Europe), through its connexion with the Louisiana Code, this gentleman's
great work. He was born and educated in the state of New-York. While
pursuing his studies at Princeton College in 1779 and 1780, he was
subject to strange interruptions, the professors being repeatedly driven
from their chairs by incursions of the enemy, and their scholars on such
occasions forming a corps to go out and fight. The library was
scattered, the philosophical apparatus destroyed, and the college
buildings shared with troops quartered in the establishment; yet young
Livingston left college a good scholar. He was a member of the fourth
Congress, and there made himself remarkable by his exertions to
ameliorate the criminal code of the United States, then as sanguinary as
those of the Old World. In 1801 he returned to the practice of his
profession of the law in New-York, but was not long permitted to decline
public life. He was appointed attorney of the state of New-York, and
mayor of the city. He remained in the city, in the discharge of his
duties, while the yellow fever drove away every one who could remove. He
nearly died of the disease, and was ruined in his private affairs by
his devotion to the public service. In 1804 he resigned his offices, and
retired to Louisiana (then a new acquisition of the United States) to
retrieve his fortunes; and from thence he discharged all his
obligations, paying his debts, with interest upon them, to the last
farthing. He was deprived, by a mistake of President Jefferson's, of an
immense property which he had acquired there, and was involved in
expensive litigation of many years' duration. The law decided in his
favour, and the controversy ended in a manner the most honourable to
both parties; in a reciprocation of hearty good-will.
During the invasion of Louisiana by the British Mr. Livingston took a
prominent part in the defence of the state; and, when it was over,
undertook, with two coadjutors, the formidable task of simplifying its
laws, entangled as they were with Spanish prolixities, and all manner of
unnecessary and unintelligible provisions. His system was adopted, and
has been in use ever since. In 1820 the system of municipal law was
revised at New-Orleans under the superintendence of Mr. Livingston, and
his amendments were put in practice in 1823. He was at the same time
engaged, without assistance, in preparing his celebrated penal code.
When it was all ready for the press, in 1824, he sat up late one night
to ascertain finally the correctness of the fair copy; and, having
finished, retired to rest in a state of calm satisfaction at his great
work being completed. He was awakened by a cry of fire. The room where
he had been employed was burning, and every scrap of his papers was
consumed. Not a note or memorandum was saved.
He appeared to be stunned for the hour; but, before the day closed, he
had begun his labours again, and he never relaxed till, in two years
from the time of the fire, he presented his work to the legislature of
Louisiana, improved by the reconsideration which he had been compelled
to give it. Men of all countries who understand jurisprudence seem to
think that no praise of this achievement can be excessive.
He afterward represented Louisiana in both Houses of Congress; became
Secretary of State in 1831; and, in 1833, minister to France. His was a
busy life, of doing, suffering, and, we may confidently add, enjoying;
for his was a nature full of simplicity, modesty, and benevolence. His
industry is of itself exhilarating to contemplate.
During the whole preceding year I had heard Mr. Livingston's name almost
daily in connexion with his extremely difficult negotiations between the
United States and France, or, rather, between President Jackson and
Louis Philippe. I had read his despatches (some of which were made
public that were never designed to be so), and had not been quite
satisfied as to their straightforwardness, but concluded, on the whole,
that he had done as much as human wits could well do in so absurd, and
perplexed, and dangerous a quarrel, where the minister had to manage the
temper of his own potentate as well as baffle the policy of the European
monarch. A desire for peace and justice was evident through the whole of
Mr. Livingston's correspondence; and under all, a strong wish to get
home. Here he was, now ploughing his way up his own beloved river, whose
banks were studded with the country-seats of a host of his relations. He
came to me on the upper deck, and sat looking very placid with his staff
between his knees, and his strong, observing countenance melting into an
expression of pleasure when he described to me his enjoyment in burying
himself among the mountains of Switzerland. He said he would not now
hear of mountains anywhere else; at least not in either his own country
or mine. He gave me some opinions upon the government of the King of the
French which I little expected to hear from the minister of a democratic
republic. We were deep in this subject when a great hissing of the steam
made us look up and see that we were at Hyde Park, and that Dr. Hosack
and a party of ladies were waiting for me on the wharf. I repeatedly met
Mr. Livingston in society in New-York the next spring, when a deafness,
which had been slight, was growing upon him, and impairing his enjoyment
of conversation. The last time I saw him was at the christening of a
grand-niece, when he looked well in health, but conversed little, and
seemed rather out of spirits. Within a month of that evening he was
seized with pleurisy, which would in all probability have yielded to
treatment; but he refused medicine, and was carried off after a very
short illness. Dr. Hosack died some months before him. How little did I
think, as I now went from the one to the other, that both these vigorous
old men would be laid in their graves even before my return home should
call upon me to bid them farewell!
The aspect of Hyde Park from the river had disappointed me, after all I
had heard of it. It looks little more than a white house upon a ridge. I
was therefore doubly delighted when I found what this ridge really was.
It is a natural terrace, overhanging one of the sweetest reaches of the
river; and, though broad and straight at the top, not square and formal,
like an artificial embankment, but undulating, sloping, and sweeping
between the ridge and the river, and dropped with trees; the whole
carpeted with turf, tempting grown people, who happen to have the
spirits of children, to run up and down the slopes, and play
hide-and-seek in the hollows. Whatever we might be talking of as we
paced the terrace, I felt a perpetual inclination to start off for play.
Yet, when the ladies and ourselves actually did something like it,
threading the little thickets and rounding every promontory, even to the
farthest (which they call Cape Horn), I felt that the possession of such
a place ought to make a man devout if any of the gifts of Providence can
do so. To hold in one's hand that which melts all strangers' hearts is
to be a steward in a very serious sense of the term. Most liberally did
Dr. Hosack dispense the means of enjoyment he possessed. Hospitality is
inseparably connected with his name in the minds of all who ever heard
it; and it was hospitality of the heartiest and most gladsome kind.
Dr. Hosack had a good library; I believe, one of the best private
libraries in the country; some good pictures, and botanical and
mineralogical cabinets of value. Among the ornaments of his house I
observed some biscuits and vases once belonging to Louis XVI., purchased
by Dr. Hosack from a gentleman who had them committed to his keeping
during the troubles of the first French Revolution.
In the afternoon Dr. Hosack drove me in his gig round his estate, which
lies on both sides of the high road; the farm on one side and the
pleasure-grounds on the other. The conservatory is remarkable for
America; and the flower-garden all that it can be made under present
circumstances, but the neighbouring country people have no idea of a
gentleman's pleasure in his garden, and of respecting it. On occasions
of weddings and other festivities, the villagers come up into the Hyde
Park grounds to enjoy themselves; and persons who would not dream of
any other mode of theft, pull up rare plants, as they would wild flowers
in the woods, and carry them away. Dr. Hosack would frequently see some
flower that he had brought with much pains from Europe flourishing in
some garden of the village below. As soon as he explained the nature of
the case, the plant would be restored with all zeal and care; but the
losses were so frequent and provoking as greatly to moderate his
horticultural enthusiasm. We passed through the poultry-yard, where the
congregation of fowls exceeded in number and bustle any that I had ever
seen. We drove round his kitchen-garden too, where he had taken pains to
grow every kind of vegetable which will flourish in that climate. Then
crossing the road, after paying our respects to his dairy of fine cows,
we drove through the orchard, and round Cape Horn, and refreshed
ourselves with the sweet river views on our way home. There we sat in
the pavilion, and he told me much of De Witt Clinton, and showed me his
own Life of Clinton, a copy of which he said should await me on my
return to New-York. When that time came he was no more; but his promise
was kindly borne in mind by his lady, from whose hands I received the
valued legacy.
We saw some pleasant society at Hyde Park: among the rest, some members
of the wide-spreading Livingston family, and the Rev. Charles Stewart,
who lived for some years as missionary in the South Sea Islands, and
afterward published a very interesting account of his residence there.
His manners, which are particularly gentlemanly and modest, show no
traces of a residence among savages, or of the shifts and disorder of a
missionary life; nor of any bad effects from the sudden fame which
awaited him on his return into civilized life. I remember with great
pleasure a conversation we had by the river-side, which proved to me
that he understands the philosophy of fame, knowing how to appropriate
the good and reject the evil that it brings, and which deepened the
respect I had entertained for him from the beginning of our
acquaintance.
The Livingston family, one of the oldest, most numerous, and opulent in
the States, has been faithful in the days of its greatness to its
democratic principles. In Boston it seems a matter of course that the
"first people" should be federalists; that those who may be aristocratic
in station should become aristocratic in principle. The Livingstons are
an evidence that this need not be. Amid their splendid entertainments in
New-York, and in their luxurious retirements on the Hudson, they may be
heard going further than most in defence of President Jackson's
idiosyncracy. Their zeal in favour of Mr. Van Buren was accounted for by
many from the natural bias of the first family in the state of New-York
in favour of the first president furnished by that state; but there is
no reason to find any such cause. The Livingstons have consistently
advocated the most liberal principles through all changes; and that they
retain their democratic opinions in the midst of their opulence and
family influence is not the less honourable to them for their party
having now the ascendency.
Dr. Hosack and his family accompanied us down to the wharf to see Mr.
Stewart off by one boat and our party by another, when, on the third day
of our visit, we were obliged to depart. Our hearts would have been more
sorrowful than they were if we had foreseen that we should not enjoy our
promised meeting with this accomplished and amiable family at New-York.
Dr. Hosack was a native American, but his father was Scotch. After
obtaining the best medical education he could in America, he studied in
Edinburgh and London, and hence his affectionate relations with Great
Britain, and the warmth with which he welcomed English travellers. He
practised medicine in New-York for upward of forty years, and filled the
Professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College for some
time. He distinguished himself by his successful attention to the causes
and treatment of yellow fever. But his services out of his profession
were as eminent as any for which his fellow-citizens are indebted to
him. He rendered liberal aid to various literary, scientific, and
benevolent institutions, and was always willing and indefatigable in
exertion for public objects. One of the most painful scenes of his life
was the duel in which Hamilton perished. Dr. Hosack was Hamilton's
second, and, probably, as well aware as his principal and others that
the encounter could hardly end otherwise than as it did. Dr. Hosack was
in New-York with his family the winter after my visit to Hyde Park. He
was one day in medical conversation with Dr. M'Vickar of that city, and
observed that it would not do for either of them to have an attack of
apoplexy, as there would be small chance of their surviving it. Within
two weeks both were dead of apoplexy. Dr. Hosack lost property in the
great fire at New-York; he over-exerted himself on the night of the
fire, and the fatigue and anxiety brought on an attack of the disease he
dreaded, under which he presently sank from amid the well-earned
enjoyments of a vigorous and prosperous old age. He was in his 67th
year, and showed to the eye of a stranger no symptom of decline. His eye
was bright, his spirits as buoyant, and his life as full of activity as
those of most men of half his years. I always heard the death of this
enterprising and useful citizen mentioned as heading the list of the
calamities of the Great Fire.
PINE ORCHARD HOUSE.
"But the new glory mixes with the heaven
And earth. Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things; the winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,
A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh;
Never a senseless gust now man is born.
The herded pines commune, and have deep thoughts,
A secret they assemble to discuss,
When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare
Like grates of hell; the peerless cup afloat
Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph
Swims bearing high above her head.
* * * * *
The morn has enterprise; deep quiet droops
With evening; triumph when the sun takes rest;
Voluptuous transport when the corn-fields ripen
Beneath a warm moon, like a happy face;
And this to fill us with regard for man,
Deep apprehension of his passing worth."
_Paracelsus_, Part v.
However widely European travellers have differed about other things in
America, all seem to agree in their love of the Hudson. The pens of all
tourists dwell on its scenery, and their affections linger about it like
the magic lights which seem to have this river in their peculiar charge.
Yet very few travellers have seen its noblest wonder. I may be
singular; but I own that I was more moved by what I saw from the
Mountain House than by Niagara itself.
What is this Mountain House? this Pine Orchard House? many will ask; for
its name is not to be found in most books of American travels. "What is
that white speck?" I myself asked, when staying at Tivoli, on the east
bank of the Hudson, opposite to the Catskills, whose shadowy surface was
perpetually tempting the eye. That white speck, visible to most eyes
only when bright sunshine was upon it, was the Mountain House; a hotel
built for the accommodation of hardy travellers who may desire to obtain
that complete view of the valley of the Hudson which can be had nowhere
else. I made up my mind to go; and the next year I went, on leaving Dr.
Hosack's. I think I had rather have missed the Hawk's Nest, the
Prairies, the Mississippi, and even Niagara, than this.
The steamboat in which we left Hyde Park landed us at Catskill
(thirty-one miles) at a little after three in the afternoon. Stages were
waiting to convey passengers to the Mountain House, and we were off in a
few minutes, expecting to perform the ascending journey of twelve miles
in a little more than four hours. We had the same horses all the way,
and therefore set off at a moderate pace, though the road was for some
time level, intersecting rich bottoms, and passing flourishing
farmhouses, where the men were milking, and the women looked up from
their work in the piazzas as we passed. Haymaking was going on in the
fields, which appeared to hang above us at first, but on which we
afterward looked down from such a height that the haycocks were scarcely
distinguishable. It was the 25th of July, and a very hot day for the
season. The roads were parched up, and every exposed thing that one
handled on board the steamboat or in the stage made one flinch from the
burning sensation. The panting horses, one of them bleeding at the
mouth, stopped to drink at a house at the foot of the ascent; and we
wondered how, exhausted as they seemed, they would drag us up the
mountain. We did not calculate on the change of temperature which we
were soon to experience.
The mountain laurel conveyed by association the first impression of
coolness. Sheep were browsing among the shrubs, apparently enjoying the
shelter of the covert. We scrambled through deep shade for three or four
miles, heavy showers passing over us, and gusts of wind bowing the
tree-tops, and sending a shiver through us, partly from the sudden
chillness, and partly from expectation and awe of the breezy solitude.
On turning a sharp angle of the steep road, at a great elevation, we
stopped in a damp green nook, where there was an arrangement of hollow
trees to serve for water-troughs. While the horses were drinking, the
gusts parted the trees to the left, and exposed to me a vast extent of
country lying below, checkered with light and shadow. This was the
moment in which a lady in the stage said, with a yawn, "I hope we shall
find something at the top to pay us for all this." Truly the philosophy
of recompense seems to be little understood. In moral affairs people
seem to expect recompense for privileges, as when children, grown and
ungrown, are told that they will be rewarded for doing their duty; and
here was a lady hoping for recompense for being carried up a glorious
mountainside, in ease, coolness, leisure, and society, all at once. If
it was recompense for the evil of inborn _ennui_ that she wanted, she
was not likely to find it where she was going to look for it.
After another level reach of road and another scrambling ascent I saw
something on the rocky platform above our heads like (to compare great
things with small) an illumined fairy palace perched among the clouds in
opera scenery; a large building, whose numerous window-lights marked out
its figure from amid the thunder-clouds and black twilight which
overshadowed it. It was now half past eight o'clock and a stormy
evening. Everything was chill, and we were glad of lights and tea in the
first place.
After tea I went out upon the platform in front of the house, having
been warned not to go too near the edge, so as to fall an unmeasured
depth into the forest below. I sat upon the edge as a security against
stepping over unawares. The stars were bright overhead, and had
conquered half the sky, giving promise of what we ardently desired, a
fine morrow. Over the other half the mass of thunder-clouds was, I
supposed, heaped together, for I could at first discern nothing of the
champaign which I knew must be stretched below. Suddenly, and from that
moment incessantly, gushes of red lightning poured out from the cloudy
canopy, revealing not merely the horizon, but the course of the river,
in all its windings through the valley. This thread of river, thus
illuminated, looked like a flash of lightning caught by some strong
hand and laid along in the valley. All the principal features of the
landscape might, no doubt, have been discerned by this sulphurous light;
but my whole attention was absorbed by the river, which seemed to come
out of the darkness like an apparition at the summons of my impatient
will. It could be borne only for a short time; this dazzling,
bewildering alternation of glare and blackness, of vast reality and
nothingness. I was soon glad to draw back from the precipice and seek
the candlelight within.
The next day was Sunday. I shall never forget, if I live to a hundred,
how the world lay at my feet one Sunday morning. I rose very early, and
looked abroad from my window, two stories above the platform. A dense
fog, exactly level with my eyes, as it appeared, roofed in the whole
plain of the earth; a dusky firmament in which the stars had hidden
themselves for the day. Such is the account which an antediluvian
spectator would probably have given of it. This solid firmament had
spaces in it, however, through which gushes of sunlight were poured,
lighting up the spires of white churches, and clusters of farm buildings
too small to be otherwise distinguished; and especially the river, with
its sloops floating like motes in the sunbeam. The firmament rose and
melted, or parted off into the likeness of snowy sky-mountains, and left
the cool Sabbath to brood brightly over the land. What human interest
sanctifies a bird's-eye view! I suppose this is its peculiar charm, for
its charm is found to deepen in proportion to the growth of mind. To an
infant, a champaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard square
of gay carpet. To the rustic it is less bewitching than a paddock with
two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he casts his eye over
its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its secluded homes, its
mountain ranges, church spires, and untrodden forests, it is a picture
of life; an epitome of the human universe; the complete volume of moral
philosophy, for which he has sought in vain in all libraries. On the
left horizon are the Green Mountains of Vermont, and at the right
extremity sparkles the Atlantic. Beneath lies the forest where the deer
are hiding and the birds rejoicing in song. Beyond the river he sees
spread the rich plains of Connecticut; there, where a blue expanse lies
beyond the triple range of hills, are the churches of religious
Massachusetts sending up their Sabbath psalms; praise which he is too
high to hear, while God is not. The fields and waters seem to him
to-day no more truly property than the skies which shine down upon them;
and to think how some below are busying their thoughts this Sabbath-day
about how they shall hedge in another field, or multiply their flocks on
yonder meadows, gives him a taste of the same pity which Jesus felt in
his solitude when his followers were contending about which should be
greatest. It seems strange to him now that man should call anything
_his_ but the power which is in him, and which can create somewhat more
vast and beautiful than all that this horizon encloses. Here he gains
the conviction, to be never again shaken, that all that is real is
ideal; that the joys and sorrows of men do not spring up out of the
ground, or fly abroad on the wings of the wind, or come showered down
from the sky; that good cannot be hedged in, nor evil barred out; even
that light does not reach the spirit through the eye alone, nor wisdom
through the medium of sound or silence only. He becomes of one mind with
the spiritual Berkeley, that the face of nature itself, the very picture
of woods, and streams, and meadows, is a hieroglyphic writing in the
spirit itself, of which the retina is no interpreter. The proof is just
below him (at least it came under my eye), in the lady (not American)
who, after glancing over the landscape, brings her chair into the
piazza, and, turning her back to the champaign, and her face to the
wooden walls of the hotel, begins the study, this Sunday morning, of her
lapful of newspapers. What a sermon is thus preached to him at this
moment from a very hackneyed text! To him that hath much; that hath the
eye, and ear, and wealth of the spirit, shall more be given; even a
replenishing of this spiritual life from that which to others is
formless and dumb; while from him that hath little, who trusts in that
which lies about him rather than in that which lives within him, shall
be taken away, by natural decline, the power of perceiving and enjoying
what is within his own domain. To him who is already enriched with large
divine and human revelations this scene is, for all its stillness,
musical with divine and human speech; while one who has been deafened by
the din of worldly affairs can hear nothing in this mountain solitude.
The march of the day over the valley was glorious, and I was grieved to
have to leave my window for an expedition to the Falls a few miles off.
The Falls are really very fine, or, rather, their environment; but I
could see plenty of waterfalls elsewhere, but nowhere else such a
mountain platform. However, the expedition was a good preparation for
the return to my window. The little nooks of the road, crowded with
bilberries, cherries, and alpine plants, and the quiet tarn, studded
with golden water-lilies, were a wholesome contrast to the grandeur of
what we had left behind us.