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.