10100

SUNNY MEMORIES

OF

FOREIGN LANDS.

BY

MRS HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,
AUTHOR OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," ETC.

"When thou haply seest

Some rare note-worthy object in thy travels,
Make me partaker of thy happiness."

SHAKSPEARE.

London:

T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;

AND EDINBURGH.

MDCCCLIV.

TISH

PREFACE.

THIS book will be found to be truly what its name denotes, 66 Sunny Memories."

If the criticism be made that everything is given couleur de rose, the answer is, Why not? They are the impressions, as they arose, of a most agreeable visit. How could they be otherwise? If there be characters and scenes that seem drawn with too bright a pencil, the reader will consider that, after all, there are many worse sins than a disposition to think and speak well of one's neighbours. To admire and to love may now and then be tolerated, as a variety, as well as to carp and criticize. America and England have heretofore abounded towards each other in illiberal criticisms. There is not an unfavourable aspect of things in the old world which has not become perfectly familiar to us; and a little of the other side may have a useful influence.

The writer has been decided to issue these letters principally, however, by the persevering and deliberate attempts, in certain quarters, to misrepresent the circumstances which are here given. So long as these misrepresentations affected only those who were predetermined to believe unfavourably, they were not regarded. But as they have had some influence, in certain cases, upon really excellent and honest people, it is desirable that the truth should be plainly told.

The object of publishing these letters is, therefore, to give to those who are true-hearted and honest the same agreeable picture of life and manners which met the writer's own eyes. She had in view a wide circle of friends throughout her own country, be

tween whose hearts and her own there has been an acquaintance and sympathy of years, and who, loving excellence, and feeling the reality of it in themselves, are sincerely pleased to have their sphere of hopefulness and charity enlarged. For such, this is written; and if those who are not such begin to read, let them treat the book as a letter not addressed to them, which, having opened by mistake, they close and pass to the true owner.

The English reader is requested to bear in mind that the book has not been prepared in reference to an English but an American public, and to make due allowance for that fact. It would have placed the writer far more at ease had there been no prospect of publication in England. As this, however, was unavoidable, in some form, the writer has chosen to issue it there under her own sanction.

There is one acknowledgment which the author feels happy to make, and that is, to those publishers in England, Scotland, France, and Germany, who have shewn a liberality beyond the requirements of legal obligation. The author hopes that the day is not far distant when America will reciprocate the liberality of other nations by granting to foreign authors those rights which her own receive from them.

The Journal which appears in the continental tour is from the pen of the Rev. C. Beecher. The Letters were, for the most part, compiled from what was written at the time and on the spot. Some few were entirely written after the author's return.

It is an affecting thought that several of the persons who appear in these letters as among the living, have now passed to the great future. The Earl of Warwick, Lord Cockburn, Judge Talfourd, and Dr Wardlaw, are no more among the ways of men. Thus, while we read, while we write, the shadowy procession is passing; the good are being gathered into life, and heaven enriched by the garnered treasures of earth.

H. B, S.

SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.

3

LETTER I.

Liverpool, April 11, 1853.

MY DEAR CHILDREN,-You wish, first of all, to hear of the voyage. Let me assure you, my dears, in the very commencement of the matter, that going to sea is not at all the thing that we have taken it to be.

You know how often we have longed for a sea-voyage, as the fulfilment of all our dreams of poetry and romance, the realization of our highest conceptions of free, joyous existence.

You remember our ship-launching parties in Maine, when we used to ride to the seaside through dark pine forests, lighted up with gold, scarlet, and orange tints of autumn. What exhilaration there was, as those beautiful inland bays, one by one, unrolled like silver ribbons before us! and how all our sympathies went forth with the grand new ship about to be launched! How graceful and noble a thing she looked, as she sprang from the shore to the blue waters, like a human soul springing from life into immortality! How all our feelings went with her! how we longed to be with her, and a part of her-to go with her to India, China, or anywhere, so that we might rise and fall on the bosom of that magnificent ocean, and share a part of that glorified existence! That ocean! that blue, sparkling, heaving, mysterious ocean, with all the signs and wonders of heaven emblazoned on its bosom, and another world of mystery hidden beneath its waters! Who would not long to enjoy a freer communion, and rejoice in a prospect of days spent in unreserved fellowship with its grand and noble nature?

Alas! what a contrast between all this poetry and the real prose fact of going to sea! No man, the proverb says, is a hero to his valet de chambre. Certainly, no poet, no hero, no inspired prophet, ever lost so much on near acquaintance as this same mystic, grandiloquent old Ocean. The one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, is never taken with such alacrity as in a sea-voyage.

In the first place, it is a melancholy fact, but not the less true, that shiplife is not at all fragrant; in short, particularly in a steamer, there is a most mournful combination of grease, steam, onions, and dinners in general, either past, present, or to come, which, floating invisibly in the atmosphere, strongly predisposes to that disgust of existence, which, in half an hour after sailing, begins to come upon you; that disgust, that strange, mysterious, ineffable sensation which steals slowly and inexplicably upon you; which makes every heaving billow, every white-capped wave, the ship, the people, the sight, taste sound, and smell of everything a matter of inexpressible loathing! Man cannot utter it.

It is really amusing to watch the gradual progress of this epidemic; to see people stepping on board in the highest possible feather, alert, airy, nimble, parading the deck, chatty and conversable, on the best possible terms with