William Cullen Bryant

“ From almost any of the eminences of the town you see spread below you its magnificent bay, the Frith of Forth, with its rocky islands; and close to the old town rise the lofty summits of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crag, a solitary, silent, mountainous district, without habitations or inclosures, grazed by flocks of sheep. To the west flows Leith-water in its deep valley, spanned by a noble bridge, and the winds of this chilly climate that strike the stately buildings of the new town, along the cliffs that border this glen, come from the very clouds. ”

“ In the evening, as I passed along the narrow sidewalk of the narrow streets, I have been startled at finding myself almost in the midst of a merry party gathered about the window of a brilliantly lighted room, and chattering the soft Spanish of the island in voices that sounded strangely near to me. I have spoken of their languid postures: they love to recline on sofas; their houses are filled with rocking-chairs imported from the United States; they are fond of sitting in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. ”

“ I have been told, however, that the White Mountains in autumn present an aspect more glorious than even the splendors of the perpetual ice of the Alps. All this mighty multitude of mountains, rising from valleys filled with dense forests, have then put on their hues of gold and scarlet, and, seen more distinctly on account of their brightness of color, seem to tower higher in the clear blue of the sky. At that season of the year they are little visited, and only awaken the wonder of the occasional traveller.
It is not necessary to ascend Mount Washington, to enjoy the finest views. ”

“ The prairie-wolf is not so formidable an animal as the name of wolf would seem to denote; he is quite as great a coward as robber, but he is exceedingly mischievous. He never takes full-grown sheep unless he goes with a strong troop of his friends, but seizes young lambs, carries off sucking-pigs, robs the henroost, devours sweet corn in the gardens, and plunders the water-melon patch. A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians. ”

“ For twenty or thirty miles before we reached Lake Erie, the fields of this fertile region looked more and more arid and sun-scorched, and I could not but contrast their appearance with that of the neighborhood of New York, where in a district comparatively sterile, an uncommonly showery season has kept the herbage fresh and deep, and made the trees heavy with leaves. Here, on the contrary, I saw meadows tinged by the drought with a reddish hue, pastures grazed to the roots of the grass, and trees spreading what seemed to me a meagre shade. ”

“ Turning out of the main road, we began to ascend a steep green declivity. To the right of us rose a peaked summit, the name of which our driver told us was Mam Tor. We left the vehicle and climbed to its top, where a wide and beautiful prospect was out-spread before us. To the north lay Edale, a deep and almost circular valley, surrounded by a wavy outline of pastoral hills, bare of trees, but clothed in living green to their summits, except on the northern side of the valley, where, half-way down, they were black with a thick growth of heath. ”

“ At one of these English houses, to which I was admitted by the hospitality of its opulent owner, I admired the variety of shrubs in full flower, which here grow in the open air, rhododendrons of various species, flushed with bloom, azaleas of different hues, one of which I recognized as American, and others of various families and names. In a neighboring field stood a plot of rye-grass two feet in height, notwithstanding the season was yet so early; and a part of it had been already mown for the food of cattle. Yet the people here complain of their climate. ”

“ If I have found my expectations of Italian scenery, in some respects, below the reality, in other respects they have been disappointed. The forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by the buildings, imposing from their architecture or venerable from time, which crown the eminences. But if the hand of man has done something to embellish this region, it has done more to deform it. Not a tree is suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural channel. ”

“ Cleveland stands in that beautiful country without a hill, of which my fellow-passenger spoke—a thriving village yet to grow into a proud city of the lake country. It is built upon broad dusty ways, in which not a pebble is seen in the fat dark earth of the lake shore, and which are shaded with locust-trees, the variety called seed-locust, with crowded twigs and clustered foliage—a tree chosen, doubtless, for its rapid growth, as the best means of getting up a shade at the shortest notice. ”

“ The depth of the valleys, the steepness of the mountain-sides, the variety of aspect shown by their summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamed with the open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain region seen north and south of us, gleaming with many lakes, took me with surprise and astonishment. Imagine the forests to be shorn from half the broad declivities—imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turf and footpaths leading from one to the other, and herds and flocks browzing, and you have Switzerland before you. ”

“ The trees keep their verdure, but I perceive their foliage growing thinner, and when I walk in the Cascine on the other side of the Arno, the rustling of the lizards, as they run among the heaps of crisp leaves, reminds me that the autumn is wearing away, though the ivy which clothes the old elms has put forth a profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur with bees like our orchards in spring. As I look along the declivities of the Appenines, I see the raw earth every day more visible between the ranks of olive-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines. ”

“ Lawrence, draining almost the whole extent of the peninsula, are flowing under my window. On the opposite shore are forests of tall trees, bright in the new verdure of the season. A hunter who has ranged them the whole day, has just arrived in a canoe, bringing with him a deer, which he has killed. I have this moment returned from a ramble with my host through a hammock, he looking for his cows, and I, unsuccessfully, for a thicket of orange-trees. He is something of a florist, and gathered for me, as we went, some of the forest plants, which were in bloom. ”

“ How grand and wild are the mountains that overlook the Mediterranean; how intense was the heat as we wound our way along the galleries of rock cut to form a road; how excellent are the fruits, and how thick the mosquitoes at Nice; how sumptuous are the palaces, how narrow and dark the streets, and how pallid the dames of Genoa; and how beautiful we found our path among the trees overrun with vines as we approached southern Italy, are matters which I will take some other opportunity of relating. On the 12th of September our vetturino set us down safe at the Hotel de l'Europe in Florence. ”

“ They were scentless; the climate which supplies the orange blossom with intense odors exhausts the fragrance of the rose. At nightfall—the night falls suddenly in this latitude—we were again at our hotel.
We passed our Sunday on a sugar estate at the hospitable mansion of a planter from the United States about fifteen miles from Matanzas. The house stands on an eminence, once embowered in trees which the hurricanes have leveled, overlooking a broad valley, where palms were scattered in every direction; for the estate had formerly been a coffee plantation. ”

“ On one side is the path beaten by the feet of the horses who drag the boats, but the other is an irregular bank, covered sometimes with grass and sometimes with shrubs or trees, and sometimes steep with rocks. I was delighted, on my journey to this place, to exchange a seat in a stage-coach, driven over the sandy and dusty road north of Saratoga by a sulky and careless driver, for a station on the top of the canal-packet. The weather was the finest imaginable; the air that blew over the fields was sweet with the odor of clover blossoms, and of shrubs in flower. ”

“ During this visit to New Hampshire, I found myself in a hilly and rocky region, to the east of this place, and in sight of the summit of Monadnock, which, at no great distance from where I was, begins to upheave its huge dark mass above the surrounding country. I arrived, late in the evening, at a dwelling, the door of which was opened to me by two damsels, all health and smiles. In the morning I saw a third sister of the same florid bloom and healthful proportions. ”

“ Two or three days more might have been pleasantly passed among its grand precipices, its winding straits, its remains of a remote and rude antiquity, its little horses, little cows, and little sheep, its sea-fowl, its larks, its flowers, and its hardy and active people. There was an amusing novelty also in going to bed, as we did, by daylight, for at this season of the year, the daylight is never out of the sky, and the flush of early sunset only passes along the horizon from the northwest to the northeast, where it brightens into sunrise. ”

“ One of the most remarkable places in Liverpool, is St. James's Cemetery. In the midst of the populous and bustling city, is a chasm among the black rocks, with a narrow green level at the bottom. It is overlooked by a little chapel. You enter it by an arched passage cut through the living rock, which brings you by a steep descent to the narrow level of which I have spoken, where you find yourself among graves set with flowers and half concealed by shrubbery, while along the rocky sides of the hollow in which you stand, you see tombs or blank arches for tombs which are yet to be excavated. ”

“ So weary had I grown of the perpetual sight of the military uniform, that I longed to escape into Switzerland, where I hoped to see less of it, and it was with great delight that I found myself at Lindau, a border town of Bavaria, on the Bodensee, or Lake of Constance, on the shores of which the boundaries of four sovereignties meet. A steamer took us across the lake, from a wharf covered with soldiers, to Roorschach, in Switzerland, where not a soldier was to be seen. Nobody asked for our passports, nobody required us to submit our baggage to search. ”

“ Sentinels in uniform were walking to and fro, keeping the spectators at a distance from the platform. The heat of the sun was intense, for the sea-breeze had not yet sprung up, but the crowd had begun to assemble. As near to the platform as they could come, stood a group of young girls, two of whom were dressed in white and one was pretty, with no other shade for their dusky faces than their black veils, chatting and laughing and stealing occasional glances at the new-comers. ”