pearly white?

28 “The blood and bruise,—the blue and red,—
    Let Asia’s groaning millions speak!
 The white,—it tells the color fled
    From starving Erin’s pallid cheek!”

The verses were at first circulated as above set down. Campbell afterwards altered the two first lines of the second stanza into:—

impairing it, as some will think, both in force and in whatever poetical expression it may have originally had. Poets are apt to make similar mistakes, frittering away the first glow of thought and language, in revision. Has not Tennyson thus injured “The ride of the six hundred?” and did not Campbell himself half spoil “Hohenlinden,” by taming its phraseology down into a supposed superfluous accuracy? For example, he first wrote,—

29

It occurred to him, or some “stop-watch critic” suggested, that the sun itself was not actually “lurid,” on that celebrated occasion, and he accordingly changed the expression to “level,” thus signifying a mere natural phenomenon; and, besides the sacrifice of a fine poetical expression, forgetting that the sun must have appeared actually “lurid” through the interposition of “the war-clouds, rolling dun.” Nor is this the only instance of misapplied fastidiousness in that splendid and stirring piece.

Then, there was the Rev. Dr. Spring, father of that celebrated clergyman, Dr. Gardiner Spring, of New York. He had been a chaplain in the army of the Revolution; and when I, as a boy, pulled off my cap to him in the street, I fancied there was something a little military in his polite salute in return. The good Doctor held to what were called Hopkinsian tenets, a special form of strict orthodoxy; and it was alleged that, differing from the ordinary practice 30 of religious people in the town, and construing literally the record of the Creation, “The evening and the morning were the first day,”—the Saturday evening was observed with primitive strictness in the family, while on Sunday evening, after sunset, the excellent matron assumed her knitting-work, or attended to whatever secular occupation she chose. I have often thought, and it seems likely, that the name of Swett—that of one of the most eminent and excellent physicians of his day, in our community, and who in fact fell a sacrifice to the faithful discharge of his professional duty—was the same as Schwedt, borne by the Prince de Schwedt, well known at the court of Frederick of Prussia (so called) the Great. The good Doctor examined the throat of a yellow fever patient, in a vessel lying at quarantine ground in the river, and inhaling his infectious breath, went home declaring he had taken the disease, of which he shortly died. The efforts and liberality of 31 his son, the late Colonel Samuel Swett, in promoting the establishment of the Public Library of the town, though himself long a resident in the capital of the State, will forever endear his memory to the inhabitants. The daughter of another distinguished physician, Dr. Sawyer, was Mrs. George Lee, who gained no little reputation by her “Lives of the Ancient Painters,” and especially by a book which attained great popularity under the title of “Three Experiments of Living.” I should do great injustice to a list of noted personages—to some of whom allusion is made elsewhere in these pages, and which might be extended, if consistent with the objects of this work, were I to omit mention of a lady, Miss Hannah F. Gould, whose poetical productions gained her well-deserved applause and many friends, and some of whose highly pleasing verses still retain their hold upon public esteem. Reflectively, too, we might claim some share in the distinction of the most popular American 32 poet of our own day; for the direct ancestors of Longfellow were natives of our immediate vicinage. I had no intention, certainly, of offering any tribute to the living in these memorials of the past; but one name inevitably suggests itself, better known on ’Change, in London, than in the place of his birth. I speak of William Wheelwright, a lad, at the period to which these sketches refer, long resident abroad, though occasionally brought home by the obligations and affections of family ties, to whose enterprise, and arduous, untiring pursuit of his object are owing steam navigation and railway lines in the southern part of this Continent, and to whose praise the whole South American coast will respond.

There were others and many, of high personal character and local reputation, and not a few of strongly marked characteristics, whose names, perhaps, would scarcely sound familiar to modern ears; 33 but I cannot pass over one wealthy merchant, distinguished for his strong common sense and decided individuality, as well as for a success in business scarcely equaled in this country, in his day,—the well-known William Bartlett, to whose judicious bounty the chief theological seminary of the State and its principal Academy for the instruction of youth owe so much toward the assurance of their permanent foundation.

Nor should the memory of Oliver Putnam fail of a record, who, long absent from his native town, provided by his will for a generous bequest, upon which a Free School of the highest character has been long established. Nor should due tribute be forgotten in honor of George Peabody, who, remembering those days of his youth which were passed in acquiring habits of business in the place, distinguished its Public Library by a munificent gift.

There had been many other men of marked character and great local influence: 34 Tracys, Daltons, Greenleafs, Davenports, Hoopers, Bradburys, Johnsons, Coffins, Bromfields, Crosses; and many more, doubtless, might be thought worthy of mention. Among those named above, Nathaniel Tracy was one of the wealthiest merchants of his day, elsewhere referred to in this narrative as suffering immense losses by his advances to the government, when its needs were great and its credit was low, and in other ways. Tristram Dalton was a Senator of the United States from Massachusetts, in the First Congress under the Constitution; and Theophilus Bradbury, afterwards appointed to the bench of the supreme court of the State, was a member of the Federal House of Representatives during a part of Washington’s administration. Indeed, from some of the early inhabitants of the town are descended not a few of the principal families in the capital of the State; and its representatives, by some tie of original or later connection, are scattered throughout the whole country. 35

I linger somewhat longer and lovingly upon this preliminary part of whatever story I may have to tell, because I am aware of nothing in the literature of New England which furnishes precisely similar reminiscences, and because pictures of past manners, if truthfully portrayed, can hardly fail to be both interesting and useful. We heard plentiful stories, in our youth, of a higher style of living in colonial days, of coaches kept by the upper class of citizens; of their slaves, whom we knew in their emancipated condition as gardeners and waiters in general; of the cocked hats, the gold-embroidered garments, the laced ruffles of the gentlemen, and the highly