SUMMER IN THE BLUE RIDGE.

And all these wayward pleasures of my youth
Are simple pictures drawn from simple truth.-Crabbe.

the rate necessary to support the laborer and his family, or to keep life in them. This is at once a truism and a mockery: for human wants are as compressible as they are elastic-and degradation, which is more to be apprehended than death, is many degrees above starvation in the scale. For the past three years* * there have been It was common, in old times, for Lowlanders plague, pestilence and famine, operating in con- in Virginia to spend the summer in the mouncert to desolate Ireland; and throughout Europe tains. Bath, in Berkeley, was a place of great there have been want, desolation and misery. resort, and its wild and glossy cedars made it The remedies applied have been swallowed up highly romantic-especially at the going down like a drop of rain upon thirsty ground, and have of the sun. But all along the mountains it was scarcely left a trace behind. Nothing has been customary for families who had wealth, to reproposed which would bring more than tempo-ceive inmates on somewhat protracted visits. rary relief: the danger and difficulty are aug- They often staid till Jack Frost drove them back mented every day: the abyss which threatens to to James River, or to the banks of the York or engulph the myriads of the earth yawns wider the Appomattox and wider: and there is no Curtius to close the The writer remembers how, many years ago, chasm by devoting his life for the safety of his he was domesticated at Forest Inn to the West fellows. Where can we look for any healing aid of the Ridge, and what an agreeable summer he in this threatening and heart-sickening condition spent. Woman had not then so spread out her of nations, except to a more profound and dili- charms as to entangle him in the sundry pergent study of the kindred sciences of History plexities of life. I had marked out a kind of and Social Economics? The former will furnish cosmopolite plan, which of course involved sinus with our instances-it will explain the causes, gle-blessedness. An inn like the one described the consequences and the succession of events-by old Walton on the Dove was about the acme of and it will reveal the secret of their connection. my wishes, and I anticipated the flow of life just The latter will afford us those laws of interpre- as if the seasons were painted on a wheel. tation and those conclusions which may be applied to the industrial life of nations, and the improvement of the condition of the masses. Until we find a complete solution of these mysteries we can none of us be safe. However secure we may think ourselves, we are slumbering upon the ashes of a volcano, which may at any time break forth again and overwhelm us.

H.

There was an almost total failure of the Potatoe

Crop in Ireland in the years 1822, 1831, 1845, 1846, 1847, and shall we not have to add 1848. v. Edinb. Rev., Jan.

1848, Art. vi, p. 233.

+ M. Comte continually points out the provisional and temporary character of all the expedients for the relief of existing social evils. In Mr. John S. Mill's political Economy, published during the present year, (1848,) some reme

dies are proposed for the distresses of Ireland, which might possibly prove effectual. All hitherto tried have been wholly ineffectual. V. Ed. Rev. Jan., 1848.

The North British Review gives the following clever translation of the old French epigram on Piron.

Ci git Piron; qui ne fut rien;

Pas même académicien.

Here lies Piron; who was-nothing; or, if that could be, was less:

What shall prevent my describing a spot where some few flowers at least were planted in the paradise of the memory? The inn stood about forty yards from the public road, which had been opened through what was once a denser forest than Sherwood or Ettrick. A clump of cool and stately oaks fringed the opposite side of the highway, which presented to the eye a series of round and beautiful wastes. In the rear of these oaks flowed a stream, known in the neighborhood by the name of Mossy Creek, in which were several natural, but slight cascades, and not seriously affecting the tranquillity of the water. There was an air of comfort about the premises, particularly the inn, which was a kind of roomy box with some paper trees planted quite near the verandah. On the sign-post was swung a board, upon which some rustic artist had painted a traveller on horseback arriving about twilight. Our garden was not highly ornamented, but was laid off in agreeable walks-and it bore tulips, pinks and sun-flowers; to which may be added a lonely holly tree, which produced vermillion berries, and stood not far from a spring in which my hostess kept her bottles of milk. My locality for a summer is before the reader; and it was a summer in which radiant suns and green forests conspired to make me happy.

My hostess was a shrewd, sensible widow, who had reached the degree of forty-seven and some How!-nothing? Yes, nothing: not so much as F. R. S. minutes over, in the circle of her life. She was

neither penny-wise nor pound-foolish; but kept it is my intention to scribble something about in a happy medium—and by uniting generosity your inn." and frugality had prospered. She had added rood after rood to her little domain, and owed nothing either at home or abroad. Formerly she had kept school and taught a great many little urchins: but good humor had kept her from a free use of the birch.

"Did you ever read," said she, "the School Mistress, written by William Shenstone?" "At least twenty times," I replied. "That Poem," she rejoined, "first put me in the notion of teaching, and made me ambitious of being remembered by my pupils."

June was now fully set in, and from its censer a multitude of tints were constantly falling. What could have been more transporting than the area which filled the vision! Though the prospect was somewhat bounded by the Ridge, the sight could reach in other directions over a valley that wore the aspect of an immense rural sea, which was green and shaded with blue. Meditation might slowly walk its waves, or fancy stretch her magnetic wires to undefined distance, and receive intelligence from a thousand round and green hills-from azure summits on which wild roses were burning in the sun-from clumps that looked like islands-from bands of reapers-from flocks and herds. The landscape pencil of Gainsbor"No doubt," I answered, "you have done ough or Morland's Rural Sketchbook, would good, and some one of your pupils may one day have fallen away from the grasp of the master make you renowned. Milton's daughters, Bun- before such a prospect. No sentimentalist can yan's blind Mary, Sir Walter Scott's nurse, By- help loving either the heaven or earth, which ron's page, and Don Quixote's squire, are all June always reveals in the valley of the Shenansafely lodged in the Temple of Fame."

"Boys or girls?" said I. "Both," she replied; "and some of my little girls have become respectable matrons."

doah.

The writer was much at his ease, in his slipThe widow had picked up a good deal of historical knowledge; and I noticed that her infor-pers and rustic gown, and turning over Chaucer's mation was remarkably minute. If, by way of Canterbury Tales, when his hostess inquired, "What book ?-what book?" example, she mentioned Cyrus, the Persian conqueror, she was sure to describe Babylon, the breadth of its walls, the height of its gates, and the structure of its hanging-gardens. And then her queen-like imagination would promenade in the parks of the Assyrian city and stop at mulberry trees and look up to the top of the fan leaf palm, or admire the gazelles. The same is true of the Egyptian Pyramids. She had conned over Rollin with vast attention: man to be keeping a rustic inn.

surprising wo

"My respected hostess," said I, "what induces you to keep a house of entertainment, when you possess such an abundance of goods and chattels ?"

"That question," she replied, "has been often asked, and as often resolved."

'Tis Chaucer," I replied. "I am trying to pull a little bark from this old cinnamon tree. Let me tell you the plan of it;" and my hostess waited till she got a sight of Tabard Inn and its hostelrie and the caravan of Pilgrims. "Where were the Pilgrims going?" she enquired.

"To Canterbury," I replied, "a city in Kent, seated on the river Stour, fifty-five miles from London. It held the shrine of Becket, a turbulent priest, who was killed in the twelfth century by four knights; and when Chaucer lived, superstition was rife both in Italy and England."

"And have you come here," said she, "to watch for Pilgrims?"

"Not exactly," I replied, "though doubtless many trudge along this road. As Schilier says in his Wilhelm Tell

'Here goes the anxious Merchant and the light
Unmonied pilgrim-the pale, pious monk,
The gloomy robber-and the mirthful shewman-
The carrier with his heavy laden horse
Who comes from far-off lands'-

"Resolve it then once more," I rejoined. "Before beginning this way of life,” she answered, "my feelings were selfish; but now they are expanded and cosmopolitan. Strangers call and we hear from the big world. The diversity enlivens attention, and occasionally it gives me power to perform an act of kindness to the way- and should a few such pass, it would please me faring man. It is my purpose to give you my to talk awhile with them about things in general." best room, free of cost, provided you will keep "Fine crested carriages stop here at times," my accounts, help me to open the mail, and prom-remarked my hostess; "and young ladies ride ise to write something about this tavern before through the hot summer out to the cool springs." you die." When such arrive," I replied, "do not call "Should my life be spared to the usual span," me. I cannot be an aristocrat: but send some I replied," and when the wheel of time shall one to tap at my door when people come along have scattered a few sprigs of moss on its roof, who look rather lowly."

VOL. XV-11

a most amiable man and a Shepherd-king among his people. You will find him in his harvest field-for he owns a fine farm-though not quite so highly ornamented as Woburn farm near Weybridge in the Shire of Surry." At that, I took out my pencil and wrote him a line of introduction, and he started with all that promptness characteristic of Northeastern people.

There are times when my heart is visited with dice would be felt anywhere against a teacher of a feeling of philanthropy that amounts to a kind music, for that's my vocation." of passion. My philanthropy, however, does not "That is," I continued, "you wish to get a take the turn of Howard's. He travelled the singing-school in this neighborhood. If so, you circumference of the globe; but my indolence must follow my counsel, which is to see Pastor prevents locomotion. To keep still and look out Morrison, who lives several miles off, and who is for the wayfaring man has been to me a source of happiness which I would not exchange for the imperial robe of the Cæsars. The writer is but one of eight hundred millions, who breathe a common atmosphere, and he would like, if possible, to hear each individual of the race tell his story. What an eventful volume would be the consequence ! How many touching incidents-what changes of fortune, as it is called- I cannot account for it, but it is so, that I never what endless varieties-what a complex web, could understand what is called Music by note, continually ravelled and unravelling by a celes- and yet I am quite sensitive to musical sounds. tial hand,-what myriad paths all slowly wind- Without even a ear for harmony, Dr. Johnson ing into a circle, from the centre of which the entertained high respect for Burney, though he race must finally lift up one universal anthem to rowed Piozzi up Salt river. Nothing fires my Divine benignity! By such reflections, I almost imagination quicker than to read of a Scotch annihilated distance and space, and my imagina- piper or a minstrel reaching baronial halls of a tion was wrought up to a kind of half-persuasion cold wintry night. What powerful use has that some Eastern merchant might come along McKenzie made of those simple airs, which dion his camel laden with spicery, or that some versify Alpine life and the sounds, which call in Arabian knight might dash up on his mettlesome goats from their clamberings. Byron drew consteed. We longed to talk with Ledyard about cord from the pines and rocks of the Jungfrau. * tropical garlands-and with Sir Joseph Banks But the writer, a few mornings after the call of about bread fruit trees-and with Buffon about the Vermonter, forgot all artificial music, and all' birds-and with the Autocrat of all the Russias about his Siberian exiles.

made by men and women in the rare melody of the birds. The concert was better than a thouOur garden had a summer-house, somewhat sand German flutes, combined with the great larger than the one which Cowper has described, Hærlem organ. I do not know that I would as an appendage to his domicile in Olney. It have turned my heel on the green sward to have was covered with vines, which promised grapes, heard Handel, or Mozart, or a full choir of Italand with honeysuckle, which in the evening drew ian exquisites. It came from the oaks which humming-birds. It was a pleasant retreat from the fervours of June. I was seated in it one morning, in a state of rumination, when my landlady called me from a window of the inn: and upon opening the garden gate, she told me that a stranger had arrived. Knowing myself to be master of ceremonies, I lost no time in repairing to the apartment in which the person was seated.

fronted the Inn. My kind hostess had loaned me some fishing-tackle and I had struck the path which led through the grove to the banks of Mossy creek. The rim of the creek was alive with beams, and the water looked as if held in a vase of gold, and the birds were absolutely frantic, dashing from limb to limb, and all their mouths were open at one and the same time. My red cork was immediately drowned, when turning, a perch happened on the hook: but I 'Is not that town," I answered, "on Otter permitted it to escape back to its appropriate eleCreek, and does not the scenery remind one of ment. Brief was the time spent in angling, for Catmose vale in Rutlandshire, England?"

"My name is Emmons," he remarked, upon my entering, "from Rutland in Vermont."

"Not knowing, I cannot say," he replied, "as to the last part of your question; but the green hue of our spruce and pine mountains contrasts well with the blue edging that hangs off from your Virginia summits."

"And do you like azure better than emerald ?” I asked, "that you should have perigrinated to a place where prejudice is indulged against New Englanders."

"I did not know," he rejoined, "that preju

my attention was drawn to a youth seemingly about twenty-three, who was approaching me through the spaces which divided between the oaks.

"A charming day," he remarked. "One finer never spent its rays on the Valley of Wyoming."

"And what," "I replied, "brought you so far West from a valley celebrated by the Muse of Campbell, and where there are better cascades than any which fall from the Persian mountains?"

"There is a power," he rejoined, "in the eye

of the imagination of being satiated united with You have been," I rejoined, "at the old Swean insatiableness perfectly ravenous. You might dish Church in Philadelphia." blindfold me and I could still cross every brook or bridge and climb every hill and mountain in the Pennsylvania valley. My boyish blood has been cooled scores of times in its grottoes."

"I made an express pilgrimage to it," he observed, "for the express purpose of paying my express homage to the tomb of Wilson, the founder of American ornithology."

"Wyoming," I observed, “needs no commenAt that he rose and brought me a sketch of dation. Come, let's go back to the inn," and, as the church, the tomb and the premises, which he he proceeded, he gave me some particulars of had taken, and also some specimens of birds himself quite interesting, and not long after noon neatly executed. My feelings were much interwe sat down to a repast, which, from its simpli-ested for this apparently ingenious youth, and city, was pleasing to my guest." Would you not next morning, notwithstanding his fondness for like," said I, "to hear some musician at play in the distance?"

"Not half so well,” he replied, “as to hear the warbling of those forest birds."

"Then you are an Ornithologist."

"A piece of a one," he remarked, "and it is my ambition to get on the trail of Audubon: but he is at present abroad."

"The best way then," said I, "to catch him, is to cross the water."

bills, my influence prevailed with my landlady to
shorten his even to annihilation. But my hostess
made herself quite merry at my expense, when
he turned out a Yankee, who had played off on
my romance.

is to be pitied."
"Do not laugh," said I, "for every impostor

"But," said she, "you must be more cautious another time and study human nature, and keep an especial look out on the Yankees."

"But New England," I rejoined, "is a part of our country, and has given us poets, statesmen

and heroes."

"Not at all," he observed, "for by that time he will be back in Louisiana. He shoots to and fro like some impassioned bird, and he bills and coos at every thing in the shape of a tree. His stay in Scotland will be short, for he can soon My mortification was extreme at having been tap all its firs, and as to the clumps of Eng-outwitted. I had almost resolved upon becoming gland, what are they but pigeon boxes compared

to the bird saloons of our wilderness?"

moody to any other pedestrian who might seek my acquaintance or my good offices. In fact, I permitted several to pass and maintained a dogged silence. There was no want of rustic objects to

"It is my wish," said I, "that you may find him at home, if he have a home: but Ornithology seems to insert a multitude of plumes into a engage my attention. The sweet brier was man's scallop without lining his pocket." climbing to the roof of the inn-the Kentucky "The pocket," rejoined my guest, rose was in bloom and the summer house was arfor the pocket when a man leads a single life. Can he not sleep on the ground, or in the hollow of a tree and drink the mountain brook and feed on the wild berry or the plum?"

"who cares

rayed in blossoms, and, in the distance, reapers were effectively wielding the sickle. My mind fell quite into a reverie about Rousseau's theory of savage and civilized life. Civilized man is often duped, but then stratagem and duplicity prevail among Indians, and thieves are plenty as blackberries in the Pagan islands. habit to

“But then,” said I, "bird-killing is something not to my taste."

my

"Nor to mine," he replied; "it is take along with me traps and nets, and upon netting the beautiful creatures, to let them go after an examination had scientifically."

You are then," I rejoined, "the man to please me, for we do not want the blessed birds diminished. We wish Heaven had made millions in addition to those that now cleave the air and that swarm in the woods. I do not doubt that you will couple your name with that of Cuvier, or Buffon, or any other renowned lover of natural science."

"That would be a high distinction, indeed, to the name of Mifflin: but my only ambition after immense explorations is to return into Wyoming, my native valley, and spend the residuum of life and then let its birds sing my requiem."

Captain

Cook lost his life in consequence of a theft, and Mungo Park was probably put to death by savages. Sustained by a number of such facts my love of man began to return, and my landlady was delighted to see the mists disperse which had been hovering over her guest for several days.

"It has struck me," said she, "that you never get the blues when you scribble."

"Never," I replied. "The friends of Cowper

set him at his translation of Homer whenever he became sombre: but it would have been better, methinks, to have put him at writing another John Gilpin."

"John Gilpin," she answered, "is not that in Scott's Lessons? I used to make my little pupils say it by heart. And was that written by a

hypocondriac? If so he must at times have been entirely, the agitation into which she had been right merry." thrown.

"Friend Anderson," said I to the interpreter, "this is our hostess, and she begs that you'll present her good will to those children of the forest. She will have a repast made ready as soon as practicable."

The interpreter expressed his thanks, and in a few minutes every thing was alive in the kitchen. Much of our happiness results from looking in upon culinary scenes, and to Cowper, the steam of the kettle must have given exquisite gratification. It has to the writer a thousand times, though he does not pretend to be more than one fourth, or, if the reader please, one twentieth of

"But Scott's Lessons," continued she, "had the Country Ale House and an account of the Rustic Preacher by Goldsmith. He must have got his name from being a smith who worked in gold and not in iron. His preacher always put me in mind of pastor Morrison, who says you must call at the manse when you ride by his farm. Mercy on us, mercy on us," she exclaim-a poet. ed, and then flew off like a ruffled bird.

I do not know why our race has been broken This interview had happened in a dim twi-up into tribes and clans. This is a secret which light, and, on turning round, what was my aston- Heaven keeps among its own archives. But it ishment, to see nineteen Indians filing up the is a mystery still greater, why different clans porch of the inn. They looked tall and strap- should go to war. A man marches from among ping, and, with their rings, tomahawks and red the thistles of Scotland, and another from among blankets, presented a frightful aspect. the vines of France, who never looked at each

"Is this the Forest Inn?" said a man who other before, and at the signal for battle, begin seemed to act as interpreter. ""Tis so called," I observed.

to shed each other's blood and then stop and make friends. What consummate folly! Oh

"My Indians," he rejoined, "have had a long love of country! What iniquities have been enstretch to day."

acted in thy name. This whole planet is my country, and so would Jupiter be, had my destiny been fixed in that orb. Let me never forget that the Moor, the Arab, the Jew and the Indian are members of the human family. Such were my brief reflections in beholding the pedestrians who had just arrived at our inn. Each of them Permit me then," I rejoined, " to see our host- was like myself in this, that he had two eyes,

"No doubt," I replied, "you might be accommodated here, but the landlady is excessively alarmed."

"Alarmed indeed," he remarked, "she might as well be alarmed at nineteen spring lambs, or at as many Lilliputians."

ess."

66

and though they looked tawny and had disfigured themselves, they were noble in stature.

"Our repast is set," said I to the interpreter, and he sounded something like a Chinese gong, when they all came round the table and cast up a look towards the Great Spirit, who feeds the

Drive 'em away," she replied, "drive off wildman caught in the forests of Germany, as those monsters."

66

"Tis impossible," said I, "they are too strong, though the interpreter says they are Lillipu

tians."

"Lilliputians," said my hostess, "I read the account of those Tom Thumbs when a little girl and could have whipped 'em by the hundred, but these seven feet men-"

"They are," said I, "but six and a half. Consider, uncle Sam pays for interpreter and all, and the interpreter makes twenty."

"Your words," said she, "fall like dew on the agitated wing of a dove, and it may be well for me to carry an olive leaf among the horrid creatures: but I'll not smoke their pipes."

At this it gave me pleasure to lead in the lady, who had surmounted somewhat, though not

well as the Prince of Wales or the Dauphin of France. My attention was profoundly fixed, and my silence arose partly from the taciturnity of the company. The Indians seemed to place implicit reliance on their interpreter, and some of them laughed when he pointed them to any thing in the repast that was especially palatable. When they rose, I observed to the interpreter, "your wild men do not speak our language."

"If you wish," rejoined he, "you can use me as the channel of communication."

"It would please me then to take a smoke with the chief," said I.

"As to that," he replied, "you can smoke with them all. They love to exchange the wampum belt and send up the curl from the pipe of peace." In making arrangements to lodge such a cara