The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VI. (Of VII): Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, Plus Personal Sketches and Tributes and Historical PapersWhittier, John Greenleaf
History
The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VI. (Of VII): Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, Plus Personal Sketches and Tributes and Historical Papers
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Biography; History
"We have recently journeyed through a portion of this, free State; and it
is not all imagination in us that sees, in its bold scenery, its
uninfected inland position, its mountainous but fertile and verdant
surface, the secret of the noble predisposition of its people. They are
located for freedom. Liberty's home is on their Green Mountains. Their
farmer republic nowhere touches the ocean, the highway of the world's
crimes, as well as its nations. It has no seaport for the importation of
slavery, or the exportation of its own highland republicanism. Should
slavery ever prevail over this nation, to its utter subjugation, the last
lingering footsteps of retiring Liberty will be seen, not, as Daniel
Webster said, in the proud old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, about
Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall; but she will be found wailing, like
Jephthah's daughter, among the 'hollows' and along the sides of the Green
Mountains.
"Vermont shows gloriously at this autumn season. Frost has gently laid
hands on her exuberant vegetation, tinging her rock-maple woods without
abating the deep verdure of her herbage. Everywhere along her peopled
hollows and her bold hillslopes and summits the earth is alive with
green, while her endless hard-wood forests are uniformed with all the
hues of early fall, richer than the regimentals of the kings that
glittered in the train of Napoleon on the confines of Poland, when he
lingered there, on the last outposts of summer, before plunging into the
snow-drifts of the North; more gorgeous than the array of Saladin's life-
guard in the wars of the Crusaders, or of 'Solomon in all his glory,'
decked in, all colors and hues, but still the hues of life. Vegetation
touched, but not dead, or, if killed, not bereft yet of 'signs of life.'
'Decay's effacing fingers' had not yet 'swept the hills' 'where beauty
lingers.' All looked fresh as growing foliage. Vermont frosts don't seem
to be 'killing frosts.' They only change aspects of beauty. The mountain
pastures, verdant to the peaks, and over the peaks of the high, steep
hills, were covered with the amplest feed, and clothed with countless
sheep; the hay-fields heavy with second crop, in some partly cut and
abandoned, as if in very weariness and satiety, blooming with
honeysuckle, contrasting strangely with the colors on the woods; the fat
cattle and the long-tailed colts and close-built Morgans wallowing in it
up to the eyes, or the cattle down to rest, with full bellies, by ten in
the morning. Fine but narrow roads wound along among the hills, free
almost entirely of stone, and so smooth as to be safe for the most rapid
driving, made of their rich, dark, powder-looking soil. Beautiful
villages or scattered settlements breaking upon the delighted view, on
the meandering way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement and
admiration. The air fresh, free, and wholesome; the road almost dead
level for miles and miles, among mountains that lay over the land like
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