Specimen Days — Jaunting To Canada --- Death of Thomas Carlyle

JAUNTING TO CANADA

To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and Green streets, at 8 o'clock P. M.

, June 3, on a first-class sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley (North Pennsylvania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly, and so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, where we arrived at 8, morning, and had a bounteous breakfast.

I must say I never put in such a good night on any railroad track--smooth, firm, the minimum of jolting, and all the swiftness compatible with safety.

So without change to Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, where we arrived early afternoon; then on to London, Ontario, Canada, in four more--less than twenty-two hours altogether.

I am domiciled at the hospitable house of my friends Dr. and Mrs. Bucke, in the ample and charming garden and lawns of the asylum.

SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE

_June 6_.

--Went over to the religious services (Episcopal) main Insane asylum, held in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story.

Plain boards, whitewash, plenty of cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet all scrupulously clean and sweet.

Some three hundred persons present, mostly patients.

Everything, the prayers, a short sermon, the firm, orotund voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond any portraying, or suggesting, _that audience_, deeply impress'd me.

I was furnish'd with an arm-chair near the pulpit, and sat facing the motley, yet perfectly well-behaved and orderly congregation.

The quaint dresses and bonnets of some of the women, several very old and gray, here and there like the heads in old pictures.

O the looks that came from those faces!

There were two or three I shall probably never forget.

Nothing at all markedly repulsive or hideous--strange enough I did not see one such.

Our common humanity, mine and yours, everywhere: "The same old blood--the same red, running blood;"

yet behind most, an inferr'd arriere of such storms, such wrecks, such mysteries, fires, love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems, crosses--mirror'd from those crazed faces (yet now temporarily so calm, like still waters,) all the woes and sad happenings of life and death--now from every one the devotional element radiating--was it not, indeed, _the peace of God that passeth all understanding_, strange as it may sound?

I can only say that I took long and searching eyesweeps as I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing unprecedented thoughts, problems unanswerable.

A very fair choir, and melodeon accompaniment.

They sang "Lead, kindly light," after the sermon.

Many join'd in the beautiful hymn, to which the minister read the introductory text, _In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire_.

Then the words: Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on.

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead thou me on.

Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou Should'st lead me on;

I lov'd to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on.

I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

A couple of days after, I went to the "Refractory building," under special charge of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards pretty thoroughly, both the men's and women's. I have since made many other visits of the kind through the asylum, and around among the detach'd cottages.

As far as I could see, this is among the most advanced, perfected, and kindly and rationally carried on, of all its kind in America.

It is a town in itself, with many buildings and a thousand inhabitants.

I learn that Canada, and especially this ample and populous province, Ontario, has the very best and plentiest benevolent institutions in all departments.

REMINISCENCE OF ELIAS HICKS

_June 8_.

--To-day a letter from Mrs. E.

S.

L.

, Detroit, accompanied in a little post-office roll by a rare old engraved head of Elias Hicks, (from a portrait in oil by Henry Inman, painted for J. V. S.

, must have been 60 years or more ago, in New York)--among the rest the following excerpt about E. H.

in the letter: "I have listen'd to his preaching so often when a child, and sat with my mother at social gatherings where he was the centre, and every one so pleas'd and stirr'd by his conversation.

I hear that you contemplate writing or speaking about him, and I wonder'd whether you had a picture of him.

As I am the owner of two, I send you one."

GRAND NATIVE GROWTH

In a few days I go to lake Huron, and may have something to say of that region and people.

From what I already see, I should say the young native population of Canada was growing up, forming a hardy, democratic, intelligent, radically sound, and just as American, good-natured and _individualistic_ race, as the average range of best specimens among us.

As among us, too, I please myself by considering that this element, though it may not be the majority, promises to be the leaven which must eventually leaven the whole lump.

A ZOLLVEREIN BETWEEN THE U.

S.

AND CANADA

Some of the more liberal of the presses here are discussing the question of a zollverein between the United States and Canada.

It is proposed to form a union for commercial purposes--to altogether abolish the frontier tariff line, with its double sets of custom house officials now existing between the two countries, and to agree upon one tariff for both, the proceeds of this tariff to be divided between the two governments on the basis of population.

It is said that a large proportion of the merchants of Canada are in favor of this step, as they believe it would materially add to the business of the country, by removing the restrictions that now exist on trade between Canada and the States.

Those persons who are opposed to the measure believe that it would increase the material welfare or the country, but it would loosen the bonds between Canada and England; and this sentiment overrides the desire for commercial prosperity.

Whether the sentiment can continue to bear the strain put upon it is a question.

It is thought by many that commercial considerations must in the end prevail.

It seems also to be generally agreed that such a zollverein, or common customs union, would bring practically more benefits to the Canadian provinces than to the United States.

(It seems to me a certainty of time, sooner or later, that Canada shall form two or three grand States, equal and independent, with the rest of the American Union.

The St. Lawrence and lakes are not for a frontier line, but a grand interior or mid-channel.

) THE ST.

LAWRENCE LINE

_August 20_.

--Premising that my three or four months in Canada were intended, among the rest, as an exploration of the line of the St. Lawrence, from lake Superior to the sea, (the engineers here insist upon considering it as one stream, over 2000 miles long, including lakes and Niagara and all)--that I have only partially carried out my programme;

but for the seven or eight hundred miles so far fulfill'd, I find that the _Canada question_ is absolutely control'd by this vast water line, with its first-class features and points of trade, humanity, and many more--here I am writing this nearly a thousand miles north of my Philadelphia starting-point (by way of Montreal and Quebec) in the midst of regions that go to a further extreme of grimness, wildness of beauty, and a sort of still and pagan _scaredness_, while yet Christian, inhabitable, and partially fertile, than perhaps any other on earth.

The weather remains perfect; some might call it a little cool, but I wear my old gray overcoat and find it just right.

The days are full of sunbeams and oxygen.

Most of the forenoons and afternoons I am on the forward deck of the steamer.

THE SAVAGE SAGUENAY

Up these black waters, over a hundred miles--always strong, deep, (hundreds of feet, sometimes thousands,) ever with high, rocky hills for banks, green and gray--at times a little like some parts of the Hudson, but much more pronounc'd and defiant.

The hills rise higher--keep their ranks more unbroken.

The river is straighter and of more resolute flow, and its hue, though dark as ink, exquisitely polish'd and sheeny under the August sun.

Different, indeed, this Saguenay from all other rivers--different effects--a bolder, more vehement play of lights and shades.

Of a rare charm of singleness and simplicity.

(Like the organ-chant at midnight from the old Spanish convent, in "Favorita"--one strain only, simple and monotonous and unornamented--but indescribably penetrating and grand and masterful.

) Great place for echoes: while our steamer was tied at the wharf at Tadousac (taj-oo-sac) waiting, the escape-pipe letting off steam, I was sure I heard a band at the hotel up in the rocks--could even make out some of the tunes.

Only when our pipe stopp'd, I knew what caused it.

Then at cape Eternity and Trinity rock, the pilot with his whistle producing similar marvellous results, echoes indescribably weird, as we lay off in the still bay under their shadows.

CAPES ETERNITY AND TRINITY

But the great, haughty, silent capes themselves; I doubt if any crack points, or hills, or historic places of note, or anything of the kind elsewhere in the world, outvies these objects--(I write while I am before them face to face.

) They are very simple, they do not startle--at least they did not me--but they linger in one's memory forever.

They are placed very near each other, side by side, each a mountain rising flush out of the Saguenay.

A good thrower could throw a stone on each in passing--at least it seems so.

Then they are as distinct in form as a perfect physical man or a perfect physical woman.

Cape Eternity is bare, rising, as just said, sheer out of the water, rugged and grim (yet with an indescribable beauty) nearly two thousand feet high.

Trinity rock, even a little higher, also rising flush, top-rounded like a great head with close-cut verdure of hair.

I consider myself well repaid for coming my thousand miles to get the sight and memory of the unrivall'd duo.

They have stirr'd me more profoundly than anything of the kind I have yet seen.

If Europe or Asia had them, we should certainly hear of them in all sorts of sent-back poems, rhapsodies, &c. , a dozen times a year through our papers and magazines.

CHICOUTIMI AND HA-HA BAY

No indeed--life and travel and memory have offer'd and will preserve to me no deeper-cut incidents, panorama, or sights to cheer my soul, than these at Chicoutimi and Ha-ha bay, and my days and nights up and down this fascinating savage river--the rounded mountains, some bare and gray, some dull red, some draped close all over with matted green verdure or vines--the ample, calm, eternal rocks everywhere--the long streaks of motley foam, a milk-white curd on the glistening breast of the stream--the little two-masted schooner, dingy yellow, with patch'd sails, set wing-and-wing, nearing us, coming saucily up the water with a couple of swarthy, black-hair'd men aboard--the strong shades falling on the light gray or yellow outlines of the hills all through the forenoon, as we steam within gunshot of them--while ever the pure and delicate sky spreads over all.

And the splendid sunsets, and the sights of evening--the same old stars, (relatively a little different, I see, so far north) Arcturus and Lyra, and the Eagle, and great Jupiter like a silver globe, and the constellation of the Scorpion.

Then northern lights nearly every night.

THE INHABITANTS--GOOD LIVING

Grim and rocky and black-water'd as the demesne hereabout is, however, you must not think genial humanity, and comfort, and good-living are not to be met.

Before I began this memorandum I made a first-rate breakfast of sea-trout, finishing off with wild raspberries.

I find smiles and courtesy everywhere--physiognomies in general curiously like those in the United States--(I was astonish'd to find the same resemblance all through the province of Quebec.

) In general the inhabitants of this rugged country (Charlevoix, Chicoutimi and Tadousac counties, and lake St. John region) a simple, hardy population, lumbering, trapping furs, boating, fishing, berry-picking and a little farming.

I was watching a group of young boatmen eating their early dinner--nothing but an immense loaf of bread, had apparently been the size of a bushel measure, from which they cut chunks with a jack-knife.

Must be a tremendous winter country this, when the solid frost and ice fully set in.

CEDAR-PLUMS LIKE-NAMES (_Back again in Camden and down in Jersey_) One time I thought of naming this collection "Cedar-Plums Like" (which I still fancy wouldn't have been a bad name nor inappropriate.

) A melange of loafing, looking, hobbling, sitting, traveling--a little thinking thrown in for salt, but very little--not only summer but all seasons--not only days but nights--some literary meditations--books, authors examined, Carlyle, Poe, Emerson tried, (always under my cedar-tree, in the open air, and never in the library)--mostly the scenes everybody sees, but some of my own caprices, meditations, egotism--truly an open air and mainly summer formation--singly, or in clusters--wild and free and somewhat acrid--indeed more like cedar-plums than you might guess at first glance.

But do you know what they are?

(To city man, or some sweet parlor lady, I now talk.

) As you go along roads, or barrens, or across country, anywhere through these States, middle, eastern, western, or southern, you will see, certain seasons of the year, the thick woolly tufts of the cedar mottled with bunches of china-blue berries, about as big as fox-grapes.

But first a special word for the tree itself: everybody knows that the cedar is a healthy, cheap, democratic wood, streak'd red and white--an evergreen--that it is not a _cultivated_ tree--that it keeps away moths--that it grows inland or seaboard, all climates, hot or cold, any soil--in fact rather prefers sand and bleak side spots--content if the plough, the fertilizer and the trimming-axe, will but keep away and let it alone.

After a long rain, when everything looks bright, often have I stopt in my wood-saunters, south or north, or far west, to take in its dusky green, wash'd clean and sweet, and speck'd copiously with its fruit of clear, hardy blue.

The wood of the cedar is of use--but what profit on earth are those sprigs of acrid plums?

A question impossible to answer satisfactorily.

True, some of the herb doctors give them for stomachic affections, but the remedy is as bad as the disease.

Then in my rambles down in Camden county I once found an old crazy woman gathering the clusters with zeal and joy.

She show'd, as I was told afterward, a sort of infatuation for them, and every year placed and kept profuse bunches high and low about her room.

They had a strange charm on her uneasy head, and effected docility and peace.

(She was harmless, and lived near by with her well-off married daughter.

) Whether there is any connection between those bunches, and being out of one's wits, I cannot say, but I myself entertain a weakness for them.

Indeed, I love the cedar, anyhow--its naked ruggedness, its just palpable odor, (so different from the perfumer's best,) its silence, its equable acceptance of winter's cold and summer's heat, of rain or drouth--its shelter to me from those, at times--its associations--(well, I never could explain _why_ I love anybody, or anything.

) The service I now specially owe to the cedar is, while I cast around for a name for my proposed collection, hesitating, puzzled--after rejecting a long, long string, I lift my eyes, and lo!

the very term I want.

At any rate, I go no further--I tire in the search.

I take what some invisible kind spirit has put before me.

Besides, who shall say there is not affinity enough between (at least the bundle of sticks that produced) many of these pieces, or granulations, and those blue berries?

their uselessness growing wild--a certain aroma of Nature I would so like to have in my pages--the thin soil whence they come--their content in being let alone--their stolid and deaf repugnance to answering questions, (this latter the nearest, dearest trait affinity of all.

) Then reader dear, in conclusion, as to the point of the name for the present collection, let us be satisfied to _have_ a name--something to identify and bind it together, to concrete all its vegetable, mineral, personal memoranda, abrupt raids of criticism, crude gossip of philosophy, varied sands and clumps--without bothering ourselves because certain pages do not present themselves to you or me as coming under their own name with entire fitness or amiability.

(It is a profound, vexatious never-explicable matter--this of names.

I have been exercised deeply about it my whole life.

[11]) After all of which the name "Cedar-Plums Like" got its nose put out of joint; but I cannot afford to throw away what I pencill'd down the lane there, under the shelter of my old friend, one warm October noon.

Besides, it wouldn't be civil to the cedar tree.

Note: [11] In the pocket of my receptacle-book I find a list of suggested and rejected names for this volume, or parts of it--such as the following: _As the wild bee hums in May, & August mulleins grow, & Winter snow-flakes fall, & stars in the sky roll round.

_ _Away from Books--away from Art, Now for the Day and Night--the lessons done, Now for the Sun and Stars.

_ _Notes of a Half-Paralytic, As Voices in the Dusk, from Week in and Week out, Speakers far or hid, Embers of Ending Days, Autochthons....

Embryons, Ducks and Drakes, Wing-and-Wing, Flood Tide and Ebb, Notes and Recalles.

Gossip at Early Candle-light, Only Mulleins and Bumble-Bees, Echoes and Escapades, Pond-Babble....

Tête-a-Têtes, Such as I....

Evening Dews, Echoes of a Life in the 19th Notes and Writing a Book, Century in the New World, Far and Near at 63, Flanges of Fifty Years, Drifts and Cumulus, Abandons....

Hurry Notes, Maize-Tassels....

Kindlings, A Life-Mosaic....

Native Moments, Fore and Aft....

Vestibules, Types and Semi-Tones, Scintilla at 60 and after, Oddments....

Sand-Drifts, Sands on the Shores of 64, Again and Again.

_ DEATH OF THOMAS CARLYLE

_Feb.

10, '81_.

--And so the flame of the lamp, after long wasting and flickering, has gone out entirely.

As a representative author, a literary figure, no man else will bequeath to the future more significant hints of our stormy era, its fierce paradoxes, its din, and its struggling parturition periods, than Carlyle.

He belongs to our own branch of the stock too; neither Latin nor Greek, but altogether Gothic.

Rugged, mountainous, volcanic, he was himself more a French revolution than any of his volumes.

In some respects, so far in the Nineteenth century, the best equipt, keenest mind, even from the college point of view, of all Britain; only he had an ailing body.

Dyspepsia is to be traced in every page, and now and then fills the page.

One may include among the lessons of his life--even though that life stretch'd to amazing length--how behind the tally of genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives a sort of casting vote.

Two conflicting agonistic elements seem to have contended in the man, sometimes pulling him different ways like wild horses.

He was a cautious, conservative Scotchman, fully aware what a foetid gas-bag much of modern radicalism is; but then his great heart demanded reform, demanded change--often terribly at odds with his scornful brain.

No author ever put so much wailing and despair into his books, sometimes palpable, oftener latent.

He reminds me of that passage in Young's poems where as death presses closer and closer for his prey, the soul rushes hither and thither, appealing, shrieking, berating, to escape the general doom.

Of short-comings, even positive blur-spots, from an American point of view, he had serious share.

Not for his merely literary merit, (though that was great)--not as "maker of books," but as launching into the self-complacent atmosphere of our days a rasping, questioning, dislocating agitation and shock, is Carlyle's final value.

It is time the English-speaking peoples had some true idea about the verteber of genius, namely power.

As if they must always have it cut and bias'd to the fashion, like a lady's cloak!

What a needed service he performs!

How he shakes our comfortable reading circles with a touch of the old Hebraic anger and prophecy--and indeed it is just the same.

Not Isaiah himself more scornful, more threatening: "The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: And the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley shall be a fading flower."

(The word prophecy is much misused; it seems narrow'd to prediction merely.

That is not the main sense of the Hebrew word translated "prophet;" it means one whose mind bubbles up and pours forth as a fountain, from inner, divine spontaneities revealing God.

Prediction is a very minor part of prophecy.

The great matter is to reveal and outpour the God-like suggestions pressing for birth in the soul.

This is briefly the doctrine of the Friends or Quakers.

) Then the simplicity and amid ostensible frailty the towering strength of this man--a hardy oak knot, you could never wear out--an old farmer dress'd in brown clothes, and not handsome--his very foibles fascinating.

Who cares that he wrote about Dr. Francia, and "Shooting Niagara"--and "the Nigger Question,"--and didn't at all admire our United States?

(I doubt if he ever thought or said half as bad words about us as we deserve.

) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of modern literature and politics!

Doubtless, respecting the latter, one needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and doggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands, with the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, to understand the last meaning in his pages.

Accordingly, though he was no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great Britain--the increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the entire soil, the money, and the fat berths.

Trade and shipping, and clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of gentry and aristocracy, with every modern improvement, cannot begin to salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness.

The way to test how much he has left his country were to consider, or try to consider, for a moment, the array of British thought, the resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as existing to-day, _but with Carlyle left out_.

It would be like an army with no artillery.

The show were still a gay and rich one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many more--horsemen and rapid infantry, and banners flying--but the last heavy roar so dear to the ear of the train'd soldier, and that settles fate and victory, would be lacking.

For the last three years we in America have had transmitted glimpses of a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless, very old man, lying on a sofa, kept out of bed by indomitable will, but, of late, never well enough to take the open air.

I have noted this news from time to time in brief descriptions in the papers.

A week ago I read such an item just before I started out for my customary evening stroll between eight and nine.

In the fine cold night, unusually clear, (Feb.

5, '81,) as I walk'd some open grounds adjacent, the condition of Carlyle, and his approaching--perhaps even then actual--death, filled me with thoughts eluding statement, and curiously blending with the scene.

The planet Venus, an hour high in the west, with all her volume and lustre recover'd, (she has been shorn and languid for nearly a year,) including an additional sentiment I never noticed before--not merely voluptuous, Paphian, steeping, fascinating--now with calm commanding seriousness and hauteur--the Milo Venus now.

Upward to the zenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon past her quarter, trailing in procession, with the Pleiades following, and the constellation Taurus, and red Aldebaran.

Not a cloud in heaven.

Orion strode through the southeast, with his glittering belt--and a trifle below hung the sun of the night, Sirius.

Every star dilated, more vitreous, nearer than usual.

Not as in some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the rest.

Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible, and just as nigh.

Berenice's hair showing every gem, and new ones.

To the northeast and north the Sickle, the Goat and kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers.

While through the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying.

(To soothe and spiritualize, and, as far as may be, solve the mysteries of death and genius, consider them under the stars at midnight.

) And now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, soon to chemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains an identity still?

In ways perhaps eluding all the statements, lore and speculations of ten thousand years--eluding all possible statements to mortal sense--does he yet exist, a definite, vital being, a spirit, an individual--perhaps now wafted in space among those stellar systems, which, suggestive and limitless as they are, merely edge more limitless, far more suggestive systems?

I have no doubt of it.

In silence, of a fine night, such questions are answer'd to the soul, the best answers that can be given.

With me, too, when depress'd by some specially sad event, or tearing problem, I wait till I go out under the stars for the last voiceless satisfaction.

CARLYLE FROM AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW