been one of the most persecuted, and his nerves have never appeared to be shaken. He has been a mark for insult from the whole body of his countrymen (except a handful of abolitionists) for a series of years; and he has never, on this account, altered his countenance towards man or woman. His house was attacked in New-York, and his family driven from the city; he quietly took up his abode on Long Island. His lady and children are stared at like wild beasts on board a steamboat; he tranquilly observes on the scenery. His partners early remonstrated with him on the injury he was doing to his trade by publicly opposing slavery, and supported one another in declaring to him that he must give up his connexion with the abolitionists. He heard them to an end; said, "I will be hanged first," and walked off. When I was in America, immense rewards for the head, and even for the ears of Mr. Tappan, were offered from the South, through advertisements in the newspapers and handbills. Whether these rewards were really offered by any committee of vigilance or not was the same thing to Mr. Tappan; he was, in either case, in equal danger from wretches who would do the deed for money. But it cannot be thought improbable that a committee of vigilance should commit an act of any degree of eccentricity at a time of such panic that a meeting was called in a new settlement in Alabama for the purpose of voting Mr. O'Connell a nuisance. Mr. Tappan's house on Long Island is in an exposed situation; but he hired no guard, and lost not an hour's sleep. When some one showed him one of these handbills, he glanced from the sum promised to the signatures. "Are these good names?" said he. A cause involving a broad principle, and supported to the point of martyrdom by men of this make, is victorious from the beginning. Its complete triumph is merely a question of time. Garrison lectured in New-York in favour of the abolition of slavery, and in exposure of the colonization scheme, and was warmly encouraged by a few choice spirits. He went to Boston for the same purpose; but in the enlightened and religious city of Boston, every place in which he could lecture was shut against him. He declared his intention of lecturing on the Common if he could get no door opened to him, and this threat procured for him what he wanted. At his first lecture he fired the souls of some of his hearers; among others, of Mr. May, the first Unitarian clergyman who embraced the cause. On the next Sunday Mr. May, in pursuance of the custom of praying for all distressed persons, prayed for the slaves; and was asked, on descending from the pulpit, whether he was mad. Garrison and his fellow-workman, both in the printing-office and the cause-his friend Knapp-set up the Liberator, in its first days a little sheet of shabby paper, printed with old types, and now a handsome and flourishing newspaper. These two heroes, in order to publish their paper, lived for a series of years in one room on bread and water," with sometimes," when the paper sold unusually well, "the luxury of a bowl of milk.” In course of time twelve men formed themselves into an abolition society at Boston, and the cause was fairly afoot. It was undergoing its worst persecutions just before I entered Boston for the winter. I had resolved some time before, that, having heard every species of abuse of Garrison, I ought in fairness to see him. The relation of the above particulars quickened my purpose, and I mentioned my wish to the relator, who engaged that we should meet, mentionng that he supposed I was aware what I should encounter by acknowledging a wish to see Garrison. I was staying at the house of a clergyman in Boston, when a note was brought in which told me that Mr. Garrison was in town, and would meet me at any hour, at any friend's house, the next day. My host arrived at a knowledge of the contents of the note quite against my will, and kindly insisted that Mr. Garrison should call on me at home. At ten o'clock he came, accompanied by his introducer. His aspect put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in me. I was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance glowing with health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation, and gentleness. I did not now wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop window without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it as the most saintlike of countenances. The end of the story is, that when the citizen found whose portrait he had been hanging up in his parlour, he took the print out of the frame and huddled it away. Garrison has a good deal of a Quaker air; and his speech is deliberate like a Quaker's, but gentle as a woman's. The only thing that I did not like was his excessive agitation when he came in, and his thanks to me for desiring to meet one 66 so odious" as him self. I was, however, as I told him, nearly as odious as himself at that time; so it was fit that we should be acquainted. On mentioning afterward to his introducer my impression of something like a want of manliness in Garrison's agitation, he replied that I could not know what it was to be an object of insult and hatred to the whole of society for a series of years; that Garrison could bear what he met with from street to street, and from town to town; but that a kind look and shake of the hand from a stranger unmanned him for the moment. How little did the great man know our feelings towards him on our meeting; how we, who had done next to nothing, were looking up to him who is achieving the work of an age, and, as a stimulus, that of a nation! His conversation was more about peace principles than the great subject. It was of the most practical cast. Every conversation I had with him confirmed my opinion that sagacity is the most striking attribute of his conversation. It has none of the severity, the harshness, the bad taste of his writing; it is as gladsome as his countenance, and as gentle as his voice. Through the whole of his deportment breathes the evidence of a heart at ease; and this it is, I think, more than all his distinct claims, which attaches his personal friends to him with an almost idolatrous affection. I do not pretend to like or to approve the tone of Garrison's printed censures. I could not use such language myself towards any class of offenders, nor can I sympathize in its use by others. But it is only fair to mention that Garrison adopts it warily; and that I am persuaded that he is elevated above passion, and has no unrighteous anger to vent in harsh expressions. He considers his task to be the exposure of fallacy, the denunciation of hypocrisy, and the rebuke of selfish timidity. He is looked upon by those who defend him in this particular as holding the branding-iron; and it seems true enough that no one branded by Garrison ever recovers it. He gives his reasons for his severity with a calmness, meekness, and softness which contrast strongly with the subject of the discourse, and which convince the objector that there is principle at the bottom of the practice. One day, when he was expressing his pleasure at Dr. Channing having shaken hands with him the preceding day, he spoke with affectionate respect of Dr. Channing. I asked him who would have supposed he felt thus towards Dr. Channing, after the language which had been used about him and his book in the Liberator of the last week. His gentle reply was, "The most difficult duty of an office like mine is to find fault with those whom I love and honour most. I have been obliged to do it about who is one of my best friends. He is clearly wrong in a matter important to the cause, and I must expose it. In the same way, Dr. Channing, while aiding our cause, has thought fit to say that the abolitionists are fanatical; in other words, that we set up our wayward wills in opposition to the will we profess to obey. I cannot suffer the cause to be injured by letting this pass; but I do not the less value Dr. Channing for the things he has done." I was not yet satisfied of the necessity of so much severity as had been used. Garrison bore with me with a meekness too touching to be ever forgotten. He never speaks of himself or his persecutions unless compelled, and his child will never learn at home what a distinguished father he has. He will know him as the tenderest of parents before he becomes aware that he is a great hero. I found myself growing into a forgetfulness of the deliverer of a race in the friend of the fireside. One day, in Michigan, two friends (who happened to be abolitionists) and I were taking a drive with the governor of the state, who was talking of some recent commotion on the slavery question. "What is Garrison like?" said he. "Ask Miss M.," said one smiling friend: "Ask Miss M.," said the other. I was asked accordingly; and my answer was, that I thought Garrison the most bewitching personage I had met in the United States. The impression cannot but be strengthened by his being made such a bugbear as he is; but the testimony of his personal friends, the closest watchers of his life, may safely be appealed to as to the charms of his domestic manners. Garrison gayly promised me that he would come over whenever his work is done in the United States, that we may keep jubilee in London. I believe it would be safe to promise him a hundred thousand welcomes as warm as mine. LAKE GEORGE. "Those now by me as they have been, G. WITHER. EVERYBODY Who has heard of American scenery has heard of Lake George. At one time I was afraid I should have to leave the States without having visited the lake which, of all others, I most desired to see, so many hinderances had fallen in the way of my plans. A few weeks before I left the country, however, I was fortunate enough to be included in a party of four who made a trip to the Springs and the lake. It was not in the fashionable season, and for this I was not sorry. I had seen the Virginia Springs and Rockaway in the plenitude of their fashionable glory, and two such exhibitions are enough for one continent. It was about noon on the 12th of May when we alighted shivering from the railcar at Saratoga. We hastened to the Adelphi, and there found the author of Major Jack Downing's Letters and two other gentlemen reading the newspapers round a stove. We had but little time to spare ; and, as soon as we had warmed ourselves and ascertained the dinner hour, we set forth to view the place and taste the Congress water. There is nothing to be seen but large white frame houses, with handsome piazzas, festooned with creepers (at this time only the sapless remains of the garlands of the last season). These houses and the wooden temple over the principal spring are all that is to be seen, at least by the bodily eye. The imagination may amuse itself with conjuring up the place as it was less than half a century ago, when these springs bubbled up amid the brush of the forest, their qualities being discovered by the path through the woods worn by the deer in their resort to it. In those days the only edifices were a single loghut and a bearpound; a space enclosed with four high walls, with an extremely narrow entrance, where it was hoped that bears might get in during the dark hours, and be unable to VOL. II.-U |