LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 275.-25 AUGUST, 1849. From the Quarterly Review. A Second Visit to the United States, in the Years 1845-6. By SIR CHARLES LYELL. 2 vols. 1849. [This is reprinted by Messrs. Harper, New York.] elementary acquaintance with this new philosophy. If on the other grave questions with which Sir Charles Lyell, in the strong curiosity of an active and ardent mind, delights to grapple, his judgments do not always obtain our assent, they THIS is very pleasant and at the same time very command our respect for their honesty, calmness, instructive reading. Sir Charles Lyell ranges, and moderation. If from the natural bias of his with great ease, liveliness, and rapidity, over an mind, predisposed and kindled by the wonderful infinite variety of subjects, religious, scientific, revelations of his own science to the utmost specpolitical, social-from the most profound inqui- ulative freedom and boldness, from gratitude for ries into the structure of the immense continent the more than generous hospitality which he everyof North America, and the institutions, the re- where met with, from the honor paid to his phisources, the destiny of the mighty nation which is losophical pursuits, the universal acceptance which spreading over it with such unexampled activity, he encountered in all parts of the land, he is indown to the lightest touches of Transatlantic char-clined to take a favorable view of American instiacter and manners. Now we are discussing the tutions and American life-to look forward with grooves and indentations which the icebergs have sanguine hope to the future of this great unpreceleft, as they grated over the rocks, when great part of Canada and the United States formed the bottom of an unfathomed ocean; we are taking measure of the enormous coal-fields, as large as most European kingdoms, which promise to be the wealth and strength of this great federation; or we are calculating the thousands of years before man became an inhabitant of our planet, when the Mississippi began to accumulate its Delta. We are now amusing ourselves among the every-day topics of American steamboats and railroads, with incidental anecdotes of the language, habits, modes of feeling in the various races and classes or conditions of American citizens; we may almost see the growth of cities springing into existence, we trust under happier auspices, as in a more genial clime, but hardly less rapidly, than that which Milton describes as 66 rising like an exhalation." We are discussing the exhausted Oregon question, the inexhaustible slavery question; even to the Millerites, a set of fanatic impostors and dupes, who sat up in their winding-sheets, or in more be-ization, and religion. coming white robes, awaiting, on the night of Oc- We write with fear and trembling when, amid tober 23, 1844, the dissolution of this world and this universal breaking up of the fountains of huall its geology. Sir Charles Lyell's present vol- man affairs, we dwell on the stability of any poumes will command the interest of the ordinary litical institutions. The Almighty might seem to reader in a much higher degree than his former have written on the crystal arch of the all-seen valuable Tour, which we take some shame to our-heavens, or rather on the crumbling walls of earthselves for not having reviewed in this journal.* ly palaces, for all mankind to read, the simple Not only do the author's peculiar pursuits occupy in proportion much less space, but the scientific part, without being condescendingly popular, from his perfect mastery of his topics and the lively perspicuity of his style, has the rare merit of making the most abstruse discussions intelligible, we cannot but think even attractive, if not to the absolutely uninitiate, to those who have but slight dented experiment in political society; there is, nevertheless, no blind flattery, no courteous reticence of that which is socially dangerous or disagreeable, if not worse, in the result of those institutions or in the prevailing character of that life. The work may at once enlighten and render us more just and fair on our side of the Atlantic; on the other side, by the strong predominance of good will, by the total absence of acrimony, though now and then there is a touch of sly, perhaps involuntary satire, (in some of the quiet anecdotes there is a singular force and poignancy,) it may afford matter for serious reflection to the thoughtful and dispassionate, and force or win some to sober thought who are in danger of surrendering themselves to the unsafe guidance of passion, jealousy, or national vanity. We cannot but hail with satisfaction anything which may tend to promote the mutual harmony and good will of the great Anglo-Saxon race, on whom, at present at least, seems to depend the cause of order, civil apostolic axiom, "Be not high-minded, but fear." It is in no spirit of boasting, therefore, but in humble gratitude to the Supreme Disposer of all things, that we refuse to close our eyes upon this inevitable fact. So far as the world as yet has shown, partly, perhaps, from some innate national idiosyncrasy, but far more from its slow and gradual training, its widely ramified and universal scheme of self-government, the growth of its laws and polity out of its character, the strengthening of its character in congeniality and in attachment to its guay, which rise one day to power and have disappeared the next-the great system of education established in Massachusetts, where the whole community cheerfully submits to a very heavy taxation to secure the intellectual and religious advancement of every order, even the lowest of the citizens, with the anarchy of Peru and Mexico, where, to judge from some recent travellers, (Mr. Buxton in Mexico, or Dr. Von Tchudi in Peru,) the land would hardly lose in peacefulness, or in intelligence and cultivation, if it were re laws and polity-the Anglo-Saxon race alone the lawless armed bands in Monte Video or Paraseems gifted with the power of building up for duration free institutions in the two majestic forms of an ancient constitutional monarchy and of a new federal republic. To each its station has manifestly been appointed by irrepealable laws, and by the force of uncontrollable circumstances. England, in the nature of things, could no more have become-could no more become a flourishing republic, than America could have started as a dignified monarchy. England could no more, with safety, without endangering all that is her pride, her glory, and her strength, even her existence-sumed by the Indian tribes. We might with deep without hazarding her wealth, her culture, her and reverential sorrow acknowledge the truth of place among the nations-break with the Past, Bishop Berkeley's famous prophecy as to the westsweep away her throne, her aristocracy and her ern course of empire and civilization—a prophecy church; dismantle her Windsor, demolish her which we will not believe so long as our throne Alnwicks, and Chatsworths, and Belvoirs, and and our three estates maintain their ancient auBlenheims, and Hatfields; break up her cathe-thority. drals into congregational churches-than America, Enough, perhaps too much of this more eswhen the inevitable day of her independence was pecially since, while we attend our accomplished come, could have vested her presidency in an traveller in his wanderings over almost the whole hereditary line of sovereigns, or attempted to cre- continent of North America, we shall be perpetuate an aristocracy without descent, wealth, tradi- ally reminded at once of those points of kindred tionary names, or those great professional fortunes and sympathy which arise out of our common deand distinctions, or fortunes and distinctions from scent of the contrasts and differences which spring public services, which are the popular element from the different forms taken by institutions priconstantly renewing our aristocracy. This sub-marily of the same origin, but developed under ject" this great much-injured name"-the aris- different auspices-when we shall behold the tocracy of England, with its influence, we have strange, striking and amusing juxta-position of long wished to see treated with the fulness, the freedom, the philosophic impartiality of M. de Tocqueville's celebrated work on the Democracy of America; but we confess that among the most profound as among the most empiric or ignorant continental writers, including among the former M. de Tocqueville himself-even among the most enlightened Americans—there seems SO complete an incapacity of comprehending its real nature and bearings, that we almost despair of the fufilment of our earnest desire. Yet, so long as such a work is wanting a work developing and illustrating worthily the profound and real meaning of a phrase which with most writers conveys but a vulgar and utterly erroneous reproach-we take the freedom to say that no political writer can judge, with the least justice, the absolute necessity of our present institutions to our political and social well being; nay, the fact, that while the slow, and gradual, and inevitable expansion of those institutions in their own spirit and in their own principles is their one safeguard, a revolution which should shatter them to the earth would, in Europe at least, throw back for ages the civilization, the order, the social happiness of mankind. We might then seek in far western realms old English institutions under totally different circumstances, growing out into the laws and usages of orderly and of happy republics; we might find our laws, our language, our letters renewing their youth under new social forms. As we may now, we might perhaps for centuries contrast North America with South America-the grave legislative assemblies of New York or Pennsylvania with the European life of Boston or New-York, with the savage squattings in the far West; the inflexible law, which the sovereign people, even while we write, are vindicating against a furious mob by the right royal argument of files of soldiers and discharges of musket-balls-to the law of Judge Lynch, which the Borderers assured Sir Charles he would duly respect as his best, his necessary protection, if he were to settle among themselves. This consummation, indeed, they seemed to consider the necessary consequence, as it could be the sole object, of travelling so far westward. Sir C. Lyell left England as far back as Sept. 4, 1845, in one of those magnificent steam-ships which have, as it were, bridged the Atlantic; and have brought Halifax, and even Boston, almost as much within the reach of London as Dublin was in the earlier part of this century. We have heard a retired home secretary of the old school say, that in his active days, between the transmission of a despatch and an answer received from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, owing to adverse winds on both sides of the channel, several weeks had been known to elapse. The average passage to Boston is now fourteen days. Here is something still more startling : In September, 1848, one of my London friends sent a message by telegraph, to Liverpool, which reached Boston by mail-steamer via Halifax in twelve days, and was sent on immediately by electric telegraph to New Orleans in one day, the answer returning to Boston the day after. Three days were then lost in waiting for the steam-packet, which conveyed the message back to England in twelve days, so that the reply reached London on the twenty-ninth day from the sending of the question the whole distance being more than 10,000 miles, which had been traversed at an average rate exceeding 350 miles a day.—Vol. i., p. 244. Another singular contrast suggests itself to Sir Charles his noble vessel, the Britannia, was of 1200 tons burthen; the first discoverers of America committed themselves to the unknown ocean in barks, one not above 15; Frobisher in two vessels of 20 or 25 tons; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in one of 10 tons only. Sir Charles had the great good fortune-a good fortune which can only be duly appreciated by those who know how important a part the glacier theory fills in modern geologyto behold, and at safe distance, one of those gigantic icebergs which warp slowly down the Atlantic ; he could judge, to a certain extent, by ocular demonstration, how far those mighty masses, "voyaging in the greatness of their strength," might achieve all the wonders now assigned to them-the transport of enormous boulders, the furrowing of the hardest rocks, the transplantation of the seeds of Arctic or Antartic vegetation. On his return home he had the advantage of a nearer view, and detected a huge iceberg, the base of which towards the steamer covered 600 feet, actually conveying two pieces of rock, not indeed of any very great dimensions, to be deposited somewhere at the bottom of the sea, a long way to the south. Yet, after all, modern philosophers are prudent and unenthusiastic compared to those of old. He who Insiluit, ardentem frigidus Ætnam is said to have been urged to his awful leap, either by the desire of knowing more, or despair at his knowing nothing, of the causes of volcanic action. We do not read of Sir Charles Lyell, nor do we hear of any other more self-devoted geologist, desiring to be left, as some melancholy bears sometimes are, on one of these majestically-moving and tardily-melting islands, as on an exploring voyage to test the powers and follow out the slow workings of these great geological agents. Sir Charles was no stranger in Boston-though Boston, from its great improvement in handsome buildings during but three years, was in some degree new to him. Before his first journey to the United States, an invitation to read a course of lectures in that city had happily fallen in with his own desire to explore the geology of North America. One of those munificent donations for the promotion of intellectual culture, to their honor now becoming of frequent occurrence-particularly in the northern States-had excited the laudable ambition of the conductors of the "Lowell Institute," to obtain aid from some of the most distinguished philosophers in Europe; and if we may judge from the eager curiosity, as well as from the intelligent behavior, of the audiences which assembled to hear the author of the "Principles of Geology," this munificence is not wasted on an ungrateful soil. "The tickets were given gratu- his vocabulary may not go beyond greywacke, eocene and meiocene, ichthyosauri and plesiosauri. But these are the rare exceptions-the hermits and devotees of an exclusive study. Far more usually men of science are not merely under the strong desire, almost the necessity, of extending their knowledge to kindred branches of natural philosophy; but they are likewise men of keen observation, quickened intelligence, extensive information on all general subjects. It must be of inestimable use to the traveller to be thrown at once under the guidance of such persons; instead of being entirely dependent, at best, on chance letters of introduction, on the casual acquaintance of the steamboat, the railway-carriage, or the table d'hôte (though, of course, much that is amusing and characteristic may be gleaned by the clever and communicative tourist from these sources, and, well weighed and winnowed, may assist in judgments on graver subjects)—or, last and worst of all, on the professional guide or lacqueyde-place. Nor is it only in cities like Boston, in meetings held in that capital of American geologists, that Sir Charles Lyell finds a zealous interest in his own inquiries, as well as society calculated to give him sound views on the state and prospects of the country. It is remarkable that in the most remote and untravelled quarters of the spacious land-on the edge of the wildernesseven within the primeval forest, where men have just hewn themselves out room for a few dwellings-he encounters persons familiar with his own works, who are delighted to accompany him on his expeditions, and to make an honorable exchange of their own local observations for the more profound and comprehensive theories, the larger and universal knowledge, of a great European master of the science. Of course now and then he will fall in with admirers of his science rather solicit- and national peculiarities are equally striking; ous to turn it to practical than to philosophical and give at once the interest of that which is naadvantage-men who would not be sorry to have tive and familiar, and the freshness of a strange the name of the famous geologist as at least en- and untrodden land. "It is an agreeable novelty couraging the hope of finding coal or valuable min- to a naturalist to combine the speed of a railway erals on certain lands, the value of which would and the luxury of good inns with the sight of the rise thereby in the market with the rapidity once native forest; the advantages of civilization with possessed by railway shares. A geological Dous- the beauty of unreclaimed nature-no hedges, few terswivel would find plenty of victims-or Face ploughed fields, the wild plants, trees, birds, and would be content to agree with Subtle for a full animals undisturbed." This is a slight and casual share in the vast profits of such "smart" transac-illustration of our travelling in a Transatlantic Engtions. We have heard of advances of this kind, land. But the affinity and the difference extend only prevented from becoming more explicit, only crushed in the bud, by certain unmistakable signs of impracticability, of an unapproachable dignity of honor and honesty, which even awed such men. But-besides and beyond the facilities thus afforded to Sir C. Lyell for his more complete geological survey of the land-our knowledge of the intimate footing on which he stood with the intellectual aristocracy of the United States, his opportunities, of which he seems constantly to have availed himself, of gathering information from those most trustworthy authorities, gives far greater weight to his statements on these more general subjects. We are hearing, through him, educated and accomplished Americans speaking of themselves and of their own country; while at the same time the pursuits of the geologist, leading him almost over the whole vast area of the United States, to its wildest and most untravelled regions, are constantly setting him down in the strangest quarters, bringing him into contact with every gradation of wild as well as of civilized life. He is among abolitionists and slave-holders-people of color, and of every shade and hue of color; he is lodging in a splendid hotel, or in a log-hut; travelling smoothly in well-appointed railroad carriages, in splendid floating hotels on the great rivers, or jolting over corduroy roads in cars or in stage-coaches, which might seem to be making their own road as they proceed; on Sundays he is listening to Dr. Channing-to Dr. Hawkes, or some other of our cloquent Episcopalian divines-or to a black Baptist preacher, himself the only white man in a large congregation. much further. England is circumscribed within two comparatively small islands-the United States stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of Mexico. England, with colonies and dependencies almost as vast as America itself, but distant, scattered over remote regions, in every continent-America, swallowing up, as if already not spacious enough, bordering territories, but those territories only divided by mountain ranges or uncultivated provinces; England, therefore, with an excessive population pent within her narrow pale, is finding a vent only at great cost and with great difficulty, and is ever threatened by explosion from its accumulation in crowded quarters-America is spreading freely, and year after year adding almost new states to her Union; making highways of rivers which but a short time before were rarely broken by the canoe of the Indian, but are now daily and nightly foaming up before the prow and the paddles of the huge steamboat; exemplifying Cooper's famous sentence, quoted by Sir Charles Lyell, that Heaven itself would have no charm for the backwoodsman if he heard of any place further west. England proper has long completely amalgamated her earlier races the Briton, the Saxon, the Dane, and the Norman for centuries have been merged undistinguishably into the Englishman; we may say nearly the same as to Scotland; yet England has her Celtic population in Ireland-either from her impolitic and haughty exclusiveness, or the stubborn aversion on the other part, or what may almost seem a natural and inextinguishable oppugnancy, a mutual repulsion-still lying on the outside of her We return to our traveller at Boston-admon- higher civilization, a separate, unmingling nation. ishing the reader that we are about to dwell far America has the not less dangerous black races, more on these general topics than on the author's apparently repelled by a more indelible aversion, scientific inquiries. To geologists his work will in a state of actual slavery-of which we wish not want our commendation; his name, and if that we could foresee some safe and speedy termore than his name were wanting, his former mination. England from her remote youth has volumes, his masterly account of Niagara, his de- slowly and gradually built up her history, her scription of the organic remains discovered in laws, her constitution, her cities, her wealth, her various parts of the continent, as well as his other arts, her letters, her commerce, her conquests :papers on the geology of the New World, will at America, in some respects born old, is starting at once command their attention. Our first impres- the point where most nations terminate, with all sion, not only at Boston, but throughout the ex- the elements of European civilization, to be emtensive journeys on which we accompany Sir ployed, quickened it may be and sharpened by her Charles Lyell, is that we are travelling in a own busy acuteness and restless activity; with a Transatlantic England; yet we can never forget complete literature, in which it might almost seem that it is Transatlantic; the points of resemblance impossible to find place for any great genius, should and dissimilitude of kindred, and of departure such arise among our American sons, in its highest from the original stock-of national sympathies branches—at least of poetry and inventive fiction; besides Sir Charles Lyell's volumes, a report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and an eloquent speech of the late most highly respected minister of the United States in England, Mr. Everett, for a short time the President of Harvard College, near Boston. In the main facts they fully agree : with English books in every cottage with the eral, and by no means light taxation for the pur English Bible the book of her religion. She is re-poses of public education. We have before us, ceiving with every packet all the products of our mind—and we must not deny making some valuable returns in the writings of her Prescotts, Irvings, Bancrofts, Channings; America, in short, is an England almost without a past-a past at the furthest but of a few centuries; if calculated from her Declaration of Independence, a past not of one century-though assuredly, if it had but given birth to Washington, no inglorious past. But she has, it must seem, a future (and this is the conclusion from Sir Charles Lyell's book) which, if there be any calculation to be formed on all the elements of power, wealth, greatness, happiness-if we have not fondly esteemed more highly than we ought the precious inheritance of our old English institutions, and the peculiar social development which may counteract and correct, at least for a long period, the dangers inseparable from republican polities--a future which might almost tempt us to the sanguine presumption of supposing, in favor of this Transatlantic England, an exception to the great mysterious law of Providence Prudens futuri temporis exitum Boston itself forces upon us, in more than one point, the analogy and the divergence of England and America. America is an England without a capital, without a London. A London she could not have had without a king, without an aristocracy, without a strong central government, without a central legislature, central courts of law, without a court, without an hereditary peerage, we may well add, without a St. Paul's and a Westminster Abbey. It is singular, but it is both significant and intelligible, that Washington is the only city in America which has not grown with rapidity: The number of public or free schools in Massachusetts in 1845-6, for a population of 800,000 souls, was about 500, which would allow a teacher for each twenty-five or thirty children, as many as they can well attend to. The sum raised by direct taxation for the wages and board of the tutors and for fuel for the schools is upwards of 600,000 dollars, for 1848 at 754,000 dollars,] but this is exclusive or 120,000 guineas, [Mr. Everett states the ainount of all expenditure for school-houses, libraries, and apparatus, for which other funds are appropriated, and every year a great number of newer and finer buildings are erected. Upon the whole, about one million of dollars is spent in teaching a population of 800,000 souls, independently of the sums expended on private instruction, which in the city of Boston is supposed to be equal to the money levied by taxes for the free schools, or 260,000 dollars (55,0007.) If we were to impose a school-rate in Great Britain, bearing the same proportion to our population of twenty-eight millions, the tax would amount annually to more than seven millions sterling, and would then be far less effective, owing to the higher cost of living and the comparative average standard of income among professional and official men.Vol. i., p. 190. The State of New York, it appears, is not behind Massachusetts; the population in 1845 was 2,604,495. The schools 11,000. The children in the schools for the whole or part of the year 807,200, being almost one third; and of these only 31,240 in private schools. The expenditure, chiefly raised In spite of some new public edifices built in aby rates, 1,191,697 dollars, equal to about 250,000 handsome style of Greek architecture, we are struck pounds. with the small progress made in three years since Sir Charles Lyell discusses at some length the we were last here. The vacant spaces are not fill-causes which have led to this universal acquiesing up with private houses, so that the would-be cence in the duty and even the necessity of prometropolis wears still the air of some projected viding, at so large a cost to the whole State, this scheme which has failed.-Vol. i., p. 265. system of popular education: The cities of America answer to our great modern commercial towns, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham. Many of these English towns have boasted and may still boast of scientific and literary circles, to which have belonged men not equal perhaps to those of whom Boston is now proud, but still notwithstanding the natural flow of the life-blood to the heart, the gravitation which draws all the more eminent talent to London-of deserved name and estimation. Yet Boston, New York, perhaps Philadelphia and Baltimore, (New Orleans seems to stand by itself, with some faint kindred with Paris,) are, though not the capitals of the Federation, the capitals of States. Boston in one respect, as likewise the province of Massachusetts, and, indeed, the New England States in general, may glory in one distinction, of which we cannot boast, the cheerful, unreluctant submission to gen During my first visit to the New England States, I was greatly at a loss to comprehend by what means so large a population had been brought to unite great earnestness of religious feeling with so much real toleration. In seeking for the cause, we must go further back than the common schools, or at least the present improved state of popular How could such schools be maintained by the State, education; for we are still met with the questionor by compulsory assessments, on so liberal a footing, in spite of the fanaticism and sectarian prejudices of the vulgar? When we call to mind the enthusiasm of the early Puritans-how these religionists, who did not hesitate to condemn several citizens to be publicly whipped for denying that the Jewish code was obligatory on Christians as a rule of life, and who were fully persuaded that they alone were the chosen people of God, should bequeath to their immediate posterity such a philosophical spirit as must precede the organization by the whole people |