"Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society" by A. Cleveland Coxe. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
A. Cleveland Coxe
Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066200459
Table of Contents
PREFACE.
The following sketches pre-suppose, on the part of the reader, a familiarity with English subjects, and with the geography, history and literature of England. The writer has endeavored to avoid the common-places of travel, and has made no allusion to topics which are generally understood, such as the petty annoyances one meets at hotels, and the coldness and phlegm of fellow-travellers. He has also forborne to dwell on the greater evils of English society, because these have been thoroughly discussed and exposed, as well by Englishmen as by foreigners. Besides, our countrymen are kept constantly in view of that side of the matter, and there would be no relish of novelty to excuse him for treating them afresh to whole pages made up of the untrustworthy statistics of Dissenting Almanacs, and the rant of Irish members of Parliament. Although English travellers have often dealt unfairly with us, he prefers to show his dislike of such examples, by forbearing to imitate them. Nor does he regard a different course as due to his love of country. A clergyman who devotes his life to the holiest interests of his native land, and who daily thinks, and prays, and toils, and exhorts others, in behalf of her wants—alike those which are purely religious and those which pertain to letters, to education and to society in general—may surely excuse himself from vociferous professions of patriotism. He freely avows his love of country to be consistent with a perception of her faults and deficiencies, and mainly to consist in a high appreciation of her many advantages; in a sense of responsibility for the blessings of which she has made him partaker; and in a studious desire always to remember what is due to her reputation, so far as his humble share in it may be concerned. Whether at home or abroad, he would endeavour so to act as never to disgrace her; but he cannot sympathize with the sort of patriotism which rejoices in the faults of other countries, or which travels mainly to gloat over them. Least of all, can he share in any petty comparisons of ourselves with our mother country. If there be Englishmen who take any pleasure in our defects, he is sorry for their narrowness; if any American finds satisfaction in this or that blemish of English society, he cannot comprehend it. He considers a sacred alliance between the two countries eminently important to mankind; and he who would peril such interests, for the sake of some trivial matter of personal pride, must be one of the most pitiable specimens of human nature, be he American or Briton.
He has aimed, therefore, to present his countrymen with a record of the pleasures which travel in England may afford to any one pre-disposed to enjoy himself, and able to appreciate what he sees. He confesses, also, that he has though rather confined himself to an exhibition of the bright side of the picture, because he fears that many of his countrymen are sceptical as to its existence. He suspects that Americans too commonly go to England prepared to dislike it, and soon cross the channel determined to be happy in France.
As a great measure of his own enjoyment depended upon the fact, that he mingled freely with English society, he thinks it proper to say that he owed his introductions chiefly to a few English friends with whom he had corresponded for years beforehand. He supplied himself with very few introductions from his native land, and even of these he presented only a part; and in accepting civilities he was careful to become indebted for them, only when he had a prospect of being able, in some degree, to return them. As the inter-communion of the Churches tends to make the interchange of hospitalities more frequent, he was the rather desirous in nothing to presume on the good-will at present existing; the abuse of which will certainly defeat the ends for which it has been so generously promoted.
Having given years to the study of the British Constitution, and to the Literature and Religion of England, he has for a long time been accustomed to watch its politics, and its public men. He has, therefore, spoken of several public characters, both Whigs and Tories, in a manner which their respective admirers will hardly approve, but, as he believes, without prejudice, and as a foreigner may do, with more freedom than a fellow-subject. In such expressions of personal opinion he has given an independent judgment, and he is very sure that many of his English friends will be sorry to see some of his criticisms on their leading statesmen. It is but just to them to say, that in remarks on the Sovereign, and her amiable Consort, the writer has spoken entirely for himself, and with a freedom, in which their loyalty and affection never allow them to indulge. He believes that an impartial posterity will, nevertheless, sustain the views with respect to political matters which he has expressed, and he considers it part of the duty of a traveller, in detailing his impressions, to be frank on such subjects, in avowing “how it strikes a stranger.”
He desires also to confess another purpose, in preparing and publishing this little work. He has aimed to present, prominently, to his readers, the distinguishing and characteristic merits of English civilization. Innumerable causes are now at work to debase the morals of our own countrymen. With the contemporaries of Washington, that high social refinement which was kept up amid all the evils of our colonial position, has well-nigh passed away. The dignity of personal bearing, the careful civility of intercourse, and the delicate sense of propriety which characterized the times of our grandfathers, have disappeared. The vulgarizing influences of a dissocial sectarianism are beginning to be perceived. The degrading effects of sudden wealth; the corruptions bred of luxury; the evils of a vast and mongrel immigration; and not least, the vices communicated to our youth, by contact with the Mexican and half-Spanish populations contiguous to our southern frontier; all these corrosive elements are operating among us with a frightful and rapid result. The contrast with such tendencies, of the sober and comparatively healthful progress of society in our ancestral land, the writer supposes, cannot but be acceptable at least to those of his countrymen who deprecate this deterioration, and who, for themselves and their families, are anxious to cultivate an acquaintance with those domestic, educational and religious institutions which have given to England her moral power and dignity among the nations of the civilized world.
These sketches were originally contributed to the New-York Church Journal, but are here given in a revised and complete form. They are a record of the memorable year 1851—a year to which English history will look back as the last, and the full-blown flower of a long peace. The revival of the imperial power in France, at the close of that year, has opened a new era in Europe, the effects of which upon the British Empire can hardly be foreseen.
A. C. C.
Baltimore, 1855.
IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
First and Second Thoughts—A Warwickshire Welcome.
About noon, one hazy April day, I found myself approaching the British coast, and was informed by the Captain of our gallant steamer, that in a few minutes we should gain a glimpse of the mountains of Wales. Instead of rushing to the upper-deck, I found myself forced by a strange impulse to retire to my state-room. For nearly thirty years had my imagination been fed with tales of the noble island over the sea; and for no small portion of that period, its history and its institutions had been a favorite subject of study. To exchange, forever, the England of my fancy for the matter-of-fact England of the nineteenth century, was something to which I was now almost afraid to consent. For a moment I gave way to misgivings; collected and reviewed the conceptions of childhood; and then betook myself, solemnly, to the reality of seeing, with my own eyes, the land of my ancestors, in a spirit of thankfulness for so great a privilege. I went on deck. There was a faint outline of Snowdon in the misty distance; and before long, as the mist dispersed, there, just before us, was the noble brow of Holyhead.
It reminded me of the massive promontory opposite Breakneck, as we descend the Hudson, towards West Point: but the thought that it was another land, and an old as well as an ancestral one, strangely mingled with my comparative memories of home. There is something like dying and waking to life again, in leaving one’s home, and committing one’s self to such a symbol of Eternity as the Ocean, and then, after long days and nights, beholding the reality of things unknown before, and entering upon new scenes, with a sense of immense separation from one’s former self. Oppressive thoughts of the final emigration from this world, and descrying, at last, “the land that is very far off,” were forced upon me. We doubled the dangerous rocks of Skerries, and began to coast along the northern shore of Anglesea: and then, with my perspective-glass, I amused myself contentedly, for hours, as I picked out the objects presenting themselves on the land. Now a windmill, now a village, and now—delightful sight—a Christian spire! It was night-fall when our guns saluted the port of Liverpool, and our noble steamer came to anchor in the Mersey.
Our voyage had been a very pleasant, and a highly interesting one. Extraordinary icebergs had been visible for several successive days, and had given us enough of excitement to relieve the tediousness of the mid-passage. Our two Sundays had been sanctified by the solemnities of worship; and the only mishap of our voyage had been such as to draw forth much good feeling, and to leave a very deep impression. One of the hands had been killed by accidental contact with the engine, and had been committed to the deep with the Burial Service of the Church, in the presence of all on board. A handsome purse was immediately made up for the surviving mother of the deceased; and the painful event tended greatly to the diffusion of a fraternal sympathy among the entire company. We became as one family: and now, before retiring for the night, I was requested, by those who remained on board, to offer a solemn thanksgiving to Almighty God, for our safe deliverance from the perils of the sea. This it gave me pleasure to do; and the words of the Psalmist rose in our evening devotions, “Then are they glad because they are at rest; and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.” The noble vessel in which we had accomplished our voyage now lies many fathoms deep in the sea. It was the Arctic.
On landing, in the morning, I inwardly saluted the dear soil, on which I was permitted at last to place my feet, and on which I could not feel, altogether, a foreigner. I ran the gauntlet of tide-waiters, and the like, without anything to complain of, and, after a bath at the Adelphi, made my way to St. George’s Church. Here, for the first time, I joined in the worship of our English Mother; though it was difficult to conceive myself a stranger, until the expression—“Victoria, our Queen and Governor”—recalled the fact that I was worshipping with the subjects of an earthly Sovereign, as well as among my brethren of the glorious City of God.
A letter awaited me at the Post Office, which invited me to spend my rest-days with a dear friend. So, after a hasty survey of Liverpool, which I did not care to inspect minutely, I took an early evening train for Warwickshire, and was soon speeding athwart highways, and through hedges, towards my friend’s abode. Even my glimpses of England, from the flying carriage, were enough to occupy my mind delightfully: and often did some scene upon the road-side, or in the sprouting fields, recall incidents of history, or passages of poetic description, which filled me with emotion, and greatly heightened my preconceptions of the pleasures before me, in the tour which I thus began.
So it happened that my first night on shore was passed beneath the roof of a pleasant English parsonage. My host had been, for years, my correspondent, and though we had never met before, we counted ourselves old friends. My bed-room had been prepared for me, and furnished with such things, in the way of books and the like, as, it was fancied, would suit my tastes. One window overlooked the Church; and another, over the churchyard, and its green graves, commanded a pretty view of the fields. It was the Holy Week. I was waked every morning by the bell for early prayers. The Bishop of W—— had sent me his permission to officiate, and when I went to Church, it was always as a priest of the One Communion. I was at home: as much so as if I had lived, for years, in the house where I was a guest. We kept the holy time together, and limited our diversions to pleasant and somewhat professional walks. We visited, for example, a parochial establishment, in which some twenty widows were lodged, by the benevolent charity of an individual. Every widow had her own little cottage, and the entire buildings enclosed a square, in which was their common garden. There was also a small chapel; and in each little home there was a text inscribed over the fire-place, encouraging charity, forbearance, and love to God. Here was a quiet Beguinage, built many years ago, and never heard of: but there are many such, in England, dear to God, and the fruits of his Church. I visited also a school founded by King Edward Sixth; and having, on my first landing at Liverpool, paid a visit to its Blue Coat Hospital, founded by a prosperous seaman of the port, and furnishing a noble example to all sea-port cities, I had seen not a little to charm me with the religion of England, before I had been a week on her shores. Our quiet walks through lanes and by-paths, were not less gratifying in their way. The hedges and the fields, gardens and residences, the farms and the very highways, were full of attractions to my eye, and the more so, because my companion seemed to think he could find nothing to show me! He knew not the heart of an American, fond of his mother country, and for the first time in his life coming into contact with old-fashioned things. A heavy wagon, lumbering along the road to market, and inscribed, “John Trott, Carrier, Ashby-de-la-Zouche”—was enough to set me thinking of past and present, of the poetry of Ivanhoe, and the prose of a market-wain; and when I saw a guide-post, which for years had directed travellers “To Stratford,” only twenty miles off, I could almost have bowed to it. A stage coach came along, bearing “Oxford” on its panels; and the thought that it had started that very morning from the seat of the University, and had raised the dust of Stratford-on-Avon, made its wheels look dignified. To enjoy England one must be an American, and a hearty and earnest member of the Anglican Church. Even the cry of “hot cross buns,” which waked me on Good Friday morning, reviving the song of the nursery, and many more sacred associations with the day, made me thankful that I was no alien to the spirit of the solemnities, which even a traditionary cry in the streets tends to fasten upon the heart and conscience of a nation.
Easter morning came at last, and I was up with the sun, and out for a walk. It came with a bright sunrise, and many cheerful notes from morning birds. I was confident I heard a lark singing high up in the air, for though I could not see the little fellow, I could not mistake the aspiring voice. His Easter Carol was a joyous one, and I set it to the familiar words—
Christ, our Lord, is risen to-day,
Sons of men and angels say!
The hedges were just in leaf: here and there the hawthorn had blossomed, but the weather was too cold for its silvery beauty; and one almost pitied the few adventurous flowers, that, like good Churchmen, seemed only to have come out in conscientious regard to the day. I finished my morning walk by a turn or two through the church-yard, every grave of which was sparkling with dews, illuminated by the Easter sun. How forcibly the scene represented the resurrection: “The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.”
As I entered the parsonage, I heard the bells chiming from a distant parish church. My reverend friend met me with the salutation—“the Lord is risen;” to which I could not but fervently respond in the same primitive spirit. We had a festal breakfast, after family prayers, and soon it was time for service. I could willingly have been a worshipper in private, but submitted to the authority of the parson, and became one of his curates for the day. We emerged from the Vestry in due order of the Psalmist—“the singers going before,” men and boys alike in surplices; the latter with red cheeks, and white ribbons to tie their collars, looking like little chubby cherubs, and when they lifted their voices, sounding still more like them. The chancel was neatly decorated; a few flowers placed over the altar, and an inscription on its cloth, “I am the Bread of Life.” With the choral parts of the service I was surprised, as well as delighted. Boys and men all did their parts, in a manner which would have done honor to the authorities of a Cathedral, and I observed that the congregation generally accompanied the choir, especially the children in the galleries. I had never before heard the Athanasian Hymn as part of the regular Service, and I was greatly impressed by its majestic effect. After the Nicene Creed, I ascended the pulpit, and preached “Jesus and the Resurrection,” and then, returning to the Altar, celebrated the Holy Eucharist, according to the English rite, administering to my reverend brethren and the lay-communicants. To this high privilege I was pressingly invited by the pastor himself, in token of entire communion with the Church in America; and thus I was able to join my personal thanksgivings for the mercies of a voyage, and my prayers for my absent flock and family, to a public exercise of the highest functions of my priesthood, at the altar of an English Church.
The many incidents of the day, which afforded me ever fresh delight, might lose their charm, if reduced to narration, or might strike the reader as proofs of my facility to be gratified. But I cannot but mention that, strolling away, in the afternoon, to see how service was performed at another Church, I was gratified to find it filled with devout worshippers of the plainer sort, attentively listening to a very excellent sermon, appropriate to the day. While the preacher was warmly enlarging upon the promise of a glorious resurrection, and I was quite absorbed in his suggestions, I suddenly caught a glimpse, among the crowd of worshippers, of a figure which startled me, as forcibly illustrative of the words of the preacher, “thy dead men shall live.” It was the recumbent effigy of an old ecclesiastic of the fifteenth century, which I had not observed before. As if listening to the preacher, in joyful hope, there it lay upon the tomb, hands clasped placidly together, and looking steadfastly towards heaven! How it seemed to join the hopes of the dead with those of the living, and to give force to every word which fell from the pulpit concerning the glory which shall be revealed in all those who sleep in Jesus!
With Easter-Monday our holidays, in the school-boy sense, began. My reverend friend proposed a visit to the Vicar, to whose patronage he owed his own incumbency of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, in B——. Off we started on foot, passing through the suburbs of a populous town, and finally emerging into the open country. We came suddenly in sight of the old Church of A——; its beautiful spire and gables admirably harmonizing with the surrounding view, and telling a silent story of long past years. Beyond it, a majestic avenue of elms disclosed at its extremity a mansion of Elizabethan architecture and date; not the less reverend in my associations for the fact that Charles the First slept in it just before Edgehill fight, and that a cannon-ball, still lodged in the stair-case, attests the perilous honor which his Sacred Majesty was thus pleased to bestow on its occupant. The solemn dignity of an old English residence of this kind, had heretofore been to me a thing of imagination; now it was before my eye, not a whit less pleasing in its reality. The rooks were chattering in its venerable trees, which seemed to divide their predilections about equally with the steeple; and I am told that they are such knowing birds, that whenever you see a rookery, you may be sure that there is both orthodox faith, and at least one sort of good-living in the neighborhood.
Had I challenged my friend to show me a genuine Roger-de-Coverley picture in real life, as the entertainment of my holiday, I must have admitted myself satisfied with this scene at A——. Not only did the old hall, and the church, in all particulars, answer to such a demand; not only did a river run by the church-yard; not only were fields beyond, with cattle grazing, corn sprouting, and hedges looking freshly green; but when I entered the church-yard gate, lo! a rustic party, in holiday trim, were hanging about the old porch, awaiting the re-appearance of a bridal train, which had just gone in. It wanted but the old Knight himself and his friend the Spectator, to make the whole scene worthy of the seventeenth century.
I entered the church, and found it in all respects just such an interior as I had longed to see; apparently the original of many a pleasing print, illustrating Irving’s “Sketch-Book” and similar works, the delight of my childhood, and still affording pleasure in recollection. Its ample nave, widened by rows of aisles, terminated in the arch of a long chancel, at the altar of which stood not only one matrimonial couple, but actually five or six, whom two curates were busily uniting in the holy bonds of wedlock. When the procession returned from the altar, they passed into the vestry to register their names, and one of the curates coming to the door of the church, found another group of villagers, at the font, presenting a child for baptism. Following my friend into the vestry, I was presented to the Vicar himself, who seemed the genius loci in all respects; a venerable gray-haired old gentleman, in his surplice, full six feet in stature, and worthy to sit for a portrait of Dr. Rochecliffe, in Woodstock. It was now time for service, and I was desired to robe myself, and accompany him into the chancel, two curates, the clerk, and some singers leading the way. I was put into a stall, marked with the name of some outlying chapelry of the parish, and appropriate to its incumbent when present. The chancel was filled with monuments, of divers ages and styles. At my left hand lay the effigies of a knight and his good dame, in Elizabethan costume; beyond were a pair of Edward III.’s time; opposite were figures of the period of Henry VI. and much earlier; the knights all in armor, and some with crossed legs, as a token that they had fought in Palestine. The service was intoned by one of the curates, in a severe old tone, authorized in Archbishop Cranmer’s time, which the Vicar afterwards assured me was very ancient, and the only genuine music of the Church of England. When the service was concluded, there was a churching to be attended to, at the south porch of the church, and to this duty one of the curates was deputed, while the Vicar himself detained us in the chancel with an enthusiastic antiquarian illustration of the monuments, to which I was a most willing listener. Here slept the de Erdingtons, and there the Ardens: such and such was their story; and such and such were the merits of the sculpture. Chantrey had visited these figures, and assured him that they were the finest in the kingdom; and if I imagined, at the time, that such was merely Sir Francis’ courtesy to the worthy Vicar, I hope I may be forgiven, for some subsequent acquaintance with such things inclines me to believe the sculptor was sincere. On the walls were the heavy tablets of the Hanoverian period, and our attention was directed to the marked decline of art, from the period of the Crusades down to the Georges, growing worse and worse till George Fourth’s time, which improved the existing style, and was succeeded by a period of rapid return to correct taste and principle. Of all this the Church itself bore witness. Here the worthy man pointed out marks of its various stages of decline: here were barbarous repairs; there a sad blunder of old Church-wardens; here a wanton mutilation of Hanoverianism in 1790, when the very worst things happened to the holy and beautiful house; and there, at last, was a fine restoration of our own times.
We were next conducted to the church-yard, the Vicar having doffed his surplice, and assumed his usual habit, which partook of the dignity and taste of its wearer in a pleasing degree. His hat was specially ecclesiastical, and turned up at the sides, and over his cassock and bands he wore a clerical surtout, so that as he strode over the graves, in his small-clothes, displaying a finely proportioned leg, his entire figure might have been thought contemporary with that of his brother of Wakefield. We now learned the history of the Church, its great tithe, and its various plunderings under successive bad kings. We viewed the tower and spire from every possible point of vantage, and then went round the walls to see where a window had been blocked up, or a doorway broken through, or a pointed arch displaced for a square-headed debasement of the Tudor period. I never found before so good a “sermon in stones.” An ancient yew-tree was pointed out as having afforded boughs, before the reformation, for the celebration of Palm-Sunday. We adjourned to the Vicarage, where luncheon was served in the Library, a room filled with the choicest volumes; and then we were dismissed for a walk, promising to return, for our dinner, at five o’clock.
Our road soon brought us to E——, where a Romish Chapel had been lately erected, by a man of fortune, in minute and extravagant reproduction of Mediævalism. It was a thing for a glass case; a piece of admirable art; a complete Pugin; and no doubt in the middle ages would have been a very suitable thing for its purposes; but, in our day, it seemed as little suited to Rome as to Canterbury. The Pope himself never saw such a place of worship, and would scarcely know how to use it; and it was chiefly interesting to me as enabling me to see, at a glance, what the finest old Parish Churches of England had been in the days of the Plantagenets. At any rate, they were never Tridentine, and they were always Anglican. This beautiful toy had a frightful Calvary in the church-yard; but the interior was adorned with the finest carvings in Caen stone, and brilliant colorings and gildings à la Froissart. The pulpit was adorned with the story of Becket, in very delicate sculpture, and around the Church were stations, or representations of the different stages of the Passion, carved elaborately in wood, and beautifully colored. The Virgin’s Altar and Chapel were gems of art; and, of course, replenished with striking proofs that they “worship and serve the creature more than the Creator.” I turned away heart-sick, that such unrealities of a dead antiquity could be employing the whole soul of any Englishman, and even tempting some into apostacy from the simple but always dignified Church of their ancestors. Let taste be the handmaid of religion, and all is well: but here was religion led captive by antiquarian fancy.
Many other objects of interest filled up our day. We made a complete circuit, crossing green fields, leaping ditches, and breaking through hedges. Up hill and down dell, and through fragrant country lanes; here a river, and there a pool; now a farm, and then a mill. Yellow gorse was in flower by the road-sides. We met many parties of village people enjoying their Easter sports, and dressed in holiday attire. This day, at least, it seemed merry England still. We came to Witton Manor-house, and thence caught a distant view of the spire, towards which it grew time to return. Immense elms, of darker look than those of New-England, beautified the view in every direction; and the landscape was diversified by many smaller trees, marking the water-courses. We came out, at last, by the old Hall, the exterior of which we closely examined, imagining the scene around its gates when the royal Stuart came to be its guest. Like many other mansions of the olden time, it is deserted now; and the deepening twilight in which we viewed it, harmonized entirely with the thoughts which it inspired. So we returned to the Vicarage, and again were warmly welcomed. At dinner we were presented to Mrs. ——, the Vicar’s wife, who seemed to take the liveliest interest in my country and its Church, and kindly to appreciate my own enjoyment of the events of the day. After dinner the Vicar lighted his long pipe, and continued his exceedingly interesting discourse about the olden time. I could see that he was no admirer of the Crystal Palace, and all that sort of thing. I had met a laudator temporis acti, whose character and venerable appearance gave him a right to lament the follies of our own age; and seldom have I enjoyed more keenly any intellectual treat than I did his arm-chair illustrations of past and present, as compared together. On his favorite topics of Church-music and Architecture he was very earnest and intelligent. The Northamptonshire Churches, he assured me, were the finest in England; and kindly introducing me to the summa fastigia rerum, he took me to the very garret, to hunt up some superb plates of his favorite localities. When I bade adieu to this Vicarage, it was as one leaves an old friend. Such hospitality, and such heart afforded to a stranger! Thus early had I found that old English manners are not yet extinct, and that the fellowship of the Church admits even a foreigner to their fullest enjoyment. It was eleven o’clock when we reached the no less hospitable home from which I started in the morning.
CHAPTER II.
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.”
CHAPTER III.
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.
CHAPTER IV.
Arrival in London, and first two days.
In early life I had always promised myself a first view of London, either approaching the Tower by water, and taking in the survey of steeples, bridges, and docks, or else descending from Hampstead, on the top of a rapid coach, and beholding the great dome of St. Paul’s, arising amid a world of subordinate roofs, and looming up through their common canopy of cloud-like smoke. Alas! for all such visions, we have reached the age of the rail: and, consequently, I found myself, one afternoon, set down in a busy, bustling station-house, with a confused sensation of having been dragged through a long ditch, and a succession of dark tunnels, and with a scarcely less confused conception of the fact, that I was in London. A few policemen loitering about, and a line of cabs and ’busses of truly English look, confirmed the conviction, however, that I was really in the Metropolis, and I soon found myself looking up my luggage, in the business way of one accustomed to the place, and without a single rapture or emotion of the marvellous. Some things were very different from an American station-house; as, for example, the dignity of an ecclesiastical gentleman emerging from the first-class carriages in cocked-hat, and solemn cravat and surtout, his short-clothes eked into pantaloons by ponderous leggings, buttoned about his black stockings, and his whole deportment evincing a reverend care of his health and personal convenience—the inevitable umbrella especially, neatly enveloped in varnished leather, and tucked under the consequential arm; or again, the careful avoidance of the crowd evinced by a dignified lady, accompanied by her maid, and watching with an eye-glass the anxious manipulations of a footman, in showy livery, piling up a stack of trunks, hat-boxes, and what not, all inscribed, “Lady Dashey, Eaton Place, Belgrave Square.” Getting into a cab, with my very democratic luggage safely rescued from the vans, and forcing an exit through vehicles of all ranks, from the dog-cart up to the lumbering coach, with footman behind, and my lord inside, I emerge at length into London streets from the Euston Square Station, and begin to make my way towards the focus of the world. How mechanically I jog along, just as if I had lived here all my life, and without the least conformity to the fact that my pulse is quickening, and mine eye straining to realize a long ideal, which in a few minutes will be substantial fact! Every street-sign arrests my eye, “Paddington New Road,” “Gower Place,” “Torrington Square,” “Keppell Street,” “Bedford Square,” “Great Russell Street,” “Bloomsbury,” “Bond Street,” “Seven Dials,” “St. Martin’s Lane,” and now I begin to know where I am. There is St. Martin’s—there the lion with a long tail on Northumberland House—here is Trafalgar Square—I see Charles First on horseback, at Charing Cross—and here old George Third, with his queue, at the head of Cockspur Street—and here the Haymarket and Pall Mall, and here I am set down at the hospitable door of a friend, first known in America, and who has kindly insisted on my spending my first few days in London as his guest. It was an unexpected pleasure, but a great one, to receive my first impressions of London in the agreeable company of the Reverend Ernest Hawkins, a person singularly qualified to share the feelings of a stranger, but upon whose valuable time I should not have ventured to trespass, except at his own friendly instance. After renewing the acquaintance, formed during his short visit to our country in 1849, the question was, Where shall we begin? A fine day was already clouded over, and alternate light and shade were inviting and again discouraging out-door amusements. However, a turn through St. James’s Park to Whitehall was practicable enough, and at Whitehall I was resolved to begin. Forth we go, step into the Athenæum Club House, and descend into the Park, by the Duke of York’s Column, descrying through the mist the towers of Westminster Abbey, and soon passing through the Horse-Guards, stand “in the open street before Whitehall.” There is the Banqueting-room—there the fatal window—here is the very spot, where the tide turned between old and new, and parted on an axe’s edge. That martyrdom! What that has happened in Church and State, not only among Anglo-Saxons, but in the greater part of Europe, since 1649, has not resulted from the deed of blood done here!
My kind friend took me out upon Hungerford Bridge, and bade me use my eyes, and tell the different objects if I could. I turned towards Lambeth, saw the old towers through the gray mist, and began with indescribable pleasure to single out St. Mary’s, Lambeth, the New Parliament Houses, Westminster Hall, the Abbey, St. Margaret’s, and so forth, till turning round, I descried St. Paul’s, (vast, sublimely so, and magnificently tutelary,) and nearer by, Somerset House and the bridges, and the little steamers shooting to and fro beneath their noble arches. Enough for a first glimpse! We went into Regent Street, and by Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, and turning into St. James’s Street, I first saw the old Palace at its extremity, looking just as one sees it in Hogarth’s picture of “the Rake going to Court,” in the last century, old and shabby, and venerable altogether. Such was my first ramble in London and Westminster.
I was so happy as to meet at dinner that evening, a small party of the clergy of the Metropolis, in whose company the hours went rapidly and delightfully by, with many warm, and, I dare say, heartfelt expressions of interest in America and her Church; the whole presided over by my reverend entertainer, with the most animating spirit of dignified cordiality. The general desire which prevails to know something of a new Bishop of the Church, may excuse my particularizing the Rev. John Jackson, Rector of St. James’s, Westminster, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, who was one of the party, as a person of very unassuming, but attractive manners, of whose subsequent elevation to the See of Lincoln, it has given me no little pleasure to learn.
With what a world of new and confused emotions, I tried to drop to sleep after such a day! The roof beneath which I was reposing was an historic one. Standing in the precincts of St. James’s, it had once been the abode of the beautiful but unhappy Nell Gwynne, the one of all those wretched creatures who disgraced the Court of the Second Charles, for whom one feels more pity than scorn; and for whom, remembering the comparative goodness of her natural qualities, and her own plaintive lament over her education in a pot-house to fill glasses for drunkards, there must have been compassion from the Father of Mercies, and possibly pardon from the blood that cleanseth from all sin, her penitent death being more than probable. It is certainly gratifying that a mansion once given up to such associations is now turned into an abode of piety and benevolence, and made the head quarters of the operations of the venerable S. P. G. In the chamber where I was lodged, had lately rested those estimable missionaries, Bishops Field, and Medley, and Gray, and Strachan; and I felt unworthy to lay my head where such holy heads had been pillowed. But a blessing seemed to haunt the spot which they, and many like them, had reconciled to virtue, and hallowed by their pure repose; and I slumbered sweetly, dreaming of Lud’s town, and King Lud, and of divers men of divers ages, who had come to London, upon manifold errands, to seek their fortunes there, and there to flourish and wax great, or to rise and fall, until now it was my lot to mingle with its living tides, and then to pass away again to my far-off home, as “a guest that tarrieth but a night.”
When I rose in the morning, I looked out into the park, and now for the first time, gained a clear idea of that strange scene described in Evelyn’s Memoirs, as occurring between King Charles and Mistress Nelly, while the grovelling monarch was walking with him in the Mall. The wretched woman was standing on a terrace, at the end of her garden, and looking over into the park, when the king turns from Evelyn, and going towards her, holds a conversation with her in that public place and manner. “I was heartily sorry at this scene,” says the pure-minded journalist; and indeed it forboded no little evil to both Church and nation, as well as to the miserable Prince who could thus debase his crown and character, in the face of the open day, and of a virtuous man.
And now, having a whole day before me, I began by attending divine service in Westminster Abbey. Through the park and Birdcage-walk, I went leisurely to old Palace Yard, passing round the Abbey and St. Margaret’s, and so entered by Poets’ Corner. Service was going on, and of course I gave myself as much as possible to its sacred impressions, but was unable to repress some wandering thoughts, as my eyes caught the long lines and intersections of nave and aisles, or turned upwards to the clere-story, where the smoky sunlight of a London morning was lingering along the old rich tracery and fret-work, to which every cadence of the chaunt seemed to aspire, and where just so, just such sunbeams have come and gone as quietly over all the most speaking and eventful pageants of the British Empire, since William First was crowned here, in the midst of those Norman and Saxon antagonists whose blood now runs mingled in the veins of the British people. Nay, we must send back our thoughts at least so far as Edward the Confessor, who was also crowned here, and whose sepulchre is hard at hand. What thoughts of human splendor, and of human nothingness! The anthem was—Awake up my Glory—and as it rose and fell, and tremulously died away, distributing its effect among innumerable objects of decayed antiquity, I seemed to catch a new meaning in the strain of the psalmist. How many tongues were mute, and ingloriously slumbering around me—the tongues of poets and of princes and of priests: but the living should praise the Lord in their stead, and in this place that humbles the glory of men, it was good to sing—“Set up thyself, oh God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth.” When the service was over, I preferred to leave the Abbey, with this general effect still upon me, and to take it, at some other time, in details: and so, with only a few glances at the familiar objects in Poet’s Corner, I passed thoughtfully through the choir, which is extended down the nave, and so into the south aisle, and out into the cloisters. I took passing notice of the Andre monument, and of the Thynne monument, which I recognized by their sculpture alone. I saw at once that I was not likely to be satisfied with such ill-placed memorials, interesting as they may be in themselves. In the cloisters, I was so fortunate as to meet Lord John Thynne; and on being introduced to his Lordship, and remarking that “I remembered very well his connection with the Abbey, as Sub-dean, from Leslie’s Picture of the Coronation,” (in which he bears the chalice, as the Archbishop gives the Bread of the Sacrament to Queen Victoria,) he courteously suggested that perhaps I might think it worth while to look at the coronation robes, which are not usually seen by visitors, but which were in his custody, and which he should be happy to have me see. His Lordship then led the way into the famous Jerusalem Chamber, a place not ordinarily shown, but full of interest, not only as the scene of the swooning of Henry Fourth, but as the seat of the Holy Anglican Synod, which has since revived, (“Laud be to God,”) in the same Jerusalem where Henry died. This place is by no means such as my fancy had led me to suppose, but has the air of having been remodeled in James First’s time, although an ancient picture of Richard Second—I think in tapestry—is sunk in the wainscot. The chamber is small, and of very moderate architectural merit, but must always be a place of deep and hallowed associations. Adjoining this is the Refectory of the Westminster school-boys, into which we were shown, and where his Lordship reminded us that the tables were made of the oak of the Spanish Armada. They were full of holes, burned into them by the Westminster boys, who are always ambitious each to “leave his mark” in this way: so that as you look at them, you may fancy this to have been burned by little George Herbert, or Ben Jonson, or John Dryden, or Willie Cowper, or Bob Southey—all of whom have, in their day, sat on the forms of Westminster. Until so late as 1845, this refectory was warmed by the ancient brazier, the smoke escaping through the louvre in the roof. On coming to the Deanery, Dr. Buckland reformed this ancient thing, and a very ugly stove now reigns in its stead, as a monument of the Dean’s utilitarianism and nineteenth-century ideas on all possible subjects.
After we had carefully inspected this interesting hall, Lord John was as good as his word, and took us to see the robes, but precisely where he took us, it would be hard for me to say. It was in some room contiguous, where a fidgety little woman with keys in her hands, attended as mistress of the robes, and opening the repository of the sacred vestments, displayed them with such profound obsequiousness to the mildly dignified ecclesiastic who conducted us, that if she called him “my lord” once, she did so some twenty times in a single minute. The readers of Mrs. Strickland’s “Queens of England” will not require me to enlarge upon these superb vestments, now dimmed and faded in their splendour by the lapse of nearly two centuries, since they were made for the coronation of the luckless, and almost brainless, James the Second. They are worn at coronations only, by the clergy of the Abbey, and we had the pleasure of seeing our reverend guide in his appropriate cope as Sub-dean; the same which he wore when Victoria was crowned, and which has been worn by his predecessors, successively, at the coronations of William and Mary, Queen Anne, the four Georges, and William the Fourth. Similar vestments in form, though not in splendour, are to this day the rubrical attire of the clergy of the English Church in celebrating the Holy Communion, but I believe they are now never used, although they were in use at least in Durham Cathedral, so late as the middle of the last century. Having seen these interesting and historical vestments, we thanked the amiable dignitary, to whom we had been indebted for so much polite attention, and took our leave, emerging into Dean’s Yard, and so finding our way to the New Houses of Parliament.
CHAPTER V.
Sight-seeing—Westminster Hall.
My emotions on first entering Westminster Hall, were scarcely inferior to those excited by the Abbey. Of course my first glance was towards the oaken roof, whose noble span, and elaborate construction, have been so largely eulogized, but which derives a richer glory than its material one, from the moral sublimity of the historic events, to which its venerable shadow has been lent. Beneath this roof the Constitution of England has steadily and majestically matured for centuries; and to this spot belongs the somewhat mysterious credit of an assimilating power, akin to that of digestion in the human system. Whatever has been the food, it has always managed to turn it into wholesome nutriment, and to add it to the solid substance of the British State in the shape of bone and sinew, or of veins and nerves. It has been the scene of violence and outrage, and of both popular and imperial tyranny. No matter! Out of all this evil has always come substantial good. The roof dates from Richard Second’s time; and scene the first is the usurpation of the fiery Bolingbroke. Here rose up that daring subject, amid astounded bishops and barons, and crossing himself broadly on the breast, profanely uttered the famous bravado—“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, do challenge this reaume of Englande”—adding mysterious words, from which it is equally difficult to say on what grounds he did or did not rest his claims. Here old Sir Thomas More forfeited his head, for high treason against “the best of princes,” as he had long called old Harry Eighth; and here sat old Hal himself, at Lambert’s trial, interrupting every fresh rejoinder of the reformer, with the savage assurance—“Thou shalt burn, Lambert!” I looked towards the great window beneath which he sat—and, lo! it was no longer a window, but an open way, just constructed for access to the New Houses of Parliament—a noble alteration, and a very speaking symbol too, in my opinion; for thus, in the path of history, and from the seat of law, will the future Senate of the Empire go to their responsible labors as stewards of the noblest inheritance that exists among mankind. Let them think, as they pass, of Strafford and of Charles; how in suffering and sorrow they contributed to the British people that distinguishing element of loyalty, which has rendered healthful their not less characteristic love of liberty. Too many, I fear, imbued with the superficial views of Macaulay, invest with sublimer associations the fanatical Court which tried and condemned their Sovereign. Here sat those bold, bad men; and daring, indeed, was their work; nor do I doubt that it has been over-ruled for good to England; but then it should not be forgotten, that the subsequent history of progressive and rational freedom is far more directly the result of the wholesome resistance opposed by Church and Crown to the spirit of anarchy, than to anything in that spirit itself. Had the King of England been a Bourbon—had the Church of England been a Genevan or a Roman one, that flood must have washed all landmarks away: and the fabric of Constitutional Liberty, which now attracts the admiration of all thinking men, could never have been constructed. Honour, then, to the martyrs of Law and of Religion, who, beneath this roof, built up the only barrier that has turned back the turbulent waves of modern barbarism! I stood, and thought of Charles, with sorrow for his grievous faults, but yet with gratitude for the manly recompense he offered here to a people whom he had unintentionally injured through their own antiquated laws, but whom he defended against the worse tyranny of lawless usurpation, by his majestic protest in this Hall, and by sealing it with his blood. Here, too, the seven bishops delivered the Church and State of England when they stood up against the treacherous son of Charles, and completed the triumph of the Church by proving it as true to the people, as it had been to the throne, on the same foundation of immutable principle. This was the roof that rang with the shouts of vindicated justice, when those fathers of the Church were set free! I looked up, and surveyed every beam and rafter with reverence. The angels, carved in the hammer-beams, were looking placidly down, each one with his shield upon his breast, like the guardian spirits of a nation, true to itself and to ancestral faith and order. The symbol is an appropriate one; for the frame-work of the British Constitution is like this roof of Richard in many respects, but in none more than this—that the strength and beauty of the whole are fitly framed together, with inseparable features of human wisdom and of divine truth; the latter being always conspicuous, and investing all with reverend dignity and grace.
The floor of the old Hall presents a less sentimental aspect, and might easily plunge imagination, by one step, into the ridiculous. Here are the barristers walking about with clients, and with each other, arm in arm, their gray wigs of divers tails, some set awry, and some strongly contrasted with black and red whiskers, giving them a ludicrous appearance; while their gowns, some of them shabby enough, are curiously tucked under the arm, or carelessly dangling about the heels, apparently an annoyance to the wearers, in either case. The several courts were in session, in chambers which open out of the hall, along its sides. I stepped into the Chancellor’s Court, where sat Lord Truro, listening, or perhaps not listening, to the eminent Mr. Bethell. His Lordship in his walrus wig, with a face proverbially likened to the hippopotamus, seemed to represent the animal kingdom, as well as that of which the mace and seal-bag, lying before him, were the familiar tokens. The court-room is very small, popular audiences being not desirable, and open doors being all that popular right can require. Here the same barristers looked far from ludicrous—their attire seemed to fit the place and its duties. Doubtless the influence of such things is an illusion, but nevertheless it is a useful one, and contributes to the dignity, which it only appears to respect. We need some such things in our Republic. Next I stepped into the Vice-Chancellor’s Court, and saw Sir J. L. Knight Bruce administering the law; and here I was introduced to several eminent lawyers, whose cauliflower wigs covered a world of learning and of grave intelligence. Stepping into the Common Pleas, there sat in a row, Lord Chief Justice Jervis, and Justices Creswell, Williams and Talfourd. I could not but look with interest at the author of Ion, but in the disguise of his magistracy, I looked in vain for any feature which I could identify with his portraits. In the Court of Queen’s Bench, Lord Campbell was presiding, with three others; in the Bail Court, I saw Justice Coleridge; and in the Court of Exchequer, Lord Chief Baron Pollock, with Barons Park, Platt and Martin. Thus, with the greatest facility, and in a very short space of time, can one see the most favoured sons of the British Themis, and gain a good idea of the dignity and close attention to business with which these courts are managed. The Supreme Court of our own country, is far inferior in appearance, although it is the only American Court which admits of any comparison with these, and yet it is allowed on all hands, that “the law’s delay” in England is an intolerable grievance, and that the expense of obtaining justice, at these tribunals, is of itself a crying injustice.
Sallying forth into the street, I went round to view the rising splendours of the Victoria Tower, the massive proportions of which almost dwarf those of the Abbey. It confuses the beholder by the elaborate richness of its details, its profuse symbolism, and all the variety of its heraldic and allegorical decoration. When completed, it will give a new, but harmonious aspect, to the acres of sacred and princely architecture which spread around; but these English builders are very slow in its construction, and prefer that it should rise only ten feet a year, rather than hazard its chance of continuing forever. How differently we go ahead in America! This new palace of Westminster will still be many years in finishing, but it is worthy of the nation to let it thus grow after its own fashion. Alas! one fears, however, that it is to be made the scene of the gradual taking down of the nation itself. It is too likely to prove the house in which John Bull will be worried to death by his own family.
In company with a friend, I next “took water” at Westminster bridge, for a trip down the river. This silent highway is now as busy as the Strand itself—the spiteful little steamers that ply up and down, being almost as numerous and as noisy as the omnibusses. Very swiftly we glide along the river’s graceful bend, passing Whitehall, Richmond Terrace, and the house lately occupied by Sir Robert Peel; shooting under Hungerford bridge, past old Buckingham house, and the Adelphi Terrace, and so under Waterloo bridge, to the Temple Gardens, where we land, and where I find myself delighted with the casual survey of the different walks and buildings, and especially with the Temple Church. Emerging into Fleet-street, choked with carts and carriages, here is Temple-bar! Passing under its arches, we are in the Strand, and so make our way to Charing-Cross. Having made a complete circuit, by land and water, I again went to Westminster bridge, and stepping into a steamer sailed up the river to Chelsea. Here we pass the river-front of the New Houses of Parliament; and granting that there is a monotony of aspect in the long stretch of the pile, as it rises from the water, I think it must be allowed that, when complete, with its towers and decorations, the whole, taking the Abbey also into view, will furnish the noblest architectural display in the world. Westminster bridge should be reconstructed, in harmony with the rest, and then, whoever may find fault with the scene, may be safely challenged to find its parallel for magnificence and imperial effect.
And yet looking to the other side of the river, how far more attractive to my eye were the quiet gardens and the venerable towers of Lambeth! Its dingy brick, and solemn little windows, with the reverend ivy spreading everywhere about its walls, seemed to house the decent and comely spirit of religion itself: and one could almost gather the true character of the Church of England, from a single glance at this old ecclesiastical palace, amid the stirring and splendid objects with which it is surrounded. Old, and yet not too old; retired, and yet not estranged from men; learned, and yet domestic; religious, yet nothing ascetic; and dignified, without pride or ostentation; such is the ideal of the Metro-political palace, on the margin of the Thames. I thought as I glided by, of the time when Henry stopped his barge just here to take in Archbishop Cranmer, and give him a taste of his royal displeasure: and of the time when Laud entered his barge at the same place, to go by water to the Tower, “his poor neighbours of Lambeth following him with their blessings and prayers for his safe return.” They knew his better part.
We had a fine view of Chelsea Hospital, and passed by Chelsea Church, famous for the monument of Sir Thomas More. We landed not far from this Church, and called upon Martin, whose illustrations of Milton and “Belshazzar’s Feast” have rendered him celebrated as a painter of a certain class of subjects, and in a very peculiar style. He was engaged on a picture of the Judgment, full of his mannerism, and sadly blemished by offences against doctrinal truth, but not devoid of merit or of interest. He asked about Allston and his Belshazzar, and also made inquiries about Morse, of whose claim as the inventor of the Electric Telegraph, he was entirely ignorant. Returning, we landed at Lambeth, and my friend left his card at the Archbishop’s; observing, as we passed into the court, that we should find the door of the residence itself standing open, with a servant ready to receive us, as we accordingly did. Such is the custom.
We then crossed Westminster bridge, and went to Whitehall, on foot, visiting the Banqueting-room, now a royal chapel. The Apotheosis of James the First, by Rubens, adorns the roof, but I tried in vain to be pleased with it. The first question—“which is the fatal window through which King Charles passed to the scaffold”—I asked quite in vain, for nobody seems to be entirely sure about it. The chapel is heavy, and unecclesiastical, although more like a sanctuary, in appearance, than the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. We went into the court, or garden behind the Banqueting-house, to look at James Second’s statue, by Grinling Gibbons. It is in Roman costume, and defiled by soot and dust, and the peculiar pointing position of one of its hands, has given currency to a vulgar error, that it indicates the spot where the blood of Charles fell from the scaffold. A soldier mounts guard in this place, for it is yet regarded as a royal palace; all beside is quiet, and I often returned to the spot during my residence in London, as one well fitted for meditation, recalling such historical associations as memory retained, and striving in vain to conceive it possible that here, in very deed, such thrilling scenes were enacted two hundred years ago. Even now there is nothing ancient about the looks of Whitehall. It requires an effort to connect it at all with the past: and when one sees the vane upon its roof, and imagines it the very one to which James Second was always looking, while he prayed the Virgin and all the Saints to keep William of Orange off the coast, even the era of 1688 seems reduced to a modern date, and stripped of all its character as something ancestral, and belonging to past time. I confess that in this garden of Whitehall, I awoke from an American illusion, and began to feel that two centuries is a very short period of time; just as afterward, on the Continent, the scale took another slide upwards, and taught me to feel that everything is modern which has happened since the Christian era. This discovery gives one a curious sensation, and I am not sure that I am the happier for having seen monuments of real antiquity, which have had the effect of freshening the comparative antiquity of England, and of reducing everything in America to the dead level of time present. I was happier when I visited the ruins of the old Fort on Lake George, and innocently imagined it a spot both ancient and august.
My reader will think my day sufficiently full already, but I must not conclude without some reference to the pleasures of the evening. I drove out to Chelsea, where the pupils of St. Mark’s Training College performed the Oratorio of “Israel in Egypt.” The hail-stone chorus was given with great effect, and several of the solos and recitatives were creditably executed. I saw there, among others, Lord Monteagle, better known as Mr. Spring Rice, but was more pleased with an introduction to the head of the College, Mr. Derwent Coleridge, who showed me a very striking portrait of his father—“the rapt one of the godlike forehead,” and made some feeling allusions to his brother Hartley, then lately dead. I saw also another member of this interesting family, Sara Coleridge, one of the cleverest of womankind. Returning to London, I stepped from the carriage at Hyde Park Corner, where chariots and wheels of every description were still rumbling incessantly, and where the gas-lamps made it light as day, though it was now eleven o’clock. I looked at Apsley-house, where the Iron Duke was then living, and so made my way along Piccadilly and St. James’s-street, as pleasantly as if I had known them all my days, but thinking such thoughts as nothing but an American’s earliest experiences of London life can possibly inspire.
CHAPTER VI.
Hyde Park—Excursion to Oxfordshire.
My plan was to fix my head-quarters in London, and to make excursions thence into the various parts of the country which I desired to see. This enabled me to choose my times for being in the Metropolis, and also for visiting other places; and I found it better, on many accounts, than the more usual method of seeing London all at once, and then going through the rest of England in a tour. I took lodgings in Bury-street, St. James’s, a time-honored place for the temporary abode of strangers, and in all respects convenient for my purposes. On looking into Peter Cunningham, I found I had unwittingly placed myself near the old haunts of several famous men of letters. Dean Swift lodged in this street in 1710, and Sir Richard Steele about the same time. Crabbe took his turn here in 1817, and here Tom Moore was sought out by Lord Byron, a few years earlier. Just round the corner, in Jermyn-street, Gray used to sojourn; and there, too, Sir Walter Scott lodged for the last time in London, after his return from the Continent in 1832. Hard by, still lives old Samuel Rogers, and Murray’s famous publishing-house is but a few steps out of the way. I was, at first, a little provoked at Cunningham for getting up a book which tends to put the most stupid visitor of London on a footing with the man whose general reading has fitted him to enjoy it: but many little pleasures which he thus supplied me, by recalling things forgotten, quite altered my humour towards him; especially as I soon reflected that the traveller to whom he only restores such information, must always have the advantage over one who gains it for the first time, at second hand.
I could now step into St. James’s Park, and freshen my appetite for breakfast, while enjoying its delightful air, and venerable associations. I soon learned how to protract my walk, passing Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, and so into Hyde Park—where one may spend the day delightfully, and almost fancy himself in the country. Indeed, stretching one’s rambles into Kensington Gardens, it is not easy to be moderate in the enjoyment, or to return without fatigue; so vast is the extent of these successive ranges, and so much of England can one find, as it were, in the midst of London. Oh, wise and prudent John Bull, to ennoble thy metropolis with such spacious country-walks, and to sweeten it so much with country air! Truly these lungs of London are vital to such a Babylon, and there is no beauty to be compared to them in any city I have ever seen. Talk of the Tuilleries—talk of the Champs Elysées—you may throw in Luxembourg and Jardin des Plantes to boot, and in my estimation Hyde Park is worth the whole. I do not think the English are half proud enough of their capital, conceited as they are about so many things besides. They are ashamed of Trafalgar Square and some other slight mistakes, and they always apologize for London, and wonder what a foreigner can find to please him, in the mere exterior of its immensity. But foreigner, forsooth! I always felt that an Anglo-American may feel himself far more at home in London, than many who inhabit there. Who are the reigning family, but a race of Germans, never yet completely naturalized either in Church or State? What is England to Prince Albert, except as he can use it for his own purposes? But to me, and to many of my countrymen, it is as dear as heart’s blood; every fibre of our flesh, every particle of our bone, and the whole fabric of our thought, as well as the vitalizing spirit of our holy religion, being derived from the glorious Isle, in whose own tongue we call her blessed. It is not as unfilial to America, but only as faithful to the antecedents of my own beloved country, that I ask no Englishman’s leave to walk the soil of England with filial pride, and in some sense to claim “a richer use of his,” than he himself enjoys. He dwells in it, and uses it of necessity for some ignoble purposes; but I have no associations with the malt-tax, or with manufactories. England reveals herself to me only in her higher and nobler character, as the mother, and nurse, and glorious preceptress of the race to which I belong. Hence, I say, it is only a true American who can feel the entire and unmixed sentiment and poetry of England.
It was soon after my arrival in the Metropolis that I went, one afternoon, to see the display of horsemanship, in Hyde Park. Strange that the scene of so much aristocratic display should be known as “Rotten-Row!” It is a road for saddle-horses exclusively, and very exclusive are the equestrians generally, who enjoy their delightful exercise in its pale. Here you see the best of horse-flesh, laden with the “porcelain-clay” of human flesh. The sides of the road are lined with pedestrians, some of whom touch their hats to the riders, and are recognized in turn; but most of them look wishfully on the sport of others, as if they were conscious that they were born to be nobody, and were unfeignedly sorry for it. Ha! how dashingly the ladies go by, and how ambitiously their favored companions display their good fortune in attending them! Here a gay creature rides independently enough, with her footman at a respectful distance. She is an heiress, and the young gallants whom she scarcely deigns to notice, are dying of love for her and her guineas. Here comes an old gentleman and his two beautiful daughters. It is Lord——, and the elder of the twain is soon to be married, the fortunate expectant being a nobleman of large estates. We look in vain this afternoon for “the Duke.” But very likely we shall see him before our walk is done. Yonder whirls a barouche, with outriders. It is the Queen and Prince Albert taking an airing. A Bishop comes along on horseback. “It must be one of the Irish Bishops,” said the friend with whom I was walking, “for I certainly have never seen him before.”
I now saw the Crystal Palace for the first time, and scarcely looked at it at all. It was just what every body knows, from ten thousand pictures. I had a prejudice against it, at this time, heightened by the fact that many, whom I had met, had innocently taken it for granted that an American must, of course, have come to England to see the show. The idea of going to England to look at anything short of England itself! Besides, I supposed it a mere toy of Prince Albert’s—just the thing for a Dutch folly—or, like the Russian ice-palace,
————“Work of imperial dotage,
Shining, and yet so false!”
I looked, therefore, and passed by. A fine walk we had to Kensington Gardens, and round by Bayswater, returning across Hyde Park. It was pleasant to see the good use to which these vast grounds are put by the People proper. Children and their nurses seem to take their fill of them. It was George the Second, I think, who asked Walpole what it would cost to fence in St. James’s Park, so as to keep the people out. “Only three crowns,” was the reply; and the heavy Hanoverian learned an important lesson, as to the difference between British freemen, and the sort of people he had been wont to deal with, in his darling Electorate.
One morning I attended a meeting of the Venerable S. P. G. The estimable Bishop of Bangor presided, and the ordinary monthly business was despatched. On this occasion, I was so happy as to meet with Lord Lyttleton, Mr. Beresford Hope, and others, whose names are familiar to American Churchmen, as identified with zeal and devotion to the noble work of Evangelization. The American Church, and her relations with her nursing Mother, were frequently alluded to; and, as an act of Christian recognition, I found myself admitted a corresponding member of the Society. Though I could not suppose the compliment a personal one, designed as it was in honor of the Orders of our Church, I felt it no small privilege to receive this humble share in the noble organization to which, under God, our Church owes its existence; and I felt it the more, as being myself the descendant of a lowly but devoted Missionary, who died in the service of the Society. I was pleased with the earnest, but very quiet and affable spirit of this meeting. No show, nor swelling words; and yet the spiritual interests of empires, and of national Churches, present and yet to be, the fruits of the Society’s labors, were deeply and religiously weighed, and dealt with. Beautiful tokens of the Society’s fruitfulness hung round the walls—portraits of English Missionary Bishops, such as Heber, and Selwyn, and Broughton. These are its trophies.
My first excursion into the country was made somewhat earlier than I had forecasted, in accepting a kind invitation to Cuddesdon, from the Bishop of Oxford. This promised me the double pleasure of an immediate acquaintance with Oxford itself, and of a no less agreeable introduction to the eminent prelate, whose elevation to that See has so highly served the dearest interests of the Church, not in England only, but also throughout Christendom. The name of Wilberforce has received new lustre in the person of this gifted divine; and certainly there was no one in England whom I more desired to see, for the sake of the interest inspired by public character and by published works. His known hospitality, and interest in visitors from all parts of the world, relieved me from surprise in receiving this unexpected attention, and I felt sure I should experience no disappointment in indulging the confidence and affection inspired by such cordiality. Arriving in Oxford, I threw myself into a cab, and set off for the Bishop’s residence, about eight miles distant—taking a drive through High-street, in my way. Every object seemed familiar; I could scarcely believe that I was, for the first time, looking at those venerable walls. Here was St. Mary’s—here All Souls—here Queen’s—and there is the tower of Magdalen. Even “the Mitre” and “the Angel” looked like Inns, in which I had often “taken mine ease.” A few gownsmen were loitering along the streets, but the town was quite deserted, it being the Easter holiday time. Here, at last, were the old gables of Magdalen; and now I pass the Cherwell, and get a view of Magdalen-walks on one hand, and of Christ Church meadows on the other. And now a tollgate, and now the country road—and I can scarce conceive that I have passed through Oxford, and that mine eyes have really seen it, and that fancy, and the pictures, are no longer my chief medium of knowing how it looks. How rapidly I have lost the use of helps on which I have depended for years! Like the lame man healed, I can hardly believe that I have gone on crutches. But honestly, now—is the reality up to what I looked for? Thus I thought, and questioned, as I jogged along.
Cuddesdon is the name of a little hamlet in Oxfordshire, on a wooded hill, overlooking a wide extent of country, besprinkled with many similar hamlets, and distinguished by a pretty parish Church, and the adjoining residence, or palace, of the Bishop. The residence is one of those rambling and nondescript houses, of ecclesiastical look, which one associates with English rural scenery; but of a class which it is difficult to characterize, except as something too modest for a nobleman’s seat, and something too lordly for a vicarage. The nearness of the parish Church might, indeed, suggest the idea of the parson’s abode—but what should a parish priest want of so large a house, or of the little private chapel which, on one side, makes a conspicuous part of the pile? On the whole, one might conceive it the residence of a Bishop without being told the fact, or before descrying the arms of the See, over the entrance, encircled by the Garter, of which most noble Order, the Bishop is Chancellor. Nothing could exceed the kindness and affability with which the estimable prelate received me, and made me welcome as his guest: his manner, at once dignified and engaging, sufficing immediately to make a visitor at home in his presence, however deeply impressed with reverence for his person. I esteemed it an additional privilege to be presented to the Bishop’s brother, Archdeacon Wilberforce, then just arrived at the palace from his own residence in Yorkshire: and I soon found, among the guests of the Bishop, several other persons of eminent position in society, from whose agreeable intercourse I derived the highest satisfaction. I had arrived on a Saturday, and, after a pleasant evening, the week was solemnly closed in the private chapel, with appropriate prayers. Here, twice every day, all the members of the household, the family, the guests, and the servants together, are assembled before the Lord their Maker, while the Bishop, like a patriarch, assisted by his chaplains, offers the sacrifices of prayer and thanksgiving, and sanctifies his house. It was beautiful, on one occasion, to see such a household together receiving the Holy Eucharist, and it was good to participate in the solemnity. The sanctity of my privilege, as the guest of such a family, forbids any further allusion to the delightful scenes of domestic piety of which I was so confidingly made a sharer; but I cannot withhold a tribute to the character of a true Bishop, who has incidentally enabled me to testify of at least one English prelate, that “he serves God with all his house,” and makes that service the one thing indispensable and most important, in all the distributions of private life, its kindly offices, and endearing charities.
I accompanied his Lordship, next day, into Oxford, where he preached at St. Ebbe’s to a very large congregation. This Church is very plain and countryfied—astonishingly so for Oxford; but the worshippers were devout and earnest in their attention. The sermon was suited to the Service for the day, and I was not disappointed in the manner, nor yet in the matter, of it. The Bishop is a truly eloquent man. His voice is sweet, and often expressive of deep feeling, or of tender emotion. He uses more action than most English preachers, or rather he has much less of inactivity in his preaching. Occasionally he looks off from his manuscript, and launches into warm extemporaneous address. Altogether, I regard him as very happily combining the advantages of the English and American pulpits. More than any other of whom I know anything, he unites the delicacy and refinement of the former with the earnestness and practical effect of the latter.
After a short visit to Wadham College, where I had the pleasure of meeting the late Vice-Chancellor of the University, Dr. Symmons, we returned to Cuddesdon. Our road lay through the village of Wheatley, where the bells were chiming for service as we passed. Ascending the hills, we alighted and walked; and, by and by, the good Bishop, pointing to a little hamlet not far off, said to me, “there lived, once upon a time, a man named John Milton. There is Forest Hill—there is Shotover—and walking over these hills, he composed Allegro and Penseroso.” How it thrilled my soul, as I listened to his words, and looked delightedly over the scenes to which he directed my attention! We soon reached Cuddesdon, and attended divine service in the parish Church, which was filled chiefly with a rustic people, many of them in hob-nailed shoes, and brown frocks, neatly arrayed, but in the manner of a peasantry, such as we know nothing about in America. The chancel of the Church has been lately restored by the Bishop, and is in excellent taste and keeping throughout. The Church itself is a cruciform one, originally Norman, but much altered, and in parts injured, during successive ages. Its aisles are early English; but many details, in perpendicular, have been introduced in different portions of the pile. Here and there in the wood-work are touches of Jacobean re-modeling. Still, altogether, it is a most interesting Church, and it afforded me great pleasure to worship there, with the rustics and their Bishop, and with a pretty fair representation of the divers ranks of English society, all uniting, happily and sweetly, in their ancestral worship. It was a delicious day, and the glimpses of sky and country, which we gained through the portals and windows, were additional inspirers of gratitude to God. After service, the Bishop led me round the Church, and showed me the grave where one of his predecessors had laid a beloved child. A stone lay upon it, containing the exquisite lament of Bishop Lowth for his daughter, which I remembered to have seen before, but which never seemed half so touching and pathetic as now, while Bishop Wilberforce repeated it from the chiseled inscription:—
“Cara Maria, Vale; at veniet felicius ævum
Quando iterum tecum, sim modo dignus, ero:
Cara redi, læta tum dicam voce, paternos
Eja age in amplexus, cara Maria, redi!”
That evening, as we sat at the Bishop’s table, the bells of Cuddesdon pealed forth a curfew chime. Oh, how sweet! A lady then reminded me that Cuddesdon was one of the “upland hamlets,” alluded to in L’Allegro—
“Where the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound.”
And so happily closed my day, that, but for some reverting thoughts to the dear home I had left behind me, I must say I went as sweetly to sleep, in the spell of its delights, as did poor Pilgrim in that chamber of his Progress, from whence he was sure of a view of the Delectable Mountains as soon as he should awake in the morning.
CHAPTER VII.
Miltonian ramble—Forest-hill, etc.
Horton, in Buckinghamshire, is supposed to have supplied to Milton the imagery of the Allegro and Penseroso, chiefly because he there composed those delightful poems, in which the very essence of what is most poetical in the scenery and rural life of England is so admirably condensed. But if it could be shown that, so early in the maiden life of Mary Powell as when these poems appeared, she had become the cynosure of Milton’s eyes, and had attracted him to Forest-Hill as a visitor, it might, one would suppose, be very fairly maintained, that this place alone answers, in all respects, to the demands of the poetry in question. It may at least be said with justice, that when the poet visited Forest-Hill with his bride, he realized more perfectly there than anywhere else, the rural delights which he has so exquisitely detailed; and which he has invested at one time with the sprightly aspect in which Nature reveals herself to youth and health, and, at another, with the more sentimental beauties which she wears before the eye of refined and meditative maturity. However, it was not for me to settle such nice questions. Forest-Hill lies not far from Milton, where the poet’s grandfather lived, and from which comes his name; and Shotover-Forest, of which the grandfather was ranger, is part of the same vicinage. It is very probable that the Powells were early friends of the poet, and that his youthful imagination was wont to haunt the whole hill-country thereabout, in honour of the lady’s charms to whom he afterwards gave his hand. Such at least was my creed, for the time, when I enjoyed a delightful walk over the scenes in the company of intelligent persons whose remarks often heightened not a little the extraordinary pleasures of the day.
Among the Bishop’s guests, at breakfast, there was the usual planning of occupations for the morning, and I heard with great satisfaction the proposal of a walk to Forest-Hill, in which it was supposed I might be glad to share. Our party was soon made up, consisting of the Archdeacon, the Rev. Mr. J——, Sir C—— A——, a young Etonian closely related to the Bishop’s family, and the Bishop’s youngest son. After some preliminary reconnoiterings about the hamlet of Cuddesdon itself, (of which the adjoining slopes and meadows furnish very pretty views,) off we went, well shod and with sturdy staves in hand, and in all respects well-appointed for an English ramble; which implies everything requisite for thorough enjoyment of the diversion. We stretched our legs, as Walton would say, over Shotover-Hill, encountering a variety of rustic objects in the fields and farms; here a fold of sheep, and there a hedge, and again a ditch, or a turnip-field, but everything in its turn was of interest to me as presenting, in some form or other, a contrast to similar objects in my own country, the advantage being generally in favor of England, so far as the picturesque is concerned. I can indeed think of many a walk in America, incomparably more interesting than this in the character of its scenery; but what I mean is, that the same kind of country with us, would have been almost devoid of interest. Thus, instead of presenting field after field, cultivated like a garden, beautifully hedged and exhibiting every mark of careful husbandry; or a succession of green pastures, in which fine cattle, and the whitest and fattest of sheep were disposed in a manner entirely suitable to the painter; or instead of a succession of views of the most pleasing variety; here a hamlet and spire, and there a neat cottage, and there a lordly mansion among trees, and there a snug farmhouse: the same number of miles with us, over a slightly undulating country, devoted to pasturage and farming, would scarcely have offered a single scene on which the eye could rest with satisfaction. At length, we reached Shotover-Lodge, which has unfortunately been rebuilt within the last hundred years, but the original of which supplies the ideal of those famous lines in L’Allegro—
“Russet lawns and fallows gray
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.”
Next we descended into a daisied meadow, and looked for the plowman and the milkmaid, as it was yet too early for the tanned haycock, or the mower whetting his scythe. Here the Archdeacon recalled to my mind a criticism of Warton’s, which I had quite forgotten, asking me if I remembered the meaning of the lines—
“And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale,”
in which the idea is not that of narrative, or eclogue, but the more English one of Thyrsis turning the sheep out of fold for the day, and counting them, one by one; that is, telling the tale, like the tale of brick exacted by the Egyptians, as we read in Genesis. Many such comments from my companions gave great inspiration to the ramble, which brought us at last up the sides of Forest-Hill itself, where we first encountered some cottages of surprising neatness, inhabited by thrifty tenants, who farmed a few acres of their own hiring. Here Sir C——, like a true Protectionist, stopped to ask a few questions of Hodge and his family about the prospects of “the British farmer,” and the practical results of Cobdenism; and I fancied, from the interest taken in the disclosures by my young friend from Eton, that the lads who now play cricket on the banks of the Thames, under “the antique towers,” are not unlikely, at some future day, to maintain the rights of the landed gentry, with the same primary reference to agriculture which so largely distinguishes Mr. Disraeli. And now we came to the little Church of Forest-Hill, where, for aught I know, Milton was married to the daughter of the good old cavalier, but where he could not have been surrounded by a very great crowd of rejoicing friends upon the happy occasion, as the sacred place will scarcely contain threescore persons at a time. It has no tower, but only one of those pretty little gable-cots for the bell, so familiar of late in our own improving architecture of country Churches. The altar-window is near the road, and the bell-gable is at the other extremity, surmounting the slope of the land, on a pretty terrace of which, embosomed among the trees and shrubs, is situated the parsonage. The little Church itself is of the early English period, but has repairs in almost every variety of pointed style, and some in no style at all. It has had very little aid from the builder, however, for nearly a century. In the early Caroline period, or a little before the date of Milton’s marriage, it was probably new-roofed and put into good order, possibly as the result of injunctions from the King and Council, with some of whom, “the filthy-lying of Churches” was not reckoned a proof of growing godliness in the nation. Accordingly I noticed on one of the tie-beams of the roof, the inscription, C. 1630 R., and again on the door, C. R. 1635. In the churchyard is a remarkably fine holly tree, and, what is still more interesting, the grave of Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad. Here he lies, ignorant alike that his Lusiad is almost forgotten, and that his little ballad of Cumnor-Hall has reproduced itself in the world-famous story of Kenilworth. We ventured to call at the parsonage, where we were very courteously shown the parish-register, a little old parchment book, in which I observed the entry of Mary Powell’s christening, and also the record of burial of persons brought in after such and such a fight, in the Civil Wars. In a nice little cottage hard by, we found an old dame teaching half-a-dozen children; and if any one marvels at my mentioning so insignificant a fact, let me say that it was one of the most pleasing of my day’s adventures to visit this school, which seemed to be the original of many a queer cut, familiar from the painted story-books of the nursery. The cottage seemed to contain but one room, the dame’s bed being turned up against the wall, and neatly concealed by a check curtain. The windows were casements, with diamond panes—and the walls were so thick, that the window-sill afforded space for several boxes of plants, set there for the sunlight. The floor was so neat, that it might have served for a table without offence to the appetite; sundry shelves shone with polished pewter and tin; the whitewash, without and within, was fresh and sweet; and sundry vines were trained about the door. The little scholars, evidently the children of laboring people, were tidy in their appearance too, and they sat, each upon his stool, with A-B-C-Book held demurely before the nose, and eyes asquint at the visitors. Every thing convinced me that the old dame was a strict disciplinarian, whose “moral suasion” consisted in the rod of Solomon, fairly displayed before the eyes of the urchins, and no doubt faithfully used. And yet nothing could exceed the good-nature and propriety of her appearance, except the humility with which she seemed to regard the literary pretensions of her academy. Good-bye, dame! Reverend is thy little starched cap, and dignified thy seat in the corner of the chimney. True, they teach greater things hard by, at Oxford; but thou art an humble co-worker with its ablest Dons and Doctors: and happy are the children, who have only to peep out of their school-house door to see the top-rounds of the ladder, about the foot of which they climb; even the towers of Christ Church, and of Magdalen, and the dome of the Radcliffe Library.
“Yes,” said one of my companions—“when the Great Tom of Oxford rings its hundred-and-one of a summer evening, then, standing on this hill, you will get the meaning of Milton’s lines:—
“ ’Oft, on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow, with sullen roar.’ ”
To which I ventured to object, that although the heavy sound of a bell like the Great Tom would alone justify the description in the last of these lines, I saw nothing in the view before me, to account for the allusion to a “wide-watered shore.” This, however, was met by the assurance that the little rivulet, which might be seen in the mead, was not unfrequently lost in a spreading inundation, and that at such times nothing could be more descriptive than the very words of the poem! This, I was bound to admit as satisfactory. And now I made a discovery of my own. Hard by the dame’s cottage I found a spring, overarched with substantial masonry, and adorned with ivy. I suggested that John Milton had certainly tasted of that water, for that the well was antique, and evidently designed for the use of a gentleman’s household; to which Sir C——, who is a judge of such matters, at one assented, pronouncing it of the period of Mary Powell’s youth, and paying my discovery the practical compliment of producing his sketch-book, and drawing it on the spot. A similar drawing he made of the Powell house itself, to which we now proceeded. It presents the remains of a much larger house, but even in its reduced dimensions, is quite sufficient for a comfortable farmer. Still the rose, the sweet-briar and eglantine are redolent beneath its casements; the cock, at the barn-door, may be seen from any of its windows; and doubtless the barn itself is the very one in which the shadowy flail of Robin Goodfellow threshed all night, to earn his bowl of cream. In the house itself we were received by the farmer’s daughter, who looked like “the neat-handed Phillis” herself; although her accomplishments were, by no means, those of a rustic maiden, for she evidently had entered fully into the spirit of the place, and imbued herself with that of the poetry in no mean degree. We were indebted to her for the most courteous reception, and were conducted by her into several apartments of the house, concerning all of which she was able to converse very intelligently. In the kitchen, with its vast hearth and over-hanging chimney, we discovered tokens of the good-living for which the old manor-house was no doubt famous in its day: and in its floor, was a large stone said to have been removed from a room, now destroyed, which was formerly the poet’s study. The garden, in its massive wall, and ornamented gateway, and an old sundial, retains some trace of its manorial dignities in former times—when the maiden Mary sat in her bower, thinking of her inspired lover; or when, perchance, the runaway wife sighed and wept here over a letter brought by the post, commanding Mistress Milton to return to her duty in a dark corner of London, on pain of her husband’s displeasure, and of being made the heroine of a book on divorce! Our fair conductress next called our attention to an outhouse, now degraded to the office of domestic brewing, but which she supposed to be the “still, removed place” of Penseroso; and in proof of the nobler office to which it had been originally designed, she pointed out the remains of old pargetting, or ornamental plaster-work, in its gables. The grace with which she used this term of art, would have rejoiced the soul of an ecclesiological enthusiast. Moreover, she brought forth a copy of Sir William Jones’ Letters, and pointed out to us his description of the place, proving that our researches on Forest-Hill can make no pretensions to originality, though certainly he could not boast of the advantages we derived from the illustrative powers of our hostess. It was her idea that the house had originally been a convent; and this notion, she said, receives force from the lines:—
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