_June 25_.--Returned to New York last night. Out to-day on the waters
for a sail in the wide bay, southeast of Staten island--a rough, tossing
ride, and a free sight--the long stretch of Sandy Hook, the highlands
of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward bound. We came up
through the midst of all, in the full sun. I especially enjoy'd the last
hour or two. A moderate sea-breeze had set in; yet over the city, and
the waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing nothing, only adding to
the beauty. From my point of view, as I write amid the soft breeze, with
a sea-temperature, surely nothing on earth of its kind can go beyond
this show. To the left the North river with its far vista--nearer, three
or four war-ships, anchor'd peacefully--the Jersey side, the banks of
Weehawken, the Palisades, and the gradually receding blue, lost in the
distance--to the right the East river--the mast-hemm'd shores--the grand
obelisk-like towers of the bridge, one on either side, in haze,
yet plainly defin'd, giant brothers twain, throwing free graceful
interlinking loops high across the tumbled tumultuous current
below--(the tide is just changing to its ebb)--the broad water-spread
everywhere crowded--no, not crowded, but thick as stars in the sky--with
all sorts and sizes of sail and steam vessels, plying ferry-boats,
arriving and departing coasters, great ocean Dons, iron-black, modern,
magnificent in size and power, fill'd with their incalculable value of
human life and precious merchandise--with here and there, above all,
those daring, careening things of grace and wonder, those white and
shaded swift-darting fish-birds, (I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere
can outvie them,) ever with their slanting spars, and fierce, pure,
hawk-like beauty and motion--first-class New York sloop or schooner
yachts, sailing, this fine day, the free sea in a good wind. And
rising out of the midst, tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American,
yet strangely oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its
spires, its cloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre--the green of
the trees, and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture well
blended, as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of
heaven above, and June haze on the surface below.