and along the White River till we joined the Connecticut, along whose banks we travelled to Brattleborough, Deerfield, and Northampton. The scenery of New-Hampshire and Vermont is that to which the attention of travellers will hereafter be directed, perhaps more emphatically than to the renowned beauties of Virginia. I certainly think the Franconia Defile the noblest mountain-pass I saw in the United States.

CHANNING.

"And, let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue."-IZAAK WALTON.

THERE is no task more difficult than that of speaking of one's intimate friends in print. It is well that the necessity occurs but seldom, for it is a task which it is nearly impossible to do well. Some persons think it as dangerous as it is difficult; but I do not feel this. If a friendship be not founded on a mutual knowledge so extensive as to leave nothing to be learned by each of the opinions of the other regarding their relation; and if, moreover, either party, knowing what it is to speak to the public-the act of all acts most like answering at the bar of eternal judgment-can yet be injuriously moved by so much of the character and circumstances being made known as the public has an interest in, such a friendship is not worthy of the name; and if it can be thus broken up, it had better be so. In the case of a true friendship there is no such danger; for it is based upon something very different from mutual ignorance, and depends upon something much more stable than the ignorance of the world concerning the parties.

Dr. Channing is, of all the public characters of the United States, the one in whom the English feel the most interest. After much consideration, I have decided that to omit, because the discussion is difficult to myself, the subject most interesting to my readers, and one on which they have, from Dr. Channing's position, a right to information, would be wrong. Accounts have already been given of him; one, at

least, to his disadvantage. There is no sufficient reason why a more friendly one should be withheld, while the account is strictly limited to those circumstances and appearances which might meet the observation of a stranger or a common acquaintance. All revelations made to me through the hospitalities of his family or by virtue of friendship will be, of course, carefully suppressed.

Dr. Channing spends seven or eight months of the year in Rhode Island, at Oakland, six miles from Newport. There I first saw him, being invited by him and Mrs. Channing to spend a week with them. This was in September, 1835. I afterward stayed a longer time with them in Boston.

The last ten miles of the journey to Dr. Channing's house from Boston is very pretty in fine weather. The road passes through a watery region, where the whims of sunshine and cloud are as various and as palpable as at sea. The road passes over a long bridge to the island, and affords fine glimpses of small islands in the spreading river, and of the distant main with its breakers. The stage set me down at the garden-gate at Oakland, whither my host came out to receive me. I knew it could be no other than Dr. Channing, but his appearance surprised me. He looked younger and pleasanter than I had expected. The common engraving of him is undeniably very like, but it does not altogether do him justice. A bust of him was modelled by Persico the next winter, which is an admirable likeness; favourable, but not flattering. Dr. Channing is short, and very slightly made. His countenance varies more than its first aspect would lead the stranger to suppose it could. mirth it is perfectly changed, and very remarkable. The lower part of other faces is the most expressive of mirth; not so with Dr. Channing's, whose muscles keep very composed, while his laughter pours out at his eyes. I have seen him laugh till it seemed doubtful where the matter would end, and I could not but wish that the expression of face could be dashed into the canvass at the moment. His voice is, however, the great charm. I do not mean in the pulpit of what it is there I am not qualified to speak, for I could not hear a tone of his preaching; but in conversation his voice becomes delightful after one is familiarized with it. At first his tones partake of the unfortunate dryness of his manner; but, by use, they grow, or seem to grow, more and more genial, till, at last, the ear waits and watches for them.

In

Of the "repulsiveness" of his manners on a first acquaintance he is himself aware; though not, I think, of all the evil it causes, in compelling mere strangers to carry away a wrong idea of him, and in deterring even familiar acquaintances from opening their minds, and letting their speech run on as freely to him as he earnestly desires that it should.

It might not be difficult to account for this manner, but this is not the place in which we have to do with any but the facts of the case. The natural but erroneous conclusion of most strangers is, that the dryness proceeds from spiritual pride; and all the more from there being an appearance of this in Dr. Channing's writings-in the shape of rather formal declarations of ways of thinking as his own, and of accounts of his own views and states of mindstill as his own. Any stranger thus impressed will very shortly be struck, be struck speechless, by evidences of humility, of generous truth, and meek charity, at such variance with the manner in which other things have been said as to overthrow all hasty conclusions. It was thus with me, and I know that it has been so with others. Those superficial observers of Dr. Channing who, carrying in their own minds the idea of his being a great man, suppose that the same idea is in his, and even kindly account for his faults of manner on this ground, do him great injustice, whatever may be his share of the blame of it. No children consulting about their plays were ever farther from the idea of speaking like an oracle than Dr. Channing; and the notion of condescending-of his being in a higher, while others are in a lower spiritual state-would be dismissed from his mind, if it ever got in, with the abhorrence with which the good chase away the shadows of evil from their souls. I say this confidently, the tone of his writings notwithstanding; and I say it, not as a friend, but from such being the result of a very few hours' study of him. Whenever his conversation is not earnest and it is not always earnest-it is for the sake of drawing out the person he is talking with, and getting at his views. The method of conversation is not to be defended -even on the ground of expediency-for a person's real views are not to be got at in this way, no one liking to be managed; but Dr. own part in this kind of conversation is not played in the spirit of condescension, but of inquiry. One proof of this is the use he makes of the views of the persons with whom he converses. Nothing is lost

Channing is

upon him. He lays up what he obtains for meditation; and it reappears, sooner or later, amplified, enriched, and made perfectly his own. I believe that he is, to a singular degree, unconscious of both processes, and unaware of his part in them, both the drawing out of information and the subsequent assimilation; but both are very evident to the observation of even strangers.

One of the most remarkable instances of all this is in the case of Mr. Abdy's visit to Dr. Channing and its results. Mr. Abdy has thought fit to publish the conversation he had with Dr. Channing, and had an undoubted right to do so, as he gave fair warning on the spot that he visited Dr. Channing as a public character, and should feel himself at liberty to report the circumstances of his visit. It is not necessary to repeat the substance of the conversation as it stands in Mr. Abdy's book; but it is necessary to explain that Mr. Abdy was not aware of his host's peculiarities of manner and conversation, and that he misunderstood him; and that, on the other hand, no stranger could be expected to make allowance for the unconsciousness which Dr. Channing expressed of the condition of the free coloured population of America. Some mutual friends of the two gentlemen tried to persuade Mr. Abdy not to publish the conversation he had with Dr. Channing till he knew him better; and Mr. Abdy, very reasonably, thought that what was said was said, and might, honourable warning having been given, be printed.

Immediately after Mr. Abdy's departure, Dr. Channing took measures to inform himself of the real state of the case of the blacks; and, within the next month, preached a thorough-going abolition sermon. He laid so firm a grasp on the fundamental principles of the case as to satisfy the farsighted and practised abolitionists themselves who were among his audience. The subject was never again out of his mind; and during my visit the next autumn, our conversation was more upon that topic than any other. Early in the winter after he published his book on slavery. This has since been followed by his Letter to Birney, and by his noble Letter to Clay on the subject of Texas, of all his works the one by which his most attached friends and admirers would have him judged and remembered.

No one out of the United States can have an idea of the merit of taking the part which Dr. Channing has adopted on

this question. Abroad, whatever may be thought of the merits of the productions, the act of producing them does not seem great. It appears a simple affair enough for an influential clergyman to declare his detestation of outrageous injustice and cruely, and to point out the duty of his fellowcitizens to do it away. But it is not a very easy or simple matter on the spot. Dr. Channing lives surrounded by the aristocracy of Boston, and by the most eminent of the clergy of his own denomination, whose lips are rarely opened on the question except to blame or to ridicule the abolitionists. The whole matter was, at that time, considered "a low subject," and one not likely, therefore, to reach his ears. He dislikes associations for moral objects; he dislikes bustle and ostentation; he dislikes personal notoriety; and, of course, he likes no better than other people to be the object of censure, of popular dislike. He broke through all these temptations to silence the moment his convictions were settled; I mean not his convictions of the guilt and evil of slavery, but of its being his duty to utter his voice against it. From his peaceful and honoured retirement he came out into the storm, which might, and probably would, be fatal to his reputation, his influence, his repose, and, perhaps, to more blessings than even these. Thus the case appears to the eye of a passing traveller.

These bad consequences have only partially followed, but he could not anticipate that. As it has turned out, Dr. Channing's reputation and influence have risen at home and abroad precisely in proportion to his own progress on the great question; to the measure of justice which he learned by degrees to deal out to the abolitionists, till, in his latest work, he reached the highest point of all. His influence is impaired only among those to whom it does not seem to have done good; among those who were vain of him as a pastor and a fellow-citizen, but who have not strength and light to follow his guidance in a really difficult and obviously perilous path. He has been wondered at and sighed over in private houses, rebuked and abused in Congress, and foamed at in the South; but his reputation and influence are far higher than ever before; and by his act of self-devotion he has been, on the whole, a great gainer, though not, of course, holding a position so enviable (though it may look more so) as that of some who moved earlier, and have risked and suffered more in the same cause.