Robert Southey died in March, 1843. Sir Robert Peel, who had obliged

Wordsworth the year before, by transferring the post in the excise,

which he had so long held, to the poet's son, and substituting a

pension for its salary, testified further his respect for the Bard of

Rydal by tendering him the laurel. It was not to be refused. Had the

office been hampered with any demands upon the occupant for popular

lyric, in celebration of notable events, Wordsworth was certainly the

last man to place in it. His frigid nature was incapable of that

prompt enthusiasm, without which, poetry, especially poetry responsive

to some strong emotion momentarily agitating the popular heart, is

lifeless and worthless. Fortunately, there were no such exactions. The

office had risen from its once low estate to be a dignified sinecure.

As such, Wordsworth filled it; and, dying, left it without one

poetical evidence of having worn the wreath.

To him, in May, 1850, succeeded, who, as the most acceptable poet of

the day, could alone rightly succeed, Alfred Tennyson, the actual

Poet-Laureate. Not without opposition. There were those who endeavored

to extinguish the office, and hang up the laurel forever,--and to that

end brought pregnant argument to bear upon government. "The Times" was

more than usually decided in favor of the policy of extinguishment.

Give the salary, it was urged, as a pension to some deserving writer

of verse, whose necessities are exacting; but abolish a title degraded

by association with names and uses so unworthy, as to confer shame,

not honor, on the wearer. The laurel is presumed to be granted to the

ablest living English poet. What vocation have the Tite Barnacles,

red-tapists, vote-mongers, of Downing Street to discriminate and

determine this supreme poetical excellence, in regard to which the

nicest critics, or the most refined and appreciative reading public

may reasonably differ among themselves as widely as the stars? On the

other hand, it was argued, that the laurel had, from its last two

wearers, recovered its lost dignity. They had lent it honor, which it

could not fail to confer upon any survivor, however great his name.

If, then, the old odium had disappeared, why not retain the place for

the sake of the ancient worthies whom tradition had handed down as at

one time or another connected with it? There was rarely difficulty in

selecting from among contemporary poets one of preëminent talent,

whose elevation to the laurel would offend none of his fellows. There

was certainly no difficulty in the present case. There was palpable

evidence that Tennyson was by all admission the hierophant of his

order; and it would be time enough to dispense with the title when a

future occasion should be at a loss to decide among contending

candidates. The latter reasoning prevailed. Tennyson accepted the

laurel, and with it a self-imposed obligation to make occasional

acknowledgments for the gift.

The first opportunity presented itself in the issue of a fresh edition

of his poems, in 1851. To these he prefixed some noble verses,

dedicating the volumes to the Queen, and referring with as much

delicacy as modesty to his place and his predecessor:--

"Victoria,--since your royal grace

To one of less desert allows

This laurel, greener from the brows

Of him that uttered nothing base."--

The next occasion was of a different order. The hero of Waterloo ended

his long life in 1852, and a nation was in mourning. Then, if ever,

poets, whether laurelled or leafless, were called to give eloquent

utterance to the popular grief; and Tennyson, of all the poets, was

looked to for its highest expression. The Threnode of the Laureate was

duly forthcoming. The public was, as it had no right to be,

disappointed. Tennyson's Muse was ever a wild and wilful creature,

defiant of rules, and daringly insubordinate to arbitrary forms. It

could not, with the witling in the play, cap verses with any man. The

moment its tasks were dictated and the form prescribed, that moment

there was ground to expect the self-willed jade to play a jade's

trick, and leave us with no decent results of inspiration. For odes

and sonnets, and other such Procrustean moulds into which poetic

thought is at times cast, Tennyson had neither gift nor liking. When,

therefore, with the Duke's death, came a sudden demand upon his Muse,

and that in shape so solemn as to forbid, as the poet conceived, any

fanciful license of invention, the Pindaric form seemed inevitable;

and that form rendered a fair exhibition of the poet's peculiar genius

out of the question. Strapped up in prescription, and impelled to move

by official impulse, his Pegasus was as awkward as a cart-horse. And

yet men did him the justice to say that his failure out-topped the

success of others.

Far better--indeed, with the animating thrill of the war-trumpet--was

"The Charge of the Light Brigade," and simply because the topic

admitted of whatever novelty of treatment the bias of the bard might

devise. This is the Laureate's most successful attempt at strictly

popular composition. It proves him to possess the stuff of a Tyrtaeus

or a Körner,--something vastly more stirring and stimulating than the

usual staple of

"The dry-tongued laurel's pattering talk."[21]

Howbeit, late may he have call for another war-song!

With the name of Tennyson we reach the term of our Laureate calendar.

Long ages and much perilously dry research must he traverse who shall

enlarge these outlines to the worthier proportions of history. Yet

will the labor not be wholly barren. It will bring him in contact with

all the famous of letters and poetry; he will fight over again

numberless quarrels of authors; he will soar in boundless Pindaric

flights, or sink, sooth to say, in unfathomed deeps of bathos. With

one moral he will be profoundly impressed: Of all the more splendid

results of genius which adorn our language and literature,--for the

literature of the English language is ours,--not one owes its

existence to the laurel; not one can be directly or indirectly traced

to royal encouragement, or the stimulus of salary or stipend. The

laurel, though ever green, and throwing out blossoms now and then of

notable promise, has borne no fruit. We might strike from the language

all that is ascribable solely to the honor and emolument of this

office, without inflicting a serious loss upon letters. The masques of

Jonson would be regretted; a few lines of Tennyson would be missed.

For the rest, we might readily console ourselves. It may certainly be

urged, that the laurel was designed rather as a reward than as a

provocative of merit; but the allegation has become true only within

the last half-century. Antecedently to Southey, it was the

consideration for which return in poetry was demanded,--in the first

instance, a return in dramatic poetry, and then in the formal lyric.

It was put forth as the stimulus to works good in their several kinds,

and it may be justly complained of for never having provoked any good

works. To represent it as a reward commensurate with the merits of

Wordsworth and Tennyson, or even of Southey, is to rate three

first-class names in modern poetry on a level with the names of those

third-rate "poetillos" who, during the eighteenth century, obtained

the same reward for two intolerable effusions yearly. Upon the whole,

therefore, we incline to the opinion that the laurel can no longer

confer honor or profit upon literature. Sack is palatable, and a

hundred pounds are eminently useful; but the arbitrary judgments of

queens and courtiers upon poetical issues are neither useful nor

palatable. The world may, in fact, contrive to content itself, should

King Alfred prove the last of the Laureates.

[Footnote 1: Schol. Vet. ad _Nem. Od._ 5.]

[Footnote 2: Commentators agree, we believe, that there was an error

as to the sum. But we tell the story as we find it.]

[Footnote 3: DRYDEN, _Epistle to Wm. Congreve_, 1693.]

[Footnote 4: The _Threnodia Augustalis_, 1685, where the eulogy is

equitably distributed between the dead Charles and the living James.]

[Footnote 5: Dr. Johnson tells the story of Rowe having applied to

Lord Oxford for promotion, and being asked whether he understood

Spanish. Elated with the prospect of an embassy to Madrid, Rowe

hurried home, shut himself up, and for months devoted himself to the

study of a language the possession of which was to make his fortune.

At length, he reappeared at the Minister's _levée_ and announced

himself a Spanish scholar. "Then," said Lord Oxford, shaking his hand

cordially, "let me congratulate you on your ability to enjoy _Don

Quixote_, in the original." Johnson seems to throw doubt on the story,

because Rowe would not even speak to a Tory, and certainly would not

apply to a Tory minister for advancement. But Oxford was once a Whig,

and was in office as such; and it was probably at that period the

incident occurred.]

[Footnote 6: Battle of the Poets, 1725.]

[Footnote 7:

"Harmonious Cibber entertains

The court with annual birthday strains,

Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,

Where Pope will never show his face,

Where Young must torture his invention

To flatter knaves, or lose his pension."

SWIFT, _Poetry, a Rhapsody,_ 1733.]

[Footnote 8:

"Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;

He sleeps among the dull of ancient days;

Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest,

And high-born Howard, more majestic sire,

With fool of quality completes the choir.

Thou, Cibber! thou his laurel shalt support;

Folly, my son, has still a friend at court."

_Dunciad_, Bk. I.

Warburton, by-the-by, exculpates Eusden from any worse fault, as a

writer, than being too prolix and too prolific.--See Note to

_Dunciad_, Bk. II. 291.]

[Footnote 9: Duck stands at the head of the prodigious school in

English literature. All the poetical bricklayers, weavers, cobblers,

farmer's boys, shepherds, and basket-makers, who have since astonished

their day and generation, hail him as their general father.]

[Footnote 10: The antiquary may be pleased to know that the "Devil"

tavern in Fleet Street, the old haunt of the dramatists, was the place

where the choir of the Chapel Royal gathered to rehearse the Laureate

odes. Hence Pope, at the close of _Dunciad I._,

"Then swells the Chapel-Royal throat;

'God save King Cibber!' mounts in every note.

Familiar White's 'God save King Colley!' cries;

'God save King Colley!' Drury-Lane replies;"]

[Footnote 11:

"On his own works with laurel crowned,

Neatly and elegantly bound,--

For this is one of many rules

With writing Lords and laureate fools,

And which forever must succeed

With other Lords who cannot read,

However destitute of wit,

To make their works for bookcase fit,--

Acknowledged master of those seats,

Cibber his birthday odes repeats."

CHURCHILL, _The Ghost_.]

[Footnote 12: Swift charges Colley with having wronged Grub Street, by

appropriating to himself all the money Britain designed for its

poets:--

"Your portion, taking Britain round,

Was just one annual hundred pound;

Now not so much as in remainder,

Since Cibber brought in an attainder,

Forever fixed by right divine,

A monarch's right, on Grub-Street line."

_Poetry, a Rhapsody_, 1733.]

[Footnote 13: Whatever momentary benefit may result from satire, it is

clear that its influence in the long run is injurious to literature.

The satirist, like a malignant Archimago, creates a false medium,

through which posterity is obliged to look at his contemporaries,--a

medium which so refracts and distorts their images, that it is almost

out of the question to see them correctly. There is no rule, as in

astronomy, by which this refraction may be allowed for and corrected.]

[Footnote 14: London, 1749, 8vo.]

[Footnote 15: Charge to the Poets, 1762.]

[Footnote 16: If the reader cares to hear the best that can be said of

Thomas Warton, let him read the Life of Milton, prefixed by Sir

Egerton Brydges to his edition of the poet. If he has any curiosity to

hear the other side, let him read all that Ritson ever wrote, and Dr.

Charles Symnions, in the Life of Milton, prefixed to the standard

edition of the Prose Works, 1806. Symnions denies to Warton the

possession of taste, learning, or sense. Certainly, to an American,

the character of Joseph Warton, the brother of Thomas, is far more

amiable. Joseph was as liberal as his brother was bigoted. While

Thomas omits no chance of condemning Milton's republicanism, in his

notes to the Minor Poems, Joseph is always disposed to sympathize with

the poet. The same generous temper characterizes his commentary upon

Dryden.]

[Footnote 17: _Sonnet upon the River Lodon_.]

[Footnote 18: Dr. Huddersford's _Salmagundi_.]

[Footnote 19: One of the earlier poems of Alexander Wilson, the

ornithologist, was entitled, _The Laurel Disputed_, and was published

in 1791. We have not met with it; but we apprehend, from title and

date, that it is a _jeu d'esprit_, founded upon the recent

appointment. The poetry of Wilson was characterized by much original

humor.]

[Footnote 20:

"Come to our _fête_, and show again

That pea-green coat, thou pink of men!

Which charmed all eyes, that last surveyed it;

When Brummel's self inquired, 'Who made it?'

When Cits came wondering from the East,

And thought thee Poet Pye at least."

_Two-Penny Post-Bag_, 1812.]

[Footnote 21: TENNYSON, _Maud_.]

WATER-LILIES.

The inconstant April mornings drop showers or sunbeams over the

glistening lake, while far beneath its surface a murky mass disengages

itself from the muddy bottom, and rises slowly through the waves. The

tasselled alder-branches droop above it; the last year's blackbird's

nest swings over it in the grapevine; the newly-opened Hepaticas and

Epigaeas on the neighboring bank peer down modestly to look for it;

the water-skater (Gerris) pauses on the surface near it, casting on

the shallow bottom the odd shadow of his feet, like three pairs of

boxing-gloves; the Notonecta, or water-boatman, rows round and round

it, sometimes on his breast, sometimes on his back; queer caddis-worms

trail their self-made homesteads of leaves or twigs beside it; the

Dytiscus, dorbug of the water, blunders clumsily against it; the

tadpole wriggles his stupid way to it, and rests upon it, meditating

of future frogdom; the passing wild-duck dives and nibbles at it; the

mink and musk-rat brush it with their soft fur; the spotted turtle

slides over it; the slow larvae of gauzy dragon-flies cling sleepily

to its sides and await their change: all these fair or uncouth

creatures feel, through the dim waves, the blessed longing of spring;

and yet not one of them dreams that within that murky mass there lies

a treasure too white and beautiful to be yet intrusted to the waves,

and that for many a day that bud must yearn toward the surface,

before, aspiring above it, as mortals to heaven, it meets the sunshine

with the answering beauty of the Water-Lily.

Days and weeks have passed away; the wild-duck has flown onward, to

dive for his luncheon in some remoter lake; the tadpoles have made

themselves legs, with which they have vanished; the caddis-worms have

sealed themselves up in their cylinders, and emerged again as winged

insects; the dragon-flies have crawled up the water-reeds, and,

clinging with heads upward, (not downward, as strangely described in a

late "North British Review,") have undergone the change which

symbolizes immortality; the world is transformed from spring to

summer; the lily-buds are opened into glossy leaf and radiant flower,

and we have come for the harvest.

We lodged, last night, in the old English phrase, "at the sign of the

Oak and Star." Wishing, not, indeed, like the ancient magicians, to

gather magic berry and bud before sunrise, but at least to see these

treasures of the lake in their morning hour, we camped last night on a

little island, which one tall tree almost covers with its branches,

while a dense undergrowth of young chestnuts and birches fills all the

intervening space, touching the water all around the circular,

shelving shore. Yesterday was hot, but the night was cool, and we

kindled a gypsy fire of twigs, less for warmth than for society. The

first gleam made the dark lonely islet into a cheering home, turned

the protecting tree to a starlit roof, and the chestnut-sprays to

illuminated walls. Lying beneath their shelter, every fresh flickering

of the fire kindled the leaves into brightness and banished into dark

interstices the lake and sky; then the fire died into embers, the

leaves faded into solid darkness in their turn, and water and heavens

showed light and close and near, until fresh twigs caught fire and the

blaze came up again. Rising to look forth, at intervals, during the

night,--for it is the worst feature of a night out-doors, that

sleeping seems such a waste of time,--we watched the hilly and wooded

shores of the lake sink into gloom and glimmer into dawn again, amid

the low plash of waters and the noises of the night.

Precisely at half-past three, a song-sparrow above our heads gave one

liquid trill, so inexpressibly sudden and delicious, that it seemed to

set to music every atom of freshness and fragrance that Nature held;

then the spell was broken, and the whole shore and lake were vocal

with song. Joining in this jubilee of morning, we were early in

motion; bathing and breakfast, though they seemed indisputably in

accordance with the instincts of the Universe, yet did not detain us

long, and we were promptly on our way to Lily Pond. Will the reader

join us?

It is one of those summer days when a veil of mist gradually burns

away before the intense sunshine, and the sultry morning only plays at

coolness, and that with its earliest visitors alone. But we are before

the sunlight, though not before the sunrise, and can watch the pretty

game of alternating mist and shine. Stray gleams of glory lend their

trailing magnificence to the tops of chestnut-trees, floating vapors

raise the outlines of the hills and make mystery of the wooded

islands, and, as we glide through the placid water, we can sing, with

the Chorus in the "Ion" of Euripides, "O immense and brilliant air,

resound with our cries of joy!"

Almost every town has its Lily Pond, dear to boys and maidens, and

partially equalizing, by its annual delights, the presence or absence

of other geographical advantages. Ours is accessible from the larger

lake only by taking the skiff over a narrow embankment, which protects

our fairyland by its presence, and eight distant factories by its dam.

Once beyond it, we are in a realm of dark Lethean water, utterly

unlike the sunny depths of the main lake. Hither the water-lilies have

retreated, to a domain of their own. Darker than these dark waves,

there stand in their bosom hundreds of submerged trees, and dismasted

roots still upright, spreading their vast, uncouth limbs like enormous

spiders beneath the surface. They are remnants of border wars with the

axe, vegetable Witheringtons, still fighting on their stumps, but

gradually sinking into the soft ooze, and ready, perhaps, when a score

of centuries has piled two more strata of similar remains in mud above

them, to furnish foundations for a newer New Orleans; that city having

been lately discovered to be thus supported.

The present decline in business is clear revenue to the water-lilies,

and these waters are higher than usual because the idle factories do

not draw them off. But we may notice, in observing the shores, that

peculiar charm of water, that, whether its quantity be greater or

less, its grace is the same; it makes its own boundary in lake or

river, and where its edge is, there seems the natural and permanent

margin. And the same natural fitness, without reference to mere

quantity, extends to its children. Before us lie islands and

continents of lilies, acres of charms, whole, vast, unbroken surfaces

of stainless whiteness. And yet, as we approach them, every islanded

cup that floats in lonely dignity, apart from the multitude, appears

as perfect in itself, couched in white expanded perfection, its

reflection taking a faint glory of pink that is scarcely perceptible

in the flower. As we glide gently among them, the air grows fragrant,

and a stray breeze flaps the leaves, as if to welcome us. Each

floating flower becomes suddenly a ship at anchor, or rather seems

beating up against the summer wind, in a regatta of blossoms.

Early as it is, the greater part of the flowers are already expanded.

Indeed, that experience of Thoreau's, of watching them open in the

first sunbeams, rank by rank, is not easily obtained, unless perhaps

in a narrow stream, where the beautiful slumberers are more regularly

marshalled. In our lake, at least, they open irregularly, though

rapidly. But, this morning, many linger as buds, while others peer up,

in half-expanded beauty, beneath the lifted leaves, frolicsome as

Pucks or baby-nymphs. As you raise the leaf, in such cases, it is

impossible not to imagine that a pair of tiny hands have upheld it, or

else that the pretty head will dip down again, and disappear. Others,

again, have expanded all but the inmost pair of white petals, and

these spring apart at the first touch of the finger on the stem. Some

spread vast vases of fragrance, six or seven inches in diameter, while

others are small and delicate, with petals like fine lace-work.

Smaller still, we sometimes pass a flotilla of infant leaves, an inch

in diameter. All these grow from the deep, dark water,--and the

blacker it is, the fairer their whiteness shows. But your eye follows

the stem often vainly into those sombre depths, and vainly seeks to

behold Sabrina fair, sitting with her twisted braids of lilies,

beneath the glassy, cool, but not translucent wave. Do not start,

when, in such an effort, only your own dreamy face looks back upon

you, beyond the gunwale of the reflected boat, and you find that you

float double, self and shadow.

Let us rest our paddles, and look round us, while the idle motion

sways our light skiff onward, now half-embayed among the lily-pads,

now lazily gliding over intervening gulfs. There is a great deal going

on in these waters and their fringing woods and meadows. All the

summer long, the pond is bordered with successive walls of flowers. In

early spring emerge the yellow catkins of the swamp-willow, first;

then the long tassels of the graceful alders expand and droop, till

they weep their yellow dust upon the water; then come the

birch-blossoms, more tardily; then the downy leaves and white clusters

of the medlar or shadbush (_Amelanchier Canadensis_ of Gray); these

dropping, the roseate chalices of the mountain-laurel open; as they

fade into melancholy brown, the sweet Azalea uncloses; and before its

last honeyed blossom has trailed down, dying, from the stem, the more

fragrant Clethra starts out above, the button-bush thrusts forth its

merry face amid wild roses, and the Clematis waves its sprays of

beauty. Mingled with these grow, lower, the spiraeas, white and pink,

yellow touch-me-not, fresh white arrowhead, bright blue vervain and

skullcap, dull snakehead, gay monkey-flower, coarse eupatoriums,

milk-weeds, golden-rods, asters, thistles, and a host beside. Beneath,

the brilliant scarlet cardinal-flower begins to palisade the moist

shores; and after its superb reflection has passed away from the

waters, the grotesque witch-hazel flares out its narrow yellow petals

amidst the October leaves, and so ends the floral year. There is not a

week during all these months, when one cannot stand in the boat and

wreathe garlands of blossoms from the shores.

These all crowd around the brink, and watch, day and night, the

opening and closing of the water-lilies. Meanwhile, upon the waters,

our queen keeps her chosen court, nor can one of these mere

land-loving blossoms touch the hem of her garment. In truth, she bears

no sister near her throne. There is but this one species among us,

_Nymphaea odorata_. The beautiful little rose-colored _Nymphaea

sanguinea_, which once adorned the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, was

merely an occasional variety of costume. She has, indeed, an English

half-sister, _Nymphaea alba_, less beautiful, less fragrant, but

keeping more fashionable hours,--not opening (according to Linnaeus)

till seven, nor closing till four. Her humble cousin, the yellow

Nuphar, keeps commonly aloof, as becomes a poor relation, though

created from the selfsame mud,--a fact which Hawthorne has beautifully

moralized. The prouder Nelumbium, a second-cousin, lineal descendant

of the sacred bean of Pythagoras, keeps aloof, through pride, not

humility, and dwells, like a sturdy democrat, in the Far West.

But, undisturbed, the water-lily keeps her fragrant court, with

few attendants. The tall pickerel-weed (Pontederia) is her

gentleman-usher, gorgeous in blue and gold through July, somewhat

rusty in August. The water-shield (Hydropeltis) is chief

maid-of-honor; she is a highborn lady, not without royal blood indeed,

but with rather a bend sinister; not precisely beautiful, but very

fastidious; encased over her whole person with a gelatinous covering,

literally a starched duenna. Sometimes she is suspected of conspiring

to drive her mistress from the throne; for we have observed certain

slow watercourses where the leaves of the water-lily have been almost

wholly replaced by the similar, but smaller, leaves of the

water-shield. More rarely seen is the slender Utricularia, a dainty

maiden, whose light feet scarce touch the water,--with the still more

delicate floating white Water-Ranunculus, and the shy Villarsia, whose

submerged flowers merely peep one day above the surface and then close

again forever. Then there are many humbler attendants, Potamogetons or

pond-weeds. And here float little emissaries from the dominions of

land; for the fallen florets of the Viburnum drift among the

lily-pads, with mast-like stamens erect, sprinkling the water with a

strange beauty, and cheating us with the promise of a new aquatic

flower.

These are the still life of this sequestered nook; but it is in fact a

crowded thoroughfare. No tropic jungle more swarms with busy existence

than these midsummer waters and their bushy banks. The warm and

humming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of

invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous whirring of the great

Libellulae, large almost as swallows, and hawking high in air for

their food. Swift butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz,

grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill notes, sharp as the edges

of the sunbeams. Busy bees go humming past, straight as arrows,

express-freight-trains from one blossoming copse to another. Showy

wasps of many species fume uselessly about, in gallant uniforms,

wasting an immense deal of unnecessary anger on the sultry universe.

Graceful, stingless Sphexes and Ichneumon-flies emulate their bustle,

without their weapons. Delicate lady-birds come and go to the

milkweeds, spotted almost as regularly as if Nature had decided to

number the species, like policemen or hack-drivers, from one to

twenty. Elegant little Lepturae fly with them, so gay and airy, they

hardly seem like beetles. Phryganeae, (_nés_ caddisworms,) laceflies,

and long-tailed Ephemerae flutter more heavily by. On the large

alder-flowers clings the superb _Desmocerus palliatus_, beautiful as a

tropical insect, with his steel-blue armor and his golden cloak

(_pallium_) above his shoulders, grandest knight on this Field of the

Cloth of Gold. The countless fireflies which spangled the evening mist

now only crawl sleepily, daylight creatures, with the lustre buried in

their milky bodies. More wholly children of night, the soft, luxurious

Sphinxes (or hawk-moths) come not here; fine ladies of the insect

world, their home is among gardens and green-houses, late and languid

by day, but all night long upon the wing, dancing in the air with

unwearied muscles till long past midnight, and supping on honey at

last. They come not here; but the nobler butterflies soar above us,

stoop a moment to the water, and then with a few lazy wavings of their

sumptuous wings float far over the oak-trees to the woods they love.

All these hover near the water-lily; but its special parasites are an

elegant beetle (_Donacia metallica_) which keeps house permanently in

the flower, and a few smaller ones which tenant the surface of the

leaves,--larva, pupa, and perfect insect, forty feeding like one, and

each leading its whole earthly career on this floating island of

perishable verdure. The "beautiful blue damsel-flies" alight also in

multitudes among them, so fearless that they perch with equal

readiness on our boat or paddle, and so various that two adjacent

ponds will sometimes be haunted by two distinct sets of species. In

the water, among the leaves, little shining whirlwigs wheel round and

round, fifty joining in the dance, till, at the slightest alarm, they

whirl away to some safer ballroom, and renew the merriment. On every

floating log, as we approach it, there is a convention of turtles,

sitting in calm debate, like mailed barons, till, as we approach, they

plump into the water, and paddle away for some subaqueous Runnymede.

Beneath, the shy and stately pickerel vanishes at a glance, shoals of

minnows glide, black and bearded pouts frisk aimlessly, soft

water-lizards hang poised without motion, and slender pickerel-frogs

cease occasionally their submerged croaking, and, darting to the

surface with swift vertical strokes, gulp a mouthful of fresh air, and

down again to renew the moist soliloquy.

Time would fail us to tell of the feathered life around us,--the

blackbirds that build securely in these thickets, the stray swallows

that dip their wings in the quiet waters, and the kingfishers that

still bring, as the ancients fabled, halcyon days. Yonder stands,

against the shore, a bittern, motionless in that wreath of mist which

makes his long-legged person almost as dim as his far-off booming by

night. There poises a hawk, before sweeping down to some chosen bough

in the dense forest; and there fly a pair of blue-jays, screaming,

from tree to tree. As for wild quadrupeds, the race is almost passed

away. Far to the North, indeed, the great moose still browses on the

lily-pads, and the shy beaver nibbles them; but here the few lingering

four-footed creatures only haunt, but do not graze upon these floating

pastures. Eyes more favored than ours may yet chance to spy an otter

in this still place; there by the shore are the small footprints of a

mink; that dark thing disappearing in the waters, yonder, a soft mass

of drowned fur, is a "musquash." Later in the season, a mound of earth

will be his winter dwelling-place; and those myriad muscle-shells at

the water's edge are the remnant of his banquets,--once banquets for

the Indians, too.

But we must return to our lilies. There is no sense of wealth like

floating in this archipelago of white and green. The emotions of

avarice become almost demoralizing. Every flower bears a fragrant

California in its bosom, and you feel impoverished at the thought of

leaving one behind. But after the first half-hour of eager grasping,

one becomes fastidious, rather scorns those on which the wasps and

flies have alighted, and seeks only the stainless. But handle them

tenderly, as if you loved them. Do not grasp at the open flower as if

it were a peony or a hollyhock, for then it will come off, stalkless,

in your hand, and you will cast it blighted upon the water; but coil

your thumb and second finger affectionately around it, press the

extended forefinger firmly to the stem below, and with one steady pull

you will secure a long and delicate stalk, fit to twine around the

graceful head of your beloved, as the Hindoo goddess of beauty

encircled with a Lotus the brow of Rama.

Consider the lilies. All over our rural watercourses, at midsummer,

float these cups of snow. They are Nature's symbols of coolness. They

suggest to us the white garments of their Oriental worshippers. They

come with the white roses and prepare the way for the white lilies of

the garden. The white doe of Rylstone and Andrew Marvell's fawn might

fitly bathe amid their beauties. Yonder steep bank slopes down to the

lake-side, one solid mass of pale pink laurel, but, once upon the

water, a purer tint prevails. The pink fades into a lingering flush,

and the white creature floats peerless, set in green without and gold

within. That bright circle of stamens is the very ring with which

Doges once wedded the Adriatic, Venice has lost it, but it dropped

into the water-lily's bosom, and there it rests forever. So perfect in

form, so redundant in beauty, so delicate, so spotless, so

fragrant,--what presumptuous lover ever dared, in his most enamored

hour, to liken his mistress to a water-lily? No human Blanche or

Lilian was ever so fair as that.

The water-lily comes of an ancient and sacred family of white-robed

priests. They assisted at the most momentous religious ceremonies,

from the beginning of recorded time. The Egyptian Lotus was a sacred

plant; it was dedicated to Harpocrates and to the god Nofr

Atmoo,--Nofr meaning _good_, whence the name of our yellow lily,

Nuphar. But the true Egyptian flower was _Nymphaea Lotus_, though

_Nymphaea caerulea_, Moore's "blue water-lilies," can be traced on the

sculptures also. It was cultivated in tanks in the gardens; it was the

chief material for festal wreaths; a single bud hung over the forehead

of many a queenly dame; and the sculptures represent the weary flowers

as dropping from the heated hands of belles, in the later hours of the

feast. Rock softly on the waters, fair lilies! your Eastern kindred

have rocked on the stormier bosom of Cleopatra. The Egyptian Lotus

was, moreover, the emblem of the sacred Nile,--as the Hindoo species,

of the sacred Ganges; and both the one and the other was held the

symbol of the creation of the world from the waters. The sacred bull

Apis was wreathed with its garlands; there were niches for water, to

place it among tombs; it was carved in the capitals of columns; it was

represented on plates and vases; the sculptures show it in many sacred

uses, even as a burnt-offering; Isis holds it; and the god Nilus still

binds a wreath of water-lilies around the throne of Memnon.

From Egypt the Lotus was carried to Assyria, and Layard found it among

fir-cones and honeysuckles on the later sculptures of Nineveh. The

Greeks dedicated it to the nymphs, whence the name _Nymphaea_. Nor did

the Romans disregard it, though the Lotus to which Ovid's nymph Lotis

was changed, _servato nomine_, was a tree, and not a flower. Still

different a thing was the enchanted stem of the Lotus-eaters of

Herodotus, which prosaic botanists have reduced to the _Zizyphus

Lotus_ found by Mungo Park, translating also the yellow Lotus-dust

into a mere "farina, tasting like sweet gingerbread."

But in the Lotus of Hindostan we find our flower again, and the

Oriental sacred books are cool with water-lilies. Open the Vishnu

Purana at any page, and it is a _Sortes Lilianae_. The orb of the

earth is Lotus-shaped, and is upborne by the tusks of Vesava, as if he

had been sporting in a lake where the leaves and blossoms float.

Brahma, first incarnation of Vishnu, creator of the world, was born

from a Lotus; so was Sri or Lakshmu, the Hindoo Venus, goddess of

beauty and prosperity, protectress of womanhood, whose worship guards

the house from all danger. "Seated on a full-blown Lotus, and holding

a Lotus in her hand, the goddess Sri, radiant with beauty, rose from

the waves." The Lotus is the chief ornament of the subterranean Eden,

Patala, and the holy mountain Meru is thought to be shaped like its

seed-vessel, larger at summit than at base. When the heavenly Urvasi

fled from her earthly spouse, Purúvavas, he found her sporting with

four nymphs of heaven, in a lake beautified with the Lotus. When the

virtuous Prahlada was burned at the stake, he cried to his cruel

father, "The fire burneth me not, and all around I behold the face of

the sky, cool and fragrant with beds of Lotus-flowers!" Above all, the

graceful history of the transformations of Krishna is everywhere hung

with these fresh chaplets. Every successive maiden whom the deity

wooes is Lotus-eyed, Lotus-mouthed, or Lotus-cheeked, and the youthful

hero wears always a Lotus-wreath. Also "the clear sky was bright with

the autumnal moon, and the air fragrant with the perfume of the wild

water-lily, in whose buds the clustering bees were murmuring their

song."

Elsewhere we find fuller details. "In the primordial state of the

world, the rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed on the

bosom of the Eternal. Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a

Lotus-leaf, floated upon the waters, and all that he was able to

discern with his eight eyes was water and darkness. Amid scenes so

ungenial and dismal, the god sank into a profound reverie, when he

thus soliloquized: 'Who am I? Whence am I?' In this state of

abstraction Brahma continued during the period of a century and a half

of the gods, without apparent benefit or a solution of his inquiries,

a circumstance which caused him great uneasiness of mind." It is a

comfort, however, to know, that subsequently a voice came to him, on

which he rose, "seated himself upon the Lotus in an attitude of

contemplation, and reflected upon the Eternal, who soon appeared to

him in the form of a man with a thousand heads": a questionable

exchange for his Lotus-solitude.

This is Brahminism; but the other great form of Oriental religion has

carried the same fair symbol with it. One of the Bibles of the

Buddhists is named "The White Lotus of the Good Laer." A pious

Nepaulese bowed in reverence before a vase of lilies which perfumed

the study of Sir William Jones. At sunset in Thibet, the French

missionaries tell us, every inhabitant of every village prostrates

himself in the public square, and the holy invocation, "Oh, the gem in

the Lotus!" goes murmuring over hill and valley, like the sound of

many bees. It is no unmeaning phrase, but an utterance of ardent

desire to be absorbed into that Brahma whose emblem is the sacred

flower. The mystic formula or "mani" is imprinted on the pavement of

the streets, it floats on flags from the temples, and the wealthy

Buddhists maintain sculptor-missionaries, Old Mortalities of the

water-lily, who, wandering to distant lands, carve the blessed words

upon cliff and stone.

Having got thus far into Orientalism, we can hardly expect to get out

again without some slight entanglement in philology. Lily-pads. Whence

_pads_? No other leaf is identified with that singular monosyllable.

Has our floating Lotus-leaf any connection with padding, or with a

footpad? with the ambling pad of an abbot, or a paddle, or a paddock,

or a padlock? with many-domed Padua proud, or with St. Patrick? Is the

name derived from the Anglo-Saxon _paad_ or _petthian_, or the Greek

[Greek: pateo]? All the etymologists are silent; Tooke and Richardson

ignore the problem; and of the innumerable pamphlets in the Worcester

and Webster Controversy, loading the tables of school-committee-men,

not one ventures to grapple with the lily-pad.

But was there ever a philological trouble for which the Sanscrit could

not afford at least a conjectural cure? A dictionary of that extremely

venerable tongue is an ostrich's stomach, which can crack the hardest

etymological nut. The Sanscrit name for the Lotus is simply _Padma_.

The learned Brahmins call the Egyptian deities Padma Devi, or

Lotus-Gods; the second of the eighteen Hindoo Puranas is styled the

Padma Purana, because it treats of the "epoch when the world was a

golden Lotus"; and the sacred incantation which goes murmuring through

Thibet is "Om mani padme houm." It would be singular, if upon these

delicate floating leaves a fragment of our earliest vernacular has

been borne down to us, so that here the schoolboy is more learned than

the _savans_.

This lets us down easily to the more familiar uses of this plant

divine. By the Nile, in early days, the water-lily was good not merely

for devotion, but for diet. "From the seeds of the Lotus," said Pliny,

"the Egyptians make bread." The Hindoos still eat the seeds, roasted

in sand; also the stalks and roots. In South America, from the seeds

of the Victoria (_Nymphaea Victoria_, now _Victoria Regia_) a farina

is made, preferred to that of the finest wheat,--Bonpland even

suggesting to our reluctant imagination Victoria-pies. But the

European species are used, so far as we know, only in dyeing, and as

food (if the truth be told) of swine. Our own water-lily is rather

more powerful in its uses; the root contains tannin and gallic acid,

and a decoction of it "gives a black precipitate, with sulphate of

iron." It graciously consents to become an astringent, and a styptic,

and a poultice, and, banished from all other temples, still lingers in

those of AEsculapius.

The botanist also finds his special satisfactions in our flower. It

has some strange peculiarities of structure. So loose is the internal

distribution of its tissues, that it was for some time held doubtful

to which of the two great vegetable divisions, exogenous or

endogenous, it belonged. Its petals, moreover, furnish the best

example of the gradual transition of petals into stamens,

--illustrating that wonderful law of identity which is the

great discovery of modern science. Every child knows this peculiarity

of the water-lily, but the extent of it seems to vary with season and

locality, and sometimes one finds a succession of flowers almost

entirely free from this confusion of organs.

Our readers may not care to know that the order of Nymphaeaceae

"differs from Ranunculaceae in the consolidation of its carpels, from

Papaveraceae in the placentation not being parietal, and from

Nelumbiaceae in the want of a large truncated disc containing

monospermous achenia"; but they may like to know that the water-lily

has relations on land, in all gradations of society, from poppy to

magnolia, and yet does not conform its habits precisely to those of

any of them. Its great black roots, sometimes as large as a man's arm,

form a network at the bottom of the water. Its stem floats, an airy

four-celled tube, adapting itself to the depth, though never stiff in

shallows, like the stalk of the yellow lily: and it contracts and

curves when seed-time approaches, though not so ingeniously as the

spiral threads of the European Vallisneria, which uncoil to let the

flowers rise to the surface, and then cautiously retract, that the

seeds may ripen on the very bottom of the lake. The leaves show

beneath the magnifier beautiful adaptations of structure. They are

not, like those of land-plants, constructed with deep veins to receive

the rain and conduct it to the stem, but are smooth and glossy, and of

even surface. The leaves of land-vegetation have also thousands of

little breathing-pores, principally on the under side: the apple-leaf,

for instance, has twenty-four thousand to a square inch. But here they

are fewer; they are wholly on the upper side, and, whereas in other

cases they open or shut according to the moisture of the atmosphere,

here the greedy leaves, secure of moisture, scarcely deign to close

them. Nevertheless, even these give some recognition of hygrometric

necessities, and, though living on the water, and not merely

christened with dewdrops like other leaves, but baptized by immersion

all the time, they are yet known to suffer in drought and to take

pleasure in the rain.

We have spoken of the various kindred of the water-lily; but we must

not leave our fragrant subject without due mention of its most

magnificent, most lovely relative, at first claimed even as its twin

sister, and classed as a Nymphaea. We once lived near neighbor to a

Victoria Regia. Nothing, in the world of vegetable existence, has such

a human interest. The charm is not in the mere size of the plant,

which disappoints everybody, as Niagara does, when tried by that sole

standard. The leaves of the Victoria, indeed, attain a diameter of six

feet; the largest flowers, of twenty-three inches,--less than four

times the size of the largest of our water-lilies. But it is not the

mere looks of the Victoria, it is its life which fascinates. It is not

a thing merely of dimensions, nor merely of beauty, but a creature of

vitality and motion. Those vast leaves expand and change almost

visibly. They have been known to grow half an inch an hour, eight

inches a day. Rising one day from the water, a mere clenched mass of

yellow prickles, a leaf is transformed the next day to a crimson

salver, gorgeously tinted on its upturned rim. Then it spreads into a

raft of green, armed with long thorns, and supported by a frame-work

of ribs and cross-pieces, an inch thick, and so substantial, that the

Brazil Indians, while gathering the seed-vessels, place their young

children on the leaves;--_yrupe_, or water-platter, they call the

accommodating plant. But even these expanding leaves are not the glory

of the Victoria; the glory is in the opening of the flower.

We have sometimes looked in, for a passing moment, at the green-house,

its dwelling-place, during the period of flowering,--and then stayed

for more than an hour, unable to leave the fascinating scene. After

the strange flower-bud has reared its dark head from the placid tank,

moving it a little, uneasily, like some imprisoned water-creature, it

pauses for a moment in a sort of dumb despair. Then trembling again,

and collecting all its powers, it thrusts open, with an indignant

jerk, the rough calyx-leaves, and the beautiful disrobing begins. The

firm, white, central cone, first so closely infolded, quivers a

little, and swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hundred petals

detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the

water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many

moments of repose follow,--you watch,--another petal trembles,

detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and

another. Each movement is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so

human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and

you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that peerless

privacy. As petal by petal slowly opens, there still stands the

central cone of snow, a glacier, an alp, a jungfrau, while each

avalanche of whiteness seems the last. Meanwhile, a strange rich odor

fills the air, and Nature seems to concentrate all fascinations and

claim all senses for this jubilee of her darling.

So pass the enchanted moments of the evening, till the fair thing

pauses at last, and remains for hours unchanged. In the morning, one

by one, those white petals close again, shutting all their beauty in,

and you watch through the short sleep for the period of waking. Can

this bright transfigured creature appear again, in the same chaste

beauty? Your fancy can scarcely trust it, fearing some disastrous

change; and your fancy is too true a prophet. Come again, after the

second day's opening, and you start at the transformation which one

hour has secretly produced. Can this be the virgin Victoria,--this

thing of crimson passion, this pile of pink and yellow, relaxed,

expanded, voluptuous, lolling languidly upon the water, never to rise

again? In this short time every tint of every petal is transformed; it

is gorgeous in beauty, but it is "Hebe turned to Magdalen."

But our rustic water-lily, our innocent Nymphaea, never claiming such

a hot-house glory, never drooping into such a blush, blooms on

placidly in the quiet waters, till she modestly folds her leaves for

the last time, and bows her head beneath the surface forever. Next

year she lives for us only in her children, fair and pure as herself.

Nay, not alone in them, but also in memory. The fair vision will not

fade from us, though the paddle has dipped its last crystal drop from

the waves, and the boat is drawn upon the shore. We may yet visit many

lovely and lonely places,--meadows thick with violet, or the homes of

the shy Rhodora, or those sloping forest-haunts where the slight

Linnaea hangs its twin-born heads,--but no scene will linger on our

vision like this annual Feast of the Lilies. On scorching mountains,

amid raw prairie-winds, or upon the regal ocean, the white pageant

shall come back to us again, with all the luxury of summer heats, and

all the fragrant coolness that can relieve them. We shall fancy

ourselves again among these fleets of anchored lilies,--again, like

Urvasi, sporting amid the Lake of Lotuses.

For that which is remembered is often more vivid than that which is

seen. The eye paints better in the presence, the heart in the absence,

of the object most dear. "He who longs after beautiful Nature can best

describe her," said Bettine; "he who is in the midst of her loveliness

can only lie down and enjoy." It enhances the truth of the poet's

verses, that he writes them in his study. Absence is the very air of

passion, and all the best description is _in memoriam_. As with our

human beloved, when the graceful presence is with us, we cannot

analyze or describe, but merely possess, and only after its departure

can it be portrayed by our yearning desires; so is it with Nature:

only in losing her do we gain the power to describe her, and we are

introduced to Art, as we are to Eternity, by the dropping away of our

companions.

FIFTY AND FIFTEEN.

With gradual gleam the day was dawning,

Some lingering stars were seen,

When swung the garden-gate behind us,--

He fifty, I fifteen.

The high-topped chaise and old gray pony

Stood waiting in the lane:

Idly my father swayed the whip-lash,

Lightly he held the rein.

The stars went softly back to heaven,

The night-fogs rolled away,

And rims of gold and crowns of crimson

Along the hill-tops lay.

That morn, the fields, they surely never

So fair an aspect wore;

And never from the purple clover

Such perfume rose before.

O'er hills and low romantic valleys

And flowery by-roads through,

I sang my simplest songs, familiar,

That he might sing them too.

Our souls lay open to all pleasure,--

No shadow came between;

Two children, busy with their leisure,--

He fifty, I fifteen.

* * * * *

As on my couch in languor, lonely,

I weave beguiling rhyme,

Comes back with strangely sweet remembrance

That far-removed time.

The slow-paced years have brought sad changes,

That morn and this between;

And now, on earth, my years are fifty,

And his, in heaven, fifteen.

ILLINOIS IN SPRING-TIME: WITH A LOOK AT CHICAGO.

I remember very well, that, when I studied the "Arabian Nights," with

a devotion which I have since found it difficult to bestow on the

perusal of better books, the thing that most excited my imagination

was the enchanted locomotive carpet, granted by one of the amiable

genii to his favorite, to whom it gave the power of being in a moment

where nobody expected him, paying visits at the most unfashionable

hours, and making himself generally ubiquitous when interest or

curiosity prompted. The other wonders were none of them inexhaustible.

Donkeys that talked after their heads were cut off, just as well as

some donkeys do with them on,--old cats turned into beautiful

damsels,--birds that obligingly carried rings between parted

lovers,--one soon had enough of. Caves full of gold and silver, and

lighted by gems resplendent as the stars, were all very well, but soon

tired. After your imagination had selected a few rings and bracelets,

necklaces and tiaras, and carried off one or two chests full of gold,

what could it do with the rest,--especially as they might vanish or

turn to pebbles or hazel-nuts in your caskets?

But flying carpets! They could never tire. You seated yourself just in

the middle, in the easiest possible attitude, and at a wish you were

off, (not off the carpet, but off this work-a-day world,) careering

through sunny fields of air with the splendid buoyancy of the eagle,

steering your intelligent vehicle by a mere thought, and descending,

gently as a snow-flake, to garden-bower or palace-window, moonlit

kiosk or silent mountain-peak, as whim suggested or affairs urged.

This was magic indeed, and worthy the genii of any age.

The sense of reality with which I accepted this wonder of wonders has

furnished forth many a dream, sleeping and waking, since those days;

and it is no uncommon thing for me, even now, to be sailing through

the air, feeling its soft waves against my face, and the delicious

refreshment of the upper ether in my breast, only to wake as if I had

dropped into bed with a celerity that made the arrival upon earth

anything but pleasant. I am not sure but there is some reality in

these flights, after all. These aërial journeys may be foretastes of

those we shall make after we are freed from the incumbrance of

avoirdupois. I hope so, at least.

Yet there are good things of the kind here below, too. After all, what

were a magic carpet that could carry a single lucky wight,--at best,

but a species of heavenly sulky,--compared with a railroad train that

speeds along hundreds of men, women, and children, over land and

water, with any amount of heavy baggage, as well as a boundless extent

of crinoline? And if this equipage, gift of genii of our age, seem to

lack some of the celerity and secrecy which attended the voyagers of

the flying carpet, suppose we add the power of whispering to a friend

a thousand miles off the inmost thoughts of the heart, the most

desperate plans, the most dangerous secrets! Do not the two powers

united leave the carpet immeasurably behind?

Shakspeare is said, in those noted lines,--

"Dear as the ruddy drops

That visit this sad heart,"

to have anticipated the discovery of the circulation of the blood: did

not the writers of the Oriental stories foresee rail and telegraph,

and describe them in their own tropical style?

It is often said, that, although medical science leaves us pretty much

as it found us with regard to the days of the years of our pilgrimage,

and has as yet, with all its discoveries, done little towards

prolonging "this pleasing, anxious being," yet the material

improvements of our day do in effect lengthen mortal life for us. And

truly, what must Indian life have been worth, when it took a month to

cut down a tree with a stone hatchet, and when the shaping of a canoe

was the work of a year? When two hundred miles of travel consumed a

week's time, every two hundred miles' journey was worth a week's life;

and if we accept the idea of a certain celebrated character, (not

"Quintus Curtius," but Geoffrey Crayon, I believe,) that the time we

spend in journeying is just so much subtracted from our little span of

days, what a fearful loss of life must have resulted from our old

modes of locomotion! And yet we inconsiderately grumble at an

occasional smash-up! So easily are we spoiled!

There are grave doubts, however, in some minds, whether our present

celerity of travel be wholly a gain upon the old methods. It must

depend upon circumstances. If agreeable people virtually live longer

now, so do bores, cheats, slanderers, hypocrites, and people who eat

onions and chew tobacco; and the rail enables these to pursue their

victims with inevitable, fatal swiftness.

Some hold that the pleasure of travelling is even impaired by this

increase of speed. There is such a thing as fatal facility. As well

eat a condensed dinner, or hear a concert in one comprehensive crash,

ear-splitting and soul-confounding, as see miles of landscape at a

glance. Willis says, travelling on an English railway is equivalent to

having so many miles of green damask unrolled before your weary eyes.

And one may certainly have too much of a good thing.

But, instead of discussing railroads in general,--too grand a theme

for me,--let me say that nobody can persuade me it is not delightful

to fly over ground scarcely yet trodden by the foot of man; to

penetrate, with the most subtle resources of inventive art, the

recesses in which Nature has enshrined herself most privately,--her

dressing-room, as it were, where we find her in her freshness, before

man-milliners have marred her beauty by attempts at improvement. The

contrast between that miracle of art, a railroad-train at full speed,

and a wide, lonely prairie, or a dusky forest, leafless, chilly, and

silent,--save for the small tinkling of streams beginning to break

from their frosty limits,--is one of the most striking in all the wide

range of rural effects. It reminds me, though perhaps unaccountably to

some, of Browning's fine image,--

"And ever and anon some bright white shaft

Burnt through the pine-tree roof, here burnt

and there,

As if God's messenger through the close

wood-screen

Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture."

Even where fields have begun to be tilled and houses and barns to be

built, the scared flying of domestic animals at sound of the terrific

visitor,--the resistless chariot of civilization with scythed axles

mowing down ignorance and prejudice as it whirls along,--tells a whole

story of change and wonder. We can almost see the shadows of the past

escaping into the dim woods, or flitting over the boundless prairie,

shivering at the fearful whistle, and seeking shelter from the wind of

our darting.

The season for this romantic pleasure of piercing primeval Nature on

the wings of subtilest Art is rapidly drawing to a close. How few

penetrable regions can we now find where the rail-car is a novelty!

The very cows and horses, in most places, know when to expect it, and

hardly vouchsafe a sidelong glance as they munch their green dinner. A

railroad to the Pacific may give excitement of this kind a somewhat

longer date, but those who would enjoy the sensation on routes already

in use must begin their explorings at once. There is no time to be

lost. If we much longer spend all our summers in beating the

changeless paths of the Old World, our chance for the fresh but

fleeting delight I have been speaking of will have passed by, never to

return. It were unwise to lose this, one of the few remaining avenues

to a new sensation. Europe will keep; but the prairies will not, the

woods will not, hardly the rivers. Already the flowery waving oceans

of Illinois begin to abound in ships, or what seem such,--houses

looming up from the horizon, like three-masters sometimes, sometimes

schooners, and again little tentative sloops. These are creeping

nearer and nearer together, filling and making commonplace those

lovely deserts where the imagination can still find wings, and

world-wearied thought a temporary repose. Where neighbors were once

out of beacon-sight, they are now within bell-sound; and however

pleasant this may be for the neighbors, it is not so good for the

traveller, especially the traveller who has seen Europe. Only think of

a virgin forest or prairie, after over-populated Belgium or finished

England! Europeans understand the thing, and invariably rush for the

prairies; but we Americans, however little we may have seen of either

world, care little for the wonders of our own. Yet, when we go abroad,

we cannot help blushing to acknowledge that we have not seen the most

striking features of our own country. I speak from experience. Scott,

describing the arid wastes of the Hebrides,--

"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"

and swept bare by wintry-cold sea-breezes, said,--

"Yes! 'twas sublime, but sad; the loneliness

Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye."

But how different the loneliness of a soft-waving prairie,--soft even

before the new grass springs; soft in outline, in coloring, in its

whispering silence! Nothing sad or harsh; no threat or repulsion; only

mild hope, and promise of ease and abundance. Whether the glad flames

sport amid the long dry grass of last year, or the plough turn up a

deep layer of the exhaustless soil, or flocks of prairie-chickens fly

up from every little valley, images of life, joy, and plenty belong to

the scene. The summer flowers are not more cheerful than the spring

blaze, the spring blackness of richness, or the spring whirr and

flutter. The sky is alive with the return of migratory birds, swinging

back and forth, as if hesitating where to choose, where all is good.

Frogs hold noisy jubilees, ("Anniversary Meetings," perhaps,)--very

hoarse, and no wonder, considering their damp lodging,--but singing,

in words more intelligible than those of the opera-choruses, "Winter's

gone! Spring's come! No, it isn't! Yes, it is!"--and the Ayes have it.

The woodpecker's hammer helps the field-music, wherever he can find a

tree. He seems to know the carpenter is coming, and he makes the most

of his brief season. All is life, movement, freedom, joy. Not on the

very Alps, where their black needles seem to dart into the blue

depths, or snow-fields to mingle with the clouds, is the immediate,

vital sympathy of Earth with Heaven more evident and striking.

The comparative ease with which prairie regions are prepared for the

advent of the great steam-car is exactly typical of the facilities

which they offer to other particulars of civilization. As the

smoothing of the prairie path, preparatory to railway speed, is but

short work, compared with the labor required in grading and levelling

mountainous tracts for the same purpose, so the introduction of all

that makes life desirable goes on with unexampled rapidity where the

land requires no felling of heavy timber to make it ready for the

plough, and where the soil is rich to such a depth that no man fears

any need of new fertilizing in his life-time or his son's. We observe

this difference everywhere in prairiedom; and it is perhaps this

thought, this close interweaving of marked outward aspect with great

human interests, that gives the prairie country its air of peculiar

cheerfulness. To man the earth was given; for him its use and its

beauty were created; it is his idea which endows it with expression,

whether savage or kindly. Rocks and mountains suggest the force

required to conquer difficulties, and the power with which the lord of

creation is endowed to subdue them; and the chief charm and interest

of such regions is derived, consciously or unconsciously, from this

suggestion. Prairie images are more domestic, quiet, leisurely. No

severe, wasting labor is demanded before corn and milk for wife and

little ones are wrung from reluctant clods. No danger is there of sons

or daughters being obliged to quit their homes and roam over foreign

lands for a precarious and beggarly subsistence. No prairie-boy will

ever carry about a hand-organ and a monkey, or see his sister yoked to

the plough, by the side of horse or ox. Blessed be God that there are

still places where grinding poverty is unfelt and unfeared! "Riches

fineless" belong to these deep, soft fields, and they become

picturesque by the thought, as the sea becomes so by the passing of a

ship, and the burning desert by the foot-print of a traveller or the

ashes of his fire.

It was in spring weather, neither cold nor warm, now and then shiny,

and again spattering with a heavy shower, or misty under a warm, slow

rain,--the snow still lying in little streaks under shady

ridges,--that I first saw the prairies of Illinois. Everybody--kind

everybody!--said, "Why didn't you come in June?" But I, not being a

bird of the air, who alone travels at full liberty, the world before

him where to choose and Providence his guide, cared not to answer this

friendly query, but promised to be interested in the spring aspect of

the prairies, after my fashion, as sincerely as more fastidious

travellers can be in the summer one. It is very well to be prepared

when company is expected, but friends may come at any time. "Brown

fields and pastures bare" have no terrors for me. Green is gayer, but

brown softer. Blue skies are not alone lovely; gray ones set them

off--Rain enhances shine. Mud, to be sure;--but then railroads are the

Napoleons of mud. Planks and platforms quench it completely. One may

travel through tenacious seas of it without smirching one's boot-heel.

There is even a feeling of triumph as we see it lying sulky and

impotent on either side, while we bowl along dry-shod. When Noah and

his family came out of the Ark, and found all "soft with the Deluge,"

it was very different. The prospect must have been discouraging. I

thought of it as we went through, or rather over, the prairies. But if

there had been in those days an Ararat Central, with good "incline"

and stationary engine, they need not have sent out dove or raven, but

might have started for home as soon as the rails shone in the sun and

they could get the Ark on wheels. It would have been well to move

carefully, to be sure; and it is odd to think what a journey they

might have had, now and then stopping or switching-off because of a

dead Mastodon across the track, or a panting Leviathan lashing out,

thirstily, with impertinent tail,--to say nothing of sadder sights and

impediments.

There were only pleasant reminiscences of the Great Deluge as we flew

along after a little one. Happy we! in a nicely-cushioned car,

berthed, curtained, and, better than all, furnished with the "best

society," _sans_ starch, _sans_ crinoline; the gentlemen sitting on

their hats as much as they pleased, and the ladies giving curls and

collars the go-by, all in tip-top humor to be pleased. I could imagine

but one improvement to our equipage,--that a steam-organ attached to

it should have played, very softly, Felicien David's lovely level

music of "The Desert," as we bowled along. There were long glittering

side-streams between us and the black or green prairie,--streams with

little ripples on their faces, as the breeze kissed them in passing,

and now and then a dimple, under the visit of a vagrant new-born

beetle. To call such shining waters mud or puddles did not accord with

the spirit of the hour; so we fancied them the "mirroring waters" of

the poet, and compared them to fertilizing Nile,--whose powers,

indeed, they share, to some extent. By their sides _ought_ to be

planted willows and poplars, and alders of half a dozen kinds, but are

not yet. All in good time. Thirsty trees would drink up superfluous

moisture, and in return save fuel by keeping off sweeping winds, and

money by diverting heavy snows, those Russian enemies to the Napoleon

rail, and by preserving embankments, to which nothing but interlacing

roots can give stability. Rows of trees bordering her railroads would

make Illinois look more like France, which in many respects she

already resembles.

The haze or _mirage_ of the prairies is wonderfully fantastic and

deceptive. The effect which seamen call _looming_ is one of the

commonest of its forms. This brings real but distant objects into

view, and dignifies them in size and color, till we can take a

farm-house for a white marble palace, and leafless woods with sunset

clouds behind them for enchanted gardens hung with golden fruit. But

the most gorgeous effects are, as is usual with air-castles, created

out of nothing,--that is, nothing more substantial than air, mist, and

sun- or moon- or star-beams. Fine times the imagination has, riding on

purple and crimson rays, and building Islands of the Blest among

vapors that have just risen from the turbid waters of the Mississippi!

No Loudon or Downing is invoked for the contriving or beautifying of

these villa-residences and this landscape-gardening. Genius comes with

inspiration, as inspiration does with genius; and we are our own

architects and draughtsmen, rioting at liberty with Nature's splendid

palette at our command, and no thought of rule or stint. Why should we

not, in solider things, derive more aid, like the poor little

"Marchioness" of Dickens, from this blessed power of imagination?

Those who do so are always laughed at as unpractical; but are they not

most truly practical, if they find and use the secret of gilding over,

and so making beautiful or tolerable, things in themselves mean or

sad?

Once upon a time, then, the great State of Illinois was all under

water;--at least, so say the learned and statistical. If you doubt it,

go count the distinctly-marked ridges in the so-called bluffs, and see

how many years or ages this modern deluge has been subsiding. Where

its remains once lay sweltering under the hot sun, and sucking miasms

from his beams, now spread great green expanses, wholesome and

fertile, making the best possible use of sunbeams, and offering, by

their aid, every earthly thing that men and animals need for their

bodily growth and sustenance, in almost fabulous abundance.

The colored map of Illinois, as given in a nice, new book, called,

"Illinois as it is," looks like a beautiful piece of silk, brocaded in

green (prairies) on a brownish ground (woodland tracts),--the surface

showing a nearly equal proportion of the two; while the swampy lands,

designated by dark blue,--in allusion, probably, to the occasional

state of mind of those who live near them,--take up a scarce

appreciable part of the space. Long, straggling "bluffs," on the banks

of the rivers, occupy still less room; but they make, on land and

paper, an agreeable variety. People thus far go to them only for the

mineral wealth with which they abound. It will be many years, yet,

before they will be thought worth farming; not because they would not

yield well, but because there is so much land that yields better.

Some parts of the State are hilly, and covered with the finest timber.

The scenery of these tracts is equal to any of the kind in the United

States; and much of it has been long under cultivation, having been

early chosen by Southern settlers, who have grown old upon the soil.

Here and there, on these beautiful highlands, we find ancient ladies,

bright-eyed and cheerful, who tell us they have occupied the selfsame

house--built, Kentucky-fashion, with chimney outside--for forty years

or so. The legends these good dames have to tell are, no doubt, quite

as interesting in their way as those which Sir Walter Scott used to

thread the wilds of Scotland to gather up; but we value them not.

By-and-by, posterity will anathematize us for letting our old national

stories die in blind contempt or sheer ignorance of their value.

The only thing to be found fault with in the landscape is the want of

great fields full of stumps. It does not seem like travelling in a new

country to see all smooth and ready for the plough. Trees are not here

looked upon as natural enemies; and so, where they grow, there they

stand, and wave triumphant over the field like victors' banners. No

finer trees grow anywhere, and one loves to see them so prized. Yet we

miss the dear old stumps. My heart leaps up when I behold hundreds of

them so close together that you can hardly get a plough between. Long,

long years ago, I have seen a dozen men toiling in one little cleared

spot, jollily engaged in burning them with huge fires of brush-wood,

chopping at them with desperate axes, and tearing the less tenacious

out by the roots, with a rude machine made on the principle of that

instrument by the aid of which the dentist revenges you on an

offending tooth. The country looks tame, at first, without these

characteristic ornaments, so suggestive of human occupancy. The ground

is excellently fertile where stumps have been, and association makes

us rather distrustful of its goodness where nothing but grass has ever

grown.

The prairies are not as flat in surface as one expects to find them.

Except in the scarcity of trees, their surface is very much like other

portions of what is considered the best farming land. There are great

tracts of what are called bushy prairies, covered with a thick growth

of hazel and sassafras, jessamine and honey-suckle, and abounding in

grape-vines. These tracts possess springs in abundance. The "islands"

so often alluded to by travellers are most picturesque and beautiful

features in the landscape. They must not be compared to oases, for

they are surrounded by anything but sterility; but they are the

evidence of springs, and generally of a slight rise in the ground, and

the timber upon them is of almost tropical luxuriance. Herds of deer

are feeding in their shade, the murmur of wild bees fills the air, and

the sweet vine-smell invites birds and insects of every brilliant

color. Prairie-chickens are in flocks everywhere, and the approach of

civilization scarcely ever disturbs them. No engine-driver in the

southern part of the State but has often seen deer startled by the

approach of his train, and many tell tales of more ferocious denizens

of the wilds. Buffalo have all long since disappeared; but what times

they must have had in this their paradise, before they went! On the

higher prairies the grass is of a superior quality, and its seed

almost like wheat. On those which are low and humid it grows rank and

tough, and sometimes so high that a man on horseback may pass through

it unobserved. The crowding of vegetation, owing to the over-fertility

of the soil, causes all to tend upward, so that most of the growth is

extra high, rather than spreading in breadth. In the very early

spring, the low grass is interspersed with quantities of violets,

strawberry-blossoms, and other delicate flowers. As the grass grows

taller, flowers of larger size and more brilliant hues diversify it,

till at length the whole is like a flowery forest, but destined to be

burnt over in the autumn, leaving their ashes to help forward the

splendid growth of their successors.

One of the marvels of this marvellous prairiedom, at the present hour,

is the taste and skill displayed in houses and gardens. One fancies a

"settler" in the Western wilds so occupied with thoughts of shelter

and sustenance as hardly to remember that a house must be

perpendicular to be safe, and a garden fenced before it is worth

planting. But every mile of our prairie-flight reminds us, that, where

no time and labor are to be consumed in felling trees and "toting"

logs to mill,--planks and joists, and such like, walking in, by rail,

all ready for the framing,--there is leisure for reflection and choice

as to form; and also, that, where fertility is the inevitable

attendant upon the first incision of the plough, _what_ we shall plant

and _how_ we shall plant it become the only topics for consideration.

Setting aside the merely temporary residences of the poorer class of

farmers,--houses sure to be replaced by palaces of pine-boards, at

least, before a great while, provided the owner does not "move West,"

or take to whiskey,--the cottages we catch glimpses of from

car-windows are pretty and well-planned, and some of them show even

better on the inside than on the out. I must forbear to enlarge on the

comfort and abundance of these dwellings, lest I trench upon private

matters; but I may mention, by way of illustrating my subject, and

somewhat as the painter introduces human figures into his picture to

give an idea of the height of a tower or the vastness of a cathedral,

that I have found an abundant and even elegant table, under frescoed

ceiling, in a cottage near the Illinois Central, and far south of the

mid-line of this wonderful State, so lately a seeming waste through

much of its extent.

And thus throughout. At one moment a bare expanse, looking

man-despised, if not God-forgotten,--and at the next, a smiling

village, with tasteful dwelling, fine shrubbery, great hotels, spires

pointing heavenward, and trees that look down with the conscious

dignity of old settlers, as if they had stood just so since the time

of good Father Marquette, that stout old missionary, who first planted

the holy cross in their shade, and, "after offering to the Mightiest

thanks and supplications, fell asleep to wake no more."

There are many interesting reminiscences or traditions of the early

European settlers of Illinois. After Father Marquette,--whom I always

seem to see in Hicks's sweet picture of a monk inscribing the name

JESU on the bark of a tree in the forest,--came La Salle, an emissary

of the great Colbert, under Louis XIV.; an explorer of many heroic

qualities, who has left in this whole region important traces of his

wanderings, and the memory of his bloody and cruel murder at the

impious hands of his own followers, who had not patience to endure to

the end. Counted as part of Florida, under Spanish rule, and part of

Louisiana, under that of the French,--falling into the hands of the

celebrated John Law, in the course of his bubble Mississippi scheme,

and afterwards ceded with Canada and Nova Scotia to the English,

Illinois was never Americanized until the peace of '83. The spongy

turf of her prairies bore the weight of many a fort, and drank the

blood of the slain in many a battle, when all around her was at peace.

The fertility of her soil and the comparative mildness of her climate

caused her to be eagerly contended for, as far back as 1673, when the

pioneers grew poetical under the inspiration of "a joy that could not

be expressed," as they passed her "broad plains, all garlanded with

majestic forests and checkered with illimitable prairies and island

groves." "We are Illinois," said the poor Indians to Father

Marquette,--meaning, in their language, "We are men." And the Jesuits

treated them as men; but by traders they soon began to be treated like

beasts; and of course--poor things!--they did their best to behave

accordingly. All the forts are ruins now; there is no longer occasion

for them. The Indians are nothing. There can scarcely be found the

slightest trace of their occupancy of these rich acres. Nations that

build nothing but uninscribed burial-places foreshadow their own

doom,--to return to the soil and be forgotten. But the mode of their

passing away is not, therefore, a matter of indifference.

On the stronger and more intelligent rests the responsibility of such

changes; and in the case of our Indians, it is certain that a load of

guilt, individual and national, rests somewhere. Necessity is no

Christian plea, "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to him

by whom the offence cometh!" The Indian and the negro shall rise up in

judgment against our rich and happy land, and condemn it for

inhumanity and selfishness. Have they not already done so? Blood and

treasure, poured out like water, have been the beginnings of

retribution in one case; a deeper and more vital punishment, such as

belongs to bosom-sins, awaits us in the other. Shall no penitence, no

sacrifice, attempt to avert it?

Illinois, level, fertile, joyous, took French rule very kindly. The

missionaries, who were physicians, schoolmasters, and artisans, as

well as preachers, lived among the people, instructed them in the arts

of life as well as in the ceremonies and spirit of the Catholic faith;

and natives and foreigners seem to have dwelt together in peace and

love. The French brought with them the regularity and neatness that

characterize their home-settlements, and the abundance in which they

lived enabled them to be public-spirited and to deal liberally even

with the Indians. They raised wheat in such plenty that Indian corn

was cultivated chiefly for provender, although they found the

_voyageurs_ glad to buy it as they passed back and forth on their

adventurous journeys. The remains of their houses show how

substantially they built; two or three modern sudden houses could be

made out of one old French picketed and porticoed cottage.

The appearance of an Illinois settler in those days was rather

picturesque than elegant,--substance before show being the principle

upon which it was planned. While the Indian still wore his paint and

feathers when he came to trade, the rural swain appeared in a _capote_

made of blanket, with a hood that served in cold weather instead of a

Leary, buck-skin overalls, moccasins of raw-hide, and, generally, only

a natural shock of Sampsonian locks between his head and the sun;

while his lady-love was satisfied with an outfit not very

different,--save that there is no tradition that she ever capped the

climax of ugliness by wearing Bloomers. There were gay colors for

holidays, no doubt; but not till 1830, we are told, did the genuine

Illinois settler adopt the commonplace dress of this imitative land.

What pity when people are in such haste to do away with everything

characteristic in costume!

Both sexes worked hard, bore rough weather without flinching, and

attended carefully to their religious duties; but, withal, they were

gay and joyous, ready for dance and frolic, and never so anxious to

make money that they forgot to make fun.

What must the ghosts of these primitive Christians think of their

successors, ploughing in broadcloth and beaver, wading through the mud

in patent-leather boots, and all the while wrinkled with anxiety,

gaunt with ambition, and grudging themselves three holidays a year!

Immigrants in time changed the character of the population as well as

its dress, and for a while there seems to have been something of a

jumble of elements, new laws conflicting with old habits, hungry

politicians preying upon a simple people, who only desired to be let

alone, and who, when they discovered some gross imposition, were

philosophical enough to call it, jokingly, being "greased and

swallowed." This anarchical condition resulted, as usual, in habits of

personal violence; and, at one time, an adverse vote was considered

matter for stabbing or gouging, and juries often dismissed

indictments, fearing private vengeance in case of a discharge of their

duty. They made a wide distinction, in murder trials, between him who

committed the crime in a passion and those who did the thing quietly;

so that you had only to walk up to the person who had offended you,

and shoot him in the open street, to feel tolerably sure of impunity.

In short, there seems to have prevailed, at that time, north of Mason

and Dixon's line, very much the same state of things that still

prevails south of it; but there was other leaven at work, and the good

sense of the people gradually got the better of this short-sighted

folly of violence.

It is reported as fact, by all writers on the earlier history of this

State, that the holding of courts was conducted very much in the style

reported of the back counties of Georgia and Alabama in our day. The

sheriff would go out into the court-yard and say to the people, "Come

in, boys,--the court is going to begin,"--or sometimes, "Our John is

going to open court now,"--the judge being just one of the "boys."

Judges did not like to take upon themselves the _onus_ of deciding

cases, but shared it with the jury as far as possible. One story, well

authenticated, runs thus: A certain judge, having to pass sentence of

death upon one of his neighbors, did it in the following form: "Mr.

Green, the jury in their verdict say you are guilty of murder, and the

law in that case says you are to be hung. Now I want you and all your

friends down on Indian Creek to know that it is not me that condemns

you, but the jury and the law. What time would you like to be hung,

Sir?" The poor man replied, that it made no difference to him; he

would rather the court should appoint a time. "Well, then, Mr. Green,"

says the judge, "the court will allow you four weeks' time to prepare

for death and settle up your business." It was here suggested by the

Attorney-General that it was usual in such cases for the court to

recapitulate the essential parts of the evidence, to set forth the

nature and enormity of the crime, and solemnly to exhort the prisoner

to repent and fit himself for the awful doom awaiting him. "Oh!" said

the judge, "Mr. Green understands all that as well as if I had

preached to him a month. Don't you, Mr. Green? You understand you're

to be hung this day four weeks?" "Yes, Sir," replied Mr. Green, and so

the matter ended.

One legal brilliant blazes on the forehead of youthful Illinois, in

the shape of a summary remedy for duelling. One of those heroes who

think it safer to appeal to chance than to logic in vindication of

tarnished honor, and who imagine the blood of a dead friend the only

salve to be relied on for the cure of wounded feelings, killed his

opponent in a duel. The law of Illinois very coolly hanged the

survivor; and from that time to this, other remedies have been found

for spiritual hurts, real or imaginary. Nobody has fancied it

necessary to fight with a noose round his neck. If ever capital

punishment were lawful, (which I confess I do not think it ever can

be,) it would be as a desperate remedy against this horrid relic of

mediaeval superstition and impiety, no wiser or more Christian than

the ordeal by burning ploughshares or poisoned wine. The rope in

judicial hands is certainly as lawful as the pistol in rash ones; so

the duellist has no reason to complain.

Some of the later days of Illinois, the days of Indian wars and Mormon

wars, pro-slavery wars and financial wars, are too red and black for

peaceful pages; and as they were incidental rather than

characteristic, they do not come within our narrow limits. There is

still too large an infusion of the cruel slavery spirit in the laws of

Illinois; but the immense tide of immigration will necessarily remedy

that, by overpowering the influence introduced over the southern

border. So nearly a Southern State was Illinois once considered to be,

that, in settling the northern boundary, it was deemed essential to

give her a portion of the lake-shore, that her interests might be at

least balanced. They have proved to be more than balanced by this wise

provision.

The little excuse there is in this favored region for a sordid

devotion to toil, a journey through the State, even at flying pace, is

sufficient to show. The fertility of the soil is the despair of

scientific farming. Who cares for rules, when he has only to drop a

seed and tread on it, to be sure of a hundred-fold return? Who talks

of succession of crops, when twelve burdens of wheat, taken from the

same soil in as many years, leave the ground black and ready for

another yield of almost equal abundance? An alluvial tract of about

three hundred thousand acres, near the Mississippi, has been

cultivated in Indian corn a hundred and fifty years,--indeed, ever

since the French occupation of Illinois. What of under-draining? Some

forty or fifty rivers threading the State, besides smaller streams

innumerable, always will do that, as soon as the Nilic floods of

spring have accomplished their work by floating to the surface the

finest part of the soil. Irrigation? You may now grow rice on one farm

and grapes on another, without travelling far between. It is true,

there must be an end to this universality of power and advantage, some

day; but nobody can see far enough ahead to feel afraid, and it is not

in the spirit of our time to think much about the good of our

grandchildren. "What has posterity done for me?" is the instinctive

question of the busy Westerner, as he sits down under vine and

fig-tree which his own hands have planted, to enjoy peace and plenty,

after suffering the inevitable hardships of pioneer life. You may tell

him he is not wise to scorn good rules; but he will reply, that he did

not come so far West, and begin life anew, for the sake of being wise,

but of making money, and that as rapidly as possible. He has forgotten

the care and economy learned among the cold and stony hills of New

England, and wants to do everything on a large scale. He likes to hear

of patent reapers, Briarean threshing-machines, and anything that will

save him most of the time and trouble of gathering in his heavy

crops,--but that is all. The growth of those crops he has nothing to

do with. That is provided for by Nature in Illinois; if it were not,

he would move "out West."

Stories of this boundless fertility are rife here. One pioneer told

us, that, when a fence is to be made and post-holes are wanted, it is

only necessary to drop beet-seed ten feet apart all around the field,

and, when the beet is ripe, you pull it up and your post-hole is

ready! To be sure, there was a twinkle in the corner of his eye as he

stated this novel and interesting fact; but, after all, the fertility

in question was not so extravagantly "poefied" by this _canard_ as

some may suppose. Our friend went on to state, that, in his district,

they had a kind of corn which produced from a single grain a dozen

stalks of twelve ears each; and not content with this, on _most_ of

the stalks you would find, somewhere near the top, a small calabash

full of shelled corn! To put the matter beyond doubt, he pulled a

handful of the corn from his pocket, which he invited us to plant, and

satisfy ourselves.

The reader has probably concluded, by this time, that beets and corn

are not the only enormous things grown in Illinois.

A friend told us, in perfectly good faith, that a tract of his, some

fourteen thousand acres, in the southern part of the State, contained

coal enough to warm the world, and more iron than that coal would

smelt,--salt enough for all time, and marble and rich metallic ores of

various kinds besides. In one region are found inexhaustible beds of

limestone, the smoke of whose burning fills the whole spring air, and

the crevices of whose formation make very pokerish-looking caves,

which young and adventurous ladies are fond of exploring; in another

we come to quantities of that snow-white porcelain clay of which some

people suppose themselves to have been originally formed, but which

has been, in a commercial point of view, hitherto a _desideratum_ in

these United States of ours. The people at Mound City (an aspiring

rival of Cairo, on the banks of the Ohio) are about building a factory

for the exploitation of this clay, not into ladies and gentlemen,

(unpopular articles here,) but into china-ware, the quality of which

will be indisputable.

One soon ceases wondering at the tropicality of the Illinoisian

imagination. Ali Baba's eye-straining experiences were poor, compared

to these every-day realities.

The "Open Sesame" in this case has been spoken through the

railroad-whistle. Railroads cannot make mines and quarries, and fat

soil and bounteous rivers; yet railroads have been the making of

Illinois. Nobody who has ever seen her spring roads, where there are

no rails, can ever question it. From the very fatness of her soil, the

greater part of the State must have been one Slough of Despond for

three quarters of the year, and her inhabitants strangers to each

other, if these iron arms had not drawn the people together and

bridged the gulfs for them. No roads but railroads could possibly have

threaded the State, a large and the best portion of whose surface is

absolutely devoid of timber, stone, gravel, or any other available

material. The prairies must have remained flowery deserts, visited as

a curiosity every year by strangers, but without dwellings for want of

wood. The vast quarries must, of course, have lain useless, for want

of transporting power,--our friend's coal and iron undisturbed,

waiting for an earthquake,--and the poetical pioneer's beets and

Indian corn unplanted, and therefore uncelebrated. Well may it be said

here, that iron is more valuable than gold. Population, agriculture,

the mechanic arts, literature, taste, civilization, in short, are all

magnetized by the beneficent rail, and follow wherever it leads. The

whole southern portion of Illinois has been nicknamed "Egypt,"

--whether because at its utmost point, on a dampish delta,

reposes the far-famed city of Cairo,--or whether, as wicked satirists

pretend, its denizens have been found, in certain particulars, rather

behind our times in intellectual light. Whatever may have been the

original excuse for the _sobriquet_, the derogatory one exists no

more. Light has penetrated, and darkness can reign no longer. Every

day, a fiery visitant, bearing the collective intelligence of the

whole world's doings and sayings, dashes through Egypt into Cairo,

giving off scintillations at every hamlet on the way,--and every day

the brilliant marvel returns, bringing northward, not only the good

things of the Ohio and Mississippi, but tropic _on-dits_ and oranges,

only a few hours old, to the citizens of Chicago, far "in advance of

the (New York) mail." With the rail comes the telegraph; and whispers

of the rise and fall of fancies and potatoes, of speculations and

elections, of the sale of corner-lots and the evasion of

bank-officers, are darting about in every direction over our heads, as

we unconsciously admire the sunset, or sketch a knot of rosy children

as they come trooping from a quaint school-house on the prairie edge.

Fancy the rail gone, and we have neither telegraph, nor school-house,

nor anything of all this but the sunset,--and even that we could not

be there to see in spring-time, at least, unless we could transmigrate

for the time into the relinquished forms of some of these aboriginal

bull-frogs, which grow to the nice size of two feet in length,

destined, no doubt, to receive the souls of habitual croakers

hereafter.

But if the railroads have been the making of the land, it is not to be

denied that the land has been the making of the railroads. Egyptian

minds they must have been, that grudged the tracts given by the United

States to the greatest of roads, the greatest road in the world.

Having bestowed a line of alternate sections on this immense

undertaking,--vital in importance, and impossible without such

aid,--the Government at once doubled the price of the intermediate

sections, _and sold them at the doubled price_, though they had been

years, and might have been ages, in market unsold, without means of

communication and building. Who, then, was the loser? Not the United

States; for they received for half the land just what they would

otherwise have received for the whole. Not the State; for it lays

hands on a good slice of the annual profits, not to speak of

incalculable benefits beside. Not the farmer, surely; for what would

his now high-priced land be worth, if the grand road were annihilated?

Not the bond-holder; for he receives a fair, full interest on his

money. Not the stock-holder; for he looks with eyes of faith toward a

great future. It was a sort of triangular or quadrangular or

pentangular bargain, in which all these parties were immensely

benefited. The traveller blesses such liberal policy, as he flies

along towards the land of oranges, or turns aside to measure mammoth

beets or weigh extra-supernal corn, to "bore" or to "prospect," to

pick at oölite and shale or to "peep and botanize" through an

inexhaustible Flora. The present writer has certainly reason to be

grateful,--not, alas! with that gushing warmth of feeling which the

owners of shares or bonds naturally experience,--but as an "'umble

individual" who could not have found material for this valuable

article, if certain gentlemen who do own the said shares had not been

very enterprising.

The man who may be said to have devised the land-basis for railroads

through unsettled tracts--a financier of unsurpassed sagacity, and

once the soul of commercial honor as well as intelligence--should not,

in his dishonored grave, and far beyond the reach of human scorn or

vengeance, be denied the credit of what he accomplished before the

fatal madness seized his soul and dragged him to perdition. Let it be

enough that his name has come to be an epithet of infamy in his land's

language. Let not the grandeur of his views, the intent with which he

set out, and the good he achieved, be lost in oblivion. Pride--"by

that sin fell the angels!"--cast him headlong down the irrecoverable

steep,--

"And when he fell, he fell like Lucifer,"--

aye! like Wolsey and Bacon,--

"Never to rise again!"

It is no sin to hope that the All-seeing eye discerned in those noble

undertakings and beneficent results the germ of wings that shall one

day bear him back to light and mercy. Let us, who benefit by his good

deeds, not insist on remembering only the evil!

Chicago, the Wondrous, sits amid her wealth, like a magnificent

sultana, half-reclining over a great oval mirror, supplied by that

lake of lakes, the fathomless Michigan. Perhaps the resemblance might

be unpoetically traced to particulars; for we are told by lotos-eating

travellers, that Oriental beauties, with all their splendor, are not

especially clean. Certain it is that our Occidental sultana dresses

her fair head with towers and spires, and hangs about her neck long

rows of gems in the shape of stately and elegant dwellings,--yet,

descending to her feet, we sink in mud and mire, or tumble unguardedly

into excavations set like traps for the unwary, or oust whole colonies

of rats from beneath plank walks where they have burrowed securely

ever since "improvements" began. At some seasons, indeed, there is no

mud; because the high winds from the lake or the prairies turn the mud

into dust, which blinds our eyes, fills our mouths, and makes us

Quakers in appearance and anything but saints in heart.

Chicago-walking resembles none but such as Christian encountered as he

fled from the City of Destruction; yet in this case the ills are those

of a City of _Con_struction.--sure to disappear as soon as the

builders find time to care for such trifles. Chicago people, it is

well known, walk with their heads in the clouds, and, naturally, do

not mind what happens to their feet. It is only strangers who exclaim,

and sometimes more than exclaim, at the dangers of the way. Cast-away

carriages lie along the road-side, like ships on Fire Island beach.

Nobody minds them. If you see a gentleman at a distance, progressing

slowly with a gliding or floundering pace, you conclude he has a horse

under him, and, perhaps, on nearer approach, you see bridle and

headstall. This is in early spring, while the frost is coming out of

the ground. As the season advances, the horse emerges, and you are

just getting a fair sight of him when the dust begins and he

disappears again. So say the scoffers, and those who would, but do

not, own any city-lots in that favored vicinity; and to the somewhat

heated mind of the traveller who encounters such things for the first

time, the story does not seem so very much exaggerated. Simple

wayfarers like myself, however, tell no such wicked tales of the

Garden City; but remember only her youth, her grandeur, her spirit,

her hospitality, her weight of cares, her immense achievements, and

her sure promise of future metropolitan splendors.

The vicinity of Chicago is all dotted with beautiful villa-residences.

To drive among them is like turning over a book of architectural

drawings,--so great is their variety, and so marked the taste which

prevails. Many of them are of the fine light-colored stone found in

the neighborhood, and their substantial excellence inspires a feeling

that all this prosperity is of no ephemeral character. People do not

build such country-houses until they feel settled and secure. The

lake-shore is of course the line of attraction, for it is the only

natural beauty of the place. But what trees! Several of the streets of

Chicago may easily become as beautiful drives as the far-famed Cascine

at Florence, and will be so before her population doubles

again,--which is giving but a short interval for the improvement. No

parks as yet, however. Land on the lake-shore is too precious, and the

flats west of the town are quite despised. Yet city parks do not

demand very unequal surface, and it would not require a very potent

landscape-gardener or an unheard-of amount of dollars to make a fine

driving-and riding-ground, where the new carriages of the fortunate

might be aired, and the fine horses of the gay exercised, during a

good part of the year.

To describe Chicago, one would need all the superlatives set in a row.

Grandest, flattest,--muddiest, dustiest,--hottest, coldest,--wettest,

driest,--farthest north, south, east, and west from other places,

consequently most central,--best harbor on Lake Michigan, worst harbor

and smallest river any great commercial city ever lived on,--most

elegant in architecture, meanest in hovel-propping,--wildest in

speculation, solidest in value,--proudest in self-esteem, loudest in

self-disparagement,--most lavish, most grasping,--most public-spirited

in some things, blindest and darkest on some points of highest

interest.

And some poor souls would doubtless add,--most fascinating, or most

desolate,--according as one goes there, gay and hopeful, to find

troops of prosperous friends, or, lonely and poor, with the distant

hope of bettering broken fortunes by struggling among the driving

thousands already there on the same errand. There is, perhaps, no

place in the world where it is more necessary to take a bright and

hopeful view of life, and none where this is more difficult. There is

too much at stake. Those who have visited Baden-Baden and her Kursaal

sisters in the height of the season need not be told that no

"church-face" ever equalled in solemnity the countenances of those who

surround the fatal tables, waiting for the stony lips of the croupier

to announce "_Noir perd_" or "_Rouge gagne_." At Chicago are a wider

table, higher stakes, more desperate throws, and Fate herself

presiding, or what seems Fate, at once partial and inexorable.

But, on this great scale, even success fails to bring smiles. The

winners sit "with hair on end at their own wonders," and half-fearing

that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove

fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more.

Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The

repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of

success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at

last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be

unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances?

When one looks at the gay and social faces and habits of some little

German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and

pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and

tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem

as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not

yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark

about the English in France--"They take their pleasure sadly, after

their fashion"--may apply to the population of Chicago, and it will be

some time yet, I fancy, before they will take it very gayly.