KICAN NOTES- 
 
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 Henry Woodward Sackett, '75 
 A BEQUEST 
 
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 AUG 1 ™ ■ 
 *V«3 7956 
 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PR 4550.E73 
 v.1 
 
 [Works.lllustrated library edition] 
 
 3 1924 016 653 929 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016653929 
 
, AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 AND 
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
EMIGRANTS. 
 
AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 GENERAL CIRCULATION. 
 
 and 
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCUS STONE. 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ld. 
 
 (. TvKI -U- 
 U KM?' If? CI TV 
 
 I IB JURY 
 
A^?s'/33 
 
 / 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND GREAT WINDMILL STREET, W. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 ll/TY readers have opportunities of judging for themselves 
 whether the influences and tendencies which I distrusted 
 in America had any existence but in my imagination. They 
 can examine for themselves whether there has been anything 
 in the public career of that country since, at home or abroad, 
 which suggests that those influences and tendencies really did 
 exist. As they find the fact, they will judge me. If they 
 discern any evidences of wrong-going, in any direction that I 
 have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in 
 what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they will con- 
 sider me altogether mistaken- — but not wilfully. 
 
 Prejudiced I am not, and never have been, otherwise than 
 in favour -of the United States. I have many friends in 
 America, I feel a grateful interest in the country, I hope and 
 believe it will successfully work out a problem of the highest 
 importance to the whole human race. To represent me as 
 viewing America with ill-nature, coldness, or animosity, is 
 merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very 
 easy one. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
 * 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Going Away 1 
 
 II. The Passage Out 11 
 
 III. Boston 2? 
 
 IV. An American Railroad. Lowell and its Factory Syst3:.i . . 71 
 V. "Worcester. The Connecticut River. IIal:t;olu>. New Haven 
 
 to New York 81 
 
 VI. New York 01 
 
 VII. Philadelphia, and its Solitary Prison 112 
 
 VIII. Washington. The Legislature. And the President's House . ISO 
 
 IX. A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. Virginia I!oad and 
 a Black Driver. Richmond. Baltimore. The Harrisburg 
 Mail, and a Glimpse op the City. A Canal Boat . . 140 
 
 X. Some further Account op the Canal Boat, its Domestic 
 Economy, and its Passengers. Journey to Pittsburg across 
 the Alleghany Mountains. Pittsburg 169 
 
 XL From Pittsburg to Cincinnati in a Western Steamboat. Cin- 
 cinnati 182 
 
 XII. From Cincinnati to Louisville in another Western Steam- 
 boat ; and prom Louisville to St. Louis in another. St. 
 • Louis l" : i 
 
 XIII. A Jaunt to the Looking-glass Prairie and Back . . 206 
 XIV.. Return to Cincinnati. A Stage-coach Ride from thai City to 
 Columbus, and thence to Sandusky, fo, vy Lake Erie, to 
 the Falls of Niagara 216 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. FACS 
 
 XV. In Canada : Toronto ; Kingston ; Montreal ; Quebec ; St. 
 John's. In the United States aoain : Lebanon? the 
 Shaker Village ; and West Toixt 235 
 
 XVI. The Passage Home 256 
 
 XVII. Slavery ... 266 
 
 XVIII. Concluding Remarks 285 
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 The Header's Passport 301 
 
 Going through France .... 304 
 
 Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon 313 
 
 Avignon to Genoa 323 
 
 Genoa and its Neighbourhood 329 
 
 To Parma, Modena, and Bologna \ 364 
 
 Through Bologna and Fekrara ... 375 
 
 An Italian Drea;.i 382 
 
 By Verona, Mantua, and Milan, auxss the Pass of the SisirLON into 
 
 Switzerland 392 
 
 To Rome by Pisa and Siena 410 
 
 Pome 426 
 
 A Rapid Diorama — 
 
 To Naples ; . . . . 478 
 
 Naples 481 
 
 Pompeii — Herculaneum 486 
 
 Pjestum 488 
 
 Vesuvius ' 489 
 
 Return to Naples 494 
 
 Monte Cassino ...... 499 
 
 Florence ,• '" 502 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
 Emigrants. Frontispiece. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Solitary Prisoner . 121 
 
 Black and White 156 
 
 The Little Wife 203 
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Civil and Military 305 
 
 Italian Peasants • 346 
 
 The Chiffonier 108 
 
 In the Catacombs 451 
 
AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
 -^ 
 
AMEEICAN NOTES, 
 
 <rt 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GOING AWAY. 
 
 f SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths 
 comical astonishment with which, on the morning of the 
 third of January, eighteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened 
 the door of, and put my head into, a " state-room" on board the 
 Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred tons burden per register, 
 bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying her Majesty's mails. 
 That this state-room had been specially engaged for " Charles 
 Dickens, Esquire, and Lady," was rendered sufficiently clear even 
 to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing 
 the fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very 
 thin mattress, spread like a surgical plaster on a most inacces- 
 sible shelf. But that this was the state-room concerning which 
 Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held daily and nightly 
 conferences for at least four months preceding : that this could 
 by any possibility be that small snug chamber of the imagina- 
 tion, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy 
 strong upon him, had always foretold would contain at least 
 one little sofa, and which his lady, with a modest yet most 
 magnificent sense of its limited dimensions, had from the first 
 opined would not hold more than two enormous portmanteaus 
 in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now 
 no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a 
 «. " B 
 
2 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot) : that this 
 utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly pre- 
 posterous box had the remotest reference to, or connection with, 
 those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, 
 sketched by a masterly hand, in the highly varnished litho- 
 graphic plan hanging up in the agent's counting-house in the 
 city of London : that this room of state, in short, could be any- 
 thing but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the captain's, 
 invented and put in practice for the better relish and enjoyment 
 of the real state-room presently to be disclosed : — these were 
 truths which I really could not, for the moment, bring my mind 
 at all to bear upon or comprehend. And I sat down upon a 
 kind of horsehair slab, or perch, of which there were two 
 within ; and looked, without any expression of countenance 
 whatever, at some friends who had come on board with us, and 
 who were crushing their faces into all manner of shapes by 
 endeavouring to squeeze them through the small doorway. 
 
 "We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming 
 below, which, but that we were the most sanguine people living, 
 might have prepared us for the worst. The imaginative artist 
 to whom I have already made allusion has depicted, in the 
 same great work, a chamber of almost interminable perspective, 
 furnished, as Mr. Robins would say, in a style of more than 
 Eastern splendour, and filled (but not inconveniently so) with 
 groups of ladies and gentlemen, in the very highest state of 
 enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending into the bowels of 
 the ship, we had passed from the deck into a long narrow 
 apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with windows in the 
 sides ; having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which 
 three 'or four chilly stewards were warming their hands ; while 
 on either side, extending down its whole dreary length, was a 
 long, long table, over each of which a rack, fixed to the low 
 roof, and stuck full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted 
 dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather. I had not at that 
 time seen the ideal presentment of this chamber which has 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 3 
 
 since gratified me so much, but I observed that one of our 
 friends, who had made the arrangements for our voyage, turned 
 pale on entering, retreated on the friend behind him, smote his 
 forehead involuntarily, and said below his breath, " Impossible ! 
 it cannot be ! " or words to that effect. He recovered himself 
 however, by a great effort, and, after a preparatory cough o\ 
 two, cried, with a ghastly smile which is still before me, looking 
 at the same time round the walls, " Ha ! the breakfast-room, 
 steward, eh ? " We all foresaw what the answer must be : we 
 knew the agony he suffered. He had often spoken of the saloon ; 
 had taken in and lived upon the pictorial idea ; had usually 
 given us to understand, at home, that to form a just conception 
 of it, it would be necessary to multiply the size and furniture of 
 an ordinary drawing-room by seven, and then fall short of the 
 reality. When the man in reply avowed the truth : the blunt, 
 remorseless, naked truth : " This is the saloon, sir" — he actually 
 reeled beneath the blow. 
 
 In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose between 
 their else daily communication the formidable barrier of many 
 thousand miles of stormy space, and who were for that reason 
 anxious to cast no other cloud, not even the passing shadow of 
 a moment's disappointment or discomfiture, upon the short 
 interval of happy companionship that yet remained to them — • 
 in persons so situated, the natural transition from these first 
 surprises was obviously into peals of hearty laughter ; and I can 
 report that I, for one, being still seated upon the slab or perch 
 before mentioned, roared outright until the vessel rang again. 
 Thus, in less than two minutes after coming upon it for the 
 first time, we all by common consent agreed that this state- 
 room was the pleasantest and most facetious and capital con- 
 trivance possible, and that to have had it one inch larger would 
 have been quite a disagreeable and deplorable state of things. 
 And with this ; and with showing how — by very nearly closing 
 the door, and twining in 'and out like serpents, and by counting 
 .the little washing slab as standing-room — we could manage to 
 
 e2 
 
4 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 insinuate four people into it, all at one time ; and entreating 
 each other to observe how very airy it was (in dock), and how 
 there was a beautiful port-hole which could be kept open all 
 day (weather permitting), and how there was quite a large bull's- 
 eye just over the looking-glass, which would render shaving a 
 perfectly easy and delightful process (when the ship didn't roll 
 too much) ; we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion 
 that it was rather spacious than otherwise : though I do verily 
 believe that, deducting the two berths, one above the other, than 
 which nothing smaller for sleeping in was ever made except 
 coffins, it was no bigger than one of those hackney cabriolets 
 which have the door behind, and shoot their fares out like sacks 
 of coals upon the pavement. 
 
 Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of all 
 parties, concerned or unconcerned, we sat down round the fire in 
 the ladies' cabin — just to try the effect. It was rather dark, cer- 
 tainly ; but somebody said, " Of course it would be light at sea," 
 a proposition to which we all assented ; echoing " Of course, of 
 course ; " though it would be exceedingly difficult to say why we 
 thought so. I remember, too, when we had discovered and 
 exhausted another topic of consolation in the circumstance of 
 this ladies' cabin adjoining our state-room, and the consequently 
 immense feasibility of sitting there at all times and seasons, and 
 had fallen into a momentary silence, leaning our faces on our 
 hands and looking at the fire, one of our patty said, with the 
 solemn air of a man who had made a discovery, " What a relish 
 mulled claret will have down here ! " which appeared to strike 
 us all most forcibly ; as though there were something spicy and 
 high-flavoured in cabins, which essentially improved that compo- 
 sition, and rendered it quite incapable of perfection anywhere else. 
 
 There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing 
 clean sheets and table-cloths from the very entrails of the sofas, 
 and from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism that it 
 made one's head ache to see them opened one after another, 
 and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her 
 
For general circulation. 5 
 
 proceedings, and to find that every nook and corner and indi- 
 vidual piece of furniture was something else besides what it 
 pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and place of 
 secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was its least useful one. 
 
 God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account 
 of January voyages ! God bless her for her clear recollection of 
 the companion passage of last year, when nobody was ill, and 
 everybody danced from morning till night, and it was " a run " 
 of twelve days, and a piece of the purest frolic, and delight, and 
 jollity ! All happiness be with her for her bright face and her 
 pleasant Scotch tongue, which had sounds of old Home in it 
 for my fellow-traveller ; and for her predictions of fair winds and 
 fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn't be half so fond of her) ; 
 and for the ten thousand small fragments of genuine Avomanly 
 tact by which, without piecing them elaborately together, and 
 patching them up into shape and form and case and pointed 
 application, she nevertheless did plainly show that all young 
 mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close at hand 
 to their little children left upon the other ; and that what seemed 
 to the uninitiated a serious journey, was, to those who were in 
 the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and whistled at ! 
 Light be her heart, and gay her merry eyes, for years ! 
 
 The state-room had grown pretty fast ; but by this time it had 
 expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay- 
 window to view the sea from. So we went upon deck again 
 in high spirits ; and there everything was in such a state of 
 bustle and active preparation, that the blood quickened its pace, 
 and whirled through one's veins on that clear frosty morning 
 with involuntary mirthfulness. For every gallant ship was 
 riding slowly up and down, and every little boat was plashing 
 noisily in the water ; and knots of people stood upon the wharf, 
 gazing with a kind of " dread delight " on the far-famed fast 
 American steamer ; and one party of men were " taking in the 
 milk," or, in other words, getting the cow on board ; and another 
 were filling the ice-houses to the very throat with fresh provi- 
 
6 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 sions ; with butcher's meat and garden stuff, pale sucking-pigs, 
 calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultry out of 
 all proportion ; and others were coiling ropes, and busy with 
 oakum yarns ; and others were lowering heavy packages into the 
 hold ; and the purser's head was barely visible as it loomed in a 
 state of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile ot 
 passengers' luggage ; and there seemed to be nothing going on 
 anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of anybody,' but prepara- 
 tions for this mighty voyage.- This, with "the" bfighf cold sun, 
 the bracing air, the crisply-curling water, the thin "white crust 
 of morning ice upon the" decks which crackled with a "sharp 'and 
 cheerful sound beneath the lightest tread; was irresistible. "And 
 when, again upon the shore, we turned and saw from the"vess"eTs 
 mast her name signalled in flags of joyous colours, and fluttering 
 by their side the beautiful American banner with its stars and 
 stripes, — the long three thousand miles and more, and, longer 
 still, the six whole months of absence, so dwindled and faded 
 that the ship had gone out and come home again, and it was 
 broad spring already in the Coburg Dock at Liverpool. 
 
 I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance whethef 
 Turtle, and cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and Claret, and 
 all the slight et csetera usually included in an unlimited Order 
 for a good dinner — especially when it is left to the liberal con- 
 struction of my faultless friend, Mr. Eadley of the Adelphi 
 Hotel — are peculiarly calculated to suffer a sea-change ; or 
 whether a plain mutton chop, and a glass or two of "sherry, 
 would be less likely of conversion into foreign and disconcerting 
 material. My own opinion is, that whether one is discreet" or 
 indiscreet in these particulars, on the eve of a sea voyage, is a 
 matter of little consequence"; and that, to use a common phrase, 
 "it comes to very much the. same thing in the end." Bethil 
 as it may, I know that the dinner of that day was undeniably 
 perfect ; that it comprehended all these items, and; a great 
 many more ; and that we all did ample justice to it: And I 
 know,- too, that, bating a certain tacit avoidance of any allusion 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 7 
 
 to to-morrow; such as may be supposed to prevail between 
 delicate-minded turnkeys and a sensitive prisoner who is to be 
 hanged next morning ; we got on very well, and, all things 
 considered, were merry enough. 
 
 When the morning — the morning — came, and we met at 
 breakfast, it was curious to see how eager we all were to pre- 
 vent a moment's pause in the conversation, and how astound- 
 ingly gay everybody was : the forced spirits of each member of 
 the little party having as much likeness to his natural mirth; as 
 hothouse peas at five guineas the quart resemble in flavour the 
 growth of the dews, and air, and rain of Heaven. But as one 
 o'clock, the hour for going aboard, drew near, this volubility 
 dwindled away by little and little, despite the most-persevering 
 efforts to the contrary, until at last, the matter being now quite 
 desperate, we threw off all disguise ; openly speculated upon 
 where we should be this time to-morrow, this time next day, 
 and so forth ; and intrusted a vast number of messages to those 
 who intended returning to town that night, which were to be 
 delivered at home and elsewhere, without fail, within the very 
 shortest possible space of time after the arrival of the railway 
 train at Euston Square. And commissions and remembrances 
 do so crowd upon one at such a time, that we were still busied 
 with this employment when we found ourselves fused, as it were, 
 into a dense conglomeration of passengers and passengers' friends 
 and passengers' luggage, all jumbled together on the deck of a 
 small steamboat, and panting and snorting off to the packet, 
 which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon, and was now 
 lying at her moorings in the river. 
 
 And there she is ! all eyes are turned to where she lies, dimly 
 discernible through the gathering fog of the early winter after- 
 noon ; every finger is pointed in the same direction ; and 
 murmurs of interest and admiration — as " How beautiful she 
 looks ! " " How trim she is ! " — are heard on every side. 
 Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on one side and his hands 
 in his pockets, who has dispensed so much consolation by 
 
$ AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 inquiring with a yawn of another gentleman whether he ia 
 " going across "—as if it were a ferry — even he condescends to 
 look that way, and nod his head, as who should say, " No 
 mistake about that : " and not even the sage Lord Burleigh 
 in his nod included half so much as this lazy gentleman of 
 might who has made the passage (as everybody on board 
 has found out already ; it's impossible to say how) thirteen 
 times without a single accident ! There is another passenger 
 very much wrapped up, who has been frowned down by the 
 rest, and morally trampled upon and crushed, for presuming to 
 inquire with a timid interest how long it is since the poor 
 President went down. He is standing close to the lazy gentle- 
 man, and says with a faint smile that he believes She is a very 
 strong Ship ; to which the lazy gentleman, looking first in his 
 questioner's eye and then very hard in the wind's, answers 
 unexpectedly and ominously, that She need be. Upon this the 
 lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the popular estima- 
 tion, and the passengers, with looks of defiance, whisper to each 
 other that he is an ass and an impostor, and clearly don't know 
 anything at all about it. 
 
 But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose huge red 
 funnel is smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious inten- 
 tions. Packing-cases, portmanteaus, carpet bags, and boxes 
 are already passed from hand to hand, and hauled on board 
 with breathless rapidity. The officers, smartly dressed, are at 
 the gangway, handing the passengers up the side, and hurrying 
 the men. In five minutes' time the little steamer is utterly 
 deserted, and the packet is beset and overrun by its late freight, 
 who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be met with 
 by the dozen in every nook and corner : swarming down below 
 with their own baggage, and stumbling over other people's ; 
 disposing themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating 
 a most horrible confusion by having to turn out again ; madly 
 bent upon opening locked doors, and on forcing a passage into 
 all kinds of out-of-the-way places where there is no thorough* 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 9 
 
 fare ; sending wild stewards, with elfin hair, to and fro upon the 
 breezy decks on unintelligible errands, impossible of execution ; 
 and, in short, creating the most extraordinary and bewildering 
 tumult. In the midst of all this, the lazy gentleman, who 
 seems to have no luggage of any kind — not so much as a friend 
 even — lounges up and down the hurricane deck, coolly puffing 
 a cigar ; and, as this unconcerned demeanour again exalts him 
 in the opinion of those who have leisure to observe his proceed- 
 ings, every time he looks up at the masts, or down at the decks, 
 or over the side, they look there too, as wondering whether he 
 sees anything wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he 
 should, he will have the goodness to mention it. 
 
 What have we here ? The captain's boat ! and yonder the 
 captain himself. Now, by all our hopes and wishes, the very 
 man he ought to be ! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little 
 fellow ; with a ruddy face, which is a letter of invitation to 
 shake him by both hands at once ; and with a clear blue, honest 
 eye, that it does one good to see one's sparkling image in. 
 " Eing the bell ! " " Ding, ding, ding ! " the very bell is in a 
 hurry. " Now for the shore — who's for the shore ? " — " These 
 gentlemen, I am sorry to say." They are away, and never said 
 Good-bye. Ah ! now they wave it from the little boat. " Good- 
 bye ! Good-bye ! " Three cheers from them ; three more from 
 us ; three more from them ; and they are gone. 
 
 To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a hundred times ! 
 This waiting for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If we 
 could have gone off in the midst of that last burst, we should 
 have started triumphantly : but to lie here, two hours and more, 
 in the damp fog, neither staying at home nor going abroad, is 
 letting one gradually down into the very depths of dulness and 
 low spirits. A speck in the mist, at last ! That's something. 
 It is the boat we wait for ! That's more to the purpose. The 
 captain appears on the paddle-box with his speaking trumpet ; 
 the officers take their stations ; all hands are on the alert ; the 
 flagging hopes of the passengers revive ; the cooks pause in 
 
10 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 their savoury wor&, and look out with faces full of interest. The 
 boat comes alongside ; the bags are dragged in anyhow, and 
 flung down for the moment anywhere. Three cheers more : 
 and, as the first one rings upon our ears, the vessel throbs like 
 a strong giant that has just received the breath of life ; the 
 two great wheels turn fiercely round for the first time ; and the 
 noble ship, with wind and tide astern, breaks proudly through 
 the lashed and foaming water. . - 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PASSAGE OUT. 
 
 TITE all dined together that day ; and a rather formidable 
 " party "we"~ were : ho fewer than eighty-six strong. The 
 vessel' being pretty deep' in "the "Water; with all' her 'cbals""on 
 board and so many passengers, and the weather being calm arid 
 quie'ty there was "but little motion ; so "that before the" "dinner 
 was "half over, even those passengers who were iriost distrustful 
 of themselves plucked up amazingly ; and those who in the 
 morning had returned to the universal question, " Are you a 
 good sailor ? " a very decided negative, now either parried the 
 inquiry with the evasive reply, " Oh ! I suppose I'm no worse 
 than anj r body else ; " or, reckless of all moral obligations, 
 answered boldly, " Yes : " and with some irritation too, as 
 though they would add, " I should like to know what you see 
 in 'me, sir, particularly, to justify suspicion ! " 
 
 Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, 
 I could not but observe that very few remained long over their 
 wine ; and that "everybody had an unusual love of the open air; 
 arid that the favourite and most coveted seats were invariably 
 those nearest to the door. The tea-table, too, was by no means 
 as well attended as the dinner-table ; and there was less whist- 
 playirig than inight have beenexpeeted. . "Still, with the excep-. 
 tiori'of one lady," "who had'retired" with some precipitation at 
 diririer-tiirie, immediately after being assisted to the finest cut of 
 a very yellow boiled leg of iriutton with very green capers, there 
 were no invalids as yet ; arid walking, and smoking, and drink- 
 ing of brandy-and-water (but always in the open air), went on 
 
12 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 with unabated spirit until eleven o'clock, or thereabouts, when 
 " turning in" — no sailor of seven hours' experience talks of going 
 to bed — became the order of the night. The perpetual tramp 
 of boot-heels on the decks gave place to a heavy silence, and 
 the whole human freight was stowed away below, excepting a 
 very few stragglers like myself, who were probably, like me, 
 afraid to go there. 
 
 To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a very striking time 
 on shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long worn 
 off, it never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm for 
 me. The gloom through which the great black mass holds its 
 direct and certain course ; the rushing water, plainly heard, but 
 dimly seen ; the broad, white, glistening track that follows in 
 the vessel's wake ; the men on the look-out forward, who would 
 be scarcely visible against the dark sky, but for their blotting 
 out some score of glistening stars ; the helmsman at the wheel, 
 with the illuminated card before him, shining, a speck of light 
 amidst the darkness, like something sentient and of Divine intel- 
 ligence ; the melancholy sighing of the wind through block, 
 and rope, and chain ; the gleaming forth of light from every 
 crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though 
 the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to burst through 
 any outlet, wild with its resistless power of death and ruin. At 
 first, too, and even when the hour, and all the objects it exalts, 
 have come to be familiar, it is difficult, alone and thoughtful, to 
 hold them to their proper shapes and forms. They change with 
 the wandering fancy ; assume the semblance of things left far 
 away ; put on the well -remembered aspect of favourite places 
 dearly loved; and even people them with shadows. Streets, 
 houses, rooms ; figures so like their usual occupants, that they 
 have startled me by their reality, which far exceeded, as it seemed 
 to me, all power of mine to conjure up the absent ; have, many 
 and many a time, at such an hour, grown suddenly out of 
 objects with whose real look, and use, and purpose I was as 
 well acquainted as with my own two hands. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 3 
 
 My own two hands, and feet likewise, being very cold, how- 
 ever, on this particular occasion, I crept below at midnight. It 
 was not exactly comfortable below. It was decidedly close ; 
 and it was impossible to be unconscious of the presence of that 
 extraordinary compound of strange smells, which is to be found 
 nowhere but on board ship, and which is such a subtle perfume 
 that it seems to enter at every pore of the skin, and whisper of 
 the hold. Two passengers' wives (one of them my own) lay 
 already in silent agonies on the sofa ; and one lady's maid {my 
 lady's) was a mere bundle on the floor, execrating her destiny, 
 and pounding her curl-papers among the stray boxes. Every- 
 thing sloped the wrong way; which in itself was an aggravation 
 scarcely to be borne. I had left the door open, a moment 
 before, in the bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I turned 
 to shut it, it was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now 
 every plank and timber creaked, as if the ship were made of 
 wicker-work ; and now crackled like an enormous fire of the 
 driest possible twigs. There was nothing for it but bed ; so I 
 went to bed. 
 
 It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a 
 tolerably fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to 
 this hour I don't know what) a good deal ; and reeled on deck 
 a little ; drank cold brandy-and- water with an unspeakable disgust, 
 and ate hard biscuit perseveringly : not ill, but going to be. 
 
 It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep 
 by a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to know whether 
 there's any danger. I rouse myself, and look out of bed. The 
 water jug is plunging and leaping like a lively dolphin ; all the 
 smaller articles are afloat, except my shoes, which are stranded 
 on a carpet bag, high and dry, like a couple of coal-barges. 
 Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and behold the looking- 
 glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon the ceiling. 
 At the same time the door entirely disappears, and a new one 
 is opened in the floor. Then I begin to comprehend that the 
 state-room is standing on its head. 
 
14 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all com- 
 patible with this novel state of things, the ship rights. Before 
 one can say " Thank E[eaven ! " she wrongs again. Before one 
 can cry she is wrong, she seems to have started forward, and to 
 be a creature actively running of its own accord, with broken 
 knees and failing legs, throitgh every variety of hole and pitfall, 
 and stumbling constantly. Before one can so much as wonder, 
 she takes a high leap into the air. Before she has well done 
 that, she takes a deep dive into the water. Before she has 
 gained the surface, she throws a summerset. The instant she is 
 on her legs, she rushes backward. And so she goes on stagger- 
 ing, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching, throb- 
 bing, rolling, and rocking : and going through all these move- 
 ments, sometimes by turns, and sometimes all together : until 
 one feels disposed to roar for mercy. 
 
 A steward passes. "Steward!" "Sir?" "What is the 
 matter ? what do you call this ? " " Bather a heavy sea on, sir, 
 and a head wind." 
 
 A head wind ! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's prow, 
 with fifteen thousand Samsons in one bent upon driving her back, 
 and hitting her exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts 
 to advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse 
 and artery of her huge body swollen and bursting under this 
 maltreatment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howl- 
 ing, the sea roaring, the rain beating : all in furious array against 
 her. Picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds, in 
 fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the 
 air. Add to all this the clattering on deck and down below ; 
 the tread of hurried feet ; the loud hoarse shouts of seamen ; 
 the gurgling in and -out of water through the scuppers ; with 
 every now and then the striking of a heavy sea upon the 
 planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard 
 within a vault; and there is the head wind of that January 
 morning. 
 
 I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 5 
 
 the ship : such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the 
 tumbling down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose 
 casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remark- 
 able and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their various 
 state rooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get up 
 to breakfast. I say nothing of them : for although I lay listen- 
 ing to this concert for three or four days, I don't think I heard 
 ifc for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration of 
 which term, I lay down again, excessively sea -sick. 
 
 Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of 
 the term : I wish I had been : but in a form which I have never 
 seen or heard described, though I have no doubt it is very 
 common. I lay there, all the day long, quite coolly and con- 
 tentedly ; with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get up, 
 or get better, or take the air ; with no curiosity, or care, or 
 regret, of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can remember, 
 in this universal indifference, having a kind of lazy joy — of 
 fiendish delight, if anything so lethargic can be dignified with 
 the title — in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to me. If 
 I may be allowed to illustrate my state of mind by such an 
 example, I should say that I was exactly in the condition of the 
 elder Mr. Willet, after the incursion of the rioters into his bar 
 at Chigwell. Nothing would have surprised me. If, in the 
 momentary illumination of any ray of intelligence that may have 
 come upon me in the way of thoughts of Home, a goblin post- 
 man, with a scarlet coat and bell, had come into that little 
 kennel before me, broad awake, in broad day, and, apologising for 
 being damp through walking in the sea, had handed me a letter, 
 directed to myself, in familiar characters, I am certain I should 
 not have felt one atom of astonishment : I should have been 
 perfectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walked in, with a 
 toasted shark on his trident, I should have looked upon the 
 event as one of the very commonest every-day occurrences. 
 . Once — once — I found myself on deck. I don't know how I 
 got there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was 5 
 
1 6 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 and completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair 
 of boots such as no weak man in his senses could ever have got 
 into. I found myself standing, when a gleam of consciousness 
 came upon me. holding on to something. I don't know what. 
 I think it was the boatswain : or it may have been the pump : 
 or possibly the cow. I can't say how long I had been there ; 
 whether a day or a minute. I recollect trying to think about 
 something (about anything in the whole wide world, I was not 
 particular) without the smallest effect. I could not even make 
 out which was the sea, and which the sky ; for the horizon 
 seemed drunk, and was flying wildly about in all directions. 
 Even in that incapable state, however, I recognised the lazy 
 gentleman standing before me : nautically clad in a suit of 
 shaggy blue, with an oil-skin hat. But I was too imbecile, 
 although I knew it to be he, to separate him from his dress ; 
 and tried to call him, I remember, Pilot. After another 
 interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and 
 recognised another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and 
 fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady 
 looking-glass ; but I knew it for the captain ; and such was the 
 cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile : yes, even 
 then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures that he addressed 
 me ; but it was a long time before I Could make out that he 
 remonstrated against my standing up to my knees in water — as 
 I was ; of course I don't know why. I tried to thank him, 
 but couldn't. I could -only point to my boots — or wherever I 
 supposed my boots to be — and say in a plaintive voice, " Cork 
 soles : " at the same time endeavouring, I am told, to sit down 
 in the pool. Finding that I was quite insensible, and for the 
 time a maniac, he humanely conducted me below. 
 
 There I remained until I got better : suffering, whenever I 
 was recommended to eat anything, an amount of anguish only 
 second to that which is said to be endured by the apparently 
 drowned, in the process of restoration to life. One gentleman 
 on board had a letter of introduction to me from a mutual 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 7 
 
 friend in London. He sent it below with his card, on the 
 morning of the head wind ; and I was long troubled with the 
 idea that he might be up, and well, and a hundred times a day- 
 expecting me to call upon him in the saloon. I imagined him 
 one of those cast-iron images — I will not call them men — who 
 ask, with red faces and lusty voices, what sea-sickness means, 
 and whether it really is as bad as it is represented to be. This 
 was very torturing indeed ; and I don't think I ever felt such 
 perfect gratification and gratitude of heart as I did when I 
 heard from the ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a 
 large mustard poultice on this very gentleman's stomach. I 
 date my recovery from the receipt of that intelligence. 
 
 It was materially assisted though, I have no doubt, by a 
 heavy gale of wind, which came slowly up at sunset, when we 
 were about ten days out, and raged with gradually increasing 
 fury until morning, saving that it lulled for an hour a little 
 before midnight. There was something in the unnatural repose 
 of that hour, and in the after gathering of the storm, so incon- 
 ceivably awful and tremendous, that its bursting into full 
 violence was almost a relief. 
 
 The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I 
 shall never forget. "Will it ever be worse than this?" was a 
 question I had often heard asked, when everything was sliding 
 and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to 
 comprehend the possibility of anything afloat being more dis- 
 turbed, without toppling over and going down. But what the 
 agitation of a steam-vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the wild 
 Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination to con- 
 ceive. To say that she is flung down on her side in the waves, 
 with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, 
 she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her 
 with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls her back — ■ 
 that she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though Stunned, 
 and then, with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward 
 like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down, and 
 
 c 
 
1 8 'AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry sea — that 
 thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind are all in fierce 
 contention for the- mastery — that every plank, has its groan, 
 every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the great ocean 
 its howling voice — is nothing. To say that all is grand, and 
 all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words 
 cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream 
 can call it up again in all its fury, rage, and passion. 
 
 And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a 
 situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as strong 
 a sense of its absurdity as I have now : and could no more help 
 laughing than I can at any other comical incident, happening 
 under circumstances the most favourable to its enjoyment. 
 About midnight we shipped a sea, which forced its way through 
 the sky-lights, burst open the doors above, and came raging and 
 roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable con- 
 sternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady — who, by the 
 way, had previously sent a message to the captain by the 
 stewardess, requesting him, with her compliments, to have a 
 steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast, 
 and to the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck 
 by lightning. They, and the handmaid before mentioned, 
 being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do 
 with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or 
 comfortable cordial ; and nothing better occurring to me, at" the 
 moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured a tumblerful 
 without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without 
 holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long 
 sofa — a fixture, extending entirely across the cabin — where they 
 clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned. 
 When I approached this place with my specific, and was about 
 to administer it, with many consolatory expressions, to the 
 nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly 
 down to the other end ! And when I staggered to that end, 
 and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffled were 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 9 
 
 my good intentions by the ship giving another lurch, and their 
 all rolling back again ! I suppose I dodged them up and 
 down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, without reach- 
 ing them once ; and, by the time I did catch them, the brandy - 
 and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a tea-spoonful. 
 To complete the group, it is necessary to recognise, in- this dis- 
 concerted dodger, an individual very pale from sea-sickness, 
 who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair last at Liver- 
 pool : and whose only articles of dress (linen not included) were 
 a pair of dreadnought trousers ; a blue jacket, formerly admired 
 upon the Thames at Richmond : no stockings ; and one slipper. 
 
 Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next morn- 
 ing ; which made bed a practical joke, and getting up, by any 
 process short of > falling out, an impossibility ; I say nothing. 
 But anything like the utter dreariness and desolation that met 
 my eyes when I literally " tumbled up " on deck at noon, I 
 never saw. Ocean and sky were all of one dull, heavy, uniform, 
 lead colour. There was no extent of prospect even over the 
 dreary waste that lay around us, for the sea ran high, and the 
 horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. Viewed from 
 the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have been imposing 
 and stupendous, no doubt ; but seen from the wet and rolling 
 decks, it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale 
 of last night the life-boat had been crushed by one blow of the 
 sea like a walnut shell ; and there it hung dangling in the air : 
 a mere faggot of crazy boards. The planking of the paddle- 
 boxes had been torn sheer away. The wheels were exposed and 
 bare ; and they whirled and dashed their spray about the decks 
 at random. Chimney white with crusted salt ; topmasts struck; 
 storm-sails set ; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping : 
 a gloomier picture it would be hard to look upon. 
 
 I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies' 
 cabin, where, besides ourselves, there were only four other 
 passengers. First, the little Scotch lady before mentioned, on 
 her way to join her husband at. New York, who had settled 
 
 C2 
 
id American notes 
 
 there three years before. Secondly and thirdly, an honest 
 young Yorkshireman, connected with some American house ; 
 domiciled in that same city, and carrying thither his beautiful . 
 young wife, to whom he had been married but a fortnight, and 
 who was the fairest specimen of a comely English country girl I 
 have ever seen. Fourthly, fifthly, and lastly, another couple : 
 newly married too, if one might judge from the endearments 
 they frequently interchanged : of whom I know no more than 
 that they were rather a mysterious, runaway kind of couple ; 
 that the lady had great personal attractions also ; and that the 
 gentleman carried more guns with him than Kobinson Crusoe, 
 wore a shooting coat, and had two great dogs on board. On 
 further consideration, I remember that he tried hot roast pig and 
 bottled ale as a cure for sea-sickness ; and that he took these 
 remedies (usually in bed) day after day, with astonishing per- 
 severance. I may add, for the information of the curious, that 
 they decidedly failed. 
 
 The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprece- 
 dentedly bad, we usually straggled into this cabin, more or less 
 faint and miserable, about an hour before noon, and lay down 
 on the sofas to recover ; during which interval the captain 
 vould look in to communicate the state of the wind, the moral 
 certainty of its changing to-morrow (the weather is always going 
 to improve to-morrow, at sea), the vessel's rate of sailing, and so 
 forth. Observations there were none to tell us of, for there 
 was no sun to take them by. But a description of one day will 
 serve for all the rest. Here it is. 
 
 The captain being gone, we compose ourselves to read, if the 
 place be light enough ; and if not, we doze and talk alternately. 
 At one a bell rings, and the stewardess comes down with a 
 steaming dish of baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples ; 
 and plates of pig's face, cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a 
 smoKing mess of rare hot collops. We fall-to upon these 
 dainties ; east as much as we can (we have great appetites now) ; 
 and are as long as possible about it. If the fire will burn (it 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 21 
 
 V , 
 will sometimes), we are pretty cheerful. If it won't, we all 
 
 remark to each other that it's very cold, rub our hands, cover 
 ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down again to doze, 
 talk, and read (provided as aforesaid), until dinner-time. At 
 five another bell rings, and the stewardess reappears with 
 another dish of potatoes — boiled this time — and store of hot 
 meat of various kinds : not forgetting the roast pig, to be taken 
 medicinally. We sit down at table again (rather more cheer- 
 fully than before) ; prolong the meal with a rather mouldy 
 dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges ; and drink our wine 
 and brandy-and-water. The bottles and glasses are still upon 
 the table, and the oranges and so forth are rolling about 
 according to their fancy and the ship's way, when the doctor 
 comes down, by special nightly invitation, to join our evening 
 rubber : immediately on whose arrival we make a party at whist, 
 and, as it is a rough night and the cards will not lie on the cloth, 
 we put the tricks in our pockets as we take them. At whist we 
 remain with exemplary gravity (deducting a short time for tea 
 and toast) until eleven o'clock, or thereabouts ; when the captain 
 comes down again, in a sou' -wester hat tied under his chin, and 
 a pilot coat : making the ground wet where he stands. By this 
 time the card-playing is over, and the bottles and glasses are 
 again upon the table ; and after an hour's pleasant conversation 
 about the ship, the passengers, and things in general, the captain 
 (who never goes to bed, and is never out of humour) turns up 
 his coat collar for the deck again ; shakes hands all round ; and 
 goes laughing out into the weather as merrily as to a birthday 
 party. 
 
 As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. 
 This passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at 
 Vingt-et-un in the saloon yesterday ; and that passenger drinks 
 his bottle of champagne every day, and how he does it (being 
 only a clerk), nobody knows. The head engineer has distinctly 
 said that there never was such times — meaning weather — and 
 four good hands are ill, and have given in, dead beat. Several 
 
22 AMERICAN NOTES ; 
 
 be.-ths are full of water, and all the cabins are. leaky. The ship's 
 cook, sesretly swigging damaged whiskey, has been, found drunk; 
 and has been played upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. 
 All the stewards have fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times, 
 and go about with plasters in various places. The baker is ill, 
 and so is the pastrycook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has 
 been required to fill the place of the latter officer ; and has been 
 propped and jammed up with empty casks in a little house upon 
 desk, and commanded to roll out pie-crusts, which he protests 
 (being highly bilious) it is death to him to look at. News ! A 
 dozen murders on shore would lack the interest of these slight 
 incidents at sea. 
 
 Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were 
 running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the fifteenth 
 night, with little wind and a bright moon — indeed, we had 
 made the Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in 
 charge : — when suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. 
 An immediate rush on deck took place, of course ; the sides 
 were crowded in an instant ; and for a few minutes we were in 
 as lively a state of confusion as the greatest lover of disorder 
 would desire to see. The passengers, and- guns, and water 
 casks, and other heavy matters, being all huddled together aft, 
 however, to lighten her in the head, she was soon got off ; and 
 after some driving on towards an uncomfortable line of objects 
 (whose vicinity had been announced very early in the disaster 
 by a loud cry of "Breakers ahead!") and much backing of 
 paddles, and heaving of the lead into a constantly decreasing 
 depth of water, we dropped anchor in a strange outlandish-look-^ 
 ing nook which nobody on board could recognise, although there 
 was land all about us, and so close that we could plainly see the 
 waving branches of the trees. 
 
 It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the 
 dead stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and 
 unexpected stoppage of the engine, which had been clanking 
 and blasting in our ears incessantly for so many days, to watch 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 23 
 
 the look of blank astonishment expressed in every face : begin- 
 ning with the officers, tracing it through all the passengers, and 
 descending to the very stokers and furnace-men, who emerged 
 from below, one by one, and clustered together in a smoky 
 group about the hatchway of the engine-room, comparing notes 
 in whispers. After throwing up a few rockets and firing signal 
 guns in the hope of being hailed from the land, or at least of seeing 
 a light — but without any other sight or sound presenting itself 
 — it was determined to send a boat on shore. It was amusing 
 to observe how very kind some of the passengers were, in 
 volunteering to go ashore in this same boat : for the general 
 good, of course : not by any means because they thought the 
 ship in an unsafe position, or contemplated the possibility of her 
 heeling over in case the tide were running out. Nor was it less 
 amusing to remark, how desperately unpopular the poor pilot 
 became in one short minute. He had had his passage out 
 from Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had been quite a 
 notorious character, as a teller of anecdotes and cracker of 
 jokes. Yet here were the very men who had laughed the 
 loudest at his jests, now - flourishing - their fists in his face, 
 loading him with imprecations, and defying him to his teeth as 
 a villain ! 
 - The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue 
 lights on board ; and in less than an hour returned ; the 
 officer in command bringing with him a tolerably tall young 
 tree, which he had plucked up by the roots, to satisfy certain 
 distrustful passengers whose minds misgave them that they 
 were to be imposed upon and shipwrecked, and who would on 
 no other terms believe that he had been ashore, or had done 
 anything but fraudulently row a little way into the mist, specially 
 to deceive them and compass their deaths. Our captain had 
 foreseen from the first that we must be in a place called the 
 Eastern passage ; and so we were. It was about the last place 
 in the world in which we had any business or reason to be, but 
 a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot's part, were the cause. 
 
24 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 We were surrounded by banks, and rocks, and shoals of all 
 kinds, but bad bappily drifted, it seemed, upon the only safe 
 speck that was to be found thereabouts. Eased by this report, 
 and by the assurance that the tide was past the ebb, we turned 
 in at three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the noise 
 above hurried me on deck. When I had left it overnight, it 
 was dark, foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round 
 us. Now, we were gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at 
 the rate of eleven miles an hour : our colours flying gaily ; our 
 crew rigged out in their smartest clothes ; our officers in 
 uniform again ; the sun shining as on a brilliant April day in 
 England ; the land stretched out on either side, streaked with 
 light patches of snow ; white wooden houses ; people at their 
 doors ; telegraphs working ; flags hoisted ; wharfs appearing ; 
 ships ; quays crowded with people ; distant noises ; shouts ; 
 men and boys running down steep places towards the pier ; all 
 more bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words 
 can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted 
 faces ; got alongside, and were made fast, after some shouting 
 and straining of cables ; darted, a score of us, along the gang- 
 way, almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before 
 it had reached the ship — and leaped upon the firm glad earth 
 again f 
 
 I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, 
 though it had been a curiosity of ugly dulness. But I carried 
 away with me a most pleasant _ impression of the town and its 
 inhabitants, and have preserved it to this hour. Nor was it 
 without regret that I came home, without having found an 
 opportunity of returning thither, and once more shaking hands 
 with the friends I made that day. 
 
 It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council 
 and General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed 
 on the commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England 
 were so closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2$ 
 
 scale, that it was like looking at Westminster through the 
 wrong end of a telescope. The governor, as her Majesty's 
 representative, delivered what may be called the Speech from 
 the Throne. He said what he had to say manfully and well. 
 The military band outside the building struck up " God save 
 the Queen " with great vigour before his Excellency had quite 
 finished ; the people shouted ; -the ins rubbed their hands ; the 
 outs shook their heads ; the Government party said there never 
 was such a good speech ; the opposition declared there never 
 was such a bad one ; the Speaker and members of the House 
 of Assembly withdrew from the bar to say a great deal among 
 themselves, and do a little ; and, in short, everything went on, 
 and promised to go on, just as it does at home upon the like 
 occasions. 
 
 The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point 
 being commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. 
 Several streets of good breadth and appearance extend from its 
 summit to the water-side, and are intersected by cross-streets 
 running parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of 
 wood. The market is abundantly supplied : and provisions 
 are exceedingly cheap. The weather being unusually mild at 
 that time for the season of the year, there was no sleighing : 
 but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and by-places, 
 and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of their decora- 
 tions, might have " gone on " without alteration as triumphal 
 cars in a melodrama at Astley's. The day was uncommonly 
 fine ; the air bracing and healthful ; the whole aspect of the 
 town cheerful, thriving, and industrious. 
 
 We lay there seven hours, to deliver and exchange the mails. 
 At length, having collected all our bags and all our passengers 
 (including two or three choice spirits, who, having indulged too 
 freely in oysters and champagne, were found lying insensible on 
 their backs in unfrequented streets), the engines were again put 
 in motion, and we stood off for Boston. 
 
 Encountering squally weather again in the Bay of Fundy, we 
 
26 >■':.. AMERICAN NOTES _ <_ 
 
 tumbled and rolled about as usual all that night and all next 
 day. On the next afternoon — that is to say, on Saturday, the 
 twenty-second of January — an American pilot-boat came along- 
 side, and soon afterwards the Britannia steam-packet ; from 
 Liverpool, eighteen days out, was telegraphed at Boston. 
 
 The indescribable interest with which I strained my eyes, 
 as the first patches of American soil peeped like molehills from 
 the green sea, and followed them, as they swelled,, by slow 
 and almost imperceptible degrees, into a continuous line of 
 coast, can hardly be exaggerated. A sharp keen wind blew 
 dead against us ; a hard frost prevailed on shore ; and the 
 cold was most severe. Yet the air was so intensely clear, and 
 dry, and bright, that the temperature was not only endurable, 
 but delicious. 
 
 How I remained on deck, staring about me, until we came 
 alongside the dock, and how, though I had had as many eyes 
 as Argus, I should have had them all wide open, and all 
 employed on new objects— are topics which I will not prolong 
 this chapter to discuss. "Neither" will I more than hint at my 
 foreigner-like mistake, in supposing that a party of most active 
 persons, who scrambled on board at the peril of their lives as 
 we approached the wharf, were newsmen, answering to that 
 industrious class at home; whereas, despite the leathern wallets 
 of news slung about the necks of some, and the broadsheets in 
 the hands of all, they were Editors, who boarded ships in person 
 (as one gentleman in a worsted comforter informed me), " because 
 they liked the excitement of it." Suffice it in this place to say, 
 that one of these invaders, with a ready courtesy for which I 
 thank him here most gratefully, went on before to order rooms 
 at the hotel ; and that when I followed, as I soon did, I found 
 myself rolling through the long passages with an involuntary 
 imitation of the gait of Mr. T. P. Cooke, in a new nautical 
 melodrama. 
 
 " Dinner, if you please," said I to the waiter. 
 
 " When ?" said the waiter. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 27 
 
 " As quick as possible," said I. 
 
 " Eight away ? " said the waiter. 
 
 After a moment's hesitation, I answered, " No," at hazard. 
 
 "Not right away?" cried the waiter, with an amount of 
 surprise that made me start. 
 
 I looked at him doubtfully, and returned, " No ; I would 
 rather have it in this private room. I like it very much." 
 
 At this I really thought the waiter must have gone out of his 
 mind ; as I believe he would have done, but for the interposi- 
 tion of another man, who whispered in his ear, " Directly." 
 
 "Well! and that's a fact!" said the waiter, looking help- 
 lessly at me. " Right away." 
 
 I saw now that "Right away" and "Directly" were one 
 and the same thing. So I reversed my previous answer, and 
 sat down to dinner in ten minutes afterwards ; and a capital 
 dinner it was. 
 
 The hotel (a very excellent one) is called the Tremont House. 
 It has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and passages than I 
 can remember, or the reader would believe. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 TN all the public establishments of America the utmost 
 -*- courtesy prevails. Most of our Departments are suscep- 
 tible of considerable improvement in this respect, but the 
 Custom House, above all others, would do well to take example 
 from the United States, and render itself somewhat less odious 
 and offensive to foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French 
 officials is sufficiently contemptible ; but there is a surly, 
 boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all persons 
 who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that 
 keeps such ill-conditioned "curs snarling about its gates. 
 
 When I landed in America, I could not help being strongly 
 impressed with the contrast their Custom House presented, and 
 the attention, politeness, and good-humour with which its 
 officers discharged their duty. 
 
 As we did not land at Boston, in consequence of some deten- 
 tion at the wharf, until after dark, I received my first impres- 
 sions of the city in walking down to the Custom House on the 
 morning after our arrival, which was Sunday. I am afraid to 
 say, by the way, how many offers of pews and seats in church 
 for that morning were made to us, by formal note of invitation, 
 before we had half finished our first dinner in America ; but if 
 I may be allowed to make a moderate guess, without going into 
 nicer calculation, I should say that at least as many sittings 
 were proffered us as would have accommodated a score or two 
 of grown-up families. The number of creeds and forms of 
 religion to which the pleasure of our company was requested 
 was in very fair proportion. 
 
£0r General Circulation. 29 
 
 Not being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, to 
 go to church that day, we were compelled to decline these 
 kindnesses, one and all ; and I was reluctantly obliged to forego 
 the delight of hearing Dr. Channing, who happened to preach 
 that morning for the first time in a very long interval. I 
 mention the name of this distinguished and accomplished man 
 (with whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure of becoming 
 personally acquainted), that I may have the gratification of 
 recording my humble tribute of admiration and respect for his 
 high abilities and character ; and for the bold philanthropy 
 with which he has ever opposed himself to that most hideous 
 blot and foul disgrace — Slavery. 
 
 To return to Boston. "When I got into the streets upon this 
 Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the houses were so bright 
 and gay ; the sign-boards were painted in such gaudy colours ; 
 the gilded letters were so very golden ; the bricks were so very 
 red, the stone was so very white, the blinds and area railings 
 were so very green, the knobs and plates upon the street-doors 
 so marvellously bright and twinkling ; and all so slight and 
 unsubstantial in appearance — that every thoroughfare in the 
 city looked exactly like a scene in a pantomime. It rarely 
 happens in the business streets that a tradesman — if I may 
 venture to call anybody a tradesman, where everybody is a 
 merchant — resides above his store ; so that many occupations 
 are often carried on in one house, and the whole front is 
 covered with boards and inscriptions. As I walked along, I kept 
 glancing up at these boards, confidently expecting to see a few 
 of them change into something ; and I never turned a corner 
 suddenly without looking out for the Clown and Pantaloon, 
 who, I had no doubt, were hiding in a doorway or behind 
 some pillar close at hand. As to Harlequin and Columbine, I 
 discovered immediately that they lodged (they are always look- 
 ing after lodgings in a pantomime) at a very small clock- 
 maker's, one story high, near the hotel ; which, in addition 
 to various symbols and devices, almost covering the whole 
 
30 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 front, had a great dial hanging out — to be jumped through, of 
 course. 
 
 The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial-looking 
 than the city. The white wooden houses (so white that it makes 
 one wink to look at them), with their green jalousie blinds, are 
 so sprinkled and dropped about in all directions, without seeming 
 to have any root at all in the ground ; and the small churches 
 and chapels are so prim, and bright, and highly varnished; that 
 I almost believed the whole affair could be taken up piecemeal 
 like a child's toy, and crammed into a little box. 
 
 The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, 
 to impress all strangers very favourably. The private dwelling- 
 houses are, for the most part, large and elegant ; the shops 
 extremely good ; and the public buildings handsome. The 
 State House is built upon the summit of a hill, which rises 
 gradually at first, and afterwards by a steep ascent, almost 
 from the water's edge. In front is a green enclosure, called 
 the Common. The site is beautiful : and from the top there 
 is a charming panoramic view of the whole town and neigh- 
 bourhood. In addition to a variety of commodious offices, it 
 contains two handsome chambers : in one the House of Repre- 
 sentatives of the State hold their meetings : in the other^ the 
 Senate. Such proceedings as I saw here were conducted with 
 perfect gravity and decorum ; and were certainly calculated - to 
 inspire attention and respect. 
 
 There is no doubt that much of the intellectual refinement 
 and superiority of Boston is referable to the quiet influence of 
 the University of Cambridge, which is within three or four miles 
 of the city. The resident professors at that university are gen- 
 tlemen of learning and varied attainments ; and are, without one 
 exception that I can call to mind, men who would shed a grace 
 upon, and do honour to, any society in the civilised world. Many 
 of the resident gentry in Boston and its neighbourhood, and I 
 think I am not mistaken in adding, a large majority of those 
 
 who are attached to the liberal professions there, have been 
 
 1/ i ' 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 3 1 
 
 educated at this same school. Whatever the defects of American 
 universities may he, they dis seminat e' no prejudice s ; rear no 
 higots ; dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions ; never 
 interpose between the people and their improvement ; exclude 
 no man because of his religious opinions ; above all, in their 
 whole course of study and instruction, recognise a world, and a 
 broad one too, lying beyond the co llege w alls. 
 
 It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to observe the 
 almost imperceptible, but not less certain effect, wrought by this 
 institution among the small community of Boston ; and to note 
 at every turn the humanising tastes and desires it has engen- 
 dered ; the affectionate friendships to which it has given rise ; 
 the amount of vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The 
 golden calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy compared with 
 the giant effigies set up in other parts of that vast counting-j j 
 house -which lies beyond the Atlantic ; and the almighty dollar \ 
 sinks into something comparatively insignificant, amidst a whole 
 Pantheon of better gods. 
 
 Above all, I sincerely believe that the public institutions and 
 charities of this capital of Massachusetts are as nearly perfect as 
 the most considerate wisdom, benevolence, and humanity can 
 make them. I never in my life was more affected by the con- 
 templation of happiness, under circumstances of privation and 
 bereavement, than in my visits to these establishments. 
 
 It is a great and pleasant feature of all such institutions in"l 
 America, that they are either supported by the State or assisted ' 
 by the State ■ or (in the event of their not needing its helping 
 hand) that they act in concert with it, and are emphatically the 
 people's. I cannot but think, with a view to the principle and 
 its tendency to elevate or depress the character of the industrious 
 classes, that a Public Charity is immeasurably better than a 
 Private Foundation, no matter how munificently the latter may \ 
 be endowed. In our own country, where it has not, until *" 
 within these later days, been a very popular fashion with 
 governments to display any extraordinary regard for the great 
 
32 American notes 
 
 mass of the people, or to recognise their existence as improvable 
 creatures, private charities, unexampled in the history of the 
 earth, have arisen, to do-an incalculable amount of good among 
 the destitute and afflicted. But the government of the country, 
 having neither act nor part in them, is not in the receipt of 
 any portion of the gratitude they inspire ; and, offering very 
 little shelter or relief beyond that which is to be found in the 
 workhouse and the gaol, has come, not unnaturally, to be looked 
 upon by the poor rather as a stern master, quick to correct and 
 punish, than a kind protector, merciful and vigilant in their 
 hour of need. 
 
 The maxim, that out of evil cometh good, is strongly illus- 
 trated by these establishments at home ; as the records of the 
 Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. 
 Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded by 
 needy relatives, makes, upon a low average, a will a week. The 
 old gentleman or lady, never very remarkable in the best of 
 times for good temper, is full of aches and pains from head to 
 foot ; full of fancies and caprices ; full of spleen, distrust, 
 suspicion, and dislike. To cancel old wills, and invent new 
 ones, is at last the sole business of such a testator's existence ; 
 and relations and friends (some of whom have been bred up 
 distinctly to inherit a large share of the property, and have 
 been, from their cradles, specially disqualified from devoting 
 themselves to any useful pursuit, on that account) are so often 
 and so unexpectedly and summarily cut off, and reinstated, and 
 cut off again, that the whole family, down to the remotest 
 cousin, is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it becomes 
 plain that the old lady or gentleman has not long to live ; and 
 the plainer this becomes, the more clearly the old lady or 
 gentleman perceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against 
 their poor old dying relative ; wherefore the old lady or gentle- 
 man makes another last will — positively the last this time — ■ 
 conceals the same in a china teapot, and expires next day. 
 Then it turns out, that the whole of the real and personal 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 33 
 
 estate is divided between half-a-dozen charities ; and that the 
 dead-and-gone testator has in pure spite helped to do a great 
 deal of good, at the cost of an immense amount of evil passion 
 and misery. 
 
 The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the 
 Blind, at Boston, is superintended by a body of trustees who 
 make an annual report to the corporation. The indigent blind 
 of that State are admitted gratuitously. Those from the adjoin- 
 ing State of Connecticut, or from the States of Maine, Vermont, 
 or New Hampshire, are admitted by a warrant from the State 
 to which they respectively belong ; or, failing that, must find 
 security among their friends, for the payment of about twenty 
 pounds English for their first year's board and instruction, and 
 ten for the second. " After the first year," say the trustees, 
 " an account current will be opened with each pupil ; he will 
 be charged with the actual cost of his board, which will not 
 exceed two dollars per week ;" a trifle more than eight shillings 
 English ; " and he will be credited with the amount paid for 
 him by the State, or by his friends; also with his earnings over 
 and above the cost of the stock which he uses ; so that all his 
 earnings over one dollar per week will be his own. By the 
 third year it will be known whether his earnings will more than 
 pay the actual cost of his board ; if they should, he will have it 
 at his option to remain and receive his earnings, or not. Those 
 who prove unable to earn their own livelihood will not be 
 retained ; as it is not desirable to convert the establishment 
 into an almshouse, or to retain any but working bees in the hive. 
 Those who, by physical or mental imbecility, are disqualified for 
 work, are thereby disqualified from being members of an indus- 
 trious community ; and they can be better provided for in 
 establishments fitted for the infirm." 
 
 I went to see this place one very fine winter morning : an 
 Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright on every side, 
 that even my eyes, which are none of the best, could follow the 
 minute lines and scraps of tracery in distant buildings. Like 
 
 D 
 
34 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 most other public institutions in America of the same class, it 
 stands a mile or two without the town, in a cheerful, healthy 
 spot ; and is an airy, spacious, handsome edifice. It is built 
 upon a height, commanding the harbour. When I paused for 
 a moment at the door, and marked how fresh and free the whole 
 scene was — what sparkling bubbles glanced upon the waves, 
 and welled up every moment to the surface, as though the 
 world below, like that above, were radiant with the bright day, 
 and gushing over in its fulness of light : when I gazed from 
 sail to sail away upon a ship at sea, a tiny speck of shining 
 white, the only cloud upon the still, deep, distant blue — and, 
 turning, saw a blind boy with his sightless face addressed that 
 way, as though he too had some sense within him of the 
 glorious distance : I felt a kind of sorrow that the place should 
 be so very light, and a strange wish that for his sake it were 
 darker. It was but momentary, of course, and a mere fancy, 
 but I felt it keenly for all that. 
 
 The children were at their daily tasks in different rooms, 
 except a few who were already dismissed, and were at play. 
 Here, as in many institutions, no uniform is worn ; and I was 
 very glad of it, for two reasons. Firstly, because I am sure 
 that nothing but senseless custom and want of thought would 
 reconcile us to the liveries and badges we are so fond of at 
 home. Secondly, because the absence of these things presents 
 each child to the visitor in his or her own proper character, 
 with its individuality unimpaired ; not lost in a dull, ugly, 
 monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning garb : which is 
 really an important consideration. The wisdom of encouraging 
 a little harmless pride in personal appearance even among the 
 blind, or the whimsical absurdity of considering charity and 
 leather breeches inseparable companions, as we do, requires no 
 comment. 
 
 1 Good order, cleanliness, and comfort pervaded every corner 
 of the building. The various classes, who were gathered round 
 their teachers, answered the questions put to them with readi- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 35 
 
 ness and intelligence, and in a spirit of cheerful contest for 
 precedence which pleased me very much. Those who were at 
 play were gleesome and noisy as other children. More spiritual 
 and affectionate friendships appeared to exist among them than 
 Avould be found among other young persons suffering under no 
 deprivation ; but this I expected and was prepared to find. It 
 is a part of the great scheme of Heaven's merciful consideration 
 for the afflicted. 
 
 In a portion of the building, set apart for that purpose, are 
 workshops for blind persons whose education is finished, and 
 who have acquired a trade, but Avho cannot pursue it in an 
 ordinary manufactory because of their deprivation. Several 
 people were at work here ; making brushes, mattresses, and so 
 forth ; and the cheerfulness, industry, and good order dis- 
 cernible in every other part of the building, extended to this 
 department also. 
 
 On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired, without any 
 guide or leader, to a spacious music-hall, where they took their 
 seats in an orchestra erected for that purpose, and listened with 
 manifest delight to a voluntary on the organ, played by one of 
 themselves. At its conclusion, the performer, a boy of nine- 
 teen, or twenty, gave place to a girl ; and to her accompaniment 
 they all sang a hymn, and afterwards a sort of chorus. It was 
 very sad to look upon and hear them, happy though their 
 condition unquestionably was ; and I saw that one blind girl, 
 who (being for the time deprived of the use of her limbs by ill- 
 ness) sat close beside me with her face towards them, wept 
 silently the while she listened. 
 
 It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see how 
 free they are from all concealment of what is passing in their 
 thoughts ; observing which, a man with eyes may blush to 
 contemplate the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade of 
 anxious expression which is never absent from their counte- 
 nances, and the like of which we may readily detect in our own 
 faces jf we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea, as it rises 
 
 D 2 
 
36 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 within them, is expressed with the lightning's speed, and 
 nature's truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing-room at 
 court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes 
 upon them as blind men and women are, what secrets would 
 come out, and what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of 
 which we so much pity, would appear to be ! 
 
 The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room, 
 before a girl blind, deaf, and dumb ; destitute of smell ; and 
 nearly so of taste : before a fair young creature with every 
 human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection, 
 enclosed within her delicate frame, and but one outward sense 
 — the sense of touch. There she was, before me ; built up, as 
 it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or 
 particle of sound ; with her poor white hand peeping through a 
 chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that 
 an Immortal soul might be awakened. 
 
 Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. Her 
 face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, 
 braided by her own hands, was bound about a head whose 
 intellectual capacity and development were beautifully expressed 
 in its graceful outline, and its broad open brow ; her dress, 
 arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity ; 
 the work she had knitted lay beside her ; her writing-book was 
 on the desk she leaned upon. From the mournful ruin of such 
 bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, 
 guileless, grateful-hearted being. 
 
 Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon 
 bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed lay near 
 upon the ground. I took it up, and saw that she had made a 
 green fillet such as she wore herself, and fastened it about its 
 mimic eyes. 
 
 She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school desks 
 and forms, writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this 
 pursuit, she engaged in an animated communication with a 
 teacher who sat beside her. This was a favourite mistress with 
 
for general circulation. 37 
 
 the poor pupil. If she could see the face of her fair instructress^ 
 she would not love her less, I am sure. 
 
 I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history, 
 from an account written by that one man who has made her 
 what she is. It is a very beautiful and touching narrative ; 
 and I wish I could present it entire. 
 
 Her name is Laura Bridgman. " She was born in Hanover, 
 New Hampshire, on the twenty-first of December, 1829. She 
 is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, 
 with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble 
 until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly 
 hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed 
 to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endurance : and 
 life was held by the feeblest tenure : but, when a year and a 
 half old, she seemed to rally ; the dangerous symptoms sub- 
 sided ; and, at twenty months old, she was perfectly well. 
 
 " Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, 
 rapidly developed themselves ; and during the four months of 
 health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance 
 for a fond mother's account) to have displayed a considerable 
 degree of intelligence. 
 
 " But suddenly she sickened again ; her disease raged with 
 great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears were 
 inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged. But 
 though sight and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child's 
 sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during seven 
 weeks ; for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened 
 room ; it was a year before she could walk unsupported, and 
 two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed 
 that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed ; and, 
 consequently, that her taste was much blunted. 
 
 " It was not until four years of age that the poor child's 
 bodily health seemed restored, and she was able to enter upon 
 her apprenticeship of life and the world. 
 
 " But what a situation was hers ! The darkness and the 
 
3§ AMERICAN KOTES 
 
 silence of the tomb were around her : no mother's smile called 
 forth her answering smile, no father's voice taught her to 
 imitate his sounds : — they, brothers and sisters, were but forms 
 of matter which resisted her touch, but which differed not from 
 the furniture of the house, save in warmth, and in the pdwer of 
 locomotion ; and not even in these respects from the dbg and 
 the cat. '' 
 
 "But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within 
 her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated ; and though 
 most of its avenues of communication with'tlie world were cut 
 off, it began to manifest itself through the others.' - As soon as 
 she could walk, she began to explore the room, 1 and then the 
 house ; "she became familiar with" the form," density; weighT," : arid 
 heat of every article she could lay her hands upon. She 
 followed her mother, and felt her hands and arms; as she was 
 occupied about the house ; and her disposition to imitate, led 
 her to repeat everything herself. She even learned to sew a 
 little, and to knit." 
 
 The reader will scarcely need to be told, however, that the 
 opportunities of communicating with her. were very, very 
 limited ; and that the moral effects of her wretched state soon 
 began to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by reason 
 can only be controlled by force ; and this, coupled with her 
 great privations, must soon have' reduced her to a worse con- 
 dition than that of the beasts that perish, but for timely arid 
 unhoped-for aid. '■■' 
 
 " At this time I was so fortunate as to hear of the child, and 
 immediately hastened to Hanover to see herf I found her with 
 a well-formed figure ; a strongly-marked, nervous-sanguine tem- 
 perament ; a large and beautifully-shaped head ; and the whole 
 system in healthy action. The parents were easily induced to 
 consent to her coming to Boston,' and on the 4th of October, 
 1837, they brought her to the Institution. r t 
 
 "For awhile she was much bewildered ; arid after waitiriar 
 about two weeks, until she became acquainted with her new 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 39 
 
 locality, and somewhat familiar with the inmates, the attempt 
 was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which 
 she could interchange thoughts with others. 
 
 " There was one of two ways to be adopted : either to go on 
 to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural 
 language which she had already commenced herself, or to teach 
 her the purely arbitrary language in common use : that is, to 
 give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a know- 
 ledge of letters" by combination of which she might express her 
 idea of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence, 
 of any thing. The former would have been easy, but very 
 ineffectual ; the latter seemed very difficult, but, if accomplished, 
 very effectual. I determined,' therefore, to try the latter. 
 
 " The first experiments were made by taking articles in com- 
 mon use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys, &c, and pasting 
 upon them labels with their names printed in raised letters. 
 These she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, distinguished 
 that the crooked lines spoon differed as much from the crooked 
 lines hey, as the spoon differed from the key in form. 
 
 " Then small detached labels, with the same words printed 
 upon them, were put into her hands ; and she soon observed 
 that they were similar to the ones pasted on the articles. She 
 showed her perception of this similarity by laying the label key 
 upon the key, and the label spoon upon the spoon. She was 
 encouraged here by the natural sign of approbation, patting on 
 the head. 
 
 " The same process was then repeated with all the articles 
 which she could handle : and she very easily learned to place 
 the proper labels upon them. It was evident, however, that the 
 only intellectual exercise was that of imitation and memory. 
 She recollected that the label ho oh was placed upon a book, and 
 she repeated the process first from imitation, next from memory, 
 with only the motive of love of approbation, but apparently 
 without the intellectual perception of any relation between the 
 things. 
 
40 American notes 
 
 " After awhile, instead of labels, the individual letters were 
 given to her on detached bits of paper : they were arranged side 
 by side so as to spell book, key, &c. ; then they were mixed up 
 in a heap, and a sign was made for her to arrange them herself, 
 so as to express the words book, key, &c. ; and she did so. 
 
 " Hitherto the process had been mechanical, and the success 
 about as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of tricks. 
 The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and patiently 
 imitated everything her teacher did ; but now the truth began 
 to flash upon her : her intellect began to work : she perceived 
 that here was a way by which she could herself make up a sign 
 of anything that was in her own mind, and show it. to another 
 mind ; and at once her countenance lighted up with a human 
 expression : it was no longer a dog, or parrot : it was an 
 immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with 
 other spirits ! I could almost fix upon the moment when this 
 truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her counte- 
 nance ; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome ; and that 
 henceforward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain 
 and straightforward, efforts were to be used. 
 
 " The result, thus far, is quickly related, and easily conceived ; 
 but not so was the process ; for many weeks of apparently 
 unprofitable labour were passed before it was effected. 
 
 "When it was said above, that a sign was made, it was 
 intended to say that the action was performed by her teacher, 
 she feeling his hands, and then imitating the motion. 
 
 " The next step was to procure a set of metal types, with the 
 different letters of the alphabet cast upon their ends ; also a 
 board, in which were square holes, into which holes she could 
 set the types ; so that the letters on their ends could alone be 
 felt above the surface. 
 
 " Then, on any article being handed to her, — for instance, a 
 pencil, or a watch, — she would select the component letters, 
 and arrange them on her board, and read them with apparent 
 pleasure. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 41 
 
 " She was exercised for several weeks in this way, until her 
 vocabulary became extensive ; and then the important step was 
 taken of teaching her how to represent the different letters by 
 the position of her fingers, instead of the cumbrous apparatus of 
 the board and types. She accomplished this speedily and easily, 
 for her intellect had begun to work in aid of her teacher, and 
 her progress was rapid. 
 
 " This was the period, about three months after she had com- 
 menced, that the first report of her case was made, in which it 
 is stated that ' she has just learned the manual alphabet, as used 
 by the deaf mutes, and it is a subject of delight and wonder to 
 see how rapidly, correctly, and eagerly she goes on with her 
 labours. Her teacher gives her a new object, — for instance, a 
 pencil, — first lets her examine it, and get an idea of its use, then 
 teaches her how to spell it by making the signs for the letters 
 with her own fingers : the child grasps her hand, and feels her 
 fingers, as the different letters are formed ; she turns her head a 
 little on one side, like a person listening closely ; her lips are 
 apart ; she seems scarcely to breathe ; and her countenance, at 
 first anxious, gradually changes to a smile, as she comprehends 
 the lesson. She then holds up her tiny fingers, and spells the 
 word in the manual alphabet ; next, she takes her types and 
 arranges her letters ; and last, to make sure that she is right, she 
 takes the whole of the types composing the word, and places 
 them upon or in contact with the pencil, or whatever the object 
 may be.' 
 
 " The whole of the succeeding year was passed in gratifying 
 her eager inquiries for the names of every object which she 
 could possibly handle ; in exercising her in the use of the 
 manual alphabet ; in extending in every possible way her know- 
 ledge of the physical relations of things ; and in proper care of 
 her health. 
 
 " At the end of the year a report of her case was made, from 
 which the following is an extract. 
 
 " ' It has been ascertained, beyond the possibility of doubt, 
 
42 .AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 that she cannot see a ray of light, cannot hear the least sound, 
 and never exercises her sense of smell, if she have any. Thus 
 her mind dwells in darkness 'and stillness, as profound as that 
 of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, and sweet 
 sounds, and pleasant odours she has no conception ; never- 
 theless, she seems as happy and playful as a bird or a lamb ; 
 and the employment of her intellectual faculties, or the acquire- 
 ment of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure, which is plainly 
 marked in her expressive features." She never seems to repine, 
 but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. She is fond 
 of fun and frolic, arid, when playing with the rest of the children, 
 her shrill laugh sounds loudest of the group. 
 
 "'When left alone, she seems very happy if she have her 
 knitting or sewing, and will busy herself for hours : if she have 
 rio occupation, she evidently amuses herself by imaginary dia- 
 logues, or by recalling past impressions ; she counts with her 
 fingers, or spells out names of things which she has recently 
 learned, in the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes. In this 
 lonely self-communion she seems to reason, reflect, and argue : 
 if she spell a word wrong, with the fingers of her right hand, she 
 instantly strikes it with her left, as her teacher does, in sign of 
 disapprobation ; if right, then she pats herself upon the head 
 and looks pleased. She sometimes purposely spells a word 
 wrong with the left hand, looks roguish for a moment and 
 laughs, and then with the right hand strikes the left, as if to 
 correct it. 
 
 " 'During the year she has attained great dexterity in the 
 use of the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes ; and she spells 
 out the words and sentences which she' knows, so fast and so 
 deftly, that only those accustomed to this language can follow 
 with the eye the rapid motions of her fingers. 
 
 " ' But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she writes her 
 thoughts upon the air, still more so is the ease arid accuracy 
 ■with which she reads the words thus written by another ; grasp- 
 ing their hands in hers, and following every movement of their 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 43 
 
 fingers, as letter after letter conveys their meaning to her mind. 
 It is in this way that she converses with her blind playmates, 
 and nothing can more forcibly show the power of mind in forcing 
 matter to its purpose than a meeting between them. For" if 
 great talent and skill are necessary for two pantomimes to paint 
 their thoughts and feelings by the movements of the body, and 
 the expression of the countenance, how much greater the diffi- 
 culty when darkness shrouds them both, and the one can hear 
 no sound! 
 
 " 'When Laura is walking through a passage-way, with her 
 hands spread before her, she knows instantly every one she 
 meets, and passes them with a sign of recognition : but if it be 
 a girl of 'her own age; and especially if it be one of her "favourites, 
 there is instantly a'bright smile (if recognition, and'a'twining'Txf 
 arms; a grasping of hands, '-and a swift telegraphing. uporp* the 
 tiny : fingers ; whose rapid evolutions convey the thoughts' and 
 feelings from the outposts of one mind to those of the other. 
 There are questions and answers, exchanges of joy or sorrow* 
 there are kissings and partings, just as between little children 
 with all their senses.' 
 
 "During this year, and six months after she had left home, 
 Her mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting was 
 an interesting one. 
 
 " The mother stood some time, gazing with overflowing eyes 
 upon her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her presence, 
 was playing about the room. Presently Laura ran against her, 
 and at once began feeling her hands, examining her dress, and 
 trying to find but if she knew her; but not succeeding in" this, 
 she turned away as from a stranger, and the poor woman' could 
 not conceal the pang" she felt at finding that her beloved child 
 did nSt know her.' r - T " - ' = 
 
 "She then gave LaureFa string of beads which -she used to 
 wear at home, which were recognised by the child at once, who, 
 with much joy," put 7 ' them^around" her "neck, and -sought me 
 eagerly to "say she"underst66d the string was from her home. 
 
44 American notes 
 
 " The mother now tried to caress her, but poor Laura repelled 
 her, preferring to be with her acquaintances. 
 
 "Another article from home was now given her, and she 
 began to look much interested ; she examined the stranger much 
 closer, and gave me to understand that she knew she came from 
 Hanover ; she even endured her caresses, but would leave her 
 with indifference at the slightest signal. The distress of the 
 mother was now painful to behold ; for, although she had feared 
 that she should not be recognised, the painful reality of being 
 treated with cold indifference by a darling child was too much 
 for woman's nature to bear. 
 
 "After awhile, on the mother taking hold of her again, a 
 vague idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind that this could 
 not be a stranger ; she therefore felt her hands very eagerly, 
 while her countenance assumed an expression of intense interest ; 
 she became very pale, and then suddenly red ; hope seemed 
 struggling with doubt and anxiety, and never were contending 
 emotions more strongly painted upon the human face : at this 
 moment of painful uncertainty, the mother drew her close to 
 her side, and kissed her fondly, when at once the truth flashed 
 upon the child, and all mistrust and anxiety disappeared from 
 her face, as with an expression of exceeding joy she eagerly 
 nestled to the bosom of her parent, and yielded herself to her 
 fond embraces. 
 
 "After this the beads were all unheeded; the playthings 
 which were offered to her were utterly disregarded ; her play- 
 mates, for whom but a moment before she gladly left the 
 stranger, now vainly strove to pull her from her mother ; and 
 though she yielded her usual instantaneous obedience to my 
 signal to follow me, it was evidently with painful reluctance. 
 She clung close to me, as if bewildered and fearful ; and when, 
 after a moment, I took her to her mother, she sprang to her 
 arms, and clung to her with eager joy. 
 
 "The subsequent parting between them showed alike the 
 affection, the intelligence, and the resolution of the child. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 45 
 
 - "Laura accompanied her mother to the door, clinging close 
 to her all the way, until they arrived at the threshold, where, 
 she paused, and. felt around to ascertain who was near her. 
 Perceiving the matron, of whom she is very fond, she grasped 
 her with one hand, holding on convulsively to her mother with 
 the other ; and thus she stood for a moment : then she dropped 
 her mother's hand; put her handkerchief to her eyes; and 
 turning round, clung sobbing to the matron ; while her mother 
 
 departed, with emotions as deep as those of her child. 
 
 ****** 
 
 " It has been remarked, in former reports, that she can dis- 
 tinguish different degrees of intellect in others, and that she 
 soon regarded almost with contempt a new-comer, when, after a 
 few days, she discovered her weakness of mind. This unamiable 
 part of her character has been more strongly developed during 
 the past year. 
 
 " She chooses for her friends and companions those children 
 who are intelligent, and can talk best with her ; and she 
 evidently dislikes to be with those who are deficient in intellect, 
 unless, indeed, she can make them serve her purposes, which 
 she is evidently inclined to do. She takes advantage of them, 
 and makes them wait upon her, in a manner that she knows she 
 could not exact of others ; and in various ways she shows her 
 Saxon blood. 
 
 " She is fond of having other children noticed and caressed 
 by the teachers, and those whom she respects ; but this must not 
 be carried too far, or she becomes jealous. She wants to have 
 her share, which, if not the lion's, is the greater part ; and if she 
 does not get it, she says, 'My mother will love me.' 
 
 " Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it leads her to 
 actions which must be entirely incomprehensible to her, and 
 which can give her no other pleasure than the gratification of 
 an internal faculty. She has been known to sit for half an hour, 
 holding a book before her sightless eyes, and moving her lips, as 
 she has observed seeing people do when reading. 
 
46 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 "She one day pretended that her doll was sick; and went 
 through all the motions of tending it, and giving it medicine ; 
 she then put it carefully to bed, and placed a bottle of hot water 
 to its feet, laughing all the. time most heartily. When I came 
 home, she insisted upon my going to see it, and feel its pulse ; 
 and when I told her to put a blister on its back, she seemed to 
 enjoy it amazingly, and almost screamed with delight. , 
 
 " Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong ; and 
 when she is sitting at work, or at her studies, by the side of one 
 of her little friends, she will break off from her task, every few 
 moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth 
 that is touching to behold. 
 
 " When left alone, she occupies, and apparently amuses her- 
 self, and seems quite contented ; and so strong seems to be the 
 natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of language, that 
 she often soliloquises in the finger language, slow and tedious 
 as it is. But it is only when alone that she is quiet : for if she 
 becomes sensible of the presence of any one near her, she is 
 restless until she can sit close beside them, hold their hand, and 
 converse with them by signs. 
 
 " In. he,r intellectual character it is pleasing to observe an 
 insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a quick perception of the 
 relations of things. In her moral character, it is beautiful to 
 behold her continual gladness, her keen enjoyment of existence, 
 her expansive love, her unhesitating confidence, her sympathy 
 with suffering, her conscientiousness, truthfulness, and hope- 
 fulness." 
 
 Such are a few fragments from the simple but most inter- 
 esting and instructive history of Laura Bridgman. The name 
 of her great benefactor and friend, who writes it, is Doctor 
 Howe. There are not many persons, I hope and believe, who, 
 after reading these passages, can ever hear that name with 
 indifference. 
 
 A further account has been published by Doctor Howe, since 
 the report from which I have just quoted. It describes her 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 47 
 
 rapid mental growth and improvement during twelve months 
 more, and brings her little history down to the end of last year. 
 It is very remarkable that as we dream in words, and carry on 
 imaginary conversations, in which we speak both for ourselves 
 and for the shadows who appear to us in those visions of the 
 night, so she, having no words, uses her finger alphabet in her 
 sleep. And it has been ascertained that when her slumber is 
 broken, and is much disturbed by dreams, she expresses her 
 thoughts in an irregular and confused manner on her fingers : 
 just as we should murmur and mutter them indistinctly in the 
 like circumstances. 
 
 I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found it written in 
 a fair, legible, square hand, and expressed in terms which were 
 quite intelligible without any explanation. On my saying that 
 I should like to see her write again, the teacher who sat beside 
 her bade her, in their language, sign her name upon a slip of 
 paper twice or thrice. In doing so, I observed that she kept 
 her left hand always touching and following up her right, in 
 which, of course, she held the pen. No line was indicated by 
 any contrivance, but she wrote straight and freely. 
 
 She had, until now, been quite unconscious of the presence of 
 visitors ; but, having her hand placed in that of the gentleman 
 who accompanied me, she immediately expressed his name upon 
 her teacher's palm. Indeed, her sense of touch is now so 
 exquisite, that having been acquainted with a person once, she 
 can recognise him or her after almost any interval. This gen- 
 tleman had been in her company, I believe, but very seldom, 
 and certainly had not seen her for many months. My hand 
 she rejected at once, as she does that of any man who is a 
 stranger to her. But she retained my wife's with evident 
 pleasure, kissed her, and examined her dress with a girl's curi- 
 osity and interest. 
 
 She was merry and cheerful, and showed much innocent 
 playfulness in her intercourse with her teacher. Her delight on 
 recognising a favourite playfellow and companion — herself a 
 
48 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 blind girl — who silently, and with an equal enjoyment of the 
 coming surprise, took a seat beside her, was beautiful to witness. 
 It elicited from her at first, as other slight circumstances did 
 twice or thrice during my visit, an uncouth noise which was 
 rather painful to hear. But, on her teacher touching her lips, 
 she immediately desisted, and embraced her laughingly and 
 affectionately. 
 
 I had previously been into another chamber, where a number 
 of blind boys were swinging, and climbing, and engaged in 
 various sports. They all clamoured, as we entered, to the 
 assistant master, who accompanied us, " Look at me, Mr. Hart ! 
 Please, Mr. Hart, look at me ! " evincing, I thought, even in this, 
 an anxiety peculiar to their condition, that their little feats of 
 agility should be seen. Among them was a small laughing 
 fellow, who stood aloof, entertaining himself with a gymnastic 
 exercise for bringing the arms and chest into play ; which he 
 enjoyed mightily ; especially when, in thrusting out his right 
 arm, he brought it into contact with another boy. Like Laura 
 Bridgman, this young child was deaf, and dumb, and blind. 
 
 Doctor Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so 
 very striking, and so intimately connected with Laura herself, 
 that I cannot refrain from a short extract. I may premise that 
 the poor boy's name is Oliver Caswell ; that he is thirteen years 
 of age ; and that he was in full possession of all his faculties 
 until three years and four months old. He was then attacked 
 by scarlet fever : in four weeks became deaf ; in a few weeks 
 more, blind ; in six months, dumb. He showed his anxious 
 sense of this last deprivation by often feeling the lips of other 
 persons when they were talking, and then putting his hand upon 
 his own, as if to assure himself that he had them in the right 
 position. 
 
 "His thirst for knowledge," says Doctor Howe, "proclaimed 
 itself as soon as he entered the house, by his eager examination 
 of everything he could feel or smell in his new location. For 
 instance, treading upon the register of a furnace, he instantly 
 
tOll dtiiNEltAL CIRCULATION. 49 
 
 stooped down and began to feel it, and soon discovered the way 
 in which the upper plate moved upon the lower one ; but this 
 was not enough for him, so, lying down upon his face, he.applied 
 his tongue first to one, then to the other, and seemed to discover 
 that they were of different kinds of metal. 
 
 " His signs were expressive : and the strictly natural lan- 
 guage, laughing, crying, sighing, kissing, embracing, &c, was 
 perfect. 
 
 " Some of the analogical signs which (guided by his faculty 
 of imitation) he had contrived, were comprehensible ; such as 
 the waving motion of his hand for the motion of a boat, the 
 circular one for a wheel, &c. 
 
 " The first object was to break up the use of these signs, and 
 to substitute for them the use of purely arbitrary ones. 
 
 " Profiting by the experience I had gained in the other cases, 
 I omitted several steps of the process before employed, and 
 commenced at once with the finger language. Taking, there- 
 fore, several articles having short names, such as key, cup, mug, 
 &c, and with Laura for an auxiliary, I sat down, and taking his 
 hand, placed it upon one of them, and then with my own made 
 the letters h e y. He felt my hands eagerly with both of his, 
 and, on my repeating the process, he evidently tried to imitate 
 the motions of my fingers. In a few minutes he contrived to 
 feel the motions of my fingers with one hand, and holding out 
 the other, he tried to imitate . them, laughing most heartily when 
 he succeeded. Laura was by, interested even to agitation ; and 
 the two presented a singular sight : her face was flushed and 
 anxious, and her fingers twined in among ours so closely as to 
 follow every motion, but so lightly as not to embarrass them ; 
 while Oliver stood attentive, his head a little aside, his face 
 turned up, his left hand grasping mine, and his right held out ; 
 at every motion of my fingers his countenance betokened keen 
 attention ; there was an expression of anxiety as he tried to 
 imitate the motions ; then a smile came stealing out as he 
 thought he could do so, and spread into a joyous laugh the 
 
 E 
 
50 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 moment he succeeded, and felt me pat his head, and Laura 
 clap him heartily upon the back, and jump up and down in 
 her joy. 
 
 "He learned more than a half-dozen letters in half an hour, 
 and seemed delighted with his success, at least in gaining appro- 
 bation. His attention then began to flag, and I commenced 
 playing with him. It was evident that in all this he had 
 merely been imitating the motions of my fingers, and placing 
 his hand upon the key, cup, &c, as part of the process, without 
 any perception of the relation between the sign and the object. 
 
 " When he was tired with play I took him back to the table, 
 and he was quite ready to begin again his process of imitation. 
 He soon learned to make the letters for key, pen, pin ; and, by 
 having the object repeatedly placed in his hand, he at last 
 perceived the relation I wished to establish between them. This 
 was evident, because, when I made the letters p % n, or p e n, or 
 cup, he would select the article. 
 
 " The perception of this relation was not accompanied by 
 that radiant flash of intelligence, and that glow of joy, which 
 marked the delightful moment when Laura first perceived it. ' I 
 then placed all the articles on the table, and going away a little 
 distance with the children, placed Oliver's fingers in the positions 
 to spell hey, on which Laura went and brought the article : the 
 little fellow seemed to be much amused by this, and looked very 
 attentive and smiling. I then caused him to make the letters 
 bread, and in an instant Laura went and brought him a piece ; 
 he smelled at it ; put it to his lips ; cocked up his head with a 
 most knowing look ; seemed to reflect a moment ; and then 
 laughed outright, as much as to say, ' Aha ! I understand now 
 how something may be made out of this.' 
 
 " It Avas now clear that he had the capacity and inclination 
 to learn, that he was a proper subject for instruction, and needed 
 only persevering attention. I therefore put him in the hands of 
 an intelligent teacher, nothing doubting of his rapid progress;" ■ 
 
 Well may this gentleman call that a delightful moment, in 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 51 
 
 which some distant promise of her present state first gleamed 
 upon the darkened mind of Laura Bridgman. Throughout his 
 life, the recollection of that moment will be to him a source of 
 pure, unfading happiness ; nor will it shine least brightly on the 
 evening of his days of Noble Usefulness. 
 
 The affection that exists between these two — the master and 
 the pupil — is as far removed from all ordinary care and regard, 
 as the circumstances in which it has had its growth are apart from 
 the common occurrences of life. He is occupied now in devising 
 means of imparting to her higher knowledge, and of conveying 
 to her some adequate idea of the Great Creator of that universe 
 in which, dark and silent and scentless though it be to her, she 
 has such deep delight and glad enjoyment. 
 
 Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear not ; 
 ye who are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disfigure 
 your faces that ye may seem unto men to fast ; learn healthy 
 cheerfulness, and mild contentment, from the deaf, and dumb, 
 and blind ! Self-elected saints with gloomy brows, this sight- 
 less, earless, voiceless child may teach you lessons you will do 
 Avell to follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your 
 hearts ; for there may be something in its healing touch akin t<* 
 that of the Great Master whose precepts you misconstrue, whose 
 lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sympathy with all the 
 world not one among you, in his daily practice, knows as much 
 as many of the worst among those fallen sinners, to whom you 
 are liberal in nothing but the preachment of perdition ! 
 
 As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of one of the 
 attendants came running in to greet its father. For the moment, 
 a child with eyes among the sightless crowd impressed me almost 
 as painfully as the blind boy in the porch had done, two hours 
 ago. Ah ! how much brighter and more deeply blue, glowing 
 and rich though it had been before, was the scene without, con- 
 trasting with the darkness of so many youthful lives within! 
 
 £2 
 
52 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently 
 adapted for the purpose, several charitable institutions are clus- 
 tered together. One of these is the State Hospital for the 
 insane ; admirably conducted on those enlightened principles of 
 conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago would have 
 been worse than heretical, and which have been acted upon with 
 so much success in our own pauper asylum at Hanwell. " Evince 
 a desire to show some confidence, and repose some trust, even 
 in mad people," said the resident physician, as we walked along 
 the galleries, his patients flocking round us unrestrained. Of 
 those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim after witness- 
 ing its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only say 
 that I hope I may never be summoned as a Juryman on a Com- 
 mission of Lunacy whereof they are the subjects ; for I should 
 certainly find them out of their senses, on such evidence alone. 
 
 Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or 
 hall, with the dormitories of the patients opening from it on 
 either hand. Here they work, read, play at skittles, and other 
 games ; and, when the weather does not admit of their taking 
 exercise out of doors, pass the day together. In one of these 
 rooms, seated calmly, and quite as a matter of course, among a 
 throng of madwomen, black and white, were the physician's 
 wife and another lady, with a couple of children. These ladies 
 were graceful and handsome ; and it was not difficult to per- 
 ceive, at a glance, that even their presence there had a highly 
 beneficial influence on the patients who were grouped about them. 
 
 Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with a great 
 assumption of dignity and refinement of manner, sat an elderly 
 female, in as many scraps of finery as Madge Wildfire herself. 
 Her head in particular was so strewn with scraps of gauze and 
 cotton and bits of paper, and had so many queer odds and ends 
 stuck all about it, that it looked like a bird's nest. She was 
 radiant with imaginary jewels ; wore a rich pair of undoubted 
 gold spectacles ; and gracefully dropped upon her lap, as we 
 approached, a very old, greasy newspaper, in which I dare say 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 53 
 
 she had been reading an account of her own presentation at 
 some Foreign Court. 
 
 I have been thus particular in describing her, because she 
 will serve to exemplify the physician's manner of acquiring and 
 retaining the confidence of his patients. 
 
 "This," he said aloud, taking me by the hand, and advancing 
 to the fantastic figure with great politeness — not raising her 
 suspicions by the slightest look or whisper, or any kind of 
 aside, to me : " this lady is the hostess of this mansion, sir. 
 It belongs to her. Nobody else has anything whatever to do 
 with it. It is a large establishment, as you see, and requires a 
 great number of attendants. She lives, you observe, in the 
 very first style. She is kind enough to receive my visits, and 
 to permit my wife and family to reside here; for which, it is 
 hardly necessary to say, we are much indebted to her. She is 
 exceedingly courteous, you perceive," — on this hint she bowed 
 condescendingly, — " and will permit me to have the pleasure of 
 introducing you : a gentleman from England, ma'am : newly 
 arrived from England, after a very tempestuous passage : Mr. 
 Dickens — the lady of the house !" 
 
 We exchanged the most dignified salutations with profound 
 gravity and respect, and so went on. The rest of the mad- 
 women seemed to understand the joke perfectly (not only in 
 this case, but in all the others, except their own), and to be 
 highly amused by it. The nature of their several kinds of 
 insanity was made known to me in the same way, and we left 
 each of them in high good-humour. Not only is a thorough 
 confidence established, by these means, between physician and 
 patient, in respect of the nature and extent of their hallucina- 
 tions, but it is easy to understand that opportunities are afforded 
 for seizing any moment of reason, to startle them by placing 
 their own delusion before them in its most incongruous and 
 ridiculous light. 
 
 Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every day 
 with a knife and fork ; and in the midst of them sits the gentle- 
 
54 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 man, whose manner of dealing with his charges I have just 
 described. At every meal, moral influence alone restrains . the 
 more violent among them from cutting the throats of the rest ; 
 \ but the effect of that influence is reduced to an absolute cer- 
 tainty, and is found, even as a means of restraint, to say nothing 
 1 of it as a means of cure, a hundred times more efficacious than 
 jail the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and handcuffs that ignorance, 
 (prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured since the creation of 
 the world. 
 
 In the labour department, every patient is as freely trusted with 
 the tools of his trade as if he were a sane man. ' In the garden, 
 and on the farm, they work with spades, rakes, and hoes. For 
 amusement, they walk, run, fish, paint, read, and ride out to 
 take the air in carriages provided for the purpose. They have 
 among themselves a sewing society to make clothes for the poor, 
 which holds meetings, passes resolutions, never comes to fisti- 
 cuffs or bowie-knives, as sane assemblies have been known to 
 do elsewhere ; and conducts all its proceedings with the greatest 
 decorum. The irritability, which would otherwise be expended 
 on their own flesh, clothes, and furniture, is dissipated in these 
 pursuits. They are cheerful, tranquil, and healthy. 
 
 Once a week they have a ball, in which the Doctor and his 
 family, with all the nurses and attendants, take an active. part. 
 Dances and marches are performed alternately, to the enlivening 
 strains of a piano ; and now and then some gentleman or lady 
 (whose proficiency has been previously ascertained) obliges the 
 company with a song ; nor does it . ever degenerate, at a tender 
 crisis, into a screech or a howl; wherein, I must confess,! should 
 have thought the danger lay. At an early hour they all meet 
 together for these festive purposes ; at eight o'clock refresh- 
 ments are served ; and at nine they separate. 
 > Immense politeness and good-breeding are observed through- 
 : out. They all take their tone from the Doctor ; and he moves 
 a very Chesterfield among the companyr Like other assemblies, 
 these entertainments afford a fruitful topic of conversation among 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 55 
 
 the ladies for some days ; and the gentlemen are so anxious to 
 shine on these occasions, that they have been sometimes found 
 " practising their steps " in private, to cut a more distinguished 
 figure in the dance. 
 
 It is obvious that one great feature of this system is the 
 inculcation and encouragement, even among such unhappy per- 
 sons, of a decent self-respect. Something of the same spirit 
 pervades all the Institutions at South Boston. 
 
 There is the House of Industry. In that branch of it -which 
 is devoted to the reception of old or otherwise helpless paupers, 
 these words are painted on the walls : " Worthy of Notice. 
 Self-Government, Quietude, and Peace are Blessings." It 
 is not assumed and taken for gran ted that, being there, they 
 must be evilrdisposed and wicked people, before whose vicious 
 eyes it . is necessary to flourish threats and harsh restraints. They 
 are met at the very threshold with this mild appeal. All within 
 doors is very plain and simple, as it ought to be, but arranged 
 with a view to peace and comfort. It costs no more than any 
 other plan of arrangement, but it bespeaks an amount of con- 
 sideration for those who are reduced to seek a shelter there, 
 which puts them at once upon their gratitude and good beha- 
 viour. Instead of being parcelled out in great, long, rambling 
 wards, where a certain amount of weazen life may mope, and 
 pine, and shiver .all day long, the building is divided into 
 separate rooms, each with its share of light and air. In these 
 the' better kind of paupers live. They have a motive for exer- 
 tion and becoming pride, in the desire to make these little 
 chambers comfortable and decent. I do not remember one but 
 it was clean and neat, and had its plant or two upon the window- 
 sill, or row of crockery upon the shelf, or small display of 
 coloured prints upon the whitewashed wall, or, perhaps, its 
 wooden clock behind the door. 
 
 The orphans and young children are in an adjoining building ;[ 
 separate from this, but a part of the same Institution. Some 
 arc such little creatures that the stairs are of Lilliputian measure- 
 
56 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 ment, fitted to their tiny strides. The same consideration for 
 their years and weakness is expressed in their very seats, which 
 are perfect curiosities, and look like articles of furniture for a 
 pauper doll's house. I can imagine the glee of our Poor-Law 
 Commissioners at the notion of these seats having arms and 
 backs ; but small spines being of older date than their occupa- 
 tion of the Board-room at Somerset House, I thought even this 
 provision very merciful and kind. 
 
 Here, again, I was greatly pleased with the inscriptions on the 
 wall, which were scraps of plain morality, easily remembered 
 and understood : such as " Love one another " — " God remem- 
 bers the smallest creature in his creation : " and straightforward 
 advice of that nature. The books and tasks of these smallest 
 of scholars were adapted, in the same judicious manner, to their 
 childish powers. When we had examined these lessons, four 
 morsels of girls (of whom one was blind) sang a little song 
 about the merry month of May, which I thought (being 
 extremely dismal) would have suited an English November 
 better. That done, we went to see their sleeping-rooms on the 
 floor above, in which the arrangements were no less excellent 
 and gentle than those we had seen below. And after observing 
 that the teachers were of a class and character well suited to 
 the spirit of the place, I took leave of the infants with a lighter 
 heart than ever I have taken leave of pauper infants yet. 
 
 Connected with the House of Industry, there is also a 
 Hospital, which was in the best order, and had, I am glad to 
 say, many beds unoccupied. It had one fault, however, which 
 is common to all American interiors : the presence of the eternal, 
 accursed, suffocating, red-hot demon of a stove, whose breath 
 would blight the purest air under Heaven. 
 
 There are two establishments for boys in this same neigh- 
 bourhood. One is called the Boylston School, and is an 
 asylum for neglected and indigent boys who have committed no 
 crime, but who, in the ordinary course of things, would very 
 soon be purged of that distinction if they were not taken from 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 57 
 
 the hungry streets and sent here. The other is a House of 
 Reformation for Juvenile Offenders. They are both under the 
 same roof, but the two classes of boys never come in contact. 
 
 The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have very much 
 the advantage of the others in point of personal appearance. 
 They were in their schoolroom when I came upon them, and 
 answered correctly, without book, such questions as where was 
 England ; how far was it ; what was its population ; its capital 
 city ; its form of government; and so forth. They sang a song, 
 too, about a farmer sowing his seed : with corresponding action 
 at such parts as " 'tis thus he sows," " he turns him round," 
 " he claps his hands ; " which gave it greater interest for them, 
 and accustomed them to act together in an orderly manner. 
 They appeared exceedingly well taught, and not better taught 
 than fed; for a more chubby-looking, full-waistcoated set of 
 boys I never saw. 
 
 The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces by a great 
 deal, and in this establishment there were many boys of colour. 
 I saw them first at their work (basket-making, and the manu- 
 facture of palm-leaf hats), afterwards in their school, where they 
 sang a chorus in praise of Liberty : an odd, and, one would 
 think, rather aggravating, theme for prisoners. These boys 
 were divided into four classes, each denoted by a numeral, worn 
 on a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a new-comer, he 
 is put into the fourth or lowest class, and left, by good behaviour, 
 to work his way up into the first. The design and object of 
 this Institution is to reclaim the youthful criminal by firm, but 
 kind and judicious, treatment ; to make his prison a place of 
 purification and improvement, not of demoralisation and cor- 
 ruption ; to impress upon him that there is but one path, and 
 that one sober industry, which can ever lead him to happiness ; 
 to teach him how it may be trodden, if his footsteps have never 
 yet been led that way ; and to lure him back to it, if they have 
 strayed : in a word, to snatch him from destruction, and restore 
 him to society a penitent and useful member, The importance 
 
§8 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 of^suchan establishment, in every point of view, and with 
 reference to every consideration of humanity and jiociaj^oh^cj, 
 requires no comment. ~ 
 
 *~ One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is the House 
 of Correction for the State, in which silence is strictly main- 
 tained, but where the prisoners have the comfort and mental 
 relief of seeing each other, and of working together. This is 
 the improved system of Prison Discipline which we have 
 imported into England, and which has been in successful opera- 
 tion among us for some years past. 
 
 America, as a new and not over-populated country, has in all 
 her prisons the one great advantage of being enabled to find 
 useful and profitable work for the inmates : whereas, with us, 
 the prejudice against prison labour is naturally very strong, and 
 almost insurmountable, when honest men, who have, not offended 
 against the laws, are frequently doomed to seek employment in 
 vain. Even in the United States, the principle of bringing 
 convict labour and free labour into a competition which must 
 obviously be to the disadvantage of the latter, has already found 
 many opponents, whose number is not likely to diminish with 
 access of years. 
 
 For this very reason, though, our best prisons would seem at 
 the first glance to be better conducted than those of America. 
 The treadmill is accompanied with little or no noise ; five 
 hundred men may pick oakum in the same room without a 
 sound ; and both kinds of labour admit of such keen and vigi- 
 lant superintendence, as will render even a word of personal 
 communication among the prisoners almost impossible. On the 
 other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge, the carpenter's 
 hammer, or the stonemason's saw greatly favours those oppor- 
 tunities of intercourse — hurried and brief,, no doubt, but 
 opportunities still — which these several kinds of work, by ren- 
 dering it necessary for men to be employed very near to each 
 other, and often side by side, without any barrier or partition 
 between them, in their very nature present. A visitor, too, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 59 
 
 requires to reason and reflect a little, before the sight of a 
 number of men engaged in ordinary labour, such as he is 
 accustomed to out of doors, •will impress him half as strongly 
 as the contemplation of the same persons in the same place and 
 garb would, if they were occupied in some task, marked and 
 degraded everywhere as belonging only to felons in gaols. In an 
 American State prison, or house of correction, I found it difficult 
 at first to persuade myself that I was really in a gaol : a place 
 of ignominious punishment and endurance. And to this hour 
 I very much question whether the humane boast, that it is not 
 like one, has its root in the true wisdom or philosophy of. the 
 matter. 
 
 I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject, for it is 
 One in which I take a strong and deep interest. I incline as 
 little to the sickly feeling which makes every canting lie or 
 maudlin speech of a notorious criminal a subject of newspaper \ 
 report and general sympathy, as I do to those good old customs j -- 
 pf the good old times which made England, even so recently as 
 in the reign of the Third King George, in respect of her criminal j 
 code and her prison regulations, one of the most bloody-minded I 
 .and barbarous countries on the earth. If I thought it would do 
 any good to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give my 
 consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genteel high- 
 wayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to their 
 exposure, piecemeal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet that might 
 be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My reason is as well 
 convinced that these gentry were utterly worthless and debauched 
 villains, as it is that the laws and gaols hardened them in their 
 evil courses, or that their wonderful escapes were effected by the 
 prison turnkeys who, in those admirable days, had always been 
 felons themselves, and were, to the last, their bosom friends and 
 pot companions. At the same time, I know, as all men do or 
 should, that the subject of Prison Discipline is one of the 
 highest importance to any community ; and that, in her sweep- 
 ing reform and bright example to other countries on this head,. 
 
60 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 America has shown great wisdom, great benevolence, and exalted 
 policy. In contrasting her system with that which we have 
 modelled upon it, I merely seek to show that, with all its draw- 
 backs, ours has some advantages of its own.* 
 
 The House of Correction which has led to these remarks is 
 not walled, like other prisons, but is palisaded round about with 
 tall rough stakes, something after the manner of an enclosure 
 for keeping elephants in, as we see it represented in Eastern 
 prints and pictures. The prisoners wear a party-coloured dress ; 
 and those who are sentenced to hard labour work at nail-making 
 or stone-cutting. When I was there, the latter class of labourers 
 were employed upon the stone for a new Custom House in 
 course of erection at Boston. They appeared to shape it skil- 
 fully and with expedition, though there were very few among 
 them (if any) who had not acquired the art within the prison 
 gates. 
 
 The women, all in one large room, were employed in making 
 light clothing for New Orleans and the Southern States. They 
 did their work in silence, like the men ; and, like them, were 
 overlooked by the person contracting for their labour, or by 
 some agent of his appointment. In addition to this, they are 
 every moment liable to be visited by the prison officers appointed 
 for that purpose. 
 
 The arrangements for cooking, washing of clothes, and so 
 forth, are much upon the plan of those I have seen at home. 
 Their mode of bestowing the prisoners at night (which is of 
 general adoption) differs from ours, and is both simple and 
 
 * Apart from profit made by the useful labour of prisoners, -which -we can never 
 hope to realise to any great extent, and which it is perhaps not expedient for us to 
 try to gain, there are two prisons in London, in all respects equal, and in some 
 decidedly superior, to any I saw, cr have ever heard or read of, in America. One 
 is the Tothill Fields Bridewell, conducted by Lieutenant A. F. Tracey, K.N. ; the 
 other the Middlesex House of Correction, superintended by Mr. Chesterton. This 
 gentleman also holds an appointment in the Public Service. Both are enlightened 
 and superior men : and it would be as difficult to find persons better qualified for 
 the functions they discharge with firmness, zeal, intelligence, and humanity, as it 
 would be to exceed the perfect order and arrangement of the institutions they 
 govern, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 6 1 
 
 effective. In the centre of a lofty area, lighted by windows in 
 the four walls, are five tiers of cells, one above the other ; each 
 tier having before it a light iron gallery, attainable by stairs of 
 the same construction and material ; excepting the lower one, 
 which is on the ground. Behind these, back to back with them, 
 and facing the opposite wall, are five corresponding rows of cells, 
 accessible by similar means : so that, supposing the prisoners 
 locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the ground, with 
 his back to the wall, has half their number under his eye at 
 once ; the remaining half being equally under the observation 
 of another officer on the opposite side ; and all in one great 
 apartment. Unless this watch be corrupted or sleeping on his 
 post, it is impossible for a man to escape ; for even in the event 
 of his forcing the iron door of his cell without noise (which is 
 exceedingly improbable), the moment he appears outside, and 
 steps into that one of the five galleries on which it is situated, 
 he must be plainly and fully visible to the officer below. Each 
 of these cells holds a small truckle-bed, in which one prisoner 
 sleeps ; never more. It is small, of course ; and the door being 
 not solid, but grated, and without blind or curtain, the prisoner 
 within is at all times exposed to the observation and inspection 
 of any guard who may pass along that tier at any hour or 
 minute of the night. Every day, the prisoners receive their 
 dinner, singly, through a trap in the kitchen wall ; and each 
 man carries his to his sleeping cell to eat it, where he is locked up 
 alone, for that purpose, one hour. The whole of this arrange- 
 ment struck me as being admirable ; and I hope that the next 
 new prison we erect in England may be built on this plan. 
 
 I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or 
 fire-arms, or even cudgels, are kept ; nor is it probable that, so 
 long as its present excellent management continues, any weapon, 
 offensive or defensive, will ever be required within its bounds. 
 
 Such are the Institutions at South Boston ! In all of them, 
 the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are carefully 
 instructed in their duties both to God and man : are surrounded 
 
62 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 by all reasonable means of comfort and happiness that their con- 
 dition will admit of ; are appealed to as members of the great 
 human family, however afflicted, indigent, or fallen ; are ruled by 
 the strong Heart, and not by the strong (though immeasurably 
 weaker) Hand. I have described them at some length : firstly, 
 because their worth demanded it ; and secondly, because I mean 
 to take them for a model, and to content myself with saying 
 of others we may come to, whose design and purpose are the 
 same, that in this or that respect they practically fail, or differ.' 
 I wish by this account of them, imperfect in its execution, 
 but, in its just intention, honest, I could hope to convey to my 
 readers one hundredth part of the gratification the sights I have 
 described afforded me. 
 
 To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia of West- 
 minster Hall, an American Court of Law is as odd a sight as, I 
 suppose, an English Court of Law would be to an American. 
 Except in the Supreme Court at Washington (where the judges 
 wear a plain black robe), there is no such thing as a wig or gown 
 connected with the administration of justice. The gentlemen 
 of the bar, being barristers and attorneys too (for there is no 
 division of those functions as in England), are no more removed 
 from their clients than attorneys in our Court for the Relief of 
 Insolvent Debtors are from theirs. The jury are quite at home, 
 and make themselves as comfortable as circumstances will permit; 
 The witness is so little elevated above, or put aloof from, the 
 crowd in the court, "that a stranger entering during a pause in 
 the proceedings would find it difficult to pick him out from the 
 rest. And if it chanced to be a criminal trial, his eyes, in nine 
 cases out of ten, would wander to the dock in search of the 
 prisoner in vain ; for that gentleman would most likely be 
 lounging among the most distinguished ornaments of the legal 
 profession, whispering suggestions in his counsel's ear, or making 
 a toothpick out of an old quill with his penknife. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 63 
 
 I could not but notice these differences when I visited the 
 courts at Boston. I was much surprised at first, too, to observe 
 that the counsel who interrogated the witness under examina- 
 tion at the time did so sitting. But seeing that he was also 
 occupied in writing down the answers, and remembering that he 
 was alone, and had no "junior," I quickly consoled myself with 
 the reflection that law was not quite so expensive an article here 
 as at home ; and that the absence of sundry formalities, which we 
 regard as indispensable, had doubtless a very favourable influence 
 upon the bill ,of costs. 
 
 In every court ample and commodious provision is made for 
 the accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all through 
 America. In every Public Institution, the right of the people 
 to attend,, and to have an interest in the proceedings, is most 
 fully and distinctly recognised. There are no grim door-keepers 
 to dole out their tardy civility by the sixpennyworth ; nor is 
 there, I sincerely believe, any insolence of office of any kind. 
 Nothing national is exhibited for money ; and no public officer 
 is a showman. We have begun, of late years, to imitate this 
 good example. I hope we shall continue to do so ; and that, 
 in the fulness of time, even deans and chapters may be con- 
 verted. - 
 
 In the civil court an action was trying for damages sustained 
 in some accident upon a railway. The witnesses had been 
 examined, and counsel was addressing the jury. The learned 
 gentleman (like a few of his English brethren) was desperately 
 long-winded, and had a remarkable capacity of saying the same 
 thing over and over again. His great theme was " Warren the 
 engine driver," whom he pressed into the service of every 
 sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about a. quarter of 
 an hour; and, coming put of court at the expiration of that 
 time, without the faintest ray of enlightenment as to the merits 
 of the case, felt as if I were at home again. 
 • In the prisoners' cell, waiting to be examined by the magis- 
 trate on a charge of theft, was a boy. This lad, instead of being 
 
64 AMERICAN NOtfES 
 
 committed to a common gaol, would be sent to the asylum at 
 South Boston, and there taught a trade ; and, in the course of 
 time, he would be bound apprentice to some respectable master. 
 Thus his detection in this offence, instead of being the prelude 
 to a life of infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was a 
 reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and becoming 
 a worthy member of society. 
 
 I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our legal solemni- 
 ties, many of which impress me as being exceedingly ludicrous. 
 Strange as it may seem, too, there is undoubtedly a degree of 
 protection in the wig and gown — a dismissal of individual 
 responsibility in dressing for the part — which encourages that 
 insolent bearing and language, and that gross perversion of the 
 office of a pleader for The Truth, so frequent in our courts of 
 law. Still, I cannot help doubting whether America, in her 
 desire to shake off the absurdities and abuses of the old system, 
 may not have gone too far into the opposite extreme ; and 
 whether it is not desirable, especially in the small community 
 of a city like this, where each man knows the other, to surround 
 the administration of justice with some artificial barriers against 
 the " Hail fellow, well met" deportment of every-day life. All 
 the aid it can have in the very high character and ability of the 
 Bench, not only here, but elsewhere, it has, and well deserves to 
 have ; but it may need something more : not to impress the 
 thoughtful and the well informed, but, the ignorant and heed- 
 less ; a class which includes some prisoners and many witnesses. 
 These institutions were established, no doubt, upon the principle 
 that those who had so large a share in making . the laws would 
 certainly respect them. But experience has proved this hope 
 to be fallacious ; for no men know better than the judges of 
 America, that on the occasion of any great popular excitement 
 the law is powerless, and cannot, for the time, assert its own 
 supremacy. ( 
 
 The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect politeness, 
 courtesy, and good-breeding. The ladies are unquestionably 
 
for General circulation. 65 
 
 Very beautiful — in face : but there I am compelled to stop. 
 Their education is much as with us ; neither better nor worse. 
 I had heard some very marvellous stories in this respect ; but 
 not believing them, was not disappointed. Blue ladies there are 
 in Boston ; but, like philosophers of that colour and sex in 
 most other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior 
 than to be so. Evangelical ladies there are, likewise, whose 
 attachment to the forms of religion, and horror of theatrical 
 entertainments, are most exemplary. Ladies who have a passion 
 for attending lectures are to be found among all classes and all 
 conditions. In the kind of provincial life Avhich prevails in 
 cities such as this, the Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar 
 province of the Pulpit in New England (always excepting the 
 Unitarian ministry) would appear to be the denouncement of 
 all innocent and rational amusements. The church, the chapel, 
 and the lecture-room are the only means of excitement excepted ; 
 and to the church, the chapel, and the lecture-room the ladies 
 resort in crowds. 
 
 Wherever religion is resorted to as a strong drink, and as an 
 escape from the dull, monotonous round of home, those of its 
 ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. 
 They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of 
 brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and 
 leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most 
 righteous ; and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity 
 on the difficulty of getting into heaven will be considered, by 
 all true believers, certain of going there : though it would be 
 hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is 
 arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so abroad. With regard 
 to the other means of excitement, the Lecture, it has at least 
 the merit of being always new. One lecture treads so quickly 
 on the heels of another, that none are remembered ; and the 
 course of this month may be safely repeated next, with its 
 charm of novelty unbroken, and its interest unabated. 
 
 The fruits of the oarth have their growth in corruption. Out 
 
 F 
 
66 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 of the rottenness of these things there has sprung up in 
 Boston a sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On 
 inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I 
 was given to understand that whatever was unintelligible would 
 be certainly transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from 
 this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and found 
 that the Transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, 
 or I should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson. This gentleman has written a volume of Essays, in 
 which, among much that is dreamy and fanciful (if he will 
 pardon me for saying so), there is much more that is true and 
 manly, honest and bold. Transcendentalism has its occasional 
 vagaries (what school has not?), but it has good healthful 
 qualities in spite of them ; not least among the number a hearty 
 disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to -detect: her in.ull thesmillion 
 varieties of her everlasting wardrobe. - And therefore? if _ I were 
 a Bostonian, I think I would be a Transcendentalism 
 
 The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who 
 addresses himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a 
 mariner himself. I found his chapel down among the shipping, 
 in one of the narrow, old, water-side streets, with a gay blue flag 
 waving freely from its roof. In the gallery opposite to -the 
 pulpit were a little choir of male and female singers, a violon- 
 cello, and a violin. The preacher already sat in the pulpit, 
 which ~was raised on pillars, and ornamented behind him "with 
 painted drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical appearance. 
 He looked a weather-beaten, hard-featured man, of about six or 
 eight and fifty ; with deep lines graven as it were into his face, 
 dark hair, and a stern, keen eye. Yet the general character ;of 
 his countenance was pleasant and agreeable. 
 
 The service commenced with a hymn, to which succeeded an 
 extemporary prayer. It had, the fault of frequent repetition, 
 incidental to all such prayers; but it was plain and" compre- 
 hensive in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general sympathy 
 and charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic of this 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 67 
 
 form of address to the Deity as it might be. That done, he 
 opened his discourse, taking for his text a passage from the 
 Song of Solomon, laid upon the desk before the commencement 
 of the service by some unknown member of the congregation : 
 " Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on the 
 arm of her beloved ?" 
 
 He handled his text in all kinds of ways, and twisted it into 
 all manner of shapes ; but always ingeniously, and with a rude 
 eloquence, well adapted to the comprehension of his hearers. 
 Indeed, if I be not mistaken, he studied their sympathies and 
 understandings much more than the display of his own powers. 
 His imagery was all drawn from the sea, and from the incidents 
 of a seaman's life ; and was often remarkably good. He spoke 
 to them of "that glorious man, Lord Nelson,'', and of.Colling- 
 wood ; and drew nothing in, as the saying is, by the head and 
 shoulders, but brought it to bear upon his purpose naturally, 
 and with a sharp mind to its effect. Sometimes, when much 
 excited with his subject, he had an odd way — compounded of 
 John Bunyan, and Balfour of Burley — of taking his great quarto 
 Bible under his arm, and pacing up and down the pulpit with 
 it ; looking, steadily down, meantime, into the midst of the 
 congregation. Thus, when he applied his text to the first 
 assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder of the 
 church at their presumption in forming a congregation among 
 themselves, he stopped short with his Bible under his arm in 
 the manner I have described, and pursued his discourse after 
 this manner : 
 
 " Who are these — who are they — who are these fellows ? 
 Where do they come from ? Where are they going to ? — Come 
 from! What's the answer?" — leaning out of the pulpit, and 
 pointing downward with his right hand : " From below !" — start- 
 ing back again, and looking at the sailors before him: "from 
 below, my brethren. From under the hatches of sin, battened 
 down above you by the evil one. That's where you came from!" 
 • — a walk up and. down the pulpit: "and where are" you going?" 
 
 r 2 
 
68 AMERICAN rfOTES 
 
 — stopping abruptly : " where are you going ? Aloft'" — very 
 softly, and pointing upward: "aloft!" — louder: "aloft!" — 
 louder still : " that's where you are going. — with a fair wind, — » 
 all taut and trim, steering direct for Heaven in its glory, where 
 there are no storms or foul weather, and where the wicked 
 cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." — Another walk: 
 " That's where you're going to, my friends. That's it. That's 
 the place. That's the port. That's the haven. It's a blessed 
 harbour — still water there, in all changes of the winds and tides ; 
 no driving ashore upon the rocks, or slipping your cables and 
 running out to sea, there : Peace — Peace — Peace — all peace!" — 
 Another walk, and patting the Bible under his left arm : "What! 
 These fellows are coming from the wilderness, are they ? Yes. 
 From the dreary, blighted wilderness of Iniquity, whose only 
 crop is Death. But do they lean upon anything — do they lean 
 upon nothing, these poor seamen ?" — Three raps upon the Bible: 
 " Oh yes! — Yes. — They lean upon the arm of their Beloved" — 
 three more raps: "upon the arm of their Beloved" — three 
 more, and a walk : " Pilot, guiding-star, and compass, all in 
 one, to all hands — here it is" — three more : " here it is. They 
 can do their seaman's duty manfully, and be easy in their minds 
 in the utmost peril and danger, with this" — two more : "they 
 can come, even these poor fellows can come, from the wilderness, 
 leaning on the arm of their Beloved, and go up — up — up !" — 
 raising his hand higher and higher at every repetition of the 
 word, so that he stood with it at last stretched above his head, 
 regarding them in a strange, rapt manner, and pressing the book 
 triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually subsided into 
 some other portion of his discourse. 
 
 I have cited this, rather as an instance of the preacher's 
 eccentricities than his merits, though, taken in connection with 
 his look and manner, and the character of his audience, even 
 this was striking. It is possible, however, that my favourable 
 impression of him may have been greatly influenced and 
 .strengthened, firstly, by his impressing upon his hearers that 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 69 
 
 the true observance of religion was not inconsistent with a 
 cheerful deportment and an exact discharge of the duties of 
 their station, which, indeed, it scrupulously required of them ; 
 and secondly, by his cautioning them not to set up any 
 monopoly in Paradise and its mercies. I never heard these two 
 points so wisely touched (if, indeed, I have ever heard them 
 touched at all) by any preacher of that kind before. 
 
 Having passed the time I spent in Boston in making myself 
 acquainted with these things, in settling the course I should take 
 in my future travels, and in mixing constantly with its society, 
 I am not aware that I have any occasion to prolong this chapter. 
 Such of its social customs as I have not mentioned, however, 
 may be told in a very few words. 
 
 The usual dinner hour is two o'clock. A dinner-party takes 
 place at five ; and at an evening party they seldom sup later 
 than eleven ; so that it goes hard but one gets home, even from 
 a rout, by midnight. I never could find out any difference 
 between a party at Boston and a party in London, saving that 
 at the former place all assemblies are held at more rational 
 hours; that the conversation may possibly be a little louder and 
 more cheerful ; that a guest is usually expected to ascend to the 
 very top of the house to take his cloak off; that he is certain 
 to see, at every dinner, an unusual amount of poultry on the 
 table ; and at every supper, at least two mighty bowls of hot 
 stewed oysters, in any one of which a half-grown Duke of 
 Clarence might be smothered easily. 
 
 There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and construc- 
 tion, but sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies who resort 
 to them sit, as of right, in the front rows of the boxes. 
 
 The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people 
 stand and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening : dropping 
 in and out as the humour takes them. There, too, the stranger 
 is initiated into the mysteries of Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, 
 Mint Julep, Sherry Cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare 
 drinks, The house is full of boarders, both married and single, 
 
70 AMERICAN XOTF.S 
 
 many of whom sleep upon the premises, and contract by the 
 week for their board and lodging : the charge for which dimi- 
 nishes as they go nearer the sky to roost. A public table is laid 
 in a very handsome hall for breakfast, and for dinner, and for 
 supper. The party sitting down together to these meals will 
 vary in number from one to two hundred : sometimes more. The 
 advent of each of these epochs in the day is proclaimed by 
 an awful gong, which shakes the very window frames as it 
 reverberates through the house, and horribly disturbs nervous 
 foreigners. > There is an ordinary for ladies, and an ordinary for 
 gentlemen. 
 
 In our private room the cloth could not, for any earthly con- 
 sideration, have been laid for dinner without a huge glass dish 
 of cranberries in the middle of the table ; and breakfast would 
 have been no breakfast unless the principal dish were a deformed 
 beef-steak with a great flat bone in the centre, swimming in hot 
 butter, and sprinkled with the very blackest of all possible 
 pepper. Our bedroom was spacious and airy, but (like every 
 bedroom on this side of the Atlantic) very bare of furniture, 
 having no curtains to the French bedstead or to the window. 
 It had one unusual luxury, however, in the shape of a wardrobe 
 of painted wood, something smaller than an English watch-box : 
 ot, if this comparison should be insufficient to convey a just 
 idea of its dimensions, they may be estimated from the fact of 
 my having lived for fourteen days and nights in the firm belief 
 that it was a shower-bath. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM. 
 
 "DEFORE leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion 
 to Lowell. I assign a separate chapter to this visit ; not 
 because I am about to describe it at any great length, but 
 because I remember it as a thing by itself, and am desirous that 
 my readers should do the same. 
 
 I made acquaintance with an American railroad on this occa- 
 sion, for the first time. As these works are pretty much alike 
 all through the States, their general characteristics are easily 
 described. 
 
 There are no first and second class carriages as with us ; but 
 there is a gentlemen's car and a ladies' car : the main distinc- 
 tion between which is, that in the first everybody smokes ; and 
 in the second, nobody does. As a black man never travels with 
 a white one, there is also a negro car ; which is a great, blun- 
 dering, clumsy chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in from the 
 kingdom of Brobdingnag. There is a great deal of jolting, a 
 great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a 
 locomotive engine,' a shriek, and a bell. 
 
 The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger : holding 
 thirty, forty, fifty people. The seats, instead of stretching from 
 end to end, are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. 
 There is a long row of them on each side of the caravan, a 
 naiTow passage up the middle, and a door at both ends. In the 
 centre of, the carriage there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal 
 or anthracite coal ; which is for the most part red-hot. It is 
 insufferably close ; and you see the hot air fluttering between 
 
72 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 yourself and any other object you may happen to look at, like 
 the ghost of smoke. 
 
 In the ladies' car there are a great many gentlemen who have 
 ladies with them. There are also a great many ladies who have 
 nobody with them : for any lady may travel alone, from one end 
 of the United States to the other, and be certain of the most 
 courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor, 
 or check-taker, or guard, or whatever he may be, wears no 
 uniform. He walks up and down the car, and in and out of it, 
 as his fancy dictates ; leans against the door with his hands in 
 his pockets, and stares at you, if you chance to be a stranger ; 
 or enters into conversation with the passengers about him. A 
 great many newspapers are .pulled out, and a few of them are 
 read. Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his 
 fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that that railroad 
 is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say " No," he 
 says " Yes ? " (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they 
 differ. You enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and 
 he says "Yes ?" (still interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses 
 that you don't travel faster in England ; and on your replying 
 that you do, says "Yes ? " again (still interrogatively), and, it is 
 quite evident, don't believe it! After a long pause he remarks, 
 partly to you, and partly to the knob on the top of his stick, that 
 "Yankees are reckoned to be considerable of a go-ahead people 
 too ; " upon which you say " Yes," and then he says " Yes " 
 again (affirmatively this time) ; and, upon your looking out of 
 window, tells you that behind that hill, and some three miles 
 from the next station, there is a clever town in a smart lo-ca- 
 tion, where he expects you have con-eluded to stop. Your 
 answer in the negative naturally leads to more questions in 
 reference to your intended route (always pronounced rout) ; and 
 wherever you are going, you invariably learn that you can't get 
 there without immense difficulty and danger, and that all the 
 great sights are somewhere else. 
 
 If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger's seat, th§ 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 73 
 
 gentleman who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, 
 and he immediately vacates it with great politeness. Politics 
 are much discussed ; so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people 
 avoid the question of the Presidency, for there will be a new 
 election in three years and a half, and party feeling runs very 
 high : the great constitutional feature of this institution being, 
 that directly the acrimony of the last election is over, the acri- r. 
 mony of the next one begins ; which is an unspeakable comfort j 
 to all strong politicians and true lovers of their country : that j 
 is to say, to ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety-nine 
 and a quarter. • ~~ ~ 
 
 Except when a branch road joins the main one, there is 
 seldom more than one track of rails ; so that the road is very 
 narrow, and the view, where there is a deep cutting, by no means 
 extensive. When there is not, the character of the scenery 
 is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees : some 
 hewn down by the axe, some blown down by the wind, some 
 half fallen and resting on their neighbours, many mere logs half 
 hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to spongy chips. 
 The very soil of the earth is made up of minute fragments such 
 as these ; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of vegetable 
 rottenness ; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks, and 
 stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, 
 and neglect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an 
 open country, glittering with some bright lake or pool, broad as 
 many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a 
 name ; now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its 
 clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New England 
 church and school-house ; when whir-r-r-r ! almost before you 
 have seen them, comes the same dark screen : the stunted trees, 
 the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water — all so like the last 
 that you seem to have been transported back again by magic. 
 
 The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impos- 
 sibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out is only 
 to be equalled by the apparently desperate hopelessness of 
 
74 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 there being anybody to get in. It rushes across the turnpike 
 road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal : nothing 
 but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted " When the bell 
 rings, look out for the Locomotive." On it whirls headlong, 
 dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters 
 over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath 
 a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a 
 wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main 
 street of a large town, and dashes on hap-hazard, pell-mell, neck 
 or nothing, down the middle of the road. There — with 
 mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning from 
 their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing 
 marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children 
 crawling, and pigs burrowing, and unaccustomed horses plung- 
 ing and rearing, close to the very rails— there — on, on, on — 
 tears the mad dragon of an engine with its train of cars ; 
 scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks from its 
 wood fire ; screeching, hissing, yelling, panting, until at last 
 the thirsty monster stops beneath a covered way to drink, the 
 people cluster round, and you have time to breathe again. 
 
 I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman intimately 
 connected with the management of the factories there ; and 
 gladly putting myself under his guidance, drove off at once to 
 that quarter of the town in which the works, the object of my 
 visit, were situated. Although only just of age — for, if my 
 recollection serve me, it has been a manufacturing town barely 
 one-and-twenty years — Lowell is a large, populous, thriving 
 place. Those indications of its youth which first attract the 
 eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of character which, to a 
 visitor from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very 
 dirty winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to 
 me, except the mud, which in some parts was almost knee deep, 
 and might have been deposited there on the subsiding of the 
 waters after the Deluge. In one place there was a new wooden 
 church, which, having no steeple, and being yet unpainted, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 75 
 
 looked like an enormous packing-case without any direction 
 upon it. In another there was a large hotel, whose walls and 
 colonnades were so crisp, and thin, and slight, that it had exactly 
 the appearance of being built with cards. I was careful not to 
 draw my breath as we passed, and trembled when I saw a work- 
 man come out upon the roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp of 
 his foot he should crush the structure beneath him, and bring it 
 rattling down. The very river that moves the machinery in the 
 mills (for they are all worked by water power) seems to acquire 
 a new character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and 
 painted wood among which it takes its course ; and to be as 
 light-headed, thoughtless, and brisk a young river, in its mur- 
 murings and tumblings, as one would desire to see. One would 
 swear that every " Bakery," " Grocery," and " Bookbindery," 
 and other kind of store took its shutters down for the first time, 1 
 and started in business yesterday. The golden pestles and 
 mortars fixed as signs xipon the" sun-blind frames outside the 
 Druggists' appear to have been just turned out of the United 
 States' Mint ; and when I saw a baby of some week or ten days , 
 old in a woman's arms at a street corner, I found myself uncon- ; 
 sclously wondering where it came from : never supposing for an; . 
 instant that it could have been born in such a young town as 
 that. 
 
 There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs 
 to what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what 
 they call in America a Corporation. I went over several of 
 these ; such as a woollen -factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton 
 factory : examined them in every part ; and saw them in their 
 ordinary working aspect, with no preparation of any kind, or 
 departure from their ordinary every-day proceedings. I may 
 add that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing towns in 
 England, and have visited many mills in Manchester and else- 
 where in the same manner. 
 
 I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner 
 hour was over, and the girls were returning to their work ; 
 
xJ 
 
 76 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 indeed, the stairs of the mill were thronged with them as I 
 ascended. They were all well dressed, but not, to my thinking, 
 above their condition : for I like to see the humbler classes of 
 society careful of their dress and appearance, and even, if they 
 please, decorated with such little trinkets as come within the 
 compass of their means. Supposing it confined within reason- 
 able limits, I would always encourage this kind of pride, as a ■ 
 worthy element of self-respect, in any person I employed ; and 
 should no more be deterred from doing so, because some 
 wretched female referred her fall to a love of dress, than I 
 would allow my construction of the real intent and meaning of 
 the Sabbath to be influenced by any warning to the well- 
 disposed, founded on his backslidings on that particular day, 
 which might emanate from the rather doubtful authority of a 
 murderer in Newgate. 
 
 These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed : and that 
 phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had 
 serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks and shawls ; and were 
 not above clogs and pattens. Moreover, there were places in the 
 mill in which they could deposit these things without injury ; 
 and there were conveniences for washing. They were healthy in 
 appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the manners 
 and deportment of young women : not of degraded brutes of 
 burden. If I had seen in one of those mills (but I did not, 
 though I looked for something of this kind with a sharp eye) the 
 most lisping, mincing, affected, and ridiculous young creature 
 that my imagination could suggest, I should have thought of the 
 careless, moping, slatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I have seen 
 that), and should have been still well pleased to look upon her. 
 
 The rooms in which they worked were as well ordered as 
 themselves. In the windows of some there were green plants, 
 which were trained to shade the glass ; in all, there was as much 
 fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort as the nature of the occupa- 
 tion would possibly admit of. Out of so large a number qf 
 females, many of whom were only then just verging upon 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. ft 
 
 Womanhood, it may be reasonably supposed that some were 
 delicate and fragile in appearance : no doubt there were. But 
 I solemnly declare, that from all the crowd I saw in the different 
 factories that day, I cannot recall or separate one young face 
 that gave me a painful impression ; not one young girl whom, 
 assuming it to be matter of necessity that she should gain her 
 daily bread by the labour of her hands, I would have removed 
 from those works if I had had the power. 
 
 They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The\ 
 owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons I 
 to enter upon the possession of these houses, whose characters 
 have not undergone the most searching and thorough inquiry. 
 Any complaint that is made against them by the boarders, or by 
 any one else, is fully investigated ; and if good ground of com- 
 plaint be shown to exist against them, they are removed, and 
 their occupation is handed over to some more deserving person. 
 There are a few children employed in these factories, but not 
 many. The laws of the State forbid their working more than), 
 nine months in the year, and require that they be educated' 
 during the other three. For this purpose there are schools in 
 Lowell ; and there are churches and chapels of various persua- 
 sions, in which the young women may observe that form of 
 worship in which they have been educated. 
 
 At some distance from the factories, and on the highest and 
 pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood, stands their hospital, 
 or boarding-house for the sick : it is the best house in those 
 parts, and was built by an eminent merchant for his own resi- 
 dence. Like that institution at Boston, which I have before 
 described, it is not parcelled out into wards, but is divided into 
 convenient chambers, each of which has all the comforts of a 
 very comfortable home. The principal medical attendant resides 
 under the same roof ; and were the patients members of his own 
 family, they could not be better cared for, or attended with 
 greater gentleness and consideration. The weekly charge in thin 
 establishment for each female patient is three dollars, or "twelve 
 
78 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 , shillings English ; but no girl employed by any of the corpora- 
 tions is ever excluded for want of the means of payment. That 
 they do not very often want the means may be gathered from 
 the fact, that in July, 1841, no fewer than nine hundred and 
 seventy-eight of these girls were depositors in the Lowell Savings 
 Bank : the amount of whose joint savings was estimated at one 
 hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand English pounds. 
 
 I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large 
 class of readers on this side of the Atlantic very much. 
 
 Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the 
 boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies sub- 
 scribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among 
 themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, " a repo- 
 sitory of original articles, written exclusively by females actively 
 employed in the mills," — which is duly printed, published, and 
 sold ; and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred 
 good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end. 
 
 The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim, 
 with one voice, '' How very preposterous ! " On my deferen- 
 tially inquiring why, they will answer, " These things are above 
 their station." In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask 
 what their station is. 
 
 It is their station to work. And they do Avork. They labour 
 in these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day, which is 
 unquestionably work, and pretty tight work too. Perhaps it is 
 above their station to indulge in such amusements on any terms. 
 Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our ideas 
 of the "station" of working-people from accustoming ourselves 
 to the contemplation of that class as they are, and not as they 
 ( might be? I think that, if we examine our own feelings, we 
 shall find that the pianos, and the circulating libraries, and even 
 the Lowell Offering, startle us by their novelty, and not by their 
 bearing upon any abstract question of right or wrong. 
 
 For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of 
 to-day" cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheer- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 7$ 
 
 fully looked to, any one of these pursuits is not most humanising 
 and laudable. I know no station which is rendered more endur- 
 able to the person in it, or more safe to the person out of it, by 
 having ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has 
 a right to monopolise the means of mutual instruction, improve : 
 ment, and rational entertainment ; or which has ever continued 
 to be a station very long after seeking to do so. 
 
 Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production 
 I will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the 
 articles having been written by these girls after the arduous 
 labours of the day, that it will compare advantageously with a 
 great many English Annuals. It is pleasant to find that many 
 of its Tales are of the Mills, and of those who work in them ; 
 that they inculcate habits of self-denial and contentment, and 
 teach good doctrines of enlarged, benevolence. . A strong, feeling 
 for ^the beauties, of nature, as displayed in the solitudes the 
 writers have left at home, breathes through its pages like whole- 
 some village air ; and though a circulating library is a favourable 
 school for the study,. of such topics,, it lias very scant allusion to 
 fine clothes, fine marriages, fine, houses, or fine life. Some per- 
 sons might object to the papers being signed occasionally with 
 rather fine names, but this is an American fashion. One of the 
 provinces of the State Legislature of Massachusetts is to alter 
 ugly names into pretty ones, as the children improve upon the 
 tastes of their parents. These changes costing little or nothing, 
 scores of Mary Annes are solemnly converted into Bevelinas 
 every session. 
 
 It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General Jackson 
 or General Harrison to this town (I forget which, but it is not 
 to the purpose), he walked through three miles and a half of 
 these young ladies, all dressed out with parasols and silk stopk- 
 ings. But, as I am not aware that any worse consequence 
 ensued than a sudden looking-up of all the parasols and silk 
 stockings in the market ; and perhaps the Bankruptcy of some 
 speculative New Englander who bought them all up at any price, 
 
§6 American n6teS 
 
 in expectation of a demand that never came ; I set iio great 
 store by the circumstance. 
 
 In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate expression "of 
 the gratification it yielded me, and cannot fail to afford to any 
 foreigner to whom the condition of such people at home is a 
 subject of interest and anxious speculation, I have carefully 
 abstained from drawing a comparison between these factories 
 and those of our own land. Many of the circumstances whose 
 strong influence has been at work for years in our manufacturing 
 towns have not arisen here ; and there is no manufacturing popu- 
 lation in Lowell, so to speak : for these girls (often the daughters 
 of small farmers) come from other States, remain a few years in 
 the mills, and then go home for good. 
 
 The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be between 
 the Good and Evil, the living light and deepest shadow. I 
 abstain from it, because I deem it just to do so. But I only 
 the more earnestly adjure all those whose eyes may rest on these 
 pages, to pause and reflect upon the difference between this 
 town and those great haunts of desperate misery : to call to 
 mind, if they can in the midst of party strife and squabble, the 
 efforts that must be made to purge them of their suffering and 
 danger : and last, and foremost, to remember how the precious 
 Time is rushing by. 
 
 I returned at- night by the same railroad, and in the same 
 kind of car. One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious 
 to expound at great length to my companion (not to me, of 
 course) the true principles on which books of travel in America 
 should be written by Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. But 
 glancing all the way out at window from the corners of my 
 eyes, I found abundance of entertainment for the rest of the 
 ride in Watching the effects of the wood fire, which had been 
 invisible in -the morning, but were now brought out in full relief 
 by the darkness : for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright 
 sparks, which showered about us like a storm, of fiery snow. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN TO NEW TORX. 
 
 T EAVING Boston on the afternoon of Saturday, the fifth of 
 ■^ February, we proceeded by another railroad to Worcester : 
 a pretty New England town, where we had arranged to remain 
 under the hospitable roof of the Governor of the State until 
 Monday morning. 
 
 These towns and cities of New England (many of which would 
 be villages in Old England) are as favourable specimens of rural 
 America as their people are of rural Americans. The well- 
 trimmed lawns and green meadows of home are not there ; and 
 the grass, compared with our ornamental plots and pastures, is 
 rank, and rough, and wild : but delicate slopes of land, gently- 
 swelling hills, wooded valleys, and slender streams abound. 
 Every little colony of houses has its church and school-house 
 peeping from among the white roofs and shady trees ; every 
 house is the whitest of the white ; every Venetian blind the 
 greenest of the green ; every fine day's sky the bluest of the 
 blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight frost had so hardened the 
 roads when we alighted at Worcester, that their furrowed tracks 
 were like ridges of granite. There was the usual aspect of new- 
 ness on every object, of course. All the buildings looked as ifj? 
 they had been built and painted that morning, and could beU 
 taken down on Monday with very little trouble. In the keen 
 evening air, every sharp outline looked a hundred times sharper 
 than ever. The clean cardboard colonnades had no more per- 
 spective than a Chinese bridge oh a teacup, and appeared 
 equally well calculated for use. The razor-like edges of the 
 
 G 
 
82 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 detached cottages seemed to cut the very wind as it whistled 
 against them, and to send it smarting on its way with a shriller 
 cry than before. Those slightly-built wooden dwellings, behind 
 which the sun was setting with a brilliant lustre, could be so 
 looked through and through, that the idea of any inhabitant 
 being able to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have any 
 secrets from the public eye, was not entertainable for a moment. 
 Even where a blazing fire shone through the uncurtained windows 
 of some distant house, it had the air of being newly lighted, and 
 of lacking warmth ; and instead of awakening thoughts of a snug 
 ' chamber, bright with faces that first saw the light round that 
 same hearth, and ruddy with warm hangings, it came upon one 
 suggestive of the smell of new mortar and damp walls. 
 
 So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning, when 
 the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were 
 ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the 
 pathway near at hand, and dotted the distant thread of road, 
 there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything which 
 it was good to feel. It would have been the better for an old 
 church ; better still for some old graves ; but as it was, a whole- 
 some repose and tranquillity pervaded the scene, which, after the 
 restless ocean and the hurried city, had a doubly grateful influ- 
 ence on the spirits. 
 
 We went on next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield. 
 From that place to Hartford, whither we were bound, is a distance 
 of only five-and-twenty miles, but at that time of the year the 
 roads were so bad that the journey would probably have occupied 
 ten or twelve hours. Fortunately, however, the winter having 
 been unusually mild, the Connecticut Kiver was " open," or, in 
 other words, not frozen. The captain of a small steamboat was 
 going to make his first trip for the season that day (the second 
 February trip, I believe, within the memory of man), and only 
 waited for us to go on board. Accordingly, we went on board 
 with as little, delay as might be. He was as good as his word, 
 and started directly. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 83 
 
 It certainly was not called a small steamboat without reason. 
 I omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have 
 been of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated 
 Dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which 
 was fitted with common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling- 
 house. These windows had bright red' curtains, too, hung 
 on slack strings across the lower panes ; so that it looked like 
 the parlour of a Lilliputian public-house, which had got afloat 
 in a flood or some other water accident, and was drifting nobody 
 knew where. But even in this chamber there was a rocking- 
 chair. It would be impossible to get on anywhere, in America, 
 without a rocking-chair. 
 
 I am afraid to tell how many feet short this vessel was, or 
 how many feet narrow ; to apply the words length and width to 
 such measurement would be a contradiction in terms. But I 
 may state that we all kept the middle of the deck, lest the boat 
 should unexpectedly tip over ; and that the machinery, by some 
 surprising process of condensation, worked between it and the 
 keel : the whole forming a warm sandwich, about three feet 
 thick. 
 
 It rained all day, as I once thought it never did rain anywhere 
 but in the Highlands of Scotland. The river was full of float- 
 ing blocks of ice, which were constantly crunching and cracking 
 under us ; and the depth of water, in the course we took to 
 avoid the larger masses, carried down the middle of the river 
 by the current, did not exceed a few inches. Nevertheless, we 
 . moved onward dexterously ; and, being well wrapped up, bade 
 defiance to the weather, and enjoyed the journey. The Connec- 
 ticut River is a fine stream ; and the banks in summer-time are, 
 I have no doubt, beautiful : at all events, I was told so by a 
 young lady in the cabin ; and she should be a judge of beauty, 
 if the possession of a quality include the appreciation of it, for 
 a more beautiful creature I never looked upon. 
 
 After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (including 
 a stoppage at a small t6wn, where we were saluted by a gun 
 
 a 2 
 
84 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 considerably bigger than our own chimney), we reached Hart- 
 ford, and straightway repaired to an extremely comfortable 
 hotel : except, as usual, in the article of bedrooms, which, in 
 almost every place we visited, were very conducive to early 
 rising. 
 
 We tarried here four days. The town is beautifully situated 
 , in a basin of green hills ; the soil is rich, well wooded, and care- 
 10 fully improved. It is the seat of the local legislature of Con- 
 necticut, which sage body enacted, in bygone times, the renowned 
 code of " Blue Laws," in virtue whereof, among other enlightened 
 provisions, any citizen who could be proved to have kissed his 
 wife on Sunday was punishable, I believe, with the stocks. 
 1 j Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists in these parts to the 
 ' present hour ; but its influence has not tended, that I know, to 
 make the people less hard in their bargains, or more equal in 
 their dealings. As I never heard of its working that effect 
 anywhere else, I infer that it never will here. Indeed, I am 
 accustomed, with reference to^ great professions and severe faces, 
 to judge of the goods of the other world pretty much as I judge 
 of the goods of this ; and whenever I see a dealer in such 
 commodities with too great a display of them in his window, I 
 doubt the quality of the article within. 
 
 In Hartford stands the famous oak in which the charter of 
 
 King Charles was hidden. It is now enclosed in a gentleman's 
 
 garden. In the State House is the charter itself. I found the 
 
 f courts of law here just the same as at Boston ; the public Insti- 
 
 | tutions almost as good. The Insane Asylum is admirably con- 
 
 1 ducted, and so is the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. 
 
 I very much questioned within myself, as I walked through 
 the Insane Asylum, whether I should have known the attend- 
 ants from the patients, but for the few words which passed 
 between the former and the Doctor, in reference to the persons 
 under their charge. Of course I limit this remark merely to 
 their looks ; for the conversation of the mad people was mad 
 enoliffh. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 85 
 
 There Was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and good 1 - 
 humoured appearance, who came sidling up to me from the end 
 of a long passage, and, with a curtsy of inexpressible condescen- 
 sion, propounded this unaccountable inquiry : 
 
 "Does Pontefract still flourish, sir, upon the soil of Eng- 
 land ? " 
 
 " He does, ma'am," I rejoined. 
 
 " When you last saw him, sir, he was- " 
 
 " Well, ma'am," said I, " extremely well. He begged me to 
 present his compliments. I never saw him looking better." 
 
 At this the old lady was very much delighted. After glancing 
 at me for a moment, as if to be quite sure that I was serious 
 in my respectful air, she sidled back some paces ; sidled forward 
 again ; made a sudden skip (at which I precipitately retreated a 
 step or two) ; and said : 
 
 " I am an antediluvian, sir." 
 
 I thought the best thing to say was, that I had suspected as 
 much from the first. Therefore I said so. 
 
 " It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to be an 
 antediluvian," said the old lady. 
 
 " I should think it was, ma'am," I rejoined. 
 
 The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked, and 
 sidled down the gallery in a most extraordinary manner, and 
 ambled gracefully into her own bedchamber. 
 
 In another part of the building there was a male patient in 
 bed ; very much flushed and heated. 
 
 " Well ! " said he, starting up, and pulling off his nightcap : 
 "it's all settled at last. I have arranged it with Queen Vic- 
 toria." 
 
 " Arranged what ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 " Why, that business," passing his hand wearily across his 
 forehead, " about the siege of New York." 
 
 " Oh ! " said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For he 
 looked at me for an answer. 
 
 " Yes. Every house without a signal will bo fired upon by 
 
86 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the British troops. No harm will be done to the others. No 
 harm at all. Those that want to be safe must hoist flags. 
 That's all they'll have to do. They must hoist flags." 
 
 Even while he was speaking he seemed, I thought, to have 
 some faint idea that his talk was incoherent, Directly he had 
 said these words, he lay down again; gave a kind of groan; 
 and covered his hot head with the blankets. 
 
 There was another : a young man whose madness was love 
 and music. After playing on the accordion a march he had com- 
 posed, he was very anxious that I should walk into his chamber, 
 which I immediately did. 
 
 By way of being very knowing, and humouring him to the 
 top of his bent, I went to the window, which commanded a 
 beautiful prospect, and remarked, with an address upon which 
 I greatly plumed myself : 
 
 " What a delicious country you have about these lodgings of 
 yours ! " 
 
 " Poh ! " said he, moving his fingers carelessly over the notes 
 of his instrument. " Well enough for such an Institution as 
 this!" 
 
 I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all my life. 
 
 " I come here just for a whim," he said coolly. " That's 
 all." 
 
 "Oh! That's all!" said I. 
 
 " Yes. That's all. The Doctor's a smart man. He quite 
 enters into it. It's a joke of mine. I like it for a time. You 
 needn't mention it, but I think I shall go out next Tuesday ! " 
 
 I assured him that I would consider our interview perfectly 
 confidential : and rejoined the Doctor. As we were passing 
 through a gallery on our way out, a well-dressed lady, of quiet 
 and composed manners, came up, and proffering a slip of paper 
 and a pen, begged that I would oblige her with an autograph. 
 I complied, and we parted. 
 
 " I think I remember having had a few interviews like that 
 with ladies out of doors. I hope she is not mad ? " 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 87 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " On what subject ? Autographs ? " 
 
 " No. She hears voices in the air." 
 
 " Well ! " thought I, "it would be well if we could shut up a 
 few false prophets of these later times, who have professed to do 
 the same ; and I should like to try the experiment on a Mor- 
 monist or two to begin with." 
 
 In this place there is the best Gaol for untried offenders in 
 the world. There is also a very well-ordered State prison, 
 arranged upon the same plan as that at Boston, except that here 
 there is always a sentry on the wall with a loaded gun. It con- 
 tained at that time about two hundred prisoners. A spot was 
 shown me in the sleeping ward, where a watchman was mur- 
 dered some years since in the dead of night, in a desperate 
 attempt to escape made by a prisoner who had broken from his 
 cell. A woman, too, was pointed out to me, who, for the 
 murder of her husband, had been a close prisoner for sixteen 
 years. 
 
 " Do you think," I asked of my conductor, " that after so 
 very long an imprisonment, she has any thought or hope of ever 
 regaining her liberty ? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! " he answered. " To be sure she has." 
 
 " She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know : " which, by-the-bye, is a national 
 answer. " Her friends mistrust her." 
 
 " What have they to do with it ? " I naturally inquired. 
 
 " Well, they won't petition." 
 
 " But if they did, they couldn't get her out, I suppose 1 " 
 
 "Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second, but 
 tiring and wearying for a few years might do it." 
 
 " Does that ever do it ? " 
 
 " Why, yes, that'll do it sometimes. Political friends '11 do 
 it sometimes. It's pretty often done, one way or another." 
 
 I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollect 
 tion of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends 
 
88 American notes 
 
 there, whom I never can remember with indifference. We left it 
 with no little regret on the evening of Friday, the 11th, and 
 travelled that night by railroad to New Haven. Upon the way, 
 the guard and I were formally introduced to each other (as we 
 usually were on such occasions), and exchanged a variety of 
 small-talk. We reached New Haven at about eight o'clock, 
 after a journey of three hours, and put up for the night at the 
 best inn. 
 
 New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. 
 Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted 
 with rows of grand old elm-trees ; and the same natural orna- 
 ments surround Yale College, an establishment of considerable 
 eminence and reputation. The various departments of this 
 Institution are erected in a kind of park or common in the 
 middle of the town, where they are dimly visible among the 
 shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathe- 
 dral yard in England ; and, when their branches are in full leaf, 
 must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter-time, these 
 groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets 
 and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance : 
 seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and 
 country ; as if each had met the other half-way, and shaken 
 hands upon it ; which is at once novel and pleasant. 
 
 After a night's rest, we rose early, and in good time went 
 down to the wharf, and on board the packet New York for New 
 York. This was the first American steamboat of any size that 
 I had seen ; and certainly, to an English eye, it was infinitely 
 less like a steamboat than a huge floating bath. I could hardly 
 persuade myself, indeed, but that the bathing establishment oil 
 "Westminster Bridge, which I left a baby, had suddenly grown 
 to an enormous size ; run away from home ; and set up in 
 foreign parts as a steamer. Being in America, too, which our 
 vagabonds do so particularly favour, it seemed the more pro- 
 bable. 
 
 The great difference in appearance between these packets and 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 89 
 
 ours is, that there is so much of them out of the water : the 
 main-deck being enclosed on all sides, and filled with casks and 
 goods, like any second or third floor in a stack of warehouses ; 
 and the promenade or hurricane deck being atop of that again. 
 A part of the machinery is always above this deck ; where the 
 connecting-rod, in a strong and lofty frame, is seen working away 
 like an iron top-sawyer. There is seldom any mast or tackle : 
 nothing aloft but two tall black chimneys. The man at the 
 helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of the boat 
 (the wheel being connected with the rudder by iron chains, 
 working the whole length of the deck) ; and the passengers, 
 unless the weather be very fine indeed, usually congregate below. 
 Directly you have left the wharf, all the life, and stir, and bustle 
 of a packet cease. You wonder for a long time how she goes 
 on, for there seems to be nobody in charge of her ; and when 
 another of these dull machines comes splashing by, you feel 
 quite indignant with it, as a sullen, cumbrous, ungraceful, 
 unshiplike leviathan : quite forgetting that the vessel you are 
 on board of is its very counterpart. 
 
 There is always a clerk's office on the lower deck, where you 
 pay your fare ; a ladies' cabin ; baggage and stowage rooms ; 
 engineer's room ; and, in short, a great variety of perplexities 
 which render the discovery of the gentlemen's cabin a matter of 
 some difficulty. It often occupies the whole length of the boat 
 (as it did in this case), and has three or four tiers of berths on 
 each side. When I first descended into the cabin of the New- 
 York, it looked, in my unaccustomed eyes, about as long as the 
 Burlington Arcade. 
 
 The Sound, which has to be crossed on this passage, is not 
 always a very safe or pleasant navigation, and has been the 
 scene of some unfortunate accidents. It was a wet morning, 
 and very misty, and we soon lost sight of land. The day was 
 calm, however, and brightened towards noon. After exhausting 
 (with good help from a friend) the larder, and the stock of 
 bottled beer, I lay down to sleep : being very much tired with 
 
00 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the fatigues of yesterday. But I awoke from my nap in time 
 to hurry up, and see Hell Gate, the Hog's Back, the Frying 
 Pan, and other notorious localities, attractive to all readers of 
 famous Diedrich Knickerbocker's History. We were now in a 
 narrow channel, with sloping banks on either side, besprinkled 
 with pleasant villas, and made refreshing to the sight by turf 
 and trees. Soon we shot, in quick succession, past a light- 
 house : a madhouse (how the lunatics flung up their caps and 
 roared in sympathy with the headlong engine and the driving 
 tide !) ; a gaol ; and other buildings : and so emerged into a 
 noble bay, whose waters sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine 
 like Nature's eyes turned up to Heaven. 
 
 Then there lay stretched out before us, to the right, confused 
 heaps of buildings, with here and there a spire or steeple, look- 
 ing down, upon the herd below ; and here and there, again, a 
 cloud of lazy smoke ; and in the foreground a forest of ships' 
 masts, cheery with flapping sails and waving flags. Crossing 
 from among them to the opposite shore, were steam ferry-boats 
 laden with people, coaches, horses, waggons, baskets, boxes : 
 crossed and recrossed by other ferry-boats : all travelling to and 
 fro : and never idle. Stately among these restless Insects were 
 two or three large ships, moving with slow majestic pace, as 
 creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful of their puny journeys, 
 and making for the broad sea. Beyond were shining heights, 
 and islands in the glancing river, and a. distance scarcely less 
 blue and bright than the sky it seemed to meet. The city's 
 hum and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, 
 the barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels, tingled in the 
 listening ear. All of which life and stir, coming across the 
 stirring water, caught new life and animation from its free 
 companionship ; and, sympathising with its buoyant spirits, 
 glistened as it seemed in sport upon its surface, and hemmed 
 the vessel round, and plashed the water high about her sides, 
 and, floating her gallantly into the dock, flew off again' to 
 welcome other comers, and speed before them to the busy port. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 T1HE beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean 
 a city as Boston, but many of its streets have the same 
 characteristics ; except that the houses are not quite so fresh- . 
 coloured, the sign-boards are not quite so gaudy, the gilded n 
 letters not quite so golden, the bricks not quite so red, the 
 stone not quite so white, the blinds and area railings not quite 
 so green, the knobs and plates upon the street-doors not quite 
 so bright and twinkling. There are many by-streets, almost as 
 neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty ones, as by-streets 
 in London ; and there is one quarter, commonly called the Five 
 Points, which, in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be 
 safely backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed 
 St. Giles's. 
 
 The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people know, 
 is Broadway ; a wide and bustling street, which, from the 
 Battery Gardens to its opposite termination in a country road, 
 may be four miles long. Shall we sit down in an upper floor 
 of the Carlton House Hotel (situated in the best part of this 
 main artery of New York), and, when we are tired of looking 
 down upon the life below, sally forth arm-in-arm, and mingle 
 with the. stream ? 
 
 Warm weather ! The sun strikes upon our heads, at this 
 open window, as though its rays were concentrated through a 
 burning-glass ; but the day is in its zenith, and the season an 
 unusual One. Was there ever such a sunny street as this 
 Broadway ? The pavement stones are polished with the tread 
 
Q2 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 of feet Until they shine again ; the red bricks of the houses 
 might be yet in the dry, hot kilns ; and the roofs of those 
 omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they 
 would hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. No 
 stint of omnibuses here ! Half-a-dozen have gone by within as 
 many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches, too ; gigs, 
 phaetons, large-wheeled tilburies, and private carriages — rather 
 of a clumsy make, and not very different from the public 
 vehicles, but built for the heavy roads beyond the city pave- 
 ment. Negro coachmen and white ; in straw hats, black hats, 
 white hats, glazed caps, fur caps ; in coats of drab, black, brown, 
 green, blue, nankeen, striped jean and linen ; and there, in that 
 one instance (look while it passes, or it will be too late), in suits 
 of livery. Some Southern republican that, who puts his blacks 
 in uniform, and swells with Sultan pomp and power. Yonder, 
 where that phaeton with the well-clipped pair of greys has 
 stopped — standing at their heads now — is a Yorkshire groom, 
 who has not been very long in these parts, and looks sorrow- 
 fully round for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may 
 traverse the city half a year without meeting. Heaven save the 
 ladies, how they dress ! We have seen more colours in these 
 ten minutes than we should have seen elsewhere in as many 
 days. What various parasols ! what rainbow silks and satins ! 
 what pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes, and 
 fluttering of ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks 
 with gaudy hoods and linings ! The young gentlemen are fond, 
 you see, of turning down their shirt collars and cultivating their 
 whiskers, especially under the chin ; but they cannot approach 
 the ladies in their dress or bearing, being, to say the truth, 
 humanity of quite another sort. Byrons of the desk and 
 counter, pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are 
 behind ye : those two labourers in holiday clothes, of whom 
 one carries in his hand a crumpled scrap of paper from which 
 he tries to spell out a hard name, while the other looks about 
 for it on all the doors and windows. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 93 
 
 Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they were masked, 
 by their long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, and their 
 drab trousers, which they wear like men well used to working 
 dresses, who are easy in no others. It would be hard to keep 
 your model republics going without the countrymen and 
 countrywomen of those two labourers. For who else Avould 
 dig, and delve, and drudge, and do domestic work, and make 
 canals and roads, and execute great lines of Internal Improve- 
 ment? Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled, too, to find out 
 what they seek. Let us go down, and help them, for the love 
 of home, and that spirit of liberty which admits of honest 
 service to honest men, and honest work for honest bread, no 
 matter what it be. 
 
 That's well ! We have got at the right address at last, 
 though it is written in strange characters truly, and might have 
 been scrawled with the blunt handle of the spade the writer 
 better knows the use of than a pen. Their way lies yonder, 
 but what business takes them there ? They carry savings : to 
 hoard up ? No. They are brothers, those men. One crossed 
 the sea alone, and working very hard for one half-year, and 
 living harder, saved funds enough to bring the other out. That 
 done, they worked together side by side, contentedly sharing 
 hard labour and' hard living for another term, and then their 
 sisters came, and then another brother, and lastly, their old 
 mother. And what now? Why, the poor old crone is restless: 
 in a strange land, and yearns to lay her bones, she says, among I 
 her people in the old graveyard at home : and so they go to pay 
 her passage back : and God help her and them, and every 
 simple heart, and all who turn to the Jerusalem of their 
 younger days, and have an altar-fire upon the cold hearth of 
 their fathers ! 
 
 This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the sun, 
 is Wall Street : the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of 
 New York. Many a rapid fortune has been made in this 
 street, and many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very 
 
94 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 merchants whom you see hanging about here now,, have looked 
 up money in their strong-boxes, like the man in the Arabian 
 Nights, and opening them again, have found but withered 
 leaves. Below, here by the water-side, where the bowsprits of 
 ships stretch across the footway, and almost thrust themselves 
 into the windows, lie the noble American vessels which have 
 made their Packet Service the finest in the world. They have 
 brought hither the foreigners who abound in all the streets : 
 not, perhaps, that there are more here than in other commercial 
 cities ; but elsewhere they have particular haunts, and you must 
 find them out ; here they pervade the town. 
 
 We must cross Broadway again ; gaining some refreshment 
 from the heat in the sight of the great blocks of clean ice which 
 are being carried into shops and bar-rooms ; and the pine-apples 
 and water-melons profusely displayed for sale. Fine streets of 
 spacious houses here, you see ! — Wall Street has furnished and 
 dismantled many of them very often — and here a deep green leafy 
 square. Be sure that is a hospitable house, with inmates to be 
 affectionately remembered always, where they have the open 
 door and pretty show of plants within, and where the child with 
 laughing eyes is peeping out of window at the little dog below. 
 You wonder what may be the use of this tall flagstaff in the by- 
 street, with something like Liberty's head-dress on its top : : so 
 flo I. But there is a passion for tall flagstaffs hereabout, and 
 you may see its twin brother in five minutes, if you have a 
 mind. ' 
 
 Again across Broadway, and so — passing from the many- 
 coloured crowd and glittering shops — into another long main 
 street, the Bowery. A rail-road yonder, see, where two stout 
 horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a great 
 wooden ark with ease. The stores are poorer here, the passen- 
 gers less gay. Clothes ready made, and meat ready cooked, are 
 to be bought in these parts ; and the lively whirl of carriages is 
 exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and waggons. .. These 
 signs which are so plentiful, in shape like river buoys, or small 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 95 
 
 balloons, hoisted by cords to poles, and dangling there, announce, 
 as you may see by looking up, "Oysters in every Style." 
 They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull candles, 
 glimmering inside, illuminate these dainty words, and make the 
 mouths of idlers water as they read and linger. 
 
 What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an 
 enchanter's palace in a melodrama ? — A famous prison, called 
 The Tombs. Shall we go in ? 
 
 So. A long, narrow, lofty building, stove-heated as usual, 
 with four galleries, one above the other, going round it, and 
 communicating by stairs. Between the two sides of each 
 gallery, and in its centre, a bridge, for the greater convenience 
 of crossing. On each of these bridges sits a man : dozing or 
 reading, or talking to an idle companion. On each tier are two 
 opposite rows of small iron doors. They look like furnace 
 doors, but are cold and black, as though the fires within had 
 all gone out. Some two or three ai*e open, and women, with 
 drooping heads bent down, are talking to the inmates. The 
 whole is lighted by a sky-light, but it is fast closed ; and from 
 the roof, there dangle, limp and drooping, two useless wind- 
 sails. 
 
 A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-look- 
 ing fellow, and, in his way, civil and obliging. 
 
 " Are those black doors the cells ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Are they all full?" 
 
 " Well, they're pretty nigh full, and that's a fact, and no two 
 ways about it." 
 
 "Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely ?" 
 
 " Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em. That's the 
 truth." 
 
 " When do the prisoners take exercise ?" 
 
 "Well, they do without it pretty much." 
 
 l ' Do they never walk in the yard ?" 
 
 " Considerable seldom." 
 
Q6 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 " Sometimes, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Well, it's rare they do. They keep pretty bright without 
 it. 
 
 "But suppose a man were here for a twelvemonth. I know 
 this is only a prison for criminals who are charged with grave 
 offences, while they are awaiting their trial, or are under remand, 
 but the law here affords criminals many means of delay. What 
 with motions for new trial, and in arrest of judgment, and what 
 not, a prisoner might be here for twelve months, I take it. might 
 he not?" 
 
 " Well, I guess he might." 
 
 "Do you mean to say that in all that time he would never 
 come out at that little iron door for exercise ?" 
 
 " He might walk some, perhaps — not much." 
 
 " Will you open one of the doors ?" 
 
 "All, if you like." 
 
 The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of the doors turns 
 slowly on its hinges. Let us look in. A small bare cell, into 
 which the light enters through a high chink in the wall. There 
 is a rude means of washing, a table, and a bedstead. Upon the 
 latter sits a man of sixty ; reading. He looks up for a moment ; 
 gives an impatient dogged shake ; and fixes his eyes upon his 
 book again. As we withdrew our heads, the door closes on him, 
 and is fastened as before. This man has murdered his wife, and 
 will probably be hanged. 
 
 " How long has he been here ?" 
 
 " A month." 
 
 " When will he be tried ?" 
 
 " Next term." 
 
 "When is that?" 
 
 " Next month." 
 
 " In England, if a man be under sentence of death even, he 
 has air and exercise at certain periods of the day." 
 
 "Possible?" 
 
 With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness ho says 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 97 
 
 this, and how loungingly he leads on to the women's side : 
 making, as he goes, a kind of iron castanet of the key and the 
 stair-rail ! 
 
 Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it. Some 
 of the women peep anxiously through it at the sound of foot- 
 steps ; others shrink away in shame. — For what offence can that 
 lonely child, of ten or twelve years old, be shut up here ? Oh ! 
 that boy ? He is the son of a prisoner we saw just now ; is a f 
 witness against his father ; and is detained here for safe keeping 
 until the trial ; that's all. \ 
 
 But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the long days ', 
 and nights in. This is rather hard treatment for a young wit- ' 
 ness, is it not ? — What says our conductor ? 
 
 "Well, it an't a very rowdy life, and that's a fact !" 
 
 Again he clinks his metal castanet, and leads us leisurely 
 away. I have a question to ask him as we go. 
 
 " Pray, why do they call this place The Tombs 1" 
 
 " Well, it's the cant name." 
 
 "I know it is. Why?" 
 
 "Some suicides happened here when it was first built. I 
 expect it come about from that." 
 
 " I saw, just now, that that man's clothes were scattered 
 about the floor of his cell. Don't you oblige the prisoners to 
 be orderly, and put such things away?" 
 
 " Where should they put 'em ?" 1 
 
 "Not on the ground, surely. What do you say to hanging ■_ 
 them up?" 
 
 He stops and looks round to emphasise his answer : ' ^ 
 
 "Why, I say that's just it. When they had hooks they 
 would hang themselves, so they're taken out of every cell, and 
 there's only the marks left where they used to be !" 
 
 The prison yard, in which he pauses now, has been the scene 
 of terrible performances. Into this narrow, grave-like place men 
 are brought out to die. The wretched creature stands beneath 
 the gibbet on thf ground ; the rope about his neck ; and when 
 
 H 
 
gS AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the sign is given, a weight at its other end conies running down, 
 and swings him up into the air — a corpse. 
 
 The law requires that there be present at this dismal spectacle 
 the judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of twenty-five, 
 From the community it is hidden. To the dissolute and bad, 
 the thing remains a frightful mystery. Between the crimina] 
 and them, the prison wall is interposed as a thick gloomy veil, 
 It is the curtain to his bed of death, his winding-sheet, and 
 grave. From him it shuts out life, and all the motives tc 
 unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which its mere sight 
 and presence is often all-sufficient to sustain. There are nc 
 bold eyes to make him bold ; no ruffians to uphold a ruffian's 
 name before. All beyond the pitiless stone wall is unknown 
 \\ space. 
 
 Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets. 
 
 Once more in Broadway ! Here are the same ladies in bright 
 colours, walking to and fro, in pairs and singly ; yonder the 
 very same light blue parasol which passed and repassed the 
 hotel window twenty times while we were sitting there. We 
 are going to cross here. Take care of the pigs. Two portly 
 sows are trotting up behind this carriage, and a select party oi 
 half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs have just now turned the corner. 
 
 Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward by himself. He 
 has only one ear ; having parted with the other to vagrant dogs 
 in the course of his city rambles. But he gets on very wel! 
 without it ; and leads a roving, gentlemanly, vagabond kind o: 
 life, somewhat answering to that of our club men at home. He 
 leaves his lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws him- 
 self upon the town, gets through his day in some manner quite 
 satisfactory to himself, and regularly appears at the door of his 
 own house again at night, like the mysterious master of Gil Bias, 
 He is a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent kind of pig, having s 
 very large acquaintance among other pigs of the same character, 
 whom he rather knows by sight than conversation, as he seldom 
 troubles himself to stop and exchange civilities, but goes grunt- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 99 
 
 ing down the kennel, turning up the news and small-talk of the 
 city in the shape of cabbage-stalks and offal, and bearing no 
 tails but his own : which is a very short one, for his old enemies, 
 the dogs, have been at that too, and have left him hardly 
 enough to swear by. He is in every respect a republican pig, 
 going wherever he pleases, and mingling with the best society, 
 on an equal, if not superior footing, for every one makes way 
 when he appears, and the haughtiest give him the wall, if he 
 prefer it. He is a great philosopher, and seldom moved, unless 
 by the dogs before mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, you may 
 see his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, whose 
 carcase garnishes a butcher's door-post, but he grunts out. 
 "Such is life : all flesh is pork !" buries his nose in the mire 
 again, and waddles down the gutter : comforting himself with 
 the reflection that there is one snout the less to anticipate stray 
 cabbage-stalks, at any rate. 
 
 They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they/] 
 are ; having, for the most part, scanty, brown backs, like the 
 lids of old horsehair trunks : spotted with unwholesome black 
 blotches. They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked 
 snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for his 
 profile, nobody would recognise it for a pig's likeness. They are 
 never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are thrown 
 upon their own resources in early life, and become preter- 
 naturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows where he 
 lives, much better than anybody could tell him. At this hour, 
 just as evening is closing in, you will see them roaming towards 
 bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some 
 youth among them who has over-eaten himself, or has been much 
 worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son ; 
 but this is a rare case : perfect self-possession and self-reliance, 
 and immovable composure, being their foremost attributes. 
 
 The streets and shops are lighted now ; and as the eye travels 
 down the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets of gas, it is 
 reminded of Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Here =ind there % 
 
 H 2 
 
I0O AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 flight of broad stone cellar steps appears, and a painted lamp 
 directs you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten4?in alley : Ten-Pins 
 being a game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the 
 legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. At other down- 
 ward flights of steps are other lamps, marking the whereabouts 
 of oyster cellars — pleasant retreats, say I : not only by reason 
 of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty nigh as large as 
 cheese-plates, (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek Pro- 
 fessors !) but because, of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or 
 fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not 
 gregarious ; but subduing themselves, as it were, to the nature 
 of what they work in, and copying the coyness of the thing they 
 eat, do sit apart in curtained boxes, anu consort by twos, not by 
 two hundreds. 
 
 But how quiet the streets are ! Are there no itinerant bands; 
 no wind or stringed instruments ? No, not one. By day, are 
 there no Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing Dogs, Jugglers, Conjurers, 
 Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-organs ? No, not one. Yes, I 
 remember one. One barrel-organ and a dancing monkey — 
 sportive by nature, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish monkey, 
 of the Utilitarian school. Beyond that, nothing lively ; no, not 
 so much as a white mouse in a twirling cage. 
 
 Are there no amusements ? Yes, there is a lecture-room 
 across the way, from which that glare of light proceeds, and 
 there may be evening service for the ladies thrice a week, or 
 oftener. For the young gentlemen there is the counting-house, 
 the store, the bar-room ; the latter, as you may see through 
 these windows, pretty full. Hark ! to the clinking sound of 
 hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool gurgling of the 
 pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they are poured from 
 glass to glass ! No amusements ? "What are these suckers of 
 cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose hats and legs we 
 see in every possible variety of twist, doing, but amusing them- 
 selves ? What are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious 
 urchins are bawling down the street, and which are kept filed 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 101 
 
 within, what are they hut amusements ? Not vapid, waterish 
 amusements, but good strong stuff ; dealing in round abuse and 
 blackguard names ; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as 
 the Halting Devil did in Spain ; pimping and pandering for all 
 degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most 
 voracious maw ; imputing to every man in public life the 
 coarsest and the vilest motives ; scaring away from the stabbed 
 and prostrate body politic every Samaritan of clear conscience 
 and good deeds ; and setting on, with yell and whistle, and the 
 clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of 
 prej'. — No amusements ! 
 
 Let us go on again ; and passing this wilderness of an hotel 
 with stores about its base, like some Continental theatre, or the 
 London Opera House shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the 
 Five Points. But it is needful, first, that we take as our escort 
 these two heads of the police, whom you would know for sharp 
 and well-trained officers if you met them in the Great Desert. 
 So true it is that certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will 
 stamp men with the same character. These two might have 
 been begotten, born, and bred in Bow Street. 
 
 We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day ; but ! 
 of other kinds of strollers plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and \ 
 vice are rife enough where we are going now. 
 
 This is the place, these narrow ways, diverging to the right 
 and left, and reeking eveiywhere with dirt and filth. Such 
 lives as are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. 
 The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at\\ — 
 home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the 
 very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are 
 tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem 
 to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. 
 Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their 
 masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours? and why 
 they talk instead of grunting 1 
 
 So far, nearly everv house is a low tavern ; and on the bar- 
 
102 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 ?oom walls are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen 
 Victoria of England, and the American Eagle. Among the 
 pigeon-holes that hold the bottles are pieces of plate glass and 
 coloured paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste for decoration 
 even here. And, as seamen frequent these haunts, there are 
 maritime pictures by the dozen: of partings between sailors 
 and their lady loves, portraits of William of the ballad, and his 
 Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will Watch, the Bold Smuggler ; of Paul 
 Jones the Pirate, and the like : on which the painted eyes of 
 Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, rest in as strange 
 companionship as on most of the scenes that are enacted in 
 their wondering presence. 
 
 What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us ? 
 A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable 
 only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this 
 tottering flight of steps, that creak beneath our tread? — A 
 miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and destitute of all 
 comfort, save that which may be hidden in a wretched bed. 
 Beside it sits a man : his elbows on his knees : his forehead 
 hidden in his hands. "What ails that man?" asks the fore- 
 most officer. "Fever," he sullenly replies, without looking up. 
 Conceive the fancies of a fevered brain in such a place as this ! 
 
 Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on 
 the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this 
 wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air appears 
 to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's 
 voice — he knows it well — but comforted by his assurance that 
 he has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself to light 
 a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and shows great 
 mounds of dusky rags upon the ground ; then dies away and 
 leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can be degrees in 
 such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs, and presently 
 comes back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the 
 mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the 
 floor is covered with heaps of negro women, waking from their 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. I03 
 
 sleep : their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes glisten- 
 ing and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the 
 countless repetition of one astonished African face in some 
 strange mirror. 
 
 Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are 
 traps and pitfalls here for those who are not so well escorted as 
 ourselves) into the housetop ; where the bare beams and rafters 
 meet overhead, and calm night looks down through the crevices 
 in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches 
 full of sleeping negroes. Pah ! They have a charcoal fire 
 within ; there is a smell o£ singeing clothes, . or flesh, so close 
 they gather round the brazier ; and vapours issue forth that 
 blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about 
 you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half awakened, as 
 if the judgment hour were near at hand, and every obscene 
 grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie, | , 
 women, and men, and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dis-.J 
 lodged rats to move away in quest of better lodgings. 
 
 Here, too, are lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee deep : 
 underground chambers, where they dance and game ; the walls 
 bedecked with rough designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and 
 American Eagles out of number : ruined houses, open to the 
 street, whence, through wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom 
 upon the eye, as though the world of vice and misery had 
 nothing else to show : hideous tenements which take their name 
 from robbery and murder ; all that is loathsome, drooping, and 
 decayed is here. 
 
 Our leader has his hand upon the latch of " Almack's," and 
 calls to us from the bottom of the steps ; for the assembly-room \ 
 of the Five-Point fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall ' 
 we go in ? It is but a moment. 
 
 Heyday ! the landlady of Almack's thrives ! A buxom fat 1 
 mulatto woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily <b 
 ornamented with a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the 
 landlord much behind her in his finery, being attired in a smart 
 
104 American notes 
 
 blue jacket, iike a ship's steward, with a thick gold ring upon 
 his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming golden watch- 
 guard. How glad he is to see us ! What will we please to call 
 for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir: "a regular 
 break-down." 
 
 The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the tam- 
 bourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra 
 in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six 
 couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro, 
 who is the wit of the assembly, and the greatest dancer known. 
 He never leaves off making queer faces, and is the delight of all 
 the rest, who grin from ear to ear incessantly. Among the 
 dancers are two young mulatto girls, with large, black, drooping 
 eyes, and head-gear after the fashion of the hostess, who are as 
 shy, or feign to be, as though they never danced before, and so 
 look down before the visitors^ that their partners can see nothing 
 but the long fringed lashes. 
 
 But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long as 
 he likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and 
 all are so long about it that the sport begins to languish, when 
 suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the 
 fiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail ; there is new energy 
 in the tambourine ; new laughter in the dancers ; new smiles in 
 the landlady ; new confidence in the landlord ; new brightness 
 in the very candles. Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and 
 cross-cut : snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his 
 knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about 
 on his toes and heels like nothing but the man's fingers on the 
 tambourine ; dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two 
 wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs — all sorts of legs 
 and no legs — what is this to him ? And in what walk of life, 
 or dance of life, does man ever get such stimulating applause as 
 thunders about him, when~ having danced his partner off her 
 feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the 
 bar-counter, and calling for something to drink, with the 
 
for general circulation. 105 
 
 chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimit- 
 able sound ? 
 
 The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the 
 stifling atmosphere of the houses ; and now, as we emerge into 
 a broader street, it blows upon us with a purer breath, and the 
 stars look bright again. Here are The Tombs once more. The"^ 
 city watch-house is a part of the building. It follows natu- 
 rally on the sights we have just left. Let us see that, and then 
 to bed. 
 
 What ! do you thrust your common offenders against the 
 police discipline of the town into such holes as these ? Do men 
 and women, against whom no crime is proved, lie here all night 
 in perfect darkness, surrounded by the noisome vapours which 
 encircle that flagging lamp you light us with, and breathing this 
 filthy and offensive stench ? Why, such indecent and disgusting 
 dungeons as these cells would bring disgrace upon the most 
 despotic empire in the world ! Look at them, man — you, who 
 see them every night, and keep the keys. Do you see what 
 they are ? Do you know how drains are made below the streets, 
 and wherein these human sewers differ, except in being always 
 stagnant ? 
 
 Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-twenty young 
 women locked up in this very cell at one time, and you'd hardly 
 realise what handsome faces there were among 'em. 
 
 In God's name ! shut the door upon the wretched creature 
 who is in it now, and put its screen before a place quite unsur- 
 passed in all the vice, neglect, and devilry of the worst old town 
 in Europe. 
 
 Are people really left all night, untried, in those black sties ? 
 — Every night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. 
 The magistrate opens his court at five in the morning. That 
 is the earliest hour at which the first prisoner can be released ; 
 and if an officer appear against him, he is not taken out 
 till nine o'clock or ten. — But if any one among them die in 
 the interval, as one man did not long ago ? Then he is half 
 
106 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 eaten by the rats in an hour's time, as that man was ; and thera 
 an end. 
 
 What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing of 
 wheels, and shouting in the distance ? A fire. And what that 
 deep red light in the opposite direction ? Another fire. And 
 what these charred and blackened walls we stand before ? A 
 dwelling where a fire has been. It was more than hinted, in an 
 official report, not long ago, that some of these conflagrations 
 were not wholly accidental, and that speculation and enterprise 
 found a field of exertion, even in flames : but, be this as it may, 
 there was a fire last night, there are two to-night, and you may 
 lay an even wager there will be at least one to-morrow. So, 
 carrying that with us for our comfort, let us say, Good night, 
 and climb up-stairs to bed. 
 
 One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the 
 different public institutions on Long Island, or Khode Island : I 
 forget which. One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The building 
 is handsome ; and is remarkable for a spacious and elegant stair- 
 case. The whole structure is not yet finished, but it is already 
 one of considerable size and extent, and is capable of accommo- 
 dating a very large number of patients. 
 
 I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection 
 of this charity. The different wards might have been cleaner 
 and better ordered ; I saw nothing of that salutary system which 
 had impressed me so favourably elsewhere ; and everything had 
 a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful. The 
 moping idiot, cowering down with long dishevelled hair ; the 
 gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed finger ; 
 the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the 
 hands and lips, and munching of the nails : there they were all, 
 without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror. In the dining- 
 room, a bare, dull, dreary place, with nothing for the eye to rest 
 on but the r mpty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 107 
 
 was bent, they told me, on committing suicide. If anything 
 could have strengthened her in her resolution, it would certainly 
 have been the insupportable monotony of such an existence. 
 
 The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were 
 filled so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the shortest 
 limits, and declined to see that portion of the building in which 
 the refractory and violent were under closer restraint. I have 
 no doubt that the gentleman who presided over this establish- 
 ment at the time I write of, was competent to manage it, and 
 had done all in his power to promote its usefulness : but will it 
 be believed that the miserable strife of Party feeling is carried 
 even into this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded humanity ? 
 Will it be believed that the eyes which are to watch over and 
 control the wanderings of minds on which the most dreadful 
 visitation to which our nature is exposed has fallen, must wear 
 the glasses of some wretched side in Politics ? Will it be 
 believed that the governor of such a house as this is appointed, 
 and deposed, and changed perpetually, as Parties fluctuate and 
 vary, and as their despicable weather-cocks are blown this way 
 or that ? A hundred times in every week, some new most paltry 
 exhibition of that narrow-minded and injurious Party Spirit 
 which is the Simoom of America, sickening and blighting every- 
 thing of wholesome life within its reach, was forced upon my 
 notice ; but I never turned my back upon it with feelings of 
 such deep disgust and measureless contempt as when I crossed 
 the threshold of this madhouse. 
 
 At a short distance from this building is another called the 
 Alms House, that is to say, the workhouse of New York. This 
 is a large institution also : lodging, I believe, when I was there, 
 nearly a thousand poor. It was badly ventilated, and badly 
 lighted ; was not too clean ; and impressed me, on the whole, 
 very uncomfortably. But it must be remembered that New 
 York, as a great emporium of commerce, and as a place of 
 general resort, not only from all parts of the States, but from 
 most parts of the world, has always a large pauper population to 
 
iqS American notes 
 
 provide for ; and labours, therefore, under peculiar difficulties in 
 this respect. Nor must it be forgotten that New York is a large 
 town, and that in all large towns a vast amount of good and 
 evil is, intermixed and jumbled up together. 
 
 In the same neighbourhood is the Farm, where young orphans 
 are nursed and bred. I did not see it, but I believe it is Avell 
 conducted ; and I can the more easily credit it, from knowing 
 how mindful they usually are, in America, of that beautiful 
 passage in the Litany which remembers all sick persons and 
 young children. 
 
 I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat belonging 
 to the Island Gaol, and rowed by a crew of prisoners, who were 
 dressed in a striped uniform of black and buff, in which they 
 looked like faded tigers. They took me, by the same convey- 
 ance, to the Gaol itself. 
 
 It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment, on the 
 plan I have already described. I was glad to hear this, for it is 
 unquestionably a very indifferent one. The most is made, how- 
 ever, of the means it possesses, and it is as well regulated as 
 such a place can be. 
 
 The women worked in covered sheds erected for that purpose. 
 If I remember right, there are no shops for the men ; but, be 
 that as it may, the greater part of them labour in certain stone 
 quarries near at hand. The day being very wet indeed, this 
 labour was suspended, and the prisoners were in their cells. 
 Imagine these cells, some two or three hundred in number, and 
 in every one a man locked up ; this one at his door for air, with 
 his hands thrust through the grate ; this one in bed (in the 
 middle of the day, remember-) ; and this one flung down in a 
 heap upon the ground, with his head against the bars, like a 
 wild beast. Make the rain pour down, outside, in torrents. 
 Put the everlasting stove in the midst ; hot, and suffocating, 
 and vaporous as a witch's cauldron. Add a collection of 
 gentle odours, such as would arise from a thousand mil- 
 dewed umbrellas, wet through, and a thousand buck-baskets, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 109 
 
 full of half-washed linen — and there is the prison as it was 
 that day. 
 
 The prison for the State at Sing Sing is, on the other hand, a 
 model gaol. That, and Auhurn, are, I believe, the largest and 
 best examples of the silent system. 
 
 In another part of the city is the Kefuge for the Destitute : 
 an Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, 
 male and female, black and white, without distinction ; to teach 
 them useful trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and 
 make them worthy members of society. Its design, it will be 
 seen, is similar to that at Boston ; and it is a no less meritorious 
 and admirable establishment. A suspicion crossed my mind 
 during my inspection of this noble charity, whether the super- 
 intendent had quite sufficient knowledge of the world and 
 worldly characters ; and whether he did not commit a great 
 mistake in treating some young girls, who were to all intents 
 and purposes, by their years and their past lives, women, as 
 though they were little children ; which certainly had a ludicrous 
 effect in my eyes, and, or I am much mistaken, in theirs also. 
 As the Institution, however, is always under the vigilant exami- 
 nation of a body of gentlemen of great intelligence and experi- 
 ence, it cannot fail to be well conducted ; and whether I am 
 right or wrong in this slight particular is unimportant to its 
 deserts and character, which it would be difficult to estimate 
 too highly. 
 
 In addition to these establishments, there are, in New York, 
 excellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and libraries ; 
 an admirable fire department (as, indeed, it should be, having 
 constant practice), and charities of every sort and kind. In 
 the suburbs there is a spacious cemetery : unfinished yet, but 
 every day improving. The saddest tomb I saw there was 
 " The Strangers' Grave. Dedicated to the different hotels in 
 this city." 
 
 There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park 
 and the Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, and 
 
IIG AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 are, I grieve to write it, generally deserted. The third, the 
 Olympic, is a tiny show-box for vaudevilles and burlesques. It 
 is singularly well conducted by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of 
 great quiet humour and originality, who is well remembered 
 and esteemed by London play-goers. I am happy to report of 
 this deserving gentleman, that his benches are usually well filled, 
 and that his theatre rings with merriment every night. I had 
 almost forgotten a small summer theatre, called Niblo's, with 
 gardens and open-air amusements attached ; but I believe it is 
 not exempt from the general depression under which Theatrical 
 Property, or what is humorously called by that name, unfortu- 
 nately labours. 
 
 The country around New York is surpassingly and exqui- 
 sitely picturesque. The climate, as I have already intimated, 
 is somewhat of the warmest. What it would be without the 
 sea breezes which come from its beautiful Bay in the evening- 
 time, I will not throw myself or my readers into a fever by 
 inquiring. 
 
 The tone of the best society in this city is like that of Boston ; 
 here and there, it may be, with a greater infusion of the mer- 
 cantile spirit, but generally polished and refined, and always 
 most hospitable. The houses and tables are elegant ; the hours 
 later and more rakish ; and there is, perhaps, a greater spirit of 
 contention in reference to appearances, and the display of wealth 
 and costly living. The ladies are singularly beautiful. 
 
 Before I left New York I made arrangements for securing a 
 passage home in the George Washington packet-ship, which was 
 advertised to sail in June ; that being the month in which I had 
 determined, if prevented by no accident in the course of my 
 ramblings, to leave America. 
 
 I never thought that going back to England, returning to all 
 who are dear to me, and to pursuits that have insensibly grown 
 to be part of my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as I 
 endured when I parted at last, on board this ship, with the 
 friends who had accompanied me from this. city. I never 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. Ill 
 
 thought the name of any place so far away, and so lately known, 
 could ever associate itself in my mind with the crowd of affec- 
 tionate remembrances that now cluster about it. There are 
 those in this city who would brighten, to me, the darkest winter 
 day that ever glimmered and went out in Lapland ; and before 
 whose presence even Home grew dim, when they and I exchanged 
 that painful word which mingles with our every thought and 
 deed ; which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, and closes up 
 the vista of our lives in age. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 
 
 r | A HE journey from New York to Philadelphia is made by rail- 
 -*- road, and two ferries ; and usually occupies between five 
 and six hours. It was a fine evening when we were passengers 
 in the train : and watching the bright sunset from a little 
 window near the door by which we sat, my attention was 
 attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing from the windows 
 of the gentlemen's car immediately in front of us, which I 
 supposed for some time was occasioned by a number of indus- 
 trious persons inside ripping open feather beds, and giving the 
 feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they 
 were only spitting, which was indeed the case; though how 
 any number of passengers which it was possible for that car to 
 contain could have maintained such a playful and incessant 
 shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to understand : 
 notwithstanding the experience in all salivatory phenomena 
 which I afterwards acquired. 
 
 I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest 
 young Quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me, in 
 a grave whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold- 
 drawn castor oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking it 
 probable that this is the first occasion on which the valuable 
 medicine in question was ever used as a conversational aperient. 
 
 We reached the city late that night. Looking out of my 
 chamber window before going to bed, I saw, on the opposite 
 side of the way, a handsome building of white marble, which 
 had a mournful, ghost-like aspect, dreary to behold. I attri- 
 
FOR GenerAl cSircSuIAtion. 1 13 
 
 buteu this to the sombre influence of the night, and, on rising 
 in the morning, looked out again, expecting to see its steps and 
 portico thronged with groups of people passing in and out. The 
 door was still tight shut, however ; the same cold, cheerless air 
 prevailed; and the" building looked as if the marble statue of Don 
 Guzman could alone have any business to transact within its 
 gloomy Avails. I hastened to inquire its name and purpose, and 
 then my surprise vanished. It was the Tomb of many fortunes ; 
 the Great Catacomb of investment ; the memorable United 
 States Bank. 
 
 The stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous consequences, 
 had cast (as I was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia, 
 under the depressing effect of which it yet laboured. It certainly 
 did seem rather dull and out of spirits. 
 
 It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After 
 walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have 
 given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat 
 appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath 
 its Quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, 
 my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm 
 accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over 
 against the Market-place, and of making a large fortune by 
 speculations in corn, came over me involuntarily. 
 
 Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, 
 which is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and poured 
 off everywhere. The AVater-works, which are on a height near 
 the city, are no less ornamental than useful, being tastefully 
 laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best and neatest 
 order. The river is dammed at this point, and forced by its own 
 power into certain high tanks or reservoirs, whence the whole 
 city, to the top stories of the houses, is supplied at a very 
 trifling expense. 
 
 There are various public institutions. Among them a most 
 excellent Hospital — a Quaker establishment, but not sectarian 
 in the great benefits it confers ; a quiet, quaint old Library, 
 
114 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 named after franklin ; a handsome Exchange and Post Office ; 
 and so forth. In connection with the Quaker Hospital there 
 is a picture by West, which is exhibited for the benefit of the 
 funds of the Institution. The subject is our Saviour healing 
 the sick, and it is, perhaps, as favourable a specimen of the 
 master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or low 
 praise, depends upon the reader's taste. 
 
 In the same room there is a very characteristic and lifelike 
 portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist. 
 
 My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of 
 its society I greatly liked. Treating of its general character- 
 istics, I should be disposed to say that it is more provincial than 
 Boston or New York, and that there is afloat in the fair- city 
 an assumption of taste and criticism, savouring rather of those 
 genteel discussions upon the same, themes, in connection with 
 Shakspeare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in 
 the Vicar of Wakefield. Near the city is a most splendid 
 unfinished marble structure for the Girard College, founded by 
 a deceased gentleman of that name, and of enormous wealth, 
 which, if completed according to the original design, will be 
 perhaps the richest edifice of modern times. But the bequest 
 is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has 
 stopped ; so that, like many other great undertakings in America, 
 even this is rather going to be done one of these days than 
 doing now. 
 
 In the outskirts stands a great prison, called the Eastern 
 Penitentiary : conducted on a plan peculiar to the State of 
 Pennsylvania. The system here is rigid, strict, and hopeless 
 solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel 
 and wrong. 
 
 In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, 
 and meant for reformation ; but I am persuaded that those who 
 devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent 
 gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is 
 that the}' are doing. I believe that very few men are capable 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 115 
 
 of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which 
 this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the 
 sufferers ; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from 
 what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my 
 certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more con- 
 vinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which 
 none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no 
 man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this 
 slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be 
 immeasurably worse than any torture of the body : and because 
 its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and 
 sense of touch as scars upon the flesh ; because its wounds are 
 not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears 
 can hear ; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punish- 
 ment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I 
 hesitated once, debating with myself whether, if I had the 
 power of saying " Yes " or " No," I would allow it to be tried 
 in certain cases, where the terms of imprisonment were short ; 
 but now I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours 
 could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lay 
 me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one 
 human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay 
 suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the 
 cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree. 
 
 I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially 
 connected with its management, and passed the day in going 
 from cell to cell, and talking with the inmates. Every facility 
 was afforded me that the utmost courtesy could suggest. 
 Nothing was concealed or hidden from my view, and every 
 piece of information that I sought was openly and frankly 
 given. The perfect order of the building cannot be praised 
 too highly, and of the excellent motives of all who are imme- 
 diately concerned in the administration of the system there can 
 be no kind of question. 
 
 Between the body of .the prison and the outer wall there is n. 
 
 I 2 
 
1 1 6 AMERICAN NOtEg 
 
 spacious garden. Entering it by a wicket in the massive gate, 
 we pursued the path before us to its other termination, and 
 passed into a large chamber, from which seven long passages 
 radiate. On either side of each is a, long, long row of low cell 
 doors, with a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery 
 of cells like those below, except that they have no narrow yard 
 attached (as those in the ground tier have), and are somewhat 
 smaller. The possession of two of these is supposed to com- 
 pensate for the absence of so much air and exercise as can be 
 had in the dull strip attached to each of the others, in an 
 hour's time every day ; and therefore every prisoner in this 
 upper story has two cells, adjoining, and communicating with, 
 each other. 
 
 Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary 
 passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails is awful. 
 Occasionally there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's 
 shuttle, or shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick walls 
 and heavy dungeon door, and only serves to make the general 
 stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every 
 prisoner who comes into this melancholy house a black hood is 
 drawn ; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain 
 dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell 
 from which he never again comes forth until his whole term of 
 imprisonment has expired. He never hears of wife or children ; 
 home or friends ; the life or death of any single creature. He 
 sees the prison officers, but, with that exception, he never looks 
 upon a human countenance, or hears a human voice. He is a 
 man buried alive ; to be dug out in the slow round of years ; 
 and in the meantime dead to everything but torturing anxieties 
 and horrible despair. 
 
 His name, and crime, and term of suffering are unknown, 
 even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a 
 number over his cell door, and in a book of which the governor 
 of the prison has one copy, and the moral instructor another : 
 this is the index to his history. Beyond these pages the prison 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. I 17 
 
 has no record of his existence : and though he live to be in the 
 same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down 
 to the very last hour, in what part of the building it is situated ; 
 what kind of men there are about him ; whether in the long- 
 winter nights there are living people near, or he is in some 
 lonely corner of the great gaol, with walls, and passages, and 
 iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary 
 horrors. 
 
 Every cell has double doors : the outer one of sturdy oak, 
 the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which 
 his food is handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, 
 and, under certain restrictions, has sometimes other books, 
 provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His 
 razor, plate, and can, and basin hang upon the wall, or shine 
 upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and 
 he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day, his bedstead 
 turns up against the wall, and leaves more space for him to 
 work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel is there ; and there he 
 labours, sleeps and wakes, and counts the seasons as they 
 change, and grows old. 
 
 The first man I saw was seated at his loom, at work. He 
 had been there six years, and was to remain, I think, three 
 more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, 
 but even after this long imprisonment denied his guilt, and 
 said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence. 
 
 He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, 
 and answered freely to everything that was said to him, but 
 always with a strange kind of pause first, and in a low, thought- 
 ful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own making, and was 
 pleased to have it noticed and commended. He had very 
 ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some dis- 
 regarded odds and ends ; and his vinegar bottle served for the 
 pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrivance, he looked 
 up at it with a great deal of pride, and said that he had been 
 thinking of improving it, and that, he hoped the hammer and a 
 
Il8 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 little piece of broken glass beside it " would play music before 
 long." He had extracted some colours from the yarn with 
 which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the wall. 
 One, of a female, over the door, he called " The Lady of the 
 Lake." 
 
 He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while away 
 the time ; but, when I looked from them to him, I saw that 
 his lip trembled, and could have counted the beating of his 
 heart. I forget how it came about, but some allusion was made 
 to his having a wife. He shook his head at the word, turned 
 aside, and covered his face with his hands. 
 
 "But you are resigned now?" said one of the gentlemen 
 after a short pause, during which he had resumed his former 
 manner. He answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless 
 in its hopelessness, " Oh yes, oh yes ! I am resigned to it." 
 " And are a better man, you think ?" " Well, I hope so : I'm 
 sure I hope I may be." " And time goes pretty quickly ?" 
 "Time is very long, gentlemen, within these four walls !" 
 
 He gazed about him — Heaven only knows how wearily ! — 
 as he said these words ; and, in the act of doing so, fell into a 
 strange stare as if he had forgotten something. A moment 
 afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went 
 about his work again. 
 
 In another cell there was a German, sentenced to five years' 
 imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With 
 colours procured in the same manner, he had painted every 
 inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid 
 out the few feet of ground behind with exquisite neatness, and 
 had made a little bed in the centre, that looked, by-the-bye, 
 like a grave. The taste and ingenuity he had displayed in 
 everything were most extraordinary ; and yet a more dejected, 
 heart-broken, wretched creature it would be difficult to imagine. 
 I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of 
 mind. My heart bled for him ; and when the tears ran down 
 his cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside, to ask, with 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 19 
 
 his trembling hands nervously clutching at his coat to detain 
 him, whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being 
 commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to witness. Ir 
 never saw or heard of any kind of misery that impressed me \" 
 more than the wretchedness of this man. ' 
 
 In a third cell was a tall, strong black, a burglar, working at 
 his proper trade of making screws and the like. His time was 
 nearly out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but was 
 notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for the number 
 of his previous convictions. He entertained us with a long 
 account of his achievements, which he narrated with such 
 infinite relish, that he actually seemed to lick his lips as he 
 told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old ladies whom 
 he had watched as they sat at windows in silver spectacles (he 
 had plainly had an eye to their metal, even from the other side 
 of the street), and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon 
 the slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his 
 professional recollections the most detestable cant ; but I am 
 very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the unmitigated 
 hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the day on 
 which he came into that prison, and that he never would 
 commit another robbery as long as he lived. 
 
 There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to 
 keep rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in conse- 
 quence, they called to him at the door to come out into the 
 passage. He complied, of course, and stood shading his hag- 
 gard face in the unwonted sun-light of the great window, 
 looking as wan and unearthly as if he had been summoned 
 from the grave. He had a white rabbit in his breast ; and 
 when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole 
 back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after «■ 
 it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in what 
 respect the man was the nobler animal of the two. 
 
 There was an English thief, who had been there but a few 
 days out of seven years : a villainous, low-browed, thin-lipped 
 
120 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 fellow, with a white face ; who had as yet no relish for visitors, 
 and who, but for the additional penalty, would have gladly 
 stabbed rne with his shoemaker's knife. There was another 
 German who had entered the gaol but yesterday, and who 
 started from his bed when we looked in, and pleaded, in his 
 broken English, very hard for work. There was a poet, who, 
 after doing two days' work in every four-and-twenty hours, one 
 for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses about ships (he 
 was by trade a mariner), and the " maddening wine-cup," and 
 his friends at home. There were very many of them. Some 
 reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned very pale. 
 Some two or three had prisoner nurses with them, for they were 
 very sick, and one, a fat old negro, whose leg had been taken 
 off within the gaol, had for his attendant a classical scholar and 
 an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner likewise. Sitting 
 upon the stairs, engaged in some slight work, was a pretty 
 % coloured boy. " Is there no refuge for young criminals in 
 I Philadelphia, then?" said I. "Yes, but only for white 
 | children." Noble aristocracy in crime ! 
 
 There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven 
 years, and who in a few months' time would be free. Eleven 
 years of solitary confinement ! 
 
 " I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out." What 
 does he say ? Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands, and 
 pick the flesh upon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, 
 every now and then, to those bare walls which have seen his 
 head turn grey ? It is a way he has sometimes. 
 
 Does he never look men in the face, and does he always 
 pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on parting 
 skin and bone ? It is his humour : nothing more. 
 
 It is his humour, too, to say that he does not look for- 
 ward to going out ; that he is not glad the time is drawing 
 near; that he did look forward to it once, but that was 
 very long ago ; that he has lost all care for everything. It 
 js his humour to be a helpless, crushed, and broken man. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 12 l 
 
 And, Heaven be his witness that he has his humour thoroughly 
 gratified ! 
 
 There were three young women in adjoining cells, all con- 
 victed at the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. 
 Tn the silence and solitude of their lives they had grown to be 
 quite beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and might have 
 moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of 
 sorrow which the contemplation of the men awakens. One was 
 a young girl ; not twenty, as I recollect ; whose snow-white 
 room was hung with the work of some former prisoner, and 
 upon whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour shone 
 down through the high chink in the wall, where one narrow 
 strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was very penitent 
 and quiet ; had come to be resigned, she said (and I believe 
 her) ; and had a mind at peace. "In a word, you are happy 
 here?" said one of my companions. She struggled — she did 
 struggle very hard — to answer, Yes : but raising her eyes, and 
 meeting that glimpse of freedom overhead, she burst into tears, 
 and said, " She tried to be ; she uttered no complaint ; but it 
 was natural that she should sometimes long to go out of that 
 one cell : she could not help that," she sobbed, poor thing ! 
 
 I went from cell to cell that day ; and every face I saw, or 
 word I heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all 
 its painfulness. But let me pass them by, for one, more 
 pleasant, glance of a prison on the same plan which I after- 
 wards saw at Pittsburg. 
 
 When I had gone over that in the same manner, I asked the 
 governor if he had any person in his charge who was shortly 
 going out. He had one, he said, whose time was up next day ; 
 but he had only been a prisoner two years. 
 
 Two years ! I looked back through two years in my own 
 life — out of gaol, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, 
 comforts, and good fortune — and thought how wide a gap it 
 was, and how long those two years passed in solitary captivity 
 would have been, I have the face of this man, who was going 
 
122 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 to be released next day, before me now. It is almost more 
 memorable in its happiness than the other faces in their misery. 
 How easy and how natural it was for him to say that the system 
 was a good one ; and that the time went " pretty quick — con- 
 sidering ; " and that when a man once felt he had offended the 
 law, and must satisfy it, " he got along somehow;" and so forth! 
 
 " What did he call you back to say to you, in that strange 
 flutter ? " I asked of my conductor, when he had locked the 
 door and joined me in the passage. 
 
 " Oh ! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were not fit 
 for walking, as they were a good deal worn when he came in ; 
 and that he would thank me very much to have them mended 
 ready." 
 
 Those boots had been taken off his feet, and put away with 
 the rest of his clothes, two years before ! 
 
 I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted 
 themselves immediately before going out ; adding that I pre- 
 sumed they trembled very much. 
 
 " Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the answer — 
 T< though they do quiver — as a complete derangement of the 
 nervous system. They can't sign their names to the book ; 
 sometimes can't even hold the pen ; look about 'em without 
 appearing to know why, or where they are ; and sometimes get 
 up and sit down again twenty times in a minute. This is when 
 they're in the office, where they are taken with the hood on as 
 they were brought in. When they get outside the gate, they 
 stop, and look first one way and then the other : not knowing 
 which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were drunk, 
 and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence, they're so 
 bad : — but they clear off in course of time." 
 
 As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the 
 faces of the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the 
 thoughts and feelings natural to their condition. I imagined 
 the hood just taken off, and the scene of their captivity disclosed 
 to them in all its dismal monotony. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 23 
 
 At first the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous 
 vision ; and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his 
 bed, and lies there abandoned to despair. By degrees the insup- 
 portable solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him from 
 this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he 
 humbly begs and prays for work. " Give me some work to do, 
 or I shall go raving mad ! " 
 
 He has it ; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour ; 
 but every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense 
 of the years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and. an 
 agony so piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden 
 from his view and knowledge, that he starts from his seat, and, 
 striding up and down the narrow room with both hands clasped 
 on his uplifted head, hears spirits tempting him to beat his 
 brains out on the wall. 
 
 Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there moaning. Sud- 
 denly he starts up, wondering whether any other man is near ; 
 whether there is another cell like that on either side of him ; 
 and listens keenly. 
 
 There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near for all that. 
 He remembers to have heard once, when he little thought of 
 coming here himself, that the cells were so constructed that the 
 prisoners could not hear each other, though the officers could 
 hear them. Where is the nearest man — upon the right, or on 
 the left? or is there one in both directions? Where is he 
 sitting now — with his face to the light ? or is he walking to 
 and fro ? How is he dressed ? Has he been here long ? Is 
 he much worn away ? Is he very white and spectre-like ? 
 Does he think of his neighbour too ? 
 
 Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he thinks, 
 he conjures up a figure with his back towards him, and imagines 
 it moving about in this next cell. He has no idea of the face, 
 but he is certain of the dark form of a stooping man. In the 
 cell upon the other side he puts another figure, whose face is 
 hidden from him also, Day after day, and often when he wake > 
 
124 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 up in the middle of the night, he thinks of these two men 
 until he is almost distracted. He never changes them. There 
 they are always as he first imagined them — an old man on the 
 right ; a younger man upon the left — whose hidden features 
 torture him to death, and have a mystery that makes him 
 tremble. 
 
 The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners at a 
 funeral ; and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the 
 cell have something dreadful in them : that their colour is 
 horrible : that their smooth surface chills his blood : that there 
 is one hateful corner which torments him. Every morning, 
 when he wakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and 
 shudders to see the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. 
 The blessed light of day itself peeps in, an ugly phantom face, 
 through the unchangeable crevice which is his prison window. 
 
 By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner 
 swell until they beset him at all times ; invade his rest, make 
 his dreams hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first he took 
 a strange dislike to it : feeling as though it gave birth in his 
 brain to something of corresponding shape, which ought not to 
 be there, and racked his head with pains. Then he began to 
 fear it, then to dream of it, and of men whispering its name and 
 pointing to it. Then, he could not bear to look at it, nor yet to 
 turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the lurking- 
 place of a ghost : a shadow : — a silent something, horrible to 
 see, but whether bird, or beast, or muffled human shape, he 
 cannot tell. 
 
 When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard without. 
 When he is in the yard, he dreads to re-enter the cell. When 
 night comes, there stands the phantom in the corner. If he 
 have the courage to stand in its place, and drive it out (he had 
 once : being desperate), it broods upon his bed. In the twilight,, 
 and always at the same hour, a voice calls to him by name ; as 
 the darkness thickens, his Loom begins to live ; and even that, 
 his comfort, is a hjdepus figure, watching him till daybreak^ 
 
THE SOLITARY PRISONER 
 
FOR &£XERAL CIRCULATION. 125 
 
 Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from 
 him one by one ; returning sometimes unexpectedly, but at 
 longer intervals, and in less alarming shapes. He has talked 
 upon religious matters with the gentleman who visits him, and 
 has read his Bible, and has written a prayer upon his slate, and 
 hung it up as a kind of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly 
 companionship. He dreams now, sometimes, of his children or 
 his wife, but is sure that they are dead, or have deserted him. 
 He is easily moved to tears.; is gentle, submissive, and broken - 
 'spirited. Occasionally the old agony comes back : a very little 
 thing will revive it : even a familiar sound, or the scent of summer 
 flowers in the air ; but it does not last long now : for the world 
 without has come to be the vision, and this solitary life the sad 
 reality. — ' 
 
 If his term of imprisonment be short — I mean comparatively, 
 for short it cannot be — the last half-year is almost worse than 
 all ; for then he thinks the prison will take fire, and he be burnt 
 in the ruins, or that he is doomed to die within the walls, or 
 that he will be detained on some false charge, and sentenced for 
 another term : or that something, no matter what, must happen 
 to prevent his going at large. And this is natural, and impos- 
 sible to be reasoned against, because, after his long separation ■> 
 from human life, and his great suffering, any event will appear I 
 to him more probable in the contemplation than the being 
 restored to liberty and his fellow-creatures. *-r ~\ 
 
 If his period of confinement have been very long, the pros- 
 pect of release bewilders and confuses him. His broken heart 
 may flutter for a moment, when he thinks of the world outside, 
 and what it might have been to him in all those lonely years, 
 but that is all. The cell door has been closed too long on all 
 its hopes and cares. Better to have hanged him in the begin- 
 ning than bring him to this pass, and send him forth to mingle 
 with his kind, who are his kind no more. 
 
 On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners 
 the same expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It 
 
126 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 had something of that strained attention which we see upon the 
 faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as 
 though they had ' all been secretly terrified. In every little 
 chamber that I entered, and at every grate through which I 
 looked, I seemed to see the same appalling countenance. It 
 lives in my memory, with the fascination of a remarkable 
 picture. Parade before my eyes a hundred men, with one 
 among them newly released from this, solitary suffering, and I 
 would point him out. 
 
 The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanises and 
 refines. Whether this be because of their better nature, which 
 is elicited in solitude, or because of their being gentler creatures, 
 of greater patience and longer suffering, I do not know ; but so 
 it is. That the punishment is nevertheless, to my thinking, 
 fully as cruel and as wrong in their case as in that of the men, 
 I need scarcely add. 
 
 My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish 
 it occasions — an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all 
 imagination of it must fall far short of the reality — it wears the 
 mind into a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough 
 contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion 
 that those who have undergone this punishment must pass into 
 society again morally unhealthy and diseased. There are many 
 instances on record of men who have chosen, or have been 
 condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely remember 
 one, even among sages of strong and vigorous intellect, where 
 its effect has not become apparent, in some disordered train 
 of thought, or some gloomy hallucination. What monstrous 
 phantoms, bred of despondency and doubt, and born and reared 
 in solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, 
 and darkening the face of Heaven ! 
 
 Suicides are rare among these prisoners : are almost, indeed, 
 unknown. But no argument in favour of the system can reason- 
 ably be deduced from this circumstance, although it is very 
 often urged. All men who have made diseases of the mind 
 
for General circulation. 127 
 
 their study, know perfectly well that such extreme depression 
 and despair as will change the whole character, and beat down 
 all its powers of elasticity and self-resistance, may be at work 
 within a man, and yet stop short of self-destruction. This is a 
 common case. 
 
 That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees impairs the 
 bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to those who 
 were with me in this very establishment at Philadelphia, that 
 the criminals who had been there long were deaf. They, who 
 were in the habit of seeing these men constantly, were perfectly 
 amazed at the idea, which they regarded as groundless and fanci- 
 ful. And yet the very first prisoner to whom they appealed — 
 one of their own selection — confirmed my impression (which 
 was unknown, to him) instantly, and said, with a genuine air it 
 was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't think how it happened, 
 but he was growing very dull of hearing. 
 
 That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and affects the 
 worst man least, there is no doubt. In its superior efficiency 
 as a means of reformation, compared with that other code of 
 regulations which allows the prisoners to work in company with- 
 out communicating together, I have not the smallest faith. All 
 the instances of reformation that were mentioned to me were of 
 a kind that might have been — and I have no doubt whatever, 
 in my own mind, would have been — equally well brought about 
 by the Silent System. With regard to such men as the negro 
 burglar and the English thief, even the most enthusiastic have 
 scarcely any hope of their conversion. 
 
 It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome or 
 good has ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, and 1 
 that even a dog, or any of the more intelligent among beasts, 
 would pine, and mope, and rust away beneath its influence, 
 would be in itself a sufficient argument against this system. 
 But when we recollect, in addition, how very cruel and severe 
 it is, and that a solitary life is always liable to peculiar and 
 distinct objections . of a most deplorable nature, which have 
 
12& AMerIcaM NoteS 
 
 arisen here ; and call to mind, moreover, that the choice is not 
 between this system and a bad or ill-considered one, but between 
 it and another which has worked well, and is, in its whole 
 design and practice, excellent ; there is surely more than suffi- 
 cient reason for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by 
 so little hope or promise, and fraught, beyond dispute, with such 
 a host of evils. 
 
 As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter with 
 a curious story, arising out of the same theme, which was related 
 to me, on the occasion of this visit, by some of the gentlemen 
 concerned. 
 
 At one of the periodical meetings of the inspectors of this 
 prison, a working-man of Philadelphia presented himself before 
 the Board, and earnestly requested to be placed in solitary con- 
 finement. On being asked what motive could possibly prompt 
 him to make this strange demand, he answered that he had an 
 irresistible propensity to get drunk ; that he was constantly 
 indulging in it, to his great misery and ruin ; that he had no 
 power of resistance ; that he wished to be put beyond the reach 
 of temptation ; and that he could think of no better way than 
 this. It was pointed out to him, in reply, that the prison was 
 for criminals who had been tried and sentenced by the law, and 
 could not be made available for any such fanciful purposes ; he 
 was exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, as he surely 
 might if he would ; and received other very good advice, with 
 which he retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the result- of his 
 application. 
 
 He came again, and again, and again, and was so very earnest 
 and importunate, that at last they took counsel together, and 
 said, " He will certainly qualify himself for admission, if we 
 reject him any more. Let us shut him up. He will soon be 
 glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of him." So they 
 made him sign a statement which would prevent his ever sus- 
 taining an action for false imprisonment, to the effect that his 
 incarceration was voluntary, and of his own seeking ; they 
 
FOR. GENERAL CIRCULATION. 129 
 
 requested him to take notice that the officer in attendance had 
 orders to release him at any hour of the day or night, when he 
 might knock upon his door for that purpose ; but desired him to 
 understand, that once going out, he would not be admitted any 
 more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in 
 the same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up 
 in one of the cells. 
 
 In this cell, the man who had not the firmness to leave a 
 glass of liquor standing untasted on a table before him — in this 
 cell, in solitary confinement, and working every day at his trade 
 of shoemaking, this man remained nearly two years. His health 
 beginning to fail at the expiration of that time, the surgeon 
 recommended that he should work occasionally in the garden ; 
 and, as he liked the notion very much, he went about this new 
 occupation with great cheerfulness. 
 
 He was digging here, one summer day, very industriously, 
 when the wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open ; 
 showing, beyond, the well-remembered dusty road and sunburnt 
 fields. The way was as free to him as to any man living, but 
 he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of it, all shining 
 in the light, than, with the involuntary instinct of a prisoner, 
 he cast away his spade, scampered off as fast as his legs would 
 carry him, and never once looked back. 
 
CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 
 
 VXTE left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six o'clock one very 
 ' cold morning, and turned our faces towards Washington. 
 In the course of this day's journey, as on subsequent occa- 
 sions, we encountered some Englishmen (small farmers, perhaps, 
 or country publicans at home) who were settled in America, 
 and were travelling on their own affairs. Of all grades and 
 kinds of men that jostle one in the public conveyances of the 
 States, these are often the most intolerable and the most insuf- 
 ferable companions. United to every disagreeable character- 
 1 istic that the worst kind of American travellers possess, these 
 ;; countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and 
 ; cool assumption of superiority quite monstrous to behold. In 
 1 the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of 
 their inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, 
 as if they panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old 
 restraints of home), they surpass any native specimens that 
 came within my range of observation : and I often grew so 
 patriotic when I saw and heard them, that I would cheerfully 
 .have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I could have given any 
 other country in the whole world the honour of claiming them 
 for its children, 
 j. As 'Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco- 
 ' tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without 
 any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices 
 of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be any- 
 i thing but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sicken- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 131 
 
 ing. In all the public places of America this filthy custom is 
 recognised. In the courts of law the judge has his spittoon, 
 the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his ; while the 
 jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who 
 in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. In the 
 hospitals the students of medicine are requested, by notices 
 upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes pro- 
 vided for that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. In 
 public buildings visitors are implored, through the same agency, 
 to squirt the essence of their quids, or " plugs," as I have heard 
 them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweetmeat, 
 into the national spittoons, and not about the bases of the 
 marble columns. But in some parts this custom is inseparably 
 mixed up with every meal and morning call, and with all the 
 transactions of social life. The stranger, who follows in the 
 track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, 
 luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And 
 let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that 
 previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself 
 is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone. 
 
 On board this steamboat there were two young gentlemen, 
 with shirt collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big 
 walking-sticks ; who planted two seats in the middle of the 
 deck, at a distance of some four paces apart ; took out their 
 tobacco boxes ; and sat down opposite each other to chew. In 
 less than a quarter of an hour's time, these hopeful youths had 
 shed about them, on the clean boards, a copious shower of 
 yellow rain ; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, 
 within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they 
 never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry.. 
 This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to 
 nausea ; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I 
 plainly saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly 
 uneasy himself. A glow of delight came over me at this dis- 
 covery ; and, as I marked his face turn paler and paler, and saw 
 
 K 2 
 
132 , AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the ball of tobacco in his left cheek quiver with his suppressed 
 agony, while yet he spat, and chewed, and spat again, in emula- 
 tion of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and 
 implored him to go on for hours. 
 
 We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin 
 below, where there was no more hurry or confusion than at such 
 a meal in England, and where there was certainly greater polite- 
 ness exhibited than at most of our stage-coach banquets. At 
 about nine o'clock we arrived at the railroad station, and went 
 on by the cars. At noon we turned out again, to cross a wide 
 river in another steamboat ; landed at a continuation of the 
 railroad on the opposite shore ; and went on by other cars ; in 
 which, in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed by 
 wooden bridges, each a mile in lengtli, two creeks, called respec- 
 tively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both was 
 blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are most 
 delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at that season of the 
 year. 
 
 These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only just 
 wide enough for the passage of the trains ; which, in the event 
 of the smallest accident, would inevitably be plunged into the 
 river. They are startling contrivances, and are most agreeable 
 when passed. 
 I We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and, being now in Mary- 
 land, were waited on, for the first time, by slaves. The sensa- 
 tion of exacting any service from human creatures who are 
 bought and sold, and being, for the time, a party as it were to 
 their condition, is not an enviable one. The institution exists, 
 perhaps, in its least repulsive and most mitigated form in such 
 a town as this ; but it is slavery ; and though I was, with 
 respect to it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with a 
 sense of shame and self-reproach. 
 
 After dinner we went down to the railroad again, and took 
 our seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those 
 men and boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 33 
 
 and Were curious in foreigners, came (according to custom) 
 round the carriage in which I sat ; let down all the windows ; 
 thrust in their heads and shoulders ; hooked themselves on 
 conveniently by their elbows ; and fell to comparing notes on 
 the subject of my personal appearance, with as much indif- 
 ference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much 
 uncompromising information with reference to my own nose 
 and eyes, the various impressions wrought by my mouth and 
 chin on different minds, and how my head looks when it is 
 viewed from behind, as on these occasions. Some gentlemen 
 were only satisfied by exercising their sense of touch ; and the 
 boys (who are surprisingly precocious in America) were seldom 
 satisfied even by that, but would return to the charge over and 
 over again. Many a budding president has walked into my 
 room with his cap on his head and his hands in his pockets, 
 and stared at me for two whole hours : occasionally refreshing 
 himself with a tweak at his nose, or a draught from the water 
 jug ; or by walking to the windows, and inviting other boys in 
 the street below to come up and do likewise : crying, " Here he 
 is!" "Come on!" "Bring all your brothers!" with other 
 hospitable entreaties of that nature. 
 
 We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, 
 and had upon the way a beautiful view of the Capitol, which is 
 a fine building of the Corinthian order, placed upon a noble 
 and commanding eminence. Arrived at the hotel, I saw no 
 more of the place that night ; being very tired, and glad to get 
 to bed. 
 
 Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the streets for an 
 hour or two, and, coming home, throw up the window in the 
 front and back, and look out. Here is Washington, fresh in 
 my mind and under my eye. 
 
 Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or the 
 straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, pre- 
 serving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and 
 dwellings occupied in Pentonville (but not in Washington) by 
 
134 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 furniture brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of 
 birds. Burn the whole down ; build it up again in wood and 
 plaster ; widen it a little ; throw in part of St. John's Wood ; 
 put green blinds outside all the private houses, with a red 
 curtain and a white one in every window ; plough up all the 
 roads ; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it 
 ought not to be ; erect three handsome buildings in stone and 
 marble anywhere, but the more entirely out of everybody's, way 
 the better ; call one the Post Office, one the Patent Office, and 
 one the Treasury ; make it scorching hot in the morning, and 
 freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado -of 
 wind and dust ; leave a brick-field, without the bricks,; in- all 
 central places where a street may naturally be . expected ; and 
 that's Washington. 
 
 The hotel in which we live is a long row of small houses 
 fronting on the street, and opening at the back upon a common 
 yard, in which hangs a great triangle. Whenever a servant is 
 wanted, somebody beats on this triangle from one stroke up to 
 seven, according to the number of the house in which his 
 presence is required ; and as all the servants are always being 
 wanted, and none of them ever come, this enlivening engine is 
 in full performance the whole day through. Clothes are drying 
 in this same yard ; female slaves, with cotton handkerchiefs 
 twisted round their heads, are running to and fro on the hotel 
 business ; black-waiters cross and recross with dishes in their 
 hands ; two great dogs are playing upon a mound of loose bricks 
 in the centre of the little square ; a pig is turning up his 
 stomach to the sun, and grunting " That's comfortable!" and 
 neither the men, nor the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig, nor 
 any created creature takes the smallest notice of the triangle, 
 which is tingling madly all the time. 
 
 I walk to the front window, and look across the road upon a 
 long, straggling row of houses, one story high, terminating, 
 nearly opposite, but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece of 
 waste ground with frouzy grass, which looks like a small piece 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. I35 
 
 of country that has taken to drinking, and has quite lost itself. 
 Standing anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space, like 
 something meteoric that has fallen down from the moon, is an 
 odd, lop-sided, one-eyed kind of wooden building, that looks 
 like a church, with a flagstaff as long as itself sticking out of a 
 steeple something larger than a tea-chest. Under the window is 
 a small stand of coaches, whose slave drivers are sunning them- 
 selves on the steps of our door, and talking idly together. The 
 three most obtrusive houses near at hand are the three meanest. 
 On one — a shop, which never has anything in the window, and 
 never has the door open — is painted in large characters, " The 
 City Lunch." At another, which looks like the back-way to 
 somewhere else, but is an independent building in itself, oysters 
 are procurable in every style. At the third, which is a very, 
 very little tailor's shop, pants are fixed to order ; or, in other 
 words, pantaloons are made to measure. And that is our street 
 in Washington. 
 
 It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but } 
 it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent 1 
 Intentions ; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from 1 
 the top of the Capitol that one can at all comprehend the vast ' 
 designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious 
 avenues that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere ; streets, mile 
 long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants ; public 
 buildings that need but a public to be complete ; and ornaments 
 of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to 
 ornament — are its leading features. One might fancy the season 
 over, and most of the houses gone out of town for ever with 
 their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Barmecide Feast ; > 
 a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in ; a monument ; 
 raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscription; 
 to record its departed greatness. 
 
 Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen 
 for the seat of Government, as a means of averting the con- 
 flicting jealousies and interests of the different States j and very 
 
1 36 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 probably, too, as being remote from mobs : a consideration not 
 to be slighted, even in America. It has no trade or commerce 
 of its own : having little or no population beyond the President 
 and his establishment : the members of the legislature, who 
 reside there during the session ; the Government clerks and 
 officers employed in the various departments ; the keepers of 
 the hotels and boarding-houses ; and the tradesmen who supply 
 their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people would live in 
 "Washington, I take it, who were not obliged to reside there ; 
 and the tides of emigration and speculation, those rapid and 
 regardless currents, are little likely to flow at any time towards 
 such dull and sluggish water. 
 
 The principal features of the Capitol are, of course, the two 
 Houses of Assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of the 
 building, a fine rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and ninety- 
 six high, whose circular wall is divided into compartments, 
 ornamented by historical pictures. Four of these have for their 
 subjects prominent events in the revolutionary struggle. They 
 were painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a member of Wash- 
 ington's staff at the time of their occurrence ; from which cir- 
 cumstance they derive a peculiar interest of their own. In this 
 same hall Mr. Greenough's large statue of Washington has been 
 lately placed. It has great merits, of course, but it struck me 
 as being rather strained and violent for its subject. I could 
 wish, however, to have seen it in a better light than it can ever 
 ■be viewed in where it stands. 
 
 There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the Capi- 
 tol ; and from a balcony in front, the bird's-eye view, of which 
 I have just spoken, may be had, together with a beautiful pros- 
 pect of the adjacent country. In one of the ornamented portions 
 of the building there is a figure of Justice ; whereunto, the Guide 
 Book says, "the artist at first contemplated giving more of 
 nudity, but he was warned that the public sentiment in this 
 country would not admit of it, and in his caution he has gone, 
 perhaps, into the opposite extreme." Poor Justice ! she has 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 137 
 
 been made to wear much stranger garments in America than 
 those she pines in in the Capitol. Let us hope that she has 
 changed her dressmaker since they were fashioned, and that the 
 public sentiment of the country did not cut out the clothes she 
 hides her lovely figure in just now. 
 
 The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall 
 of semicircular shape, supported by handsome pillars. One 
 part of the gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they 
 sit in front rows, and come in, and go out, as at a play or con- 
 cert. The chair is canopied, and raised considerably above the 
 floor of the House ; and every member has an easy-chair and a 
 writing-desk to himself : which is denounced by some people 
 out of doors as a most unfortunate and injudicious arrangement, 
 tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches. It is an elegant 
 chamber to look at, but a singularly bad one for all purposes of 
 hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free from this objec- 
 tion, and is exceedingly well adapted to the uses for which it is 
 designed. The sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the 
 day ; and the parliamentary forms are modelled on those of the 
 old country. 
 
 I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other places, 
 whether I had not been very much impressed by the heads of 
 the law-makers at Washington ; meaning not their chiefs and 
 leaders, but literally their individual and personal heads, whereon 
 their hair grew, and whereby the phrenological character of each 
 legislator was expressed ; and I almost as often struck my ques- 
 tioner dumb with indignant consternation by answering, " No, 
 that I didn't remember being at all overcome." As I must, at 
 whatever hazard, repeat the avowal here, I will follow it up by 
 relating my impressions on this subject in as few words as 
 possible. 
 
 In the first place — it may be from some imperfect develop- 
 ment of my organ of veneration — I do not remember having 
 ever fainted away, or having even been moved to tears of joyful 
 pride, at sight of any legislative body. I have borne the House 
 
x 38 'AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 of Commons like a man, and have yielded to no weakness, but 
 slumber, in the House of Lords. I have seen elections for 
 borough and county, and have never been impelled (no matter 
 which party won) to damage my hat by throwing it up into the 
 air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shouting forth any 
 reference to our Glorious Constitution, to the noble purity of 
 our independent voters, or the unimpeachable integrity of oUr 
 independent members. Having withstood such strong attacks 
 upon my fortitude, it is possible that I may be of a cold and 
 insensible temperament, amounting to iciness, in such matters ; 
 and therefore my impressions of the live pillars of the Capitol at 
 Washington must be received with such grains of allowance as 
 this free confession may seem to demand. 
 
 Did I see in this public body an assemblage of men, bound 
 together in the sacred names of Liberty and Freedom, and so 
 asserting the chaste dignity of those twin goddesses, in all 
 their discussions, as to exalt at once the Eternal Principles to 
 which their names are given, and their own character, and the 
 character of their countrymen, in the admiring eyes of the whole 
 world ? 
 
 It was but a week since an aged, grey-haired man, a lasting 
 honour to the land that gave him birth, who has done good 
 service to his country, as his forefathers did, and who will be 
 remembered scores upon scores of years after the worms bred in 
 its corruption are but so many grains of dust — it was but a week 
 since this old man had stood for days upon his trial before this 
 very body, charged with having dared to assert the infamy of that 
 traffic which has for its accursed merchandise men and women, 
 and their unborn children. Yes. And publicly exhibited in the 
 same city all the while ; gilded, framed, and glazed ; hung up 
 for general admiration ; shown to strangers, not with shame, but 
 pride ; its face not turned towards the wall, itself not taken 
 down and burned ; is the Unanimous Declaration of The Thirteen 
 United States of America, which solemnly declares that All 
 Men are created Equal ; and are endowed by their Creator with 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 3$ 
 
 the Inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of 
 Happiness ! 
 
 It was not a month since this same body had sat calmly by, 
 and heard a man, one of themselves, with oaths which beggars 
 in their drink reject threaten to cut another's throat from ear 
 to ear. There he sat among them ; not crushed by the general 
 feeling of the assembly, but as good a man as any. 
 
 There was but a week to come, and another of that body, for 
 doing his duty to those who sent him there ; for claiming in a 
 Republic the Liberty and Freedom of expressing their senti- 
 ments, and making known their prayer ; would be tried, found 
 guilty, and have strong censure passed upon him by the xest. 
 His was a grave offence indeed ; for, years before, he had risen 
 up and said, " A gang of male and female slaves for sale, war- 
 ranted to breed like cattle, linked to each other by iron fetters, 
 are passing now along the open street beneath the windows of 
 your Temple of Equality ! Look ! " But there are many kinds 
 of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of Happiness, and they go 
 variously armed. It is the Inalienable Right of some among 
 them to take the field after their Happiness, equipped with cat 
 and cart-whip, stocks, and iron collar, and to shout their view 
 halloa (always in praise of Liberty) to the music of clanking 
 chains and bloody stripes. 
 
 Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats ; of words 
 and blows such as coalheavers deal upon each other, when they 
 forget their breeding ? On every side. Every session had its 
 anecdotes of that kind, and the actors were all there. 
 
 Did I recognise in this assembly a body of men who, applying 
 themselves in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and 
 vices of the old, purified the avenues to Public Life, paved the 
 dirty ways to Place and Power, debated and made laws for the 
 Common Good, and had no party but their Country ? 
 
 I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion 
 of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. 
 Despicable trickery at elections ; under-handed tamperings with 
 
140 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 public officers ; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous 
 newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers ; shameful 
 trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered is, 
 that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their 
 venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything 
 but sharpness ; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in 
 the popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good influ- 
 ences : such things as these, and, in a word, D ishonest Factio n 
 i n its most depra ved and most unblushing form, stared out from 
 every corner of the cro wded hall._ 
 
 Did I see among them the intelligence and refinement : the 
 true, honest, patriotic heart of America ? Here and there were 
 drops of its blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the stream 
 of desperate adventurers which sets that way for profit and for 
 pay. It is the game of these men, and of their profligate organs, 
 to make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destruc- 
 tive of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive and delicate- 
 minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, 
 be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And thus this 
 lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other coun- 
 tries would, from their intelligence and station, most aspire to make 
 the laws, do here recoil the farthest from that degradation. 
 
 That there are, among the representatives of the people in 
 both Houses, and among all parties, some men of high character 
 and great abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those 
 politicians who are known in Europe have been already described, 
 and I see no reason to, depart from the rule I have laid down 
 for my guidance, of abstaining from all mention of individuals. 
 It will be sufficient to add that, to the most favourable accounts 
 that have been written of them, I more than fully and most 
 heartily subscribe ; and that personal intercourse and free com- 
 munication have bred within me, not the result predicted in the 
 very doubtful proverb, but increased admiration and respect. 
 They are striking men to look at, hard to deceive, prompt to 
 act, lions in energy, Crichtons in varied accomplishments, Indians 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 141 
 
 in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong and generous 
 impulse ; and they as well represent the honour and wisdom of 
 their country at home, as the distinguished gentleman who is 
 now its minister at the British Court sustains its highest character 
 abroad. 
 
 I visited both Houses nearly every day during my stay in 
 Washington. On my initiatory visit to the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, they divided against a decision of the chair ; but the 
 chair won. The second time I went, the member who was 
 speaking, being interrupted by a laugh, mimicked it, as one 
 child would in quarrelling with another, and added " that he 
 would make honourable gentlemen opposite sing out a little 
 more on the other side of their mouths presently." But inter- 
 ruptions are rare ; the speaker being usually heard in silence. 
 There are more quarrels than with us, and more threatenings 
 than gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in any civilised 
 society of which we have record : but farmyard imitations have 
 not as yet been imported from the Parliament of the United 
 Kingdom. The feature in oratory which appears to be the most 
 practised, and most relished, is the constant repetition of the 
 same idea, or shadow of an idea, in fresh words ; and the inquiry 
 out of doors is not, " What did he say ? " but, " How long did 
 he speak ? " These, however, are but enlargements of a prin 
 ciple which prevails elsewhere. 
 
 The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceed- 
 ings are conducted with much gravity and order. Both Houses 
 are handsomely carpeted ; but the state to which these carpets 
 are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon with 
 which every honourable member is accommodated, and the 
 extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted 
 and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being 
 described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend 
 all strangers not to look at the floor ; and if they happen to 
 drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with 
 an ungloved hand on any account. 
 
142 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to 
 see so many honourable members with swelled faces ; and it is 
 scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is 
 caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within 
 the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough, too, to see an 
 honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair, with his 
 legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient " plug " with 
 his penknife, and, when it is quite ready for use, shooting the 
 old one from his mouth as from a pop-gun, and clapping the 
 new one in its place. 
 
 I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewers of 
 great experience are not always good marksmen, which has 
 rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the 
 rifle, of which we have heard so much in England. Several 
 gentlemen called upon me who, in the course of conversation, 
 frequently missed the spittoon at five paces ; and one (but he 
 was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open 
 window at three. On another occasion, when I dined out, and 
 was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round a fire 
 before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fire-place six 
 distinct times. I am disposed to think, however, that this was 
 occasioned by his not aiming at that object; as there was a white 
 marble hearth before the fender, which was more convenient, and 
 may have suited his purpose better. 
 
 The Patent Office at Washington furnishes an extraordinary 
 example of American enterprise and ingenuity ; for the immense 
 number of models it contains are the accumulated inventions of 
 only five years : the whole of the previous collection having been 
 destroyed by fire. The elegant structure in which they are 
 arranged is one of design rather than execution, for there is 
 but one side erected out of four, though the works are stopped. 
 The Post Office is a very compact and very beautiful building. 
 In one of the departments, among a collection of rare and curious 
 articles, are deposited the presents which have been made from 
 time to time to the American ambassadors at foreign courts by 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 43 
 
 the various potentates to whom they were the accredited agents 
 of the Republic : gifts which, by the law, they are not permitted 
 to retain. I confess that I looked upon this as a very painful 
 exhibition, and one by no means flattering to the national stand- 
 ard of honesty and honour. That can scarcely be a high state 
 of moral feeling which imagines a gentleman of repute and station 
 likely to be corrupted, in the discharge of his duty, by the pre- 
 sent of a snuff-box, or a richly-mounted sword, or an Eastern 
 shawl ; and surely the Nation who reposes confidence in her 
 appointed servants is likely to be better served than she who 
 makes them the subject of such very mean and paltry suspicions. 
 
 At George Town, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit College ; 
 delightfully situated, and, so far as I had an opportunity of 
 seeing, well managed. Many persons who are not members of 
 the Komish church avail themselves, I believe, of these institu- 
 tions, and of the advantageous opportunities they afford for the 
 education of their children. The heights in this neighbourhood, 
 above the Potomac River, are very picturesque ; and are free, 
 I should conceive, from some of the insalubrities of Washington. 
 The air, at that elevation, was quite cool and refreshing, when 
 in the city it was burning hot. 
 
 The President's mansion is more like an English club-house, 
 both within and without, than any other kind of establishment 
 with which I can compare it. The ornamental ground about it 
 has been laid out in garden walks ; they are pretty, and agree- 
 able to the eye ; though they have that uncomfortable air of j 
 having been made yesterday, which is far from favourable to ! 
 the display of such beauties. 
 
 My first visit to this house was on the morning after my arrival, 
 when I was carried thither by an official gentleman, who was so 
 kind as to charge himself with my presentation to the President 
 
 We entered a large hall, and, having twice or thrice rung a 
 bell which nobody answered, walked without further ceremony 
 through the rooms on the ground-floor, as divers other gentle- 
 men (mostly with their hats on, and their hands in their pockets) 
 
144 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 were doing very leisurely. Some of these had ladies with them, 
 to whom they were showing the premises ; others were lounging 
 on the chairs and sofas ; others, in a perfect state of exhaustion 
 from listlessness, were yawning drearily. The greater portion of 
 this assemblage were rather asserting their supremacy than doing 
 anything else, as they had no particular business there, that any- 
 body knew of. A few were closely eyeing the movables, as if 
 to make quite sure that the President (who was far from 
 popular) had not made away with any of the furniture, or sold 
 the fixtures for his private benefit. 
 
 After glancing at these loungers ; who were scattered over a 
 pretty drawing-room, opening upon a terrace which commanded 
 a beautiful prospect of the river and the adjacent country ; and 
 who were sauntering, too, about a larger state-room called the 
 Eastern Drawing-room ; we went up-stairs into another chamber, 
 where were certain visitors waiting for audiences. At sight of 
 my conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow slippers who 
 was gliding noiselessly about, and whispering messages in the 
 ears of the more impatient, made a sign of recognition, and 
 glided off to announce him. 
 
 "We had previously looked into another chamber fitted all 
 round with a great bare wooden desk or counter, whereon lay 
 files of newspapers, to which sundry gentlemen were referring. 
 But there were no such means of beguiling the time in this 
 apartment, which was as unpromising and tiresome as any wait- 
 ing-room in one of our public establishments, or any physician's 
 dining-room during his hours of consultation at home. 
 
 There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room. One, 
 a tall, wiry, muscular old man, from the west ; sunburnt and 
 swarthy ; with a brown-white hat on his knees, and a giant 
 umbrella resting between his legs ; who sat bolt upright in his 
 'diair, frowning steadily at the carpet, and twitching the hard 
 lines about his mouth, as if he had made up his mind " to fix " 
 the President on what he had to say, and wouldn't bate him a 
 grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six feet six in height, with 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 145 
 
 his hat on, and his hands under his coat-tails, who leaned 
 against the wall and kicked the floor with his heel, as though 
 he had Time's head under his shoe, and were literally "killing" 
 him. A third, an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with sleek 
 black hair cropped close, and whiskers and beard shaved down 
 to blue dots, who sucked the head of a thick stick, and from 
 time to time took it out of his mouth to see how it was getting 
 on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A fifth did nothing but 
 spit. And, indeed, all these gentlemen were so very persevering 
 and energetic in this latter particular, and bestowed their favours 
 so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take it for granted the 
 Presidential housemaids have high wages, or, to speak more 
 genteelly, an ample amount of "compensation:" which is the 
 American word for salary in the case of all public servants. 
 
 We had not waited in this room many minutes before the 
 black messenger returned, and conducted us into another of 
 smaller dimensions, where, at a business-like table covered with 
 papers, sat the President himself. He looked somewhat worn 
 and anxious, — and well lie might : being at war with everybody, 
 — but the expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his 
 manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable. 
 I thought that, in his whole carriage and demeanour, he became 
 his station singularly well. 
 
 Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the republican 
 court admitted of a traveller, like myself, declining, without any 
 impropriety, an invitation to dinner, which did not reach me 
 until I had concluded my arrangements for leaving Washington 
 some days before that to which it referred, I only returned to 
 this house once. It was on the occasion of one of those general 
 assemblies which are held on certain nights, between the hours 
 of nine and twelve o'clock, and are called, rather oddly, Levees. 
 
 I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a pretty 
 dense crowd of carriages and people in the courtyard, and, so 
 far as I could make out, there were no very clear regulations for 
 the taking up or setting down of company, There were certainly 
 
 h 
 
146 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 no policemen to soothe startled horses, either by sawing at their 
 bridles or nourishing truncheons in their eyes ; and I am ready 
 to make oath that no inoffensive persons were knocked violently 
 on the head, or poked acutely in their backs or stomachs ; or 
 brought to a stand-still by any such gentle means, and then 
 taken into custody for not moving on. But there was no con- 
 \\ fusion or disorder. Our carriage reached the porch in its turn, 
 without any blustering, swearing, shouting, backing, or other 
 disturbance : and we dismounted with as much ease and comfort 
 as though we had been escorted by the whole Metropolitan Force, 
 from A to Z inclusive. 
 
 The suite of rooms on the ground-floor were lighted up ; and 
 a military band was playing in the hall. In the smaller draw- 
 ing-room, the centre of a circle of company, were the President 
 and his daughter-in-law, who acted as the lady of the mansion : 
 and a very interesting, graceful, and accomplished lady too. 
 One gentleman who stood among this group appeared to take 
 upon himself the functions of a master of the ceremonies. I 
 saw no other officers or attendants, and none were needed. 
 
 The great drawing-room which I have already mentioned, and 
 the other chambers on the ground-floor, were crowded to excess. 
 The company was not, in our sense of the term, select, for it 
 comprehended persons of very many grades and classes ; nor 
 was there any great display of costly attire : indeed, some of the 
 costumes . may have been, for aught I know, grotesque enough. 
 But the. .decorum and propriety of behaviour which prevailed 
 were unbroken by any rude or disagreeable incident ; and every 
 man, even among the miscellaneous crowd in the hall who were 
 admitted without any orders or tickets to look on, appeared to 
 feel that he was a part of the Institution, and was responsible 
 for its preserving a becoming character, and appearing to the 
 best advantage. 
 
 That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not with- 
 out some refinement of taste and appreciation of intellectual gifts, 
 and gratitude to those men who, by the peaceful exercise of 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 147 
 
 great abilities, shed new charms and associations upon the homes 
 of their countrymen, and elevate their character in other lands, 
 was most earnestly testified by their reception of Washington 
 Irving, my dear friend, who had recently been appointed Minister 
 at the Court of Spain, and who was among them that night, 
 in his new character, for the first and last time before going 
 abroad. I sincerely believe that, in all the madness of American 
 politics, few public men would have been so earnestly, devotedly, 
 and affectionately caressed as this most charming writer : and I 
 have seldom respected a public assembly more than I did this 
 eager throng, when I saw them turning with one mind from 
 noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking with a generous 
 and honest impulse round the man of quiet pursuits : proud in 
 his promotion, as reflecting back upon their country : and 
 grateful to him with their whole hearts for the store of graceful 
 fancies he had poured out among them. Long may he dispense 
 such treasures with unsparing hand ; and long may they 
 remember him as worthily ! 
 
 The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in 
 Washington was now at an end, and we were to begin to travel; 
 for the railroad distances we had traversed yet, in journeying 
 among these older towns, are on that great continent looked 
 upon as nothing. 
 
 I had at first intended going South — to Charleston. But 
 when I came to consider the length of time which this journey 
 would occupy, and the premature heat of the season, which even 
 at Washington had been often very trying ; and weighed, more- 
 over, in my own mind, the pain of living in the constant con- 
 templation of slavery, against the more than doubtful chances 
 of my ever seeing it, in the time I had to spare, stripped of the 
 disguises in which it would certainly be dressed, and so adding 
 any item to the host of facts already heaped together on the 
 subject ; I began to listen to old whisperings which had often 
 
 L 2 
 
148 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 been present to me at home in England, when I little thought 
 of ever being here ; and to dream again of cities growing up, 
 like palaces in fairy tales, among the wilds and forests of the 
 west. 
 
 The advice I received in most quarters, when I began to yield 
 to my desire of travelling towards that point of the compass, 
 was, according to custom, sufficiently cheerless : my companion 
 being threatened with more perils, dangers, and discomforts than 
 I can remember, or would catalogue if I could ; but of which it 
 will be sufficient to remark that blowings-up in steamboats and 
 breakings-down in coaches were among the least. But, having 
 a western route sketched out for me by the best and kindest 
 authority to which I could have resorted, and putting no great 
 faith in these discouragements, I soon determined on my plan 
 of action. 
 
 This was to travel south only to Richmond in Virginia ; and 
 then to turn, and shape our course for the Far West ; whither I 
 beseech the reader's company in a new chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. VIRGINIA ROAD, AND A BLACK DRIVER. 
 RICHMOND. BALTIMORE. THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OP THE CITY. 
 A CANAL BOAT. 
 
 T^fTE were to proceed in the first instance by steamboat : and 
 as it is usual to sleep on board, in consequence of the 
 starting hour being four o'clock in the morning, we went down 
 to where she lay, at that very uncomfortable time for such 
 expeditions when slippers are most valuable, and a familiar bed, 
 in the perspective of an hour or two, looks uncommonly pleasant. 
 
 It is ten o'clock at night : say half-past ten : moonlight, 
 warm, and dull enough. The steamer (not unlike a child's 
 Noah's ark in form, with the machinery on the top of the roof) 
 is riding lazily up and down, and bumping clumsily against the 
 wooden pier, as the ripple of the river trifles with its unwieldy 
 carcase. The wharf is some distance from the city. There is 
 nobody down here ; and one or two dull lamps upon the 
 steamer's decks are the only signs of life remaining, when our 
 coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps are heard 
 upon the planks, a fat negress, particularly favoured by nature 
 in respect of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs, and marshals 
 my wife towards the ladies' cabin, to which retreat she goes, 
 followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and great-coats. I valiantly 
 resolve not to go to bed at all, but to walk up and down the 
 pier till morning. 
 
 I begin my promenade — thinking of all kinds of distant 
 things and persons, and of notbing near — and pace up and 
 down for half an hour. Then I go on board again : and, getting 
 
150 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 into the light of one of the lamps, look at my watch, and think 
 it must have stopped ; and wonder what has become of the 
 faithful secretary whom I brought along with me from Boston. 
 He is supping with our late landlord (a Field Marshal at least, 
 no doubt) in honour of our departure, and may be two hours 
 longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller : the moon 
 goes down : next June seems farther off in the dark, and the 
 echoes of my footsteps make me nervous. It has turned cold, 
 too ; and walking up and down without any companion in such 
 lonely circumstances is but poor amusement. So I break my 
 staunch resolution, and think it may be, perhaps, as well to go 
 to bed. 
 
 1 I go on board again ; open the door of the gentlemen's cabin ; 
 and walk in. Somehow or other — from its being so quiet, I 
 suppose — I have taken it into my head that there is nobody 
 there. To my horror and amazement it is full of sleepers in 
 every stage, shape, attitude, and variety of slumber : in the 
 berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on the tables, and par- 
 ticularly round the stove, my detested enemy. I take another 
 step forward, and slip upon the shining face of a black steward, 
 who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins, 
 half in pain and half in hospitality ; whispers my own name in 
 my ear ; and, groping among the sleepers, leads me to my berth. 
 Standing beside it, I count these slumbering passengers, and get 
 past forty. There is no use in going further, so I begin to 
 undress. As the chairs are all occupied, and there is nothing 
 else to put my clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground : 
 not without soiling my hands, for it is in the same condition as 
 the carpets in the Capitol, and from the same cause. Having 
 but partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf, and hold the 
 curtain open for a few minutes while I look round on all my 
 fellow-travellers again. That done, I let it fall on them, and on 
 the world : turn round : and go to sleep. 
 
 I wake, of course, when we get under way, for there is a good 
 deal of noise. The day is then just breaking. Everybody 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 151 
 
 wakes at the same time. Some are self-possessed directly, and 
 some are much perplexed to make out where they are until they 
 have rubbed their eyes, and, leaning on one elbow, looked about 
 them. Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a few get 
 up. I am among the risers : for it is easy to feel, without 
 going into fresh air, that the atmosphere of the cabin is vile 
 in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down into the 
 fore-cabin, get shaved by. the barber, and wash myself. The 
 washing and dressing apparatus, for the passengers generally, 
 consists of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of 
 water and a ladle to serve it out with, six square inches of look- 
 ing-glass, two ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for 
 the head, and nothing for the teeth. Everybody uses the comb 
 and brush, except myself. Everybody stares to see me using 
 my own ; and two or three gentlemen are strongly disposed to 
 banter me on my prejudices, but don't. When I have made 
 my toilet, I go upon the hurricane deck, and set in for two hours 
 of hard walking up and down. The sun is rising brilliantly ; 
 we are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington lies buried ; 
 the river is wide and rapid ; and its banks are beautiful. All 
 the glory and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing 
 brighter every minute. 
 
 At eight o'clock we breakfast in the cabin where I passed the 
 night, but the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now 
 it is fresh enough. There is no hurry or greediness apparent 
 in the dispatch of the meal. It is longer than a travelling 
 breakfast with us ; more orderly ; and more polite. 
 
 Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we 
 are to land ; and then comes the oddest part of the journey. 
 Seven stage-coaches are preparing to carry us on. Some of them 
 are ready, some of them are not ready. Some of the drivers are 
 blacks, some whites. There are four horses to each coach, and 
 all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are there. The pas- 
 sengers are getting out of the steamboat, and into the coaches ; 
 the luggage is being transferred in noisy wheelbarrows ; the 
 
152 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 horses are frightened, and impatient to start ; the black drivers 
 are chattering to them like so many monkeys ; and the white 
 ones whooping like so many drovers : for the main thing to be 
 done, in all kinds of hostlering here, is to make as much noise 
 as possible. The coaches are something like the French coaches, 
 but not nearly so good. In lieu of springs, they are hung on 
 bands of the strongest leather. There is very little choice or 
 difference between them ; and they may be likened to the car 
 portion of the swings at an English fair, roofed, put upon axle- 
 trees and wheels, and curtained with painted canvas. They are 
 covered with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have 
 never been cleaned since they were first built. 
 
 The tickets Ave have received on • board the steamboat are 
 marked No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1. I throw my coat 
 on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid into the inside. It 
 has only one step, and that being about a yard from the ground, 
 is usually approached by a chair : when there is no chair, ladies 
 trust in Providence. The coach holds nine inside, having a seat 
 across from door to door, where we in England put our legs ; so 
 that there is only one feat more difficult in the performance 
 than getting in, and that is getting out again. There is only 
 one outside passenger, and he sits upon the box. As I am that 
 one, I climb up ; and while they are strapping the luggage on 
 the roof, and heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a good 
 opportunity of looking at the driver. 
 
 He is a negro — very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse 
 pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly 
 at the knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low 
 shoes, and very short trousers. He has two odd gloves : one of 
 party-coloured worsted, and one of leather. He has a very 
 short whip, broken in the middle, and bandaged up with string. 
 And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat : 
 faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of an English 
 coachman ! But somebody in authority cries " Go ahead ! " 
 as I am making these observations. The mail takes the lead in 
 
For General Circulation. 153 
 
 a, four-horse waggon, and all the coaches follow in procession : 
 headed by No. 1. — 
 
 By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry "All right !" 
 an American cries " Go ahead ! " which is somewhat expressive 
 of the national character of the two countries. 
 
 The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose 
 planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels 
 roll over them ; and in the river. The river has a clayey 
 bottom, and is full of holes, so that half a horse is constantly 
 disappearing unexpectedly, and can't be found again for some 
 time. 
 
 But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which 
 is a series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous 
 place is close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws 
 his mouth up very round, and looks straight between the two 
 leaders, as if he were saying to himself, " We have done this 
 often before, but now I think we shall have a crash." He takes 
 a rein in each hand ; jerks and pulls at both ; and dances on the 
 splash-board with both feet (keeping his seat, of course) like the 
 late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come 
 to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach windows, 
 tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and stick there. 
 The insides scream dismally ; the coach stops ; the horses floun- 
 der ; all the other six coaches stop ; and their four-and-twenty 
 horses flounder likewise : but merely for company, and in sym- 
 pathy with ours. Then the following circumstances occur. 
 
 Black Driver (to the horses). " Hi ! " 
 
 Nothing happens. Insides scream again. 
 
 Black Driver (to the horses). " Ho ! " 
 
 Horses plunge, and splash the black driver. 
 
 Gentleman inside (looking out). " Why, what on airth " 
 
 Gentleman receives a variety of splashes, and draws his head 
 in again, without finishing his question or waiting for an answer. 
 
 Black Driver (still to the horses). " Jiddy ! Jiddy ! " 
 
 Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and 
 
154 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 draw it up a bank ; so steep that the black driver's legs fly 
 up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the 
 roof. But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to 
 the horses), 
 
 "Pill!" 
 
 No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back 
 upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon 
 No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear nearly 
 a quarter of a mile behind. 
 
 Black Driver (louder than before). " Pill ! " 
 
 Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again 
 the coach rolls backward. 
 
 Black Driver (louder than before). " Pe-e-e-ill ! " 
 
 Horses make a desperate struggle. 
 
 Black Driver (recovering spirits). " Hi ! Jiddy, Jiddy, 
 Pill!" 
 
 Horses make another effort. 
 
 Black Driver (with great vigour). " Ally Loo ! Hi. Jiddy, 
 Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo ! " 
 
 Horses almost do it. 
 
 Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of his head). 
 " Lee, den. Lee, dere. ■ Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. 
 Lee-e-e-e-e ! " 
 
 They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side 
 at a fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the 
 bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls 
 frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and water fly about 
 us. The black driver dances like a madman. Suddenly we are 
 all right by some extraordinary means, and stop to breathe. 
 
 A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The 
 black driver recognises him by twirling his head round and 
 round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, 
 and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short, turns to me, and 
 says : 
 
 "We shall get you through, sa, like a fiddle, and hope a 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 155 
 
 please you when we get you through, sa. Old 'ooman at home, 
 sa : " chuckling very much. " Outside gentleman, sa, he often 
 remember old 'ooman at home, sa," grinning again. 
 
 *' Ay, ay, we'll take care of the old woman. Don't be afraid." 
 
 The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and, 
 beyond that, another bank, close before us. So he stops short : 
 cries (to the horses again) " Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. 
 Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally. Loo," but never " Lee ! " until we 
 are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the midst 
 of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but 
 impossible. 
 
 And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and 
 a half; breaking no bones, though bruising a great many; and, 
 in short, getting through the distance " like a fiddle." 
 
 This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericksburg* 
 whence there is a railway to Richmond. The tract of country 
 through which it takes its course was once productive : but the 
 soil has J been— exhauatfid_-by the system of emplo ying a great 
 amount of slave labour i n forcing crops, without strengthening 
 the land : and it is now little better than a sandy desert over- 
 grown with trees. Dreary and uninteresting as its aspect is, I 
 was glad to the heart to find anything on which one of the 
 curses of this horrible institujjnn_bas fallen ; and had greater 
 pleasure in contemplating the withered ground than the l-ichest 
 and most thriving cultivation in the same place could possibly 
 have afforded me. 
 
 Inthisdisjtrict,_as. in all others where slavery sits brooding 
 (I have frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are 
 its warmest advocates), t here is an air of ruin a nd decay abroad, 
 which is inseparable from the system. The barns and outhouses 
 are mouldering away ; the sheds are patched and half roofless ; 
 the log-cabins (built in Virginia with external chimneys made of 
 clay or wood) are squalid in the last degree. There is no look 
 of decent comfort anywhere. The miserable stations by the 
 railway side ; the great wild woodyards, whence the engine is 
 
156 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 supplied with fuel ; the negro children rolling on the ground 
 before the cabin doors, with dogs and pigs ; the biped beasts of 
 burden slinking past : gloom and dejection are upon them all. 
 
 In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made 
 this journey were a mother and her children who had just been 
 purchased-; the husband and father being left behind with their 
 old owner. The children cried the whole way, and the mother 
 was misery's picture. The champion of Life, Liberty, and the 
 Pursuit of Happiness, who had bought them, rode in the same 
 train ; and, every time we stopped, got down to see that they 
 were safe. The black in Sinbad's Travels, with one eye in the 
 : middle of his forehead which shone like a burning coal, was 
 (nature's aristocrat compared with this white gentleman. 
 
 It was between six and seven o'clock in the evening when we 
 drove to the hotel : in front of which, and on the top of the broad 
 flight of steps leading to the door, two or three citizens were 
 balancing themselves on rocking-chairs, and smoking cigars. 
 We found it a very large and elegant establishment, and were 
 as well entertained as travellers need desire to be. The climate 
 being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the day, a 
 scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar, or a cessation of the 
 mixing of cool liquors : but they were a merrier people here, 
 and had musical instruments playing to them 0' nights, which 
 it was a treat to hear again. 
 
 The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the 
 town, which is delightfully situated on eight hills overhanging 
 James Kiver ; a sparkling stream, studded here and there with 
 bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although it was 
 yet but the middle of March, the weather in this southern 
 temperature was extremely warm ; the peach-trees and mag- 
 nolias were in full bloom ; and the trees were green. In a 
 low ground among the hills is a valley known as " Bloody 
 Run," from a terrible conflict with the -Indians which once 
 occurred there. It is a good plaee for such a struggle, and, like 
 every other spot I saw associated with any legend of that wild 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 57 
 
 people now so rapidly fading from the earth, interested me very- 
 much. 
 
 The city is the seat of the local Parliament of Virginia ; and, 
 in its shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding 
 forth to the hot noonday. By dint of constant repetition, how- 
 ever, these constitutional sights had very little more interest for 
 me than so many parochial vestries ; and I was glad to exchange 
 this one for a lounge in a well-arranged public library of some 
 ten thousand volumes, and a visit to a tobacco manufactory, 
 where the workmen were all slaves. 
 
 I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, 
 pressing, drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the 
 tobacco thus dealt with was in course of manufacture for chew- 
 ing ; and one would have supposed there was enough in that 
 one storehouse to have filled even the comprehensive jaws of 
 America. In this form the weed looks like the oil-cake on 
 which we fatten cattle ; and, .even without reference to its con- 
 sequences, is sufficiently uninviting. 
 
 Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is 
 hardly necessary to add that they were all labouring quietly 
 then. After two o'clock in the day they are allowed to sing, a 
 certain number at a time. The hour striking while I was there, 
 some twenty sang a hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill ; 
 pursuing their work meanwhile. A bell rang as I was about to 
 leave, and they all poured forth into a building on the opposite 
 side of the street to dinner. I said several times that I should 
 like to see them at their meal ; but, as the gentleman to whom 
 I mentioned this desire appeared to be suddenly taken rather 
 deaf, I did not pursue the request. Of their appearance I shall 
 have something to say presently. 
 
 On the following day I visited a plantation or farm, of about 
 twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here 
 again, although I went down with the owner of the estate, to 
 " the quarter," as that part of it in which the slaves live is 
 called, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts. All I 
 
4l 
 
 I58 .AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 saw of them was, that they were very crazy, wretched cabins, 
 near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the sun, 
 or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I believe that this gen- 
 tleman is a considerate and excellent master, who inherited his 
 fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of human stock ; 
 and I am sure, from my own observation and conviction, that 
 he is a kind-hearted, worthy man. 
 
 The planter's house was an airy, rustic dwelling, that brought 
 Defoe's description of such places strongly to my recollection. 
 The day was very warm, but the blinds being all closed, and 
 the windows and doors set wide open, a shady coolness rustled 
 through the rooms, which was exquisitely refreshing after the 
 glare and heat without. Before the windows was an open 
 piazza, where, in what they call the hot weather — whatever that 
 may be — -they sling hammocks, and drink and doze luxuriously. 
 I do not know how their cool refections may taste within the 
 hammocks, but, having experience, I can report that, out of 
 them, the mounds of ices and the bowls of mint-julep and 
 sherry-cobbler they make in these latitudes, are refreshments 
 never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who 
 would preserve contented minds. 
 
 There are two bridges across the river : one belongs to the 
 railroad, and the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the 
 private property of some old lady in the neighbourhood, who 
 levies tolls upon the townspeople. Crossing this bridge on my 
 way back, I saw a notice painted on the gate, cautioning all 
 persons to drive slowly : under a penalty, if the offender were a 
 white man, of five dollars ; if a negro, fifteen stripes. 
 
 The same decay and gloom that overhang the way by which 
 it is approached, hover above the town of Bichmond. There 
 are pretty villas and cheerful houses in its streets, and Nature 
 smiles upon the country round ; but jostling its handsome 
 residences, like slavery itself going hand-in-hand with many 
 lofty virtues, are deplorable tenements, fences unrepaired, walls 
 crumbling into ruinous heaps. Hinting gloomily at things 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 59 
 
 below the surface, the se., and many other tokens of the same 
 description, force themselves upon the notice, and are remem - 
 bered with depressing_ influence, _ jvhen_ livelier f eatures are 
 forgotten. 
 
 To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, the counte- 
 nances in the streets and labouring-places, too, are shocking. 
 All men who know that there are laws against inst ructing 
 slaves, o f which the pains and penalties greatly exceed in their 
 amount the fines imposed on those who maim and torture them, 
 must be prepared to find their faces very low in the scale of 
 intellectual expression. But the darkness — not of skin, but 
 mind — which meets the stranger's eye at every turn ; the 
 brutalising and blotting out of all fairer characters traced by 
 Nature's hand ; immeasurably outdo his worst belief. That 
 travelled creation of the great satirist's brain, who, fresh from 
 living among horses, peered from a high casement down upon 
 his own kind with trembling horror, was scarcely more repelled 
 and daunted by the sight than those who look upon some of 
 these faces for the first time must surely be. 
 
 I left the last of them behind me in the person of a wretched 
 drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till midnight, and 
 moping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs between- 
 Avhiles, was washing the dark passages at four o'clock in the 
 morning ; and went upon my way with a grateful heart that I 
 was not doomed to live where slavery was, and had never had 
 my senses blunted to its wrongs and horrors in a slave-rocked 
 cradle. 
 
 It had been my intention to proceed by James River and 
 Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore ; but one of the steamboats being 
 absent from her station through some accident, and the means 
 of conveyance being consequently rendered uncertain, we 
 returned to Washington by the way we had come (there were 
 two constables on board the steamboat, in pursuit of runaway 
 slaves), and, halting there again for one night, went on to 
 Baltimore next afternoon, 
 
160 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any 
 experience in the United States, and they were not a few, is 
 Barnum's, in that city : where the English traveller will find 
 curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time in 
 America (this is a disinterested remark, for I never use them) ; 
 and where he will be likely to have enough water for washing 
 himself, which is not at all a common case. 
 
 This capital of the State of Maryland is a bustling, busy 
 town, with a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in par- 
 ticular of water commerce. That portion of the town which it 
 most favours is none of the cleanest, it is true ; but the upper 
 part is of a very different character, and has many agreeable 
 streets and public buildings. The Washington Monument, 
 which is a handsome pillar with a statue on its summit ; the 
 Medical College ; and the Battle Monument in memory of an 
 engagement with the British at North Point ; are the most 
 conspicuous among them. 
 
 There is a very good prison in this city, and the State 
 Penitentiary is also among its institutions. In this latter 
 establishment there were two curious cases. 
 
 One was that of a young man who had been tried for the 
 murder of his father. The evidence was entirely circumstantial, 
 and was very conflicting and doubtful ; nor was it possible to 
 assign any motive which could have tempted him to the com- 
 mission of so tremendous a crime. He had been tried twice ; 
 and, on the second occasion, the jury felt so much hesitation in 
 convicting him, that they found a verdict of manslaughter, or 
 murder in the second degree ; which it could not possibly be, 
 as there had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel or provocation, 
 and if he were guilty at all, he was unquestionably guilty of 
 murder in its broadest and worst signification. 
 
 The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the unfor- 
 tunate deceased were not really murdered by this own son of 
 his, he must have been murdered by his own brother. The 
 evidence lay, in a most remarkable manner, between those two. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. l6l 
 
 On all the suspicious points, the dead man's brother was the 
 witness ; all the explanations for the prisoner (some of them 
 extremely plausible) went, by construction and inference, to 
 inculpate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his nephew. It 
 must hare been one of them ; and the jury had to decide 
 between two sets of suspicions, almost equally unnatural, 
 unaccountable, and strange. 
 
 The other case was that of a man who once went to a certain 
 distiller's, and stole . a copper measure containing a quantity of 
 liquor. He was pursued and taken with the property in his 
 possession, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On 
 coming out of the gaol at the expiration of that term, he went 
 back to the same distiller's, and stole the same copper measure, 
 containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not the 
 slightest reason to suppose that the man wished to return to 
 prison : indeed, everything, but the commission of the offence, 
 made directly against that assumption. There are only two 
 ways of accounting for this extraordinary proceeding. One is 
 that, after undergoing so much for this copper measure, he con- 
 ceived he had established a sort of claim and right to it. The 
 other that, by dint of long thinking about, it had become a 
 monomania with him, and had acquired a fascination which ho 
 found it impossible to resist : swelling from an Earthly Copper 
 Gallon into an Ethereal Golden Yat. 
 
 After remaining here a couple of days, I bound myself to a 
 rigid adherence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and 
 resolved to set forward on our western journey without any 
 more delay. Accordingly, having reduced the luggage within 
 the smallest possible compass (by sending back to New York, 
 to be afterwards forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as 
 was not absolutely wanted) ; and having procured the necessary 
 credentials to banking-houses on the way ; and having, more- 
 over, looked for two evenings at the setting sun, with as well- 
 defined an idea of the country before us as if we had been going 
 to travel into the very centre of that planet ; we left Baltimore 
 
 M 
 
1 62 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 by another railway at half-past eight in the morning, and 
 reached the town of York, some sixty miles off, by the early 
 dinner-time of the hotel which was the starting-place of the 
 four-horse coach wherein we were to proceed to Harrisburg. 
 
 This conveyance, the" box of which I was fortunate enough to 
 secure, had come down to meet us at the railroad station, and 
 was as muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more passengers 
 were waiting for us at the inn door, the coachman observed 
 under his breath, in the usual self-communicative voice, looking 
 the while at his mouldy harness as if it were to that he was 
 addressing himself, 
 
 " I expect we shall want the big coach." 
 
 I could not help wondering within myself what the size of 
 this big coach might be, and how many persons it might be 
 designed to hold ; for the vehicle which was too small for our 
 purpose was something larger than two English heavy night 
 coaches, and might have been the twin brother of a French 
 Diligence. My speculations were speedily set at rest, however ; 
 for, as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling up the streel, 
 shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge on 
 wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped at the 
 door : rolling heavily from side to side, when its other motion 
 had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its damp stable, and 
 between that, and the having been required in its dropsical old 
 age to move at any faster pace than a walk, were distressed by 
 shortness of wind. 
 
 " If here ain't the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful 
 bright and smart to look at too," cried an elderly gentleman in 
 some excitement, " darn my mother !" 
 
 I don't know what the sensation of being darned may be, or 
 whether a man's mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the 
 process than anybody else; but if the endurance of this 
 mysterious ceremony by the old lady in question had depended 
 on the accuracy of her son's vision in respect to the abstract 
 brightness and smartness of the Harrisburg mail, she would 
 
for general Circulation. 163 
 
 ftertainly have undergone its infliction. However, they booked 
 twelve people inside ; and the luggage (including such trifles 
 as a large rocking-chair and a good-sized dining-table) being 
 at length made fast upon the roof, we started off in great state. 
 
 At the door of another hotel there was another passenger to 
 be taken up. 
 
 "Any room, sir?" cries the new passenger to the coachman. 
 
 " Well, there's room enough," replies the coachman, without 
 getting down, or even looking at him. 
 
 " There ain't no room at all, sir," bawls a gentleman inside. 
 Which another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting 
 that the attempt to introduce any more passengers " won't fit 
 nohow." 
 
 The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, looks 
 into the coach, and then looks up at the coachman. "Now, how 
 do you mean to fix it ?" says he after a pause : " for I must go." 
 
 The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his 
 whip into a knot, and takes no more notice of the question : 
 clearly signifying that it is anybody's business but his, and that 
 the passengers would do well to fix it among themselves. In 
 this state of things, matters seem to be approximating to a fix 
 of another kind, when another inside passenger in a corner, who 
 is nearly suffocated, cries faintly. 
 
 ".I'll get out." 
 
 This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, 
 for his immovable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by any- 
 thing that happens in the coach. Of all things in the world, 
 the coach would, seem to be the very last upon "his mind. The 
 exchange is made, however, and then the passenger who has 
 given up his seat makes a third upon the box, seating himself 
 in what he calls the middle : that is, with half his person on 
 my legs, and the other half on the driver's. 
 
 " Go ahead, cap' en," cries the colonel, who directs. 
 
 " Go-lang !" cries the cap' en to his company, the horses, and 
 away we go. 
 
 m 2 
 
l6-f AMERICAN NOl-Eg 
 
 We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few 1 
 miles, an intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon the roof 
 among the luggage, and subsequently slipping off without 
 hurting himself, was seen in the distant perspective reeling 
 back to the grog-shop where we had found him. We also 
 parted with more of our freight at different times, so that when 
 we came to change horses, I was again alone outside. 
 
 The coachmen always change with the horses, and are usually 
 as dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like a very shabby 
 English baker ; the second like a Russian peasant : for he wore 
 a loose purple camlet robe with a fur collar, tied round his 
 waist with a party-coloured worsted sash ; grey trousers ; light 
 blue gloves ; and a cap of bear-skin. It had by this time come 
 on to rain very heavily, and there was a cold damp mist 
 besides, which penetrated to the skin. I was very glad to take 
 advantage of a stoppage, and get down to stretch my legs, 
 shake the water off my great-coat, and swallow the usual anti- 
 temperance recipe for keeping out the cold. 
 
 When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new parcel 
 lying on the coach roof, which I took to be a rather large fiddle 
 in a brown bag. In the course of a few miles, however, I dis- 
 covered that it had a glazed cap at one end and a pair of 
 muddy shoes at the other ; and further observation demon- 
 strated it to be a small boy in a snuff-coloured coat, with his 
 arms quite pinioned to his sides, by deep forcing into his 
 pockets. He was, I presume, a relative or friend of the coach- 
 man's, as he lay atop of the luggage, with his face towards the 
 rain ; and, except when a change of position brought his shoes 
 in contact with my hat, he appeared to be asleep. At last, on 
 some occasion of our stopping, this thing slowly upreared itself 
 to the height of three feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, 
 observed in piping accents, with a complaisant yawn, half 
 quenched in an obliging air of friendly patronage, " Well now, 
 stranger, I guess you find this a' most like an English arternoon 3 
 hey?" * , 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 165 
 
 The scenery, which had been tame enough at first, was, for 
 the last ten or twelve miles, beautiful. Our road wound 
 through the pleasant valley of the Susquehanna ; the river, 
 dotted with innumerable green islands, lay upon our right ; 
 and on the left, a steep ascent, craggy with broken rock, and 
 dark with pine-trees. The mist, wreathing itself into a hundred 
 fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water ; and the 
 gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery and silence 
 which greatly enhanced its natural interest. 
 
 We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered 
 in on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly 
 dark ; perplexed, with great beams crossing and recrossing it at 
 every possible angle ; and through the broad chinks and crevices 
 of the floor the rapid river gleamed, far down below, like a legion 
 of eyes. We had no lamps ; and as the horses stumbled and 
 floundered through this place, towards the distant speck of 
 dying light, it seemed interminable. I really could not at first 
 persuade myself, as we rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge 
 with hollow noises, and I held down my head to save it from 
 the rafters above, but that I was in a painful dream ; for I have 
 often dreamed of toiling through such places, and as often 
 argued, even at the time, " this cannot be reality." 
 
 At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of Harris- 
 burg, whose feeble lights, reflected dismally from the wet ground, 
 did not shine out upon a very cheerful city. We were soon esta- 
 blished in a snug hotel, which, though smaller and far less 
 splendid than many we put up at, is raised above them all in 
 my remembrance, by having for its landlord the most obliging, 
 considerate, and gentlemanly person I ever had to deal with. 
 
 As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the after- 
 noon, I walked out, after breakfast the next morning, to look 
 about me ; and was duly shown a model prison on the solitary 
 system, just erected, and as yet without an inmate ; the trunk 
 of an old tree to which Harris, the first settler here (afterwards 
 buried under it) was tied by hostile Indians, with his funeral 
 
1 66 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 •pile about him, when he was saved by the timely appearance of 
 a friendly party on the opposite shore of the river ; the local 
 legislature (for there was another of those bodies here, again, in 
 full debate) ; and the other curiosities of the town. 
 
 I was very much interested in looking over a number of 
 treaties made from time to time with the poor Indians, signed 
 by the different chiefs at the period of their ratification, and 
 preserved in the office of the Secretary to the Commonwealth. 
 These signatures, traced of course by their own hands, are 
 rough drawings of the creatures or weapons they were called 
 after. Thus, the Great Turtle makes a crooked pen-and-ink 
 outline of a great turtle ; the Buffalo sketches a buffalo ; the 
 War Hatchet sets a rough image of that weapon for his mark. 
 So with the Arrow, the Fish, the Scalp, the Big Canoe, and all 
 of them. 
 
 I could not but think — as I looked at these feeble and 
 tremulous productions of hands which could draw the longest 
 arrow to the head in a stout elk-horn bow, or split a bead or 
 feather with a rifle ball — of Crabbe's musings over the Parish 
 Register, and the irregular scratches. made with a pen by men 
 who would plough a lengthy furrow straight from end to end. 
 Nor could I help bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon the 
 simple warriors whose hands and hearts were set there in all 
 truth and honesty ; and who only learned in course of time 
 from white men how to break their faith, and quibble out of 
 forms and bonds. I wondered, too, how many times the credu- 
 lous Big Turtle, or trusting Little Hatchet, had put his mark to 
 treaties which were falsely read to him ; and had signed away, 
 he knew not what, until it went and cast him loose upon the 
 new possessors of the land, a savage indeed. 
 
 Our host announced, before our early dinner, that some 
 members of the legislative body proposed to do us the honour 
 of calling. He had kindly yielded up to us his wife's own little 
 parlour, and when I begged that he would show them in, I saw 
 him look with painful apprehension at its pretty carpet ; though, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 67 
 
 being otherwise occupied at the time, the cause of his uneasiness 
 did not occur to me. 
 
 It certainly would have been more pleasant to all parties con- 
 cerned, and would not, I think, have compromised their inde- 
 pendence in any material degree, if some of these gentlemen had 
 not only yielded to the prejudice in favour of spittoons, but had 
 abandoned themselves, for the moment, even to the conventional 
 absurdity of pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 
 It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down to 
 the Canal Boat (for that was the mode of conveyance by which 
 we were to proceed) after dinner, the weather was as unpro- 
 mising and obstinately wet as one would desire to see. Nor was 
 the sight of this canal boat, in which we were to spend three or 
 four days, by any means a cheerful one ; as it involved some 
 uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of the passengers at 
 night, and opened a wide field of inquiry touching the other 
 domestic arrangements of the establishment, which was suffi- 
 ciently disconcerting. 
 
 However, there it was — a barge with a little house in it, 
 viewed from the outside ; and a caravan at a fair, viewed from 
 within : the gentlemen being accommodated as the spectators 
 usually are in one of those locomotive museums of penny 
 wonders ; and the ladies being partitioned off by a red curtain, 
 after the manner of the dwarfs and giants in the same establish- 
 ments, whose private lives are passed in rather close exclusive- 
 ness. 
 
 We sat here, looking silently at the row of little tables which 
 extended down both sides of the cabin, and listening to the 
 rain as it dripped and pattered on the boat, and plashed with a 
 dismal merriment in the water, until the arrival of the railway 
 train, for whose final contribution to our stock of passengers 
 our departure was alone deferred. It brought a great many 
 boxes, which were bumped and tossed upon the roof, almost as 
 painfully as if they had been deposited on one's own head, without 
 the intervention of a porter's knot ; and several damp gentlemen, 
 
r68 AMERICAN NOTES * j 
 
 whose clothes, on their drawing round the stove, began to steam 
 again. No doubt it would have been a thought more comfort- 
 able if the driving rain, -which now poured down more soakingly 
 than ever, had admitted of a window being opened, or if our 
 number had been something less than thirty ; but there was 
 scarcely time to think as much, when a train of three horses was 
 attached to the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader smacked his 
 whip, the rudder creaked and groaned complainingly, and we 
 had begun our journey. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY, AND ITS 
 PASSENGERS. JOURNEY TO riTTSBURG ACROSS THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. 
 PITTSBURG. 
 
 A S it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained 
 "^ below : the damp gentlemen round the stove gradually- 
 becoming mildewed by the action of the fire : and the dry 
 gentlemen lying at full length upon the seats, or slumbering 
 uneasily with their faces on the tables, or walking up and 
 down the cabin, which it was barely possible for a man of tho 
 middle height to do without making bald places on his head 
 by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock all the 
 small tables were put together to form one long table, and 
 everybody sat down to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad ; 
 liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and 
 sausages. 
 
 " Will you try," said my opposite neighbour, handing me a 
 dish of potatoes broken up in milk and butter, " will you try 
 some of these fixings ? " 
 
 There are few words which perform such various duties as 
 this word " fix." It is the Caleb Quotem of the American 
 vocabulary. You call upon a gentleman in a country town, and 
 his help informs you that he is " fixing himself" just now, but 
 will be down directly : by which you are to understand that he 
 is dressing. You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a fellow- 
 passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells you 
 he should think so, for, when he was last below, they were " fix- 
 ing the tables : " in other words, laying the cloth. You beg a 
 
I?0 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 porter to collect your luggage, and he entreats you not to be 
 uneasy, for he'll " fix it presently : " and if you complain of 
 indisposition, you are advised to have recourse to Doctor So- 
 and-so, who will " fix you " in no time. 
 
 One night I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel where 
 I was staying, and waited a long time for it ; at length it was 
 put upon the table, with an apology from the landlord that he 
 feared it wasn't " fixed properly." And I recollect once, at a 
 stage-coach dinner, overhearing a very stern gentleman demand 
 of a waiter who presented him with a plate of underdone 
 roast beef, " whether he called that fixing God- A'mighty's 
 vittles ? " 
 
 There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation was 
 tendered to me which has occasioned this digression, was dis- 
 posed of somewhat ravenously ; and that the gentlemen thrust 
 the broad-bladed knives and the two-pronged forks further down 
 their throats than I ever saw the same weapons go before, except 
 in the hands of a skilful juggler : but no man sat down until 
 the ladies were seated ; or omitted any little act of politeness 
 which could contribute to their comfort. Nor did I ever once, 
 on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, see 
 a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or 
 even inattention. 
 
 By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to 
 have worn itself out by coming down so fast, was nearly over 
 too ; and it became feasible to go on deck : which was a great 
 relief, notwithstanding its being a very small deck, and being 
 rendered still smaller by the luggage, which was heaped together 
 in the middle under a tarpaulin covering ; leaving, on either 
 side, a path so narrow, that it became a science to walk to and 
 fro without tumbling overboard into the canal. It was some- 
 what embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck nimbly every 
 five minutes whenever the man at the helm cried " Bridge ! " 
 and sometimes, when the cry was " Low Bridge," to lie down 
 nearly flat. But custom familiarises one to anything, and there 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 17; 
 
 were so many bridges that it took a very short time to get used 
 to this. 
 
 As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first range of 
 hills, which are the outposts of the Alleghany Mountains, the 
 scenery, which had been uninteresting hitherto, became more 
 bold and striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked after 
 the heavy fall of rain ; and the croaking of the frogs (whose 
 noise in these parts is almost incredible) sounded as though a 
 million of fairy teams with bells were travelling through the air, 
 and keeping pace with lis. The night was cloudy yet, but 
 moonlight too : and when we crossed the Susquehanna River — • 
 over which there is an extraordinary wooden bridge with two 
 galleries, one above the other, so that, even there, two boat- 
 teams meeting may pass without confusion — it was wild and 
 grand. 
 
 I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and 
 doubt, at first, relative to the sleeping arrangements on board 
 this boat. I remained in the same vague state of mind until 
 ten o'clock or thereabouts, when, going below, I found suspended, 
 on either side of the cabin, three long tiers of hanging book- 
 shelves, designed apparently for volumes of the small octavo 
 size. Looking with greater attention at these contrivances 
 (wondering to find such literary preparations in such a place), 
 I descried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket ; 
 then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were the 
 library, and that they were to be arranged edge-wise on these 
 shelves till morning. 
 
 I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them 
 gather round the master of the boat at one of the tables, draw- 
 ing lots with all the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted 
 in their countenances ; while others, with small pieces of card- 
 board in their hands, were groping among the shelves in search 
 of numbers corresponding with those they had drawn. As soon 
 as any gentleman found his number, he took possession of it by 
 immediately undressing himself and crawling into bed. The 
 
172 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 rapidity with which an agitated gambler subsided into a snoring 
 sluniberer was one of the most singular effects I have ever 
 witnessed. As to the ladies, they were already abed, behind the 
 red curtain, which was carefully drawn and pinned up the centre ; 
 though as every cough, or sneeze, or whisper, behind this curtain, 
 was perfectly audible before it, we had still a lively consciousness 
 of their society. 
 
 The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me 
 a shelf in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed 
 from the great body of sleepers : to which place I retired, 
 with many acknowledgments to him for his attention. I found 
 it, on after-measurement, just the width of an ordinary sheet of 
 Bath post letter-paper ; and I was at first in some uncertainty 
 as to the best means of getting into it. But the shelf being a 
 bottom one, I finally determined on lying upon the floor, rolling 
 gently in, stopping immediately I touched the mattress, and 
 remaining for the night with that side uppermost, whatever it 
 might be. Luckily, I came upon my back at exactly the right 
 moment. I was much alarmed, on looking upward, to see, by 
 the shape of his half-yard of sacking (which his weight had 
 bent into an exceedingly tight bag), that there was a very heavy 
 gentleman above me, whom the slender cords seemed quite 
 incapable of holding ; and I could not help reflecting upon the 
 grief of my wife and family in the event of his coming down 
 in the night. But, as I could not have got up again without a 
 severe bodily struggle, which might have alarmed the ladies ; 
 and as I had nowhere to go to even if I had ; I shut my eyes 
 upon the danger, and remained there. 
 
 One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact, 
 with reference to that class of society who travel in these boats. 
 Either they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they 
 never sleep at all ; or they expectorate in dreams, which vrould 
 be a remarkable mingling of the real and ideal. All night long, 
 and every night, on this canal, there was a perfect storm and 
 tempest of spitting ; and once my coat, being in the very centre 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 173 
 
 Of a hurricane sustained by five gentlemen (which moved verti- 
 cally, strictly carrying out Reid's Theory of the Law of Storms), 
 I was fain the next morning to lay it on the deck, and rub it 
 down with fair water before it was in a condition to be worn 
 again. 
 
 Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, and 
 some of us went on deck, to give them an opportunity of taking 
 the shelves down ; while others, the morning being very cold, 
 crowded round the rusty stove, cherishing the newly-kindled 
 fire, and filling the grate with those voluntary contributions of 
 which they had been so liberal all night. The washing accommo- 
 dations were primitive. There was a tin ladle chained to the 
 deck, with which every gentleman who thought it necessary to 
 cleanse himself (many were superior to this weakness) fished the 
 dirty water out of the canal, and poured it into a tin basin, 
 secured in like manner. There was also a jack-towel. And, 
 hanging up before a little looking-glass in the bar, in the imme- 
 diate vicinity of the bread and cheese and biscuits, were a public 
 comb and hair-brush. 
 
 At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put away, 
 and the tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea, 
 coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, 
 ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages, all over again. Some 
 were fond of compounding this variety, and having it all on 
 their plates at once. As each gentleman got through his own 
 personal amount of tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, 
 liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and 
 sausages, he rose up and walked off. When everybody had 
 done with everything, the fragments were cleared away : and 
 one of the waiters, appearing anew in the character of a barber, 
 shaved such of the company as desired to be shaved ; while the 
 remainder looked on, or yawned over their newspapers. Dinner 
 was breakfast again, without the tea and coffee ; and supper and 
 breakfast were identical. 
 
 There was a man on board this boat with a light, fresh- 
 
174 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 coloured face, and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was the 
 most inquisitive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He 
 never spoke otherwise than interrogatively. He was an em- 
 bodied inquiry. Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, 
 walking the deck or taking his meals, there he was, with a great 
 note of interrogation in each eye, two in his cocked ears, two 
 more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half-a-dozen more 
 about the corners of his mouth, and the largest one of all in his 
 hair, which was brushed pertly off his forehead in a flaxen 
 clump. Every button in his clothes said, " Eh ? What's that ? 
 Did you speak ? Say that again, will you ? " He was always 
 wide awake, like the enchanted bride who drove her husband 
 frantic ; always restless ; always thirsting for answers ; per- 
 petually seeking and never finding. There never was such a 
 curious man. 
 
 I wore a fur great-coat- at that time, and, before we were well 
 clear of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, 
 and where I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what 
 it weighed, and what it cost. Then he took notice of my watch, 
 and asked what that cost, and whether it was a French watch, 
 and where I got it, and how I got it, and whether I bought it 
 or had it given me, and how it went, and where the keyhole was, 
 and when I wound it, every night or every morning, and whether 
 I ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I did, what then ? Where 
 had I been to last, and where was I going next, and where was 
 I going after that, and had I seen the President, and what did 
 he say, and what did I say, and what did he say when I had 
 said that ? Eh ? Lor, now ! do tell ! 
 
 Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his ques- 
 tions after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded 
 ignorance respecting the name of the fur whereof the coat was 
 made. I am unable to say whether this was the reason, but 
 that coat fascinated him ever afterwards ; he usually kept close 
 behind me as I walked, and moved as I moved, that he might 
 look at it the better ; and he frequently dived into narrow places 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 75 
 
 after me at the risk of his life, that he might have the satis- 
 faction of passing his hand up the back, and rubbing it the 
 wrong way. 
 
 We had another odd specimen on board of a different kind. 
 This was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and 
 stature, dressed in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I 
 never saw before. He was perfectly quiet during the first part 
 of the journey : indeed, I don't remember having so much as 
 seen him until he was brought out by circumstances,, as great 
 men often are. The conjunction of events which made him 
 famous happened, briefly, thus. 
 
 The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of 
 course, it stops ; the passengers being conveyed across it by land 
 carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the 
 counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side. 
 There are two canal lines of passage boats ; one is called the 
 Express, and one (a cheaper one) the Pioneer. The Pioneer 
 gets first to the mountain, and waits for the Express people to 
 come up ; both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at 
 the same time. We were the Express company ; but when we 
 had crossed the mountain, and had come to the second boat, 
 the proprietors took it into their heads to draft all the Pioneers . 
 into it likewise, so that we were five-and-forty at least, and 
 the accession of passengers was not at all of that kind 
 which improved the prospect of sleeping at night. Our people 
 grumbled at this, as people do in such cases ; but suffered the 
 boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless ; 
 and' away we went down the canal. At home I should have 
 protested lustily, but, being a foreigner here/ 1 held my peace. 
 Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the people on 
 deck (we were nearly all on deck), and, without addressing any- 
 body whomsoever, soliloquised as follows : 
 
 " This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This 
 may be all very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston 
 raising, but it won't suit my figure nohow ; and no two ways 
 
176 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 about that ; and so I tell you. Now ! I'm from the brown 
 forests of the Mississippi, I am, and when the sun shines on me, 
 it does shine — a little. It don't glimmer where / live, the sun 
 don't. No. I'm a brown forester, I am. I an't a Johnny Cake. 
 There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough men 
 there. Eather. If Down Easters and men of Boston raising 
 like this, I'm glad of it, but I'm none of that raising nor of that 
 breed. No. This company wants a little fixing, it does. I'm 
 the wrong sort of man for 'em, i" am. They won't like me, they 
 won't. This is piling of it up a little too mountainous, this is." 
 At the end of every one of these short sentences he turned upon 
 his heel, and walked the other way ; checking himself abruptly 
 when he had finished another short sentence, and turning back 
 again. 
 
 It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was 
 hidden in the words of this brown forester, but I know that 
 the other passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and 
 that presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as many 
 of the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away 
 were got rid of. 
 
 When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board 
 made bold to say to the obvious occasion of this improvement 
 in our prospects, "Much obliged to you, sir:" whereunto the 
 brown forester (waving his hand, and still walking up and down 
 as before), replied, " No, you an't. You're none o' my raising. 
 You may act for yourselves, you may. I have pinted out the 
 way. Down Easters and Johnny Cakes can follow if they please. 
 I an't a Johnny Cake, i" an't. I am from the brown forests of 
 the Mississippi, / am" — and so on, as before. He was unani- 
 mously voted one of the tables for his bed at night — there is 
 a great contest for the tables — in consideration of his public 
 services : and he had the warmest corner by the stove through- 
 out the rest of the journey. But I never could find out that 
 he did anything except sit there ; nor - did I hear him speak 
 again until, in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of getting. 
 
For general Circulation. 177 
 
 the luggage ashore in the dark at Pittsburg, I stumbled over 
 him as he sat smoking a cigar on the cabin steps, and heard 
 him muttering to himself, with a short laugh of defiance, " I 
 an't a Johnny Cake, J an't. I'm from the brown forests of the 
 Mississippi, / am, damme !" I am inclined to argue, from this, 
 that he had never left off saying so; but I could not make 
 affidavit of that part of the story, if required to do so by my 
 Queen and Country. 
 
 As we have not reached Pittsburg yet, however, in the order 
 of our narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast was 
 perhaps the least desirable meal of the day, as, in addition to 
 the many savoury odours arising from the eatables already 
 mentioned, there were whiffs of gin, whiskey, brandy, and rum 
 from the little bar hard by, and a decided seasoning of stale 
 tobacco. Many of the gentlemen passengers were far from par- 
 ticular in respect of their linen, which was in some cases as 
 yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled from the corners 
 of their mouths in chewing, and dried there. Nor was the 
 atmosphere quite free from zephyr whisperings of the thirty 
 beds which had just been cleared away, and of which we were 
 further and more pressingly reminded by the occasional appear- 
 ance on the table-cloth of a kind of Game not mentioned in the 
 Bill of Fare. 
 
 And yet despite these oddities — and even they had, for me 
 at least, a humour of their own — there was much in this mode 
 of travelling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look 
 back upon with great pleasure. Even the running up, bare- 
 necked, at five o'clock in the morning, from the tainted cabin 
 to the dirty deck ; scooping up the icy water, plunging one's 
 head into it, and drawing it out all fresh and glowing with the 
 cold ; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the towing- 
 path, between that time and breakfast, when every vein and 
 artery seemed to tingle with health ; the exquisite beauty of the 
 opening day, when light came gleaming off from everything ; 
 the lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly on the deck, 
 
 N 
 
178 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 looking through, rather than at, the deep blue sky ; the gliding 
 on at night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with dark 
 trees, and sometimes angry in one red burning spot high up, 
 where unseen men lay crouching round a fire ; the shining out 
 of the bright stars, undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam, or 
 any other sound than the liquid rippling of the water as the 
 boat went on : all these were pure delights. 
 
 Then, there were new settlements and detached log-cabins 
 and frame-houses, full of interest for strangers from an old 
 country : cabins with simple ovens, outside, made of clay ; and 
 lodgings for the pigs nearly as good as many of the human 
 quarters ; broken windows, patched with worn-out hats, old 
 clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper ; and home' 
 made dressers standing in the open air without the door, 
 whereon was ranged the household store, not hard to count, of 
 earthen jars and pots. The eye was pained to see the stumps 
 of great 'trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat, and seldom 
 to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of 
 rotten trunks and twisted branches steeped in its unwholesome 
 water. It was quite sad and oppressive to come upon great 
 tracts where settlers had been burning down the trees, and 
 wher,e their wounded bodies lay about like those of murdered 
 creatures, while here and there some charred and blackened 
 giant reared aloft two withered arms, and seemed to call down 
 curses on his foes. Sometimes, at night, the way wound through 
 some lonely gorge, like a mountain pass in Scotland, shining 
 and coldly glittering in the light of the moon, and so closed in 
 by high steep hills all round, that there seemed to be no egress, 
 save through the narrower path by which we had come, until 
 one rugged hill-side seemed to open, and, shutting out the 
 moonlight as we passed into its gloomy throat, wrapped our new 
 course in shade and darkness. 
 
 We had left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning we 
 arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by railroad. 
 There are ten inclined planes ; five ascending, and five descend- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 179 
 
 ing ; the carriages are dragged up the former, and let slowly 
 down the latter, by means of stationary engines ; the compara- 
 tively level spaces between being traversed, sometimes by horse, 
 and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. Occa- 
 sionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy 
 precipice ; and looking from the carriage window, the traveller 
 gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, 
 into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully 
 made, however ; only two carriages travelling together ; and, 
 while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its 
 dangers. 
 
 It was very pretty, travelling thus at a rapid pace along the 
 heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a 
 valley full of light and softness ; catching glimpses, through the 
 tree-tops, of scattered cabins ; children running to the doors ; 
 dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could see without hearing < 
 terrified pigs scampering homewards ; families sitting out in 
 their rude gardens ; cows gazing upward with a stupid indif- 
 ference ; men in their shirt-sleeves, looking on at their unfinished 
 houses, planning out to-morrow's work ; and we riding onward, 
 high above them, like a whirlwind. It was amusing, too, when 
 we had dined, and rattled down a steep pass, having no other 
 moving power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to 
 see the engine, released long after us, come buzzing down alone, 
 like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the 
 sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no 
 one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. 
 But it stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when 
 we reached the canal ; and, before we left the wharf, went pant- 
 ing up this hill again, with the passengers who had waited our 
 arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had 
 come. 
 
 On the Monday evening, furnace fires and clanking hammers 
 on the banks of the canal warned us that we approached the 
 termination of this part of our journey. After going through 
 
 N 2 
 
iSo AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 another dreamy place — a long aqueduct across the Alleghany 
 River, which was stranger than the hridge at Harrisburg, being 
 a vast, low, wooden chamber full of water — we emerged upon 
 that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries 
 and stairs which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, 
 canal, or ditch : and were at Pittsburg. 
 
 Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England ; at least, its towns- 
 people say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, 
 waggons, factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it 
 may be. It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging 
 about it, and is famous for its iron -works. Besides the prison 
 to which I have already referred, this town contains a pretty 
 arsenal and other institutions. It is very beautifully situated 
 on the Alleghany River, over which there are two bridges ; and 
 the villas of the wealthier citizens, sprinkled about the high 
 grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough. "We lodged 
 at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As usual, 
 it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad colon- 
 nade to every story of the house. ) 
 
 We tarried here three days. Our next point was Cincinnati : 
 and as this was a steamboat journey, and western steamboats 
 usually blow up one or two a week in the season, it was advisable 
 to collect opinions in reference to the comparative safety of the 
 vessels bound that way, then lying in the river. One called the 
 Messenger was the best recommended. She had been advertised 
 to start positively every day for a fortnight or so, and had not 
 gone yet, nor did her captain seem to have any very fixed inten- 
 tion on the subject. But this is the custom : for if the law 
 were to bind down a free and independent citizen to keep his 
 word with the public, what would become of the liberty of the 
 subject ? Besides, it is in the way of trade. And if passengers 
 be decoyed in the way of trade, and people be inconvenienced in 
 the way of trade, what man, who is a sharp tradesman himself, 
 shall say, " We must put a stop to this ? " 
 
 Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public announcement, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 181 
 
 I (being then ignorant of these usages) was for hurrying on 
 board in a breathless state immediately ; but receiving private 
 and confidential information that the boat would certainly not 
 start until Friday, April the First, we made ourselves very 
 comfortable in the meanwhile, and went on board at noon that 
 day. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 PROM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAMBOAT. CINCINNATI. 
 
 fTIHE Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure 
 -*• steamboats clustered together by the wharf-side, which, 
 looked down upon from the rising ground that forms the 
 landing-place, and backed by the lofty bank on the opposite 
 side of the river, appeared no larger than so many floating 
 models. She had some forty passengers on board, exclusive of 
 the poorer persons on the lower deck ; and in half an hour, or 
 less, proceeded on her way. 
 
 We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two berths in 
 it, opening out of the ladies' cabin. There was, undoubtedly, 
 something satisfactory in this " location," inasmuch as it was in 
 the stern, and we had been a great many times very gravely 
 recommended to keep as far aft as possible, " because the steam- 
 boats generally blew up forward." Nor was this an unnecessary 
 caution, as the occurrence and circumstances of more than one 
 such fatality during our stay sufficiently testified. Apart from 
 this source of self-congratulation, it was an unspeakable relief to 
 have any place, no matter how confined, where one could be 
 alone : and as the row of little chambers, of which this was one, 
 had each a second glass door besides that in the ladies' cabin, 
 which opened on a narrow gallery outside the vessel, where the 
 other passengers seldom came, and where one could sit in peace 
 Hnd gaze upon the shifting prospect, we took possession of our 
 new quarters with much pleasure. 
 
 If the native packets I have already described be unlike any- 
 thing we are in the habit of seeing on water, these western 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1-83 
 
 vessels are still more foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed 
 to entertain of boats. I hardly know what to liken them to, or 
 how to describe them. 
 
 In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, 
 or other such boat-like gear ; nor have they anything in their 
 shape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stern, 
 sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water, and display 
 a couple of paddle-boxes, they might be intended, for anything 
 that appears to the contrary, to perform some unknown service, 
 high and dry, upon a mountain-top. There is no visible deck 
 even : nothing but a long, black, ugly roof, covered with burnt- 
 out feathery sparks ; above which tower two iron chimneys, and 
 a hoarse escape valve, and a glass steerage house. Then, in 
 order as the eye descends towards the water, are the sides, and 
 doors, and windows of the state-rooms, jumbled as oddly together 
 as though they formed a small street, built by the varying tastes 
 of a dozen men : the whole is supported on beams and pillars 
 resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the water's 
 edge : and in the narrow space between this upper structure 
 and this barge's deck are the furnace fires and machinery, open 
 at the sides to every wind that blows, and every storm of rain 
 it drives along its path. | 
 
 Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great 
 body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and 
 roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood : the machinery not 
 warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the 
 midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children who 
 throng the lower deck : under the management, too, of reckless 
 men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of 
 six months' standing : one feels directly that the wonder is, not 
 that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any 
 journey should be safely made. 
 
 Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of 
 the boat ; from which the state-rooms open on both sides. A 
 small portion of it at the stern is partitioned off for the ladies j 
 
1 84 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 and the bar is at the opposite extreme. There is a long table 
 down the centre, and at either end a stove. The washing 
 apparatus is forward, on the deck. It is a little better than on 
 board the canal boat, but not much. In all modes of travelling, 
 the American customs, with reference to the means of personal 
 cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and 
 filthy ; and I strongly incline to the belief that a considerable 
 amount of illness is, referable to this cause. 
 
 We are to be on board the Messenger three days : arriving 
 at Cincinnati (barring accidents) on Monday morning. There 
 are three meals a day. Breakfast at seven, dinner at half-past 
 twelve, supper about six. At each there are a great many small 
 dishes and plates upon the table, with very little in them ; so 
 that, although there is every appearance of a mighty " spread," 
 there is seldom really more than a joint : except for those who 
 fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of dried beef, complicated entan- 
 glements of yellow pickle, maize, Indian corn, apple sauce, and 
 pumpkin. 
 
 Some people fancy all these little dainties together (and sweet 
 preserves besides), by way of relish to their roast pig. They 
 are generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat 
 unheard-of quantities of hot corn bread (almost as good for the 
 digestion as a kneaded pincushion) for breakfast and for supper. 
 Those who do not observe this custom, and who help themselves 
 several times instead, usually suck their knives and forks medi- 
 tatively until they have decided what to take next ; then pull 
 them out of their mouths ; put them in the dish ; help them- 
 selves ; and fall to work again. At dinner there is nothing to 
 drink upon the table but great jugs full of cold water. Nobody 
 says anything, at any meal, to anybody. All the passengers 
 are very dismal, and seem to have tremendous secrets weighing 
 on their minds. There is no conversation, no laughter, no 
 cheerfulness, no sociality, except in spitting ; and that is done 
 in silent fellowship round the stove, when the meal is over. 
 Every man sits down dull and languid ; swallows his fare as if 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 185 
 
 breakfasts, dinners, and suppers were necessities of nature never 
 to be coupled with recreation or enjoyment ; and, having bolted 
 his food in a gloomy silence, bolts himself in the same state. 
 But for these animal observances, you might suppose the whole 
 male portion of the company to be the melancholy ghosts of 
 departed book-keepers, who had fallen dead at the desk : such is 
 their weary air of business and calculation. Undertakers on 
 duty would be sprightly beside them ; and a collation of funeral 
 baked meats, in comparison with these meals, would be a spark- 
 ling festivity. 
 
 The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of 
 character. They travel about on the same errands, say and do 
 the same things in exactly the same manner, and follow in the 
 same dull, cheerless round. All down the long table there is 
 scarcely a man who is in anything different from his neighbour. 
 It is quite a relief to have, sitting opposite, that little girl of 
 fifteen with the loquacious chin : who, to do her justice, acts up to 
 it, and fully identifies Nature's handwriting ; for, of all the small 
 chatterboxes that ever invaded the repose of drowsy ladies' cabin, 
 she is the first and foremost. The beautiful girl who sits a little 
 beyond her — farther down the table there — married the young 
 man with the dark whiskers, who sits beyond her, only last 
 month. They are going to settle in the very Far West, where 
 he has lived four years, but where she has never been. They 
 were both overturned in a stage-coach the other day (a bad 
 omen anywhere else, where overturns are not so common), and 
 his head, which bears the marks of a recent wound, is bound up 
 still. She was hurt, too, at the same time, and lay insensible 
 for some days ; bright as her eyes are now. 
 
 Further down still, sits a man who is going some miles beyond 
 their place of destination to "improve" a newly-discovered 
 copper mine. He carries the village — that is to be — with him : 
 a few frame cottages, and an apparatus for smelting the copper. 
 He carries its people too. They are partly American and partly 
 Irish, and herd together on the lower deck ; where they amused 
 
1 86 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 themselves last evening till the night was pretty far advanced; 
 by alternately firing off pistols and singing hymns. 
 
 They, and the very few who have been left at table twenty 
 minutes, rise and go away. We do so too ; and, passing 
 through our little state-room, resume our seats in the quiet 
 gallery without. 
 
 A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider 
 than in others : and then there is usually a green island covered 
 with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally we stop 
 for a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe for passengers, 
 at some small town or Village (I ought to say city, every place 
 is a city here) ; but the banks are for the most part deep soli- 
 tudes, overgrown with trees, which, hereabouts, are already in 
 leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and miles, these 
 solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or trace of 
 human footstep ; nor is anything seen to move about them but 
 the blue jay, whose colour is so bright, and yet so delicate, that 
 it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals a log- 
 cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under 
 a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up 
 into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, 
 which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthy butchers' 
 blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared : the 
 felled trees lying yet upon the soil : and the log-house only this 
 morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans 
 upon his axe or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from 
 the world. Tbe children creep out of the temporary hut, which 
 is like a gipsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and 
 shout. The dog only glances round at us ; and then looks up 
 into his master's face again, as if he were rendered uneasy by 
 any suspension of the common business, and had nothing more 
 to do with pleasurers. And still there is the same eternal fore- 
 ground. The river has washed away its banks, and stately trees 
 have fallen down into the stream. Some have been there so 
 long, that they are mere dry, grizzly skeletons. Some have just 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 87 
 
 •toppled over, arid, having earth yet about their roots, are bathing 
 their green heads in the river, and putting forth new shoots and 
 branches. Some are almost sliding down as you look at them. 
 And some were drowned so long ago, that their bleached arms 
 start out from the middle of the current, and seem to try to 
 grasp the boat, and drag it under water. 
 
 Through such a scene as this the unwieldy machine takes its 
 hoarse sullen way ; venting, at every revolution of the paddles, 
 a loud high-pressure blast ; enough, one would think, to waken 
 up the host of Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder : 
 so old, that mighty oaks and other forest trees have struck their 
 roots into its earth ; and so high, that it is a hill even among 
 the hills that Nature planted round it. The very river, as 
 though it shared one's feelings of compassion for the extinct 
 tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in their blessed ignorance 
 of white existence, hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way 
 to ripple near this mound : and there are few places where the 
 Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek. 
 
 All this I see as I sit in the little stern-gallery mentioned 
 just now. Evening slowly steals upon the landscape, and 
 changes it before me, when we stop to set some emigrants 
 . ashore. 
 
 Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All their 
 worldly goods are a bag, a large chest, and an old chair : one 
 old, high-backed, rush-bottomed chair : a solitary settler in 
 itself. They are rowed ashore in the boat, while the vessel 
 stands a little off awaiting its return, the water being shallow. 
 They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on the summit of 
 which are a few log-cabins, attainable only by a long winding 
 path. It is growing dusk ; but the sun is very red, and shines 
 in the water, and on some of the tree-tops, like fire. 
 
 The men get out of the boat first ; help out the women ; 
 take out the bag, the chest, the chair ; bid the rowers " good- 
 bye ; " and shove the boat off for them. At the first plash of 
 the oars in the water, the oldest woman of the party sits down 
 
1 88 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 in the old chair, close to the water's edge, without speaking a 
 word. None of the others sit down, though the chest is large 
 enough for many seats. They all stand where they landed, as 
 if stricken into stone ; and look after the boat. So they 
 remain, quite still and silent : the old woman and her old chair 
 in the centre ; the bag and chest upon the shore, without any- 
 body heeding them : all eyes fixed upon the boat. It comes 
 alongside, is made fast, the men jump on board, the engine is 
 put in motion, and we go hoarsely on again. There they stand 
 yet, without the motion of a hand. I can see them, through 
 my glass, when, in the distance and increasing darkness, they 
 are mere specks to the eye : lingering there still : the old 
 woman in the old chair, and all the rest about her : not 
 stirring in the least degree. And thus I slowly lose them. 
 
 The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of the 
 wooded bank, which makes it darker. After gliding past the 
 sombre maze of boughs for a long time, we come upon an open 
 space where the tall trees are burning. The shape of every 
 branch and twig is expressed in a deep red glow, and as the 
 light wind stirs and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It 
 is such a sight as we read of in legends of enchanted forests : 
 saving that it is sad to see these noble works wasting away so 
 awfully, alone ; and to think how many years must come and 
 go before the magic that created them will rear their like upon 
 this ground again. But the time will come : and when, in 
 their changed ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck 
 its roots, the' restless men of distant ages will repair to these 
 again unpeopled solitudes ; and their fellows, in cities far away, 
 that slumber now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read, 
 in language strange to any ears in being now, but very old to 
 them, of primeval forests where the axe was never heard, 
 and where the jungled ground was never trodden by a human 
 foot. 
 
 Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts : and 
 when the morning shines again, it gilds the housetops of a 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 1 89 
 
 lively city, before whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored : 
 with other boats, and flags, and moving wheels, and hum of 
 men around it ; as though there were not a solitary or silent 
 rood of ground within the compass of a thousand miles. 
 
 Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and ani- 
 mated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so 
 favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as 
 this does : with its clean houses of red and white, its well- 
 paved roads, and footways of bright tile. Nor does it become 
 less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The streets are 
 broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private residences 
 remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There is some- 
 thing of invention and fancy in the varying styles of these 
 latter erections, which, after the dull company of the steamboat, 
 is perfectly delightful, as conveying an assurance that there are 
 such qualities still in existence. The disposition to ornament 
 these pretty villas, and render them attractive, leads to the 
 culture of trees and flowers, and the laying out of well-kept 
 gardens, the sight of which, to those who walk along the 
 streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. I was quite 
 charmed with the appearance of the town, and its adjoining 
 suburb of Mount Auburn ; from which the city, lying in an 
 amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty, and 
 is seen to great advantage. 
 
 There happened to be a great Temperance Convention held 
 here on the day after our arrival ; and as the order of march 
 brought the procession under the windows of the hotel in which 
 we lodged, when they started in the morning, I had a good 
 opportunity of seeing it. It comprised several thousand men ; 
 the members of various " Washington Auxiliary Temperance 
 Societies ;" and was marshalled by officers on horseback, who 
 cantered briskly up and clown the line, with scarfs and ribbons 
 of bright colours fluttering out behind them gaily. There were 
 bands of music, too, and banners out of number : and it was a 
 fresh, holiday-looking concourse altogether. 
 
190 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a 
 distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong 
 with their green scarfs ; carrying their national Harp, and their 
 Portrait of Father Mathew, high above the people's heads. 
 They looked as jolly and good-humoured as ever ; and working 
 (here) the hardest for their living, and doing any kind of sturdy 
 labour that came in their way, were the most independent 
 fellows there, I thought. 
 
 The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the 
 street famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the 
 gushing forth of the waters ; and there was a temperate man 
 with "considerable of a hatchet" (as the standard-bearer would 
 probably have said), aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which 
 was apparently about to spring upon him from the top of a 
 barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this part of the show 
 was a huge allegorical device, borne among the ship carpenters, 
 on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was represented 
 bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while 
 upon the other, the good ship Temperance sailed away with a 
 fair wind, to the heart's content of the captain, crew, and 
 passengers. 
 
 After going round the town, the procession repaired to a 
 certain appointed place, where, as the printed programme set 
 forth, it would be received by the children of the different free- 
 schools, " singing Temperance Songs." I was prevented from 
 getting there in time to hear these Little Warblers, or to report 
 upon this novel kind of vocal entertainment : novel, at least, to 
 me : but I found, in a large open space, each society gathered 
 round its own banners, and listening in silent attention to its' 
 own orator. The speeches, judging from the little I could hear 
 of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, as having that' 
 degree of relationship to cold water which wet blankets may 
 claim : but the main thing was the conduct and appearance of 
 the audience throughout the day, and that was admirable and 
 full of promise. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. tqi 
 
 Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free-schools, of which 
 it has so many that no person's child among its population can, 
 by possibility, want the means of education, which are extended, 
 upon an average, to four thousand pupils annually. I was only 
 present in one of these establishments during the hours of 
 instruction. In the boys' department, which was full of little 
 urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old 
 to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an extemporary 
 examination of the pupils in algebra ; a proposal which, as I 
 was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes 
 in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls' 
 school, reading was proposed ; and, as I felt tolerably equal 
 to that art, I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books 
 were distributed accordingly, and some half-dozen girls relieved 
 each other in reading paragraphs from English history. But 
 it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above their 
 powers ; and when they had blundered through three or four 
 dreary passages concerning the treaty of Amiens, and other 
 thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without com- 
 prehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It 
 is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave 
 in the Ladder of Learning for the astonishment of a visitor ; 
 and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds ; 
 but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if 
 I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons which they under- 
 stood. 
 
 As in every other place I visited, the Judges here were 
 gentlemen of high character and attainments. I was in one of 
 the courts for a few minutes, and found it like those to which 
 I have already referred. A nuisance cause was trying ; there 
 were not many spectators ; and the witnesses, counsel, and 
 jury formed a sort of family circle, sufficiently jocose and snug. 
 
 The society with which I mingled was intelligent, courteous, 
 and agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of 
 their city, as one of the most interesting in America : and with 
 
102 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 good reason : for beautiful and thriving as it is ndw, and con- 
 taining, as it does, a population of fifty thousand souls, but two- 
 and-fifty years have passed away since the ground on which it 
 stands (bought at that time for a few dollars) was a wild wood, 
 and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scattered log- 
 huts upon the river's shore. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN STEAMBOAT; AND PBOM 
 LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS IN ANOTHER. ST. LOUIS. 
 
 T EAVING Cincinnati at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, we 
 embarked for Louisville in the Pike steamboat, which, 
 carrying the mails, was a packet of a much better class than 
 that in which we had come from Pittsburg. As this passage 
 does not occupy more than twelve or thirteen hours, we 
 arranged to go ashore that night : not coveting the distinction 
 of sleeping in a state-room, when it was possible to sleep any- 
 where else. 
 
 There chanced to be on board this boat; in addition to the 
 usual dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a chief of the 
 Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with 
 whom I had the pleasure of a long conversation. 
 
 He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun 
 to learn the language, he told me, until he was a young man 
 grown. He had read many books ; and Scott's poetry appeared 
 to have left a strong impression on his mind : especially the 
 opening of The Lady of the Lake, and the great battle scene in 
 Marmion, in which, no doubt from the congeniality of the 
 subjects to his own pursuits and tastes, he had great interest 
 and delight. He appeared to understand correctly all he had 
 read ; and whatever fiction had enlisted his sympathy in its 
 belief, had done so keenly and earnestly. I might almost say 
 fiercely. He was dressed in our ordinary every-day costume, 
 which hung about his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent 
 grace. On my telling him that I regretted not to see him in 
 
 o 
 
194 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 his own attire, lie threw up his right arm for a moment, as 
 though he were brandishing some heavy weapon, and answered, 
 as he let it fall again, that his race were losing many things 
 besides their dress, and would soon be seen upon the earth nc 
 more : but he wore it at home, he added proudly. 
 
 He told me that he had been away from his home, west of 
 the Mississippi, seventeen months : and was now returning. He 
 had been chiefly at "Washington on some negotiations pending 
 between his Tribe and the Government : which were not settled 
 yet (he said in a melancholy Avay), and he feared never would 
 be : for what could a few poor Indians do against such well- 
 skilled men of business as the whites ? He had no love for 
 Washington ; tired of towns and cities very soon ; and longed 
 for the Forest and the Prairie. 
 
 I asked him what he thought of Congress ? He answered, 
 with a smile, that it wanted dignity in an Indian's eyes. 
 
 He would very much like, he said, to see England before he 
 died ; and spoke with much interest about the great things to 
 be seen there. When I told him of that chamber in the British 
 Museum wherein are preserved household memorials of a race 
 that ceased to be, thousands of years ago, he was very attentive, 
 and it was not hard to see that he had a reference in his mind 
 to the gradual fading away of his own people. 
 
 This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin's gallery, which he praised 
 highly : observing that his own portrait was among the collec- 
 tion, and that all the likenesses were " elegant." Mr. Cooper, 
 he said, had painted the Eed Man well ; and so would I, he 
 know, if I would go- home with him and hunt buffaloes, which 
 he was quite anxious I should do. When I told him that, sup- 
 posing I went, I should not be very likely to damage the 
 buffaloes much, he took it as a great joke and laughed 
 heartily. 
 
 He was a remarkably handsome man ; some years past forty 
 I should judge ; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad 
 cheek bones, a sunburnt complexion, and a very bright, keen, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. lc,5 
 
 dark, and piercing eye. There were but twenty thousand of the 
 Choctaws left, he said, and their number was decreasing every 
 day, A few of his brother chiefs had been obliged to become 
 civilised, and to make themselves acquainted with what the 
 whites knew, for it was their only chance of existence. But 
 they were not many ; and the rest were as they always had 
 been. He dwelt on this : and said several times that unless 
 they tried to assimilate themselves to their conquerors, they 
 must be swept away before the strides of civilised society. 
 
 When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come 
 to England, as he longed to see the land so much : that I should 
 hope to see him there one day : and that I could promise him 
 he would be well received and kindly treated. He was evidently 
 pleased by this assurance, though he rejoined, with a good- 
 humoured smile and an arch shake of his head, that the English 
 used to be very fond of the Red Men when they wanted their 
 help, but had not cared much for them since. 
 
 He took his leave ; as stately and complete a gentleman of 
 Nature's making as ever I beheld ; and moved among the people 
 in the boat, another kind of being. He sent me a lithographed 
 portrait of himself soon afterwards ; very like, though scarcely 
 handsome enough ; which I have carefully preserved in memory 
 of our brief acquaintance. 
 
 There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this 
 day's journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We 
 slept at the Gait House ; a splendid hotel ; and were as hand- 
 somely lodged as though we had been in Paris, rather than 
 hundreds of miles beyond the Alleghanies. 
 
 The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain 
 us on our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another 
 steamboat, the Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a suburb 
 called Portland, where it would be delayed some time in passing 
 through a canal. 
 
 The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through 
 the town, which is regular and cheerful : the streets being laid 
 
 o 2 
 
t9& AMERICAN NdTE9 
 
 out at right angles, and planted with young trees. The build- 
 ings are smoky and blackened, from the use of bituminous coal, 
 but an Englishman is well used to that appearance, and indis- 
 posed to quarrel with it. There did not appear to be much 
 business stirring ; and some unfinished buildings and improve- 
 ments seemed to intimate that the city had been over-built in 
 the ardour of " going ahead," and was suffering under the reac- 
 tion consequent upon such feverish forcing of its powers. 
 
 On our way to Portland we passed a " Magistrate's Office," 
 which amused me, as looking far more like a dame school than 
 any police establishment : for this awful Institution was nothing 
 but a little, lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open to the 
 street ; wherein two or three figures (I presume the magistrate 
 and his myrmidons) were basking in the sunshine, the very 
 effigies of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture of 
 Justice retired from business for want of customers ; her sword 
 and scales sold off ; napping comfortably with her legs upon the 
 table. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly alive 
 with pigs of all ages ; lying about in every direction, fast asleep ; 
 or grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had always a 
 sneaking kindness for these odd animals, and found a constant 
 source of amusement, when all others failed, in watching their 
 proceedings. As we were riding along this morning, I observed 
 a little incident between two youthful pigs, which was so very 
 human as to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the time, 
 though, I dare say, in telling, it is tame enough. 
 
 One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several 
 straws sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations 
 in a dunghill), was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, 
 when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen 
 by bim, rose up immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly 
 with damp mud. Never was pig's whole mass of blood so 
 turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed for a moment, 
 and then shot off as hard as he could go.: his excessively littlo 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 197 
 
 tail vibrating with speed and terror like a distracted pendulum. 
 But, before he had gone very far, he began to reason with him- 
 self as to the nature of this frightful appearance ; and as he 
 reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees ; until at last 
 he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother, with the 
 mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very 
 same hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings ! He was no 
 sooner assured of this ; and he assured himself so carefully that 
 one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the 
 better ; than he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, 
 and summarily took off a piece of his tail ; as a caution to him 
 to be careful what he was about for the future, and never to 
 play tricks with his family any more. 
 
 We found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the slow 
 process of getting through the lock, and went on board, where 
 we shortly afterwards had a new kind of visitor in the person of 
 a certain Kentucky Giant whose name is Porter, and who is 
 of the moderate height of seven feet eight inches in his 
 stockings. 
 
 There never was a race of people who so completely gave the 
 lie to history as these giants, or whom all the chroniclers have 
 so cruelly libelled. Instead of roaring and ravaging about the 
 world, constantly catering for their cannibal larders, and per- 
 petually going to market in an unlawful manner, they are the 
 meekest people in any man's acquaintance : rather inclining to 
 milk and vegetable diet, and bearing anything for a quiet life. 
 So decidedly are amiability and mildness their characteristics, 
 that I confess I look upon that youth who distinguished himself 
 by the slaughter of these inoffensive persons as a false-hearted 
 brigand, who, pretending to philanthropic motives, was secretly 
 influenced only by the wealth stored up within their castles, and 
 the hope of plunder. And I lean the more to this opinion 
 from finding that even the historian of those exploits, with all 
 his partiality for his hero, is fain to admit that the slaughtered 
 monsters in question were of a very innocent and simple turn ; 
 
1 98 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 extremely guileless and ready of belief ; lending a credulous ear 
 to the most improbable tales ; suffering themselves to be easily 
 entrapped into pits ; and even (as in the case of the Welsh 
 Giant), with an excess of the hospitable politeness of a landlord, 
 ripping themselves open, rather than hint at the possibility of 
 their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand 
 and hocus-pocus. 
 
 The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of the truth 
 of this position. He had a weakness in the region of the knees, 
 and a trustfulness in his long face, which appealed even to five- 
 feet-nine for encouragement and support. He was only twenty- 
 five years old, he said, and had grown recently, for it had been 
 found necessary to make an addition to the legs of his inex- 
 pressibles. At fifteen he was a short boy, and in those days his 
 English father and his Irish mother had rather snubbed him, as 
 being too small of stature to sustain the credit of the family. 
 He added that his health had not been good, though it was 
 better now ; but short people are not wanting who whisper that 
 he drinks too hard. 
 
 I understand he drives a hackney coach, though how he does 
 it, unless he stands on the foot-board behind, and lies along the 
 roof upon his chest, with his chin in the box, it would be diffi- 
 cult to comprehend. He brought his gun with him, as a 
 curiosity. Christened " The Little Kifle," and displayed out- 
 side a shop-window, it would make the fortune of any retail 
 business in Holborn. When he had shown himself and talked a 
 little while, he withdrew with his pocket instrument, and went 
 bobbing down the cabin, among men of six feet high and 
 upwards, like a lighthouse walking among lamp-posts. 
 
 Within a few minutes afterwards we were out of the canal, 
 and in the Ohio Eiver again. 
 
 The arrangements of the boat were like those of the Messenger, 
 and the passengers were of the same order of people. We fed 
 at the same times, on the same kind of viands, in the same dull 
 manner, and with the same observances. The company appeared 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. ig9 
 
 to be oppressed by the same tremendous concealments, and had 
 as little capacity of enjoyment or light-heartedness. I never in 
 my life did see such listless, heavy dulness as brooded over these 
 meals : the very recollection of it weighs me down, and makes 
 me, for the moment, wretched. Beading and writing on my 
 knee, in our little cabin, I really dreaded the coming of the hour 
 that summoned us to table ; and was as glad to escape from it 
 again as if it had been a penance or a punishment. Healthy 
 cheerfulness and good spirits forming a part of the banquet, I 
 could soak my crusts in the fountain with Le Sage's strolling 
 player, and revel in their glad enjoyment : but sitting down with 
 so many fellow-animals to ward off thirst and hunger as a busi- 
 ness ; to empty each creature his Yahoo's trough as quickly as 
 he can, and then slink sullenly away ; to have these social 
 sacraments stripped of everything but the mere greedy satis- 
 faction of the natural cravings ; goes so. against the grain with 
 me, that I seriously believe the recollection of these funeral 
 feasts will be a waking nightmare to me all my life. 
 
 There was some relief in this boat, too, which there had not 
 been in the other, for the captain (a blunt, good-natured fellow) 
 had his handsome wife with him, who was disposed to be lively 
 and agreeable, as were a few other lady passengers who had 
 their seats about us at the same end of the table. But nothing 
 could have made head against the depressing influence of the 
 general body. There was a magnetism of dulness in them which 
 would have beaten down the most facetious companion that the 
 earth ever knew. A jest would have been a crime, and a smile 
 would have faded into a grinning horror. Such deadly leaden 
 people; such systematic, plodding, weary, insupportable heavi- 
 ness ; such a mass of animated indigestion in respect of all that 
 was genial, jovial, frank, social, or hearty ; never, sure, was 
 brought together elsewhere since the world began. 
 
 Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction of the 
 Ohio and Mississippi Kivers, at all inspiriting in its influence. 
 The trees were stunted in their growth ; the banks were low and 
 
200 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 flat ; the settlements and log-cabins fewer in number : their 
 inhabitants more wan and wretched than any we 'had encoun- 
 tered yet. No songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant scents, 
 no moving lights and shadows from swift-passing clouds. Hour 
 after hour, the changeless glare of the hot, unwinking sky shone 
 upon the same monotonous objects. Hour after hour, the river 
 rolled along as wearily and slowly as the time itself. 
 
 At length, upon the morning of the third day, we arrived at a 
 spot so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld, that 
 the forlornest places we had passed were, in comparison with it, 
 full of interest. At the junction of the two rivers, on ground 
 so flat and low and marshy, that at certain seasons of the year 
 it is inundated to the housetops, lies a breeding-place of fever, 
 ague, and death ; vaunted in England as a mine of Golden Hope, 
 and speculated in, on the faith of monstrous representations, to 
 many people's ruin. A dismal swamp, on which the half-built 
 houses rot away : cleared here and there for the space of a few 
 yards ; and teeming, then, with rank, unwholesome vegetation, 
 in whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers who are tempted 
 hither droop, and die, and lay their bones ; the hateful Mississippi 
 circling and eddying before it, and turning off upon its southern 
 course, a slimy monster hideous to behold ; a hotbed of disease, 
 an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise : 
 a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water, to 
 commend it : such is this dismal Cairo. 
 
 But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of 
 rivers, who (praise be to Heaven !) has no young children like 
 him ? An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, 
 running liquid mud, six miles an hour : its strong and frothy 
 current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and 
 whole forest trees : now twining themselves together in great 
 rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy, lazy foam works up, 
 to" float upon the water's top : now rolling past like monstrous 
 bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted hair ; now 
 glancing singly by like giant leeches ; and now writhing round 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 201 
 
 and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool like wounded 
 shakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes 
 swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, 
 their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, 
 mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, 
 mud and slime on everything : nothing pleasant in its aspect, 
 but the harmless lightning which flickers every night upon the 
 dark horizon. 
 
 For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking constantly 
 against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those more 
 dangerous obstacles, the snags, or sawyers, which are the hidden 
 trunks of trees that have their roots below the tide. When the 
 nights are very dark, the look-out stationed in the head of the 
 boat knows, by the ripple of the water, if any great impediment 
 be near at hand, and rings a bell beside him, which is the signal 
 for the engine to be stopped ; but always in the night this bell 
 has work to do, and, after every ring, there comes a blow which 
 renders it no easy matter to remain in bed. 
 
 The decline of day here was very gorgeous ; tinging the firma- 
 ment deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone of the 
 arch above us. As the sub. went down behind the bank, the 
 slightest blades of grass upon it seemed to become as distinctly 
 visible as the arteries in the skeleton of a leaf, and when, as it 
 slowly sank, the red and golden bars upon the water grew 
 dimmer, and dimmer yet, as if they were sinking too ; and all 
 the glowing colours of departing day paled, inch by inch, before 
 the sombre night ; the scene became a thousand times more 
 lonesome and more dreary than before, and all its influences 
 darkened with the sky. 
 
 We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon 
 it. It is considered wholesome by the natives, and is something 
 more opaque than gruel. I have seen water like it at the Filter 
 shops, but nowhere else. 
 
 On the fourth night after leaving Louisville we reached St. 
 Louis, and here I witnessed the conclusion of an incident, trifling 
 
i02 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 enough in itself, but very pleasant to see, which had interested 
 me during the whole journey. 
 
 There was a little woman on board, with a little baby ; and 
 both little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, 
 bright-eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been passing 
 a long time with her sick mother in New York, and had left her 
 home in St. Louis in that condition in which ladies who truly 
 love their lords desire to be. The baby was born in her 
 mother's house ; and she had not seen her husband (to whom 
 she was now returning) for twelve months : having left him a 
 month or two after their marriage. 
 
 Well, to be sure there never was a little woman so full of 
 hope, and tenderness, and love, and anxiety as this little woman 
 was : and all day long she wondered whether " He" would be 
 at the wharf; and whether "He" had got her letter; and 
 whether, if she sent the baby ashore by somebody else, " He " 
 would know it, meeting it in the street : which, seeing that he 
 had never set eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in the 
 abstract, but was probable enough to the young mother. She 
 was such an artless little creature ; and was in such a sunny, 
 beaming, hopeful state ; and let out all this matter, clinging 
 close about her heart, so freely ; that all the other lady pas- 
 sengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she ; and the 
 captain (who heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous 
 sly, I promise you : inquiring, every time we met at table, as in 
 forgetfulness, whether she expected anybody to meet her at St. 
 Louis, and whether she would want to go ashore the night we 
 reached it (but he supposed she wouldn't), and cutting many 
 other dry jokes of that nature. There was one little, weazen, 
 dried-apple-faced old woman, who took occasion to doubt the 
 constancy of husbands in such circumstances of bereavement ; 
 and there was another lady (with a lapdog) old enough to 
 moralise on the lightness of human affections, and yet not so 
 old that she could help nursing the baby now and then, or 
 laughing with the rest when the little woman called it by its 
 
THE LITTLE WIFE, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 203 
 
 father's name, and asked it all manner of fantastic questions 
 concerning him in the joy of her heart. 
 
 It was something of a blow to the little woman, that when wt 
 wcra within twenty miles of our destination, it became clearly 
 n pessary to put this baby to bed. But she got over it with 
 the same good-humour ; tied a handkerchief round her head ; 
 and came out into the little gallery with the rest. Then, such 
 aa oracle as she became in reference to the localities ! and such 
 facetiousness as was displayed by the married ladies ! and such 
 sympathy as was shown by the single ones ! and such peals of 
 laughter as the little woman herself (who would just as soon 
 have cried) greeted every jest with ! 
 
 At last there were the lights of St. Louis, and here was the 
 wharf, and those were the steps : and the little woman, covering 
 her face with her hands, and laughing (or seeming to laugh) 
 more than ever, ran into her own cabin, and shut herself up. I 
 have no doubt that, in the charming inconsistency of such excite- 
 ment, she stopped her ears, lest she should hear " Him " asking 
 for her : but I did not see her do it. 
 
 Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the 
 boat was not yet made fast, but was wandering about, among 
 the other boats, to find a landing-place : and everybody looked 
 for the husband : and nobody saw him : when, in the midst of 
 us all — Heaven knows how she ever got there— there was the 
 little woman clinging with both arms tight round the neck of a 
 fine, good-looking, sturdy young fellow ! and, in a moment after- 
 wards, there she was again, actually clapping her little hands for 
 joj', as she dragged him through the small door of her small 
 cabin, to look at the baby as he lay asleep ! 
 
 We went to a large hotel, called the Planter's House : built 
 like an English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, and 
 sky-lights above the room-doors for the free circulation of air. 
 There were a great many boarders in it ; and as many lights 
 sparkled and glistened from the windows down into the street 
 below, when we drove up, as if it had been illuminated on some 
 
204 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 occasion of rejoicing. It is an excellent house, and the pro- 
 prietors have most bountiful notions of providing the creature 
 comforts. Dining alone with my wife in our own room one day, 
 I counted fourteen dishes on the table at once. 
 
 In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are 
 narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and 
 picturesque : being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries 
 before the windows, approachable by stairs, or rather ladders, 
 from the street. There are queer little barbers' shops, and 
 drinking-houses too, in this quarter ; and abundance of crazy 
 old tenements with blinking casements, such as may be seen in 
 Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret 
 gablo windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French 
 shrug about them; and, being lop-sided with age,. appear to 
 hold their heads askew besides, as if they were grimacing in 
 astonishment at the American Improvements. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that these consist of wharfs and 
 warehouses, and new buildings in all directions ; and of a great 
 many vast plans which are still " progressing." Already, how- 
 ever, some very good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted 
 shops have gone so far ahead as to be in a state of completion ; 
 and the town bids fair, in a few years, to improve considerably : 
 though it is not likely ever to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, 
 with Cincinnati. 
 
 The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early 
 French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public insti- 
 tutions are a Jesuit College ; a convent for " the Ladies of the 
 Sacred Heart ;" and a large chapel attached to" the college, which 
 was in course of erection at the time of my visit, and was 
 intended to be consecrated on the second of December in the 
 next year. The architect of this building is one of the reverend 
 fathers of the school, and the works proceed under his sole 
 direction. The organ will be sent from Belgium. 
 
 In addition to these establishments, there is a Roman Catholic 
 cathedral, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier ; and a hospital, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 205 
 
 founded by the munificence of a deceased resident, who was a 
 member of that church. It also, sends missionaries from hence 
 among the Indian tribes. 
 
 The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote place, as 
 in most other parts of America, by a gentleman of great worth 
 and excellence. The poor have good reason to remember and 
 bless it ; for it befriends them, and aids the cause of rational 
 education, without any sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal 
 in all its actions ; of kind construction ; and of wide benevolence. 
 There are three free-schools already erected and in full opera- 
 tion in this city. A fourth is building, and will soon be opened. 
 No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells 
 in (unless he is "going away from it), and I shall therefore, I 
 have no doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis in 
 questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate, and in hinting 
 that I think it must rather dispose to fever in the summer and 
 autumnal seasons. Just adding, that it is very hot, lies among 
 great rivers, and has vast tracts of undrained swampy land 
 around it, I leave the reader to form his own opinion. 
 
 As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back 
 from the furthest point of my wanderings ; and as some gentle- 
 men of the town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal 
 desire to gratify me ; a day was fixed, before my departure, for 
 an expedition to the Lookiug-Glass Prairie, which k within 
 thirty miles of the town. Deeming it possible that my readers 
 mav not object to know what kind of thing such a gipsy part3 r 
 may be at that distance from home, and among what sort of 
 objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt in another' chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK. 
 
 T MAY premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced 
 -*- paraaer, parearer, and paroarer. The latter n.ole of pro- 
 nunciation is, perhaps, the most in favour. 
 
 We were fourteen in all, and all young men : indeed, it is a 
 singular though very natural feature in the society of these 
 distant settlements, that it is mainly composed of adventurous 
 persons in the prime of life, and has very few grey heads among 
 it. There were no ladies : the trip being a fatiguing one : and 
 we were to start at five o'clock in the morning punctually. 
 
 I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping 
 nobody waiting ; and having got some bread-and-milk for break- 
 fast, threw up the window and looked down into the street, 
 expecting to see the whole party busily astir, and great prepara- 
 tions going on below. But, as everything was very quiet, and the 
 street presented that hopeless aspect with which five o'clock in 
 the morning is familiar elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go to 
 bed again, and went accordingly. 
 
 I awoke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the party 
 Lad assembled, and were gathered round, one light carriage, 
 with a very stout axletree ; one something on wheels like an 
 amateur carrier's cart; one double phaeton of great antiquity 
 and unearthly construction ; one gig with a great hole in its 
 back, and a broken head ; and one rider on horseback, who was 
 to go on before. I got into the first coach with three com- 
 panions ; the rest bestowed themselves in the other vehicles ; 
 two large baskets were made fast to the lightest; two large 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 207 
 
 stone jars in wicker cases, technically known as demi-johns, were 
 consigned to the " least rowdy " of the party for safe keeping ; 
 and the procession moved off to the ferry-boat, in which it was 
 to cross the river bodily, men, horses, carriages, and all, as the 
 manner in these parts is. 
 
 We got over the river in due course, and mustered again 
 before a little wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a 
 morass, with " Merchant tailor " painted in very large letters 
 over the door. Having settled the order of proceeding and the 
 road to be taken, we started off once more, and began to make 
 our way through an ill-favoured Black Hollow, called, less 
 expressively, the American Bottom. 
 
 The previous day had been — not to say hot, for the term is 
 weak and lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the 
 temperature. The town had been on fire ; in a blaze. But at 
 night it had come on to rain in torrents, and all night long it 
 had rained without cessation. We had a pair of very strong 
 horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a couple 
 of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud 
 and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was 
 only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now 
 the coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The air 
 resounded in all directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, 
 who, with the pigs (a coarse, ugly breed, as unwholesome-looking 
 as though they were the spontaneous growth of the country), 
 had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed 
 a log-hut ; but the' wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly 
 3cattered, for though the soil is very rich in this place, few 
 people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side 
 of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick "bush ;" and 
 everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water. 
 
 As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or 
 so of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted 
 for that purpose at a log-inn in the wood, far removed from any 
 other residence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and barer 
 
208 American notes 
 
 walled of course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was 
 a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like bed- 
 furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers. There were a couple 
 of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idly by the well ; and 
 they, and he, and the traveller at the inn, turned out to look 
 at us. 
 
 The traveller was an old man, with a grey, grisly beard two 
 inches long, a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enormous 
 eyebrows ; which almost obscured his lazy, semi-drunken glance, 
 as he stood regarding us with folded arms : poising himself 
 alternately upon his toes and heels. On being addressed by 
 one of the party, he drew nearer, and said, rubbing his chin 
 (which scraped under his horny hand like fresh gravel beneath 
 a nailed shoe), that he was from Delaware, and had lately bought 
 a farm " down there," pointing into one of the marshes where 
 the stunted trees were thickest. He was " going," he added, to 
 St. Louis, to fetch his family, whom he had left behind ; but he 
 seemed in no great hurry to bring on these encumbrances, for 
 when we moved away, he loitered back into the cabin, and was 
 plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money lasted. 
 He was a great politician, of course, and explained his opinions 
 at some length to one of our company ; but I only remember 
 that he concluded with two sentiments, one of which was, 
 Somebody for ever ; and the other, Blast everybody else ! which 
 is by no means a bad abstract of the general creed in these 
 matters. 
 
 When the horses were swollen out to about twice their 
 natural dimensions (there seems to be an idea here that this 
 kind of inflation improves their going), we went forward again, 
 through mud and mire, and damp, and festering heat, and brake 
 and bush, attended always by the music of the frogs and pigs, 
 until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called Belleville. 
 
 Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled 
 together in the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of 
 them had singularly bright doors of red and yellow ; for the 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 20<) 
 
 place had been lately visited by a travelling painter, " who got 
 along," as I was told, " by eating his way." The Criminal Court 
 was sitting, and was at that moment trying some criminals for 
 horse-stealing ; with whom it would most likely go hard : for 
 live-stock of all kinds, being necessarily very much exposed in 
 the woods, is held by the community in rather higher value 
 than human life ; and, for this reason, juries generally make a 
 point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing guilty, 
 whether or no. 
 
 The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses 
 were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road ; by 
 which is to be understood a forest path, nearly knee deep in 
 mud and slime. 
 
 There was an hotel in this place, which, like all hotels in 
 America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It was 
 an odd, shambling, low-roofed outhouse, half cow -shed and half 
 kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces 
 stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The 
 horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables 
 prepared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He had 
 ordered " wheat bread and chicken fixings," in preference to 
 " corn bread and common doings." The latter kind of refection 
 includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled 
 ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that 
 nature as may be supposed, by a tolerably wide poetical con- 
 struction, " to fix " # chicken comfortably in the digestive organs 
 of any lady or gentleman. 
 
 On one of the door-posts at this inn was a tin plate, whereon 
 was inscribed, in characters of gold, " Doctor Crocus ; " and on 
 a sheet of paper, pasted up by the side of this plate, was a 
 written announcement that Doctor Crocus would that evening 
 deliver a lecture on Phrenology for the benefit of the Belleville 
 public ; at a charge for admission of so much a head. 
 
 Straying up-stairs during the preparation of the chicken 
 fixings, I happened tP P ass the Doctor's chamber ; and as the 
 
 P 
 
210 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 door stood wide open, and the room was empty, I made bold to 
 peep in. 
 
 It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an unframed 
 portrait hanging up at the head of the bed ; a likeness, I take 
 it, of the Doctor, for the forehead was fully displayed, and great 
 stress was laid by the artist upon its phrenological developments. 
 The bed itself was covered with an old patchwork counterpane. 
 The room was destitute of carpet or of curtain. There was a 
 damp fire-place without any stove, full of wood ashes ; a chair, 
 and a very small table ; and on the last-named piece of furni- 
 ture was displayed, in grand array, the Doctor's library, con- 
 sisting of some half-dozen greasy old books. 
 
 Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the 
 whole earth out of which any man would be likely to get any- 
 thing to do him good. But the door, as I have said, stood 
 coaxingly open, and plainly said, in conjunction with the chair, 
 the portrait, the table, and the books, " Walk in, gentlemen, 
 walk in ! Don't be ill, gentlemen, when you may be well in no 
 time. Doctor Crocus is here, gentlemen, the celebrated Doctor 
 Crocus ! Doctor Crocus has come all this way to cure you, 
 gentlemen. If you haven't heard of Doctor Crocus, it's your 
 fault, gentlemen, who live a little way out of the world here : 
 not Doctor Crocus's. Walk in, gentlemen, walk in !" 
 
 In the passage below, when I went down- stairs again, was 
 Doctor Crocus himself. A crowd had flocked in from the Court 
 House, and a voice from among them called out to the landlord, 
 " Colonel ! introduce Doctor Crocus." 
 
 " Mr. Dickens," says the colonel, " Doctor Crocus." 
 
 Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking Scotch- 
 man, but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a professor 
 of the peaceful art of healing, bursts out of the concourse with 
 his right arm extended, and his chest thrown out as far as it 
 will possibly come, and says : 
 
 " Your countryman, sir !" 
 
 Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands ; and Doctor 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 211 
 
 Crocus looks as if I didn't by any means realise his expectations, 
 which, in a linen blouse, and a great straw hat with a green 
 ribbon, and no gloves, and my face and nose profusely orna- 
 mented with the stings of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it 
 is very likely I did not. 
 
 " Long in these parts, sir ? " says I. 
 
 " Three or four months, sir," says the Doctor. 
 
 "Do you think of soon returning to the old country, sir?'' 
 says I. 
 
 Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an 
 imploring look, which says so plainly, " Will you ask me that 
 again a little louder, if you please ?" that I repeat the question. 
 
 "Think of soon returning to the old country, sir?" repeats 
 the Doctor. 
 
 " To the old country, sir," I rejoin. 
 
 Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the 
 effect he produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud voice : 
 
 " Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won't catch me at that 
 just yet, sir. I am a little too fond of freedom for that, sir. 
 Ha, ha ! It's not so easy for a man to tear himself from a free 
 country such as this is, sir. Ha, ha ! No, no ! Ha, ha ! None 
 of that till one's obliged to do it, sir. No, no !" 
 
 As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head 
 knowingly, and laughs again. Many of the bystanders shake 
 their heads in concert with the Doctor, and laugh too, and look 
 at each other as much as to say, " A pretty bright and first-rate 
 sort of chap is Crocus !" and, unless I am very much mistaken, 
 a good many people went to the lecture that night who never 
 thought about phrenology, or about Doctor Crocus either, in all 
 their lives before. 
 
 From Belleville we went on, through the same desolate kind 
 of waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of a 
 moment, by the same music ; until, at three o'clock in the after- 
 noon, we halted once more at a village called Lebanon to innate 
 the horses again, and give them some corn besides : of which 
 
 P2 
 
212 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony, I walked 
 into the village, where I met a full-sized dwelling-house 
 coming downhill at a round trot, drawn by a score or more 
 of oxen. 
 
 The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the 
 managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it, and put up there 
 for the night, if possible. This course decided on, and the 
 horses being well refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came 
 upon the Prairie at sunset. , 
 
 It would be difficult to say why, or how — though it was 
 possibly from having heard and read so much about it — but the 
 effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the setting 
 sun, there lay, stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of 
 level ground ; unbroken, save by one thin line of trees, which 
 scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great blank ; until it 
 met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip : mingling with 
 its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant blue. There it 
 lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be 
 admissible, with the day going down upon it : a few birds 
 wheeling here and there : and solitude and silence reigning 
 paramount around. But the grass was not yet high ; there 
 were bare black patches on the ground ; and the few wild flowers 
 that the eye could see were poor and scanty. Great as the 
 picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to 
 
 the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest., I_ 
 
 ''relt little of that sense of freedom and ex hilaration which a 
 Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs awaken. 
 It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren monotony. 
 I felt that, in traversing the Prairies, I could never abandon 
 myself to the scene, forgetful of all else ; as I should do 
 instinctively, were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron- 
 bound coast beyond ; but should often glance towards the 
 distant and frequently receding line of the horizon, and wish 
 it gained and passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten, but 
 it is scarcely one, I think (at all events, as I saw it), to remem- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 213 
 
 ber with much pleasure, or to covet the looking on again in 
 after life. 
 
 We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its 
 water, and dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast 
 fowls, buffalo's tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, 
 bread, cheese, and butter ; biscuits, champagne, sherry ; lemon 
 and sugar for punch ; and abundance of rough ice. The meal 
 was delicious, and the entertainers were the soul of kindness 
 and good-humour. I have often recalled that cheerful party 
 to my pleasant recollection since, and shall not easily forget, 
 in junketings nearer home with friends of older date, my boon 
 companions on the Prairie. 
 
 Eeturning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at 
 which we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness 
 and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison with any 
 village alehouse of a homely kind in England. 
 
 Rising at five o'clock next morning, I took a walk about the 
 village : none of the houses were strolling about to-day, but it 
 was early for them yet, perhaps : and then amused myself by 
 lounging in a kind of farmyard behind the tavern, of which the 
 leading features were, a strange jumble of rough sheds for 
 stables ; a rude colonnade, built as a cool place of summer resort ; 
 a deep well ; a great earthen mound for keeping vegetables 
 in, in winter-time ; and a pigeon-house, whose little apertures 
 looked, as they do in all pigeon-houses, very much too small for 
 the admission of the plump and swelling-breasted birds who 
 were strutting about it, though they tried to get in never so 
 hard. That interest exhausted, I took a survey of the inn's 
 two parlours, which were decorated with coloured prints of Wash- 
 ington and President Madison, and of a white-faced young lady 
 (much speckled by the flies), who held up her gold neck-chain 
 for the admiration of the spectator, and informed all admiring 
 comers that she was "Just Seventeen :" although I should have 
 thought her older. In the best room were two oil portraits of 
 the kit-cat size, representing the landlord and his infant son ; 
 
214 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 both looking as bold as lions, and staring out of the canvas with 
 an intensity that would have been cheap at any price. They 
 were painted, I think, by the artist who had touched up the 
 Belleville doors with red and gold; for I seemed to recognise 
 his style immediately. 
 
 After breakfast we started to return by a different way from 
 that which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock 
 with an encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods 
 in carts, who had made a rousing fire which they were just 
 quitting, stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire 
 was ; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was quite cold 
 to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, as 
 we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial-places, 
 called the Monks' Mound ; in memory of a body of fanatics of 
 the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there 
 many years ago, when there were no settlers within a thousand 
 miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious climate : in which 
 lamentable fatality few rational people will suppose, perhaps, 
 that society experienced any very severe deprivation. 
 
 The track of to-day had the same features as the track of 
 yesterday. There was the swamp, the bush, the perpetual chorus 
 of frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome steam- 
 ing earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we encountered 
 a solitary broken-down waggon, full of some new settler's goods. 
 It was a pitiful sight to see one of these vehicles deep in the 
 mire ; the axletree broken ; the wheel lying idly by its side ; 
 the man gone miles away, to look for assistance ; the woman 
 seated among their wandering household gods, with a baby at 
 her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected patience ; the team of 
 oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, and breathing 
 forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and nostrils, that 
 all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come direct 
 from them. 
 
 In due time we mustered once again before the merchant 
 tailor's, and, having done so, crossed over to the city in the 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 215 
 
 ferry-boat : passing, on the way, a spot called Bloody Island, 
 the duelling-ground of St. Louis, and so designated in honour of 
 the last fatal combat fought there, which was with pistols, breast 
 to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the ground ; and 
 possibly some rational people may think of them, as of the 
 gloomy madmen on the Monks' Mound, that they were no great 
 loss to the community. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RETURN TO CINCINNATI. A STAGE-COACH HIDE FROM THAT CITY TO COLUMBUS, ANU 
 THENCE TO SANDUSKY. SO, BY LAKE ERIE, TO THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 
 
 A SI had a desire to travel through the interior of the State 
 of Ohio, and to " strike the lakes," as the phrase is, at a 
 small town called Sandusky, to which that route would conduct 
 us on our way to Niagara, we had to return from St. Louis by 
 the way we had come, and to retrace our former track as far as 
 Cincinnati. 
 
 The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being 
 very fine ; and the steamboat, which was to have started I don't 
 know how early in the morning, postponing, for the third or 
 fourth time, her departure until the afternoon ; we rode forward 
 to an old French village on the river, called properly Carondelet, 
 and nicknamed Vide Poche, and arranged that the packet should 
 call for us there. 
 
 The place consisted of a few poor cottages and two or three 
 public-houses ; the state of whose larders certainly seemed to 
 justify the second designation of the village, for there was 
 nothing to eat in any of them. At length, however, by going 
 back some half a mile or so, we found a solitary house where ham 
 and coffee were procurable ; and there we tarried to await the 
 advent of the boat, which would come in sight from the green 
 before the door, a long way off. 
 
 It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our 
 repast in a quaint little room with a bed in it, decorated with 
 some old oil-paintings, which in their time had probably done 
 duty in a Catholic chapel or monastery. The fare was very 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2l7 
 
 good, and served with great cleanliness. The house was kept 
 by a characteristic old couple, with whom we had a long talk, 
 and who were perhaps a very good sample of that kind of people 
 in the West. 
 
 The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow (not so 
 very old either, for he was but just turned sixty, I should think), 
 who had been out with the militia in the last war with England, 
 and had seen all lands of service — except a battle ; and he had 
 been very near seeing that, he added : very near. He had all 
 his life been restless and locomotive, with an irresistible desire 
 for change ; and was still the son of his old self : for, if he had 
 nothing to keep him at home, he said (slightly jerking his hat 
 and his thumb towards the window of the room in which the 
 old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the house) he would 
 clean up his musket, and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. 
 He was one of the very many descendants of Cain proper to 
 this continent, who seem destined from their birth to serve as 
 pioneers in the great human army : who gladly go on from year 
 to year extending its outposts, and leaving home after home 
 behind them ; and die at last, utterly regardless of their graves 
 being left thousands of miles behind, by the wandering genera- 
 tion who succeed. 
 
 His wife was a domesticated, kind-hearted old soul, who had 
 come with him "from the queen city of the world," which, it 
 seemed, was Philadelphia ; but had no love for this "Western 
 country, and, indeed, had little reason to bear it any ; having 
 seen her children, one by one, die here of fever, in the full prime 
 and beauty of their youth. Her heart was sore, she said, to 
 think of them ; and to talk on this theme, even to strangers, in 
 that blighted place, so far from her old home, eased it somewhat, 
 and became a melancholy pleasure. 
 
 The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the 
 poor old lady and her vagrant spouse, and making for the nearest 
 landing-place, were soon on board the Messenger again, in our 
 old cabin, and steaming down the Mississippi. 
 
2l8 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 If the coming up this river, slowly making head against the 
 stream, be an irksome journey, the shooting down it with the 
 turbid current is almost worse ; for then the boat, proceeding 
 at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, has to force its 
 passage through a labyrinth of floating logs, which, in the dark, 
 it is often impossible to see beforehand or avoid. All that 
 night the bell was never silent for five minutes at a time ; and 
 after every ring the vessel reeled again, sometimes beneath a 
 single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen dealt in quick succes- 
 sion, the lightest of which seemed more than enough to beat in 
 her frail keel, as though it had been pie-crust. Looking down 
 upon the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive with 
 monsters, as these black masses rolled upon the surface, or came 
 starting up again, head first, when the boat, in ploughing her 
 way among a shoal of such- obstructions, drove a few among 
 them, for the moment, under water. Sometimes the engine 
 stopped during a long interval, and then before her and behind, 
 and gathering close about her on all sides, were so many of these 
 ill-favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in ; the centre 
 of a floating island ; and was constrained to pause until they 
 parted somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, and 
 opened by degrees a channel out. 
 
 In good time next morning, however, we came again in sight 
 of the detestable morass called Cairo : and stopping there to 
 take in wood, lay alongside a barge, whose starting timbers 
 scarcely held together. It was moored to the bank, and on its 
 side was painted "Coffee House;" that being, I suppose, the 
 floating paradise to which the people fly for shelter when they lose 
 their houses for a month or two beneath the hideous waters of 
 the Mississippi. But, looking southward from this point, we 
 had the satisfaction of seeing that intolerable river dragging its 
 slimy length and ugly freight abruptly off towards New Orleans ; 
 and, passing a yellow line which stretched across the current, 
 were again upon the clear Ohio, never, I trust, to see the 
 Mississippi more, saving in troubled dreams and nightmares, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2 10. 
 
 Leaving it for the company of its sparkling neighbour was like 
 the transition from pain to ease, or the awakening from a 
 horrible vision to cheerful realities. 
 
 We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night, and gladly 
 availed ourselves of its excellent hotel. Next day we went on 
 in the Ben Franklin, a beautiful mail steamboat, and reached 
 Cincinnati shortly after midnight. Being by this time nearly 
 tired of sleeping upon shelves, we had remained awake to go 
 ashore straightway; and groping a passage across the dark decks 
 of other boats, and among labyrinths of engine machinery and 
 leaking casks of molasses, we reached the streets, knocked up 
 the porter at the hotel where we had stayed before, and were, to 
 our great joy, safely housed soon afterwards. 
 
 We rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our 
 journey to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage- 
 coach travelling, which, with those I have already glanced at, 
 comprehend the main characteristics of this mode of transit in 
 America, I will take the reader as our fellow-passenger, and 
 pledge myself to perform the distance with all possible dispatch. 
 
 Our place of destination, in the first instance, is Columbus. 
 It is distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, 
 but there is a macadamised road (rare blessing !) the whole way, 
 and the rate of travelling upon it is six miles an hour. 
 
 We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail- 
 coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric, that 
 it appears to be troubled with a tendency of blood to the head. 
 Dropsical it certainly is, for it will hold a dozen passengers 
 inside. But, wonderful to add, it is very clean and bright, 
 being nearly new ; and rattles through the streets of Cincinnati 
 
 gaily 
 
 Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, 
 and luxuriant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Some- 
 times we pass a field where the strong bristling stalks of Indian 
 corn look like a crop of walking-sticks, and sometimes an enclo- 
 sure where the green wheat is springing up among a labyrinth of 
 
220 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 "stumps; the primitive worm-fence is universal, and an ugly 
 thing it is ; but the farms are neatly kept, and, save for these 
 differences, one might be travelling just now in Kent. 
 
 We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull 
 and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and 
 holds it to the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever any one to 
 help him ; there are seldom any loungers standing round ; and 
 never any stable company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, 
 when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting 
 again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young 
 horse : which is to catch him, harness him against his will, and 
 put him in a stage-coach without further notice : but we get on 
 somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent 
 struggle ; and jog on as before again. 
 
 Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three 
 half-drunken loafers will come loitering out with their hands in 
 their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking- 
 chairs, or lounging on the window-sill, or sitting on a rail within 
 the colonnade ; they have not often anything to say, though, 
 either to us or to each other, but sit there idly staring at the 
 coach and horses. The landlord of the inn is usually among 
 them, and seems, of all the party, to be the least connected with 
 the business of the house. Indeed, he is, with reference to the 
 tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach and passen- 
 gers : whatever happens in his sphere of action, he is quite 
 indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind. 
 
 The frequent change of coachmen works no change or variety 
 in the coachman's character. He is always dirt}', sullen, and 
 taciturn. If he be capable of smartness of any kind, moral or 
 physical, he has a faculty of concealing it which is truly mar- 
 vellous. He never speaks to you as you sit beside him on the 
 box, and if you speak to him, he answers (if at all) in mono- 
 syllables. He points out nothing on the road, and seldom looks 
 at anything : being, to all appearance, thoroughly weary of it, 
 and of existence generally. As to doing the honours of his 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 221 
 
 coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. The 
 coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on wheels : 
 not because you are in it. Sometimes, towards the end of a 
 long stage, he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment 
 of an election song, but his face never sings along with him : it 
 is only his voice, and not often that. 
 
 He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers 
 himself with a pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the 
 box passenger, especially when the wind blows towards him, are 
 not agreeable. 
 
 Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of the 
 inside passengers ; or whenever any bystander addresses them, 
 or any one among them ; or they address each other ; you will 
 hear one phrase repeated over and over and over again to the 
 most extraordinary extent. It is an ordinary and unpromising 
 phrase enough, being neither more nor less than " Yes, sir ;" 
 but it is adapted to every variety of circumstance, and fills up 
 every pause in the conversation. Thus : 
 
 The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where 
 we are to stay to dine on this journey. The coach drives up to 
 the door of an inn. The day is warm, and there are several 
 idlers lingering about the tavern, and waiting for the public 
 dinner. Among them is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, 
 swinging himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pavement. 
 
 As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks out of 
 the window. 
 
 Straw Hat (to the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair). I 
 reckon that's Judge Jefferson, ain't it ? 
 
 Brown Hat (still swinging ; speaking very slowly ; and with- 
 out any emotion whatever). Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. Warm weather, Judge. 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. There was a snap of cold last week. 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
222 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 A pause, they look at each other very seriously. 
 
 Straw Hat. I calculate you'll have got through that case of 
 the corporation, Judge, by this time, now ? 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. How did the verdict go, sir ? 
 
 Brown Hat. For the defendant, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat (interrogatively). Yes, sir ? 
 
 Brown Hat (affirmatively). Yes, sir. 
 
 Both (musingly, as each gazes down the street). Yes, sir. 
 
 Another pause. They look at each other again, still more 
 seriously than before. 
 
 Brown Hat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, 
 I guess. 
 
 Straw Hat (doubtingly). Yes, sir. 
 
 Brown Hat (looking at his watch). Yes, sir ; nigh upon 
 two hours. 
 
 Straw Hat (raising his eyebrows in very great surprise). 
 Yes, sir ! 
 
 Brown Hat (decisively, as he puts up his watch). Yes, sir. 
 
 All the other inside Passengers (among themselves). 
 Yes, sir. 
 
 Coachman (in a very surly tone). No, it an't. 
 
 Straw Hat (to the coachman). Well, I don't know, sir. 
 We were a pretty tall time coming that last fifteen mile. That's 
 a fact. 
 
 The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to enter 
 into any controversy on a subject so far removed from his sym- 
 pathies and feelings, another passenger says, " Yes, sir ;" and the 
 gentleman in the straw hat, in acknowledgment of his courtesy, 
 says, " Yes, sir," to him in return. The straw hat then inquires 
 of the brown hat whether that coach in which he (the straw hat) 
 then sits is not a new one ? To which the brown hat again 
 makes answer, " Yes, sir." 
 
 Straw Hat. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of varnish, 
 sir? 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 223 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 All the other inside Passengers. Yes, sir. 
 
 Brown Hat (to the company in general). Yes, sir. 
 
 The conversational powers of the company having been by 
 this time pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door and 
 gets out ; and all the rest alight also. We dine soon afterwards 
 with the boarders in the house, and have nothing to drink but 
 tea and coffee. As they are both very bad, and the water is 
 worse, I ask for brandy ; but it is a Temperance Hotel, and 
 spirits are not to be had for love or money. This preposterous 
 forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant throats of 
 travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but I never dis- 
 covered that the scruples of such wincing landlords induced 
 them to preserve any unusually nice balance between the quality 
 of their fare and their scale of charges : on the contrary, I rather 
 suspected them of diminishing the one and exalting the other, 
 by way of recompense for the loss of their profit on the sale of 
 spirituous liquors. After all, perhaps, the plainest course for 
 persons of such tender consciences would be, a total abstinence 
 from tavern-keeping. 
 
 Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at 
 the door (for the coach has been changed in the interval), and 
 resume our journey ; which continues through the same kind of 
 country until evening, when we come to the town where we are 
 to stop for tea and supper ; and having delivered the mail-bags 
 at the Post Office, ride through the usual wide street, lined with 
 the usual stores and houses (the drapers always having hung up 
 at their door, by way of sign, a piece of bright red cloth), to the 
 hotel where this meal is prepared. There being many boarders 
 here, we sit down a large party, and a very melancholy one as 
 usual. But there is a buxom hostess at the head of the table, 
 and opposite, a simple Welsh schoolmaster with his wife and 
 child ; who came here, on a speculation of greater promise than 
 performance, to teach the classics : and they are sufficient sub- 
 jects of interest until the meal is over, and another coach is 
 
224 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 ready. In it we go on once more, lighted by a bright moon, 
 until midnight ; when we stop to change the coach again, and 
 remain for half an hour or so in a miserable room, with a 
 blurred lithograph of Washington over the smoky fire-place, and 
 a mighty jug of cold water on the table : to "which refreshment 
 the moody passengers do so apply themselves that they would 
 seem to be, one and all, keen patients of Doctor Sangrado. 
 Among them is a very little boy, who chews tobacco like a very 
 big one ; and a droning gentleman, who talks arithmetically and 
 statistically on all subjects, from poetry downwards ; and who 
 always speaks in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, 
 and with very grave deliberation. -He came outside just now, 
 and told me how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had 
 been spirited away and married by a certain captain lived in 
 these parts ; and how this uncle was so valiant and ferocious 
 that he shouldn't wonder if he were to follow the said captain to 
 England, " and shoot him down in the street, wherever he found 
 him ;" in the feasibility of which strong measure I, being for the 
 moment rather prone to contradiction, from feeling half asleep 
 and very tired, declined to acquiesce : assuring him that if the 
 uncle did resort to it, or gratified any other little whim of the 
 like nature, he would find himself one morning prematurely 
 throttled at the Old Bailey ; and that he would do well to make 
 his will before he went, as he would certainly want it before he 
 had been in Britain very long. 
 
 On we go all night, and by-and-by the day begins to break, 
 and presently the first cheerful rays of the warm sun come 
 slanting on us brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable 
 waste of sodden grass, and dull trees, and squalid huts, whose 
 aspect is forlorn and grievous in the last degree. A very desert 
 in the wood, whose growth of green is dank and noxious like 
 that upon the top of standing water : where poisonous fungus 
 grows in the rare footprint on the oozy ground, and sprouts like 
 witches' coral from the crevices in the cabin wall and floor ; it 
 is a hideous thing to he upon the very threshold of a city. But 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, 225 
 
 it was purchased years ago, and as the owner cannot be dis- 
 covered, the State has been unable to reclaim it. So there it 
 remains, in the midst of cultivation and improvement, like 
 ground accursed, and made obscene and rank by some great 
 crime. 
 
 We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock, and stayed 
 there, to refresh, that day and night : having excellent apart- 
 ments in a very large unfinished hotel called the Neill House, 
 which were richly fitted with the polished wood of the black 
 walnut, and opened on a handsome portico and stone verandah, 
 like rooms in some Italian mansion. The town is clean and 
 pretty, and of course is " going to be " much larger. It is the 
 seat of the State legislature of Ohio, and lays claim, in conse- 
 quence, to some consideration and importance. 
 
 There being no stage-coach next day upon the road we wished 
 to take, I hired " an extra," at a reasonable charge, to carry us 
 1:0 Tiffin ; a small town from whence there is a railroad to San- 
 dusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stage-coach, such 
 as I have described, changing horses and drivers, as the stage- 
 coach would, but was exclusively our own for the journey. To 
 insure our having horses at the proper stations, and being incom- 
 moded by no strangers, the proprietors sent an agent on the 
 box, who was to accompany us the whole way through ; and 
 thus attended, and bearing with us, besides, a hamper full of 
 savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine ; we started off again, in 
 high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next morning, very much 
 delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the 
 roughest journey. 
 
 It was well for us that we were in this humour, for the road 
 we went over that day was certainly enough to have shaken 
 tempers that were not resolutely at Set Fair down to some inches 
 below Stormy. At one time we were all flung together in a 
 heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another we were 
 crushing our heads against the roof. Now one side was down 
 deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now 
 
226 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers ; and now 
 it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with all four 
 horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, 
 looking coolly back at it, as though they would say, " Unharness 
 us. It can't be done." The drivers on these roads, who cer- 
 tainly get over the road in a manner which is quite miraculous, 
 so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew 
 fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common 
 circumstance, on looking out of the window, to see the coach- 
 man, with the ends of a pair of reins in his hands, apparently 
 driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at 
 one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some 
 idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over 
 what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing 
 trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them to settle there. 
 The very slightest of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage 
 fell from log to log was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated 
 all the bones in the human body. It would be impossible to 
 experience a similar set of sensations in any other circumstances, 
 unless, perhaps, in attempting to.go up to the top of St. Paul's 
 in an omnibus. Never, never once., that day, was the coach in 
 any position, attitude, or kind of motion to which we are accus- 
 tomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest approach to 
 one's experience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that 
 goes on wheels. 
 
 Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, 
 and though we had left Summer behind us in the west, and 
 were fast leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara and 
 home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of 
 the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments 
 with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs (who swarm in 
 this part of the country like grains of sand on the seashore, to 
 the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada), we went for- 
 ward again gaily. 
 
 As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 227 
 
 until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver 
 seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of 
 knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling asleep, 
 for every now and then a wheel would strike against an unseen 
 stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight 
 and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the box. Nor was there 
 any reason to dread the least danger from furious driving, inas- 
 much as over that broken ground the horses had enough to do 
 to walk ; as to shying, there was no room for that ; and a herd 
 of wild elephants could not have run away in such a wood, 
 with such a coach at their heels. So we stumbled along, quite 
 satisfied. 
 
 These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American 
 travelling. The varying illusions they present to the unac- 
 customed eye, as it grows dark, are quite astonishing in their 
 number and reality. Now there is a Grecian urn erected in the 
 centre of a lonely field ; now there is a woman weeping at a 
 tomb ; now a very commonplace old gentleman in a white waist- 
 coat, with a thumb thrust into each armhole of his coat ; now a 
 student poring on a book ; now a crouching negro ; now a horse, 
 a dog, a cannon, an armed man ; a hunchback throwing off his 
 cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often as 
 entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and 
 never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force 
 themselves upon me, whether I would or no ; and, strange to 
 say, I sometimes recognised in them counterparts of figures 
 once familiar to me in pictures attached to childish books, for- 
 gotten long ago. 
 
 It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, 
 and the trees were so close together that their dry branches 
 rattled against the coach on either side, and obliged us all to 
 keep our heads within. It lightened, too, for three whole hours; 
 each flash being very bright, and blue, and long ; and as the 
 vivid streaks came darting in among the crowded branches, and 
 the thunder rolled gloomily above the tree-tops, one could 
 
 Q2 
 
228 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 scarcely help thinking that there were better neighbourhoods at 
 such a time than thick woods afforded. 
 
 At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few 
 feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, 
 an Indian village, where we were to stay till morning, lay 
 before us. 
 
 They were gone to bed at the log-inn, which was the only 
 house of entertainment in the place, but soon answered to our 
 knocking, and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or com- 
 mon room, tapestried with old newspapers, pasted against the 
 wall. The bedchamber to which my wife and I were shown 
 was a large, low, ghostly room ; with a quantity of withered 
 branches on the hearth, and two doors without any fastening, 
 opposite to each other, both opening on the black night and 
 wild country, and so contrived that one of them always blew 
 the other open : a novelty in domestic architecture which I do 
 not remember to have seen before, and which I was somewhat 
 disconcerted to have forced on my attention after getting into 
 bed, as I had a considerable sum in gold, for our travelling 
 expenses, in my dressing-case. Some of the luggage, however, 
 piled against the panels, soon settled this difficulty, and my 
 sleep would not have been very much affected that night, I 
 believe, though it had failed to do so. 
 
 My Boston friend climbed up to bed somewhere in the roof, 
 where another guest was already snoring hugely. But, being 
 bitten beyond his power of endurance, he turned out again, and 
 fled for shelter to the coach, which was airing itself in front of 
 the house. This was not a very politic step as it turned out, 
 for the pigs scenting him, and looking upon the coach as a kind 
 of pie with some manner of meat inside, grunted round it so 
 hideously, that he was afraid to come out again, and lay there 
 shivering till morning. Nor was it possible • to warm him, 
 when he did come out, by means of a glass of brandy ; for in 
 Indian villages, the legislature, with a very good and wise inten- 
 tion, forbids the sale of spirits by tavern-keepers. The pre- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 22g 
 
 caution, however, is quite inefficacious, for the Indians never 
 fail to procure liquor of a worse kind, at a dearer price, from 
 travelling pedlers. 
 
 It is a settlement of the Wyandot Indians who inhabit this 
 place. Among the company at breakfast was a mild old gentle- 
 man, who had been for many years employed by the United 
 States Government in conducting negotiations with the Indians, 
 and who had just concluded a treaty with these people by which 
 they bound themselves, in consideration of a certain annual 
 sum, to remove next year to some land provided for them west 
 of the Mississippi, and a little way beyond St. Louis. He gave 
 me a moving account of their strong attachment to the familiar 
 scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial-places of 
 their kindred ; and of their great reluctance to leave them. He 
 had witnessed many such removals, and always with pain, though 
 he knew that they departed for their own good. The question 
 whether this tribe should go or stay had been discussed among 
 them a day or two before, in a hut erected for the purpose, the 
 logs of which still lay upon the ground before the inn. When 
 the speaking was done, the ayes and noes were ranged on 
 opposite sides, and every male adult voted in his turn. The 
 moment the result was known, the minority (a large one) cheer- 
 fully yielded to the rest, and withdrew all kind of opposition. 
 
 We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on 
 shaggy ponies. They were so like the meaner sort of gipsies, 
 that if I could have seen any of them in England, I should have 
 concluded, as a matter of course, that they belonged to that 
 wandering and restless people. 
 
 Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed forward 
 again, over a rather worse road than yesterday, if possible, and 
 arrived about noon at Tiffin, where Ave parted with the extra. 
 At two o'clock we took the railroad ; the travelling on which was 
 very slow, its construction being indifferent, and the ground wet 
 and marshy ; and arrived at Sandusky in time to dine that 
 evening. We put up at a comfortable little hotel on the brink 
 
230 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 of Lake Erie, lay there that night, and had no choice but to 
 wait there next day, until a steamboat bound for Buffalo appeared. 
 The town, which was sluggish and uninteresting enough, was 
 something like the back of an English watering-place out of the 
 season. 
 
 Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us 
 comfortable, was a handsome middle-aged man, who had come to 
 this town from New England, in which part of the country he 
 was " raised." When I say that he constantly walked in and 
 out of the room with his hat on ; and stopped to converse in 
 the same free-and-easy state : and lay down on our sofa, and 
 pulled his newspaper out of his pocket, and read it at his ease ; 
 I merely mention these traits as characteristic of the country : 
 not at all as being matter of complaint, or as having been dis- 
 agreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by such 
 proceedings at home, because there they are not the custom, 
 and where they are not, they would be impertinences ; but, in 
 America, the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this kind 
 is to treat his guests hospitably and well ; and I had no more 
 right, and I can truly say no more disposition, to measure his 
 conduct by our English rule and standard, than I had to quarrel 
 with him for, not being of the exact stature which would qualify 
 him for admission into the Queen's Grenadier Guards. As little 
 inclination had I to find fault with a funny old lady who was an 
 upper domestic in this establishment, and who, when she came 
 to wait upon us at any meal, sat herself down comfortably in 
 the most convenient chair, and, producing a large pin to pick 
 her teeth with, remained performing that ceremony, and stead- 
 fastly regarding us meanwhile with much gravity and composure 
 (now and then pressing us to eat a little more), until it was time 
 to clear away. It was enough for us that whatever we wished 
 done was done with great civility and readiness, and a desire to 
 oblige, not only here, but everywhere else ; and that all our 
 wants were, in general, zealously anticipated. 
 
 We were taking an early dinner at this house, on the day 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2^J 
 
 after our arrival, which was Sunday, when a steamboat came in 
 sight, and presently touched at the wharf. As she proved to be 
 on her way to Buffalo, we hurried on board with all speed, and 
 soon left Sandusky far behind us. 
 
 She was a large vessel of five hundred tons, and handsomely 
 fitted up, though with high-pressure engines ; which always 
 conveyed that kind of feeling to me which I should be likely to 
 experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the first floor of a 
 powder-mill. She was laden with flour, some casks of which 
 commodity were stored upon the deck, The captain coming up 
 to have a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, seated 
 himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus of private 
 life ; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his pocket, began to 
 " whittle " it as he talked, by paring thin slices off the edges. 
 And he whittled with such industry and hearty good-will, that 
 but for his being called away very soon, it must have disap- 
 peared bodily, and left nothing in its place but grist and shavings. 
 
 After calling at one or two flat places, with low dams stretch- 
 ing out ' into the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, like 
 windmills without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch vignette, 
 we came at midnight to. Cleveland, where we lay all night, and 
 until nine o'clock next morning. 
 
 I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from 
 having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in the 
 shape of a newspaper, which was very strong indeed upon the 
 subject of LoTd Ashburton's recent arrival at Washington, to 
 adjust the points in dispute between the United States Govern- 
 ment and Great Britain : informing its readers that as America 
 had " whipped " England in her infancy, and whipped her again 
 in her youth, so it was clearly necessary that she must whip her 
 once "again in her maturity : and pledging its credit to all True 
 Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in the approaching 
 negotiations, and sent the English Lord home again in double- 
 quick time, they should, within two years, sing "Yankee Doodle 
 in Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in the scarlet courts of West- 
 
232 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 minster ! " I found it a pretty town, and had the satisfaction 
 of beholding the outside of the office of the journal from which I 
 have just quoted. I did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit 
 who indited the paragraphs in question, but I have no doubt he 
 is a prodigious man in his way, and held in high repute by a 
 select circle. 
 
 There was a gentleman on board, to whom, as I unintentionally 
 learned through the thin partition which divided our state-room 
 from the cabin in which he and his wife conversed together, I 
 was unwittingly the occasion of very great uneasiness. I don't 
 know why or wherefore, but I appeared to run in his mind per- 
 petually, and to dissatisfy him very much. First of all I heard 
 him say : and the most ludicrous part of the business was, that 
 he said it in my very ear, and could not have communicated 
 more directly with me, if he had leaned upon my shoulder, and 
 whispered me: " Boz is on board still, my dear." After a con- 
 siderable pause he added, complainingly, " Boz keeps himself 
 very close : " which was true enough, for I was not very well, 
 and was lying down, with a book. I thought he had done with 
 me after this, but I was deceived ; for a long interval having 
 elapsed, during which I imagine him to have been turning rest- 
 lessly from side to side, and trying to go to sleep, he broke out 
 again with, " I suppose that Boz will be writing a book by-and- 
 by, and putting all our names in it ! " at which imaginary con- 
 sequence of being on board a boat with Boz, he groaned, and 
 became silent. 
 
 We called at the town of Erie at eight o'clock that night, 
 and lay there an hour. Between five and six next morning we 
 arrived at Buffalo, where we breakfasted ; and, being too near 
 the Great Falls to wait patiently anywhere else, we set off by the 
 train, the same morning at nine o'clock, to Niagara. 
 
 It was a miserable day ; chilly and raw ; a damp mist 
 falling ; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and 
 wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for the roar ; 
 and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 233 
 
 knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards 
 them ; every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within 
 a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white 
 clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the depths of the 
 earth. That was all. At length we alighted : and then, for 
 the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the 
 ground tremble underneath my feet. 
 
 The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain and half- 
 melted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at 
 the bottom, and climbing, with two English officers who were 
 crossing and had joined me, over some broken rocks, deafened 
 by the noise, half blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. We 
 were at the foot of the American Fall. I could see an immense 
 torrent of water tearing headlong down from some great height, 
 but had no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but vague 
 immensity. 
 
 When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing 
 the swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to 
 feel what it was : but I was in a manner stunned, and unable to 
 comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was not until I came 
 on Table Rock, and looked — Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright 
 green water ! — that it came upon me in its full might and majesty. 
 
 Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, 
 the first effect, and the enduring one — instant and lasting — of 
 the tremendous spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tran- 
 quillity, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of 
 Eternal Rest and Happiness : nothing of gloom or terror. 
 Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of 
 Beauty ; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its 
 pulses cease to beat, for ever. 
 
 Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my 
 view, and lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable 
 days we passed on that Enchanted Ground ! What voices spoke 
 from out the thundering water ; what faces, faded from the earth, 
 looked out upon me from its gleaming depths ; what Heavenly 
 
234 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 promise glistened in those angels' tears, the drops of many hues, 
 that showered around, and twined themselves about the gorgeous 
 arches which the changing rainbows made ! 
 
 I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian . side, 
 whither I had gone at first. I never crossed the river again ; 
 for I knew there were people on the other shore, and in such 
 a place it is natural to shun strange company. To wander to 
 and fro all day, and see the cataracts from all points of view ; 
 to stand upon the edge of the Great Horse-shoe Fall, marking 
 the hurried water gathering strength as it approached the verge, 
 yet seeming, too, to pause before it shot into the gulf below ; 
 to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as it came 
 streaming down ; to climb the neighbouring heights and watch 
 it through the trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids 
 hurrying on to take its fearful plunge ; to linger in the shadow 
 of the solemn rocks three miles below ; watching the river as, 
 stirred by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the 
 echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath the surface, by its 
 giant leap ; to have Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and 
 by the moon, red in the day's decline, and grey as evening slowly 
 fell upon it ; to look upon it every day, and wake up in the 
 night and hear its ceaseless voice : this was enough. 
 
 I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll 
 and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long ; still are the rain- 
 bows spanning them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the sun 
 is on them, do they shine and glow like molten gold. Still, 
 when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem to 
 crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down 
 the rock like dense white smoke. But always does the mighty 
 stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from its 
 unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and 
 mist, which is never laid : which has haunted this place with 
 the same dread solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, 
 and that first flood before the Deluge — Light — came rushing on 
 Creation at the word of God. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IN CANADA : TORONTO ; KINGSTON J MONTREAL ; QUEREC ; ST. JOHN'S. IN THE TJNITEB 
 STATES AGAIN : LEBANON ; THE SHAKER VILLAGE ; AND WEST POINT. 
 
 |~ WISH to abstain from instituting any comparison, or draw- 
 ing any parallel whatever, between the social features of the 
 United States and those of the British possessions in Canada. 
 For this reason, I shall confine myself to a very brief account of 
 our journeyings in the latter territory. 
 
 But, before I leave Niagara, I must advert to one disgusting 
 circumstance, which can hardly have escaped the observation of 
 any decent traveller who has visited the Falls. 
 
 On Table Rock there is a cottage belonging to a Guide, where 
 little relics of the place are sold, and where visitors register 
 their names in a book kept for the purpose. On the wall of the 
 room in which a great many of these volumes are preserved, the 
 following request is posted : " Visitors will please not copy nor 
 extract the remarks and poetical effusions from the registers and 
 albums kept. here." 
 
 But for this intimation, I should have let them lie upon the 
 tables on which they were strewn with careful negligence, like 
 books in a drawing-room : being quite satisfied with the stu- 
 pendous silliness of certain stanzas with an anti-climax at the end 
 of each, which were framed and hung up on the wall. Curious, 
 however, after reading this announcement, to see what kind of 
 morsels were so carefully preserved, I turned a few leaves, and 
 found them scrawled all over with the vilest and the filthiest 
 ribaldry that ever human hogs delighted in. 
 
 It is humiliating enough to know that there are among men 
 
236 American notes 
 
 brutes so obscene and worthless, that they can delight in 
 laying their miserable profanations upon the very steps of 
 Nature's greatest altar. But that these should be hoarded up 
 for the delight of their fellow-swine, and kept in a public place 
 where any eyes may see them, is a disgrace to the English 
 language in which they are written (though I hope few of these 
 entries have been made by Englishmen), and a reproach to the 
 English side, on which they are preserved. 
 
 The quarters of our soldiers at Niagara are finely and airily 
 situated. Some of them are large detached houses on the plain 
 above the Falls, which were originally designed for hotels ; and 
 in the evening-time,, when the women and children were lean- 
 ing over the balconies watching the men as they played at ball 
 and other games upon the grass before the door, they often pre- 
 sented a little picture of cheerfulness and animation which made 
 it quite a pleasure to pass that way. 
 
 At any garrisoned point where the line of demarcation between 
 one country and another is so very narrow as at Niagara, deser- 
 tion from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of frequent occurrence : 
 and it may be reasonably supposed that when the soldiers enter- 
 tain the wildest and maddest hopes of the fortune and inde- 
 pendence that await them on the other side, the impulse to 
 play traitor, which such a place suggests to dishonest minds, is 
 not weakened. But it very rarely happens that the men who 
 do desert are happy or contented afterwards ; and many instances 
 have been known in which they have confessed their grievous 
 disappointment, and their earnest desire to return to their old 
 service, if they could but be assured of pardon, or of lenient 
 treatment. Many of their comrades, notwithstanding, do the 
 like from time to time ; and instances of loss of life in the effort 
 to cross the river with this object are far from being uncommon. 
 Several men were drowned in the attempt to swim across, not 
 long ago ; and one, who had the madness to trust himself upon 
 a table as a raft, was swept down to the whirlpool, where his 
 mangled body eddied round and round some days. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 237 
 
 I am inclined to think that the noise of the Falls is very 
 much exaggerated ; and this will appear the more probable 
 when the depth of the great basin in which the water is received 
 is taken into account. At no time during our stay there was 
 the wind at all high or boisterous, but we never heard them 
 three miles off, even at the very quiet time of sunset, though 
 Ave often tried. 
 
 Queenston, at which place the steamboats start for Toronto 
 (or I should rather say at which place they call, for their wharf 
 is at Lewiston, on the opposite shore), is situated in a delicious 
 valley, through which the Niagara River, in colour a very deep 
 green, pursues its course. It is approached by a road that takes 
 its winding way among the heights by which the town is 
 sheltered ; and, seen from this point, is extremely beautiful and 
 picturesque. On the most conspicuous of these heights stood 
 a monument erected by the Provincial Legislature in memory of 
 General Brock, who was slain in a battle with the American 
 Forces, after having won the victory. Some vagabond, supposed 
 to be a fellow of the name of Lett, who is now, or who lately 
 was, in prison as a felon, blew up this monument two years ago, 
 and it is now a melancholy ruin, with a long fragment of iron 
 railing hanging dejectedly from its top, and waving to and fro 
 like a wild ivy branch or broken vine stem. It is of much 
 higher importance than it may seem, that this statue should be 
 repaired at the public cost, as it ought to have been long ago. 
 Firstly, because it is beneath the dignity of England to allow a 
 memorial raised in honour of one of her defenders to remain in 
 this condition, on the very spot where he died. Secondly, 
 because the sight of it in its present state, and the recollection 
 of the unpunished outrage which brought it to this pass, is not 
 very likely to soothe down border feelings among English sub- 
 jects here, or compose their border quarrels and dislikes. 
 
 I was standing on the wharf at this place, watching the 
 passengers embarking in a steamboat which preceded that whose 
 coming we awaited, and participating in the anxiety with which 
 
238 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 a sergeant's wife was collecting her few goods together — keep- 
 ing one distracted eye hard upon the porters, who were hurry- 
 ing them on board, and the other on a hoopless washing-tub 
 for which, as being the most utterly worthless of all her 
 movables, she seemed to entertain particular affection — when 
 three or four soldiers with a recruit came up, and went on board. 
 
 The recruit was a likely young fellow enough, strongly built 
 and well made, but by no means sober : indeed, he had all the 
 air of a man who had been more or less drunk for some days. 
 He carried a small bundle over his shoulder, slung at the end 
 of a walking-stick, and had a short pipe in his mouth. He was 
 as dusty and dirty as recruits usually are, and his shoes betokened 
 that he had travelled on foot some distance, but he was in a 
 very jocose state, and shook hands with this soldier, and clapped 
 that one on the back, and talked and laughed continually, like 
 a roaring idle dog as he was. 
 
 The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with him : 
 seeming to say, as they stood straightening their canes in their 
 hands, and looking coolly at him over their glazed stocks, " Go 
 on, my boy, while you may ! you'll know better by-and-by :" 
 when suddenly the novice, who had been backing towards the 
 gangway in his noisy merriment, fell overboard before their eyes, 
 and splashed heavily down into the river between the vessel and 
 the dock. 
 
 I never saw such a good thing as the change that came over 
 these soldiers in an instant. Almost before the man was down, 
 their professional manner, their stiffness and constraint, Avere 
 gone, and they were filled with the most violent energy. In 
 less time than is required to tell it, they had him out again, 
 feet first, with the tails of his coat flapping over his eyes, every- 
 thing about him hanging the wrong way, and the water stream- 
 ing off at every thread in his threadbare dress. But the moment 
 they set him upright, and found that he was none the worse, 
 they were soldiers again, looking over their glazed stocks more 
 composedly than ever. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 239 
 
 The half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment, as if 
 his first impulse were to express some gratitude for his preser- 
 vation, but seeing them with this air of total unconcern, and 
 having his wet pipe presented to him with an oath by the soldier 
 who had been by far the most anxious of the party, he stuck it 
 in his mouth, thrust his hands into his moist pockets, and, 
 without even shaking the water off his clothes, walked on board 
 whistling ; not to say as if nothing had happened, but as if he 
 had meant to do it, and it had been a perfect success. 
 
 Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and 
 soon bore us to the mouth of the Niagara ; where the stars and 
 stripes of America flutter on one side, and the Union Jack of 
 England on the other : and so narrow is the space between 
 them that the sentinels in either fort can often hear the watch- 
 word of the other country given. Thence we emerged on Lake 
 Ontario, an inland sea ; and by half-past six o'clock were at 
 Toronto. 
 
 The country round this town, being very flat, is bare of scenic 
 interest ; but the town itself is full of life and motion, bustle, 
 business, and improvement. The streets are well paved, and 
 lighted with gas ; the houses are large and good ; the shops 
 excellent. Many of them have a display of goods in their 
 windows, such as may be seen in thriving county towns in 
 England ; and there are some which would do no discredit to 
 the metropolis itself. There is a good stone prison here ; and 
 there are, besides, a handsome church, a Court-house, public 
 offices, many commodious private residences, and a Government 
 Observatory for noting and recording the magnetic variations. 
 In the College of Upper Canada, which is one of the public 
 establishments of the city, a sound education in every depart- 
 ment of polite learning can be had at a very moderate expense : 
 the annual charge for the instruction of each pupil not exceed- 
 ing nine pounds sterling. It has pretty good endowments in 
 the way of land, and is a valuable and useful institution. 
 
 The first stone of a new college had been laid but a few days 
 
240 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 before by the Governor General. It will be a handsome, spacious 
 edifice, approached by a long avenue, which is already planted 
 and made available as a public walk. The town is well adapted 
 for wholesome exercise at all seasons, for the footways in the 
 thoroughfares which lie beyond the principal street are planked 
 like floors, and kept in very good and clean repair. 
 
 It is a matter of deep regret that political differences should 
 have run high in this place, and led to most discreditable and 
 disgraceful results. It is not long since guns were discharged 
 from a window in this town at the successful candidates in an 
 election, and the coachman of one of them was actually shot in 
 the body, though not dangerously wounded. But one man was 
 killed on the same occasion ; and from the very window whence 
 he received his death, the very flag which shielded his murderer 
 (not only in the commission of his crime, but from its conse- 
 quences), was displayed again on the occasion of the public 
 ceremony performed by the Governor General to which I have 
 just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there is but 
 one which could be so employed : I need not say that flag was 
 orange. 
 
 The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon. By eight 
 o'clock next morning the traveller is at the end of his journey, 
 which is performed by steamboat upon Lake Ontario, calling at 
 Port Hope and Coburg, the latter a cheerful, thriving little town. 
 Vast quantities of flour form the chief item in the freight of 
 these vessels. We had no fewer than one thousand and eighty 
 barrels on board between Coburg and Kingston. 
 
 The latter place, which is now the seat of government in 
 Canada, is a very poor town, rendered still poorer in the appear- 
 ance of its market-place by the ravages of a recent fire. Indeed, 
 it may be said of Kingston, that one half of it appears to be 
 burnt down, and the other half not to be built up. The Govern- 
 ment House is neither elegant nor commodious, yet it is almost 
 the only house of any importance in the neighbourhood. 
 
 There is an admirable gaol here, well and wisely governed, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. i\t 
 
 and excellently regulated in every respect. The men Avere 
 employed as shoemakers, ropemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, car- 
 penters, and stone-cutters ; and in building a new prison, which 
 was pretty far advanced towards completion. The female 
 prisoners were occupied in needlework. Among them was a 
 beautiful girl of twenty, who had been there nearly three years. 
 She acted as bearer of secret dispatches for the self-styled Patriots 
 on Navy Island during the Canadian Insurrection: sometimes 
 dressing as a girl, and carrying them in her stays ; sometimes 
 attiring herself as a boy, and secreting them in the lining of her 
 hat. In the latter character she always rode as a boy would, 
 which was nothing to her, for she could govern any horse that 
 any man could ride, and could drive four-in-hand with the best 
 whip in those parts. Setting forth on one of her patriotic 
 missions, she appropriated to herself the first horse she could 
 lay her hands on ; and this offence had brought her where I saw 
 her. She had quite a lovely face, though, as the reader may 
 suppose from this sketch of her history, there was a lurking 
 devil in her bright eye, which looked out pretty sharply from 
 between her prison bars. 
 
 There is a bomb-proof fort here of great strength, which 
 occupies a bold position, and is capable, doubtless, of doing good 
 service ; though the town is much too close upon the frontier 
 to be long held, I should imagine, for its present purpose in 
 troubled times. There is also a small navy-yard, where a 
 couple of Government steamboats were building, and getting 
 on vigorously. 
 
 We left Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of May, at half- 
 past nine in the morning, and proceeded in a steamboat down 
 the St. Lawrence Eiver. The beauty of this noble stream at 
 almost any point, but especially in the commencement of thid 
 journey, when it winds its way among the thousand Islands, 
 can hardly be imagined. The number and constant successions 
 of these islands, all green and richly wooded ; their fluctuating 
 sizes, some so large that for half an hour together one among 
 
242 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 them will appear as the opposite bank of the river, and some so 
 small that they are mere dimples on its broad bosom ; their 
 infinite variety of shapes ; and the numberless combinations of 
 beautiful forms which the trees growing on them present ; all 
 form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure. 
 
 In the afternoon we shot down some rapids where the river 
 boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force and headlong 
 violence of the current were tremendous. At seven o'clock we 
 reached Dickenson's Landing, whence travellers proceed for two 
 or three hours by stage-coach : the navigation of the river being 
 rendered so dangerous and difficult in the interval, by rapids, 
 that steamboats do not make the passage. The number and 
 length of those portages, over which the roads are bad, and the 
 travelling slow, render the way between the towns of Montreal 
 and Kingston somewhat tedious. 
 
 Our course lay over a wide, unenclosed tract of country at a 
 little distance from the river-side, whence the bright warning 
 lights on the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly. 
 The night was dark and raw, and the way dreary enough. It 
 was nearly ten o'clock when we reached the wharf where the 
 next steamboat lay ; and went on board, and to bed. 
 
 She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was day. 
 The morning was ushered in by a violent thunder-storm, and 
 was very wet, but gradually improved and brightened up. 
 Going on deck after breakfast, I was amazed to see floating 
 down with the stream a most gigantic raft, with some thirty or 
 forty wooden houses upon it, and at least as many flag masts, 
 so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw many of these 
 rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the timber, or 
 " lumber," as it is called in America, which is brought down 
 the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. When the 
 raft reaches its place of destination, it is broken up ; the 
 materials are sold ; and the boatmen return for more. 
 
 At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-coach for 
 four hours through a pleasant and well-cultivated country, per- 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 243 
 
 fectly French in every respect : in the appearance of the 
 cottages ; the air, language, and dress of the peasantry, the 
 sign-boards on the shops and taverns ; and the Virgin's shrines 
 arid crosses by the wayside. Nearly every common labourer 
 and boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, wore round his 
 waist a sash of some bright colour : generally red : and the 
 women, who were working in the fields and gardens, and doing 
 all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, great flat straw hats 
 with most capacious brims. There were Catholic Priests and 
 Sisters of Charity in the village streets ; and images of the 
 Saviour at the corners of cross-roads, and in other public 
 places. 
 
 At noon we went on board another steamboat, and reached 
 the village of Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, by three 
 o'clock. There we left the river, and went on by land. 
 
 Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. 
 Lawrence, and is backed by some bold heights, about which 
 there are charming rides and drives. The streets are generally 
 narrow and irregular, as in most French towns of any age ; but, 
 in the more modern parts of the city, they are wide and airy. 
 They display a great variety of very good shops ; and both in 
 the town and suburbs there are many excellent private dwell- 
 ings. The granite quays are remarkable for their beauty, 
 solidity, and extent. 
 
 There is a very large Catholic cathedral here, recently 
 erected; with two tall spires, of which one is yet unfinished. 
 In the open space in front of this edifice stands a solitary, 
 grim-looking, square brick tower, which has a quaint and 
 remarkable appearance, and which the wiseacres of the place 
 have consequently determined to pull down immediately. The 
 Government House is very superior to that at Kingston, and 
 the town is full of life and bustle. In one of the suburbs is a 
 plank road — not footpath — five or six miles long, and a famous 
 road it is too. All the rides in the vicinity were made doubly 
 interesting by the bursting out of spring, which is here so rapid, 
 
 a 2 
 
24 \ AMERICAN NOTE$ 
 
 that it is but a day's leap from barren winter to the blooming 
 youth of summer. 
 
 The steamboats to Quebec perform the journey in the night ; 
 that is to say, they leave Montreal at six in the evening, and 
 arrive in Quebec at six next morning. We made this excursion 
 during our stay in Montreal (which exceeded a fortnight), and 
 were charmed by its interest and beauty. 
 
 The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of 
 America : its giddy heights ; its citadel suspended, as it were, 
 in the air ; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways ; 
 and the splendid views which burst upon the eye at every turn : 
 is at once unique and lasting. 
 
 It is a place not to be forgotten, or mixed up in the mind 
 with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of 
 scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this 
 most picturesque city, there are associations clustering about it 
 which would make a desert rich in interest. The dangerous 
 precipice along whose rocky front Wolfe and his brave com- 
 panions climbed to glory ; the Plains of Abraham, where he 
 received his mortal wound ; the fortress so chivalrously defended 
 by Montcalm ; and his soldier's grave, dug for him, while yet 
 alive, by the bursting of a shell ; are not the least among them, 
 or among the gallant incidents of history. That is a noble 
 Monument, too, and worthy of two great nations, which per- 
 petuates the memory of both brave generals, and on which their 
 names are jointly written. 
 
 The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic 
 churches and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from 
 the site of the Old Government House, and from the Citadel, 
 that its surpassing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of 
 country, rich in field and forest, mountain height and water, 
 which lies stretched out before the view, with miles of Canadian 
 villages, glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the 
 landscape ; the motley crowd of gables, roofs, and chimney- 
 tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand ; the beautiful 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 245 
 
 St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sun-light ; and the 
 tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant 
 rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks 
 and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners 
 become so many puppets : all this, framed by a sunken window 
 in the fortress, and looked at from the shadowed room within, 
 forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that 
 the eye can rest upon. 
 
 In the spring of the year, vast numbers of emigrants, who 
 have newly arrived from England or from Ireland, pass between 
 Quebec and Montreal, on their way to the back-woods and new 
 settlements of Canada. If it be an entertaining lounge (as I 
 very often found it) to take a morning stroll upon the quay at 
 Montreal, and see them grouped in hundreds on the public 
 wharfs about their chests and boxes, it is matter of deep 
 interest to be their fellow-passenger on one of these steamboats, 
 and, mingling with the concourse, see and hear them unobserved. 
 
 The vessel in which we returned from Quebec to Montreal 
 was crowded with them, and at night they spread their beds 
 between decks (those who had beds, at least), and slept so close 
 and thick about our cabin door, that the passage to and fro was 
 quite blocked up. They were nearly all English ; from Glou- 
 cestershire the greater part ; and had had a long winter passage 
 out ; but it was wonderful to see how clean the children had 
 been kept, and how untiring in their love and self-denial all the 
 poor parents were. 
 
 Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it 
 is very much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for 
 the rich ; and the good that is in them shines the brighter for 
 it. In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands 
 and of fathers, whose private worth in both capacities is justly 
 lauded to the skies. But bring him here, upon this crowded 
 deck. Strip from his fair young wife her silken dress and 
 jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her 
 brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much privation, array 
 
246 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 her faded form in coarsely-patched attire, let there be nothing 
 but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and you shall put 
 it to the proof indeed. So change his station in the world, 
 that he shall see in those young things who climb about his 
 knee : not records of his wealth and name : but little wrestlers 
 with him for his daily bread ; so many poachers on his scanty 
 meal ; so many units to divide his every sum of comfort, and 
 farther to reduce its small amount. In lieu of the endearments 
 of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap upon him all its pains 
 and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice, and 
 querulous endurance : let its prattle be, not of engaging infant 
 fancies, but of cold, and thirst, and hunger : and if his fatherly 
 affection outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender ; 
 careful of his children's lives, and mindful always of their joys 
 and sorrows ; then send him back to Parliament, and Pulpit, 
 and to Quarter Sessions, and when he hears fine talk of the 
 depravity of those who live from hand to mouth, and labour 
 hard to do it, let him speak up, as one who knows, and tell 
 those holders forth that they, by parallel with such a class, 
 should be High Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble 
 siege to Heaven at last. 
 
 Which of us shall say what he would be, if such realities, 
 with small relief or change all through his days, were his? 
 Looking round upon these people ; far from home, houseless, 
 indigent, wandering, weary with travel and hard living : and 
 seeing how patiently they nursed and tended their young 
 children ; how they consulted ever their wants first, then half 
 supplied their own ; what gentle ministers of hope and faith 
 the women were ; how the men profited by their example ; 
 and how very, very seldom even a moment's petulance or harsh 
 complaint broke out among them : I felt a stronger love and 
 honour of my kind come glowing on my heart, and wished 
 to God there had been many Atheists in the better part of human 
 nature there, to read this simple lesson in the book of Life. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 247 
 
 We left Montreal for New York again on the thirtieth of 
 May ; crossing to La Prairie, on the opposite shore of the St. 
 Lawrence, in a steamboat ; we then took the railroad to St. 
 John's, which is on the brink of Lake Champlain. Our last 
 greeting in Canada was from the English officers in the pleasant 
 barracks at that place (a class of gentlemen who had made every 
 hour of our visit memorable by their hospitality and friendship) ; 
 and, with " Rule Britannia " sounding in our ears, soon left it 
 far behind. 
 
 But Canada has held, and always will retain, a foremost place 
 in my remembrance. Few Englishmen are prepared to find it 
 what it is. Advancing quietly ; old differences settling down, 
 and being fast forgotten ; public feeling and private enterprise 
 alike in a sound and wholesome state ; nothing of flush or fever 
 in its system, but health and vigour throbbing in its steady 
 pulse : it is full of hope and promise. To me — who had been 
 accustomed to think of it as something left behind in the strides 
 of advancing society, as something neglected and forgotten, 
 slumbering and wasting in its sleep — the demand for labour 
 and the rates of wages ; the busy quays of Montreal ; the 
 vessels taking in their cargoes, and discharging them ; the 
 amount of shipping in the different ports ; the commerce, 
 roads, and public works, all made to last; the respectability 
 and character of the public journals ; and the amount of 
 rational comfort and happiness which honest industry may 
 earn : were very great surprises. The steamboats on the 
 lakes, in their conveniences, cleanliness, and safety ; in the 
 gentlemanly character and bearing of their captains ; and 
 in the politeness and perfect comfort of their social regula- 
 tions ; are unsurpassed even by the famous Scotch vessels, 
 deservedly so much esteemed at home. The inns are usually 
 bad ; because the custom of boarding at hotels is not so general 
 here as in the States, and the British officers, who form a 
 large portion of the society of every town, live chiefly at the 
 regimental messes : but, in every other respect, the traveller in 
 
248 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 Canada will find as good provision for his comfort as in any 
 place I know. 
 
 There is one American boat — the vessel which carried us on 
 Lake Champlain, from St. John's to Whitehall — which I praise 
 very highly, but no more than it deserves, when I say that it is 
 superior even to that in which we went from Queenston to 
 Toronto, or to that in which we travelled from the latter place 
 to Kingston, or, I have no doubt I may add, to any other in 
 the world. This steamboat, which is called the Burlington, is 
 a perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, elegance, and 
 order. The decks are drawing-rooms ; the cabins are boudoirs, 
 choicely furnished and adorned with prints, pictures, and 
 musical instruments ; every nook and corner in the vessel is a 
 perfect curiosity of graceful comfort and beautiful contrivance. 
 Captain Sherman, her commander, to whose ingenuity and 
 excellent taste these results are solely attributable, has bravely 
 and worthily distinguished himself on more than one trying 
 occasion : not least among them in having the moral courage 
 to carry British troops, at a time (during the Canadian rebel- 
 lion) when no other conveyance was open to them. He and 
 his vessel are held in universal respect, both by his own 
 countrymen and ours ; and no man ever enjoyed the popular 
 esteem, who, in his sphere of action, won and wore it better 
 than this gentleman. 
 
 By means of this floating palace we were soon in the United 
 States again, and called that evening at Burlington ; a pretty 
 town, where we lay an hour or so. We reached Whitehall, 
 where we were to disembark, at six next morning ; and might 
 have done so earlier, but that these steamboats lie by for some 
 hours in the night, in consequence of the lake becoming very 
 narrow at that part of the journey, and difficult of navigation in 
 the dark. Its width is so contracted at one point, indeed, that 
 they are obliged to warp round by means of a rope. 
 
 After breakfasting at Whitehall, we took the stage-coach for 
 Albany : a large and busy town, where we arrived between five 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 249 
 
 and six o'clock that afternoon ; after a very hot day's journey, 
 for we were now in the height of summer again. At seven we 
 started for New York on board a great North River steamboat, 
 which was so crowded with passengers that the upper deck was 
 like the box lobby of a theatre between the pieces, and the 
 lower one like Tottenham Court Road on a Saturday night 
 But we slept soundly, notwithstanding, and soon after five 
 o'clock next morning reached New York. 
 
 Tarrying here only that day and night to recruit after our 
 late fatigues, we started off once more upon our last journey in 
 America. We had yet five days to spare before embarking for 
 England, and I had a great desire to see " the Shaker Village," 
 which is peopled by a religious sect from whom it takes its 
 name. 
 
 To this end, we went up the North River again as far as the 
 town of Hudson, and there hired an extra to carry us to Leba- 
 non, thirty miles distant : and of course another and a different 
 Lebanon from that village where I slept on the night of the 
 Prairie trip. 
 
 The country through which the road meandered was rich and 
 beautiful ; the weather very fine ; and for many miles the Kaats- 
 kill Mountains, where Rip Van Winkle and the ghastly Dutch- 
 men played at ninepins one memorable gusty afternoon, towered 
 in the blue distance like stately clouds. At one point, as we 
 ascended a steep hill, athwart whose base a railroad, yet con- 
 structing, took its course, we came upon an Irish colony. With 
 means at hand of building decent cabins, it was wonderful to 
 see how clumsy, rough, and wretched its hovels were. The best 
 were poor protection from the weather ; the worst let in the 
 wind and rain through wide breaches in the roofs of sodden 
 grass, and in the walls of mud ; some had neither door nor 
 window ; some had nearly fallen down, and were imperfectly 
 propped up by stakes and poles ; all were ruinous and filthy. 
 Hideously ugly old women and very buxom young ones, pigs, 
 dogs, men, children, babies, pots, kettles, dunghills, vile refuse, 
 
250 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 rank straw, and standing water all wallowing together in an 
 inseparable heap, composed the furniture of every dark and 
 dirty hut. 
 
 Between nine and ten o'clock at night we arrived at Lebanon : 
 which is renowned for its warm baths, and for a great hotel, well 
 adapted, I have no doubt, to the gregarious taste of those seekers 
 after health or pleasure who repair here, but inexpressibly com- 
 fortless to me. We were shown into an immense apartment, 
 lighted by two dim candles, called the drawing-room : from 
 which there was a descent, by a flight of steps, to another vast 
 desert called the dining-room : our bedchambers were among 
 certain long rows of little whitewashed cells, which opened from 
 either side of a dreary passage ; and were so like rooms in a prison 
 that I half expected to be locked up when I went to bed, and 
 listened involuntarily for the turning of the key on the outside. 
 There need be baths somewhere in the neighbourhood, for the 
 other washing arrangements were on as limited a scale as I ever 
 saw, even in America : indeed, these bedrooms were so very bare 
 of even such common luxuries as chairs, that I should say they 
 were not provided with enough of anything, but that I bethink 
 myself of our having been most bountifully bitten all night. 
 
 The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and we had a 
 good breakfast. That done, we went to visit our place of desti- 
 nation, which was some two miles off, and the way to which was 
 soon indicated by a finger-post, whereon was painted, " To the 
 Shaker Village." 
 
 As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who were at 
 work upon the road ; who wore the broadest of all broad- 
 brimmed hats ; and were in all visible respects such very wooden 
 men, that I felt about as much sympathy for them, and as much 
 interest in them, as if they had been so many figure-heads of 
 ships. Presently we came to the beginning of the village, and 
 alighting at the door of a house where the Shaker manufactures 
 are sold, and which is the head-quarters of the elders, requested 
 permission to see the Shaker worship. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 251 
 
 Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in 
 authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats 
 were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a 
 grim clock, which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, 
 as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. 
 Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff, high-backed 
 chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness, 
 that one would much rather have sat on the floor than incurred 
 the smallest obligation to any of them. 
 
 Presently, there stalked into this apartment a grim old Shaker, 
 with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold as the great round metal 
 buttons on his coat and waistcoat ; a sort of calm goblin. Being 
 informed of our desire, he produced a newspaper wherein the 
 body of elders, whereof he was a member, had advertised, but 
 a few days before, that in consequence of certain unseemly inter- 
 ruptions which their worship bad received from strangers, their 
 chapel was closed to the public for the space of one year. 
 
 As nothing was to be urged in opposition to this reasonable 
 arrangement, we requested leave to make some trifling purchases 
 of Shaker goods- ; which was grimly conceded. We accordingly 
 repaired to a store in the same house, and on the opposite side 
 of the passage, where the stock was presided over by something 
 alive in a russet case, which the elder said was a woman ; and 
 which I suppose was a woman, though I should not have sus- 
 pected it. 
 
 On the opposite side of the road was their place of worship : 
 a cool, clean edifice of wood, with large windows and green 
 blinds : like a spacious summer-house. As there was no getting 
 into this place, and nothing was to be done but walk up and 
 down, and look at it and the other buildings in the village 
 (which were chiefly of wood, painted a dark red like English 
 barns, and composed of many stories like English factories), I 
 have nothing to communicate to the reader beyond the scanty 
 results I gleaned the while our purchases were making. 
 
 These people are called Shakers from their peculiar form of 
 
252 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 adoration, which consists of a dance, performed by the men and 
 women of all ages, who arrange themselves for that purpose in 
 opposite parties : the men first divesting themselves of their hats 
 and coats, which they gravely hang against the wall before they 
 begin ; and tying a ribbon round their shirt-sleeves, as though 
 they were going to be bled. They accompany themselves with 
 a droning, humming noise, and dance until they are quite 
 exhausted, alternately advancing and retiring in -a preposterous 
 sort of trot. The effect is said to be unspeakably absurd : and 
 if I may judge from a print of this ceremony which I have in 
 my possession ; and which, I am informed by those who have 
 visited the chapel, is perfectly accurate ; it must be infinitely 
 grotesque. 
 
 They are governed by a woman, and her rule is understood to 
 be absolute, though she has the assistance of a council of elders ; 
 She lives, it is said, in strict seclusion, in certain rooms above 
 the chapel, and is never shown to profane eyes. If she at all 
 resemble the lady who presided over the store, it is a great 
 charity to keep her as close as possible, and I cannot too 
 strongly express my perfect concurrence in this benevolent pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 All the possessions and revenues of the settlement are thrown 
 into a common stock, which is managed by the elders. As they 
 have made converts among people who were well to do in the 
 world, and are frugal and thrifty, it is understood that this fund 
 prospers : the more especially as they have made large purchases 
 of land. Nor is this at Lebanon the only Shaker settlement : 
 there are, I think, at least three others. 
 
 They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly pur- 
 chased and highly esteemed. " Shaker seeds," " Shaker herbs," 
 and "Shaker distilled Avaters" are commonly announced for 
 sale in the shops of towns and cities. They are good breeders 
 of cattle, and are kind and merciful to the brute creation. Con- 
 sequently, Shaker beasts seldom fail to find a ready market. 
 
 They eat and drink together, after the Spartan model, at a 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2 53 
 
 great public table. There is no union of the sexes ; and every 
 Shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. 
 Eumour has been busy upon this theme, but here again I must 
 refer to the lady of the store, and say, that if many of the sister 
 Shakers resemble her, I treat all such slander as bearing on its 
 face the strongest marks of wild improbability. But that they 
 take as proselytes persons so young that they cannot know their 
 own minds, and cannot possess much strength of resolution in 
 this or any other respect, I can assert from my own observation 
 of the extreme juvenility of certain youthful Shakers whom I 
 saw at work among the party on the road. 
 
 They are said to be good drivers of bargains, but to be honest 
 and just in their transactions, and even in horse-dealing to resist 
 those thievish tendencies which would seem, for some undis- 
 covered reason, to be almost inseparable from that branch of 
 traffic. In all matters they hold their own course quietly, live 
 in their gloomy, silent commonwealth, and show little desire to 
 interfere with other people. 
 
 This is well enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I confess, 
 incline towards the Shakers ; view them with much favour, or 
 extend towards them any very lenient construction. I so abhor, 
 and from my soul detest, that bad spirit, no matter by what 
 class or sect it may be entertained, which would strip life of its 
 healthful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from 
 maturity and age their pleasant ornaments, and make existence 
 but a narrow path towards the grave. •. that odious spirit which, 
 if it could have had full scope anr 1 . sway upon the earth, must 
 have blasted and made barren the imaginations of the greatest 
 men, and left them, in their power of raising up enduring 
 images before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no better than 
 the beasts : that, in these very broad-brimmed hats and very 
 sombre coats — in stiff-necked, solemn-visaged piety, in short, no 
 matter what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as in a 
 Shaker village, or long nails as in a Hindoo temple — I recognise 
 the worst among the enemies of Heaven and Earth, who turn 
 
254 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the water at the marriage feasts of this poor world, not into 
 wine, but gall. And if there must be people vowed to crush 
 the harmless fancies and the love of innocent delights and 
 gaieties, which are a part of human nature : as much a part of it 
 as any other love or hope that is our common portion : let them, 
 for me, stand openly revealed among the ribald and licentious : 
 the very idiots know that they are not on the Immortal road, and 
 will despise them, and avoid them readily. 
 
 Leaving the Shaker village with a hearty dislike of the old 
 Shakers, and a hearty pity for the young ones : tempered by the 
 strong probability of their running away as they grow older and 
 wiser, which they not uncommonly do : we returned to Lebanon, 
 and so to Hudson, by the way we had come upon the previous 
 day. There we took steamboat down the North River towards 
 New York, but stopped, some four hours' journey short of it, at 
 West Point, where we remained that night, and all next day, and 
 next night too. 
 
 In this beautiful place : the fairest among the fair and lovely 
 Highlands of the North River : shut in by deep green heights 
 and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of 
 Newburgh, along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here 
 and there a skiff, whose white sail often bends on some new 
 tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her from the 
 gullies in the hills : hemmed in, besides, all round, with memo- 
 ries of Washington and events of the revolutionary war : is the 
 Military School of America. 
 
 It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and any 
 ground more beautiful can hardly be. The course of education 
 is severe, but well devised and manly. Through June, July, 
 and August, the young men encamp upon the spacious plain 
 whereon the college stands ; and all the year their military exer- 
 cises are performed there daily. The term of study at this 
 institution, which the State requires from all cadets, is four 
 years ; but, whether it be from the rigid nature of the discipline, 
 or the national impatience of restraint, or both causes combined, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 255 
 
 not more than half the number who begin their studies here 
 ever remain to finish them. 
 
 The number of cadets being about equal to that of the mem- 
 bers of Congress, one is sent here from every Congressional 
 district: its member influencing the selection. Commissions in 
 the service are distributed on the same principle. The dwellings 
 of the various Professors are beautifully situated ; and there is a 
 most excellent hotel for strangers, though it has the two draw- 
 backs of being a total-abstinence house (wines and spirits being 
 forbidden to the students), and of serving the public meals at 
 rather uncomfortable hours : to wit, breakfast at seven, dinner at 
 one, and supper at sunset. 
 
 The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very 
 dawn and greenness of summer — it was then the beginning of 
 June — were exquisite indeed. Leaving it upon the sixth, and 
 returning to New York, to embark for England on the suc- 
 ceeding day, I was glad to think that among the last memorable 
 beauties which had glided past us, and softened in the bright 
 perspective, were those whose pictures, traced by no common 
 hand, are fresh in most men's minds ; not easily to grow old, or 
 fade beneath the dust of Time : the Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy 
 Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE PASSAGE HOME. 
 
 T NEVER had so much interest before, and very likely I shall 
 -*■ never have so much interest again, in the state of the wind 
 as on the long-looked-for morning of Tuesday, the Seventh of 
 June. Some nautical authority had told me, a day or two 
 previous, " Anything with west in it will do ; " so when I darted 
 out of bed at daylight, and, throwing up the window, was 
 saluted by a lively breeze from the north-west which had sprung 
 up in the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling with so 
 many happy associations, that I conceived upon the spot a 
 special regard for all airs blowing from that quarter of the com- 
 pass, which I shall cherish, I dare say, until my own wind has 
 breathed its last frail puff, and withdrawn itself for ever from 
 the mortal calendar. 
 
 The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this 
 favourable weather, and the ship which yesterday had been in 
 such a crowded dock that she might have retired from trade for 
 good and all, for any chance she seemed to have of going to 
 sea, was now full sixteen miles away. A gallant sight she was, 
 when we, fast gaining on her in a steamboat, saw her in the 
 distance riding at anchor ; her tall masts pointing up in grace- 
 ful lines against the sky, and every rope and spar expressed in 
 delicate and thread-like outline : gallant, too, when, we being 
 all aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus, "Cheerily, 
 men, oh, cheerily ! " and she followed proudly in the towing 
 steamboat's wake : but bravest and most gallant of all when, 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 257 
 
 the tow-rope being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her 
 masts, and, spreading her white wings, she soared away upon 
 her free and solitary course. 
 
 In the after-cabin we were only fifteen passengers in all, and 
 the greater part were from Canada, where some of us had known 
 each other. The night was rough and squally, so were the next 
 two days, but they flew by quickly, and we were soon as cheer- 
 ful and as snug a party, with an honest, manly-hearted captain 
 at our head, as ever came to the resolution of being mutually 
 agreeable, on land or water. 
 
 We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at three, 
 and took our tea at half-past seven. We had abundance of 
 amusements, and dinner was not tbe least among them : firstly, 
 for its own sake; secondly, because of its extraordinary length: 
 its duration, inclusive of all the long pauses between the courses, 
 being seldom less than two hours and a half ; which was a sub- 
 ject of never-failing entertainment. By way of beguiling the 
 tediousness of these banquets, a select association was formed at 
 the lower end of the table, below the mast, to whose distin- 
 guished president modesty forbids me to make any further 
 allusion, which, being a, very hilarious and jovial institution, 
 was (prejudice apart) in high favour with the rest of the com- 
 munity, and particularly with a black steward, who lived for 
 three weeks in a broad grin at the marvellous humour of these 
 incorporated worthies. 
 
 Then we had chess for those who played it, whist, cribbage, 
 books, backgammon, and shovelboard. In all weathers, fair or 
 foul, calm or windy, we were every one on deck, walking up and 
 down in pairs, lying in the boats, leaning over the side, or 
 chatting in a lazy group together. We had no lack of music, 
 for one played the accordion, another the violin, and another 
 (who usually began at six o'clock a.m.) the key-bugle : the com- 
 bined effect of which instruments, when they all played different 
 tunes, in different parts of the ship, at the same time, . and 
 within hearing of each other, as they sometimes did (everybody 
 
258 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 being intensely satisfied with his own performance), was sub- 
 limely hideous. 
 
 When all these means of entertainment failed, a sail would 
 heave in sight ; looming, perhaps, the very spirit, of a ship, in 
 the misty distance, or passing us so close that through our 
 glasses we could see the people on her decks, and easily make 
 out her name, and whither she was bound. For hours together 
 we could watch the dolphins and porpoises as they rolled and 
 leaped and dived around the vessel ; or those small creatures 
 ever on the wing, the Mother Carey's chickens, which had borne 
 us company from New York Bay, and for a whole fortnight 
 fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some days we had a 
 dead calm, or very light winds, during which the crew amused 
 themselves with fishing, and hooked an unlucky dolphin, who 
 expired, in all his rainbow colours, on the deck : an event of 
 such importance in our barren calendar, that afterwards we dated 
 from the dolphin, and made the day on which he died an era. 
 
 Besides all this, when we were five or six days out, there 
 began to be much talk of icebergs, of which wandering islands 
 an unusual number had been seen by the vessels" that had come 
 into New York a day or two before we left that port, and of 
 whose dangerous neighbourhood we were warned by the sudden 
 coldness of the weather, and the sinking of the mercury in the 
 barometer. While these tokens lasted, a double look-out was 
 kept, and many dismal tales were whispered, after dark, of ships 
 that had struck upon the ice and gone down in the night ; but 
 the wind obliging us to hold a southward course, we saw none 
 of them, and the weather soon grew_ bright and warm again. 
 
 The observation every day at noon, and the subsequent work- 
 ing of the vessel's course, was, as may be supposed, a feature in 
 our lives of paramount importance ; nor were there wanting (as 
 there never are) sagacious doxibters of the captain's calculations, 
 who, so soon as his back was turned, would, in the absence of 
 jompasses, measure the chart with bits of string, and ends of 
 pocket-handkerchiefs, and points of snuffers, and clearly prove 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 259 
 
 him to be wrong by an odd thousand miles or so. It was very 
 edifying to see these unbelievers shake their heads and frown, 
 and hear them hold forth strongly upon navigation : not that 
 they knew anything about it, but that they always mistrusted 
 the captain in calm weather, or when the wind was adverse. 
 Indeed, the mercury itself is not so variable as this class of 
 passengers, whom you will see, when the ship is going nobly 
 through the water, quite pale with admiration, swearing that 
 the captain beats all captains ever known, and even hinting at 
 subscriptions for a piece of plate ; and who, next morning, when 
 the breeze has lulled, and all the sails hang useless in the idle 
 air, shake their despondent heads again, and say, with screwed- 
 up lips, they hope that the captain is a sailor — but they shrewdly 
 doubt him. 
 
 It even became an occupation in the calm to wonder when 
 the wind would spring up in the favourable quarter, where, it 
 was clearly shown by all the rules and precedents, it ought to 
 have sprung up long ago. The first mate, who whistled for it 
 zealously, was much respected for his perseverance, and was 
 regarded, even by the unbelievers, as a first-rate sailor. Many 
 gloomy looks would be cast upward through the cabin sky-lights 
 at the flapping sails while dinner was in progress ; and some, 
 growing bold in ruefulness, predicted that we should land about 
 the middle of July. There are always on board ship a Sanguine 
 One and a Despondent One. The latter character carried it 
 hollow at this period of the voyage, and triumphed over the 
 Sanguine One at every meal, by inquiring where he supposed 
 the Great Western (which left New York a week after us) was 
 now : and where he supposed the Cunard steam-packet was 
 now : and what he thought of sailing vessels as compared with 
 steam-ships now : and so beset his life with pestilent attacks of 
 that kind, that he, too, was obliged to affect despondency for 
 very peace and quietude. 
 
 These were additions to the list of entertaining incidents, but 
 £here was still another source of interest. We carried in the 
 
 s 2 
 
260 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 steerage nearly a hundred passengers : a little world of poverty : 
 and, as we came to know individuals among them by sight, from 
 looking down upon the deck where they took the air in the day^ 
 time, and cooked their food, and very often ate it too, we became 
 curious to know their histories, and with what expectations they 
 had gone out to America, and on what errands they were going 
 home, and what their circumstances were. The information we 
 got on these heads from the carpenter, who had charge of these 
 people, was often of the strangest kind. Some of them had 
 been in America but three days, some but three months, and 
 some had gone out in the last voyage of that very ship in which 
 they were now returning home. Others had sold their clothes 
 to raise the passage -money, and had hardly rags to cover them ; 
 others had no food, and lived upon the charity of the rest : and 
 one man, it was discovered nearly at the end of the voyage, not 
 before — for he kept his secret close, and did not court compas- 
 sion — had had no sustenance whatever but the bones and 
 scraps of fat he took from the plates used in the after-cabin 
 dinner, when they were put out to be washed. 
 
 The whole system of shipping and conveying these unfortu- 
 nate persons is one that stands in need of thorough revision. 
 If any class deserve to be protected and assisted by the Govern- 
 ment, it is that class who are banished from their native land 
 in search of the bare means of subsistence. All that could be 
 done for these poor people by the great compassion and humanity 
 of the captain and officers was done, but they require much 
 more. The law is bound, at least upon the English side, to see 
 that too many of them are not put on board one ship : and that 
 their accommodations are decent : not demoralising and profli- 
 gate. It is bound, too, in common humanity, to declare that no 
 man shall be taken on board without his stock of provisions 
 being previously inspected by some proper officer, and pro- 
 nounced moderately sufficient for his support upon the voyage. 
 It is bound to provide, or to require that there be provided, a 
 medical attendant; whereas in these ships there are none, 
 
£or Genera! circulation. £61 
 
 though sickness of adults, and deaths of children, on the pas- 
 sage, are matters of the very commonest occurrence. Above 
 all, it is the duty of any Government, be it monarchy or 
 republic, to interpose and put an end to that system by which 
 a firm of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the whole 
 'tween-decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched 
 people as they can lay hold of, on any terms they can get., 
 without the smallest reference to the conveniences of the steer- 
 age, the number of berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, 
 or anything but their own immediate profit. Nor is even this 
 the worst of the vicious system : for, certain crimping agents 
 of these houses, who have a per-centage on all the passengers 
 they inveigle, are constantly travelling about those districts 
 where poverty and discontent are rife, and tempting the credu- 
 lous into more misery, by holding out monstrous inducements 
 to emigration which can never be realised. 
 
 The history of every family we had on board was pretty much 
 the same. After hoarding up, and borrowing, and begging, and 
 selling everything to pay the passage, they had gone out to 
 New York, expecting to find its streets paved with gold ; and 
 had found them paved with very hard and very real stones. 
 Enterprise was dull ; labourers were not wanted ; jobs of work 
 were to be got, but the payment was not. They were coming 
 back, even poorer than they went. One of them was carrying 
 an open letter from a young English artisan, who had been in 
 New York a fortnight, to- a friend near Manchester, whom he 
 strongly urged to follow him. One of the officers brought it to 
 me as a curiosity. " This is the country, Jem," said the writer. 
 " I like America. There is no despotism here ; that's the great 
 thing. Employment of all sorts is going a begging, and wages 
 are capital. You have only to choose a trade, Jem, and be it. 
 I haven't made choice of one yet, but I shall soon. At present, 
 I haven't quite made up my mind whether to be a carpenter or 
 a tailor." 
 
 There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one more, 
 
202 American notes 
 
 who, in the calm and the light winds, was a constant theme of 
 conversation and observation among us. This was an English 
 sailor, a smart, thorough-built, English man-of-war s-man from 
 his hat to his shoes, who was serving in the American navy, and, 
 having got leave of absence, was on his way home to see his 
 friends. When he presented himself to take and pay for his 
 passage, it had been suggested to him that, being an able seaman, 
 he might as well work it and save the money, but this piece of 
 advice he very indignantly rejected : saying, " He'd be damned 
 but for once he'd go aboard ship as a gentleman." Accordingly, 
 they took his money, but he no sooner came aboard than he 
 stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the crew, 
 and, the very first time the hands were turned up, went aloft 
 like a cat, before anybody. And all through the passage there 
 he was, first at the braces, outermost on the yards, perpetually 
 lending a hand everywhere, but always with a sober dignity in 
 his manner, and a sober grin on his face, which plainly said, "I 
 do it as a gentleman. For my own pleasure, mind you ! " 
 
 At length and at last, the promised wind came up in right 
 good earnest, and away we went before it, with every stitch of 
 canvas set, slashing through the water nobly. There was a 
 grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as, overshadowed 
 by her mass of sails, she rode at a furious pace upon the waves, 
 which filled one with an indescribable sense of pride and exulta- 
 tion. As she plunged into a foaming valley, how I loved to see 
 the green waves, bordered deep with white, come rushing on 
 astern, to buoy her upward at their pleasure, and curl about her 
 as she stooped again, but always own her for their haughty 
 mistress still ! On, on we flew, with changing lights upon the 
 water, being now in the blessed region of fleecy skies ; a bright 
 sun lighting us by day, and a bright moon by night ; the vane 
 pointing directly homeward, alike the truthful index to the 
 favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts ; until at sunrise, one 
 fair Monday morning — the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not 
 easily forget the day — there lay before us old Cape Clear, God 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 263 
 
 bless it, showing, in the mist of early morning, like a cloud : 
 the brightest and most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid the 
 face of Heaven's fallen sister — Home. 
 
 Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sun- 
 rise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of human 
 interest which it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, 
 the return of day is inseparable from some sense of renewed 
 hope and gladness ; but the light shining on the dreary waste 
 of water, and showing it in all its vast extent of loneliness, pre- 
 sents a solemn spectacle, which even night, veiling it in dark- 
 ness and uncertainty, does not surpass. The rising of the moon 
 is more in keeping with the solitary ocean ; and has an air of 
 melancholy grandeur, which, in its soft and gentle influence, 
 seems to comfort while it saddens. I recollect, when I was a 
 very young child, having a fancy that the reflection of the moon 
 in water was a path to Heaven, trodden by the spirits of good 
 people on their way to God ; and this old feeling often came 
 over me again, when I watched it on a tranquil night at sea. 
 
 The wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but 
 it was still in the right quarter, and so, by slow degrees, we left 
 Cape Clear behind, and sailed along within sight of the coast of 
 Ireland. And how merry we all were, and how loyal to the 
 George Washington, and how full of mutual congratulations, 
 and how venturesome in predicting the exact hour at which we 
 should arrive at Liverpool, may be easily imagined and readily 
 understood. Also, how heartily we drank the captain's health 
 that day at dinner ; and how restless we became about packing 
 up ; and how two or three of the most sanguine spirits rejected 
 the idea of going to bed at all that night as something it was not 
 worth while to do, so near the shore, but went nevertheless, and 
 slept soundly ; and how to be so near our journey's end was like 
 a pleasant dream, from which one feared to wake. 
 
 The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we 
 went once more before it gallantly : descrying now and then an 
 English ship going homeward under shortened sail, while we, 
 
264 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 with every inch of canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past, and 
 left her far behind. Towards evening the weather turned hazy, 
 with a drizzling rain ; and soon became so thick, that we sailed, 
 as it were, in a cloud. Still we swept onward like a phantom 
 ship, and many an eager eye glanced up to where the Look-out 
 on the mast kept watch for Holyhead. 
 
 At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same 
 moment there shone out from the haze and mist ahead a gleam- 
 ing light, which presently was gone, and soon returned, and soon 
 was gone again. Whenever it came back, the eyes of all on 
 board brightened and sparkled like itself : and there we all stood, 
 watching this revolving light upon the rock at Holyhead, and 
 praising it for its brightness and its friendly warning, and laud- 
 ing it, in short, above all other signal lights that ever were dis- 
 played, until it once more glimmered faintly in the distance, far 
 behind us. 
 
 Then, it was time to fire a gun for a pilot ; and, almost 
 before its smoke had cleared away, a little boat with a light at 
 her masthead came bearing down upon us, through the darkness, 
 swiftly. And presently, our sails being backed, she ran along- 
 side ; and the hoarse pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats 
 and shawls to the very bridge of his weather-ploughed-up nose, 
 stood bodily among us on the deck. And I think, if that pilot 
 had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an indefinite period on 
 no security, we should have engaged to lend it him, among us, 
 before his boat had dropped astern, or (which is the same thing) 
 before every scrap of news in the paper he brought with him 
 had become the common property of all on board. 
 
 We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty 
 early next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, 
 prepared to go ashore ; and looked upon the spires and roofs, 
 and smoke, of Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of 
 its hotels, to eat and drink together for the last time. And by 
 nine we had shaken hands all round, and broken up our social 
 company for ever. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 265 
 
 The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled through 
 it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields (so small 
 they looked !), the hedgerows, and the trees ; the pretty cottages, 
 the beds of flowers, the old churchyards, the antique houses, 
 and every well-known object ; the exquisite delights of that one 
 journey crowding, in the short compass of a summer's day, the 
 joy of many years, and winding up with Home, and all that 
 makes it dear ; no tongue can tell, or pen of mine describe. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 •T^HE upholders of slavery in America — of "the atrocities of 
 which system I shall not write one word for which I have 
 not ample proof and warrant — may be divided into three great 
 classes. 
 
 The first are those more moderate and rational owners of 
 human cattle who have come into the possession of them as so 
 many coins in their trading capital, but who admit the frighc- 
 ful nature of the Institution in the abstract, and perceive the 
 dangers to society with which it is fraught : dangers which, 
 however distant they may be, or howsoever tardy in their 
 coming on, are as certain to fall upon its guilty head as is the 
 Day of Judgment. 
 
 The second consists of all those owners, breeders, users, 
 buyers, and sellers of slaves, who will, until the bloody chapter 
 has a bloody end, own, breed, use, buy, and sell them at all 
 hazards ; who doggedly deny the horrors of the system, in the 
 teeth of such a mass of evidence as never was brought to bear 
 on any other subject, and to which the experience of every day 
 contributes its immense amount ; who would, at this or any 
 other moment, gladly involve America in a war, civil or foreign, 
 provided that it had for its sole end and object the assertion of 
 their right to perpetuate slavery, and to whip and work and 
 torture slaves, unquestioned by any human authority, and 
 unassailed by any human power ; who, when they speak of 
 Freedom, mean the Freedom to oppress their kind, and to be 
 savage, merciless, and cruel ; and of whom every man on his 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 267 
 
 own ground, in Republican America, is a more exacting, and a 
 sterner, and a less responsible despot than the Caliph Haroun 
 Alraschid in his angry robe of scarlet. 
 
 The third, and not the least numerous or influential, is 
 composed of all that delicate gentility which cannot bear a 
 superior, and cannot brook an equal ; of that class whose 
 Republicanism means, " I will not tolerate a man above me : 
 and, of those below, none must approach too near;" whose 
 pride, in a land where voluntary servitude is shunned as a dis- 
 grace, must be ministered to by slaves ; and whose inalienable 
 rights can only have their growth in negro wrongs. 
 
 It has been sometimes urged that, in the unavailing efforts 
 which have been made to advance the cause of Human Freedom 
 in the republic of America (strange cause for history to treat 
 of !), sufficient regard has not been had to the existence of the 
 first class of persons ; and it has been contended that they are 
 hardly used, in being confounded with the second. This is, no 
 doubt, the case ; noble instances of pecuniary and personal 
 sacrifice have already had their growth among them ; and it is 
 much to be regretted that the gulf between them and the 
 advocates of emancipation should have been widened and 
 deepened by any means : the rather as there are, beyond 
 dispute, among these slave-owners, many kind masters who are 
 tender in the exercise of their unnatural power. Still it is to 
 be feared that this injustice is inseparable from the state of 
 things with which humanity and truth are called upon to deal. 
 Slavery is not a whit the more endurable because some hearts 
 are to be found which can partially resist its hardening 
 influences ; nor can the indignant tide of honest wrath stand 
 still, because in its onward course it overwhelms a few who are 
 comparatively innocent among a host of guilty. 
 
 The ground most commonly taken by these better men 
 among the advocates of slavery is this : " It is a bad system ; 
 and for myself I would willingly get rid of it, if I could ; most 
 willingly. But it is not so bad as you in England take it to 
 
268 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 be. You are deceived by the representations of the emancipa- 
 tionists. The greater part of my slaves are much attached to 
 me. You will . say that I do not allow them to be severely 
 treated ; but I will put it to you whether you believe that it 
 can be a general practice to treat them inhumanly, when it 
 would impair their value, and would be obviously against the 
 interests of their masters." 
 
 Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his 
 health and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear 
 himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder ? 
 No. All these are roads to ruin. And why, then, do men 
 tread them ? Because such inclinations are among the vicious 
 qualities of mankind. Blot out, ye friends of slavery, from the 
 catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, cruelty, and the abuse 
 of irresponsible power (of all earthly temptations the most 
 difficult to be resisted), and when ye have done so, and not 
 before, we will inquire whether it be the interest of a master to 
 lash and maim the slaves, over whose lives and limbs he has an 
 absolute control ! 
 
 But again : this class, together with that last one I have 
 named, the miserable aristocracy spawned of a false republic, 
 lift up their voices and exclaim, " Public opinion is all-sufficient 
 to prevent such cruelty as you. denounce." Public opinion ! 
 Why, public opinion in the slave States is slavery, is it not ? 
 Public opinion in the slave States has delivered the slaves over 
 to the gentle mercies of their masters. Public opinion has 
 made the laws, and denied the slaves legislative protection. 
 Public opinion has knotted the lash, heated the branding-iron, 
 loaded the rifle, and shielded the murderer. Public opinion 
 threatens the abolitionist with death, if he venture to the 
 South ; and drags him with a rope about his middle, in broad 
 unblushing noon, through the first city in the East. Public 
 opinion has, within a few years, burned a slave alive at a slow 
 fire in the city of St. Louis ; and public opinion has to this day 
 maintained upon the bench that estimable Judge who charged 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. >6<) 
 
 the Jury, impanelled there to try his murderers, that their most 
 horrid deed was an act of public opinion, and, being so, must 
 not be punished by the laws the public sentiment had made. 
 Public opinion hailed this doctrine with a howl of wild 
 applause, and set the prisoners free, to walk the city, men of 
 mark, and influence, and station, as they had been before. 
 
 Public opinion ! what class of men have an immense prepon- 
 derance over the rest of the community in their power of repre- 
 senting public opinion in the legislature ? The slave-owners. 
 They send from their twelve States one hundred members, 
 while the fourteen free States, with a free population nearly 
 double, return but a hundred and forty-two. Before whom do 
 the presidential candidates bow down the most humbly, on 
 whom do they fawn the most fondly, and for whose tastes do 
 they cater the most assiduously in their servile protestations ? 
 The slave-owners always. 
 
 Public opinion ! hear the public opinion of the free South 
 as expressed by its own members in the House of Kepresenta- 
 tives at Washington. " I have a great respect for the chair," 
 quoth North Carolina, " I have a great respect for the chair as 
 an officer of the House, and a great respect for him personally ; 
 nothing but that respect prevents me from rushing to the table, 
 and tearing that petition which has just been presented for the 
 abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia to pieces." — " I 
 warn the abolitionists," says South Carolina, " ignorant, infu- 
 riated barbarians as they are, that if chance shall throw any of 
 them into our hands, he may expect a felon's death." — " Let an 
 abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina," cries a 
 third ; mild Carolina's colleague ; " and if we can catch him, 
 we will try him, and, notwithstanding the interference of all 
 the governments on earth, including the Federal Government, 
 we will hang him." 
 
 Public opinion has made this law. — It has declared that in 
 Washington, in that city which takes its name from the father 
 of American liberty, any justice of the peace may bind with 
 
270 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 fetters any negro passing down the street, and thrust him into 
 gaol: no offence on the black man's part is necessary. The 
 justice says, "I choose to think this man a runaway:"- and 
 locks him up. Public opinion empowers the man of law, when 
 this is done, to advertise the negro in the newspapers, warning 
 his owner to come and claim him, or he will be sold to pay the 
 gaol fees. But supposing he is a free black, and has no owner, 
 it may naturally be presumed that he is set at liberty. No : 
 he is sold to recompense his gaoler. This has been done 
 again, and again, and again. He has no means of proving his 
 freedom ; has no adviser, messenger, or assistance of any sort 
 or kind; no investigation into his case is made, or inquiry 
 instituted. He, a free man, who may have served for years, 
 and bought his liberty, is thrown into gaol on no process, for 
 no crime, and on no pretence of crime : and is sold to pay 
 the gaol fees. This seems incredible, even of America, but it 
 is the law. 
 
 Public opinion is deferred to in such cases as the following ; 
 which is headed in the newspapers — 
 
 " Interesting Law-case. 
 
 " An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme Court, 
 arising out of the following facts. A gentleman residing in 
 Maryland had allowed an aged pair of his slaves substantial 
 though not legal freedom for several years. "While thus living, 
 a daughter was born to them, who grew up in the same liberty, 
 until she married a free negro, and went with him to reside in 
 Pennsylvania. They had several children, and lived unmolested 
 until the original owner died, when his heir attempted to 
 regain them ; but the magistrate before whom they were 
 brought decided that he had no jurisdiction in the case. The 
 owner seized the woman and her children in the night, and 
 carried them to Maryland." 
 
 " Cash for negroes," " cash for negroes," " cash for negroes," 
 
TOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2"/ 1 
 
 is the heading of advertisements in great capitals down the long 
 columns of the crowded journals. Woodcuts of a runaway 
 negro with manacled hands, crouching beneath a bluff pursuer 
 in top-boots, who, having caught him, grasps him by the throat, 
 agreeably diversify the pleasant text. The leading article pro- 
 tests against "that abominable and hellish doctrine of abolition, 
 which is repugnant alike to every law of God and nature." 
 The delicate mamma, wbo smiles her acquiescence in this 
 sprightly writing as she reads the paper in her cool piazza, 
 quiets her youngest child who clings about her skirts by 
 promising the boy " a whip to beat the little niggers with." — 
 But the negroes, little and big, are protected by public opinion. 
 
 Let us try this public opinion by another test, which is 
 important in three points of view : first, as showing how despe- 
 rately timid of the public opinion slave-owners are in their 
 delicate descriptions of fugitive slaves in widely-circulated news- 
 papers ; secondly, as showing how perfectly contented the slaves 
 are, and how very seldom they run away ; thirdly, as exhibiting 
 their entire freedom from scar, or blemish, or any mark of cruel 
 infliction, as their pictures are drawn, not by lying abolitionists, 
 but by their own truthful masters. 
 
 The following are a few specimens of the advertisements in 
 the public papers. It is only four years since the oldest among 
 them appeared ; and others of the came nature continue to be 
 published every day in shoals. 
 
 " Kan away, Negress Caroline. Had on a collar with one 
 prong turned down." 
 
 " Kan away, a black woman, Bstsy. Had an iron bar on he:- 
 right leg." 
 
 '■' Ran away, the negro Manuel. Much marked with irons." 
 
 " Ran away, the negress Fanny. Had on an iron band about 
 her neck." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro boy about twelve years old. Had 
 round his neck a chain dog-collar with ' De Lampert ' engraved 
 on it." 
 
27-2 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 " Ran away, the negro Hown. Has a ring of iron on his 
 left foot. Also, Grise, his wife, having a ring and chain on the 
 left leg." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro boy named James. Said boy was ironed 
 when he left me." 
 
 " Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John. He 
 has a clog of iron on his right foot which will weigh four or 
 five pounds." 
 
 " Detained at the police jail, the negro wench, Myra. Has 
 several marks of lashing, and has irons on her feet." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro woman and two children. A few days 
 before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left 
 side of her face. I tried to make the letter M." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man named Henry ; his left eye out, 
 some scars from a dirk on and under his left arm, and much 
 scarred with the whip." 
 
 " One hundred dollars reward, for a negro fellow, Pompey, 
 40 years old. He is branded on the left jaw." 
 
 " Committed to jail, a negro man. Has no toes on the left 
 foot." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro woman named Rachel. Has lost all her 
 toes except the large one." 
 
 " Ran away, Sam. He was shot a short time since through 
 the hand, and has several shots in his left arm and side." 
 
 " Ran away, my negro man Dennis. Said negro has been 
 shot in the left arm between the shoulders and elbow, which 
 has paralysed the left hand." 
 
 " Ran away, my negro man named Simon. He has been 
 shot badly, in his back and right arm." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro named Arthur. Has a considerable scar 
 - across his breast and each arm, made by a knife ; loves to talk 
 much of the goodness of God." 
 
 " Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Isaac. He has a 
 scar on his forehead, caused by a blow ; and one on his back, 
 made by a shot from a pistol." 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 273 
 
 " Ran away, a negro girl called Mary. Has a small scar over 
 her eye, a good many teeth missing, the letter A is branded on 
 her cheek and forehead." 
 
 " Ean away, negro Ben. Has a scar on his right hand ; his 
 thumb and forefinger being injured by being shot last fall. A 
 part of the bone came out. He has also one or two large scars 
 on his back and hips." 
 
 "Detained at the jail, a mulatto, named Tom. Has a scar on 
 the right cheek, and appears to have been burned with powder 
 on the face." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man named Ned. Three of his fingers 
 are drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut. Has a scar on 
 the back of his neck, nearly half round, done by a knife." 
 
 " Was committed to jail, a negro man. Says his name is 
 Josiah. His back very much scarred by the whip ; and branded 
 on the thigh and hips in three or four places, thus (J M). The 
 rim of his right ear has been bit or cut off." 
 
 "Fifty dollars -reward, for my fellow Edward. He has a scar 
 on the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his arm, and 
 the letter E on his arm." 
 
 " Ran away, negro boy Ellie. Has a scar on one of his arms 
 from the bite of a dog." 
 
 " Ran away, from the plantation of James Surgette, the 
 following negroes : Randal, has one ear cropped ; Bob, has lost 
 one eye ; Kentucky Tom, has one jaw broken." 
 
 " Ran away, Anthony. One of his ears cut off, and his left 
 hand cut with an axe." 
 
 " Fifty dollars reward for the negro Jim Blake. Has a piece 
 cut out of each ear, and the middle finger of the left hand cut 
 off to the second joint." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro woman named Maria. Has a scar on 
 one side of her cheek, by a cut. Some scars on her- back." 
 
 " Ran away, the Mulatto wench Mary. Has a cut on the left 
 arm, a scar on the left shoulder, and two upper teeth missing." 
 
 I should say, perhaps, in explanation of this latter piece of 
 
274 ' AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 description, that, among the other blessings which public opinion 
 secures to the negroes, is the common ^practice of violently 
 punching out their teeth. To make them wear iron collars by- 
 day and night, and^A worry them with dogs, are practices 
 almost too ordinary to deserve mention. 
 
 " Ean away, my man Fountain. Has holes in his ears, a scar 
 on the right side of his forehead, has been shot in the hind parts 
 of his legs, and is marked on the back with the whip." 
 
 "Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my negro man 
 Jim. He is much marked with shot in his right thigh. The 
 shot entered on the outside, halfway between the hip and knee 
 joints." 
 
 " Brought to jail, John. Left ear cropt." 
 
 "Taken up, a negro man. Is very much scarred about T the 
 face and body, and has the left ear bit off." 
 
 "Ran away, a black girl named Mary. Has a scar on her 
 cheek, and the end of one of her toes cut off." 
 
 "Ran away, my mulatto woman, Judy. She has had her 
 right arm broke." 
 
 " Ran away, my negro man, Levi. His left hand has been 
 burnt, and I think the end of his forefinger is off." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man, named Washington. Has lost a 
 part of his middle finger, and the end of his little finger." 
 
 " Twenty-five dollars reward for my man John. The tip of 
 bis nose is bit off." 
 
 " Twenty-five dollars reward for the negro slave Sally. Walks 
 as though crippled in the back." 
 
 "Ran away, Joe Dennis. Has a small notch in one of his 
 ears." 
 
 "Ran away, negro boy, Jack. Has a small crop out of his 
 left ear." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man, named Ivory. Has a small piece 
 cut out of the top of each ear." 
 
 While upon the subject of ears, I may observe that a dis- 
 tinguished abolitionist in New York once received a negro'a 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 275 
 
 ear, which had been cut off close to the head, in a general post 
 letter. It was forwarded by the free and independent gentle- 
 man who had caused it to be amputated, with a polite request 
 that he would place the specimen in his " collection." 
 
 I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and broken 
 legs, and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and lacerated backs, 
 and bites of dogs, and brands of red-hot irons innumerable : 
 but, as my readers will be sufficiently sickened and repelled 
 already, I will turn to another branch of the subject. 
 
 These advertisements, of which a similar collection might be 
 made for every year, and month, and week, and day ; and which 
 are coolly read in families as things of course, and as a part of 
 the current news and small-talk ; will serve to show how very, 
 much the slaves profit by public opinion, and how tender it is 
 in their behalf. But it may be worth while to inquire how the 
 slave-owners, and the class of society to which great numbers of 
 them belong, defer to public opinion in their conduct, not to 
 their slaves, but to each other ; how they are accustomed to 
 restrain their passions ; what their bearing is among themselves ; 
 whether they are fierce or gentle, whether their social customs 
 • be brutal, sanguinary, and violent, or bear the impress of civil- 
 isation and refinement. 
 
 That we may have no partial evidence from abolitionists in 
 this inquiry either, I will once more turn to their own news- 
 papers, and I will confine myself, this time, to a selection from 
 paragraphs which appeared from day to day during my visit to 
 America, and which refer to occurrences happening while I was 
 there. The italics in these extracts, as in the foregoing, are 
 my own. 
 
 These cases did not all occur, it will be seen, in territory 
 actually belonging to legalised Slave States, though most, and 
 those the very worst among them, did, as their counterparts con- 
 stantly do ; but the position of the scenes of action in reference 
 to places immediately at hand, where slavery is the law; and 
 the strong resemblance between that class of outrages and the 
 
27.6 American notes 
 
 rest ; lead to the just presumption that the character of the 
 parties concerned was formed in slave districts, and brutalised 
 by slave customs. 
 
 "Horrible Tragedy. 
 
 "By a slip from The Southport Telegraph, Wisconsin, we 
 learn that the Hon. Charles C. P. Arndt, Member of the Council 
 for Brown county, was shot dead on the floor of the Council 
 chamber, by James K. Vinyard, Member from Grant county. 
 The affair grew out of a nomination for Sheriff of Grant 
 county. Mr. E. S. Baker was nominated and supported by 
 Mr. Arndt. This nomination was opposed by Vinyard, who 
 wanted the appointment to vest in his own brother. In 
 the course of debate, the deceased made some statements 
 which Vinyard pronounced false, and made use of violent and 
 insulting language, dealing largely in personalities, to which 
 Mr. A. made no reply. After the adjournment, Mr. A. stepped 
 up to Vinyard, and requested him to retract, which he refused 
 to do, repeating the offensive words. Mr. Arndt then made a 
 blow at Vinyard, who drew back a pace, drew a pistol, and shot 
 him dead. 
 
 " The issue appears to have been provoked on the part of 
 Vinyard, who was determined at all hazards to defeat the 
 appointment of Baker, and who, himself defeated, turned his 
 ire and revenge upon the unfortunate Arndt." 
 
 " The Wisconsin Tragedy. 
 
 " Public indignation runs high in the territory of Wisconsin, 
 in relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arndt, in the Legislative 
 Hall of the Territory. Meetings have been held in different 
 counties of Wisconsin, denouncing the practice of secretly bear- 
 ing arms in the Legislative chambers- of the country. We have 
 seen the account of the expulsion of James B. Vinyard, the per- 
 petrator of the bloody deed, and are amazed to hear, that, after 
 this expulsion by those who saw Vinyard kill Mr. Arndt in the 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 277 
 
 presence of his aged father, who was on a visit to see his son, 
 little dreaming that he was to witness his murder, Judge Dunn 
 has discharged Vinyard on bail. The Miners' Free Press speaks 
 in terms of merited rebuke at the outrage upon the feelings of 
 the people of Wisconsin. Vinyard was within arm's length of 
 Mr. Arndt, when he took such deadly aim at him, that he never 
 spoke. Vinyard might at pleasure, being so near, have only 
 wounded him, but he chose to kill him." 
 
 " Murder. 
 
 "By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 14th, we notice a 
 terrible outrage at Burlington, Iowa. A Mr. Bridgman having 
 had a difficulty with a citizen of the place, Mr. Ross ; a brother- 
 in-law of the latter provided himself with one of Colt's revolving 
 pistols, met Mr. B. in the street, and discharged the contents of 
 five of the barrels at him : each shot taking effect. Mr. B., though 
 horribly wounded, and dying, returned the fire, and killed Ross 
 on the spot." 
 
 " Terrible death of Robert Potter. 
 
 "From the 'Caddo Gazette,' of the 12th inst., we learn the 
 
 frightful death of Colonel Robert Potter He was beset 
 
 in his house by an enemy, named Rose. He sprang from his 
 couch, seized his gun, and, in his night clothes, rushed from the 
 house. For about two hundred yards his speed seemed to defy 
 his pursuers ; but, getting entangled in a thicket, he was captured. 
 Rose told him that he intended to act a generous part, and give 
 him a chance for his life. He then told Potter he might run, 
 and he should not be interrupted till he reached a certain dis- 
 tance. Potter started at the word of command, and before a 
 gun was fired he had reached the lake. His first impulse was 
 to jump into the water and dive for it, which he did. Rose 
 was close behind him, and formed his men on the bank ready 
 to shoot him as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to 
 breathe j and scarce had his head reached the surface of the 
 
278 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 water when it was completely riddled with the shot of their 
 guns, and he sunk, to rise no more !" 
 
 " Murder in Arkansas. 
 
 " We understand tlmt a severe rencontre came o/f a few days 
 since in the Seneca Nation, between Mr. Loose, the sub-agent 
 of the mixed band of the Senecas, Quapaw, and Shawnees, and 
 Mr. James Gillespie, of the mercantile firm of Thomas G. Allison 
 and Co., of Maysville, Benton, County Ark, in which the latter 
 was slain with a bowie-knife. Some difficulty had for some time 
 existed between the parties. It is said that Major Gillespie 
 brought on the attack with a cane. A severe conflict ensued, 
 during which two pistols were fired by Gillespie and one by 
 Loose. Loose then stabbed Gillespie with one of those never- 
 failing weapons, a bowie-knife. The death of Major G. is much 
 regretted, as he was a liberal-minded and energetic man. Since 
 the above was in type, we have learned that Major Allison has 
 stated to some of our citizens in town that Mr. Loose gave the 
 first blow. "We forbear to give any particulars, as the matter 
 will be the subject of judicial investigation." 
 
 "Foul Deed. 
 
 " The steamer Thames, just from Missouri river, brought us 
 a handbill, offering a reward of 500 dollars, for the person who 
 assassinated Lilburn W. Baggs, late Governor of this State, at 
 Independence, on the night of the 6th inst. Governor Baggs, it 
 is stated in a written memorandum, was not dead, but mortally 
 wounded. 
 
 " Since the above was written, we received a note from the 
 clerk of the Thames, giving the following particulars. Gov. 
 Baggs was shot by some villain on Friday, Gth inst., in the 
 evening, while sitting in a room in his own house in Independ- 
 ence. His son, a boy, hearing a report, ran into the room, and 
 found the Governor sitting in his chair, with his jaw fallen down, 
 and his head leaning back : on discovering the injury done to 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 279 
 
 his father, he gave the alarm. Foot tracks were found in the 
 garden below the window, and a pistol picked up supposed to 
 have been overloaded, and thrown from the hand of the scoundrel 
 who fired it. Three buck shots of a heavy load took effect ; one 
 going through his mouth, one into the brain, and another 
 probably in or near the brain ; all going into the back part of 
 the neck and head. The Governor was still alive on the morn- 
 ing of the 7th ; but no hopes for his recovery by his friends, 
 and but slight hopes from his physicians. 
 
 "A man was suspected, and the Sheriff most probably has 
 possession of him by this time. 
 
 " The pistol was one of a pair stolen some days previous from 
 a baker in Independence, and the legal authorities have the 
 description of the other." 
 
 " Rencontre. 
 
 "An unfortunate affair took place on Friday evening in 
 Chartres Street, in which one of our most respectable citizens 
 received a dangerous wound, from a poignard, in the abdo- 
 men. From the Bee (New Orleans) of yesterday, we learn the 
 following particulars. It appears that an article was published 
 in the French side of the paper on Monday last, containing 
 some strictures on the Artillery Battalion for firing their guns 
 on Sunday morning, in answer to those from the Ontario and 
 Woodbury, and thereby much alarm was caused to the families of 
 those persons who were out all night preserving the peace of the 
 city. Major C. Gaily, Commander of the battalion, resenting 
 this, called at the office and demanded the author's name ; that 
 of Mr. P. Arpin was given to him, who was absent at the time. 
 Some angry words then passed with one of the proprietors, and 
 a challenge followed ; the friends of both parties tried to arrange 
 the affair, but failed to do so. On Friday evening, about seven 
 o'clock, Major Gaily met Mr. P. Arpin in Chartres Street, and 
 accosted him. 'Are you Mr. Arpin ?' 
 
 " ' Yes, sir,' 
 
280 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 " ' Then I have to tell you that you are a ' " (applying 
 
 an appropriate epithet). 
 
 " ' I shall remind you of your words, sir.' 
 " ' But I have said I would break my cane on your shoulders.' 
 " ' I know it, but I have not yet received the blow.' 
 " At these words, Major Gaily, having a cane in his hands, 
 struck Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter drew a poignard 
 from his pocket and stabbed Major Gaily in the abdomen. 
 
 " Fears are entertained that the wound will be mortal. We 
 understand that Mr. Arpin has given security for his appear- 
 ance at the Criminal Court to answer the charge." 
 
 "Affray in Mississippi. 
 
 " On the 27th ult., in an affray near Carthage, Leake county, 
 Mississippi, between James Cottingham and John Wilburn, the 
 latter was shot by the former, and so horribly wounded, that 
 there was no hope of his recovery. On the 2nd instant, there 
 was an affray at Carthage between A. C. Sharkey and George 
 Goff, in which the latter was shot, and thought mortally wounded. 
 Sharkey delivered himself up to the authorities, but changed his 
 mind and escaped ! " 
 
 " Personal Encounter. 
 
 " An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days since, between 
 the barkeeper of an hotel, and a man named Bury. It appears 
 that Bury had become somewhat noisy, and that the barkeeper, 
 determined to preserve order, had threatened to shoot Bury, 
 whereupon Bury drew a pistol and shot the barkeeper down. 
 He was not dead at the last accounts, but slight hopes were 
 entertained of his recovery." 
 
 "Duel. 
 
 " The clerk of the steamboat Tribune informs us that another 
 duel was fought on Tuesday last, by Mr. Bobbins, a bank officer 
 in Vicksburg, and Mr. Fall, the editor of the Vicksburg Sentinel. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 28 1 
 
 According to the arrangement, the parties had six pistols each, 
 which, after the word ' Fire ! ' they were to discharge as fast as 
 they pleased. Fall fired two pistols without effect. Mr. Bob- 
 bins' first shot took effect in Fall's thigh, who fell, and was 
 unable to continue the combat." 
 
 " Affray in Clarice County. 
 
 " An unfortunate affray occurred in Clarke county (Mo.) near 
 Waterloo, on Tuesday the 19 th ult., which originated in settling 
 the partnership concerns of Messrs. M'Kane and MAllister, who 
 had been engaged in the business of distilling, and resulted in 
 the death of the latter, who was shot down by Mr. M'Kane, 
 because of his attempting to take possession of seven barrels of 
 whiskey, the property of M'Kane, which had been knocked off 
 to MAllister at a sheriff's sale at one dollar per barrel. M'Kane 
 immediately fled, and at the latest dates had not been talcen. 
 
 " This unfortunate affray caused considerable excitement in 
 the neighbourhood, as both the parties were men with large 
 families depending upon them and stood well in the community." 
 
 I will quote but one more paragraph, which, by reason of its 
 monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these atrocious deeds. 
 
 "Affair of Honour. 
 
 " We have just heard the particulars of a meeting which took 
 place on Six Mile Island, on Tuesday, between two young bloods 
 of our city : Samuel Thurston, aged fifteen, and William Hine, 
 aged thirteen years. They were attended by young gentlemen 
 of the same age. The weapons used on the occasion were a 
 couple of Dickson's best rifles ; the distance, thirty yards. They 
 took one fire, without any damage being sustained by either 
 party, except the ball of Thurston's gun passing through the 
 crown of Hine's hat. Through the intercession of the Board of 
 Honour, the challenge was withdrawn, and the difference amicably 
 adjusted,'' 
 
202 AMERICAN NOTES- 
 
 If the reader will picture to himself the kind of Board of 
 Honour which amicably adjusted the difference between these 
 two little boys, who in any other part of the world would have 
 been amicably adjusted on two porters' backs, and soundly 
 flogged with birchen rods, he will be possessed, no doubt, with 
 as strong a sense of its ludicrous character as that which sets me 
 laughing whenever its image rises up before me. 
 
 Now, I appeal to every human mind imbued with the com- 
 monest of common sense, and the commonest of common human- 
 ity ; to all dispassionate, reasoning creatures, of any shade of 
 opinion ; and ask, with these revolting evidences of the state of 
 society which exists in and about the slave districts of America 
 before them, can they have a doubt of the real condition of the 
 slave, or can they for a moment make a compromise between 
 the institution or any of its flagrant fearful features, and their 
 own just consciences ? Will they say of any tale of cruelty and 
 horror, however aggravated in degree, that it is improbable, when 
 they can turn to the public prints, and, running, read such signs 
 as these, laid before them by the men who rule the slaves : in 
 their own acts, and under their own hands ? 
 
 Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness of 
 slavery are at once the cause and the effect of the reckless 
 licence taken by these free-born outlaws ? Do we not know 
 that the man who has been born and bred among its wrongs ; 
 who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged, at the word of 
 command, to flog their wives ; women, indecently compelled to 
 hold up their own garments that men might lay the heavier 
 stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers 
 in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field of 
 toil, under the very lash itself ; who has read in youth, and seen 
 his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, 
 and their disfigured persons, which could not be published else- 
 where of so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts : — 
 do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, 
 will be a brutal savage ? Do we not know that as he is a coward 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 283 
 
 in his domestic life, stalking among his shrinking men and 
 women slaves armed with his heavy whip, so he will be a coward 
 out of doors, and, carrying cowards' weapons hidden in his 
 breast, will shoot men down and stab them when he quarrels ? 
 And if our reason did not teach us this and much beyond ; if 
 we were such idiots as to close our eyes to that fine mode of 
 training which rears up such men ; should we not know that 
 they who among their equals stab and pistol in the legislative 
 halls, and in the counting-house, and on the market-place, and 
 in all the elsewhere peaceful pursuits of life, must be to their 
 dependants, even though they were free servants, so many mer- 
 ciless and unrelenting tyrants ? 
 
 What ! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of 
 Ireland, and mince the matter when these American taskmasters 
 are in question ? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those 
 who ham-string cattle : and spare the lights of Freedom upon 
 earth who notch the ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies 
 in the shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens of red-hot iron 
 on the human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries of muti- 
 lation which their slaves shall wear for life and carry to the 
 grave, break living limbs as did the soldiery who mocked and 
 slew the Saviour of the world, and set defenceless creatures up 
 for targets ? Shall we whimper over legends of the tortures 
 practised on each other by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon 
 the cruelties of Christian men? Shall we, so long as these 
 things last, exult above the scattered remnants of that stately 
 race, and triumph in the white enjoyment of their broad pos- 
 sessions ? Rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian 
 village ; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor feather flutter 
 in the breeze ; replace the streets and squares by wigwams ; and 
 though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors fill the 
 air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave. 
 
 On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in 
 respect of which our national character is changing fast, let the 
 plain Truth be spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat about 
 
284 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 the bush by hinting at the Spaniard and the fierce Italian. 
 When knives are drawn by Englishmen in conflict, let it be said 
 and known : " We owe this change to Republican Slavery. 
 These are the weapons of Freedom. With sharp points and 
 edges such as these, Liberty in America hews and hacks her 
 slaves ; or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote them to a better 
 use, and turn them on each other." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 rFHERE are many passages in this book where I have been 
 ■^ at some pains to resist the temptation of troubling my 
 readers with my own deductions and conclusions : preferring 
 that they should judge for themselves, from such premises as I 
 have laid before them. My only object in the outset was, to 
 carry them with me faithfully wheresoever I went : and that 
 task I have discharged. 
 
 But I may be pardoned if, on such a theme as the general 
 character of the American people, and the general character of 
 their social system, aa presented to a stranger's eyes, I desire to 
 express my own opinions in a few words, before I bring these 
 volumes to a close. 
 
 They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and 
 affectionate. Cultivation and refinement seem but to enhance 
 their warmth of heart and ardent enthusiasm ; and it is the 
 possession of these latter qualities in a most remarkable degree 
 which renders an educated American one of the most endearing 
 and most generous of friends^ T"never was so won upon as by 
 this class ; never yielded up my full confidence and esteem so 
 readily and pleasurably as to them ; never can make again, in 
 half a year, so many friends for whom I seem to entertain the 
 regard of half a life. 
 
 These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the whole 
 people. That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted in 
 their growth among the mass ; and that there are influences at 
 work which endanger them still more, and give but little pre- 
 
286 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 sent promise of their healthy restoration, is a truth that ought 
 to be told. 
 
 It is an essential part of every national character to pique 
 itself mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its virtue 
 or its wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great blemish 
 in the popular mind of America, and the prolific parent of an 
 innumerable brood of evils, is Universal Distrust^ Yet the 
 American citizen plumes himself upon this spirit, even when he 
 is sufficiently dispassionate to perceive the ruin it works ; and 
 will often adduce it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance of 
 the great sagacity and acuteness of the people, and. their superior 
 shrewdness and independence. 
 
 " You carry," says the stranger, " this jealousy and distrust 
 into every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men 
 from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candi- 
 dates for the suffrage, who, in their every act, disgrace your 
 Institutions and your people's choice. It has rendered you so 
 fickle, and so given to change, that your inconstancy has passed 
 into a proverb ; for you no sooner set up an idol firmly than 
 you are sure to pull it down and dash it int o fr agments : and 
 this because, directly you reward a benefactor, or a public ser- 
 vant, you distrust him, merely because he is rewarded ; and 
 immediately apply yourselves to find out, either that you have 
 been too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in 
 his deserts. Any man who attains a high place among you, 
 from the President downwards, may date his downfall from that 
 moment ; for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, 
 although it militate directly against the character and conduct 
 of a life, appeals at once to your distrust, and is believed. You 
 will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, 
 however fairly won and well deserved ; but you will swallow a 
 whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts 
 and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, or likely to 
 elevate the character of the governors or the governed among 
 you ? " 
 
For general circulation. 287 
 
 The answer is invariably the same : " There's freedom of 
 opinion here, you know. Every man thinks for himself, and we 
 are not to be easily overreached. That's how our people come 
 to be suspicious."^ 
 
 Another prominent feature is the love of " smart " dealing : 
 which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust ; 
 many a defalcation, public and private ; and enables many a 
 knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a 
 halter : though it has not been without its retributive operation, 
 for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the 
 public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull 
 honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The 
 merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a suc- 
 cessful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his observance of the 
 golden rule, " Do as you would be done by," but are considered 
 with reference to their smartness. I recollect, on both occasions 
 of our passing that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remarking 
 on the bad effects such gross deceits must have, when they 
 exploded, in generating a want of confidence abroad, and dis- 
 couraging foreign investment : but I was given to understand 
 that this was a very smart scheme, by which a deal of money 
 had been made : and that its smartest feature was, that they 
 forgot these things abroad in a very short time, and speculated 
 again as freely as ever. The following dialogue I have held a 
 hundred times : " Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that 
 such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property 
 by the most infamous and odious means, and, notwithstanding 
 all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated 
 and abetted by your citizens ? He is a public nuisance, is he 
 not?" "Yes, sir." "A convicted liar ?" "Yes, sir." "He 
 has been kicked, and cuffed, and caned?" "Yes, sir." "And 
 he is utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate ?" "Yes, 
 sir." "In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit ?" "Well, 
 sir, he is a smart man." 
 
 In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolitic usages are 
 
288 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 referred to the national love of trade \ though, oddly enough, 
 it would be a weighty charge against a foreigner that he regarded 
 the Americans as a trading people. The love of trade is assigned 
 as a reason for that comfortless custom, so very prevalent in 
 country towns, of married persons living in hotels, having no 
 
 \ fireside of their own, and seldom meeting, from early morning 
 
 i until late at night, but at the hasty public meals. The love of 
 
 trade is a reason why the literature of America is to remain for 
 
 ever unprotected : " For we are a trading people, and don't care 
 
 for poetry : " though we do, by the way, profess to be very proud 
 
 of our poets : while healthful amusements, cheerful means of 
 
 , recreation, and wholesome fancies must fade before the stern 
 
 ' utilitarian joys of trade. 
 
 These three characteristics are strongly presented at every 
 turn, full in the stranger's view. But, the foul growth of 
 America has a more tangled root than this ; and it strikes its 
 fibres deep in its licentious Press. 
 
 Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South ; 
 pupils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of 
 thousands ; colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, 
 temperance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all 
 
 r _ „_o±her forms walk through the land with giant strides : but 
 
 \ while the newspaper press of America is in, or near, its present 
 abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hope- 
 
 "___ less. Year by year, it must and will go back ; year by year, 
 the tone of public feeling must sink lower down ; year by year, 
 the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before 
 all decent men ; and year by year, the memory of the Great 
 Fathers of the Eevolution must be outraged more and more, in 
 the bad life of their degenerate child. 
 
 Among the herd of journals which are published in the 
 States, there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of 
 character and credit. From personal intercourse with accom- 
 plished gentlemen connected with publications of this class, I 
 have derived both pleasure and profit. But the name of these 
 
"FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 589 
 
 is Few, and of the others Legion ; and the influence of the good 
 is powerless to counteract the mortal poison of the bad. 
 
 Among the gentry of America ; among the well-informed 
 and moderate ; in the learned professions ; at the bar and on 
 the bench : there is, as there can be, but one opinion, in refer- 
 ence to the vicious character of these infamous journals. It is 
 sometimes contended — I will not say strangely, for it is natural 
 to seek excuses for such a disgrace— that their influence is not 
 so great as a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned for 
 saying that there is no warrant for this plea, and tbat every fact 
 and circumstance tends directly to the opposite conclusion. 
 
 When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or cha- 
 racter, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in 
 America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bend- 
 ing the knee before this monster of depravity ; when any private 
 excellence is safe from its attacks ; when any social confidence 
 is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency and honour 
 is held in the least regard ; when any man in that Free Country 
 has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for himself, and 
 speak for himself, without humble reference to a censorship which, 
 for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he utterly loathes 
 and despises in hio heart ; when those who most acutely feel its 
 infamy, and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most 
 denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon, and 
 crush it openly, in the sight of all men : then I will believe that ) 
 its influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly 
 senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, 
 and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a 
 president to a postman ; while, with ribald slander for its only 
 stock-in-trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class, 
 who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not 
 read at all ; so long must its odium be upon the country's head, 
 and so long must the evil it works be plainly visible in the 
 llepublic. 
 
 To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, 
 
 V 
 
200 AMERICAN NOTES' 
 
 or to the respectable journals of tlie Continent of Europe ; to 
 those who are accustomed to anything else in print and paper ; 
 it would be impossible, without an amount of extract for which 
 I have neither space nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea 
 of this frightful engine in America. But if any man desire 
 confirmation of my statement on this head, let him repair to any 
 place in this city of London, where scattered numbers of these 
 publications are to be found ; and there let him form his own 
 opinion.* 
 
 It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American 
 
 \ people as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal 
 somewhat more. It would be well, if there were greater 
 encouragement to lightness of heart and gaiety, and a wider 
 cultivation of what is beautiful, without being eminently and 
 directly useful. But here I think the general remonstrance, 
 " We are a new country," which is so often advanced as an 
 excuse for defects which are quite unjustifiable, as being of 
 right only the slow growth of an old one, may be very treason- 
 ably urged : and I yet hope to hear of there being some other 
 
 [ national amusement in the United States, besides newspaper 
 i politics. 
 
 They certainly are not a humorous people, and their tem- 
 perament always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy 
 character. In shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron 
 quaintness, the Yankees, or people of New England, unques- 
 tionably take the lead ; as they do in most other evidences of 
 intelligence. But in travelling about, out of the large cities — 
 as I have remarked in former parts of these volumes — I was 
 
 i quite oppressed by the prevailing seriousness and melancholy air 
 of business : which was so general and unvarying, that, at every 
 
 * Note to the Original Edition.— Or let him refer to an able and perfectly- 
 truthful article in The Foreign Quarterly Review, published in the present month of 
 October ; to -which my attention has been attracted, since these sheets have been 
 passing through the press. He will find some specimens there, by no means remark- 
 able to any man who has been in America, but sufficiently striking to one who has 
 not. 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 291 
 
 new town I came to. I seemed to meet the very same people 
 whom I had left behind me at the last. Such defects as are 
 perceptible in the national manners seem, to me, to be referable, 
 in a great degree, to this cause : which has generated a dull, ' 
 sullen persistence in coarse usages, and rejected the graces of 
 life as undeserving of attention. There is no doubt that Wash- 
 ington, who was always most scrupulous and exact on points of 
 ceremony, perceived the tendency towards this mistake, even in 
 his time, and did his utmost to correct it. 
 
 I cannot hold, with other writers on these subjects, that the 
 prevalence of various forms of Dissent in America is in any way 
 attributable to the non-existence there of anElstablished Church : 
 indeed, I think the temper of the peoplejjfjt admitted of such 
 an Institution being founded amongst them, woulcLlead ihem to 
 deser t it, as a matter of .course, merely because it wm established. 
 But, supposing it to exist, I doubt its probable efficacy in sum- ! 
 moning the wandering sheep to one great fold, simply because of 
 the immense amount of Dissent which prevails at home ; and 
 because I do not find in America any one form of religion with 
 which we in Europe, or even in England, are unacquainted. Dis- 
 senters resort thither in great numbers, as other people do, simply 
 because it is a land of resort ; and great settlements of them 
 are founded, because ground can be purchased, and towns and 
 villages reared, where there were none of the human creation 
 before. But even the Shakers emigrated from England ; our 
 country is not unknown to Mr. Joseph Smith, the apostle of 
 Mormonism, or to his benighted disciples ; I have beheld 
 religious scenes myself, in some of our populous towns, which 
 can hardly be surpassed by an American camp-meeting ; and 
 I am not aware that any instance of superstitious imposture on 
 the one hand, and superstitious credulity on the other, has 
 had its origin in the United States, which we cannot more than 
 parallel by the precedents of Mrs. Southcote, Mary Tofts the 
 rabbit-breeder, or even Mr. Thom of Canterbury : which latter 
 case arose some time after the dark ages had passed away. 
 
 u 2 
 
2Q1' AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 The Republican Institutions of America undoubtedly lead th< 
 people to assert their self-respect and their equality ; but i 
 traveller is bound to bear those Institutions in his mind, anc 
 not hastily to resent the near approach of a class of stranger: 
 who, at home, would keep aloof. This characteristic, when i 
 was tinctured with no foolish pride, and stopped short of n< 
 honest service, never offended me ; and I very seldom, if ever 
 experienced its rude or unbecoming display. Once or twice ii 
 was comically developed, as in the following case ; but this wai 
 an amusing incident, and not the rule, or near it. 
 
 I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had none t( 
 travel in, but those with the memorable cork soles, which wen 
 much too hot for the fiery decks of a steamboat. I therefor* 
 sent a message to an artist in boots, importing, with my com' 
 pliments, that I should be happy to see him, if he would d( 
 me the polite favour to call. He very kindly returned foj 
 answer, that he would " look round " at six o'clock that evening 
 
 I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass, ai 
 about that time, when the door opened, and a gentleman in i 
 stiff cravat, within a year or two on either side of thirty, entered 
 in his hat and gloves; walked up to the looking-glass; arrangec 
 his hair ; took off his gloves ; slowly produced a measure fron 
 the uttermost depths of his coat pocket ; and requested me, ir 
 a languid tone, to " unfix " my straps. I complied, but lookec 
 with some curiosity at his hat, which was still upon his head 
 It might have been that, or it might have been the heat — bui 
 he took it off. Then, he sat himself down on a chair opposit< 
 to me ; rested an arm on each knee ; and, leaning forward verj 
 much, took from the ground, by a great effort, the specimen o: 
 metropolitan workmanship which I had just pulled off : whis 
 tling pleasantly as he did so. He turned it over and over ; sur 
 veyed it with a contempt no language can express ; and inquirec 
 if I wished him to fix me a boot like that ? I courteously 
 replied that, provided the boots were large enough, I woulc 
 leave the rest to him ; that, if convenient and practicable, ) 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCQLATION. 293 
 
 should not object to their bearing some resemblance to the 
 model then before him ; but that I would be entirely guided by, 
 and would beg to leave the whole subject to, his judgment and 
 discretion. " You an't partickler about this scoop in the heel I 
 suppose, then?" says he. "We don't foller that here." I 
 repeated my last observation. He looked at himself in the 
 glass again ; went closer to it to dash a grain or two of dust out of 
 the corner of his eye ; and settled his cravat. All this time my 
 leg and foot were in the air. " Nearly ready, sir ?" I inquired. 
 " Well, pretty nigh," he said ; " keep steady." I kept as steady 
 as I could, both in foot and face ; and having by this time got 
 the dust out, and found his pencil-case, he measured me, and 
 made the necessary notes. When he had finished, he fell into 
 his old attitude, and, taking up the boot again, mused for some 
 time. " And this," he said at last, "is an English boot, is it ? 
 This is a London boot, eh ? " " That, sir," I replied, "is a Lon- 
 don boot." He mused over it again, after the manner of Hamlet 
 with Yorick's skull; nodded his head, as who should say, "I 
 pity the Institutions that led to the production of this boot ;" 
 rose ; put up his pencil, notes, and -paper — glancing at himself 
 in the glass all the time — put on his hat ; drew on his gloves 
 very slowly ; and finally walked out. When he had been 
 gone about a minute, the door reopened, and his hat and his 
 head reappeared. He looked round the room, and at the 
 boot again, which was still lying on the floor ; appeared 
 thoughtful for a minute, and then said, " Well, good arternoon." 
 " Good afternoon, sir," said I : -and that was the end of the 
 interview. 
 
 There is but one other head on whieh I wish to offer a 
 remark ; and that has reference to the public health. In so 
 vast a country, where there are thousands of millions of acres of 
 land yet unsettled and uncleared, and on every rood of which 
 vegetable decomposition is annually taking place ; where there 
 are so many great rivers, and such opposite varieties of climate ; 
 there cannot fail to be a great amount of sickness at certain 
 
294 AMERICAN NOTES 
 
 seasons. But I may venture to say, after conversing with many 
 members of the medical profession in America, that I am not 
 singular in the opinion that much of the disease which does 
 prevail might he avoided, if a few common precautions were 
 observed. Greater means of personal cleanliness are indispen- 
 sable to this end ; the custom of hastily swallowing large 
 quantities of" animal food three times a day, and rushing back 
 to sedentary pursuits after each meal, must be changed; the 
 gentler sex must go more wisely clad, and take more healthful 
 exercise ; and in the latter clause the males must be included 
 also. Above all, in public institutions, and throughout the 
 whole of every town and city, the system of ventilation, and 
 drainage, and removal of impurities requires to be thoroughly 
 revised. There is no local Legislature in America which 
 may not study Mr. Chadwick's excellent Eeport upon the 
 Sanitary Condition of our Labouring Classes with immense 
 advantage. 
 
 I have now arrived at the close of this book. I have little 
 ;eason to believe, from certain warnings I have had since I 
 returned to England, that it will be tenderly or favourably 
 received by the American people ; and, as I have written the 
 Truth in relation to the mass of those who form their judg- 
 ments and express their opinions, it will be seen that I have 
 no desire to court, by any adventitious means, the popular 
 applause. 
 
 It is enough for me to know that what I have set down 
 in these pages cannot cost me a single friend on the other side 
 of the Atlantic, who is, in anything, deserving of the name. 
 For the rest, I put my trust, implicitly, in the spirit in which 
 they have been conceived and penned ; and I can bide my 
 time. 
 
 I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I 
 
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 295 
 
 suffered it to influence me in what I have written ; for, in 
 either case, I should have offered but a sorry acknowledgment, 
 compared with that I bear within my breast, towards those 
 partial readers of my former books across the "Water, who met 
 me with an open hand, and not with one that closed upon an 
 iron muzzle. 
 
 END OF AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 At a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday, the 18th of April, 
 1868, in the City of New York, by two hundred representatives 
 of the Press of the United States of America, I made the follow- 
 ing observations among others : — 
 
 " So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that 
 I might have been contented with troubling you no further from 
 my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I 
 henceforth charge myself, not only here, but on every suitable 
 occasion, whatsoever and wheresoever, to express my high and 
 grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my 
 honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity. 
 Also, to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing 
 changes I have seen around me on every side, — changes moral, 
 changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and 
 peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the 
 growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in 
 the graces and amenities of life, changes in the Press, with- 
 out whose advancement no advancement can take place any- 
 where. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that 
 in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me, 
 and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions 
 to correct when I was here first, And this brings me to a 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 297 
 
 point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United 
 States last November, observed a strict silence, though some- 
 times tempted to break it, but in reference to which I will, with 
 your good leave, take you into my confidence now. Even the 
 Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misin- 
 formed, and I rather think that I have in one or two rare 
 instances observed its information to be not strictly accurate 
 with reference to myself. Indeed, I have, now and again, been 
 more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself, 
 than by any printed news that I have ever read in my pre- 
 sent state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance 
 with which I have for some months past been collecting mate- 
 rials for, and hammering away at, a new book on America 
 has much astonished me ; seeing that all that time my decla- 
 ration has been perfectly well known to my publishers on both 
 sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on earth would 
 induce me to write one. But Avhat I have intended, what I 
 have resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in 
 you) is, on my return to England, in my own person, in my 
 own Journal, to bear, for the behoof of my countrymen, such 
 testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have 
 hinted at to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have 
 been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been 
 received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, 
 hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for 
 the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avo- 
 cation here, and the state of my health. This testimony, so 
 long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal 
 right in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an appen- 
 dix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I have 
 referred to America, • And this I will do and cause -to be done, 
 
298 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as 
 an act of plain justice and honour." 
 
 I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could 
 lay upon them, and I repeat them in print here with equal 
 earnestness. So long as this book shall last, I hope that they 
 will form a part of it, and will be fairly read as inseparable from 
 my experiences and impressions of America. 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 May., 1868. 
 
PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 THE READER'S PASSPORT. 
 
 TF the readers of this volume will be so kind as to take their 
 credentials for the different places which are the subject of 
 its author's reminiscences, from the Author himself, perhaps they 
 may visit them, in fancy, the more agreeably, and with a better 
 understanding of what they are to expect. 
 
 Many books have been written upon Italy, affording many 
 means of studying the history of that interesting country, and 
 the innumerable associations entwined about it. I make but 
 little reference to that stock of information ; not at all regard- 
 ing it as a necessary consequence of my having, had recourse to 
 the storehouse for my own benefit, that I should reproduce its 
 easily accessible contents before the eyes of my readers. 
 
 Neither will there be found, in these pages, any grave exami- 
 nation into the government or misgovernment of any portion of 
 the country. No visitor of that beautiful land can fail to have 
 a strong conviction on the subject ; but as I chose when residing 
 there, a Foreigner, to abstain from the discussion of any such 
 questions with any order of Italians, so I would rather not enter 
 on the inquiry now. During my twelve months' occupation of 
 a house at Genoa, I never found that authorities, constitutionally 
 jealous, were distrustful of me ; and I should be sorry to give 
 them occasion to regret their free courtesy, either to myself or 
 any of my countrymen. 
 
 There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in all 
 
302 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Italy, but could be easily buried under a mountain of printed 
 paper devoted to dissertations on it. I do not, therefore, though 
 an earnest admirer of Painting and Sculpture, expatiate at any 
 length on famous Pictures and Statues. 
 
 This Book is a series of faint reflections — mere shadows in 
 the water — of places to which the imaginations of most people 
 are attracted in a greater or less degree, on which mine had 
 dwelt for years, and which have some interest for all. The 
 greater part of the descriptions were written on the spot, and 
 sent home, from time to time, in private letters. I do not 
 mention the circumstance as an excuse for any defects they 
 may present, for it would be none ; but as a guarantee to the 
 Reader that they were at least penned in the fulness of the 
 subject, and with the liveliest impressions of novelty and 
 freshness. 
 
 If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the reader 
 Will suppose them written in the shade of a Sunny Day, in the 
 midst of the objects of which they treat, and will like them none 
 the worse for having such influences of the country upon them. 
 
 I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Professors of 
 the Roman Catholic faith, on account of anything contained in 
 these pages. I have done my best, in one of my former pro- 
 ductions, to do justice to them ; and I trust, in this, they will 
 do justice to me. When I mention any exhibition that impressed 
 me as absurd or disagreeable, I do not seek to connect it, or 
 recognise it as necessarily connected, with any essentials of their 
 creed. When I treat of the ceremonies of the Holy Week, I 
 merely treat of their effect, and do not challenge the good and 
 learned Dr. Wiseman's interpretation of their meaning. When 
 I hint a dislike of nunneries for young girls who abjure the 
 world before they have ever proved or known it ; or doubt the 
 ex officio sanctity of all Priests and Friars ; I do no more than 
 many conscientious Catholics both abroad and at home. 
 
 I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water, and 
 would fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred the water so 
 
THE READER'S PASSPORT. 
 
 303 
 
 roughly as to mar the shadows. I could never desire to be on 
 better terms with all my friends than now, when distant moun- 
 tains rise, once more, in my path. For I need not hesitate to 
 avow that, bent on correcting a brief mistake I made, not long 
 ago, in disturbing the old relations between myself and my 
 readers, and departing for a moment from my old pursuits, I 
 am about to resume them, joyfully, in Switzerland : where, 
 during another year of absence, I can at once work out the 
 themes I have now in my mind without interruption : and, 
 while I keep my English audience within speaking distance, 
 extend my knowledge of a noble country, inexpressibly attractive 
 to me.* 
 
 This book is made as accessible as possible, because it would 
 be a great pleasure tome if I could hope, through its mean.*, to 
 compare impressions with some among the multitudes who will 
 hereafter visit the scenes described with interest and delight. 
 
 And I have only now, in passport wise, to sketch my reader's 
 portrait, which I hope may be thus supposititiously traced for 
 either sex : 
 
 Complexion 
 
 . 
 
 Fair. 
 
 Eyes . 
 
 . 
 
 Very cheerful. 
 
 Nose . 
 
 . 
 
 Not supercilious 
 
 Mouth 
 
 . 
 
 Smiling. 
 
 Visage 
 
 . 
 
 Beaming. 
 
 General Expression 
 
 Extremely agree 
 
 
 * ITiis 
 
 wan written in 1846. 
 
GOING THROUGH FRANCE. 
 
 fXN a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and 
 weather of eighteen hundred and forty-four, it was, my 
 good friend, when — don't be alarmed ; not when two travellers 
 might have been observed slowly making their way over that 
 picturesque and broken ground by which the first chapter of a 
 Middle- Aged novel is usually attained — but when an English 
 travelling carriage of considerable proportions, fresh from the 
 shady halls of the Pantechnicon near Belgrave Square, London, 
 was observed (by a very small French soldier ; for I saw him 
 look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hotel Meurice, in the 
 Rue Rivoli at Paris. 
 
 I am no more bound to explain why the English family 
 travelling by this carriage, inside and out, should be starting 
 for Italy on a Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, 
 than I am to assign a reason for all the little men in France 
 being soldiers, and all the big men postillions : which is the 
 invariable rule. But, they had some sort of reason for what 
 they did, I have no doubt ; and their reason for being there at 
 all was, as you know, that they were going to live in fair 
 Genoa for a year ; and that the head of the family purposed, in 
 ;hat space of time, to stroll about wherever his restless humour 
 carried him. 
 
 And it would have been small comfort to mc to have explained 
 to the population of Paris generally, that I was that Head and 
 Chief; and not the radiant embodiment of good-humour who 
 sat beside me in the person of a French Courier — best of 
 servants and most beaming of men ! Truth to say, he looked 
 
CIVIL AND MILITARY. 
 
DEPARTURE FROM PARIS. 305 
 
 a great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow of his 
 portly presence, dwindled down to no account at all. 
 
 There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris — as we 
 rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the Pont Neuf — to 
 reproach us for our Sunday travelling. The wine-shops (every 
 second house) were driving a roaring trade ; awnings were 
 spreading, and chairs and tables arranging, outside the cafe's, 
 preparatory to the eating of ices, and drinking of cool liquids, 
 later in the day ; shoe-blacks were busy on the bridges ; shops 
 were open ; carts and waggons clattered to and fro ; the narrow, 
 uphill, funnel-like streets across the River were so many dense 
 perspectives of crowd and bustle, party-coloured nightcaps, 
 tobacco-pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy heads of hair ; 
 nothing at that hour denoted a day of rest, unless it were the 
 appearance, here and there, of a family pleasure party, crammed 
 into a bulky old lumbering cab ; or of some contemplative 
 holiday-maker in the freest and easiest dishabille, leaning out of 
 a low garret window, watching the drying of his newly-polished 
 shoes on the little parapet outside (if a gentleman), or the 
 airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady), with calm antici- 
 pation. 
 
 Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement 
 which surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards 
 Marseilles are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens. To 
 Avallon. To Chalons. A sketch of one day's proceedings is a 
 sketch of all three ; and here it is. 
 
 We have four horses, and one postillion, who has a very long 
 whip, and drives his team something like the Courier of St. 
 Petersburg in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's : only he sits 
 his own horse instead of standing on him. The immense jack- 
 boots worn by these postillions are sometimes a century or two 
 old ; and so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's foot, 
 that the spur, which is put where his own heel comes, is gene- 
 rally half-way up the leg of the boots. The man often comes 
 put of the stabk-yard, with his whip in his hand and his shoes 
 
306 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 on, and brings out, in both hands, one boot at a time, which he 
 plants on the ground by the side of his horse, with great gravity, 
 until everything is ready. When it is — and, oh Heaven ! the 
 noise they make about it r — he gets into the boots, shoes and 
 all, or is hoisted into them by a couple of friends ; adjusts the 
 rope harness, embossed by the labours of innumerable pigeons 
 in the stables ; makes all the horses kick and plunge ; cracks 
 his whip like a madman ; shouts " En route — Hi ! " and away 
 we go. He is sure to have a contest with his horse before we 
 have gone very far ; and then he calls him a Thief, and a 
 Brigand, and a Pig, and what not; and beats him about the head 
 as if he were made of wood. 
 
 There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the 
 country for the first two days. From a dreary plain, to an inter- 
 minable avenue, and from an interminable avenue to a dreary 
 plain again. Plenty of vines there are in the open fields, but of 
 a short low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight 
 sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere ; but an 
 extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer children than I 
 ever encountered. I don't believe we saw a hundred children 
 between Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns, drawbridged and 
 walled : with odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque 
 faces, as if the wall had put a mask on, and were staring down 
 into the moat ; other strange little towers, in gardens and fields, 
 and down lanes, and in farmyards : all alone, and always round 
 with a peaked roof, and never used for any purpose at all ; 
 ruinous buildings of all sorts : sometimes an hotel de ville, 
 sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, some- 
 times a chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and 
 watched over by extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed 
 little casements ; are the standard objects, repeated over and 
 over again. Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumbling 
 wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of outhouses ! and 
 painted over the gateway, " Stabling for Sixty Horses ; " as, 
 indeed, there might be stabling for sixty score, were there any 
 
TO CHALONS. 307 
 
 horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, or anything 
 stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative of the 
 wine inside ; which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping 
 with everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age, 
 though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day 
 long, strange little narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, 
 bringing cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the 
 whole line, of one man or even boy — and he very often asleep 
 in the foremost cart — come jingling past : the horses drowsily 
 ringing the bells upon their harness, and looking as if they 
 thought (no doubt they do) their great blue woolly furniture, 
 of immense weight and thickness, with a pair of grotesque 
 horns growing out of the collar, very much too warm for the 
 Midsummer weather. 
 
 Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a day ; with the 
 dusty outsides in blue frocks, like butchers ; and the insides in 
 white nightcaps ; and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding 
 and shaking, like an idiot's head ; and its Young-France 
 passengers staring out of window, with beards down to their 
 waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading their warlike eyes, 
 and very big sticks clenched in their National grasp. - Also the 
 Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at 
 a real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady 
 old Cure's come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, 
 rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe 
 in ; and bony women dawdle about in solitary places, holding 
 cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing, or doing 
 field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real 
 shepherdesses with their flocks — to obtain an adequate idea of 
 which pursuit and its followers, in any country, it is only 
 necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and imagine 
 to yourself whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike the 
 descriptions therein contained. 
 
 You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you 
 generally do, in the last stage of the day ; and the ninety-six 
 
 x 2 
 
308 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 bells upon the horses — twenty-four apiece — have been ringing 
 sleepily in your ears for half an hour or so ; and it has become 
 a very jog-trot, monotonous, tiresome sort of business ; and you 
 have been thinking deeply about the dinner you ■will have at 
 the next stage ; when, down at the end of the long avenue of 
 trees through which you are travelling, the first indication of a 
 town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages : and 
 the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven 
 pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the 
 mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly 
 it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. 
 Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack-crack. Crick-crack. 
 Crick-crack. Helo ! Hola ! Vite ! Voleur ! Brigand ! Hi, 
 hi, hi ! En r-r-r-r-r-route ! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, 
 beggars, children ; crack, crack, crack ; helo ! hola ! charite* 
 pour 1' amour de Dieu ! crick-crack-crick-crack ; crick, crick, 
 crick ; bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack ; round the corner, 
 up the narrow street, down the paved hill on the other side ; in 
 the gutter ; bump, bump ; jolt, jog, crick, crick, crick ; crack, 
 crack, crack ; into the shop-windows on the left-hand side of 
 the street, preliminary to a sweeping turn into the wooden arch- 
 way on the right ; rumble, rumble, rumble ; clatter, clatter, 
 clatter ; crick, crick, crick ; and here we are in the yard of the 
 Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or ; used up, gone out, smoking, spent, 
 exhausted ; but sometimes making a false start unexpectedly, 
 with nothing coming of it — like a firework to the last ! 
 
 The landlady of the H6tel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and the 
 landlord of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and the femme de 
 chambre of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and a gentle- 
 man in a glazed cap, with a red beard like a bosom friend, who 
 is staying at the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and Monsieur le 
 Cure" is walking up and down in a corner of the yard by him- 
 self, with a shovel hat upon his head, and a black gown on his 
 back, and a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other ; 
 and everybody, except Monsieur le Cure", is open-mouthed and 
 
TO CHALONS. 300 
 
 Open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage door. The landlord 
 of the H6tel de l'Ecu d'Or dotes to that extent upon the 
 Courier, that lie can hardly wait for his coining down from the 
 box, but embraces his very legs and boot-heels as he descends. 
 " My Courier ! My brave Courier ! My friend ! My brother ! " 
 The landlady loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him, 
 the garcon worships him. The Courier asks if his letter has 
 been received ? It has, it has. Are the rooms prepared ? 
 They are, they are. The best rooms for my noble Courier. 
 The rooms of state for my gallant Courier ; the whole house is 
 at the service of my best of friends ! He keeps his hand upon 
 the carriage door, and asks some other question to enhance the 
 expectation. He carries a green leathern purse outside his 
 coat, suspended by a belt. The idlers look at it ; one touches 
 it. It is full of five-franc pieces. Murmurs of admiration are 
 heard among the boys. The landlord falls upon the Courier's 
 neck, and folds him to his breast. He is so much fatter than 
 he was, he says. He looks so rosy and so well ! 
 
 The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The lady of 
 the family gets out. Ah, sweet lady ! Beautiful lady ! The 
 sister of the lady of the family gets out. Great Heaven, 
 mam'selle is charming ! First little boy gets out. Ah, what 
 a beautiful little boy ! First little girl gets out. Oh, but this 
 is an enchanting child ! Second little girl gets out. The 
 landlady, yielding to the finest impulse of our common nature, 
 catches her up in her arms ! Second little boy gets out. Oh, 
 the sweet boy ! Oh, the tender little family ! The baby is 
 handed out. Angelic baby ! The baby has topped everything. 
 All the rapture is expended on the baby ! Then the two 
 nurses tumble out ; and the enthusiasm swelling into madness, 
 the whole family are swept up-stairs as on a cloud ; while the 
 idlers press about the carriage, and look into it, and walk round 
 it, and touch it. For it is something to touch a carriage that 
 has held so many people. It is a legacy to leave one's children. 
 
 The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the 
 
310 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 night, which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five 
 beds in it : through a dark passage, up two steps, down four, 
 past a pump, across a balcony, and next door to the stable. 
 The other sleeping apartments are large and lofty ; each with 
 two small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the windows, with red 
 and white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is 
 a^eady laid in it for three ; and the napkins are folded in 
 cocked-hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There are no 
 carpets, and not much furniture to speak of; but there is 
 abundance of looking-glass, and there are large vases under 
 glass shades, filled with artificial flowers ; and there are plenty 
 of clocks. The whole party are in motion. The Brave Courier, 
 in particular, is everywhere : looking after the beds, having 
 wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the landlord, 
 and picking up green cucumbers — always cucumbers ; Heaven 
 knows where he gets them — with which he walks about, one 
 in each hand, like truncheons. 
 
 Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup ; there are 
 very large loaves — one apiece ; a fish ; four dishes afterwards ; 
 some poultry afterwards ; a dessert afterwards ; and no lack of 
 wine. There is not much in the dishes ; but they are very 
 good, and always ready instantly. When it is nearly dark, the 
 Brave Courier, having eaten the two cucumbers, sliced up in the 
 contents of a pretty large decanter of oil, and another of vinegar, 
 emerges from his retreat below, and proposes a visit to the 
 Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down upon the court- 
 yard of the inn. Off we go ; and very solemn and grand it is 
 in the dim light : so dim at last, that the polite, old, lantern- 
 jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of candle in his hand, to 
 grope among the tombs with — and looks, among the grim 
 columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his own. 
 
 Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants 
 of the inn are supping in the open air, at a great table ; the 
 dish a stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in 
 the iron cauldron it Avas boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin 
 
TO CHALONS. 311 
 
 wine, and are very merry ; merrier than the gentleman with the 
 red beard, who is playing billiards in the light room on the left 
 of the yard, where shadows, with cues in their hands, and cigars 
 in their mouths, cross and recross the window constantly. Still 
 the thin Cure' walks up and down alone, with his book and 
 umbrella. And there he walks, and there the billiard balls 
 rattle, long after we are fast asleep. 
 
 We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful day, 
 shaming yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could 
 shame a carriage, in a land where carriages are never cleaned. 
 Everybody is brisk ; and as we finish breakfast, the horses come 
 jingling into the yard from the Post-house. Everything taken 
 out of the carriage is put back again. The Brave Courier 
 announces that all is ready, after walking into every room, and 
 looking all round it, to be certain that nothing is left behind. 
 Everybody gets in. Everybody connected with the Hotel de 
 l'Ecu d'Or is again enchanted. The Brave Courier runs into the 
 house for a parcel containing cold fowl, sliced ham, bread, and 
 biscuits, for lunch ; hands it into the coach ; and runs back 
 again. 
 
 "What has he got in his hand now ? More cucumbers ? No. 
 A long strip of paper. It's the bill. 
 
 The Brave Courier has two belts on this morning : one sup- 
 porting the purse : another, a mighty good sort of leathern 
 bottle, filled to the throat with the best light Bordeaux wine in 
 the house. He never pays the bill till this bottle is full. Then 
 he disputes it. 
 
 He disputes it now, violently. He is still the landlord's 
 brother, but by another father or mother. He is not so nearly 
 related to him as he was last night. The landlord scratches 
 his head. The Brave Courier points to certain figures in the 
 bill, and intimates that if they remain there, the Hotel de l'Ecu 
 d'Or is thenceforth and for ever an hotel de l'Ecu de cuivre. 
 The landlord goes into a little counting-house. The Brave 
 Courier follows, forces the bill and a pen into his hand, and 
 
$ii PlCTUfe.ES FROM ITALY. 
 
 talks more rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the pen. The 
 Courier smiles. The landlord makes an alteration. The Courier 
 cuts a joke. The landlord is affectionate, but not weakly so. 
 He bears it like a man. He shakes hands with his brave 
 brother, but he don't hug him. Still, he loves his brother ; for 
 he knows that he will be returning that way, one of these fine 
 days, with another family, and he foresees that his heart will 
 yearn towards him again. The Brave Courier traverses all round 
 the carriage once, looks at the drag, inspects the wheels, jumps 
 up, gives the word, and away we go ! 
 
 It is market morning. The market is held in the little 
 square outside, in front of the cathedral. It is crowded with 
 men and women, in blue, in red, in green, in white ; with 
 canvassed stalls ; and fluttering merchandise. The country- 
 people are grouped about, with their clean baskets before them. 
 Here, the lace-sellers ; there, the butter and egg sellers ; there, 
 the fruit-sellers ; there, the shoemakers. The whole place looks 
 as if it were the stage of some great theatre, and the curtain 
 had just run up, for a picturesque ballet. And there is the 
 cathedral to boot : scene-like : all grim, and swarthy, and 
 mouldering, and cold : just splashing the pavement in one 
 place with faint purple drops, as the morning sun, entering by 
 a little window on the eastern side, struggles through some 
 stained-glass panes on the western. 
 
 In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with a little 
 ragged kneeling-place of turf before it, in the outskirts of the 
 town ; and are again upon the road. 
 
LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OP 
 AVIGNON. 
 
 /^HALONS is a fair resting-place, in right of its good inn on 
 ^ the bank of the river, and the little steamboats, gay with 
 green and red paint, that come and go upon it : which make 
 up a pleasant and refreshing scene, after the dusty roads. But, 
 unless you would like to dwell on an enormous plain, with 
 jagged rows of irregular poplars on it, that look in the distance 
 like so many combs with broken teeth : and unless you would 
 like to pass your life without the possibility of going uphill, or 
 going up anything but stairs : you would hardly approve of 
 Chalons as a place of residence. 
 
 You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons ; 
 which you may reach, if you will, in one of the before- 
 mentioned steamboats, in eight hours. 
 
 What a city Lyons is ! Talk about people feeling, at certain 
 unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the clouds \ Here 
 is a whole town that has tumbled, anyhow, out of the sky ; 
 having been first caught up, like other stones that tumble down 
 from that region, out of fens and barren places, dismal to 
 behold ! The two great streets through which the two great 
 rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, 
 were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high 
 and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly 
 peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses 
 swarm ; and the mites inside were lolling out of the windows, 
 and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and crawling in and 
 out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp upon the 
 
3H PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and bales 
 of fusty, musty, stifling goods ; and living, or rather not dying 
 till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every 
 manufacturing town, melted into one, would hardly convey an 
 impression of Lyons as it presented itself to me : for all the 
 undrained, unscavengered qualities of a foreign town seemed 
 grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a manufacturing one ; 
 and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles out of my way 
 to avoid encountering again. 
 
 In the cool of the evening : or rather, in the faded heat of 
 the day : we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, 
 and a few dogs, were engaged in contemplation. There was no 
 difference, in point of cleanliness, between its stone pavement 
 and that of the streets ; and there was a wax saint, in a little 
 box like a berth aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom 
 Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on any terms, 
 and which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed of. If 
 you would know all about the architecture of this church, or 
 any other, its dates, dimensions, endowments, and history, is it 
 not written in Mr. Murray's Guide-Book, and may you not read 
 it there, with thanks to him, as I did ? 
 
 For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious 
 clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I 
 made in connection with that piece of mechanism. The keeper 
 of the church was very anxious it should be shown ; partly for 
 the honour of the establishment and the town ; and partly, 
 perhaps, because of his deriving a per-centage from the addi- 
 tional consideration. However that may be, it was set in 
 motion, and thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and 
 innumerable little figures staggered out of them, and jerked 
 themselves back again, with that special unsteadiness of purpose, 
 and hitching in the gait, which usually attaches to figures that 
 are moved by clockwork. Meanwhile, the Sacristan stood 
 explaining these wonders, and pointing them out, severally, 
 with a wand. There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary ; 
 
THE RHONE. 315 
 
 and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and 
 a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges 
 I ever saw accomplished ; instantly flopping back again at sight 
 of her, and banging his little door violently after him. Taking 
 this to be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and 
 not at all unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the 
 subject, in anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, " Aha ! 
 The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon disposed of." 
 " Pardon, monsieur," said the Sacristan, with a polite motion of 
 his hand towards the little door, as if introducing somebody — • 
 "the Angel Gabriel!" 
 
 Soon after daybreak next morning, we were steaming down 
 the Arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a 
 very dirty vessel full of merchandise, and with only three or 
 four other passengers for our companions : among whom, the 
 most remarkable was a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, 
 immeasurably-polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon 
 hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there to remind 
 himself of something : as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots 
 in his pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 For the last two days we had seen great sullen hills, the first 
 indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we 
 were rushing on beside them : sometimes close beside them : 
 sometimes with an intervening slope, covered with vineyards. 
 Villages and small towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods 
 of olives seen through the light open towers of their churches, 
 and clouds moving slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind 
 them ; ruined castles perched on every eminence ; and scat- 
 tered houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills ; made it very 
 beautiful. The great height of these, too, making the buildings 
 look so tiny, that they had all the charm of elegant' models ; 
 their excessive whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, 
 or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the olive-tree ; and 
 the puny size and little slow walk of the Lilliputian men and 
 women on the bank ; made a charming picture. There were 
 
3i6 pictures from Italy. 
 
 ferries out of number, too ; bridges ; tbe famous Pont d'Esprit, 
 with I don't know how many arches ; towns where memorable 
 wines are made ; Vallenoe, where Napoleon studied ; and the 
 noble river, bringing, at every winding turn, new beauties into 
 view. 
 
 There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge 
 of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun ; yet with an 
 underdone-pie-crust, battlemented wall, that never will be 
 brown, though it bake for centuries. 
 
 The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the 
 brilliant oleander was in full bloom everywhere.- The streets 
 are old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by 
 awnings stretched from house to house. Bright stuffs and 
 handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames of carved wood, old 
 chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring daubs 
 of portraits being exposed for sale beneath, it was very quaint 
 and lively. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one 
 caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy 
 courtyards, having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. 
 It was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian 
 Nights. The three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at 
 any one of those doors till the street rang again, and the porter 
 who persisted in asking questions — the man who had the 
 delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning — might 
 have opened it quite naturally. 
 
 After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the 
 lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, 
 as made the walk delightful : though the pavement stones, and 
 stones of the walls and houses, were far too hot to have a hand 
 laid on them comfortably. 
 
 We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the Cathedral : 
 where Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of 
 Lyons, namely, several old women, a baby, and a very self- 
 possessed dog, who had marked out for himself a little course 
 or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and ending 
 
AVIGNON. 3 '7 
 
 at the door, up and down which constitutional walk ho trotted, 
 during the service, as methodically and calmly as any old 
 gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and the 
 paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp 
 weather ; but the sun was shining in splendidly through the 
 red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar furni- 
 ture ; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be. 
 
 Going apart, in this church, to see some painting which was 
 being executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, I was 
 led to observe, more closely than I might otherwise have done, 
 a great number of votive offerings with which the walls of the 
 different chapels were profusely hung. I will not say decorated, 
 for they were very roughly and comically got up : most likely 
 by poor sign-painters, who eke out their living in that way. 
 They were all little pictures: each representing some sickness 
 or calamity from which the person placing it there had escaped, 
 through the interposition of his or her patron saint, or of the 
 Madonna ; and I may refer to them as good specimens of the 
 class generally. They are abundant in Italy. 
 
 In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of 
 perspective, they were not unlike the woodcuts in old books ; 
 but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of 
 the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In 
 one, a lady was having a toe amputated — an operation which a 
 saintly personage had sailed into the room, upon a cloud, to 
 superintend. In another, a lady was lying in bed, tucked up 
 very tight and prim, and staring with much composure at a 
 tripod, with a slop-basin on it : the usual form of washing- 
 stand, and the only piece of furniture, besides the bedstead, in 
 her chamber. One would never have supposed her to be 
 labouring under any complaint, beyond the inconvenience of 
 being miraculously wide awake, if the painter had not hit upon 
 the idea of putting all her family on their knees in one corner, 
 with' their legs sticking out behind them on the floor like boot- 
 trees. Above whom, the Yirgin, on a kind of blue divan, 
 
3:8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 promised to restore the patient. In another case, a lady was 
 in the very act of being run over, immediately outside the city 
 walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there 
 again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the 
 horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't 
 know ; but he was galloping away, ding-dong, without the 
 smallest reverence or compunction. On every picture "Ex 
 voto" was painted in yellow capitals in the sky. 
 
 Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan Temples, 
 and are evidently among the many compromises made between 
 the false religion and the true, when the true was in its infancy, 
 I could wish that all the other compromises were as harmless. 
 Gratitude and Devotion are Christian qualities ; and a grateful, 
 humble, Christian spirit may dictate the observance. 
 
 Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the 
 Popes, of which one portion is now a common gaol, and another 
 a noisy barrack : while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut 
 up and deserted, mock their own old state and glory, like the 
 embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went there to see 
 state-rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common gaol, though 
 we dropped some money into a prisoners' box outside, whilst 
 the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high 
 up, and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the 
 dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit. 
 
 A little,, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black 
 eyes, — proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil 
 within her, though it had had between sixty and seventy years 
 to do it in, — came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she 
 was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands, and mar- 
 shalled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on 
 the way, that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais 
 apostolique), and had been for I don't know how many years ; 
 and how she had shown these dungeons to princes ; and how 
 sie was the best of dungeon demonstrators ; and how she had 
 resided in the palace from an infant, — had been born there, if 
 
AVIGNON. 319 
 
 I recollect right, — I needn't relate. But such a fierce, little, 
 rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She was 
 alight and flaming all the time. Her action was violent in the 
 extreme. She never spoke without stopping expressly for the 
 purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung 
 herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, 
 for mere emphasis : now whispered as if the Inquisition were 
 there still : now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself ; 
 and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when 
 approaching the remains of some new horror — looking back 
 and walking stealthily, and making horrible grimaces — that 
 might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick 
 man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through 
 a whole fever. 
 
 Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, 
 we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for 
 our admission, and locked again behind us : and entered a 
 narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of 
 rubbish ; part of it choking up the mouth of a ruined subter- 
 ranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to have 
 done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. 
 Close to this courtyard is a dungeon — we stood within it, in 
 another minute — in the dismal tower des oubliettes, where Rienzi 
 was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that 
 stands there now, but shut out from the sky which now looks 
 down into it. A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which 
 the prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight 
 hours after their capture, without food or drink, that their 
 constancy might be shaken, even before they were confronted 
 with their gloomy judges. The day has not got in there yet, 
 they are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard 
 walls ; still profoundly dark ; still massively doored and fastened, 
 as of old. 
 
 Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, 
 into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room : once the 
 
320 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 ciiapel of the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat 
 was plain. The platform might have been removed but yester- 
 day. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having been 
 painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers ! But 
 it was, and may be traced there yet. 
 
 High up in the jealous wall are niches where the faltering 
 replies of the accused were heard and noted down. Many of 
 them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked 
 into, so awfully : along the same stone passage. We had 
 trodden in their very footsteps. 
 
 I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, 
 when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny 
 finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, 
 with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a 
 room adjoining — a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, con- 
 tracting roof, open at the top to the bright day. I ask her 
 what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares. I 
 ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little com- 
 pany are there ; sits down upon a mound of stones ; throws up 
 her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La Salle de la Question !" 
 
 The Chamber of Torture ! And the roof was made of that 
 shape to stifle the victim's cries ! Oh, Goblin, Goblin, let us 
 think of this awhile in silence. Peace, Goblin ! Sit with your 
 short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, 
 for only five minutes, and then flame out again. 
 
 Minutes ! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock, 
 when, with her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up, in the middle of 
 the chamber, describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of 
 heavy blows. Thus it ran round ! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, 
 mash ! An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, 
 mash ! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough ! says 
 Goblin. For the water torture ! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst, for 
 the Eedeemer's honour ! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into 
 your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw. 
 And • when the executioner plucks jt out, reeking with th§ 
 
AVIGNOtf. 321 
 
 smaller mysteries of God's owu Image, know us for His chosen 
 servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect dis- 
 ciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal : who never 
 struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, mad- 
 ness, any one affliction of mankind ; and never stretched His 
 blessed hand out, but to give relief and ease ! 
 
 See ! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There they 
 made the irons red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp 
 stake, on which the tortured persons hung poised : dangling 
 with their whole weight from the roof. " But " — and Goblin 
 whispers this — " Monsieur has heard of this tower ? Yes ? 
 Let Monsieur look down then ! " 
 
 A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of 
 Monsieur ; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in 
 the wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward 
 to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower : very dismal, very 
 dark, very cold. The Executioner of the Inquisition, says 
 Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung those who 
 were past all further torturing down here. " But look ! does 
 Monsieur see the black stains on the wall ? " A glance, over 
 his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur — and would 
 without the aid of the directing key — where they are. " What 
 are they ? " " Blood ! " 
 
 In October, 1791, when the Kevolution was at its height 
 here, sixty persons : men and women (" and priests," says 
 Goblin, " priests ") : were murdered, and hurled, the dying and 
 the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of quicklime 
 was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those ghastly tokens of 
 the massacre were soon no more ; but while one stone of the 
 strong building in which the deed was done remains upon 
 another, there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to 
 see as the splashing of their blood upon the wall is now. 
 
 Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution that the 
 cruel deed should be committed in this place ? That a part of 
 the atrocities and monstrous institutions, which had been, for 
 
 X 
 
$11 PICTURES rROM ITALY. 
 
 scores of years, at work, to change men's nature, should, in its 
 last service, tempt them with the ready means of gratifying 
 their furious and beastly rage ? Should enable them to show 
 themselves, in the height of their frenzy, no worse than- a great, 
 solemn, legal establishment in the height of its power ? No 
 worse ! Much better. They used the Tower of the- Forgotten 
 in the name of Liberty — their liberty ; an earth-born creature, 
 nursed in the black mud of the Bastille moats and dungeons, 
 and necessarily betraying many evidences of its unwholesome 
 bringing-up — but the Inquisition used it in the name of Heaven. 
 
 Goblin's finger is lifted ; and she steals out again into the 
 Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the 
 floorings Her great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. 
 She darts at the Brave Courier, who is explaining something ; 
 hits him a sounding rap on the hat with the largest key : and 
 bids him be silent. She assembles us all round a little trap- 
 door in the floor, as round a grave. " Voila ! " she darts down 
 at the ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in her goblin 
 energy, though it is no light weight. " Voila les oubliettes ! 
 Voila les.oubliettes ! Subterranean! Frightful! Black! Terrible! 
 Deadly ! Les oubliettes de l'lnquisition ! " 
 
 My blood ran cold as I looked from Goblin, down into the 
 vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the 
 world outside : of wives, friends, children, brothers : starved to 
 death, and made the stones ring with their unavailing groans. 
 But, the thrill I felt on seeing the accursed wall below, decayed 
 and broken through, and the sun shining in through its gaping 
 wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph. I felt exalted 
 with the proud delight of living, in these degenerate times, to see 
 it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement ! The light 
 in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed 
 in on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at 
 its noon ! It cannot look more lovely to a blind man newly 
 restored to sight, than to a traveller who sees it, calmly and 
 majestically, treading down the darkness of that Infernal Well. 
 
AVIGNON TO GENOA. 
 
 Ci OBLIN, having shown fe oubliettes, felt that her great coup 
 ^ was struck. She let the door fall with a crash, and stood 
 upon it with her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously. 
 
 When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, 
 under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history 
 of the building. Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by 
 small windows, sunk in the thick wall — in the softened light, 
 and with its forge-like chimney ; its little counter by the door, 
 with bottles, jars, and glasses on it ; its household implements 
 and scraps of dress against the wall ; and a sober-looking 
 woman (she must have a congenial life of it with Goblin) 
 knitting at the door—looked exactly like a picture by Ostade. 
 
 I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of 
 dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having awakened 
 from it, of which the light, down in the vaults, had given me 
 the assurance. The immense thickness and giddy height of the 
 walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great 
 extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, 
 and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder. The recol- 
 lection of its opposite old uses : an impregnable fortress, a 
 luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court 
 of the Inquisition : at one and the same time, a house of feast- 
 ing, fighting, religion, and blood : gives to every stone in its 
 huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to its 
 incongruities.. I could think of little, however, then, or long 
 afterwards, but the sun in the dungeons. The palace coming 
 down to be the lounging -place of noisy soldiers, and being 
 forced to echo their rough talk and common oaths, and to have 
 
 12 
 
324 Pictures from italy. 
 
 their garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was some 
 reduction of its state, and something to rejoice at ; but the 
 day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its chambers of 
 cruelty — that was its desolation and defeat ! If I had seen it 
 in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that not 
 that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could 
 waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber, and 
 its prisons. 
 
 Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from 
 the little history I mentioned just now a short anecdote, quite 
 appropriate to itself, connected with its adventures. 
 
 "An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of 
 Pierre de Lude, the Pope's legate, seriously insulted some dis- 
 tinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized 
 the young man and horribly mutilated him. For several years 
 the legate kept his revenge within his own breast, but he was 
 not the less resolved upon its gratification at last. He even 
 made, in the fulness of time, advances towards a complete 
 reconciliation ; and when their apparent sincerity had prevailed, 
 he invited to a splendid banquet, in this palace, certain families, 
 whole families, whom he sought to exterminate. The utmost 
 gaiety animated the repast ; but the measures of the legate 
 were well taken. When the dessert was on the board, a Swiss 
 presented himself, with the announcement that a strange ambas- 
 sador solicited an extraordinary audience. The legate, excusing 
 himself, for the moment, to his guests, retired, followed by his 
 officers. Within a few moments afterwards, five hundred per- 
 sons were reduced to ashes : the whole of that wing of the build- 
 ing having been blown into the air with a terrible explosion !" 
 
 After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with 
 churches just now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The heat 
 being very great, the roads outside the walls were strewn with 
 people fast asleep in every little slip of shade, and with 
 lazy groups, half asleep and half awake, who were waiting until 
 the sun should be low enough to admit of their playing bowls. 
 
MARSEILLES. 325 
 
 among the burnt-up trees, arid on the dusty road. The harvest 
 here was already gathered in, and mules and horses were tread- 
 ing out the corn in the fields. We came, at dusk, upon a wild 
 and hilly country, once famous for brigands : and travelled 
 slowly up a steep ascent. So we went on until eleven at night, 
 when we halted at the town of Aix (within two stages of 
 Marseilles) to sleep. 
 
 The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the 
 light and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and 
 the town was very clean ; but so hot, and so intensely light, 
 that when I walked out at noon it was like coming suddenly 
 from the darkened room into crisp blue fire. The air was so 
 very clear, that distant hills and rocky points appeared within 
 an hour's walk : while the town immediately at hand — with a 
 kind of blue wind between me and it — seemed to be white-hot, 
 and to be throwing off a fiery air from its surface. 
 
 We left this town towards evening, and took the road to 
 Marseilles. A dusty road it was ; the houses shut up close ; 
 and the. vines powdered white. At nearly all the cottage doors, 
 women were peeling and slicing onions into earthen bowls for 
 supper. So they had been doing last night all the way from 
 Avignon. We passed one or two shady dark chateaux, sur- 
 rounded by trees, and embellished with cool basins of water : 
 which were the more refreshing to behold, from the great 
 scarcity of such residences on the road we had travelled. As 
 we approached Marseilles, the road began to be covered with 
 holiday people. Outside the public-houses were parties smok- 
 ing, drinking, playing draughts and cards, and (once) dancing. 
 But dust, dust, dust everywhere. We went on, through a long, 
 straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with people ; having on our 
 left a dreary slope of land, on which the country houses of the 
 Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and 
 heaped without the slightest order : backs, fronts, sides, and 
 gables towards all points of the compass ; until, at last, we 
 entered the town, 
 
326 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 I was there twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and 
 foul ; and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and 
 disagreeable place. But the prospect, from the fortified heights, 
 of the beautiful Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks and islands, 
 is most delightful. These heights are a desirable retreat, for 
 less picturesque reasons — as an escape from a compound of vile 
 smells perpetually arising from a great harbour full of stagnant 
 water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable ships with all 
 sorts of cargoes : which, in hot weather, is dreadful in the last 
 degree. 
 
 There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets ; with 
 red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and shirts of 
 orange colour ; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, great beards, 
 and no beards ; in Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and 
 Neapolitan head-dresses. There were the townspeople sitting in 
 clusters on the pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of 
 their houses, or walking up and down the closest and least airy 
 of Boulevards ; and there were crowds of fierce-looking people of 
 the lower sort, blocking up the way, constantly. In the very 
 heart of all this stir and uproar was the common madhouse ; a 
 low, contracted, miserable building, looking straight upon the 
 street, without the smallest screen or courtyard ; where chattering 
 madmen and madwomen were peeping out, through rusty bars, 
 at the staring faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant 
 into their little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry 
 them, as if they were baited by a pack of dogs. . 
 
 "We were pretty well accommodated at the H6tel du Paradis, 
 situated in a narrow street of very high houses, with a hair- 
 dresser's shop opposite, exhibiting in one of its windows two 
 full-length waxen ladies, twirling round and round : which so 
 enchanted the hairdresser himself, that he and his family sat in 
 arm-chairs, and in cool undresses, on the pavement outside, 
 enjoying the gratification of the passers-by, with lazy dignity. 
 The family had retired to rest when Ave went to bed at mid- 
 night ; but the hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) 
 
GENOA. 327 
 
 was still sitting there, with his legs -stretched out before him, 
 and evidently couldn't bear to have the shutters put up. 
 
 Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors of 
 all nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds : 
 fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of 
 merchandise. Taking one of the great number of lively little 
 boats with gay-striped awnings, we rowed away, under the 
 sterns of great ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and 
 among other boats, and very much too near the sides of vessels 
 that were faint with oranges, to the Marie Antoinette, a hand- 
 some steamer bound for Genoa, lying near the mouth of the 
 harbour. By-and-by, the carriage, that unwieldy " trifle from 
 the Pantechnicon," on a flat barge, bumping against everything, 
 and, giving occasion for a prodigious quantity of oaths and 
 grimaces, came stupidly alongside ; and by five o'clock we were 
 steaming out in the open sea. The vessel was beautifully clean ; 
 the meals were served under an awning on deck; the night 
 was calm and clear ; the quiet beauty of the sea and sky 
 unspeakable. 
 
 We were off Nice early next morning, and coasted along, 
 within a few miles of the Cornice Road (of which more in its 
 place), nearly all day. We could see Genoa before three ; and 
 watching it as it gradually developed its splendid amphitheatre, 
 terrace rising above terrace, garden above garden, palace above 
 palace, height upon height, was ample occupation for us, till we 
 ran into the stately harbour. Having been duly astonished 
 here by the sight of a few Cappuccini monks, who were watching 
 the fair-weighing of some wood upon the wharf, we drove off to 
 Albaro, two miles distant, where we had engaged a house. 
 
 The way lay through the main streets, but not through the 
 Strada Nuova, or the Strada Balbi, which are the famous streets 
 of palaces. I never, in my life, was so dismayed ! The won- 
 derful novelty of everything, the unusual smells, the unaccount- 
 able filth (though it is reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns), 
 the disorderly jumbling of dirty houses, one upon the roof of 
 
3^8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 another ; the passages more squalid and more close than any in 
 St. Giles's or old Paris ; in and out of which, not vagabonds, 
 but well-dressed women, with white veils and great fans, were 
 passing and repassing ; the perfect absence of resemblance in 
 any dwelling-house, or shop, or wall, or post, or pillar, to any- 
 thing one had ever seen before ; and the disheartening dirt, 
 discomfort, and decay ; perfectly confounded me. I fell into a 
 dismal reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and bewildered 
 vision of saints' and virgins' shrines at the street corners — of 
 great numbers of friars, monks, and soldiers — of vast red cur- 
 tains, waving in the doorways of the churches — of always going 
 uphill, and yet seeing every other street and passage going 
 higher up — of fruit-stalls, with fresh lemons and oranges 
 hanging in garlands made of vine-leaves — of a guard-house, 
 and a drawbridge — and some gateways — and vendors of iced 
 water, sitting with little trays upon the margin of the kennel — 
 and this is all the consciousness I had, until I was set down in 
 a rank, dull, weedy courtyard, attached to a kind of pink gaol ; 
 and was told I lived there. 
 
 I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to have 
 an attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and 
 to look back upon the city with affection as connected with 
 many hours of happiness and quiet ! But these are my first 
 impressions honestly set down ; and how they changed I will 
 set down too. At present, let us breathe after this long-winded 
 journey. 
 
GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 rFHE first impressions of such a place as Albaro, the suburb 
 of Genoa where I am now, as my American friends would 
 say, "located," can hardly fail, I should imagine, to be mournful 
 and disappointing. It requires a little time and use to over- 
 come the feeling of depression consequent, at first, on so much 
 ruin and neglect. Novelty, pleasant to most people, is particu- 
 larly delightful, I think, to me. I am not easily dispirited when 
 I have the means of pursuing my own fancies and occupations ; 
 and I believe I have some natural aptitude for accommodating 
 myself to circumstances. But, as yet, I stroll about here, in all 
 the holes and corners of the neighbourhood, in a perpetual 
 state of forlorn surprise ; and returning to my villa ; the Villa 
 Bagnerello ; (it sounds romantic, but Signor Bagnerello is a 
 butcher hard by), have sufficient occupation in pondering over 
 my new experiences, and comparing them, very much to my 
 own amusement, with my expectations, until I wander out 
 again. 
 
 The Villa Bagnerello : or the Pink Gaol, a far more expressive 
 name for the mansion : is in one of the most splendid situations 
 imaginable. The noble bay of Genoa, with the deep blue 
 Mediterranean, lie stretched out near at hand ; monstrous old 
 desolate houses and palaces are dotted all about ; lofty hills, 
 with their tops often hidden in the clouds, and with strong forts 
 perched high up on their craggy sides, are close upon the left ; 
 and in front, stretching from the walls of the house, down to a 
 ruined chapel which stands upon the bold and picturesque rocks 
 on the seashore, are green vineyards, where you may wander all 
 
33° PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 day long in partial shade, through interminable vistas ol grapes, 
 trained on a rough trellis-work across the narrow paths. 
 
 This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very narrow, 
 that when we arrived at the Custom House, we found the people 
 here had taken the measure of the narrowest among them, and 
 were waiting to apply it to the carriage ; which ceremony was 
 gravely performed in the street, while we all stood by, in 
 breathless suspense. It was found to be a very tight fit, but 
 just a. possibility, and no more — as I am reminded every day, 
 by the sight of various large holes which it punched in the walls 
 on either side as it came along. We are more fortunate, I am 
 told, than an old lady who took a house in these parts not long 
 ago, and who stuck fast in her carriage in. a lane ; and as it was 
 impossible to open one of the doors, she was obliged to submit 
 to the indignity of being hauled through* one of the little, front 
 windows like a harlequin. 
 
 When you have got through these narrow lanes, you come to 
 an archway, imperfectly stopped up. by a rusty old gate — my 
 gate. The rusty old gate has a bell to correspond, which yon 
 ring as long as you like, and which nobody answers, as it has 
 no connection whatever with the house. But there is a rusty 
 old knocker, too- — very loose, so that it slides round when you 
 touch . it— and if you learn \ the trick, of it, and knock long 
 enough, somebody comes. The Brave Courier comes, and gives 
 you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild 
 and weedy, from which the vineyard opens ; cross it, enter a 
 square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and 
 pass into a most enormous room with a. vaulted roof and white- 
 washed walls : not unlike a great Methodist chapel. This is the 
 sola. It has five windows and five .doors, and is decorated with 
 pictures which would gladden: the heart of one of those pictures- 
 cleaners' in London who hang up, as a sign, a picture divided, 
 like death and the lady at the top of the old ballad : which 
 always leaves you in a state of uncertainty whether the inge- 
 nious professor has cleaned one half or dirtied the other. The 
 
GENOA. 331 
 
 furniture of this sola is a sort of red brocade. All the chairs 
 are immovable, and the sofa weighs several tons. 
 
 On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are 
 dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bedrooms : each with a 
 multiplicity of doors and windows. Up-stairs are divers other 
 gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and down-stairs is another 
 kitchen, which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for burn- 
 ing charcoal, looks like an alchemical laboratory. There are 
 also some half-dozen small sitting-rooms, where the servants, in 
 this hot July, may escape from the heat of the fire, and where 
 the Brave Courier plays all sorts of musical instruments of his 
 own manufacture, all the evening long. A mighty old, wan- 
 dering, ghostly, echoing, grim, bare house it is, as ever I beheld 
 or thought of. 
 
 There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the 
 drawing-room ; and under this terrace, and forming one side 
 of. the. little- garden, is what used to be the stable. It is now a 
 cow-house-,- and has three cows in it, so that we get new milk by 
 the bucketful. There- is no pasturage near, and they never go 
 out, but are constantly lying down, and surfeiting themselves 
 with vine-leaves— perfect Italian cows — enjoying the dolce far 
 niente all day long. They are presided over, and slept with, by 
 an old man named Antonio, and his son ; two burnt-sienna 
 natives with naked legs and feet, who wear, each, a shirt, a pair 
 of trousers, and a red sash, with a relic, or some sacred charm 
 like a bonbon off a twelfth-cake, hanging round the neck. The 
 old man is very anxious to convert me to the Catholic Faith ; 
 and exhorts me frequently. We sit upon a stone by the door 
 sometimes, in the evening, like Kobinson Crusoe and Friday 
 reversed ; and he generally relates, towards my conversion, an 
 abridgment of the History of St. Peter — chiefly, I believe, from 
 the unspeakable delight he has in his imitation of the cock. 
 
 The view, as I have said, is charming ; but in the day you 
 must keep the lattice blinds close shut, or the sun would drive 
 you mad ; and when the sun goes down, you must shut up all 
 
332 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 the windows, or the mosquitoes would tempt you to commit 
 suicide. So, at this time of the year, you don't see much of the 
 prospect within doors. As for the flies, you don't mind them. 
 Nor the fleas, whose size is prodigious, and whose name is 
 Legion, and who populate the coach-house to that extent that I 
 daily expect to see the carriage going off bodily, drawn by 
 myriads of industrious fleas in harness. The rats are kept 
 away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats, who roam about 
 the garden for that purpose. The lizards, of course, nobody 
 cares for ; they play in the sun, and don't bite. The little 
 scorpions are merely curious. The beetles are rather late, and 
 have not appeared yet. The frogs are company. There is a 
 preserve of them in the grounds of the next villa ; and, after 
 nightfall, one would think that scores upon scores of women in 
 pattens were going up and down a wet stone pavement without 
 a moment's cessation. That is exactly the noise they make. 
 
 The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful seashore, 
 was dedicated, once upon a time, to St. John the Baptist. I 
 believe there is a legend that St. John's bones were received 
 there, with various solemnities, when they were first brought to 
 Genoa ; for Genoa possesses them to this day. When there is 
 any uncommon tempest at sea, they are brought out and 
 exhibited to the raging weather, which they never fail to calm. 
 In consequence of this connection of St. John with the city, 
 great numbers of the common people are christened Giovanni 
 Baptista, which latter name is pronounced in the Genoese patois 
 " Batcheetcha," like a sneeze. To hear everybody calling every- 
 body else Batcheetcha, on a Sunday, or Festa-day, when there 
 are crowds in the streets, is not a little singular and amusing to 
 a stranger. 
 
 The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose 
 walls (outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all sorts 
 of subjects, grim and holy. But time and the sea air have 
 nearly obliterated them ; and they look like the entrance to 
 Vauxhall Gardens on a sunny day. The courtyards of these 
 
&ENOA. 333 
 
 houses are overgrown with grass and weeds ; all sorts of hideous 
 patches cover the bases of the statues, as if they were afflicted 
 with a cutaneous disorder ; the outer gates are rusty ; and the 
 iron bars outside the lower windows are all tumbling down. 
 Fire-wood is kept in halls where costly treasures might be 
 heaped up, mountains high ; waterfalls are dry and choked ; 
 fountains too dull to play, and too lazy to work, have just 
 enough recollection of their identity, in their sleep, to make the 
 neighbourhood damp ; and the sirocco wind is often blowing 
 over all these things for days together, like a gigantic oven out 
 for a holiday. 
 
 Not long ago, there was a festa-day in honour of the Virgin's 
 mother, when the young men of the neighbourhood, having worni 
 green wreaths of the vine in some procession or other, bathed 
 in them by scores. It looked very odd and pretty. Though I 
 am bound to confess (not knowing of the festa at that time), 
 that I thought, and was quite satisfied, they wore them as horses 
 do — to keep the flies off. 
 
 Soon afterwards, there was another festa-day, in honour of a 
 St. Nazaro. One of the Albaro young men brought two large 
 bouquets soon after breakfast, and coming up-stairs into the 
 great sola, presented them himself. This was a polite way of 
 begging for a contribution towards the expenses of some music 
 in the Saint's honour, so we gave him whatever it may have 
 been, and his messenger departed : well satisfied. At six o'clock 
 in the evening we went to the church — close at hand — a very 
 gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, 
 and filled, from the altar to the main door, with women, all 
 seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white veil — 
 the "mezzero;" and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking 
 audience I ever saw. The young women are not generally 
 pretty, but they walk remarkably well, and, in their personal 
 carriage and the management of their veils, display much innate 
 grace and elegance. There were some men present : not very 
 many : and a few of these were kneeling about the aisles, while 
 
334 PICTURES FR01X ITALY. 
 
 everybody else tumbled over them. Innumerable tapers were 
 burning in the church ; the bits of silver and tin about the 
 saints (especially in the Virgin's necklace) sparkled brilliantly; 
 the priests were seated about the chief altar ; the organ played 
 away lustily, and a full band did the like ; while a conductor, 
 in a little gallery opposite to the band, hammered away on the 
 desk before him with a scroll ; and a tenor, without any voice, 
 sang. The band played one way, the organ played another, the 
 singer went a third, and the unfortunate conductor banged and" 
 banged, and flourished his scroll on some principle of his own : 
 apparently well satisfied with the whole performance. I never 
 did hear such a discordant din. The heat Avas intense all the time. 
 The men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on their 
 shoulders (they never put them on), were playing bowls, and 
 buying sweetmeats, immediately outside the church. When 
 half-a-dozen of them finished a game, they came into the aisle, 
 crossed themselves with the holy water, knelt on one knee for 
 an instant, and walked off again to- play another game at bowls. 
 They are remarkably expert at this diversion, and will play in 
 the stony lanes and streets, and on the most uneven and disas- 
 trous ground for such a purpose, with as much nicety as on a 
 billiard-table. But the most favourite game is the national one 
 of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour, and at which 
 they will stake everything they possess. It is a destructive 
 kind of gambling, requiring no accessories but the ten fingers, 
 which are always — I intend no pun — at hand. Two men play 
 together; One calls a number — say the extreme one, ten. He. 
 marks what portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or 
 four, or five fingers ; and his adversary has, in the same instant, 
 at hazard, and without seeing his hand, to throw out as many 
 fingers as will make the exact balance. Their eyes and hands 
 become so used to this, and act with such astonishing rapidity, 
 that an uninitiated bystander would find it very difficult, if not 
 impossible, to follow the progress of the game. The initiated, 
 however, of whom there is always an eager group looking on; 
 
GEisroA. 335 
 
 devour it with the most intense avidity ; and as they are always 
 ready to champion one side or the other in case of a dispute, 
 and are frequently divided in their partisanship, it is often a 
 very noisy proceeding. It is never the quietest game in the 
 world ; for the numbers are always called in a loud sharp voice, 
 and follow as close upon each other as they can be counted. 
 On a holiday evening, standing at a window, or walking in a 
 garden, or passing through the streets, or sauntering in any 
 quiet place about the town, you will hear this game in progress 
 in a score of wine-shops at once ; and looking over any vineyard 
 walk, or turning almost any corner, will come upon a knot of 
 players in full cry. It is observable that most men have a 
 propensity to throw out some particular number oftener than 
 another ; and the vigilance with which two sharp-eyed players 
 will mutually endeavour to detect this weakness, and adapt 
 their game to it, is very curious and entertaining. The effect 
 is greatly heightened by the universal suddenness and vehe- 
 mence of gesture ; two men playing for half a farthing with an 
 intensity as all-absorbing as if the stake were life. 
 
 Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging to some 
 member of the Brignole family, but just now hired by a school 
 of Jesuits for their summer quarters. I walked into its dis- 
 mantled precincts the other evening about sunset, and couldn't 
 help pacing up and down for a little time, drowsily taking in 
 the aspect of the place : which is repeated hereabouts in all 
 directions. 
 
 I loitered to and fro under a colonnade, forming two sides of 
 a weedy, grass-grown courtyard, whereof the house formed a 
 third side, and a low terrace walk, overlooking the garden and 
 the neighbouring hills, the fourth; I don't believe there was 
 an uncracked stone in the whole pavement. In the centre was 
 a melancholy statue, so piebald in its decay, that it looked 
 exactly as if it had been covered with sticking-plaster, and after- 
 wards powdered. The stables, coach-houses, offices, were all 
 empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted. 
 
33& PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their 
 latches ; windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, 
 and was lying about in clods ; fowls and cats had so taken pos- 
 session of the out-buildings, that I couldn't help thinking of 
 the fairy tales, and eyeing them with suspicion, as transformed 
 retainers waiting to be changed back again. One old Tom in 
 particular : a scraggy brute, with a hungry green eye (a poor 
 relation, in reality, I am inclined to think) : came prowling 
 round and round me, as if he half believed, for the moment, 
 that I might be the hero come to marry the lady, and set all to 
 rights ; but discovering his mistake, he suddenly gave a grim 
 snarl, and walked away with such a tremendous tail, that he 
 couldn't get into the little hole where he lived, but was obliged 
 to wait outside, until his indignation and his tail had gone 
 down together. 
 
 In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this 
 colonnade, some Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a 
 nut ; but the Jesuits had given them notice to go, and they 
 had gone, and that was shut up too. The house : a wandering, 
 echoing, thundering barrack of a place, with the lower windows 
 barred up, as usual : was wide open at the door ; and I have no 
 doubt I might have gone in, and gone to bed, and gone dead, 
 and nobody a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms on an 
 upper floor was tenanted ; and from one of these, the voice of a 
 young-lady vocalist, practising bravura lustily, came flaunting 
 out upon the silent evening. 
 
 I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint, 
 with avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and 
 water in stone basins ; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, 
 straggling, undergrown, or overgrown, mildewy, damp, redolent 
 of all sorts of slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life. 
 There was nothing bright in the whole scene but a fire-fly — one 
 solitary fire-fly — showing against the dark bushes like the last 
 little speck of the departed Glory of the house ; and even it 
 went flitting up and down at sudden angles, and leaving a place 
 
GENOA. 337 
 
 with a jerk, and describing an irregular circle, and returning to 
 the same place with a twitch that startled one : as if it were 
 looking for the rest of the Glory, and wondering (Heaven knows 
 it might !) what had become of it. 
 
 In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows 
 of my dismal entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into 
 familiar forms and substances ; and I already began to think 
 that when the time should come, a year hence, for closing the 
 long holiday and turning back to England, I might part from 
 Genoa with anything but a glad heart. 
 
 It is a place that " grows upon you " every day. There 
 seems to be always something to find out in it. There" are the 
 most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You 
 can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle !) 
 twenty times a day, if you like ; and turn up again, under the 
 most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the 
 strangest contrasts ; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, 
 magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at 
 every turn. 
 
 They who would know how beautiful the country imme- 
 diately surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to 
 the top of Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city walls : 
 a feat more easily performed. No prospect can be more diver- 
 sified and lovely than the changing views of the harbour, and 
 the valleys of the two rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, 
 from the heights along which the strongly fortified walls are 
 carried, like the great wall of China in little. In not the least 
 picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair specimen of a real 
 Genoese tavern, where the visitor may derive good entertain- 
 ment from real Genoese dishes, such as Tagliarini ; Eavioli ; 
 German sausages, strong of garlic, sliced and eaten with fresh green 
 figs ; cocks' combs and sheep-kidneys, chopped up with mutton 
 chops and liver ; small pieces of some unknown part of a calf, 
 twisted into small shreds, fried, and served up in a great dish 
 
 z 
 
338 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 like whitebait ; and other curiosities of that kind. They often 
 get wine at these suburban Trattorie, from France and Spain 
 and Portugal, which is brought over by small captains in little 
 trading vessels. They buy it at so much a bottle, without ask- 
 ing what it is, or caring to remember if anybody tells them, and 
 usually divide it into two heaps ; of which they label one 
 Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various opposite 
 flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are com- 
 prised under these two general heads are quite extraordinary. 
 The most limited range is probably from cool Gruel up to old 
 Marsala, and down again to apple Tea. 
 
 The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any 
 thoroughfare can well be, where people (even Italian people) 
 are supposed to live and walk about ; being mere lanes, with 
 here and there a kind of well, or breathing-place. The houses 
 are immensely high, painted in all sorts of colours, and are in 
 every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of repair. They 
 are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses in the 
 old town of Edinburgh, or many houses i in Paris. There are 
 few street-doors ; the entrance-halls are, for the most part, 
 looked upon as public property ; and any moderately enter- 
 prising scavenger might make a fine fortune by now and then 
 clearing them out. As it is impossible for, coaches to penetrate 
 into these streets, there are sedan-chairs, gilded and otherwise, 
 for hire in divers places. A great many private chairs are also 
 kept among the nobility and gentry ; and at night these are 
 trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers of great 
 lanterns, made of linen stretched upon a frame. The sedans 
 and lanterns are the legitimate successors of the long strings, of 
 patient and much-abused mules, that go jingling their little 
 bells through these confined streets all day long. They follow 
 them as regularly as the stars the sun. 
 
 When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces : the Strada Nuova 
 and the Strada Balbi ? or how the former, looked one summer 
 day, when I first saw it underneath the brightest, and most 
 
GENOA. 339 
 
 intensely blue of summer skies : which its narrow perspective 
 of immense mansions reduced to a tapering and most precious 
 strip of brightness, looking down upon the heavy shade below ? 
 A brightness not too common, even in July and August, to be 
 well esteemed : for, if the Truth must out, there were not eight 
 blue skies in as many midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, 
 early in the morning ; when, looking out to sea, the water and 
 the firmament were one world of deep and brilliant blue. At 
 other times there were clouds and haze enough to make an 
 Englishman grumble in his own climate. 
 
 The endless details of these rich Palaces : the walls of some 
 of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke ! The 
 great, heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over 
 tier : with here and there one larger than the rest, towering 
 high up — a huge marble platform ; the doorless vestibules, 
 massively barred lower windows, immense public staircases, 
 thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, 
 dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers : among which the eye 
 wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is suc- 
 ceeded by another — the terrace gardens between house and 
 house, with green arches of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, 
 and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet 
 above the street — the painted halls, mouldering, and blotting, 
 and rotting in the damp corners, and still shining out in beauti- 
 ful colours and voluptuous designs, where the walls are dry — 
 the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding wreaths, 
 and crowns, and flying upward and downward, and standing in 
 niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than 
 elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who, on a 
 more recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out 
 what seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a 
 sun-dial — the steep, steep, uphill streets of small palaces (but 
 very large palaces for all that), with marble terraces looking 
 down into close by-ways — the magnificent and innumerable 
 churches ; and the rapid passage from a street of stately edifices? 
 
 z 2 
 
,34° PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming with unwholesome 
 stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and whole 
 worlds of dirty people — make up, altogether, such a scene of 
 wonder : so lively, and yet so dead : so noisy, and yet so 
 quiet : so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering : so wide 
 awake,' and yet so fast asleep : that it is a sort of intoxication 
 to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. 
 A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of 
 a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant 
 reality ! 
 
 The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied, 
 all at once, is characteristic. For instance, the English Banker 
 (my excellent and hospitable friend) has his office in a good- 
 sized Palazzo in the Strada Nuova. In the hall (every inch of 
 which is elaborately painted, but which is as dirty as a police- 
 station in London), a hook-nosed Saracen's Head with an 
 immense quantity of black hair (there is a man attached to it) 
 sells walking-sticks. On the other side of the doorway, a lady 
 with a showy handkerchief for head-dress (wife to the Saracen's 
 Head, I believe) sells articles of her own knitting ; and some- 
 times flowers. A little further in, two or three blind men 
 occasionally beg. Sometimes they are visited by a man without 
 legs, on a little go-cart, but who has such a fresh-coloured, 
 lively face, and such a respectable, well-conditioned body, that 
 he looks as if he had sunk into the ground up to his middle, 
 or had come, but partially, up a flight of cellar steps to speak 
 to somebody. A little further in, a few men, perhaps, lie asleep 
 in the middle of the day ; or they may be chairmen waiting 
 for their absent freight. If so, they have brought their chairs 
 in with them, and there they stand also. On the left of the 
 hall is a little room : a hatter's shop. On the first floor is the 
 English bank. On the first floor, also, is a whole house, and a 
 good large residence too. Heaven knows what there may be 
 above that ; but, when you are there, you have only just begun 
 to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs again, thinking of 
 
GENOA. 34t 
 
 this ; and passing out at a great crazy door in the back of the 
 hall, instead of turning the other way, to get into the street 
 again ; it bangs behind you, making the dismallest and most 
 lonesome echoes, and you stand in a yard (the yard of the same 
 house) which seems to have been unvisited by human foot for a 
 hundred years. Not a sound disturbs its repose. Not a head 
 thrust out of any of the grim, dark, jealous windows within 
 sight, makes the weeds in the cracked pavement faint of heart, 
 by suggesting the possibility of there being hands to grub them 
 up. Opposite to you is a giant figure carved in stone, reclining, 
 with an urn upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork ; and out 
 of the urn dangles the fag-end of a leaden pipe, which, once 
 upon a time, poured a small torrent down the rocks. But the 
 eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than this channel is now. 
 He seems to have given his urn, which is nearly upside down, 
 a final tilt ; and after crying, like a sepulchral child, " All 
 gone !" to have lapsed into a stony silence. 
 
 In the streets of shops the houses are much smaller, but of 
 great size notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very 
 dirty : quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable : and emit 
 a peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese kept in 
 very hot blankets. Notwithstanding the height of the houses, 
 there would seem to have been a lack of room in the city, for 
 new houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it has been 
 possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a crack or corner, 
 in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the wall of a 
 church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, there 
 you are sure to find some kind of habitation : looking as if it 
 had grown there, like a fungus. Against the Government 
 House, against the old Senate House, round about any large 
 building, little shops stick close, like parasite vermin to the 
 great carcase. And for all this, look where you may : up steps, 
 down steps, anywhere, everywhere : there are irregular houses, 
 receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their 
 neighbours, crippling themselves or their friends by some means 
 
342 l'ICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 or other, until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the 
 way, and you can't see any further. 
 
 One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is 
 down by the landing- wharf : though it may be that its being 
 associated with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our 
 arrival has stamped it deeper in my mind. Here, again, the 
 houses are very high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed 
 shapes, and have (as most of the houses have) something hang- 
 ing out of a great many windows, and wafting its frouzy 
 fragrance on the breeze. . Sometimes, it is a curtain ; some- 
 times, it is a carpet ; sometimes, it is a bed ; sometimes, a 
 whole line-full, of clothes ;. but. there is almost always _ some- 
 thing. Before the basements of. these houses is an arcade over 
 the pavement : very massive, dark, and low, like an old. crypt. 
 The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, has turned quite 
 black; and against every one of these black piles, all sorts. of 
 filth and garbage seem to accumulate spontaneously. Beneath 
 some of the arches, the sellers of macaroni and polenta establish 
 their stalls, which are by no means inviting. The offal of the 
 fish market, near at hand — that is to say, of a back-lane, where 
 people sit upon the ground and on various old bulk-heads and 
 sheds, and sell fish when they have any to dispose of — and of a 
 vegetable market, constructed on the same principle — are con- 
 tributed to the decoration of this quarter ; and as all the 
 mercantile business is transacted here, and it is crowded all 
 day, it has a very decided flavour about it. The Porto Franco, 
 or Free Port (where goods brought in from foreign countries 
 pay no duty until they are sold and taken out, as in a bonded 
 warehouse in England), is down here also ; and two portentous 
 officials, in cocked-hats, stand at the gate to search you if they 
 choose,, and to keep out Monks and Ladies. For, Sanctity. as 
 well as Beauty has been known to. yield to. the temptation of 
 smuggling, and in the same way : that is to say, by concealing 
 the smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So 
 Sanctity and 'Beauty may by no means enter. 
 
GENOA. 343 
 
 The Streets of Genoa would be all the better for the importa- 
 tion of a few Priests of prepossessing appearance. Every fourth 
 or fifth man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk ; and there is 
 pretty sure to be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or 
 outside every hackney carriage on the neighbouring roads. I 
 have no knowledge, elsewhere, of more repulsive countenances 
 than are to be found among these gentry. If Nature's hand- 
 writing be at all legible, greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and 
 intellectual torpor could hardly.be observed among any class of 
 men "in the world. 
 
 Mr. Pepys once heard a clergyman assert in his sermon, in 
 illustration of his respect for the Priestly office, that if he could 
 meet" a Priest and angel -together, he- would salute the Priest 
 first"" lam rather of the opinion of- Petrarch, who, when -his 
 pupil Boccaccio wrote to him in great tribulation, that he had 
 been visited and admonished for his writings by a Carthusian 
 Friar who claimed to be a messenger immediately commissioned 
 by Heaven for that purpose, replied that, for his own part, he 
 Would take the liberty of testing the reality of the commission 
 by personal observation of the Messenger's face, eyes, forehead, 
 behaviour, and discourse. I cannot but believe myself, from 
 similar observation, that many unaccredited celestial messengers 
 maybe seen skulking through the streets of Genoa, or droning 
 aWay their lives in other Italian towns. 
 
 Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body, are, as 
 an order, the best friends of the people. They seem to mingle 
 with them more immediately, as their counsellors and com- 
 forters ; and to go among them more when they are sick ; and 
 to pry less than some other orders into the secrets of families, 
 for the purpose of establishing a baleful ascendancy over 
 their weaker members j and' to be influenced by a less fierce 
 desire to make converts, and, once made, to let them go to 
 ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse dress, 
 in all parts of the town at all times, and begging in the 
 markets early in the morning. The Jesuits, too, muster strong 
 
344 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in the streets, and go slinking noiselessly about, in pairs, like 
 black cats. 
 
 In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades congregate. 
 There is a street of jewellers, and there is a row of booksellers ; 
 but even down in places where nobody ever can, or ever could, 
 penetrate in a carriage, there are mighty old palaces shut in 
 among the gloomiest and closest walls, and almost shut out 
 from the sun. Very few of the tradesmen have any idea of 
 setting forth their goods, or disposing them for show. If you, 
 a stranger, want to buy anything, you usually look round the 
 shop till you see it ; then clutch it, if it be within reach ; and 
 inquire how much. Everything is sold at the most unlikely 
 place. If you want coffee, you go to a sweetmeat shop ; and if 
 you want meat, you will probably find it behind an old checked 
 curtain, down half-a-dozen steps, in some sequestered nook as 
 hard to find as if the commodity were poison, and Genoa's law 
 were death to any that uttered it. 
 
 Most of the apothecaries' shops are great lounging-places. 
 Here, grave men with sticks sit down in the shade for hours 
 together, passing a meagre Genoa paper from hand to hand, and 
 talking, drowsily and sparingly, about the News. Two or three 
 of these are poor physicians, ready to proclaim themselves on an 
 emergency, and tear off with any messenger who may arrive. 
 You may know them by the way in which they stretch their 
 necks to listen when you enter ; and by the sigh with which 
 they fall back again into their dull corners, on finding that you 
 only want medicine. Few people lounge in the barbers' shops ; 
 though they are very numerous, as hardly any man shaves him- 
 self. But the apothecary's has its group of loungers, who sit 
 back among the bottles, with their hands folded over the tops 
 of their sticks. So still and quiet, that either you don't see 
 them in the darkened shop, or mistake them — as I did one 
 ghostly man in bottle-green, one day, with a hat like a stopper 
 — for Horse Medicine. 
 
GENOA. 345 
 
 On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of putting 
 themselves, as their ancestors were of putting houses, in every 
 available inch of space within and about the town. In all the 
 lanes and alleys, and up every little ascent, and on every dwarf 
 wall, and on every flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Mean- 
 while (and especially on festa-days) the bells of the churches 
 ring incessantly : not in peals, or any known form of sound, 
 but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle : 
 with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is 
 maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up 
 in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope 
 attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy 
 similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly 
 obnoxious to Evil Spirits ; but looking up into the steeples, 
 and seeing (and hearing) these young Christians thus engaged, 
 one might very naturally mistake them for the Enemy. 
 
 Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous. All 
 the shops were shut up, twice within a week, for these holi- 
 days ; and one night, all the houses in the neighbourhood of a 
 particular church were illuminated, while the church itself was 
 lighted outside with torches ; and a grove of blazing links was 
 erected in an open place outside one of the city gates. This 
 part of the ceremony is prettier and more singular a little way 
 in the country, where you can trace the illuminated cottages all 
 the way up a steep hill-side ; and where you pass festoons of 
 tapers, wasting away in the starlight night, before some lonely 
 little house upon the road. 
 
 On these days, they always dress the church of the saint in 
 whose honour the festa is holden, very gaily. Gold-embroidered 
 festoons of different colours hang from the arches ; the altar 
 furniture is set forth ; and, sometimes, even the lofty pillars 
 are swathed from top to bottom in tight-fitting draperies. The 
 cathedral is dedicated to St. Lorenzo. On St. Lorenzo's day we 
 went into it, just as the sun was setting. Although these 
 decorations are usually in very indifferent taste, the effect, just 
 
34^ PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 then, was very superb indeed. For the whole building was 
 dressed in red ; and the sinking sun, streaming in through a 
 great red curtain in the chief doorway, made all the gorgeous- 
 ness its own. When the sun went down, and it gradually grew 
 quite dark inside, except for a few twinkling tapers on the 
 principal altar, and some small dangling silver lamps, it was 
 very mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any of the 
 churches towards evening is like a mild dose of opium. 
 
 With the money collected at a festa, they usually pay for 
 the dressing of the church, and for the hiring of the band, and 
 for the tapers.- If there be any left (which seldom happens,'. I 
 believe), the souls in^Purgatory get the benefit of. it. .They are. 
 also- supposed" to have the - benefit of the exertions t>£ certain 
 small boys, who' shake" money-bDxes" : before". some mysterious 
 little buildings like rural" turnpikes, which (usually shut up 
 close) fly open on Red-letter days, and disclose an image and 
 some flowers inside. 
 
 Just without the city gate, on the Albaro Road, is a small 
 house, with an altar in it, and a stationary money-box : also for 
 the benefit of the souls in Purgatory. Still further to stimu- 
 late the charitable, there is a monstrous painting on the plaster, 
 on either side of the grated door, representing a select party of 
 souls frying. One of them has a grey moustache, and an 
 elaborate head of grey hair : as if he had been taken out of a 
 hairdresser's window and cast into the furnace. There he is : 
 a most grotesque and hideously comic old soul : for ever blis- 
 tering in the real sun, and melting in the mimic fire, for 1 the 
 gratification and improvement (and the contributions) of the 
 poorer Genoese. 
 
 They are not a very joyous people, "and are seldom seen to 
 dance on their holidays : the staple places of entertainment, 
 among the women, being the churches and the public walks; 
 They are very good- tempered, obliging, and industrious. In- 
 dustry has not made them clean, for their" habitations are 
 extremely filthy, and their usual occupation, on a fine Sunday 
 
ITALIAN FEASANTS. 
 
GENOA. 347 
 
 morning, is to sit at their doors, hunting in each others' heads. 
 But their dwellings are so close and confined that, if those 
 parts of the city had been beaten down by Massena in the time 
 of the terrible Blockade, it would have at least occasioned one 
 public benefit among many misfortunes: 
 
 The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so con- 
 stantly washing clothes in the public tanks, and in every stream 
 and ditch, that one cannot help wondering, in the midst of all 
 this dirt, who wears them when they are clean. The custom is 
 to lay the wet. linen which is being operated upon, on a smooth 
 stone, and hammer away at it with a flat wooden mallet. This 
 they do, . as. furiously as if they were revenging themselves 
 on dress in. general for being connected with the Fall of 
 Mankind. . . '"-.'„ 
 
 ,It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at 
 these times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby, 
 tightly swathed up, arms and legs and all, in an enormous 
 quantity of wrapper, so that it is unable to move a toe or finger. 
 This custom (which we often see represented in old pictures) 
 is universal among the common people. A child is left any- 
 whex'e without the possibility of crawling away, or is accidentally 
 knocked off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is hung up to a 
 hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at an English 
 rag shop, without the least inconvenience to anybody. . 
 
 I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in the little 
 country church of San. Martino, a couple of miles from the city, 
 while a baptism took place. I saw the priest, and an attendant ' 
 with a -large taper, and a. mam and a woman, and some others; 
 but I had no more idea, until the ceremony was all over, that it 
 was a baptism, or .that the curious little stiff instrument, that 
 was passed from one to another, in the course of the ceremony, 
 by the handle — like a short poker — was a child, than I had that 
 it was my own christening. . I borrowed the child afterwards, for 
 a minute or two (it was lying across the font then), and found 
 it very red in the face, but perfectly quiet,, and not to be bent 
 
34 8 MCTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 on any terms. The number of cripples in the streets soon 
 ceased to surprise me. 
 
 There are plenty of Saints' and Virgin's Shrines, of course ; 
 generally at the corners of streets. The favourite memento to 
 the Faithful, about Genoa, is a painting, representing a peasant 
 on his knees, "with a spade and some other agricultural imple- 
 ments beside him ; and the Madonna, with the Infant Saviour 
 in her arms, appearing to him in a cloud. This is the Legend 
 of the Madonna della Guardia : a chapel on a mountain within 
 a few miles, which is in high repute. It seems that this 
 peasant lived all alone by himself, tilling some land atop of the 
 mountain, where, being a devout man, he daily said his prayers 
 to the Virgin in the open air ; for his hut was a very poor one. 
 Upon a certain day, the Virgin appeared to him, as in the 
 picture, and said, " Why do you pray in the open air and 
 without a priest ? " The peasant explained because there was 
 neither priest nor church at hand— a very uncommon complaint 
 indeed in Italy. " I should wish, then," said the Celestial 
 Visitor, " to have a chapel built here, in which the prayers of 
 the Faithful may be offered up." " But, Santissima Madonna," 
 said the peasant, " I am a poor man ; and chapels cannot be 
 built without money. They must be supported, too, Santissima; 
 for to have a chapel, and not support it liberally, is a wicked- 
 ness — a deadly sin." This sentiment gave great satisfaction to 
 the visitor. " Go ! " said she. " There is such a village in the 
 valley on the left, and such another village in the valley on the 
 right, and such another village elsewhere, that will gladly con- 
 tribute to the building of a chapel. Go to them ! Relate what 
 you have seen : and do not doubt that sufficient money will be 
 forthcoming to erect my chapel, or that it will, afterwards, be 
 handsomely maintained." All of which (miraculously) turned 
 out to be quite true. And, in proof of this prediction and 
 revelation, there is the chapel of the Madonna della Guardia, 
 rich and nourishing at this day. 
 
 The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches can hardly 
 
GENOA. 349 
 
 be exaggerated. The church of the Annunciata especially : built, 
 like many of the others, at the cost of one noble family, and 
 now in slow progress of repair : from the outer door to the 
 utmost height of the high cupola, is so elaborately painted and 
 set in gold, that it looks (as Simond describes it, in his charm- 
 ing book on Italy) like a great enamelled snuff-box. Most of 
 the richer churches contain some beautiful pictures, or other 
 embellishments of great price, almost universally set, side by 
 side, with sprawling effigies of maudlin monks, and the veriest 
 trash and tinsel ever seen. 
 
 It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of the 
 popular mind, and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory, but there 
 is very little tenderness for the bodies of the dead here. For 
 the very poor, there are, immediately outside one angle of the 
 walls, and behind a jutting point of the fortification, near the 
 sea, certain common pits — one for every day in the year — which 
 all remain closed up, until the turn of each comes for its daily 
 reception of dead bodies. Among the troops in the town, there 
 are usually some Swiss : more or less. When any of these die, 
 they are buried out of a fund maintained by such of their 
 countrymen as are resident in Genoa. Their providing coffins 
 for these men is matter of great astonishment to the autho- 
 rities. 
 
 Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent splash- 
 ing down of dead people into so many wells is bad. It sur- 
 rounds Death with revolting associations, that insensibly become 
 connected with those whom Death is approaching. Indifference 
 and avoidance are the natural result ; and all the softening 
 influences of the great sorrow are harshly disturbed. 
 
 There is a ceremony, when an old Cavaliere or the like 
 expires, of erecting a pile of benches in the cathedral, to 
 represent his bier ; covering them over with a pall of black 
 velvet ; putting his hat and sword on the top ; making a little 
 square of seats about the whole ; and sending out formal invita- 
 tions to his friends and acquaintance to come and sit there, 
 
35° PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and hear Mass : which is performed at the principal altar, 
 decorated with an infinity of candles for that purpose. 
 
 When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of 
 death, their nearest relations generally walk off: retiring into 
 the country for a little change, and leaving the body to be dis- 
 posed of, without any superintendence from them. The proces- 
 sion is usually formed, and the coffin borne, and the funeral s 
 conducted, by a body of persons called a Confraternita, who, as 
 a kind of voluntary penance, undertake to perform these offices, 
 in regular rotation, for the dead ; but who, mingling something 
 of pride with their humility, are dressed in a loose garment 
 covering their whole person, and wear a hood concealing the 
 face ; with breathing holes and apertures for the eyes. The 
 effect of this costume is very ghastly : especially in the case of 
 a certain Blue Confraternita belonging to Genoa, who, to say 
 the least of them, are very ugly customers, and who look — ■ 
 suddenly encountered in their pious ministration in the streets 
 — as if they were Ghoules or Demons, bearing off the body for 
 themselves. 
 
 Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse attendant 
 on many Italian customs, of being recognised as a means of 
 establishing a current account with Heaven, on which to draw, 
 too easily, for future bad actions, or as an expiation for past 
 misdeeds, it must be admitted to be a good one, and a practical 
 one, and one involving unquestionably good works. A voluntary 
 service like this is surely better than the imposed penance (not 
 at all an infrequent one) of giving so many licks to such and 
 such a stone in the pavement of the cathedral ; or than a voav 
 to the Madonna to wear nothing but blue for a year or two. 
 This is supposed to give great delight above ; blue being (as is 
 well known) the Madonna's favourite colour. Women who have 
 devoted themselves to this act of Faith are very commonly seen 
 walking in the streets. 
 
 There are three theatres, in the city, besides an old one now 
 rarely opened. The most important— the Carlo Felice : the' 
 
GENOA. 35I 
 
 opera-house of Genoa — is a very splendid, commodious, and 
 beautiful theatre. A company of comedians were acting there 
 when we arrived : and, after their departure, a second-rate opera 
 company came. The great season is not until the carnival time 
 — in the spring. Nothing impressed me so much, in my visits 
 here (which were pretty numerous), as the uncommonly hard 
 and cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest 
 defect, take nothing good-humouredly, seem to be always lying 
 in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as 
 little as the actors. But, as there is nothing else of a public 
 nature at which they are allowed to express the least disap- 
 probation, perhaps they are resolved to make the most of this 
 opportunity. 
 
 There are a great number of Piedmontese Officers too, who 
 are allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for 
 next to nothing : gratuitous or cheap accommodation for these 
 gentlemen being insisted on by the Governor, in all public or 
 semi-public entertainments. They are lofty critics in conse-. 
 quence, and infinitely more exacting than if they made the 
 unhappy manager's fortune. 
 
 The Teatro Diueno, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage in 
 the open air, where the performances take place by daylight, in 
 the cool of the afternoon ; commencing at four or five o'clock, 
 and lasting some three hours. It is curious, sitting among the 
 audience, to have a fine view of the neighbouring hills and 
 houses, and to see the neighbours at their windows looking on, 
 and to hear the bells of the churches and convents ringing at 
 most complete cross purposes with the scene. Beyond this, 
 and the novelty of seeing a play in the fresh pleasant air, with 
 the darkening evening closing in, there is nothing very exciting 
 or characteristic in the performances. The actors are indif- 
 ferent ; and though they sometimes represent one of Goldoni's 
 comedies, the staple of the Drama is French. Anything like 
 nationality is dangerous to despotic governments and Jesuit- 
 beleaguered kings, 
 
352 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti — a famous company 
 from Milan — is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition 
 I ever beheld in my life. I never saw anything so exquisitely 
 ridiculous. They look between four and five feet high, but are 
 really much smaller ; for when a musician in the orchestra 
 happens to put his hat on the stage, it becomes alarmingly 
 gigantic, and almost blots out an actor. They usually play a 
 comedy and a ballet. The comic man in the comedy I saw one 
 summer night is a waiter at an hotel. There never was such a 
 locomotive actor since the world began. Great pains are taken 
 with him. He has extra joints in his legs : and a practical eye, 
 with which he winks at the pit, in a manner that is absolutely 
 insupportable to a stranger, but which the initiated audience, 
 mainly composed of the common people, receive (so they do 
 everything else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were a 
 man. His spirits are prodigious. He continually shakes his 
 legs, and winks his eye. And there is a heavy father with grey 
 hair, who sits down on the regular conventional stage-bank, and 
 blesses his daughter in the regular conventional way, who is 
 tremendous. No one would suppose it possible that anything 
 short of a real man could be so tedious. It is the triumph 
 of art. 
 
 In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with the Bride in the 
 very hour of her nuptials. He brings her to his cave, and tries 
 to soothe her. They sit down on a sofa (the regular sofa ! in 
 the regular place, O.P. Second Entrance !), and a procession of 
 musicians enter ; one creature playing a drum, and knocking 
 himself off his legs at every blow. These failing to delight her, 
 dancers appear. Four first ; then two ; the two ; the flesh- 
 coloured two. The way in which they dance ; the height to 
 which they spring ; the impossible and inhuman extent to 
 which they pirouette ; the revelation of their preposterous legs ; 
 the coming down with a pause, on the very tips of their toes, 
 when the music requires it ; the gentleman's retiring up when 
 it is the lady's turn ; and the lady's retiring up when it is the 
 
GENOA. 353 
 
 gentleman's turn ; the final passion of a pas de deux ; and the 
 going off with a bound ! — I shall never see a real ballet with a 
 composed countenance again. 
 
 I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play called 
 " St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon." It began by the 
 disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa 
 in his chamber at St. Helena ; to whom his valet entered, with 
 this obscure announcement : 
 
 " Sir Yew ud se on Low !" (the ow as in cow). 
 
 Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals !) was 
 a perfect mammoth of a man to Napoleon ; hideously ugly ; 
 with a monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for 
 the lower jaw, to express his tyrannical and obdurate nature. 
 He began his system of persecution by calling his prisoner 
 "General Buonaparte;" to which the latter replied, with the 
 deepest tragedy, "Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me not thus. 
 Eepeat that phrase and leave me ! I am Napoleon, Emperor of 
 France !" Sir Yew lid se on, nothing daunted, proceeded to 
 entertain him with an ordinance of the British Government, 
 regulating the state he should preserve, and the furniture of his 
 rooms : and limiting his attendants to four or five persons. 
 " Four or five for me ! " said Napoleon. " Me ! One hundred 
 thousand men were lately at my sole command ; and this 
 English officer talks of four or five for me ! " Throughout the 
 piece, Napoleon (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and 
 was for ever having small soliloquies by himself) was very 
 bitter on " these English officers " and " these English soldiers :" 
 to the great satisfaction of the audience, who were perfectly 
 delighted to have Low bullied ; and who, whenever Low said 
 " General Buonaparte " (which he always did : always receiving 
 the same correction), quite execrated him. It would be hard to 
 say why ; for Italians have little cause to sympathise with 
 Napoleon, Heaven knows. 
 
 There was no plot at all, except that a French officer, dis- 
 guised as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape ; 
 
 A A 
 
354 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and being discovered, but not before Napoleon had magnani- 
 mously refused to steal his freedom, was immediately ordered 
 off by Low to be hanged. In two very long speeches, which 
 Low made memorable by winding up with "Yas!" — to show 
 that he was English — which brought down thunders of applause. 
 Napoleon was so affected by this catastrophe, that he fainted 
 away on the spot, and was carried out by two other puppets. 
 Judging from what followed, it would appear that he never 
 recovered the shock ; for the next act showed him, in a clean 
 shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), where a lady, 
 prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little children, 
 who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a decent end ; 
 the last word on his lips being " Vatterlo." 
 
 It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots were so 
 wonderfully beyond control, and did such marvellous things of 
 their own accord : doubling themselves, up, and getting under 
 tables, and dangling in the air, and sometimes skating away 
 with him, out of all human knowledge, when he was in full 
 speech — mischances which were not rendered the less absurd 
 by a settled melancholy depicted in his face. To put an end 
 to one conference with Low, he had to go to a table, and read a 
 book : when it was the finest spectacle I ever beheld, to see his 
 body bending over the volume like a bootjack, and his senti- 
 mental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was pro- 
 digiously good in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and 
 his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, 
 represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, 
 who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered 
 about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in 
 the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was 
 great at all times — a decided brute and villain, beyond all possi- 
 bility of mistake. Low was especially fine at the last, when, 
 hearing the doctor and the valet say, " The Emperor is dead I" 
 he pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece (not the watch) 
 by exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, " Ha ! ha ! Eleven 
 
GENOA, 355 
 
 minutes to six! The General dead! and the spy hanged !" 
 This brought the curtain down triumphantly. 
 
 There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier 
 residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fish-ponds, 
 whither we removed as soon as our three months' tenancy of 
 the Pink Gaol at Albaro had ceased and determined. 
 
 It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof 
 from the town : surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, 
 adorned with statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces, 
 walks of orange-trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and 
 camellias. All its apartments are beautiful in their proportions 
 and decorations ; but the great hall, some fifty feet in height, 
 with three large windows at the end, overlooking the whole town 
 of Genoa, the harbour, and the neighbouring sea, affords one of 
 the most fascinating and delightful prospects in the world. 
 Any house more cheerful and habitable than the great rooms 
 are, within, it would be difficult to conceive ; and certainly 
 nothing more delicious than the scene without, in sunshine or 
 in moonlight, could be imagined. It is more like an enchanted 
 palace in an Eastern story than a grave and sober lodging. 
 
 How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire 
 of the wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their 
 fresh colouring as if they had been painted yesterday ; or how 
 one floor, or even the great hall which opens on eight other 
 rooms, is a spacious promenade ; or how there are corridors and 
 bedchambers above, which we never use and rarely visit, and 
 scarcely know the way through ; or how there is a view of a 
 perfectly different character on each of the four sides of the 
 building ; matters little. But that prospect from the hall is 
 like a vision to me. I go back to it in fancy, as I have done 
 in calm reality a hundred times a day ; and stand there, looking 
 out, with the sweet scents from the garden rising up about me, 
 in a perfect dream of happiness. 
 
 There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many 
 
 A A 2 
 
350 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the 
 sunny sky ; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, a 
 solitary convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an iron 
 cross at the end, where sometimes, early in the morning, I have 
 seen a little group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to 
 and fro, and stopping now and then to peep down upon the 
 waking world in which they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, 
 brightest of hills in good weather, but sulkiest when storms are 
 coming on, is here, upon the left. The Fort within the walls 
 (the good King built it to command the town, and beat the 
 houses of the Genoese about their ears, in case they should be 
 discontented) commands that height upon the right. The broad 
 sea lies beyond, in front there ; and that hue of coast, begin- 
 ning by the lighthouse, and tapering away, a mere speck in the 
 rosy distance, is the beautiful coast road that leads to Nice. 
 The garden near at hand, among the roofs and houses : all red 
 with roses and fresh with little fountains : is the Acqua Sola — 
 a public promenade, where the military band plays gaily, and 
 the white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese nobility ride 
 round, and round, and round, in state clothes and coaches at 
 least, if not in absolute wisdom. Within a stone's throw, as it 
 seems, the audience of the Day Theatre sit : their faces turned 
 this way. But, as the stage is hidden, it is very odd, without 
 a knowledge of the cause, to see their faces change so suddenly 
 from earnestness to laughter ; and odder still to hear the rounds 
 upon rounds of applause, rattling in the evening air, to which 
 the curtain falls. But, being Sunday night, they act their best 
 and most attractive play. And now the sun is going down, in 
 such magnificent array of red, and green, and golden light, as 
 neither pen nor pencil could depict ; and to the ringing of the 
 vesper bells, darkness sets in at once, without a twilight. Then, 
 lights begin to shine in Genoa, and on the country road ; and 
 the revolving lantern out at sea there, flashing, for an instant, 
 on this palace front and portico, illuminates it as if there were 
 a bright moon bursting from behind a cloud ; then, merges it 
 
GENOA. 357 
 
 in deep obscurity. And this, so far as I know, is the only reason 
 why the Genoese avoid it after dark, and think it haunted. 
 
 My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come ; 
 but nothing worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will occa- 
 sionally sail away, as I did one pleasant autumn evening, into 
 the bright prospect, and snuff the morning air at Marseilles. 
 
 The corpulent hairdresser was still sitting in his slippers out- 
 side his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the window, 
 with the natural inconstancy of their sex, had ceased to twirl, 
 and were languishing, stock-still, with their beautiful faces 
 addressed to blind corners of the establishment, where it was 
 impossible for admirers to penetrate. 
 
 The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of 
 eighteen hours, and we were going to run back again by the 
 Cornice Road from Nice ; not being satisfied to have seen only 
 the outsides of the beautiful towns that rise in picturesque 
 white clusters from among the olive woods, and rocks, and hills, 
 upon the margin of the Sea. 
 
 The boat which started for Nice that night, at eight o'clock, 
 was very small, and so crowded with goods that there was 
 scarcely room to move ; neither was there anything to eat on 
 board, except bread ; nor to drink, except coffee. But, being 
 due at Nice at about eight or so in the morning, this was of no 
 consequence : so when we began to wink at the bright stars, in 
 involuntary acknowledgment of their winking at us, we turned 
 into our berths, in a crowded, but cool little cabin, and slept 
 soundly till morning. 
 
 The boat being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever was 
 built, it was within an hour of noon when we turned into Nice 
 Harbour, where we very little expected anything but breakfast. 
 But we were laden with wool. Wool must not remain in the 
 Custom House at Marseilles more than twelve months at a 
 stretch, without paying duty. It is the custom to make ficti- 
 tious removals of unsold wool to evade this law ; to take it 
 somewhere when the twelve months are nearly out ; bring it 
 
35 8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 straight back again ; and warehouse it, as anew cargo, for nearly 
 twelve months longer. This wool of ours had come originally 
 from some place in the East. It was recognised as Eastern 
 produce, the moment we entered the harbour. Accordingly, 
 the gay little Sunday boats, full of holiday people, which had 
 come off to greet us, were warned away by the authorities ; we 
 were declared in quarantine ; and a great flag was solemnly run 
 up to the masthead on the wharf, to make it known to all the 
 town. 
 
 It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, unwashed, 
 undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity of lying 
 blistering in a lazy harbour, with the town looking on from a 
 respectful distance, all manner of whiskered men in cocked-hats 
 discussing our fate at a remote guard-house, with gestures (we 
 looked very hard at them through telescopes) expressive of a 
 week's detention at least : and nothing whatever the matter all 
 the time. But even in this crisis the Brave Courier achieved 
 a triumph. He telegraphed somebody (/ saw nobody) either 
 naturally connected with the hotel, or put en rapport with the 
 establishment for that occasion only. The telegraph was 
 answered, and in half an hour, or less, there came a loud shout 
 from the guard-house. The captain was wanted Everybody 
 helped the captain into hiis boat. , Everybody got his luggage, 
 and said we were going. The captain rowed away, and dis- 
 appeared behind a little jutting corner of the Galley-slaves' 
 Prison : and presently came back with something, very sulkily. 
 The Brave Courier met him at the side, and received the some- 
 thing as its rightful owner. It was a wicker basket, folded in 
 a linen cloth ; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a roast 
 fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of bread, a 
 dozen or so of peaches, and a few other trifles. When we had 
 selected our own breakfast, the Brave Courier invited a chosen 
 party to partake of these refreshments, and assured them that 
 tVy need, not be deterred by motives of delicacy, as he would 
 order a second basket to be furnished at their expense. Which 
 
NICE HARBOUR. 35.9 
 
 he did — no one knew how — and by-and-by, the captain being 
 again summoned, agaiu sulkily returned with another some- 
 thing ; over which my popular attendant presided as before : 
 carving with a clasp-knife, his own personal property, something 
 smaller than a Koman sword. 
 
 The whole party on board were made merry by these un- 
 expected supplies ; but none more so than a loquacious little 
 Frenchman, who got drunk in five minutes, and a sturdy Cap- 
 puccino Friar, who had taken everybody's fancy mightily, and 
 was one of the best friars in the world, I verily believe. 
 
 He had a free, open countenance ; and a rich brown, flowing 
 beard ; and was a remarkably handsome man, of about fifty. He 
 had come up to us early in the morning, and inquired whether we 
 were sure to be at Nice by eleven ; saying that he particularly 
 wanted to know, because, if we reached it by that time, he 
 would have to perform Mass, and must deal with the consecrated 
 wafer, fasting ; whereas, if there were no chance of his being in 
 time, he would immediately breakfast. He made this communi- 
 cation under the idea that the Brave Courier was the captain ; 
 and, indeed, he looked much more like it than anybody else on 
 board. Being assured that we should arrive in good time, he 
 fasted, and talked, fasting, to everybody, with the most charm- 
 ing good-humour ; answering jokes at the expense of friars with 
 other jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying that, friar as he 
 was, he would engage to take up the two strongest men on board, 
 one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along the 
 deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he 
 could have done it ; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, 
 even in the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most 
 ungainly that can well be. 
 
 All this had given great delight to the loquacious Frenchman, 
 who gradually patronised the Friar very much, and seemed to 
 commiserate him, as one who might have been born a French- 
 man himself, but for ,an unfortunate destiny. Although his 
 patronage was such as a mouse might bestow upon a lion, he 
 
360 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 had a vast opinion of its condescension ; and, in the warmth of 
 that sentiment, occasionally rose on tiptoe, to slap the Friar on 
 the back. 
 
 When the baskets arrived : it being then too late for Mass : 
 the Friar went to work bravely ; eating prodigiously of the cold 
 meat and bread, drinking deep draughts of the wine, smoking 
 cigars, taking snuff, sustaining an uninterrupted conversation 
 with all hands, and occasionally running to the boat's side, and 
 hailing somebody on shore with the intelligence that we musi 
 be got out of this quarantine somehow or other, as he had to 
 take part in a great religious procession in the afternoon. After 
 this, he would come back, laughing lustily from pure good- 
 humour : while the Frenchman wrinkled his small face into ten 
 thousand creases, and said how droll it was, and what a brave 
 boy was that Friar ! At length the heat of the sun without, 
 and of the wine within, made the Frenchman sleepy. So, in 
 the noontide of his patronage of his gigantic protege', he lay 
 down among the wool, and began to snore. 
 
 It was four o'clock before we were released ; and the French- 
 man, dirty, and woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping when the 
 Friar went ashore. As soon as we were free, we all hurried away 
 to wash and dress, that we might make a decent appearance at 
 the procession ; and I saw no more of the Frenchman until Ave 
 took up our station in the main street to see it pass, when he 
 squeezed himself into a front place, elaborately renovated ; threw 
 back his little coat, to show a broad-barred velvet waistcoat, 
 sprinkled all over with stars ; and adjusted himself and his cane 
 so as utterly to bewilder and transfix the Friar, when he should 
 appear. 
 
 The procession was a very long one, and included an immense 
 number of people divided into small parties ; each party chant- 
 ing nasally, on its own account, without reference to any other, 
 and producing a most dismal result. There were angels, crosses, 
 Virgins carried on flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns, 
 saints, missals, infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics, dignitaries 
 
NICE HARBOUR. 361 
 
 of the church in green hats, walking under crimson parasols : 
 and, here and there, a species of sacred street lamp hoisted on 
 a pole. We looked out anxiously for the Cappuccini, and pre- 
 sently their brown robes and corded girdles were seen coming 
 on in a body. 
 
 I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that 
 when the Friar saw him in the broad-barred waistcoat, he would 
 mentally exclaim, "Is that my Patron? That distinguished 
 man ? " and would be covered with confusion. Ah ! never was 
 the Frenchman so deceived. As our friend the Cappuccino 
 advanced, with folded arms, he looked straight into the visage 
 of the little Frenchman, with a bland, serene, composed abstrac- 
 tion, not to be described. There was not the faintest trace of 
 recognition or amusement on his features ; not the smallest con- 
 sciousness of bread and meat, wine, snuff, or cigars. " C'est 
 lui-m^me," I heard the little Frenchman say, in some doubt. 
 Oh yes, it was himself. It was not his brother or his nephew, 
 very like him. It was he. He walked in great state : being 
 one of the Superiors of the Order : and looked his part to 
 admiration. There never was anything so perfect of its kind as 
 the contemplative way in which he allowed his placid gaze to 
 rest on us, his late companions, as if he had never seen us in 
 his life, and didn't see us then. The Frenchman, quite humbled, 
 took off his hat at last, but the Friar still passed on, with the 
 same imperturbable serenity ; and the broad-barred waistcoat, 
 fading into the crowd, was seen no more. 
 
 The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry that 
 shook all the windows in the town. Next afternoon we started 
 for Genoa by the famed Cornice Eoad. 
 
 The half-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who undertook, with 
 his little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither in three 
 days, was a careless, good-looking fellow, whose light-heartedness 
 and singing propensities knew no bounds as long as we went on 
 smoothly. So long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of 
 his whip, for all the peasant girls, and odds and ends of the 
 
3 6 * PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Sonnamhula for all the echoes. So long, he went jingling 
 through every little village, with bells on his horses and rings 
 in his ears : a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness. But, 
 it was highly characteristic to see him under a slight reverse of 
 circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we came to a 
 narrow place where a waggon had broken down and stopped up 
 the road. His hands were twined in his hair immediately, as if 
 a combination of all the direst accidents in life had suddenly 
 fallen on his devoted head. He swore in French, prayed in 
 Italian, and went up and down, beating his feet on the ground 
 in a very ecstasy of despair. There were various carters and 
 mule-drivers assembled round the broken waggon, and at last 
 some man, of an original turn of mind, proposed that a general 
 and joint effort should be made to get things to rights again, and 
 clear the way — an idea which, I verily believe, would never have 
 presented itself to our friend, though we had remained there until 
 now. It was done at no great cost of labour ; but at every pause 
 in the doing, his hands were wound in his hair again, as if there 
 were no ray of hope to lighten his misery. The moment he was 
 on his box once more, and clattering briskly downhill, he 
 returned to the Sonnamhula and the peasant girls, as if it were 
 not in the power of misfortune to depress him. 
 
 Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages on 
 this beautiful road disappears when they are entered, for many 
 of them are very miserable. The streets are narrow, dark, and 
 dirty ; the inhabitants lean and squalid ; and the withered old 
 women, with their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the 
 top of the head, like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely 
 ugly, both along the Riviera, and in Genoa too, that, seen Strega 
 gling about in dim doorways with their spindles, or crooning 
 together in by-corners, they are like a population of Witches — 
 except that they certainly are not to be suspected of brooms or 
 any other instrument of cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in 
 common use to hold wine, and hung out in the sundn all direc- 
 tions, by any means ornamental, as they always preserve the 
 
CORXICE ROAD. 363 
 
 form of very bloated pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, 
 dangling upside down by their own tails. 
 
 These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however : 
 nestling, with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on 
 steep hill-sides, or built upon the brink of noble bays : are 
 charming. The vegetation is everywhere luxuriant and beauti- 
 ful, and the Palm-tree makes a novel feature in the novel 
 scenery. In one town, San Kemo — a most extraordinary place, 
 built on gloomy open arches, so that one might ramble under- 
 neath the whole town — there are pretty terrace gardens ; in other 
 towns there is the clang of shipwrights' hammers, and the 
 building of small vessels on the beach. In some of the broad 
 bays the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor. In every case, 
 each little group of houses presents, in the distance, some 
 enchanting confusion of picturesque and fanciful shapes. 
 
 The road itself, now high above the glittering sea, which 
 breaks against the foot of the precipice : now turning inland to 
 sweep the shore of a bay : now crossing the stony bed of a 
 mountain stream : now low down on the beach : now winding 
 among riven rocks of many forms and colours : now chequered 
 by a solitary ruined tower, one of a chain of towers built, in old 
 time, to protect the coast from the invasions of the Barbary 
 Corsairs — presents new beauties every moment. "When its own 
 striking scenery is passed, and it trails on through a long line of 
 suburb, lying on the flat seashore, to Genoa, then the changing 
 glimpses of that noble city and its harbour awaken a new 
 source of interest ; freshened by every huge, unwieldy, half- 
 inhabited old house in its outskirts : and coming to its climax 
 when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa, with its beau- 
 tiful harbour and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the 
 view. 
 
TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA. 
 
 T STROLLED away from Genoa on the sixth of November, 
 bound for a good many places (England among them), but 
 first for Piacenza ; for which town I started in the coupe* of a 
 machine something like a travelling caravan, in company with 
 the Brave Courier, and a lady with a large dog, who howled 
 dolefully, at intervals, all night. It was very wet, and very 
 cold ; very dark, and very dismal ; we travelled at the rate of 
 barely four miles an hour, and stopped nowhere for refreshment. 
 At ten o'clock next morning we changed coaches at Alessandria, 
 where we Avere packed up in another coach (the body whereof 
 would have been small for a fly), in company with a very old 
 priest ; a young Jesuit, his companion — who carried their 
 breviaries and other books, and who, in the exertion of getting 
 into the coach, had made a gash of pink leg between his black 
 stocking and his black knee-shorts, that reminded one of Hamlet 
 in Ophelia's closet, only it was visible on both legs — a provin- 
 cial Avvocato ; and a gentleman with a red nose that had an 
 uncommon and singular sheen upon it, which I never observed 
 in the human subject before. In this way we travelled on until 
 four o'clock in the afternoon : the roads being still very heavy, 
 and the coach very slow. To mend the matter, the old priest 
 was troubled with cramps in his legs, so that he had to give a 
 terrible yell every ten minutes or so, and be hoisted out by the 
 united efforts of the company ; the coach always stopping for him 
 with great gravity. This disorder, and the roads, formed the 
 main subject of conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that 
 the coupe* had discharged two people, and had only one passenger 
 
stradella. 365 
 
 inside — a monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, 
 of which no man could see the ends when he had his hat on — 
 I took advantage of its better accommodation, and, in company 
 with this gentleman (who was very conversational and good- 
 humoured), travelled on until nearly eleven o'clock at night, 
 when the driver reported that he couldn't think of going any 
 farther, and we accordingly made a halt at a place called 
 Stradella. 
 
 The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard ; 
 where our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls and 
 fire-wood, were all heaped up together, higgledy-piggledy ; so 
 that you didn't know, and couldn't have taken your oath, which 
 was a fowl and which was a cart. We followed a sleepy man with 
 a flaring torch into a great, cold room, where there were two 
 immensely broad beds, on what looked like two immensely 
 broad deal dining-tables ; another deal table of similar dimen- 
 sions in the middle of the bare floor ; four windows ; and two 
 chairs. Somebody said it w r as my room ; and I walked up and 
 down it for half an hour or so, staring at the Tuscan, the old 
 priest, the young priest, and the Avvocato (Red Nose lived in 
 the town, and had gone home), who sat upon the beds, and 
 stared at me in return. 
 
 The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the proceedings 
 is interrupted by an announcement from the Brave (he has been 
 cooking) that supper is ready ; and to the priest's chamber (the 
 next room, and the counterpart of mine) we all adjourn. The 
 first dish is a cabbage, boiled with a great quantity of rice in a 
 tureen full of water, and flavoured with cheese. It is so hot, 
 and we are so cold, that it appears almost jolly. The second 
 dish is some little bits of pork, fried with pigs' kidneys. The 
 third, two red fowls. The fourth, two little red turkeys. The 
 fifth, a huge stew of garlic and truffles, and I don't know what 
 else ; and this concludes the entertainment. 
 
 Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of 
 the dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, 
 
366 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in the middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like 
 Birnam Wood taking a winter walk. He kindles this heap in 
 a twinkling, and produces a jorum of hot brandy-and-water ; 
 for that bottle of his keeps company with the seasons, and now 
 holds nothing but the purest eau de vie. When he has accom- 
 plished this feat, he retires for the night ; and I hear him, for 
 an hour afterwards, and, indeed, until I fall asleep, making jokes 
 in some outhouse (apparently under the pillow), where he is 
 smoking cigars with a party of confidential friends. He never 
 was in the house in his life before : but he knows everybody 
 everywhere, before he has been anywhere five minutes ; and is 
 certain to have attracted to himself, in the meantime, the enthu- 
 siastic devotion of the whole establishment. 
 
 This is at twelve o'clock at night. At four o'clock. next 
 morning he is up again, fresher than a new-blown rose ; making 
 blazing fires without the least authority from the landlord ; pro- 
 ducing mugs of scalding coffee when nobody else can get any- 
 thing but cold water ; and going out into the dark streets, and 
 roaring for fresh milk, on the chance of somebody with a cow 
 getting up to supply it. While the horses are " coming," I 
 stumble out into the town too. It seems to be all one little 
 Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in and out of the arches, 
 alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it is profoundly dark, and 
 raining heavily ; and I shouldn't know it to-morrow, if I were 
 taken there to try. Which Heaven forbid ! 
 
 The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval the 
 driver swears : sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan 
 oaths. Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he 
 begins with Christianity and merges into Paganism. Various 
 messengers are dispatched ; not so much after the horses, as 
 after each other ; for the first messenger never comes back, and 
 all the rest imitate him. At length the horses appear, sur- 
 rounded by all the messengers ; some kicking them, and some 
 dragging them, and all shouting abuse to them. Then, the 
 old priest, the young priest, the Av-vocato, the Tuscan, and 
 
PIACENZA. 367 
 
 all of us take our places ; and sleepy voices, proceeding from 
 the doors of extraordinary hutches in divers parts of the yard, 
 cry out " Addio, corriere mio ! Buon' viaggio, corriere !" 
 Salutations which the Courier, with his face one monstrous 
 grin, returns in like manner as we go jolting and wallowing 
 away through the mud. 
 
 At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey from the 
 inn at Stradella, we broke up our little company before the 
 hotel door, with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all 
 sides. The old priest was taken with the cramp again, before 
 he had got half-way down the street ; and the young priest 
 laid the bundle of books on a door-step, while he dutifully 
 rubbed the old gentleman's legs. The client of the Avvocato 
 was waiting for him at the yard-gate, and kissed him on each 
 cheek with such a resounding smack, that I am afraid he had 
 either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished purse. The 
 Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering off, carrying 
 his hat in his hand that he might the better trail up the ends 
 of his dishevelled moustache. And the Brave Courier, as he 
 and I strolled away to look about us, began immediately to 
 entertain me with the private histories and family affairs of the 
 whole party. 
 
 A brown, decayed, old town Piacenza is. A deserted, soli- 
 tary, grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts ; half-filled-up 
 trenches, which afford a frouzy pasturage to the lean kine that 
 wander about them ; and streets of stern houses, moodily 
 frowning at the other houses over the way. The sleepiest and 
 shabbiest of soldiery go wandering about, with the double curse 
 of laziness and poverty, uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting 
 regimentals ; the dirtiest of children play with their impromptu 
 toys (pigs and mud) in the feeblest of gutters ; and the gauntest 
 of dogs trot in and out of the dullest of archways, in perpetual 
 search of something to eat, which they never seem to find. A 
 mysterious and solemn Palace, guarded by two colossal statues, 
 twin Genii of the place, stands gravely in the midst of the idle 
 
3,68 PICTURES PROM ITALY. 
 
 town ; and the king with the marble legs, who nourished in the 
 time of the thousand and one Nights, might live contentedly 
 inside of it, and never have the energy, in his upper half of 
 flesh and blood, to want to come out. 
 
 What a strange, half-sorrowful, and half-delicious doze it is 
 to ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the 
 sun ! Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all the mouldy, 
 dreary, God-forgotten towns in the wide world, the chief. Sit- 
 ting on this hillock where a bastion used to be, and where a 
 noisy fortress was, in the time of the old Roman station here, I 
 become aware that I have never known till now what it is to be 
 lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the same con- 
 dition before he retires under the wool in his cage ; or a 
 tortoise before he buries himself. I feel that I am getting 
 rusty. That any attempt to think would be accompanied with 
 a creaking noise. That there is nothing, anywhere, to be done, 
 or needing to be done. That there is no more human progress, 
 motion, effort, or advancement of any kind beyond this. That 
 the whole scheme stopped here centuries ago, and lay down to 
 rest until the Day of Judgment. 
 
 Never while the Brave Courier lives ! Behold him jingling 
 out of Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest posting- 
 chaise ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if 
 he were peeping over a garden wall ; while the postillion, con- 
 centrated essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a 
 moment in his animated conversation, to touch his hat to a 
 blunt-nosed little Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, 
 enshrined in a plaster Punch's show outside the town. 
 
 In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trellis- 
 work, supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in themselves, 
 are anything but picturesque. But here they twine them 
 around trees, and let them trail among the hedges ; and the 
 vineyards are full of trees, regularly planted for this purpose, 
 each with its own vine twining and clustering about it. Their 
 leaves are now of the brightest gold and deepest red ; and never 
 
PARMA. 369 
 
 was anything so enchantingly graceful and full of beauty, 
 Through miles of these delightful forms and colours the road 
 winds its way. The wild festoons, the elegant wreaths, and 
 crowns, and garlands of all shapes ; the fairy nets flung over 
 great trees, and making them prisoners in sport ; the tumbled 
 heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon the ground ; how 
 rich and beautiful they are ! And every now and then a long, 
 long line of trees will be all bound and garlanded together : as 
 if they had taken hold of one another, and were coming dancing 
 down the field ! 
 
 Parma has cheerful, stirring streets for an Italian town ; and 
 consequently is not so characteristic as many places of less note. 
 Always excepting the retired Piazza, where the Cathedral, 
 Baptistery, and Campanile — ancient buildings, of a sombre 
 brown, embellished with innumerable grotesque monsters and 
 dreamy-looking creatures carved in marble and red stone — are 
 clustered in a noble and magnificent repose. Their silent 
 presence was only invaded, when I saw them, by the twittering 
 of the many birds that were flying in and out of the crevices in 
 the stones, and little nooks in the architecture, where they had 
 made their nests. They were busy, rising from the cold shade 
 of .Temples made with hands into the sunny air of Heaven. 
 Not so the worshippers within, who were listening to the same 
 drowsy chant, or kneeling before the same kinds of images and 
 tapers, or whispering with their heads bowed down, in the very 
 selfsame dark confessionals as I had left in Genoa and every- 
 where else. 
 
 The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this cnurch 
 is covered have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and 
 depressing influence. It is miserable to see great works of 
 art — something of the Souls of Painters — perishing and fading 
 away, like human forms. This cathedral is odorous with the 
 rotting of Correggio's frescoes in the Cupola. Heaven knows 
 how beautiful they may have been at one time. Connoisseurs 
 fall into raptures with them now ; but such a labyrinth of arms 
 
 BS 
 
37 D PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and legs : such heaps of foreshortened limbs, entangled and 
 involved and jumbled together : no operative surgeon, gone 
 mad, could imagine in his wildest delirium. 
 
 There is a very interesting subterranean church here ; the 
 roof supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there 
 seemed to be at least one beggar in ambush : to say nothing of 
 the tombs and secluded altars. From every one of these lurk- 
 ing-places, such crowds of phantom-looking men and women, 
 leading other men and women with twisted limbs, or chattering 
 jaws, or paralytic gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad 
 infirmity, came hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes 
 in the cathedral above had been suddenly animated, and had 
 retired to this lower church, they could hardly have made a 
 greater confusion, or exhibited a more confounding display of 
 arms and legs. 
 
 There is Petrarch's Monument, too ; and there is the 
 Baptistery, with its beautiful arches and immense font ; and 
 there is a gallery containing some very remarkable pictures, 
 whereof a few were being copied by hairy -faced artists, with 
 little velvet caps more off their heads than on. There is the 
 Farnese Palace, too ; and in it one of the dreariest spectacles 
 of decay that ever was seen — a grand, old, gloomy theatre 
 mouldering away. 
 
 It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape ; the 
 lower seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but above them, 
 great heavy chambers rather than boxes, where the Nobles sat, 
 remote, in their proud state. Such desolation as has fallen on 
 this theatre, enhanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay inten- 
 tion and design, none but worms can be familiar with. A 
 hundred and ten years have passed since any play was acted 
 here. The sky shines in through the gashes in the roof; the 
 boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and only tenanted by 
 rats ; damp and mildew smear the faded colours, and make 
 spectral maps upon the panels ; lean rags are dangling down 
 where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium ; the stage 
 
M.ODENA. 37 1 
 
 has rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, 
 or it would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the 
 gloomy depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress 
 themselves on all the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, 
 and an earthy taste ; any stray outer sounds that straggle in 
 with some lost sunbeam are muffled and heavy ; and the worm, 
 the maggot, and the rot have changed the surface of the wood 
 beneath the touch, as time will seam and roughen a smooth 
 hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act them on this ghostly 
 stage. 
 
 It was most delicious weather when we came into Modena, 
 where the darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways 
 skirting the main street on either side was made refreshing and 
 agreeable by the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed 
 from all the glory of the day into a dim cathedral, where high 
 mass was performing, feeble tapers were burning, people were 
 kneeling in all directions before all manner of shrines; and 
 officiating priests were crooning the usual chant, in the usual 
 low, dull, drawling, melancholy tone. 
 
 Thinking how strange it was to find, in every stagnant town, 
 this same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, 
 the centre of the same torpid, listless system, I came out 
 by another door, and was suddenly scared to death by a blast 
 from the shrillest trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately 
 came tearing round the corner an equestrian company from 
 Paris : marshalling themselves under the walls of the church, 
 and flouting, with their horses' heels, the griffins, lions, tigers, 
 and other monsters in stone and marble, decorating its exterior. 
 First, there came a stately nobleman with a great deal of hair, 
 and no hat, bearing an enormous banner, on which was inscribed, 
 Mazeppa ! to-night ! Then, a Mexican chief, with a great 
 pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like Hercules. Then, six or 
 eight Roman chariots : each with a beautiful lady in extremely 
 short petticoats, and unnaturally pink tights, erect within: 
 shedding beaming looks upon the crowd, in which there was 
 
 B b 2 
 
37 2 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 a latent expression of discomposure and anxiety, for which I 
 couldn't account, until, as the open back of each chariot pre- 
 sented itself, I saw the immense difficulty with which the pink 
 legs maintained their perpendicular, over the uneven pavement 
 of the town : which gave me quite a new idea of the ancient 
 Romans and Britons. The procession was brought to a close 
 by some dozen indomitable warriors of different nations, riding 
 two and two, and haughtily surveying the tame population of 
 Modena : among whom, however, they occasionally condescended 
 to scatter largesse in the form of a few handbills. After cara- 
 coling among the lions and tigers, and proclaiming that evening's 
 entertainments with blast of trumpet, it thdh filed off by the 
 other end of the square, and left a new and greatly increased 
 dulness behind. 
 
 When the procession had so entirely passed away that the 
 shrill trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the last 
 horse was hopelessly round the corner, the people who had come 
 out of the church to stare at it, went back again. But one old 
 lady, kneeling on the pavement within, near the door, had seen 
 it all, and had been immensely interested, without getting up ; 
 and this old lady's eye, at that juncture, I happened to catch : 
 to our mutual confusion. She cut our embarrassment very short, 
 however, by crossing herself devoutly, and going down, at full 
 length, on her face, before a figure in a fancy petticoat and a 
 gilt crown ; which was so like one of the procession figures, that 
 perhaps at this hour she may think the whole appearance a 
 celestial vision. Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven her 
 her interest in the Circus, though I had been her Father Con- 
 fessor. 
 
 There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder, 
 in the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to 
 see the bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of 
 Modena took away from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth 
 century, and about which there was war made and a mock- 
 heroic poem by Tassone, too. Being quite content, however, 
 
BOLOGNA. 373 
 
 to look at the outside of the tower, and feast, in imagination, 
 on the bucket within ; and preferring to loiter in the shade of 
 the tall Campanile, and about the cathedral ; I have no personal 
 knowledge of this bucket, even at the present time. 
 
 Indeed, we were at Bologna before the little old man (or 
 the Guide Book) would have considered that we had half done 
 justice to the wonders of Modena. But it is such a delight to 
 me to leave new scenes behind, and still go on, encountering 
 newer scenes — and, moreover, I have such a perverse disposition 
 in respect of sights that are cut, and dried, and dictated — that 
 I fear I sin against similar authorities in every place I visit. 
 
 Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna I 
 found myself walking next Sunday morning, among the stately 
 marble tombs and colonnades, in company with a crowd of 
 Peasants, and escorted by a little Cicerone of that town, who 
 was excessively anxious for the honour of the place, and most 
 solicitous to divert my attention from the bad monuments : 
 whereas he was never tired of extolling the good ones. Seeing 
 this little man (a good-humoured little man he was, who seemed 
 to have nothing in his face but shining teeth and eyes) looking, 
 wistfully, at a certain plot of grass, I asked him who was buried 
 there. " The poor people, Signore," he said with a shrug and 
 a smile, and stopping to look back at me — for he always went 
 on a little before, and took off his hat to introduce every new 
 monument. " Only the poor, Signore ' It's very cheerful. It's 
 very lively. How green it is, how cool ! It's like a meadow ! 
 There are five," — holding up all the fingers of his right hand 
 to express the number, which an Italian peasant will always do, 
 if it be within the compass of his ten fingers, — " there are five 
 of my little children buried there, Signore ; just there ; a little 
 to the right. Well ! Thanks to God ! It's very cheerful. How 
 green it is ! How cool it is ! It's quite a meadow !" 
 
 He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was sorry 
 for him, took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone takes snuff), and 
 made a little bow ; partly in deprecation of his having alluded 
 
374 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 to such a subject, and partly in memory of the children and of 
 his favourite saint. It was as unaffected and as perfectly natural 
 a little bow as ever man made. Immediately afterwards, he 
 took his hat off altogether, and begged to introduce me to the 
 next monument ; and his eyes and his teeth shone brighter than 
 before. 
 
 ■*>£££ 
 
THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA. 
 
 rpHERE was such a very smart official in attendance at the 
 -*- Cemetery where the little Cicerone had buried his children, 
 that when the little Cicerone suggested to me, in a whisper, that 
 there would be no offence in presenting this officer, in return 
 for some slight extra service, with a couple of pauls (about ten- 
 pence, English money), I looked incredulously at his cocked-hat, 
 wash-leather gloves, well-made uniform, and dazzling buttons, 
 and rebuked the little Cicerone with a grave shake of the head. 
 For, in splendour of appearance, he was at least equal to the 
 Deputy Usher of the Black Rod ; and the idea of his carrying, 
 as Jeremy Diddler would say, " such a thing as tenpence " away 
 Avith him seemed monstrous. He took it in excellent part, how- 
 ever, when I made bold to give it him, and pulled off his cocked- 
 hat with a flourish that would have been a bargain at double 
 the money. 
 
 It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments to the 
 people — at all events he was doing so ; and when I compared 
 him, like Gulliver in Brobdingnag, " with the Institutions of my 
 own beloved country, I could not refrain from tears of pride and 
 exultation." He had no pace at all ; no more than a tortoise. 
 He loitered as the people loitered, that they might gratify their 
 curiosity ; and positively allowed them, now and then, to read 
 the inscriptions on the tombs. He was neither shabby, nor 
 insolent, nor churlish, nor ignorant. He spoke his own Ian 
 guage with perfect propriety, and seemed to consider himself, 
 in his way, a kind of teacher of the people, and to entertain a 
 just respect both for himself and them. They would no more 
 
376 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 have such a man for a Verger in Westminster Abbey than they 
 would let the people in (as they do at Bologna.) to see the monu- 
 ments for nothing.* 
 
 Again, an ancient and sombre town, under the brilliant sky ; 
 with heavy arcades over the footways of the older streets, and 
 lighter and more cheerful archways in the newer portions of the 
 town. Again, brown piles of sacred buildings, with more birds 
 flying in and out of chinks in the stones ; and more snarling 
 monsters for the bases of the pillars. Again, rich churches, 
 drowsy masses, curling incense, tinkling bells, priests in bright 
 vestments : pictures, tapers, laced altar cloths, crosses, images, 
 and artificial flowers. 
 
 There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a pleasant 
 gloom upon it, that would leave it a distinct and separate impres- 
 sion in the mind, among a crowd of cities, though it were not 
 still further marked in the traveller's remembrance by the two 
 brick leaning towers (sufficiently unsightly in themselves, it 
 must be acknowledged), inclining crosswise as if they were bow- 
 ing stiffly to each other — a most extraordinary termination to 
 the perspective of some of the narrow streets. The colleges, 
 and churches too, and palaces : and, above all, the Academy of 
 Fine Arts, where there are a host of interesting pictures, especially 
 by Guido, Domenichino, and Ltjdovico Caracci : give it a 
 place of its own in the memoiy. Even though these were not, 
 and there were nothing else to remember it by, the great Meridian 
 on the pavement of the church of San Petronio, where the sun- 
 beams mark the time among the kneeling people, would give it 
 a fanciful and pleasant interest. 
 
 Bologna being very full of tourists, detained there by an 
 inundation which rendered the road to Florence impassable, I 
 was quartered up at the top of an hotel, in an out-of-the-way 
 room which I never could find : containing a bed big enough 
 for a boarding-school, which I couldn't fall asleep in. The chief 
 
 * A far more liberal and just recognition of the public has arisen in Westminster 
 Abbey since this was written. 
 
£OlOgnA. 377 
 
 among the waiters who visited this lonely retreat, where there 
 was no other company but the swallows in the broad eaves over 
 the window, was a man of one idea in connection with, the 
 English ; and the subject of this harmless monomania was Lord 
 Byron. I made the discovery by accidentally remarking to him, 
 at breakfast, that the matting with which the floor was covered 
 was very comfortable at that season, when he immediately 
 replied that Milor Beeron had been much attached to that kind 
 of matting. Observing, at the same moment, that I took no 
 milk, he exclaimed with enthusiasm, that Milor Beeron had 
 never touched it. At first, I took it for granted, in my inno- 
 cence, that he had been one of the Beeron servants ; but no, he 
 said no, he was in the habit of speaking about my Lord to 
 English gentlemen ; that was all. He knew all about him, he 
 said. In proof of it, he connected him with every possible topic, 
 from the Monte Pulciano wine at dinner (which was grown on 
 an estate he had owned), to the big bed itself, which was the 
 very model of his. When I left the inn, he coupled with his 
 final bow in the yard a parting assurance that the road by which 
 I was going had been Milor Beeron's favourite ride ; and before 
 the horses' feet had well begun to clatter on the pavement, he 
 ran briskly up-stairs again, I dare say to tell some other English- 
 man, in some other solitary room, that the guest who had just 
 departed was Lord Beeron's living image. 
 
 I had entered Bologna by night — almost midnight — and all 
 along the road thither, after our entrance into the Papal terri- 
 tory : which is not, in any part, supremely well governed, St. 
 Peter's keys being rather rusty now : the driver had so worried 
 about the danger of robbers in travelling after dark, and had so 
 infected the Brave Courier, and the two had been so constantly 
 stopping and getting up and down to look after a portmanteau 
 which was tied on behind, that I should have felt almost obliged 
 to any one who would have had the goodness to take it away. 
 Hence it was stipulated that, whenever we left Bologna, we 
 should start so as not to arrive at Ferrara later than eight at 
 
378 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 night ; and a delightful afternoon and evening journey it was, 
 albeit through a flat district, which gradually became more 
 marshy from the overflow of brooks and rivers in the recent 
 heavy rains. 
 
 At sunset, when I was walking on alone while the horses 
 rested, I arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those 
 singular mental operations of which we are all conscious, seemed 
 perfectly familiar to me, and which I see distinctly now. There 
 was not much in it. In the blood-red light there was a mourn- 
 ful sheet of water, just stirred by the evening wind ; upon it^ 
 margin a few trees. In the foreground was a group of silent 
 peasant girls leaning over the parapet of a little bridge, and 
 looking, now up at the sky,, now down into the water ; in the 
 distance, a deep bell ; the shadow of approaching night on 
 everything. If I had been murdered there in some former life, I 
 could not have seemed to remember the place more thoroughly, 
 or with a more emphatic chilling of the blood ; and the real 
 remembrance of it acquired in that minute is so strengthened 
 by the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think I could 
 forget it. 
 
 More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old Ferrara, 
 than any city of the solemn brotherhood ! The grass so grows 
 up in the silent streets, that any one might make hay there, 
 literally, while the sun shines. But the sun shines with 
 diminished cheerfulness in grim Ferrara ; and the people are so 
 few who pass and repass through the public places, that the 
 flesh of its inhabitants might be grass indeed, and growing in 
 the squares. 
 
 I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian" town 
 always lives next door to the Hotel, or opposite : making the 
 visitor feel" as if the beating hammers were his own heart, palpi- 
 tating with a deadly energy ! I wonder why jealous corridors 
 surround the bedroom on all sides, and fill it with unnecessary 
 doors that can't be shut, and will not open, and abut on pitchy 
 darkness ! I wonder why it is not enough that these distrust- 
 
FERRAKA. 379 
 
 fill genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must 
 also be round open port-holes, high in the wall, suggestive, when 
 a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody- 
 scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one 
 of these port-holes and look in ! I wonder why the faggots are 
 so constructed as to know of no effect but an agony of heat 
 when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold 
 and suffocation at all other times ! I wonder, above all, why it 
 is the great feature of domestic architecture in Italian inns that 
 all the fire goes up the chimney, except the smoke ! 
 
 The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, port-holes, 
 smoke, and faggots are welcome to me. Give me the smiling 
 face of the attendant, man or woman ; the courteous manner ; 
 the amiable desire to please and to be pleased : the light-hearted, 
 pleasant, simple air — so many jewels set in dirt — and I am 
 theirs again to-morrow ! 
 
 Ariosto's house, Tasso's prison, a rare old Gothic cathedral, 
 and more churches, of course, are the sights of Ferrara. But 
 the long-silent streets, and the dismantled palaces, where ivy 
 waves in lieu of banners, and where rank weeds are slowly creep- 
 ing up the long-untrodden stairs, are the best sights of all. 
 
 The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before sunrise 
 one fine morning, when I left it, was as picturesque as it seemed 
 unreal and spectral. It was no matter that the people were not 
 yet out of bed ; for, if they had all been up and busy, they 
 would have made but little difference in that desert of a place. 
 It was best to seeit without a single figure in the picture; a 
 city of the dead, without one solitary survivor. Pestilence 
 might have ravaged streets, squares, and market-places ; and 
 sack and siege have ruined the old houses; battered down their 
 doors and windows, and made breaches in their roofs. In one 
 part a great tower rose into the air; the only landmark in the 
 melancholy view. In another, a prodigious Castle, with a moat 
 about it, stood aloof: a sullen city in itself. In the black 
 dungeons of this castle, Parisina and her lover were beheaded 
 
380 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in the dead of night. The red light, beginning to shine when 
 I looked back upon it, stained its walls without, as they have, 
 many a time, been stained within, in old days ; but, for any 
 sign of life they gave, the castle and the city might have been 
 avoided by all human creatures from the moment when the axe 
 went down upon the last of the two lovers : and might have 
 never vibrated to another sound 
 
 Beyond the blow that to the block 
 
 Pierced through -with forced and sullen shock. 
 
 Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running 
 fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of boats, and so came 
 into the Austrian territory, and resumed our journey : through 
 a country of which, for some miles, a great part was under water. 
 The Brave Courier and the soldiery had first quarrelled, for half 
 an hour or more, over our eternal passport. But this was a 
 daily relaxation with the Brave, who was always stricken deaf 
 when shabby functionaries in uniform came, as they constantly 
 did come, plunging out of wooden boxes to look at it — or, in 
 other words, to beg — and who, stone deaf to my entreaties that 
 the man might have a trifle given him, and we resume our 
 journey in peace, was wont to sit reviling the functionary in 
 broken English : while the unfortunate man's face was a portrait 
 of mental agony framed in the coach window, from his perfect 
 ignorance of what was being said to his disparagement. 
 
 There was a Postillion, in the course of this day's journey, as 
 wild and savagely good-looking a vagabond as you would desire 
 to see. He was a tall, stout-made, dark-complexioned fellow, 
 with a profusion of shaggy black hair hanging all over his face, 
 and great black whiskers stretching down his throat. His dress 
 was a torn suit of rifle green, garnished here and there with red ; 
 a steeple-crowned hat, innocent of nap, with a broken and be- 
 draggled feather stuck in the band ; and a flaming red necker- 
 chief hanging on his shoulders. He was not in the saddle, 
 but reposed, quite at his ease, on a sort of low foot-board in 
 
FERRARA. 38 T 
 
 front of the post-chaise, down among the horses' tails — con- 
 venient for having his brains kicked out at any moment. To 
 this Brigand, the Brave Courier, when we were at a reasonable 
 trot, happened to suggest the practicability of going faster. He 
 received the proposal with a perfect yell of derision ; brandished 
 his whip about his head (such a whip ! it was more like a home- 
 made bow) ; flung up his heels much higher than the horses ; 
 and disappeared, in a paroxysm, somewhere in the neighbour- 
 hood of the axletree. I fully expected to see him lying in the 
 road, a hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-crowned 
 hat again next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a sofa, 
 entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, " Ha, ha ! what 
 next? Oh, the devil! Faster, too! Shoo — hoo — o — !" 
 (This last ejaculation an inexpressibly defiant hoot.) Being 
 anxious to reach our immediate destination that night, I ven- 
 tured, by-and-by, to repeat the experiment on my own account. 
 It produced exactly the same effect. Bound flew the whip with 
 the same scornful flourish, up came the heels, down went the 
 steeple-crowned hat, and presently he reappeared, reposing as 
 before, and saying to himself, " Ha, ha ! what next ? Faster, 
 too ! Oh, the devil ! Shoo — hoo — — 1" 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 
 
 T HAD been travelling for some days ; resting very little in 
 *- the night, and never in the day. The rapid and unbroken 
 succession of novelties that had passed before me came back 
 like half-formed dreams: and a crowd of objects wandered in 
 the greatest confusion through my mind, as I travelled on by a 
 solitary road. At intervals, some one among them would stop, 
 as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to 
 look at it quite steadily, and behold it in full distinctness. 
 After a few moments it would dissolve, like a view in a magic 
 lantern ; and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, and 
 some faintly, and some not at all, would show me another of 
 the many places I had lately seen, lingering behind it, and 
 coming through it. This was no sooner visible than, in its turn, 
 it melted into something else. 
 
 At one moment I was standing again before the brown old 
 rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised the curious pillars 
 with grim monsters for their bases, I seemed to see them, stand- 
 ing by themselves in the quiet square at Padua, where there 
 were the staid old University, and the figures demurely gowned, 
 grouped here and there in the open space about it. Then, I 
 was strolling in the outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring the 
 unusual neatness of the dwelling-houses, gardens, and orchards, 
 as I had seen them a few hours before. In their stead arose, 
 immediately, the two towers of Bologna ; and the most obstinate 
 of all these objects failed to hold its ground a minute, before 
 the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustra- 
 tion to a wild romance, came back again in the red sunrise, 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 383 
 
 lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In 
 short, I had that incoherent, but delightful jumble in my brain, 
 whieh travellers are apt to have, and are indolently willing to 
 encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half dozing 
 in the dark, appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its 
 place, and to jerk some other new recollection into it ; and in 
 this state I fell asleep. 
 
 I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the stopping 
 of the coach. It was now quite night, and we were at the water- 
 side. There lay here a black boat, with a little house or cabin 
 in it of the same mournful colour. When I had taken my seat 
 in this, the boat was paddled, by two men, towards a great 
 light lying in the distance on the sea. 
 
 Ever and again there was a dismal sigh of wind. It ruffled 
 the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds flying 
 before the stars. I could not but think how strange it was to 
 be floating away at that hour : leaving the land behind, and 
 going on towards this light upon the sea. It soon began to 
 burn brighter ; and, from being one light, became a cluster of 
 tapers, twinkling and shining out of the water, as the boat 
 approached towards them by a dreamy kind of track, marked 
 out upon the sea by posts and piles. 
 
 We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, when 
 I heard it rippling, in my dream, against some obstruction near 
 at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a 
 something black and massive — like a shore, but lying close and 
 flat upon the water, like a raft — -which we were gliding past. 
 The chief of the two rowers said it was a burial-place. 
 
 Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out 
 there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it 
 should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from 
 my view. Before I knew by^ what, or how, I found that we 
 were gliding up a street — a phantom street ; the houses rising 
 on both sides from the water, and the black boat gliding on 
 beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some of 
 
3 §4 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream with 
 their reflected rays ; but all was profoundly silent. 
 
 So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our 
 course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with 
 water. Some of the corners where our way branched off were 
 so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long, 
 slender boat to turn them ; but the rowers, with a low, melodious 
 cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Some- 
 times the rowers of another black boat like our own echoed the 
 cry, and, slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours), 
 would come flitting past us, like a dark shadow. Other boats, of 
 the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted 
 pillars, near to dark, mysterious doors that opened straight upon 
 the water. Some of these were empty; in some the rowers 
 lay asleep ; towards one I saw some figures coming down a 
 gloomy archway from the interior of a palace : gaily dressed, 
 and attended by torch-bearers. It was but a glimpse I had of 
 them ; for a bridge so low and close upon the boat that it 
 seemed ready to fall down and crush us : one of the many 
 bridges that perplexed the Dream : blotted them out instantly. 
 On we went, floating towards the heart of this strange place — 
 with water all about us where never water was elsewhere — 
 clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing 
 out of it— and, everywhere, the same extraordinary silence. 
 Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream ; and pass- 
 ing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the 
 bright lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of 
 arches and pillars, of ponderous construction and great strength, 
 but as light to the eye as garlands of hoar frost or gossamer — 
 and where, for the first time, I saw people walking — arrived at 
 a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, 
 where, having passed through corridors and galleries innumer- 
 able, I lay down to rest ; listening to the black boats stealing 
 up and down below the window on the rippling water till I fell 
 asleep. 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 385 
 
 The glory of the day that broke upon me in this Dream ; its 
 freshness, motion, buoyancy ; its sparkles of the sun in water ; 
 its clear blue sky and rustling air ; no waking words can tell. 
 But, from my window, I looked down on boats and barks ; on 
 masts, sails, cordage, flags ; on groups of busy sailors working 
 at the cargoes of these vessels ; on wide quays strewn with bales, 
 casks, merchandise of many kinds ; on great ships lying near at 
 hand in stately indolence ; on islands crowned with gorgeous 
 domes and turrets ; and where golden crosses glittered in the 
 light, atop of wondrous churches springing from the sea ! Going 
 down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the 
 door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such 
 surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor 
 and faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness. 
 
 It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like all the 
 rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom was a Palace, 
 more majestic and magnificent in its old age than all the build- 
 ings of the earth, in the high prime and fulness of their youth. 
 Cloisters and galleries : so light, they might have been the work 
 of fairy hands : so strong, that centuries had battered them in 
 vain : wound round and round this palace, and enfolded it with 
 a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant fancies of the East. 
 At no great distance from its porch, a lofty tower standing by 
 itself, and rearing its proud head, alone, into the sky, looked 
 out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin of the stream 
 were two ill-omened pillars of red granite ; one having on its 
 top a figure with a sword and shield ; the other, a winged lion. 
 Not far from these, again, a second tower : richest of the rich 
 in all its decorations : even here, where all was rich : sustained 
 aloft a great orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue : the 
 Twelve Signs painted on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its 
 course around them : while above, two bronze giants hammered 
 out the hours upon a sounding bell. An oblong square of lofty 
 houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a light and beautiful 
 arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene ; and, here and 
 
 c c 
 
386 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering from the pavement of 
 the unsubstantial ground. 
 
 I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out 
 among its many arches : traversing its whole extent. A grand 
 and dreamy structure, of immense proportions ; golden with old 
 mosaics ; redolent of perfumes ; dim with the smoke of incense ; 
 costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering 
 through iron bars ; holy with the bodies of deceased saints ; 
 rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass ; dark with carved 
 woods and coloured marbles ; obscure in its vast heights and 
 lengthened distances ; shining with silver lamps and winking 
 lights ; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I 
 thought I entered the old palace ; pacing silent galleries and 
 council-chambers, where the old rulers of this mistress of the 
 waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the walls, and where 
 her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on canvas, fought and 
 conquered as of old. I thought I wandered through its halls 
 of state and triumph — bare and empty now ! — and musing on 
 its pride and might, extinct : for that was past ; all past : heard 
 a voice say, " Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some con- 
 soling reasons for its downfall, may be traced here yet!" 
 
 I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, 
 communicating with a prison near the palace ; separated from it 
 by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street ; and called, I dreamed, 
 The Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall ; the lions' 
 mouths — now toothless — where, in the distempered horror of 
 my sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old 
 wicked Council had been dropped through, many a time, when 
 the night was dark. So, when I saw the council-room to which 
 such prisoners were taken for examination, and the door by 
 which they passed out when they were condemned — a door that 
 never closed upon a man with life and hope before him — my 
 heart appeared to die within me. 
 
 It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I de- 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 387 
 
 scended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, 
 of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. 
 Each had a loophole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, 
 every day, a torch was placed — I dreamed — to light the prisoner 
 within for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of 
 these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in the 
 blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with a rusty 
 nail's point had outlived their agony and them, through many 
 generations. 
 
 One cell I saw, in which no man remained for more than 
 four-and-twenty hours ; being marked for dead before he entered 
 it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, 
 the confessor came — a monk brown-robed, and hooded — ghastly 
 in the day, and free bright air, but, in the midnight of that 
 murky prison, Hope's extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I 
 had my foot upon the spot where, at the same dread hour, 
 the shriven prisoner was strangled ; and struck my hand upon 
 the guilty door — -low-browed and stealthy — through which the 
 lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and 
 drowned where it was death to cast a net. 
 
 Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it : 
 licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp 
 and slime within : stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks 
 and crevices, as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop : 
 furnishing a smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the 
 secret victims of the state — a road so ready that it went along 
 with them, and ran before them, like a cruel officer — flowed the 
 same water that filled this Dream of mine, and made it seem 
 one, even at the time. 
 
 Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, 
 the Giant's — I had some imaginary recollection of an old man 
 abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when 
 he heard the bell proclaiming his successor — I glided off, in one 
 of the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal guarded by 
 four marble lions. To make my Dream more monstrous and 
 
 cc2 
 
3 88 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 unlikely, one of these had words and sentences upon its body, 
 inscribed there at an unknown time, and in an unknown lan- 
 guage ; so that their purport was a mystery to all men. 
 
 There was little sound of hammers in this place for building 
 ships, and little work in progress ; for the greatness of the city 
 was no more, as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very Avreck 
 found drifting on the sea ; a strange flag hoisted in its honour- 
 able stations, and strangers standing at its helm. A splendid 
 barge, in which its ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at 
 certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought, no more ; 
 but, in its place, there was a tiny model, made from recollection 
 like the city's greatness ; and it told of what had been (so are 
 the strong and weak confounded in the dust) almost as eloquently 
 as. the massive pillars, arches, roofs, reared to overshadow stately 
 ships that had no other shadow now, upon the water or the 
 earth. 
 
 An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled ; but 
 an armoury. With a fierce standard, taken from the Turks, 
 drooping in the dull air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn 
 by great warriors were hoarded there ; crossbows and bolts ; 
 quivers full of arrows ; spears ; swords, daggers, maces, shields, 
 and heavy-headed axes. Plates of wrought steel and iron, to 
 make the gallant horse a monster cased in metal scales ; and 
 one spring weapon (easy to be carried in the breast) designed 
 to do its office noiselessly, and made for shooting men with 
 poisoned darts. 
 
 One press or case I saw full of accursed instruments of torture: 
 horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind, and crush 
 men's bones, and tear and twist them with the. torment of a 
 thousand deaths. Before it were two iron helmets, with breast- 
 pieces : made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of 
 living sufferers; and fastened on to each was a small knob or 
 anvil, where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his 
 ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and 
 confessions of the wretch within. There was that grim resem- 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 389 
 
 blance in. them to the human shape — they were such moulds of 
 sweating faces, pained and cramped — that it was difficult to 
 think them empty ; and terrible distortions lingering within 
 them seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I 
 rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where 
 there were grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood 
 upon its farthest brink — I stood there in my dream — and 
 looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun ; before me, in the 
 sky and on the deep, a crimson flush ; and behind me the whole 
 city resolving into streaks of red and purple on the water. 
 
 In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little 
 heed of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. 
 But there were days and nights in it; and when the sun was 
 high, and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running 
 water, I was still afloat, I thought : plashing the slippery walls 
 and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, 
 borne upon it, skimmed along the streets. 
 
 Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast 
 palaces, I wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, 
 through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments ; decayed 
 apartments where the furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was 
 mouldering away. Pictures were there, replete with such 
 enduring beauty and expression : with such passion, truth, and 
 power : that they seemed so many young and fresh realities 
 among a host of spectres. I thought these often intermingled 
 with the old days of the city : with its beauties, tyrants, captains, 
 patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests : nay, with its very stones, 
 and bricks, and public places ; all of which lived again, about 
 me, on the walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase 
 where the water lapped and oozed against the lower steps, I 
 passed into my boat again, and went on in my dream. 
 
 Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with 
 plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight 
 upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before 
 me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten 
 
3Q6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty 
 patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shadows 
 on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and 
 terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and 
 repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, on 
 flagstones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where there 
 were idlers too : loitering and looking over. Below stone 
 balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows 
 of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, theatres, shrines, 
 prodigious piles of architecture — Gothic — Saracenic — fanciful 
 with all the fancies of all times and countries. Past buildings 
 that were high, and low, and black, and white, and straight, 
 and crooked ; mean and grand, crazy and strong. Twining 
 among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at 
 last into a Grand Canal ! There, in the errant fancy of my 
 dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all 
 built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men ; 
 a form I seemed to know for Desdemona's^ leaned down through 
 a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought 
 that Shakspeare's spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere : 
 stealing through the city. 
 
 At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of 
 the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the 
 roof, I fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a 
 blaze of cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged 
 with people ; while crowds were diverting themselves in splendid 
 coffee-houses opening from it — which were never shut, I thought, 
 but open all night long. When the bronze giants struck the 
 hour of midnight on the bell, I thought the life and animation 
 of the city were all centred here ; and as I rowed away, abreast 
 the silent quays, I only saw them dotted, here and there, with 
 sleeping boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full 
 length upon the stones. 
 
 But, close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons : 
 sucking at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 3gi 
 
 the town : crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful : 
 coiled round and round it, in its many folds, like an old 
 serpent : waiting for the time, I thought, when 'people should 
 look down into its depths for any stone of the old city that had 
 claimed to be its mistress. 
 
 Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old Market- 
 place at Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since 
 of this strange Dream upon the water : half wondering if it lie 
 there yet, and if its name be Venice. 
 
/ 
 
 BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE 
 PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND. 
 
 T HAD been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all 
 put me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was 
 no sooner come into the old Market-place than the misgiving 
 vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, 
 formed by such an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic 
 buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of even 
 this romantic town : scene of one of the most romantic and 
 beautiful of stories. 
 
 It was natural enough to go straight from the Market-place 
 to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most 
 miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts 
 Avere disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle deep in 
 dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese ; and there 
 was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who 
 would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put 
 it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those 
 times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off 
 many years ago ; but there used to be one attached to the house 
 — or at all events there may have been — and the hat (Cappello) 
 the ancient cognizance of the family, may still be seen, carved in 
 stone, over the gateway of the yard. The geese, the market- 
 carts, their drivers, and the dog were somewhat in the way of 
 the story, it must be confessed ; and it would have been 
 pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have been 
 able to walk through the disused rooms. But the hat was 
 unspeakably comfortable ; and the place where the garden used 
 
VERCttfA. 393 
 
 to be, hardly less so. Besides, the house is* a distrustful, jealous- 
 looking house as one would desire to see, though of a very 
 moderate size. So I was quite satisfied with it, as the veritable 
 mansion of old Capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my 
 acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged 
 lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was lounging on the 
 threshold looking at the geese ; and who at least resembled the 
 Capulets in the one particular of being very great indeed in the 
 " Family" way. 
 
 From Juliet's home to Juliet's tomb is a transition as natural 
 to the visitor as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet 
 that ever has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. 
 So, I went off, with a guide, to an old, old garden, once belong- 
 ing to an old, old convent, I suppose ; and being admitted, 
 at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman who was washing 
 clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants and young 
 flowers were prettily growing among fragments of old wall and 
 ivy-covered mounds • and was shown a little tank, or water 
 trough, which the bright-eyed woman, drying her arms upon 
 her kerchief, called " La tomba di Giulietta la sfortunata." With 
 the best disposition in the world to believe, I could do no more 
 than believe that the bright-eyed woman believed ; so I gave 
 her that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money. 
 It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that Juliet's 
 resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have 
 been to Yorick's ghost to hear the feet upon the pavement over- 
 head, and, twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is 
 better for Juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have 
 no visitors but such as come to graves in spring rain, and sweet 
 air, and sunshine. 
 
 Pleasant Verona ! With its beautiful old palaces, and charm- 
 ing country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, 
 baiustraded galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the 
 fair street, and casting, on the sun-light of to-day, the shade of 
 fifteen hundred years ago. With its marble-fitted churches, 
 
394 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 lofty towers, rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thorough- 
 fares, where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once resounded, 
 
 And made Verona's ancient citizens 
 Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments, 
 To wield old partisans. 
 
 With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle, 
 waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful and so cheerful! 
 Pleasant Verona ! 
 
 In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Br£ — a spirit of old time 
 among the familiar realities of the passing hour — is the great 
 Eoman Amphitheatre. So well preserved and carefully main- 
 tained, that every row of seats is there unbroken. Over certain 
 of the arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be seen ; and 
 there are corridors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for 
 beasts, and winding ways, above-ground and below, as when the 
 fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody 
 shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and 
 hollow places of the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, 
 and a few small dealers of one kind or other ; and there are 
 green weeds, and leaves, and grass upon the parapet. But little 
 else is greatly changed. 
 
 When I had traversed all about it with great interest, and 
 had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and, turning from 
 the lovely panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down 
 into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of 
 a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad 
 brim and a shallow crown : the plaits being represented by the 
 four-and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely and 
 fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it was 
 irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless. 
 
 An equestrian troop had been there a short time before — the 
 same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the 
 church at Modena — and had scooped out a little ring at one end 
 of the arena ; where their performances had taken place, and 
 where the marks of their horses' feet were still fresh. I could 
 
VERONA. 395 
 
 not but picture to myself a handful of spectators gathered 
 together on one or two of the old stone seats, and a spangled 
 Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello funny, with the grim walls 
 looking on. Above all, I thought how strangely those Roman 
 mutes would gaze upon the favourite comic scene of the travelling 
 English, where a British nobleman (Lord John), with a very 
 loose stomach : dressed in a blue tailed coat down to his heels, 
 bright yellow breeches, and a white hat : comes abroad, riding 
 double on a rearing horse, with an English lady (Lady Betsey) 
 in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a red spencer ; and who 
 always carries a gigantic reticule, and a put-up parasol. 
 
 I walked through and through the town all the rest of the 
 day, and could have walked there until now, I think. In one 
 place there was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had 
 just performed the opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo 
 and Juliet. In another there was a collection, under a colonnade, 
 of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan remains, presided over by an 
 ancient man who might have been an Etruscan relic himself ; for 
 he was not strong enough to open the iron gate when he had 
 unlocked it, and had neither voice enough to be audible when 
 he described the curiosities, nor sight enough to see them : he 
 was so very old. In another place there was a gallery of pic- 
 tures : so abominably bad, that it was quite delightful to see 
 them mouldering away. But anywhere : in the churches, among 
 the palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down beside the 
 river : it was always pleasant Yerona, and in my remembrance 
 always will be. 
 
 I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that 
 night — of course, no Englishman had ever read it there before 
 — and set out for Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to 
 myself (in the coupe - of an omnibus, and next to the conductor, 
 who was reading the Mysteries of Paris), 
 
 There is no world without Verona's walls, 
 But purgatory, torture, hell itself. 
 Hence-banished is hanish'd from the world, 
 And world's exile is death 
 
3g6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 which reminded me that Komeo was only banished five-and- 
 twenty miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his 
 energy and boldness. 
 
 Was the way to Mantua as beautiful in his time, I wonder ? 
 Did it wind through pasture land as green bright with the same 
 glancing streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees ? 
 Those purple mountains lay on the horizon then, for certain ; 
 and the dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, knobbed, 
 silver pin like an English " life-preserver" through their hair 
 behind, can hardly be much changed. The hopeful feeling 
 of so bright a morning, and so exquisite a sunrise, can have 
 been no stranger, even to an exiled lover's breast ; and Mantua 
 itself must have broken on him in the prospect, with its 
 towers, and walls, and water, pretty much as on a commonplace 
 and matrimonial omnibus. He made the same sharp twists 
 and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling drawbridges ; passed 
 through the like long, covered, wooden bridge ; and, leaving the 
 marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of stagnant 
 Mantua. 
 
 If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his 
 place of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came 
 together in a perfect fitness of things. It may have been more 
 stirring then, perhaps. If so, the Apothecary was a man in 
 advance of his time, and knew what Mantua would be in eighteen 
 hundred and forty-four. He fasted much, and that assisted him 
 in his foreknowledge. 
 
 I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own 
 room arranging plans with the Brave Courier, when there came 
 a modest little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery 
 surrounding a courtyard ; and an intensely shabby little man 
 looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to 
 show the town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in 
 the half-opened doorway, and there was so much poverty 
 expressed in his faded suit and little pinched hat, and in the 
 threadbare worsted glove with which he held it — not expressed 
 
MANTUA. 397 
 
 the less, because these were evidently his genteel clothes, hastily 
 slipped on — that I would as soon have trodden on him as dis- 
 missed him. I engaged him on the instant, and he stepped in 
 directly. 
 
 While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, he 
 stood, beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of brushing 
 my hat with his arm. If his fee had been as many napoleons 
 as it was francs, there could not have shot over the twilight of 
 his shabbiness such a gleam of sun as lighted up the whole man, 
 now that he was hired. 
 
 " Well ! " said I, when I was ready, " shall we go out now ? " 
 
 " If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A little 
 fresh, but charming ; altogether charming. The gentleman will 
 allow me to open the door. This is the Inn Yard. The court- 
 yard of the Golden Lion ! The gentleman will please to mind 
 his footing on the stairs." 
 
 We were now in the street. 
 
 " This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the outside of 
 the Golden Lion. The interesting window up there, on the first 
 Piano, where the pane of glass is broken, is the window of the 
 gentleman's chamber ! " 
 
 Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if there 
 were much to see in Mantua. 
 
 " Well ! Truly, no. Not much ! So, so," he said, shrugging 
 his shoulders apologetically. 
 
 " Many churches ? " 
 
 " No. Nearly all suppressed by the French." 
 
 " Monasteries or convents ? " 
 
 " No. The French again ! Nearly all suppressed by Napo- 
 leon." 
 
 " Much business ? " 
 
 " Very little business." 
 
 " Many strangers ? " 
 
 "Ah Heaven!" 
 
 I thought he would have fainted. 
 
398 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 "Then, when we have seen the two large Churches yonder, 
 what shall we do next ? " said I. 
 
 He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his 
 chin timidly ; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light had 
 broken on his mind, yet with a humble appeal to my forbearance 
 that was perfectly irresistible : 
 
 " We can take a little turn about the town, Signore ! " (Si 
 pu6 far' un piccolo giro della citta.) 
 
 It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the pro- 
 posal, so we set off together in great gdod-humour. In the relief 
 of his mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much of 
 Mantua as a Cicerone could. 
 
 "One must eat," he said; "but, bah ! it was a dull place, 
 without doubt ! " 
 
 He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa Andrea 
 -~-a noble church — and of an enclosed portion of the pavement, 
 about which tapers were burning, and a few people kneeling, and 
 under which is said to be preserved the Sangreal of the old 
 Eomances. This church disposed of, and another after it (the 
 Cathedral of San Pietro), we went to the Museum, which was 
 shut up. " It was all the same," he said. " Bah ! There was 
 not much inside ! " Then, we went to see the Piazza del Dia- 
 volo, built by the Devil (for no particular purpose) in a single 
 night ; then, the Piazza Yirgiliana ; then, the statue of Yirgil — 
 our Poet, my little friend said, plucking up a spirit for the 
 moment, and putting his hat a little on one side. Then, we 
 went to a dismal sort of farmyard, by which a picture-gallery 
 was approached. The moment the gate of this retreat was 
 opened, some five hundred geese came waddling round us, 
 stretching out their necks, and clamouring in the most hideous 
 manner, as if they were ejaculating, " Oh ! here's somebody 
 come to see the Pictures ! Don't go up ! Don't go up ! " While 
 we went up, they waited very quietly about the door in a crowd, 
 cackling to one another occasionally in a subdued tone ; but, the 
 instant we appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, 
 
MANTUA. 3Q9 
 
 and setting up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, 
 " What, you would go, would you ? What do you think of it ? 
 How do you like it ? " they attended us to the outer gate, and 
 cast us forth, derisively, into Mantua. 
 
 The geese who saved the Capitol were, as compared with 
 these, Pork to the learned Pig. What a gallery it was ! I 
 would take their opinion on a question of art, in preference to 
 the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus 
 ignominiously escorted thither, my little friend was plainly 
 reduced to the " piccolo giro," or little circuit of the town, he 
 had formerly proposed. But my suggestion that we should 
 visit the Palazzo Te (of which I had heard a great deal, as a 
 strange wild place) imparted new life to him, and away we went. 
 
 The secret of the length of Midas's ears would have been 
 more extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered 
 it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and 
 rushes enough to have published it to all the world. The 
 Palazzo Te stands in a swamp, among this sort of vegetation ; 
 and is, indeed, as singular a place as I ever saw. 
 
 Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Nor for its 
 dampness, though it is very damp. Nor for its desolate con- 
 dition, though it is as desolate and neglected as house can be. 
 But chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares with which its 
 interior has been decorated (among other subjects of more 
 delicate execution) by Giulio Romano. There is a leering Giant 
 over a certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens of Giants 
 (Titans warring with Jove) on the walls of another room, so 
 inconceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous how any 
 man can have imagined such creatures. In the. chamber in 
 which they abound, these monsters, with swollen faces and 
 cracked cheeks, and every kind of distortion of look and limb, 
 are depicted as staggering under the weight of falling buildings, 
 and being overwhelmed in the ruins ; upheaving masses of rock, 
 and burying themselves beneath ; vainly striving to sustain the 
 
4°° PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their heads ; and, 
 in a word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and 
 demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely large, 
 and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness ; the 
 colouring is harsh and disagreeable ; and the whole effect more 
 like (I should imagine) a violent rush of blood to the head of 
 the spectator, than any real picture set before him by the hand 
 of an artist. This apoplectic performance was shown by a sickly- 
 looking woman, whose appearance was referable, I dare say, to 
 the bad air of the marshes ; but it was difficult to help feeling 
 as if she were too much haunted by the Giants, and they were 
 frightening her to death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of 
 a Palace, among the reeds and rushes, with the mists hovering 
 about outside, and stalking round and round it continually. 
 
 Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, 
 some suppressed church : now used for a warehouse, now for 
 nothing at all : all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, 
 short of tumbling down bodily. The marshy town was so 
 intensely dull and flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to 
 have come there in the ordinary course, but to have settled 
 and mantled on its surface as on standing water. And yet 
 there were some business dealings going on, and some profits 
 realising ; for there were arcades full of Jews, where those 
 extraordinary people were sitting outside their shops, con- 
 templating their stores of stuffs, and woollens, and bright hand- 
 kerchiefs, and trinkets ; and looking, in all respects, as wary 
 and business-like as their brethren in Houndsditch, London. 
 
 Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring 
 Christians, who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a 
 half, and to start, next morning, as soon as the gates were 
 opened, I returned to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously 
 in my own room, in a narrow passage between two bedsteads : 
 confronted by a smoky fire, and backed up by a chest of drawers. 
 At six o'clock next morning we were jingling in the dark 
 through the wet, cold mist that enshrouded the town ; and, 
 
MILAN. 40 1 
 
 T>efore noon, the driver (a native of Mantua, and sixty years of 
 age, or thereabouts) began to ask the way to Milan. 
 
 It lay through Bozzolo ; formerly a little republic, and now 
 ' one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns : where 
 the landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him ! it was his 
 weekly custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a 
 clamorous herd of women and children, whose rags were flutter- 
 ing in the wind and rain outside his door, where they were 
 gathered to receive his charity. - It lay through mist, and mud, 
 and rain, and- vines trained low upon the ground, all that day 
 and the next ; the first sleeping-place being Cremona, memorable 
 for its dark brick churches, and immensely high tower, the 
 Torrazzo — to say nothing of its violins, of which it certainly 
 produces none in these degenerate days ; and the second, Jjodi. 
 Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and rain, and marshy 
 ground : and through such a fog as Englishmen, strong in the 
 faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is nowhere to 
 be found but in their own country, until we entered the paved 
 streets of Milan. 
 
 The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed 
 Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that 
 could be seen of it at that time. But as we halted to refresh, 
 for a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, 
 I had ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all 
 its majesty and beauty. 
 
 All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it ! There 
 are many" good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo 
 Borromeo has — if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject 
 — "my warm heart." A charitable doctor to the sick, a muni- 
 ficent friend to the poor, and this not in any spirit of blind 
 bigotry, but as the bold opponent of enormous abuses- in the 
 Romish church, I honour his memory. I honour it none the 
 less because he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned by priests 
 to murder him at the altar : in acknowledgment of his endea- 
 vours to reform a false and hypocritical brotherhood of monks. 
 
402 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo Borromeo as it shielded 
 him! A reforming Pope would need a little shielding, even 
 now. 
 
 The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo 
 Borromeo is preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a 
 contrast, perhaps, as any place can show. The tapers which 
 are lighted down there, flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold 
 and silver, delicately wrought by skilful hands, and representing 
 the principal events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and pre- 
 cious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass 
 slowly removes the front of the altar; and within it, in a 
 gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, 
 the shrivelled mummy of a man ; the pontifical robes with 
 which it is adorned radiant with diamonds, emeralds, rubies : 
 every costly and magnificent gem. The shrunken heap of poor 
 earth in the midst of this great glitter is more pitiful than if it 
 lay upon a dunghill. There is not a ray of imprisoned light in 
 all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to mock the dusty 
 holes where eyes were once. Every thread of silk in the rich 
 vestments seems only a provision from the worms that spin, for 
 the behoof of worms that propagate in sepulchres. 
 
 In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa 
 Maria delle Grazie is the work of art, perhaps better known than 
 any other in the world : the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci 
 — with a door cut through it by the intelligent Dominican friars, 
 to facilitate their operations at dinner-time; 
 
 I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, 
 and have no other means of judging of a picture than as I see 
 it resembling and refining upon nature, and presenting graceful 
 combinations of forms and colours. I am, therefore, no autho- 
 rity whatever in reference to the "touch" of this or that 
 master ; though I know very well (as anybody may, who chooses 
 to think about the matter) that few very great masters can 
 possibly have painted, in the compass of their lives, one half 
 of the pictures that bear their names, and that are recognised, 
 
MILAtf. 463 
 
 by nlany aspirants to a reputation for taste, as undoubted 
 originals. But this by the way. Of the Last Supper I would 
 simply observe, that in its beautiful composition and arrange- 
 ment, there it is, at Milan, a wonderful picture ; and that, in its 
 original colouring, or in its original expression of any single 
 face or feature, there it is not. Apart from the damage it has 
 sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry 
 shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, 
 that many of the heads are, now, positive deformities, with 
 patches of paint and plaster sticking upon them like wens, and 
 utterly distorting the expression. Where the original artist set 
 that impress of his genius on a face, which, almost in a line or 
 touch, separated him from meaner painters, and made him what 
 he was, succeeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams 
 and cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand ; and 
 putting in some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles of their own, 
 have blotched and spoiled the work. This is so well established 
 as an historical fact, that I should not repeat it, at the risk of 
 being tedious, but for having observed an English gentleman 
 before the picture, who was at great pains to fall into what I 
 may describe as mild convulsions, at certain minute details of 
 expression which are not left in it. Whereas, it would be com- 
 fortable and rational for travellers and critics to arrive at a 
 general understanding that it cannot fail to have been a work 
 of extraordinary merit once ; when, with so few of its original 
 beauties remaining, the grandeur of the general design is yet 
 sufficient to sustain it as a piece replete with interest and 
 dignity. 
 
 We achieved the other sights of Milan in due course, and a 
 fine city it is, though not so unmistakably Italian as to possess 
 the characteristic qualities of many towns far less important 
 in themselves. The Corso, where the Milanese gentry ride up 
 and down in carriages, and rather than not do which they 
 would half starve themselves at home, is a most noble public 
 promenade, shaded by long avenues of trees. In the splendid 
 
 dd2 
 
4«4 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 theatre of La Scala there was a ballet of action performed after 
 the opera, under the title of Prometheus : in the beginning of 
 which, some hundred or two of men and women represented 
 our mortal race before the refinements of the arts and sciences, 
 and loves and graces, came on earth to soften them. I never 
 saw anything more effective. Generally speaking, the panto- 
 mimic action of the Italians is more remarkable for its sudden 
 and impetuous character than for its delicate expression ; but, 
 in this case, the drooping monotony : the weary, miserable, 
 listless, moping life : the sordid passions and desires of human 
 creatures, destitute of those elevating influences to which we 
 owe so much, and to whose promoters we render so little : were 
 expressed in a manner really powerful and affecting. I should 
 have thought it almost impossible to present such an idea so 
 strongly on the stage, without the aid of speech. 
 
 Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morning ; 
 and before the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral 
 spire was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously confused 
 in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were towering in 
 our path. 
 
 Still, we continued to advance towards them until nightfall ; 
 and, all day long, the mountain-tops presented strangely shifting 
 shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of view. 
 The beautiful day was just declining when we came upon the 
 Lago Maggiore, with its lovely islands. Tor, however fanciful 
 and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beautiful. 
 Anything springing out of that blue water, with that scenery 
 around it, must be. 
 
 It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Porno d'Ossola, 
 at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But as the moon was 
 shining brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it 
 'was no time for going to bed, or going anywhere, but on. So, 
 we got a little carriage after some delay, and began the ascent. 
 
 It was late in November ; and the snow lying four or five 
 feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the 
 
PASS OF THE SIMPLON. 405 
 
 new drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the 
 serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, with its 
 impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sudden turns 
 into the shining of the moon, and its incessant roar of falling 
 water, rendered the journey more and more sublime at every 
 step. 
 
 Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us sleeping in 
 the moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and 
 after a time emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toil- 
 some, where the moon shone bright and high. By degrees, the 
 roar of water grew louder ; and the stupendous track, after cross- 
 ing the torrent by a bridge, struck in between two massive 
 perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out the moonlight, 
 and only left a few stars shining in the narrow strip of sky 
 above. Then, even this was lost in the thick darkness of a 
 cavern in the rock, through which the way was pierced ; the 
 terrible cataract thundering and roaring close below it, and 
 its foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about the entrance. 
 Emerging from this cave, and coming again into the moonlight, 
 and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted upward, through 
 the Gorge of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description, with 
 smooth-fronted precipices rising up on either hand, and almost 
 meeting overhead. Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way, 
 higher and higher all night, without a moment's weariness : lost 
 in the contemplation of the black rocks, the tremendous heights 
 and depths, the fields of smooth snow lying in the clefts and 
 hollows, and the fierce torrents thundering headlong down the 
 deep abyss. 
 
 Towards daybreak we came among the snow, where a keen 
 wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened 
 the inmates of a wooden house in this solitude : round which 
 the wind was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths, 
 and hurling it away : we got some breakfast in a room built of 
 rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well contrived 
 (as it had need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A 
 
406 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 sledge being then made ready, and four horses harnessed to it; 
 we went ploughing through the snow. Still upward, but now 
 in the cold light of morning, and with the great white desert on 
 which we travelled plain and clear. 
 
 We were well upon the summit of the mountain : and had 
 before us the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude 
 above the sea : when the light of the rising sun struck, all at 
 once, upon the waste of snow, and turned it a deep red. The 
 lonely grandeur of the scene was then at its height. 
 
 As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice 
 founded by Napoleon a group of Peasant travellers, with staves 
 and knapsacks, who had rested there last night : attended by a 
 Monk or two, their hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly 
 forward with them, for company's sake. It was pleasant to give 
 them good morning, and pretty, looking back a long way after 
 them, to see them looking back at us, and hesitating presently, 
 when one of our horses stumbled and fell, whether or no they 
 should return and help us. But he was soon up again, with 
 the assistance of a rough waggoner whose team had stuck fast 
 there too ; and when we had helped him out of his difficulty, 
 in return, we left him slowly ploughing towards them, and went 
 softly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep precipice, 
 among the mountain pines. 
 
 Taking to our wheels again soon afterwards, we began rapidly 
 to descend ; passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of 
 arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping icicles ; under 
 and over foaming water-falls ; near places of refuge, and galleries 
 of shelter against sudden danger ; through caverns over whose 
 arched roofs the avalanches slide in spring, and bury themselves 
 in the unknown gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and 
 through horrible ravines : a little shifting speck in the vast 
 desolation of ice and snow, and monstrous granite rocks : down 
 through the deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deafened by the 
 torrent plunging madly down, among the riven blocks of rock, 
 into the level country far below. Gradually down, by zigzag 
 
GLIMPSES OF SWITZERLAND. 40 7 
 
 roads, lying between an upward and a downward precipice, into 
 warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay 
 before us, glittering like gold or silver in the thaw and sunshine, 
 the metal-covered, red, green, yellow domes and church spires 
 of a Swiss town. 
 
 The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my 
 business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as 
 possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the 
 Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant mountains, looked 
 like playthings ; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and 
 piled together ; or how there were very narrow streets to shut 
 the howling winds out in the winter-time ; and broken bridges, 
 which the impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, had 
 swept away. Or how there were peasant women here, with 
 great round fur caps : looking, when they peeped out of case- 
 ments and only their heads were seen, like a population of 
 Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of London ; or how the town 
 of Vevay, lying on the smooth Lake of Geneva, was beautiful to 
 see ; or how the statue of St. Peter, in the street at Fribourg, 
 grasps the largest key that ever was beheld ; or how Fribourg 
 is illustrious for its two suspension bridges, and its grand cathe- 
 dral organ. 
 
 Or how, between that town and Bale, the road meandered 
 among thriving villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging 
 thatched roofs, and low protruding windows, glazed with small 
 round panes of glass like crown-pieces ; or how, in every little 
 Swiss homestead, with its cart or waggon carefully stowed away 
 beside the house, its little garden, stock of poultry, and groups 
 of red-cheeked children, there was an air of comfort, very new 
 and very pleasant after Italy ; or how the dresses of the women 
 changed again, and there were no more sword-bearers to be 
 seen ; and fair white stomachers, and great black, fan-shaped, 
 gauzy-looking caps prevailed instead. 
 
 Or how the country by the Jura Mountains, sprinkled with 
 snow, and lighted by the moon, and musical with falling water, 
 
403 . PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 was delightful ; or how, below the windows of the great hotel 
 of the Three Kings at Bale, the swollen Khine ran fast and 
 green ; or how, at Strasbourg, it was quite as fast, but not as 
 green : and was said to be foggy lower down : and, at that late 
 time of the year, was a far less certain means of progress than 
 the highway road to Paris. 
 
 Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic Cathe-' 
 dral, and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and gables, 
 made a little gallery of quaint and interesting views ; or how a 
 crowd was gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to see the 
 famous mechanical clock in motion, striking twelve. How, 
 when it struck twelve, a whole army of puppets went through 
 many ingenious evolutions ; and, among them, a huge puppet- 
 cock, perched on the top, crowed twelve times, loud and clear. 
 Or how it was wonderful to see this cock at great pains to clap 
 its wings, and strain its throat ; but obviously haviDg no con- 
 nection whatever with its own voice; which was deep within 
 the clock, a long way down. 
 
 Or how the road to Paris was one sea of mud ; and thence 
 to the coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how the cliffs 
 of Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so wonderfully 
 neat — though dark, and lacking colour on a winter's day, it 
 must be conceded. 
 
 Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, recrossing the 
 Channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep 
 in France. Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the 
 snow, headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of 
 stout horses at a canter ; or how there were, outside the Post 
 Office Yard in Paris, before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers 
 in heaps of rags, groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, 
 in search of odds and ends. 
 
 Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then 
 exceeding deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather 
 than rolled for the next three hundred miles or so ; breaking 
 springs on Sunday' nights, and putting out its two passengers 
 
THE CHIFFONIKk 
 
MARSEILLES TO GENOA. 409 
 
 to warm and refresh themselves, pending the repairs, in miser- 
 able billiard-rooms, where hairy company, collected about stoves, 
 were playing cards ; the cards being very like themselves — 
 extremely limp and dirty. 
 
 . Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of 
 weather ; and steamers were advertised to go, which did not 
 go ; or how the good steam-packet Charlemagne at length put 
 out, and met such weather that now she threatened to run into 
 Toulon, and now into Nice, but, the wind moderating, did 
 neither, but ran on into Genoa harbour instead, where the 
 familiar Bells rang sweetly in my ear. Or how there was a 
 travelling party on board, of whom one member was very ill in 
 the cabin next to mine, and, being ill, was cross, and therefore 
 declined to give up the Dictionary, which he kept under his 
 pillow ; thereby obliging his companions to come down to him 
 constantly, to ask what was the Italian for a lump of sugar — a 
 glass of brandy-and-water — what's o'clock ? and so forth : which 
 he always insisted on looking out with his own sea-sick eyes, 
 declining to intrust the book to any man alive. 
 
 Like Grumio, I might have told you, in detail, all this and 
 something more — but to as little purpose — were I not deterred 
 by the remembrance that my business is with Italy. There- 
 fore, like Grumio's story, it " shall die in oblivion.'' 
 
TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA. 
 
 rFHERE is nothing in Italy more beautiful to me than the 
 x coast road between Genoa and Spezzia. On one side : 
 sometimes far below, sometimes nearly on a level with the road, 
 and often skirted by broken rocks of many shapes : there is the 
 free blue sea, with here and there a picturesque felucca gliding 
 slowly on ; on the other side are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled 
 with white cottages, patches of dark olive woods, country 
 churches with their light open towers, and country houses gaily 
 painted. On every bank and knoll by the wayside, the wild 
 cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant profusion ; and the gardens 
 of the bright villages along the road are seen, all blushing in 
 the summer-time with clusters of the belladonna, and are 
 fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden oranges and 
 lemons. 
 
 Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by 
 fishermen ; and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled up 
 on the beach, making little patches of shade, where they lie 
 asleep, or where the women and children sit romping and 
 looking out to sea, while they mend their nets upon the shore. 
 There is one town, Camoglia, with its little harbour on the sea, 
 hundreds of feet below the road : where families of mariners 
 live, who, time out of mind, have owned coasting vessels in that 
 place, and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. Seen from the 
 road above, it is like a tiny model on the margin of the dimpled 
 water, shining in the Sun. Descended into by the winding 
 mule tracks, it is a perfect miniature of a primitive seafaring 
 town ; the saltest, roughest, most piratical little place that ever 
 
CAMOGLIA. 411 
 
 was seen. Great rusty iron rings and mooring chains, capstans, 
 and fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way ; hardy 
 rough-weather boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little 
 harbour, or are drawn out on the sunny stones to dry ; on the 
 parapet of the rude pier a few amphibious-looking fellows lie 
 asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or 
 water were all one to them, and if they slipped in, they would 
 float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes ; the church 
 is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive offerings, in com- 
 memoration of escape from storm and shipwreck. The dwell- 
 ings not immediately abutting on the harbour are approached 
 by blind low archways, and by crooked steps, as if in darkness 
 and in difficulty of access they should be like holds of ships, or 
 inconvenient cabins under water ; and everywhere there is a 
 smell of fish, and seaweed, and old rope. 
 
 The coast road, whence Camoglia is descried so far below, is 
 famous in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa, 
 for fire-flies. Walking there on a dark night, I have seen it 
 made one sparkling firmament by these beautiful insects ; so 
 that the distant stars were pale against the flash and glitter 
 that spangled every olive wood and hill-side, and pervaded the 
 whole air. 
 
 It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this 
 road on our way to Rome. The middle of January was only 
 just past, and it was very gloomy and dark weather ; very wet 
 besides. In crossing the fine Pass of Bracco, we encountered 
 such a storm of mist and rain, that we travelled in a cloud the 
 whole way. There might have been no Mediterranean in the 
 world, for anything we saw of it there, except when a sudden 
 gust of wind, clearing the mist before it for a moment, showed 
 the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing the distant 
 rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The rain was inces- 
 sant ; every brook and torrent was greatly swollen ; and such a 
 deafening leaping, and roaring, and thundering of water, I never 
 heard the like of in my life. 
 
412 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, 
 an unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be 
 safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until the 
 afternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree, subsided. 
 Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at ; by reason, firstly, 
 of its beautiful bay ; secondly, of its ghostly Inn ; thirdly, of the 
 head-dress of the women, who wear, on one side of their head, a 
 small doll's straw hat, stuck on to the hair ; which is certainly 
 the oddest and most roguish head-gear that ever was invented. 
 
 The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat — the passage is 
 not by any means agreeable when the current is swollen and 
 strong — we arrived at Carrara within a few hours. In good 
 time next morning we got some ponies, and went out to see the 
 marble quarries. 
 
 They are four or five great glens, running up into a range of 
 lofty hills, until they can run no longer, and are stopped by 
 being abruptly strangled by Nature. The quarries, or " caves," 
 as they call them there, are so many openings, high up in the 
 hills, on either side of these passes, where they blast and exca- 
 vate for marble : which may turn out good or bad : may make 
 a man's fortune very quickly, or ruin him by the great expense 
 of working what is worth nothing. Some of these caves were 
 opened by the ancient Komans, and remain as they left them to 
 this hour. Many others are being worked at this moment : 
 others are to be begun to-morrow, next week, next month ; 
 others are unbonght, unthought of ; and marble enough for more 
 ages than have passed since the place was resorted to, lies hidden 
 everywhere : patiently awaiting its time of discovery. 
 
 As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (having 
 left your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or two lower 
 down) you hear, every now and then, echoing among the hills, 
 in a low tone, more silent than the previous silence, a melan- 
 choly warning bugle, — a signal to the miners to withdraw. 
 Then, there is a thundering, and echoing from hill to hill, and 
 perhaps a splashing up of great fragments of rock into the air ; 
 
CARRARA. _ 413 
 
 and on you toil again until some other bugle sounds in a new 
 direction, and you stop directly, lest you should come within the 
 range of the new explosion. 
 
 There were numbers of men, working high up in these hills 
 ■ — on the sides — clearing away, and sending down the broken 
 masses of stone and earth, to make way for the blocks of marble 
 that had been discovered. As these came rolling down from 
 unseen hands into the narrow valley, I could not help thinking 
 of the deep glen (just the same sort of glen) where the Hoc left 
 Sinbad the Sailor ; and where the merchants, from the heights 
 above, flung down great pieces of meat for the diamonds to stick 
 to. There were no eagles here to darken the sun in their swoop, 
 and pounce upon them ; but it was as wild and fierce as if there 
 had been hundreds. 
 
 But the road, the road down which the marble comes, how- 
 ever immense the blocks ! The genius of the country, and the 
 spirit of its institutions, pave that road : repair it, watch it, keep 
 it going ! Conceive a channel of water running over a rocky 
 bed, beset with great heaps of stone of all shapes and sizes, 
 winding down the middle of this valley ; and that being the 
 road — because it was the road five hundred years ago ! Imagine 
 the clumsy carts of five hundred years ago being used to this 
 hour, and drawn, as they used to be five hundred years ago, by 
 oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death five hundred years 
 ago, as their unhappy descendants are now, in twelve months, 
 by the suffering and agony of this cruel work ! Two pair, four 
 pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, according to its size ; 
 down it must come, this way. In their struggling from stone 
 to stone, with their enormous loads behind them, they die 
 frequently upon the spot ; and not they alone ; for their passionate 
 drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their energy, are crushed 
 to death beneath the wheels. But it was good five hundred 
 years ago, and it must be good now : and a railroad down one 
 of these steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be flat 
 blasphemy. 
 
AH PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn by Only 
 a pair of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble on it) 
 coming down, I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat upon the 
 heavy yoke, to keep it on the neck of the poor beasts — and who 
 faced backward : not before him — as the very Devil of true 
 despotism. He had a great rod in his hand, with an iron point ; 
 and when they could plough and force their way through the 
 loose bed of the torrent no longer, and came to a stop, he poked 
 it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, screwed it round and 
 round in their nostrils, got them on a yard or two in the 
 madness of intense pain ; repeated all these persuasions, with 
 increased intensity of purpose, when they stopped again ; got 
 them on once more ; forced and goaded them to an abrupter 
 point of the descent ; and when their writhing and smarting, 
 and the weight behind them, bore them plunging down the 
 precipice in a cloud of scattered water, whirled his rod above 
 his head, and gave a great whoop and halloo, as if he had 
 achieved something, and had no idea that they might shake 
 him off, and blindly mash his brains upon the road, in the noon- 
 tide of his triumph. 
 
 Standing in one of the many studii of Carrara that afternoon 
 — for it is a great workshop, full of beautifully-fmished copies in 
 marble of almost every figure, group, and bust we know — it 
 seemed, at first, so strange to me that those exquisite shapes, 
 replete with grace, and thought, and delicate repose, should grow 
 out of all this toil, and sweat, and torture ! But I soon found 
 a parallel to it, and an explanation of it, in every virtue that 
 springs up in miserable ground, and every good thing that has 
 its birth in sorrow and distress. And, looking out of the sculp- 
 tor's great window upon the marble mountains, all red and 
 glowing in the decline of day, but stern and solemn to the last, 
 I thought, My God ! how many quarries of human hearts and 
 souls, capable of far more beautiful results, are left shut up and 
 mouldering away : while pleasure-travellers through life avert 
 their faces as they pass, and shudder at the gloom and rugged- 
 ness that conceal them ! 
 
CARRARA. 415 
 
 The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this territory in 
 part belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the only- 
 sovereign in Europe who had not recognised Louis Philippe as 
 King of the French ! He was not a wag, but quite in earnest. 
 He was also much opposed to railroads ; and if certain lines in 
 contemplation by other potentates, on either side of him, had 
 been executed, would have probably enjoyed the satisfaction 
 of having an omnibus plying to and fro, across his not very 
 vast dominions, to forward travellers from one terminus to 
 another. 
 
 Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and bold. 
 Few tourists stay there ; and the people are nearly all connected, 
 in one way or other, with the working of marble. There are 
 also villages among the caves, where the workmen live. It 
 contains a beautiful little Theatre, newly built : and it is an 
 interesting custom there to form the chorus of labourers in the 
 marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear. I heard 
 them in a comic opera, and in an act of Norina ; and they 
 acquitted themselves very well ; unlike the common people of 
 Italy generally, who (with some exceptions among the Neapoli- 
 tans) sing vilely out of tune, and have very disagreeable singing 
 voices. 
 
 From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view 
 of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies — with Leghorn, 
 a purple spot in the flat distance — is enchanting. Nor is it 
 only distance that lends enchantment to the view ; for the 
 fruitful country, and rich woods of olive-trees through which 
 the road subsequently passes, render it delightful. 
 
 The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a 
 long time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all 
 awry in the uncertain light ; the shadowy original of the old 
 pictures in school-books, setting forth " The Wonders of the 
 World." Like most things connected in. their first associations 
 with school-books and school-times, it was too small. I felt it 
 keenly. It was nothing like so high above the wall as I had 
 
41 6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 hoped. It was another of the many' deceptions practised by 
 Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, 
 London. His Tower was a fiction, but this was reality — and, 
 by comparison, a short reality. Still, it looked very well, and 
 very strange, and was quite as much out of the perpendicular as 
 Harris had represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa, too ; the 
 big guard-house at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it ; 
 the streets, with scarcely any show of people in them ; and the 
 ■Arno, flowing quaintly through the centre of the town ; were 
 excellent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. Harris 
 (remembering his good intentions), but forgave' him before 
 dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to see the Tower next 
 morning. 
 
 I might have known better ; but, somehow, I had expected to 
 see it casting its long shadow on a public street where people 
 came and went all day. It was a surprise to me to find it in a 
 grave, retired place, apart from the general resort, and carpeted 
 with smooth green turf. But, the group of buildings clustered 
 on and about this verdant carpet ■: comprising the Tower, the 
 Baptistery, the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo : 
 is perhaps the most remarkable^ and beautiful in the whole 
 world ; and, from being clustered there together, away from the 
 ordinary transactions and details of the town, they have a singu- 
 larly venerable and impressive character. It is the architectural 
 •essence of a rich old city, with all its common life and common 
 'habitations pressed out, and filtered away. 
 
 Simond compares the Tower to the usual pictorial representa- 
 tions in children's books of the Tower of Babel. It is a happy 
 'simile, and conveys a better idea of the building than chapters 
 of laboured description. Nothing can exceed the grace and 
 lightness of the structure ; nothing can be more remarkable than 
 its general appearance. In the course of the ascent to the top 
 (which is by an easy staircase), the inclination is not very appa- 
 rent ; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and gives one the sen- 
 sation of being in a ship that has heeled over, through the action 
 
MSA. 41 •} 
 
 of an ebb tide. The effect upon the low side, so to speak — 
 looking over from the gallery, and seeing the shaft recede to its 
 base — is very startling ; and I saw a nervous traveller hold on 
 to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he had 
 some idea of propping it up. The view within, from the ground 
 • — looking up, as through a slanted tube — is also very curious. 
 It certainly inclines as much as the most sanguine tourist could 
 desire. The natural impulse of ninety-nine people out of a 
 hundred, who were about to recline upon the grass below it to 
 rest, and contemplate the adjacent buildings, would probably be, 
 not to take up their position under the leaning side ; it is so 
 very much aslant. 
 
 The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery need 
 no recapitulation from me ; though in this case, as in a hundred 
 others, I find it difficult to separate my own delight in recalling 
 them from your weariness in having them recalled. There is a 
 picture of St. Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and 
 there are a variety of rich columns in the latter, that tempt me 
 strongly. 
 
 It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted 
 into elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo ; 
 where grass-grown graves are dug in earth brought more than 
 six hundred years ago from the Holy Land ; and where there 
 are, surrounding them, such cloisters, with such playing lights 
 and shadows falling through their delicate tracery on the stone 
 pavement, as surely the dullest memory could never forget. On 
 the walls of this solemn and lovely place are ancient frescoes, 
 very much obliterated and decayed, but very curious. As 
 usually happens in almost any collection of paintings, of any 
 sort, in Italy, where there are many heads, there is, in one of 
 them, a striking accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one time} 
 I used to please my fancy with the speculation whether these 
 old painters, at their work, had a foreboding knowledge of the 
 man who would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon 
 art : whose soldiers would make targets of great pictures, and 
 
 E E 
 
4*8 FICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 stable their horses among triumphs of architecture. But the 
 same Corsican face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this 
 day, that a more commonplace solution of the coincidence is 
 unavoidable. 
 
 If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its 
 Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or third in right 
 of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visitor at every turn, 
 escort him to ■every door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, 
 with strong reinforcements, at every door by which they know 
 he must come out. The grating of the portal on its hinges is 
 the signal for a general shout, and the moment he appears, he 
 is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags and personal dis- 
 tortions. The beggars seem to embody all the trade and enter- 
 prise of Pisa. Nothing else is stirring but warm air. Going 
 through the streets, the fronts of the sleepy houses look like 
 backs. They are all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with 
 people in them, that the greater part of the city has the appear- 
 ance of a city at daybreak, or during a general siesta of the popu- 
 lation. Or it is yet more like those backgrounds of houses in 
 common prints, or old engravings, where windows and doors are 
 squarely indicated, and one figure (a beggar of course) is seen 
 walking off by itself into illimitable perspective. 
 
 Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by Smollett's grave) : 
 which is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where 
 idleness is shouldered out of the way by commerce. The regu- 
 lations observed there, in reference to trade and merchants, are 
 very liberal and free ; and the town, of course, benefits by them. 
 Leghorn has a bad name in connection with stabbers, and with 
 some justice, it must be allowed ; for, not many years ago, there 
 was an assassination club there, the members of which bore 
 no ill-will to anybody in particular, but stabbed people (quite 
 strangers to them) in the streets at night, for the pleasure and 
 excitement of the recreation. I think the president of this 
 amiable society was a shoemaker. He was taken, however, and 
 the club was broken up. It would probably have disappeared 
 
SIENA. 419 
 
 in the natural course of events, before the railroad between 
 Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good one, and has already begun 
 to astonish Italy with a precedent of punctuality, order, plain 
 dealing, and improvement — the most dangerous and heretical 
 astonisher of all. There must have been a slight sensation, as 
 of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when the first Italian rail- 
 road was thrown open. 
 
 Keturning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vetturino, 
 and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we travelled through 
 pleasant Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery all day. The road- 
 side crosses in this part of Italy are numerous and curious. 
 There is seldom a figure on the cross, though there is sometimes 
 a face ; but they are remarkable for being garnished with little 
 models, in wood, of every possible object that can be connected 
 with the Saviour's death. The cock that crowed when Peter 
 had denied his Master thrice is usually perched on the tiptop ; 
 and an ornithological phenomenon he generally is. Under him 
 is the inscription. Then, hung on to the crossbeam, are the 
 spear, the reed with the sponge of vinegar and water at the 
 end, the coat without seam for which the soldiers cast lots, 
 the dice-box with which they threw for it, the hammer that 
 drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the ladder 
 which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the instru- 
 ment of flagellation, the lantern with which Mary went to the 
 tomb (I suppose), and the SAvord with which Peter smote 
 the servant of the high priest, — a perfect toy-shop of little 
 objects, repeated at every four or five miles, all along the high- 
 way. 
 
 On the evening of the second day from Pisa we reached the 
 beautiful old city of Siena. There was what they called a Car- 
 nival in progress ; but, as its secret lay in a score or two of 
 melancholy people walking up and down the principal street in 
 common toy-shop masks, and being more melancholy, if possible, 
 than the same sort of people in England, I say no more of it. 
 We went off betimes, next morning, to see the Cathedral, which 
 
 £ e2 
 
420 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 is wonderfully picturesque inside and out, especially the latter — 
 also the market-place, or great Piazza, which is a large square, 
 with a great broken-nosed fountain in it : some quaint Gothic 
 houses : and a high square brick tower ; outside the top of 
 which — a curious feature in such views in Italy— hangs an 
 enormous bell. It is like a bit of Venice, without the water. 
 There are some curious old Palazzi in the town, which is 
 very ancient; and without having (for me) the interest of 
 Verona or Genoa, it is very dreamy and fantastic, and most 
 interesting. 
 
 We went on again as soon as we had seen these things,' and 
 going over a rather bleak country (there had been nothing but 
 vines until now : mere walking-sticks at that season of the year), 
 stopped, as usual, between one and two hours in the middle of 
 the day, to rest the horses ; that being a part of every Vetturino 
 contract. We then went on again, through a region gradually 
 becoming bleaker and wilder, until it became as bare and deso- 
 late as any Scottish moors. Soon after dark we halted for the 
 night, at the osteria of La Scala : a perfectly lone house, where 
 the family were sitting round a great fire in the kitchen, raised 
 on a stone platform three or four feet high, and big enough for 
 the roasting of an ox. On the upper, and only other floor of 
 this hotel, there was a great wild rambling sala, with one very 
 little window in a by-corner, and four black doors opening into 
 four black bedrooms in various directions. To say nothing of 
 another large black door, opening into another large black sala, 
 with the staircase coming abruptly through a kind of trap-door 
 in the floor, and the rafters of the roof looming above : a sus- 
 picious little press skulking in one obscure corner : and all the 
 knives in the house lying about in various directions. The fire- 
 place was of the purest Italian architecture, so that it was per- 
 fectly impossible to see it for the smoke. The waitress was like 
 a dramatic brigand's wife, and wore the same style of dress upon 
 her head. The dogs barked like mad ; the echoes returned the 
 compliments bestowed upon them ; there was not another house 
 
OSTERIA OF LA SCALA, 4ZI 
 
 within twelve miles ; and things had a dreary, and rather a cut- 
 throat, appearance. 
 
 They were not improved by rumours of robbers having come 
 out, strong and boldly, within a few nights ; and of their having 
 stopped the mail very near that place. They were known to have 
 waylaid some travellers not long before, on Mount Vesuvius 
 itself, and were the talk at all the roadside inns. As they were 
 no business of ours, however (for we had very little with us to 
 lose), we made ourselves merry on the subject, and were very 
 soon as comfortable as need be. We had the usual dinner in this 
 solitary house ; and a very good dinner it is, when you are used 
 to it. There is something with a vegetable or some rice in it, 
 which is a sort of shorthand or arbitrary character for soup, and 
 which tastes very well, when you have flavoured it with plenty 
 of grated cheese, lots of salt, and abundance of pepper. There 
 is the half fowl of which this soup has been made. There is a 
 stewed pigeon, with the gizzards and livers of himself and other 
 birds stuck all round him. There is a bit of roast beef, the size 
 of a small French roll. There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, 
 and five little withered apples, all huddled together on a small 
 plate, and crowding one upon the other, as if each were trying 
 to save itself from the chance of being eaten. Then there is 
 coffee ; and then there is bed. You don't mind brick floors ; 
 you don't mind yawning doors, nor banging windows ; you don't 
 mind your own horses being stabled under the bed : and so 
 close that, every time a horse coughs or sneezes, he wakes you. 
 If you are good-humoured to the people about you, and speak 
 pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word for it you may be 
 well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, and always in 
 the most obliging manner, and may go from one end of the 
 country to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) with- 
 out any great trial of your patience anywhere. Especially, when 
 you get such wine in flasks as the Orvieto and the Monte 
 Pulciano. 
 
 It was a bad morning when we left this place ; and we went, 
 
422 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 for twelve miles, over a country as barren, as stony, and as wild 
 as Cornwall in England, until we came to Radicofani, where 
 tliere is a ghostly, goblin inn : once a hunting-seat, belonging 
 to, the Dukes of Tuscany. It is full of such rambling corridors 
 and gaunt rooms, that all the murdering and phantom tales that 
 ever were written might have originated in that one house. 
 There are some horrible old Palazzi in Genoa : one in particular, 
 not unlike it, outside : but there is a windy, creaking, wormy, 
 rustling, door-opening, foot-on-staircase-falling character about 
 this Radicofani Hotel, such as I never saw anywhere else. The 
 town, such as it is, hangs on a hill-side above the house, and in 
 front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars ; and, as soon as 
 they see a carriage coming, they swoop down upon it, like so 
 many birds of prey. 
 
 When we got on the mountain pass which lies beyond this 
 place, the wind (as they had forewarned us at the inn) was so 
 terrific, that we were obliged to take my other half out of the 
 carriage, lest she should be blown over, carriage and all, and to 
 hang to it, on the windy side (as well as we could for laughing), 
 to prevent its going, Heaven knows where. For mere force of 
 wind, this land storm might have competed with an Atlantic 
 gale, and had a reasonable chance of coming off "victorious. The 
 blast came sweeping down great gullies in a range of mountains 
 on the right : so that we looked with positive awe at a great 
 morass on the left, and saw that there was not a bush or twig 
 to hold by. It seemed as if, once blown from our feet, Ave must 
 be swept out to sea, or away into space. There was snow, and 
 hail, and rain, and lightning, and thunder; and there were 
 rolling mists, travelling with incredible velocity. It was dark, 
 awful, and solitary to the last degree ; there were mountains 
 above mountains, veiled in angry clouds ; and there was such 
 a wrathful, rapid, violent, tumultuous hurry everywhere, as 
 rendered the scene unspeakably exciting and grand. 
 
 It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding ; and to cross 
 even the dismal, dirty Papal Frontier. After passing through 
 
A SCENE OF DESOLATION. 423 
 
 two little towns ; in one of which, Acquapendente, there was 
 also a " Carnival " in progress : consisting of one man dressed 
 and masked as a woman, and one woman dressed and masked 
 as a man, walking, ankle deep, through the muddy streets, in a 
 very melancholy manner : we came, at dusk, within sight of the 
 Lake of Bolsena, on whose bank there is a little town of the 
 same name, much celebrated for malaria. With the exception 
 of this poor place, there is not a cottage on the banks of the 
 lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep there) ; not a boat upon 
 its waters ; not a stick or stake to break the dismal monotony 
 of seven-and-twenty watery miles. We were late in getting in, 
 the roads being very bad from heavy rains ; and, after dark, the 
 dulness of the scene was quite intolerable. 
 
 We entered on a very different and a finer scene of desolation, 
 next night, at sunset. We had passed through Montefiaschone 
 (famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its fountains) : and, after 
 climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles extent, came 
 suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake : in one part very 
 beautiful, with a luxuriant wood ; in another, very barren, and 
 shut in by bleak volcanic hills. Where this lake flows, there 
 stood, of old, a city. It was swallowed up one day ; and, in its 
 stead, this water rose. There are ancient traditions (common 
 to many parts of the world) of the ruined city having been seen 
 below, when the water was clear ; but, however that may be, 
 from this spot of earth it vanished. The ground came bubbling 
 up above it ; and the water too ; and here they stand, like ghosts 
 on whom the other world closed suddenly, and who have no 
 means of getting back again. They seem to be waiting the 
 course of ages, for the next earthquake in that place; when 
 they will plunge below the ground at its first yawning, and be 
 seen no more. The unhappy city below is not more lost and 
 dreary than these fire-charred hills and the stagnant water 
 above. The red sun looked strangely on them, as with the 
 knowledge that they were made for caverns and darkness ; and 
 the melancholy water oozed and sucked the mud, and crept 
 
4?"4 PICTURES' FROM ITALY. 
 
 quietly among the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow 
 of all the ancient towers and housetops, and the death of all the 
 ancient people born and bred there, were yet heavy on its 
 conscience. 
 
 A short ride from this lake brought us to Konciglione ; a 
 little town like a large pigsty, where we passed the night. Next 
 morning, at seven o'clock, we started for Rome. 
 
 As soon as we were out of the pigsty, we entered on the 
 Campagna Romana ; an undulating flat (as you know), where 
 few people can live : and where, for miles and miles, there is 
 nothing to relieve the terrible monotony and gloom. Of all 
 kinds of country that could, by possibility, lie outside the 
 gates of Rome, this is the aptest and fittest burial-ground for 
 the Dead City. So sad, so quiet, so sullen ; so secret in its 
 covering up of great masses of ruin, and hiding them ; so like 
 the waste places into which the men possessed with devils used 
 to go and howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of Jeru- 
 salem. We had to traverse thirty miles of this Campagna ; and 
 for two-and-twenty we went on and on, seeing nothing but now 
 and then a lonely house, or a villainous-looking shepherd, with 
 matted hair all over his face, and himself wrapped to the chin 
 in a frouzy brown mantle, tending his sheep. At the end of 
 that distance, we stopped to refresh the horses, and to get some 
 lunch, in a common malaria-shaken, despondent little public- 
 house, whose every inch of wall and beam, inside, was (accordi 
 ing to custom) painted and decorated in a way so miserable that 
 every room looked like the wrong side of another room, and, 
 with its wretched imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little 
 daubs of lyres, seemed to have been plundered from behind the 
 scenes of some travelling circus. 
 
 When we were fairly off again, we began, in a perfect fever, 
 to strain our eyes for Rome ; and when, after another mile 
 or two, the Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance, 
 it looked like — I am half afraid to write the word — like 
 LONDON ! ! ! There it lay, under a thick cloud, with innu- 
 
CAMPAGNA ROM AN A. 425 
 
 merable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up 
 into the sky, and, high above them all, one Dome. I swear, 
 that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, 
 it was so like London, at that distance, that if you could 
 have shown it me in a glass, I should have taken it for nothing 
 else. 
 
ROME. 
 
 ~V\7"E entered the Eternal City at about four o'clock in the 
 afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del 
 Popolo, and came immediately — it was a dark, muddy day, and 
 there had been heavy rain — on the skirts of the Carnival. We 
 did not, then, know that we were only looking at the fag-end of 
 the masks, who were driving slowly round and round the Piazza, 
 until they could find a promising opportunity for falling into the 
 stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into the thick of 
 the festivity : and coming among them so abruptly, all travel- 
 stained and weary, was not coming very well prepared to enjoy 
 the scene. 
 
 We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle, two or three 
 miles before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and, 
 hurrying on between its worn-away and miry banks, had a pro- 
 mising aspect of desolation and ruin. The masquerade dresses 
 on the fringe of the Carnival did great violence to this promise. 
 There were no great ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity to be 
 seen ; — they all lie on the other side of the city. There seemed 
 to be long streets of commonplace shops and houses, such as 
 are to be found in any European town ; there were busy people, 
 equipages, ordinary walkers to and fro ; a multitude of chatter- 
 ing strangers. It was no more my Rome ; the Rome of 
 anybody's fancy, man or boy : degraded and fallen, and lying 
 asleep in the sun among a heap of ruins : than the Place de la 
 Concorde in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy 
 streets, I was prepared for, but not for this : and I confess to 
 having gone to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humour, 
 and with a very considerably quenched enthusiasm. 
 
ROME. 427 
 
 Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to St. 
 Peter's. It looked immense in the distance, but distinctly and 
 decidedly small, by comparison, on a near approach. The beauty 
 of the Piazza in which it stands, with its clusters of exquisite 
 columns, and its gushing fountains — so fresh, so broad, and free, 
 and beautiful — nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of the 
 interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory : and, most of 
 all, the looking up into the Dome : is a sensation never to be 
 forgotten. But, there were preparations for a Festa ; the pillars 
 of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent frippery of 
 red and yellow ;. the altar, and entrance to the subterranean 
 chapel : which is before it, in the centre of the church : were 
 like a goldsmith's shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very 
 lavish pantomime. And though I had as high a sense of the 
 beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, 
 I felt no very strong emotion. I have been infinitely more 
 affected in many English cathedrals when the organ has been 
 playing, and in many English country churches when the 
 congregation have been singing. I had a much greater sense 
 of mystery and wonder in the Cathedral of San Mark, at 
 Venice. 
 
 When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an 
 hour staring up into the dome, and would not have "gone 
 over " the Cathedral then for any money), we said to the coach- 
 man, " Go to the Coliseum." In a quarter of an hour or so, he 
 stopped at the gate, and we went in. 
 
 It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say : so 
 suggestive and distinct is it at this hour : that, for a moment — 
 actually in passing in — they who will, may have the whole 
 great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager 
 faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and 
 blood, and dust, going on there, as no language can describe. 
 Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation strike 
 upon the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow ; 
 and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and over- 
 
4 2 8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 come by any sight, not immediately connected with his Own 
 affections and afflictions. 
 
 To see it crumbling there, an inch a year;- its walls and 
 arches overgrown with green ; its corridors open to the day ; 
 the long grass growing in its porches ; young trees of yesterday 
 springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit : chance 
 produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds who build their 
 nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see its Pit of Fight 
 filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the 
 centre ; to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, 
 ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches of Constantine, 
 Septimus Severus, and Titus ; the Roman Forum ; the Palace 
 of the Caesars ; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and 
 gone ; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful 
 old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. 
 It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, 
 grand, majestic, mournful sight conceivable. Never, in its 
 bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and 
 running over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it 
 must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked : 
 a ruin ! 
 
 As it tops the other ruins : standing there, a mountain among 
 graves : so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants 
 of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature 
 of the fierce and cruel Roman people. The Italian face changes 
 as the visitor approaches the city ; its beauty becomes devilish ; 
 and there is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among the 
 common people in the streets, that would not be at home and 
 happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow. 
 
 Here was Rome indeed at last ; and such a Rome as no one 
 can imagine in its full and awful grandeur ! We wandered out 
 upon the Appian Way, and then went on, through miles of 
 ruined tombs and broken walls, with here and there a desolate 
 and uninhabited house : past the Circus of Romulus, where 
 the course of the chariots, the stations of the judges, competitors, 
 
ROME. 42 Q 
 
 and spectators are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time : 
 past the Tomb of Cecilia Metella : past all enclosure, hedge, or 
 stake, wall or fence : away upon the open Campagna, where, on 
 that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but Ruin. Except 
 where the distant Apennines bound the view upon the left, the 
 whole wide prospect is one field of ruin. Broken aqueducts, 
 left in the most picturesque and beautiful clusters of arches ; 
 broken temples ; broken tombs. A desert of decay, sombre 
 and desolate beyond all expression ; and with a history in every 
 stone that strews the ground. 
 
 On Sunday the Pope assisted in the performance of High 
 Mass at St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, 
 on that second visit, was exactly what it was at first, and what 
 it remains after many visits. It is not religiously impressive or 
 affecting. It is an immense edifice, with no one point for the 
 mind to rest upon ; and it tires itself with wandering round 
 and round. The very purpose of the place is not expressed in 
 anything you see there, unless you examine its details — and all 
 examination of details is incompatible with the place itself. It 
 might be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a great architectural 
 trophy, having no other object than an architectural triumph. 
 There is a black statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red 
 canopy ; which is larger than life, and which is constantly hav- 
 ing its great toe kissed by good Catholics. You cannot help 
 seeing that : it is so very prominent and popular. But it does 
 not heighten the effect of the temple as a work of art ; and it 
 is not expressive — to me, at least — of its high purpose. 
 
 A large space behind the altar was fitted up with boxes, 
 shaped like those at the Italian Opera in England, but in their 
 decoration much more~ gaudy. In the centre of the kind of 
 theatre thus railed off was a canopied dais with the Pope's chair 
 upon it. The pavement was covered with a carpet of the 
 brightest green ; and what with this green, and the intolerable 
 reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the hangings, the whole 
 
430 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 concern looked like a stupendous Bonbon. On either side of 
 the altar was a large box for lady strangers. These were filled 
 with ladies in black dresses and black veils. The gentlemen of 
 the Pope's guard, in red coats, leather breeches, andg'ack-boots, 
 guarded all this reserved space, with drawn swords that were very 
 flashy in every sense ; and, from the altar all down the nave, a 
 broad lane was kept clear by the Pope's Swiss Guard, who wear 
 a quaint striped surcoat, and striped tight legs, and carry hal- 
 berds like those which are usually shouldered by those theatrical 
 supernumeraries, who never can get off the stage fast enough, and 
 who may be generally observed to linger in the enemy's camp 
 after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has been 
 split up the middle by a convulsion of Nature. 
 
 I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company with 
 a great many other gentlemen attired in black (no other pass- 
 port is necessary), and stood there, at my ease, during the per- 
 formance of mass. The singers were in a crib of wire-work (like 
 a large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one corner ; and sang most 
 atrociously. All about the green carpet there was a slowly- 
 moving crowd of people : talking to each other : staring at the 
 Pope through eye-glasses : defrauding one another, in moments 
 of partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of 
 pillars : and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted here and 
 there were little knots of friars (Francescani, or Cappuccini, in 
 their coarse brown dresses and peaked hoods), making a strange 
 contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of higher degree, and having 
 their humility gratified to the utmost, by being shouldered 
 about, and elbowed right and left, on all sides. Some of these 
 had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments : hav- 
 ing trudged in from the country. The faces of the greater part 
 were as coarse and heavy as their dress ; their dogged, stupid; 
 monotonous stare at all the glory and splendour having soms- 
 thing in it half miserable, and half ridiculous. 
 
 Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, 
 was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, purple. 
 
ROME. 43 1 
 
 violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers from these went to 
 and fro among the crowd, conversing two and two, or giving 
 and receiving introductions, and exchanging salutations ; other 
 functionaries in black gowns, and other functionaries in court 
 dresses, were similarly engaged. In the midst of all these, and 
 stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and the extreme restless- 
 ness of the Youth of England, who were perpetually wandering 
 about, some few steady persons in black cassocks, who had 
 knelt down with their faces to the wall, and were poring over 
 their missals, became, unintentionally, a sort of humane man- 
 traps, and with their own devout legs tripped up other people's 
 by the dozen. 
 
 There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor 
 near me, which a very old man in a rusty black gown with an 
 open-work tippet, like a summer ornament for a fire-place in 
 tissue paper, made himself very busy in dispensing to all the 
 ecclesiastics : one apiece. They loitered about with these for 
 some time, under their arms like walking-sticks, or in their 
 hands like truncheons. At a certain period of the ceremony, 
 however, each carried his candle up to the Pope, laid it across 
 his two knees to be blessed, took it back again, and filed off. 
 This was done in a very attenuated procession, as you may 
 suppose, and occupied a long time. Not because it takes long 
 to bless a candle through and through, but because there were 
 so many candles to be blessed. At last they were all blessed ; 
 and then they were all lighted ; and then the Pope was taken 
 up, chair and all, and carried round the church. 
 
 I must say that I never saw anything, out of November, so 
 like the popular English commemoration of the fifth of that 
 month. A bundle of matches and a lantern would have made 
 it perfect. Nor did the Pope himself at all mar the resem- 
 blance, though he has a pleasant and venerable face ; for, as 
 this part of the ceremony makes him giddy and sick, he shuts 
 his eyes when it is performed : and having his eyes shut, and a 
 great mitre on his head, and his head itself wagging to and fro, 
 
432 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 as they shook him in carrying, he looked as if his mask were 
 going to tumble off. The two immense fans which are always 
 borne, one on either side of him, accompanied him, of course, 
 on this occasion. As they carried him along, he blessed the 
 people with the mystic sigh ; and, as he passed them, they 
 kneeled down. When he had made the round of the church, 
 he was brought back again, and, if I am not mistaken, this 
 performance was repeated, in the whole, three times. There 
 was, certainly, nothing solemn or effective in it ; and certainly 
 very much that was droll and tawdry. But this remark 
 applies to the whole ceremony, except the raising of the Host, 
 when every man in the guard dropped on one knee instantly, 
 and dashed his naked sword on the ground ; which had a fine 
 effect. 
 
 The next time I saw the Cathedral was some two or three 
 weeks afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball ; and then, 
 the hangings being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but 
 all the framework left, the remnants of these decorations looked 
 like an exploded cracker. 
 
 The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa days, 
 and Sunday being always a dies non in Carnival proceedings, 
 Ave had looked forward, with some impatience and curiosity, to 
 the beginning of the new week : Monday and Tuesday being 
 the two last and best days of the Carnival. 
 
 On the Monday afternoon, at one or two o'clock, there began 
 to be a great rattling of carriages into the courtyard of the 
 hotel ; a hurrying to and fro of all the servants in it ; and, 
 now and then, a swift shooting across some doorway or balcony 
 of a straggling stranger in a fancy dress : not yet sufficiently 
 well used to the same to wear it with confidence, and defy 
 public opinion. All the carriages were open, and had the 
 linings carefully covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent 
 their proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant 
 pelting of sugar-plums ; and people were packing and cramming 
 
ROME. 433 
 
 into every vehicle, as it waited for its occupants, enormous 
 sacks, and basketsful of these confetti, together with such heaps 
 of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were 
 not only brimful of flowers, but literally running over : scatter- 
 ing, at every shake and jerk of the springs, some of their 
 abundance on the ground. Not to be behindhand in these 
 essential particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of 
 sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes- 
 basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired barouche 
 with all speed. And from our place of observation, in one of 
 the upper balconies of the hotel, we contemplated these arrange- 
 ments with the liveliest satisfaction. The carriages now begin- 
 ning to take up their company, and move away, we got into 
 ours, and drove off too, armed with little wire masks for our 
 faces ; the sugar-plums, like Falstaff's adulterated sack, having 
 lime in their composition. 
 
 The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops, and 
 palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad 
 piazza. There are verandas and balconies, of all shapes and 
 sizes, to almost every house — not on one story alone, but often 
 to one room or another on every story — put there, in' general, 
 with so little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and 
 season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, 
 snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have 
 come into existence in a more disorderly manner. 
 
 This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnival. 
 But all the streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigi- 
 lantly kept by dragoons, it is necessary for carriages, in the first 
 instance, to pass, in line, down another thoroughfare, and so 
 come into the Corso at the end remote from the Piazza del 
 Popolo ; which is one of its terminations. Accordingly, we fell 
 into the string of coaches, and, for some time, jogged on quietly 
 enough ; now crawling on at a very slow walk ; now trotting 
 half-a-dozen yards ; now backing fifty ; and now stopping 
 altogether : as the pressure in. front obliged us. If any 
 
 F F 
 
4.34 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 impetuous carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered 
 forward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was sud- 
 denly met, or overtaken, by a trooper on horseback, who, deaf 
 as his own drawn sword to all remonstrances, immediately 
 escorted it back to the very end of the row, and made it a dim 
 speck in the remotest perspective; Occasionally, we inter- 
 changed a volley of confetti with the carriage next in front, 
 or the carriage next behind ; but, as yet, this capturing of 
 stray and errant coaches by the military was the chief 
 amusement. 
 
 Presently we came into a narrow street, where, besides one 
 line of carriages going, there was another line of carriages 
 returning. Here the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to 
 fly about pretty smartly ; and I was fortunate enough to 
 observe one gentleman, attired as a Greek warrior, catch a 
 light-whiskered brigand on the nose (he was in the very act of 
 tossing up a bouquet to a young lady in a first-floor window) 
 with a precision that was much applauded by the bystanders. 
 As this victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark 
 with a stout gentleman in a doorway — one half black and one 
 half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle— who had 
 offered him his congratulations on this achievement, he received 
 an orange from a housetop full on his left ear, and was much 
 surprised, not to say discomfited. Especially as he was stand- 
 ing up at the time ; and, in consequence of the carriage moving 
 on suddenly at the same moment, staggered ignominiously, and 
 buried himself among his flowers. 
 
 Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress brought us 
 to the Corso ; and anything so gay, so bright, and Jively as the 
 whole scene there, it would be difficult to imagine. From all 
 the innumerable balconies : from the remotest and highest, no 
 less than from the lowest and nearest : hangings of bright red, 
 bright green, bright blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the 
 brilliant sun-light. From windows, and from parapets, and tops 
 of houses, streamers of the richest colours, and draperies of the 
 
ROME. 435 
 
 gaudiest and most sparkling hues, were floating out upon the 
 street. The buildings seemed to have been literally turned 
 inside out, and to have all their gaiety towards the highway. 
 Shop-fronts were taken down, and the windows filled with 
 company, like boxes at a shining theatre ; doors were carried 
 off their hinges, and long tapestried groves, hung with garlands 
 of flowers and evergreens, displayed within ; builders' scaffold- 
 ings were gorgeous temples, radiant in silver, gold, and crimson ; 
 and in every nook and corner, from the pavement to the 
 chimney-tops, where women's eyes could glisten, there they 
 danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the light in water. 
 Every sort of bewitching madness of dress was there. Little 
 preposterous scarlet jackets ; quaint old stomachers, more 
 wicked than the smartest bodices ; Polish pelisses, strained and 
 tight as ripe gooseberries ; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and cling- 
 ing to the dark hair, Heaven knows how ; every wild, quaint, 
 bold, shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress ; 
 and every fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the 
 tumult of merriment, as if the three old aqueducts, that still 
 remain entire, had brought Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy 
 arches, that morning. 
 
 The carriages were now three abreast ; in broader places 
 four ; often stationary for a long time together ; always one 
 close mass of variegated brightness ; showing the -whole street- 
 ful, through the storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth 
 themselves. In some the horses were richly caparisoned in 
 magnificent trappings ; in others they were decked, from head 
 to tail, with flowing ribbons. Some were driven by coachmen 
 with enormous double faces : one face leering at the horses : 
 the other cocking its extraordinary eyes into' the carriage : and 
 both rattling again under the hail of sugar-plums. Other 
 drivers were attired as women, wearing long ringlets and no 
 bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in any real difficulty with 
 the horses (of which, in such a concourse, there were a great 
 many) than tongue can tell, or pen describe. Instead of setting 
 
 FF 2 * 
 
436 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in the carriages, upon the seats, the handsome Roman women, 
 to see and to be seen the better, sit in the heads of the 
 barouches, at this time of general licence, with their feet upon 
 the cushions — and oh, the flowing skirts and dainty waists, the 
 blessed shapes and laughing faces, the free, good-humoured, 
 gallant figures that they make ! There were great vans, too, 
 full of handsome girls — thirty or more together, perhaps — and 
 the broadsides that were poured into, and poured out of, these 
 fairy fire-ships, splashed the air with flowers and bonbons for 
 ten minutes at a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, 
 would begin a deliberate engagement with other carriages, or 
 with people at the lower windows ; and the spectators at some 
 upper balcony or window, joining in the fray, and attacking 
 both parties, would empty down great bags of confetti, that 
 descended like a cloud, and in an instant made them white as 
 millers. Still, carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours 
 on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Men and boys 
 clinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind,, 
 and following in their wake, and diving in among the horses' 
 feet to pick up scattered flowers to sell again ; maskers on foot 
 (the drollest,, generally), in fantastic exaggerations of court 
 dresses, surveying the throng through enormous eye-glasses, 
 and always transported with an ecstasy of love, on the dis- 
 covery of any particularly old lady at a window ; long strings 
 of Policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders at the 
 ends of sticks ; a waggonful of madmen, screaming and tearing 
 to the life ; a coachful of grave mamelukes, with their horse- 
 tail standard set up in the midst ; a party of gipsy women 
 engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors ; a man- 
 monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs', 
 faces, and lions' tails, carried under their arms, or worn grace- 
 fully over their shoulders ; carriages on carriages, dresses on 
 dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end.' 
 Not many actual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps, 
 considering the pnmber dressed, but the main pleasure of the 
 
ROME. 437 
 
 scene consisting in its perfect good temper ; in its bright, and 
 infinite, and flashing variety ; and in its entire abandonment to 
 the mad humour of the time — an abandonment so perfect, so 
 contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up 
 to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest 
 Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past 
 four o'clock, when he is suddenly reminded (to his great regret) 
 that this is not the whole business of his existence, by hearing 
 the trumpets sound, and seeing the dragoons begin to clear the 
 street. 
 
 How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at five, 
 or how the horses ever go through the race, without going over 
 the people, is more than I can say. But the carriages get out 
 into the by-streets, or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and some 
 people sit in temporary galleries in the latter place, and tens of 
 thousands line the Corso on both sides, when the horses are 
 brought out into the Piazza — to the foot of that same column 
 which, for centuries, looked down upon the games and chariot 
 races in the Circus Maximus. 
 
 At a given signal they are started off. Down the live lane, 
 the whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind : riderless, 
 as all the world knows : with shining ornaments upon their 
 backs, and • twisted in their plaited manes : and with heavy 
 little balls, stuck full of spikes, dangling at their sides, to goad 
 them on. The jingling of these trappings, and the rattling of 
 their hoofs upon the hard stones ; the dash and fury of their 
 speed along the echoing street ; nay, the very cannon that are 
 fired — these noises are nothing to the roaring of the multitude : 
 their shouts : the clapping of their hands. But it is soon over 
 — almost instantaneously. More cannon shake the town. The 
 horses have plunged into the carpets put across the street to 
 stop them ; the goal is reached ; the prizes are won (they are 
 given, in part, by the poor Jews, as a compromise for not 
 running foot-races themselves) ; and there is an end to that 
 day's sport. 
 
43§ PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded on the last 
 day but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height 
 of glittering colour, swarming life, and frolicsome uproar, that 
 the bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this moment. The 
 same diversions, greatly heightened and intensified in the ardour 
 with which they are pursued, go on until the same hour. The 
 race is repeated ; the cannon are fired ; the shouting and clapping 
 of hands are renewed ; the cannon are fired again ; the race is 
 over ; and the prizes are won. But, the carriages : ankle deep 
 in sugar-plums within, and so beflowered and dusty without as 
 to be hardly recognisable for the same vehicles that they were 
 three hours ago : instead of scampering off in all directions, 
 throng into the Corso, where they are soon wedged together in 
 a scarcely moving mass. For the diversion of the Moccoletti, 
 the last gay madness of the Carnival, is now at hand ; and sellers 
 of little tapers, like what are called Christmas candles in Eng- 
 land, are shouting lustily on every side, "Moccoli, Moccoli ! 
 Ecco Moccoli ! " — a new item in the tumult ; quite abolishing 
 that other item of " Ecco Fiori ! Ecco Fior — r — r ! " which has 
 been making itself audible over all the rest, at intervals, the 
 whole day through. 
 
 As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one 
 dull, heavy, uniform colour in the decline of the day, lights 
 begin flashing here and there : in the windows, on the house- 
 tops, in the balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the foot- 
 passengers : little by little : gradually, gradually : more and 
 more : until the whole long street is one great glare and blaze 
 of fire. Then, everybody present has but one engrossing object ; 
 that is, to extinguish other people's candles, and to keep his own 
 alight ; and everybody : man, woman, or child, gentleman or 
 lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner : yells and screams, 
 and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, " Senza Moc- 
 colo, Senza Moccolo ! " (Without a light ! Without a light !) 
 until nothing is heard but a gigantic chorus of those two words, 
 mingled with peals of laughter. 
 
ROME. 430. 
 
 The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordinary 
 that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with every- 
 body standing on the seats or on the box, holding up their 
 lights at arm's length for greater safety ; some in paper shades ; 
 some with a bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled alto- 
 gether ; some with blazing torches ; some with feeble little 
 candles ; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels, watch- 
 ing their opportunity to make a spring at some particular light, 
 and dash it out ; other people climbing up into carriages, to get 
 hold of them by main force ; others chasing some unlucky wan- 
 derer round and round his own coach, to blow out the light he 
 has begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his 
 own company, and enable them to light their extinguished 
 tapers ; others with their hats off, at a carriage door, humbly 
 beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige them with a light 
 for a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of doubt whether to 
 comply or no, blowing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly 
 with her little hand ; other people at the windows fishing for 
 candles with lines and hooks, or letting down long willow wands 
 with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them out dexter- 
 ously when the bearer is at the height of his triumph ; others 
 biding their time in corners, with immense extinguishers like 
 halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches ; 
 others gathered round one coach, and sticking to it ; others 
 raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or 
 regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man 
 among them, who carries one feeble little wick above his head, 
 with which he defies them all ! Senza Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo ! 
 Beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at 
 extinguished lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass on, 
 crying, " Senza Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo ! " low balconies full 
 of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the 
 streets ; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending 
 down, some leaning over, some shrinking back — delicate arms 
 and bosoms — graceful figures — glowing lights, fluttering dresses, 
 
44° PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o ! — when, 
 in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy ot 
 the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and 
 the Carnival is over in an instant — put out like a taper, with 
 a breath ! 
 
 There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and 
 senseless as a London one, and only remarkable for the summary 
 way in which the house was cleared at eleven o'clock : which 
 was done by a line of soldiers forming along the wall, at the 
 back of the stage, and sweeping the whole company out before 
 them, like a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the 
 word, in the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo, 
 and means a little lamp or candle-snuff) is supposed by some to 
 be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the death of the Car- 
 nival : candles being indispensable to Catholic grief. But whether 
 it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient Saturnalia, or an incor- 
 poration of both, or have its origin in anything else, I shall 
 always remember it, and the frolic, as a brilliant and most capti- 
 vating sight : no less remarkable for the unbroken good-humour 
 of all concerned, down to the very lowest (and among those who 
 scaled the carriages were many of the commonest men and boys), 
 than for its innocent vivacity. For, odd as it may seem to say 
 so, of a sport so full of thoughtlessness and personal display, it 
 is as free from any taint of immodesty as any general mingling 
 of the two sexes can possibly be ; and there seems to prevail, 
 during its progress, a feeling of general, almost childish, sim- 
 plicity and confidence, which one thinks of with a pang, when 
 the Ave Maria has rung it away for a whole year. 
 
 Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between the 
 termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy Week : 
 when everybody had run away from the one, and few people had 
 yet begun to run back again for the other : we went conscien- 
 tiously to work to see Rome. And, by dint of going out early 
 ■every morning, and coming back late every evening, and labour- 
 
ROME. 44 1 
 
 ing hard all day, I believe we made acquaintance with every 
 post and pillar in the city, and the country round ; and, in par- 
 ticular, explored so many churches that I abandoned that part 
 of the enterprise at last, before it was half finished, lest I should 
 never, of my own accord, go to church again as long as I lived. 
 But, I managed, almost every day, at one time or other, to get 
 back to the Coliseum, and out upon the open Campagna, beyond 
 the Tomb of Cecilia Metella. 
 
 "We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of 
 English Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but ungratified, 
 longing to establish a speaking acquaintance. They were one 
 Mr. Davis, and a small circle of friends. It was impossible not 
 to know Mrs. Davis's name, from her being always in great 
 request among her party, and her party being everywhere. 
 During the Holy Week, they were in every part of every scene 
 of every ceremony. For a fortnight or three weeks before it, 
 they were in every tomb, and every church, and every ruin, and 
 every Picture Gallery ; and I hardly ever observed Mrs. Davis to 
 be silent for a moment. Deep underground, high up in St. 
 Peter's, out on the Campagna, and stifling in the Jews' quarter, 
 Mrs. Davis turned up, all the same. I don't think she ever 
 saw anything, or ever looked at anything ; and she had always 
 lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and was trying to 
 find it, with all her might and main, among an immense quan- 
 tity of English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon the sea- 
 shore, at the bottom of it. There was a professional Cicerone 
 always attached to the party (which had been brought over from 
 London, fifteen or twenty strong, by contract), and if he so much 
 as looked at Mrs. Davis, she invariably cut him short by saying, 
 " There, God bless the man, don't worrit me ! I don't under- 
 stand a word you say, and shouldn't if you was to talk till you 
 was black in the face ! " Mr. Davis always had a snuff-coloured 
 great-coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, 
 and had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which 
 prompted him to do extraordinary things, such as taking the 
 
442 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 covers off urns in tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if they 
 were pickles — and tracing out inscriptions with the ferrule of 
 his umbrella, and saying, with intense thoughtfulness, "Here's 
 a B you see, and there's a R, and this is the way we goes on in ; 
 is it ? " His antiquarian habits occasioned his being frequently 
 in the rear of the rest ; and one of the agonies of Mrs. Davis, 
 and the party in general, was an ever-present fear that Davis 
 would be lost. This caused them to scream for him in the 
 strangest places, and at the most improper seasons. And when 
 he came, slowly emerging out of some Sepulchre or other, like a 
 peaceful Ghoule, saying, " Here I am!" Mrs. Davis invariably 
 replied, " You'll be buried alive in a foreign country, Davis, and 
 it's no use trying to prevent you ! " 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been 
 brought from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen 
 hundred years ago, the Roman legions under Claudius protested 
 against being led into Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country, urging that 
 it lay beyond the limits of the world. 
 
 Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome, 
 there was one that amused me mightily. It is always to be 
 found there ; and its den is on the great flight of steps that lead 
 from the Piazza di Spagna to the Church of Trinita del Monte. 
 In plainer words, these steps are the great place of resort for the 
 artists' " Models," and there they are constantly waiting to be 
 hired. Th& first time I went up there, I could not conceive why 
 the faces seemed familiar to me ; why they appeared to have 
 beset me, for years, in every possible variety of action and cos- 
 tume ; and how it came to pass that they started up before me, 
 in Rome, in the broad day, like so many saddled and bridled 
 nightmares. I soon found that we had made acquaintance, and 
 improved it, for several years, on the walls of various Exhibition 
 Galleries. There is one old gentleman, with long white hair 
 and an immense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone half 
 through the catalogue of the Royal Academy. This is the 
 venerable, or patriarchal model. He carries a long staff; and 
 
ROME. 443 
 
 every knot and twist in that staff I have seen, faithfully deli- 
 neated, innumerable times. There is another man in a blue 
 cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the sun (when there 
 is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide awake, and 
 very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This is the dolce 
 far niente model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who 
 leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and 
 looks out of the corners of his eyes : which are just visible 
 beneath his broad slouched hat. This is the assassin model. 
 There is another man, who constantly looks over his own 
 shoulder, and is always going away, but never goes. This is 
 the haughty, or scornful model. As to Domestic Happiness, and 
 Holy Families, they should come very cheap, for there are lumps 
 of them, all up the steps ; and the cream of the thing is, that 
 they are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, especially made 
 up for the purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome, or any 
 other part of the habitable globe. 
 
 My recent mention of the Carnival reminds me of its being 
 said to be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it 
 closes) for the gaieties and merry-makings before Lent ; and this 
 again reminds me of the real funerals and mourning processions 
 of Rome, which, like those in most other parts of Italy, are ren- 
 dered chiefly remarkable to a Foreigner by the indifference with 
 which the mere clay is universally regarded, after life has left it. 
 And this js not from the survivors having had time to dissociate 
 the memory of the dead from their well-remembered appearance 
 and form on earth ; for the interment follows too speedily after 
 death for that : almost always taking place within four-and- 
 twenty hours, and, sometimes, within twelve. 
 
 At Rome there is the same arrangement of Pits in a great, 
 bleak, open, dreary space that I have already described as existing 
 in Genoa. When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin 
 of plain deal : uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly 
 made, that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed 
 it in : carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of 
 
444 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 one of the pits— and there left, by itself, in the wind and sun- 
 shine. " How does it come to be left here ? " I asked the man 
 who showed me the place. " It was brought here half an hour 
 ago, Signore," he said. I remembered to have met the proces- 
 sion on its return : straggling away at a good round pace. "When 
 will it be put in the pit ? " I asked him. " When the cart comes, 
 and it is opened to-night," he said. " How much does it cost 
 to be brought here in this way, instead of coming in the cart ? " 
 I asked him. " Ten scudi," he said (about two pounds two-and- 
 sixpence, English). "The other bodies, for whom nothing is 
 paid, are taken to the Church of the Santa Maria della Conso- 
 lazione," he continued, "and brought here all together in the 
 cart at night." I stood a moment looking at the coffin, which 
 had two initial letters scrawled upon the top : and turned away, 
 with an expression in my face, I suppose, of not much liking its 
 exposure in that manner : for he said, shrugging his shoulders 
 with great vivacity, and giving a pleasant smile, " But he's dead, 
 Signore, he's dead. Why not ? " 
 
 Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select 
 for separate mention. It is the Church of the Ara Cceli, sup- 
 posed to be built on the site of the old Temple of Jupiter 
 Feretrius ; and approached, on one side, by a long steep flight 
 of steps, which seem incomplete without some group of bearded 
 soothsayers on the top. It is remarkable for the possession of 
 a miraculous Bambino, or wooden doll, representing the Infant 
 Saviour ; and I first saw this miraculous Bambino, in legal 
 phrase, in manner following, that is to say : 
 
 We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were 
 looking down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient 
 churches built upon the ruins of old temples are dark and sad), 
 when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon his face that 
 stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to follow him with- 
 out a moment's delay, as they were going to show the Bambino 
 to a select party. We accordingly hurried off to a sort of 
 
ROME. 445 
 
 chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but not in the 
 church itself, where the select party, consisting of two or three 
 Catholio gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were already 
 assembled : and where one hollow-cheeked young monk was 
 lighting up divers candles, while another was putting on some 
 clerical robes over his coarse brown habit. The candles were 
 on a kind of altar, and above it were two delectable figures, such 
 as you would see at any English fair, representing the Holy 
 Virgin, and St. Joseph, as I suppose, bending in devotion over 
 a wooden box, or coffer ; which was shut. 
 
 The hollow-cheeked monk, Number One, having finished 
 lighting the candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, 
 before this set-piece ; and the monk Number Two, having put 
 on a pair of highly ornamented and gold-bespattered gloves, 
 lifted down the coffer with great reverence, and set it on the 
 altar. Then, with many genuflexions, and muttering certain 
 prayers,, he opened it, and let down the front, and took off 
 sundry coverings of satin and lace from the inside. The ladies 
 had been on their knees from the commencement ; and the 
 gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he exposed to view 
 a little wooden doll, in face very like General Tom Thumb, the 
 American Dwarf : gorgeously dressed in satin and gold lace, and 
 actually blazing with rich jewels. There was scarcely a spot 
 upon its little breast, or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling 
 with the costly offerings of the Faithful. Presently he lifted it 
 out of the box, and carrying it round among the kneelers, set 
 its face against the forehead of every one, and tendered its 
 clumsy foot to them to kiss — a ceremony which they all per- 
 formed, down to a dirty little ragamuffin of a boy who had 
 walked in from the street. When this was done he laid it in the 
 box again ; and the company, rising, drew near, and commended 
 the jewels in whispers, In good time he replaced the cover- 
 ings, shut up the box, put it back in its place, locked up the 
 whole concern (Holy Family and all) behind a pair of folding 
 doors ; took off his priestly vestments ; and received the cus- 
 
44& PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 tomary "small charge," while his companion, by means of an 
 extinguisher fastened to the end of a long stick, put out the 
 lights, one after another. The candles being all extinguished, 
 and the money all collected, they retired, and so did the spec- 
 tators. 
 
 I met this same Bambino in the street, a short time after- 
 wards, going, in great state, to the house of some sick person. 
 It is taken to all parts of Eome for this purpose constantly ; 
 but, I understand that it is not always as successful as could be 
 wished ; for, making its appearance at the bedside of weak and 
 nervous people in extremity, accompanied by a numerous escort, 
 it not unfrequently frightens them to death. It is most popular 
 in cases of childbirth, where it has done such wonders, that if a 
 lady be longer than usual in getting through her difficulties, a 
 messenger is dispatched, with all speed, to solicit the immediate 
 attendance of the Bambino. It is a very valuable property, and 
 much confided in — especially by the religious body to whom it 
 belongs. 
 
 I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate by 
 some who are good Catholics, and who are behind the scenes, 
 from what was told me by the near relation of a Priest, himself 
 a Catholic, and a gentleman of learning and intelligence. This 
 Priest made my informant promise that he would on no account 
 allow the Bambino to be borne into the bedroom of a sick lady, 
 in whom they were both interested. " For," said he, " if they 
 (the monks) trouble her with it, and intrude themselves into 
 her room, it will certainly kill her." My informant accordingly 
 looked out of the window when it came ; and, with many thanks, 
 declined to open the door. He endeavoured, in another case of 
 which he had no other knowledge than such as he gained as a 
 passer-by at the moment, to prevent its being carried into a small, 
 unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl was dying. But, he 
 strove against it unsuccessfully, and she' expired while the crowd 
 were pressing round her bed. 
 
 Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, 
 
ROME. 4 } 7 
 
 to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are 
 certain schools and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that come 
 in, twenty or thirty strong. These boys always kneel down in 
 single file, one behind the other, with a tall, grim master, in a 
 black gown, bringing up the rear : like a pack of cards arranged 
 to be tumbled down at a touch, with a disproportionately large 
 Knave of clubs at the end. When they have had a minute or 
 so at the chief altar, they scramble up, and, filing off to the 
 chapel of the Madonna, or the sacrament, flop down again in 
 the same order ; so that, if anybody did stumble against the 
 master, a general and sudden overthrow of the whole line must 
 inevitably ensue. 
 
 The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible. The 
 same monotonous, heartless, drowsy chanting always going on ; 
 the same dark building, darker frpm the brightness of the street 
 without ; the same lamps dimly burning ; the selfsame people 
 kneeling here and there ; turned towards you, from one altar or 
 other, the same priest's back, with the same large cross embroi- 
 dered on it : however different in size, in shape, in wealth, in 
 architecture, this church is from that, it is the same thing still. 
 There are the same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered 
 prayers to beg; the same miserable cripples exhibiting their 
 deformity at the doors ; the same blind men rattling little pots 
 like kitchen pepper-castors : their depositories for alms ; the 
 same preposterous crowns of silver stuck upon the painted heads 
 of single saints and Virgins in crowded pictures, so that a little 
 figure on a mountain has a head-dress bigger than the temple 
 in the foreground, or adjacent miles of landscape ; the same 
 favourite shrine or figure, smothered with little silver hearts 
 and crosses, and the like : the staple trade and show of all the 
 jewellers ; the same odd mixture of respect and indecorum, faith 
 and phlegm : kneeling on the stones, and spitting on them, 
 loudly ; getting up from prayers to beg a little, or to pursue 
 some other worldly matter : and then kneeling down again, to 
 resume the contrite supplication at the point where it was inter- 
 
448 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 rupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her prayers, 
 for a moment, to offer us her card as a teacher of Music ; and 
 in another, a sedate gentleman, with a very thick walking-staff, 
 arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling 
 at another dog : and whose yelps and howls resounded through 
 the church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train 
 of meditation — keeping his eye upon the dog at the same time, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions 
 of the Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes it is a 
 money-box, set up between the worshipper and the wooden life- 
 size figure of the Redeemer ; sometimes it is a little chest for 
 the maintenance of the Virgin ; sometimes an appeal on behalf 
 of a popular Bambino : sometimes a bag at the end of a long 
 stick, thrust among the people here and there, and vigilantly 
 jingled by an active Sacristan ; but there it always is, and, very 
 often, in many shapes in the same church, and doing pretty well 
 in all. Nor is it wanting in the open air — the streets and roads 
 — for often as you are walking along, thinking about anything 
 rather than a tin canister, that object pounces out upon you 
 from a little house by the wayside ; and on its top is painted, 
 " For the Souls in Purgatory ;" an appeal which the bearer 
 repeats a great many times, as he rattles it before you, much as 
 Punch rattles the cracked bell which his sanguine disposition 
 makes an organ of. 
 
 And this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar 
 sanctity bear the inscription, " Every mass performed at this 
 altar frees a soul from Purgatory." I have never been able to 
 find out the charge for one of these services, but they should 
 needs be expensive. There are several Crosses in Rome, too, 
 the kissing of which confers indulgences for varying terms. 
 That in the centre of the Coliseum is worth a hundred days ; 
 and people may be seen kissing it from morning to night. It 
 is curious that some of these crosses seem to acquire an arbitrary 
 popularity ; this very one among them. In another part of the 
 
ROME. 449 
 
 Coliseum tliero is a cross upon a marble slab, with the inscrip- 
 tion, "' Who kisses this cross shall be entitled to Two hundred 
 and forty days' indulgence." But I saw no one person kiss it, 
 though, day after clay, I sat in the arena, and saw scores upon 
 scores of peasants pass it, on their way to kiss the other. 
 
 To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches 
 would be the wildest occupation in the world. But San Stefano 
 Rotondo, a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the out- 
 skirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by 
 reason of the hideous paintings with which its walls are covered. 
 These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early Christians ; 
 and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could 
 imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig, raw, 
 for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, 
 crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried 
 alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets : 
 women having their breasts torn with iron pincers, their tongues 
 cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken, their bodies 
 stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled 
 up and melted in the fire : these are among the mildest subjects. 
 So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer gives 
 you the same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke in 
 Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much blood 
 in him. 
 
 There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over 
 what is said to have been — and very possibly may have been — 
 the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as an 
 oratory, dedicated to that saint ; and it lives, as a distinct and 
 separate place, in my recollection, too. It is very small and 
 low-roofed ; and the dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdu- 
 rate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist 
 through the floor. Hanging on the walls, among the clustered 
 votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely in keeping, and 
 strangely at variance, with the place — rusty daggers, knives, 
 pistols, clubs, divers instruments of violence and murder, 
 
 G G 
 
45° Pictures from italy. 
 
 brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to propitiate offended 
 Heaven : as if the blood upon them would drain off in con- 
 secrated air, and have no voice to cry with. It is all so silent 
 and so close, and tomb-like ; and the dungeons below are so 
 black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked ; that this little 
 dark spot becomes a dream within a dream : and in the vision 
 of great churches which come rolling past me like a sea, it is a 
 small wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and does 
 not flow on with the rest. 
 
 It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that 
 are entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the 
 city. Many churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of 
 great size, which, in the ancient time, were baths, and secret 
 chambers of temples, and what not ; but I do not speak of them. 
 Beneath the Church of San Giovanni and San Paolo there are 
 the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and 
 said to have another outlet underneath the Coliseum — tre- 
 mendous darknesses of vast extent, half buried in the earth and 
 unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed by the attendants, 
 glimmer down long ranges of distant vaults branching to the 
 fight and left, like streets in the city of the dead ; and show 
 the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip-drop, drip-drop, to 
 join the pools of water that lie here and there, and never saw, 
 and never will see, one ray of the sun. Some accounts make 
 these the prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphi- 
 theatre ; some the prisons of the condemned gladiators ; some, 
 both. But the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in 
 the upper range (for there are two stories of these caves) the 
 Early Christians destined to be eaten at the Coliseum Shows 
 heard the wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring down below ; 
 until, upon the night and solitude of their captivity, there burst 
 the sudden noon and life of the vast theatre crowded to the 
 parapet, and of these, their dreaded neighbours, bounding in ! 
 
 Below the Church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the 
 gate of San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to 
 

 
 IN THE CATACOMBS. 
 
ROME. 45 1 
 
 the catacombs of Rome — quarries in the old time, but afterwards 
 the ' hiding-places of the Christians. These ghastly passages 
 have been exploi'ed for twenty miles ; and form a chain of laby- 
 rinths, sixty miles in circumference. 
 
 A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild, bright eye, was our 
 only guide down into this profound and dreadful place. The 
 narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the 
 dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollec- 
 tion of the track by which we had come ; and I could not help 
 thinking, "Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of madness, he 
 should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a 
 fit, what would become of us?" On we wandered, among 
 martyrs' graves : passing great subterranean vaulted roads, 
 diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, 
 that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form 
 a population under Home, even worse than that which lives 
 between it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves ; Graves of 
 men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the 
 persecutors, "We are Christians' We are Christians!" that 
 they might be murdered with their parents ; Graves with the 
 palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, 
 and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood ; 
 Graves of some who lived down here for years together, minister- 
 ing to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort from 
 the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour ; 
 more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being 
 surprised, were hemmed in and walled up : buried before Death, 
 and killed by slow starvation. 
 
 " The Triumphs of the Faith are not above-ground in our 
 splendid churches," said the friar, looking round upon us, as we 
 stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust 
 surrounding us on every side. " They are here ! Among the 
 Martyrs' Graves ! " He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it 
 from his heart ; but when I thought how Christian men have 
 dealt with one another ; how, perverting our most merciful 
 
 gg2 
 
4y Pictures from italy. 
 
 religion, they have hunted clown and tortured, burnt and 
 beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other ; I 
 pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust had 
 suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how 
 these great and constant hearts would have been shaken — how 
 they would have quailed and drooped — if a foreknowledge of 
 the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the Great 
 Name for which they died, could have rent them, with its own 
 unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in 
 the fearful fire. 
 
 Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches 
 that remain apart, and keep their separate identity. I have a 
 fainter recollection, sometimes, of the relics ; of the fragments 
 of the pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain ; of the por- 
 tion of the table that was spread for the Last Supper ; of the 
 well at which the woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour ; 
 of two columns from the house of Pontius Pilate ; of the stone 
 to which the sacred hands were bound, when the scourging was 
 performed ; of the gridiron of St. Lawrence, and the stone 
 below it, marked with the frying of his fat and blood ; these 
 set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as an old story or a 
 fable might, and stop them for an instant, as they flit before 
 me. The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated buildings of 
 all shapes and fancies, blending one with another ; of battered 
 pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and 
 forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of Christian 
 churches ; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and 
 ridiculous ; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, 
 and sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ ; of Madonne, 
 with their breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle 
 like a modern fan ; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously 
 attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold : 
 their withered crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or 
 with chaplets of crushed flowers ; sometimes, of people gathered 
 round the pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the 
 
ROME. 453 
 
 crucifix, and preaching fiercely : the sun just streaming down 
 through some high window on the sail-cloth stretched above 
 him and across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice from 
 being lost among the echoes of the roof. Then my tired 
 memory comes out upon a flight of steps, where knots of 
 people are asleep, or basking in the light ; and strolls away, 
 among the rags, and smells, and palaces, and hovels of an old 
 Italian street. 
 
 On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March) a man was 
 beheaded here. Nine or ten months before, he had waylaid a 
 Bavarian countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Eome — alone and 
 on foot, of course — and performing, it is said, that act of piety 
 for the fourth time. He saw her change a piece of gold at 
 Yiterbo, where he lived ; followed her ; bore her company on 
 her journey for some forty miles or more, on the treacherous 
 pretext of protecting her ; attacked her, in the fulfilment of his 
 unrelenting purpose, on the Campagna, within a very short 
 distance of Rome, near to what is called (but what is not) the 
 Tomb of Nero ; robbed her ; and beat her to death with her 
 own pilgrim's staff. He was newly married, and gave some of 
 her apparel to his wife : saying that he had bought it at a fair. 
 She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing through 
 their town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to her. 
 Her husband then told her what he had done. She, in confes- 
 sion, told a priest ; and the man was taken within four days 
 after the commission of the murder. 
 
 There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or 
 its execution, in this unaccountable country ; and he had been 
 in prison ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the 
 other prisoners, they came and told him he was to be beheaded 
 next morning, and took him away. It is very unusual to exe- 
 cute in Lent ; but his crime being a very bad one, it was deemed 
 advisable to make an example of him at that time, when great 
 numbers of pilgrims were coming towards Rome, from all parts, 
 
454 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 for the Holy Week. I heard of this on the Friday evening, and 
 saw the bills up at the churches, calling on the people to pray 
 for the ci'iminal's soul. So I determined to go and see him 
 executed. 
 
 The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a half o'clock, 
 Roman time : or a quarter before nine in the forenoon. I had 
 two friends with me ; and, as we did not know but that the 
 crowd might be very great, we were on the spot by half-past 
 seven. The place of execution was near the Church of San 
 Giovanni Decollate (a doubtful compliment to St. John the 
 Baptist), in one of the impassable back-streets without any foot- 
 way, of which a great part of Rome is composed — a street of 
 rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to anybody, and do 
 not seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly were never 
 built on any plan, or for any particular purpose, and have no 
 window-sashes, and are a little like deserted breweries, and might 
 be warehouses, but for having nothing in them. Opposite to 
 one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built. An untidy, 
 unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing, of course : some seven 
 feet high, perhaps : with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising above 
 it, in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of 
 iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning 
 sun, whenever it looked out, now and then, from behind a 
 cloud. 
 
 There were not many people lingering about ; and these were 
 kept at a considerable distance from the scaffold by parties of 
 the Pope's dragoons. Two or three hundred' foot-soldiers were 
 under arms, standing at ease in clusters here and there ; and 
 the officers were walking up and down in twos and threes, 
 chatting together, and smoking cigars. 
 
 At the end of the street was an open space, where there 
 would be a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds 
 of vegetable refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere 
 and everywhere in Rome, and favouring no particular sort of 
 locality. We got into a kind of wash-house, belonging to a 
 
ROME. 455 
 
 dwelling-house on this spot ; and standing there in an old cart, 
 and on a heap of cart wheels piled against the wall, looked, 
 through ,a large grated window, at the scaffold, and straight 
 down the street beyond it, until, in consequence of its turning 
 off abruptly to the left, our perspective was brought to a sudden 
 termination, and had a corpulent officer, in a cocked-hat, for its 
 crowning feature. 
 
 Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and nothing 
 happened. All the bells of all the churches rang as usual. A 
 little parliament of dogs assembled in the open space, and 
 chased each other in and out among the soldiers. Fierce- 
 looking Romans of the lowest class, in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, 
 and rags uncloaked, came and went, and talked together. 
 "Women and children fluttered on the skirts of the scanty crowd. 
 One large, muddy spot was left quite bare, like a bald place on a 
 man's head. A cigar merchant, with an earthen pot of charcoal 
 ashes in one hand, went up and down crying his wares. A 
 pastry merchant divided his attention between the scaffold and 
 his customers. Boys tried to climb up walls, and tumbled down 
 again. Priests and monks elbowed a passage for themselves 
 among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of the knife : 
 then went away. Artists, in inconceivable hats of the middle 
 ages, and beards (thank Heaven!) of no age at all, flashed 
 picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the throng. 
 One gentleman (connected with the fine arts I presume) went 
 up and down in a pair of Hessian boots, with a red beard 
 hanging down on his breast, and his long and bright red hair 
 plaited into two tails, one on either side of his head : which fell 
 over his shoulders in front of him, very nearly to his. waist, and 
 were carefully entwined and braided ! 
 
 Eleven o'clock struck ; and still nothing happened. A rumour 
 got about, among the crowd, that the criminal would not con- 
 fess ; in which case the priests would keep him until the Ave 
 Maria (sunset) ; for it is their merciful custom never finally to 
 turn the crucifix away from a man at that pass, as one refusing 
 
456 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 to be shriven, and consequently a sinner abandoned of the 
 Saviour', until then. People began to drop off. The officers 
 fcnrtigged their shoulders and looked doubtful. The dragoons, 
 who came riding up below our window, every now and then, to 
 order an unlucky hackney coach or cart away as soon as it had 
 comfortably established itself, and was covered with exulting 
 people (but never before), became imperious and quick-tempered. 
 The bald place hadn't a straggling hair upon it ; and the cor- 
 pulent officer, crowning the perspective, took a world of snuff. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. " Attention ! " was 
 among the foot-soldiers instantly. They were marched up to 
 the scaffold, and formed round it. The dragoons galloped to 
 their nearer stations too. The guillotine became the centre of 
 a wood of bristling bayonets and shining sabres. The people 
 closed round nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A long, 
 straggling stream of men and boys, who had accompanied the 
 procession from the prison, came pouring into the open space. 
 The bald spot was scarcely distinguishable from the rest. The 
 cigar and pastry merchants resigned all thoughts of business for 
 the moment, and, abandoning themselves wholly to pleasure, got 
 good situations in the crowd. The perspective ended, now, in 
 a troop of dragoons. And the corpulent officer, sword in hand, 
 looked hard at a church close to him, which he could see, but 
 we, the crowd, could not. 
 
 After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to 
 the scaffold from this church ; and above their heads, coming on 
 slowly and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied 
 with black. This was carried round the foot of the scaffold, to 
 the front, and turned towards the criminal, that he might see it 
 to the last. It was hardly in its place, when he appeared on 
 the platform, barefooted ; his hands bound ; and with the collar 
 and neck of his shirt cut away almost to the shoulder. A 
 young man — six-and-twenty — vigorously made, and well shaped. 
 Face pale ; small, dark moustache ; and dark brown hair. 
 
 He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having his 
 
ROME. 457 
 
 wife brought to see him ; and they had sent an escort for her, 
 which had occasioned the delay. 
 
 He immediately kneeled down, below the knife. His neck 
 fitting into a hole, made for the purpose, in a cross-plank, was 
 shut down by another plank above ; exactly like the pillory. 
 Immediately below him was a leathern bag. And into it his 
 head rolled instantly. 
 
 The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking with 
 it round the scaffold, showing it to the peeple, before one quite 
 knew that the knife had fallen heavily, and with a rattling 
 sound. 
 
 When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, it 
 was set upon a pole in front — a little patch of black and white, 
 for the long street to stare at, and the flies to settle on. The 
 eyes were turned upward, as if he had avoided the sight of the 
 leathern bag, and looked to the crucifix. Every tinge and hue 
 of life had left it in that instant. It was dull, cold, livid wax. 
 The body also. 
 
 There was a great deal of blood. When we left the window, 
 and went close up to the scaffold, it was very dirty ; one of the 
 two men who were throwing water over it, turning to help the 
 other lift the body into a shell, picked his way as through mire. 
 A strange appearance was the apparent annihilation of the neck. 
 The head was taken off so close, that it seemed as if the knife 
 had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving off the ear ; 
 and the body looked as if there were nothing left above the 
 shoulder. 
 
 Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no manifesta- 
 tion of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow. My empty 
 pockets were tried, several times, in the crowd immediately 
 below the scaffold, as the corpse was being put into its coffin. 
 It was an ugly, filthy, careless, sickening spectacle ; meaning 
 nothing but butchery, beyond the momentary interest, to the 
 one wretched actor. Yes ! Such a sight has one meaning and 
 one warning. Let me not forget it, The speculators in the 
 
458 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 lottery station themselves at favourable points for counting the 
 gouts of blood that spurt out here or there ; and buy. that 
 number. It is pretty sure to have a run upon it. 
 
 The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansedj the 
 scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed. 
 The executioner : an outlaw ex officio (what a satire on the 
 Punishment !) who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge 
 of St. Angelo but to do his work : retreated tp his lair, and 
 the show was over. 
 
 At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the 
 Vatican, of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous 
 galleries, and staircases, and suites upon suites of immense 
 chambers, ranks highest and stands foremost. Many most noble 
 statues and wonderful pictures are there ; nor is it heresy to say 
 that there is a considerable amount of rubbish there too. When 
 any old piece of sculpture dug out of the ground finds a place 
 in a gallery because it is old, and without any reference to its 
 intrinsic merits : and finds admirers by the hundred, because it 
 is there, and for no other reason on earth : there will.be no lack 
 of objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who 
 employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles 
 of Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of 
 taste for the mere trouble of putting them on. 
 
 I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my 
 natural perception of what is natural and true at a palace door, 
 in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were 
 travelling in the East. I cannot forget that there are certain 
 expressions of face natural to certain passions, and as unchange- 
 able in their nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an 
 eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain knowledge such 
 commonplace facts as the ordinary proportions of men's arms, 
 and legs, and heads ; and when I meet with performances that 
 do violence to these experiences and recollections, no matter 
 where they may be, I cannot honestly admire them, and think 
 
ROME. 459 
 
 it best to say so ; in spite of high critical advice that we 
 should sometimes feign an admiration, though we have it not. 
 
 Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a Jolly 
 young Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and 
 Perkins's Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to 
 commend or admire in the performance, however great its 
 reputed Painter. Neither am I partial to libellous Angels, who 
 play on fiddles and bassoons, for the edification of sprawling 
 monks apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons 
 of galleries, St. Francis and St. Sebastian ; both of whom, I 
 submit, should have very uncommon and rare merits, as works 
 of art, to justify their compound multiplication by Italian 
 Painters. 
 
 It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined 
 raptures in which some critics indulge is incompatible with the 
 true appreciation of the really great and transcendent works. 
 I cannot imagine, for example, how the resolute champion of 
 undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's 
 great picture of the Assumption of the Virgin at Venice ; or 
 how the man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that 
 exquisite production, or who is truly sensible of the beauty of 
 Tintoretto's great picture of the Assembly of the Blessed in 
 the same place, can discern in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, 
 in the Sistine Chapel, any general idea, or one pervading 
 thought, in harmony with the stupendous subject. He who 
 will contemplate Raphael's masterpiece, the Transfiguration, and 
 will go away into another chamber of that same Vatican, and 
 contemplate another design of Raphael, representing (in incre- 
 dible caricature) the miraculous stopping of a great fire by Leo 
 the Fourth — and who will say that he admires them both, as 
 works of extraordinary genius — must, as I think, be wanting in 
 his powers of perception in one of the two instances, and, pro- 
 bably, in the high and lofty one. 
 
 It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt 
 whether, sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly 
 
460.' PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 observed, and whether it is quite well or agreeable that we 
 should know beforehand where this figure will be turning 
 round, and where that figure will be lying down, and where 
 there will be drapery in folds, and so forth. When I observe 
 heads inferior to the subject in pictures of merit, in Italian 
 galleries, I do not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I 
 have a suspicion that these great men, who were, of necessity, 
 very much in the hands of monks and priests, painted monks 
 and priests a great deal too often. I frequently see, in 
 pictures of real power, heads quite below the story and the 
 painter : and I invariably observe that those heads are of the 
 Convent stamp, and have their counterparts among the Convent 
 inmates of this hour ; so, I have settled with myself that, in 
 such cases, the lameness was not with the painter, but with the 
 vanity and ignorance of certain of his employers, who would be 
 apostles — on canvas, at all events. 
 
 The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues ; the 
 wonderful gravity and repose of many of the ancient works in 
 sculpture, both in the Capitol and the Vatican ; and the 
 strength and fire of many others ; are, in their different ways, 
 beyond all reach of words. They are especially impressive and 
 delightful, after the works of Eernini and his disciples, in which 
 the churches of Rome, from St. Peter's downward, abound ; and 
 which are, I verily believe, the most detestable class of pro- 
 ductions in the wide world. I would infinitely rather (as mere 
 works of art) look upon the three deities of the Past, the 
 Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Collection, than upon 
 the best of these breezy maniacs ; whose every fold of drapery 
 is blown inside out ; whose smallest vein, or artery, is as big as 
 an ordinary forefinger ; whose hair is like a nest of lively 
 snakes ; and whose attitudes put all other extravagance to 
 shame. Insomuch that I do honestly believe there can be no 
 place in the world where such intolerable abortions, begotten 
 of the sculptor's chisel, are to be found in such profusion as 
 in Rome, 
 
koMtfi -461 
 
 There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities in the 
 Vatican ; and the ceilings of the rooms in which they are 
 arranged are painted to represent a starlight sky in the Desert. 
 It may seem an odd idea, but it is very effective. The grim, 
 half-human monsters from the temples look more grim and 
 monstrous underneath the deep dark blue ; it sheds a strange 
 uncertain gloomy air on everything — a mystery adapted to the 
 objects ; and you leave them, as you find them, shrouded in a 
 solemn night. 
 
 In the private palaces pictures are seen to the best advantage. 
 There are seldom so many in one place that the attention need 
 become distracted, or the eye confused. You see them very 
 leisurely ; and are rarely interrupted by a crowd of people. 
 There are portraits innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, 
 and Vandyke ; heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo 
 Dolci ; various subjects by Correggio, and Murillo, and Eaphael, 
 and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto — many of which it would 
 be difficult indeed to praise too highly, or to praise enough ; 
 such is their tenderness and grace ; their noble elevation, 
 purity, and beauty. 
 
 The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini, is 
 a picture almost impossible to be forgotten. Through the tran- 
 scendent sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a something 
 shining out that haunts me. I see it now, as I see this paper, 
 or my pen. The head is loosely draped in white ; the light 
 hair falling down below the linen folds. She has turned sud- 
 denly towards you ; and there is an expression in the eyes— 
 although they are very tender and gentle — as if the wildness of 
 a momentary terror, or distraction, had been struggled with, 
 and overcome, that instant ; and nothing but a celestial hope, 
 and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness 
 remained. Some stories say that Guido painted it the night 
 before her execution ; some other stories, that he painted it 
 from memory, after having seen her on her way to the scaffold. 
 - 1 am willing to believe that, as you see her on his canvas, so 
 
4^2 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 she turned towards him, in the crowd, from the first sight of 
 the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which he has 
 stamped on mine, as though I had stood beside him in the 
 concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci : blighting a whole 
 quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by ,grains : 
 had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black 
 blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and 
 growing out of the darkness of its ghostly galleries. The 
 History is written in the Painting ; written, in the dying girl's 
 face, by Nature's own hand. And oh ! how in that one touch 
 she puts to flight (instead of making kin) the puny world that 
 claim to be related to her, in right of poor conventional 
 forgeries ! 
 
 I saw, in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey ; the 
 statue at whose base Caesar fell. A stern, tremendous figure ! 
 I imagined one of greater finish : of the last refinement : full 
 of delicate touches : losing its distinctness in the giddy eyes of 
 one whose blood was ebbing before it, and settling into some 
 such rigid majesty as this, as Death came creeping over the 
 upturned face. 
 
 The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charming, 
 and would be full of interest, were it only for the changing 
 views they afford of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of 
 ground, in every direction, is rich in associations, and in natural 
 beauties. There is Albano, with its lovely lake and wooded 
 shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not improved since 
 the days of Horace, and in these times hardly justifies his 
 panegyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio diverted 
 from its course, and plunging down, headlong, some eighty feet 
 in search of it. With its picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, 
 perched high on a crag ; its minor water-falls glancing and 
 sparkling in the sun ; and one good cavern yawning darkly, 
 where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots on, low 
 down under beetling rocks. There, too, is the Villa d'Este, 
 deserted and decaying among groves of melancholy pine and 
 
ROME. 463 
 
 cypress trees, where it seems to lie in state. Then, there is 
 Firascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of Tusculum, 
 where Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his favourite house 
 (some fragments of it may yet be seen there), and where Cato 
 was born. We saw its ruined amphitheatre on a grey, dull 
 day, when a shrill March wind was blowing, and when the 
 scattered stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely 
 eminence, as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long-extin- 
 guished fire. 
 
 One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, 
 fourteen miles distant ; possessed by a great desire to go there 
 by the ancient Appian Way, long since ruined and overgrown. 
 We started at half-past seven in the morning, and, within an 
 hour or so, were out upon the open Campagna. For twelve 
 miles we went climbing on, over an unbroken succession of 
 mounds, and heaps, and hills of ruin. Tombs and temples, 
 overthrown and prostrate ; small fragments of columns, friezes, 
 pediments ; great blocks of granite and marble ; mouldering 
 arches, grass-grown and decayed ; ruin enough to build a 
 spacious city from" ; lay strewn about us. Sometimes loose 
 walls, built up from these fragments by the shepherds, came 
 across our path : sometimes a ditch, between two mounds of 
 broken stones, obstructed our progress ; sometimes the frag- 
 ments themselves, rollingfrom beneath our feet, made it a toilsome 
 matter to advance ; but it was always ruin. Now we tracked a 
 piece of the old road above the ground : now traced it under- 
 neath a grassy covering, as if that were its grave : but all the 
 way was ruin. In the distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking 
 on their giant course along the plain ; and every breath of wind 
 that swept towards us stirred early flowers and grasses, spring- 
 ing up, spontaneously, on miles of ruin. The unseen larks 
 above us, who alone disturbed the awful silence, had their nests 
 in ruin ; and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheep-skins, who now 
 and then scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were 
 housed in ruin. The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one 
 
*464 PICTURES FFn.011 ITALY. 
 
 direction, where it was most level, reminded me of an American 
 prairie ; but what is the solitude of * region where men have 
 never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty race have left 
 their footprints in the earth from which they have vanished ; 
 where the resting-places of their Dead have fallen like their 
 Dead ; and the broken hour-glass of Time is but a heap of idle 
 dust ? Returning, by the road, at sunset, and looking, from 
 the distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, I 
 almost felt (as I had felt when I first saw it at that hour) as if 
 the sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that night, 
 upon a ruined world. 
 
 To come again on Rome by moonlight, after such an expedi- 
 tion, is a fitting close to such a day. The narrow streets, 
 devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by 
 heaps of dunghill rubbish, contrast so strongly, in their cramped 
 dimensions, and their filth and darkness, with the broad square 
 before some haughty church : in the centre of which a hiero- 
 glyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the 
 Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it ; or 
 perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown, 
 supports a Christian saint : Marcus Aurelius giving place to 
 Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous 
 buildings reared from the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting 
 out the moon, like mountains : while, here and there, are broken 
 arches and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the life 
 comes pouring from a wound. The little town of miserable 
 houses, walled, and shut in by barred gates, is the quarter where 
 the Jews are locked up nightly, when the clock strikes eight — 
 a miserable place, densely populated, and reeking with bad 
 odours, but where the people are industrious and money-getting. 
 In the daytime, as you make your way along the narrow streets, 
 you see them all at work : upon the pavement, oftener than in 
 their dark and frouzy shops : furbishing old clothes, and driving 
 bargains. 
 
 Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the 
 
ROME. 465 
 
 moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred 
 jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. 
 In the narrow little throat of street beyond, a booth, dressed out 
 with flaring lamps and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky 
 Romans round its smoking coppers of hot broth and cauliflowei 
 stew ; its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. As you rattle 
 round the sharply-twisting corner, a lumbering sound is heard. 
 The coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes 
 slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross ; by a 
 torch-bearer ; and a priest : the latter chanting as he goes. It 
 is the Dead Cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to 
 burial in the Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be 
 thrown into the pit that will be covered with a stone to-night, 
 and sealed up for a year. 
 
 But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks or columns : 
 ancient temples, theatres, houses, porticos, or forums : it is strange 
 to see how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been 
 blended into some modern structure, and made to serve some 
 modern purpose — a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable — 
 some use for which it never was designed, and associated with 
 which it cannot otherwise than lamely assort. It is stranger 
 still to see how many ruins of the old mythology : how many 
 fragments of obsolete legend and observance : have been incorpo- 
 rated into the worship of Christian altars here ; and how, in 
 numberless respects, the false faith and the true are fused into a 
 monstrous union. 
 
 From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a 
 squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) 
 makes an opaque triangle in the moonlight. But, to an English 
 traveller, it serves to mark the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes 
 lie beneath a little garden near it. Nearer still, almost within 
 its shadow, lie the bones of Eeats, " whose name is writ in water," 
 that shines brightly in the landscape of a calm Italian night. 
 
 • The Holy Week in Borne is supposed to offer great attractions 
 
 HH 
 
4^6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 to all visitors ; but, saving for the sights of Easter Sunday, I 
 would counsel those who go to Rome for its own interest to 
 avoid it at that time. The ceremonies, in general, are of the 
 most tedious and wearisome kind ; the heat and crowd at every 
 one of them painfully oppressive ; the noise, hubbub, and confu- 
 sion quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of these 
 shows very early in the proceedings, and betook ourselves to the 
 Euins again. But, we plunged into the crowd for a share of the 
 best of the sights ; and what we saw I will describe to you. 
 
 At the Sistine Chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very little, 
 for, by the time we reached it (though we were early), the 
 besieging crowd had filled it to the door, and overflowed into 
 the adjoining hall, where they were struggling, and squeezing, 
 and mutually expostulating, and making great rushes every time 
 a lady was brought out faint, as if at least fifty people could be 
 accommodated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging in the 
 doorway of the chapel was a heavy curtain, and this curtain, 
 some twenty people nearest to it, in their anxiety to hear the 
 chanting of the Miserere, were continually plucking at, in oppo- 
 sition to each other, that it might not fall down and stifle the 
 sound of the voices. The consequence was, that it occasioned 
 the most extraordinary confusion, and seemed to wind itself 
 about the unwary like a Serpent. Now, a lady was wrapped up 
 in it, and couldn't be unwound. Now, the voice of a stifling 
 gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to be let out. Now, 
 two muffled arms, no man could say of which sex, struggled in it 
 as in a sack. Now, it was carried by a rush, bodily overhead into 
 the chapel, like an awning. Now, it came out the other way, 
 and blinded one of the Pope's Swiss Guard who had arrived, that 
 moment, to set things to rights. 
 
 Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the 
 Pope's gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the minutes 
 — as perhaps his Holiness was too — we had better opportunities 
 of observing this eccentric entertainment than of hearing the 
 Miserere. Sometimes there was a swell of mournful voices that 
 
ROME. 467 
 
 sounded very pathetic and sad, and died away into a low strain 
 again ; but that was all we heard. 
 
 At another time there was the Exhibition of the Relics in St. 
 Peter's, which took place at between six and seven o'clock in the 
 evening, and was striking, from the cathedral being dark and 
 gloomy, and having a great many people in it. The place into 
 which the relics were brought, one by one, by a party of three 
 priests, was a high balcony near the chief altar. This was the 
 only lighted part of the church. There are always a hundred 
 and twelve lamps burning near the altar, and there were two tall 
 tapers, besides, near the black statue of St. Peter ; but these 
 were nothing in such an immense edifice. The gloom, and the 
 general upturning of faces to the balcony, and the prostration of 
 true believers on the pavement, as shining objects, like pictures 
 or looking-glasses, were brought out and shown, had something 
 effective in it, despite the very preposterous manner in which 
 they were held up for the general edification, and the great 
 elevation at which they were displayed ; which one would think 
 rather calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from a full 
 conviction of their being genuine. 
 
 On the Thursday we went to see the Pope convey the Sacra- 
 ment from the Sistine Chapel, to deposit it in the Capella Paolina, 
 another chapel in the Vatican ; — a ceremony emblematical of the 
 entombment of the Saviour before His Resurrection. "We waited 
 in a great gallery with a great crowd of people (three-fourths of 
 them English) for an hour or so, while they were chanting the 
 Miserere in the Sistine Chapel again. Both chapels opened out 
 of the gallery ; and the general attention was concentrated on the 
 occasional opening and shutting of the door of the one for which 
 the Pope was ultimately bound. None of these openings dis- 
 closed anything more tremendous than a man on a ladder, light- 
 ing a great quantity of candles ; but, at each and every opening, 
 there was a terrific rush made at this ladder and this man, 
 something like (I should think) a charge of the heavy British 
 cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never brought down, how- 
 
 h H 2 
 
468 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 ever, nor the ladder ; for it performed the strangest antics in the 
 world among the crowd — where it was carried by the man, when 
 the candles were all lighted ; and finally it was stuck up against 
 the gallery wall, in a very disorderly manner, just before the 
 opening of the other chapel, and the commencement of a new 
 chant, announced the approach of his Holiness. At this crisis, 
 the soldiers of the guard, who had been poking the crowd into 
 all sorts of shapes, formed down the gallery : and the procession 
 came up, between the two lines they made. 
 
 There were a few choristers, and then a great many priests, 
 walking two and two, and carrying — the good-looking priests, at 
 least — their lighted tapers, so as to throw the light with a good 
 effect upon their faces : for the room was darkened. Those who 
 were not handsome, or who had not long beards, carried their 
 tapers anyhow, and abandoned themselves to spiritual contem- 
 plation. Meanwhile, the chanting, was very monotonous and 
 dreary. The procession passed on, slowly, into the chapel, and 
 the drone of voices went on, and came on, with it, until the Pope 
 himself appeared, walking under a white satin canopy, and bear- 
 ing the covered Sacrament in both hands ; Cardinals and Canons, 
 clustered round him, making a brilliant show. The soldiers of 
 the guard knelt down as he passed ; all the bystanders bowed ; 
 and so he passed on into the chapel : the white satin canopy 
 being removed from over him at the door, and a white satin 
 parasol hoisted over his poor old head, in place of it. A few 
 more couples brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel 
 also. Then, the chapel door was shut ; and it was all over ; and 
 everybody hurried off headlong, as for life or death, to see some- 
 thing else, and say it wasn't worth the trouble. 
 
 I think the most popular and most crowded sight (excepting 
 those of Easter Sunday and Monday, which are open to all classes 
 of people) was the Pope washing the feet of Thirteen men, repre- 
 senting the twelve apostles, and Judas Iscariot. The place in 
 which this pious office is performed is one of the chapels of St. 
 Peter's, which is gaily decorated for the occasion ; the Thirteen 
 
ROME. 469 
 
 sitting " all of a row," on a very high bench, and looking parti- 
 cularly uncomfortable, with the eyes of Heaven knows how many 
 'English, French, Americans, Swiss, Germans, Kussians, Swedes, 
 Norwegians, and other foreigners nailed to their faces all the 
 time. They are robed in white ; and on their heads they wear 
 a stiff white cap, like a large English porter pot without a handle. 
 Each carries in his hand a nosegay, of the size of a fine cauli- 
 flower ; and two of them, on this occasion, wore spectacles : 
 which, remembering the characters they sustained, I thought a 
 droll appendage to the costume. There was a great eye to 
 character. St. John was represented by a good-looking young 
 man ; St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman, with a flowing 
 brown beard ; and Judas Iscariot by such an enormous -hypocrite 
 (I could not make out, though, whether the expression of his 
 face was real or assumed), that if he had acted the part to the 
 death, and had gone away and hanged himself, he would have 
 left nothing to be desired. 
 
 As the two large boxes appropriated to ladies, at this sight, 
 were full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted 
 off, along with a great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where 
 the Pope, in person, waits on these Thirteen ; and after a pro- 
 digious struggle at the Vatican staircase, and several personal 
 conflicts with the Swiss Guard, the whole crowd swept into the 
 room. It was a long gallery, hung with drapery of white and 
 red, with another great box for ladies (who are obliged to dress 
 in black at these ceremonies, and to wear black veils), a royal 
 box for the King of Naples and his party ; and the table itself, 
 whichy set out like a ball supper, and ornamented with golden 
 figures of the real apostles, was arranged on an elevated platform 
 on one side of the gallery. The counterfeit apostles' knives and 
 forks were laid out on 'that -side of the table which was nearest 
 to the wall, so that -they might be stared at again" without let or 
 hindrance. --• «->•• 
 
 The body of the room was full of male strangers ; the crowd 
 immense ; the heat very great ; and the pressure sometimes 
 
47° PICTURES PROM ITALY. 
 
 frightful. It was at its height when the stream came pouring in 
 from the feet-washing ; and then there were such shrieks and 
 outcries, that a party of Piedmontese dragoons went to the rescue 
 of the Swiss Guard, and helped them to calm the tumult. 
 
 The ladies were particularly ferocious in their struggles for 
 places. One lady of my acquaintance was seized round the 
 waist in the ladies' box, by a strong matron, and hoisted out of 
 her place ; and there was another lady (in a back row in the 
 same box) who improved her position by sticking a large pin 
 into the ladies before her. 
 
 The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to see what 
 was on the table ; and one Englishman seemed to have embarked 
 the whole energy of his nature in the determination to discover 
 whether there was any mustard. " By Jupiter, there's vinegar ! " 
 I heard him say to his friend, after he had stood on tiptoe an 
 immense time, and had been crushed and beaten on all sides. 
 " And there's oil ! ! I saw them distinctly, in cruets ! Can any 
 gentleman, in front there, see mustard on the table ? Sir, will 
 you oblige me ? Do you see a Mustard-pot ? " 
 
 The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, after much 
 expectation, were marshalled, in line, in front of the table, with 
 Peter at the top ; and a good long stare was taken at them by 
 the company, while twelve of them took a long smell at their 
 nosegays, and Judas — moving his lips very obtrusively — engaged 
 in inward prayer. Then, the Pope, clad in a scarlet robe, and 
 wearing on his head a skull-cap of white satin, appeared in the 
 midst of a crowd of Cardinals and other dignitaries, and took in 
 his hand a little golden ewer, from which he poured a little water 
 over one of Peter's hands, while one attendant held a golden 
 basin ; a second, a fine cloth ; a third, Peter's nosegay, which 
 was taken from him during the operation. This his Holiness 
 performed, with considerable expedition, on every man in the 
 line (Judas I observed to be particularly overcome by his conde- 
 scension) ; and then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner. 
 Grace said by the Pope. Peter in the chair. 
 
ROME. 47 1 
 
 There was white wine, and red wine : and the dinner looked 
 very good. The courses appeared in portions, one for each 
 apostle ; and these being presented to the Pope, by Cardinals 
 upon their knees, were by him handed to the Thirteen. The 
 manner in which Judas grew more white-livered over his victuals, 
 and languished, with his head on one side, as if he had no appe- 
 tite, defies all description. Peter was a good, sound old man, 
 and went in, as the saying is, " to win ;" eating everything that 
 was given him (he got the best : being first in the row), and 
 saying nothing to anybody. The dishes appeared to be chiefly 
 composed of fish and vegetables. The Pope helped the Thirteen 
 to wine also ; and, during the whole dinner, somebody read 
 something aloud, out of a large book — the Bible, I presume — 
 which nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the least 
 attention. The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to each 
 other, from time to time, as if the thing were a great farce ; and 
 if they thought so, there is little doubt they were perfectly right. 
 His Holiness did what he had to do, as a sensible man gets through 
 a troublesome ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was all over. 
 
 The Pilgrims' Suppers : where lords and ladies waited on the 
 Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when they 
 had been well washed by deputy : were very attractive. But, of 
 all the many spectacles of dangerous reliance on outward observ- 
 ances, in themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half so 
 much as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several 
 times, but to the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good 
 Friday. 
 
 This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, said 
 to have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house, and to be the identical 
 stairs on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the 
 judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend it, only on their knees. It is 
 steep ; and, at the summit, is a chapel, reported to be full of 
 relics ; into which they peep through some iron bars, and then 
 come down again by one of two side-staircases, which are not 
 sacred, and may be walked on. 
 
472 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 On Good Friday there were, on a moderate computation, a 
 hundred people slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, 
 at one time ; while others, who were going up, or had come down 
 — and a few who had done both, and were going up again for 
 the second time — stood loitering in the porch below, where an 
 old gentleman, in a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin canister, with 
 a slit in the top, incessantly, to remind them that he took the 
 money. The majority were country-people, male and female. 
 There were four or five Jesuit priests, however, and some half- 
 dozen well-dressed women. A whole school of boys, twenty at 
 least, were about half-way up — evidently enjoying it very much. 
 They were all wedged together pretty closely ; but the rest of the 
 company gave the boys as wide a berth as possible, in cons_e- 
 quence of their betraying some recklessness in the management 
 of their boots. 
 
 I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and 
 so unpleasant, as this sight — ridiculous in the absurd incidents 
 inseparable from it ; and unpleasant in its senseless and unmean- 
 ing degradation. There are two steps to begin with, and then 
 a rather broad landing. The more rigid climbers went along 
 this landing on their knees, as well as up the stairs ; and the 
 figures they cut, in their shuffling progress over the level sur- 
 face, no description can paint. Then, to see them watch their 
 opportunity from the porch, and cut in where there was a place 
 next the wall ! And to see one man with an umbrella (brought 
 on purpose, for it was a fine day) hoisting himself, unlawfully, 
 from stair to stair ! And to observe a demure lady of fifty-five 
 or so, looking back, every now and then, to assure herself that 
 her legs were properly disposed ! 
 
 There were such odd differences in the speed of different 
 people, too. Some got on- as if they were doing a match against 
 time ; others stopped to say a prayer on every step. This man 
 touched every stair with his forehead, and kissed it ; that man 
 scratched his head all the way. The boys got on brilliantly, and 
 were up and down again before the old lady had accomplished 
 
ROME. 473 
 
 her half-dozen stairs. But most of the Penitents came down 
 very sprightly and fresh, as having done a real good substantia] 
 deed, which it would take a good deal of sin to counterbalance ; 
 and the old gentleman in the watch-box was down upon theni 
 with his canister while they were in this humour, I promise you. 
 
 As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll 
 enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a 
 crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer ; so rickety and 
 unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure 
 with more than usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer 
 with more than common readiness (for it served in this respect 
 as a second or supplementary canister), it gave a great leap and 
 rattle, and nearly shook the attendant lamp out : horribly 
 frightening the people further down, and throwing the guilty 
 party into unspeakable embarrassment. 
 
 On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the 
 Pope bestows his benediction on the people from the balcony in 
 front of St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a day so bright 
 and blue : so cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright : that all the 
 previous bad weather vanished from the recollection in a moment. 
 I had seen the Thursday's benediction dropping damply on some 
 hundreds of umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then in all 
 the hundred fountains of Rome — such fountains as they are ! — ■ 
 and, on this Sunday morning, they were running diamonds. 
 The miles of miserable streets through which we drove (com- 
 pelled to a certain course by the Pope's dragoons : the Roman 
 police on such occasions) were so full of colour, that nothing in 
 them was capable of wearing a faded aspect. The common 
 people came out in their gayest dresses ; the richer people in 
 their smartest vehicles ; Cardinals rattled to the church of the 
 Poor Fishermen in their state carriages ; shabby magnificence 
 flaunted its threadbare liveries and tarnished cocked-hats in the 
 sun ; and every coach in Rome was put in requisition for the 
 Great Piazza of St. Peter's. 
 
 One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least ! 
 
474 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Yet there was ample room. How many carriages were there I 
 don't know ; yet there was room for them too, and to spare. 
 The great steps of the church were densely crowded. There 
 were many of the Contadini, from Albano (who delight in red), 
 in that part of the square, and the mingling of bright colours 
 in the crowd was beautiful. Below the steps the troops were 
 ranged. In the magnificent proportions of the place, they looked 
 like a bed of flowers. Sulky Komans, lively peasants from the 
 neighbouring country, groups of pilgrims from distant parts of 
 Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all nations, made a murmur in 
 the clear air, like so many insects ; and high above them all, plash- 
 ing and bubbling, and making rainbow colours in the light, the 
 two delicious fountains welled and tumbled bountifully. 
 
 A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the 
 balcony ; and the sides of the great window were bedecked with 
 crimson drapery. An awning was stretched, too, over the top, 
 to screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. As noon 
 approached, all eyes were turned up to this window- In due 
 time the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the 
 gigantic fans of peacock's feathers close behind. The doll within 
 it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and stretched 
 out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in the square 
 uncovered, and some, but not by any means the greater part, 
 kneeled down. The guns upon the ramparts of the Castle of 
 St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the benediction was 
 given ; drums beat ; trumpets sounded ; arms clashed ; and the 
 great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and 
 scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like party-coloured 
 sand. 
 
 What a bright noon it was as we rode away ! The Tiber 
 was no longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the old 
 bridges, that made them fresh and hale again. The Pantheon, 
 with its majestic front, all seamed and furrowed like an old face, 
 had summer light upon its battered walls. Every squalid and 
 desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear witness, every grim old 
 
ROME. 475 
 
 palace, to the filth and misery of the plebeian neighbour that 
 elbows it, as certain as Time has laid its grip on its patrician 
 head !) was fresh and new with some ray of the sun. The very 
 prison in the crowded street, a whirl of cairiages and people, 
 had some stray sense of the day, dropping through its chinks 
 and crevices : and dismal prisoners, who could not wind their 
 faces round the barricading of the blocked-up windows, stretched 
 out their hands, and clinging to the rusty bars, turned theon 
 towards the overflowing street : as if it were a cheerful fire, and 
 could be shared in that way. 
 
 But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full 
 moon, what a sight it was to see the Great Square full once 
 more, and the whole church, from the cross to the ground, 
 lighted with innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture, 
 and winking and shining all round the colonnade of the Piazza ! 
 And what a sense of exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the 
 great bell struck half-past seven — on the instant — to behold one 
 bright red mass of fire soar gallantly from the top of the cupola 
 to the extremest summit of the cross, and, the moment it leaped 
 into its place, become the signal of a bursting out of countless 
 lights, as great, and red, and blazing as itself, from every part 
 of the gigantic church ; so that every cornice, capital, and 
 smallest ornament of stone expressed itself in fire : and the 
 black, solid groundwork of the enormous dome seemed to grow 
 transparent as an egg-shell ! 
 
 A train of gunpowder, an electric chain — nothing could be 
 fired more suddenly and swiftly than this second illumination ; 
 and when we had got away, and gone upon a distant height, 
 and looked towards it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, 
 shining and glittering in the calm night like a jewel ! Not a 
 line of its proportions wanting ; not an angle blunted ; not an 
 atom of its radiance lost. 
 
 The next night — Easter Monday — there was a great display 
 of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room 
 in an opposite house, and made our way to our places in good 
 
47 & PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 time, through a dense mob of people choking up the square in 
 front, and all the avenues leading to it ; and so loading the 
 bridge by which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready 
 to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this 
 bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great vessels full of 
 burning tow were placed : glaring strangely on the faces of the 
 crowd, and not less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them. 
 
 The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon ; and 
 then, for twenty minutes, or half an hour, the whole castle was 
 one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of 
 every colour, size, and speed : while rockets streamed into the 
 sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. 
 The concluding burst — the Girandola — was like the blowing up 
 into the air of the whole massive castle, without smoke or dust. 
 
 In half an hour afterwards the immense concourse had dis- 
 persed ; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled 
 image in the river ; and half-a-dozen men and boys, with bits 
 of lighted candle in their hands : moving here and there, in 
 search of anything worth having, that might have been dropped 
 in the press : had the whole scene to themselves. 
 
 By way of contrast, we rode out into old ruined Home, after 
 all this firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum. 
 I had seen it by moonlight before (I never could get through a 
 day without going back to it), but its tremendous solitude that 
 night is past all telling. The ghostly pillars in the Forum ; the 
 Triumphal Arches of Old Emperors ; those enormous masses of 
 ruin which were once their palaces ; the grass-grown mounds 
 that mark the graves of ruined temples ; the stones of the Via 
 Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Eome ; even 
 these were dimmed, in their transcendent melancholy, by the 
 dark ghost of its bloody holidays, erect and grim ; haunting the 
 old scene ; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fighting Princes, 
 but not laid; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass, and 
 bramble ; and lamenting to the night in every gap and broken 
 arch — the shadow of its awful self, immovable ! 
 
 s / 
 
ROME. 477 
 
 As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna next day, on 
 our way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little 
 wooden cross had been erected on the spot where the poor Pil- 
 grim Countess was murdered. So, we piled some loose stones 
 about it, as the beginning of a mound to her memory, and 
 wondered if we should ever rest there again, and look back at 
 Rome. 
 
A RAPID DIORAMA. 
 
 Ty E are bound for Naples ! And we cross the threshold of 
 the Eternal City at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni 
 Laterano, where the two last objects that attract the notice of a 
 departing visitor, and the two first objects that attract the notice 
 of an arriving one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin — 
 good emblems of Some. 
 
 Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn 
 on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky ; the 
 great extent of ruin being plainer to the eye : and the sunshine 
 through the arches of the broken aqueducts, showing other 
 broken arches shining through them in the melancholy distance. 
 When we have traversed it, and look back from Albano, its dark, 
 undulating surface lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a 
 broad, dull Lethe flowing round the walls of Rome, and sepa- 
 rating it from all the world! How often have the Legions, in 
 triumphant march, gone glittering across that purple waste, so 
 silent and unpeopled now ! How often has the train of captives 
 looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld 
 its population pouring out to hail the return of their conqueror ! 
 What riot, sensuality, and murder have run mad in the vast 
 palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble ! What glare 
 of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and 
 famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is 
 now heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol 
 unmolested in the sun ! 
 
 The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each driven by a 
 shaggy peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned canopy 
 
FONDI. 479 
 
 of sheep-skin, is ended now, and we go toiling up into a higher 
 country where there are trees. The next day brings us on the 
 Pontine Marshes, wearily flat and lonesome, and overgrown with 
 brushwood, and swamped with water, but with a fine road made 
 across them, shaded by a long, long avenue. Here and there 
 we pass a solitary guard-house ; here and there a hovel, deserted, 
 and walled up. Some herdsmen loiter on the banks of the 
 stream beside the road, and sometimes a flat-bottomed boat, 
 towed by a man, comes rippling idly along it. A horseman 
 passes occasionally, carrying a long gun crosswise on the saddle 
 before him, and attended by fierce dogs ; but there is nothing 
 else astir, save the wind and the shadows, until we come in sight 
 of Terracina. 
 
 How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the windows of 
 the inn so famous in robber stories ! How picturesque the great 
 crags and points of rock overhanging to-morrow's narrow road, 
 where galley-slaves are working in the quarries above, and the 
 sentinels who guard them lounge on the seashore ! All night 
 there is the murmur of the sea beneath the stars ; and, in the 
 morning, just at daybreak, the prospect suddenly becoming 
 expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals — in the far distance, across 
 the sea there ! — Naples with its islands, and Vesuvius spouting 
 fire ! Within a quarter of an hour, the whole is gone as if it 
 were a vision in the clouds, and there is nothing but the sea 
 and sky. 
 
 The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours' travelling ; 
 and the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house officers with 
 difficulty appeased ; we enter, by a gateless portal, into the first 
 Neapolitan town — Fondi. Take note of Fondi, in the name, of 
 all that, is wretched and beggarly. 
 
 A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down the centre 
 of the miserable street, fed by obscene rivulets that trickle from 
 the abject houses. There is not a door, a window, or a shutter ; 
 not a roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed, 
 "and crazy, and rotting away. The wretched history of the town, 
 
48a PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 with all its sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest, might 
 have been acted last year. How the gaunt dogs that sneak 
 about the miserable street come to be alive, and undevoured by 
 the people, is one of the enigmas of the world. 
 
 A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are ! All beggars ; 
 but that's nothing. Look at them as they gather round. Some 
 are too indolent to come down-stairs, or are too wisely mistrust- 
 ful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture : so stretch out their lean 
 hands from upper windows, and howl ; others come nocking 
 about us, fighting and jostling one another, and demanding, 
 incessantly, charity for the love of God, charity for the love of 
 the Blessed Virgin, charity for the love of all the Saints. A 
 group of miserable children, almost naked, screaming forth the 
 same petition, discover that they can see themselves reflected in 
 the varnish of the carriage, and begin to dance and make 
 grimaces, that they may have the pleasure of seeing their antics 
 repeated in this mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking 
 one of them who drowns his clamorous demand for charity, 
 observes his angry counterpart in the panel, stops short, and, 
 thrusting out his tongue, begins to wag his head and chatter. 
 The shrill cry raised at this awakens half-a-dozen wild creatures 
 wrapped in frouzy brown cloaks, who are lying on the church 
 steps with pots and pans for sale. These, scrambling up, 
 approach, and beg defiantly. "lam hungry. Give me some- 
 thing. Listen to me, Signore. J am hungry ! " Then, a ghastly 
 old woman, fearful of being too late, comes hobbling down the 
 street, stretching out one hand, and scratching herself all the 
 way with the other, and screaming, long before she can be heard, 
 " Charity, charity ! I'll go and pray for you directly, beautiful 
 lady, if you'll give me charity ! " Lastly, the members of a 
 brotherhood for burying the dead : hideously masked, and attired 
 in shabby black robes, white at the skirts, with the splashes of 
 many muddy winters : escorted by a dirty priest, and a con- 
 genial cross-bearer : come hurrying past. Surrounded by this 
 motley concourse, we move out of Fondi : bad bright eyes glaring 
 
NAPLES. 481 
 
 at us, out of the darkness of every crazy tenement, like glisten- 
 ing fragments of its filth and putrefaction. 
 
 A noble mountain pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong 
 eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo ; the old 
 town of Itri, like a device in pastry, built up, almost perpen- 
 dicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep flights of steps ; 
 beautiful Mola di Gaeta, whose wines, like those of Albano, 
 have degenerated since the days of Horace, or his taste for wine 
 was bad: which is not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and 
 extolled it so well ; another night upon the road at St. Agata ; a 
 rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but hardly so seduc- 
 tive to a traveller now as the soldiers of Praetorian Rome were wont 
 to find the ancient city of that name ; a flat road among vines 
 festooned and looped from tree to tree ; and Mount Vesuvius 
 close at hand at last ! — its cone and summit whitened with snow; 
 and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the 
 day, like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling downhill, into 
 Naples. 
 
 A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The body, on 
 an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gay 
 cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners in white gowns and 
 masks. If there be death abroad, life is well represented too, for 
 all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro 
 in carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino vehicles, 
 are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart trappings 
 and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very 
 fast. Not that their loads are light ; for the smallest of them 
 has at least six people inside, four in front, four or five more 
 hanging on behind, and two or three more in a net or bag below 
 the axletree, where they lie half suffocated with mud and dust. 
 Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, 
 reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and 
 showmen, drums and trumpets, painted cloths representing the 
 wonders within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist 
 the whirl and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in door- 
 
 Jl 
 
482 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 ways, archways, and kennels ; the gentry, gaily dressed, are 
 dashing up and down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walking in 
 the Public Gardens ; and quiet letter-writers, perched behind 
 their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the Great 
 Theatre of San Carlo, in the public street, are Avaiting for 
 clients. 
 
 Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written to 
 a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under 
 the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained per- 
 mission of the sentinel who guards him : who stands near, lean- 
 ing against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates 
 in the ear of the letter-writer what he desires to say ; and, as he 
 can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there 
 whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After . a time 
 the galley-slave becomes discursive — incoherent. The secretary 
 pauses and rubs his chin. The galley-slave is voluble and 
 energetic. The secretary, at length, catches the idea, and, with 
 the air of a man who knows how to word it, sets it down ; 
 stopping, now and then, to glance back at his text admiringly. 
 The galley-slave is silent. The soldier stoically cracks his nuts. 
 Is there anything more to say ? inquires the letter-writer. No 
 more. Then listen, friend of mine. He reads it through. ,The 
 galley-slave is quite enchanted. It is folded, and addressed, and 
 given to him, and he pays the fee. The secretary falls back 
 indolently in his chair, and takes a book. The galley-slave 
 gathers up an empty sack. The sentinel throws away a handful 
 of nutshells, shoulders his musket, and away they go together. 
 
 Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly with their 
 right hands, when you look at them ? Everything is done in 
 pantomime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for 
 hunger. A man who is quarrelling with another, yonder, lays 
 the palm of his right hand on the back of his left, and shakes 
 the two thumbs — expressive of a donkey's ears— whereat his 
 adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for 
 fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is 
 
NAPLES. 483 
 
 told the price, and walks away without a word : having thoroughly 
 conveyed to the seller that he considers it too dear. Two people 
 in carriages, meeting, one touches his lips twice or thrice, holds 
 up the five fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut 
 in the air with the palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his 
 way. He has been invited to a friendly dinner at half-past five 
 o'clock, and will certainly come. 
 
 All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the 
 wrist, with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative — 
 the only negative beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, 
 those five fingers are a copious language. 
 
 All this, and every other kind of outdoor life and stir, and 
 macaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and 
 begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon 
 the bright seashore, where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily. 
 But, lovers and hunters of the picturesque, let us not keep too 
 studiously out of view the miserable depravity, degradation, and 
 wretchedness with which this gay Neapolitan life is inseparably 
 associated ! It is not well to find St. Giles's so repulsive, and 
 the Porta Capuana so attractive. A pair of naked legs and a 
 ragged red scarf do not make all the difference between what is 
 interesting and what is coarse and odious. Painting and poet- 
 ising for ever, if you will, the beauties of this most beautiful 
 and lovely spot of earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a 
 new picturesque with some faint recognition of man's destiny 
 and capabilities ; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and 
 snow of the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples. 
 
 Capri — once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius — 
 Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, 
 lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine 
 twenty times a day : now close at hand, now far off, now 
 unseen. The fairest country in the world is spread about us. 
 Whether we turn towards the Miseno shore of the splendid 
 watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the 
 Grotto del Cane, and away to Baia? : or take the other way, 
 
 11 2 
 
484 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 towards Vesuvius and Sorrento : it is one succession of delights. 
 In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, 
 there are countless little images of San Gennaro, with his 
 Canute's hand stretched out to check the fury of the Burning 
 Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beau- 
 tiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon 
 the ashes of the former town, destroyed by an eruption of 
 Vesuvius within a hundred years ; and past the flat-roofed 
 houses, granaries, and macaroni manufactories ; to Castel-a-Mare, 
 with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in 
 the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here the railroad terminates ; 
 but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of 
 enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest 
 summit of St. Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, down 
 to the water's edge — among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of 
 oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in 
 the hills — and by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through 
 small towns with handsome, dark-haired women at the doors — and 
 pass delicious summer villas — to Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso 
 drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Return- 
 ing, we may climb the heights above Castel-a-Mare, and, looking 
 down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glisten- 
 ing in the sun ; and clusters of white ihouses in distant Naples, 
 dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice. The 
 coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset : with the 
 glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with its 
 smoke and flame, upon the other : is a sublime conclusion to 
 the glory of the day. 
 
 That church by the Porta Capuana — near the old fisher-market 
 in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of 
 Masaniello began — is memorable for having been the scene of 
 one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particu- 
 larly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and 
 bejewelled Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands ; or the 
 enormous number of beggars who are constantly rapping their 
 
NAPLES. 485 
 
 chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with the 
 beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite 
 that once ornamented the Temple of Apollo, contains the famous 
 sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius : which is preserved 
 in two phials in a silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies 
 three times a year, to the great admiration of the people. At 
 the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where the 
 Saint suffered martyrdom becomes faintly red. It is said that 
 the officiating priests turn faintly red also, sometimes, when 
 these miracles occur. 
 
 The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these 
 ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem 
 waiting here to be buried themselves, are members of a curious 
 body, called the Koyal Hospital, who are the official attendants 
 at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted 
 tapers, to show the caverns of death — as unconcerned as if they 
 were immortal. They were used as burying-places for three 
 hundred years ; and in one part is a large pit full of skulls and 
 bones, said to be the sad remains of a great mortality occasioned 
 by a plague. In the rest there is nothing but dust. They 
 consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths, hewn 
 out of the rock. At the end of some of these long passages 
 are unexpected glimpses of the daylight, shining down from 
 above. It looks as ghastly and as strange : among the torches, 
 and the dust, and the dark vaults : as if it, too, were dead and 
 buried. 
 
 The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the 
 city and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo, with its three hundred 
 and sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals 
 and prisons, and are unclaimed by their friends. The graceful 
 new cemetery, at no great distance from it, though yet unfinished, 
 has already many graves among its shrubs and flowers, and airy 
 colonnades. It might be reasonably objected elsewhere, that 
 some of the tombs are meretricious and too fanciful ; but the 
 general brightness seems to justify it here; and Mount Vesuvius, 
 
486 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 separated from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and 
 saddens the scene. 
 
 If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, 
 with its dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more 
 awful and impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii ! 
 
 Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, 
 and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of 
 Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanc- 
 tuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and 
 snowy in the peaceful distance ; and lose all count of time, and 
 heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of 
 seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet pic- 
 ture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the 
 little familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day pursuits ; 
 the chafing of the bucket rope in the stone rim of the exhausted 
 well; the track of carriage wheels in the pavement of the street ; 
 the marks of drinking vessels on the stone counter of the wine- 
 shop ; the amphoraa in private cellars, stored away so many 
 hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour — all rendering 
 the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place ten thousand 
 times more solemn than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept 
 the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. 
 
 After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the 
 eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new 
 ornaments for temples and other buildings .that had suffered. 
 Here lies their work, outside the city gate, as if they would 
 return to-morrow. 
 
 In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skeletons were 
 found huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their 
 bodies on the ashes, hardened with the ashes, and became stamped 
 and fixed there, after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. 
 So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the 
 stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic features in 
 it as it hardened into stone; and now, it turns upon the stranger 
 
POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM. 4S7 
 
 the fantastic look it turned upon the audiences in that same 
 theatre two thousand years ago. 
 
 Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in 
 and out of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the 
 temples of a religion that has vanished from the earth, and find- 
 ing so many fresh traces of remote antiquity : as if the course of 
 Time had been stopped after this desolation, and there had been 
 no nights and days, months, years, and centuries since : nothing 
 is more impressive and terrible than the many evidences of the 
 searching nature of the ashes, as bespeaking their irresistible 
 power, and the impossibility of escaping them. In the wine- 
 cellars, they forced their way into the earthen vessels : displacing 
 the wine, and choking them, to the brim, with dust. In the 
 tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, 
 and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and eyes, 
 and skulls of all the skeletons were stuffed with this terrible 
 hail. In Herculaneum, where the flood was of a different and 
 a heavier kind, it rolled in like a sea. Imagine a deluge of 
 water turned to marble, at its height — and that is what is called 
 "the lava" here. 
 
 Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of 
 which we now stand, looking down, when they came" on some of 
 the stone benches of the theatre — those steps (for such they 
 seem) at the bottom of the excavation — and found the buried 
 city of Herculaneum. Presently going down, with lighted 
 torches, we are perplexed by great walls of monstrous thickness, 
 rising up between the benches, shutting out the stage, obtruding 
 their shapeless forms in absurd places, confusing the whole plan, 
 and making it a disordered dream. We cannot, at first, believe, 
 or picture to ourselves, that This came rolling in, and drowned 
 the city ; and that all that is not here has been cut away, by 
 the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and understood, 
 the horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable. 
 
 Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers 
 -of both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, 
 
488 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 are as fresh and plain as if they had been executed yesterday. 
 Here are subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, 
 glasses, and the like ; familiar classical stories, or mythological 
 fables, always forcibly and plainly told ; conceits of Cupids, 
 quarrelling, sporting, working at trades ; theatrical rehearsals ; 
 poets reading their productions to their friends ; inscriptions 
 chalked upon the walls ; political squibs, advertisements, rough 
 drawings by school-boys ; everything to people and restore the 
 ancient cities in the fancy of their wondering visitor. Furni- 
 ture, too, you see, of every kind — lamps, tables, couches ; vessels 
 for eating, drinking, and cooking ; workmen's tools, surgical 
 instruments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, personal 
 ornaments, bunches of keys found clenched in the grasp of skele- 
 tons, helmets of guards and warriors ; little household bells, yet 
 musical with their old domestic tones. 
 
 The least among these objects lends its aid to swell the interest 
 of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The look- 
 ing, from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds 
 overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees ; and remem- 
 bering that house upon house, temple on temple, building after 
 building, and street after street, are still lying underneath the 
 roots of all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the 
 light of day ; is something so wonderful, so full of mystery, so 
 captivating to the imagination, that one would think it would 
 be paramount, and yield to nothing else. To nothing but 
 Vesuvius ; but the mountain is the genius of the scene. From 
 every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with 
 an absorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the 
 sky. It is beyond us, as we thread the ruined streets : above 
 us, as we stand upon the ruined walls ; we follow it through 
 every vista of broken columns, as we wander through the empty 
 courtyards of the houses ; and through the garlandings and inter- 
 lacings of every wanton vine. Turning away to Paestum yonder, 
 to see the awful structures built, the least aged of them hundreds 
 of years before the birth of Christ, and standing yet, erect in 
 
VESUVIUS. 489 
 
 lonely majesty, upon the wild malaria-blighted plain — we watch 
 Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and watch for it 
 again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest : as the 
 doom and destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its 
 terrible time. 
 
 It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring day, when we 
 return from Psestum, but very cold in the shade : insomuch that 
 although we may lunch pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by 
 the gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice 
 for our wine. But, the sun is shining brightly ; there is not a 
 cloud or speck of vapour in the whole blue sky looking down 
 upon the Bay of Naples ; and the moon will be at the full to- 
 night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the 
 summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot all day at 
 Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be 
 on the mountain by night, in such an unusual season. Let us 
 take advantage of the fine weather ; make the best of our way to 
 Kesina, the little village at the foot of the mountain ; prepare 
 ourselves, as well as we can on so short a notice, at the guide's 
 house ; ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up, moonlight 
 at the top, and midnight to come down in ! 
 
 At four o'clock in the afternoon there is a terrible uproar in 
 the little stable-yard of Signore Salvatore, the recognised head 
 guide, with the gold band round his cap ; and thirty under- 
 guides, who are all scuffling and screaming at once, are prepar- 
 ing half-a-dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and some stout 
 staves for the journey. Every one of the thirty quarrels with 
 the other twenty-nine, and frightens the six ponies ; and as 
 much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into the little 
 stable-yard participates in the tumult, and gets trodden on by 
 the cattle. 
 
 After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would 
 suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The 
 head guide, who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a 
 little in advance of the party ; the other thirty guides proceed 
 
4Q0 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 on foot. Eight go forward with the litters that are to be used 
 by-and-hy ; and the remaining two-and-twenty beg. 
 
 "We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights 
 of stairs, for some time. At length we leave these, and the vine- 
 yards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare region, 
 where the lava lies confusedly in enormous rusty masses : as if 
 the earth had been ploughed up by burning thunderbolts. And 
 now we halt to see the sun set. The change that falls upon the 
 dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as its; red light fades, 
 and the night comes on — and the unutterable solemnity and 
 dreariness that reign around, who that has witnessed it can ever 
 forget ? 
 
 It is dark when, after winding for some time over the broken 
 ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone : which is extremely 
 steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot 
 where we dismount. The only light is reflected from the snow, 
 deep, hard, and white, with which the cone is covered. It is now 
 intensely cold, and the air is piercing. The thirty-one have 
 brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise before we 
 reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to the two ladies ; 
 the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospi- 
 tality and good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and 
 determined him to assist in doing the honours of the mountain. 
 The rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men ; each of 
 the ladies by half-a-dozen. We who walk make the best use of 
 our staves ; and so the whole party begin to labour upward over 
 the snow, — as if they were toiling to the summit of an ante- 
 diluvian twelfth-cake. 
 
 We are a long time toiling up ; and the head guide looks 
 oddly about him when one of the company — not an Italian, 
 though an habitue' of the mountain for many years i whom we 
 will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici — suggests 
 that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is 
 covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to 
 descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and 
 
Vesuvius. 491 
 
 down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers con- 
 tinually slip and stumble, diverts our attention: more especially 
 as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that 
 moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head 
 downwards. 
 
 The rising of the moon, soon afterwards, revives the flagging 
 spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual 
 watchword, " Courage, friend ! It is to eat macaroni ! " they 
 press on, gallantly, for -the summit. 
 
 From tinging the top of the snow above us with a band of 
 light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while 
 we have been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the 
 whole white mountain-side, and the broad sea down below, and 
 tiny Naples in the distance, and every village in the country 
 round. The whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we 
 come upon the platform on the mountain-top — the region of 
 Fire — an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic 
 cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous water-fall, 
 burnt up ; from every chink and crevice of which hot, sulphurous 
 smoke is pouring out : while, from another conical-shaped hill, 
 the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, 
 great sheets of fire are streaming forth : reddening the night 
 with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with red- 
 hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and 
 fall down like lead. What words can paint the gloom and 
 grandeur of this scene ? 
 
 The broken ground ; the smoke ; the sense of suffocation from 
 the sulphur ; the fear of falling down through the crevices in the 
 yawning ground ; the stopping, every now and then, for some- 
 body who is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now 
 obscures the moon) ; the intolerable noise of the thirty ; and the 
 hoarse roaring of the mountain ; make it a scene of such confu- 
 sion, at the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging the 
 ladies through it, and across another exhausted crater to the foot 
 of the present Volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side, 
 
49 2 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and then sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up 
 in silence ; faintly estimating the action that is going on within, 
 from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it 
 was six weeks ago. 
 
 There is something in the fire and roar that generates an irre- 
 sistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long without 
 starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees, accompanied by 
 the head guide, to climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and 
 try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with one voice, 
 that it is a dangerous proceeding, and call to us to come back ; 
 frightening the rest of the party out of their wits. 
 
 What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the 
 thin crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our 
 feet, and plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the real 
 danger, if there be any) ; and what with the flashing of the fire 
 in our faces, and the shower of red-hot ashes that is raining 
 down, and the choking smoke and sulphur ; we may well feel 
 giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But, we contrive to 
 climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into the 
 Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all three come rolling 
 down ; blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy : 
 and each with his dress alight in half-a-dozen places. 
 
 You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of 
 descending is by sliding down the ashes : which, forming a 
 gradually increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a 
 descent. But, when we have crossed the two exhausted craters 
 on our way back, and are come to this precipitous place, there is 
 (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of ashes to be seen ; the 
 whole being a smooth sheet of ice. 
 
 In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join 
 hands, and make a chain of men ; of whom the foremost beat, as 
 well as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we 
 prepare to follow. The way being fearfully steep, and none of 
 the party : even of the thirty : being able to keep their feet for 
 six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their litters, and 
 
VESUVIUS. 493 
 
 placed each between two careful persons ; while others of the 
 thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward — a 
 necessary precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless 
 dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is 
 adjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; 
 but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought up, on the 
 principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at 
 once, and that he is safer so than trusting to his own legs. 
 
 In this order, we begin the descent : sometimes on foot, some- 
 times shuffling on the ice : always proceeding much more quietly 
 and slowly than on our upward way : and constantly alarmed by 
 the falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers 
 the footing of the whole party, and clings pertinaciously to any- 
 body's ankles. It is impossible for the litter to be in advance, 
 too, as the track has to be made ; and its appearance behind us, 
 overhead— with some one or other of the bearers always down, 
 and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs always in the air 
 — is very threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus a 
 very little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and 
 regarding it as a great success — and have all fallen several times, 
 and have all been stopped, somehow or other, as we were sliding 
 away — when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in the act of remarking on 
 these uncommon circumstances as quite beyond his experience, 
 stumbles, falls, disengages himself, with quick presence of mind, 
 from those about him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, 
 over and over, down the whole surface of the cone i 
 
 Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, 1 
 see him there, in the moonlight — I have had such a dream often 
 •—skimming over the white ice like a cannon-ball. Almost at 
 the same moment, there is a cry from behind ; and a man who 
 has carried a light basket of spare cloaks on his head, comes 
 rolling past at the same frightful speed, closely followed by a boy. 
 At this climax of the chapter of accidents, the remaining eight- 
 and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that a pack of wolves would 
 be music to tbem ! 
 
494 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle o5 
 Portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where 
 the horses are waiting ; but, thank God, sound in limb ! And 
 never are we likely to be more glad to see a man alive, and on 
 his feet, than to see him now — making light of it too, though 
 sorely bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought into the 
 Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper, with his 
 head tied up ; and the man is heard of some hours afterwards. 
 He, too, is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones ; the 
 snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock 
 and stone, and rendered them harmless. 
 
 After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, 
 we again take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore's 
 house — very slowly, by reason of our bruised friend being hardly 
 able to keep the saddle, or endure the pain of motion. Though 
 it is so late at night, or early in the morning, all the people of 
 the village are waiting about the little stable-yard when we 
 arrive, and looking up the road by which we are expected. Our 
 appearance is hailed with a great clamour of tongues, and a 
 general sensation for which, in our modesty, we are somewhat at 
 a loss to account, until, turning into the yard, we find that one 
 of a party of French gentlemen who were on the mountain at the 
 same time is lying on some straw in the stable, with a broken limb : 
 looking like Death, and suffering great torture ; and that we were 
 confidently supposed to have encountered some worse accident. 
 
 So " well returned, and Heaven be praised ! " as the cheerful 
 Vetturino, who has borne us company all the way from Pisa, 
 says with all his heart i And away with his ready horses into 
 sleeping Naples ! 
 
 It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers 
 and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal 
 degradation ; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine, next day 
 and every day ; singing, starving, dancing, gaming, on the sea- 
 shore ; and leaving all labour to the burning mountain, which is 
 ever at its work, 
 
NAPLES. 495 
 
 Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the subject 
 of the national taste, if they could hear an Italian opera half as 
 badly sung in England as we may hear the Foscari performed, 
 to-night, in the splendid theatre of San Carlo. But, for astonish- 
 ing truth and spirit in seizing and embodying the real life about 
 it, the shabby little San Carlino Theatre — the rickety house one 
 story high, with a staring picture outside : down among the 
 drums and trumpets, and the tumblers, and the lady conjurer 
 — is without a rival anywhere. 
 
 There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of Naples, 
 at which we may take a- glance before we go — the Lotteries. 
 
 They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly 
 obvious, in their effects and influences, here. They are drawn 
 every Saturday. They bring an immense revenue to the Govern- 
 ment ; and diffuse a taste for gambling among the poorest of the 
 poor, which is very comfortable to the coffers of the state, and 
 very ruinous to themselves. The lowest stake is one grain ; 
 less than a farthing. One hundred numbers — from one to a 
 hundred, inclusive — are put into a box. Five are drawn. Those 
 are the prizes. I buy three numbers. If one of them come up, 
 I win a small prize. If two, some hundreds of times my stake. 
 If three, three thousand five hundred times my stake. I stake 
 (or play as they call it) what I can upon my numbers, and buy 
 what numbers I please. The amount I play, I pay at the 
 lottery office, where I purchase the ticket ; and it is stated on 
 the ticket itself. 
 
 Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal Lottery 
 Diviner, wdiere every possible accident and circumstance is pro- 
 vided for, and has a number against it. For instance, let us 
 stake two carlini — about sevenpence. On our way to the lottery 
 office, we run against a black man. When we get there, we 
 say gravely, " The Diviner." It is handed over the counter, as 
 a serious matter of business. We look at black man. Such 
 a number. "Give us that." We look at running against a 
 person in the street. " Give us that." We look at the name 
 
49 6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 of the street itself. "Give us that." Now, we have our three 
 numbers. 
 
 If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall in, so many- 
 people would play upon the numbers attached to such an acci- 
 dent in the Diviner, that the Government would soon close those 
 numbers, and decline to run the risk of losing any more upon them. 
 This often happens. Not long ago, when there was a fire in the 
 King's Palace, there was such a desperate run on fire, and king, 
 and palace, that further stakes on the numbers attached to those 
 words in the Golden Book were forbidden. Every accident or 
 event is supposed, by the ignorant populace, to be a revelation 
 to the beholder, or party concerned, in connection with the 
 lottery. Certain people, who have a talent for dreaming fortu- 
 nately, are much sought after, and there are some priests who 
 are constantly favoured with visions of the lucky numbers. 
 
 I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing 
 him down dead at the corner of a street. Pursuing the horse 
 with incredible speed was another man, who ran so fast, that he 
 came up immediately after the accident. He threw himself 
 upon his knees beside the unfortunate rider, and clasped his 
 hand with an expression of the wildest grief. " If you have 
 life," he said, " speak one word to me ! If you have one gasp 
 of breath left, mention your age for Heaven's sake, that I may 
 play that number in the lottery." 
 
 It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and we may go to see our 
 lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place every Saturday, in 
 the Tribunale, or Court of Justice — this singular, earthy-smell- 
 ing room, or gallery, as mouldy as an old cellar, and as damp as 
 a dungeon. At the upper end is a platform, with a large horse- 
 shoe table upon it ; and a President and Council sitting round 
 — all Judges of the Law. The man on the little stool behind 
 the President is the Capo Lazzarone, a kind of tribune of the 
 people, appointed on their behalf to see that all is fairly con- 
 ducted : attended by a few personal friends. A ragged, swarthy 
 fellow he is : with long, matted hair hanging down all over his 
 
NAPLES. 497 
 
 face : and covered, from head to foot, with most unquestionably 
 genuine dirt. All the body of the room is filled with the com- 
 monest of the Neapolitan people : and between them and the 
 platform, guarding the steps leading to the latter, is a small 
 body of soldiers. 
 
 There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary number of 
 judges ; during which, the box, in which the numbers are being 
 placed, is a source of the deepest interest. When the box is 
 full, the boy who is to draw the numbers out of it becomes the 
 prominent feature of the proceedings. He is already dressed 
 for his part, in a tight brown holland coat, with only one (the 
 left) sleeve to it, which leaves his right arm bared to the shoulder, 
 ready for plunging down into the mysterious chest. 
 
 During the hush and whisper that pervade the room, all eyes 
 are turned on this young minister of fortune. People begin to 
 inquire his age, with a view to the next lottery; and the 
 number of his brothers and sisters ; and the age of his father 
 and mother ; and whether he has any moles or pimples upon 
 him ; and where, and how many ; when the arrival of the last 
 judge but one (a little old man, universally dreaded as possessing 
 the Evil Eye) makes a slight diversion, and would occasion a 
 greater one, but that he is immediately deposed, as a source of 
 interest,- by the officiating priest, who advances gravely to his 
 place, followed by a very dirty little boy, carrying his sacred 
 vestments, and a pot of Holy Water. 
 
 Here is the* last judge come at last, and now he takes his 
 place at the horse-shoe table ! 
 
 There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the midst 
 of it, the priest puts his head into the sacred vestments, and 
 pulls the same over his shoulders. Then he says a silent prayer ; 
 and, dipping a brush into the pot of Holy Water, sprinkles it 
 over the box and over the boy, and gives them a double-barrelled 
 blessing, which the box and the boy are both hoisted on the table 
 to receive. The boy remaining on the table, the box is now 
 carried round the front of the platform, by an attendant, who 
 
 £ £ 
 
49 8 PICTURES FROM ITALY, 
 
 holds it up and shakes it lustily all the time ; seeming to say, 
 like the conjurer, " There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen ; 
 keep your eyes upon me, if you please !" 
 
 At last the box is set before the boy ; and the boy, first hold- 
 ing up his naked arm and open hand, dives down into the hole 
 (it is made like a ballot-box) and pulls out a number, which is 
 rolled up, round something hard, like a bonbon. This he hands 
 to the judge next him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands it to 
 the President, next to whom he sits. The President unrolls it 
 very slowly. The Capo Lazzarone leans over his shoulder. 
 The President holds it up, unrolled, to the Capo Lazzarone. The 
 Capo Lazzarone, looking at it eagerly, cries out, in a shrill, loud 
 voice, "Sessanta-due!" (sixty-two), expressing the two upon his 
 fingers, as he calls it out. Alas '. the Capo Lazzarone himself 
 has not staked on sixty-two. His face is very long, and his 
 eyes roll wildly. 
 
 As it happens to be a favourite number, however, it is pretty 
 well received, which is not always the case. They are all drawn 
 with the same ceremony, omitting the blessing. One blessing 
 is enough for the whole multiplication table. The only new 
 incident in the proceedings is the gradually deepening intensity 
 of the change in the Capo Lazzarone, who has, evidently, specu- 
 lated to the very utmost extent of his means ; and who, when 
 he sees the last number, and finds that it is not one of his, 
 clasps his hands, and raises his eyes to the ceiling before pro- 
 claiming it, as though remonstrating, in a secret agony, with his 
 patron saint, for having committed so gross a breach of confi- 
 dence. I hope the Capo Lazzarone may not desert him for some 
 other member of the Calendar, but he seems to threaten it. 
 
 Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They certainly 
 are not present ; the general disappointment filling one with 
 pity for the poor people. They look : when we stand aside, 
 observing them in their passage through the courtyard down 
 below : as miserable as the prisoners in the gaol (it forms a part 
 of the building), who are peeping down upon them, from between, 
 
MONTE CASSINO. 499 
 
 their bars ; or, as the fragments of human heads which are still 
 dangling in chains outside, in memory of the good old times, 
 "when their owners were strung up there for the popular edifi- 
 cation. 
 
 Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to Capua, 
 and then on a three days' journey along by-roads, that we may 
 see, on the way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, which is 
 perched on the steep and lofty hill above the little town of San 
 Germano, and is lost on a misty morning in the clouds. 
 
 So much the better for the deep sounding of its bell, which, 
 as we go winding up, on mules, towards the convent, is heard 
 mysteriously in the still air, while nothing is seen but the grey 
 mist, moving solemnly and slowly, like a funeral procession. 
 Behold, at length, the shadowy pile of building close before us : 
 its grey walls and towers dimly seen, though so near and so 
 vast : and the raw vapour rolling through its cloisters heavily. 
 
 There are two black shadows walking to and fro in the quad- 
 rangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint and his sister ; and 
 hopping on behind them, in and out of the old arches, is a 
 raven, croaking in answer to the bell, and uttering, at intervals, 
 the purest Tuscan. How like a Jesuit he looks ! There never 
 was a sly and stealthy fellow so at home as is this raven, stand- 
 ing now at the refectory door, with his head on one side, and 
 pretending to glance another way, while he is scrutinising the 
 visitors keenly, and listening with fixed attention. What a dull- 
 headed monk the porter becomes in comparison ! 
 
 "He speaks like us!" says the porter: "quite as plainly." 
 Quite as plainly, Porter. Nothing could be more expressive 
 than his reception of the peasants who are entering the gate 
 with baskets and burdens. There is a roll in his eye, and a 
 chuckle in his throat, which should qualify him to be chosen 
 Superior of an Order of Ravens. He knows all about it. " It's 
 all right," he says. " We know what we know. Come along, 
 good people. Glad to see you !" 
 
 How was this extraordinary structure ever built in such a 
 
 £ ic 2 
 
5 0O PICTURES. FROM ITALY 
 
 situation, where the labour of conveying the stone, and iron, and 
 marble so great a height must have been prodigious h- " Caw !" 
 says the raven, welcoming the peasants. How, being "despoiled 
 by plunder, fire, and earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and 
 been again made what we now see it, with its church so sump- 
 tuous and magnificent ? " Caw !" says the raven, welcoming the 
 peasants. These -people have a miserable appearance, and (as 
 usual) are densely ignorant, and all beg while the monks are 
 chanting in the chapel. "Caw !" says the raven. "Cuckoo!'" 
 
 So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the convent 
 gate, and wind slowly down again through the cloud. At last, 
 emerging from it, we come in sight of the village far below, and 
 the flat, green country intersected by rivulets ; which is pleasant 
 and fresh to see after the obscurity and haze of the convent — 
 no disrespect to the raven, or the holy friars. 
 
 Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the most 
 shattered and tattered of villages, where there is not a whole 
 window among all the houses, or a whole garment among all the 
 peasants, or the least appearance of anything to eat in any of 
 the wretched hucksters' shops. The women wear a bright red 
 bodice laced before and behind, a white skirt, and the- Neapo- 
 litan head-dress of square folds of linen, primitively meant to 
 carry loads on. The men and children wear anything they can 
 get. The soldiers are as dirty and rapacious as the dogs. The 
 inns are such hobgoblin places, that they are infinitely more 
 attractive and amusing than the best hotels in Paris. Here -is 
 one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone, the round, walled 
 town on the mount opposite), which is approached by a quag- 
 mire almost knee deep. There is a wild colonnade below, and 
 a dark yard full of empty stables and lofts, and a great long 
 kitchen with a great long bench and a great long form, where a 
 party of travellers, with two priests among them, are crowding 
 round the fire while their supper is cooking. Above-stairs is a 
 rough brick gallery to sit in, with very little windows with very 
 small patches of knotty glass in them, and all the doors that 
 
PERUGIA. 501, 
 
 open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and a bare board 
 on trestles for a table, at which thirty people might dine easily, 
 and a fire-place large enough in itself for a breakfast parlour, 
 where, as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the 
 ugliest and grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the white- 
 washed chimney-sides by previous travellers. There is a flaring 
 country lamp on the table ; and, hovering about it, scratching 
 her thick black hair continually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, 
 who stands on tiptoe to arrange the hatchet knives, and takes a 
 flying leap to look into the water jug. The beds in the adjoin- 
 ing rooms are of the liveliest kind. There is not a solitary scrap 
 of looking-glass in the house, and the washing apparatus is 
 identical with the cooking utensils. . But the yellow dwarf sets 
 on the table a good flask of excellent wine, holding a quart at 
 least ; and produces, among half-a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds 
 of a roasted kid, smoking hot. She is as good-humoured, too, 
 as dirty, which is saying a great deal. So here's long life to 
 her in the flask of wine, and prosperity to the establishment. 
 
 Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who are 
 now repairing to their own homes again — each with his scallop 
 shell and staff, and soliciting alms for the love of God — we come, 
 by a fair country, to the Falls of Terni, where the whole Velino 
 River dashes, headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray 
 and rainbows. Perugia, strongly fortified by art and nature, on 
 a lofty eminence, rising abruptly from the plain where purple 
 mountains mingle with the distant sky, is glowing, on its market- 
 day, with radiant colours. They set off its sombre but rich 
 Gothic buildings admirably. The pavement of its market-place 
 is strewn with country goods. All along the steep hill leading 
 from the town, under the town wall, there is a noisy fair of 
 calves, lambs, pigs, horses, mules, and oxen. Fowls, geese, and 
 turkeys flutter vigorously among their very hoofs ; and buyers, 
 sellers, and spectators, clustering everywhere, block up the road 
 as we come shouting down upon them. 
 
 Suddenly there is a ringing sound among our horses. * The 
 
502 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 driver stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and casting up his 
 eyes to Heaven, he delivers this apostrophe, " Oh, Jove Omnipo- 
 tent ! here is a horse has lost his shoe !" 
 
 Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, and 
 the utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any one but an 
 Italian Yetturino) with which it is announced, it is not long in 
 being repaired by a mortal Farrier, by whose assistance we reach 
 Castiglione the same night, and Arezzo next day. Mass is, of 
 course, performing in its fine cathedral, where the sun shines in 
 among the clustered pillars, through rich stained-glass windows : 
 half revealing, half concealing the kneeling figures on the pave- 
 ment, and striking out paths of spotted light in the long aisles. 
 
 But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a 
 fair, clear morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on 
 Florence ! See where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, 
 bright with the winding Arno, and shut in by swelling hills ; 
 its domes, and towers, and palaces rising from the rich country 
 in a glittering heap, and shining in the sun like gold ! 
 
 Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beautiful 
 Florence ; and the strong old piles of building make such heaps 
 of shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another 
 and a different city of rich forms and fancies always lying at 
 our feet. Prodigious palaces, constructed for defence, with small 
 distrustful windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness 
 formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown, in their old sulky 
 state, on every street. In the midst of the city — in the Piazza 
 of the Grand Duke, adorned with beautiful statues and the 
 Fountain of Neptune — rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its 
 enormous overhanging battlements, and the Great Tower that 
 watches over the whole town. In its courtyard — worthy of the 
 Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom — is a massive stair- 
 case that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of horses 
 might be driven up. Within it is a Great Saloon, faded and 
 tarnished in its stately decorations, and mouldering by grains, 
 but recording yet, in pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the 
 
FLORENCE T50J 
 
 Medici and tile wars of the old Florentine people. The prison 
 is hard by, in an adjacent courtyard of the building — a foul and 
 dismal place, where some men are shut up close, in small cells 
 like ovens ; and where others look through bars and beg ; where 
 some are playing draughts, and some are talking to their friends, 
 who smoke, the while, to purify the air ; and some are buying 
 wine and fruit of women vendors ; and all are squalid, dirty, 
 and vile to look at. " They are merry enough, Signore," says 
 the gaoler. " They are all blood-stained here," he adds, indi- 
 cating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building. 
 Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age, quarrel- 
 ling over a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, stabs her 
 dead in the market-place full of bright flowers ; and is brought 
 in prisoner, to swell the number. 
 
 Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte 
 Vecchio — that bridge which is covered with the shops of 
 Jewellers and Goldsmiths — is a most enchanting feature in the 
 scene. The space of one house, in the centre, being left open, 
 the view beyond is shown as in a frame ; and that precious 
 glimpse of sky, and water, and rich buildings, shining so quietly 
 among the huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite. 
 Above it, the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses the river. It 
 was built to connect the two Great Palaces by a secret passage ; 
 and it takes its jealous course among the streets and houses 
 with true despotism : going where it lists, and spurning every 
 obstacle away before it. 
 
 The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the 
 streets, in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Com- 
 pagnia della Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks 
 of men. If an accident take place, their office is to raise the 
 sufferer, and bear him tenderly to the Hospital. If a fire break 
 out, it is one of their functions to repair to the spot, and render 
 their assistance and protection. It is, also, among their com- 
 monest offices to attend and console the sick ; and they neither 
 receive money, nor eat, nor drink in any house they visit fo> 
 
504 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 this purpose. Those who are on duty for the time are called 
 together, on a moment's notice, by the tolling of the great bell 
 of the Tower ; and it is said that the Grand Duke has been 
 seen, at this sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly 
 withdraw to attend the summons. 
 
 In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of market 
 is held, and stores of old iron and other small merchandise are 
 set out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped 
 together the Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful Italian 
 Gothic Tower the Campanile, and the Baptistery with its wrought- 
 bronze doors. And here, a small untrodden square in the pave- 
 ment, is " the Stone of Dante," where (so runs the story) he 
 was used to bring his stool, and sit in contemplation. I wonder 
 was he ever, in his bitter exile, withheld from cursing the very 
 stones in the -streets of Florence the ungrateful, by any kind 
 remembrance of this old musing-place, and its association with 
 gentle thoughts of little Beatrice ! 
 
 The Chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels of 
 Florence; the Church of Santa Croce, where Michael Angelo 
 lies buried, and where every stone in the cloisters is eloquent 
 on great men's deaths ; innumerable churches, often masses of 
 unfinished, heavy brickwork externally, but solemn and serene 
 within ; arrest our lingering steps, in strolling through the city. 
 
 In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters is the Museum 
 of Natural History, famous through the world for its prepara- 
 tions in wax ; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, 
 inferior animals ; and gradually ascending, through separate 
 organs of the human frame, up to the whole structure of that 
 wonderful creation, exquisitely presented, as in recent death. 
 Few admonitions of our frail mortality can be more solemn and 
 more sad, or strike so home upon the heart, as the counterfeits 
 of Youth and Beauty that are lying there, upon their beds, in 
 their last sleep. 
 
 Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the 
 Convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's house, eld 
 
FLORENCE. 505 
 
 villas and retreats ; innumerable spots of interest, all glowing in 
 a landscape of surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light ; 
 are spread before us. Keturning from so much brightness, how 
 solemn and how grand the streets again, with their great, dark, 
 mournful palaces, and many legends : not of siege, and war, and 
 might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the triumphant growth of 
 peaceful Arts and Sciences. 
 
 What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst 
 these rugged Palaces of Florence ! Here, open to all comers, in 
 their beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient sculptors are immor- 
 tal, side by side with Michael Angel 0, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, 
 Raphael, Poets, Historians, Philosophers — those illustrious men 
 of history, beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed warriors 
 show so poor and small, and are so soon forgotten. Here the 
 imperishable part of noble mind survives, placid and equal, when 
 strongholds of assault and defence are overthrown ; when the 
 tyranny of the many, or the few, or both, is but a tale ; when 
 Pride and Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire within 
 the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces and Towers, 
 kindled by rays from Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the 
 flickering of war is extinguished and the household fires of 
 generations have decayed; as thousands upon thousands of 
 faces, rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have faded 
 out of the old Squares and public haunts, while the nameless 
 Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion by a Painter's hand, 
 yet lives on, in enduring grace and youth. 
 
 Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its 
 shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful 
 Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it ; for Italy will be the 
 fairer for the recollection. The summer-time being come ; and 
 Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far behind us : 
 and we resting at Faido. a Swiss village, near the awful rocks 
 and mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts, of 
 the Great Saint Gothard : hearing the Italian tongue for the last 
 time on the journey : let us part from Italy, wit'J: all its miseries 
 
 LL 
 
506 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of the beauties, 
 natural and artificial, of which it is full to overflowing, and in 
 our tenderness towards a people, naturally well disposed, and 
 patient, and sweet-tempered. Years of neglect, oppression, and 
 misrule have been at work, to change their nature and reduce 
 their spirit ; miserable jealousies, fomented by petty Princes to 
 whom union was destruction, and division strength, have been a 
 canker at the root of their nationality, and have barbarised their 
 language ; but the good that was in them ever, is in them yet, 
 and a noble people may be, one day, raised up from these ashes. 
 Let us entertain that hope ! And let us not remember Italy 
 the less regardfully, because, in every fragment of her fallen 
 temples, and every stone of her deserted palaces and prisons, 
 she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel of Time is 
 rolling for an end, and that the world is, in all great essentials, 
 better, gentler, more forbearing, and more hopeful as it rolls I 
 
 THK END. 
 
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