I was assured at the outset that the late abolition riots in New-York were the work of the Irish emigrants, who feared the increase of a free black population as likely to interfere with their monopoly of certain kinds of labour. This I afterward found to be untrue. Some Irish may have joined in "the row," but the mischief originated with natives. It is remarkable that I heard no more of abolition for many weeks; I think not till I was about leaving Philadelphia.
We obtained some "impressions" of the environs of New-York to add to those we had of the city itself, by going to spend an evening at Mr. Kings at High Wood, two miles beyond Hoboken, on the New-Jersey side of the river. The frame cottages, with their thatched verandahs, struck me as very pretty. I could not say much for the beauty of the corn, whose plants, long since stripped of their cobs, were standing yellow and dry, and fast hastening to decay. There were ridges of gray rock, interspersed with woods, which still flourished in their summer greenness. Above all was a sunset, which, if seen in England, would persuade the nation that the end of the world was come. The whole arch of the sky appeared lined with conflagration. It seemed strange to see the wagon-driver talking with his bullocks and the old Dutch dame spinning in the stoop as quietly as if that scarlet sky had been of its usual summer blue.
I was shown on the way the spot where Hamilton received his death-wound from Colonel Burr. It was once made a qualification for office that the candidate should never have fought a duel. Duelling is an institution not to be reached by such a provision as this. No man under provocation to fight would refrain from fear of disqualifying himself for office hereafter; and the operation of the restriction was accordingly found to be this; that duels were as frequent as ever, and that desirable candidates were excluded. The provision was got rid of on the plea that promissory oaths are bad in principle. The cure of duelling, as of every other encroachment of passion and selfishness on such higher principles as, being passive, cannot be imbodied in acts, must be the natural result of the improved moral condition of the individual or of society. No one believes that the legal penalties of duelling have had much effect in stopping the practice; and it is an injury to society to choose out of the ample range of penalties disqualification for social duty as one.
The view from Mr. King's garden at High Wood is beautiful. From one opening a reach of twelve miles of the Hudson is commanded, from the Narrows upward. A soft red light was resting on the waters, the last tinge from the late flaming sky. The dark sloops moored below were thus rendered visible, while the twilight shrouded the rocks. Opposite there was a flare in the woods from a glasshouse; and the lights of the city twinkled afar off, reflected in the waters.
One of the first impressions of a foreigner in New-York is of the extreme insolence and vulgarity of certain young Englishmen, who thus make themselves very conspicuous. Well-mannered Englishmen are scarcely distinguishable from the natives, and thus escape observation; while every commercial traveller who sneers at republicanism all day long, and every impertinent boy, leaving home for the first time, with no understanding or sympathy for anything but what he has been accustomed to see at home, obtrudes himself upon the notice, and challenges the congeniality of such countrymen and countrywomen as he can contrive to put himself in the way of. I was annoyed this evening, on my return home, by a very complete specimen of the last-mentioned order of travellers.
Need I say, after thus detailing the little incidents which followed my landing in America, that my first impressions of the country were highly agreeable?
THE HUDSON.
"Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie."