the Queen” as I came in, and the audience, generally, I am told, a very undemonstrative one, cheered heartily. My nervousness, however, wore off at once, when I got on my legs. I found that my voice filled the hall easily, and so was at my ease and got through just within the hour, without once losing the attention of the audience for a minute. They were indeed wonderfully sympathetic and hearty, and gave me three rounds of cheers at the end, far more warmly than at the beginning. Every one came and said that it was a great success; that they had never heard our side fairly stated before; that this and that fact were quite new to them, etc. In fact, if I didn’t know how soon the reaction comes in such cases, I should think I had done some good work towards a better understanding between the nations, and, as it is, I am sure I have done no harm, and have at any rate made my own position perfectly clear, and shown them that in the event of a quarrel, they can’t reckon upon me for any kind of sympathy or aid. After the lecture whom should I meet as I went out but Craft, the negro who had been the cause of one of the most exciting meetings ever held in that hall some twenty years before, when the attempt was made to seize him and his wife in Boston. I was delighted to see him and to hear a capital account of his experiment at association in Georgia. Then I went to Field’s, the publisher, to supper, where were Longfellow, Holmes, Dana, and others, and so home by the last car, thankful that it was all well over. Next morning I got a cheque for 250 dollars (£50). I had, of course, never said a word about any payment, so it was an agreeable surprise. The post brought me I know not how many letters, begging me to lecture in a dozen states on my own terms, so when all trades fail, I can come over here and earn a good living easily enough, which is a consolation. Wednesday, our last whole day with the dear Lowells, I spent peaceably. Went to his lecture in the University on Arthurian legends; Miss Mabel photographed the house and us in groups, and we talked and loafed. In the evening a supper at the house of one of the professors, to meet the whole staff, and a pleasanter or abler set of men I have never come across. Thursday, lunch with Longfellow after packing, then a run down on the car to Boston, to change my cheque, to take a berth on a packet, so as to be armed against any appeals for another day or two in New York, and to get a last look at the favourite points in the old Puritan capital, the place where I should certainly settle if I ever had to leave England. We drove a rather sad party to Mrs. Lowell’s sister, and the mother of the beautiful boy whose photograph we have, and who was killed early in the war, to tea, and from her house went to the station and took sleeping-car for Syracuse. I cannot tell you how I like Lowell and all his belongings. It is a dangerous thing to make acquaintance in the flesh with one with whose writings one is so familiar, but he has quite come up to my idea of him, and his wife and Miss Mabel are both very charming in their own ways. I slept well, woke at Albany, breakfasted, and then on to Syracuse, where Mr. Wansey, Mrs. Hamilton’s uncle, lives. We got there at two, and I was immediately seized at the station by Wilkinson, the local banker, whom I had just met at Ned’s this summer. He drove us all through and round the most characteristic town in America. Great broad streets lined with lovely maple trees, all turned now to clouds of scarlet and gold; down the principal one the railway runs without any fence. Old Mr. Wansey and others came to dine, he a dear old man of eighty, but hale and handsome, rather like my dear old grandfather’s picture, the rest pleasant country folk. We played billiards, and told stories after dinner, and had a decidedly good time till nearly midnight. The next morning we breakfasted with Mr. White, the President of this new University, and came on here with him. He is a young man of about thirty-five, and one of the finest scholars America has to boast of at present. By the way, he was a classmate of Smalley at Yale. He is a rich man, and he has nothing whatever to gain by undertaking this work. In short, he is quite worthy of having Goldwin Smith as a fellow-worker, and between them, with the excellent staff of professors and teachers they have got round them, I expect they will make this place in a wondrous short time a great working-men’s college. Everything is of course rough at present, as the buildings are still in progress, but two blocks are completed, and there are about seven hundred pupils living in them and in the town at the bottom of the hill on which Cornell stands. It is a most magnificent situation, looking over a large lake, forty miles long, and two splendid valleys, which are now ablaze with the crimson and purple colours of the maples, shumachs, American walnuts, and other trees, which make the hillsides here glow all the later autumn through. We found Goldwin Smith waiting for us at the wharf and looking much stronger than he used to do in England, and quite warm in his welcome. All the professors, with their wives and families, if married, live for the present in a huge square block of buildings originally intended for a hydropathic establishment, in which they have a private sitting-room and bedrooms and dine and take all meals in the hall. You may fancy how much I am interested in this great practical step towards association.

New York, Tuesday.

Here I am in the great city again, to spend the last few days before my start for home. The reception in the great hall, speech, visit to lecture rooms, etc., enthusiasm of boys, baseball games, and football given in my honour, must all keep till we meet. For, alas! I have no time to spend here for writing, as I have another address to give before I start, on Friday evening, and I must write it carefully, as it is to be on the labour question, which is mightily exercising our cousins here. They are getting into the controversy which we are nearly through at home, and if I can give them a little good advice before I come away, I shall be very glad. As I am engaged every evening, it will not be easy to find time to do it as I should like, but I can give the morning, I think, and can at any rate make sure of not talking nonsense.

AMERICA--1880 to 1887

The Cumberland Mountains

East Tennessee, 1st September 1880.

Here I am at my goal, and so full of new impressions that I must put some of them down at once, lest they should slip away like the new kind of recruits, and I should not be able to lay my hand on them again when I want them. The above address is vague, as this range of highlands extends for some 200 miles through this State and Kentucky; but, though fixed as fate myself, I can for the moment put no more definite heading to my letters. The name of the town that is to be, and which is already laid out and in course of building here, is a matter of profound interest to many persons, and not to be decided hastily. The only point which seems clear is that it will be some name round which cluster tender memories in the old Motherland. We are some 1800 feet above the sea, and after the great heat of New York, Newport, and Cincinnati, the freshness and delight of this brisk, mountain air are quite past describing. For mere physical enjoyment, I have certainly never felt its equal, and can imagine nothing finer.

And now for our journey down. We left Cincinnati early in the morning by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, a line built entirely by the city, and the cost of which will probably make the municipality poor for some years to come. But it seems to me a splendid and sagacious act of foresight in a great community, to have boldly taken hold of and opened up at once what must be one, if not the main, artery of communication between North and South in the future. I believe the impelling motive was the tendency of the carrying trade of late years to settle along other routes, leaving the metropolis of the south-west out in the cold. If this be so, the result justifies the prompt courage of the citizens of Cincinnati, for the tide has obviously set in again with a vengeance. The passenger-cars are filled to the utmost of their capacity, and freight, as we know here too well, is often delayed for days, in spite of all the efforts of the excellent staff of the road. Besides its through traffic, the line has opened up an entirely new country, of which these highlands seem likely to prove a profitable, as they certainly are the most interesting, tract. This section has not been open for six months, and already it is waking up life all over these sparsely-settled regions. Down below on the way to Chatanooga I hear that the effect is the same, and that in that great mineral region blast-furnaces are already at work, and coal-mines opening all along the line. At Chatanooga there are connections with all the great Southern lines, so that we on this aerial height are, in these six months, in direct communication with every important seaport from Boston to New Orleans, and almost every great centre of inland population; and the settlers here, looking forward with that sturdy faith which seems to inspire all who have breathed the air for a week or two, are already considering upon which favoured mart they shall pour out their abundance of fruits and tobacco, from the trees yet to be planted and seed yet to be sown. All which seems to prove that Cincinnati, at any rate, has done well to adopt the motto, “L’audace, toujours l’audace,” which is, indeed, characteristic of this country and this time.

And the big work has not only been done, but done well and permanently. The engineering difficulties must have been very great; the cuttings and tunnels had to be made through hard rock, and the bridges over streams which have cut for themselves channels hundreds of feet deep. We crossed the Kentucky river, on (I believe) the highest railway bridge in the world, 283 feet above the water; and rushed from a tunnel in the limestone rock right on to the bridge which spans the north fork of the Cumberland river, 170 feet below. The lightness of the ironwork on which these bridges rest startles one at first, but experience has shown them to be safe, and the tests to which they have been put on this line would have tried most seriously the strength of far more massive structures. But it is only in its bridges that the Cincinnati Southern Railway has a light appearance. The building of the line has a solid and permanent look, justifying, I should think, the very considerable sum per mile which has been spent on it above the ordinary cost in this country. And by the only test which an amateur is as well able to apply as an expert, that of writing on a journey, I can testify that it is as smoothly laid as the average of our leading English lines. For the last fifty miles we ran almost entirely through forests, which are, however, falling rapidly all along the side of the line, and yielding place to corn-fields in the rich bottoms, wherever any reasonably level ground bordered the water-courses, up which we could glance as we hurried past. I was surprised, and, I need not say, greatly pleased, to see the apparently excellent terms on which the white and coloured people were, even in the Kuklux regions through which we came. A Northern express man, our companion at this point, denounced it as the most lawless in the United States. About one hundred homicides, he declared, had taken place in the last year, and no conviction had been obtained, the juries looking on such things as regrettable accidents. This may be so, but I can, at any rate, testify, from careful observation of the mixed gangs of workmen on the road, and the groups gathered at the numerous stations, to the familiar and apparently friendly footing on which the races met. As for the decrease of the blacks, it must be in other regions than those traversed by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, for the cabins we passed in the clearings and round the stations swarmed with small urchins, clad in single garments, the most comic little figures of fun, generally, that one had ever seen, as they stood staring and signalling to the train. There is something to me so provocative of mirth in the race, and I have found them generally such kindly folk, that I regret their absence from this same Alpine settlement,--a regret not shared, doubtless, by the few householders, to whom their constant small peculations must be very trying.

About five we stopped at the station from which this place is reached, and turning out on the platform were greeted by four or five young Englishmen, who had preceded us, on one errand or another, every one of whom was well known to me in ordinary life, but whom for the first moment I did not recognise. I had seen them last clothed in the frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of our much-vaunted civilisation, and behold, here was a group which I can compare to nothing likely to be familiar to your readers, unless it be the company of the _Danites_, as they have been playing in London. Broad-brimmed straw or felt hats, the latter very battered and worse for wear; dark-blue jerseys, or flannel shirts of varying hue; breeches and gaiters, or long boots, were the prevailing, I think I may say the universal costume, varied according to the taste of the wearer with bits of bright colour laid on in handkerchief at neck or waist. And tastes varied deliciously, two of the party showing really a fine feeling for the part, and one, our geologist, 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, and a mighty Etonian and Cantab, in brains as well as bulk, turning out, with an heroic scorn of all adornment, in woefully battered nether-garment and gaiters, and a felt which a tramp would have looked at several times before picking it out of the gutter. There was a light buggy for passengers and a mule waggon for luggage by the platform; but how were nine men, not to mention the manager and driver, both standing over 6 feet, and the latter as big at least as our geologist, to get through the intervening miles of forest tracks in time for tea up here? Fancy our delight when a chorus of “Will you ride or drive?” arose, and out of the neighbouring bushes the Danites led forth nine saddle-horses, bearing the comfortable half-Mexican saddles with wooden stirrups in use here. Our choice was quickly made, and throwing coats and waistcoats into the waggon, which the manager good-naturedly got into himself, surrendering his horse for the time, we joined the cavalcade in our shirts.

A lighter-hearted party has seldom scrambled through the Tennessee mountain roads on to this plateau. We were led by a second Etonian, also 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, whose Panama straw hat and white corduroys gleamed like a beacon through the deep shadows cast by the tall pine trees and white oaks. The geologist brought up the rear, and between rode the rest of us--all public schoolmen, I think, another Etonian, two from Rugby, one Harrow, one Wellington--through deep gullies, through four streams, in one of which I nearly came to grief, from not following my leader; but my gallant little nag picked himself up like a goat from his floundering amongst the boulders, and so up through more open ground till we reached this city of the future, and in the dusk saw the bright gleam of light under the verandahs of two sightly wooden houses. In one of these, the temporary restaurant, we were seated in a few minutes at an excellent tea (cold beef and mutton, tomatoes, rice, cold apple-tart, maple syrup, etc.); and during the meal the news passed round that the hotel being as yet unfurnished and every other place filled with workpeople, we must all (except the geologist and the Wellingtonian, who had a room over the office) pack away in the next cottage, which had been with difficulty reserved for us. If it had been a question of men only, no one would have given it a thought; but our party had now been swollen by two young ladies, who had hurried down by an earlier train to see their brother and brother-in-law, settlers on the plateau, and by another young Englishman who had accompanied them. A puzzle, you will allow, when you hear a description of our tenement. It is a four-roomed timber house, of moderate size, three rooms on the ground floor, and one long loft upstairs. You enter through the verandah on a common room, 20 ft. long by 14 ft. broad, opening out of which are two chambers, 14 ft. by 10 ft. One of these was, of course, at once appropriated to the ladies. The second, in spite of my remonstrances, was devoted to me, as the Nestor of the party, and on entering it I found an excellent bed (which had been made by two of the Etonians), and a great basin full of wild-flowers on the table. There were four small beds in the loft, for which the seven drew lots, and two of the losers spread rugs on the floor of the common room, and the third swung a hammock in the verandah. Up drove the mule waggon with luggage, and the way in which big and little boxes were dealt with and distributed filled me with respect and admiration for the rising generation. The house is ringing behind me with silvery and bass laughter, and jokes as to the shortness of accommodation in the matter of washing appliances, while I sit here writing in the verandah, the light from my lamp throwing out into strong relief the stems of the nearest trees. Above, the vault is blue beyond all description, and studded with stars as bright as though they were all Venuses. The katydids are making delightful music in the trees, and the summer lightning is playing over the Western heaven; while a gentle breeze, cool and refreshing as if it came straight off a Western sea, is just lifting, every now and then, the corner of my paper. Were I young again,--but as I am not likely to be that, I refrain from bootless castle-building, and shall turn in, leaving windows wide open for the katydid’s chirp and the divine breeze to enter freely, and wishing as good rest as they have all so well earned to my crowded neighbours in this enchanted solitude.

Rugby, Tennessee, 10th September 1880.