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Easter Holidays—Lichfield and Dr. Johnson.

My reverend friend accompanied me to Lichfield, as our occupation for Easter-Tuesday; kindly expressing his desire to have a share in the enthusiasm, with which he justly imagined the first sight of an ancient cathedral would inspire a visiter from America. And although Lichfield is by no means one of the most impressive specimens of English cathedral architecture, as it is small, and not very well kept, I was very glad to begin my pilgrimage to the cathedrals with this venerable Church, the see of the primitive and apostolic St. Chad; the scene of some of the most severe and melancholy outrages of the Great Rebellion; and the sacred spot, in which some of the earliest and most durable impressions were made upon the character of the truly great Dr. Johnson. Familiar with all I expected to see, so far as books and engravings could make me so, it was thrilling to set out for my first visit to such a place, and I was obliged to smother something like anxiety lest the reality should fall far below anticipation. How would it strike me, after all? I was to tread, at last, the hallowed pavement of an ancient minster, in which the sacrifices of religion had been offered for centuries, and occupying a spot which had been drenched with the blood of primitive martyrs; I was to join in the solemn chant of its perpetual services; I was to go round about its walls, and mark well its bulwarks, and survey its towers, and to trace the tokens of those who had once set up their banners there, and broken down its carved work with axes and hammers, and defiled the place of its sanctuary. No English mind, to which ancient things have been familiar from birth, could possibly have appreciated my inward agitation at the prospect of such a day; and, as I took my seat in the train, I could not but wonder at the indifference of my fellow-passengers, to whom booking for Lichfield was an every-day affair, and whose associations with that city were evidently those of mere business, and downright matter-of-fact.

The three spires, crowning the principal towers of the Church, soon came in sight, and beneath its paternal shadow were clustered the humbler roofs of the town. How like a hen gathering her chickens under her wings, is a true cathedral amid the dwellings which it overshadows, and how completely is its true intent set forth by this natural suggestion of its architecture! I had never, before, seen a city purely religious in its prestige, and I felt, as soon as my eyes saw it, the moral worth to a nation of many such cities scattered amid the more busy hives of its industry. On alighting, I could not but remark to my companion, the still and Sabbath-like aspect of the city. “It is generally so,” he answered, “with our cathedral towns; they are unlike all other places.” This is their reproach in the eyes of the economist; but such men never seem to reflect that the cathedral towns owe their existence to the fact they are such, and would, generally, have no population at all, but for their ecclesiastical character. Why can they not see, besides, that such a place as Lichfield is as necessary to a great empire, as a Sheffield? It bred a Johnson—and that was a better product for England than ever came out of a manufactory of cotton or hardware. Probably, just such a mind could have been reared only in just such a place. “You are an idle set of people,” said Boswell to his master, as they entered Lichfield together. “Sir,” replied the despot, “we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.”

But here at length is the cathedral, and service is going on! A moment’s survey of its western front, so old, so enriched with carvings and figures, so defiant of casual observation, and so worthy of careful study—and we pass inside—and here is the nave, and the massive and dim effect of the interior—somehow not all realized at once, and yet overpowering. We reach the choir, and a verger quietly smuggles us within. After a moment’s kneeling, we observe that the Epistle is reading, and the service about to close. In a few minutes my first impressions of worship in a cathedral are complete, and they are very unsatisfactory. I had reached the sanctuary too late for the musical parts of the solemnity, and there was rather a deficiency than an excess of ceremonial, in the parts I saw. A moment’s inspection convinced me that Lichfield Cathedral is, by no means, over-worked by its Dean and Chapter. Alas! I said to myself, what we could do with such a foundation in my own city, in America! We might have such a school of the prophets as should be felt in all the land: we would make it the life of the place; the seat of perpetual preachings, and prayers, and catechizings, and councils; a citadel of power to the faith, and a magazine of holy armor and defences for the Church. Why do not these worthy Canons wake up, and go to work, like genuine sons and successors of St. Chad?

We now went the rounds of the Church, with the stupid verger for our orator, and I began to experience the intolerable annoyance complained of by all travellers. “Oh, that he might hold his tongue! We know it—we know it—only let us alone, and here’s your shilling”—said my inmost heart, a score of times, but still he mumbled on. He was most impressive in detailing the exploits of the Puritans: here they hacked, and there they hewed; this was done by Cromwell’s men—when they broke into the old Bishops’ sepulchres; and that, when they hunted a cat, with the hounds, through the nave and aisles. Here they tooted with the broken organ pipes, and there the soldiers mounted the pulpit, and preached à la Woodstock. They went so far as to cut up their rations of flesh meat on the altar, and they baptised a calf at the font; but, enough; mine eyes have seen that there were such men in England two hundred years ago, and oh, let us pray that we may not deserve such judgments again. It was refreshing to stop before the tomb of Bishop Hacket, and to thank God, who put it into his heart to be a repairer of the breach. The Bishop had his failings, but what he did for his cathedral should cover a multitude of sins, if he had so many. He was the man who, during the worst scenes of the rebellion, was threatened by a soldier with instant death, unless he desisted from the prayers which he was then offering, in the Church of St. Giles, Holborn, and who answered, calmly, “you do what becomes a soldier, but I shall do as becomes a priest,” and so went on with the service. At the Restoration, being already three-score and ten, he was appointed to this See. He found the cathedral almost a ruin; thousands of round shot, and hand-grenades had been fired upon it; the pinnacles were battered to pieces, and the walls and spires seemed ready to fall, while the interior was a mass of filth and desolation. The very next day after his arrival, he set his own horses to work in clearing away the rubbish, and for eight years he devoted his wealth and labor, and made perpetual efforts among the zealous laity of the kingdom, to achieve and pay for the restoration of the Church, which he thus accomplished. Finally he reconciled the holy place by a solemn ceremonial, and re-instituted the services. When he heard the bells ring, for the first time, being then confined to his bed-chamber, he went into another room to hear the sound; but, while he blessed God that he had lived to enjoy it, said it was his knell, and so, soon after, died like old Simeon.

We paused before the busts of Johnson and Garrick, and the monuments of Miss Seward and Lady M. W. Montague, and also before a monument lately erected to some soldiers who perished in India, over which the flags of their victories were displayed. The kneeling figure of the late Bishop Ryder is pleasing and appropriate; but the object of universal attraction is the monument of two children, by Chantrey, so generally known and admired in prints and engravings. I cannot say that the style of this monument comports well with the surrounding architecture, but in itself it is beautiful, and bespeaks that sentimental love of children for which the Church of England has made the English people remarkable, beyond other Christian nations. The epitaph is a sad blemish, but the reposing Innocents make you forget it. So simple and sweet is their marble slumber, which, of itself, speaks “the Resurrection and the Life.”

The cathedral-close is open and spacious, and one gains a very good view of the architecture, on all sides of the exterior. I sat down beneath some trees, at the eastern extremity of the Church, and for a long while gazed at the old stones, from the foundation to the topmost spire. They told of centuries—how mutely eloquent! All was so still that the rooks and jackdaws, chattering in the belfries, supplied the only sounds. There was the bishop’s palace at my right, the scene of Anna Seward’s bright days, and of some of Dr. Johnson’s happiest hours. The ivy almost covers its modest but ample front. The close is a little picture of itself; too much, perhaps, like the swallows’ nests, around the altar, in the warm and inactive contentment with which it must tend to surfeit any but the most conscientious of God’s ministers.

On one side of the cathedral is a pretty pool, and altogether, in this point of observation, it presents a beautiful view. Swans are kept in this water, and go oaring themselves about, without that annoyance from boys and vagabonds, which prevents their being kept in public places, in our country. They came familiarly to us, and even followed us a long distance, as we walked on the margin of the pool, as if doing the honors of the place to ecclesiastical visitors. We now took a walk through the meadows, to Stowe, distant about half-a-mile, and presenting another pleasant picture, with its old, but beautiful parish-church. Here we found tokens of that work of Church restoration which is going on throughout all England, and which will make the age of Victoria enviably famous with future generations. The little Church was in perfect keeping, throughout; severely plain, but strictly Anglican, and full of reverend simplicity. There were some pews in the Church, but the new sittings were all open, and apparently free. We looked with some interest at the monument of Lucy Porter, daughter of the lady who afterwards became the wife of Dr. Johnson. Hard by the Church is the well of St. Chad, to which I next paid a visit, and from which I was glad to drink. It is twined with roses, and neatly arched over with masonry, on which is chiselled CE. EP.—that is, Ceadda Episcopus, and here, in the seventh century, the holy man lived and baptized. St. Chad, though a Saxon by birth, was in British orders, of the primitive ante-Gregorian succession, and held the See of York, until his own humility, and the Roman scruples of the Archbishop of Canterbury, transferred him to Lichfield, where he lived the life of an apostle, and from which he itinerated through the midland counties, very often, on foot, in the spirit of a truly primitive missionary. It was with exceeding veneration for the memory of his worth and piety, that I visited this scene of his holy life, and blessed God for the mercies which have issued thence, even to my own remote country. Such are the world’s true benefactors: the world forgets them, but their record is with God; and He will make up His jewels yet, in the sight of the assembled universe.

Returning, we had the cathedral before us, all the way, in truly delightful prospect. I observed the birds that darted across our path with peculiar pleasure, and could not but remark that the sparrows were John Bull’s own sparrows, having, in comparison with ours, a truly English rotundity and plumpness, which should no doubt be credited to the roast-beef of Old England, and to good ale, withal, or to something equivalent in the diet of birds. We now took a turn into the city, and first, went to see the house, in a window of which Lord Brooke was seated when he received the fatal bullet from the cathedral. It seems a great distance for such a shot; and this fact heightens the peculiarity of the occurrence. There is a little tablet, fixed in the wall, recording the event. As it took place on St. Chad’s day, and as the shot was fired by a deaf and dumb man in the tower, putting out the eye with which the Puritan besieger had prayed he might behold the ruins of the cathedral, and killing him on the spot, it is not wonderful that the providence was regarded as special and significant. Sacrilege has been dangerous sport ever since the days of Belshazzar. It was a more gratifying occupation to seek next the birth-place of Dr. Johnson, with which pictures had made me so familiar, that when I came suddenly into the market-place, I recognized the house and St. Mary’s Church, and even the statue, all as old acquaintances. The pillars at the corners of the house give it a very marked effect, and one would say, at the outset, that it must have a history. It is not unworthy of such a man’s nativity. The Church in which the future sage was christened is almost directly opposite; and as I came in view of it, I looked for its projecting clock, and found it, just as I had seen it in engravings. The statue of Dr. Johnson is placed in the market square, just before the house in which he first saw the light. It was the gift of one of the dignitaries of the cathedral to the city. Did poor Michael Johnson, the bookseller, ever console his poverty and sorrows, as he looked from those windows on a stormy day, with visions of this tribute to the Christian genius of his son? Perhaps, just where it stands, he often saw his boy borne to school on the backs of his playmates, in triumphal procession; and this incident of his childhood is now wrought into the monumental stone. In another bas-relief, he is seen as a child of three years old, perched on his father’s shoulder, listening to Dr. Sacheverel, as he preaches in the cathedral. In a third is illustrated that touching act of filial piety, the penance of the sage in Uttoxeter market. For an act of disobedience to his poor hard-faring father, done when he was a boy, but haunting him through life with remorse, the great man went to the site of his father’s humble book-stall in the market-place, and there stood bare-headed in the storm, one rainy day, bewailing his sin, and honoring the lowliness of the parental industry which provided for the wants of his dependent years. What moral sublimity! worthy indeed of a memorial, and doubtless recorded in the book of the Lamb that was slain to take away his sin!

Opposite St. Mary’s, and next door to the birth-place, we found the “Three Crowns Inn,” where Johnson chose to stay, with sturdy independence, when he visited Lichfield, refusing even the hospitalities of Peter Garrick. I suppose the room in which we lunched was the scene of another instance of true greatness in Dr. Johnson, who, with the dignity of a gentleman, entertained here a friend of his humbler days, “whose talk was of bullocks,” and whose personal appearance was by no means agreeable, but to whose tiresome volubility, in things of his own profession, the sage extended the most patient and condescending attention. We could not but drink our mug of ale to the memory of the immortal old man of ten thousand honest prejudices, and as many virtues; in whom “has been found no lie,” and who has made his own massive character, in some respects, the ideal of a genuine Englishman.

We visited the hospital and Church of St. John Baptist, a charitable foundation of an old Bishop of Lichfield, who was also a munificent benefactor of Brazen-nose College, at Oxford. It is a queer, out-of-the-way, little blessing, of the sort which attracts no attention, but which bespeaks a Church at work among the people, of the like of which England is full. I was much pleased with this fragrant little flower of charity, for such it seemed, hiding, like the violet, out of sight, but heavenly when discovered. The Church of St. Michael, Green-hill, next attracted me, standing on an eminence, and crowning it with a conspicuous tower and spire. An avenue of venerable elms leads to its portal, and I found it open. The font, which is a relic of very high antiquity, has lately been restored to its place; and nearly the whole of the nave is a late restoration. Here, then, is another proof of the revival of primitive life and zeal in the Church of England! And all so truly national; Anglican and yet Catholic; consistent with self, and with antiquity, and attesting a continuous ecclesiastical life, from the days of Ceadda, and his predecessors, until now.

The Evening Service at the cathedral was far more gratifying than the morning’s experience had led me to anticipate. The evening sun streamed through the windows of the clere-story with inspiring effect, and the Magnificat quite lifted me up to the devotional heights I had desired to attain, in such a place. Then came the anthem, suitable to Easter-week—“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” How amiable the beautiful and holy place in which such strains have been heard for ages! In passing through the streets, on my way home, I saw one of the popular sports of the Easter-holidays, peculiar to the midland counties, and a relic of the many frolics in use before the Reformation. Some buxom lasses were endeavoring to lift, or heave, a strapping youth, who, in no very gallant style, repelled the embraces and salutations of his female aggressors. I take it for granted, however, that he was not released until he had been handsomely lifted into the air, and made to purchase his freedom by a substantial fine. This is a custom confined, of course, to the vulgar—but even among them, according to my judgment, “more honored in the breach than in the observance.”