Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/107

Rh generally in the Senate. In the afternoons some of my friends among the senators frequently drive me out to various places in the neighbourhood; and in the evenings I receive visitors. During such a drive to-day with Governor Seward, he related to me the circumstance in his life which aroused his inextinguishable abhorrence of slavery, and his unwavering opposition to it.

Yesterday afternoon I drove with the senators from Illinois, and Miss Lynch, to an old battle-field, now a churchyard, on the banks of the Potomac. When I stood with General Shield, and beheld from this spot the extensive view of the river-banks, scattered with hamlets and churches, and villas and cottages, amid their garden-grounds, he exclaimed as he pointed it out, “See! This is America!” And so it is. The true life of the New World is not to be seen in great cities, with great palaces and dirty alleys, but in the abundance of its small communities, of its beautiful private dwellings, with their encircling fields and groves, in the bosom of grand scenery, by the sides of vigorous rivers, with mountains and forests, and all appliances for a vigorous and affluent life. One of the peculiar appliances for this vigour and affluence of life are the magnificent rivers, the many streams of water with which North America abounds, and which promote the circulation of life, both physically and spiritually, and which bring into connection all points of the Union one with another. The circulation of life and population is already very great in the United States, and it becomes greater every day by means of new steam-boat communication and new rail-roads. The North travels to the South, and the South to the North, to and fro, like shuttles in the weaver's loom, partly for business, partly on account of the climate. The Northerners love, during the winter months, to warm themselves in summer air, and to gather flowers in Carolina and Florida (as well as in Cuba, which indeed lies out of the political, but not out