I of course visited "Boston Common," "Bunker Hill Monument," "Old South Church," the museums and galleries of painting, rare collections of statuary, and even heard the "Great Organ." These localities are all fraught with interest, but too familiar to tourists to require description or comment; but I cannot leave the readers of this chapter without a tribute of praise to the high attainments of this "Athens of America," and a word of gratitude for their kindness. I found not the cold, phlegmatic nature which had been depicted as that of the Yankee, nor did I see the tight purse-grip so often attributed to them, for I have nowhere met warmer hearts and more generous patronage than there, and indeed all New England was pervaded by an equal spirit of liberality and kindness. Lowell and the other manufacturing towns I visited were to me objects of wonderful interest, the music of whose looms and shuttles, belts and wheels, engines and flame, will ever come in vivid variety amid the many voiced memories of life and its mystic music.
"There is an old belief that in the embers Of all things, their primordial form exists; And cunning Alchemists could recreate The rose, with all its members, From its own ashes--but without the bloom, Without the least perfume. Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes of our hearts Once more the rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time, and change; and for a single hour, Renew this phantom flower?"
Taking New Hampshire in my route, I was pained to find the season too far advanced to admit a trip to White Mountains, and among the great objects of interest I must of necessity omit this "Noblest Roman of them all," and pass silently by the grandeur of this rugged mountain scenery.
I went to Waterbury, Vermont, the birth-place of Mr. Arms, and, after a short rest at the hotel, walked through the meadow, and crossed the clear trout-stream he had so often pictured to me as most prominent among the reminiscences of his boyhood. Going to the homestead now hallowed to me as his birth-place, I was kindly received by the widow of his brother, who needed only the knowledge of my acquaintance with her friends in the West to place me upon a familiar footing, and I became an earnest, attentive listener to her well rendered rehearsal of the pranks of his urchin-hood. So was this day marked as memorable in the calendar of life. From Waterbury I went to Burlington, and thence to Montpelier, and finding the Legislature in session the sale of my books was greatly enhanced by the liberal patronage of its members; and here as elsewhere I had reason to to thank our national convocations.