The Rhode-Island Republican. [volume] (Newport, R.I.) 1809-1841, 1836-06-22
BROOKS LETTERS.

striking passages. One Of these, from
letter written in Italy, is annexed =
One of the grandest views, if not the
sublimest in the United States, it strikes
me is the junction of the Mississippi and
the Ohio, not that there is aught of itself
in the scenery around SO very astonish-
ing, but the idea Of extent and power in
flame the Imagination there, when you
sec stream of about 5000 miles long
mingling with another of about 1900
miles, and the greater absorbing the less,
which of itself is mighty river, without
even swelling its steam, or widening its
banks, as it seems to the eye, and both
then to course on together thousand
miles more TO meet the ocean! The al
most boundless extent, and the awful but
silent power of the seeming lazy current,
affected me more than the noise of Ma
CARA, because extent was asso ciated
with power.
A like sensation l felt even hero on the
shores of the Adratic, because here, for
the first time, my eyes had an actual view
of the broad sea itself, free and loose as
it were, and not in chains as among tho
lagunes of Venice. But, as in the juno
ton of the Mississippi and the Ohio, of
which have spoken, there is nothing at
all astonishing in the scenery around,-
the sensation is powerful nevertheless.
The sight ola new sea is perhaps a new
era in mans life. 1t may be that he
thinks he has made a new acquisition,
and his heart beats proudly at the thought.
Or it may be, that felt aroused by the
association of similar objects in the sea,
those longings after home, which every
traveller feels more or less, in a foreign
land. saw the same waters which in
their everlasting flow may roll upon the
very shores where all my hopes and my
heart are, and as | distinctly dis
cerned in the distance the Adriatic barks
of Ancona, ofDalmatia, or of Greece, or
il may be some American ship seeking
her way to Trieste, felt that on board
each of these there was link that might
connect me with them. The sight of
ship always does strangers heart good
when he is in foreign land, and particu-
larly if he has been long in the interior of
that land, for upon it he feels as if he
could walk where no would be a stranger
and foreigner no more. The great of
the Adratic, though, is not this in the eye
of pilgrim from the new world. 1t is
the only changeless thing amid the ruin
ed empires all around. The Oldest of all,
yet is the only thing young. Beauty and
youth sit upon It's waves and its shores
alone. The Mediterranean, the Archi-
pelago, and the Adratic, are as they were
when Homer coasted along them. or
when the Egyptians sent arts and arms
to Greece.
Twenty nations, with their opulent
cities, their regal palaces, their tenn
pies, and their arts, have fallen, apon
the Peninsula between the Euxine and
the Mediterranean alone. The Trojan,
the Lydian, the Macedonian, tho Persian,
the Greek, the Roman and the Turk have
each in turn shed their blood, and won
their trumphs on its plains. Just over
this sea is the land of Pericles, Themisto-
cles and Cimon. An American steam
boat in single day would carry me
quite near the Acropolis and Mars Hill,
or the Areopagus of Athens but the city
that Perlcles adorned with marble, has
but few other relics of interest left than
the genius of the place.
As we rode along, could not but think
upon the varied races of men that have
sailed in arms over those waters, and upon
the various means OF navigation, from the
Grecian and Roman with their galleys,
and the Venetian, clinging to the coast
without compass to guide them, to that
new invention, that new power of ours.
viviiied and subdued for the service of
man, so as to enable him to defy wind and
tide. And il was a source of high graft.
tication TO me, 10 see that though was
now upon one of the oldest known seas
of the world, which the prov had been
cleaving ever since the sheet was spread
10 catch the wind to move the wood, vet
that upon all these seas, from the best |
could learn, aye, even from the pillars Of
Hercules to the Euxine, from the mouth
of the Nile to Genoa the Superb. seas
where arts and arms, and commerce had
their birlh,-yct that upon all these, thus
laving the shores ofEgypt. and Palestine,
aud Greece, and Italy, and Turkey, and
Gallia, and Spain, there are not so many
Steamboats, noc as there arc upon tbe SIM
gle inland uaicrs of Lake Erie, where
sixty years ago the savage ragged. and the
tomahawk was brandished in terror =
Good God, what an idea does this give of
the growth aud promise of my country
The 800 steamboats, of the Mississippi,
would create more astonishment here than
did the army ofthc Persian monarch who
lashcd the sea and the vast inland vale
from which they come is world almost,
il not quite, as large as Thucydidee or
St,Qbo dreaocd OF