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Title: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Release Date: July, 2003 [EBook #4232]
Last Updated: December 22, 2019

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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[Illustration]




A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

by Henry David Thoreau

AUTHOR OF “WALDEN,” ETC.


Contents

 CONCORD RIVER
 SATURDAY
 SUNDAY
 MONDAY
 TUESDAY
 WEDNESDAY
 THURSDAY
 FRIDAY




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




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




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




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

OVID, Met. I. 39

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




CONCORD RIVER


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

—EMERSON.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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




SATURDAY


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

_Christ’s Invitation to the Soul._ QUARLES

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

—“renning aie downward to the sea.”


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




SUNDAY


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

—CHANNING.


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

SIEUR DE MONTS, _Relations of the jesuits_, 1604.

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

“Bedford, most noble Bedford,
I shall not thee forget.”


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

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

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

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

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


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

“Some nation yet shut in
    With hills of ice.”


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

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

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

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


Also, Lydgate says:—

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


One man says,—

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


Another, that

    —“all the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


or

“Strata jacent passim sua quæque sub arbore poma”;
The apples lie scattered everywhere, each under its tree.


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

ἐπειὴ μάλα πολλὰ μεταξύ
Ὄυρεά τε σκιοέντα, θαλάσσα τε ἠχήεσσα.
for there are very many
Shady mountains and resounding seas between.


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

“You grov’ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades
Where light ne’er shot his golden ray.”


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

        “Merchants, arise,
And mingle conscience with your merchandise.”


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

—“ask for that which is our whole life’s light,
For the perpetual, true and clear insight.”


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


From _his_

“lips of cunning fell
    The thrilling Delphic oracle.”


And yet, sometimes,

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


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

Though we know well,

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


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

“And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,”
_Were not_ “within _her_ peaceful reign confined.”


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

Then spend an age in whetting thy desire,
Thou needs’t not _hasten_ if thou dost _stand fast_.


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

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

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

        “campoque recepta
Liberioris aquæ, pro ripis litora pulsant.”


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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




MONDAY


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

GOWER.


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

_Robin Hood Ballads_.


“His shoote it was but loosely shott,
    Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,
For it mett one of the sheriffe’s men,
    And William a Trent was slaine.”

_Robin Hood Ballads_


“Gazed on the heavens for what he missed on Earth.”

_Britania’s Pastorals_


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


Not being Reve of this Shire,

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

ANTIGONE.


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

ISMENE.


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

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

“Did you then dare to transgress these laws?”

ANTIGONE.


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

This was concerning the burial of a dead body.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In wisdom is to be found every work without exception,” says
Kreeshna.

“Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, thou shalt
be able to cross the gulf of sin with the bark of wisdom.”

“There is not anything in this world to be compared with wisdom
for purity.”

“The action stands at a distance inferior to the application of
wisdom.”

The wisdom of a Moonee “is confirmed, when, like the tortoise, he can
draw in all his members, and restrain them from their wonted purposes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
With grand content ye circle round,
Tumultuous silence for all sound,
Ye distant nursery of rills,
Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;—
Firm argument that never stirs,
Outcircling the philosophers,—
Like some vast fleet,
Sailing through rain and sleet,
Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat;
Still holding on upon your high emprise,
Until ye find a shore amid the skies;
Not skulking close to land,
With cargo contraband,
For they who sent a venture out by ye
Have set the Sun to see
Their honesty.

Ships of the line, each one,
Ye westward run,
Convoying clouds,
Which cluster in your shrouds,
Always before the gale,
Under a press of sail,
With weight of metal all untold,—
I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,
Immeasurable depth of hold,
And breadth of beam, and length of running gear

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

“All beside thy limpid waters,
    All beside thy sands so bright,
_Indian_ Chiefs and Christian warriors
    Joined in fierce and mortal fight.”


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

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

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


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

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

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

“Strata jacent passim _suo_ quæque sub” _lapide_—


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

Here lies an honest man,
Rear-Admiral Van.

        ———

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

“When the drum beat at dead of night.”


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

RUMORS FROM AN ÆOLIAN HARP.


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

        —————

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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




TUESDAY


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

TENNYSON.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

“Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

.   .   .   .   .   .

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.”


But never here did “Heaven’s sun” stain himself.

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

“Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure.”


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

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

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

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

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

“May 15th, 1685.


“Honor governor my friend,—

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

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

JOHN HOGKINS.”


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

ANACREON.


“Nor has he ceased his charming song, for still that lyre,
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades.”


_Simonides’ Epigram on Anacreon._


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

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

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

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

“The young and tender stalk
Ne’er bends when _they_ do walk.”


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

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

ON HIS LYRE.


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

TO A SWALLOW.


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

ON A SILVER CUP.


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

ON HIMSELF.


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

TO A DOVE.


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

ON LOVE.


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

ON WOMEN.


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

ON LOVERS.


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

TO A SWALLOW.


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

TO A COLT.


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

CUPID WOUNDED.


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

—————


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

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

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

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

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


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

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




WEDNESDAY


_“Man is man’s foe and destiny.”_

COTTON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


and at the nod of Zeus,

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

“Rome living was the world’s sole ornament;
And dead is now the world’s sole monument.
     *     *     *     *     *
With her own weight down pressed now she lies,
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies.”


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

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

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

            “bees that fly
About the laughing blossoms of sallowy.”


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and Goffstown.

——————

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————

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

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


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

THE ATLANTIDES.


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

And it is well said by another poet,

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And love as well the shepherd can
As can the mighty nobleman.”


The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than the other.
A hero’s love is as delicate as a maiden’s.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

“There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,”


remains to be proved;

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once more to one and all,

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

THE INWARD MORNING


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

“Silver sands and pebbles sing
Eternal ditties with the spring,”


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

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

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

“Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray.”


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

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




THURSDAY


“He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
     *     *     *     *     *
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
     *     *     *     *     *
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.”

EMERSON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.


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

            “Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.”

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

In the third satire, he asks:—

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

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


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

“Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore _vivit_,”


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


HERBERT.


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Old woman that lives under the hill,
And if she’s not gone she lives there still.”


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

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

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

“The laws of Nature break the rules of Art.”


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

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

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

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

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

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

The work we choose should be our own,
            God lets alone.


The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their
foundation below the frost.

What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms of lichens
and leaves. There is a certain perfection in accident which we never
consciously attain. Draw a blunt quill filled with ink over a sheet of
paper, and fold the paper before the ink is dry, transversely to this
line, and a delicately shaded and regular figure will be produced, in
some respects more pleasing than an elaborate drawing.

The talent of composition is very dangerous,—the striking out the heart
of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a scalp. I feel as if my
life had grown more outward when I can express it.

On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe writes:

“The Tees flows now more gently, and makes in many places broad sands.
On the land, near to the water, upon the hillsides, everything is so
closely planted one to another, that you think they must choke one
another,—vineyards, maize, mulberry-trees, apples, pears, quinces, and
nuts. The dwarf elder throws itself vigorously over the walls. Ivy
grows with strong stems up the rocks, and spreads itself wide over
them, the lizard glides through the intervals, and everything that
wanders to and fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures of art. The
women’s tufts of hair bound up, the men’s bare breasts and light
jackets, the excellent oxen which they drive home from market, the
little asses with their loads,—everything forms a living, animated
Heinrich Roos. And now that it is evening, in the mild air a few clouds
rest upon the mountains, in the heavens more stand still than move, and
immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to grow more
loud; then one feels for once at home in the world, and not as
concealed or in exile. I am contented as though I had been born and
brought up here, and were now returning from a Greenland or whaling
voyage. Even the dust of my Fatherland, which is often whirled about
the wagon, and which for so long a time I had not seen, is greeted. The
clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets is altogether lovely,
penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely when roguish boys whistle
in emulation of a field of such songstresses. One fancies that they
really enhance one another. Also the evening is perfectly mild as the
day.”

“If one who dwelt in the south, and came hither from the south, should
hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem me very childish. Alas! what
I here express I have long known while I suffered under an unpropitious
heaven, and now may I joyful feel this joy as an exception, which we
should enjoy everforth as an eternal necessity of our nature.”

Thus we “sayled by thought and pleasaunce,” as Chaucer says, and all
things seemed with us to flow; the shore itself, and the distant
cliffs, were dissolved by the undiluted air. The hardest material
seemed to obey the same law with the most fluid, and so indeed in the
long run it does. Trees were but rivers of sap and woody fibre, flowing
from the atmosphere, and emptying into the earth by their trunks, as
their roots flowed upward to the surface. And in the heavens there were
rivers of stars, and milky-ways, already beginning to gleam and ripple
over our heads. There were rivers of rock on the surface of the earth,
and rivers of ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and
circulated, and this portion of time was but the current hour. Let us
wander where we will, the universe is built round about us, and we are
central still. If we look into the heavens they are concave, and if we
were to look into a gulf as bottomless, it would be concave also. The
sky is curved downward to the earth in the horizon, because we stand on
the plain. I draw down its skirts. The stars so low there seem loath to
depart, but by a circuitous path to be remembering me, and returning on
their steps.

We had already passed by broad daylight the scene of our encampment at
Coos Falls, and at length we pitched our camp on the west bank, in the
northern part of Merrimack, nearly opposite to the large island on
which we had spent the noon in our way up the river.

There we went to bed that summer evening, on a sloping shelf in the
bank, a couple of rods from our boat, which was drawn up on the sand,
and just behind a thin fringe of oaks which bordered the river; without
having disturbed any inhabitants but the spiders in the grass, which
came out by the light of our lamp, and crawled over our buffaloes. When
we looked out from under the tent, the trees were seen dimly through
the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, which seemed to rejoice
in the night, and with the damp air we inhaled a solid fragrance.
Having eaten our supper of hot cocoa and bread and watermelon, we soon
grew weary of conversing, and writing in our journals, and, putting out
the lantern which hung from the tent-pole, fell asleep.

Unfortunately, many things have been omitted which should have been
recorded in our journal; for though we made it a rule to set down all
our experiences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to keep,
for the important experience rarely allows us to remember such
obligations, and so indifferent things get recorded, while that is
frequently neglected. It is not easy to write in a journal what
interests us at any time, because to write it is not what interests us.

Whenever we awoke in the night, still eking out our dreams with
half-awakened thoughts, it was not till after an interval, when the
wind breathed harder than usual, flapping the curtains of the tent, and
causing its cords to vibrate, that we remembered that we lay on the
bank of the Merrimack, and not in our chamber at home. With our heads
so low in the grass, we heard the river whirling and sucking, and
lapsing downward, kissing the shore as it went, sometimes rippling
louder than usual, and again its mighty current making only a slight
limpid, trickling sound, as if our water-pail had sprung a leak, and
the water were flowing into the grass by our side. The wind, rustling
the oaks and hazels, impressed us like a wakeful and inconsiderate
person up at midnight, moving about, and putting things to rights,
occasionally stirring up whole drawers full of leaves at a puff. There
seemed to be a great haste and preparation throughout Nature, as for a
distinguished visitor; all her aisles had to be swept in the night, by
a thousand hand-maidens, and a thousand pots to be boiled for the next
day’s feasting;—such a whispering bustle, as if ten thousand fairies
made their fingers fly, silently sewing at the new carpet with which
the earth was to be clothed, and the new drapery which was to adorn the
trees. And then the wind would lull and die away, and we like it fell
asleep again.




FRIDAY


            “The Boteman strayt
Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse,
Ne ever shroncke, ne ever sought to bayt
His tryed armes for toylesome wearinesse;
But with his oares did sweepe the watry wildernesse.”

SPENSER.


            “Summer’s robe grows
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows.”

DONNE.

As we lay awake long before daybreak, listening to the rippling of the
river, and the rustling of the leaves, in suspense whether the wind
blew up or down the stream, was favorable or unfavorable to our voyage,
we already suspected that there was a change in the weather, from a
freshness as of autumn in these sounds. The wind in the woods sounded
like an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring amid rocks, and we even
felt encouraged by the unusual activity of the elements. He who hears
the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly
despair. That night was the turning-point in the season. We had gone to
bed in summer, and we awoke in autumn; for summer passes into autumn in
some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left it, and as if waiting
for us, there on the shore, in autumn, all cool and dripping with dew,
and our tracks still fresh in the wet sand around it, the fairies all
gone or concealed. Before five o’clock we pushed it into the fog, and,
leaping in, at one shove were out of sight of the shores, and began to
sweep downward with the rushing river, keeping a sharp lookout for
rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgling water, and a solid bank of
fog on every side, forming a small yard around us. We soon passed the
mouth of the Souhegan, and the village of Merrimack, and as the mist
gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from the trouble of
watching for rocks, we saw by the flitting clouds, by the first russet
tinge on the hills, by the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and
the shore itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later in
the day, by the hue of the grape-vine, the goldfinch on the willow, the
flickers flying in flocks, and when we passed near enough to the shore,
as we fancied, by the faces of men, that the Fall had commenced. The
cottages looked more snug and comfortable, and their inhabitants were
seen only for a moment, and then went quietly in and shut the door,
retreating inward to the haunts of summer.

“And now the cold autumnal dews are seen
    To cobweb ev’ry green;
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear
    The fast-declining year.”


We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and even the water had
acquired a grayer hue. The sumach, grape, and maple were already
changed, and the milkweed had turned to a deep rich yellow. In all
woods the leaves were fast ripening for their fall; for their full
veins and lively gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the sered one of the
poets; and we knew that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the
earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along the edge of the
meadow. Already the cattle were heard to low wildly in the pastures and
along the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in
apprehension of the withering of the grass and of the approach of
winter. Our thoughts, too, began to rustle.

As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on the day of our
annual Cattle-Show, when it usually happens that the leaves of the elms
and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground under the breath of the
October wind, the lively spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as
any plough-boy’s let loose that day; and they lead my thoughts away to
the rustling woods, where the trees are preparing for their winter
campaign. This autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds in
the streets as regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster
and rustle by the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with the
fall of the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse
symphony or running bass to the rustling of the leaves. The wind goes
hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose straw that is left in
the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to scud before
it,—having donned his best pea-jacket and pepper-and-salt waistcoat,
his unbent trousers, outstanding rigging of duck or kerseymere or
corduroy, and his furry hat withal,—to country fairs and cattle-shows,
to that Rome among the villages where the treasures of the year are
gathered. All the land over they go leaping the fences with their
tough, idle palms, which have never learned to hang by their sides,
amid the low of calves and the bleating of sheep,—Amos, Abner,
Elnathan, Elbridge,—

“From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain.”


I love these sons of earth every mother’s son of them, with their great
hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle to
spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be time between sun and
sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more than in
haying-time.

“Wise Nature’s darlings, they live in the world
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled.”


Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes of the
day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the inspired negro from
whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and Guinea Coast have broke
loose into our streets; now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of
oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle
and milch cows as unspotted as Isis or Io. Such as had no love for
Nature

                “at all,
Came lovers home from this great festival.”


They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but
they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn
days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like
migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air
is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the
trampling of the crowd. We read now-a-days of the ancient festivals,
games, and processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a little
incredulity, or at least with little sympathy; but how natural and
irrepressible in every people is some hearty and palpable greeting of
Nature. The Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude primitive tragedians
with their procession and goat-song, and the whole paraphernalia of the
Panathenæa, which appear so antiquated and peculiar, have their
parallel now. The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar
is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while
antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it. The farmers
crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law, which
Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally as bees swarm and follow
their queen.

It is worth the while to see the country’s people, how they pour into
the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, their very shirt and
coat-collars pointing forward,—collars so broad as if they had put
their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions always tend to
superfluity,—and with an unusual springiness in their gait, jabbering
earnestly to one another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to
appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to
disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an
ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer’s best, yet never
dressed; come to see the sport, and have a hand in what is going,—to
know “what’s the row,” if there is any; to be where some men are drunk,
some horses race, some cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking props
under a table, and above all to see the “striped pig.” He especially is
the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his
character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the
social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.

I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and succulent
pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though
there are many crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among them,
run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse
circumstances, like the third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder
to see some heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will
fail or waver in them; like the crabs which grow in hedges, they
furnish the stocks of sweet and thrifty fruits still. Thus is nature
recruited from age to age, while the fair and palatable varieties die
out, and have their period. This is that mankind. How cheap must be the
material of which so many men are made.

The wind blew steadily down the stream, so that we kept our sails set,
and lost not a moment of the forenoon by delays, but from early morning
until noon were continually dropping downward. With our hands on the
steering-paddle, which was thrust deep into the river, or bending to
the oar, which indeed we rarely relinquished, we felt each palpitation
in the veins of our steed, and each impulse of the wings which drew us
above. The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river,
which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but
we are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these
points. The steadfast shores never once turned aside for us, but still
trended as they were made; why then should we always turn aside for
them?

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be
conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
These winged thoughts are like birds, and will not be handled; even
hens will not let you touch them like quadrupeds. Nothing was ever so
unfamiliar and startling to a man as his own thoughts.

To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to succumb and conform to
the ways of the world. Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would
float upon the breeze of popularity. The bird of paradise is obliged
constantly to fly against the wind, lest its gay trappings, pressing
close to its body, impede its free movements.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the
wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most
begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as
within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass,
there are some harbors which they can never reach.

The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar
institutions and edicts for his defence, but the toughest son of earth
and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting
companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshippers of
beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.

The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in
spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we
shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth
and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great
who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their
high estimate beyond the stars.

Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from his lyre, but only
those which are breathed into it; for the original strain precedes the
sound, by as much as the echo follows after. The rest is the perquisite
of the rocks and trees and beasts.

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world,
but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not truly cumulative
treasure, where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies
which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already
spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of
what poetry is,—I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee
into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a
true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he
saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a
vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

We are often prompted to speak our thoughts to our neighbors, or the
single travellers whom we meet on the road, but poetry is a
communication from our home and solitude addressed to all Intelligence.
It never whispers in a private ear. Knowing this, we may understand
those sonnets said to be addressed to particular persons, or “To a
Mistress’s Eyebrow.” Let none feel flattered by them. For poetry write
love, and it will be equally true.

No doubt it is an important difference between men of genius or poets,
and men not of genius, that the latter are unable to grasp and confront
the thought which visits them. But it is because it is too faint for
expression, or even conscious impression. What merely quickens or
retards the blood in their veins and fills their afternoons with
pleasure they know not whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the
finer organization of the poet.

We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, and the poet could only
express what other men conceived. But in comparison with his task, the
poet is the least talented of any; the writer of prose has more skill.
See what talent the smith has. His material is pliant in his hands.
When the poet is most inspired, is stimulated by an _aura_ which never
even colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent is all gone,
and he is no longer a poet. The gods do not grant him any skill more
than another. They never put their gifts into his hands, but they
encompass and sustain him with their breath.

To say that God has given a man many and great talents, frequently
means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.

When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with our pen,
intent only on worms, calling our mates around us, like the cock, and
delighting in the dust we make, but do not detect where the jewel lies,
which, perhaps, we have in the mean time cast to a distance, or quite
covered up again.

The poet’s body even is not fed like other men’s, but he sometimes
tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine
life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life
is preserved to a serene old age.

Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it
is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread.
The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which
he lives.

Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect more than great
verse, since it implies a more permanent and level height, a life more
pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet often only makes an
irruption, like a Parthian, and is off again, shooting while he
retreats; but the prose writer has conquered like a Roman, and settled
colonies.

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem
not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this,
stereotyped in the poet’s life. It is _what he has become through his
work_. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper,
is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the
life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince’s
gallery.

My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.

THE POET’S DELAY.


In vain I see the morning rise,
    In vain observe the western blaze,
Who idly look to other skies,
    Expecting life by other ways.

Amidst such boundless wealth without,
    I only still am poor within,
The birds have sung their summer out,
    But still my spring does not begin.

Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
    Compelled to seek a milder day,
And leave no curious nest behind,
    No woods still echoing to my lay?


This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of the oaks and pines on
shore, reminded us of more northern climes than Greece, and more wintry
seas than the Ægean.

The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his
name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects, of the
same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no
less than Homer, and in his era we hear of no other priest than he. It
will not avail to call him a heathen, because he personifies the sun
and addresses it; and what if his heroes did “worship the ghosts of
their fathers,” their thin, airy, and unsubstantial forms? we worship
but the ghosts of our fathers in more substantial forms. We cannot but
respect the vigorous faith of those heathen, who sternly believed
somewhat, and are inclined to say to the critics, who are offended by
their superstitious rites,—Don’t interrupt these men’s prayers. As if
we knew more about human life and a God, than the heathen and ancients.
Does English theology contain the recent discoveries!

Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, of Homer,
Pindar, Isaiah, and the American Indian. In his poetry, as in Homer’s,
only the simplest and most enduring features of humanity are seen, such
essential parts of a man as Stonehenge exhibits of a temple; we see the
circles of stone, and the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of life
acquire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through his mists. Like
all older and grander poetry, it is distinguished by the few elements
in the lives of its heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars
and the earth, shrunk to the bones and sinews. The earth is a boundless
plain for their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and everlasting
life, as hardly needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted entire
from age to age. There are but few objects to distract their sight, and
their life is as unencumbered as the course of the stars they gaze at.

“The wrathful kings, on cairns apart,
Look forward from behind their shields,
And mark the wandering stars,
That brilliant westward move.”


It does not cost much for these heroes to live; they do not want much
furniture. They are such forms of men only as can be seen afar through
the mist, and have no costume nor dialect, but for language there is
the tongue itself, and for costume there are always the skins of beasts
and the bark of trees to be had. They live out their years by the vigor
of their constitutions. They survive storms and the spears of their
foes, and perform a few heroic deeds, and then

“Mounds will answer questions of them,
For many future years.”


Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their days listening to the
lays of the bards, and feeling the weapons which laid their enemies
low, and when at length they die, by a convulsion of nature, the bard
allows us a short and misty glance into futurity, yet as clear,
perchance, as their lives had been. When Mac-Roine was slain,

“His soul departed to his warlike sires,
To follow misty forms of boars,
In tempestuous islands bleak.”


The hero’s cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief significant
strain, which will suffice for epitaph and biography.

“The weak will find his bow in the dwelling,
The feeble will attempt to bend it.”


Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears
the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the
civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest
era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes
shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of
finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man
stand the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed,
yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans.

The profession of the bard attracted more respect in those days from
the importance attached to fame. It was his province to record the
deeds of heroes. When Ossian hears the traditions of inferior bards, he
exclaims,—

“I straightway seize the unfutile tales,
And send them down in faithful verse.”


His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening of the third Duan of
Ca-Lodin.

“Whence have sprung the things that are?
And whither roll the passing years?
Where does Time conceal its two heads,
In dense impenetrable gloom,
Its surface marked with heroes’ deeds alone?
I view the generations gone;
The past appears but dim;
As objects by the moon’s faint beams,
Reflected from a distant lake.
I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war,
But there the unmighty joyless dwell,
All those who send not down their deeds
To far, succeeding times.”


The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten;

“Strangers come to build a tower,
And throw their ashes overhand;
Some rusted swords appear in dust;
One, bending forward, says,
‘The arms belonged to heroes gone;
We never heard their praise in song.’”


The grandeur of the similes is another feature which characterizes
great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a gigantic and universal language.
The images and pictures occupy even much space in the landscape, as if
they could be seen only from the sides of mountains, and plains with a
wide horizon, or across arms of the sea. The machinery is so massive
that it cannot be less than natural. Oivana says to the spirit of her
father, “Gray-haired Torkil of Torne,” seen in the skies,

“Thou glidest away like receding ships.”


So when the hosts of Fingal and Starne approach to battle,

“With murmurs loud, like rivers far,
The race of Torne hither moved.”


And when compelled to retire,

“dragging his spear behind,
Cudulin sank in the distant wood,
Like a fire upblazing ere it dies.”


Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he spoke;

“A thousand orators inclined
To hear the lay of Fingal.”


The threats too would have deterred a man. Vengeance and terror were
real. Trenmore threatens the young warrior whom he meets on a foreign
strand,

“Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore,
While lessening on the waves she spies
The sails of him who slew her son.”


If Ossian’s heroes weep, it is from excess of strength, and not from
weakness, a sacrifice or libation of fertile natures, like the
perspiration of stone in summer’s heat. We hardly know that tears have
been shed, and it seems as if weeping were proper only for babes and
heroes. Their joy and their sorrow are made of one stuff, like rain and
snow, the rainbow and the mist. When Fillan was worsted in fight, and
ashamed in the presence of Fingal,

“He strode away forthwith,
And bent in grief above a stream,
His cheeks bedewed with tears.
From time to time the thistles gray
He lopped with his inverted lance.”


Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of Fingal, who comes to aid
him in war;—

“‘My eyes have failed,’ says he, ‘Crodar is blind,
Is thy strength like that of thy fathers?
Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.’
        I gave my arm to the king.
The aged hero seized my hand;
He heaved a heavy sigh;
Tears flowed incessant down his cheek.
’Strong art thou, son of the mighty,
Though not so dreadful as Morven’s prince.

Let my feast be spread in the hall,
Let every sweet-voiced minstrel sing;
Great is he who is within my walls,
Sons of wave-echoing Croma.’”


Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays tribute to the superior
strength of his father Fingal.

“How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind,
Why succeeded Ossian without its strength?”


————————

While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with the river gurgling under
our stern, the thoughts of autumn coursed as steadily through our
minds, and we observed less what was passing on the shore, than the
dateless associations and impressions which the season awakened,
anticipating in some measure the progress of the year.

I hearing get, who had but ears,
    And sight, who had but eyes before,
I moments live, who lived but years,
    And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.


Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied the landscape by
degrees, as one unrolls a map, rock, tree, house, hill, and meadow,
assuming new and varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene,
and there was variety enough for our entertainment in the metamorphoses
of the simplest objects. Viewed from this side the scenery appeared new
to us.

The most familiar sheet of water viewed from a new hill-top, yields a
novel and unexpected pleasure. When we have travelled a few miles, we
do not recognize the profiles even of the hills which overlook our
native village, and perhaps no man is quite familiar with the horizon
as seen from the hill nearest to his house, and can recall its outline
distinctly when in the valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a short
distance, which way the hills range which take in our houses and farms
in their sweep. As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we
had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the
wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we
are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere. It is an
important epoch when a man who has always lived on the east side of a
mountain, and seen it in the west, travels round and sees it in the
east. Yet the universe is a sphere whose centre is wherever there is
intelligence. The sun is not so central as a man. Upon an isolated
hill-top, in an open country, we seem to ourselves to be standing on
the boss of an immense shield, the immediate landscape being apparently
depressed below the more remote, and rising gradually to the horizon,
which is the rim of the shield, villas, steeples, forests, mountains,
one above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens. The most
distant mountains in the horizon appear to rise directly from the shore
of that lake in the woods by which we chance to be standing, while from
the mountain-top, not only this, but a thousand nearer and larger
lakes, are equally unobserved.

Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works of the farmer, his
ploughing and reaping, had a beauty to our eyes which he never saw. How
fortunate were we who did not own an acre of these shores, who had not
renounced our title to the whole. One who knew how to appropriate the
true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich
man! all he has is what he has bought. What I see is mine. I am a large
owner in the Merrimack intervals.

Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend,
    Who yet no partial store appropriate,
Who no armed ship into the Indies send,
    To rob me of my orient estate.


He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer and
winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts. Buy a farm! What
have I to pay for a farm which a farmer will take?

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that
nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and
solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet. There is
a pleasant tract on the bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I
have in my mind;—the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture with
its bleak cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow in
the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,—places where one may
have many thoughts and not decide anything. It is a scene which I can
not only remember, as I might a vision, but when I will can bodily
revisit, and find it even so, unaccountable, yet unpretending in its
pleasant dreariness. When my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to
see and sit on rocks which I _have_ known, and pry into their moss, and
see unchangeableness so established. I not yet gray on rocks forever
gray, I no longer green under the evergreens. There is something even
in the lapse of time by which time recovers itself.

As we have said, it proved a cool as well as breezy day, and by the
time we reached Penichook Brook we were obliged to sit muffled in our
cloaks, while the wind and current carried us along. We bounded swiftly
over the rippling surface, far by many cultivated lands and the ends of
fences which divided innumerable farms, with hardly a thought for the
various lives which they separated; now by long rows of alders or
groves of pines or oaks, and now by some homestead where the women and
children stood outside to gaze at us, till we had swept out of their
sight, and beyond the limit of their longest Saturday ramble. We glided
past the mouth of the Nashua, and not long after, of Salmon Brook,
without more pause than the wind.

        Salmon Brook,
        Penichook,
Ye sweet waters of my brain,
        When shall I look,
        Or cast the hook,
    In your waves again?

        Silver eels,
        Wooden creels,
These the baits that still allure,
        And dragon-fly
        That floated by,
    May they still endure?


The shadows chased one another swiftly over wood and meadow, and their
alternation harmonized with our mood. We could distinguish the clouds
which cast each one, though never so high in the heavens. When a shadow
flits across the landscape of the soul, where is the substance?
Probably, if we were wise enough, we should see to what virtue we are
indebted for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt we have earned it at
some time; for the gifts of Heaven are never quite gratuitous. The
constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future
growth. The wood which we now mature, when it becomes virgin mould,
determines the character of our second growth, whether that be oaks or
pines. Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly
mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it
falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never
see it?—But, referred to the sun, it is widest at its base, which is no
greater than his own opacity. The divine light is diffused almost
entirely around us, and by means of the refraction of light, or else by
a certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it, transparency, if
we preserve ourselves untarnished, we are able to enlighten our shaded
side. At any rate, our darkest grief has that bronze color of the moon
eclipsed. There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark,
if you let in a stronger light upon it. Shadows, referred to the source
of light, are pyramids whose bases are never greater than those of the
substances which cast them, but light is a spherical congeries of
pyramids, whose very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the system
shines with uninterrupted light. But if the light we use is but a
paltry and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider than
themselves.

The places where we had stopped or spent the night in our way up the
river, had already acquired a slight historical interest for us; for
many upward day’s voyaging were unravelled in this rapid downward
passage. When one landed to stretch his limbs by walking, he soon found
himself falling behind his companion, and was obliged to take advantage
of the curves, and ford the brooks and ravines in haste, to recover his
ground. Already the banks and the distant meadows wore a sober and
deepened tinge, for the September air had shorn them of their summer’s
pride.

“And what’s a life? The flourishing array
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay.”


The air was really the “fine element” which the poets describe. It had
a finer and sharper grain, seen against the russet pastures and
meadows, than before, as if cleansed of the summer’s impurities.

Having passed the New Hampshire line and reached the Horseshoe Interval
in Tyngsborough, where there is a high and regular second bank, we
climbed up this in haste to get a nearer sight of the autumnal flowers,
asters, golden-rod, and yarrow, and blue-curls (_Trichostema
dichotoma_), humble roadside blossoms, and, lingering still, the
harebell and the _Rhexia Virginica_. The last, growing in patches of
lively pink flowers on the edge of the meadows, had almost too gay an
appearance for the rest of the landscape, like a pink ribbon on the
bonnet of a Puritan woman. Asters and golden-rods were the livery which
nature wore at present. The latter alone expressed all the ripeness of
the season, and shed their mellow lustre over the fields, as if the now
declining summer’s sun had bequeathed its hues to them. It is the
floral solstice a little after midsummer, when the particles of golden
light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds on the earth,
and produced these blossoms. On every hillside, and in every valley,
stood countless asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole
race of yellow flowers, like Brahminical devotees, turning steadily
with their luminary from morning till night.

“I see the golden-rod shine bright,
    As sun-showers at the birth of day,
A golden plume of yellow light,
    That robs the Day-god’s splendid ray.

“The aster’s violet rays divide
    The bank with many stars for me,
And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed,
    As moonlight floats across the sea.

“I see the emerald woods prepare
    To shed their vestiture once more,
And distant elm-trees spot the air
    With yellow pictures softly o’er.
     *     *     *     *     *
“No more the water-lily’s pride
    In milk-white circles swims content,
No more the blue-weed’s clusters ride
    And mock the heavens’ element.
     *     *     *     *     *
“Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent
    With the same colors, for to me
A richer sky than all is lent,
    While fades my dream-like company.

“Our skies glow purple, but the wind
    Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass,
To-day shines fair, and lurk behind
    The times that into winter pass.

“So fair we seem, so cold we are,
    So fast we hasten to decay,
Yet through our night glows many a star,
    That still shall claim its sunny day.”


So sang a Concord poet once.

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still later flowers,
which abide with us the approach of winter. There is something
witch-like in the appearance of the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in
October and in November, with its irregular and angular spray and
petals like furies’ hair, or small ribbon streamers. Its blossoming,
too, at this irregular period, when other shrubs have lost their
leaves, as well as blossoms, looks like witches’ craft. Certainly it
blooms in no garden of man’s. There is a whole fairy-land on the
hillside where it grows.

Some have thought that the gales do not at present waft to the voyager
the natural and original fragrance of the land, such as the early
navigators described, and that the loss of many odoriferous native
plants, sweet-scented grasses and medicinal herbs, which formerly
sweetened the atmosphere, and rendered it salubrious,—by the grazing of
cattle and the rooting of swine, is the source of many diseases which
now prevail; the earth, say they, having been long subjected to
extremely artificial and luxurious modes of cultivation, to gratify the
appetite, converted into a stye and hot-bed, where men for profit
increase the ordinary decay of nature.

According to the record of an old inhabitant of Tyngsborough, now dead,
whose farm we were now gliding past, one of the greatest freshets on
this river took place in October, 1785, and its height was marked by a
nail driven into an apple-tree behind his house. One of his descendants
has shown this to me, and I judged it to be at least seventeen or
eighteen feet above the level of the river at the time. According to
Barber, the river rose twenty-one feet above the common high-water
mark, at Bradford in the year 1818. Before the Lowell and Nashua
railroad was built, the engineer made inquiries of the inhabitants
along the banks as to how high they had known the river to rise. When
he came to this house he was conducted to the apple-tree, and as the
nail was not then visible, the lady of the house placed her hand on the
trunk where she said that she remembered the nail to have been from her
childhood. In the mean while the old man put his arm inside the tree,
which was hollow, and felt the point of the nail sticking through, and
it was exactly opposite to her hand. The spot is now plainly marked by
a notch in the bark. But as no one else remembered the river to have
risen so high as this, the engineer disregarded this statement, and I
learn that there has since been a freshet which rose within nine inches
of the rails at Biscuit Brook, and such a freshet as that of 1785 would
have covered the railroad two feet deep.

The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and make as interesting
revelations, on this river’s banks, as on the Euphrates or the Nile.
This apple-tree, which stands within a few rods of the river, is called
“Elisha’s apple-tree,” from a friendly Indian, who was anciently in the
service of Jonathan Tyng, and, with one other man, was killed here by
his own race in one of the Indian wars,—the particulars of which affair
were told us on the spot. He was buried close by, no one knew exactly
where, but in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water standing
over the grave, caused the earth to settle where it had once been
disturbed, and when the flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the
form and size of the grave, revealed its locality; but this was now
lost again, and no future flood can detect it; yet, no doubt, Nature
will know how to point it out in due time, if it be necessary, by
methods yet more searching and unexpected. Thus there is not only the
crisis when the spirit ceases to inspire and expand the body, marked by
a fresh mound in the churchyard, but there is also a crisis when the
body ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a fainter
depression in the earth.

We sat awhile to rest us here upon the brink of the western bank,
surrounded by the glossy leaves of the red variety of the mountain
laurel, just above the head of Wicasuck Island, where we could observe
some scows which were loading with clay from the opposite shore, and
also overlook the grounds of the farmer, of whom I have spoken, who
once hospitably entertained us for a night. He had on his pleasant
farm, besides an abundance of the beach-plum, or _Prunus littoralis_,
which grew wild, the Canada plum under cultivation, fine Porter apples,
some peaches, and large patches of musk and water melons, which he
cultivated for the Lowell market. Elisha’s apple-tree, too, bore a
native fruit, which was prized by the family. He raised the blood
peach, which, as he showed us with satisfaction, was more like the oak
in the color of its bark and in the setting of its branches, and was
less liable to break down under the weight of the fruit, or the snow,
than other varieties. It was of slower growth, and its branches strong
and tough. There, also, was his nursery of native apple-trees, thickly
set upon the bank, which cost but little care, and which he sold to the
neighboring farmers when they were five or six years old. To see a
single peach upon its stem makes an impression of paradisaical
fertility and luxury. This reminded us even of an old Roman farm, as
described by Varro:—Cæsar Vopiscus Ædilicius, when he pleaded before
the Censors, said that the grounds of Rosea were the garden (_sumen_
the tid-bit) of Italy, in which a pole being left would not be visible
the day after, on account of the growth of the herbage. This soil may
not have been remarkably fertile, yet at this distance we thought that
this anecdote might be told of the Tyngsborough farm.

When we passed Wicasuck Island, there was a pleasure-boat containing a
youth and a maiden on the island brook, which we were pleased to see,
since it proved that there were some hereabouts to whom our excursion
would not be wholly strange. Before this, a canal-boatman, of whom we
made some inquiries respecting Wicasuck Island, and who told us that it
was disputed property, suspected that we had a claim upon it, and
though we assured him that all this was news to us, and explained, as
well as we could, why we had come to see it, he believed not a word of
it, and seriously offered us one hundred dollars for our title. The
only other small boats which we met with were used to pick up
driftwood. Some of the poorer class along the stream collect, in this
way, all the fuel which they require. While one of us landed not far
from this island to forage for provisions among the farm-houses whose
roofs we saw, for our supply was now exhausted, the other, sitting in
the boat, which was moored to the shore, was left alone to his
reflections.

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveller always has a
resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view.
The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may
always read a new truth there. There are things there written with such
fine and subtile tinctures, paler than the juice of limes, that to the
diurnal eye they leave no trace, and only the chemistry of night
reveals them. Every man’s daylight firmament answers in his mind to the
brightness of the vision in his starriest hour.

These continents and hemispheres are soon run over, but an always
unexplored and infinite region makes off on every side from the mind,
further than to sunset, and we can make no highway or beaten track into
it, but the grass immediately springs up in the path, for we travel
there chiefly with our wings.

Sometimes we see objects as through a thin haze, in their eternal
relations, and they stand like Palenque and the Pyramids, and we wonder
who set them up, and for what purpose. If we see the reality in things,
of what moment is the superficial and apparent longer? What are the
earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and
scatters them? While I sit here listening to the waves which ripple and
break on this shore, I am absolved from all obligation to the past, and
the council of nations may reconsider its votes. The grating of a
pebble annuls them. Still occasionally in my dreams I remember that
rippling water.

Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o’er,
I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore,
Distinct as if it were at broad noonday,
And I were drifting down from Nashua.


With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsborough and Chelmsford,
each holding in one hand half of a tart country apple-pie which we had
purchased to celebrate our return, and in the other a fragment of the
newspaper in which it was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish,
and learning the news which had transpired since we sailed. The river
here opened into a broad and straight reach of great length, which we
bounded merrily over before a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care
look in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed
which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind in the
horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent
to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys turned their cheeks to
it. They were great and current motions, the flowing sail, the running
stream, the waving tree, the roving wind. The north-wind stepped
readily into the harness which we had provided, and pulled us along
with good will. Sometimes we sailed as gently and steadily as the
clouds overhead, watching the receding shores and the motions of our
sail; the play of its pulse so like our own lives, so thin and yet so
full of life, so noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and
impatient when least effective; now bending to some generous impulse of
the breeze, and then fluttering and flapping with a kind of human
suspense. It was the scale on which the varying temperature of distant
atmospheres was graduated, and it was some attraction for us that the
breeze it played with had been out of doors so long. Thus we sailed,
not being able to fly, but as next best, making a long furrow in the
fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with our wings spread, but
never lifting our heel from the watery trench; gracefully ploughing
homeward with our brisk and willing team, wind and stream, pulling
together, the former yet a wild steer, yoked to his more sedate fellow.
It was very near flying, as when the duck rushes through the water with
an impulse of her wings, throwing the spray about her, before she can
rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on the shore!

When we reached the great bend just above Middlesex, where the river
runs east thirty-five miles to the sea, we at length lost the aid of
this propitious wind, though we contrived to make one long and
judicious tack carry us nearly to the locks of the canal. We were here
locked through at noon by our old friend, the lover of the higher
mathematics, who seemed glad to see us safe back again through so many
locks; but we did not stop to consider any of his problems, though we
could cheerfully have spent a whole autumn in this way another time,
and never have asked what his religion was. It is so rare to meet with
a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is
independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man’s busy-ness
there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within
the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still
water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it
above the surface.

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a
scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a
moral one. Few detect the morality in the former, or the science in the
latter. Aristotle defined art to be Λόγος τοῦ ἔργου ἄνευ ὕλης, _The
principle of the work without the wood_; but most men prefer to have
some of the wood along with the principle; they demand that the truth
be clothed in flesh and blood and the warm colors of life. They prefer
the partial statement because it fits and measures them and their
commodities best. But science still exists everywhere as the sealer of
weights and measures at least.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of
it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic
value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statement of any truth
must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules
of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would
express them both. All the moral laws are readily translated into
natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive
meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to their
literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already
_supernatural_ philosophy. The whole body of what is now called moral
or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if
we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.
The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. He is
not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his
studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by
application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere
coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry
is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger
system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with
physics but with ethics, _that_ is _mixed_ mathematics. The fact which
interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is
still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it
is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee, and he
professes another religion than it teaches, and worships at a foreign
shrine. Anciently the faith of a philosopher was identical with his
system, or, in other words, his view of the universe.

My friends mistake when they communicate facts to me with so much
pains. Their presence, even their exaggerations and loose statements,
are equally good facts for me. I have no respect for facts even except
when I would use them, and for the most part I am independent of those
which I hear, and can afford to be inaccurate, or, in other words, to
substitute more present and pressing facts in their place.

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes
their widest deductions.

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic
application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal
themselves. Almost any _mode_ of observation will be successful at
last, for what is most wanted is method. Only let something be
determined and fixed around which observation may rally. How many new
relations a foot-rule alone will reveal, and to how many things still
this has not been applied! What wonderful discoveries have been, and
may still be, made, with a plumb-line, a level, a surveyor’s compass, a
thermometer, or a barometer! Where there is an observatory and a
telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once. I
should say that the most prominent scientific men of our country, and
perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts and not pure science,
or are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors in particular
departments. They make no steady and systematic approaches to the
central fact. A discovery is made, and at once the attention of all
observers is distracted to that, and it draws many analogous
discoveries in its train; as if their work were not already laid out
for them, but they had been lying on their oars. There is wanting
constant and accurate observation with enough of theory to direct and
discipline it.

But, above all, there is wanting genius. Our books of science, as they
improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing the freshness and vigor
and readiness to appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked
merit in the ofttimes false theories of the ancients. I am attracted by
the slight pride and satisfaction, the emphatic and even exaggerated
style in which some of the older naturalists speak of the operations of
Nature, though they are better qualified to appreciate than to
discriminate the facts. Their assertions are not without value when
disproved. If they are not facts, they are suggestions for Nature
herself to act upon. “The Greeks,” says Gesner, “had a common proverb
(Λαγος καθευδον) a sleeping hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit;
because the hare sees when she sleeps; for this is an admirable and
rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her bodily parts take
their rest, but the eye standeth continually sentinel.”

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to
the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would
always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect
conclusions; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all
ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts
observed. The senses of the savage will furnish him with facts enough
to set him up as a philosopher. The ancients can still speak to us with
authority, even on the themes of geology and chemistry, though these
studies are thought to have had their birth in modern times. Much is
said about the progress of science in these centuries. I should say
that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had
been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity;
for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How
can we _know_ what we are _told_ merely? Each man can interpret
another’s experience only by his own. We read that Newton discovered
the law of gravitation, but how many who have heard of his famous
discovery have recognized the same truth that he did? It may be not
one. The revelation which was then made to him has not been superseded
by the revelation made to any successor.

We see the _planet_ fall,
And that is all.


In a review of Sir James Clark Ross’s Antarctic Voyage of Discovery,
there is a passage which shows how far a body of men are commonly
impressed by an object of sublimity, and which is also a good instance
of the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. After describing the
discovery of the Antarctic Continent, at first seen a hundred miles
distant over fields of ice,—stupendous ranges of mountains from seven
and eight to twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, covered with
eternal snow and ice, in solitary and inaccessible grandeur, at one
time the weather being beautifully clear, and the sun shining on the
icy landscape; a continent whose islands only are accessible, and these
exhibited “not the smallest trace of vegetation,” only in a few places
the rocks protruding through their icy covering, to convince the
beholder that land formed the nucleus, and that it was not an
iceberg;—the practical British reviewer proceeds thus, sticking to his
last, “On the 22d of January, afternoon, the Expedition made the
latitude of 74° 20’ and by 7h P.M., having ground (ground! where did
they get ground?) to believe that they were then in a higher southern
latitude than had been attained by that enterprising seaman, the late
Captain James Weddel, and therefore higher than all their predecessors,
an extra allowance of grog was issued to the crews as a reward for
their perseverance.”

Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon ourselves any airs on
account of our Newtons and our Cuviers; we deserve an extra allowance
of grog only.

We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind to blow through the long
corridor of the canal, which is here cut straight through the woods,
and were obliged to resort to our old expedient of drawing by a cord.
When we reached the Concord, we were forced to row once more in good
earnest, with neither wind nor current in our favor, but by this time
the rawness of the day had disappeared, and we experienced the warmth
of a summer afternoon. This change in the weather was favorable to our
contemplative mood, and disposed us to dream yet deeper at our oars,
while we floated in imagination farther down the stream of time, as we
had floated down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of a milder
period than had engaged us in the morning. Chelmsford and Billerica
appeared like old English towns, compared with Merrimack and Nashua,
and many generations of civil poets might have lived and sung here.

What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian, and
that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much more of
Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry like the Greek
and Latin before it, seems well advanced toward its fall, and laden
with the fruit and foliage of the season, with bright autumnal tints,
but soon the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shading
leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the
snow and rime, and creak in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the
impression that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we
come to the literature of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various
ages and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative,
and didactic; but the poetry of runic monuments is of one style, and
for every age. The bard has in a great measure lost the dignity and
sacredness of his office. Formerly he was called a _seer_, but now it
is thought that one man sees as much as another. He has no longer the
bardic rage, and only conceives the deed, which he formerly stood ready
to perform. Hosts of warriors earnest for battle could not mistake nor
dispense with the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the pauses of
the fight. There was no danger of his being overlooked by his
contemporaries. But now the hero and the bard are of different
professions. When we come to the pleasant English verse, the storms
have all cleared away and it will never thunder and lighten more. The
poet has come within doors, and exchanged the forest and crag for the
fireside, the hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge with its circles of
stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero stands at the door
prepared to break forth into song or heroic action, but a homely
Englishman, who cultivates the art of poetry. We see the comfortable
fireside, and hear the crackling fagots in all the verse.

Notwithstanding the broad humanity of Chaucer, and the many social and
domestic comforts which we meet with in his verse, we have to narrow
our vision somewhat to consider him, as if he occupied less space in
the landscape, and did not stretch over hill and valley as Ossian does.
Yet, seen from the side of posterity, as the father of English poetry,
preceded by a long silence or confusion in history, unenlivened by any
strain of pure melody, we easily come to reverence him. Passing over
the earlier continental poets, since we are bound to the pleasant
archipelago of English poetry, Chaucer’s is the first name after that
misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can detain us long. Indeed,
though he represents so different a culture and society, he may be
regarded as in many respects the Homer of the English poets. Perhaps he
is the youthfullest of them all. We return to him as to the purest
well, the fountain farthest removed from the highway of desultory life.
He is so natural and cheerful, compared with later poets, that we might
almost regard him as a personification of spring. To the faithful
reader his muse has even given an aspect to his times, and when he is
fresh from perusing him, they seem related to the golden age. It is
still the poetry of youth and life, rather than of thought; and though
the moral vein is obvious and constant, it has not yet banished the sun
and daylight from his verse. The loftiest strains of the muse are, for
the most part, sublimely plaintive, and not a carol as free as
nature’s. The content which the sun shines to celebrate from morning to
evening, is unsung. The muse solaces herself, and is not ravished but
consoled. There is a catastrophe implied, and a tragic element in all
our verse, and less of the lark and morning dews, than of the
nightingale and evening shades. But in Homer and Chaucer there is more
of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and
moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men
cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized
and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more. To the
innocent there are neither cherubim nor angels. At rare intervals we
rise above the necessity of virtue into an unchangeable morning light,
in which we have only to live right on and breathe the ambrosial air.
The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare
sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground,
and were autochthones of the soil.

Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary man and a scholar. There
were never any times so stirring that there were not to be found some
sedentary still. He was surrounded by the din of arms. The battles of
Hallidon Hill and Neville’s Cross, and the still more memorable battles
of Cressy and Poictiers, were fought in his youth; but these did not
concern our poet much, Wickliffe and his reform much more. He regarded
himself always as one privileged to sit and converse with books. He
helped to establish the literary class. His character as one of the
fathers of the English language would alone make his works important,
even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as
Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it
was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of
a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that
which Dante rendered to Italy. If Greek sufficeth for Greek, and Arabic
for Arabian, and Hebrew for Jew, and Latin for Latin, then English
shall suffice for him, for any of these will serve to teach truth
“right as divers pathes leaden divers folke the right waye to Rome.” In
the Testament of Love he writes, “Let then clerkes enditen in Latin,
for they have the propertie of science, and the knowinge in that
facultie, and lette Frenchmen in their Frenche also enditen their
queinte termes, for it is kyndely to their mouthes, and let us shewe
our fantasies in soche wordes as we lerneden of our dames tonge.”

He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, who has come down to him
the natural way, through the meagre pastures of Saxon and
ante-Chaucerian poetry; and yet, so human and wise he appears after
such diet, that we are liable to misjudge him still. In the Saxon
poetry extant, in the earliest English, and the contemporary Scottish
poetry, there is less to remind the reader of the rudeness and vigor of
youth, than of the feebleness of a declining age. It is for the most
part translation of imitation merely, with only an occasional and
slight tinge of poetry, oftentimes the falsehood and exaggeration of
fable, without its imagination to redeem it, and we look in vain to
find antiquity restored, humanized, and made blithe again by some
natural sympathy between it and the present. But Chaucer is fresh and
modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens
along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and
birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of
the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the
original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and
did breathe quite as modern men do.

There is no wisdom that can take place of humanity, and we find _that_
in Chaucer. We can expand at last in his breadth, and we think that we
could have been that man’s acquaintance. He was worthy to be a citizen
of England, while Petrarch and Boccacio lived in Italy, and Tell and
Tamerlane in Switzerland and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and
Wickliffe, and Gower, and Edward the Third, and John of Gaunt, and the
Black Prince, were his own countrymen as well as contemporaries; all
stout and stirring names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down from the
preceding century, and the name of Dante still possessed the influence
of a living presence. On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater
than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for
he would have held up his head in their company. Among early English
poets he is the landlord and host, and has the authority of such. The
affectionate mention which succeeding early poets make of him, coupling
him with Homer and Virgil, is to be taken into the account in
estimating his character and influence. King James and Dunbar of
Scotland speak of him with more love and reverence than any modern
author of his predecessors of the last century. The same childlike
relation is without a parallel now. For the most part we read him
without criticism, for he does not plead his own cause, but speaks for
his readers, and has that greatness of trust and reliance which compels
popularity. He confides in the reader, and speaks privily with him,
keeping nothing back. And in return the reader has great confidence in
him, that he tells no lies, and reads his story with indulgence, as if
it were the circumlocution of a child, but often discovers afterwards
that he has spoken with more directness and economy of words than a
sage. He is never heartless,

“For first the thing is thought within the hart,
Er any word out from the mouth astart.”


And so new was all his theme in those days, that he did not have to
invent, but only to tell.

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit. The easy height he speaks
from in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, as if he were equal to
any of the company there assembled, is as good as any particular
excellence in it. But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it
is not transcendent poetry. For picturesque description of persons it
is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is
essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. Humor, however
broad and genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm. To his own
finer vein he added all the common wit and wisdom of his time, and
everywhere in his works his remarkable knowledge of the world, and nice
perception of character, his rare common sense and proverbial wisdom,
are apparent. His genius does not soar like Milton’s, but is genial and
familiar. It shows great tenderness and delicacy, but not the heroic
sentiment. It is only a greater portion of humanity with all its
weakness. He is not heroic, as Raleigh, nor pious, as Herbert, nor
philosophical, as Shakespeare, but he is the child of the English muse,
that child which is the father of the man. The charm of his poetry
consists often only in an exceeding naturalness, perfect sincerity,
with the behavior of a child rather than of a man.

Gentleness and delicacy of character are everywhere apparent in his
verse. The simplest and humblest words come readily to his lips. No one
can read the Prioress’s tale, understanding the spirit in which it was
written, and in which the child sings _O alma redemptoris mater_, or
the account of the departure of Constance with her child upon the sea,
in the Man of Lawe’s tale, without feeling the native innocence and
refinement of the author. Nor can we be mistaken respecting the
essential purity of his character, disregarding the apology of the
manners of the age. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness, which
Wordsworth only occasionally approaches, but does not equal, are
peculiar to him. We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine,
not masculine. It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to
find in woman, though not the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to
be found at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man.

Such pure and genuine and childlike love of Nature is hardly to be
found in any poet.

Chaucer’s remarkably trustful and affectionate character appears in his
familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner of speaking of his God. He
comes into his thought without any false reverence, and with no more
parade than the zephyr to his ear. If Nature is our mother, then God is
our father. There is less love and simple, practical trust in
Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we find
expressed any affection for God. Certainly, there is no sentiment so
rare as the love of God. Herbert almost alone expresses it, “Ah, my
dear God!” Our poet uses similar words with propriety; and whenever he
sees a beautiful person, or other object, prides himself on the
“maistry” of his God. He even recommends Dido to be his bride,—

“if that God that heaven and yearth made,
Would have a love for beauty and goodnesse,
And womanhede, trouth, and semeliness.”


But in justification of our praise, we must refer to his works
themselves; to the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the account of
Gentilesse, the Flower and the Leaf, the stories of Griselda, Virginia,
Ariadne, and Blanche the Dutchesse, and much more of less distinguished
merit. There are many poets of more taste, and better manners, who knew
how to leave out their dulness; but such negative genius cannot detain
us long; we shall return to Chaucer still with love. Some natures,
which are really rude and ill-developed, have yet a higher standard of
perfection than others which are refined and well balanced. Even the
clown has taste, whose dictates, though he disregards them, are higher
and purer than those which the artist obeys. If we have to wander
through many dull and prosaic passages in Chaucer, we have at least the
satisfaction of knowing that it is not an artificial dulness, but too
easily matched by many passages in life. We confess that we feel a
disposition commonly to concentrate sweets, and accumulate pleasures;
but the poet may be presumed always to speak as a traveller, who leads
us through a varied scenery, from one eminence to another, and it is,
perhaps, more pleasing, after all, to meet with a fine thought in its
natural setting. Surely fate has enshrined it in these circumstances
for some end. Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and never
collects them into heaps. This was the soil it grew in, and this the
hour it bloomed in; if sun, wind, and rain came here to cherish and
expand the flower, shall not we come here to pluck it?

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or
any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most
have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing
of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very
breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and
fragrance. Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no
character. It is only an unusual precision and elasticity of speech, as
if its author had taken, not an intoxicating draught, but an electuary.
It has the distinct outline of sculpture, and chronicles an early hour.
Under the influence of passion all men speak thus distinctly, but wrath
is not always divine.

There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the
other art,—one seeks food for nutriment, the other for flavor; one
satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate. There are two kinds
of writing, both great and rare; one that of genius, or the inspired,
the other of intellect and taste, in the intervals of inspiration. The
former is above criticism, always correct, giving the law to criticism.
It vibrates and pulsates with life forever. It is sacred, and to be
read with reverence, as the works of nature are studied. There are few
instances of a sustained style of this kind; perhaps every man has
spoken words, but the speaker is then careless of the record. Such a
style removes us out of personal relations with its author; we do not
take his words on our lips, but his sense into our hearts. It is the
stream of inspiration, which bubbles out, now here, now there, now in
this man, now in that. It matters not through what ice-crystals it is
seen, now a fountain, now the ocean stream running under ground. It is
in Shakespeare, Alpheus, in Burns, Arethuse; but ever the same. The
other is self-possessed and wise. It is reverent of genius, and greedy
of inspiration. It is conscious in the highest and the least degree. It
consists with the most perfect command of the faculties. It dwells in a
repose as of the desert, and objects are as distinct in it as oases or
palms in the horizon of sand. The train of thought moves with subdued
and measured step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instrument in
its hand, and not instinct with life, like a longer arm. It leaves a
thin varnish or glaze over all its work. The works of Goethe furnish
remarkable instances of the latter.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. Nothing is considered
simply as it lies in the lap of eternal beauty, but our thoughts, as
well as our bodies, must be dressed after the latest fashions. Our
taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet’s work,
but never yea to his hope. It invites him to adorn his deformities, and
not to cast them off by expansion, as the tree its bark. We are a
people who live in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain,
and drink only light wines, whose teeth are easily set on edge by the
least natural sour. If we had been consulted, the backbone of the earth
would have been made, not of granite, but of Bristol spar. A modern
author would have died in infancy in a ruder age. But the poet is
something more than a scald, “a smoother and polisher of language”; he
is a Cincinnatus in literature, and occupies no west end of the world.
Like the sun, he will indifferently select his rhymes, and with a
liberal taste weave into his verse the planet and the stubble.

In these old books the stucco has long since crumbled away, and we read
what was sculptured in the granite. They are rude and massive in their
proportions, rather than smooth and delicate in their finish. The
workers in stone polish only their chimney ornaments, but their
pyramids are roughly done. There is a soberness in a rough aspect, as
of unhewn granite, which addresses a depth in us, but a polished
surface hits only the ball of the eye. The true finish is the work of
time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still
polishing the pyramids. Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no
more. A work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it
anticipates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish, which still
appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its
substance. Its beauty is at the same time its strength, and it breaks
with a lustre.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
The reader easily goes within the shallowest contemporary poetry, and
informs it with all the life and promise of the day, as the pilgrim
goes within the temple, and hears the faintest strains of the
worshippers; but it will have to speak to posterity, traversing these
deserts, through the ruins of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and
beauty of its proportions.

———————

But here on the stream of the Concord, where we have all the while been
bodily, Nature, who is superior to all styles and ages, is now, with
pensive face, composing her poem Autumn, with which no work of man will
bear to be compared.

In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings,
which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and
longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we
are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain,
and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new
life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more
mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of
October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which
we occupy, not far off geographically,—

“There is a place beyond that flaming hill,
    From whence the stars their thin appearance shed,
A place beyond all place, where never ill,
    Nor impure thought was ever harbored.”


Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not his Father but his
Mother stirs within him, and he becomes immortal with her immortality.
From time to time she claims kindredship with us, and some globule from
her veins steals up into our own.

I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter’s moon,
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
        I am all sere and yellow,
        And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods,
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief.


To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke in prose:

The moon no longer reflects the day, but rises to her absolute rule,
and the husbandman and hunter acknowledge her for their mistress.
Asters and golden-rods reign along the way, and the life-everlasting
withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride, but an
inward verdure still crowns them. The thistle scatters its down on the
pool, and yellow leaves clothe the vine, and naught disturbs the
serious life of men. But behind the sheaves, and under the sod, there
lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers have not gathered, the true
harvest of the year, which it bears forever, annually watering and
maturing it, and man never severs the stalk which bears this palatable
fruit.

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a _natural_ life, round which the
vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate
it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him.
He needs not only to be spiritualized, but _naturalized_, on the soil
of earth. Who shall conceive what kind of roof the heavens might extend
over him, what seasons minister to him, and what employment dignify his
life! Only the convalescent raise the veil of nature. An immortality in
his life would confer immortality on his abode. The winds should be his
breath, the seasons his moods, and he should impart of his serenity to
Nature herself. But such as we know him he is ephemeral like the
scenery which surrounds him, and does not aspire to an enduring
existence. When we come down into the distant village, visible from the
mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have
departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the
imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of
their heroes. They may feign that Cato’s last words were

“The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
And now will view the Gods’ state and the stars,”


but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny of common men. What is
this heaven which they expect, if it is no better than they expect? Are
they prepared for a better than they can now imagine? Where is the
heaven of him who dies on a stage, in a theatre? Here or nowhere is our
heaven.

“Although we see celestial bodies move
Above the earth, the earth we till and love.”


We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have
experienced. “The remembrance of youth is a sigh.” We linger in manhood
to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they are half forgotten ere we
have learned the language. We have need to be earth-born as well as
heaven-born, γηγενεῖς, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better
sense than they. There have been heroes for whom this world seemed
expressly prepared, as if creation had at last succeeded; whose daily
life was the stuff of which our dreams are made, and whose presence
enhanced the beauty and ampleness of Nature herself. Where they walked,

“Largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit
Purpureo: Solemque suum, sua sidera nôrunt.”


“Here a more copious air invests the fields, and clothes with purple
light; and they know their own sun and their own stars.” We love to
hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air
they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls
on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire.
They stand many deep. They have the heavens for their abettors, as
those who have never stood from under them, and they look at the stars
with an answering ray. Their eyes are like glow-worms, and their
motions graceful and flowing, as if a place were already found for
them, like rivers flowing through valleys. The distinctions of
morality, of right and wrong, sense and nonsense, are petty, and have
lost their significance, beside these pure primeval natures. When I
consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky,
frowning with darkness or glowing with downy light, or gilded with the
rays of the setting sun, like the battlements of a city in the heavens,
their grandeur appears thrown away on the meanness of my employment;
the drapery is altogether too rich for such poor acting. I am hardly
worthy to be a suburban dweller outside those walls

        “Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”


With our music we would fain challenge transiently another and finer
sort of intercourse than our daily toil permits. The strains come back
to us amended in the echo, as when a friend reads our verse. Why have
they so painted the fruits, and freighted them with such fragrance as
to satisfy a more than animal appetite?

“I asked the schoolman, his advice was free,
But scored me out too intricate a way.”


These things imply, perchance, that we live on the verge of another and
purer realm, from which these odors and sounds are wafted over to us.
The borders of our plot are set with flowers, whose seeds were blown
from more Elysian fields adjacent. They are the pot-herbs of the gods.
Some fairer fruits and sweeter fragrances wafted over to us, betray
another realm’s vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, and there is the
abutment of the rainbow’s arch.

A finer race and finer fed
Feast and revel o’er our head,
And we titmen are only able
To catch the fragments from their table.
Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits,
While we consume the pulp and roots.
What are the moments that we stand
Astonished on the Olympian land!


We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a
_purely_ sensuous life. Our present senses are but the rudiments of
what they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb
and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling. Every generation
makes the discovery, that its divine vigor has been dissipated, and
each sense and faculty misapplied and debauched. The ears were made,
not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear
celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as
they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now
invisible. May we not _see_ God? Are we to be put off and amused in
this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly
read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely? When
the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned,
he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with reverence speaks of
“the Heavens,” but the seer will in the same sense speak of “the
Earths,” and his Father who is in them. “Did not he that made that
which is _within_, make that which is _without_ also?” What is it,
then, to educate but to develop these divine germs called the senses?
for individuals and states to deal magnanimously with the rising
generation, leading it not into temptation,—not teach the eye to
squint, nor attune the ear to profanity. But where is the instructed
teacher? Where are the _normal_ schools?

A Hindoo sage said, “As a dancer, having exhibited herself to the
spectator, desists from the dance, so does Nature desist, having
manifested herself to soul—. Nothing, in my opinion, is more gentle
than Nature; once aware of having been seen, she does not again expose
herself to the gaze of soul.”

It is easier to discover another such a new world as Columbus did, than
to go within one fold of this which we appear to know so well; the land
is lost sight of, the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still
history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of nature. But
there is only necessary a moment’s sanity and sound senses, to teach us
that there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we have only some
vague pre-emption right and western reserve as yet. We live on the
outskirts of that region. Carved wood, and floating boughs, and sunset
skies, are all that we know of it. We are not to be imposed on by the
longest spell of weather. Let us not, my friends, be wheedled and
cheated into good behavior to earn the salt of our eternal porridge,
whoever they are that attempt it. Let us wait a little, and not
purchase any clearing here, trusting that richer bottoms will soon be
put up. It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a
richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied
loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
        By a chance bond together,
    Dangling this way and that, their links
        Were made so loose and wide,
                Methinks,
            For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,
        And sorrel intermixed,
    Encircled by a wisp of straw
        Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I’m fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out
        Those fair Elysian fields,
    With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
        Doth make the rabble rout
                That waste
            The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
        Drinking my juices up,
    With no root in the land
        To keep my branches green,
                But stand
            In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem
        In mimicry of life,
    But ah! the children will not know,
        Till time has withered them,
                The woe
            With which they’re rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
        And after in life’s vase
    Of glass set while I might survive,
        But by a kind hand brought
                Alive
            To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
        And by another year,
    Such as God knows, with freer air,
        More fruits and fairer flowers
                Will bear,
            While I droop here.


This world has many rings, like Saturn, and we live now on the outmost
of them all. None can say deliberately that he inhabits the same
sphere, or is contemporary with, the flower which his hands have
plucked, and though his feet may seem to crush it, inconceivable spaces
and ages separate them, and perchance there is no danger that he will
hurt it. What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the
lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the
mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea
and land, sun, moon and stars, and shall not see clearly till after
nine days at least. That is a pathetic inquiry among travellers and
geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they
think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be
the place it occupied!

The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me in the same way as do those
faint revelations of the Real which are vouchsafed to men from time to
time, or rather from eternity to eternity. When I remember the history
of that faint light in our firmament, which we call Venus, which
ancient men regarded, and which most modern men still regard, as a
bright spark attached to a hollow sphere revolving about our earth, but
which we have discovered to be _another world_, in itself,—how
Copernicus, reasoning long and patiently about the matter, predicted
confidently concerning it, before yet the telescope had been invented,
that if ever men came to see it more clearly than they did then, they
would discover that it had phases like our moon, and that within a
century after his death the telescope was invented, and that prediction
verified, by Galileo,—I am not without hope that we may, even here and
now obtain some accurate information concerning that OTHER WORLD which
the instinct of mankind has so long predicted. Indeed, all that we call
science, as well as all that we call poetry, is a particle of such
information, accurate as far as it goes, though it be but to the
confines of the truth. If we can reason so accurately, and with such
wonderful confirmation of our reasoning, respecting so-called material
objects and events infinitely removed beyond the range of our natural
vision, so that the mind hesitates to trust its calculations even when
they are confirmed by observation, why may not our speculations
penetrate as far into the immaterial starry system, of which the former
is but the outward and visible type? Surely, we are provided with
senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the
substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the
material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ,
Shakespeare, Swedenborg,—these are some of our astronomers.

There are perturbations in our orbits produced by the influence of
outlying spheres, and no astronomer has ever yet calculated the
elements of that undiscovered world which produces them. I perceive in
the common train of my thoughts a natural and uninterrupted sequence,
each implying the next, or, if interruption occurs, it is occasioned by
a new object being presented to my _senses_. But a steep, and sudden,
and by these means unaccountable transition, is that from a
comparatively narrow and partial, what is called common sense view of
things, to an infinitely expanded and liberating one, from seeing
things as men describe them, to seeing them as men cannot describe
them. This implies a sense which is not common, but rare in the wisest
man’s experience; which is sensible or sentient of more than common.

In what enclosures does the astronomer loiter! His skies are shoal, and
imagination, like a thirsty traveller, pants to be through their
desert. The roving mind impatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical
orbits, like cobwebs in a corner of its universe, and launches itself
to where distance fails to follow, and law, such as science has
discovered, grows weak and weary. The mind knows a distance and a space
of which all those sums combined do not make a unit of measure,—the
interval between that which _appears_, and that which _is_. I know that
there are many stars, I know that they are far enough off, bright
enough, steady enough in their orbits,—but what are they all worth?
They are more waste land in the West,—star territory,—to be made slave
States, perchance, if we colonize them. I have interest but for six
feet of star, and that interest is transient. Then farewell to all ye
bodies, such as I have known ye.

Every man, if he is wise, will stand on such bottom as will sustain
him, and if one gravitates downward more strongly than another, he will
not venture on those meads where the latter walks securely, but rather
leave the cranberries which grow there unraked by himself. Perchance,
some spring a higher freshet will float them within his reach, though
they may be watery and frost-bitten by that time. Such shrivelled
berries I have seen in many a poor man’s garret, ay, in many a
church-bin and state-coffer, and with a little water and heat they
swell again to their original size and fairness, and added sugar
enough, stead mankind for sauce to this world’s dish.

What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as
invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,—for there
must be subordination,—but uncommon sense, that sense which is common
only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare. Some
aspire to excellence in the subordinate department, and may God speed
them. What Fuller says of masters of colleges is universally
applicable, that “a little alloy of dulness in a master of a college
makes him fitter to manage secular affairs.”

“He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief
Because he wants it, hath a true belief;
And he that grieves because his grief’s so small,
Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all.”


Or be encouraged by this other poet’s strain,—

“By them went Fido marshal of the field:
    Weak was his mother when she gave him day;
And he at first a sick and weakly child,
    As e’er with tears welcomed the sunny ray;
        Yet when more years afford more growth and might,
        A champion stout he was, and puissant knight,
    As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright.

“Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand;
    Stops and turns back the sun’s impetuous course;
Nature breaks Nature’s laws at his command;
    No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force;
        Events to come yet many ages hence,
        He present makes, by wondrous prescience;
    Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense.”


“Yesterday, at dawn,” says Hafiz, “God delivered me from all worldly
affliction; and amidst the gloom of night presented me with the water
of immortality.”

In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah occurs this sentence: “The eagle of
the immaterial soul of Shaikh Sadi shook from his plumage the dust of
his body.”

Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward to find some autumnal work to
do, and help on the revolution of the seasons. Perhaps Nature would
condescend to make use of us even without our knowledge, as when we
help to scatter her seeds in our walks, and carry burrs and cockles on
our clothes from field to field.

All things are current found
On earthly ground,
Spirits and elements
Have their descents.

Night and day, year on year,
High and low, far and near,
These are our own aspects,
These are our own regrets.

Ye gods of the shore,
Who abide evermore,
I see your far headland,
Stretching on either hand;

I hear the sweet evening sounds
From your undecaying grounds;
Cheat me no more with time,
Take me to your clime.


As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely up the gentle
stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming banks, where we had first
pitched our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our lives had
passed, we seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in the southwest
horizon. The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so
rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to
men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll
of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over
the stream, the whole river valley undulated with mild light, purer and
more memorable than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary
vales uninhabited by man. Two herons, _Ardea herodias_, with their long
and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen travelling high
over our heads,—their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending
their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth’s
surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol
for the ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky, or sculptured
amid the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Bound to some northern meadow, they
held on their stately, stationary flight, like the storks in the
picture, and disappeared at length behind the clouds. Dense flocks of
blackbirds were winging their way along the river’s course, as if on a
short evening pilgrimage to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so
fair a sunset.

“Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night
    Hastes darkly to imprison on his way,
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright
    Of what’s yet left thee of life’s wasting day:
        Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn,
        And twice it is not given thee to be born.”


The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure, and in a contemplative
mood; but the farmer’s boy only whistled the more thoughtfully as he
drove his cows home from pasture, and the teamster refrained from
cracking his whip, and guided his team with a subdued voice. The last
vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently
along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars
being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or in
silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of
rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of
her dimly lighted halls;

“Pulsæ referunt ad sidera valles,”


and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars.

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded
that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are
worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind. It is recorded in
the Chronicle of Bernaldez, that in Columbus’s first voyage the natives
“pointed towards the heavens, making signs that they believed that
there was all power and holiness.” We have reason to be grateful for
celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man. The
stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our
fairest and most memorable experiences. “Let the immortal depth of your
soul lead you, but earnestly extend your eyes upwards.”

As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most
excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all
men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly,
sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is
her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and
purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare
mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. They are so far akin to
Silence, that they are but bubbles on her surface, which straightway
burst, an evidence of the strength and prolificness of the
under-current; a faint utterance of Silence, and then only agreeable to
our auditory nerves when they contrast themselves with and relieve the
former. In proportion as they do this, and are heighteners and
intensifiers of the Silence, they are harmony and purest melody.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and
all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety
as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not
daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we
may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum,
where no indignity can assail, no personality disturb us.

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when
most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his
audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth’s
speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which
kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked
by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made,
and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they
have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an
enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a
strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been dark and
leaden. Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any
sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever sounding and
resounding in the ears of men.

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are
struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own
unwritten sequel, to the written and comparatively lifeless body of the
work. Of all books this sequel is the most indispensable part. It
should be the author’s aim to say once and emphatically, “He said,”
ἔφη, ἔ. This is the most the book-maker can attain to. If he make his
volume a mole whereon the waves of Silence may break, it is well.

It were vain for me to endeavor to interrupt the Silence. She cannot be
done into English. For six thousand years men have translated her with
what fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better than a
sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has
her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at
last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made; for
when he at length dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the
told to the untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the
surface where he disappeared. Nevertheless, we will go on, like those
Chinese cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth, which may
one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the sea-shore.

We had made about fifty miles this day with sail and oar, and now, far
in the evening, our boat was grating against the bulrushes of its
native port, and its keel recognized the Concord mud, where some
semblance of its outline was still preserved in the flattened flags
which had scarce yet erected themselves since our departure; and we
leaped gladly on shore, drawing it up, and fastening it to the wild
apple-tree, whose stem still bore the mark which its chain had worn in
the chafing of the spring freshets.

THE END.




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