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I proceed with my letter in the capital of Wisconsin, a pretty little town (mostly consisting of villas and gardens) most beautifully situated between four lakes, the shores of which are fringed with live-oaks. I am here in a good and handsome house on the shore of one of the lakes, surrounded by all the comforts of life, and among kind, cultivated people and friends. At Watertown I discovered that the Public Conveyance Company had given orders that I was to have free transit through all parts of the state, and   [p. 629]   the host of the hotel, where every thing was very good and excellent, would not be paid for my entertainment there, but thanked me for "my call at his house." That one may term politeness!

At Watertown I became acquainted with some Danes who resided there, and spent a pleasant evening with one of them, just married to a young and charming Norwegian lady. They were comfortable, and seemed to be doing well in the city, where he was engaged in trade. An elderly Danish gentleman, however, who also was in trade in the city, did not seem to get on so well, but complained of the want of society and of some cheerful amusement in the long and solitary evenings. He was a widower, and widowers, or indeed men without wives and domestic life in America, lead solitary lives, particularly in small towns and in the country.

I left that kind little city with regret, in order to be shook onward to Madison. My portmanteau had been sent on by mistake from Watertown, by some diligence, I knew not how or whither, but thanks to the electric telegraphs, which sent telegraphic messages in three directions, I received again the next day my lost effects safe and sound. It is remarkable that in all directions throughout this young country, along these rough roads, which are no roads at all, run these electric wires from tree to tree, from post to post, along the prairie-land, and bring towns and villages into communication.

The road to Madison was difficult, but having a greater resemblance to a road than that between Milwaukee and Watertown. There were but few passengers in the diligence, and I was able, therefore, to place myself a little more comfortably; a bright Aurora Borealis shone across the prairie-land as we drove along in that starlight night, and the glow-worms glimmered in the grass which bordered the road. The journey was not unpleasant. The vast, solitary, verdant, billowy extent, embraced by   [p. 630]   the vast, star-lit firmament, had in it something grand and calm. I sat silent and quiet. At half past eleven I reached Madison, where it was with difficulty that room could be found for me at the inn, or that any body would take charge of me. The next day, however, I found both house, and home, and friends, and every thing excellent.

I am with a family of the name of F. The master of the house, who is a judge of the state, is now from home; but his wife and their young married daughter, who resides with her parents, have given me the most agreeable reception. And it is hardly possible to imagine a more charming picture than that which is here presented by the three generations--mother, daughter, and grandchild. The elderly lady is delicate and graceful, and still handsome; the daughter, with a certain look of Jenny Lind about her, and an expression of unspeakable goodness in her blonde countenance, is the most charming of young women, and her little girl is one of those loveable little creatures, which not merely mother and grandmother, but every stranger even, must regard as quite out of the common way, gifted, even while in the cradle, with unusual powers and more than earthly grace. When in the morning I saw the young mother standing with her little child in her arms, and embraced by her mother--that little group standing quietly thus in the sunlit room, all three reposing happily in each other's love--I could not but think, Why do I seek for the Temple of the Sun shining aloft over earth? Is not each sunflower a temple more beautiful than that of Peru or of Solomon? And these people, who love and who worship in spirit and in truth, are not they true sunflowers--the Temple of the Sun upon earth?

The male portion of the family consists for the present of the young son of the house, and this young lady's husband.

October. I have just returned from church. The minister   [p. 631]   preached a sermon strongly condemnatory of the gentlemen of the West. All his hope was in the ladies, and he commended their activity in the Western country. To this not very reasonable and not very judicious sermon succeeded the Lord's Supper, silent, holy, sanctifying, pouring its gracious wine into the weak, faulty, male communicants with the word--not the word of man; with power--not the power of man.

After divine service, the Sunday scholars assembled, and young and handsome ladies instructed each her class of poor children. And how maternally they did it, and how well, especially my young hostess, Mrs. D., whom I could not but observe with the most heartfelt pleasure in the exercise of her maternal vocation.

The weather was bright and sunny, although cold, and I wished to avail myself of the afternoon for an excursion on the beautiful lake, and the observation of its shores. "But --it is Sunday," was the answer which I received with a smile, and on Sundays people must not amuse themselves, not even in God's beautiful scenery. But sleep in church-- that they may do!

October 7th. I had heard speak of a flourishing Norwegian settlement, in a district called Koskonong, about twenty miles from Madison, and having expressed a wish to visit it, a kind young lady, Mrs. C., offered to drive me there with her carriage and horses.

The next day we set off in a little open carriage, with a Norwegian lad as driver. The weather was mild and sunny, and the carriage rolled lightly along the country, which is here hilly, and, having a solid surface, makes naturally good roads. The whole of the first part of the way lay through new and mostly wild, uncultivated land, but which every where resembled an English park, with grassy hills and dales, the grass waving tall and yellow, and scattered with oak wood. The trees were not lofty, and the green sward under them as free from underwood   [p. 632]   as if it had been carefully uprooted. This is attributed to the practice of the Indians to kindle fires year after year upon these grass-grown fields, whereby the bushes and trees were destroyed; and it is not many years since the Indians were possessed of this tract of country.

As we proceeded, however, the land became a little more cultivated. One saw here and there a rudely-built log-house, with its fields of maize around it, and also of new-sown wheat. We then reached a vast billowy prairie, Liberty Prairie, as it is called, which seemed interminable, for our horses were tired, and evening was coming on; nor was it till late and in darkness that we reached Koskonong, and our Norwegian driver, who came from that place, drove us to the house of the Norwegian pastor. This, too, was merely a small log-house.

The Norwegian pastor, Mr. P., had only left Norway to come hither a few months before. His young and pretty wife was standing in the kitchen, where a fire was blazing, boiling groats as I entered. I accosted her in Swedish. She was amazed at first, and terrified by the late visit, as her husband was from home on an official journey, and she was here quite alone with her little brother and an old woman servant; but she received us with true Northern hospitality and good-will, and she was ready to do every thing in the world to entertain and accommodate us. As the house was small, and its resources not very ample, Mrs. C. and her sister drove to the house of an American farmer who lived at some little distance, I remaining over night with the little Norwegian lady. She was only nineteen, sick at heart for her mother, her home, and the mountains of her native land, nor was happy in this strange country, and in those new circumstances to which she was so little accustomed. She was pretty, refined, and graceful; her whole appearance, her dress, her guitar which hung on the wall, every thing showed that she had lived in a sphere very different to that of a log-   [p. 633]   house in a wilderness, and among rude peasants. The house was not in good condition; it rained in through the roof. Her husband, to whom she had not long been married, and whom for love she had accompanied from Norway to the New World, had been now from home for several days; she had neither friend nor acquaintance near nor far in the new hemisphere. It was no wonder that she was unable to see any thing beautiful or excellent in "this disagreeable America." But a young creature, good and lovely as she is, will not long remain lonely among the warm-hearted people of this country. Her little nine-years-old brother was a beautiful boy, with magnificent blue eyes and healthy temperament (although at the present moment suffering from one of the slow, feverish diseases peculiar to the country), and he thought yet of becoming a bishop "like his grandfather in Norway, Bishop Nordahl Brun"--for this young brother and sister were really the grandchildren of Norway's celebrated poet and bishop, Nordahl Brun, whom Norway has to thank for her best national songs. They had come hither by the usual route of the Western emigrants, by the Erie Canal from New York, and then by steamer down the lakes. They complained of uncleanliness and the want of comfort in the canal-boats, and that the people there were so severe with the little boy, whom they drove out of his bed, and often treated ill.

The young lady gave me a remarkably good tea, and a good bed in her room; but a terrific thunder-storm, which prevailed through the whole night, with torrents of rain, disturbed our rest, especially that of my little hostess, who was afraid, and sighed over the life in "this disagreeable country."

Next morning the sun shone, the air was pleasant and mild; and after breakfast with the young lady, during which I did all in my power to inspire her with better feelings toward the country, and a better heart, I went out   [p. 634]   for a ramble. The parsonage, with all its homely thriftiness, was, nevertheless, beautifully situated upon a hill, surrounded by young oaks. The place, with a little care, may be made pretty and excellent. I wandered along the road; the country, glowing with sunshine, opened before me like an immense English park, with a background of the most beautiful arable land, fringed with leafy woods, now splendid with the colors of autumn. Here and there I saw little farm-houses, built on the skirts of the forest, mostly of log-houses; occasionally, however, might be seen a frame house, as well as small gray stone cottages. I saw the people out in the fields busied with their corn-harvest I addressed them in Norwegian, and they joyfully fell into conversation.

I asked many, both men and women, whether they were contented--whether they were better off here than in old Norway? Nearly all of them replied "Yes. We are better off here; we do not work so hard, and it is easier to gain a livelihood." One old peasant only said, "There are difficulties here as well as there. The health is better in the old country than it is here!"

I visited also, with Mrs. P., some of the Norwegian peasant houses. It may be that I did not happen to go into the best of them; but certainly the want of neatness and order I found contrasted strongly with the condition of the poor American cottages. But the Norwegians wisely built their houses generally beside some little river or brook, and understand how to select a good soil. They come hither as old and accustomed agriculturists, and know how to make use of the earth. They help one another in their labor, live frugally, and ask for no pleasures. The land seems to me, on all hands, to be rich, and has an idyllian beauty. Mountains there are none; only swelling hills, crowned with pine-wood. About seven hundred Norwegian colonists are settled in this neighborhood, all upon small farms, often at a great distance one from another.   [p. 635]   There are two churches, or meeting-houses, at Koskonong.

The number of Norwegian immigrants resident at this time in Wisconsin is considered to be from thirty to forty thousand. No very accurate calculation has, however, been made. Every year brings new immigrants, and they often settle upon tracts of country very distant from the other colonists. They call a colony "a settlement," from the English word settlement. I have heard of one called "Luther's Dale," nearer to the limits of Illinois, which is said to be large and remarkably flourishing, and under the direction of an excellent and active pastor, Mr. Claussen. If I could have made the time, I would have gone there.

It is said to be difficult to give to one portion of these Norwegian people any sense of religious or civil order; they are spoken of as obstinate and unmanageable; but they are able tillers of the ground, and they prepare the way for a better race; and their children, when they have been taught in American schools, and after that become servants in the better American families are praised as the best of servants--faithful, laborious, and attached merely difficult to accustom to perfect cleanliness and order. The greater number of domestic servants in these young Mississippi States come from the Norwegian colonies scattered over the country. In a general way, the Norwegians seem to succeed better here than the Swedes. A Norwegian newspaper is published at Madison, called "The Norwegian's Friend," some copies of which I have obtained.

After an excellent breakfast, at which our young hostess, at my request, regaled us also with the songs of her native land, sung to the guitar with a fresh, sweet voice, we took our leave of that amiable lady, who will now find a good friend in Mrs. C., and, through her, many other friends in Madison. We drove home in a shower of rain, stopping now and then by the way to talk with the Norwegian   [p. 636]   people in the fields, and reached Madison as the sun sank amid the most unimaginable splendor, over that beautiful lake district and the city. The prevalence of sunny weather in America makes it easier, and more agreeable, to travel there than any where else. One may be sure of fine weather; and if a heavy shower does come, you may depend upon its soon being over, and that the sun will shortly be out again.

In Madison I have seen a good many people, and some tiresome interrogators (and these I place among the goats), with the usual questions, "How do you like the United States? How do you like Madison? Our roads? Do you know Jenny Lind personally?" and so on. Some interesting and unusually agreeable people I also saw (and these I place among the sheep), who have enough to say without living by questions, and who afforded me some hours of very interesting conversation. Foremost among these must I mention the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Lathrop, an agreeable and really intellectual man, full of life, and a clear and intelligent sense of the value of that youthful state in the group of the United States, and their common value in the history of the world. I derived much pleasure from his conversation, and from the perusal of a speech which he made a short time since in the Capitol here, on his installation as Chancellor of the University. This, together with another speech on the same occasion, by Mr. Hyatt Smith, one of the directors of the Educational Committee, shows a great understanding of the social relationship in general, and of that of the New World in particular; of the relationship of the past with the present, and of the present with the future, and both speeches breathe the noblest spirit. I have heard it remarked, that the characteristic of the speeches of the New World, which distinguishes them from those of Europe, is, that they embrace a much larger extent of subject, and take much broader views, and generally aim at   [p. 637]   comprehending the whole past, present, and future, and the whole of the human race. They take an immense range, place their subjects in large groups, and obtain large views of the relationship of these to the divine law of progressive advance. And to this I may add also, as characteristic, that they do it all by railway, or with railway speed, which brings together the near and the remote with incredible rapidity, and presents the greatest possible opposite to that German circumstantiality which never reaches its goal. I seem to find these characteristics, in a high degree, in those speeches delivered on the prairie-land of the West, in the youngest state of the Union.

Chancellor Lathrop discovers that all material development on the earth which is derived from art and science, has ultimately the effect of throwing back the soul upon itself. The discipline of its powers during the labor which is requisite to obtain possession of the physical world for itself, strengthens and animates it for new conquests in the spiritual world. And a more perfect knowledge of the law of this, prepares us again for a more perfect dominion over the world without us.

"The history of philosophy testifies to this mutual and friendly relation between the sciences of matter and of mind; and in no period have the spiritual tendencies of the race been more observable than in this, stigmatized though it has been, as the mechanical, the material, the iron age of the world. The science of mind has ceased to be regarded as a subject of barren speculation. Its practical bearings are felt and acknowledged. The treasured results of metaphysical inquiry in past ages, since the injunction, 'KNOW THYSELF,' first opened to the pupil and the philosopher a region of mystery and doubt, will pass to coming generations enriched by the contributions of the present, and distinguished by the sunlight which our own gifted intellects are shedding on the science of mind.

  [p. 638]  

"But to tarry no longer in the vestibule, let us enter the inner temple. The prosecution of physical, metaphysical, or mathematical truth derives, after all, its chief value from its bearing on, and connection with, the social principle in man. It is the social part of his constitution, in which is centered mainly the value of an individual, either to himself as a sensitive being, or to the universe as one of its component parts.

"In all questions relative to human progress, therefore, the burden of the inquiry must respect the social advancement of man.

"This inquiry presents a two-fold aspect--the consideration of man, first, as a portion of the universal empire of God; and, secondly, as a political or national society. The constitutions and laws which concern him under the former aspect are moral constitutions and laws; those which concern him under the latter aspect are political constitutions and laws.

"Ask we, then, the ages what historical report they have to bring in of the progress of those moral arrangements, by which God is inviting and enabling man to work out the moral regeneration of his species, to prepare himself for that spiritual life which is to follow his trial here, for the service, the society, and the felicity of that glorious inner temple, to which this physical scene, with its thousands of revealed and still hidden mysteries, is but the court and the vestibule.

"They point us, in reply, to the schools of the philosophers, those earth-born laboratories of ethical truth, to the constitutions of the Hebrews, divine in their original, and to the more glorious and efficacious arrangements of the Christian dispensation, remedial in its nature, and adapted with a divine precision to the moral diseases of man. And under this latter dispensation, in further exemplification of the law of progress, they point us to the canons of the Fathers, to the reformations of Germany and England, to   [p. 639]   the dissent of the Puritans, to the rock of Plymouth, to the thousand clustering institutions and associations of this latter day, subsidiary to the instructions of the pulpit and the labors of the evangelist--all intended, and becoming more and more adapted, to render the prevalence of the Christian faith as universal, as its spirit is intelligent, and rational, and catholic, and benign. They exhibit, in strong contrast, the moral darkness which enveloped our pagan ancestry, with the sunlight which rests on the more favored portions of the Christian world, the believer with a brightening faith, and with a growing knowledge of his manifold duties and high destiny, to discover and to pursue the pathway which leads to the companionship of angelic natures in his spiritual home.

"Ask we, too, the ages what they have done to develop the true theory of political organization, to improve the mechanism of the social system, to impart practical wisdom to its ministrations, in order that the state may discharge its high duty to the citizen, for whose sake it exists, and whose allegiance it claims. They point us, in reply, to the council, of the Amphictyons, to the laws of Lycurgus and of Solon, to the tables of the Roman lawgivers, to the body of the civil law, to Magna Charta, to the Bill of Rights, and to the American Constitution--those precious records of mind, which stand up as pillared inscriptions in the shadowy past, along the lengthened line of civil progress. They exhibit in contrast the wild war of anarchy, with the beneficent reign of social order--the unmitigated despotism of the earlier governments, with the checks and balances of the constitutional monarchies of the day--the wild, unformed democracies of the past, those first experiments of young freedom, with the written constitutions, the perfect action, of the modern representative republics.

"How manifest it is, then, that our age is an age of 'results,' the causes of which lie far behind us in the stream of time."

  [p. 640]  

I have given so much of this speech, because I think that it affords a good specimen of the tendency and impulse of speeches in this country, and especially in the Western country, where society evidently feels itself to belong in a high degree to the citizenship of the world to be universal, because it is composed of people of all nations flowing in hither by emigration; and perhaps also because the immense stretch of landscape in these states of the prairies, leads the soul to take an extensive flight. After his great railway tour round the world, Lathrop finally comes, in his speech, to the duties which the government of the young state of Wisconsin has to fulfill, in order that it may accomplish its great vocation as a home for various nations-- Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Germans, Scandinavians, all directing its being by new elements of life.

"Free schools and public education have every where, in the United States, shown themselves to be the great principle of the popular elevation and development. The American mind has caught the idea, and will not lose sight of it, that the whole of the states' property, public or private, is holden subject to the sacred trust of providing the means of education for every child in the state.

"Unless we adopt this system, that political equality of which we boast is only a dream, a pleasing illusion. Knowledge is the true equalizer; it is the true democracy; it equalizes by elevating, not by bringing down."

The speaker, in recommending the class of education which the University ought to afford, observed, that the character and position of the teacher must be elevated that the want of efficient teachers was a subject of universal complaint; and that, therefore, a normal school should be established for the preparation of efficient teachers for the University.

And that the aim of the library should be to contain every work which is worthy of being possessed, in every   [p. 641]   language and of every age; the whole amount of human thought, and of the experience of society.

"Wisconsin, the youngest state of the Union, established under the most favorable circumstances, able to avail itself of the experience of the older sister-states, rich in a new population composed of various races; rich in its fertile soil, and its advantageous position between the great lakes and the great river--the arteries of the world's commerce --Wisconsin must, Minerva-like, advance in existence, and take the initiative in popular progress and in social life!"

There is here, however, vigorous life, Agatha, and vigorous life must make itself felt, otherwise so young a state could not become a leader; nevertheless, the leaders here have not gone further than to school, and the education of schools, which, as the principal requirement for the people, is on the right system; and beyond that the American mind has in a general way not advanced.

But it must advance further still if it would reach the fountain-heads--the springs of life, wherefrom peoples and states ought to drink the renewing life of youth!

The State of Wisconsin is merely two years old--a very hopeful "baby" of the West, is it not? Seventeen years since the state first became territory; and it is only three or four years since the last great battle was fought in the country with the Indians, and their brave chief Black Hawk. He and his people were finally taken captive on these prairies, and carried as trophies to New York. There are now no longer Indians in Wisconsin; its white population is rapidly on the increase. Wisconsin has no hills, but on all sides uncultivated, and for the most part fertile land, abounding in lakes and rivers. It is a state for agriculture and the rearing of cattle; the land in many parts, however, and in particular around Madison, where it is appropriated by the Federal government to the supplying an income to the state's University, is already very dear. It has been purchased by speculators at the government   [p. 642]   price, a dollar and a quarter per acre, and resold by them for not less than ten or twelve dollars per acre.

"And who will give so much for it?" inquired I of Chancellor Lathrop.

"Your countrymen," replied he, quickly. "Your countrymen, whose sons will be freely educated at our University."

I visited, in company with Chancellor Lathrop and his cheerful, intelligent wife, the University which is in progress of erection, and which will now be soon finished. It stands upon an elevation, "College Hill," as it is called, and which commands an open and extensive view; it is a large building, without any unnecessary pomp of exterior, as in Girard College at Philadelphia, but internally it has ample and spacious room. Many of the windows struck me, lighted up, as they were, by the setting sun. Such, after all, ought the Temple of the Sun to be on the Western prairies! And if it fulfills its expectation, a Temple of the Light in spirit and in truth, more glorious than that of Peru!

It is only a few years since the Indians dwelt around these beautiful lakes; and they still come hither annually in the autumn to visit the graves of their ancestors, and to lift up their cry of lamentation!