Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive SketchesVarious
History
Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
Various
Historic buildings -- United States; Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
"Mr. Clay has lived at Ashland forty years. The place bore the name when
he came to it, as he says, probably on account of the ash timber, with
which it abounds; and he has made it the most delightful retreat in all
the West. The estate is about six hundred acres large, all under the
highest cultivation, except some two hundred acres of park, which is
entirely cleared of underbrush and small trees, and is, to use the words
of Lord Morpeth, who staid at Ashland nearly a week, the nearest
approach to an English park of any in this country. It serves for a
noble pasture, and here I saw some of Mr. Clay's fine horses and Durham
cattle. He is said to have some of the finest in America; and if I am
able to judge I confirm that report. The larger part of his farm is
devoted to wheat, rye, hemp, &c., and his crops look most splendidly. He
has also paid great attention to ornamenting his land with beautiful
shade trees, shrubs, flowers, and fruit orchards. From the road which
passes his place on the northwest side, a carriage-road leads up to the
house, lined with locust, cypress, cedar, and other rare trees, and the
rose, jasmine, and ivy, were clambering about them, and peeping through
the grass and the boughs, like so many twinkling fairies, as we drove
up. Mr Clay's mansion is nearly hidden from the road by the trees
surrounding it, and is as quiet and secluded, save to the throng of
pilgrims continually pouring up there to greet its more than royal
possessor, as though it were in the wilderness."
Here let the house, the lawn, the wood, the farm, pass, if they will,
from the mind. They are all well in their way, and were doubtless well
adapted in his time to smooth the care-worn brow, and soothe the
care-fraught breast of the lofty, gallant, frank, winning statesman, who
gave and still gives them all their interest. Be our thoughts
concentrated on him who still lives, and speaks, and sways, though the
clay which enrobed him has been hid from our sight for ever, rather than
on the physical accessories which, but for him, though living to the
corporal sense, are dead to the informing soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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