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Birmingham—The Oratory—Newman.

Going up to London, I tarried for a few days at Birmingham, a town not pleasing to my fancy, and yet one which no tourist in England would choose to omit. I found it, indeed, as Leland described it three hundred years ago, “to be inhabited of many smithes, that use to make knives, and all manner of cutting tooles: and many lorimers, that make bittes, and a great many naylors; so that a great part of the town is maintayned by smithes who have their sea-coal out of Staffordshire.” To this, I cannot help adding, in the style of old Fuller, that “there be divers many also who do make buttons; and a great store of all things gilt, and showy, and not costlie nor precious withal, do come out of Brummagem; for which also the new bishoppes which Cardinal Wiseman did lately make therein, be commonly called the Brummagem hierarchie, that is to say, not so much Latin bishoppes as Latten bishops; latten being much used in Brummagem, and is made of stone of calamine and copper, or chiefly of brass.” I confess that good part of my interest in Birmingham proper was to see what this new hierarchy were about.

The Town-Hall has been often enough described and praised, and is, no doubt, very fine; but I did not go to England to see Grecian temples, and I took much more satisfaction in any old frame house of three centuries ago, than in the frigid and formal show of all its columns.

On the whole, I think King Edward’s Grammar School the most interesting object in the town. Though the buildings were erected very lately, they are in the true academic style of Cambridge and Oxford. The pile is massive and imposing, and I was pleased to find that the solid oak of its noble rooms is the production of American forests. Here I first saw how English boys are made scholars; the drill being obvious to even a moment’s glance; every motion and look of the masters, who walk up and down among the boys in their college gowns, implying a discipline and method, of which our schools are too commonly destitute. Queen’s College is also worthy of a visit, and I was much pleased with some of the pictures which I saw in its hall, among which was an old one of Mary Queen of Scots, representing her with her child, James Stuart. Who ever conceived of Mary as a motherly creature, or of the old pedant king as an unbreeched boy? Yet such were they in this painting, which was no doubt true, as well as beautiful, in its time. With the churches of Birmingham I was not particularly impressed. St. Martin’s, the “old paroch-church” of Leland’s day, scarcely retains any remnant of its ancient self, except the spire, which leans, and seems likely to fall. The sovereign hill of the town is surmounted by St. Philip’s, which ought to be a cathedral, and the seat of a school of the prophets, but which looks like nothing more than a plethoric Hanoverian temple, in which indolent and drowsy worldliness would be content to say its prayers not more than once a week. I was better pleased with a church in the suburbs, built in George Fourth’s day, and partaking both of the merits and defects of that period of transition, when the church was in palmy prosperity as “the venerable establishment.” Here first I saw an English funeral, evidently of one of the humbler class, all parties walking on foot, and the coffin carried on a bier. The curate met the procession at the gate, in his surplice and cap, and then reverently uncovering his head, led the way into the house of God, the consoling words of the service gradually dying on my ear, as the rear of the funeral train disappeared within. The parsonage is close at hand, an ecclesiastical looking house of most appropriate and pleasing aspect; and the abode, as I can testify from personal knowledge, of the true spirit of an English parish priest—such an one as Hooker and Herbert would have rejoiced to foreknow. In his Church the prayers are perpetual; the fire never going out on the altar, and its gates standing open, as it were, night and day. The vicinity is known as “Camp Hill,” for here was the furious Rupert once in garrison; but a queer old house, all gables and chimneys, is pointed out, upon the hill, as the former lodging of his redoubtable adversary, old Noll himself. Hence we stretch into the country, and gain those pleasant extremes of Warwickshire, which Leland noteth, not forgetting the return by Sandy Lane, through “Dirty End,” which, since the days of his chronicle, is euphuized into Deritend. This place is full of what the Brummagem Cardinal would call slums, and one of them, as if on purpose to affront a portion of my countrymen, displayed to my astonishment, on a street sign, the name of “New-England.” Did any returned pilgrim settle down here, and give the last retreat of his poverty this name?

“Born in New-England, did in London die,”

is a well-known epitaph, which may possibly explain this circumstance; for, said Dr. Johnson, “who that was born in New-England, would care to die there,” or words to that effect. Yet I confess, for life or death, I have scarcely seen any place in our own New-England which would not be preferable to this, although Leland calls Dirty End “a pretty street with a mansion of tymber hard on the bank of a brook, with a proper chapel close by.” Here I stopped before the aged front of the “Old Crown Inn,” which I take to be the same “tymber” mansion, having all the odd corners, and juttings-forth, and quaint appurtenances of centuries long gone by. These out-of-the-way ramblings and searches were far more to my taste than the gaudy sights of the shops and manufactories.

I went out to Oscott, and took a survey of the enemy’s headquarters, to begin with. Here Tridentinism shows her best front, and yet it falls far below what I had been led to expect. The college is built of brick, but is prettily situated, and commands a fine view from the leads, to which I ascended, for a prospect of the surrounding country. There is little architectural merit in any part of the structure, and the general appearance of things, throughout, is below that of collegiate institutions in England, or on the Continent. I was pleased, however, with the rooms set apart for ecclesiastical visitors, so far as their furniture was suitable to offices of private devotion, and not merely to those of rest and recreation; and I was not sorry to see in the Library a pretty large selection of standard English divines, though I am painfully suspicious that they are not there to be freely used by all who would read and study them. The chapel is gaudy, yet in true Mediæval character, and somewhat impressive. The other rooms are labelled—pransorium, deversorium, and the like, or surmounted with the names of the divers arts, as Rhetorica, Dialectica, and so on. In the common-room are showy portraits of the chiefs of the Romish recusancy in England, some of whom look like saints, and some like Satan. There was a portrait of Pugin, to which I directed the attention of the official who served as guide. He sneered significantly, and said Pugin was a queer fellow, which meant that they had found him not so blind as they wished him to be, to his fatal mistake in joining them. He studied Mediæval Anglicanism, with the illusion that it was all one with modern Tridentinism, and had left his mother Church in the vain hope that he should find a more congenial sphere for his antiquarian tastes, among the English Papists. But he found the past even more absolutely ignored at Oscott than at Oxford. Anglicans are glad to retain all that may be safely retained of their own antiquity: but Romanists are Italian throughout, and any thing that is national, is schismatical. They know nothing of Augustine and little of Anselm; they date from Trent, and to that all must conform. Old liturgies, old customs, old principles, as he in vain tried to recommend them, they laughed at as utterly obsolete: and he in turn scoffed at their Romanesque, and their Oratorianism, as infinitely less Catholic than the Anglican Gothic, and the Anglican Prayer-Book. Poor fellow! he has since died in a mad-house—a noble genius, but the victim of theory, and of unreal conceptions as to the diseases and the cure of the times.

If I was disappointed at Oscott, much more at St. Chad’s, their new cathedral in Birmingham. So much was said about this attempt, that I had supposed it a chef d’œuvre of the architect, and a complete trap for dilettanti Anglicans. It is the reverse of all this, being so poor, and even niggard in its entire conception and execution, that I am sure it must be a spoiled Pugin, if his at all. It is of brick, and of small dimensions, and not cleanly. Its crypts are instructive as to the way in which the crypts of the old cathedrals were formerly used, being fitted up for masses for the dead, but not much adorned. They are damp, dark, and somewhat offensive, as they are used for burial.

Strolling out to Edgbaston, I saw the rising walls of Newman’s Oratory. This, too, is strictly conformed to his new Italian idea of religion, which scrupulously eschews the old English architecture, associated as that is with Magna Charta and the Constitutions of Clarendon, and with three hundred years of absolute independence. This is in strict agreement with his development theory. The Romanism of the present is the rule, and that is Italian: the past was immature and undigested, and hence savored, more or less, of nationality. How vastly more severed, then, from the historical antecedents of his country is the British papist, than the genuine Anglican!

While I was in Birmingham, Mr. Newman yet occupied his temporary Oratory, in the neighborhood of Camp-Hill. It was an old distillery, and, of course, was but an ill-looking place for worship. Wishing to see him and his sect, I went one day to the spot, and pushing aside a heavy veil at the door, such as is common in Italian churches, found myself in a low and dirty-looking place of worship, in which the first object that met my eye was an immense doll of almost ludicrous aspect, near the door, representing the Virgin, with the crescent beneath her feet. Bishop Ullathorne proves Mohammed to have been the first believer in the Immaculate Conception, so that we cannot but admit the propriety of the symbol. Before this image several youth, with broad tonsures, and in long cassocks, were kneeling, in a manner truly histrionic. One of them rose and asked if I would like to be shown the library, and so conducted me up a dark and narrow stair-case into a large apartment, in which were no books, but which appeared to be hung with baize, like the rooms of an artist. He informed me that the books were in petto, and would, by and by, be manifested; apologizing for the present deficiency.

A person, in like costume with my conductor, and with a shaven crown even more grotesque, was pacing to and fro in the room, apparently devoting himself to a book which he held in hand. At a question of mine, addressed to my guide, as to where Mr. Newman might be, this personage turned sharply round and answered, “he has been all day in the Confessional, where he would be glad to see you.” “Who is that person?” I demanded, looking towards the strange apparition, as he continued pacing up and down, and addressing my guide. “Father Ambrose,” was the reply. “Yes, but what is his name beyond the walls of the Oratory?” The young man, rather reluctantly, lisped out, “Mr. S——.” “Mr. S——,” I rejoined, “late of—— College, Oxford! Can it be possible?” I looked at him, utterly unable to conceal my surprise, and pitied him in my heart. The youths whom I had seen were doubtless all, like him, young men of promise and of parts only a few years since, in Oxford; and now to see them thus ignobly captive, and performing such unreal and corrupting dramatics, in an age of wants and works, and of awful realities, like this! But where was the ignis fatuus of the bog into which they had fallen? Inquiring for their Master, I was informed he was to preach in their chapel on a certain evening, and accordingly I attended at the appointed time. It was during the Octave of Easter, and on entering, I observed that the altar was a bank of flowers, looking more like the shelves of a conservatory, than the table of the Lord. Above this horticultural display towered a thing of wax and glass and spangles, (or what seemed to be such,) as the apparent divinity of the shrine. It was a shameful burlesque of the Virgin, and utterly incompetent to excite one religious or reverent thought in any mind not entirely childish, or depraved in taste. It was surrounded with tawdry finery, and looked like the idol of a pagoda. The room was well lighted, and filled with the sort of people usually frequenting Romish chapels in this country. A few well-dressed persons seemed to be strangers, and like myself were treated with great civility. The chancel was filled with the youths I had seen before, wearing over their cassocks the short jacket-like surplice, usual in Italy. These were offering some prayers in English, but they could not be called English prayers; and then followed a hymn, given out and sung very much in the style of the Methodists. I could not distinguish what it was altogether, but the hymn-book which they use was given me in Birmingham, and consists, in a great degree, of such ditties as this, which they apparently address to the image over the altar:—

“So age after age in the Church hath gone round,

And the Saints new inventions of homage have found;

Conceived without sin, thy new title shall be

A new gem to thy shining, sweet Star of the Sea!”

Many hymns in the collection are not only lack-a-daisical in the extreme, but highly erotic, and even nauseously carnal. I could scarcely believe my eyesight, so senseless seemed the ceremony; and yet here were educated men, Englishmen, sons of a pure and always majestic Church, and familiar with the Holy Scriptures from their infancy! How shall we account for such a phenomenon in the history of the human mind, and of the human soul?

While the singing was going on, a lank and spectral figure appeared at the door of the chancel—stalked in, and prostrated himself before the altar. This was followed by a succession of elevations and prostrations, awkward in the extreme, and both violent and excessive: but whether required by the rubric, or dictated by personal fervor only, they added nothing to the solemnity of the scene. Meanwhile the hymn was continued by the disciples, as fanatically as the pantomime was performed by the Master. But could this be the man? Could this be he who once stood in the first pulpit of Christendom, and from his watch-tower in St. Mary’s, told us what of the night? Was this the burning and shining light who for a season allowed us to rejoice in his light? What an eclipse! I felt a chill creep over me as he mounted his rostrum, and turned towards us his almost maniacal visage. There could be no mistake. It was, indeed, poor fallen Newman. He crossed himself, unfolded a bit of broad ribbon, kissed it, put it over his shoulders, opened his little Bible, and gave his text from the Vulgate—Surrexit enim, sicut dixit—“He is risen, as he said.” The preaching was extemporaneous; the manner not fluent; the matter not well arranged; gesticulations not violent nor immoderate; the tone, affectedly earnest; and the whole thing, from first to last, painfully suggestive of a sham; of something not heartily believed; of something felt to be unreal by the speaker himself. And yet “the hand of Joab was in it.” There was no denying the craft of no common artist. He dwelt chiefly on Sicut dixit—to which he gave a very Newman-like force, repeating the words over and over again. “Sicut dixit, my friends, that is, as he said, but as you would not believe! This was a reproach: as much as to say—What did you expect? Were you not told as much? Of course, he is risen, for he said so!” In this way the preacher reached the point of his discourse, which was, that “the original disciples themselves, who thought they knew and loved Christ—nay, who did love him, and came to embalm his body, after he was crucified—had so little faith, as to deserve a rebuke, instead of a commendation. They had to be harshly reminded of what Jesus had said to them with his own mouth. Well, just so in our day, thousands who think they know and love him, have yet no real faith; don’t believe, in short, what the Church requires them to believe, and hence are strangers to the Catholic faith.” Drawing illustrations from the days of Noe (so he called him) and many Old Testament histories, he endeavored to show, in like manner, that God had always required men to believe the very things they were not willing to believe: and hence he drew his conclusion that the slowness of men to believe all that Romanism prescribes, is mere want of faith. It would have been quite to the point to have shown a sicut dixit in support of the matters which he endeavored to force upon us, before he asked us to admit that denying the “Deification of Mary,” is all the same thing as doubting the Resurrection of Christ from the dead; but of course this joint was wanting. I was amused at the ingenuity, but shocked at the juggle of such an argument, which was simply this—that because it is sinful to doubt what Christ has said, therefore it is equally sinful to doubt what he never said, and what is directly contrary to many things which he did expressly say! The orator, in delivering this apology for his new faith, by no means forgot a little plea for himself personally, in which I saw evidence of his wounded pride. He said, “Christ thus sent a rebuke to his disciples for not believing what he said; and you know how hard it is, for even us, to bear such unbelief in our friends. We know we are sincere; but they say, for example, he is artful, he don’t believe his own words, he deceives; or, if they don’t say that, then they say, he is crazy, he is beside himself, he has lost his wits.” On this he enlarged with much feeling, for he was pleading his own cause, and in fact he rambled on in this direction till he had nearly forgotten his argument. But I was amused at one instance of his forgetting himself in particular. In referring to the hard names Christ himself had to bear, he had occasion to quote St. Matthew xxvii., 63, where the Romish version reads, “Sir, we have remembered that that seducer said, yet living, etc.” But before he knew it, he forgot that he was an actor, and unwittingly quoted the smoother rendering of his good old English Bible, “Sir, we remember that that deceiver said while he was yet alive.” While dwelling on the words that deceiver, he bethought himself that he was quoting heresy, and hobbled as well as he could into some other equivalent, but whether the very words of his new Bible or not, I cannot affirm. There were other similar haltings of the tongue, which show that a man may have a good will to say the Romish Shibboleth, and yet betray himself occasionally, by “not framing to pronounce it right.” Newman certainly forgot the talismanic aspirate on this occasion; he seemed to be conscious of playing a part, and, altogether, when he had done, I left the place, contented to have done with him. Alas! that gold can be thus changed, and the fine gold become so dim!

I could not learn that he was doing much by all his efforts; in fact he was said to be somewhat crest-fallen and irritable, about things in Birmingham. His Oratorians were going about the streets in queer, and, in fact, ridiculous garments, and attracting stares and jibes, and no doubt they felt themselves martyrs; but there is, after all, much sturdy common sense in John Bull’s hatred of the absurd, and few can think any better of folly for wearing its cap in broad daylight. The results God only can foresee; but a delusion so patent, one would think—if it must have its day—must also find daylight enough in the very shortest day in the year to kill it outright.

They showed me, at the Oratory, a wax cast of the face of St. Philip Neri, and a very pleasant and benevolent one it was. He was an Italian Wesley, and the Pope was his bitter adversary, in his life-time, interdicting him, and refusing him the Sacraments, and almost excommunicating him. But somehow or other when he was out of the way, it became convenient to canonize him, as a sort of patron of enthusiasts of a certain class, who find in his fraternity, a free scope for their feelings and passions. Oratorianism is the Methodism of the Trent religion, but has a virtual creed of its own, and is as really a sect as Methodism was in the life-time of its founder. Hence it is odious to many even of the new converts, and many old-fashioned Romanists abhor it. I left the Oratory of Mr. Newman with a deep impression that he has yet a remaining character to act, very different from that in which he now appears, but in which it will be evident that he is far from satisfied, at this time, with the direction which he has given to his own movement, and with the grounds on which he has chosen to rest his submission to the Pope.