Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the battle. Had they started, the Diligence managers could only have rendered a Flemish account of that load. As it was, they stopped, and the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute.

I was on the box-seat with him, and fell under him, catching a bad sprain of the left wrist, on which I came down, which disables that hand for a few days—nothing broken and no great harm done—only a few liberal rents and trifling bruises. But I should judge that our heads lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below looked particularly jagged and uninviting.

Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge seriatim from the side door which in the fall came uppermost—only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty.

The drivers ahead stopped and came back, helped right the stage, and each took a shy at the unlucky charioteer, though in fact they were as much in fault as he, only more fortunate. I suspected before that this trotting down zig-zags was not the thing, and now I know it, and shall remember it, at least for one week. And I have given this tedious detail to urge and embolden others to remonstrate against it. The vice is universal—at least it was just as bad at Mount Cenis as here, and here were four carriages all going at the same reckless pace. The truth is, it is not safe to trot down such mountains and hardly to ride down them at all. We passed scores of places where any such unavoidable accident as the breaking of a reach or a hold-back must have sent the whole concern over a precipice where all that reached the bottom would hardly be worth picking up. Who has a right to risk his life in this fool-hardy manner?

The next time I cross the Alps, I will take my seat for the stopping-place at the nearer foot, and thence walk leisurely over, with a long staff and a water-proof coat, sending on my baggage by the coach to the hotel on the other side. If I can get an hour's start, I can (by straightening the zig-zags) nearly double it going up; if not, I will wait on the other side for the next stage. If it were not for the cowardly fear of being thought timid, there would be more care used in such matters. Hitherto, I have not given the subject much consideration, but I turn over a new leaf from the date of this adventure.

We came down the rest of the mountain more carefully, though still a great deal too fast. A girl of twelve or thirteen breaking stone by the road-side in a lonely place was among the note-worthy features of the wilder upper region. Trees, Potato-patches, Grain-fields were welcome sights as we neared them successively, though the Vine and the Chestnut did not and Indian Corn barely did reaeppear on this side, which is much colder than the other and grows little but Grass. At the foot of the pass, the valley widened a little, though still with steep, snow-capped cliffs crowding it on either side. Five hours from the summit and less than two from the base, we reached the pretty town of Altorf, having perhaps five thousand inhabitants, with a mile width of valley and grassy slopes on the surrounding mountains. A few minutes more brought us to the petty port of Fluellen on Lake Lucerne, where a little steamboat was waiting to bring us to this city. I would not just then have traded off that steamboat for several square miles of snow-capped sublimity.

Lake Lucerne is a mere cleft in the mountains, narrow and most irregular in form, with square cliffs like our Palisades, only many times higher, rising sheer out of its depths and hardly a stone's throw apart. Mount Pilatte and The Rhigi are the most celebrated of those seen from its breast. After making two or three short turns among the hights, it finally opens to a width of some miles on a softer scene, with green pastures and pleasant woods sweeping down the hills nearly or quite to its verge. Lucerne City lies at or near its outlet, and seems a pleasant place, though I have had no time to spend upon it, as I arrived at 8 1/2 P. M. too weary even to write if I had been able to sleep. I leave for Basle by Diligence at eight this morning.



XXXII.

LUCERNE TO BASLE.

BASLE, July 13, 1851.

Very striking is the contrast between all of Switzerland I had traversed, before reaching Lucerne, and the route thence to this place. From Como to the middle of Lake Lucerne is something over a hundred miles, and in all that distance there was never so much as one-tenth of the land in sight that could, by any possibility, be cultivated. The narrow valleys, when not too narrow, were arable and generally fertile; but they were shut in on every side by dizzy precipices, by lofty mountains, often snow-crowned, and either wholly barren or with only a few shrubs and stunted trees clinging to their clefts and inequalities, because nothing else could cling there. A fortieth part of these mountain sides may have been so moderately steep that soil could gather and lie on them, in which case they yielded fair pasturage for cattle, or at least for goats: but nine-tenths of their superficies were utterly unproductive and inhospitable. On the mountain-tops, indeed, there is sometimes a level space, but the snow generally monopolizes that. Such is Switzerland from the Italian frontier, where I crossed it, to the immediate vicinity of Lucerne.

Here all is changed. A small but beautiful river debouches from the lake at its west end, and the town is grouped around this outlet. But mountains here there are none—nothing but rich glades and gently swelling hills, covered with the most bounteous harvest, through which the high road runs north-easterly some sixty miles to Basle on the Rhine in the north-east corner of Switzerland, with Germany (Baden) on the east and France on the north. A single ridge, indeed, on this route presents a ragged cliff or two and some heights dignified with the title of mountains, which seem a joke to one who has just spent two days among the Alps.

Grass is the chief staple of this fertile region, but Wheat is abundantly grown and is just beginning to ripen, promising a noble yield. Potatoes also are extensively planted, and I never saw a more vigorous growth. Rye, Oats and Barley do well, but are little cultivated. Of Indian Corn there is none, and the Vine, which had given out on the Italian side some twenty miles below the foot of St. Gothard, does not come in again till we are close to the Rhine. But in its stead they have the Apple in profusion—I think more Apple trees between Lucerne and the Rhine, than I had seen in all Europe before—and they seem very thrifty, though this year's yield of fruit will be light. There are some other trees planted, and many small, thrifty forests, such as I had hardly seen before on the Continent. These increase as we approach the Rhine. There is hardly a fence throughout, and generous crops of Wheat, Potatoes, Rye, Grass, Oats, &c., are growing close up to the beaten road on either side. I don't exactly see how Cattle are driven through such a country, having passed no drove since crossing Mount St. Gothard.

The dwellings are generally large, low structures, with sloping, overhanging roofs, indicating thrift and comfort. Sometimes the first story, or at least the basement, is of hewn-stone, but the greater part of the structure is nearly always of wood. The barns are spacious, and built much like the houses. I have passed through no other part of Europe evincing such general thrift and comfort as this quarter of Switzerland, and Basle, already a well built city, is rapidly improving. When the Railroad line from Paris to Strasburg is completed, the French capital will be but little more than twenty-four hours from Basle, while the Baden line, down the German side of the Rhine, already connects this city easily with all Germany, and is certain of rapid and indefinite extension. Basle, though quite a town in Caesar's day, is renewing her youth.

THE SWISS.

I am leaving Switzerland, after four days only of observation therein; but during those days I have traversed the country from its southern to its north-eastern extremity, passing through six of the Cantons and along the skirts of another, resting respectively at Airolo, Lucerne, and Basle, and meeting many hundreds of the people on the way, beside seeing thousands in the towns and at work in their fields. This is naturally a very poor country, with for the most part a sterile soil—or rather, naked, precipitous rocks, irreclaimably devoid of soil—where, if anywhere, the poor peasantry would be justified in asking charity of the strangers who come to gaze at and enjoy their stupendous but most inhospitable mountains—and yet I have not seen one beggar to a hundred hearty workers, while in fertile, bounteous, sunny Italy, the preponderance was clearly the other way. And, though very palpably a stranger, and specially exposed by my ignorance of the languages spoken here to imposition, no one has attempted to cheat me from the moment of my entering the Republic till this, while in Italy every day and almost every hour was marked by its peculiar extortions. Every where I have found kindness and truth written on the faces and evinced in the acts of this people, while in Italy rapacity and knavery are the order of the day. How does a monarchist explain this broad discrepancy? Mountains alone will not do, for the Italians of the Apennines and the Abruzzi are notoriously very much like those of the Campagna and of the Val d'Arno; nor will the zealot's ready suggestion of diverse Faiths suffice, for my route has lain almost exclusively through the Catholic portion of this country. Ticino, Uri, Lucerne, etc., are intensely, unanimously Catholic; the very roadsides are dotted with little shrines, enriched with the rudest possible pictures of the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, &c., and I think I did not pass a Protestant church or village till I was within thirty miles of this place. Nearly all the Swiss I have seen are Catholics, and a more upright, kindly, truly religious people I have rarely or never met. What, then, can have rendered them so palpably and greatly superior to their Italian neighbors, whose ancestors were the masters of theirs, but the prevalence here of Republican Freedom and there of Imperial Despotism?

Switzerland, shut out from equal competition with other nations by her inland, elevated, scarcely accessible position, has naturalized Manufactures on her soil, and they are steadily extending. She sends Millions' worth of Watches, Silks, &c., annually even to distant America; while Italy, with nearly all her population within a day's ride of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, with the rich, barbaric East at her doors for a market, does not fabricate even the rags which partially cover her beggars, but depends on England and France for most of the little clothing she has. Italy is naturally a land of abundance and luxury, with a soil and climate scarcely equalled on earth; yet a large share of her population actually lack the necessaries, not to speak of the comforts, of life, and those who sow and reap her bountiful harvests are often without bread: Switzerland has, for the most part, an Arctic climate and scarcely any soil at all; and yet her people are all decently clad and adequately though frugally fed, and I have not seen one person who seemed to have been demoralized by want or to suffer from hunger since I crossed her border. Her hotels are far superior to their more frequented namesakes of Italy; even at the isolated hamlet of Airolo, where no grain will grow, I found everything essential to cleanliness and comfort, while the "Switzer Hoff" at Lucerne and "Les Trois Rois" at Basle are two of the very best houses I have found in Europe. What Royalist can satisfactorily explain these contrasts?

Switzerland, though a small country, and not half of this habitable, speaks three different languages. I found at Airolo regular files of Swiss journals printed respectively in French, Italian, and German: the last entirely baffled me; the two former I read after a fashion, making out some of their contents' purport and drift. Those in French, printed at Geneva, Lausanne, &c., were executed far more neatly than the others. All were of small size, and in good part devoted to spirited political discussion. Switzerland, though profoundly Republican, is almost equally divided into parties known respectively as "Radical" and "Conservative:" the Protestant Cantons being preponderantly Radical, the Catholic generally Conservative. Of the precise questions in dispute I know little and shall say nothing; but I do trust that the controversy will not enfeeble nor paralyze the Republic, now seriously menaced by the Allied Despots, who seem to have almost forgotten that there ever was such a man as WILLIAM TELL. Let us drink, in the crystal current leaping brightly down from the eternal glaciers, to his glorious, inspiring memory, and to Switzerland a loving and hopeful Adieu!



XXXIII.

GERMANY.

COLOGNE, Tuesday, July 15, 1851.

After spending Sunday very agreeably at Basle (where American Protestants traveling may like to know that Divine worship is regularly conducted each Sabbath by an English clergyman, at the excellent Hotel of the Three Kings), I set my face again northward at 7 1/2 A. M. on Monday, crossing the Rhine (which is here about the size of the Hudson at Albany) directly into Baden, and so leaving the soil of glorious Switzerland, the mountain home of Liberty amid surrounding despotisms. The nine first miles from Basle (to Efringen) are traversed by Omnibus, and thence a very good Railroad runs nearly parallel with the Rhine by Freiburg, Kehl (opposite Strasburg), Baden (at some distance), Rastatt, Carlsruhe, and Heidelberg, to Mannheim, distant from Basle 167 1/2 miles by Railroad, and I presume considerably further by River, as the Rhine (unlike the Railroad as far as Heidelberg) is not very direct in its course. There is a French Railroad completed on the other (west) side of the river from Basle to Strasburg, and nearly completed from Strasburg to Paris, which affords a far more direct and expeditious route than that I have chosen, as I wished to see something of Germany. It is also cheaper, I believe, to take the French Railroad to Strasburg, and the river thence by steamboats which ply regularly as high as Strasburg, and might keep on to Basle, I presume, if not impeded by bridges, as the river is amply large enough.

The Baden Railroad runs through a country descending, indeed, toward the Rhine and with the Rhine, but as nearly level as a country well can be, and affording the fewest possible obstacles to its construction. It is faithfully built, but instead of the numerous common roads which cross it being carried over or under its track, as the English Railroads are, they are closed on each side by a swing-bar, at which a guard is stationed—a plan which saves expense at the outset, but involves a heavy permanent charge. I should deem the English plan preferable to this, though men are had much cheaper for such service in Germany than in America, or even Great Britain. The pace is slower than with us. We were about nine hours of fair daylight traversing 160 miles of level or descending grade, with a light passenger train. The management, however, was careful and unexceptionable.

This Railroad runs for most of the distance much nearer to the range of gentle hills which bound the broad and fertile Rhine valley on the east than to the river itself. The valley is nearly bare of trees for the most part, and has scarcely any fences save the very slight board fence on either side of the Railroad. In some places, natural woods of considerable extent are permitted, but not many fruit nor shade-trees, whether in rows or scattered. The hills in sight, however, are very considerably wooded, and wood is apparently the common fuel. The valley is generally but not entirely irrigated, though all of it easily might be, the arrangements for irrigation appearing much more modern and unsystematic here than in Lombardy. The land is cultivated in strips as in France—first Wheat (the great staple), then Rye, then Potatoes, then Clover, then Beets, or Hemp, or Flax, and so on. For a small part of the way, Grass seems to preponderate, but generally Wheat and Rye cover more than half the ground, while Potatoes have a very large breadth of it. Rye is now being harvested, and is quite heavy: in fact, all the crops promise abundant harvests. The Vine appears at intervals, but is not general through this region: Indian Corn is also rare, and appears in small patches. In some places many acres of Wheat are seen in one piece, but usually a breadth of four to twenty rods is given to one crop, and then another succeeds and so on. I presume this implies a diversity of owners, or at least of tenants.

The cultivation, though not always judicious, is generally thorough, there being no lack of hands nor of good will. The day being fine and the season a hurrying one, the vast plain was everywhere dotted with laborers, of whom fully half were Women, reaping Rye, binding it, raking and pitching Hay, hoeing Potatoes, transplanting Cabbages, Beets, &c. They seemed to work quite as heartily and efficiently as the men. But the most characteristically European spectacle I saw was a woman unloading a great hay-wagon of huge cordwood at a Railroad station, and pitching over the heavy sticks with decided resolution and efficiency. It may interest the American pioneers in the Great Pantalette (or is it Pantaloon?) Movement to know that she was attired in appropriate costume—short frock, biped continuations and a mannish oil-skin hat.—And this reminds me that, coming away from Rome, I met, at the half-way house to Civita Vecchia, a French marching regiment on its way from Corsica to the Eternal City, to which regiment two women were attached as sutlers, &c., who also wore the same costume, except that their hats were of wool instead of oil-skin. Thus attired, they had marched twenty-five miles that hot day, and were to march as many the next, as they had doubtless done on many former days. It certainly cannot be pretended that these women adopted that dress from a love of novelty, or a desire to lead a new fashion, or from any other reason than a sense of its convenience, founded on experience. I trust, therefore, that their unconscious testimony in behalf of the Great Movement may not be deemed irrelevant nor unentitled to consideration. Their social rank is certainly not the highest, but I consider them more likely to render a correct judgment on the merit of the Bloomer controversy than the Lady Patronesses of Almack's.

THE RHINE.

After spending the night at Mannheim, I took a steamboat at 5 1/2 this morning for this place, 165 miles down the Rhine, embracing all the navigable part of the river of which the scenery is esteemed attractive. As far down as Mayence or Mentz (55 miles), the low banks and broad intervale continue, and there is little worthy of notice. From Mentz to Coblentz (54 miles), there is some magnificent scenery, though I think its natural beauties do not surpass those of the Hudson from New-York to Newburgh. Certainly there are no five miles equal in rugged grandeur to those beginning just below and ending above West Point. But the Rhine is here somewhat larger than the Hudson; the hills on either side, though seldom absolutely precipitous, are from one to five hundred feet high, and are often crowned with the ruins of ancient castles, which have a very picturesque appearance; while the little villages at their foot and the cultivation (mainly of the Vine) which is laboriously prosecuted up their rocky and almost naked sides, contribute to heighten the general effect. These sterile rocks impart a warmth to the soil and a sweetness to the grape which are otherwise found only under a more southerly sun, and, combined with the cheapness of labor, appear to justify the toilsome process of terracing up the steep hill-sides, and even carrying up earth in baskets to little southward-looking nooks and crevices where it may be retained and planted on. Yet I liked better than the vine-clad heights those less abrupt declivities where a more varied culture is attempted, and where the Vine is intermingled with strips of now ripened Rye, ripening Wheat, blossoming Potatoes, &c., &c., together imparting a variegated richness and beauty to the landscape which are rarely equaled. But the Rhine has been nearly written out, and I will pass it lightly over. Its towers are not very imposing in appearance, though Coblentz makes a fair show. Opposite is Ehrenbreitstein, no longer the ruin described (if I rightly remember) in Childe Harold, but a magnificent fortress, apparently in the best condition, and said to have cost Five Millions of dollars. The "blue Moselle" enters the Rhine from the west just below Coblentz. This city (Cologne) is the largest, I believe, in Rhenish Prussia, and, next to Rotterdam at its mouth, the largest on the Rhine, having a flourishing trade and 90,000 inhabitants. (Coblentz has 26,000, Mayence 36,000, Mannheim 23,000 and Strasburg 60,000.)

There are some bold hights dignified as mountains below Coblentz, but the finest of the scenery is above. The hills disappear some miles above this city, and henceforward to the sea all is flat and tame as a marsh. On the whole, the Rhine has hardly fulfilled my expectations. Had I visited it on my way to the Alps, instead of just from them, it would doubtless have impressed me more profoundly; but I am sure the St. Mary's of Lake Superior is better worth seeing; so I think, is the Delaware section of the Erie Railroad. It is possible the weather may have unfitted me for appreciating this famous river, for a more cloudy, misty, chilly, rainy, execrable, English day I have seldom encountered. To travelers blessed with golden sunshine, the Rhine may wear a grander, nobler aspect, and to such I leave it.

THE GERMANS.

I have been but two days wholly among the Germans, but I had previously met many of them in England, Italy and Switzerland. They are seen to the best advantage at home. Their uniform courtesy (save in the detestable habit of smoking where others cannot help being annoyed by their fumes), indicates not merely good nature but genuine kindness of heart. I have not seen a German quarreling or scolding anywhere in Europe. The deference of members of the same family to each other's happiness in cars, hotels and steamboats has that quiet, unconscious manner which distinguishes a habit from a holiday ornament. The entire absence of pretense, of stateliness, of a desire to be thought a personage and not a mere person, is scarcely more universal in Switzerland than here. But in fact I have found Aristocracy a chronic disease nowhere but in Great Britain. In France, there is absolutely nothing of it; there are monarchists in that country—monarchists from tradition, from conviction, from policy, or from class interest—but of Aristocracy scarcely a trace is left. Your Paris boot-black will make you a low bow in acknowledgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of the abjectness of a London waiter, and would evidently decline the honor of being kicked by a Duke. In Italy, there is little manhood but no class-worship; her millions of beggars will not abase themselves one whit lower before a Prince than before anyone else from whom they hope to worm a copper. The Swiss are freemen, and wear the fact unconsciously but palpably on their brows and beaming from their eyes. The Germans submit passively to arbitrary power which they see not how successfully to resist, but they render to rank or dignity no more homage than is necessary—their souls are still free, and their manners evince a simplicity and frankness which might shame or at least instruct America. On the Rhine, the steamboats are so small and shabby, without state-rooms, berth-rooms, or even an upper deck—that the passengers are necessarily at all times under each other's observation, and, as the fare is high, and twice as much in the main as in the forward cabin, it may be fairly presumed that among those who pay the higher charge are none of the poorest class—no mere laborers for wages. Yet in this main cabin well-dressed young ladies would take out their home-prepared dinner and eat it at their own good time without seeking the company and countenance of others, or troubling themselves to see who was observing. A Lowell factory-girl would consider this entirely out of character, and a New-York milliner would be shocked at the idea of it.

The Germans are a patient, long-suffering race. Of their Forty Millions outside of Austria, probably less than an eighth at all approve or even acquiesce in the despotic policy in which their rulers are leagued, and which has rendered Germany for the present a mere outpost of Russia—an unfinished Poland. These people are intelligent as well as brave—they see and feel, yet endure and forbear. Perhaps their course is wiser than that which hot impatience would prompt—nay, I believe it is. If they can patiently suffer on without losing heart until France shall have extricated herself from the toils of her treacherous misrulers, they may then resume their rights almost without a blow. And whenever a new 1848 shall dawn upon them, they will have learned to improve its opportunities and avoid its weaknesses and blunders. Heaven speed its auspicious coming!



XXXIV.

BELGIUM.

PARIS, Saturday, July 19, 1851.

From Cologne westward by Railroad to the Western frontier (near Verviers) of Rhenish Prussia, and thus of Germany, is 65 miles. For most of the way the country is flat and fertile, and in good part devoted to Grazing, though considerable Wheat is grown. The farming is not remarkably good, and the general aspect befits a region which for two thousand years has been too often the arena of fierce and bloody conflict between the armies of great nations. Cologne itself, though a place of no natural strength, has been fortified to an extent and at an evident cost beyond all American conception. All over this part of Europe, and to a less degree throughout Italy, the amount of expenditure on walls and forts, bastions, ditches, batteries, &c. is incalculably great. I cannot doubt that any nation, by wisely expending half so much in systematic efforts to educate, employ steadily and reward amply its poorer classes, would have been strengthened and ensured against invasion far more than it could be by walls like precipices and a belt of fortresses as impregnable as Gibraltar. But this wisdom is slowly learned by rulers, and is not yet very widely appreciated. Whenever it shall be, "Othello's occupation" will be gone, not for Othello only, but for all who would live by the sword.

For some miles before it reaches the frontier, and for a much larger distance after entering Belgium, the Railroad passes through a decidedly broken, hilly, up-and-down country, most unlike the popular conception of Flanders or Belgium. Precipices of naked rock are not unfrequent and the region is wisely given up mainly to Wood and Grass, the former engrossing most of the hill-sides and the latter flourishing in the valleys. This Railroad has more tunnels in the course of fifty miles than I ever before met with—I think not less than a dozen—while the grading and bridging must have been very expensive. Such a country is of course prolific in running streams, on which many small and some larger manufacturing towns and villages are located. At length, it ascends a considerable inclined plane at Liege, once a very popular, powerful and still a handsome and important manufacturing town with 60,000 inhabitants; and here the beautiful and magnificently fertile table lands of Belgium spread out like a vast prairie before the traveler. In fact, the peasant cultivators are so commonly located in villages, leaving long stretches of the rarely fenced though well cultivated plain without a habitation, that the resemblance to level prairies which have been planted and sown is more striking than would be imagined. But the growing crops are too cleanly and carefully weeded and too uniformly good to protract the illusion. Sometimes hundreds of acres are unbrokenly covered with Wheat, which has the largest area of any one staple; but more commonly a breadth of this is succeeded by one of Rye, that by one of Potatoes, then Wheat again, then Clover, then Rye, then Wheat, then Potatoes, then Clover or other grass, and so on. I never before saw so extensive and uniformly thrifty a growth of Potatoes, while acres upon acres of Beets, also in regular rows and kept carefully free from weeds, present at this season a beautiful appearance. I apprehend that not half so much attention has been given in our country to the growth of this and the kindred roots as would have been richly rewarded. Of course, it is idle to sow Beets on any but rich land, with a generous depth of soil and the most thorough cultivation, but with such cultivation the red lands of New-Jersey and the intervales of our rivers might be profitably and extensively devoted to the Beet culture and to that of the larger Turnips. I have seen nothing in Europe that made a better appearance or promised a more bountiful return than the large tracts of Belgium and the neighboring district of France sown to Beets.

Indian Corn and the Vine are scarcely, or not at all seen in Belgium. Beggars are not abundant; but women are required to labor quite extensively in the fields. The habitations of the poor are less wretched than those of Italy, but not equal to those of the fertile portion of Switzerland. Irrigation is quite extensively practised, but is far from universal. The few cattle kept in the wholly arable and thoroughly cultivated portion of the country are seldom allowed to range, because of the lack of fences, but are kept up and fed throughout the year. Women cutting grass in all by-places, and carrying it home by back-loads to feed their stock, is a common spectacle throughout central Europe. Trees sometimes line the roads and streams, or irrigating canals, and sometimes have a piece of ground allotted them whereon to grow at random, but are rather scarce throughout this region, and I think I saw square miles entirely devoid of them. Fruit-trees are clearly too scarce, though Cherries in abundance were offered for sale as we passed. On the whole, Belgium is not only a fertile but a prosperous country.

At Liege, the Railroad we traversed leaves its westerly for a north-west course, running past Tirlemont to Malines (Mechlin) and thence to Antwerp; but we took a sharp turn to the south-west of Malines in order to reach Brussels, which, though the capital and the largest city of Belgium, is barely a point or stopping-place on a right line, while Liege, Namur, Ghent and Bruges are each the point of junction of two or more completed roads. Brussels has slept while this network has been woven over the country, and will awake to discover herself shorn of her trade and sinking into insignificance if she does not immediately bestir herself. Her location is a fine one, on a ground which rises very gradually from the great plain to a modest hill southward, and she is among the best built of modern cities. But already she is off the direct line from either London or Paris to Germany; I would have saved many miles by avoiding her and taking the road due west from Liege to Namur, Charleroi and Mons, where it intersects the Brussels line; and soon the great bulk of the travel will do so if it does not already. Railroads are reckless Radicals and are destined by turns to make and to mar the fortunes of many great emporiums.

NORTH-EASTERN FRANCE.

Tournay in the coal region, fifty miles from Brussels, is the last town of Belgium; eight miles further is Valenciennes, one of the strong frontier fortresses of France, with over 20,000 inhabitants, an active trade and the worth of a dukedom wasted on its fortifications. Here our baggage underwent a new custom-house scrutiny, which was expeditiously and rationally made, and I kept on twenty-three miles farther to Douai, where our Railroad falls into one from Calais, which had already absorbed those from Dunkirk and Ghent, and where, it being after 10 o'clock, I halted for the night, so as to take a Calais morning train at 4 1/2 and see by fair daylight the country thence to Paris, which I had already traversed in the dark.

This country presents no novel features. It is not quite so level nor so perfectly cultivated as central Belgium, but is generally fertile and promises fairly. The Rye harvest is in progress through all this country, and is very good, but the breadth of Wheat is much greater, and it also promises well, though not yet ripened. Westward from Brussels in Belgium is an extensive Grazing region, bountifully irrigated, and covered with large herds of fine cattle. Something of this is seen after crossing into France, but Wheat regains its predominance, while large tracts are devoted to the Beet, probably for the manufacture of Sugar. There are few American gardens that can show the Beet in greater perfection than it exhibits here, in areas of twenty to forty acres. Wood also becomes far more abundant in the Grazing region, and continues so nearly up to the walls of Paris, Poplars and other trees of slender foliage being planted in rows across the fields as well as by the streams and road-sides. The Vine, which had vanished with the bolder scenery of the Rhine, reappears only within sight of Paris, where many of the cultivated fields attest a faultiness or meagerness of cultivation unworthy of the neighborhood of a great metropolis. I presume there will be more middling and half middling yields within twenty miles of Paris than in all Belgium.

I find Paris, and measurably France, in a state of salutary ferment, connected with the debate in the Assembly on the proposed Revision of the Constitution. The best speeches are yet to be made, but already the attention of the People is fixed on the discussion, and it will be followed to the end with daily increased interest. That end, as is well known, will be a defeat of the proposed Revision, and of all schemes looking to the legal and peaceful reestablishment of Monarchy, or the reelection of Louis Napoleon. And this discussion, this result, will have immensely strengthened the Republic in the hearts of the French Millions, as well as in the general conviction of its stability. And if, with the Suffrage crippled as it is, and probably must continue to be, a heartily Republican President can be elected here next May, an impulse will be given to the movement throughout Europe which can scarcely be withstood. Live the Republic!



XXXV.

PARIS TO LONDON.

LONDON, Tuesday, July 22, 1851.

The quickest and most usual route from Paris to London is that by way of Calais and Dover; but as I had traversed that once, and part of it twice, I resolved to try another for my return, and chose the cheapest and most direct of all—that by way of Rouen, Dieppe, New-Haven and the Brighton Railroad—which is 32 miles shorter than the Calais route, but involves four times as long a water passage, and so is spun out to more than twice the length of the other. We left Paris at 8 yesterday morning; halted at the fine old town of Rouen before noon; were in Dieppe at 2 1/2 P. M.; but there we waited for a boat till after 6; then were eight hours crossing the Channel; had to wait at New-Haven till after 6 this morning before the Custom-House scrutiny of our baggage was begun; so that only a few were enabled to take the first train thence for London at a quarter to 7. I was not among the lucky ones, but had to hold on for the second train at a quarter past 8, and so did not reach this city till after 10, or twenty-six hours from Paris, though, with a little enterprise and a decent boat on the Channel, the trip could easily be made in 14 hours—four for the French side, six for the Channel, two for the English side and two for Custom-House delay and leeway of all kinds. If Commodore Vanderbilt or Mr. Newton would only take compassion on the ignorance and barbarism prevailing throughout Europe in the matter of steamboat-building, and establish a branch of his business on this side of the Atlantic, he would do the cause of Human Progress a service, and signally contribute to the diminution of the sum of mortal misery.

The night was mild and fair; the wind light; the sea consequently smooth; and I suffered less, and repented my choice of a route less, than I had expected to; but consider the facts: Here was the most direct route by Railroad and Steamboat between the two great Capitals of Europe—a route constantly traveled by multitudes from all parts of world—yet the only boats provided for the liquid portion of the way are two little black, cobbling concerns, each perhaps seventy feet long by fifteen wide, with no deck above the water line, and not a single berth for even a lady passenger, though making one passage each night. Who could suppose that two tolerably civilized nations would endure this in the middle of 1851?

We were nearly two hundred passengers, and the boat just about decently held us, but had not sitting-room for all, above and under the deck. But as about half, being "second class," had no right to enter the main cabin, those who had that right were enabled to sit and yawn, and try to cheat themselves into the notion that they would coax sleep to their aid after a while. Occasionally, one or two having left for a turn on deck, some drowsy mortal would stretch himself on a setter at full length, but the remonstrances of others needing seats would soon compel him to resume a half-upright posture. And so the passage wore away, and between 2 and 3 this morning we reached New-Haven (a petty sea-port at the mouth of the little river Ouse), where we were permitted promptly to land, minus our baggage, and repair to a convenient inn. Here I, with several others, invested two British shillings in a chance to sleep, but the venture (at least in my case) proved a losing one. It was daylight when we went to bed, and the incessant tramping, ringing of bells, &c., kept us for the most part awake and called us up at a very early hour, to fidget uselessly for the recovery of our baggage, and lose the early train at last.

The country stretching north-westward from Paris to Dieppe (125 miles) is less thoroughly cultivated than any other I have seen in Europe out of Italy. I saw more weedy and thin Rye and ragged Wheat than I had noted elsewhere. Grass is the chief staple, after leaving the garden-covered vicinity of Paris, though Wheat, Rye and Oats are extensively cultivated. The Root crops promise poorly. Indian Corn is hardly seen, though the Vine is considerably grown. This region is generally well wooded, but in a straggling, accidental way, which has the effect neither of Lombard nicety of plantation, nor of the natural luxuriance of genuine forests. Fruit is not abundant. Irrigation is considerably practiced. The dwellings of the majority have an antiquated, ruinous, tumble-down aspect, such as I have observed nowhere else this side of Lower Italy. On the whole, I doubt whether this portion of France has improved much within the last fifty years.

Rouen, the capital of ancient Normandy, is the fifth city of France, only Paris, Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux having more inhabitants. Here the Railroad for Havre diverges from that to Dieppe, which we adhered to. Rouen is interesting for its antiquities, including several venerable and richly adorned Churches which I had no time to visit. Dieppe, on the Channel, has a small harbor, completely landlocked, and 17,000 inhabitants. It is considerably resorted to for sea-bathing, but seems to have very little trade. I judge that the Railroads now being extended through France, are likely to arrest the growth or hasten the decline of most of the smaller cities and towns by facilitating and cheapening access to the capital, where nearly every Frenchman would live if he could, and where the genius of people and government (no matter under what constitution) conspires to concentrate all the intellectual and artistic life of the Nation.

The Railroad from New-Haven to London passes through no considerable town, though not far from Brighton and Tunbridge. The country is undulating and beautiful, mainly devoted to Grass, Wheat and Wood, and in the very highest condition. It is now toward the end of Haying, and the Wheat is just beginning to ripen, though that of Central Italy was mainly harvested a full month ago. But the English Wheat covers the ground thickly and evenly, and promises a large average crop, especially if the present fine weather should continue through the next two weeks.

Noble herds of Cattle and flocks of Sheep overspread the spacious grounds devoted to Pasturage, especially near the Channel, where most of the land is in Grass. English Agriculture has a thorough and cleanly aspect which I have rarely observed elsewhere. Belgium is as careful and as productive, but its alternations of tillage or grass with woodland are by no means so frequent nor so picturesque as I see here. The sturdy, hospitable trees of an English park or lawn are not rivaled, so far as I have seen, on the Continent. I have rarely seen a reach of country better disposed for effect than that from a point ten miles this side of New-Haven to within some ten miles of this city, where Market Gardening supplants regular Farming. Women work in the fields at this season in England, but not more than one woman to five men were visible in the hay-fields we passed this morning—it may have been otherwise in the afternoon. As to beggars, none were visible, begging being disallowed.

Crossing the Channel shifts the boot very decidedly with respect to language. Those who were groping in the dark a few hours ago are now in the brightest sunshine, while the oracles of yesterday are the meekest disciples to-day. I rode from New-Haven to London in the same car with three Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen, coming up to the Exhibition, with a scant half-allowance of English among them; and their efforts to understand the signs, &c., were interesting. "London Stout," displayed in three-foot letters across the front of a drinking-house, arrested their attention: "Stoot? Stoot?" queried one of them; but the rest were as much in the dark as he, and I was as deficient in French as they in English. The befogged one pulled out his dictionary and read over and over all the French synonyms of "Stout," but this only increased his perplexity. "Stout" signified "robust," "hearty," "vigorous," "resolute," &c., but what then could "London Stout" be? He closed his book at length in despair and resumed his observations.

LONDON AT MIDNIGHT.

London is given to late hours. At 6 A. M. though the sun has long been up, there are few stirring in the principal streets; occasionally you meet a cab hurrying with some passenger to take an early train; but few shutters are down at 7, and scarcely an omnibus is to be seen till after 8. The aristocratic dinner hour is 8 P. M. though I trust few are so unmerciful to themselves as to postpone their chief meal to that late hour when they have no company. The morning to sleep, the afternoon to business and the evening to enjoyment, seems the usual routine with the favored classes.

Walking home from a soiree at the West-end through Regent-street, Haymarket and the Strand once at midnight, I was struck, though accustomed to all manner of late hours in New-York, with the relative activity and wide-awake aspect of London at that hour. It seemed the High Change of revelry and pleasure-seeking. The taverns, the clubs and drinking-shops betrayed no symptoms of drowsiness; the theatres were barely beginning to emit their jaded multitudes; the cabs and private carriages were more plentiful than by day, and were briskly wheeling hundreds from party to party; even the omnibuses rattled down the wide streets as freshly and almost as numerously as at midday. The policemen were alert on nearly every corner; sharpers and suspicious characters stepped nimbly about the cross-streets in quest of prey, and innumerable wrecks of Womanhood, God pity them! shed a deeper darkness over the shaded and dusky lanes and byways whence they momently emerged to salute the passer-by. Beneath the shelter of night, Misery stole forth from its squalid lair, no longer awed by the Police, to beseech the compassion of the stranger and pour its tale of woe and suffering into the rarely willing ear. Serene and silvery in the clear night-air rose the nearly full moon over Southwark, shedding a soft and mellow light on pillar and edifice, column and spire, and enduing the placid bosom of the Thames with a tranquil and spiritual beauty. Such was one glimpse of London at midnight; I have not seen it so impressive by day.



XXXVI.

UNIVERSAL PEACE CONGRESS.

LONDON, July 25, 1851.

The fourth Annual Congress of the friends and champions of Peace, universal and perpetual, was closed last evening, after a harmonious and enthusiastic session of three full days. The number of Delegates in attendance was between eight and nine hundred, while the spacious area of Exeter Hall, which is said to hold comfortably thirty-five hundred persons, was well filled throughout, and densely crowded for hours together. Having been held at a most favorable time and at the point most accessible to the great body of the active friends of Peace, I presume the attendance was larger than ever before.

Two thoughts were suggested to me by the character and proceedings of this assemblage—first, that of the eminently popular and plebeian origin and impulse of all the great Reform Movements of our age. Every great public assemblage in Europe for any other purpose will be sure to number Lords, Dukes, Generals, Princes, among its dignitaries; but none such came near the Peace Congress; very few of them take part in any movement of the kind. In the list of Delegates to this Congress, under the head of "Profession or Trade," you find "Merchant," "Miller," "Teacher," "Tanner," "Editor," "Author," "Bookseller," "Jeweller," &c., very rarely "Gentleman," or "Baronet," and never a higher title, I rejoice to say that "Minister" or "Clergyman" appears pretty often, but never such a word as "Bishop" or "Archbishop," though the most liberal of the Established Hierarchy, Archbishop Whateley of Dublin, sent a brief note expressing sympathy with the objects of the meeting. And I think among the clergymen present there was hardly one belonging to either of the two Churches which in these realms claim a special and exclusive patent from Heaven for the dispensation of Religious Truth.

The other thought suggested by this mighty gathering concerns the character and efficacy of the organizations and sects in which Christianity is presumed to be embodied. Let a Convention be called of the Friends of Peace, of Temperance, of Personal Liberty, of the Sacredness of Human Life, or any other tangible and positive idea, and many hundreds will come together from distant nations, speaking diverse languages, and holding antagonist opinions on other important subjects, and will for days discuss and deliberate in perfect harmony, unite in appropriate and forcible declarations of their common sentiments and in the adoption of measures calculated to ensure their triumph. But let a general Convention of the followers of Jesus Christ be called, with a view to the speedy Christianization of the world, and either three-fourths would keep away or the whole time of the meeting be wasted in an acrimonious quarrel as to the meaning of Christianity or the wording of the Shibboleth whereby those who were should be distinguished from those who were not entitled to bear the Christian name.

This contrast implies a great wrong somewhere, and for which somebody must be responsible. I merely suggest it for general consideration, and pass on.

Not fully sympathising with the Peace Movement in the actual condition of Europe, I was not a Delegate, and did not attend the first two days' deliberations. I see not how any one who does not hope to live and thrive by injustice, oppression and murder, can be otherwise than ardently favorable to Universal Peace. But, suppose there is a portion of the human family who won't have Peace, nor let others have it, what then? If you say, "Let us have it as soon as we can," I respond with all my heart. I would tolerate War, even against pirates or murderers, no longer than is absolutely necessary to inspire them with a love of Peace, or put them where they can no longer invade the peace of others. But so long as Tyrannies and Aristocracies shall say—as they now practically do say all over Europe, "Yes, we too are for Peace, but it must be Peace with absolute submission to our good pleasure—Peace with two-thirds of the fruits of Human Labor devoted to the pampering of our luxurious appetites, the maintenance of our pomp, the indulgence of our unbounded desires—it must be a Peace which leaves the Millions in darkness, in hopeless degradation, the slaves of superstition and the helpless victims of our lusts." I answer, "No, Sirs! on your conditions no Peace is possible, but everlasting War rather, until your unjust pretensions are abandoned or until your power of enforcing them is destroyed." I have felt a painful apprehension that the prevalence of the Peace Movement, confined as it is to the Liberal party, and acting on a state of things which secures almost unbounded power to the Despots, is calculated to break the spirit of down-trodden nations, and, by thus postponing the inevitable struggle, protract to an indefinite period the advent of that Reign of Universal Justice which alone can usher in the glorious era of Universal Peace. And, had I been a Delegate to this Universal Peace Congress, I should perhaps have marred its harmony and its happiness by asking it to consider and vote upon some such proposition as this:

"Resolved, That in commending to all men everywhere the duty of seeking and preserving Peace, we bear in mind the Apostle's injunction, 'First pure, then peaceable,' and do not deny but affirm the right of a Nation wantonly invaded by a foreign army, or intolerably oppressed by its own rulers, to resist force by force."

I rejoice in being able to say that the general tendency of the speeches was towards universal Emancipation, mental and physical. I doubt whether an English audience composed in so large proportion of the conventionally "respectable classes" ever listened to so much downright Democracy before. The French speakers, the French writers, were full of it, and the great event, at least of the last day's session, was the entrance of a body of fifteen French workmen, delegates to the World's Exhibition of the "Working Associations" of Paris, who came in a body to pledge their hearts and hands to the cause of Universal Peace, and to assure the Congress that the Laborers, the Republicans, of France, were eminently pacific in their ideas and purposes, and that the preservation of the Republic, which is the immediate object of their exertions, is valued not more in its relation to their personal rights and aspirations than as a step toward the formation of a European confederacy of emancipated Nations, and thus as the corner-stone of the temple of Universal Peace. The Speeches of these Workmen just from their benches in the work-shops of Paris were every way admirable, and were received with the heartiest enthusiasm. They breathed the true spirit not of Peace only but of hearty cooeperation in every work calculated to promote the moral and social well-being of mankind. The wretched cant which implies natural enmity between France and England, or any other two nations, was emphatically repudiated by them, and every variety of forcible expression given to the earnest desire of the Laboring Classes of France that Peace, Freedom and Brotherhood shall prevail, not in their own country merely, but throughout the world.

Mr. COBDEN had made his great speech on the preceding day, wherein the grievous expensiveness and hideous immorality of Standing Armies were vividly portrayed. He did not hesitate to speak straight out on the subject of the demoralizing influence of Armies on the People among whom they were quartered or posted, and the broad track of moral desolation which an armed force everywhere leaves behind it. If the facts in this connection were but generally known, I think there would soon be a loud call from Christians, Moralists and Philanthropists for the entire disbandment and dispersion of every Standing Army.—EMILE GIRARDIN, Editor of "La Presse," spoke more especially of the enormous expense of Armies and the ruinous taxation they render necessary.—Mr. COBDEN spoke again yesterday, in more immediate denunciation of the enormous Standing Army maintained by Austria, not merely throughout its own but in other countries also, the Loans which its Government is constantly contracting, and the gulf of bankruptcy to which it is rapidly hurrying. He said there were intimations that another Austrian Loan would be attempted in London, and if it should be he should urge the call of a public meeting to expose the past knaveries of Austria in dealing with her creditors, and to hold up to public reprobation whoever should touch the Loan.—Mr. SAMUEL GURNEY, the Quaker banker, also spoke in reprehension of Loans for War purposes and all who subscribe to or encourage them.—EDWARD MIALL (Editor of The Non-Conformist), also spoke forcibly against War Loans.

M. CORMENIN, an eminent French Statesman and writer, read a witty, piquant essay in reprehension of War and all other contrivances for shortening human life, which, being given first in French and then substantially in English, elicited very hearty plaudits.

There were many more speakers, including Mr. HINDLEY, British M. P., M. BOURET, French Chamber of Deputies, ELIHU BURRITT, M. AVIGNON, an Italian banker, J. S. BUCKINGHAM, Dr. SCHERTZER of Vienna, and JOSEPH STURGE, who moved that a similar convention be held next year, at a time and place to be afterward agreed on, which was unanimously carried. It was announced that Mr. Geo. Hatfield of Manchester had suggested and agreed to bear the expense of fifteen Silver Medals to be presented, in behalf of the Congress, to the representatives of the French Workmen's Association for their attendance and sympathy.—Sir DAVID BREWSTER, being warmly thanked for his services as Chairman, responded in a few excellent remarks, urging each person present to instill the principles of Peace into the hearts of the children who are or may be committed to his or her guidance. He remarked that he had not once been called upon to exercise authority or repress commotion during the whole period of the Congress,—a fact proving that the principles of Peace had already taken root in the breasts of the Members; and there was not, I believe, a single proposition submitted to the Congress on which its vote was not substantially unanimous. The following are the Resolutions adopted:

The Congress of the friends of Universal Peace, assembled in London July 22, 23 and 24, 1851, considering that recourse to arms for the settlement of international disputes, is a custom condemned alike by Religion, Morality, Reason, and Humanity, and believing that it is useful and necessary frequently to direct the attention both of Governments and Peoples to the evils of the War system, and the desirableness and practicability of maintaining Permanent International Peace, resolves:

1. That it is the special and solemn duty of all Ministers of Religion, Instructors of Youth, and Conductors of the Public Press, to employ their great influence in the diffusion of pacific principles and sentiments, and in eradicating from the minds of men those hereditary animosities, and political and commercial jealousies, which have been so often the cause of disastrous Wars.

2. That as an appeal to the sword can settle no question, on any principle of equity and right, it is the duty of Governments to refer to the decision of competent and impartial Arbitrators such differences arising between them as cannot be otherwise amicably adjusted.

3. That the Standing Armaments, with which the Governments of Europe menace each other, amid professions of mutual friendship and confidence, being a prolific source of social immorality, financial embarrassment, and national suffering, while they excite constant disquietude and irritation among the nations, this Congress would earnestly urge upon the Governments the imperative necessity of entering upon a system of International Disarmament.

4. This Congress, regarding the system of negotiating Loans for the prosecution of War, or the maintenance of warlike armaments, as immoral in principle and disastrous in operation, renews its emphatic condemnation of all such Loans.

5. This Congress, believing that the intervention, by threatened or actual violence, of one country in the international politics of another, is a frequent cause of bitter and desolating wars, maintains that the right of every State to regulate its own affairs should be held absolute and inviolate.

6. This Congress recommends all the friends of Peace to prepare public opinion, in their respective countries, with a view to the formation of an authoritative Code of International Law.

7. This Congress expresses its strong abhorrence of the system of aggression and violence practiced by so-called civilized nations upon aboriginal and feeble tribes, as leading to incessant and exterminating wars, eminently unfavorable to the true progress of religion, civilization and commerce.

8. This Congress, convinced that whatever brings the nations of the earth together in intimate and friendly intercourse must tend to the establishment of Peace, by removing misapprehensions and prejudices, and inspiring mutual respect, hails, with unqualified satisfaction, the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, as eminently calculated to promote that end.

9. That the members of Peace Societies, in all Constitutional Countries, be recommended to use their influence to return to their respective Parliaments, representatives who are friends of Peace, and who will be prepared to support, by their votes, measures for the diminution of the number of men employed in, and the amount of money expended for, War purposes.

American Members of the Congress.—Nathaniel Adams, Cornwall, Conn., Rev. Robert Baird, New-York; Geo. M. Borrows, Friburg, Maine; M. B. Bateman, Columbus, Ohio; Rev. George Beckwith, Boston, Mass.; W. Wells Brown, do; Elihu Burritt, Worcester, Mass.; William A. Burt, Washington, D. C.; Dr. Thomas Chadbourne, Portsmouth, N. H.; Rev. J. W. Chickering, Portland, Me.; Wm. Darlington, Westchester, Pa.; Rev. P. B. Day, New-Haven; Rev. Amos Dresser, Oberlin, Ohio; Rev. D. C. Eddy, Lowell, Mass.; Rev. Romeo Elton, Providence, R. I.; A. R. Forsyth, Indiana; Rev. Aaron Foster, Massachusetts; William B. Fox, do; Rev. H. H. Garnett, Geneva, N. Y.; David Gould, Sharon, Conn.; Rev. Josiah Henson, Canada West; E. Jackson, Jr., Boston, Mass.; Wm. Jackson, Newton, do; Rev. P. M. McDowell, New-Brunswick; Rev. Geo. Maxwell, Ohio; Rev. H. A. Mills, Lowell, Mass.; Rev. A. A. Miner, Boston, Mass.; Dr. Henry S. Patterson, Frank B. Palmer, Dr. William Pettit, Philadelphia, Pa.; Thomas Pierce, Illinois; Moses Pond, Boston, Mass.; J. T. Sheoffe, Whitesboro', N. Y.; Isaac Skervan, Buffalo, N. Y.; Rev. Zadock Thompson, Burlington, Vt.; Rev. John E. Tyler, Windham, Conn.; Ichabod Washbourne, Worcester, Mass.; Rev. James C. White, Ohio; Chas. H. De Wolfe, Oldtown, Me.



XXXVII.

AMERICA AT THE WORLD'S FAIR.

LONDON, Tuesday, July 26, 1851.

If I return this once more and for the last time to the subject of American contributions to the great Exposition, it shall not be said with truth that my impulse is a feeling of soreness and chagrin. Within the last few days, a very decided and gratifying change has taken place in the current of opinion here with regard to American invention and its results. One cause of this was the late formal trial of American (with other foreign) Plows, in the presence of the Agricultural Jury; which trial, though partial and hurried, was followed by immediate orders for an American Plow then tested (Starbuck's) from Englishmen, Belgians and Frenchmen, including several Agricultural Societies. If a hundred of those Plows were here, they might be sold at once; in their absence, the full price has been paid down for some twenty or thirty, to be shipped at New-York, and be thenceforth at the risk and cost of the buyers. And these orders have just commenced. The London journals which had reporters present (some of which journals ridiculed our Farming Implements expressly a few weeks ago), now grudgingly admit that the American Plows did their work with less draft than was required by their European rivals, but add that they did not do it so well. Such was not the judgment of other witnesses of the trial, as the purchases, among other things, attest.

A still more signal triumph to American ingenuity was accorded on Thursday. Mr. Mechi, formerly a London merchant, having acquired a competence by trade, retired some years since to a farm in Essex, about forty miles off, where he is vigorously prosecuting a system of High Farming, employing the most effective implements and agencies of all kinds. He annually has a gathering of distinguished farmers and others to inspect his estate and see how his "book farming" gets on. This festival occurred day before yesterday—a sour, dark, drenching day—notwithstanding which, nearly two hundred persons were present. Among others, several machines for cutting Grain were exhibited and tested, including two (Hussey's and McCormick's) from America, and an English one which was declared on all hands a mere imitation of Hussey's. Neither the original nor the copy, however, appear to have operated to the satisfaction of the assembly, perhaps owing to the badness of the weather and its effects on the draggled, unripe grain. With McCormick's a very different result was obtained. This machine is so well known in our Wheat-growing districts that I need only remark that it is the same lately ridiculed by one of the great London journals as "a cross between an Astley's chariot, a treadmill and a flying machine," and its uncouth appearance has been a standing butt for the London reporters at the Exhibition. It was the ready exemplar of American distortion and absurdity in the domain of Art. It came into the field at Mechi's, therefore, to confront a tribunal (not the official but the popular) already prepared for its condemnation. Before it stood John Bull, burly, dogged and determined not to be humbugged—his judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. Nothing disconcerted, the brown, rough, homespun Yankee in charge jumped on the box, starting the team at a smart walk, setting the blades of the machine in lively operation, and commenced raking off the grain in sheaf-piles ready for binding,—cutting a breadth of nine or ten feet cleanly and carefully as fast as a span of horses could comfortably step. There was a moment, and but a moment of suspense; human prejudice could hold out no longer; and burst after burst of involuntary cheers from the whole crowd proclaimed the triumph of the Yankee "treadmill." That triumph has since been the leading topic in all agricultural circles. The Times' report speaks of it as beyond doubt, as placing the harvest absolutely under the farmer's control, and as ensuring a complete and most auspicious revolution in the harvesting operations of this country. I would gladly give the whole account, which, grudgingly towards the inventor, but unqualifiedly as to the machine, speaks of the latter as "securing to English farming protection against climate and an economy of labor which must prove of incalculable advantage." Pretty well for "a cross between an Astley's chariot, a flying machine and a treadmill."

Mr. McCormick, I hear, is probably now on his way hither from the United States, and will be rather astonished on landing to find himself a lion. Half a dozen makers and sellers of Agricultural implements, are already on the watch for him, and if he makes his bargain wisely, he is morally sure of a fortune from England alone. His machine and its operator were the center of an eager circle to-day, and if five hundred of the former were to be had here, they would all be bought within a month. There is to be another public trial, merely to place beyond doubt its capacity to cut dry and ripe grain as well as green and wet; but those who have seen it work in the States will not care much for that.[C]

Mr. Hobbs, of the American Bank Lock Company, has had a recent trial of the Chubb Lock, so long deemed invincible here, and consumed twenty-four minutes and a half in picking it, under the supervision of judges of unquestionable ability and impartiality. He then re-locked it without disturbing the "Detector," and left it as when it was set before him. He has now to try his skill on the "Bramah" lock under the challenge for L200; and, should he be able to open it, he says he shall there rest the case.[D] He has been sent for by the Governor of the Bank of England, and will respond to the invitation. His operations have of course excited some feeling among those whose interests were affected by them; yet it is manifestly proper and important, if the locks relied on by banks and other depositories of treasure here are not secure against burglary, that the fact should be known. Unless I err as to his success at the forthcoming trial with the Bramah lock, British locksmiths must commence at once to learn their business over again under Yankee tuition.

I might give other facts in support of my judgment that our Country has not been and will not be disgraced by her share in this Exhibition, but I forbear. Had we declined altogether the invitation to participate in this show, we certainly would have been discredited in the world's opinion, however unjustly; had we attempted to rival the costly tissues, dainty carvings, rich mosaics, and innumerable gewgaws of Europe, we should have shown equal bad taste and unsound judgment, and would have deservedly been laughed at. Our real error consists, not in neglecting to send articles to rival the rich fabrics and wares of this Continent, but in sending too few of those homely but most important products in which we unquestionably lead the world. We have a good many such here now, but we should have had many more. One such plain, odd-looking concern as McCormick's Reaper, though it makes no figure in the eyes of mere sight-seers in comparison with an inlaid Table or a case of Paris Bonnets, is of more practical account than a Crystal Palace full of those, and so will ultimately be regarded. Looking to-day at Mitchell's admirable new Map of the United States and their Territories, as now existing, which worthily fills an honorable place in the Exhibition, with several but too few others of the same class, I could not but regret that a set of Harpers' Common School Libraries, with a brief account of the origin and progress of our School Library system, had not been contributed; and I wish I had myself spent fifty dollars if necessary to place in the Exhibition a good collection of American School Books. If there shall ever be another World's Exhibition, I bespeak a conspicuous place in it for a model American country School-House, with its Library, Globes, Maps, Black-Board, Class Books, &c., and a succinct account of our Common School system, printed in the five or six principal languages of Europe for gratuitous distribution to all who may apply for it. With this got up as it should be, I would not mind admitting that in Porcelain and Laces, Ormolu and Trinkets, Europe is yet several years ahead of us.

Mr. J. S. Gwynne of our State, whose "Balanced Centrifugal Pump" made a sensation and obtained a Gold Medal at our Institute Fair last October, is here with it, and proposes a public trial of its qualities in competition with the rival English pumps of Appold and Bessimer for $1,000, to be paid by the loser to the Mechanics' Society. Mr. Gwynne claims that these English Pumps (which have been among the chief attractions of the department of British Machinery) are palpable plagiarisms from his invention, and not well done at that. He, of course, does not claim the idea of a Centrifugal Pump as his own, for it is much older than any of them, but he does claim that adaptation of the idea which has rendered it effective and valuable. I am reliably informed that he has just sold his Scotch patent only for the comfortable sum of L10,000 sterling, or nearly $50,000; and this is but one of several inventions for which he has found a ready market here at liberal prices. I cite his case (for he is one of several Americans who have recently sold their European patents here at high figures) as a final answer to those who croak that our country is disgraced, and regret that any American ever came near the Exhibition. Had these discerning and patriotic gentlemen been interested in these patents, they might have taken a different view of the matter. Even my New-York friend, whose toadyism in exhibiting a capital pair of Oars inscribed "A present for the Prince of Wales," I have already characterized as it deserves, yesterday informed me that he had sold $15,000 worth of Oars here since the Fair opened. I am sure I rejoice in his good fortune, and hope it may insure the improvement of his taste also.

There are many articles in the American department of which I would gladly speak, that have attracted no public notice. Since I left for the Continent, Mrs. A. Nicholson, formerly of our city, has sent in a Table-Cover worked in Berlin Wool from the centre outward so as to form a perfect circle, or succession of circles, from centre to circumference, with a great variety of brilliant colors imperceptibly shading into each other. This having been made entirely by hand, with no implement but a common cut nail, the process is of course too slow to be valuable; but the result attained may very probably afford useful hints and suggestions to inventors of weaving machinery.—I think the display of Flint Glass by the Brooklyn Company is equal in purity and fineness to any other plain Glass in the Exhibition, and only regret that the quantity sent had not been larger. I regret far more that the "Hillotype," for giving sun-pictures with the colors of life, has not yet made its appearance here, while the "Caloric Engine" (using compressed and heated air instead of water for the generation of power), was not ready in season to justify a decision on its merits by the Jury of its Class; and so with other recent American inventions of which high hopes are entertained. We ought to have had here a show merely of Inventions, Machines and Implements exceeding the entire contents of the American Department—ought to have had, apart from any question of National credit, if only because the inventors' interests would have been subserved thereby—and we should have had much more than we actually have, had the state of the British Patent-Laws been less outrageous than it is. A patent here costs ten times as much as in the United States, and is worth little when you have it—that is, it is not even an opinion that the patentee has really invented anything, but merely an evidence that he claimed to have done so at such a date, and a permission to prove that he actually did, if he can. In other words; a patent gives a permission and an opportunity to contend legally for your rights; and if the holder is known to have money enough, it generally suffices; if not, he can and will be not only plundered with impunity, but defied and laughed at. A bill radically revising the British Patent-Laws is now on its way through Parliament, but in its absence many American inventors refused to expose themselves to a loss of their inventions by exhibiting them at the Fair; and who can blame them?

The succession of fetes to be given by the Municipality of Paris to the Royal Commissioners, Jurors, &c., in honor of the World's Exhibition, opens this week, and will be brilliant and gratifying as no other city but Paris could make it. The number invited is over One Thousand, and all are taken from the British shore in French National Vessels, and thenceforth will be the guests of their inviters until they shall again be landed at an English port, paying nothing themselves for travel, entertainment, balls, &c., &c. This is certainly handsome, and I acknowledge the courtesy, though I shall not accept the invitation. I leave for Scotland and Ireland on Monday.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] This trial took place at Mechi's some three weeks later, and resulted in a complete triumph for the reaper, which thereupon received an award (already accorded it by the Council of Chairmen, subject to revision upon the result of this trial), of a first-class or Great-Medal.

[D] He has since done so, to the perfect satisfaction of the judges.



XXXVIII.

ENGLAND, CENTRAL AND NORTHERN.

NEWCASTLE, Eng., Tuesday, July 29, 1851.

I came up through the heart of England by railroad yesterday from London by Rugby, Leicester, Derby, Chesterfield, near Sheffield and Leeds, through York, near Durham, to this place, where Coal is found in proverbial abundance, as its black canopy of smoke might testify. Newcastle lies at the head of navigation on the Tyne, about thirty miles inland from the E. N. E. coast of England, three hundred miles from London, and is an ancient town, mainly built of brick, exhibiting considerable manufacturing and commercial activity.

The British Railroads are better built, more substantial and costly than ours, but their management does not equal my anticipations. They make no such time as is currently reported on our side, and are by no means reliable for punctuality. The single Express Train daily from London to Edinburgh professes to make the distance (428 miles) in about twelve hours, which is less than 36 miles per hour, with the best of double tracks, through a remarkably level country, everything put out of its way, and no more stops than its own necessities of wood and water require. We should easily beat this in America with anything like equal facilities, and without charging the British price—L4 7s. (or over $21) for a distance not equal to the length of the Erie Railroad, almost wholly through a populous and busy region, where Coal is most abundant and very cheap.

Our train (the Mail) started from London at 10 1/2 A. M. and should have been here at 11 P. M. or in a little less than 25 miles per hour. But the running throughout the country is now bewitched with Excursion Trains and throngs of passengers flocking on low-priced Excursion return tickets to see the Great Exhibition, which is quite as it should be, but the consequent delay and derangement of the regular trains is as it should not be. The Companies have no moral right to fish up a quantity of irregular and temporary business to the violation of their promises and the serious disappointment of their regular customers. As things are managed, we left London with a train of twenty-five cars, half of them filled with Excursion passengers for whom a separate engine should have been, but was not, provided; so that we were behind time from the first and arrived here at 1 this morning instead of 11 last night.

The spirit of accommodation is not strikingly evinced on British Railroads. The train halts at a place to which you are a stranger, and you perhaps hear its name called out for the benefit of the passengers who are to stop there; but whether the halt is to last half a minute, five minutes, or ten, you must find out as you can. The French Railroads are better in this respect, and the American cannot be worse, though the fault is not unknown there. A penny programme for each train, to be sold at the chief stations on each important route, stating not merely at what place but exactly how long each halt of that particular train would be made, is one of the yet unsatisfied wants of Railroad travelers. Our "Path-finders" and "Railway Guides" undertake to tell so much that plain people are confused and often misled by them, and are unable to pick out the little information they actually need from the wilderness of figures and facts set before them. Let us have Guides so simple that no guide is needed to explain them.

There is much sameness in English rural scenery. I have now traveled nearly a thousand miles in this country without seeing anything like a mountain and hardly a precipice except the chalky cliffs of the sea shore. Nearly every acre I have seen is susceptible of cultivation, and of course either cultivated, built upon, or devoted to wood. A few steep banks of streams or ravines, almost uniformly wooded, and some small marshes, mainly on the sea-coast, are all the exceptions I remember to the general capacity for cultivation. Usually, the aspect of the country is pleasant—beautiful, if you choose—but nowise calculated to excite wonder or evoke enthusiasm. The abundance of evergreen hedges is its most striking characteristic. I judge that two-thirds of England is in Grass (meadow or pasture), very green and thrifty, and dotted with noble herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. They are anxious to finish Hay-making throughout the region we traversed yesterday; but as there has been scarcely an hour of very bashful sunshine during the last six days, more than half of which have been rainy, the operation is one rather trying to human patience. Some of the cut grass looks as if it were Flax spread out to rot, and all of it evinces a want of shelter. This morning is almost fair, though hazy, so that the necessity of taking in and drying the hay by a fire may be obviated, but a great deal of it must be seriously damaged. (P. S. 10 o'clock.—It is cloudy and raining again.)

Wheat covers perhaps an eighth of all Central England, is now ripening and generally heavy, but much of it is beaten down by the wind and rain, and looks as if a herd of buffaloes had been chased through it by a tribe of mounted Indians. If the weather should be mainly fair henceforth, the crop may be saved, but it must already have received material damage, and the process of harvesting it must be tedious. Barley is considerably grown, and has also been a good deal prostrated. Oats have suffered less, being more backward.—Potatoes look vigorous, though not yet out of danger from blight or rot. Not a patch of Indian Corn is to be seen throughout. Considerable grass-land has been plowed up for Wheat next season, and some Turnips are just visible; but it is evident that Grass and Stock, under the influence of the low prices of Grain produced by the repeal of the Corn-laws, are steadily gaining upon Tillage, of course throwing tens of thousands of Agricultural laborers out of employment, and driving them to emigration, to manufactures, or the poor-house. Thus the rural population of England is steadily and constantly decreasing.

The best feature of English landscape is formed by its Trees. Though rarely relied on for fuel, there is scarcely an area of forty acres without them, while single trees, copses, more rarely rows, and often petty forests, are visible in all quarters. The trees are not the straight, tall, trim, short-limbed, shadeless Poplars, &c., of France and Italy, but wide-spreading, hospitable Oaks, Yews and other sturdy battlers with wind and storm, which have a far more genial and satisfactory appearance. And the trees of England have a commercial as well as a less measurable value; for timber of all sorts is in demand in the collieries, manufactories and mines, and bears a high price, the consumption far exceeding the domestic supply. But for the trees, these sullen skies and level grounds would render England dreary enough.

Newcastle is the location of one of those immense structures which illustrate the Industrial greatness and pecuniary strength of Britain, and illustrate also the meagerness of her Railroad dividends. The Tyne is here a furlong wide or more, running through a narrow valley or wide ravine perhaps 150 feet below the average level of the great plain which encloses it, and hardly more than half a mile wide at the top. Across this river and gorge is thrown a bridge of iron, with abutments and piers of hewn stone, the arches of said bridge having a total length of 1,375 feet, with 512 feet water-way, while the railway is 112 1/2 feet above high-water mark, with a fine carriage and footway underneath it at a hight of 86 feet, and a total hight from river-bed to parapet of 132 1/2 feet. The gigantic arches have a span of over 124 feet each, and the total cost of the work was L304,500, or about $1,500,000. Near this is a Central Railway Station (there are two others in the place), built entirely, including the roof, of cut stone, save a splendid row of glass windows on either side—said depot being over 592 feet long, the passengers' department being 537 by 183 feet, and the whole costing over $500,000. Here, then, are about $2,000,000 expended on a single mile of railroad, in a city of by no means primary importance. If any one can see how fair dividends could be paid on railroads constructed at such expense, the British shareholders generally would be glad to avail themselves of his sagacity. And it is stated that the Law Expenses of several of the British roads, including procurement of charter and right of way, have exceeded $2,500,000. Add to this rival lines running near each other, and often three where one should suffice, and you have the explanation of a vast, enormous and ruinous waste of property. Let the moral be heeded.

THE BORDER—SCOTLAND.

EDINBURGH, July 29—Evening.

From Newcastle to the Tweed (70 miles) the country continues level and mainly fertile, but the Grain is far more backward than in the vicinity of London, and very little of it has been blown down. More Wheat and far less Grass are grown here than below York, while Barley, Oats and Potatoes cover a good share of the ground, and the Turnip is often seen. All look well, but the Potato, though late, is especially hearty and thrifty. Shade-trees in the cultivated fields are rare; in fact, wood is altogether rarer than at the south, though small forests are generally within sight. I should judge from what I see and feel that shade is seldom wanting here, except as a shield from the rain. Desperate attempts at Hay-making engross the thoughts and efforts of a good many men and women, though the skies are black, rain falls at intervals, and a chill, heavy mist makes itself disagreeably familiar, while a thin, drifting fog limits the vision to a square mile or so. Some of the half-made hay in the meadows looks as though it had been standing out to bleach for the last fortnight. Even the Grass-land is often ridged so as to shed the water quickly, while deep ditches or drains do duty for fences. Fruit-trees are rarely seen; they were scarce from London to York, but now have disappeared. Our road runs nearer and nearer the North Sea, which at length is close beside us on the right, but no town of any importance is visible until we cross the Tweed on a long, high, costly stone bridge just above Berwick of historic fame, and are in

SCOTLAND.

Here the growing crops are much the same as throughout the North of England—Wheat, Potatoes, Barley, Oats, and Grass—save that the Turnip has become an article of primary importance. From some points, hundreds of acres of the Swedish and French may be seen, and they are rarely or never out of view. They are sown in rows or drills, some eighteen inches or two feet apart, so as to admit of cultivation by the plow, which is now in progress. The most forward of the plants now display a small yellow blossom. All are healthy and promising, and are kept thoroughly clear of weeds. I infer that they are mainly grown for feeding cattle, and this seems a good idea, since they can be harvested in defiance of rain and mist, which is rather more difficult with Hay. They become more and more abundant as we approach this city, and are grown up to its very doors. Heavy stone walls laid in mortar and copses or little forests of Oak are among the characteristics of the rural district around Edinburgh, whereof the culture is widely famed for its excellence. The only Scottish town of any note we pass is Dunbar, by the sea-side, though Dunse, Haddington and Dalkeith lie but a few miles inland from our road, with which they are connected by branches. We reached this city about 3 P. M. or in five hours from Newcastle, 130 miles.

EDINBURGH.

I knew this was a city of noble and beautiful structures, but the reality surpasses my expectation. The old town was mainly built in a deep valley running northward into the Firth of Forth, with the Royal Palace of Holyrood in its midst, the port of Leith on the Firth a few miles northward, and the Castle on a commanding crag overlooking the old town from the west. The Canongate and High-street lead up to the esplanade of the Castle from the east, but its other sides are precipitous and inaccessible, a deep valley skirting it on the north, while the south end of the old town fills the other side. The former or more northern valley has for the most part been kept clear of buildings, the spacious Prince's-street Gardens and the grounds of several charitable institutions having had possession of it, until they were recently required to surrender a part for the Railroads running south to Berwick, &c., and west to Glasgow for a General Depot. Across this deep valley or chasm, northward, rises the eminence on which the new town of Edinburgh is constructed, with the deep chasm in which runs the rapid mill-stream known as the "Water of Leith," separating it from a like, though lower, hill still further north and west, on which a few fine buildings and very pleasant gardens are located. The new town is thus perhaps 150 feet above the old town, a mile and a half long by half a mile wide, commanding magnificent views of the old town, the port of Leith, the broad, ocean-like Firth of Forth, and the finely cultivated country stretching southward; and, as if these were not enough to secure its salubrity, it has more gardens and public squares than any other city of its size in the world. Its streets are broad and handsome; its houses built almost wholly of stone, and I never saw so many good ones with so few indifferent. If I were to choose from all the world a city wherein to make an effort for longevity, I would select the new town of Edinburgh; but I should prefer to live fewer years where there is more sunshine.

Public Monuments would seem to be the grand passion of the Edinburghers. The most conspicuous are those of Lord Nelson on Calton Hill (next to the Castle, if not before it, the most commanding location in the city) and of Walter Scott on Prince's-street, nearly opposite the Castle, across the glen, in full sight of all who arrive in Edinburgh by Railroad, as also from the Castle and its vicinity, as well as from the broad and thronged street beside which it is located. But there are Monuments also to Pitt, to Lord Melville, and some twenty or thirty other deceased notables. These are generally located in the higher squares or gardens which wisely occupy a large portion of the ground-plot of the new town. Public Hospitals and Infirmaries are also a prominent feature of the Scottish capital, there being several spacious and fine edifices devoted to the healing of the sick, most if not all of them founded and endowed by private munificence. There are several Bridges across the two principal and more on the secondary or cross valleys, ravines or gorges which may well attract attention. These Bridges are often several hundred feet long, and from thirty to eighty feet high, and you look down from their roadway upon the red-tiled roofs of large eight or nine-story houses beside and below them. Nearly or quite every house in Edinburgh is built of stone, which is rather abundant in Scotland, and often of a fair, free, easily worked quality. Many even of the larger houses, especially in the old town, are built of coarse, rough, undressed stone, often of round, irregular boulders, made to retain the places assigned them by dint of abundant and excellent mortar. In the better buildings, however, the stone is of a finer quality, and handsomely cut, though almost entirely of a brown or dark gray color. The winding drive to the summit of Calton Hill, looking down upon large, tall, castle-like houses of varied material and workmanship, with the prospect from the summit, are among the most impressive I have seen in Europe.

I was interested this afternoon in looking around from one to another of the edifices with which History or the pen of the Wizard of the North has rendered us all familiar—the Tolbooth, the Parliament House, the Castle, the house of John Knox, the principal Churches, &c., &c. I spent most time of all in the Palace of Holyrood, which, though unwisely located, never gorgeously furnished, and long since abandoned of Royalty to dilapidation and decay, still wears the stamp of majesty and will be regal even when crumbled into ruins. Its tapestries are faded and rotten; its paintings, never brilliant specimens of the art, have also felt the tooth of Time; its furniture, never sumptuous, would but poorly answer at this day the needs of an ordinary family; its ball-room is now a lumber-room; its royal beds excite premonitions of rheumatism: its boudoir says nought of Beauty but that it passeth away. Yet the carefully preserved ivory miniature of the hapless Queen of Scots is still radiant with that superlative loveliness which seems unearthly and prophetic of coming sorrows; and it were difficult to view without emotion the tapestry she worked, the furniture she brought over from France, some mementoes of her unwise marriage, the little room in which she sat at supper with Rizzio and three or four friends when the assassins rushed in through a secret door, stabbed her ill-starred favorite, and dragged him bleeding through her bed-room into an outer audience chamber, and there left him to die, his life-blood oozing out from fifty-six wounds. The partition still stands which the Queen caused to be erected to shut off the scene of this horrible tragedy from that larger portion of the reception-room which she was obliged still to occupy, therein to greet daily those whom public cares and duties constrained her to confer with and listen to, though Murder had stained ineffaceably the floor of that regal hall. Alas! unhappy Queen!—and yet not all unhappy. Other sovereigns have their little day of pomp and adulation, then shrivel to dust and are forgotten; but she still lives and reigns wherever Beauty finds admirers or Suffering commands sympathy. Other Queens innumerable have lived and died, and their scepters crumbled to dust even sooner than their clay; but Mary is still Queen of Scots, and so will remain forever.



XXXIX.

SCOTLAND.

THE CLYDE, Wednesday, July 30, 1851.