"And she, the mother of thy boys.
Will, by her pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's;
One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die,"—
these lines, and his own parting scene with their author in New York harbor, flashed into his mind, and he felt as if this incident alone were enough to repay him for his whole journey.
On his return once more to Paris, in a letter to his friend Leggett he sketches in epitome the ground he has been over. An extract follows:
"Since I saw you, I have indeed been in strange lands, and seen strange sights. I have traversed the Baltic and the wide dominions of the ambitious Autocrat,—crossed the Euxine and dipped into Asia and European Turkey,—'kept due onwards to the Propontic and Hellespont,'—wandered amid the faultless fragments of the 'bright clime of battle and of song,'—sailed by the Ionian Isles,—visited the chief towns of the Germanic Confederation,—and here I am at last, safe and sound, in the ever-gay capital of France. I thank Heaven my travelling in the 'far East' is at an end. One is badly accommodated there in railroads and steamers. However, take it for all in all, I have every reason to be satisfied with the voyage, for there is no kind of information but must be purchased with some painstaking, and one day I shall fully enjoy all this in calm retrospection from the bosom of the unpruned woods of my own country. Yes, the sight of the city of Moscow alone would amply repay one for all risks and fatigues at sea. Never shall I forget my sensations when, from the great tower of the Kremlin, one bright, sunny day, I looked down upon that beautiful city. The numberless domes, beaming with azure and with gold, the checkered roofs, the terraces, the garden slopes, the mingling of all the styles and systems of architectural construction, now massive and heavy, now brilliant and light, and everywhere fresh and original, enchanted me. I am free to confess Russia astonished me. I have sailed down the mighty Mississippi,—I have been in the dark and silent bosom of our own forest homes,—I have been under the eye of Mont Blanc and Olympus,—I grew familiar with Rome and with London,—without experiencing the same degree of wonder which fastened upon me in Russia. I thought there to have encountered with hordes of semi-barbarians, yet I found a people raised, as it were, at once from a state of nature to our level of civilization. Nor have they apparently, in their rapid onward course, neglected the means to render their progress sure. And then, what an army,—a million of men! and the best forms of men,—the best disciplined, and able to endure the 'labored battle sweat' by their constant activity, the rigor of their climate, and their ignorance of all pleasures which serve to effeminate. The navy, too, though in an imperfect state compared with the army (in sailors, not ships), will doubtless soon hold a distinguished rank. Only think of such a power, increasing every day,—stretching out wider and wider, and all confessing one duty,—obedience to the will of the absolute sovereign!"