what was the largest beast that might nibble his legs there. I fear that he did not improve all the night, as he might have done, to sleep. I had asked him to go and spend a week there. We spent five nights, being gone six days, for C. suggested that six working days made a week, and I saw that he was ready to decamp. However, he found his account in it as well as I. Yes, to meet men on an honest and simple footing, meet with rebuffs, suffer from sore feet, as you did,—ay, and from a sore heart, as perhaps you also did, — all that is excellent. What a pity that that young prince 1 could not enjoy a little of the legitimate experience of traveling - be dealt with simply and truly, though rudely. He might have been invited to some hospitable house in the country, had his bowl of bread and milk set before him, with a clean pinafore; been told that there were the punt and the fishing-rod, and he could amuse himself as he chose; might have swung a few birches, dug out a woodchuck, and had a regular good time, and finally been sent to bed with the boys, and so never have been introduced to Mr. Everett at all. I have no doubt that this would have been a far more memorable and valuable experience than he got. The snow-clad summit of Mt. Washington must have been a very interesting sight from Wachuset. How wholesome winter is, seen far or near; how good, above all mere sentimental, warm-blooded, short-lived, soft-hearted, moral goodness, commonly so called. Give me the goodness which has forgotten its own deeds, — which God has seen to be good, and let be. None of your just made perfect, pickled eels! All that will save them will be their picturesqueness, as with blasted trees. Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good. I value no moral goodness or 1 The Prince of Wales, now King Edward VII, then traveling in the United States. Everything Goes Lazy greatness unless it is good or great, even as that snowy peak is. Pray, how could thirty feet of bowels improve it? Nature is goodness crystallized. You look into the land, of promise. Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire. Theodore Parker, fresh from Boston, finds Santa Cruz slow (To Mrs. Apthorp) WEST-END, FREDERIKSTAD, March, 1859 (Written with a pencil out of doors) "In the afternoon they came unto a land WELL, we have got there, this is the place. With nature it seems a perpetual Midsummer's Day, but with man it is "always afternoon." I should think the island was peopled by lotos-eaters. Everything goes lazy. In the morning there is a string of women who go to the spring for water, each with a little pipkin, or pitcher, or jug, or carafe on her head. In six months, time enough is spent to make an acqueduct with a reservoir which would supply the whole town with water. The boys do not run even down-hill, nor the girls romp. To play hoop, jump rope, bat and ball, would be a torture to these dullards. The only game I have seen among the children is top; all the little negroes have a top, and spin it on the hard, smooth street. The cows don't run to pasture, or from it ; even the calves are as sedate as the heaviest oxen, and walk decorously up to their milky supper, and pull as leisurely as if they worked by the day (to pay an old debt), not by the job (and incurring a new one). The ducks lie in the street all day where they can find a shade, and only quack and gabble at night when the effort is not too heating. Mr. Cockadoodle does not run after the hens; he only walks as deliberately as a Dutchman, and it seems as if he ought also to have a pipe in his mouth. The winds blow in a gentle sort, and make no dust, though it has not rained enough to wet a blanket through this never so long. There is a brook outside the little village, but it never runs, it has no current. There are no tides in the sea, only a little slopping against the coral rock. . . We live with a Mrs. a widow of 65 years old. She condescends to take boarders at 10 dollars a-week, and takes the greatest pains to feed them well. She belongs to the tip-top aristocracy of the island, and her house is the West-Endest promontory of the West-End of Santa Cruz. Why, her husband was Herr-Master-Collector-General of the Post, when at least 25 ships arrived in a year, and he had an income of 20,000 dollars a-year (she says), and her house cost 45,000 dollars (so she says). I take off a cypher from each sum, and bring it down a little by this reduction descending. They used to live in Saus und Braus in his time, that they did. What puncheons of rum, what pipes of wine and brandy did they not have, and what fun, and frolic, and feasting, and dancing, and making love, and marrying and giving in marriage. But alas! "vergangen ist vergangen, verloren ist verloren." The house and all looks now, like the state of things a day or two after Noe entered the ark, only the ruin is not by water. All the buildings are tumbling down, the garden is never hoed or dug, the fences have fallen, the gates without hinges, the doors lack handles, and the once costly furniture has been battered, and neglected, and maltreated, till you mourn over it all. . . . Mrs. - talks all the time about herself and her former grandeur, till she sounds as 1. Negroes. 2. Pigs empty as the Heidelberg tun. In the next life I trust we shall be able to hold our ears as well as our tongues. I wish I could now. The town belongs to the negroes and the pigs. A word of each. 1. Of the negroes. In the street you see nobody but negroes and colored people-fine straight backs. All the women are slender. You may walk half an hour and not see a white man. One of these days I will write a word upon the moral condition of the Africans here, and their possible future. It is full of hope. the negro is slow But a loose-jointed sort of animal, a great child. 2. The pig. There are lots of pigs in the streets. Pigs male and pigs female, pigs young and pigs old. Most of them are coal-black, and, like Zaccheus, "little of stature." They are long-nosed and grave-looking animals. I should think they had been through a revival, and were preparing for the ministry; a whole Andover, Newton, and Princeton turned into the streets. But they are slow, as are all things here. They do not keep their tails flying, like the porkers of New England. A woman, not far off, comes out into the street and now and then calls, "Pik, pik! sough, sough!" (¿.e. suff, suff,) and her particular pig recognizes the voice and grunts gently, but approvingly, and walks home to his dinner, like an English country gentleman, and not as American members of Congress go to their meals. Good bye, dear friend that you are. T. Charles Sumner rides with the fox-hunting gentry and clergy of merrie England (To George S. Hillard) MILTON PARK, Dec. 25, 1838 A MERRY CHRISTMAS to you, dear Hillard! This morning greeting I send with the winter winds across the Atlantic. It will not reach you till long after this day; but I hope that it will find you happy,—not forgetful of your great loss, but remembering it with manly grief, and endeavoring in the undoubted present bliss of your dear boy to catch a reflected ray for yourself. I am passing my Christmas week with Lord Fitzwilliam, in one of the large country-houses of old England. I have already written you about Wentworth House. The place where I now am is older and smaller; in America, however, it would be vast. The house is Elizabethan. Here I have been enjoying fox-hunting, to the imminent danger of my limbs and neck; that they still remain intact is a miracle. His Lordship's hounds are among the finest in the kingdom, and his huntsman is reputed the best. There are about eighty couples; the expense of keeping them is about five thousand pounds a year. In his stables there are some fifty or sixty hunters that are only used with the hounds, and of course are unemployed during the summer. The exertion of a day's sport is so great that a horse does not go out more than once in a week. I think I have never participated in anything more exciting than this exercise. The history of my exploits will confirm this. The morning after my arrival I mounted, at half-past nine o'clock, a beautiful hunter, and rode with Lord Milton about six miles to the place of meeting. There were the hounds and huntsmen and whippers-in, and about eighty |