In 1803, at the early age of 23, Moore began to reap some of the solid fruits of his connection with the English aristocracy. He got the place of Registrar of the Court of Admiralty at Bermuda, through the interest of the Earl of Moira, and went to the island to take possession of his office. But instead of doing the duties of it, he procured a deputy, and went rambling and rhyming over the islands and on the continent of America. He highly enjoyed the natural softness and beauty of the Summer Islands; but many a song and poetical epistle proved that “his heart was in Albion—his heart was not there”—that he was sighing for what he called
The flourishing Isle of the brave and the free,
the splendid hospitalities of Donington and the pays de cocagne of the British aristocracy in general.
Passing from Bermuda, he came to Norfolk in Virginia, and thence made a pretty lengthened tour through the States, by Washington, Philadelphia, Buffalo and the lakes. The young votary of the Anacreontic muses—the musical pet of the higher English circles—did not like the American Democracy at all, and has left on record about as unfavorable an opinion and prophecy concerning the republic as has been written at any time since. Every thing seemed tough and unrefined; and when he made his bow to President Thomas Jefferson, he felt a mental shock from the sight of that simple man, wearing “Connemara stockings and slippers,” at the head of a nation. To be sure the society of British officers and Federal Whigs among whom he chose his friends and acquaintances was not calculated to impress him with any favorable idea of the democratic party. But, every allowance made, Moore said enough to show that, Catholic as he was, and come of plebeian forefathers (at least in an immediate manner; for the name O’Moore is high on the old rolls of Irish peerage and rebellion) he never had any hearty sympathy with republicanism and the cause of the people. He was all for the glorious distinctions of rank and historic prestige—the pride, pomp and circumstance of lordly life; and, in fact, looked on America as a sort of moral wilderness. He had no hopes of it, indeed. He said society here was rotten to the core; and he wrote poetical prophecies of its speedy decay and disappearance from among the nations of the earth!
And yet there were many things here to conciliate the fastidiousness of the young traveler. Among the other tokens of an exceptional civilization, was one which he himself recalls with an evident feeling of gratified pride. The American master of the packet in which he crossed Ontario—knowing that the young gentleman was a poet—the author of “Anacreon Translated,” and “Juvenile Poems and Songs”—refused to accept any money for his passage—would thus show his sense of what was due to literature! We believe very few ship-masters in any of the old countries would have done so courteously magnanimous a thing as that; and Moore himself probably thought so too. The poet was, in fact, much better pleased with the natural scenery than the people of the continent; and scattered through the verses occasioned by his visit will be found many tributes to the picturesque wildernesses he passed through. Speaking of Niagara and other grand scenes he says—
Oh lady, there are miracles which man
Caged in the bounds of Europe’s narrow span
Can scarcely dream of—which his eye must see
To know how wonderful this world can be.
Moore, as well as hundreds of others, has left us his first impressions on the sight of Niagara Falls. He says, “When we arrived at length at the inn, in the neighborhood of the Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening, and I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract in my ears. The day following I consider a sort of era in my life: and the first glimpse I got of that wonderful cataract gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached the spot where a full view of the Falls was to burst upon us, that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters folding smoothly over the edge of the precipice, and so overwhelming was the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching, that during the short interval that followed, imagination had far outrun the reality; and vast and wonderful as was the scene that then opened upon me my first feeling was that of disappointment. . . But in spite of the start thus got by imagination the triumph of the reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole mind, presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as well as elevating thoughts. . . I should find it difficult to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking on the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Coliseum.”