Part 3. - This evening, a lady and her daughter steamed down from Fishkill with a request to us to spend a few days there; and a clergyman steamed up from New York with an invitation from ...

This evening, a lady and her daughter steamed down from Fishkill with a request to us to spend a few days there; and a clergyman steamed up from New York with an invitation from Dr. Hosack to visit him and his family at Hyde Park. We could not do both; and there was some difficulty in contriving to do either, anxiously as we desired it; but we presently settled that Fishkill must be given up, and that we must content ourselves with two days at Hyde Park.

The next morning, I experienced a sensation which I had often heard of, but never quite believed in; – the certainty that one has wakened in another world. – Those who have travelled much, know that a frequent puzzle, on waking from sound sleep in new places, is to know where one is, – even in what country of the world. This night, I left my window open, close to my head, so that I could see the stars reflected in the river. When I woke, the scene was steeped in the light of the sunrise, and as still as death. Its ineffable beauty was all; I remarked no individual objects; but my heart stood still with an emotion which I should be glad to think I may feel again, whenever I really do enter a new scene of existence. It was some time before my senses were separately roused; during the whole day, I could not get rid of the impression that I had seen a vision; and even now I can scarcely look back upon the scene as the very same which at other hours I saw clouded with earth–drawn vapours, and gilded by the common sun.

At eleven o’clock, we left West Point; and I am glad that we felt sure at the time that we should visit it again; – a design which we did not accomplish, as the place was ravaged by scarlet fever at the season of the next year that we had fixed for our visit. – Mr. Livingston, who had just returned from his French mission, was on board the boat. My letters of introduction to him were at the bottom of my trunk; but we did not put off becoming acquainted till I could get at them.

Mr. Livingston’s name is celebrated and honoured in England, (as over all Europe) through its connexion with the Louisiana Code, – this gentleman’s great work. He was born and educated in the State of New York. While pursuing his studies at Princeton College in 1779 and 1780, he was subject to strange interruptions; the professors being repeatedly driven from their chairs by incursions of the enemy, and their scholars on such occasions forming a corps to go out and fight. The library was scattered, the philosophical apparatus destroyed, and the college buildings shared with troops quartered in the establishment: yet young Livingston quitted college a good scholar. He was a member of the fourth Congress, and there made himself remarkable by his exertions to ameliorate the criminal code of the United States, then as sanguinary as those of the Old World. In 1801, he returned to the practice of his profession of the law in New York, but was not long permitted to decline public life. He was appointed attorney of the state of New York, and mayor of the city. He remained in the city, in the discharge of his duties, while the yellow fever drove away every one who could remove. He nearly died of the disease and was ruined in his private affairs by his devotion to the public service. In 1804, he resigned his offices, and retired to Louisiana, (then a new acquisition of the United States,) to retrieve his fortunes: and from thence he discharged all his obligations, paying his debts, with interest upon them, to the last farthing. He was deprived, by a mistake of President Jefferson’s, of an immense property which he had acquired there, and was involved in expensive litigation of many years’ duration. The law decided in his favour, and the controversy ended in a manner the most honourable to both parties; in a reciprocation of hearty good will.

During the invasion of Louisiana by the British, Mr. Livingston took a prominent part in the defence of the State: and when it was over, undertook, with two coadjutors, the formidable task of simplifying its laws, entangled as they were with Spanish prolixities, and all manner of unnecessary and unintelligible provisions. His system was adopted, and has been in use ever since. In 1820, the system of municipal law was revised at New Orleans, under the superintendence of Mr. Livingston, and his, amendments were put in practice in 1823. He was at the same time engaged, without assistance, in preparing his celebrated penal code. When it was all ready for the press, in 1824, he sat up late one nights to ascertain finally the correctness of the fair copy; and, haying finished, retired to rest, in a State of calm satisfaction at his great work being completed. He was awakened by a cry of fire. The room where he had been employed was burning, and every scrap of his papers was consumed. Not a note or memorandum was saved.

He appeared to be stunned for the hour; but before the day closed he had begun his labours again; and he never relaxed, till, in two years from the time of the fire, he presented his work to the legislature of Louisiana, improved by the reconsideration which he had been compelled to give it. Men of all countries who understand jurisprudence, seem to think that no praise of this achievement can be excessive.

He afterwards represented Louisiana in both Houses of Congress, became Secretary of State in 1831: and in 1833, Minister to France. His was a busy life, of doing, suffering, and, we may confidently add, enjoying: for his was a nature full of simplicity, modesty, and benevolence. His industry is, of itself, exhilarating to contemplate.

During the whole preceding year, I had heard Mr. Livingston’s name, almost daily, in connexion with his extremely difficult negotiations between the United States and France, – or rather between President Jackson and Louis Philippe. I had read his despatches, (some of which were made public that were never designed to be so,) and had not been quite satisfied as to their straightforwardness, but concluded, on the whole, that he had done as much as human wits could well do in so absurd, and perplexed, and dangerous a quarrel, where the minister had to manage the temper of his own potentate, as well as baffle the policy of the European monarch. A desire for peace and justice was evident through the whole of Mr. Livingston’s correspondence; and under all, a strong wish to get home. Here lie was, – now ploughing his way up his own beloved river, whose banks were studded with the country–seats of a host of his relations. He came to me on the upper deck, and sat looking very placid, with his staff between his knees, and his strong, observing countenance melting into an expression of pleasure when he described to me his enjoyment in burying himself among the mountains of Switzerland. He said he would not now hear of mountains anywhere else, – at least not in either his own country or mine. He gave me some opinions upon the government of the King of the French, which I little expected to hear from the minister of a democratic republic. We were deep in this subject, when a great hissing of the steam made us look up and see that we were at Hyde Park, and that Dr. Hosack and a party of ladies were waiting for me on the wharf. – I repeatedly met Mr. Livingston in society in New York, the next spring, when a deafness, which had been slight, was growing upon him, and impairing his enjoyment of conversation. The last time I saw him was at the christening of a grand–niece, when he looked well in health, but conversed little, and seemed rather out of spirits. Within a month of that evening, he was seized with pleurisy, which would in all probability have yielded to treatment; but he refused medicine, and was carried off, after a very short illness. – Dr. Hosack died some months before him. How little did I think, as I now went from the one to the other, that both these vigorous old men would be laid in their graves, even before my return home should call upon me to bid them farewell!

The aspect of Hyde Park from the river had disappointed me, after all I had heard of it. It looks little more than a white house upon a ridge. I was therefore doubly delighted when I found what this ridge really was. It is a natural terrace, over–hanging one of the sweetest reaches of the river; and, though broad and straight at the top, not square and formal, like an artificial embankment, but undulating, sloping, and sweeping, between the ridge and the river, and dropped with trees; the whole carpeted with turf, tempting grown people, who happen to have the spirits of children, to run up and down the slopes, and play hide–and–seek in the hollows. Whatever we might be talking of as we paced the terrace, I felt a perpetual inclination to start off for play. Yet, when the ladies and ourselves actually did something like it, threading the little thickets, and rounding every promontory, even to the farthest, (which they call Cape Horn,) I felt that the possession of such a place ought to make a man devout, if any of the gifts of Providence can do so. To hold in one’s hand that which melts all strangers’ hearts is to be steward in a very serious sense of the term. Most liberally did Dr. Hosack dispense the means of enjoyment he possessed. Hospitality is inseparably connected with his name in the minds of all who ever heard it: and it was hospitality of the heartiest and most gladsome kind.