“No.—Your wife wears what the old ladies before my time called a frisk and petticoat; it is the fashion of the year 1780. Her hair is cropped and curled closely to her head, with small clusters of curls in the hollow of each temple. In 1835 the hair was dressed in the Grecian style—but you can see the fashion. You have preserved the picture of my dear Ophelia; she sat to two of the best painters of the day, Sully and Ingham; the one you have was painted by Ingham, and is in the gay dress of the time. The other, which her brother had in his possession, was in a quaker dress, and was painted by Sully.”
“We have it still, and it is invaluable for the sweetness of expression and the grace of attitude. The one in your room is admirable likewise; it abounds in beauties. No one since has ever been able to paint in that style; it bears examination closely. Was he admired as an artist in your day?”
“Yes; he was a distinguished painter, but he deserved his reputation, for he bestowed immense labour on his portraits, and sent nothing unfinished from his hands.”
“But portrait painting is quite out of date now; it began to decline about the year 1870. It was a strange taste, that of covering the walls with paintings, which your grandchildren had to burn up as useless lumber. Where character, beauty and grace were combined, and a good artist to embody them, it was well enough; a number of these beautiful fancy pieces are still preserved. Landscape and historical painting is on the decline also. There are no good artists now, but you had a delightful painter in your day—Leslie. His pictures are still considered as very great treasures, and they bring the very highest prices.”
“How is it with sculpture? That art was beginning to improve in my day.”
“Yes; and has continued to improve. We now rival the proudest days of Greece. But you must see all these things. The Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia will delight you; it is now the largest in the world. In reading an old work I find that in your time it was contemptible enough, for in the month of April of 1833, the Academy of Fine Arts in that city was so much in debt, as to be unable to sustain itself. It was with the greatest difficulty that the trustees could beg a sum sufficient to pay the debts. The strong appeal that was made to the public enabled them to continue it a little longer in its impoverished condition, but it seems that it crumbled to pieces, and was not resuscitated until the year 1850, at which time a taste for the art of sculpture began to appear in this country.”
On the first of May the two gentlemen commenced their tour—not in locomotive engines, nor in steamboats, but in curious vehicles that moved by some internal machinery. They were regulated every hour at the different stopping places, and could be made to move faster or slower, to suit the pleasure of those within. The roads were beautifully smooth and perfectly level; and Hastings observed that there were no dangerous passes, for a strong railing stretched along the whole extent of every elevation. How different from the roads of 1834! Then men were reckless or prodigal of life; stages were overturned, or pitched down some steep hill—rail cars bounded off the rails, or set the vehicles on fire—steamboats exploded and destroyed many lives—horses ran away and broke their riders’ necks—carts, heavily laden, passed over children and animals—boats upset in squalls of wind—in short, if human ingenuity had been exerted to its fullest extent, there could not be contrivances better suited to shorten life, or render travelling more unsafe and disagreeable.
Instead of going directly to New York, as they at first contemplated, they visited every part of Pennsylvania. Railroads intersected one another in every direction; every thing was a source of amazement and amusement to Hastings. The fields were no longer cultivated by the horse or the ox, nor by small steam engines, as was projected in the nineteenth century, but by a self-moving plough, having the same machinery to propel it as that of the travelling cars. Instead of rough, unequal grounds, gullied, and with old tree stumps in some of the most valuable parts of the field, the whole was one beautiful level; and, where inclinations were unavoidable, there were suitable drains. The same power mowed the grass, raked it up, spread it out, gathered it, and brought it to the barn—the same power scattered seeds, ploughed, hoed, harrowed, cut, gathered, threshed, stored and ground the grain—and the same power distributed it to the merchants and small consumers.
“Wonderful, most wonderful,” said the astonished Hastings. “I well remember this very farm; those fields, the soil of which was washed away by the precipitous fall of rain from high parts, are now all levelled smooth. The hand of time has done nothing better for the husbandman than in perfecting such operations as these. Now, every inch of ground is valuable; and this very farm, once only capable of supporting a man, his wife and five children in the mere necessaries of life, must now give to four times that number every luxury.”
“Yes, you are right; and instead of requiring the assistance of four labourers, two horses and two oxen, it is all managed by four men alone! The machines have done every thing—they fill up gullies, dig out the roots of trees, plough down hills, turn water courses—in short, they have entirely superseded the use of cattle of any kind.”