name for Lieutenant. To lose this place is a matter of no im-
portance, and we can see whether I am really so odious."
I shoidd have hated to serve as Lieutenant-Governor, but I
should have gloried in running for the post. I want to have my
enemies all upon me at once, ā I am tired of fighting them piece-
meal. And, although I should have been beaten in the canvass, I
know that my running woidd have helped the ticket and helped
my paper.
It was thought best to let the matter take another course.
No other name could have been put upon the ticket so bitterly
hmnbling to me as that which was selected. The nomination was
given to Raymond, ā the fight left to me. And, Governor Seward,
I have made it, though it be conceited in me to say so. ^Vhat
little fight there has been, I have stirred up. Even Weed has not
been (I speak of his paper) hearty in this contest, while the joiu"-
nal of the Whig Lieutenant-Governor has taken care of its own
320 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
interests and let the canvass take care of itself, as it early declared
it would do. That journal has (because of its milk-and-water
course) some twenty thousand subscribers in this city and its sub-
urbs ; and of these twenty thousand, I venture to say, more voted
for Ullmann and Scroggs than for Clark and Raymond ; The Tribune
(also because of its character) has but eight thousand subscribers
within the same radius ; and, I venture to say that, of its habitual
readers, nine tenths voted for Clark and Raymond, very few for
Ullmann and Scroggs. I had to bear the brunt of the contest, and
take a teiTible responsibility, in order to prevent the Whigs uniting
upon James W. Barker, in order to defeat Fernando Wood. Had
Barker been elected here, neither you nor I could walk these
streets without being hooted, and Know-Nothingism would have
swept like a prairie-fire. I stopped Barker's election at the cost of
incurring the deadliest enmity of the defeated gang, and I have
been rebuked for it 'by the Lieutenant-Governor's paper. At the
critical moment, he came out against John Wheeler in favor of
Charles H. Marshall (who would have been your deadliest enemy
in the Hovise) ; and even your Colonel-General's paper, which was
even with me in insisting that Wheeler should be returned, wheeled
about at the last moment, and went in for Marshall, ā The
Tribune alone clinging to Wheeler to the last. I rejoice that they
who turned so suddenly were not able to turn all their readers.
Governor Seward, I know that some of your most cherished
friends think me a great obstacle to your advancement, ā that
John Schoolcraft, for one, insists that you and Weed shall not be
identified with me. I trust, after a time, yoii will not be. I trust
I shall never be found in opposition to you ; I have no further
wish but to glide out of the newspaper world as quietly and as
speedily as possible, join my family in Europe, and, if possible,
stay there quite a time, ā long enough to cool my fevered brain
and renovate my overtasked energies. All I ask is that we shall
be counted even on the morning after the first Tuesday in Febru-
ary, as aforesaid, and that I may thereafter take such course as
seems best, without reference to the j^ast.
You have done me acts of valued kindness in the line of your
profession, ā let me close with the assurance that these will ever
be gratefully remembered by
' Horace Greeley.
Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Present.
"SEWARD, WEED, AND GREELEY." 321
Seeing nothing in this letter that requires explanation, I
simply add that my personal relations with Governor Seward
were wholly unchanged by it. We met frequently and cor-
dially after it was ^vritten, and we very freely conferred
and cooperated during the long struggle in Congress for Kansas
and Free Labor. He understood as well as I did that my
position with regard to him, though more independent than it
had been, was nowise hostile, and that I was as ready to
support his advancement as that of any other statesman,
whenever my judgment should tell me that the public good
required it. I was not his adversary, but my own and my
country's freeman.
In the Spring of 1859, Governor Seward crossed the At-
lantic ; visiting Egypt, traversing Syria and other portions of
Asia Minor, as well as much of Europe. Soon after his re-
turn, he came one evening to my seat in Dr. Chapin's
church, ā as he had repeatedly done during former \dsits to
our city, ā and I now recall this as the last occasion on which
we ever met. The Scripture lesson of the evening was the
thirty-first chapter of Proverbs, which recounts the merits
and proclaims the honors of the virtuous woman ; enumerat-
ing, among the latter, that " Her husband is kaown in the
gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land." " Two
months ago," thereupon observed Governor Seward, " I was
travelling in S}Tia, with a Turkish firman and other docu-
ments, which proclaimed me, I infer, a person of some conse-
quence ; since the head functionary of a village where I
halted and presented my papers received me with the greatest
distinction, and, as a final proof of his regard, invited me to
sit with him in the gate, as, flanked by the. elders, he heard
complaints and defences, and rendered judgment thereon."
So unchanging are the essential habits and usages of the
Asiatics, that foreign conquest ā Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian,
Greek, Eoman, Saracen, Crusader, and Osmanli ā had, along
wdth more than thirty centuries, rolled their effacing surges
over that region, yet here are the chiefs of the respective
villages or tribes judging the people as of old, surrounded
21
322 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
and counselled by the elders ; and any eminent stranger is
invited, as a mark of honor, to sit with them, as he was in (or
before) the reign of Solomon.
Ross Browne found but one man doing anything in Syria ;
and he was falling off a house. It is well to be usefvdly busy ;
yet quiet and tenacious contentment witli
" The good old ways, ā all ways, when old, are good,"
is not devoid of recommendation, and even advantacre.
I have often, during these later years, been unable to agree
witli Governor Seward, ā have sometimes quite pointedly
dissented from his views of great public questions. It is not
probable that we shall ever again be as near to each other as
we have been. That his ends have ever been patriotic, I will
not doubt ; that his means have sometimes been mistaken, I
think his warmest friends must admit. That he once aspired
to the Presidency is a truth, but no reproach ; able, wise, and
good men have done so, without impeachment of their pa-
triotism or abatement of their usefulness. Still, one who has
all but clutched the glittering prize, yet failed to secure it,
always thereafter seems to have suffered from the aspiration
or the failure, ā possibly from both. Great, intellectually,
as Daniel Webster was, he would have been morally greater,
and every way more useful and honored, had he sternly re-
sponded " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " to every suggestion
that he might yet attain the Presidency. I hope Mr. Seward
will outlive, if he has not already outlived, his ambition, and
will find leisure and incitement to write of what he has seen
and known during his all but a half-century of devotion to
public affairs. Doubtless, he could clear up points which
now seem obscure and puzzling ; and I will hope he would
succeed in showing that, even when most denounced and
execrated, he was, however mistaken, faithful in heart and
purpose to Justice, to Freedom, and the inalienable Paglits of
Man.
XXXIX.
EUROPE REVISITED. ā PARIS. ā SWITZERLAND.
IN the Autumn of 1854, my wife took passage, with our
two surviving children, for Europe, under a pledge that I
should follow and rejoin her the ensuing Spring. As those
children were less than six and four years old respectively, I
did not believe she had the courage to start on such a jour-
ney without me to a continent whereon she had scarcely an
acquaintance ; but when I at length said to her, " If you are
really going, I must engage your passage," she replied, " En-
gage it, then " ; and I did so. She went accordingly, and
spent the ensuing Winter quietly in London ; where I joined
her late in April ensuing. In a few days, I ran over in ad-
vance to Paris, where I hired a liftle cottage just outside of
the then western barrier I'Etoile or octroi gate, which sepa-
rates the Avenue Champs Elysees from the street outside,
which leads to the Bois de Bolougne, to Passy, and to NeuiUy.
Here my wife soon rejoined me with our children, two female
friends, and the husband of one of them ; and here we
remained till late in June, visiting the second World's Expo-
sition, the Louvre, the Garden of Plants, the Invalides, Notre
Dame, the Field of Mars, the Madeleine, P^re-la-Chaise, &c.,
&c., and making (or renewing) a very few Erench with many
American acquaintances. The Spring was remarkably cold,
backwiard, cloudy, and rainy, ā very unlike our preconcep-
tions of " sunny Erance," and our enjoyment of Paris did not
fulfil our expectations ; yet the six weeks thus spent are fixed
in my memory as the nearest approach to leisure I have
kno^vn during the last thirty years. Eor, though still occu-
324 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
pied, and even busy, throughout nearly every day, I was less
so than in any former six weeks since I first landed in New
York. I spent much time in the Exposition, trying to com-
prehend it ; but I was not a juror, as I had been in London
four years previously, and I did not feel required to study
this Exposition so persistently, so systematically, as I had
studied the former. Besides, it did not impress me so favor-
ably nor interest me so deeply as that did. The edifice was
of stone ; hence, far more massive, gloomy, crypt-like, than
the Hyde Park marvel ; and the French seemed to me infe-
rior in the skill required for lucid arrangement and classifica-
tion. This judgment may have been the dictate of prejudice
or ignorance ; I only speak as I felt, and record an abiding
impression. Two hours of impulsive wandering and gazing
in the Paris Exposition fatigued me more than four hours'
steady work as a juror in its London precursor ; and I learned
immeasurably more from that of '51 than I did from that of
'55. In fact, the only point on which my little all of knowl-
edge seems to have been permanently enlarged by the latter
is that I think I obtained here some faint, rude conception
of the peculiarities and merits of the school of art termed
" pre-Eaphaelite," ā I cannot say how ajDtly. I was deeply,
though not altogether favorably, impressed by the works of
J. E. Millais, Holman Hunt, and other apostles of this school,
whose works here first arrested my attention ; and I now re-
call a picture of " The Dead Ophelia " (by Millais, if I rightly
remember), which evinced a pains-taking fidelity, and made a
vivid, though unpleasant, impression. I trust that this school
has not yet attained its fulness of development, or at least
had not in 1855 ; if it had, the grand achievements of Ea-
phael, of Titian, and of Murillo are in little danger of being
eclipsed or superseded by those of its disciples or devotees.
StiU, the fact remains, that, of the many pictures exhibited in
the Pine Arts division of the Paris Exposition, I remember
none beside so distinctly, so vividly, as those of the British
pre-Eaphaelites, so called, though several of the French
painters of our day evince decided merit.
EUROPE REVISITED. ā PARIS. ā SWITZERLAND. 325
Paris is the Paradise of thoughtless boys with full pock-
ets ; but I, if ever thoughtless, had ceased to be a boy some
time ere I first greeted the "gay, bright, airy city of the
Seine." I presume I could now enjoy a week of the careless,
sunny life of her mob of genteel idlers ; but a month of it
would sate and bore me. To rise reluctantly to a late break-
fast ; trifle away the day, from noon to 5 P. m., in riding and
sight-seeing ; dine elaborately ; and thenceforward spend the
evening at theatre, opera, or party, is a routine that soon tells
on one who is indurated in the habit of making the most of
every working-hour. I envy no man his happiness ; I envy
least of all the pleasure-seeker, who chases his nimble, co-
quettish butterfly, year in, year out, along the Boulevards and
around the " Places " of the giddy metropolis of France.
And here let me turn aside to say that the very common
aspiration of our yoimg men to spend a year or more in for-
eign travel seems to me inconsiderate and mistaken. Xo one
is fit to travel in foreign lands till ha has made himself pretty
thoroughly acquainted with his own ; and the youth who ā
ignorant of History, of Art, of Languages, and very slenderly
versed even in Natural Science ā fancies that he can pay his
way while traversing Europe by writing for the Press, evinces
inordinate, preposterous presumption. If I seem, in saying
this, to condemn myself, so be it ; but remember I was more
than forty years old, and had had a full dozen years' famil-
iarity with public affairs, before I set my face toward the Old
World ; yet, even thus, I doubt not that my letters abounded
in blunders and gaucherics which a riper knowledge, a better
preparation, for foreign travel, would have taught me to avoid.
As it was, I vsTote for a circle of readers of whom many were
glad to look through my eyes because they were mine, ā that
is, because, having read my -^vritings for years, they were in-
terested in knowing how Europe would impress me, and what
I should find there to admire or to condemn. Had not this
been the case, ā had I addressed readers to whom I. was un-
326 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
known or indifferent, ā I could not have deemed my letters
worth their attention, nor likely to attract it.
I say, then, most earnestly, to every youth anxious to go
abroad, traverse Europe, and pay his way by writing for some
journal, " Tarry at Jericho till your beard be grown." I never
knew but one of your class ā Bayard Taylor ā who achieved
a real success in thus traveUing ; and he left home a good
type-setter, with some knowledge of modern languages ; so
that he stopped and worked at his trade whenever his funds
ran short ; yet, even thus, he did not wholly pay his way
during the two years he devoted to his delightful "Views
Afoot." I know it ; for I employed and paid him all that his
letters were fairly worth, though not nearly so much as his
letters now righteously command. He practised a systematic
and careful economy ; yet he went away with money, and re-
turned with the clothes on his back, and (I judge) very little
more. My young friend, if you think yourself better qualified
than he was, go ahead, and " do " Europe ! but don't ask me
to further your scheme ; for I hold that you may far better
stay at home, apply yourself to some useful branch of produc-
tive industry, help pay our National Debt, and accumulate
a little independence whereon, by and by, to travel (if you
choose) as a gentleman, and not with but a sheet of paper
between you and starvation. It is bad to be ragged and hun-
gry at home ; it is infinitely worse to be destitute in a foreign
country, where every one feels that you have no moral right
to subtract from his means or add to his burdens. Even if
willing to be a beggar and a vagabond, be content to burden
your country, and go not abroad to disgrace her ! The bor-
rowing Yankee is a nuisance anywhere ; but he is a frightful,
hideous pest in those portions of Europe most frequented by
Americans.
If I were to spend a year at leisure in the Old World, I
tliink I should give a month of it to London, another to the
residue of the British Isles, a third to France, a fourth to Ger-
many, a month to Rome, another to the realm of Victor Em-
manuel, o'r what the Pope terms " the sub- Alpine kingdom,"
EUROPE REVISITED. ā PARIS. ā SWITZERLAND. 327
and the remaining half of the year to Switzerland, ā not po-
litical, but geographical, Switzerland, which includes Savoy
and the Tyrol. I would cross the ocean in June, land at
Havi"e or Antwerp, make my way directly to the Alps, and
there remain until driven down their southward sloping vales
by the coming on of Winter. Then I would descend to
Milan, pass eastward to Venice, and back, by Bologna and
Florence, to Eome ; liieing therefrom to Naples to greet the
advent of Spring ; steaming thence to Marseilles, and crossing
France by Lyons and Paris, to finish my tour in Great Britain
and Ireland.
I crossed the Alps twice in my former visit to Europe ; first
by Mont Cenis, from Lyons to Turin ; returning, via ISIilan,
across the pass of St. Gothard to Lucerne and Basle. The
long June day in which I traversed, by diligence, Savoy, from
the 'frontier (alas ! the frontier no longer) of France to the
crest of Mont Cenis, is one of the brightest that lives in my
memory ; next to that stands that wherein I left Milan at 5
A. M., travelled fifteen miles by rail to Monza, and thence
skirted by dibgence Lake Como, crossed into the valley of
the Ticino, which we wound steadily up to the little \dllage
or hamlet of Airolo, at the foot of the pass of St. Gothard,
very near the upper limit of cultivation. Besting here for
the night, and crossing the summit of the pass about noon,
we rattled down to the Lake of Altorf, whereon a tiny steam-
boat conveyed us to Lucerne before nightfall. Though the
plains of Italy glowed beneath a July sun, and the Vine, the
Maize, and the Chestnut clung tenaciously to the valley of
the Ticino, still they were successively constrained, by the
increasing cold, to abandon it. We found little besides Oats,
Potatoes, and Grass growing around Airolo ; and these for-
sook us a little further up ; so that, at the summit of the pass,
a chill storm was piling new snow upon the still formidable
drifts of the preceding Winter (perchance of a thousand Win-
ters), and the tumbling, roaring brooks were frequently seen
emerging from beneath ice of ample thickness and solidity.
328 JiE COLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
On my later visit to Europe, I left Paris with my family in
June ; travelled by rail to Dijon, capital of the kingdom of
Burgundy that was, ā the palace of whose kings is now a mu-
seum of deeply interesting relics of that monarchy, ā and,
after spending a bright day there, we took diligence at 9 P. M.,
were toiling up the Jura next forenoon, and were soon rattling
down their southeastern slope, whence we reached Geneva
before night. Passing thence up the valley of the Arve to
Chamonix, we spent five days there in deeply interested ob-
servation of the adjacent peaks and glaciers. I gave one day
to a visit to Montanvert and the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice),
across which cattle are annually driven ā a practical path
being first made by cutting ice and filling crevices ā to a
sunny southern slope (" the Garden "), 9,000 feet above tide-
level, on an adjacent mountain, where they are pastured till
snow falls and lies, and then driven back to the valley whence
they came. The ice of the Mer de Glace is so frequently
seamed with deep cracks and crevices as to afford most unsafe
footing for novices in Alpine pedestrianism ; and I, for one,
was glad to turn about, when I had gone but half-way across
it, and regain the solid ground I had eagerly left. You climb
thence nearly a thousand feet to the perch known as Montan-
vert, whence a good view is had, in clear-weather, of several
lofty peaks, Mont Blanc included ; and, when I had thence
made my way down to Chamonix (you ascend on horse or
mule back, but descend slowly on foot), I was as weary as any
one need wish to be.
During my absence on this trip, my wife had undertaken
to visit, with our children, the Glacier de Boissons, which
seems scarcely a mile distant from the hotels at Chamonix,
and easily accessible ; but she had failed to reach it, lost her
way, and been obliged to hire a peasant-woman to pilot her,
and carry our fagged-out younger child, back to our hotel. I
lauffhed at this misadventure when we met, and volunteered
to lead the party next morning straight up to the glacier
aforesaid, so that they might put their hands on it ; but, on
trying it, I failed miserably. So many deep ravines and steep
EUROPE RE VISITED. ā PARIS. ā S WITZERLAND. 329
moraines were found to bar our way, where all seemed smooth
and level from our hotel, and the actual was so much greater
than the apparent distance, that I gave up, after an hour's
rugged clambering, and contented myself with asserting that
I could reach the glacier by myself, ā as I still presume I
could, though I never tried. Either of the great glaciers is so
large that it dwarfs everything around it ; behttling obstacles
and distances to an extent elsewhere incredible.
The Glacier des Bois is said to measure over fifty miles
from the giant snow-drift wherein it originates, filling an in-
dentation or gully leading down the east side of Mont Blanc,
to the very bed of the Arve in the Chamonix valley. Indeed,
tlie Mer de Glace itself may be considered a branch, if not the
principal source, of the little river, and is approached by fol-
lowing up the bed of the stream for a couple of miles or so
above the village, then stepping from one to another of the
giant boulders, brought down by the glacier from the icy
region above, and which here fill the spacious bed of the
stream. I spent a forenoon here, watching the gi^adual dis-
solution of the ice by the warm breath of the valley, and
noting how moraines are made.
A moraine is a ridge or bank of earth and stones, averaging
four to eight feet high, and perhaps ten to twenty in width at
the base, which is uniformly found bordering a glacier on either
side, with one far larger ā oftener two or more ā at its lower
extremity. It is so unfailingly separated by distances of ten
to twenty feet from the glacier, that the green observer finds
it difficult to comprehend that it is naturally formed of the
points and fragments of rock broken off by the giant masses
of ice in their imperceptible, yet constant, progress ā at the
average rate of six feet or so per day ā from the snow-drifts
cradled between the higher peaks to the deep valleys, green
with grass, and crimson with Alpine flowers.
But steady observation detects a constant wearing away, in
warm weather, of the lower part of the glacier facing the
valley, and a consequent formation of cavities and channels
therein, whereby the stones are loosened- and allowed to pre-
330 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
cipitate themselves. But, while the water faUs directly down-
ward, the stones fall outward, or, striking a lower slope of ice,
are so deflected from the perpendicular that they rest at last
at some distance outward from the base of the glacier. Hence
moraines. ā
We were in Chamonix, I believe, from the 20th to the 25th
of June, ā too early by a month. Snow fell repeatedly,
though lightly ; rain frequently and heavily ; the mountain-
tops were usually shrouded in cloud and fog ; and we only
caught a clear view of the summit of Mont Blanc on the
morning of our departure. Swamp Alder (a large shrub with
us) here attaining the size of a considerable tree, so that it is
frequently split into fence-rails ; and stretches of meadow,
carpeted and blazing with the deep scarlet of innumerable
flowers, ā are among my recollections of that lofty, high-
walled valley, so deeply embosomed in the Alps, and so rich
in everything that renders the vicinage of mountains attractive
to civilized man.
Eeturning to Geneva, we took steamboat on Lake Leman
to Lausanne, whence we journeyed by diligence to Berne, and
were to start thence at 4 one morning for Interlachen and the
Bernese Oberland ; but the sudden iUness of a child forbade ;
and we returned to Lausanne, ā a lovely little city, nested
half-way up the side of a long, steep, verdant hill, which
would elsewhere be deemed a mountain, ā where I left my
family in a rented cottage, and hastened back, by Neufchatel,
Basie, and Strasburg, to Paris, where business urgently re-
quired my presence ; leaving France two or three weeks later
for London, Liverpool, and home. I embarked at Liverpool
under a deep impression that something had gone wrong with
my family (which returned in the Autumn to Paris, thence
repaired to Germany, and spent the ensuing Winter at Dres-
den ; returning, via England, to New York the following
Summer). On reaching home, I learned that my mother had