The American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) lived in the Essex County portion of the Merrimack Valley for most of his life, but he did live in Lowell in 1844-45 where he served as the editor of the Middlesex Standard, an abolitionist newspaper. As a professional writer, Whittier recorded his observations of the city in an 1845 book, The Stranger in Lowell. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting excerpts from the book. Today is chapter 2.

The Heart of the Stranger

By John G. Whittier

The population of Lowell is constituted mainly of’ New Englanders, but there are representatives here of almost every part of the civilized world.     The good­ humored face of the Milesian meets one at almost every turn, – the shrewdly solemn Scotchman, the transatlantic Yankee, blending the crafty thrift of Bryce Snailsfoot with the stern religious heroism of Cameron, – the blue-eyed, fair-haired German, from the towered hills which overlook the Rhine, slow, heavy and unpromising in his exterior, yet of the same mould and mettle of the men who rallied for ” Father­ land ” at the Tyrtean call of Korner, and beat back the chivalry of France from the banks of the Katzbach ; the countrymen of Richter, and Goethe, and our saint- ed Follen. Here, too, are pedlers from Hamburg and Bavaria and Poland, with their sharp Jewish faces and black, keen eyes. At this moment, beneath my window, are two sturdy, sun-browned Swiss maidens, grinding music for a livelihood, rehearsing in a strange Yankee land the simple songs of their old mountain home, reminding me, by their foreign garb and Ianguage, of

“Lauterbrunnen’s peasant girl.”

Poor wanderers! I cannot say that I love their music; but now, as the notes die away, and, to use the words of Dr. Holmes, “silence comes, like a poultice to heal the wounded ear,” I feel grateful for their visitation. Away from crowded thorough fares, from brick walls and dusty avenues, at the sight of these poor peasants I have gone in thought to the vale of Chamouny, and seen, with Coleridge, the morning star pausing on the “bald, awful head of Sovran Blanc,”and the sun rise and the sun set glorious upon snowy-crested mountains, down in whose valleys the night still lingers; and, following in the track of Byron and Rousseau, have watched the lengthening shadows of the hills on the beautiful waters of the Genevan lake. Blessings, then, upon these young wayfarers, for they have “blessed me unawares.”  In an hour of sickness and lassitude, they have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto’s chapel, and borne me away from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering, to that wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley, and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the hard blue heaven, the echoes of that mighty hymn of a new-created world, when “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy!”

But of all classes of foreigners, the Irish are by far the most numerous. They constitute a quiet and industrious portion of the population; and are consequently respected by their Yankee neighbors. For myself, I confess I feel a sympathy for the Irishman. I see him as the representative of a generous, warm­ hearted and cruelly oppressed people. That he loves his native land, that his patriotism is divided, that he cannot forget the claims of his mother island – that his religion, with all its abuses, is dear to him – does not decrease my estimation of him. A stranger in a strange land, he is to me always an object of interest. The poorest and rudest has a romance in his history. Amidst all his apparent gayety of heart, and national drollery and wit, the poor emigrant has sad thoughts of the “ould mother of him,” sitting lonely in her solitary cabin by the bog-side; recollections of a father’s blessing and a sister’s farewell are haunting him; a grave-mound in a distant churchyard, far beyond  the ” wide wathers,” has an eternal greenness in his memory, for there, perhaps, lies a :darlint child,” or a “swate crather” who once loved him. The New World is forgotten for the moment; blue Killarney and the Liffy sparkle before him, and Glendalough stretches beneath him its dark still mirror; he sees the same evening sunshine rest upon and hallow alike with Nature’s blessing, the ruins of the Seven Churches of Ireland’s apostolic age, the broken mound of the Druids, and the Round Towers of the Phoenician sun­ worshippers, – beautiful and mournful recollections of his home waken within him ; and the rough and seemingly careless and light-hearted laborer melts into tears. It is no light thing to abandon one’s own country and household gods. Touching and beautiful was the injunction of the prophet of the Hebrews: “Ye shall not oppress the stranger, for ye know the heart of the stranger, seeing that ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

I love my own country-I have a strong New England feeling; but I am no friend of that narrow spirit of mingled national vanity and religious intolerance, which, under the specious pretext of preserving our institutions from foreign contamination, has made its appearance among us. I reverence man, as man. Be he Irish or Spanish, black or white, he is my brother man. I have no prejudices against other nations – I cannot regard the people of England as my enemies, nor sympathize with that blustering sham-patriotism, which is ever exclaiming, like the giant of the nursery tale:

“Fee-faw-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman, –
Dead or alive, I will have some.”

I remember that the same sun which shines upon England’s royalty and priestcraft, streams also into the dusty workshop of Ebenezer Elliot- rests on the drab coat of the Birmingham Quaker reformer – greets O’Connell through the grates of his prison – glorifies the gray locks of Clarkson, and gladdens the heroic­ hearted Harriet Martineau in her sick chamber at the mouth of the Tyne. With heart and soul I respond to the sentiments of Channing, when speaking of a foreign nation: “That nation is not an abstraction to me ; it is no longer a vague mass ; it spreads out before me into individuals, in a thousand interesting forms and relations; it consists of husbands and wives, parents and children, who love one another as I love my own home ; it consists of affectionate women and sweet children: it consists of Christian;, united with me to the common Savior, and in whose spirit I reverence the likeness of his divine virtue; it consists of a vast multitude of laborers at the plough and in the workshop, whose toils I sympathize with, whose burden I should rejoice to lighten, and for whose elevation I have pleaded; it consists of men of science, taste, genius, whose writings have beguiled my solitary hours, and given life to my intellect and best affections.”