No More Learning

[Illustration: _Montreal from Mount Royal_]

We left Montreal Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon.
In the La Prairie cars the Yankees made themselves merry, imitating
the cries of the charette-drivers to perfection, greatly to the
amusement of some French-Canadian travelers, and they kept it up all
the way to Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St. Johns,
and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray
greatcoats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell
back between their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up
over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place
now. They looked as if they would be convenient and proper enough as
long as the coats were new and tidy, but would soon come to have a
beggarly and unsightly look, akin to rags and dust-holes. We reached
Burlington early in the morning, where the Yankees tried to pass off
their Canada coppers, but the newsboys knew better. Returning through
the Green Mountains, I was reminded that I had not seen in Canada such
brilliant autumnal tints as I had previously seen in Vermont. Perhaps
there was not yet so great and sudden a contrast with the summer heats
in the former country as in these mountain valleys. As we were passing
through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood at some distance
in a field, one passenger exclaimed, so that all in the car could hear
him, "There, there's not so good a house as that in all Canada! " I did
not much wonder at his remark, for there is a neatness, as well as
evident prosperity, a certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to
speak, when not rich, about a New England house, as if the proprietor
could at least afford to make repairs in the spring, which the
Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they are no better
constructed than a stone barn would be with us; the only building,
except the chateau, on which money and taste are expended, being the
church. In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for
the chateau, and while every village here contains at least several
gentlemen or "squires," _there_ there is but one to a seigniory.

I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada
and traveled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey,
including two guide-books and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and
a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy-five cents. I do not suppose
that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a
cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as
seen by Hearne or Mackenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting
features would be omitted.
I wished to go a little way behind the word
_Canadense_, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should
like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the
wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called _Iter
Canadense_.




NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS[3]


Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read
in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground,
of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of
the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the
rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting
of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of
health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered, when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,
Its own memorial,--purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God's cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter's task again.

I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries,
poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer
glories? There is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East
Main, which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal
are these States! If there were no other vicissitudes than the
seasons, our interest would never tire. Much more is adoing than
Congress wots of. What journal do the persimmon and the buckeye keep,
and the sharp-shinned hawk? What is transpiring from summer to winter
in the Carolinas, and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley of the
Mohawk? The merely political aspect of the land is never very
cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a
political organization. On this side all lands present only the
symptoms of decay.