public office, even of the lowest kinds, is to the advantage of the opponents of the Fugitive Slave Law. A United States marshal in the New England States would run a better chance of bringing his victim down if he hunted with a pack of Irish beagles. In the Slave States, where the negroes have decidedly the advantage over the Irish in houses, habits, and general consideration, the scorn with which they look on them as "white treish,' is exceedingly amusing. Nor is the feeling less keen in the Free States, where social advantages are all on the side of the Irish population. We were walking up a hilly street in Newport some time after our arrival, when a party of little mulatto boys coming out of school were engaged in blackguarding each other: one at length used an epithet to which, for a moment, his adversary could find no bad word strong enough to reply; when, trembling with rage, he shook his fist in his opponent's face, and stammered out, "You-you Irish niggar, you!" Our reflections on the helotry of the United States are broken in upon by the captain of the boat, who opens the doors which have kept us closely penned like travellers waiting in a French railway station, and the passengers for Newport pour forth by the light of a few lanterns. A hand is laid upon our shoulder as we step from the gangway. "My name is Pennifeather-what's yourn?" says a rough voice, not unkindly. Just fresh from England, and perfect strangers to Newport and its population, we are a little startled by this stand-and-deliver demand upon our personality. Really," we say, with English hesitation, "we don't know why you "It's "Wal now!" says Pennifeather, putting his arms a-kimbo. as you please, you know. Only if you was Miss Archer's relative that she's bin speerin' out for for these two weeks, and if these here is your folks and luggage, she said you was to git into my coach and let me drive you." Inimitable doctor! Prince of all hack-drivers!-dressed in a fancy waistcoat; in warm weather seldom covered by a coat, but gay with inassy chain and turquoise studs! If the doctor does not wear a coat he always wears his hat: paying visits in it when he comes to be paid, and sits on the best chair in your drawing-room. Honest and kindly! Good to man and beast-with a vein of Yankee humour which Haliburton would "find it pay" to spend a season here and study; the doctor is one of the originals of the little town. His veterinary practice gives him his handle to his name, but that he is modest about assuming it is proved by a series of new cards that have been printed of late W. C. PENNIFEATHER (Commonly called the Doctor). As we ride up the hill on which the town (mostly of wood) is built, passing through Washington-square, and past the quaint respectable old Court-house, where Washington gave audience, and where a portrait of him which claims to be authentic is now shown, let us fill up the time by giving you a few anecdotes of our coachman, which will give you a better idea than any formal description, of the state of manners in this little town. This evening, when the boat comes in from Providence, the doctor will be standing on the wharf, and hailing any of the principal inhabitants-acquaintances of our good kinswoman-whom he sees aboard, will sing out, long before she reaches her wharf, "Mr. Smith!-Miss Partington !-Miss Archer's family is come! I driv 'em up as soon as they stepped on shore this mornin'." "Mr. Pennifeather, your bill is wrong," we shall remark, on some future day of settling old scores. "Wal-make it right yourself then. You is folks that I can trust, and I ain't so perticular about makin' out a bill agin you. I have got to keep a pretty sharp look-out on some of the hotel folks though." Some day during the heat of summer a head and a hat will be poked through the shrubbery into the window of our drawing-room, with, "Wal now come to tell you, that you can't have that carry: all you sent for this afternoon-'cos I ain't got a hos that's fit for a gal to drive." And with a strong aroma of cigar smoke left behind to testify the visit, the conscientious doctor draws his head out of the room. We were telling our kinswoman of our meeting with him on the wharf, and she gave us, as we now are giving to the reader, a good many characteristic anecdotes which opened our eyes to the nature of the character we had stumbled upon. Coming one day from Providence, and seized, as usual, on the wharf by the doctor, always on the look-out for unprotected females (gentlemen and the ladies they escort he leaves to his subordinate hack-drivers), she was handed into a stage with some very unpleasant-looking people in one corner. The gentle lady endured it for some moments, and then, beckoning to the doctor, said, unwilling to hurt the feelings of the people in whose company she found herself, "I think, as it is coming on to rain, I had rather have a closer carriage -can't you find me one ?" "I reckon I can," said Pennifeather, letting down the steps with an iron clang. "And you're about right about gittin' out o' this one; 'cos I've got to take them folks to gaol, and leave 'em there, afore I drive you home." Our last anecdote of Pennifeather-last too in point of time, for it happened not long since-is a very characteristic one. "Mrs. Archer says, Dr. Pennifeather," said our servant, "that the last time you sent her a carriage the driver had on an old dirty checked coat, and a Scotch cap, while the carriage and horses were handsome enough; and that she cannot drive with such a shabby-looking coachman-you must send her a better one." "Wal now," said the doctor, "tell Miss Archer I'll do my best. But I don't know as I've got a man that's got a black hat and a blue coat. My men ain't got no taste in dress-and that's a fact!-I often tell em so !” We find ourselves standing on the porch of a small Grecian temple, built of wood, with green blinds, chimney-pots, and lightning-rods! The first notion of the American settlers in this country, when frame-houses replaced the first rough huts of logs, was to build houses warm and tight, *It is a peculiarity of Yankees who use the vulgar tongue to say "Miss" instead of " Mrs.," when speaking of a married woman. with sloping roofs, so cunningly contrived as to prevent the snow from lodging there. It is curious to go into a New England village, and watch a taste for architecture beginning to dawn. First comes the idea of paint. "Paint costs nothing," says a wise Dutch proverb. Next, some eccentric man of wealth invents a house, taking some young and enterprising carpenter into his councils. No proverb is more true than that which says "A man must build one house to learn how to build another." Our pioneer in taste, after spending much more money than he meant to do (of course), will end by being owner of a pile of woodwork, on which every ornament and invention that he or his carpenter have ever heard of will be accumulated. My father's going to have something more upon his house than your father," said the son of one of these ambitious individuals to a schoolfellow, whose parent was attempting to rival his Chinese-Greco-Gothic-Yankee abortion. 66 "What is he going to put on it now? You got your cupola fixed last week," was the answer. "Well, I don't know exactly what; but I heard father telling mother last night that it was going to have a mortgage on it." What an admirable commentary on those happy lines by Waller! If you have these whims of apartments and gardens, Of twice fifty acres you'll ne'er see five farthings; Ere you've finish'd your house you'll have spent your estate. Happily, an enterprising Yankee holds his landed property in the world of thought, and when one branch of business fails he "squats" upon some other "notion." He has the bone and sinew which Macawber lacked, and a great back country, and "Tom Tidler's ground" in which to repair his broken fortunes; although it must be conceded that many more fortunes are lost than made in California-that Pandora's box, with which defeated Mexico revenged herself upon her conquerors. To these original inventions generally succeeds a period of Grecian architecture. Models of the Parthenon, with cast-iron railings running round the second story, inserted half-way up the columns to be a sort of bedroom balcony. A few years pass, and a reaction against Greece takes place. The roofs have shot up into points and peaks, the windows have contracted, and every house is a fresh specimen of the order of AmericanGothic, improved upon in after-supper dreams by some inventive carpenter. After this, when there is wealth, and foreign travel, and good taste, a reign of better things may be expected to begin. Stone houses come into fashion, and architects to build them are frequently employed. It is said that each man has his stingy point; his old shoes, or his candle-ends, or postage-stamps, or letter-backs, on which he likes to expend his penny wisdom. The national "stingy point" of an American is always in invention. Why cannot he build just as good a house as any architect? Why should he pay another man for "notions" when he has a head-full of his own? With stone houses comes in a taste for landscape gardening, which has been increasing on the sea-board of the United States for the last twelve or fifteen years, and the American mania for upholstery steps in to injure the fresh simplicity of many a sea side cottage, which would look as lovely in roses and white muslin as a young maiden at her first ball. Newport is dotted with handsome villas, of all sorts of tastes and kinds, each prophesying more surely than physiognomy or dress the taste and disposition of its owner. One of the most home-like is that built by Mr. Bancroft, the historian and late ambassador. It is a low, brown, inexpensive wooden house, commanding a noble view of sea and cliff, of surf and breakers, with flower-beds, on which great personal care has been bestowed, sloping down to the very edge of the ocean. The land along these cliffs has been a little California to its original proprietors. Within seven years its price has risen from 200 dollars an acre to 3600 dollars. One cause of this influx of rich strangers is the superiority of the summer climate of Newport over that of any other on the Atlantic coast. The oppressive heats of summer rarely visit it. Its nights are always cool; its grass is always fresh; and at sunset there is always a sea-breeze upon its beaches. For this freshness it is indebted, in a great measure, to its heavy sea-fogs, which wrap the island in a veil of mist, rolling upon you dense as smoke, often without ten minutes' warning. In the night unearthly sounds will often break upon your rest: it is the steam-whistle, warning vessels coming on the coast in one of these dense fogs of the nearness of the danger. These fogs are destructive to pretty summer muslin robes and neatly starched shirt-collars, while barège becomes as stiff as crinoline, and silk-gowns creased and mottled by their clammy touch. They visit Newport chiefly during the height of summer. And while the pavements of the cities almost melt with fervent heat, Newport and its visitors are wrapped in the soft, grateful dampness of a veil of fog. The early settlers fancied that they found a resemblance in these fogs to the soft mists that shroud the Isle of Wight, and named their city "Newport," after its principal town. To return to houses in Newport. Another peculiarity is their migratory character. That a house should continue to stand many years in the place where it was built is rarely contemplated by the proprietor. Often it is moved a mile. These operations mostly take place in spring and autumn, when almost any day some street or other will be blocked up by a tall house in transitu, generally with all the furniture standing inside of it; and occasions have been known of the family sleeping in their own beds every night during the journey. The stone foundation of the house is abandoned, and a new one prepared. The frame-building is loosened, lifted off, and placed on rollers. It is then worked slowly forward by a windlass, turned by an old white horse, who has assisted in the transport of hundreds of Newport houses. No size seems to arrest the emigrative propensities of these wooden buildings. A church was cut into three slices, and moved piecemeal, within the last three months; and an immense hotel, with one hundred feet of front, standing too closely upon the street for the taste of its proprietor, was lately moved back about twenty yards! Come down on the beaches with us, reader-the glorious beaches on whose shelving sand roller after roller of surf (often seven at a time) swells in its stately march until it breaks, scattering its silver foam. See how the opal edge of the great wave is fringed with silver light for one brief moment, ere it breaks for one long mile along the shore. We never walk along the Newport beach or on its cliffs without an echo in our heart from the picture-page of Shelley: I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown; I sit upon the sands alone, The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion. How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion! It cannot be true, as we are told, that this verse was "written in dejection." The sweet influences of the scene that it describes must have given a temporary happiness at least to him whose heart was open to such impressions. It seems to have been written for Newport-for one of our half-hazy autumn days, when Nature lies at noonday half-asleep, enjoying some bright daydream. The nearest beach is three-quarters of a mile from the town, and they are three in number. The first is a mile in length, the second a mile and a half. They are divided by a tongue of land, the geological features of which are said to be very curious. Here the devil, years ago, pursued a wicked soul, and left the print of his red-hot iron hoof upou the rock, on which he stamped with all his force, and a yawning chasm let him and his victim into the realm of purgatory. That chasm has never closed, and like similar ones in the Swiss glaciers, no line has ever sounded its depths, and no stone is ever heard to touch the bottom. There are no houses built around the beach, as there would be in England, no marquee with its circulating books, and chairs for those who like to pass their morning on the sands, and watch the ebb or rising of the ocean. The reasons for this are various. Firstly, this out-door life is neither suited to an hotel belle, nor to the Marthas of American private life, "much cumbered" with domestic occupation. In the next place, the great power of the sun would make sitting on a beach under his glare entirely impossible; and, lastly, the bathing arrangements are such that no one would desire a family view of the beach during the bathing-hours. No bathing-machines are used, but along the beach stand rows of little shanties, each a trifle larger than a sentry-box, just capable of accommodating yourself and a colony of spiders, every variety of which may here be found. If you will go with us to the beach at 10 A.M. on a fine day in August (the height of the Newport season), you may see issuing forth from these frail tenements all the beauty and fashion of Newport, the same that floated past you last night in the ball. "Old men and children, young men and maidens," in every variety of fancy tunic. "Women in every description of bathing dress. Old women, young women, thin women, thick women, big feet, little feet, red feet, brown feet, rushing about. Carriages of all kinds. Fast' men, fast horses, universal confusion." Such is a description of Newport beach at bathingtime, and every visitor to Newport will bear witness to its accuracy. Young, pretty girls, dressed completely à la Bloomer, in scarlet, yellow, blue, or orange serge, immensely full, with double, treble, and quadruple skirts, trimmed with an endless number of yards of worsted galloon, and VOL. XXXIX. 2 Q |