There are few lovelier villages in the Valley of the West than the little town of Edwardsville, in whose quiet inn many of the preceding observations have been sketched.132 It was early one bright morning that I entered Edwardsville, after passing a sleepless night at a neighbouring farmhouse. The situation of the village is a narrow ridge of [175] land swelling abruptly from the midst of deep and tangled woods. Along this elevation extends the principal street of the place, more than a mile in length, and upon either side runs a range of neat edifices, most of them shaded by forest-trees in their front yards. The public buildings are a courthouse and jail of brick, neither of them worthy of farther mention, and two plain, towerless churches, imbosomed in a grove somewhat in the suburbs of the village. There is something singularly picturesque in the situation of these churches, and the structures themselves are not devoid of beauty and symmetrical proportion. At this place, also, is located the land-office for the district. On the morning of my arrival at the village, early as was the hour, the place was thronged with disappointed applicants for land; a lean and hungry-looking race, by-the-by, as it has ever been my lot to look upon. Unfortunately, the office had the evening before, from some cause, been closed, and the unhappy speculators were forced to trudge away many a weary mile, through dust and sun, with their heavy specie dollars, to their homes again. I remember once to have been in the city of Bangor, "away down East in the State of Maine," when the public lands on the Penobscot River were first placed in the market. The land mania had for some months been running high, but could hardly be said yet to have reached a crisis. From all quarters of the Union speculators had been hurrying to the place; and day and night, for the week past, the steamers had been disgorging upon the city their ravenous freights. The important [176] day arrived. At an early hour every hotel, and street, and avenue was swarming with strangers; and, mingling with the current of living bodies, which now set steadily onward to the place of sale, I was carried resistlessly on by its force till it ceased. A confused murmur of voices ran through the assembled thousands; and amid the tumult, the ominous words "land—lumber—title-deed," and the like, could alone be distinguished. At length, near noon, the clear tones of the auctioneer were heard rising above the hum of the multitude: all was instantly hushed and still; and gaining an elevated site, before me was spread out a scene worthy a Hogarth's genius and pencil. Such a mass of working, agitated features, glaring with the fierce passion of avarice and the basest propensities of humanity, one seldom is fated to witness. During that public land-sale, indeed, I beheld so much of the selfishness, the petty meanness, the detestable heartlessness of man's nature, that I turned away disgusted, sick at heart for the race of which I was a member. We are reproached as a nation by Europeans for the contemptible vice of avarice; is the censure unjust? Parson Taylor tells us that Satan was the first speculator in land, for on a certain occasion he took Jesus up into an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory thereof, and said to him, "All these things will I give to thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me," when, in fact, the devil did not own one inch of land to give!

[177] Yet it is to be apprehended that not a few in our midst would not hesitate to barter soul and body, and fall down in worship, were a sufficient number of acres spread out before them as the recompense.

Among other objects worthy the traveller's notice in passing through Edwardsville is a press for the manufacture of that well-known, agreeable liquid, castor oil: it is situated within the precincts of what is termed, for distinction, the "Upper Village." The apparatus, by means of which the oil is expressed from the bean and clarified, is extremely simple, consisting merely of the ordinary jack-screw. One bushel of the castor beans—palma Christi—yields nearly two gallons of the liquid. The only previous preparation to pressing is to dry the beans in an oven. This establishment133 has been in operation upward of ten years, and has rendered its proprietor, Mr. Adams, a wealthy man.134 He has a delightful villa, with grounds laid out with taste; and though many years have passed away since he left his native New-England, yet the generosity of his heart and the benevolence of his character tell truly that he has not yet ceased the remembrance of early principles and habits. The village of Edwardsville and its vicinity are said to be remarkably healthy; and the location in the heart of a fertile, well-watered, heavily-timbered section of country, tilled by a race of enterprising yeomanry, gives promise of rapid advancement. The town plat was first laid off in 1815; but the place advanced but little in importance until five years afterward, when a new [178] town was united to the old. About twelve miles southeast from Edwardsville is situated the delightful little hamlet of Collinsville, named from its founder, to which I paid a hasty visit during my ramble on the prairies.135 It was settled many years ago, but till very recently had not assumed the dignity of a town. Its site is the broad, uniform surface of an elevated ridge, ascending gently from the American Bottom, beautifully shaded by forest-trees, and extending into the interior for several miles. It is almost entirely settled by northern emigrants, whose peculiarities are nowhere more strikingly exhibited. Much attention is bestowed upon religion and education; not a grocery exists in the place, nor, by the charter of the town, can one be established for several years. This little village presents a delightful summer-retreat to the citizens of St. Louis, only ten miles distant.

The sun had not yet risen when I left Edwardsville, after a pleasant visit, and, descending into the Bottom, pursued my route over the plain to Alton. The face of the country, for a portion of the way, is broken, and covered with forests of noble trees, until the traveller finds himself on the deep sand-plains, stretching away for some miles, and giving support to a stunted, scragged growth of shrub-oaks. The region bears palpable evidence of having been, at no distant period, submerged; and the idea is confirmed by the existence, at the present time, of a lake of considerable extent on the southern border, which, from the character of the surface, a slight addition of water would spread for miles. I shall not [179] soon forget, I think, the day I entered Alton for the second time during my ramble in the West. It was near the noon after an exceedingly sultry morning; and the earth beneath my horse's hoofs was reduced by protracted drought to an impalpable powder to the depth of several inches. The blazing sunbeams, veiled by not a solitary cloud, reflected from the glassy surface of the Mississippi as from the face of an immense steely mirror and again thrown back by the range of beetling bluffs above, seemed converged into an intense burning focus along the scorched-up streets and glowing roofs of the village. I have endured heat, but none more intolerable in the course of my life than that of which I speak.

In the evening, when the sultriness of the day was over, passing through the principal street of the town, I ascended that singular range of bluffs which, commencing at this point, extend along the river, and to which, on a former occasion, I have briefly alluded. The ascent is arduous, but the glorious view from the summit richly repays the visiter for his toil. The withering atmosphere of the depressed, sunburnt village at my feet was delightfully exchanged for the invigorating breezes of the hills, as the fresh evening wind came wandering up from the waters. It was the sunset hour. The golden, slanting beams of departing day were reflected from the undulating bosom of the river, as its bright waters stretched away among the western forests, as if from a sea of molten, gliding silver. On the left, directly at your feet, reposes the village of Alton, overhung by hills, with the gloomy, castellated [180] walls of the Penitentiary lifting up their dusky outline upon its skirts, presenting to the eye a perfect panorama as you look down upon the tortuous streets, the extensive warehouses of stone, and the range of steamers, alive with bustle, along the landing. Beyond the village extends a deep forest; while a little to the south sweep off the waters of the river, bespangled with green islands, until, gracefully expanding itself, a noble bend withdraws it from the view. It is at this point that the Missouri disgorges its turbid, heavy mass of waters into the clear floods of the Upper Mississippi, hitherto uncheckered by a stain. At the base of the bluffs, upon which you stand, at an elevation of a hundred and fifty feet, rushes with violence along the crags the current of the stream; while beyond, upon the opposite plain, is beheld the log hut of the emigrant couched beneath the enormous sycamores, and sending up its undulating thread of blue, curling smoke through the lofty branches. A lumber steam-mill is also here to be seen. Beyond these objects the eye wanders over an interminable carpet of forest-tops, stretching away till they form a wavy line of dense foliage circling the western horizon. By the aid of a glass, a range of hills, blue in the distance, is perceived outlined against the sky: they are the bluffs skirting the beautiful valley of the Missouri. The heights from which this view is commanded are composed principally of earth heaped upon a massive ledge of limerock, which elevates itself from the very bed of the waters. As the spectator gazes and reflects, he cannot but be amazed that the [181] rains, and snows, and torrents of centuries have not, with all their washings, yet swept these earth-heaps away, though the deep ravines between the mounds, which probably originated their present peculiar form, give proof conclusive that such diluvial action to some extent has long been going on. As is usually found to be the case, the present race of Indians have availed themselves of these elevated summits for the burial-spots of their chiefs. I myself scraped up a few decaying fragments of bones, which lay just beneath the surface.

At sunrise of the morning succeeding my visit to the bluffs I was in the saddle, and clambering up those intolerably steep hills on the road leading to the village of Upper Alton, a few miles distant. The place is well situated upon an elevated prairie; and, to my own taste, is preferable far for private residence to any spot within the precincts of its rival namesake. The society is polished, and a fine-toned morality is said to characterize the inhabitants. The town was originally incorporated many years ago, and was then a place of more note than it has ever since been; but, owing to intestine broils and conflicting claims to its site, it gradually and steadily dwindled away, until, a dozen years since, it numbered only seven families. A suit in chancery has happily settled these difficulties, and the village is now thriving well. A seminary of some note, under jurisdiction of the Baptist persuasion, has within a few years been established here, and now comprises a very respectable body of students.136 It originated in a seminary [182] formerly established at Rock Spring in this state. About five years since a company of gentlemen, seven in number, purchased here a tract of several hundred acres, and erected upon it an academical edifice of brick; subsequently a stone building was erected, and a preparatory school instituted. In the year 1835, funds to a considerable amount were obtained at the East; and a donation of $10,000 from Dr. Benjamin Shurtliff, of Boston, induced the trustees to give to the institution his name. Half of this sum is appropriated to a college building, and the other half is to endow a professorship of belles lettres. The present buildings are situated upon a broad plain, beneath a walnut grove, on the eastern skirt of the village; and the library, apparatus, and professorships are worthy to form the foundation of a college, as is the ultimate design, albeit a Western college and a Northern college are terms quite different in signification. I visited this seminary, however, and was much pleased with its faculty, buildings, and design. All is as it should be. What reflecting mind does not hail with joy these temples of science elevating themselves upon every green hill and broad plain of the West, side by side with the sanctuaries of our holy religion! It is intelligence, baptized intelligence, which alone can save this beautiful valley, if indeed it is to be saved from the inroads of arbitrary rule and false religion; which is to hand down to another generation our civil and religious immunities unimpaired. In most of the efforts for the advancement of education in [183] the West, it is gratifying to perceive that this principle has not been overlooked. Nearly all those seminaries of learning which have been established profess for their design the culture of the moral powers as well as those of the intellect. That intelligence is an essential requisite, a prime constituent of civil and religious freedom, all will admit; that it is the only requisite, the sole constituent, may be questioned. "Knowledge," in the celebrated language of Francis Bacon, "is power;" ay! power; an engine of tremendous, incalculable energy, but blind in its operations. Applied to the cause of wisdom and virtue, the richest of blessings; to that of infidelity and vice, the greatest of curses. A lever to move the world, its influence cannot be over-estimated; as the bulwark of liberty and human happiness, its effect has been fearfully miscalculated. Were man inclined as fully to good as to evil, then might knowledge become the sovereign panacea of every civil and moral ill; as man by nature unhappily is, "the fruit of the tree" is oftener the stimulant to evil than to good. Unfold the sacred record of the past. Why did not intelligence save Greece? Greece! the land of intellect and of thought; the birthspot of eloquence, philosophy, and song! whose very populace were critics and bards! Greece, in her early day of pastoral ignorance, was free; but from the loftiest pinnacle of intellectual glory she fell; and science, genius, intelligence, all could not save her. The buoyant bark bounded beautifully over the blue-breasted billows; but the helm, the helm of [184] moral culture was not there, and her broad-spread pinions hurried her away only to a speedier and more terrible destruction.

Ancient Rome: in the day of her rough simplicity, she was free; but from her proudest point of intellectual development—the era of Augustus—we date her decline.

France: who will aver that it was popular ignorance that rolled over revolutionary France the ocean-wave of blood? When have the French, as a people, exhibited a prouder era of mind than that of their sixteenth Louis? The encyclopedists, the most powerful men of the age, concentrated all their vast energies to the diffusion of science among the people. Then, as now, the press groaned in constant parturition; and essays, magazines, tracts, treatises, libraries, were thrown abroad as if by the arm of Omnipotent power. Then, as now, the supremacy of human reason and of human society flitted in "unreal mockery" before the intoxicated fancy; and wildly was anticipated a career of upward and onward advancement during the days of all coming time. France was a nation of philosophers, and the great deep of mind began to heave; the convulsed labouring went on, and, from time to time, it burst out upon the surface. Then came the tornado, and France, refined, intelligent, scientific, etherealized France, was swept, as by Ruin's besom, of every green thing. Her own children planted the dagger in her bosom, and France was a nation of scientific, philosophic parricides! But "France was poisoned [185] by infidelity." Yes! so she was: but why was not the subtle element neutralized in the cup of knowledge in which it was administered? Is not "knowledge omnipotent to preserve; the salt to purify the nations?"

England: view the experiment there. It is a matter of parliamentary record, that within the last twenty years, during the philanthropic efforts of Lord Henry Brougham and his whig coadjutors, crime in England has more than tripled. If knowledge, pure, defecated knowledge, be a conservative principle, why do we witness these appalling results?

What, then, shall be done? Shall the book of knowledge be taken from the hands of the people, and again be locked up in the libraries of the few? Shall the dusky pall of ignorance and superstition again be flung around the world, and a long starless midnight of a thousand years once more come down to brood over mankind? By no means. Let the sweet streams of knowledge go forth, copious, free, to enrich and irrigate the garden of mind; but mingle with them the pure waters of that "fount which flows fast by the oracles of God," or the effect now will be, as it ever has been, only to intoxicate and madden the human race. There is nothing in cold, dephlegmated intellect to warm up and foster the energies of the moral system of man. Intellect, mere intellect, can never tame the passions or purify the heart.

Upper Alton, Ill.

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