From my retiring late and the consciousness of an early call, I did not sleep very well. The day was bright and I walked in company with Capt. Kearney down to the Steamboat at the foot of Chesnut Street. I found on board Col. Hayne, who was now accompanied by his wife whom he had left at Philadelphia to establish their only daughter 20at a finishing school, and they were now returning to New York for the purpose of securing a passage tomorrow to Charleston. She was a very lady like woman without airs but with the easy, quiet way of all our Southern women, and from her long travels had picked up materials enough to sustain amusing conversation. There was nothing particularly intellectual about her, but one does not bargain for this in a lady companion in a Steamboat. Our acquaintance the dissatisfied Officer and Mr. J. Sheridan Knowles the actor author who was also with us yesterday but whom I did not get introduced to until Col. Hayne brought him up were all I knew. Mr. Knowles is on the whole the most successful dramatist of the present day, he has some good poetry and plots with no more than the usual degree of improbability in them. The small opportunity I had for conference with him does not entitle me to pronounce upon him, but it certainly did not exalt my notion of him.

We reached Bordenton shortly after ten and Amboy about one, after a ride very uninteresting to me in the Railroad car. Here we took the Swan and hastened into New York. I took leave here of my pleasant companions Mr. and Mrs. Hayne who by their kindness have done much to relieve me of the tedium of the Journey. I hope they will be in Boston when I may have an opportunity of returning the civility.

The day was so fine and our arrival so exactly in time for the President which was blowing off her Steam prior to starting that I could not relish the idea of a twenty four hours delay and therefore crossed directly over, so that fifteen minutes saw me quietly passing over the East River and turning my eyes without regret back upon New York.

The boat was full but I found no acquaintances excepting Mr. and Mrs. Shimmin who were on their way home again after a few days at Washington. I saw just enough of them and no more. They are neither of them interesting but better than nothing. The evening was so beautiful I sat much on deck and the accident that we had some good musicians on board who played charmingly as we floated along by the various light houses contributed to make me in loneliness enjoy a dream of romance.

If there is romance in music on the water at night, there is a rapid vibration to the realities of life in the interior of a Steamboat. I went down and laid myself drest as I was upon a Settee destined for me which I found more pleasant than a berth. I awoke shortly after five. 21Before seven o’clock I went upstairs to watch the sun rise—A sight I do not often see.

It was not a clear morning. A cloud in the East took off much of the beauty of the sight, and yet with all our search for the sublime, there is nothing in nature or art equal to it. It defies adequate expression. The heart swells with feelings of beauty and of grandeur but the tongue refuses to clothe them in language which depreciates them. I often ask myself why I who can enjoy these things should so seldom give way to my feelings, and my mind answers that nature has been changed, that art and worldliness have so woven their nets over my frame bodily and mental that the glorious energies I might have had are prostrate. Am I happier? Yes, by the calm calculation of a reasoning head I certainly must be called so, but the placid lake will never have the swell or the grandeur of the ocean, nor the serene sky the sublimity of the thunder storm. Passion makes no man what the sober man calls happy, but it gives moments which no calmness can understand or appreciate.

The morning was bright but before we got to Providence it clouded over and rained the latter part of the day. I not admiring the changing and rechanging of the Railroad, preferred taking a seat in the Stage line through. I was on this account delayed in going for an hour as I was not informed that we should be employed in taking in Passengers at Providence. However an hour more or less makes little difference in getting home. We travelled on quietly with few or no stops arriving in Boston at about six o’clock.

My fellow passengers were none of them interesting to me. One of them however was the notorious Thompson, an apostle of the Abolition cause from England who has imprudently exposed himself to public censure by his meddling with our domestic concerns.1 I was not pleased with his manners, but he certainly did not intrude upon others in any way. Such men are either to be pitied or despised. If their motives are good it is enough that their designs are impracticable. If not, they are mere adventurers and to be so treated. He stopped in Roxbury.

I ordered the driver to put me down at Mr. Brooks’ in Pearl Street where I found him and my Wife and children quietly and comfortably established,2 and gladly terminated my travels which have lasted much to my own surprise one day less than a fortnight.