Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals / In Two Volumes, Volume I.

by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

JANUARY 1, 1826—DECEMBER 5, 1829

Success of his lectures, the first of the kind in the United States.— Difficulties of his position as leader.—Still longing for a home.—Very busy but in good health.—Death of his father.—Estimates of Dr. Morse.— Letters to his mother.—Wishes to go to Europe again.—Delivers address at first anniversary of National Academy of Design.—Professor Dana lectures on electricity.—Morse's study of the subject.—Moves to No. 13 Murray Street.—Too busy to visit his family.—Death of his mother.—A remarkable woman.—Goes to central New York.—A serious accident.—Moral reflections.—Prepares to go to Europe.—Letter of John A. Dix.—Sails for Liverpool.—Rough voyage.—Liverpool.

January 1, 1826

MY DEAR PARENTS,—I wish you all a Happy New Year! Kiss my little ones as a New Year's present from me, which must answer until I visit them, when I shall bring them each a present if I hear good accounts from them….

The new year brings with it many painful reflections to me. When I consider what a difference a year has accomplished in my situation; that one on whom I depended so much for domestic happiness at this time last year gave me the salutations of the season, and now is gone where years are unknown; and when I think how mysteriously I am separated from my little family, and that duty may keep me I know not how much longer in this solitary state, I have much that makes the present season far from being a Happy New Year to me. But, mysterious as things seem in regard to the future, I know that all will be ordered right, and I have a great deal to say of mercy in the midst of judgment, and a thousand unmerited blessings with all my troubles.

But why do I talk of troubles? My cup is overflowing with blessings. As far as outward circumstances are concerned, Providence seems to be opening an honorable and useful course to me. Oh! that I may be able to bear prosperity, if it is his will to bestow it, or be denied it if not accompanied with his blessing….

I am much engaged in my lectures, have completed two, nearly, and hope to get through the four in season for my turn at the Athenæum. These lectures are of great importance to me, for, if well done, they place me alone among the artists; I being the only one who has as yet written a course of lectures in our country. Time bestowed on them is not, therefore, misspent, for they will acquire me reputation which will yield wealth, as mother, I hope, will live to see.

"January 15, 1826. On this day I seem to have the only moment in the week in which I can write you, for I am almost overwhelmed by the multitude of cares that crowd upon me…. I find that the path of duty, though plain, is not without its roughness. I can say but in one word that the Association of Artists, of whom I am president, after negotiations of some weeks with the Academy of Fine Arts to come into it on terms of mutual benefit, find their efforts unavailing, and have separated and formed a new academy to be called, probably, the National Academy of the Arts of Design. I am at its head, but the cares and responsibility which devolve on me in consequence are more than a balance for the honor. The battle is yet to be fought for the need of public favor, and were it not that the entire and perfect justness of our cause is clear to me in every point of view, I should retire from a contest which would merely serve to rouse up all the 'old Adam' to no profit; but the cause of the artists seems, under Providence, to be, in some degree, confided to me, and I cannot shrink from the cares and troubles at present put upon me. I have gone forward thus far, asking direction from above, and, in looking around me, I feel that I am in the path of duty. May I be kept in it and be preserved from the temptations, the various and multiplied and complicated temptations, to which I know I shall be exposed. In every step thus far I feel an approving conscience; there is none I could wish to retrace….

"I fear you will think I have but few thoughts for you all at home, and my dear little ones in particular. I do think of them, though, very often, with many a longing to have a home for them under a parent's roof, and all my efforts now are tending distantly to that end; but when I shall ever have a home of my own, or whether it will ever be, I know not. The necessity for a second connection on their account seems pressing, but I cannot find my heart ready for it. I am occasionally rallied on the subject, but the suggestion only reminds me of her I have lost, and a tear is quite as ready to appear as a smile; or, if I can disguise it, I feel a pang within that shows me the wound is not yet healed. It is eleven months since she has gone, but it seems but yesterday."

"April 18, 1826. I don't know but you will think I have forgotten how to write letters, and I believe this is the first I have written for six weeks.

"The pressure of my lectures became very great towards the close of them, and I was compelled to bend my whole attention to their completion. I did not expect, when I delivered my first, that I should be able to give more than two, but the importance of going through seemed greater as I advanced, and I was strengthened to accomplish the whole number, and, if I can judge from various indications, I think I have been successful. My audience, consisting of the most fashionable and literary society in the city, regularly increased at each successive lecture, and at the last it was said that I had the largest audience ever assembled in the room.

"I am now engaged on Lafayette in expectation of completing it for our exhibition in May, after which time I hope I shall be able to see you for a day or two in New Haven. I long to see you all, and those dear children often make me feel anxious, and I am often tempted to break away and have a short look at them, but I am tied down here and cannot move at present. All that I am doing has some reference to their interest; they are constantly on my mind.

"… My health was never better with all my intense application, sitting in my chair from seven in the morning until twelve or one o'clock the next morning, with only about an hour's intermission. I have felt no permanent inconvenience. On Saturday night, generally, I have felt exceedingly nervous, so that my whole body and limbs would shake, but resting on the Sabbath seemed to give me strength for the next week. Since my mind is relieved from my lectures I have felt new life and spirits, and feel strong to accomplish anything."

"May 10, 18S6. I have just heard from mother and feel anxious about father. Nothing but the most imperious necessity prevents my coming immediately to New Haven; indeed, as it is, I will try and break away sometime next week, if possible, and pass one day with you, but how to do it without detriment to my business I don't know….

"I have longed for some time for a little respite, but, like our good father, all his sons seem destined for most busy stations in society, and constant exertions, not for themselves alone, but for the public benefit."

Whether this promised visit to New Haven was paid or not is not recorded, but it is to be hoped that it was made possible, for the good husband and father, the faithful worker for the betterment of mankind, was called to his well-earned rest on the 9th of June, 1826.

Of him Dr. John Todd said, "Dr. Morse lived before his time and was in advance of his generation." President Dwight of Yale found him "as full of resources as an egg is of meat"; and Daniel Webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting." Mr. Prime thus sums up his character: "He was a man of genius, not content with what had been and was, but originating and with vast executive ability combining the elements to produce great results. To him more than to any other one man may be attributed the impulses given in his day to religion and learning in the United States. A polished gentleman in his manners; the companion, correspondent, and friend of the most eminent men in Church and State; honored at the early age of thirty-four with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; sought by scholars and statesmen from abroad as one of the foremost men of his country and time."

The son must have felt keenly the loss of his father so soon after the death of his wife. The whole family was a singularly united one, each member depending on the others for counsel and advice, and the father, who was but sixty-five when he died, was still vigorous in mind, although of delicate constitution.

Later in this year Morse managed to spend some time in New Haven, and he persuaded his mother to seek rest and recuperation in travel, accompanying her as far as Boston and writing to her there on his return to New Haven.

"September 20, 1826. I arrived safely home after leaving you yesterday and found that neither the house nor the folks had run away…. Persevere in your travels, mother, as long as you think it does you good, and tell Dick to brush up his best bows and bring home some lady to grace the now desolate mansion."

On November 9, 1826, he writes to his mother from New York:—

"Don't think I have forgotten you all at home because I have been so remiss in writing you lately. I feel guilty, however, in not stealing some little time just to write you one line. I acknowledge my fault, so please forgive me and I will be a better boy in future.

"The fact is I have been engaged for the last three days during all my leisure moments in something unusual with me,—I mean electioneering. 'Oh! what a sad boy!' mother will say. 'There he is leaving everything at sixes and sevens, and driving through the streets, and busying himself about those poison politics.' Not quite so fast, however.

"I have not neglected my own affairs, as you will learn one of these days. I have an historical picture to paint, which will occupy me for some time, for a proprietor of a steamboat which is building in Philadelphia to be the most splendid ever built. He has engaged historical pictures of Allston, Vanderlyn, Sully, and myself, and landscapes of the principal landscape painters, for a gallery on board the boat. I consider this as a new and noble channel for the encouragement of painting, and in such an enterprise and in such company I shall do my best.

"What do you think of sparing me for about one year to visit Paris and Rome to finish what I began when in Europe before? My education as a painter is incomplete without it, and the time is rapidly going away when my age will render it impossible to profit by such studies, even if I should be able, at a future time, to visit Europe again…. I can, perhaps, leave my dear little ones at their age better than if they were more advanced, and, as my views are ultimately to benefit them, I think no one will accuse me of neglecting them. If they do, they know but little of my feelings towards them."

The mother's answer to this letter has not been preserved, but whether she dissuaded him from going at that time, or whether other reasons prevented him, the fact is that he did not start on the voyage to Europe (the return trip proving so momentous to himself and to the world) until exactly three years later.

I shall pass rapidly over these intervening three years. They were years of hard work, but of work rewarded by material success and increasing honor in the community.

On May 8, 1827, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the National Academy of Design, Morse, its president, delivered an address before a brilliant audience in the chapel of Columbia College. This address was considered so remarkable that, at the request of the Academy, it was published in pamphlet form. It called forth a sharp review in the "North American," which voiced the opinions of those who were hostile to the new Academy, and who considered the term "National" little short of arrogant. Morse replied to this attack in a masterly manner in the "Journal of Commerce," and this also was published in pamphlet form and ended the controversy.

In the year 1827, Professor James Freeman Dana, of Columbia College, delivered a series of lectures on the subject of electricity at the New York Athenæum. Professor Dana was an enthusiast in the study of that science, which, at that time, was but in its infancy, and he foresaw great and beneficial results to mankind from this mysterious force when it should become more fully understood.

Morse, already familiar with the subject from his experiments with Professor Silliman in New Haven, took a deep interest in these lectures, and he and Professor Dana became warm friends. The latter, on his side a great admirer of the fine arts, spent many hours in the studio of the artist, discussing with him the two subjects which were of absorbing interest to them both, art and electricity. In this way Morse became perfectly familiar with the latest discoveries in electrical science, so that when, a few years later, his grand conception of a simple and practicable means of harnessing this mystic agent to the uses of mankind took form in his brain, it found a field already prepared to receive it. I wish to lay particular emphasis on this point because, in later years, when his claims as an inventor were bitterly assailed in the courts and in scientific circles, it was asserted that he knew nothing whatever of the science of electricity at the time of his invention, and that all its essential features were suggested to him by others.

In the year 1828, Morse again changed his quarters, moving to a suite of rooms at No. 13 Murray Street, close to Broadway, for which he paid a "great rent," $500, and on May 6 of that year he writes to his mother:

"Ever since I left you at New Haven I have been over head and ears in arrangements of every kind. It is the busiest time of the whole year as it regards the National Academy. We have got through the arrangement of our exhibition and yesterday opened it to the guests of the Academy. We had the first people in the city, ladies and gentlemen, thronging the room all day, and the voice of all seemed to be—'It is the best exhibition of the kind that has been seen in the city.'

"I am now arranging my rooms; they are very fine ones. I shall be through in a few days, and then I hope to be able to come up and see you, for I feel very anxious about you, my dear mother. I do most sincerely sympathize with you in your troubles and long to come up and take some of the care and burden from you, and will do it as soon as my affairs here can be arranged so that I can leave them without serious detriment to them…. What a siege you must have had with your help, as it is most strangely called in New Haven. I am too aristocratic for such doings as help would make those who live in New Haven endure. Ardently as I am attached to New Haven the plague of help will probably always prevent my living there again, for I would not put up with 'the world turned upside down,' and therefore should give offense to their helpinesses, and so lead a very uncomfortable life."

From this our suspicion is strengthened that the servant question belongs to no time or country, but is and always has been a perennial and ubiquitous problem.

"May 11, 1888. I feel very anxious about you, dear mother. I heard through Mr. Van Rensselaer that you were better, and I hope that you will yet see many good days on earth and be happy in the affection of your children and friends here, before you go, a little before them, to join those in heaven."

While expressing anxiety about his mother's health, he could not have considered her condition critical, for on the 18th of May he writes again:—

"I did hope so to make my arrangements as to have been with you in New Haven yesterday and to-day, but I am so situated as to be unable to leave the city without great detriment to my business…. Unless, therefore, there is something of pressing necessity, prudence would dictate to me to take advantage of this season, which has generally been the most profitable to others in the profession, and see if I cannot get my share of something to do. It is a great struggle with me to know what I ought to do. Your situation and that of the family draw me to New Haven; the state of my finances keeps me here. I will come, however, if, on the whole, you think it best."

Again are the records silent as to whether the visit was paid or not, but his anxiety was well founded, for his mother's appointed time had come, and just ten days later, on the 28th of May, 1828, she died at the age of sixty-two.

Thus within the space of three years the hand of death had removed the three beings whom Morse loved best. His mother, while, as we have seen, stern and uncompromising in her Puritan principles, yet possessed the faculty of winning the love as well as the respect of her family and friends. Dr. Todd said of her home: "An orphan myself and never having a home, I have gone away from Dr. Morse's house in tears, feeling that such a home must be more like heaven than anything of which I could conceive."

Mr. Prime, in his biography of Morse, thus pays tribute to her:—

"Two persons more unlike in temperament, it is said, could not have been united in love and marriage than the parents of Morse. The husband was sanguine, impulsive, resolute, regardless of difficulties and danger. She was calm, judicious, cautious, and reflecting. And she, too, had a will of her own. One day she was expressing to one of the parish her intense displeasure with the treatment her husband had received, when Dr. Morse gently laid his hand upon her shoulder and said, 'My dear, you know we must throw the mantle of charity over the imperfections of others.' And she replied with becoming spirit, 'Mr. Morse, charity is not a fool.'"

In the summer of 1828, Morse spent some time in central New York, visiting relatives and painting portraits when the occasion offered. He thus describes a narrow escape from serious injury, or even death, in a letter to his brother Sidney, dated Utica, August 17, 1828:—

"In coming from Whitesboro on Friday I met with an accident and a most narrow escape with my life. The horse, which had been tackled into the wagon, was a vicious horse and had several times run away, to the danger of Mr. Dexter's life and others of the family. I was not aware of this or I should not have consented to go with him, much less to drive him myself.

"I was alone in the wagon with my baggage, and the horse went very well for about a mile, when he gradually quickened his pace and then set out, in spite of all check, on the full run. I kept him in the road, determined to let him run himself tired as the only safe alternative; but just as I came in sight of a piece of the road which had been concealed by an angle, there was a heavy wagon which I must meet so soon that, in order to avoid it, I must give it the whole road.

"This being very narrow, and the ditches and banks on each side very rough, I instantly made up my mind to a serious accident. As well as the velocity of the horse would allow me, however, I kept him on the side, rough as it was, for about a quarter of a mile pretty steadily, expecting, however, to upset every minute; when all at once I saw before me an abrupt, narrow, deep gully into which the wheels on one side were just upon the point of going down. It flashed across me in an instant that, if I could throw the horse down into the ditch, the wheels of the wagon might, perhaps, rest equipoised on each side, and, perhaps, break the horse loose from the wagon.

"I pulled the rein and accomplished the object in part. The sudden plunge of the horse into the gully broke him loose from the wagon, but it at the same time turned one of the fore wheels into the gully, which upset the wagon and threw me forwards at the moment when the horse threw up his heels, just taking off my hat and leaving me in the bottom of the gully. I fell on my left shoulder, and, although muddied from head to foot, I escaped without any injury whatever; I was not even jarred painfully. I found my shoulder a little bruised, my wrist very slightly scratched, and yesterday was a little, and but very little, stiffened in my limbs, and to-day have not the slightest feeling of bruise about me, but think I feel better than I have for a long time. Indeed, my health is entirely restored; the riding and country air have been the means of restoring me. I have great cause of thankfulness for so much mercy and for such special preserving care."

[Illustration: ELIZABETH A. MORSE
Painted by Morse]

The historian or the biographer who is earnestly desirous of presenting an absolutely truthful picture of men and of events is aided in his task by taking into account the character of the men who have made history. He must ask the question: "Is it conceivable that this man could have acted thus and so under such and such circumstances when his character, as ultimately revealed through the perspective of time, has been established? Could Washington and Lincoln, for example, have been actuated by the motives attributed to them by their enemies?"

Like all men who have become shining marks in the annals of history, Morse could not hope to escape calumny, and in later years he was accused of actions, and motives were imputed to him, which it becomes the duty of his biographer to disprove on the broad ground of moral impossibility.

Among his letters and papers are many rough drafts of thoughts and observations on many subjects, interlined and annotated. Some were afterwards elaborated into letters, articles, or lectures; others seem to have been the thought of the moment, which he yet deemed worth writing down, and which, perhaps better than anything else, reveal the true character of the man.

The following was written by him in pencil on Sunday, September 6, 1829, at Cooperstown, New York:—

"That temptations surround us at every moment is too evident to require proof. If they cease from without they still act upon us from within ourselves, and our most secret thoughts may as surely be drawn from the path of duty by secret temptation, by the admission of evil suggestions, and they will affect our characters as injuriously as those more palpable and tangible temptations that attack our sense.

"This life is a state of discipline; a school in which to form character. There is not an event that comes to our knowledge, not a sentence that we read, not a person with whom we converse, not an act of our lives, in short, not a thought which we conceive, but is acting upon and moulding that character into a shape of good or evil; and, however unconscious we may be of the fact, a thought, casually conceived in the solitariness and silence and darkness of midnight, may so modify and change the current of our future conduct that a blessing or a curse to millions may flow from it.

"All our thoughts are mysteriously connected with good or evil. Their very habits, too, like the habits of our actions, are strengthened by indulgence, and, according as we indulge the evil or the good, our characters will partake of the moral character of each. But actions proceed from thoughts; we act as we think. Why should we, then, so cautiously guard our actions from impropriety while we give a loose rein to our thoughts, which so certainly, sooner or later, produce their fruits in our actions?

"God in his wisdom has separated at various distances sin and the consequence of sin. In some instances we see a sin instantly followed by its fruits, as of revenge by murder. In others we see weeks and months and years, aye, and ages, too, elapse before the fruits of a single act, the result, perhaps, of a single thought, are seen in all their varieties of evil.

"How long ere the fruits of one sin in Paradise will cease to be visible in the moral universe?

"If this reasoning is correct, I shall but cheat myself in preserving a good moral outward appearance to others if every thought of the heart, in the most secret retirement, is not carefully watched and checked and guarded from evil; since the casual indulgence of a single evil thought in secret may be followed, long after that thought is forgotten by me, and when, perhaps, least expected, by overt acts of evil.

"Who, then, shall say that in those pleasures in which we indulge, and which by many are called, and apparently are, innocent, there are not laid the seeds of many a corrupt affection? Who shall say that my innocent indulgence at the card table or at the theatre, were I inclined to visit them, may not produce, if not in me a passion for gaming or for low indulgence, yet in others may encourage these views to their ruin?

"Besides, 'Evil communications corrupt good manners,' and even places less objectionable are studiously to be avoided. The soul is too precious to be thus exposed.

"Where then is our remedy? In Christ alone. 'Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Search me, O God, and know my thoughts; try me and know my ways and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way which is everlasting.'"

This is but one of many expressions of a similar character which are to be found in the letters and notes, and which are illuminating.

Morse was now making ready for another trip to Europe. He had hoped, when he returned home in 1815, to stay but a year or two on this side and then to go back and continue his artistic education, which he by no means considered complete, in France and Italy. We have seen how one circumstance after another interfered to prevent the realization of this plan, until now, after the lapse of fourteen years, he found it possible. His wife and his parents were dead; his children were being carefully cared for by relatives, the daughter Susan by her mother's sister, Mrs. Pickering, in Concord, New Hampshire, and the boys by their uncle, Richard C. Morse, who was then happily married and living in the family home in New Haven.

The National Academy of Design was now established on a firm footing and could spare his guiding hand for a few years. He had saved enough money to defray his expenses on a strictly economical basis, but, to make assurance doubly sure, he sought and received commissions from his friends and patrons in America for copies of famous paintings, or for original works of his own, so that he could sail with a clear conscience as regarded his finances.

His friends were uniformly encouraging in furthering his plan, and he received many letters of cordial good wishes and of introduction to prominent men abroad. I shall include the following from John A. Dix, at that time a captain in the army, but afterwards a general, and Governor of New York, who, although he had been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of Miss Walker, Morse's wife, bore no ill-will towards his rival, but remained his firm friend to the end:—

COOPERSTOWN, 27th October, 1829.

MY DEAR SIR,—I have only time to say that I have been absent in an adjacent county and fear there is not time to procure a letter for you to Mr. Rives before the 1st. I have written to Mr. Van Buren and he will doubtless send you a letter before the 8th. Therefore make arrangements to have it sent after you if you sail on the 1st.

I need not say I shall be very happy to hear from you during your sojournment abroad. Especially tell me what your impressions are when you turn from David's picture with Romulus and Tatius in the foreground, and Paul Veronese's Marriage at Cana directly opposite, at the entrance of the picture gallery in the Louvre.

We are all well and all desire to be remembered. I have only time to add my best wishes for your happiness and prosperity.

Yours truly and constantly,
JOHN A. DIX.

The Mr. Rives mentioned in the letter was at that time our Minister to
France, and the Mr. Van Buren was Martin Van Buren, then Secretary of
State in President Jackson's Cabinet, and afterwards himself President of
the United States.

The following is from the pencilled draft of a letter or the beginning of a diary which was not finished, but ends abruptly:—

"On the 8th November, 1829, I embarked from New York in the ship Napoleon, Captain Smith, for Liverpool. The Napoleon is one of those splendid packets, which have been provided by the enterprise of our merchants, for the accommodation of persons whose business or pleasure requires a visit to Europe or America.

"Precisely at the appointed hour, ten o'clock, the steamboat with the passengers and their baggage left the Whitehall dock for our gallant ship, which was lying to above the city, heading up the North River, careening to the brisk northwest gale, and waiting with apparent impatience for us, like a spirited horse curvetting under the rein of his master, and waiting but his signal to bound away. A few moments brought us to her side, and a few more saw the steamboat leave us, and the sad farewells to relatives and friends, who had thus far accompanied us, were mutually exchanged by the waving of hands and of handkerchiefs. The 'Ready about,' and soon after the 'Mainsail haul' of the pilot were answered by the cheering 'Ho, heave, ho' of the sailors, and, with the fairest wind that ever blew, we fast left the spires and shores of the great city behind us. In two hours we discharged our pilot to the south of Sandy Hook, with his pocket full of farewell letters to our friends, and then stood on our course for England.

"Four days brought us to the Banks of Newfoundland, one third of our passage. Many of our passengers were sanguine in their anticipations of our making the shortest passage ever known, and, had our subsequent progress been as great as at first, we should doubtless have accomplished the voyage in thirteen days, but calms and head winds for three days on the Banks have frustrated our expectations.

"There is little that is interesting in the incidents of a voyage. The indescribable listlessness of seasickness, the varied state of feeling which changes with the wind and weather, have often been described. These I experienced in all their force. From the time we left the Banks of Newfoundland we had a continued succession of head winds, and when within one fair day's sail of land, we were kept off by severe gales directly ahead for five successive days and nights, during which time the uneasy motion of the ship deprived us all of sleep, except in broken intervals of an half-hour at a time. We neither saw nor spoke any vessel until the evening of the ——, when we descried through the darkness a large vessel on an opposite course from ourselves; we first saw her cabin lights. It was blowing a gale of wind before which we were going on our own course at the rate of eleven miles an hour. It was, of course, impossible to speak her, but, to let her know that she had company on the wide ocean, we threw up a rocket which for splendor of effect surpassed any that I had ever seen on shore. It was thrown from behind the mizzenmast, over which it shot arching its way over the main and foremasts, illuminating every sail and rope, and then diving into the water, piercing the wave, it again shot upwards and vanished in a loud report. To our companion ship the effect must have been very fine.

"The sea is often complained of for its monotony, and yet there is great variety in the appearance of the sea."

Here it ends, but we learn a little more of the voyage and the landing in
England from a letter to a cousin in America, written in Liverpool, on
December 5, 1829:—

"I arrived safely in England yesterday after a long, but, on the whole, pleasant, passage of twenty-six days. I write you from the inn (the King's Arms Hotel) at which I put up eighteen years ago. This inn is the one at which Professor Silliman stayed when he travelled in England, and which he mentions in his travels. The old Frenchman whom he mentions I well remember when I was here before. I enquired for him and am told he is still living, but I have not seen him.

"There is a large black man, a waiter in the house, who is quite a polished man in his manners, and an elderly white man, with white hair, who looks so respectable and dignified that one feels a little awkward at first in ordering him to do this or that service; and the chambermaids look so venerable and matronly that to ask them for a pitcher of water seems almost rude to them. But I am in a land where domestic servants are the best in the world. No servant aspires to a higher station, but feels a pride in making himself the first in that station. I notice this, for our own country presents a melancholy contrast in this particular."

Here follows a description of the voyage, and he continues:—

"Yesterday we anchored off the Floating Light, sixteen miles from the city, unable to reach the dock on account of the wind, but the post-office steamboat (or steamer, as they call them here) came to us from Liverpool to take the letter-bags, and I with other passengers got on board, and at twelve o'clock I once more placed my foot on English ground.

"The weather is true English weather, thick, smoky, and damp. I can see nothing of the general appearance of the city. The splendid docks, which were building when I was here before, are now completed and extend along the river. They are really splendid; everything about them is solid and substantial, of stone and iron, and on so large a scale.

"I have passed my baggage through the custom-house, and on Monday I proceed on my journey to London through Birmingham and Oxford. Miss Leslie, a sister of my friend Leslie of London, is my compagnon de voyage. She is a woman of fine talents and makes my journey less tedious and irksome than it would otherwise be…. I have a long journey before me yet ere I reach Rome, where I intended to be by Christmas Day, but my long voyage will probably defeat my intention."