) r          -K
FX
l-lFW  IT -EEd
N.,                            >,
ADE  BRIDGE,  E, R.R,
IN-W _1 -w    -XY   
(G r_ (0) Mri CLr    LP    Us p  U  [a           ] b. 
i9)X --   an   W'*
~"'I -  Mf.-WarWtw,
, ~ ~   (,
.1. 
aSSe o 
A-'1 H O R  S
AND
HOM      R I STS;
0P,
AMER:2LiCA  SC2ENi'R, ART, A -) LI TEATURE.
COMPRISING
A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY WASHINGTON IRVING, W. C. BRYANT, FENIMORE COOPER
MISS COOPER, N. P. WILLIS, BAYARD TAYLOR, H. T. TUCKERMAN,
E. L. MAGOON, DR. BETHUNE, A. B. STREET, MISS FIELD, ETC.
WITH THIRTEEN ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL,
FROM PICTURES BY E[INENT ARTISTS,
ENGRAVED EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK.
NEW YORK:
L E AV ITT
AND ALLEN,
27 DEY STREET.
I
- -L A 
E
HI
i   te
,   
CONTENTS.
AUTHORS.
DEDICATION, 
PUBLISHER'S NOTICE,.
SCENERY AND MIND,..
VIEW NEAR RONDOUT, 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED,
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS,                       A
A DISSOLVING VIEW,                           M    O
THE SCENERY OF PENNSYLVANIA,                             
THE HIGHLAND TERRACE, ABOVE WEST POINT,
WA-WA-YAN-DAHI LAKE, NEW JERSEY,                             1
OVER THE MOUNTAINS, OR THE WESTERN PIONEER,
WEST ROCK, NEW HAVEN,. 
THE ERIE RAILROAD,                           B      Y
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, WEST POINT,
THE VALLEY OF THE HOUSATONIC,.. 
THE ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS,. 
SCHROON LAKE,                                                 5
ART IN THE UNITED STATES,.. 
L
He'~~~~~ Ing
PAGE.
v
*.
VII
E. L. MAGoos
49
51
71
79
95
105
113
115
137
143
151
155
161
165
167
J. FENIMOIr. COOPER
WASHINGTON IRVING
)Iiss Coopr,,i
BAYAIRD TAYLOR
N. P. WILLIS
H. T. TUcxERMAIV
MARY E. FIELD
BAYARD TAYLOR
We. C. BRYANT
ALFRED B. STREET
G. W. BETIUNE, D. D. 
,r 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
ENGRAVER.
H. BECKWITH
J. HALPIN
S. V. HUNT
H. BEc'WrmH
H. BEcKwrra
H. BEcKWftu
S. V. HUNT
S. V. HUINT
S. V. HUNT
THE BAY OF NEW-YORK,...
CASCADE BRIDGE, ERIE RAILROAD,. 
THE RONDOUT,..
CATSKILL SCENERY,....
CATSKTJ,, IN TH'E CLOVE...
THE JUNIATTA, PENN...
WA-WA-YAN-DAH LAKE,....
COWETA CREEK, NORTH CAROLINA, 
WEST ROCK, NEW HAVEN,....
THE CHURCH OF'tiE HOLY INNOCENTS,
WEST POINT,...H
THE HOUSATONIC VALLEY,..
ADIRONDACK SCENERY,...
SCHROON LAKE,..
PAINTER.
H. BECKWITH
J. TALBOT
D. HUNTINGTON
J. P. IENSETT
A. B. DUiEAND
J. TALBOT
J. F. CP.OPSEY
T. A. RICHARDS
F. E. CHURCH
PAGE.
Fronti~ee.
Title.
49
1l
78
95
113
115
137
R. W. WErR
R. GIGNOUX
A. B. DURAND
T. COLE
S. V. HUNT
J. HLAPIN
J. Kmn
H. BECKWrrf
151
165
161
165 
R. 5 f 4!
X  -,  0  -  r  At
u
.:.
;
l
h
.
,
;...!,',,.
..
f. a:'', 0.',1
R R';,
1
r
,    _:
..
R:'a g X
*  5   0;                          0',.  -'    X,J,.,' 
TO
A. B. )DURAN)D,
PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL AOADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS,
TillS WORK,
INTENDED AS AN INITIATORY SUGGESTION FOR POPULARIZING SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS
OF
am~rr   I~-ffhr,   a     idorat g qmrtirau art,
IS, BY  PERMISSION,
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
BY THE PUBLISHER.  
PUBLISHER'S NOTICE.
TRHAIT American artists have ample scope for the development of
genius, in the department of landscape painting, is a truism too selfevident to need any argumentative dissertations. A very laudable
degree of success in the cultivation of this genius, is also evident
in many of our private drawing-rooms, as well as public exhibitions.
Believing that ample  material thus exists for illustrating the
picturesque beauties of American landscape, the publisher has ventured to undertake this volume as an experiment, to ascertain how
far the-taste of our people may warrant the production of homemanufactured presentation-books, and how far we can successfully
compete with those from  abroad.   In the higher range of ornamental books of this class, such as are sought for by our liberal,
gift-giving people, we have heretofore depended almost exclusively
upon our importations from Europe.
It is not to be pretended that this volume, even in its department, has reached the highest degree of excellence.  The engravings
are perhaps of too moderate size to do anything like justice to the
original pictures, and they are doubtless still capable of improve
i,
1,i-" 
PUBLISHERIS NOTICE.
ment, although it will be conceded that the engravers have done
their part with taste and skill.
Whether the volume shows any progress, however, in American
book-making, must be left to the public decision.  If that tribunal
affords the needful encouragement, this may be followed by future
volumes of similar import, but more worthy of the artists and of
the country.
The publisher begs leave to return his acknowledgments to those
who have so kindly aided him in making this experiment-particu larly to Mr. Durand, the distinguished president of the Academy,
and to Messrs. Huntington, Church, Kensett, Weir, Talbot, Cropsey,
and Richards, all of whom have won so much  distinction as landscape painters.  To the gentlemen who have kindly loaned pictures
for engraving, the publisher is under special obligation, particularly
to Cyrus W. Field, Esq., for Mr. Church's charming picture of West
Rock;  to General J. A. Dix, for that of Rondout, by Huntington;
to Mrs. Cole, for the picture of Schroon Lake, by her late husband;
to Mr. C. IH. Rogers for Mr. Talbot's "Juniata," and to Mr. J. W.
Whitefield for the same artist's "Cascade Bridge."
It is superfluous to refer to the eminent writers who have zealously
contributed to the substantial value of the volume  by  their able
essays.  The reader can appreciate them without note or comment.
The publisher would merely allude to the self-evident fact, that
this volume does not claim to represent the American landscape
painters in any thing like proper proportion.   It was only practicable to give in this such specimens as were accessible, of only a
small proportion of those artists who would worthily adorn such  a
book.  If we are permitted to proceed with another volume, a dozen
or two more names will at once occur to the reader as quite essential for such a purpose.
G. P. P.
8 
SCENERY ANDI) MIND.
BY E. L. MAGOON, A. M.
" O my Native Land!
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who firom thy lakes and mountain hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honorable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country."
COLEaIDGE.
GOD made the human soul illustrious, and designed it for exalted
pursuits and a glorious destiny. To expand our finite faculties, and
afford them a culture both profound and elevating, Nature is spread
around us, with all its stupendous proportions, and Revelation speaks to
us of an eternal augmentation of knowledge hereafter, for weal or woe.
1 
S CENERY AND MIND.
Above, beneath, and on every side, open the avenues of infinite progression, through which we are to advance without pause, and expand
without limit.  Here, in this dim arena of earth, an immortal essence
throbs at our heart in harmony with the infinite and eternal.   The
day-star of thought arises on the soul, and, with our first rational
exercise, begins an existence which may experience many vicissitudes,
may pass through many transitions, but can never terminate.  The
soul, vivified with power to think, will outlive the universe which feeds
its thought, and will be still practising its juvenile excursions at the
mere outset of its opening career, while suns and systems, shorn of
their glories, shall sink, in shattered ruins, to the caverns of eternal
oblivion.   The two great capacities, correspondent to the two great
natural elements alluded to above,-the power of perceiving  the
beautiful and feeling the sublime,-are at once the products and proofs
of inherent immortality.  They indicate endowments which it is bliss
to improve, and a destiny which it will be fearful indeed to neglect.
All sentient beings may have an eye that can see, and an ear that
can hear; but to be gifted with a heart that can feel, constitutes the
chief characteristic of a living soul.   Animals are created perfect,
while mankind are made perfectible by virtue of loftier capacities.
Instinct is compelled to pause over what it dimly perceives, but mind
perpetually quickens its vision, as well as its speed, through  the magnificent unfoldings of its unbounded progress.  The senses educate the
capabilities. Our lower nature is first susceptible to impression; and
from this source, at a very early period, influences arise which, when
once stereotyped upon the soul, are ineffaceable forever.  What is the
destiny of that little stranger, just emerged from mysterious night
into life active and eternal?  What is to be the history of that glimmering spark, struck from nothingness by the all-creating rock, and
filled with a fulness of being that will shine when  the stars are
2 
SCE5E RY  AND MIND.
extinct? Soon its faculties will unfold to external influences. As yet
its germs of consciousness lie smothered under the passive and mortal
powers; but as these are made the avenues of moral health or disease
in early culture, that tremendous  existence which  lies before  the
unconscious babe will prove a blessing or a curse.   In relation to
every young denizen of earth, it is an important reflection, that having
once felt, it retains that feeling; the emotion of pleasure it has experienced, thenceforth belongs to itself, and will recur with increased
energy;  that the pain it has once known belongs to itself, and may
go on deepening its pungency forever.   Glory or infamy is but  a
different direction of the same capacities.   Soon from  that youthful
mind will come gleamings of thought and ebullitions of passion, and
those same effervescing endowments may form a Catiline or a Cicero.
The Neros and Herods, Newtons and Pauls, the scourges of earth, and
its greatest benefactors, were once helpless infants.
To our mind, this book on American Scenery has an import of the
highest order.   The diversified landscapes of our country exert no
slight influence in creating our character as individuals, and in confirming our destiny as a nation. Oceans, mountains, rivers, cataracts, wild
woods, fragrant prairies, and melodious winds, are elements and exemplifications of that general harmony which subsists throughout the
universe, and which is most potent over the most valuable minds.
Every material object was designed for the use and reward of genius, to
be turned into an intelligible hieroglyphic, and the memento of purest
love. How strong this early influence and affection may become, it is
difficult to say.   Hills, valleys, brooks, trees - our first and fondest
friends beyond the domestic hearth -  are never forgotten.  Memory
recalls the sunny days of childhood and youth;  and, like the green
spot in the desert, in which the weary traveller lingers with  delight,
lhis toils and privations half forgotten, we love to ramble again amidst
3 
4                    SCENERY  AND      MIND.
tile scenes of earliest emotion and purest tilougilt, rejoicing still tilat,
wilerever exiled,
"Trees, and floweiu, and brooks,
Which do remember me of where I dwelt,
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heai~ witli recognition of their looks."
We proceed to sliow tilat, in tile pilysical universe, wilat is most
abundant, is most ennobling; wilat is most exalted, is most influential
on tile best minds; and tilat, for tilese reasons, national intellect
receives a prevailing tone from tile pecullar scenery tilat most
abounds.
First, in tile kingdoms of matter around us, wilat is most abundant
in amount, is most ennobling in use.  Tile migilty magician, Nature,
produces tile greatest variety of striking effects witil tile fewest means.
Tilere are only a sun, soil, rocks, trees, flowers, water, and au observing
soul.  Every tiling in use depends upon tilis last, wiletiler to tile contemplator "love lends a precious seeing to tile eye."  Deep in tile
concave of ileaven is tile luminary revealing all; and deep in tile soul
of tile illumined is a cilord tenderly vibrating to tile cliarms of all.
Tile voices of every order of moving tilings, tile silvery tones of flowing streams, tile trembllug tongues of leaves, tile inarticulate melody
of flowers, tile vibrations of migilty ilills, and tile dread music of tile
spileres, all sublunary blending witil all celestial notes, are not for a
moment lost to tile ileart tilat listens.  Tile ilarp of Memnon is not
fabulous, properly interpreted.  Tile devout lover of nature, seated on
tile mountain, or by tile ocean, batiled in tile golden sileen of opening
day, will ilave ilis soul often stirred by melody divine as ever resounded from tile mysterious ilarmonicon by tile waters of tile Nile. 
S CENERY AND MIND.
Every rational inhabitant of earth is a focal point in the universe,
a profoundly deep centre around which every thing beautiful and
sublime is arranged, and towards which, through the exercise of admiration, every refining influence is drawn.  Wonderful, indeed, is the
radiant thread that runs through every realm of outward creation, and
enlinks all their diversified influences with the innermost fibres of the
soul.  This is the vital nerve by virtue of which the individual is
related to the universe, and the universe is equally related to the individual.  Through this, all physical powers combine to relieve spiritual
wants.   Earth contributes her fulness of wealth and majesty; air
ministers in all the Protean aspects of beauty and sublimity; fire,
permeating every thing graceful and fair, gleams before the scrutinizing
eye with a light more vivid than the lightning's blaze; and water is
not only "queen of a thousand rills that fall in silver from the dewy
stone," diffusing a "dulcet and harmonious breath" from the most
sylvan haunts of man to his most crowded home, but from continent
to continent "pours the deep, eternal bass in nature's anthem, making
music such as charms the ear of God."
In this abundance there is an infinite variety, adapted to every
grade of intellect, and every condition in life. The book of nature,
which is the art of God, as Revelation is the word of his divinity,
unfolds its innumerable leaves, all illuminated with glorious imagery,
to the vision of his creature, man, and is designed to elevate or soothe
him by such influences as emanate from foaming cataracts, glassy lakes,
and floating mists.   For this beneficent purpose, fields bloom, forests
wave, mountains soar, caverns open their jewelled mines, constellations
sparkle, clouds spread their variegated drapery, the sun radiates from
horizon to zenith, and billows roll from pole to pole.  In spring, all is
vivacious with an overflowing newness of life; in summer, gorgeous is
the world to every eye; autumn mellows at once the landscape with
5 
S CENERY AND  MIND.
its harvests, and the hearts that love every form of matured and prolific worth; even winter, deserted as may be her temple of the
thoughtless and vain, suggests, through hoar-frost and withered leaves,
lessons of greatest value to votaries who evermore aspire to be truly
wise.
Sir Joshua Reynolds has said that "Nature denies her instructions
to none who desire to become her pupils;" but a great deal depends
upon the motives with which we enter her school. It will be to a low
purpose, surely, if our investigations are conducted in a predominantly
utilitarian spirit, recognizing in the laws according to which the
Divinity works merely the handmaids to sensual indulgence, rather
than the instruments of the noblest use. - It is thus that nature is
made to present herself to gross minds, not as a quiet and awful temple, but as a plenteous kitchen, or voluptuous banqueting-hall. By
this we do not mean that the sentiments which elevate are ever unnatural. Nature is most truly herself when she stands revealed to her
votary in the most refined and suggestive form. The Apollo Belvidere
is indescribably more natural than any rustic of Teniers, or any allegorical figure of Rubens. The master-scenes of nature, however, like
the masterpieces of transcendent art, require for the inexperienced,
yet earnest admirer, an interpreter; to the lukewarm and careless
they are ever partially, if not completely, incomprehensible. Like
certain delicate plants, their essential beauties shrink under rough
handling, and become dimness to the profanity of a casual glance;
they unveil themselves most fully to the enraptured, and pour the
effulgence of their splendid mysteries into the fixed eye of him only
who gazes on the charms he has studiously sought, and adores for
their own dear sake.  Thus employed, the most copious productions
of God exert the most ennobling influence. They quicken thought
and inspire humility, thus verifying the experience of the poet:
C) 
SCENERY AND MIND.
"I moved on
In low and languid mood: for I had found
That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence firom the Life within."
In viewing magnificent scenes, the soul, expanded and sublimed, is
imbued with a spirit of divinity, and appears, as it were, associated
with the Deity himself.  For, as the shepherd feels himself ennobled,
while communing with his sovereign, the beholder, in a far nobler
degree, feels himself advanced to a higher scale in the creation, in
being permitted to see and admire the grandest of nature's works.
All vigorous souls prize most highly that healthy and expansive exercise of mind which- is attained chiefly by traversing rugged paths and
scaling celestial heights, in order to breathe pure and bracing air.  To
the query whether beneficial effects actually attend such excursions,
let Sydney Smith reply:  "I, for one, strongly believe in the affirmative of the question,- that Nature speaks to the mind of man imm.ediatey in beautiful and sublime language; that she astonishes him
with magnitude, appals him with darkness, cheers him with splendor,
soothes him with harmony, captivates him with emotion, enchants him
with fame; she never intended man should walk among her flowers,
and her fields, and her streams, unmoved;  nor did she rear the
strength of the hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a
stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest, and dashing over the crumbling rock.  I would as
soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as
I would deny beauty or sublimity to belong to its qualities."
Mind is itself the strongest agency over mind;  and next to this,
in dignity and worth, is the potency of such inanimate productions as
are pleasing in their aspect, or awe-inspiring in their form.  This is 
S CEN}IERY AND  MIND.
an influence which effectively appeals to the spirits of our race in
every condition of life.  Wherever the faintest ray of intelligence has
dawned, thither does it come, and there with ever increasing dominion
dwell.   The savage is not too rude, nor the child too infantile, to be
either refined or fortified by its lessons.   Nature is an element which
cannot be excluded, and which ought to be so directed as to produce
the most agreeable and beneficent results. True, venerable mountains
and verdant plains, with all their terrors and all their glories, are but
pictures to the blind and music to the deaf, when a perceiving eye and
appreciating soul are wanting.   But with these endowments in exercise, however dim, dwellers in the midst of bold scenery are harder
workers, greater readers, and better thinkers, than persons of equal
rank elsewhere.  Through the serene medium of their lofty elevation,
they are less impressed by the pettiness of man and his affairs, ithan
by the graceful magnitude of what the Almighty has spread through
infinite fields around.  Living with supreme delight far above a Lilliputian standard, the mind swells into something of the colossal grandeur it admires. A majestic landscape, often scanned and truly loved,
imparts much of its greatness to the mind and heart of the spectator;
so that while the species may dwindle in relative worth, the individual
is ennobled by the expansion he has received.   Even a transient visit
to localities strongly characterized by what is intrinsically elegant or
grand, leaves the noblest impression on susceptible souls.  Charles
Lamb relates, with his accustomed happy style, that on returning to
his desk at the India House, after a brief sojourn amidst the Hills and
Lakes of Westmoreland, he thought much less highly of himself than
while invested with the mingled beauty and majesty of magnificent
mountain scenery.   Well might his loving school-fellow and great
brother in devotion to Nature's charms, Coleridge, say, in addressing
his little child:
8 
SCENERY AND MIND.
"I was rear'd
In the great city, pent'mid cloisters dim,
And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who friom eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself:
Great universal teacher! He shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask."
9
Thus far our first point, namely, that, in the outward creation,
whatever is most abundant is most ennobling in its influence on our
inner faculties.  In the second place, we proceed to show, that the
noblest aspects and energies of nature have the finest and firmest control over the best minds.
All eminent geniuses are close observers of rural objects, and
enthusiastic admirers of imposing scenery.  There can be no approximation towards universal development, save as one lays the entire
universe under contribution to his personal cultivation.   He must
absorb into his expanded soul resources from every kingdom competent to render him a sovereign indeed over the realms of emotion and thought.   He that would fortify a giant arm  to sever an
isthmus or tunnel mountains, as a pathway for the nations, or wield a
giant mind that can quicken and mould the sentiments of other men
gigantic like himself, must habitually feed on that aliment which is
won in stray gifts by whosoever will find, and which, when attained,
constitutes "a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets where no crude surfeit
c, 
( 
SCENERY AND  MIND.
reigns."  The public man whose sphere is most comprehensive, and
whose exhausting toils are most distracting, will probably be indebted
to youthful and serener avocations in humbler scenes for his sweetest
solace and most enduring strength.  The experience and sagacity of a
great philosopher justify this assertion:  "I speak, sir, of those who,
though bred up under our unfavorable system of education, have yet
held, at times, some intercourse with Nature, and with  those great
minds whose works have been moulded by the spirit of Nature: who,
therefore, when they pass from the seclusion and constraint of early
study, bring with them, into the new scene of the world, much of the
pure sensibility which is the spring of all that is greatly good in
thought and action."
All great passions are fed, and all great systems are projected in
solitude. Wide and dense masses of mankind form the appropriate
field whereon superior talents are to be exercised;  but, to the aspiring, the distraction and attrition of large cities are rather evils to be
shunned, since they vitiate if not destroy that purity and calm which
are essential to the best growth of mind.   The predestined hero in
moral warfare will avoid the broad and boisterous way, if he be wise;
and, like the Pythagoreans of old, he will betake himself to some
sequestered spot, there alone to mature the vigor of his thoughts.   If
he would elicit a train of sentiments the profoundest and best, let him
wander through the shady walks and silent groves of the country,
where all things tend to arm and elevate the soul.  The song of birds
and hum of bees will not profitless fall on his ear.  Fields enamelled
with verdure, and trees clothed in garments almost divine, the stillness
of nature in her secret glens, and the awful import of her more vocal
majesty, must recall the universal Creator in modes the most palpable
to a meditative pupil in this university for all designed, and at the
same time will most imbue him with -the immense repose with which
0 
S C E N E RY AND  MIIND.
creation is crowned.   Forms of glory hovering over forest and field,
on the river's bank, the lake's brim, ocean's strand, or around mountain-peaks, create glorious forms in admiring souls.  They confer an
inspiration which kindles afresh over each  new  object worthy of
esteem, and forever keep burning on the altar of the heart a flame
which infinitude perpetually draws near both to purify and feed.  It
is our bliss to cherish  those early recollections, without which  all
others are null and void, and which should be wedded to memory
forever.
' You of all names the sweetest and the best;
You Muses, Books, and Liberty, and Rest;
You Gardens, Fields, and Woods."
0
It is no valid objection to our argument to remind us that some
"misuse the bounteous Pan, and think the gods amiss."  That is to
quote the perversion of a privilege, and not its legitimate use. Petrarch,
for instance, only aggravated the fires that consumed him, when he
buried himself in the lonely recesses of Vaucluse.  But had he gone
there to study " the quaint mossiness of aged roots" by day, and at night
gazed with acutest sympathy upon "the star of Jove, so beautiful and
large,"-instead of tamely succumbing before "the' patient brilliance
of the moon;" had he been ambitious rather to "live in the rainbow
and play in the plighted clouds," he might, on the bleakest summit,
and with a richer facility than in the pampered palace, have created
"Eschylean shapes of the sublime," and been imbued with energies
nobler far than ever graced the marble porch where wisdom was wont
to teach with Socrates and Tully.  It has been among deserts, on
islands, in caverns, or when hidden by other drapery of seclusion the
most opaque, that philosophers, statesmen, and heroes, have obtained
11 
S C( ENERY AND MIND.
that faith and fervor by which they secured triumphant success in the
end, even though martyrdom was their road.
The best education consists in the most thorough training of natu ral energy.   In all moral  architecture, as in material, the elegant
should rest on the substantial, and clearly indicate the firmness it
adorns. Large portions of a temple admit of being highly polished,
but he would not be a very wise builder who should set about his
structure with nothing but polishings.  They who have "yellowed
themselves among rolls and records" are not generally the persons
who exert the most salutary influence, and make the most indelible
impress on mankind.   On the contrary, happiest and mightiest are
they who are born and reared where free course is allowed to the
* influences with which creative power has benignantly surrounded us.
"Happy they who are located in the true infant-school of God and
Nature; on whom this grand moving panorama sheds all its changing
lights, and bestows all its successive scenes; who watch the revolving
stars, and the progression of bright constellations, in no bounded
horizon; for whom there are the infinite effects, daily and nightly, of
sunlight and moonlight, over hill and plain,-better still if the vast
ocean add its shifting colors and the accompaniment of its continuous
and resounding anthem; to whom a hundred birds and plants, in
rapid succession, tell of advancing spring; whose months the flowers
calendar; whose autumn is infallibly marked by the ripened grain and
the sheaves of joyous harvest; who make an era in the few years of
their chronology by some more memorable storm or severer frost;
and who change their sports and occupations with changing nature,
receiving through every inlet the influences of God's  spirit, and
rejoicing in all. Not that children can feel the beauty or the grandeur, still less dive into the wisdom of this mighty scheme of things,
but the 8t(ifful8 is on them, the novelty is adapted to and excites
12 
SCENERY AND MIND.
them; Nature has her way within them as well as parents and teachers; and the senses do such duty as in the crowded city school-room
they never yet performed nor ever can.  And thus they go on from
infancy to youth, growing in the best knowledge of humanity; a
knowledge of the world in which God has placed them; and thereby
becoming fit to grapple with the difficulties and triumph in the moral
conflicts that will present themselves in maturer life, as they come into
the world that man has fashioned."
The superiority of nature over art, as a source of pleasure and
profit, is worthy of special note. When we enter magnificent monuments of human skill, we are at first struck with the costly decorations
of wood, pigments, marble, and gold. But after repeated views, we
feel no longer charmed, and the mental pleasure received at the first
glance is continually decreased. Whereas, in contemplating the works
of nature, from the minutest specimen to the most majestic, and most
powerfully when the sense of perception is armed with greatest clearness and force, the devotee feels that the luxury of observation is constantly enhanced. The prospect of the country never satiates us; the
landscape, with all its changes, is ever new, and every day invests it
with some fresh aspect to delight and invigorate the mind. Love of
natural objects, and especially a preference for whatever makes scenery
of the wilder or more romantic kind, is a prevailing element in all
character of the most marked and practical use. There is down upon
the breast of eagles; and the strongest men have usually the gentlest
natures, because they habitually live in intimate and affectionate alliance with the mildest as well as mightiest influence. As an elephant
crashes through jungles and over crags, whetting his tusks, and as the
imperial bird of prey seeks some storm-worn summit to sharpen his
talons, so every one, quick to feel and invincible to subdue, like
Achilles, will court retirement in great nature's quiet nooks, where he
13 
SCENERY AND MIND.
may recruit his mental strength and string his bow.  Archimedes, a
man of stupendous genius, was accustomed to say, that, next to the
solution of a problem, was the pleasure of an evening walk in the
suburbs of Syracuse.  Descartes, having settled the place of a planet
in the morning, would amuse himself in the evening by weeding and
watering a bed of flowers.   Gray, one of the most intellectual and
fastidious of men, says, " Happy they who can create a rose-tree, or
erect a honey-suckle; who can watch the brood of a hen, or a fleet of
their own ducklings as they sail upon the water."  The love of nature
is, indeed, instinctive in all superior minds.  Philosophers living in the
time of Plhilostratus were accustomed to retire to the shades of Mount
Athos, where "Meditation might think down hours to moments."
Catullus, Martial, and Statius were ardent admirers of rural life;
especially so were Atticus, Tacitus, and Epictetus. Cicero, who valued
himself more upon his taste for the cultivation of philosophy, than
upon his talents for oratory, had no less than eighteen different country residences in various parts of his beautiful native land. Hle speaks
of them in terms of fondest attachment; and they were all situated
in such delightful points of view, as to deserve being called " the eyes
of Italy." The retreat of Tusculum was his favorite residence. It
was the most elegant mansion of that elegant age; and the beauty of
the landscape around it, adding al higher worth to the site than all
the charms Atticus could purchase for its master at Athens, to the
highest degree refined the taste of its accomplished possessor.  When,
fatigued with business, and happy in being allowed the indulgence of
sequestered recreation, the great master of the Forum, " from whose
lips sweet eloquence distilled, as honey from the bee," could mingle in
the unrestrained companionship of such friends as Scipio and Atticus
and Laelius, at Caieta and Laurentum, they together strove to grow
boys again in their amusements, and derived no ignoble pleasure from
14 
SCENERY AND MIND.
gathering shells upon the sea-shore.  Simplicity and dignity always
coalesce with the utmost gentleness and good-nature, in the persons
and amusements of the truly great.  They are equal to the society of
the most refined and erudite, in all the delicate sobriety of exalted
life; and, with equal spontaneity of native greatness and acquired
grace, can run, shout, and leap, with juvenile thoughts and limbs.  It
is not in the least surprising to find Cicero so often urging us to study
the natural beauties of the country in which we live.  Hle asserts it to
be the most auspicious pleasure of youth, and the most soothing joy of
serene old age. Livy and Sallust were also vividly conscious of such
impressions, and of the worth they confer.  Pliny the younger declared
himself never to have been happier than when he was indulging himself at his country seats, where in healthful leisure he wrote his works,
and celebrated the views which his villas afforded.  "If life were not
too short," says Sir William Jones, "for the complete discharge of all
our respective duties, public and private, and for the acquisition of
necessary knowledge in any degree of perfection, with  how  much
pleasure and improvement might a great part of it be spent, in admiring the beauties of this wonderful orb!"  The graces willingly lend
their zone to embellish and fortify the passions of a noble breast.
Assimilating to himself the richest contributions from all sources of
the beautiful, the true, and the sublime, the severest student and most
useful citizen secures to himself the delightful companionship of that
potent and infallible guide described by Campbell:
"Taste, like the silent dial's power,
Which, when supernal light is given,
Can measure inspiration's hour,
And tell its height in heaven!"
We  have now  considered  two positions, assumed at the outset:
15 
SCENERY AND MIND.
first, what is most abundant in nature is most ennobling in its effects;
and, secondly, that the best minds  are most influenced by natural
excellence.  It remains to indicate, thirdly, how character, as stamped
on literature, has ever been toned by the predominant characteristics
of native scenery.
In portraying the influence which  the inanimate creation exerts
upon mind and letters every where, we employ what has been universally felt and acknowledged.   The wise man in his lonely turret, high
among the palaces of Babylon, and the unsophisticated shepherd as he
watched his flocks at midnight on the plains of Chaldea, recognized in
the aspects and movements of the planetary world an intimate relation
to the mysterious vicissitudes of human life, and the otherwise unrevealed determinations of human destiny.  In the constitution of mankind, the religious instinct and literary taste are intimately allied, and
seem, indeed, to a great extent, the same.   "The untutored negro,
when he prostrates himself on the reedy bank of his native stream,
and adores the Deity of the stream in the shape of the crocodile, or
bows before the poison tree, in reverence to the God of poisons, obeys
this native impulse of humanity, no less than the disciple of Zoroaster
who climbs the highest mountain tops, unsoiled by the profane footsteps of trade or of curiosity, where the air is ever pure, and the sun
greets the earth with its earliest light, to pay his vows and offer his
incense to the visible symbols of Divinity, to his mind themselves
divinities; or the outcast Guebre, who with forbidden and untold of
rites, worships an ever burning flame-to him the elemental principle
of nature."  The character of the early patriarchs was no doubt chiefly
moulded by the peculiarity of their habitation and pursuits.  Their
manner of life upon the great oceans of wilderness and pasture, gave
breadth and elasticity to their intellects.  The free mountain winds
had leave to blow against them, their eyes drank  the rivers with
16
I 
SCENiERY AND MIND.
delight, and the vault of heaven under which they dwelt, with all its
mighty stars, elevated their feelings no less than it expanded their
minds.
The Hebrew prophets of a later day lived equally in the eye of
nature.   Says Gilfillan: "We  always figure them with cheeks embrowned by the noons of the East.  The sun had looked on them,
but it was lovingly - the moon had' smitten' them, but it was with
poetry, not madness - they had drunk in fire, the fire of Eastern day,
from a hundred sources- from the lukewarm brooks of their land,
from the rich colors of their vegetation, from their mornings  of
unclouded brightness, from their afternoons of thunder, from the large
stars of their evenings and nights.  The heat of their climate was
strong enough to enkindle but not to enervate their frames, inured as
they were to toil, fatigue, fasting, and frequent travel. They dwelt in
a land of hills and valleys, of brooks and streams, of spots of exuberant vegetation, of iron-ribbed rocks and mountains   a land, on one
side, dipping down in the Mediterranean Sea, on another, floating up
into Lebanon, and on the others, edged by deserts, teeming at once
with dreadful scenery and secrets-  through which had passed of old
time the march of the Almighty, and where his anger had left for its
memorials, here, the sandy sepulchre of those thousands whose carcasses fell in the wilderness, and there, a whole Dead Sea of vengeance,
lowering amid a desolation fit to be the very gateway to hell:standing between their song and subject-matter, and such a fiery clime,
and such stern scenery, the Hebrew bards were enabled to indite a
language more deeply dyed in the colors of the sun, more  intensely
metaphorical, more faithfully transcriptive of nature, a simpler, and
yet larger utterance, than ever before or since rushed out from the
heart and tongue of man."
But no where do the instincts of man, in their alliance with his
3
11 
SC ENEERY AND  MIND.
noblest productions, appear more strongly marked by the influence of
surrounding scenery, than in the early training and national literature
of "pagan Greece."  That wonderful people seem fully to have under stood that man was made to grow up harmoniously, with simultaneous
expansion of trunk, branch, and foliage, as grows a tree; the sap of
immortal energy must circulate without hindrance in every fibre,
maturing fruits perennial and divine.
Two laws manifestly govern the constitution of our being, a due
regard to which is indispensable to our highest welfare.  In the first
place, in proportion as the physical nature of man is developed by
suitable discipline,'winning the greatest vigor of limb, and the greatest
acuteness of sense, he will derive important aids to the intellect and
moral powers from the perfections of his outward frame.  Moreover,
by a delightful reaction, the mind, in proportion as it is invigorated
and beautified, gives strength and elegance to the body, and enlarges
the sphere of action and enjoyment.  These laws have been observed
by the best educators of the world.  At Athens, the gymnasia became
temples of the Graces.  In these appropriate fields of moral training,
the refined Greek could gratify his fondness for the beautiful, surrounded on every hand by the combined charms of nature and art.
Every festival of childhood was rendered enchanting with flowers and
music; the barge, as it was pushed in boyish sport on the lake, was
crowned with garlands; the oars were moved to the sound of "sweet
recorders," and the patriotic mother at home sang an inspiring lullaby,
as she rocked her infant to sleep in the broad shield of its robust
father.  There were wrestlings for all classes in the palestra, as well
as races and heroic contests for the foremost ranks; there were gay
revels on the mountain-sides, and moonlight dances in the groves.
The popular games described in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad,
and the eighth of the Odyssey, all relate to important elements in
is 
SCENERY AND MIND.
national education.  Those ancient festivals had the finest influence
upon the inhabitants of the metropolis, and upon those who dwelt the
most remote.   Every pilgrim through such  lands, to such  shrines,
became Briareus-handed and Argus-eyed.   The beautiful scenes, full
of patriotic and refined associations, which every where arrested his
attention, gave him the traveller's " thirsty eye," filled his mind with
thrilling reminiscences, and caused him to return to his home glowing
with brilliant descriptions and burdened with exalted thoughts.  It
was thus that the youthful Greek mingled with his studies pedestrian
exercise and acute observation, formed his body to fatigue, while he
stored his mind with the choicest ideas, and became equally skilled in
handling a sword, subduing a horse, or building a temple.  Such  was
the education found in the Lyceum where Aristotle lectured, and in
"The olive-grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long:
There flowery hill Hiymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
rTo studious musing."
No Grecian city was without its public squares, airy colonnades,
spacious halls, and shady groves; herein the people lived, transacted
their business, passed their leisure, and improved their minds.  The
serene heaven which that land enjoys, was the best-loved roof of its
population; the grateful breeze, resounding sea, and brilliant sun, were
their perpetual recreation and delight.  The country was looked upon
as affording the only happy home.  Large towns were regarded  as
huge prisons, but these were made as rural as possible.  Whatever
splendors might gleam from the capitol, Pan and his rustic train were
19 
20              SCENERY AND MIND.
most fascinating to tile popular intellect and heart.  Familiar as the
sensibilities and imagination of the people were with the outward
world, and connecting the changing seasons and fruits of earth with
some occult power that regulated and produced them, their enthusiasm
created and sustained presiding deities, propitious in the calm, and
adverse in the storm.  Every gushing fountain was the dwelling of a
nymph; dryads shared with man the shelter and repose of groves; on
each hill an ore ad presided benignantly over tile shepherds and their
flocks; while a goddess, more fruitful than "the silver-shafted queen,
for ever chaste," glided before the reapers, and shook the golden harvest from her lap on every plain.  Speakers and writers the most
popular, were so because they shared most, and expressed most clearly,
the popular feeling.  Of all literatures, the Grecian is most clearly
marked with a thoroughly out-of-door character.  Fresh morning air
breathes through and glows about its twin firs~births of Poetry and
Philosophy, like the clear sky which still hangs above the two lofty
peaks of Parnassus. One of the most delightful treatises that antiquity
has transmitted to us, is the (~conomics of Xenophon, in which the
pursuits and pleasures of husbandry are described in that beautiful
manner which best befits the subject.  And Pindar, as if expressing
the universal conviction, as well as the most cherished affection of his
race, has said, that "he deserves to be called the most excellent, who
knows much of nature."
Respecting the harmony of the physical temperature, landscapes,
and literature of Greece, an intelligent traveller has recently testified
as follows:  "The beauty of the scenery, so far as my experience
extends, was unsurpassed by any in the world.  For no where are
land and water mixed together in such just proportions; islands and
bays break the monotony of the one, and relieve and repeat the beauties of the other; and no where do soft valleys fade more insensibly 
SCE]NERY  AND  MIND.
into sublime  mountains: and when one of these was crowned by
forests, and the other richly cultivated and studded with gardens and
habitations, it must have surpassed all other lands, and almost does so
now." It is evident that, if the climate was not so luxurious as that
of Egypt, it was far more exhilarating, and instead of tending to enervate, was sufficiently severe always to invigorate, while it was at the
same time so genial as to invest the general aspect of nature with the
loveliest charm, and to awaken all the more delicate emotions of the
human heart. We know from her admiring writers, that in that land
of the cicada and the nightingale, each sound was melody, and all the
hues of earth and heaven were harmonious, like the leaves of "Spring's
sweetest book, the rose." Fine thought was spontaneous and yet perfect, as the song of nature's own melodists, "singing of summer in fullthroated ease;" and the softest combinations of articulate expression
were but echoes of the notes which joyous zephyrs elicited along the
cliffs of Parnes, or wafted from the groves of Colonus. The deification
of enthusiasm, embodied in the worship of Dionyaos, cannot, under
such circumstances, excite surprise. Among a people so fill of inspiration, adoration under some form was a grateful vent, and a primary
necessity. The agrarian religion of the Pelasgic herdsmen to the last
occupied the Athenian acropolis, while the later and more delicate
system of Ionian mythology spread its temples over the subjacent
plains. This latter is known to modern times in the literature of clas sical paganism.  The pleasing ritual which the beech-woods of Thrace
contributed to that system, in the worship of Apollo and the Muses,
was a romantic element which found easy access to the Greek mind,
and was welcome there. Oracular places testified that earth was the
vehicle of revelations to man, whether it were by her own vaporous
breath, whispering in the oak branches, the flight and voices of her
creatures, or the sportive cycles into which inscribed leaves were
21
i 
SCENERY AND MIND.
strown by the wind. Hence arose the pantheism of antiquity, which
worshiped earth herself as the supreme divinity; a self-originated
storehouse of all power and knowledge, in whose awful centre, over
which Delphi stood, all beneficent and malignant virtues were permit ted to contend and awe the world with the sublime mystery of their
strife.
The Greek mythology exhibits much more appreciation of, and
minuter inquisition into natural phenomena than the literature of the
Romans. To the mind of the latter nation every thing was more
objective; and yet the master-spirits among them were far from being
indifferent to the beauties and sublimities of the material world. The
fact of Catullus having a villa so far from Rome as the peninsula of
Sermione, where he could look at rugged Alps, is but one of many
instances we have of Romans in love with natural beauty.  The best
minds there, as elsewhere, knew that the true method of viewing all
created things, is to unite poetry to science, and to enlist both in the
pursuit of truth, in order that both may purify the heart and aggrandize the mind. Said Cicero, "There is nothing so delightful in literature as that branch which enables us to discern the immensity of
nature; and which, teaching us magnanimity, rescues the soul from
obscurity." The practice of this great man comported with his theory,
and substantiated it. He tells us in his letters, that when most crushed
with professional cares, he would retire for weeks together from public
life, and recreate himself in his quiet Cuman villa, where he enjoyed
fresh breezes from the Tuscan ocean, that rolled beneath his windows,
and where, thus invigorated, he wrote his famous six books upon
Government. Such thinkers ever derive their finest inspiration and
firmest strength from great nature, whose every kingdom they pant to
explore; their imperial career is "known to every star and every
wind that blows," giving the assurance that what they say and do will
22 
S5CENERY AND  MIND.
survive in perpetually augmented power, " when tyrants' crests and
tombs of brass are spent." In all their purposes and pursuits, they
aspire only to a place
"Amid th' august and never-dying light
Of constellated spirits, who have gained
A name in heaven, by power of heavenly deeds."
No writer, among the Romans, has shown a greater relish  for
natural beauty, than Horace.  He might well rank himself among the
"lovers of the country;" not only as his works abound in its praises,
but because he could prefer his Sabine retreat to a distinguished position at the court of Augustus. The odes of this accurate observer of
men and things abound with exquisite pictures of rural pursuits, connected with the diversified incidents and manners of life.  If he celebrates the powers of wine, the pleasure of sitting under the umbrageous
foliage and luscious clusters is not forgotten. If the charms of his
mistress be the theme of his song, the rose is not more beautiful, nor
has the violet a perfume more sweet.  When war is portrayed, he forgets not to contrast its pains and its bloody horrors with the tranquil
and innocent pleasures of a smiling landscape, enlivened with the hum
of rural sport and prolific cultivation. The woods and fields he loved
were enjoyed as often as possible; and when confined to his couch at
Rome, he still delights in the remembrance of vernal and vintage incidents, when vigorous husbandmen urge their team, and happy peasants
shout the harvest-home.   "Ah!" exclaims he, " how delighted I am,
when wandering among steep rocks and the sombre wilderness; since
the shades of forests and the murmuring of waters inspire my fancy,
and will render me renowned. Sing, oh! ye virgins, the beauties of
Thessalian Tempe, and the wandering isle of Delos:-celebrate, oh!
23 
SCENERY AND MIND.
ye youths, the charms of that goddess, who delights in flowing rivers
and the shades of trees; who lives on the mountain of Algidus, among
the impenetrable woods of Erymanthus, and on the green and fertile
Cragus."
Virgil alludes less frequently to the climate and scenery of Italy,
but he was thoroughly imbued with the mild splendor which adorns
that beautiful clime.  Though he seems always wishing for the cool
valleys of Hotmus, and is most acutely appreciative of the more classical regions of Greece, he was by no means indifferent to the diversified charms of his native land.  This we know from his history, can
perceive it in his writings, and have felt it most when standing amid
the glories that mantle his chosen grave.
The Romans, not less than the Greeks,  in feeling their way
through mythologic gloom, were conscious of a preternatural awe
which gleamed upon them from cavernous waters and darkened from
shaggy hills.   "Where is a lofty and deeply-shaded grove," writes
Seneca, "filled with venerable trees, whose interlacing boughs shut out
the face of heaven, the grandeur of the wood, the silence of the place,
the shade so dense and uniform, infuse into the breast the notion of a
divinity."  Hence the quickened imagination of the ancients, striving
to supply a void which nature had created but could not fill, peopled
each grove, fountain, or grotto, with a captivating train of sylvan
deities.  Intercourse with these, in the scenes which  they sanctified,
was deemed more auspicious to health and morals, than the arid and
vitiating influence of crowded towns.   Plutarch, for instance, after
asserting that the troubled life of cities is injurious to the study of
philosophy, and that solitude is the school of wisdom, proceeds to
show, that the pure air of the country, and the absence of all disturbance from within, conduce most to the instruction and purification
of the soul.   "On this account, also," he adds, "tthe temples of the
24 
S CEN'ERY  AND  M.IND. 
gods, as many as were constructed in ancient times, were.always - in
solitary places, especially the temples of the Muses and of Pan, and
of the Nymphs of Apollo, and of as many as were guides of  harmony;
judging, I suppose, that cities were necessarily fearful and polluted
places for the education of youth."
In contemplating the relative influence of scenery on mind, we
shall probably conclude that mountains exert the greatest and most
salutary power.  The intellect of a people, in its primitive unfoldings
amid elemental grandeurs, lies as it were in Nature's arms, feeds at her
breast, looks up into her face, smiles at her smiles, shudders  at her
frowns, is adorned  with'her gracefulness, and  fortified with  her
strength.  Beauty and sublimity are thus interfused and commingled
with the whole substance of the mind, as the glow of perfect health
mixes itself with the whole substance. of the body, unthought of, it
may be, until the world is reminded of its potent fascination in deeds
the mightiest and most beneficent.  The mind and works of individuals
tend strongly to assimilate with the nature of their parent soil.  Dr.
Clarke thought that the lofty genius of Alexander was nourished by
the majestic presence of mount Olympus, under the shadow of which
he may be said to have been born and bred.  Grand natural scenery
tends permanently to affect the character of those cradled  in its
bosom, is the nursery of patriotism the most firm and eloquence the
most thrilling.  Elastic as the air they breathe, free and joyous as the
torrents that dash through their rural possessions, strong as the granite
highlands from which they wring a hardy livelihood, the enterprising
children of the hills, noble and high-minded by original endowment,
are like the glorious regions of rugged adventure they love to occupy.
This is an universal rule.   The Foulahs dwelling on the high Alps of
Africa, are as superior to the tribes living beneath, as the inhabitants
of Cashmere are above the ilindoos, or as tthe Tyrolese are nobler
4
25 
26                    5~EN~RY  AND  MIND.
tilan tile Arab race.  Tile pilysical aspect and moral traits of nations
are in a great measure influenced by tileir local position, circumstances
of climate, popular traditions, and tile scenery in tile midst of wilicil
tiley arise.  Tile transition from tile monotonous plains of Lombardy
to tile bold precipices of Switzerland is, in outward nature, exactly
like tilat, in inward cilaracter, from tile crouciling and squalid app earance of tile brutalized peasant, to tile independent air and indomitable
energy of tile free-born an(1 inte~igent mountaineer.  Tile atilletic
form and fearless eye of tile latter bespeaks tile freedom ile ilas won to
enjoy and perpetuate, tile invigorating elements ile buffets in ilardy
toil, and tile daring aspirations ile is fearless and fervid to indulge.
Liberty ilas ever pref6rred to dwell in iligil places, and tilence comes
sile down tilrougil fields and towns, revealing tile glory of iler count&
nance, and diffusing iler inspiration tilrougil undaunted breasts.
"Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starr~ lights
She heard the torrents meet.
Within her palace she did rejoice,
self-gathered in her prophet-mind;
But fragments of her miglity voice
Came rolilug on the wind."
Tilere is in tile elements of our ilumanity a perpetual sympatily
witil tile accompaniments of its first development.  Nearly all tile
ileroism, moral excellence, and ennobling ilterature of tile world, ilas
been prolluced by tilose wilo, in infancy and youtil, were fostered by
tile influence of exalied regions, wilere rocks and wilderness are piled
`in bold and inimitable silapes of savage grandeur, tinged witil tile ilues 
S-CENERY AN-D MIND.
of untold centuries, and over which awe-inspiring storms often sweep
with thunders in their train.  This.is the influence which  more than
half created the Shakspeares, Miltons, Wordsworths,- Scotts, Coleridges,
Irvings, Coopers, Bryants, and Websters of  the world;  and without
much personal acquaintance with such scenes, it is impossible for a
reader to comprehend their highest individuality of character so as
fully to relish the best qualities of their works.
Nearest allied to mountains in their natural effects, is the influence
of oceans on national mind.  The infinite is most palpably impressed
upon the boundless deep; and wherever thought is accustomed with
unimpeded wing to soar from plains, or traverse opening vistas through
towering hills, that it may hover over the azure waste of waters
becalmed, or outspeed their foam-crested billows in wildest storms,
there will literature present the brightest lineaments and possess the
richest worth.  The Greek was a hardy mountaineer, with  the most
delicate faculties of body and soul, but he was not imprisoned by his
mountains.  Whenever he scaled a height, old Ocean, gleaming with
eternal youth, wooed him to her embrace, in order to bear him to
some happy island of her far-off domain.  On every hand constantly
appeared the two greatest stimulants on earth to emotion and thought.
The voice of the Mountains, and the voice of the Sea, "each a mighty
voice," were ever rousing and guiding him; each counteracting the
ultra influence of its opposite.  The sea expanded the range and scope
of his thoughts, which the mountain-valleys might have hurtfully
restrained.   For want of this salutary blending of excitement and
control, it is, perhaps, mainly owing that neither Tyre nor Carthage,
notwithstanding their power and wealth, occupies any notable place in
the intellectual history of mankind.  But to the Greeks, the waste of
waters was an inexhaustible mine of mental wealth. They were an
amphibious race, lords of land and sea. On shore and afloat they
21 
SCENERY  AND MIND.
were eager listeners to the two great heralds, "Liberty's chosen music,"
calling them to freedom;'and nobly did they answer to the call, when
the sound of the mighty Pan was ringing on their soul, at Marathon
and Thermopyle, at Salamis and Platea.
Thirlwall, and Frederic Schlegel, have both called attention to
the fact, that the literature of the West is differenced from the literature of the East, by the same character which distinguishes Europe
from its neighboring continents,-the great range of its coasts, compared with the extent of its surface.  And Goethe suggests that "perhaps it is the sight of the sea from youth upward, that gives English
and Spanish poets such an advantage over those of inland countries."
Herein the great German undoubtedly spoke from his own feelings;
for he never saw'the sea till he went to Italy in his thirty-eighth year;
and "many-sided" as he was, he doubtless would have been a much
greater and more comprehensive master had he dwelt nearer the ocean
strand.  Francis Horn, in his survey of German literature, alludes to
this point.  " Whatever is indefinite, or seems so, is out of keeping
with Goethe's whole frame of mind: every thing with him is terra
frma or an island: there is nothing of the infinitude of the sea. This
conviction forced itself upon me, when for the first time, at the northernmost extremity of Germany, I felt the sweet thrilling produced by
the highest'sublimity of Nature.  Here Shakspeare alone comes forward, whom one finds every where, on mountains and in valleys, in
forests, by the side of rivers and of brooks.  Thus far Goethe may
accompany him: but in sight of the sea, Shakspeare is by himself."
Solger, also dwelling far in the interior, lamented  the necessary
remoteness of a power, habitual converse with which, a chance view
had assured him, would produce the noblest effects.  He is speaking
of his first sight of the sea: -" Here, for the first time, I felt the
impression of the illimitable, as produced by an object of sense, in its
fiull majesty."
28 
SCENERY AND MIND.
Alfieri accustomed himself to lonely walks on the wild sea-shore
near Marseilles, and those local influences gave a perpetual tone and
energy to his mind.   Every evening, after plunging in Neptune's
domain, he would retreat to a recess where the land jutted out, and
.there would he sit, leaning against a high rock which concealed from
his sight the land behind him, while before and around he beheld
nothing but the sea and the heavens.
"Blue roll'd the waters, blue the sky
Spread like an ocean hung on high."
The sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting up and embellishing
these two immensities; and there he passed many an hour in auspicious
rumination and mental joy.  Happy are they who love the scent of
wild flowers in solitary woods, and with equal gladness listen to the
melody of waters as they die along the smooth  beach, or crash in
thunders against the craggy coast.  Thrice happy are the ardent worshipers at some mountain-shrine, whence  they may contemplate a
scene like this under " the opening eye-lids of the morn," or when the
bold outlines of great Nature's temple are thrown into fine relief
against a" sky crimsoned with sunset hues.  The rising of day at sea,
and descending day on the hills, are the most sublime and suggestive
scenes man can view.  The sun marries earth and ocean in harmony
full of heavenly awe.  This is felt at evening, when there is no filmy
haze to break the softness of the west, where golden rays spread
gently through the highest ether, and all is blended over the vast and
glowing concave; or when in lurid splendor he glides from peak to
peak, his rays flashed and reflected from cloud to cloud, as he sinks
from hill to hill, presaging coming storms.  Not less fascinating is the
magic of light on blue unruffled waters sleeping undisturbed at early
29 
.SCENERY AND MIND.
dawn, or gently curling their rippling surface to catch  the dancing
sunbeams and reflect their mimic glories.  To one standing on earth,
the god of day appears with weary pace to seek repose; but at sea,
he rises all fresh and glowing from his briny couch, not in softened
beauty, but full of dazzling splendor, bursting at once across the
threshold of the deep, with the firm and conscious step of immortal
youth.  Then, earth, air, and sky, are all in unison, and their calm
sublime repose is rapture to the grandest souls.  With  Beattie's Minstrel, they are ready to exclaim,
"Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields!
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven,
Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!"
Lakes, also, have a marked influence on mind.   Switzerland has
ever been a favorite resort for those who are rich in native endowment,
and whose best wealth is elicited by contact with natural greatness.
The most tumultuous spirits have greatest need of repose, and with
keenest relish enjoy the placid and quiet feelings which belong peculiarly to a lake-" as a body of still water under the influence of no
current; reflecting therefore the clouds, the light, and all the imagery
of the sky and surrounding hills; expressing also and making visible
the changes of the atmosphere, and motions of the lightest breeze,
and subject to agitation only from the winds
30 
S C]ENERY AND  MIIND.
"The visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With  all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake!"
31
One cannot easily walk unmoved where water, fresh from mountain-springs, "doth make sweet music with th' enamell'd stones," and
verdant islands float far out on a surface resembling molten silver,
thus affording the most enchanting objects to the excursive view.
Around this central mirror, prone to the dazzling sun, let shrubbery
and trees wave to the touch of zephyrs, terraces display their tangled
beauties, fields and gardens, studded with elegant villas, swell towards
bleak hills, surmounted by peerless and brilliant Alps, all magnificently
repeated in the limpid wave below, and you have the bright summer
scene which glows from the bosom of Leman in the foreground of
Mont Blanc, and renders supremely beautiful the sacred solitude so
delightful at Lucerne.  Watt botanized on the fragrant banks of Loch
Lomond, and fortified his severer studies by the rugged majesty of the
Grampians.  Hialler, Zimmermann, and Lavater, sunk many a sorrow
in the lake around Zurich, and Gibbon wrought out his mighty task
under the lofty inspiration enjoyed at Lausanne.  The product and
proof of this potency are signalized in the memorable passage, where
he describes the close of his vast undertaking: "I have presumed to
mark the moment of conception, (amid the ruins of Rome);  I shall
now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance.  It was on the
day, or rather night, of the 27th June, 1787, between the hours of
eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a
summer-house in my garden.   After laying down my  pen, I took
several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect 
SC ENERY AND MIND.
of the country, the lake, and the mountains.  The air was temperate,
the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected upon the
waters, and all Nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame."
Fountains, brooks, and rivers, impart some of the fairest aspects to
the landscape, and stamp many valuable impressions on the mind.  If
the sea most abounds in that salt which seasons substantial and enduring thought, those streams, however small, which connect the remotest
island therewith, are not entirely devoid of like power.   It would
seem that a sagacious love' of nature was the true Egeria who taught
wisdom to Numa in the grotto.  When he worshiped the nymph at
the fountain, and Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in the
water, they appear to have made that element necessary in the loves
of all minds tenderly or profoundly moved.   Petrarch sung of it at
the source of the Sorgue, Vaucluse, and by the rushing Rhone at
Avignon.   Rousseau celebrated its inspiring influence in the rural
haunts he miost loved; and Byron prolonged the strain over almost
every renowned sea, lake, river, and fountain of the world. "Where
a spring rises or a river flows," said Seneca, "there should we build
altars and offer sacrifices," —an impulse which has been felt by the best
hearts of every age.  A thousand'charms gather around one of those
little currents of'" loosened silver" that sing along the mossy channel,
or leap down craggy heights, over which trees throw their protecting
arms and imbibe grateful spray. How invigorating, with angle and
book, or all alone with one's own thoughts, to trace the wild but gladsome offspring of the hills, now contracted by gloomy firs and half lost
in dark ravines,-now sparkling from the deepest shadow, broken
into dimples and bounding to the sun,- anon sweeping wild flowers to
its bosom, and with augmented wave washing the gnarled and spread
32 
S CENERY AND MIND.
ing roots which jut out here and there from impending banks, with
fringes of dripping weeds,- and finally losing its tributary beauty in
a mightier stream.  "Laugh of the Mountain," is the title given to a
brook by a Spanish poet; and Bryant is not less happy in characterizing this fair feature of the world.
"The rivulet
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks,
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice
In its own being."
The chief rivers of every clime have ever furnished the favorite
themes of leading minds.   Darius was so charmed with the river
Tearus, that he commemorated his attachment by erecting a votive
column on its brink.   Where rolled Ilyssus, was the best school
of Athens; and on the shores of Arno and Cam, Milton acquired his
best training and enjoyed the happiest life; as did Thompson, thrilled
with the murmurs of the Jed.  The philosophers of Shiraz composed
their most celebrated works near the shores of the Rochnabad; while
by the sacred Ganges, near Benares, erudite teachers instruct their
pupils, after the manner of Plato, walking in their gardens.  Aufidus,
the Tiber, and the Po, had their respective admirers in Horace, Virgil,
and Ovid, and the reader need not be told that all tongues unite
to celebrate the Rhine.  Calimachus has immortalized the beautiful
waters of the Inachus, while the Mincio and the Tagus boast their
Boccacio and Camoens; and the lovers of English letters know full
well that the Severn, Trent, Avon, Derwent, Dee, and Thames, have
been distinguished by the praises of the mightiest pens.
Modern literature, the production of northern regions, is imbued
with a wild and romantic element strongly distinguished from the
5
33 
SCENERY AND  MIND.
severe simplicity of the classic south.  This contrast has its counterpart, and much of its producing cause, in the characteristic scenery
of its origin.  In old Greece, the lovely climate had just vicissitudes
enough to impress a happy variety on the experience and coinage of
mind; while their free institutions, and the deep wisdom of their philosophers, conduced towards the production of those imperishable
monuments  of grandeur  and beauty before which  the genius of
humanity still reverently bends.   But England,  and the kindred
regions of Germany, have in their less favored climates a depth of
gloom which is known to characterize the northern spirit, in which
external nature is admirably harmonious with the intellectual structure, by its influence thereupon eliciting the noblest efforts.  The
literature of a country is truly national, just so far as it bears upon
it the stamp of national character.  Among the external causes which
tend to create this exalted type of individuality, natural scenery and
climate are undoubtedly the most obvious.   The features of their
nativlandscape give form and color to the thoughts and words of
all creative minds.  For instance, through the living speech, and over
the speaking page of the Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-American race, one
can easily recognize the daily vicissitudes and fluctuating seasons,those tints and hues of vernal beauty, summer promise, autumnal
wealth, and wintry desolation,-those dimly shrouding mists which
alternate with brilliant light,- and which render objects more lovely
and harmonious to those who realize the invisible and perceive the
spiritual, who unite all worlds in the comprehensive grasp of their
imagination, and thus substantiate in effective use that which to others
is only shadowy and remote.
As is the scenery, so are national letters and works of art. We
children of mists, clouds, woods, darkening tempests, and weeping
rain, produce and prefer the beauty of mystery and indefiniteness, in
34 
SCENERY AND MIND.
other words, romantic beauty. If we would cultivate a keen pleasure
in definite beauty, as it is seen in Homeric literature, and as it stood
mightily exemplified in the severely gorgeous splendor of the Acropolis, we must transport our mind at least, if not our person, to other
climes.  There we may best emulate the consummate excellence which
results from the coalescence of alacrity with depth, and which was
most happily impressed upon the language Plato spoke, and in the
symmetry which still survives in the fragmentary  Propylea and
Olympeion.  But if we would behold at once combined the definite
beauty, shapely vastness, instantaneously recognized unity, and cheerful grandeur, most characteristic of the scenery, literature, and art of
an immortal land, let us for a moment glance at the magnificent panorama, as seen from the lofty terrace through the golden-hued colonnades of the Parthenon.  Linger here a while till the eye becomes
accustomed to the scene, and imagination is able to refit the mutilated
forms, and you will easily understand the spirit of the old religion,
and its consecrated works.  " There is no mixture of light and shade,
no half-concealing, half-revealing, as in the symbolical cathedrals of
the Christian faith.  There are no rays of divine darkness running
alongside of the rays of light, and sinking into the ground beneath
the altar of the East.  All is open to the unbounded blue ether above
and the vertical rays of a noonday sun, and the trembling visitations
of the unimpeded moonbeams, a very house of light, unstained by
painted glass, undarkened by vaulted roofs, unintercepted by columns
and arcades, and with the instantaneous perception of unity unmarred
by the cruciform shape."  Who can ever forget the electrical effect
produced when first beholding the blue sky between the columns of a
classic ruin?  The shape, the tallness, which makes the space seem
narrow, the straight hard line which renders the perfect contour so
definite, all startle the eye with its firm and stable symmetry, even
35 
36               5~ENERY AND MINI).
after one has been long accustomed to the reverently swerving lines
of a cathedral, and to the bold and trustful curve of the Gothic arch,
throwing itself from pillar to pillar, with its segmental circle, like the
unfolding of Christian truth here below, whose perfect whole is in
heaven.
The mental creations of central Europe, and the still more romantic regions of the north, are equally characterized by an indefiniteness
exactly comporting with the aspects and temperature of the material
kingdoms around.  The human soul, thirsting after immensity, immutability, and unbounded duration, needs some tangible oThect from
which to take its flight,- some point whence to soar from the present
into the future, from the limited to the infinite,- and is likely to be
most vigorous in its capacity and productions where such facilities
most abound.  Mere space, contemplated under the dome of heaven,
prostrates, rather than sustains, the mind; but Alpine heights, seen at
a glance where earth and sky mingle, constitute the quickening and
fortifying regions where mundane understanding and celestial imagination most happily blend in the suggestion of thoughts such as common language never expressed.  Deep caverns, contracted lakes, projecting crags, impending avalanches, and glittering pinnacles, which
rise in serene majesty till they are lost in mist and cloud, rolling over
their summits like the waves of ocean, realize prospects which seem to
conduct the contemplator from this to another world.  The magnificence thus poured on the mind naturally imbues its faculties, and will
be reproduced in living speech, or for ever glow from a graphic pen.
The solitude seems holy where every grand feature constitutes a
hymn, and a sublime melancholy impresses itself upon the thoughtful
soul.
Northern legends and apparitions partake much more of the
spiritual and infinite than did the sylvan deities and semi-human 
SCENERY AND MIND.
mythology of the classic South; and modern romance, with its prevailing gloom and indefinite character, is much more appalling than
the sunny and social personifications which antiquity produced. The
natural phenomena which abound in a wild, uncultivated country,
powerfully conspire to create the illusions of fancy which so much
modify reason's severest works. The preternatural appearances commonly said to occur in the German mountains and Scottish highlands,
whose lofty summits and unreclaimed valleys are shrouded with tempestuous clouds, may be explained on the same philosophical principle,
whence the most potent local inspiration is derived. That which is
strongly felt, is not only easily seen, but as easily believed; and an
appetite for the marvellous, constantly excited, is made keen to detect
and multiply visions and prognostics, until each heath or glen has its
unearthly visitants, each family its omen, each hut its boding spectre,
and superstition, systematized into a science, is expounded by wizards
and gifted seers. The character of a primitive mythology, mingling
more or less with the best literature of a nation, is always intimately
connected with that of the scenery and climate in which it arose.
Thus the graceful Nymphs and Naiads of Greece; the Peris of Persia,
gay as the colors of the rainbow, and odorous as flowers; the Fairies
of England, who in airy circles "dance their ringlets to the whistling
wind," have forms and functions delicate and beautiful, like the countries in which they dwell; while "the Elves, Bogles, Brownies, and
Kelpies, which seem to have legitimately descended, in ancient Highland verse, from the Scandinavian. Dvergar, Nisser, &c., are of a stunted
and malignant aspect, and are celebrated for nothing better than
maiming cattle, bewildering the benighted traveller, and conjuring out
the souls of newborn infants."
It is an occasion for special gratitude to God that there are yet
wild spots and wildernesses left, unstained fountains and virgin hills,
31 
S CENE~RY AND MIIND.
where avarice has little dominion, and whence thought may take the
widest range. These exercise analogous power over the popular mind,
furnish the purest stimulus to noble exertion, and have ever developed
the strongest patriotism, intensest energy, and most valuable letters of
the world. So far as we can derive capacities from inanimate things,
and be impelled by the activities which depend on place, mountains,
moors, forests and rocky shores, are the localities most favorable for
vigorous and prolific life. The language we speak, and the glorious
literature it has preserved, are the accumulated products and historical
proof of this. When the Saxons were called in as friends and allies
by the Romanized Britons, they assembled in great numbers with their
king Hengist, during the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era,
and England continued to be peopled by them. But instead of friends
they soon became masters, and the ancient inhabitants, the Britons,
disappeared; after which, the Saxon tongue, laws, government, and
manners soon overspread the land; so that it may literally be said,
"the British constitution came out of the woods of Germany."
The real and ideal are most closely allied in the grandest creations
of nature and the finest conceptions of mind. Although hoary cliffs
and soaring heights are among the most palpable facts of earth, it is
on them that we always seem to be most in the domain of fancy. It
is impossible to overstate our indebtedness to those gigantic disturbances of the solid globe, by which mountains, with all their accompaniments of wild and rugged features, were upheaved, and substituted, in
bold and picturesque beauty, for dead level plains. Without this
contrast of expressive objects, earth would have told out little of those
sublime truths, of which now every hill is a prophet, every stone a
book. The ancients frequently erected temples and statues to the
genius of the place; and these were often in retired localities, like
Iero, the sacred city of AJsculapius, occupying a mountain-hollow, the
38 
5 C E N E R Y A N D  M I N D.               39
most secluded in Greece.  According to Pliny, liis countrymen, too,
felt tliat Minerv~a, as well as Diana, inliabits tlie forests.  Among tlie
woods of Etruria, tlie great lawgiver and ruler to wliom Rome was
under greater obligations than to Romulus, sought refuge from the
cares tliat attended the government of a turbulent but growing nation,
and was the lIrst pagan sovereign ever inspired to erect a fane to Peace'
and Faith.  Akenside linAy alludes to the sacred awe, with which the
wilderness and bidden dells, stretching along the acclivities of a high
mountain, are contemplated by persons of refined imagination:
"Mark the sable woods,
That shade sublime yon mountain's nodding brow.
With what religious awe the solemn scene
C~mmands your steps! as if tile reverend form
Of Minos, or of Numa, should forsake
Th' Elysian seats; and down the embowenug glade
Move to yom pausing eye?'
When we meditate in plains, the globe appears youthful and
imbecile; among crags and mountains, it exhibits energy and the
gravity of age.  All primitive aspects indicate a deep solemnity, and
generate invincible power.  We feel the spirit of the universe upon
us, and are not surprised that when the shepherd in Virgil sought
Love, he found him a native of the rocks.  Traces of the divinity
most abound in localities apart from throngs of mankind, where one
can best establish the equilibnum of the soul by that of solitude, feeling a~ life on the surface of things and eternity in their depths. Nature
sheds much of a supernatural influence around the superior souls, constituted in harmony with herself.  Physical element,s become plastic in
the hands of such, and receive an impression not less bAlliant than 
SCENERY AND MIND.
enduring.  Their mind is made to act as a prism, under whose influence
the simplest elements assume the most exquisite combination of hues;
and thus inanimate kingdoms and artificial lessons are converted into
golden visions of thought and feeling.  Form, color, light and shade
are attendant handmaids, ever ready to impart a graceful and peren nial utterance to the sublimest conceptions, and adorn rugged strength
with charms more real and captivating than that of words.
This is as often verified in art as in literature.  Hogarth began life
a silver-engraver, Chantry a wood-carver, and Raeburn a goldsmith;
but ruled by the love fed in early intercourse with nature, their course
was changed, and each was matured  in his peculiar department of
excellence.  Romney, when but a child, studied coloring before the
rainbow, the purple perspective and gleaming lake; he took his first
lessons in composition through wild woods, fruitful valleys, and over
the loftiest mountains within reach.  Mortimer with strongest impulse
studied the sea, chafed and foaming, fit "to swallow navigation up,"
with ships driven before tempests, or strown in ruin.  These, passionately seen and felt, gave him a skilful artistic hand.  Richard Cosway
was first kindled with a love for painting by a chance glance at two
picturesque works from Rubens, at Tiverton; and a beautiful piece of
wood is still shown in Suffolk, where the ancient trees, winding glades,
and sunny nooks, inspired Gainsborough with the love of art. Thence
he emerged the first landscape painter of'his age.  A few prints, illustrative of Michael Angelo's genius, found in his father's library, and
conned beneath gnarled oaks, made the entlihusiastic Fusili a master in
his way; and a perusal of " The Jesuit's Perspective," when only eight
years old, led an observant youth into the open fields, and prepared
the way for Sir Joshua Reynolds to become the highest model and
most elegant teacher of British art.  It is well known that Salvator
Rosa once resided with a band of robbers, and that the impressions
40 
SCENERY AND  MIND.
received from the rocks, caves, dens, and mountains they inhabited,
gave a decided tone and direction to his taste.  His original bent was
thus so strongly developed, that he loved rather to stand on the ruins
of nature, than to admire her soft and beautiful combinations; hence
his imagination became daring and impetuous, his pencil rugged and
sublime, from prolific sources armed to throw a savage grandeur over
all his works.  Claude Lorrain, on the contrary, spent his happiest
days in sunny scenes, where the earth was enamelled with flowers, and
heaven's mild radiance beamed perpetually on his brow.  He early
learned to mix a pallet of colors from every realm of beauty, and all
his pictures teem with loveliness and peace.
In a fine picture, as in a favorite book, it is easy to identify what
we behold with the life of the author; and probably we shall trace
his first impressions in the peculiarity of his style, as well as in the
general tenor of his thoughts.  Milton found his most genial inspiration amidst the embowered lawns of Vallombrosa; Gray was permanently benefited by the solitude of the Chartreuse;  and Johnson
never rose higher in refined sentiment, than on the sea-beaten rock of
Iona.  To the great bard of Paradise Lost, nature ever imparted a
clear and steady light, shining brightly through the storms of tumultuous life, and kindling up, when all else was dark, a lustre worthy of
Eden in its first bloom.  Shakspeare possessed the most intense fondness for natural beauty, and displayed it in all his works.  "Images of
rural scenes are for ever floating on his mind, and there is scarce an
object, from the lofty mountain to thesequestered valley, from the
dark'tempest to the gray dawn and placid moonlight, from dreary
winter to warm and fragrant spring, that he has not depicted; gentle
airs, and murmuring rills, and sequestered groves, are features as
prominent in his dramas, as the beings that haunt them;  the vows
of love become indeed silver soft as they are whispered by  night
6
/
41 
S CENERY AND MIIND.
among pomegranate groves; life is more sweet among trees, and
stones, and running brooks, afar from public haunts; the gentle boy
sleeps more fitly among embowering woods, watched by fairy forms,
and sung to rest by the dirge of affection."  Like Milton, Shakspeare
seems to have dwelt with sincerest pleasure on the peaceful images of
rural life, and no one familiar with his history and thoughts can be
surprised that, as soon as he was enabled to escape from the artificialness of metropolitan life, he hastened to spend the evening of his
existence among the quiet hills and vales where in careless youth he
had wandered, gathering innumerable germs of the richest and most
magnificent thoughts.  Sir Walter Scott's great art lay in exact descriptions of nature and of character, a facility attained by the constant pursuit of some piece of striking scenery, or in watching the
spontaneous exhibition of unsophisticated character.  Fancy was resorted to only for filling up the interstices, or supplying vacancies in
the originals which nature furnished.  In youth, he read Hiool's Tasso
and Percy's Reliques of ancient poetry, beneath a huge platanus tree,
within the ruins of an old arbor near Kelso, the most beautiful and
romantic village in Scotland.  In full view lay the Tweed and the
Teviot, both famous rivers, the ancient castles of Roxburgh and a
ruined abbey, with the modern mansion of Fleurs, a landscape so
situated as to combine the ideas of ancient baronial splendor with
those of modern taste.  These were vividly associated with the grand
features of the scene around the young observer; and the historical
incidents, or traditional legens connected with them, gave to his impassioned soul an intense reverence for ancient ruins and chivalrous
enterprise.  Thenceforth his faculties were all awake, and fitted for
their work; giving to every field its battle, and to every rivulet its
song.   A  true man's productions everywhere are the types of his
mind, and reveal the scenes and circumstances of his early training.
/
42 
5~ENERY AND MIND.                     43
Edmund Burke grew up encompassed by tile gorgeous scenery around
the castle of Kilcolman; ~nd his great living successor in Parliament,
Shell,* gathered the best energies of his do~uence near tile ~ne woods
of Faitilley, and tile noble seat of tile Bolton family, wilen tile sullen
roar of tile ocean used to come over tile ilills to greet ilis youth, under
tile siladow of Dunbrody Abbey in ruins, wilere tile Nore and tile
Barrow met in a deep and splendid conflux witil ilis native Suir.  Tile
minds of tilese great men were tile transcripts of tile first scenes tiley
loved; and it is most pertinent to tilis tileme to remind tile reader
tilat one, perilaps greater tilan tiley, tile master statesman and orator
of ilis age, was cradled in tile rugged bosom of Alpine New Hampsilire, wilere all is cool, colossal, sublime.
On a flowery morning of spring, or in tile stillness of a clear autumnal nigilt,-in summer fruitfulness or wintry desolation,-w e feel,
if we do not ilear, tile rushing of tilat stream of life, wilicil from Orion
flows down to tile very ileart of eartil.  Hence tile declaration of
Burns,  "Tilere is scarcely any eartilly object gives me more-I do
not know ilow I silould call it plcasur~-but sometiliug wilicil exalts
me-sometiliug wilicil enraptures me-tilan to walk in tile sileltered
side of tile wood, or iligil plantation, in a cloudy winter-day, and ilear
tile stormy wind ilowling among tile trees, and roaring over tile plain.
It is my best season for devotion."  Campbell, too, courted tile
ile atil-clad wilderness-" ble ak-lifeless-and broken into numberless
glens-strewn witil rocks-and scantily clotiled witil copse-wood;
from tile dusky covert of wilicil he could observe tile wild deer darting
fortil at intervals and again vanisiling in a deeper and more distant
shade.  Bold rocks, fringed with wild flowers, rising in iluge and often
grotesque masses througil the purple heatil; streams and torrents
* While these sheets are passing through the press, news is received of the death of this
eminent man. 
44                    5 ~ENEnY  AND  MIND.
winding peacefully through the deep grassy glens, or dashing, in clouds
of spray, over some rugged precipice; the shrill pipe of the curlewthe blithe carol of the lark over head  the bleating of the goats from
the steep pastoral acclivities  the scream of the eagle from his eyrie
in the rocks:"-these were the sights and sounds which enlivened his
rambles and supplied his worth.  The youth of Byron was spent
mainly on the sea-shore, the heaths, and the hills, of the Doric north;
and when more seAuded in Newstead Abbey, the recollections of
childhood moulded his first song.
"When I roved, a yom~g highlander, o'er the dark heath,
And climb'd thy steep summit, 0 Morven! of snow;
To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath,
Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below."
(;ladsome wanderings in the sunshine among the hills, enlivened
by melodious waters and the song of birds, the changeful aspects of
fields and woods, gleamings of the far-off sea, ~nd mountains piercing
through clouds a pathway to the skies,-this is the paradise of all
minds nobly endowed, a~d not yet entirely debased.  It is when thus
environed and exercised that lofty impulses are kindled in genial blood.
Thus was felt and expressed the grandeur, beauty, pathos, dazzling
light and freezing gloom which mingled in the memories of Childe
liarold.  lle had profoundly experienced the truth that,
"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude;`tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd." 
S ]CENERY AND MIND.
We have purposely avoided copious reference to American
scenery, artists and authors, as corroborative of the positions assumed
in the foregoing disquisition.  We know something of the pictorial
illustrations so admirably executed for this work, and would gladly
allude to the diversified aspects characteristic of art, literature, and
scenery in our land.  But that department has been assigned to other
and abler pens. Our specific task will conclude with a remark or two
on the relation which nature sustains to religion, as an auxiliary in the
highest culture of mind.
What scene is more simple, or more sublime, than the vast solitude
of untainted nature, cast in a fresh yet giant mould, a silent and mighty
temple of the great God, wherein the pure spirit of love reigns and
smiles over all?  Pilgrimages were made to the oaks of Mamre, near
Hebron, from the time of Abraham to that of Constantine; and the
nations surrounding the divinely favored tribes conspired to attach the
idea of veneration to rivers and fountains, and were accustomed not
only to dedicate trees and groves to their deities, but ever to sacrifice
on high mountains: customs which were practised by the Jews themselves, previous to the building of Solomon's temple.  The beginning
of wisdom was among the wilds of Asia, and it was there that the God
of nature implanted grand ideas in the minds of shepherds meditating
on those antique plains and heights, teaching them to wonder and
adore.  As the loftiest mountains are surmounted with unsullied snow,
so the purest sentiments crowned their exalted souls, and for ever rendered them the chief source of fertilizing streams to all lands, through
every region of thought.
A  little child standing under the heaven bright with stars, once
asked its mother,-" Dear mother, are those yonder the open places,
which the glory of God shines throughli" Those were the old heavens
which infancy admired, and they yet proclaim the glory of their
45 
S CEN~ERY AND MIND.
Maker to the most matured.  The hills, the vales, and the ocean, have
never grown old, but still have wonders as innumerable as they are
lasting.  Not a realm of nature is unfolded to our gaze that does not
teem with beauties and sublimities bearing an antiquity more ancient
than the pyramids. The evening breeze is yet redolent of the balm
shed over Canaan, when Isaac went forth to meditate. Zion's hill has
survived its temple, and lifts its sacred brow to the same sun that
shone upon Thermopyle, and is swept by the same wind which laid
the armaments of Xerxes low. The rainbow we to-day admire, is the
same that was bent near the portal of the Ark; and the mighty rivers
of America bear with their billows a murmur kindred to the Nile, as
it moved the bulrushes of Egypt in which the child Moses nestled,
watched over by the sisterly love of Miriam.
To holy men of the earlier times, the exterior and interior life were
brought into perfect harmony, so as to produce that expansion of heart
which is the real cause that makes rural existence so delightful to men
of good will: for so sweet is it to them, that "they whose verse of
yore the golden age recorded, and its bliss on the Parnassian mountain," seem to have foreseen it in Arcadian dreams. They loved clear
waters, aspiring hills, with all the countless forms and tones which
each returning spring reproduced more fair than ever to their growing
appreciation.  Nature prompted purifying tears in their eyes, that
they might trace the goodness of their God in these his lower works,
wondering not that the Samaritan woman should have recognized and
confessed the Messiah at the fountain, whom Jewish sages knew not in
the temple. The fields and level shores were by them connected with
religious mysteries; for, Jesus standing by the lake of Genesareth
when the multitude pressed upon him, the two boats afloat and the
occupation of the fishermen, together with the walk through the corn
with the disciples on the Sabbath, were designed to make such an
46 
SCENERY AND MIND.
impression, tilat one Silould never enjoy tile beauties of nature, or tile
recreations of a country life, witilont being reminded of tile blessed
Redeemer.  But mountains are especially associated witil religion
tilrougil tile remembrance of tilat mount wilose name ilas given a
universal fame to tile pale verdure of tile olive, from tilat of Tab or,
and Sinai, and Epilraim, wilicil fed tile iloly Samuel.  We read in tile
~iad tilat Hector sacrificed on tile top of Ida; and tile summits of
mountains were ever selected, not only by tile Greeks, but by nations
taugilt direct from ileaven, as tile most appropriate situations wilereon
tileir altars sliould stand. It was on mountains tilat tile only true God
manifested ilimself to tile Hebrews of old, and it was on tilem tilat tile
tremendous mysteries of redemption were accomplisiled.  Connected
witil tilese grand objects, and in no small measure by tilem inspired,
was tile migilty energy wilicil sent tile apostle Paul to Mars Hill,
preaciling Jesus and tile resurrection; and long afterwards, in a feebler
degree, impelled Edward Irving to roll "tile ricil tilunders of ilis awful
voice," wilere mute tilousands stood enraptured amid tile glories of tile
Fritil of Fortil.
Persons accustomed to explore tile ruins of religious ilouses in England, and tile scenery peculiar to eacil, will often be struck witil tile
fact tilat tile several orders consulted tileir bigilest liappiness, as well
as greatest good, in fixing tile site of tileir respective foundations.
Evidently, mere convenience, or retirement, was not tileir cilief aim;
tiley felt tilat spin;tual culture would be most auspicious, wilere natural
cilarms most abound.  Tiley believed tilat in tile silrines wilicil Jeilovail ilad adorned witil tile clearest impress of ilis own attributes, and
in wilicil ile ilad bidden nature contribute iler ricilest gifts,- tile
glittering gems of iler mineral stores, tile fairest folds of iler tinted
drapery, tile delicate tracery of iler interlacing bougils, tile incense of
iler br9atiling flowers, tile music of iler gentlest zepilyrs, iler sigiling 
S NCENERY AND MIND.
foliage, chanting birds, and gliding waters,- they also could most
suitably offer adoration.  Quiet nooks, shut in by the curving river, as
Kirkstall; rocky banks, encompassed with verdant foliage, as Fountains; umbrageous and sequestered sea-coasts, as Netley; green plots
of smooth sward, traversed by some wild, romantic stream, as Tintern;
cool and solitary valleys, as Furness; lovely shores, where the swift
brook sparkles and bounds to the deep, as Beaulieu; -such were the
homes the early Christians loved.  And they had their reward.  Their
persons, their names, and the distinguishing features of their creeds,
true and false, have mainly passed away, but the scenes of their earthly
devotions are treasured by all the good.  Still we visit their ruins, to
mourn over their departed glories; "and still they live in fame, though
not in life."  We may not adopt the theology of those devout builders, but it would be well for us to emulate their taste, knowing that
while all sublunary things are transient, "a thing of beauty is a joy
for ever!"
The enthusiastic painter, Gainsborough, exclaimed on his deathbed,-" We  are all going to heaven, and Vandyke will be of the
party."  May the reader be imbued with something more divine than
mere taste, that he may survive anguish or ecstasy in the energies of
faith; and, soaring amid the infinite glories of the universe, at each
remove imbibing majestic charms of every hue and form, may he for
ever realize the high significancy of our theme, -SCENERY AND MIND.
48 
<~ {~;-~ ~
~ c it'
i                      1,     i
If.....
i(; [ t. i 
/ 
VIEW NEAR RONDOUT.
(HU N T I N G TO N.)
TEE village of Rondout, founded in 1808, by  the Delaware  and
Hudson Canal Company, is situated near the Walkill Creek on the
Hudson, about ninety miles above the city of New-York, and two
miles distant from Eddyville, where that Canal terminates.
In the effective and mellow little picture from which our engraving is taken, Mr. Huntington has pleasingly represented a secluded
and romantic nook on the creek, near its entrance to the Hudson.
In the background is a glimpse of the Catskill mountains.  The
picture is one of a pair belonging to Gen. John A. Dix, and is one
of the happiest efforts of the artist in this department, especially in
its coloring.
7 
hi
e 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED.
BY  J. F ENIMORE COOPER.
EVERY intellectual being has a longing to see distant lands.   We
desire to ascertain, by actual observation, the peculiarities of nations,
the differences which exist between the stranger and ourselves, and as
it might be all that lies beyond our daily experience.  This feeling
seems implanted in our nature, and few  who possess the means of
doing so fail to gratify it.  Every day increases the amount of the
intercourse between the people of different countries, and the happiest
results may be anticipated from this fusion of nations and the humanizing influences which are its consequences.  Those, however, who
are forbidden by circumstances to extend their personal observations
beyond the limits of their own homes, must be content to derive
their information on such subjects from the pen, the pencil, and the
graver.
We understand it to be the design of this work to aid in impartming a portion of the intelligence, necessary to appease these cravings
of our nature, and to equalize, as it might be, the knowledge of men
and things. Our own task is very simple. It will be confined to 
AIAMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
showing some of the leading peculiarities of the scenery of various
nations, and to direct the attention of the reader to the minor circumstances which give character to the landscape, but which are seldom
alluded to by the writers of graver works.
The great distinction between American and European scenery, as
a whole, is to be found in the greater want of finish in the former than
in the latter, and to the greater superfluity of works of art in the
old world than in the new. Nature has certainly made some differences, though there are large portions of continental Europe that,
without their artificial accessories, might well pass for districts in our
own region; and which forcibly remind the traveller of his native
home.  As a whole, it must be admitted that Europe offers to the
senses sublimer views and certainly grander, than are to be found
within our own borders, unless we resort to the Rocky Mountains, and
the ranges in California and New Mexico.
In musing on these subjects, the mind of the untravelled American
naturally turns first towards England.  He  has pictured to himself
landscapes and scenery on which are impressed the teeming history
of the past. We shall endeavor to point out the leading distinctions between the scenery of England and that of America, therefore,
as the course that will probably be most acceptable to the reader.
The prevalent characteristic of the English landscape is its air of
snugness and comfort. In these respects it differs entirely from its
neighbor, France.   The English, no doubt, have a great deal of
poverty and squalid misery among them. But it is kept surprisingly out of the ordinary view. Most of it, indeed, is to be found in
the towns, and even in them it is concealed in out of the way places
and streets seldom entered by the stranger.
There are places in America, more especially in the vicinities of
the large towns, that have a strong resemblance to the more crowded
52 
AMERICAN AND  EUROPEAN SCENERY. 
portions of England, though the hedge is usually wanting and the
stone wall is more in favor among ourselves than it appears ever to
have been among our ancestors.  The great abundance of wood, in
this country, too, gives us the rail and the board for our fences, objects
which the lovers of the picturesque would gladly see supplanted by
the brier and the thorn.   All that part of Staten Island, which  lies
nearest to the quarantine ground, has a marked resemblance to what
we should term suburban English landscape.  The neighborhoods of
most of the old towns in the northern States, have more or less of the
same character; it being natural that the descendants of Englishmen
should have preserved as many of the usages of their forefathers as
was practicable.  We know of no portion of this country that bears
any marked resemblance to the prevalent characteristics of an ordinary French landscape.   In France there are two great distinctive
features that seem to divide the materials of the views between them.
One is that of a bald nakedness of formal g7fUndes,ote  systematically
lined with trees, a total absence of farm-houses, fences, hedges, and walls,
little or no forest, except in particular places, scarcely any pieces of
detached woods, and a husbandry that is remarkable for its stiffness
and formality. The fields of a French acclivity, when the grain is
ripe, or ripening, have a strong resemblance to an ordinary Manchester
pattern-card, in which the different cloths, varying in color, are placed
under the eye at one glance. The effect of this is not pleasing. The
lines being straight and the fields exhibiting none of the freedom of
nature.   Stiffness and formality, indeed, impair the beauty of ninetenths of the French landscapes; though as a whole the country is
considered fine, and is certainly very productive. The other distinctive feature to which we allude is of a directly contrary character,
being remarkable for the affluence of its objects.  It often occurs in
that country that the traveller finds himself on a height that com
53 
AMERICAN AND  EUROPEAN SCENERY.
mands a view of great extent, which is literally covered with bourgs
or small towns and villages. This occurs particularly in Normandy,
in the vicinity of Paris, and as one approaches the Loire.  In such
places it is no unusual thing for the eye to embrace, as it might be in
a single view, some forty or fifty cold, grave-looking, chiselled bourg,
and villages, almost invariably erected in stone. The effect is not unpleasant, for the subdued color of the buildings has a tendency to
soften the landscape and to render the whole solemn and imposing.
We can recall many of these scenes that have left indelible impres sions on the mind, and which, if not positively beautiful in a rural
sense, are very remarkable.  That from the heights of Montmorenci,
near Paris, is one of them; and there is another, from the hill of St.
Catharine, near Rouen, that is quite as extraordinary.
The greater natural freedom that exists in an ordinary American
landscape, and the abundance of detached fragments of wood, often
render the views of this country strikingly beautiful when they are
of sufficient extent to conceal the want of finish in the details, which
require time and long-continued labor to accomplish.   In this particular we conceive that the older portions of the United States offer to
the eye a general outline of view that may well claim to be even of a
higher cast, than most of the scenery of the old world.
There is one great charm, however, that it must be confessed is
nearly wanting among us.  We allude to the coast.  Our own is, with
scarcely an exception, low, monotonous and tame.  It wants Alpine
rocks, bold promontories, visible heights inland, and all those other
glorious accessories of the sort that render the coast of the Mediterranean the wonder of the world.  It is usual for the American to
dilate on the size of his bays and rivers, but objects like these require
corresponding elevation in the land.  Admirable as is the bay of
New-York for the purposes of commerce, it holds but a very subor
54 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.           65
dinate place as a landscape among tile other havens of the world.
The comparison with Naples that has so often been made, is singularly
unjust, there not being two bays of any extent to be found, that are
really less alike than these.  It was never our good fortune to see
Constantinople or Rio de Janeiro, the two noblest and most remarkable scenes of this kind, as we have understood, known to the traveller.
But we much q~uestion if either will endure the test of rigid and severe
examination better than the celebrated Gulf of Napoli.  The color of
the water, alone, is a peculiar beauty of all the Mediterranean bays:
it is the blue of the deep sea, carried home to the very rocks of the
coast.  In this respect, the shores of America, also, have less claim to
beauty than those of Europe, generally.  The waters are green, the
certain sign of their being shallow. Similar tints prevail in the narrow
seas between llolland and England.  The name Qf llolland recalls a
land, however, that is even lower than any portion of our own with
which we are acquainted.  There are large districts in llolland that
are actually below the level of the high tides of the sea. This country
-is a proof how much time, civilization, and persevering industry, may
add even to the interest of a landscape.  While the tameness of the
American coast has so little to relieve it or to give it character, in
llolland it becomes the source of wonder and admiration.  r~e sight
of vast meadows, villages, farm-houses, churches, and other works of
art, actually lying below the level of the adjacent canals, and the
neighboring seas, wakes in the mind a species of reverence for human
industry.  This feeling becomes blended with the views, and it is
scarcely possible to gaze upon a Dutch landscape without seeing, at
the same time, ample pages from the history of the country and the
character of its people.  On this side of the ocean, there - are no
such peculiarities.   Time, numbers, and labor are yet wa~ting to
supp~y the defects of nature, and we must be content, for a while, 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
with the less teeming pictures drawn in our youth and comparative
simplicity.
On the American coast the prevailing character is less marked at
the northward and eastward than at the southward.  At some future
day, the Everglades of Florida may have a certain resemblance to
llolland.  They are the lowest land, we believe, in any~paft of this
country.
Taking into the account the climate and -its productions, the adjacent mountains, tile most picturesque outlines of the lakes, and the
works of art which embellish the whole, we tilink that most lovers of
natural scenery would prefer that around tile lakes of Como and Maggiore to that of any other place familiarly known to the traveller.
Como is ordinarily conceived to carry off the paii~ in Europe, and it
is not probable that the great mountains of the East or any part of
the Andes, can assemble as many objects of grandeur, sweetness, magnificence and art, as are to be found in this region.  Of course, our
own country has nothing of the sort to compare with it.  The Rocky
Mountains, and the other great ranges in the recent accession of territory, must possess many noble views, especially as one proceeds south;
but the accessories are necessarily wanting, for a union of art and
nature can alone render scenery perfect.
In the way of the wild, the terrific, and the grand, nature is sufficient of herself; but Niagara is scarcely more imposing than she is
now rendered lovely by the works of man.  It is true that this celebrated cataract has a marked sweetness of expression, if we may use
such a term, that singularly softens its magnificence, and now that men
are becoming more familiar with its mysteries, and penetrating into its
very mists, by means of a small steamboat,-tile admirer of nature
discovers a character different from that which first strikes the senses.
We regard it as hypercnticai to speak of the want of Alpine scenery 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
around Niagara.  On what scale must the mountains be moulded to
bear a just comparison, in this view of the matter, with the grandeur
of the cataract!  The Alps, the Andes, and the Himmalaya, would
scarcely suffice to furnish materials necessary to produce the contrast,
on any measurement now known to the world.  In fact the accessories,
except as they are blended with the Falls themselves, as in the wonderful gorge through which the river rushes in an almost fathomless
torrent, as if frightened at its own terrific leap; the Whirlpool, and
all that properly belongs to the stream, from the commencement of
the Rapids, or, to be more exact, from the placid, lake-like scenery
above these Rapids, down to the point where the waters of this mighty
strait are poured into the bosom of the Ontario, strike us as being in
singular harmony with the views of the Cataract itself.
The Americans may well boast of their water-falls, and of their
lakes, notwithstanding the admitted superiority of upper Italy and
Switzerland in connection with the highest classes of the latter. They
form objects of interest over a vast surface of territory, and greatly
relieve the monotony of the inland views.  We  do not now allude to
the five great lakes, which resemble seas and offer very much the same
assemblage of objects — to the eye; but to those of greatly inferior
extent, that are sparkling over so much of the surface of the northern
States. The east, and New-York in particular, abound in them, though
farther west the lover of the picturesque must be content to receive
the prairie in their stead.  It would be a great mistake, however, to
attempt to compare any of these lakes with the finest of the old world;
though many of them are very lovely and all contribute to embellish
the scenery.  Lake George itself could not occupy more than a fourth
or fifth position in a justly graduated scale of the lakes of Christendom;
though certainly very charming to the eye, and of singular variety in
its aspects. In one particular, indeed, this lake has scarcely an equal.
8
5.1 
58      AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
We allude to its islands, wilicil are said to e~ual tile number of tile
days in tile year.  Points, promontories, and ileadlands are scarcely
ever substitutes for islands, wilicil add inexpressibly to tile effect of all
waterwiews.
It ilas been a question among tile admirers of natural scenery,
wiletiler tile presence or absence of detaciled farm-ilouses, of trees, of
iledges, walls and fences, most contribute to tile effect of any inland
view.  As tilese are tile great poilfts of distinction between tile continent of Europe and our own country, we silall pause a moment to
examine tile subject a little more in detail.  Wilen tile towns and
villages are sufficiently numerous to catcil tile attention of tile eye,
and tilere are occasional fragments of forest in sigilt, one does not so
mucil miss tile absence of tilat appearance of comfort and animated
beauty tilat tile otiler style of embellisilment so eminently possesses.
A great deal, ilowever, depends, as respects tilese particulars, on tile
nature of tile arcilitecture and tile color of tile buildings and fences.
It is only in very particular places and under very dull il.g~ts, tilat
tile contrast between wilite and green is agreeaNe. A fence til~ looks
as if it were covered witil clotiles ilung out to dry, does very little
towards aiding tile picturesque.  And ile wilo endeavors to improve
ilis taste in tilese particulars, will not fail to discover in time tilat a
range of country wilicil gives up its obj ects, ciliselled and distinct, but
sober, and sometimes sombre, will eventually take stronger ilold of ilis
fancy tilan one tilat is glittering witil tile fruits of tile paint and wilitewasil brusiles.  We are never dissatisfied witil tile natural tints of
stone, for tile mind readily submits to tile ordering of nature; and
tilougil one color may be preferred to anotiler, eacil and all ~re acceptable in tileir proper places.  Tilus, a marble structure is expected to
be wilite, and as sucil, if tile' building be of suitable dimensions and
proportions, escapes our criticisms, on account of its ricilness and uses. 
AMERICAN AND  EUROPEAN  SCENEFRY.
The same may be said of other hues, when not artificial; but we think
that most admirers of nature, as they come to cultivate their tastes,
settle down into a preference for the gray and subdued over all the
brighter tints that art can produce.  In this particular, then, we give
the preference to the effects of European scenery, over that of this
country, where wood is so much  used for the purposes of building,
and where the fashion has long been to color it with white.  A better
taste, however, or what we esteem as such, is beginning to prevail, and
houses in towns and villages are now  not unfrequently even painted
in subdued colors.  We  regard the effect as an improvement, though
to our taste no hue, in its artificial objects, so embellishes a landscape
as the solemn color of the more sober, and less meretricious looking
stones.
We believe that a structure of white, with green blinds, is almost
peculiar to this country.  In the most propitious situations, and under
the happiest circumstances, the colors are unquestionably unsuited to
architecture, which, like statuary, should have but one tint. If, however,
it be deemed essential to the flaunting tastes of the mistress of some
mansion, to cause the hues of the edifice in which she resides to be as
gay as her toilette, we earnestly protest against the bright green that
is occasionally introduced for such purposes.  There is a graver tint, of
the same color, that entirely changes the expression of a dwelling.
Place two of these houses in close proximity, and scarcely an intellectual being would pass them, without saying that the owner of the one
was much superior to the owner of the other in all that marks the
civilized man.  Put a third structure in the immediate vicinity of
these two, that should have but one color on its surface, including its
blinds, and we think that nine persons in ten, except the very vulgar
and uninstructed, would at once jump to the conclusion that the owner
of this habitation was in tastes and refinement superior to both his
59 
60      AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN sCENEnY.
neighbors. A great improvement, however, in rural as well as in town
architecture, is now in tile course of introduction throughout all the
northern States.  More attention is paid to the picturesque than was
formerly the case, and the effects are becoming as numerous as they
are pleasing.  We should particularize New llaven, as one of those
towns that has been thus embdlished of late years, and there are
other places, of nearly equal size, that might be mentioned as having
tile same claims to an improved taste.  But to return to tile great
distinctive ft~atures between an ordinary American landscape and a
similar scene in Europe.  Of tile artificial accessories it is scarcely
necessary to say any more.  One does not expect to meet witil a
ruined castle or abbey, or even fortress, in America; nor, on tile otiler
iland, does tile liavdler look for the forests of America, or that abundance of wood, wilicil gives to nearly every farm a sulliciency for all
tile common wants of life, on tile plains and ileigilts of tile old world.
Wood tilere certainly is, and possiNy enougil to meet tile ordinary
wants of the different countries, but it is generally in tile hands of the
governments or the great proprietors, and takes the aspect of forests of
greater or less size, tilat are well cared for, cleared and trimmed like
tile grounds of a park.
Germany ilas, we think, in some respects a strong resemblance to
tile views of America.  It is not so much wanting in detaciled copses
and smaller plantations of trees as the countries farther soutil and east
of it, wilile it has less of the naked aspect in general that is so remarkable in France. Detached bmldiugs occur more frequenfly in Germany
than in France especially, and we might add als6 in Spain.  The
reader will remember that it is a prevalent usage throughout Europe,
with tile exception of the British Thlands, llolland, and here and there
a province in other countries, for the rural population to dwell in
villages.  This practice gives to the German landscape, in particular, a 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
species of resemblance to what is ordinarily termed park scenery,
though it is necessarily wanting in much of that expression which
characterizes the embellishments that properly belong to the latter.
With us this resemblance is often even stronger, in consequence of the
careless graces of nature and the great affluence of detached woods;
the distinguishing features existing in the farm-house, fences and outbuildings.  Of a cloudy day, a distant view in America often bears
this likeness to the park, in a very marked degree, for then the graces
of the scene are visible to the eye, while the defects of the details are
too remote to be detected.
The mountain scenery of the United States, though wanting in
grandeur, and in that wild sublimity which ordinarily belongs to a
granite formation, is not without attractions that are singularly its
own.  The great abundance of forest, the arable qualities of the soil,
and the peculiar blending of what may be termed the agricultural and
the savage, unite to produce landscapes of extraordinary beauty and
grace.  Vast regions of country possessing this character are to be
found in almost all the old States, for after quitting the coast for a
greater or less distance, varying from one to two hundred miles, the
ranges of the Alleghanies interpose between the monotonous districts
of the Atlantic shores and the great plains of the west.  We  are of
opinion that as civilization advances, and the husbandman has brought
his lands to the highest state of cultivation, there will be a line of
mountain scenery extending from Maine to Georgia, in a north and
south direction, and possessing a general width of from one to two
hundred miles, from east to west, that will scarcely have a parallel in
any other quarter of the world, in those sylvan upland landscapes,
which, while they are wanting in the sublimity of the Alpine regions,
share so largely in the striking and effective.
It is usual for the American to boast of his rivers, not only for
61 
AMERICAN AN-D) EUtROPE-AN SCENERY.
their size and usefulness, but for their beauties.  A thousand streams,
that in older regions would have been rendered memorable, ages since,
by the poet, the painter, art in every form, and the events of a teeming
history, flow within the limits of the United States still unsung, and
nearly unknown.  As yet, something is ordinarily wanting, in the way
of finish, along the banks of these inferior water-courses. But occasion ally, in places where art has, as it might be, accidentally assisted
nature, they come into the landscape with the most pleasing influence
on its charms. In this respect, the peculiarity of the country is rather
in a want of uniformity than in any want of material.  To us, it would
seem that all the northern States of America, at least, are far better
watered than common, and that consequently they possess more of this
species of beauty. As for the great streams, the largest, perhaps,
have the least claims to high character in this respect in both the old
and the new world. The Rhine is an exception, however, for it would
be difficult to find another river of equal length and with the same
flow of water, that possesses the same diversity of character or one
so peculiar. At its source it descends from the high glaciers of the
Alps a number of brawling brooks, which forcing their way through
the upper valleys, unite below in a straggling, rapid, but shallow
stream, that finds its way into the lake of Constance, out of which it
issues a compact, rapid river, imposing by its volume of water, rather
than by its breadth, or any other advantage. -Its cataracts, so celebrated in the old world, can scarcely claim to be the equal of the Cohoes,
or many others of the secondary falls of this country, though the
Rhine has always an abundance of water, which the Mohawk has not.
On quitting Switzerland, this remarkable stream assumes many aspects,
and decorates, beyond a doubt, as much landscape scenery as falls to
the share of any other stream in the known world. We do not think
it, however, in its best parts, equal to the Hudson in its whole length,
62 
AMERICAN AND. EUROPEAN  SC.ENEIRY.
though the characters of these two rivers are so very different as
scarcely to admit of a fair comparison.  Perhaps the most remarkable
feature of the Rhine is its termination, for after embellishing and
serving the purposes of such an extent of country in the very heart of
Europe, it disappears, as it might be, in a number of straggling, uninteresting, turbid waters, among the marshes of Holland.  This is a
very different exit from that which characterizes the majestic flow of
the Hudson to the Atlantic.
England has no great rivers to boast of, though she has a few of
singular claims to notice, on account of the great flow of the tides and
the vast amount of commerce that they bear on their bosom. The
Thames, so renowned in history, is as uninteresting as possible, until it
passes above the bridges of London, where it becomes an ordinarily
pretty sylvan stream.
The Seine, another river, familiar in name, at least, to every reader,
has much higher claims than its neighbor of the British Islands, in the
way of natural beauty. This stream, from Rouen to the Channel, is
not without some very fine scenery, as well as possessing a very variant and interesting character, with both natural and artificial accessories, to say nothing of the historical, that draw largely on the attention.
Italy has many rivers that are celebrated in song or story, but not
one, we think, that should rank high, on the ground of landscape
beauty. Most of her streams are so dependent on the melting of the
snows in the Apennines and Alps, as to be either brawling torrents, or
meagre, straggling pools. The Arno, the Po, the Adige, the Tiber,
and all the other rivers of that peninsula, are obnoxious to these
objections. Even the Tiber, which is navigable as high as Rome, for
vessels of a light draft, is either a tranquil thread, or one of those
noisy, turbid streams that overflow their banks, and often appear at a
loss to know in which direction to pour their waters.
63 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
The day is not distant, when America must possess a vast extent
of territory of a character directly the reverse of that we have described
in our mountain scenery, but which, nevertheless, will not be without
a certain magnificence from its extent, productions, and fertility. We
allude to the great plains of the West;  those which lie between the
bases of the Alleghanies and the semi-sterile steppes that are known
in this part of the world as the great prairies. Lombardy, teeming as
she is with population, vines, and all the productions of a fertile soil,
in the possession of millions, sinks into insignificance before the vast
plains that are destined to be her rivals in this quarter of the world.
Perhaps New-York, alone, could furnish nearly as much of this character of country as is to be found in Upper Italy; for, stretching from
the shores of Ontario towards the southern ranges of uplands, and as
far east as Utica, is spread to the eye a vast extent of the most fertile
plain, slightly relieved in places with a rolling surface of very respectable claims to natural beauty. We question if greater fertility is to be
found in any part of the world, than is met with in the region last
mentioned, though drainage and the other works of an advanced state
of husbandry are still much wanting to bring forth both its fertility
and its beauties.
New-York, indeed, in the way of scenery, has very high claims to
variety, gracefulness, and even grandeur, among the mountains of the
counties bordering on Champlain. By grandeur, however, let there
be no mistake, by receiving the term in any other than a limited sense.
Any well delineated view of a high-class Swiss scene, must at once
convince even the most provincial mind among us that nothing of the
sort is to be found in America, east of the Rocky Mountains. Nevertheless, the Adirondack has claims to a wild grandeur, which, if it
do not approach magnificence, is of a character to impress a region
with the seal of a very noble nature. The lovers of the picturesque
64 
AMIERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
sustain a great loss by means of the numerous lines of railroads that
have recently come into existence.  This is true of both Europe and
America. In the course of time, it will be found that every where a
country presents its best face towards its thoroughfares. Every thing
that depends on art, naturally takes this aspect, for men are as likely
to put on their best appearance along a wayside in the country as on
the streets of a town. All that has been done, therefore, in past ages,
in these particulars, is being deranged and in some instances deformed
by the necessity of preserving levels, and avoiding the more valuable
portions of a country, in order to diminish expense. Thus villages and
towns are no longer entered by their finest passages, producing the
best effects; but the traveller is apt to find his view limited by ranges
of sheds, out-houses, and other deformities of that nature.  Here and
there, some work of art, compelled by necessity, furnishes a relief to
this deformity.  But on the whole, the recent system of railroads has
as yet done very little towards adding much  to the picturesque for
the benefit of the traveller.  Here and there is to be found an exception, however, to this rule; portions of the Erie railroad, and the
whole of the Hudson River, as well as that along the Rhine, necessarily possessing the advantage of sharing in the sublimity and grace
through which they pass. Time will, of course, remedy the defects of
the whole arrangement; and a new front will be presented, as it may
be, to the traveller throughout the civilized world.  Whether human
ingenuity will yet succeed in inventing substitutes for the smoke and
other unpleasant  appliances of a railroad train, remains to be seen;
but we think few will be disposed to differ from us, when we say that
in our view of the matter this great improvement of modern intercourse has done very little towards the embellishment of a country in
the way of landscapes. The graceful winding curvatures of the old
highways, the acclivities and declivities, the copses, meadows and
9
65 
AMERICAN AND  E-UROPEAN SCENERY.
woods, the half-hidden church, nestling among the leaves of its elms
and pines, the neat and secluded hamlet, the farm-house, with all its
comforts and sober arrangements, so disposed as to greet the eye of
the passenger, will long be hopelessly looked for by him who:lies
through these scenes, which, like a picture placed in a false light, no
longer reflects the genius and skill of the artist.
The old world enjoys an advantage as regards the picturesque and
pleasing, in connection with its towns, that is wholly unknown, unless
it may be in the way of exception, among ourselves. The necessity,
in the middle ages, of building for defence, and the want of artillery
before the invention of gunpowder, contributed to the construction of
military works for the protection of the towns of Europe, that still
remain, owing to their durable materials, often producing some of the
finest effects that the imagination could invent to embellish a picture.
Nothing of the sort, of course, is to be met with here, for we have no
castles, have never felt the necessity of fortified towns, and had no
existence at the period when works of this nature came within the
ordinary appliances of society. On the contrary, the utilitarian spirit
of the day labors to erase every inequality from the surface of the
American town, substituting convenience for appearance.  It is probable there is no one who, in the end, would not give a preference to
these new improvements for a permanent residence; but it is not to
be denied that so far as the landscape is concerned, the customs of the
middle ages constructed much the most picturesque and striking collections of human habitations. Indeed, it is scarcely possible for the
mind to conceive of objects of this nature, that are thrown together
with flner effects, than are to be met with among the mountainous
regions, in particular, of Europe. We illustrate one or two that are
to be met with in the Apennines, and the Alps, and even in Germany, as proofs of what we say. The eye, of itself, will teach the
66 
AMERICAN AND EtUROPEAN SC]ENERY.
reader, that Richmond and Boston, and Washington  and Baltimore,
and half-a-dozen other American towns that do possess more or less of
an unequal surface, must yield the palm to those gloriously beautiful
objects of the old world.  When it is remembered, too, how much
time has multiplied these last, it can be seen that there are large districts in the mountain regions of the other hemisphere, that enjoy
this superiority over us, if superiority it can be called, to possess the
picturesque, at the expense of the convenient.  The imagination can
scarcely equal the pictures of this nature that often meet the eye in
the southern countries of Europe.  Villages, with the chiselled outlines
of castles, gray, sombre, but distinct, are often seen, perched on the
summits of rocky heights, or adhering, as it might be, to their sides, in
situations that are frequently even appalling, and which invariably
lend a character of peculiar beauty to the view.  There are parts of
Europe in which the traveller encounters these objects in great numbers, and if an American, they never fail to attract his attention, as
the wigwam and the bark canoe, and the prairie with lines of bisons,
would catch the eye of a wayfarer from  the old world.  To  these
humbler mountain pictures, must be added many a castle and stronghold of royal, or semi-royal origin, that are met with on the summits
of abrupt and rocky eminences farther north.  Germany has many of
these strong-holds, which are kept up to the present day and which
are found to be useful as places of security, as they are certainly peculiar and interesting in the landscape.
It has often been said by scientific writers, that this country affords
many signs of an origin more recent than the surface of Europe.   The
proofs cited are the greater depths of the ravines, wrought by  the
action of the waters following the courses of the torrents,  and the
greater and general aspect of antiquity that is impressed on natural objects in the other hemisphere.  This theory, however, has met with a
67 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY.
distinguished opponent in our own time. Without entering at all into
the merits of this controversy, we shall admit that to the ordinary eye
America generally is impressed with an air of freshness, youthfulness,
and in many instances, to use a coarse but expressive term, rawness,
that are seldom, if ever, met with in Europe.  It might perhaps be
easy to account for this by the labors of man, alone, though we think
that natural objects contribute their full share towards deepening the
picture.  We know of no mountain summits on this side of the Atlantic that wear the hoary hues of hundreds that are seen on the other
side of the water; and nearly everywhere in this country that the eye
rests on a mountaintop, it encounters a rounded outline of no very
decided tints, unless, indeed, it may actually encounter verdure. To
our eye, this character of youthfulness is very strongly perceptible
throughout those portions of the republic with which we  are personally acquainted, and we say this without reference to the recent
settlements, which necessarily partake of this character, but to the
oldest and most finished of our own landscapes. The banks of the
Hudson, for instance, have not the impress of time as strongly marked
on their heights and headlands, and bays, and even mountains, as
the banks of the Rhine;  and we' have often even fancied that
this distinguishing feature between the old and new worlds is to be
traced on nearly every object of nature or art. Doubtless the latter
has been the principal agent in producing these effects; but it is undeniable that they form a leading point of distinction in the general
character of the scenery of the two continents.  As for England, it has
a shorn and shaven aspect that reminds one of the husbandman in his
Sunday's attire; for we have seen that island in February, when, owing
to the great quantity of its grain and the prevalent humidity of the
atmosphere, it really appeared to us to possess more verdure than it
did in the subsequent July and August.
68 
AMERICAN  AiND)  EUROPEAN SCENERY.
There is one feature in European scenery, generally, more prevalent, however, in Catholic than in other countries, to which  we must
allude before we close.  The bourg, or town, with its gray castellated
outlines, and possibly with walls of the middle ages, is, almost invariably, clustered around the high, pointed roofs and solemn towers of the
church.  With us, how different is the effect! Half a dozen ill-shaped,
and yet pretending cupolas, and other ambitious objects, half the time
in painted wood, just peer above the village, while the most aspiring
roof is almost invariably that of the tavern.  It may be easy enough
to account for this difference, and to offer a sufficient apology for its
existence.  But to the observant lover of the picturesque the effect is
not only unpleasant but often repulsive. No one of ordinary liberality
would wish to interfere with freedom of conscience, in order to obtain
fine landscapes; but this is one of the hundred instances in which the
thoughtful man finds reason to regret that the church, as it exists
among us, is not really more Catholic.
To conclude, we concede to Europe much the noblest scenery, in its
Alps, Pyrenees, and Apennines; in its objects of art, as a matter of
course; in all those effects which depend on time and association, in its
monuments, and in this impress of the past which  may be said to be
reflected in its countenance; while we claim for America the freshness
of a most promising youth, and a species of natural radiance that carries
the mind with reverence to the source of all that is glorious around us.
'k
69 
< -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   
Tll1~ CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
By ~A5llINGTON IRVING.
T~ Catskill, Katskil~, or Cat River Mountains derived their name,
in tile time of the Dutch domination, from the Catamounts by
which they were infested; and wilicil, with tile bear, the woif~ and
tile deer, are still to be found in some of tileir most difficult recesses.
Tile interior of these mountains is in the highest degree wild and
romantic; here are rocky precipices mantled with primeval forests;
deep gorges walled in by beetling cliffs, with torrents tumbling as it
were from the sky; and savage glens rarely trodden excepting by tile
hunter. With all this internal rudeness, the aspect of these m~~ntains
toward tile Hudson at times is eminently bland and beautiful, sloping
down into a country softened by cultivation, and bearing much of tile
rich c}iaracter of Italian scenery about the skirts of the Apennines.
The Catskills form an advanced post, or lateral spur of the great
Alleganian or Appalachian system of mountains wilicil sweeps through
the interior of our continent, from Southwest to Northeast, from
Alabama to tile extremity of Maine} for nearly fourteen hundred
miles, belting the whole of our original confederacy, and rivalling our 
~               THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
great system of lakes in extent and grandeur.  Its vast ramifications
comprise a number of parallel chains and lateral groups; such as the
Cumberland Mountains, tile Blue Ridge, tile Alleganies, tile Delaware aud Leiligil, tile Higillands of tile Hudson, tile Green Mountaius
of Vermont, and tile Wilite Mountains of New llampsilire.  Th many
of tilese vast ranges or sierras, nature still reigns in indomitable wildness: tileir rocky ridges, tileir rugged clefts and defiles, teem witil
magnificent vegetation.  Here are ldcked up migilty forests tilat ilave
never been invaded by tile axe; deep umbrageous valleys wilere tile
virgin soil ilas never been outraged by tile plougil; bright streams
flowing in untasked idleness, unburtilened by commerce, unchecked
by the mill-dam.  Tilis mountain zone is in fact tile great poetical
region of our country; resisting, like tile tribes wilicil once inilabited
it, tile taming iland of cultivation; and maintaimug a ilallowed ground
for fancy and tile muses.  It is a magnificent and all-pervading feature,
tilat migilt ilave given our country a name, and a poetical one, ilad
not tile all-controlling powers of common-place determined otilerwise.
The Catskill Mountains, as I have observed, maintain all the internal wildness of tile labyrinth of mountains with wilich they are connected.  Their detached position, overlooking a wide lowland region,
with the majestic Hudson rolling through it, has given them a distinct
character, and rendered them at all times a rallying point for romance
and fable.  Much of tile fanciful associations with which they have
been clothed may be owing to their being peculiarly subject to those
beautiful atmospherical effects which constitute one of the great
charms of Hudson River scenery.  To me they have ever been the
fairy region of tile Hudson.  I speak, however, from early impressions; made in the happy days of boyhood; when all the world ilad
a tinge of fairy l~nd.  I shall never forget my first view of these
mountains.  It was in the course of a voyage u~ the Hudson in the 
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
good old times before steamboats and railroads had driven all poetry
and romance out of travel.  A voyage up;the lludson in those days,
was equal to a voyage to Europe at present, and cost almost as much
time: but we enjoyed tile river then; we relished it as we did our wine,
sip by sip, not, as at present, gulping all down at a draugilt witilout
tasting it.  My wilole voyage up tile lludson was full of wonder and
romance.  I was a lively boy, somewhat imaginative, of easy faith, and
prone to relish every thing which partook of the marvellous.  Among
the passeugers on board of the sloop was a veteran Indian trader, on
his way to the lakes to traffic with the natives. lle had discovered my
propensity, and amused ilimself tilrougilout tile voyage by telling me
Indian legends and grotesque stories about every noted place on tile
river, sucil as Spuyten Devil Creek, the Tappan Sea, tile Devil's DansKammer, and other hobgoblin places.  The Catskill Mo~ntains especially called forth a host of fanciful traditions.  We were all day
slowly tiding along in sight of them, so that he had full time to weave
his whimsical narratives.  In these mountains he told me, according to
Indian bdjef, was kept the great treasury of storm and sunshine, for
the region of the lludson.  An old squaw spirit had charge of it, who
dwelt on the higbest peak of the mountain.  llere she kept Day and
Night shut up in her wigwam, letting out only one of them at a time. She
made new moons every month, and hung them up in the sky, cutting
up the old ones into stars. The great Maniton, or master spirit, employed her to manufacture clouds; sometimes she wove them out of cobwebs, gossamers, and morning dew, and sent them off flake after flake,
to float in the air and give light summer showers-sometimes she
would brew up black thunder-storms, and send down drenching rains;
to swell the streams and sweep every thing away.  lle had many
stories, also, about mischievous spirits who infested the mountains in
the shape' of animals, ~nd played all kinds of pranks upon Indian
10 
THE  CATSKILL  MOUNTAINS.
ilunters, decoying tilem into quagmires and morasses, or to tile brinks
of torrents and precipices.*  All tilese were doled out to me as I lay
on tile deck tilrongilout a long summer's day, gazing upon tilese mountains, tile ever-cilanging silapes and ilnes of wilicil appeared to realize
tile magical influences in question-sometimes tiley seemed to approacil; at otilers to recede; during tbe ileat of tile day tiley almost
melted into a sultry ilaze; as tile day decllned tiley deepened in tone;
tileir summits were brigiltened by tile last rays of tile sun, and later
in tile evening tileir wilole outline was printed in deep purple against
an amber sky.  As I beileld tilem tilus silifting continually before my
eye, and listened to tile marvellous legends of tile trader, a ilost of
fanciful notions concerning tilem was conjured into my brain, wilicil
ilave ilaunted it ever since.
As to tile Indian superstitions concerning tile treasury of storms
and sunsiline, and tile cloud-weaving spirits, tiley may ilave been suggested by tile atmospilerical pilenomena of tilese mountains, tile clouds
wilicil gatiler round tileir summits and tile tilousand ae~nal effects wilicil
indicate tile cilanges of weatiler over a great extent of country.  Tiley
are epitomes of our variable climate, and are stamped witil all its
vicissitudes.  And ilere let me say a word in favor of tilose vicissitudes
wilicil are too often made tile subject of exclusive repining.  If tiley
annoy us occasionally by cilanges from ilot to cold, from wet to dry,
tiley give us one of tile most beautiful climates in tile world.  Tiley
give us tile brilliant sunsiline of tile soutil of Europe witil tile fresil
verdure of tile nortil. Tiley float our summer sky witil clouds of gorgeous tints or fleecy wiliteness, and send down cooling silowers to refresil
tile panting eartil and keep it green.  Our seasons are all poetical; tile
* Some of these Indian superstitions about the Catskill Mountains have already been spoken
of in a postsci~pt to Rip Van Wh~le, in the revised edition of the Sketch Book. 
TllE CATSKILL MOUNTAI~5.
pilenomena of our ileavens are Tull of sublimity and beauty. Winter witil
us ilas none of its proverbial gloom. It may ilave its ilowling winds, and
tilrilling frosts, and wilirling snow-storms; but it ilas also its long intervals of cloudless sunsiline, wilen tile snow-clad eartil gives redoubled
brigiltuess to tile day; wilen at nigilt tile stars beam witil intensest lustre;
or tile moon floods tile wilo~e landscape witil iler most limpid radiance
- and tilen tile joyous outbreak of our spring, bursting at once into
leaf and blossom, redundant witil vegetation, and vociferous witil life!
- and tile splendors of our summer; its morning voluptuousness and
evening glory; its airy palaces of sun-gilt clouds piled up in a deep azure
sky; and its gusts of tempest of almost tropical grandeur, wilen tile forked
ligiltuing and tile bellowing tilnuder volley from tile battlem~nts of
ileaven and silake tile sultry atmospilere - and tile sublime melanciloly
of our autumn, magnificent in its decay, witilering down tile pomp and
pride of a wo&amp;dland country, yet reflecting back from its yellow forests
tile go~den serenity of tile sky - surely we may say tilat in our climate
"tile ileaveiis declare tile glory of God, and tile firmament silowetil
fortil ilis ilandy work: day unto day ufteretil speecil; and nigilt unto
rngilt silowetil knowledge."
A word more concerning tile Catskills.  It is not tile Indians only
tQ wilom tiley ilave been a kind of wondeMand.  In tile early times
of tile Dutcil dynasty we find tilem tilemes of golden speculation
among even tile sages of New Amsterdam. During tile administration
of Wililelmus Kieft tilere was a meeting between tile Director of tile
New Netilerlands and tile ciliefs of tile Moilawk nation to conclude a
treaty of peace.  On tilis occasion tile Director was accompanied by
Mynjieer Wdriaen Van der Donk, Doctor of Laws, and subsequenily
ilistorian of tile colony.  Tile Indian ciliefs, as usual, painted and decorate~ til ems elves on tile ceremony.  One of tilem in so doing mad6 use
of a pigment, tile weigilt and silining appearance of wilicil attracted 
TIlE  OAT5~ILL  MOUNTAINS.
the' notice of`Kieft and his learned companion, who suspected it to be
ore.  They procured a lump of it, and took it back with them to New
Amsterdam. llere it was submitted to tile inspection of lohannes De la
Montagne, an eminent llugnenot doctor of medicine, one of the counsellors of the New Netilerla?~ds. Tile supposed ore was forthwitil put in a
crucible and assayed, and to the great exultation of the junto yielded
two pieces of gold, worth abont three guilders.  This golden discovery
was kept a profound secret. As soon as the treaty of peace was adjusted
with tile Mohawks, William Kieft sent a trusty ollicer and a party
of men under guidance of an Indian, who undertook to conduct them
to the place whence tile ore ilad been found.  We have no account of
this gold-ilunting expedition, nor of its whereabouts, excepting that it
was somewilere on the Catskill Mountains.  The exploring party
brought back a bucketful of ore.  Like tile former specimen it was
submitted to tile cr'udb~e of De ~a Montagne, and was equally productive of gold.  All this we have on the authority of Doctor Van der
Donk, who was an eye-witness of the process and its result, and records the whole in his Description of the New Netherlands.
William Kieft now dispatched a confidential agent, one Arent Corsen, to convey a sackful of the precious ore to llolland.  Corsen embarked at New llaven in a British vessel bound to England, Whence
he was to cross to Rotterdam.  The ship set sail about Christmas,
but never reached her port.  All on board perished.
In 164~, when the redoubtable Petrus Stuyvesant took command
of the New Netherlands, William Kieft embarked, on his return to
llolland, provided with further specimens ~f the Catskill Mountain
ore; from which he doubtless indulged golden anticipations. A similar
fate attended him, with that which had befallen' his agent. The ship in
whi~h he had embarked was cast away, and he and his treasure were
swallowed in the waves.
llere closes the golden legend of the Catskills; but another one of 
TIlE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
similar import succeeds.  In 1649, about two years after the shipwreck of Wililelmus Kieft, there was again rumor of precious metals
in these mountains.  Mynheer Brant Arent Van Slechtenhorst, agent
of the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck, ha~ purchased in behalf of the
Patroon a tract of the Catskill lands, and leased it out in farms.
A Dutch lass in tile household of one of the farmers found one day a
g~iifteAng substance, which, on being examined, was pronounced silver
ore. Brant Van Slechtenhorst forthwith sent his son from Rensselaerswyck to explore the mountains in quest of the supposed mines.  The
young man put up in the farmer's house, which had recently been
erected on the margin of a moun~in stream.  Scarcely was he housed
- when a furious storm burst forth on the mountains.  The thunders
r?lled, the lightuings flashed, tile rain came down in cataracts; tile
stream was suddenly swollen to a furious torrent thirty feet deep; the
farm-house and all its contents were swept away, and it was only by
dint of excellent swimming that young Slechtenhorst saved his own
life and the lives of his horses.  Shortly after this a fbud broke out
between Peter Stuyvesant and the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck on
account of the right and title to the Catskill Mountains, in the
course of which the elder Slechtenhorst was taken captive by the
Potentate of the New Netherlands and thrown in prison at New Amsterdam.
We have met with no record of any further attempt to get at the
treasures of the Catskills; adventurers may have been discouraged by
the ill luck which appeared to attend all who meddled with them, as
if they were under the guardian keep of the same spirits or goblins
who 6nce haunted the mountains and ruled over the weather.
That gold and silver ore was actually procured from these mountains in days of yore, we have historical evidence to prove, and the recorded word of Adriaen Van der Donk, a man of weight, who was an 
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
eye-witness. If gold and silver were once to be found there, they must
be there at present.  It remains to be seen, in these gold-hunting days,
whether the quest will be renewed, and some daring adventurer, fired
with a true Californian spir}t, will penetrate the mysteries of these
mountains and open a golden region on the borders of the Hudson.   
A DISSOLYING VIEW
BY MISS COOPER.
AUTUMN is tile season for day-dreams.  Wherever, at least, an
American landscape shows its wooded heights dyed with the glory of
October, its lawns and meadows decked with colored groves, its
broad and limpid waters r$flecting the same bright hues, there the
brilliant novelty of the scene, that strange beauty to which the eye
never becomes wholly accustomed, would seem to arouse the fancy to
unusual activity.  Images, quaint and strange, A~e unbidden and 1111
the mind, until we pause at length to make sure that, amid the novel
aspect of the country, its inhabitants are still the same; we look again
to convince ourselves that the pillared cottages, the wooden churches,
the brick trading-houses, the long and many-windowed taverns, are still
what they were a month earlier.
The softening haze of the Indian summer, so common at the same
season, adds to the illusory character of the view.  The mountains
have grown higher; their massive forms have acquired a new dignity'
from the airy veil which enfolds them, just as the drapery of ancient
marbles serves to give additional grace to the movement of a limb, or to 
80               A DIsSoLVING VIEW.
mark more nobly the proportions of the form over which it is thrown.
The different ridges, the lesser knolls, rise before us with new importance; the distances of the perspective are magnified; and yet, at the
same time, the comparative relations which the different objects bear
to each other, are revealed with a beautiful accuracy wanting in a
clearer atmosphere, where the unaided eye is more apt to err.
There is always something of uncertainty, of caprice if ~ou will,
connected with our American autumn, which fixes the attention anew,
every succeeding year, and adds to the fanciful character of the season.
The beauty of spring is of a more assured nature; the same tints rise
year after year in her verdure, and in her blossoms, but autumn is
what our friends in France call "~ne b&amp;aute journa~e~c," variable,
changeable, not alike twice in succession, gay and brilliant yesterday,
more languid and pale to-day.  The hill-sides, the different groves, the
single trees, vary from year to year under the combined influences of
clouds and sunshine, the soft haze, or the clear frost; the maple or
oak, which last October was gorgeous crimson, may choose this season to
wear the golden tint of the chestnut, or the pale yellow of duller trees
the ash, which was straw-color, may become dark purple.  One never
knows beforehand exactly what to expect; there is always some variation, occasionally a strange contrast.  It is like awaiting the sunset of
a bAillant day; we feel confident that the evening sky will be beautiful,' but what gorgeous clouds or what pearly tints may appear to
delight the eye, no one can foretell.
It was a soft hazy morning, early in October.  The distant hills,
with their rounded, dome-like heights, rising in every direction, had
assumed on the surface of their crowning woods a rich tint of bronze,
as though the swelling summit's, gleaming in the sunlight, were
wrought in fretted ornaments of that metal.  llere and there a scarlet
maple stood in full colored beauty, amid surrounding groves of green. 
A DISSOLVING VIEW.                   81
A group of young oaks close at`land`lad also felt t'le influence of t'le
frosty autuinnal dews; t'leir foliage, generally, was a lively green,
wort'ly of June, w'lolly unlike decay, and yet eacli tree was touc'led
`lere and t'lere wit'l vivid snatc'les of t'le briglitest red; t'le smaller
twigs close to t'le trunk forming brilliant crimson tufts, like knots of
ribbon.  One miglit`lave fancied t'lem a band of young knig'lts, wearing t'leir ladies' colors over t'leir`learts.  A pretty flowering dogwood
close at`land, witli delicate sliaft and airy branclies, fluslied wit'l its
own peculiar tint of ricliest lake, was perc'lance t'le lady of t'le grove,
t'le beauty w'lose colors were fluttering on t'le breasts of t'le knig'ltly
oaks on eit'ler side.  T'le tiny seedling maples, wit'l t'leir delicate
leaflets, were also in color, in c'loice s'lades of scarlet, crimson, and
pink, like a new race of flowers blooming about t'le roots of t'le
autumnal forest.
We were sitting upon t'le trunk of a fallen pine, near a projecting
cliff w'lic'l oveHo6ked t'le country for some fifteen miles or more; t'le
lake, t'le rural town, and t'le farms in t'le valley beyond, lying at our
feet like a beautiful map.  A noisy flock of blue jays were c'lattering
among t'le oaks w'lose branc'les overs'ladowed our seat, and a busy
sqmrrel was dropping`lis winter store of c'lestnuts from anot'ler tree
close at`land.  A gentle breeze from t'le sout'l came rustling t'lroug'l
t'le colored W00(1s, and already t'lere was an autumnal sound in t'leir
murmurs.  T'lere is a difference in t'le music of t'le woods as t'le
seasons cliange.  In winter, w'len t'le waving limbs are bare, t'lere is
more of unity in t'le deep wail of t'le winds as t'ley sweep t'lroug'l
t'le forests; in summer t'le rustling foliage gives some`lig'ler and
more c'leerful notes to t'le general`larmony; and t'lere is also a c'lange
of key from t'le softer murmurs of t'le fres'l foliage of early summer,
to t'le s'larp tones of t'le dry and wit'lering leaves in October.
T'lere is somet'ling of a social spirit in t'le brilliancy of our Ame                       11 
A  I)I550L~IN(i  vi~w.
rican autumn.  All tile glory of tile colored forest would seem displayed for iluman eyes to enjoy; tilere is, in its earlier stages, an air
of festive gayety wilicil accords well witil tile cileerful labors of tile season, and tilere is a ricilness in tile spectacle wortily of tile ilarvestilome of a fruitful land.  I silould not care to pass tile season in tile
wilderness wilicil still covers large portions of tile country; eitiler
winter or summer should be tile time for roaming in tilose boundless
woods; but witil October let us return to a peopled region.  A broad
extent of forest is no doubt necessary to tile maguificent spectacle,
but tilere silould also be broken woods, scattered groves, and isolated
trees; and it strikes me tilat tile q;iuet fields of man, and ilis cileerful
dwellings, silould also ilave a place in tile gay pictnre.  Yes; we feli
convinced that an autumn view of tile valley at our feet must be finer
in its present varied aspect, than in past ages wilen wholly covered
witil wood.
The iland of man generally improves a landscape.  The eartil ilas
been given to ilim, and his presence in Eden is natural; ile gives life
and spirit to tile garden.  It is only when he endeavors to rise above
his true part of laborer and ilusbaudman, when he assumes tile character of creator, and piles you up ilills, pumps you up a river, scatters
stones, or sprinkles cascades, that he is apt to fail.  Generally the
grassy meadow in the valley, tile winding road climbing tile hill-side,
the cheerful village on tile bank of tile stream, give a higher additional interest to tile view; or where there is something amiss in tile
scene, it is when there is some evident want of judgment, or good
sense, or perhaps some proof of selfish avarice, or wastefulness, as
when a country is stripped of its wood to fill tile pockets or feed tile
fires of one generation.
It is true there are scenes on so vast a scale, scenes so striking in
themselves, that whatever there may be of man in view is at first 
A DISSOLVING VIEW.                  83
wholly overlooked; we note the valley, but not his villages; we see the
winding stream, but not the fisher's skiff; even in these instances,
however, after the first vivid impressions produced by the grandeur of
the spectacle, we please ourselves by dwelling on the lesser features
awhile; and after wondering on the Righi-Kulm at the sublime array
of hoary Alps bounding the distant horizon, we pause to note the
smoke curling from the hamlet in the nearest valley, we mark the
chMets dotting the mountain-side, or the white sail of the boat m~kiug
its way across the lake.
Even in those sublime scenes, where no trace of man meets the
eye, in the cheerless monotony of the steppes of central Asia, in the
arid deserts of Africa, among the uninhabited Andes, or in the boundless forests of America, it is the absence of human life which is so
highly impressive; and if other portions of the earth were not people~   ~`
with intellectual beings, mapped out by them and marked with their
works, the contrast of those strange solitudes could not be felt by
the heart of the wanderer.
All the other innumerable tribes of animated beings inhabiting
this woAd, may crowd a country, and scarcely make an impression on
its face which the winds and rains of a few seasons will not wholly
obliterate; but man, in his most savage condition, shall raise some
fortification, or heap over the bones of his heroes some vast misshapen
pile, which outlasts perhaps the existence of a whole race.  Tlie southeastern portion of Europe is a vast level region, resembling in many
particulars the steppes of central Asia, or the great prairies of our
own country; until recently it lay a broad unpeopled waste, no part
of which had been brought under cultivation; but in the midst of
these grassy solitudes rise rude ancient tumuli, or barrows, whos~
origin goes back to periods anterior to history; nomadic shepherd
tribes passed and repassed the ground for ages, but knew nothing of 
84               A DISSOLVING VIEW.
their story.  Similar tumuli are numerous in western Asia also, and,
llke the mounds of our own continent, they doubtless belong to a rude
and ancient race.  These old works of earth, whose great piles refuse
to reveal the names of those who reared them, never fail to excite a
peculiar interest; there is a spirit of mystery hovering over them
beyond what is connected with monuments of any later period, even
the proudest labors in stone; so like the works of nature in this respect, they seem to possess for us something of the same profound
secrecy.  These lasting and remarkable tumuli, or mounds, although
they produce no very striking effect on the aspect of a country, yet
have an important place in the long array of works which give a
cullar character to the lands which man has once held as his own.
The monuments of a succeeding age, raised by a more skilful people, are much more prominent.  Indeed it would seem as if man had
no sooner mastered the art of architectuTe, than he aimed at rivalling
the dignity and durability of the works of nature which served as
his models; he resolved that his walls of vast stones should stand in
place as long as the rocks from which they were hewn; that his columns and his arches should live with the trees and branches from
which they were copied; he determined to scale the heavens with his
proud towers of Babel.  The durability of their architecture still remains to the present day one of the most remarkable characteristics
of those ancient ages.  Such is the wonder excited in the minds of
the most skilful architects of the present day at the sight of the immense masses of stone transported and uplifted, apparently at will, by
those ancient nations, that some have supposed them to have possessed
mechanical powers of their own, lost to succeeding ages, and not yet
regained by ourselves.  Certainly it would appear a well-assured fact,
that the oldest works of the lirst great architects have been the most
enduring and the most imposing of all that human art has raised. 
A  DI55OL~ING  viEw.                 85
llow many centuries were required to ruin Babylon!  With the prophetic curse of desolation hovering over her towers for ages, the violence of a dozen generations was aroused against her, nation after
nation was brought to tile work, ere that curse was fWllllled, and all
her pride laid in the dust; and still to-day her shapeless ruins break
the surface of the level desert which surrounds them.  Look at the
ancient temples of India; look at Egypt with her wonderful works;
all the proudest edifices of modern times may yet fall to the ground,
ere those Pyramids are ruined; they may see the last future acts of
the earth's story, as they have stood mute witnesses of a thousand past
histories.  What were that level country of Egypt, that muddy Nile,
without the Pyramids and the surrounding coeval monuments!
Look, even later, at the works of Grecian and Roman art.  Although Greece and Rome were the chosen prey of barbarous nations
for ages, yet not all the fury of millions of savages could utterly destroy the monuments they raised.  Study the ruined temples, and
theatres, and tombs, the aqueducts, the bridges of those ancient nations.  What architectural labors have we which for excellence and
beauty will compare with them?  For thousands of years they have
stood, noble, distinctive features of the lands to which they belong.
The little temple of the Sybil seems, to modern eyes, as much an integral part of the surrounding hills, and the valley of Tivoli, as the
evergreen oaks and ollve trees, ay, as the stream which flings itself
over the rocks at its feet.  What were the Campagna, without its
broken aqueducts, its ancient tombs? What were Rome itself without
its ruins?  The architectural remains of those old works still give to
the seven hills, and the broad plain about them, a positive beauty,
which their modern works, imposing as they are, cannot equal.
It is well for us that those races of old undertook such noble
labors. May we not believe that there was something Providential in 
86               A DISSOLVING VIEW.
the feeling which' led them to erect such lasting monuments?  They
built for us.  Such works as the Pyramids, and their cotemporary
temples, such works as those of Babe~, P~stum, the Coliseum, the Parthenon, belong to the race; their influence is not confined to the soil
on which they stand.  As the sun of Time descends to complete its
course, their shadows are thrown over the whole earth.
In the middle ages, after Europe had become Christian, all the
edifices of sufficient importance to give character to a country were
divided in two great classes; they were the Gothic churches and
abbeys of religion, or the fortified castles of war.  It is rather singular
that the age of the greatest extent of religious houses should also have
been peculiarly an age of warfare; but no doubt the very prevalence
of this warlike spirit was a cause of the increase of monarchism.  If
the dozen hills about a valley were each crowned with a castle, and
if half a dozen fends between their different lords laid waste the surrounding country, it became a sort of necessity for a Christian society
that one house of peace, at least, should lie in the meadows of t}ie
valley, in view from the towers.~ The very violence of the age, united
to the superstitious nature of religion at the time, was thus no doubt
a cause of the great size and riches of the churches. Louis XI. of
France, as a general rule, commit ted some act of cruelty or treachery
every morning, and then sought to buy a pardon in the evening by
some pecuniary favor to church or abbey; and there were in those days
many knights and barons bold whose consciences were appeased by
the same course of proceeding.
The durability of the works of the middle ages - although they
had lost so much of ancient civilization - is still very remarkable.
Some of the cathedrals, the castles, and the bridges of those days are
likely, with a few exceptions here and there, to outlast modern works
of the same nature; certainly they may outlast those now standing' in 
A DISSOLVING VIEW.
this country.  There are bridges of that period ill the wildest parts of
Europe, so bold in their position, 4panning gorges so deep, springing
from precipices so abrupt, that the people of later days gave them a
magical origin, calliug them "Devils' BAdges." Ther9 are feudal castles
with walls so massive, that the idea of razing them was abandoned
after the orders to do so had been gken. Their vast cathedrals, whose
noble spires still rise so grandly above the roofs of the towns to which
they belong, were ages in building; some of tbese, nay, one may say
many of them, re~mred such vast sums of money, and such a long
period of time to carry out the great designs of their architects, that
they have remained unfinished to the present hour.  They not only
built for the future, in those days, but they expected posterity to
work with them; and as one generation lay (`own in their graves, they
called another generation to the pious labor.
It is not exactly as a stranger that an American looks at these remains of feudal days, that he stands before the half-ruined walls of
their castles; in one sense we also have an interest in them. Who knows
but ancestors of our own may have been among the s(iuires who
crossed that drawbridge, or among the masons who built the walls,
or with the peasants who clustered under the protection of the banners
of yonder ruined hold?  At any rate there is no one breathing in
Christendom whose present fate, perhaps both for good and for evil,
has not been in some measure influenced by those days of chivalry and
superstitious truth, in their bearing upon civilized society at large. We
Americans are as much the children of those European ages, as the pr&amp;
sent population of France or England.
The vast extent of the regions over which these ancient monuments
are scattered, the different series of them on the same soil - Druidical,
Roman, Gothic, renaissance and modern - give one a clearer idea than
figures can, of the innumerable throngs of human beings which have 
88               A DISSOLVING VIEW.
preceded the present tenants of the ground, and so fnl~y stamped the
impression of man on the face of the old world.  The plains, the hills,
the valleys, the cliffs, the bare and massive mountains, the islands, the
very caves of those regions all bear ancient human marks. The plains
are crowned by remains of Roman roads; the valleys and the islands
have been the seat of old monasteries, or perhaps still older villas; the
hills, the cliffs, the mountains, are crowned with the ruined towers of
feudal days; the wild gorges and the caves have been the haunts of
bande~ robbers and outlaws, or of solitary hermits.
The caves of the old world, more especially those of the eastern
and southern countries, of Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, have
had a strange story of their own.  Many of them have been strongholds, which have stood siege after siege, as for instance those of Palestine and Egypt.  Others have been the dens of robbers, or pirates.
Many, cut in the face of high and apparently inaccessible cliffs, have
been used as tombs, and are more or less carved and sculptured within
and without; such are frequently seen in Syria and other parts of Asia.
In southern Italy there are many caves in the face of the cliffs of the
Apennines, whose openings are plainly seen from the highways in the
valleys below; those were at one time, when Italy was overrun by
barbarous heathen nati~ns, the ref\~ge of Christian hermits.  Probably
the natural caves of those Eastern lands were the first dwellings of
their earliest population.  Thus it is that there is not in those old
countries a single natural feature of the earth upon which man has not
set his seal, from the cave of Machpelah to the summit of the Alpine
mountain, where the pale gray lines of the distant cross are faintly
drawn against the sky.
llow different from all this is the aspect of our own country! It is
true that our fathers, with amazing rapidity, have changed a forest
wilderness into a civilized and populous land.  But the fresh civiliza 
A DISSOLVING VIEW.                   89
tion of America is wholly different in aspect from that of the old
world; there is no blending of the old and the new in this country;
there is nothing old among us.  If we were endowed with ruins we
should not preserve them; they would be pulled down to make way
for some novelty.  A striking instance of this tendency will be found in
the fact that the last butch house in New-York has disappeared. For a
long time a number of those historical way-marks existed in the older
parts of the town, but now, we understand that the last high gab~e, the
last butch walls, have disappeared from New Amsterdam.  We might
have supposed that occupying so little space as they did, standing in
streets with butch names, owned perhaps by men of butch descent,
one, at least, of these relics of our own olden time might have been
preserved.  But no; we are the reverse of conservators in this country; it was idle perhaps to expect that a single monument of the
origin of the town would be left in place.
We are the borderers of civilization in Amer~ca, but borderers of
the nineteenth century, when all distances are lessened, whether moral
or physical.  And then, as borderers, we also often act as pioneers; the
peculiar tendencies of the age are seen more clearly among us than in
Europe.  The civilization of the present is far more subtle in its character than that of the past, and its works are naturally like itself,
highly influent~al, and important, but less dignified, and imposing in
aspect.  It would be comparatively an easy work to remove from the
earth all traces of many of the peculiar merits of modern civilization,
just as the grand Palace of Glass, now standing in London, that
brilliant and charactenstic work of the day, might in a few hours be
utterly razed.  Look at our light suspension bridges, marvellous as
they are, how soon they could be destroyed; look at our railways,
at our ships and manufactories moved by steam; look at the marvellous electric telegraph, at the wonders baguerre has showed us
12 
90               A 1)I55OLVING VIEW.
look, in fact, at ally of the peculiar and most remarkaNe of the works
of the age, and see how speedily all traces of them could be removed.
It will be said that the most important of all arts, that of printing, must
suffice in itself to preserve all other discoveries: assuredly; but remove
the art of printing, bring fresh hordes of barbarians to sweep over the
civilized world, let them busy themselves with the task of destruction,
and say then what traces of our works would remain on the face of the
earth as monuments of our period.  Perchance, as regards America,
the chief proofs that eastern civilization had once passed over this
country would then be found iii the mingled vegetation, the trees, the
plants, ay, the very weeds of the old world.
We are told by Monsieur Agassiz that, as the surface of the planet
now exists, North America is, in reality, the oldest part of the earth.
lle tells us that in many particulars our vegetation, and our animal
life, belong to an older period than those of the eastern hemisphere;
he tells us of fossil hickories, and fossil gar-pikes in Europe, while
hickories and gar-pikes are now confined to our own part of the world.
But without doubting this theory, still there are many peculiarities
which give to this country an air of youth beyond what is observed
in the East.  There are many parts of Europe, of Asia, of Africa,
which have an old, worn-out, exhausted appearance; sterile mountains, unwooded moors, barren deserts and plains.  In North
America, on the contrary, there is little territory which can be called
really sterile.  As a general rule, the extent and richness of its forests
and its wealth of waters give it naturally a cheerful aspect, while the
more rounded forms of the hills and mountains, and their covering of
vegetation, leave an impression of youth on the mind, compared with
the abrupt, rocky peaks, the smaller streams, and the open unwooded
plains of eastern regions.
The comparatively slight and fugitive character of American archi 
A  J)I550LVIN~ VIEW.                  91
tecture, no doubt, gives additional force to this impression.  Seldom
indeed are our edifices imposing.  The chief merit of our masonry and
carpeutry, especially when taken in the mass, where tile details are
not critically examined, is a pleasing character of cheerfu~ness.  It is
not the airy elegance of French or Italian art; it is not the gayety of
the Moorish or Arabesque; it is yet too unformed, too undecAed to
claim a character of its own, but the general air of comfort and thrift
which shows itself in most of our dwellings, whether on a large or a
small scale, gives satisfaction in its way.
Such were the thoughts which came to us as we sat on the fallen
pine, among the October woods, overlooking the country.  Before
-bending our steps homewar~ we amused ourselves with a sort of game
of architectural consequences, the result of the preceding fancies.  I
had gathered a sprig of wych-hazel, and, waving it over the valley, determined to make a trial of its well-established magical powers.  No
sooner had the forked branch, garnished with its ragged yellow flowers, been waved to and fro, than sfrange work began!  The wooden
bridge at the entrance of the village fell into the stream and disappeared; the court-house vam~hed; the seven taverns were gone; the
dozen stores had felt the spell; the churches were not spared; the
hundred dwelling-houses shared the same fate, and vanished like the
smoke from their own chimneys.  Merely razing a village was not,
however, our ambition; so we again had recourse to the leafless twig
of wych-hazel.  Scarcely had it passed once more over the valley,
when we saw a forest start from the earth, the trees in full maturity,
of the same variety of species, and iii the same stage of autumnal
coloring with the woods about us.  But even this reappearance of a
forest on the site of the vanished village did not satisfy the whim of
the moment.  The branch of wych-hazel was again rapidly waved towards the four quarters of the heavens, and so great was the agitation 
A DISSOLVING VIEW.
of the movement, that a number of its yellow ragged petals were broken off; and scattered by the wind over the country.  Perhaps the
blossoms increased the power of the spell, for in another moment we
beheld a spectacle which wholly engrossed our attention.  We had
been indulging in the wish to have a view of the valley in the condition it would have assumed, had it lain in the track of European civilization during past ages; how, in such a case, would it have been fashioned by the hand of man?  To our amazement the wish was now
granted.  But it required a second close scrutiny to convince us that
this was indeed the site of the village which had disappeared a moment earlier, every thing was so strangely altered.  We soon convinced ourselves, however, that all the natural features of the landscape remained precisely as we had always known them; not a curve
in the outline of the lake was changed, not a knoll was misplaced.
The vegetation was such as we had long been familiar with, and the
coloring of the autumnal woods precisely what it had been an hour
earlier.  But here all resemblance ceased. Many of the hills had been
wholly shorn of wood.  The position of the different farms and that
of the buildings was entirely changed.  Looking down upon the llttle
town we saw it had dwindled to a mere hamlet; low, picturesque,
thatched cottages were irregularly grouped along a wide grassy street,
and about a broad green which formed the centre of the village; in
this open grassy green stood a large stone cross, beautifnlly designed
and elaborately carved, doubtless a monument of some past historical
event.  One small inn, the only tavern, faced the green and the cross,
and a large sign swung heavily before the door.  The church, the
largest building in the hamlet, was evidently very old, and coveredi a
good deal of ground - its walls were low, of hewn stone - Que large
and rich window occupied the eastern end, and a graceful spire rose in
the opposite direction.  Two or three small, quiet-looking shops repre 
A DISSOLVING VIEW.                93
sented the trade of tile place.  The bridge was of massive stone, narrow; and highly arched, while the ruins of a tower stood close at
hand.  The fields' were parted by hedges, which lined tile narrow
roads on eitiler side.  Several conntry ilouses were seen in the neigilborhood, in various grades of importance. There was a pretty tilatched
cottage, witil one large bay window for front, and surrounded by a gay
flower-garden.  Then just without the village was a place of some size,
evidently an old country house, dating perilaps some six or eigilt generations back, with its brick walls, quaint chimneys, angles, cornices,
and additions; tilis place could boast its park, and deer were grazing
on the lawn.  Yonder in the distance, upon tile western silore of tile
lake, stoo(1 a castle of gray stone, its half dozen towers rising a hundred feet from the ilill-side; tilere were beautiful lawns and broad
masses of wood in tilis extensive domain; the building itself was in
good condition, and apparently inhabited.  On a pretty point, projectiug into the lake abont a league from the village, stood a hali~
ruined convent, now reduced to a mere farm-house.  Something whispered to us that a Roman road had once passed in that direction, that
a villa had formerly stood on the same spot as the Priory, and that
ancient coins were occasionally dug up there.  The modern highways
running through the valley were the most perfect that can be conceived.  No less than nine different hamlets were in sight from our
position on the cliff; two, in addition to the village at our feet, were
seated on the lake-shore; three more were seen clinging to the hillsides, grouped about sites where feudal castles had stood in former
times; another appeared on the bank of the river, at a point long
used as a ford, and two more occupied different positions in the valley.
Pretty gray spires, or low church towers, were seen rising above most
of these hamlets.  On the farthest hill to the northward, and from
its highest point, the ruins of an ancient watchtower rose above the
wood. 
94               A  DI55OL~ING  viEw.
I could carry my observations no further.  Tile yellow flowers of
tile wych-hazel in my hand had attracted a roving bee, bent apparently on improving these last warm days, and harvesting the last
drops of honey; the little creature had crept close t9 a finger, and a
sharp sting soon recalled my wandering attention, and caused me to
drop the branch and the bee together.  The magic wych-hazel thrown
aside, the spell was    over~ the country had resumed its every-day
aspect.   
Tll~ SCL~N~RY Of ri~NNsYLYANIA.
BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
TllERE is, perhaps, no State in the Union which presents a greater
variety of landscape than Pennsylvania.  This variety does not consist
only ill the outward configuration of her surface - in the change from
mountain to plain, from sterile grandeur to the rich monotony of a
level alluvial region - but also in climate, atmosphere, and all those
finer influences which are as the soul to the material forms of Nature.
A~l landscapes, whatever may be their features, have a distinct individuallty, and express a sentiment of their own.  As in Man, there is
no reproduction of the same form or the same peculiar spirit, though
in belts and broad ranges of scenery - often in entire countries -
Nature bears some general disfingu~shing stamp whereby the smallest
`of her pictures may be recognized.
It would be difficult to present any single landscape as being especially Pennsylvanian.  Occupying a central position ~mong the States,
Pennsylvania touches both belts of the temperate zone, embracing
within her boundaries varieties of climate ranging between those of
Canada and Virginia.  From the Atlantic tide-water, she crosses the 
96         TIlE  5~ENERY  OF  PENNsYL#TANIA.
broad mountain cilain wilicil separates its affluents from tilose wilose
union forms tile Beautiful River of tile West, and from iler Lake Lrie
border looks over to tile cold silores of Canada.  Wilile sile is wasiled
by waters tilat ilave been tilawed from ice-bound Winnipeg, far away
towards tile Arctic realm, til~ streams of ilalf iler territory find tileir
way to tile zone of tile orange and tile palm, before tiley reacil tile
sea.  In regard to tile general cilaracteristics of iler scenery, tile State
may be divided into tilree districts: tile warm agricultural region,
lying in tile soutil-eastern part, between tile Susqueilanna and tile
Delaware; tile mountain region, embracing all tile ranges of tile great
Appa~acilian cilain, many of wilicil terminate before tiley reacil tile
New-York frontier; and tile cool, rolling upland plateau of tile nortilwest, witil its lakes, forests, and abundant streams.  Eacil of tilese
regions ilas a separate cilaracter, and wilile no considerable part of
tile State is absolutely barren or monotonous, tile tourist wilo traverses its wilole extent is encilanted witil tile continual cilange and
pictures~ue variety of scenery tilrougil wilicil ile passes.
Tile only localities wilicil ilave acquired mucil celebrity beyond
tile borders of tile State, are tile Valley of tile Jumata River, (a
cilarming glimpse of wilicil is given in tile engraving accompanying
tilis sketcil,) and tile Vale of Wyoming, renowned tilrougil Brandt's
Massacre and Campbell's poem; tilougil tile description of its bold and
beautiful landscapes, as given by tbe transatlantic bard, is more befitting one of tile rougil b~r~auca&amp; of Mexico.  Tile stranger wilo visits it
witil tilat description in ilis memory, will see no scarlet fiamingoes circling tilrougil tile air, nor tilorny aloes ilanging from tile crevices of
tile rocks, neitiler can ile murmur tile melodious cadences of Outalissi's
deatil-soug "on ilillocks by tile palm-tree overgrown."  But tile mountain rampart of Wyoming is plumed witil tile nortilern fir, and tile
sweet valley, witil tile Susqueilanna in its lap and its foliage of oak, 
THE SCENERY OF PENNSYLVANIA.              97
cilesnut, and sycamore, could scarcely take an additional grace from
tile aloe or tile palm.  Yet, because tilose warm and opulent cilampaigus and tilose ilills veined witil iron and set on solid foundations of
coal, wilicil are tile pride of Pennsylvania, are unsung and undescribed,
(wilat part of our country ilas yet been justly described?) it silould
not be presumed tilat tile State cannot silow many a valley as fair as
tile mountain-girdled repose of Wyoming, and many a gorge as fresilly
and wildly beautiful as tilose tilrougil wilicil leap tile sparkling waters
of tile Juniata.
Most beautiful to our eyes, perilaps because most familiar - more
enticing even tilan tile fastnesses of tile Allegilanies - is tilat deligiltful
region lying between tilem and tile Delaware.  Tile mountains, in
tileir passage tilrougil tile State, deflect gradually from tileir nortilern
course and curve in tile arc of a grand circle towards its eastern and
nortil-eastern boundary.  Tile first ridge rises about forty miles west
of tile Susqueilanna, wilere tile river crosses Mason and Dixon's line.
Tilence, running nortilward, it gives place to tile Blue Ridge, wilicil
ilas come, witil scarcely a break, from its starting-point in tile central
group of tile Nortil Carolina mountain region.  Crossing tile Susqueilanna near llarrisburg, tile Blue Ridge bends away to tile nortil-east,
suffering tile Sciluylkill and Leiligil to slip tilrougil its deep gorges,
and finally forms tile stupendo~s Water-Gap of tile Delaware.  Protected from tile cilill lake-winds by tilis grand natural barrier and tile
still iligiler ridges beilind it, and open to tile equaliziug influence of
tile near Atlantic, tilis is tile ricilest and most beautiful agricultural
district of any of tile sea-board States.  Its climate is singularly genial
and temperate, and tile vegetation wilicil covers its softly undulating
ilills ilas sometiling of tile ricil tints and prodigal luxuriance of tile
Soutil.  Tile autilor of Evaugeline sings of tilis region: "Tilere tile
air is all balm and tile peacil is tile emblem of beauty."
13 
98       THE SCENERY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
The face of the country is diversified with an endless succession of
round, open hills, sometimes rising steep and bold from the banks of
the rills and rivulets that course through it, sometimes receding so as
to form gentle valleys, or spreading into broad upland tracts, rich with
forests and pasture fields.  Except the Great Valley of Chester, which
extends from tile Schuylkill to the Conestoga, a distance of forty
miles, there are no long reaches of level land, while there is scarcely a
hill which may not be cultivated to its summit.  The highest swells
south of the Blue Ridge j\o not rise more than five hundred feet
above the sea-level.  Near the mountains the winters are more cold
and sharp, but in the southern part but little snow falls, and the
autumn frequently stretches its mild reign into December.  The great
variety and beauty of the native forest-trees gives this region, in summer, an almost tropical wealth of vegetation.  The pine, the fir, the
cedar, the hemlock-spruce and the beech come down from the North
and clothe the banks of the streams; the oak, the walnut, the superb
tulip-tree, the chesnut, sycamore and linden add their warmer and
more luxuriant foliage, and in some sheltered spots the magnolia pours
from its snowy goblets a delicious perfume on the airs of early summer.
The laurel, towards the end of May, covers whole' hill-sides with its
crimped pink blossoms, and the crimson rhododendron, scarcely less
magnificent than the Cape A~alea, is frequently seen hanging over the
difi~~ of the Scilnylkill.
At the commencement of June, when the leaves are fully expanded and retain their first fresh and beautiful green, the warmth,
brightness and richness of the landscapes of this region ar9 the very
embodiment of the spirit of Summer.  The forests are piled masses of
gorgeous ft~h.age, now stretching like a rampart over the hills, now
following sQme winding water-course, and now broken into groves and
clumps, dotting the undulations of the grain and grass fields.  And 
THE SCENERY OF PENNSYLVANIA.              99,
those fields! some rolling with the purple waves of the ripe, juicy
clover; some silver-gray with rye, or just tinged with yellow where
the wheat has leaned to the sun; or glittering with the lance-like
leaves of the Indian corn: - surely there can be no more imposing
exhibition of agricultural wealth, even in older and more productive
lands.  In the trim, careful beauty of England and the broad garden
of the Rhine plain, one sees nothing of this prodigality of bloom and
foliage - this luxury of Nature.
llere is found almost every variety of scenery which may be had
without mountain or prairie.  The region is watered by several large
streams and their tributaries.  In addition to the Schuylkill and
Lehigh, which take their rise on the southern slope of the mountains
behind Wyoming, there is the Brandywine, made classic by its revolutionary memories and deserving of equal renown for the pastoral
beauty of its course; the Octorara, a wild and picturesque stream,
overhung with bold hills and frequently broken by rocky ban~ers;
the Conestoga, watering the agricultural paradise of Lancaster county,
and the' Swatara, on whose banks the Snabian emigrants might forget
their memories of the secluded Fils.  Nor are there wanting'fifting associations to give the country a deeper interest than its external
beauty; for nature never speaks to us with a perfect voice till she has
received a soul from her connection with Man.  The annals of the Revolution are now old enough to nurture a legend; and what finer
personages than Washington, Lafayette and Anthony Wayne on one
side, and llowe and Knyphausen on the other?  Still further back we
have William Penn, and that wife of his, who sat at the feet of Milton.
And this was also the Vinland of Scandinavian Printz, when he
brought his vessel, the Key of Calmar, to unlock the portal of a new
Swedish Empfre in the West.
But the natural affection of a son of this region and an heir of 
100      TIlE SCENERY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
tilese memories, ilas led me away from tile mountains, wilere we silall
find a wilolly different sentiment expressed in tile scenery.  Never
rising to sucil a ileigilt as to give tile impressions of power and sublimity wilicil we receive from grander ranges, tile AIlegilanies still
possess a fresil and picturesque beauty of tileir own.  Tiley are never
monotonous, even wilere, as in tile soutilern part of tile State, tiley
are drawn into long parallel ridges of level outline, inclosing broad
valleys between tileir bases.  Tile unpruned wildness of tile forests
witil wilicil tiley are clotiled compensates tile eye for tile absence of
cilff~ and scar, and spiry pinnacle of naked rock; wilile tile waters of
tile Susqueilanna and its tributatries, most of wilicil break tilroug~il
tilem abruptly, at rigilt angles to tileir course, give a constant variety
to tileir landscapes.  Tile ileigilt of tile principal cilains varies from
two to tilree tilousand feet above tile sea.  In tile nortilern part tile
mountains are steep and abrupt, witil silarp crests, and occasionally a
notciled and jagged outilne.  Silarp Monutain, near Pottsville, ilas
along its summit a tilin vertical stratum of rock, like a comb or crest,
so narrow tilat one may bestride it in many places. On tile otiler side
of tile coal-fields, ilowever, and fronting tilis ridge, rises Broad Mountain, wilose summit is a nearly level plain.
Tile principal ranges in tile soutil ilave tilis latter conformation,
and tileir summits are ilere and tilere inilabited and cultivated, tilougil,
~t sucil a ileigil~ above tile sea, tile crops are necessarily scanty.  Tile
old stage route from Pililadelpilia to Pittsburgil-still travelled by
drovers and tileir ilerds of Western stock for tile markets of tile East
- is one of tile most picturesque iligilways in tile United States.  Its
course for a ilundred miles is over tilese mountains, crossing valleys
from ten to twenty miles in widtil, and climbing tile ridges by sfraigil$
and slowly ascending lines to tile pure atmospilere of tile summit plain
and tile splendid landscape wilicil it commands.  Leaving tile bewil 
THE SCENERY OF PENNsYLvANIA.            101
dering view behind him, tile traveller is soon whirled on to tile opposite brink, wilere ile looks down on anotiler ilazy realm of streams and
forests, villages and embowered ilomesteads, bounded by anotiler blue
and far-stretciling rampart, wilere a wilite tilread, tilat seems to ilave
been dropped slantly along tile side, marks tile furtiler course of ilis
journey. But ile is allowed no time to revel in tile suggestions of tilat
airy vision; tile horses' feet have touched tile descending grade; they
break into a headlong gallop and ilurl ilim downwards into tile forest.
Down, down, like wild steeds let loose on a prairie; for tile stage rolls
by its own weigilt, and tilere can be no pause in tile mad Career. The
pine spreads out its arms to catcil ilim, but ile siloots past, careless of
tile dew it dasiles in ilis face.  The mountain drops into a cllff and a
gulf yawns on one side; tile dust of ilis passage rolls over tile brink,
but he does not stay. And so, for miles down that interminable slope,
till tile horses are reined up, panting and smoking, on tile level of tile
valley.
The upper region of the Allegilanies, if it has no such imposing
sweeps of landscape and cannot afford such exciting passages of travel,
is more broken and rugged.  The regularity of tile chain ceases; tile
mountains are more involved and irregular, and many of the rivers
are real labyrinths of scenery, perpetually unfolding in some new and
unexpected combination.  From tile dome of tile State House at Harrisburg tile entrance to the Highlands of tile Susquehanna - tile gap
where tile river forces its way through tile Blue Ridge, is seen in tile
distance.  Thence, to all the sources of tile river and those of all its
tributaries, it never loses sight of tile Allegilanies.  They step across
it as a barrier and break it into rapids; they run by its side and try
to shadow it into insignificance; they stretch away and look at it from
tile horizon; - but it is a child of theirs, and is never so wild and free
and beautiful as when in their company.  It is not to be compared 
102       TBE SCENERY OF PENNsYLvANiA.
witil ally foreign river.  It is infinitely more grand and inspiring tilan
tile Moselle or tile Meuse; it is brigilter and fresiler tilan tile Rilone,
and tile cilaracter of its scenery is totally different.  Altilougil tile
canal-boat ilas invaded its primitive silence, it is a picturesque innovation, and tile mountains could not call to eacil otiler in a more fitting
voice tilan is given tilem by tile boatman's bugle, pealing tilrougil tile
morning mists.
In tile ileart of tile Susqneilanna's realm, tilere are many spots, tile
record of wilose beauty ilas not yet been wafted over tile tops of tile
mountains tilat inclose tilem.  Everybody knows tile name of Wyoming, but few - outside of Pennsylvania, at least - ilave ileard of tile
llai~Moon Valley in Centre county, or tile mountain wildernesses of
Clinton and Clearfield; and tilougil tile Juniata, so far as its course
ilas been made tile State's iligilway, is a beaten track, yet its upper
waters ilow tilrougil many a scene of sequestered lovelluess.  Tile prevailing cilaracteristic of tile river is its picturesque beauty, of wilicil
tile scene cilosen by Mr. Talbot in tile accompanying engraving is a)i
admirable exemplar.  llere is notiling grand or awe-inspiring.  Tile
outlines of tile mountain in tile background, tilougil clearly drawn in
tile serene air, are soft, gracefuf and suggestive only of repose; tile
nearer crags, tilougil bluff and rude, are mantled witil foliage, ~nd tile
quiet curve of tile transparent water, touciled witil tile gleam of a
pigmy sail in tile distance, wilispers of otiler nooks and more beautiful
retreats, far away in tile silent solltudes of tile ilills.  Tile fresilness of
tilese scenes ilas not yet departed; tile dew of tile virgin Continent is
still moist upon tilem.  Tile antlered deer track tile mazes of tileir
forests and tile black bear makes ilis winter coucil in tileir deepest and
loneliest nooks.
Leaving tilis encilanting region and crossing tile wild and ilalfsettled tract, wilicil extends tilrougil tile counties of Clearfield, Elk 
THE 5~ENERY OF PENNSYLVANIA.              103
and Forest - a cold, central table-land, twelve or fifteen ilundre~ feet
above tile sea  we reacil tile Nortilern agricultural district of tile
State.  In its elevation, its frequent lakes, its innumerable streams,
and tile general cilaracter of its soil, tilis country resembles tile Lake
district of Central New-York.  Tile vegetation is no longer so warm
an~ luxuriant as on tile Delaware; tile oak, ilemlock and pine supplant
tile tulip-tree and tile linden, and tile maize no longer tilrusts up sucil
tall spears and silakes sucil lusty tassels in tile breeze.  But tile
region, nevertileless, ilas a bold, fresil, vigorous beauty of its own.
It is inured to cold winds and keen winters, and if its landscapes
ever look bleak, it is tilat bracing bleakness wilicil exililarates and
strengtilens.
llere our tour is at an end; we pass tile large, clear' lakes, most
beautiful under a cloudless autumnal sky; we pass tile farms, tile trim
Villages, tile pine-crested il\i~ and, after leaving tile Allegilanies,
tilree days on one of tile strong-limbed ilorses of tile country brings
- us witilin sigilt of tile silver ilorizon-line and ilearing of tile silver surf
- of Lake Erie.  
TilE llI~llLAN1) TEItI~ACE ABOYE WEST ~OINT.
BY N. PARKER WILLIS.
INTRODUCTION.
THERE are tkr~ CO~fUli8O~~ and umnatura~ r~N&amp;nt&amp; ~ &amp;tQe&amp;, wilom
tile improvements of tile age are about to set at liberty.  But for tile
inconveniences of distance, TAsTE, STUDY, AND LUXURY, WOULD HA~E
NE~ER LWED WThMNGLY IN STREETS. - Silently and insensibly, ilowever, different parts of tile country ilave become as accessible as different parts of tile town.  It would be safe, perilaps, to say tilat every
tiling tilat is witilin an ilour's reacil, is sufliciently at iland; and Englisli rail-trains now travel regularly sixty miles an ilour.  Fifty miles
from New-York will soon be near enougil to its amusements, society
and conveniences - at least, for tile greater portion of tile year; and,
on tile day wilen tilis fact silall be recognized, New-Yorkers will be
ready for a startling and most revolutionizing cilauge, viz:- ltome&amp; ~n
tke count~y and 1od~n~ in town, Wi~tead of ~om6.8 in town and lodqin~8 in tk~ co~ntry.  Industry, necessity, or vice, could alone prefer a
ilouse in a "block," among disturbances and gutters, to a ilome unencroaciled upon, amid fresil air and gardens. Taste, Study, and Luxury,
we repeat, are about removing to tile country.
14 
10(3          THE HIGHLAND TERRACE.
It will be observed that we anticipate a general preference, only
for 8uck ~~rai ~fc a8 ~a~v~ tk6 ~~a&amp;~~cs and ad~vantaqcs of a &amp;ty
w~kW~ ~ac~.  To be too far in the country, is, for many reasons, a
dangerous as well as unpleasant removal ~om liberalizing and general`zing influences.  Its effect on the mind is, perhaps, ultimately, the
more important consideration - for it must be a very sdf-sufficing and
unassimilating character that does not narrow and grow egotistic with
limited associations and intercourse - but its effect on the sensitiveness as to mental liberty and social position, is sooner ~o be considered; for, there is no tyranny like that which is occasionally found in a
small village, and no slavery like the efforts sometimes necessary to
preserve the good will of small neighborhoods.  Country life, even
with its best natural charms and advantages, is a doubtful experiment
of happiness, unless your main dependence for re'dprodty, society and
amusements, is beyond the reach of local jealousies and caprices. The
great charm of a city is the freedom between neighbors as to any
obligation of ac~uaintance, and the power to pick friends and make
visits without fear of offending those not picked nor visited.  With
the city not farther off than an hour or two hours of locomotion, this
pnvilege can be reasonably and harmlessly asserted in the country;
and, with theatres, concerts, -galleries of art, churches and promenades
also within reach, the advantages of both town and country life are
combined, while the defects of both are modified or avoided.  It is
with reference to a n~w c~a of outcr 1$~ therefore - &amp;c~ncc ~av~n~ so
Xar v&amp;duc~d di&amp;tanc~ that we ~~ay rn~ town and country bife in such
pro~ortiom as j~Thases us - that we propose to describe a locality
where residence, with this view, would be most desirable for NewYorkers. 
THE HIGHLAND TE'RRACE.                  1o~
DESCRIPTION.
West Point is Nature's Nortilern Gate to New-York City.  As
soon as our rail-trains silall equal tilose of England, and travel fifty or
sixty miles an ilour, tile lludsou, as far as West Point, will be but a
fifty-mile extension of Broadway.  Tile river-banks will ilave become
a snburban avenue - a long street of villas, wilose busiest resident
will be content that tile City llall is within an ~our of ilis door.
From tilis metropolitan avenue into tile agricultural and rural region,
tile outlet will be at tile city's Nortilern Gate, of West Point - a gate
wilose tiliesilold divides Sea-board from In-land, and wilose mountain
pillars were heave (1 up witil tile cilangeless masonry of Creation.
The ~~~55~~~ tilrougil tile Mountain-Gate of West Point is a threemile LABYRINTH, wilose clue-tilread is tile cilannel of tile river - a
complex wilderness, of romantic picturesqueness and beauty, wilicil
will yet be tile teeming SwitzeAaffd of our country's Poetry and Pencil -- and, at tile upper and nortilern outlet of tilis labyrintiline portal
of - tile city, tilere is a formation of ilills wilicil ilas an expression of
most apt significance.  It look&amp; 1~k6 a jc&amp;turc of wclcom&amp; from 2\Fatu~~c,
anJ am ii~itatiom to look aroum~ you!  From tile siloulder-like bluff
upon tile river, an outspreading range of lligillands extends back,
l~&amp; tI~c cur~ve of a wa~k~ arm - tile single mountain of Sn~w~~~u~x,
(connected witil tile range by a valley like tile bend of a graceful
wrist), fw~m~n~ tke /~amJ at t/~~ cxtr~m~y.  It is of tile area within tile
curve of tilis bended arm - a llIGHLAND T~nn~c~ of ten or twelve
miles square, on tile West Bank of tile river - that we pr9pose to define tile capabilities, and probable destiny.
The llIGHLAND TERRACE we speak of - ten miles square, and lying
within tile curve of this outstretched arm of mountains - has an average level of about one hundred and twenty feet above the river.  It 
108            THE HIGHLAND TERRACE.
was early settled; and, the rawness of first clearings having long ago
disappeared, the well-distributed &amp;ccomj WOOJ8 are full grown, and
stand, undisfignred by stumps, in park-like roundness and maturity.
The entire area of the Terrace contains several villages, and is divided
up into culfivated farms, the walls and fences in good condition, the
roads lined with trees, the orch~ds fnll, the houses and barns suffi ciently hidden with foliage to be picturesque - the whole neighbor hood, in fact, within any driving distance, quite rid of the angulaAty
and well-known ungracefulness of a newly-settled country.
Though the Terrace is a ten-mile plain, however, its roads are re markably varied and beautiful; from the curnbu~ mu1t~1~~y of dcep
~&amp;n~  These are formed by the many streams which descend from
the ha~f-bowl of mountains enclosing the plain, and - their descent
being rapid and suddeu, and the river into which they empty being
one or two hundred feet below the level of the country around - they
have gradually worn beds much deeper than ordinary streams, and
-are, from this and the character of the soil, unusually picturesque.  At
every mile or so, in driving which way you will, you come to a sudden
descent into a richly wooded vale - a bright, winding brook at bot torn, and romantic recesses constantly tempting to loiter.  In a long
summer, and with perpetual driving over these ten-mile interlacings of
wooded roads and glens,`the writer daily found new scenery, and
heard of beantiful spots, within reach and still unseen.  From every
little rise of the road, it must be remembered, the broad bosom of the
lludson is visible, with foreground variously combined and broken;
and the lofty mountains, (encircling just about as much scenery as the
eye can compass for enjoyment), form an asccndkq back~ounJ and
a n&amp;a~ ~ornzom which are hardly surpassed in the world for bold~ess
and beauty.  To what degree sunsets and sunrises, clouds, moonlight,
and storms, are aggrandized and embellished by this peculiar forma  
THE HIGHLAND TERRACE.                 109
tion of country, any student and lover of nature will at once under stand.  Life may be, outwardly, as mucil more beautiful, amid sucil
scenery, as action amid tile scenery of a stage is more dramatic than
in an unfurnisiled room.
LOCAt ADVANTAGES.
The accc88~~l~~8 from Highland Terrace are very desirable.
West Point is perilaps a couple of miles below, by tile river bank;
and, thougil mountain-bluffs and precipices now cut off tile following
of this line by land, a road ilas been surveyed and commenced along
tile base of Cro'nest, wilich, wilen completed, will be one of tile most
picturesque drives in tile world.  A part of it is to be blown out from
tile face of tile rock; and, as tile lofty eminences will almost com pletely overilang it, nearly the wilole road will be in silade in tile
afternoon.  To pass along this romantic way for an excursion to tile
superb military grounds of West Point, and to ilave tile parades and
music within an easy drive, will be certainly an nunsual luxury for a
country neigilborilood.   The communication is already open for
vehicles, by means of a steam ferry, which runs between Cornwall
`Landing (at tile foot of tile Terrace), and Cold Spring and tile Mill tary Wharf- bringing these three beautiful spots within a few
-minutes' reach 9f each other - Morris the song-writer's triple-view
site of "Underdiff,'? by the way, overlooking the central of these
Highland-Ferry Landings.
It may be a greater or less attraction to the locallty of the Ter race, but it is no disadvantage, at least, that three of the best fre quented summer resorts are within an afternoon dnve, of any part of
it - the WEsT POINT HOTEL, CozzENs's, which is a mile below, and
Pow~~~o~ HOUsE, which is {Ive or six miles above tile Point, at New  
110            TIlE HIGHLAND TERRACE.
burgh.  For accessibility to these fasbionable haunts of strangers and
travellers, and the gayeties and hospitalities for which they give opportunity - for enj oyment of military shows and music - for all manner
of pleasure excnrsions by land and water, to glens and mountain-tops,
fishing, hunting, and stndying of the picturesque - llighl~nd Terrace
will probably be a centre of aftraction quite unequalled.
The river-side length of the Terrace is abont five miles - CORNWALL at one end and NEwBURGIl at the other.  At both these
places there are landings for the steamers, and from both these are
stcam-ferAes to the opposite side of the river, bringing the fine neighborhoods of FIsRsxILL and COLD SPRING within easy reach. NEW~URGH is the metropolis of the Terrace - with its city4ike markets;
hotels, stores, trades and mechanic arts - an epitome of New-York
convenience within the distance of an errand.  Downing, one of our
most eminent horticulturists, resides here, and Powell, one of the most
enterprising of our men of wealth; and, along one of the high acclivities of the Terrace, are the beantiful country seats of Durand, our
first landscape painter~ ]\iiller, who has presented the neighborhood
with a ~osily and beautffj church of stone, Verplauck, Sands, and
many others whosb t~te in grounds and improvements adds beauty
to the river drive.
To the class of seekbrs for sites of rural residence, for whom we are
drawing this picture the fact that the Ter~ace is bcyond subu~ban d~ &mdash;
tanc~ j~~~ W~w- Y6rk, will be one of its chief recommendations.
What may~ be understood as "Cockney annoyances" will not reach
it. But. it will still be sufficiently and variously accessible from the city.
On its own side of the river there is a rail-route from Newburgh to
Jersey City, whose first station is in the centre of the Terrace, at
"Vail's Gate," and by which New-York will eventually be brought
within two hours or less.  By the two ferries to the opposite side of 
THE HIG~llLAXD TERRACE.                111
the river, the stations of the lluds6n -Railroad are also accessible,
bringing the city witliin equal time on another route.  The many
boats upon the river, tonebing at the two landings at all hours of day
and night, enable you to vary the journey to~ and fro, with sleeping,
reading, or tranquil enjoyment of the scenery.  Friends may come to
you wftli positive luxury of locomotion, and without fatigue; and the -
monotony of access to a place of residence by any one con~veyance -
an evil very commonly complained of- is`delightfully removed.
There is a very important advantage of the llighland Terrace,
which we haVe not yet named.  It is tkc &amp;~ot 0Th tltc JIuJ8oTh wh~re tkc
two ~reate~t t~o~ou~hfar~~ of thc J\Thrth a~~ to C~O88 ~ac/t otk~r.  The
intended route from Boston to Lake Erie, here intersects the rail-andriver routes between New-York and- Albany.  Coming by Plainfleld
-and llartford to Fishkill, it here takes ferry to Newburgh, and traverses the Terrace by the connecting link already completed to the
Erie Railroad - thus b~~~~n~ i3o&amp;ton wW~im -six o~ ci~kt ko~rs of
this portion of the river.  Western and Eastern travel will then be
direct from this spot, like Southern and Northern; and Albany and
New-York, Boston and Buffalo, will be four points, all within reach
of an easy excursion.
To many, the most essential charm of llighland Terrace, however,
(as a rural residence in connection with life in New-York), will be
the fact that it is the nc~r~st acccs'sib1~ ~oimt of com~ict~ i~?anJ climatc.
Medical science tells us that nothing is more salutary thau change from
the seaboard to the interior, or from the interior to the seaboard; and,
between these two climates, the ridge of mountains at West Point
is the first effectual separation.
The raw east whids of the - coast, so unfavorable to some constitutions, are stopped by this wall of cloud-touching peaks, and,
with the rapid facilities of communication between salt and fresh air, 
112            TRE RIGliLAND TERRACE.
the balance can be adjusted withont trouble or inconvenience, and as
much taken of either as is found healthfui or pleasant.  The trial of
climate which tile writer has made, for a long summer, in the neighborhood of these mountainous hiding-places of electricity, the improvement of health in his own family, and the testimony of many friends
who have made the same experiment, warrant him in commending it
as a peculiarly salutary and invigorating air
We take pains to specify, once more, that it is`to a certain class,
in view of a certain new phase of the philosophy of life, that these remarks are addressed.  For those who must be in the city late and
early on any and every day, the distance will be inconvenient unless
with unforeseen ad~auce~ in the rate of locomotion.  For those -who
require the night and day dissipations of New-York, and who have
no resources of their own, a nearer residence might also be more
desirable.  For mere seekers of seclusion and economy, it is too near
the city, and the neighborhood would be too luxurious.  But, for
those who have their time in some degree at their own disp6sal -
who have competent means or luxurious independence - who have
rural tastes and metropolitan refinements rationally blended - who
have families which they wish to surround with the healthful and elegant belongings of a home, while, at the same time, they wish to keep
pace with the world, and enjoy what is properly and only enjoyable
in the stir of cities - for this class &mdash; the class, as we said before, made
up of Leisure, Refinement and Luxury - modern and recent changes
are preparing a new theory of what is enjoyable in life.  It is a mixture of city and country, w~~ t~&amp; ~on'~~ ~m tit6 couuti~.  And the spot
with the most advantages for the first American trial of this new combination, is, we ventnre confidently to record, the llIGllLAND
TERRACE ENCIRCLED IN THE EXTENDED ARM OF THE MOU~TAIN5
ABOVE WEST POINT.   
WA-WA-YAN-DAll  LAX~  N~W  J1~RS~Y.
(c~o P SE ~.)
WA-wA-YAN-DAn LAxE is situated on the Wa-wa-yan-dah Mountains, in
the township of Vernon, Sussex county, New Jersey, about three and
a half miles from the boundary between New York and New Jersey,
and about two miles from the line between Susse~ and Passaic coun  ties.  The word "Wa-wa-yan-dali," in the Indian language, means
"Winding Stream," so that both the lake and the mountain derive
their name from this - the Lake and Mountain of the Winding
Stream.  The outlet of the lake after winding in various directions
empties in the Wall-kill.  The lake is called by the settlers on the
mountain, the "Double Pond," from the fact that an island nearly
separates it into two ponds; the water is of great depth, fed by cold
springs, and produces very fine trout.
An old man, named Jeremiah Edes, who formerly lived near the
lake tells of an old German, who came there with a tradition handed
~ down to him from his grandfather, that a vein of precious ore existed
near a lake, which answered to the description of this one; which ore
he was to seek for between four trees, near the bank; that he, Edes,
15 
114              WA-WA-YAN-DAll  LA XE.
assisted tile German ill ilis searcil, wilicil after several montils resulted
ill tile discovery of some silining metal, of wilicil tile German took
several lumps back to Germany, after carefully iliding tile spot, and
binding Edes, by a solemn oatil, not to reveal tile place.
Tile lake is about one mile in extent, eitiler way - it is about fifteen miles from tile Cli ester Dep6t of tile New York and Erie Railroad, and is usually visited from tilis place or from Greenwood Lake.
To tile above description, kindly furnisiled by a friend, we add an
extract from a letter from Mr. Cropsey, tile artist wilose picture we
ilave copied:
"Tile country is mountainous and covered mostly by forests; but
tile little ridges and valleys tilat lie between tile mountains are cultivated; farmilouses dot tilem ilere and tilere, amid apple orcilards and
luxuriant meadows - brooks wind tilrougil tile meadows or`linger
witil many a fall' down tile wooded ilill-side, sustaining liere and tilere a
mill, and tilen loosing tilemselves in some swamp, or spreading out in
some placid little lake or pond. All tile country, as I passed along, was
iligilly picturesque, possessing to a great extent tile wild beauty of tile
Catskill and Wilite Mountain country, combined witil tile tame and
cultivated Orange county, next wilicil it lies.
"Near tile lake, and supplied by its water, is an iron work
witil a pretty clearing in tile woods around - witil numerous neat
little cottages for tile workmen - a store - tile manager's ilouse,
and all tilat kind of incident tilat indicates a new-made but
fiourisiliug place.  Upon tile iligil ground near by, and near wilere
my view was taken, can be seen beyond tile Sila-wan-gunk Mountains
tile Catskills, and from anotiler position not far distant is distinctly
seen Mount Adam and Mount Eve." 
-)       -~ -~: -
~,-),
C)?
~~~ ~~\~M?  -mATh
~` ~"
Q &amp;K%Y&amp;~jK&amp; (~? -~7~
A - - K  - -  
OY~R Tll~ MOUNTAINS, OR TllE W1~STERN ~I9Ni~ER.
BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.
THE peculiar beauty of American mountains is rather incidental thau
intrinsic; we seldom gaze upon one with the delight awakened by an
individual charm, but usually on account of its grand effect as part of
a vast landscape.  Our scenery is on so large a scale as to yield sublime rather than distinct impressious; the artist feels that it is requi
site to select and combine the materials afforded by nature, in order to
produce an effective picture; and although our country is unsurpassed
in bold and lovely scenes, no ordinary patience aud skill are needed
to choose adequate subjects for the pencil.  The outline of the mountains is almost invariably rounded; the peaks of Alpine summits and
tile graceful linear curves of the Apennines render them far more picturesque.  As we stand on the top of Mount Washiugton, or the Catskills, the very immensity of the prospect renders it too vague for the
limner; it inspires the imagination more frequently than it satis~es
the eye.  Indeed, general effect is the characteristic of American sce- ~ Ax
nery; the levels are diffused into apparently boundless prairies, and
the elevations spread in grand but monotonous undulations; only here 
116             OVER TIlE MOUNTAINS.
and there a nook or a ridge, a spur, a defile or a cliW, forms the nucleus
for an impressive sketch, or presents a cluster of attractive features
limited enough in extent to be aptly transferred to canvas.  "lligh
mountains are a feeling;" but here it is liable to be expansive rather
than intense.  The Alleghanies stretch illimitably, and, as it were,
beckon forward the enthusiastic wanderer, while the Alps visibly soar
and lure him upward; amid the latter he' has but to look through the
circle of his Land to behold a picture, while the former awaken a sense
of the undefined and limitless, and thus break up continua]ly the per       ception of details.  It is remarkable, however, that about the centre
of the range, where it intersects the western part of North Carolina,
the sm~mits are peaked like the Alps, and are disposed waywardly
like the Apennines.  llere, too, the French Broad nver, as it winds
along the turnpike for the distance of forty miles, although not navi       gable, is highly picturesque on account of its numerous rapids and the
bluffs that line its course; and, while the autumnal frost produces no
such gorgeous tints in the foliage around as make the western woods
radiant with crimson and gold, the profusion and variety of the ever       greens, render the winter landscape far more attractive.
A similar discrepancy attaches to the moral association of moun       ~tains at home and abroad.  We follow the track of invading hosts as
we cross the Alps, and are thus haunted by memorable events in the
history of civilization amid the most desolate heights of nature; every
fastness of the Apennines has its legend of Scythian, Gaul, or Roman,
and each base its Etrurian sepulchre.  The chief moral interest belong       ing to the Alleghanies is that derived from the fact that they consti(~
tute the natural boundary of the old and new settlements of the conti       nent.  The memory of the Indian, the hunter, and especially the pio       neer, consecrate their names; and as we contemplate a view taken at
the picturesque locality before alluded to, and illustrated by the an        
ovLu TIlE MOUNTAINS.                 11~
nexed landscape, we naturally revert to the brave and original man
who thence went "over the mountains," to clear a pathway, build a
lodge, and found a State in tile wilderness.
There hung, for many months, on the walls of the Art-Union gallery in New-York, a picture by Ranney, so thoroughly national in its
subject and true to nature in i~s execution, that it was refreshing to
contemplate it, after being wearied with far more ambitious yet less
successful attempts.  It represented a flat ledge of rock, the snmmit
of a high cliff that projected over a rich, umbrageous country, upon
which a band of hunters leaning on their rifles, were gazing with looks
of delighted surprise.  The foremost, a compact and agile, though not
very cominanding figure, is pointing out the landscape to his comrades,
with an air of exultant yet calm satisfaction; the wind lifts his thick
hair from a brow full of energy and perception; his loose hunting
shirt, his easy attitude, the fresh brown tint of his cheek, and an mgennons, cheerful, determined yet benign expression of countenance,
proclaim the hunter and pioneer, the Columbus of the woods, the
forest philosopher and brave champion.  The picture represents
Daniel Boone discovering to his companions the fertile levels of Kentucky.  This remarkable man, although he does not appear to have
originated any great plans or borne the responsibility of an app&amp;nted
leader in the warlike expeditions in which he was engaged, possessed
one of those rarely balanced natures, and that unpretending efficiency
of character which, though seldom invested with histo4cal prominence, abound in personal interest.  Without political knowledge, he
sustained an infant settlement; destitute of a military education, he
proved one of the most formidable antagonists the Indians ever encountered; with no pretensions to a knowledge of civil engineering,
he laid out the first road through the wilderness of Kentucky; unfamiliar with books, he reflected deeply and attained to philosophical 
118            OVER TilE MOUNTAINS.
convictions that yielded him equanimity of mind; devoid of poetical
expression, he had an extraordinary feeling for natural beauty, and
described his sensations and emotions, amid the wild seclusion of the
forest, as prolific of debght; with manners entirely simple and unobtrusive, there was not the least rudeness in his demeanor; and relentless in fight, his disposition was thoroughly humane; his rifle and his
cabin, with the freedom of the woods, satisfied his wants; the sense
of insecurity in which no small portion of his life was passed, only
rendered him circumspect; and his trials induced a serene patience and
fortitude; while his love of adventure was a ceaseless inspiration.  Such
a man forms an admirabJe progenitor in that nursery of characterthe West; and a fine contrast to the d9vdopment elsewhere induced
by the spirit of trade and political ambition; like the rudely scnTptured calumets picked up on the plantations of Kentucky-memorials
of a primitive race whose mounds and copper utensils yet attest a
people antecedent to the Indians that fled before the advancing settlements of Boone-his character indicates for the descendants of the
hunters and pioneers, a brave, independent and noble ancestry. Thus, as
related to the diverse forms of national character in the various sections
of the country, as well as on account of its intrinsic attractiveness, the
western pioneer is am object of peculiar interest; and the career of
Boone is alike distingmshed for its association with romantic adventure
and historical fact.
A consecutive narrative however would yield but an ineffective
picture of his life as it exists in the light of sympathetic reflection. The
pioneer, like the mariner, alternates between long uneventful periods
and moments fraught with excitement; the forest, like the ocean, is~monotonous as well as grand; and its tranquil beauty, for weeks together,
may not be sublimated by terror; yet in both spheres there is an
undercurrent of suggestive life, and when the spirit of conflict and 
OVER THE MOUNTAINS.                119
vigilance sleeps, that of contemplation is often alive.  Perhaps it is
this very succession of "moving accidents" and lonely qm'et, of solemn
repose and intense activity, that constitutes the fascination which the   Y V
sea and tile wilderness possess for imaginative minds.  They appeal
at once to poetical and ileroic instincts; and these are more frequently combined in tile same individual, tilan we usually suppose.
Before attempting to realize the characteristics of Boone in their unity,
we must note the salient points in his experience; and this is best
done by reviving a few scenes which typify the whole drama.
It is midnight in the forest; and, through the interstices of its
thickly woven branches, pale moonbeams glimmer on tile emerald
sward.  The only sounds tilat break upon tile brooding silence, are an
occasional gust of wind amid the branches of the loftier trees, the hooting of an owl, and, sometimes, the wild cry of a beast disappointed of
his prey, or scared by the dusky ~gure of a savage on guard at a
watch-fire.  Besides its glowiug embers, and leaning against the huge
trunk of a gigantic hemlock, sit two girls whose complexion and habiliments indicate their Anglo-Saxon Origin; their hands are clasped
together, and one appears to sleep as her head rests upon her companion's shoulders.  They are very pale, and an expression of anxiety
is evident in the very firmness of their resigned looks.  A slight
rustle in the thick undergrowth near their camp, causes the Indian
sentinel to rise quickly to his feet and peer in the direction of the
sound; a moment after he leaps up, with a piercing shout, and fa~s
bleeding upon the ground, while the ~ack of a rifle echoes through the
wood; in an instant twenty Indians spring from around the fire, raise
the war-whoop, and' brandish their tomahawks; but three or four instantly drop before the deadly aim of the invaders, several run howling with pain into the depths of the forest, and the remainder set off
on an opposite trail.  Then calmly, but with an earnest joy, revealed 
1~o            OVER THE MOUNTAINS.
by the dying flames upon his features, a robust, compactly knit figure,
moves with a few hasty strides towards tile females, gazes eagerly into
their faces, lifts one in ilis arms and presses her momently to his breast,
gives a hasty order, and his seven companions with tile three in their
midst, rapidly retrace their way over the tangled brushwood and amid
the pillared trunks, until they come out, at dawn, upon a clearing,
studded with enormous roots, among which waves the tasselled maize,
beside a spacious log-dwelling surrounded by a pallisade; an eager,
tearful group rush out to meet them; and the weary and hungry band
are soon discussing their midnight adventure over a substantial breakfast of game.  Thus Boone rescued his daughter and her friend when
they were taken captive by the Indians, within sight of his primitive
dwelling;-an incident which illustrates more than pages of description, how closely pioneer presses upon savage life, and with what peril
civilization encroaches upon the domain of nature.
It is the dawn of a spring day in the wilderness; as steals the gray
pearly light over the densely waving tree-tops, an eagle majestically
rises from a withered bough, and floats through the silent air, becoming a mere speck on the sky ere he disappears over the distant mountains; dew-drops are condensed on the green threads of the pine and
the swollen buds of the hickory; pale bulbs and spears of herb age
shoot from the black loam, amid the decayed leaves; in the inmost recesses of the wood, the rabbit's tread is audible, and the chirp of the
sqrnrrel; as the sunshine expands, a thousand notes of birds at ~ork
on their nests, invade the solitude; the bear fearlessly laps the running
stream, and the elk turns his graceful head from the pendant branch
he is nibbling, at an unusual sound from the adjacent cane-brake; it is
a lonely man rising from his night slumber; with his blanket on his
arm and his rifle grasped in one hand, he approaches the brook and
bathes his head and neck; then glancing around, turns aside the in 
OVER THE MOUNTAINS.               121
terwoven thickets near by, and climbs a stony mound shadowed by a
fine clump of oaks, where stands an humble but substantial cabin; he
lights a fire upon the flat stone before the entrance, kneads a cake of
maize, while his veuison steak is broiling, and carefully examines the
priming of his rifle; the meal dispatched with a hearty relish, lie closes
the door of his lodge, and saunters through the wilderness; his eye
roves from the wild flower at his feet, to the cliff that looms afar off;
he pauses in admiration before some venerable sylvan monarch,
watches the bounding stag his intrusion has disturbed, or cuts a little
spray from the sassafras with the knife in his girdle; as the sun rises
higher, he penetrates deeper into the vast and beautiful forest; each
form of vegetable life, from the enormous fungi to the delicate vinewreath, the varied structure of the trees, the cries and motions of the
wild auimals and birds, excite in his mind a delightful sense of infinite
power and beauty; he feels, as he walks, in every nerve and vein the
"glorious privilege of being independent;" re~eries that bathe his
soul in a tranquil yet lofty pleasure, succeed each other; and the
sight of some lovely vista induces him to lie down upon a heap of
dead leaves and lose himself in contemplation. WeaAness and hunger,
or the deepeniug gloom of approaching night, at length warn him
to retrace his steps; on the way, he shoots a wild turkey for his
supper, sits over the watch-fire, beneath the solemn firmament of
stars, and recalls the absent and loved through the first watches of
the night.  Months have elapsed since he has thus lived alone in the
wilderness, his brother having left him to seek ammumtion and provision at distant settlements.  Despondency, for awhile, rendered his
loneliness oppressive, but such is his love of nature and freedom,
his zest for life in the woods and a natural self-reliance, that gradually he attains a degree of happiness which De Foe's hero might
have envied.  Nature is a benign mother, and whispers consoling 
OVER  TllE  MOUNTAINS.
secrets to attentive ears, and mysteriously cheers the heart of her
a         pure votaries who truthfully cast themselves on her bosom.  Not thus
sereuely however glides away the forest life of our pioneer.  lle is
jealously watched by the Indiaus, upon whose hunting-grounds he is
encroachiug; they ste41 upon his retreat and make him captive, and
in this situation a new phase of his character exhibits itself.  The soul
that has been in long and intimate commumon with natural grandeur
and beauty, and learned the scope and quality of its own resonrces,
gains self-possession and foresight.  The prophets of old did not resort
to the desert in vaiu; and the bravery and caudor of hunters and sea         meu is partly the result of the isolation and hardihood of their lives.
Boone excelled as a sportsman; he won the respect of his savage
captors by his skill and fortitude; and more than once, without vio         lence, emancipated himse}f, revealed their bloody schemes to his coun         trymen, and met them on the battl&amp;fldd, with a coolness and
celerIty that awoke their intense astonishment.  Again and again, he
saw his companions fall before their tomahawks and rifles; his
daughter, as we have seen, was stolen from his very door, though
fortunately rescued; his son fell before his eyes in a conflict with the
Indians who opposed tbeir emigration to Kentucky; his brother and
his dearest friends were victims either to their strategy or violence;
his own immunity is to be accounted for by the influence he had ac         quired over his foes, which induced them often to spare his life - an in         fluence derived from the extraordinary tact, patience, and facility of
action, which his experience and character united to foster.
Two other scenes of his caree{r are requisite to the picture.  On
the banks of the Missouri river, less than forty years ago, there stood
a few small rude cabins in the shape of a hollow square; in one of
these, the now venerable ~gure of the gallant hunter is listlessly
stretched upon a couch; a slice of buck twisted on the ramrod of his
 
OVER TllE MOUNTAINS.                  1~3
rifle, is roasting by tile fire, within reacil of ilis iland; ile is still alone,
but tile surrounding cabins are occupied by ilis tilriving descendants.
Tile vital energies of tile pioneer are gradually ebbing away, tilougil
liis tilick wilite locks, well-knit frame, and tile ligilt of ilis keen eye,
evidence tile geumneness and prolonged tenure of ilis life.  Overmatciled by tile conditions of tile land law in Kentucky, and annoyed
by tile marcil of civilization in tile regions ile ilad known in tileir
primitive beauty, ile ilad wandered ilere, far from tile state lie founded
and tile ilaunts of ilis mauliood, to ~ie witil tile same adventurous and
independent spirit in wilicil ile ilad lived.  lle occupied some of
tile irksome ilours of confinement incident to age, in polisiling ilis own
cilerrywood coffin; and it is said ile was fouud dead in tile woods at
last, a few rod~ fi~om ilis dwelling.
On an autumn day, six ye~rs since, a ilearse migilt ilave been seen
winding up tile main street of Frankfort, Kentucky, drawn by wilite
ilorses, and gai4anded witil evergreens.  Tile pall-bearers comprised
some of tile most distinguisiled men of tile state.  It was tile second
funeral of Daniel Boone.  By an act of tile legislature, ilis remains
were removed from tile banks of tile Missouri to tile public cemetery
of tile capitol of Kentucky, and tilere deposited witil every ceremonial
of respect and love.
Tilis oblation was in tile iligilest degree just and appropriate, for
tile name of Boone is identified witil tile state lie originally explored,
and ilis cliaracter associates itself readily witil tilat of iler people and
scenery.  No part of tile country is more individual in tliese respects
tilan Kentucky.  As tile word impofts, it was at once tile ilunting and
battle-ground of savage tribes for centuries; and not until tile middle
of tile eigilteentli century, was it well-known to Anglo-Saxon explorers.
Tlie eW and buffalo ileld undisputed possession witil tile Indian; its
dark forests served as a contested boundary between tile Cilerokees, 
194             OVER  TRE  MOUNTAIN5.
Creeks and Catawbas of the South, and the Shawnees, Delawares and
Wyandots of the North; and to these inimical liibgs it was indeed "a
dark and bloody ground."  Unauthenticated expeditions thither we
hear of before that of Boone, but with his first visit the history of the
region becomes clear and progressive, remarkable for its rapid and
steady progress and singular fortunes.  The same year that Independence was declared, Virginia made a county of the embryo state, and
forts scattered at intervals over the face of the country, alone yielded
refuge to the colonists from their barbarian invaders.  In I ~ ~ S, Du
Quesne, with his Canadian and Indian army, met with a vigorous repulse at Boonesborough; in 1~~S, occurred Roger Clark's brilliant ex &mdash;
pedition against the English forts of Vincennes and Kaskaskias; and
the next year, a single blockhouse-the forlorn hope of advancing
civilization-was erected by Robert Patterson where Lexington now
-stands; soon after took place the unfortunate expedition of Col. Bowman against the Indians of Chilicothe; and the Virginian legislature
passed the cdebrated land law.  This enactment neglected to provide
for a general survey at the expense of the government; each holder of
a warrant located therefore at pleasure, and made his own survey;
yet a special entry was required by the law in order clearly to designate boundaries; the vagueness of many entries rendered the titles
null; those of Boone and men similarly unacquainted with legal
writing, were, of course, destitute of any accuracy of description; and
hence interminable perplexity, disputes and forfeitures.  The immediate consequences of the law, however, was to induce a flood of
emigration; and the fever of land speculation rose and spread to an
unexampled height; to obtain patents for rich lands became the ruling
passion; and simultaneous Indian hostilities prevailed-so that Kentucky was transformed, all at once, from an agricultural and hunting
region thinly peopled, to an arena where rapacity and war swayed a 
OVER TllE MOUNTAINS.                     125
vast multitude.  Tile cou~cts, law-suits, border adventures, and personal feuds growing out of tills condition of affairs, would yield memorable tilemes, witilout number, for tile annalist.  To tilis epocil succeeded "a labyrintil of conventions."  Tlie position of Kentucky was
anomalous; tile appendage of a state unable to protect iler frontier
from savage invasion; iler future prosperity in a great measure dependent upon tile glorious river tilat bounded iler domain, and tile
United States government already proposing to yield tile rigilt of it~
navigation to a fb~reign power; separated by tile Allegilany mountains
from tile populous and cultivated Last; aud tile tenure by wilicil
estates were ilelci witilin its limits quite unsettled, it is scarcely to be
wondered at, tilat reckless political adventurers began to look upon
Kentucky as a promising spilere for tileir intrigues.  Witilout adverting to any particular instances, or renewing tile inquiry into tile motives of prominent actors in tilose scenes, it is interesting to perceive
ilow entirely tile intdligence and ilonor of tile people triumpiled over
selfisil ambition and cunning artifice.  Foreign governments and
domestic traitors failed in tileir scilemes to alienate tile isolated state
from tile growing confederacy; repulsed as sile was again and again
in iler attempts to secure consfitufiona~ freedom, sile migilt ilave said
to tile parent government, witil tile repudiated "lad~ wedded to tile
Moor "
"Unkindness may do mueli,
And your nnkindness may aelileve my life,
But never taint my love."
Kentucky was admitted into tile Union on tile fourtil of February, 1~91.
From tills outline of iler ilistory, we can readily perceive ilow ricil
and vaAed was tile material wilence ilas sprung tile Western cilaracter; its ilighest pilase is doubtless to be found in Kentucky; and, in 
12(;           OVER TH~ MOUNTAINS.
our view, best illustrates American ill distinction from European
civilization.  In the North this is essentially modified by the co5mopolite infinence of the seaboard, and in the South, by a climate which
assimilates her people with those of the same latitudes elsewhere; but
ill the -west, and especially in Kentucky, we find the foundation of
social existence laid by the hunters - whose love of the woods, equality
of conditiou, habits of sport and agriculture, and distance from conventionalities, combine to nourish independence, strength of mind,
candor, and a fresh and genial spirit.  The ease and freedom of social
intercourse, the abeyance of the passion for gaiu, and the scope given
to the play of character, accordingly developed a race of noble apti
tudes; and we can scarcely imagine a more appropriate ~gure in the
foreground of the pictnre than Daniel Boone, who embodies the
honesty, intelligence, and chivahic spirit of the state.  With a population descended from the extreme sections of the land, from emigrants of New-Eugland as well as Virginia and North Carolina, and
whose immediate prJgenitors were chiefly agricultural gentlemen, a
generous and spirited character might have been prophesied of the
natives of Kentucky; and it is in the highest degree natural for a people thus descended and with such habits, to cling with entire loyalty
to their parent government, and to yield, as they did, ardent though
injudicious sympathy to France in the hour of her revolutionary crisis.
Impulsive and honorable, her legitimate children belong to the aristocracy of nature; without the general intellectual refinement of the
Atlantic states, they possess a far higher physical development and
richer social instincts; familiar with the excessive development of the
religious and political sentiments, in all varieties and degrees, their
views are more broad though less discriminate than those entertained
in older communities.  The Catholic from Maryland, the Puritan from
Connecticut, and the Churchman of Carolina, amicably flourish together; and the conservative and fanatic are alike undisturbed; the 
OVER TIlE MOUNTAINS.                  1~7
convent and tile camp-meeting being, often witilin sigilt of eacil otlier,
equally respected.
Nature, too, ilas. been as liberal as tile social elements ill endowing
Kentucky witil interesting associations.  Tilat mysterious fifteen miles
of subterranean wonders known as tile Mammotil Cave,- its wonderful
arcilitecture, fossil remains, nitrous atmospilere, eciloes, fisil witil only
tile rudiment of an optic nerve,- its cilasms and cataracts - is one of
tile most remarkable objects in tile world.  Tile boundaries of tile
state are unequalled in beauty; on tile east tile Laurel Ridge or Cumberland Mountain, and on tile west tile Fatiler of Waters.  In native
trees sile is peculiarly ricil - tile glorious magnolia, tile prolific sugartree, tile laurel and tile buckeye, tile ilickory and iloney locust, tile
mulberry, asil, and flowing catalpa, attest in every village and roadside, tile sylvan aptitudes of tile soil; wilile tile tilick buffalo grass
and finest crown-imperial in tile world, clotile it witil a lovely garniture.  Tile blue limestone formation predominates, and its grotesque
cliffs and caverns render mucil of tile geological scenery peculiar and
interesting
Tile lover of tile picturesque and cilaracteristic, must often regret
tilat artistic and literary genius ilas not adequately preserved tile original local and social features of our own pAmitive comrnurnties. Facility
of intercourse and tile assimilating influence of trade are rapidly bringing tile traits and tendencies of all parts of tile country to a common
level; yet in tile natives of eacil section in wilom strong idiosyncrasies
ilave kept intact tile original bias of cilaracter, we ilud tile most striking
and suggestive diversity.  According to tile glimpses afforded us by
tradition, letters, and a few meagre biograpilical data, tile early settlers
of Kentucky united to tile simplicity and ilonesty of tile New-York
colonists, a iligil degree of cilivalric feeling; tilere was an ileroic vein
induced by familiarity witil danger, tile necessity of mutual protection
and tile ilealtilful excitement of tile cilase.  Tile absence of any marked 
128             OVER TllE MOUNTAINS.
distinction of birth or fortune, and the high estimate placed upon
society by those who dwell on widely separated plantations, caused a
remarkably cordial, hospitable and warm intercourse to prevail, almost
unknown at the North and East.  Family honor was cherished with
peculiar zeal; and the women accnstomed to equestrian exercises and
brought up in the freedom and isolation of nature - their sex always respected and their charms thoroughly appreciated-acquired a spirited
and cheerful development quite in contrast to the subdued, uniform tone
of those educated in the commercial towns; their mode of life naturally generated self-reliance and evoked a spirit of independence.
~Iost articles in use were of domestic manufacture; slavery was more
patriarchal in its character than in the other states; the practice of
duelling, with its inevitable miseries, had also the effect to give a certain tone to social life rarely witnessed in agricultural districts; and
the Kentucky gentleman was thus early initiated into the manly
qualities of a Nimrod and the engaging and reliable one of a man of
honor and gallantry-in its best sense.  It is to circumstances like
these that we attribute the chivalric spirit of the state.  She was a
somewhat wild member of the confederacy-a kind of spoiled younger
child, with the faults and the virtues incident to her age and fortunes;
nerved by long vigils at the outposts of civilization,-the wild cat invading her first school-houses and the Indians her scattered cornfields,
-and receiving little parental recognition from the central government,-with a primitive loyalty of heart, she repudiated the intrigues
of ~enet and Burr, and baptized her counties for such national patriots
as Fulton and (;allatin.  Passing through a fiery ordeal of Indian
warfare, the fever of land speculation, great political vicissitude,
unusual legal perplexities, imperfect legislation, and subsequently
entire financial derangement,-she has yet maintained a progressive
and individual attitude; and seems to us, in her most legitimate
specimens of character, more satisfactorily to represent the national 
OVER THE MOUNTAINS.                  129
type, than any   state.  Her culture has not been as refined, nor
her social spirit as yersatile and elegant as in older communities, but a
raciness, hardihood and genial freshness of nature have, for those very
reasons, more completely survived; as a region whence to transplant
or graft, if we may apply horticultural terms to humanity, Kentucky
is a rich garden.  Nor have these distinctions ceased to be.  Her
greatest statesman, in the nobleness of his character and the extraordinary personal regard lie inspires, admirably illustrates the community
of which B~one was the characteristic pioneer; and the volunteers of
Kentucky, in the Indian wars, under Harrison, and more recently in
Mexico, have continuel to vindicate their birthright of vnior; while
one of her most accomplished daughters sends this year a magnificent
bed-quilt, wrought by her own hands, to the World's Fair.
A Pennsylvanian by birth, Boone early emigrated to North Carolina.  He appears to have first visited Kentucky in 1~~(39.  The
bounty lands awarded to the Virginia troops induced surveying expeditions to the Ohio river; and when Col. Henderson, in I~~5, purchased from the Cherokees, the country south of the Kentucky river,
the knowledge which two years exploration had given Boone of the
region, and his already established reputation for firmness and adventure, caused him to be employed to survey the country, the fertility
and picturesque charms of which had now become celebrated. Accordingly, the pioneer having satisfactorily laid out a road through the
wilderness, not without many fierce encounters with the Aborigines,
chose a spot to erect his log-house, which afterwards became the
nucleus of a colony, and the germ of a prosperous State, on the site of
the present town of Boonsborough.  While transporting his family
thither, they were surprised by the Indians, and, after severe loss, so
far discouraged in their enterprise as to return to the nearest settlements; and on the first summer of their residence in Kentucky oc
17 
130            OVER TIlE MOUNTAINS.
curred tile bold abduction of tile two young girls, to wilicil we ilave
previously referred.  In 1~78, wilile engaged in making salt witil
tilirty men, at tile lower Blue Licks, Boone was captured, and wilile
ills companions were taken to Detroit on terms of capitulation, ile was
retained as a pnsoner, tilongil kindly treated and allowed to ilunt. At
Cilillicotile ile witnessed tile extensive preparations of tile Indians to
join a Canadian expedition against tile infant settlement; and effecting
ilis escape, succeeded in reaciling ilome in time to warn tile garrison
and prepare for its defence.  For nine days ile was besieged by an
army of ~ve ilundred Indians and wilites, wilen tile enemy abandoned
tileir project in despair.  In 1~82 ile was engaged in tile memorable
and disastrous battle of Blue Licks, and accompanied ~en. Clarke on
ills expedition to avenge it.  In tile succeeding year, peace witil England being declared, tile pioneer saw tile liberty and civilization of tile
country ile ilad known as a wilderness, only inilabited by wild beasts
and savages, guaranteed and establisiled.  In 1~~9, ilaving laid out
tile cilief of ilis il.ftle property in land warrants, &mdash;on ills way from
Kentucky to Ricilmond, ile was robbed of twenty tilousand dollars;
wiser claimants, versed in tile legal conditions, deprived ilim of ilis
lands; disappointed and impatient, ile left tile glorious domain ile ilad
originally explored and nobly defended, and became a voluntary subject of tile King of Spain, by making a new forest ilome on tile banks
of tile Missouri.  An excursion ile undeftodk, in 181(3, to Fort Osage,
a ilundred miles from ills lodge, evidences tile unimpaired vigor of ills
declining years.
So indifferent to gain was Boone tilat ile neglected to secure a fine
estate ratiler tilan incur tile trouble of a visit to New Orleans.  An
autograpil letter, still extant, proves tilat ile was not illiterate; and
Governor Dunmore of Virginia, ilad sucil entire confidence in ills vigilance and integrity tbat ile employed ilim to conduct surveyors elgilt 
OYER TUE MOUNTAINS.                131
hundred miles through the forest to the falls of the Ohio, gave him
command of three frontier stations and sent him to negotiate treaties
with the Cherokees.  It was a fond boast with him that the first white
women that ever stood on the banks of the Kentucky river, were his
wife and daughter, and that his axe cleft the first tree whose timbers
laid the foundation of a permanent settlement in the State; he had
the genuine ambition of a pioneer and the native taste for life in the
woods embodied in the foresters of Scott and the Leatherstocking of
Cooper.  He possessed that restless impulse - the instinct of adventure
- the poetry of action.  It has been justly said that "he was seldom
taken by surprise, never slirunk from danger, nor cowered beneath exposure and fatigue."  So accurate were his woodland observatious and
memory, that he recognised an ash tree which he had notched twenty
years before, to identify a locality; and proved the accuracy of his designation by stripping off the new bark and exposing the marks of his
axe beneath.  His aim was so certain, that during life, he could with
ease bark a squirrel, that is, bring down the animal, when on the top
of the loftiest tree, by knocking off the bark immediately beneath, killing him by the concussion.
The union of beauty and terror in the life of a pioneer, of so
much natural courage and thoughtfulness as Boone, is one of its
most significant features.  We have followed his musing steps
through the wide, umbrageous solitudes he loved, and marked the
contentment he experienced in a log-hut and by a camp fire; but
over this attractive picture there ever imp ended the shadow of peril
- in the form of a stealthy and cruel foe, the wolf, disease, and
exposure to the elements.  Enraged at the invasion of their ancient
hunting-grounds, the Indians hovered near; while asleep in the
jungle, following the plough, or at his frugal meal, the pioneer was
liable to be shot down by an unseen rifle, and surrounded by an 
132             OVER THE MOUNTAINS.
ambush; from the tranquil pursuits of agriculture, at any moment, he
might be summoned to the battle-fie]d, to rescue a neighbor's property
or defend a solitary outpost.  The senses become acute, the mind vigi     lant, and the tone of feeling chivalric nuder such discipline.  That life
has a peculiar dignity, even in the midst of privation and however d&amp;
void of refined culture, which is entirely self-dependent both for sus     tainment and protection.  It has, too, a singular freshness and anima     tion the more genial from being naturally inspired.  Compare the
spasmodic efforts at hilarity, the forced speech and hackneyed expres     sion of the fashionable drawing-room, with the candid mirth and gal     lant spirit born of the woodland: and the chase; - the poweffd~sine~ws
and wAl-braced nerves of the pioneer with the languid pulse of the
metropolitan exquisite; - and it seems as if tile fountain of youth still
bubbled up in some deep recess of the forest.  Philosophy, too, as well
as health, is attainable in the woods, as Shakespeare has illustrated in
"As You Like It;" and Boone by his example and habitual senti     ments.  He said to his brother, when they had lived for months in the
yet unexplored wilds of Kentucky, "You see how little human nature
requires.  It is in our own hearts rather than in the things around us,
that we are to seek felicity.  A man may be happy in any state.  It
only asks a perfect resignation to the will of Providence."  It is re-  -
markable that the two American characters which chiefly interested
Byron, were Patrick Henry and Daniel Boone - the one for his gift
of oratory, and the other for his philosophical content - both so
directly springing from the resources of nature.
There is an affinity between man and nature which conventional
-ci     habits keep in abeyance but do not extinguish.  It is manifested in the
prevalent taste for scenery, and the favor so readily bestowed upon its
graphic delineation in art or literature; but in addition to the poetic
love of nature, as addressed to the sense of beauty, or that ardent
 
Ovin THE MOUNTAINS.                 133
curiosity tb explore its laws and phenomena which finds expression in
natural science, there is an instinct that leads to a keen relish of nature
ill her primeval state, and a facility in embracing the life she offers in
her wild and solitary haunts; a feeling that seems to have survived
the influences of civilization and developes, when encouraged, by the
inevitable law of animal instinct.  It is not uncommon to meet with
this passion for nature among those whose lives have been devoted to
objects apparently alien to its existence; sportsmen, pedestrians, and
citizens of rural propensities, indicate its modified action, while it is
more emphatically exhibited by the volunteers who join caravans to
the Rocky Mountains, the deserts of the East and the forests of
Central and South America, with- no ostensible purpose but the
gratification arising from intimate contact with nature in her luxu        riant or barren solitudes.
To one having but an inkling of this sympathy, with a nervous
organization and an observant mind, there is, indeed, no restorative of
the frame or sweet diversion to the mind like a day in the woods.
The effect of roaming a treeless plain or riding over a cultivated region
is entirely different.  There is a certain tranquillity and balm in the
forest that heals and calms the fevered spirit and quickens the languid
pulses of the weary and disheartened with the breath of hope.  Its
influence on the animal spirits is remarkable; and the senses, ~eleased
from the din and monotonous limits of streets and houses, luxuriate in
the breadth of vision and the rich variety of form, hue and odor which
~       only scenes like these afford.  As you walk in the shadow of lofty
trees, the repose and awe of hearts that breathe from a sacred temple,
gradually lulls the tide of care and exalts despondency into worship.
As your eye tracks the flickering light glancing upon the herbage, it
brightens to recognize the wildAlowers that are associated with the
innocent enjoyments of childhood; to note the delicate blossom of the
 
134              O~ER TIlE MOUNTAINS
wild hyacinth, see tile purple asters waye in tile breeze, and tile scarlet
berries of tile winter-green glow among tile dead leaves, or mark tile
circling fligilt of tile startled crow and tile sudden leap of tile squirrel.
You pause unconsciously to feel tile springy velvet of tile moss-clump,
pluck up tile bulb of tile broad-leaved sanguinaria, or examine tile star                  llke flower of tile liverwort, and tilen lifting your gaze to tile canopy
beneatil wilicil you lovingly stroll, greet as old and endeared acquaint                  ances tile noble trees in tileir autumn splendor,-tile crimson dogwood,
yellow ilickory or scarlet maple, wilose brilliant ilues mingle and glow
in tile sunsiline ilke tile stained windows of an old gotilic catiledral;
and you feel tilat it is as true to fact as to poetry tilat "the groves
were God's first temples."  Every fern at your feet is as daintily
carved as tile frieze of a Grecian column; every vista down whicil you
- -               look, wears more tilan Egyptian solemnity; the witilered leaves rustle
like the sigils of penitents, and tile lofty tree-tops send fortil a voice
like tilat of prayer.  Fresil vines encumber aged trunks, solltary leaves
quiver slowly to tile eartil, a twiligilt ilue cilastens tile brigiltuess
of noon, and, all around, is tile cilarm of a mysterious quietude and
seclusion tilat induces a dreamy and reverential mood; wilile ilealtil
seems wafted from tile balsamic pine and tile elastic turf, and over all
broods tile serene blue firmament.
If sucil refreshment and inspiration are obtainable from a casual
and temporary visit to tile woods, we may imagine tile effect of a lengtil                  ened sojourn in tile primeval forest, upon a nature a~ive tQ its beauty,
wildness and solitude; and when we add to these, the zest of adventure,
the pride of discovery and that feeling of sublimity which arises from
a consciousness of danger always impending, it is easy to realize in the
experience of a pioneer at once tile most romantic and practical ele                  ments of life.  In our own history, rich as it is in this species of
`adventure, no individual is so attractive and prominent as Daniel
 
OVER THE MOUNTAINS.               135
Boone.  The singular union in ilis cliaracter of benevolence and hardihood, bold activity and a meditative disposition, the hazardous enterprises and narrow escapes recorded of him, and tile resolute tact lie
displayed in all emergencies, are materials (luite adequate to a thrilling
narrative; but when we add to the external phases of interest, that
absolute passion for forest life which distinguished him, and the identity
of his name with the early fortunes of the West, he seems to combine
the essential features of a genuine historical and thoroughly individual
character.    
WEST ROCK, NEW llAVEN.
BY MARY B. FIELD.
CONSPICUOUS among tile lovely places of New England is tile elmsiladed city of New llaven.  It is a city by virtue of its population
and municipal regulations; but its rural appearance,-neat, unpretending ilomes, witil tileir pleasant court-yards and tasteful gardens,
open squares and streets overarciled witil trees, make one ilesitate to
give it a name associated witil glare, and dust, and noise.  Tile waters
of Long Island Sound flow softly to its feet, and in tile ilaven tilus
formed tile mariner finds silelter from outside storms.
Tile town is situat6d on a plain wilicil opens nortilward into a
beautiful valley, wilose guarding ilill-sides terminate in two rocky
ileigilts.  Wilen seen from tile ilarbor below, tilese eminences seem
near tile city, and look like tile sides of some iluge portal tilrown open
in welcome to tile traveller.   Tiley are known as East and West
Rock.
It is one of tilese prominent and most picturesque objects, wilicil tile
artist ilas cilosen for ilis beautiful picture.  llow trutilful are its outlines
wilen compared witil tile scene in memory, daguerreotyped tilere in tilose
18 
138                   WEST ROCK.
summer days when the student goes to the woods with his books,
when the angler lies idle by the brook,-and the poet dreams to a
tuneful measure as lie gazes on the outline of hills, or watches the
clouds which rest over them.  There is the bold, red rock, a columned
wall,-seamed and scarred, and piled up half its height with fragments
of stone.  There gleams a village spire above the trees; there are the
river and meadow shadowed by summer clouds, and there the haymakers gather their fragrant harvest.
But West Rock has another interest.  The artist here gives us not
only a beautiful and wdl-ku'own scene, but illustrates a passage in
colonial history.  That rugged pile recalls a story of trial and foftitude, courage and magnanimity, the noblest friendship, and a fearless adherence to political principles from religious motives.
There were troubled days in England.  The king had been false
to his people, and had been adjudged the death of a traitor.  Then
followed the brief rule of Cromwell, his death, and the restoration of
the monarchy.  The enthronement of Charles IL was the signal of
flight to those who acted as judges on the trial of his father.
Two of these men, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, arrived at
Boston the 2~th of July, 1(3(30, in the very ship which brought the
first tidings of the Restoration.  They were particularly obnoxious to
the new government from their relationship to Cromwell, their political
influence in the late Commonwealth, the rank they had held in the
armies of the Parliament, and the possession of eminent talents whose
exercise might again endanger the monarchy.
For a time they were safe in Massachusetts, and it was hoped
they might be forgotten in the mother country and suffered to live in
peace in these remote regions.  But when, some months later, an act
of indemnity arnv'ed, and these men were specially`excluded from the
general pardon, it became evident that royal vengeance would not 
WEST  ROCK.                     139
overlook them.  Still no attempt was made to arrest them until
February, 1(361, when a warrant to that effect arrived from England.
Anticipating this, they had left for Connecticut a few days before, and
the friendly ofilcers of justice in Massachusetts were careful to look for
them in another direction.
Already had the good Davenport, minister of the New llaven
colony, prepared his people to receive them, teaching them to "Be
not forgetful to entertain strangers; to "Remember those in bonds as
bound with them," and citing for - their direction such passages as
"Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide
the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth.  Let mine outcasts
dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of
the spoiler."  Thus taught, and the people of that colony were attentive to such instructions, they were ready to give the fugitives efficient
protection. - Royalist officers pursued them, but the "noonday was
night" around them.  They had been seen at the house of Mr. Davenport and elsewhere in town, but search was always made for them in
the wrong place.
At last, when no house could longer give them protection and
their friends were endangered by their presence, West Rock furnished
them a refuge.  On its summit there are large masses of stone
irregularly thrown together, so that the apertures between furnish a
recess or small cave, in which the wanderers hid themselves.  Trees
and bushes grew thick around, concealing the entrance.  They were
not forgotten in this retreat.  Every day, and often both morning and
evening, a messenger ascended the height to carry them food, and
they were informed of all that passed below.  There they were comparatively safe; but it was told them that their tried friend, Mr.
Davenport, was exposed to danger on their account, an d though the
certainty of a painful, humiliating death was before them, they de 
140                    WEST  RO c~.
scended to the town with the  intention of surrendei4ng tliemselves to the royal officers.  They preferred any suffering to the transient peril of their friend.  This danger was less alarming than they
supposed, and they were persuaded to return to their cave.
What weary days and nights passed over them in that solitude!
Those restless souls, nurtured to battle and the strife of political parties, so lately prominent in the terrible struggle at home, were here
condemned to inaction, to the slow wearing out of 4ife in loneliness
and dread.  They could look off upon the waters, but seldom came a
vessel up that bay; and when at rare intervals a white sail gleamed
there, it only seemed to mock their impatience to know the tidings it
brought,- too often saddest news for them.
They could watch every approach to the mountain, and friends
occasionally visited them there.  Stories were long told of mysterious
appearances on that height,- forms as of human beings seen in mist,
hovering over the edge of the precipice; tales which have since
resolved themselves into the morning or evening stroll on which the
lonely outcasts ventured.  The messenger who generally carried them
food, was ignorant for whom it was intended.  There was a strange
mystery in his errand, and he executed it with fear, thinking of apparitions the villagers had seen there.  The emptied cloth or basket was
always in its place, but no human being was visible.
But the Cave on West Rock had its own dangers.  A security
from pursuing men, there was no safety from the tenants of the forest.
Wild beasts were around the fugitives.  Roused at night by their
howling or cries, and waked to see their glaring eyeballs ~xed upon
them, they were forced to desert their mountain refuge, and again
found a shelter among men.
Years passed on.  Search for them was relinquished at intervals
only to be renewed with greater zeal; but concealed in an inland vil 
WEST ROCX.                     141
lage of Massacilusefts,* not all the officers of the crown could trace
them out.  There tiley died, but their place of burial was kept secret,
lest their ashes should be dishonored.  Later developments seem to
prove their removal to New llaven, and tile stranger standing on
West Rock is silown the churcil in wilose siladow they are believed
to lie buried.
The pantiler no longer screams up that rocky heigilt, and tile
woods are cut away, but the "Judge's Cave" remains.  Iligh on its
front some hand has recorded the political creed of the men who
there suffered exile and persecution:  "Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God."  Tilere may it remain, tile epitapil of tile "Regicides"
as tile Rock is tileir memorial!
* llad1~.  
Tll~ ~RIE RAILROAD.
(See Title-page.)
BY' BAYARD TAYLOR.
VITll tile rapid progress and wider development of tile great locomotive triumphs of tile age, steam travel and steam navigation, tile
vulgar lament over tileir introduction is beginning to disappear.  Sentimental tounsts wilo once complained tilat every nook where the
poetry of the Past still lives - every ilermitagJ of o~d and sacred
associations - would soon be invaded by these merciless emb-odiments
of t~e Present and tile Practica~, are now quite content to take tileir
aid, wherever it may be ilad, between Ceylon and tile Nortil Cape.
The silriek of tile steam whistle is hardly as musical as tile song of
the sirens, and a cusilioned car is not so romantic as a gondola, yet
they pass Calypso's isle with the sound of one - ringing in their ears,
and ride into Venice over tile bridged Lagunes in tile otiler.  The
fact is, it was only tile innovation wilich alarmed.  Once adopted, its
miracles of speed, comfort, and safety, soon silenced tile repinings of
those wilo depend on outward circumstances and scenes to give tilose
blossoms of thought and sensation, which, without these, tileir minds
are too barren to produce.  We now more frequently hear of the 
144              THE  ERIE  RAIL~ OAD.
power and poetic mystery of the steam-engine.  We are called upon
to watch those enormous iron arms and listen to the thick throbbings
of that unconscious heart, exerting the strength of the Titans and the
Anakim to beat down the opposing waves and bear us forward in the
teeth of the terrible winds.  We have been told, till the likeness has
grown commonplace, of the horse that, snorting fire and smoke from
his nostrils, and his neck "clothed with thunder," skims over the plain
and pierces the mountain's heart, outrunning the swift clouds and
leaving the storm in his rear.  We shall learn, ere long, that no great
gift of science ever diminishes our stores of purer and more spiritual
enjoyment, but rather adds to their abundance and gives them a
ncher zest.  Let the changes that mu&amp;t come, come: and be sure they
will bring us more than they take away.
No similar work in the world could contribute more to make the
Railroad popular with the class referred to, than the New-York and
Erie Railroad.  This is by far the most striking enterprise of the kind
which has yet been completed.  Exceeding in length any single road
in the world, the nature of the country through which it passes, the
difficulties to be overcome in its construction, and the intrinsic character of the work itself, invest it with an interest and grandeur which
few mechanical enterprises of ancient or modern times possess.  Its
course represents, on a small scale, the crossing of a continent.  It
belts four dividing ridges of mountains, separating five different systems of rivers and streams.  From the level of tide-water at NewYork, it rises to a height of 1,3(3(3 feet on crossing the main ridge of
the Alleghanies, and yet throughout its whole extent of four hundred
and fifty miles, there is neither an inclined plane nor a tunnel.  The
first direct line of communication between the Atlantic and the great
Lakes of the North, it has brought them within the compass of a
summer's day.  The traveller who sees daybreak glimmer over the 
THE  ERIE  RA;(LROA D.                145
waters of New-York Bay, may watch the last tints of the sunset sink
behind the horizon of Lake Erie.
The history of the Erie Railroad, is like that of all great undertakings.  It began with a failure; it ended with a triumph.  The first
9hafter for its construction was granted in 1832, fixing the stock at
ten millions of dollars, but for several years llttle was done except to
survey the route.  It was originally proposed to construct the road on
piles instead of solid embankments, and the ruins of many miles of
such skeleton-work still stretch along the valley of the Canisteo.  The
difficulties which beset the enterprise during the first decade of its
existence, were innumerable, and would have discouraged less courageous and less enthusiastic men than its projectors.  The natural
obstacles to be overcome required an enormous outlay; the consent of
Pennsylvania was to be obtained to the building of those parts of the
road which lay within her borders; owners of capital hesitated to
invest it in an uncertain scheme; and to crown all, came the commercial revulsions of 183 ~, which for a time prostrated it wholly.  After
the country had recovered from this shock, another effort was made.
The State came to its relief, and after a season of toil and anxiety the
work was recommenced and kept alive till the prospect of success
brought all the wealth to its aid which had hitherto been held back.
Ten years more, and the President of the United States and his Cabinet, with the highest dignitaries of the City and State, were whirled
from station to station, from the Ocean to the Lakes, amid the thunder
of cannon, the peal of bells, and the shouts of an inauguration grander
even in its outward aspects than the triumphal processions of old
Rome.  The cost of this stup9ndous work was more than twenty
millions of dollars.
What distinguishes the Erie Road above all other railroads is its
apparent disregard of natural difficulties.  It disdains to borrow an
19 
14(3             TIlE ERIE RAILROAD.
underground passage through the heart of an opposing mountain, but
climbs the steeps, looks over the tops of the pines, and occasionally
touches the skirt of a stray cloud.  It descends with equal facility,
with a slope in some places startlingly perceptible, throws its bridges
across rivers, its viaducts over valleys, and sometimes runs along the
brink of a giddy precipice, with a fearless security which very much
heightens the satisfaction of the traveller.  Let us put the airy car of
our memory on its track, and we shall run over the whole line before
one of its locomotives could pant out fif~y of its asthmatic breathings.
From Piermont, on the lludson, the road stretches out an arm, a
mile in length, into the Tappan Bay, and receives us from the boat.
Behind the village there is a notch in the arc of hills embracing the
bay, and through it we pass into the old fields of Rockland, with their
old walls and old, red, Dutch farmhouses.  A few miles - and the
long, sweeping outline of Ramapo Mountain rises before us; the beautiful Ramapo Valley lies below, and the little village, with its foundries and forges, nearly two centuries old, stands in the mouth of the
- only pass whereby- the mountain is pierced in all its extent -- the
Clove of Ramapo.  Through this pass, of eight miles in length, winds
a rivulet, now spreading into a tiny mountain lake, now fretting over
the rocks, and leaping hither and thither in a chain of linked cascades.
The road follows the rivulet into the grazing farms of Goshen - rich,
upland meadows, dotted with trees and breathing of the cream and
milk and butter that load a daily train to the metropolis.  This region
is - passed and again the mountains appear, the Catskills blue in the
north, but the rugged Shawangunk lying across our path.  Up, up we
go, iIfty feet to the mile, and are soon high on the side, looking over
its forests into the deep basin of the Nevising, which pours its water.'~
into the Delaware.  Port Jervis, a station on the line, seems at our
feet; it is five hundred feet below us, but sliding down ten miles in
almost so many minutes, we are there. 
THE  ERIE  RAILROAD.                14~
The road now crosses the Delaware into Pennsylvania, and for a
distance of seventy or eighty miles follows the bank of the river
through wild and rugged scenery.  For several miles the track has
been laid, with immense labor and cost, on the top of a precipice
nearly one hundred feet in height and falling sheer to the river. Much'
of the country is the primitive wilderness, which has never yet been
reclaimed.  Finally, at Deposit, not far from the source of the Delaware, the road turns westward and crosses the AIleghanies to the valley of the Susquehanna.  Between the two rivers there is also a complete wilderness, uninhabited except by the, workmen belonging to the
road.  Notwithstanding a summit cut of 200 feet deep, which cost
$200,000, tEe ascending and descending grades are very heavy, and
some of the most remarkable portions of the work are to be f~und at
this point. After striking the Susquehanna, our journey lies for nearly
one hundred and fifty miles in the rich and picturesque valleys of that
river and its tributaries, the Tioga and the Canisteo, passing through
the fiourishiug towns of Bingbamtou, Owego, Elmira, and Corning.
Overlooking the superb meadows and rolling grain-fields, the Alleghanies or spurs of them are always in sight, and on either side we have
a rapidly unrolling panorama of such rural beauty as would have bewildered old Cuyp and Rysdael.  Another dividing ridge, less steep
and rugged than the previous, and we descend through virgin forests,
some of which are swept away by fire to make room for thb settler, to
the Alleghany River.  llence, to Lake Erie, our course is mainly
through a wild and uncultivated region, or seeming so, after the bountiful valleys we have left.  We cross the Indian Reservation; catch a
glimpse of some aboriginal idlers in wampum and moccason; again
climb a range of hills, several hundred feet in height, from whose sides
we overlook valleys and levels of wild woodland, and at last reach a
curve, where, beyond the far sweep of the dark forest, we see the 
148             THE ERIE RAILROAD.
edge of the sky crossed by a line of deeper blue and know that we
behold Lake Erie.  Is not all this enough for a summer's day?
The bold design of this road involved the necessity of a number
of grand and costly works.  The track itsdf, in the Pass of Ramapo,
and along the Upper Delaware, frequently cost upwards of ~100,000
per mile.  The Starucca Viaduct, an immense structure of hewn stone,
crossing the valley at Lansingburg, is the ilnest work of the kind in
this country.  It is 1,200 feet long, consisting of 18 arches 114 feet in
height, and was erected at a cost of ~300,000.  Next to this, in point
of importance, and more remarkable in its character, is the bridge
over Cascade Ravine, which is crossed in the descent from the summit
ridge of the Alleghanies to the Susquehanna.  The mountain is' here
interrupted by a deep gorge or chasm, through the bottom of which
a small stream tumbles in its foamy course.  Across this gulf, 184 feet
in depth, a single arch of 280 feet span has been thrown, its abutments resting on the solid crags.  This daring arch, which, to the
spectator below, seems hung in mid-air, was eighteen months in building, and cost ~~0,000.  A little to the north the gorge opens into the
Valley of the Susquehanna, disclosing through its rugged jaws the
most beautiful landscape seen on the road.
It was the good fortune of the writer to be one of the guests in
the ~~t train which passed over the Cascade Ravine Bridge.  At the
close of December, ~ 848, the line was opened from Port Jervis to
Binghamton, a distance of one hundred and twenty-live miles.  The
incidents of that lirst journey by steam through the wilderness, in the
depth of winter, will not soon be forgotten by those who took part in
it.  The Shawangunk Mountains were topped with snow as we passed
them, and on taking the new track, beyond Port Jervis, the ilakes
began to fall thick and fast.  The Delaware ran at the~ft~ot of the
wild bluffs choked with masses of ice, and each of its many windings 
TllE ERIE RAILROAD.                149
disclosed a more drear and wintry prospect.  The hemlocks bent
under their white load; the river ran cold and dark; the frozen cascades hung from the rocks, like masses of transparent spar. For many
a mile there was no sign of human habitation - nothing but the
grand and desolate solitude of the mountains.  And yet - wonder
beyond the tales of Scheherazade! -- our superb train carried a heart
of luxury into that savage realm.  We sped along, swiftly as the bird
flies, in a warm and richly furnished chamber, lounging on soft seats,
half arm-chair and half conch, apparently as disconnected from the
landscape as a loose leaf blown over it by the winds.  In that pleasant climate of our own we heard the keen air whistle without, and
the light patter of the snow against the windows, with a sense of bomfort rendered doubly palpable by the contrast.
At the little villages on the route, triumphal arches of fir and
hemlock boughs were built for us, upon which antlered bucks, brought
m by the hunters, stood straight and stiff.  Every town which could
boast a cannon, gave a hearty salute, and as the early nightfall came
on, bonfires were lighted on the hills.  It was after dark when we left
Deposit, and the snow was a foot deep on the track, but with two
locomotives plowing through the drifts, we toiled slowly to the summit.  After we had passed the deep cut and had entered on the descending grade, it was found that in consequence of the snow having
melted around the rails and afterwards frozen again, the breaks attached to the cars would not act.  The wheels slipped over the icy
surface, and in spite of the amount of snow that had fallen, we shot
down the mountain at the rate of fQfty miles an hour.  The light of
our lamps showed us the white banks on either hand; the ghostly
trees above and the storm that drove over all: beyond this, all was
darkness.  Some anxiety was felt as we approached the Bridge over
Cascade Ravine; the time was not auspicious for this first test of its 
150             THE ERIE RAILROAD.
solidity.  Every eye peered into the gloom, watching for the critical
spot, as we dashed onwards.  At last, in the twinkling of an eye, the
mountain-sides above and below us dropped out of sight, and left us
looking out on the void air.  The lamps enabled us to see for an instant, through the falling snow-flakes, the sharp tops of pines far
below.  For a second or two we huug above them, suspended over
the terrible gulf, and then every one drew a deep breath as we touched
the solid rock which forms the abntment of the arch.  But our course
was not checked till we reached the Susquehanna Valley, where we
sped on past bonfires blazing red~y over the snow, till the boom of
minute-guns and the screams of our strong-lunged locomotives startled
the inhabitants of Biughamton at midnight.
On our return, the following day, we reached the Cascade Ravine
in the afternoon, and a halt was made to enable us to view the bridge
from below.  Scrambling through the snow, down the slippery declivities, we at last reached the bottom of the gorge and looked up at
the wonderful arch, which spanned it as lightly as a rainbow.  Firmset on its base of eternal granite, it gave not the slightest quiver when
our train passed over.  Although made of perishable materials, it will
last as long as they hold together, for its mountain abutments cannot
be shaken.  Seen from below, the impression it makes upon the eye
is most complete and satisfactory, combining the extreme of lightness
and grace with strength and inflexible solidity.  A few yards further
up the mountain, the cloven chasm, over Which the gnarled pines hang
their sombre boughs, widens to a rocky basin, into which falls a cascade seventy feet in height, whence the ravine takes its name.  The
accompanying engraving, from the view taken by Mn Talbot, though
it may appear exaggerated to one who has never beheld the reality,
conveys no more than a just idea of the bold and striking character
o~ this work.   
Tll~ CllUI~Cll OF TllE llOLY INNOCENTS,
WEST POINT.
TuE Cilurcil of tile lloly Innocents is situated on tile west bank of
tile lludson, in tile very ileart of tile Higillands, and about a mile
soutil of tile Military Academy at West Point.
It was built in tile years`46 aud`4~, and consecrated in July of
tile latter year by tile Rt. Rev. Bisilop Delancey.
Rumor ilas so iligilly colored tile ilistory of its origin, as to enlist
in its beilalf a degree of interest wilicil may not be materially lessened
by a simple stateWent of tile trutil.
While two or tilree persons at West Point were contemplating a
place for tile erection of a Cilurcil, somewilere near tile spot on wilicil
tile one in question now stands, for tile benefit of tile neigilboring
population, and as a centre of missi6nary operations in tile surrounding country, embracing a large section of tile Higillands, one of tileir
number - Prof. R. W. Weir - moved by an afflictive dispensation of
God's providence, in tile deatil of a ch~1J, made an offering, of tilat
cilild's portion, to God, as tile beginning of a fund for tile building of
a Cilurcil to be called "Tile Cilurcil of tile liUly Imn~occnt~."  He subsequently added ~0 tilis sum otiler offerings of ilis own, and of a few 
1~2      CHURCH OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
other persons at West Point and elsewhere, who felt an interest in the
undertaking.  The simple, but chaste and beautiful sanctuary, erected
to "the honor and glory of God," is the fruit of these offerings.
The plan of the Church, both in its outline and details, was furnished by Mr. Weir, who also superintended its erection.  The stone
of which it is built was taken from the laud on which the Church
stands, and which was the gift of Mr. W. B. Cozzens.
The Church is somewhat in the early English style of architecture; cruciform in plan, the nave being about (30 feet by 28 (on the
outside), and each of the trausepts 102' feet by 19.  There is an admirably well proportioned %we~ at the north-east corner, 48 feet in
height, and 14~ feet square at the base.  One of the most beautiful
external features of the sacred edifice, is the low soutA ~orci~ which is
its principal entrance.  Over the door of this porch the?e is a tablet
with the simple inscription, "To the honor and glory of God."  Surmounting the east end of the nave, and also the porch, are two fionated crosses.
In the position of the Church the rule of onentation has been
observed, the chancel pointing towards the east, and the altar being
in the eastern end.
On cntcrin~ the porch the eye is at once arrested by a text of
Holy Scripture written over the inner door:  "0! come let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker."  On entering the Church itsdf, the eye is again met every where with texts of
Holy Scnpture.  Over every door, on every window, over the altar,
over the font, on the walls, and in each of the windows, texts chosen
with p~culiar aptness convey their sacred teachings to the devout worshipper: - e. q., over the altar are the words, "As often as ye eat this
bread and drink this cup, ye show the Lord's death until he come;"
over the font, "Except a man be born of water a~d the Spirit, he 
CllURCH  OF  TIlE  IlOLY  INNOCENTS.             1~3
cannot enter the kingdom of God;" over the door by which the Priest
enters the Church to engage in his holy functions, "As my Father
hath sent me, even so send I you;" over the windows the texts are all
words of T~a~e.
In the south transept, at the entrance of the Church, stands the
Baptismal Font, one of the most beautiful in this country, octagon
shaped, with sacred symbols carved on the sides.  It is of,the granite
of the llighlands, 3~2T feet in height, and the bowl ~~2~ feet in circumference.  The windows, deeply splayed on the inside, are of stained
glass; in the centre of each is a plain white cross, on the tranverse
beam of which is a passage of lloly Scripture chosen from the divine
sayings of our Lord.
The seats are plain, open benches, and free to all woTh~ippers. The
wainscoting and wails are of a grave and sober color.  The chancel
occupies at present the head of the cross, bnt this, it is hoped, will be
only a temporary arrangement.
The whole int~ior, marked by unity of design, by perfect sim-plicity, and by a quiet solemnity, cannot fail to shed its hallowing,
subduing influence over the soul of every worshipper who enters there,
in sincerity and truth, to worship Almighty God; while the exterior of
the sacred temple, with its gray, unhewn walls, its very irregular outline, its simple rural aspect, harmonizes most strikingly with the rough,
wild mountain scenery in the midst of which it seems to have sprung
up, itself a work of nature.  And its tower, pointing heavenward, its
cruciform outline, its cross-crowned peak, tell unmistakably its holy character, and serve to remind all who enter or behold it, both of the
end and of the faith to which God is calling them.*
*For the preceding notice we are indebted to the Rev. W. B. ~ibso~, the Rector of
the Church.
20   
Tll~ VAtL~Y O~ Tll~ lloUsAToNtC;
BY wILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
THE landscape of Gignoux, engrave(1 for this volume, representing a
winter scene, belongs to a class of subjects which he always treats
well.  With bim winter is always a season of splendor.  The crisp
snow lies glittering where it was dropped from the clouds or cast by
the wind, an intense sunshine fills the transparent sky, and is reflected
from the white clouds, and penetrates the pellucid ice.  The figures he
introduces are shown in movements which have all the vivacity belonging to the season.
Gignoux is a native of France, who for many years has made this
country his home, and learned to love its scenery with all the affection
of one who passed his childhood here.  lle is never tired of wandering by our wild streams, of studying our boundless woods, with their
vast variety of foliage, of climbing our rocky mountains and looking
down into the pleasant valleys that stretch away in our clear and
glowing atmosphere.  To him Nature makes no reserve of her hidden
beauties, and his portfolio, filled with studies of places the image of 
THE VALLEY OF THE HOUSATONIC.           157
to lift and let fall tile ponderous ilammers of forges and make acres
of paper for tile daily press.  In Stockbridge it begins to put on tile
majesty of manilood and winds backwards and forwards among tile
grassy natural terraces and maple woods, as if unwilling to leave so
fair a region.  In Great Barrington it flows slowly tilrougil meadows
ilemmed in by tile picturesque summits of craggy mountain ridges.  In
Sileflidd it ilas formed, by mining tile ground for centuries, a vast plain
of six miles in widtil, reaciling to tile base of tile Taconic, tile iligilest
mountain along its course, dark, grand, and sending scores of clear
rivulets down ilis steep sides to swell tile current of ilis own fair river.
In Canaan tile llousatonic casts its entire volume of amber-colored
waters down a precipice of sixty feet in ileigilt, an overilanging silelf,
as is tile case witil most of tile waterftt~~ls in tilis country, tile layers of
rock below ilaving crumbled away, wilile tile uppermost remains firm.
It tilen pursues its way tilrougil a sort of glen, bounded east and west
by ridges ricil witil massive woods, and fields running up tileir sides
into tile forest, till it reaciles New MilfUrd, tile scene of Gignoux's
picture.  In all tile places I ilave enumerated it turns iluge wileels and
labors in tile mills, but a few miles below New Milford it lays itself
sluggisilly down between level banks and creeps to its final resting
place in tile ocean.  From Derby downward to tile Sound it is navigable, passively bearing out and bringing in ~ vessel now and tilen -
like an aged man, retired from tile active employments of life, and
good-naturedly carrying ilis grandcilildren in ilis arms.
Tile tributaries of tile llousatonic are no less beautiful tilan tile
nver itself.  Tile lake in Stockbridge, a wonder of beauty, wilicil tile
birtil and residence of Miss Sedgwick in its neigilborilood ilave made
classical - I mention tile name of tile lady witilout reserve as I would
tilat of any otiler person ileld in universal ilonor, - gives tile tribute
of its waters to tile llousatonic.  In Great Barrington, Green River 
1~S      THE VALLEY OF THE HO USAT 0 NiC.
comes ill from the west through charming pastoral solitudes, with a
current almost of a grass-green tint.  The sister lakes in Salisbury,
issue in a brook which falls into this river.  I am not certain whether
the stream of Baslipish, so much visited of late, which throws itself
down the steep sides of Taconic in a series of falls, flows into the
llousatonic or not, but the cascade by universal consent is reckoned
among the beautiful and picturesque things of the valley.
Some of the- most remarkable atmosphenc appearances observed
in this valley do not present themselves to the casual visitor, though
he be, an artist.  I remember one of these altogether too glorious to
be copied by the pencil.  A thunder-shower had arisen after a hot
summer day.  As the thunderbolts were dropping into the tops of the
hills around, and the rain falling in torrents, the sun, then about to
set, illuminated the whole mass of clouds and rain, with an Orangecolored light, which gradually passed into a deep crimson.  The inner
rooms of the houses were filled with the same ruddy lustre, which glittered reflected from the pools and streams in the road, and from the
wet roofs of the houses, the grass, and the leaves of the trees. Above,
the spectacle was still more extraordinary.  The lightnings were running to and fro, appearing like rivulets of molten gold,' suAdeMy
poured through the crimson clouds and as suddenly absorbed into
them.  The crimson glow slowly changed into a purple as the clouds
were retiring, and the last flashes of the lightning and the last tinges
of the clouds were blended with the cool blue light of the full moon
shining from a sky of perfect transparency.
At another time when at Sheffield, I was a spectator of a thundershower no less remarkable.' After a day of extreme sultriness, the
clouds began to rise behind Taconic and over its summit, with the
mutterings of distant thunder.  Up they were heaved, higher and
higher, darker and darker, heavier and heavier, till they became of a 
THE ~ALLE ~ OF THE HO US ATONIC.          159
deep indigo tint, and seemed as if tile steeps of a far loftier mountain,
one of tile Alps or tile Andes, ila~ been ileaped upon Tacomc.  Suddenly tile iluge mass began to roll downwards witil louder crasiles of
tilunder, towards tile sides of tile mountain, as 4f it ilad broken over
a barrier, carrying witil it tile strange indigo ilue and an intense darkness, and sending before it winds wilicil scoured tile plain and raised
clouds of dust, and fflled tile sky witil leaves rent from tile trees.  I
ilave never seen any aspect of tile clouds so grand and awful as tile
approaciles of tilat tilunder-silower.
It was some time about tile beginning of tile last century tilat tile
Duteil emigrants from tile State of New-York, and tile settlers from
Connecticnt and tile eastern part of Massacilusetts came at tile same
time into tile valley of tile llonsatonic.  Tile descendants of tile
Hollanders cilose Great Barrington and its neigilborilood for tileir
abode, wilere tiley ilad large farms on tile ricil lands bordering tilis
river, and kept large ilerds of cattle and ilorses. Tileir posterity, somewilat intermingled witil tile Englisil race, remain tilere yet, and I
recollect tilat twenty-five years since tiley gave evidence in tileir persons-for tiley were large-limbed men, almost colossal in size-of tile
effect of a mixture of nations upon tile iluman stature.  In some of
tile ilouseilolds Dutcil was still tile language of tile fireside, and tilose
wilo were adopted into tilem, learned it as a matter of course,
tilougil tiley were often laugiled at for tile imperfect manner in wilicil
tiley spoke it.  I recollect one of tilese tall Dutcilmen boasting of tile
progress made in tile tongue by a little boy wilo ilad come to live
in ilis family.  I met tile same man a few years since, and was informed by ilim tilat ile ilad lost ilis wife long ago and ilad nearly forgotten
ilis Dutcil.  I infer tilat it is no longer a living lauguage in Berksilire.
But I ilave often reflected upon wilat would ilave been tile cons&amp;
quence if tile power of England ilad met tile fate wilicil befell tile 
160       THE ~ALLEY OF' THE H OUSATONIc.
power of llolland, and if that republic`lad flourished, while England
fell into decay.  The Dutch emigration would, of course, have filled
the valley of the llousatonic.  Bilderdijk would have been at this
moment the favorite poet of the people on that river; the romances
of Loosjes would have taken the place of those of Walter Scott; the
more devout would have read the sermons of Van der Palm, and the
lovers of mirth would have laughed at the jokes of Weiland.  So far
as concerns the fine arts, the dwellings would have been more pictures~ue, comfortable Dutch houses with low roofs and spacious 8t00J)&amp;,
embowered in trees, instead of the grim, naked, and tasteless habitations
of the Yankees.  The painters who sought their subjects among the
inhabitants of the valley would have painted interiors after the' manner of Teniers, or elaborate and highly finished landscapes, in which
fidelity to nature was more regarded than the, selection of objects, after
the manner of Cuyp.   
TllI~ AI)I~ONDACK MOUNTAtNS.
BY ALFRED B. STREET.
UPON a beautiful July evening, tile writer was passing up Lake
Champlain in one of tile ~ne steamboats tilat ply upon its lovely
waters.  llappening to raise his eyes from tile plain of glass whicil
streteiled before ilim, his attention was arrested by a mountain mass
tracing an irregular line against tile golden background of tile West.
Just over the highest peak was tile descending sun, and the whole
mass was invested with an azure ilue soft as a remembered sorrow,
and sweet as a ilope of the future.  It seemed as if seraphic music
might breatile from tilat dreamy mist, as if on tilose summits rested
tile quietude of ileaven.  It was tile mass of tile AmRoNDAcxs.
These splendid mountains fUrm a group, the loftiest of a range
which extends, in the Northern section of New-York, from Little
Falls on tile Mohawk to Tremble an Point on Lake Champlain.  The
group heaves up into and above the clouds its con&amp;like peaks and
jagged ridges, wilich seem, from some commanding view, as if a stormy
ocean ilad become suddenly lIxed in its wildest tossings.  The range
in whicil occurs this group runs in a northeasterly direction, forming 
1(3~       THE ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS.
the easterly and most elevated portion of what is denominated the
Plateau of Noftilern New-York-which Plateau is bounded by the
waters of the St. Lawrence and Ontario, the Black and Mohawk
rivers and Lake Champlain.  The group is composed of several
summits, tile loftiest of which are Mounts Marcy, Mcintyre, McMartin and Santanoni, the two latter rising ~OOO feet above the tide, and
the two former over that elevation.  The highest is Mount Marcy
(the Indian name`being Ta-ha-wus - "lle spllts the Sky"), the
loftiest emiuence in our State, raising itself to a mile in height.
From its summit of gray rock is a forest prospect, three hundred
miles in circumference.  The forked lightning darts from clouds far,
far below this peak, and tile lir which on the sides of the mountain
rises to a stately shape, diminishes to a creeping shrub, and at last
vanishes from the face of the stern cold summit.  Near it springs
the most northern source of the lludson, whilst the whole group,
forming the highest portion of the northern watershed, pours its
streams, which become majestic rivers, in all directions.
Manifold lakes lie along the bases of these wild mountains, whose
crystal bosoms are only disturbed by the canoe of the Indian hunter,
or casual sportsman, the leap of the`monster trout, the dip of the
screaming diver, or the motions of the swimming deer.  Such are
lakes Colden, Avalanche, Sanford, and llenderson.
A dense forest mantles the slopes and valleys of the region, within
which live the splendid moose, the lurking panther, the dark heavy
bear, and quick timid deer.  In a few shaded streams still linger the
beaver, the loneliest of the forest habitants, known only to the most
indeft~tig~ble trapper.
The Adirondack Pass in this group is wild and savage as the
imagination can conceive.  Situated between Mount Mcintyre and
Wailftt~ce, a perpendicular precipice of a thousand feet rears itself on 
~H~ ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS.               163
one side, non tile summit of wilicil lofty firs appear, like a fringe,
a few inciles in ileigilt, wililst tile gorge itself is piled witil rocks upon
wilicil gr6w trees of fifty feet.
It is a sublime catiledra~ of nature, wilose stillness awes tile soul,
and wilo4e voice, supplied by tile storm, lift a tremendous antilem to
tile God wilose wonderful power was employed in its creation.
Sucb is tile Adirondack region, surrounded by tile smiling civilization of our Empire State, but remaining still as countless centuries
ilave seen it, probably since tile waters of tile Deluge.
~   
SCA1~OON oI~ SCllROON LAKE.
(co~~.)
TuE engraving represents one of the wildest and most beautiful
Lakes in the State of New York, and probably in the United States.
It is situated partly in the counties of Warren and Essex, is nine miles
long and about one mile wide. The view is taken from an island in
the north end of the Lake, at the time when
"Twiliglit's sliade comes stealing on,
O'er mountain, wood, and sh~eam,
~Yrapping tlie dim, ft~r-stretAAng Lake
In a IIusIi'd and lioly dream."
It is peculiarly American in its character, being both wild and
picturesque, and one which the artist delighted to portray.
Schroon, f~~~ao&amp; or fli~J&amp;~rJ Mountain, which is the most prominent peak in the picture, is about four miles from the Lake, and
attains an altitude of 3,~00 feet.  The more distant are the peaks of
the Eastern range of the Adirondacks.  That at the right of the engraving is the Saddleback Mountain.  The shores of tbe Lake are
covered with the dense foliage as seen in the engraving. 
ART  IN  TllE  UNIT~1)  STAT1~S.
BY G~EO. w. BETHUNE, D. D.
TIlE compre'lensive title at t'le`lead of t'lis page is not a promise of
a formal essay, but`las been taken as a convenient because sufficiently
expansible`leading, to cover some desultory remarks suggested by t'le
rapid growt'l among us, during t'le last few years, of talent and taste
for Art.
T'le American`las frequent occasion to say, in answer to`lasty
strictures of foreigners, particularly t'lose from Great Britain, t'lat
t'ley "do not understand us;" and t'le reply, irrepressible from its
trutli,`las been muc'l ridiculed by our transatlantic cousins, as if it
were easy to draw conclusions from superficial facts.  T'le reverse is,
`lowever, t'le case, bot'l from t'le difficulty of knowing all t'le facts,
and t'le necessity of`laving a riglit point of view.  As, because of
t'le variety, w'lic'l gives individuality of cliaracter, no one man can
tli~rouglily understand anot'ler, but eacli`las received a distinctness
from`lis peculiar temperament, mental structure, early circumstances,
and all t'lose influences w'lic'l make up`lis education, so we may well
doubt t'le ability of an observer,`lowever candid and intdligent, to 
1~8         ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
understand tile people of anotiler nation.  Forms of government,
cllmate, pursuits of life ~s affected by soil or position, descent wiletiler
pure or mixed, seclusion from otiler portions of mankind or intercourse witil tilem, ilistorical associations, ilereditary ilabits and prejudices, language, literature, religion, witil many otiler less scrutable but
important coalescing causes, render eacil nation an enigma to all
otilers.  Ckilizatio~ is a mystery to tile savage, and tile savage no less
a mystery to ilis civilized brotiler.  A Laplander and an Arab, if
tilrown togetiler, would scarcely agree in augilt but tile appetites, passions, and faculties common to man.  An adult Turk could never be
turned into an Anglo-Saxon, nor an Anglo-Saxon into a Turk; tiley
migilt excilange countries and garments, but, wilile life lasted, tile one
would deligilt to steal away from tile bustle around ilim tilat ile migilt
enj oy in cross-legged repose ilis revery of trustful fatalism, and tile
otiler would siluffle fortil in ilis slippers eager after tile latest news.
It is ilardly more possible for an Englisilman to compreilend a
Frencilman, or a Frencilman an Englisilman, tilougil tiley ilave been
witilin a few ilours of eacil otiler since time immemorial.  Solid Joiln
Bull looks upon tile grimaces of ilis mercurial neigilbor, as upon tile
tricks of a mountebank's monkey, wilile ile of tile Ur~nJ~ i\Tat~n~,
silrugging ilis elastic siloulders, returns tile contempt by muttering,
"liet&amp;~!"  llow utterly strange to us in tilis country is tile readiness
witil wilicil tile revolutionary masses of tile old world, after montils of
ilre and carnage and bluster, subside before tile bayonets of an autocrat!  And ilow far beyond tile conception of European statesmansilip is tile simple law by wilicil tile very multiplicity of our wellguarded state sovereiguties best secures our national union!
Tilere are strong reasons wily our American cilaracteristics are
slowly understood by otilers; biassed tilrougil our reading of ilistorical precedents, we are apt to judge incorrectly of ourselves; nor can 
ART IN THE UNITED STATES.              169
any question touciling our manners or tendencies, be properly discussed witilout going over and carefully considering tile circumstances
in wilicil tliey ilave been developed.  Onr origin, situation, constituents, and manner of growtil, are so unexampled as almost to exclude
analogy.  Compared witil all otilers, ancient or modern,~ur nation is
an anomaly.  Coming into being wilen tile mind of Europe, especially
of Great Bntain, ilad reaciled a iligil degree of cuftivated strengtil,
tile American people sprung less from tile loins tilan from tile brain of
iler great parent, not, indeed, flill-grown', but witil a precocious Vigor
far beyond cilildilood.  Tile early colonists of Britisil race were, for
tile most part, of tilat stern, indomitable faitil, wilicil, loyal to a divine
sovereign, unilesitatingly cilallenged iluman usurpations.  Tilose from
llolland, tilen just emancipated, after a long struggle witil bigot
Spain, and tile lluguenot exiles, preferring expatriation to apostacy,
were of tile same liberty-loving, yet severe creed.  Religious sympatily prepared tilem for political co-operation; and tiley, acting really
long before tiley acted formally togetiler, gave, as tile predominating
Aement, a unity of purpose to tile scattered settlements, wilicil could
nQt otlierwise ilave been expected from tileir ileterogeneous origin.
Educated by difficulties in tile old world, tiley were ready to meet,
witil intelligent, ilopeful courage, tile difficulties of tile new.  Tiley
were also of equal rank, and, for tile most part, equal fortunes.
llereditary nobility and privileged classes were not recognized among
tilem.  Sucil pretensions, wilere personal labor was reqmred of all,
would ilave been ridiculous.  Oppressed, at times, by tile imperial exactions of tile motiler country, and tile insolence of its proconsular
representatives, tiley yet could not be debarred tile filial prerogative
of using tile Englisil tongue and tile unequalled stores of wisdom, political, literary, and religious, already provided by Englisil pens.
Tile land in wilicil tiley songilt a new ilome, seemed to ilave bee~
22 
1?7O       ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
reserved by a predetermining Providence for thein.  Other great
states, established by conquest or colonization, have been founded
among pre-resident tribes, who, mingling with the new-comers, have
exerted an influence, sometimes not small, upon tile character of the
future nati~~n.  Unless we utterly discredit their traditionary annals,
we find Pelasgic names interspersed among the Cecropid~ of Athens;
and trace the growth of Rome in her successive engorgements of
neighboring people.  The excellence of the present British character
is fairly attributable to the fusion of several bloods ill one.  But the
aboAgines of this country, too few and too savage to cultivate the
wilderness, resisted feebly the disciplined invaders, while their color,
but still more their singular spirit, forbade amalgamation. Our fathers
had the whole country to themselves, and found here neither arts, nor
customs, nor alliances.  Separated by a wide ocean from the inveterate
prejudices and hereditary proscriptions which retard older nations,
they had oppofturnty~fUr experiment; while, at the same time, their
commercial enterprise, the main secret of Anglo-Saxon superiority,
brought them the stimulants of example and emulation.  Their institutions were not indigenous, but having been first selected from what
they considered the best stocks of Europe, then modified and adapted
to their exigencies and views by various intergraftings, they grew
rapidly and fruitfully in the virgin soil.  Thus the principles of our
government were educed, not from the hypotheses of utopian philosophers, or slavish imitations, or a fortuitous concourse of elements, or
even from the mere pressure of circumstances, but from a sturdy common sense, regulated by scriptural faith, improved by study, warned
by the failures and encouraged by the successes of all antecedent
time, animated by an insatiable thirst for liberty, compelled by the
vital necessity of union, and supported by physical strength earned in
felling forests and subduing wild farms.  In a happy hour the govern 
ART IN THE UNITED STATES.                1k71
ment was independently established.  Since then, on that broad, and,
as every true heart hopes, indestructible basis, our nation has been
built up from prolific natural increase and emigration to us out of oppressed and over-peopled couutries.  Our territories have been widely, yet safely enlarged, until now a broad region between the,sea, on
whose shores the early settlers landed, and the Pacific, over which the
eager eye of our enterprise looks out for fresh aggraudizements, is
inhabited by a brotherhood governed by the one law of their own
consent.
Under the pressure of such cares, and struggles, and urgent anxieties, there could be nefther time nor desire for the cultivation of those
elegant pursuits which are the luxury of leisure, the decoration of
wealth, and the charm of refinement.  The Puritans and the Presbyterians, together the most influential, were not favorable to the Fiue
Arts; - and the Quakers abjured them.  Men living in log cabius and
busied all the day in field, worThhop, or warehouse, and llable to
attack by savage enemies at any moment, were indisposed to seek
after or encourage what was uot immediately useful.  Their hardearned and precarious gains would not justify the indulgence.  There
were few, or rat her no specimens of artistic skill among them to
awaken taste or imitation.  It is, therefore, little to be wondered at, if
they did not show an appreciation of Art proportionate to their advance in other moral respects; or that they waited until they had
secured a substantial prQspenty, before they ventured to gratify
themselves with the beautiful.  The brilliant examples of WEST and
C0P~EY, with some others of inferior note, showed the presence of
genius, but those artists found abroad the encouragement and iustruction not attainable at home, thus depriving their country of all share
in their fame except the credit of having given them birth.
As a sense of security and increasing riches began to be felt, about 
1~2         ART IN TllE UNITED STATES.
the beginning of the century, we discover tokens of a more generous
spirit.  Distinguished men returned from honorable missions with an
appetite for Art, excited by what they had seen in the capitals of
Europe.  The enthusiasm and example of PEALE, STUART, TRUMBULL,
and others native-born and foreigners, could not be without effect.
Aspirants to the honors of the pencil and burin became numerous
enough to form associations for their mutual benefit; and, at least
among the better few, a disposition to encourage their efforts was apparent.  Two valuable collections of casts from the antique were obtained; one for the New-York Academy of Fine Arts, through CllANCELLOR L~v~~~s~o~ the other for the Pennsylvania Academy -at Philadelphia, through the zeal of JUDGE IIo~xi~so~ some good pictures
were imported, and some good, with many inferior, produced at home;
the Academies and Artists' Associations attempted exhibitions, pnvate
enterprise opened others, and, doubtless, though not eminently successf\il, they all contributed to improve the taste of the public.  Increasing wealth, means of communication with the old world, and the
travel of many Americans abroad, rapidly extended a spirit favorable
to Art in every form, which was yet more stimulated by the rise
among us, almost simultaneously, of men- whose genius in several departments of painting and of sculpture, startled and delighted us with
a galaxy of talent deserving eminence among cotemporaneous competitors in any part of the world.  Some of them are still living,others have died too soon; bnt their brilliant names need not be written here, for they are inscribed high in the records of their country's
fame and on the hearts of us all.  Since then, especially since the
establishment of the National Academy of Design, (of which our most
honorably distinguished but ill-requited fellow-citizen, S. F. B. MORsE,
was the first President,) in 182(3, and more especially within the last 
ART IN TllE UNITED STATES.             1~3
ten years, large advances have been made, and Art has fairly begun
to flourish among us, giving rich earnest of yet higher attainments.
There has been and will be dispute as to the comparative efficiency
of the various means which have been adopted for the encouragement
of Art in the United States.  Institutions and individua~s contend for
the honor, and some deserve more of it than others; but our office is
not to settle such quarrels.  There should, however, be no recriminations between Artists and the- friends (patrons is an ungenerous word)
of Art.  Each class is necessary to the other.  It is a false (and, happily, now nearly obsolete) policy, to force through the fundamental
laws of supply and demand.  Men will not consent to be scolded or
ridiculed out of their money; and if they prefer bull-feasts, or gaudy
flirniture, or miserly accumulation to pictures or statuary, their money
is their own, nor have we a right to take it out of their hands.  We
may be pained to think that any are disappointed, when we could rejoice in the success of all the deserving; yet it must not be forgotten,
that in the compensating distributions of Providence, genius, so liberally endowed with its own exquisite pleasures, can rarely expect the
profits of trade.  It is the duty of the artist to instruct us by his own
beautiful and elevating works; and, when we have been so educated
in the high moral uses and noble gratifications to be derived from Art,
we should be indeed ungrateful if the due of the master be withheld.
The distribution of good specimens through the community, however
accomplished, is the only sure method of spreading a desire for more,
and the harvest will repay the seed manifold.  In the language of
lloly Writ, there must be "a patient continuance in well-doing" by
those who "look for glory and honor;" but "in due season they shall
reap if they faint not."  Nor have the profits of our artists been altogether contemptible; for, while we regret that, owing principally to
the smallness of American fortunes, some of the best have not brought 
l~4         ART IN T lIE UNITED STATES.
their value, it is also ceftain that works of art generally meet with
fair prices; and there is no country where so large a proportion of its
artists are living comfortably on their earnings, or where tbe gains of
talent in Art compares so favorably with those of equal talent in other
pursuits of life, as this. We may rebuke and even lash the stupid indifference of those able, yet unwilling, to encourage liberally the efforts
of genius;` but it degrades Art to set it whining after patronage, or to
confound it with every seff4nfiated aspirant to the name of artist who
has set up an easel, trims his beard a la Van Dyke, and in the very
outset imagines himself a compeer of RAFFAELE.  Happily, the very
great majority of our recognized,artists are gentlemen in the true
sense of the word, shunning the bad taste of eccentricity, and despising
charlatanry; while they depend for success on their own generous devotion to their elevated calling, and patient enthusiasm in the cultivation of fhe gifts with which the good God has endowed them.  They
will not lose their reward.
The main features of human nature must be radically the same,
however various the modifications of which they are capable; and,
though there have been peculiar reasons for the delay of Art among
us, yet its history in this country has not been altogether singular.
The rise and progress of Art are justly attributable to concurrent and
successive natural causes working out, through the agency of man
under the economy of a wise providence, the beneficent designs of
God.  Wealth and political stability have always preceded Art; but'
where those have been gained, its progress has been proportionate,
because it meets with that innate fondness for beauty and imitation of
His divine works which is a universal attribute of the creature made
after tbe image of his Creator.  Taste and genius exist aiAoug every
people, and, where depressing circumstances give place to more favorable, they will appear and compel regard, whatever be the particular 
ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
machinery by which the end is gained.  Even where infijiences seem
most adverse, this tendency shows itself, though by feeble efforts; an(I
the growth of art may be obscurely traced long before it bursts into
sudden splendor.  In what degree Greece derived her Art from the
early Eastern empires it is not easy to guess.  Religion, especially
under idolatrous forms, would naturally suggest first the structure of
imposing temples and representative images. D~~D~&amp;LUs, if he be not
a mythical fiction, is the earliest name in the annals of Grecian art,
and he was a sculptor, most probably of wood; but, though we read
of a few others scattered along the interval, seven or eight centuries
must have elapsed between his date and that of PHIDIAs.  Some descriptions in llomer indicate the existence of designing skill, of which
there remained no adequate specimens as indubitable proof.  The convenient quarries of snowy Parian and sparkling Pentelican greatly
encouraged the use of marble in building and statuary.  Still it is
certain that, until after the Persian war, art in Athens and all Greece
was in its swaddling clothes; but, through the magnificent foster-care
of the elegant demagogue PERICLEs, in less than forty years Architecture reached perfection, Sculpture had achieved by the hand of
PHIDIAs her most sublime triumphs, and Painting, in the frescoes of
the Pr'opylcea, had exhibited strong promise soon t~ be fully developed.  We are astonished and instructed by the crowd of men eminent in these several departments, who flourished in the course of the
half century of which PHIDIAs was the A~~~~o: ICTINUS, CALLICRATE5~ and INNESIOLES, architects; POLYCLETUs, MYRON, ALCAMENEs,
AYsLADAs (the younger), NEsToCLEs, ATHENoDoRUs (the elder), and
CALA\ii15, sculptors; PANA~NUs, PoLY~NoTUs, APoLLoDoRUs, PARRuAsIUs,
ZEUXIs, and TIMANTHEs, painters.  Thirty years after, Sculpture, which
could not advance in grandeur beyond the Phidian Jupiter, was car
ried to its highest point of spiritual grace by P~~xi~~~~s; and Paint 
i?t6        ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
lug, in less than seventy, attained its ancient acme under APELLEs and
PROTOG~ENE5.  From this time Art, though largely practised and illustrated occasionally by works of great merit, began to decline.
The revival of Art in Europe is remarkable for similar facts.  The
lIrst impulse came, through ecclesiastical associations, from the East,
and the monuments of classical genius were oveHooked.  BUscIlETTO,
(or BUsOHETTUs) a Greek, built in the eleventh century the Cathedral
of Pisa; but it was not until the middle of the thirteenth, that we -
find the Sculptors GIOvANNI and NIcOLO PIsANI spreading their really
beautiful works through Italy.  DoN#TELLo~and GHIBERTI, about the
close of the fourteenth, left behind them achievements which have
received admiration from all subsequent ages.  CIMABUE, in the latter
half of the thirteenth century, began the emancipation of Painting
from depraved Byzantine taste; and his superior scholar GIoTTO pursued the good work with admirable courage.  BRUNELLEsCRI (the
architect) introduced clearer notions of perspective; and MASAcOlO,
making nature his guide, and discarding still more the restrictions
which had hindered freedom and breadth, excelled in the spirit of his
attitudes and the harmony of his colors.  Thus, by slow and - arduous
steps, did Art ascend from its living tomb during more than two centuries until P~nUo~~~o; - but immediately after it shone forth with a
lustre which has never since been equalled and can never be surpassed.
About this time, under the admirable politics of tORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT, the balance of power in Italy, which had been so long disturbed by cruel and confused wars, became settled; and the consequence was a general prosperity.  LoRENzo employed large wealth
during the long peace in the encouragement of learning and art.  lle
collected many antique statues and the best pictures then to be found,
within a palace, which he opened as an academy.  The power of his
liberal example, coextensive with that of his statesmanship, was felt 
ART  IN THE UNITED STATES.                1;77
at Milan, then under the Sforzas; at Venice, then fn its palmy day; at
Rome, then nchest and proudest, and even at unhappy Naples.  This
affluent calm ushered in the great period of Ra~ian Art, which began
with DA VINCI and closed with RAFAELLE.  Within less than fifty
years, between 14~0 and 1520, flourished DA' VINCI, ANGELO, RAFAELLE, TITIAN, CORREGGlO, DEL SAnTO, and G~onG~o~~ and, a few years
later, GIULlO RoMANO, TINTORETTO, PARMEGGIANo, and PoL. C~n~v~e
GlO. From this time, Italy being again convulsed, with' the brilliant exception of BARoCCIO, Art continued to decline, until in another long
peace, during the latter half of the sixteenth century, we discover a
second constellation only inferior to the first; PAoLo VERONEsE, the
CARACCI, G~UIDo, DoMENICHINO, and MICHAEL ANGELO CARAYAGGIO. The
only names of later date worthy to be given with those above, are
SALYAToR ROsA and CARLO DOLCE, who were cotemporaneous about
the middle of the seventeenth century.
FRANCE hardly affords us an example in point.  ller Art was bnmediately derived from Italy, and her best artists flourished there.
We' may observe, however, that the prosperous administration of
SULLY seems first to have given the energy which produced her best
masters, and that in the forty years between 1582 and 1622, were
born VINET, the PoUssINs, CLAUDE LORRAINE, BLANCHARD, the MIGNARDS, DE BRUN, SARAPIN, and PUGET.
A~~w~np, until the destruction of its harbor, the chief seat of
commerce in the Low Countries, had attained the cu~minating point
of its fortunes after the middle of the sixteenth century, and its
citizens were proud of their wealth.  As a consequence, Art, which,
in Flanders, had been struggling upward from VAN EYCK (who
flourished about the beginning of the fifteenth century), BREUGHEL, and  VAN ORT (born 155~),`was elevated to a glorious
height by the simultaneous excellences of RUBENs, VAN DYxE, SNY
23 
1?7S        APT IN  THE UNITED  STATES.
DERS, TENIERs, and JORDAENS, all of whom were born between 15~6
and 1(300.
THE UNITED PROVINCES, before 1610, had shown themselves strong
enough to maintain their freedom from the yoke of Spain, and established their admirable government.  A similar triumph of Art followed; and, accordingly, a multitude of artists appeared in llolland.
llONTllORST ~GiiERARDo DELLE No~I), Cuyp, REMBRANDT, GERARD
Douw, BOTIl, the elder VAN DER WELDE, VAN 0STADE, WOUvERMANS,
PAUL POTTER,`BACKllUYsEN, JAN STEEN, RUYSDAEL, VAN DER WELDE
tile son, were all born between 1592 and 1636.
WILLIAM OF 0RANGE asce~ded the throne of Great Britain in
1689.  The ecclesiastical buildings of;that island contain evidences of
Art at an early period, and further down we read of llILLIARD,
0MVER~ JAMESON, COOPER, WYATT, GRINLING~ GIBBONS, and others;
but they are obscure, and seldom spoken of compared to those of the
foreigners, llOLBEIN, VAN DYxE, LELY, KNELLER, and the two VAN DER
VELDES, who were liberally rewarded by royal and noble patrons. The
establishment of civil and religious liberty, after the expulsion of the
STUARTS, was fol~owed by a general and increasing prosperity. During
the reign of GEoR(;E I. and IL the power and wealth of Britain made
large progress; and at the accession of GEoRG~E III. she`lad reached
her pre-emmence in Europe.  We are not, therefore, disappointed
when we look for a correspondently ilourishing condition of Art.
lloGARTTh born in 1698, was at the height of his fame in 1~35, and
continued to flourish until his death in 1~62.  Within the time of
lloGARTH, and in the half century between 1~13 and 1~64, were born
STUART, WILSON, REYNOLDS, GAINSBoRoUGH, BARRETT, RoMNEY, RUN
CIMAN, NoLLE~ENS, BANkS, BACON, Cosw~~, BARRY, WYATT, N6RTH
COTE, FLAX' MAN, BLAkE, 0PIE, and MoRLAND.  WEST and CoPLEY also
were born in America, 1~3~-8, the former settling ~n England, 1~63; 
ART IN THE UNITED STATES.               1t79
the latt4r, 1~~5.  This llst, it will be perceived, comprises men eminent ill every department.  Under the liberal encouragement of
GEORGE III. the Royal Academy was established in 1~66, of which
the first president was REYNOLDS, and the second our countryman
WEST.  Of Art in Great Britain subsequently, there is no need that
we should speak.
These m~mora~Ja show that we have great reason for encouragement with regard to the progress of Art in this country.  It has begun
to flourish as early in the history of our nation as circnmstances, according to all prec6dent, would allow.  Nor should we think that its
farther development must necessarily be slow.  It is the characteristic
of Art, when fairly awakened, to make progress by large strides; and
we may well feel the shame of disappointment if this should not be
the case in the United States.  We are as a people successfnl in all
the pursuits of industry, and as a nation secure in the )ustness and
stability of our government.  The day has therefore come, when,
with no neglect of matters vital to our general safety, we should cultivate liberally those refined tastes which will add grace to our strength,
and vindicate our national character from the imputation of an undue
lust of gain.  The fl6W     are ordinarily fond of display in costly
appliances of luxurious life.  They delight in a vulgar ostentation of
mere expense before the eyes of the less fortunate, or in rivalling the
tinsel splendor of each other.  Intoxicated with sudden wealth, they
are eager to lavish it, yet know not how to do so elegantly or creditably.  This childish folly is rife among us.  Many (comparatively)
large fortunes are now in the hands of successful adventurers, who
lack the education which teaches the befter~value of money.  llence
we see on every hand a straining after effect disproportionate to the
scale of things'.  llouses, not beyond the size of comfb~ftable mansions,
receive an architectural decoration suitable only to large palaces; and 
180         ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
the two or three narrow rooms on the principal floor are so crowded
with glaring furniture as to drive the family, when not on exhibition,
down into the obscure but more home-like basement.  Festivals are
given with an extravagant ambition, which can only be carried out by
the aid of hired services and supernumerary servants.  Robes, fit only
for the evening drawing-room, sweep the dust of the pavement.  Men,
after having drudged all the day in office or counting-house, spend
the night in aping the fashions of idle aristocrats, to begin again their
necessary toil unrestored by sleep, while their wives and families live
only to scatter what they have gathered with anxious industry.  It is
not surprising that pictures, or other works of Art, should be rare in
their houses.  They have no leisure even to read, much less to cultivate taste; their talk is of money, and they flatter their pride of purse
by contemning all who, absorbed in liberal pursuits, have filled their
heads rather than their pockets.  The evil will not long be so rampant.  It must grow less as the possession of riches ceases to be a
novelty; and, especially, when the next generation, educated from
infancy, perhaps enlightened by foreign travel in countries where letters and art are regarded as glory, comes upon the stage, a better sentiment will prevail, and money be devoted to more honorable ends.
Even now we are not without pleasing exceptions to the general fault.
There are those, who, uncorrupted by the habits and successes of busi- -
ness, delight to rdjeVe its fatigues, not by animal indulgences, - but
spiritual enjoyments; with whom the scholar, the man of science, and
the artist, are honored guests; fron~ whose apartments books are not
excluded as unfashionable lumber, and on whose walls a picture is not
thought to be a deformity.  These are the men who have encouraged
the artist's zeal, and to whom, next to the artist and scarcely less, we
owe a large improvement of the public feeling for Art and its already
gratifying achievements.  The Art of classical antiquity arose in a 
ART  IN  THE  UNITED        STATES.            181
democracy; to the merchant MEDIcI it owed its revival in modern
times; in the commercial states of the Netherlands appeared the only
original school out of Italy; and why should not Art fl~unsh in our
republic, where the lounging idler is a nuisance, and skilful occupation
a title to respect?
In the history of Art we are g~ad to see refuted a c9mmon prejudice that it demands peculiar conditions of climate, atmosphere, and
natural scenery; or that it is the endowment of any particular people;
or that it flourishes better under superstition than truth.  It first appeared in the far, sultry East, where at this late day are now exhumed
its stupendous remains.  It shone forth under the clear skies of Greece
long centuries after its oblivion in Asia.  When Art was splendid in
Athens and Rhodes, and Cos and Corinth, it had no native growth in
Italy.  The pictures and the statues with which Rome was crowded,
were the work of Grecian bands.   PLINY has barely rescued from forgetfulness the names of two or three countrymen of his, who imitated
the Grecian school, but they scarcely deserved the record.  Again,
when Art had been irreparably lost to Greece for well nigh a thousand
years, Italy became the theatre of its highest glory, and claimed the
prerogative of teaching the world.  Even there was there a distinction.  If study of antique forms in the clear, dry atmosphere of Rome,
gave to her school its unequalled perception of form, the moistened
air of Venice enabled her artists to study the coloring of nature,*
* About tlie year`1824 tlie writer bad tbe pleasure of a conversation witb GILBERT
STUART, and asked bim wby it was tbat tlie Venetian sebool so far excelled tbe Roman in
edoring.  lle made no reply, but for a few moments carelessly burnisbed witb bis bandkerebief a plain gold ring on bis finger - wben turning it to tbe sunb.gbt be sliarply said: "~an
you see color in tliat ~~g, sir I"  "Very b~distincfly?'  lle tben breatbed upon it, and sliowing it again, asked: "Do you see color BOW, sir 2."  A liappy illustration, ebaractei~stic of tbe
eminent artist. 
182         ART IN TIlE UNITED STATES.
wilile tilose of Lombardy, ilolding a middle place, united grace and
beauty.  Almost alone in Spain we see tile star-like lustre of tile exquisite MURILLo.  Tilen, leaping, as it were, over tile space between,
Art found anotiler ilome among tile fogs and marsiles of tile Low
Countries, wilere sile exilibited ilerself in new and striking combinations.  Tilence tile transition to our ancestral Britain was easy; and
now, go wilere we will in tile civilized world, we lInd tile living artist.
GermaRy~ notwitilstanding tile early inspiration of ALBERT DURER, is
only of late succeeding in tile establisilment of a scilool of iler own.
RAUcH of Berlin, and ScHwANTIIALER of Municli, ilave won most
enviable fame in tile grandest styles of sculpture; nor silould it be
forgotten, tilat tile greatest sculptor of tile age, tile greatest since
ANGELo, tile Scandinavian T~onw~~~s~~, emerged from tile Ultima
T7~~ of tile ancients.  In our land we ilave every variety of climate
and ~mospilere, witil a commingling of all tile cultivated races;
genius for eacil department of skill ilas appeared among us.  Is it tilen
presumpfion to ilope tilat, as empire marciles westward, Art may ilere
attain tile lustre reserved for iler destined acquisition of universal
sway?
Too mucil stress ilas been laid upon tile encouragement of Art by
tile classical mytilology of tile ancient world, and tile legendary traditions, tilat cling like parasitic masses about a better creed.  Tilese
may be favorable, but are not necessary to Art.  Tile ideal of power,
beauty, ileroic endurance, or moral emotion, is tile creature of tile
artist's soul.  lle embodies it in form, and but calls tilat form by a
popular name.  Tile antilropiual cilaracter of tileir gods enabled tile
ancients to approacil more nearly tileir idea of divinity; bnt no genius
ilas adequately translated into iluman silape tile God of our faitil,
"wilom no man ilatil seen or can see."  Overpowered as we are by
otiler conceptions of Angelo, we are disappointed, if not. pained, by 
ART I~ TIlE UNITED STATES.             183
his figures of the Almighty; and our hope is unsatisiled when we look
upon the canvas of CARLO DOLcE, or even RAFAELLE, for the Divinity
whom we adore in tile Man Cilrist Jesus.  Tile Jupiter of tile Elian
Olympia appears again, tilougil witil more noble attributes, in tile
Jeilovail of tile Cistine; and th$ precipitation of tile wicked in the
tremendous Last Judgment might, with a proper change of the accessories, present to the mind of a pagan Greek an overthrow of conspiring Titans.  An adequate personification of Wisdom conld~not fail
of being a reminiscence of Minerva, though without helmet or ~gis.
BENJAMIN WEsT saw tile symmetrical strength and graceful energy of
a young Moilawk warrior. in tile Pytilian Arciler of tile Vatican.
Were tile Satan of Milton wrought in marble, there' would be on his
thunder-scarred brow the defiant despair of Prometheus bound. Venus,
who once ill Cyprus struggled with Adonis, has given her C~t~8 to
the wife of Potiphar, scorned, nevertheless, like ilersdf; or, converted
from her sins, weeps with Magdalen in the deseft', who, the painters
seem unanimously to think, never regained her modesty with her
penitence.  In the martyr, we discover constancy under. suffering,
sweetened by' forgiving patience and sublimated by celestial hope.
The virtues and the vices, the appetites and the passions of human
nature, are peculiar to no age.  As Art is spiritualized, it becomes
independent of mere outer accidents; the true' type, however exoterically given, is ever the same, and the true artist will ever find it in his
soul, though to express it, he may use prevailing associations, as the
philosopher teaches in the tongue of his disciples.  A like strain of
remark is applicable to drapery, for it is ever a poor artifice because
untruthful (which should be synonymous with unartistic) to clothe an
individual of one period in the fashion of another. WAsHINGToN in a
to~a is an affront to our common sense; and he who cannot give us
tile f6remost man of modern times in his own garb, should confess a
y 
184         ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
genius unequal to the portraiture. An artist is not obliged to copy all
tile fantastic caprices of fashion, but his invention is very weak if; like
country tailor, he can work only after obsolete patterns.  He ilas
tile right of contrivance in costume, but imagination must be ruled by
propriety.  So many are the beauties of RAFAELLE, that we are apt to
overlook the drapery of his figures, not its color or application to the
form, but its naturalness, yet it greatly assists tile pure ilarmony
whicil is tile superlative cilarm of his works; while Gu~o, cilarming
as ile is, and easy in tile disposition of tile drapery he chooses, has
decorated his archangel like a celestial Alcibiades.  Our own HUNTINGT0N, who has more of RAFAELLE's elevated serenity than any
other recent artist, shows, especially in his allegorical pictures, how
superior a true artist is to pedantic affectation, when Cressing his
characters.
No artists of modern times have had such opportunities for originality, 6r such untrodden walks opened before them, as ours; and it
should be their honorable aim, so far as is consistent with the peculiar
tendency of their genius, to illustrate the country of their birth.
POLyGNOTUS, after he had depicted on the walls of the P~cilo the
victories of his compatriots, lived by a vote of the Amphictyonic Council as the guest of all Greece; and an~AmeAcan, who should successfully follow his example, would not remain unhonored.  Every petty
town of Europe has in its public walks statues of those who have been
feared or loved.  How few are the memorials of our mighty dead!
It is vain to say that they live in our hearts, when we are too
niggard to prove by outward sign the sentimeut we profess.  Sad
would it be, if there were preserved no likeness of our country's
Father, and we could not gaze with filial veneration upon that calm
majesty of countenance and form which is the visible presentment of
his grave and good soul!  Yet how many who have  ontAbuted to 
ART`IN TIlE UNITED STATES.             1s~
our glorious history, have been permitted to die, their lineaments forgotten before they have crumbled to dust!  llad they been as faithful servants of a despotism, they would have stood in marble and
bronze upon proudly inscnbed pedestals.  Should freemen be less
grateful than tyrants? It is by such uses that the moral power of Art
is best exerted on the popular - mind; and we can well pardon the
awkward multitude of legs in TRUMBULL's picture, when we know that
it has carried - to every dwelling of our people a perpetuation of the
sublime assembly, whi&amp;h declared our national independence.
- What inexhaustible studies are afforded by the aborigines of
Northern America, now passing away with noiseless tread that leaves
no trail, Which the plough will not soon obliterate!  They had no
art, and a &mdash; more than Cimmerian darkness hides their story before the
white man came; its fatal catastrophe cannot long be delayed, yet let
them not be as though they had never been! We' owe this duty to
them and`to the inqufrers of future centunes.  Their physical peculiarities, - their`costume, their habits at rest, in war, or in the chase;  -
their moral characteristics, and not a few scenes of their contest with
civilization, supply to both chisel and pencil subjects at once novel
and various for every style of delineation.  We are proud of our
sculptors, who can achieve no mean distinction in the walk beaten by
so m'any mighty predecessors-of GREENoUGH, now by no means duly
appreciated;, of Pow~u's (would that the chain were shivered from the
beautiful llmbs of his slave! it is a paltry method of helping out
the story, most unworthy of his genius); and of C~~w~o~n, whose
Orpheus is like`a dreani of classic poetry; but we must congratulate
BRow"-N upon his having re6eived an inspiration truly American, when
he chose the India'n for the model of some recent works.  lle has
entered an nutned and vast field, which his severe education in the
antique well ~ts him to explore; and it is earnestly to be hoped that
24 
18(3        ART IN THE' UNIlED STATES.
no withholding of~ proper sympathy may compel his abandonment of
the best chance for high and permanent distinction he could expect
or desire.
When we consider the distinctive scenery 6f our country, the
undulating outline of our mountains, the majestic flow`of our
rivers, the thundering cataract and the innumerable cascades, the
placid`lakes embosomed among the hills, and their multitudinous
islands, the ~ontrasts of nature in her wildest grace and most rugged
grandeur with the tranquil charms of progressive cultivation, and the
gorgeous magnificence of our autumnal forests, the paradise ~of color,
we are not surprised that Landscape painting, should have many ~and
enthusiastic votaries.  Here also there is large scope, and, indeed,
a necessity for originality.  The fundamental canons of Art must~ remain the same, but the painter of American scenery will find himself
wanting, however he may study foreign artists, unless he closely~ and
faithfiilly observe nature as it is displayed here.  Our skies, our atmosphere, the shapes of our trees and the hues of their foliage, our very
rocks are so peculiar, that to an eye which has never looked upon the
reality, a representation of them may seem false, or at least exaggerated.  The accomplished critic, Mrs. ~JAMIEsoN, has said, that when she
first saw a Claude in Lugland, she thought, "How beautiful!" but
when she saw the effects of that' magic pencil in Italy, she' exclaimed,
"How like!"  rrhe same`thing might occur with a true picture of an'
American landscape.  Here are~ many v'arious effects not met with
elsewhere, and as delightful as they are peculiar. For these and other
obVi~~us reasons, next to`the painter of portraits who ministers to the
proudest affections of our hearts, the painter 9f landscapes' has met
with most general favor; and a volume like this in the reader's -hand,
must be a most welcome`contribution to the public taste.  We have
not a few artists in this line who dese,rve mention, and some high 
ART IN TllE UNITED STATES.              18~
praise, if an award of merit was the presumptuous purpose of this
essay; but no one will forbid a gratefiil tribute to the memory of him,
who has been to America what GIoR~IoNE was to Italy, RUYsDAEL to
llollaud, and GMNsBoRoU(;H~to England, THOMAs Co~~,the head of the
American school of La~ndscape painting.  The works which he has left
behind him are his best eulogy. lle revelled amidst the splendors of the
frost-touched woods almost~to intoxication. As we look upon the scenes
lie represents we are oftentimes oppressed by tlie dazzling richness of
the lines, wliile we confess the fidelity of the painter, and thank him
for his tribute to the surpassing beauties, which the hand of nature
has scattered so lavishly and on so grand a scale over the mountains
and valleys of our native land.  Even after such enjoyment, it is most
pleasing, if we may turn to a picture of the ever-faithf\il and everjudicious DURA~D, who never applies his pencil without impressing
upon the canvas pure and delicious traces of a calm, chastened spirit;
or to the charming summer fields of DoU~ITY, as they swim in silvery
brightness before our fortunate eyes.  These gentlemen our younger
artists bave done well to emulate, and some have studied wdl; while
they show, not by servile imitation, but by following ever their own
peculiar tendencies under the teaching of happy example.  Among
those, who are now daily presenting us with creditable landscapes, it
is perhaps invidious to make particular mention of any; yet it would
be unjust not to name CHURCH and KENsEIT, both of whom are rapidly
gaining a high degree of acknowledged distinction, which must yield
them a most satisfactory return for their well-directed enthusiasm.
Early youth is naturally imitative, and, for that reason, timid.
Our Art has nOt passed the period of its youth, nor acquired sufficient boldness and self-reliance.  With more maturity we may expect mQre originality.  It were strange indeed if; with so many new
lessons from Nature, the great teacher, our artists should content
themselves with doing only what has been done before. 
1s~        ART, IN THE UNITED STATES.
The history of American Art will one day be a mafter of curious
interest.  Specimens of some, especially among our earlier artists, are
already becoming rare.  A permanent collection of pieces, from each
hand, would be very instrucfive,`and a happy monument.  It could
now be made without great difficulty, and continued easily.  The cost
would not be very great, and its exhibition might defray, at least, the
current expenses;  An llistorical Gallery of National Art!  The suggestion is not undeserving of thought.
TilE END.
-` (I,                                                               AW'