Half fatigued with my walk, I threw myself down upon the rocky slope of the bank, where the panorama of earth, sky, and water lay clear and distinct about me. Far above, silent and dim as a picture, was the city, with its huge mill-masonry, confused chimney-tops, and church- spires; nearer rose the height of Belvidere, with its deserted burial- place and neglected gravestones sharply defined on its bleak, bare summit against the sky; before me the river went dashing down its rugged channel, sending up its everlasting murmur; above me the birch-tree hung its tassels; and the last wild flowers of autumn profusely fringed the rocky rim of the water. Right opposite, the Dracut woods stretched upwards from the shore, beautiful with the hues of frost, glowing with tints richer and deeper than those which Claude or Poussin mingled, as if the rainbows of a summer shower had fallen among them. At a little distance to the right a group of cattle stood mid-leg deep in the river; and a troop of children, bright-eyed and mirthful, were casting pebbles at them from a projecting shelf of rock. Over all a warm but softened sunshine melted down from a slumberous autumnal sky.
My revery was disagreeably broken. A low, grunting sound, half bestial, half human, attracted my attention. I was not alone. Close beside me, half hidden by a tuft of bushes, lay a human being, stretched out at full length, with his face literally rooted into the gravel. A little boy, five or six years of age, clean and healthful, with his fair brown locks and blue eyes, stood on the bank above, gazing down upon him with an expression of childhood's simple and unaffected pity.
"What ails you?" asked the boy at length. "What makes you lie there?"
The prostrate groveller struggled half-way up, exhibiting the bloated and filthy countenance of a drunkard. He made two or three efforts to get upon his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled forward upon his face.
"What are you doing there?" inquired the boy.
"I'm taking comfort," he muttered, with his mouth in the dirt.
Taking his comfort! There he lay,—squalid and loathsome under the bright heaven,—an imbruted man. The holy harmonies of Nature, the sounds of gushing waters, the rustle of the leaves above him, the wild flowers, the frost-bloom of the woods,—what were they to him? Insensible, deaf, and blind, in the stupor of a living death, he lay there, literally realizing that most bitterly significant Eastern malediction, "May you eat dirt!"
In contrasting the exceeding beauty and harmony of inanimate Nature with the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that "Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has no citizen. The beauty of Nature must ever be universal and mocking until the landscape has human figures as good as itself. Man is fallen; Nature is erect."—(Emerson.) As I turned once more to the calm blue sky, the hazy autumnal hills, and the slumberous water, dream-tinted by the foliage of its shores, it seemed as if a shadow of shame and sorrow fell over the pleasant picture; and even the west wind which stirred the tree-tops above me had a mournful murmur, as if Nature felt the desecration of her sanctities and the discord of sin and folly which marred her sweet harmonies.
God bless the temperance movement! And He will bless it; for it is His work. It is one of the great miracles of our times. Not Father Mathew in Ireland, nor Hawkins and his little band in Baltimore, but He whose care is over all the works of His hand, and who in His divine love and compassion "turneth the hearts of men as the rivers of waters are turned," hath done it. To Him be all the glory.