Harriet Martineau

“ To an infant, a champaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard square of gay carpet. To the rustic it is less bewitching than a paddock with two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he casts his eye over its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its secluded homes, its mountain ranges, church spires, and untrodden forests, it is a picture of life; an epitome of the human universe; the complete volume of moral philosophy, for which he has sought in vain in all libraries. On the left horizon are the Green Mountains of Vermont, and at the right extremity sparkles the Atlantic. ”

“ We were taken to the Battle-ground, the native soil of General Jackson's political growth. Seeing the Battle-ground was all very well; but my delight was in the drive to it, with the Mississippi on the right hand, and on the left gardens of roses which bewildered the imagination. I really believed at the time that I saw more roses that morning than during the whole course of my life before. Gardens are so rare in America, from want of leisure and deficiency of labour, that, when they do occur, they are a precious luxury to the traveller, especially when they are in their spring beauty. ”

“ One morning we found an old man, between seventy and eighty years old, gazing from Table Rock. He was an American. Being on a journey, he had walked from Queenstown to see the falls. He quietly observed that he was ashamed to think there had been wars near such a place, and that he hoped the English and Americans were grown wiser now, and would not think of fighting any more. This came in echo of my thought. I had been secretly wishing that all the enemies in the world could be brought together on this rock; they could not but love as brethren. ”

“ But open perfection to its veneration and immortality to its step; tell it of one who is and always will be the inspirer of genius, the originator of truth, the life of emotion; assure it that all which is loved shall live for ever; that that which is known shall enlarge for ever; that all which is felt shall grow intenser for ever, and the proximity of death will quicken instead of withering the mind; the eye will grow dim on the open page of knowledge; the hand will be found clasping in death the instruments of human good; the heart's last pulse will beat with some new emotion of benignity. ”

“ Those whose taste is the contemplation of great and original men may always have it gratified by going to Washington. Whatever may be thought of the form and administration of government there; however certain it may be that the greatest men are not, in this age of the world, to be found in political life, it cannot be but that, among the real representatives of a composite and self-governing nation, there must be many men of power; power of intellect, of goodness, or, at least, of will. ”

“ While any light is left, the driver is apt to shorten his road by cutting across a knoll instead of winding round it; and then the wheels are noiseless on the turf; the branches crash as the vehicle is forced between the trees; and the wood-pigeons, frightened from their roost, flutter abroad.
When the sun has gone down all is still within the stage; the passengers grow drowsy unless hunger keeps them awake. Each one nods upon his neighbour's shoulder, till a red light, gradually illuminating all the faces, and every moment growing brighter, rouses the dullest. ”

“ As the day steals through the forest, kindling up beauty as it goes, the traveller's whole being is refreshed. The young aloes under the fallen trunks glitter with dew; the gray moss, dangling from the trees, waves in the breath of the morning. The busy little chameleons run along the fences, and the squirrel erects his brush as you pass. While the [Pg 214] crescent moon and the morning star glittered low down in the sky, you had longed to stay the sun beneath the horizon; but, now that he is come, fresh vigour and enjoyment seem to be shed down with his rays. ”

“ To observing eyes it appears plain that the hour is approaching when these young men must, like all other American men, choose their part, and enter decisively into struggle to maintain or overthrow the first principles of freedom. It will then be seen whether "the vestal flame" has been kept alive, or whether the name of him who cherished it has been honoured with mere lip-worship, while the labours of his latter years have been despised and undone. The eyes of the world will be fixed on Jefferson's University during the impending conflict between slaveholders and freemen. ”

“ I strongly suspect that those who complain of the monotony of the ocean do not use their eyes as they do on land. It seems to be the custom at sea to sit on deck, looking abroad only when the sun is setting, or the moon rising, or when there is a sail to be speculated upon. Some of the most beautiful sights I caught were when no one else was looking down quite into the deep, the only way to see most of the creatures that live there. One day I was startled, while thus gazing, with an excessive radiance, like an expanse of brilliant rainbow, far down in the sunny deep under our bows. ”

“ There is no tolerable portrait of Judge Story, and there never will be. I should like to bring him face to face with a person who entertains the common English idea of how an American looks and behaves. I should like to see what such a one would make of the quick smiles, the glistening eye, the gleeful tone, with passing touches of sentiment; the innocent self-complacency, the confiding, devoted affections of the great American lawyer. ”

“ When I looked at her, and thought of the fearful disobedience to the first of moral laws, the cowardly treachery, the cruel abuse of power involved in thus dooming to blight a being so helpless, so confiding, and so full of promise, a horror came over me which sickened my very soul. To see slaves is not to be reconciled to slavery.
At Baltimore and Washington again I was warned, in various stealthy ways, of perils awaiting me in the South. ”

“ Charleston is the place in which to see those contrasting scenes of human life brought under the eye which moralists gather together for the purpose of impressing the imagination. The stranger has but to pass from street to street, to live from hour to hour in this city, to see in conjunction the extremes between which there is everywhere else a wide interval. The sights of one morning I should remember if every other particular of my travels were forgotten. ”

“ At five the sky was so thickly overspread with clouds that the expedition to the housetop had to be abandoned. The morning afterward cleared, and I went alone down to Kosciusko's Garden. I loved this retreat at an hour when I was likely to have it to myself. It is a nook scooped, as it were, out of the rocky bank of the river, and reached by descending several flights of steps from the platform behind the hotel and academy. Besides the piled rocks and the vegetation with which they are clothed, there is nothing but a clear spring, which wells up in a stone basin inscribed with the hero's name. ”

“ Right or left soon appears the loghouse, its open shutters and door giving token that a large fire is blazing within. The gentlemen hand out the ladies at the door, and then stand yawning and stretching, or draw to the fire while they can, before the ladies take possession of the best places. The hostess, who is busy cooking, points to a lamp, with which the ladies light themselves to her chamber, to put up their hair under their bonnets for the night. Little impish blacks peep and grin from behind the stove or shine in the heat of the chimney-corner. ”

“ The American can conceive of nothing more dismal than a pine-barren on a rainy day; but the profound tranquillity made it beautiful to me, whose rainy days have been almost all spent in cities, amid the rumbling of hackney-coaches, the clink of pattens, the gurgle of spouts, and the flitting by of umbrellas. It is very different in the pine-barrens. The sandy soil absorbs the rain, so that there is no mud; the pines stand meekly drooping, as if waiting to be fed; the drip is noiseless ”

“ Gay butterflies seemed quite at home in this ravine. They flit through the very spray of the falls. It seemed wonderful that an insect could retain its frail life in the midst of such an uproar. When the sun, in its course, suddenly shone full into the glen through a chasm in its rocky wall, how the cascade was instantly dressed in glory! crowned with a rainbow, and invested with all radiant hues! How the poor banished Indians must mourn when the lights of their Cayoharic visit their senses again in the dreams of memory or of sleep! ”

“ Every one is aware that the wigs and gowns of counsel are not to be seen in the United States. There was no knowing, when Webster sauntered in, threw himself down, and leaned back against the table, his dreamy eyes seeming to see nothing about him, whether he would by-and-by take up his hat and go away, or whether he would rouse himself suddenly, and stand up to address the judges. ”

“ But when, as in some rare instances, this devotion to truth is seen purified from the failings which elsewhere seem its natural accompaniments; when the hero is seen holy, harmless, and undefiled as the sage; when no regrets need mingle with the admiration of the disciple, as delicious a contemplation is afforded to the moral taste as the moral creation yields.
Such was Priestley, the singled-minded martyr, but the meek inquirer; the intrepid confessor, but the humble Christian; the gentle philosopher, the sympathizing friend. ”

“ Then there is a pond of red fire on either hand, and pillars of light rising from it; tall burning stems, throwing out jets of flame on all sides, or emitting a flood of sparks when touched by the night breeze. The succeeding darkness is intense. The horses seem to feel it, for they slacken to a footpace, and the grazing of a wheel against a pinestem, or the zigzag motion of the vehicle, intimates that the driver's eyes have been dazzled. Presently the horses set off again, and the passengers sink once more into silence. ”

“ The finest harvest-field of romance perhaps in the world is the frontier between the United States and Canada. The vowed student of human nature could not do better than take up his abode there, and hear what fugitives and their friends have to tell. There have been no exhibitions of the forces of human character in any political revolution or religious reformation more wonderful and more interesting than may almost daily be seen there. ”

“ In her pre-eminently ugly costume, the long, scanty, dirty woollen garment, with the shabby large bonnet at the back of her head, the perspiration streaming down her dull face, the heavy tread of the splay foot, the slovenly air with which she guides her plough, a more hideous object cannot well be conceived, unless it be the same woman at home, in the negro quarter, as the cluster of slave dwellings is called. ”

“ There is no need to add another to the many eulogies of Madison; I will only mention that the finest of his characteristics appeared to me to be his inexhaustible faith; faith that a well-founded commonwealth may, as our motto declares, be immortal; not only because the people, its constituency, never die, but because the principles of justice in which such a commonwealth originates never die out of the people's heart and mind. ”

“ The heat is far less oppressive in the streets than in the open country, as there is generally a shady side. We were never kept within doors by the heat, though summer weather had fairly set in before our arrival. We made calls, and went shopping and sight-seeing, much as we do in London; and, moreover, walked to dinner visits, to the theatre, and to church, while the sun was blazing as if he had drawn that part of the world some millions of miles nearer to himself than that in which we had been accustomed to live. It is in vain to attempt describing what the moonlight is like. ”

“ Naturally believing that nothing good can come out of England—nothing good for Ireland—they passionately ask that their country shall be left to govern herself. With tears and scornful laughter they beg that nothing may be "done for her" by hands that have ravaged her with gibbet, fire, and sword, but that she may be left to whatever hopefulness may yet be smouldering under the ashes of her despair. Such is the representation of Ireland to American minds. ”

“ Before the clatter of knives has ceased, the stage, with its fresh horses, is at the door; the ladies snatch a final warming while the driver finishes his protracted meal, their eyes being now at liberty to study the apartment, looking round for some other object than the old story, the six presidents who smile from the walls of almost every loghouse in America, and the great map of the United States, with a thumbmark, amounting to an erasure, on the spot of the very territory where this particular loghouse happens to be. ”

“ Nothing can be more chilling to the imagination than the idea of fog, yet I have seen exquisite sights in a night fog; not in a pervading, durable mist, but in such a fog as is common at sea, thick and driving, with spaces through which the moon may shine down, making clusters of silvery islands on every side. This was an entirely new appearance to me, and the white archipelago was a spectacle of great beauty. ”