“It is from a sense of duty, then, that you all go to the liquor store to read the papers?”

“To be sure it is, and he’d be no true born American as didn’t.  I don’t say that the father of a family should always be after liquor, but I do say that I’d rather have my son drunk three times in a week, than not look after the affairs of his country.”

Our autumn walks were delightful; the sun ceased to scorch; the want of flowers was no longer peculiar to Ohio; and the trees took a colouring, which in richness, brilliance, and variety, exceeded all description.  I think it is the maple, or sugar-tree, that first sprinkles the forest with rich crimson; the beech follows, with all its harmony of golden tints, from pale yellow up to brightest orange.  The dog-wood gives almost the purple colour of the mulberry; the chesnut softens all with its frequent mass of delicate brown, and the sturdy oak carries its deep green into the very lap of winter.  These tints are too bright for the landscape painter; the attempt to follow nature in an American autumn scene must be abortive.  The colours are in reality extremely brilliant, but the medium through which they are seen increases the effect surprisingly.  Of all the points in which America has the advantage of England, the one I felt most sensibly was the clearness and brightness of the atmosphere.  By day and by night this exquisite purity of air gives tenfold beauty to every object.  I could hardly believe the stars were the same; the Great Bear looked like a constellation of suns; and Jupiter justified all the fine things said of him in those beautiful lines from I know not what spirited pen, beginning,

    “I looked on thee, Jove! till my gaze
     Shrunk, smote by the pow’r of thy blaze.”

I always remarked that the first silver line of the moon’s crescent attracted the eye on the first day, in America, as strongly as it does here on the third.  I observed another phenomenon in the crescent moon of that region, the cause of which I less understood.  That appearance which Shakespear describes as “the new moon, with the old moon in her lap,” and which I have heard ingeniously explained as the effect of earth light, was less visible there than here.

Cuyp’s clearest landscapes have an atmosphere that approaches nearer to that of America than any I remember on canvas; but even Cuyp’s air cannot reach the lungs, and, therefore, can only give an idea of half the enjoyment; for it makes itself felt as well as seen, and is indeed a constant source of pleasure.

Our walks were, however, curtailed in several directions by my old Cincinnati enemies, the pigs; immense droves of them were continually arriving from the country by the road that led to most of our favourite walks; they were often fed and lodged in the prettiest valleys,and worse still, were slaughtered beside the prettiest streams.  Another evil threatened us from the same quarter, that was yet heavier.  Our cottage had an ample piazza, (a luxury almost universal in the country houses of America), which, shaded by a group of acacias, made a delightful sitting-room; from this favourite spot we one day perceived symptoms of building in a field close to it; with much anxiety we hastened to the spot, and asked what building was to be erected there.