HOMES AMERICAN AUTHORS; COMPRISING BY VARIOUS WRITERS. ILLt>TKATEI> WITH VIKWS OF THEIR RESIDENCES FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS, AND A FA< -SIMILE OF TIIE MANUSCRIPT OF EACH AUTHOR. NEW-YORK: . 1'. PUTNAM AND CO., 10 PARK PLACE. M.DCCC.LIII. - ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S52, by G. P. PUTNAM & COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER AND STEREOTYPED 49 Ann-street CONTENTS. PAGE -JoHN JAMES AUDUBON, 1 -FAMES K. PAULDING, 21 WASHINGTON IRVING, 35 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 65 <;K ruble in both hemispheres. ~No pain- ful quarantine of hope deferred, as too often falls to the lot of genius, was appointed to his share, no protracted poverty withered and cut short his labors. The result was a work on Ornithology, with splendid volumes of paintings, illustrated in the letter-press with animated descriptions and lively incidents of personal adventure. When it was published, it at once established his fame abroad, and though he knew it not, gave him a high reputation at home. But besides the willing and instant applause he received, it should be said that of the one hun- dred and seventy subscribers to his book, at one thousand dollars each, nearly half came from England and France. This testimony to his merit was as honorable to those who gave it as it was to him who received it, and must have largely compensated him not for the expense, which we will not mention here but for the trouble and pain of his almost miraculous exertions. 12 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. After a few years he returned to America to enrich his portfolios and journals with materials for other volumes of what he characteristically named his " Ornithological Biog- raphy." No term could have been more happily chosen to designate both his paintings and descriptions, for both are actual histories of their objects. A faithful portrait or tran- script of the form and plumage of his aerial friends was not all that he desired to accomplish, as if they had no lives of their own and no relations to the rest of nature, and sat for ever, melancholy and alone, like the stock-dove of the poet, brood- ing over their own sweet notes. He wished to portray them in their actual habitudes and localities, such as he had found them for years in their homes. Knowing how they were rear- ed and mated and made a living, how each one had its indi- vidualities of character and custom, how its motions and postures and migrations were as much a part of its history as its structure and hue, and how the food it fed upon, as well as the trees on wiiich it built, were important elements in the knowledge of it, as a fact of creation, he strove to represent each in its most characteristic and striking peculi- arities and ways. And by this means he obtained another end, beyond strict fidelity to the truth of things, in that rich variety of accessories, which is essential to picturesque effect. This was not, however, a success that in any degree intox- icated his mind, for no sooner had he finally returned home, crow r ned with fame and easy in fortune, than he resumed his arduous tasks. His was not a nature that could be content with reposing upon laurels. On the contrary, an incessant activity was the law of life. If any thing could have tempted AUDUBON. 13 him into the indolence of a comfortable retirement, it was the charm of his happy family, where, surrounded by his accomplished wife and sons, blessed with competence, and enjoying general respect, he could have whiled away the evening of his days in security, peace and affection. But stronger than these to him were the seductions of the fields, and that nameless restless impulse which ever forces men of genius along their peculiar paths. He was soon again immersed in preparations for his perilous journeys, and set out upon them with as much hopefulness and joy as had ever marked his earlier days. Those who have turned over the leaves of Audubon's large books, or better still, who remember to have seen the collected exhibition he once made in the Lyceum of this city, will recall with grateful feeling the advantages of his method. They will remember how that vast and brilliant collection made it appear to the spectator as if he had been admitted at once to all sylvan secrets, or at least that the gorgeous infinity of the bird-world had been reveal- ed tu him in some happy moment of nature's confidence. All the' gay tlenixens of the air we're there, some alone on sway- ing twigs of the birch or maple, or on bending ferns and spires of grass ; others in pairs tenderly feeding their young with gaudy or green insects, or in groups pursuing their prey or defending themselves from attack ; while others again clove the thiii air of the hills or flitted darkly through secluded brakes. All were alive, all graceful, all joyous. It was impossible not to feel among them that there was something in birds which brought them nearer to our affection than the rest of the animal tribes ; for while these are either indifferent 14 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. to us, or inimical, or mere " servile ministers," birds are ever objects of admiration and solicitude. No body loves or even so much as likes insects, or reptiles, or worms ; fishes have an unutterably stupid and unsentimental look, and deserve to be caught ; wild beasts, though sometimes savagely grand and majestic, are always dreadful, and tame beasts we sub- jugate and therefore despise ; but birds win their way to our hearts and imaginations by a thousand ties. They are lovely in their forms and fascinating in their habits. They have canny knowing eyes, they have wonderfully pretty and brilliant hues, their motions are the perfection of beauty, and they lead free, happy, melodious lives. Their swift and graceful evolutions, now rising like an arrow to the very gate of heaven, and anon outspeeding the wind as it curls the white caps of the ocean, and above all, their far off mysterious flights in the drear autumn, awaken aspiration and thought, and breed a vague mysterious human interest in their destinies, while their songs, profuse, varied, sparkling, sympathetic, glorious, filling the world with melody, are the richest and tenderest of nature's voices. Among the recollections of childhood, those of the birds we have fed and cherished are often the sweetest, and in maturer years the country -home we love, the nooks where we have meditated, or the field in which we have worshipped, are the greener and the dearer for the memory of the birds. Thus they are associated with the most charming features of the external world, and breathe a spell over the interior world of thought. They are the po- etry of nature, and at the same time a pervading presence of poetry. Shakspeare, Keats, Shelley, Burns, Bryant and Wordsworth are their laureates, and while language lasts we A U D U B O N. 15 shall hear an echo of their strains in the cadences of " im- mortal verse." In this view of the matter, Audubon needs no apology for his life-long devotion to birds, or for the affectionate interest he every where manifests in his writings about them. It must not be understood that he was exclusive in his attachments, for besides the nomenclature and scien- tific descriptions of his volumes, there are delightful epi- sodes on natural scenery, local character and amusements, anecdotes of adventure, and sketches of the grander pheno- mena of winds and floods. In one place he tells us of an earthquake he experienced, in another of a fearful tempest, next of the hospitality of old friends suddenly and strangely found in a secluded corner of Canada, then of a ball in Newfoundland or of a Barbacue in Kentucky, and anon we are initiated into the mysteries of the maple-sugar camp, or stand appalled at the inhuman feats of the wreckers of the Florida reefs. His style, sometimes a little too ambi- tious and diffuse, is always vivacious and clear. The slight vein of egotism that runs through his interludes, gives an added charm to them, while, whatever his theme or your own mood, there is an impetuous bounding enthusiasm in all that he says, a strain of exuberant and exulting ani- mal spirits, that carries you whither he wills. A sedate, restrained, dyspeptic manner would have been impossible in one writing as he did in all the freshness of inspiration, and in the immediate presence of his objects. When Audubon had completed his various ornithologies, he projected, with the aid of the Rev. Dr. Bachman, his firm friend, the well-known geologist, a similar work in respect to 16 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. the quadrupeds. Indeed he had already, in his previous wan- derings, accumulated a large mass of materials, and was only anxious to complete his design. But the approach of age, he was then nearly seventy, induced his friends to dis- suade him from some of the more toilsome and hazardous expeditions necessary to complete this undertaking. He therefore left a portion of it to Dr. Bachman and to his sons, who inherit much of his talent. Before this second great undertaking was accomplished the over-wrought constitution had began to fail, the powers of both mind and body were exhausted the once brilliant eye could no longer keenly inspect the minute and delicate organs of the smaller quadrupeds or birds, nor could the once firm hand trace aught but trembling lines. We have heard that the last gleam of light stole across his features a few days before his death, when one of his sons held before him, as he sat in his chair, some of his most cherished drawings. He died on the 27th of January, 1851, gently as a child composes himself to his beautiful sleep. Without show, or the least attempt at parade of any kind, his remains were attended to their resting-place in Trinity Cemetery, adjoining his residence, by his family and a few friends. But in a short space of time the decease of this great, though simple-hearted man, was known both throughout our own broad land and Europe. I cannot but think that his countrymen made too little account of his death. It was perhaps, however, not to be expected that the multitude, who knew nothing of his ser- vices, should pay him their tributes of gratitude and respect, N ^ < M i ' / \ Y V ^ YNA I } Mil 1 V K\ io v i \ 3 1 s , f v ' \* * \ %'VxV x i \\ r MnMwm ijS^in^l^ tfMllllr A U D U B O N. 17 but it was to be supposed that our scientific societies and our artist associations would at least propose a monument to one who was so rare an ornament to both. Yet if they were neg- lectful, there are those who will not be, and who will long cherish his name : and, in the failure of all human memo- rials, as it has been elsewhere said, the little wren will whis- per it about our homes, the robin and the reed-bird pipe it from the meadows, the ring-dove will coo it from the dewy depths of the woods, and the mountain eagle scream it to the stars. lames $. PAULDING. TO those critics, at home and abroad, who deny that there is any essential nationality in our literature, we com- mend the works of Paulding. The oldest of our living authors, and after Brockden Brown, the first to make a creditable mark in our literary history, every thing he has written is not only American in subject and material, but as thoroughly imbued with the national spirit as any such body of works that ever proceeded from the brain and heart of a patriot. It is half a century since he made his first 22 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. appearance in print, and at seventy-five lie continues to write with the vivacity, good sense, and earnest love of country, for which he has been distinguished from the beginning. Before proceeding with a description of the residence of the veteran novelist, let us briefly sketch the life which is drawing to its close in a place so congenial and beau- tiful. Mr. Paulding is of the old Dutch stock, and of a family ennobled by sacrifices when sacrifices were the seals of devotion to liberty. It has been stated that he was born in Pawling, on the Hudson, so named in honor of one of his ancestors, who spelt his name in this way ; but his real birth-place was Pleasant Valley, a town in the same vicin- ity, where he came into the world on the twenty-second of August, 1778. His father was a member of the first New- York Committee of Safety, and Commissary General of the State troops ; and a cousin the son of his father's elder brother was John Paulding, who assisted in the capture of Andre. While the army was suffering from cold and hunger in the Highlands, from the inability of Congress to afford ade- quate supplies, Commissary Paulding on his own responsi- bility furnished the necessary means for their subsistence. When the war was over he presented his account for adjust- ment at the office of the Auditor General ; it was refused, and he returned to his family ruined in fortune, to be thrown into prison by a public creditor. His confinement was at length ended by the burning of the prison, after which he was permitted to walk unmolested to his home, PAULDING. 23 where the remainder of his life was passed in poverty and such depression as might well be induced by a recollection of his wrongs and sufferings. This brief notice of the father furnishes an index to the early life of our author. He was the youngest son, and his elder brothers being compelled to go from home in order to make their way in the world, he was left without associates to wile away his boyhood in the reading of such books as were in the family library, or could be borrowed in the neighborhood. Country houses, in those days, were not tilled with the vagabond literature which cloys, weakens and depraves the mind of the now rising generation. The works apt to be found in them were standard travels, biogra- phies, histories, essays, and treatises in practical religion, and they were rarely too numerous to be well digested during a studious minority, to the great advantage of one's intellectual health and character. Thus, in the society of his mother, and without farther instruction than could be obtained at a little log school-house about two miles away, in listless and dreamy solitude passed the early years of the author of " The Dutchman's Fireside," till with the assist- ance of one of his brothers he obtained a place in a public office in Xew-York. His sister had married Mr. Peter Irving, a merchant of high character, afterward well known as a representative of the city in Congress, and through him he became acquainted with his younger brother, Washington Irving, with whom he contracted at once an intimate and lasting friendship. They had written some trifles for the gazettes Paulding a few hits at the follies of society, and Irving his " Oliver Old- 24 HOMES OF AMERICAN A U T H O K S. style " essays, and, meeting one evening at a party, it was proposed in a gay conversation to establish a periodical in which to lash and amuse the town. When they next met each had prepared an introductory paper, and as both had some points too good to be sacrificed, they were blended into one, Paulding's serving as the basis. They adopted the title of " Salmagundi," and soon after published a small edition of their first number, little thinking of the extraor- dinary success which awaited it. The work had a great deal of freshness ; its humor, though unequal, was nearly always lively and piquant, and as its satire was general, every body was pleased. Its reception perhaps determined the subsequent devotion of the authors to literature. The publisher found it profitable, as he paid nothing for the copy- right, and on his refusal to make any remuneration for it, with the completion of the second volume it was suspended. In the following half dozen years Mr. Paulding attended to business and cultivated the increasing and brilliant society of wits and men of genius then growing up in the city ; and in 1813, having in the mean while written occasionally for the magazines, he printed his next book, "The Lay of a Scotch Fiddle," a satirical poem, and " Jokeby," a burlesque of " Rokeby," in six cantos ; and in the succeeding spring " The United States and England," in reply to an attack on C. J. Ingersoll's " Inchiquin Letters," in the Quarterly Re- view. " The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan," the most successful of his satires, appeared in 1816. The allegory is well sustained, and the style has a homely simplicity and vigor that remind us of Swift. A part of this year was passed in Virginia, where he wrote his PAULDING. 25 "Letters from the South," published in 1817. The humor in them is not in his happiest vein, and the soundness of some views here displayed respecting education, paper currency, and other subjects, may be questioned ; but the volumes contain many interesting sketches of scenery, manners, and personal character, and, with his previous writings, they commended him to the notice of President Madison, who became his warm friend, and secured for him, on the close of the war with England, the secretaryship of the Board of Navy Commissioners, which he held as may be stated here until he was made Navy Agent in New- York, which office he resigned, after twelve years, to enter the cabinet of President Yan Buren. In 1818 he published " The Backwoodsman," a descrip- tive poem, and in the next year the second series of " Sal- magundi," of which he was the sole author. "Konings- marke, or Old Times in the New World," a novel founded on incidents in the early history of Swedish settlements on the Delaware, appeared in 1823 ; "John Bull in America" in 1824; and "Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham" in 182C. The idea that the progress of man- kind is more apparent than actual, is a favorite one with him, and modern improvements, and discoveries in politi- cal economy and productive labor, and new theories of philosophy, are here ingeniously ridiculed. "The Book of St. Nicholas," a collection of stories purporting to be trans- lated from the Dutch, " The New Pilgrim's Progress," con- taining some of the best specimens of his satire, and " Tales of a Good Woman, by a Doubtful Gentleman," came out in the three following years. 26 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. The best of Mr. Paulding's novels, " The Dutchman's Fireside," was published in 1831, and it was immediately and decidedly successful. It is a domestic story of the time of the " old French war ; " the scenes are among the sources of the Hudson, on the borders of Lake Champlain, and in other parts of the province of New- York ; the characters are natural and distinctly drawn, and from the outset the reader feels that each one of them is a personal acquaintance. One of the most cleverly executed is a meddling little old Dutchman, Ariel Van Cour, who with the best intentions is continually working mischief an every-day sort of person, nowhere else so palpably embodied. The hero, Sybrant Yan Cour, is educated in almost total seclusion, and finds himself on the verge of manhood, a scholar, ignorant of the world, proud, sensitive and suspicious, unhappy, and a cause of unhappiness to all about him. His transforma- tion is effected by the famous Sir William Johnson, whom he accompanies on a campaign, and in the end, a self-confi- dent and self-complacent gentleman, he marries a woman whom he had loved all the while, but whom his infirmities had previously rendered as wretched as himself. The work is marked throughout with the author's quaint and peculiar humor, and it is a delightful picture of primitive colonial life, varied with glimpses of the mimic court of the gover- nor, where ladies figure in hoops and brocades, and of the camp in the wilderness, and the strategy of Indian warfare. In the following year he published " Westward Ho ! " the moral of which story is, that we are to disregard the presentiments of evil, withstand the approaches of fanati- cism, and feel confident that the surest means of inducing P A U L D I N G. 27 a gracious interposition of Providence in our favor, is to persevere ourselves in all the kindly offices of humanity toward the unfortunate. The characters are boldly and skilfully drawn : the Virginia planter who squanders his estate in a prodigal hospitality and with the remnants of a liberal fortune seeks a new home in untried forests, Zeno and Judith Paddock, a pair of village inquisitors, and Bush- field, an untamed western hunter, are all actual and indi- genous beings. lie had already sketched the Kentuckian, with a freer but less skilful hand, in hig comedy of Nimrod Wildfire. Whoever wanders in the footsteps of Daniel Boone will still meet with Bushfields, though until he approaches nearer the Rocky Mountains the rough edges of the character may be somewhat softened down ; and Dangernelds are not yet strangers in Virginia. His next work was on " Slavery in the United States," an unhesitating defence of the institution against every sort of religious, moral and economical attacks ; and this was followed in 1835 by his admirable " Life of Washington,'' addressed to the youth of the country, and constituting the most just and attractive personal history of the great chief ever written. Retiring from public life in 1841, after having served four years as Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Paulding at the age of sixty-three resumed his pen, and some of his maga- zine papers produced since that time are equal to any of the compositions of his most vigorous days. In 1846 he pub- lished a new novel, " The Old Continental," which is dis- tinguished for all his peculiarities of manner and spirit, and in 1850 his last novel " The Puritan's Daughter." 28 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. The works here enumerated fill twenty-seven volumes, and half a dozen more might be made of his miscellane- ous tales, essays, ballads, and other contributions to the periodicals, constituting perhaps the most popular as well as characteristic portion of his writings. As we have said, he is a national author : he has little respect for authority unsupported by reason, but on all sub- jects has thought and judged for himself; he has defended our government and institutions and embodied what is peculiar in our manners and opinions, and there is scarcely a person in all his dramas who would not in any country be instantly recognized as an American. He is unequalled in a sort of quaint .and whimsical humor, but occasionally falls into coarseness, and the unnecessary habit of labelling his characters, as if doubtful of their possessing sufficient indi- viduality to be otherwise distinguishable. But the motley crowds at our watering-places, the ridiculous extravagance and ostentation of the suddenly made rich, the ascendency of pocket over brain in affairs of love, and all the fopperies and follies of our mimic worlds, are described by him in a most diverting manner, while he treats the more serious sins of society with an appropriate severity. The residence of Mr. Paulding, of which a sketch is presented at the beginning of this chapter, is situated on the east bank of the Hudson, about eight miles above the town of Poughkeepsie, in the county of Duchess, and the farm he now occupies is part of the grant of a manor by William the Third to one of his ancestors. This property has long since been divided into smaller portions among a succession of proprietors, and the only part now in pos- P A U L D I N G. 29 session of the family is that occupied by Mr. Paulding, who purchased it about ten years ago. The house is on a natural terrace, whence descends an undulating lawn of some twenty or twenty-five acres, to the river, which is nearly a quarter of a mile distant, and about a mile wide. The whole farm is singularly picturesque, being entirely in grass, with the exception of the garden, and numerous copses and clumps of wood, planted by the hand of Nature, and displaying some of her most happy combinations and diversities. The view from the piazza presents a variety of lake scenery the river being occasionally intercepted by project- ing points and graceful curves, that for a little space hide its course. Looking to the southwest and west, the eye rests on the opposite shores of the river, which rise at first ab- ruptly, sometimes in rocky precipices, crowned by a rich slope of cultivated land sprinkled with country-seats and farm-houses, and reaching the base of a range of wood- crowned mountains, which ends, nearly opposite the house, in a high bluff, resembling in outline and magnitude An- thony's Nose, in the Highlands below. Beyond this, and between another range of hills, opens a vista of some twenty miles, terminated by the Shawangunk mountains. Towards the north, looking from the piazza over a rich undulating country, occasionally rising into considerable hills, the prospect is closed by the Catskill Mountains, which are seen, from the base to the summits, in all their Alpine features and graceful outlines, at a distance of some twenty or thirty miles. A little rocky island, covered with evergreens, and about half a mile in length, lies 30 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. in the centre of the river, and adds to the beauty of the scenery. Here, surrounded by a growing family of grandchildren, Mr. Paulding has resided the last ten years, during which time he has visited the city but once, to attend the marriage of a relation. He has retired from the world, not in disgust or disappointment, for it has always treated him better than he deserved, he says, but because he is of opinion that at seventy-five men are generally more fit for contemplation than for action, and better qualified to benefit the world by their precepts than their example, that at this age a man should consider the balancing of old accounts rather than the opening of new ones, and that the traveller so near his journey's end should prepare for putting up for the night. Still in conversing with him we observe that he feels a profound interest in the general welfare, that he has not outlived that ardent love of country which glows in all his waitings, and what perhaps is more remarkable, that he con- tinues to cherish an almost youthful feeling for the beauties of nature by which he is surrounded. In pleasant weather he occupies himself every day an hour or two in working on his farm of course not in very laborious duties but the greater portion of his time is spent in reading and writing, as he says, not so much with a view to become wiser or to enlighten others as to relieve himself from two of the heaviest burdens of life old age and unoccupied time. The veteran litterateur we find, like most persons who have long passed the meridian of life, is a staunch conserv- ative, even less indulgent of all the pretences of progress PAULDING. 31 than when he wrote the history of the " Seven Wise Men of Gotham." The world he thinks is quite as apt to move backwards as forwards ; he says it is becoming conceited, which is a good sign ; and in a recent letter, which we ven- ture to quote, he reminds us, referring to the headlong spec- ulation of the new generation, that " the ardor of genius is very different from the presumption of ignorance, and the more we learn the stronger becomes our conviction that whatever may be our progress in removing doubts, it is only to be involved in others still more inextricable only groping in the dark for Captain Kyd's buried money." He is fully persuaded that the ancients were as wise as the moderns, that in the lapse of ages the world forgets full as much as it learns, and that most if not all of the theories of our philosophers were suggested in the old schools, whose masters differed from the reckless teachers of our time only in an unwillingness to endanger the existence of society by practical applications of vague speculations unsupported by sound reason. On the whole, he concludes that, however it may be with the present, our intellectual eccentricities, under the direction of a wise Providence, will hereafter tend to the general benefit of the human race, or at least leave it but more strongly convinced of the immutability of ancient truths ; that the wisdom of Omnipotence is the best cor- rective of the presumption of its creatures, and often saves the ship when the crew is intoxicated, the captain desperate, and the pilot asleep at the helm. Such are some of the " whim- whams and opinions " thrown out in various conversations by " Launcelot Lang- staff " in his old age ; and in his pleasant home by the 32 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTHORS. Hudson he has such enjoyment of his philosophy as should be derived from a conviction of its truth, and the conscious- ness of a life well spent in its vindication and in agreement with its precepts. with such majesty through his works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight. " I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson ! [ tli ink it an invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of some grand and noble object in nature ; a river, a lake, or a mountain. "We make a friend- ship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. ' The things which we have learned in our childhood,' says an old writer, ' grow up with our souls, and unite themselves to it.' So it is with the scenes among which we have passed our early clays ; they influence the whole course of our thoughts and feelings ; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound, to my early companionship with this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired its frank, bold, honest character ; its noble sincerity and perfect truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the danger- 60 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. cms sand-bar or perfidious rock ; but a stream deep as it was broad, and bearing with, honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow ; ever straight forward. Once indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an emblem of a good man's course through life ; ever simple, open, and direct ; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he de- viate into error, it is but momentary ; he soon recovers his onward and honorable career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage. " Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love ; and after all my wanderings, and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem to catch new life, as I bathe in its ample billows, and inhale the pure breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an Arcadia in every green valley ; nor a fairy land among the distant mountains ; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the trees ; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape, the recollections of de- parted years and departed pleasures shed over it the mellow charm of evening sunshine. "Permit me then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to hold occasional discourse from my retreat, with the busy world I have abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and thought, through the fr-~~- ^2^-VO ^ vy, GcL^eJtt, 62^^.4 IRVING. 61 course of a varied and rambling life, and some lucubrations, that have long been encumbering my port-folio; together with divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands, that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon our early his- tory. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that, though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it ; and that if, in my communings with it, I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at least prove very good-natured. AVliich is all at present, from Yours, etc., GEOFFREY CKAYON. William Cullen $tptt. BRYANT. IF ever there were poet of whom it is not necessary to ask whether he lives in town or country, it is Mr. Bryant. Not even Burns gives more unmistakable signs of the inspi- ration of rural sights and sounds. Winds breathe soft or loud ; sunshine or shadow flits over the landscape ; leaves rustle and birds sing, wherever his verses are read. The ceiling over our heads becomes a forest, with green boughs waving ; the carpet turns to fresh grass, and the air we breathe is moist and fragrant with mosses and hidden 5 66 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. streams. No need of carrying the book out of doors to aid the illusion ; its own magic is irresistible, and brings out-of-doors wherever it goes. Here is a mind whose Raptures are not conjured up To serve occasion of poetic pomp, But genuine and such as could not be excited or satisfied with pictures of what it loves. All is consistent, therefore, when we find the poet's home a great, old-time mansion, so embosomed in trees and vines that we can hardly catch satisfactory glimpses of the bay on which it lies, through the leafy windows, of which an overhanging roof prolongs the shade. No greener, quieter or more purely simple retreat can be found ; none with which the owner and his tastes and occu- pations are more in keeping. It would be absurd to say that all appearance of show or style is carefully avoided ; for it requires very little observation to perceive that these are absent from the place simply because they never entered its master's mind. I suppose if any thing could completely disgust Mr. Bryant with this beloved home, it would be the addition of any outward costliness, or even elegance, calcu- lated to attract the attention of the passing stranger. Friend Richard Kirk a Quaker of the Quakers, if he may be judged by his works little thought, when he built this great, ample, square dwelling-place, in the lap of the hills, in 1787, that he was fashioning the house of a poet one worthy to be "spared when temple and tower went to the ground," because it is the sanctuary of a priest of Nature. Whether any BRYANT. 67 Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms did spare it from a prophetic insight into its destination, we cannot tell ; but there was wild work in its vicinity, and stories of outrages perpetrated by " cow-boys " and other desperadoes are still fresh in old families. The wide region still called Hempstead was then inhabited for the most part by loyalists, devoutly attached to the parent govern- ment, and solicitous, by means of town meetings passing loyal resolutions, and conventions denouncing the spirit of rebellion against " his most gracious majesty King George the Third," to put down the dangerous agitation that began to threaten "our civil and religious liberties, which can only be secured by our present constitution;" and this north- ern part of the township, in particular, held many worthy citizens who felt it their duty to resist to the last the unhal- lowed desire of the people to govern themselves. In Sep- tember, 1775, an official reports that " without the assistance of Col. Lasher's battalion" he "shall not be able, in Jamaica and Hempstead, to carry the resolutions of Congress into execution," as "the people conceal all their arms that are of any value." The disaffection of the district was considered important enough to justify a special commission from Con- gress, then sitting at Philadelphia, requiring the resistants to deliver their arms and ammunition on oath, as persons " incapable of resolving to live and die freemen, and more disposed to quit their liberties than part with the small por- tion of their property that may be necessary to defend them." This seems to have had the desired effect, for the people not only brought in their arms, but were " much irritated with 68 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. those who had led them to make opposition," says a con- temporary letter. The lovers of peace and plenty, rather than commotion and scanty harvests, were, however, still so numerous in Queen's county, that on the 21st of October, 177fi, about thirteen hundred freeholders presented a most humble petition to Lord Howe, entreating that he would "declare the county in the peace of His Majesty," and de- nouncing " the infatuated conduct of the Congress," as hav- ing "blasted their hopes of returning peace and security." Among the names appended to this petition we find that of Richard Kirk a lover of comfort, doubtless, like his breth- ren in general, and who, when once the drum had ceased to outrage the mild echoes of that Quaker region, returned to his farming or his merchandize, and in due season, being prospered, founded the substantial dwelling now known as Spring Bank, destined to last far into the time of freedom and safety, and to prove, in these latter days, fit harbor for a poet whose sympathies are any where but with the signers of that humble petition. The house stands at the foot of a woody hill, which shel- ters it on the east, facing Hempstead harbor, to which the flood tide gives the appearance of a lake, bordered to its very edge with trees, through which, at intervals, are seen farmhouses and cottages, and all that brings to mind that beautiful image, " a smiling land." The position is well chosen, and it is enhanced in beauty by a small artificial pond, collected from the springs with which the hill abounds, and lying between the house and the edge of the harbor, from which it is divided by an irregular embankment, affording room for a plantation of shade-trees and fine BRYANT. 69 shrubbery. Here again Friend Richard was doing what he little thought of; for his only intention was to build a paper-mill one of the earliest in the United States, whose wheel for many a year furnished employment to the outlet of the pond. The mill was burnt once and again by way of hint, perhaps, that beauty is use enough ; and the vis- itor cannot but hope it will never be rebuilt. The village at the head of the harbor was long called Xorth Ilempstead, but as there were already quite Hemp- steads enough in Queen's county to perplex future Topogra- phers, the inhabitants united in desiring a more distinctive title, and applied to Mr. Bryant for his aid in choosing one. This is not so easy a matter as it seems at first glance ; and in defect of all express guidance in the history of the spot, and desiring, too, a name at once musical in itself and agree- able in its associations, Mr. Bryant proposed Roslyn, the town annals declaring that when the British evacuated the island in 1781, "The Sixtieth, or Royal American Regiment, inarched out of Hempstead to the tune of Roslyn Castle." The name is not too romantic for the place, for a more irreg- ular, picturesque cluster of houses can hardly be found perched here and there on the hillsides, embowered in foli- age, and looking down upon a chain of pretty little lakes, on the outlet of which, overhanging the upper point of the harbor, is an old-fashioned mill, with its pretty rural acces- sories. One can hardly believe this a bit of Long Island, which is by no means famed for romantic scenery. After Richard Kirk's time, other Quakers in succession became proprietors of the great farmhouse and the little paper-mill, but at length were purchased by Joseph W. 70 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. Moulton, Esq., author of a history of New- York, who, not relishing the plainness of the original style, surrounded the house with square columns and a heavy cornice. These help to shade a wide and ample piazza, shut in still more closely by tall trees and clustering vines, so that from within the house is one bower of greenery, and the hottest sun of July leaves the ample hall and large rooms cool and comfortable at all times. The library occupies the northwest corner that which in our artist's sketch appears at the left and we need hardly say that of all the house this is the most attractive spot not only because, besides ample store of books, it is supplied with all that can minister to quiet and refined pleasure but because it is, par excellence the haunt of the poet and his friends. Here, by the great table covered with periodicals and literary novelties, with the soft, cease- less music of rustling leaves, and the singing of birds mak- ing the silence sweeter, the summer visitor may fancy him- self in the very woods, only with a deeper and more grateful shade ; and " when wintry blasts are piping loud " and the whispering leaves have changed to whirling ones, a bright wood-fire lights the home-scene, enhanced in comfort by the inhospitable sky without ; and the domestic lamp calls about it a smiling or musing circle, for whose conversation or silence the shelves around afford excellent material. The collection of books is not large, but widely various ; Mr. Bryant's tastes and pursuits leading him through the entire range of litera- ture, from the Fathers to Shelley, and from Courier to Jean Paul. In German, French and Spanish, he is a proficient, and Italian he reads with ease ; so all these languages are BRYANT. 71 well represented in the library. He turns naturally from the driest treatise on politics or political economy, to the wildest romance or the most tender poem happy in a power of enjoying all that genius has created or industry achieved in literature. The library has not, however, power to keep Mr. Bryant from the fields, in which he seeks health and pleasure a large part of every day that his editorial duties allow him to pass at home. To explore his farm, entering into the minutest details of its cultivation ; to thread the beautiful woodland hill back of the house, making winding paths and shady seats to overlook the water or command the distant prospect ; to labor in the garden with the perse- verance of an enthusiast these ought perhaps to be called his favorite occupations ; for as literature has been the busi- ness of his life, these out-door pleasures have all the charm of contrast together with that of relaxation. It is under the open sky, and engaged in rural matters, that Mr. Bryant is seen to advantage, that is, in his true character. It is here that the amenity and natural sweetness of disposition, some- times clouded by the cares of life and the untoward circum- stances of business intercourse, shine gently forth under the influences of Nature, so dear to the heart and tranquillizing to the spirits of her child. Here the eye puts on its deeper and softer lustre, and the voice modulates itself to the tone of affection, sympathy, enjoyment. Little children cluster about the grave man's steps, or climb his shoulders in tri- umph ; and " serenest eyes " meet his in fullest confidence, finding there none of the sternness of which casual observers sometimes complain. It seems almost a pity that other walks 72 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHOKS. should ever draw him hence ; but perhaps the contrast be- tween garden walks and city pavements is required for the perfection and durability of rural pleasures. There can hardly be found a man who has tried active life for fifty years, yet preserved so entire and resolute a simplicity of character and habits as Mr. Bryant. ~No one can be less a man of the world so far as that term ex- presses a worldly man in spite of a large share of foreign travel, and extensive intercourse with society. A disposition somewhat exclusive, and a power of living self-inclosed at will, may account in part for the total failure of politics, society or ambition, to introduce any thing artificial upon a character enabled by natural courage to face opposition, and by inherent self-respect to adhere to individual tastes in spite of fashion or convention. And the simplicity which is the result of high cultivation is so much more potent than that which arises only from ignorance, that it may be doubted whether, if Mr. Bryant had never left his native village of Cummington, in the heart of Massachusetts, he would have been as free from all sophistication of taste and manners as at present. It is with no sentimental aim that we call him the child of Nature, but because he is one of the few who, by their docility and devotion, show that they are not asham- ed of the great mother, or desirous to exchange her rule for something more fashionable or popular. The father of Mr. Bryant was a man of taste and learn- ing a physician and an habitual student ; and his mother- not to discredit the general law which gives able mothers to eminent men was a woman of excellent understanding and high character, remarkable for judgment and decision as for BRYANT. 73 faithfulness to her domestic duties. And here, in this little Hampshire village of Cummington, where William Cullen Bryant was born in 179^, he began at ten years of age to write verses, which were printed in the Northampton news- paper of that day the Hampshire Gazette. A year earlier he had written rhymes, which his father criticised and taught him to correct. Precocity like this too often disappoints its admirers, but Bryant went on without faltering, and at fourteen wrote a satirical poem called the Embargo, which is, perhaps, one of the most wonderful performances of the kind on record. We know of nothing to compare with it except the achieve- ments of Chatterton. Here are a few of the lines : " E'en while I sing, see Faction urge her claim, Misled with falsehood, and with zeal inflame ; Lift her black banner, spread her empire wide, And stalk triumphant with a Fury's stride. She blows her brazen trump, and, at the sound, A motley throng, obedient, flock around ; A mist of changing hue o'er all she flings, And darkness perches on her dragon wings ! " O, might some patriot rise ! the gloom dispel, Chase Error's mist, and break her magic spell ! But vain the wish, for, hark ! the murmuring meed Of hoarse applause from yonder shed proceed ; Enter, and view the thronging concourse there, Intent, with gaping mouth and stupid stare ; While, in the midst, their supple leader stands, Harangues aloud, and flourishes his hands ; To adulation tunes his servile throat, And sues, successful, for each blockhead's vote." 74 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. This poem was published, in company with a few shorter ones, at Boston, in 1808. Two years afterwards the author entered Williams College, a sophomore, and greatly distin- guished himself during two years, at the end of which time he obtained an honorable discharge, intending to complete his education at Yale a design which was, however, never carried into effect. He studied law, first with Judge Howe, of Washington, afterwards with Mr. William Baylies, of Bridgewater, and in 1815 was admitted to the bar at Ply- mouth. He practised law a single year at Plainfield, near his native place, and then removed to Great Barrington, in Berkshire, where, in 1821, he married Miss Frances Fair- child whose portrait is exquisitely shadowed forth to those who know her in that tenderest, most domestic, and most personal poem that Bryant ever wrote " The Future Life." In the whole range of English literature there can hardly be found so delicate and touching a tribute to feminine excellence a husband's testimony after twenty years of married life, not exempt from toils and trials. The poem of Thanatopsis was written in 1812, when the writer was eighteen, and we have heard a family friend say that when Dr. Bryant showed a copy to a lady well qualified to judge of such things, saying simply "Here are some lines that our William has been writing," the lady read the poem raised her eyes to the father's face, and burst into tears in which that father, a somewhat stern and silent man was not ashamed to join. And no wonder! It must have seemed a mystery, as well as a joy, that in a quiet country life, in the bosom of eighteen, had grown up thoughts that even in boyhood shaped themselves into sol- BRYANT. Y5 i emu harmonies, majestic as the diapason of ocean, fit for a temple-service beneath the vault of heaven. The poem of the "Water Fowl was written two years after, while Mr. Bryant was reading law at Bridgewater. These verses, which are in tone only less solemn than the Thanatopsis, while they show a graphic power truly remark- able, were suggested by the actual sight of a solitary water- fowl, steadily flying towards the northwest at sunset, in a brightly illumined sky. They were published, with Thana- topsis and the Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, in the North American Review of the year 1816. In 1821 Mr. Bryant delivered the poem called "The Ages," before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. At the suggestion of his friends, it was published the same year, at Cambridge, together witli the three poems just men- tioned, and a very few others, among which was that called Green River, which he had a short time before contributed to the Idle Man, then in course of publication by his friend Dana. In 1824 Mr. Bryant wrote a considerable number of papers for the Literary Gazette, published in Boston ; and in 1825, by the advice of his excellent and lamented friend, Henry D. Sedgwick, he removed to New- York, and became one of the editors of the New-York Review, in conjunction with Henry James Anderson. At the end of six months this gentleman, between whom and Mr. Bryant there has ever since subsisted a strong friendship, was appointed Pro- fessor of Mathematics in Columbia College, and Robert C. Sands took his place as associate editor of the Review. This Review, however, was not destined to as long a life as it 76 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. deserved the life of Reviews as well as of men depending upon a multitude of contingencies and at the end of the year Mr. Bryant was engaged as an assistant editor of the Evening Post. The next year he became one of the propri- etors of that paper, and has so continued ever since. In 1827, and the two years next succeeding, he found time to contribute a considerable share of the matter of an annual of superior character, called the Talisman, the whole of which was written by three persons Sands, Yerplanck, and Bryant. He also furnished several stories for a publi- cation called " Tales of the Glauber Spa," published by the Harpers. The other writers were Miss Sedgwick, Paulding, Sands, Yerplanck and Leggett. Mr. Bryant's contributions were " The Skeleton's Cave " and " Medfield." The first general collection of his works was in 1832, when he gave to the world in one volume all the poems he was willing to acknowledge. His publisher was Mr. Elam Bliss, now no more, a man of whose sterling goodness Mr. Bryant loves to speak, as eminent for exemplary liberality in dealings, and for a most kind and generous disposition. It was for him that the Talisman was written. In 1834 Mr. Bryant sailed with his family for Europe, leaving the Evening Post in the charge of his friend Leg- gett. His residence abroad was mostly in Italy and Ger- many, both of which countries he found too interesting for a mere glance. Here the pleasure and improvement of himself and his family would have detained him full three years the allotted period of his sojourn abroad but news of Mr. Leggett's illness and of some disadvantage arising from it in the affairs of the paper, compelled him to return BRYANT. 77 home suddenly in 1836, leaving his family to follow at more leisure under the care of Mr. Longfellow, who had been abroad at the same time. The business aspect of the Post was unpromising enough at this juncture, but sound judg- ment and patient labor succeeded, in time, in restoring it to the prosperous condition which it has enjoyed for half a century. In 1842 appeared "The Fountain and other Poems," gravely sweet, like their predecessors, and breathing of Na- ture and green fields, in spite of editorial and pecuniary cares. In 1843 Mr. Bryant refreshed himself by a visit to the South- ern States, and passed a few weeks in East Florida. The " AVhite Footed Deer," with several other poems, was pub- lished a year after. In 1845 Mr. Bryant visited England, Scotland, and the Shetland Isles, for the first time ; and dur- ing the next year a new collection was made of his poems, with the outward garnish of mechanical elegance, and also numerous illustrations by Leutze. This edition, published at Philadelphia, is enriched with a beautiful portrait by Che- ney the best, in our opinion, ever yet published. This graceful and delicate head, with its fine, classic outline, in which taste and sensitiveness are legible at a glance, has a singular resemblance to the engraved portraits of Rubens, taken in a half Spanish hat of wavy outline, such as Mr. Bryant is fond of wearing in his wood-rambles. Add the hat to this exquisite miniature of Cheney's, and we have Rubens complete an odd enough resemblance, when we contrast the productions of the painter and the poet. Only one still more characteristic and perfect likeness of Bryant exists the full-length in Durand's picture of the 78 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTHOES. poet standing with his friend Cole the eminent land- scape-painter among the Catskill woods and waterfalls. This picture is particularly to be prized, not only for the sweetness and truth of its general execution, but because it gives us the poet and the painter where they loved best to be, and just as they were when under the genial influence and in the complete ease of such scenes. Such pictures are half biographies. In 1848 Cole died, and Mr. Bryant, from a full heart, pronounced his funeral oration. Friendship is truly the wine of the poet's life, and Cole was a beloved friend. If Mr. Bryant ever appears stern or indifferent, it is not when speaking or thinking of the loved and lost. No man chooses his friends more carefully none prizes them dearer or values their society more none does them more generous and del- icate justice. Such attachment cannot afford to be indis- criminate. March, 1849, saw Mr. Bryant in Cuba, and in the sum- mer of the same year he visited Europe for the third time. The letters written during his various journeys and voyages were collected and published in the year 1850, by Mr. Put- nam, a volume embodying a vast amount of practical and poetic thought, expressed with the united modesty and good sense that so eminently characterize every production of Mr. Bryant; not a superfluous word, not an empty or a showy remark. As a writer of pure, manly, straightforward English, Mr. Bryant has few equals and no superiors among us. In the beginning of 1852, on the occasion of the public commemoration held in honor of the genius and worth of James Fenimore Cooper, and in view of a monument to be BRYANT. 79 erected in New- York to that great American novelist, Mr. Bryant pronounced a Discourse on his Life and Writings, marked by the warmest appreciation of his claims to the remembrance and gratitude of his country. Some even of Mr. Cooper's admirers objected that the poet had assigned a higher niche to his old friend than the next century will be willing to award him ; if it be so, perhaps the peculiarly manly and bold character of Cooper's mind gave him an unsuspected advantage in Mr. Bryant's estimation. He looked upon him, it may be, as a rock of truth and cour- age in the midst of a fluctuating sea of " dilletantism " and time-serving, and valued him with unconscious reference to this particular quality, so rare and precious. But the dis- course was an elegant production, and a new proof of the generosity with which Mr. Bryant, who never courts praise, is disposed to accord it. Mr. Bryant's habits of life have a smack of asceticism, although he is the disciple of none of the popular schools which, under various forms, claim to rule the present world in that direction. Milk is more familiar to his lips than wine, yet he does not disdain the " cheerful hour " over which moderation presides. He eats sparingly of animal food, but he is by no means afraid to enjoy roast goose lest he should outrage the manes of his ancestors, like some modern enthusiasts. He " hears no music " if it be fantas- tical, yet his ear is finely attuned to the varied harmonies of wood and wave. His health is delicate, yet he is almost never ill ; his life laborious, yet carefully guarded against excessive and exhausting fatigue. He is a man of rule, but none the less tolerant of want of method in others ; strictly 80 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHOKS. self-governed, but not prone to censure the unwary or the weak-willed. In religion he is at once catholic and devout, and to moral excellence no soul bows lower. Placable we can perhaps hardly call him, for impressions on his mind are almost indelible ; but it may with the strictest truth be said, that it requires a great offence, or a great unworthiness, to make an enemy of him, so strong is his sense of justice. ISTot amid the bustle and dust of the political arena, cased in armor offensive and defensive, is a champion's more inti- mate self to be estimated, but in the pavilion or the bower, where, in robes of ease, and with all professional ferocity laid aside, we see his natural form and complexion, and hear in placid domestic tones the voice so lately thundering above the fight. So we willingly follow Mr. Bryant to Ros- lyn ; see him musing on the pretty rural bridge that spans the fish-pond ; or taking the oar in his daughter's fairy boat ; or pruning his trees ; or talking over farming matters with his neighbors ; or to return to the spot whence we set out some time ago sitting calm and happy in that pleasant library, surrounded by the friends he loves to draw about him, or listening to the prattle of infant voices, quite as much at home there as under their own more especial roof his daughter's, within the same inclosure. In person Mr. Bryant is tall and slender, symmetrical and well-poised ; in carriage eminently firm and self-pos- sessed. He is fond of long rural walks and of gymnastic exercises on all which his health depends. Poetical com- position tries him severely so severely that his efforts of that kind are necessarily rare. His are no holiday-verses ; and those who urge his producing a long poem are, perhaps, BRYANT. 81 proposing that lie should, in gratifying their admiration, build for himself a monument in which he would be self- enveloped. Let us rather content ourselves with asking " a few more of the same," especially of the later poems, in which, certainly, the poet trusts his fellows with a nearer and more intimate view of his inner and peculiar self than was his wont in earlier times. Let him more and more give a human voice to woods and waters ; and, in acting as the accepted interpreter of Nature, speak fearlessly to the heart as well as to the eye. His countrymen were never more dis- posed to hear him with delight ; for since the public demand for his poems has placed a copy in every house in the land, the taste for them has steadily increased, and the national pride in the writer's genius become a generous enthusiasm, which is ready to grant him an apotheosis while he lives. dnorgc $;tntroft. BANCROFT. Indians called the finest of New England rivers, Connecticut, River of Pines. The summer tourist to the White Mountains, ascending or descending its valley, finds little reason for the name remaining, until he reaches its upper shores, where occasional groves of pines remind him of the name and its significance. A broad, tranquil stream, it flows through much of the most characteristic scenery of the Northern States, from out the " crystal hills," from the shadow of Agiocochook, "throne of the Great Spirit," as the Indians called Mount "Washington, dividing New Hampshire from Vermont, the granite from the green, beneath graceful Ascutney Mountain at "Wind- sor, through wide-waving grain-fields, foaming over the rocks in its sole important cascade at Bellows Falls, then into a broader and more open landscape as it crosses ^r;i-sachusetts, making at Northampton its famous bend the Great Ox-bow. At Springfield the railways from every quarter meet upon its banks, and its calm breadth here, 86 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. with the low clustering foliage of its shores, and the bold cliff of Mount Tom glimmering in the hazy noon, which is the hour of arrival at Springfield, gives the tone to the day's impression. The traveller southward follows the stream toward Hartford and New Haven ; the north- ern traveller clings to its shore until he reaches North- ampton. Lying in the heart of Massachusetts, Northampton is one of the most beautiful of country towns. Looking over a quiet and richly cultivated landscape, the view from Mount Holyoke is of the same quality as that from Rich- mond Hill, in England. Gentle green hills, fair and fer- tile meadows, watered by the River of Pines. That river is not classic Thames, and no grotesque Strawberry Hill nor historic Hampden Court, no Pope's Villa at Twicken- ham nor stately Bushy Park, tell tales to the musing eye of the singularly artificial and amusing life which is so strangely and intimately associated with the graceful Eng- lish scene. The River of Pines laves its peaceful shores with Indian lore. Terrible traditions of the fights of the early settlers of New England haunt the stream. Historic life in its neighborhood is not old enough to be artificial. Like much of our pastoral scenery, which seems the natural theatre of tranquil life and a long Arcadian antiquity, the landscape of the Connecticut, so far as it is suggestive, reminds the observer only of the dull monotony of savage existence ; but, irresistibly as the stream flows to the sea, bears imagination forward to the history that shall be. Alone of all scenery in the world, the American landscape points to the future. The best charm of the BANCROFT. 87 European and Asian lies much in its reference to the past. Human interest invests it all. "The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea." But that sea is not only a sublime waste of waters, with the inherent character of every grand natural feature, but it teems and sparkles all over with another spell. And this charm is undeniable. The pass of Leonidas is more interest- ing than the Xotch of the White Mountains, because man is the master of nature, and wherever human character has entwined itself with natural beauty, it becomes an insepar- able element of enjoyment in the scene, and an element which enhances the dignity of the landscape. Thus in Con- cord, the spot upon the river's bank w r here the battle was fought, is lovely and tranquil, but how much lovelier not as water and foliage, but as feeling and inspiration, which is the immortal beauty of landscape for the remembrance of the human valor which consecrates it, and its significance and results. Xo man, of course, grieves that American scenery is not generally invested with this character. Born upon this superb continent, heaped at intervals with the inarticulate mounds of extinct races, yet races which have left no his- toric trace, and can never be more than romantically inter- esting, we are fed upon the literature and history of the world. The grandeur of Egypt, the grace of Greece, the heroism of Rome, are all ours, and the lands illustrated by that various character do not fail to fascinate us. But at present our landscape is not unlike the Indian himself. It 88 HOMES OF A ME El CAN A U T H O E S. is grand but silent ; or eloquent only with speechless impli- cation. Foreign critics complain that we are enamored of foreign scenery, and do not know our own wealth. But our admiration for the old world is only our homage to that human genius which shall make our own story as splendid. Seeing what it has elsewhere done, we perceive more truly what, in a sphere so stately and spacious, it will yet accom- plish. A Greece more Greek and a more Roman Rome, is the possible future of America. Why are they so jealous of our delight in the Parthenon in the Alps in the Italian pictures ? Shall we not honor the flowering of the power that ornamented the old lands and times, when we look to its future blossoming for our own glory ? We prospectively honor ourselves in respecting the old world. And if, some- times, the youth of a sensitive and delicate temperament, fully capable of enjoying to the utmost the resources of European life, and requiring the successes of art and the convenience of an old civilization for the happiest play of his powers, longs for the galleries, the societies, the historic shores, it may well be pardoned to him, in consideration that he is an indication of our capacity for that condition. He shows what we shall be, he shows that not only the genius of creation, but of appreciation, is part of our consti- tution. When, however, this peculiarity takes the form of a quer- ulous fastidiousness, and, in Broadway, sighs for the Boule- vards, and, remembering St. Peter's, sneers at the Capitol, it is foolish and offensive. But, on the other hand, we shall not necessarily improve our nationality by perpetually visit- ing Niagara or reading Mr. School craft's Legends, or refus BANCROFT. 89 ing assent to the positive superiorities of other countries and times. Essentially eclectic in our origin, we shall be so in our development. Foreign critics treat us as if we had not a common ancestry with them, but were descended from the Indians. They say to us, How are you ever to have a na- tionality, if you desert all your traditions and devote your- selves to loving and imitating Europe ? The question is fair, but the implication is unjust. They forget, especially the English critics, that our difference is not absolute and final, O ' ' but only relative. "\Ve have the same history and language with them. Their men and events are peculiarly ours, more, that is, than Italian and Patagonian events and men, and our literature, which they so obstreperously insist must be na- tional, necessarily has a family likeness to their own. Many of our books imitate English books just as they imitate each other. The reason is in the common language and the simi- larity of habit of thought. But no American need tremble lest the grandeur of his country should fail to be expressed in Art and Literature. Some Homer, or Poet along whose lines shall flash and roar our boundless sea ; some Plato, or Catholic Philosopher, in whose calm wisdom the breadth of a continent shall repose ; some artist, who shall passionately dash upon immortal can- vas the fervor of our tropics, and realize in new and unim- agined grace the hints of forest and prairie these must all be, or the conditions of human and national development as they appear in history, will not be fulfilled. Certainly, looking from Holyoke, no man grieves that the Connecticut is not the classic Thames, nor that the Great Ox-bow is unadorned by Strawberry Hill. Kor do I sup- 90 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. pose that he regrets upon the hill the absence of the dandies who composed the court of " the first gentleman in Europe," nor that of the Dutch royalty of his three predecessors. Fortunately for us, this law of association works both ways. Horace Walpole in the country, tormenting it with his fan- tastic fancies, is almost as incongruous a spectacle as Beau Nash by the seaside. But it is the glowing line of history in which these figures are insignificant, that imparts the charm. The elegance of extreme refinement marks the pleasant view from Eichmond Hill. It is akin in impres- sion to that of the " lovely London ladies." It is in land- scape what they are in society. But pastoral peace broods over the valley of the River of Pines. Golden plenty waves in its meadows, the flowing tresses of a peasant. Gentle mountains undulate around, covered with green woods. A fresh sweetness and virginal purity every where breathe a benediction. If no historic heroism inspires the mind of the spectator, there is also no taint of sheer artificiality, none of the nameless sadness which haunts the gallery of King Charles's Beauties. This is Nell Gwyn, the ruddy orange-girl, her youth and heart sweeter than the fruit she bore ; not the painted and brocaded lady, not the frail but faithful St. Albans. Looking from the piazza of this house at Round Hill, the eye grasps grim Monadnoc at the north, and the Yankee hills of Connecticut, made poetic by distance. A tranquil and friendly landscape, somewhat lurid in our early history with Indian fires and desolations, a broad, fair river, alto- gether a fine and suggestive emblem of our condition and resources, it is pleasant to associate with Northampton the BANCROFT. 91 commencement of the work that records our history in a manner which secures its final permanence. It is fortunate that it was written now, while the outlines are not lost in the mist of antiquity, and by one who, to an original, clear and profound perception of the great principles which appear in the development of the race, has added the ripeness of rich scholarship, long foreign residence, and that invaluable prac- tical acquaintance with men and aifairs, which has made his own life part of contemporary history. Best of all for the purpose, the ineradicable Americanism of the historian im- parts his native air to the page. It is not only a History of America, it is an American History. There is- a wild vigor and luxuriant richness in its style of treatment, a proud buoyancy of flow, as if it shared the energetic career of the country it describes. The intellectual habit evident throughout is precisely that required of a historian, not so romantic as to limit the story to a sweet and captivating legend, nor so academic as to marshal in colorless masses the hosts of historic facts. It has no withered, scholastic air. The historian has not curiously culled flowers, and offered them to us pressed, but with generous hands he gathers all the bounties of the field and heaps them before us, wet with morning devr. Our present duty is not with the work, but with the cir- cumstances which the work has made interesting. Born near Worcester, Massachusetts, Mr. Bancroft was the son of the Eev. Aaron Bancroft, one of the most distinguished Unitarian divines of the last half century. In his house the religion learned from his lips by his children was of that grave and humane catholicity which, once permeating the 92 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTHOES. young mind, sweetens the man's life for ever after. Free- dom of inquiry, the supremest liberty of moral investiga- tion, was the golden rule of the old man's life. " Prove all things," was the earnest exhortation of his preaching, sure that otherwise there would be little good to hold fast. When, in the declining years of his life, an intellectual and moral excitement, known as Transcendentalism, pre- vailed in New England, and many good men of his own persuasion fancied that the foundations of things were at last succumbing, the old clergyman went his way quite unperplexed, sympathized with the spirit, although not with the result of the investigation, and assured his alarmed friends that the errors, if such they were, would necessarily pass, and that all grain of truth grew in husks. At seventeen years of age our historian went to Ger- many and studied at Gottingen. Like all ardent and seri- ous New England youths, his interest in theological specu- lations was great, and he often preached to the quiet Ger- man country congregations around Gottingen, in their native tongue. This interest was the puritanical inheritance of his native land. The small towns were parishes, and the minis- ter the high priest. It had been so from the earliest times, and the feeling in the matter, which survived until a quar- ter of a century since, clearly manifested the fact that the emigration of the pilgrims and the settlement of New Eng- land was a religious movement. Possibly, seen from Gottin- gen, the theological traditions of New England might lose some of their awful proportions. In the pleasant pulpits of Boston the observer might not always see the Cotton BANCROFT. 93 Mather.-?, and other clerical Boanerges of the elder day, nor trace in their limpid discourse the fiery torrent of Puritan preaching. But the spirit of inquiry inculcated by the father, the pastor of the quiet country town, was sure to preserve the inquirer by neither exaggerating nor threaten- ing. The young man pursued his studies with ardor,, in every direction. His penetrant mind, contrasting the Euro- pean habit of education with our own, perceived where ours failed, and what it was necessary to do to elevate our stand- ard in the matter. Of singular intellectual restlessness, his mind bounded and darted through the fields of scholastic culture, hiving the sweets, quite ignorant yet of their proba- ble or final use. During his residence in Germany, the young American student, bringing to the Savans of that country the homage of a fame they did not know to exist, was doubly welcome. In Berlin he knew Schleirmacher, Wolffe and Savigny. It was in Jena that he first saw Goethe. The old man was walking in his garden in the morning, clad with German carelessness, in heavy loose coat and trowsers, without a waistcoat. He had the imperial presence which is pre- served in all the statues and pictures, and talked pleas- antly of many things as they strolled. Lord Byron was then at the height of his fame. Goethe asked of him with interest, and said, although without passion or ill-feeling, that the English poet had modelled his Manfred upon Faust. In this remark, however, Goethe showed more the pride of the author than the perception of the critic. For the theme attempted in both poems is precisely the one sure to fascinate all genius of a certain power, and the 94 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. treatment in these especial instances reveals all the differ- ences of the men. Afterward, in Italy, our student saw Lord Byron. He first met him on board of one of our national vessels lying at Leghorn, and to which the poet had been invited. As he mounted the side of the ship, Byron's eye fell upon a group of ladies, and he wavered a moment, saying afterward that he feared they were English, toward whom, at that time, he was not friendly. He advanced down the deck, how- ever, glad to learn that the dreadful cloud of muslin en- veloped nothing but Americans, and fell into animated con- versation. " Ah ! Lord Byron," said one of the fairest of the group, " when I return to America no one will believe that I have actually seen you. I must carry them some tangible proof of my good fortune. "Will you give me the rose in your button-hole ? " The " free and independent " address did not displease the poet, and he gave the rose. Upon leaving the vessel, Lord Byron asked Mr. Bancroft to visit him at his villa, Montenero, near the city, to which, a day or two after, he went. They talked of many things, Lord Byron naturally asking endless questions of America. He denied the charge of Goethe about Manfred, and said that he had never read Faust. He had just written the letter upon Pope, and, in conversation, greatly extolled his poetry. Without saying brilliant or memorable things, By- ron was a fluent and agreeable talker. It was in the year 1821, and he was writing Don Juan. " People call it im- moral," said he, " and put Roderick Random in their libra- BANCROFT. 95 ries." So of Shelley : " They call him an infidel," said Lord Byron, " but he is more Christian than the whole of them." AVI ie n his visitor rose to leave, the poet took down a volume containing the last cantos he had then written of the poem, and wrote his name in them, as a remembrance " from Noel Byron." But Ambrosia was that day allotted to the young American, for as they passed slowly through the saloon, the host bade him tarry a moment, and leaving the room imme- diately returned with the Countess Guiccioli. She, too, smiled, and gliding into the mazy music of Italian speech, led the listener on, delighted. Again he rose to go, but a servant threw open a door and discovered a collation spread in the adjoining room. Perhaps the poet pleased himself with the fancy of graciously and profusely entertaining his foreign subjects in the ambassadorial person of his guest. " That is lame," he said, upon reading in some tourist's vol- ume that a copy of the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers had been found by him at Niagara. The modesty of his American visitor might recognize in the cordiality of his reception and treatment Lord Byron's acknowledgment of his American fame. In 1822 Mr. Bancroft returned home, and served for a year as Greek tutor in Harvard College. During his long residence in Europe he had matured his projects to raise the standard of education in America, and in the following year he, with Mr. Cogswell, now Librarian of the Astor Library, commenced the famous Round Hill School at Northampton. Three brothers Shepard, descendants of the old New Eng- land divine, had built three neighboring houses upon this spot. Gradually they had all passed into the hands of one 96 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. of them, who was willing to sell them, and they became the seat of the school. The estate comprised about fifty acres. The school was immediately filled by young men from every part of the country, and took rank directly among the finest institutions. Mr. Bancroft devoted himself with unremitting ardor to the enterprise. The system of study pursued at the best schools in the world was introduced, and the scheme was, in itself, completely successful. Unhappily, however, there was no Oxford and no Cambridge for this Eton. The course of study was so high and entire that the graduates of Bound Hill were well fitted to enter the advanced classes of any College. But, by a singular provision of College Laws, those who entered an advanced class were held to pay for the preceding years. Nor did the studies in any College carry the student forward to a proportioned result. Shrewd men did not want to pay twice for their sons' education. Besides, it was a solitary effort, possibly some wild whim thought the shrewd men, of this deeply-dyed German stu dent. Thus, although in itself successful, it did not promise to achieve the desired result, like a very perfect blossom, which will yet not ripen into a fruit. Mr. Bancroft's inter- est in it, therefore, gradually declined. Meanwhile he had served other aims by translating his friend Ileeren's History of Greece, and had been long meditating and preparing the material for a History of the United States. In 1827 he was married at Springfield, and returning to Northampton resumed his connection with the School simply as a teacher, and presently withdrew from it altogether. In the house represented in the engraving the first volume of the History was written, and published in r BANCROFT. 97 the year 1834. The historian then removed to Springfield, where he resided two years, completing and publishing another volume there. It was a favorite maxim of Ariosto, and of Lord Byron, that every man of letters must mix in affairs, if he would secure a profound influence upon men. Only by contact, they felt, does man learn to know man. The wandering Homer, the actor Shakspeare, the statesman Milton, Lord Bacon, the privy councillor Goethe, Michael Angelo plan- ning fortifications for Florence, Leonardo da Vinci designing drains for the Lombardy plains, are names upon their side. It is easy to see how invaluable to a historian must be this practical intercourse with men and affairs, of whose develop- ment history is the record. Mr. Bancroft's political career, therefore, is not only a remarkable illustration of the suc- cesses opened in a republic to ability and energy, but it has necessarily been of the profoundest influence upon his work. A man who makes part of the history of his own time can better write that of another. While still resident at North- ampton, he was, quite unwittingly upon his part, elected a representative to the General Court, but his engagements prevented his taking his seat. Other positions were offered him, which he declined. Appointed Collector of Boston in 1838, by President Yan Buren, Mr. Bancroft brought to his new duties an intelligence and zeal which secured the ac- knowledgment of great ability from very determined oppo- nents. He was again married at this time ; and, during the engrossing engagements of his office he labored diligently upon the third volume of the history, which was published in 1842. In the year 1844 he was nominated for Governor 7 98 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. by the democratic party. He was not elected, although receiving a larger vote than had ever before been polled upon the purely democratic issue. Party spirit did not spare any prominent man, and plenty of hard things were said during the contest. But in the excited moments of political difference, although great talent is often conceded to opponents, integrity and kindliness of heart are as often denied. Throughout a canvass of great acerbity of feeling, the democratic nominee w r as in New-York, engaged in ex- amining, often for more than the twelve hours of clay, the documents illustrative of our early history, which Mr. Brod- head had then just brought from Holland for the Histori- cal Society of his State. . In 1844 Mr. Polk was elected President, and summoned Mr. Bancroft to Washington as Secretary of the Navy, and in the autumn of 1846, he crossed the ocean as Minister to England. "When Eubens, the painter, resided in England as Dutch Ambassador, a company of diplomats one day called upon him and found him, pallette in hand, at work before his easel. " Ah ! " said they, " Monsieur the Ambassador is playing painter." " No, gentlemen," responded the artist, " the painter is playing Ambassador." So our historian played Ambassador, and played it well. Upon leaving Washington he said to the President that he should devote his energies to the modification of the Nav- igation Act, and his success in the effort is one of the chief triumphs of Mr. Bancroft's political career. He did not arrive as a stranger in London, but the scholars BANCROFT. 99 there, and the learned representatives of other countries, were already correspondents of the American scholar and loyal to the fame of the American historian. We have had no foreign representative more genuinely American. Still devoted to the aim of his life, by personal inter- course with eminent men and close examination of all material accessible in England, by constant correspondence with other parts of Europe, especially France, and frequent visits to Paris to explore its libraries and search its archives, the History of the United States went on. In 1849 Mr. Bancroft returned to the United States, and took up his residence in New- York. The fourth volume of the history, comprising the French war and the beginnings of our revo- lution, was immediately prepared for the press and pub- lished by his old publishers, in Boston, in the spring of 1852. Its success, after so long and highly-wrought expec- tation, was entire, and confirmed the satisfaction that the history of our country was to be recorded by a mind so sagacious, so cognizant of the national ideas, so receptive of the national spirit, so affluent in historic lore, so moulded by intercourse and attrition with great times and their great- est men, so capable of expression at once rich, vigorous, and characteristic. Mr. Bancroft's time is now divided between the city and the seaside. Early in the summer he repairs to Newport, and were the date of our book somewhat later, we might enrich our pages with an engraving of the house he is now building there. It will be a simple, summer retreat, lying upon the seaward slope of the cliff. From his windows he will look down upon the ocean, and as he breathes its air, 100 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. impart its freshness and vigor to his pages. The fifth vol- ume of the history is now printing. It will comprise the first events of the greatest epoch of modern times. Nor is it possible to say to how late a date the work will be con- tinued. The great result of independence once achieved, the consequent organization of details can hardly be prop- erly or copiously treated, until the mind can clearly trace the characteristic operation of principles through a some- what longer course of years. I ? 1 r\ \ < 1- -^ -Q 4 : '! i S \ 1 - j ^ 4= .i ^^ gitbart f. DAM. CAPE ANN would almost appear to have been designed by Nature to afford a home to a poet ; and especially to a poet like DANA, who has always been a lover of the coast scenery of his native New Knghmd, and whose genius has contributed so much t<> invest it with ideal beauty. For here, within the easy limits of morning drives, maybe seen all the varieties of land and sea that give a peculiar pictu- resqiu'iiess to these shuns, from Portland round to Newport. Added to this, the country inland is broken into hills, rocks, dells, meadows, woodlands, farms, and fields, in the most charmingly confused manner imaginable ; the landscapes change every moment, and there are never wanting new ones enough to last till it becomes pleasant to revisit those with which the eye is familiar. The old roads wind in and out and up and down with a most alluring sinuosity ; I know of one where for nearly five miles the forest trees almost join hands overhead, and the curves are calculated upon such ex- ceedingly short radii (to borrow a phrase of the railway en- 104 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. gineers) that one can never see more than a hundred rods in advance ; for the next five miles the way goes over high granite rolling hills, with magnificent ocean views from their bare summits, and deep green vales between, lined with orchards, cornfields, and meadows, and thickly sown with ancient farmhouses. This is near Squam Ferry, as the road goes towards Essex. If he chooses, the explorer may turn aside through a gateway, and a mile or two over loose sand and sand-cliffs, that look like huge snow-drifts, will bring him to a desolate peninsular beach, that stretches away, I know not how far, to the northward. This beach is one of the finest, and by fishermen one of the most dread- ed on the coast ; it is very wide, and as smooth and almost as hard as a marble floor ; the sand in the distance appears almost perfectly white. Somewhere on it is a buried farm, but the peninsula is now uninhabited, and accessible only at one extremity. To ride or walk on this apparently inter- minable waste, with no companion but the marching waves, that loom up so threateningly, and seem so loudly impatient for another victim that one becomes almost afraid of them, is not the least of Cape Ann's poetical attractions to " the man of fine feeling, and deep and delicate and creative thought:" such an one as the IDLE MAN has identified himself with by the very substance and eloquence of his description, in the essay he has entitled " Musings." In another direction, the road which leads to the beauti- fully situated old town of Gloucester, and thence goes quite round the shore of the Cape, offers views no less various and interesting. Rock, beach, headland and island alter- nate with each other for the whole distance ; and the gen- DANA. 105 eral sterility of the scenery, with the sense of loneliness and desolation it inspires, reach a climax at the extremity or " pitch of the Cape," where Thatcher's Island with its cold lighthouses stands out into the Atlantic surges. Further round, towards Rockport, are some high hills, from which the ocean appears almost encircling the horizon ; broad and blue, of that deep ultramarine hue peculiar to our northern waters, it rises upward half-way to the sky, and the distant sails which dot it over literally " hang in the clouds." I shall al \vays remember one early morning here, when the bivi-ze blew fresh and the white-caps gleamed in the latter dawning ; the horizon line was as clear as in a picture, and the surf was foaming joyfully upon the ledges. Some of the precipices here and elsewhere on the Cape are not ex- celled for grandeur by those of Nahant. Rockport is in itself a curiosity a little thriving village stivtched along a narrow shore, and just able to preserve itself from being washed into the deep. A strong sea-wall scarcely protects a little basin of a harbor, in which some fifty fishing schooners are usually lying. Many of the im- mense blocks of granite composing this wall were moved from their places in the great gale of 1851, and the whole would have probably gone had the gale continued another tide. Beyond, and forming a part of Rockport, is Pigeon Cove, where are extensive granite quarries, hewn into the pine-covered cliffs. The scenery here will bear Othello's description : " Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven." Or if the whole of Cape Ann were to be described in 106 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTHOES. brief, it could hardly be more aptly done than in the lan- guage of one who has profited by an observation of Ameri- can scenery which the perplexed Othello could hardly have enjoyed : "The hills Rock-ribb'd, and ancient as the sun the valea Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green ; and pour'd round all Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste." Such is the vicinity in which DANA has found a home congenial with his spirit. But I know not how to describe it, or how to speak of him in connection with it, except by drawing from the actual. Let me then, as necessary to the purpose, beg the reader's indulgence in asking him to trans- port himself to the place where I am at this moment writ- ing. It is an old farmhouse, about four miles by the road from Dana's residence, though but for the projecting ledges and deeply indented coves it would be much nearer. From my window, looking westward over the meadows near the shore, I can almost see there. It is a bright August morn- ing ; so calm that the swell is scarce audible on the beauti- ful willow-lined beach just below me. Looking seaward are the rocky islets visible from Mr. Dana's house, and the high point on which stands a solitary oak, long a watcher over the waters, but blasted the early part of this summer 'by lightning ; inland are meadows and far-off farmhouses, with deep green-wooded hills in the distance. Around me all is DANA. 107 still and singing in the hot sun ; except only the threshers, who are making a rural sound in yonder barn. Let each of my readers " play with his fancy " and think he hears with me the noise of a carriage jolting along down the long lane that leads here, where carriage seldom comes. It approaches nearer and now it ceases on the green- sward under the window. We look out and perceive a plain country double-seated wagon, in which are a gentle- man and two little girls. He is preparing to descend, and I, recognizing him, go down to meet him. We find an elderly gentleman of sixty or thereabout, with a counte- nance bearing the marks of care and thought, but having a most pleasant half sad expression ; a voice of peculiar sympathetic quality, and a manner very frank and simple, yet conveying an impression of singular refinement. Be- yond this there is little to notice, except that he is some- what under the middle height, unusually square-shouldered, and wears a loose brown linen frock and a palm-leaf hat evidently designed to keep the sun off. This is the author of the " Buccaneer," " Paul Felton," and numerous other poems and prose writings, which have enriched his country's literature, by tending to make nature and art more beautiful, truth and purity of heart more lovely, and faith in Christianity stronger. We will now, at his invitation, step in and ride over with him to dine premising, however, that the reader shall expect no set conversation, poetical, critical, or other, beyond what might naturally suggest itself to thinking and educated persons, long acquainted, and experienced in life, driving along an old country road, with children in charge, 108 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. as full of questions and sage observations as any this hemi- sphere and age can probably produce. The last half mile of the road is in a wood, where we come to a gate which lets us into the poet's grounds, the wood still continuing along the base of a hill. At length we emerge upon an open lawn and see the house. "We soon reach it, and leaving our horse (a quiet, contemplative ani- mal, by the way,) to the care of an Exile of Erin, we enter the hall. The doors are open, and we perceive directly be- fore and beneath us the ocean. Passing through, we see at a glance that the lawn on which the house stands shelves off a few rods in front of it, in an almost perpendicular gravelly cliff, about sixty feet above a smooth sandy beach. The edge of this cliff is fringed by the remains of an old wall covered with a growth of bushes and low trees, which reaches also to the beach down the cliff's face. The beach is almost a perfect semicircle, of about a third of a mile in extent, and is perfectly isolated ; on the right by " Eagle Head," a projecting ledge that makes out beyond it into the sea, and on the left by " Shark's Mouth," the precipitous base of the hill round which we lately passed. The house stands on a line with the beach, that is, nearly south, and the hill, cov- ered with a thick growth of wood, encircles the lawn round the north, an effectual barrier to .the cold winds, which come chiefly from that quarter. A still further protection is afford- ed by a high wooded island of considerable extent, which be- longs to the estate, and lies perhaps a hundred rods from just within the base of the hill, and seems placed there as a shelter to the beach. But it is still early in the day, and the family not having DANA. 109 yet assembled, our host, after hearing us exhaust the various expressions of " How beautiful ! " and the like, which the lirst view of the place draws from every visitor, leaves us to enjoy it for a while by ourselves. It will be a convenient opportunity to mention what I have learnt of the history and topography of the estate. It originally belonged to a man named Graves, and the island and beach are still called by his name on the maps. He had been a shipmaster, and long after him there was a tradition to the effect that he had here buried doubloons. The money-diggers tried to find them, but their success or failure still remains a question for antiquaries. The estate contains a little over one hundred acres of woods, beach, rocks, island, and land capable of cultivation. We observe how the beach is shut in by the rocks and island. This beach is the only one in the vicinity that is private prop- erty. In Massachusetts the townships were originally granted to their proprietors, in common, and then by them assigned and subdivided. Certain pasture lands, and the beaches, were usually not assigned, and were still held in common. The control over these vested in the legal voters of the towns in which they were situated. This is the case with Boston Common, and with nearly all the beaches in the State. Graves's beach, however, partly from its being shut by its headlands, but chiefly from its connection at low e with the island, which has always been private prop- erty, passed to the owner of the upland ; and all the deeds run to low-water mark. So that both legally and practically it is private property and belongs to the estate. 110 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 'We are, as we see, on the south shore of Cape Ann, and protected by many miles of land and wooded hills on the north and east. The south winds, which are the hot ones inland in summer, are cooled by coming from off the water. The trees, which grow quite down to the beach, so that we might stand under thick foliage, with flowers under foot, and throw pebbles into the ocean, show how much the severity of the " east winds " is here mitigated by the shelter of the hills. Yonder rocky headland, to the eastward, is " Norman's Woe," celebrated in Longfellow's ballad. At the right we may see from these windows the lighthouses at the entrances, of Salem, Boston, and Marblehead harbors. Behind us, about a mile distant, is the village of Manchester, with its little harbor and creek. We are south of the Gloucester and Boston road, which bounds the estate on the north. Before it was purchased by Mr. Dana, the property had lain quite wild, and there are still crows, hawks, &c., in plenty, with an occasional visit from an eagle. How near the beach that wild duck ventures ! He seems to be aware that here there is no danger. Even the " little beach birds," which are esteemed such a delicacy that they are shot with- out mercy every where else, here find a spot where they may forage and twitter, and wing their short unsteady flights without molestation. The estate was purchased by Mr. Dana by the sale of a part of his inherited property in Cambridge, and the house was built by him. It has been suffered to remain, except levelling the lawn, and setting a few spruces where they were rather needed as screens to the stable and out-build- DANA. Ill ings than for ornament, as nearly as possible in its original condition. But the thick underwood of the hill has been hewn into little paths leading to the open summit by various routes, and to the points where the best views may be had of the land and ocean. Some of these are very fine, and have been commemorated, it is said, by sketches not less so. While we are making these observations, our host reap- pears divested of his rustic garb, and we take chairs and seat ourselves under the broad piazza. Our talk is of old times, and modern times, the things that have been and are, and are likely to be hereafter a range of subjects much more extensive, in fact, than that proposed by Talkative, in Bun van. It might be thought, from the finish and care shown in his writings, that Dana would be reserved in con- versation, or at least didactic. But it is not so. His conver- sation i< free, genial, discursive, abounding in acute obser- vation of life, in apt anecdote, and, what may be thought hardly possible by those who have only known him as a poet and author, in humor. His sense of the ridiculous is no less keen than his perception of beauty ; and he passes from one to the other with the freedom of a reflective mind, and a rapidity which, while it is perfectly natural and consistent with true emotion, sometimes has a strange effect upon the nerves of those who have not been in the habit of coming in contact with a mind of such calibre. Let a formal char- acter^ accustomed to run in a certain roadway of thought, stray into his society when he is in his arm-chair with two or three fireside friends, and Mr. Formality will be likely to have his eyes open very wide more than once, if he remains long a listener. But though it certainly can never be charg- 112 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. ed upon Dana that he has studied to conceal his opinions, or shrunk from setting them forth in strong lights, yet it is not matter of opinion or of controversy, by any means, that forms the staple of his discourse. He loves rather to dwell upon matters of art and manners, on subjects connected with painting and music, and poetry, the soul of all. Here his fountain of ideas is inexhaustible ; and he pours them out so constantly and unerringly towards all that is high and good, that they germinate and grow upward into lofty and true principles in the minds of others. Within this circle, and it is a sufficiently extensive one, few can walk so well as he. He has also the rare faculty of imperceptibly conducting conversation along these quiet and secure channels. In passing a few hours with Dana, and those by whom he is usually surrounded, men lose for the while a portion of their individuality, and find themselves capable of new states of being. They find themselves refreshed, or perplexed, or excited, they hardly know why or how, but impressed they must be if they possess common susceptibility. There are those who have this secretly influencing faculty in common with Dana many, it is probable, in all walks of life indi- viduals who have power to throw a passing light on those around them, to lift them up, as it were, by a Strong idio- syncratic or idiodynamic force, deprived of which, they fall back by their own inertness ; but few are so highly charged with this spiritual magnetism as Dana. His friends must have remarked that there are many in his circle of personal acquaintance who are diiferent creatures when he is by, much wiser and wittier than at any other times, and more DANA. 113 impressible. This is, perhaps, one of the most desirable spe- cies of conversational power. It is not the power of elo- quence and intellectual greatness alone, like that of Cole- ridge ; it is rather the Scott faculty, who charmed listeners by his unaffectedness, and health-imparting vigor. It is the free intercourse of one spirit with another "good talk," as a child of my acquaintance once expressed it. But while we are enjoying this sort of intercourse two or three hours have slipped away, and the different members of the poet's family, and the guests, if there are any, and there are almost sure to be some, are beginning to drop in from their morning rambles. One comes with a book in hand from the shades of the hill ; another with a portfolio ; two or three more with baskets of blackberries, for the hill and its environs are said to be one of the best "berrying places " in the vicinity, as the anything-but-ruby lips of all the incomers bear oral though inarticulate evidence. While all this transpires dinner approaches, and it becomes time, as Dana the younger might express it, to " call all hands ; " for some are still away yonder, looking like Matthew Lee "Sitting on that long, black ledge, Which makes so far out in the sea ; Feeling the kelp- weed on its edge" and some are still ensanguining their fingers in the black- berry thickets, lost to all considerations of time and dining. The call must be sounded, which is a horn, blown by a Triton not a "wreathed horn," however, but a tin one, as sends welcome echoes in summer time all over New gland meadows. They hear ; and rock, wood, and hill 8 114 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. " rebellow to the roar." Very soon the truants are brought in, and after the usual metamorposis in apparel, the import- ant duty of the day commences. Think of thus dining, in a parlor with the cool southwest wind blowing through the lattice right off the Atlantic, drowsily murmuring on the beach below ! Were it not, gentle reader, who thus far hast accompa- nied me were it not that you are invisible to mortal eyes, I should insist on your taking a place at the table, where, I feel sure, if you love what refreshes every department, floor, or story of the inner man, you would enjoy yourself and be welcome ; but this is denied me. On the parlor table there, you will find some newspapers, magazines and books ; divin- ity, German metaphysics, novels, and the like, mostly in English ; and on the piano is a pile of music, much of which has been sung or played till the notes of all the parts have almost vanished into the air among the rest, some old masses of Haydn and Mozart, which it may amuse you to put together according to the paging. (I have myself tried it with but indifferent success.) Or if Griswold's " Poets of America " is among the books, perhaps it would suit you better to glance at his sketch of Dana's life and writings. Lest it should not be, I will leave you the following sum- mary : " Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge in 1787. At the age of ten he went to live with his grandfather, the Hon. William Ellery, of Newport, R. I., one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Here he remained until he entered Harvard College. On leaving College in 1807, he went to Baltimore and entered as a law student in DANA. 115 the office of Gen. Robert Goodloe Harper, of Baltimore. Returning thence, he finished his studies and commenced practice in his native town. He soon gave up the law, how-, ever, and became an assistant of his relative, Prof. Edward T. Channing, in the conduct pf the North American Review, then established about two years. In 1821 he began the " Idle Man," in which he published some of his most admir- ed tales. His first poem, "The Dying Raven," he published in 1825, in the New- York Review, then edited by Mr. Bry- ant. Two years after he published the " Buccaneer, and other Poems," and in 1833 his " Poems and Prose Writ- ings." His Lectures on Shakspeare, which have been deliv- ered in most of our principal cities, he has not yet given to the public. In 1849 he published a new edition of his entire collected works. He has always resided in Boston or its vicinity, and the incidents of his life are purely domestic." Such is a brief summary of the life of one whose writings have exercised a great and permanent and healthful influ- ence upon our literature, and whose position is in the first rank of the intellectual men of our nation. Many such summaries might be read during a dinner- time even during an American dinner-time but, as the chorus to Henry Yth very sensibly remarks, " time, num- bers, and due course of things, cannot be here presented." I shall, therefore, call up ancient Gower to assure the reader, should he doubt it, that dinner is now over. Having already transported him four miles (and I may wish him to walk home with me presently) I do not feel at liberty to draw further upon his credulity without a letter of credit from an ^proved house. Doctor Johnson observes of Othello, that 116 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. " had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding inci- dents been occasionally related, there had been little want- ing to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous regularity." Judging from the success of much of the fictitious and dra- matic literature of the day, I fear he had too little confidence in the docility of the human fancy ; I would not hesitate, did I know any thing of the matter, to introduce into this sketch an essay on the Tariff question. The public are getting to be like the gentleman who, on doubting the truth of a story, and being taken up for it, pacified the narrator by begging his pardon, and saying that he would believe any thing, " rather than hurt a friend's feelings." But this is mere after-dinner criticism. "We are now in mid-afternoon, seated with the poet's family and guests, in the shade of the house ; some of the ladies are in the parlor or under the piazza playing at needlework ; but the most of us have brought chairs upon the narrow lawn above the cliff, and are idle according to our several tastes. The children Mr. Dana's grandchildren and the children of a visitor are occupied with a nest of young sea-gulls which the boys brought yesterday from yonder bare rock about two miles off shore, and which they are trying to tame. Some are endeavoring to count the number of sails that now glisten over the sea in the light of the declining sun, and there is a question whether there are fifty-two or three in all, it being doubtful whether those just visible specks below the eastern horizon ought to be reckoned ; also minor questions have arisen as to their rig, whether they are foreign or domestic, and the like matters which are the fruit of endless discus- sion with young sailors not yet emerged from the state of DANA. 117 boaihood. Faces loved and revered for many years are around us others in which we trace the lineaments of those that were young when we were young more than all, one that was old when we were young, and is, to me at least, less old now that I am older. Speaking of the scene before us, some one half consciously quotes " Or like a ship some summer's day In sunshine sailing far away : " which leads our venerable host to praise " The White Doe of Eylestone " in language of which the words might be as easily quoted as " How fine ! " or " I love thee ! " but which, in their expression, bear, as those often do, a meaning that the printer's art cannot reach. From this we are very naturally led to speak of Wordsworth, and the Prelude but we are interrupted by a shout from the juveniles; "there comes the Cunarder ! " And sure enough there she is, her black hull looming on the horizon, and a long line of smoke following in her wake. The telescope is brought out, mounted on a chair, and adjusted and re-adjusted to suit the visions of all. Through it we can see the white foam from the steamship's wheels, and the " bone in her mouth ; " we can almost distinguish people on her deck. In a few hours more she will be in her dock, and to-morrow afternoon some of her passengers may be in New York, some in Albany, and some in the White Mountains. The news she brings will be in New Orleans before morning. Wonder who is on board? Perhaps the Queen herself. She would be wel- comed, I am sure, as never was lady before. What proces- sions we should have ? Up the Bowery, down Broadway ; 118 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. from Roxbury line to Faneuil Hall, up Court and Tremont to a tent on the Common, &c., it would be grand ! But she will probably come in her own yacht and when she does, nobody certainly can say we have a British tory among us. " But do you think," observes our host, very characteris- tically, " that all we gain in mere utility must necessarily be obtained at some sacrifice of beauty ? What can be more beautiful to the eye than those white sails their varying forms and shades of lightness? The steamship certainly cannot compare with them. And so with stage coaches and railroads, and in architecture indeed every where, we observe it." The suggestion leads to some discussion, which is inter- rupted, however, from another quarter by a question about the opera. This, by some occult, though natural transition, leads us to speak of the Coal Mines of Rhode Island ; Tenny- son ; Ruskin and Turner ; Homoeopathy ; New- York book- publishers ; a receipt for making bread without yeast ; whether it would be believed (this in answer to a young academician guest, who objected to a story he had been reading, its want of probability) that Mr. Dana and myself had listened to quartetts of Mozart and Beethoven in such a street in New York on a certain winter evening, while a wild elephant was walking under the very window ? arguing that the very improbability ought to command belief; then as to the overland route to California ; Margaret Fuller ; Bloomerism ; the Senate of the United States ; that there ought to be a new edition of Brockden Brown, with per- sonal recollections of him from a lady (the mother of one now present) who remembers him ; when will there be another Charles Lamb ? the poet agrees with Sir Kenelm DANA. 119 Digby about Cervantes and Don Quixote, which I by no means can; Hartley Coleridge, and Ejuxrias: BOSWELL. " Do you suppose great artists feel, like other men?" DANA. " Yes ; they are strong enough to bear at all." BOSWELL. " And that Shakspeare felt Hamlet, even ? " DANA. " Certainly." BOSWELL. " I can believe it of Mozart, when I hear that Kyrie to the Twelfth Mass. But I was never meant for an artist, then. I am not strong; I cannot 'suffer and be strong.' " DANA. (Smiling) "You are big enough. "Well, there's nothing like keeping at work and doing the best we can. You see it is easy to give advice, at all events." Presently this very formal sort of conversation is inter- rupted by a discovery some one has made, that there is an interloper with a gun upon the beach. Poet, knights, and ladies instantly act upon the advice of King Henry at Agin- court ; and there is no rest till the Exile of Erin is sent to request and then warn the intruder to depart. But the incident breaks the current of chat, and looking westward, we perceive it is near sundown. We must depart also, and I shall be glad of your company at least a part of my way home. Leave taking between those who expect soon to meet again is a short ceremony ; we merely bid good evening, reserving for another occasion the sight of some favorite trees in the woods, and some recently discovered paths. We are soon out upon the old road by the gate we came. How cool and grateful the forest smells in the falling dew ! Yet it and all things do but sadden me ; and were it 120 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTHOES. not for such friends as we have seen to day, the shadows would deepen over my soul, as they do even now, while we emerge from the wood, over the valley. But see how glo- riously the sunset touches the hill ! What a mist of gold an< purple ! And away yonder, directly in the eye of the sunset, is the window of my chamber, all on fire. But the ocean is cold, and those far eastern sails that were so bright, look like spectres wandering on the verge of nothingness. As night comes on they would come to land, only that the watchful moon is already preparing to set her mild eye upon them while we sleep. Here we have reached a by-path which will conduct me by a shorter way across the pastures and beaches to my home. And here, Reader, with many thanks for your courtesy, and hoping you have not been wearied, I will bid you farewell. May we meet again ! Militant $. |m0tt. PRESCOTT. true idea of a home includes something more than A a place to live in. It involves elements which are intangible and imponderable. It means a particular spot in which the mind is developed, the character trained, and the affections fed. It supposes a chain of association, by which mute material forms are linked to certain states of thought and moods of feeling, so that our joys and sorrows, our struggles and triumphs, are chronicled on the walls of a house, the trunk of a tree, or the alleys of a garden. Many 124: HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. persons are so unhappy as to pass through life without these sweet influences. Their lives are wandering and nomadic, and their temporary places of shelter are mere tents, though built of brick or wood. The bride is brought home to one house, the child is born in another, and dies in a third. As we walk through the unexpressive squares of one of our cities, and mark their dreary monotony of front, and their ever-changing door-plates, how few of these houses are there that present themselves to the eye with any of the symbols and indications of home. These, we say instinctively, are mere parallelograms of air, with sections and divisions at regular intervals, in which men may eat and sleep, but not live, in the large meaning of the term. But a country- house, however small and plain, if it be only well placed, as in the shadow of a patriarchal tree, or on the banks of a stream, or in the hollow of a sheltering hill, has more of the look of home than many a costly city mansion. In the former, a portion of nature seems to have been subdued and converted to the uses of man, and yet its primitive character to have remained unchanged ; but, in the latter, nature has been slain and buried, and a huge brick monument erected to her memory. We read that " God setteth the solitary in families." The significance of this beautiful expression dwells in its last word. The solitary are not set in hotels or boarding-houses, nor yet in communities or phalansteries, but in families. The burden of solitude is to be lightened by household affections, and not by mere aggregation. True society that which the heart craves and the character needs is only to be found at home, and what are called the cares of housekeeping, from which so many selfishly PRESCOTT. 125 and indolently shrink, when lightened by mutual forbear- ance and unpretending self-sacrifice, become occasions of endearment and instruments of moral and spiritual growth. The partial deprivation of sight under which Mr. Pres- cott has long labored, is now a fact in literary history almost as well known as the blindness of Milton or the lameness of Scott. Indeed, many magnify in their thoughts the extent of his loss, and picture to themselves the author of " Ferdinand and Isabella " as a venerable personage, entirely sightless, whose " dark steps " require a constant " guiding hand," and are greatly surprised when they see this ideal image transformed into a figure retaining a more than common share of youthful lightness of movement, and a countenance full of freshness and animation, which betrays to a casual observation no mark of visual imperfection. The weight of this trial, heavy indeed to a man of literary tastes, has been balanced in Mr. Prescott's case by great compen- sations. He has been happy in the home into which he was born, happy in the home he has made for himself, and happy in the troops of loving and sympathizing friends whom he has gathered around him. lie has been happy in the early possession of that leisure which has enabled him to give his whole energies to literary labors, without distraction or interruption, and, most of all, happy in his own genial temper, his cheerful spirit, his cordial frankness, and that disposition to look on the bright side of men and things, which is better not only than house and land, but than genius and fame. It is his privilege, by no means universal with successful authors, to be best valued where most known; and the graceful tribute which his intimate 126 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. friend, Mr. Ticknor, has paid to him, in the preface to his History of Spanish Literature, that his " honors will always be dearest to those who have best known the discourage- ments under which they have been won, and the modesty and gentleness with which they are worn," is but an expres- sion of the common feeling of all those who know him. To come down to smaller matters, Mr. Prescott has been fortunate in the merely local influences which have helped to train his mind and character. His lines have fallen to him in pleasant places. His father, who removed from Salem to Boston when he himself was quite young, lived for many years in a house in Bedford-street, now swept away by the march of change, the effect of which, in a place of limited extent like Boston, is to crowd the popu- lation into constantly narrowing spaces. It was one of a class of houses of which but few specimens are now left in our densely-settled peninsula. It was built of brick, painted yellow, was square in form, and had rooms on either side of the front door. It had little architectural merit and no architectural pretension. But it stood by itself and was not imprisoned in a block, had a few feet of land between the front door and the street, and a reasonable amount of breathing-space and elbow-room at the sides and in the rear, and was shaded by some fine elms and horse-chest- nuts. It had a certain individual character and expression of its own. Here Mr. Prescott the elder, commonly known and addressed in Boston as Judge Prescott, lived from 1817 to 1844, the year of his death. Mr. Prescott the younger, the historian, upon his marriage, did not leave his father's house to seek a new home, but, complying with a kindly PKESCOTT. 127 custom more common in Europe, at least upon the Conti- nent, than in America, continued to reside under the pater- nal roof, the two families forming one united and affection- ate household, which, in the latter years of Judge Prescott's life, presented most engaging forms of age, mature life, and blooming youth. As Mr. Prescott's circle of research grew more and more wide, the house was enlarged by the addi- tion of a study, to accommodate his books and manuscripts, and here fame found him living when she came to seek him after the publication of the " History of Ferdinand and Isa- bella." ~No one of those who were so fortunate as to enjoy the friendship of both the father and the son ever walks by the spot where this house once stood, without recalling, with a mingling of pleasure and of pain, its substantial and respectable appearance, its warm atmosphere of welcome and hospitality, and the dignified form, so expressive of wisdom and of worth, of that admirable person who so long presided over it. This house was pulled down a few years since, soon after the death of Judge Prescott : his son having previously removed to the house in Beacon-street, in which he now lives during the winter months. Few authors have ever been so rich in dwelling-places as Mr. Prescott. " The truth is," says he in a letter to the publisher, " I have three places of residence, among which I contrive to distribute my year. Six months I pass in town, where my house is in Beacon-street, looking on the common, which, as you may recollect, is an uncommonly fine situa- tion, commanding a noble view of land and water." There is little in the external aspect of this house in Beacon-street to distinguish it from others in its immediate 128 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. vicinity. It is one of a continuous but not uniform block. It is of brick, painted white, four stories high, and with one of those swelled fronts which are characteristic of Boston. It has the usual proportion and distribution of drawing- rooms, dining-room and chambers, which are furnished with unpretending elegance and adorned with some por- traits, copies of originals in Spain, illustrative of Mr. Pres- cott's writings. The most striking portion of the interior consists of an ample library, added by Mr. Prescott to the rear of the house, and communicating with the drawing- rooms. It is an apartment of noble size and fine propor- tions, filled with a choice collection of books, mostly histori- cal, which are disposed in cases of richly-veined and highly- PRESCOTT. 129 polished oak. This room, which is much used in the social arrangements of the household, is not that in which Mr. Prescott does his hard literary work. A much smaller apartment, above the library and communicating with it. is the working study an arrangement similar to that adopted by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. Mr. Prescott's collection of books has been made with special reference to his own departments of inquiry, and in these it is very rich. It contains many works which cannot be found in any other private library, at least, in the country. Besides these, he has a large number of manuscripts, amounting in the aggregate to not less than twenty thousand folio pages, illustrative of the periods of history treated in his works. These manuscripts have been drawn from all parts of Europe, as well as from the States of Spanish origin in this country. He has also many curi- <>IH and valuable autographs of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nor is the interest of this apartment confined to its books and manuscripts. Over the window at the northern end, there are two swords suspended, and crossed like a pair of clasped hands. One of these was borne by Col. Prescott at Bunker Hill, and the other by Capt. Lizeen. the maternal grandfather of Mrs. Prescott, who commanded the British sloop of war Falcon, which w r as engaged in firing upon the American troops on that occasion. It is a signifi- cant and suggestive sight, from which a thoughtful mind may draw out a long web of reflection. These swords, once waving in hostile hands, but now amicably lying side by side, symbolize not merely the union of families once op- 130 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. posed in deadly struggle, but, as we hope and trust, the mood of peace which is destined to guide the two great nations which, like parted streams, trace back their source to the same parent fountain. On entering the library from the drawing-room, the vis- itor sees at first no egress except by the door through which he had just passed ; but, on his attention being called to a particular space in the populous shelves, he is, if a reading man, attracted by some rows of portly quartos and goodly octavos, handsomely bound, bearing inviting names, un- known to Lowndes or Brunet. On reaching forth his hand to take one of them down, he finds that while they keep the word of promise to the eye, they break it to the hope, for the seeming books are nothing but strips of gilded leather pasted upon a flat surface, and stamped with titles, in the selection of which, Mr. Prescott has indulged that playful fancy which, though it can rarely appear in his grave histo- rical works, is constantly animating his correspondence and conversation. It is, in short, a secret door, opening at the touch of a spring, and concealed from observation when shut. A small winding staircase leads to a room of mode- rate extent above, so arranged as to give all possible advan- tage of light to the imperfect eyes of the historian. Here Mr. Prescott gathers around him the books and manuscripts 111 use for the particular work on which he may be engaged, and few persons, except himself and his secretary, ever pen- etrate to this studious retreat. In regard to situation, few houses in any city are supe- rior to this. It stands directly upon the common, a beau- tiful piece of ground, tastefully laid out, moulded into an PRESCOTT. 131 exhilarating variety of surface, and only open to the objec- tion of being too much cut up by the intersecting paths which the time-saving habits of the thrifty Bostonians have traced across it. Mr. Prescott's house stands nearly opposite a small sheet of water, to which the tasteless name of Frog Pond is so inveterately fixed by long usage, that it can never be divorced from it. Of late years, since the intro- duction of the Cochituate water, a fountain has been made to play here, which throws up an obelisk of sparkling silver, springing from the bosom of the little lake, like a palm-tree from the sands, producing, in its simple beauty, a far finer effect than the costly architectural fancies of Europe, in which the water spurts and fizzles amid a tasteless crowd of sprawling Tritons and flopping dolphins. Here a beautiful spectacle may be seen in the long afternoons of June, before the midsummer heats have browned the grass, when the crystal plumes of the fountain are waving in the breeze, and the rich, yellow light of the slow-sinking sun hangs in the air and throws long shadows on the turf, and the Common is sprinkled, for and wide, with well-dressed and well-mannered crowds a spectacle in which not only the eye but the heart also may take pleasure, from the evidence which it furnishes of the general diffusion of material com- fort, worth and intelligence. The situation of the house admirably adapts it also for a winter residence. The sun, during nearly his whole course, plays on the walls of the houses which occupy the western part of Beacon-street, and the broad pavement in front is, in the coldest weather, clear of ice and snow, and offers an inviting promenade even to the long dresses and thin shoes 132 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. which so many of our perverse wives and daughters will persist in bringing into the streets. Here, in the early days of spring, the timid crocus and snowdrop peep from the soil long before the iron hand of winter has been lifted from the I'est of the city. Besides the near attraction of the Common, which is beautiful in all seasons, this part of Boston, from its elevated position, commands a fine view of the western horizon, including a range of graceful and thickly-peopled hills in Brookline and Roxbury. Our brilliant winter sun- sets are seen here to the greatest advantage. The whole western sky burns with rich metallic lights of orange, yel- low, and yellow-green ; the outlines of the hills in the clear, frosty air, are sharply cut against this glowing back-ground ; the wind-harps of the leafless trees send forth a melancholy music, and the faint stars steal out one by one as the shroud- ing veil of daylight is slowly withdrawn. A walk at this hour along the western side of the Common offers a larger amount of the soothing and elevating influences of nature than most dwellers in cities can command.* In this house in Beacon-street, Mr. Prescott lives for * The beauty of our winter sunsets is, so far as I am aware, peculiar to our country. It depends upon a combination of elements found nowhere else ; a low temperature with a brilliant sunlight and a transparent atmosphere : the climate of Sweden with the sky of Italy. In northern Europe, the tone of coloring is too gray and subdued, and the short days of winter leave but lit- tle light in the air. In Italy, the beauty of the winter sunsets is essentially the same as that of the summer. In both, the coloring is what painters would call warm. But there is something peculiarly spiritual in the pure light of one of our winter sunsets, in which the frost keeps down all the clouds and vapors of earth, and the western sky looks like a vault of crystal, through which th. A lover of Nature in her sterner moods can find few spots of more attraction than this presents after a south-easterly storm. The dark ridges of the rapid waves leap upon the broken cliffs with an expression so like that of animal rage, that it is difficult to believe that they are not conscious of what they are about. But in an instant the gray mass is broken into splinters of snowy spray, which glide and hiss over the rocky points and hang their dripping and fleecy locks along the sheer wall, the dazzling white con- trasting as vividly with the reddish brown of the rock, as does the passionate movement with the monumental calm. One is never weary of watching so glorious a spectacle, for though the elements remain the same, yet, from their com- bination, there results a constant variety of form and move- ment. Nature never repeats herself. As no two pebbles on a bi-ach are identical, so no two waves ever break upon a rock in precisely the same way. The beach which connects the headland of Little Nahant with the mainland of Lynn, is about a mile and a half long, and curved into the finest line of beauty. At low tide there is a space of some twenty or thirty rods wide, left bare by the receding waters. This has a very gentle inclination, and having been hammered upon so long by the action of the waves, it is as hard and smooth as a marble floor, presenting 136 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. an inviting field for exercise, whether on foot, in carriages, or on horseback. The wheels roll over it in silence and leave no indentation behind, and even the hoofs of a gal- loping steed make but a momentary impression. On a fine breezy afternoon, in the season, when the tide is favorable, this beach presents a most exhilarating spectacle, for the whole gay world of the place is attracted here ; some in carriages, some on horseback, and some on foot. Every kind of carriage that American ingenuity has ever devised is here represented, from the old-fashioned family coach, with its air of solid, church-and-state respectability, to the sporting-man's wagon, which looks like a vehicular taran- tula, all wheels and no body. The inspiriting influence of the scene extends itself to both bipeds and quadrupeds Little boys and girls race about on the fascinating wet sand, so that their nurses, what with the w r aves and what with the horses' hoofs, are kept in a perpetual frenzy of apprehension. Sober pedestrians, taking their " constitu- tional," involuntarily quicken their pace, as if they were really walking for pleasure and not for exercise. The well- fed family horse pricks up his ears and lifts his feet lightly as if he felt a sense of pleasure in the coolness and moisture under them. Fair equestrians dash across the beach a f full gallop, their veils and dresses streaming on the breeze attended by their own flying shadows in the smooth water) mirror of the yellow sands. Let the waves curl and break in long lines of dazzling foam and spring upon the beach as if they enjoyed their own restless play ; sprinkle the ba) with snowy sails for the setting sun to linger and play upon and cover the whole with a bright blue sky dappled witl PRESCOTT. 137 drifting clouds, and all these elements make up so animating a scene, that a man must be very moody or very apathetic not to feel his heart grow lighter as he gazes upon it. The position of Nahant, and its convenient distance from Boston, make it a place of much resort in the hot months of summer. There are many hotels and boarding-houses ; and also a large number of cottages, occupied for the most part by families, the heads of which come up to town every day and return in the evening. The climate and scenery arc so marked, that they give rise to very decided opinions. Many pronounce Nahant delightful, but some do not hesi- tate to call it detestable. No place can be more marine and less rural. There are no woods and very few trees. There are none but ocean sights and ocean sounds. It is like being out at sea in a great ship that does not rock. As every wind blows off the bay, the temperature of the air is very low, and the clear green water looks cold enough in a hot August noon to make one's teeth chatter, so that it requires some resolution to venture upon a bath, and still more to repeat the experiment. The characteristic climate of Xahant may be observed in one of those days, not uncom- mon on the coast of New England, when a sharp east wind sets in after a hot morning. The sea turns up a chill steel- blue surface, and the air is so cold that it is not comfortable to sit still in the shade, while the sky, the parched grass, the dusty roads, and the sunshine bright and cold, like moon- beams, give to the eye a strangely deceptive promise of heat. Under the calm light of a broad full moon, Nahant puts on a strange and unearthly beauty. The sea sparkles in silver gleams, and its phosphoric foam is in vivid con- 138 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. trast with the inky shadows of the cliffs. The ships dart away into the luminous distance, like spectral forms. In the deep stillness, the sullen plunge of the long, breaking waves becomes oppressive to the spirits. The roofs of the cottages glitter with spiritual light, and the white line of the dusty road is turned into a path of pearl. The cottage which Mr. Prescott occupies at Nahant is built of wood, two stories in height, and has a spacious piazza running round it, which in fine weather is much used as a supplementary drawing-room. There is nothing remarkable whatever in its external appearance. Its plain and unassuming aspect provokes neither criticism nor admi- ration. Its situation is one of the finest in the whole penin- sula. It stands upon the extremity of a bold, bluff-like pro- montory, and its elevated position gives it the command of a very wide horizon. The sea makes up a large proportion of the prospect, and as every vessel that sails into or out of the harbor of Boston passes within range of the eye, there is never a moment in which the view is not animated by ships and canvas. The pier, where the steamer which plies between Boston and ISTahant, lands and receives her passen- gers, and the Swallow's Cave, one of the lions of the place, are both within a stone's throw of the cottage. Mr. Prescott resides at Nahant from eight to ten weeks, and finds a refreshing and restorative influence in its keenly bracing sea-air. This, though a season of retirement, is by no means one of indolence, for he works as many hours every day and accomplishes as much, here, as in Boston, his time of study being comparatively free from those interruptions which in a busy city will so often break into a scholar's PKESCOTT. 139 seclusion. As his life at ISTahant falls within the travelling season, he receives here many of the strangers who are attracted to his presence by his literary reputation and the report of his amiable manners ; and this tribute to celebrity, exacted in the form of golden hours from him as from every distinguished man in our enterprising and inquisitive age, is paid with a cheerful good-humor, which leaves no alloy in the recollections of those who have thus enjoyed the privi- lege of his society. Mr. Prescott's second remove for if Poor Richard's saying be strictly true he is burnt out every year is from Xahnnt to Pepperell, and usually happens early in Septem- ber. His home in Pepperell is thus described by him in a letter to the publisher. " The place at Pepperell has been in the family for more than a century and a half, an uncommon event among our locomotive people. The house is about a century old, the original building having been greatly enlarged by my father iirst, and since by me. It is here that my grandfather, Col. Wm. Prescott, who commanded at Bunker Hill, was born and died, and in the village church-yard he lies buried under a simple slab, containing only the record of his name and age. My father, Wm. Prescott, the best and wisest of his name, was also born and passed his earlier days here, and, from my own infancy, not a year has passed that I have not spent more or less of in these shades, now hal- lowed to me by the recollection of happy hours and friends that are gone. " The place, which is called ' The Highlands,' consists of some two hundred and fifty acres, about forty-two miles from 140 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. Boston, on the border-line of Massachusetts and New Hamp- shire. It is a fine rolling country ; and the house stands on a rising ground that descends with a gentle sweep to the Nissitisset, a clear and very pretty river, affording pictu- resque views in its winding course. A bold mountain chain on the northwest, among which is the Grand Monadnoc, in New Hampshire, makes a dark frame to the picture. The land is well studded with trees oak, walnut, chestnut, and maple distributed in clumps and avenues, so as to produce an excellent effect. The maple, in particular, in its autumn season, when the family are there, makes a brave show with its gay livery when touched by the frost." To possess an estate like that at Pepperell, which has come down by lineal descent through several successions of owners, all of whom were useful and honorable men in their day and generation, is a privilege not common any where, and very rare in a country like ours, young in years and not fruitful in local attachments. Family pride may be a weakness, but family reverence is a just and generous sentiment. No man can look round upon fields of his own like those at Pepperell, where, to a suggestive eye, the very forms of the landscape seem to have caught an expression from the patriotism, the public spirit, the integrity, and the intelligence which now for more than a hundred years have been associated with them, without being conscious of a rush of emotions, all of which set in the direction of honor and virtue. The name of Prescott has now, for more than two hun- dred years, been known and honored in Massachusetts. The first of the name, of whom mention is made, was PKESCOTT. 141 John Prescott, who came to this country in 1640, and set- tled in Lancaster. lie was a blacksmith and millwright by trade a man of athletic frame and dauntless resolution; and his strength and courage were more than once put to the proof in those encounters which so often took place between the Indians and the early settlers of New England. He brought with him from England a helmet and suit of armor perhaps an heir-loom descended from some ances- tor who had fought at Poitiers or Flodden-fi eld and when- ever the Indians attacked his house he clothed himself in full mail and sallied out against them ; and the advantages lu is reported to have gained were probably quite as much owing to the terror inspired by his appearance as to the prowess of his arm. His grandson, Benjamin Prescott, who lived in Groton, was a man of influence and consideration in the colony of Massachusetts. He represented Groton for many years in the colonial legislature, was a magistrate, and an officer in the militia. In 1735 he was chosen agent of the province to maintain their rights in a controversy with New Hampshire respecting boundary lines, but declined the trust on account of not having had the small-pox, which was prevalent at the time in London. Mr. Edmund Quincy, who was ap- pointed in his place, took the disease and died of it. But, in the same year, the messenger of fate found Mr. Prescott upon his own farm, engaged in the peaceful labors of agri- culture. He died in August, 1735, of a sudden inflamma- tory attack, brought on by over-exertion, in a hot day, to s.ive a crop of grain from an impending shower. He was but forty years old at the time of his death, and the influ- 142 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. ence he had long enjoyed among a community slow to give their confidence to the young, is an expressive tribute to his character and understanding. He had the further advan- tage of a dignified and commanding personal appearance. In 1735, the year of his death, he received a donation of about eight hundred acres of land from the town of Groton for his services in procuring a large territory for them from the General Court, and the present family estate in Pep- perell forms probably a part of this grant. His second son was Col. Win. Prescott, the commander of the American forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill, who, after his father's death, and while he was yet in his minor- ity, settled upon the estate in Pepperell, and built the house which is still standing. Up to the age of forty-nine, his life, with the exception of a few months' service in the old French war, was passed in agricultural labors, and the discharge of those modest civic trusts which the influence of his family, and the confidence inspired by his own character, devolved upon him. Joining the army at Cambridge immediately after the news of the Concord fight, it was his good fortune to secure a permanent place in history, by commanding the troops of his country in a battle, to which subsequent events gave a significance greatly disproprotioned both to the num- bers engaged in it and to its immediate results. At the end of the campaign of 1776, he returned home and resumed his usual course of life, which continued uninterrupted, except that he was present as a volunteer w r ith Gen. Gates at the surrender of Burgoyne, until his death, in 1795, when he was in his seventieth year. He was a man of vigorous mind, not much indebted to the advantages of education PKESCOTT. 143 in early life, though he preserved to the last a taste for reading. His judgment and good sense were much esteem- ed by the community in which he lived, and were always at their service both in public and private affairs. He was of a generous temper, and somewhat impaired his estate by his liberal spirit and hearty hospitality. In the career of Col. Prescott we see how well the training given by the institutions of New England fits a man for discharging wor- thily the duties of war or peace. AVe see a man summoned from the plough, and by the accident of war called upon to perform an important military service, and in the exercise of his duty we find him displaying that calm courage and sagacious judgment which a life in the camp is supposed to be necessary to bestow. Nor was his a rare case, for as the needs of our revolutionary struggle required such men, they were always forthcoming. Nor is there any reason to sup- pose that Col. Prescott himself ever looked upon his con- duct on the seventeenth of June as any thing to be specially commended, but only as the performance of a simple piece of duty, which could not have been put by without shame and disgrace.* * The revolutionary annals of New England abound in curious nnd charac- teristic anecdotes, illustrating the resolute spirit of the people, most of which are preserved only in those town histories which contain the results of minute investigation, applied to a limited territory, and guided by a spirit of local pride and affection. The news of the march of the British troops out of Boston on the morning of April 19, 1775, which flew like a fiery cross through New Eng- land, reached Pepperell at about ten o'clock in the forenoon. Col. Prescott immediately summoned his company, and put himself at their head and pro- ceeded towards Concord, having been joined by a reinforcement from Groton. A member of the company Abel Parker was ploughing in a distant field, 14:4: HOMES OF AMERICA X A U T II O R S. Judge Prescott, who died in Boston in the month of December, 18M, at the age of eighty-two, was the only child of Col. Prescott, and born upon the family estate at Pepperell. His son, in one of his previously quoted letters, speaks of him as " the best and wisest of his name." It does not become a stranger to their blood to confirm or deny a comparative estimate like this, but all who knew Judge Prescott will agree that he must have gone very far who would have found a wiser or a better man. His active life was mainly passed in the unambitious labors of the bar ; a profession which often secures to its members a fair share of substantial returns and much local influence, but rarely gives extended or posthumous fame. He had no taste for politi- cal life, and the few public trusts which he discharged were and did not receive the alarm in season to start with his fellow-soldiers ; but as soon as he heard it, he left his oxen in the field unyoked, ran home, seized his gun in one hand and his best coat in the other, and set out upon a run to join his companions, whom he overtook in Groton. After the departure of the Pep- perell and Groton troops, these towns were left nearly defenceless, but in a state of great uneasiness from a rumored approach of the British regulars. In this emergency, several of the women of the neighborhood met together, dressed themselves in the clothes of their absent husbands and brothers, armed them- selves with muskets, pitchforks, and such weapons as they could find, and hav- ing elected Mrs. David Wright of Pepperell their commander, took possession of a bridge between Pepperell and Groton, which they resolved to maintain against foreign force or domestic treason. A person soon appeared on horse- back, who was known to be a zealous Tory. He was immediately seized by these resolute heroines, unhorsed and searched, and some treasonable corre- spondence found in his boots. He was detained prisoner, and his dispatches sent to the Committee of Safety. For these anecdotes, as well as for some of the statements in the text, I am indebted to Butler's History of Groton, an un- pretending and meritorious work. PRESCOTT. 145 assumed rather from a sense of duty than from inclination. He was never a member of Congress, nor in any way con- nected with the general government, but was always con- tent to move within the narrower sphere of his own State. As a practising lawyer, no person ever enjoyed in a greater degree the confidence of the community or the respect of the courts, and for many years his only difficulty was how to dispose of the great amount of responsible business in- trusted to him, without injury to his health. This rank at the' bar he had fairly earned both by a large measure and a happy combination of moral and intellectual qualities by a good sense and sagacity which instinctively led him to the right, by invincible industry, by large stores of legal learning, by natural dignity of manner and a perfect fairness of mind which never allowed him to overstate the testimony of a witness or the force of an authority. To say that Judge Prescott was a man of sense and sagacity is not enough, for in him these qualities ripened into wisdom. As he was never called upon to manage public aifairs upon a large scale, or to draw conclusions from a very wide range of observation, we can only reason from what we know to what we do not know, and infer that in the prime of his faculties he would have proved himself competent to the highest trust which his country could have imposed upon him ; but, within his sphere of action and experience, his judgment command- ed the greatest respect, was sought in the most difficult ques- tions, and reposed upon with the utmost confidence. For the last thirty years of his life there was no one in Boston whose counsel was more solicited or more valued in important mat- ters, whether public or private. He was not called upon, 10 146 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. like his father, to serve his country in war, but the walks of civic and peaceful life allow a man to show of what stuff he is made, and the friends of Judge Prescott knew that he had the hereditary courage of his race, and that had duty required him to face a bristling line of muskets, he would have done it with as much composure as he ever stood up before a jury to argue in behalf of a client against whom an unjust current of popular prejudice was setting. The resources of his mind and the well-balanced symme- try of his character, were strikingly seen in his declining years, after his retirement from the bar, which took place in 1828, in consequence of failing health. The interval be- tween active life and the grave is apt to be a trying period with lawyers. It is one of the burdens of our profession that we are obliged to spend half our time in learning what we wish to forget the moment it has served some particular end. The brain is like an inn that is constantly receiving new guests and dismissing the old. Thus the mind of an old lawyer is apt to be like a warehouse, which is in part empty, and in part filled with goods of which the fashion has passed away. But such was not the case with Judge Prescott. His social tastes, his domestic affections, his love of general knowledge, and the interest he had taken in every thing which had interested the community in which he lived, had prevented his mind from becoming warped or narrowed by professional pursuits ; and when these were no longer permitted to him, he passed naturally and cheer- fully into more tranquil employments. His books, his friends, his family, filled up his hours and gave healthy occupation to his mind. His interest in life was not im- PRESCOTT. 147 paired, nor the vigor of his understanding relaxed, by the change. The writer of this sketch had the privilege of a personal acquaintance with Judge Prescott during the last years of his lilt'. His appearance at that time was dignified and prepossessing. His figure was tall, thin, and slightly bent; his movements active, and his frame untouched by infirm- ity. His features were regular in outline and proportion resembling the portraits of a kindred spirit, the late illus- trious John Jay and their expression benevolent and in- tellectual. His manners were simple, but marked by an air <>f high breeding, flowing from dignity and refinement of character. He was a perfect gentleman, whether judged by a natural or a conventional standard. A stranger, ad- mitted t<> his society, would at first have been inclined to describe him by negatives. His manner was not overbear- ing, his tone was not dogmatical, his voice was not loud. He was free from our bad national habit of making strong assertions and positive statements. He was not a great talker; nor was his conversation brilliant or pointed. But he who had spent any considerable time in Judge Prescott's society, especially if he had had occasion to consult him or ask his. advice, would have brought away other than merely negative impressions. He would have recalled the mild and tolerant good sense of his discourse, his penetrating insight, his freedom from prejudice, his knowledge of men so unalloyed by the bitterness, the hardness, the misan- thropy with which that knowledge is so often bought, and the natural ease with which the stores of a capacious mem- ory were brought out, as the occasion required. He would 14:8 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. have felt that he had been admitted to the presence of a person of eminent wisdom and worth, whose mind moved in higher regions than wit or eloquence alone can soar to. Who can estimate too highly the privilege of having had such a father so fitted for the paternal office, that if his son could have had the impossible boon bestowed upon him, of selecting the parent of whom he would have been born, he could never have found a better guide, a wiser counsellor, a truer friend, than he upon whom, in the provi- dence of God, that trust was actually devolved. The life of Judge Prescott was as happy in its close as it had been during its continuance. On the morning of Sunday, December 8th, 1844, being then in his eighty-third year, he died suddenly and without pain, surrounded by his family and in the perfect possession of all his faculties. His death, though so natural an event at his advanced age, was widely and sincerely mourned, and the expressions of feeling which it called forth, were proportioned to the respect and venera- tion which had followed him while living.* The town of Pepperell lies in the northern part of the county of Middlesex, bordering upon the State of * The widow of Judge Prescott, the mother of the historian, died in March, 1852, at the age of eighty-four. She was a woman of great benevolence, and large, genial and active sympathies. To the last, in winter's cold or summer's heat, her venerable form was constantly seen in the streets of Boston, as she went about on foot upon her errands of charity. She will be long remembered and sincerely mourned by the widow and the orphan, the poor and the friend- less, the neglected and the forsaken. She retained her youthful energy of spirit and freshness of feeling in a remarkable degree to the last moment, and her animated smile and cordial greeting were always full of the sunshine of youth and hope. PKESCOTT. 149 Hampshire. Its inhabitants are mostly farmers, cultivating their own lands with their own hands a class of men which forms the best wealth of a country, the value of whom we never properly estimate till we have been in regions where they have ceased to exist. The soil is of that reasona- ble and moderate fertility, common in New England, which gives constant motive to intelligent labor, and rewards it with fair returns a kind of soil very favorable to the growth of the plant, man. The character of the scenery is pk-a-ing, without any claim to be called striking or pictu- resque. The land rises and falls in a manner that contents the eye, and the distant horizon is dignified by some of those high hills to which, in our magniloquent way, we give the name of mountains. The town has the advantage of being watered by two streams, the Nashua and the Nissitisset. The former is a thrifty New England river that turns mills, furnishes water-power, and works for its living in a respecta- ble way ; the latter is a giddy little steam that does little else than look pretty ; gliding through quiet meadows fringed with alder and willow, tripping and singing over pebbly shallows, and expanding into tranquil pools, gemmed with white water-lilies,, the purest and most spiritual of flowers. Mr. Prescott's farm is about two miles from the centre of the town, in a region which has more than the average amount of that quiet beauty characteristic of New England scenery. The house stands upon rather high ground, and commands an extensive view of a gently-undulating region, most of which is grass land, which, when clothed in the " glad, light green " of our early summer, and animated with 150 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. flying cloud-shadows, presents a fine and exhilarating pros- pect. As the farm has been so long under cultivation, and as for many years past the claims of taste and the harvests of the eye have not been overlooked in its management, the landscape in the immediate neighborhood of the house has a riper and mellower look than is usual in the rural parts of New England. At a short distance in front, on the oppo- site side of the road, sloping gently down to the meadows of the Nissitisset, is a smooth symmetrical knoll, on which are some happily-disposed clumps of trees, so that the whole has the air of a scene in an English park. The meadows and fields beyond a're also well supplied with trees, and the morning and evening shadows which fall from these, as well as from the rounded heights, give character and expression to the landscape. The house itself has little to distinguish it from the bet- ter class of New England farmhouses. It wears our com- mon uniform of white, with green blinds ; is long in propor- tion to its height, and the older portions bear marks of age. There is a piazza, occupying one side and a part of the front. Since it was first built there have been several additions made to it some recently, by Mr. Prescott himself so that the interior is rambling, irregular and old-fashioned; but thoroughly comfortable, and hospitably arranged, so as to accommodate a large number of guests. These are some- times more numerous than the family itself. There is a small fruit and kitchen garden on the east side of the house, and on the west, as also in front, is a grassy lawn, over which many young feet have sported and frolicked, and some that were not young. PKESCOTT. 151 The great charm of the house consists in the number of fine trees by which it is surrounded and overshadowed. These are chiefly elms, oaks, maples and butternuts. Of these last there are some remarkably large specimens. From these trees the house derives an air of dignity and grace which is the more conspicuous from the fact that these noble ornaments to a habitation are not so common in ^"ew England as is to be desired. Our agricultural popu- lation have not yet shaken off those transmitted impressions derived from a period when a tree was regarded as an ene- my to be overcome. Would that the farmers of fifty years ago had been mindful of the injunction given by the dying Scotch laird to his son, " Be aye sticking in a tree, Jock ; it will be growing while you are sleeping." What a differ- ent aspect the face of the country might have been made to wear. A bald and staring farmhouse, shivering in the winter wind or fainting in the summer sun, without a rag of a tree to cover its nakedness with, is a forlorn and unsightly object, rather a blot upon the landscape than an embellishment to it. Behind the house, which faces the south, the ground rises into a considerable elevation, upon which there are also several fine trees. A small oval pond is nearly sur- rounded by a company of graceful elms, which, with their slender branches and pensile foliage, suggest to a fanciful eye a group of wood-nymphs smoothing their locks in the mirror of a fountain. At a short distance, a clump of oaks and chestnuts, which look as if they had been sown by the hand of art, have formed a kind of natural arbor, the shade of which is inviting to meditative feet. Under these trees 152 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTIIOES. Mr. Prescott has passed many studious hours, and his steps, as he has paced to and fro, have worn a perceptible path in the turf. A few rods from the house, towards the east, is another and larger pond, near which is a grove of vigorous oaks ; and, in the same direction, about half a mile farther, is an extensive piece of natural woodland, through which winding paths are traced, in which a lover of nature may soon bury himself in primeval shades, under broad-armed trees which have witnessed the stealthy step of the Indian hunter, and shutting out the sights and sounds of artificial life, hear only the rustling of leaves, the tap of a wood- pecker, the dropping of nuts, the whir of a partridge, or the iron call of a sentinel crow. The house is not occupied by the family during the heats of summer ; but they remove to it as soon as the cool mornings and evenings proclaim that summer is over. The region is one which appears to peculiar advantage under an autumnal sky. The slopes and uplands are gay with the orange and crimson of the maples, the sober scarlet and brown of the oaks, and the warm yellow of the hickories. A delicate gold-dust vapor hangs in the air, wraps the val- leys in dreamy folds, and softens all the distant outlines. The bracing air and elastic turf invite to long walks or rides, the warm noons are delightful for driving ; and the country in the neighborhood, veined with roads and lanes that wind and turn and make no haste to come to an end, is well suited for all these forms of exercise. There is a boat on the Mssitisset for those who are fond of aqua- tic excursions, and a closet-full of books for a rainy day. Among these are two works which seem in perfect unison PKESCOTT. 153 with the older portion of the house and its ancient furni- ture Theobald's Shakspeare and an early edition of the Spectator both bound in snuff-colored calf, and printed on paper yellow with age ; and the latter adorned with those delicious copperplate engravings which perpetuate a costume so ludicrously absurd, that the wonder is that the wearers could ever have left off laughing at each other long enough to attend to any of the business of life. When the cool evenings begin to set in with something of a wintry chill in the air, wood-fires are kindled in the spacious chimneys, which animate the low ceilings with their rest- fleams, and when they have burned down, the dying embers diffuse a ruddy glow, which is just the light to tell a ghost-story by, such as may befit the narrow rambling passages of the old farmhouse, and send a rosy cheek to bed a little paler than usual. While Mr. Prescott is at Pepperell, a portion of every day is given to study ; and the remainder is spent in long walks or drives, in listening to reading, or in the social cir- cle of his family and guests. Under his roof there is always house-room and heart-room for his own friends and those of his children. Indeed, he has followed the advice of some wise man Dr. Johnson, perhaps, upon whom all vagrant scraps of wisdom are fathered and kept his friendships in repair, making the friends of his children his own friends. There are many persons, not members of the family, who have become extremely attached to the place, from the happy hours they have spent there. There may be seen upon the window-sill of one of the rooms a few lines in pencil, by a young lady whose beauty and sweetness make 154 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. her a great favorite among her friends, expressing her sense of a delightful visit made there, some two or three years since. Had similar records been left by all, of the happy days passed under this roof, the walls of the house would be hardly enough to hold them. And this sketch may be fitly concluded with the expres- sion of an earnest wish that thus it may long be. May the future be like the past. May the hours which pass over a house honored by so much worth and endeared by so much kindness, bring with them no other sorrows than such as the providence of God has inseparably linked to our mortal state such as soften and elevate the heart, and, by gently weaning it from earth, help to " dress the soul" for its new home. In reply to the publisher's request for a page of Mr. Prescott's manuscript, to be copied in fac-simile, the fol- lowing interesting note has been received : " NAHANT, July 9, 18 12. " MY DEAR SIR : " As you desire, I send you a specimen of my autograph. It is the concluding page of one of the chapters of the "Conquest of Peru" -Book III., Cap. 3. The writing is not, as you may imagine, made by a pencil, but is indelible, being made with an apparatus used by the blind. This is a very simple affair, consisting of a frame of the size of a common sheet of letter-paper, with brass wires inserted in PRESCOTT. 155 * it to correspond with the number of lines wanted. On one side of this frame is pasted a leaf of thin carbonated paper, such as is used to obtain duplicates. Instead of a pen, the writer makes use of a stylus, of ivory or agate, the last bet- ter or harder. The great difficulties in the way of a blind man's writing in the usual manner, arise from his not knowing when the ink is exhausted in his pen, and when his lines run into one another. Both difficulties are obvi- ated by this simple writing-case, which enables one to do his work as well in the dark as in the light. Though my trouble is not blindness, but a disorder of the nerve of the eye, the effect, as far as this is concerned, is the samfe, and I am wholly incapacitated for writing in the ordinary way. In this manner I have written every word of my historicals. This modus operandi exposes one to some embarrassments ; for, as one cannot see what he is doing on the other side of the paper, any more than a performer in the treadmill sees what he is grinding on the other side of the wall, it becomes very difficult to make corrections. This requires the subject to be pretty thoroughly canvassed in the mind, and all the blots and erasures to be made there before taking up the pen, or rather the stylus. This compels me to go over my composition to the extent of a whole chapter, however long it may be, several times in my mind before setting down to my desk. When there, the work becomes one of memory rather than of creation, and the writing is apt to run off glibly enough. A letter which I received some years since from the French historian, Thierry, who is totally blind, urged me by all means to cultivate the habit of dictation, to which he had resorted ; and James, the eminent novelist, 156 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. who lias adopted liis habits, finds it favorable to facility of composition. But I have been too long accustomed to my own way to change. And, to say truth, I never dictated a -sentence in my life for publication, without its falling so flat on my ear that I felt almost ashamed to send it to the press. I suppose it is habit. " One thing I may add. My manuscript is usually too illegible (I have sent you a favorable specimen) for the press, and it is always fairly copied by an amanuensis before it is consigned to the printer. I have accompanied the autograph with these explanations, which are at your service, if you think they will have interest for your read- ers. My modus operandi has the merit of novelty, at least I have never heard of any history monger who has adopted it besides myself. " I remain, dear Sir, " Very truly yours, "Wn. H. PKESCOTT." c ^ . >- N I 1 N f ? 6 Hiss . C. M. SEDGWICK. PERHAPS it is not to be wondered at that Home should be the prominent idea on Miss Sedgwick's mind, through- out a literary career which has made her name dear to her country. Every novel, and essay, and touching story that has ever fallen from her pen we choose our words advis- edly, to express the graceful ease which characterizes her writings has the thought of Home, like a sweet under- song, beneath all the rich foliage of fancy and gleams of heroic feeling. Her heroines are rich in home qualities ; her plots all revolve round the home centre ; her hints touch gently or strongly on the sacrifices and errors that make home happy or miserable. In those admirable stories that seem like letters from an observing friend those, we mean, that have an avowed moral purpose, like " Live and let Live," the " Rich poor Man and poor Rich Man" imagination and memory are evidently tasked for every phase of common social experience that can by exam- ple or contrast throw light upon the great problem how to 160 HOMES OF AMEKICAN AUTHOES. make a happy home under disadvantages both of fortune and character. She might be well painted as a priestess tending the domestic altar shedding light upon it set- ting its holy symbols in order due, and hanging it with votive wreaths, that may both render it proper honor, and attract the careless or the unwilling. If all lady-writers who could boast masculine understanding had possessed also the truly feminine spirit which breathes throughout Miss Sedgwick's writings, even where they are strongest and boldest for truth and virtue, some of the satire which has pursued the gentler sex when they have ventured to practise the " gentle craft," might have been spared. We are ready to say, when we read Miss Sedgwick " True woman, true teacher," since no true teaching is accomplish- ed without Love. Besides this home charm, Miss Sedgwick's writings have no little value as natural pictures ; and pictures, too, of a transition state, of which it will be, at no distant day, diffi- cult to catch the features, except through the delineations of contemporary novelists. That great photograph, the newspaper, gives back the features of the time with severer accuracy ; but as the portrait is to the daguerreotype, so is the novel to the newspaper. Miss Sedgwick and Mr. Cooper may be considered pioneers in this excellent work the delineation of American life and character, with proper accompaniments of American scenery. The homely rural life of our country appears in the New England Tale under a touch as delicate as skilful, while the manes of our forefathers are shadowed forth in " Hope Leslie," with a loving truthfulness for which old chronicles vouch amply. MISS SEDGWICK. 161 Xational feeling is strong in Miss Sedgwick, and she is neither meanly ashamed of it nor weakly inclined to parade it. It comes out because it is there, and not because it is called for. Foreign travel has not stifled it, nor much in- tercourse with the high civilization of older countries tinged it with sadness or made it morose. Ever kind and hopeful, it still disdains flattery, and while it loves and praises gener- ously, it is not afraid to condemn with equal justice. Our western world is so sensible of this kindness and this firm- ness, that although it is prone to resent even clearer truths, especially when they grate on national vanity, it hears Miss Sedgwick always with something more than patience and tespect. In delineating individual character, it is possible to let an amiable disposition lower the contrasts which are essen- tial to vigorous impressions. This occasions the only fault we are disposed to find with Miss Sedgwick's novels. They lack strongly-marked character; they smooth rough points too much ; they hesitate at horrors, moral ones at least. If the world were really made up of so large a proportion of pretty good people, with a sprinkling of angels, and only now and then a compunctiously half-bad man or woman, novels would never have been written, or if they had, would hardly have become one of the elixirs to so great a portion of the weary children of earth. The imagination is not satis- fied with truth, it asks the stimulus of high-wrought truth unusual distinct startling. It will not do for a writer to be too restrictedly conscientious in this matter. If it be true that "2e rrai //Y.v/ pas toujours le vraisemblable" it is also true that the " vraisemblablt" does not include the entire 11 162 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. " vrai" With this single complaint of unnecessary " toning down," let us dismiss the ungracious task of fault-finding. To make virtue lovely, is one of the achievements of the good. To draw such pictures of excellence as shall incite to imitation, is far less easy, if more pleasant, than to dash off vice and crime by wholesale with the intent of warning. Bugbears have little power after the bread and butter age, while self-sacrifice, tenderness and heroism possess Heaven be praised for it undying interest, and always find some sensitive chords even in the mind most sadly unstrung. Here we indicate Miss Sedgwick's forte it is to touch the heart by examples of domestic goodness, not so exalted as to preclude emulation, but so exquisitely human and natural as to call up all that is best and sweetest in the heart's im- pulses, and throw us back upon ourselves with salutary com- parisons and forward with pure resolutions. We have heard the remark from those well qualified to judge, that Miss Sedg- wick's writings had done much towards prompting aspiration and high resolve in young men ; how much wider must have been her influence over her own sex over the daughters and the mothers of her country ! Here is wherewithal not to boast, but to be thankful ; occasion not for pride, but for self-con- secration ; and as such we doubt not Miss Sedgwick looks upon her great success. Even on the wide field of our com- mon schools, the influence of that excellent manual, " Means and Ends," is daily felt ; and we can desire nothing better than that every American girl, whatever her position in life, may be prompted by it to " self-training," on the best plan and the best principles. If it could be conceded that the character of every writer MISS SEDGWICK. 163 is legibly impressed on his works, we need say nothing of that of Miss Sedgwick. But, though it may be true that a man always " writes himself down " to some extent, unhappy instances are not wanting to prove that we may sometimes grossly mistake the true character of a professor of tender sensibilities, or heedlessly ascribe the rough or self-depreci- ating expressions of a humorist to harshness or want of feel- ing. It would be invidious to point out examples of this at any time near our own, and Sterne has been too often cited. But we may remark that a tender, humane and generous character, at once gentle and courageous, modest and inde- pendent is impressed on the whole series of Miss Sedg- wick's works, we might almost say on every page of them. Slu> makes few professions or none ; she speaks in her own person only with reluctance ; her sketches of exalted good- ness are free from all taint of parade ; yet against her will we see her own heart and habits through whatever veil of fictitious form ; we need never ask what manner of woman is this ; we can feel the very beaming of her eye when she utters high thoughts, and we never for a moment doubt that when our hearts are stirred, hers is stirred also. At least it is so with us who know her. Perhaps we are poor judges of what strangers may think on this point. To her friends, the very lines of Miss Sedgwick's harmonious face accord sweetly with the spirit of all she has written. We read there such a sympathy with suffering, such ardor in the cause of struggling virtue, as will allow her no self- complacent ease when action is called for. Outlines which might well by the careless observer be called aristocratic, her friends more justly denominate noble, since to them HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. they express feelings to which nothing that belongs to humanity can be indifferent. It is beautiful to see elegant tastes and habits of the greatest refinement no hindrance to a truly democratic respect for the lowest and care for the worst, Hers is not the goodness which the French aptly term musqiiw, which requires that its objects be fashionable or picturesque. The high-toned sympathy which lent itself so gracefully and naturally, as well as w^ith such excellent results, to the exalted aims of Kossuth, becomes lowly pity and a kindness that nothing can shock when its object is a wretched \voman, released from prison only to undergo the heavier penance of universal contempt and avoidance. If Miss Sedgwick had never become celebrated as a writer, it is of her humanity that those who know her would have spoken as her leading trait ; and in her humanity the care of her own sex occupies the leading place, as is meet. Sympathy with the unhappy disputes the empire of her heart with that attachment to family and friends which accords so well with her efforts to glorify the private home in the public estima- tion. We can regret this overflowing affectionateness only on one account because the demands of generosity, pity and friendship, upon Miss Sedgwick's time and powers, leave her little leisure for the production of new works which would both delight and improve society at large. May long life and health be granted her, to do all that her vig- orous intellect can devise and her kind heart desire ! To the above appreciative and genial sketch by a kin- dred spirit, the editor has merely to add these personal facts from Mr. Griswold's " Prose Writers " : MISS SEDGWICK. 165 " Miss SEDGWICK was one of the first Americans of her sex who were distinguished in the republic of letters, and in the generous rivalry of women of genius which marks the present age, she continues to occupy a conspicuous and most honorable position. She is of a family which has con- tributed some of its brightest names to Massachusetts. Her father, who was descended from one of the major-generals in the service of Cromwell, enjoyed a high reputation as a statesman and a jurist, and was successively an officer in the revolutionary army, a representative and senator in Congress, and a judge of the supreme court of his state. Her brother Henry, who died in 1831, was an able lawyer and political writer, and another brother, the late Theodore Sedgwick, was also distinguished as a statesman and an author.* " Miss Sedgwick was born in the beautiful rural village of Stockbridge, on the river Housatonic, to which her father had removed in 1787. Judge Sedgwick died in 1813, before his daughter had given any indications of literary ability, but her brother Henry, who had been among the first to appreciate the genius of Bryant,-)- soon discovered and en- couraged the development of her dormant powers. The earliest of her published works was the New England Tale, originally intended to appear as a religious tract, but which * The most considerable work of Mr. Sedgwick is his Public and Private Economy, in three volumes, published by Harpers. f It was chiefly through the influence of Henry Sedgwick's persuasions that Mr. Bryant was induced to remove to New- York, from the neighboring village of Great Barrington, where he was engaged in the uncongenial pursuits of a country lawyer ; and it was through Mr. Sedgwick's means that he first became connected with the Evening Post. 166 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. grew beyond the limits of such a design, and was given to the world in a volume in 1822. This was followed, in 1824, by ' Redwood,' a novel which was immediately and widely popular ; in 1827 by ' Hope Leslie, or Early Times in Massa- chusetts,' by which her reputation was yet more extended ; in 1830 by ' Clarence, a Tale of our own Times,' which was inferior in merit, though received with equal favor ; in 1832 by ' Le Bossu,' one of the Tales of the Glauber Spa, and in 1835 by ' The Linwoods, or " Sixty Years Since " in Amer- ica,' the last and in some respects the best of her novels. In the same year she also published a collection of tales and sketches which had previously appeared in various peri- odicals. " In 1834 Miss Sedgwick gave the public the first of a new and admirable series of illustrations of common life, under the title of ' Home,' which was followed in 1836 by ' The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man,' and subse- quently by i Live and Let Live ' and c Means and Ends, or Self-training,' ' A Love Token for Children,' and ' Stories for Young Persons.' " In the spring of 1839 she went to Europe, and in the year which she spent in travelling, wrote her ' Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home,' which were published in two volumes soon after her return. " Besides the works already mentioned, Miss Sedgwick has written a Life of Lucretia M. Davidson, and many con- tributions to annuals and literary magazines. " Miss Sedgwick has marked individuality. She com- mands as much respect by her virtues as she does admira- tion by her talents. Indeed, the rare endowments of her MISS SEDGWICK. 167 mind depend in an unusual degree upon the moral qualities with which they are united for their value. She writes with it higher object than merely to amuse. Animated by a cheerful philosophy, and anxious to pour its sunshine into every place where there is lurking care or suffering, she selects fn- illustration the scenes of every-day experience, paints them with exact fidelity, and seeks to diffuse over the mind a delicious serenity, and in the heart kind feelings and sympathies, and wise ambition, and steady hope. A truly American spirit pervades her works. She speaks of our country as one ' where the government and institutions are based on the gospel principle of equal rights and equal privileges to all,' and denies that honor and shame depend upon condition. She is the champion of the virtuous poor, and selecting her heroes and heroines from humble life, does not deem it necessary that by tricks upon them in the cradle they have been only temporarily banished from a patrician caste and estate to which they were born. "Her style is colloquial, picturesque, and marked by a facile grace which is evidently a gift of nature. Her char- acters are nicely drawn and delicately contrasted. Her Deborah Lenox has remarkable merit as a creation and as an impersonation, and it is perfectly indigenous. The same can be said of several others. Miss Sedgwick's delineations of New England manners are decidedly the best that have appeared, and show both a careful study and a just appreci- ation.'' Miss Sedgwick has passed much of her time at Stock- bridge, where she was born, and where the family of her 168 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. late brother Theodore continues to reside. But of late years her home has been divided between the residence of her friends in New- York and that of her brother Charles, at Lenox, Berkshire county, Mass. A description of her pa- rental home has been kindly communicated by the one, of all others, who could do it best : "A comfortable rural mansion, some fifty feet square, built, without architectural adornments, for the modest wants of a country gentleman of i sixty years since,' is here presented, faithfully, from a sketch made by one of his descendants, who lives still at the old homestead, en- riching by her daily life its sacred associations. "The view is taken from the meadow below the south entrance of .the house, and admits a few only of the trees that on every other side shelter and obscure it, and under whose shadows the fourth generation from him who planted them now plays. " A small curve of the semicircular slope from i Stock- bridge plain,' on which the house stands, a piece of the rich alluvial meadow below it, and a glimpse of the Housatonic river, the living spirit of the valleys to which it gives its name, are the only objects that could be included within the narrow limits of this sketch. " Would that the pen could supply the beauties excluded by the narrow space allotted to the pencil ! and present to the mind's eye the deep-set valley in the very heart of which the old mansion stands,* on < Stockbridge plain.' Thus the * "This is no figure of speech. The lot west of the house, known to the family as the ^Elizabeth lot,' (a name derived from the old Indian woman whose 'baptismal designation it was, and whose wigwam stood on it,) was originally MISS SEDGWICK. 169 perfectly level strip of land hemmed in between tlie upland and the meadows was designated by the first Yengees (Eng- lish) who came over the mountains from Connecticut river, and, preferring home memorials to designations that to them seemed barbarous and unmeaning, baptized the valleys of the Ilonsatonic with old-world nanirs. " How far the judgment may be biassed and the senses bewitched by early love, by long association, and by the illu- sions of fond memories, I cannot pretend to say ; but to one who has bei'ii young and grown old in familiarity with it, 'Stock- bridge plain' realizes the beau-ideal of a village just such a village as a poet dreams of when he gives a local habita- tion to rural beauty and < country contentments.' It is en- closed, like the happy valley of Kasselas, by a circuit of hills, wooded to their tops, which we, somewhat ambitiously, call mountains, since the very highest of them does not rise more than eight hundred feet above the meadows. Midway called Manwootania, middle of the town the town was six miles square. Those who are curious in such matters may like to see the Indian names oi localities related to this old homestead. Housatonic is a corruption of Awees- tonook ('over the mountain') the name in the Indian day was borne by the valley as well as the river. Kunkapoi is still the name of a little brook that so lazily winds through the meadows that it seems almost to sleep in its rich bed there. Kaehpeekuek (' nation's sugar-place ') is the beautiful little meadow be- tween Stockbridge and Lee, a gem an emerald gem, deep set in the hilla Kachpeehuchtchoo is the precipitous green mountain-wall south of it. Taheeca- nuck ('the heart') a long hill running east and west, which hides the valley of Stockbridge from Lenox. The name was given as an affectionate memorial of some kindness between the Indians and white people. Is there treachery implied in its present designation, Rattlesnake Mountain ? Masswasseefiaich ('a nest') Monument Mountain. Maheecancw, the name of the tribe from which the Stockbridge Indians came, corrupted to Mohigan." 170 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. of the plain is a long wide street, gently rising at the eastern extremity, and by a slight curve vanishing within the shadow of trees in their < summer pride,' impenetrable to the eye. The view at the western end, where stands the church, and the burying-ground thick-set with monumental stones, is closed by the site of the old missionary-house and the mountain beyond it. The wide street is embowered, and its monotony broken by fine sugar-maples and elms that seem lovingly to clasp it in their far-stretching arms. " On each side the street, with well trimmed adjoining gardens and deeply-shaded court-yards in front, are neat dwellings, indicative of cultivated and refined proprietors, an aspect rather idiosyncratic in our land. There is not a single ; Italian villa,' no ' Grecian front,' not one wooden Corinthian column without a capital, nor a capital without a column ! no architectural absurdity indicating ignorant imitation or fatuous aspiration. But there is a filial conser- vatism, a reverence for the past, demonstrated in a careful repair and scrupulous preservation of ancestral homes. This diffuses a sort of sentiment over the village plain, w^hich he who runs may read. " Several of the best houses are tenanted by women. The prosperity and beauty about them is a formidable argument in favor of the capacity of the sex to be the managers of their own property ! These are the kind of arguments which can be most potently and most gracefully used by those who contend for the ' rights of women,' and against which, even those that are confuted by them may be willing not to ' argue still.' " Between the eastern extremity of the plain and the MISS SEDGWICK. 171 river is a circular hill, rising, it may be, 150 feet above the valley, covered with trees and a thick undergrowth of cal- mias. From them it takes its name, ' Laurel-hill.' ' The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage.' Not in our humble life ! where it merely serves to deck its mother earth. " Well-trodden paths wind around Laurel-hill from its base to its summit. The old man may go to the very top without toil or weariness, stopping at the turns and rustic seats, to look through the frame-work of trees at such lovely pic- tures as may IK I made by a village, meadows, harvest-fields, circling hills, and the Ilousatonic, which winds half around it. On one side Laurel-hill is rocky and precipitous. Its crown is called l sacrifice-rock,' a name given to it by an in- digenous romance writer, who naturally enough transferred to her pages the impressions her childhood received there. Laurel-hill was at one time in danger of being denuded by some of Pluto's demons to fill a coal-pit. It was rescued by the Sedgwick family, and given to the village in perpetuity. " May it remain for ages the resort of the thoughtful, the refreshment of the aged, and the favorite play-ground ol happy children, who shall make it echo, as it now does, to the healthy music of their glad voices ! " Beyond the plain, above, below and around, stretch meadows, uplands and lowlands, in every variety of beauti- ful form and gradation of cultivation. Small lakes, or, in our homely dialect, i ponds,' open their blue eyes among the hills in various parts of the town. The largest is some three 172 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. miles from the village. The name by which it was to its original and rightful proprietors was Quecheeochook (Anglice ' the bowl '). Quite latterly, it has been called by a little girl, who seems merely to have given voice to a self- impressed name, ' the mountain mirror.' And though the name is somewhat fantastical, it seems from its descriptive- ness to have been acceptable. The border of this lake has already been selected by a gentleman of taste for his country home. Others will soon follow this pioneer, for many who are now doomed to ' Scrawl strange words with a barbarous pen,' or to fret and stifle in those haunts where ' merchants most do congregate,' are looking to the vallies of Berkshire as their land of promise. " Hawthorne, the wizard writer of our land, perched for a year just on the rim of < the bowl,' and in his < wonder book ' has cast his spells around it. To us we confess it derives its dearest association from being the fishing-ground of a great dramatic genius our most dear friend her favorite resort, where she saw visions, and dreamed of laying the foundations of a future home. " In turning back the volume of life for half a century, how different from the present do we find the then modes of do- mestic life. Civilization has advanced the social arts have developed. Has virtue made an equal progress ? Is house- hold life enriched ? " Bail-roads are of recent date. But in my childhood not even a < turnpike ' connected our village with the great marts (little marts then !) of New York and Boston, equidistant MISS SEDGWICK. 173 from us. A ricketty mail-coach came once a week from New York. But with what eager expectation we watched it as it slowly crawled along the line of road visible from the piazza of the south entrance !* With what blissful emotions we hailed the mail that was sure to bring to each child a letter from the beloved parent in Congress at Philadelphia ! Now, twice a day, the rail-cars come shrieking through the meadows of Awastonook, and twice a week they bring us European news and scarcely a sensation is produced! " Then how often the gate of the avenue to the old house was thrown wide open to receive political friends, or aristo- cratic guests, who had come in their own carriages a weary journey from their city homes guests, servants, and horses, were all received with unostentatious but abounding hospi- tality. The doors opened as readily to troops of cousins, and humble friends, for those who dwelt there were much 'given to hospitality,' and though still retaining the prestiges of colonial life, they showed certain humane tendencies to slide down to the platform of their democratic descendants ! Now your friend is a mere passenger in a rail-car, perchance driven past you as if the Fates were at his heels. "Those were the days of the wide open fire-place, which, with its brilliant, crackling, bountiful fire, has made the good Saxon terms of 'fireside' and 'hearth-stone,' key-notes to household loves, and domestic charities. " A winter's evening fire in the kitchen of the old house, stocked as it was in the days of its Founder with the African * " The piazza, or stoop, (the word was borrowed from our Dutch neighbors on the Xe\v York border) has given place to the bay-windows seen in the vig- nette." 174 HOMES OY AMERICAN AUTHORS. race, (free people all gratias Deo !) would supply a month's fuel for one of the cruel, dark, cheerless stoves of the present day. I well remember how, as the night approached, a chain was fastened round a hickory log, and attached to a horse who drew it to the door-step. Then it was rolled to the huge fire-place by the men, shaking the house to its foundations! Then was brought the ' 'fore-stick ' larger than any 'Yule-log' since the Norman conquest ; then arm-full after arm-full was piled on till the structure would have served for the holocaust of an army. But its uses were of a gentler kind. Their easy day's work done, the genial children of a tropical sun sat joc- uiid around, roasting and mellowing ! These were their ' good old times,' before the Celts came in, the first days of their Independence in Massachusetts, and while they yet re- tained the habits of trained servants, and much of the affec- tionate loyalty of feudal service. The (so-called) slaves of New England were few, and were never degraded below the condition of serfs. They made a part of the domestic establish- ment. They were incorporated with the family, sometimes assuming the patronymic, and always claiming a participa- tion in its honors, as a portion of their personal property. In the Farmer's household they sat, like Gurth and Wam- ba, ' below the salt ' at their Master's table. " The genius loci of the old Homestead kitchen was a no- ble creature, whose first free service was devoted to the fami- ly, and who watched over it with vigorous intelligence and unswerving fidelity till she died, loved and honored, in a good old age.* * " While this woman was yet young, and a slave, her natural sense of right and justice was confirmed by hearing the 'Declaration of Independence' read. She MISSSEDGWICK. . 175 " There were other of the faithful servants of that day whose memories are embalmed at the old- Homestead. One, named Agrippa, came to my father from Kosciusko, whom he had served during all his campaigns in this country. lie did not entertain our childhood with the ' battles, sieges, for- tunes,' of his hero, but with his practical jokes in camp, and his boyish love of fun. Agrippa lived to be a village sage, with something of the humorous pithiness of Sancho Panza, and much, as we thought, < of the wisdom of Solomon.' "Violin players maintain that the quality of their instru- ment is improved by age; that it is mysteriously enriched by the music it has produced in the hands of superior artists. If this be so, what secret records may have sunken into the walls of an old family home, consecrated by the domestic life of three happy generations ! " 'The only bliss that has survived the Fall.' Certain it is these walls of our old home give out to the attentive ear of memory the harmonies of family love the soft glad whisper of the birth-day the merry music of the marriage-bell the shout of joyous meetings the sighs of partings the noisy, idle, and yet most wise joys of child- came to my father respecting the clause which asserts that 'all men are born free and equal ; ' she said 'I am not a dumb critter, Sir, and I have a right to my free- dom.' My father undertook the prosecution of her legal claim, and the result was the manumission of all the slaves in Massachusetta 'From the hour of her emancipation she served in my father's house, and wrought into the hearts of his children a love for the race that had given to them a life-long friend, unsurpassed in practical intelligence, and rarely equalled in the Divine qualities of justice, truth and fidelity." 176 HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. hood the ringing gayeties of youth the free, fearless dis- cussions of manhood the loving admonition of age the funeral wail and lament ! There we hold communion with 4 spirits unseen,' " ' Both when we wake and when we sleep.' " gewick . Preface to New England Tale., . ed . 1852 . .