V. "' ,V ■'•^^o^' ,^*^^' '^bV^ *»«<>■' ^ '0 -^ V O. 'b s' <>'^^ « . \J % -■ •• o ^^: v'^y <'^ '> ^-^ ^"^^*^ ^ . .v^ ^^ '•- -ov*^ lV<^ A ^^v ,c«:^.; .0 'O. • ( ■« ' „A -^^. .«-^ ^-./\-4^^-:..''" *^ >' •^-. % * » 1^ %\ c,^ )'^: ,i'* .^ />->-j A REVIEW HARRIET MARTINEAU'S \ "RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL,' CONTAINING PORTRAITURES AMERICAN PUBLIC CHARACTERS. E3TRACTKD FROM THE LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, JANUARY, 1838. <■ NEW YORK: WILLIAM L E W E R, BASEMENT ROOMS, Corner ol' Broadway and Pine street 1838. INTRODUCTION. The high reputation already attained by Miss Martineau as a writer on Statisiics, Political Economy, and subjects connected therewith, give an interest to all she publishes, and her opinions possess an authority commensurate with that reputation. Hence her arrival in this country, and its avowed object, awakened the public curiosity in no ordinary de- gree. A portion of her observations has for some time been in the hands of the American public, who, from thence, have been able to judge in a great manner of their accuracy. The work, of which the following pages is a review, is one that has been prepared more at leisure, and the interest awakened thereby will probably be so much the greater. With the opinions, however, whether of the author or of the critic, the publisher of this pamphlet has nothing whatever to do ; the object in producing it in this form being solely to present a few of the very graphic descriptions of public characters with which the work of Miss Martineau abounds. That she has not been a very negligent observer will at once be evident, and the spirit in which the descriptions are given, will at least entitle her to the credit of can- dor and animation. The London and Westminster Review, from the recent January number of which this article is extracted, is remarkable for the open fearlessne.ss with which it examines the works taken up by it ; — the pre- sent is a fair specimen of its opinions and style of criticism; and inde- pendent of the local attractions arising from the immediate subject, the publisher is induced to believe that as a mere critical paper it will be found interesting to general readers. REVIEW, ETC. The distinguished success of her first, has produced this second work on America, from Miss Martineau, which consists of the lighter and more anecdotical portion of her impressions and experiences, of adventures, sketches of life and scenery, and pictures of women and men. Of all the books in the English language on her subject, her ' Society in America' is incomparably the ablest and most instructive, and we can conscientiously say of her ' Retrospect of Western Travel,' that it distances all her competitors in the qualities which yield amuse- ment and delight. The contents of this work are of course too multifarious for us to attempt anything like a complete account of it, but her sketches of scenery and men will afford us occasion for a few incidental remarks on what we have never seen critically characterised, the excellences and defects of her descriptive style. We begin with her voyage. On the Tuesday following the Saturday in August, 1834, on which she sailed, the pleasures of the sea began: her occupations during the interval were rest and sea-sickness. By getting upon deck, by seating herself on the rail, and by keeping her eyes away from the invalids strewed about the deck, she became well enough to enjoy the exhila- ration and gladsomeness of riding the high billows, and of watching them, as dark-green and white-tipt, they kept dashing and boiling fromi the gray horizon to the side of the ship. " The captain,'' she says, " pointed out to me the first of the monsters of the deep that I ever saw ; — a large black-fish, tumbling about joyously by itself in the stormy sea, now throwing its thick body forward in ungainly gambols, and» now rearing its forked tail perpendicularly, as it prepared to dive.' There was a passenger on board who did not appreciate such sights. " The early risers could sometimes speak to the sluggards of a big fish, of a passing .sail, of a frolic among the sailors. I was asked once by a passenger, in a tone whose laziness cannot be conveyed on paper, ' What, did ye see the whale this mornin' V I* 6 HARRIET MARTINEAU S *' ' No. It came at four o'clock, when I was asleep ; but the captain promis's to h;ive me called next time, whatever the hour may be.' " ' What, d'ye want to see a whale?' " ' Yes, very much.' " ' Well, hut 1 dare say you have seen a pictur' o' one.' " It was not apparent to him that this was not an equally good thing." Here are some beautiful observations on the sea, and true ones on most voyagers : — " By two o'clock, when the deck began to fill again after luncheon, I joyfully mounted the rail. * * * \V hat fleets of Portuguese men-of- war dicl we see at those hours ! I hardly know whether these Utile ma- riners of the deep are most beautiful when gliding, rich in their violet hues, along the calm sunny surface of the summer sea, or when they are tossed abcjut like toys, by rough dark waves. ***** I strongly suspect that those who complain of the monotony of the ocean, do not use their eyes as they do on land. It seems to be the custom at sea to sit on deck, looking abroad only when the sun is setting, or the moon rising, or when there is a sail to be speculated upon. Some of the most beautitul sights I caught were when no one else was looking down quite into the deep — the only way to see most of the creatures that live there. One day I was startled, while thus gazing, with an exquisite ra- diance, like an expanse of brilliant rainbow, far down in the sunny deep under our bows. AJy exclamation brought one witness to behold, as I did, the distinct form of a dolphin come out of the liglit. It was a family of dolphins, — the only ones that were seen on the voyage. Many a flying fish darted from the crest of one wave into another. Many a mi- nuet did Mother Carey's chickens trip with their slender web-feet, on the momentary calm left between two billows. Many a shining visitor came up from the lowest deep, to exchange glances and be gone. These sights arc too transient to be caught otherwise than by watching. When a shoal of porpoises came to race with the ship, every one on board was up on the rail to see ; and an exhilarating sight it is, when the ship is going befijre the wind in a rough sea, and the porpoises dart visibly through the miiist of a billow, and pitch and rise, and cross each other's path, swiftly and orderly, without ever relaxing their speed, till they are tired of play. It is impossible to help having a favorite among the shoal, and watching him with an interest and admiration which, upon consi- deration, are really ridiculous." One morning early a French ship made signals of distress. The deck was in a bustle, faces began to wear a look of compassion, and at the cry of " a ship in distress," the ladies hurried on deck, muffled in cloaks, and their hearts ready to bleed ; but the ship had only lost her longitude. Miss Martineau, strange to say, omits the details of dinner, and dwells on the quiet on dwck when the sun set, and all eyes watched, — the steerage as well as the cabin passengers — "some par- ticular bar of reddened cloud, or snowy mountain of vapors, or the crimson or golden light spattered on the swelling sides of the billows as they h' aved sunwards." Then came the rising on tiptoe, trying to see more of the sun, and the pniring off to parade the deck like a school. A taste similar to that which made her prefer sunset to din- RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 7 ners, led her to neglect chess and whist parties for the moonshine of the deck. — (By the way, why have not the books of chess and whist yet been reviewed, when su many Tory Lords could have instructed the reviewer in numerous dexterous manoeuvres ? and especially when a reverend dignitary has identified the sacred cause of the Church gwith these games,* which but for it would be played only in wild dens and caverns?) She would sing alone in the stern, heard only by the helmsman on fine nights, the light from the binnacle gleaming on the deck, shifting lights and shadows, marking out the full sails against the sky, stars looking down between, — the young moon drop- ping into the sea afar, and the vessel hissing along with a train of pale fire in her wake. Silence and dim, gray, infinitude around her, she watched the march of the night; and even in fog, though thick and driving, she saw specimens of the beautiful — the moon shining through spaces, and making clusters of silvery islands on every side — a white Archipelago. Then again the ship in a strong night breeze, cutting the seething waters, and making of them, on either hand, a white marble pavement, gemmed with stars. It was for such things as these Miss Marlineau forsook the conversation of the cabin, and of the enthusiast in the fine arts, who preferred the " picture of the whale." Here are more specimens of this gentleman : — "The gentleman who unconsciously supplied the most merriment to the party, waylaid the captain one busy morning. "' Captain,' said he, ' I want to speak to you.' "' Another time, sir, if you please. I am in a hurry now.' "'But, captain, I want to speak to you very much.' " • Speak then, sir,and be quick, if you please.' " ' Captain, I am very glad you have u cow on board, — because of the milk.' " ' Hum,' said the captain, and went on with his business. "'Some of the passengers, talking one day at dinner of percussion caps, asked him whether they were used in a rejijiment of which he had frequently spoken. He replied that he did not know, as he had not in- quired much into the costume of the army.' " One of Miss Martineau's wishes on going to sea was for a storm as severe as they couid possibly es-cape. She seems to have met with a considerable one, but we do not think her very successful in describ- ing it. She has presented to the imagination some pretty and pictu- resque imagery, because her habits of observation consist chiefly in seeing these ; it is not her way to look for sublimity — she is rather an observer and a poet of the familiar; she has consequently employed phrases which bi^long to the pretiy and the familiar, when delineating objects of a different kind, and produced on this occasion a ludicrous effect. Hecausc she saw little terrific in the hurricane, which is likely enough, since there seems to have been no danger, it does not follow that there was no grandeur. But in her description, the black line advan- * The Rev. Sydney Smith. 8 HARRIET MARTINEAU'S cing from the horizon, the sailors busy in tlie shrouds, and the second mate aloft in the post of danger, with his long hair streaming in the wind, are connected with the crew coming for their grog. The sun setting in a tremendous sky, the wind moaning and whistling strangely, with the laughable image of herself staggering to the stern to bid the sea good night, and with the merely beautiful or pretty conceptions of waters splendidly luminous ; floods of blue fire dashed abroad from the bows, and a whole expanse sparkling as with diamonds. The waves which we figure to our fancy like " huge wandering mountains — wan- dering as if to find a resting place — with dreary leaden vales between," — which dash against the sides of the ship as if they were bursting in ; also, " pour into the cabin, though the skylight was fastened down." " The heavens are rocking their torn masses of cloud, keeping time with the solemn music of the winds ;" and our authoress is pitched out of her berth upon a wet heap, consisting, among other things, of her scissors and thimble. The description brings together in the imagina- tion a sail shivering to rags, and a glass crashing ; a storm enough to waken the dead, and a lady under the table holding by the leg of it. At best the sublime is faintly painted, compared to the pretty. " The sky seemed narrowed to a mere slip over head, and a long-drawn ex- tent of leaden waters seemed to measure a thousand miles, and these ■loere crested by most exquisite shades of blue and greemvkere the foam- was about to break.'''' Of course we do not mean that these defects arc as apparent in her pages as we have made them in ours ; because the object in the latter was to exhibit them ; but they exist in the descrip- tion before us, and though the same faults are discernible in her ac- count of Niagara, this storm is the only very conspicuous failure in the book ; and a failure not, be it understood, because she details the familiar, which is a priceless excellence, but because her poetry and her matter of fact jostle one another. Miss Martineau landed in America on the evening of the 19th of September, 1834. One of her first impressions in New York was of the neatness and comfort in the appearance of " the young ladies" whom she saw mopping steps and dusting parlors, of well-dressed car- men, and of poor boys selling matches with clean shirt collars and whole coats. This is the grand thing in the country — less striking superficially than the falls and rivers, and many tinted vegetation, but newer and greater than they are. America is a country where every- body is well off. Though little dwelt on by travellers, they all attest it ; too common a thing to seem a novelty long, the writers of books have let it peep out in an incident or an anecdote here and there, without elaborating it ; and even the persons who wilfully misre- present America, the Halls* and the Trollopes, have contented themselves with showing the bad side of this fact without denying it — the sauciness of " helps," and the familiarites of the obtrusive * For proof of wilful misrepresentation by Captain Basil Hall, we refer to the ' Tour in Canada and the United States,' published in 1833, by Mr. Fergusson of Woodhill, p. 248. RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 9 among the working people. Miss Fanny Kemble, when she went to see Grant Thorburn, the original of Lawrie Todd, heard from his lips the eulogium of the United States, which is the noblest that can be pronounced on any country, and which, since the spread of feudalism by the conquest of William, we may say, since the days of Roman conquest, can be said of the republic of America, and of it alone — " It is a fine country for pocr people." The rich may say this of many lands — the poor say it of America alone. Mr. Fer^usson complains thus : " Again and again did my ears ring with, ' We are the happiest people in the world, sir.' " Mr. Power, in his ' Impressions on America,' mentions a Biscayan he met on the load, who said, " It is a fine country and a fine people ; I am a citizen, have lived here forty years, and hope to die here." Miss Martineau, stating a remark of Mr. Madison, in- sists on the point that whatever may be the fate of these states in the fu- ture, they have given to history one invaluable bequest, the fact that a people have been self-governed for fifty years, and governed well; and the corollary to this is magnificent and beautiful ; — the material comfort and moral of the many has been so great in the self-governed land as to exhibit the novel spectacle of a land of happiness for the poor. There is a country in which the attitude of the many to the few is that of the rulers to the ruled, in which the interests of the working classes govern, and in which suffrage is universal ; and the result is, not injury to themselves, nor discomfort to any class, nor faithlessness of man in man, nor any species of agrarian plunder, nor any wide-spread anarchy. Yet more. The districts of this country, in which universal suffrage prevails, have been the parts in which prosperity has been developed with a vigor before unknown to man; and where there was no suffrage for the slave there is ruin hanging over the rich. The population of this land has consisted of men whose ties were not to it — of a population of exiles — of Irishmen, whose aflections still cling to their " emerald isle" — of Scotchmen, whose breasts will throb their last, before they cease to love " the land of brown heath and shaggy wood" — of Englishmen, whose fondest recollections cluster about the green lanes of their merry native soil — of Frenchmen, to whom beautiful France is ever a gay enthusiasm — of Germans, who retain every custom of Germany, and speak its language as that of their fatherland, though a century has elapsed since their forefathers left it — of, in short, almost every people, and language, and tribe ; yet, such has been the prosperity and freedom they have found in their new home, that it has chained itself, with a power stronger than all old ties, to the core of all hearts, and the ears of travellers ring with declarations of happiness. Many of them were men of earnest religious convictions — Roman Catholics, the priests of whose old faith never ceased to beard the oppressor, and uphold the dignity of poverty — Congregationalists, to whom the rights of conscience were an enthusiasm and a duty — and Unitarians, who felt bound to their views by the authority both of reason and revela- tion; but whatever their creed, the United States denied them no 10 HARRIET MARTINEAU'S civil privileg-es, and neither established the one nor the other as a churcii i'^r whom the rest were to be taxed or degraded or persecu- ted. M SI ot these men of many countries were fathers, and the re- public (lid not tax them to support either a navy or an army, in which their sons iiii'>ht bleed equally, but not rise equally. All were men. The U lited Sales, of all the countries in the world, alone recogni- ■zed thi /;i( t : it alone bade men give each other the right hand of fel- lowship as brothers, equal, except that the nobler spirits were to serve tiie humbler, and all to recognize the immortal beauty of the service. In America alone is man, man. No wonder it is loved by religionists, fathers, and men. This is not a dream. We have not said a ihing any one denies; for all we have said is, that it has no established church, no privileged classes, and no poverty. In Ire- land are all these: the Catholic peasant pays tithe to the Protestant parson: his son cannot start fair for promotion in either army or navy ; he could not at all, till lately, and cannot now, without peril, vote for the man who would advocate his cause. If he cannot send the advocate of his interests to the legislature, the laws will not embody his interests; if his son cannot rise to the rich and honorable positions in the public service, the advantages of these stations cannot come to his family; if he pays both the clergyman whose religious instructions he re- ceives, and him whose ministry he does not attend, it must impove- rish and exisperate him, in proportion to the willingness with which he gives to the one, and the violence with which he is compelled to give to the other; and, finally, if he can be governed by means of his wretchedness and ignorance, he will be kept wretched and igno- rant : and all these things, though they fasten the miseries of Ireland to the institutions of Ireland, are mere truisms and common-places; though, because they see them not, thousands of good and intelligent men ari- the sworn and fervid defenders of those institutions,under the venerabh- n ime of the time-honored and time-tried constitution of the country Ireland is a fine country for bishops; it is a miserable country for poor people. The burden of all travellers in Ireland is hunger Herr von Raumer mentions, that the skins of goose-berries which he tlir^w away were picked up by a famishing mother, to give to her child, who was ill from starvation. Mr. Binns, who WIS assistant agricultural commissioner to the late Irish Poor Inquiry,* says, using the words of a witness, that the generality of the |)pasantry " have not a stitch but what they have on their bones." Old astlunatic and rheumatic men and women have for beds nothing but strav. on clay. Their food was the coarsest kind of potatoes, call- ed lum[)ers, and the words of the people were, ?o which their appear- ance of emaciation and misery corresponded, " We are only just kept breathing,'' — '• Our eyes are only just kept open." How dreadful, in men whose hearts are open to all brotherly sympathies, must be the * See Binns' 'Beauties and Miseries of Ireland;' an excellent book, both for interest and information. RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 11 ^naw and bitterness of hunger, ere they will dig a grave near the house of a man who deprives them of chance of food, to warn him, and if the hint is not taken, fire his house, and keep the inmates amidsi the flames with pitchforks I The cruelties of Ireland are the miseries of treland writtc-n in blood and fire. But Ireland is not alone in ihe crimes by which the hunger which will not beg, reveals itself through death and murder. Scotland too lias its Thuggee of starvation. The recent Glasgow trials, which are used to widen the breach between the middle classes and the lower, prove, we fear, that there too, in the best instruct- ed and most moral manufacturing town perhaps in the world, for seve- ral years hunger has been hiring secret assassins. Robert Burns said, the sight of a man asking leave to toil was the most painful of all spec- tacles : a secret tribunal of assassins for securing bread in return for their toil, is a fact, one of the most shocking in the annals of man, and which we urge upon the meditation of all thoughtful, and patriotic, and benevolent men. To destroy the causes of such things is our radical- ism. The blessings of a wliole people are on the American institu- tions ; on ours, from Irishmen and Scolchmen, the guilty curse of blood. We would make our constitution loved. Tne defence of the causes of these things is Conservatism. The state of things which has borne such deadly fruits is that to whose service are devoied die labors of men — none of whom have a legitimate drop of aristocratic blood in them — most of whom have themselves struggled with poveriy, and al- most all of whom are sprung from the ranks ot the oppressed ; — men, such as Lockhart, Wilson, Barnes, Jordan, Maginn, Mahoney, Pal- grave, Sulivan, Banks, D'Israeli, Theodore Hook, Crofton Croker, and Abraham Hayward, — several of them Jews, and most of them Irish- men, who, if they were not ashamed of their fathers, would be on the side of the oppressed — the champions of their own order, in their placeai as sons of the unprivileged classes — instead of exhibiting the melan- choly spectacle ot the gifted kissing the feet of the dunces ; the feet, which were for ages on the necks of their fathers, — instead of doing the base work of the aristocracy, fighting for them, writing for them, joking for them, blackguardising for them, and (it may be said of not a few) lying for them, against men of their own class, of their own schools and colleges, whose only end is to make, without change when possible, but by change when needful, England, Scotland, and Ireland, not what America is, but like America, " a fine country for poor people." It would be a useless task to furnish an abstract of a book which is sure to be read by almost all our readers. We shall, however, touch shortly on one or two ot the features in Miss Martineau's ' VVestertt Travel' which have most novelty, and are likely to attract most atten- tion to the pages which contain them. One of the most attractive of these is her numerous sketches of the eminent men in America, about whom she justly observes, the intensest ignorance prevails in this coun- try. These portraits are, on the whole, very admirably done ; noble and pure moral standards are applied to each of them ; her esti- mates are appreciative and admiring, and though we discern few traces of tia'^ application of any very profound philosophy of character to the 12 HARRIET MARTINEAU'S men she portrays, her remarks are often singularly discriminating and acute. Easily, rapidly, and keenly, does she delineate the traits of temper and manner, the peculiarities of dress and person, which make up the pictures of the people she exhibits ; and, though containing some marks of haste, and some mistakes, and though some of her observa- tions on her friends have an air, more in appearance than in reality, of freedom amounting to asperity, which is the bad aspect of her great- est quality, — her moral courage; — in spite of these drawbacks, — from their truth and brilliancy, the vivid reality apparent in them, and the ele- vated principles they enforce — no such portraits of contemporaries have been laid before the public for many a day. We cannot do better than make a few of our pages an American portrait gallery ; we regret, however, that they can be but few. On board a sfeam-boat on the Hudson, she became acquainted with the late Mr. Livingston, author of the ' Louisiana Code.' She sketches rapidly his life, his studies at Princeton College in 1780, when the professors were repeatedly driven from their chairs by incursions of the enemy, the library scattered, the apparatus destroyed, the college buildings shared with troops, and the students occasionally formed corps to go out and fight ; — his triumphant struggles with his debts and lawsuits ; and above all, his labors on his celebrated Penal Code. Having finished it, he sat up late one night to make his final corrections, and retired with the calm satisfaction of having completed it : he was awakened by a cry of fire, and every scrap and nole of his papers were con- sumed. He was stunned for the hour ; but before the day closed he had recommenced his labors, and in two years more he presented their result to the legislature of Louisiana, considerably improved. He is thus brought before us ; — " Here he was, — now ploughing his way up his own beloved river, whose banks was studed 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 either ia his own country or mine. The last time I saw him was at the christen- ing of a grand niece, when he looked well in health, hut 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." Here is Mr. Van Buren, the present President of the United States. "Mr. Van Buren and his son happened to be in Albany, and called on me this afternoon. There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of this gentleman, whom i afterwards saw frequently at Washington. RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 13 He is small in person, with light hair and blue eyes. I was often asked whether I did not think his manners gentlemanly. There is much friendliness in his manners, for he is a kind-hearted man : he is also rich in intormation, and lets it come out on subjects in which he cannot contrive to see any danger in speaking. But his manners want the frankness and confidence which are essential to good breeding. He questions closely, without giving anything in return. Moreover, he flat- ters to a degree which so cautious a man should long ago have found out to be disagreeable : and his flattery is not merely praise of the per- son he is speaking to, but a worse kind still, — a scepticism and ridicule of objects and persons supposed to be distasteful to the one he is con- versing with. 1 fully believe that he is an amiable and indulgent do- mestic man, and a reasonable political master, a good scholar, and a shrewd man of business ; but he has the scepticism which marks the lower orders of politicians. His public career exhibits no one exercise of that faith In men, and preference of principle to petty expediency, by which a statesman shows himself to be great. " The consequence is, that, with all his opportunities, no great deed has ever been put to his account, and his shrewdness has been at fault in some of the most trying crises of his career. The man who so little trusts others, and so intensely regards self as to make it the study of his life not to commit himself, is liable to a more than ordinary danger of judging wrong when compelled, by the pressure of circumstances, to act a decided part. It has already been so with Mr. Van Buren, more than once ; and now that he is placed in a position where he must sometimes visibly lead, and cannot always appear to follow, it will be seen whether a due reverence ot men, and a forgetfulness of self, would not have furnished him with more practical wisdom than all his 'sound- ing on his dim and perilous way.' J\lr. Calhoun is, I believe, Mr. Van Buren's evil genius. Mr. Calhoun was understood to be in expectation of succeeding to the presidential chair when Mr. Van Buren was ap- poiiited Minister to Great Britain. This appointment of President Jack- son's did not receive the necessary sanction from the Senate ; and the new Minister was recalled on the first possible day, Mr. Calhoun being very active in bringing him back. Mr. Calhoun was not aware that he was recalling one who was to prove a successful rival. Mr. Calhoun has not been President; Mr. Van Buren is so ; but the successful rival has a mortal dread of the great Nullifier — a dread so obvious, and caus- ing such a prostration of ail principle and all dignity, as to oblige ob- servers to conclude that there is more in the matter than they see; that it will come out some day why the disappointed aspirant is still to be propitiated, when he seems to be deprived of power to do mischief. To propitiate Mr. Calhoun seems to have been Mr. Van Buren's great ob- ject for a long time past ; an object probably hopeless in itself, and in the pursuit of which he is likely to lose the confidence of the North far faster than he could, at best, disarm the enmity of the South. " In the spring of 1836, when Mr. Van Buren was still Vice-President, and the Presidential election was drawing near, Mr. Calhoun brought forward in the Senate his Bill (commonly called the Gag Bill) to violate the post-office function, by authorising post masters to investigate the contents of the mails, and to keep back all papers whatsoever relating to the snbject of slavery. The Bill was, by consent, read the first and se- cond times without debate ; and the Senate was to be divided on the 2 14 HARRIET MARTINEAU'S question whether it should go to a third reading. The votes were equate — 18 to 18, 'Where's the Vice-President J' shouted Mr. Calhoun's mighty voice. The Vice-President was behind a pillar, talking. He was compelled to give the casting vote,— to commit himself for once ; a cruel necessity to a man of his caution. He voted for the third reading, and there was a bitter cry on the instant, — 'The Northern States are sold.' The Bill was thrown out on the division of the third reading, and the Vice-President lost by his vote the good-will of the whole body of abolitionists, who had till then supported him as the democratic and supposed anti-slavery candidate. As it was. most of the abolitionists did not vote at all, for want of a good candidate, and Mr, Van Buren's majority was so reduced as to justify a belief that if the people had had another year to consider his conduct in, or if another democratic candidate could have been put forward, he would have been emphatically rejected. Having once committed himself he has gone further still, in propitiation of Mr, Calhoun. On the day of his presidential installation, he declared that under no circumstances would he give his assent to any bill for the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia. This declaration does not arise out of a be- lief that Congress has not power to abolish slavery in the district : for he did, not long before, when hard pressed, declare that he believed Congress to possess that power. He has therefore hazarded the ex- traordinary declaration that he will not, under any circumstances^ assent to what may become the will of the people, constitutionally embodied. This is a bold intimation for a 'non-committal man' to make. "How strange it is to recal one's first impressions of public men in the midst of one's matured opinions of them ! How freshly I remem- ber the chat about West Point and Stockbridge acquaintances that I had that afternoon at Albany, with the conspicuous man about whom I was then ignorant and indifferent, and whom I have since seen com- mitted to the lowest political principles and practices, while elected as professing some of the highest ! It only remains to be said, that if Mr. Van Buren feels himself aggrieved by the interpretation which is commonly put upon the facts of his political life, he has no one to blame but himself; for such misinterpretation (if it exist) is owing to his singular reserve," We are inclined to doubt the completeness of this sketch ; it seems to want the main point in the character, an exhibition of the qualities by which Mr. Van Buren has become what he is, which most assuredly mere shrewdness in business, and weak caution, could never have made him. Mr. Fergusson of WoodhiH relates two traits of Van Bu- ren which harmonize with what Miss Martineau has said, while they betray a point of character which would go far to explain his rise ; namely, the power of obtaining his purposes by skilfully and systema- tically acting on the feelings of others — a quality by which a man may rise to almost any height in ordinary times, when there is no pressing demand for the men who rise by doing things which show them to be the only persons capable of accomplishing what multitudes wish to be done. Mr. Fergusson was introduced to Van Buren by a note from a gentle- man he did not know, and by him to President Jackson, with whom RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 15 they were when the unknown introducer was announced. Mr. Fer- gusson says, " his face, no doubt, showed his feelings, for Mr. Van Buren immediately arose, and kindly relieved me by saying, ' Permit me, Mr. Fergusson, to introduce you to your fr Unci, Mr. C ," much to the amusement ot the President, who laughed heartily at what he could at first by no means decypher." This gentleman afterwards remarks, that Van Buren paid a compliment to Scotch settlers which was so addressed to his national feelings as to " smack of the court." These trifles seem indications of a habit. Mr. Power tells us that Van Buren had, among his admirers, the cognomen of the "Little Magi- cian" — among his party, a character for wisdom and political sagacity ; and to the combination of the two he probably owes the appellation of the American Talleyrand. Mr. Power also cites his filling the chair of the senate with little reproach, while the avowed director of Jackson's cabinet, as a proof of the greatest good temper ; and we may add skill in managing men, especially when it is remembered that he was only a short lime before declared unworthy to represent the nation at a foreign court by the very assembly over wliich he presided so well. His manner as a speaker, he thinks highly characteristic, " cool, cour- teous ; with a tone quiet but persuasive, a voice low pitched, but singu- lavly effective, from the clearness of his enunciation and well chosen emphasis." We should, if space permitted, have quoted Miss Martineau's sketch of Jackson, for whose occasional violence and prejudices, the qualities which got him the nickname of Old Hickory, are an ample compen- sation. The 'hero of New Orleans,' the man who with such a perfect comprehension of his position as he displayed on that occasion, knew how to assume a dictatorship in such a republic as America, and triumph by assuming it, however inferior in talk and style he may be to his eloquent rivals, showed himself possessed of faculties which, so far as we are aware, none of them have displayed. A traveller men- tions an American who became angry because, in a processsion in which were several foreign ambassadors in gold lace costume glittering in the sun, the straight figure of the President was pointed out to him in a plain black suit. There is a prejudice equally vulgar in the people who cannot recognize as a great man, a man who has no rhetoric. Miss Martineau passes, in rapid review, the most eminent men of Wash- ington, in the following passage : — " Our pleasantest evenings were spent at home in a society of the highest order. Ladies, literary, fashionable, or domestic, would spend an hour with us on their way from a dinner, or to a ball. Members of Congress would repose themselves by our fire-side. Mr. Clay sitting up- right on the sofa, with his snufF-box ever in his hand, would discourse for many hours, in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great sub- jects of American policy which we might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of 16 HARRIET :»1ARTINEAU'S laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution, would illuminate' an evenine: now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast iron man, who looks as if he had never been born, and never could be extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our understandings upon a painful stretch for a short while, and leave us to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make of it. His speech abounds in figures, truly illustrative, if that which they illustrate were but true also. But his theories of government (almost the only subject on which his thoughts are employed,) the squarest and compactest theories that ever were made, are composed out of limited elements, and are not therefore likely to stand service very well. It is at first extremely interesting to hear Mr. Calhoun talk ; and there is a never-failing evidence of power in all he says and does, which commands intellec- tual reverence: but the admiration is too soon turned into regret, — into absolute melancholy. It is impossible to resist the conviction that all this force can be at best but useless, and is but too likely to be very mischievous. His mind has long lost all power of communi- cating with any other. I know no man who lives in such utter in- tellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues them, by the fire- side, as in the Senate: he is v,'rought like a piece of machinery, set a-going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer: he either passes by what you say, or twists it into a suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again. Of course, a mind like this can have but little influence in the Senate, except by virtue, perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less eccentric days : but its influence at home is to be dreaded. There is no hope that an intellect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate itself to vary- ing circumstances ; and there is every danger that it will break up all that it can, in order to remould the materials in its own way. Mr. Calhoun is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines ; and those who know the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of modification by other minds (after having gone through as re- markable a revolution of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experienced,) will no more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession. Half an hour's conversation with him is enough to make a necessarian of anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his enemies. His moments of softness, in his family, and when recurring to old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement working of the intellectual machine ; arelief equally to himself and others. Those moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of a soldier. ; "One incident befel during my stay, which moved everybody. — A representative from South Carolina was ill, a friend of Mr. Cal- houn's ; and Mr. Calhoun parted from us, one day, on leaving the Capitol, to visit this sick gentleman. The physician told Mr. Cal- houn on his entrance that his friend was dying, and could not live more than a very few hours. A visitor, not knowing this, asked the sick man how he was. ' To judge by my own feelings,' said he, 'much better; but by the countenances of my friends, not.' And he begged to be told the truth. On hearing it, he instantly beck- RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 17 oned Mr. Calhoun to him, and said, 'I hear they are giving you rough treatment in the Senate. Let a dying friend implore you to guard your looks and words so as that no undue warmth may make you appear unworthy of your principles.' ' This was friendship, — strong friendship,' said Mr. Calhoun to me, and to many others ; and it had its due effect upon him. A few days after, Colonel Ben- ten, a fantastic senator from Missouri, interrupted Mr. Calhoun in a speech, for the purpose of making an attack upon him, which would have been insufferable, if it had not been too absurdly worded to be easily made anything of. He was called to order: this was objected to ; the Senate divided upon the point of order, being dis- satisfied with the decision of the chair ; — in short, Mr. Calhoun sat for two full hours, hearing his veracity talked about, before his speech could proceed. He sat in stern patience, scarcely moving a muscle the whole time; and when it was all settled in his favor, merely observed that his friends need not fear his being disturbed by an attack of this nature from such a quarter, and resumed his speech at the precise point where his argument had been broken off. It was great, and would have satisfied the 'strong friendship' of his departed comrade, if he could have been there to witness it. " Our active-minded, genial friend, Judge Story, found time to visit us frequently, though he is one of the busiest men in the world, — writing half-a-dozen great law books every year ; having his full share of the business of the Supreme Court upon his hands ; his professorship to attend to ; the District Courts at home and in Mas- sachusetts, and a correspondence which spreads half over the world. His talk would gush out for hours, and there was never too much of it for us ; it is so heartfelt, so lively, so various ; and his face all the while, notwithstanding his grey hair, showing all the nobility and ingenuousness of a child's. There is no tolerable portrait of Judge Story, and there never will be, I should like to bring him face to face with a person who entertains the com- mon English idea of how an American looks and behaves. I should like to see what such an one would make of the quick smiles, the glistening eye, the gleeful tone, with passing touches of sentiment ; the innocent self-complacency, the confiding, devoted affections of the great American lawyer. The preconception would be totally at fault. " With Judge Story sometimes came the man to whom he looked up with feelings little short of adoration, — the aged Chief-Justice Marshall. There was almost too much mutual respect in our first meeting: we knew -something of his individual merits and services; and he maintained through life, and carried to his grave, a rever- ence for woman as rare in its kind as in its degree. It had all the theoretical fervor and magnificence of UncleToby's, with the ad- vantage of being grounded upon an extensive knowledge of the sex. He was the father and the grandfather of women ; and out of this experience he brought, not only the love and pity which theiroffices and position command, and the awe of purity which they excite in the minds of the pure, but a steady conviction of their intellectujil equality with men ; and with this, a deep sense of their social inju- ries. Throughout life he so invariably sustained their cause, that no indulgent libertine dared to flatter and humor, no sceptic, secure in the possession of power, dared to scoff at the claims of woman in 2* 18 HARRIET MARTlNEATj's the presence of Marshall, who, made clear-sighted by his purity, knew the sex far better than either. "How delighted we were to see Judge Story bring in the tall, majestic, bright-eyed old man ! — old by chronology, by the lines on his composed face, and by his services to the republic ; but so dig- nified, so fresh, so present to the time, that no feeling of compas- sionate consideration for age dared to mix with the contemplation of him. The first evening, he asked me much about Englisii politics, and especially whether the people were not fast ripening for the abo- lition of our religious establishment — an institution which, after a long study of it, he considered so monstrous in principle, and so in- jurious to true religion in practice, that he could not imagine that it could be upheld for any thing but political purposes. There was no prejudice here, on account of American modes being different; for he observed that the clergy were there, as elsewhere, far from being in the van of society, and lamented the existence of much fanati- cism in the United States : but he saw the evils of an establishment the more clearly, not the less, from being aware of the faults in the administration of religion at home. The most animated moment of our conversation was when I told him I was going to visit Mr. Madi- son, on leaving Washington. He instantly sat upright in his chair, and, with beaming eyes began to praise Mr. Madison. Madison received the mention of Marshall's name in just the same manner: yet these men were strongly opposed in politics, and their magnani- mous appreciation of each other underwent no slight or brief trial. '' Judge Porter sometimes came, a hearty friend, and much like a fellow-countryman, though he was a senator of the United States, and had previously been, for fourteen years. Judge of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. He was Irish by birth. His father was vin- dictively executed, with cruel haste, under martial law, in the Irish rebellion; and the sons were sent by their noble-minded mother to America, where Alexander, the eldest, has thus raised himself into a station of high honor. Judge Porter's warmth, sincerity, gene- rosity, knowledge, and wit, are the pride of his constituents, and very ornamental to the Senate. What their charm is by the fireside may be imagined." We must pass her sketch of the Vice-President, Colonel Johnson, of whom she says, " If he should become President, he will be as strange looking a potentate as ever ruled ; his countenance is wild, though with much cleverness in it; hi.s hair wanders all abroad, and he wears no cravat;" — because we have a still more interesting per- sonage to notice in the celebrated, though unseen, Amos Kendall — the object of infinite marvel in Washington, and, indeed, in the whole of the United States. " I was fortunate enough once to catch a glimpse of the invisible Amos Kendall, one of the most remarkable men in America. He is supposed to be the moving spring of the whole administration ; the thinker, planner and doer ; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued of an excellence which prevents their being attributed to persons wlio take the responsibility of them; a correspondence is kept up all over the country for which no one seems to be answer- able ; work is doi.e, of goblin extent and with goblin speed, which RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. 19 makes men look about them with a superstitious wonder ; and the invisible Amos Kendall has the credit of it all. President Jack- son's Letters to his Cabinet are said to be Kendall's : the Report on Sunday Mails is attributed to Kendall : the Letters sent from Wash- ington to appear in remote country newspapers, whence they are collected and published in the ' Globe' as demonstrations of public opinion, are pronounced to be written by Kendall : every n yste- rious paragraph in opposition newspapers relates to Kendall : and it is some relief to the timid that his having now the office of Post- master-General affords opportunity for open attacks upon this twi- light personage ; who is proved, by the faults in the Post-Office ad- ministration, not to be able to do quite everything well. But he is undoubtedly a great genius. He unites with his " great talent for silence" a splendid audacity. " It is clear that he could not do the work that he does (incredible enough in amount any way) if he went into society like other men. He did, however, one evening, — 1 think it was at the Attorney- General's. The moment 1 went in, intimations reached me from all quarters, amidst nods and winks, 'Kendall is here:' ' That is he.' I saw at once that his plea for seclusion, — bad health,— is no false one. The extreme sallowness of his complexion, and hair of such perfect whiteness as is rarely seen in a man of middle age, tes- tified to disease. His countenance does not help the superstitious to throw off their dread of him. He probably does not desire this superstition to melt away ; for there is no calculating how much influence was given to Jackson's administration by the universal belief thatthere was a concealed eye and hand behind the machinery of government, by which everything could be foreseen, and the hardest deeds done. A member of Congress told me, this night, that he had watched through four sessions for a sight of Kendall, and had never attained it till now. Kendall was leaning on a chair, with his head bent down, and eye glancing up at a member of Con- gress with whom he was in earnest conversation : and in a few minutes he was gone. " Tidings reached Mi*, and Mrs. Clay one evening, many years ago, at their house in the neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky, that a young man, solitary and poor, lay ill of a fever in a noisy hotel in the town. Mrs. Clay went down in the carriage without delay, and brought the sufferer home to her house, where she nursed him with her own hands till he recovered. Mr. Clay was struck with the talents and knowledge of the young man (Kendall), and retained him as tutor to his sons, heaping benefits upon him with characteristic bounty. Thus far is notorious fact. As to the causes of their separation and enmity, I have not heard Kendall's side of the question; and I therefore say nothing; but go on to the other notorious facts, that Amos Kendall quitted Mr. Clay's political party some time after Adams had been, by Mr. Clay's influence, seated in the Presidential chair, and went over to Jackson ; since which time he has never ceased his persecutions of Mr. Clay through the news- papers. It was extensively believed, on Mr. Van Buren's accession, that Kendall would be dismissed from office altogether ; and there was much speculation about how the administration would get on without him. But he appears to be still there. Whether he goes o;iars per annum, payable in advance. U. It will be handsomely printed in a bold type, on a paper of first rate qu lity, size Demy 8vo. ; and stitched up in a cover of unique design, and ! made in every respect to correspond with the London Edition. 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