University of Virginia Library

New Travel.

Again I am upon the sea; but not alone. She
whom I first met upon the wastes of ocean, is there
beside me. Again I steady her tottering step upon
the deck; once it was a drifting, careless pleasure;
now the pleasure is holy.

Once the fear I felt, as the storms gathered, and
night came, and the ship tossed madly, and great
waves gathering swift, and high, came down like slipping
mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering
vessel, was a selfish fear. But it is so no
longer. Indeed I hardly know fear; for how can the
tempests harm her? Is she not too good to suffer
any of the wrath of heaven?

And in nights of calm,—holy nights, we lean over
the ship's side, looking down, as once before, into the
dark depths, and murmur again snatches of ocean
song, and talk of those we love; and we peer among the

stars, which seem neighborly, and as if they were the
homes of friends. And as the great ocean-swells
come rocking under us, and carry us up and down
along the valleys and the hills of water, they seem
like deep pulsations of the great heart of nature,
heaving us forward toward the goal of life, and to the
gates of heaven!

We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon,
and sweep toward us, like false friends, with the
sun glittering on their sails; and then shift their
course, and bear away—with their bright sails, turned
to spots of shadow. We watch the long winged
birds skimming the waves hour after hour,—like
pleasant thoughts—now dashing before our bows, and
then sweeping behind, until they are lost in the hollows
of the water.

Again life lies open, as it did once before; but the
regrets, disappointments, and fruitless resolves do
not come to trouble me now. It is the future,
which has become as level as the sea; and she is beside
me,—the sharer in that future—to look out with
me, upon the joyous sparkle of water, and to count
with me, the dazzling ripples, that lie between us and
the shore. A thousand pleasant plans come up, and
are abandoned, like the waves we leave behind us;
a thousand other joyous plans, dawn upon our fancy,
like the waves that glitter before us. We talk of

Laurence and his bride, whom we are to meet; we
talk of her mother, who is even now watching the
winds that waft her child over the ocean; we talk of
the kindly old man, her god-father, who gave her a
father's blessing; we talk low, and in the twilight
hours, of Isabel—who sleeps.

At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night,
over the western waters which we have passed, we
see before us, the low blue line of the shores of Cornwall
and Devon. In the night, shadowy ships glide
past us with gleaming lanterns; and in the morning,
we see the yellow cliffs of the Isle of Wight; and
standing out from the land, is the dingy sail of our
pilot. London with its fog, roar, and crowds, has
not the same charms that it once had; that roar and
crowd is good to make a man forget his griefs—forget
himself, and stupify him with amazement. We are
in no need of such forgetfulness.

We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that
glides by Hampton Court; and we toil up Richmond
Hill, to look together upon that scene of water, and
meadow,—of leafy copses, and glistening villas, of
brown cottages, and clustered hamlets,—of solitary
oaks, and loitering herds—all spread like a veil of
beauty, upon the bosom of the Thames. But we
cannot linger here, nor even under the glorious old
boles of Windsor Forest; but we hurry on to that

sweet county of Devon, made green with its white
skeins of water.

Again we loiter under the oaks, where we have
loitered before; and the sleek deer gaze on us with
their liquid eyes, as they gazed before. The squirrels
sport among the boughs as fearless as ever; and some
wandering puss pricks her long ears at our steps,
and bounds off along the hedge rows to her burrow.
Again I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap, with the
white plume; and I meet her as I met her before,
under the princely trees that skirt the northern avenue.
I recal the evening when I sauntered out at the
park gates, and gained a blessing from the porter's
wife, and dreamed that strange dream;—now, the
dream seems more real, than my life.—“God bless
you!”—said the woman again.

—“Aye, old lady, God has blessed me!”—and I
fling her a guinea, not as a gift, but as a debt.

The bland farmer lives yet; he scarce knows me,
until I tell him of my bout around his oat-field, at the
tail of his long stilted plough. I find the old pew in
the parish church. Other holly sprigs are hung
now; and I do not doze, for Carry is beside me.
The curate drawls the service; but it is pleasant to
listen; and I make the responses with an emphasis,
that tells more I fear, for my joy, than for my religion.
The old groom at the mansion in the Park,

has not forgotten the hard-riding of other days; and
tells long stories (to which I love to listen) of the old
visit of mistress Carry, when she followed the hounds
with the best of the English lasses.

—“Yer honor may well be proud; for not a prettier
face, or a kinder heart has been in Devon, since
mistress Carry left us!”

But pleasant as are the old woods, full of memories,
and pleasant as are the twilight evenings upon the
terrace—we must pass over to the mountains of
Switzerland. There we are to meet Laurence.

Carry has never seen the magnificence of the Juras;
and as we journey over the hills between Dole, and
the border line, looking upon the rolling heights
shrouded with pine trees, and down thousands of feet,
at the very road side, upon the cottage roofs, and
emerald valleys, where the dun herds are feeding
quietly, she is lost in admiration. At length we
come to that point above the little town of Gex, from
which you see spread out before you, the meadows
that skirt Geneva, the placid surface of Lake Leman
and the rough, shaggy mountains of Savoy;—and far
behind them, breaking the horizon with snowy cap,
and with dark pinnacles—Mont Blanc, and the
Needles of Chamouni.

I point out to her in the valley below, the little
town of Ferney, where stands the deserted chateau of

Voltaire; and beyond, upon the shores of the lake,
the old home of de Stael; and across, with its white
walls reflected upon the bosom of the water, the house
where Byron wrote the prisoner of Chillon. Among
the grouping roofs of Geneva, we trace the dark
cathedral, and the tall hotels shining on the edge of
the lake. And I tell of the time, when I tramped
down through yonder valley, with my future all
visionary, and broken, and drank the splendor of the
scene, only as a quick relief to the monotony of my
solitary life.

—“And now, Carry, with your hand locked in
mine, and your heart mine—yonder lake sleeping in
the sun, and the snowy mountains with their rosy hue,
seem like the smile of nature, bidding us be glad!”

Laurence is at Geneva; he welcomes Carry, as he
would welcome a sister. He is a noble fellow, and
tells me much of his sweet Italian wife; and presents
me to the smiling, blushing—Enrica! She has
learned English now; she has found, she says, a
better teacher, than ever I was. Yet she welcomes
me warmly, as a sister might; and we talk of those
old evenings by the blazing fire, and of the one-eyed
Maestro, as children long separated, might talk of
their school tasks, and of their teachers. She cannot
tell me enough of her praises of Laurence, and of his

noble heart.—“You were good,”—she says,—“but
Laurence is better.”

Carry admires her soft brown hair, and her deep
liquid eye, and wonders how I could ever have left
Rome?

—Do you indeed wonder—Carry?

And together we go down into Savoy, to that
marvellous valley, which lies under the shoulder of
Mont Blanc; and we wandered over the Mer de Glace,
and picked Alpine roses from the edge of the frowning
glacier. We toil at night-fall up to the monastery
of the Great St. Bernard, where the new forming
ice crackles in the narrow foot-way, and the cold
moon glistens over wastes of snow, and upon the
windows of the dark Hospice. Again, we are among
the granite heights, whose ledges are filled with ice,
upon the Grimsel. The pond is dark and cold; the
paths are slippery;—the great glacier of the Aar
sends down icy breezes, and the echoes ring from rock
to rock, as if the ice-God answered. And yet we
neither suffer, nor fear.

In the sweet valley of Meyringen, we part from
Laurence: he goes northward, by Grindelwald, and
Thun,—thence to journey westward, and to make for
the Roman girl, a home beyond the ocean. Enrica
bids me go on to Rome: she knows that Carry will
love its soft warm air, its ruins, its pictures and

temples, better than these cold valleys of Switzerland.
And she gives me kind messages for her mother, and
for Cesare; and should we be in Rome at the Easter
season, she bids us remember her, when we listen to
the Miserere, and when we see the great Chiesa on
fire, and when we saunter upon the Pincian hill;—
and remember, that it is her home.

We follow them with our eyes, as they go up the
steep height over which falls the white foam of the
clattering Reichenbach; and they wave their hands
toward us, and disappear upon the little plateau which
stretches toward the crystal Rosenlaui, and the tall,
still, Engel-Horner.

May the mountain angels guard them!

As we journey on toward that wonderful pass of
Splugen, I recal by the way, upon the heights, and in
the valleys, the spots where I lingered years before;—
here, I plucked a flower, there, I drank from that
cold, yellow glacier water; and here, upon some rock
overlooking a stretch of broken mountains, hoary with
their eternal frosts, I sat musing upon that very Future,
which is with me now. But never, even when the
ice-genii were most prodigal of their fancies to the
wanderer, did I look for more joy, or a better angel.

Afterward, when all our trembling upon the Alpine
paths has gone by, we are rolling along under the
chestnuts and lindens that skirt the banks of Como.

We recal that sweet story of Manzoni, and I point
out, as well as I may, the loitering place of the bravi,
and the track of poor Don Abbondio. We follow in
the path of the discomfited Renzi, to where the
dainty spire, and pinnacles of the Duomo of Milan,
glisten against the violet sky.

Carry longs to see Venice; its water-streets, and
palaces have long floated in her visions. In the
bustling activity of our own country, and in the quiet
fields of England, that strange, half-deserted capital,
lying in the Adriatic, has taken the strongest hold
upon her fancy.

So we leave Padua, and Verona behind us, and find
ourselves upon a soft spring noon, upon the end of
the iron road which stretches across the lagoon,
toward Venice. With the hissing of steam in the
ear, it is hard to think of the wonderful city, we are
approaching. But as we escape from the carriage,
and set our feet down into one of those strange,
hearse-like, ancient boats, with its sharp iron prow,
and listen to the melodious rolling tongue of the
Venetian gondolier:—as we see rising over the watery
plain before us, all glittering in the sun, tall, square
towers with pyramidal tops, and clustered domes, and
minarets; and sparkling roofs lifting from marble
walls—all so like the old paintings;—and as we glide
nearer and nearer to the floating wonder, under the

silent working oar, of our now silent gondolier;—
as we ride up swiftly under the deep, broad shadows
of palaces, and see plainly the play of the sea-water
in the crevices of the masonry,—and turn into
narrow rivers shaded darkly by overhanging walls,
hearing no sound, but of voices, or the swaying of the
water against the houses,—we feel the presence of the
place. And the mystic fingers of the Past, grappling
our spirits, lead them away—willing and rejoicing
captives, through the long vista of the ages, that are
gone.

Carry is in a trance;—rapt by the witchery of the
scene, into dream. This is her Venice; nor have all
the visions that played upon her fancy, been equal to
the enchanting presence of this hour of approach.

Afterward, it becomes a living thing,—stealing
upon the affections, and upon the imagination by a
thousand coy advances. We wander under the warm
Italian sunlight to the steps from which rolled the
white head of poor Marino Faliero. The gentle
Carry can now thrust her ungloved hand, into the
terrible Lion's mouth. We enter the salon of the
fearful Ten; and peep through the half opened door,
into the cabinet of the more fearful Three. We go
through the deep dungeons of Carmagnola and of
Carrara; and we instruct the willing gondolier to
push his dark boat under the Bridge of Sighs; and

with Rogers' poem in our hand, glide up to the prison
door, and read of—

I sail, listening to nothing but the dip of the gondolier's
oar, or to her gentle words, fast under the
palace door, which closed that fearful morning, on
the guilt and shame of Bianca Capello. Or, with
souls lit up by the scene, into a buoyancy that can
scarce distinguish between what is real, and what is
merely written,—we chase the anxious step of the
forsaken Corinna; or seek among the veteran palaces
the casement of the old Brabantio,—the chamber of
Desdemona,—the house of Jessica, and trace among
the strange Jew money-changers, who yet haunt the
Rialto, the likeness of the bearded Shylock. We
wander into stately churches, brushing over grass, or
tell-tale flowers that grow in the court, and find them
damp and cheerless; the incense rises murkily, and
rests in a thick cloud over the altars, and over the
paintings; the music, if so be that the organ notes
are swelling under the roof, is mournfully plaintive.

Of an afternoon we sail over to the Lido, to gladden
our eyes with a sight of land and green things,
and we pass none upon the way, save silent oarsmen,
with barges piled high with the produce of their gardens,—pushing
their way down toward the floating
city. And upon the narrow island, we find Jewish
graves, half covered by drifted sand; and from
among them, watch the sunset glimmering over a
desolate level of water. As we glide back, lights
lift over the Lagoon, and double along the Guideca,
and the Grand Canal. The little neighbor isles will
have their company of lights dancing in the water;
and from among them, will rise up against the mellow
evening sky of Italy, gaunt, unlighted houses.

After the nightfall, which brings no harmful dew
with it, I stroll, with her hand within my arm,—as
once upon the sea, and in the English Park, and in
the home-land—over that great square which lies before
the palace of St. Marks. The white moon is
riding in the middle heaven, like a globe of silver;
the gondoliers stride over the echoing stones; and
their long black shadows, stretching over the pavement,
or shaking upon the moving water, seem like
great funereal plumes, waving over the bier of Venice.

Carrying thence whole treasures of thought and
fancy, to feed upon in the after years, we wander to
Rome.

I find the old one-eyed maestro, and am met with
cordial welcome by the mother of the pretty Enrica.
The Count has gone to the marches of Ancona.
Lame Pietro still shuffles around the boards at the
Lepré, and the flower sellers at the corner, bind me
a more brilliant bouquet than ever, for a new beauty
at Rome. As we ramble under the broken arches of
the great aqueduct stretching toward Frascati, I tell
Carry, the story of my trip in the Appenines; and
we search for the pretty Carlotta. But she is married,
they tell us, to a Neapolitan guardsman. In
the spring twilight, we wander upon those heights
which lie between Frascati and Albano; and looking
westward, see that glorious view of the Campagna,
which can never be forgotten. But beyond the Campagna,
and beyond the huge hulk of St. Peter's, heaving
into the sky from the middle waste, we see, or
fancy we see, a glimpse of the sea which stretches out
and on to the land we love, better than Rome. And
in fancy, we build up that home, which shall belong
to us, on the return;—a home, that has slumbered
long in the future; and which, now that the future
has come, lies fairly before me.