LOVE AND CHAMPAIGN. 169 away. I know, too, that the ominous glow which alcohol ever excites in both sexes, is denominated oft by a softened name; but not so does human observation or the word of God proclaim. Both unite in establishing the reverse. Listen, in the Bacchanalian, midnight concourse where wine has been permitted, to the boisterous glee-the refusal to retire-the indelicate allusion-the kiss provoked and commended-and the fervent proposal to introduce new games better suited to the feverish, unholy excitement! Then turn to inspiration: "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things." (Prov. xxiii. 29—33.) Amativeness and drunkenness thus go hand in hand (Gen. xix. 30-36); and it is to this truth that Horace alludes, (Od. 7, 1. 2,) when he refers to the goddess of love as arranging the ceremonies of a drunken feast. The truth is, that, had not mankind been intended to be governed by reason rather than sense, it might properly, as it would seem, have been the 170 OFFICES OF REASON. case, that the use of alcohol, instead of producing even temporary exhilaration, would have led imagination always to portray all that forlorn, hopeless wretchedness which the moderate drinker has every reason to anticipate, and which delirium tremens COMMANDS to be felt. It might have pictured the sunless deserts through which the intemperate travel, illumined here and there by a volcano's lurid flame, and ending in outer darkness, where "the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever!" up CHAPTER XVIII. "The nook in which the captive, overtoiled, Six years had passed away since the events which have been narrated in the preceding pages, transpired; and, amid life's varied scenes, those transactions had been but occasionally recollected. I had wandered in our own wide dominion from the green-wood shores of New-England, beyond the Western banks of lake Erie, and gazed upon the waving ocean of wilderness there where the tree-tops bow before the breeze, with their varied hues at autumn, their deep, rich foliage in summer, and their naked branches mid the wintry storm. I had seen the wild deer playing among those forest retreats, and the red man's light canoe floating along those shadowy streams. And as I stood at what was then considered the verge, 172 TRAVELS IN EARLY LIFE. but which has now become scarcely more than the portal of Western civilization, I could not but often cast my eye, in my loneliness there, in the direction of the dim solitudes extending far toward the setting sun, where the towering branches buried deep in their gloomy shadows the ancient valleys and hills yet untraversed by the white. man's foot-and long to know the history those forests might tell, could the deep voice come up from their bosom, of our injuries to the savage, and of his "Wrongs unredressed and insults unavenged." I had wandered, too, upon the ocean's waves, and crossed the rolling billows of the Atlantic. My foot had been planted upon a foreign shore, and my eyes delighted with the scenery of Europe, while a thousand leagues of watery waste rolled tumultuously between me and the home I loved. The dreary ocean had again been traversed-the land of my nativity had emerged from the West -and the green hills of my infancy were again beheld, more enchanting still than before my departure. "Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, THE VILLAGE OF "H." 173 and I realized, with emotions before unknown, the truth, that "A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere." It so happened that, after the interval mentioned, I passed again through the little village of H., where, so many years before, I had been delighted with the prospect. It was late one wintry afternoon, as a friend and myself stopped at the only public house which the place contained, which seemed interesting to me from numerous associations. The noble square in the village was buried many feet in depth by the snow; and the grove which so deeply shaded it in summer, stood bereft of foliage, that had been scattered afar for no spring to renew. It was one of those clear, cold days in which the ice-bound rivers and snowmantled cliffs seem to smile, fearless of the sunshine. The sun itself was sinking behind the Western hills; and, as the next hotel was eight miles distant, we concluded, as we travelled by our own conveyance, to remain till morning. But, beside this, an additional reason operated in my mind to induce a delay. I wished to dwell longer amid that mountain paradise, though its |