Left Utica at six o'clock, in our exclusive extra: we were to go on as far as Auburn, a distance of seventy-six miles. The day was very beautiful, but extremely hot. At Vernon, where we stopped to breakfast, we overtook the ——s: we had a very good breakfast; and, I think, for the first time since our land journey from Baltimore to Philadelphia, last winter, we were waited on by women. Found a case of musical glasses: sat on the floor, in great delight, amusing myself with them, while the stage was getting ready, —— and I began wandering about; but the place did not look promising, and the heat was intense. We sat ourselves down under the piazza of the tavern, and I gave him the words of "To that lone Well." In about an hour we set off again. The country was very rich and beautiful; and, at every knoll, backed by woodlands, and skirted by golden grain fields, Mr. —— exclaimed, "Come, we will have a farm here." He and my father were to smoke, reflect, and enjoy life; I was to sing, whenever I happened to please, and enjoy life too; D—— was to brew, to bake, wash, iron, plough, manage the house, look after the cattle, take care of the poultry, mind the dairy; in short, do every thing on earth that was to be done, and enjoy life too: all which arrangements afforded us matter of converse on the way, and much amusement. Then my father and Mr. —— had long argumentations about acting: the latter is a vehement admirer of Kean; and of course, that being the case, matter of debate was not wanting. It was all extremely pleasant and profitable; and while the sun shone, and we all kept our tempers, nothing could do better. —— amused me by telling me portions of ——'s book, the Adventures of a younger Son, with which he had been extremely charmed; and which I remember beginning on board ship, as we crossed from England.
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At about half-past three, we arrived at a place called Syracuse!!!—where, stopping to change horses, my father observed that here there were two different routes to our point of destination; and desired our driver to take that which passes through Skaneateles, a very beautiful village, situated on a lake so called. However, to this the master of the inn, who was also, I believe, proprietor of the coach, seemed to have some private objection; and while my father was yet speaking, very coolly shut the coach door in his face, and desired the driver to go on in the contrary direction. The insolence of the fellow enraged my father extremely; and it was rather astonishing, that's the fact: but the deuce is in't if, in a free country, a man may not choose which way his own coach shall go, in spite of the folk who pay him for the use of it. We had to pocket the affront; and, what was much more disagreeable, to travel an ugly uninteresting road, instead of a picturesque and pretty one. We had not proceeded many miles after this occurrence, and were just recovering our equanimities, when the said vehicle broke down. We were not overturned or hurt, only tilted a little on one side. The driver, however, did not seem to think it safe to proceed in this condition: the gentlemen got out, and searched the hedges and thickets for a piece of oak sufficiently strong and stout to repair, at least for the moment, the damage: we were not at the time within reach of any house. At last, they procured what they wanted; and, having propped up the carriage after the best fashion they could, we proceeded at a foot pace to the next village. Here, while they were putting our conveyance into something like better order, —— and I wandered away to a pretty bright water-course, which, like all water in this country, was made to turn a mill. The coach being made sound once more, we packed ourselves into it, and progressed. The evening was perfectly sultry. I never shall forget, at a place where we stopped to water the horses, a cart-full of wretched sheep and calves, who were, I suppose, on their way to the slaughterhouse, but who, in the mean time, seemed enduring the most horrible torture that creatures can suffer. They were jammed into the cart so as to be utterly incapable of moving a single limb; the pitiless sun shone fiercely upon their wretched heads, and their poor eyes were full of dust and flies. I never saw so miserable a spectacle of suffering. I looked at the brutal-looking man that was driving them, and wondered whether he would go to hell, for tormenting these helpless beasts in this fashion.
The sun set gloriously. Mr. —— began talking about Greece, and, getting a good deal excited, presently burst forth into "The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!" which he recited with amazing vehemence and earnestness. He reminded me of Kean several times: while he was declaiming, he looked like a tiger. 'Tis strange, or, rather, 'tis not strange, 'tis but natural, how, in spite of the contempt and even hatred which he often expresses for England, and every thing connected with it, his thoughts and plans, and all the energies of his mind, seem for ever bent upon changes to be wrought in England—freer government, purer laws, more equal rights. He began to talk about Cromwell: he wanted, he said, to have a play written out of Cromwell's life. We talked the matter over with infinite zeal, and established most satisfactorily, that to accomplish such a thing, as it ought to be done, would be quite one of the most difficult tasks in the world. Nobody but a religious and political enthusiast could do it: a poet, unless himself a republican Englishman, and fanatical sectarian, hardly could: it must be unlike all other works of art—not an imitation of truth, but truth itself. Schiller is the only man I can imagine who could have attempted it with any chance of success: and I even doubt whether he would have made of it the firebrand our friend wants.[105] Towards evening the heat became more and more oppressive. Our coach was but ill cobbled, and leaned awfully to one side. I fell asleep lying in my father's lap; and when we reached Auburn, which was not until nine o'clock, I was so tired, so miserably sleepy, and so tortured with the side-ach, from the cramped position in which I had been lying, that I just crawled into the first room in the inn where we alighted, and dropped down on the floor fast asleep. They roused me for supper; and very soon after I betook myself to bed. The heat was intolerable; the pale feet of the summer lightning ran along the black edges of the leaden clouds,—the world was alight with it. I could not sleep: I never endured such suffocating heat.
Sunday, 14th.
Rose at eight: the morning was already sultry as the hottest noon in England. After breakfast, I wandered about the house in search of shade; went into an empty room, opened the shutters, and got out upon a large piazza, or rather colonnade, which surrounded it. The side I had chosen was defended by the house from the fierce sunlight; and I walked up and down in quiet and loneliness for some time. Not far from the house stood the prison, one of the state prisons of the country; a large grey building, which appeared like a huge block of granite, unsheltered by a single tree or bush, and dim with the hazy heat of the atmosphere. Being Sunday, we were not able to visit it; but the person who kept the house where we were, a very intelligent and civil man, gave us some account of it, and fully corroborated the fact which Stuart mentions,—that when the prison took fire, and all the criminals confined in it were liberated to assist in saving the building, in spite of the general confusion and total absence of restraint or observation, which for some time left them the most easy opportunity of escape, not one of them took advantage of this accident to recover their liberty, but every prisoner returned voluntarily, after the fire was got under, to his cell. This seems miraculous, and speaks more for the excellence of the system pursued in these establishments than all the disquisitions in the world. At about ten, our exclusive extra having driven to the door, we packed ourselves into it, and proceeded towards Geneva, where we were to dine. The sky, however, presently became overcast; and, towards noon, the world was absolutely shrouded in a lead-coloured pall. The air was stifling: it was impossible to draw one's breath; and a quarter of a degree more of heat would certainly have occasioned suffocation. We were all gasping. Suddenly the red lightning tore open the heavy clouds, the thunder rolled round the heavens, the rain came down in torrents: we were away from all shelter, and obliged to proceed through the storm. The leather curtains of our coach were speedily unrolled and buttoned down; but this formed but a miserable shelter against the furious rain. Our carpet bags, which were on the outside of the carriage, were soaked through; and we ourselves were soon in nearly as bad a plight. The rain came in rivulets through the crevices of our insufficient shelter, and the seats and bottom of the coach were presently standing pools. We arrived between twelve and one o'clock at Cayuga; and here we drew up before the inn door, to await the end of the storm. The rain was still so violent, that we preferred remaining in the coach to getting out and being still more thoroughly drenched. The thunder growled sulkily at a distance, and the lightning glared rapidly from side to side. By degrees, the over-swollen clouds, having emptied themselves, rolled away; the rain became less violent; the mist and heavy vapour parted from off the face of the earth, and the lake appeared blending with the sky amid the indistinct and hazy outlines of the half-shrouded country. While we were sitting listening to the storm, silence had fallen upon us all: a thunderstorm is apt to prove an interruption to conversation. During this pause, Mr. —— took out his pencil, and wrote upon a scrap of paper a very eloquent Mahomedan description of the attributes of God. I do not know whether it was his own, or an authentic Mahomedan document: it was sublime.
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