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Title: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Release Date: July, 2003 [EBook #4232]
Last Updated: August 23, 2017

Language: English

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A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS

by HENRY D. THOREAU

AUTHOR OF “WALDEN,” ETC.





Contents

CONCORD RIVER.

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY





     Where'er thou sail'st who sailed with me,
     Though now thou climbest loftier mounts,
     And fairer rivers dost ascend,
     Be thou my Muse, my Brother—.

     I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore,
     By a lonely isle, by a far Azore,
     There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek,
     On the barren sands of a desolate creek.

     I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind,
     New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find;
     Many fair reaches and headlands appeared,
     And many dangers were there to be feared;
     But when I remember where I have been,
     And the fair landscapes that I have seen,
     Thou seemest the only permanent shore,
     The cape never rounded, nor wandered o'er.

     Fluminaque obliquis cinxit declivia ripis;
     Quæ, diversa locis, partim sorbentur ab ipsa;
     In mare perveniunt partim, campoque recepta
     Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant.

Ovid, Met. I. 39

   He confined the rivers within their sloping banks,
   Which in different places are part absorbed by the earth,
   Part reach the sea, and being received within the plain
   Of its freer waters, beat the shore for banks.








CONCORD RIVER.

     "Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
     Through which at will our Indian rivulet
     Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
     Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
     Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees,
     Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell."

Emerson.

The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably as old as the
Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place in civilized history,
until the fame of its grassy meadows and its fish attracted settlers
out of England in 1635, when it received the other but kindred name of
Concord from the first plantation on its banks, which appears to have
been commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony. It will be Grass-ground
River as long as grass grows and water runs here; it will be Concord
River only while men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct
race it was grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and it is still
perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who own the Great Meadows,
and get the hay from year to year. "One branch of it," according to the
historian of Concord, for I love to quote so good authority, "rises
in the south part of Hopkinton, and another from a pond and a large
cedar-swamp in Westborough," and flowing between Hopkinton and
Southborough, through Framingham, and between Sudbury and Wayland, where
it is sometimes called Sudbury River, it enters Concord at the south
part of the town, and after receiving the North or Assabeth River, which
has its source a little farther to the north and west, goes out at the
northeast angle, and flowing between Bedford and Carlisle, and through
Billerica, empties into the Merrimack at Lowell. In Concord it is, in
summer, from four to fifteen feet deep, and from one hundred to three
hundred feet wide, but in the spring freshets, when it overflows its
banks, it is in some places nearly a mile wide. Between Sudbury and
Wayland the meadows acquire their greatest breadth, and when covered
with water, they form a handsome chain of shallow vernal lakes, resorted
to by numerous gulls and ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge, between
these towns, is the largest expanse, and when the wind blows freshly in
a raw March day, heaving up the surface into dark and sober billows or
regular swells, skirted as it is in the distance with alder-swamps
and smoke-like maples, it looks like a smaller Lake Huron, and is
very pleasant and exciting for a landsman to row or sail over.
The farm-houses along the Sudbury shore, which rises gently to a
considerable height, command fine water prospects at this season. The
shore is more flat on the Wayland side, and this town is the greatest
loser by the flood. Its farmers tell me that thousands of acres are
flooded now, since the dams have been erected, where they remember to
have seen the white honeysuckle or clover growing once, and they could
go dry with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint
and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year round. For
a long time, they made the most of the driest season to get their hay,
working sometimes till nine o'clock at night, sedulously paring with
their scythes in the twilight round the hummocks left by the ice; but
now it is not worth the getting when they can come at it, and they look
sadly round to their wood-lots and upland as a last resource.

It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go no
farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in the rear
of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses, and barns,
and haystacks, you never saw before, and men everywhere, Sudbury, that
is Southborough men, and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound
Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland,
Sudbury, Concord. Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping
nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving;
ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just
ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like
riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed
wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly
moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these
parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and
cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of; their labored homes
rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and
winged titmice along the sunny windy shore; cranberries tossed on the
waves and heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating about
among the alders;—such healthy natural tumult as proves the last day
is not yet at hand. And there stand all around the alders, and birches,
and oaks, and maples full of glee and sap, holding in their buds until
the waters subside. You shall perhaps run aground on Cranberry Island,
only some spires of last year's pipe-grass above water, to show where
the danger is, and get as good a freezing there as anywhere on the
Northwest Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my life. You shall see
men you never heard of before, whose names you don't know, going away
down through the meadows with long ducking-guns, with water-tight boots
wading through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant
shores, with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged,
green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and many
other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who sit in
parlors never dream of. You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and
wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer's wood, or
chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in
the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out
not only in '75 and 1812, but have been out every day of their lives;
greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got
time to say so; they never took to the way of writing. Look at their
fields, and imagine what they might write, if ever they should put
pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth
already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing, and
ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and over and
over, again and again, erasing what they had already written for want of
parchment.

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of to-day is
present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi-experiences of the life
that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to
time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

     The respectable folks,—
     Where dwell they?
     They whisper in the oaks,
     And they sigh in the hay;
     Summer and winter, night and day,
     Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
     They never die,
     Nor snivel, nor cry,
     Nor ask our pity
     With a wet eye.
     A sound estate they ever mend
     To every asker readily lend;
     To the ocean wealth,
     To the meadow health,
     To Time his length,
     To the rocks strength,
     To the stars light,
     To the weary night,
     To the busy day,
     To the idle play;
     And so their good cheer never ends,
     For all are their debtors, and all their friends.

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which
is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the
proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the
Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been proposed, that the town
should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord
circling nine times round. I have read that a descent of an eighth of an
inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our river has, probably,
very near the smallest allowance. The story is current, at any rate,
though I believe that strict history will not bear it out, that the only
bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the limits of the
town, was driven up stream by the wind. But wherever it makes a sudden
bend it is shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to be called a
river. Compared with the other tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears
to have been properly named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the
Indians. For the most part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned
with scattered oaks, where the cranberry is found in abundance, covering
the ground like a moss-bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders the
stream on one or both sides, while at a greater distance the meadow is
skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees, overrun with
the grape-vine, which bears fruit in its season, purple, red, white,
and other grapes. Still farther from the stream, on the edge of the
firm land, are seen the gray and white dwellings of the inhabitants.
According to the valuation of 1831, there were in Concord two thousand
one hundred and eleven acres, or about one seventh of the whole
territory in meadow; this standing next in the list after pasturage and
unimproved lands, and, judging from the returns of previous years, the
meadow is not reclaimed so fast as the woods are cleared.

Let us here read what old Johnson says of these meadows in his
"Wonder-working Providence," which gives the account of New England from
1628 to 1652, and see how matters looked to him. He says of the Twelfth
Church of Christ gathered at Concord: "This town is seated upon a fair
fresh river, whose rivulets are filled with fresh marsh, and her streams
with fish, it being a branch of that large river of Merrimack. Allwifes
and shad in their season come up to this town, but salmon and dace
cannot come up, by reason of the rocky falls, which causeth their
meadows to lie much covered with water, the which these people, together
with their neighbor town, have several times essayed to cut through but
cannot, yet it may be turned another way with an hundred pound charge as
it appeared." As to their farming he says: "Having laid out their estate
upon cattle at 5 to 20 pound a cow, when they came to winter them with
inland hay, and feed upon such wild fother as was never cut before, they
could not hold out the winter, but, ordinarily the first or second year
after their coming up to a new plantation, many of their cattle died."
And this from the same author "Of the Planting of the 19th Church in
the Mattachusets' Government, called Sudbury": "This year [does he mean
1654] the town and church of Christ at Sudbury began to have the first
foundation stones laid, taking up her station in the inland country, as
her elder sister Concord had formerly done, lying further up the same
river, being furnished with great plenty of fresh marsh, but, it lying
very low is much indamaged with land floods, insomuch that when
the summer proves wet they lose part of their hay; yet are they so
sufficiently provided that they take in cattle of other towns to
winter."

The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals thus unobserved
through the town, without a murmur or a pulse-beat, its general course
from southwest to northeast, and its length about fifty miles; a huge
volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the plains and valleys of
the substantial earth with the moccasoned tread of an Indian warrior,
making haste from the high places of the earth to its ancient reservoir.
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach
even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks; many a
poet's stream floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain
torrent, but fed by the everflowing springs of fame;—

    "And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere
     Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea";—

and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much abused
Concord River with the most famous in history.

    "Sure there are poets which did never dream
     Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
     Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
     Those made not poets, but the poets those."

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those journeying atoms from
the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a
kind of personal importance in the annals of the world. The heavens are
not yet drained over their sources, but the Mountains of the Moon still
send their annual tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the
Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his revenue at the point
of the sword. Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the
footsteps of the first travellers. They are the constant lure, when
they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a
natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany
their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their
invitation the interior of continents. They are the natural highways of
all nations, not only levelling the ground and removing obstacles from
the path of the traveller, quenching his thirst and bearing him on their
bosoms, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery, the
most populous portions of the globe, and where the animal and vegetable
kingdoms attain their greatest perfection.

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of
the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the
system, with time, and all that is made; the weeds at the bottom gently
bending down the stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted where
their seeds had sunk, but erelong to die and go down likewise; the
shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the chips
and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees that floated past,
fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at
last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would
bear me.








SATURDAY.

   "Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try
    Those rural delicacies."

               Christ's Invitation to the Soul.

Quarles SATURDAY.

At length, on Saturday, the last day of August, 1839, we two, brothers,
and natives of Concord, weighed anchor in this river port; for Concord,
too, lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for the bodies
as well as the souls of men; one shore at least exempted from all duties
but such as an honest man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling rain
had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay our voyage, but
at length the leaves and grass were dried, and it came out a mild
afternoon, as serene and fresh as if Nature were maturing some greater
scheme of her own. After this long dripping and oozing from every pore,
she began to respire again more healthily than ever. So with a vigorous
shove we launched our boat from the bank, while the flags and bulrushes
courtesied a God-speed, and dropped silently down the stream.

Our boat, which had cost us a week's labor in the spring, was in form
like a fisherman's dory, fifteen feet long by three and a half in
breadth at the widest part, painted green below, with a border of
blue, with reference to the two elements in which it was to spend its
existence. It had been loaded the evening before at our door, half a
mile from the river, with potatoes and melons from a patch which we had
cultivated, and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels in order
to be rolled around falls, as well as with two sets of oars, and several
slender poles for shoving in shallow places, and also two masts, one of
which served for a tent-pole at night; for a buffalo-skin was to be our
bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our roof. It was strongly built, but
heavy, and hardly of better model than usual. If rightly made, a boat
would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements,
related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by
the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird. The fish shows where
there should be the greatest breadth of beam and depth in the hold; its
fins direct where to set the oars, and the tail gives some hint for the
form and position of the rudder. The bird shows how to rig and trim the
sails, and what form to give to the prow that it may balance the boat,
and divide the air and water best. These hints we had but partially
obeyed. But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be
satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all
the requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a ship but the wood,
and yet the wood alone will rudely serve the purpose of a ship, so
our boat, being of wood, gladly availed itself of the old law that the
heavier shall float the lighter, and though a dull water-fowl, proved a
sufficient buoy for our purpose.

    "Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough
     Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough."

Some village friends stood upon a promontory lower down the stream to
wave us a last farewell; but we, having already performed these shore
rites, with excusable reserve, as befits those who are embarked on
unusual enterprises, who behold but speak not, silently glided past the
firm lands of Concord, both peopled cape and lonely summer meadow, with
steady sweeps. And yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns speak for
us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and thus left the woods to
ring again with their echoes; and it may be many russet-clad children,
lurking in those broad meadows, with the bittern and the woodcock
and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and hardhack and
meadow-sweet, heard our salute that afternoon.

We were soon floating past the first regular battle ground of the
Revolution, resting on our oars between the still visible abutments of
that "North Bridge," over which in April, 1775, rolled the first faint
tide of that war, which ceased not, till, as we read on the stone on
our right, it "gave peace to these United States." As a Concord poet has
sung:—

    "By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
      Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
    Here once the embattled farmers stood,
      And fired the shot heard round the world.

    "The foe long since in silence slept;
      Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
    And Time the ruined bridge has swept
      Down the dark stream which seaward creeps."

Our reflections had already acquired a historical remoteness from the
scenes we had left, and we ourselves essayed to sing.

    Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din
      That wakes the ignoble town,
    Not thus did braver spirits win
      A patriot's renown.

    There is one field beside this stream,
      Wherein no foot does fall,
    But yet it beareth in my dream
      A richer crop than all.

    Let me believe a dream so dear,
     Some heart beat high that day,
    Above the petty Province here,
     And Britain far away;

    Some hero of the ancient mould,
     Some arm of knightly worth,
    Of strength unbought, and faith unsold,
     Honored this spot of earth;

    Who sought the prize his heart described,
     And did not ask release,
    Whose free-born valor was not bribed
     By prospect of a peace.

    The men who stood on yonder height
     That day are long since gone;
    Not the same hand directs the fight
     And monumental stone.

    Ye were the Grecian cities then,
     The Romes of modern birth,
    Where the New England husbandmen
     Have shown a Roman worth.

    In vain I search a foreign land
     To find our Bunker Hill,
    And Lexington and Concord stand
     By no Laconian rill.

With such thoughts we swept gently by this now peaceful pasture-ground,
on waves of Concord, in which was long since drowned the din of war.

    But since we sailed
    Some things have failed,
    And many a dream
    Gone down the stream.

    Here then an aged shepherd dwelt,
    Who to his flock his substance dealt,
    And ruled them with a vigorous crook,
    By precept of the sacred Book;
    But he the pierless bridge passed o'er,
    And solitary left the shore.

    Anon a youthful pastor came,
    Whose crook was not unknown to fame,
    His lambs he viewed with gentle glance,
    Spread o'er the country's wide expanse,
    And fed with "Mosses from the Manse."
    Here was our Hawthorne in the dale,
    And here the shepherd told his tale.

That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills, and we had floated
round the neighboring bend, and under the new North Bridge between
Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, into the Great Meadows, which, like a
broad moccason print, have levelled a fertile and juicy place in nature.

     On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,
     Down this still stream to far Billericay,
     A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
     Doth often shine on Concord's twilight day.

     Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high,
     Shining more brightly as the day goes by,
     Most travellers cannot at first descry,
     But eyes that wont to range the evening sky,

     And know celestial lights, do plainly see,
     And gladly hail them, numbering two or three;
     For lore that's deep must deeply studied be,
     As from deep wells men read star-poetry.

     These stars are never paled, though out of sight,
     But like the sun they shine forever bright;
     Ay, they are suns, though earth must in its flight
     Put out its eyes that it may see their light.

     Who would neglect the least celestial sound,
     Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground,
     If he could know it one day would be found
     That star in Cygnus whither we are bound,
     And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round?

Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked
on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as
silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts. We glided
noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel or a bream
from the covert of the pads, and the smaller bittern now and then sailed
away on sluggish wings from some recess in the shore, or the larger
lifted itself out of the long grass at our approach, and carried its
precious legs away to deposit them in a place of safety. The tortoises
also rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the surface
amid the willows, breaking the reflections of the trees. The banks had
passed the height of their beauty, and some of the brighter flowers
showed by their faded tints that the season was verging towards the
afternoon of the year; but this sombre tinge enhanced their sincerity,
and in the still unabated heats they seemed like the mossy brink of
some cool well. The narrow-leaved willow (Salix Purshiana) lay along the
surface of the water in masses of light green foliage, interspersed with
the large balls of the button-bush. The small rose-colored polygonum
raised its head proudly above the water on either hand, and flowering
at this season and in these localities, in front of dense fields of the
white species which skirted the sides of the stream, its little streak
of red looked very rare and precious. The pure white blossoms of the
arrow-head stood in the shallower parts, and a few cardinals on the
margin still proudly surveyed themselves reflected in the water, though
the latter, as well as the pickerel-weed, was now nearly out of blossom.
The snake-head, Chelone glabra, grew close to the shore, while a kind of
coreopsis, turning its brazen face to the sun, full and rank, and a tall
dull red flower, Eupatorium purpureum, or trumpet-weed, formed the rear
rank of the fluvial array. The bright blue flowers of the soap-wort
gentian were sprinkled here and there in the adjacent meadows, like
flowers which Proserpine had dropped, and still farther in the fields or
higher on the bank were seen the purple Gerardia, the Virginian rhexia,
and drooping neottia or ladies'-tresses; while from the more distant
waysides which we occasionally passed, and banks where the sun had
lodged, was reflected still a dull yellow beam from the ranks of tansy,
now past its prime. In short, Nature seemed to have adorned herself for
our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the
bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the white
water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over
for this season. He makes his voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water
clock who delays so long. Many of this species inhabit our Concord
water. I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning
between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the
flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water,
whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I
floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this
flower to the influence of the sun's rays.

As we were floating through the last of these familiar meadows, we
observed the large and conspicuous flowers of the hibiscus, covering the
dwarf willows, and mingled with the leaves of the grape, and wished
that we could inform one of our friends behind of the locality of this
somewhat rare and inaccessible flower before it was too late to pluck
it; but we were just gliding out of sight of the village spire before it
occurred to us that the farmer in the adjacent meadow would go to church
on the morrow, and would carry this news for us; and so by the Monday,
while we should be floating on the Merrimack, our friend would be
reaching to pluck this blossom on the bank of the Concord.

After a pause at Ball's Hill, the St. Ann's of Concord voyageurs, not
to say any prayer for the success of our voyage, but to gather the few
berries which were still left on the hills, hanging by very slender
threads, we weighed anchor again, and were soon out of sight of our
native village. The land seemed to grow fairer as we withdrew from it.
Far away to the southwest lay the quiet village, left alone under its
elms and buttonwoods in mid afternoon; and the hills, notwithstanding
their blue, ethereal faces, seemed to cast a saddened eye on their old
playfellows; but, turning short to the north, we bade adieu to their
familiar outlines, and addressed ourselves to new scenes and adventures.
Naught was familiar but the heavens, from under whose roof the voyageur
never passes; but with their countenance, and the acquaintance we had
with river and wood, we trusted to fare well under any circumstances.

From this point, the river runs perfectly straight for a mile or more
to Carlisle Bridge, which consists of twenty wooden piers, and when we
looked back over it, its surface was reduced to a line's breadth, and
appeared like a cobweb gleaming in the sun. Here and there might be seen
a pole sticking up, to mark the place where some fisherman had enjoyed
unusual luck, and in return had consecrated his rod to the deities who
preside over these shallows. It was full twice as broad as before, deep
and tranquil, with a muddy bottom, and bordered with willows, beyond
which spread broad lagoons covered with pads, bulrushes, and flags.

Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long
birch pole, its silvery bark left on, and a dog at his side, rowing so
near as to agitate his cork with our oars, and drive away luck for a
season; and when we had rowed a mile as straight as an arrow, with our
faces turned towards him, and the bubbles in our wake still visible on
the tranquil surface, there stood the fisher still with his dog, like
statues under the other side of the heavens, the only objects to relieve
the eye in the extended meadow; and there would he stand abiding his
luck, till he took his way home through the fields at evening with his
fish. Thus, by one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants into all
her recesses. This man was the last of our townsmen whom we saw, and we
silently through him bade adieu to our friends.

The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are
always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my
earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is
still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.
Perchance he is not confounded by many knowledges, and has not sought
out many inventions, but how to take many fishes before the sun sets,
with his slender birchen pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough
for him. It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.
Some men are judges these August days, sitting on benches, even till the
court rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons and
between meals, leading a civil politic life, arbitrating in the case
of Spaulding versus Cummings, it may be, from highest noon till the red
vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman, meanwhile, stands in three
feet of water, under the same summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases
between muckworm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-lilies, mint,
and pontederia, leading his life many rods from the dry land, within a
pole's length of where the larger fishes swim. Human life is to him very
much like a river,

   "renning aie downward to the sea."

This was his observation. His honor made a great discovery in bailments.

I can just remember an old brown-coated man who was the Walton of this
stream, who had come over from Newcastle, England, with his son,—the
latter a stout and hearty man who had lifted an anchor in his day. A
straight old man he was who took his way in silence through the meadows,
having passed the period of communication with his fellows; his old
experienced coat, hanging long and straight and brown as the yellow-pine
bark, glittering with so much smothered sunlight, if you stood near
enough, no work of art but naturalized at length. I often discovered him
unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows when he moved, fishing
in some old country method,—for youth and age then went a fishing
together,—full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance about his own
Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to be seen in serene afternoons
haunting the river, and almost rustling with the sedge; so many sunny
hours in an old man's life, entrapping silly fish; almost grown to
be the sun's familiar; what need had he of hat or raiment any, having
served out his time, and seen through such thin disguises? I have seen
how his coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and yet I
thought his luck was not in proportion to his years; and I have
seen when, with slow steps and weighed down with aged thoughts, he
disappeared with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts of
the village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody else remembers him now,
for he soon after died, and migrated to new Tyne streams. His fishing
was not a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort of solemn
sacrament and withdrawal from the world, just as the aged read their
Bibles.

Whether we live by the seaside, or by the lakes and rivers, or on the
prairie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of fishes, since they
are not phenomena confined to certain localities only, but forms and
phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The countless
shoals which annually coast the shores of Europe and America are not so
interesting to the student of nature, as the more fertile law itself,
which deposits their spawn on the tops of mountains, and on the interior
plains; the fish principle in nature, from which it results that they
may be found in water in so many places, in greater or less numbers. The
natural historian is not a fisherman, who prays for cloudy days and
good luck merely, but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's
recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit
of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in
new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's
recreation. The seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere disseminated,
whether the winds waft them, or the waters float them, or the deep earth
holds them; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this
vivacious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not yet out. The
Chinese are bribed to carry their ova from province to province in jars
or in hollow reeds, or the water-birds to transport them to the mountain
tarns and interior lakes. There are fishes wherever there is a fluid
medium, and even in clouds and in melted metals we detect their
semblance. Think how in winter you can sink a line down straight in a
pasture through snow and through ice, and pull up a bright, slippery,
dumb, subterranean silver or golden fish! It is curious, also, to
reflect how they make one family, from the largest to the smallest. The
least minnow that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks like a
huge sea-fish cast up on the shore. In the waters of this town there are
about a dozen distinct species, though the inexperienced would expect
many more.

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature, to
observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this
century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer. The Fresh-Water
Sun-Fish, Bream, or Ruff, Pomotis vulgaris, as it were, without
ancestry, without posterity, still represents the Fresh-Water Sun-Fish
in nature. It is the most common of all, and seen on every urchin's
string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests are visible all
along the shore, hollowed in the sand, over which it is steadily poised
through the summer hours on waving fin. Sometimes there are twenty or
thirty nests in the space of a few rods, two feet wide by half a foot in
depth, and made with no little labor, the weeds being removed, and the
sand shoved up on the sides, like a bowl. Here it may be seen early in
summer assiduously brooding, and driving away minnows and larger fishes,
even its own species, which would disturb its ova, pursuing them a few
feet, and circling round swiftly to its nest again: the minnows,
like young sharks, instantly entering the empty nests, meanwhile, and
swallowing the spawn, which is attached to the weeds and to the bottom,
on the sunny side. The spawn is exposed to so many dangers, that a very
small proportion can ever become fishes, for beside being the constant
prey of birds and fishes, a great many nests are made so near the shore,
in shallow water, that they are left dry in a few days, as the river
goes down. These and the lamprey's are the only fishes' nests that I
have observed, though the ova of some species may be seen floating on
the surface. The breams are so careful of their charge that you may
stand close by in the water and examine them at your leisure. I have
thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them
familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers
harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand
approached their ova, and have even taken them gently out of the water
with my hand; though this cannot be accomplished by a sudden movement,
however dexterous, for instant warning is conveyed to them through their
denser element, but only by letting the fingers gradually close about
them as they are poised over the palm, and with the utmost gentleness
raising them slowly to the surface. Though stationary, they keep up a
constant sculling or waving motion with their fins, which is exceedingly
graceful, and expressive of their humble happiness; for unlike ours,
the element in which they live is a stream which must be constantly
resisted. From time to time they nibble the weeds at the bottom or
overhanging their nests, or dart after a fly or a worm. The dorsal fin,
besides answering the purpose of a keel, with the anal, serves to keep
the fish upright, for in shallow water, where this is not covered, they
fall on their sides. As you stand thus stooping over the bream in its
nest, the edges of the dorsal and caudal fins have a singular dusty
golden reflection, and its eyes, which stand out from the head, are
transparent and colorless. Seen in its native element, it is a very
beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, and looks like a
brilliant coin fresh from the mint. It is a perfect jewel of the river,
the green, red, coppery, and golden reflections of its mottled sides
being the concentration of such rays as struggle through the floating
pads and flowers to the sandy bottom, and in harmony with the sunlit
brown and yellow pebbles. Behind its watery shield it dwells far from
many accidents inevitable to human life.

There is also another species of bream found in our river, without
the red spot on the operculum, which, according to M. Agassiz, is
undescribed.

The Common Perch, Perca flavescens, which name describes well the
gleaming, golden reflections of its scales as it is drawn out of the
water, its red gills standing out in vain in the thin element, is one
of the handsomest and most regularly formed of our fishes, and at such a
moment as this reminds us of the fish in the picture which wished to
be restored to its native element until it had grown larger; and indeed
most of this species that are caught are not half grown. In the ponds
there is a light-colored and slender kind, which swim in shoals of many
hundreds in the sunny water, in company with the shiner, averaging
not more than six or seven inches in length, while only a few larger
specimens are found in the deepest water, which prey upon their weaker
brethren. I have often attracted these small perch to the shore at
evening, by rippling the water with my fingers, and they may sometimes
be caught while attempting to pass inside your hands. It is a tough and
heedless fish, biting from impulse, without nibbling, and from impulse
refraining to bite, and sculling indifferently past. It rather prefers
the clear water and sandy bottoms, though here it has not much choice.
It is a true fish, such as the angler loves to put into his basket or
hang at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons along the banks
of the stream. So many unquestionable fishes he counts, and so many
shiners, which he counts and then throws away. Old Josselyn in his "New
England's Rarities," published in 1672, mentions the Perch or River
Partridge.

The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or whatever else it is called,
Leuciscus pulchellus, white and red, always an unexpected prize, which,
however, any angler is glad to hook for its rarity. A name that reminds
us of many an unsuccessful ramble by swift streams, when the wind rose
to disappoint the fisher. It is commonly a silvery soft-scaled fish,
of graceful, scholarlike, and classical look, like many a picture in
an English book. It loves a swift current and a sandy bottom, and bites
inadvertently, yet not without appetite for the bait. The minnows are
used as bait for pickerel in the winter. The red chivin, according to
some, is still the same fish, only older, or with its tints deepened as
they think by the darker water it inhabits, as the red clouds swim in
the twilight atmosphere. He who has not hooked the red chivin is not yet
a complete angler. Other fishes, methinks, are slightly amphibious, but
this is a denizen of the water wholly. The cork goes dancing down the
swift-rushing stream, amid the weeds and sands, when suddenly, by a
coincidence never to be remembered, emerges this fabulous inhabitant
of another element, a thing heard of but not seen, as if it were the
instant creation of an eddy, a true product of the running stream. And
this bright cupreous dolphin was spawned and has passed its life beneath
the level of your feet in your native fields. Fishes too, as well as
birds and clouds, derive their armor from the mine. I have heard of
mackerel visiting the copper banks at a particular season; this fish,
perchance, has its habitat in the Coppermine River. I have caught white
chivin of great size in the Aboljacknagesic, where it empties into
the Penobscot, at the base of Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones there. The
latter variety seems not to have been sufficiently observed.

The Dace, Leuciscus argenteus, is a slight silvery minnow, found
generally in the middle of the stream, where the current is most rapid,
and frequently confounded with the last named.

The Shiner, Leuciscus crysoleucas, is a soft-scaled and tender fish, the
victim of its stronger neighbors, found in all places, deep and shallow,
clear and turbid; generally the first nibbler at the bait, but, with its
small mouth and nibbling propensities, not easily caught. It is a gold
or silver bit that passes current in the river, its limber tail dimpling
the surface in sport or flight. I have seen the fry, when frightened by
something thrown into the water, leap out by dozens, together with
the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank. It is the little
light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles,
slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the
water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more
crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is
almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and lighter colored
shiner is found in one of our ponds.

The Pickerel, Esox reticulatus, the swiftest, wariest, and most ravenous
of fishes, which Josselyn calls the Fresh-Water or River Wolf, is very
common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along the sides of the stream.
It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking under the shadow of a
pad at noon, with still, circumspect, voracious eye, motionless as a
jewel set in water, or moving slowly along to take up its position,
darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog or insect as
comes within its range, and swallowing it at a gulp. I have caught one
which had swallowed a brother pickerel half as large as itself, with the
tail still visible in its mouth, while the head was already digested in
its stomach. Sometimes a striped snake, bound to greener meadows across
the stream, ends its undulatory progress in the same receptacle. They
are so greedy and impetuous that they are frequently caught by being
entangled in the line the moment it is cast. Fishermen also distinguish
the brook pickerel, a shorter and thicker fish than the former.

The Horned Pout, Pimelodus nebulosus, sometimes called Minister, from
the peculiar squeaking noise it makes when drawn out of the water, is a
dull and blundering fellow, and like the eel vespertinal in his habits,
and fond of the mud. It bites deliberately as if about its business.
They are taken at night with a mass of worms strung on a thread, which
catches in their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, at one
pull. They are extremely tenacious of life, opening and shutting
their mouths for half an hour after their heads have been cut off. A
bloodthirsty and bullying race of rangers, inhabiting the fertile river
bottoms, with ever a lance in rest, and ready to do battle with their
nearest neighbor. I have observed them in summer, when every other one
had a long and bloody scar upon his back, where the skin was gone, the
mark, perhaps, of some fierce encounter. Sometimes the fry, not an inch
long, are seen darkening the shore with their myriads.

The Suckers, Catostomi Bostonienses and tuberculati, Common and Horned,
perhaps on an average the largest of our fishes, may be seen in
shoals of a hundred or more, stemming the current in the sun, on their
mysterious migrations, and sometimes sucking in the bait which the
fisherman suffers to float toward them. The former, which sometimes grow
to a large size, are frequently caught by the hand in the brooks, or
like the red chivin, are jerked out by a hook fastened firmly to the end
of a stick, and placed under their jaws. They are hardly known to the
mere angler, however, not often biting at his baits, though the spearer
carries home many a mess in the spring. To our village eyes, these
shoals have a foreign and imposing aspect, realizing the fertility of
the seas.

The Common Eel, too, Muraena Bostoniensis, the only species of eel
known in the State, a slimy, squirming creature, informed of mud, still
squirming in the pan, is speared and hooked up with various success.
Methinks it too occurs in picture, left after the deluge, in many a
meadow high and dry.

In the shallow parts of the river, where the current is rapid, and the
bottom pebbly, you may sometimes see the curious circular nests of the
Lamprey Eel, Petromyzon Americanus, the American Stone-Sucker, as large
as a cart-wheel, a foot or two in height, and sometimes rising half a
foot above the surface of the water. They collect these stones, of the
size of a hen's egg, with their mouths, as their name implies, and are
said to fashion them into circles with their tails. They ascend falls
by clinging to the stones, which may sometimes be raised, by lifting the
fish by the tail. As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it
is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die,
clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic
feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with
Shakespeare's description of the sea-floor. They are rarely seen in
our waters at present, on account of the dams, though they are taken in
great quantities at the mouth of the river in Lowell. Their nests, which
are very conspicuous, look more like art than anything in the river.

If we had leisure this afternoon, we might turn our prow up the brooks
in quest of the classical trout and the minnows. Of the last alone,
according to M. Agassiz, several of the species found in this town are
yet undescribed. These would, perhaps, complete the list of our finny
contemporaries in the Concord waters.

Salmon, Shad, and Alewives were formerly abundant here, and taken in
weirs by the Indians, who taught this method to the whites, by whom they
were used as food and as manure, until the dam, and afterward the
canal at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put an end to their
migrations hitherward; though it is thought that a few more enterprising
shad may still occasionally be seen in this part of the river. It is
said, to account for the destruction of the fishery, that those who at
that time represented the interests of the fishermen and the fishes,
remembering between what dates they were accustomed to take the grown
shad, stipulated, that the dams should be left open for that season
only, and the fry, which go down a month later, were consequently
stopped and destroyed by myriads. Others say that the fish-ways were not
properly constructed. Perchance, after a few thousands of years, if the
fishes will be patient, and pass their summers elsewhere, meanwhile,
nature will have levelled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories,
and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new
migratory shoals, even as far as the Hopkinton pond and Westborough
swamp.

One would like to know more of that race, now extinct, whose seines lie
rotting in the garrets of their children, who openly professed the
trade of fishermen, and even fed their townsmen creditably, not skulking
through the meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim visions we still
get of miraculous draughts of fishes, and heaps uncountable by the
river-side, from the tales of our seniors sent on horseback in their
childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on saddle-bags, with
instructions to get the one bag filled with shad, the other with
alewives. At least one memento of those days may still exist in the
memory of this generation, in the familiar appellation of a celebrated
train-band of this town, whose untrained ancestors stood creditably at
Concord North Bridge. Their captain, a man of piscatory tastes, having
duly warned his company to turn out on a certain day, they, like
obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on parade at the appointed time,
but, unfortunately, they went undrilled, except in the manuoevres of a
soldier's wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day; for their captain,
forgetting his own appointment, and warned only by the favorable
aspect of the heavens, as he had often done before, went a-fishing that
afternoon, and his company thenceforth was known to old and young, grave
and gay, as "The Shad," and by the youths of this vicinity this was long
regarded as the proper name of all the irregular militia in Christendom.
But, alas! no record of these fishers' lives remains that we know,
unless it be one brief page of hard but unquestionable history, which
occurs in Day Book No. 4, of an old trader of this town, long since
dead, which shows pretty plainly what constituted a fisherman's stock
in trade in those days. It purports to be a Fisherman's Account Current,
probably for the fishing season of the year 1805, during which months he
purchased daily rum and sugar, sugar and rum, N. E. and W. I., "one cod
line," "one brown mug," and "a line for the seine"; rum and sugar, sugar
and rum, "good loaf sugar," and "good brown," W. I. and N. E., in
short and uniform entries to the bottom of the page, all carried out in
pounds, shillings, and pence, from March 25th to June 5th, and promptly
settled by receiving "cash in full" at the last date. But perhaps not
so settled altogether. These were the necessaries of life in those days;
with salmon, shad, and alewives, fresh and pickled, he was thereafter
independent on the groceries. Rather a preponderance of the fluid
elements; but such is the fisherman's nature. I can faintly remember to
have seen this same fisher in my earliest youth, still as near the river
as he could get, with uncertain undulatory step, after so many things
had gone down stream, swinging a scythe in the meadow, his bottle like
a serpent hid in the grass; himself as yet not cut down by the Great
Mower.

Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more
immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarely seem
rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is
not harshly reminded of the things he may not do. She is very kind and
liberal to all men of vicious habits, and certainly does not deny them
quarter; they do not die without priest. Still they maintain life along
the way, keeping this side the Styx, still hearty, still resolute,
"never better in their lives"; and again, after a dozen years have
elapsed, they start up from behind a hedge, asking for work and wages
for able-bodied men. Who has not met such

       "a beggar on the way,
   Who sturdily could gang? ….
   Who cared neither for wind nor wet,
   In lands where'er he past?"

   "That bold adopts each house he views, his own;
   Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure,
   Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Cæsar";—

as if consistency were the secret of health, while the poor inconsistent
aspirant man, seeking to live a pure life, feeding on air, divided
against himself, cannot stand, but pines and dies after a life of
sickness, on beds of down.

The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not sick; but
methinks the difference between men in respect to health is not great
enough to lay much stress upon. Some are reputed sick and some are not.
It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell, where they
are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack shad, on account of
the warmth of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with
instinct not to be discouraged, not to be reasoned with, revisiting
their old haunts, as if their stern fates would relent, and still met
by the Corporation with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When
Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate?
Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the
mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter.
By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely stemming
the tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite of thy bright armor,
awaiting new instructions, until the sands, until the water itself,
tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole migrating nations, full of
instinct, which is thy faith, in this backward spring, turned adrift,
and perchance knowest not where men do not dwell, where there are not
factories, in these days. Armed with no sword, no electric shock, but
mere Shad, armed only with innocence and a just cause, with tender dumb
mouth only forward, and scales easy to be detached. I for one am with
thee, and who knows what may avail a crow-bar against that Billerica
dam?—Not despairing when whole myriads have gone to feed those sea
monsters during thy suspense, but still brave, indifferent, on easy fin
there, like shad reserved for higher destinies. Willing to be decimated
for man's behoof after the spawning season. Away with the superficial
and selfish phil-anthropy of men,—who knows what admirable virtue of
fishes may be below low-water-mark, bearing up against a hard destiny,
not admired by that fellow-creature who alone can appreciate it! Who
hears the fishes when they cry? It will not be forgotten by some memory
that we were contemporaries. Thou shalt erelong have thy way up the
rivers, up all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mistaken. Yea, even
thy dull watery dream shall be more than realized. If it were not so,
but thou wert to be overlooked at first and at last, then would not
I take their heaven. Yes, I say so, who think I know better than thou
canst. Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the tides thou mayst meet.

At length it would seem that the interests, not of the fishes only, but
of the men of Wayland, of Sudbury, of Concord, demand the levelling of
that dam. Innumerable acres of meadow are waiting to be made dry land,
wild native grass to give place to English. The farmers stand with
scythes whet, waiting the subsiding of the waters, by gravitation, by
evaporation or otherwise, but sometimes their eyes do not rest, their
wheels do not roll, on the quaking meadow ground during the haying
season at all. So many sources of wealth inaccessible. They rate the
loss hereby incurred in the single town of Wayland alone as equal to the
expense of keeping a hundred yoke of oxen the year round. One year, as
I learn, not long ago, the farmers standing ready to drive their
teams afield as usual, the water gave no signs of falling; without
new attraction in the heavens, without freshet or visible cause, still
standing stagnant at an unprecedented height. All hydrometers were
at fault; some trembled for their English even. But speedy emissaries
revealed the unnatural secret, in the new float-board, wholly a foot
in width, added to their already too high privileges by the dam
proprietors. The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing patient,
gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inaccessible waving native grass,
uncut but by the great mower Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without
so much as a wisp to wind about their horns.

That was a long pull from Ball's Hill to Carlisle Bridge, sitting with
our faces to the south, a slight breeze rising from the north, but
nevertheless water still runs and grass grows, for now, having passed
the bridge between Carlisle and Bedford, we see men haying far off in
the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the
distance the wind seemed to bend all alike. As the night stole over,
such a freshness was wafted across the meadow that every blade of
cut grass seemed to teem with life. Faint purple clouds began to be
reflected in the water, and the cow-bells tinkled louder along the
banks, while, like sly water-rats, we stole along nearer the shore,
looking for a place to pitch our camp.

At length, when we had made about seven miles, as far as Billerica, we
moored our boat on the west side of a little rising ground which in the
spring forms an island in the river. Here we found huckleberries still
hanging upon the bushes, where they seemed to have slowly ripened for
our especial use. Bread and sugar, and cocoa boiled in river water, made
our repast, and as we had drank in the fluvial prospect all day, so now
we took a draft of the water with our evening meal to propitiate the
river gods, and whet our vision for the sights it was to behold. The
sun was setting on the one hand, while our eminence was contributing its
shadow to the night, on the other. It seemed insensibly to grow
lighter as the night shut in, and a distant and solitary farm-house was
revealed, which before lurked in the shadows of the noon. There was no
other house in sight, nor any cultivated field. To the right and left,
as far as the horizon, were straggling pine woods with their plumes
against the sky, and across the river were rugged hills, covered with
shrub oaks, tangled with grape-vines and ivy, with here and there a
gray rock jutting out from the maze. The sides of these cliffs, though
a quarter of a mile distant, were almost heard to rustle while we looked
at them, it was such a leafy wilderness; a place for fauns and satyrs,
and where bats hung all day to the rocks, and at evening flitted over
the water, and fire-flies husbanded their light under the grass and
leaves against the night. When we had pitched our tent on the hillside,
a few rods from the shore, we sat looking through its triangular door
in the twilight at our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the
alders, and hardly yet come to a stand-still from the swaying of the
stream; the first encroachment of commerce on this land. There was our
port, our Ostia. That straight geometrical line against the water and
the sky stood for the last refinements of civilized life, and what of
sublimity there is in history was there symbolized.

For the most part, there was no recognition of human life in the night,
no human breathing was heard, only the breathing of the wind. As we sat
up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation, we heard at intervals
foxes stepping about over the dead leaves, and brushing the dewy grass
close to our tent, and once a musquash fumbling among the potatoes and
melons in our boat, but when we hastened to the shore we could detect
only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we
were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of
an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of
the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves,
there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if
the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully abroad at that hour.
There was a fire in Lowell, as we judged, this night, and we saw the
horizon blazing, and heard the distant alarm-bells, as it were a faint
tinkling music borne to these woods. But the most constant and memorable
sound of a summer's night, which we did not fail to hear every night
afterward, though at no time so incessantly and so favorably as now, was
the barking of the house-dogs, from the loudest and hoarsest bark to the
faintest aerial palpitation under the eaves of heaven, from the patient
but anxious mastiff to the timid and wakeful terrier, at first loud
and rapid, then faint and slow, to be imitated only in a whisper;
wow-wow-wow-wow—wo—wo—w—w. Even in a retired and uninhabited
district like this, it was a sufficiency of sound for the ear of night,
and more impressive than any music. I have heard the voice of a hound,
just before daylight, while the stars were shining, from over the woods
and river, far in the horizon, when it sounded as sweet and melodious as
an instrument. The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in
the horizon, may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to
alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle
long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was
invented. The very dogs that sullenly bay the moon from farm-yards
in these nights excite more heroism in our breasts than all the civil
exhortations or war sermons of the age. "I would rather be a dog, and
bay the moon," than many a Roman that I know. The night is equally
indebted to the clarion of the cock, with wakeful hope, from the very
setting of the sun, prematurely ushering in the dawn. All these sounds,
the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at
noon, are the evidence of nature's health or sound state. Such is the
never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in
the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

At length the antepenultimate and drowsy hours drew on, and all sounds
were denied entrance to our ears.

     Who sleeps by day and walks by night,
     Will meet no spirit but some sprite.








SUNDAY.

          "The river calmly flows,
        Through shining banks, through lonely glen,
     Where the owl shrieks, though ne'er the cheer of men
           Has stirred its mute repose,
     Still if you should walk there, you would go there again."

Channing.

   "The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the south,
   which they call Merrimack."

Sieur de Monts, Relations of the jesuits, 1604.

SUNDAY.

In the morning the river and adjacent country were covered with a dense
fog, through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a still subtiler
mist; but before we had rowed many rods, the sun arose and the fog
rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only to curl along the surface
of the water. It was a quiet Sunday morning, with more of the auroral
rosy and white than of the yellow light in it, as if it dated from
earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a heathenish
integrity:—

     An early unconverted Saint,
     Free from noontide or evening taint,
     Heathen without reproach,
     That did upon the civil day encroach,
     And ever since its birth
     Had trod the outskirts of the earth.

But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews, and
not even the most "persevering mortal" can preserve the memory of its
freshness to mid-day. As we passed the various islands, or what were
islands in the spring, rowing with our backs down stream, we gave names
to them. The one on which we had camped we called Fox Island, and one
fine densely wooded island surrounded by deep water and overrun by
grape-vines, which looked like a mass of verdure and of flowers cast
upon the waves, we named Grape Island. From Ball's Hill to Billerica
meeting-house, the river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a
deep, dark, and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes
cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a long woodland lake
bordered with willows. For long reaches we could see neither house nor
cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity of man. Now we coasted
along some shallow shore by the edge of a dense palisade of bulrushes,
which straightly bounded the water as if clipt by art, reminding us of
the reed forts of the East-Indians, of which we had read; and now the
bank slightly raised was overhung with graceful grasses and various
species of brake, whose downy stems stood closely grouped and naked as
in a vase, while their heads spread several feet on either side. The
dead limbs of the willow were rounded and adorned by the climbing
mikania, Mikania scandens, which filled every crevice in the leafy bank,
contrasting agreeably with the gray bark of its supporter and the balls
of the button-bush. The water willow, Salix Purshiana, when it is of
large size and entire, is the most graceful and ethereal of our trees.
Its masses of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the height
of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water,
while the slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible between
them. No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well with
still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping willow, or any
pendulous trees, which dip their branches in the stream instead of
being buoyed up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface as if
attracted by it. It had not a New England but an Oriental character,
reminding us of trim Persian gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the
artificial lakes of the East.

As we thus dipped our way along between fresh masses of foliage overrun
with the grape and smaller flowering vines, the surface was so calm, and
both air and water so transparent, that the flight of a kingfisher or
robin over the river was as distinctly seen reflected in the water below
as in the air above. The birds seemed to flit through submerged groves,
alighting on the yielding sprays, and their clear notes to come up from
below. We were uncertain whether the water floated the land, or the land
held the water in its bosom. It was such a season, in short, as that in
which one of our Concord poets sailed on its stream, and sung its quiet
glories.

   "There is an inward voice, that in the stream
   Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear,
   And in a calm content it floweth on,
   Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect.
   Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts,
   It doth receive the green and graceful trees,
   And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms."

And more he sung, but too serious for our page. For every oak and birch
too growing on the hill-top, as well as for these elms and willows, we
knew that there was a graceful ethereal and ideal tree making down from
the roots, and sometimes Nature in high tides brings her mirror to
its foot and makes it visible. The stillness was intense and almost
conscious, as if it were a natural Sabbath, and we fancied that the
morning was the evening of a celestial day. The air was so elastic and
crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass
has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The
landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and
fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and
uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon,
and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery
to hang over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some holiday or
prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our
lives to wind on before us like a green lane into a country maze, at the
season when fruit-trees are in blossom.

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair
and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at
least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as
objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a
limitless horizon. Character always secures for itself this advantage,
and is thus distinct and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether
things or persons. On this same stream a maiden once sailed in my boat,
thus unattended but by invisible guardians, and as she sat in the prow
there was nothing but herself between the steersman and the sky. I could
then say with the poet,—

         "Sweet falls the summer air
      Over her frame who sails with me;
      Her way like that is beautifully free,
         Her nature far more rare,
   And is her constant heart of virgin purity."

At evening still the very stars seem but this maiden's emissaries and
reporters of her progress.

   Low in the eastern sky
   Is set thy glancing eye;
   And though its gracious light
   Ne'er riseth to my sight,
   Yet every star that climbs
   Above the gnarled limbs
       Of yonder hill,
   Conveys thy gentle will.

   Believe I knew thy thought,
   And that the zephyrs brought
   Thy kindest wishes through,
   As mine they bear to you,
   That some attentive cloud
   Did pause amid the crowd
       Over my head,
   While gentle things were said.

   Believe the thrushes sung,
   And that the flower-bells rung,
   That herbs exhaled their scent,
   And beasts knew what was meant,
   The trees a welcome waved,
   And lakes their margins laved,
       When thy free mind
   To my retreat did wind.

   It was a summer eve,
   The air did gently heave
   While yet a low-hung cloud
   Thy eastern skies did shroud;
   The lightning's silent gleam,
   Startling my drowsy dream,
       Seemed like the flash
   Under thy dark eyelash.

   Still will I strive to be
   As if thou wert with me;
   Whatever path I take,
   It shall be for thy sake,
   Of gentle slope and wide,
   As thou wert by my side,
       Without a root
   To trip thy gentle foot.

   I 'll walk with gentle pace,
   And choose the smoothest place
   And careful dip the oar,
   And shun the winding shore,
   And gently steer my boat
   Where water-lilies float,
       And cardinal flowers
   Stand in their sylvan bowers.

It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like
surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so
faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for
only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is
unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more
than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice
that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and
abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to
see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the
direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens
from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the
one and some to the other object.

         "A man that looks on glass,
            On it may stay his eye,
          Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
            And the heavens espy."

Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating buoyantly amid
the reflections of the trees, like a feather in mid-air, or a leaf which
is wafted gently from its twig to the water without turning over, seemed
still in their element, and to have very delicately availed themselves
of the natural laws. Their floating there was a beautiful and successful
experiment in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in our eyes
the art of navigation; for as birds fly and fishes swim, so these men
sailed. It reminded us how much fairer and nobler all the actions of man
might be, and that our life in its whole economy might be as beautiful
as the fairest works of art or nature.

The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and glanced from every pad; the
bulrushes and flags seemed to rejoice in the delicious light and air;
the meadows were a-drinking at their leisure; the frogs sat meditating,
all sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, with one eye out on the
golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eying the wondrous universe in
which they act their part; the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as
maidens go to church; shoals of golden and silver minnows rose to the
surface to behold the heavens, and then sheered off into more sombre
aisles; they swept by as if moved by one mind, continually gliding past
each other, and yet preserving the form of their battalion unchanged, as
if they were still embraced by the transparent membrane which held the
spawn; a young band of brethren and sisters trying their new fins; now
they wheeled, now shot ahead, and when we drove them to the shore and
cut them off, they dexterously tacked and passed underneath the boat.
Over the old wooden bridges no traveller crossed, and neither the river
nor the fishes avoided to glide between the abutments.

Here was a village not far off behind the woods, Billerica, settled not
long ago, and the children still bear the names of the first settlers in
this late "howling wilderness"; yet to all intents and purposes it is
as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old gray town where men grow old and
sleep already under moss-grown monuments,—outgrow their usefulness.
This is ancient Billerica, (Villarica?) now in its dotage, named from
the English Billericay, and whose Indian name was Shawshine. I never
heard that it was young. See, is not nature here gone to decay, farms
all run out, meeting-house grown gray and racked with age? If you would
know of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in the pasture. It
has a bell that sounds sometimes as far as Concord woods; I have heard
that,—ay, hear it now. No wonder that such a sound startled the
dreaming Indian, and frightened his game, when the first bells were
swung on trees, and sounded through the forest beyond the plantations
of the white man. But to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs and
woods. It is no feeble imitation, but rather its original, or as if some
rural Orpheus played over the strain again to show how it should sound.

   Dong, sounds the brass in the east,
   As if to a funeral feast,
   But I like that sound the best
   Out of the fluttering west.

   The steeple ringeth a knell,
   But the fairies' silvery bell
   Is the voice of that gentle folk,
   Or else the horizon that spoke.

   Its metal is not of brass,
   But air, and water, and glass,
   And under a cloud it is swung,
   And by the wind it is rung.

   When the steeple tolleth the noon,
   It soundeth not so soon,
   Yet it rings a far earlier hour,
   And the sun has not reached its tower.

On the other hand, the road runs up to Carlisle, city of the woods,
which, if it is less civil, is the more natural. It does well hold the
earth together. It gets laughed at because it is a small town, I know,
but nevertheless it is a place where great men may be born any day, for
fair winds and foul blow right on over it without distinction. It has
a meeting-house and horse-sheds, a tavern and a blacksmith's shop, for
centre, and a good deal of wood to cut and cord yet. And

     "Bedford, most noble Bedford,
     I shall not thee forget."

History has remembered thee; especially that meek and humble petition
of thy old planters, like the wailing of the Lord's own people, "To
the gentlemen, the selectmen" of Concord, praying to be erected into
a separate parish. We can hardly credit that so plaintive a psalm
resounded but little more than a century ago along these Babylonish
waters. "In the extreme difficult seasons of heat and cold," said
they, "we were ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what a weariness
is it."—"Gentlemen, if our seeking to draw off proceed from any
disaffection to our present Reverend Pastor, or the Christian Society
with whom we have taken such sweet counsel together, and walked unto
the house of God in company, then hear us not this day, but we greatly
desire, if God please, to be eased of our burden on the Sabbath, the
travel and fatigue thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us, near
to our houses and in our hearts, that we and our little ones may serve
the Lord. We hope that God, who stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to set
forward temple work, has stirred us up to ask, and will stir you up to
grant, the prayer of our petition; so shall your humble petitioners ever
pray, as in duty bound—" And so the temple work went forward here to a
happy conclusion. Yonder in Carlisle the building of the temple was many
wearisome years delayed, not that there was wanting of Shittim wood,
or the gold of Ophir, but a site therefor convenient to all the
worshippers; whether on "Buttrick's Plain," or rather on "Poplar
Hill."—It was a tedious question.

In this Billerica solid men must have lived, select from year to year; a
series of town clerks, at least; and there are old records that you may
search. Some spring the white man came, built him a house, and made a
clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old
gray stones in fences, cut down the pines around his dwelling, planted
orchard seeds brought from the old country, and persuaded the civil
apple-tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding
its perfume in the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain. He culled
the graceful elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and so
refined and smoothed his village plot. He rudely bridged the stream, and
drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the wild grass, and
laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat, and with the whetting of
his scythe scared off the deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of
English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with his grain he scattered
the seeds of the dandelion and the wild trefoil over the meadows,
mingling his English flowers with the wild native ones. The bristling
burdock, the sweet-scented catnip, and the humble yarrow planted
themselves along his woodland road, they too seeking "freedom to worship
God" in their way. And thus he plants a town. The white man's mullein
soon reigned in Indian cornfields, and sweet-scented English grasses
clothed the new soil. Where, then, could the Red Man set his foot?
The honey-bee hummed through the Massachusetts woods, and sipped the
wild-flowers round the Indian's wigwam, perchance unnoticed, when, with
prophetic warning, it stung the Red child's hand, forerunner of that
industrious tribe that was to come and pluck the wild-flower of his race
up by the root.

The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought, with a
slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well what he knows,
not guessing but calculating; strong in community, yielding obedience
to authority; of experienced race; of wonderful, wonderful common sense;
dull but capable, slow but persevering, severe but just, of little humor
but genuine; a laboring man, despising game and sport; building a
house that endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and
baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds, and at length forgets where
he is buried and ploughs up his bones. And here town records, old,
tattered, time-worn, weather-stained chronicles, contain the Indian
sachem's mark perchance, an arrow or a beaver, and the few fatal words
by which he deeded his hunting-grounds away. He comes with a list of
ancient Saxon, Norman, and Celtic names, and strews them up and down
this river,—Framingham, Sudbury, Bedford, Carlisle, Billerica,
Chelmsford,—and this is New Angle-land, and these are the New West
Saxons whom the Red Men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese,
and so at last they are known for Yankees.

When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica, the fields on either
hand had a soft and cultivated English aspect, the village spire being
seen over the copses which skirt the river, and sometimes an orchard
straggled down to the water-side, though, generally, our course this
forenoon was the wildest part of our voyage. It seemed that men led
a quiet and very civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly
cultivators of the earth, and lived under an organized political
government. The school-house stood with a meek aspect, entreating a long
truce to war and savage life. Every one finds by his own experience, as
well as in history, that the era in which men cultivate the apple, and
the amenities of the garden, is essentially different from that of the
hunter and forest life, and neither can displace the other without loss.
We have all had our day-dreams, as well as more prophetic nocturnal
vision; but as for farming, I am convinced that my genius dates from an
older era than the agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into
the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his
bill into a tree. There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning
toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a
sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to
this ground. What have I to do with ploughs? I cut another furrow than
you see. Where the off ox treads, there is it not, it is farther off;
where the nigh ox walks, it will not be, it is nigher still. If corn
fails, my crop fails not, and what are drought and rain to me? The rude
Saxon pioneer will sometimes pine for that refinement and artificial
beauty which are English, and love to hear the sound of such sweet and
classical names as the Pentland and Malvern Hills, the Cliffs of Dover
and the Trosachs, Richmond, Derwent, and Winandermere, which are to him
now instead of the Acropolis and Parthenon, of Baiae, and Athens with
its sea-walls, and Arcadia and Tempe.

     Greece, who am I that should remember thee,
     Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylae?
     Is my life vulgar, my fate mean,
     Which on these golden memories can lean?

We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn's Sylva,
Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hortense, but they imply a relaxed nerve in
the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor
and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may be an excess of
cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes
pathetic. A highly cultivated man,—all whose bones can be bent! whose
heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The young pines springing up
in the cornfields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk
of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement.
By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he
preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from
time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has glances
of starry recognition to which our saloons are strangers. The steady
illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like the
faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling but
ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The Society-Islanders
had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be "of equal
antiquity with the atua fauau po, or night-born gods." It is true, there
are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is sometimes pleasant
to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their
season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter
retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its
parterres elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by
the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as
berries. We would not always be soothing and taming nature, breaking
the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the
buffalo. The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits
of the greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger
in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something
vulgar and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something
noble and cleanly in the former's distance. In civilization, as in
a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the
incursion of more northern tribes,

     "Some nation yet shut in
        With hills of ice."

There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of nature than our
poets have sung. It is only white man's poetry. Homer and Ossian even
can never revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how these cities
are refreshed by the mere tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted
fragrance and flavor of these wild fruits. If we could listen but for
an instant to the chant of the Indian muse, we should understand why
he will not exchange his savageness for civilization. Nations are not
whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian
does well to continue Indian.

After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the poets, I have
been out early on a foggy morning, and heard the cry of an owl in a
neighboring wood as from a nature behind the common, unexplored by
science or by literature. None of the feathered race has yet realized
my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths. I had seen the red
Election-bird brought from their recesses on my comrades' string, and
fancied that their plumage would assume stranger and more dazzling
colors, like the tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced farther
into the darkness and solitude of the forest. Still less have I seen
such strong and wilderness tints on any poet's string.

These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more
venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its
primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the
sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and
invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg,
or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been
gradually learned and taught. According to Gower,—

     "And Iadahel, as saith the boke,
       Firste made nette, and fishes toke.
     Of huntyng eke he fond the chace,
     Whiche nowe is knowe in many place;
     A tent of clothe, with corde and stake,
     He sette up first, and did it make."

Also, Lydgate says:—

     "Jason first sayled, in story it is tolde,
     Toward Colchos, to wynne the flees of golde,
     Ceres the Goddess fond first the tilthe of londe;
           *        *       *       *      *
     Also, Aristeus fonde first the usage
     Of mylke, and cruddis, and of honey swote;
     Peryodes, for grete avauntage,
     From flyntes smote fuyre, daryng in the roote."

We read that Aristeus "obtained of Jupiter and Neptune, that the
pestilential heat of the dog-days, wherein was great mortality,
should be mitigated with wind." This is one of those dateless benefits
conferred on man, which have no record in our vulgar day, though we
still find some similitude to them in our dreams, in which we have a
more liberal and juster apprehension of things, unconstrained by habit,
which is then in some measure put off, and divested of memory, which we
call history.

According to fable, when the island of Ægina was depopulated by
sickness, at the instance of Æacus, Jupiter turned the ants into men,
that is, as some think, he made men of the inhabitants who lived meanly
like ants. This is perhaps the fullest history of those early days
extant.

The fable which is naturally and truly composed, so as to satisfy
the imagination, ere it addresses the understanding, beautiful though
strange as a wild-flower, is to the wise man an apothegm, and admits
of his most generous interpretation. When we read that Bacchus made the
Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that they leapt into the sea, mistaking
it for a meadow full of flowers, and so became dolphins, we are not
concerned about the historical truth of this, but rather a higher
poetical truth. We seem to hear the music of a thought, and care not
if the understanding be not gratified. For their beauty, consider
the fables of Narcissus, of Endymion, of Memnon son of Morning, the
representative of all promising youths who have died a premature death,
and whose memory is melodiously prolonged to the latest morning; the
beautiful stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone afar
off white with the bones of unburied men; and the pregnant ones of
Pan, Prometheus, and the Sphinx; and that long list of names which have
already become part of the universal language of civilized men, and from
proper are becoming common names or nouns,—the Sibyls, the Eumenides,
the Parcae, the Graces, the Muses, Nemesis, &c.

It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest
sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and
roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the
beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only
by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some
trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered
planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astraea, that the Virgin who was driven
from earth to heaven at the end of the golden age, may have her local
habitation in the heavens more distinctly assigned her,—for the
slightest recognition of poetic worth is significant. By such slow
aggregation has mythology grown from the first. The very nursery tales
of this generation, were the nursery tales of primeval races. They
migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded
into the "tale divine" of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme. This
is an approach to that universal language which men have sought in vain.
This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest
posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouching the old
material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and
Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all. All men are
children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and
wakes them in the morning. Joseph Wolff, the missionary, distributed
copies of Robinson Crusoe, translated into Arabic, among the Arabs, and
they made a great sensation. "Robinson Crusoe's adventures and wisdom,"
says he, "were read by Mahometans in the market-places of Sanaa,
Hodyeda, and Loheya, and admired and believed!" On reading the book,
the Arabians exclaimed, "O, that Robinson Crusoe must have been a great
prophet!"

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and
biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it
contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here
and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom
writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a
thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology to-day
without the aid of posterity. In how few words, for instance, the Greeks
would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence
for our classical dictionary,—and then, perchance, have stuck up their
names to shine in some corner of the firmament. We moderns, on the other
hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, "memoirs
to serve for a history," which itself is but materials to serve for
a mythology. How many volumes folio would the Life and Labors of
Prometheus have filled, if perchance it had fallen, as perchance it
did first, in days of cheap printing! Who knows what shape the fable of
Columbus will at length assume, to be confounded with that of Jason and
the expedition of the Argonauts. And Franklin,—there may be a line for
him in the future classical dictionary, recording what that demigod
did, and referring him to some new genealogy. "Son of——and——.
He aided the Americans to gain their independence, instructed mankind in
economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds."

The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought
to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and
history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be
made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of
still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood
they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun,
or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular
thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman
intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its
hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind,
these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as
Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping
in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral
atmosphere.

As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but its scenery is the
more suggestive to the contemplative voyager, and this day its water was
fuller of reflections than our pages even. Just before it reaches the
falls in Billerica, it is contracted, and becomes swifter and shallower,
with a yellow pebbly bottom, hardly passable for a canal-boat, leaving
the broader and more stagnant portion above like a lake among the hills.
All through the Concord, Bedford, and Billerica meadows we had heard
no murmur from its stream, except where some tributary runnel tumbled
in,—

     Some tumultuous little rill,
       Purling round its storied pebble,
     Tinkling to the selfsame tune,
     From September until June,
       Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble.

     Silent flows the parent stream,
       And if rocks do lie below,
     Smothers with her waves the din,
     As it were a youthful sin,
       Just as still, and just as slow.

But now at length we heard this staid and primitive river rushing to her
fall, like any rill. We here left its channel, just above the Billerica
Falls, and entered the canal, which runs, or rather is conducted, six
miles through the woods to the Merrimack, at Middlesex, and as we did
not care to loiter in this part of our voyage, while one ran along the
tow-path drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off the shore
with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole distance in little more
than an hour. This canal, which is the oldest in the country, and has
even an antique look beside the more modern railroads, is fed by the
Concord, so that we were still floating on its familiar waters. It is
so much water which the river lets for the advantage of commerce. There
appeared some want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not of equal
date with the woods and meadows through which it is led, and we missed
the conciliatory influence of time on land and water; but in the lapse
of ages, Nature will recover and indemnify herself, and gradually plant
fit shrubs and flowers along its borders. Already the kingfisher sat
upon a pine over the water, and the bream and pickerel swam below. Thus
all works pass directly out of the hands of the architect into the hands
of Nature, to be perfected.

It was a retired and pleasant route, without houses or travellers,
except some young men who were lounging upon a bridge in Chelmsford, who
leaned impudently over the rails to pry into our concerns, but we caught
the eye of the most forward, and looked at him till he was visibly
discomfited. Not that there was any peculiar efficacy in our look, but
rather a sense of shame left in him which disarmed him.

It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for
the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance
of the eye. First, there was the glance of Jove's eye, then his
fiery bolt, then, the material gradually hardening, tridents, spears,
javelins, and finally, for the convenience of private men, daggers,
krisses, and so forth, were invented. It is wonderful how we get
about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing
weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being
noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously
looked at.

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching
the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from
above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish
comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day.
According to Hesiod,

              "The seventh is a holy day,
   For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo,"

and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the week, and not the
first. I find among the papers of an old Justice of the Peace and
Deacon of the town of Concord, this singular memorandum, which is worth
preserving as a relic of an ancient custom. After reforming the spelling
and grammar, it runs as follows: "Men that travelled with teams on the
Sabbath, Dec. 18th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richardson and Jonas Parker,
both of Shirley. They had teams with rigging such as is used to carry
barrels, and they were travelling westward. Richardson was questioned
by the Hon. Ephraim Wood, Esq., and he said that Jonas Parker was
his fellow-traveller, and he further said that a Mr. Longley was his
employer, who promised to bear him out." We were the men that were
gliding northward, this Sept. 1st, 1839, with still team, and rigging
not the most convenient to carry barrels, unquestioned by any Squire
or Church Deacon and ready to bear ourselves out if need were. In the
latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian
of Dunstable, "Towns were directed to erect 'a cage' near the
meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of
the Sabbath were confined." Society has relaxed a little from its
strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion
than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it
is only drawn the tighter in another.

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must
content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is
slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists
tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are
organic, and one hundred and fifty more, to prove that they are not to
be referred to the Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake
myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather
than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new
attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more
divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious
and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on
nature, as many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the infinite
power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal, hardly as yet
apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no Sister Juno, no Apollo, no
Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, ??µ? f?????s? te, ??d?µ???
te. The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices
of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.
In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy
face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook,
his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is
not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of
New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized
countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is
the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men
reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak with
discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should
praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil
and humane, but I may be mistaken. Every people have gods to suit their
circumstances; the Society Islanders had a god called Toahitu, "in shape
like a dog; he saved such as were in danger of falling from rocks and
trees." I think that we can do without him, as we have not much climbing
to do. Among them a man could make himself a god out of a piece of wood
in a few minutes, which would frighten him out of his wits.

I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old school, who had the
supreme felicity to be born in "days that tried men's souls," hearing
this, may say with Nestor, another of the old school, "But you are
younger than I. For time was when I conversed with greater men than
you. For not at any time have I seen such men, nor shall see them, as
Perithous, and Dryas, and p??µe?a ?a??," that is probably Washington,
sole "Shepherd of the People." And when Apollo has now six times rolled
westward, or seemed to roll, and now for the seventh time shows his face
in the east, eyes wellnigh glazed, long glassed, which have fluctuated
only between lamb's wool and worsted, explore ceaselessly some good
sermon book. For six days shalt thou labor and do all thy knitting, but
on the seventh, forsooth, thy reading. Happy we who can bask in this
warm September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well when they
rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude; whose
life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord's
Mona-day as on his Suna-day.

There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at
any of them? What man believes, God believes. Long as I have lived, and
many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or
witnessed any direct and conscious blasphemy or irreverence; but of
indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct
and personal insolence to Him that made him?

One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to this era,—the
Christian fable. With what pains, and tears, and blood these centuries
have woven this and added it to the mythology of mankind. The new
Prometheus. With what miraculous consent, and patience, and persistency
has this mythus been stamped on the memory of the race! It would seem
as if it were in the progress of our mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and
crown Christ in his stead.

If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to call it.
Such a story as that of Jesus Christ,—the history of Jerusalem, say,
being a part of the Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, unburied
death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills,—think of it. In Tasso's
poem I trust some things are sweetly buried. Consider the snappish
tenacity with which they preach Christianity still. What are time and
space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and a new world?—that
the humble life of a Jewish peasant should have force to make a New York
bishop so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now burning in
a place called the Holy Sepulchre;—a church-bell ringing;—some
unaffected tears shed by a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week.—

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my right hand forget her
cunning."

"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and we wept when we
remembered Zion."

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or
Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary
not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the
life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when
they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am
willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love
is the main thing, and I like him too. "God is the letter Ku, as well
as Khu." Why need Christians be still intolerant and superstitious? The
simple-minded sailors were unwilling to cast overboard Jonah at his own
request.—

   "Where is this love become in later age?
   Alas! 'tis gone in endless pilgrimage
   From hence, and never to return, I doubt,
   Till revolution wheel those times about."

One man says,—

   "The world's a popular disease, that reigns
   Within the froward heart and frantic brains
   Of poor distempered mortals."

Another, that

              "all the world's a stage,
   And all the men and women merely players."

The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it. Old
Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and would be a poet, for
instance, should have in him certain "brave, translunary things," and a
"fine madness" should possess his brain. Certainly it were as well, that
he might be up to the occasion. That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr.
Johnson expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that "his life
has been a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not history
but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable." The wonder is,
rather, that all men do not assert as much. That would be a rare praise,
if it were true, which was addressed to Francis Beaumont,—"Spectators
sate part in your tragedies."

Think what a mean and wretched place this world is; that half the time
we have to light a lamp that we may see to live in it. This is half our
life. Who would undertake the enterprise if it were all? And, pray, what
more has day to offer? A lamp that burns more clear, a purer oil,
say winter-strained, that so we may pursue our idleness with less
obstruction. Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we
bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

   I make ye an offer,
   Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
   The scheme will not hurt you,
   If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue.
   Though I am your creature,
   And child of your nature,
   I have pride still unbended,
   And blood undescended,
   Some free independence,
   And my own descendants.
   I cannot toil blindly,
   Though ye behave kindly,
   And I swear by the rood,
   I'll be slave to no God.
   If ye will deal plainly,
   I will strive mainly,
   If ye will discover,
   Great plans to your lover,
   And give him a sphere
   Somewhat larger than here.

"Verily, my angels! I was abashed on account of my servant, who had no
Providence but me; therefore did I pardon him."—The Gulistan of Sadi.

Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of some originality and
genius, have their scheme of the universe all cut and dried,—very dry,
I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post,
methinks,—which they set up between you and them in the shortest
intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with all its boards blown
off. They do not walk without their bed. Some, to me, seemingly very
unimportant and unsubstantial things and relations, are for them
everlastingly settled,—as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like.
These are like the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wanderings I
never came across the least vestige of authority for these things. They
have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote
geological period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man preaches
no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb,
against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one
time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer. To see
from earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture, that
old Jewish scheme! What right have you to hold up this obstacle to my
understanding you, to your understanding me! You did not invent it; it
was imposed on you. Examine your authority. Even Christ, we fear, had
his scheme, his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates his
teaching. He had not swallowed all formulas. He preached some mere
doctrines. As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the
subtilest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.
Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes
will soon be ruins. The perfect God in his revelations of himself has
never got to the length of one such proposition as you, his prophets,
state. Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do
you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words?
Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you,
that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of
God's personality? Do you, Miles Howard, think that he has made you his
confidant? Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the
diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history
of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad. Yet we have a sort of
family history of our God,—so have the Tahitians of theirs,—and some
old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting
truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true
assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt
if there is any example of this in literature.

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been
slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church
and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the
yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes.
It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true
flavor.—I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which
has been preached from this text; almost all other sermons that I have
heard, or heard of, have been but poor imitations of this.—It would
be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the
book has been edited by Christians. In fact, I love this book rarely,
though it is a sort of castle in the air to me, which I am permitted
to dream. Having come to it so recently and freshly, it has the greater
charm, so that I cannot find any to talk with about it. I never read a
novel, they have so little real life and thought in them. The reading
which I love best is the scriptures of the several nations, though
it happens that I am better acquainted with those of the Hindoos, the
Chinese, and the Persians, than of the Hebrews, which I have come to
last. Give me one of these Bibles and you have silenced me for a while.
When I recover the use of my tongue, I am wont to worry my neighbors
with the new sentences; but commonly they cannot see that there is any
wit in them. Such has been my experience with the New Testament. I have
not yet got to the crucifixion, I have read it over so many times. I
should love dearly to read it aloud to my friends, some of whom are
seriously inclined; it is so good, and I am sure that they have never
heard it, it fits their case exactly, and we should enjoy it so much
together,—but I instinctively despair of getting their ears. They soon
show, by signs not to be mistaken, that it is inexpressibly wearisome
to them. I do not mean to imply that I am any better than my neighbors;
for, alas! I know that I am only as good, though I love better books
than they.

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which
the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with
which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no
appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of
no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and
heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews,
it is foolishness and a stumbling-block. There are, indeed, severe
things in it which no man should read aloud more than once.—"Seek
first the kingdom of heaven."—"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
earth."—"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven."—"For what is a
man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"—Think of this,
Yankees!—"Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder
place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto
you."—Think of repeating these things to a New England audience!
thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly, till there are three barrels of sermons!
Who, without cant, can read them aloud? Who, without cant, can hear
them, and not go out of the meeting-house? They never were read, they
never were heard. Let but one of these sentences be rightly read, from
any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one stone of that
meeting-house upon another.

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual
affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to
alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or
moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most definite designs on
the future. Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that
they should do unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of
current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It
is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case. The book has never
been written which is to be accepted without any allowance. Christ was a
sublime actor on the stage of the world. He knew what he was thinking of
when he said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not
pass away." I draw near to him at such a time. Yet he taught mankind but
imperfectly how to live; his thoughts were all directed toward another
world. There is another kind of success than his. Even here we have a
sort of living to get, and must buffet it somewhat longer. There are
various tough problems yet to solve, and we must make shift to live,
betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents
a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject for
Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some,
but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his
leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the
solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland
streams.

Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything,
because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them
in the end. The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very
subtle policy, far finer than the politicians, and the world is very
successfully ruled by them as the policemen. It is not worth the while
to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does
not, and ought not to monopolize the whole of our lives, any more than
the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.
I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former
indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at
length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud,
and their lives of course yielded no milk.

    Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
    Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin
    By an unnatural breeding in and in.
    I say, Turn it out doors,
    Into the moors.
    I love a life whose plot is simple,
    And does not thicken with every pimple,
    A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,
    That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.
    I love an earnest soul,
    Whose mighty joy and sorrow
    Are not drowned in a bowl,
    And brought to life to-morrow;
    That lives one tragedy,
    And not seventy;
    A conscience worth keeping,
    Laughing not weeping;
    A conscience wise and steady,
    And forever ready;
    Not changing with events,
    Dealing in compliments;
    A conscience exercised about
    Large things, where one may doubt.
    I love a soul not all of wood,
    Predestinated to be good,
    But true to the backbone
    Unto itself alone,
    And false to none;
    Born to its own affairs,
    Its own joys and own cares;
    By whom the work which God begun
    Is finished, and not undone;
    Taken up where he left off,
    Whether to worship or to scoff;
    If not good, why then evil,
    If not good god, good devil.
    Goodness!—you hypocrite, come out of that,
    Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
    I have no patience towards
    Such conscientious cowards.
    Give me simple laboring folk,
    Who love their work,
    Whose virtue is a song
    To cheer God along.

I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some
meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because
I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of
a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word
spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was "breaking the Lord's
fourth commandment," and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone,
the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary
work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to
trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did
not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. The
country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village,
the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking
building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the
lowest and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as these shall
erelong cease to deform the landscape. There are few things more
disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of
a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like
a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet
atmosphere of the day. You fancy him to have taken off his coat, as when
men are about to do hot and dirty work.

If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to let me speak in his pulpit
on a Sunday, he would object, because I do not pray as he does, or
because I am not ordained. What under the sun are these things?

Really, there is no infidelity, now-a-days, so great as that which
prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of
the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine. The church is a sort of
hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for
their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their
Retreat or Sailor's Sung Harbor, where you may see a row of religious
cripples sitting outside in sunny weather. Let not the apprehension that
he may one day have to occupy a ward therein, discourage the cheerful
labors of the able-souled man. While he remembers the sick in their
extremities, let him not look thither as to his goal. One is sick at
heart of this pagoda worship. It is like the beating of gongs in a
Hindoo subterranean temple. In dark places and dungeons the preacher's
words might perhaps strike root and grow, but not in broad daylight in
any part of the world that I know. The sound of the Sabbath bell
far away, now breaking on these shores, does not awaken pleasing
associations, but melancholy and sombre ones rather. One involuntarily
rests on his oar, to humor his unusually meditative mood. It is as the
sound of many catechisms and religious books twanging a canting peal
round the earth, seeming to issue from some Egyptian temple and echo
along the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and
Moses in the bulrushes, startling a multitude of storks and alligators
basking in the sun.

Everywhere "good men" sound a retreat, and the word has gone forth to
fall back on innocence. Fall forward rather on to whatever there is
there. Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and
cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream,
and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her
falsehoods to her child, but, thank Heaven, the child does not grow
up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her
experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life
was too hard for her to learn.

It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be
incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the
personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late
than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.
In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral
reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the
page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he
calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. He
should know better than expose himself, and keep his foul sores covered
till they are quite healed. There is more religion in men's science than
there is science in their religion. Let us make haste to the report of
the committee on swine.

A man's real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an
article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits
him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he
clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does
him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag.

In most men's religion, the ligature, which should be its umbilical
cord connecting them with divinity, is rather like that thread which the
accomplices of Cylon held in their hands when they went abroad from the
temple of Minerva, the other end being attached to the statue of the
goddess. But frequently, as in their case, the thread breaks, being
stretched, and they are left without an asylum.

"A good and pious man reclined his head on the bosom of contemplation,
and was absorbed in the ocean of a revery. At the instant when he awaked
from his vision, one of his friends, by way of pleasantry, said, What
rare gift have you brought us from that garden, where you have been
recreating? He replied, I fancied to myself and said, when I can reach
the rose-bower, I will fill my lap with the flowers, and bring them as a
present to my friends; but when I got there, the fragrance of the roses
so intoxicated me, that the skirt dropped from my hands.——`O bird
of dawn! learn the warmth of affection from the moth; for that scorched
creature gave up the ghost, and uttered not a groan: These vain
pretenders are ignorant of him they seek after; for of him that knew
him we never heard again:—O thou! who towerest above the flights of
conjecture, opinion, and comprehension; whatever has been reported of
thee we have heard and read; the congregation is dismissed, and
life drawn to a close; and we still rest at our first encomium of
thee!'"—Sadi.

By noon we were let down into the Merrimack through the locks at
Middlesex, just above Pawtucket Falls, by a serene and liberal-minded
man, who came quietly from his book, though his duties, we supposed, did
not require him to open the locks on Sundays. With him we had a just and
equal encounter of the eyes, as between two honest men.

The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and unconscious courtesy
of the parties. It is said, that a rogue does not look you in the face,
neither does an honest man look at you as if he had his reputation to
establish. I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their
eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is
wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone
conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face
and sees me, that is all.

The best relations were at once established between us and this man, and
though few words were spoken, he could not conceal a visible interest
in us and our excursion. He was a lover of the higher mathematics, as we
found, and in the midst of some vast sunny problem, when we overtook him
and whispered our conjectures. By this man we were presented with the
freedom of the Merrimack. We now felt as if we were fairly launched on
the ocean-stream of our voyage, and were pleased to find that our boat
would float on Merrimack water. We began again busily to put in practice
those old arts of rowing, steering, and paddling. It seemed a strange
phenomenon to us that the two rivers should mingle their waters so
readily, since we had never associated them in our thoughts.

As we glided over the broad bosom of the Merrimack, between Chelmsford
and Dracut, at noon, here a quarter of a mile wide, the rattling of
our oars was echoed over the water to those villages, and their slight
sounds to us. Their harbors lay as smooth and fairy-like as the Lido, or
Syracuse, or Rhodes, in our imagination, while, like some strange roving
craft, we flitted past what seemed the dwellings of noble home-staying
men, seemingly as conspicuous as if on an eminence, or floating upon
a tide which came up to those villagers' breasts. At a third of a
mile over the water we heard distinctly some children repeating their
catechism in a cottage near the shore, while in the broad shallows
between, a herd of cows stood lashing their sides, and waging war with
the flies.

Two hundred years ago other catechizing than this was going on here;
for here came the Sachem Wannalancet, and his people, and sometimes
Tahatawan, our Concord Sachem, who afterwards had a church at home, to
catch fish at the falls; and here also came John Eliot, with the Bible
and Catechism, and Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and other tracts,
done into the Massachusetts tongue, and taught them Christianity
meanwhile. "This place," says Gookin, referring to Wamesit,

"being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, they come to fish; and
this good man takes this opportunity to spread the net of the gospel,
to fish for their souls."—"May 5th, 1674," he continues, "according to
our usual custom, Mr. Eliot and myself took our journey to Wamesit, or
Pawtuckett; and arriving there that evening, Mr. Eliot preached to as
many of them as could be got together, out of Matt. xxii. 1-14, the
parable of the marriage of the king's son. We met at the wigwam of
one called Wannalancet, about two miles from the town, near Pawtuckett
falls, and bordering upon Merrimak river. This person, Wannalancet, is
the eldest son of old Pasaconaway, the chiefest sachem of Pawtuckett. He
is a sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty. He
hath been always loving and friendly to the English." As yet, however,
they had not prevailed on him to embrace the Christian religion. "But at
this time," says Gookin, "May 6, 1674,"—"after some deliberation and
serious pause, he stood up, and made a speech to this effect:—`I must
acknowledge I have, all my days, used to pass in an old canoe, (alluding
to his frequent custom to pass in a canoe upon the river,) and now you
exhort me to change and leave my old canoe, and embark in a new canoe,
to which I have hitherto been unwilling; but now I yield up myself to
your advice, and enter into a new canoe, and do engage to pray to
God hereafter.'" One "Mr. Richard Daniel, a gentleman that lived in
Billerica," who with other "persons of quality" was present, "desired
brother Eliot to tell the sachem from him, that it may be, while he went
in his old canoe, he passed in a quiet stream; but the end thereof
was death and destruction to soul and body. But now he went into a new
canoe, perhaps he would meet with storms and trials, but yet he
should be encouraged to persevere, for the end of his voyage would
be everlasting rest."—"Since that time, I hear this sachem doth
persevere, and is a constant and diligent hearer of God's word, and
sanctifieth the Sabbath, though he doth travel to Wamesit meeting every
Sabbath, which is above two miles; and though sundry of his people have
deserted him, since he subjected to the gospel, yet he continues and
persists."— Gookin's Hist. Coll. of the Indians in New England, 1674.

Already, as appears from the records, "At a General Court held at Boston
in New England, the 7th of the first month, 1643-4."—"Wassamequin,
Nashoonon, Kutchamaquin, Massaconomet, and Squaw Sachem, did voluntarily
submit themselves" to the English; and among other things did "promise
to be willing from time to time to be instructed in the knowledge of
God." Being asked "Not to do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day,
especially within the gates of Christian towns," they answered, "It is
easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and they can well
take their rest on that day."—"So," says Winthrop, in his Journal, "we
causing them to understand the articles, and all the ten commandments of
God, and they freely assenting to all, they were solemnly received, and
then presented the Court with twenty-six fathom more of wampom; and the
Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and their dinner;
and to them and their men, every of them, a cup of sack at their
departure; so they took leave and went away."

What journeyings on foot and on horseback through the wilderness, to
preach the Gospel to these minks and muskrats! who first, no doubt,
listened with their red ears out of a natural hospitality and courtesy,
and afterward from curiosity or even interest, till at length there
were "praying Indians," and, as the General Court wrote to Cromwell, the
"work is brought to this perfection, that some of the Indians themselves
can pray and prophesy in a comfortable manner."

It was in fact an old battle and hunting ground through which we had
been floating, the ancient dwelling-place of a race of hunters and
warriors. Their weirs of stone, their arrowheads and hatchets, their
pestles, and the mortars in which they pounded Indian corn before the
white man had tasted it, lay concealed in the mud of the river bottom.
Tradition still points out the spots where they took fish in the
greatest numbers, by such arts as they possessed. It is a rapid
story the historian will have to put together.
Miantonimo,—Winthrop,—Webster. Soon he comes from Montaup to Bunker
Hill, from bear-skins, parched corn, bows and arrows, to tiled roofs,
wheat-fields, guns and swords. Pawtucket and Wamesit, where the Indians
resorted in the fishing season, are now Lowell, the city of spindles
and Manchester of America, which sends its cotton cloth round the globe.
Even we youthful voyagers had spent a part of our lives in the village
of Chelmsford, when the present city, whose bells we heard, was its
obscure north district only, and the giant weaver was not yet fairly
born. So old are we; so young is it.

We were thus entering the State of New Hampshire on the bosom of the
flood formed by the tribute of its innumerable valleys. The river was
the only key which could unlock its maze, presenting its hills and
valleys, its lakes and streams, in their natural order and position.
The Merrimack, or Sturgeon River, is formed by the confluence of the
Pemigewasset, which rises near the Notch of the White Mountains, and the
Winnipiseogee, which drains the lake of the same name, signifying
"The Smile of the Great Spirit." From their junction it runs south
seventy-eight miles to Massachusetts, and thence east thirty-five miles
to the sea. I have traced its stream from where it bubbles out of the
rocks of the White Mountains above the clouds, to where it is lost amid
the salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island beach. At first it comes
on murmuring to itself by the base of stately and retired mountains,
through moist primitive woods whose juices it receives, where the bear
still drinks it, and the cabins of settlers are far between, and there
are few to cross its stream; enjoying in solitude its cascades still
unknown to fame; by long ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of Squam,
slumbering like tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of Moosehillock, the
Haystack, and Kearsarge reflected in its waters; where the maple and
the raspberry, those lovers of the hills, flourish amid temperate
dews;—flowing long and full of meaning, but untranslatable as its name
Pemigewasset, by many a pastured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses
haunt, tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and receiving the tribute
of many an untasted Hippocrene. There are earth, air, fire, and
water,—very well, this is water, and down it comes.

   Such water do the gods distil,
   And pour down every hill
      For their New England men;
   A draught of this wild nectar bring,
   And I'll not taste the spring
      Of Helicon again.

Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by the lowest fall. By the
law of its birth never to become stagnant, for it has come out of the
clouds, and down the sides of precipices worn in the flood, through
beaver-dams broke loose, not splitting but splicing and mending itself,
until it found a breathing-place in this low land. There is no danger
now that the sun will steal it back to heaven again before it reach the
sea, for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews into its bosom
again with interest at every eve.

It was already the water of Squam and Newfound Lake and Winnipiseogee,
and White Mountain snow dissolved, on which we were floating, and
Smith's and Baker's and Mad Rivers, and Nashua and Souhegan and
Piscataquoag, and Suncook and Soucook and Contoocook, mingled in
incalculable proportions, still fluid, yellowish, restless all, with an
ancient, ineradicable inclination to the sea.

So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, at which last place it
first suffers a sea change, and a few masts betray the vicinity of
the ocean. Between the towns of Amesbury and Newbury it is a broad
commercial river, from a third to half a mile in width, no longer
skirted with yellow and crumbling banks, but backed by high green hills
and pastures, with frequent white beaches on which the fishermen draw up
their nets. I have passed down this portion of the river in a steamboat,
and it was a pleasant sight to watch from its deck the fishermen
dragging their seines on the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign
strand. At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with lumber,
standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at anchor or aground, waiting
for wind or tide; until, at last, you glide under the famous Chain
Bridge, and are landed at Newburyport. Thus she who at first was "poore
of waters, naked of renowne," having received so many fair tributaries,
as was said of the Forth,

   "Doth grow the greater still, the further downe;
      Till that abounding both in power and fame,
      She long doth strive to give the sea her name";

or if not her name, in this case, at least the impulse of her stream.
From the steeples of Newburyport you may review this river stretching
far up into the country, with many a white sail glancing over it like
an inland sea, and behold, as one wrote who was born on its head-waters,
"Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main blending with the blue above.
Plum Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon like the
sea-serpent, and the distant outline broken by many a tall ship,
leaning, still, against the sky."

Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the Merrimack reaches
the sea by a course only half as long, and hence has no leisure to form
broad and fertile meadows, like the former, but is hurried along rapids,
and down numerous falls, without long delay. The banks are generally
steep and high, with a narrow interval reaching back to the hills, which
is only rarely or partially overflown at present, and is much valued by
the farmers. Between Chelmsford and Concord, in New Hampshire, it varies
from twenty to seventy-five rods in width. It is probably wider than it
was formerly, in many places, owing to the trees having been cut down,
and the consequent wasting away of its banks. The influence of the
Pawtucket Dam is felt as far up as Cromwell's Falls, and many think that
the banks are being abraded and the river filled up again by this cause.
Like all our rivers, it is liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has
been known to rise twenty-five feet in a few hours. It is navigable
for vessels of burden about twenty miles; for canal-boats, by means of
locks, as far as Concord in New Hampshire, about seventy-five miles from
its mouth; and for smaller boats to Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen
miles. A small steamboat once plied between Lowell and Nashua, before
the railroad was built, and one now runs from Newburyport to Haverhill.

Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the sand-bar at
its mouth, see how this river was devoted from the first to the service
of manufactures. Issuing from the iron region of Franconia, and flowing
through still uncut forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, with
Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and Newfound, and Massabesic Lakes for its
mill-ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where it has
been offering its privileges in vain for ages, until at last the Yankee
race came to improve them. Standing at its mouth, look up its sparkling
stream to its source,—a silver cascade which falls all the way from
the White Mountains to the sea,—and behold a city on each successive
plateau, a busy colony of human beaver around every fall. Not to mention
Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence, and Lowell, and Nashua, and
Manchester, and Concord, gleaming one above the other. When at length
it has escaped from under the last of the factories, it has a level and
unmolested passage to the sea, a mere waste water, as it were, bearing
little with it but its fame; its pleasant course revealed by the morning
fog which hangs over it, and the sails of the few small vessels which
transact the commerce of Haverhill and Newburyport. But its real vessels
are railroad cars, and its true and main stream, flowing by an iron
channel farther south, may be traced by a long line of vapor amid the
hills, which no morning wind ever disperses, to where it empties into
the sea at Boston. This side is the louder murmur now. Instead of the
scream of a fish-hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the
steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.

This river too was at length discovered by the white man, "trending up
into the land," he knew not how far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea.
Its valley, as far as the Winnipiseogee, was first surveyed in 1652. The
first settlers of Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, in
one part of its course, ran northwest, "so near the great lake as the
Indians do pass their canoes into it over land." From which lake and the
"hideous swamps" about it, as they supposed, came all the beaver that
was traded between Virginia and Canada,—and the Potomac was thought to
come out of or from very near it. Afterward the Connecticut came so near
the course of the Merrimack that, with a little pains, they expected to
divert the current of the trade into the latter river, and its profits
from their Dutch neighbors into their own pockets.

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream,
though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a
swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost
no weeds, and comparatively few fishes. We looked down into its yellow
water with the more curiosity, who were accustomed to the Nile-like
blackness of the former river. Shad and alewives are taken here in their
season, but salmon, though at one time more numerous than shad, are now
more rare. Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have
proved more or less destructive to the fisheries. The shad make their
appearance early in May, at the same time with the blossoms of the
pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is for this
reason called the shad-blossom. An insect called the shad-fly also
appears at the same time, covering the houses and fences. We are told
that "their greatest run is when the apple-trees are in full blossom.
The old shad return in August; the young, three or four inches long,
in September. These are very fond of flies." A rather picturesque and
luxurious mode of fishing was formerly practised on the Connecticut,
at Bellows Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. "On the steep
sides of the island rock," says Belknap, "hang several arm-chairs,
fastened to ladders, and secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen
sit to catch salmon and shad with dipping nets." The remains of Indian
weirs, made of large stones, are still to be seen in the Winnipiseogee,
one of the head-waters of this river.

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these
shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers,
and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in
the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the
sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way
downward to the sea. "And is it not pretty sport," wrote Captain John
Smith, who was on this coast as early as 1614, "to pull up twopence,
sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul and veer a
line?"—"And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less
hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air
from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea."

On the sandy shore, opposite the Glass-house village in Chelmsford, at
the Great Bend where we landed to rest us and gather a few wild plums,
we discovered the Campanula rotundifolia, a new flower to us, the
harebell of the poets, which is common to both hemispheres, growing
close to the water. Here, in the shady branches of an apple-tree on the
sand, we took our nooning, where there was not a zephyr to disturb the
repose of this glorious Sabbath day, and we reflected serenely on the
long past and successful labors of Latona.

     "So silent is the cessile air,
        That every cry and call,
     The hills, and dales, and forest fair
        Again repeats them all.

    "The herds beneath some leafy trees,
        Amidst the flowers they lie,
     The stable ships upon the seas
        Tend up their sails to dry."

As we thus rested in the shade, or rowed leisurely along, we had
recourse, from time to time, to the Gazetteer, which was our Navigator,
and from its bald natural facts extracted the pleasure of poetry. Beaver
River comes in a little lower down, draining the meadows of Pelham,
Windham, and Londonderry. The Scotch-Irish settlers of the latter town,
according to this authority, were the first to introduce the potato into
New England, as well as the manufacture of linen cloth.

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at
least of the best that is in literature. Indeed, the best books have a
use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not
anticipated in the preface, nor concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's
poetry serves a very different use to me to-day from what it did to his
contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely,
proving that man is still man in the world. It is pleasant to meet with
such still lines as,

    "Jam læto turgent in palmite gemmæ";
     Now the buds swell on the joyful stem.

    "Strata jacent passim sua quaeque sub arbore poma";
     The apples lie scattered everywhere, each under its tree.

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature
attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass grew
and water ran. It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the
test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight.

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be
in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they
would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can
supply their place.

The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false
by setting aside its requisitions. We can, therefore, publish only our
advertisement of it.

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed,
or in some way musically measured,—is, in form as well as substance,
poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of
mankind need not have one rhythmless line.

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As
naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a
poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success,
for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. What else have the
Hindoos, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians done, that can
be told? It is the simplest relation of phenomena, and describes the
commonest sensations with more truth than science does, and the latter
at a distance slowly mimics its style and methods. The poet sings how
the blood flows in his veins. He performs his functions, and is so well
that he needs such stimulus to sing only as plants to put forth leaves
and blossoms. He would strive in vain to modulate the remote and
transient music which he sometimes hears, since his song is a vital
function like breathing, and an integral result like weight. It is not
the overflowing of life but its subsidence rather, and is drawn from
under the feet of the poet. It is enough if Homer but say the sun sets.
He is as serene as nature, and we can hardly detect the enthusiasm
of the bard. It is as if nature spoke. He presents to us the simplest
pictures of human life, so the child itself can understand them, and
the man must not think twice to appreciate his naturalness. Each reader
discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of
nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.
His more memorable passages are as naturally bright as gleams of
sunshine in misty weather. Nature furnishes him not only with words, but
with stereotyped lines and sentences from her mint.

   "As from the clouds appears the full moon,
   All shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds,
   So Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost,
   And at another in the rear, commanding; and all with brass
   He shone, like to the lightning of aegis-bearing Zeus."

He conveys the least information, even the hour of the day, with such
magnificence and vast expense of natural imagery, as if it were a
message from the gods.

   "While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing,
   For that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people fell;
   But when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal,
   In the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands
   With cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind,
   And the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts;
   Then the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes,
   Shouting to their companions from rank to rank."

When the army of the Trojans passed the night under arms, keeping watch
lest the enemy should re-embark under cover of the dark,

   "They, thinking great things, upon the neutral ground of war
   Sat all the night; and many fires burned for them.
   As when in the heavens the stars round the bright moon
   Appear beautiful, and the air is without wind;
   And all the heights, and the extreme summits,
   And the wooded sides of the mountains appear; and from the
        heavens an Infinite ether is diffused,
   And all the stars are seen, and the shepherd rejoices in his heart;
   So between the ships and the streams of Xanthus
   Appeared the fires of the Trojans before Ilium.
   A thousand fires burned on the plain, and by each
   Sat fifty, in the light of the blazing fire;
   And horses eating white barley and corn,
   Standing by the chariots, awaited fair-throned Aurora."

The "white-armed goddess Juno," sent by the Father of gods and men for
Iris and Apollo,

   "Went down the Idæan mountains to far Olympus,
   As when the mind of a man, who has come over much earth,
   Sallies forth, and he reflects with rapid thoughts,
   There was I, and there, and remembers many things;
   So swiftly the august Juno hastening flew through the air,
   And came to high Olympus."

His scenery is always true, and not invented. He does not leap in
imagination from Asia to Greece, through mid air,

   ?pe?? µ??a p???? µeta??
    ???e? te s?????ta, ?a??ssa te ???essa.

        for there are very many
   Shady mountains and resounding seas between.

If his messengers repair but to the tent of Achilles, we do not wonder
how they got there, but accompany them step by step along the shore of
the resounding sea. Nestor's account of the march of the Pylians against
the Epeians is extremely lifelike:—

   "Then rose up to them sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator
       of the Pylians,
   And words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue."

This time, however, he addresses Patroclus alone: "A certain river,
Minyas by name, leaps seaward near to Arene, where we Pylians wait
the dawn, both horse and foot. Thence with all haste we sped us on the
morrow ere 't was noonday, accoutred for the fight, even to Alpheus's
sacred source," &c. We fancy that we hear the subdued murmuring of the
Minyas discharging its waters into the main the livelong night, and the
hollow sound of the waves breaking on the shore,—until at length we
are cheered at the close of a toilsome march by the gurgling fountains
of Alpheus.

There are few books which are fit to be remembered in our wisest hours,
but the Iliad is brightest in the serenest days, and embodies still all
the sunlight that fell on Asia Minor. No modern joy or ecstasy of ours
can lower its height or dim its lustre, but there it lies in the east of
literature, as it were the earliest and latest production of the mind.
The ruins of Egypt oppress and stifle us with their dust, foulness
preserved in cassia and pitch, and swathed in linen; the death of that
which never lived. But the rays of Greek poetry struggle down to us, and
mingle with the sunbeams of the recent day. The statue of Memnon is cast
down, but the shaft of the Iliad still meets the sun in his rising.

     "Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where
      The rival cities seven?  His song outlives
      Time, tower, and god,—all that then was, save Heaven."

So too, no doubt, Homer had his Homer, and Orpheus his Orpheus, in
the dim antiquity which preceded them. The mythological system of the
ancients, and it is still the mythology of the moderns, the poem of
mankind, interwoven so wonderfully with their astronomy, and matching in
grandeur and harmony the architecture of the heavens themselves, seems
to point to a time when a mightier genius inhabited the earth. But,
after all, man is the great poet, and not Homer nor Shakespeare; and our
language itself, and the common arts of life, are his work. Poetry is
so universally true and independent of experience, that it does not need
any particular biography to illustrate it, but we refer it sooner or
later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after ages to the genius of humanity
and the gods themselves.

It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the
society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor
fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems,
and when they failed, read them again, or perchance write more. Instead
of other sacrifice, we might offer up our perfect (te?e?a) thoughts
to the gods daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm
at least once a day. The whole of the day should not be daytime; there
should be one hour, if no more, which the day did not bring forth.
Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But
is it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless
study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the Chinese,
or even French philosophy and much of German criticism. Read the best
books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
"There are the worshippers with offerings, and the worshippers with
mortifications; and again the worshippers with enthusiastic devotion;
so there are those the wisdom of whose reading is their worship, men
of subdued passions and severe manners;—This world is not for him who
doth not worship; and where, O Arjoon, is there another?" Certainly, we
do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who
resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if
he took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by
those who stand on the side whence they arrive. Books, not which afford
us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual
daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not
be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing
institutions,—such call I good books.

All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not necessarily
belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries
and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a
thousand disguises. "The way to trade," as a pedler once told me, "is to
put it right through," no matter what it is, anything that is agreed on.

    "You grov'ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades
     Where light ne'er shot his golden ray."

By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cunningly compiled, and
have their run and success even among the learned, as if they were the
result of a new man's thinking, and their birth were attended with some
natural throes. But in a little while their covers fall off, for no
binding will avail, and it appears that they are not Books or Bibles at
all. There are new and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to
be for the elevation of the race, which many a pure scholar and genius
who has learned to read is for a moment deceived by, and finds himself
reading a horse-rake, or spinning-jenny, or wooden nutmeg, or oak-leaf
cigar, or steam-power press, or kitchen range, perchance, when he was
seeking serene and biblical truths.

                          "Merchants, arise,
     And mingle conscience with your merchandise."

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they
write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat and potatoes,
they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters.
Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise
crops of grain to be distilled into brandy. Books are for the most part
wilfully and hastily written, as parts of a system, to supply a want
real or imagined. Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty
schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not
in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or
rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct
the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always
dwell.

    "To Athens gowned he goes, and from that school
     Returns unsped, a more instructed fool."

They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of knowledge, for, to
speak deliberately and in view of the highest truths, it is not easy to
distinguish elementary knowledge. There is a chasm between knowledge
and ignorance which the arches of science can never span. A book should
contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked
mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been
out of sight of land. They must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must
themselves be the unconstrained and natural harvest of their author's
lives.

    "What I have learned is mine; I've had my thought,
     And me the Muses noble truths have taught."

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human
books, from frank and honest biographies. The life of a good man will
hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable
laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our
lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind.
The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no
less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of
health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump
has as tender a bud as the sapling.

At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse-rake or a kitchen
range which is not cracked. Let not the poet shed tears only for the
public weal. He should be as vigorous as a sugar-maple, with sap enough
to maintain his own verdure, beside what runs into the troughs, and not
like a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to
death in the endeavor to heal its wounds. The poet is he that hath
fat enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his claws all winter. He
hibernates in this world, and feeds on his own marrow. We love to think
in winter, as we walk over the snowy pastures, of those happy dreamers
that lie under the sod, of dormice and all that race of dormant
creatures, which have such a superfluity of life enveloped in thick
folds of fur, impervious to cold. Alas, the poet too is, in one sense, a
sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters of deep and serene thoughts,
insensible to surrounding circumstances; his words are the relation
of his oldest and finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the remotest
experience. Other men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks,
that would fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now and
then.

There are already essays and poems, the growth of this land, which are
not in vain, all which, however, we could conveniently have stowed in
the till of our chest. If the gods permitted their own inspiration to
be breathed in vain, these might be overlooked in the crowd, but the
accents of truth are as sure to be heard at last on earth as in heaven.
They already seem ancient, and in some measure have lost the traces of
their modern birth. Here are they who

   "ask for that which is our whole life's light,
   For the perpetual, true and clear insight."

I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in its native
pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not as if spread over
a sandy embankment; answering to the poet's prayer,

                "Let us set so just
   A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust
   The poet's sentence, and not still aver
   Each art is to itself a flatterer."

But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent the peaceful
games of the Lyceum, from which a new era will be dated to New England,
as from the games of Greece. For if Herodotus carried his history to
Olympia to read, after the cestus and the race, have we not heard such
histories recited there, which since our countrymen have read, as made
Greece sometimes to be forgotten?—Philosophy, too, has there her grove
and portico, not wholly unfrequented in these days.

Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won another palm,
contending with

   "Olympian bards who sung
   Divine ideas below,
   Which always find us young,
   And always keep us so."

What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove, is
safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off Phœbus' beaten
track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the
old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile flow back and hide his head!

   That Phaeton of our day,
   Who'd make another milky way,
   And burn the world up with his ray;

   By us an undisputed seer,—
   Who'd drive his flaming car so near
   Unto our shuddering mortal sphere,

   Disgracing all our slender worth,
   And scorching up the living earth,
   To prove his heavenly birth.

   The silver spokes, the golden tire,
   Are glowing with unwonted fire,
   And ever nigher roll and nigher;

   The pins and axle melted are,
   The silver radii fly afar,
   Ah, he will spoil his Father's car!

   Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer?
   Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year;
   And we shall Ethiops all appear.

From his

           "lips of cunning fell
   The thrilling Delphic oracle."

And yet, sometimes,

   We should not mind if on our ear there fell
   Some less of cunning, more of oracle.

It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contemporary, let us have
far-off heats. Give us the subtler, the heavenlier though fleeting
beauty, which passes through and through, and dwells not in the verse;
even pure water, which but reflects those tints which wine wears in its
grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, and cease this waltz of inspirations.
Let us oftener feel even the gentle southwest wind upon our cheeks
blowing from the Indian's heaven. What though we lose a thousand meteors
from the sky, if skyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulae
remain? What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the oracle, if
we may have instead some natural acres of Ionian earth?

Though we know well,

   "That't is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise
    A spirit for verse that is not born thereto,
    Nor are they born in every prince's days";

yet spite of all they sang in praise of their "Eliza's reign," we have
evidence that poets may be born and sing in our day, in the presidency
of James K. Polk,

    "And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,"
    Were not "within her peaceful reign confined."

The prophecy of the poet Daniel is already how much more than fulfilled!

    "And who in time knows whither we may vent
    The treasure of our tongue?  To what strange shores
    This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
    T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
    What worlds in th' yet unformed occident,
    May come refined with the accents that are ours."

Enough has been said in these days of the charm of fluent writing.
We hear it complained of some works of genius, that they have fine
thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain
peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts of one range. We
should consider that the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than
a prone river, and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any
declivity in its channel. The river flows because it runs down hill, and
flows the faster the faster it descends. The reader who expects to float
down stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of nauseating swells
and choppings of the sea when his frail shore-craft gets amidst the
billows of the ocean stream, which flows as much to sun and moon as
lesser streams to it. But if we would appreciate the flow that is
in these books, we must expect to feel it rise from the page like an
exhalation, and wash away our critical brains like burr millstones,
flowing to higher levels above and behind ourselves. There is many
a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a
mill-stream sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the
full tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus
halt beside them. Their long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that
consistency that they naturally flow and run together. They read as if
written for military men, for men of business, there is such a despatch
in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers and philosophers seem
not to have got their swaddling-clothes off; they are slower than a
Roman army in its march, the rear camping to-night where the van camped
last night. The wise Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough.

    "How many thousands never heard the name
    Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?
    And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame,
    And seem to bear down all the world with looks."

The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Forward! Alamo and Fanning!
and after rolls the tide of war. The very walls and fences seem to
travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow after all; and thither,
reader, you and I, at least, will not follow.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the
most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could
be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their
colors, or the heavens without their azure. The most attractive
sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest.
They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as if the speaker had a right
to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well
learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied if only for the
excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many
masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man's tread,
and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern
writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say
rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the
underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings. All
the distinguished writers of that period possess a greater vigor and
naturalness than the more modern,—for it is allowed to slander our own
time,—and when we read a quotation from one of them in the midst of
a modern author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a
greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough were laid
across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in
midwinter or early spring. You have constantly the warrant of life and
experience in what you read. The little that is said is eked out by
implication of the much that was done. The sentences are verdurous and
blooming as evergreen and flowers, because they are rooted in fact and
experience, but our false and florid sentence have only the tints of
flowers without their sap or roots. All men are really most attracted
by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in
imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than to come
short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the epistolary style of
Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, because of "the difficulty
of understanding it; there was," he said, "but one person at Jidda, who
was capable of understanding and explaining the Pasha's correspondence."
A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net
result. Every sentence is the result of a long probation. Where shall we
look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man? The word
which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is
cousin to a deed which the speaker could have better done. Nay, almost
it must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by
some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive knight,
after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored
Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience, they made
him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds, and
transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to read how
Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks with which the royal family and
nobility were to be entertained should be "grounded upon antiquity
and solid learning." Can there be any greater reproach than an idle
learning? Learn to split wood, at least. The necessity of labor and
conversation with many men and things, to the scholar is rarely well
remembered; steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention
also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and
sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing. If he
has worked hard from morning till night, though he may have grieved that
he could not be watching the train of his thoughts during that time, yet
the few hasty lines which at evening record his day's experience will
be more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy could have
furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such
therefore must be his own discipline. He will not idly dance at his
work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of
winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the
wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar's pen, which at evening
record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of
the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away. The scholar
may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his
palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes
a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the
body. We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which
hard-working men, unpractised in writing, easily attain when required
to make the effort. As if plainness, and vigor, and sincerity, the
ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop,
than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are
nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the
roots of the pine. As for the graces of expression, a great thought is
never found in a mean dress; but though it proceed from the lips of
the Woloffs, the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to
clothe it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and
its implied wit can endow a college. The world, which the Greeks called
Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament
which was not fitted to endure. The Sibyl, "speaking with inspired
mouth, smileless, inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries
by the power of the god." The scholar might frequently emulate the
propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call to his team, and confess
that if that were written it would surpass his labored sentences. Whose
are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the
politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description
of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac,
to restore our tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its
author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow
deep and straight to the end. The scholar requires hard and serious
labor to give an impetus to his thought. He will learn to grasp the
pen firmly so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe or a
sword. When we consider the weak and nerveless periods of some literary
men, who perchance in feet and inches come up to the standard of their
race, and are not deficient in girth also, we are amazed at the
immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. What! these proportions,—these
bones,—and this their work! Hands which could have felled an ox have
hewed this fragile matter which would not have tasked a lady's fingers!
Can this be a stalwart man's work, who has a marrow in his back and a
tendon Achilles in his heel? They who set up the blocks of Stonehenge
did somewhat, if they only laid out their strength for once, and
stretched themselves.

Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will not crowd his day with
work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and
leisure, and then do but what he loves best. He is anxious only about
the fruitful kernels of time. Though the hen should sit all day, she
could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials
for another. Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed,
though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly,
without hurry or confusion, as if the short spring days were an
eternity.

     Then spend an age in whetting thy desire,
     Thou needs't not hasten if thou dost stand fast.

Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, but for resolves to
draw breath in. We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose
that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us and ramble with prepared
mind, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root
or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward which is
fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upward to the light.

There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which
is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. There may be nothing
lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless
country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a
house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very
high art. Some have this merit only. The scholar is not apt to make his
most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.
Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They
overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor. They do not
speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can
get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The
surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them
as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm
of the lover of nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim
be a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.
Aubrey relates of Thomas Fuller that his was "a very working head,
insomuch that, walking and meditating before dinner, he would eat up
a penny loaf, not knowing that he did it. His natural memory was very
great, to which he added the art of memory. He would repeat to you
forwards and backwards all the signs from Ludgate to Charing Cross." He
says of Mr. John Hales, that, "He loved Canarie," and was buried "under
an altar monument of black marble————with a too long epitaph";
of Edmund Halley, that he "at sixteen could make a dial, and then, he
said, he thought himself a brave fellow"; of William Holder, who wrote a
book upon his curing one Popham who was deaf and dumb, "he was beholding
to no author; did only consult with nature." For the most part, an
author consults only with all who have written before him upon a
subject, and his book is but the advice of so many. But a good book will
never have been forestalled, but the topic itself will in one sense be
new, and its author, by consulting with nature, will consult not only
with those who have gone before, but with those who may come after.
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject;
as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not
interfere with the first.

We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts
to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works
of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still
habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten
path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us.
Fortunately we had no business in this country. The Concord had rarely
been a river, or rivus, but barely fluvius, or between fluvius and
lacus. This Merrimack was neither rivus nor fluvius nor lacus,
but rather amnis here, a gently swelling and stately rolling flood
approaching the sea. We could even sympathize with its buoyant tide,
going to seek its fortune in the ocean, and, anticipating the time when
"being received within the plain of its freer water," it should "beat
the shores for banks,"—

   "campoque recepta
   Liberioris aquæ, pro ripis litora pulsant."

At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rabbit Island,
subjected alternately to the sun and to the waves, as desolate as if it
lay some leagues within the icy sea, and found ourselves in a narrower
part of the river, near the sheds and yards for picking the stone
known as the Chelmsford granite, which is quarried in Westford and the
neighboring towns. We passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy
acres or more, on our right, between Chelmsford and Tyngsborough. This
was a favorite residence of the Indians. According to the History of
Dunstable, "About 1663, the eldest son of Passaconaway [Chief of the
Penacooks] was thrown into jail for a debt of £45, due to John Tinker,
by one of his tribe, and which he had promised verbally should be
paid. To relieve him from his imprisonment, his brother Wannalancet and
others, who owned Wicasuck Island, sold it and paid the debt." It was,
however, restored to the Indians by the General Court in 1665. After
the departure of the Indians in 1683, it was granted to Jonathan Tyng in
payment for his services to the colony, in maintaining a garrison at his
house. Tyng's house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Gookin, who, in
his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, apologizes for presenting his
"matter clothed in a wilderness dress," says that on the breaking out of
Philip's war in 1675, there were taken up by the Christian Indians
and the English in Marlborough, and sent to Cambridge, seven "Indians
belonging to Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who had all been at
work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jonathan Tyng, of Dunstable, upon
Merrimack River; and, hearing of the war, they reckoned with their
master, and getting their wages, conveyed themselves away without
his privity, and, being afraid, marched secretly through the woods,
designing to go to their own country." However, they were released
soon after. Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng was the
first permanent settler of Dunstable, which then embraced what is now
Tyngsborough and many other towns. In the winter of 1675, in Philip's
war, every other settler left the town, but "he," says the historian
of Dunstable, "fortified his house; and, although `obliged to send
to Boston for his food,' sat himself down in the midst of his savage
enemies, alone, in the wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming his
position an important one for the defence of the frontiers, in February,
1676, he petitioned the Colony for aid, "humbly showing, as his petition
runs, that, as he lived "in the uppermost house on Merrimac river,
lying open to ye enemy, yet being so seated that it is, as it were, a
watch-house to the neighboring towns, "he could render important service
to his country if only he had some assistance," there being, "he said,"
never an inhabitant left in the town but myself." Wherefore he requests
that their "Honors would be pleased to order him three or four men to
help garrison his said house," which they did. But methinks that such a
garrison would be weakened by the addition of a man.

    "Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief,
     Make courage for life, to be capitain chief;
     Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin,
     Make gunstone and arrow show who is within."

Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In 1694 a law was
passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians
should forfeit all his rights therein." But now, at any rate, as I have
frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories
of truth and justice, which are the State's best lands, for fear of
far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights
therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General
Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters' camp
itself.

As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck Island, which was then
covered with wood, in order to avoid the current, two men, who looked as
if they had just run out of Lowell, where they had been waylaid by the
Sabbath, meaning to go to Nashua, and who now found themselves in the
strange, natural, uncultivated, and unsettled part of the globe which
intervenes, full of walls and barriers, a rough and uncivil place to
them, seeing our boat moving so smoothly up the stream, called out
from the high bank above our heads to know if we would take them as
passengers, as if this were the street they had missed; that they might
sit and chat and drive away the time, and so at last find themselves in
Nashua. This smooth way they much preferred. But our boat was crowded
with necessary furniture, and sunk low in the water, and moreover
required to be worked, for even it did not progress against the stream
without effort; so we were obliged to deny them passage. As we glided
away with even sweeps, while the fates scattered oil in our course, the
sun now sinking behind the alders on the distant shore, we could still
see them far off over the water, running along the shore and climbing
over the rocks and fallen trees like insects,—for they did not know
any better than we that they were on an island,—the unsympathizing
river ever flowing in an opposite direction; until, having reached the
entrance of the island brook, which they had probably crossed upon the
locks below, they found a more effectual barrier to their progress. They
seemed to be learning much in a little time. They ran about like ants on
a burning brand, and once more they tried the river here, and once more
there, to see if water still indeed was not to be walked on, as if a
new thought inspired them, and by some peculiar disposition of the limbs
they could accomplish it. At length sober common sense seemed to have
resumed its sway, and they concluded that what they had so long heard
must be true, and resolved to ford the shallower stream. When nearly a
mile distant we could see them stripping off their clothes and preparing
for this experiment; yet it seemed likely that a new dilemma would
arise, they were so thoughtlessly throwing away their clothes on the
wrong side of the stream, as in the case of the countryman with his
corn, his fox, and his goose, which had to be transported one at a time.
Whether they got safely through, or went round by the locks, we never
learned. We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent
indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhere she
was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her
service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within
sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff
and scrip and scallop shell.

We, too, who held the middle of the stream, came near experiencing a
pilgrim's fate, being tempted to pursue what seemed a sturgeon or larger
fish, for we remembered that this was the Sturgeon River, its dark and
monstrous back alternately rising and sinking in mid-stream. We kept
falling behind, but the fish kept his back well out, and did not dive,
and seemed to prefer to swim against the stream, so, at any rate, he
would not escape us by going out to sea. At length, having got as near
as was convenient, and looking out not to get a blow from his tail,
now the bow-gunner delivered his charge, while the stern-man held his
ground. But the halibut-skinned monster, in one of these swift-gliding
pregnant moments, without ever ceasing his bobbing up and down, saw
fit, without a chuckle or other prelude, to proclaim himself a huge
imprisoned spar, placed there as a buoy, to warn sailors of sunken
rocks. So, each casting some blame upon the other, we withdrew quickly
to safer waters.

The Scene-shifter saw fit here to close the drama, of this day, without
regard to any unities which we mortals prize. Whether it might have
proved tragedy, or comedy, or tragi-comedy, or pastoral, we cannot tell.
This Sunday ended by the going down of the sun, leaving us still on
the waves. But they who are on the water enjoy a longer and brighter
twilight than they who are on the land, for here the water, as well
as the atmosphere, absorbs and reflects the light, and some of the day
seems to have sunk down into the waves. The light gradually forsook
the deep water, as well as the deeper air, and the gloaming came to the
fishes as well as to us, and more dim and gloomy to them, whose day is a
perpetual twilight, though sufficiently bright for their weak and watery
eyes. Vespers had already rung in many a dim and watery chapel down
below, where the shadows of the weeds were extended in length over the
sandy floor. The vespertinal pout had already begun to flit on leathern
fin, and the finny gossips withdrew from the fluvial street to creeks
and coves, and other private haunts, excepting a few of stronger fin,
which anchored in the stream, stemming the tide even in their dreams.
Meanwhile, like a dark evening cloud, we were wafted over the cope of
their sky, deepening the shadows on their deluged fields.

Having reached a retired part of the river where it spread out to sixty
rods in width, we pitched our tent on the east side, in Tyngsborough,
just above some patches of the beach plum, which was now nearly ripe,
where the sloping bank was a sufficient pillow, and with the bustle of
sailors making the land, we transferred such stores as were required
from boat to tent, and hung a lantern to the tent-pole, and so our house
was ready. With a buffalo spread on the grass, and a blanket for our
covering our bed was soon made. A fire crackled merrily before the
entrance, so near that we could tend it without stepping abroad, and
when we had supped, we put out the blaze, and closed the door, and with
the semblance of domestic comfort, sat up to read the Gazetteer, to
learn our latitude and longitude, and write the journal of the voyage,
or listened to the wind and the rippling of the river till sleep
overtook us. There we lay under an oak on the bank of the stream, near
to some farmer's cornfield, getting sleep, and forgetting where we were;
a great blessing, that we are obliged to forget our enterprises every
twelve hours. Minks, muskrats, meadow-mice, woodchucks, squirrels,
skunks, rabbits, foxes, and weasels, all inhabit near, but keep very
close while you are there. The river sucking and eddying away all night
down toward the marts and the seaboard, a great wash and freshet, and no
small enterprise to reflect on. Instead of the Scythian vastness of the
Billerica night, and its wild musical sounds, we were kept awake by the
boisterous sport of some Irish laborers on the railroad, wafted to us
over the water, still unwearied and unresting on this seventh day,
who would not have done with whirling up and down the track with ever
increasing velocity and still reviving shouts, till late in the night.

One sailor was visited in his dreams this night by the Evil Destinies,
and all those powers that are hostile to human life, which constrain and
oppress the minds of men, and make their path seem difficult and narrow,
and beset with dangers, so that the most innocent and worthy enterprises
appear insolent and a tempting of fate, and the gods go not with us. But
the other happily passed a serene and even ambrosial or immortal night,
and his sleep was dreamless, or only the atmosphere of pleasant dreams
remained, a happy natural sleep until the morning; and his cheerful
spirit soothed and reassured his brother, for whenever they meet, the
Good Genius is sure to prevail.








MONDAY.

       "I thynke for to touche also
       The worlde whiche neweth everie daie,
       So as I can, so as I maie."

Gower.

          "The hye sheryfe of Notynghame,
            Hym holde in your mynd."

Robin Hood Ballads.            "His shoote it was but loosely shott,
              Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,
             For it mett one of the sheriffe's men,
              And William a Trent was slaine."

                                     Robin Hood Ballads

    "Gazed on the heavens for what he missed on Earth."

                                   Britania's Pastorale

MONDAY.

When the first light dawned on the earth and the birds, awoke, and the
brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble
early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all men having
reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt
and fear, were invited to unattempted adventures.

     "All courageous knichtis
      Agains the day dichtis
      The breest-plate that bricht is,
           To feght with their foue.
      The stoned steed stampis
      Throw curage and crampis,
      Syne on the land lampis;
           The night is neir gone."

One of us took the boat over to the opposite shore, which was flat and
accessible, a quarter of a mile distant, to empty it of water and wash
out the clay, while the other kindled a fire and got breakfast ready.
At an early hour we were again on our way, rowing through the fog as
before, the river already awake, and a million crisped waves come forth
to meet the sun when he should show himself. The countrymen, recruited
by their day of rest, were already stirring, and had begun to cross the
ferry on the business of the week. This ferry was as busy as a beaver
dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River
at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their
two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke loose and constable with
warrant, travellers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women
to whom the Merrimack River was a bar. There stands a gig in the gray
morning, in the mist, the impatient traveller pacing the wet shore with
whip in hand, and shouting through the fog after the regardless Charon
and his retreating ark, as if he might throw that passenger overboard
and return forthwith for himself; he will compensate him. He is to break
his fast at some unseen place on the opposite side. It may be Ledyard or
the Wandering Jew. Whence, pray, did he come out of the foggy night? and
whither through the sunny day will he go? We observe only his transit;
important to us, forgotten by him, transiting all day. There are two of
them. May be, they are Virgil and Dante. But when they crossed the Styx,
none were seen bound up or down the stream, that I remember. It is
only a transjectus, a transitory voyage, like life itself, none but the
long-lived gods bound up or down the stream. Many of these Monday men
are ministers, no doubt, reseeking their parishes with hired horses,
with sermons in their valises all read and gutted, the day after never
with them. They cross each other's routes all the country over like woof
and warp, making a garment of loose texture; vacation now for six days.
They stop to pick nuts and berries, and gather apples by the wayside at
their leisure. Good religious men, with the love of men in their hearts,
and the means to pay their toll in their pockets. We got over this ferry
chain without scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel,—no toll for
us that day.

The fog dispersed and we rowed leisurely along through Tyngsborough,
with a clear sky and a mild atmosphere, leaving the habitations of
men behind and penetrating yet farther into the territory of ancient
Dunstable. It was from Dunstable, then a frontier town, that the famous
Captain Lovewell, with his company, marched in quest of the Indians on
the 18th of April, 1725. He was the son of "an ensign in the army of
Oliver Cromwell, who came to this country, and settled at Dunstable,
where he died at the great age of one hundred and twenty years." In the
words of the old nursery tale, sung about a hundred years ago,—

    "He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide,
      And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride."

In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the "rebel Indians," and
prevailed, after a bloody fight, and a remnant returned home to enjoy
the fame of their victory. A township called Lovewell's Town, but now,
for some reason, or perhaps without reason, Pembroke, was granted them
by the State.

     "Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four,
      And of the rebel Indians, there were about four-score;
      And sixteen of our English did safely home return,
      The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn.

     "Our worthy Capt.  Lovewell among them there did die,
      They killed Lieut.  Robbins, and wounded good young Frye,
      Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew,
      And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew."

Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the Indians, and their
degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned houses nor hear
any war-whoop in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many an
"English Chaplin" in these days could exhibit as unquestionable trophies
of his valor as did "good young Frye." We have need to be as sturdy
pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to
follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes.
What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling
about the clearings to-day?—

     "And braving many dangers and hardships in the way,
     They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of May."

But they did not all "safe arrive in Dunstable the thirteenth," or
the fifteenth, or the thirtieth "day of May." Eleazer Davis and Josiah
Jones, both of Concord, for our native town had seven men in this fight,
Lieutenant Farwell, of Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye, of Andover, who
were all wounded, were left behind, creeping toward the settlements.
"After travelling several miles, Frye was left and lost," though a more
recent poet has assigned him company in his last hours.

     "A man he was of comely form,
       Polished and brave, well learned and kind;
     Old Harvard's learned halls he left
       Far in the wilds a grave to find.

     "Ah! now his blood-red arm he lifts;
       His closing lids he tries to raise;
     And speak once more before he dies,
       In supplication and in praise.

     "He prays kind Heaven to grant success,
       Brave Lovewell's men to guide and bless,
     And when they've shed their heart-blood true,
       To raise them all to happiness."

           *   *   *   *   *

     "Lieutenant Farwell took his hand,
       His arm around his neck he threw,
     And said, `Brave Chaplain, I could wish
       That Heaven had made me die for you.'"

           *   *   *   *   *

Farwell held out eleven days. "A tradition says," as we learn from the
History of Concord, "that arriving at a pond with Lieut. Farwell, Davis
pulled off one of his moccasins, cut it in strings, on which he fastened
a hook, caught some fish, fried and ate them. They refreshed him, but
were injurious to Farwell, who died soon after." Davis had a ball lodged
in his body, and his right hand shot off; but on the whole, he seems to
have been less damaged than his companion. He came into Berwick after
being out fourteen days. Jones also had a ball lodged in his body, but
he likewise got into Saco after fourteen days, though not in the best
condition imaginable. "He had subsisted," says an old journal, "on the
spontaneous vegetables of the forest; and cranberries which he had eaten
came out of wounds he had received in his body." This was also the case
with Davis. The last two reached home at length, safe if not sound, and
lived many years in a crippled state to enjoy their pension.

But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their adventures in the woods,—

     "For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell,
     Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well,"—

how many balls lodged with them, how fared their cranberries, what
Berwick or Saco they got into, and finally what pension or township was
granted them, there is no journal to tell.

It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that just before his last
march, Lovewell was warned to beware of the ambuscades of the enemy, but
"he replied, `that he did not care for them,' and bending down a small
elm beside which he was standing into a bow, declared `that he would
treat the Indians in the same way.' This elm is still standing [in
Nashua], a venerable and magnificent tree."

Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe Interval in Tyngsborough, where
the river makes a sudden bend to the northwest,—for our reflections
have anticipated our progress somewhat,—we were advancing farther into
the country and into the day, which last proved almost as golden as the
preceding, though the slight bustle and activity of the Monday seemed
to penetrate even to this scenery. Now and then we had to muster all our
energy to get round a point, where the river broke rippling over rocks,
and the maples trailed their branches in the stream, but there was
generally a backwater or eddy on the side, of which we took advantage.
The river was here about forty rods wide and fifteen feet deep.
Occasionally one ran along the shore, examining the country, and
visiting the nearest farm-houses, while the other followed the windings
of the stream alone, to meet his companion at some distant point, and
hear the report of his adventures; how the farmer praised the coolness
of his well, and his wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, or the
children quarrelled for the only transparency in the window that they
might get sight of the man at the well. For though the country seemed
so new, and no house was observed by us, shut in between the banks that
sunny day, we did not have to travel far to find where men inhabited,
like wild bees, and had sunk wells in the loose sand and loam of the
Merrimack. There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew scriptures, and the
Esprit des Lois, where a thin vaporous smoke curled up through the noon.
All that is told of mankind, of the inhabitants of the Upper Nile, and
the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko, was experience here.
Every race and class of men was represented. According to Belknap,
the historian of New Hampshire, who wrote sixty years ago, here too,
perchance, dwelt "new lights," and free thinking men even then. "The
people in general throughout the State," it is written, "are professors
of the Christian religion in some form or other. There is, however, a
sort of wise men who pretend to reject it; but they have not yet been
able to substitute a better in its place."

The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the mean while have seen a brown
hawk, or a woodchuck, or a musquash creeping under the alders.

We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or a willow, and drew
forth a melon for our refreshment, while we contemplated at our leisure
the lapse of the river and of human life; and as that current, with its
floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in review before us,
while far away in cities and marts on this very stream, the old routine
was proceeding still. There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as
the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate, and the ebb always
balances the flow. All streams are but tributary to the ocean, which
itself does not stream, and the shores are unchanged, but in longer
periods than man can measure. Go where we will, we discover infinite
change in particulars only, not in generals. When I go into a museum and
see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives
of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth.
I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is
near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes,
so do they live in Dunstable to-day. "Time drinketh up the essence of
every great and noble action which ought to be performed, and is delayed
in the execution." So says Veeshnoo Sarma; and we perceive that the
schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the
evidence of history.

   "Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
   And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the Suns."

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more
importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

There are many skilful apprentices, but few master workmen. On every
hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in
the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.
Who does not see that heresies have some time prevailed, that reforms
have already taken place? All this worldly wisdom might be regarded as
the once unamiable heresy of some wise man. Some interests have got a
footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.
Even they who first built these barns and cleared the land thus, had
some valor. The abrupt epochs and chasms are smoothed down in history as
the inequalities of the plain are concealed by distance. But unless we
do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices,
and not yet masters of the art of life.

Now that we are casting away these melon seeds, how can we help feeling
reproach? He who eats the fruit, should at least plant the seed; aye,
if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed. Seeds!
there are seeds enough which need only to be stirred in with the soil
where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine
flavor. O thou spendthrift! Defray thy debt to the world; eat not the
seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but plant it rather,
while thou devourest the pulp and tuber for thy subsistence; that so,
perchance, one variety may at last be found worthy of preservation.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the
infinite leisure and repose of nature. All laborers must have their
nooning, and at this season of the day, we are all, more or less,
Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. While lying thus on our
oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the day, our boat held
by an osier put through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons,
which are a fruit of the East, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, Persia,
and Hindostan, the lands of contemplation and dwelling-places of the
ruminant nations. In the experience of this noontide we could find some
apology even for the instinct of the opium, betel, and tobacco chewers.
Mount Sabér, according to the French traveller and naturalist, Botta,
is celebrated for producing the Kát-tree, of which "the soft tops of
the twigs and tender leaves are eaten," says his reviewer, "and produce
an agreeable soothing excitement, restoring from fatigue, banishing
sleep, and disposing to the enjoyment of conversation." We thought that
we might lead a dignified Oriental life along this stream as well, and
the maple and alders would be our Kát-trees.

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of
Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I. Think
you that sitting hens are troubled with ennui these long summer
days, sitting on and on in the crevice of a hay-loft, without active
employment? By the faint cackling in distant barns, I judge that dame
Nature is interested still to know how many eggs her hens lay. The
Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of
hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows. Away
in Scythia, away in India, it makes butter and cheese. Suppose that
all farms are run out, and we youths must buy old land and bring it
to, still everywhere the relentless opponents of reform bear a strange
resemblance to ourselves; or, perchance, they are a few old maids and
bachelors, who sit round the kitchen hearth and listen to the singing
of the kettle. "The oracles often give victory to our choice, and not to
the order alone of the mundane periods. As, for instance, when they
say that our voluntary sorrows germinate in us as the growth of the
particular life we lead." The reform which you talk about can be
undertaken any morning before unbarring our doors. We need not call any
convention. When two neighbors begin to eat corn bread, who before ate
wheat, then the gods smile from ear to ear, for it is very pleasant to
them. Why do you not try it? Don't let me hinder you.

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over,
living on anticipation. Wolff, travelling in the deserts of Bokhara,
says, "Another party of derveeshes came to me and observed, `The time
will come when there shall be no difference between rich and poor,
between high and low, when property will be in common, even wives and
children.'" But forever I ask of such, What then? The derveeshes in the
deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in Marlboro' Chapel sing the
same song. "There's a good time coming, boys," but, asked one of the
audience, in good faith, "Can you fix the date?" Said I, "Will you help
it along?"

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at
infinite periods in the progress of mankind. The States have leisure to
laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England shakes
at the double-entendres of Australian circles, while the poor reformer
cannot get a hearing.

Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence
to give wisdom the preference. What we need to know in any case is very
simple. It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious
routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make
something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it
was the very thing they wanted. They must behave, at any rate, and will
work up any material. There is always a present and extant life, be it
better or worse, which all combine to uphold. We should be slow to mend,
my friends, as slow to require mending, "Not hurling, according to the
oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety." The language of excitement
is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter
oracles. What was the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared
with the calm wisdom of Socrates?—or whoever it was that was
wise.—Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

     "Men find that action is another thing
       Than what they in discoursing papers read;
     The world's affairs require in managing
       More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed."

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of
all past change in the present invariable order of society. The greatest
appreciable physical revolutions are the work of the light-footed air,
the stealthy-paced water, and the subterranean fire. Aristotle said, "As
time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais nor
the Nile can have flowed forever." We are independent of the change we
detect. The longer the lever the less perceptible its motion. It is the
slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero then will know how
to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth
wisely; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by
hurrying over the hills of the west. Be assured that every man's success
is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and
bloom where the waters annually deposit their slime, not where they
reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor
yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what
we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work
will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real
purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the
furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines
most.

To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things,
the political state can hardly be said to have any existence whatever.
It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant to him, and for him to
endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material is like making
sugar from linen rags, when sugar-cane may be had. Generally speaking,
the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written to-day
for the next ten years, with sufficient accuracy. Most revolutions in
society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell
me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the
country, and I might attend. Most events recorded in history are more
remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by
which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to
calculate.

But will the government never be so well administered, inquired one,
that we private men shall hear nothing about it? "The king answered: At
all events, I require a prudent and able man, who is capable of managing
the state affairs of my kingdom. The ex-minister said: The criterion, O
Sire! of a wise and competent man is, that he will not meddle with such
like matters." Alas that the ex-minister should have been so nearly
right!

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there
were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the
dead. It is grateful to make one's way through this latest generation
as through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the morning to the
unsuspicious.

     "And round about good morrows fly,
     As if day taught humanity."

Not being Reve of this Shire,

     "The early pilgrim blithe he hailed,
     That o'er the hills did stray,
     And many an early husbandman,
     That he met on the way";—

thieves and robbers all, nevertheless. I have not so surely foreseen
that any Cossack or Chippeway would come to disturb the honest and
simple commonwealth, as that some monster institution would at length
embrace and crush its free members in its scaly folds; for it is not to
be forgotten, that while the law holds fast the thief and murderer,
it lets itself go loose. When I have not paid the tax which the State
demanded for that protection which I did not want, itself has robbed
me; when I have asserted the liberty it presumed to declare, itself has
imprisoned me. Poor creature! if it knows no better I will not blame it.
If it cannot live but by these means, I can. I do not wish, it happens,
to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or
in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these
respects.—As for Massachusetts, that huge she Briareus, Argus and
Colchian Dragon conjoined, set to watch the Heifer of the Constitution
and the Golden Fleece, we would not warrant our respect for her,
like some compositions, to preserve its qualities through all
weathers.—Thus it has happened, that not the Arch Fiend himself has
been in my way, but these toils which tradition says were originally
spun to obstruct him. They are cobwebs and trifling obstacles in an
earnest man's path, it is true, and at length one even becomes attached
to his unswept and undusted garret. I love man—kind, but I hate the
institutions of the dead un-kind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as
the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this
world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have
our lectures and our sermons, commonly. They are all Dudleian; and piety
derives its origin still from that exploit of pius Aeneas, who bore his
father, Anchises, on his shoulders from the ruins of Troy. Or rather,
like some Indian tribes, we bear about with us the mouldering relics
of our ancestors on our shoulders. If, for instance, a man asserts the
value of individual liberty over the merely political commonweal, his
neighbor still tolerates him, that he who is living near him, sometimes
even sustains him, but never the State. Its officer, as a living man,
may have human virtues and a thought in his brain, but as the tool of an
institution, a jailer or constable it may be, he is not a whit superior
to his prison key or his staff. Herein is the tragedy; that men doing
outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise and good, lend
themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come
war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by this opening? But
certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread into his mouth
which will not prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.

     "Now turn again, turn again, said the pindèr,
     For a wrong way you have gone,
     For you have forsaken the king's highway,
     And made a path over the corn."

Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for, because society is not
animated, or instinct enough with life, but in the condition of some
snakes which I have seen in early spring, with alternate portions of
their bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggle neither
way. All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we
see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically
dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be
stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It
should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

               "Virtues as rivers pass,
     But still remains that virtuous man there was."

Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, but marshes, and
alligators, and miasma instead. We read that when in the expedition of
Alexander, Onesicritus was sent forward to meet certain of the Indian
sect of Gymnosophists, and he had told them of those new philosophers of
the West, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes, and their doctrines, one
of them named Dandamis answered, that "They appeared to him to have
been men of genius, but to have lived with too passive a regard for the
laws." The philosophers of the West are liable to this rebuke still.
"They say that Lieou-hia-hoei, and Chao-lien did not sustain to the
end their resolutions, and that they dishonored their character. Their
language was in harmony with reason and justice; while their acts were
in harmony with the sentiments of men."

Chateaubriand said: "There are two things which grow stronger in the
breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years: the love of
country and religion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, they
sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms,
and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly due to
their beauty." It may be so. But even this infirmity of noble minds
marks the gradual decay of youthful hope and faith. It is the allowed
infidelity of age. There is a saying of the Yoloffs, "He who was
born first has the greatest number of old clothes," consequently M.
Chateaubriand has more old clothes than I have. It is comparatively
a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and
intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and
think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not boast;
they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor comforts
they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back
on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the young is
forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present. In the
declining day the thoughts make haste to rest in darkness, and hardly
look forward to the ensuing morning. The thoughts of the old prepare
for night and slumber. The same hopes and prospects are not for him
who stands upon the rosy mountain-tops of life, and him who expects the
setting of his earthly day.

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not
given us for no purpose, or for a hinderance. However flattering order
and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will
choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves
on this earth and in this life, as we may, without signing our
death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us,
on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The
expedients of the nations clash with one another, only the absolutely
right is expedient for all.

There are some passages in the Antigone of Sophocles, well known to
scholars, of which I am reminded in this connection. Antigone has
resolved to sprinkle sand on the dead body of her brother Polynices,
notwithstanding the edict of King Creon condemning to death that one who
should perform this service, which the Greeks deemed so important, for
the enemy of his country; but Ismene, who is of a less resolute and
noble spirit, declines taking part with her sister in this work, and
says,—

"I, therefore, asking those under the earth to consider me, that I am
compelled to do thus, will obey those who are placed in office; for to
do extreme things is not wise."

ANTIGONE

"I would not ask you, nor would you, if you still wished, do it joyfully
with me. Be such as seems good to you. But I will bury him. It is
glorious for me doing this to die. I beloved will lie with him beloved,
having, like a criminal, done what is holy; since the time is longer
which it is necessary for me to please those below, than those here, for
there I shall always lie. But if it seems good to you, hold in dishonor
things which are honored by the gods."

ISMENE

"I indeed do not hold them in dishonor; but to act in opposition to the
citizens I am by nature unable."

Antigone being at length brought before King Creon, he asks,—

"Did you then dare to transgress these laws?"

ANTIGONE

"For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these to me, nor Justice who dwells
with the gods below; it was not they who established these laws among
men. Nor did I think that your proclamations were so strong, as, being a
mortal, to be able to transcend the unwritten and immovable laws of the
gods. For not something now and yesterday, but forever these live, and
no one knows from what time they appeared. I was not about to pay the
penalty of violating these to the gods, fearing the presumption of any
man. For I well knew that I should die, and why not? even if you had not
proclaimed it."

This was concerning the burial of a dead body.

The wisest conservatism is that of the Hindoos. "Immemorial custom is
transcendent law," says Menu. That is, it was the custom of the gods
before men used it. The fault of our New England custom is that it is
memorial. What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the
chief of conservatives. "Perform the settled functions," says Kreeshna
in the Bhagvat-Geeta; "action is preferable to inaction. The journey of
thy mortal frame may not succeed from inaction."—"A man's own calling
with all its faults, ought not to be forsaken. Every undertaking is
involved in its faults as the fire in its smoke."—"The man who is
acquainted with the whole, should not drive those from their works
who are slow of comprehension, and less experienced than
himself."—"Wherefore, O Arjoon, resolve to fight," is the advice of
the God to the irresolute soldier who fears to slay his best friends.
It is a sublime conservatism; as wide as the world, and as unwearied
as time; preserving the universe with Asiatic anxiety, in that state
in which it appeared to their minds. These philosophers dwell on the
inevitability and unchangeableness of laws, on the power of temperament
and constitution, the three goon or qualities, and the circumstances
of birth and affinity. The end is an immense consolation; eternal
absorption in Brahma. Their speculations never venture beyond their own
table-lands, though they are high and vast as they. Buoyancy, freedom,
flexibility, variety, possibility, which also are qualities of the
Unnamed, they deal not with. The undeserved reward is to be earned by an
everlasting moral drudgery; the incalculable promise of the morrow is,
as it were, weighed. And who will say that their conservatism has not
been effectual? "Assuredly," says a French translator, speaking of the
antiquity and durability of the Chinese and Indian nations, and of
the wisdom of their legislators, "there are there some vestiges of the
eternal laws which govern the world."

Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, practical, and, in a large
sense, radical. So many years and ages of the gods those Eastern sages
sat contemplating Brahm, uttering in silence the mystic "Om," being
absorbed into the essence of the Supreme Being, never going out of
themselves, but subsiding farther and deeper within; so infinitely wise,
yet infinitely stagnant; until, at last, in that same Asia, but in the
western part of it, appeared a youth, wholly unforetold by them,—not
being absorbed into Brahm, but bringing Brahm down to earth and to
mankind; in whom Brahm had awaked from his long sleep, and exerted
himself, and the day began,—a new avatar. The Brahman had never
thought to be a brother of mankind as well as a child of God. Christ
is the prince of Reformers and Radicals. Many expressions in the
New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it
furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless
dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good
sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we
may say nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth
is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the
Hindo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere
raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought
than in the Bhagvat-Geeta. Warren Hastings, in his sensible letter
recommending the translation of this book to the Chairman of the
East India Company, declares the original to be "of a sublimity of
conception, reasoning, and diction almost unequalled," and that the
writings of the Indian philosophers "will survive when the British
dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources
which it once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance." It
is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which
have come down to us. Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of
their topics, even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
The Oriental philosophy approaches, easily, loftier themes than the
modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It
only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation,
or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not
conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense. Speaking
of the spiritual discipline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves,
and the wonderful power of abstraction to which they attained, instances
of which had come under his notice, Hastings says:—

"To those who have never been accustomed to the separation of the mind
from the notices of the senses, it may not be easy to conceive by what
means such a power is to be attained; since even the most studious men
of our hemisphere will find it difficult so to restrain their attention,
but that it will wander to some object of present sense or recollection;
and even the buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power to disturb
it. But if we are told that there have been men who were successively,
for ages past, in the daily habit of abstracted contemplation, begun in
the earliest period of youth, and continued in many to the maturity of
age, each adding some portion of knowledge to the store accumulated by
his predecessors; it is not assuming too much to conclude, that as the
mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise, so in such an
exercise it may in each have acquired the faculty to which they aspired,
and that their collective studies may have led them to the discovery
of new tracts and combinations of sentiment, totally different from
the doctrines with which the learned of other nations are acquainted;
doctrines which, however speculative and subtle, still as they possess
the advantage of being derived from a source so free from every
adventitious mixture, may be equally founded in truth with the most
simple of our own."

"The forsaking of works" was taught by Kreeshna to the most ancient of
men, and handed down from age to age,

"until at length, in the course of time, the mighty art was lost.

"In wisdom is to be found every work without exception," says Kreeshna.
"Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, thou shalt be able to
cross the gulf of sin with the bark of wisdom." "There is not anything
in this world to be compared with wisdom for purity." "The action stands
at a distance inferior to the application of wisdom." The wisdom of a
Moonee "is confirmed, when, like the tortoise, he can draw in all his
members, and restrain them from their wonted purposes."

"Children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative and
the practical doctrines as two. They are but one. For both obtain the
selfsame end, and the place which is gained by the followers of the one
is gained by the followers of the other."

"The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, from the non-commencement
of that which he hath to do; nor doth he obtain happiness from a
total inactivity. No one ever resteth a moment inactive. Every man is
involuntarily urged to act by those principles which are inherent in his
nature. The man who restraineth his active faculties, and sitteth down
with his mind attentive to the objects of his senses, is called one of
an astrayed soul, and the practiser of deceit. So the man is praised,
who, having subdued all his passions, performeth with his active
faculties all the functions of life, unconcerned about the event."

"Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose
motive for action is the hope of reward. Let not thy life be spent in
inaction."

"For the man who doeth that which he hath to do, without affection,
obtaineth the Supreme."

"He who may behold, as it were inaction in action, and action in
inaction, is wise amongst mankind. He is a perfect performer of all
duty."

"Wise men call him a Pandeet, whose every undertaking is free from the
idea of desire, and whose actions are consumed by the fire of wisdom. He
abandoneth the desire of a reward of his actions; he is always contented
and independent; and although he may be engaged in a work, he, as it
were, doeth nothing."

"He is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who performeth that which he hath
to do independent of the fruit thereof; not he who liveth without the
sacrificial fire and without action."

"He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which is left of his offerings,
obtaineth the eternal spirit of Brahm, the Supreme."

What, after all, does the practicalness of life amount to? The things
immediate to be done are very trivial. I could postpone them all to
hear this locust sing. The most glorious fact in my experience is not
anything that I have done or may hope to do, but a transient thought, or
vision, or dream, which I have had. I would give all the wealth of the
world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. But how
can I communicate with the gods who am a pencil-maker on the earth, and
not be insane?

"I am the same to all mankind," says Kreeshna; "there is not one who is
worthy of my love or hatred."

This teaching is not practical in the sense in which the New Testament
is. It is not always sound sense inpractice. The Brahman never proposes
courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active
faculties are paralyzed by the idea of cast, of impassable limits,
of destiny and the tyranny of time. Kreeshna's argument, it must be
allowed, is defective. No sufficient reason is given why Arjoon should
fight. Arjoon may be convinced, but the reader is not, for his judgment
is not "formed upon the speculative doctrines of the Sankhya Sastra."
"Seek an asylum in wisdom alone"; but what is wisdom to a Western
mind? The duty of which he speaks is an arbitrary one. When was it
established? The Brahman's virtue consists in doing, not right, but
arbitrary things. What is that which a man "hath to do"? What is
"action"? What are the "settled functions"? What is "a man's own
religion," which is so much better than another's? What is "a man's own
particular calling"? What are the duties which are appointed by one's
birth? It is a defence of the institution of casts, of what is called
the "natural duty" of the Kshetree, or soldier, "to attach himself to
the discipline," "not to flee from the field," and the like. But they
who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not
therefore unconcerned about their actions.

Behold the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The
former has nothing to do in this world; the latter is full of activity.
The one looks in the sun till his eyes are put out; the other follows
him prone in his westward course. There is such a thing as caste, even
in the West; but it is comparatively faint; it is conservatism here. It
says, forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no violence,
rend no bonds; the State is thy parent. Its virtue or manhood is wholly
filial. There is a struggle between the Oriental and Occidental in every
nation; some who would be forever contemplating the sun, and some who
are hastening toward the sunset. The former class says to the latter,
When you have reached the sunset, you will be no nearer to the sun. To
which the latter replies, But we so prolong the day. The former "walketh
but in that night, when all things go to rest the night of time. The
contemplative Moonee sleepeth but in the day of time, when all things
wake."

To conclude these extracts, I can say, in the words of Sanjay, "As,
O mighty Prince! I recollect again and again this holy and wonderful
dialogue of Kreeshna and Arjoon, I continue more and more to rejoice;
and as I recall to my memory the more than miraculous form of Haree,
my astonishment is great, and I marvel and rejoice again and again!
Wherever Kreeshna the God of devotion may be, wherever Arjoon the mighty
bowman may be, there too, without doubt, are fortune, riches, victory,
and good conduct. This is my firm belief."

I would say to the readers of Scriptures, if they wish for a good book,
read the Bhagvat-Geeta, an episode to the Mahabharat, said to have
been written by Kreeshna Dwypayen Veias,—known to have been written
by——, more than four thousand years ago,—it matters not whether
three or four, or when,—translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to
be read with reverence even by Yankees, as a part of the sacred writings
of a devout people; and the intelligent Hebrew will rejoice to find in
it a moral grandeur and sublimity akin to those of his own Scriptures.

To an American reader, who, by the advantage of his position, can see
over that strip of Atlantic coast to Asia and the Pacific, who, as
it were, sees the shore slope upward over the Alps to the Himmaleh
Mountains, the comparatively recent literature of Europe often appears
partial and clannish, and, notwithstanding the limited range of his
own sympathies and studies, the European writer who presumes that he
is speaking for the world, is perceived by him to speak only for that
corner of it which he inhabits. One of the rarest of England's scholars
and critics, in his classification of the worthies of the world, betrays
the narrowness of his European culture and the exclusiveness of
his reading. None of her children has done justice to the poets and
philosophers of Persia or of India. They have even been better known to
her merchant scholars than to her poets and thinkers by profession. You
may look in vain through English poetry for a single memorable verse
inspired by these themes. Nor is Germany to be excepted, though her
philological industry is indirectly serving the cause of philosophy and
poetry. Even Goethe wanted that universality of genius which could have
appreciated the philosophy of India, if he had more nearly approached
it. His genius was more practical, dwelling much more in the regions of
the understanding, and was less native to contemplation than the genius
of those sages. It is remarkable that Homer and a few Hebrews are the
most Oriental names which modern Europe, whose literature has taken its
rise since the decline of the Persian, has admitted into her list of
Worthies, and perhaps the worthiest of mankind, and the fathers of
modern thinking,—for the contemplations of those Indian sages have
influenced, and still influence, the intellectual development of
mankind,—whose works even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are,
for the most part, not recognized as ever having existed. If the lions
had been the painters it would have been otherwise. In every one's
youthful dreams philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with
singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover
its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the
philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet
given birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal philosophy of the
Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green
and practical merely. Some of these sublime sentences, as the Chaldaean
oracles of Zoroaster, still surviving after a thousand revolutions and
translations, alone make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are
not transitory, and not essential to the most effective and enduring
expression of thought. Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of
scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all
the light which it is destined to receive thence.

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures
or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the
Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New
Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of
men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and
comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work
which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the
printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the
missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

While engaged in these reflections, thinking ourselves the only
navigators of these waters, suddenly a canal-boat, with its sail set,
glided round a point before us, like some huge river beast, and changed
the scene in an instant; and then another and another glided into sight,
and we found ourselves in the current of commerce once more. So we threw
our rinds in the water for the fishes to nibble, and added our breath
to the life of living men. Little did we think, in the distant garden in
which we had planted the seed and reared this fruit, where it would be
eaten. Our melons lay at home on the sandy bottom of the Merrimack, and
our potatoes in the sun and water at the bottom of the boat looked like
a fruit of the country. Soon, however, we were delivered from this fleet
of junks, and possessed the river in solitude, once more rowing steadily
upward through the noon, between the territories of Nashua on the one
hand, and Hudson, once Nottingham, on the other. From time to time we
scared up a kingfisher or a summer duck, the former flying rather by
vigorous impulses than by steady and patient steering with that short
rudder of his, sounding his rattle along the fluvial street.

Erelong another scow hove in sight, creeping down the river; and hailing
it, we attached ourselves to its side, and floated back in company,
chatting with the boatmen, and obtaining a draught of cooler water from
their jug. They appeared to be green hands from far among the hills,
who had taken this means to get to the seaboard, and see the world; and
would possibly visit the Falkland Isles, and the China seas, before they
again saw the waters of the Merrimack, or, perchance, they would not
return this way forever. They had already embarked the private interests
of the landsman in the larger venture of the race, and were ready to
mess with mankind, reserving only the till of a chest to themselves. But
they too were soon lost behind a point, and we went croaking on our way
alone. What grievance has its root among the New Hampshire hills? we
asked; what is wanting to human life here, that these men should make
such haste to the antipodes? We prayed that their bright anticipations
might not be rudely disappointed.

    Though all the fates should prove unkind,
     Leave not your native land behind.
     The ship, becalmed, at length stands still;
     The steed must rest beneath the hill;
     But swiftly still our fortunes pace
     To find us out in every place.

     The vessel, though her masts be firm,
     Beneath her copper bears a worm;
     Around the cape, across the line,
     Till fields of ice her course confine;
     It matters not how smooth the breeze,
     How shallow or how deep the seas,
     Whether she bears Manilla twine,
     Or in her hold Madeira wine,
     Or China teas, or Spanish hides,
     In port or quarantine she rides;
     Far from New England's blustering shore,
     New England's worm her hulk shall bore,
     And sink her in the Indian seas,
     Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.

We passed a small desert here on the east bank, between Tyngsborough
and Hudson, which was interesting and even refreshing to our eyes in the
midst of the almost universal greenness. This sand was indeed somewhat
impressive and beautiful to us. A very old inhabitant, who was at work
in a field on the Nashua side, told us that he remembered when corn
and grain grew there, and it was a cultivated field. But at length the
fishermen, for this was a fishing place, pulled up the bushes on the
shore, for greater convenience in hauling their seines, and when the
bank was thus broken, the wind began to blow up the sand from the shore,
until at length it had covered about fifteen acres several feet deep.
We saw near the river, where the sand was blown off down to some ancient
surface, the foundation of an Indian wigwam exposed, a perfect circle of
burnt stones, four or five feet in diameter, mingled with fine charcoal,
and the bones of small animals which had been preserved in the sand. The
surrounding sand was sprinkled with other burnt stones on which their
fires had been built, as well as with flakes of arrow-head stone, and
we found one perfect arrow-head. In one place we noticed where an Indian
had sat to manufacture arrow-heads out of quartz, and the sand was
sprinkled with a quart of small glass-like chips about as big as a
fourpence, which he had broken off in his work. Here, then, the Indians
must have fished before the whites arrived. There was another similar
sandy tract about half a mile above this.

Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prow aside to bathe, and
recline ourselves under some buttonwoods, by a ledge of rocks, in a
retired pasture sloping to the water's edge, and skirted with pines and
hazels, in the town of Hudson. Still had India, and that old noontide
philosophy, the better part of our thoughts.

It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in
very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom
which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts
their health and independence of the experience of later times.
This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes
pleasantly reflect upon itself. The story and fabulous portion of this
book winds loosely from sentence to sentence as so many oases in a
desert, and is as indistinct as a camel's track between Mourzouk and
Darfour. It is a comment on the flow and freshet of modern books. The
reader leaps from sentence to sentence, as from one stepping-stone
to another, while the stream of the story rushes past unregarded. The
Bhagvat-Geeta is less sententious and poetic, perhaps, but still more
wonderfully sustained and developed. Its sanity and sublimity
have impressed the minds even of soldiers and merchants. It is the
characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due
proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they
will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveller
may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.

One of the most attractive of those ancient books that I have met with
is the Laws of Menu. According to Sir William Jones, "Vyasa, the son
of Parasara, has decided that the Veda, with its Angas, or the six
compositions deduced from it, the revealed system of medicine, the
Puranas or sacred histories, and the code of Menu, were four works of
supreme authority, which ought never to be shaken by arguments merely
human." The last is believed by the Hindoos "to have been promulged in
the beginning of time, by Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first
of created beings"; and Brahma is said to have "taught his laws to Menu
in a hundred thousand verses, which Menu explained to the primitive
world in the very words of the book now translated." Others affirm
that they have undergone successive abridgments for the convenience of
mortals, "while the gods of the lower heaven and the band of celestial
musicians are engaged in studying the primary code."—"A number
of glosses or comments on Menu were composed by the Munis, or old
philosophers, whose treatises, together with that before us, constitute
the Dherma Sastra, in a collective sense, or Body of Law." Culluca
Bhatta was one of the more modern of these.

Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it
was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul; but after all,
it was but a caravansary which supplied refreshment to the traveller,
and directed him farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no
Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen
of the universe, and not sentenced to any caste.

I know of no book which has come down to us with grander pretensions
than this, and it is so impersonal and sincere that it is never
offensive nor ridiculous. Compare the modes in which modern literature
is advertised with the prospectus of this book, and think what a reading
public it addresses, what criticism it expects. It seems to have been
uttered from some eastern summit, with a sober morning prescience in the
dawn of time, and you cannot read a sentence without being elevated as
upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of
the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and is as superior to criticism
as the Himmaleh Mountains. Its tone is of such unrelaxed fibre, that
even at this late day, unworn by time, it wears the English and the
Sanscrit dress indifferently; and its fixed sentences keep up their
distant fires still, like the stars, by whose dissipated rays this lower
world is illumined. The whole book by noble gestures and inclinations
renders many words unnecessary. English sense has toiled, but Hindoo
wisdom never perspired. Though the sentences open as we read them,
unexpensively, and at first almost unmeaningly, as the petals of a
flower, they sometimes startle us with that rare kind of wisdom which
could only have been learned from the most trivial experience; but it
comes to us as refined as the porcelain earth which subsides to the
bottom of the ocean. They are clean and dry as fossil truths, which have
been exposed to the elements for thousands of years, so impersonally
and scientifically true that they are the ornament of the parlor and
the cabinet. Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu
addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar,
and, at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken
in parlor or pulpit now-a-days. As our domestic fowls are said to have
their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts
have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers. We are
dabbling in the very elements of our present conventional and actual
life; as if it were the primeval conventicle where how to eat, and
to drink, and to sleep, and maintain life with adequate dignity and
sincerity, were the questions to be decided. It is later and more
intimate with us even than the advice of our nearest friends. And yet
it is true for the widest horizon, and read out of doors has relation
to the dim mountain line, and is native and aboriginal there. Most books
belong to the house and street only, and in the fields their leaves feel
very thin. They are bare and obvious, and have no halo nor haze about
them. Nature lies far and fair behind them all. But this, as it proceeds
from, so it addresses, what is deepest and most abiding in man. It
belongs to the noontide of the day, the midsummer of the year, and after
the snows have melted, and the waters evaporated in the spring, still
its truth speaks freshly to our experience. It helps the sun to shine,
and his rays fall on its page to illustrate it. It spends the mornings
and the evenings, and makes such an impression on us overnight as
to awaken us before dawn, and its influence lingers around us like a
fragrance late into the day. It conveys a new gloss to the meadows
and the depths of the wood, and its spirit, like a more subtile ether,
sweeps along with the prevailing winds of a country. The very locusts
and crickets of a summer day are but later or earlier glosses on the
Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos, a continuation of the sacred code. As we
have said, there is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and
the farthest west is but the farthest east. While we are reading these
sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of
Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere
practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already
in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and
incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity,
and I am assured that they will have a place and significance as long as
there is a sky to test them by.

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a
kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words a kind of blood
must circulate forever. It is wonderful that this sound should have come
down to us from so far, when the voice of man can be heard so little
way, and we are not now within ear-shot of any contemporary. The
woodcutters have here felled an ancient pine forest, and brought to
light to these distant hills a fair lake in the southwest; and now in
an instant it is distinctly shown to these woods as if its image had
travelled hither from eternity. Perhaps these old stumps upon the knoll
remember when anciently this lake gleamed in the horizon. One wonders if
the bare earth itself did not experience emotion at beholding again so
fair a prospect. That fair water lies there in the sun thus revealed, so
much the prouder and fairer because its beauty needed not to be seen.
It seems yet lonely, sufficient to itself, and superior to
observation.—So are these old sentences like serene lakes in the
southwest, at length revealed to us, which have so long been reflecting
our own sky in their bosom.

The great plain of India lies as in a cup between the Himmaleh and the
ocean on the north and south, and the Brahmapootra and Indus, on the
east and west, wherein the primeval race was received. We will not
dispute the story. We are pleased to read in the natural history of the
country, of the "pine, larch, spruce, and silver fir," which cover the
southern face of the Himmaleh range; of the "gooseberry, raspberry,
strawberry," which from an imminent temperate zone overlook the torrid
plains. So did this active modern life have even then a foothold and
lurking-place in the midst of the stateliness and contemplativeness of
those Eastern plains. In another era the "lily of the valley, cowslip,
dandelion," were to work their way down into the plain, and bloom in a
level zone of their own reaching round the earth. Already has the era
of the temperate zone arrived, the era of the pine and the oak, for the
palm and the banian do not supply the wants of this age. The lichens on
the summits of the rocks will perchance find their level erelong.

As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much concerned to know
what doctrines they held, as that they were held by any. We can tolerate
all philosophies, Atomists, Pneumatologists, Atheists, Theists,—Plato,
Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Confucius.
It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they
make, that attracts us. Between them and their commentators, it is true,
there is an endless dispute. But if it comes to this, that you compare
notes, then you are all wrong. As it is, each takes us up into the
serene heavens, whither the smallest bubble rises as surely as the
largest, and paints earth and sky for us. Any sincere thought is
irresistible. The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to the
devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury. Wants so easily
and gracefully satisfied seem like a more refined pleasure. Their
conception of creation is peaceful as a dream. "When that power awakes,
then has this world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with
a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away." In the very
indistinctness of their theogony a sublime truth is implied. It hardly
allows the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but directly it
hints at a supremer still which created the last, and the Creator is
still behind increate.

Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture; "From fire,
from air, and from the sun," it was "milked out." One might as well
investigate the chronology of light and heat. Let the sun shine.
Menu understood this matter best, when he said, "Those best know the
divisions of days and nights who understand that the day of Brahma,
which endures to the end of a thousand such ages, [infinite ages,
nevertheless, according to mortal reckoning,] gives rise to virtuous
exertions; and that his night endures as long as his day." Indeed, the
Mussulman and Tartar dynasties are beyond all dating. Methinks I have
lived under them myself. In every man's brain is the Sanscrit. The Vedas
and their Angas are not so ancient as serene contemplation. Why will
we be imposed on by antiquity? Is the babe young? When I behold it, it
seems more venerable than the oldest man; it is more ancient than Nestor
or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles of father Saturn himself. And do
we live but in the present? How broad a line is that? I sit now on a
stump whose rings number centuries of growth. If I look around I see
that the soil is composed of the remains of just such stumps, ancestors
to this. The earth is covered with mould. I thrust this stick many aeons
deep into its surface, and with my heel make a deeper furrow than the
elements have ploughed here for a thousand years. If I listen, I hear
the peep of frogs which is older than the slime of Egypt, and the
distant drumming of a partridge on a log, as if it were the pulse-beat
of the summer air. I raise my fairest and freshest flowers in the old
mould. Why, what we would fain call new is not skin deep; the earth is
not yet stained by it. It is not the fertile ground which we walk on,
but the leaves which flutter over our heads. The newest is but the
oldest made visible to our senses. When we dig up the soil from a
thousand feet below the surface, we call it new, and the plants which
spring from it; and when our vision pierces deeper into space, and
detects a remoter star, we call that new also. The place where we sit is
called Hudson,—once it was Nottingham,—once —

We should read history as little critically as we consider the
landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various
lights and shades which the intervening spaces create, than by its
groundwork and composition. It is the morning now turned evening and
seen in the west,—the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its
beauty is like the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat
and bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free. In reality, history
fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is
of moment is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its
then, but its now. We do not complain that the mountains in the horizon
are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the heavens.

Of what moment are facts that can be lost,—which need to be
commemorated? The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead.
The pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living
fact commemorates itself. Why look in the dark for light? Strictly
speaking, the historical societies have not recovered one fact from
oblivion, but are themselves, instead of the fact, that is lost. The
researcher is more memorable than the researched. The crowd stood
admiring the mist and the dim outlines of the trees seen through it,
when one of their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, and with
fresh admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. It
is astonishing with how little co-operation of the societies the past is
remembered. Its story has indeed had another muse than has been assigned
it. There is a good instance of the manner in which all history began,
in Alwákidis' Arabian Chronicle: "I was informed by Ahmed Almatin
Aljorhami, who had it from Rephâa Ebn Kais Alámiri, who had it from
Saiph Ebn Fabalah Alchâtquarmi, who had it from Thabet Ebn Alkamah, who
said he was present at the action." These fathers of history were
not anxious to preserve, but to learn the fact; and hence it was not
forgotten. Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the
past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil
hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the
historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has
been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts;
where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit
on a mound and muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their
legs again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they were men, or not
rather that they are bones?

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It
is written as if the spectator should be thinking of the backside of the
picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be
his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience. Men
seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries,
earnestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered down by the
encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both
fall a prey to the arch enemy. History has neither the venerableness of
antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to
the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume
to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did
burdock and plantain sprout first? It has been so written for the most
part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called
dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the
dark about them. The sun rarely shines in history, what with the dust
and confusion; and when we meet with any cheering fact which implies the
presence of this luminary, we excerpt and modernize it. As when we read
in the history of the Saxons that Edwin of Northumbria "caused stakes to
be fixed in the highways where he had seen a clear spring," and "brazen
dishes were chained to them to refresh the weary sojourner, whose
fatigues Edwin had himself experienced." This is worth all Arthur's
twelve battles.

   "Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger day:
    Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."
    Than fifty years of Europe better one New England ray!

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be
autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad
and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am
not I, who will be?

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not
so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of
time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials.
What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still.
Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is
the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us
to forget that the sun shone,—nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon. Yet
no era has been wholly dark, nor will we too hastily submit to the
historian, and congratulate ourselves on a blaze of light. If we could
pierce the obscurity of those remote years, we should find it light
enough; only there is not our day. Some creatures are made to see in the
dark. There has always been the same amount of light in the world.
The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do not affect the
general illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them. The eyes of
the oldest fossil remains, they tell us, indicate that the same laws of
light prevailed then as now. Always the laws of light are the same, but
the modes and degrees of seeing vary. The gods are partial to no era,
but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the
beholder is turned to stone. There was but the sun and the eye from the
first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre
of the other.

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those
vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's
inheritance, still reflecting some of their original splendor, like the
fragments of clouds tinted by the rays of the departed sun; reaching
into the latest summer day, and allying this hour to the morning of
creation; as the poet sings:—

     "Fragments of the lofty strain
       Float down the tide of years,
     As buoyant on the stormy main
       A parted wreck appears."

These are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and
progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at
the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand
surmises shed some light on this story. We will not be confined by
historical, even geological periods which would allow us to doubt of a
progress in human affairs. If we rise above this wisdom for the day,
we shall expect that this morning of the race, in which it has been
supplied with the simplest necessaries, with corn, and wine, and honey,
and oil, and fire, and articulate speech, and agricultural and other
arts, reared up by degrees from the condition of ants to men, will be
succeeded by a day of equally progressive splendor; that, in the lapse
of the divine periods, other divine agents and godlike men will assist
to elevate the race as much above its present condition.

But we do not know much about it.

Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while his companion slumbered on the
bank. Suddenly a boatman's horn was heard echoing from shore to shore,
to give notice of his approach to the farmer's wife with whom he was
to take his dinner, though in that place only muskrats and kingfishers
seemed to hear. The current of our reflections and our slumbers being
thus disturbed, we weighed anchor once more.

As we proceeded on our way in the afternoon, the western bank became
lower, or receded farther from the channel in some places, leaving a few
trees only to fringe the water's edge; while the eastern rose abruptly
here and there into wooded hills fifty or sixty feet high. The bass,
Tilia Americana, also called the lime or linden, which was a new tree
to us, overhung the water with its broad and rounded leaf, interspersed
with clusters of small hard berries now nearly ripe, and made an
agreeable shade for us sailors. The inner bark of this genus is the
bast, the material of the fisherman's matting, and the ropes and
peasant's shoes of which the Russians make so much use, and also of nets
and a coarse cloth in some places. According to poets, this was once
Philyra, one of the Oceanides. The ancients are said to have used its
bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a kind of paper
called Philyra. They also made bucklers of its wood, "on account of
its flexibility, lightness, and resiliency." It was once much used for
carving, and is still in demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes
and panels of carriages, and for various uses for which toughness and
flexibility are required. Baskets and cradles are made of the twigs.
Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is said to
be preferred to any other. Its leaves are in some countries given to
cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made of its fruit, a medicine has
been prepared from an infusion of its flowers, and finally, the charcoal
made of its wood is greatly valued for gunpowder.

The sight of this tree reminded us that we had reached a strange land to
us. As we sailed under this canopy of leaves we saw the sky through its
chinks, and, as it were, the meaning and idea of the tree stamped in a
thousand hieroglyphics on the heavens. The universe is so aptly fitted
to our organization that the eye wanders and reposes at the same time.
On every side there is something to soothe and refresh this sense. Look
up at the tree-tops and see how finely Nature finishes off her work
there. See how the pines spire without end higher and higher, and make a
graceful fringe to the earth. And who shall count the finer cobwebs that
soar and float away from their utmost tops, and the myriad insects that
dodge between them. Leaves are of more various forms than the alphabets
of all languages put together; of the oaks alone there are hardly two
alike, and each expresses its own character.

In all her products Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would
say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The
hawk, which now takes his flight over the top of the wood, was at first,
perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling
leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear
carol of the bird.

Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the railroad, a mile and
a half below the village of Nashua. We rowed up far enough into the
meadows which border it to learn its piscatorial history from a haymaker
on its banks. He told us that the silver eel was formerly abundant here,
and pointed to some sunken creels at its mouth. This man's memory and
imagination were fertile in fishermen's tales of floating isles in
bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously stocked with fishes, and
would have kept us till nightfall to listen, but we could not afford to
loiter in this roadstead, and so stood out to our sea again. Though
we never trod in those meadows, but only touched their margin with our
hands, we still retain a pleasant memory of them.

Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a translation from the Indian,
was a favorite haunt of the aborigines. Here, too, the first white
settlers of Nashua planted, and some dents in the earth where their
houses stood and the wrecks of ancient apple-trees are still visible.
About one mile up this stream stood the house of old John Lovewell, who
was an ensign in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and the father of "famous
Captain Lovewell." He settled here before 1690, and died about 1754,
at the age of one hundred and twenty years. He is thought to have been
engaged in the famous Narragansett swamp fight, which took place in
1675, before he came here. The Indians are said to have spared him in
succeeding wars on account of his kindness to them. Even in 1700 he
was so old and gray-headed that his scalp was worth nothing, since the
French Governor offered no bounty for such. I have stood in the dent
of his cellar on the bank of the brook, and talked there with one whose
grandfather had, whose father might have, talked with Lovewell. Here
also he had a mill in his old age, and kept a small store. He was
remembered by some who were recently living, as a hale old man who drove
the boys out of his orchard with his cane. Consider the triumphs of the
mortal man, and what poor trophies it would have to show, to wit:—He
cobbled shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cut a handsome swath
at a hundred and five! Lovewell's house is said to have been the first
which Mrs. Dustan reached on her escape from the Indians. Here probably
the hero of Pequawket was born and bred. Close by may be seen the cellar
and the gravestone of Joseph Hassell, who, as is elsewhere recorded,
with his wife Anna, and son Benjamin, and Mary Marks, "were slain by
our Indian enemies on September 2d, [1691,] in the evening." As Gookin
observed on a previous occasion, "The Indian rod upon the English backs
had not yet done God's errand." Salmon Brook near its mouth is still a
solitary stream, meandering through woods and meadows, while the
then uninhabited mouth of the Nashua now resounds with the din of a
manufacturing town.

A stream from Otternic Pond in Hudson comes in just above Salmon Brook,
on the opposite side. There was a good view of Uncannunuc, the most
conspicuous mountain in these parts, from the bank here, seen rising
over the west end of the bridge above. We soon after passed the village
of Nashua, on the river of the same name, where there is a covered
bridge over the Merrimack. The Nashua, which is one of the largest
tributaries, flows from Wachusett Mountain, through Lancaster, Groton,
and other towns, where it has formed well-known elm-shaded meadows,
but near its mouth it is obstructed by falls and factories, and did not
tempt us to explore it.

Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another companion, I have
crossed the broad valley of the Nashua, over which we had so long looked
westward from the Concord hills without seeing it to the blue mountains
in the horizon. So many streams, so many meadows and woods and quiet
dwellings of men had lain concealed between us and those Delectable
Mountains;—from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsborough you may get
a good view of them. There where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our
youthful eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon, lay the
valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was even then winding at its
bottom, and then, as now, it was here silently mingling its waters with
the Merrimack. The clouds which floated over its meadows and were born
there, seen far in the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, had
adorned a thousand evening skies for us. But as it were, by a turf wall
this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those hills it was
first gradually revealed to us. Summer and winter our eyes had rested on
the dim outline of the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness
lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to interpret all the
allusions of poets and travellers. Standing on the Concord Cliffs we
thus spoke our mind to them:—

     With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
     With grand content ye circle round,
     Tumultuous silence for all sound,
     Ye distant nursery of rills,
     Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;—
     Firm argument that never stirs,
     Outcircling the philosophers,—
     Like some vast fleet,
     Sailing through rain and sleet,
     Through winter's cold and summer's heat;
     Still holding on upon your high emprise,
     Until ye find a shore amid the skies;
     Not skulking close to land,
     With cargo contraband,
     For they who sent a venture out by ye
     Have set the Sun to see
     Their honesty.
     Ships of the line, each one,
     Ye westward run,
     Convoying clouds,
     Which cluster in your shrouds,
     Always before the gale,
     Under a press of sail,
     With weight of metal all untold,—
     I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,
     Immeasurable depth of hold,
     And breadth of beam, and length of running gear

     Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure
     In your novel western leisure;
     So cool your brows and freshly blue,
     As Time had naught for ye to do;
     For  ye lie at your length,
     An unappropriated strength,
     Unhewn primeval timber,
     For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;
     The stock of which new earths are made,
     One day to be our western trade,
     Fit for the stanchions of a world
     Which through the seas of space is hurled.

     While we enjoy a lingering ray,
     Ye still o'ertop the western day,
     Reposing yonder on God's croft
     Like solid stacks of hay;
     So bold a line as ne'er was writ
     On any page by human wit;
     The forest glows as if
     An enemy's camp-fires shone
     Along the horizon,
     Or the day's funeral pyre
     Were lighted there;
     Edged with silver and with gold,
     The clouds hang o'er in damask fold,
     And with such depth of amber light
     The west is dight,
     Where still a few rays slant,
     That even Heaven seems extravagant.
     Watatic Hill
     Lies on the horizon's sill
     Like a child's toy left overnight,
     And other duds to left and right,
     On the earth's edge, mountains and trees
     Stand as they were on air graven,
     Or as the vessels in a haven
     Await the morning breeze.
     I fancy even
     Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;
     And yonder still, in spite of history's page,
     Linger the golden and the silver age;
     Upon the laboring gale
     The news of future centuries is brought,
     And of new dynasties of thought,
     From your remotest vale.

     But special I remember thee,
     Wachusett, who like me
     Standest alone without society.
     Thy far blue eye,
     A remnant of the sky,
     Seen through the clearing or the gorge,
     Or from the windows of the forge,
     Doth leaven all it passes by.
     Nothing is true
     But stands 'tween me and you,
     Thou western pioneer,
     Who know'st not shame nor fear,
     By venturous spirit driven
     Under the eaves of heaven;
     And canst expand thee there,
     And breathe enough of air?
     Even beyond the West
     Thou migratest,
     Into unclouded tracts,
     Without a pilgrim's axe,
     Cleaving thy road on high
     With thy well-tempered brow,
     And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky.
     Upholding heaven, holding down earth,
     Thy pastime from thy birth;
     Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,
     May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we
had resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded the western horizon,
though not without misgivings that thereafter no visible fairy-land
would exist for us. But it would be long to tell of our adventures, and
we have no time this afternoon, transporting ourselves in imagination up
this hazy Nashua valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We have since
made many similar excursions to the principal mountains of New England
and New York, and even far in the wilderness, and have passed a night
on the summit of many of them. And now, when we look again westward from
our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have retreated once more among
the blue and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our eyes rest
on the very rocks on both of them, where we have pitched our tent for a
night, and boiled our hasty-pudding amid the clouds.

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north side of the Nashua,
but only scattered wigwams and grisly forests between this frontier and
Canada. In September of that year, two men who were engaged in making
turpentine on that side, for such were the first enterprises in the
wilderness, were taken captive and carried to Canada by a party of
thirty Indians. Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable, going to look for
them, found the hoops of their barrel cut, and the turpentine spread on
the ground. I have been told by an inhabitant of Tyngsborough, who
had the story from his ancestors, that one of these captives, when the
Indians were about to upset his barrel of turpentine, seized a pine knot
and flourishing it, swore so resolutely that he would kill the first
who touched it, that they refrained, and when at length he returned
from Canada he found it still standing. Perhaps there was more than
one barrel. However this may have been, the scouts knew by marks on the
trees, made with coal mixed with grease, that the men were not killed,
but taken prisoners. One of the company, named Farwell, perceiving that
the turpentine had not done spreading, concluded that the Indians
had been gone but a short time, and they accordingly went in instant
pursuit. Contrary to the advice of Farwell, following directly on their
trail up the Merrimack, they fell into an ambuscade near Thornton's
Ferry, in the present town of Merrimack, and nine were killed, only one,
Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. The men of Dunstable went
out and picked up their bodies, and carried them all down to Dunstable
and buried them. It is almost word for word as in the Robin Hood
ballad:—

     "They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham,
       As many there did know,
     They digged them graves in their churchyard,
       And they buried them all a-row."

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and they were not
exactly all a-row. You may read in the churchyard at Dunstable, under
the "Memento Mori," and the name of one of them, how they "departed this
life," and

      "This man with seven more that lies in
      this grave was slew all in a day by
                    the Indians."

The stones of some others of the company stand around the common grave
with their separate inscriptions. Eight were buried here, but nine were
killed, according to the best authorities.

     "Gentle river, gentle river,
       Lo, thy streams are stained with gore,
     Many a brave and noble captain
       Floats along thy willowed shore.

     "All beside thy limpid waters,
       All beside thy sands so bright,
     Indian Chiefs and Christian warriors
       Joined in fierce and mortal fight."

It is related in the History of Dunstable, that on the return of Farwell
the Indians were engaged by a fresh party which they compelled to
retreat, and pursued as far as the Nashua, where they fought across the
stream at its mouth. After the departure of the Indians, the figure of
an Indian's head was found carved by them on a large tree by the shore,
which circumstance has given its name to this part of the village of
Nashville,—the "Indian Head." "It was observed by some judicious,"
says Gookin, referring to Philip's war, "that at the beginning of the
war the English soldiers made a nothing of the Indians, and many spake
words to this effect: that one Englishman was sufficient to chase ten
Indians; many reckoned it was no other but Veni, vidi, vici." But we
may conclude that the judicious would by this time have made a different
observation.

Farwell appears to have been the only one who had studied his
profession, and understood the business of hunting Indians. He lived
to fight another day, for the next year he was Lovewell's lieutenant at
Pequawket, but that time, as we have related, he left his bones in the
wilderness. His name still reminds us of twilight days and forest scouts
on Indian trails, with an uneasy scalp;—an indispensable hero to New
England. As the more recent poet of Lovewell's fight has sung, halting a
little but bravely still:—

     "Then did the crimson streams that flowed
       Seem like the waters of the brook,
     That brightly shine, that loudly dash,
       Far down the cliffs of Agiochook."

These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt
if such things ever were; if our bold ancestors who settled this land
were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a
copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the
unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrow-heads are turned up by the
plough. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is
nothing so shadowy and unreal.

It is a wild and antiquated looking graveyard, overgrown with bushes,
on the high-road, about a quarter of a mile from and overlooking the
Merrimack, with a deserted mill-stream bounding it on one side, where
lie the earthly remains of the ancient inhabitants of Dunstable. We
passed it three or four miles below here. You may read there the names
of Lovewell, Farwell, and many others whose families were distinguished
in Indian warfare. We noticed there two large masses of granite more
than a foot thick and rudely squared, lying flat on the ground over the
remains of the first pastor and his wife.

It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones,—

     "Strata jacent passim suo quæque sub" lapide—

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. When the stone is a
slight one, it does not oppress the spirits of the traveller to meditate
by it; but these did seem a little heathenish to us; and so are all
large monuments over men's bodies, from the pyramids down. A monument
should at least be "star-y-pointing," to indicate whither the spirit is
gone, and not prostrate, like the body it has deserted. There have been
some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the
only traces which they have left. They are the heathen. But why these
stones, so upright and emphatic, like exclamation-points? What was
there so remarkable that lived? Why should the monument be so much more
enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to
a bone? "Here lies,"—"Here lies";—why do they not sometimes write,
There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended? "Having
reached the term of his natural life";—would it not be truer to say,
Having reached the term of his unnatural life? The rarest quality in an
epitaph is truth. If any character is given, it should be as severely
true as the decision of the three judges below, and not the partial
testimony of friends. Friends and contemporaries should supply only the
name and date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph.

               Here lies an honest man,
               Rear-Admiral Van.


                      ———-

               Faith, then ye have
               Two in one grave,
               For in his favor,
               Here too lies the Engraver.

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true. But they only
are the true epitaphs which Old Mortality retouches.

A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of
nature by being buried in it. For the most part, the best man's spirit
makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is therefore much
to the credit of Little John, the famous follower of Robin Hood,
and reflecting favorably on his character, that his grave was "long
celebrous for the yielding of excellent whetstones." I confess that I
have but little love for such collections as they have at the Catacombs,
Père la Chaise, Mount Auburn, and even this Dunstable graveyard. At any
rate, nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me.
I have no friends there. It may be that I am not competent to write the
poetry of the grave. The farmer who has skimmed his farm might perchance
leave his body to Nature to be ploughed in, and in some measure restore
its fertility. We should not retard but forward her economies.

Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and the woods were gained
again, and we rowed slowly on before sunset, looking for a solitary
place in which to spend the night. A few evening clouds began to be
reflected in the water and the surface was dimpled only here and there
by a muskrat crossing the stream. We camped at length near Penichook
Brook, on the confines of what is now Nashville, by a deep ravine, under
the skirts of a pine wood, where the dead pine-leaves were our carpet,
and their tawny boughs stretched overhead. But fire and smoke soon tamed
the scene; the rocks consented to be our walls, and the pines our roof.
A woodside was already the fittest locality for us.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest
villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them,
more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably
inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and
occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the
sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very
uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and
vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where
the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the sun was setting
carried up our furniture, and soon arranged our house upon the bank, and
while the kettle steamed at the tent door, we chatted of distant friends
and of the sights which we were to behold, and wondered which way the
towns lay from us. Our cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set upon our
chest, and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs, with
our talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the ground, and read in the
Gazetteer when the first settlers came here and got a township granted.
Then, when supper was done and we had written the journal of our voyage,
we wrapped our buffaloes about us and lay down with our heads pillowed
on our arms listening awhile to the distant baying of a dog, or the
murmurs of the river, or to the wind, which had not gone to rest:—

     The western wind came lumbering in,
     Bearing a faint Pacific din,
     Our evening mail, swift at the call
     Of its Postmaster General;
     Laden with news from Californ',
     Whate'er transpired hath since morn,
     How wags the world by brier and brake
     From hence to Athabasca Lake;—

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which glimmered
through our cotton roof. Perhaps at midnight one was awakened by a
cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider in his
eye, and was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling its way along
at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine in our neighborhood. It was
pleasant to lie with our heads so low in the grass, and hear what a
tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was. A thousand little artisans beat on
their anvils all night long.

Far in the night as we were falling asleep on the bank of the Merrimack,
we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in preparation for a
country muster, as we learned, and we thought of the line,—

     "When the drum beat at dead of night."

We could have assured him that his beat would be answered, and the
forces be mustered. Fear not, thou drummer of the night, we too will be
there. And still he drummed on in the silence and the dark. This stray
sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from time to time, far,
sweet, and significant, and we listened with such an unprejudiced
sense as if for the first time we heard at all. No doubt he was an
insignificant drummer enough, but his music afforded us a prime and
leisure hour, and we felt that we were in season wholly. These simple
sounds related us to the stars. Ay, there was a logic in them so
convincing that the combined sense of mankind could never make me doubt
their conclusions. I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plough had
suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world. How
can I go on, who have just stepped over such a bottomless skylight in
the bog of my life. Suddenly old Time winked at me,—Ah, you know me,
you rogue,—and news had come that IT was well. That ancient universe
is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly it will never die. Heal
yourselves, doctors; by God, I live.

                Then idle Time ran gadding by
                And left me with Eternity alone;
            I hear beyond the range of sound,
            I see beyond the verge of sight,—

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to which we
are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very Selves;
the one historic truth, the most remarkable fact which can become the
distinct and uninvited subject of our thought, the actual glory of the
universe; the only fact which a human being cannot avoid recognizing, or
in some way forget or dispense with.

           It doth expand my privacies
       To all, and leave me single in the crowd.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not
the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

         Now chiefly is my natal hour,
         And only now my prime of life.
         I will not doubt the love untold,
         Which not my worth nor want hath bought,
         Which wooed me young and wooes me old,
         And to this evening hath me brought.

What are ears? what is Time? that this particular series of sounds
called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop which never
brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted down through the centuries
from Homer to me, and he have been conversant with that same aerial and
mysterious charm which now so tingles my ears? What a fine communication
from age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the aspirations of
ancient men, even such as were never communicated by speech, is music!
It is the flower of language, thought colored and curved, fluent and
flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun's rays, and its
purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds. A strain of music
reminds me of a passage of the Vedas, and I associate with it the idea
of infinite remoteness, as well as of beauty and serenity, for to the
senses that is farthest from us which addresses the greatest depth
within us. It teaches us again and again to trust the remotest and
finest as the divinest instinct, and makes a dream our only real
experience. We feel a sad cheer when we hear it, perchance because we
that hear are not one with that which is heard.

        Therefore a torrent of sadness deep,
        Through the strains of thy triumph is heard to sweep.

The sadness is ours. The Indian poet Calidas says in the Sacontala:
"Perhaps the sadness of men on seeing beautiful forms and hearing sweet
music arises from some faint remembrance of past joys, and the traces of
connections in a former state of existence." As polishing expresses the
vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic
lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music. That harmony which
exists naturally between the hero's moods and the universe the soldier
would fain imitate with drum and trumpet. When we are in health all
sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or
catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn. Marching is when
the pulse of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of Nature, and he
steps to the measure of the universe; then there is true courage and
invincible strength.

Plutarch says that "Plato thinks the gods never gave men music, the
science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the
ear; but that the discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous
fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about the body, and many
times, for want of tune and air, breaks forth into many extravagances
and excesses, might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to their
former consent and agreement."

Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only
assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass any man's
faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it
will be worth the while to learn. Formerly I heard these

Rumors from an Æolian Harp.      There is a vale which none hath seen,
      Where foot of man has never been,
      Such as here lives with toil and strife,
      An anxious and a sinful life.

     There every virtue has its birth,
     Ere it descends upon the earth,
     And thither every deed returns,
     Which in the generous bosom burns.

     There love is warm, and youth is young,
     And poetry is yet unsung,
     For Virtue still adventures there,
     And freely breathes her native air.

     And ever, if you hearken well,
     You still may hear its vesper bell,
     And tread of high-souled men go by,
     Their thoughts conversing with the sky.

According to Jamblichus, "Pythagoras did not procure for himself a thing
of this kind through instruments or the voice, but employing a certain
ineffable divinity, and which it is difficult to apprehend, he extended
his ears and fixed his intellect in the sublime symphonies of the world,
he alone hearing and understanding, as it appears, the universal harmony
and consonance of the spheres, and the stars that are moved through
them, and which produce a fuller and more intense melody than anything
effected by mortal sounds."

Travelling on foot very early one morning due east from here about
twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman's tavern in Hampstead toward
Haverhill, when I reached the railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some
distance a faint music in the air like an Aeolian harp, which I
immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of the telegraph
vibrating in the just awakening morning wind, and applying my ear to one
of the posts I was convinced that it was so. It was the telegraph harp
singing its message through the country, its message sent not by men,
but by gods. Perchance, like the statue of Memnon, it resounds only in
the morning, when the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the
first lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore,—that vibrating cord high
in the air over the shores of earth. So have all things their higher and
their lower uses. I heard a fairer news than the journals ever print. It
told of things worthy to hear, and worthy of the electric fluid to carry
the news of, not of the price of cotton and flour, but it hinted at the
price of the world itself and of things which are priceless, of absolute
truth and beauty.

Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to fresh extravagance
that night. The clarion sound and clang of corselet and buckler were
heard from many a hamlet of the soul, and many a knight was arming for
the fight behind the encamped stars.

                                "Before each van
         Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears
         Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
         From either end of Heaven the welkin burns."

                     ———————

           Away! away! away! away!
             Ye have not kept your secret well,
           I will abide that other day,
             Those other lands ye tell.

           Has time no leisure left for these,
             The acts that ye rehearse?
           Is not eternity a lease
             For better deeds than verse?

           'T is sweet to hear of heroes dead,
             To know them still alive,
           But sweeter if we earn their bread,
              And in us they survive.

           Our life should feed the springs of fame
              With a perennial wave.
           As ocean feeds the babbling founts
              Which find in it their grave.

          Ye skies drop gently round my breast,
            And be my corselet blue,
          Ye earth receive my lance in rest,
            My faithful charger you;

          Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky,
            My arrow-tips ye are;
          I see the routed foemen fly,
            My bright spears fixed are.

          Give me an angel for a foe,
            Fix now the place and time,
          And straight to meet him I will go
            Above the starry chime.

          And with our clashing bucklers' clang
            The heavenly spheres shall ring,
          While bright the northern lights shall hang
            Beside our tourneying.

          And if she lose her champion true,
            Tell Heaven not despair,
          For I will be her champion new,
            Her fame I will repair.

There was a high wind this night, which we afterwards learned had been
still more violent elsewhere, and had done much injury to the cornfields
far and near; but we only heard it sigh from time to time, as if it had
no license to shake the foundations of our tent; the pines murmured, the
water rippled, and the tent rocked a little, but we only laid our ears
closer to the ground, while the blast swept on to alarm other men, and
long before sunrise we were ready to pursue our voyage as usual.








TUESDAY.

            "On either side the river lie
             Long fields of barley and of rye,
             That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
             And through the fields the road runs by
                          To many-towered Camelot."

Tennyson. TUESDAY.

Long before daylight we ranged abroad, hatchet in hand, in search of
fuel, and made the yet slumbering and dreaming wood resound with our
blows. Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the loitering night,
while the kettle sang its homely strain to the morning star. We tramped
about the shore, waked all the muskrats, and scared up the bittern and
birds that were asleep upon their roosts; we hauled up and upset our
boat and washed it and rinsed out the clay, talking aloud as if it
were broad day, until at length, by three o'clock, we had completed our
preparations and were ready to pursue our voyage as usual; so, shaking
the clay from our feet, we pushed into the fog.

Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we trusted that there was a
bright day behind it.

     Ply the oars! away! away!
     In each dew-drop of the morning
     Lies the promise of a day.

     Rivers from the sunrise flow,
     Springing with the dewy morn;
     Voyageurs 'gainst time do row,
     Idle noon nor sunset know,
     Ever even with the dawn.

Belknap, the historian of this State, says that, "In the neighborhood
of fresh rivers and ponds, a whitish fog in the morning lying over the
water is a sure indication of fair weather for that day; and when no
fog is seen, rain is expected before night." That which seemed to us to
invest the world was only a narrow and shallow wreath of vapor stretched
over the channel of the Merrimack from the seaboard to the mountains.
More extensive fogs, however, have their own limits. I once saw the day
break from the top of Saddle-back Mountain in Massachusetts, above the
clouds. As we cannot distinguish objects through this dense fog, let me
tell this story more at length.

I had come over the hills on foot and alone in serene summer days,
plucking the raspberries by the wayside, and occasionally buying a loaf
of bread at a farmer's house, with a knapsack on my back which held a
few traveller's books and a change of clothing, and a staff in my hand.
I had that morning looked down from the Hoosack Mountain, where the road
crosses it, on the village of North Adams in the valley three miles away
under my feet, showing how uneven the earth may sometimes be, and making
it seem an accident that it should ever be level and convenient for
the feet of man. Putting a little rice and sugar and a tin cup into
my knapsack at this village, I began in the afternoon to ascend the
mountain, whose summit is three thousand six hundred feet above the
level of the sea, and was seven or eight miles distant by the path. My
route lay up a long and spacious valley called the Bellows, because the
winds rush up or down it with violence in storms, sloping up to the very
clouds between the principal range and a lower mountain. There were a
few farms scattered along at different elevations, each commanding a
fine prospect of the mountains to the north, and a stream ran down the
middle of the valley on which near the head there was a mill. It seemed
a road for the pilgrim to enter upon who would climb to the gates of
heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, and now over the brook on a slight
bridge, still gradually ascending all the while with a sort of awe, and
filled with indefinite expectations as to what kind of inhabitants
and what kind of nature I should come to at last. It now seemed some
advantage that the earth was uneven, for one could not imagine a more
noble position for a farm-house than this vale afforded, farther from or
nearer to its head, from a glen-like seclusion overlooking the country
at a great elevation between these two mountain walls.

It reminded me of the homesteads of the Huguenots, on Staten Island,
off the coast of New Jersey. The hills in the interior of this island,
though comparatively low, are penetrated in various directions by
similar sloping valleys on a humble scale, gradually narrowing and
rising to the centre, and at the head of these the Huguenots, who were
the first settlers, placed their houses quite within the land, in rural
and sheltered places, in leafy recesses where the breeze played with
the poplar and the gum-tree, from which, with equal security in calm and
storm, they looked out through a widening vista, over miles of forest
and stretching salt marsh, to the Huguenot's Tree, an old elm on the
shore at whose root they had landed, and across the spacious outer bay
of New York to Sandy Hook and the Highlands of Neversink, and thence
over leagues of the Atlantic, perchance to some faint vessel in the
horizon, almost a day's sail on her voyage to that Europe whence they
had come. When walking in the interior there, in the midst of rural
scenery, where there was as little to remind me of the ocean as amid the
New Hampshire hills, I have suddenly, through a gap, a cleft or "clove
road," as the Dutch settlers called it, caught sight of a ship under
full sail, over a field of corn, twenty or thirty miles at sea. The
effect was similar, since I had no means of measuring distances,
to seeing a painted ship passed backwards and forwards through a
magic-lantern.

But to return to the mountain. It seemed as if he must be the most
singular and heavenly minded man whose dwelling stood highest up the
valley. The thunder had rumbled at my heels all the way, but the shower
passed off in another direction, though if it had not, I half believed
that I should get above it. I at length reached the last house but one,
where the path to the summit diverged to the right, while the summit
itself rose directly in front. But I determined to follow up the valley
to its head, and then find my own route up the steep as the shorter and
more adventurous way. I had thoughts of returning to this house, which
was well kept and so nobly placed, the next day, and perhaps remaining a
week there, if I could have entertainment. Its mistress was a frank and
hospitable young woman, who stood before me in a dishabille, busily and
unconcernedly combing her long black hair while she talked, giving
her head the necessary toss with each sweep of the comb, with lively,
sparkling eyes, and full of interest in that lower world from which I
had come, talking all the while as familiarly as if she had known me for
years, and reminding me of a cousin of mine. She at first had taken me
for a student from Williamstown, for they went by in parties, she said,
either riding or walking, almost every pleasant day, and were a pretty
wild set of fellows; but they never went by the way I was going. As I
passed the last house, a man called out to know what I had to sell, for
seeing my knapsack, he thought that I might be a pedler who was taking
this unusual route over the ridge of the valley into South Adams. He
told me that it was still four or five miles to the summit by the path
which I had left, though not more than two in a straight line from where
I was, but that nobody ever went this way; there was no path, and I
should find it as steep as the roof of a house. But I knew that I was
more used to woods and mountains than he, and went along through his
cow-yard, while he, looking at the sun, shouted after me that I should
not get to the top that night. I soon reached the head of the valley,
but as I could not see the summit from this point, I ascended a low
mountain on the opposite side, and took its bearing with my compass.
I at once entered the woods, and began to climb the steep side of the
mountain in a diagonal direction, taking the bearing of a tree every
dozen rods. The ascent was by no means difficult or unpleasant, and
occupied much less time than it would have taken to follow the path.
Even country people, I have observed, magnify the difficulty of
travelling in the forest, and especially among mountains. They seem to
lack their usual common sense in this. I have climbed several higher
mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected,
that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the
smoothest highway. It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this
world which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount. It is true
we may come to a perpendicular precipice, but we need not jump off nor
run our heads against it. A man may jump down his own cellar stairs
or dash his brains out against his chimney, if he is mad. So far as my
experience goes, travellers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the
way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?
If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not
beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on the very spot where
he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places
that have known him, they are lost,—how much anxiety and danger would
vanish. I am not alone if I stand by myself. Who knows where in space
this globe is rolling? Yet we will not give ourselves up for lost, let
it go where it will.

I made my way steadily upward in a straight line through a dense
undergrowth of mountain laurel, until the trees began to have a scraggy
and infernal look, as if contending with frost goblins, and at length I
reached the summit, just as the sun was setting. Several acres here had
been cleared, and were covered with rocks and stumps, and there was a
rude observatory in the middle which overlooked the woods. I had one
fair view of the country before the sun went down, but I was too thirsty
to waste any light in viewing the prospect, and set out directly to find
water. First, going down a well-beaten path for half a mile through the
low scrubby wood, till I came to where the water stood in the tracks of
the horses which had carried travellers up, I lay down flat, and drank
these dry, one after another, a pure, cold, spring-like water, but yet
I could not fill my dipper, though I contrived little siphons of
grass-stems, and ingenious aqueducts on a small scale; it was too slow a
process. Then remembering that I had passed a moist place near the top,
on my way up, I returned to find it again, and here, with sharp stones
and my hands, in the twilight, I made a well about two feet deep, which
was soon filled with pure cold water, and the birds too came and
drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and, making my way back to the
observatory, collected some dry sticks, and made a fire on some flat
stones which had been placed on the floor for that purpose, and so I
soon cooked my supper of rice, having already whittled a wooden spoon to
eat it with.

I sat up during the evening, reading by the light of the fire the scraps
of newspapers in which some party had wrapped their luncheon; the prices
current in New York and Boston, the advertisements, and the singular
editorials which some had seen fit to publish, not foreseeing under what
critical circumstances they would be read. I read these things at a vast
advantage there, and it seemed to me that the advertisements, or what
is called the business part of a paper, were greatly the best, the most
useful, natural, and respectable. Almost all the opinions and sentiments
expressed were so little considered, so shallow and flimsy, that I
thought the very texture of the paper must be weaker in that part and
tear the more easily. The advertisements and the prices current were
more closely allied to nature, and were respectable in some measure
as tide and meteorological tables are; but the reading-matter, which I
remembered was most prized down below, unless it was some humble record
of science, or an extract from some old classic, struck me as strangely
whimsical, and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme, such
as youths write and after burn. The opinions were of that kind that are
doomed to wear a different aspect to-morrow, like last year's fashions;
as if mankind were very green indeed, and would be ashamed of themselves
in a few years, when they had outgrown this verdant period. There
was, moreover, a singular disposition to wit and humor, but rarely the
slightest real success; and the apparent success was a terrible satire
on the attempt; the Evil Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best
jokes. The advertisements, as I have said, such as were serious, and not
of the modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and poetic thoughts; for
commerce is really as interesting as nature. The very names of the
commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as if they had been inserted
in a pleasing poem,—Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood. Some
sober, private, and original thought would have been grateful to read
there, and as much in harmony with the circumstances as if it had been
written on a mountain-top; for it is of a fashion which never changes,
and as respectable as hides and logwood, or any natural product. What an
inestimable companion such a scrap of paper would have been, containing
some fruit of a mature life. What a relic! What a recipe! It seemed
a divine invention, by which not mere shining coin, but shining and
current thoughts, could be brought up and left there.

As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and lay down on a board
against the side of the building, not having any blanket to cover me,
with my head to the fire, that I might look after it, which is not the
Indian rule. But as it grew colder towards midnight, I at length encased
myself completely in boards, managing even to put a board on top of me,
with a large stone on it, to keep it down, and so slept comfortably. I
was reminded, it is true, of the Irish children, who inquired what their
neighbors did who had no door to put over them in winter nights as
they had; but I am convinced that there was nothing very strange in the
inquiry. Those who have never tried it can have no idea how far a
door, which keeps the single blanket down, may go toward making one
comfortable. We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which taken
from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, will
often peep till they die, nevertheless, but if you put in a book, or
anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen,
they go to sleep directly. My only companions were the mice, which
came to pick up the crumbs that had been left in those scraps of paper;
still, as everywhere, pensioners on man, and not unwisely improving this
elevated tract for their habitation. They nibbled what was for them; I
nibbled what was for me. Once or twice in the night, when I looked up,
I saw a white cloud drifting through the windows, and filling the whole
upper story.

This observatory was a building of considerable size, erected by the
students of Williamstown College, whose buildings might be seen by
daylight gleaming far down in the valley. It would be no small advantage
if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain, as good at
least as one well-endowed professorship. It were as well to be educated
in the shadow of a mountain as in more classical shades. Some will
remember, no doubt, not only that they went to the college, but that
they went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were,
generalize the particular information gained below, and subject it to
more catholic tests.

I was up early and perched upon the top of this tower to see the
daybreak, for some time reading the names that had been engraved there,
before I could distinguish more distant objects. An "untamable fly"
buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance as on a molasses hogshead
at the end of Long Wharf. Even there I must attend to his stale humdrum.
But now I come to the pith of this long digression.—As the light
increased I discovered around me an ocean of mist, which by chance
reached up exactly to the base of the tower, and shut out every vestige
of the earth, while I was left floating on this fragment of the wreck of
a world, on my carved plank, in cloudland; a situation which required
no aid from the imagination to render it impressive. As the light in the
east steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly the new world
into which I had risen in the night, the new terra firma perchance of
my future life. There was not a crevice left through which the trivial
places we name Massachusetts or Vermont or New York could be seen, while
I still inhaled the clear atmosphere of a July morning,—if it were
July there. All around beneath me was spread for a hundred miles on
every side, as far as the eye could reach, an undulating country of
clouds, answering in the varied swell of its surface to the terrestrial
world it veiled. It was such a country as we might see in dreams,
with all the delights of paradise. There were immense snowy pastures,
apparently smooth-shaven and firm, and shady vales between the vaporous
mountains; and far in the horizon I could see where some luxurious
misty timber jutted into the prairie, and trace the windings of a
water-course, some unimagined Amazon or Orinoko, by the misty trees
on its brink. As there was wanting the symbol, so there was not the
substance of impurity, no spot nor stain. It was a favor for which to
be forever silent to be shown this vision. The earth beneath had become
such a flitting thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been
before. It was not merely veiled to me, but it had passed away like the
phantom of a shadow, s???? ??a?, and this new platform was gained. As
I had climbed above storm and cloud, so by successive days' journeys I
might reach the region of eternal day, beyond the tapering shadow of the
earth; ay,

             "Heaven itself shall slide,
        And roll away, like melting stars that glide
        Along their oily threads."

But when its own sun began to rise on this pure world, I found myself a
dweller in the dazzling halls of Aurora, into which poets have had but a
partial glance over the eastern hills, drifting amid the saffron-colored
clouds, and playing with the rosy fingers of the Dawn, in the very path
of the Sun's chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy dust, enjoying the
benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting glances of the god.
The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy
under-side of heaven's pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable
angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the
rich lining of the clouds are revealed. But my muse would fail to convey
an impression of the gorgeous tapestry by which I was surrounded, such
as men see faintly reflected afar off in the chambers of the east. Here,
as on earth, I saw the gracious god

        "Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

             .      .      .      .      .      .

          Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy."

But never here did "Heaven's sun" stain himself.

But, alas, owing, as I think, to some unworthiness in myself, my private
sun did stain himself, and

             "Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
              With ugly wrack on his celestial face,"—

for before the god had reached the zenith the heavenly pavement rose
and embraced my wavering virtue, or rather I sank down again into that
"forlorn world," from which the celestial sun had hid his visage,—

      "How may a worm that crawls along the dust,
       Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high,
       And fetch from thence thy fair idea just,
       That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie,
       Clothed with such light as blinds the angel's eye?
          How may weak mortal ever hope to file
          His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style?
       O, raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile!"

In the preceding evening I had seen the summits of new and yet higher
mountains, the Catskills, by which I might hope to climb to heaven
again, and had set my compass for a fair lake in the southwest, which
lay in my way, for which I now steered, descending the mountain by my
own route, on the side opposite to that by which I had ascended, and
soon found myself in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, and the
inhabitants affirmed that it had been a cloudy and drizzling day wholly.

But now we must make haste back before the fog disperses to the blithe
Merrimack water.

      Since that first "Away! away!"
           Many a lengthy reach we've rowed,
      Still the sparrow on the spray
      Hastes to usher in the day
           With her simple stanza'd ode.

We passed a canal-boat before sunrise, groping its way to the seaboard,
and, though we could not see it on account of the fog, the few dull,
thumping, stertorous sounds which we heard, impressed us with a sense
of weight and irresistible motion. One little rill of commerce already
awake on this distant New Hampshire river. The fog, as it required more
skill in the steering, enhanced the interest of our early voyage, and
made the river seem indefinitely broad. A slight mist, through which
objects are faintly visible, has the effect of expanding even ordinary
streams, by a singular mirage, into arms of the sea or inland lakes.
In the present instance it was even fragrant and invigorating, and we
enjoyed it as a sort of earlier sunshine, or dewy and embryo light.

         Low-anchored cloud,
         Newfoundland air,
         Fountain-head and source of rivers,
         Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
         And napkin spread by fays;
         Drifting meadow of the air,
         Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
         And in whose fenny labyrinth
         The bittern booms and heron wades;
         Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
         Bear only perfumes and the scent
         Of healing herbs to just men's fields!

The same pleasant and observant historian whom we quoted above says,
that, "In the mountainous parts of the country, the ascent of vapors,
and their formation into clouds, is a curious and entertaining object.
The vapors are seen rising in small columns like smoke from many
chimneys. When risen to a certain height, they spread, meet, condense,
and are attracted to the mountains, where they either distil in gentle
dews, and replenish the springs, or descend in showers, accompanied with
thunder. After short intermissions, the process is repeated many
times in the course of a summer day, affording to travellers a lively
illustration of what is observed in the Book of Job, `They are wet with
the showers of the mountains.'"

Fogs and clouds which conceal the overshadowing mountains lend the
breadth of the plains to mountain vales. Even a small-featured country
acquires some grandeur in stormy weather when clouds are seen drifting
between the beholder and the neighboring hills. When, in travelling
toward Haverhill through Hampstead in this State, on the height of land
between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or the sea, you commence
the descent eastward, the view toward the coast is so distant and
unexpected, though the sea is invisible, that you at first suppose the
unobstructed atmosphere to be a fog in the lowlands concealing hills
of corresponding elevation to that you are upon; but it is the mist of
prejudice alone, which the winds will not disperse. The most stupendous
scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other words
limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it.
The actual height and breadth of a mountain or a waterfall are always
ridiculously small; they are the imagined only that content us. Nature
is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously
exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.

Such was the heaviness of the dews along this river that we were
generally obliged to leave our tent spread over the bows of the boat
till the sun had dried it, to avoid mildew. We passed the mouth of
Penichook Brook, a wild salmon-stream, in the fog, without seeing it. At
length the sun's rays struggled through the mist and showed us the
pines on shore dripping with dew, and springs trickling from the moist
banks,—

      "And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms,
       Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds,
       Dandle the morning's childhood in their arms,
       And, if they chanced to slip the prouder pines,
       The under corylets did catch their shines,
       To gild their leaves."

We rowed for some hours between glistening banks before the sun had
dried the grass and leaves, or the day had established its character.
Its serenity at last seemed the more profound and secure for the
denseness of the morning's fog. The river became swifter, and the
scenery more pleasing than before. The banks were steep and clayey for
the most part, and trickling with water, and where a spring oozed out a
few feet above the river the boatmen had cut a trough out of a slab with
their axes, and placed it so as to receive the water and fill their jugs
conveniently. Sometimes this purer and cooler water, bursting out from
under a pine or a rock, was collected into a basin close to the edge
of and level with the river, a fountain-head of the Merrimack. So near
along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making
fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to replenish
his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources. Some youthful spring,
perchance, still empties with tinkling music into the oldest river,
even when it is falling into the sea, and we imagine that its music is
distinguished by the river-gods from the general lapse of the stream,
and falls sweeter on their ears in proportion as it is nearer to the
ocean. As the evaporations of the river feed thus these unsuspected
springs which filter through its banks, so, perchance, our aspirations
fall back again in springs on the margin of life's stream to refresh and
purify it. The yellow and tepid river may float his scow, and cheer his
eye with its reflections and its ripples, but the boatman quenches his
thirst at this small rill alone. It is this purer and cooler element
that chiefly sustains his life. The race will long survive that is thus
discreet.

Our course this morning lay between the territories of Merrimack, on
the west, and Litchfield, once called Brenton's Farm, on the east, which
townships were anciently the Indian Naticook. Brenton was a fur-trader
among the Indians, and these lands were granted to him in 1656. The
latter township contains about five hundred inhabitants, of whom,
however, we saw none, and but few of their dwellings. Being on the
river, whose banks are always high and generally conceal the few houses,
the country appeared much more wild and primitive than to the traveller
on the neighboring roads. The river is by far the most attractive
highway, and those boatmen who have spent twenty or twenty-five years on
it must have had a much fairer, more wild, and memorable experience than
the dusty and jarring one of the teamster who has driven, during the
same time, on the roads which run parallel with the stream. As one
ascends the Merrimack he rarely sees a village, but for the most part
alternate wood and pasture lands, and sometimes a field of corn or
potatoes, of rye or oats or English grass, with a few straggling
apple-trees, and, at still longer intervals, a farmer's house. The soil,
excepting the best of the interval, is commonly as light and sandy as
a patriot could desire. Sometimes this forenoon the country appeared
in its primitive state, and as if the Indian still inhabited it, and,
again, as if many free, new settlers occupied it, their slight fences
straggling down to the water's edge; and the barking of dogs, and even
the prattle of children, were heard, and smoke was seen to go up from
some hearthstone, and the banks were divided into patches of pasture,
mowing, tillage, and woodland. But when the river spread out broader,
with an uninhabited islet, or a long, low sandy shore which ran on
single and devious, not answering to its opposite, but far off as if it
were sea-shore or single coast, and the land no longer nursed the river
in its bosom, but they conversed as equals, the rustling leaves with
rippling waves, and few fences were seen, but high oak woods on one
side, and large herds of cattle, and all tracks seemed a point to one
centre behind some statelier grove,—we imagined that the river flowed
through an extensive manor, and that the few inhabitants were retainers
to a lord, and a feudal state of things prevailed.

When there was a suitable reach, we caught sight of the Goffstown
mountain, the Indian Uncannunuc, rising before us on the west side. It
was a calm and beautiful day, with only a slight zephyr to ripple the
surface of the water, and rustle the woods on shore, and just warmth
enough to prove the kindly disposition of Nature to her children. With
buoyant spirits and vigorous impulses we tossed our boat rapidly along
into the very middle of this forenoon. The fish-hawk sailed and screamed
overhead. The chipping or striped squirrel, Sciurus striatus (Tamias
Lysteri, Aud.), sat upon the end of some Virginia fence or rider
reaching over the stream, twirling a green nut with one paw, as in a
lathe, while the other held it fast against its incisors as chisels.
Like an independent russet leaf, with a will of its own, rustling
whither it could; now under the fence, now over it, now peeping at the
voyageurs through a crack with only its tail visible, now at its
lunch deep in the toothsome kernel, and now a rod off playing at
hide-and-seek, with the nut stowed away in its chops, where were half a
dozen more besides, extending its cheeks to a ludicrous breadth,—as if
it were devising through what safe valve of frisk or somerset to let its
superfluous life escape; the stream passing harmlessly off, even while
it sits, in constant electric flashes through its tail. And now with a
chuckling squeak it dives into the root of a hazel, and we see no more
of it. Or the larger red squirrel or chickaree, sometimes called the
Hudson Bay squirrel (Scriurus Hudsonius), gave warning of our approach
by that peculiar alarum of his, like the winding up of some strong
clock, in the top of a pine-tree, and dodged behind its stem, or leaped
from tree to tree with such caution and adroitness, as if much depended
on the fidelity of his scout, running along the white-pine boughs
sometimes twenty rods by our side, with such speed, and by such
unerring routes, as if it were some well-worn familiar path to him; and
presently, when we have passed, he returns to his work of cutting off
the pine-cones, and letting them fall to the ground.

We passed Cromwell's Falls, the first we met with on this river, this
forenoon, by means of locks, without using our wheels. These falls are
the Nesenkeag of the Indians. Great Nesenkeag Stream comes in on the
right just above, and Little Nesenkeag some distance below, both in
Litchfield. We read in the Gazetteer, under the head of Merrimack, that
"The first house in this town was erected on the margin of the river
[soon after 1665] for a house of traffic with the Indians. For some time
one Cromwell carried on a lucrative trade with them, weighing their furs
with his foot, till, enraged at his supposed or real deception, they
formed the resolution to murder him. This intention being communicated
to Cromwell, he buried his wealth and made his escape. Within a few
hours after his flight, a party of the Penacook tribe arrived, and, not
finding the object of their resentment, burnt his habitation." Upon the
top of the high bank here, close to the river, was still to be seen his
cellar, now overgrown with trees. It was a convenient spot for such
a traffic, at the foot of the first falls above the settlements, and
commanding a pleasant view up the river, where he could see the Indians
coming down with their furs. The lock-man told us that his shovel and
tongs had been ploughed up here, and also a stone with his name on it.
But we will not vouch for the truth of this story. In the New Hampshire
Historical Collections for 1815 it says, "Some time after pewter was
found in the well, and an iron pot and trammel in the sand; the latter
are preserved." These were the traces of the white trader. On the
opposite bank, where it jutted over the stream cape-wise, we picked up
four arrow-heads and a small Indian tool made of stone, as soon as
we had climbed it, where plainly there had once stood a wigwam of the
Indians with whom Cromwell traded, and who fished and hunted here before
he came.

As usual the gossips have not been silent respecting Cromwell's buried
wealth, and it is said that some years ago a farmer's plough, not far
from here, slid over a flat stone which emitted a hollow sound, and, on
its being raised, a small hole six inches in diameter was discovered,
stoned about, from which a sum of money was taken. The lock-man told us
another similar story about a farmer in a neighboring town, who had been
a poor man, but who suddenly bought a good farm, and was well to do
in the world, and, when he was questioned, did not give a satisfactory
account of the matter; how few, alas, could! This caused his hired man
to remember that one day, as they were ploughing together, the plough
struck something, and his employer, going back to look, concluded not to
go round again, saying that the sky looked rather lowering, and so put
up his team. The like urgency has caused many things to be remembered
which never transpired. The truth is, there is money buried everywhere,
and you have only to go to work to find it.

Not far from these falls stands an oak-tree, on the interval, about a
quarter of a mile from the river, on the farm of a Mr. Lund, which was
pointed out to us as the spot where French, the leader of the party
which went in pursuit of the Indians from Dunstable, was killed. Farwell
dodged them in the thick woods near. It did not look as if men had ever
had to run for their lives on this now open and peaceful interval.

Here too was another extensive desert by the side of the road in
Litchfield, visible from the bank of the river. The sand was blown
off in some places to the depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving small
grotesque hillocks of that height, where there was a clump of bushes
firmly rooted. Thirty or forty years ago, as we were told, it was a
sheep-pasture, but the sheep, being worried by the fleas, began to paw
the ground, till they broke the sod, and so the sand began to blow, till
now it had extended over forty or fifty acres. This evil might easily
have been remedied, at first, by spreading birches with their leaves on
over the sand, and fastening them down with stakes, to break the wind.
The fleas bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the sore
had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little
scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where caravans and cities are
buried, began with the bite of an African flea? This poor globe, how it
must itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough to spread a salve
of birches over its sores? Here too we noticed where the Indians had
gathered a heap of stones, perhaps for their council-fire, which, by
their weight having prevented the sand under them from blowing away,
were left on the summit of a mound. They told us that arrow-heads, and
also bullets of lead and iron, had been found here. We noticed several
other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can
be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sandbanks, though the
river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear,
have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made
through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set
the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts,
and the company has had to pay the damages.

This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water.
It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the
ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like
those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmen are
permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when
they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now
understood the propriety of this provision.

Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose formation, perhaps,
these very banks have sent their contribution, is a similar desert of
drifting sand, of various colors, blown into graceful curves by the
wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to
the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than
half a mile wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it
is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with which a
countryman is familiar. The thin vegetation stands half buried in sand,
as in drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach-plum, which gives the
island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so abundant
that parties of a hundred at once come from the main-land and down the
Merrimack, in September, pitch their tents, and gather the plums,
which are good to eat raw and to preserve. The graceful and delicate
beach-pea, too, grows abundantly amid the sand, and several strange,
moss-like and succulent plants. The island for its whole length is
scalloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind,
and, excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless
as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys ploughed by
the wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a caravan.
Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand for masons' uses, and
in a few hours the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet you
have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come to fresh water; and you
are surprised to learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found,
though you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves. I have
walked down the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at
which time alone you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably
Massachusetts does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the
seaside there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand
monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual,
is remarkable as a landmark for miles; while for music you hear only the
ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the beach-birds.

There were several canal-boats at Cromwell's Falls passing through the
locks, for which we waited. In the forward part of one stood a brawny
New Hampshire man, leaning on his pole, bareheaded and in shirt and
trousers only, a rude Apollo of a man, coming down from that "vast
uplandish country" to the main; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and
vigorous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrinkles the sun still
lodged, as little touched by the heats and frosts and withering cares
of life as a maple of the mountain; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man,
with whom we parleyed awhile, and parted not without a sincere interest
in one another. His humanity was genuine and instinctive, and his
rudeness only a manner. He inquired, just as we were passing out of
earshot, if we had killed anything, and we shouted after him that we had
shot a buoy, and could see him for a long while scratching his head in
vain to know if he had heard aright.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are
sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or
sap-wood at all. We sometimes meet uncivil men, children of Amazons, who
dwell by mountain paths, and are said to be inhospitable to strangers;
whose salutation is as rude as the grasp of their brawny hands, and
who deal with men as unceremoniously as they are wont to deal with the
elements. They need only to extend their clearings, and let in more
sunlight, to seek out the southern slopes of the hills, from which they
may look down on the civil plain or ocean, and temper their diet duly
with the cereal fruits, consuming less wild meat and acorns, to become
like the inhabitants of cities. A true politeness does not result from
any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in
characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of
men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. Perhaps I can tell
a tale to the purpose while the lock is filling,—for our voyage this
forenoon furnishes but few incidents of importance.

Early one summer morning I had left the shores of the Connecticut, and
for the livelong day travelled up the bank of a river, which came in
from the west; now looking down on the stream, foaming and rippling
through the forest a mile off, from the hills over which the road led,
and now sitting on its rocky brink and dipping my feet in its rapids,
or bathing adventurously in mid-channel. The hills grew more and more
frequent, and gradually swelled into mountains as I advanced, hemming in
the course of the river, so that at last I could not see where it came
from, and was at liberty to imagine the most wonderful meanderings and
descents. At noon I slept on the grass in the shade of a maple, where
the river had found a broader channel than usual, and was spread out
shallow, with frequent sand-bars exposed. In the names of the towns I
recognized some which I had long ago read on teamsters' wagons, that had
come from far up country; quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous fame. I
walked along, musing and enchanted, by rows of sugar-maples, through
the small and uninquisitive villages, and sometimes was pleased with
the sight of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, where there appeared no
inhabitants to use it. It seemed, however, as essential to the river as
a fish, and to lend a certain dignity to it. It was like the trout of
mountain streams to the fishes of the sea, or like the young of the
land-crab born far in the interior, who have never yet heard the sound
of the ocean's surf. The hills approached nearer and nearer to the
stream, until at last they closed behind me, and I found myself just
before nightfall in a romantic and retired valley, about half a mile in
length, and barely wide enough for the stream at its bottom. I thought
that there could be no finer site for a cottage among mountains. You
could anywhere run across the stream on the rocks, and its constant
murmuring would quiet the passions of mankind forever. Suddenly the
road, which seemed aiming for the mountain-side, turned short to the
left, and another valley opened, concealing the former, and of the same
character with it. It was the most remarkable and pleasing scenery I had
ever seen. I found here a few mild and hospitable inhabitants, who, as
the day was not quite spent, and I was anxious to improve the light,
directed me four or five miles farther on my way to the dwelling of
a man whose name was Rice, who occupied the last and highest of the
valleys that lay in my path, and who, they said, was a rather rude and
uncivil man. But "what is a foreign country to those who have science?
Who is a stranger to those who have the habit of speaking kindly?"

At length, as the sun was setting behind the mountains in a still darker
and more solitary vale, I reached the dwelling of this man. Except for
the narrowness of the plain, and that the stones were solid granite, it
was the counterpart of that retreat to which Belphœbe bore the wounded
Timias,—

                        "In a pleasant glade,
     With mountains round about environed,
     And mighty woods, which did the valley shade,
     And like a stately theatre it made,
     Spreading itself into a spacious plain;
     And in the midst a little river played
     Amongst the pumy stones which seemed to plain,
     With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain."

I observed, as I drew near, that he was not so rude as I had
anticipated, for he kept many cattle, and dogs to watch them, and I saw
where he had made maple-sugar on the sides of the mountains, and above
all distinguished the voices of children mingling with the murmur of
the torrent before the door. As I passed his stable I met one whom I
supposed to be a hired man, attending to his cattle, and I inquired
if they entertained travellers at that house. "Sometimes we do," he
answered, gruffly, and immediately went to the farthest stall from
me, and I perceived that it was Rice himself whom I had addressed. But
pardoning this incivility to the wildness of the scenery, I bent my
steps to the house. There was no sign-post before it, nor any of the
usual invitations to the traveller, though I saw by the road that many
went and came there, but the owner's name only was fastened to the
outside; a sort of implied and sullen invitation, as I thought. I passed
from room to room without meeting any one, till I came to what seemed
the guests' apartment, which was neat, and even had an air of refinement
about it, and I was glad to find a map against the wall which would
direct me on my journey on the morrow. At length I heard a step in a
distant apartment, which was the first I had entered, and went to see if
the landlord had come in; but it proved to be only a child, one of those
whose voices I had heard, probably his son, and between him and me stood
in the doorway a large watch-dog, which growled at me, and looked as if
he would presently spring, but the boy did not speak to him; and when I
asked for a glass of water, he briefly said, "It runs in the corner." So
I took a mug from the counter and went out of doors, and searched round
the corner of the house, but could find neither well nor spring, nor
any water but the stream which ran all along the front. I came back,
therefore, and, setting down the mug, asked the child if the stream was
good to drink; whereupon he seized the mug, and, going to the corner
of the room, where a cool spring which issued from the mountain behind
trickled through a pipe into the apartment, filled it, and drank, and
gave it to me empty again, and, calling to the dog, rushed out of doors.
Erelong some of the hired men made their appearance, and drank at the
spring, and lazily washed themselves and combed their hair in silence,
and some sat down as if weary, and fell asleep in their seats. But all
the while I saw no women, though I sometimes heard a bustle in that part
of the house from which the spring came.

At length Rice himself came in, for it was now dark, with an ox-whip in
his hand, breathing hard, and he too soon settled down into his seat not
far from me, as if, now that his day's work was done, he had no farther
to travel, but only to digest his supper at his leisure. When I asked
him if he could give me a bed, he said there was one ready, in such a
tone as implied that I ought to have known it, and the less said about
that the better. So far so good. And yet he continued to look at me
as if he would fain have me say something further like a traveller. I
remarked, that it was a wild and rugged country he inhabited, and worth
coming many miles to see. "Not so very rough neither," said he, and
appealed to his men to bear witness to the breadth and smoothness of his
fields, which consisted in all of one small interval, and to the size
of his crops; "and if we have some hills," added he, "there's no better
pasturage anywhere." I then asked if this place was the one I had heard
of, calling it by a name I had seen on the map, or if it was a certain
other; and he answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one nor the
other; that he had settled it and cultivated it, and made it what it
was, and I could know nothing about it. Observing some guns and other
implements of hunting hanging on brackets around the room, and his
hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to change the
discourse, and inquired if there was much game in that country, and he
answered this question more graciously, having some glimmering of
my drift; but when I inquired if there were any bears, he answered
impatiently that he was no more in danger of losing his sheep than
his neighbors; he had tamed and civilized that region. After a pause,
thinking of my journey on the morrow, and the few hours of daylight in
that hollow and mountainous country, which would require me to be on my
way betimes, I remarked that the day must be shorter by an hour there
than on the neighboring plains; at which he gruffly asked what I knew
about it, and affirmed that he had as much daylight as his neighbors;
he ventured to say, the days were longer there than where I lived, as
I should find if I stayed; that in some way, I could not be expected to
understand how, the sun came over the mountains half an hour earlier,
and stayed half an hour later there than on the neighboring plains. And
more of like sort he said. He was, indeed, as rude as a fabled satyr.
But I suffered him to pass for what he was,—for why should I quarrel
with nature?—and was even pleased at the discovery of such a singular
natural phenomenon. I dealt with him as if to me all manners were
indifferent, and he had a sweet, wild way with him. I would not question
nature, and I would rather have him as he was than as I would have him.
For I had come up here not for sympathy, or kindness, or society, but
for novelty and adventure, and to see what nature had produced here. I
therefore did not repel his rudeness, but quite innocently welcomed it
all, and knew how to appreciate it, as if I were reading in an old drama
a part well sustained. He was indeed a coarse and sensual man, and, as I
have said, uncivil, but he had his just quarrel with nature and mankind,
I have no doubt, only he had no artificial covering to his ill-humors.
He was earthy enough, but yet there was good soil in him, and even a
long-suffering Saxon probity at bottom. If you could represent the case
to him, he would not let the race die out in him, like a red Indian.

At length I told him that he was a fortunate man, and I trusted that he
was grateful for so much light; and, rising, said I would take a
lamp, and that I would pay him then for my lodging, for I expected to
recommence my journey even as early as the sun rose in his country; but
he answered in haste, and this time civilly, that I should not fail to
find some of his household stirring, however early, for they were no
sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them before I started,
if I chose; and as he lighted the lamp I detected a gleam of true
hospitality and ancient civility, a beam of pure and even gentle
humanity, from his bleared and moist eyes. It was a look more intimate
with me, and more explanatory, than any words of his could have been if
he had tried to his dying day. It was more significant than any Rice
of those parts could even comprehend, and long anticipated this man's
culture,—a glance of his pure genius, which did not much enlighten
him, but did impress and rule him for the moment, and faintly constrain
his voice and manner. He cheerfully led the way to my apartment,
stepping over the limbs of his men, who were asleep on the floor in an
intervening chamber, and showed me a clean and comfortable bed. For many
pleasant hours after the household was asleep I sat at the open window,
for it was a sultry night, and heard the little river

   "Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain,
     With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain."

But I arose as usual by starlight the next morning, before my host, or
his men, or even his dogs, were awake; and, having left a ninepence on
the counter, was already half-way over the mountain with the sun before
they had broken their fast.

Before I had left the country of my host, while the first rays of the
sun slanted over the mountains, as I stopped by the wayside to gather
some raspberries, a very old man, not far from a hundred, came along
with a milking-pail in his hand, and turning aside began to pluck the
berries near me:—

          "His reverend locks
     In comelye curles did wave;
     And on his aged temples grew
        The blossoms of the grave."

But when I inquired the way, he answered in a low, rough voice, without
looking up or seeming to regard my presence, which I imputed to his
years; and presently, muttering to himself, he proceeded to collect his
cows in a neighboring pasture; and when he had again returned near to
the wayside, he suddenly stopped, while his cows went on before, and,
uncovering his head, prayed aloud in the cool morning air, as if he had
forgotten this exercise before, for his daily bread, and also that He
who letteth his rain fall on the just and on the unjust, and without
whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground, would not neglect the stranger
(meaning me), and with even more direct and personal applications,
though mainly according to the long-established formula common to
lowlanders and the inhabitants of mountains. When he had done praying, I
made bold to ask him if he had any cheese in his hut which he would
sell me, but he answered without looking up, and in the same low and
repulsive voice as before, that they did not make any, and went to
milking. It is written, "The stranger who turneth away from a house
with disappointed hopes, leaveth there his own offences, and departeth,
taking with him all the good actions of the owner."

Being now fairly in the stream of this week's commerce, we began to meet
with boats more frequently, and hailed them from time to time with the
freedom of sailors. The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented
life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves
to many professions which are much more sought after. They suggested how
few circumstances are necessary to the well-being and serenity of man,
how indifferent all employments are, and that any may seem noble and
poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and
freedom. With liberty and pleasant weather, the simplest occupation, any
unquestioned country mode of life which detains us in the open air,
is alluring. The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more than
respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn neighbors. We are
as happy as the birds when our Good Genius permits us to pursue any
out-door work, without a sense of dissipation. Our penknife glitters
in the sun; our voice is echoed by yonder wood; if an oar drops, we are
fain to let it drop again.

The canal-boat is of very simple construction, requiring but little
ship-timber, and, as we were told, costs about two hundred dollars. They
are managed by two men. In ascending the stream they use poles fourteen
or fifteen feet long, pointed with iron, walking about one third the
length of the boat from the forward end. Going down, they commonly keep
in the middle of the stream, using an oar at each end; or if the wind
is favorable they raise their broad sail, and have only to steer. They
commonly carry down wood or bricks,—fifteen or sixteen cords of wood,
and as many thousand bricks, at a time,—and bring back stores for
the country, consuming two or three days each way between Concord and
Charlestown. They sometimes pile the wood so as to leave a shelter in
one part where they may retire from the rain. One can hardly imagine a
more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and
the observation of nature. Unlike the mariner, they have the constantly
varying panorama of the shore to relieve the monotony of their labor,
and it seemed to us that as they thus glided noiselessly from town to
town, with all their furniture about them, for their very homestead is
a movable, they could comment on the character of the inhabitants with
greater advantage and security to themselves than the traveller in a
coach, who would be unable to indulge in such broadsides of wit and
humor in so small a vessel for fear of the recoil. They are not subject
to great exposure, like the lumberers of Maine, in any weather, but
inhale the healthfullest breezes, being slightly encumbered with
clothing, frequently with the head and feet bare. When we met them at
noon as they were leisurely descending the stream, their busy commerce
did not look like toil, but rather like some ancient Oriental game still
played on a large scale, as the game of chess, for instance, handed down
to this generation. From morning till night, unless the wind is so fair
that his single sail will suffice without other labor than steering,
the boatman walks backwards and forwards on the side of his boat, now
stooping with his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly
to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily forward through an endless
valley and an everchanging scenery, now distinguishing his course for
a mile or two, and now shut in by a sudden turn of the river in a small
woodland lake. All the phenomena which surround him are simple and
grand, and there is something impressive, even majestic, in the very
motion he causes, which will naturally be communicated to his own
character, and he feels the slow, irresistible movement under him with
pride, as if it were his own energy.

The news spread like wildfire among us youths, when formerly, once in a
year or two, one of these boats came up the Concord River, and was seen
stealing mysteriously through the meadows and past the village. It came
and departed as silently as a cloud, without noise or dust, and was
witnessed by few. One summer day this huge traveller might be seen
moored at some meadow's wharf, and another summer day it was not there.
Where precisely it came from, or who these men were who knew the rocks
and soundings better than we who bathed there, we could never tell. We
knew some river's bay only, but they took rivers from end to end. They
were a sort of fabulous river-men to us. It was inconceivable by what
sort of mediation any mere landsman could hold communication with them.
Would they heave to, to gratify his wishes? No, it was favor enough to
know faintly of their destination, or the time of their possible return.
I have seen them in the summer when the stream ran low, mowing the weeds
in mid-channel, and with hayers' jests cutting broad swaths in three
feet of water, that they might make a passage for their scow, while
the grass in long windrows was carried down the stream, undried by the
rarest hay-weather. We admired unweariedly how their vessel would float,
like a huge chip, sustaining so many casks of lime, and thousands of
bricks, and such heaps of iron ore, with wheelbarrows aboard, and that,
when we stepped on it, it did not yield to the pressure of our feet.
It gave us confidence in the prevalence of the law of buoyancy, and we
imagined to what infinite uses it might be put. The men appeared to lead
a kind of life on it, and it was whispered that they slept aboard. Some
affirmed that it carried sail, and that such winds blew here as filled
the sails of vessels on the ocean; which again others much doubted. They
had been seen to sail across our Fair Haven bay by lucky fishers who
were out, but unfortunately others were not there to see. We might then
say that our river was navigable,—why not? In after-years I read in
print, with no little satisfaction, that it was thought by some that,
with a little expense in removing rocks and deepening the channel,
"there might be a profitable inland navigation." I then lived some-where
to tell of.

Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa-nut and bread-fruit tree in
the remotest isle, and sooner or later dawns on the duskiest and most
simple-minded savage. If we may be pardoned the digression, who can help
being affected at the thought of the very fine and slight, but positive
relation, in which the savage inhabitants of some remote isle stand to
the mysterious white mariner, the child of the sun?—as if we were
to have dealings with an animal higher in the scale of being than
ourselves. It is a barely recognized fact to the natives that he exists,
and has his home far away somewhere, and is glad to buy their fresh
fruits with his superfluous commodities. Under the same catholic sun
glances his white ship over Pacific waves into their smooth bays, and
the poor savage's paddle gleams in the air.

     Man's little acts are grand,
     Beheld from land to land,
     There as they lie in time,
     Within their native clime
          Ships with the noontide weigh,
          And glide before its ray
          To some retired bay,
          Their haunt,
          Whence, under tropic sun,
          Again they run,
          Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant.
     For this was ocean meant,
     For this the sun was sent,
     And moon was lent,
     And winds in distant caverns pent.

Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been extended, and there
is now but little boating on the Merrimack. All kinds of produce and
stores were formerly conveyed by water, but now nothing is carried up
the stream, and almost wood and bricks alone are carried down, and these
are also carried on the railroad. The locks are fast wearing out, and
will soon be impassable, since the tolls will not pay the expense of
repairing them, and so in a few years there will be an end of boating on
this river. The boating at present is principally between Merrimack and
Lowell, or Hooksett and Manchester. They make two or three trips in a
week, according to wind and weather, from Merrimack to Lowell and back,
about twenty-five miles each way. The boatman comes singing in to shore
late at night, and moors his empty boat, and gets his supper and lodging
in some house near at hand, and again early in the morning, by starlight
perhaps, he pushes away up stream, and, by a shout, or the fragment of
a song, gives notice of his approach to the lock-man, with whom he is
to take his breakfast. If he gets up to his wood-pile before noon he
proceeds to load his boat, with the help of his single "hand," and is on
his way down again before night. When he gets to Lowell he unloads his
boat, and gets his receipt for his cargo, and, having heard the news
at the public house at Middlesex or elsewhere, goes back with his empty
boat and his receipt in his pocket to the owner, and to get a new load.
We were frequently advertised of their approach by some faint sound
behind us, and looking round saw them a mile off, creeping stealthily
up the side of the stream like alligators. It was pleasant to hail these
sailors of the Merrimack from time to time, and learn the news which
circulated with them. We imagined that the sun shining on their bare
heads had stamped a liberal and public character on their most private
thoughts.

The open and sunny interval still stretched away from the river
sometimes by two or more terraces, to the distant hill-country, and when
we climbed the bank we commonly found an irregular copse-wood skirting
the river, the primitive having floated down-stream long ago to——the
"King's navy." Sometimes we saw the river-road a quarter or half a mile
distant, and the particolored Concord stage, with its cloud of dust, its
van of earnest travelling faces, and its rear of dusty trunks, reminding
us that the country had its places of rendezvous for restless Yankee
men. There dwelt along at considerable distances on this interval a
quiet agricultural and pastoral people, with every house its well, as we
sometimes proved, and every household, though never so still and remote
it appeared in the noontide, its dinner about these times. There they
lived on, those New England people, farmer lives, father and grandfather
and great-grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition,
and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not
learn what. They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for
them, and where their lines had fallen.

     Our uninquiring corpses lie more low
     Than our life's curiosity doth go.

Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as Solomon in all his
glory, so similar are the lives of men in all countries, and fraught
with the same homely experiences. One half the world knows how the other
half lives.

About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack at Thornton's Ferry,
and tasted of the waters of Naticook Brook on the same side, where
French and his companions, whose grave we saw in Dunstable, were
ambuscaded by the Indians. The humble village of Litchfield, with its
steepleless meeting-house, stood on the opposite or east bank, near
where a dense grove of willows backed by maples skirted the shore.
There also we noticed some shagbark-trees, which, as they do not grow in
Concord, were as strange a sight to us as the palm would be, whose
fruit only we have seen. Our course now curved gracefully to the north,
leaving a low, flat shore on the Merrimack side, which forms a sort
of harbor for canal-boats. We observed some fair elms and particularly
large and handsome white-maples standing conspicuously on this interval;
and the opposite shore, a quarter of a mile below, was covered with
young elms and maples six inches high, which had probably sprung from
the seeds which had been washed across.

Some carpenters were at work here mending a scow on the green and
sloping bank. The strokes of their mallets echoed from shore to shore,
and up and down the river, and their tools gleamed in the sun a quarter
of a mile from us, and we realized that boat-building was as ancient and
honorable an art as agriculture, and that there might be a naval as well
as a pastoral life. The whole history of commerce was made manifest in
that scow turned bottom upward on the shore. Thus did men begin to go
down upon the sea in ships; quæque diu steterant in montibus altis,
Fluctibus ignotis insultavêre carinæ; "and keels which had long stood
on high mountains careered insultingly (insultavêre) over unknown
waves." (Ovid, Met. I. 133.) We thought that it would be well for the
traveller to build his boat on the bank of a stream, instead of finding
a ferry or a bridge. In the Adventures of Henry the fur-trader, it is
pleasant to read that when with his Indians he reached the shore of
Ontario, they consumed two days in making two canoes of the bark of
the elm-tree, in which to transport themselves to Fort Niagara. It is a
worthy incident in a journey, a delay as good as much rapid travelling.
A good share of our interest in Xenophon's story of his retreat is in
the manoeuvres to get the army safely over the rivers, whether on rafts
of logs or fagots, or sheep-skins blown up. And where could they better
afford to tarry meanwhile than on the banks of a river?

As we glided past at a distance, these out-door workmen appeared to have
added some dignity to their labor by its very publicness. It was a part
of the industry of nature, like the work of hornets and mud-wasps.

      The waves slowly beat,
      Just to keep the noon sweet,
      And no sound is floated o'er,
      Save the mallet on shore,
      Which echoing on high
      Seems a-calking the sky.

The haze, the sun's dust of travel, had a Lethean influence on the land
and its inhabitants, and all creatures resigned themselves to float upon
the inappreciable tides of nature.

     Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,
     Woven of Nature's richest stuffs,
     Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
     Last conquest of the eye;
     Toil of the day displayed sun-dust,
     Aerial surf upon the shores of earth.
     Ethereal estuary, frith of light,
     Breakers of air, billows of heat
     Fine summer spray on inland seas;
     Bird of the sun, transparent-winged
     Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
     From heath or stubble rising without song;
     Establish thy serenity o'er the fields

The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest days, as that which
has conquered and prevailed, commends itself to us by its very antiquity
and apparent solidity and necessity. Our weakness needs it, and our
strength uses it. We cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves
against it. If there were but one erect and solid standing tree in the
woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make sure of their
footing. During the many hours which we spend in this waking sleep, the
hand stands still on the face of the clock, and we grow like corn in the
night. Men are as busy as the brooks or bees, and postpone everything
to their business; as carpenters discuss politics between the strokes of
the hammer while they are shingling a roof.

This noontide was a fit occasion to make some pleasant harbor, and there
read the journal of some voyageur like ourselves, not too moral nor
inquisitive, and which would not disturb the noon; or else some old
classic, the very flower of all reading, which we had postponed to such
a season

     "Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure."

But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, contained only its
well-thumbed "Navigator" for all literature, and we were obliged to draw
on our memory for these things.

We naturally remembered Alexander Henry's Adventures here, as a sort of
classic among books of American travel. It contains scenery and rough
sketching of men and incidents enough to inspire poets for many
years, and to my fancy is as full of sounding names as any page of
history,—Lake Winnipeg, Hudson Bay, Ottaway, and portages innumerable;
Chipeways, Gens de Terres, Les Pilleurs, The Weepers; with reminiscences
of Hearne's journey, and the like; an immense and shaggy but sincere
country, summer and winter, adorned with chains of lakes and
rivers, covered with snows, with hemlocks, and fir-trees. There is a
naturalness, an unpretending and cold life in this traveller, as in a
Canadian winter, what life was preserved through low temperatures
and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart. He has truth and
moderation worthy of the father of history, which belong only to an
intimate experience, and he does not defer too much to literature. The
unlearned traveller may quote his single line from the poets with as
good right as the scholar. He too may speak of the stars, for he sees
them shoot perhaps when the astronomer does not. The good sense of this
author is very conspicuous. He is a traveller who does not exaggerate,
but writes for the information of his readers, for science, and for
history. His story is told with as much good faith and directness as if
it were a report to his brother traders, or the Directors of the Hudson
Bay Company, and is fitly dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like
the argument to a great poem on the primitive state of the country and
its inhabitants, and the reader imagines what in each case, with the
invocation of the Muse, might be sung, and leaves off with suspended
interest, as if the full account were to follow. In what school was this
fur-trader educated? He seems to travel the immense snowy country with
such purpose only as the reader who accompanies him, and to the latter's
imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily created to be the scene of
his adventures. What is most interesting and valuable in it, however,
is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the
Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the
natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of
history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like
withered leaves.

The Souhegan, or Crooked River, as some translate it, comes in from the
west about a mile and a half above Thornton's Ferry. Babboosuck Brook
empties into it near its mouth. There are said to be some of the finest
water privileges in the country still unimproved on the former stream,
at a short distance from the Merrimack. One spring morning, March 22,
in the year 1677, an incident occurred on the banks of the river here,
which is interesting to us as a slight memorial of an interview between
two ancient tribes of men, one of which is now extinct, while the other,
though it is still represented by a miserable remnant, has long since
disappeared from its ancient hunting-grounds. A Mr. James Parker,
at "Mr. Hinchmanne's farme ner Meremack," wrote thus "to the Honred
Governer and Council at Bostown, Hast, Post Hast":—

"Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning to informe me, and then went
to Mr. Tyng's to informe him, that his son being on ye other sid of
Meremack river over against Souhegan upon the 22 day of this instant,
about tene of the clock in the morning, he discovered 15 Indians on this
sid the river, which he soposed to be Mohokes by ther spech. He called
to them; they answered, but he could not understand ther spech; and he
having a conow ther in the river, he went to breck his conow that they
might not have ani ues of it. In the mean time they shot about thirty
guns at him, and he being much frighted fled, and come home forthwith to
Nahamcock [Pawtucket Falls or Lowell], wher ther wigowames now stand."

Penacooks and Mohawks! ubique gentium sunt? In the year 1670, a Mohawk
warrior scalped a Naamkeak or else a Wamesit Indian maiden near where
Lowell now stands. She, however, recovered. Even as late as 1685, John
Hogkins, a Penacook Indian, who describes his grandfather as having
lived "at place called Malamake rever, other name chef Natukkog
and Panukkog, that one rever great many names," wrote thus to the
governor:—

"May 15th, 1685.

"Honor governor my friend,—

"You my friend I desire your worship and your power, because I hope you
can do som great matters this one. I am poor and naked and I have no men
at my place because I afraid allwayes Mohogs he will kill me every day
and night. If your worship when please pray help me you no let Mohogs
kill me at my place at Malamake river called Pannukkog and Natukkog, I
will submit your worship and your power. And now I want pouder and such
alminishon shatt and guns, because I have forth at my hom and I plant
theare.

"This all Indian hand, but pray you do consider your humble servant,

John Hogkins."

Signed also by Simon Detogkom, King Hary, Sam Linis, Mr. Jorge
Rodunnonukgus, John Owamosimmin, and nine other Indians, with their
marks against their names.

But now, one hundred and fifty-four years having elapsed since the date
of this letter, we went unalarmed on our way without "brecking" our
"conow," reading the New England Gazetteer, and seeing no traces of
"Mohogs" on the banks.

The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed to-day to have borrowed its
character from the noon.

     Where gleaming fields of haze
     Meet the voyageur's gaze,
     And above, the heated air
     Seems to make a river there,
     The pines stand up with pride
     By the Souhegan's side,
     And the hemlock and the larch
     With their triumphal arch
     Are waving o'er its march
        To the sea.
     No wind stirs its waves,
     But the spirits of the braves
        Hov'ring o'er,
     Whose antiquated graves
     Its still water laves
        On the shore.
     With an Indian's stealthy tread
     It goes sleeping in its bed,
     Without joy or grief,
     Or the rustle of a leaf,
     Without a ripple or a billow,
     Or the sigh of a willow,
     From the Lyndeboro' hills
     To the Merrimack mills.
     With a louder din
     Did its current begin,
     When melted the snow
     On the far mountain's brow,
     And the drops came together
     In that rainy weather.
     Experienced river,
     Hast thou flowed forever?
     Souhegan soundeth old,
     But the half is not told,
     What names hast thou borne,
     In the ages far gone,
     When the Xanthus and Meander
     Commenced to wander,
     Ere the black bear haunted
        Thy red forest-floor,
     Or Nature had planted
        The pines by thy shore?

During the heat of the day, we rested on a large island a mile above the
mouth of this river, pastured by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and
scattered elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal-boats on
each side. When we made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, the
flames spreading amid the dry grass, and the smoke curling silently
upward and casting grotesque shadows on the ground, seemed phenomena
of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up the stream without
effort, and as naturally as the wind and tide went down, not outraging
the calm days by unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the
neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south,
looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the
shade. We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings
as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and
tremulous cooing. They sojourned with us during the noontide, greater
travellers far than we. You may frequently discover a single pair
sitting upon the lower branches of the white-pine in the depths of the
wood, at this hour of the day, so silent and solitary, and with such a
hermit-like appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its skirts,
while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of Maine is still
undigested in their crops. We obtained one of these handsome birds,
which lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and broiled it here
with some other game, to be carried along for our supper; for, beside
the provisions which we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river
and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem to be putting
this bird to its right use to pluck off its feathers, and extract
its entrails, and broil its carcass on the coals; but we heroically
persevered, nevertheless, waiting for further information. The same
regard for Nature which excited our sympathy for her creatures nerved
our hands to carry through what we had begun. For we would be honorable
to the party we deserted; we would fulfil fate, and so at length,
perhaps, detect the secret innocence of these incessant tragedies which
Heaven allows.

     "Too quick resolves do resolution wrong,
     What, part so soon to be divorced so long?
     Things to be done are long to be debated;
     Heaven is not day'd, Repentance is not dated."

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return
stroke straps our vice. Where is the skilful swordsman who can give
clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?

Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures.
What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our
solacement? The sparrows seem always chipper, never infirm. We do not
see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each
one of their lives. They must perish miserably; not one of them is
translated. True, "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our
Heavenly Father's knowledge," but they do fall, nevertheless.

The carcasses of some poor squirrels, however, the same that frisked
so merrily in the morning, which we had skinned and embowelled for our
dinner, we abandoned in disgust, with tardy humanity, as too wretched a
resource for any but starving men. It was to perpetuate the practice of
a barbarous era. If they had been larger, our crime had been less. Their
small red bodies, little bundles of red tissue, mere gobbets of venison,
would not have "fattened fire." With a sudden impulse we threw them
away, and washed our hands, and boiled some rice for our dinner. "Behold
the difference between the one who eateth flesh, and him to whom it
belonged! The first hath a momentary enjoyment, whilst the latter is
deprived of existence!" "Who would commit so great a crime against a
poor animal, who is fed only by the herbs which grow wild in the woods,
and whose belly is burnt up with hunger?" We remembered a picture
of mankind in the hunter age, chasing hares down the mountains; O me
miserable! Yet sheep and oxen are but larger squirrels, whose hides
are saved and meat is salted, whose souls perchance are not so large in
proportion to their bodies.

There should always be some flowering and maturing of the fruits of
nature in the cooking process. Some simple dishes recommend themselves
to our imaginations as well as palates. In parched corn, for instance,
there is a manifest sympathy between the bursting seed and the more
perfect developments of vegetable life. It is a perfect flower with its
petals, like the houstonia or anemone. On my warm hearth these cerealian
blossoms expanded; here is the bank whereon they grew. Perhaps some such
visible blessing would always attend the simple and wholesome repast.

Here was that "pleasant harbor" which we had sighed for, where the weary
voyageur could read the journal of some other sailor, whose bark had
ploughed, perchance, more famous and classic seas. At the tables of the
gods, after feasting follow music and song; we will recline now under
these island trees, and for our minstrel call on

ANACREON.

     "Nor has he ceased his charming song, for still that lyre,
     Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades."
                                Simonides' Epigram on Anacreon.

I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the
Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the
words, Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes
of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly
more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcaeus, Stesichorus,
Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless
fames without reserve or personality.

I know of no studies so composing as those of the classical scholar.
When we have sat down to them, life seems as still and serene as if
it were very far off, and I believe it is not habitually seen from
any common platform so truly and unexaggerated as in the light of
literature. In serene hours we contemplate the tour of the Greek and
Latin authors with more pleasure than the traveller does the fairest
scenery of Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more refined society?
That highway down from Homer and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more
attractive than the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing with
those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works, is like walking
amid the stars and constellations, a high and by way serene to travel.
Indeed, the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer in his
habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed to obstruct the field of
his vision, for the higher regions of literature, like astronomy, are
above storm and darkness.

But passing by these rumors of bards, let us pause for a moment at the
Teian poet.

There is something strangely modern about him. He is very easily turned
into English. Is it that our lyric poets have resounded but that lyre,
which would sound only light subjects, and which Simonides tells us does
not sleep in Hades? His odes are like gems of pure ivory. They possess
an ethereal and evanescent beauty like summer evenings, ? ??? se ??e??
???? ???e?—which you must perceive with the flower of the mind,—and
show how slight a beauty could be expressed. You have to consider them,
as the stars of lesser magnitude, with the side of the eye, and look
aside from them to behold them. They charm us by their serenity and
freedom from exaggeration and passion, and by a certain flower-like
beauty, which does not propose itself, but must be approached and
studied like a natural object. But perhaps their chief merit consists in
the lightness and yet security of their tread;

     "The young and tender stalk
     Ne'er bends when they do walk."

True, our nerves are never strung by them; it is too constantly the
sound of the lyre, and never the note of the trumpet; but they are not
gross, as has been presumed, but always elevated above the sensual.

These are some of the best that have come down to us.

ON HIS LYRE.

     I wish to sing the Atridæ,
     And Cadmus I wish to sing;
     But my lyre sounds
     Only love with its chords.
     Lately I changed the strings
     And all the lyre;
     And I began to sing the labors
     Of Hercules; but my lyre
     Resounded loves.
     Farewell, henceforth, for me,
     Heroes! for my lyre
     Sings only loves.

TO A SWALLOW.

     Thou indeed, dear swallow,
     Yearly going and coming,
     In summer weavest thy nest,
     And in winter go'st disappearing
     Either to Nile or to Memphis.
     But Love always weaveth
     His nest in my heart….

ON A SILVER CUP.

     Turning the silver,
     Vulcan, make for me,
     Not indeed a panoply,
     For what are battles to me?
     But a hollow cup,
     As deep as thou canst
     And make for me in it
     Neither stars, nor wagons,
     Nor sad Orion;
     What are the Pleiades to me?
     What the shining Bootes?
     Make vines for me,
     And clusters of grapes in it,
     And of gold Love and Bathyllus
     Treading the grapes
     With the fair Lyæus

ON HIMSELF.

     Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes,
     And he the battles of Troy,
     But I of my own defeats.
     No horse have wasted me,
     Nor foot, nor ships;
     But a new and different host,
     From eyes smiting me.

TO A DOVE

     Lovely dove,
     Whence, whence dost thou fly?
     Whence, running on air,
     Dost thou waft and diffuse
     So many sweet ointments?
     Who art? What thy errand?—
     Anacreon sent me
     To a boy, to Bathyllus,
     Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all.
     Cythere has sold me
     For one little song,
     And I'm doing this service
     For Anacreon.
     And now, as you see,
     I bear letters from him.
     And he says that directly
     He'll make me free,
     But though he release me,
     His slave I will tarry with him.
     For why should I fly
     Over mountains and fields,
     And perch upon trees,
     Eating some wild thing?
     Now indeed I eat bread,
     Plucking it from the hands
     Of Anacreon himself;
     And he gives me to drink
     The wine which he tastes,
     And drinking, I dance,
     And shadow my master's
     Face with my wings;
     And, going to rest,
     On the lyre itself I sleep.
     That is all; get thee gone.
     Thou hast made me more talkative,
     Man, than a crow.

ON LOVE.

     Love walking swiftly,
     With hyacinthine staff,
     Bade me to take a run with him;
     And hastening through swift torrents,
     And woody places, and over precipices,
     A water-snake stung me.
     And my heart leaped up to
     My mouth, and I should have fainted;
     But Love fanning my brows
     With his soft wings, said,
     Surely, thou art not able to love.

ON WOMEN.

     Nature has given horns
     To bulls, and hoofs to horses,
     Swiftness to hares,
     To lions yawning teeth,
     To fishes swimming,
     To birds flight,
     To men wisdom.
     For woman she had nothing beside;
     What then does she give? Beauty,—
     Instead of all sheilds,
     Instead of all  spears;
     And she conquers even iron
     And fire, who is beautiful.

ON LOVERS.

     Horses have the mark
     Of fire on their sides,
     And some have distinguished
     The Parthian men by their crests;
     So I, seeing lovers,
     Know them at once,
     For they have a certain slight
     Brand on their hearts.

TO A SWALLOW.

     What dost thou wish me to do to thee,—
     What, thou loquacious swallow?
     Dost thou wish me taking thee
     Thy light pinions to clip?
     Or rather to pluck out
     Thy tongue from within,
     As that Tereus did?
     Why with thy notes in the dawn
     Hast thou plundered Bathyllus
     From my beautiful dreams?

TO A COLT.

     Thracian colt, why at me
     Looking aslant with thy eyes,
     Dost thou cruelly flee,
     And think that I know nothing wise?
     Know I could well
     Put the bridle on thee,
     And holding the reins, turn
     Round the bounds of the course.
     But now thou browsest the meads,
     And gambolling lightly dost play,
     For thou hast no skilful horseman
     Mounted upon thy back.

CUPID WOUNDED.

     Love once among roses
     Saw not
     A sleeping bee, but was stung;
     And being wounded in the finger
     Of his hand, cried for pain.
     Running as well as flying
     To the beautiful Venus,
     I am killed, mother, said he,
     I am killed, and I die.
     A little serpent has stung me,
     Winged, which they call
     A bee,—the husbandmen.
     And she said, If the sting
     Of a bee afflicts you,
     How, think you, are they afflicted,
     Love, whom you smite?

            —————-

Late in the afternoon, for we had lingered long on the island, we raised
our sail for the first time, and for a short hour the southwest wind was
our ally; but it did not please Heaven to abet us along. With one sail
raised we swept slowly up the eastern side of the stream, steering clear
of the rocks, while, from the top of a hill which formed the opposite
bank, some lumberers were rolling down timber to be rafted down the
stream. We could see their axes and levers gleaming in the sun, and the
logs came down with a dust and a rumbling sound, which was reverberated
through the woods beyond us on our side, like the roar of artillery. But
Zephyr soon took us out of sight and hearing of this commerce. Having
passed Read's Ferry, and another island called McGaw's Island, we
reached some rapids called Moore's Falls, and entered on "that section
of the river, nine miles in extent, converted, by law, into the Union
Canal, comprehending in that space six distinct falls; at each of which,
and at several intermediate places, work has been done." After passing
Moore's Falls by means of locks, we again had recourse to our oars, and
went merrily on our way, driving the small sandpiper from rock to rock
before us, and sometimes rowing near enough to a cottage on the bank,
though they were few and far between, to see the sunflowers, and the
seed vessels of the poppy, like small goblets filled with the water of
Lethe, before the door, but without disturbing the sluggish household
behind. Thus we held on, sailing or dipping our way along with the
paddle up this broad river, smooth and placid, flowing over concealed
rocks, where we could see the pickerel lying low in the transparent
water, eager to double some distant cape, to make some great bend as in
the life of man, and see what new perspective would open; looking far
into a new country, broad and serene, the cottages of settlers seen afar
for the first time, yet with the moss of a century on their roofs,
and the third or fourth generation in their shadows. Strange was it to
consider how the sun and the summer, the buds of spring and the seared
leaves of autumn, were related to these cabins along the shore; how all
the rays which paint the landscape radiate from them, and the flight of
the crow and the gyrations of the hawk have reference to their roofs.
Still the ever rich and fertile shores accompanied us, fringed with
vines and alive with small birds and frisking squirrels, the edge of
some farmer's field or widow's wood-lot, or wilder, perchance, where the
muskrat, the little medicine of the river, drags itself along stealthily
over the alder-leaves and muscle-shells, and man and the memory of man
are banished far.

At length the unwearied, never-sinking shore, still holding on without
break, with its cool copses and serene pasture-grounds, tempted us to
disembark; and we adventurously landed on this remote coast, to survey
it, without the knowledge of any human inhabitant probably to this day.
But we still remember the gnarled and hospitable oaks which grew even
there for our entertainment, and were no strangers to us, the lonely
horse in his pasture, and the patient cows, whose path to the river, so
judiciously chosen to overcome the difficulties of the way, we followed,
and disturbed their ruminations in the shade; and, above all, the cool,
free aspect of the wild apple-trees, generously proffering their fruit
to us, though still green and crude,—the hard, round, glossy fruit,
which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New-English too, brought
hither its ancestors by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a
half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.
Still farther on we scrambled up the rocky channel of a brook, which had
long served nature for a sluice there, leaping like it from rock to rock
through tangled woods, at the bottom of a ravine, which grew darker and
darker, and more and more hoarse the murmurs of the stream, until we
reached the ruins of a mill, where now the ivy grew, and the trout
glanced through the crumbling flume; and there we imagined what had been
the dreams and speculations of some early settler. But the waning day
compelled us to embark once more, and redeem this wasted time with long
and vigorous sweeps over the rippling stream.

It was still wild and solitary, except that at intervals of a mile or
two the roof of a cottage might be seen over the bank. This region, as
we read, was once famous for the manufacture of straw bonnets of the
Leghorn kind, of which it claims the invention in these parts; and
occasionally some industrious damsel tripped down to the water's edge,
to put her straw a-soak, as it appeared, and stood awhile to watch the
retreating voyageurs, and catch the fragment of a boat-song which we had
made, wafted over the water.

   Thus, perchance, the Indian hunter,
     Many a lagging year agone,
   Gliding o'er thy rippling waters,
     Lowly hummed a natural song.

   Now the sun's behind the willows,
     Now he gleams along the waves,
   Faintly o'er the wearied billows
     Come the spirits of the braves.

Just before sundown we reached some more falls in the town of Bedford,
where some stone-masons were employed repairing the locks in a solitary
part of the river. They were interested in our adventure, especially one
young man of our own age, who inquired at first if we were bound up
to "'Skeag"; and when he had heard our story, and examined our outfit,
asked us other questions, but temperately still, and always turning to
his work again, though as if it were become his duty. It was plain that
he would like to go with us, and, as he looked up the river, many a
distant cape and wooded shore were reflected in his eye, as well as in
his thoughts. When we were ready he left his work, and helped us through
the locks with a sort of quiet enthusiasm, telling us that we were at
Coos Falls, and we could still distinguish the strokes of his chisel for
many sweeps after we had left him.

We wished to camp this night on a large rock in the middle of the
stream, just above these falls, but the want of fuel, and the difficulty
of fixing our tent firmly, prevented us; so we made our bed on the
main-land opposite, on the west bank, in the town of Bedford, in a
retired place, as we supposed, there being no house in sight.








WEDNESDAY.

             "Man is man's foe and destiny."

Cotton. WEDNESDAY.

Early this morning, as we were rolling up our buffaloes and loading our
boat amid the dew, while our embers were still smoking, the masons who
worked at the locks, and whom we had seen crossing the river in their
boat the evening before while we were examining the rock, came upon us
as they were going to their work, and we found that we had pitched our
tent directly in the path to their boat. This was the only time that we
were observed on our camping-ground. Thus, far from the beaten highways
and the dust and din of travel, we beheld the country privately, yet
freely, and at our leisure. Other roads do some violence to Nature,
and bring the traveller to stare at her, but the river steals into the
scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently creating and adorning
it, and is as free to come and go as the zephyr.

As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the smaller
bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its edge, or stood
probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so demurely
at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like a wrecker in his
storm-coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and cockles. Now away he
goes, with a limping flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a
rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and now our steady
approach compels him to seek a new retreat. It is a bird of the oldest
Thalesian school, and no doubt believes in the priority of water to
the other elements; the relic of a twilight antediluvian age which
yet inhabits these bright American rivers with us Yankees. There is
something venerable in this melancholy and contemplative race of
birds, which may have trodden the earth while it was yet in a slimy and
imperfect state. Perchance their tracks too are still visible on the
stones. It still lingers into our glaring summers, bravely supporting
its fate without sympathy from man, as if it looked forward to some
second advent of which he has no assurance. One wonders if, by its
patient study by rocks and sandy capes, it has wrested the whole of
her secret from Nature yet. What a rich experience it must have gained,
standing on one leg and looking out from its dull eye so long on
sunshine and rain, moon and stars! What could it tell of stagnant pools
and reeds and dank night-fogs! It would be worth the while to look
closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and
in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own
soul must be a bright invisible green. I have seen these birds stand
by the half-dozen together in the shallower water along the shore, with
their bills thrust into the mud at the bottom, probing for food, the
whole head being concealed, while the neck and body formed an arch above
the water.

Cohass Brook, the outlet of Massabesic Pond,—which last is five or
six miles distant, and contains fifteen hundred acres, being the largest
body of fresh water in Rockingham County,—comes in near here from
the east. Rowing between Manchester and Bedford, we passed, at an early
hour, a ferry and some falls, called Goff's Falls, the Indian Cohasset,
where there is a small village, and a handsome green islet in the middle
of the stream. From Bedford and Merrimack have been boated the bricks
of which Lowell is made. About twenty years before, as they told us, one
Moore, of Bedford, having clay on his farm, contracted to furnish eight
millions of bricks to the founders of that city within two years. He
fulfilled his contract in one year, and since then bricks have been the
principal export from these towns. The farmers found thus a market for
their wood, and when they had brought a load to the kilns, they could
cart a load of bricks to the shore, and so make a profitable day's work
of it. Thus all parties were benefited. It was worth the while to see
the place where Lowell was "dug out." So likewise Manchester is being
built of bricks made still higher up the river at Hooksett.

There might be seen here on the bank of the Merrimack, near Goff's
Falls, in what is now the town of Bedford, famous "for hops and for its
fine domestic manufactures," some graves of the aborigines. The land
still bears this scar here, and time is slowly crumbling the bones of
a race. Yet, without fail, every spring, since they first fished and
hunted here, the brown thrasher has heralded the morning from a birch
or alder spray, and the undying race of reed-birds still rustles through
the withering grass. But these bones rustle not. These mouldering
elements are slowly preparing for another metamorphosis, to serve new
masters, and what was the Indian's will erelong be the white man's
sinew.

We learned that Bedford was not so famous for hops as formerly, since
the price is fluctuating, and poles are now scarce. Yet if the traveller
goes back a few miles from the river, the hop-kilns will still excite
his curiosity.

There were few incidents in our voyage this forenoon, though the river
was now more rocky and the falls more frequent than before. It was
a pleasant change, after rowing incessantly for many hours, to lock
ourselves through in some retired place,—for commonly there was no
lock-man at hand,—one sitting in the boat, while the other, sometimes
with no little labor and heave-yo-ing, opened and shut the gates,
waiting patiently to see the locks fill. We did not once use the wheels
which we had provided. Taking advantage of the eddy, we were sometimes
floated up to the locks almost in the face of the falls; and, by the
same cause, any floating timber was carried round in a circle and
repeatedly drawn into the rapids before it finally went down the stream.
These old gray structures, with their quiet arms stretched over the
river in the sun, appeared like natural objects in the scenery, and the
kingfisher and sandpiper alighted on them as readily as on stakes or
rocks.

We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours, until the sun had
got high in the sky, our thoughts monotonously beating time to our oars.
For outward variety there was only the river and the receding shores, a
vista continually opening behind and closing before us, as we sat
with our backs up-stream; and, for inward, such thoughts as the muses
grudgingly lent us. We were always passing some low, inviting shore, or
some overhanging bank, on which, however, we never landed.

     Such near aspects had we
     Of our life's scenery.

It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream
is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men
may steer by their farm-bounds and cottage-lights. For my own part, but
for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of
our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove.
Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.
From an old ruined fort on Staten Island, I have loved to watch all
day some vessel whose name I had read in the morning through the
telegraph-glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull heaved
up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the pilot and most
adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the narrow channel
of the wide outer bay, till she was boarded by the health-officer, and
took her station at Quarantine, or held on her unquestioned course to
the wharves of New York. It was interesting, too, to watch the less
adventurous newsman, who made his assault as the vessel swept through
the Narrows, defying plague and quarantine law, and, fastening his
little cockboat to her huge side, clambered up and disappeared in the
cabin. And then I could imagine what momentous news was being imparted
by the captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that Asia, Africa,
Europe—were all sunk; for which at length he pays the price, and is
seen descending the ship's side with his bundle of newspapers, but not
where he first got up, for these arrivers do not stand still to gossip;
and he hastes away with steady sweeps to dispose of his wares to the
highest bidder, and we shall erelong read something startling,—"By the
latest arrival,"—"by the good ship——." On Sunday I beheld, from
some interior hill, the long procession of vessels getting to sea,
reaching from the city wharves through the Narrows, and past the Hook,
quite to the ocean stream, far as the eye could reach, with stately
march and silken sails, all counting on lucky voyages, but each time
some of the number, no doubt, destined to go to Davy's locker, and never
come on this coast again. And, again, in the evening of a pleasant day,
it was my amusement to count the sails in sight. But as the setting
sun continually brought more and more to light, still farther in the
horizon, the last count always had the advantage, till, by the time
the last rays streamed over the sea, I had doubled and trebled my first
number; though I could no longer class them all under the several heads
of ships, barks, brigs, schooners, and sloops, but most were faint
generic vessels only. And then the temperate twilight light, perchance,
revealed the floating home of some sailor whose thoughts were already
alienated from this American coast, and directed towards the Europe of
our dreams. I have stood upon the same hill-top when a thunder-shower,
rolling down from the Catskills and Highlands, passed over the island,
deluging the land; and, when it had suddenly left us in sunshine, have
seen it overtake successively, with its huge shadow and dark, descending
wall of rain, the vessels in the bay. Their bright sails were suddenly
drooping and dark, like the sides of barns, and they seemed to shrink
before the storm; while still far beyond them on the sea, through this
dark veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those vessels which the storm
had not yet reached. And at midnight, when all around and overhead was
darkness, I have seen a field of trembling, silvery light far out on the
sea, the reflection of the moonlight from the ocean, as if beyond
the precincts of our night, where the moon traversed a cloudless
heaven,—and sometimes a dark speck in its midst, where some fortunate
vessel was pursuing its happy voyage by night.

But to us river sailors the sun never rose out of ocean waves, but from
some green coppice, and went down behind some dark mountain line. We,
too, were but dwellers on the shore, like the bittern of the morning;
and our pursuit, the wrecks of snails and cockles. Nevertheless, we were
contented to know the better one fair particular shore.

      My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
          As near the ocean's edge as I can go,
      My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach,
          Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.

      My sole employment 't is, and scrupulous care,
          To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,
      Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
          Which ocean kindly to my hand confides.

      I have but few companions on the shore,
          They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea,
      Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er
          Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

      The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
          Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view,
      Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
          And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.

The small houses which were scattered along the river at intervals of
a mile or more were commonly out of sight to us, but sometimes, when we
rowed near the shore, we heard the peevish note of a hen, or some
slight domestic sound, which betrayed them. The lock-men's houses were
particularly well placed, retired, and high, always at falls or rapids,
and commanding the pleasantest reaches of the river,—for it is
generally wider and more lake-like just above a fall,—and there they
wait for boats. These humble dwellings, homely and sincere, in which a
hearth was still the essential part, were more pleasing to our eyes than
palaces or castles would have been. In the noon of these days, as
we have said, we occasionally climbed the banks and approached these
houses, to get a glass of water and make acquaintance with their
inhabitants. High in the leafy bank, surrounded commonly by a small
patch of corn and beans, squashes and melons, with sometimes a graceful
hop-yard on one side, and some running vine over the windows, they
appeared like beehives set to gather honey for a summer. I have not read
of any Arcadian life which surpasses the actual luxury and serenity of
these New England dwellings. For the outward gilding, at least, the
age is golden enough. As you approach the sunny doorway, awakening the
echoes by your steps, still no sound from these barracks of repose, and
you fear that the gentlest knock may seem rude to the Oriental dreamers.
The door is opened, perchance, by some Yankee-Hindoo woman, whose
small-voiced but sincere hospitality, out of the bottomless depths of a
quiet nature, has travelled quite round to the opposite side, and fears
only to obtrude its kindness. You step over the white-scoured floor to
the bright "dresser" lightly, as if afraid to disturb the devotions of
the household,—for Oriental dynasties appear to have passed away since
the dinner-table was last spread here,—and thence to the frequented
curb, where you see your long-forgotten, unshaven face at the bottom, in
juxtaposition with new-made butter and the trout in the well. "Perhaps
you would like some molasses and ginger," suggests the faint noon
voice. Sometimes there sits the brother who follows the sea, their
representative man; who knows only how far it is to the nearest port,
no more distances, all the rest is sea and distant capes,—patting the
dog, or dandling the kitten in arms that were stretched by the cable and
the oar, pulling against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at the
stranger, half pleased, half astonished, with a mariner's eye, as if he
were a dolphin within cast. If men will believe it, sua si bona nôrint,
there are no more quiet Tempes, nor more poetic and Arcadian lives,
than may be lived in these New England dwellings. We thought that the
employment of their inhabitants by day would be to tend the flowers
and herds, and at night, like the shepherds of old, to cluster and give
names to the stars from the river banks.

We passed a large and densely wooded island this forenoon, between
Short's and Griffith's Falls, the fairest which we had met with, with
a handsome grove of elms at its head. If it had been evening we should
have been glad to camp there. Not long after, one or two more were
passed. The boatmen told us that the current had recently made important
changes here. An island always pleases my imagination, even the
smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have
a fancy for building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I
can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious
charm for me. There is commonly such a one at the junction of two
rivers, whose currents bring down and deposit their respective sands
in the eddy at their confluence, as it were the womb of a continent.
By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made!
What an enterprise of Nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build
up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of
forests, with ant-like industry! Pindar gives the following account of
the origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene was settled
by Battus. Triton, in the form of Eurypylus, presents a clod to
Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they are about to return home.

                        "He knew of our haste,
     And immediately seizing a clod
     With his right hand, strove to give it
     As a chance stranger's gift.
     Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore,
     Stretching hand to hand,
     Received the mystic clod.
     But I hear it sinking from the deck,
     Go with the sea brine
     At evening, accompanying the watery sea.
     Often indeed I urged the careless
     Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot.
     And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya
     Is spilled before its hour."

It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how Helius, or the Sun,
looked down into the sea one day,—when perchance his rays were first
reflected from some increasing glittering sandbar,—and saw the fair
and fruitful island of Rhodes

                "springing up from the bottom,
     Capable of feeding many men, and suitable for flocks;

and at the nod of Zeus,

             "The island sprang from the watery
     Sea; and the genial Father of penetrating beams,
     Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it."

The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should
be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what
currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still
being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still
empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages
before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the
graceful, gentle robber!

Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, or Sparkling Water,
emptying in on our left, and heard the Falls of Amoskeag above. Large
quantities of lumber, as we read in the Gazetteer, were still annually
floated down the Piscataquoag to the Merrimack, and there are many fine
mill privileges on it. Just above the mouth of this river we passed
the artificial falls where the canals of the Manchester Manufacturing
Company discharge themselves into the Merrimack. They are striking
enough to have a name, and, with the scenery of a Bashpish, would be
visited from far and near. The water falls thirty or forty feet over
seven or eight steep and narrow terraces of stone, probably to break its
force, and is converted into one mass of foam. This canal-water did not
seem to be the worse for the wear, but foamed and fumed as purely, and
boomed as savagely and impressively, as a mountain torrent, and, though
it came from under a factory, we saw a rainbow here. These are now the
Amoskeag Falls, removed a mile down-stream. But we did not tarry
to examine them minutely, making haste to get past the village here
collected, and out of hearing of the hammer which was laying the
foundation of another Lowell on the banks. At the time of our voyage
Manchester was a village of about two thousand inhabitants, where we
landed for a moment to get some cool water, and where an inhabitant told
us that he was accustomed to go across the river into Goffstown for
his water. But now, as I have been told, and indeed have witnessed, it
contains fourteen thousand inhabitants. From a hill on the road between
Goffstown and Hooksett, four miles distant, I have seen a thunder-shower
pass over, and the sun break out and shine on a city there, where I had
landed nine years before in the fields; and there was waving the flag
of its Museum, where "the only perfect skeleton of a Greenland or river
whale in the United States" was to be seen, and I also read in its
directory of a "Manchester Athenaeum and Gallery of the Fine Arts."

According to the Gazetteer, the descent of Amoskeag Falls, which are the
most considerable in the Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in half a
mile. We locked ourselves through here with much ado, surmounting the
successive watery steps of this river's staircase in the midst of a
crowd of villagers, jumping into the canal to their amusement, to save
our boat from upsetting, and consuming much river-water in our service.
Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is said to mean "great fishing-place." It was
hereabouts that the Sachem Wannalancet resided. Tradition says that his
tribe, when at war with the Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the
cavities of the rocks in the upper part of these falls. The Indians, who
hid their provisions in these holes, and affirmed "that God had cut them
out for that purpose," understood their origin and use better than the
Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the last century, speaking
of these very holes, declare that "they seem plainly to be artificial."
Similar "pot-holes" may be seen at the Stone Flume on this river, on the
Ottaway, at Bellows' Falls on the Connecticut, and in the limestone rock
at Shelburne Falls on Deerfield River in Massachusetts, and more or less
generally about all falls. Perhaps the most remarkable curiosity of this
kind in New England is the well-known Basin on the Pemigewasset, one
of the head-waters of this river, twenty by thirty feet in extent and
proportionably deep, with a smooth and rounded brim, and filled with
a cold, pellucid, and greenish water. At Amoskeag the river is divided
into many separate torrents and trickling rills by the rocks, and its
volume is so much reduced by the drain of the canals that it does not
fill its bed. There are many pot-holes here on a rocky island which the
river washes over in high freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where I first
observed them, they are from one foot to four or five in diameter,
and as many in depth, perfectly round and regular, with smooth and
gracefully curved brims, like goblets. Their origin is apparent to
the most careless observer. A stone which the current has washed down,
meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a pivot where it lies, gradually
sinking in the course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, and
in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones, which are drawn into
this trap and doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, doing
Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until they either wear out, or
wear through the bottom of their prison, or else are released by some
revolution of nature. There lie the stones of various sizes, from a
pebble to a foot or two in diameter, some of which have rested from
their labor only since the spring, and some higher up which have lain
still and dry for ages,—we noticed some here at least sixteen
feet above the present level of the water,—while others are still
revolving, and enjoy no respite at any season. In one instance, at
Shelburne Falls, they have worn quite through the rock, so that a
portion of the river leaks through in anticipation of the fall. Some of
these pot-holes at Amoskeag, in a very hard brown-stone, had an oblong,
cylindrical stone of the same material loosely fitting them. One, as
much as fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diameter, which was worn
quite through to the water, had a huge rock of the same material, smooth
but of irregular form, lodged in it. Everywhere there were the rudiments
or the wrecks of a dimple in the rock; the rocky shells of whirlpools.
As if by force of example and sympathy after so many lessons, the rocks,
the hardest material, had been endeavoring to whirl or flow into the
forms of the most fluid. The finest workers in stone are not copper or
steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their
leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Not only have some of these basins been forming for countless ages,
but others exist which must have been completed in a former geological
period. In deepening the Pawtucket Canal, in 1822, the workmen came to
ledges with pot-holes in them, where probably was once the bed of the
river, and there are some, we are told, in the town of Canaan in this
State, with the stones still in them, on the height of land between
the Merrimack and Connecticut, and nearly a thousand feet above these
rivers, proving that the mountains and the rivers have changed places.
There lie the stones which completed their revolutions perhaps before
thoughts began to revolve in the brain of man. The periods of Hindoo
and Chinese history, though they reach back to the time when the race
of mortals is confounded with the race of gods, are as nothing compared
with the periods which these stones have inscribed. That which commenced
a rock when time was young, shall conclude a pebble in the unequal
contest. With such expense of time and natural forces are our very
paving-stones produced. They teach us lessons, these dumb workers;
verily there are "sermons in stones, and books in the running streams."
In these very holes the Indians hid their provisions; but now there is
no bread, but only its old neighbor stones at the bottom. Who knows how
many races they have served thus? By as simple a law, some accidental
by-law, perchance, our system itself was made ready for its inhabitants.

These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human
vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which
may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate,
returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations
has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester
are on the trail of the Indian.

The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects no little dignity on
Nature herself; that from some particular hill the Roman once looked out
on the sea. She need not be ashamed of the vestiges of her children. How
gladly the antiquary informs us that their vessels penetrated into this
frith, or up that river of some remote isle! Their military monuments
still remain on the hills and under the sod of the valleys. The
oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every
quarter of the Old World, and but to-day, perchance, a new coin is
dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some "Judaea
Capta" with a woman mourning under a palm-tree, with silent argument and
demonstration confirms the pages of history.

   "Rome living was the world's sole ornament;
    And dead is now the world's sole monument.

       .        .        .       .       .

    With her own weight down pressed now she lies,
    And by her heaps her hugeness testifies."

If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction
of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the
temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the
enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to
seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape
and confirms some story which we had read. As Fuller said, commenting
on the zeal of Camden, "A broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate
still surviving out of which the city is run out." When Solon endeavored
to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the Athenians, and not
to the Megareans, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed that the
inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the same side
with the Athenians, but the Megareans to the opposite side. There they
were to be interrogated.

Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature; they
can offer no reason or "guess," but they exhibit the solemn and
incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause
the tombs to be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces the
reason and the understanding at the same time. Of such sort is always
the only pertinent question and the only satisfactory reply.

Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as
useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens, and a soil
which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature.
What if we cannot read Rome, or Greece, Etruria, or Carthage, or Egypt,
or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare? The lichen on the rocks is
a rude and simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature suspended
there. Still hangs her wrinkled trophy. And here too the poet's eye may
still detect the brazen nails which fastened Time's inscriptions, and
if he has the gift, decipher them by this clew. The walls that fence our
fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are
all built of ruins. Here may be heard the din of rivers, and ancient
winds which have long since lost their names sough through our
woods;—the first faint sounds of spring, older than the summer of
Athenian glory, the titmouse lisping in the wood, the jay's scream, and
blue-bird's warble, and the hum of

     "bees that fly
     About the laughing blossoms of sallowy."

Here is the gray dawn for antiquity, and our to-morrow's future should
be at least paulo-post to theirs which we have put behind us. There
are the red-maple and birchen leaves, old runes which are not yet
deciphered; catkins, pine-cones, vines, oak-leaves, and acorns; the
very things themselves, and not their forms in stone,—so much the more
ancient and venerable. And even to the current summer there has come
down tradition of a hoary-headed master of all art, who once filled
every field and grove with statues and god-like architecture, of every
design which Greece has lately copied; whose ruins are now mingled with
the dust, and not one block remains upon another. The century sun and
unwearied rain have wasted them, till not one fragment from that quarry
now exists; and poets perchance will feign that gods sent down the
material from heaven.

What though the traveller tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick
or idle, that we must sacrifice our America and to-day to some man's
ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if
their skeletons remain, still more desert sand, and at length a wave of
the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches
to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the
columns of a larger and purer temple.

     This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome
     Shelters the measuring art and measurer's home.
     Behold these flowers, let us be up with time,
     Not dreaming of three thousand years ago,
     Erect ourselves and let those columns lie,
     Not stoop to raise a foil against the sky.
     Where is the spirit of that time but in
     This present day, perchance the present line?
     Three thousand years ago are not agone,
     They are still lingering in this summer morn,
     And Memnon's Mother sprightly greets us now,
     Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow.
     If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain,
     To enjoy our opportunities they remain.

In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Pasaconaway, who was seen by
Gookin "at Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and twenty years
old." He was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained his people
from going to war with the English. They believed "that he could make
water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a
flaming man; that in winter he could raise a green leaf out of the ashes
of a dry one, and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one,
and many similar miracles." In 1660, according to Gookin, at a great
feast and dance, he made his farewell speech to his people, in which he
said, that as he was not likely to see them met together again, he would
leave them this word of advice, to take heed how they quarrelled with
their English neighbors, for though they might do them much mischief at
first, it would prove the means of their own destruction. He himself, he
said, had been as much an enemy to the English at their first coming as
any, and had used all his arts to destroy them, or at least to prevent
their settlement, but could by no means effect it. Gookin thought that
he "possibly might have such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon
Balaam, who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said `Surely, there is no enchantment
against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel.'" His son
Wannalancet carefully followed his advice, and when Philip's War
broke out, he withdrew his followers to Penacook, now Concord in New
Hampshire, from the scene of the war. On his return afterwards, he
visited the minister of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the history of
that town, "wished to know whether Chelmsford had suffered much during
the war; and being informed that it had not, and that God should be
thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, `Me next.'"

Manchester was the residence of John Stark, a hero of two wars, and
survivor of a third, and at his death the last but one of the American
generals of the Revolution. He was born in the adjoining town of
Londonderry, then Nutfield, in 1728. As early as 1752, he was taken
prisoner by the Indians while hunting in the wilderness near Baker's
River; he performed notable service as a captain of rangers in the
French war; commanded a regiment of the New Hampshire militia at the
battle of Bunker Hill; and fought and won the battle of Bennington in
1777. He was past service in the last war, and died here in 1822, at the
age of 94. His monument stands upon the second bank of the river, about
a mile and a half above the falls, and commands a prospect several miles
up and down the Merrimack. It suggested how much more impressive in the
landscape is the tomb of a hero than the dwellings of the inglorious
living. Who is most dead,—a hero by whose monument you stand, or his
descendants of whom you have never heard?

The graves of Pasaconaway and Wannalancet are marked by no monument on
the bank of their native river.

Every town which we passed, if we may believe the Gazetteer, had been
the residence of some great man. But though we knocked at many doors,
and even made particular inquiries, we could not find that there were
any now living. Under the head of Litchfield we read:—

"The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life in this town." According to
another, "He was a classical scholar, a good lawyer, a wit, and a poet."
We saw his old gray house just below Great Nesenkeag Brook.—Under
the head of Merrimack: "Hon. Mathew Thornton, one of the signers of the
Declaration of American Independence, resided many years in this
town." His house too we saw from the river.—"Dr. Jonathan Gove, a
man distinguished for his urbanity, his talents and professional skill,
resided in this town [Goffstown]. He was one of the oldest practitioners
of medicine in the county. He was many years an active member of the
legislature."—"Hon. Robert Means, who died Jan. 24, 1823, at the age
of 80, was for a long period a resident in Amherst. He was a native of
Ireland. In 1764 he came to this country, where, by his industry
and application to business, he acquired a large property, and great
respect."—"William Stinson [one of the first settlers of Dunbarton],
born in Ireland, came to Londonderry with his father. He was much
respected and was a useful man. James Rogers was from Ireland, and
father to Major Robert Rogers. He was shot in the woods, being mistaken
for a bear."—"Rev. Matthew Clark, second minister of Londonderry, was
a native of Ireland, who had in early life been an officer in the army,
and distinguished himself in the defence of the city of Londonderry,
when besieged by the army of King James II. A. D. 1688-9. He afterwards
relinquished a military life for the clerical profession. He possessed
a strong mind, marked by a considerable degree of eccentricity. He died
Jan. 25, 1735, and was borne to the grave, at his particular request, by
his former companions in arms, of whom there were a considerable number
among the early settlers of this town; several of them had been made
free from taxes throughout the British dominions by King William, for
their bravery in that memorable siege."—Col. George Reid and Capt.
David M'Clary, also citizens of Londonderry, were "distinguished and
brave" officers.—"Major Andrew M'Clary, a native of this town [Epsom],
fell at the battle of Breed's Hill ."—Many of these heroes, like
the illustrious Roman, were ploughing when the news of the massacre at
Lexington arrived, and straightway left their ploughs in the furrow,
and repaired to the scene of action. Some miles from where we now were,
there once stood a guide-post on which were the words, "3 miles to
Squire MacGaw's."

But generally speaking, the land is now, at any rate, very barren of
men, and we doubt if there are as many hundreds as we read of. It may be
that we stood too near.

Uncannunuc Mountain in Goffstown was visible from Amoskeag, five or six
miles westward. It is the north-easternmost in the horizon, which we see
from our native town, but seen from there is too ethereally blue to be
the same which the like of us have ever climbed. Its name is said to
mean "The Two Breasts," there being two eminences some distance apart.
The highest, which is about fourteen hundred feet above the sea,
probably affords a more extensive view of the Merrimack valley and the
adjacent country than any other hill, though it is somewhat obstructed
by woods. Only a few short reaches of the river are visible, but you can
trace its course far down stream by the sandy tracts on its banks.

A little south of Uncannunuc, about sixty years ago, as the story goes,
an old woman who went out to gather pennyroyal, tript her foot in the
bail of a small brass kettle in the dead grass and bushes. Some say
that flints and charcoal and some traces of a camp were also found. This
kettle, holding about four quarts, is still preserved and used to dye
thread in. It is supposed to have belonged to some old French or Indian
hunter, who was killed in one of his hunting or scouting excursions, and
so never returned to look after his kettle.

But we were most interested to hear of the pennyroyal, it is soothing to
be reminded that wild nature produces anything ready for the use of
man. Men know that something is good. One says that it is yellow-dock,
another that it is bitter-sweet, another that it is slippery-elm bark,
burdock, catnip, calamint, elicampane, thoroughwort, or pennyroyal. A
man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his
medicine. There is no kind of herb, but somebody or other says that it
is good. I am very glad to hear it. It reminds me of the first chapter
of Genesis. But how should they know that it is good? That is the
mystery to me. I am always agreeably disappointed; it is incredible that
they should have found it out. Since all things are good, men fail at
last to distinguish which is the bane, and which the antidote. There are
sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff a cold and
starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices both always
in full blast. Yet you must take advice of the one school as if there
was no other. In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations
are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries
the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.
Consider the deference which is everywhere paid to a doctor's opinion.
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine.
Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this
case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the
credulity of men. Priests and physicians should never look one another
in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate
between them. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come
together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one's
profession is a satire on the other's, and either's success would be the
other's failure. It is wonderful that the physician should ever die,
and that the priest should ever live. Why is it that the priest is
never called to consult with the physician? Is it because men believe
practically that matter is independent of spirit. But what is quackery?
It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing
his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both
soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two souls.

After passing through the locks, we had poled ourselves through the
canal here, about half a mile in length, to the boatable part of the
river. Above Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake reaching a mile
or two without a bend. There were many canal-boats here bound up to
Hooksett, about eight miles, and as they were going up empty with a fair
wind, one boatman offered to take us in tow if we would wait. But when
we came alongside, we found that they meant to take us on board, since
otherwise we should clog their motions too much; but as our boat was too
heavy to be lifted aboard, we pursued our way up the stream, as before,
while the boatmen were at their dinner, and came to anchor at length
under some alders on the opposite shore, where we could take our lunch.
Though far on one side, every sound was wafted over to us from the
opposite bank, and from the harbor of the canal, and we could see
everything that passed. By and by came several canal-boats, at intervals
of a quarter of a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze, and
one by one disappeared round a point above. With their broad sails set,
they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze, like
one-winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by some mysterious
counter-current. It was a grand motion, so slow and stately, this
"standing out," as the phrase is, expressing the gradual and steady
progress of a vessel, as if it were by mere rectitude and disposition,
without shuffling. Their sails, which stood so still, were like chips
cast into the current of the air to show which way it set. At length the
boat which we had spoken came along, keeping the middle of the stream,
and when within speaking distance the steersman called out ironically
to say, that if we would come alongside now he would take us in tow;
but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in the shade till we had
finished our lunch, and when the last boat had disappeared round the
point with flapping sail, for the breeze had now sunk to a zephyr, with
our own sails set, and plying our oars, we shot rapidly up the stream
in pursuit, and as we glided close alongside, while they were vainly
invoking Aeolus to their aid, we returned their compliment by proposing,
if they would throw us a rope, to "take them in tow," to which these
Merrimack sailors had no suitable answer ready. Thus we gradually
overtook and passed each boat in succession until we had the river to
ourselves again.

Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and Goffstown.

——————-

While we float here, far from that tributary stream on whose banks our
Friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, like the stars, come out of
their horizon still; for there circulates a finer blood than Lavoisier
has discovered the laws of,—the blood, not of kindred merely, but of
kindness, whose pulse still beats at any distance and forever.

     True kindness is a pure divine affinity,
     Not founded upon human consanguinity.
     It is a spirit, not a blood relation,
     Superior to family and station.

After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious
behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the
wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness
long passed, and realize that there have been times when our Friends'
thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed
over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as
what we were, but as what we aspired to be. There has just reached
us, it may be, the nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be
forgotten, not to be remembered, and we shudder to think how it fell
on us cold, though in some true but tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off
these scores.

In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject of
conversation, though with a Friend, are commonly the most prosaic and
trivial of facts. The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to
discuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all runs to slander,
and our limits grow narrower as we advance. How is it that we are
impelled to treat our old Friends so ill when we obtain new ones? The
housekeeper says, I never had any new crockery in my life but I began to
break the old. I say, let us speak of mushrooms and forest trees rather.
Yet we can sometimes afford to remember them in private.

     Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,
     Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,
     As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
     But after manned him for her own strong-hold.

     On every side he open was as day,
     That you might see no lack of strength within,
     For walls and ports do only serve alway
     For a pretence to feebleness and sin.

     Say not that Cæsar was victorious,
     With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame,
     In other sense this youth was glorious,
     Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.

     No strength went out to get him victory,
     When all was income of its own accord;
     For where he went none other was to see,
     But all were parcel of their noble lord.

     He forayed like the subtile haze of summer,
     That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes,
     And revolutions works without a murmur,
     Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.

     So was I taken unawares by this,
     I quite forgot my homage to confess;
     Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,
     I might have loved him had I loved him less.

     Each moment as we nearer drew to each,
     A stern respect withheld us farther yet,
     So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,
     And less acquainted than when first we met.

     We two were one while we did sympathize,
     So could we not the simplest bargain drive;
     And what avails it now that we are wise,
     If absence doth this doubleness contrive?

     Eternity may not the chance repeat,
     But I must tread my single way alone,
     In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
     And know that bliss irrevocably gone.

     The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
     For elegy has other subject none;
     Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
     Knell of departure from that other one.

     Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;
     With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields;
     Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
     Than all the joys other occasion yields.

                    —————-

     Is't then too late the damage to repair?
     Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
     The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
     But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.

     If I but love that virtue which he is,
     Though it be scented in the morning air,
     Still shall we be truest acquaintances,
     Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered
like heat lightning in past summers. Fair and flitting like a summer
cloud;—there is always some vapor in the air, no matter how long the
drought; there are even April showers. Surely from time to time, for its
vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere. It takes place,
like vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a law, but
always without permanent form, though ancient and familiar as the sun
and moon, and as sure to come again. The heart is forever inexperienced.
They silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never quite
deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy clouds in the calmest and
clearest days. The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding
the mariner in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be encountered,
equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere he may sail before the constant
trades. But who would not sail through mutiny and storm, even over
Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some
continent man? The imagination still clings to the faintest tradition of

THE ATLANTIDES.

     The smothered streams of love, which flow
     More bright than Phlegethon, more low,
     Island us ever, like the sea,
     In an Atlantic mystery.
     Our fabled shores none ever reach,
     No mariner has found our beach,
     Scarcely our mirage now is seen,
     And neighboring waves with floating green,
     Yet still the oldest charts contain
     Some dotted outline of our main;
     In ancient times midsummer days
     Unto the western islands' gaze,
     To Teneriffe and the Azores,
     Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores.

     But sink not yet, ye desolate isles,
     Anon your coast with commerce smiles,
     And richer freights ye'll furnish far
     Than Africa or Malabar.
     Be fair, be fertile evermore,
     Ye rumored but untrodden shore,
     Princes and monarchs will contend
     Who first unto your land shall send,
     And pawn the jewels of the crown
     To call your distant soil their own.

Columbus has sailed westward of these isles by the mariner's compass,
but neither he nor his successors have found them. We are no nearer than
Plato was. The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this New World
always haunts the outskirts of his time, and walks through the densest
crowd uninterrupted, and as it were in a straight line.

      Sea and land are but his neighbors,
      And companions in his labors,
      Who on the ocean's verge and firm land's end
      Doth long and truly seek his Friend.
      Many men dwell far inland,
      But he alone sits on the strand.
      Whether he ponders men or books,
      Always still he seaward looks,
      Marine news he ever reads,
      And the slightest glances heeds,
      Feels the sea breeze on his cheek,
      At each word the landsmen speak,
      In every companion's eye
      A sailing vessel doth descry;
      In the ocean's sullen roar
      From some distant port he hears,
      Of wrecks upon a distant shore,
      And the ventures of past years.

Who does not walk on the plain as amid the columns of Tadmore of the
desert? There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has
established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains its
maxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor
that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a
footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery
and the monuments of inhabitants.

However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but
as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and
more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance,
and their actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to lay the chief
stress on likeness and not on difference, and in foreign bodies we admit
that there are many degrees of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold
above it.

Mencius says: "If one loses a fowl or a dog, he knows well how to seek
them again; if one loses the sentiments of his heart, he does not know
how to seek them again. . . . The duties of practical philosophy consist
only in seeking after those sentiments of the heart which we have lost;
that is all."

One or two persons come to my house from time to time, there being
proposed to them the faint possibility of intercourse. They are as full
as they are silent, and wait for my plectrum to stir the strings of
their lyre. If they could ever come to the length of a sentence, or hear
one, on that ground they are dreaming of! They speak faintly, and do not
obtrude themselves. They have heard some news, which none, not even they
themselves, can impart. It is a wealth they can bear about them which
can be expended in various ways. What came they out to seek?

No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and indeed no
thought is more familiar to their aspirations. All men are dreaming of
it, and its drama, which is always a tragedy, is enacted daily. It is
the secret of the universe. You may thread the town, you may wander the
country, and none shall ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere busy
about it, and the idea of what is possible in this respect affects
our behavior toward all new men and women, and a great many old ones.
Nevertheless, I can remember only two or three essays on this subject
in all literature. No wonder that the Mythology, and Arabian Nights, and
Shakespeare, and Scott's novels entertain us,—we are poets and fablers
and dramatists and novelists ourselves. We are continually acting a part
in a more interesting drama than any written. We are dreaming that our
Friends are our Friends , and that we are our Friends' Friends. Our
actual Friends are but distant relations of those to whom we are
pledged. We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our
lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually
rise. One goes forth prepared to say, "Sweet Friends!" and the
salutation is, "Damn your eyes!" But never mind; faint heart never won
true Friend. O my Friend, may it come to pass once, that when you are my
Friend I may be yours.

Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if there are no hours
given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties
and relations? Friendship is first, Friendship last. But it is equally
impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal.
When they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them company. How
often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that
we may go and meet their ideal cousins. I would that I were worthy to be
any man's Friend.

What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound
or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly.
I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of
insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often
transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not
observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man. If
one abates a little the price of his wood, or gives a neighbor his
vote at town-meeting, or a barrel of apples, or lends him his wagon
frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance of Friendship. Nor do the
farmers' wives lead lives consecrated to Friendship. I do not see the
pair of farmer Friends of either sex prepared to stand against the
world. There are only two or three couples in history. To say that a man
is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your
enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling
advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need,
by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel; but he who foresees
such advantages in this relation proves himself blind to its real
advantage, or indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation itself. Such
services are particular and menial, compared with the perpetual and
all-embracing service which it is. Even the utmost good-will and harmony
and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do
not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish
for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies,—neighbors are kind enough
for that,—but to do the like office to our spirits. For this few are
rich enough, however well disposed they may be. For the most part we
stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races
or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals. To his
Friend a man's peculiar character appears in every feature and in every
action, and it is thus drawn out and improved by him.

Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.

     "He that hath love and judgment too,
     Sees more than any other doe."

It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him
a saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the
magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with
man.

And it is well said by another poet,

     "Why love among the virtues is not known,
     Is that love is them all contract in one."

All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist,
the statesman, and the housekeeper are unconsciously amended in the
intercourse of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the
compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate
them in us. It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another
to hear. How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and stone? If we
dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to
speak truth. Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth, while
traders prize a cheap honesty, and neighbors and acquaintance a cheap
civility. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are
dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect
nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.
We ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely,
nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not even hear this
prayer. He says practically, I will be content if you treat me as "no
better than I should be," as deceitful, mean, dishonest, and selfish.
For the most part, we are contented so to deal and to be dealt with, and
we do not think that for the mass of men there is any truer and nobler
relation possible. A man may have good neighbors, so called, and
acquaintances, and even companions, wife, parents, brothers, sisters,
children, who meet himself and one another on this ground only. The
State does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it
succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues
practise; and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly
called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

But sometimes we are said to love another, that is, to stand in a true
relation to him, so that we give the best to, and receive the best
from, him. Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and in
proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives
are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages
of affection in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such as no
prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our earthly life, and
anticipate Heaven for us. What is this Love that may come right into
the middle of a prosaic Goffstown day, equal to any of the gods? that
discovers a new world, fair and fresh and eternal, occupying the
place of the old one, when to the common eye a dust has settled on the
universe? which world cannot else be reached, and does not exist. What
other words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated
than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever
uttered. They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music,
they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other
words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should
not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear them at
all times.

The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of
Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends.
They mean associates and confidants merely. "Know that the contrariety
of foe and Friend proceeds from God." Friendship takes place between
those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural
and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail. Even
speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do with it; but it follows
after silence, as the buds in the graft do not put forth into leaves
till long after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the parties
have no part to act. We are all Mussulmen and fatalists in this respect.
Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they must say or do something
kind whenever they meet; they must never be cold. But they who are
Friends do not do what they think they must, but what they must. Even
their Friendship is to some extent but a sublime phenomenon to them.

The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such
terms as these.

"I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,—I have a right. I love
thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as
something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I
think of you! You are purely good, —you are infinitely good. I can
trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an
opportunity to live."

"You are the fact in a fiction,—you are the truth more strange and
admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I alone will
never stand in your way."

"This is what I would like,—to be as intimate with you as our spirits
are intimate,—respecting you as I respect my ideal. Never to profane
one another by word or action, even by a thought. Between us, if
necessary, let there be no acquaintance."

"I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from me?"

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept
and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each
other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

Though the poet says, "'Tis the pre-eminence of Friendship to impute
excellence," yet we can never praise our Friend, nor esteem him
praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can please us by any behavior,
or ever treat us well enough. That kindness which has so good a
reputation elsewhere can least of all consist with this relation, and
no such affront can be offered to a Friend, as a conscious good-will, a
friendliness which is not a necessity of the Friend's nature.

The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to one another, by
constant constitutional differences, and are most commonly and surely
the complements of each other. How natural and easy it is for man to
secure the attention of woman to what interests himself. Men and women
of equal culture, thrown together, are sure to be of a certain value
to one another, more than men to men. There exists already a natural
disinterestedness and liberality in such society, and I think that
any man will more confidently carry his favorite books to read to some
circle of intelligent women, than to one of his own sex. The visit of
man to man is wont to be an interruption, but the sexes naturally expect
one another. Yet Friendship is no respecter of sex; and perhaps it is
more rare between the sexes than between two of the same sex.

Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect equality. It cannot
well spare any outward sign of equal obligation and advantage. The
nobleman can never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the king among
his subjects. Not that the parties to it are in all respects equal, but
they are equal in all that respects or affects their Friendship. The
one's love is exactly balanced and represented by the other's. Persons
are only the vessels which contain the nectar, and the hydrostatic
paradox is the symbol of love's law. It finds its level and rises to
its fountain-head in all breasts, and its slenderest column balances the
ocean.

     "And love as well the shepherd can
     As can the mighty nobleman."

The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than the other.
A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's. Confucius said, "Never
contract Friendship with a man who is not better than thyself." It is
the merit and preservation of Friendship, that it takes place on a level
higher than the actual characters of the parties would seem to warrant.
The rays of light come to us in such a curve that every man whom we meet
appears to be taller than he actually is. Such foundation has civility.
My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought. I
always assign to him a nobler employment in my absence than I ever find
him engaged in; and I imagine that the hours which he devotes to me were
snatched from a higher society. The sorest insult which I ever received
from a Friend was, when he behaved with the license which only long
and cheap acquaintance allows to one's faults, in my presence, without
shame, and still addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, lest thy
Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an
obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love. There are times when we
have had enough even of our Friends, when we begin inevitably to profane
one another, and must withdraw religiously into solitude and silence,
the better to prepare ourselves for a loftier intimacy. Silence is the
ambrosial night in the intercourse of Friends, in which their sincerity
is recruited and takes deeper root.

Friendship is never established as an understood relation. Do you demand
that I be less your Friend that you may know it? Yet what right have
I to think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for me? It is a
miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest
imagination and the rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent
behavior,—"I will be so related to thee as thou canst imagine; even so
thou mayest believe. I will spend truth,—all my wealth on thee,"—and
the Friend responds silently through his nature and life, and treats
his Friend with the same divine courtesy. He knows us literally through
thick and thin. He never asks for a sign of love, but can distinguish
it by the features which it naturally wears. We never need to stand
upon ceremony with him with regard to his visits. Wait not till I invite
thee, but observe that I am glad to see thee when thou comest. It would
be paying too dear for thy visit to ask for it. Where my Friend lives
there are all riches and every attraction, and no slight obstacle can
keep me from him. Let me never have to tell thee what I have not to
tell. Let our intercourse be wholly above ourselves, and draw us up to
it.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an
intelligence above language. One imagines endless conversations with
his Friend, in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be spoken
without hesitancy or end; but the experience is commonly far otherwise.
Acquaintances may come and go, and have a word ready for every occasion;
but what puny word shall he utter whose very breath is thought and
meaning? Suppose you go to bid farewell to your Friend who is setting
out on a journey; what other outward sign do you know than to shake
his hand? Have you any palaver ready for him then? any box of salve
to commit to his pocket? any particular message to send by him? any
statement which you had forgotten to make?—as if you could forget
anything.—No, it is much that you take his hand and say Farewell; that
you could easily omit; so far custom has prevailed. It is even painful,
if he is to go, that he should linger so long. If he must go, let him
go quickly. Have you any last words? Alas, it is only the word of words,
which you have so long sought and found not; you have not a first word
yet. There are few even whom I should venture to call earnestly by
their most proper names. A name pronounced is the recognition of the
individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he
can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. Yet reserve is the
freedom and abandonment of lovers. It is the reserve of what is hostile
or indifferent in their natures, to give place to what is kindred and
harmonious.

The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it
is durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only
with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain
be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for Friendship that he is able to
do without that which is cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is as
wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance
of their love, and know no other law nor kindness. It is not extravagant
and insane, but what it says is something established henceforth, and
will bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is better and
fairer news, and no time will ever shame it, or prove it false. This is
a plant which thrives best in a temperate zone, where summer and winter
alternate with one another. The Friend is a necessarius, and meets his
Friend on homely ground; not on carpets and cushions, but on the ground
and on rocks they will sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws.
They will meet without any outcry, and part without loud sorrow. Their
relation implies such qualities as the warrior prizes; for it takes a
valor to open the hearts of men as well as the gates of castles. It
is not an idle sympathy and mutual consolation merely, but a heroic
sympathy of aspiration and endeavor.

     "When manhood shall be matched so
       That fear can take no place,
     Then weary works make warriors
       Each other to embrace."

The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry the fur-trader, as
described in the latter's "Adventures," so almost bare and leafless,
yet not blossomless nor fruitless, is remembered with satisfaction and
security. The stern, imperturbable warrior, after fasting, solitude, and
mortification of body, comes to the white man's lodge, and affirms
that he is the white brother whom he saw in his dream, and adopts him
henceforth. He buries the hatchet as it regards his friend, and they
hunt and feast and make maple-sugar together. "Metals unite from
fluxility; birds and beasts from motives of convenience; fools from fear
and stupidity; and just men at sight." If Wawatam would taste the "white
man's milk" with his tribe, or take his bowl of human broth made of the
trader's fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place of safety for his
Friend, whom he has rescued from a similar fate. At length, after a
long winter of undisturbed and happy intercourse in the family of the
chieftain in the wilderness, hunting and fishing, they return in the
spring to Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs; and it becomes
necessary for Wawatam to take leave of his Friend at the Isle aux
Outardes, when the latter, to avoid his enemies, proceeded to the Sault
de Sainte Marie, supposing that they were to be separated for a short
time only. "We now exchanged farewells," says Henry, "with an emotion
entirely reciprocal. I did not quit the lodge without the most grateful
sense of the many acts of goodness which I had experienced in it, nor
without the sincerest respect for the virtues which I had witnessed
among its members. All the family accompanied me to the beach; and the
canoe had no sooner put off than Wawatam commenced an address to the
Kichi Manito, beseeching him to take care of me, his brother, till we
should next meet. We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow
of our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had ceased to offer up his
prayers." We never hear of him again.

Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it has not much human blood in
it, but consists with a certain disregard for men and their erections,
the Christian duties and humanities, while it purifies the air like
electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy in the relation of two
more than usually innocent and true to their highest instincts. We may
call it an essentially heathenish intercourse, free and irresponsible in
its nature, and practising all the virtues gratuitously. It is not the
highest sympathy merely, but a pure and lofty society, a fragmentary and
godlike intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at intervals, which,
remembering itself, does not hesitate to disregard the humbler rights
and duties of humanity. It requires immaculate and godlike qualities
full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension and anticipation of
the remotest future. We love nothing which is merely good and not fair,
if such a thing is possible. Nature puts some kind of blossom before
every fruit, not simply a calyx behind it. When the Friend comes out of
his heathenism and superstition, and breaks his idols, being converted
by the precepts of a newer testament; when he forgets his mythology, and
treats his Friend like a Christian, or as he can afford; then Friendship
ceases to be Friendship, and becomes charity; that principle which
established the almshouse is now beginning with its charity at home, and
establishing an almshouse and pauper relations there.

As for the number which this society admits, it is at any rate to be
begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we know, and whether the
world will ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms,

     "There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,"

remains to be proved;

     "And certaine he is well begone
     Among a thousand that findeth one."

We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any while we are conscious
that another is more deserving of our love. Yet Friendship does not
stand for numbers; the Friend does not count his Friends on his fingers;
they are not numerable. The more there are included by this bond, if
they are indeed included, the rarer and diviner the quality of the love
that binds them. I am ready to believe that as private and intimate a
relation may exist by which three are embraced, as between two. Indeed,
we cannot have too many friends; the virtue which we appreciate we to
some extent appropriate, so that thus we are made at last more fit
for every relation of life. A base Friendship is of a narrowing
and exclusive tendency, but a noble one is not exclusive; its very
superfluity and dispersed love is the humanity which sweetens society,
and sympathizes with foreign nations; for though its foundations are
private, it is, in effect, a public affair and a public advantage,
and the Friend, more than the father of a family, deserves well of the
state.

The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a delicate
plant, though a native. The least unworthiness, even if it be unknown to
one's self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know that those faults which
he observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There is no rule more
invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we
suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have so much
and such of you, my Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable,
none disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true and
lasting Friendship.

I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do not appreciate
their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they
expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered
or did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be that your
silence was the finest thing of the two. There are some things which
a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the
highest communications we only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations
are not simply kept silent about, but buried under a positive depth
of silence never to be revealed. It may be that we are not even yet
acquainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is
misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Then
there can never be an explanation. What avails it that another loves
you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse. What sort of
companions are they who are presuming always that their silence is more
expressive than yours? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and unjust, to
conduct as if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not your Friend
always equal ground of complaint? No doubt my Friends sometimes speak to
me in vain, but they do not know what things I hear which they are not
aware that they have spoken. I know that I have frequently disappointed
them by not giving them words when they expected them, or such as they
expected. Whenever I see my Friend I speak to him; but the expecter, the
man with the ears, is not he. They will complain too that you are hard.
O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side outwards, when next I weep
I will let you know. They ask for words and deeds, when a true relation
is word and deed. If they know not of these things, how can they be
informed? We often forbear to confess our feelings, not from pride, but
for fear that we could not continue to love the one who required us to
give such proof of our affection.

I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelligent mind,
interested in her own culture, and earnest to enjoy the highest possible
advantages, and I meet her with pleasure as a natural person who not a
little provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated in turn by myself. Yet
our acquaintance plainly does not attain to that degree of confidence
and sentiment which women, which all, in fact, covet. I am glad to help
her, as I am helped by her; I like very well to know her with a sort of
stranger's privilege, and hesitate to visit her often, like her other
Friends. My nature pauses here, I do not well know why. Perhaps she does
not make the highest demand on me, a religious demand. Some, with whose
prejudices or peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet inspire me with
confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as a religious
heathen at least,—a good Greek. I, too, have principles as well
founded as their own. If this person could conceive that, without
wilfulness, I associate with her as far as our destinies are coincident,
as far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such intercourse, it
would be a grateful assurance to me. I feel as if I appeared careless,
indifferent, and without principle to her, not expecting more, and yet
not content with less. If she could know that I make an infinite demand
on myself, as well as on all others, she would see that this true though
incomplete intercourse, is infinitely better than a more unreserved
but falsely grounded one, without the principle of growth in it. For a
companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own
genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant. It is suicide, and
corrupts good manners to welcome any less than this. I value and trust
those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If
you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and
farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.

     My love must be as free
        As is the eagle's wing,
     Hovering o'er land and sea
        And everything.

     I must not dim my eye
        In thy saloon,
     I must not leave my sky
        And nightly moon.

     Be not the fowler's net
        Which stays my flight,
     And craftily is set
        T'allure the sight.

     But be the favoring gale
        That bears me on,
     And still doth fill my sail
        When thou art gone.

     I cannot leave my sky
        For thy caprice,
     True love would soar as high
        As heaven is.

     The eagle would not brook
        Her mate thus won,
     Who trained his eye to look
        Beneath the sun.

Few things are more difficult than to help a Friend in matters which do
not require the aid of Friendship, but only a cheap and trivial service,
if your Friendship wants the basis of a thorough practical acquaintance.
I stand in the friendliest relation, on social and spiritual grounds, to
one who does not perceive what practical skill I have, but when he seeks
my assistance in such matters, is wholly ignorant of that one with whom
he deals; does not use my skill, which in such matters is much greater
than his, but only my hands. I know another, who, on the contrary, is
remarkable for his discrimination in this respect; who knows how to make
use of the talents of others when he does not possess the same; knows
when not to look after or oversee, and stops short at his man. It is a
rare pleasure to serve him, which all laborers know. I am not a
little pained by the other kind of treatment. It is as if, after the
friendliest and most ennobling intercourse, your Friend should use
you as a hammer, and drive a nail with your head, all in good faith;
notwithstanding that you are a tolerable carpenter, as well as his good
Friend, and would use a hammer cheerfully in his service. This want
of perception is a defect which all the virtues of the heart cannot
supply:—

     The Good how can we trust?
     Only the Wise are just.
     The Good we use,
     The Wise we cannot choose.
     These there are none above;
     The Good they know and love,
     But are not known again
     By those of lesser ken.
     They do not charm us with their eyes,
     But they transfix with their advice;
     No partial sympathy they feel,
     With private woe or private weal,
     But with the universe joy and sigh,
     Whose knowledge is their sympathy.

Confucius said: "To contract ties of Friendship with any one, is to
contract Friendship with his virtue. There ought not to be any other
motive in Friendship." But men wish us to contract Friendship with their
vice also. I have a Friend who wishes me to see that to be right which I
know to be wrong. But if Friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is
to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive and
inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True Friendship can afford
true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. A want
of discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can see my Friend's
virtues more distinctly than another's, his faults too are made more
conspicuous by contrast. We have not so good a right to hate any as
our Friend. Faults are not the less faults because they are invariably
balanced by corresponding virtues, and for a fault there is no excuse,
though it may appear greater than it is in many ways. I have never known
one who could bear criticism, who could not be flattered, who would not
bribe his judge, or was content that the truth should be loved always
better than himself.

If two travellers would go their way harmoniously together, the one must
take as true and just a view of things as the other, else their path
will not be strewn with roses. Yet you can travel profitably and
pleasantly even with a blind man, if he practises common courtesy, and
when you converse about the scenery will remember that he is blind but
that you can see; and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is
probably quickened by his want of sight. Otherwise you will not long
keep company. A blind man, and a man in whose eyes there was no defect,
were walking together, when they came to the edge of a precipice. "Take
care! my friend," said the latter, "here is a steep precipice; go no
farther this way."—"I know better," said the other, and stepped off.

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We
may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is
too well grounded to be uttered. There is not so good an understanding
between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the
other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
The constitutional differences which always exist, and are obstacles
to a perfect Friendship, are forever a forbidden theme to the lips of
Friends. They advise by their whole behavior. Nothing can reconcile them
but love. They are fatally late when they undertake to explain and treat
with one another like foes. Who will take an apology for a Friend? They
must apologize like dew and frost, which are off again with the sun,
and which all men know in their hearts to be beneficent. The necessity
itself for explanation,—what explanation will atone for that?

True love does not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mutual
acquaintances can explain away, but, alas, however slight the apparent
cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, which can
never be set aside. Its quarrel, if there is any, is ever recurring,
notwithstanding the beams of affection which invariably come to gild its
tears; as the rainbow, however beautiful and unerring a sign, does not
promise fair weather forever, but only for a season. I have known two
or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never known advice to be of
use but in trivial and transient matters. One may know what another does
not, but the utmost kindness cannot impart what is requisite to make the
advice useful. We must accept or refuse one another as we are. I could
tame a hyena more easily than my Friend. He is a material which no tool
of mine will work. A naked savage will fell an oak with a firebrand, and
wear a hatchet out of a rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest
chip out of the character of my Friend, either to beautify or deform it.

The lover learns at last that there is no person quite transparent and
trustworthy, but every one has a devil in him that is capable of
any crime in the long run. Yet, as an Oriental philosopher has said,
"Although Friendship between good men is interrupted, their principles
remain unaltered. The stalk of the lotus may be broken, and the fibres
remain connected."

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill
without. There may be courtesy, there may be even temper, and wit, and
talent, and sparkling conversation, there may be good-will even,—and
yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine for exercise. Our life
without love is like coke and ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and
Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet if
there is no milk mingled with the wine at their entertainments, better
is the hospitality of Goths and Vandals.

My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my
flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature groping
yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart. Have not the fates
associated us in many ways? It says, in the Vishnu Purana: "Seven paces
together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and
I have dwelt together." Is it of no significance that we have so long
partaken of the same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the same
air summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same fruits
have been pleased to refresh us both, and we have never had a thought of
different fibre the one from the other!

      Nature doth have her dawn each day,
      But mine are far between;
      Content, I cry, for sooth to say,
      Mine brightest are I ween.

      For when my sun doth deign to rise,
      Though it be her noontide,
      Her fairest field in shadow lies,
      Nor can my light abide.

      Sometimes I bask me in her day,
      Conversing with my mate,
      But if we interchange one ray,
      Forthwith her heats abate.

      Through his discourse I climb and see,
      As from some eastern hill,
      A brighter morrow rise to me
      Than lieth in her skill.

      As 't were two summer days in one,
      Two Sundays come together,
      Our rays united make one sun,
      With fairest summer weather.

As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the
ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely
as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make
age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of nature
survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall
forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall
foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins
of temples. As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming
stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and
winter, I love thee, my Friend.

But all that can be said of Friendship, is like botany to flowers. How
can the understanding take account of its friendliness?

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They
will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to
defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be
incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of
other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the
graveyard.

This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends.

Also this other word of entreaty and advice to the large and respectable
nation of Acquaintances, beyond the mountains;—Greeting.

My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let us see that we have
the whole advantage of each other; we will be useful, at least, if not
admirable, to one another. I know that the mountains which separate us
are high, and covered with perpetual snow, but despair not. Improve the
serene winter weather to scale them. If need be, soften the rocks with
vinegar. For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready to receive you.
Nor shall I be slow on my side to penetrate to your Provence. Strike
then boldly at head or heart or any vital part. Depend upon it, the
timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear rough usage; and if it
should crack, there is plenty more where it came from. I am no piece of
crockery that cannot be jostled against my neighbor without danger of
being broken by the collision, and must needs ring false and jarringly
to the end of my days, when once I am cracked; but rather one of the
old-fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands at the head of
the table, and at another is a milking-stool, and at another a seat
for children, and finally goes down to its grave not unadorned with
honorable scars, and does not die till it is worn out. Nothing can
shock a brave man but dulness. Think how many rebuffs every man has
experienced in his day; perhaps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten
fresh-water clams, or worn one shirt for a week without washing. Indeed,
you cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that
which shocks you. Use me, then, for I am useful in my way, and stand
as one of many petitioners, from toadstool and henbane up to dahlia and
violet, supplicating to be put to my use, if by any means ye may find
me serviceable; whether for a medicated drink or bath, as balm and
lavender; or for fragrance, as verbena and geranium; or for sight, as
cactus; or for thoughts, as pansy. These humbler, at least, if not those
higher uses.

Ah, my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would not forget you. I can
well afford to welcome you. Let me subscribe myself Yours ever and
truly,—your much obliged servant. We have nothing to fear from our
foes; God keeps a standing army for that service; but we have no ally
against our Friends, those ruthless Vandals.

Once more to one and all,

     "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers."

     Let such pure hate still underprop
     Our love, that we may be
     Each other's conscience.
     And have our sympathy
     Mainly from thence.

     We'll one another treat like gods,
     And all the faith we have
     In virtue and in truth, bestow
     On either, and suspicion leave
     To gods below.

     Two solitary stars,—
     Unmeasured systems far
     Between us roll,
     But by our conscious light we are
     Determined to one pole.

     What need confound the sphere,—
     Love can afford to wait,
     For it no hour's too late
     That witnesseth one duty's end,
     Or to another doth beginning lend.

     It will subserve no use,
     More than the tints of flowers,
     Only the independent guest
     Frequents its bowers,
     Inherits its bequest.

     No speech though kind has it,
     But kinder silence doles
     Unto its mates,
     By night consoles,
     By day congratulates.

     What saith the tongue to tongue?
     What heareth ear of ear?
     By the decrees of fate
     From year to year,
     Does it communicate.

     Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns,—
     No trivial bridge of words,
     Or arch of boldest span,
     Can leap the moat that girds
     The sincere man.

     No show of bolts and bars
     Can keep the foeman out,
     Or 'scape his secret mine
     Who entered with the doubt
     That drew the line.

     No warder at the gate
     Can let the friendly in,
     But, like the sun, o'er all
     He will the castle win,
     And shine along the wall.

     There's nothing in the world I know
     That can escape from love,
     For every depth it goes below,
     And every height above.

     It waits as waits the sky,
     Until the clouds go by,
     Yet shines serenely on
     With an eternal day,
     Alike when they are gone,
     And when they stay.

     Implacable is Love,—
     Foes may be bought or teased
     From their hostile intent,
     But he goes unappeased
     Who is on kindness bent.

Having rowed five or six miles above Amoskeag before sunset, and reached
a pleasant part of the river, one of us landed to look for a farm-house,
where we might replenish our stores, while the other remained cruising
about the stream, and exploring the opposite shores to find a suitable
harbor for the night. In the mean while the canal-boats began to come
round a point in our rear, poling their way along close to the shore,
the breeze having quite died away. This time there was no offer of
assistance, but one of the boatmen only called out to say, as the truest
revenge for having been the losers in the race, that he had seen a
wood-duck, which we had scared up, sitting on a tall white-pine, half
a mile down stream; and he repeated the assertion several times, and
seemed really chagrined at the apparent suspicion with which this
information was received. But there sat the summer duck still,
undisturbed by us.

By and by the other voyageur returned from his inland expedition,
bringing one of the natives with him, a little flaxen-headed boy, with
some tradition, or small edition, of Robinson Crusoe in his head,
who had been charmed by the account of our adventures, and asked his
father's leave to join us. He examined, at first from the top of the
bank, our boat and furniture, with sparkling eyes, and wished himself
already his own man. He was a lively and interesting boy, and we should
have been glad to ship him; but Nathan was still his father's boy, and
had not come to years of discretion.

We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and water melons for
dessert. For this farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, cultivated
a large patch of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. He
hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and
kiln and melon-patch, warning us to step over the tight rope which
surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a
little bower at one corner, where it connected with the lock of a gun
ranging with the line, and where, as he informed us, he sometimes sat in
pleasant nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped high
over the line, and sympathized with our host's on the whole quite human,
if not humane, interest in the success of his experiment. That night
especially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the atmosphere,
and the priming was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who had his
dwelling between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there belonged,
and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement of distant political
organizations, and by his own tenacity, held a property in his melons,
and continued to plant. We suggested melon-seeds of new varieties and
fruit of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had come away up
here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable beneficence
of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well in one man's garden as
another's, and the sun lodges as kindly under his hillside,—when we
had imagined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful
souls whom we know.

We found a convenient harbor for our boat on the opposite or east shore,
still in Hooksett, at the mouth of a small brook which emptied into the
Merrimack, where it would be out of the way of any passing boat in the
night,—for they commonly hug the shore if bound up stream, either to
avoid the current, or touch the bottom with their poles,—and where it
would be accessible without stepping on the clayey shore. We set one of
our largest melons to cool in the still water among the alders at the
mouth of this creek, but when our tent was pitched and ready, and we
went to get it, it had floated out into the stream, and was nowhere to
be seen. So taking the boat in the twilight, we went in pursuit of this
property, and at length, after long straining of the eyes, its green
disk was discovered far down the river, gently floating seaward with
many twigs and leaves from the mountains that evening, and so perfectly
balanced that it had not keeled at all, and no water had run in at the
tap which had been taken out to hasten its cooling.

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the clear light of the western
sky fell on the eastern trees, and was reflected in the water, and we
enjoyed so serene an evening as left nothing to describe. For the most
part we think that there are few degrees of sublimity, and that the
highest is but little higher than that which we now behold; but we are
always deceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale and fade
away. We are grateful when we are reminded by interior evidence of the
permanence of universal laws; for our faith is but faintly remembered,
indeed, is not a remembered assurance, but a use and enjoyment of
knowledge. It is when we do not have to believe, but come into actual
contact with Truth, and are related to her in the most direct and
intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like
flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. In some happier
moment, when more sap flows in the withered stalk of our life, Syria
and India stretch away from our present as they do in history. All the
events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of
our private experiences. Suddenly and silently the eras which we call
history awake and glimmer in us, and there is room for Alexander and
Hannibal to march and conquer. In short, the history which we read
is only a fainter memory of events which have happened in our own
experience. Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

This world is but canvas to our imaginations. I see men with infinite
pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, what I, with at least
equal pains, would realize to my imagination,—its capacities; for
certainly there is a life of the mind above the wants of the body, and
independent of it. Often the body is warmed, but the imagination is
torpid; the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and shrunk. But
what avails all other wealth if this is wanting? "Imagination is the air
of mind," in which it lives and breathes. All things are as I am. Where
is the House of Change? The past is only so heroic as we see it. It
is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one
sense, the dim prospectus of our future field. Our circumstances answer
to our expectations and the demand of our natures. I have noticed
that if a man thinks that he needs a thousand dollars, and cannot be
convinced that he does not, he will commonly be found to have them; if
he lives and thinks a thousand dollars will be forthcoming, though it be
to buy shoe-strings with. A thousand mills will be just as slow to come
to one who finds it equally hard to convince himself that he needs them.

     Men are by birth equal in this, that given Themselves and
     their condition, they are even.

I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our
lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so difficult, if not
impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular
paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must
walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do
anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are
gone, and yet this suffices. The bird now sits just out of gunshot. I am
never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor. If debts are incurred,
why, debts are in the course of events cancelled, as it were by the same
law by which they were incurred. I heard that an engagement was entered
into between a certain youth and a maiden, and then I heard that it was
broken off, but I did not know the reason in either case. We are hedged
about, we think, by accident and circumstance, now we creep as in a
dream, and now again we run, as if there were a fate in it, and all
things thwarted or assisted. I cannot change my clothes but when I do,
and yet I do change them, and soil the new ones. It is wonderful that
this gets done, when some admirable deeds which I could mention do
not get done. Our particular lives seem of such fortune and confident
strength and durability as piers of solid rock thrown forward into the
tide of circumstance. When every other path would fail, with singular
and unerring confidence we advance on our particular course. What risks
we run! famine and fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of a
cruel fate,—and yet every man lives till he—dies. How did he manage
that? Is there no immediate danger? We wonder superfluously when we hear
of a somnambulist walking a plank securely,—we have walked a plank all
our lives up to this particular string-piece where we are. My life will
wait for nobody, but is being matured still without delay, while I go
about the streets, and chaffer with this man and that to secure it a
living. It is as indifferent and easy meanwhile as a poor man's dog, and
making acquaintance with its kind. It will cut its own channel like a
mountain stream, and by the longest ridge is not kept from the sea at
last. I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter,
elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. No matter
what imprudent haste in my career; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs are
bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage-train carried pontoons
for my convenience, and while from the heights I scan the tempting but
unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried over the
mountains piecemeal on the backs of mules and lamas, whose keel shall
plough its waves, and bear me to the Indies. Day would not dawn if it
were not for

THE INWARD MORNING

     Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
     Which outward nature wears,
     And in its fashion's hourly change
     It all things else repairs.

     In vain I look for change abroad,
     And can no difference find,
     Till some new ray of peace uncalled
     Illumes my inmost mind.

     What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
     And paints the heavens so gay,
     But yonder fast-abiding light
     With its unchanging ray?

     Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
     Upon a winter's morn,
     Where'er his silent beams intrude,
     The murky night is gone.

     How could the patient pine have known
       The morning breeze would come,
     Or humble flowers anticipate
       The insect's noonday hum,—

     Till the new light with morning cheer
       From far streamed through the aisles,
     And nimbly told the forest trees
       For many stretching miles?

     I've heard within my inmost soul
       Such cheerful morning news,
     In the horizon of my mind
       Have seen such orient hues,

     As in the twilight of the dawn,
       When the first birds awake,
     Are heard within some silent wood,
       Where they the small twigs break,

     Or in the eastern skies are seen,
       Before the sun appears,
     The harbingers of summer heats
        Which from afar he bears.

Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide away in thin volumes like
mist and smoke, till at length, some warm morning, perchance, I see a
sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, and I float as high
above the fields with it. I can recall to mind the stillest summer
hours, in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there is a
valor in that time the bare memory of which is armor that can laugh at
any blow of fortune. For our lifetime the strains of a harp are heard to
swell and die alternately, and death is but "the pause when the blast is
recollecting itself."

We lay awake a long while, listening to the murmurs of the brook, in
the angle formed by whose bank with the river our tent was pitched, and
there was a sort of human interest in its story, which ceases not in
freshet or in drought the livelong summer, and the profounder lapse of
the river was quite drowned by its din. But the rill, whose

     "Silver sands and pebbles sing
     Eternal ditties with the spring,"

is silenced by the first frosts of winter, while mightier streams, on
whose bottom the sun never shines, clogged with sunken rocks and the
ruins of forests, from whose surface comes up no murmur, are strangers
to the icy fetters which bind fast a thousand contributary rills.

I dreamed this night of an event which had occurred long before. It was
a difference with a Friend, which had not ceased to give me pain, though
I had no cause to blame myself. But in my dream ideal justice was at
length done me for his suspicions, and I received that compensation
which I had never obtained in my waking hours. I was unspeakably soothed
and rejoiced, even after I awoke, because in dreams we never deceive
ourselves, nor are deceived, and this seemed to have the authority of a
final judgment.

We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are divine, as well as some
waking thoughts. Donne sings of one

     "Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray."

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less
afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream,
than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is our
atonement, measures the degree by which this is separated from an actual
unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been
learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover
some waking consent thereto. If this meanness had not its foundation
in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and
acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others
awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever-wakeful
authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have
dreamed of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

     "And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
     A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
     And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
     Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
     Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
     No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes,
     As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne,
     Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes
     Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes."








THURSDAY.

     "He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
     The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
     Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
     And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

          .  .  .  .

     Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
     There the red morning touched him with its light.

          .  .  .  .

     Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
     His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
     Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
     By God's own light illumined and foreshowed."

Emerson.

THURSDAY.

When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint, deliberate, and ominous
sound of rain-drops on our cotton roof. The rain had pattered all night,
and now the whole country wept, the drops falling in the river, and on
the alders, and in the pastures, and instead of any bow in the heavens,
there was the trill of the hair-bird all the morning. The cheery faith
of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole woodland choir
beside. When we first stepped abroad, a flock of sheep, led by their
rams, came rushing down a ravine in our rear, with heedless haste and
unreserved frisking, as if unobserved by man, from some higher pasture
where they had spent the night, to taste the herbage by the river-side;
but when their leaders caught sight of our white tent through the mist,
struck with sudden astonishment, with their fore-feet braced, they
sustained the rushing torrent in their rear, and the whole flock stood
stock-still, endeavoring to solve the mystery in their sheepish brains.
At length, concluding that it boded no mischief to them, they spread
themselves out quietly over the field. We learned afterward that we had
pitched our tent on the very spot which a few summers before had been
occupied by a party of Penobscots. We could see rising before us through
the mist a dark conical eminence called Hooksett Pinnacle, a landmark to
boatmen, and also Uncannunuc Mountain, broad off on the west side of the
river.

This was the limit of our voyage, for a few hours more in the rain would
have taken us to the last of the locks, and our boat was too heavy to be
dragged around the long and numerous rapids which would occur. On foot,
however, we continued up along the bank, feeling our way with a stick
through the showery and foggy day, and climbing over the slippery logs
in our path with as much pleasure and buoyancy as in brightest sunshine;
scenting the fragrance of the pines and the wet clay under our feet,
and cheered by the tones of invisible waterfalls; with visions of
toadstools, and wandering frogs, and festoons of moss hanging from the
spruce-trees, and thrushes flitting silent under the leaves; our road
still holding together through that wettest of weather, like faith,
while we confidently followed its lead. We managed to keep our thoughts
dry, however, and only our clothes were wet. It was altogether a cloudy
and drizzling day, with occasional brightenings in the mist, when the
trill of the tree-sparrow seemed to be ushering in sunny hours.

"Nothing that naturally happens to man can hurt him, earthquakes and
thunder-storms not excepted," said a man of genius, who at this time
lived a few miles farther on our road. When compelled by a shower to
take shelter under a tree, we may improve that opportunity for a more
minute inspection of some of Nature's works. I have stood under a tree
in the woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the summer,
and yet employed myself happily and profitably there prying with
microscopic eye into the crevices of the bark or the leaves or the fungi
at my feet. "Riches are the attendants of the miser; and the heavens
rain plenteously upon the mountains." I can fancy that it would be a
luxury to stand up to one's chin in some retired swamp a whole summer
day, scenting the wild honeysuckle and bilberry blows, and lulled by the
minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes! A day passed in the society of those
Greek sages, such as described in the Banquet of Xenophon, would not be
comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry vines, and the fresh
Attic salt of the moss-beds. Say twelve hours of genial and familiar
converse with the leopard frog; the sun to rise behind alder and
dogwood, and climb buoyantly to his meridian of two hands' breadth,
and finally sink to rest behind some bold western hummock. To hear the
evening chant of the mosquito from a thousand green chapels, and
the bittern begin to boom from some concealed fort like a sunset
gun!—Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp
for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp,—are
they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?

At present, the drops come trickling down the stubble while we lie
drenched on a bed of withered wild oats, by the side of a bushy hill,
and the gathering in of the clouds, with the last rush and dying breath
of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the
country over, enhance the sense of inward comfort and sociableness.
The birds draw closer and are more familiar under the thick foliage,
seemingly composing new strains upon their roosts against the sunshine.
What were the amusements of the drawing-room and the library in
comparison, if we had them here? We should still sing as of old,—

     My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read,
     'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large
     Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,
     And will not mind to hit their proper targe.

     Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,
     Our Shakespeare's life were rich to live again,
     What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true,
     Nor Shakespeare's books, unless his books were men

     Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
     What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
     If juster battles are enacted now
     Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?

     Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn,
     If red or black the gods will favor most,
     Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn,
     Struggling to heave some rock against the host.

     Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour,
     For now I've business with this drop of dew,
     And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower,—
     I'll meet him shortly when the sky is blue.

     This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread
     Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use,
     A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
     And violets quite overtop my shoes.

     And now the cordial clouds have shut all in
     And gently swells the wind to say all's well
     The scattered drops are falling fast and thin,
     Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell.

     I am well drenched upon my bed of oats;
     But see that globe come rolling down its stem
     Now like a lonely planet there it floats,
     And now it sinks into my garment's hem.

     Drip drip the trees for all the country round,
     And richness rare distils from every bough,
     The wind alone it is makes every sound,
     Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.

     For shame the sun will never show himself,
     Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so,
     My dripping locks,—they would become an elf,
     Who in a beaded coat does gayly go.

The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises very abruptly to the
height of about two hundred feet, near the shore at Hooksett Falls. As
Uncannunuc Mountain is perhaps the best point from which to view the
valley of the Merrimack, so this hill affords the best view of the river
itself. I have sat upon its summit, a precipitous rock only a few rods
long, in fairer weather, when the sun was setting and filling the river
valley with a flood of light. You can see up and down the Merrimack
several miles each way. The broad and straight river, full of light and
life, with its sparkling and foaming falls, the islet which divides the
stream, the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly under your
feet, so near that you can converse with its inhabitants or throw a
stone into its yards, the woodland lake at its western base, and the
mountains in the north and northeast, make a scene of rare beauty and
completeness, which the traveller should take pains to behold.

We were hospitably entertained in Concord, New Hampshire, which we
persisted in calling New Concord, as we had been wont, to distinguish it
from our native town, from which we had been told that it was named and
in part originally settled. This would have been the proper place to
conclude our voyage, uniting Concord with Concord by these meandering
rivers, but our boat was moored some miles below its port.

The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now Concord, New Hampshire,
had been observed by explorers, and, according to the historian of
Haverhill, in the

"year 1726, considerable progress was made in the settlement, and a road
was cut through the wilderness from Haverhill to Penacook. In the fall
of 1727, the first family, that of Captain Ebenezer Eastman, moved
into the place. His team was driven by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a
Frenchman, and he is said to have been the first person who drove a team
through the wilderness. Soon after, says tradition, one Ayer, a lad of
18, drove a team consisting of ten yoke of oxen to Penacook, swam the
river, and ploughed a portion of the interval. He is supposed to have
been the first person who ploughed land in that place. After he had
completed his work, he started on his return at sunrise, drowned a
yoke of oxen while recrossing the river, and arrived at Haverhill about
midnight. The crank of the first saw-mill was manufactured in Haverhill,
and carried to Penacook on a horse."

But we found that the frontiers were not this way any longer. This
generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises. Go
where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.
We cannot now have the pleasure of erecting the last house; that was
long ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries have
literally been run to the South Sea, according to the old patents. But
the lives of men, though more extended laterally in their range, are
still as shallow as ever. Undoubtedly, as a Western orator said, "Men
generally live over about the same surface; some live long and narrow,
and others live broad and short"; but it is all superficial living. A
worm is as good a traveller as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much
wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from
drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before
it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes
drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper. The frontiers are not
east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though
that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him
and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between
him and it. Let him build himself a log-house with the bark on where he
is, fronting it, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy
years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him
and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.

We now no longer sailed or floated on the river, but trod the unyielding
land like pilgrims. Sadi tells who may travel; among others, "A common
mechanic, who can earn a subsistence by the industry of his hand, and
shall not have to stake his reputation for every morsel of bread, as
philosophers have said." He may travel who can subsist on the wild
fruits and game of the most cultivated country. A man may travel fast
enough and earn his living on the road. I have at times been applied to
to do work when on a journey; to do tinkering and repair clocks, when
I had a knapsack on my back. A man once applied to me to go into a
factory, stating conditions and wages, observing that I succeeded in
shutting the window of a railroad car in which we were travelling, when
the other passengers had failed. "Hast thou not heard of a Sufi, who was
hammering some nails into the sole of his sandal; an officer of cavalry
took him by the sleeve, saying, Come along and shoe my horse." Farmers
have asked me to assist them in haying, when I was passing their
fields. A man once applied to me to mend his umbrella, taking me for an
umbrella-mender, because, being on a journey, I carried an umbrella
in my hand while the sun shone. Another wished to buy a tin cup of me,
observing that I had one strapped to my belt, and a sauce-pan on my
back. The cheapest way to travel, and the way to travel the farthest in
the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a
fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. When you come
to a brook or pond, you can catch fish and cook them; or you can boil
a hasty-pudding; or you can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's house for
fourpence, moisten it in the next brook that crosses the road, and dip
into it your sugar,—this alone will last you a whole day;—or, if you
are accustomed to heartier living, you can buy a quart of milk for two
cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding into it, and eat it with your
own spoon out of your own dish. Any one of these things I mean, not all
together. I have travelled thus some hundreds of miles without taking
any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found
it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than staying at home.
So that some have inquired why it would not be best to travel always.
But I never thought of travelling simply as a means of getting a
livelihood. A simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house I once
stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the bucket,
that I had stopped there nine years before for the same purpose, asked
if I was not a traveller, supposing that I had been travelling ever
since, and had now come round again; that travelling was one of the
professions, more or less productive, which her husband did not follow.
But continued travelling is far from productive. It begins with wearing
away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it
will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain.
I have observed that the after-life of those who have travelled much is
very pathetic. True and sincere travelling is no pastime, but it is as
serious as the grave, or any part of the human journey, and it requires
a long probation to be broken into it. I do not speak of those that
travel sitting, the sedentary travellers whose legs hang dangling the
while, mere idle symbols of the fact, any more than when we speak of
sitting hens we mean those that sit standing, but I mean those to whom
travelling is life for the legs, and death too, at last. The traveller
must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements,
the principal powers that be for him. He shall experience at last that
old threat of his mother fulfilled, that he shall be skinned alive. His
sores shall gradually deepen themselves that they may heal inwardly,
while he gives no rest to the sole of his foot, and at night weariness
must be his pillow, that so he may acquire experience against his rainy
days.—So was it with us.

Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where trout-fishers from
distant cities had arrived before us, and where, to our astonishment,
the settlers dropped in at nightfall to have a chat and hear the news,
though there was but one road, and no other house was visible,—as if
they had come out of the earth. There we sometimes read old newspapers,
who never before read new ones, and in the rustle of their leaves heard
the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore, instead of the sough
of the wind among the pines. But then walking had given us an appetite
even for the least palatable and nutritious food.

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it
impossible to read at home, but for which you have still a lingering
regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey. At a country inn,
in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I could undertake the
writers of the silver or the brazen age with confidence. Almost the last
regular service which I performed in the cause of literature was to read
the works of

AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.

If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the poet, and
approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at length
fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of the
prologue,

     "Ipse semipaganus
     Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum."

     I half pagan
     Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets.

Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance and
vivacity of Horace, nor will any sibyl be needed to remind you, that
from those older Greek poets there is a sad descent to Persius. You can
scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid this unmusical bickering
with the follies of men.

One sees that music has its place in thought, but hardly as yet in
language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould language,
and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and labors
with its load, and goes not forward blithely, singing by the way. The
best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and
trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer and
Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling
of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the
sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. Most
of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry music
to their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best; stand but just
outside the faults they condemn, and so are concerned rather about the
monster which they have escaped, than the fair prospect before them. Let
them live on an age, and they will have travelled out of his shadow and
reach, and found other objects to ponder.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
One sees not but he had best let bad take care of itself, and have to do
only with what is beyond suspicion. If you light on the least vestige
of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still which stamps the
faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol it, while no evil
is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth never
turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest
correction. Horace would not have written satire so well if he had not
been inspired by it, as by a passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In
his odes, the love always exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire
still sings itself, and the poet is satisfied, though the folly be not
corrected.

A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius is, first,
Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the
condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong the
enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into regret.
We can never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after searching
nature through, we conclude that he must be both plaintiff and defendant
too, and so had best come to a settlement without a hearing. He who
receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest strain of the muse is
essentially plaintive. The saint's are still tears of joy. Who has ever
heard the Innocent sing?

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest
satire; as impersonal as Nature herself, and like the sighs of her winds
in the woods, which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer. The
greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

Hence we have to do only with the rare and fragmentary traits, which
least belong to Persius, or shall we say, are the properest utterances
of his muse; since that which he says best at any time is what he can
best say at all times. The Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to
cull some quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it to
meet even the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if our neighbor
had said it, we should have passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six
satires, you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as
many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as readily
as a natural image; though when translated into familiar language, they
lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such lines
as the following, translation cannot render commonplace. Contrasting the
man of true religion with those who, with jealous privacy, would fain
carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he says:—

     "Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros
     Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto."

     It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
     Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.

To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the
penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence. Why should
he betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were the only holy
ground in all the world which he had left unprofaned? The obedient soul
would only the more discover and familiarize things, and escape more and
more into light and air, as having henceforth done with secrecy, so
that the universe shall not seem open enough for it. At length, it is
neglectful even of that silence which is consistent with true modesty,
but by its independence of all confidence in its disclosures, makes that
which it imparts so private to the hearer, that it becomes the care of
the whole world that modesty be not infringed.

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still
greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be matter for
secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity,
by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.

In the third satire, he asks:—

     "Est aliquid quò tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
     An passim sequeris corvos, testâve, lutove,
     Securus quò pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?"

   Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which thou
       directest thy bow?
   Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay,
   Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore?

The bad sense is always a secondary one. Language does not appear to
have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in its
significance, when any meanness is described. The truest construction is
not put upon it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is
here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes the front
of his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come forth from the
sharpest inquisition and lecturing, the combined din of reproof and
commendation, with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices always
lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but
plausible imitations of the latter. Falsehood never attains to the
dignity of entire falseness, but is only an inferior sort of truth; if
it were more thoroughly false, it would incur danger of becoming true.

     "Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit,"

is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle discernment of
the language would have taught us, with all his negligence he is still
secure; but the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is insecure.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out
of an eternity which includes all time. The cunning mind travels further
back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the present
with its revelation. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking give no
man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no better, his
capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as yesterday.
All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures
nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not
that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say
it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live without
his creed in his pocket.

In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find,—

     "Stat contrà ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem,
     Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo."

   Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear,
   That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing.

Only they who do not see how anything might be better done are forward
to try their hand on it. Even the master workman must be encouraged
by the reflection, that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do
that thing harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here is
no apology for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our
incapacity,—for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from our
hands?—but only a warning to bungle less.

The satires of Persius are the furthest possible from inspired;
evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps I have given him credit
for more earnestness than is apparent; but it is certain, that that
which alone we can call Persius, which is forever independent and
consistent, was in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration of
all. The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most wilfully
foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the
doer together make ever one sober fact. There is but one stage for the
peasant and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to laugh always at
his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian granite, to
stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character.

———

Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank forest path which
meanders up the Pemigewasset, now more like an otter's or a marten's
trail, or where a beaver had dragged his trap, than where the wheels of
travel raise a dust; where towns begin to serve as gores, only to hold
the earth together. The wild pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on
the dead limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin's size. The very yards
of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts of mountains, and, as we
passed, we looked up at a steep angle at the stems of maples waving in
the clouds.

Far up in the country,—for we would be faithful to our
experience,—in Thornton, perhaps, we met a soldier lad in the woods,
going to muster in full regimentals, and holding the middle of the
road; deep in the forest, with shouldered musket and military step, and
thoughts of war and glory all to himself. It was a sore trial to the
youth, tougher than many a battle, to get by us creditably and with
soldierlike bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered like a reed in his
thin military pants, and by the time we had got up with him, all the
sternness that becomes the soldier had forsaken his face, and he skulked
past as if he were driving his father's sheep under a sword-proof
helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra armor then, who could
not easily dispose of his natural arms. And for his legs, they were like
heavy artillery in boggy places; better to cut the traces and forsake
them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one with another for want of other
foes. But he did get by and get off with all his munitions, and lived to
fight another day; and I do not record this as casting any suspicion on
his honor and real bravery in the field.

Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the side and
over the brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the stumpy, rocky,
forested, and bepastured country, we at length crossed on prostrate
trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of Unappropriated
Land. Thus, in fair days as well as foul, we had traced up the river to
which our native stream is a tributary, until from Merrimack it became
the Pemigewasset that leaped by our side, and when we had passed its
fountain-head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny channel was crossed at a
stride, guiding us toward its distant source among the mountains, and
at length, without its guidance, we were enabled to reach the summit of
Agiocochook.

———————-

     "Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright,
     The bridal of the earth and sky,
     Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
                         For thou must die."

Herbert. When we returned to Hooksett, a week afterward, the melon man,
in whose corn-barn we had hung our tent and buffaloes and other things
to dry, was already picking his hops, with many women and children to
help him. We bought one watermelon, the largest in his patch, to carry
with us for ballast. It was Nathan's, which he might sell if he wished,
having been conveyed to him in the green state, and owned daily by
his eyes. After due consultation with "Father," the bargain was
concluded,—we to buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our
risk, and pay "what the gentlemen pleased." It proved to be ripe; for we
had had honest experience in selecting this fruit.

Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under Uncannunuc Mountain, with a
fair wind and the current in our favor, we commenced our return voyage
at noon, sitting at our ease and conversing, or in silence watching for
the last trace of each reach in the river as a bend concealed it from
our view. As the season was further advanced, the wind now blew steadily
from the north, and with our sail set we could occasionally lie on our
oars without loss of time. The lumbermen throwing down wood from the top
of the high bank, thirty or forty feet above the water, that it might be
sent down stream, paused in their work to watch our retreating sail. By
this time, indeed, we were well known to the boatmen, and were hailed as
the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we sailed rapidly down the river,
shut in between two mounds of earth, the sounds of this timber rolled
down the bank enhanced the silence and vastness of the noon, and we
fancied that only the primeval echoes were awakened. The vision of a
distant scow just heaving in sight round a headland also increased by
contrast the solitude.

Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental
city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which
Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are
light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse,
there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of
Nature. The Ægean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian. Also there
is all the refinement of civilized life in the woods under a sylvan
garb. The wildest scenes have an air of domesticity and homeliness even
to the citizen, and when the flicker's cackle is heard in the clearing,
he is reminded that civilization has wrought but little change there.
Science is welcome to the deepest recesses of the forest, for there too
nature obeys the same old civil laws. The little red bug on the stump of
a pine,—for it the wind shifts and the sun breaks through the clouds.
In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most
cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result, but
a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man. There is
papyrus by the river-side, and rushes for light, and the goose only
flies overhead, ages before the studious are born or letters invented,
and that literature which the former suggest, and even from the first
have rudely served, it may be man does not yet use them to express.
Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human
art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears
in his work.

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A
perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.
Man tames Nature only that he may at last make her more free even than
he found her, though he may never yet have succeeded.

With this propitious breeze, and the help of our oars, we soon
reached the Falls of Amoskeag, and the mouth of the Piscataquoag, and
recognized, as we swept rapidly by, many a fair bank and islet on which
our eyes had rested in the upward passage. Our boat was like that which
Chaucer describes in his Dream, in which the knight took his departure
from the island,

     "To journey for his marriage,
     And return with such an host,
     That wedded might be least and most. . . . .
     Which barge was as a man's thought,
     After his pleasure to him brought,
     The queene herself accustomed aye
     In the same barge to play,
     It needed neither mast ne rother,
     I have not heard of such another,
     No master for the governance,
     Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce,
     Without labor east and west,
     All was one, calme or tempest."

So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the saying of Pythagoras,
though we had no peculiar right to remember it, "It is beautiful when
prosperity is present with intellect, and when sailing as it were with
a prosperous wind, actions are performed looking to virtue; just as
a pilot looks to the motions of the stars." All the world reposes in
beauty to him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on
his path without secret violence; as he who sails down a stream, he has
only to steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it round the
falls. The ripples curled away in our wake, like ringlets from the head
of a child, while we steadily held on our course, and under the bows we
watched

                            "The swaying soft,
     Made by the delicate wave parted in front,
     As through the gentle element we move
     Like shadows gliding through untroubled dreams."

The forms of beauty fall naturally around the path of him who is in the
performance of his proper work; as the curled shavings drop from the
plane, and borings cluster round the auger. Undulation is the gentlest
and most ideal of motions, produced by one fluid falling on another.
Rippling is a more graceful flight. From a hill-top you may detect in
it the wings of birds endlessly repeated. The two waving lines which
represent the flight of birds appear to have been copied from the
ripple.

The trees made an admirable fence to the landscape, skirting the horizon
on every side. The single trees and the groves left standing on the
interval appeared naturally disposed, though the farmer had consulted
only his convenience, for he too falls into the scheme of Nature. Art
can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former
all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in
comparison; but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly,
satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the
roots. In swamps, where there is only here and there an ever-green tree
amid the quaking moss and cranberry beds, the bareness does not suggest
poverty. The single-spruce, which I had hardly noticed in gardens,
attracts me in such places, and now first I understand why men try to
make them grow about their houses. But though there may be very perfect
specimens in front-yard plots, their beauty is for the most part
ineffectual there, for there is no such assurance of kindred wealth
beneath and around them, to make them show to advantage. As we have
said, Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of God; though,
referred to herself, she is genius; and there is a similarity between
her operations and man's art even in the details and trifles. When the
overhanging pine drops into the water, by the sun and water, and the
wind rubbing it against the shore, its boughs are worn into fantastic
shapes, and white and smooth, as if turned in a lathe. Man's art has
wisely imitated those forms into which all matter is most inclined to
run, as foliage and fruit. A hammock swung in a grove assumes the exact
form of a canoe, broader or narrower, and higher or lower at the ends,
as more or fewer persons are in it, and it rolls in the air with the
motion of the body, like a canoe in the water. Our art leaves its
shavings and its dust about; her art exhibits itself even in the
shavings and the dust which we make. She has perfected herself by an
eternity of practice. The world is well kept; no rubbish accumulates;
the morning air is clear even at this day, and no dust has settled
on the grass. Behold how the evening now steals over the fields, the
shadows of the trees creeping farther and farther into the meadow,
and erelong the stars will come to bathe in these retired waters. Her
undertakings are secure and never fail. If I were awakened from a deep
sleep, I should know which side of the meridian the sun might be by the
aspect of nature, and by the chirp of the crickets, and yet no painter
can paint this difference. The landscape contains a thousand dials which
indicate the natural divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand styles
point to the hour.

     "Not only o'er the dial's face,
       This silent phantom day by day,
     With slow, unseen, unceasing pace
       Steals moments, months, and years away;
     From hoary rock and aged tree,
       From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls,
     From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea,
       From every blade of grass it falls."

It is almost the only game which the trees play at, this tit-for-tat,
now this side in the sun, now that, the drama of the day. In deep
ravines under the eastern sides of cliffs, Night forwardly plants her
foot even at noonday, and as Day retreats she steps into his trenches,
skulking from tree to tree, from fence to fence, until at last she sits
in his citadel and draws out her forces into the plain. It may be that
the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, not only because of the
greater transparency of its atmosphere, but because we naturally look
most into the west, as forward into the day, and so in the forenoon see
the sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the shadow of every tree.

The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh and leisurely wind is
blowing over the river, making long reaches of bright ripples. The
river has done its stint, and appears not to flow, but lie at its length
reflecting the light, and the haze over the woods is like the inaudible
panting, or rather the gentle perspiration of resting nature, rising
from a myriad of pores into the attenuated atmosphere.

On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred and forty-two years before
this, probably about this time in the afternoon, there were hurriedly
paddling down this part of the river, between the pine woods which then
fringed these banks, two white women and a boy, who had left an island
at the mouth of the Contoocook before daybreak. They were slightly
clad for the season, in the English fashion, and handled their paddles
unskilfully, but with nervous energy and determination, and at the
bottom of their canoe lay the still bleeding scalps of ten of the
aborigines. They were Hannah Dustan, and her nurse, Mary Neff, both of
Haverhill, eighteen miles from the mouth of this river, and an English
boy, named Samuel Lennardson, escaping from captivity among the Indians.
On the 15th of March previous, Hannah Dustan had been compelled to rise
from child-bed, and half dressed, with one foot bare, accompanied by her
nurse, commence an uncertain march, in still inclement weather, through
the snow and the wilderness. She had seen her seven elder children flee
with their father, but knew not of their fate. She had seen her infant's
brains dashed out against an apple-tree, and had left her own and
her neighbors' dwellings in ashes. When she reached the wigwam of her
captor, situated on an island in the Merrimack, more than twenty miles
above where we now are, she had been told that she and her nurse were
soon to be taken to a distant Indian settlement, and there made to run
the gauntlet naked. The family of this Indian consisted of two men,
three women, and seven children, beside an English boy, whom she found
a prisoner among them. Having determined to attempt her escape, she
instructed the boy to inquire of one of the men, how he should despatch
an enemy in the quickest manner, and take his scalp. "Strike 'em there,"
said he, placing his finger on his temple, and he also showed him how
to take off the scalp. On the morning of the 31st she arose before
daybreak, and awoke her nurse and the boy, and taking the Indians'
tomahawks, they killed them all in their sleep, excepting one favorite
boy, and one squaw who fled wounded with him to the woods. The English
boy struck the Indian who had given him the information, on the temple,
as he had been directed. They then collected all the provision they
could find, and took their master's tomahawk and gun, and scuttling all
the canoes but one, commenced their flight to Haverhill, distant about
sixty miles by the river. But after having proceeded a short distance,
fearing that her story would not be believed if she should escape to
tell it, they returned to the silent wigwam, and taking off the scalps
of the dead, put them into a bag as proofs of what they had done, and
then retracing their steps to the shore in the twilight, recommenced
their voyage.

Early this morning this deed was performed, and now, perchance, these
tired women and this boy, their clothes stained with blood, and their
minds racked with alternate resolution and fear, are making a hasty meal
of parched corn and moose-meat, while their canoe glides under these
pine roots whose stumps are still standing on the bank. They are
thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on that solitary isle
far up the stream, and of the relentless living warriors who are in
pursuit. Every withered leaf which the winter has left seems to know
their story, and in its rustling to repeat it and betray them. An Indian
lurks behind every rock and pine, and their nerves cannot bear the
tapping of a woodpecker. Or they forget their own dangers and their
deeds in conjecturing the fate of their kindred, and whether, if they
escape the Indians, they shall find the former still alive. They do not
stop to cook their meals upon the bank, nor land, except to carry their
canoe about the falls. The stolen birch forgets its master and does
them good service, and the swollen current bears them swiftly along
with little need of the paddle, except to steer and keep them warm by
exercise. For ice is floating in the river; the spring is opening; the
muskrat and the beaver are driven out of their holes by the flood; deer
gaze at them from the bank; a few faint-singing forest birds, perchance,
fly across the river to the northernmost shore; the fish-hawk sails and
screams overhead, and geese fly over with a startling clangor; but they
do not observe these things, or they speedily forget them. They do not
smile or chat all day. Sometimes they pass an Indian grave surrounded by
its paling on the bank, or the frame of a wigwam, with a few coals left
behind, or the withered stalks still rustling in the Indian's solitary
cornfield on the interval. The birch stripped of its bark, or the
charred stump where a tree has been burned down to be made into a canoe,
these are the only traces of man,—a fabulous wild man to us. On either
side, the primeval forest stretches away uninterrupted to Canada, or to
the "South Sea"; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but to
the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful as the smile of
the Great Spirit.

While we loiter here this autumn evening, looking for a spot retired
enough, where we shall quietly rest to-night, they thus, in that chilly
March evening, one hundred and forty-two years before us, with wind and
current favoring, have already glided out of sight, not to camp, as we
shall, at night, but while two sleep one will manage the canoe, and the
swift stream bear them onward to the settlements, it may be, even to old
John Lovewell's house on Salmon Brook to-night.

According to the historian, they escaped as by a miracle all roving
bands of Indians, and reached their homes in safety, with their
trophies, for which the General Court paid them fifty pounds. The family
of Hannah Dustan all assembled alive once more, except the infant whose
brains were dashed out against the apple-tree, and there have been many
who in later times have lived to say that they had eaten of the fruit of
that apple-tree.

This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his
Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we
do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the
English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek. "We must look a long
way back," says Raleigh, "to find the Romans giving laws to nations,
and their consuls bringing kings and princes bound in chains to Rome in
triumph; to see men go to Greece for wisdom, or Ophir for gold; when now
nothing remains but a poor paper remembrance of their former condition."
And yet, in one sense, not so far back as to find the Penacooks and
Pawtuckets using bows and arrows and hatchets of stone, on the banks of
the Merrimack. From this September afternoon, and from between these now
cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.
On beholding an old picture of Concord, as it appeared but seventy-five
years ago, with a fair open prospect and a light on trees and river, as
if it were broad noon, I find that I had not thought the sun shone in
those days, or that men lived in broad daylight then. Still less do we
imagine the sun shining on hill and valley during Philip's war, on
the war-path of Church or Philip, or later of Lovewell or Paugus, with
serene summer weather, but they must have lived and fought in a dim
twilight or night.

The age of the world is great enough for our imaginations, even
according to the Mosaic account, without borrowing any years from the
geologist. From Adam and Eve at one leap sheer down to the deluge, and
then through the ancient monarchies, through Babylon and Thebes, Brahma
and Abraham, to Greece and the Argonauts; whence we might start again
with Orpheus and the Trojan war, the Pyramids and the Olympic games,
and Homer and Athens, for our stages; and after a breathing space at
the building of Rome, continue our journey down through Odin and Christ
to—America. It is a wearisome while. And yet the lives of but sixty
old women, such as live under the hill, say of a century each, strung
together, are sufficient to reach over the whole ground. Taking hold
of hands they would span the interval from Eve to my own mother. A
respectable tea-party merely,—whose gossip would be Universal History.
The fourth old woman from myself suckled Columbus,—the ninth was nurse
to the Norman Conqueror,—the nineteenth was the Virgin Mary,—the
twenty-fourth the Cumaean Sibyl,—the thirtieth was at the Trojan
war and Helen her name,—the thirty-eighth was Queen Semiramis,—the
sixtieth was Eve the mother of mankind. So much for the

     "Old woman that lives under the hill,
     And if she's not gone she lives there still."

It will not take a very great-granddaughter of hers to be in at the
death of Time.

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure
invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true
work of fiction even, is only to take leisure and liberty to describe
some things more exactly as they are. A true account of the actual is
the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial
view. Though I am not much acquainted with the works of Goethe, I should
say that it was one of his chief excellences as a writer, that he was
satisfied with giving an exact description of things as they appeared
to him, and their effect upon him. Most travellers have not self-respect
enough to do this simply, and make objects and events stand around them
as the centre, but still imagine more favorable positions and relations
than the actual ones, and so we get no valuable report from them at all.
In his Italian Travels Goethe jogs along at a snail's pace, but always
mindful that the earth is beneath and the heavens are above him. His
Italy is not merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene
of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by
the sun, and nightly by the moon. Even the few showers are faithfully
recorded. He speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose object is
faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, for the most part, in the
order in which he sees it. Even his reflections do not interfere with
his descriptions. In one place he speaks of himself as giving so glowing
and truthful a description of an old tower to the peasants who had
gathered around him, that they who had been born and brought up in the
neighborhood must needs look over their shoulders, "that," to use his
own words, "they might behold with their eyes, what I had praised
to their ears,"—"and I added nothing, not even the ivy which for
centuries had decorated the walls." It would thus be possible for
inferior minds to produce invaluable books, if this very moderation were
not the evidence of superiority; for the wise are not so much wiser than
others as respecters of their own wisdom. Some, poor in spirit, record
plaintively only what has happened to them; but others how they have
happened to the universe, and the judgment which they have awarded to
circumstances. Above all, he possessed a hearty good-will to all men,
and never wrote a cross or even careless word. On one occasion the
post-boy snivelling, "Signor perdonate, quésta è la mia patria," he
confesses that "to me poor northerner came something tear-like into the
eyes."

Goethe's whole education and life were those of the artist. He lacks
the unconsciousness of the poet. In his autobiography he describes
accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm Meister. For as there is in
that book, mingled with a rare and serene wisdom, a certain pettiness
or exaggeration of trifles, wisdom applied to produce a constrained and
partial and merely well-bred man,—a magnifying of the theatre till
life itself is turned into a stage, for which it is our duty to study
our parts well, and conduct with propriety and precision,—so in the
autobiography, the fault of his education is, so to speak, its merely
artistic completeness. Nature is hindered, though she prevails at last
in making an unusually catholic impression on the boy. It is the life of
a city boy, whose toys are pictures and works of art, whose wonders are
the theatre and kingly processions and crownings. As the youth studied
minutely the order and the degrees in the imperial procession, and
suffered none of its effect to be lost on him, so the man aimed to
secure a rank in society which would satisfy his notion of fitness and
respectability. He was defrauded of much which the savage boy enjoys.
Indeed, he himself has occasion to say in this very autobiography,
when at last he escapes into the woods without the gates: "Thus much is
certain, that only the undefinable, wide-expanding feelings of youth and
of uncultivated nations are adapted to the sublime, which, whenever
it may be excited in us through external objects, since it is either
formless, or else moulded into forms which are incomprehensible, must
surround us with a grandeur which we find above our reach." He further
says of himself: "I had lived among painters from my childhood, and had
accustomed myself to look at objects, as they did, with reference to
art." And this was his practice to the last. He was even too well-bred
to be thoroughly bred. He says that he had had no intercourse with the
lowest class of his towns-boys. The child should have the advantage of
ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share
of neglect and exposure.

     "The laws of Nature break the rules of Art."

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an
Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius,
referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who
produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The Artist
is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of
Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies
the rules which others have detected. There has been no man of pure
Genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

The expressions of the poet cannot be analyzed; his sentence is one
word, whose syllables are words. There are indeed no words quite worthy
to be set to his music. But what matter if we do not hear the words
always, if we hear the music?

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at
the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it.
It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not
recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into
literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for
whom it was matured.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you
will never read, you have done rare things.

     The work we choose should be our own,
     God lets alone.

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their
foundation below the frost.

What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms of lichens
and leaves. There is a certain perfection in accident which we never
consciously attain. Draw a blunt quill filled with ink over a sheet of
paper, and fold the paper before the ink is dry, transversely to this
line, and a delicately shaded and regular figure will be produced, in
some respects more pleasing than an elaborate drawing.

The talent of composition is very dangerous,—the striking out the
heart of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a scalp. I feel as if
my life had grown more outward when I can express it.

On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe writes:

"The Tees flows now more gently, and makes in many places broad sands.
On the land, near to the water, upon the hillsides, everything is so
closely planted one to another, that you think they must choke one
another,—vineyards, maize, mulberry-trees, apples, pears, quinces, and
nuts. The dwarf elder throws itself vigorously over the walls. Ivy grows
with strong stems up the rocks, and spreads itself wide over them, the
lizard glides through the intervals, and everything that wanders to and
fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures of art. The women's tufts of
hair bound up, the men's bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent
oxen which they drive home from market, the little asses with their
loads,—everything forms a living, animated Heinrich Roos. And now that
it is evening, in the mild air a few clouds rest upon the mountains, in
the heavens more stand still than move, and immediately after sunset the
chirping of crickets begins to grow more loud; then one feels for once
at home in the world, and not as concealed or in exile. I am contented
as though I had been born and brought up here, and were now returning
from a Greenland or whaling voyage. Even the dust of my Fatherland,
which is often whirled about the wagon, and which for so long a time I
had not seen, is greeted. The clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets
is altogether lovely, penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely when
roguish boys whistle in emulation of a field of such songstresses.
One fancies that they really enhance one another. Also the evening is
perfectly mild as the day."

"If one who dwelt in the south, and came hither from the south, should
hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem me very childish. Alas! what
I here express I have long known while I suffered under an unpropitious
heaven, and now may I joyful feel this joy as an exception, which we
should enjoy everforth as an eternal necessity of our nature."

Thus we "sayled by thought and pleasaunce," as Chaucer says, and all
things seemed with us to flow; the shore itself, and the distant cliffs,
were dissolved by the undiluted air. The hardest material seemed to obey
the same law with the most fluid, and so indeed in the long run it
does. Trees were but rivers of sap and woody fibre, flowing from the
atmosphere, and emptying into the earth by their trunks, as their roots
flowed upward to the surface. And in the heavens there were rivers of
stars, and milky-ways, already beginning to gleam and ripple over our
heads. There were rivers of rock on the surface of the earth, and rivers
of ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and circulated, and this
portion of time was but the current hour. Let us wander where we will,
the universe is built round about us, and we are central still. If we
look into the heavens they are concave, and if we were to look into a
gulf as bottomless, it would be concave also. The sky is curved downward
to the earth in the horizon, because we stand on the plain. I draw
down its skirts. The stars so low there seem loath to depart, but by a
circuitous path to be remembering me, and returning on their steps.

We had already passed by broad daylight the scene of our encampment at
Coos Falls, and at length we pitched our camp on the west bank, in the
northern part of Merrimack, nearly opposite to the large island on which
we had spent the noon in our way up the river.

There we went to bed that summer evening, on a sloping shelf in the
bank, a couple of rods from our boat, which was drawn up on the sand,
and just behind a thin fringe of oaks which bordered the river; without
having disturbed any inhabitants but the spiders in the grass, which
came out by the light of our lamp, and crawled over our buffaloes. When
we looked out from under the tent, the trees were seen dimly through the
mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, which seemed to rejoice in the
night, and with the damp air we inhaled a solid fragrance. Having eaten
our supper of hot cocoa and bread and watermelon, we soon grew weary of
conversing, and writing in our journals, and, putting out the lantern
which hung from the tent-pole, fell asleep.

Unfortunately, many things have been omitted which should have been
recorded in our journal; for though we made it a rule to set down all
our experiences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to keep, for
the important experience rarely allows us to remember such obligations,
and so indifferent things get recorded, while that is frequently
neglected. It is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at any
time, because to write it is not what interests us.

Whenever we awoke in the night, still eking out our dreams with
half-awakened thoughts, it was not till after an interval, when the
wind breathed harder than usual, flapping the curtains of the tent, and
causing its cords to vibrate, that we remembered that we lay on the bank
of the Merrimack, and not in our chamber at home. With our heads so
low in the grass, we heard the river whirling and sucking, and lapsing
downward, kissing the shore as it went, sometimes rippling louder
than usual, and again its mighty current making only a slight limpid,
trickling sound, as if our water-pail had sprung a leak, and the water
were flowing into the grass by our side. The wind, rustling the oaks
and hazels, impressed us like a wakeful and inconsiderate person up
at midnight, moving about, and putting things to rights, occasionally
stirring up whole drawers full of leaves at a puff. There seemed to be
a great haste and preparation throughout Nature, as for a distinguished
visitor; all her aisles had to be swept in the night, by a thousand
hand-maidens, and a thousand pots to be boiled for the next day's
feasting;—such a whispering bustle, as if ten thousand fairies made
their fingers fly, silently sewing at the new carpet with which the
earth was to be clothed, and the new drapery which was to adorn the
trees. And then the wind would lull and die away, and we like it fell
asleep again.








FRIDAY.

                               "The Boteman strayt
     Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse,
     Ne ever shroncke, ne ever sought to bayt
     His tryed armes for toylesome wearinesse;
     But with his oares did sweepe the watry wildernesse."

Spenser.                "Summer's robe grows
     Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows."

Donne. FRIDAY.

As we lay awake long before daybreak, listening to the rippling of the
river, and the rustling of the leaves, in suspense whether the wind blew
up or down the stream, was favorable or unfavorable to our voyage,
we already suspected that there was a change in the weather, from a
freshness as of autumn in these sounds. The wind in the woods sounded
like an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring amid rocks, and we even
felt encouraged by the unusual activity of the elements. He who hears
the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly
despair. That night was the turning-point in the season. We had gone to
bed in summer, and we awoke in autumn; for summer passes into autumn in
some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left it, and as if waiting
for us, there on the shore, in autumn, all cool and dripping with dew,
and our tracks still fresh in the wet sand around it, the fairies all
gone or concealed. Before five o'clock we pushed it into the fog, and,
leaping in, at one shove were out of sight of the shores, and began
to sweep downward with the rushing river, keeping a sharp lookout for
rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgling water, and a solid bank of
fog on every side, forming a small yard around us. We soon passed the
mouth of the Souhegan, and the village of Merrimack, and as the mist
gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from the trouble of watching
for rocks, we saw by the flitting clouds, by the first russet tinge on
the hills, by the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and the shore
itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later in the day, by
the hue of the grape-vine, the goldfinch on the willow, the flickers
flying in flocks, and when we passed near enough to the shore, as we
fancied, by the faces of men, that the Fall had commenced. The cottages
looked more snug and comfortable, and their inhabitants were seen only
for a moment, and then went quietly in and shut the door, retreating
inward to the haunts of summer.

     "And now the cold autumnal dews are seen
     To cobweb ev'ry green;
     And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear
     The fast-declining year."

We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and even the water
had acquired a grayer hue. The sumach, grape, and maple were already
changed, and the milkweed had turned to a deep rich yellow. In all woods
the leaves were fast ripening for their fall; for their full veins and
lively gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the sered one of the poets; and
we knew that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the earliest,
would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along the edge of the meadow.
Already the cattle were heard to low wildly in the pastures and along
the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in apprehension of
the withering of the grass and of the approach of winter. Our thoughts,
too, began to rustle.

As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on the day of our
annual Cattle-Show, when it usually happens that the leaves of the elms
and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground under the breath of the
October wind, the lively spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as
any plough-boy's let loose that day; and they lead my thoughts away
to the rustling woods, where the trees are preparing for their winter
campaign. This autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds in the
streets as regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster and
rustle by the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with the
fall of the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse
symphony or running bass to the rustling of the leaves. The wind goes
hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose straw that is left
in the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to scud before
it,—having donned his best pea-jacket and pepper-and-salt waistcoat,
his unbent trousers, outstanding rigging of duck or kerseymere or
corduroy, and his furry hat withal,—to country fairs and cattle-shows,
to that Rome among the villages where the treasures of the year are
gathered. All the land over they go leaping the fences with their tough,
idle palms, which have never learned to hang by their sides, amid
the low of calves and the bleating of sheep,—Amos, Abner, Elnathan,
Elbridge,—

     "From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain."

I love these sons of earth every mother's son of them, with their great
hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle to spectacle,
as if fearful lest there should not be time between sun and sun to see
them all, and the sun does not wait more than in haying-time.

     "Wise Nature's darlings, they live in the world
     Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled."

Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes of the
day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the inspired negro from
whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and Guinea Coast have broke loose
into our streets; now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of oxen,
all as august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and
milch cows as unspotted as Isis or Io. Such as had no love for Nature

                                    "at all,
       Came lovers home from this great festival."

They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair,
but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn
days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like
migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air is
but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling
of the crowd. We read now-a-days of the ancient festivals, games, and
processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a little incredulity,
or at least with little sympathy; but how natural and irrepressible
in every people is some hearty and palpable greeting of Nature. The
Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude primitive tragedians with
their procession and goat-song, and the whole paraphernalia of the
Panathenaea, which appear so antiquated and peculiar, have their
parallel now. The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar
is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while
antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it. The farmers
crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law, which
Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally as bees swarm and follow
their queen.

It is worth the while to see the country's people, how they pour into
the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, their very shirt and
coat-collars pointing forward,—collars so broad as if they had put
their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions always tend to
superfluity,—and with an unusual springiness in their gait, jabbering
earnestly to one another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to
appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to
disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in
an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never
dressed; come to see the sport, and have a hand in what is going,—to
know "what's the row," if there is any; to be where some men are drunk,
some horses race, some cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking props
under a table, and above all to see the "striped pig." He especially
is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his
character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the
social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.

I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and succulent
pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though there
are many crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among them, run all
to thorn and rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse circumstances,
like the third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some
heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will fail or waver
in them; like the crabs which grow in hedges, they furnish the stocks
of sweet and thrifty fruits still. Thus is nature recruited from age
to age, while the fair and palatable varieties die out, and have their
period. This is that mankind. How cheap must be the material of which so
many men are made.

The wind blew steadily down the stream, so that we kept our sails set,
and lost not a moment of the forenoon by delays, but from early morning
until noon were continually dropping downward. With our hands on the
steering-paddle, which was thrust deep into the river, or bending to the
oar, which indeed we rarely relinquished, we felt each palpitation in
the veins of our steed, and each impulse of the wings which drew us
above. The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river,
which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but we
are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these points.
The steadfast shores never once turned aside for us, but still trended
as they were made; why then should we always turn aside for them?

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be
conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
These winged thoughts are like birds, and will not be handled; even
hens will not let you touch them like quadrupeds. Nothing was ever so
unfamiliar and startling to a man as his own thoughts.

To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to succumb and conform to
the ways of the world. Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would
float upon the breeze of popularity. The bird of paradise is obliged
constantly to fly against the wind, lest its gay trappings, pressing
close to its body, impede its free movements.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the
wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most
begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as
within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass,
there are some harbors which they can never reach.

The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar
institutions and edicts for his defence, but the toughest son of earth
and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting
companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshippers of
beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.

The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite
of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not
know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart,
which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great
who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their
high estimate beyond the stars.

Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from his lyre, but only
those which are breathed into it; for the original strain precedes the
sound, by as much as the echo follows after. The rest is the perquisite
of the rocks and trees and beasts.

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world,
but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not truly cumulative
treasure, where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which
did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread
from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what
poetry is,—I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into
what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true
poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that
he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a
vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

We are often prompted to speak our thoughts to our neighbors, or
the single travellers whom we meet on the road, but poetry is a
communication from our home and solitude addressed to all Intelligence.
It never whispers in a private ear. Knowing this, we may understand
those sonnets said to be addressed to particular persons, or "To a
Mistress's Eyebrow." Let none feel flattered by them. For poetry write
love, and it will be equally true.

No doubt it is an important difference between men of genius or poets,
and men not of genius, that the latter are unable to grasp and confront
the thought which visits them. But it is because it is too faint for
expression, or even conscious impression. What merely quickens or
retards the blood in their veins and fills their afternoons with
pleasure they know not whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the finer
organization of the poet.

We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, and the poet could only
express what other men conceived. But in comparison with his task, the
poet is the least talented of any; the writer of prose has more skill.
See what talent the smith has. His material is pliant in his hands. When
the poet is most inspired, is stimulated by an aura which never even
colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent is all gone, and
he is no longer a poet. The gods do not grant him any skill more than
another. They never put their gifts into his hands, but they encompass
and sustain him with their breath.

To say that God has given a man many and great talents, frequently means
that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.

When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with our pen,
intent only on worms, calling our mates around us, like the cock, and
delighting in the dust we make, but do not detect where the jewel lies,
which, perhaps, we have in the mean time cast to a distance, or quite
covered up again.

The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes
tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine
life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life
is preserved to a serene old age.

Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it
is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread.
The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which he
lives.

Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect more than great
verse, since it implies a more permanent and level height, a life more
pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet often only makes
an irruption, like a Parthian, and is off again, shooting while he
retreats; but the prose writer has conquered like a Roman, and settled
colonies.

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a
poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this,
stereotyped in the poet's life. It is what he has become through his
work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper,
is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in
the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince's
gallery.

   My life has been the poem I would have writ,
   But I could not both live and utter it.

THE POET'S DELAY.

     In vain I see the morning rise,
       In vain observe the western blaze,
     Who idly look to other skies,
       Expecting life by other ways.

     Amidst such boundless wealth without,
       I only still am poor within,
     The birds have sung their summer out,
       But still my spring does not begin.

     Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
       Compelled to seek a milder day,
     And leave no curious nest behind,
       No woods still echoing to my lay?

This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of the oaks and pines on shore,
reminded us of more northern climes than Greece, and more wintry seas
than the Aegean.

The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his
name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects, of the same
stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less
than Homer, and in his era we hear of no other priest than he. It will
not avail to call him a heathen, because he personifies the sun and
addresses it; and what if his heroes did "worship the ghosts of their
fathers," their thin, airy, and unsubstantial forms? we worship but the
ghosts of our fathers in more substantial forms. We cannot but respect
the vigorous faith of those heathen, who sternly believed somewhat,
and are inclined to say to the critics, who are offended by their
superstitious rites,—Don't interrupt these men's prayers. As if we
knew more about human life and a God, than the heathen and ancients.
Does English theology contain the recent discoveries!

Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, of Homer, Pindar,
Isaiah, and the American Indian. In his poetry, as in Homer's, only the
simplest and most enduring features of humanity are seen, such essential
parts of a man as Stonehenge exhibits of a temple; we see the circles of
stone, and the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of life acquire almost
an unreal and gigantic size seen through his mists. Like all older and
grander poetry, it is distinguished by the few elements in the lives of
its heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars and the earth,
shrunk to the bones and sinews. The earth is a boundless plain for their
deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and everlasting life, as hardly
needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted entire from age to age.
There are but few objects to distract their sight, and their life is as
unencumbered as the course of the stars they gaze at.

     "The wrathful kings, on cairns apart,
     Look forward from behind their shields,
     And mark the wandering stars,
     That brilliant westward move."

It does not cost much for these heroes to live; they do not want much
furniture. They are such forms of men only as can be seen afar through
the mist, and have no costume nor dialect, but for language there is the
tongue itself, and for costume there are always the skins of beasts and
the bark of trees to be had. They live out their years by the vigor of
their constitutions. They survive storms and the spears of their foes,
and perform a few heroic deeds, and then

     "Mounds will answer questions of them,
     For many future years."

Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their days listening to the
lays of the bards, and feeling the weapons which laid their enemies low,
and when at length they die, by a convulsion of nature, the bard allows
us a short and misty glance into futurity, yet as clear, perchance, as
their lives had been. When Mac-Roine was slain,

     "His soul departed to his warlike sires,
     To follow misty forms of boars,
     In tempestuous islands bleak."

The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief significant
strain, which will suffice for epitaph and biography.

     "The weak will find his bow in the dwelling,
     The feeble will attempt to bend it."

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears
the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the
civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era.
It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes,
but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer
texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man
stand the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed,
yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans.

The profession of the bard attracted more respect in those days from the
importance attached to fame. It was his province to record the deeds
of heroes. When Ossian hears the traditions of inferior bards, he
exclaims,—

     "I straightway seize the unfutile tales,
     And send them down in faithful verse."

His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening of the third Duan of
Ca-Lodin.     "Whence have sprung the things that are?
     And whither roll the passing years?
     Where does Time conceal its two heads,
     In dense impenetrable gloom,
     Its surface marked with heroes' deeds alone?
     I view the generations gone;
     The past appears but dim;
     As objects by the moon's faint beams,
     Reflected from a distant lake.
     I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war,
     But there the unmighty joyless dwell,
     All those who send not down their deeds
     To far, succeeding times."

The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten;

     "Strangers come to build a tower,
     And throw their ashes overhand;
     Some rusted swords appear in dust;
     One, bending forward, says,
     'The arms belonged to heroes gone;
     We never heard their praise in song.'"

The grandeur of the similes is another feature which characterizes great
poetry. Ossian seems to speak a gigantic and universal language. The
images and pictures occupy even much space in the landscape, as if they
could be seen only from the sides of mountains, and plains with a wide
horizon, or across arms of the sea. The machinery is so massive that it
cannot be less than natural. Oivana says to the spirit of her father,
"Gray-haired Torkil of Torne," seen in the skies,

     "Thou glidest away like receding ships."

So when the hosts of Fingal and Starne approach to battle,

     "With murmurs loud, like rivers far,
     The race of Torne hither moved."

And when compelled to retire,

     "dragging his spear behind,
     Cudulin sank in the distant wood,
     Like a fire upblazing ere it dies."

Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he spoke;

     "A thousand orators inclined
     To hear the lay of Fingal."

The threats too would have deterred a man. Vengeance and terror were
real. Trenmore threatens the young warrior whom he meets on a foreign
strand,

     "Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore,
     While lessening on the waves she spies
     The sails of him who slew her son."

If Ossian's heroes weep, it is from excess of strength, and not
from weakness, a sacrifice or libation of fertile natures, like the
perspiration of stone in summer's heat. We hardly know that tears have
been shed, and it seems as if weeping were proper only for babes and
heroes. Their joy and their sorrow are made of one stuff, like rain and
snow, the rainbow and the mist. When Fillan was worsted in fight, and
ashamed in the presence of Fingal,

     "He strode away forthwith,
     And bent in grief above a stream,
     His cheeks bedewed with tears.
     From time to time the thistles gray
     He lopped with his inverted lance."

Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of Fingal, who comes to aid
him in war;—

     "'My eyes have failed,' says he, 'Crodar is blind,
     Is thy strength like that of thy fathers?
     Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.'
        I gave my arm to the king.
     The aged hero seized my hand;
     He heaved a heavy sigh;
     Tears flowed incessant down his cheek.
     'Strong art thou, son of the mighty,
     Though not so dreadful as Morven's prince.

     Let my feast be spread in the hall,
     Let every sweet-voiced minstrel sing;
     Great is he who is within my walls,
     Sons of wave-echoing Croma.'"

Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays tribute to the superior
strength of his father Fingal.

     "How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind,
     Why succeeded Ossian without its strength?"

————————

While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with the river gurgling under
our stern, the thoughts of autumn coursed as steadily through our minds,
and we observed less what was passing on the shore, than the dateless
associations and impressions which the season awakened, anticipating in
some measure the progress of the year.

     I hearing get, who had but ears,
       And sight, who had but eyes before,
     I moments live, who lived but years,
       And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.

Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied the landscape by
degrees, as one unrolls a map, rock, tree, house, hill, and meadow,
assuming new and varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene,
and there was variety enough for our entertainment in the metamorphoses
of the simplest objects. Viewed from this side the scenery appeared new
to us.

The most familiar sheet of water viewed from a new hill-top, yields a
novel and unexpected pleasure. When we have travelled a few miles, we do
not recognize the profiles even of the hills which overlook our native
village, and perhaps no man is quite familiar with the horizon as
seen from the hill nearest to his house, and can recall its outline
distinctly when in the valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a short
distance, which way the hills range which take in our houses and farms
in their sweep. As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had
been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound
heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and
that nature is one and continuous everywhere. It is an important epoch
when a man who has always lived on the east side of a mountain, and seen
it in the west, travels round and sees it in the east. Yet the universe
is a sphere whose centre is wherever there is intelligence. The sun is
not so central as a man. Upon an isolated hill-top, in an open country,
we seem to ourselves to be standing on the boss of an immense shield,
the immediate landscape being apparently depressed below the more
remote, and rising gradually to the horizon, which is the rim of the
shield, villas, steeples, forests, mountains, one above another, till
they are swallowed up in the heavens. The most distant mountains in the
horizon appear to rise directly from the shore of that lake in the woods
by which we chance to be standing, while from the mountain-top, not only
this, but a thousand nearer and larger lakes, are equally unobserved.

Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works of the farmer, his
ploughing and reaping, had a beauty to our eyes which he never saw. How
fortunate were we who did not own an acre of these shores, who had not
renounced our title to the whole. One who knew how to appropriate the
true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich
man! all he has is what he has bought. What I see is mine. I am a large
owner in the Merrimack intervals.

     Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend,
       Who yet no partial store appropriate,
     Who no armed ship into the Indies send,
       To rob me of my orient estate.

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer and
winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts. Buy a farm! What
have I to pay for a farm which a farmer will take?

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature
wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and
sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet. There is a pleasant
tract on the bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have in my
mind;—the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak
cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow in the midst,
and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,—places where one may have many
thoughts and not decide anything. It is a scene which I can not only
remember, as I might a vision, but when I will can bodily revisit,
and find it even so, unaccountable, yet unpretending in its pleasant
dreariness. When my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to see
and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into their moss, and see
unchangeableness so established. I not yet gray on rocks forever gray,
I no longer green under the evergreens. There is something even in the
lapse of time by which time recovers itself.

As we have said, it proved a cool as well as breezy day, and by the time
we reached Penichook Brook we were obliged to sit muffled in our cloaks,
while the wind and current carried us along. We bounded swiftly over the
rippling surface, far by many cultivated lands and the ends of fences
which divided innumerable farms, with hardly a thought for the various
lives which they separated; now by long rows of alders or groves of
pines or oaks, and now by some homestead where the women and children
stood outside to gaze at us, till we had swept out of their sight, and
beyond the limit of their longest Saturday ramble. We glided past the
mouth of the Nashua, and not long after, of Salmon Brook, without more
pause than the wind.

     Salmon Brook,
     Penichook,
     Ye sweet waters of my brain,
     When shall I look,
     Or cast the hook,
     In your waves again?

     Silver eels,
     Wooden creels,
     These the baits that still allure,
     And dragon-fly
     That floated by,
     May they still endure?

The shadows chased one another swiftly over wood and meadow, and their
alternation harmonized with our mood. We could distinguish the clouds
which cast each one, though never so high in the heavens. When a
shadow flits across the landscape of the soul, where is the substance?
Probably, if we were wise enough, we should see to what virtue we are
indebted for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt we have earned it
at some time; for the gifts of Heaven are never quite gratuitous. The
constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future
growth. The wood which we now mature, when it becomes virgin mould,
determines the character of our second growth, whether that be oaks or
pines. Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly
mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it
falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see
it?—But, referred to the sun, it is widest at its base, which is
no greater than his own opacity. The divine light is diffused almost
entirely around us, and by means of the refraction of light, or else by
a certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it, transparency, if
we preserve ourselves untarnished, we are able to enlighten our shaded
side. At any rate, our darkest grief has that bronze color of the moon
eclipsed. There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if
you let in a stronger light upon it. Shadows, referred to the source
of light, are pyramids whose bases are never greater than those of
the substances which cast them, but light is a spherical congeries of
pyramids, whose very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the system
shines with uninterrupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry
and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider than themselves.

The places where we had stopped or spent the night in our way up the
river, had already acquired a slight historical interest for us; for
many upward day's voyaging were unravelled in this rapid downward
passage. When one landed to stretch his limbs by walking, he soon found
himself falling behind his companion, and was obliged to take advantage
of the curves, and ford the brooks and ravines in haste, to recover
his ground. Already the banks and the distant meadows wore a sober and
deepened tinge, for the September air had shorn them of their summer's
pride.

     "And what's a life?  The flourishing array
     Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day
     Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay."

The air was really the "fine element" which the poets describe. It had
a finer and sharper grain, seen against the russet pastures and meadows,
than before, as if cleansed of the summer's impurities.

Having passed the New Hampshire line and reached the Horseshoe Interval
in Tyngsborough, where there is a high and regular second bank, we
climbed up this in haste to get a nearer sight of the autumnal flowers,
asters, golden-rod, and yarrow, and blue-curls (Trichostema dichotoma),
humble roadside blossoms, and, lingering still, the harebell and the
Rhexia Virginica. The last, growing in patches of lively pink flowers on
the edge of the meadows, had almost too gay an appearance for the rest
of the landscape, like a pink ribbon on the bonnet of a Puritan woman.
Asters and golden-rods were the livery which nature wore at present. The
latter alone expressed all the ripeness of the season, and shed their
mellow lustre over the fields, as if the now declining summer's sun had
bequeathed its hues to them. It is the floral solstice a little after
midsummer, when the particles of golden light, the sun-dust, have, as
it were, fallen like seeds on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On
every hillside, and in every valley, stood countless asters, coreopses,
tansies, golden-rods, and the whole race of yellow flowers, like
Brahminical devotees, turning steadily with their luminary from morning
till night.

     "I see the golden-rod shine bright,
       As sun-showers at the birth of day,
     A golden plume of yellow light,
      That robs the Day-god's splendid ray.

     "The aster's violet rays divide
       The bank with many stars for me,
     And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed,
       As moonlight floats across the sea.

     "I see the emerald woods prepare
       To shed their vestiture once more,
     And distant elm-trees spot the air
       With yellow pictures softly o'er.

          .    .    .    .    .

     "No more the water-lily's pride
       In milk-white circles swims content,
     No more the blue-weed's clusters ride
       And mock the heavens' element.

          .    .    .    .    .

     "Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent
       With the same colors, for to me
     A richer sky than all is lent,
       While fades my dream-like company.

     "Our skies glow purple, but the wind
       Sobs chill through green trees and bright graas,
     To-day shines fair, and lurk behind
       The times that into winter pass.

     "So fair we seem, so cold we are,
       So fast we hasten to decay,
     Yet through our night glows many a star,
       That still shall claim its sunny day."

So sang a Concord poet once.

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still later flowers, which
abide with us the approach of winter. There is something witch-like in
the appearance of the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in October and in
November, with its irregular and angular spray and petals like furies'
hair, or small ribbon streamers. Its blossoming, too, at this irregular
period, when other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as blossoms,
looks like witches' craft. Certainly it blooms in no garden of man's.
There is a whole fairy-land on the hillside where it grows.

Some have thought that the gales do not at present waft to the voyager
the natural and original fragrance of the land, such as the early
navigators described, and that the loss of many odoriferous native
plants, sweet-scented grasses and medicinal herbs, which formerly
sweetened the atmosphere, and rendered it salubrious,—by the grazing
of cattle and the rooting of swine, is the source of many diseases
which now prevail; the earth, say they, having been long subjected to
extremely artificial and luxurious modes of cultivation, to gratify
the appetite, converted into a stye and hot-bed, where men for profit
increase the ordinary decay of nature.

According to the record of an old inhabitant of Tyngsborough, now dead,
whose farm we were now gliding past, one of the greatest freshets on
this river took place in October, 1785, and its height was marked by a
nail driven into an apple-tree behind his house. One of his descendants
has shown this to me, and I judged it to be at least seventeen or
eighteen feet above the level of the river at the time. According to
Barber, the river rose twenty-one feet above the common high-water mark,
at Bradford in the year 1818. Before the Lowell and Nashua railroad was
built, the engineer made inquiries of the inhabitants along the banks as
to how high they had known the river to rise. When he came to this
house he was conducted to the apple-tree, and as the nail was not then
visible, the lady of the house placed her hand on the trunk where she
said that she remembered the nail to have been from her childhood.
In the mean while the old man put his arm inside the tree, which was
hollow, and felt the point of the nail sticking through, and it was
exactly opposite to her hand. The spot is now plainly marked by a notch
in the bark. But as no one else remembered the river to have risen so
high as this, the engineer disregarded this statement, and I learn that
there has since been a freshet which rose within nine inches of the
rails at Biscuit Brook, and such a freshet as that of 1785 would have
covered the railroad two feet deep.

The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and make as interesting
revelations, on this river's banks, as on the Euphrates or the Nile.
This apple-tree, which stands within a few rods of the river, is called
"Elisha's apple-tree," from a friendly Indian, who was anciently in the
service of Jonathan Tyng, and, with one other man, was killed here
by his own race in one of the Indian wars,—the particulars of which
affair were told us on the spot. He was buried close by, no one knew
exactly where, but in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water
standing over the grave, caused the earth to settle where it had once
been disturbed, and when the flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of
the form and size of the grave, revealed its locality; but this was now
lost again, and no future flood can detect it; yet, no doubt, Nature
will know how to point it out in due time, if it be necessary, by
methods yet more searching and unexpected. Thus there is not only the
crisis when the spirit ceases to inspire and expand the body, marked
by a fresh mound in the churchyard, but there is also a crisis when
the body ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a fainter
depression in the earth.

We sat awhile to rest us here upon the brink of the western bank,
surrounded by the glossy leaves of the red variety of the mountain
laurel, just above the head of Wicasuck Island, where we could observe
some scows which were loading with clay from the opposite shore, and
also overlook the grounds of the farmer, of whom I have spoken, who
once hospitably entertained us for a night. He had on his pleasant farm,
besides an abundance of the beach-plum, or Prunus littoralis, which
grew wild, the Canada plum under cultivation, fine Porter apples, some
peaches, and large patches of musk and water melons, which he cultivated
for the Lowell market. Elisha's apple-tree, too, bore a native fruit,
which was prized by the family. He raised the blood peach, which, as he
showed us with satisfaction, was more like the oak in the color of its
bark and in the setting of its branches, and was less liable to break
down under the weight of the fruit, or the snow, than other varieties.
It was of slower growth, and its branches strong and tough. There, also,
was his nursery of native apple-trees, thickly set upon the bank, which
cost but little care, and which he sold to the neighboring farmers when
they were five or six years old. To see a single peach upon its stem
makes an impression of paradisaical fertility and luxury. This reminded
us even of an old Roman farm, as described by Varro:—Caesar Vopiscus
Aedilicius, when he pleaded before the Censors, said that the grounds
of Rosea were the garden (sumen the tid-bit) of Italy, in which a pole
being left would not be visible the day after, on account of the growth
of the herbage. This soil may not have been remarkably fertile, yet
at this distance we thought that this anecdote might be told of the
Tyngsborough farm.

When we passed Wicasuck Island, there was a pleasure-boat containing a
youth and a maiden on the island brook, which we were pleased to see,
since it proved that there were some hereabouts to whom our excursion
would not be wholly strange. Before this, a canal-boatman, of whom we
made some inquiries respecting Wicasuck Island, and who told us that it
was disputed property, suspected that we had a claim upon it, and though
we assured him that all this was news to us, and explained, as well as
we could, why we had come to see it, he believed not a word of it, and
seriously offered us one hundred dollars for our title. The only other
small boats which we met with were used to pick up driftwood. Some of
the poorer class along the stream collect, in this way, all the fuel
which they require. While one of us landed not far from this island to
forage for provisions among the farm-houses whose roofs we saw, for
our supply was now exhausted, the other, sitting in the boat, which was
moored to the shore, was left alone to his reflections.

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveller always has a
resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view.
The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may
always read a new truth there. There are things there written with such
fine and subtile tinctures, paler than the juice of limes, that to the
diurnal eye they leave no trace, and only the chemistry of night
reveals them. Every man's daylight firmament answers in his mind to the
brightness of the vision in his starriest hour.

These continents and hemispheres are soon run over, but an always
unexplored and infinite region makes off on every side from the mind,
further than to sunset, and we can make no highway or beaten track into
it, but the grass immediately springs up in the path, for we travel
there chiefly with our wings.

Sometimes we see objects as through a thin haze, in their eternal
relations, and they stand like Palenque and the Pyramids, and we wonder
who set them up, and for what purpose. If we see the reality in things,
of what moment is the superficial and apparent longer? What are the
earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and
scatters them? While I sit here listening to the waves which ripple and
break on this shore, I am absolved from all obligation to the past, and
the council of nations may reconsider its votes. The grating of a pebble
annuls them. Still occasionally in my dreams I remember that rippling
water.

     Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o'er,
     I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore,
     Distinct as if it were at broad noonday,
     And I were drifting down from Nashua.

With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsborough and Chelmsford,
each holding in one hand half of a tart country apple-pie which we had
purchased to celebrate our return, and in the other a fragment of the
newspaper in which it was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish,
and learning the news which had transpired since we sailed. The river
here opened into a broad and straight reach of great length, which we
bounded merrily over before a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care
look in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed
which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind in the
horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent
to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys turned their cheeks to
it. They were great and current motions, the flowing sail, the running
stream, the waving tree, the roving wind. The north-wind stepped readily
into the harness which we had provided, and pulled us along with good
will. Sometimes we sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds overhead,
watching the receding shores and the motions of our sail; the play of
its pulse so like our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so
noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient when least
effective; now bending to some generous impulse of the breeze, and then
fluttering and flapping with a kind of human suspense. It was the scale
on which the varying temperature of distant atmospheres was graduated,
and it was some attraction for us that the breeze it played with had
been out of doors so long. Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but
as next best, making a long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack toward
our home, with our wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the
watery trench; gracefully ploughing homeward with our brisk and willing
team, wind and stream, pulling together, the former yet a wild steer,
yoked to his more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when the
duck rushes through the water with an impulse of her wings, throwing the
spray about her, before she can rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up
but a few feet on the shore!

When we reached the great bend just above Middlesex, where the river
runs east thirty-five miles to the sea, we at length lost the aid of
this propitious wind, though we contrived to make one long and judicious
tack carry us nearly to the locks of the canal. We were here locked
through at noon by our old friend, the lover of the higher mathematics,
who seemed glad to see us safe back again through so many locks; but we
did not stop to consider any of his problems, though we could cheerfully
have spent a whole autumn in this way another time, and never have asked
what his religion was. It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who
cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the
labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness there should be a level
of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling
a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the
depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a
scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a
moral one. Few detect the morality in the former, or the science in
the latter. Aristotle defined art to be ????? t?? ????? ??e? ????, The
principle of the work without the wood; but most men prefer to have
some of the wood along with the principle; they demand that the truth be
clothed in flesh and blood and the warm colors of life. They prefer
the partial statement because it fits and measures them and their
commodities best. But science still exists everywhere as the sealer of
weights and measures at least.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of
it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic
value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statement of any truth
must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules
of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would
express them both. All the moral laws are readily translated into
natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive
meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to
their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already
supernatural philosophy. The whole body of what is now called moral or
ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we
prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality. The
Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. He is not a
true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and
expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is
childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial
and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise
of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.
Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics, that
is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of
the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will
dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the
moral life of its devotee, and he professes another religion than it
teaches, and worships at a foreign shrine. Anciently the faith of a
philosopher was identical with his system, or, in other words, his view
of the universe.

My friends mistake when they communicate facts to me with so much pains.
Their presence, even their exaggerations and loose statements, are
equally good facts for me. I have no respect for facts even except when
I would use them, and for the most part I am independent of those
which I hear, and can afford to be inaccurate, or, in other words, to
substitute more present and pressing facts in their place.

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes
their widest deductions.

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic
application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal
themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last,
for what is most wanted is method. Only let something be determined
and fixed around which observation may rally. How many new relations a
foot-rule alone will reveal, and to how many things still this has not
been applied! What wonderful discoveries have been, and may still be,
made, with a plumb-line, a level, a surveyor's compass, a thermometer,
or a barometer! Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect
that any eyes will see new worlds at once. I should say that the most
prominent scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, are
either serving the arts and not pure science, or are performing faithful
but quite subordinate labors in particular departments. They make no
steady and systematic approaches to the central fact. A discovery is
made, and at once the attention of all observers is distracted to that,
and it draws many analogous discoveries in its train; as if their work
were not already laid out for them, but they had been lying on their
oars. There is wanting constant and accurate observation with enough of
theory to direct and discipline it.

But, above all, there is wanting genius. Our books of science, as they
improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing the freshness and vigor and
readiness to appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked merit
in the ofttimes false theories of the ancients. I am attracted by the
slight pride and satisfaction, the emphatic and even exaggerated style
in which some of the older naturalists speak of the operations
of Nature, though they are better qualified to appreciate than to
discriminate the facts. Their assertions are not without value when
disproved. If they are not facts, they are suggestions for Nature
herself to act upon. "The Greeks," says Gesner, "had a common proverb
(?a??? ?a?e?d??) a sleeping hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit;
because the hare sees when she sleeps; for this is an admirable and
rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her bodily parts take their
rest, but the eye standeth continually sentinel."

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to
the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would
always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect
conclusions; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages
of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.
The senses of the savage will furnish him with facts enough to set him
up as a philosopher. The ancients can still speak to us with authority,
even on the themes of geology and chemistry, though these studies are
thought to have had their birth in modern times. Much is said about the
progress of science in these centuries. I should say that the useful
results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no
accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity; for
knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How
can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's
experience only by his own. We read that Newton discovered the law of
gravitation, but how many who have heard of his famous discovery have
recognized the same truth that he did? It may be not one. The revelation
which was then made to him has not been superseded by the revelation
made to any successor.

     We see the planet fall,
     And that is all.

In a review of Sir James Clark Ross's Antarctic Voyage of Discovery,
there is a passage which shows how far a body of men are commonly
impressed by an object of sublimity, and which is also a good instance
of the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. After describing the
discovery of the Antarctic Continent, at first seen a hundred miles
distant over fields of ice,—stupendous ranges of mountains from
seven and eight to twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, covered with
eternal snow and ice, in solitary and inaccessible grandeur, at one
time the weather being beautifully clear, and the sun shining on the
icy landscape; a continent whose islands only are accessible, and these
exhibited "not the smallest trace of vegetation," only in a few places
the rocks protruding through their icy covering, to convince the
beholder that land formed the nucleus, and that it was not an
iceberg;—the practical British reviewer proceeds thus, sticking to
his last, "On the 22d of January, afternoon, the Expedition made the
latitude of 74 degrees 20' and by 7h P.M., having ground (ground!
where did they get ground?) to believe that they were then in a higher
southern latitude than had been attained by that enterprising seaman,
the late Captain James Weddel, and therefore higher than all their
predecessors, an extra allowance of grog was issued to the crews as a
reward for their perseverance."

Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon ourselves any airs on
account of our Newtons and our Cuviers; we deserve an extra allowance of
grog only.

We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind to blow through the long
corridor of the canal, which is here cut straight through the woods, and
were obliged to resort to our old expedient of drawing by a cord. When
we reached the Concord, we were forced to row once more in good earnest,
with neither wind nor current in our favor, but by this time the rawness
of the day had disappeared, and we experienced the warmth of a summer
afternoon. This change in the weather was favorable to our contemplative
mood, and disposed us to dream yet deeper at our oars, while we floated
in imagination farther down the stream of time, as we had floated
down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of a milder period than had
engaged us in the morning. Chelmsford and Billerica appeared like old
English towns, compared with Merrimack and Nashua, and many generations
of civil poets might have lived and sung here.

What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian, and
that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much more of
Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry like the Greek
and Latin before it, seems well advanced toward its fall, and laden with
the fruit and foliage of the season, with bright autumnal tints, but
soon the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shading leaves,
and leave only a few desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and
rime, and creak in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impression
that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to the
literature of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various ages
and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative, and
didactic; but the poetry of runic monuments is of one style, and
for every age. The bard has in a great measure lost the dignity and
sacredness of his office. Formerly he was called a seer, but now it
is thought that one man sees as much as another. He has no longer the
bardic rage, and only conceives the deed, which he formerly stood ready
to perform. Hosts of warriors earnest for battle could not mistake nor
dispense with the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the pauses of
the fight. There was no danger of his being overlooked by his
contemporaries. But now the hero and the bard are of different
professions. When we come to the pleasant English verse, the storms have
all cleared away and it will never thunder and lighten more. The
poet has come within doors, and exchanged the forest and crag for
the fireside, the hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge with its circles of
stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero stands at the door
prepared to break forth into song or heroic action, but a homely
Englishman, who cultivates the art of poetry. We see the comfortable
fireside, and hear the crackling fagots in all the verse.

Notwithstanding the broad humanity of Chaucer, and the many social and
domestic comforts which we meet with in his verse, we have to narrow
our vision somewhat to consider him, as if he occupied less space in the
landscape, and did not stretch over hill and valley as Ossian does.
Yet, seen from the side of posterity, as the father of English poetry,
preceded by a long silence or confusion in history, unenlivened by any
strain of pure melody, we easily come to reverence him. Passing over
the earlier continental poets, since we are bound to the pleasant
archipelago of English poetry, Chaucer's is the first name after that
misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can detain us long. Indeed,
though he represents so different a culture and society, he may be
regarded as in many respects the Homer of the English poets. Perhaps he
is the youthfullest of them all. We return to him as to the purest well,
the fountain farthest removed from the highway of desultory life. He is
so natural and cheerful, compared with later poets, that we might almost
regard him as a personification of spring. To the faithful reader his
muse has even given an aspect to his times, and when he is fresh from
perusing him, they seem related to the golden age. It is still the
poetry of youth and life, rather than of thought; and though the moral
vein is obvious and constant, it has not yet banished the sun and
daylight from his verse. The loftiest strains of the muse are, for the
most part, sublimely plaintive, and not a carol as free as nature's. The
content which the sun shines to celebrate from morning to evening, is
unsung. The muse solaces herself, and is not ravished but consoled.
There is a catastrophe implied, and a tragic element in all our verse,
and less of the lark and morning dews, than of the nightingale and
evening shades. But in Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence
and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad
is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song,
because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life,
which give them an appetite for more. To the innocent there are neither
cherubim nor angels. At rare intervals we rise above the necessity of
virtue into an unchangeable morning light, in which we have only to live
right on and breathe the ambrosial air. The Iliad represents no
creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and
irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones
of the soil.

Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary man and a scholar. There
were never any times so stirring that there were not to be found some
sedentary still. He was surrounded by the din of arms. The battles of
Hallidon Hill and Neville's Cross, and the still more memorable battles
of Cressy and Poictiers, were fought in his youth; but these did not
concern our poet much, Wickliffe and his reform much more. He regarded
himself always as one privileged to sit and converse with books. He
helped to establish the literary class. His character as one of the
fathers of the English language would alone make his works important,
even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as
Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it
was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a
literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which
Dante rendered to Italy. If Greek sufficeth for Greek, and Arabic for
Arabian, and Hebrew for Jew, and Latin for Latin, then English shall
suffice for him, for any of these will serve to teach truth "right
as divers pathes leaden divers folke the right waye to Rome." In the
Testament of Love he writes, "Let then clerkes enditen in Latin, for
they have the propertie of science, and the knowinge in that facultie,
and lette Frenchmen in their Frenche also enditen their queinte termes,
for it is kyndely to their mouthes, and let us shewe our fantasies in
soche wordes as we lerneden of our dames tonge."

He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, who has come down to
him the natural way, through the meagre pastures of Saxon and
ante-Chaucerian poetry; and yet, so human and wise he appears after
such diet, that we are liable to misjudge him still. In the Saxon poetry
extant, in the earliest English, and the contemporary Scottish poetry,
there is less to remind the reader of the rudeness and vigor of youth,
than of the feebleness of a declining age. It is for the most part
translation of imitation merely, with only an occasional and slight
tinge of poetry, oftentimes the falsehood and exaggeration of fable,
without its imagination to redeem it, and we look in vain to find
antiquity restored, humanized, and made blithe again by some natural
sympathy between it and the present. But Chaucer is fresh and modern
still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the
line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung,
and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the
rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life
is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as
modern men do.

There is no wisdom that can take place of humanity, and we find that
in Chaucer. We can expand at last in his breadth, and we think that we
could have been that man's acquaintance. He was worthy to be a citizen
of England, while Petrarch and Boccacio lived in Italy, and Tell
and Tamerlane in Switzerland and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and
Wickliffe, and Gower, and Edward the Third, and John of Gaunt, and the
Black Prince, were his own countrymen as well as contemporaries; all
stout and stirring names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down from the
preceding century, and the name of Dante still possessed the influence
of a living presence. On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater
than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he
would have held up his head in their company. Among early English
poets he is the landlord and host, and has the authority of such. The
affectionate mention which succeeding early poets make of him, coupling
him with Homer and Virgil, is to be taken into the account in estimating
his character and influence. King James and Dunbar of Scotland speak
of him with more love and reverence than any modern author of his
predecessors of the last century. The same childlike relation is without
a parallel now. For the most part we read him without criticism, for he
does not plead his own cause, but speaks for his readers, and has that
greatness of trust and reliance which compels popularity. He confides
in the reader, and speaks privily with him, keeping nothing back. And
in return the reader has great confidence in him, that he tells no lies,
and reads his story with indulgence, as if it were the circumlocution
of a child, but often discovers afterwards that he has spoken with more
directness and economy of words than a sage. He is never heartless,

     "For first the thing is thought within the hart,
     Er any word out from the mouth astart."

And so new was all his theme in those days, that he did not have to
invent, but only to tell.

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit. The easy height he speaks
from in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, as if he were equal to any
of the company there assembled, is as good as any particular excellence
in it. But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not
transcendent poetry. For picturesque description of persons it is,
perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially
humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. Humor, however broad and
genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm. To his own finer vein he
added all the common wit and wisdom of his time, and everywhere in his
works his remarkable knowledge of the world, and nice perception of
character, his rare common sense and proverbial wisdom, are apparent.
His genius does not soar like Milton's, but is genial and familiar. It
shows great tenderness and delicacy, but not the heroic sentiment. It
is only a greater portion of humanity with all its weakness. He is
not heroic, as Raleigh, nor pious, as Herbert, nor philosophical, as
Shakespeare, but he is the child of the English muse, that child which
is the father of the man. The charm of his poetry consists often only
in an exceeding naturalness, perfect sincerity, with the behavior of a
child rather than of a man.

Gentleness and delicacy of character are everywhere apparent in his
verse. The simplest and humblest words come readily to his lips. No one
can read the Prioress's tale, understanding the spirit in which it was
written, and in which the child sings O alma redemptoris mater, or the
account of the departure of Constance with her child upon the sea,
in the Man of Lawe's tale, without feeling the native innocence
and refinement of the author. Nor can we be mistaken respecting the
essential purity of his character, disregarding the apology of the
manners of the age. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness, which
Wordsworth only occasionally approaches, but does not equal, are
peculiar to him. We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not
masculine. It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in
woman, though not the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to be found
at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man.

Such pure and genuine and childlike love of Nature is hardly to be found
in any poet.

Chaucer's remarkably trustful and affectionate character appears in his
familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner of speaking of his God. He
comes into his thought without any false reverence, and with no more
parade than the zephyr to his ear. If Nature is our mother, then God
is our father. There is less love and simple, practical trust in
Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we find
expressed any affection for God. Certainly, there is no sentiment so
rare as the love of God. Herbert almost alone expresses it, "Ah, my dear
God!" Our poet uses similar words with propriety; and whenever he sees
a beautiful person, or other object, prides himself on the "maistry" of
his God. He even recommends Dido to be his bride,—

     "if that God that heaven and yearth made,
     Would have a love for beauty and goodnesse,
     And womanhede, trouth, and semeliness."

But in justification of our praise, we must refer to his works
themselves; to the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the account of
Gentilesse, the Flower and the Leaf, the stories of Griselda, Virginia,
Ariadne, and Blanche the Dutchesse, and much more of less distinguished
merit. There are many poets of more taste, and better manners, who knew
how to leave out their dulness; but such negative genius cannot detain
us long; we shall return to Chaucer still with love. Some natures,
which are really rude and ill-developed, have yet a higher standard of
perfection than others which are refined and well balanced. Even the
clown has taste, whose dictates, though he disregards them, are higher
and purer than those which the artist obeys. If we have to wander
through many dull and prosaic passages in Chaucer, we have at least the
satisfaction of knowing that it is not an artificial dulness, but too
easily matched by many passages in life. We confess that we feel a
disposition commonly to concentrate sweets, and accumulate pleasures;
but the poet may be presumed always to speak as a traveller, who leads
us through a varied scenery, from one eminence to another, and it is,
perhaps, more pleasing, after all, to meet with a fine thought in its
natural setting. Surely fate has enshrined it in these circumstances
for some end. Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and never
collects them into heaps. This was the soil it grew in, and this the
hour it bloomed in; if sun, wind, and rain came here to cherish and
expand the flower, shall not we come here to pluck it?

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or
any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most
have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing
of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the
very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit
and fragrance. Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no
character. It is only an unusual precision and elasticity of speech, as
if its author had taken, not an intoxicating draught, but an electuary.
It has the distinct outline of sculpture, and chronicles an early hour.
Under the influence of passion all men speak thus distinctly, but wrath
is not always divine.

There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the
other art,—one seeks food for nutriment, the other for flavor; one
satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate. There are two kinds of
writing, both great and rare; one that of genius, or the inspired,
the other of intellect and taste, in the intervals of inspiration. The
former is above criticism, always correct, giving the law to criticism.
It vibrates and pulsates with life forever. It is sacred, and to be
read with reverence, as the works of nature are studied. There are
few instances of a sustained style of this kind; perhaps every man has
spoken words, but the speaker is then careless of the record. Such a
style removes us out of personal relations with its author; we do not
take his words on our lips, but his sense into our hearts. It is the
stream of inspiration, which bubbles out, now here, now there, now in
this man, now in that. It matters not through what ice-crystals it is
seen, now a fountain, now the ocean stream running under ground. It
is in Shakespeare, Alpheus, in Burns, Arethuse; but ever the same. The
other is self-possessed and wise. It is reverent of genius, and greedy
of inspiration. It is conscious in the highest and the least degree. It
consists with the most perfect command of the faculties. It dwells in a
repose as of the desert, and objects are as distinct in it as oases or
palms in the horizon of sand. The train of thought moves with subdued
and measured step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instrument
in its hand, and not instinct with life, like a longer arm. It leaves
a thin varnish or glaze over all its work. The works of Goethe furnish
remarkable instances of the latter.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. Nothing is considered
simply as it lies in the lap of eternal beauty, but our thoughts, as
well as our bodies, must be dressed after the latest fashions. Our taste
is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but
never yea to his hope. It invites him to adorn his deformities, and not
to cast them off by expansion, as the tree its bark. We are a people who
live in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain, and drink only
light wines, whose teeth are easily set on edge by the least natural
sour. If we had been consulted, the backbone of the earth would have
been made, not of granite, but of Bristol spar. A modern author would
have died in infancy in a ruder age. But the poet is something more than
a scald, "a smoother and polisher of language"; he is a Cincinnatus in
literature, and occupies no west end of the world. Like the sun, he will
indifferently select his rhymes, and with a liberal taste weave into his
verse the planet and the stubble.

In these old books the stucco has long since crumbled away, and we read
what was sculptured in the granite. They are rude and massive in their
proportions, rather than smooth and delicate in their finish. The
workers in stone polish only their chimney ornaments, but their pyramids
are roughly done. There is a soberness in a rough aspect, as of unhewn
granite, which addresses a depth in us, but a polished surface hits only
the ball of the eye. The true finish is the work of time, and the use to
which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.
Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more. A work of genius is
rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates the lapse of time, and
has an ingrained polish, which still appears when fragments are broken
off, an essential quality of its substance. Its beauty is at the same
time its strength, and it breaks with a lustre.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
The reader easily goes within the shallowest contemporary poetry, and
informs it with all the life and promise of the day, as the pilgrim goes
within the temple, and hears the faintest strains of the worshippers;
but it will have to speak to posterity, traversing these deserts,
through the ruins of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and beauty of
its proportions.

———————-

But here on the stream of the Concord, where we have all the while been
bodily, Nature, who is superior to all styles and ages, is now, with
pensive face, composing her poem Autumn, with which no work of man will
bear to be compared.

In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings,
which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and
longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we
are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain,
and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new
life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more
mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of
October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which
we occupy, not far off geographically,—

     "There is a place beyond that flaming hill,
     From whence the stars their thin appearance shed,
     A place beyond all place, where never ill,
     Nor impure thought was ever harbored."

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not his Father but his
Mother stirs within him, and he becomes immortal with her immortality.
From time to time she claims kindredship with us, and some globule from
her veins steals up into our own.

     I am the autumnal sun,
     With autumn gales my race is run;
     When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
     Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
     When will the harvest or the hunter's moon,
     Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
     I am all sere and yellow,
     And to my core mellow.
     The mast is dropping within my woods,
     The winter is lurking within my moods,
     And the rustling of the withered leaf
     Is the constant music of my grief.

To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke in prose:

The moon no longer reflects the day, but rises to her absolute rule, and
the husbandman and hunter acknowledge her for their mistress. Asters and
golden-rods reign along the way, and the life-everlasting withers not.
The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride, but an inward verdure
still crowns them. The thistle scatters its down on the pool, and yellow
leaves clothe the vine, and naught disturbs the serious life of men. But
behind the sheaves, and under the sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which
the reapers have not gathered, the true harvest of the year, which it
bears forever, annually watering and maturing it, and man never severs
the stalk which bears this palatable fruit.

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine
clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it
by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him.
He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of
earth. Who shall conceive what kind of roof the heavens might extend
over him, what seasons minister to him, and what employment dignify his
life! Only the convalescent raise the veil of nature. An immortality in
his life would confer immortality on his abode. The winds should be his
breath, the seasons his moods, and he should impart of his serenity to
Nature herself. But such as we know him he is ephemeral like the scenery
which surrounds him, and does not aspire to an enduring existence. When
we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top,
the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left
only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets
which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes. They
may feign that Cato's last words were

     "The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
     The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
     And now will view the Gods' state and the stars,"

but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny of common men. What is
this heaven which they expect, if it is no better than they expect?
Are they prepared for a better than they can now imagine? Where is the
heaven of him who dies on a stage, in a theatre? Here or nowhere is our
heaven.

     "Although we see celestial bodies move
     Above the earth, the earth we till and love."

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have
experienced. "The remembrance of youth is a sigh." We linger in manhood
to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they are half forgotten ere
we have learned the language. We have need to be earth-born as well as
heaven-born, ???e?e??, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better
sense than they. There have been heroes for whom this world seemed
expressly prepared, as if creation had at last succeeded; whose daily
life was the stuff of which our dreams are made, and whose presence
enhanced the beauty and ampleness of Nature herself. Where they walked,

     "Largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit
     Purpureo: Solemque suum, sua sidera nôrunt."

"Here a more copious air invests the fields, and clothes with purple
light; and they know their own sun and their own stars." We love to
hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air they
breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the
ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand
many deep. They have the heavens for their abettors, as those who
have never stood from under them, and they look at the stars with
an answering ray. Their eyes are like glow-worms, and their motions
graceful and flowing, as if a place were already found for them, like
rivers flowing through valleys. The distinctions of morality, of
right and wrong, sense and nonsense, are petty, and have lost their
significance, beside these pure primeval natures. When I consider the
clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, frowning with
darkness or glowing with downy light, or gilded with the rays of the
setting sun, like the battlements of a city in the heavens, their
grandeur appears thrown away on the meanness of my employment; the
drapery is altogether too rich for such poor acting. I am hardly worthy
to be a suburban dweller outside those walls

             "Unless above himself he can
     Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"

With our music we would fain challenge transiently another and finer
sort of intercourse than our daily toil permits. The strains come back
to us amended in the echo, as when a friend reads our verse. Why have
they so painted the fruits, and freighted them with such fragrance as to
satisfy a more than animal appetite?

     "I asked the schoolman, his advice was free,
     But scored me out too intricate a way."

These things imply, perchance, that we live on the verge of another and
purer realm, from which these odors and sounds are wafted over to us.
The borders of our plot are set with flowers, whose seeds were blown
from more Elysian fields adjacent. They are the pot-herbs of the gods.
Some fairer fruits and sweeter fragrances wafted over to us, betray
another realm's vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, and there is the
abutment of the rainbow's arch.

     A finer race and finer fed
     Feast and revel o'er our head,
     And we titmen are only able
     To catch the fragments from their table.
     Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits,
     While we consume the pulp and roots.
     What are the moments that we stand
     Astonished on the Olympian land!

We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a
purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but the rudiments of what
they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb and
blind, and without smell or taste or feeling. Every generation makes the
discovery, that its divine vigor has been dissipated, and each sense
and faculty misapplied and debauched. The ears were made, not for such
trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.
The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to
and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God?
Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere
allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly
taken to be the symbol merely? When the common man looks into the sky,
which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the
earth, and with reverence speaks of "the Heavens," but the seer will
in the same sense speak of "the Earths," and his Father who is in them.
"Did not he that made that which is within, make that which is without
also?" What is it, then, to educate but to develop these divine germs
called the senses? for individuals and states to deal magnanimously with
the rising generation, leading it not into temptation,—not teach
the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to profanity. But where is the
instructed teacher? Where are the normal schools?

A Hindoo sage said, "As a dancer, having exhibited herself to the
spectator, desists from the dance, so does Nature desist, having
manifested herself to soul—. Nothing, in my opinion, is more gentle
than Nature; once aware of having been seen, she does not again expose
herself to the gaze of soul."

It is easier to discover another such a new world as Columbus did, than
to go within one fold of this which we appear to know so well; the land
is lost sight of, the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still
history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of nature. But there
is only necessary a moment's sanity and sound senses, to teach us that
there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we have only some vague
pre-emption right and western reserve as yet. We live on the outskirts
of that region. Carved wood, and floating boughs, and sunset skies, are
all that we know of it. We are not to be imposed on by the longest spell
of weather. Let us not, my friends, be wheedled and cheated into good
behavior to earn the salt of our eternal porridge, whoever they are that
attempt it. Let us wait a little, and not purchase any clearing here,
trusting that richer bottoms will soon be put up. It is but thin soil
where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen
a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which
reminded me of myself.

     I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
         By a chance bond together,
       Dangling this way and that, their links
         Were made so loose and wide,
                        Methinks,
              For milder weather.

     A bunch of violets without their roots,
         And sorrel intermixed,
       Encircled by a wisp of straw
         Once coiled about their shoots,
                        The law
              By which I'm fixed.

     A nosegay which Time clutched from out
          Those fair Elysian fields,
       With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
          Doth make the rabble rout
                        That waste
              The day he yields.

     And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
          Drinking my juices up,
       With no root in the land
          To keep my branches green,
                         But stand
              In a bare cup.

     Some tender buds were left upon my stem
         In mimicry of life,
       But ah! the children will not know,
         Till time has withered them,
                         The woe
              With which they're rife.

     But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
         And after in life's vase
       Of glass set while I might survive,
         But by a kind hand brought
                         Alive
               To a strange place.

     That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
         And by another year,
       Such as God knows, with freer air,
         More fruits and fairer flowers
                       Will bear,
               While I droop here.

This world has many rings, like Saturn, and we live now on the outmost
of them all. None can say deliberately that he inhabits the same sphere,
or is contemporary with, the flower which his hands have plucked, and
though his feet may seem to crush it, inconceivable spaces and ages
separate them, and perchance there is no danger that he will hurt it.
What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and
the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are
still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun,
moon and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.
That is a pathetic inquiry among travellers and geographers after the
site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is. When a
thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!

The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me in the same way as do those
faint revelations of the Real which are vouchsafed to men from time to
time, or rather from eternity to eternity. When I remember the history
of that faint light in our firmament, which we call Venus, which ancient
men regarded, and which most modern men still regard, as a bright spark
attached to a hollow sphere revolving about our earth, but which we have
discovered to be another world, in itself,—how Copernicus, reasoning
long and patiently about the matter, predicted confidently concerning
it, before yet the telescope had been invented, that if ever men came to
see it more clearly than they did then, they would discover that it
had phases like our moon, and that within a century after his death the
telescope was invented, and that prediction verified, by Galileo,—I
am not without hope that we may, even here and now obtain some accurate
information concerning that OTHER WORLD which the instinct of mankind
has so long predicted. Indeed, all that we call science, as well as all
that we call poetry, is a particle of such information, accurate as far
as it goes, though it be but to the confines of the truth. If we can
reason so accurately, and with such wonderful confirmation of our
reasoning, respecting so-called material objects and events infinitely
removed beyond the range of our natural vision, so that the mind
hesitates to trust its calculations even when they are confirmed by
observation, why may not our speculations penetrate as far into the
immaterial starry system, of which the former is but the outward and
visible type? Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to
penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these
outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster,
Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,—these are some of our
astronomers.

There are perturbations in our orbits produced by the influence of
outlying spheres, and no astronomer has ever yet calculated the elements
of that undiscovered world which produces them. I perceive in the common
train of my thoughts a natural and uninterrupted sequence, each implying
the next, or, if interruption occurs, it is occasioned by a new object
being presented to my senses. But a steep, and sudden, and by these
means unaccountable transition, is that from a comparatively narrow and
partial, what is called common sense view of things, to an infinitely
expanded and liberating one, from seeing things as men describe them, to
seeing them as men cannot describe them. This implies a sense which is
not common, but rare in the wisest man's experience; which is sensible
or sentient of more than common.

In what enclosures does the astronomer loiter! His skies are shoal, and
imagination, like a thirsty traveller, pants to be through their desert.
The roving mind impatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical orbits,
like cobwebs in a corner of its universe, and launches itself to where
distance fails to follow, and law, such as science has discovered, grows
weak and weary. The mind knows a distance and a space of which all those
sums combined do not make a unit of measure,—the interval between that
which appears, and that which is. I know that there are many stars, I
know that they are far enough off, bright enough, steady enough in their
orbits,—but what are they all worth? They are more waste land in the
West,—star territory,—to be made slave States, perchance, if we
colonize them. I have interest but for six feet of star, and that
interest is transient. Then farewell to all ye bodies, such as I have
known ye.

Every man, if he is wise, will stand on such bottom as will sustain him,
and if one gravitates downward more strongly than another, he will not
venture on those meads where the latter walks securely, but rather leave
the cranberries which grow there unraked by himself. Perchance, some
spring a higher freshet will float them within his reach, though they
may be watery and frost-bitten by that time. Such shrivelled berries
I have seen in many a poor man's garret, ay, in many a church-bin and
state-coffer, and with a little water and heat they swell again to their
original size and fairness, and added sugar enough, stead mankind for
sauce to this world's dish.

What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as
invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,—for there
must be subordination,—but uncommon sense, that sense which is common
only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare. Some
aspire to excellence in the subordinate department, and may God speed
them. What Fuller says of masters of colleges is universally applicable,
that "a little alloy of dulness in a master of a college makes him
fitter to manage secular affairs."

     "He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief
     Because he wants it, hath a true belief;
     And he that grieves because his grief's so small,
     Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all."

Or be encouraged by this other poet's strain,—

     "By them went Fido marshal of the field:
     Weak was his mother when she gave him day;
     And he at first a sick and weakly child,
     As e'er with tears welcomed the sunny ray;
     Yet when more years afford more growth and might,
     A champion stout he was, and puissant knight,
     As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright.

     "Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand;
     Stops and turns back the sun's impetuous course;
     Nature breaks Nature's laws at his command;
     No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force;
     Events to come yet many ages hence,
     He present makes, by wondrous prescience;
     Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense."

"Yesterday, at dawn," says Hafiz, "God delivered me from all worldly
affliction; and amidst the gloom of night presented me with the water of
immortality."

In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah occurs this sentence: "The eagle of
the immaterial soul of Shaikh Sadi shook from his plumage the dust of
his body."

Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward to find some autumnal work
to do, and help on the revolution of the seasons. Perhaps Nature would
condescend to make use of us even without our knowledge, as when we help
to scatter her seeds in our walks, and carry burrs and cockles on our
clothes from field to field.

     All things are current found
     On earthly ground,
     Spirits and elements
     Have their descents.

     Night and day, year on year,
     High and low, far and near,
     These are our own aspects,
     These are our own regrets.

     Ye gods of the shore,
     Who abide evermore,
     I see your far headland,
     Stretching on either hand;

     I hear the sweet evening sounds
     From your undecaying grounds;
     Cheat me no more with time,
     Take me to your clime.

As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely up the gentle
stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming banks, where we had first
pitched our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our lives had
passed, we seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in the southwest
horizon. The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so
rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to
men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll
of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over
the stream, the whole river valley undulated with mild light, purer and
more memorable than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary
vales uninhabited by man. Two herons, Ardea herodias, with their long
and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen travelling high
over our heads,—their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending
their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth's
surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol
for the ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky, or sculptured
amid the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Bound to some northern meadow, they
held on their stately, stationary flight, like the storks in the
picture, and disappeared at length behind the clouds. Dense flocks of
blackbirds were winging their way along the river's course, as if on a
short evening pilgrimage to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so
fair a sunset.

     "Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night
     Hastes darkly to imprison on his way,
     Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright
     Of what's yet left thee of life's wasting day:
     Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn,
     And twice it is not given thee to be born."

The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure, and in a contemplative
mood; but the farmer's boy only whistled the more thoughtfully as
he drove his cows home from pasture, and the teamster refrained from
cracking his whip, and guided his team with a subdued voice. The last
vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently
along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars
being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or
in silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of
rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of her
dimly lighted halls;

     "Pulsæ referunt ad sidera valles,"

and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars.

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded
that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are
worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind. It is recorded in
the Chronicle of Bernaldez, that in Columbus's first voyage the natives
"pointed towards the heavens, making signs that they believed that there
was all power and holiness." We have reason to be grateful for celestial
phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man. The stars are
distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most
memorable experiences. "Let the immortal depth of your soul lead you,
but earnestly extend your eyes upwards."

As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most
excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all
men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly,
sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her
visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors,
proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and
earnestly to be sought after. They are so far akin to Silence, that they
are but bubbles on her surface, which straightway burst, an evidence of
the strength and prolificness of the under-current; a faint utterance
of Silence, and then only agreeable to our auditory nerves when they
contrast themselves with and relieve the former. In proportion as they
do this, and are heighteners and intensifiers of the Silence, they are
harmony and purest melody.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and
all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety
as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub,
be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have
made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no
indignity can assail, no personality disturb us.

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when
most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with
his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's
speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which
kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by
an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and
just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they
have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an
enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to
a strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been dark and
leaden. Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any
sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever sounding and
resounding in the ears of men.

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are
struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own
unwritten sequel, to the written and comparatively lifeless body of the
work. Of all books this sequel is the most indispensable part. It should
be the author's aim to say once and emphatically, "He said," ?f?, ?.
This is the most the book-maker can attain to. If he make his volume a
mole whereon the waves of Silence may break, it is well.

It were vain for me to endeavor to interrupt the Silence. She cannot be
done into English. For six thousand years men have translated her with
what fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better than a
sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has
her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at
last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made; for
when he at length dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the
told to the untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the
surface where he disappeared. Nevertheless, we will go on, like those
Chinese cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth, which may
one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the sea-shore.

We had made about fifty miles this day with sail and oar, and now, far
in the evening, our boat was grating against the bulrushes of its native
port, and its keel recognized the Concord mud, where some semblance of
its outline was still preserved in the flattened flags which had scarce
yet erected themselves since our departure; and we leaped gladly on
shore, drawing it up, and fastening it to the wild apple-tree, whose
stem still bore the mark which its chain had worn in the chafing of the
spring freshets.

THE END.



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