23 OCTOBER 1897, Page 23

LADY HOWARD OF GLOSSOP'S AMERICAN TOUR.* IT may be doubted

if, since the death of Marianne North, any traveller has felt the ecstasy of travel so keenly, or

• Journal of a Tour in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. By Winefred, Lady Howard of Glossop. London: Sampson Low and Co. expressed that ecstasy with such gusto, as has Lady Howard of Glossop in this delightful "whirlpool rapid" of a volume. Indeed, even Miss North seems occasionally tame beside her successor. Take, for example, what she says of Niagara in the first volume of her charming Recollections of a Happy Life:—" The falls far outstretched my grandest ideas. They are enormous, the banks above and below wildly and richly wooded with a great variety of fine trees, tangles of vine and Virginian creeper over them, dead stumps, skeleton trees, and worn rocks white with lichens ; the whole setting is grand, and the bridges are so cobwebby that they seem by contrast to make the falls more massive. From my home I could walk along the edge of the cliff over the boiling green waters all the way to the falls, and if they had not been there at all, I would willingly have stayed to paint the old trees and water alone." Compare this with Lady Howard's:— " On the farther side of the bridge you pass, midst lovely shrubs, to a point overlooking the central Fall, the beauty and glory of which defies description. You are deafened yet fasci- nated; rainbowy clouds and showers flit round you, and the dancing billows, having danced to the edge full of life and joy, take one sudden despairing plunge into the seething abyss below, with wild sounds of mingled thunder and shrieking wailing ; whirling currents and rushes of air fighting rushes of water—a pandemonium of mad rush and sound ! This is perhaps, from above, the grandest and loveliest view of all ; but leave it at last one must, and you proceed to drive or walk all over the Goat Island, through its groves of trees and park-like expanse, till, at the farther end, you pass, by bridges, from lovely rocky wooded isle to isle—the 'three sisters' and 'little brother ' ; and crossing between, suddenly come upon the sight of sights, the indescribably superb, gigantic towering flow of the glorious Canadian rapids ! They come with a mountainous, swirling, tumultuous rush, com- pressed into the rocky narrows. Looking up the river you see a wide far-spreading expanse of apparent sea, with long unbroken lines of foaming giant waves, stretching from distant shore to shore, away into dim unfathomed distance—line after line of breaking foam. Nearer and nearer the billows roll, till, close before you, they rise and gather and swirl into one gigantic purple-blue, compressed, mad, furious rushing wave, and plunge between the narrowing rocks with appalling deafening roar, and not-to-be-resisted upward dash of foam, with a velocity of thirty miles an hour, plunging, bolting, past you, behind you, out of sight till with wild thundering yell of fury, they reach their fate, the Fall. And this goes on for ever !"

There is rapture here, but not. mere rhetoric. It is the rapture of simplicity and of suddenly but naturally aroused astonishment. We had marked a dozen other passages illus- trative of the perfectly sincere enthusiasm of Lady Howard, but space will allow us to give but one description of the sensations produced by crossing one of the slight American railway-bridges :—

" We soon moved on, the scene every moment more inexpressibly beautiful ; but the track risky and dangerous, along narrow rocky ledges with not an inch to spare, edging frightful precipices ; across long unprotected trestle-bridges with the sensation of a tight-rope in the air, till we come to the famous and truly awful Barra/ice de Malec, across which, over the broad glistening river Metlac deep down below, the track describes a horse-shoe on a bridge 100 feet high, of nine spans on a curve of 323 feet radius—along the dizzy and unprotected summit of which the train carefully creeps at the slowest of snail's pace—the slim and slender sup- ports of the narrow erection swaying and vibrating visibly under the strain of its heavy weight ; a real mauvais quart d'heure for persons with or without nerves ! At last it is passed, and on we go, winding like a snake up the steep barranca.; silvery cascades and crystal streams on every side shaded by delicate ferns, lovely foliage and flowery creepers ; till we find ourselves on the summit of the gorge in a fairy valley of dazzling green—its exquisite verdure and idyllic loveliness, the more lovely for the wild ranges of beetling crag and huge precipitous mountain that encircle it— its northern rocky mass towering to the heavens, crowned by that mighty silver dome whose far-off mysterious radiant beauty seemed like some distant dreamy presentment of the long ago visioned 'Great White Throne.' " When Lady Howard and "her brother G." crossed the Atlantic in the great Cunard liner • Lucania ' in the autumn of 1894 they had no special mission. They went to see, to admire, and to sketch, and they adhered to their programme. Lady Howard, therefore, does not profess to supply the British public with much that is new as to the moral and intellectual phenomena of the North American Continent. As, indeed, she makes her rapid survey of Canada, Colorado, Arkansas, California, Mexico, Florida, New Orleans, North Carolina, and Virginia, closing with a glance at Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston, one wonders that she has time to do anything else but burst out into ejaculations of surprise and admiration. At the same time, having keen powers of observation and an excellent memory,

she is able to throw new light on old subjects. Here, for example, is Mormonism in a fresh light. Lady Howard attended service in the monstrous, ungainly Tabernacle of Salt Lake City :—

" The organ pealed forth magnificently, and several hymns, a little in the 'Salvation' style, were thundered forth from at least 8,000 throats, all in unison and perfectly good tune—the effect exceeding grand. After that first one, then another occupant of the platform uprose and discoursed a few words of extempore prayer and exhortation, then sat down again ; and an unhappy member of the congregation, who had prepared for no such thing, was solemnly invited to mount the platform and preach a sermon to the assembled saints.' Evidently in a state of great per- turbation, and most desirous to decline the invitation, but apparently not daring to refuse, he obeyed, and after a great deal of hesitation said, in a lachrymose and complaining voice, Well, he did think it was hard, and he believed it was the practice of the Mormon Church alone—for all other Churches carefully chose and trained their preachers—that an unimportant and unpretending member of the congregation who came to the Tabernacle solely for the purpose of being himself instructed, should be set up on high on Zion to teach the assembled saints that which he did not understand himself; any way, not as a preacher should; and it was harder still on those before him to be called upon to listen to one so unlearned as himself ; and he did think it was not for the good or for the credit of the latter- day saints that their doctrines should be set forth by any chance member, as devoid of eloquence as of knowledge. He guessed this was not the way to raise the Mormon faith in the eyes of Gentile strangers. All other Churches set forth their best and most learned men to preach—only the Mormons had this foolish custom.' This, repeated over and over again in varied words, formed the gist of his ' sermon' for half an hour at least, till an impatient Elder sprang up and said he guessed they'd heard enough of that; he hadn't much to say himself, but he would just inform the Gentiles present that the special feature of the Mormon faith which set it on high above all others, was its glorious doctrine of Redemption after death' and Vicarious Baptism of the dead,' by which it was enabled to circumvent the powers of darkness. Upon this he harped and shrieked and gesticulated, till happily the grand organ suddenly pealed forth once more one or two magnificent fugues splendidly played, after which an anthem, well sung by the choir on the platform, and a kind of blessing, dispensed by the high priest, brought the proceedings to an end, and the vast crowd dispersed."

Here, certainly, we have a comic picture of Mormonism at work which differs very much from the commonplace view.

As was to be expected, the splendour of Mexican scenery and the romance of Mexican history have a great attraction for Lady Howard. She repeats at fall length the story of the Spanish Conquest, and she is not unmindful of the sad tragedy of Maximilian. She justifies the execution of him by Juarez on the ground that the same rigour had been observed by the enemy in the case of innumerable guerilla chiefs and leaders of the Republicans. A magnificent mausoleum has been erected to Juarez in the cemetery of SaniFernando, and "the love with which the Mexicans regard the memory of this artificer of their independence is shown by the innumerable trophies and flags and wreaths of immortelles and daily fresh flowers, with which the mausoleum and marble spaces round the tomb are covered." Colorado, Florida, and Mexico rather spoil the traveller for tame regions and still tamer towns ; hence it is, perhaps, that Lady Howard's descriptions of New York, Washington, and Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston—which, however, she visited in intensely cold weather that culminated in a blizzard—are comparatively prosaic and matter-of-fact. The most notable, indeed, of her observa- tions of these towns regards the dominance of French ideas over the American middle-class mind at the present time. French art of every variety is to be found in the art galleries. As for fashions- " Newport (Rhode Island), as every one knows, is the Trouville of the States, the summer-resort of the fine fieur of American Society people,' who have erected a series of the most charming villas, many of them gorgeous palaces which they affectedly call 'cottages,' and where the elaborate bathing establishments and beaches necessitate innumerable changes of equally elaborate French toilettes and bathing costumes, and where the fashionable belles of the 'Four Hundred' vie with each other as to who shall wear the extremest number of Parisian 'confections' of the costliest and most ravishing description."

Altogether Lady Howard's book is one of the most en- thusiastic, sincere, and informing, as well as one of the least pretentious, that have been published about that North American Continent which, in spite of portentous railway enterprise, is quite as much of a miracle, and very nearly as much of a mystery, as it was in the days of Columbus.