communities, and the influences it exerts whether fluence springing up, under the direct patronage of for good or evil, on society at large. the Legislature, and carried into operation by the When we remember the control which is ex-wealth and power of that city,-an institution which erted by physicians in the districts in which they will assuredly assume the aspect of a National reside, it is a matter of unspeakable importance, one. Now, let us look at home. Have we no instithat on all these topics they should be well in-tutions which might be brought forward in generous formed. It were indeed no small advantage, were emulation of this? Are there no Medical Schools they able not only to avert the results of individual in Virginia is there none in this City which calamity, but also to give an enlightened counsel might receive the fostering care of our own Legisto public opinion on public affairs. lature? How is it with our Colleges? Are there It is for these reasons, that we regard with plea-none that deserve that the government should carry sure the foundation of this new Institution. Speak- them through their difficulties, and place them ing as mere literary men, its fine buildings and safe from the calamities of disastrous times? We splendid apartments, are the least part of its ad- have seen what New-York has done, it becomes vantages; it is true, that the instruction and in- Virginia to imitate her example. formation which these doctors will give, like the pills they sometimes prescribe, will be none the less effectual in their operation, because they are gilded. But with commanding professional advantages of a local character, and an able body of instructors, we perceive that there is beyond all this an inci- The dental benefit, which is of general interest to our country at large. The following is a list of the Faculty: WYOMING VALLEY. Susquehannah-Incidents of Travel-The Lost Traveller-The Captive Maid. BY ERASTUS BROOKS. The American tourist, fond of the beautiful in Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen, Chancellor of the University. scenery, the wonderful in creation, and the interest- ing in history, may find enough to gratity his eyes, The School opens during the last week in October next. With extensive hospital arrangements; the means of giving chemical instruction efficiently, museums,-chemical apparatus,- -access to public libraries,―all the materiel of a well appointed Medical School amply provided,—a faculty carefully selected from all parts of the world,-arrangements made for boarding several hundred students, at rates less than could have been supposed; the fees for the courses of lectures low, the means of education in superfluity beyond example. Added to all this, the allurements of that great city,-its resources for mental recreation and improvement, memory of the people, preserving its locality and its Lyceums and learned societies,—its mercantile and political relations,-its ships,-its manufactures, the intense activity that pervades its society, the broad ocean, that field of enterprise and wealth; with all the novel scenes it brings before those who come from remote inland places,-must make this, if we are not greatly mistaken, an institution of favorite resort, for young physicians. its history, because the tomb of Orpheus is there, and minstrels of every age and clime choose to render homage at the tomb of the saint. The country of Boetia, enclosed by the familiar mountains of Helicon, Parnassus, and Citheron, with a history not unlike that of the valley of blood and beauty in the heart of Pennsylvania, is oftener visited by us, than a spot within our almost daily So much for our Northern adventure. Now let reach, far more pleasing to the eye, and every way us draw a few remarks from it. Any of our more interesting to be remembered. Why, we readers will perceive that we hail the progress of speak to our poets,-should Helicon be sacred to science in whatever part of the Union it may take Apollo, and not the mountains that stretch all along place; but though we delight to see the North or the our land? The grove of the muses is at the sumWest advancing in these things, we love our own mit of Mount Helicon, and the fountain sacred to VIRGINIA more! In the City of New-York, we the muses flows at its base, and there were they have sketched an institution of overwhelming in-placed, because of the purity of the mountain air, VOL. VII-70 the fertility of the valley beneath, the plenty of its ous but pious labor of making known the unknown waters, and the abundance of its shades. Poets, God, whom the Aborigines of the land ignorantly too, have peopled Parnassus with deities, and given worshipped. The spirit of Loyalism prevailed here them water from the Castalian fount, oracular as it prevailed no where else in the Colonies-and priests to be consulted, spirits to be refreshed, ca- with the shouts that often went up for “George verns for nymphs to dwell in. And why should not the Third," ascended prayers that the British Lion story and song,—we need no mere romance,—for might be brought to cower beneath the young Eawe have history without it,-bring to life and re-gle of the New World. No place suffered so membrance things dead or forgotten among us. much as Wyoming did before, subsequent, or durEnclosed on all sides like the Boetian country is ing the Revolution. The troops which went forth the vale of Wyoming. The Valley itself, as you to do service in the struggles for independence look down upon it from the elevations on either were the bravest of the brave; at home, abroad, side of the majestic and graceful Susquehannah, wherever they were, and they were wherever duty which flows through its centre, realizes the de- called them, they fell like leaves in October. Roscription of that river large, "Southward through mance, or reality, or both, has made Wyoming the which Eden went," watering the garden with many spot where Catharine Montour or Queen Esther a rill. I was at Wyoming upon a Sabbath day in played the Hecate of the night in a scene bloodier the present month of June. A Sabbath day still- than that wherein "Glamis murdered sleep, and ness reigned in the Valley. A quiet tranquillity Cawder slept no more." rested upon the face of the earth, and stillness The sleeping and the dead were often pictures. upon the waters. There was beauty every where The eye of childhood, that "feared a painted devil for the stranger's eye. I stood upon the slope of in the savage," found the spear deep-laid in the the hill, and sat upon the borders of the river, and bosom of a father, and the transfixed arrow which truly was each place "a happy rural seat of vari- had wounded or killed as dear a friend. The his ous view." Boon nature "Pour'd forth profuse on hill and dale and plain, tory of Wyoming is indeed a tale of blood, throughout. Incident follows incident, in quick succession. To-day there is a peaceful settlement in a quiet and beautiful valley, shut out by nature from all the world beside,-the earth is made rich in its preducts by the labor of the Pioneer, who there seeks her flowers, and groves, and trees, and fruits, and his new home. To-morrow comes, and when the every thing beautiful to the sense of sight or smell. grain is ready for the sickle, and the reapers begin In the few journeyings I have taken through my their harvest, death like a foul and ugly witch. own land, the Valley of Wyoming, all things con- stalks in. The song of the bird is changed for the sidered, is the most attractive spot I have visited. yell of the savage, the ploughshare and the pruOf scenery there is every conceivable variety, from ning hook become again the sword and the spear; the rugged mountain and lofty forest, still inhabited the belt of wampum and the calumet of peace, by the wolf and the deer and the bear, to the peace-emblems of sworn friendship, have lost their power, ful valley which sleeps below, seemingly like the and the council now is the council for war. A dead to know no waking here, or like the noble massacre succeeds, and blood will have blood, with stream that flows onward, waking, it would seem, men civilized as with men barbarian. at the dawn of creation, to rest no more until chaos comes again in the destruction of the world. There is mountain and river, valley and hill-side, and all is hallowed ground. The red man and the white man have here fought foot to foot, and men of one form and faith and baptism have been armed, the one against the other, in civil and deadly strife. Thus fell at Wyoming the brave chieftain Teedyuscung, a victim to the white man's treachery and dearly was his life paid for. Again, you find Wyoming the scene of an insurgent army, with white men acting like demons, and instigated of the devil, it would seem, to destroy all who came within their reach. It is, at another time, the stage The valley is indeed a great sepulchre,—a grave- for acting the darkest drama of religious fanatyard watered with tears, and sprinkled with blood. cism-at another, the spot where Yankees from The bones of some of the victims there sacrificed Connecticut are found besieging Pennsylvanians, are yet seen, gathered up by the surviving chil- claiming the same soil, and where again Pennsy! dren, and exhibited as the precious relics of a no-vanians are seen skirmishing with Yankees, each ble parentage. Of the history of Wyoming, vo- having their forts, commanders, ammunition, and sli lumes have been, and may yet be written, of interest that belonged to civil warfare and murder. Many to any reader. It was the scene of strife and blood and interesting are the tales of olden time, yet told between the settlers of Connecticut and Pennsyl-you by the few survivors who took part in these vania; it was the hallowed spot of missionary en- early struggles. In some instances, particularly in terprise and devotion; the Moravians and the the last great sacrifice of 1778, whole families were United Brethren were here engaged in the ardu- cut down. Every man in that terrible carnage beneath its skies rushed with eagerness to the field, but alas! few returned. Widows and orphans were made in scores. The happy shepherd swains had nought to do, But feed their flocks on green declivities, The sun that rose upon a large and happy family, Or skim, perchance, the lake with light canoe, sunk to rest with not one left to tell the tale of From morn till evening's sweeter pastime grew, death. Five sons and sons-in-law there, went With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown, into the field buoyant with hope, and not one re- Her comely maidens would the dance renew." turned alive. Five brothers and two brothers-inWhen, I ask, by our own poets, may this spot, law obeyed the same summons, and fought like the which should be the home of the American muses, Spartans at the pass, until all save one were dead. become hallowed and inspired? When next the Fiction here can add nothing to truth, for truth re-story of Wyoming is told, and its beauties written veals a record which almost startles belief. The in verse, let it be by an American, and not an Engfamous Mohawk Brandt was here, and whether or lish, poet. It is not exclusive, but it is holy ground; not a leader in the last and bloodiest engagement, and a countryman cannot but be mortified that it is yet a matter of controversy,-though probably lives in the memory of the people, rather for what he was not there. Campbell, however, placed him the stranger has said than for what has been said there,or done by those bound to keep its incidents for ever alive. The traveller who may not lisp in numbers, or speak the written language of poetry, but who can feel deep laid in the heart the impressions of beauties to which his tongue refuses utterance, may find here all that is interesting in historical remembrance, or beautiful in charming scenery. The foe, the monster Brandt, I will do no such violence to the good taste and judgment of my readers, as to reject the tale of massacre and love so beautifully told in the "Gertrude of Wyoming." The "Happy Valley" of Rasselas, is a story of fiction, into which Johnson, with his charming power of description, has breathed, as it were, the breath of life. It will live as long as Wyoming lives,-as long as books are read, or the mind exists;-but it is after all a tale of fiction, to be seen only in the mind's eye, while the Valley upon the banks of the Susquehannah, remains to be seen and admired by every passing traveller. There is real beauty there,-that speaking poetry of Nature that puts "tongues in trees," and "sermons in stones," and "books in the running brooks,"—that awakens the latent fire within, and again quenches by its subdued pathos, the spi rit that sometimes burns like a consuming flame. The Hesperian fables are here made true, in groves which have "Betwixt them lawns, or level downs and flocks Grazing the tender herb. Or palmy hillock, or the flowing lamp Where some irriguous valley, spreads her store; Flowers of all hue, and without thorn, the rose." The river is as beautiful as the lake described by Milton, whose murmuring waters fell down into the first garden from the slope hills to "the fringed bank, with myrtle crowned." Here, as there, "The birds their choir apply; airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves." It is but a short week since, looking down upon the river at evening time, I saw before me, and to the life, the scene which the poet of Wyoming had painted,— The useful is happily blended with the beautiful in the whole Valley of this river. The hills and mountains that tower aloft along the borders of the stream, yield of that rich abundance found beneath, as well as upon, the surface of the soil. The face of nature, too, is not only fair to the eye, but fruitful to the husbandman. To crown all, a dense and luxuriant forest, next to the valley, beautiful to look upon, is scattered here and there, not only all along the banks of the river, but all along the State. The trees of America! A true poet would make nature melody itself in singing to their praise. They tell you of trees in the old world, but what are they? We have more in our forests, I have said enough, perhaps, to make Wyoming than there is in all the world beside us,-east of interesting to the reader, who has forgotten or ne- the Mississippi more than one hundred and fifty inver looked into its history, or never seen its beau- digenous to our soil, and which grow more than ties. It is, as Campbell hath painted it, though he thirty feet in height. In England, Wales and never saw it, "fair Wyoming," and "delightful Scotland, there is not a score of forest trees, Wyoming." The poet of another land, in the ex- and not forty altogether; while New-York and ercise of a strong imagination, has hardly equalled Pennsylvania furnish many-more than half of the reality of this beautiful spot, where once, as he them ranking as forest trees, including almost every thing that grows in that beautiful country has sung, which lies between the Adriatic and the North of the forests of Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Sea, with Germany and Switzerland, there, more | Wyoming and the Susquehannah river. Wilkesfamed for what is grand and fair in nature than in barre, a village named from two noted politicians, art. There are not as many native trees there as is the centre of all these attractions. It lies in the you may find in a day's ramble between the Dela- bosom of the Valley, upon the borders of the river, ware and the Susquehannah. The stateliness and is a growing village, whose very nature has been beauty of the European oaks have been often changed by the improvements which act sometimes written of, but they are as shrubs compared with as innovations as well upon quiet nature, as upon the oaks in our American forests. Not only have refined and quiet society. The contrast of a brief we the greater variety of trees, but nobler trees by year or two, in and about this village, would be far all from the prettier and more delicate to the painful to the recluse. Before the mountains were more expansive, and every way more noble. Our opened, to bring forth the coal imbedded within cyprus trees are sui generis,-so that, all in all, them, or the forest thinned by a thousand aremen, sweetest of trees, the magnolia,-so the locust, levelling the trees, and bearing them away to the the catalpa, the sasafras; and so the tulip tree "its mills near by, or tumbling them into the river, or golden chalice oft triumphantly displays." And the canals dug, which made not only States, but there are others, too, which for lack of knowledge I may not name. Not among the ancient Gauls and Britons, even with M'Fingal and Ossian to record the beauty there, would the school of the Druids have been found had our land been known in olden time. The forests here would have been The quiet there was the peace of nearly the a more fitting place for the Druidical sacrifice, and whole half century which succeeded between the for imbibing the mysteries of that stern school-settlement of differences between the people of the teachers of which shut themselves from the Pennsylvania and the people of Connecticut, who world known, to hold closer communion with the world unknown. "broad armed ports,"-seeking a market in Balti more, in Philadelphia, in New-York, on the Ohio, and anon on Lake Erie,-the Valley was as quiet a dwelling-place almost as the garden of our first parents. made Wyoming their home. All is business and bustle now, with no hope that Wyoming will be From one of the mountain sides that look down again the "lone valley," or its "Indian hills" the upon that sweet land, which gives beauty to the" Wyoming of war and crime." shore and valley, you may behold a scene like that But, I must leave the valley. They who would where the Greek poets placed their forest deities. see a rich drawing of some of its scenery, and As I gazed from the traveller's rock there, with a read a tale of the early settlers there,-half fiction, friend or two,-one admiring the scene because half truth, a story of plain, homespun life, of home, sweet home" was there, and another, be- strong character,-of startling incident and Indian cause it realized a bright anticipation, which had warfare,—may find it in the story of Mary Dergrown, as mine had, for years, ever since I had went, from the pen of one of our most gifted counread the Gertrude of Wyoming. I could not but re-try-women. The "Gertrude of Wyoming," 100, member of the deities of the forest, which, fable tells will be read with more pleasure than ever, after us, preside throughout the world over all that is rural Wyoming itself is visited, and its real history in nature. The mountains near the valley, once, known. it would seem, were haunted, not with mountain I left the Valley for Harrisburg, on the canal, nymphs, it is true, but with those tangible ghostssavage men—so much more to be dreaded than the ethereal spirits of the imagination. The Dale and Mead Nymphs might well have peopled the valley below; and the bright and sparkling river, with the trees of every form and hue, from the infant locust in bloom and beauty, to the old oak that stretched its limbs far upward, would have given a congenial home to the nymphs of the water and the trees. The Arcadian God who dwelt upon the top of the mountain, as the Lord of the Forest, leaning upon his pastoral reed, and clothed in the skins of beasts, might have found here a temple not made with hands, for himself and his thousand attendants. of Waters-our own Hudson. I have before spoken of the bountiful soil of Pennsylvania, in the region of the valley-of her mineral wealth, richer, in coal and iron, than mines of gold or silver, and of the charming scenery of the Valley. I have added a word now in praise which passes through the heart of the State-running its whole distauce along the banks of the Susquehannah, and in no place between town and town, a half mile from the river. The distance is one hundred and twenty miles. The scenery is not so very beautiful,—not equalled, if I may speak my own opinion, by our own beautiful Hudson, confession, which as a New-Yorker, I never espected to make-never expecting, however, to see river scenery more stupendous or more enchanting, than that between New-York and Albany. I speak of beauty only. As a great artery of trade and commerce, there is but one river east of the Father From the top of the mountains, to the verge of the river, there are trees, and shrubbery, and flowers, and rocks hanging from the peaks above. The river has a serpentine course, and as the canal follows along its banks, in one place,—and it is a fairy spot to look upon five miles below Wilkesbarre,the water runs into the river and makes part of the great highway to the towns below. In many places the scene appears like the Highlands of the Hudson. To relieve the frequent mountain passes, there are islands and grass-grown fields, and other lands in a high state of cultivation. For miles the river is upon one side of the canal and the high road upon the other, with mountains above you upon the right and an interval of land upon the opposite shore. There are but few settlements even in a half day's journey, and none are needed to give interest to the scenery or interest to the travel. The borders of the river abound in incident as thrilling almost as that of the border wars of Scotland. Priestly, his family and their followers of the same faith, alone, I believe, sleep in the same grave-yard. The dwelling places of the dead seemed as many as the public places of worship. The impression left was rather a painful than a pleasant one. Why must sects and parties, men of differing creeds alive, be walled in, the one from the other, when death has given them but that common receptacle-the grave,-which knows no change till the spirit leaving its dusty element below flees away to the God who gave it, or none but that quicker crumbling of the body to the dust and ashes of earth which comes from the quicker decay of a more destroying disease. Northumberland has this distinction, and it has grown up with the settlement of the town. I looked into two of The first town of note is Danville,-destined these grave-yards, and in that one where Priestly anon to be a great and thriving place, and famed was buried found the graves strewed with flowers. already for its beds of iron, its iron works, and for The graves of the more aged and young were all working iron with its anthracite furnaces. We bedecked with roses, and their bloom and beauty, stopped long enough to look upon some of the life and freshness, spoke a sad contrast to the sons of Vulcan there,-to peep into its workshops moss-covered grave-stones and the mouldering re and gather a specimen or two of iron from a vein just opened, purer and richer than any before found, and yielding about seventy per cent.,-as plenty too, and as accessible as rocks upon the rock-bound coast of New-England. Some twenty miles below Danville is Northumberland, one of the oldest and most interesting towns of the State. The marks of antiquity are legibly written there upon the works of nature, on the mountain along the river, and much more than legibly upon the grave-yards, the churches, and the dwellings. It is a place worth a day's observation, for its scenery and for its history. The habitation, the church, the grave of Dr. Priestly, are there. I visited them all, and loving as I do the grave-yard inscriptions, which tell so summarily, in a short epitaph, of the brevity and incidents of life, I sat long enough upon the tomb of the divine, respected and beloved yet by so many of his disciples, to remember the record of the tombstone. It is of plain marble, erected "To the memory of REV. JOSEPH PRIESTLY, Who departed this life on the 6th of February, 1804. Not far distant from the village graves is one of Anno ætatis, LXXI." Beneath is written a simple, but pious record, which says: "Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. I will lay me down in peace, and sleep until I awake on the morning of my resurrection." Beside the husband, in the close affinity of kindred souls, rests the body of the wife, who died in September, 1796. The record there told is that written in the good book, which says: the most imposing views, which it seemed to me, the eye of man ever fell upon. The juncture of the two branches of the Susquehannah is here, and here the clear transparent waters of a hundred miles and more to the West, and many more to the North and East, reflecting the beauty of the heavens and every fair thing of earth, upon their borders, mingle together like harmonizing spirits. The scene is indeed lovely, with the islands, cultivated lands, meadows, mountains and river, the quiet village, the hum of industry, the ingenuity of art and the patience of labor, all "God shall wipe away all tears from their there shall be no more death, neither shall there be any in view. With Wordsworth in hand for a guide book, and one would think he had been bodily pre eyes, and more pain, for the former things have passed away." |