Our old home;

BERKELEY

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY LIBRARY
OF TRAVEL

I
OUR OLD HOME

BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
LIBRARY OF TRAVEL

VOLUME ONE

OUR OLD HOME

BY

NATHANIEL ^HAWTHORNE

ANNOTATED

WITH PASSAGES FROM THE
AUTHOR'S NOTE-BOOKS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

IIOUGHTON MIFFLIN & COMPANY

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS

CAMBRIDGE

1907

Copyright, 1863,
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

Copyright, 1870,
BY SOPHIA HAWTHORNE.

Copyright, 1883, 1890,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN £ CO.

Copyright, 1891,
BY ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S, A
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

Add to Sift?

GHF1

P5

PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT.

IT is well known to students of Haw
thorne that the great romancer was a dili
gent recorder of the observations which
lay at the foundation of his fiction and
his sketches ; that he accumulated many
volumes of manuscript notes, and had re
course to this material when engaged upon
the books which his observation, under an
informing imagination, suggested. The
connection between the first notes and
the final form was closest, naturally, in
the case of Our Old Home, which was very
largely composed by Hawthorne of tran
scripts from his note-books, so that when
his widow printed the English Note-Books,
she found herself compelled to omit many
pages because they had already been used
by the author when writing the sketches
which composed Our Old Home.

539

IV PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT

At the same time it is clear that Haw
thorne when giving the final form to his
impressions of England did not make a
mere cento from his note-books, nor fru
gally use every scrap bearing upon the
subject in hand. Consequently the stu
dent of the English Note-Books often is
haunted by a feeling that he has read
something to the same effect in Our Old
Home, and finds it an agreeable task to
trace the connection between the impres
sions set down at the moment and the
more deliberate writing intended for the
public eye.

The publishers have taken the opportu
nity of a new edition of Ottr Old Home to
make this comparison practicable to all
readers, by annotating the text from the
note-books. Thus Hawthorne is made his
own commentator, often with felicitous
effect, as, for example, on pages 151, 152,
where the latter half of the foot-note
clearly contains the first form of the pas
sage expanded into the fuller and richer
expression in the text. The references

PUBLISHERS'- ADVERTISEMENT V

are by volume and page, to the Riverside
Edition of Passages from the English Note-
Books.

The photogravures, in almost all cases,
are from photographs from the objects
themselves, and regard has been had,
whenever it was expedient, to the date of
Hawthorne's own knowledge of England,
so that the pictures might be true copies
of the scenes which he described with
marvelous fidelity. For the portrait of
Miss Delia Bacon, who was so prominent
a figure in Hawthorne's world at the time,
the publishers are indebted to the courtesy
of Mr. Theodore Bacon, author of The
Life of Delia Bacon, where it first ap
peared.

BOSTON, August, 1890.

The present new edition of Our Old
Home brings the two volumes of the 1890
edition into a single convenient volume.
Otherwise, contents and illustrations re
main the same.

BOSTON, August, 1901.

TO
FRANKLIN PIERCE,

AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIEND
SHIP, PROLONGED THROUGH MANHOOD,
AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY
IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS,

(2Dfris Volume

IS INSCRIBED BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

TO A FRIEND

I HAVE not asked your consent, my dear
General, to the foregoing inscription, be
cause it would have been no inconsiderable
disappointment to me had you withheld it ;
for I have long desired to connect your
name with some book of mine, in commem
oration of an early friendship that has
grown old between two individuals of widely
dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. I only
wish that the offering were a worthier one
than this volume of sketches, which cer
tainly are not of a kind likely to prove in
teresting to a statesman in retirement, in
asmuch as they meddle with no matters of
policy or government, and have very little
to say about the deeper traits of national
character. In their humble way, they be
long entirely to aesthetic literature, and can
achieve no higher success than to represent
to the American reader a few of the exter
nal aspects of English scenery and life, es
pecially those that are touched with the
antique charm to which our countrymen

X TO A FRIEND

are more susceptible than are the people
among whom it is of native growth.

I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a
volume would not be all that I might write.
These and other sketches, with which, in a
somewhat rougher form than I have given
them here, my journal was copiously filled,
were intended for the side-scenes and back
grounds and exterior adornment of a work
of fiction of which the plan had imperfectly
developed itself in my mind, and into which
I ambitiously proposed to convey more of
various modes of truth than I could have
grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I
should not mention this abortive project,
only that it has been utterly thrown aside
and will never now be accomplished. The
Present, the Immediate, the Actual, has
proved too potent for me. It takes away
not only my scanty faculty, but even my
desire for imaginative composition, and
leaves me sadly content to scatter a thou
sand peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane
that is sweeping us all along with it, possi
bly, into a Limbo where our nation and its
polity may be as literally the fragments of
a shattered dream as my unwritten Ro
mance. But I have far better hopes for
our dear country ; and for my individual

TO A FRIEND XI

share of the catastrophe, I afflict myself
little, or not at all, and shall easily find
room for the abortive work on a certain
ideal shelf, where are reposited many other
shadowy volumes of mine, more in number,
and very much superior in quality, to those
which I have succeeded in rendering ac
tual.

To return to these poor Sketches : some
of my friends have told me that they evince
an asperity of sentiment towards the Eng
lish people which I ought not to feel, and
which it is highly inexpedient to express.
The charge surprises me, because, if it be
true, I have written from a shallower mood
than I supposed. I seldom came into per
sonal relations with an Englishman without
beginning to like him, and feeling my favor
able impression wax stronger with the pro
gress of the acquaintance. I never stood
in an English crowd without being con
scious of hereditary sympathies. Never
theless, it is undeniable that an American
is continually thrown upon his national an
tagonism by some acrid quality in the moral
atmosphere of England. These people
think so loftily of themselves, and so con
temptuously of everybody else, that it re
quires more generosity than I possess to

Xll TO A FRIEND

keep always in perfectly good humor with
them. Jotting down the little acrimonies
of the moment in my journal, and transfer
ring them thence (when they happened to
be tolerably well expressed) to these pages,
it is very possible that I may have said
things which a profound observer of na
tional character would hesitate to sanction,
though never any, I verily believe, that had
not more or less of truth. If they be true,
there is no reason in the world why they
should not be said. Not an Englishman of
them all ever spared America for courtesy's
sake or kindness ; nor, in my opinion, would
it contribute in the least to our mutual ad
vantage and comfort if we were to besmear
one another all over with butter and honey.
At any rate, we must not judge of an Eng
lishman's susceptibilities by our own, which
likewise, I trust, are of a far less sensitive
texture than formerly.

And now farewell, my dear friend ; and
excuse (if you think it needs any excuse)
the freedom with which I thus publicly as
sert a personal friendship between a private
individual and a statesman who has filled
what was then the most august position in
the world. But I dedicate my book to the
Friend, and shall defer a colloquy with the

TO A FRIEND Xlll

Statesman till some calmer and sunnier
hour. Only this let me say, that, with the
record of your life in my memory, and with
a sense of your character in my deeper con
sciousness as among the few things that
time has left as it found them, I need no
assurance that you continue faithful forever
to that grand idea of an irrevocable Union,
which, as you once told me, was the earliest
that your brave father taught you. For
other men there may be a choice of paths,
— for you, but one ; and it rests among my
certainties that no man's loyalty is more
steadfast, no man's hopes or apprehensions
on behalf of our national existence more
deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined
with his possibilities of personal happiness,
than those of FRANKLIN PIERCE.

THE WAYSIDE, July 2, 1863.

CONTENTS

PAGB

I. CONSULAR EXPERIENCES i

II. LEAMINGTON SPA 60

III. ABOUT WARWICK 103

IV. RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 145

V. LlCHFIELD AND UTTOXETER . . .199

VI. PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON . . 231

VII. NEAR OXFORD 281

VIII. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS * 325

IX. A LONDON SUBURB 359

X. UP THE THAMES 411

XI. OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 470

XII. Civic BANQUETS 527

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. . Frontispiece

A STREET IN LEAMINGTON 62

WARWICK CASTLE AND THE COUNTRY AROUND 78

A DEVONSHIRE FARMHOUSE .... 100
ARCHED BRIDGE OVER THE AVON, SHOWING

WARWICK CASTLE 106

LEICESTER HOSPITAL, AND WEST GATE, WAR
WICK 1 20

A COUNTRY LANE 150

THE ROOM IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN 160

DELIA BACON 174

CHARLECOTE HALL 194

LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEST . 206
STATUE OF DR. JOHNSON, ST. MARY'S SQUARE,

LICHFIELD 218

LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 240

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL AND BISHOP'S PALACE 242

ROMAN ARCH, LINCOLN 250

ST. BOTOLPH'S TOWER, OLD BOSTON . . 260

BLENHEIM " . . .292

THE THAMES AT OXFORD FROM FOLLY BRIDGE 318
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD, FROM THE CHER-
WELL 122

XVI LIST OF ILL USTRA TIONS

ROBERT BURNS 334

BURNS'S BIRTHPLACE, ALLOWAY PARISH, NEAR

AYR 350

THE AULD BRIG o' DOON, AYR .... 354

ALLOWAY KIRK 356

A COUNTRY HOUSE 364

THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT .... 374

LORD NELSON 392

LONDON BRIDGE 412

TOWER OF LONDON, SHOWING TRAITORS' GATE 428

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 430

POETS' CORNER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY . . 452

AN ENGLISH ALMSHOUSE .... 500

OUR OLD HOME

I.

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES

THE Consulate of the United States, in
my day, was located in Washington Build
ings (a shabby and smoke - stained edifice
of four stories high, thus illustriously
named in honor of our national establish
ment), at the lower corner of Brunswick
Street, contiguous to the Goree Arcade,
and in the neighborhood of some of the
oldest docks. This was by no means a
polite or elegant portion of England's great
commercial city, nor were the apartments
of the American official so splendid as to
indicate the assumption of much consular
pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-light
ed staircase gave access to an equally
narrow and ill-lighted passageway on the
first floor, at the extremity of which, sur
mounting a door-frame, appeared an ex
ceedingly stiff pictorial representation of

2 OUR OLD HOME

the Goose and Gridiron, according to the
English idea of those ever-to-be-honored
symbols. The staircase and passageway
were often thronged, of a morning, with a
set of beggarly and piratical-looking scoun
drels (I do no wrong to our own country
men in styling them so, for not one in
twenty was a genuine American), purport
ing to belong to our mercantile marine,
and chiefly composed of Liverpool Black-
bailers and the scum of every maritime
nation on earth ; such being the seamen by
whose assistance we then disputed the
navigation of the world with England.
These specimens of a most unfortunate
class of people were shipwrecked crews in
quest of bed, board, and clothing ; invalids
asking permits for the hospital ; bruised
and bloody wretches complaining of ill-
treatment by their officers ; drunkards,
desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, per-
plexingly intermingled with an uncertain
proportion of reasonably honest men. All
of them (save here and there a poor devil
of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going
rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they
had sweltered or shivered throughout the
voyage, and all required consular assistance
in one form or another.

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 3

Any respectable visitor, if he could make
up his mind to elbow a passage among
these sea-monsters, was admitted into an
outer office, where he found more of the
same species, explaining their respective
wants or grievances to the Vice-Consul
and clerks, while their shipmates await
ed their turn outside the door. Passing
through this exterior court, the stranger
was ushered into an inner privacy, where
sat the Consul himself, ready to give per
sonal attention to such peculiarly difficult
and more important cases as might de
mand the exercise of (what we will cour
teously suppose to be) his own higher ju
dicial or administrative sagacity.

It was an apartment of very moderate
size, painted in imitation of oak, and dusk
ily lighted by two windows looking across
a by-street at the rough brick side of an
immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and
uglier structure than ever was built in
America. On the walls of the room hung
a large map of the United States (as they
were twenty years ago, but seem little
likely to be, twenty years hence), and a
similar one of Great Britain, with its ter
ritory so provokingly compact, that we
may expect it to sink sooner than sunder.

4 OUR OLD HOME

Farther adornments were some rude en
gravings of our naval victories in the War
of 1812, together with the Tennessee State
House, and a Hudson River steamer, and
a colored, life-size lithograph of General
Taylor, with an honest hideousness of as
pect, occupying the place of honor above
the mantel-piece. On the top of a book
case stood a fierce and terrible bust of
General Jackson, pilloried in a military
collar which rose above his ears, and frown
ing forth immitigably at any Englishman
who might happen to cross the threshold.
I am afraid, however, that the truculence
of the old general's expression was utterly
thrown away on this stolid and obdurate
race of men ; for, when they occasionally
inquired whom this work of art represent
ed, I was mortified to find that the younger
ones had never heard of the battle of New
Orleans, and that their elders had either
forgotten it altogether, or contrived to mis-
remember, and twist it wrong end foremost
into something like an English victory.
They have caught from the old Romans
(whom they resemble in so many other
characteristics) this excellent method of
keeping the national glory intact by sweep
ing all defeats and humiliations clean out

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 5

of their memory. Nevertheless, my pat
riotism forbade me to take down either
the bust or the pictures, both because it
seemed no more than right that an Ameri
can Consulate (being a little patch of our
nationality imbedded into the soil and in
stitutions of England) should fairly repre
sent the American taste in the fine arts,
and because these decorations reminded me
so delightfully of an old-fashioned Ameri
can barber's shop.

One truly English object was a barome
ter hanging on the wall, generally indicat
ing one or another degree of disagreeable
weather, and so seldom pointing to Fair,
that I began to consider that portion of its
circle as made superfluously. The deep
chimney, with its grate of bituminous coal,
was English too, as was also the chill tem
perature that sometimes called for a fire at
midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmos
phere which often, between November
and March, compelled me to set the gas
aflame at noonday. I am not aware of
omitting anything important in the above
descriptive inventory, unless it be some
book-shelves filled with octavo volumes of
the American Statutes, and a good many
pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communi-

6 OUR OLD HOME

cations from former Secretaries of State,
and other official documents of similar
value, constituting part of the archives of
the Consulate, which I might have done
my successor a favor by flinging into the
coal grate. Yes ; there was one other arti
cle demanding prominent notice : the con
sular copy of the New Testament, bound
in black morocco, and greasy, I fear, with
a daily succession of perjured kisses ; at
least, I can hardly hope that all the ten
thousand oaths, administered by me be
tween two breaths, to all sorts of people
and on all manner of worldly business,
were reckoned by the swearer as if taken
at his soul's peril.

Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled
chamber in which I spent wearily a con
siderable portion of more than four good
years of my existence. At first, to be quite
frank with the reader, I looked upon it as
not altogether fit to be tenanted by the
commercial representative of so great and
prosperous a country as the United States
then were ; and I should speedily have
transferred my headquarters to airier and
loftier apartments, except for the prudent
consideration that my government would
have left me thus to support its dignity at

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 7

my own personal expense. Besides, a long
line of distinguished predecessors, of whom
the latest is now a gallant general under
the Union banner, had found the locality
good enough for them ; it might certainly
be tolerated, therefore, by an individual so
little ambitious of external magnificence as
myself. So I settled quietly down, striking
some of my roots into such soil as I could
find, adapting myself to circumstances, and
with so much success, that, though from
first to last I hated the very sight of the
little room, I should yet have felt a singu
lar kind of reluctance in changing it for a
better.

Hither, in the course of my incumbency,
came a great variety of visitors, principally
Americans, but including almost every
other nationality on earth, especially the
distressed and downfallen ones, like those
of Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits
(for so they looked), proscribed conspirators
from Old Spain, Spanish-Americans, Cu
bans who professed to have stood by Lopez,
and narrowly escaped his fate, scarred
French soldiers of the Second Republic, —
in a word, all sufferers, or pretended ones,
in the cause of Liberty, all people homeless
in the widest sense, those who never had a

8 OUR OLD HOME

country, or had lost it, those whom their
native land had impatiently flung off for
planning a better system of things than
they were born to, — a multitude of these,
and, doubtless, an equal number of jail
birds, outwardly of the same feather, sought
the American Consulate, in hopes of at
least a bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a
passage to the blessed shores of Freedom.
In most cases there was nothing, and in
any case distressingly little, to be done for
them ; neither was I of a proselyting dis
position, nor desired to make my Consulate
a nucleus for the vagrant discontents of
other lands. And yet it was a proud
thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies
of an American, that these unfortunates
claimed the privileges of citizenship in our
Republic on the strength of the very same
noble misdemeanors that had rendered
them outlaws to their native despotisms.
So I gave them what small help I could.
Methinks the true patriots and martyr-
spirits of the whole world should have been
conscious of a pang near the heart, when a
deadly blow was aimed at the vitality of a
country which they have felt to be their
own in the last resort.

As for my countrymen, I grew better

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 9

acquainted with many of our national char
acteristics during those four years than in
all my preceding life. Whether brought
more strikingly out by the contrast with
English manners, or that my Yankee
friends assumed an extra peculiarity from
a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that
their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even
their figures and cast of countenance, all
seemed chiseled in. sharper angles than
ever I had imagined them to be at home.
It impressed me with an odd idea of having
somehow lost the property of my own per
son, when I occasionally heard one of them
speaking of me as " my Consul ! " They
often came to the Consulate in parties of
half a dozen or more, on no business what
ever, but merely to subject their public
servant to a rigid examination, and see
how he was getting on with his duties.
These interviews were rather formidable,
being characterized by a certain stiffness
which I felt to be sufficiently irksome at
the moment, though it looks laughable
enough in the retrospect. It is my firm
belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing
a native tendency to organization, gener
ally halted outside of the door, to elect a
speaker, chairman, or moderator, and thus

10 .OUR OLD HOME

approached me with all the formalities of
a deputation from the American people.
After salutations on both sides, — abrupt,
awful, and severe on their part, and dep
recatory on mine, — and the national cere
mony of shaking hands being duly gone
through with, the interview proceeded by
a series of calm and well-considered ques
tions or remarks from the spokesman (no
other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a
word), and diplomatic responses from the
Consul, who sometimes found the investi
gation a little more searching than he liked.
I flatter myself, however, that, by much
practice, I attained considerable skill in
this kind of intercourse, the art of which
lies in passing off commonplaces for new
and valuable truths, and talking trash and
emptiness in such a way that a pretty acute
auditor might mistake it for something
solid. If there be any better method of
dealing with such junctures, — when talk
is to be created out of nothing, and within
the scope of several minds at once, so that
you cannot apply yourself to your inter
locutor's individuality, — I have not learned
it.

Sitting, as it were, in the gateway
between the Old World and the New,

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES II

where the steamers and packets landed the
greater part of our wandering countrymen,
and received them again when their wander
ings were done, I saw that no people on
earth have such vagabond habits as our
selves. The Continental races never travel
at all if they can help it ; nor does an
Englishman ever think of stirring abroad,
unless he has the money to spare, or pro
poses to himself some definite advantage
from the journey ; but it seemed to me
that nothing was more common than for a
young American deliberately to spend all
his resources in an aesthetic peregrination
about Europe, returning with pockets nearly
empty to begin the world in earnest. It
happened, indeed, much oftener than was
at all agreeable to myself, that their funds
held out just long enough to bring them
to the door of my Consulate, where they
entered as if with an undeniable right to
its shelter and protection, and required at
my hands to be sent home again. In my
first simplicity, — finding them gentle
manly in manners, passably educated, and
only tempted a little beyond their means
by a laudable desire of improving and
refining themselves, or perhaps for the
sake of getting better artistic instruction

12 OUR OLD HOME

in music, painting, or sculpture than our
country could supply, — I sometimes took
charge of them on my private responsibility,
since our government gives itself no trouble
about its stray children, except the sea
faring class. But, after a few such experi
ments, discovering that none of these
estimable and ingenuous young men, how
ever trustworthy they might appear, ever
dreamed of reimbursing the Consul, I
deemed it expedient to take another course
with them. Applying myself to some
friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward
passages on their behalf, with the under
standing that they were to make them
selves serviceable on shipboard ; and I
remember several very pathetic appeals
from painters and musicians, touching the
damage which their artistic fingers were
likely to incur from handling the ropes.
But my observation of so many heavier
troubles left me very little tenderness for
their finger-ends. In time I grew to be
reasonably hard-hearted, though it never
was quite possible to leave a countryman
with no shelter save an English poorhouse,
when, as he invariably averred, he had only
to set foot on his native soil to be possessed
of ample funds. It was my ultimate con-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 13

elusion, however, that American ingenuity
may be pretty safely left to itself, and that,
one way or another, a Yankee vagabond is
certain to turn up at his own threshold, if
he has any, without help of a Consul, and
perhaps be taught a lesson of foresight that
may profit him hereafter.

Among these stray Americans, I met
with no other case so remarkable as that
of an old man, who was in the habit of
visiting me once in a few months, and
soberly affirmed that he had been wandering
about England more than a quarter of a
century (precisely twenty-seven years, I
think), and all the while doing his utmost
to get home again. Herman Melville, in
his excellent novel or biography of " Israel
Potter," has an idea somewhat similar to
this. The individual now in question was
a mild and patient, but very ragged and
pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond descrip
tion, lean and hungry-looking, but with a
large and somewhat red nose. He made
no complaint of his ill-fortune, but only
repeated in a quiet voice, with a pathos of
which he was himself evidently unconscious,
" I want to get home to Ninety-Second
Street, Philadelphia." He described him
self as a printer by trade, and said that he

14 OUR OLD HOME

had come over when he was a younger
man, in the hope of bettering himself, and
for the sake of seeing the Old Country,
but had never since been rich enough to
pay his homeward passage. His manner
and accent did not quite convince me that
he was an American, and I told him so ;
but he steadfastly affirmed, " Sir, I was
born and have lived in Ninety-Second
Street, Philadelphia," and then went on to
describe some public edifices and other
local objects with which he used to be
familiar, adding, with a simplicity that
touched me very closely, " Sir, I had rather
be there than here 1 " Though I still man
ifested a lingering doubt, he took no of
fense, replying with the same mild depres
sion as at first, and insisting again and
again on Ninety-Second Street. Up to
the time when I saw him, he still got a
little occasional job-work at his trade, but
subsisted mainly on such charity as he met
with in his wanderings, shifting from place
to place continually, and asking assistance
to convey him to his native land. Possibly
he was an impostor, one of the multitu
dinous shapes of English vagabondism, and
told his falsehood with such powerful sim
plicity, because, by many repetitions, he

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 15

had convinced himself of its truth. But
if, as I believe, the tale was fact, how very
strange and sad was this old man's fate !
Homeless on a foreign shore, looking
always towards his country, coming again
and again to the point whence so many
were setting sail for it, — so many who
would soon tread in Ninety-Second Street,
— losing, in this long series of years, some
of the distinctive characteristics of an
American, and at last dying and surrender
ing his clay to be a portion of the soil
whence he could not escape in his life
time.

He appeared to see that he had moved
me, but did not attempt to press his ad
vantage with any new argument, or any
varied form of entreaty. He had but
scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray
head, and in the intervals of those, like the
refrain of an old ballad, came in the monot
onous burden of his appeal, "If I could
only find myself in Ninety-Second Street,
Philadelphia ! " But even his desire of
getting home had ceased to be an ardent
one (if, indeed, it had not always partaken
of the dreamy sluggishness of his char-
acter), although it remained his only loco
motive impulse, and perhaps the sole

1 6 OUR OLD HOME

principle of life that kept his blood from
actual torpor.

The poor old fellow's story seemed to
me almost as worthy of being chanted in
immortal song as that of Odysseus or
Evangeline. I took his case into deep
consideration, but dared not incur the
moral responsibility of sending him across
the sea, at his age, after so many years of
exile, when the very tradition of him had
passed away, to find his friends dead, or
forgetful, or irretrievably vanished, and the
whole country become more truly a foreign
land to him than England was now, — and
even Ninety-Second Street, in the weed-
like decay and growth of our localities,
made over anew and grown unrecognizable
by his old eyes. That street, so patiently
longed for, had transferred itself to the
New Jerusalem, and he must seek it there,
contenting his slow heart, meanwhile, with
the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of Eng
lish towns, or the green country lanes and
by-paths with which his wanderings had
made him familiar ; for doubtless he had a
beaten track, and was the "long-remem
bered beggar " now, with food and a
roughly hospitable greeting ready for him
at many a farmhouse door, and his choice

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES \J

of lodging under a score of haystacks. In
America, nothing awaited him but that
worst form of disappointment which comes
under the guise of a long-cherished and
late-accomplished purpose, and then a year
or two of dry and barren sojourn in an
almshouse, and death among strangers at
last, where he had imagined a circle of
familiar faces. So I contented myself with
giving him alms, which he thankfully ac
cepted, and went away with bent shoulders
and an aspect of gentle forlornness ; re
turning upon his orbit, however, after a
few months, to tell the same sad and quiet
story of his abode in England for more
than twenty-seven years, in all which time
he had been endeavoring, and still en
deavored as patiently as ever, to find his
way home to Ninety-Second Street, Phil
adelphia.

I recollect another case, of a more ridic
ulous order, but still with a foolish kind of
pathos entangled in it, which impresses me
now more forcibly than it did at the moment.
One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured,
fat-faced individual came into my private
room, dressed in a sky-blue, cut-away coat
and mixed trousers, both garments worn
and shabby, and rather too small for his

1 8 OUR OLD HOME

overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary
talk, he turned out to be a country shop
keeper (from Connecticut, I think), who
had left a flourishing business, and come
over to England purposely and solely to
have an interview with the Queen. Some
years before he had named his two children,
one for her Majesty and the other for
Prince Albert, and had transmitted photo
graphs of the little people, as well as of
his wife and himself, to the illustrious god
mother. The Queen had gratefully ac
knowledged the favor in a letter under the
hand of her private secretary. Now, the
shopkeeper, like a great many other Amer
icans, had long cherished a fantastic notion
that he was one of the rightful heirs of a
rich English estate; and on the strength
of her Majesty's letter and the hopes of
royal patronage which it inspired, he had
shut up his little country store and come
over to claim his inheritance. On the
voyage, a German fellow-passenger had
relieved him of his money on pretense of
getting it favorably exchanged, and had
disappeared immediately on the ship's ar
rival ; so that the poor fellow was compelled
to pawn all his clothes, except the remark
ably shabby ones in which I beheld him,

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 19

and in which (as he himself hinted, with a
melancholy, yet good-natured smile) he did
not look altogether fit to see the Queen.
I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat
and mixed trousers constituted a very odd-
looking court-dress, and suggested that it
was doubtless his present purpose to get
back to Connecticut as fast as possible.
But no ! The resolve to see the Queen
was as strong in him as ever ; and it was
marvelous the pertinacity with which he
clung to it amid raggedness and starvation,
and the earnestness of his supplication that
I would supply him with funds for a suita
ble appearance at Windsor Castle.

I never had so satisfactory a perception
of a complete booby before in my life ; and
it caused me to feel kindly towards him,
and yet. impatient and exasperated on be
half of common sense, which could not pos
sibly tolerate that such an unimaginable
donkey should exist. I laid his absurdity
before him in the very plainest terms, but
without either exciting his anger or shak
ing his resolution. " Oh, my dear man,"
quoth he, with good-natured, placid, simple,
and tearful stubbornness, " if you could
but enter into my feelings and see the
matter from beginning to end as I see it ! "

2O OUR OLD HOME

To confess the truth, I have since felt that
I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton,
and that there was more weight in his re
monstrance than I chose to be sensible of,
at the time ; for, like many men who have
been in the habit of making playthings or
tools of their imagination and sensibility, I
was too rigidly tenacious of what was
reasonable in the affairs of real life. And
even absurdity has its rights, when, as in
this case, it has absorbed a human being's
entire nature and purposes. I ought to
have transmitted him to Mr. Buchanan, in
London, who, being a good-natured old
gentleman, and anxious, just then, to grat
ify the universal Yankee nation, might, for
the joke's sake, have got him admittance
to the Queen, who had fairly laid herself
open to his visit, and has received hun
dreds of our countrymen on infinitely
slighter grounds. But I was inexorable,
being turned to flint by the insufferable
proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere
with his business in any way except to pro
cure him a passage home. I can see his
face of mild, ridiculous despair at this mo
ment, and appreciate, better than I could
then, how awfully cruel he must have felt
my obduracy to be. For years and years,

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 21

the idea of an interview with Queen Vic
toria had haunted his poor foolish mind ;
and now, when he really stood on English
ground, and the palace door was hanging
ajar for him, he was expected to turn back,
a penniless and bamboozled simpleton,
merely because an iron-hearted Consul re
fused to lend him thirty shillings (so low
had his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a
second-class ticket on the rail for London !
He visited the Consulate several times
afterwards, subsisting on a pittance that I
allowed him in the hope of gradually starv
ing him back to Connecticut, assailing me
with the old petition at every opportunity,
looking shabbier at every visit, but still
thoroughly good-tempered, mildly stubborn,
and smiling through his tears, not without
a perception of the ludicrousness of his
own position. Finally, he disappeared al
together, and whither he had wandered,
and whether he ever saw the Queen, or
wasted quite away in the endeavor, I never
knew ; but I remember unfolding the
" Times," about that period, with a daily
dread of reading an account of a ragged
Yankee's attempt to steal into Buckingham
Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his
captors, and besought them to introduce

22 OUR OLD HOME

him to her Majesty. I submit to Mr. Sec
retary Seward that he ought to make diplo
matic remonstrances to the British Minis
try, and require them to take such order
that the Queen shall not any longer be
wilder the wits of our poor compatriots by
responding to their epistles and thanking
them for their photographs.

One circumstance in the foregoing inci
dent — I mean the unhappy storekeeper's
notion of establishing his claim to an Eng
lish estate — was common to a great many
other applications, personal or by letter,
with which I was favored by my country
men. The cause of this peculiar insanity
lies deep in the Anglo-American heart.
After all these bloody wars and vindictive
animosities, we have still an unspeakable
yearning towards England. When our
forefathers left the old home, they pulled
up many of their roots, but trailed along
with them others, which were never snapt
asunder by the tug of such a lengthening
distance, nor have been torn out of the
original soil by the violence of subsequent
struggles, nor severed by the edge of the
sword. -Even so late as these days, they
remain entangled with our heart-strings,
and might often have influenced our na-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 2$

tional cause like the tiller-ropes of a ship, if
the rough gripe of England had been capa
ble of managing so sensitive a kind of ma
chinery. It has required nothing less than
the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-suffi
ciency, the contemptuous jealousy, the half-
sagacity, invariably blind of one eye and
often distorted of the other, that character
ize this strange people, to compel us to be
a great nation in our own right, instead of
continuing virtually, if not in name, a prov
ince of their small island. What pains did
they take to shake us off, and have ever
since taken to keep us wide apart from
them ! It might seem their folly, but was
really their fate, or, rather, the Providence
of God, who has doubtless a work for us to
do, in which the massive materiality of the
English character would have been too
ponderous a dead-weight upon our progress.
And, besides, if England had been wise
enough to twine our new vigor round about
her ancient strength, her power would have
been too firmly established ever to yield, in
its due season, to the otherwise immutable
law of imperial vicissitude. The earth
might then have beheld the intolerable
spectacle of a sovereignty and institutions,
imperfect, but indestructible.

24 OUR OLD HOME

Nationally, there has ceased to be any
peril of so inauspicious and yet outwardly
attractive an amalgamation, But as an in
dividual, the American is often conscious
of the deep-rooted sympathies- that belong
more fitly to times gone by, and feels a
blind pathetic tendency to wander back
again, which makes itself evident in such
wild dreams as I have alluded to above,
about English inheritances. A mere coin
cidence of names (the Yankee one, perhaps,
having been assumed by legislative per
mission), a supposititious pedigree, a silver
mug on which an anciently engraved coat
of arms has been half scrubbed out, a seal
with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter
or document in faded ink, the more scantily
legible the better, — rubbish of this kind,
found in a neglected drawer, has been po
tent enough to turn the brain of many an
honest Republican, especially if assisted
by an advertisement for lost heirs, cut out
of a British newspaper. There is no esti
mating or believing, till we come into a po
sition to know it, what foolery lurks latent
-in the breasts of very sensible people. Re
membering such sober extravagances, I
should not be at all surprised to find that
I am myself guilty of some unsuspected

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 2$

absurdity, that may appear to me the most
substantial trait in my character.

I might fill many pages with instances
of this diseased American appetite for
English soil. A respectable-looking woman,
well advanced in life, of sour aspect, ex
ceedingly homely, but decidedly New-Eng-
landish in figure and manners, came to my
office with a great bundle of documents, at
the very first glimpse of which I appre
hended something terrible. Nor was I
mistaken. The bundle contained evidences
of her indubitable claim to the site on
which Castle Street, the Town Hall, the
Exchange, and all the principal business
part of Liverpool have long been situated ;
and, with considerable peremptoriness, the
good lady signified her expectation that I
should take charge of her suit, and pros
ecute it to judgment ; not, however, on the
equitable condition of receiving half the
value of the property recovered (which, in
case of complete success, would have made
both of us ten or twenty fold millionnaires),
but without recompense or reimbursement
of legal expenses, solely as an incident of
my official duty. Another time came two
ladies, bearing a letter of emphatic intro
duction from his Excellency the Governor

26 OUR OLD HOME

of their native State, who testified in most
satisfactory terms to their social respec
tability. They were claimants of a great
estate in Cheshire, and announced them
selves as blood-relatives of Queen Victoria,
— a point, however, which they deemed it
expedient to keep in the background until
their territorial rights should be established,
apprehending that the Lord High Chancel
lor might otherwise be less likely to come
to a fair decision in respect to them, from
a probable disinclination to admit new
members into the royal kin. Upon my
honor, I imagine that they had an eye to
the possibility of the eventual succession
of one or both of them to the crown of
Great Britain through superiority of title
over the Brunswick line ; although, being
maiden ladies, like their predecessor Eliz
abeth, they could hardly have hoped to
establish a lasting dynasty upon the throne.
It proves, I trust, a certain disinterested
ness on my part, that, encountering them
thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I for
bore to put in a plea for a future dukedom.
Another visitor of the same class was a
gentleman of refined manners, handsome
figure, and remarkably intellectual aspect.
Like many men of an adventurous cast, he

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 27

had so quiet a deportment, and such an
apparent disinclination to general sociabil
ity, that you would have fancied him
moving always along some peaceful and
secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from
his first hour, he had been tossed upon the
surges of a most varied and tumultuous
existence, having been born at sea, of
American parentage, but on board of a
Spanish vessel, and spending many of the
subsequent years in voyages, travels, and
outlandish incidents and vicissitudes, which,
methought, had hardly been paralleled since
the days of Gulliver or De Foe. When
his dignified reserve was overcome, he had
the faculty of narrating these adventures
with wonderful eloquence, working up his
descriptive sketches with such intuitive
perception of the picturesque points that
the whole was thrown forward with a pos
itively illusive effect, like matters of your
own visual experience. In fact, they were
so admirably done that I could never more
than half believe them, because the genuine
affairs of life are not apt to transact them
selves so artistically. Many of his scenes
were laid in the East, and among those
seldom-visited archipelagoes of the Indian
Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fra-

28 OUR OLD HOME

grance breathing through his talk, and an
odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in
his garments. He had much to say of the
delightful qualities of the Malay pirates,
who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare
against the ships of all civilized nations,
and cut every Christian throat among their
prisoners ; but (except for deeds of that
character, which are the rule and habit of
their life, and matter of religion and con
science with them) they are a gentle-
natured people, of primitive innocence and
integrity.

But his best story was about a race of
men (if men they were) who seemed so
fully to realize Swift's wicked fable of the
Yahoos, that my friend was much exercised
with psychological speculations whether or
no they had any souls. They dwelt in the
wilds of Ceylon, like other savage beasts,
hairy, and spotted with tufts of fur, filthy,
shameless, weaponless (though warlike in
their individual bent), tool-less, houseless,
language-less, except for a few guttural
sounds, hideously dissonant, whereby they
held some rudest kind of communication
among themselves. They lacked both
memory and foresight, and were wholly
destitute of government, social institutions,

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 29

or law or rulership of any description, ex
cept the immediate tyranny of the strong
est ; radically untamable, moreover, save
that the people of the country managed to
subject a few of the less ferocious and
stupid ones to outdoor servitude among
their other cattle. They were beastly in
almost all their attributes, and that to such
a degree that the observer, losing sight of
any link betwixt them and manhood, could
generally witness their brutalities without
greater horror than at those of some dis
agreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And
yet, at times, comparing what were the
lowest general traits in his own race with
what was highest in these abominable
monsters, he found a ghastly similitude
that half compelled him to recognize them
as human brethren.

After these Gulliverian researches, my
agreeable acquaintance had fallen under
the ban of the Dutch government, and had
suffered (this, at least, being matter of
fact) nearly two years' imprisonment, with
confiscation of a large amount of property,
for which Mr. Belmont, our minister at the
Hague, had just made a peremptory demand
of reimbursement and damages. Mean
while, since arriving in England on his

3O OUR OLD HOME

way to the United States, he had been
providentially led to inquire into the^ cir
cumstances of his birth on shipboard, and
had discovered that not himself alone, but
another baby, had come into the world
during the same voyage of the prolific
vessel, and that there were almost ir
refragable reasons for believing that these
two children had been assigned to the
wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of
his early days confirmed him in the idea
that his nominal parents were aware of the
exchange. The family to which he felt
authorized to attribute his lineage was that
of a nobleman, in the picture-gallery of
whose country-seat (whence, if I mistake
not, our adventurous friend had just re
turned) he had discovered a portrait bear
ing a striking resemblance to himself. As
soon as he should have reported the out
rageous action of the Dutch government
to President Pierce and the Secretary of
State, and recovered the confiscated prop
erty, he purposed to return to England and
establish his claim to the nobleman's title
and estate.

I had accepted his Oriental fantasies
(which, indeed, to do him justice, have been
recorded by scientific societies among the

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 31

genuine phenomena of natural history), not
as matters of indubitable credence, but as
allowable specimens of an imaginative trav
eler's vivid coloring and rich embroidery
on the coarse texture and dull neutral tints
of truth. The English romance was among
the latest communications that he intrust
ed to my private ear ; and as soon as I
heard the first chapter, — so wonderfully
akin to what I might have wrought out of
my own head, not unpracticed in such fig
ments, — I began to repent having made
myself responsible for the future noble
man's passage homeward in the next Col
lins steamer. Nevertheless, should his
English rent-roll fall a little behindhand,
his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand
dollars was certainly in the hands of our
government, and might at least be valuable
to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had
engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have
reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned
out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his
English country-seat a mere castle in the
air, — which I exceedingly regret, for he
was a delightful companion and a very
gentlemanly man.

A Consul, in his position of universal re
sponsibility, the general adviser and helper,

32 OUR OLD HOME

sometimes finds himself compelled to as
sume the guardianship of personages who,
in their own sphere, are supposed capable
of superintending the highest interests of
whole communities. An elderly Irishman,
a naturalized citizen, once put the desire
and expectation of all our penniless vaga
bonds into a very suitable phrase, by pa
thetically entreating me to be a "father to
him ; " and, simple as I sit scribbling here,
I. have acted a father's part, not only by
scores of such unthrifty old children as
himself, but by a progeny of far loftier
pretensions. It may be well for persons
who are conscious of any radical weakness
in their character, any besetting sin, any
unlawful propensity, any unhallowed im
pulse, which (while surrounded with the
manifold restraints that protect a man from
that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his
lower self, in the circle of society where he
is at home) they may have succeeded in
keeping under the lock and key of strict
est propriety, — it may be well for them,
before seeking the perilous freedom of a
distant land, released from the watchful
eyes of neighborhoods and coteries, light
ened of that wearisome burden, an immac
ulate name, and blissfully obscure after

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 33

years of local prominence, — it may be well
for such individuals to know that when
they set foot on a foreign shore, the long-
imprisoned Evil, scenting a wild license
in the unaccustomed atmosphere, is apt to
grow riotous in its iron cage. It rattles
the rusty barriers with gigantic turbulence,
and if there be an infirm joint anywhere in
the framework, it breaks madly forth, com
pressing the mischief of a lifetime into a
little space.

A parcel of letters had been accumulat
ing at the Consulate for two or three weeks,
directed to a certain Doctor of Divinity,
who had left America by a sailing-packet
and was still upon the sea. In due time,
the vessel arrived, and the reverend Doc
tor paid me a visit. He was a fine-looking
middle-aged gentleman, a perfect model of
clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet with the
air of a man of the world rather than a stu
dent, though overspread with the graceful
sanctity of a popular metropolitan divine, a
part of whose duty it might be to exem
plify the natural accordance between Chris
tianity and good-breeding. He seemed a
little excited, as an American is apt to be
on first arriving in England, but conversed
with intelligence as well as animation, mak-

34 OUR OLD HOME

ing himself so agreeable that his visit stood
out in considerable relief from the mo
notony of my daily commonplace. As I
learned from authentic sources, he was
somewhat distinguished in his own region
for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, but
was now compelled to relinquish it tempo
rarily for the purpose of renovating his
impaired health by an extensive tour in
Europe. Promising to dine with me, he
took up his bundle of letters and went
away.

The Doctor, however, failed to make his
appearance at dinner-time, or to apologize
the next day for his absence ; and in the
course of a day or two more, I forgot all
about him, concluding that he must have
set forth on his Continental travels, the
plan of which he had sketched out at our
interview. But, by and by, I received a
call from the master of the vessel in which
he had arrived. He was in some alarm
about his passenger, whose luggage re
mained on shipboard, but of whom nothing
had been heard or seen since the moment
of his departure from the Consulate. We
conferred together, the captain and I, about
the expediency of setting the police on
the traces (if any were to be found) of our

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 35

vanished friend ; but it struck me that the
good captain was singularly reticent, and
that there was something a little myste
rious in a few points that he hinted at
rather than expressed ; so that, scrutinizing
the affair carefully, I surmised that the
intimacy of life on shipboard might have
taught him more about the reverend gentle
man than, for some reason or other, he
deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, in
our native country, I would have looked to
the Doctor's personal safety and left his
reputation to take care of itself, knowing
that the good fame of a thousand saintly
clergymen would amply dazzle out any la
mentable spot on a single brother's char
acter. But in scornful and invidious Eng
land, on the idea that the credit of the
sacred office was measurably intrusted to
my discretion, I could not endure, for the
sake of American Doctors of Divinity gen
erally, that this particular Doctor should
cut an ignoble figure in the police reports
of the English newspapers, except at the
last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter
myself, will acknowledge that I acted on
their own principle. Besides, it was now
too late ; the mischief and violence, if any
had been impending, were not of a kind

36 OUR OLD HOME

which it requires the better part of a week
to perpetrate ; and to sum up the entire
matter, I felt certain, from a good deal of
somewhat similar experience, that, if the
missing Doctor still breathed this vital air,
he would turn up at the Consulate as soon
as his money should be stolen or spent.

Precisely a week after this reverend per
son's disappearance, there came to my
office a tall, middle-aged gentleman in a
blue military surtout, braided at the seams,
but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the
wearer had been bivouacking in it through
out a Crimean campaign. It was buttoned
up to the very chin, except where three or
four of the buttons were lost ; nor was
there any glimpse of a white shirt-collar
illuminating the rusty black cravat. A
grisly mustache was just beginning to
roughen the stranger's upper lip. He
looked disreputable to the last degree, but
still had a ruined air of good society glim
mering about him, like a few specks of pol
ish on a sword-blade that has lain corroding
in a mud-puddle. I took him to be some
American marine officer, of dissipated hab
its, or perhaps a cashiered British major,
stumbling into the wrong quarters through
the unrectified bewilderment of the last

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 37

night's debauch. He greeted me, however,
with polite familiarity, as though we had
been previously acquainted ; whereupon I
drew coldly back (as sensible people natu
rally do, whether from strangers or former
friends, when too evidently at odds with
fortune) and requested to know who my
visitor might be, and what was his busi
ness at the Consulate. "Am I then so
changed ? " he exclaimed with a vast depth
of tragic intonation ; and after a little blind
and bewildered talk, behold ! the truth
flashed upon me. It was the Doctor of
Divinity ! If I had meditated a scene or
a coup de theatre, I could not have con
trived a more effectual one than by this
simple and genuine difficulty of recogni
tion. The poor Divine must have felt that
he had lost his personal identity through
the misadventures of one little week.
And, to say the truth, he did look as if,
like Job, on account of his especial sanc
tity, he had been delivered over to the
direst temptations of Satan, and proving
weaker than the man of Uz, the Arch
Enemy had been empowered to drag him
through Tophet, transforming him, in the
process, from the most decorous clergyman
into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded

38 OUR OLD HOME

officers. I never fathomed the mystery of
his military costume, but conjectured that
a lurking sense of fitness had induced him
to exchange his clerical garments for this
habit of a sinner ; nor can I tell precisely
into what pitfall, not more of vice than ter
rible calamity, he had precipitated him
self, — being more than satisfied to know
that the outcasts of society can sink no
lower than this poor, desecrated wretch
had sunk.

The opportunity, I presume, does not
often happen to a layman, of administering
moral and religious reproof to a Doctor of
Divinity ; but finding the occasion thrust
upon me, and the hereditary Puritan wax
ing strong in my breast, I deemed it a
matter of conscience not to let it pass
entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was
unspeakably shocked and disgusted. Not,
however, that I was then to learn that
clergymen are made of the same flesh and
blood as other people, and perhaps lack
one small safeguard which the rest of us
possess, because they are aware of their
own peccability, and therefore cannot look
up to the clerical class for the proof of the
possibility of a pure life on earth, with
such reverential confidence as we are prone

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 39

to do. But I remembered the innocent
faith of my boyhood, and the good old
silver-headed clergyman, who seemed to
me as much a saint then on earth as he is
now in heaven, and partly for whose sake,
through all these darkening years, I retain
a devout, though not intact nor unwavering
respect for the entire fraternity. What a
hideous wrong, therefore, had the back
slider inflicted on his brethren, and still
more on me, who much needed whatever
fragments of broken reverence (broken,
not as concerned religion, but its earthly
institutions and professors) it might yet be
possible to patch into a sacred image !
Should all pulpits and communion-tables
have thenceforth a stain upon them, and
the guilty one go unrebuked for it ? So I
spoke to the unhappy man as I never
thought myself warranted in speaking to
any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing
my utmost to find out his vulnerable part,
and prick him into the depths of it. And
not without more effect than I had dreamed
of, or desired !

No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor's
reversed position, thus standing up to re
ceive such a f ulmination as the clergy have
heretofore arrogated the exclusive right of

40 OUR OLD HOME

inflicting, might give additional weight and
sting to the words which I found utterance
for. But there was another reason (which,
had I in the least suspected it, would have
closed my lips at once) for his feeling
morbidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that
I administered. The unfortunate man had
come to me, laboring under one of the
consequences of his riotous outbreak, in
the shape of delirium tremens ; he bore a
hell within the compass of his own breast,
all the torments of which blazed up with
tenfold inveteracy when I thus took upon
myself the Devil's office of stirring up the
red-hot embers. His emotions, as well as
the external movement and expression of
them by voice, countenance, and gesture,
were terribly exaggerated by the tremen
dous vibration of nerves resulting from the
disease. It was the deepest tragedy I
ever witnessed. I know sufficiently, from
that one experience, how a condemned soul
would manifest its agonies ; and for the
future, if I have anything to do with sin
ners, I mean to operate upon them through
sympathy and not rebuke. What had I to
do with rebuking him ? The disease, long
latent in his heart, had shown itself in a
frightful eruption on the surface of his life.

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 41

That was all! Is it a thing to scold the
sufferer for ?

To conclude this wretched story, the
poor Doctor of Divinity, having been robbed
of all his money in this little airing beyond
the limits of propriety, was easily persuaded
to give up the intended tour and return to
his bereaved flock, who, very probably,
were thereafter conscious of an increased
unction in his soul-stirring eloquence, with
out suspecting the awful depths into which
their pastor had dived in quest of it. His
voice is now silent. I leave it to members
of his own profession to decide whether it
was better for him thus to sin outright,
and so to be let into the miserable secret
what manner of man he was, or to have
gone through life outwardly unspotted,
making the first discovery of his latent
evil at the judgment-seat. It has occurred
to me that his dire calamity, as both he
and I regarded it, might have been the
only method by which precisely such a man
as himself, and so situated, could be re
deemed. He has learned, ere now, how
that matter stood.

For a man, with a natural tendency to
meddle with other people's business, there
could not possibly be a more congenial

42 ' OUR OLD HOME

sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. For
myself, I had never been in the habit of
feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend
any particular conjunction of circumstances
with human character, to justify me in
thrusting in my awkward agency among
the intricate and unintelligible machinery
of Providence. I have always hated to
give advice, especially when there is a
prospect of its being taken. It is only
one-eyed people who love to advise, or
have any spontaneous promptitude of action.
When a man opens both his eyes, he gen
erally sees about as many reasons for acting
in any one way as in any other, and quite
as many for acting in neither ; and is there
fore likely to leave his friends to regulate
their own conduct, and also to remain
quiet as regards his especial affairs till
necessity shall prick him onward. Never
theless, the world and individuals flourish
upon a constant succession of blunders.
The secret of English practical success lies
in their characteristic faculty of shutting
one eye, whereby they get so distinct and
decided a view of what immediately con
cerns them that they go stumbling towards
it over a hundred insurmountable obstacles,
and achieve a magnificent triumph without

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 43

ever being aware of half its difficulties. If
General McClellan could but have shut
his left eye, the right one would long ago
have guided us into Richmond. Mean
while, I have strayed far away from the
Consulate, where, as I was about to say, I
was compelled, in spite of my disinclina
tion, to impart both advice and assistance
in multifarious affairs that did not per
sonally concern me, and presume that I
effected about as little mischief as other
men in similar contingencies. The duties
of the office carried me to prisons, police-
courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coroners
inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought
me in contact with insane people, criminals,
ruined speculators, wild adventurers, di
plomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner
of simpletons and unfortunates, in greater
number and variety than I had ever
dreamed of as pertaining to America ; in
addition to whom there was an equivalent
multitude of English rogues, dexterously
counterfeiting the genuine Yankee article.
It required great discrimination not to be
taken in by these last-mentioned scoundrels;
for they knew how to imitate our national
traits, had been at great pains to instruct
themselves as regarded American localities,

44 OUR OLD HOME

and were not readily to be caught by a
cross-examination as to the topographical
features, public institutions, or prominent
inhabitants of the places where they pre
tended to belong. The best shibboleth I
ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of
the word "been," which the English in
variably make to rhyme with " green," and
we Northerners, at least (in accordance, I
think, with the custom of Shakespeare's
time), universally pronounce "bin."

All the matters that I have been treating of,
however, were merely incidental, and quite
distinct from the real business of the office.
A great part of the wear and tear of mind
and temper resulted from the bad relations
between the seamen and officers of Amer
ican ships. Scarcely a morning passed,
but that some sailor came to show the
marks of his ill-usage on shipboard. Often,
it was a whole crew of them, each with his
broken head or livid bruise, and all testify
ing with one voice to a constant series of
savage outrages during the voyage ; or, it
might be, they laid an accusation of actual
murder, perpetrated by the first or second
officers, with many blows of steel-knuckles,
a rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by the
captain, in the twinkling of an eye, with a

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 45

shot of his pistol. Taking the seamen's
view of the case, you would suppose that
the gibbet was hungry for the murderers.
Listening to the captain's defense, you
would seem to discover that he and his
officers were the humanest of mortals, but
were driven to a wholesome severity by
the mutinous conduct of the crew, who,
moreover, had themselves slain their com
rade in the drunken riot and confusion of
the first day or two after they were shipped.
Looked at judicially, there appeared to be
no right side to the matter, nor any right
side possible in so thoroughly vicious a
system as that of the American mercantile
marine. The Consul could do little, except
to take depositions, hold forth the greasy
Testament to be profaned anew with per
jured kisses, and, in a few instances of
murder or manslaughter, carry the case
before an English magistrate, who generally
decided that the evidence was too contra
dictory to authorize the transmission of
the accused for trial in America. The
newspapers all over England contained
paragraphs, inveighing against the cruelties
of American shipmasters. The British
Parliament took up the matter (for nobody
is so humane as John Bull, when his benev-

46 OUR OLD HOME

olent propensities are to be gratified by
finding fault with his neighbor), and caused
Lord John Russell to remonstrate with our
government on the outrages for which it
was responsible before the world, and which
it failed to prevent or punish. The Amer
ican Secretary of State, old General Cass,
responded, with perfectly astounding igno
rance of the subject, to the effect that the
statements of outrages had probably been
exaggerated, that the present laws of the
United States were quite adequate to deal
with them, and that the interference of the
British Minister was uncalled for.

The truth is, that the state of affairs
was really very horrible, and could be met
by no laws at that time (or I presume now)
in existence. I once thought of writing a
pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the
Consulate before finding time to effect my
purpose ; and all that phase of my life im
mediately assumed so dream-like a con
sistency that I despaired of making it seem
solid or tangible to the public. And now
it looks distant and dim, like troubles of a
century ago. The origin of the evil lay
in the character of the seamen, scarcely
any of whom were American, but the off
scourings and refuse of all the seaports of

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 47

the world, such stuff as piracy is made of,
together with a considerable intermixture
of returning emigrants, and a sprinkling of
absolutely kidnapped American citizens.
Even with such material the ships were
very inadequately manned. The shipmas
ter found himself upon the deep, with a
vast responsibility of property and human
life upon his hands, and no means of salva
tion except by compelling his inefficient
and demoralized crew to heavier exertions
than could reasonably be required of the
same number of able seamen. By law he
had been intrusted with no discretion of
judicious punishment ; he therefore habit
ually left the whole matter of discipline
to his irresponsible mates, men often of
scarcely a superior quality to the crew.
Hence ensued a great mass of petty out
rages, unjustifiable assaults, shameful in
dignities, and nameless cruelty, demoraliz
ing alike to the perpetrators and the
sufferers ; these enormities fell into the
ocean between the two countries, and
could be punished in neither. Many mis
erable stories come back upon my memory
as I write ; wrongs that were immense,
but for which nobody could be held re
sponsible, and which, indeed, the closer you

48 OUR OLD HOME

looked into them, the more they lost the
aspect of willful misdoing, and assumed
that of an inevitable calamity. It was the
fault of a system, the misfortune of an
individual. Be that as it may, however,
there will be no possibility of dealing ef
fectually with these troubles as long as we
deem it inconsistent with our national dig
nity or interests to allow the English courts,
under such restrictions as may seem fit, a
jurisdiction over offenses perpetrated on
board our vessels in mid-ocean.

In such a life as this, the American ship
master develops himself into a man of iron
energies, dauntless courage, and inexhaust
ible resource, at the expense, it must be
acknowledged, of some of the higher and
gentler traits which might do him excellent
service in maintaining his authority. The
class has deteriorated of late years on ac
count of the narrower field of selection,
owing chiefly to the diminution of that
excellent body of respectably educated
New England seamen, from the flower of
whom the officers used to be recruited.
Yet I found them, in. many cases, very
agreeable and intelligent companions, with
less nonsense about them than landsmen
usually have, eschewers of fine-spun the-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 49

ories, delighting in square and tangible
ideas, but occasionally infested with preju
dices that stuck to their brains like bar
nacles to a ship's bottom. I never could
flatter myself that I was a general favorite
with them. One or two, perhaps, even
now, would scarcely meet me on amicable
terms. Endowed universally with a great
pertinacity of will, they especially disliked
the interference of a Consul with their man
agement on shipboard ; notwithstanding
which, I thrust in my very limited authority
at every available opening, and did the ut
most that lay in my power, though with
lamentably small effect, towards enforcing
a better kind of discipline. They thought,
no doubt (and on plausible grounds enough,
but scarcely appreciating just that one
little grain of hard New England sense,
oddly thrown in among the flimsier com
position of the Consul's character), that
he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as people
said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not
possibly understand anything of the diffi
culties or the necessities of a shipmaster's
position. But their cold regards were
rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is
exceedingly awkward to assume a judicial
austerity in the morning towards a man

50 OUR OLD HOME

with whom you have been hobnobbing over
night.

With the technical details of the busi
ness of that great Consulate (for great it
then was, though now, I fear, wofully fallen
off, and perhaps never to be revived in
anything like its former extent), I did not
much interfere. They could safely be left
to the treatment of two as faithful, upright,
and competent subordinates, both English
men, as ever a man was fortunate enough
to meet with, in a line of life altogether
new and strange to him. I had come over
with instructions to supply both their
places with Americans, but, possessing a
happy faculty of knowing my own interest
and the public's, I quietly kept hold of
them, being little inclined to open the con
sular doors to a spy of the State Depart
ment or an intriguer for my own office.
The venerable Vice-Consul, Mr. Pearce,
had witnessed the successive arrivals of a
score of newly appointed Consuls, shadowy
and short-lived dignitaries, and carried his
reminiscences back to the epoch of Consul
Maury, who was appointed by Washington,
and has acquired almost the grandeur of a
mythical personage in the annals of the
Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. Wild-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 51

ing, who has since succeeded to the Vice-
Consulship, was a man of English integ
rity, — not that the English are more hon
est than ourselves, but only there is a
certain sturdy reliableness common among
them, which we do not quite so invariably
manifest in just these subordinate posi
tions, — of English integrity, combined
with American acuteness of intellect, quick-
wittedness, and diversity of talent. It
seemed an immense pity that he should
wear out his life at a desk, without a step
in advance from year's end to year's end,
when, had it been his luck to be born on
our side of the water, his bright faculties
and clear probity would have insured him
eminent success in whatever path he might
adopt. Meanwhile, it would have been a
sore mischance to me, had any better
fortune on his part deprived me of Mr.
Wilding's services.

A fair amount of common sense, some
acquaintance with the United States Stat
utes, an insight into character, a tact of
management, a general knowledge of the
world, and a reasonable but not too invet-
erately decided preference for his own will
and judgment over those of interested
people, — these natural attributes and

52 OUR OLD HOME

moderate acquirements will enable a Consul
to perform many of his duties respectably,
but not to dispense with a great variety of
other qualifications, only attainable by long
experience. Yet, I think, few Consuls are
so well accomplished. An appointment of
whatever grade, in the diplomatic or consu
lar service of America, is too often what
the English call a "job ; " that is to say, it
is made on private and personal grounds,
without a paramount eye to the public
good or the gentleman's especial fitness
for the position. It is not too much to
say (of course allowing for a brilliant ex
ception here and there), that an American
never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign
post, nor has time to make himself so, be
fore the revolution of the political wheel
discards him from his office. Our country
wrongs itself by permitting such a system
of unsuitable appointments, and, still more,
of removals for no cause, just when the
incumbent might be beginning to ripen
into usefulness. Mere ignorance of official
detail is of comparatively small moment ;
though it is considered indispensable, I pre
sume, that a man in any private capacity
shall be thoroughly acquainted with the
machinery and operation of his business,

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 53

and shall not necessarily lose his position
on having attained such knowledge. But
there are so many more important things
to be thought of, in the qualifications of
a foreign resident, that his technical dex
terity or clumsiness is hardly worth men
tioning.

One great part of a Consul's duty, for
example, should consist in building up for
himself a recognized position in the society
where he resides, so that his local influence
might be felt in behalf of his own country,
and, so far as they are compatible (as they
generally are to the utmost extent), for the
interests of both nations. The foreign
city should know that it has a permanent
inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him.
There are many conjunctures (and one of
them is now upon us) where a long-estab
lished, honored, and trusted American citi
zen, holding a public position under our
government in such a town as Liverpool,
might go far towards swaying and direct
ing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He
might throw his own weight into the bal
ance against mischief-makers ; he might
have set his foot on the first little spark of
malignant purpose, which the next wind
may blow into a national war. But we

54 OUR OLD HOME

willfully give up all advantages of this kind.
The position is totally beyond the attain
ment of an American ; there to-day, bris
tling all over with the porcupine quills of
our Republic, and gone to-morrow, just as
he is becoming sensible of the broader and
more generous patriotism which might al
most amalgamate with that of England,
without losing an atom of its native force
and flavor. In the changes that appear to
await us, and some of which, at least, can
hardly fail to be for good, let us hope for a
reform in this matter.

For myself, as the gentle reader would
spare me the trouble of saying, I was not
at all the kind of man to grow into such
an ideal Consul as I have here suggested.
I never in my life desired to be burdened
with public influence. I disliked my office
from the first, and never came into any
good accordance with it. Its dignity, so
far as it had any, was an encumbrance ;
the attentions it drew upon me (such as in
vitations to Mayors' banquets and public
celebrations of all kinds, where, to my hor
ror, I found myself expected to stand up
and speak) were — as I may say without
incivility or ingratitude, because there is
nothing personal in that sort of hospital-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 55

ity — a bore. The official business was
irksome, and often painful. There was
nothing pleasant about the whole affair,
except the emoluments ; l and even those,
never too bountifully reaped, were dimin
ished by more than half in the second or
third year of my incumbency. All this
being true, I was quite prepared, in ad
vance of the inauguration of Mr. Buchan
an, to send in my resignation. When my
successor arrived, I drew the long, delight
ful breath which first made me thoroughly
sensible what an unnatural life I had been
leading, and compelled me to admire my
self for having battled with it so sturdily.2

1The pleasantest incident of the morning is when Mr.
Pearce (the Vice-Consul) makes his appearance with
the account books, containing the receipts and expendi
tures of the preceding day, and deposits on my desk a
little rouleau of the Queen's coin, wrapped up in a piece
of paper. This morning there were eight sovereigns,
four half-crowns, and a shilling, — a pretty fair day's
work, though not more than the average ought to be.
— I. 415.

2 1 am sick- to death of my office, — brutal captains
and brutal sailors ; continual complaints of mutual
wrong which I have no power to set right, and which,
indeed, seem to have no right on either side ; calls of
idleness or ceremony from my traveling countrymen,
who seldom know what they are in search of at the
commencement of their tour, and never have attained
any desirable end at the close of it; beggars, cheats,

56 OUR OLD HOME

The new-comer proved to be a very genial
and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and,
as he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern
Fire-Eater, — an announcement to which
I responded, with similar good-humor and
self-complacency, by parading my descent
from an ancient line of Massachusetts Pu
ritans. Since our brief acquaintanceship,
my fire-eating friend has had ample oppor
tunities to banquet on his favorite diet,
hot and hot, in the Confederate service.
For myself, as soon as I was out of office,
the retrospect began to look unreal. I
could scarcely believe that it was I, — that
figure whom they called a Consul, — but a
sort of Double Ganger, who had been per
mitted to assume my aspect, under which
he went through his shadowy duties with a
tolerable show of efficiency, while my real
self had lain, as regarded my proper mode
of being and acting, in a state of suspended
animation.

The same sense of illusion still pursues
me. There is some mistake in this matter.
I have been writing about another man's
consular experiences, with which, through

simpletons, unfortunates, so mixed up that it is impos
sible to distinguish one from another, and so, in self-
defense, the Consul distrusts them all. — II. 69.

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 57

some mysterious medium of transmitted
ideas, I find myself intimately acquainted,
but in which I cannot possibly have had a
personal interest. Is it not a dream alto
gether ? The figure of that poor Doctor
of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so
do those of the Oriental adventurer with
the visionary coronet above his brow, and
the moonstruck visitor of the Queen, and
the poor old wanderer, seeking his native
country through English highways and by
ways for almost thirty years ; and so would
a hundred others that I might summon up
with similar distinctness. But were they
more than shadows ? Surely, I think not.
Nor are these present pages a bit of in
trusive autobiography. Let not the reader
wrong me by supposing it. I never should
have written with half such unreserve, had
it been a portion of this life congenial with
my nature, which I am living now, instead
of a series of incidents and characters en
tirely apart from my own concerns, and on
which the qualities personally proper to
me could have had no bearing. Almost
the only real incidents, as I see them now,
were the visits of a young English friend,
a scholar and a literary amateur, between
whom and myself there sprung up an

58 OURt OLD HOME

affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory re
gard. He used to come and sit or stand
by my fireside, talking vivaciously and elo
quently with me about literature and life,
his own national characteristics and mine,
with such kindly endurance of the many
rough republicanisms wherewith I assailed
him, and such frank and amiable assertion
of all sorts of English prejudices and mis
takes, that I understood his countrymen
infinitely the better for him, and was almost
prepared to love the intensest Englishman
of them all, for his sake. It would gratify
my cherished remembrance of this dear
friend, if I could manage, without offending
him, or letting the public know it, to intro
duce his name upon my page. Bright was
the illumination of my dusky little apart
ment, as often as he made his appearance
there !

The English sketches which I have been
offering to the public comprise a few of
the more external, and therefore more read
ily manageable, things that I took note of,
in many escapes from the imprisonment of
my consular servitude. Liverpool, though
not very delightful as a place of residence,
is a most convenient and admirable point
to get away from. London is only five

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 59

hours off by the fast train. Chester, the
most curious town in England, with its
encompassing" wall, its ancient rows, and
its venerable cathedral, is close at hand.
North Wales, with all its hills and ponds,
its noble sea-scenery, its multitude of gray
castles and strange old villages, may be
glanced at in a summer day or two. The
lakes and mountains of Cumberland and
Westmoreland may be reached before din
ner-time. The haunted and legendary Isle
of Man, a little kingdom by itself, lies
within the scope of an afternoon's voyage.
Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable over
night, and Loch Lomond betimes in the
morning. Visiting these famous localities,
and a great many others, I hope that I do
not compromise my American patriotism
by acknowledging that I was often conscious
of a fervent hereditary attachment to the
native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to
be our own Old Home.

II.

LEAMINGTON SPA

IN the course of several visits and stays
of considerable length we acquired a home
like feeling towards Leamington, and came
back thither again and again, chiefly be
cause we had been there before. Wander
ing and wayside people, such as we had
long since become, retain a few of the in
stincts that belong to a more settled way
of life, and often prefer familiar and com
monplace objects (for the very reason that
they are so) to the dreary strangeness of
scenes that might be thought much better
worth the seeing. There is a small nest
of a place in Leamington — at No. 10
Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this
day, my reminiscences are apt to settle as
one of the cosiest nooks in England or in
the world ; not that it had any special
charm of its own, but only that we stayed
long enough to know it well, and even to
grow a little tired of it. In my opinion,
the very tediousness of home and friends

LEAMINGTON SPA 6 1

makes a part of what we love them for ;
if it be not mixed in sufficiently with the
other elements of life, there may be mad
enjoyment, but no happiness.

The modest abode to which I have alluded
forms one of a circular range of pretty,
moderate-sized, two-story houses, all built
on nearly the same plan, and each provided
with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its
tufts of box trimmed into globes and other
fantastic shapes, and its verdant hedges
shutting the house in from the common
drive, and dividing it from its equally cozy
neighbors. Coming out of the door, and
taking a turn round the circle of sister-
dwellings, it is difficult to find your way
back by any distinguishing individuality of
your own habitation. In the centre of the
Circus is a space fenced in with iron rail
ing, a small play-place and sylvan retreat
for the children of the precinct, permeated
by brief paths through the fresh English
grass, and shadowed by various shrubbery ;
amid which, if you like, you may fancy
yourself in a deep seclusion, though prob
ably the mark of eye-shot from the windows
of all the surrounding houses. But, in
truth, with regard to the rest of the town
and the world at large, an abode here is a

62 OUR OLD HOME

genuine seclusion ; for the ordinary stream
of life does not run through this little,
quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabi
tants seem to be troubled with any business
or outside activities. I used to set them
down as half-pay officers, dowagers of nar
row income, elderly maideri ladies, and
other people of respectability, but small
account, such as hang on the world's skirts,
rather than actually belong to it. The
quiet of the place was seldom disturbed,
except by the grocer and butcher, who
came to receive orders ; or by the cabs,
hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which
the ladies took an infrequent airing ; or
the livery-steed which the retired captain
sometimes bestrode for a morning ride ; or
by the red-coated postman who went his
rounds twice a day to deliver letters, and
again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell,
to take letters for the mail. In merely
mentioning these slight interruptions of
its sluggish stillness, I seem to myself to
disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet
that brooded over the spot ; whereas its
impression upon me was, that the world
had never found the way hither, or had
forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhabi
tants were the only ones who possessed

LEAMINGTON SPA 63

the spell-word of admittance. Nothing
could have suited me better at the time ;
for I had been holding a position of public
servitude, which imposed upon me (among
a great many lighter duties) the ponderous
necessity of being universally civil and
sociable.

Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the
bustle of society, he might find it more
readily in Leamington than in most other
English towns. It is a permanent water
ing-place, a sort of institution to which I
do not know any close parallel in American
life : for such places as Saratoga bloom
only for the summer season, and offer a
thousand dissimilitudes even then ; while
Leamington 'seems to be always in flower,
and serves as a home to the homeless all
the year round. Its original nucleus, the
plausible excuse for the town's coming into
prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of,
a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far
a reality that out of its magical depths
have gushed streets, groves, gardens, man
sions, shops, and churches, and spread
themselves along the banks of the little
river Learn. This miracle accomplished,
the beneficent fountain has retired beneath
a pump-room, and appears to have given

64 OUR OLD HOME

up all pretensions to the remedial virtues
formerly attributed to it. I know not
whether its waters are ever tasted nowa
days ; but not the less does Leamington —
in pleasant Warwickshire, at the very mid
most point of England, in a good hunting
neighborhood, and surrounded by country-
seats and castles — continue to be a resort
of transient visitors, and the more perma
nent abode of a class of genteel, unoc
cupied, well-to-do, but not very wealthy
people, such as are hardly known among
ourselves. Persons who have no country-
houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate
to a London expenditure, find here, I sup
pose, a sort of town and country life in one.
In its present aspect the town is of no
great age. In contrast with the antiquity
of many places in its neighborhood, it has
a bright, new face, and seems almost to
smile even amid the sombreness of an
English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hun
dreds upon hundreds of years old, if we
reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during
which it existed as a small village of thatched
houses, clustered round a priory ; and it
would still have been precisely such a rural
village, but for a certain Dr. Jephson, who
lived within the memory of man, and who

LEAMINGTON SPA 65

found out the magic well, and foresaw what
fairy wealth might be made to flow from it.
A public garden has been laid out along
the margin of the Leam, and called the
Jephson Garden, in honor of him who cre
ated the prosperity of his native spot. A
little way within the garden-gate there is
a circular temple of Grecian architecture,
beneath the dome of which stands a marble
statue of the good doctor, very well exe
cuted, and representing him with a face of
fussy activity and benevolence : just the
kind of man, if luck favored him, to build
up the fortunes of those about him, or,
quite as probably, to blight his whole
neighborhood by some disastrous specula
tion.

The Jephson Garden is very beautiful,
like most other English pleasure-grounds ;
for, aided by their moist climate and not
too fervid sun, the landscape-gardeners ex
cel in converting flat or tame surfaces into
attractive scenery, chiefly through the
skillful arrangement of trees and shrubbery.
An Englishman aims at this effect even in
the little patches under the windows of a
suburban villa and achieves it on a larger
scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden
is shadowed with trees of a fine growth,

66 OUR OLD HOME

standing alone, or in dusky groves and
dense entanglements, pervaded by wood
land paths ; and emerging from these pleas
ant glooms, we come upon a breadth of
sunshine, where the greensward — so vividly
green that it has a kind of lustre in it —
is spotted with beds of gem-like flowers.
Rustic chairs and benches are scattered
about, some of them ponderously fashioned
out of the stumps of obtruncated trees, and
others more artfully made with intertwining
branches, or perhaps an imitation of such
frail handiwork in iron. In a central part
of the Garden is an archery-ground, where
laughing maidens practice at the butts,
generally missing their ostensible mark,
but, by the mere grace of their action,
sending an unseen shaft into some young
man's heart. There is space, moreover,
within these precincts, for an artificial lake,
with a little green island in the midst of it ;
both lake and island being the haunt of
swans, whose aspect and movement in the
water are most beautiful and stately, —
most infirm, disjointed, and decrepit, when,
unadvisedly, they see fit to emerge, and
try to walk upon dry land. In the latter
case, they look like a breed of uncommonly
ill-contrived geese ; and I record the matter

LEAMINGTON SPA 67

here for the sake of the moral, — that we
should never pass judgment on the merits
of any person or thing, unless we behold
them in the sphere and circumstances to
which they are specially adapted. In still
another part of the Garden there is a laby
rinthine maze formed of an intricacy of
hedge-bordered walks, involving himself in
which, a man might wander for hours in
extricably within a circuit of only a few
yards. It seemed to me a sad emblem of
the mental and moral perplexities in which
we sometimes go astray, petty in scope,
yet large enough to entangle a lifetime,
and bewilder us with a weary movement,
but no genuine progress.

The Learn, — the "high complexioned
Learn, " as Drayton calls it, — after drows
ing across the principal street of the town,
beneath a handsome bridge, skirts along
the margin of the Garden without any per
ceptible flow. Heretofore I had fancied
the Concord the laziest river in the world,
but now assign that amiable distinction to
the little English stream. Its water is by
no means transparent, but has a greenish,
goose-puddly hue, which, however, accords
well with the other coloring and character
istics of the scene, and is disagreeable

68 OUR OLD HOME

neither to sight nor smell. Certainly, this
river is a perfect feature of that gentle
picturesqueness in which England is so
rich, sleeping, as it does, beneath a margin
of willows that droop into its bosom, and
other trees, of deeper verdure than our own
country can boast, inclining lovingly over
it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by
a shadowy, secluded grove, with winding
paths among its boskiness, affording many
a peep at the river's imperceptible lapse
and tranquil gleam ; and on the opposite
shore stands the priory-church, with its
churchyard full of shrubbery and tomb
stones.

The business portion of the town clus
ters about the banks of the Learn, and is
naturally densest around the well to which
the modern settlement owes its existence.
Here are the commercial inns, the post-
office, the furniture-dealers, the ironmon
gers, and all the heavy and homely estab
lishments that connect themselves even
with the airiest modes of human life ;
while upward from the river, by a long and
gentle ascent, rises the principal street,
which is very bright and cheerful in its
physiognomy, and adorned with shop-fronts
almost as splendid as those of London,

LEAMINGTON SPA 69

though on a diminutive scale. There are
likewise side-streets and cross-streets, many
of which are bordered with the beautiful
Warwickshire elm, a most unusual kind of
adornment for an English town ; and spa
cious avenues, wide enough to afford room
for stately groves, with foot-paths running
beneath the lofty shade, and rooks cawing
and chattering so high in the tree-tops that
their voices get musical before reaching
the earth. The houses are mostly built in
blocks and ranges, in which every separate
tenement is a repetition of its fellow,
though the architecture of the different
ranges is sufficiently various. Some of
them are almost palatial in size and sump-
tuousness of arrangement. Then, on the
outskirts of the town, there are detached
villas, inclosed within that separate domain
of high stone fence and embowered shrub
bery which an Englishman so loves to
build and plant around his abode, present
ing to the public only an iron gate, with a
graveled carriage-drive winding away to
wards the half-hidden mansion. Whether
in street or suburb, Leamington may fairly
be called beautiful, and, at some points,
magnificent : but by and by you become
doubtfully suspicious of a somewhat unreal

70 OUR OLD HOME

finery : it is pretentious, though not glar
ingly so ; it has been built with malice
aforethought, as a place of gentility and
enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the
houses look, and comfortable as they often
are, there is a nameless something about
them, betokening that they have not grown
out of human hearts, but are the creations
of a skillfully applied human intellect : no
man has reared any one of them, whether
stately or humble, to be his lifelong resi
dence, wherein to bring up his children,
who are to inherit it as a home. They are
nicely contrived lodging-houses, one and
all, — the best as well as the shabbiest of
them, — and therefore inevitably lack some
nameless property that a home should
have. This was the case with our own
little snuggery in Lansdowne Circus, as
with all the rest ; it had not grown out of
anybody's individual need, but was built to
let or sell, and was therefore like a ready-
made garment, — a tolerable fit, but only
tolerable.1

1 This English custom of lodgings, of which we had
some experience at Rhyl last year, has its advantages ;
but is rather uncomfortable for strangers, who, in first
settling themselves down, find that they must undertake
all the responsibility of housekeeping at an instant's
warning, and cannot get even a cup of tea till they have

LEAMINGTON SPA 7 1

All these blocks, ranges, and detached
villas are adorned with the finest and most
aristocratic names that I have found any
where in England, except perhaps, in Bath,
which is the great metropolis of that
second-class gentility with which watering-
places are chiefly populated. Lansdowne
Crescent, Lansdowne Circus, Lansdowne
Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street,
Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower
Parade : such are a few of the designations.
Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen name for
the principal street, along which the popu
lation of the idle town draws itself out for
daily review and display. I only wish that
my descriptive powers would enable me to
throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny
noontide, individualizing each character
with a touch ; the great people alighting
from their carriages at the principal shop-
doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian

made arrangements with the grocer. Soon, however,
there comes a sense of being at home, and by our exclu
sive selves, which never can be attained at hotels nor
boarding-houses. Our house is well situated and re
spectably furnished, with the dinginess, however, which
is inseparable from lodging-houses, — as if others had
used these things before and would use them again
after we had gone, — a well-enough adaptation, but a
lack of peculiar appropriateness ; and I think one puts
off real enjoyment from a sense of not being truly fitted.
-I.58r.

72 OUR OLD HOME

officers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the
comely, rather than pretty, English girls,
with their deep, healthy bloom, which an
American taste is apt to deem fitter for a
milkmaid than for a lady ; the mustached
gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a mil
itary air ; the nursemaids and chubby chil
dren, but no chubbier than our own, and
scampering on slenderer legs ; the sturdy
figure of John Bull in all varieties and of
all ages, but ever with the stamp of authen
ticity somewhere about him.

To say the truth, I have been holding
the pen over my paper, purposing to write
a descriptive paragraph or two about the
throng on the principal Parade of Leam
ington, so arranging it as to present a
sketch of the British out-of-door aspect on
a morning walk of gentility ; but I find no
personages quite sufficiently distinct and
individual in my memory to supply the
materials of such a panorama. Oddly
enough, the only figure that comes fairly
forth to my mind's eye is that of a dow
ager, one of hundreds whom I used to
marvel at, all over England, but who have
scarcely a representative among our own
ladies of autumnal life, so thin, careworn,
and frail, as age usually makes the latter.

LEAMINGTON SPA 73

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity
with which English ladies retain their per
sonal beauty to a late period of life ; but
(not to suggest that an American eye
needs use and cultivation before it can
quite appreciate the charm of English
beauty at any age) it strikes me that an
English lady of fifty is apt to become a
creature less refined and delicate, so far as
her physique goes, than anything that we
Western people class under the name of
woman. She has an awful ponderosity of
frame, not pulpy, like the looser develop
ment of our few fat women, but massive
with solid beef and streaky tallow : so that
(though struggling manfully against the
idea) you inevitably think of her as made
up of steaks and sirloins. When she
walks, her advance is elephantine. When
she sits down, it is on a great round space
of her Maker's footstool, where she looks
as if nothing could ever move her. She
imposes awe and respect by the muchness
of her personality, to such a degree that
you probably credit her with far greater
moral and intellectual force than she can
fairly claim. Her visage is 'usually grim
and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet
calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth

74 OUR OLD HOME

and weight of feature, but because it
seems to express so much well-founded
self-reliance, such acquaintance with the
world, its toils, troubles, and dangers, and
such sturdy capacity for trampling down
a foe. Without anything positively sa
lient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, un
justly formidable to her neighbors, she has
the effect of a seventy-four gun-ship in
time of peace ; for, while you assure your
self that there is no real danger, you can
not help thinking how tremendous would
be her onset if pugnaciously inclined, and
how futile the effort to inflict any counter-
injury. She certainly looks ten-fold —
nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take
care of herself than our slender - framed
and haggard womankind ; but I have not
found reason to suppose that the English
dowager of fifty has actually greater cour
age, fortitude, and strength of character
than our women of similar age, or even
a tougher physical endurance than they.
Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in
society, and in the common routine of so
cial affairs, and would be found powerless
and timid in* any exceptional strait that
might call for energy outside of the con
ventionalities amid which she has grown

up!

LEAMINGTON SPA 75

You can meet this figure in the street,
and live, and even smile at the recollection.
But conceive of her in a ball-room, with
the bare, brawny arms that she invariably
displays there, and all the other corre
sponding development, such as is beautiful
in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to
howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose
as this.

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk
there must be hidden the modest, slender,
violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass
of earthliness has unkindly overgrown ; for
an English maiden in her teens, though
very seldom so pretty as our own damsels,
possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm
of half -blossom, and delicately folded leaves,
and tender womanhood shielded by maiden
ly reserves, with which, somehow or other,
our American girls often fail to adorn them
selves during an appreciable moment. It
is a pity that the English violet should
grow into such an outrageously developed
peony as I have attempted to describe. I
wonder whether a middle-aged husband
ought to be considered as legally married
to all the accretions that have overgrown
the slenderness of his bride, since he led
her to the altar, and which make her so

76 OUR OLD HOME

much more than he ever bargained for!
Is it not a sounder view of the case, that
the matrimonial bond cannot be held to
include the three fourths of the wife that
had no existence when the ceremony was
performed ? And as a matter of conscience
and good morals, ought not an English
married pair to insist upon the celebration
of a silver-wedding at the end of twenty-
five years, in order to legalize and mutually
appropriate that corporeal growth of which
both parties have individually come into
possession since they were pronounced one
flesh?

The chief enjoyment of my several visits
to Leamington lay in rural walks about the
neighborhood, and in jaunts to places of
note and interest, which are particularly
abundant in that region. The high-roads
are made pleasant to the traveler by a
border of trees, and often afford him the
hospitality of a wayside bench beneath a
comfortable shade. But a fresher delight
is to be found in the foot-paths, which go
wandering away from stile to stile, along
hedges, and across broad fields, and through
wooded parks, leading you to little hamlets
of thatched cottages, ancient, solitary farm
houses, picturesque old mills, streamlets,

LEAMINGTON SPA 'JJ

pools, and all those quiet, secret, unexpect
ed, yet strangely familiar features of English
scenery that Tennyson shows us in his
idyls and eclogues. These by-paths admit
the wayfarer into the very heart of rural
life, and yet do not burden him with a
sense of intrusiveness. He has a right to
go whithersoever they lead him ; for, with
all their shaded privacy, they are as much
the property of the public as the dusty
high-road itself, and even by an older tenure.
Their antiquity probably exceeds that of
the Roman ways ; the footsteps of the
aboriginal Britons first wore away the
grass, and the natural flow of intercourse
between village and village has kept the
track bare ever since. An American farmer
would plough across any such path, and
obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and
Indian corn; but here it is protected by
law, and still more by the sacredness that
inevitably springs up, in this soil, along the
well-defined footprints of centuries. Old
associations are sure to be fragrant herbs
in English nostrils ; we pull them up as
weeds.

I remember such a path, the access to
which is from Lovers' Grove, a range of
tall old oaks and elms on a high hill-top,

78 OUR OLD HOME

whence there is a view of Warwick Castle,
and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful,
though bedimmed with English mist. This
particular foot-path, however, is not a re
markably good specimen of its kind, since
it leads into no hollows and seclusions, and
soon terminates in a high-road. It connects
Leamington by a short cut with the small
neighboring village of Lillington, a place
which impresses an American observer with
its many points of contrast to the rural
aspects of his own country. The village
consists chiefly of one row of contiguous
dwellings, separated only by party-walls,
but ill-matched among themselves, being
of different heights, and apparently of
various ages, though all are of an antiquity
which we should call venerable. Some of
the windows are leaden-framed lattices
opening on hinges. These houses are
mostly built of gray stone ; but others, in
the same range, are of brick, and one or
two are in a very old fashion, — Elizabethan,
or still older, — having a ponderous frame
work of oak, painted black, and filled in
with plastered stone or bricks. Judging
by the patches of repair, the oak seems to
be the more durable part of the structure.
Some of the roofs are covered with earthen

LEAMINGTON SPA 79

tiles ; others (more decayed and poverty-
stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts
a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks,
and yellow flowers. What especially strikes
an American is the lack of that insulated
space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots,
orchards, broad - spreading shade -trees,
which occur between our own village-
houses. These English dwellings have no
such separate surroundings ; they all grow
together, like the cells of a honeycomb.

Beyond the first row of houses, and
hidden from it by a turn of the road, there
was another row (or block, as we should
call it) of small old cottages, stuck one
against another, with their thatched roofs
forming a single contiguity. These, I pre
sume, were the habitations of the poorest
order of rustic laborers ; and the narrow
precincts of each cottage, as well as the
close neighborhood of the whole, gave the
impression of a stifled, unhealthy atmos
phere among the occupants. It seemed
impossible that there should be a cleanly
reserve, a proper self-respect among indi
viduals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity be
tween families, where human life was
crowded and massed into such intimate
communities as these. Nevertheless, not

80 OUR OLD HOME

to look beyond the outside, I never saw a
prettier rural scene than was presented by
this range of contiguous huts. For in front
of the whole row was a luxuriant and well-
trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging
to each cottage was a little square of garden-
ground, separated from its neighbors by a
line of the same verdant fence. The gar
dens were chockfull, not of esculent vege
tables, but of flowers, familiar ones, but
very bright-colored, and shrubs of box,
some of which were trimmed into artistic
shapes ; and I remember, before one door,
a representation of Warwick Castle, made
of oyster-shells. The cottagers evidently
loved the little nests in which they dwelt,
and did their best to make them beautiful,
and succeeded more than tolerably well, —
so kindly did nature help their humble ef
forts with its verdure, flowers, moss, lichens,
and the green things that grew out of the
thatch. Through some of the open door
ways we saw plump children rolling about
on the stone floors, and their mothers, by no
means very pretty, but as happy-looking as
mothers generally are ; and while we gazed
at these domestic matters an old woman
rushed wildly out of one of the gates, up
holding a shovel, on which she clanged and

LEAMINGTON SPA 8 1

clattered with a key. At first we fancied
that she intended an onslaught against
ourselves, but soon discovered that a more
dangerous enemy was abroad ; for the old
lady's bees had swarmed, and the air was
full of them, whizzing by our heads like
bullets.1

Not far from these two rows of houses
and cottages, a green lane, overshadowed
with trees, turned aside from the main
road, and tended towards a square, gray
tower, the battlements of which were just
high enough to be visible above the foliage.
Wending our way thitherward, we found
the very picture and ideal of a country
church and churchyard. The tower seemed
to be of Norman architecture, low, massive,
and crowned with battlements. The body

1 But the old, whitewashed stone cottage [near Liver
pool] is still frequent, with its roof of slate or thatch,
which, perhaps, is green with weeds or grass. Through
its open door, you see that it has a pavement of flag
stones, or perhaps of red freestone ; and hogs and
donkeys are familiar with the threshold. The door
always opens directly into the kitchen, without any vesti
bule ; and, glimpsing in, you see that a cottager's life
must be the very plainest and homeliest that ever was
lived by men and women. Yet the flowers about the door
often indicate a native capacity for the beautiful ; but
often there is only a pavement of round stones or of
flagstones, like those within. — II. 70.

82 OUR OLD HOME

of the church was of very modest dimen
sions, and the eaves so low that I could
touch them with my walking-stick. We
looked into the windows and beheld the
dim and quiet interior, a narrow space, but
venerable with the consecration of many
centuries, and keeping its sanctity as entire
and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral.
The nave was divided from the side aisles
of the church by pointed arches resting on
very sturdy pillars : it was good to see how
solemnly they held themselves to their age
long task of supporting that lowly roof.
There was a small organ, suited in size to
the vaulted hollow, which it weekly filled
with religious sound. On the opposite
wall of the church, between two windows,
was a mural tablet of white marble, with
an inscription in black letters, — the only
such memorial that I could discern, although
many dead people doubtless lay beneath
the floor, and had paved it with their ancient
tombstones, as is customary in old English
churches. There were no modern painted
windows, flaring with raw colors, nor other
gorgeous adornments, such as the present
taste for mediaeval restoration often patches
upon the decorous simplicity of the gray
village church. It is probably the worship-

LEAMINGTON SPA 83

ing-place of no more distinguished a con
gregation than the farmers and peasantry
who inhabit the houses and cottages which
I have just described. Had the lord of the
manor been one of the parishioners, there
would have been an eminent pew near the
chancel, walled high about, curtained, and
softly cushioned, warmed by a fireplace of
its own, and distinguished by hereditary
tablets and escutcheons on the inclosed
stone pillar.

A well-trodden path led across the
churchyard, and the gate being on the latch,
we entered, and walked round among the
graves and monuments. The latter were
chiefly headstones, none of which were
very old, so far as was discoverable by the
dates ; some, indeed, in so ancient a ceme
tery, were disagreeably new, with inscrip
tions glittering like sunshine in gold letters.
The ground must have been dug over and
over again, innumerable times, until the
soil is made up of what was once human
clay, out of which have sprung successive
crops of gravestones, that floarish their
allotted time, and disappear, like the weeds
and flowers in their briefer period. The
English climate is very unfavorable to the
endurance of memorials in the open air.

84 OUR OLD HOME

Twenty years of it suffice to give as much
antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone
or edifice, as a hundred years of our own
drier atmosphere, — so soon do the drizzly
rains and constant moisture corrode the
surface of marble or freestone. Sculptured
edges lose their sharpness in a year or two ;
yellow lichens overspread a beloved name,
and obliterate it while it is yet fresh upon
some survivor's heart. Time gnaws an
English gravestone with wonderful appetite;
and when the inscription is quite illegible,
the sexton takes the useless slab away, and
perhaps makes a hearthstone of it, and digs
up the unripe bones which it ineffectually
tried to memorialize, and gives the bed to
another sleeper. In the Charter Street
burial-ground at Salem, and in the old
graveyard on the hill at Ipswich, I have
seen more ancient gravestones, with legi
ble inscriptions on them, than in any Eng
lish churchyard.

And yet this same ungenial climate,
hostile as it generally is to the long re
membrance of departed people, has some
times a lovely way of dealing with the
records on certain monuments that lie
horizontally in the open air. The rain falls
into the deep incisions of the letters, and

LEAMINGTON SPA 85

has scarcely time to be dried away before an
other shower sprinkles the flat stone again,
and replenishes those little reservoirs. The
unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find
their way into the lettered furrows, and
are made to germinate by the continual
moisture and watery sunshine of the Eng
lish sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two
years, or many years, behold the complete
inscription —

^ere 2Lgetfj tfy iSotjg,

and all the rest of the tender falsehood —
beautifully embossed in raised letters of
living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on
the marble slab ! It becomes more legible,
under the skyey influences, after the world
has forgotten the deceased, than when it
was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. It
outlives the grief of friends. I first saw an
example of this in Bebbington churchyard,1

1 There were monuments about the church [of Beb
bington], some lying flat on the ground, others elevated
on low pillars, or on cross slabs of stone, and almost all
looking dark, moss-grown, and very antique. But on
reading some of the inscriptions, I was surprised to find
them very recent ; for, in fact, twenty years of this
climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity of
aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred
years of our own, — so soon do lichens creep over the
surface, so soon does it blacken, so soon do the edges
lose their sharpness, so soon does Time gnaw away the
records. — I. 439.

86 OUR OLD HOME

in Cheshire, and thought that Nature must
needs have had a special tenderness for
the person (no noted man, however, in the
world's history) so long ago laid beneath
that stone, since she took such wonderful
pains to "keep his memory green." Per
haps the proverbial phrase just quoted may
have had its origin in the natural phenome
non here described.

While we rested ourselves on a horizontal
monument, which was elevated just high
enough to be a convenient seat, I observed
that one of the gravestones lay very close
to the church, — so close that the droppings
of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed
as if the inmate of that grave had desired
to creep under the church-wall. On closer
inspection, we found an almost illegible
epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty
made out this forlorn verse : —

" Poorly lived,
And poorly died,
Poorly buried,
And no one cried."

It would be hard to compress the story of
a cold and luckless life, death, and burial
into fewer words, or more impressive ones ;
at least, we found them impressive, perhaps
because we had to re-create the inscription

LEAMINGTON SPA 8/

by scraping away the lichens from the
faintly traced letters. The grave was on
the shady and damp side of the church,
endwise towards it, the headstone being
within about three feet of the foundation-
wall ; so that, unless the poor man was a
dwarf, he must have been doubled up to
fit him into his final resting-place. No
wonder that his epitaph murmured against
so poor a burial as this ! His name, as
well as I could make it out, was Treeo, —
John Treeo, I think, — and he died in
1810, at the age of seventy-four. The
gravestone is so overgrown with grass and
weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens,
and so crumbly with time and foul weather,
that it is questionable whether anybody
will ever be at the trouble of deciphering:
it again. But there is a quaint and sad
kind of enjoyment in defeating (to such
slight degree as my pen may do it) the
probabilities of oblivion for poor John
Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for
him, half a century after his death, and
making him better and more widely known,
at least, than any other slumberer in Lil-
lington churchyard : he having been, as
appearances go, the outcast of them all.
You find similar old churches and villages

88 OUR OLD HOME

in all the neighboring country, at the dis
tance of every two or three miles ; and
I describe them, not as being rare, but
because they are so common and charac
teristic. The village of Whitnash, within
twenty minutes' walk of Leamington, looks
as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed
by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jephson
had never developed all those Parades and
Crescents out of his magic well. I used to
wonder whether the inhabitants had ever
yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate
of progress, had even reached the epoch
of stage-coaches. As you approach the
village, while it is yet unseen, you observe
a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm -tree
tops, beneath which you almost hesitate to
follow the public road, on account of the
remoteness that seems to exist between
the precincts of this old-world community
and the thronged modern street out of
which you have so recently emerged.
Venturing onward, however, you soon find
yourself in the heart of Whitnash, and see
an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings
surrounding the village green, on one side
of which stands the church, with its square
Norman tower and battlements, while close
adjoining is the vicarage, made picturesque

LEAMINGTON SPA 89

by peaks and gables. At first glimpse,
none of the houses appear to be less than
two or three centuries old, and they are of
the ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with
thatched roofs, which give them the air
of birds' nests, thereby assimilating them
closely to the simplicity of nature.

The church-tower is mossy and much
gnawed by time ; it has narrow loopholes
up and down its front and sides, and an
arched window over the low portal, set with
small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and ir
regular, through which a by-gone age is peep
ing out into the daylight. Some of those
old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are
seen on the projections of the architecture.
The churchyard is very small, and is en
compassed by a gray stone fence that looks
as ancient as the church itself. In front
of the tower, on the village green, is a yew-
tree of incalculable age, with a vast circum
ference of trunk, but a very scanty head
of foliage ; though its boughs still keep
some of the vitality which, perhaps, was in
its early prime when the Saxon invaders
founded Whitnash. A thousand years is
no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime
of a yew. We were pleasantly startled,
however, by discovering an exuberance of

90 OUR OLD HOME

more youthful life than we had thought
possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of
two children laughed at us out of an open
ing in the trunk, which had become hollow
with long decay. On one side of the yew
stood a framework of worm-eaten timber,
the use and meaning of which puzzled me
exceedingly, till I made it out to be the
village stocks ; a public institution that, in
its day, had doubtless hampered many a
pair of shank-bones, now crumbling in the
adjacent churchyard. It is not to be sup
posed, however, that this old-fashioned
mode of punishment is still in vogue among
the good people of Whitnash. The vicar
of the parish has antiquarian propensities,
and had probably dragged the stocks out
of some dusty hiding-place and set them
up on the former site as a curiosity.

I disquiet myself in vain with the effort
to hit upon some characteristic feature, or
assemblage of features, that shall convey to
the reader the influence of hoar antiquity
lingering into the present daylight, as I so
often felt it in these old English scenes.
It is only an American who can feel it ;
and even he begins to find himself growing
insensible to its effect, after a long resi
dence in England. But while you are still

LEAMING7VN SPA 91

new in the old country, it thrills you with
strange emotion to think that this little
church of Whitnash, humble as it seems,
stood for ages under the Catholic faith, and
has not materially changed since Wick-
liffe's days, and that it looked as gray as
now in Bloody Mary's time, and that Crom
well's troopers broke off the stone noses of
those same gargoyles that are now grin
ning in your face. So, too, with the imme
morial yew-tree ; you see its great roots
grasping hold of the earth like gigantic
claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of
time can wrench them away ; and there
being life in the old tree, you feel all the
more as if a contemporary witness were
telling you of the things that have been.
It has lived among men, and been a
familiar object to them, and seen them
brought to be christened and married and
buried in the neighboring church and
churchyard, through so many centuries,
that it knows all about our race, so far as
fifty generations of the Whitnash people
can supply such knowledge.

And, after all, what a weary life it must
have been for the old tree ! Tedious be
yond imagination ! Such, I think, is the
final impression on the mind of an Ameri-

Q2 OUR OLD HOME

can visitor, when his delight at finding
something permanent begins to yield to
his Western love of change, and he be
comes sensible of the heavy air of a spot
where the forefathers and foremothers
have grown up together, intermarried, and
died, through a long succession of lives,
without any intermixture of new elements,
till family features and character are all
run in the same inevitable mould. Life is
there fossilized in its greenest leaf. The
man who died yesterday or ever so long
ago walks the village street to-day, and
chooses the same wife that he married a
hundred years since, and must be buried
again to-morrow under the same kindred
dust that has already covered him half a
score of times. The stone threshold of his
cottage is worn away with his hobnailed
footsteps, shuffling over it from the reign
of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria.
Better than this is the lot of our restless
countrymen, whose modern instinct bids
them tend always towards " fresh woods
and pastures new." Rather than such
monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a
village green, toiling in hereditary fields,
listening to the parson's drone lengthened
through centuries in the gray Norman

LEAMINGTON SPA 93

church, let us welcome whatever change
may come, — change of place, social cus
toms, political institutions, modes of wor
ship, — trusting that, if all present things
shall vanish, they will but make room for
better systems, and for a higher type of
man to clothe his life in them, and to fling
them off in turn.

Nevertheless, while an American willing
ly accepts growth and change as the law of
his own national and private existence, he
has a singular tenderness for the stone-
incrusted institutions of the mother-country.
The reason may be (though I should prefer
a more generous explanation) that he rec
ognizes the tendency of these hardened
forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her
ankles, in the race and rivalry of improve
ment. I hated to see so much as a twig of
ivy wrenched away from an old wall in
England. Yet change is at work, even in
such a village as Whitnash. At a subse
quent visit, looking more critically at the
irregular circle of dwellings that surround
the yew-tree and confront the church, I
perceived that some of the houses must
have been built within no long time,
although the thatch, the quaint gables, and
the old oaken framework of the others dif-

94 OUR OLD HOME

fused an air of antiquity over the whole
assemblage. The church itself was under
going repair and restoration, which is but
another name for change. Masons were
making patchwork on the front of the
tower, and were sawing a slab of stone and
piling up bricks to strengthen the side-wall,
or possibly to enlarge the ancient edifice
by an additional aisle. Moreover, they
had dug an immense pit in the churchyard,
long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two
thirds of which profundity were discolored
by human decay, and mixed up with crum
bly bones. What this excavation was in
tended for I could nowise imagine, unless
it were the very pit in which Longfellow
bids the " Dead Past bury its dead," and
Whitnash, of all places in the world, were
going to avail itself of our poet's suggestion.
If so, it must needs be confessed that many
picturesque and delightful things would be
thrown into the hole, and covered out of
sight forever.

The article which I am writing has taken
its own course, and occupied itself almost
wholly with country churches ; whereas I
had purposed to attempt a description of
some of the many old towns — Warwick,
Coventry, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon

LEAMINGTON SPA 95

— which lie within an easy scope of Leam
ington. And still another church presents
itself to my remembrance. It is that of
Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course
of a forenoon's ramble, and paused a little
while to look at it for the sake of old Dr.
Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton,
so far as I could discover, has no public-
house, no. shop, no contiguity of roofs (as
in most English villages, however small),
but is merely an ancient neighborhood of
farmhouses, spacious, and standing wide
apart, each within its own precincts, and
offering a most comfortable aspect of or
chards, harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all
manner of rural plenty. It seemed to be
a community of old settlers, among whom
everything had been going on prosper
ously since an epoch beyond the memory
of man ; and they kept a certain privacy
among themselves, and dwelt on a cross
road, at the entrance of which was a barred
gate, hospitably open, but still impressing
me with a sense of scarcely warrantable
intrusion. After all, in some shady nook
of those gentle Warwickshire slopes, there
may have been a denser and more populous
settlement styled Hatton, which I never
reached.

g6 OUR OLD HOME

Emerging from the by-road, and enter
ing upon one that crossed it at right angles
and led to Warwick, I espied the church of
Dr. Parr. Like the others which I have
described, it had a low stone tower, square,
and battlemented at its summit : for all
these little churches seem to have been
built on the same model, and nearly at the
same measurement, and have even a greater
family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I
approached, the bell of the tower (a re
markably deep-toned bell, considering how
small it was) flung its voice abroad, and
told me that it was noon. The church
stands among its graves, a little removed
from the wayside, quite apart from any
collection of houses, and with no signs of
a vicarage ; it is a good deal shadowed by
trees, and not wholly destitute of ivy. The
body of the edifice, unfortunately (and it is
an outrage which the English churchwar
dens are fond of perpetrating), has been
newly covered with a yellowish plaster or
wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of
antiquity, except upon the tower, which
wears the dark gray hue of many centuries.
The chancel-window is painted with a rep-
resentation of Christ upon the Cross, and
all the other windows are full of painted or

LEAMINGTON SPA 97

stained glass, but none of it ancient, nor
(if it be fair to judge from without of what
ought to be seen within) possessing any of
the tender glory that should be the in
heritance of this branch of Art, revived
from mediaeval times. I stepped over the
graves, and peeped in at two or three of
the windows, and saw the snug interior of
the church glimmering through the many-
colored panes, like a show of commonplace
objects under the fantastic influence of a
dream : for the floor was covered with
modern pews, very like what we may see
in a New England meeting-house, though,
I think, a little more favorable than those
would be to the quiet slumbers of the
Hatton farmers and their families. Those
who slept under Dr. Parr's preaching now
prolong their nap, I suppose, in the church
yard round about, and can scarcely have
drawn much spiritual benefit from any
truths that he contrived to tell them in
their lifetime. It struck me as a rare ex
ample (even where examples are numerous)
of a man utterly misplaced, that this enor
mous scholar, great in the classic tongues,
and inevitably converting his own simplest
vernacular into a learned language, should
have been set up in this homely pulpit,

98 OUR OLD HOME

and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic
audience, to whom it is difficult to imagine
how he could ever have spoken one avail
able word.

Almost always, in visiting such scenes
as I have been attempting to describe, I
had a singular sense of having been there
before. The ivy-grown English churches
(even that of Bebbington,1 the first that
I beheld) were quite as familiar to me,
when fresh from home, as the old wooden
meeting-house in Salem, which used, on
wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen purgatory
of my childhood. This was a bewildering,

1 Soon we reached the church, and I have seen nothing
yet in England that so completely answered my idea of
what such a thing was, as this old village church of
Bebbington. It is quite a large edifice, built in the
form of a cross, a low peaked porch in the side, over
which, rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and some
thing. The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old ;
so does the whole church, though portions of it have
been renewed, but not so as to impair the aspect of
heavy, substantial endurance, and long, long decay,
which may go on hundreds of years longer before the
church is a ruin. There it stands, among the surround
ing graves, looking just the same as it did in Bloody
Mary's days ; just as it did in Cromwell's time. A
bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the
steeple, and flew in and out of the loopholes that were
opened into it. The stone framework of the windows
looked particularly old. — I. 438.

LEAMINGTON SPA 99

yet very delightful emotion, fluttering about
me like a faint summer wind, and filling
my imagination with a thousand half-re
membrances, which looked as vivid as sun
shine at a side-glance, but faded quite away
whenever I attempted to grasp and define
them. Of course, the explanation of the
mystery was, that history, poetry, and
fiction, books of travel, and the talk of
tourists, had given me pretty accurate pre
conceptions of the common objects of
English scenery, and these, being long ago
vivified by a youthful fancy, had insensibly
taken their places among the images of
things actually seen. Yet the illusion was
often so powerful, that I almost doubted
whether such airy remembrances might not
be a sort of innate idea, the print of a rec
ollection in some ancestral mind, transmit
ted, with fainter and fainter impress through
several descents, to my own. I felt, indeed,
like the stalwart progenitor in person, re
turning to the hereditary haunts after more
than two hundred years, and finding the
church, the hall, the farmhouse, the cottage,
hardly changed during his long absence,
-the same shady by-paths and hedge-
lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lus
tre of the lawns and fields, — while his own

100 OUR OLD HOME

affinities for these things, a little obscured
by disuse, were reviving at every step.

An American is not very apt to love the
English people, as a whole, on whatever
length of acquaintance. I fancy that they
would value our regard, and even recipro
cate it in their ungracious way, if we could
give it to them in spite of all rebuffs ; but
they are beset by a curious and inevitable
infelicity, which compels them, as it were,
to keep up what they seem to consider a
wholesome bitterness of feeling between
themselves and all other nationalities, espe
cially that of America.1 They will never
confess it ; nevertheless, it is as essen
tial a tonic to them as their bitter ale.
Therefore, — and possibly, too, from a sim
ilar narrowness in his own character, — an
American seldom feels quite as if he were
at home among the English people. If he
do so, he has ceased to be an American.2

1 If an Englishman were individually acquainted with
all our twenty-five millions of Americans, and liked
every one of them, and believed that each man of those
millions was a Christian, honest, upright, and kind, he
would doubt, despise, and hate them in the aggregate,
however he might love and honor the individuals. —
II. 288.

2 There are some Englishmen whom I like, — one or
two for whom I might say I have an affection ; but still

LEAMINGTON SPA IO1

But it requires no long residence to make
him love their island, and appreciate it as
thoroughly as they themselves do. For
my part, I used to wish that we could an.
nex it, transferring their thirty millions of
inhabitants to some convenient wilderness
in the great West, and putting half or a
quarter as many of ourselves into their
places. The change would be beneficial to
both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere,
are getting too nervous, haggard, dyspep
tic, extenuated, unsubstantial, theoretic,
and need to be made grosser. John Bull,
on the other hand, has grown bulbous,
long-bodied, short -legged, heavy- witted,
material, and, in a word, too intensely
English. In a few more centuries he will
be the earthliest creature that ever the
earth saw. Heretofore Providence has ob
viated such a result by timely intermix
tures of alien races with the old English
stock ; so that each successive conquest of

there is not the same union between us as if they were
Americans. A cold, thin medium intervenes betwixt
our most intimate approaches. It puts me in mind of
Alnaschar and his princess, with the cold steel blade of
his scimitar between them. Perhaps if I were at home
I might feel differently ; but in a foreign land I can
never forget the distinction between English and Ameri
can.— II. 178.

102 OUR OLD HOME

England has proved a victory by the reviv
ification and improvement of its native
manhood. Cannot America and England
hit upon some scheme to secure even
greater advantages to both nations ?

ITT.

ABOUT WARWICK

BETWEEN bright, new Leamington, the
growth of the present century, and rusty
Warwick, founded by King Cymbeline in
the twilight ages, a thousand years before
the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads,
either of which may be measured by a so
ber-paced pedestrian in less than half an
hour.

One of these avenues flows out of the
midst of the smart parades and crescents
of the former town, — along by hedges and
beneath the shadow of great elms, past
stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside
alehouses, and through a hamlet of modern
aspect, — and runs straight into the prin
cipal thoroughfare of Warwick. The bat-
tlemented turrets of the castle, embow
ered half-way up in foliage, and the tall,
slender tower of St. Mary's Church, rising
from among clustered roofs, have been
visible almost from the commencement of
the walk. Near the entrance of the town

104 OUR OLD

stands St. John's School-House, a pictur
esque old edifice of stone, with four peak
ed gables in a row, alternately plain and
ornamented, and wide, projecting windows,
and a spacious and venerable porch, all
overgrown with moss and ivy, and shut in
from the world by a high stone fence, not
less mossy than the gabled front. There
is an iron gate, through the rusty open
work of which you see a grassy lawn, and
almost expect to meet the shy, curious
eyes of the little boys of past generations,
peeping forth from their infantile antiquity
into the strangeness of our present life. I
find a peculiar charm in these long-estab
lished English schools, where the school
boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were,
with his great-grandsire, on the same old
benches, and often, I believe, thumbs a
later, but unimproved edition of the same
old grammar or arithmetic. The new
fangled notions of a Yankee school-com
mittee would madden many a pedagogue,
and shake down the roof of many a time-
honored seat of learning, in the mother-
country.

At this point, however, we will turn
back, in order to follow up the other road
from Leamington, which was the one that

ABOUT WARWICK 105

I loved best to take. It pursues a straight
and level course, bordered by wide gravel-
walks and overhung by the frequent elm,
with here a cottage and there a villa ; on
one side a wooden plantation, and on the
other a rich field of grass or grain ; until,
turning at right angles, it brings you to an
arched bridge over the Avon. Its parapet
is a balustrade carved out of freestone, into
the soft substance of which a multitude of
persons have engraved their names or ini
tials, many of them now illegible, while
others, more deeply cut, are illuminated
with fresh green moss. These tokens in
dicate a famous spot ; and casting our eyes
along the smooth gleam and shadow of the
quiet stream, through a vista of willows
that droop on either side into the water,
we behold the gray magnificence of War
wick Castle, uplifting itself among stately
trees, and rearing its turrets high above
their loftiest branches. We can scarcely
think the scene real, so completely do those
machicolated towers, the long line of battle
ments, the massive buttresses, the high-
windowed walls, shape out our indistinct
ideas of the antique time. It might rather
seem as if the sleepy river (being Shake
speare's Avon, and often, no doubt, the

IO6 OUR OLD HOME

mirror of his gorgeous visions) were dream
ing now of a lordly residence that stood
here many centuries ago ; and this fantasy
is strengthened, when you observe that the
image in the tranquil water has all the dis
tinctness of the actual structure. Either
might be the reflection of the other.
Wherever Time has gnawed one of the
stones, you see the mark of his tooth just
as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each
is so perfect, that the upper vision seems a
castle in the air, and the lower one an old
stronghold of feudalism, miraculously kept
from decay in an enchanted river.

A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that
projects from the bank a little on the hither
side of the castle, has the effect of making
the scene appear more entirely apart from
the every-day world, for it ends abruptly
in the middle of the stream, — so that, if
a cavalcade of the knights and ladies of
romance should issue from the old walls,
they could never tread on earthly ground
any more than we, approaching from the
side of modern realism, can overleap the
gulf between our domain and theirs. Yet,
if we seek to disenchant ourselves, it may
readily be done. Crossing the bridge on
which we stand, and passing a little farther

ABOUT WARWICK TO?

on, we come to the entrance of the castle,
abutting on the highway, and hospitably
open at certain hours to all curious pilgrims
who choose to disburse half a crown or so
toward the support of the earl's domestics.
The sight of that long series of historic
rooms, full of such splendors and rarities
as a great English family necessarily
gathers about itself in its hereditary abode,
and in the lapse of ages, is well worth the
money, or ten times as much, if indeed the
value of the spectacle could be reckoned in
money's-worth. But after the attendant
has hurried you from end to end of the
edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and
exorcising each successive hall of its poetic
glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone
in which he talks about it, you will make
the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle
has ceased to be a dream. It is better,
methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing
at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower, in the
dim English sunshine above, and in the
placid Avon below, and still keep them as
thoughts in your own mind, than climb to
their summits, or touch even a stone of
their actual substance. They will have all
the more reality for you, as stalwart relics
of immemorial time, if you are reverent

108 OUR OLD HOME

enough to leave them in the intangible
sanctity of a poetic vision.

From the bridge over the Avon, the
road passes in front of the castle-gate, and
soon enters the principal street of Warwick,
a little beyond St. John's School-House,
already described. Chester itself, most
antique of English towns, can hardly show
quainter architectural shapes than many of
the buildings that border this street. They
are mostly of the timber-and-plaster kind,
with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a
whole chronology of various patchwork in
their walls ; their low-browed doorways
open upon a sunken floor ; their projecting
stories peep, as it were, over one another's
shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of
peaked gables ; they have curious windows,
breaking out irregularly all over the house,
some even in the roof, set in their own
little peaks, opening lattice-wise, and fur
nished with twenty small panes of lozenge-
shaped glass. The architecture of these
edifices (a visible oaken framework, show
ing the whole skeleton of the house, — as
if a man's bones should be arranged on his
outside, and his flesh seen through the
interstices) is often imitated by modern
builders, and with sufficiently picturesque

ABOUT WARWICK 109

effect. The objection is, that such houses,
like all imitations of by-gone styles, have
an air of affectation ; they do not seem to
be built in earnest ; they are no better
than playthings, or overgrown baby-houses,
in which nobody should be expected to
encounter the serious realities of either
birth or death. Besides, originating noth
ing, we leave no fashions for another age
to copy, when we ourselves shall have
grown antique.

Old as it looks, all this portion of War
wick has over-brimmed, as it were, from
the original settlement, being outside of
the ancient wall. The street soon runs
under an arched gateway, with a church or
some other venerable structure above it,
and admits us into the heart of the town.
At one of my first visits, I witnessed a
military display. A regiment of Warwick
shire militia, probably commanded by the
Earl, was going through its drill in the
market-place ; and on the collar of one of
the officers was embroidered the Bear and
Ragged Staff, which has been the cogni
zance of the Warwick earldom from time
immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy
young men, with the simple, stolid, yet
kindly, faces of English rustics, looking

110 OUR OLD HOME

exceedingly well in a body, but slouching
into a yeoman-like carriage and appearance
the moment they were dismissed from drill.
Squads of them were distributed every
where about the streets, and sentinels were
posted at various points ; and I saw a
sergeant, with a great key in his hand (big
enough to have been the key of the castle's
main entrance when the gate was thickest
and heaviest), apparently setting a guard.

Thus, centuries after feudal times are
past, we find warriors still gathering under
the old castle walls, and commanded by a
feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-
Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his
retainers in the same market-place where I
beheld this modern regiment.

The interior of the town wears a less
old-fashioned aspect than the suburbs
through which we approach it ; and the
High Street has shops with modern plate-
glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts,
exhibiting as few projections to hang a
thought or sentiment upon as if an architect
of to-day had planned them. And, indeed,
so far as their surface goes, they are per
haps new enough to stand unabashed in
an American street ; but behind these
renovated faces, with their monotonous

ABOUT WARWICK III

lack of expression, there is probably the
substance of the same old town that wore
a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The
street is an emblem of England itself.
What seems new in it is chiefly a skillful
and fortunate adaptation of what such a
people as ourselves would destroy. The
new things are based and supported on
sturdy old things, and derive a massive
strength from their deep and immemorial
foundations, though with such limitations
and impediments as only an Englishman
could endure. But he likes to feel the
weight of all the past upon his back ; and,
moreover, the antiquity that overburdens
him has taken root in his being, and has
grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so
that there is no getting rid of it without
tearing his whole structure to pieces. In
my judgment, as he appears to be sufficient-
ly comfortable under the mouldy accretion,
he had better stumble on with it as long as
he can. He presents a spectacle which is
by no means without its charm for a dis
interested and unencumbered observer.

When the old edifice, or the antiquated
custom or institution, appears in its pristine
form, without any attempt at intermarrying
it with modern fashions, an American can-

112 OUR OLD HOME

no,t but admire the picturesque effect pro
duced by the sudden cropping up of an
apparently dead-and-buried state of society
into the actual present, of which he is him
self a part. We need not go far in War
wick without encountering an instance of
the kind. Proceeding westward through
the town, we find ourselves confronted by
a huge mass of natural rock, hewn into
something like architectural shape, and
penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may
well have been one of King Cymbeline's
original gateways ; and on the top of the
rock, over the archway, sits a small old
church, communicating with an ancient
edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look
down from a similar elevation on the side
of the street. A range of trees half hides
the latter establishment from the sun. It
presents a curious and venerable specimen
of the timber-and-plaster style of building,
in which some of the finest old houses in
England are constructed ; the front projects
into porticoes and vestibules, and rises into
many gables, some in a row, and others
crowning semi-detached portions of the
structure ; the windows mostly open on
hinges, but show a delightful irregularity
of shape and position ; a multiplicity of

ABOUT WARWICK 113

chimneys break through the roof at their
own will, or, at least, without any settled
purpose of the architect. The whole affair
looks very old, — so old indeed that the
front bulges forth, as if the timber frame
work were a little weary, at last, of standing
erect so long ; but the state of repair is so
perfect, and there is such an indescribable
aspect of continuous vitality within the
system of this aged house, that you feel
confident that there may be safe shelter
yet, and perhaps for centuries to come,
under its time-honored roof. And on a
bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine,
and looking into the street of Warwick
as from a life apart, a few old men are
generally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks,
on which you may detect the glistening
of a silver badge representing the Bear
and Ragged Staff. These decorated wor
thies are some of the twelve brethren of
Leicester's Hospital, — a community which
subsists to-day under the identical modes
that were established for it in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains
many features of a social life that has
vanished almost everywhere else.

The edifice itself dates from a much old
er period than the charitable institution of

114 OUR OLD HOME

which it is now the home. It was the seat
of a religious fraternity far back in the
Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry
VIII. turned all the priesthood of England
out of doors, and put the most unscru
pulous of his favorites into their vacant
abodes. In many instances, the old monks
had chosen the sites of their domiciles so
well, and built them on such a broad sys
tem of beauty and convenience, that their
lay-occupants found it easy to convert
them into stately and comfortable homes ;
and as such they still exist, with something
of the antique reverence lingering about
them. The structure now before us seems
to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas
Lestrange, who perhaps intended, like
other men, to establish his household gods
in the niches whence he had thrown down
the images of saints, and to lay his hearth
where an altar had stood. But there was
probably a natural reluctance in those days
(when Catholicism, so lately repudiated,
must needs have retained an influence over
all but the most obdurate characters) to
bring one's hopes of domestic prosperity
and a fortunate lineage into direct hostility
with the awful claims of the ancient reli
gion. At all events, there is still a super-

ABOUT WARWICK 115

stitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a belief,
that the possession of former Church prop
erty has drawn a curse along with it, not
only among the posterity of those to whom
it was originally granted, but wherever it
has subsequently been transferred, even
if honestly bought and paid for. There
are families, now inhabiting some of the
beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge
a species of pride in recording the strange
deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that
have occurred among their predecessors,
and may be supposed likely to dog their
own pathway down the ages of futurity.
Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in the
beef-eating days of Old Harry and Eliza
beth, was a nervous man, and subject to
apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell ;
but it is certain that he speedily rid him
self of the spoils of the Church, and that,
within twenty years afterwards, the edifice
became the property of the famous Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of
Warwick. He devoted the ancient reli
gious precinct to a charitable use, endow
ing it with an ample revenue, and making it
the perpetual home of twelve poor, honest,
and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own
retainers, and natives either of Warwick-

Il6 OUR OLD HOME

shire or Gloucestershire. These veterans,
or others wonderfully like them, still occupy
their monkish dormitories, and haunt the
time-darkened corridors and galleries of
the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned
comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks,
and burnishing the identical silver badges
which the Earl of Leicester gave to the
original twelve. He is said to have been
a bad man in his day ; but he has suc
ceeded in prolonging one good deed into
what was to him a distant future.

On the projecting story, over the arched
entrance, there is the date, 1571, and sev
eral coats - of - arms, either the Earl's or
those of his kindred, and immediately
above the doorway a stone sculpture of the
Bear and Ragged Staff.

Passing through the arch, we find our
selves in a quadrangle, or inclosed court,
such as always formed the central part of
a great family residence in Queen Eliza
beth's time, and earlier. There can hardly
be a more perfect specimen of such an
establishment than Leicester's Hospital.
The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall,
to which there is convenient access from
all parts of the house. The four inner
fronts, with their high, steep roofs and

ABOUT WARWICK I I/

sharp gables, look into it from antique win
dows, and through open corridors and gal
leries along the sides ; and there seems to
be a richer display of architectural devices
and ornaments, quainter carvings in oak,
and more fantastic shapes of the timber
framework, than on the side toward the
street. On the wall opposite the arched
entrance are the following inscriptions,
comprising such moral rules, I presume, as
were deemed most essential for the daily
observance of the community : " ^onor all
jjflen " _ « jfrar (Soft " — " ^onot tjje Ittng " -
u ILobe tfje Brotfjerfjoflti ; " and again, as if this
latter injunction needed emphasis and rep
etition among a household of aged people
soured with the hard fortune of their pre
vious lives, "i3e femtrlg aff£cti0neti one to an*
otfjer." One sentence, over a door commu
nicating with the Master's side of the
house, is addressed to that dignitary, —
"J^e tjjat ruletjj afar men must fce just." All
these are charactered in old English letters,
and form part of the elaborate ornamen
tation of the house. Everywhere — on the
walls, over windows and doors, and at all
points where there is room to place them —
appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances,
and crests, emblazoned in their proper

Il8 OUR OLD HOME

colors, and illuminating the ancient quad
rangle with their splendor. One of these
devices is a large image of a porcupine on
an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the
Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cog
nizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff re
peated over and over, and over again and
again, in a great variety of attitudes, — at
fulUlength and half-length, in paint and in
oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded
image. The founder of the hospital was
certainly disposed to reckon his own benef
icence as among the hereditary glories of
his race ; and had he lived and died a half-
century earlier, he would have kept up
an old Catholic custom, by enjoining the
twelve bedesmen to pray for the welfare of
his soul.

At my first visit, some of the brethren
were seated on the bench outside of the
edifice, looking down into the street ; but
they did not vouchsafe me a word, and
seemed so estranged from modern life, so
enveloped in antique customs and old-
fashioned cloaks, that to converse with
them would have been like shouting across
the gulf between our age and Queen Eliz
abeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle,
and found it quite solitary, except that a

ABOUT WARWICK 119

plain and neat old woman happened to be
crossing it, with an aspect of business and
carefulness that bespoke her a woman of
this world, and not merely a shadow of the
past. Asking her if I could come in, she
answered very readily and civilly that I
might, and said that I was free to look
about me, hinting a hope, however, that I
would not open the private doors of the
brotherhood, as some visitors were in the
habit of doing. Under her guidance, I
went into what was formerly the great hall
of the establishment, where King James I.
had once been feasted by an Earl of War
wick, as is commemorated by an inscription
on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a
very spacious and barnlike apartment, with
a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters
of which are oaken beams, wonderfully
carved, but hardly visible in the duskiness
that broods aloft. The hall may have made
a splendid appearance, when it was deco
rated with rich tapestry, and illuminated
with chandeliers, cressets, and torches
glistening upon silver dishes, where King
James sat at supper among his brilliantly
dressed nobles ; but it has come to base
uses in these latter days, — being improved,
in Yankee phrase, as a brewery and wash-

120 OUR OLD HOME

room, and as a cellar for the brethren's
separate allotments of coal.

The old lady here left me to myself, and
I returned into the quadrangle. It was
very quiet, very handsome, in its own ob
solete style, and must be an exceedingly
comfortable place for the old people to
lounge in, when the inclement winds render
it inexpedient to walk abroad. There are
shrubs against the wall, on one side ; and
on another is a cloistered walk, adorned
with stags' heads and antlers, and running
beneath a covered gallery, up to which
ascends a balustraded staircase. In the
portion of the edifice opposite the entrance-
arch are the apartments of the Master ; and
looking into the window (as the old woman,
at no request of mine, had specially in
formed me that I might), I saw a low, but
vastly comfortable parlor, very handsomely
furnished, and altogether a luxurious place.
It had a fireplace with an immense arch,
the antique breadth of which extended
almost from wall to wall of the room, though
now fitted up in such a way that the mod
ern coal-grate looked very diminutive in
the midst. Gazing into this pleasant in
terior, it seemed to me that, among these
venerable surroundings, availing himself of

ABOUT' WAR WICK 1 2 1

whatever was good in former things, and
eking out their imperfection with the re
sults of modern ingenuity, the Master
might lead a not unenviable life. On the
cloistered side of the quadrangle, where
the dark oak panels made the inclosed
space dusky, I beheld a curtained window
reddened by a great blaze from within, and
heard the bubbling and squeaking of some
thing — doubtless very nice and succulent
— that was being cooked at the kitchen
fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of
the savory fragrance reached my nostrils ;
at all events, the impression grew upon
me that Leicester's Hospital is one of the
jolliest old domiciles in England.
' I was about to depart, when another old
woman, very plainly dressed, but fat, com
fortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her
eyes, came in through the arch, and looked
curiously at me. This repeated apparition
of the gentle sex (though by no means
under its loveliest guise) had still an agree
able effect in modifying my ideas of an
institution which I had supposed to be of a
stern and monastic character. She asked
whether I wished to see the hospital, and
said that the porter, whose office it was to
attend to visitors, was dead, and would be

122 OUR OLD HOME

buried that very day, so that the whole
establishment could not conveniently be
shown me. She kindly invited me, how
ever, to visit the apartment occupied by
her husband and herself ; so I followed her
up the antique staircase, along the gallery,
and into a small, oak-paneled parlor, where
sat an old man in a long blue garment, who
arose and saluted me with much courtesy.
He seemed a very quiet person, and yet
had a look of travel and adventure, and
gray experience, such as I could have
fancied in a palmer of ancient times, who
might likewise have worn a similar cos
tume. The little room was carpeted and'
neatly furnished ; a portrait of its occupant
was hanging on the wall ; and on a table
were two swords crossed, — one, probably,
his own battle weapon, and the other, which
I drew half out of the scabbard, had an
inscription on the blade, purporting that
it had been taken from the field of Water
loo. My kind old hostess was anxious to
exhibit all the particulars of their house
keeping, and led me into the bedroom,
which was in the nicest order, with a snow-
white quilt upon the bed ; and in a little
intervening room was a washing and
bathing apparatus ; a convenience (judging

ABOUT WARWICK 12$

from the personal aspect and atmosphere
of such parties) seldom to be met with in
the humbler ranks of British life.

The old soldier and his wife both seemed
glad of somebody to talk with ; but the
good woman availed herself of the privilege
far more copiously than the veteran him
self, insomuch that he felt it expedient to
give her an occasional nudge with his el
bow in her well-padded ribs. " Don't you
be so talkative ! " quoth he ; and, indeed,
he could hardly find space for a word, and
quite as little after his admonition as be
fore. Her nimble tongue ran over the
whole system of life in the hospital. The
brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend
(the amount of which she did not mention),
and such decent lodgings as I saw, and
some other advantages, free ; and, instead
of being pestered with a great many rules,
and made to dine together at a great table,
they could manage their little household
matters as they liked, buying their own
dinners, and having them cooked in the
general kitchen, and eating them snugly in
their own parlors. " And," added she,
rightly deeming this the crowning privilege,
"with the Master's permission, they can
have their wives to take care of them ; and

124 OUR OLD HOME

no harm comes of it ; and what more can
an old man desire ? " It was evident enough
that the good dame found herself in what
she considered very rich clover, and, more
over, had plenty of small occupations to
keep her from getting rusty and dull ; but
the veteran impressed me as deriving far
less enjoyment from the monotonous ease,
without fear of change or hope of improve
ment, that had followed upon thirty years
of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, too,
that, while pleased with the novelty of a
stranger's visit, he was still a little shy of
becoming a spectacle for the stranger's
curiosity ; for, if he chose to be morbid
about the matter, the establishment was
but an almshouse, in spite of its old-
fashioned magnificence, and his fine blue
cloak only a pauper's garment with a silver
badge on it that perhaps galled, his shoulder.
In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb,
though quite in accordance with the man
ners of the Earl of Leicester's age, are
repugnant to modern prejudices, and might
fitly and humanely be abolished.

A year or two afterwards I paid another
visit to the hospital, and found a new
porter established in office, and already ca
pable of talking like a guide-book about

ABOUT WARWICK 12$

the history, antiquities, and present con
dition of the charity. He informed me
that the twelve brethren are selected from
among old soldiers of good character,
whose other resources must not exceed an
income of five pounds ; thus excluding
all commissioned officers, whose half-pay
would of course be more than that amount.
They receive from the hospital an annuity
of eighty pounds each, besides their apart
ments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an
annual abundance of ale, and a privilege
at the kitchen fire ; so that, considering
the class from which they are taken, they
may well reckon themselves among the
fortunate of the earth. Furthermore, they
are invested with political rights, acquiring
a vote for member of Parliament in virtue
either of their income or brotherhood. On
the other hand, as regards their personal
freedom or conduct, they are subject to a
supervision which the Master of the hospi
tal might render extremely annoying, were
he so inclined ; but the military restraint
under which they have spent the active
portion of their lives makes it easier for
them to endure the domestic discipline
here imposed upon their age. The porter
bore his testimony (whatever were its

126 OUR OLD HOME

value) to their being as contented and
happy as such a set of old people could
possibly be, and affirmed that they spent
much time in burnishing their silver-
badges, and were as proud of them as a
nobleman of his star. These badges, by
the by, except one that was stolen and re
placed in Queen Anne's time, are the very
same that decorated the original twelve
brethren.

I have seldom met with a better guide
than my friend the porter. He appeared
to .take a genuine interest in the peculiari
ties of the establishment, and yet had an
existence apart from them, so that he could
the better estimate what those peculiarities
were. To be sure, his knowledge and ob
servation were confined to external things,
but, so far, had a sufficiently extensive
scope. He led me up the staircase and ex
hibited portions of the timber framework
of the edifice that are reckoned to be eight
or nine hundred years old, and are still
neither worm-eaten nor decayed ; and
traced out what had been a great hall in
the days of the Catholic fraternity, though
its area is now filled up with the apart
ments of the twelve brethren ; and pointed
to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an

ABOUT WARWICK I2/

ancient religious style of art, but hardly
visible amid the vaulted dimness of the
roof. Thence we went to the chapel —
the Gothic church which I noted several
pages back — surmounting the gateway
that stretches half across the street. Here
the brethren attend daily prayer, and have
each a prayer-book of the finest paper,
with a fair, large type for their old eyes.
The interior of the chapel is very plain,
with a picture of no merit for an altar-
piece, and a single old pane of painted glass
in the great eastern window, represent
ing, — no saint, nor angel, as is customary
in such cases, — but that grim sinner, the
Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so
many tangible proofs of his human sympa
thy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl
could have been such a hardened reprobate,
after all.

We ascended the tower of the chapel,
and looked down between its battlements
into the street, a hundred feet below us ;
while clambering halfway up were foxglove
flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of
grass, that had rooted themselves into the
roughnesses of the stone foundation. Far
around us lay a rich and lovely English
landscape, with many a church-spire and

128 OUR OLD HOME

noble country-seat, and several objects of
high historic interest. Edge Hill, where
the Puritans defeated Charles L, is in sight
on the edge of the horizon, and much
nearer stands the house where Cromwell
lodged on the night before the battle.
Right under our eyes, and half enveloping
the town with its high-shouldering wall,
so that all the closely compacted streets
seemed but a precinct of the estate, was
the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a
wide extent of sunny lawns, interspersed
with broad contiguities of forest shade.
Some of the cedars of Lebanon were
there, — a growth of trees in which the
Warwick family take an hereditary pride.
The two highest towers of the castle
heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage,
and look down in a lordly manner upon the
plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are
slate-covered (these are the modern houses),
and a part are coated with old red tiles,
denoting the more ancient edifices. A
hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, a
great fire destroyed a considerable portion
of the town, and doubtless annihilated many
structures of a remote antiquity ; at least,
there was a possibility of very old houses
in the long past of Warwick, which King

ABOUT WARWICK 129

Cymbeline is said to have founded in the
year ONE of the Christian era !

And this historic fact or poetic fiction,
whichever it may be, brings to mind a more
indestructible reality than anything else
that has occurred within the present field
of our vision ; though this includes the
scene of Guy of Warwick's legendary ex
ploits, and some of those of the Round
Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge
Hill. For perhaps it was in the landscape
now under our eyes that Posthumus wan
dered with the King's daughter, the sweet,
chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen,
the tenderest and womanliest woman that
Shakespeare ever made immortal in the
world. The silver Avon, which we see
flowing so quietly by the gray castle, may
have held their images in its bosom.

The day, though it began brightly, had
long been overcast, and the clouds now
spat down a few spiteful drops upon us ;
besides that, the east wind was very chill ;
so we descended the winding tower-stair,
and went next into the garden, one side of
which is shut in by almost the only remain
ing portion of the old city-wall. A part of
the garden-ground is devoted to grass and
shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks,

130 OUR OLD HOME

in the centre of one of which is a beautiful
stone vase of Egyptian sculpture, that for
merly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or
graduated pillar for measuring the rise and
fall of the river Nile. On the pedestal is
a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his
vicarage of Hatton being so close at hand)
was probably often the Master's guest, and
smoked his interminable pipe along these
garden - walks. Of the vegetable - garden,
which lies adjacent, the lion's share is ap
propriated to the Master, and twelve small,
separate patches to the individual brethren,
who cultivate them at their own judgment
and by their own labor ; and their beans
and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I
doubt not, than if they had received them
directly from the dead hand of the Earl of
Leicester, like the rest of their food. In
the farther part of the garden is an arbor
for the old men's pleasure and convenience,
and I should like well to sit down among
them there, and find out what is really the
bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life.
As for the old gentlemen themselves, they
put me queerly in mind of the Salem Cus
tom House, and the venerable personages
whom I found so quietly at anchor there.
The Master's residence, forming one en-

ABOUT WARWICK 131

tire side of the quadrangle, fronts on the
garden, and wears an aspect at once stately
and homely. It can hardly have undergone
any perceptible change within three centu
ries ; but the garden, into which its old
windows look, has probably put off a great
many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in
the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery,
since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's
reign threw down his rusty shears and took
his departure. The present Master's name
is Harris ; he is a descendant of the found
er's family, a gentleman of independent
fortune, and a clergyman of the Established
Church, as the regulations of the hospital
require him to be. I know not what are
his official emoluments ; but, according to
all English precedent, an ancient charitable
fund is certain to be held directly for the
behoof of those who administer it, and per
haps incidentally, in a moderate way, for
the nominal beneficiaries ; and, in the case
before us, the twelve brethren being so
comfortably provided for, the Master is
likely to be at least as comfortable as all
the twelve together. Yet I ought not,
even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe
against a gentleman of whom I really know
nothing, except that the people under his

132 OUR OLD HOME

charge bear all possible tokens of being
tended and cared for as sedulously as if
each of them sat by a warm fireside of his
own, with a daughter bustling round the
hearth to make ready his porridge and his
titbits. It is delightful to think of the good
life which a suitable man, in the Master's
position, has an opportunity to lead, —
linked to time-honored customs, welded in
with an ancient system, never dreaming of
radical change, and bringing all the mel
lowness and richness of the past down into
these railway days, which do not compel
him or his community to move a whit
quicker than of yore. Everybody can ap
preciate the advantages of going ahead ; it
might be well, sometimes, to think whether
there is not a word or two to be said in
favor of standing still or going to sleep.

From the garden we went into the kitch
en, where the fire was burning hospitably,
and diffused a genial warmth far and wide,
together with the fragrance of some old
English roast-beef, which, I think, must at
that moment have been done nearly to a
turn. The kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and
noble room, partitioned off round the fire
place, by a sort of semi-circular oaken
screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy

ABOUT WARWICK 133

and high-backed settles, with an ever-open
entrance between them, on either side of
which is the omnipresent image of the Bear
and Ragged Staff, three feet high, and ex
cellently carved in oak, now black with
time and unctuous kitchen smoke. The
ponderous mantel-piece, likewise of carved
oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling,
and extends its mighty breadth to take in
a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fire
place being positively so immense that I
could compare it to nothing but the city
gateway. Above its cavernous opening
were crossed two ancient halberds, the
weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had
fought under Leicester in the Low Coun
tries ; and elsewhere on the walls were
displayed several muskets, which some of
the present inmates of the hospital may
have leveled against the French. Another
ornament of the mantel-piece was a square
of silken needlework or embroidery, faded
nearly white, but dimly representing that
wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which
we should hardly look twice at, only that it
was wrought by the fair fingers of poor
Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in
oak from Kenilworth Castle, at the expense
of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own.

134 OUR OLD HOME

Certainly, no Englishman would be capable
of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally,
the kitchen firelight glistens on a splendid
display of copper flagons, all of generous
capacity, and one of them about as big as
a half-barrel ; the smaller vessels contain
the customary allowance of ale, and the
larger one is filled with that foaming liquor
on four festive occasions of the year, and
emptied amain by the jolly brotherhood.
I should be glad to see them do it ; but it
would be an exploit fitter for Queen Eliza
beth's age than these degenerate times.

The kitchen is the social hall of the
twelve brethren. In the daytime, they
bring their little messes to be cooked here,
and eat them in their own parlors ; but
after a certain hour, the great hearth is
cleared and swept, and the old men as
semble round its blaze, each with his tank
ard and his pipe, and hold high converse
through the evening. If the Master be a
fit man for his office, methinks he will
sometimes sit down sociably among them ;
for there is an elbow-chair by the fireside
which it would not demean his dignity to
fill, since it was occupied by King James at
the great festival of nearly three centuries
ago. A sip of the ale and a whiff of the

ABOUT WARWICK 135

tobacco-pipe would put him in friendly re
lations with his venerable household ; and
then we can fancy him instructing them
by pithy apothegms and religious texts,
which were first uttered here by some
Catholic priest and have impregnated the
atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes
round, it shall be of an elder coinage than
Joe Miller's, as old as Lord Bacon's collec
tion, or as the jest-book that Master Slender
asked for when he lacked small-talk for
sweet Anne Page. No news shall be spoken
of, later than the drifting ashore, on the
northern coast, of some stern-post or fig
urehead, a barnacled fragment of one of
the great galleons of the Spanish Armada.
What a tremor would pass through the
antique group, if a damp newspaper should
suddenly be spread to dry before the fire !
They would feel as if either that printed
sheet or they themselves must be an un
reality. What a mysterious awe, if the
shriek of the railway train, as it reaches
the Warwick station, should ever so faintly
invade their ears ! Movement of any kind
seems inconsistent with the stability of
such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust
that the ages will carry it along with them ;
because it is such a pleasant kind of dream

136 OUR OLD HOME

for an American to find his way thither,
and behold a piece of the sixteenth century
set into our prosaic times, and then to de
part, and think of its arched doorway as a
spell-guarded entrance which will never be
accessible or visible to him any more.

Not far from the market-place of War
wick stands the great church of St. Mary's :
a vast edifice, indeed, and almost worthy
to be a cathedral. People who pretend to
skill in such matters say that it is in a poor
style of architecture, though designed (or,
at least, extensively restored) by Sir Chris
topher Wren ; but I thought it very strik
ing, with its wide, high, and elaborate
windows, its tall towers, its immense length,
and (for it was long before I outgrew this
Americanism, the love of an old thing
merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of
gray antiquity over the whole. Once, while
I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock
struck twelve with a very deep intonation,
and immediately some chimes began to
play, and kept up their resounding music
for five minutes, as measured by the hand
upon the dial. It was a very delightful
harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and
seemed a not unbecoming freak of half-
sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, and

ABOUT WARWICK 137

solemn church ; although I have seen an
old-fashioned parlor clock that did precisely
the same thing, in its small way.

The great attraction of this edifice is the
Beauchamp (or, as the English, who delight
in vulgarizing their fine old Norman names,
call it, the Beechum) Chapel, where the
Earls of Warwick and their kindred have
been buried, from four hundred years back
till within a recent period. It is a stately
and very elaborate chapel, with a large win
dow of ancient painted glass, as perfectly
preserved as any that I remember seeing
in England, and remarkably vivid in its
colors. Here are several monuments with
marble figures recumbent upon them, repre
senting the earls in their knightly armor,
and their dames in the ruffs and court-
finery of their day, looking hardly stiffer
in stone than they. must needs have been
in their starched linen and embroidery.
The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen
Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the
hospital, reclines at full length on the tab
let of one of these tombs, side by side with
his Countess, — not Amy Robsart, but a
lady who (unless I have confused the story
with some other mouldy scandal) is said
to have avenged poor Amy's murder by

138 OUR OLD HOME

poisoning the Earl himself. Be that as it
may, both figures, and especially the Earl,
look like the very types of ancient Honor
and Conjugal Faith. In consideration of
his long-enduring kindness to the twelve
brethren, I cannot consent to believe him
as wicked as he is usually depicted ; and it
seems a marvel, now that so many well-
established historical verdicts have been
reversed, why some enterprising writer
does not make out Leicester to have been
the pattern nobleman of his age.

In the centre of the chapel is the mag
nificent memorial of its founder, Richard
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time
of Henry VI. On a richly ornamented
altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze
figure of a knight in gilded armor, most
admirably executed : for the sculptors of
those days had wonderful skill in their own
style, and could make so lifelike an image
of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a
trumpet were sounded over his tomb, you
would expect him to start up and handle
his sword. The Earl whom we now speak
of, however, has slept soundly in spite of a
more serious disturbance than any blast of
a trumpet, unless it were the final one.
Some centuries after his death, the floor of

ABOUT WARWICK 139

the chapel fell down and broke open the
stone coffin in which he was buried ; and
among the fragments appeared the an
ciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with
the color scarcely faded out of his cheeks,
his eyes a little sunken, but in other re
spects looking as natural as if he had died
yesterday. But exposure to the atmos
phere appeared to begin and finish the
long-delayed process of decay in a moment,
causing him to vanish like a bubble; so
that, almost before there had been time to
wonder at him, there was nothing left of
the stalwart Earl save his hair. This sole
relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of,
and braided it into rings and brooches for
their own adornment ; and thus, with a
chapel and a ponderous tomb built on pur
pose to protect his remains, this great
nobleman could not help being brought
untimely to the light of day, nor even keep
his lovelocks on his skull after he had so
long done with love. There seems to be a
fatality that disturbs people in their sep
ulchres, when they have been over-careful
to render them magnificent and impreg
nable, — as witness the builders of the
Pyramids, and Hadrian, Augustus, and the
Scipios, and most other personages whose

140 OUR OLD HOME

mausoleums have been conspicuous enough
to attract the violator ; and as for dead
men's hair, I have seen a lock of King
Edward the Fourth's, of a reddish-brown
color, which perhaps was once twisted
round the delicate forefinger of Mistress
Shore.

The direct lineage of the renowned char
acters that lie buried in this splendid chapel
has long been extinct. The earldom is
now held by the Grevilles, descendants of
the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parlia
mentary War ; and they have recently (that
is to say, within a century) built a burial-
vault on the other side of the church, cal
culated (as the sexton assured me, with a
nod as if he were pleased) to afford suitable
and respectful accommodation to as many
as fourscore coffins. Thank Heaven, the
old man did not call them " CASKETS " ! —
a vile modern phrase, which compels a
person of sense and good taste to shrink
more disgustfully than ever before from
the idea of being buried at all. But as re
gards those eighty coffins, only sixteen
have as yet been contributed ; and it may
be a question with some minds, not merely
whether the Grevilles will hold the earldom
of Warwick until the full number shall be

ABOUT WARWICK 141

made up, but whether earldoms and all
manner of lordships will not have faded out
of England long before those many gen
erations shall have passed from the castle
to the vault. I hope not. A titled and
landed aristocracy, if anywise an evil and
an encumbrance, is so only to the nation
which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ;
and an American, whose sole relation to it
is to admire its picturesque effect upon so
ciety, ought to be the last man to quarrel
with what affords him so much gratuitous
enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as
England is, and though I scarce ever found
an Englishman who seemed really to desire
change, there was continually a dull sound
in my ears as if the old foundations of
things were crumbling away. Some time
or other, — by no irreverent effort of vio
lence, but, rather, in spite of all pious
efforts to uphold a heterogeneous pile of
institutions that will have outlasted their
vitality, — at some unexpected moment,
there must come a terrible crash. The
sole reason why I should desire it to happen
in my day is, that I might be there to see !
But the ruin of my own country is, per
haps, all that I am destined to witness ;
and that immense catastrophe (though I

142 OUR OLD HOME

am strong in the faith that there is a
national lifetime of a thousand years in us
yet) would serve any man well enough as
his final spectacle on earth.

If the visitor is inclined to carry away
any little memorial of Warwick, he had
better go to an Old Curiosity Shop in the
High Street, where there is a vast quantity
of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and
many of them so pretty and ingenious that
you wonder how they came to be thrown
aside and forgotten. As regards its minor
tastes, the world changes, but does not
improve ; it appears to me, indeed, that
there have been epochs of far more exqui
site fancy than the present one, in matters
of personal ornament, and such delicate
trifles as we put upon a drawing-room
table, a mantel-piece, or a whatnot. The
shop in question is near the East Gate, but
is hardly to be found without careful
search, being denoted only by the name
of " REDFERN," painted not very conspic
uously in the top-light of the door. Im
mediately on entering, we find ourselves
among a confusion of old rubbish and valu
ables, ancient armor, historic portraits,
ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall,
ghostly clocks, hideous old china, dim look-

ABOUT WARWICK 143

ing-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi
cence, — a thousand objects of strange as
pect, and others that almost frighten you
by their likeness in unlikeness to things
now in use. It is impossible to give an
idea of the variety of articles, so thickly
strewn about that we can scarcely move
without overthrowing some great curiosity
with a crash, or sweeping away some small
one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories
of the entire house are crowded in like
manner. The collection, even as we see it
exposed to view, must have been got to
gether at great cost ; but the real treasures
of the establishment lie in secret reposi
tories, whence they are not likely to be
drawn forth at an ordinary summons ;
though, if a gentleman with a competently
long purse should call for them, I doubt
not that the signet-ring of Joseph's friend
Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's leading
staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of
Buckingham (all of which I have seen), or
any other almost incredible thing, might
make its appearance. Gold snuff-boxes,
antique gems, jeweled goblets, Venetian
wine-glasses (which burst when poison is
poured into them, and therefore must not
be used for modern wine drinking), jasper-

144 OUR OLD

handled knives, painted Sevres teacups, —
in short, there are all sorts of things that a
virtuoso ransacks the world to discover.

It would be easier to spend a hundred
pounds in Mr. Redfern's shop than to keep
the money in one's pocket ; but, for my
part, I contented myself with buying a
little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantasti
cally shaped, and got it at all the more rea
sonable rate because there happened to be
no legend attached to it. I could supply
any deficiency of that kind at much less
expense than regilding the spoon !

IV.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED
WOMAN

FROM Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon
the distance is eight or nine miles, over a
road that seemed to me most beautiful.
Not that I can recall any memorable pecu
liarities ; for the country, most of the
way, is a succession of the gentlest swells
and subsidences, affording wide and far
glimpses of champaign scenery here and
there, and sinking almost to a dead level
as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape
in New England, even the tamest, has a
more striking outline, and, besides, would
have its blue eyes open in those lakelets
that we encounter almost from mile to mile
at home, but of which the Old Country is
utterly destitute ; or it would smile in our
faces through the medium of the wayside
brooks that vanish under a low stone arch
on one side of the road, and sparkle out
again on the other. Neither of these pretty

146 OUR OLD HOME

features is often to be found in an English
scene. The charm of the latter consists
in the rich verdure of the fields, in the
stately wayside trees and carefully kept
plantations of wood, and in the old and
high cultivation that has humanized the
very sods by mingling so much of man's
toil and care among them. To an Amer
ican there is a kind of sanctity even in an
English turnip-field, when he thinks how
long that small square of ground has been
known and recognized as a possession,
transmitted from father to son, trodden
often by memorable feet, and utterly re
deemed from savagery by old acquaintance
ship with civilized eyes.1

The wildest things in England are more
than half tame. The trees, for instance,

1 All the scenery we have yet met with is in excellent
taste, and keeps itself within very proper bounds, —
never getting too wild and rugged to shock the sensi
bilities of cultivated people, as American scenery is apt
to do. On the rudest surface of English earth, there is
seen the effect of centuries of civilization, so that you
do not quite get at naked Nature anywhere. And then
every point of beauty is so well known, and has been
described so much, that one must needs look through
other people's eyes, and feels as if he were seeing a
picture rather than a reality. Man has, in short, entire
possession of Nature here, and I should think young
men might sometimes yearn for a fresher draught. But
an American likes it. — II. 8.

A GIFTED WOMAN 147

whether in hedge-row, park, or what they
call forest, have nothing wild about them.
They are never ragged ; there is a certain
decorous restraint in the freest outspread
of their branches, though they spread wider
than any self-nurturing trees ; they are tall,
vigorous, bulky, with a look of age-long life,
and a promise of more years to come, all
of which will bring them into closer kin
dred with the race of man. Somebody or
other has known them from the sapling
upward ; and if they endure long enough,
they grow to be traditionally observed
and honored, and connected with the for
tunes of old families, till, like Tennyson's
Talking Oak, they babble with a thousand
leafy tongues to ears that can understand
them.

An American tree, however, if it could
grow in fair competition with an English
one of similar species, would probably be
the more picturesque object of the two.
The Warwickshire elm has not so beauti
ful a shape as those that overhang our
village street ; and as for the redoubtable
English oak, there is a certain John Bull-
ism in its figure, a compact rotundity of
foliage, a lack of irregular and various out
line, that make it look wonderfully like a

148 OUR OLD HOME

gigantic cauliflower.1 Its leaf, too, is much
smaller than that of most varieties of Amer
ican oak ; nor do I mean to doubt that the
latter, with free leave to grow, reverent
care and cultivation, and immunity from
the axe, would live out its centuries as
sturdily as its English brother, and prove
far the nobler and more majestic specimen
of a tree at the end of them. Still, how
ever one's Yankee patriotism may struggle
against the admission, it must be owned
that the trees and other objects of an Eng
lish landscape take hold of the observer by
numberless minute tendrils, as it were,
which, look as closely as we choose, we
never find in an American scene. The
parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the
trunk of the tree, so gray and dry in our
climate, is better worth observing than the
boughs and foliage ; a verdant mossiness
coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as
green as the leaves ; and often, moreover,

1 The oaks [in Knowsley Park] did not seem to me
so magnificent as they should be in an ancient noble
property like this. A century does not accomplish so
much for a tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours.
I think, however, that they were more individual and
picturesque, with more character in their contorted
trunks; therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our
forest trees have a great sameness of character, like our
people, — because one and the other grow too closely.
— 1.488.

A GIFTED WOMAN 149

the stately stem is clustered about, high
upward, with creeping and twining shrubs,
the ivy, and sometimes the mistletoe, close-
clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture
and never too fervid sunshine, and support
ing themselves by the old tree's abundant
strength. We call it a parasitical vege
tation ; but, if the phrase imply any re
proach, it is unkind to bestow it on this
beautiful affection and relationship which
exist in England between one order of
plants and another : the strong tree being
always ready to give support to the trail
ing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out
of its own heart, if it crave such food ; and
the shrub, on its part, repaying its foster-
father with an ample luxuriance of beauty,
and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's
lofty strength. No bitter winter nips these
tender little sympathies, no hot sun burns
the life out of them ; and therefore they
outlast the longevity of the oak, and, if the
woodman permitted, would bury it in a
green grave, when all is over.

Should there be nothing else along the
road to look at, an English hedge might
well suffice to occupy the eyes, and, to a
depth beyond what he would suppose, the
heart of an American. We often set out

150 OUR OLD HOME

hedges in our own soil, but might as well
set out figs or pineapples and expect to
gather fruit of them. Something grows, to
be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ;
but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of
vegetation that is accumulated into the
English original, in which a botanist would
find a thousand shrubs and gracious herbs
that the hedge-maker never thought of
planting there. Among them, growing
wild, are many of the kindred blossoms of
the very flowers which our pilgrim fathers
brought from England, for the sake of their
simple beauty and homelike associations,
and which we have ever since been culti
vating in gardens. There is not a softer
trait to be found in the character of those
stern men than that they should have
been sensible of these flower-roots clinging
among the fibres of their rugged hearts,
and have felt the necessity of bringing
them over sea and making them hereditary
in the new land, instead of trusting to what
rarer beauty the wilderness might have in
store for them.

Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the
ugliest stone fence (such as, in America,
would keep itself bare and unsympathizing
till the end of time) is sure to be covered

A COUNTRY LANE

A GIFTED WOMAN 151

with the small handiwork of Nature ; that
careful mother lets nothing go naked there,
and if she cannot provide clothing, gives at
least embroidery. No sooner is the fence
built than she adopts and adorns it as a
part of her original plan, treating the hard,
uncomely construction as if it had all along
been a favorite idea of her own. A little
sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the
side of the low wall and clinging fast with
its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft
of grass roots itself between two of the
stones, where a pinch or two of wayside
dust has been moistened into nutritious soil
for it ; a small bunch of fern grows in an
other crevice ; a deep, soft, verdant moss
spreads itself along the top, and over all the
available inequalities of the fence ; and
where nothing else will grow, lichens stick
tenaciously to the bare stones, and varie
gate the monotonous gray with hues of
yellow and red. Finally, a great deal of
shrubbery clusters along the base of the
stone wall, and takes away the hardness of
its outline ; and in due time, as the upshot
of these apparently aimless or sportive
touches, we recognize that the beneficent
Creator of all things, working through his
handmaiden whom we call Nature, has de-

152 OUR OLD HOME

signed to mingle a charm of divine grace
fulness even with so earthly an institu
tion as a boundary fence. The clown who
wrought at it little dreamed what fellow-
laborer he had.1

The English should send us photographs
of portions of the trunks of trees, the
tangled and various products of a hedge,
and a square foot of an old wall. They can
hardly send anything else so characteristic.

1 The roads give us beautiful walks along the river
side, or wind away among the gentle hills ; and if we
had nothing else to look at in these walks, the hedges
and stone fences would afford interest enough, so many
and pretty are the flowers, roses, honeysuckles, and
other sweet things, and so abundantly does the moss
and ivy grow among the old stones of the fences, which
would never have a single shoot of vegetation on them
in America till the very end of time. But here, no
sooner is a stone fence built, than Nature sets to work
to make it a part of herself. She adopts 'it and adorns
it, as if it were her own child. A little sprig of ivy may
be seen creeping up the side, and clinging fast with its
many feet ; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of
the stones, where a little dust from the road has been
moistened into soil for it ; a small bunch of fern grows
in another such crevice ; a deep, soft, green moss
spreads itself over the top and all along the sides of the
fence ; and wherever nothing else will grow, lichens
adhere to the stones and variegate their hues. Finally,
a great deal of shrubbery is sure to cluster along its
extent, and take away all hardness from the outline ;
and so the whole stone fence looks as if God had had at
least as much to do with it as man. — II. 16.

A GIFTED WOMAN 153

Their artists, especially of the later school,
sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but
are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the
process. The poets succeed better, with
Tennyson at their head, and often produce
ravishing effects by dint of a tender mi
nuteness of touch, to which the genius of
the soil and climate artfully impels them :
for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier
scenes in many countries than the best
that England can show ; but, for the pic-
turesqueness of the smallest object that
lies under its gentle gloom and sunshine,
there is no scenery like it anywhere.

In the foregoing paragraphs I have
strayed away to a long distance from the
road to Stratford-on-Avon ; for I remember
no such stone fences as I have been speak
ing of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in
England, except among the Lakes, or in
Yorkshire, and the rough and hilly coun
tries to the north of it. Hedges there were
along my road, however, and broad, level
fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of an
cient date, — from the roof of one of which
the occupant was tearing away the thatch,
and showing what an accumulation of dust,
dirt, rnouldiness, roots of weeds, families of
mice, swallows'-nests, and hordes of in-

154 OUR OLD HOME

sects had been deposited there since that
old straw was new. Estimating its antiquity
from these tokens, Shakespeare himself, in
one of his morning rambles out of his na
tive town, might have seen the thatch laid
on ; at all events, the cottage-walls were
old enough to have known him as a guest.
A few modern villas were also to be seen,
and perhaps there were mansions of old
gentility at no great distance, but hidden
among trees ; for it is a point of English
pride that such houses seldom allow them
selves to be visible from the high-road. In
short, I recollect nothing specially remark
able along the way, nor in the immediate
approach to Stratford ; and yet the picture
of that June morning has a glory in my
memory, owing chiefly, I believe, to the
charm of the English summer weather, the
really good days of which are the most de
lightful that mortal man can ever hope to
be favored with. Such a genial warmth !
A little too warm, it might be, yet only to
such a degree as to assure an American (a
certainty to which he seldom attains till
attempered to the customary austerity of
an English summer day) that he was quite
warm enough. And after all, there was an
unconquerable freshness in the atmosphere,

A GIFTED WOMAN 155

which every little movement of a breeze
shook over me like a dash of the ocean
spray. Such days need bring us no other
happiness than their own light and temper
ature. No doubt, I cauld not have enjoyed
it so exquisitely, except that there must be
still latent in us Western wanderers (even
after an absence of two centuries and more)
an adaptation to the English climate which
makes us sensible of a motherly kindness
in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us
with delight at its more lavish smiles.

The spire of Shakespeare's church — the
Church of the Holy Trinity — begins to
show itself among the trees at a little dis
tance from Stratford. Next we see the
shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-
looking houses of modern date ; and the
streets being quite level, you are struck
and surprised by nothing so much as the
tameness of the general scene, as if Shake
speare's genius were vivid enough to have
wrought pictorial splendors in the town
where he was born. Here and there, how
ever, a queer edifice meets your eye, en
dowed with the individuality that belongs
only to the domestic architecture of times
gone by ; the house seems to have grown
out of some odd quality in its inhabitant,

156 OUR OLD HOME

as a sea-shell is moulded from within by
the character of its inmate ; and having
been built in a strange fashion, generations
ago, it has ever since been growing stranger
and quainter, as old humorists are apt to
do. Here, too (as so often impressed me
in decayed English towns), there appeared
to be a greater abundance of aged people
wearing small-clothes and leaning on sticks
than you could assemble on our side of the
water by sounding a trumpet and proclaim
ing a reward for the most venerable. I
tried to account for this phenomenon by
several theories : as, for example, that our
new towns are unwholesome for age and
kill it off unseasonably ; or that our old
men have a subtile sense of fitness, and die
of their own accord rather than live in an
unseemly contrast with youth and novelty ;
but the secret may be, after all, that hair-
dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and
contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness,
have not crept into these antiquated Eng
lish towns, and so people grow old without
the weary necessity of seeming younger
than they are.

After wandering through two or three
streets, I found my way to Shakespeare's
birthplace, which is almost a smaller and

A GIFTED WOMAN 157

humbler house than any description can
prepare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably
does an august inhabitant make his abode
palatial to our imaginations, receiving his
guests, indeed, in a castle in the air, until
we unwisely insist on meeting him among
the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth.
The portion of the edifice with which
Shakespeare had anything to do is hardly
large enough, in the basement, to contain
the butcher's stall that one of his descend
ants kept, and that still remains there,
windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its
hacked counter, which projects into the
street under a little penthouse-roof, as if
waiting for a new occupant.

The upper half of the door was open,
and, on my rapping at it, a young person
in black made her appearance and admitted
me ; she was not a menial, but remarkably
genteel (an American characteristic) for an
English girl, and was probably the daughter
of the old gentlewoman who takes care of
the house. This lower room has a pave
ment of gray slabs of stone, which may
have been rudely squared when the house
was new, but are now all cracked, broken,
and disarranged in a most unaccountable
way. One does not see how any ordinary

158 OUR OLD HOME

usage, for whatever length of time, should
have so smashed these heavy stones ; it is
as if an earthquake had burst up through
the floor, which afterwards had been imper
fectly trodden down again. The room is
whitewashed and very clean, but wofully
shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such
as the most poetical imagination would find
it difficult to idealize. In the rear of this
apartment is the kitchen, a still smaller
room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a
great rough fireplace, with space for a large
family under the blackened opening of the
chimney, and an immense passageway for
the smoke, through which Shakespeare may
have seen the blue sky by day and the stars
glimmering down at him by night. It is
now a dreary spot where the long-extin
guished embers used to be. A glowing fire,
even if it covered only a quarter part of the
hearth, might still do much towards making
the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a
depressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre
kind of life that could have been lived in
such a dwelling, where this room seems to
have been the gathering-place of the family,
with no .breadth or scope, no good retire
ment, but old and young huddling together
cheek by jowl. What a hardy plant was

A GIFTED WOMAN 159

Shakespeare's genius, how fatal its develop
ment, since it could not be blighted in such
an atmosphere ! It only brought human
nature the closer to him, and put more
unctuous earth about his roots.

Thence I was ushered upstairs to the
room in which Shakespeare is 'supposed to
have been born : though, if you peep too
curiously into the matter, you may find the
shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well
as most other points of his mysterious life.
It is the chamber over the butcher's shop,
and is lighted by one broad window con
taining a great many small, irregular panes
of glass. The floor is made of planks,
very rudely hewn, and fitting together with
little neatness ; the naked beams and raf
ters, at the sides of the room and overhead,
bear the original marks of the builder's
broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt
to smooth off the job. Again we have to
reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the
space inclosed by these illustrious walls, —
a circumstance more difficult to accept, as
regards places that we have heard, read,
thought, and dreamed much about, than
any other disenchanting particular of a
mistaken ideal. A few paces — perhaps
seven or eight — take us from end to end

l6o OUR OLD HOME

of it. So low it is, that I could easily touch
the ceiling, and might have done so with
out a tiptoe-stretch, had it been a good deal
higher ; and this humility of the chamber
has tempted a vast multitude of people
to write their names overhead in pencil.
Every inch of the side-walls, even into the
obscurest nooks and corners, is covered
with a similar record ; all the window-
panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond
signatures, among which is said to be that
of Walter Scott ; but so many persons
have sought to immortalize themselves in
close vicinity to his name, that I really
could not trace him out. Methinks it is
strange that people do not strive to forget
their forlorn little identities, in such situa
tions, instead of thrusting them forward
into the dazzle of a great renown, where,
if noticed, they cannot but be deemed
impertinent.

This room, and the entire house, so far
as I saw it, are whitewashed and exceed
ingly clean ; nor is there the aged, musty
smell with which old Chester first made
me acquainted, and which goes far to cure
an American of his excessive predilection
for antique residences. An old lady, who
took charge of me upstairs, had the man-

A GIFTED WOMAN l6l

ners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and
talked with somewhat formidable knowledge
and appreciative intelligence about Shake
speare. Arranged on a table and in chairs
were various prints, views of houses and
scenes connected with Shakespeare's mem
ory, together with editions of his works and
local publications about his home and
haunts, from the sale of which this respect
able lady perhaps realizes a handsome profit.
At any rate, I bought a good many of them,
conceiving that it might be the civilest
way of requiting her for her instructive
conversation and the trouble she took in
showing me the house. It cost me a pang
(not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly
one) to offer a downright fee to the lady
like girl who had admitted me ; but I swal
lowed my delicate scruples with some little
difficulty, and she digested hers, as far as
I could observe, with no difficulty at all.
In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half
a crown to any person with whom he has
occasion to speak a word in England.1

1 We got some biscuits at the hotel [in Eastham], and
I gave the waiter (a splendid gentleman in black) four
halfpence, being the surplus of a shilling. He bowed
and thanked me very humbly An American does not
easily bring his mind to the small measure of English
liberality to servants ; if anything is to be given, we are

1 62 OUR OLD HOME

I should consider it unfair to quit Shake
speare's house without the frank acknow-

ashamed not to give more, especially to clerical looking
persons, in black suits and white neck-cloths. — I. 493.

The hotels are mostly very good all through this
region, and this deserved that character. A black-coated
waiter, of more gentlemanly appearance than most Eng
lishmen, yet taking a sixpence with as little scruple as a
lawyer would take his fee ; the mistress, in lady-like at
tire, receiving us at the door, and waiting upon us to the
carriage-steps ; clean, comely house-maids everywhere at
hand, — all appliances, in short, for being comfortable,
and comfortable, too, within one's own circle. And, on
taking leave, everybody who has clone anything for you,
or who might by possibility have done anything, is to be
feed. You pay the landlord enough, in all conscience ;
and then you pay all his servants, who have been your
servants for the time. — II. 40.

Perhaps a part of my weariness is owing to the hotel-
life which we lead. At an English hotel the traveler
feels as if everybody, from the landlord, downward,
united in a joint and individual purpose to fleece him,
because all the attendants who come in contact with
him are to be separately considered. So, after paying,
in the first instance, a very heavy bill, for what would
seem to cover the whole indebtedness, there remain
divers dues still to be paid, to no trifling amount, to
the landlord's servants, — dues not to be ascertained,
and which you never can know whether you have prop
erly satisfied. You can know, perhaps, when you have
less than satisfied them, by the aspect of the waiter,
which I wish I could describe, — not disrespectful in the
slightest degree, but a look of profound surprise, a gaze
at the offered coin (which he nevertheless pockets) as
if he either did not see it, or did not know it, or could
not believe his eyesight; — all this, however, with the

A GIFTED WOMAN 163

ledgment that I was conscious of not the
slightest emotion while viewing it, nor any
quickening of the imagination. This has
often happened to me in my visits to
memorable places. Whatever pretty and
apposite reflections I may have made upon
the subject had either occurred to me be
fore I ever saw Stratford, or have been
elaborated since. It is pleasant, neverthe
less, to think that I have seen the place ;
and I believe that I can form a more sen
sible and vivid idea of Shakespeare as a
flesh-and-blood individual now that I have
stood on the kitchen-hearth and in the
birth-chamber ; but I am not quite certain
that this power of realization is altogether
desirable in reference to a great poet. The
Shakespeare whom I met there took various

most quiet forbearance, a Christian-like non-recognition
of an unmerited wrong and insult ; and finally, all in a
moment's space indeed, he quits you and goes about
his other business. If you have given him too much,
you are made sensible of your folly by the extra amount
of his gratitude, and the bows with which he salutes you
from the doorstep. Generally, you cannot very deci
dedly say whether you have been right or wrong ; but,
in almost all cases, you decidedly feel that you have
been fleeced. — II. 60.

Be it recorded that I never knew an Englishman to
refuse a shilling, — or, for that matter, a halfpenny.
— II. 169.

164 OUR OLD HOME

guises, but had not his laurel on. He was
successively the roguish boy, — the youth
ful deer-stealer, — the comrade of players, —
the too familiar friend of Davenant's mo
ther, — the careful, thrifty, thriven man of
property who came back from London
to lend money on bond, and occupy the
best house in Stratford, — the mellow, red-
nosed, autumnal boon-companion of John a'
Combe, — and finally (or else the Stratford
gossips belied him), the victim of convivial
habits, who met his death by tumbling into
a ditch on his way home from a drinking-
bout, and left his second-best bed to his
poor wife.

I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what
horrible impiety it is to remember these
things, be they true or false. In either
case, they ought to vanish out of sight on
the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a
pure, white memory, even as a sail, though
perhaps darkened with many stains, looks
snowy white on the far horizon. But I
draw a moral from these unworthy remi
niscences and this embodiment of the poet,
as suggested by some of the grimy actu
alities of his life. It is for the high
interests of the world not to insist upon
finding out that its greatest men are, in a

A GIFTED WOMAN 165

certain lower sense, very much the same
kind of men as the rest of us, and often a
little worse ; because a common mind can
not properly digest such a discovery, nor
ever know the true proportion of the great
man's good and evil, nor how small a part
of him it was that touched our muddy or
dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewil
derment, and even intellectual loss, in re
gard to what is best of him. When Shake
speare invoked a curse on the man who
should stir his bones, he perhaps meant
the larger share of it for him or them who
should pry into his perishing earthliness,
the defects or even the merits of the char
acter that he wore in Stratford, when he
had left mankind so much to muse upon
that was imperishable and divine. Heaven
keep me from incurring any part of the
anathema in requital for the irreverent sen
tences above written !

From Shakespeare's house, the next step,
of course, is to visit his burial-place. The
appearance of the church is most venerable
and beautiful, standing amid a great green
shadow of lime-trees, above which rises the
spire, while the Gothic battlements and
buttresses and vast arched windows are
obscurely seen through the boughs. The

1 66 OUR OLD HOME

Avon loiters past the churchyard, an ex-
ceedingly sluggish river, which might seem
to have been considering which way it
should flow ever since Shakespeare left off
paddling in it and gathering the large for
get-me-nots that grow among its flags and
water-weeds.

An old man in small-clothes was waiting
at the gate ; and inquiring whether I wished
to go in, he preceded me to the church-
porch, and rapped. I could have done it
quite as effectually for myself ; but it seems
the old people of the neighborhood haunt
about the churchyard, in spite of the frowns
and remonstrances of the sexton, who
grudges them the half-eleemosynary six
pence which they sometimes get from visi
tors. I was admitted into the church by a
respectable-looking and intelligent man in
black, the parish-clerk, I suppose, and prob
ably holding a richer incumbency than his
vicar, if all the fees which he handles remain
in his own pocket. He was already exhibit
ing the Shakespeare monuments to two
or three visitors, and several other parties
came in while I was there.

The poet and his family are in possession
of what may be considered the very best
burial-places that the church affords. They

A GIFTED WOMAN l6?

lie in a row, right across the breadth of the
chancel, the foot of each gravestone being
close to the elevated floor on which the
altar stands. Nearest to the side-wall, be
neath Shakespeare's bust, is a slab bearing
a Latin inscription addressed to his wife,
and covering her remains ; then his own
slab, with the old anathematizing stanza
upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who
married his granddaughter ; then that of
Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter
Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah's own.
Shakespeare's is the commonest-looking
slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as
Essex Street in Salem used to be paved
with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless
my eyes or recollection deceive me, there
is a crack across it, as if it had already
undergone some such violence as the in
scription deprecates. Unlike the other
monuments of the family, it bears no name,
nor am I acquainted with the grounds or
authority on which it is absolutely deter
mined to be Shakespeare's ; although, be
ing in a range with those of his wife and
children, it might naturally be attributed to
him. But, then, why does his wife, who
died afterwards, take precedence of him
and occupy the place next his bust ? And

1 68 OUR OLD HOME

where are the graves of another daughter
and a son, who have a better right in the
family row than Thomas Nash, his grand-
son-in-law ? Might not one or both of
them have been laid under the nameless
stone ? But it is dangerous trifling with
Shakespeare's dust ; so I forbear to meddle
further with the grave (though the prohi
bition makes it tempting), and shall let
whatever bones be in it rest in peace.
Yet I must needs add that the inscription
on the bust seems to imply that Shake
speare's grave was directly underneath it.
The poet's bust is affixed to the northern
wall of the church, the base of it being
about a man's height, or rather more, above
the floor of the chancel. The features of
this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike
any portrait of Shakespeare that I have
ever seen, and compel me to take down the
beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture
of him which has hitherto hung in my
mental portrait gallery. The bust cannot
be said to represent a beautiful face or an
eminently noble head ; but it clutches firm
ly hold of one's sense of reality and insists
upon your accepting it, if not as Shake
speare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher
of Stratford, the friend of John a' Combe,

A GIFTED WOMAW 169

who lies yonder in the corner. I know not
what the phrenologists say to the bust.
The forehead is but moderately developed,
and retreats somewhat, the upper part of
the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are
prominent almost beyond the penthouse of
the brow ; the upper lip is so long that it
must have been almost a deformity, unless
the sculptor artistically exaggerated its
length, in consideration, that, on the ped
estal, it must be foreshortened by being
looked at from below. On the whole,
Shakespeare must have had a singular
rather than a prepossessing face ; and it is
wonderful how, with this bust before its
eyes, the world has persisted in maintaining
an erroneous notion of his appearance, al
lowing painters and sculptors to foist their
idealized nonsense on us all, instead of the
genuine man. For my part, the Shake
speare of my mind's eye is henceforth to
be a personage of a ruddy English complex
ion, with a reasonably capacious brow, in
telligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose
curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper
lip, with the mouth a little unclosed be
neath it, and cheeks considerably developed
in the lower part and beneath the chin.
But when Shakespeare was himself (for

1 70 OUR OLD HOME

nine tenths of the time, according to all
appearances, he was but the burgher of
Stratford), he doubtless shone through this
dull mask and transfigured it into the face
of an angel.

Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of
Shakespeare gravestones is the great east
window of the church, now brilliant with
stained glass of recent manufacture. On
one side of this window, under a sculptured
arch of marble, lies a full-length marble
figure of John a' Combe, clad in what I
take to be a robe of municipal dignity, and
holding its hands devoutly clasped. It is a
sturdy English figure, with coarse features,
a type of ordinary man whom we smile to
see immortalized in the sculpturesque mate
rial of poets and heroes ; but the prayerful
attitude encourages us to believe that the
old usurer may not, after all, have had that
grim reception in the other world which
Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By
the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with
Warwickshire pronunciation, I never under
stood that the point of those ill-natured
lines was a pun. " ' Oho ! ' quoth the Dev
il, ''tis my John a' Combe!'" — that is,
" My John has come ! "

Close to the poet's bust is a nameless.

A GIFTED WOMAN I /I

oblong, cubic tomb, supposed to be that of
a clerical dignitary of the fourteenth cen
tury. The church has other mural monu
ments and altar-tombs, one or two of the
latter upholding the recumbent figures of
knights in armor and their dames, very
eminent and worshipful personages in their
day, no doubt, but doomed to appear for
ever intrusive and impertinent within the
precincts which Shakespeare has made his
own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers
nothing else to be recognized within the
scope of its material presence, unless illu
minated by some side-ray from himself.
The clerk informed me that interments no
longer take place in any part of the church.
And it is better so ; for methinks a person
of delicate individuality, curious about his
burial-place, and desirous of six feet of
earth for himself alone, could never endure
to lie buried near Shakespeare, but would
rise up at midnight and grope his way out
of the church-door, rather than sleep in the
shadow of so stupendous a memory.

I should hardly have dared to add another
to the innumerable descriptions of Strat-
ford-on-Avon, if it had not seemed to me
that this would form a fitting framework to
some reminiscences of a very remarkable

172 OUR OLD HOME

woman. Her labor, while she lived, was of
a nature and purpose outwardly irreverent
to the name of Shakespeare, yet, by its ac
tual tendency, entitling her to the distinc
tion of being that one of all his worshipers
who sought, though she knew it not, to
place the richest and stateliest diadem upon
his brow. We Americans, at least, in the
scanty annals of our literature, cannot af
ford to forget her high and conscientious
exercise of noble faculties, which, indeed, if
you look at the matter in one way, evolved
only a miserable error, but, more fairly con
sidered, produced a result worth almost
what it cost her. Her faith in her own
ideas was so genuine that, erroneous as
they were, it transmuted them to gold, or, at
all events, interfused a large proportion of
that precious and indestructible substance
among the waste material from which it
can readily be sifted.

The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon
was in London, where she had lodgings in
Spring Street, Sussex Gardens, at the house
of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged, civil, and
friendly man, who, as well as his wife, ap
peared to feel a personal kindness towards
their lodger. I was ushered up two (and I
rather believe three) pair of stairs into

A GIFTED WOMAN 173

a parlor somewhat humbly furnished, and
told that Miss Bacon would come soon.
There were a number of books on the table,
and, looking into them, I found that every
one had some reference, more or less im
mediate, to her Shakespearean theory, —
a volume of Raleigh's "History of the
World, " a volume of Montaigne, a volume
of Lord Bacon's Letters, a volume of Shake
speare's Plays ; and on another table lay a
large roll of manuscript, which I presume
to have been a portion of her work. To
be sure, there was a pocket-Bible among
the books, but everything else referred to
the one despotic idea that had got posses
sion of her mind ; and as it had engrossed
her whole soul as well as her intellect, I
have no doubt that she had established
subtile connections between it and the Bible
likewise. As is apt to be the case with
solitary students, Miss Bacon probably read
late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne
(it was Hazlitt's translation) and had been
reading his journey to Italy a good while
before she appeared.

I had expected (the more shame for me,
having no other ground for such expecta
tion than that she was a literary woman) to
see a very homely, uncouth, elderly person-

174 OUR OLD HOME

age, and was quite agreeably disappointed
by her aspect. She was rather uncom
monly tall, and had a striking and expres
sive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone
with an inward light as soon as she began
to speak, and by and by a color came into
her cheeks and made her look almost young.
Not that she really was so ; she must have
been beyond middle age : and there was no
unkindness in coming to that conclusion,
because, making allowance for years and
ill-health, I could suppose her to have been
handsome and exceedingly attractive once.
Though wholly estranged from society,
there was little or no restraint or embar
rassment in her manner : lonely people are
generally glad to give utterance to their
pent-up ideas, and often bubble over with
them as freely as children with their new
found syllables. I cannot tell how it came
about, but we immediately found ourselves
taking a friendly and familiar tone together,
and began to talk as if we had known one
another a very long while. A little prelimi
nary correspondence had indeed smoothed
the way, and we had a definite topic in the
contemplated publication of her book.

She was very communicative about her
theory, and would have been much more so

DELIA BACON

A GIFTED WOMAN 1/5

had I desired it ; but, being conscious with
in myself of a sturdy unbelief, I deemed it
fair and honest rather to repress than draw
her out upon the subject. Unquestionably,
she was a monomaniac ; these overmaster
ing ideas about the authorship of Shake
speare's Plays, and the deep political phi
losophy concealed beneath the surface of
them, had completely thrown her off her
balance ; but at the same time they had
wonderfully developed her intellect, and
made her what she could not otherwise
have become. It was a very singular phe
nomenon : a system of philosophy growing
up in this woman's mind without her voli
tion, — contrary, in fact, to the determined
resistance of her volition, — and substitut
ing itself in the place of everything that
originally grew there. To have based such
a system on fancy, and unconsciously elab
orated it for herself, was almost as wonder
ful as really to have found it in the plays.
But, in a certain sense, she did actually find
it there. Shakespeare has surface beneath
surface, to an immeasurable depth, adapted
to the plummet-line of every reader ; his
works present many phases of truth, each
with scope large enough to fill a contempla
tive mind. Whatever you seek in him you

OUR OLD HOME

will surely discover, provided you seek
truth. There is no exhausting the various
interpretation of his symbols ; and a thou
sand years hence a world of new readers
will possess a whole library of new books,
as we ourselves do, in these volumes old
already. I had half a mind to suggest to
Miss Bacon this explanation of her theory,
but forbore, because (as I could readily
perceive) she had as princely a spirit as
Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once
have motioned me from the room.

I had heard, long ago, that she believed
/hat the material evidences of her dogma
as to the authorship, together with the key
of the new philosophy, would be found
buried in Shakespeare's grave. Recently,
as I understood her, this notion had been
somewhat modified, and was now accurately
defined and fully developed in her mind,
with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord
Bacon's Letters, on which she laid her
finger as she spoke, she had discovered the
key and clew to the whole mystery. There
were definite and minute instructions how
to find a will and other documents relating
to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers,
which were concealed (when and by whom
she did not inform me) in a hollow space

A GIFTED WOMAN IJJ

in the under surface of Shakespeare's grave
stone. Thus the terrible prohibition to
remove the stone was accounted for. The
directions, she intimated, went completely
and precisely to the point, obviating all
difficulties in the way of coming at the
treasure, and even, if I remember right,
were so contrived as to ward off any trouble
some consequences likely to ensue from
the interference of the parish-officers. All
that Miss Bacon now remained in England
for — indeed, the object for which she had
come hither, and which had kept her here for
three years past — was to obtain possession
of these material and unquestionable proofs
of the authenticity of her theory.

She communicated all this strange mat
ter in a low, quiet tone ; while, on my part,
I listened as quietly, and without any ex
pression of dissent. Controversy against
a faith so settled would have shut her up
at once, and that, too, without in the least
weakening her belief in the existence of
those treasures of the tomb ; and had it
been possible to convince her of their in
tangible nature, I apprehend that there
would have been nothing left for the poor
enthusiast save to collapse and die. She
frankly confessed that she could no longer

i;8 OUR OLD HOME

bear the society of those who did not at
least lend a certain sympathy to her views,
if not fully share in them ; and meeting
little sympathy or none, she had now en
tirely secluded herself from the world. In
all these years, she had seen Mrs. Farrar a
few times, but had long ago given her up ;
Carlyle once or twice, but not of late, al
though he had received her kindly; Mr.
Buchanan, while Minister in England, had
once called on her ; and General Campbell,
our Consul in London, had met her two or
three times on business. With these ex
ceptions, which she marked so scrupulously
that it was perceptible what epochs they
were in the monotonous passage of her
days, she had lived in the profoundest soli
tude. She never walked out ; she suffered
much from ill-health ; and yet, she assured
me, she was perfectly happy.

I could well conceive it ; for Miss Bacon
imagined herself to have received (what is
certainly the greatest boon ever assigned
to mortals) a high mission in the world, with
adequate powers for its accomplishment ;
and lest even these should prove insuffi
cient, she had faith that special interposi
tions of Providence were forwarding her
human efforts. This idea was continually

A GIFTED WOMAN 1 79

coming to the surface, during our interview.
She believed, for example, that she had been
providentially led to her lodging-house, and
put in relations with the good-natured gro
cer and his family ; and, to say the truth,
considering what a savage and stealthy tribe
the London lodging-house keepers usually
are, the honest kindness of this man and
his household appeared to have been little
less than miraculous. Evidently, too, she
thought that Providence had brought me
forward — a man somewhat connected with
literature — at the critical juncture when
she needed a negotiator with the book
sellers ; and, on my part, though little ac
customed to regard myself as a divine
minister, and though I might even have
preferred that Providence should select
some other instrument, I had no scruple in
undertaking to do what I could for her.
Her book, as I could see by turning it over,
was a very remarkable one, and worthy of
being offered to the public, which, if wise
enough to appreciate it, would be thankful
for what was good in it and merciful to
its faults. It was founded on a prodigious
error, but was built up from that foundation
with a good many prodigious truths. And,
at all events, whether I could aid her liter-

180 OUR OLD HOME

ary views or no, it would have been both
rash and impertinent in me to attempt
drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delu
sions, which were the condition on which
she lived in comfort and joy, and in the
exercise of great intellectual power. So I
left her to dream as she pleased about the
treasures of Shakespeare's tombstone, and
to form whatever designs might seem good
to herself for obtaining possession of them.
I was sensible of a lady-like feeling of pro
priety in Miss Bacon, and a New England
orderliness in her character, and, in spite
of her bewilderment, a sturdy common
sense, which I trusted would begin to op
erate at the right time, and keep her from
any actual extravagance. And as regarded
this matter of the tombstone, so it proved.
The interview lasted above an hour, dur
ing which she flowed out freely, as to the
sole auditor, capable of any degree of in
telligent sympathy, whom she had met with
in a very long while. Her conversation
was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth
one's own ideas and fantasies from the shy
places where they usually haunt. She was
indeed an admirable talker, considering how
long she had held her tongue for lack of a
listener, — pleasant, sunny, and shadowy,

A GIFTED WOMAN l8l

often piquant, and giving glimpses of all
a woman's various and readily changeable
moods and humors ; and beneath them all
there ran a deep and powerful undercurrent
of earnestness, which did not fail to produce
in the listener's mind something like a
temporary faith in what she herself believed
so fervently. But the streets of London
are not favorable to enthusiasms of this
kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish
anywhere in the English atmosphere ; so
that, long before reaching Paternoster Row,
I felt that it would be a difficult and doubt
ful matter to advocate the publication of
Miss Bacon's book. Nevertheless, it did
finally get published.

Months before that happened, however,
Miss Bacon had taken up her residence at
Stratford-on-Avon, drawn thither by the
magnetism of those rich secrets which she
supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh,
or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shake
speare's grave, and protected there by a
curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in
the guardianship of a fiend. She took a
humble lodging and began to haunt the
church like a ghost. But she did not con
descend to any stratagem or underhand
attempt to violate the grave, which, had she

1 82 OUR OLD HOME

been capable of admitting such an idea,
might possibly have been accomplished by
the aid of a resurrection-man. As her first
step, she made acquaintance with the clerk,
and began to sound him as to the feasibility
of her enterprise and his own willingness
to engage in it. The clerk apparently
listened with not unfavorable ears ; but as
his situation (which the fees of pilgrims,
more numerous than at any Catholic shrine,
render lucrative) would have been forfeited
by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated
for liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon
requested to tell her own story to the rev
erend gentleman, and seems to have been
received by him with the utmost kindness,
and even to have succeeded in making a
certain impression on his mind as to the
desirability of the search. As their inter
view had been under the seal of secrecy,
he asked permission to consult a friend,
who, as Miss Bacon either found out or
surmised, was a practitioner of the law.
What the legal friend advised she did not
learn ; but the negotiation continued, and
certainly was never broken off by an abso
lute refusal on the vicar's part. He, per
haps, was kindly temporizing with our poor
countrywoman, whom an Englishman of

A GIFTED WOMAN 183

ordinary mould would have sent to a lunatic
asylum at once. I cannot help fancying,
however, that her familiarity with the events
of Shakespeare's life, and of his death and
burial (of which she would speak as if she
had been present at the edge of the grave),
and all the history, literature, and person
alities of the Elizabethan age, together with
the prevailing power of her own belief, and
the eloquence with which she knew how to
enforce it, had really gone some little way
toward making a convert of the good clergy
man. If so, I honor him above all the
hierarchy of England.

The affair certainly looked very hopeful.
However erroneously, Miss Bacon had un
derstood from the vicar that no obstacles
would be interposed to the investigation,
and that he himself would sanction it with
his presence. It was to take place after
nightfall ; and all preliminary arrangements
being made, the vicar and clerk professed
to wait only her word in order to set about
lifting the awful stone from the sepulchre.
So, at least, Miss Bacon believed ; and as
her bewilderment was entirely in her own
thoughts, and never disturbed her percep
tion or accurate remembrance of external
things, I see no reason to doubt it, except

184 OUR OLD HOME

it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact.
But, in this apparently prosperous state of
things, her own convictions began to falter.
A doubt stole into her mind whether she
might not have mistaken the depository
and mode of concealment of those historic
treasures; and, after once admitting the
doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock
of uplifting the stone and finding nothing.
She examined the surface of the grave
stone, and endeavored, without stirring it,
to estimate whether it were of such thick
ness as to be capable of containing the
archives of the Elizabethan club. She went
over anew the proofs, the clues, the enig
mas, the pregnant sentences, which she had
discovered in Bacon's Letters and else
where, and now was frightened to perceive
that they did not point so definitely to
Shakespeare's tomb as she had heretofore
supposed. There was an unmistakably
distinct reference to a tomb, but it might
be Bacon's, or Raleigh's, or Spenser's ;
and instead of the " Old Player, " as she
profanely called him, it might be either of
those three illustrious dead, poet, warrior,
or statesman, whose ashes, in Westminster
Abbey, or the Tower burial-ground, or
wherever they sleep, it was her mission to

A GIFTED WOMAN 185

disturb. It is very possible, moreover, that
her acute mind may always have had a
lurking and deeply latent distrust of its own
fantasies, and that this now became strong
enough to restrain her from a decisive
step.

But she continued to hover around the
church, and seems to have had full freedom
of entrance in the daytime, and special
license, on one occasion at least, at a late
hour of the night. She went thither with
a dark-lantern, which could but twinkle like
a glow-worm through the volume of ob
scurity that filled the great dusky edifice.
Groping her way up the aisle and towards
the chancel, she sat down on the elevated
part of the pavement above Shakespeare's
grave. If the divine poet really wrote the
inscription there, and cared as much about
the quiet of his bones as its deprecatory
earnestness would imply, it was time for
those crumbling relics to bestir themselves
under her sacrilegious feet. But they were
safe. She made no attempt to disturb
them ; though, I believe, she looked nar
rowly into the crevices between Shake
speare's and the two adjacent stones, and
in some way satisfied herself that her single
strength would suffice to lift the former, in

1 86 OUR OLD HOME

case of need. She threw the feeble ray of
her lantern up towards the bust, but could
not make it visible beneath the darkness
of the vaulted roof. Had shebeen subject
to superstitious terrors, it is impossible to
conceive of a situation that could better
entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakespeare's
ghost would rise at any provocation, it must
have shown itself then ; but it is my sin
cere belief that, if his figure had appeared
within the scope of her dark-lantern, in his
slashed doublet and gown, and with his
eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald
forehead, just as we see him in the bust,
she would have met him fearlessly, and
controverted his claims to the authorship
of the plays, to his very face. She had
taught herself to contemn " Lord Leices
ter's groom " (it was one of her disdainful
epithets for the world's incomparable poet)
so thoroughly, that even his disembodied
spirit would hardly have found civil treat
ment at Miss Bacon's hands.

Her vigil, though it appears to have had
no definite object, continued far into the
night. Several times she heard a low move
ment in the aisles : a stealthy, dubious foot
fall prowling about in the darkness, now
here, now there, among the pillars and an-

A GIFTED WOMAN" l8/

cient tombs, as if some restless inhabitant
of the latter had crept forth to peep at the
intruder. By and by the clerk made his
appearance, and confessed that he had been
watching her ever since she entered the
church.

About this time it was that a strange
sort of weariness seems to have fallen upon
her : her toil was all but done, her great
purpose, as she believed, on the very point
of accomplishment, when she began to re
gret that so stupendous a mission had been
imposed on the fragility of a woman. Her
faith in the new philosophy was as mighty
as ever, and so was her confidence in her
own adequate development of it, now about
to be given to the world ; yet she wished,
or fancied so, that it might never have been
her duty to achieve this unparalleled task,
and to stagger feebly forward under her
immense burden of responsibility and re
nown. So far as her personal concern in
the matter went, she would gladly have
forfeited the reward of her patient study
and labor for so many years, her exile from
her country and estrangement from her
family and friends, her sacrifice of health
and all other interests to this one pursuit,
if she could only find herself free to dwell

1 88 OUR OLD HOME

in Stratford and be forgotten. She liked
the old slumberous town, and awarded the
only praise that ever I knew her to bestow
on Shakespeare, the individual man, by
acknowledging that his taste in a residence
was good, and that he knew how to choose
a suitable retirement for a person of shy,
but genial temperament. And at this point,
I cease to possess the means of tracing her
vicissitudes of feeling any further. In
consequence of some advice which I fancied
it my duty to tender, as being the only
confidant whom she now had in the world,
I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and
passionate displeasure, and was cast off by
her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a
misfortune to which her friends were always
particularly liable ; but I think that none
of them ever loved, or even respected, her
most ingenuous and noble, but likewise
most sensitive and tumultuous character,
the less for it.

At that time her book was passing
through the press. Without prejudice to
her literary ability, it must be allowed that
Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her
own work for publication, because, among
many other reasons, she was too thoroughly
in earnest to know what to leave out.

A GIFTED WOMAN 189

Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had
been written under so deep a conviction of
truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect
of inspiration. A practiced book-maker,
with entire control of her materials, would
have shaped out a duodecimo volume full
of eloquent and ingenious dissertation, —
criticisms which quite take the color and
pungency out of other people's critical re
marks on Shakespeare, — philosophic truths
which she imagined herself to have found
at the roots of his conceptions, and which
certainly come from no inconsiderable
depth somewhere. There was a great
amount of rubbish, which any competent
editor would have shoveled out of the way.
But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of
inspiration and nonsense into the press in
a lump, and there tumbled out a ponderous
octavo volume, which fell with a dead
thump at the feet of the public, and has
never been picked up. A few persons
turned over one or two of the leaves, as it
lay there, and essayed to kick the volume
deeper into the mud ; for they were the
hack critics of the minor periodical press
in London, than whom, I suppose, though
excellent fellows in their way, there are no
gentlemen in the world less sensible of any

1 90 OUR OLD HOME

sanctity in a book, or less likely to recog
nize an author's heart in it, or more utterly
careless about bruising, if they do recog
nize it. It is their trade. They could not
do otherwise. I never thought of blaming
them. It was not for such an Englishman
as one of these to get beyond the idea that
an assault was meditated on England's
greatest poet. From the scholars and
critics of her own country, indeed, Miss
Bacon might have looked for a worthier
appreciation, because many of the best of
them have higher cultivation, and finer and
deeper literary sensibilities than all but the
very profoundest and brightest of English
men. But they are not a courageous body
of men ; they dare not think a truth that
has an odor of absurdity, lest they should
feel themselves bound to speak it out. If
any American ever wrote a word in her
behalf, Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I.
Our journalists at once published some of
the most brutal vituperations of the English
press, thus pelting their poor country
woman with stolen mud, without even wait
ing, to know whether the ignominy was
deserved. And they never have known it,
to this day, nor ever will.

The next intelligence that I had of Miss

A GIFTED WOMAN 1 91

Bacon was by a letter from the mayor of
Stratford-on-Avon. He was a medical man,
and wrote both in his official and profes
sional character, telling me that an Ameri
can lady, who had recently published what
the mayor called a " Shakespeare book, "
was afflicted with insanity. In a lucid in
terval she had referred to me, as a person
who had some knowledge of her family and
affairs. What she may have suffered be
fore her intellect gave way, we had better
not try to imagine. No author had ever
hoped so confidently as she ; none ever
failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy
might suggest that the anathema on Shake
speare's tombstone had fallen heavily on
her head, in requital of even the unaccom
plished purpose of disturbing the dust be
neath, and that the " Old Player " had kept
so quietly in his grave, on the night of her
vigil, because he foresaw how soon and
terribly he would be avenged. But if that
benign spirit takes any care or cognizance
of such things now, he has surely requited
the injustice that she sought to do him —
the high justice that she really did — by a
tenderness of love and pity of which only
he could be capable. What matters it
though she called him by some other name ?

1 92 OUR OLD HOME

He had wrought a greater miracle on her
than on all the world besides. This bewil
dered enthusiast had recognized a depth in
the man whom she decried, which scholars,
critics, and learned societies, devoted to the
elucidation of his unrivaled scenes, had
never imagined to exist there. She had
paid him the loftiest honor that all these
ages of renown have been able to accumu
late upon his memory. And when, not
many months after the outward failure of
her lifelong object, she passed into the
better world, I know not why we should
hesitate to believe that the immortal poet
may have met her on the threshold and led
her in, reassuring her with friendly and
comfortable words, and thanking her (yet
with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at
the thought of certain mistaken specula
tions) for having interpreted him to man
kind so well.

I believe that it has been the fate of this
remarkable book never to have had more
than a single reader. I myself am ac
quainted with it only in insulated chapters
and scattered pages and paragraphs. But,
since my return to America, a young man
of genius and enthusiasm has assured me
that he has positively read the book from

A GIFTED WOMAN

193

beginning to end, and is completely a con.
vert to its doctrines. It belongs to him,
therefore, and not to me, — whom, in al
most the last letter that I received from
her, she declared unworthy to meddle with
her work, — it belongs surely to this one
individual, who has done her so much jus
tice as to know what she wrote, to place
Miss Bacon in her due position before the
public and posterity.

This has been too sad a story. To lighten
the recollection of it, I will think of my
stroll homeward past Charlecote Park,
where I beheld the most stately elms,
singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered
all about in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest
fashion ; so that I could not but believe in
lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoyment
which these trees must have in their ex
istence. Diffused over slow-paced cen
turies, it need not be keen nor bubble into
thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary
delights of short-lived human beings. They
were civilized trees, known to man, and
befriended by him for ages past. There is
an indescribable difference — as I believe I
have heretofore endeavored to express —
between the tamed, but by no means effete
(on the contrary, the richer and more lux-

194 OUR OLD

uriant), nature of England, and the rude,
shaggy, barbarous nature which offers us
its racier companionship in America. No
less a change has been wrought among the
wildest creatures that inhabit what the
English call their forests. By and by,
among those refined and venerable trees, I
saw a large herd of deer, mostly reclining,
but some standing in picturesque groups,
while the stags threw their large antlers
aloft, as if they had been taught to make
themselves tributary to the scenic effect.
Some were running fleetly about, vanishing
from light into shadow and glancing forth
again, with here and there a little fawn
careering at its mother's heels. These
deer are almost in the same relation to the
wild, natural state of their kind that the
trees of an English park hold to the rugged
growth of an American forest. They have
held a certain intercourse with man for im
memorial years ; and, most probably, the
stag that Shakespeare killed was one of
the progenitors of this very herd, and may
himself have been a partly civilized and
humanized deer, though in a less degree
than these remote posterity. They are a
little wilder than sheep, but they do not
snuff the air at the approach of human be-

A GIFTED WOMAN 195

ings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty
close proximity ; although if you continue
to advance, they toss their heads and take
to their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or
something akin to feminine skittishness,
with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it
were, of their having come of a wild stock.
They have so long been fed and protected d
by man, that they must have lost many of
their native instincts, and, I suppose, could
not live comfortably through even an Eng
lish winter without human help. One is
sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such
dependency, but feels none the less kindly
disposed towards the half -domesticated
race ; and it may have been his observation
of these tamer characteristics in the Char-
lecote herd that suggested to Shakespeare
the tender and pitiful description of a
wounded stag, in "As You Like It."

At a distance of some hundreds of yards
from Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by
the trees between it and the roadside, is an
old brick archway and porter's lodge. In
connection with this entrance there appears
to have been a wall and an ancient moat,
the latter of which is still visible, a shallow,
grassy scoop along the base of an embank
ment of the lawn. About fifty yards with-

196 OUR OLD HOME

in the gateway stands the house, forming
three sides of a square, with three gables
in a row on the front, and on each of the
two wings ; and there are several towers
and turrets at the angles, together with
projecting windows, antique balconies, and
other quaint ornaments suitable to the half-
Gothic taste in which the edifice was built.
Over the gateway is the Lucy coat of arms,
emblazoned in its proper colors. The
mansion dates from the early days of Eliza
beth, and probably looked very much the
same as now when Shakespeare was brought
before Sir Thomas Lucy for outrages among
his deer. The impression is not that of
gray antiquity, but of stable and time-hon
ored gentility, still as vital as ever.

It is a most delightful place. All about
the house and domain there is a perfection
of comfort and domestic taste, an amplitude
of convenience, which could have been
brought about only by the slow ingenuity
and labor of many successive generations,
intent upon adding all possible improve
ment to the home where years gone by and
years to come give a sort of permanence to
the intangible present. An American is
sometimes tempted to fancy that only by
this long process can real homes be pro-

A GIFTED WOMAN 197

duced.1 One man's lifetime is not enough
for the accomplishment of such a work of
art and nature, almost the greatest merely
temporary one that is confided to him ; too
little, at any rate, — yet perhaps too long
when he is discouraged by the idea that he
must make his house warm and delightful
for a miscellaneous race of successors, of
whom the one thing certain is, that his
own grandchildren will not be among them.
Such repinings as are here suggested, how
ever, come only from the fact that, bred in
English habits of thought, as most of us
are, we have not yet modified our instincts
to the necessities of our new forms of life.
A lodging in a wigwam or under a tent
has really as many advantages, when we

1 It is a wonder to behold — and it is always a new
wonder to me — how comfortable Englishmen know how
to make themselves ; locating their dwellings far within
private grounds, with secure gateways and porters'
lodges, and the smoothest roads, and trimmest paths, and
shaven lawns, and clumps of trees, and every bit of the
ground, every hill and dell, made the most of for conven
ience and beauty, and so well kept that even winter can
not cause disarray ; and all this appropriated to the same
family for generations, so that I suppose they come to
believe it created exclusively and on purpose for them.
And, really, the result is good and beautiful. It is a
home, — an institution which we Americans have not ;
but then I doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home
in this world, in so full a sense. — I. 558.

198 OUR OLD HOME

come to know them, as a home beneath the
roof-tree of Charlecote Hall. But, alas ! our
philosophers have not yet taught us what
is best, nor have our poets sung us what is
beautifullest, in the kind of life that we
must lead ; and therefore we still read the
old English wisdom, and harp upon the
ancient strings. And thence it happens
that, when we look at a time-honored hall,
it seems more possible for men who inherit
such a home, than for ourselves, to lead
noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good
and lovely things as their daily work, and
achieving deeds of simple greatness when
circumstances require them. I sometimes
apprehend that our institutions may perish
before we shall have discovered the most
precious of the possibilities which they
involve.

V.

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

AFTER my first visit to Leamington Spa,
I went by an indirect route to Lichfield,
and put up at the Black Swan. Had I
known where to find it, I would much rather
have established myself at the inn formerly
kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous
for his ale in Farquhar's time. The Black
Swan is an old-fashioned hotel, its street-
front being penetrated by an arched pas
sage, in either side of which is an entrance-
door to the different parts of the house,
and through which, and over the large
stones of its pavement, all vehicles and
horsemen rumble and clatter into an in
closed court-yard, with a thunderous uproar
among the contiguous rooms and chambers.
I appeared to be the only guest of the spa
cious establishment, but may have had a
few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate
parlors, and utterly eschewing that com
munity of interests which is the character
istic feature of life in an American hotel.

200 OUR OLD HOME

At any rate, I had the great, dull, dingy,
and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old
mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself,
and not a soul to exchange a word with,
except the waiter, who, like most of his
class in England, had evidently left his
conversational abilities uncultivated. No
former practice of solitary living, nor hab
its of reticence, nor well-tested self-depen
dence for occupation of mind and amuse
ment, can quite avail, as I now proved, to
dissipate the ponderous gloom of an Eng
lish coffee-room under such circumstances
as these, with no book at hand save the
county directory, nor any newspaper but a
torn local journal of five days ago. So I
buried myself, betimes, in a huge heap of
ancient feathers (there is no other kind of
bed in these old inns), let my head sink
into an unsubstantial pillow, and slept a
stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmen
tary confusion of dreams that I took them
to be a medley, compounded of the night
troubles of all my predecessors in that same
unrestful couch. And when I awoke, the
musty odor of a by-gone century was in
my nostrils, — a faint, elusive smell, of
which I never had any conception before
crossing the Atlantic.

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 2OI

In the morning, after a mutton-chop and
a cup of chiccory in the dusky coffee-room,
I went forth and bewildered myself a little
while among the crooked streets, in quest
of one or two objects that had chiefly at
tracted me to the spot. The city is of very
ancient date, and its name in the old Saxon
tongue has a dismal import that would ap
ply well, in these days and forever hence
forward, to many an unhappy locality in
our native land. Lichfield signifies "The
Field of the Dead Bodies," — an epithet,'
however, which the town did not assume in
remembrance of a battle, but which prob
ably sprung up by a natural process, like a
sprig of rue or other funereal weed, out of
the graves of two princely brothers, sons of
a pagan king of Mercia, who were converted
by St. Chad, and afterwards martyred for
their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was
but little interested in the legends of the
remote antiquity of Lichfield, being drawn
thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral,
and still more, I believe, because it was the
birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose
sturdy English character I became ac
quainted, at a very early period of my life,
through the good offices of Mr. Boswell
In truth, he seems as familiar to my recol-

2O2 OUR OLD HOME

lection, and almost as vivid in his personal
aspect to my mind's eye, as the kindly
figure of my own grandfather. It is only a
solitary child, — left much to such wild
modes of culture as he chooses for himself
while yet ignorant what culture means,
standing on tiptoe to pull down books from
no very lofty shelf, and then shutting him
self up, as it were, between the leaves,
going astray through the volume at his
own pleasure, and comprehending it rather
by his sensibilities and affections than his
intellect, — that child is the only student
that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I
am now thinking of with a literary person
age. I do not remember, indeed, ever car
ing much about any of the stalwart Doctor's
grandiloquent productions, except his two
stern and masculine poems, " London,"
and " The Vanity of Human Wishes ; " it
was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that
I knew and loved him, appreciating many
of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly
than I do now, though never seeking to put
my instinctive perception of his character
into language.

Beyond all question, I might have had a
wiser friend than he. The atmosphere in
which alone he breathed was dense; his

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 203

awful dread of death showed how much
muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out
of him, before he could be capable of spir
itual existence ; he meddled only with the
'surface of life, and never cared to penetrate
further than to ploughshare depth ; his
very sense and sagacity were but a one-
eyed clear-sightedness. I laughed at him,
sometimes, standing beside his knee. And
yet, considering that my native propensities
were towards Fairy Land, and also how
much yeast is generally mixed up with the
mental sustenance of a New Englander, it
may not have been altogether amiss, in
those childish and boyish days, to keep pace
with this heavy-footed traveler, and feed
on the gross diet that he carried in his
knapsack. It is wholesome food even now.
And, then, how English ! Many of the
latent sympathies that enabled me to 'enjoy
the Old Country so well, and that so readily
amalgamated themselves with the Ameri
can ideas that seemed most adverse to them,
may have been derived from, or fostered
and kept alive by, the great English moral
ist. Never was a descriptive epithet more
nicely appropriate than that! Dr. John
son's morality was as English an article as
a beefsteak.

204 OUR OLD HOME

The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral
towns are called cities in England) stands
on an ascending site. It has not so many
old gabled houses as Coventry, for example,
but still enough to gratify an American
appetite for the antiquities of domestic
architecture. The people, too, have an old-
fashioned way with them, and stare at the
passing visitor, as if the railway had not
yet quite accustomed them to the novelty
of strange faces moving along their ancient
sidewalks. The old women whom I met,
in several instances, dropt me a courtesy ;
and as they were of decent and comfortable
exterior, and kept quietly on their way
without pause or further greeting, it cer
tainly was not allowable to interpret their
little act of respect as a modest method
of asking for sixpence ; so that I had the
pleasure of considering it a remnant of the
reverential and hospitable manners of elder
times, when the rare presence of a stranger
might be deemed worth a general acknow
ledgment. Positively, coming from such
humble sources, I took it all the more as a
welcome on behalf of the inhabitants, and
would not have exchanged it for an invita
tion from the mayor and magistrates to a
public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for the

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 205

experiment's sake, that I could have em
boldened myself to hold out the aforesaid
sixpence to at least one of the old ladies.

In my wanderings about town, I came to
an artificial piece of water, called the Min
ster Pool. It fills the immense cavity in a
ledge of rock, whence the building materials
of the cathedral were quarried out a great
many centuries ago. I should never have
guessed the little lake to be of man's crea
tion, so very pretty and quietly picturesque
an object has it grown to be, with its green
banks, and the old trees hanging over its
glassy surface, in which you may see re
flected some of the battlements of the
majestic structure that once lay here in
unshaped stone. Some little children stood
on the edge of the pool, angling with pin-
hooks ; and the scene reminded me (though
really, to be quite fair with the reader, the
gist of the analogy has now escaped me) of
that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights,
which had once been a palace and a city,
and where a fisherman used to pull out the
former inhabitants in the guise of enchant
ed fishes. There is no need of fanciful
associations to make the spot interesting.
It was in the porch of one of the houses,
in the street that runs beside the Minster

206 OUR OLD HOME

Pool, that Lord Brooke was slain, in the
time of the Parliamentary war, by a shot
from the battlements of the cathedral,
which was then held by the Royalists as a
fortress. The incident is commemorated
by an inscription on a stone, inlaid into the
wall of the house.

I know not what rank the Cathedral of
Lichfield holds among its sister edifices in
England, as a piece of magnificent archi
tecture. Except that of Chester (the grim
and simple nave of which stands yet unri
valed in my memory), and one or two
small ones in North Wales, hardly worthy
of the name of cathedrals, it was the first
that I had seen. To my uninstructed vision,
it seemed the object best worth gazing at
in the whole world ; and now, after behold
ing a great many more, I remember it with
less prodigal admiration only because others
are as magnificent as itself. The traces re
maining in my memory represent it as airy
rather than massive. A multitude of beau
tiful shapes appeared to be comprehended
within its single outline ; it was a kind of
kaleidoscopic mystery, so rich a variety of
aspects did it assume from each altered
point of view, through the presentation of
a different face, and the rearrangement of

LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 2O/

its peaks and pinnacles and the three battle-
mented towers, with the spires that shot
heavenward from all three, but one loftier
than its fellows. Thus it impressed you,
at every change, as a newly created struc
ture of the passing moment, in which yet
you lovingly recognized the half-vanished
structure of the instant before, and felt,
moreover, a joyful faith in the indestructible
existence of all this cloudlike vicissitude.
A Gothic cathedral is surely the most won
derful work which mortal man has yet
achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so pro
foundly simple, with such strange, delight
ful recesses in its grand figure, so difficult
to comprehend within one idea, and yet all
so consonant that it ultimately draws the
beholder and his universe into its harmony.
It is the only thing in the world that is
vast enough and rich enough.

Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an
unmingled enjoyment in gazing at this
wonder. I could not elevate myself to its
spiritual height, any more than I could have
climbed from the ground to the summit of
one of its pinnacles. Ascending but a
little way, I continually fell back and lay in
a kind of despair, conscious that a flood of
uncomprehended beauty was pouring down

208 OUR OLD HOME

upon me, of which I could appropriate only
the minutest portion. After a hundred
years, incalculably as my higher sympathies
might be invigorated by so divine an em
ployment, I should still be a gazer from
below and at an awful distance, as yet re
motely excluded from the interior mystery.
But it was something gained, even to have
that painful sense of my own limitations,
and that half-smothered yearning to soar
beyond them. The cathedral showed me
how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply
of immortality. After all, this was prob
ably the best lesson that it could bestow,
and, taking it as thoroughly as possible
home to my heart, I was fain to be content.
If the truth must be told, my ill-trained
enthusiasm soon flagged, and I began to
lose the vision of a spiritual or ideal edifice
behind the time-worn and weather-stained
front of the actual structure. Whenever
that is the case, it is most reverential to
look another way ; but the mood disposes
one to minute investigation, and I took
advantage of it to examine the intricate
and multitudinous adornment that was lav
ished on the exterior wall of this great
church. Everywhere, there were empty
niches where statues had been thrown

LICHFTELD AND UTTOXETER 20Q

down, and here and there a statue still
lingered in its niche ; and over the chief
entrance, and extending across the whole
breadth of the building, was a row of an
gels, sainted personages, martyrs, and kings,
sculptured in reddish stone. Being much
corroded by the moist English atmosphere,
during four or five hundred winters that
they had stood there, these benign and
majestic figures perversely put me in mind
of the appearance of a sugar image, after a
child has been holding it in his mouth.
The venerable infant Time has evidently
found them sweet morsels.

Inside of the minster there is a long and
lofty nave, transepts of the same height,
and side-aisles and chapels, dim nooks of
holiness, where in Catholic times the lamps
were continually burning before the richly
decorated shrines of saints. In the auda
city of my ignorance, as I humbly acknow
ledge it to have been, I criticised this great
interior as too much broken into compart
ments, and shorn of half its rightful impres-
siveness by the interposition of a screen
betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not
spread itself in breadth, but ascended to
the roof in lofty narrowness. One large
body of worshipers might have knelt down

210 OUR OLD HOME

in the nave, others in each of the transepts,
and smaller ones in the side-aisles, besides
an indefinite number of esoteric enthusiasts
in the mysterious sanctities beyond the
screen. Thus it seemed to typify the ex-
clusiveness of sects, rather than the world
wide hospitality of genuine religion. I had
imagined a cathedral with a scope more
vast. These Gothic aisles, with their
groined arches overhead, supported by
clustered pillars in long vistas up and down,
were venerable and magnificent, but in
cluded too much of the twilight of that
monkish gloom out of which they grew.
It is no matter whether I ever came to a
more satisfactory appreciation of this kind
of architecture ; the only value of my stric
tures being to show the folly of looking at
noble objects in the wrong mood, and the
absurdity of a new visitant pretending to
hold any opinion whatever on such subjects,
instead of surrendering himself to the old
builder's influence with childlike simplicity.
A great deal of white marble decorates
the old stonework of the aisles, in the
shape of altars, obelisks, sarcophagi, and
busts. Most of these memorials are com
memorative of people locally distinguished,
especially the deans and canons of the

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 211

cathedral, with their relatives and families;
and I found but two monuments of person
ages whom I had ever heard of, — one be
ing Gilbert Walmesley and the other Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, a literary acquain
tance of my boyhood. It was really pleas
ant to meet her there ; for after a friend
has lain in the grave far into the second
century, she would be unreasonable to re
quire any melancholy emotions in a chance
interview at her tombstone. It adds a
rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-
honored custom of burial in churches, after
a few years, at least, when the mortal re
mains have turned to dust beneath the
pavement, and the quaint devices and in
scriptions still speak to you above. The
statues, that stood or reclined in several
recesses of the cathedral, had a kind of
life, and I regarded them with an odd sort
of deference, as if they were privileged
denizens of the precinct. It was singular,
too, how the memorial of the latest buried
person, the man whose features were famil
iar in the streets of Lichfield only yes
terday, seemed precisely as much at
home here as his mediaeval predecessors.
Henceforward he belonged to the cathe
dral like one of its original pillars. Me-

212 OUR OLD HOME

thought this impression in my fancy might
be the shadow of a spiritual fact. The
dying melt into the great multitude of the
Departed as quietly as a drop of water into
the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of
no unfamiliarity with their new circum
stances, but immediately become aware of
an insufferable strangeness in the world
which they have quitted. Death has not
taken them away, but brought them home.
The vicissitudes and mischances of sub
lunary affairs, however, have not ceased to
attend upon these marble inhabitants ; for
I saw the upper fragment of a sculptured
lady, in a very old - fashioned garb, the
lower half of whom had doubtless been de
molished by Cromwell's soldiers when they
took the minster by storm. And there
lies the remnant of this devout lady on her
slab, ever since the outrage, as for cen
turies before, with a countenance of divine
serenity, and her hands clasped in prayer,
symbolizing a depth of religious faith which
no earthly turmoil or calamity could dis
turb. Another piece of sculpture (appar
ently a favorite subject in the Middle Ages,
for I have seen several like it in other
cathedrals) was a reclining skeleton, as
faithfully representing an open - work of

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 21$

bones as could well be expected in a solid
block of marble, and at a period, moreover,
when the mysteries of the human frame
were rather to be guessed at than re
vealed. Whatever the anatomical defects
of his production, the old sculptor had
succeeded in making it ghastly beyond
measure. How much mischief has been
wrought upon us by this invariable gloom
of the Gothic imagination ; flinging itself
like a death-scented pall over our concep
tions of the future state, smothering our
hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal
efforts to raise the harvest of immortality
out of what is most opposite to it, — the
grave !

The cathedral service is performed twice
every day : at ten o'clock and at four.
When I first entered, the choristers (young
and old, but mostly, I think, boys, with
voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and
as fresh as bird-notes) were just winding
up their harmonious labors, and soon came
thronging through a side-door from the
chancel into the nave. They were all
dressed in long white robes, and looked
like a peculiar order of beings, created on
purpose to hover between the roof and
pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice,

214 OUR OLD

and illuminate it with divine melodies,
reposing themselves, meanwhile, on the
heavy grandeur of the organ tones like
cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once,
however, one of the cherubic multitude
pulled off his white gown, thus transform
ing himself before my very eyes into a
commonplace youth of the day, in modern
frockcoat and trousers of a decidedly pro
vincial cut. This absurd little incident,
I verily believe, had a sinister effect in
putting me at odds with the proper in
fluences of the cathedral, nor could I quite
recover a suitable frame of mind during
my stay there. But, emerging into the
open air, I began to be sensible that I had
left a magnificent interior behind me, and
I have never quite lost the perception
and enjoyment of it in these intervening
years.

A large space in the immediate neigh
borhood of the cathedral is called the Close,
and comprises beautifully kept lawns and
a shadowy walk bordered by the dwellings
of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the dio
cese. All this row of episcopal, canonical,
and clerical residences has an air of the
deepest quiet, repose, and well-protected
though not inaccessible seclusion. They

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 21$

seemed capable of including everything
that a saint could desire, and a great many
more things than most of us sinners gen
erally succeed in acquiring. Their most
marked feature is a dignified comfort, look
ing as if no disturbance or vulgar intru-
siveness could ever cross their thresholds,
encroach upon their ornamented lawns, or
straggle into the beautiful gardens that
surround them with flower-beds and rich
clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal pal
ace is a stately mansion of stone, built
somewhat in the Italian style, and bearing
on its front the figures 1687, as the date
of its erection. A large edifice of brick,
which, if I remember, stood next to the
palace, I took to be the residence of the
second dignitary of the cathedral ; and, in
that case, it must have been the youthful
home of Addison, whose father was Dean
of Lichfield. I tried to fancy his figure
on the delightful walk that extends in
front of those priestly abodes, from which
and the interior lawns it is separated by
an open-work iron fence, lined with rich
old shrubbery, and overarched by a min
ster-aisle of venerable trees. This path is
haunted by the shades of famous person
ages who have formerly trodden it. John-

2l6 OUR OLD HOME

son must have been familiar with it, both
as a boy and, in his subsequent visits to
Lichfield, an illustrious old man. Miss
Seward, connected with so many literary
reminiscences, lived in one of the adjacent
houses. Tradition says that it was a fa
vorite spot of Major Andre, who used to
pace to and fro under these trees, waiting,
perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of
Honoria Sneyd, before he crossed the
ocean to encounter his dismal doom from
an American court-martial. David Garrick,
no doubt, scampered along the path in his
boyish days, and, if he was an early stu
dent of the drama, must often have thought
of those two airy characters of the " Beaux'
Stratagem," Archer and Aimwell, who, on
this very ground, after attending service at
the cathedral, contrive to make acquain
tance with the ladies of the comedy. These
creatures of mere fiction have as positive
a substance now as the sturdy old figure of
Johnson himself. They live, while reali
ties have died. The shadowy walk still
glistens with their gold -embroidered mem
ories.

Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found
it in St. Mary's Square, which is not so
much a square as the mere widening of a

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 21?

street. The house is tall and thin, of three
stories, with a square front and a roof ris
ing steep and high. On a side-view, the
building looks as if it had been cut in two
in the midst, there being no slope of the
roof on that side. A ladder slanted against
the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier
hue to the plaster. In a corner room of
the basement, where old Michael Johnson
may be supposed to have sold books, is
now what we should call a dry-goods store,
or, according to the English phrase, a
mercer's and haberdasher's shop. The
house has a private entrance on a cross-
street, the door being accessible by several
much-worn stone steps, which are bordered
by an iron balustrade. I set my foot on
the steps and laid my hand on the balus
trade, where Johnson's hand and foot must
many a time have been, and ascending
to the door, I knocked once, and again,
and again, and got no admittance. Going
round to the shop-entrance, I tried to open
it, but found it as fast bolted as the gate
of Paradise. It is mortifying to be so
balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but
looking round in quest of somebody to
make inquiries of, I was a good deal con
soled by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself,

2l8 OUR OLD HOME

who happened, just at that moment, to be
sitting at his ease nearly in the middle of
St. Mary's Square, with his face turned
towards his father's house.

Of course, it being almost fourscore
years since the Doctor laid aside his weary
bulk of flesh, together with the ponderous
melancholy that had so long weighed him
down, the intelligent reader will at once
comprehend that he was marble in his sub
stance, and seated in a marble chair, on
an elevated stone pedestal. In short, it
was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and
placed here in 1838, at the expense of
Dr. Law, the reverend chancellor of the
diocese.

The figure is colossal (though perhaps
not much more so than the mountainous
Doctor himself), and looks down upon the
spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve
feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity
of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua
Reynolds's portrait of Johnson, but calmer
and sweeter in expression. Several big
books are piled up beneath his chair, and,
if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his
hand, thus blinking forth at the world out
of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet be
nevolent at heart. The statue is immensely

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 219

massive, a vast ponderosity of stone, not
finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully human
ized, but rather resembling a great stone
bowlder than a man. You must look with
the eyes of faith and sympathy, or, possibly,
you might lose the human being altogether,
and find only a big stone within your men
tal grasp.1 On the pedestal are three bas-
reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented
as hardly more than a baby, bestriding an
old man's shoulders, resting his chin on the
bald head, which he embraces with his
little arms, and listening earnestly to the
High-Church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell.
In the second tablet, he is seen riding to
school on the shoulders of two of his com
rades, while another boy supports him in
the rear.

The third bas-relief possesses, to my
mind, a great deal of pathos, to which my
appreciative faculty is probably the more

1 Against one of the pillars [in St. Paul's Cathedral]
stands a statue of Dr. Johnson, — a noble and thought
ful figure, with a development of muscle befitting an
athlete. I doubt whether sculptors do not err in point
of taste, by making all their statues models of physical
perfection, instead of expressing by them the individual
character and habits of the man. The statue in the
market-place at Lichfield has more of the homely truth
of Johnson's actual personality than this. — II. 117.

220 OUR OLD HOME

alive, because I have always been pro
foundly impressed by the incident here
commemorated, and long ago tried to tell
it for the behoof of childish readers. It
shows Johnson in the market-place of Ut-
toxeter, doing penance for an act of diso
bedience to his father, committed fifty
years before. He stands bareheaded, a
venerable figure, and a countenance ex
tremely sad and woe-begone, with the wind
and rain driving hard against him, and thus
helping to suggest to the spectator the
gloom of his inward state. Some market-
people and children gaze awe-stricken into
his face, and an aged man and woman, with
clasped and uplifted hands, seem to be pray
ing for him. These latter personages
(whose introduction by the artist is none
the less effective, because, in queer prox
imity, there are some commodities of
market-day in the shape of living ducks
and dead poultry) I interpreted to represent
the spirits of Johnson's father and mother,
lending what aid they could to lighten his
half-century's burden of remorse.

I had never heard of the above-described
piece of sculpture before ; it appears to
have no reputation as a work of art, nor
am I at all positive that it deserves any.

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 221

For me, however, it did as much as sculpture
could, under the circumstances, even if the
artist of the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it,
by reviving my interest in the sturdy old
Englishman, and particularly by freshening
my perception of a wonderful beauty and
pathetic tenderness in the incident of the
penance. So, the next day, I left Lichfield
for Uttoxeter, on one of the few purely
sentimental pilgrimages that I ever under
took, to see the very spot where Johnson
had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the
town (its name is pronounced Yuteoxeter)
as being about nine miles off from Lich
field, but the county map would indicate a
greater distance ; and by rail, passing from
one line to another, it is as much as eighteen
miles. I have always had an idea of old
Michael Johnson sending his literary mer
chandise by carrier's wagon, journeying to
Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morning,
selling books through the busy hours, and
returning to Lichfield at night. This
could not possibly have been the case.

Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the
first objects that I saw, with a green field
or two between them and me, were the
tower and gray steeple of a church, rising
among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered

222 OUR OLD HOME

trees. A very short walk takes you from
the station up into the town. It had been
my previous impression that the market
place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round
about the church ; and, if I remember the
narrative aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his
behalf, describes his father's book-stall as
standing in the market-place, close beside
the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me
to say what changes may have occurred in
the topography of the town, during almost
a century and a half since Michael Johnson
retired from business, and ninety years,
at least, since his son's penance was per
formed. But the church has now merely
a street of ordinary width passing around
it, while the market-place, though near at
hand, neither forms a part of it nor is really
contiguous, nor would its throng and bustle
be apt to overflow their boundaries and
surge against the churchyard and the old
gray tower. Nevertheless, a walk of a
minute or two brings a person from the
centre of the market-place to the church
door ; and Michael Johnson might very
conveniently have located his stall and laid
out his literary ware in the corner at the
tower's base ; better there, indeed, than in
the busy centre of an agricultural market.

LI CH FIELD AND UTTOXETER 22 3

But the picturesque arrangement and full
impressiveness of the story absolutely re
quire that Johnson shall not have done his
penance in a corner, ever so little retired,
but shall have been the very nucleus of the
crowd, — the midmost man of the market
place, — a central image of Memory and
Remorse, contrasting with and overpower
ing the petty materialism around him. He
himself, having the force to throw vitality
and truth into what persons differently
constituted might reckon a mere external
ceremony, and an absurd one, could not
have failed to see this necessity. I am re
solved, therefore, that the true site of Dr.
Johnson's penance was in the middle of
the market-place.

That important portion of the town is
a rather spacious and irregularly shaped
vacuity, surrounded by houses and shops,
some of them old, with red-tiled roofs, others
wearing a pretense of newness, but prob
ably as old in their inner substance as the
rest. The people of Uttoxeter seemed
very idle in the warm summer-day, and were
scattered in little groups along the side
walks, leisurely chatting with one another,
and often turning about to take a deliberate
stare at my humble self ; insomuch that I

224 OUR OLD HOME

felt as if my genuine sympathy for the il
lustrious penitent, and my many reflections
about him, must have imbued me with some
of his own singularity of mien. If their
great-grandfathers were such redoubtable
starers in the Doctor's day, his penance
was no light one. This curiosity indicates
a paucity of visitors to the little town, ex
cept for market purposes, and I question if
Uttoxeter ever saw an American before.
The only other thing that greatly impressed
me was the abundance of public-houses, one
at every step or two : Red Lions, White
Harts, Bulls' Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys,
and I know not what besides. These are
probably for the accommodation of the
farmers and peasantry of the neighborhood
on market-day, and content themselves with
a very meagre business on other days of
the week. At any rate, I was the only
guest in Uttoxeter at the period of my visit,
and had but an infinitesimal portion of
patronage to distribute among such a multi
tude of inns. The reader, however, will
possibly be scandalized to learn what was
the first, and, indeed, the only important
affair that I attended to, after coming so
far to indulge a solemn and high emotion,
and standing now on the very spot where

LIC H FIELD AND UTTOXETER 22$

my pious errand should have been consum
mated. I stepped into one of the rustic
hostelries and got my dinner, — bacon and
greens, some mutton-chops, juicier and
more delectable than all America could
serve up at the President's table, and a
gooseberry pudding ; a sufficient meal for
six yeomen, and good enough for a prince,
besides a pitcher of foaming ale, the whole
at the pitiful small charge of eighteen-
pence !

Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me,
for nobody had a heartier faith in beef and
mutton than himself. And as regards my
lack of sentiment in eating my dinner, —
it was the wisest thing I had done that
day. A sensible man had better not let
himself be betrayed into these attempts to
realize the things which he has dreamed
about, and which, when they cease to be
purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the
truest of their truth, the loftiest and pro-
foundest part of their power over his sym
pathies. Facts, as we really find them,
whatever poetry they may involve, are cov
ered with a stony excrescence of prose,
resembling the crust on a beautiful sea-
shell, and they never show their most del
icate and divinest colors until we shall

226 OUR OLD HOME

have dissolved away their grosser actuali
ties by steeping them long in a powerful
menstruum of thought. And seeking to
actualize them again, we do but renew the
crust. If this were otherwise, — if the
moral sublimity of a great fact depended
in any degree on its garb of external cir
cumstances, things which change and de
cay, — it could not itself be immortal and
ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time
and a little neighborhood would be spiritu
ally nourished by its grandeur and beauty.
Such were a few of the reflections which
I mingled with my ale, as I remember to
have seen an old quaffer of that excellent
liquor stir up his cup with a sprig of some
bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I
found myself still haunted by a desire to
get a definite result out of my visit to Ut-
toxeter. The hospitable inn was called the
Nag's Head, and, standing beside the mar
ket-place, was as likely as any other to
have entertained old Michael Johnson in
the days when he used to come hither to
sell books. He, perhaps, had dined on
bacon and greens, and drunk his ale, and
smoked his pipe, in the very room where
I now sat, which was a low, ancient room,
certainly much older than Queen Anne's

LIC H FIELD AND UTTOXETER 22/

time, with a red-brick floor, and a white
washed ceiling, traversed by bare, rough
beams, the whole in the rudest fashion,
but extremely neat. Neither did it lack
ornament, the walls being hung with col
ored engravings of prize oxen and other
pretty prints, and the mantelpiece adorned
with earthenware figures of shepherdesses
in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael
Johnson's eyes might have rested on that
self -same earthen image, to examine which
more closely I had just crossed the brick
pavement of the room. And, sitting down
again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced
through the open window into the sunny
market-place, and wished that I could hon
estly fix on one spot rather than another,
as likely to have been the holy site where
Johnson stood to do his penance.

How strange and stupid it is that tradi
tion should not have marked and kept in
mind the very place ! How shameful (noth
ing less than that) that there should be no
local memorial of this incident, as beautiful
and touching a passage as can be cited out
of any human life ! No inscription of it,
almost as sacred as. a verse of Scripture on
the wall of the church ! No statue of the
venerable and illustrious penitent in the

228 OUR OLD HOME

market-place to throw a wholesome awe
over its earthliness, its frauds and petty
wrongs, of which the benumbed fingers of
conscience can make no record, its selfish
competition of each man with his brother
or his neighbor, its traffic of soul-substance
for a little worldly gain ! Such a statue,
if the piety of the people did not raise it,
might almost have been expected to grow
up out of the pavement of its own accord
on the spot that had been watered by the
rain that dripped from Johnson's garments,
mingled with his remorseful tears.

Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was
told that there were individuals in the
town who could have shown me the exact,
indubitable spot where Johnson performed
his penance. I was assured, moreover,
that sufficient interest wras felt in the sub
ject to have induced certain local discus
sions as to the expediency of erecting a
memorial.1 With all deference to my

1 While I was sitting in the central saloon [at the
Manchester Art Exhibition], listening to the music, a
young man accosted me, presuming that I was so-and-
so, the American author. He himself was a traveler
for a publishing firm ; and he introduced conversation
by talking of Uttoxeter, and my description of it in
an annual. He said that the account had caused a
good deal of pique among the good people of Ut-

LIC H FIELD AND UTTOXETER 2 29

polite informant, I surmise that there is a
mistake, and decline, without further and
precise evidence, giving credit to either
of the above statements. The inhabitants
know nothing, as a matter of general in
terest, about the penance, and care noth
ing for the scene of it. If the clergyman
of the parish, for example, had ever heard
of it, would he not have used the theme
time and again, wherewith to work ten
derly and profoundly on the souls com
mitted to his charge ? If parents were
familiar with it, would they not teach it to
their young ones at the fireside, both to
insure reverence to their own gray hairs,
and to protect the children from such un
availing regrets as Johnson bore upon his
heart for fifty years ? If the site were as
certained, would not the pavement there
abouts be worn with reverential footsteps ?
Would not every town-born child be able

toxeter, because of the ignorance which I attribute to
them as to the circumstance which connects Johnson
with their town. The spot where Johnson stood can,
it appears, still be pointed out. It is on one side of
the market-place, and not in the neighborhood of the
church. I forget whether I recorded, at the time, that
an Uttoxeter newspaper was sent me, containing a pro
posal that a statue or memorial should be erected on
the spot. It would gratify me exceedingly if such a
result should come from my pious pilgrimage thither.

- n. 532.

230 OUR OLD HOME

to direct the pilgrim thither ? While wait
ing at the station, before my departure, I
asked a boy who stood near me, — an in
telligent and gentlemanly lad twelve or
thirteen years old, whom I should take to
be a clergyman's son, — I asked him if he
had ever heard the story of Dr. Johnson,
how he stood an hour doing penance near
that church, the spire of which rose before
us. The boy stared and answered, —

"No!"

" Were you born in Uttoxeter ? "

"Yes."

I inquired if no circumstance such as I
had mentioned was known or talked about
among the inhabitants.

" No," said the boy ; " not that I ever
heard of."

Just think of the absurd little town,
knowing nothing of the only memorable
incident which ever happened within its
boundaries since the old Britons built it,
this sad and lovely story, which conse
crates the spot (for I found it holy to my
contemplation, again, as soon as it lay be
hind me) in the heart of a stranger from
three thousand miles over the sea ! It but
confirms what I have been saying, that
sublime and beautiful facts are best un
derstood when etherealized by distance.

VI.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON

WE set out at a little past eleven, and
made our first stage to Manchester. We
were by this time sufficiently Anglicized
to reckon the morning a bright and sunny
one ; although the May sunshine was
mingled with water, as it were, and distem
pered with a very bitter east wind.

Lancashire is a dreary county (all, at
least, except its hilly portions), and I have
never passed through it without wishing
myself anywhere but in that particular spot
where I then happened to be. A few
places along our route were historically
interesting ; as, for example, Bolton, which
was the scene of many remarkable events in
the Parliamentary War, and in the market-
square of which one of the Earls of Derby
was beheaded. We saw, along the wayside,
the never-failing green fields, hedges, and
other monotonous features of an ordinary
English landscape. There were little fac
tory villages, too, or larger towns, with their

232 OUR OLD HOME

tall chimneys, and their pennons of black
smoke, their ugliness of brick-work, and
their heaps of refuse matter from the fur
nace, which seems to be the only kind of
stuff which Nature cannot take back to
herself and resolve into the elements, when
man has thrown it aside. These hillocks
of waste and effete mineral always disfigure
the neighborhood of ironmongering towns,
and, even after a considerable antiquity, are
hardly made decent with a little grass.

At a quarter to two we left Manchester
by the Sheffield and Lincoln Railway
The scenery grew rather better than that
through which we had hitherto passed,
though still by no means very striking ;
for (except in the show-districts, such as
the Lake country, or Derbyshire) English
scenery is not particularly well worth look
ing at, considered as a spectacle or a pic
ture. It has a real, homely charm of its
own, no doubt ; and the rich verdure, and
the thorough finish added by human art,
are perhaps as attractive to an American
eye as any stronger feature could be. Our
journey, however, between Manchester and
Sheffield was not through a rich tract of
country, but along a valley walled in by
bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 233

rampart, and across black moorlands with
here and there a plantation of trees. Some
times there were long and gradual ascents,
bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the
very impression which the reader gets from
many passages of Miss Bronte's novels, and
still more from those of her two sisters.
Old stone or brick farmhouses, and, once
in a while, an old church-tower, were visible ;
but these are almost too common objects
to be noticed in an English landscape.

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do
see of the country is seen quite amiss, be
cause it was never intended to be looked
at from any point of view in that straight
line ; so that it is like looking at the wrong
side of a piece of tapestry. The old high
ways and foot-paths were as natural as
brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves
by an inevitable impulse to the physiog
nomy of the country ; and, furthermore,
every object within view of them had some
subtile reference to their curves and undu
lations ; but the line of a railway is perfect
ly artificial, and puts all precedent things
at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the
cause what it may, there is seldom anything
worth seeing within the scope of a railway
traveler's eye ; and if there were, it re-

234 OUR OLD HOME

quires an alert marksman to take a flying
shot at the picturesque.

At one of the stations (it was near a vil
lage of ancient aspect, nestling round a
church, on a wide Yorkshire moor) I saw
a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have
just alighted from the train. She caught
my attention by a singular movement of
the head, not once only, but continually
repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she
were making a stern and solemn protest
against some action that developed itself
before her eyes, and were foreboding ter
rible disaster, if it should be persisted in.
Of course, it was nothing more than a par
alytic or nervous affection ; yet one might
fancy that it had its origin in some un
speakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime
ago in this old gentlewoman's presence,
either against herself or somebody whom
she loved still better. Her features had
a wonderful sternness, which, I presume,
was caused by her habitual effort to com
pose and keep them quiet, and thereby
counteract the tendency to paralytic move
ment. The slow, regular, and inexorable
character of the motion — her look of force
and self-control, which had the appearance
of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 235

so fateful — have stamped this poor lady's
face and gesture into my memory ; so that,
some dark day or other, I am afraid she
will reproduce herself in a dismal romance.

The train stopped a minute or two, to
allow the tickets to be taken, just before
entering the Sheffield station, and thence
I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors
and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its
own diffusing. My impressions of it are
extremely vague and misty, — or rather,
smoky : for Sheffield seems to me smokier
than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birming
ham, — smokier than all England besides,
unless Newcastle be the exception. It
might have been Pluto's own metropolis,
shrouded in sulphurous vapor ; and, indeed,
our approach to it had been by the Valley
of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel
three miles in length, quite traversing the
breadth and depth of a mountainous hill.

After passing Sheffield, the scenery be
came softer, gentler, yet more picturesque.
At one point we saw what I believe to be
the utmost northern verge of Sherwood
Forest, — not consisting, however, of thou
sand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's
days, but of young and thriving plantations,
which will require a century or two of slow

236 OUR OLD HOME

English growth to give them much breadth
of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies
in this neighborhood, and probably his
castle was hidden among some soft depth
of foliage not far off. Farther onward the
country grew quite level around us, where
by I judged that we must now be in Lin
colnshire ; and shortly after six o'clock we
caught the first glimpse of the cathedral
towers, though they loomed scarcely huge
enough for our preconceived idea of them.
But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice
began to assert itself, making us acknow
ledge it to be larger than our receptivity
could take in.

At the railway-station we found no cab
(it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln),
but only an omnibus belonging to the
Saracen's Head, which the driver recom
mended as the best hotel in the city, and
took us thither accordingly. It received us
hospitably, and looked comfortable enough ;
though, like the hotels of most old Eng
lish towns, it had a musty fragrance of an
tiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-
opened London church where the broad-
aisle is paved with tombstones. The house
was of an ancient fashion, the entrance
into its interior court-yard being through

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 237

an arch, in the side of which is the door of
the hotel. There are long corridors, an
intricate arrangement of passages, an up-
and-down meandering of staircases, amid
which it would be no marvel to encounter
some forgotten guest who had gone astray
a hundred years ago, and was still seeking
for his bedroom while the rest of his gen
eration were in their graves. There is no
exaggerating the confusion of mind that
seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering
geography of a great old-fashioned English
inn.

This hotel stands in the principal street
of Lincoln, and within a very short dis
tance of one of the ancient city -gates,
which is arched across the public way, with
a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either
side ; the whole, a gray, time-gnawn, pon
derous, shadowy structure, through the
dark vista of which you look into the Mid
dle Ages. The street is narrow, and re
tains many antique peculiarities ; though,
unquestionably, English domestic architec
ture has lost its most impressive features,
in the course of the last century. In this
respect, there are finer old towns than Lin
coln : Chester, for instance, and Shrews
bury, — which last is unusually rich in

238 OUR OLD HOME

those quaint and stately edifices where the
gentry of the shire used to make their
winter abodes, in a provincial metropolis.1

1 On this account I never knew such pleasant walk
ing as in old streets like those of Shrewsbury. And
there are passages opening under archways, and winding
up between high edifices, very tempting to the explorer,
and generally leading to some court, or some queer old
range of buildings or piece of architecture, which it
would be the greatest pity to miss seeing. ... I have
seen no such stately houses, in that style, as we found
here in Shrewsbury. There were no such fine ones in
Coventry, Stratford, Warwick, Chester, nor anywhere
else where we have been. Their stately height and spa
ciousness seem to have been owing to the fact that
Shrewsbury was a sort of metropolis of the country
round about, and therefore the neighboring gentry had
their town-houses there, when London was several days'
journey off, instead of a very few hours ; and, besides, it
was once much the resort of kings, and the centre-point
of great schemes of war and policy. One such house,
formerly belonging to a now extinct family, that of Ire
land, rises to the height of four stories, and has a front
consisting of what look like four projecting towers.
There are ranges of embowed windows, one above an
other, to the full height of the house, and these are sur
mounted by peaked gables. The people of those times
certainly did not deny themselves light ; and while win
dow-glass was an article of no very remote introduction,
, it was probably a point of magnificence and wealthy dis
play to have enough of it. One whole side of the room
must often have been formed by the window. This
Ireland mansion, as well as all the rest of the old houses
in Shrewsbury, is a timber house, — that is, a skeleton
of oak, filled up with brick, plaster, or other material,
and with the beams of the timber marked out with black

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 239

Almost everywhere, nowadays, there is a
monotony of modern brick or stuccoed
fronts, hiding houses that are older than
ever, but obliterating the picturesque an
tiquity of the street.

Between seven and eight o'clock (it be
ing still broad daylight in these long Eng
lish days) we set out to pay a preliminary
visit to the exterior of the cathedral. Pass
ing through the Stone Bow, as the city-
gate close by is called, we ascended a street
which grew steeper and narrower as we
advanced, till at last it got to be the steep
est street I ever climbed, — so steep that
any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle
downward much faster than it could pos
sibly be drawn up. Being almost the only
hill in Lincolnshire, the inhabitants seem
disposed to make the most of it. The

paint ; besides which, in houses of any pretension, there
are generally trefoils, and other Gothic-looking orna
ments, likewise painted black. They have an indescrib
able charm for me, — the more, I think, because they
are wooden ; but, indeed, I cannot tell why it is that I
like them so well, and am never tired of looking at
them. A street was a development of human life, in
the days when these houses were built, whereas a mod
ern street is but the cold plan of an architect, without
individuality or character, and without the human emo
tion which a man kneads into the walls which he builds
on a scheme of his own. — II. 82-84.

240 OUR OLD HOME

houses on each side had no very remark
able aspect, except one with a stone portal
and carved ornaments, which is now a
dwelling-place for poverty-stricken people,
but may have been an aristocratic abode
in the days of the Norman kings, to whom
its style of architecture dates back. This
is called the Jewess's House, having been
inhabited by a woman of that faith who
was hanged six hundred years ago.

And still the street grew steeper and
steeper. Certainly, the Bishop and clergy
of Lincoln ought not to be fat men, but of
very spiritual, saint-like, almost angelic,
habit, if it be a frequent part of their ec
clesiastical duty to climb this hill ; for it is
a real penance, and was probably performed
as such, and groaned over accordingly, in
monkish times. Formerly, on the day of
his installation, the Bishop used to ascend
the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered
and invigorated by looking upward to the
grandeur that was to console him for the
humility of his approach. We, likewise,
were beckoned onward by glimpses of the
cathedral towers ; and, finally, attaining
an open square on the summit, we saw an
old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and
another to the right. The latter had

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 24!

apparently been a part of the exterior de
fenses of the cathedral, at a time when the
edifice was fortified. The west front rose
behind. We passed through one of the
side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found
ourselves in the cathedral close, a wide,
level space, where the great old minster
has fair room to sit, looking down on the
ancient structures that surround it, all of
which, in former days, were the habitations
of its dignitaries and officers. Some of
them are still occupied as such, though
others are in too neglected and dilapidated
a state to seem worthy of so splendid
an establishment. Unless it be Salisbury
Close, however (which is incomparably rich
as regards the old residences that belong
to it), I remember no more comfortably pic
turesque precincts round any other cathe
dral. But, in truth, almost every cathe
dral close, in turn, has seemed to me the
loveliest, cosiest, safest, least wind-shaken,
most decorous, and most enjoyable shelter
that ever the thrift and selfishness of mor
tal man contrived for himself. How de
lightful, to combine all this with the service
of the temple ! 1

1 We now walked around the close [at Salis
bury], which is surrounded by some of the quaintest

242 OUR OLD HOME

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish
brownstone, which appears either to have
been largely restored, or else does not as
sume the hoary, crumbly surface that gives
such a venerable aspect to most of the an
cient churches and castles in England. In
many parts, the recent restorations are
quite evident ; but other, and much the
larger, portions can scarcely have been
touched for centuries : for there are still
the gargoyles, perfect, or with broken
noses, as the case may be, but showing

and comfortablest ecclesiastical residences that can be
imagined. These are the dwelling-houses of the Dean
and the canons, and whatever other high officers com
pose the Bishop's staff ; and there was one large brick
mansion, old, but not so ancient as the rest, which we
took to be the Bishop's palace. I never beheld any
thing — I must say again — so cosey, so indicative
•of domestic comfort for whole centuries together, —
houses so fit to live in or to die in, and where it
-would be so pleasant to lead a young wife beneath
the antique portal, and dwell with her till husband and
•wife were patriarchal, — as these delectable old houses.
They belong naturally to the cathedral, and have a ne
cessary relation to it, and its sanctity is somehow thrown
•over them all, .so that they do not quite belong to this
world, though they look full to overflowing of whatever
•earthly thangs are good for man. These are places,
"however, in which mankind makes no progress ; the
rrushing tumult of 'human life here subsides into a deep
quiet pool, with perhaps a gentle circular eddy, but no
onward movement. — II. 299.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 243

that variety and fertility of grotesque ex
travagance which no modern imitation can
effect. There are innumerable niches, too,
up the whole height of the towers, above
and around the entrance, and all over the
walls : most of them empty, but a few
containing the lamentable remnants of
headless saints and angels. It is singular
what a native animosity lives in the human
heart against carved images, insomuch that,
whether they represent Christian saint or
Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize
the first safe opportunity to knock off their
heads ! In spite of all dilapidations, how
ever, the effect of the west front of the
cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being
covered from massive base to airy summit
with the minutest details of sculpture and
carving : at least, it was so once ; and even
now the spiritual impression of its beauty
remains so strong, that we have to look
twice to see that much of it has been ob
literated. I have seen a cherry - stone
carved all over by a monk, so minutely
that it must have cost him half a lifetime
of labor ; and this cathedral-front seems to
have been elaborated in a monkish spirit,
like that cherry-stone. Not that the re
sult is in the least petty, but miraculously

244 OUR OLD

grand, and all the more so for the faithful
beauty of the smallest details.

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at
the west front, came to the door of an ad
jacent house, and called to inquire if we
wished to go into the cathedral ; but as
there would have been a dusky twilight
beneath its roof, like the antiquity that
has sheltered itself within, we declined for
the present. So we merely walked round
the exterior, and thought it more beautiful
than that of York ; though, on recollection,
I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as
that. It is vain to attempt a description,
or seek even to record the feeling which
the edifice inspires. It does not impress
the beholder as an inanimate object, but
as something that has a vast, quiet, long-
enduring life of its own, — a creation which
man did not build, though in some way or
other it is connected with him, and kindred
to human nature. In short, I fall straight
way to talking nonsense, when I try to ex
press my inner sense of this and other
cathedrals.

While we stood in the close, at the east
ern end of the minster, the clock chimed
the quarters ; and then Great Tom, who
hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 245

eight o'clock, in far the sweetest and might
iest accents that I ever heard from any
bell, — slow, and solemn, and allowing the
profound reverberations of each stroke to
die away before the next one fell. It was
still broad daylight in that upper region of
the town, and would be so for some time
longer ; but the evening atmosphere was
getting sharp and cool. We therefore de
scended the steep street, — our younger
companion running before us, and gather
ing such headway that I fully expected him
to break his head against some projecting
wall.

In the morning we took a fly (an English
term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle),
and drove up to the minster by a road
rather less steep and abrupt than the one
we had previously climbed. We alighted
before the west front, and sent our chariot
eer in quest of the verger ; but, as he was
not immediately to be found, a young girl
let us into the nave. We found it very
grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand,
methought, as the vast nave of York Min
ster, especially beneath the great central
tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends
a professedly architectural description,
there is but one set of phrases in which to

246 OUR OLD HOME

talk of all the cathedrals in England and
elsewhere. They are alike in their great
features : an acre or two of stone flags for
a pavement ; rows of vast columns support
ing a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great
windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with
ancient or modern stained glass ; and an
elaborately carved screen between the nave
and chancel, breaking the vista that might
else be of such glorious length, and which
is further choked up by a massive organ, —
in spite of which obstructions you catch
the broad, variegated glimmer of the paint
ed east window, where a hundred saints
wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind
the screens are the carved oaken stalls of
the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's
throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever
else may furnish out the Holy of Holies.
Nor must we forget the range of chapels
(once dedicated to Catholic saints, but
which have now lost their individual conse
cration), nor the old monuments of kings,
warriors, and prelates, in the side-aisles of
the chancel. In close contiguity to the
main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-
House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salis
bury, is supported by one central pillar
rising from the floor, and putting forth

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 247

branches like a tree, to hold up the roof.
Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the
cloisters, extending round a quadrangle,
and paved with lettered tombstones, the
more antique of which have had their in
scriptions half obliterated by the feet of
monks taking their noontide exercise in
these sheltered walks, five hundred years
ago. Some of these old burial-stones, al
though with ancient crosses engraved upon
them, have been made to serve as memorials
to dead people of very recent date.

In the chancel, among the tombs of for
gotten bishops and knights, we saw an
immense slab of stone purporting to be the
monument of Catherine Swynford, wife of
John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine
of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian
child who was fabled to have been crucified
by the Jews of Lincoln. The cathedral is
not particularly rich in monuments ; for it
suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation,
both at the Reformation and in Cromwell's
time. This latter iconoclast is in especially
bad odor with the sextons and vergers of
most of the old churches which I have
visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds
in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and
hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures,

248 OUR OLD HOAfE

and the ancestral memorials of great fam
ilies, quite at their wicked and plebeian
pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some
most exquisite and marvelous specimens
of flowers, foliage, and grapevines, and mir
acles of stonework twined about arches, as
if the material had been as soft as wax in
the cunning sculptor's hands, — the leaves
being represented with all their veins, so
that you would almost think it petrified
Nature, for which he sought to steal the
praise of Art. Here, too, were those gro
tesque faces which always grin at you from
the projections of monkish architecture, as
if the builders had gone mad with their
own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a
catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in
something ineffably absurd.

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars
of this great edifice, and all these magic
sculptures, were polished to the utmost
degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable
to think that the artists would have taken
these further pains, when they had already
bestowed so much labor in working out
their conceptions to the extremest point.
But, at present, the whole interior of the
cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish
wash, the very meanest hue imaginable.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 249

and for which somebody's soul has a bitter
reckoning to undergo.

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle
about which the cloisters perambulate is a
small, mean brick building, with a locked
door. Our guide, — I forgot to say that
we had been captured by a verger, in black,
and with a white tie, but of a lusty and
jolly aspect, — our guide unlocked this
door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At
the bottom appeared what I should have
taken to be a large square of dim, worn,
and faded oil-carpeting, which might origi
nally have been painted of a rather gaudy
pattern. This was a Roman tessellated
pavement, made of small colored bricks, or
pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally
discovered here, and has not been meddled
with, further than by removing the super
incumbent earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to
be recorded about the interior of the cathe
dral, except that we saw a place where the
stone pavement had been worn away by
the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon
it, as they knelt down before a shrine of
the Virgin.

Leaving the cathedral, we now went along
a street of more venerable appearance than

250 OUR OLD HOME

we had heretofore seen, bordered with
houses, the high-peaked roofs of which
were covered with red earthen tiles. It
led us to a Roman arch, which was once
the gateway of a fortification, and has been
striding across the English street ever since
the latter was a faint village-path, and for
centuries before. The arch is about four
hundred yards from the cathedral, and it is
to be noticed that there are Roman re
mains in all this neighborhood, some above
ground, and doubtless innumerable more
beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself,
an inundation of accumulated soil seems to
have swept over what was the surface of
that earlier day. The gateway which I am
speaking about is probably buried to a third
of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a
Roman pavement (if sought for at the orig
inal depth) as that which runs beneath the
Arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive
structure, and seems as stalwart now as it
could have been two thousand years ago ;
and though Time has gnawed it externally,
he has made what amends he could by
crowning its rough and broken summit
with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of
yellow flowers on the projections up and
down the sides.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2$l

There are the ruins of a Norman castle,
built by the Conqueror, in pretty close
proximity to the cathedral ; but the old
gateway is obstructed by a modern door
of wood, and we were denied admittance,
because some parts of the precincts are
used as a prison. We now rambled about
on the broad back of the hill, which, be
sides the cathedral and ruined castle, is the
site of some stately and queer old houses,
and of many mean little hovels. I suspect
that all or most of the life of the present
day has subsided into the lower town, and
that only priests, poor people, and pris
oners dwell in these upper regions. In the
wide, dry moat, at the base of the castle
wall, are clustered whole colonies of small
houses, some of brick, but the larger por
tion built of old stones which once made
part of the Norman keep, or of Roman
structures that existed before the Con
queror's castle was ever dreamed about.
They are like toadstools that spring up
from the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly
as they are, they add wonderfully to the
picturesqueness of the scene, being quite
as valuable, in that respect, as the great,
broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep,
which rose high above our heads, heaving

252 OUR OLD HOME

its huge, gray mass out of a bank of green
foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as
lilacs, and other flowering plants, in which
its foundations were completely hidden.

After walking quite round the castle,
I made an excursion through the Roman
gateway, along a pleasant and level road
bordered with dwellings of various char
acter. One or two were houses of gentil
ity, with delightful and shadowy lawns be
fore them ; many had those high, red-tiled
roofs, ascending into acutely pointed ga
bles, which seem to belong to the same
epoch as some of the edifices in our own
earlier towns ; and there were pleasant-
looking cottages, very sylvan and rural,
with hedges so dense and high, fencing
them in, as almost to hide them up to the
eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of
one of these I saw various images, crosses,
and relics of antiquity, among which were
fragments of old Catholic tombstones, dis
posed by way of ornament.

We now went home to the Saracen's
Head ; and as the weather was very un-
propitious, and it sprinkled a little now and
then, I would gladly have felt myself re
leased from further thraldom to the cathe
dral. But it had taken possession of me,

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2$$

and would not let me be at rest ; so at
length I found myself compelled to climb
the hill again between daylight and dusk.
A mist was now hovering about the upper
height of the great central tower, so as to
dim and half obliterate its battlements and
pinnacles, even while I stood in the close
beneath it. It was the most impressive
view that I had had. The whole lower
part of the structure was seen with perfect
distinctness ; but at the very summit the
mist was so dense as to form an actual
cloud, as well defined as ever I saw resting
on a mountain-top. Really and literally,
here was a " cloud-capt tower."

The entire cathedral, too, transfigured
itself into a richer beauty and more im
posing majesty than ever. The longer I
looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior
is certainly far more beautiful than that of
York Minster ; and its finer effect is due,
I think, to the many peaks in which the
structure ascends, and to the pinnacles
which, as it were, repeat and reecho them
into the sky. York Minster is compara
tively square and angular in its general ef
fect ; but in this at Lincoln there is a con
tinual mystery of variety, so that at every
glance you are aware of a change, and a

254 OUR OLD HOME

disclosure of something new, yet working
an harmonious development of what you
have heretofore seen. The west front is
unspeakably grand, and may be read over
and over again forever, and still show un
detected meanings, like a great, broad page
of marvelous writing in black - letter, —
so many sculptured ornaments there are,
blossoming out before your eyes, and gray
statues that have grown there since you
looked last, and empty niches, and a hun
dred airy canopies beneath which carved
images used to be, and where they will
show themselves again, if you gaze long
enough. But I will not say another word
about the cathedral.

We spent the rest of the day within the
sombre precincts of the Saracen's Head,
reading yesterday's " Times," " The Guide-
Book of Lincoln," and "The Directory
of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the
weather was, the street beneath our win
dow was enlivened with a great bustle and
turmoil of people all the evening, because
it was Saturday night, and they had ac
complished their week's toil, received their
wages, and were making their small pur
chases against Sunday, and enjoying them
selves as well as they knew how. A band

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 255

of music passed to and fro several times,
with the rain-drops falling into the mouth
of the brazen trumpet and pattering on
the bass-drum ; a spirit-shop, opposite the
hotel, had a vast run of custom ; and a
coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occa
sional, vent for his commodity, in spite of
the cold water that dripped into the cups.
The whole breadth of the street, between
the Stone Bow and the bridge across the
Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and
humming with human life.

Observing in the Guide - Book that a
steamer runs on the river Witham between
Lincoln and Boston, I inquired of the
waiter, and learned that she was to start
on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it
might be an interesting trip, and a pleasant
variation of our customary mode of travel,
we determined to make the voyage. The
Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing
the main street under an arched bridge of
Gothic construction, a little below the Sar
acen's Head. It has more the appearance
of a canal than of a river, in its passage
through the town, — being bordered with
hewn-stone mason-work on each side, and
provided with one or two locks. The
steamer proved to be small, dirty, and

256 OUR OLD HOME

altogether inconvenient. The early morn
ing had been bright ; but the sky now low
ered upon us with a sulky English temper,
and we had not long put off before we felt
an ugly wind from the German Ocean
blowing right in our teeth. There were a
number of passengers on board, country
people, such as travel by third-class on the
railway ; for, I suppose, nobody but our
selves ever dreamt of voyaging by the
steamer for the sake of what he might
happen upon in the way of river scenery.

We bothered a good while about get
ting through a preliminary lock ; nor, when
fairly under way, did we ever accomplish,
I think, six miles an hour. Constant de
lays were caused, moreover, by stopping to
take up passengers and freight, — not at
regular landing-places, but anywhere along
the green banks. The scenery was iden
tical with that of the railway, because the
latter runs along by the river-side through
the whole distance, or nowhere departs from
it except to make a short cut across some
sinuosity ; so that our only advantage lay in
the drawling, snail-like slothfulness of our
progress, which allowed us time enough and
to spare for the objects along the shore. Un
fortunately, there was nothing, or next to

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2$?

nothing, to be seen, — the country being one
unvaried level over the whole thirty miles
of our voyage, — not a hill in sight either
near or far, except that solitary one on the
summit of which we had left Lincoln Cathe
dral. And the cathedral was our landmark
for four hours or more, and at last rather
faded out than was hidden by any interven
ing object.

It would have been a pleasantly lazy
day enough, if the rough and bitter wind
had not blown directly in our faces, and
chilled us through, in spite of the sunshine
that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of
rain. These English east winds, which
prevail from February till June, are greater
nuisances than the east wind of our own
Atlantic coast, although they do not bring
mist and storm, as with us, but some of
the sunniest weather that England sees.
Under their influence, the sky smiles and
is villainous.

The landscape was tame to the last de
gree, but had an English character that
was abundantly worth our looking at. A
green luxuriance of early grass ; old, high-
roofed farmhouses, surrounded by their
stone barns and ricks of hay and grain ;
ancient villages, with the square, gray

258 OUR OLD HOME

tower of a church seen afar over the level
country, amid the cluster of red roofs ;
here and there a shadowy grove of vener
able trees, surrounding what was perhaps
an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more
like the abode of some rich yeoman. Once,
too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval castle,
that of Tattershall, built by a Cromwell,
but whether of the Protector's family I
cannot tell. But the gentry do not appear
to have settled multitudinously in this tract
of country ; nor is it to be wondered at,
since a lover of the picturesque would as
soon think of settling in Holland. The
river retains its canal-like aspect all along ;
and only in the latter part of its course
does it become more than wide enough
for the little steamer to turn itself round,
— at broadest, not more than twice that
width.

The only memorable incident of our voy
age happened when a mother-duck was
leading her little fleet of five ducklings
across the river, just as our steamer went
swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream
into great waves that lashed the banks on
either side. I saw the imminence of the
catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the
boat to witness its consummation, since I

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 259

could not possibly avert it. The poor duck
lings had uttered their baby quacks, and
striven with all their tiny might to escape ;
four of them, I believe, were washed aside
and thrown off unhurt from the steamer's
prow ; but the fifth must have gone under
the whole length of the keel, and never
could have come up alive.

At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the
tall tower of Saint Botolph's Church (three
hundred feet high, the same elevation as
the tallest tower of Lincoln Cathedral) loom
ing in the distance. At about half past four
we reached Boston (which name has been
shortened, in the course of ages, by the
quick and slovenly English pronunciation,
from Botolph's town), and were taken by a
cab to the Peacock, in the market-place.
It was the best hotel in town, though
a poor one enough ; and we were shown
into a small, stifled parlor, dingy, musty,
and scented with stale tobacco-smoke, —
tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter
assured us that the room had not more
recently been fumigated. An exceedingly
grim waiter he was, apparently a genuine
descendant of the old Puritans of this Eng
lish Boston, and quite as sour as those who
people the daughter-city in New England.

260 OUR OLD HOME

Our parlor had the one recommendation of
looking into the market-place, and afford
ing a sidelong glimpse of the tall spire and
noble old church.

In my first ramble about the town,
chance led me to the river-side, at that
quarter where the port is situated. Here
were long buildings of an old-fashioned as
pect, seemingly warehouses, with windows
in the high, steep roofs. The Custom
House found ample accommodation within
an ordinary dwelling-house. Two or three
large schooners were moored along the
river's brink, which had here a stone mar
gin ; another large and handsome schooner
was evidently just finished, rigged and
equipped for her first voyage ; the rudi
ments of another were on the stocks, in a
shipyard bordering on the river. Still an
other, while I was looking on, came up the
stream, and lowered her mainsail, from a
foreign voyage. An old man on the bank
hailed her and inquired about her cargo ;
but the Lincolnshire people have such a
queer way of talking English that I could
not understand the reply. Farther down
the river, I saw a brig, approaching rap
idly under sail. The whole scene made an
odd impression of bustle, and sluggishness,

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 26 1

and decay, and a remnant of wholesome
life ; and I could but contrast it with the
mighty and populous activity of our own
Boston, which was once the feeble infant
of this old English town, — the latter, per
haps, almost stationary ever since that day,
as if the birth of such an offspring had
taken away its own principle of growth.
I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil
Hall, and Washington Street, and the
Great Elm, and the State House, and ex
ulted lustily, - - but yet began to feel at
home in this good old town, for its very
name's sake, as I never had before felt, in
England.

The next morning we came out in the
early sunshine (the sun must have been
shining nearly four hours, however, for it
was after eight o'clock), and strolled about
the streets, like people who had a right to
be there. The market-place of Boston is
an irregular square, into one end of which
the chancel of the church slightly projects.
The gates of the churchyard were open
and free to all passengers, and the common
footway of the townspeople seems to lie to
and fro across it. It is paved, according
to English custom, with flat tombstones ;
and there are also raised or altar tombs,

262 OUR OLD HOME

some of which have armorial bearings on
them. One clergyman has caused himself
and his wife to be buried right in the mid
dle of the stone-bordered path that tra
verses the churchyard ; so that not an in
dividual of the thousands who pass along
this public way can help trampling over
him or her. The scene, nevertheless, was
very cheerful in the morning sun : people
going about their business in the day's
primal freshness, which was just as fresh
here as in younger villages ; children with
milk-pails loitering over the burial-stones ;
schoolboys playing leap-frog with the altar-
tombs ; the simple old town preparing it
self for the day, which would be like myr
iads of other days that had passed over it,
but yet would be worth living through. And
down on the churchyard, where were bur
ied many generations whom it remembered
in their time, looked the stately tower of
Saint Botolph ; and it was good to see and
think of such an age-long giant intermarry
ing the present epoch with a distant past,
and getting quite imbued with human na
ture by being so immemorially connected
with men's familiar knowledge and homely
interests. It is a noble tower ; and the
jackdaws, evidently, have pleasant homes in

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 263

their hereditary nests among its topmost
windows, and live delightful lives, flitting
and cawing about its pinnacles and flying
buttresses. I should almost like to be a
jackdaw myself, for the sake of living up
there.

In front of the church, not more than
twenty yards off, and with a low brick wall
between, flows the river Witham. On the
hither bank a fisherman was washing his
boat ; and another skiff, with her sail lazily
half twisted, lay on the opposite strand.
The stream at this point is about of such
width that, if the tall tower were to tum
ble over flat on its face, its topstone
might perhaps reach to the middle of the
channel. On the farther shore there is a
line of antique-looking houses, with roofs
of red tile, and windows opening out of
them, — some of these dwellings being so
ancient that the Reverend Mr. Cotton, sub
sequently our first Boston minister, must
have seen them with his own bodily eyes
when he used to issue from the front portal
after service. Indeed, there must be very
many houses here, and even some streets,
that bear much the aspect that they did
when the Puritan divine paced solemnly
among them.

264 OUR OLD HOME

In our rambles about town, we went into
a bookseller's shop to inquire if he had
any description of Boston for sale. He
offered me (or, rather, produced for inspec
tion, not supposing that I would buy it) a
quarto history of the town, published by
subscription, nearly forty years ago. The
bookseller showed himself a well-informed
and affable man, and a local antiquary, to
whom a party of inquisitive strangers were
a godsend. He had met with several Amer
icans, who, at various times, had come on
pilgrimages to this place, and he had been
in correspondence with others. Happen
ing to have heard the name of one member
of our party, he showed us great courtesy
and kindness, and invited us into his inner
domicile, where, as he modestly intimated,
he kept a few articles which it might in
terest us to see. So we went with him
through the shop, upstairs, into the private
part of his establishment ; and, really, it
was one of the rarest adventures I ever
met with, to stumble upon this treasure of
a man, with his treasury of antiquities and
curiosities, veiled behind the unostenta
tious front of a bookseller's shop, in a very
moderate line of village business. The
two upstair rooms into which he introduced

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 26$

us were so crowded with inestimable arti
cles, that we were almost afraid to stir for
fear of breaking some fragile thing that
had been accumulating value for unknown
centuries.

The apartment was hung round with
pictures and old engravings, many of which
were extremely rare. Premising that he
was going to show us something very cu
rious, Mr. Porter went into the next room
and returned with a counterpane of fine
linen, elaborately embroidered with silk,
which so profusely covered the linen that
the general effect was as if the main texture
were silken. It was stained and seemed
very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It
was wrought all over with birds and flowers
in a most delicate style of needlework, and
among other devices, more than once re
peated, was the cipher M. S., — being the
initials of one of the most unhappy names
that ever a woman bore. This quilt was
embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen
of Scots, during her imprisonment at Foth-
eringay Castle ; and having evidently been
a work of years, she had doubtless shed
many tears over it, and wrought many dole
ful thoughts and abortive schemes into its
texture, along with the birds and flowers.

266 OUR OLD HOME

As a counterpart to this most precious relic,
our friend produced some of the handiwork
of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented
by her to Captain Cook ; it was a bag,
cunningly made of some delicate vegetable
stuff, and ornamented with feathers.. Next,
he brought out a green silk waistcoat of
very antique fashion, trimmed about the
edges and pocket-holes with a rich and
delicate embroidery of gold and silver.
This (as the possessor of the treasure
proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came
into his hands) was once the vestment of
Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh ; but
that great statesman must have been a
person of very moderate girth in the chest
and waist ; for the garment was hardly
more than a comfortable fit for a boy of
eleven, the smallest American of our party,
who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat.
Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously
engraved drinking-glasses, with a view of
Saint Botolph's steeple on one of them,
and other Boston edifices, public or do
mestic, on the remaining two, very admi
rably done. These crystal goblets had been
a present, long ago, to an old master of the
Free School from his pupils ; and it is very
rarely, I imagine, that a retired school-

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 267

master can exhibit such trophies of grati
tude and affection, won from the victims
of his birch rod.

Our kind friend kept bringing out one
unexpected and wholly unexpectable thing
after another, as if he were a magician, and
had only to fling a private signal into the
air, and some attendant imp would hand
forth any strange relic he might choose to
ask for. He was especially rich in draw
ings by the Old Masters, producing two
or three, of exquisite delicacy, by Raphael,
one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and
others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Gior
dano, Benvenuto Cellini, and hands almost
as famous ; and besides what were shown
us, there seemed to be an endless supply
of these art-treasures in reserve. On the
wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never
engraved, representing him as a rather
young man, blooming, and not uncomely ;
it was the worldly face of a man fond of
pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sar
castic, odd expression that we see in his only
engraved portrait. The picture is an orig
inal, and must needs be very valuable ; and
we wish it might be prefixed to some new
and worthier biography of a writer whose
character the world has always treated with

268 OUR OLD HOME

singular harshness, considering how much
it owes him. There was likewise a crayon-
portrait of Sterne's wife, looking so haughty
and unamiable that the wonder is, not that
he ultimately left her, but how he ever
contrived to live a week with such an awful
woman.

After looking at these, and a great many
more things that I can remember, above
stairs, we went down to a parlor, where
this wonderful bookseller opened an old
cabinet, containing numberless drawers,
and looking just fit to be the repository of
such knick-knacks as were stored up in it.
He appeared to possess more treasures than
he himself knew of, or knew where to find ;
but, rummaging here and there, he brought
forth things new and old : rose-nobles, Vic
toria crowns, gold angels, double sovereigns
of George IV., two-guinea pieces of George
II. ; a marriage-medal of the first Napoleon,
only forty-five of which were ever struck
off, and of which even the British Museum
does not contain a specimen like this, in
gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches
in diameter, of a Roman emperor ; together
with buckles, bracelets, amulets, and I know
not what besides. There was a green silk
tassel from the fringe of Queen Mary's

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 269

bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illu
minated missals, antique Latin Bibles, and
(what may seem of especial interest to the
historian) a Secret-Book of Queen Eliza
beth, in manuscript, written, for aught I
know, by her own hand. On examination,
however, it proved to contain, not secrets
of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks,
medicines, washes, and all such matters of
housewifery, the toilet, and domestic quack
ery, among which we were horrified by the
title of one of the nostrums, " How to kill
a Fellow quickly" ! We never doubted
that bloody Queen Bess might often have
had occasion for such a recipe, but won
dered at her frankness, and at her attending
to these anomalous necessities in such a
methodical way. The truth is, we had read
amiss, and the Queen had spelt amiss : the
word was " Fellon, " a sort of whitlow, —
not " Fellow."

Our hospitable friend now made us drink
a glass of wine, as old and genuine as the
curiosities of his cabinet ; and, while sip
ping it, we ungratefully tried to excite his
envy, by telling him various things, in
teresting to an antiquary and virtuoso,
which we had seen in the course of our
travels about England. We spoke, for in-

2/O OUR OLD HOME

stance, of a missal bound in solid gold and
set around with jewels, but of such intrin
sic value as no setting could enhance, for
it was exquisitely illuminated, throughout,
by the hand of Raphael himself. We men
tioned a little silver case which once con
tained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV.
nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's
horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland
popped the kingly morsel into his mouth,
and swallowed it. We told about the black-
letter prayer-book of King Charles the
Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold,
taking which into our hands, it opened
of itself at the Communion Service ; and
there, on the left-hand page, appeared a
spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yel
lowish or brownish hue : a drop of the
king's blood had fallen there.

Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the
church, but first leading us to a vacant
spot of ground, where old John Cotton's
vicarage had stood till a very short time
since. According to our friend's descrip
tion, it was a humble habitation, of the cot
tage order, built of brick, with a thatched
roof. The site is now rudely fenced in,
and cultivated as a vegetable garden. In
the right-hand aisle of the church there is

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2? I

an ancient chapel, which, at the time of
our visit, was in process of restoration, and
was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, whom
these English people consider as the
founder of our American Boston. It would
contain a painted memorial-window, in
honor of the old Puritan minister. A fes
tival in commemoration of the event was
to take place in the ensuing July, to which
I had myself received an invitation, but I
knew too well the pains and penalties in
curred by an invited guest at public festi
vals in England to accept it. It ought to
be recorded (and it seems to have made
a very kindly impression on our kinsfolk
here) that five hundred pounds had been
contributed by persons in the United
States, principally in Boston, towards the
cost of the memorial-window, and the re
pair and restoration of the chapel.

After we emerged from the chapel, Mr.
Porter approached us with the vicar, to
whom he kindly introduced us, and then
took his leave. May a stranger's benedic
tion rest upon him ! He is a most pleas
ant man ; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso
than an antiquary ; for he seemed to value
the Queen of Otaheite's bag as highly as
Queen Mary's embroidered quilt, and to

2/2 OUR OLD HOME

have an omnivorous appetite for every
thing strange and rare. Would that we
could fill up his shelves and drawers (if
there are any vacant spaces left) with the
choicest trifles that have dropped out of
Time's carpet-bag, or give him the carpet
bag itself, to take out what he will !

The vicar looked about thirty years old,
a gentleman, evidently assured of his po
sition (as clergymen of the Established
Church invariably are), comfortable and
well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and
fit to be a bishop, knowing how to make
the most of life without prejudice to the
life to come. I was glad to see such a
model English priest so suitably accommo
dated with an old English church. He
kindly and courteously did the honors,
showing us quite round the interior, giving
us all the information that we required, and
then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of
what we came to see.

The interior of St. Botolph's is very fine
and satisfactory, as stately, almost, as a
cathedral, and has been repaired — so far
as repairs were necessary — in a chaste
and noble style. The great eastern win
dow is of modern painted glass, but is the
richest, mellowest, and tenderest modern

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2/3

window that I have ever seen : the art of
painting these glowing transparencies in
pristine perfection being one that the world
has lost. The vast, clear space of the in
terior church delighted me. There was no
screen, — nothing between the vestibule
and the altar to break the long vista ; even
the organ stood aside, — though it by and
by made us aware of its presence by a me
lodious roar. Around the walls there were
old engraved brasses, and a stone coffin,
and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and
an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full
length, as large as life, and in perfect pre
servation, except for a slight modern touch
at the tips of their noses. In the chancel
we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly
and admirably carved, especially about the
seats formerly appropriated to the monks,
which were so contrived as to tumble down
with a tremendous crash if the occupant
happened to fall asleep.

We now essayed to climb into the upper
regions. Up we went, winding and still
winding round the circular stairs, till we
came to the gallery beneath the stone roof
of the tower, whence we could look down
and see the raised Font, and my Talma
lying on one of the steps, and looking

2/4 OUR OLD HOME

about as big as a pocket-handkerchief.
Then up again, up, up, up, through a yet
smaller staircase, till we emerged into an
other stone gallery, above the jackdaws,
and far above the roof beneath which we
had before made a halt. Then up another
flight, which led us into a pinnacle of the
temple, but not the highest ; so, retracing
our steps, we took the right turret this
time, and emerged into the loftiest lantern,
where we saw level Lincolnshire, far and
near, though with a haze on the distant
horizon. There were dusty roads, a river,
and canals, converging towards Boston,
which — a congregation of red-tiled roofs
— lay beneath our feet, with pygmy people
creeping about its narrow streets. We
were three hundred feet aloft, and the pin
nacle on which we stood is a landmark
forty miles at sea.

Content, and weary of our elevation, we
descended the corkscrew stairs and left the
church ; the last object that we noticed in
the interior being a bird, which appeared
to be at home there, and responded with
its cheerful notes to the swell of the organ.
Pausing on the church-steps, we observed
that there were formerly two statues, one
on each side of the doorway ; the canopies

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2/5

still remaining and the pedestals being
about a yard from the ground. Some of
Mr. Cotton's Puritan parishioners are prob
ably responsible for the disappearance of
these stone saints. This doorway at the
base of the tower is now much dilapidated,
but must once have been very rich and of
a peculiar fashion. It opens its arch
through a great square tablet of stone,
reared against the front of the tower. On
most of the projections, whether on the
tower or about the body of the church,
there are gargoyles of genuine Gothic gro-
tesqueness, — fiends, beasts, angels, and
combinations of all three ; and where por
tions of the edifice are restored, the modern
sculptors have tried to imitate these wild
fantasies, but with very poor success. Ex
travagance and absurdity have still their
law, and should pay as rigid obedience to
it as the primmest things on earth.

In our further rambles about Boston, we
crossed the river by a bridge, and observed
that the larger part of the town seems to
lie on that side of its navigable stream.
The crooked streets and narrow lanes re
minded me much of Hanover Street, Ann
Street, and other portions of the North
End of our American Boston, as I remem-

276 OUR OLD HOME

ber that picturesque region in my boyish
days. It is not unreasonable to suppose
that the local habits and recollections of
the first settlers may have had some influ
ence on the physical character of the streets
and houses in the New England metrop
olis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy
of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old
peaked and projecting-storied dwellings,
such as I used to see there. It is singular
what a home-feeling and sense of kindred
I derived from this hereditary connection
and fancied physiognomical resemblance
between the old town and its well-grown
daughter, and how reluctant I was, after
chill years of banishment, to leave this
hospitable place on that account. More
over, it recalled some of the features of
another American town, my own dear na
tive place, when I saw the seafaring people
leaning against posts, and sitting on planks,
under the lee of warehouses, — or lolling
on long-boats, drawn up high and dry, as
sailors and old wharf-rats are accustomed
to do, in seaports of little business. In
other respects, the English town is more
village-like than either of the American
ones. The women and budding girls chat
together at their doors, and exchange merry

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2//

greetings with young men ; children chase
one another in the summer twilight ;
schoolboys sail little boats on the river,
or play at marbles across the flat tomb
stones in the churchyard ; and ancient
men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wan
der slowly about the streets, with a certain
familiarity of deportment, as if each one
were everybody's grandfather. I have fre
quently observed, in old English towns,
that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully
and genially into the sunshine than among
ourselves, where the rush, stir, bustle, and
irreverent energy of youth are so prepon
derant that the poor, forlorn grandsires
begin to doubt whether they have a right
to breathe in such a world any longer,
and so hide their silvery heads in solitude.
Speaking of old men, I am reminded of the
scholars of the Boston Charity School, who
walk about in antique, long-skirted blue
coats, and knee-breeches, and with bands
at their necks, — • perfect and grotesque
pictures of the costume of three centuries
ago.

On the morning of our departure, I
looked from the parlor-window of the Pea
cock into the market-place, and beheld its
irregular square already well covered with

278 OUR OLD HOME

booths, and more in process of being put
up, by stretching tattered sail-cloth on
poles. It was market-day. The dealers
were arranging their commodities, consist
ing chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of
which seemed to be cabbages. Later in
the forenoon there was a much greater
variety of merchandise : basket-work, both
for fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives,
oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things,
in short, that are commonly sold at a rural
fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and
the bleating of sheep, and found that there
was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in
another part of the town. A crowd of
townspeople and Lincolnshire yeomen el
bowed one another in the square ; Mr.
Punch was squeaking in one corner, and
a vagabond juggler tried to find space for
his exhibition in another : so that my final
glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave
a livelier impression than my former ones.
Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph's
looked benignantly down ; and I fancied it
was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr.
Cotton, two or three hundred years ago,
and telling me to describe its venerable
height, and the town beneath it, to the
people of the American city, who are partly

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 2/9

akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old
Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in
its churchyard.

One thing more. They have a Bunker
Hill in the vicinity of their town ; and
(what could hardly be expected of an Eng
lish community) seem proud to think that
their neighborhood has given name to our
first and most widely celebrated and best
remembered battlefield.

VII.

NEAR OXFORD

ON a fine morning in September we set
out on an excursion to Blenheim, — the
sculptor and myself being seated on the
box of our four-horse carriage, two more of
the party in the dicky, and the others less
agreeably accommodated inside. We had
no coachman, but two postilions in short
scarlet jackets and leather breeches with
top-boots, each astride of a horse ; so that,
all the way along, when not otherwise at
tracted, we had the interesting spectacle of
their up-and-down bobbing in the saddle.
It was a sunny and beautiful day, a speci
men of the perfect English weather, just
warm enough for comfort, — indeed, a little
too warm, perhaps, in the noontide sun, —
yet retaining a mere spice or suspicion
of austerity, which made it all the more
enjoyable.

282 OUR OLD HOME

The country between Oxford and Blen
heim is not particularly interesting, being
almost level, or undulating very slightly ;
nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, a rich
part of England. We saw one or two
hamlets, and I especially remember a pic
turesque old gabled house at a turnpike
gate, and, altogether, the wayside scenery
had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ;
but there was nothing very memorable till
we reached Woodstock, and stopped to
water our horses at the Black Bear. This
neighborhood is called New Woodstock,
but has by no means the brand-new appear
ance of an American town, being a large
village of stone houses, most of them pretty
well time-worn and weather-stained. The
Black Bear is an ancient inn, large and
respectable, with balustraded staircases, and
intricate passages and corridors, and queer
old pictures and engravings hanging in the
entries and apartments. We ordered a
lunch (the most delightful of English insti
tutions, next to dinner) to be ready against
our return, and then resumed our drive to
Blenheim.

The park gate of Blenheim stands close
to the end of the village street of Wood
stock. Immediately on passing through its

NEAR OXFORD 283

portals we saw the stately palace in the
distance, but made a wide circuit of the
park before approaching it. This noble
park contains three thousand acres of land,
and is fourteen miles in circumference.
Having been, in part, a royal domain before
it was granted to the Marlborough family,
it contains many trees of unsurpassed an
tiquity, and has doubtless been the haunt
of game and deer for centuries. We saw
pheasants in abundance, feeding in the
open lawns and glades ; and the stags
tossed their antlers and bounded away, not
affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as
we drove by. It is a magnificent pleasure-
ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly
subjected within rule, but vast enough to
have lapsed -back into nature again, after
all the pains that the landscape-gardeners
of Queen Anne's time bestowed on it, when
the domain of Blenheim was scientifically
laid out. The great, knotted, slanting
trunks of the old oaks do not now look as
if man had much intermeddled with their
growth and postures. The trees of later
date, that were set out in the Great Duke's
time, are arranged on the plan of the order
of battle in which the illustrious comman
der ranked his troops at Blenheim ; but the

284 OUR OLD HOME

ground covered is so extensive, and the
trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator
is not disagreeably conscious of their stand
ing in military array, as if Orpheus had
summoned them together by beat of drum.
The effect must have been very formal a
hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased
to be so, — although the trees, I presume,
have kept their ranks with even more fidel
ity than Maryborough's veterans did.

One of the park-keepers, on horseback,
rode beside our carriage, pointing out the
choice views, and glimpses at the palace, as
we drove through the domain. There is a
very large artificial lake (to say the truth,
it seemed to me fully worthy of being com
pared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not
with those of Westmoreland), which was
created by Capability Brown, and fills the
basin that he scooped for it, just as if Na
ture had poured these broad waters into
one of her own valleys. It is a most beauti
ful object at a distance, and not less so on
its immediate banks ; for the water is very
pure, being supplied by a small river, of the
choicest transparency, which was turned
thitherward for the purpose. And Blen
heim owes not merely this water scenery,
but almost all its other beauties, to the

NEAR OXFORD 285

contrivance of man. Its natural features
are not striking ; but Art has effected such
wonderful things that the uninstructed visi
tor would never guess that nearly the whole
scene was but the embodied thought of
a human mind. A skillful painter hardly
does more for his blank sheet of canvas
than the landscape-gardener, the planter,
the arranger of trees, has done for the
monotonous surface of Blenheim, — making
the most of every undulation, — flinging
down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of
a giant's hand, wherever it was needed, —
putting in beauty as often as there was a
niche for it, — opening vistas to every
point that deserved to be seen, and throw
ing a veil of impenetrable foliage around
what ought to be hidden ; — and then, to
be sure, the lapse of a century has softened
the harsh outline of man's labors, and has
given the place back to Nature again with
the addition of what consummate science
could achieve.

After driving a good way, we came to
a battlemented tower and adjoining house,
which used to be the residence of the
Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held
charge of the property for the King before
the Duke of Maryborough possessed it.

286 OUR OLD HOME

The keeper opened the door for us, and in
the entrance-hall we found various things
that had to do with the chase and wood
land sports. We mounted the staircase,
through several stories, up to the top of
the tower, whence there was a view of the
spires of Oxford, and of points much far
ther off, — very indistinctly seen, however,
as is usually the case with the misty
distances of England. Returning to the
ground-floor, we were ushered into the
room in which died Wilmot, the wicked
Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the
Park in Charles II. 's time. It is a low
and bare little room, with a window in front,
and a smaller one behind ; and in the con
tiguous entrance-room there are the re
mains of an old bedstead, beneath the can
opy of which, perhaps, Rochester may have
made the penitent end that Bishop Burnet
attributes to him. I hardly know what it
is, in this poor fellow's character, which
affects us with greater tenderness on his
behalf than for all the other profligates of
his day, who seem to have been neither
better nor worse than himself. I rather
suspect that he had a human heart which
never quite died out of him, and the warmth
of which is still faintly perceptible amid
the dissolute trash which he left behind.

NEAR OXFORD

Methinks, if such good fortune ever be
fell a bookish man, I should choose this
lodge for my own residence, with the top
most room of the tower for a study, and all
the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath
to ramble in. There being no such pos
sibility, we drove on, catching glimpses of
the palace in new points of view, and by
and by came to Rosamond's Well. The par
ticular tradition that connects Fair Rosa
mond with it is not now in my memory ;
but if Rosamond ever lived and loved, and
ever had her abode in the maze of Wood
stock, it may well be believed that she and
Henry sometimes sat beside this spring.
It gushes out from a bank, through some
old stone-work, and dashes its little cascade
(about as abundant as one might turn out
of a large pitcher) into a pool, whence it
steals away towards the lake, which is not
far removed. The water is exceedingly
cold, and as pure as the legendary Rosa
mond was not, and is fancied to possess me
dicinal virtues, like springs at which saints
have quenched their thirst. There were
two or three old women and some children
in attendance with tumblers, which they
present to visitors, full of the consecrated
water ; but most of us filled the tumblers
for ourselves, and drank.

288 OUR OLD HOME

Thence we drove to the Triumphal Pillar
which was erected in honor of the Great
Duke, and on the summit of which he
stands, in a Roman garb, holding a winged
figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordi
nary man might hold a bird. The column
is I know not how many feet high, but
lofty enough, at any rate, to elevate Marl-
borough far above the rest of the world,
and to be visible a long way off ; and it is
so placed in reference to other objects,
that, wherever the hero wandered about
his grounds, and especially as he issued
from his mansion, he must inevitably have
been reminded of his glory. In truth, until
I came to Blenheim, I never had so posi
tive and material an idea of what Fame
really is — of what the admiration of his
country can do for a successful warrior —
as I carry away with me and shall always
retain. Unless he had the moral force
of a thousand men together, his egotism
(beholding himself everywhere, imbuing
the entire soil, growing in the woods,
rippling and gleaming in the water, and
pervading the very air with his greatness)
must have been swollen within him like
the liver of a Strasburg goose. On the
huge tablets inlaid into the pedestal of

NEAR OXFORD 289

the column, the entire Act of Parliament,
bestowing Blenheim on the Duke of Marl-
borough and his posterity, is engraved in
deep letters, painted black on the marble
ground. The pillar stands exactly a mile
from the principal front of the palace, in a
straight line with the precise centre of its
entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it
was the Duke's principal object of con
templation.

We now proceeded to the palace-gate,
which is a great pillared archway, of won
derful loftiness and state, giving admit
tance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout,
elderly, and rather surly footman in livery
appeared at the entrance, and took posses
sion of whatever canes, umbrellas, and par
asols he could get hold of, in order to
claim sixpence on our departure. This
had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is
much public outcry against the meanness
of the present Duke in his arrangements
for the admission of visitors (chiefly, of
course, his native countrymen) to view the
magnificent palace which their forefathers
bestowed upon his own. In many cases,
it seems hard that a private abode should
be exposed to the intrusion of the public
merely because the proprietor has inherited

2QO

OUR OLD

or created a splendor which attracts gen
eral curiosity ; insomuch that his home
loses its sanctity and seclusion for the
very reason that it is better than other
men's houses. But in the case of Blen
heim, the public have certainly an equi
table claim to admission, both because the
fame of its first inhabitant is a national
possession, and because the mansion was
a national gift, one of the purposes of
which was to be a token of gratitude and
glory to the English people themselves.
If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is
very likely to incur some little inconven
iences himself, and entail them on his pos
terity. Nevertheless, his present Grace
of Marlborough absolutely ignores the pub
lic claim above suggested, and (with a
thrift of which even the hero of Blenheim
himself did not set the example) sells
tickets admitting six persons at ten shil
lings ; if only one person enters the gate,
he must pay for six ; and if there are seven
in company, two tickets are required to
admit them. The attendants, who meet
you everywhere in the park and palace,
expect fees on their own private account,
— their noble master pocketing the ten
shillings. But, to be sure, the visitor gets

NEAR OXFORD 2<)l

his money's worth, since it buys him the
right to speak just as freely of the Duke
of Marlborough as if he were the keeper
of the Cremorne Gardens.1

Passing through a gateway on the op
posite side of the quadrangle, we had be
fore us the noble classic front of the pal
ace, with its two projecting wings. We
ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and
were admitted into the entrance-hall, the
height of which, from floor to ceiling, is
not much less than seventy feet, being the
entire elevation of the edifice. The hall
is lighted by windows in the upper story,
and, it being a clear, bright day, was very
radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a
swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling
was painted by Sir James Thornhill in some
allegorical design, (doubtless commemora
tive of Marlborough' s victories), the pur
port of which I did not take the trouble
to make out, — contenting myself with the
general effect, which was most splendidly
and effectively ornamental.

1 The above was written two or three years ago, or
more ; and the Duke of that day has since transmitted
his coronet to his successor, who, we understand, has
adopted much more liberal arrangements. There is
seldom anything to criticise or complain of, as regards
the facility of obtaining admission to interesting private
houses in England.

2Q2 OUR OLD HOME

We were guided through the show-rooms
by a very civil person, who allowed us to
take pretty much our own time in looking
at the pictures. The collection is exceed
ingly valuable, — many of these works of
Art having been presented to the Great
Duke by the crowned heads of England or
the Continent. One room was all aglow
with pictures by Rubens ; and there were
works of Raphael, and many other famous
painters, any one of which would be suffi
cient to illustrate the meanest house that
might contain it. I remember none of
them, however (not being in a picture-see
ing mood), so well as Vandyck's large and
familiar picture of Charles I. on horseback,
with a figure and face of melancholy dig
nity such as never by any other hand was
put on canvas. Yet, on considering this
face of Charles (which I find often repeated
in half-lengths) and translating it from the
ideal into literalism, I doubt whether the
unfortunate king was really a handsome
or impressive-looking man : a high, thin-
ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and
reddish hair and beard, — these are the lit
eral facts. It is the painter's art that has
thrown such pensive and shadowy grace
around him.

NEAR OXFORD 293

On our passage through this beautiful
suite of apartments, we saw, through the
vista of open doorways, a boy of ten or
twelve years old coming towards us from
the farther rooms. He had on a straw
hat, a linen sack that had certainly been
washed and rewashed for a summer or
two, and gray trousers a good deal worn,
— a dress, in short, which an American
mother in middle station would have
thought too shabby for her darling school
boy's ordinary wear. This urchin's face
was rather pale (as those of English chil
dren are apt to be, quite as often as our
own), but he had pleasant eyes, an intelli
gent look, and an agreeable boyish manner.
It was Lord Sunderland, grandson of the
present Duke, and heir — though not, I
think, in the direct line — of the blood of
the great Maryborough, and of the title and
estate.

After passing through the first suite of
rooms, we were conducted through a corre
sponding suite on the opposite side of the
entrance-hall. These latter apartments
are most richly adorned with tapestries,
wrought and presented to the first Duke
by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns ; they look
like great, glowing pictures, and completely

294 OUR OLD HOME

cover the walls of the rooms. The designs
purport to represent the Duke's battles
and sieges ; and everywhere we see the
hero himself, as large as life, and as gor
geous in scarlet and gold as the holy sisters
could make him, with a three-cornered hat
and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and
extending his leading-staff in the attitude
of command. Next to Marlborough, Prince
Eugene is the most prominent figure. In
the way of upholstery, there can never have
been anything more magnificent than these
tapestries ; and, considered as works of Art,
they have quite as much merit as nine pic
tures out of ten.

One whole wing of the palace is occupied
by the library, a most noble room, with a
vast perspective length from end to end.
Its atmosphere is brighter and more cheer
ful than that of most libraries : a wonderful
contrast to the old college libraries of Ox
ford, and perhaps less sombre and sugges
tive of thoughtfulness than any large library
ought to be ; inasmuch as so many stu
dious brains as have left their deposit on
the shelves cannot have conspired without
producing a very serious and ponderous
result. Both walls and ceiling are white,
and there are elaborate doorways and fire-

NEAR OXFORD 295

places of white marble. The floor is of
oak, so highly polished that our feet slipped
upon it as if it had been New England ice.
At one end of the room stands a statue
of Queen Anne in her royal robes, which
are so admirably designed and exquisitely
wrought that the spectator certainly gets
a strong conception of her royal dignity ;
while the face of the statue, fleshy and
feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of
her personal character.1 The marble of
this work, long as it has stood there, is as
white as snow just fallen, and must have
required most faithful and religious care to
keep it so. As for the volumes of the
library, they are wired within the cases,
and turn their gilded backs upon the vis
itor, keeping their treasures of wit and
wisdom just as intangible as if still in the
unwrought mines of human thought.

I remember nothing else in the palace,
except the chapel, to which we were con
ducted last, and where we saw a splendid
monument to the first Duke and Duchess,
sculptured by Rysbrach, at the cost, it is
said, of forty thousand pounds. The de-

1 In front of St. Paul's there is a statue of Queen
Anne, which looks rather more majestic, I doubt not^
than that fat old dame ever did. — II. 97.

296 OUR OLD HOME

sign includes the statues of the deceased
dignitaries, and various allegorical flour
ishes, fantasies, and confusions ; and be
neath sleep the great Duke and his proud
wife, their veritable bones and dust, and
probably all the Marlboroughs that have
since died. It is not quite a comfortable
idea that these mouldy ancestors still in
habit, after their fashion, the house where
their successors spend the passing day ; but
the adulation lavished upon the hero of
Blenheim could not have been consum
mated, unless the palace of his lifetime had
become likewise a stately mausoleum over
his remains, — and such we felt it all to be,
after gazing at his tomb.

The next business was to see the private
gardens. An old Scotch under-gardener
admitted us and led the way, and seemed
to have a fair prospect of earning the fee
all by himself ; but by and by another re
spectable Scotchman made his appearance
and took us in charge, proving to be the
head-gardener in person. He was ex
tremely intelligent and agreeable, talking
both scientifically and lovingly about trees
and plants, of which there is every variety
capable of English cultivation. Positively,
the Garden of Eden cannot have been

NEAR OXFORD 297

more beautiful than this private garden of
Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres,
and by the artful circumlocution of the
paths, and the undulations, and the skillfully
interposed clumps of trees, is made to ap
pear limitless. The sylvan delights of a
whole country are compressed into this
space, as whole fields of Persian roses go
to the concoction of an ounce of precious
attar. The world within that garden-fence
is not the same weary and dusty world
with which we outside mortals are conver
sant ; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious
Nature ; and the Great Mother lends her
self kindly to the gardener's will, knowing
that he will make evident the half-obliter
ated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty,
and allow her to take all the credit and
praise to herself. I doubt whether there
is ever any winter within that precinct, —
any clouds, except the fleecy ones of sum
mer. The sunshine that I saw there rests
upon my recollection of it as if it were
eternal. The lawns and glades are like
the memory of places where one has wan
dered when first in love.

What a good and happy life might be
spent in a paradise like this ! And yet, at
that very moment, the besotted Duke (ah !

298 OUR OLD HOME

I have let out a secret which I meant to
keep to myself ; but the ten shillings must
pay for all) was in that very garden (for
the guide told us so, and cautioned our
young people not to be too uproarious),
and, if in a condition for arithmetic, was
thinking of nothing nobler than how many
ten-shilling tickets had that day been sold.
Republican as I am, I should still love to
think that noblemen lead noble lives, and
that all this stately and beautiful environ
ment may serve to elevate them a little
way above the rest of us. If it fail to
do so, the disgrace falls equally upon the
whole race of mortals as on themselves ;
because it proves that no more favorable
conditions of existence would eradicate our
vices and weaknesses. How sad, if this be
so ! Even a herd of swine, eating the
acorns under those magnificent oaks of
Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better
habits than ordinary swine.

Well, all that I have written is pitifully
meagre, as a description of Blenheim ; and
I hate to leave it without some more ade
quate expression of the noble edifice, with
its rich domain, all as I saw them in that
beautiful sunshine ; for, if a day had been
chosen out of a hundred years, it could not

NEAR OXFORD 299

have been a finer one. But I must give
up the attempt ; only further remarking
that the finest trees here were cedars, of
which I saw one — and there may have
been many such — immense in girth, and
not less than three centuries old. I like
wise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred
feet in circumference, all growing from one
root ; and the gardener offered to show us
another growth of twice that stupendous
size. If the Great Duke himself had been
buried in that spot, his heroic heart could
not have been the seed of a more plentiful
crop of laurels.

We now went back to the Black Bear,
and sat down to a cold collation, of which
we ate abundantly, and drank (in the good
old English fashion) a due proportion of
various delightful liquors. A stranger in
England, in his rambles to various quarters
of the country, may learn little in regard
to wines (for the ordinary English taste is
simple, though sound, in that particular),
but he makes acquaintance with more va
rieties of hop and malt liquor than he pre
viously supposed to exist. I remember a
sort of foaming stuff, called hop - cham
pagne, which is very vivacious, and appears
to be a hybrid between ale and bottled

3OO OUR OLD HOME

cider. Another excellent tipple for warm
weather is concocted by mixing brown-stout
or bitter ale with ginger-beer, the foam of
which stirs up the heavier liquor from its
depths, forming a compound of singular
vivacity and sufficient body. But of all
things ever brewed from malt (unless it be
the Trinity Ale of Cambridge, which I
drank long afterwards, and which Barry
Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse),
commend me to the Archdeacon, as the
Oxford scholars call it, in honor of the
jovial dignitary who first taught these eru
dite worthies how to brew their favorite
nectar. John Barleycorn has given his
very heart to this admirable liquor ; it is
a superior kind of ale, the Prince of Ales,
with a richer flavor and a mightier spirit
than you can find elsewhere in this weary
world. Much have we been strengthened
and encouraged by the potent blood of the
Archdeacon !

A few days after our excursion to Blen
heim, the same party set forth, in two flies,
on a tour to some other places of interest
in the neighborhood of Oxford. It was
again a delightful day ; and, in truth, every
day, of late, had been so pleasant that it
seemed as if each must be the very last of

NEAR OXFORD 30 1

such perfect weather ; and yet the long
succession had given us confidence in as
many more to come. The climate of Eng
land has been shamefully maligned, its sul-
kiness and asperities are not nearly so
offensive as Englishmen tell us (their cli
mate being the only attribute of their coun
try which they never overvalue) ; and the
really good summer - weather is the very
kindest and sweetest that the world knows.
We first drove to the village of Cumnor,
about six miles from Oxford, and alighted
at the entrance of the church. Here, while
waiting for the keys, we looked at an old
wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose
gray stones, which are said to have once
formed a portion of Cumnor Hall, cele
brated in Mickle's ballad and Scott's ro
mance. The hall must have been in very
close vicinity to the church, — not more
than twenty yards off ; and I waded through
the long, dewy grass of the churchyard,
and tried to peep over fhe wall, in hopes
to discover some tangible and traceable
remains of the edifice. But the wall was
just too high to be overlooked, and difficult
to clamber over without tumbling down
some of the stones ; so I took the word of
one of our party, who had been here be-

302 OUR OLD HOME

fore, that there is nothing interesting on
the other side. The churchyard is in rather
a neglected state, and seems not to have
been mown for the benefit of the parson's
cow ; it contains a good many gravestones,
of which I remember only some upright
memorials of slate to individuals of the
name of Tabbs.

Soon a woman arrived with the key of
the church-door, and we entered the simple
old edifice, which has the pavement of let
tered tombstones, the sturdy pillars and low
arches, and other ordinary characteristics
of an English country church. One or two
pews, probably those of the gentle folk of
the neighborhood, were better furnished
than the rest, but all in a modest style.
Near the high altar, in the holiest place,
there is an oblong, angular, ponderous
tomb of blue marble, built against the wall,
and surmounted by a carved canopy of the
same material ; and over the tomb, and
beneath the canopy, are two monumental
brasses, such as we oftener see inlaid into
a church pavement. On these brasses are
engraved the figures of a gentleman in
armor, and a lady in an antique garb, each
about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in
prayer ; and there is a long Latin inscrip-

NEAR OXFORD 303

tion likewise cut into the enduring brass,
bestowing the highest eulogies on the
character of Anthony Forster, who, with
his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this
tombstone. His is the knightly figure that
kneels above ; and if Sir Walter Scott
ever saw this tomb, he must have had an
even greater than common disbelief in
laudatory epitaphs, to venture on depicting
Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken
him in the romance. For my part, I read
the inscription in full faith, and believe
the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-
wronged individual, with good grounds for
bringing an action of slander in the courts
above.

But the circumstance, lightly as we treat
it, has its serious moral. What nonsense
it is, this anxiety, which so worries us
about our good fame, or our bad fame,
after death ! If it were of the slightest
real moment, our reputations would have
been placed by Providence more in our
own power, and less in other people's, than
we now find them to be. If poor Anthony
Forster happens to have met Sir Walter
in the other world, I doubt whether he has
ever thought it worth while to complain of
the latter's misrepresentations.

304 OUR OLD HOME

We did not remain long in the church,
as it contains nothing else of interest ;
and, driving through the village, we passed
a pretty large and rather antique-looking
inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and
Ragged Staff. It could not be so old, how
ever, by at least a hundred years, as Giles
Gosling's time ; nor is there any other ob
ject to remind the visitor of the Eliza
bethan age, unless it be a few ancient cot
tages, that are perhaps of still earlier date.
Cumnor is not nearly so large a village,
nor a place of such mark, as one antici
pates from its romantic and legendary
fame ; but, being still inaccessible by rail
way, it has retained more of a sylvan char
acter than we often find in English coun
try towns. In this retired neighborhood
the road is narrow and bordered with
grass, and sometimes interrupted by gates ;
the hedges grow in unpruned luxuriance ;
there is not that close-shaven neatness and
trimness that characterize the ordinary
English landscape. The whole scene con
veys the idea of seclusion and remoteness.
We met no travelers, whether on foot or
otherwise.

I cannot very distinctly trace out this
day's peregrinations ; but, after leaving

NEAR OXFORD 305

Cumnor a few miles behind us, I think we
came to a ferry over the Thames, where
an old woman served as ferryman, and
pulled a boat across by means of a rope
stretching from shore to shore. Our two
vehicles being thus placed on the other
side, we resumed our drive, — first glanc
ing, however, at the old woman's antique
cottage, with its stone floor, and the cir
cular settle round the kitchen fireplace,
which was quite in the mediaeval English
style.

We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt,
where we were received at the parsonage
with a hospitality which we should take
delight in describing, if it were allowable
to make public acknowledgment of the pri
vate and personal kindnesses which we
never failed to find ready for our needs.
An American in an English house will
soon adopt the opinion that the English
are the very kindest people on earth, and
will retain that idea as long, at least, as
he remains on the inner side of the thresh
old. Their magnetism is of a kind that
repels strongly while you keep beyond a
certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you
get within the magic line.

It was at this place, if I remember right,

306 OUR OLD HOME

that I heard a gentleman ask a friend of
mine whether he was the author of " The
Red Letter A ; " and, after some consid
eration (for he did not seem to recognize
his own book, at first, under this improved
title), our countryman responded doubt
fully, that he believed so. The gentleman
proceeded to inquire whether our friend
had spent much time in America, — evi
dently thinking that he must have been
caught young, and have had a tincture of
English breeding, at least, if not birth, to
speak the language so tolerably, and ap
pear so much like other people. This in
sular narrowness is exceedingly queer, and
of very frequent occurrence, and is quite
as much a characteristic of men of educa
tion and culture as of clowns.

Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old
place. It was formerly the seat of the an
cient family of Harcourt, which now has
its principal abode at Nuneham Courtney,
a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic
of the family mansion, or castle, other por
tions of which are close at hand ; for,
across the garden, rise two gray towers,
both of them picturesquely venerable, and
interesting for more than their antiquity.
One of these towers, in its entire capacity,

NEAR OXFORD 307

from height to depth, constituted the
kitchen of the ancient castle, and is still
used for domestic purposes, although it
has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or, we
might rather say, it is itself one vast chim
ney, with a hearth of thirty feet square,
and a flue and aperture of the same size.
There are two huge fireplaces within, and
the interior walls of the tower are black
ened with the smoke that for centuries
used to gush forth from them, and climb
upward, seeking an exit through some wide
air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy
feet above. These lofty openings were
capable of being so arranged, with reference
to the wind, that the cooks are said to have
been seldom troubled by the smoke ; and
here, no doubt, they were accustomed to
roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and
ado as a modern cook would roast a fowl.
The inside of the tower is very dim and
sombre (being nothing but rough stone
walls, lighted only from the apertures above
mentioned), and has still a pungent odor
of smoke and soot, the reminiscence of
the fires and feasts of generations that
have passed away. Methinks the extremest
range of domestic economy lies between
an American cooking-stove and the ancient

308 OUR OLD HOME

kitchen, seventy dizzy feet in height and
all one fireplace, of Stanton Harcourt.

Now — the place being without a parallel
in England, and therefore necessarily be
yond the experience of an American — it
is somewhat remarkable that, while we
stood gazing at this kitchen, 1 was haunted
and perplexed by an idea that somewhere
or other I had seen just this strange spec
tacle before. The height, the blackness,
the dismal void, before my eyes, seemed as
familiar as the decorous neatness of my
grandmother's kitchen ; only my unac
countable memory of the scene was lighted
up with an image of lurid fires blazing all
round the dim interior circuit of the tower.
I had never before had so pertinacious an
attack, as I could not but suppose it, of
that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully
and teasingly remember some previous
scene or incident, of which the one now
passing appears to be but the echo and
reduplication. Though the explanation of
the mystery did not for some time occur
to me, I may as well conclude the matter
here. In a letter of Pope's, addressed
to the Duke of Buckingham, there is an
account of Stanton Harcourt (as I now
find, although the name is not mentioned),

NEAR OXFORD 309

where he resided while translating a part
of the "Iliad." It is one of the most ad
mirable pieces of description in the lan
guage, — playful and picturesque, with fine
touches of humorous pathos, — and con
veys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn
of a decayed English country-house ; and
among other rooms, most of which have
since crumbled down and disappeared, he
dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, —
which, moreover, he peoples with witches,
engaging Satan himself as head cook, who
stirs the infernal caldrons that seethe and
bubble over the fires. This letter, and
others relative to his abode here, were very
familiar to my earlier reading, and, remain
ing still fresh at the bottom of my memory,
caused the weird and ghostly sensation
that came over me on beholding the real
spectacle that had formerly been made so
vivid to my imagination.

Our next visit was to the church, which
stands close by, and is quite as ancient as
the remnants of the castle. In a chapel
or side aisle, dedicated to the Harcourts,
are found some very interesting family
monuments, -- and among them, recum
bent on a tombstone, the figure of an armed
knight of the Lancastrian party, who was

310 OUR OLD HOME

slain in the Wars of the Roses. His fea
tures, dress, and armor are painted in col
ors, still wonderfully fresh, and there still
blushes the symbol of the Red Rose, de
noting the faction for which he fought and
died. His head rests on a marble or ala
baster helmet ; and on the tomb lies the
veritable helmet, it is to be presumed,
which he wore in battle, — a ponderous
iron case, with the visor complete, and
remnants of the gilding that once covered
it. The crest is a large peacock, not of
metal, but of wood. Very possibly, this
helmet was but an heraldic adornment of
his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange
that it has not been stolen before now, es
pecially in Cromwell's time, when knightly
tombs were little respected, and when ar
mor was in request. However, it is need
less to dispute with the dead knight about
the identity of his iron pot, and we may as
well allow it to be the very same that so
often gave him the headache in his life
time. Leaning against the wall, at the foot
of the tomb, is the shaft of a spear, with a
wofully tattered and utterly faded banner
appended to it, — the knightly banner be
neath which he marshaled his followers in
the field. As it was absolutely falling to

NEAR OXFORD 311

pieces, I tore off one little bit, no bigger
than a finger-nail, and put it into my waist
coat pocket ; but seeking it subsequently,
it was not to be found.

On the opposite side of the little chapel,
two or three yards from this tomb, is an
other monument, on which lie, side by side,
one of the same knightly race of Harcourts
and his lady. The tradition of the family
is, that this knight was the standard-bearer
of Henry of Richmond in the Battle of
Bosworth Field ; and a banner, supposed
to be the same that he carried, now droops
over his effigy. It is just such a colorless
silk rag as the one already described. The
knight has the order of the Garter on his
knee, and the lady wears it on her left
arm, — an odd place enough for a garter ;
but, if worn in its proper locality, it could
not be decorously visible. The complete
preservation and good condition of these
statues, even to the minutest adornment
of the sculpture, and their very noses, -
the most vulnerable part of a marble man,
as of a living one, — are miraculous. Ex
cept in Westminster Abbey, among the
chapels of the kings, I have seen none so
well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to
the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused through-

312 OUR OLD HOME

out its neighborhood by the influence of
the University, during the great Civil War
and the rule of the Parliament. It speaks
well, too, for the upright and kindly char
acter of this old family, that the peasantry,
among whom they had lived for ages, did
not desecrate their tombs, when it might
have been done with impunity.

There are other and more recent memo
rials of the Harcourts, one of which is the
tomb of the last lord, who died about a
hundred years ago. His figure, like those
of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb,
clad, not in armor, but in his robes as a
peer. The title is now extinct, but the
family survives in a younger branch, and
still holds this patrimonial estate, though
they have long since quitted it as a resi
dence.

We next went to see the ancient fish
ponds appertaining to the mansion, and
which used to be of vast dietary importance
to the family in Catholic times, and when
fish was not otherwise attainable. There
are two or three, or more, of these reser
voirs, one of which is of very respectable
size, — large enough, indeed, to be really
a picturesque object, with its grass-green
borders, and the trees drooping over it, and

NEAR OXFORD 313

the towers of the castle and the church
reflected within the weed-grown depths of
its smooth mirror. A sweet fragrance, as
it were, of ancient time and present quiet
and seclusion was breathing all around ;
the sunshine of to-day had a mellow charm
of antiquity in its brightness. These
ponds are said still to breed abundance of
such fish as love deep and quiet waters ;
but I saw only some minnows, and one or
two snakes, which were lying among the
weeds on the top of the water, sunning and
bathing themselves at once.

I mentioned that there were two towers
remaining of the old castle : the one con
taining the kitchen we have already visited ;
the other, still more interesting, is next to
be described. It is some seventy feet high,
gray and reverend, but in excellent repair,
though I could not perceive that anything
had been done to renovate it. The base
ment story was once the family chapel, and
is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At
one corner of the tower is a circular turret,
within which a narrow staircase, with worn
steps of stone, winds round and round as
it climbs upward, giving access to a cham
ber on each floor, and finally emerging on
the battlemented roof. Ascending this

314 OUR OLD HOME

turret stair, and arriving at the third story,
we entered a chamber, not large, though
occupying the whole area of the tower, and
lighted by a window on each side. It was
wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark
oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the
corners. The window-panes were small
and set in lead. The curiosity of this
room is, that it was once the residence of
Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable
part of the translation of Homer, and like
wise, no doubt, the admirable letters to
which I have referred above. The room
once contained a record by himself,
scratched with a diamond on one of the
window-panes (since removed for safe
keeping to Nuneham Courtney, where it
was shown me), purporting that he had
here finished the fifth book of the " Iliad "
on such a day.

A poet has a fragrance about him, such
as no other human being is gifted withal ;
it is indestructible, and clings forevermore
to everything that he has touched. I was
not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense
that the mighty Duke still haunted the
palace that was created for him ; but here,
after a century and a half, we are still
conscious of the presence of that decrepit

NEAR OXFORD 315

little figure of Queen Anne's time, although
he was merely a casual guest in the old
tower, during one or two summer months.
However brief the time and slight the
connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised
so long as the tower stands. In my mind,
moreover, Pope, or any other person with
an available claim, is right in adhering to
the spot, dead or alive ; for I never saw a
chamber that I should like better to in
habit, — so comfortably small, in such a
safe and inaccessible seclusion, and with a
varied landscape from each window. One
of them looks upon the church, close at
hand, and down into the green churchyard,
extending almost to the foot of the tower ;
the others have views wide and far, over a
gently undulating tract of country. If
desirous of a loftier elevation, about a
dozen more steps of the turret stair will
bring the occupant to the summit of the
tower, — where Pope used to come, no
doubt, in the summer evenings, and peep —
poor little shrimp that he was! — through
the embrasures of the battlement.

From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I
forget how far — to a point where a boat
was waiting for us upon the Thames, or
some other stream ; for I am ashamed to

316 OUR OLD HOME

confess my ignorance of the precise geo
graphical whereabout. We were, at any
rate, some miles above Oxford, and, I should
imagine, pretty near one of the sources of
England's mighty river. It was little more
than wide enough for the boat, with ex
tended oars, tc pass, — shallow, too, and
bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds,
which, in some places, quite overgrew the
surface of the river from bank to bank.
The shores were flat and meadow-like, and
sometimes, the boatman told us, are over
flowed by the rise of the stream. The
water looked clean and pure, but not partic
ularly transparent, though enough so to
show us that the bottom is very much
weed-grown ; and I was told that the weed
is an American production, brought to
England with importations of timber, and
now threatening to choke up the Thames
and other English rivers. I wonder it does
not try its obstructive powers upon the
Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hud
son, — not to speak of the St. Lawrence or
the Mississippi !

It was an open boat, with cushioned
seats astern, comfortably accommodating
our party ; the day continued sunny and
warm, and perfectly still ; the boatman,

NEAR OXFORD 317

well trained to his business, managed the
oars skillfully and vigorously : and we went
down the stream quite as swiftly as it was
desirable to go, the scene being so pleas
ant, and the passing hours so thoroughly
agreeable. The river grew a little wider
and deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but
was still an inconsiderable stream : for it
had a good deal more than a hundred miles
to meander through before it should bear
fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and
towers and Parliament houses and dingy
and sordid piles of various structure, as it
rolled to and fro with the tide, dividing
London asunder. Not, in truth, that T ever
saw any edifice whatever reflected in its
turbid breast, when the sylvan stream, as
we beheld it now, is swollen into the
Thames at London.

Once, on our voyage, we had to land,
while the boatman and some other persons
drew our skiff round some rapids, which
we could not otherwise have passed ; an
other time, the boat went through a lock.
We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine
the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe,
where Fair Rosamond secluded herself,
after being separated from her royal lover.
There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a

OUR OLD HOME

shattered tower at one of the angles ; the
whole much ivy-grown, — brimming over,
indeed, with clustering ivy, which is rooted
inside of the walls. The nunnery is now,
I believe, held in lease by the city of Ox
ford, which has converted its precincts into
a barnyard. The gate was under lock and
key, so that we could merely look at the
outside, and soon resumed our places in
the boat.

At three o'clock or thereabouts (or
sooner or later, — for I took little heed of
time, and only wished that these delightful
wanderings might last forever) we reached
Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took pos
session of a spacious barge, with a house in
it, and a comfortable dining-room or draw
ing-room within the house, and a level roof,
on which we could sit at ease, or dance if
so inclined. These barges are common at
Oxford, — some very splendid ones being
owned by the students of the different col
leges, or by clubs. They are drawn by
horses, like canal-boats ; and a horse be
ing attached to our own barge, he trotted
off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped
through the water behind him, with a
gentle and pleasant motion, which, save
for the constant vicissitude of cultivated

NEAR OXFORD 319

scenery, was like no motion at all. It was
life without the trouble of living ; nothing
was ever more quietly agreeable. In this
happy state of mind and body we gazed at
Christ Church meadows, as we passed,
and at the receding spires and towers of
Oxford, and on a good deal of pleasant va
riety along the banks : young men rowing
or fishing ; troops of naked boys bathing,
as if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity
of the Golden Age ; country-houses, cot
tages, water-side inns, all with something
fresh about them, as not being sprinkled
with the dust of the highway. We were a
large party now ; for a number of addi
tional guests had joined us at Folly Bridge,
and we comprised poets, novelists, scholars,
sculptors, painters, architects, men and
women of renown, dear friends, genial, out
spoken, open - hearted Englishmen, — all
voyaging onward together, like the wise
ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember
not a single annoyance, except, indeed,
that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us
and alighted on the head of one of our
young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of
the pomatum which he had been rubbing
into his hair. He was the only victim, and
his small trouble the one little flaw in our

320 OUR OLD HOME

day's felicity, to put us in mind that we
were mortal.

Meanwhile, a table had been laid in the
interior of our barge, and spread with cold
ham, cold fowl, cold pigeon-pie, cold beef,
and other substantial cheer, such as the
English love, and Yankees too, — besides
tarts, and cakes, and pears, and plums,. —
not forgetting, of course, a goodly provi
sion of port, sherry, and champagne, and
bitter ale, which is like mother's milk to
an Englishman, and soon grows equally
acceptable to his American cousin. By the
time these matters had been properly at
tended to, we had arrived at that part of
the Thames which passes by Nuneham
Courtney, a fine estate belonging to the
Harcourts, and the present residence of
the family. Here we landed, and, climb
ing a steep slope from the river -side,
paused a moment or two to look at an ar
chitectural object, called the Carfax, the
purport of which I do not well understand.
Thence we proceeded onward, through the
loveliest park and woodland scenery I ever
saw, and under as beautiful a declining
sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth,
to the stately mansion-house.

As we here cross a private threshold,

NEAR OXFORD $21

it is not allowable to pursue my feeble nar
rative o,f this delightful day with the same
freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, I may
as well bring it to a close. I may mention,
however, that I saw the library, a fine,
large apartment, hung round with portraits
of eminent literary men, principally of the
last century, most of whom were familiar
guests of the Harcourts. The house it
self is about eighty years old, and is built
in the classic style, as if the family had been
anxious to diverge as far as possible from
the Gothic picturesqueness of their old
abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds
were laid out in part by Capability Brown,
and seemed to me even more beautiful
than those of Blenheim. Mason the poet,
a friend of the house, gave the design of a
portion of the garden. Of the whole place
I will not be niggardly of my rude Trans
atlantic praise, but be bold to say that it
appeared to rne as perfect as anything
earthly can be, — utterly and entirely fin
ished, as if the years and generations had
done all that the hearts and minds of the
successive owners could contrive for a spot
they dearly loved. Such homes as Nune-
ham Courtney are among the splendid
results of long hereditary possession ; and

322 OUR OLD HOME

we Republicans, whose households melt
away like new-fallen snow in a spring morn
ing, must content ourselves with our many
counterbalancing advantages, — - for this
one, so apparently desirable to the far-pro
jecting selfishness of our nature, we are
certain never to attain.

It must not be supposed, nevertheless,
that Nuneham Courtney is one of the great
show-places of England. It is merely a
fair specimen of the better class of coun
try-seats, and has a hundred rivals, and
many superiors, in the features of beauty,
and expansive, manifold, redundant com
fort, which most impressed me. A moder
ate man might be content with such a
home, — that is all.

And now I take leave of Oxford without
even an attempt to describe it, — there be
ing no literary faculty, attainable or con
ceivable by me, which can avail to put it
adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper.
It must remain its own sole expression ;
and those whose sad fortune it may be
never to behold it have no better resource
than to dream about gray, weather-stained,
ivy -grown edifices, wrought with quaint
Gothic ornament, and standing around
grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks

NEAR OXFORD 323

nave echoed to the quiet footsteps of
twenty generations, — lawns and gardens
of luxurious repose, shadowed with cano
pies of foliage, and lit up with sunny
glimpses through archways of great boughs,

— spires, towers, and turrets, each with its
history and legend, — dimly magnificent
chapels, with painted windows of rare
beauty and brilliantly diversified hues,
creating an atmosphere of richest gloom,
— vast college halls, high-windowed, oaken-
paneled, and hung round with portraits of
the men, in every age, whom the univer
sity has nurtured to be illustrious, — long
vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wis
dom and learned folly of all time is shelved,

— kitchens (we throw in this feature by
way of ballast, and because it would not be
English Oxford without its beef and beer),
with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a
hundred joints at once, — and cavernous
cellars, where rows of piled-up hogsheads
seethe and fume with that mighty malt-
liquor which is the true milk of Alma
Mater : make all these things vivid in your
dream, and you will never know nor be
lieve how inadequate is the result to repre
sent even the merest outside of Oxford.

We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude

324 OUR OLD HOME

this article without making our grateful
acknowledgments, by name, to a gentleman
whose overflowing kindness was the main
condition of all our sight-seeings and enjoy
ments. Delightful as will always be our
recollection of Oxford and its neighborhood,
we partly suspect that it owes much of
its happy coloring to the genial medium
through which the objects were presented
to us, — to the kindly magic of a hospitality
unsurpassed, within our experience, in the
quality of making the guest contented with
his host, with himself, and everything about
him. He has inseparably mingled his image
with our remembrance of the Spires of
Oxford.

VIII.
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS

WE left Carlisle at a little past eleven,
and within the half hour were at Gretna
Green. Thence we rushed onward into
Scotland through a flat and dreary tract of
country, consisting mainly of desert and
bog, where probably the moss-troopers were
accustomed to take refuge after their raids
into England. Anon, however, the hills
hove themselves up to view, occasionally
attaining a height which might almost be
called mountainous. In about two hours
we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the
station there.

Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed
to be, we found it an awfully hot day, not
a whit less so than the day before ; but we
sturdily adventured through the burning
sunshine up into the town, inquiring our
way to the residence of Burns. The street
leading from the station is called Shake
speare Street ; and at its farther extremity
we read " Burns Street " on a corner-house,

326 OUR OLD HOME

— the avenue thus designated having been
formerly known as " Mill-Hole Brae." It
is a vile lane, paved with small, hard stones
from side to side, and bordered by cottages
or mean houses of whitewashed stone, join
ing one to another along the whole length
of the street. With not a tree, of course,
or a blade of grass between the paving-
stones, the narrow lane was as hot as
Tophet, and reeked with a genuine Scotch
odor, being infested with unwashed chil
dren, and altogether in a state of chronic
filth ; although some women seemed to be
hopelessly scrubbing the thresholds of their
wretched dwellings. I never saw an out-
skirt of a town less fit for a poet's residence,
or in which it would be more miserable for
any man of cleanly predilections to spend
his days.

We asked for Burns's dwelling ; and a
woman pointed across the street to a two-
story house, built of stone, and white
washed, like its neighbors, but perhaps of a
little more respectable aspect than most of
them, though I hesitate in saying so. It
was not a separate structure, but under the
same continuous roof with the next. There
was an inscription on the door, bearing no
reference to Burns, but indicating that the

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 327

house was now occupied by a ragged or
industrial school. On knocking, we were
instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who
smiled intelligently when we told our er
rand, and showed us into a low and very
plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen
feet square. A young woman, who seemed
to be a teacher in the school, soon ap
peared, and told us that this had been
Burns' s usual sitting-room, and that he had
written many of his songs here.

She then led us up a narrow staircase
into a little bedchamber over the parlor.
Connecting with it, there is a very small
room, or windowed closet, which Burns
used as a study ; and the bedchamber itself
was the one where he slept in his later
lifetime, and in which he died at last.
Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable
place for a pastoral and rural poet to live
or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than
Shakespeare's house, which has a certain
homely picturesqueness that contrasts fa
vorably with the suburban sordidness of
the abode before us. The narrow lane,
the paving-stones, and the contiguity of
wretched hovels are depressing to remem
ber ; and the steam of them (such is our
human weakness) might almost make the
poet's memory less fragrant.

328 OUR OLD HOME

As already observed, it was an intoler
ably hot day. After leaving the house,
we found our way into the principal street
of the town, which, it may be fair to say, is
of very different aspect from the wretched
outskirt above described. Entering a hotel
(in which, as a Dumfries guide-book as
sured us, Prince Charles Edward had once
spent a night), we rested and refreshed
ourselves, and then set forth in quest of
the mausoleum of Burns.

Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw
a man digging a grave, and, scrambling out
of the hole, he let us into the churchyard,
which was crowded full of monuments.
Their general shape and construction are
peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular
tablet of marble or other stone, within a
framework of the same material, somewhat
resembling the frame of a looking-glass ;
and, all over the churchyard, these sepul
chral memorials rise to the height of ten,
fifteen, or twenty feet, forming quite an
imposing collection of monuments, but in
scribed with names of small general signi
ficance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain
the rank of those who slept below ; for in
Scotland it is the custom to put the occupa
tion of the buried personage (as " Skin-

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 329

ner," "Shoemaker," " Flesher ") on his
tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives
are buried under their maiden names, in
stead of those of their husbands, thus giv
ing a disagreeable impression that the mar
ried pair have bidden each other an eternal
farewell on the edge of the grave.

There was a foot-path through this crowd
ed churchyard, sufficiently well worn 'to
guide us to the grave of Burns ; but a
woman followed behind us, who, it ap
peared kept the key of the mausoleum,
and was privileged to show it to strangers.
The monument is a sort of Grecian temple,
with pilasters and a dome, covering a space
of about twenty feet square. It was for
merly open to all the inclemencies of the
Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected
and shut in by large squares of rough
glass, each pane being of the size of one
whole side of the structure. The woman
unlocked the door, and admitted us into
the interior. Inlaid into the floor of the
mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns, —
the very same that was laid over his grave
by Jean Armour, before this monument
was built. Displayed against the surround
ing wall is a marble statue of Burns at the
plough, with the Genius of Caledonia sum-

330 OUR OLD HOME

moning the ploughman to turn poet. Me-
thought it was not a very successful piece
of work ; for the plough was better sculp
tured than the man, and the man, though
heavy and cloddish, was more effective
than the goddess. Our guide informed us
that an old man of ninety, who knew
Burns, certifies this statue to be very like
the original.

The bones of the poet, and of Jean
Armour, and of some of their children, lie
in the vault over which we stood. Our guide
(who was intelligent, in her own plain way,
and very agreeable to talk withal) said
that the vault was opened about three
weeks ago, on occasion of the burial of
the eldest son of Burns. The poet's bones
were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so
brimming over with powerful thought and
bright and tender fantasies, was taken
away, and kept for several days by a Dum
fries doctor. It has since been deposited
in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the
vault. We learned that there is a surviv
ing daughter of Burns's eldest son, and
daughters likewise of the two younger
sons, — and, besides these, an illegitimate
posterity by the eldest son, who appears
to have been of disreputable life in his

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 331

younger days. He inherited his father's
failings, with some faint shadow, I have
also understood, of the great qualities
which have made the world tender of his
father's vices and weaknesses.

We listened readily enough to this paltry
gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's
memory of some of the reverence that was
its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave
had very much the same tendency and ef
fect as the home-scene of his life, which
we had been visiting just previously. Be
holding his poor, mean dwelling and its
surroundings, and picturing his outward
life and earthly manifestations from these,
one does not so much wonder that the
people of that day should have failed to
recognize all that was admirable and im
mortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily
clothed, and shabbily housed man, consort
ing with associates of damaged character,
and, as his only ostensible occupation,
gauging the whiskey, which he too often
tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs
must, in his plea against the world, let us
try to do the world a little justice too. It
is far easier to know and honor a poet
when his fame has taken shape in the
spotlessness of marble than when the ac-

332 OUR OLD HOME

tual man comes staggering before you, be
smeared with the sordid stains of his daily
life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that
his recognition dawned so brightly while
he was still living. There must have been
something very grand in his immediate
presence, some strangely impressive char
acteristic in his natural behavior, to have
caused him to seem like a demigod so
soon.

As we went back through the church
yard, we saw a spot where nearly four hun
dred inhabitants of Dumfries were buried
during the cholera year ; and also some
curious old monuments, with raised letters,
the inscriptions on which were not suffi
ciently legible to induce us to puzzle them
out ; but, I believe, they mark the resting-
places of old Covenanters, some of whom
were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow-
ruffians.

St. Michael's Church is of red freestone,
and was built about a hundred years ago,
on an old Catholic foundation. Our guide
admitted us into it, and showed us, in the
porch, a very pretty little marble figure
of a child asleep, with a drapery over the
lower part, from beneath which appeared
its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 333

little statue ; and the woman told us that
it represented a child of the sculptor, and
that the baby (here still in its marble in
fancy) had died more than twenty-six years
ago. " Many ladies," she said, " especially
such as had ever lost a child, had shed
tears over it." It was very pleasant to
think of the sculptor bestowing the best of
his genius and art to re-create his tender
child in stone, and to make the representa
tion as soft and sweet as the original ; but
the conclusion of the story has something
that jars with our awakened sensibilities.
A gentleman from London had seen the
statue, and was so much delighted with it
that he bought it of the father-artist, after
it had lain above a quarter of a century in
the church-porch. So this was not the
real, tender image that came out of the
father's heart ; he had sold that truest one
for a hundred guineas, and sculptured this
mere copy to replace it. The first figure
was entirely naked in its earthly and spir
itual innocence. The copy, as I have said
above, has a drapery over the lower limbs.
But, after all, if we come to the truth of
the matter, the sleeping baby may be as
fitly reposited in the drawing-room of a
connoisseur as in a cold and dreary church-
porch.

334

OUR OLD HOME

We went into the church, and found it
very plain and naked, without altar deco
rations, and . having its floor quite covered
with unsightly wooden pews. The woman
led us to a pew, cornering on one of the
side aisles, and, telling us that it used to be
Burns's family pew, showed us his seat,
which is in the corner by the aisle. It is
so situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him
from the pulpit, and from the minister's
eye ; " for Robin was no great friends with
the ministers," said she. This touch — his
seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself
nodding in sermon-time, or keenly obser
vant of profane things — brought him be
fore us to the life. In the corner- seat of
the next pew, right before Burns, and not
more than two feet off, sat the young lady
on whom the poet saw that unmention
able parasite, which he has immortalized
in song. We were ungenerous enough to
ask the lady's name, but the good woman
could not tell it. This was the last thing
which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record;
and it ought to be noted that our guide re
fused some money which my companion
offered her, because I had already paid her
what she deemed sufficient.

At the railway-station we spent more

ROBERT BURNS

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 335

than a weary hour, waiting for the train,
which at last came up, and took us to
Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the
only conveyance to be had, and drove about
a mile to the village, where we established
ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of
the veriest country inns which we have
found in Great Britain. The town of
Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns
than almost any other, consists of a street
or two of contiguous cottages, mostly white
washed, and with thatched roofs. It has
nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate
village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man
could contrive to make, or to render uglier
through a succession of untidy generations.
The fashion of paving the village street, and
patching one shabby house on the gable-
end of another, quite shuts out all verdure
and pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are
not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch
village, such as they used to be in Burns's
time, and long before, than this of Mauch
line. The church stands about midway up
the street, and is built of red freestone,
very simple in its architecture, with a square
tower and pinnacles. In this sacred edifice,
and its churchyard, was the scene of one
of Burns's most characteristic productions,
"The Holy Fair."

33'6 OUR OLD HOME

Almost directly opposite its gate, across
the village street, stands Posie Nansie's inn,
where the "Jolly Beggars" congregated.
The latter is a two-story, red-stone, thatched
house, looking old, but by no means ven
erable, like a drunken patriarch. It has
small, old-fashioned windows, and may well
have stood for centuries, — though, seventy
or eighty years ago, when Burns was con
versant with it, I should fancy it might
have been something better than a beggars'
alehouse. The whole town of Mauchline
looks rusty and time-worn, — even the
newer houses, of which there are several,
being shadowed and darkened by the gen
eral aspect of the place. When we arrived,
all the wretched little dwellings seemed to
have belched forth their inhabitants into
the warm summer evening : everybody was
chatting with everybody, on the most fa
miliar terms ; the bare - legged children
gamboled or quarreled uproariously, and
came freely, moreover, and looked into the
window of our parlor. When we ventured
out, we were followed by the gaze of the
old town : people standing in their door
ways, old women popping their heads from
the chamber-windows, and stalwart men —
idle on Saturday at e'en, after their week's

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 337

hard labor — clustering at the street-cor
ners, merely to stare at our unpretending
selves. Except in some remote little town
of Italy (where, besides, the inhabitants had
the intelligible stimulus of beggary), I have
never been honored with nearly such an
amount of public notice.

The next forenoon my companion put
me to shame by attending church, after
vainly exhorting me to do the like ; and it
being Sacrament Sunday, and my poor
friend being wedged into the farther end
of a closely filled pew, he was forced to
stay through the preaching of four several
sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted
and desperate. He was somewhat consoled,
however, on finding that he had witnessed
a spectacle of Scotch manners identical with
that of Burns's "Holy Fair" on the very
spot where the poet located that immortal
description. By way of further conform-
ance to the customs of the country, we
ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and
did penance accordingly; and at five o'clock
we took a fly, and set out for Burns's farm
of Moss Giel.

Moss Giel is not more than a mile from
Mauchline, and the road extends over a
high ridge of land, with a view of far hills

338 OUR OLD HOME

and green slopes on either side. Just be
fore we reached the farm, the driver stopped
to point out a hawthorn, growing by the
wayside, which he said was Burns's "Lousie
Thorn ; " and I devoutly plucked a branch,
although I have really forgotten where or
how this illustrious shrub has been cele
brated. We then turned into a rude gate
way, and almost immediately came to the
farm-house of Moss Giel, standing some
fifty yards removed from the high-road,
behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and con
siderably overshadowed by trees. The
house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like
thousands of others in England and Scot
land, with a thatched roof, on which grass
and weeds have intruded a picturesque,
though alien, growth. There is a door and
one window in front, besides another little
window that peeps out among the thatch.
Close by the cottage, and extending back
at right angles from it, so as to inclose the
farm-yard, are two other buildings of the
same size, shape, and general appearance
as the house : any one of the three looks
just as fit for a human habitation as the
two others, and all three look still more
suitable for donkey-stables and pigsties,
As we drove into the farm-yard, bounded

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 339

on three sides by these three hovels, a
large dog began to bark at us ; and some
women and children made their appear
ance, but seemed to demur about admit
ting us, because the master and mistress
were very religious people, and had not yet
come back from the Sacrament at Mauch-
line.

However, it would not do to be turned
back from the very threshold of Robert
Burns ; and as the women seemed to be
merely straggling visitors, and nobody, at all
events, had a right to send us away, we went
into the back door, and, turning to the right,
entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable
lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there
were three or four children, one of whom,
a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby
in her arms. She proved to be the daugh
ter of the people of the house, and gave us
what leave she could to look about us.
Thence we stepped across the narrow mid-
passage of the cottage into the only other
apartment below stairs, a sitting-room,
where we found a young man eating bread
and cheese. He informed us that he did
not live there, and had only called in to
refresh himself on his way home from
church. This room, like the kitchen, was

340 OUR OLD HOME

a noticeably poor one, and, besides being
all that the cottage had to show for a par
lor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two
beds, which might be curtained off, on
occasion. The young man allowed us lib
erty (so far as in him lay) to go up stairs.
Up we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps
brought us to the top of the staircase, over
the kitchen, where we found the wretch-
edest little sleeping-chamber in the world,
with a sloping roof under the thatch, and
two beds spread upon the bare floor. This,
most probably, was Burns's chamber; or,
perhaps, it may have been that of his moth
er's servant-maid ; and, in either case, this
rude floor, at one time or another, must
have creaked beneath the poet's midnight
tread. On the opposite side of the passage
was the door of another attic-chamber,
opening which, I saw a considerable num
ber of cheeses on the floor.

The whole house was pervaded with a
frowzy smell, and also a dunghill odor ;
and it is not easy to understand how the
atmosphere of such a dwelling can be any
more agreeable or salubrious morally than
it appeared to be physically. No virgin,
surely, could keep a holy awe about her
while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse-

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 341

natured rustics into this narrowness and
filth. Such a habitation is calculated to
make beasts of men and women ; and it
indicates a degree of barbarism which I
did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that
a tiller of broad fields, like the farmer of
Mauchline, should have his abode in a
pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody —
not to say a poet, but any human being
— sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and
spending all his home-life in this miser
able hovel ; but, methinks, I never in the
least knew how to estimate the miracle of
Burns's genius, nor his heroic merit for
being no worse man, until I thus learned
the squalid hindrances amid which he de
veloped himself. Space, a free atmosphere,
and cleanliness have a vast deal to do with
the possibilities of human virtue.

The biographers talk of the farm of
Moss Giel as being damp and unwhole
some ; but I do not see why, outside of the
cottage-walls, it should possess so evil a re
putation. It occupies a high, broad ridge,
enjoying, surely, whatever benefit can come
of a breezy site, and sloping far downward
before any marshy soil is reached. The
high hedge, and the trees that stand be
side the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect

342 OUR OLD HOME

enough to one who does not know the
grimy secrets of the interior ; and the
summer afternoon was now so bright that
I shall remember the scene with a great
deal of sunshine over it.

Leaving the cottage, we drove through
a field, which the driver told us was that
in which Burns turned up the mouse's
nest. It is the inclosure nearest to the
cottage, and seems now to be a pasture,
and a rather remarkably unfertile one. A
little farther on, the ground was whitened
with an immense number of daisies, -
daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer
to my inquiry, the driver said that this was
the field where Burns ran his ploughshare
over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to
have been consecrated to daisies by the
song which he bestowed on that first im
mortal one. I alighted, and plucked a
whole handful of these " wee, modest, crim
son-tipped flowers," which will be precious
to many friends in our own country as
coming from Burns's farm, and being of
the same race and lineage as that daisy
which he turned into an amaranthine flower
while seeming to destroy it.1

1 SOUTHPORT, May \Qth. The grass has been green
for a month, — indeed, it has never been entirely brown,

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 343

From Moss Giel we drove through a va
riety of pleasant scenes, some of which
were familiar to us by their connection
with Burns. We skirted, too, along a por
tion of the estate of Auchinleck, which
still belongs to the Boswell family, — • the
present possessor being Sir James Bos-
well,1 a grandson of Johnson's friend, and
son of the Sir Alexander who was killed in
a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as
a kind, free-hearted man, but addicted to
horse - races and similar pastimes, and a
little too familiar with the wine-cup ; so
that poor Bozzy's booziness would appear
to have become hereditary in his ancient
line. There is no male heir to the estate
of Auchinleck. The portion of the lands
which we saw is covered with wood and
much undermined with rabbit-warrens ;
nor, though the territory extends over a

— and now the trees and hedges are beginning to be in
foliage. Weeks ago the daisies bloomed, even in the
sandy grass-plot bordering on the promenade beneath
our front windows ; and in the progress of the daisy,
and towards its consummation, I saw the propriety of
Burns's epithet, " wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower," —
its little white petals in the bud being fringed all round
with crimson, which fades into pure white when the
flower blooms. — II. 419.

1 Sir James Boswell is now dead.

344 OUR OLD HOME

large number of acres, is the income very
considerable.

By and by we came to the spot where
Burns saw Miss Alexander, the Lass of
Ballochmyle. It was on a bridge, which
(or, more probably, a bridge that has suc
ceeded to the old one, and is made of iron)
crosses from bank to bank, high in air
over a deep gorge of the road ; so that the
young lady may have appeared to Burns
like a creature between earth and sky, and
compounded chiefly of celestial elements.
But, in honest truth, the great charm of a
woman, in Burns's eyes, was always her
womanhood, and not the angelic mixture
which other poets find in her.

Our driver pointed out the course taken
by the Lass of Ballochmyle, through the
shrubbery, to a rock on the banks of the
Lugar, where it seems to be the tradition
that Burns accosted her. The song im
plies no such interview. Lovers, of what
ever condition, high or low, could desire
no lovelier scene in which to breathe their
vows : the river flowing over its pebbly
bed, sometimes gleaming into the sun
shine, sometimes hidden deep in verdure,
and here and there eddying at the foot of
high and precipitous cliffs. This beautiful

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 345

estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the
family of Alexanders, to whom Burns's
song has given renown on cheaper terms
than any other set of people ever attained
it. How slight the tenure seems ! A
young lady happened to walk out, one
summer afternoon, and crossed the path
of a neighboring farmer, who celebrated
the little incident in four or five warm,
rude, — at least, not refined, though rather
ambitious, — and somewhat ploughman-
like verses. Burns has written hundreds
of better things ; but henceforth, for cen
turies, that maiden has free admittance
into the dream-land of Beautiful Women,
and she and all her race are famous. I
should like to know the present head of
the family, and ascertain what value, if any,
the members of it put upon the celebrity
thus won.

We passed through Catrine, known here
abouts as "the clean village of Scotland."
Certainly, as regards the point indicated,
it has greatly the advantage of Mauchline,
whither we now returned without seeing
anything else worth writing about.

There was a rain-storm during the night,
and, in the morning, the rusty, old, slop
ing street of Mauchline was glistening with

346 OUR OLD HOME

wet, while frequent showers came spatter
ing down. The intense heat of many days
past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere,
much more suitable to a stranger's idea of
what Scotch temperature ought to be. We
found, after breakfast, that the first train
northward had already gone bfy, and that
we must wait till nearly two o'clock for the
next. I merely ventured out once, during
the forenoon, and took a brief walk through
the village, in which I have left little to
describe. Its chief business appears to
be the manufacture of snuff-boxes. There
are perhaps five or six shops, or more, in
cluding those licensed to sell only tea and
tobacco ; the best of them have the char
acteristics of village stores in the United
States, dealing in a small way with an ex
tensive variety of articles. I peeped into
the open gateway of the churchyard, and
saw that the ground was absolutely stuffed
with dead people, and the surface crowded
with gravestones, both perpendicular and
horizontal. All Burns's old Mauchline ac
quaintance are doubtless there, and the
Armours among them, except Bonny Jean,
who sleeps by her poet's side. The fam
ily of Armour is now extinct in Mauch
line.

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 347

Arriving at the railway-station, we found
a tall, elderly, comely gentleman walking
to and fro and waiting for the train. He
proved to be a Mr. Alexander, — it may
fairly be presumed the Alexander of Bal-
lochmyle, a blood relation of the lovely lass.
Wonderful efficacy of a poet's verse, that
could shed a glory from Long Ago on this
old gentleman's white hair ! These Alex
anders, by the by, are not an old family on
the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the
lass having made a fortune in trade, and
established himself as the first landed pro
prietor of his name in these parts. The
original family was named Whitefoord.

Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very
remarkable ; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy
day takes the varnish off the scenery, and
causes a woful diminution in the beauty
and impressiveness of everything we see.
Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy
level, in a southerly direction. We reached
Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove
to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals
of showers I took peeps at the town, which
appeared to have many modern or modern-
fronted edifices ; although there are like
wise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking
houses in the by-streets, here and there,

348 OUR OLD HOME

betokening an ancient place, The town
lies on both sides of the Ayr, which is
here broad and stately, and bordered with
dwellings that look from their windows
directly down into the passing tide.

I crossed the river by -a modern and
handsome stone bridge, and recrossed it, at
no great distance, by a venerable structure
of four gray arches, which must have be
stridden the stream ever since the early
days of Scottish history. These are the
"Two Briggs of Ayr," whose midnight
conversation was overheard by Burns, while
other auditors were aware only of the rush
and rumble of the wintry stream among the
arches. The ancient bridge is steep and
narrow, and paved like a street, and de
fended by a parapet of red freestone, except
at the two ends, where some mean old shops
allow scanty room for the pathway to creep
between. Nothing else impressed me here
abouts, unless I mention that, during the
rain, the women and girls went about the
streets of Ayr barefooted to save their
shoes.

The next morning wore a lowering as
pect as if it felt itself destined to be one
of many consecutive days of storm. After
a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 349

herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started
at a little past ten for the banks of the
Doon. On our way, at about two miles
from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cottage,
on which was an inscription to the effect
that Robert Burns was born within its
walls. It is now a public house ; and, of
course, we alighted and entered its little
sitting-room, which, as we at present see it,
is a neat apartment with the modern im
provement of a ceiling. The walls are
much overscribbled with names of visitors,
and the wooden door of a cupboard in the
wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work
of the room, is cut and carved with initial
letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which,
having received a coat of varnish over the
inscriptions, form really curious and inter
esting articles of furniture. I have seldom
(though I do not personally adopt this
mode of illustrating my humble name) felt
inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of
most people thus to record themselves at
the shrines of poets and heroes.

On a panel, let into the wall in a corner
of the room, is a portrait of Burns, copied
from the original picture by Nasmyth. The
floor of this apartment is of boards, which
are probably a recent substitute for the

350 OUR OLD HOME

ordinary flag-stones of a peasant's cottage.
There is but one other room pertaining to
the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns :
it is the kitchen, into which we now went.
It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than
those of Shakespeare's house, — though,
perhaps, not so strangely cracked and bro
ken as the latter, over which the hoof of
Satan himself might seem to have been
trampling. A new window has been opened
through the wall, towards the road ; but on
the opposite side is the little original win
dow, of only four small panes, through
which came the first daylight that shone
upon the Scottish poet. At the side of
the room, opposite the fireplace, is a recess,
containing a bed, which can be hidden by
curtains. In that humble nook, of all places
in the world, Providence was pleased to de
posit the germ of richest human life which
mankind then had within its circumference.
These two rooms, as I have said, make
up the whole sum and substance of Burns's
birthplace : for there were no chambers,
nor even attics ; and the thatched roof
formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sit
ting-room, the height of which was that of
the whole house. The cottage, however, is
attached to another edifice of the same size

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 351

and description, as these little habitations
often are ; and, moreover, a splendid addi
tion has been made to it, since the poet's
renown began to draw visitors to the way
side alehouse. The old woman of the house
led us through an entry, and showed a
vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be
sure, but marvelously large and splendid
as compared with what might be antici
pated from the outward aspect of the cot
tage. It contained a bust of Burns, and
was hung round with pictures and engrav
ings, principally illustrative of his life and
poems. In this part of the house, too,
there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco-
smoke ; and, no doubt, many a noggin of
whiskey is here quaffed to the memory of
the bard, who professed to draw so much
inspiration from that potent liquor.

We bought some engravings of Kirk
Alloway, the Bridge of Doon, and the mon
ument, and gave the old woman a fee be
sides, and took our leave. A very short
drive farther brought us within sight of the
monument, and to the hotel, situated close
by the entrance of the ornamental grounds
within which the former is inclosed. We
rang the bell at the gate of the inclosure,
but were forced to wait a considerable time;

352 OUR OLD HOME

because the old man, the regular superin
tendent of the spot, had gone to assist at
the laying of the corner-stone of a new
kirk. He appeared anon, and admitted us,
but immediately hurried away to be present
at the concluding ceremonies, leaving us
locked up with Burns.

The inclosure around the monument is
beautifully laid out as an ornamental gar
den, and abundantly provided with rare
flowers and shrubbery, all tended with lov
ing care. The monument stands on an ele
vated site, and consists of a massive base
ment story, three-sided, above which rises
a light and elegant Grecian temple, — a
mere dome, supported on Corinthian pil
lars, and open to all the winds. The edi
fice is beautiful in itself ; though I know
not what peculiar appropriateness it may
have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural
poet.

The door of the basement story stood
open ; and, entering, we saw a bust of
Burns in a niche, looking keener, more re
fined, but not so warm and whole-souled
as his pictures usually do. I think the
likeness cannot be good. In the centre of
the room stood a glass case, in which were
reposited the two volumes of the little

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 353

Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland
Mary, when they pledged their troth to
one another. It is poorly printed on coarse
paper. A verse of Scripture referring to
the solemnity and awfulness of vows is writ
ten within the cover of each volume, in the
poet's own hand ; and fastened to one of
the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's
golden hair. This Bible had been carried
to America by one of her relatives, but was
sent back to be fitly treasured here.

There is a staircase within the monu
ment, by which we ascended to the top,
and had a view of both Briggs of Doon :
the scene of Tarn O'Shanter's misadven
ture being close at hand. Descending, we
wandered through the inclosed garden, and
came to a little building in a corner, on en
tering which, we found the two statues of
Tarn and Sutor Wat, — ponderous stone
work enough, yet permeated in a remark
able degree with living warmth and jovial
hilarity. From this part of the garden,
too, we again beheld the old Brigg of
Doon, over which Tam galloped in such
imminent and awful peril. It is a beauti
ful object in the landscape, with one high,
graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all
over and around with foliage.

354 OUR OLD HOME

When we had waited a good while, the
old gardener came, telling us that he had
heard an excellent prayer at laying the cor
ner-stone of the new kirk. He now gave
us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us
out from his pleasant garden. We imme
diately hastened to Kirk Alloway, which
is within two or three minutes' walk of the
monument. A few steps ascend from the
roadside, through a gate, into the old
graveyard, in the midst of which stands
the kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless,
but the side-walls and gable-ends are quite
entire, though portions of them are evi
dently modern restorations. Never was
there a plainer little church, or one with
smaller architectural pretensions ; no New
England meeting-house has more simpli
city in its very self, though poetry and fun
have clambered and clustered so wildly
over Kirk Alloway that it is difficult to
see it as it actually exists. By the by,
I do not understand why Satan and an as
sembly of witches should hold their revels
within a consecrated precinct ; but the
weird scene has so established itself in the
world's imaginative faith that it must be
accepted as an authentic incident, in spite
of rule and reason to the contrary. Pos-

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 355

sibly, some carnal minister, some priest of
pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dis
pelled the consecration of the holy edifice
by his pretense of prayer, and thus made
it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcer
ers and devils.

The interior of the kirk, even now, is
applied to quite as impertinent a purpose
as when Satan and the witches used it as
a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in the
midst by a wall of stone-masonry, and each
compartment has been converted into a
family burial-place. The name on one of
the monuments is Crawfurd ; the other
bore no inscription. It is impossible not
to feel that these good people, whoever
they may be, had no business to thrust
their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs
to the world, and where their presence jars
with the emotions, be they sad or gay,
which the pilgrim brings thither. They
shut us out from our own precincts, too,
— from that inalienable possession which
Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind,
by taking it from the actual earth and an
nexing it to the domain of imagination.
And here these wretched squatters have
lain down to their long sleep, after barring
each of the two doorways of the kirk with

356 OUR OLD HOME

an iron grate ! May their rest be troubled,
till they rise and let us in !

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small,
considering how large a space it fills in our
imagination before we see it. I paced its
length, outside of the wall, and found it
only seventeen of my paces, and not more
than ten of them in breadth. There seem
to have been but very few windows, all of
which, if I rightly remember, are now
blocked up with mason - work of stone.
One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in
the eastern gable, might have been seen
by Tarn O'Shanter, blazing with devilish
light, as he approached along the road
from Ayr ; and there is a small and square
one, on the side nearest the road, into
which he might have peered, as he sat on
horseback. Indeed, I could easily have
looked through it, standing on the ground,
had not the opening been walled up. There
is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of
one of the gables, with the small bell still
hanging in it. And this is all that I
remember of Kirk Alloway, except that
the stones of its material are gray and
irregular.

The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk,
and crosses the Doon by a modern bridge,

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 357

without swerving much from a straight
line. To reach the old bridge, it appears
to have made a bend, shortly after passing
the kirk, and then to have turned sharply
towards the river. The new bridge is
within a minute's walk of the monument ;
and we went thither, and leaned over its
parapet to admire the beautiful Doon, flow
ing wildly and sweetly between its deep
and wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier
scene ; although this might have been even
lovelier if a kindly -sun had shone upon it.
The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its
high arch, through which we had a picture
of the river and the green banks beyond,
was absolutely the most picturesque ob
ject, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever
blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its
wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into
the water ! The memory of them, at this
moment, affects me like the song of birds,
and Burns crooning some verses, simple
and wild, in accordance with their native
melody.

It was impossible to depart without cross
ing the very bridge of Tarn's adventure ;
so we went thither, over a now disused
portion of the road, and, standing on the
centre of the arch, gathered some ivy-leaves

358 OUR OLD HOME

from that sacred spot. This done, we re
turned as speedily as might be to Ayr,
whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld
Ailsa Craig rising like a pyramid out of
the sea. Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben
Lomond hove in sight, with a dome -like
summit, supported by a shoulder on each
side. But a man is better than a moun
tain ; and we had been holding intercourse,
if not with the reality, at least with the
stalwart ghost of one of Earth's memo
rable sons, amid the scenes where he lived
and sung. We shall appreciate him better
as a poet, hereafter; for there is no writer
whose life, as a man, has so much to do
with his fame, and throws such a neces
sary light upon whatever he has pro
duced. Henceforth, there will be a per
sonal warmth for us in everything that he
wrote ; and, like his countrymen, we shall
know him in a kind of personal way, as if
we had shaken hands with him, and felt
the thrill of his actual voice.

IX.

A LONDON SUBURB

ONE of our English summers looks, in the
retrospect, as if it had been patched with
more frequent sunshine than the sky of
England ordinarily affords ; but I believe
that it may be only a moral effect, — a
"light 'that never was on sea or land," —
caused by our having found a particularly
delightful abode in the neighborhood of
London. In order to enjoy it, however,
I was compelled to solve the problem of
living in two places at once, — an impossi
bility which I so far accomplished as to
vanish, at frequent intervals, out of men's
sight and knowledge on one side of Eng
land, and take my place in a circle of
familiar faces on the other, so quietly that
I seemed to have been there all along. It
was the easier to get accustomed to our
new residence, because it was not only rich
in all the material properties of a home,
but had also the home-like atmosphere, the
household element, which is of too intan-

360 OUR OLD HOME

gible a character to be let even with the
most thoroughly furnished lodging-house.
A friend had given us his suburban resi
dence, with all its conveniences, elegances,
and snuggeries, — its drawing-rooms and
library, still warm and bright with the recol
lection of the genial presences that we had
known there, — its closets, chambers, kitch
en, and even its wine-cellar, if we could
have availed ourselves of so dear and deli
cate a trust, — its lawn and cosey garden-
nooks, and whatever else makes up the
multitudinous idea of an English home, —
he had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and
dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and
take our ease during his summer's absence
on the Continent. We had long been
dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally
shivering by hearths which, heap the bitu
minous coal upon them as we might, no
blaze could render cheerful. I remember,
to this day, the dreary feeling with which
I sat by our first English fireside, and
watched the chill and rainy twilight of
an autumn day darkening down upon the
garden ; while the portrait of the preceding
occupant of the house (evidently a most un-
amiable personage in his lifetime) scowled
inhospitably from above the mantelpiece,

A LONDON SUBURB 361

as if indignant that an American should try
to make himself at home there. Possibly
it may appease his sulky shade to know
that I quitted his abode as much a stranger
as I entered it. But now, at last, we were
in a genuine British home, where refined
and warm-hearted people had just been
living their daily life, and had left us
a summer's inheritance of slowly ripened
days, such as a stranger's hasty opportuni
ties so seldom permit him to enjoy.

Within so trifling a distance of the cen
tral spot of all the world (which, as Ameri
cans have at present no centre of their own,
we may allow to be somewhere in the vicin
ity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral), it
might have seemed natural that I should be
tossed about by the turbulence of the vast
London whirlpool. But I had drifted into
a still eddy, where conflicting movements
made a repose, and, wearied with a good
deal of uncongenial activity, I found the
quiet of my temporary haven more attrac
tive than anything that the great town
could offer. I already knew London well ;
that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so
far as it was capable of satisfaction) that
mysterious yearning — the magnetism of
millions of hearts operating upon one — •

362 OUR OLD HOME

which impels every man's individuality to
mingle itself with the immensest mass of
human life within his scope. Day after
day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the
thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely
squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange laby
rinthine courts, the parks, the gardens and
inclosures of ancient studious societies, so
retired and silent amid the city uproar, the
markets, the foggy streets along the river
side, the bridges, — I had sought all parts
of the metropolis, in short, with an unweari-
able and indiscriminating curiosity ; until
few of the native inhabitants, I fancy, had
turned so many of its corners as myself.
These aimless wanderings (in which my
prime purpose and achievement were to
lose my way, and so to find it the more
surely) had brought me, at one time or
another, to the sight and actual presence
of almost all the objects and renowned
localities that I had read about, and which
had made London the dream-city of my
youth. I had found it better than my
dream ; for there is nothing else in life
comparable (in that species of enjoyment,
I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive,
sombre delight which an American is sen
sible of, hardly knowing whether to call it

A LONDON SUBURB 363

a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of
London. The result was, that I acquired
a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in
the world, — though afterwards I came to
have a somewhat similar sentiment in re
gard to Rome ; and as long as either of
those two great cities shall exist, the cities
of the Past and of the Present, a man's
native soil may crumble beneath his feet
without leaving him altogether homeless
upon earth.

Thus, having once fully yielded to its
influence, I was in a manner free of the
city, and could approach or keep away from
it as I pleased. Hence it happened that,
living within a quarter of an hour's rush of
the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener
tempted to spend a whole summer day in
our garden than to seek anything new or
old, wonderful or commonplace, beyond its
precincts. It was a delightful garden, of
no great extent, but comprising a good
many facilities for repose and enjoyment,
such as arbors and garden-seats, shrubbery,
flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of
bloom, pinks, poppies, geraniums, sweet-
peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow,
blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not
trouble myself to recognize individually,

364 OUR OLD HOME

yet had always a vague sense of their
beauty about me. The dim sky of England
has a most happy effect on the coloring of
flowers, blending richness with delicacy in
the same texture ; but in this garden, as
everywhere else, the exuberance of English
verdure had a greater charm than any trop
ical splendor or diversity of hue. The
hunger for natural beauty might be satis
fied with grass and green leaves forever.
Conscious of the triumph of England in
this respect, and loyally anxious for the
credit of my own country, it gratified me
to observe what trouble and pains the Eng
lish gardeners are fain to throw away in
producing a few sour plums and abortive
pears and apples, — as, for example, in this
very garden, where a row of unhappy trees
were spread out perfectly flat against a
brick wall, looking as if impaled alive, or
crucified, with a cruel and unattainable
purpose of compelling them to produce rich
fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate
an English fruit, raised in the open air,
that could compare in flavor with a Yankee
turnip.

The garden included that prime feature
of English domestic scenery, a lawn. It
had been leveled, carefully shorn, and con-

A LONDON SUBURB 365

verted into a bowling-green, on which we
sometimes essayed to practice the time-
honored game of bowls, most unskillfully,
yet not without a perception that it in
volves a very pleasant mixture of exercise
and ease, as is the case with most of the
old English pastimes. Our little domain
was shut in by the house on one side, and
in other directions by a hedge-fence and a
brick wall, which last was concealed or soft
ened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit-
trees already mentioned. Over all the outer
region, beyond our immediate precincts,
there was an abundance of foliage, tossed
aloft from the near or distant trees with
which that agreeable suburb is adorned.
The effect was wonderfully sylvan and
rural, insomuch that we might have fancied
ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclu
sion ; only that, at brief intervals, we could
hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train
passing within a quarter of a mile, and its
discordant screech, moderated by a little
farther distance, as it reached the Black-
heath Station. That harsh, rough sound,
seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice
of the great world summoning me forth.
I know not whether I was the more pained
or pleased to be thus constantly put in

366 OUR OLD HOME

mind of the neighborhood of London ; for,
on the one hand, my conscience stung me
a little for reading a book, or playing with
children in the grass, when there were
so many better things for an enlightened
traveler to do, — while, at the same time,
it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious
idleness to contrast it with the turmoil
which I escaped. On the whole, however,
I do not repent of a single wasted hour,
and only wish that I could have spent
twice as many in the same way ; for the
impression on my memory is, that I was
as happy in that hospitable garden as the
English summer day was long.

One chief condition of my enjoyment
was the weather. Italy has nothing like
it, nor America. There never was such
weather except in England, where, in re
quital of a vast amount of horrible east
wind between February and June, and a
brown October and black November, and
a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few
weeks of incomparable summer, scattered
through July and August, and the earlier
portion of September, small in quantity,
but exquisite enough to atone for the whole
year's atmospherical delinquencies. After
all, the prevalent sombreness may have

A LONDON SUBURB 367

brought out those sunny intervals in such
high relief that I see them, in my recol
lection, brighter than they really were : a
little light makes a glory for people who
live habitually in a gray gloom. The Eng
lish, however, do not seem to know how
enjoyable the momentary gleams of their
summer are ; they call it broiling weather,
and hurry to the seaside with red, perspir
ing faces, in a state of combustion and de
liquescence ; and I have observed that even
their cattle have similar susceptibilities,
seeking the deepest shade, or standing
midleg deep in pools and streams to cool
themselves, at temperatures which our own
cows would deem little more than barely
comfortable. To myself, after the summer
heats of my native land had somewhat
effervesced out of my blood and memory,
it was the weather of Paradise itself. It
might be a little too warm ; but it was
that modest and inestimable superabun
dance which constitutes a bounty of Provi
dence, instead of just a niggardly enough.
During my first year in England, residing
in perhaps the most ungenial part of the
kingdom, I could never be quite comfort
able without a fire on the hearth ; in the
second twelvemonth, beginning to get ac-

368 OUR OLD HOME

climatized, I became sensible of an austere
friendliness, shy, but sometimes almost ten
der, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling
summer ; and in the succeeding years, —
whether that I had renewed my fibre with
English beef and replenished my blood
with English ale, or whatever were the
cause, — I grew content with winter and
especially in love with summer, desiring
little more for happiness than merely to
breathe and bask. At the midsummer
which we are now speaking of, I must
needs confess that the noontide sun came
down more fervently than I found alto
gether tolerable ; so that I was fain to
shift my position with the shadow of the
shrubbery, making myself the movable in
dex of a sundial that reckoned up the
hours of an almost interminable day.

For each day seemed endless, though
never wearisome. As far as your actual
experience is concerned, the English sum
mer day has positively no beginning and
no end. When you awake, at any reason
able hour, the sun is already shining
through the curtains ; you live through
unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude,
with a calm variety of incident softly
etched upon their tranquil lapse ; and at

A LONDON SUBURB 369

length you become conscious that it is
bedtime again, while there is still enough
daylight in the sky to make the pages of
your book distinctly legible. Night, if
there be any such season, hangs down a
transparent veil through which the by
gone day beholds its successor ; or, if not
quite true of the latitude of London, it
may be soberly affirmed of the more north
ern parts of the island, that To-morrow is
born before its Yesterday is dead. They
exist together in the golden twilight, where
the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face
of the ominous infant ; and you, though a
mere mortal, may simultaneously touch
them both with one finger of recollection
and another of prophecy. I cared not how
long the day might be, nor how many of
them. I had earned this repose by a long
course of irksome toil and perturbation,
and could have been content never to stray
out of the limits of that suburban villa and
its garden. If I lacked anything beyond,
it would have satisfied me well enough to
dream about it, instead of struggling for its
actual possession. At least, this was the
feeling of the moment ; although the tran
sitory, flitting, and irresponsible character
of my life there, was perhaps the most en-

370

OUR OLD HOME

joyable element of all, as allowing me much
of the comfort of house and home, without
any sense of their weight upon my back.
The nomadic life has great advantages, if
we can find tents ready pitched for us at
every stage.

So much for the interior of our abode, —
a spot of deepest quiet, within reach of the
intensest activity. But, even when we
stepped beyond our own gate, we were not
shocked with any immediate presence of
the great world. We were dwelling in one
of those oases that have grown up (in com
paratively recent years, I believe) on the
wide waste of Blackheatb, which otherwise
offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground
in singular proximity to the metropolis.
As a general thing, the proprietorship of
the soil seems to exist in everybody and
nobody ; but exclusive rights have been
obtained, here and there, chiefly by men
whose daily concerns link them with Lon
don, so that you find their villas or boxes
standing along village streets which have
often more of an American aspect than the
elder English settlements. The scene is
semi-rural. Ornamental trees overshadow
the sidewalks, and grassy margins border
the wheel-tracks. The houses, to be sure,

A LONDON SUBURB 3/1

have certain points of difference from those
of an American village, bearing tokens of
architectural design, though seldom of in
dividual taste ; and, as far as possible, they
stand aloof from the street, and separated
each from its neighbor by hedge or fence,
in accordance with the careful exclusive-
ness of the English character, which impels
the occupant, moreover, to cover the front
of his dwelling with as much concealment
of shrubbery as his limits will allow.
Through the interstices, you catch glimpses
of well-kept lawns, generally ornamented
with flowers, and with what the English
call rock-work, being heaps of ivy-grown
stones and fossils, designed for romantic
effect in a small way. Two or three of
such village streets as are here described
take a collective name, — as, for instance,
Blackheath Park, — and constitute a kind
of community of residents, with gateways,
kept by a policeman, and a semi-privacy,
stepping beyond which, you find yourself
on the breezy heath.

On this great, bare, dreary common I
often went astray, as I afterwards did on
the Campagna of Rome, and drew the air
(tainted with London smoke though it
might be) into my lungs by deep inspira-

372 OUR OLD HOME

tions, with a strange and unexpected sense
of desert freedom. The misty atmosphere
helps you to fancy a remoteness that per
haps does not quite exist. During the little
time that it lasts, the solitude is as impres
sive as that of a Western prairie or forest ;
but soon the railway shriek, a mile or two
away, insists upon informing you of your
whereabout ; or you recognize in the dis
tance some landmark that you may have
known, — an insulated villa, perhaps, with
its garden-wall around it, or the rudimental
street of a new settlement which is sprout
ing on this otherwise barren soil. Half
a century ago, the most frequent token
of man's beneficent contiguity might have
been a gibbet, and the creak, like a tavern
sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in
irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen
and footpads, was dangerous in those days ;
and even now, for aught I know, the West
ern prairie may still compare favorably with
it as a safe region to go astray in. When
I was acquainted with Blackheath, the in
genious device of garroting had recently
come into fashion ; and I can remember,
while crossing those waste places at mid
night, and hearing footsteps behind me, to
have been sensibly encouraged by also

A LONDON SUBUKB 373

hearing, not far off, the clinking hoof-tramp
of one of the horse-patrols who do regular
duty there. About sunset, or a little later,
was the time when the broad and some
what desolate peculiarity of the heath
seemed to me to put on its utmost impres-
siveness. At that hour, finding myself on
elevated ground, I once had a view of
immense London, four or five miles off,
with the vast Dome in the midst, and the
towers of the two Houses of Parliament
rising up into the smoky canopy, the thin
ner substance of which obscured a mass of
things, and hovered about the objects that
were most distinctly visible, — a glorious
and sombre picture, dusky, awful, but irre
sistibly attractive, like a young man's dream
of the great world, foretelling at that dis
tance a grandeur never to be fully realized.
While I lived in that neighborhood, the
tents of two or three sets of cricket-players
were constantly pitched on Blackheath, and
matches were going forward that seemed
to involve the honor and credit of com
munities or counties, exciting an interest
in everybody but myself, who cared not
what part of England might glorify itself
at the expense of another. It is necessary
to be born an Englishman, I believe, in

374 OUR OLD HOME

order to enjoy this great national game ; at
any rate, as a spectacle for an outside ob
server, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious,
and utterly devoid of pictorial effects.
Choice of other amusements was at hand.
Butts for archery were established, and
bows and arrows were to be let, at so many
shots for a penny, — there being abundance
of space for a farther flight-shot than any
modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then
there was an absurd game of throwing a
stick at crockery-ware, which I have wit
nessed a hundred times, and personally
engaged in once or twice, without ever
having the satisfaction to see a bit of
broken crockery. In other spots you found
donkeys for children to ride, and ponies of
a very meek and patient spirit, on which
the Cockney pleasure-seekers of both sexes
rode races and made wonderful displays of
horsemanship. By way of refreshment
there was gingerbread (but, as a true pa
triot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior
to our native dainty), and ginger -beer,
and probably stancher liquor among the
booth-keeper's hidden stores. The fre
quent railway - trains, as well as the nu
merous steamers to Greenwich, have made
the vacant portions of Blackheath a play-

A LONDON SUBURB 375

ground and breathing-place for the Lon
doners, readily and very cheaply accessible ;
so that, in view of this broader use and
enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts
that have been niched away, so to speak,
and individualized by thriving citizens.
One sort of visitors especially interested
me : they were schools of little boys or
girls, under the guardianship of their in
structors, — charity schools, as I often sur
mised from their aspect, collected among
dark alleys and squalid courts ; and hither
they were brought to spend a summer af
ternoon, these pale little progeny of the
sunless nooks of London, who had never
known that the sky was any broader than
that narrow and vapory strip above their
native lane. I fancied that they took but
a doubtful pleasure, being half affrighted
at the wide, empty space overhead and
round about them, finding the air too little
medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard
exhalations, to be breathed with comfort,
and feeling shelterless and lost because
grimy London, their slatternly and disrep
utable mother, had suffered them to stray
out of her arms.

Passing among these holiday people, we
come to one of the gateways of Greenwich

376 OUR OLD HOME

Park, opening through an old brick wall.
It admits us from the bare heath into a
scene of antique cultivation and woodland
ornament, traversed in all directions by
avenues of trees, many of which bear to
kens of a venerable age. These broad and
well-kept pathways rise and decline over
the elevations, and along the bases of
gentle hills, which diversify the whole sur
face of the park. The loftiest and most
abrupt of them (though but of very mod
erate height) is one of the earth's noted
summits, and may hold up its head with
Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as being the
site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if
all nations will consent to say so, the longi
tude of our great globe begins. I used to
regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate
against the observatory wall, and felt it
pleasant to be standing at the very centre
of Time and Space.

There are lovelier parks than this in the
neighborhood of London, richer scenes of
greensward and cultivated trees ; and Ken
sington, especially, in a summer afternoon,
has seemed to me as delightful as any
place can or ought to be, in a world which,
some time or other, we must quit. But
Greenwich, too, is beautiful, — a spot where

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the art of man has conspired with Nature,
as if he and the great mother had taken
counsel together how to make a pleasant
scene, and the longest liver of the two had
faithfully carried out their mutual design.
It has, likewise, an additional charm of its
own, because, to all appearance, it is the
people's property and play -ground in a
much more genuine way than the aristo
cratic resorts in closer vicinity to the me
tropolis. It affords one of the instances
in which the monarch's property is actually
the people's, and shows how much more
natural is their relation to the sovereign
than to the nobility, which pretends to
hold the intervening space between the
two : for a nobleman makes a paradise
only for himself, and fills it with his own
pomp and pride ; whereas the people are
sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of
whatever beauty kings and queens create,
as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays,
when the sun shone, and even on those
grim and sombre days when, if it do not
actually rain, the English persist in calling
it fine weather, it was too good to see how
sturdily the plebeians trod under their own
oaks, and what fullness of simple enjoy
ment they evidently found there. They

3/8 OUR OLD HOME

were the people, — not the populace, —
specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes
are a distinct kind of garb from their week
day ones : and this, in England, implies
wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, and
a rank above the lowest. I longed to be
acquainted with them, in order to investi
gate what manner of folks they were, what
sort of households they kept, their politics,
their religion, their tastes, and whether
they were as narrow-minded as their bet
ters. There can be very little doubt of
it ; an Englishman is English, in whatever
rank of life, though no more intensely so,
I should imagine, as an artisan or petty
shopkeeper, than as a member of Parlia
ment.

The English character, as I conceive it,
is by no means a very lofty one ; they
seem to have a great deal of earth and
grimy dust clinging about them, as was
probably the case with the stalwart and
quarrelsome people who sprouted up out of
the soil, after Cadmus had sown the drag
on's teeth. And yet, though the individ
ual Englishman is sometimes preternatu-
rally disagreeable, an observer standing
aloof has a sense of natural kindness to
wards them in the lump. They adhere

A LONDON SUBURB 379

closer to the original simplicity in which
mankind was created than we ourselves
do ; they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn
their actual selves inside out with greater
freedom than any class of Americans would
consider decorous. It was often so with
these holiday folks in Greenwich Park ;
and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy
myself to have caught very satisfactory
glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cock
neys there, hardly beyond the scope of
Bow -Bells, picnicking in the grass, un-
couthly gamboling on the broad slopes, or
straying in motley groups or by single
pairs of love-making youths and maidens,
along the sun-streaked avenues. Even the
omnipresent policemen or park - keepers
could not disturb the beatific impression
on my mind. One feature, at all events,
of the Golden Age was to be seen in the
herds of deer that encountered you in the
somewhat remoter recesses of the park,
and were readily prevailed upon to nibble
a bit of bread out of your hand. But,
though no wrong had ever been done them,
and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed
at the heels of themselves or their antlered
progenitors for centuries past, there was
still an apprehensiveness lingering in their

380 OUR OLD HOME

hearts ; so that a slight movement of the
hand or a step too near would send a whole
squadron of them scampering away, just as
a breath scatters the winged seeds of a
dandelion.

The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all
those festal people wandering through it,
resembled that of the Borghese Gardens
under the walls of Rome, on a Sunday or
Saint's day ; but, I am not ashamed to say,
it a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost
of Puritanic strictness might be lingering
in the sombre depths- of a New England
heart, among severe and sunless remem
brances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and
pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in
the catechism, and for erratic fantasies or
hardly suppressed laughter in the middle
of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to
take the long-hoarded sting out of these
compunctious smarts by attending divine
service in the open air. On a cart outside
of the park-wall (and, if I mistake not, at
two or three corners and secluded spots
within the park itself) a Methodist preacher
uplifts his voice and speedily gathers a con
gregation, his zeal for whose religious wel
fare impels the good man to such earnest
vociferation and toilsome gesture that his

A LONDON SUBURB 381

perspiring face is quickly in a stew. His
inward flame conspires with the too fervid
sun, and makes a positive martyr of him,
even in the very exercise of his pious
labor ; insomuch that he purchases every
atom of spiritual increment to his hearers
by loss of his own corporeal solidity, and,
should his discourse last long enough, must
finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile
at him, be it understood, it is not in scorn ;
he performs his sacred office more accept
ably than many a prelate. These wayside
services attract numbers who would not
otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or
hymn, from one year's end to another, and
who, for that very reason, are the auditors
most likely to be moved by the preacher's
eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner,
too, — in his costume of three - cornered
hat, and old-fashioned, brass-buttoned blue
coat with ample skirts, which makes him
look like a contemporary of Admiral Ben-
bow, — that tough old mariner may hear a
word or two which will go nearer his heart
than anything that the chaplain of the
Hospital can be expected to deliver. I al
ways noticed, moreover, that a considera
ble proportion of the audience were sol
diers, who came hither with a day's leave

382 OUR OLD HOME

from Woolwich, — hardy veterans in as
pect, some of whom wore as marfy as four
or five medals, Crimean or East Indian, on
the breasts of their scarlet coats. The mis
cellaneous congregation listen with every
appearance of heartfelt interest ; and, for
my own part, I must frankly acknowledge
that I never found it possible to give five
minutes' attention to any other English
preaching : so cold and commonplace are
the homilies that pass for such, under the
aged roofs of churches. And as for cathe
drals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminu
tive and unimportant part of the religious
services, — if, indeed, it be considered a
part, — among the pompous ceremonies,
the intonations, and the resounding and
lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The
magnificence of the setting quite dazzles
out what we Puritans look upon as the
jewel of the whole affair ; for I presume
that it was our forefathers, the Dissenters
in England and America, who gave the
sermon its present prominence in the Sab
bath exercises.1

1 We all, together with Mr. Squarey, went to Chester
last Sunday, and attended the cathedral service. . . .
In America the sermon is the principal thing ; but here
all this magnificent ceremonial of prayer and chanted

A LONDON SUBURB 383

The Methodists are probably the first
and only Englishmen who have worshiped
in the open air since the ancient Britons
listened to the preaching of the Druids ;
and it reminded me of that old priesthood,
to see certain memorials of their dusky
epoch — not religious, however, but war
like — in the neighborhood of the spot
where the Methodist was holding forth.
These were some ancient barrows, beneath
or within which are supposed to lie buried
the slain of a forgotten or doubtfully re
membered battle, fought on the site of
Greenwich Park as long ago as two or
three centuries after the birth of Christ.
Whatever may once have been their height
and magnitude, they have now scarcely
more prominence in the actual scene than
the battle of which they are the sole mon
uments retains in history, — being only a
few mounds side by side, elevated a little
above the surface of the • ground, ten or
twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow de
pression in their summits. When one of
them was opened, not long since, no bones,

responses and psalms and anthems was the setting to a
short, meagre discourse, which would not have been con
sidered of any account among the elaborate intellectual
efforts of New England ministers. — I. 466.

384 OUR OLD HOME

nor armor, nor weapons were discovered,
nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft
of hair, — perhaps from the head of a val
iant general, who, dying on the field of his
victory, bequeathed this lock, together with
his indestructible fame, to after ages. The
hair and jewels are probably in the British
Museum, where the potsherds and rubbish
of innumerable generations make the vis
itor wish that each passing century could
carry off all its fragments and relics along
with it, instead of adding them to the con
tinually accumulating burden which human
knowledge is compelled to lug upon its
back.1 As for the fame, I know not what
has become of it.

1 The fact is, the world is accumulating too many
materials for knowledge. We do not recognize for rub
bish what is really rubbish ; and under this head might
be reckoned very many things one sees in the British
Museum : and, as each generation leaves its fragments
and potsherds behind it, such will finally be the desper
ate conclusion of the learned. — II. 143.

Yesterday I went out at about twelve, and visited
the British Museum ; an exceedingly tiresome affair.
It quite crushes a person to see so much at once, and
I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy
heart, wishing (Heaven forgive me !) that the Elgin
Marbles and the frieze of the Parthenon were all burnt
into lime, and that the granite Egyptian statues were
hewn and squared into building-stones, and that the
mummies had all turned to dust two thousand years

A LONDON SUBURB 385

After traversing the park, we come into
the neighborhood of Greenwich Hospital,
and will pass through one of its spacious
gateways for the sake of glancing at an es
tablishment which does more honor to the
heart of England than anything else that
I am acquainted with, of a public nature.
It is very seldom that we can be sensible
of anything like kindliness in the acts or
relations of such an artificial thing as a
National Government. Our own govern
ment, I should conceive, is too much an
abstraction ever to feel any sympathy for
its maimed sailors and soldiers, though it
will doubtless do them a severe kind of
justice, as chilling as the touch of steel.
But it seemed to me that the Greenwich
pensioners are the petted children of the
nation, and that the government is their
dry-nurse, and that the old men themselves
have a child-like consciousness of their

ago ; and, in fine, that all the material relics of so many
successive ages had disappeared with the generations
that produced them. The present is burdened too
much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly
existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and im
mediately around us ; yet we heap up these old shells,
out of which human life has long emerged, casting them
off forever. I do not see how future ages are to stagger
onward under all this dead weight, with the additions
that will be continually made to it. — II. 207.

386 OUR OLD HOME

position. Very likely, a better sort of life
might have been arranged, and a wiser
care bestowed on them ; but, such as it is,
it enables them to spend a sluggish, care
less, comfortable old age, grumbling, growl
ing, gruff, as if all the foul weather of their
past years were pent up within them, yet
not much more discontented than such
weather-beaten and battle - battered frag
ments of human kind must inevitably be.
Their home, in its outward form, is on a
very magnificent plan. Its germ was a
royal palace, the full expansion of which
has resulted in a series of edifices externally
more beautiful than any English palace
that I have seen, consisting of several
quadrangles of stately architecture, united
by colonnades and gravel - walks, and in
closing grassy squares, with statues in the
centre, the whole extending along the
Thames. It is built of marble, or very
light - colored stone, in the classic style,
with pillars and porticos, which (to my own
taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sail
ors) produce but a cold and shivery effect
in the English climate. Had I been the
architect, I would have studied the charac
ters, habits, and predilections of nautical
people in Wapping, Rotherhithe, and the

A LONDON SUBURB 387

neighborhood of the Tower (places which
I visited in affectionate remembrance of
Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual
or mythological navigators), and would
have built the hospital in a kind of ethe
real similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly,
and inconvenient, but snug and cosey home
liness of the sailor boarding-houses there.
There can be no question that all the above
attributes, or enough of them to satisfy an
old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with
architectural beauty and the wholesome
contrivances of modern dwellings, and thus
a novel and genuine style of building be
given to the world.

But their countrymen meant kindly by
the old fellows in assigning them the an
cient royal site where Elizabeth held her
court and Charles II. began to build his
palace. So far as the locality went, it was
treating them like so many kings ; and,
with a discreet abundance of grog, beer,
and tobacco, there was perhaps little more
to be accomplished in behalf of men whose
whole previous lives have tended to unfit
them for old age. Their chief discomfort
is probably for lack of something to do or
think about. But, judging by the few
whom I saw, a listless habit seems to have

388 OUR OLD HOME

crept over them, a dim dreaminess of
mood, in which they sit between asleep
and awake, and find the long day wearing
towards bedtime without its having made
any distinct record of itself upon their
consciousness. Sitting on stone benches
in the sunshine, they subside into slumber,
or nearly so, and start at the approach of
footsteps echoing under the colonnades,
ashamed to be caught napping, and rous
ing themselves in a hurry, as formerly on
the midnight watch at sea. In their bright
est moments, they gather in groups and
bore one another with endless sea -yarns
about their voyages under famous admirals,
and about gale and calm, battle and chase,
and all that class of incident that has its
sphere on the deck and in the hollow in
terior of a ship, where their world has ex
clusively been. For other pastime, they
quarrel among themselves, comrade with
comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists
in furrowed faces. If inclined for a little
exercise, they can bestir their wooden legs
on the long esplanade that borders by the
Thames, criticising the rig of passing ships,
and firing off volleys of malediction at the
steamers, which have made the sea another
element than that they used to be ac-

A LONDON SUBURB 389

quainted with. All this is but cold com
fort for the evening of life, yet may com
pare rather favorably with the preceding
portions of it, comprising little save im
prisonment on shipboard, in the course of
which they have been tossed all about the
world and caught hardly a glimpse of it,
forgetting what grass and trees are, and
never finding out what woman is, though
they may have encountered a painted spec
tre which they took for her. A country
owes much to human beings whose bodies
she has worn out and whose immortal part
she has left undeveloped or debased, as
we find them here ; and having wasted an
idle paragraph upon them, let me now sug
gest that old men have a kind of suscepti
bility to moral impressions, and even (up
to an advanced period) a receptivity of
truth, which often appears to come to them
after the active time of life is past. The
Greenwich pensioners might prove better
subjects for true education now than in
their schoolboy days ; but then where is
the Normal School that could educate in
structors for such a class ?

There is a beautiful chapel for the pen
sioners, in the classic style, over the altar
of which hangs a picture by West. I

390 OUR OLD HOME

never could look at it long enough to make
out its design ; for this artist (though it
pains me to say it of so respectable a
countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack
of grinding ice into his paint, a power of
stupefying the spectator's perceptions and
quelling his sympathy, beyond any other
limner that ever handled a brush. In spite
of many pangs of conscience, I seize this
opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence
upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake
of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion
of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to
me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would
fire burn it, I wonder ?

The principal thing that they have to
show you, at Greenwich Hospital, is the
Painted Hall. It is a splendid and spacious
room, at least a hundred feet long and half
as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco by
Sir James Thornhill. As a work of art, I
presume, this frescoed canopy has little
merit, though it produces an exceedingly
rich effect by its brilliant coloring and as a
specimen of magnificent upholstery. The
walls of the grand apartment are entirely
covered with pictures, many of them repre
senting battles and other naval incidents
that were once fresher in the world's mem-

A LONDON SUBURB 391

ory than now, but chiefly portraits of old
admirals, comprising the whole line of he
roes who have trod the quarter-decks of
British ships for more than two hundred
years back. Next to a tomb in Westmin
ster Abbey, which was Nelson's most ele
vated object of ambition, it would seem to
be the highest meed of a naval warrior to
have his portrait hung up in the Painted
Hall ; but, by dint of victory upon victory,
these illustrious personages have grown to
be a mob, and by no means a very inter
esting one, so far as regards the character
of the faces here depicted. They are gen
erally commonplace, and often singularly
stolid ; and I have observed (both in the
Painted Hall and elsewhere, and not only
in portraits, but in the actual presence of
such renowned people as I have caught
glimpses of) that the countenances of he
roes are not nearly so impressive as those
of statesmen, — except, of course, in the
rare instances where warlike ability has
been but the one-sided manifestation of a
profound genius for managing the world's
affairs.

Nine tenths of these distinguished ad
mirals, for instance, if their faces tell
truth, must needs have been blockheads,

392

OUR OLD HOME

and might have served better, one would
imagine, as wooden figure-heads for their
own ships than to direct any difficult and
intricate scheme of action from the quar
ter-deck. It is doubtful whether the same
kind of men will hereafter meet with a
similar degree of success ; for they were
victorious chiefly through the old English
hardihood, exercised in a field of which
modern science had not yet got possession.
Rough valor has lost something of its value
since their days, and must continue to sink
lower and lower in the comparative esti
mate of warlike qualities. In the next
naval war, as between England and France,
I would bet, methinks, upon the French
man's head.

It is remarkable, however, that the great
naval hero of England — the greatest,
therefore, in the world, and of all time
- had none of the stolid characteristics
that belong to his class, and cannot fairly
be accepted as their representative man.
Foremost in the roughest of professions,
he was as delicately organized as a woman,
and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More
than any other Englishman he won the love
and admiration of his country, but won
them through the efficacy of qualities that

LORD NELSON

A LONDON SUBURB 393

are not English, or, at all events, were
intensified in his case and made poignant
and powerful by something morbid in the
man, which put him otherwise at cross-
purposes with life. He was a man of
genius ; and genius in an Englishman (not
to cite the good old simile of a pearl in ihe
oyster) is usually a symptom of a lack of
balance in the general making-up of the
character ; as we may satisfy ourselves by
running over the list of their poets, for
example, and observing how many of them
have been sickly or deformed, and how
often their lives have been darkened by
insanity. An ordinary Englishman is the
healthiest and wholesomest of human be
ings ; an extraordinary one is almost always,
in one way or another, a sick man. It was
so with Lord Nelson. The wonderful con
trast or relation between his personal
qualities, the position which he held, and
the life that he lived, makes him as inter
esting a personage as all history has to
show ; and it is a pity that Southey's biog
raphy — so good in its superficial way, and
yet so inadequate as regards any real delin
eation of the man — should have taken the
subject out of the hands of some writer
endowed with more delicate appreciation

394 OUR OLD HOME

and deeper insight than that genuine Eng
lishman possessed. But Southey accom
plished his own purpose, which, apparently,
was to present his hero as a pattern for
England's young midshipmen.

But the English capacity for hero-wor
ship is full to the brim with what they
are able to comprehend of Lord Nelson's
character. Adjoining the Painted Hall is
a smaller room, the walls of which are
completely and exclusively adorned with
pictures of the great Admiral's exploits.
We see the frail, ardent man in all the
most noted events of his career, from his
encounter with a Polar Bear to his death
at Trafalgar, quivering here and there about
the room like a blue, lambent flame. No
Briton ever enters that apartment without
feeling the beef and ale of his composition
stirred to its depths, and finding himself
changed into a hero for the nonce, however
stolid his brain, however tough his heart,
however unexcitable his ordinary mood.
To confess the truth, I myself, though be
longing to another parish, have been deeply
sensible to the sublime recollections there
aroused, acknowledging that Nelson ex
pressed his life in a kind of symbolic poetry
which I had as much right to understand

A LONDON SUBURB 395

as these burly islanders.1 Cool and critical
observer as I sought to be, I enjoyed their
burst of honest indignation when a visitor
(not an American, I am glad to say) thrust
his walking-stick almost into Nelson's face,
in one of the pictures, by way of pointing
a remark ; and the bystanders immediately
glowed like so many hot coals, and would
probably have consumed the offender in
their wrath, had he not effected his retreat.
But the most sacred objects of all are
two of Nelson's coats, under separate glass
cases. One is that which he wore at the
Battle of the Nile, and it is now sadly in
jured by moths, which will quite destroy it
in a few years, unless its guardians preserve
it as we do Washington's military suit by
occasionally baking it in an oven. The
other is the coat in which he received his
death-wound at Trafalgar. On its breast
are sewed three or four stars and orders
of knighthood, now much dimmed by time
and damp, but which glittered brightly
enough on the battle-day to draw the fatal

1 Even the great sailor, Nelson, was unlike his country
men in the qualities that constituted him a hero; he
was not the perfection of an Englishman, but a creature
of another kind, — sensitive, nervous, excitable, and
really more like a Frenchman. — II. 531.

396 OUR OLD HOME

aim of a French marksman. The bullet-
hole is visible on the shoulder, as well as a
part of the golden tassels of an epaulet, the
rest of which was shot away. Over the
coat is laid a white waistcoat, with a great
blood-stain on it, out of which all the red
ness has utterly faded, leaving it of a dingy
yellow hue, in the threescore years since
that blood gushed out. Yet it was once
the reddest blood in England, — Nelson's
blood !

The hospital stands close adjacent to the
town of Greenwich, which will always re
tain a kind of festal aspect in my memory,
in consequence of my having first become
acquainted with it on Easter Monday. Till
a few years ago, the first three days of
Easter were a carnival season in this old
town, during which the idle and disrepu
table part of London poured itself into the
streets like an inundation of the Thames,
— as unclean as that turbid mixture of the
offscourings of the vast city, and overflow
ing with its grimy pollution whatever rural
innocence, if any, might be found in the
suburban neighborhood. This festivity was
called Greenwich Fair, the final one of
which, in an immemorial succession, it was
my fortune to behold.

A LONDON SUBURB 397

If I had bethought myself of going
through the fair with a note-book and
pencil, jotting down all the prominent ob
jects, I doubt not that the result might have
been a sketch of English life quite as char
acteristic and worthy of historical preserva
tion as an account of the Roman Carnival.
Having neglected to do so, I remember
little more than a confusion of unwashed
and shabbily dressed people, intermixed
with some smarter figures, but, on the
whole, presenting a mobbish appearance
such as we never see in our own country.
It taught me to understand why Shake
speare, in speaking of a crowd, so often
alludes to its attribute of evil odor. The
common people of England, I am afraid,
have no daily familiarity with even so
necessary a thing as a wash-bowl, not to
mention a bathing-tub. And, furthermore,
it is one mighty difference between them
and us, that every man and woman on our
side of the water has a working-day suit
and a holiday suit, and is occasionally as
fresh as a rose, whereas, in the good old
country, the griminess of his labor or squa
lid habits clings forever to the individual,
and gets to be a part of his personal sub
stance. These are broad facts, involving

398 OUR OLD HOME

great corollaries and dependencies. There
are really, if you stop to think about it, few
sadder spectacles in the world than a rag
ged coat, or a soiled and shabby gown, at a
festival.

This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly
dense, being welded together, as it were,
in the street through which we strove to
make our way. On either side were oyster-
stands, stalls of oranges (a very prevalent
fruit in England, where they give the with
ered ones a guise of freshness by boiling
them), and booths covered with old sail
cloth, in which the commodity that most
attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread. It
was so completely enveloped in Dutch
gilding that I did not at first recognize an
old acquaintance, but wondered what those
golden crowns and images could be. There
were likewise drums and other toys for
small children, and a variety of showy and
worthless articles for children of a larger
growth ; though it perplexed me to imagine
who, in such a mob, could have the inno
cent taste to desire playthings, or the
money to pay for them. Not that I have
a right to accuse the mob, on my own
knowledge, of being any less innocent than
a set of cleaner and better dressed people

A LONDON SUBURB 399

might have been ; for, though one of them
stole my pocket-handkerchief, I could not
but consider it fair game, under the circum
stances, and was grateful to the thief for
sparing me my purse. They were quiet,
civil, and remarkably good-humored, mak
ing due allowance for the national gruff-
ness ; there was no riot, no tumultuous
swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I
have often noted in an American crowd ;
no noise of voices, except frequent bursts
of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a widely
diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling
nothing so much as the rumbling of the
tide among the arches of London Bridge.
What immensely perplexed me was a sharp,
angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off
and close at hand, and sometimes right at
my own back, where it sounded as if the
stout fabric of my English surtout had
been ruthlessly rent in twain ; and every
body's clothes, all over the fair, were evi
dently being torn asunder in the same way.
By and by, I discovered that this strange
noise was produced by a little instrument
called " The Fun of the Fair, " — a sort of
rattle, consisting of a wooden wheel, the
cogs of which turn against a thin slip of
wood, and so produce a rasping sound when

400 OUR OLD HOME

drawn smartly against a person's back.
The ladies draw their rattles against the
backs of their male friends (and everybody
passes for a friend at Greenwich Fair), and
the young men return the compliment on
the broad British backs of the ladies ; and
all are bound by immemorial custom to
take it in good part and be merry at the
joke. As it was one of my prescribed
official duties to give an account of such
mechanical contrivances as might be un
known in my own country, I have thought
it right to be thus particular in describing
the Fun of the Fair.

But this was far from being the sole
amusement. There were theatrical booths,
in front of which were pictorial representa
tions of the scenes to be enacted within ;
and anon a drummer emerged from one of
them, thumping on a terribly lax drum,
and followed by the entire dramatis per-
soncB, who ranged themselves on a wooden
platform in front of the theatre. They
were dressed in character, but wofully
shabby, with very dingy arid wrinkled
white tights, threadbare cotton - velvets,
crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, and
all the gloss and glory gone out of their
aspect and attire, seen thus in the broad

A LONDON SUBURB 40!

daylight and after a long series of perform
ances. They sang a song together, and
withdrew into the theatre, whither the pub
lic were invited to follow them at the in
considerable cost of a penny a ticket. Be
fore another booth stood a pair of brawny
fighting-men, displaying their muscle, and
soliciting patronage for an exhibition of
the noble British art of pugilism. There
were pictures of giants, monsters, and out
landish beasts, most prodigious, to be sure,
and worthy of all admiration, unless the
artist had gone incomparably beyond his
subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the
miracles which they were prepared to
work ; and posture-makers dislocated every
joint of their bodies and tied their limbs
into inextricable knots, wherever they
could find space to spread a little square
of carpet on the ground. In the midst of
the confusion, while everybody was tread
ing on his neighbor's toes, some little boys
were very solicitous to brush your boots.
These lads, I believe, are a product of
modern society, — at least, no older than
the time of Gay, who celebrates their ori
gin in his " Trivia ; " but in most other
respects the scene reminded me of Bun-
yan's description of Vanity Fair, — nor is

4<D2 OUR OLD HOME

it at all improbable that the Pilgrim may
have been a merry-maker here in his wild
youth.

It seemed very singular — though, of
course, I immediately classified it as an
English characteristic — to see a great
many portable weighing-machines, the own
ers of which cried out continually and
amain, " Come, know your weight ! Come,
come, know your weight to-day ! Come,
know your weight ! " and a multitude of
people, mostly large in the girth, were
moved by this vociferation to sit down in
the machines. I know not whether they
valued themselves on their beef, and es
timated their standing as members of so
ciety at so much a pound ; but I shall set it
down as a national peculiarity, and a sym
bol of the prevalence of the earthly over
the spiritual element, that Englishmen are
wonderfully bent on knowing how solid and
physically ponderous they are.

On the whole, having an appetite for the
brown bread and the tripe and sausages
of life, as well as for its nicer cates and
dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and was
amused at the sight of a gruff old Green
wich pensioner, who, forgetful of the sailor-
frolics of his young days, stood looking

A LONDON SUBURB 403

with grim disapproval at all these vanities.
Thus we squeezed our way through the
mob-jammed town, and emerged into the
Park, where, likewise, we met a great many
merry-makers, but with freer space for
their gambols than in the streets. We
soon found ourselves the targets for a can
nonade with oranges (most of them in a
decayed condition), which went humming
past our ears from the vantage-ground of
neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our
sacred persons with an inelastic thump.
This was one of the privileged freedoms
of the time, and was nowise to be resented,
except by returning the salute. Many per
sons were running races, hand in hand,
down the declivities, especially that steep
est one on the summit of which stands the
world-central Observatory, and (as in the
race of life) the partners were usually male
and female, and often caught a tumble to
gether before reaching the bottom of the
hill. Hereabouts we were pestered and
haunted by two young girls, the elder not
more than thirteen, teasing us to buy
matches ; and finding no market for their
commodity, the taller one suddenly turned
a somerset before our faces, and rolled
heels over head from top to bottom of the

404 OUR OLD HOME

hill on which we stood. Then, scrambling

t>

up the acclivity, the topsy-turvy trollop
offered us her matches again, as demurely
as if she had never flung aside her equili
brium ; so that, dreading a repetition of
the feat, we gave her sixpence and an ad
monition, and enjoined her never to do so
any more.

The most curious amusement that we
witnessed here — or anywhere else, indeed
— was an ancient and hereditary pastime
called "Kissing in the Ring." I shall de
scribe the sport exactly as I saw it, although
an English friend assures me that there
are certain ceremonies with a handker
chief, which make it much more decorous
and graceful. A handkerchief, indeed !
There was no such thing in the crowd, ex
cept it were the one which they had just
filched out of my pocket. It is one of the
simplest kinds of games, needing little or
no practice to make the player altogether
perfect ; and the manner of it is this : A
ring is formed (in the present case, it was
of large circumference and thickly gemmed
around with faces, mostly on the broad
grin), into the centre of which steps an ad
venturous youth, and, looking round the
circle, selects whatever maiden may most

A LONDON SUBURB 405

delight his eye. He presents his hand
(which she is bound to accept), leads her
into the centre, salutes her on the lips, and
retires, taking his stand in the expectant
circle. The girl, in her turn, throws a
favorable regard on some fortunate young
man, offers her hand to lead him forth,
makes him happy with a maidenly kiss,
and withdraws to hide her blushes, if any
there be, among the simpering faces in the
ring ; while the favored swain loses no
time in transferring her salute to the pret
tiest and plumpest among the many mouths
that are primming themselves in anticipa
tion. And thus the thing goes on, till all
the festive throng are inwreathed and in
tertwined into an endless and inextricable
chain of kisses ; though, indeed, it smote
me with compassion to reflect that some
forlorn pair of lips might be left out, and
never know the triumph of a salute, after
throwing aside so many delicate reserves
for the sake of winning it. If the young
men had any chivalry, there was a fair
chance to display it by kissing the home
liest damsel in the circle.

To be frank, however, at the first glance,
and to my American eye, they looked all
homely alike, and the chivalry that I sug-

406 OUR OLD HOME

gest is more than I could have been ca
pable of, at any period of my life. They
seemed to be country-lasses, of sturdy and
wholesome aspect, with coarse - grained,
cabbage-rosy cheeks, and, I am willing to
suppose, a stout texture of moral principle,
such as would bear a good deal of rough
usage without suffering much detriment.
But how unlike the trim little damsels of
my native land ! I desire above all things
to be courteous ; but, since the plain truth
must be told, the soil and climate of Eng
land produce feminine beauty as rarely as
they do delicate fruit ; and though admi
rable specimens of both are to be met with,
they are the hot-house ameliorations of re
fined society, and apt, moreover, to relapse
into the coarseness of the original stock.
The men are manlike, but the women are
not beautiful, though the female Bull be
well enough adapted to the male. To re
turn to the lasses of Greenwich Fair, their
charms were few, and their behavior, per
haps, not altogether commendable ; and
yet it was impossible not to feel a degree
of faith in their innocent intentions, with
such a half-bashful zest and entire sim
plicity did they keep up their part of the
game. It put the spectator in good-humor

A LONDON SUBURB 407

to look at them, because there was still
something of the old Arcadian life, the
secure freedom of the antique age, in their
way of surrendering their lips to strangers,
as if there were no evil or impurity in the
world. As for the young men, they were
chiefly specimens of the vulgar sediment
of London life, often shabbily genteel,
rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat,
unshifted linen, and unwashed faces of
yesterday, as well as the haggardness of
last night's jollity in a gin-shop. Gather
ing their character from these tokens, I
wondered whether there were any reason
able prospect of their fair partners return
ing to their rustic homes with as much in
nocence (whatever were its amount or qual
ity) as they brought to Greenwich Fair, in
spite of the perilous familiarity established
by Kissing in the Ring.

The manifold disorders resulting from
the fair, at which a vast city was brought
into intimate relations with a comparatively
rural district, have at length led to its sup
pression ; this was the very last celebration
of it, and brought to a close the broad-
mouthed merriment of many hundred years.
Thus my poor sketch, faint as its colors
are, may acquire some little value in the

408 OUR OLD HOME

reader's eyes from the consideration that
no observer of the coming time will ever
have an opportunity to give a better. I
should find it difficult to believe, however,
that the queer pastime just described, or
any moral mischief to which that and other
customs might pave the way, can have led
to the overthrow of Greenwich Fair ; for
it has often seemed to me that Englishmen
of station and respectability, unless of a
peculiarly philanthropic turn, have neither
any faith in the feminine purity of the
lower orders of their countrywomen, nor
the slightest value for it, allowing its pos
sible existence. The distinction of ranks
is so marked, that the English cottage
damsel holds a position somewhat analogous
to that of the negro girl in our Southern
States. Hence comes inevitable detriment
to the moral condition of those men them
selves, who forget that the humblest wo
man has a right and a duty to hold herself
in the same sanctity as the highest. The
subject cannot well be discussed in these
pages ; but I offer it as a serious convic
tion, from what I have been able to observe,
that the England of to-day is the unscrupu
lous old England of Tom Jones and Joseph
Andrews, Humphrey Clinker and Roder-

A LONDON SUBURB 409

ick Random ; and in our refined era, just
the same as at that more free-spoken epoch,
this singular people has a certain contempt
for any fine -strained purity, any special
squeamishness, as they consider it, on the
part of an ingenuous youth. They appear
to look upon it as a suspicious phenomenon
in the masculine character.

Nevertheless, I by no means take upon
me to affirm that English morality, as re
gards the phase here alluded to, is really at
a lower point than our own. Assuredly, I
hope so, because, making a higher preten
sion, or, at all events, more carefully hiding-
whatever may be amiss, we are either better
than they, or necessarily a great deal worse.
It impressed me that their open avowal
and recognition of immoralities served to
throw the disease to the surface, where it
might be more effectually dealt with, and
leave a sacred interior not utterly profaned,
instead of turning its poison back among
the inner vitalities of the character, at the
imminent risk of corrupting them all. Be
that as it may, these Englishmen are cer
tainly a franker arid simpler people than
ourselves, from peer to peasant ; but if we
can take it as compensatory on our part
(which I leave to be considered) that they

410 OUR OLD HOME

owe those noble and manly qualities to a
coarser grain in their nature, and that,
with a finer one in ours, we shall ultimately
acquire a marble polish of which they are
unsusceptible, I believe that this may be
the truth.

X.
UP THE THAMES

THE upper portion of Greenwich (where
my last article left me loitering) is a cheer
ful, comely, old-fashioned town, the pe
culiarities of which, if there be any, have
passed out of my remembrance. As you
descend towards the Thames the streets get
meaner, and the shabby and sunken houses,
elbowing one another for frontage, bear the
signboards of beer-shops and eating-rooms,
with especial promises of white-bait and
other delicacies in the fishing line. You
observe, also, a frequent announcement of
" Tea Gardens " in the rear ; although,
estimating the capacity of the premises by
their external compass, the entire sylvan
charm and shadowy seclusion of such bliss
ful resorts must be limited within a small
back-yard. These places of cheap suste
nance and recreation depend for support
upon the innumerable pleasure-parties who
come from London Bridge by steamer, at
a fare of a few pence, and who get as en-

412 OUR OLD HOME

joyable a meal for a shilling a head as the
Ship Hotel would afford a gentleman for a
guinea.

The steamers, which are constantly
smoking their pipes up and down the
Thames, offer much the most agreeable
mode of getting to London. At least, it
might be exceedingly agreeable, except for
the myriad floating particles of soot from
the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of mid
summer sunshine on the unsheltered deck,
or the chill, misty air-draught of a cloudy
day, and the spiteful little showers of rain
that may spatter down upon you at any
moment, whatever the promise of the sky ;
besides which there is some slight incon
venience from the inexhaustible throng of
passengers, who scarcely allow you stand
ing-room, nor so much as a breath of un
appropriated air, and never a chance to sit
down. If these difficulties, added to the
possibility of getting your pocket picked,
weigh little with you, the panorama along
the shores of the memorable river, and the
incidents and shows of passing life upon its
bosom, render the trip far preferable to the
brief yet tiresome shoot along the railway
track. On one such voyage, a regatta of
wherries raced past us, and at once involved

UP THE THAMES 413

every soul on board our steamer in the tre
mendous excitement of the struggle. The
spectacle was but a moment within our
view, and presented nothing more than a
few light skiffs, in each of which sat a
single rower, bare-armed, and with little
apparel, save a shirt and drawers, pale,
anxious, with every muscle on the stretch,
and plying his oars in such fashion that
the boat skimmed along with the aerial
celerity of a swallow. I wondered at my
self for so immediately catching an interest
in the affair, which seemed to contain no
very exalted rivalship of manhood ; but,
whatever the kind of battle or the prize of
victory, it stirs one's sympathy immensely,
and is even awful, to behold the rare sight
of a man thoroughly in earnest, doing his
best, putting forth all there is in him, and
staking his very soul (as these rowers ap
peared willing to do) on the issue of the
contest. It was the seventy-fourth annual
regatta of the Free Watermen of Green
wich, and announced itself as under the
patronage of the Lord Mayor and other
distinguished individuals, at whose expense,
I suppose, a prize-boat was offered to the
conqueror, and some small amounts of
money to the inferior competitors.

414 OUR OLD HOME

The aspect of London along the Thames,
below Bridge, as it is called, is by no means
so impressive as it ought to be, considering
what peculiar advantages are offered for
the display of grand and stately archi
tecture by the passage of a river through
the midst of a great city. It seems, indeed,
as if the heart of London had been cleft
open for the mere purpose of showing how
rotten and drearily mean it had become.
The shore is lined with the shabbiest,
blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be
imagined, decayed warehouses with blind
windows, and wharves that look ruinous ;
insomuch that, had I known nothing more
of the world's metropolis, I might have
fancied that it had already experienced the
downfall which I have heard commercial
and financial prophets predict for it, within
the century. And the muddy tide of the
Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a
million of unclean secrets within its breast,
— a sort of guilty conscience, as it were,
unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that
constantly flow into it, — is just the dis
mal stream to glide by such a city. The
surface, to be sure, displays no lack of
activity, being fretted by the passage of a
hundred steamers and covered with a good

UP THE THAMES 415

deal of shipping, but mostly of a clumsier
build than I had been accustomed to see
in the Mersey : a fact which I complacently
attributed to the smaller number of Ameri
can clippers in the Thames, and the less
prevalent influence of American example
in refining away the broad -bottomed ca
pacity of the old Dutch or English models.
About midway between Greenwich and
London Bridge, at a rude landing-place on
the left bank of the river, the steamer rings
its bell and makes a momentary pause in
front of a large circular structure, where it
may be worth our while to scramble ashore.
It indicates the locality of one of those
prodigious practical blunders that would
supply John Bull with a topic of inexhaus
tible ridicule if his cousin Jonathan had
committed them, but of which he himself
perpetrates ten to our one in the mere
wantonness of wealth that lacks better em
ployment. The circular building covers
the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, and is
surmounted by a dome of glass, so as to
throw daylight down into the great depth
at which the passage of the river com
mences. Descending a wearisome succes
sion of staircases, we at last find ourselves,
still in the broad noon, standing before a

41 6 OUR OLD HOME

closed door, on opening which we behold
the vista of an arched corridor that extends
into everlasting midnight. In these days,
when glass has been applied to so many
new purposes, it is a pity that the architect
had not thought of arching portions of his
abortive tunnel with immense blocks of
the lucid substance, over which the dusky
Thames would have flowed like a cloud,
making the sub-fluvial avenue only a little
gloomier than a street of upper London.
At present, it is illuminated at regular in
tervals by jets of gas, not very brilliantly,
yet with lustre enough to show the damp
plaster of the ceiling and walls, and the
massive stone pavement, the crevices of
which are oozy with moisture, not from the
incumbent river, but from hidden springs
in the earth's deeper heart. There are
two parallel corridors, with a wall between,
for the separate accommodation of the
double throng of foot-passengers, equestri
ans, and vehicles of all kinds, which was
expected to roll and reverberate continually
through the tunnel. Only one of them
has ever been opened, and its echoes are
but feebly awakened by infrequent foot
falls.

Yet there seem to be people who spend

UP THE THAMES 417

their lives here, and who probably blink
like owls, when, once or twice a year, per
haps, they happen to climb into the sun
shine. All along the corridor, which I be
lieve to be a mile in extent, we see stalls
or shops in little alcoves, kept principally
by women ; they were of a ripe age, I was
glad to observe, and certainly robbed Eng
land of none of its very moderate supply of
feminine loveliness by their deeper than
tomb -like interment. As you approach
(and they are so accustomed to the dusky
gaslight that they read all your character
istics afar off), they assail you with hungry
entreaties to buy some of their merchan
dise, holding forth views of the tunnel put
up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a
magnifying glass at one end to make the
vista more effective. They offer you, be
sides, cheap jewelry, sunny topazes, and
resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and di
amonds as big as the Kohinoor at a not
much heavier cost, together with a multi
farious trumpery which has died out of the
upper world to reappear in this Tartarean
bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still
in the realms of the living, they urge you
to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and
such small refreshment, more suitable, how-

41 8 OUR OLD HOME

ever, for the shadowy appetite of ghosts
than for the sturdy stomachs of English
men. The most capacious of the shops
contains a dioramic exhibition of cities and
scenes in the daylight world, with a dreary
glimmer of gas among them all ; so that
they serve well enough to represent the
dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that
dead people might be supposed to retain
from their past lives, mixing them up with
the ghastliness of their unsubstantial state.
I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do
my best to give them a mockery of impor
tance, because, if these are nothing, then
all this elaborate contrivance and mighty
piece of work has been wrought in vain.
The Englishman has burrowed under the
bed of his great river, and set ships of two
or three thousand tons a-rolling over his
head, only to provide new sites for a few
old women to sell cakes and ginger-beer !
Yet the conception was a grand one ;
and though it has proved an absolute fail
ure, swallowing an immensity of toil and
money, with annual returns hardly suffi
cient to keep the pavement free from the
ooze of subterranean springs, yet it needs,
T presume, only an expenditure three or
four (or, for aught I know, twenty) times

UP THE THAMES 419

as large, to make the enterprise brilliantly
successful. The descent is so great from
the bank of the river to its surface, and the
tunnel dips so profoundly under the riv
er's bed, that the approaches on either
side must commence a long way off, in
order to render the entrance accessible to
horsemen or vehicles ; so that the larger
part of the cost of the whole affair should
have been expended on its margins. It
has turned out a sublime piece of folly ;
and when the New-Zealander of distant
ages shall have moralized sufficiently among
the ruins of London Bridge, he will be
think himself that somewhere thereabout
was the marvelous Tunnel, the very ex
istence of which will seem to him as in
credible as that of the hanging gardens of
Babylon. But the Thames will long ago
have broken through the massive arch, and
choked up the corridors with mud and
sand and with the large stones of the
structure itself, intermixed with skeletons
of drowned people, the rusty ironwork of
sunken vessels, and the great many such
precious and curious things as a river al
ways contrives to hide in its bosom ; the
entrance will have been obliterated, and
its very site forgotten beyond the memory

420 OUR OLD HOME

of twenty generations of men, and the
whole neighborhood be held a dangerous
spot on account of the malaria ; insomuch
that the traveler will make but a brief and
careless inquisition for the traces of the
old wonder, and will stake his credit before
the public, in some Pacific Monthly of that
day, that the story of it is but a myth,
though enriched with a spiritual profundity
which he will proceed to unfold.

Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at
least) to see so much magnificent ingenu
ity thrown away, without trying to endow
the unfortunate result with some kind of
usefulness, though perhaps widely differ
ent from the purpose of its original concep
tion. In former ages, the mile-long corri
dors, with their numerous alcoves, might
have been utilized as a series of dungeons,
the fittest of all possible receptacles for
prisoners of state. Dethroned monarchs
and fallen statesmen would not have needed
to remonstrate against a domicile so spa
cious, so deeply secluded from the world's
scorn, and so admirably in accordance with
their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An
alcove here might have suited Sir Walter
Raleigh better than that darksome hiding-
place communicating with the great cham-

UP THE THAMES 421

her ill the Tower, pacing from end to end
of which he meditated upon his " History
of the World." His track would here have
been straight and narrow, indeed, and
would therefore have lacked somewhat of
the freedom that his intellect demanded ;
and yet the length to which his footsteps
might have traveled forth and retraced
themselves would partly have harmonized
his physical movement with the grand
curves and planetary returns of his thought,
through cycles of majestic periods. Hav
ing it in his mind to compose the world's
history, methinks he could have asked no
better retirement than such a cloister as
this, insulated from all the seductions of
mankind and womankind, deep beneath
their mysteries and motives, down into the
heart of things, full of personal reminis
cences in order to the comprehensive
measurement and verification of historic
records, seeing into the secrets of human
nature, — secrets that daylight never yet
revealed to mortal, — but detecting their
whole scope and purport with the infallible
eyes of unbroken solitude and night. And
then the shades of the old mighty men
might have risen from their still pro-
founder abodes and joined him in the dim

422 OUR OLD HOME

corridor, treading beside him with an an
tique stateliness of mien, telling him in
melancholy tones, grand, but always mel
ancholy, of the greater ideas and purposes
which their most renowned performances
so imperfectly carried out ; that, magnifi
cent successes in the view of all poster
ity, they were but failures to those who
planned them. As Raleigh was a navi
gator, Noah would have explained to him
the peculiarities of construction that made
the ark so seaworthy ; as Raleigh was a
statesman, Moses would have discussed
with him the principles of laws and govern
ment ; as Raleigh was a soldier, Caesar and
Hannibal would have held debate in his
presence, with this martial student for their
umpire ; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or
whatever most illustrious bard he might
call up, would have touched his harp, and
made manifest all the true significance of
the past by means of song and the subtle
intelligences of music.

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir
Walter Raleigh's century knew nothing of
gaslight, and that it would require a pro
digious and wasteful expenditure of tal
low-candles to illuminate the tunnel suffi
ciently to discern even a ghost. On this

UP THE THAMES 423

account, however, it would be all the more
suitable place of confinement for a met
aphysician, to keep him from bewildering
mankind with his shadowy speculations ;
and, being shut off from external converse,
the dark corridor would help him to make
rich discoveries in those cavernous regions
and mysterious by-paths of the intellect,
which he had so long accustomed himself
to explore. But how would every succes
sive age rejoice in so secure a habitation
for its reformers, and especially for each
best and wisest man that happened to be
then alive ! He seeks to burn up our
whole system of society, under pretense of
purifying it from its abuses ! Away with
him into the tunnel, and let him begin by
setting the Thames on fire, if he is able !

If not precisely these, yet akin to these
were some of the fantasies that haunted
me as I passed under the river : for the
place is suggestive of such idle and irre
sponsible stuff by its own abortive charac
ter, its lack of whereabout on upper earth,
or any solid foundation of realities. Could
I have looked forward a few years, I might
have regretted that American enterprise
had not provided a similar tunnel, under
the Hudson or the Potomac, for the con-

424 OUR OLD HOME

venience of our National Government in
times hardly yet gone by. It would be de
lightful to clap up all the enemies of our
peace and Union in the dark together, and
there let them abide, listening to the mo
notonous roll of the river above their
heads, or perhaps in a state of miraculously
suspended animation, until, — be it after
months, years, or centuries, — when the
turmoil shall be all over, the Wrong washed
away in blood (since that must needs be
the cleansing fluid), and the Right firmly
rooted in the soil which that blood will
have enriched, they might crawl forth again
and catch a single glimpse at their re
deemed country, and feel it to be a better
land than they deserve, and die !

I was not sorry when the daylight
reached me after a much briefer abode in
the nether regions than, I fear, would await
the troublesome personages just hinted at.
Emerging on the Surrey side of the
Thames, I found myself in Rotherhithe, a
neighborhood not unfamiliar to the readers
of old books of maritime adventure. There
being a ferry hard by the mouth of the
tunnel, I recrossed the river in the prim
itive fashion of an open boat, which the
conflict of wind and tide, together with the

UP THE THAMES 425

swash and swell of the passing steamers,
tossed high and low rather tumultuously.
This inquietude of our frail skiff (which,
indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so
much alarmed an old lady, the only other
passenger, that the boatmen essayed to
comfort her. " Never fear, mother ! "
grumbled one of them; "we'll make the
river as smooth as we can for you. We '11
get a plane, and plane down the waves ! "
The joke may not read very brilliantly;
but I make bold to record it as the only
specimen that reached my ears of the old,
rough water -wit for which the Thames
used to be so celebrated. Passing directly
along the line of the sunken tunnel, we
landed in Wapping, which I should have
presupposed to be the most tarry and
pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old
salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse,
homely, and cheerful life. Nevertheless,
it turned out to be a cold and torpid neigh
borhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque,
both as to its buildings and inhabitants :
the latter comprising (so far as was visible
to me) not a single unmistakable sailor,
though plenty of land-sharks, who get a
half-dishonest livelihood by business con
nected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults

426 OUR OLD HOME

(as petty drinking-establishments are styled
in England, .pretending to contain vast
cellars full of liquor within the compass
of ten feet square above ground) were
particularly abundant, together with ap
ples, oranges, and oysters, the stalls of
fishmongers and butchers, and slop-shops,
where blue jackets and duck trousers
swung and capered before the doors.
Everything was on the poorest scale, and
the place bore an aspect of unredeemable
decay. From this remote point of London
I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the
city ; while the streets, at first but thinly
occupied by man or vehicle, got more and
more thronged with foot-passengers, carts,
drays, cabs, and the all-pervading and all-
accommodating omnibus. But I lack cour
age, and feel that I should lack persever
ance, as the gentlest reader would lack
patience, to undertake a descriptive stroll
through London streets ; more especially
as there would be a volume ready for the
printer before we could reach a midway
resting-place at Charing Cross. It will be
the easier course to step aboard another
passing steamer, and continue our trip up
the Thames.

The next notable group of objects is an

UP THE THAMES 427

assemblage of ancient walls, battlements,
and turrets, out of the midst of which rises
prominently one great square tower, of a
grayish hue, bordered with white stone,
and having a small turret at each corner
of the roof. This central structure is the
White Tower, and the whole circuit of
ramparts and inclosed edifices constitutes
what is known in English history, and still
more widely and impressively in English
poetry, as the Tower. A crowd of river-
craft are generally moored in front of it ;
but if we look sharply at the right moment
under the base of the rampart, we may
catch a glimpse of an arched water - en
trance, half submerged, past which the
Thames glides as indifferently as if it were
the mouth of a city-kennel. Nevertheless,
it is the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind of
triumphal passage-way (now supposed to be
shut up and barred forever), through which
a multitude of noble and illustrious person
ages have entered the Tower and found it
a brief resting-place on their way to heaven.
Passing it many times, I never observed
that anybody glanced at this shadowy and
ominous trap-door, save myself. It is well
that America exists, if it were only that
her vagrant children may be impressed

428 OUR OLD HOME

and affected by the historical monuments
of England in a degree of which the native
inhabitants are evidently incapable. These
matters are too familiar, too real, and too
hopelessly built in amongst and mixed up
with the common objects and affairs of life,
to be easily susceptible of imaginative
coloring in their minds ; and even their
poets and romancers feel it a toil, and al
most a delusion, to extract poetic material
out of what seems embodied poetry itself
to an American. An Englishman cares
nothing about the Tower, which to us is a
haunted castle in dreamland. That honest
and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P.
R. James (whose mechanical ability, one
might have supposed, would nourish itself
by devouring every old stone of such a
structure), once assured me that he had
never in his life set eyes upon the Tower,
though for years an historic novelist in
London.

Not to spend a whole summer's day
upon the voyage, we will suppose ourselves
to have reached London Bridge, and thence
to have taken another steamer for a farther
passage up the river. But here the mem
orable objects succeed each other so rap
idly that I can spare but a single sentence

UP THE THAMES 429

even for the great Dome, though I deem
it more picturesque, in that dusky atmos
phere, than St. Peter's in its clear blue sky.1
I must mention, however (since everything
connected with royalty is especially inter
esting to my dear countrymen), that I once
saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly
gilded and ornamented, and overspread with
a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to
St. Paul's Cathedral ; it had the royal ban
ner of Great Britain displayed, besides be
ing decorated with a number of other flags ;
and many footmen (who are universally the
grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen

1 St. Paul's appeared to me unspeakably grand and
noble, and the more so from the throng and bustle
continually going on around its base, without in the least
disturbing the sublime repose of its great dome, and,
indeed, of all its massive height and breadth. Other
edifices may crowd close to its foundation, and people
may tramp as they like about it; but still the great
cathedral is as quiet and serene as if it stood in the
middle of Salisbury Plain. There cannot be anything
else in its way so good in the world as just this effect of
St. Paul's in the very heart and densest tumult of Lon
don. I do not know whether the church is built of
marble, or of whatever other white or nearly white ma
terial ; but in the time that it has been standing there, it
has grown black with the smoke of ages, through which
there are, nevertheless, gleams of white, that make a
most picturesque impression on the whole. It is much
better than staring white; the edifice would not be
nearly so grand without this drapery of black. — II. 91.

43O OUR OLD HOME

in England at this day, and these were
regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery bedi
zened with gold-lace, and white silk stock
ings) were in attendance. I know not what
festive or ceremonial occasion may have
drawn out this pageant ; after all, it might
have been merely a city-spectacle, apper
taining to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight
had its value in bringing vividly before me
the grand old times when the sovereign
and nobles were accustomed to use the
Thames as the high street of the metrop
olis, and join in pompous processions upon
it ; whereas, the desuetude of such customs
nowadays has caused the whole show of
river-life to consist in a multitude of smoke-
begrimed steamers. An analogous change
has taken place in the streets, where cabs
and the omnibus have crowded out a rich
variety of vehicles ; and thus life gets more
monotonous in hue from age to age, and ap
pears to seize every opportunity to strip off
a bit of its gold-lace among the wealthier
classes, and to make itself decent in the
lower ones.

Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy
Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a face
as any other portion of London ; and, ad
joining it, the avenues and brick squares

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

UP THE THAMES 43 1

of the Temple, with that historic garden,
close upon the river-side, and still- rich in
shrubbery and flowers, where the partisans
of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal
roses, and scattered their pale and bloody
petals over so many English battle-fields.
Hard by, we see the long white front or
rear of Somerset House, and, farther on,
rise the two new Houses of Parliament,
with a huge unfinished tower already hid
ing its imperfect summit in the smoky
canopy, — the whole vast and cumbrous
edifice a specimen of the best that modern
architecture can effect, elaborately imitat
ing the master-pieces of those simple ages
when men " builded better than they
knew." 1 Close by it, we have a glimpse

1 After coming out of the Abbey, we looked at the two
Houses of Parliament, directly across the way, — an im
mense structure, and certainly most splendid, built of a
beautiful warm-colored stone. The building has a very
elaborate finish, and delighted me at first ; but by and
by I began to be sensible of a weariness in the effect, a
lack of variety in the plan and ornament, a deficiency of
invention ; so that instead of being more and more in
terested the longer one looks, as is the case with an old
Gothic edifice, and continually reading deeper into it,
one finds that one has seen all in seeing a little piece,
and that the magnificent palace has nothing better to
show one or to do for one. It is wonderful how the old
weather-stained and smoke-blackened Abbey shames
down this brand - newness ; not that the Parliament
Houses are not fine objects to look at, too. — II. 105.

432

OUR OLD HOME

of the roof and upper towers of the holy
Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on
the opposite side of the river is Lambeth
Palace, a venerable group of halls and tur
rets, chiefly built of brick, but with at
least one large tower of stone.1 In our
course, we have passed beneath half a
dozen bridges, and, emerging out of the
black heart of London, shall soon reach a
cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames,
if I remember, begins to put on an aspect
of unpolluted innocence. And now we
look back upon the mass of innumerable
roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers,
columns, and the great crowning Dome,
— look back, in short, upon that mystery
of the world's proudest city, amid which
a man so longs and loves to be ; not, per
haps, because it contains much that is pos
itively admirable and enjoyable, but be
cause, at all events, the world has nothing
better. The cream of external life is there ;

1 It stands immediately on the bank of the river, not
far above the bridge. We merely walked round it, and
saw only an old stone tower or two, partially renewed
with brick, and a high connecting wall, within which ap
peared gables and other portions of the palace, all of an
ancient plan and venerable aspect, though evidently
much patched up and restored in the course of the many
ages since its foundation. — II. 193.

UP THE THAMES 433

and whatever merely intellectual or ma
terial good we fail to find perfect in Lon
don, we may as well content ourselves to
seek that unattainable thing no farther on
this earth.

The steamer terminates its trip at Chel
sea, an old town endowed with a prodigious
number of pothouses, and some famous
gardens, called the Cremorne, for public
amusement. The most noticeable thing,
however, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like
that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe,
by Charles II. (whose bronze statue, in the
guise of an old Roman, stands in the cen
tre of the quadrangle), and appropriated
as a home for aged and infirm soldiers of
the British army. The edifices are of three
stories, with windows in the high roofs,
and are built of dark, sombre brick, with
stone edgings and facings. The effect
is by no means that of grandeur (which
is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of
Greenwich Hospital), but a quiet and ven
erable neatness. At each extremity of the
street-front there is a spacious and hospi
tably open gateway, lounging about which
I saw some gray veterans in long scarlet
coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked
hats of a century ago, or occasionally a

434 OUR OLD HOME

modern foraging-cap. Almost all of them
moved with a rheumatic gait, two or three
stumped on wooden legs, and here and
there an arm was missing. Inquiring of
one of these fragmentary heroes whether
a stranger could be admitted to see the
establishment, he replied most cordially,
" Oh yes, sir, — anywhere ! Walk in and
go where you please, — upstairs, or any
where ! " So I entered, and, passing along
the inner side of the quadrangle, came to
the door of the chapel, which forms a part
of the contiguity of edifices next the street.
Here another pensioner, an old warrior of
exceedingly peaceable and Christian rc-
meanor, touched his three-cornered hat dnd
asked if I wished to see the interior ; to
which I assenting, he unlocked the door,
and we went in.

The chapel consists of a great hall with
a vaulted roof, and over the altar is a large
painting in fresco, the subject of which
I did not trouble myself to make out.
More appropriate adornments of the place,
dedicated as well to martial reminiscences
as religious worship, are the long ranges
of dusty and tattered banners, that hang
from their staves all round the ceiling of
the chapel. They are trophies of battles

UP THE THAMES 435

fought and won in every quarter of the
world, comprising the captured flags of all
the nations with whom the British lion
has waged war since James II.'s time, —
French, Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Rus
sian, Chinese, and American, — collected
together in this consecrated spot, not to
symbolize that there shall be no more dis
cord upon earth, but drooping over the
aisle in sullen, though peaceable, humil
iation. Yes, I said "American " among
the rest ; for the good old pensioner mis
took me for an Englishman, and failed not
to point out (and, methought, with an es
pecial emphasis of triumph) some flags
that had been taken at Bladensburg and
Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they
hung a little higher and drooped a little
lower than any of their companions in dis
grace. It is a comfort, however, that their
proud devices are already indistinguish
able, or nearly so, owing to dust and tat
ters and the kind offices of the moths, and
that they will soon rot from the banner-
staves and be swept out in unrecognized
fragments from the chapel-door.

It is a good method of teaching a man
how imperfectly cosmopolitan he is, to
show him his country's flag occupying a

436 OUR OLD HOME

position of dishonor in a foreign land. But,
in truth, the whole system of a people
crowing over its military triumphs had far
better be dispensed with, both on account
of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fer
menting among the nations, and because
it operates as an accumulative inducement
to future generations to aim at a kind of
glory, the gain of which has generally
proved more ruinous than its loss. I heart
ily wish that every trophy of victory might
crumble away, and that every reminiscence
or tradition of a hero, from the beginning
of the world to this day, could pass out of
all men's memories at once and forever.
I might feel very differently, to be sure, if
we Northerners had anything especially
valuable to lose by the fading of those il
luminated names.

I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid
there may have been a little affectation in
it) a magnificent guerdon of all the silver
I had in my pocket, to requite him for
having unintentionally stirred up my pa
triotic susceptibilities. He was a meek-
looking, kindly old man, with a humble
freedom and affability of manner that made
it pleasant to converse with him. Old sol
diers, I know not why, seem to be more

UP THE THAMES 437

accostable than old sailors. One is apt to
hear a growl beneath the smoothest cour
tesy of the latter. The mild veteran, with
his peaceful voice, and gentle reverend
aspect, told me that he had fought at a
cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo,
and escaped unhurt ; he had now been in
the hospital four or five years, and was
married, but necessarily underwent a sep
aration from his wife, who lived outside
of the gates. To my inquiry whether his
fellow - pensioners were comfortable and
happy, he answered, with great alacrity,
" Oh yes, sir ! " qualifying his evidence,
after a moment's consideration, by saying
in an undertone, " There are some people,
your Honor knows, who could not be com
fortable anywhere." I did know it, and
fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital
allows too little of that wholesome care
and regulation of their own occupations
and interests which might assuage the
sting of life to those naturally uncomfort
able individuals by giving them something
external to think about. But my old friend
here was happy in the hospital, and by this
time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in
spite of the bloodshed that he may have
caused by touching off a cannon at Wa
terloo.

438 OUR OLD HOME

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neigh-
borhood of Chelsea, I remember seeing a
distant gleam of the Crystal Palace, glim
mering afar in the afternoon sunshine like
an imaginary structure, — an air-castle by
chance descended upon earth, and resting
there one instant before it vanished, as we
sometimes see a soap-bubble touch un
harmed on the carpet, — a thing of only
momentary visibility and no substance,
destined to be overburdened and crushed
down by the first cloud-shadow that might
fall upon that spot. Even as I looked, it
disappeared.1 Shall I attempt a picture of
this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or
what else shall I try to paint ? Everything
in London and its vicinity has been depicted
innumerable times, but never once trans
lated into intelligible images; it is an ''old,
old story," never yet told, nor to be told.
While writing these reminiscences, I am
continually impressed with the futility of

1 The Crystal Palace gleamed in the sunshine ; but I
do not think a very impressive edifice can be built of
glass, — light and airy, to be sure, but still it will be no
other than an overgrown conservatory. It is unlike
anything else in England ; uncongenial with the English
character, without privacy, destitute of mass, weight, and
shadow, unsusceptible of ivy, lichens, or any mellowness
from age. — II. 135.

UP THE THAMES 439

the effort to give any creative truth to my
sketch, so that it might produce such pic
tures in the reader's mind as would cause
the original scenes to appear familiar when
afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers
often been more successful in representing
definite objects prophetically to my own
mind. In truth, I believe that the chief
delight and advantage of this kind of liter
ature is not for any real information that
it supplies to untraveled people, but for
reviving the recollections and reawakening
the emotions of persons already acquainted
with the scenes described. Thus I found
an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in
reading Mr. Tuckerman's " Month in Eng
land, " — a fine example of the way in
which a refined and cultivated American
looks at the Old Country, the things that
he naturally seeks there, and the modes of
feeling and reflection which they excite.
Correct outlines avail little or nothing,
though truth of coloring may be somewhat
more efficacious. Impressions, however,
states of mind produced by interesting and
-emarkable objects, these, if truthfully and
vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect,
and, though but the result of what we see,
go further towards representing the actual

440 OUR OLD HOME

scene than any direct effort to paint it.
Give the emotions that cluster about it,
and, without being able to analyze the spell
by which it is summoned up, you get some
thing like a simulachre of the object in the
midst of them. From some of the above
reflections I draw the comfortable infer
ence, that, the longer and better known a
thing may be, so much the more eligible is
it as the subject of a descriptive sketch.

On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through
a side-entrance in the time-blackened wall
of a place of worship, and found myself
among a congregation assembled in one of
the transepts and the immediately contig
uous portion of the nave. It was a vast
old edifice, spacious enough, within the ex
tent covered by its pillared roof and over
spread by its stone pavement, to accommo
date the whole of church -going Londonr
and with a far wider and loftier concave
than any human power of lungs could fill
with audible prayer. Oaken benches were
arranged in the transept, on one of which
I seated myself, and joined, as well as I
knew how, in the sacred business that was
going forward. But when it came to the
sermon, the voice of the preacher was
puny, and so were his thoughts, and both

UP THE THAMES 441

seemed impertinent at such a time and
place, where he and all of us were bodily
included within a sublime act of religion,
which could be seen above and around us
and felt beneath our feet. The structure
itself was the worship of the devout men
of long ago, miraculously preserved in stone
without losing an atom of its fragrance
and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem-strain
that they had sung and poured out of the
organ in centuries gone by ; and being so
grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence
had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof
of auditors unborn. I therefore came to
the conclusion, that, in my individual case,
it would be better and more reverent to
let my eyes wander about the edifice than
to fasten them and my thoughts on the
evidently uninspired mortal who was ven
turing — and felt it no venture at all — to
speak here above his breath.

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for
the reader recognized it, no doubt, the
moment we entered) is built of rich brown
stone; and the whole of it — the lofty roof,
the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed
arches — appears to be in consummate re
pair. At all points where decay has laid
its finger, the structure is clamped with

442 OUR OLD HOME

iron or otherwise carefully protected ; and
being thus watched over, — whether as a
place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen
of Gothic art, or an object of national inter
est and pride, — it may reasonably be ex
pected to survive for as many ages as have
passed over it already. It was sweet to
feel its venerable quietude, its long-endur
ing peace, and yet to observe how kindly
and even cheerfully it received the sun
shine of to-day, which fell from the great
windows into the fretted aisles and arches
that laid aside somewhat of their aged
gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always
seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and
castles, kissing them, as it were, with a
more affectionate, though still reverential
familiarity, than it accords to edifices of
later date. A square of golden light lay
on the sombre pavement of the nave, afar
off, falling through the grand western en
trance, the folding leaves of which were
wide open, and afforded glimpses of people
passing to and fro in the outer world, while
we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity of
antique devotion. In the south transept,
separated from us by the full breadth of
the minster, there were painted glass win
dows, of which the uppermost appeared to

UP THE THAMES 443

be a great orb of many-colored radiance,
being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels
whose glorified bodies formed the rays of
an aureole emanating from a cross in the
midst. These windows are modern, but
combine softness with wonderful brilliancy
of effect. Through the pillars and arches,
I saw that the walls in that distant region
of the edifice were almost wholly incrusted
with marble, now grown yellow with time,
no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials
of such men as their respective generations
deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them
were commemorated merely by inscriptions
on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas-
reliefs, others (once famous, but now for
gotten, generals or admirals, these) by
ponderous tombs that aspired towards the
roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the
immense arch of a window. These moun
tains of marble were peopled with the
sisterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters,
and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs ;
but it was strange to observe how the old
Abbey melted all such absurdities into the
breadth of its own grandeur, even magnify
ing itself by what would elsewhere have
been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test
of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridic

444 OUR OLD HOME

ulous without deigning to hide it ; and
these grotesque monuments of the last
century answer a similar purpose with the
grinning faces which the old architects
scattered among their most solemn con
ceptions.

From these distant wanderings (it was
my first visit to Westminster Abbey, and
I would gladly have taken it all in at a
glance) my eyes came back and began to
investigate what was immediately about
me in the transept. Close at my elbow
was the pedestal of Canning's statue. Next
beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spa
cious tablet of which reposed the full-
length figures of a marble lord and lady,
whom an inscription announced to be the
Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, — the
historic Duke of Charles I.'s time, and the
fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered
by her poems and plays. She was of a
family, as the record on her tomb proudly
informed us, of which all the brothers had
been valiant and all the sisters virtuous.
A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, the
new marble as white as snow, held the
next place ; and near by was a mural mon
ument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The
round visage of this old British admiral

UP THE THAMES 445

has a certain interest for a New-Englander,
because it was by no merit of his own
(though he took care to assume it as such),
but by the valor and warlike enterprise
of our colonial forefathers, especially the
stout men of Massachusetts, that he won
rank and renown, and a tomb in West
minster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge
mass of marble done into the guise of a
judicial gown and wig, with a stern face in
the midst of the latter, sat on the other
side of the transept ; and on the pedestal
beside him was a figure of Justice, holding
forth, instead of the customary grocer's
scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards.
It is an ancient and classic instrument, un
doubtedly ; but I had supposed that Portia
(when Shylock's pound of flesh was to be
weighed) was the only judge that ever
really called for it in a court of justice.
Pitt and Fox were in the same distin
guished company ; and John Kemble, in
Roman costume, stood not far off, but
strangely shorn of the dignity that is said
to have enveloped him like a mantle in his
lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent majesty
of the stage is incompatible with the long
endurance of marble and the solemn reality
of the tomb ; though, on the other hand,

446 OUR OLD HOME

almost every illustrious personage here rep-
resented has been invested with more or
less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In
truth, the artist (unless there be a divine
efficacy in his touch, making evident a
heretofore hidden dignity in the actual
form) feels it an imperious law to remove
his subject as far from the aspect of or
dinary life as may be possible without sac
rificing every trace of resemblance. The
absurd effect of the contrary course is very
remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wilber-
force, whose actual self, save for the lack
of color, I seemed to behold, seated just
across the aisle.

This excellent man appears to have sunk
into himself in a sitting posture, with a
thin leg crossed over his knee, a book in
one hand, and a finger of the other under
his chin, I believe, or applied to the side
of his nose, or to some equally familiar
purpose ; while his exceedingly homely and
wrinkled face, held a little on one side,
twinkles at you with the shrewdest com
placency, as if he were looking right into
your eyes, and twigged something there
which you had half a mind to conceal
from him. He keeps this look so pertina
ciously that you feel it to be insufferably

UP THE THAMES 447

impertinent, and bethink yourself what
common ground there may be between
yourself and a stone image, enabling you
to resent it. I have no doubt that the
statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one
pea to another, and you might fancy, that,
at some ordinary moment, when he least
expected it, and before he had time to
smooth away his knowing complication of
wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head,
and whitened into marble, — not only his
personal self, but his coat and small-clothes,
down to a button and the minutest crease
of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks
the impropriety of bestowing the age-long
duration of marble upon small, character
istic individualities, such as might come
within the province of waxen imagery.
The sculptor should give permanence to
the figure of a great man in his mood of
broad and grand composure, which would
obliterate all mean peculiarities ; for, if
the original were unaccustomed to such a
mood, or if his features were incapable of
assuming the guise, it seems questionable
whether he could really have been entitled
to a marble immortality. In point of fact,
however, the English face and form are
seldom statuesque, however illustrious the
individual.

448 OUR OLD HOME

It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed
into this mood of half-jocose criticism in
describing my first visit to Westminster
Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed about
more reverentially, from my childhood up
ward, than any other in the world, and
which I then beheld, and now look back
upon, with profound gratitude to the men
who built it, and a kindly interest, I may
add, in the humblest personage that has
contributed his little all to its impressive-
ness, by depositing his dust or his memory
there. But it is a characteristic of this
grand edifice that it permits you to smile
as freely under the roof of its central nave
as if you stood beneath the yet grander
canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if
you feel inclined, provided the vergers do
not hear it echoing among the arches. In
an ordinary church you would keep your
countenance for fear of disturbing the
sanctities or proprieties of the place ; but
you need leave no honest and decorous
portion of your human nature outside of
these benign and truly hospitable walls.
Their mild awfulness will take care of it
self. Thus it does no harm to the general
impression, when you come to be sensible
that many of the monuments are ridiculous;

UP THE THAMES 449

and commemorate a mob of people who
are mostly forgotten in their graves, and
few of whom ever deserved any better
boon from posterity. You acknowledge
the force of Sir Godfrey Kneller's objection
to being buried in Westminster Abbey,
because " they do bury fools there ! "
Nevertheless, these grotesque carvings
of marble, that break out in dingy-white
blotches on the old freestone of the inte
rior walls, have come there by as natural a
process as might cause mosses and ivy to
cluster about the external edifice ; for they
are the historical and biographical record
of each successive age, written with its
own hand, and all the truer for the inevi
table mistakes, and none the less solemn
for the occasional absurdity. Though you
entered the Abbey expecting to see the
tombs only of the illustrious, you are con
tent at last to read many names, both in
literature and history, that have now lost
the reverence of mankind, if indeed they
ever really possessed it. Let these men
rest in peace. Even if you miss a name
or two that you hoped to find there, they
may well be spared. It matters little a
few more or less, or whether Westminster
Abbey contains or lacks any one man's

45 O OUR OLD HOME

grave, so long as the Centuries, each with
the crowd of personages that it deemed
memorable, have chosen it as their place
of honored sepulture, and laid themselves
down under its pavement. The inscrip
tions and devices on the walls are rich
with evidences of the fluctuating tastes,
fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices,
follies, wisdoms, of the past, and thus they
combine into a more truthful memorial of
their dead times than any individual epi
taph-maker ever meant to write.

When the services were over, many of
the audience seemed inclined to linger in
the nave or wander away among the mys
terious aisles ; for there is nothing in this
world so fascinating as a Gothic minster,
which always invites you deeper and deeper
into its heart both by vast revelations and
shadowy concealments. Through the open
work screen that divides the nave from
the chancel and choir, we could discern
the gleam of a marvelous window, but
were debarred from entrance into that
more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the
vergers. These vigilant officials (doing
their duty all the more strenuously because
no fees could be exacted from Sunday
visitors) flourished their staves, and drove

UP THE THAMES 451

us towards the grand entrance like a flock
of sheep. Lingering through one of the
aisles, I happened to look down, and found
my foot upon a stone inscribed with this
familiar exclamation, "O rare Ben Jons on ! "
and remembered the story of stout old
Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright,
— not, I presume, on account of any un
seemly reluctance on his part to lie down
in the dust, like other men, but because
standing-room was all that could reason
ably be demanded for a poet among the
slumberous notabilities of his age. It made
me weary to think of it ! — such a pro
digious length of time to keep one's feet !
• — apart from the honor of the thing, it
would certainly have been better for Ben
to stretch himself at ease in some country
churchyard. To this day, however, I fancy
that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed
up with the admiration which the higher
classes of English society profess for their
literary men.

Another day — in truth, many other
days — I sought out Poets' Corner, and
found a sign -board and pointed finger
directing the visitor to it, on the corner
house of a little lane leading towards the
rear of the Abbey. The entrance is at the

452 OUR OLD HOME

southeastern end of the south transept, and
it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the
only free mode of access to the building.
It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly
door, passing through which, and pushing
aside an inner screen that partly keeps out
an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself
in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts
of poets gazing at you from the otherwise
bare stone-work of the walls. Great poets,
too ; for Ben Jonson is right behind the
door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and
Butler's on the same side of the transept,
and Milton's (whose bust you know at once
by its resemblance to one of his portraits,
though older, more wrinkled, and sadder
than that) is close by, and a profile-medal
lion of Gray beneath it. A window high
aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these
and many other sculptured marbles, now
as yellow as old parchment, that cover the
three walls of the nook up to an elevation
of about twenty feet above the pavement.
It seemed to me that I had always been
familiar with the spot. Enjoying a humble
intimacy — and how much of my life had
else been a dreary solitude ! — with many
of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself
a stranger there. It was delightful to be

UP THE THAMES 453

among them. There was a genial awe,
mingled with a sense of kind and friendly
presences about me ; and I was glad, more
over, at finding so many of them there
together, in fit companionship, mutually
recognized and duly honored, all reconciled
now, whatever distant generations, what
ever personal hostility or other miserable
impediment, had divided them far asunder
while they lived. I have never felt a
similar interest in any other tombstones,
nor have I ever been deeply moved by the
imaginary presence of other famous dead
peop.e. A poet's ghost is the only one
that survives for his fellow - mortals, after
his bones are in the dust, — and he not
ghostly, but cherishing many hearts with
his own warmth in the chillest atmosphere
of life. What other fame is worth aspir
ing for ? Or, let me speak it more boldly,
what other long-enduring fame can exist ?
We neither remember nor care anything
for the past, except as the poet has made
it intelligibly noble and sublime to our
comprehension. The shades of the mighty
have no substance ; they flit ineffectually
about the darkened stage where they per
formed their momentary parts, save, when
the poet has thrown his own creative soul

454 OUR OLD HOME

into them, and imparted a more vivid life
than ever they were able to manifest to
mankind while they dwelt in the body.
And therefore — though he cunningly dis
guises himself in their armor, their robes
of state, or kingly purple — it is not the
statesman, the warrior, or the monarch
that survives, but the despised poet, whom
they may have fed with their crumbs, and
to whom they owe all that they now are or
have, — a name ! 1

1 September 30, 1855. Poets' Corner has never seemed
like a strange place to me ; it has been familiar from the
very first; at all events, I cannot now recollect the pre
vious conception, of which the reality has taken the place.
I seem always to have known that somewhat dim
corner, with the bare brown stone-work of the old edi
fice aloft, and a window shedding down its light on the
marble busts and tablets, yellow with time, that cover
the three walls of the nook up to a height of about
twenty feet. Prior's is the largest and richest monu
ment. It is observable that the bust and monument of
Congreve are in a distant part of the Abbey. His
duchess probably thought it a degradation to bring a
gentleman among the beggarly poets. — II. 153.

November 12, 1857. We found our way to Poets' Cor
ner, however, and entered those holy precincts, which
looked very dusky and grim in the smoky light. ... I
was strongly impressed with the perception that very
commonplace people compose the great bulk of society
in the home of the illustrious dead. It is wonderful
how few names there are that one cares anything about
a hundred years after their departure ; but perhaps each

UP THE THAMES 455

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to
have been betrayed into a flight above
or beyond the customary level that best
agrees with me ; but it represents fairly
enough the emotions with which I passed
from Poets' Corner into the chapels, which
contain the sepulchres of kings and great
people. They are magnificent even now,
and must have been inconceivably so when
the marble slabs and pillars wore their new
polish, and the statues retained the brilliant
colors with which they were originally
painted, and the shrines their rich gilding,
of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer
or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks
tarnished with antique dust. Yet this rec
ondite portion of the Abbey presents few
memorials of personages whom we care
to remember. The shrine of Edward the
Confessor has a certain interest, because
it was so long held in religious reverence,
and because the very dust that settled
upon it was formerly worth gold. The
helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn

generation acts in good faith in canonizing its own
men. . . . But the fame of the buried person does not
make the marble live, — the marble keeps merely a cold
and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten.
No man who needs a monument ever ought to have
one. — II. 565.

456 OUR OLD HOME

at Agincourt, and now suspended above
his tomb, are memorable objects, but more
for Shakespeare's sake than the victor's
own. Rank has been the general pass
port to admission here. Noble and regal
dust is as cheap as dirt under the pave
ment. I am glad to recollect, indeed (and
it is too characteristic of the right Eng
lish spirit not to be mentioned), one or
two gigantic statues of great mechanicians,
who contributed largely to the material
welfare of England, sitting familiarly in
their marble chairs among forgotten kings
and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of
the earlier monuments, and the antique
beauty of some of them, are what chiefly
gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison
is buried among the men of rank ; not on
the plea of his literary fame, however, but
because he was connected with nobility by
marriage, and had been a Secretary of
State. His gravestone is inscribed with a
resounding verse from Tickell's lines to
his memory, the only lines by which Tick-
ell himself is now remembered, and which
(as I discovered a little while ago) he
mainly filched from an obscure versifier of
somewhat earlier date.

Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked

UP THE THAMES 457

again at the walls, and wondered how the
requisite hospitality can be shown to poets
of our own and the succeeding ages. There
is hardly a foot of space left, although
room has lately been found for a bust of
Southey and a full-length statue of Camp
bell. At best, only a little portion of the
Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men,
musical composers, and others of the gen
tle artist breed, and even into that small
nook of sanctity men of other pursuits have
thought it decent to intrude themselves.
Methinks the tuneful throng, being at
home here, should recollect how they were
treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold
shoulder, looking askance at nobles and
official personages, however worthy of
honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it
shows aptly and truly enough what portion
of the world's regard and honor has hereto
fore been awarded to literary eminence in
comparison with other modes of greatness,
— this dimly lighted corner (nor even that
quietly to themselves) in the vast minster
the walls of which are sheathed and hidden
under marble that has been wasted upon
the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it
may not be worth while to quarrel with the
world on this account ; for, to confess the

458 OUR OLD HOME

very truth, their own little nook contains
more than one poet whose memory is kept
alive by his monument, instead of imbuing
the senseless stone with a spiritual immor
tality, — men of whom you do not ask,
" Where is he ? " but, " Why is he here ? "
I estimate that all the literary people who
really make an essential part of one's inner
life, including the period since English
literature first existed, might have ample
elbow-room to sit down and quaff their
draughts of Castaly round Chaucer's broad,
horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets
consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected
glory over the humblest of their com
panions. And as for the latter, it is to be
hoped that they may have long outgrown
the characteristic jealousies and morbid
sensibilities of their craft, and have found
out the little value (probably not amount
ing to sixpence in immortal currency) of
the posthumous renown which they once
aspired to win. It would be a poor com
pliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning
out of the sky and snuffing up the impure
breath of earthly praise.

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of
the notion that those who have bequeathed
us the inheritance of an undying song

UP THE THAMES 459

would fain be conscious of its endless
reverberations in the hearts of mankind,
and would delight, among sublimer enjoy
ments, to see their names emblazoned in
such a treasure -place of great memories
as Westminster Abbey. There are some
men, at all events, — true and tender poets,
moreover, and fully deserving of the honor,
— whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger
a little while about Poets' Corner, for the
sake of witnessing their own apotheosis
among their kindred. They have had a
strong natural yearning, not so much for
applause as sympathy, which the cold for
tune of their lifetime did but scantily sup
ply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may
make itself felt upon sensibilities at once
so delicate and retentive, even a step or
two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for
example, would be pleased, even now, if he
could learn that his bust had been reposited
in the midst of the old poets whom he ad
mired and loved ; though there is hardly a
man among the authors of to-day and yes
terday whom the judgment of Englishmen
would be less likely to place there. He
deserves it, however, if not for his verse
(the value of which I do not estimate,
never having been able to read it), yet for

460 OUR OLD HOME

his delightful prose, his unmeasured po
etry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch,
working soft miracles by a life-process like
the growth of grass and flowers. As with
all such gentle writers, his page sometimes
betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the
next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance
overgrew and buried it out of sight. I
knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be
praised, few English celebrities whom I
chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen
by their decease, and as I assume no liber
ties with living men) I will conclude this
rambling article by sketching my first in
terview with Leigh Hunt.

He was then at Hammersmith, occupy
ing a very plain and shabby little house, in
a contiguous range of others like it, with
no prospect but that of an ugly village
street, and certainly nothing to gratify his
craving for a tasteful environment, inside
or out. A slatternly maid-servant opened
the door for us, and he himself stood in
the entry, a beautiful and venerable old
man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-
coat, tall and slender, with a countenance
quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and
most naturally courteous manner. He
ushered us into his little study, or parlor,

UP THE THAMES 461

or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor
paper-hangings and carpet, few books, no
pictures that I remember, and an awful
lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon
these external blemishes and this nudity of
adornment, not that they would be worth
mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable
persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born
with such a faculty of enjoying all beauti
ful things that it seemed as if Fortune did
him as much wrong in not supplying them
as in withholding a sufficiency of vital
breath from ordinary men. All kinds of
mild magnificence, tempered by his taste,
would have become him well ; but he had
not the grim dignity that assumes naked
ness as the better robe.

I have said that he was a beautiful old
man. In truth, I never saw a finer coun
tenance, either as to the mould of features
or the expression, nor any that showed the
play of feeling so perfectly without the
slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like
a child's face in this respect. At my first
glimpse of him, when he met us in the
entry, I discerned that he was old, his long
hair being white and his wrinkles many ;
it was an aged visage, in short, such as I
had not at all expected to see, in spite of

462 OUR OLD HOME

dates, because his books talk to the reader
with the tender vivacity of youth. But
when he began to speak, and as he grew
more earnest in conversation, I ceased to
be sensible of his age ; sometimes, indeed,
its dusky shadow darkened through the
gleam which his sprightly thoughts dif
fused about his face, but then another
flash of youth came out of his eyes and
made an illumination again. I never wit
nessed such a wonderfully illusive trans
formation, before or since ; and, to this
day, trusting only to my recollection, I
should find it difficult to decide which was
his genuine and stable predicament, —
youth or age. I have met no Englishman
whose manners seemed to me so agreeable,
soft, rather than polished, wholly uncon
ventional, the natural growth of a kindly
and sensitive disposition without any refer
ence to rule, or else obedient to some rule
so subtile that the nicest observer could
not detect the application of it.

His eyes were dark and very fine, and
his delightful voice accompanied their vis
ible language like music. He appeared to
be exceedingly appreciative of whatever
was passing among those who surrounded
him, and especially of the vicissitudes in

UP THE THAMES 463

the consciousness of the person to whom
he happened to be addressing himself at
the moment. I felt that no effect upon
my mind of what he uttered, no emotion,
however transitory, in myself, escaped his
notice, though not from any positive vigi
lance on his part, but because his faculty of
observation was so penetrative and delicate ;
and to say the truth, it a little confused me
to discern always a ripple on his mobile
face, responsive to any slightest breeze that
passed over the inner reservoir of my senti
ments, and seemed thence to extend to a
similar reservoir within himself. On mat
ters of feeling, and within a certain depth,
you might spare yourself the trouble of
utterance, because he already knew what
you wanted to say, and perhaps a little
more than you would have spoken. His
figure was full of gentle movement, though,
somehow, without disturbing its quietude ;
and as he talked, he kept folding his hands
nervously, and betokened in many ways a
fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel
pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable,
I should imagine, of a passionate experi
ence in either direction. There was not
an English trait in him from head to foot,
morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef,

464 OUR OLD HOME

ale, or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered
not at all into his composition. In his
earlier life, he appears to have given evi
dences of courage and sturdy principle, and
of a tendency to fling himself into the
rough struggle of humanity on the liberal
side. It would be taking too much upon
myself to affirm that this was merely a
projection of his fancy world into the ac
tual, and that he never could have hit a
downright blow, and was altogether an un
suitable person to receive one. I beheld
him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest
robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclu
sion merely from what I saw, it would have
occurred to me that his main deficiency
was a lack of grit. Though anything but
a timid man, the combative and defensive
elements were not prominently developed
in his character, and could have been made
available only when he put an unnatural
force upon his instincts. It was on this
account, and also because of the fineness
of his nature generally, that the English
appreciated him no better, and left this
sweet and delicate poet poor, and with
scanty laurels, in his declining age.

It was not, I think, from his American
blood that Leigh Hunt derived either his

UP THE THAMES 465

amiability or his peaceful inclinations ; at
least, I do not see how we can reasonably
claim the former quality as a national char
acteristic, though the latter might have
been fairly inherited from his ancestors on
the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania
Quakers. But the kind of excellence that
distinguished him — his fineness, subtilty,
and grace — was that which the richest
cultivation has heretofore tended to de
velop in the happier examples of American
genius, and which (though I say it a little
reluctantly) is perhaps what our future in
tellectual advancement may make general
among us. His person, at all events, was
thoroughly American, and of the best type,
as were likewise his manners ; for we are
the best as well as the worst mannered
people in the world.

Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised.
That is to say, he desired sympathy as a
flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited
by it as much in the richer depth of color
ing that it imparted to his ideas. In re
sponse to all that we ventured to express
about his writings (and, for my part, I went
quite to the extent of my conscience, which
was a long way, and there left the matter
to a lady and a young girl, who happily

466 OUR OLD HOME

were with me), his face shone, and he man
ifested great delight, with a perfect, and
yet delicate, frankness, for which I loved
him. He could not tell us, he said, the
happiness that such appreciation gave him ;
it always took him by surprise, he re
marked, for — perhaps because he cleaned
his own boots, and performed other little
ordinary offices for himself — he never had
been conscious of anything wonderful in
his own person. And then he smiled,
making himself and all the poor little parlor
about him beautiful thereby. It is usually
the hardest thing in the world to praise a
man to his face ; but Leigh Hunt received
the incense with such gracious satisfaction
(feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar
praise), that the only difficulty was to keep
the enthusiasm of the moment within the
limit of permanent opinion. A storm had
suddenly come up while we were talking ;
the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and
the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have
great pleasure in believing, that it was a
sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless,
it was not to my voice that he most favor
ably inclined his ear, but to those of my
companions. Women are the fit ministers
at such a shrine.

UP THE THAMES 467

He must have suffered keenly in his
lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping his
emotions so much upon the surface as he
seemed to do, and convenient for everybody
to play upon. Being of a cheerful temper
ament, happiness had probably the upper-
hand. His was a light, mildly joyous
nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attain
ing to that deepest grace which results
from power ; for beauty, like woman, its
human representative, dallies with the
gentle, but yields its consummate favor
only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh
Hunt may have been more beautiful when
I met him, both in person and character,
than in his earlier days. As a young man,
I could conceive of his being finical in
certain moods, but not now, when the
gravity of age shed a venerable grace about
him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he
was favored with most confident and cheer
ing anticipations in respect to a future life ;
and there were abundant proofs, through
out our interview, of an unrepining spirit,
resignation, quiet relinquishment of the
worldly benefits that were denied him,
thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to
enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward
into the dusk, — all of which gave a rever-

468 OUR OLD HOME

ential cast to the feeling with which we
parted from him. I wish that he could
have had one full draught of prosperity
before he died. As a matter of artistic
propriety, it would have been delightful to
see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his
own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of
elaborate upholstery and minute elegances
about him, and a succession of tender and
lovely women to praise his sweet poetry
from morning to night. I hardly know
whether it is my fault, or the effect of a
weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that
I should be sensible of a regret of this
nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely
believe that he has found an infinity of
better things in the world whither he has
gone.

At our leave - taking he grasped me
warmly by both hands, and seemed as much
interested in our whole party as if he had
known us for years. All this was genuine
feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of
his heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds
of rich and rare varieties, not acorns, but
a true heart, nevertheless. Several years
afterwards I met him for the last time at a
London dinner-party, looking sadly broken
down by infirmities ; and my final recollec-

UP THE THAMES 469

tion of the beautiful old man presents him
arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not,
partly embraced and supported by, another
beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-
name, since he has a week-day one for his
personal occasions, I will venture to speak.
It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind intro
duction had first made me known to Leigh
Hunt.1

1 Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter,, called on me a week
or more ago, but I happened not to be in the office.
Saturday last he called again, and as I had crossed to
Rock Park he followed me thither. A plain, middle-
sized, English-looking gentleman, elderly, with short
white hair, and particularly quiet in his manners. He
talks in a somewhat low tone without emphasis, scarcely
distinct. . . . His head has a good outline, and would
look well in marble. I liked him very well. He talked
unaffectedly, showing an author's regard to his reputa
tion, and was evidently pleased to hear of his American
celebrity. He said that in his younger days he was a sci
entific pugilist, and once took a journey to have a spar
ring encounter with the Game-Chicken. Certainly no
one would have looked for a pugilist in this subdued
old gentleman. He is now Commissioner of Lunacy,
and makes periodical circuits through the country, at
tending to the business of his office. He is slightly deaf,
and this may be the cause of his unaccented utterance,
— owing to his not being able to regulate his voice ex
actly by his own ear. . . . He is a good man, and much
better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by his
poetical one, Barry Cornwall. . . . He took my hand in
both of his at parting. . . . — I. 498.

XL

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH
POVERTY

BECOMING an inhabitant of a great Eng
lish town, I often turned aside from the
prosperous thoroughfares (where the edi
fices, the shops, and the bustling crowd
differed not so much from scenes with
which I was familiar in my own country),
and went designedly astray among pre
cincts that reminded me of some of Dick-
ens's grimiest pages. There I caught
glimpses of a people and a mode of life
that were comparatively new to my obser
vation, a sort of sombre phantasmagoric
spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to be
hold, yet involving a singular interest and
even fascination in its ugliness.

Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough
all over the world, being the symbolic ac
companiment of the foul incrustation which
began to settle over and bedim all earthly
things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ;
ever since which hapless epoch, her daugh-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 471

ters have chiefly been engaged in a des
perate and unavailing struggle to get rid of
it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken Eng
lish street is a monstrosity unknown on
our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme
within its own limits, and is inconceivable
everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the
great advantage, that the brightness and
dryness of our atmosphere keep every
thing clean that the sun shines upon, con
verting the larger portion of our impurities
into transitory dust which the next wind
can sweep away, in contrast with the damp,
adhesive grime that incorporates itself with
all surfaces (unless continually and pain
fully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the
English air. Then the all-pervading smoke
of the city, abundantly intermingled with
the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal,
hovering overhead, descending, and alight
ing on pavements and rich architectural
fronts, on the snowy muslin of the ladies,
and the gentlemen's starched collars and
shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets
in a half-mourning garb. It is beyond the
resources of Wealth to keep the smut away
from its premises or its own fingers' ends ;
and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself to
the dark influence without a struggle.

472

OUR OLD HOME

Along with disastrous circumstances, pinch
ing need, adversity so lengthened out as
to constitute the rule of life, there comes
a certain chill depression of the spirits
which seems especially to shudder at cold
water. In view of so wretched a state of
things, we accept the ancient Deluge not
merely as an insulated phenomenon, but
as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge
that nothing less than such a general wash
ing-day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly
old world of its moral and material dirt.

Gin - shops, or what the English call
spirit-vaults, are numerous in the vicinity
of these poor streets, and are set off with
the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tar
nished by contact with the unclean cus
tomers who haunt there. Ragged chil
dren come thither with old shaving-mugs,
or broken-nosed teapots, or any such make
shift receptacle, to get a little poison or
madness for their parents, who deserve no
better requital at their hands for having
engendered them. Inconceivably sluttish
women enter at noonday and stand at the
counter among boon - companions of both
sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a
bumper together, and quaffing off the mix
ture with a relish. As for the men, they

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 4/3

lounge there continually, drinking till they
are drunken, — drinking as long as they
have a halfpenny left, — and then, as it
seemed to me, waiting for a sixpenny mir
acle to be wrought in their pockets so as
to enable them to be drunken again. Most
of these establishments have a significant
advertisement of " Beds," doubtless for
the accommodation of their customers in
the interval between one intoxication and
the next. I never could find it in my
heart, however, utterly to condemn these
sad revelers, and should certainly wait till
I had some better consolation to offer
before depriving them of their dram of
gin, though death itself were in the glass ;
for methought their poor souls needed
such fiery stimulant to lift them a little
way out of the smothering squalor of both
their outward and interior life, giving them
glimpses and suggestions, even if bewil
dering ones, of a spiritual existence that
limited their present misery. The temper
ance-reformers unquestionably derive their
commission from the Divine Beneficence,
but have never been taken fully into its
counsels. All may not be lost, though
those good men fail.

Pawnbrokers' establishments — distin-

474 OUR OLD HOME

guished by the mystic symbol of the three
golden balls, — were conveniently accessi
ble ; though what personal property these
wretched people could possess, capable of
being estimated in silver or copper, so as
to afford a basis for a loan, was a problem
that still perplexes me. Old clothesmen,
likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out an
cient garments to dangle in the wind.
There were butchers' shops, too, of a class
adapted to the neighborhood, presenting
no such generously fattened carcasses as
Englishmen love to gaze at in the market,
no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no
dead hogs, or muttons ornamented with
carved bas-reliefs of fat on their ribs and
shoulders, in a peculiarly British style of
art, — not these, but bits and gobbets of
lean meat, selvages snipt off from steaks,
tough and stringy rnorsels, bare bones
smitten away from joints by the cleaver ;
tripe, liver, bullocks' feet, or whatever else
was cheapest and divisible into the small
est lots. I am afraid that even such deli
cacies came to many of their tables hardly
oftener than Christmas. In the windows
of other little shops you saw half a dozen
wizened herrings ; some eggs in a basket,
looking so dingily antique that your imagi-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 475

nation smelt them ; fly-speckled biscuits,
segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and
papers of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy
milk-woman passed by with a wooden yoke
over her shoulders, supporting a pail on
either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the
composition of which was water and chalk
and the milk of a sickly cow, who gave
the best she had, poor thing ! but could
scarcely make it rich or wholesome, spend
ing her life in some close city-nook and
pasturing on strange food. I have seen,
once or twice, a donkey coming into one
of these streets with panniers full of vege
tables, and departing with a return cargo of
what looked like rubbish and street-sweep
ings. No other commerce seemed to exist,
except, possibly, a girl might offer you a
pair of stockings or a worked collar, or a
man whisper something mysterious about
wonderfully cheap cigars. And yet I re
member seeing female hucksters in those
regions, with their wares on the edge of
the sidewalk arid their own seats right in
the carriage-way, pretending to sell half-
decayed oranges and apples, toffy, Orms-
kirk cakes, combs, and cheap jewelry, the
coarsest kind of crockery, and little plates
of oysters, — knitting patiently all day long,

476 OUR OLD HOME

and removing their undiminished stock in
trade at nightfall. All indispensable im
portations from other quarters of the town
were on a remarkably diminutive scale : for
example, the wealthier inhabitants pur
chased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load,
and the poorer ones by the peck-measure.
It was a curious and melancholy spectacle,
when an overladen coal-cart happened to
pass through the street and drop a handful
or two of its burden in the mud, to see half
a dozen women and children scrambling
for the treasure-trove, like a flock of hens
and chickens gobbling up some spilt corn.
In this connection I may as well mention
a commodity of boiled snails (for such they
appeared to me, though probably a marine
production) which used to be peddled from
door to door, piping hot, as an article of
cheap nutriment.

The population of these dismal abodes
appeared to consider the sidewalks and
middle of the street as their common hall.
In a drama of low life, the unity of place
might be arranged rigidly according to the
classic rule, and the street be the one
locality in which every scene and incident
should occur. Courtship, quarrels, plot
and counterplot, conspiracies for robbery

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 4/7

and murder, family difficulties or agree
ments, — all such matters, I doubt not, are
constantly discussed or transacted in this
sky-roofed saloon, so regally hung with its
sombre canopy of coal-smoke. Whatever
the disadvantages of the English climate,
the only comfortable or wholesome part of
life, for the city poor, must be spent in the
open air. The stifled and squalid rooms
where they lie down at night, whole fam
ilies and neighborhoods together, or sulkily
elbow one another in the daytime, when a
settled rain drives them within doors, are
worse horrors than it is worth while (with
out a practical object in view) to admit into
one's imagination. No wonder that they
creep forth from the foul mystery of their
interiors, stumble down from their garrets,
or scramble up out of their cellars, on the
upper step of which you may see the grimy
housewife, before the shower is ended,
letting the raindrops gutter down her vis
age ; while her children (an impish progeny
of cavernous recesses below the common
sphere of humanity) swarm into the day
light and attain all that they know of per
sonal purification in the nearest mud-
puddle. It might almost make a man
doubt the existence of his own soul, to

478 OUR OLD HOME

observe how Nature has flung these little
wretches into the street and left them
there, so evidently regarding them as
nothing worth, and how all mankind acqui
esce in the great mother's estimate of her
offspring. For, if they are to have no
immortality, what superior claim can I
assert for mine ? And how difficult to be
lieve that anything so precious as a germ
of immortal growth can have been buried
under this dirt - heap, plunged into this
cesspool of misery and vice ! As often as
I beheld the scene, it affected me with
surprise and loathsome interest, much re
sembling, though in a far intenser degree,
the feeling with which, when a boy, I used
to turn over a plank or an old log that had
long lain on the damp ground, and found a
vivacious multitude of unclean and devilish-
looking insects scampering to and fro be
neath it. Without an infinite faith, there
seemed as much prospect of a blessed
futurity for those hideous bugs and many-
footed worms as for these brethren of our
humanity and co-heirs of all our heavenly
inheritance. Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly,
slowly, as after groping at the bottom of a
deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope
struggles upward to the surface, bearing

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 479

the half -drowned body of a child along
with it, and heaving it aloft for its life, and
my own life, and all our lives. Unless
these slime - clogged nostrils can be made
capable of inhaling celestial air, I know
not how the purest and most intellectual
of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a
breath of it. The whole question of eter
nity is staked there. If a single one of
those helpless little ones be lost, the world
is lost !

The women and children greatly prepon
derate in such places ; the men probably
wandering abroad in quest of that daily
miracle, a dinner and a drink, or perhaps
slumbering in the daylight that they may
the better follow out their cat - like ram
bles through the dark. Here are women
with young figures, but old, wrinkled, yel
low faces, tanned and blear-eyed with the
smoke which they cannot spare from their
scanty fires, — it being too precious for its
warmth to be swallowed by the chimney.
Some of them sit on the doorsteps, nursing
their unwashed babies at bosoms which we
will glance aside from, for the sake of our
mothers and all womanhood, because the
fairest spectacle is here the foulest. Yet
motherhood, in these dark abodes, is

480 OUR OLD HOME

strangely identical with what we have
all known it to be in the happiest homes.
Nothing, as I remember, smote me with
more grief and pity (all the more poignant
because perplexingly entangled with an
inclination to smile) than to hear a gaunt
and ragged mother priding herself on the
pretty ways of her ragged and skinny in
fant, just as a young matron might, when
she invites her lady friends to admire her
plump, white-robed darling in the nursery.
Indeed, no womanly characteristic seemed
to have altogether perished out of these
poor souls. It was the very same creature
whose tender torments make the rapture
of our young days, whom we love, cherish,
and protect, and rely upon in life and
death, and whom we delight to see beautify
her beauty with rich robes and set it off
with jewels, though now fantastically mas
querading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit
for her to handle. I recognized her, over
and over again, in the groups round a door
step or in the descent of a cellar, chatting
with prodigious earnestness about intangi
ble trifles, laughing for a little jest, sym
pathizing at almost the same instant with
one neighbor's sunshine and another's
shadow ; wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 481

easily perturbed, and breaking into small
feminine ebullitions of spite, wrath, and
jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, such as
vary the social atmosphere of her silken-
skirted sisters, though smothered into pro
priety by dint of a well-bred habit. Not
that there was an absolute deficiency of
good-breeding, even here. It often sur
prised me to witness a courtesy and def
erence among these ragged folks, which,
having seen it, I did not thoroughly believe
in, wondering whence it should have come.
I am persuaded, however, that there were
laws of intercourse which they never vio
lated, — a code of the cellar, the garret, the
common staircase, the doorstep, and the
pavement, which, perhaps, had as deep a
foundation in natural fitness as the code of
the drawing-room.

Yet again I doubt whether I may not
have been uttering folly in the last two
sentences, when I reflect how rude and
rough these specimens of feminine char
acter generally were. They had a readi
ness with their hands that reminded me of
Molly Seagrim and other heroines in Field
ing's novels. For example, I have seen
a woman meet a man in the street, and,
for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly

482 OUR OLD HOME

clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears, —
an infliction which he bore with exemplary
patience, only snatching the very earliest
opportunity to take to his heels. Where a
sharp tongue will not serve the purpose,
they trust to the sharpness of their finger
nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of
vituperative words in a resounding slap, or
the downright blow of a doubled fist. All
English people, I imagine, are influenced
in a far greater degree than ourselves by
this simple and honest tendency, in cases
of disagreement, to batter one another's
persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of
English ladies (for instance, at the door of
the Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be
satisfied that their belligerent propensities
are kept in abeyance only by a merciless
rigor on the part of society. It requires a
vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their
large physical endowments. Such being
the case with the delicate ornaments of
the drawing-room, it is less to be wondered
at that women who live mostly in the open
air, amid the coarsest kind of companion
ship and occupation, should carry on the
intercourse of life with a freedom unknown
to any class of American females, though
still, I am resolved to think, compatible

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 483

with a generous breadth of natural propri
ety. It shocked me, at first, to see them
(of all ages, even elderly, as well as infants
that could just toddle across the street
alone) going about in the mud and mire, or
through the dusky snow and slosh of a
severe week in winter, with petticoats high
uplifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but
I was comforted by observing that both
shoes and stockings generally reappeared
with better weather, having been thriftily
kept out of the damp for the convenience
of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood
was wonderful, and their strength greater
than could have been expected from such
spare diet as they probably lived upon. I
have seen them carrying on their heads
great burdens under which they walked as
freely as if they were fashionable bonnets ;
or sometimes the burden was huge enough
almost to cover the whole person, looked
at from behind, — as in Tuscan villages you
may see the girls coming in from the coun
try with great bundles of green twigs upon
their backs, so that they resemble locomo
tive masses of verdure and fragrance. But
these poor English women seemed to be
laden with rubbish, incongruous and inde
scribable, such as bones and rags, the

484 OUR OLD HOME

sweepings of the house and of the street,
a merchandise gathered up from what pov
erty itself had thrown away, a heap of
filthy stuff analogous to Christian's bundle
of sin.

Sometimes, though very seldom, I de
tected a certain gracefulness among the
younger women that was altogether new
to my observation. It was a charm proper
to the lowest class. One girl I particularly
remember, in a garb none of the cleanest
and nowise smart, and herself exceedingly
coarse in all respects, but yet endowed
with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a
robe of simple beauty and suitable behavior
that she was born in and had never been
tempted to throw off, because she had
really nothing else to put on. Eve herself
could not have been more natural. Noth
ing was affected, nothing imitated ; no
proper grace was vulgarized by an effort
to assume the manners or adornments of
another sphere. This kind of beauty, ar
rayed in a fitness of its own, is probably
vanishing out of the world, and will cer
tainly never be found in America, where all
the girls, whether daughters of the upper-
tendom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the
kennel, aim at one standard of dress and

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 485

deportment, seldom accomplishing a per
fectly triumphant hit or an utterly absurd
failure. Those words, " genteel" and "lady
like, " are terrible ones, and do us infinite
mischief, but it is because (at least, I hope
so) we are in a transition state, and shall
emerge into a higher mode of simplicity
than has ever been known to past ages.

In such disastrous circumstances as I
have been attempting to describe, it was
beautiful to observe what a mysterious ef
ficacy still asserted itself in character. A
woman, evidently poor as the poorest of
her neighbors, would be knitting or sewing
on the doorstep, just as fifty other women
were ; but round about her skirts (though
wofully patched) you would be sensible of
a certain sphere of decency, which, it
seemed to me, could not have been kept
more impregnable in the cosiest little sit
ting-room, where the teakettle on the hob
was humming its good old song of domestic
peace. Maidenhood had a similar power.
The evil habit that grows upon us in this
harsh world makes me faithless to my own
better perceptions ; and yet I have seen
girls in these wretched streets, on whose
virgin purity, judging merely from their
impression on my instincts as they passed

486 OUR OLD HOME

by, I should have deemed it safe, at the
moment, to stake my life. The next mo
ment, however, as the surrounding flood of
moral uncleanness surged over their foot
steps, I would not have staked a spike of
thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the
miracle was within the scope of Providence,
which is equally wise and equally benefi
cent (even to those poor girls, though I
acknowledge the fact without the remotest
comprehension of the mode of it), whether
they were pure or what we fellow-sinners
call vile. Unless your faith be deep-rooted
and of most vigorous growth, it is the
safer way not to turn aside into this region
so suggestive of miserable doubt. It was
a place " with dreadful faces thronged,"
wrinkled and grim with vice and wretched
ness ; and, thinking over the line of Mil
ton here quoted, I come to the conclusion
that those ugly lineaments which startled
Adam and Eve, as they looked backward to
the closed gate of Paradise, were no fiends
from the pit, but the more terrible fore-
shadowings of what so many of their de
scendants were to be. God help them, and
us likewise, their brethren and sisters !
Let me add, that, forlorn, ragged, careworn,
hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as they

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 487

were, the most pitiful thing of all was to
see the sort of patience with which they
accepted their lot, as if they had been born
into the world for that and nothing else.
Even the little children had this character
istic in as perfect development as their
grandmothers.

The children, in truth, were the ill-
omened blossoms from which another har
vest of precisely such dark fruitage as I
saw ripened around me was to be produced.
Of course you would imagine these to be
lumps of crude iniquity, tiny vessels as full
as they could hold of naughtiness ; nor can
I say a great deal to the contrary. Small
proof of parental discipline could I discern,
save when a mother (drunken, I sincerely
hope) snatched her own imp out of a group
of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions
that were playing and squabbling together
in the mud, turned up its tatters, brought
down her heavy hand on its poor little
tenderest part, and let it go again with a
shake. If the child knew what the punish
ment Was for, it was wiser than I pretend
to be. It yelled and went back to its play
mates in the mud. Yet let me bear tes
timony to what was beautiful, and more
touching than anything that I ever wit-

488 OUR OLD HOME

nessed before in the intercourse of happier
children. I allude to the superintendence
which some of these small people (too small,
one would think, to be sent into the street
alone, had there been any other nursery
for them) exercised over still smaller ones.
Whence they derived such a sense of duty,
unless immediately from God, I cannot
tell ; but it was wonderful to observe the
expression of responsibility in their deport
ment, the anxious fidelity with which they
discharged their unfit office, the tender pa
tience with which they linked their less
pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps
of an infant, and let it guide them whith
ersoever it liked. In the hollow-cheeked,
large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving
a cheerless oversight to her baby-brother,
I did not so much marvel at it. She had
merely come a little earlier than usual to
the perception of what was to be her busi
ness in life. But I admired the sickly-
looking little boy, who did violence to his
boyish nature by making himself the ser
vant of his little sister, — she too small to
walk, and he too small to take her in his
arms, • — and therefore working a kind of
miracle to transport her from one dirt-heap
to another. Beholding such works of love

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 489

and duty, I took heart again, and deemed
it not so impossible, after all, for these
neglected children to find a path through
the squalor and evil of their circumstances
up to the gate of heaven. Perhaps there
was this latent good in all of them, though
generally they looked brutish, and dull even
in their sports ; there was little mirth
among them, nor even a fully awakened
spirit of blackguardism. Yet sometimes,
again, I saw, with surprise and a sense as
if I had been asleep and dreaming, the
bright, intelligent, merry face of a child
whose dark eyes gleamed with vivacious
expression through the dirt that incrusted
its skin, like sunshine struggling through
a very dusty window-pane.

In these streets the belted and blue-
coated policeman appears seldom in com
parison with the frequency of his occur
rence in more reputable thoroughfares. I
used to think that the inhabitants would
have ample time to murder one another, or
any stranger, like myself, who might vio
late the filthy sanctities of the place, be
fore the law could bring up its lumbering
assistance. Nevertheless, there is a super
vision ; nor does the watchfulness of author
ity permit the populace to be tempted to

4QO OUR OLD HOME

any outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth,
I noticed a ballad-singer going through the
street hoarsely chanting some discordant
strain in a provincial dialect, of which I
could only make out that it addressed the
sensibilities of the auditors on the score
of starvation ; but by his side stalked the
policeman, offering no interference, but
watchful to hear what this rough minstrel
said or sang, and silence him, if his effusion
threatened to prove too soul-stirring. In
my judgment, however, there is little or no
danger of that kind : they starve patiently,
sicken patiently, die patiently, not through
resignation, but a diseased flaccidity of
hope. If ever they should do mischief to
those above them, it will probably be by
the communication of some destructive
pestilence ; for, so the medical men affirm,
they suffer all the ordinary diseases with
a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown,
and keep among themselves traditionary
plagues that have long ceased to afflict
more fortunate societies. Chanty herself
gathers her robe about her to avoid their
contact. It would be a dire revenge, in
deed, if they were to prove their claims to
be reckoned of one blood and nature with
the noblest and wealthiest, by compelling

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 491

them to inhale death through the diffusion
of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere.
A true Englishman is a kind man at
heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to
poverty and beggary. Beggars have here
tofore been so strange to an American that
he is apt to become their prey, being recog
nized through his national peculiarities,
and beset by them in the streets. The
English smile at him, and say that there
are ample public arrangements for every
pauper's possible need, that street charity
promotes idleness and vice, and that yon
der personification of misery on the pave
ment will lay up a good day's profit, be
sides supping more luxuriously than the
dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by
the stranger adopts their theory and be
gins to practice upon it, much to his own
temporary freedom from annoyance, but
not entirely without moral detriment or
sometimes a too late contrition. Years
afterwards, it may be, his memory is still
haunted by some vindictive wretch whose
cheeks were pale and hunger -pinched,
whose rags fluttered in the east -wind,
whose right arm was paralyzed and his left
leg shriveled into a mere nerveless stick,
but whom he passed by remorselessly be-

492 OUR OLD HOME

cause an Englishman chose to say that the
fellow's misery looked too perfect, was too
artistically got up, to be genuine. Even
allowing this to be true (as, a hundred
chances to one, it was), it would still have
been a clear case of economy to buy him
off with a little loose silver, so that his
lamentable figure should not limp at the
heels of your conscience all over the world.1
To own the truth, I provided myself with
several such imaginary persecutors in Eng
land, and recruited their number with at
least one sickly-looking wretch whose ac
quaintance I first made at Assisi, in Italy,
and, taking a dislike to something sinister
in his aspect, permitted him to beg early
and late, and all day long, without getting
a single baiocco. At my latest glimpse of
him, the villain avenged himself, not by a
volley of horrible curses as any other Ital
ian beggar would, but by taking an expres
sion so grief -stricken, want -wrung, hope
less, and withal resigned, that I could paint
his lifelike portrait at this moment. Were
I to go over the same ground again, I would

1 The natural man cries out against the philosophy
that rejects beggars. It is a thousand to one that they
are impostors, but yet we do ourselves a wrong by hard
ening our hearts against them. — II. 152.

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 493

listen to no man's theories, but buy the lit
tle luxury of beneficence at a cheap rate,
instead of doing myself a moral mischief
by exuding a stony incrustation over what
ever natural sensibility I might possess.

On the other hand, there were some
mendicants whose utmost efforts I even
now felicitate myself on having withstood.
Such was a phenomenon abridged of his
lower half, who beset me for two or three
years together, and, in spite of his defi
ciency of locomotive members, had some
supernatural method of transporting him
self (simultaneously, I believe) to all quar
ters of the city. He wore a sailor's jacket
(possibly, because skirts would have been
a superfluity to his figure), and had a re
markably broad-shouldered and muscular
frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored
face, which was full, of power and intelli
gence. His dress arid linen were the per
fection of neatness. Once a day, at least,
wherever I went, I suddenly became aware
of this trunk of a man on the path before
me, resting on his base, and looking as if
he had just sprouted out of the pavement,
and would sink into it again and reappear
at some other spot the instant you left him
behind. The expression of his eye was

494

OUR OLD HOME

perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed,
holding your own as by fascination, never
once winking, never wavering from its
point-blank gaze right into your face, till
you were completely beyond the range of
his battery of one immense rifled cannon.
This was his mode of soliciting alms ; and
he reminded me of the old beggar who ap
pealed so touchingly to the charitable sym
pathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him
from the roadside with a long - barreled
musket. The intentness and directness of
his silent appeal, his close and unrelenting
attack upon your individuality, respectful
as it seemed, was the very flower of inso
lence ; or, if you give it a possibly truer
interpretation, it was the tyrannical effort
of a man endowed with great natural force
of character to constrain your reluctant
will to his purpose. Apparently, he had
staked his salvation upon the ultimate suc
cess of a daily struggle between himself
and me, the triumph of which would com
pel me to become a tributary to the hat
that lay on the pavement beside him. Man
or. fiend, however, there was a stubbornness
in his intended victim which this massive
fragment of a mighty personality had not
altogether reckoned upon, and by its aid I

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 495

was enabled to pass him at my customary
pace hundreds of times over, quietly meet
ing his terribly respectful eye, and allowing
him the fair chance which I felt to be his
due, to subjugate me, if he really had the
strength for it. He never succeeded, but,
on the other hand, never gave up the con
test ; and should I ever walk those streets
again, I am certain that the truncated ty
rant will sprout up through the pavement
and look me fixedly in the eye, and perhaps
get the victory.1

I should think all the more highly of
myself, if I had shown equal heroism in

1 Among the beggars of Liverpool, the hardest to en
counter is a man without any legs, and if I mistake not,
likewise deficient in arms. You see him before you all
at once, as if he had sprouted half-way out of the earth,
and would sink down and reappear in some other place
the moment he has done with you. His countenance is
large, fresh, and very intelligent ; but his great power
lies in his fixed gaze, which is inconceivably difficult to
bear. He never once removes his eye from you till you
are quite past his range ; and you feel it all the same,
although you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly
respectful ; but the intentness and directness of his silent
appeal is far worse than any impudence. In fact, it is
the very flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile
about than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by
him, and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great
force in the man to produce such an effect. There is
nothing of the customary squalidness of beggary about
him, but remarkable trimness and cleanliness. — I. 475.

496 OUR OLD HOME

resisting another class of beggarly depre
dators, who assailed me on my weaker side
and won an easy spoil. Such was the
sanctimonious clergyman, with his white
cravat, who visited me with a subscription-
paper, which he himself had drawn up, in a
case of heart-rending distress; — the re
spectable and ruined tradesman, going from
door to door, shy and silent in his own per
son, but accompanied by a sympathizing
friend, who bore testimony to his integrity,
and stated the unavoidable misfortunes that
had crushed him down ; l — or the delicate

1 It appears to be customary for people of decent
station, but in distressed circumstances, to go round
among their neighbors and the public, accompanied by a
friend, who explains the case. I have been accosted in
the street in regard to one of these matters ; and to-day
there came to my office a grocer, who had become secur
ity for a friend, and who was threatened with an execu
tion, — with another grocer for supporter and advocate.
The beneficiary takes very little active part in the affair,
merely looking careworn, distressed, and pitiable, and
throwing in a word of corroboration, or a sigh, or an ac
knowledgment, as the case may demand. . . . The whole
matter is very foreign to American habits. No respect
able American would think of retrieving his affairs by
such means, but would prefer ruin ten times over ; no
friend would take up his cause ; no public would think
it worth while to prevent the small catastrophe. And
yet the custom is not without its good side, as indicating
a closer feeling of brotherhood, a more efficient sense of
neighborhood, than exists among ourselves, although,

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 497

and prettily dressed lady, who had been
bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown
upon the perilous charities of the world
by the death of an indulgent, but secretly
insolvent father, or the commercial catas
trophe and simultaneous suicide of the best
of husbands ; — or the gifted, but unsuc
cessful author, appealing to my fraternal
sympathies, generously rejoicing in some
small prosperities which he was kind
enough to term my own triumphs in the
field of letters, and claiming to have largely
contributed to them by his unbought no
tices in the public journals. England is
full of such people, and a hundred other
varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher
than these, and lower, who act their parts
tolerably well, but seldom with an abso
lutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw
Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs,
almost without an exception, — rats that
nibble at the honest bread and cheese of
the community, and grow fat by their petty
pilferings, — yet often gave them what
they asked, and privately owned myself a
simpleton. There is a decorum which re-

perhaps, we are more careless of a fellow-creature's ruin,
because ruin with us is by no means the fatal and irre
trievable event that it is in England. — I. 543.

498 OUR OLD HOME

strains you (unless you happen to be a
police-constable) from breaking through a
crust of plausible respectability, even when
you are certain that there is a knave be
neath it.

After making myself as familiar as I
decently could with the poor streets, I be
came curious to see what kind of a home
was provided for the inhabitants at the
public expense, fearing that it must needs
be a most comfortless one, or else their
choice (if choice it were) of so miserable a
life outside was truly difficult to account
for. Accordingly, I visited a great alms-
house, and was glad to observe how unex-
ceptionably all the parts of the establish
ment were carried on, and what an orderly
life, full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, and un
disturbed by the arbitrary exercise of au
thority, seemed to be led there. Possibly,
indeed, it was that very orderliness, and
the cruel necessity of being neat and clean,
and even the comfort resulting from these
and other Christian-like restraints and reg
ulations, that constituted the principal
grievance on the part of the poor, shiftless
inmates, accustomed to a life-long luxury
of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild
life of the streets has perhaps as unforget-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 499

able a charm, to those who have once
thoroughly imbibed it, as the life of the
forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather
that there must be insuperable difficulties,
for the majority of the poor, in the way of
getting admittance to the almshouse, than
that a merely aesthetic preference for the
street would incline the pauper class to fare
scantily and precariously, and expose their
raggedness to the rain and snow, when
such a hospitable door stood wide open for
their entrance. It might be that the rough
est and darkest side of the matter was not
shown me, there being persons of eminent
station and of both sexes in the party
which I accompanied ; and, of course, a
properly trained public functionary would
have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as
well as a great shame, to exhibit anything
to people of rank that might too painfully
shock their sensibilities.

The women's ward was the portion of
the establishment which we especially ex
amined. It could not be questioned that
they were treated with kindness as well as
care. No doubt, as has been already sug
gested, some of them felt the irksomeness
of submission to general rules of orderly
behavior, after being accustomed to that

500 OUR OLD HOME

perfect freedom from the minor proprieties,
at least, which is one of the compensations
of absolutely hopeless poverty, or of any
circumstances that set us fairly below the
decencies of life. I asked the governor of
the house whether he met with any diffi
culty in keeping peace and order among
his inmates ; and he informed me that his
troubles among the women were incompa
rably greater than with the men. They
were freakish, and apt to be quarrelsome,
inclined to plague and pester one another
in ways that it was impossible to lay hold
of, and to thwart his own authority by the
like intangible methods. He said this with
the utmost good-nature, and quite won my
regard by so placidly resigning himself to
the inevitable necessity of letting the wo
men throw dust into his eyes. They cer
tainly looked peaceable and sisterly enough
as I saw them, though still it might be
faintly perceptible that some of them were
consciously playing their parts before the
governor and his distinguished visitors.

This governor seemed to me a man thor
oughly fit for his position. An American,
in an office of similar responsibility, would
doubtless be a much superior person, better
educated, possessing a far wider range of

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY1 501

thought, more naturally acute, with a
quicker tact of external observation and
a readier faculty of dealing with difficult
cases. The women would not succeed in
throwing half so much dust into his eyes.
Moreover, his black coat, and thin, sallow
visage, would make him look like a scholar,
and his manners would indefinitely approx
imate to those of a gentleman. But I
cannot help questioning whether, on the
whole, these higher endowments would
produce decidedly better results. The
Englishman was thoroughly plebeian both
in aspect and behavior, a bluff, ruddy-faced,
hearty, kindly, yeoman-like personage, with
no refinement whatever, nor any super
fluous sensibility, but gifted with a native
wholesomeness of character which must
have been a very beneficial element in the
atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke
to his pauper family in loud, good-humored,
cheerful tones, and treated them with a
healthy freedom that probably caused the
forlorn wretches to feel as if they were
free and healthy likewise. If he had under
stood them a little better, he would not
have treated them half so wisely. We are
apt to make sickly people more morbid,
and unfortunate people more miserable, by

502 OUR OLD HOME

endeavoring to adapt our deportment to
their especial and individual needs. They
eagerly accept our well-meant efforts ; but
it is like returning their own sick breath
back upon themselves, to be breathed over
and over again, intensifying the inward
mischief at every reception. The sympa
thy that would really do them good is of
a kind that recognizes their sound and
healthy parts, and ignores the part affected
by disease, which will thrive under the eye
of a too close observer like a poisonous
weed in the sunshine. My good friend the
governor had no tendencies in the latter
direction, and abundance of them in the
former, and was consequently as wholesome
and invigorating as the west-wind with a
little spice of the north in it, brightening
the dreary visages that encountered us as
if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand.
He expressed himself by his whole being
and personality, and by works more than
words, and had the not unusual English
merit of knowing what to do much better
than how to talk about it.

The women, I imagine, must have felt
one imperfection in their state, however
comfortable otherwise. They were forbid
den, or at all events lacked the means, to

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 503

follow out their natural instinct of adorn
ing themselves ; all were well dressed in
one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns,
with such caps upon their heads as English
servants wear. Generally, too, they had
one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar
type of features so nearly alike that they
seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood.
We have few of these absolutely unillumi-
nated faces among our native American
population, individuals of whom must be
singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we
do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed
to refine the turbid element, no gleam of
hereditary intelligence has lighted up the
stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought
from the Old Country. Even in this Eng
lish almshouse, however, there was at least
one person who claimed to be intimately
connected with rank and wealth. The
governor, after suggesting that this per
son would probably be gratified by our
visit, ushered us into a small parlor, which
was furnished a little more like a room
in a private dwelling than others that we
entered, and had a row of religious books
and fashionable novels on the mantelpiece.
An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, reading
a romance, and rose to receive us with a

504

OUR OLD HOME

certain pomp of manner and elaborate dis
play of ceremonious courtesy, which, in
spite of myself, made me inwardly question
the genuineness of her aristocratic preten
sions. But, at any rate, she looked like
a respectable old soul, and was evidently
gladdened to the very core of her frost
bitten heart by the awful punctiliousness
with which we responded to her gracious
and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome.
After a little polite conversation, we re
tired ; and the governor, with a lowered
voice and an air of deference, told us that
she had been a lady of quality, and had
ridden in her own equipage, not many years
before, and now lived in continual expecta
tion that some of her rich relatives would
drive up in their carriages to take her
away. Meanwhile, he added, she was
treated with great respect by her fellow-
paupers. I could not help thinking, from a
few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and
manner, that there might have been a mis
take on the governor's part, and perhaps
a venial exaggeration on the old lady's,
concerning her former position in society ;
but what struck me was the forcible in
stance of that most prevalent of English
vanities, the pretension to aristocratic con-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 505

nection, on one side, and the submission
and reverence with which it was accepted
by the governor and his household, on the
other. Among ourselves, I think, when
wealth and eminent position have taken
their departure, they seldom leave a pallid
ghost behind them, — or, if it sometimes
stalks abroad, few recognize it.

We went into several other rooms, at the
doors of which, pausing on the outside, we
could hear the volubility, and sometimes
the wrangling, of the female inhabitants
within, but invariably found silence and
peace when we stepped over the threshold.
The women were grouped together in their
sitting - rooms, sometimes three or four,
sometimes a larger number, classified by
their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and
all busied, so far as I can remember, with
the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn
stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry
to say, had a brisk or cheerful air, though
it often stirred them up to a momentary
vivacity to be accosted by the governor,
and they seemed to like being noticed,
however slightly, by the visitors. The
happiest person whom I saw there (and
running hastily through my experiences, I
hardly recollect to have seen a happier one

506 OUR OLD HOME

in my life, if you take a careless flow of
spirits as happiness) was an old woman
that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy-
looking females, who plied their knitting-
work round about her. She laughed, when
we entered, and immediately began to talk
to us, in a thin, little, spirited quaver, claim
ing to be more than a century old ; and
the governor (in whatever way he happened
to be cognizant of the fact) confirmed her
age to be a hundred and four. Her jaun-
tiness and cackling merriment were really
wonderful. It was as if she had got
through with all her actual business in life
two or three generations ago, and now,
freed from every responsibility for herself
or others, had only to keep up a mirthful
state of mind till the short time, or long
time (and, happy as she was, she appeared
not to care whether it were long or short),
before Death, who had misplaced her name
in his list, might remember to take her
away. She had gone quite round the circle
of human existence, and come back to the
play-ground again. And so she had grown
to be a kind of miraculous old pet, the
plaything of people seventy or eighty years
younger than herself, who talked and
laughed with her as if she were a child,

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 507

finding great delight in her wayward and
strangely playful responses, into some of
which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that
caused their ears to tingle a little. She
had done getting out of bed in this world,
and lay there to be waited upon like a
queen or a baby.

In the same room sat a pauper who had
once been an actress of considerable re
pute, but was compelled to give up her
profession by a softening of the brain.
The disease seemed to have stolen the con
tinuity out of her life, and disturbed all
healthy relationship between the thoughts
within her and the world without. On our
first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us,
and showed herself ready to engage in
conversation ; but suddenly, while we were
talking with the century-old crone, the poor
actress began .to weep, contorting her face
with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wring
ing her hands for some inscrutable sorrow.
It might have been a reminiscence of ac
tual calamity in her past life, or, quite as
probably, it was but a dramatic woe, be
neath which she had staggered and shrieked
and wrung her hands with hundreds of
repetitions in the sight of crowded thea
tres, and been as often comforted by thun-

508 OUR OLD HOME

ders of applause. But my idea of the mys
tery was, that she had a sense of wrong in
seeing the aged woman (whose empty vivac
ity was like the rattling of dry peas in a
bladder) chosen as the central object of
interest to the visitors, while she herself,
who had agitated thousands of hearts with
a breath, sat starving for the admiration
that was her natural food. I appeal to the
whole society of artists of the Beautiful
and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers,
painters, sculptors, actors, — whether or no
this is a grief that may be felt even amid
the torpor of a dissolving brain !

We looked into a good many sleeping-
chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly
calculated for two occupants, and provided
with sheets and pillow-cases that resem
bled sackcloth. It appeared to me that
the sense of beauty was insufficiently re
garded in all the arrangements of the alms-
house ; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at
least, might do the poor folks a substantial
good. But, at all events, there was the
beauty of perfect neatness and orderliness,
which, being heretofore known to few of
them, was perhaps as much as they could
well digest in the remnant of their lives.
We were invited into the laundry, where a

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 509

great washing and drying were in process,
the whole atmosphere being hot and vapor
ous with the steam of wet garments and
bedclothes. This atmosphere was the pau
per-life of the past week or fortnight re
solved into a gaseous state, and breathing
it, however fastidiously, we were forced to
inhale the strange element into our inmost
being. Had the Queen been there, I know
not how she could have escaped the neces
sity. What an intimate brotherhood is
this in which we dwell, do what we may to
put an artificial remoteness between the
high creature and the low one ! A poor
man's breath, borne on the vehicle of to
bacco-smoke, floats into a palace - window
and reaches the nostrils of a monarch. It
is but an example, obvious to the sense, of
the innumerable and secret channels by
which, at every moment of our lives, the
flow and reflux of a common humanity per
vade us all. How superficial are the nice
ties of such as pretend to keep aloof! Let
the whole world be cleansed, or not a man
or woman of us all can be clean.

By and by we came to the ward where
the children were kept, on entering which,
we saw, in the first place, several unlovely
and unwholesome little people lazily play-

5io

OUR OLD HOME

ing together in a court-yard. And here a
singular incommodity befell one member
of our party. Among the children was a
wretched, pale, half - torpid little thing
(about six years old, perhaps, but I know
not whether a girl or a boy), with a humor
in its eyes and face, which the governor
said was the scurvy, and which appeared
to bedim its powers of vision, so that it
toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it
did not precisely know what. This child
— this sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant,
the offspring of unspeakable sin and sorrow^
whom it must have required several gener
ations of guilty progenitors to render so
pitiable an object as we beheld it — im
mediately took an unaccountable fancy to
the gentleman just hinted at. It prowled
about him like a pet kitten, rubbing against
his legs, following everywhere at his heels,
pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exert
ing all the speed that its poor limbs were
capable of, got directly before him and
held forth its arms, mutely insisting on
being taken up. It said not a word, being
perhaps underwitted and incapable of prat
tle. But it smiled up in his face, — a sort
of woful gleam was that smile, through the
sickly blotches that covered its features, —

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 511

and found means to express such a perfect
confidence that it was going to be fondled
and made much of, that there was no pos
sibility in a human heart of balking its ex
pectation. It was as if God had promised
the poor child this favor on behalf of that
individual, and he was bound to fulfill the
contract, or else no longer call himself a
man among men. Nevertheless, it could
be no easy thing for him to do, he being a
person burdened with more than an Eng
lishman's customary reserve, shy of actual
contact with human beings, afflicted with
a peculiar distaste for whatever was ugly,
and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit
of observation from an insulated stand
point which is said (but, I hope, errone
ously) to have the tendency of putting ice*
into the blood.

So I watched the struggle- in his mind
with a good deal of interest, and am seri
ously of opinion that he did an heroic act,
and effected more than he dreamed of to
wards his final salvation, when he took up
the loathsome child and caressed it as ten
derly as if he had been its father. To be
sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but
doubtless would have acted pretty much
the same in a similar stress of circum-

512 OUR OLD HOME

stances. The child, at any rate, appeared
to be satisfied with his behavior ; for when
he had held it a considerable time, and set
it down, it still favored him with its com
pany, keeping fast hold of his forefinger
till we reached the confines of the place.
And on our return through the court-yard,
after visiting another part of the establish
ment, here again was this same little
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with
a smile of joyful, and yet dull recognition
about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy
eyes. No doubt, the child's mission in
reference to our friend was to remind him
that he was responsible, in his degree, for
all the sufferings and misdemeanors of
the world in which he lived, and was not
entitled to look upon a particle of its dark
calamity as if it were none of his concern :
the offspring- of a brother's iniquity being
his own blood-relation, and the guilt, like
wise, a burden on him, unless he expiated
it by better deeds.1

1 February 28, 1856. " After this, we went to the ward
[West Derby Workhouse] where the children were kept,
and, on entering this, we saw, in the first place, two or
three unlovely and ilnwholesome little imps, who were
lazily playing together. One of them (a child about six
years old, but I know not whether girl or boy) immedi
ately took the strangest fancy for me. It was a wretched>

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 513

All the children in this ward seemed to
be invalids, and, going upstairs, we found
more of them in the same or a worse con
dition than the little creature just de
scribed, with their mothers (or more prob
ably other women, for the infants were
mostly foundlings) in attendance as nurses.
The matron of the ward, a middle-aged
woman, remarkably kind and motherly in
aspect, was walking to and fro across the

pale, half-torpid little thing, with a humor in its eyes
which the governor said was the scurvy. I never saw,
till a few moments afterwards, a child that I should feel
less inclined to fondle. But this little, sickly, humor-
eaten fright prowled around me, taking hold of my skirts,
following at my heels, and at last held up its hands,
smiled in my face, and, standing directly before me, in
sisted on my taking it up ! Not that it said a word, for
I rather think it was undeiwitted, and could not talk;
but its face expressed such perfect confidence that it
was going to be taken up and made much of, that it
was impossible not to do it. It was as if God had
promised the child this favor on my behalf, and that I
must needs fulfill the contract. 1 held my undesirable
burden a little while ; and, after setting the child down,
it still followed me, holding two of my fingers and play
ing with them, just as if it were a child of my own. It
was a foundling, and out of all human kind it chose me
to be its father ! We went up stairs into another ward ;
and, on coming down again, there was this same child
waiting for me, with a sickly smile round its defaced
mouth, and in its dim red eyes. ... I never should
have forgiven myself if I had repelled its advances." —
II. 184.

514 OUR OLD HOME

chamber — on that weary journey in which
careful mothers and nurses travel so con
tinually and so far, and gain never a step
of progress — with an unquiet baby in her
arms. She assured us that she enjoyed
her occupation, being exceedingly fond of
children ; and, in fact, the absence of ti
midity in all the little people was a suffi
cient proof that they could have had no
experience of harsh treatment, though, on
the other hand, none of them appeared to
be attracted to one individual more than
another. In this point they differed widely
from the poor child below stairs. They
seemed to recognize a universal mother
hood in womankind, and cared not which
individual might be the mother of the mo
ment. I found their tameness as shock
ing as did Alexander Selkirk that of the
brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom.
It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect
indifference to the approach of strangers,
such as I never noticed in other children.
I accounted for it partly by their nerveless,
unstrung state of body, incapable of the
quick thrills of delight and fear which play
upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy
child's nature, and partly by their woful
lack of acquaintance with a private home,

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 515

and their being therefore destitute of the
sweet home-bred shyness, which is like the
sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted
child. Their condition was like that of
chickens hatched in an oven, and growing
up without the especial guardianship of a
matron hen : both the chicken and the
child, methinks, must needs want some
thing that is essential to their respective
characters.

In this chamber (which was spacious,
containing a large number of beds) there
was a clear fire burning on the hearth, as
in all the other occupied rooms ; and di
rectly in front of the blaze sat a woman
holding a baby, which, beyond all reach of
comparison, was the most horrible object
that ever afflicted my sight. Days after
wards — nay, even now, when I bring it up
vividly before my mind's eye — it seemed
to lie upon the floor of my heart, pollut
ing my moral being with the sense of
something grievously amiss in the entire
conditions of humanity. The holiest man
could not be otherwise than full of wick
edness, the chastest virgin seemed impure,
in a world where such a babe was possi
ble. The governor whispered me, apart,
that, like nearly all the rest of them, it was

516 OUR OLD HOME

the child of unhealthy parents. Ah, yes !
There was the mischief. This spectral in
fant, a hideous mockery of the visible link
which Love creates between man and wo
man, was born of disease and sin. Dis
eased Sin was its father, and Sinful Disease
its mother, and their offspring lay in the
woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence,
which, could it live and grow up, would
make the world a more accursed abode
than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it
could not live ! This baby, if we must
give it that sweet name, seemed to be
three or four months old, but, being such
an unthrifty changeling, might have been
considerably older. It was all covered
with blotches, and preternaturally dark and
discolored ; it was withered away, quite
shrunken and fleshless ; it breathed only
amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned
painfully at every gasp. The only comfort
in reference to it was the evident impossi
bility of its surviving to draw many more
of those miserable, moaning breaths ; and
it would have been infinitely less heart-
depressing to see it die, right before my
eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in
my remembrance, still suffering the incal
culable torture of its little life. I can by

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 517

mo means express how horrible this infant
was, neither ought I to attempt it. And
yet I must add one final touch. Young as
the poor little creature was, its pain and
misery had endowed it with a premature
intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed
to stare at the by-standers out of their
sunken sockets knowingly and appealingly,
as if summoning us one and all to wit
ness the deadly wrong of its existence.
At least, I so interpreted its look, when it
positively met and responded to my own
awe-stricken gaze, and therefore I lay the
case, as far as I am able, before mankind,
on whom God has imposed the necessity
to suffer in soul and body till this dark and
dreadful wrong be righted.

Thence we went to the school -rooms,
which were underneath the chapel. The
pupils, like the children whom we had just
seen, were, in large proportion, foundlings.
Almost without exception, they looked
sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in
their doltish faces, and a general tendency
to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the
poor little wretches appeared to be uneasy
within their skins, and screwed themselves
about on the benches in a disagreeably
suggestive way, as if they had inherited

518 OUR OLD HOME

the evil habits of their parents as an in- *
nermost garment of the same texture and
material as the shirt of Nessus, and must
wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long
as they lived. I saw only a single child
that looked healthy ; and on my pointing
him out, the governor informed me that
this little boy, the sole exception to the
miserable aspect of his school-fellows, was
not a foundling, nor properly a workhouse
child, being born of respectable parent
age, and his father one of the officers of
the institution. As for the remainder, —
the hundred pale abortions to be counted
against one rosy-cheeked boy, — what shall
we say or do ? Depressed by the sight of
so much misery, and uninventive of reme
dies for the evils that force themselves on
my perception, I can do little more than
recur to the idea already hinted at in the
early part of this article, regarding the
speedy necessity of a new deluge. So far
as these children are concerned, at any
rate, it would be a blessing to the human
race, which they will contribute to ener
vate and corrupt, — a greater blessing to
themselves, who inherit no patrimony but
disease and vice, and in whose souls, if
there be a spark of God's life, this seems

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 519

the only possible mode of keeping it aglow,
— if every one of them could be drowned
to-night, by their best friends, instead of
being put tenderly to bed. This heroic
method of treating human maladies, moral
and material, is certainly beyond the scope
of man's discretionary rights, and probably
will not be adopted by Divine Providence
until the opportunity of milder reformation
shall have been offered us again and again,
through a series of future ages.

It may be fair to acknowledge that the
humane and excellent governor, as well as
other persons better acquainted with the
subject than myself, took a less gloomy
view of it, though still so dark a one as to
involve scanty consolation. They remarked
that individuals of the male sex, picked up
in the streets and nurtured in the work
house, sometimes succeed tolerably well in
life, because they are taught trades before
being turned into the world, and, by dint
of immaculate behavior and good luck, are
not unlikely to get employment and earn a
livelihood. The case is different with the
girls. They can only go to service, and
are invariably rejected by families of re
spectability on account of their origin, and
for the better reason of their unfitness to

520

OUR OLD HOME

fill satisfactorily even the meanest situa
tions in a well-ordered English household.
Their resource is to take service with
people only a step or two above the poorest
class, with whom they fare scantily, endure
harsh treatment, lead shifting and preca
rious lives, and finally drop into the slough
of evil, through which, in their best estate,
they do but pick their slimy way on step
ping-stones.

From the schools we went to the bake
house, and the brew-house (for such cruelty
is not harbored in the heart of a true Eng
lishman as to deny a pauper his daily
allowance of beer), and through the kitch
ens, where we beheld an immense pot over
the fire, surging and walloping with some
kind of a savory stew that filled it up to its
brim. We also visited a tailor's shop, and
a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a
number of men, and pale, diminutive ap
prentices, were at work, diligently enough,
though seemingly with small heart in the
business. Finally, the governor ushered
us into a shed, inside of which was piled
up an immense quantity of new coffins.
They were of the plainest description,
made of pine boards, probably of Ameri
can growth, not very nicely smoothed by

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 52!

the plane, neither painted nor stained with
black, but provided with a loop of rope at
either end for the convenience of lifting
the rude box and its inmate into the cart
that shall carry them to the burial-ground.
There, in holes ten feet deep, the paupers
are buried one above another, mingling
their relics indistinguishably. In another
world may they resume their individuality,
and find it a happier one than here !

As we departed, a character came under
our notice which I have met with in all
almshouses, whether of the city or village,
or in England or America. It was the fa
miliar simpleton, who shuffled across the
court - yard, clattering his wooden - soled
shoes, to greet us with a howl or a laugh,
I hardly know which, holding out his hand
for a penny, and chuckling grossly when it
was given him. All underwitted persons,
so far as my experience goes, have this
craving for copper coin, and appear to es
timate its value by a miraculous instinct,
which is one of the earliest gleams of hu
man intelligence while the nobler faculties
are yet in abeyance. There may come a
time, even in this world, when we shall all
understand that our tendency to the indi
vidual appropriation of gold and broad

522 OUR OLD HOME

acres, fine houses, and such good and beau
tiful things as are equally enjoyable by a
multitude, is but a trait of imperfectly de
veloped intelligence, like the simpleton's
cupidity of a penny. When that day
dawns, — and probably not till then, — I
imagine that there will be no more poor
streets nor need of almshouses.

I was once present at the wedding of
some poor English people, and was deeply
impressed by the spectacle, though by no
means with such proud and delightful emo
tions as seem to have affected all England
on the recent occasion of the marriage of
its Prince. It was in the Cathedral at
Manchester, a particularly black and grim
old structure, into which I had stepped to
examine some ancient and curious wood-
carvings within the choir. The woman in
attendance greeted me with a smile (which
always glimmers forth on the feminine vis
age, I know not why, when a wedding is
in question), and asked me to take a seat
in the nave till some poor parties were
married, it being the Easter holidays, and
a good time for them to marry, because no
fees would be demanded by the clergyman.
I sat down accordingly, and soon the par
son and his clerk appeared at the altar, and

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 523

a considerable crowd of people made their
entrance at a side-door, and ranged them
selves in a long, huddled line across the
chancel. They were my acquaintances of
the poor streets, or persons in a precisely
similar condition of life, and were now
come to their marriage-ceremony in just
such garbs as I had always seen them
wear : the men in their loafers' coats, out
at elbows, or their laborers' jackets, de
faced with grimy toil ; the women drawing
their shabby shawls tighter about their
shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath ;
all of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed,
uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and
care ; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor
hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms ;
— they were, in short, the mere rags and
tatters of the human race, whom some
east-wind of evil omen, howling along the
streets, had chanced to sweep together into
an unfragrant heap. Each and all of them,
conscious of his or her individual misery,
had blundered into the strange miscalcu
lation of supposing that they could lessen
the sum of it by multiplying it into the
misery of another person. All the couples
(and it was difficult, in such a confused
crowd, to compute exactly their number)

524 OUR OLD HOME

stood up at once, and had execution done
upon them in the lump, the clergyman ad
dressing only small parts of the service to
each individual pair, but so managing the
larger portion as to include the whole com
pany without the trouble of repetition. By
this compendious contrivance, one would
apprehend, he came dangerously near mak
ing every man and woman the husband or
wife of every other ; nor, perhaps, would
he have perpetrated much additional mis
chief by the mistake ; but, after receiving
a benediction in common, they assorted
themselves in their own fashion, as they
only knew how, and departed to the gar
rets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered
street-corners, where their honeymoon and
subsequent lives were to be spent. The
parson smiled decorously, the clerk and
the sexton grinned broadly, the female
attendant tittered almost aloud, and even
the married parties seemed to see some
thing exceedingly funny in the affair ; but
for my part, though generally apt enough
to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in
my memory as one of the saddest sights I
ever looked upon.

Not very long afterwards, I happened to
be passing the same venerable cathedral,

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 525

and heard a clang of joyful bells, and be
held a bridal party coming down the steps
towards a carriage and four horses, with a
portly coachman and two postilions, that
waited at the gate. One parson and one
service had amalgamated the wretched
ness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and
three or four clergymen had combined
their spiritual might to forge the golden
links of this other marriage - bond. The
bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless
and kindly English pride ; the bride floated
along in her white drapery, a creature so
nice and delicate that it was a luxury to
see her, and a pity that her silk slippers
should touch anything so grimy as the
old stones of the churchyard avenue. The
crowd of ragged people, who always cluster
to witness what they may of an aristocratic
wedding, broke into audible admiration of
the bride's beauty and the bridegroom's
manliness, and uttered prayers and ejacu
lations (possibly paid for in alms) for the
happiness of both. If the most favorable
of earthly conditions could make them
happy, they had every prospect of it. They
were going to live on their abundance in
one of those stately and delightful English
homes, such as no other people ever ere-

526 OUR OLD HOME

ated or inherited, a hall set far and safe
within its own private grounds, and sur
rounded with venerable trees, shaven lawns,
rich shrubbery, and trimmest pathways, the
whole so artfully contrived and tended that
summer rendered it a paradise, and even
winter would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ;
and all this fair property seemed more ex
clusively and inalienably their own, because
of its descent through many forefathers,
each of whom had added an improvement
or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a
stronger stamp of rightful possession to his
heir. And is it possible, after all, that
there may be a flaw in the title-deeds ? Is,
or is not, the system wrong that gives one
married pair so immense a superfluity of
luxurious home, and shuts out a million
others from any home whatever? One
day or another, safe as they deem them
selves, and safe as the hereditary temper
of the people really tends to make them,
the gentlemen of England will be com
pelled to face this question.

XII.

CIVIC BANQUETS

IT has often perplexed me to imagine
how an Englishman will be able to recon
cile himself to any future state of existence
from which the earthly institution of dinner
shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
his appetite along with him (which it seems
to me hardly possible to believe, since this
endowment is so essential to his compo
sition), the immortal day must still admit
an interim of two or three hours during
which he will be conscious of a slight dis
taste, at all events, if not an absolute re
pugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment.
The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself
among his highest and deepest character
istics, so illuminated itself with intellect
and softened itself with the kindest emo
tions of his heart, so linked itself with
Church and State, and grown so majestic
with long hereditary customs and cere
monies, that, by taking it utterly away,
Death, instead of putting the final touch

528 OUR OLD HOME

to his perfection, would leave him infinitely
less complete than we have already known
him. He could not be roundly happy.
Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would
lack one daily felicity which his sombre
little island possessed. Perhaps it is not
irreverent to conjecture that a provision
may have been made, in this particular, for
the Englishman's exceptional necessities.
It strikes me that Milton was of the opin
ion here suggested, and may have intended
to throw out a delightful and consolatory
hope for his countrymen, when he repre
sents the genial archangel as playing his
part with such excellent appetite at Adam's
dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit
and vegetables only, because, in those early
days of her housekeeping, Eve had no
more acceptable viands to set before him.
Milton, indeed, had a true English taste
for the pleasures of the table, though re
fined by the lofty and poetic discipline to
which he had subjected himself. It is
delicately implied in the refection in Para
dise, and more substantially, though still
elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing
to " Laurence, of virtuous father virtuous
son," a series of nice little dinners in
midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in that

CIVIC BANQUETS 529

untasted banquet, which, elaborate as it
was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the
kitchen-ranges of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in
their generation, dinner has a kind of sanc
tity quite independent of the dishes that
may be set upon the table ; so that, if it be
only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree
of enjoyment which such reckless devour-
ers as ourselves do not often find in our
richest abundance. It is good to see how
stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of
heroic eating, still relying upon their di
gestive powers and indulging a vigorous
appetite ; whereas an American has gener
ally lost the one and learned to distrust the
other long before reaching the earliest de
cline of life ; and thenceforward he makes
little account of his dinner, and dines at
his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
countrymen will allow me to tell them,
though I think it scarcely too much to af
firm, that on this side of the water people
never dine. At any rate, abundantly as
Nature has provided us with most of the
material requisites, the highest possible
dinner has never yet been eaten in Amer
ica. It is the consummate flower of civil-

53O OUR OLD HOME

ization and refinement ; and our inability
to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable
beauty if a happy inspiration should bring
it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that
the mob of cultivated Englishmen know
how to dine in this elevated sense. The
unpolishable ruggedness of the national
character is still an impediment to them,
even in that particular line where they are
best qualified to excel. Though often pres
ent at good men's feasts, I remember only a
single dinner, which, while lamentably con
scious that many of its higher excellences
were thrown away upon me, I yet could
feel to be a perfect work of art. It could
not, without unpardonable coarseness, be
styled a matter of animal enjoyment, be
cause, out of the very perfection of that
lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like
development of spiritual happiness. As in
the masterpieces of painting and poetry,
there was a something intangible, a final
deliciousness that only fluttered about your
comprehension, vanishing whenever you
tried to detain it, and compelling you to
recognize it by faith rather than sense. It
seemed as if a diviner set of senses were

CIVIC BANQUETS 531

requisite, and had been partly supplied, for
the special fruition of this banquet, and
that the guests around the table (only eight
in number) were becoming so educated,
polished, and softened, by the delicate in
fluences of what they ate and drank, as to
be now a little more than mortal for the
nonce. And there was that gentle, deli
cious sadness, too, which we find in the
very summit of our most exquisite enjoy
ments, and feel it a charm beyond all the
gayety through which it keeps breathing
its undertone. In the present case, it was
worth a heavier sigh to reflect that such a
festal achievement — the production of so
much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
taste — the growth of all the ages, which
appeared to have been ripening for this
hour, since man first began to eat and to
moisten his food with wine — must lavish
its happiness upon so brief a moment
when other beautiful things can be made a
joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
better than we can get, any day, at the
rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-house, un
less the whole man, with soul, intellect,
and stomach, is ready to appreciate it, and
unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
ir> all the circumstances and accompani-

532 OUR OLD HOME

ments, and especially such a pitch of well-
according minds, that nothing shall jar
rudely against the guest's thoroughly awak
ened sensibilities. The world, and espe
cially our part of it, being the rough, ill-
assorted, and tumultuous place we find it,
a beefsteak is about as good as any other
dinner.

The foregoing reminiscence, however,
has drawn me aside from the main object
of my sketch, in which I purposed to give
a slight idea of those public, or partially
public banquets, the custom of which so
thoroughly prevails among the English
people, that nothing is ever decided upon,
in matters of peace and war, until they
have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-
beef, and talked it fully over in their cups.
Nor are these festivities merely occasional,
but of stated recurrence in all considerable
municipalities and associated bodies. The
most ancient times appear to have been as
familiar with them as the Englishmen of
to-day. In many of the old English towns,
you find some stately Gothic hall or cham
ber in which the Mayor and other authorities
of the place have long held their sessions ;
and always, in convenient contiguity, there
is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fire-

CIVIC BANQUETS 533

place where an ox might lie roasting at his
ease, though the less gigantic scale of mod
ern cookery may now have permitted the
cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.
Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a
specimen of an ancient banqueting-room,
that perhaps I may profitably devote a page
or two to the description of it.

In a narrow street opposite to St. Mi
chael's Church, one of the three famous
spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval
edifice, in the basement of which is such a
venerable and now deserted kitchen as I
have above alluded to, and, on the same
level, a cellar, with low stone pillars and in
tersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathe
dral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the
oaken balustrade of which is as black as
ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some
sixty feet in length, and broad and lofty in
proportion. It is lighted by six windows
of modern stained glass, on one side, and
by the immense and magnificent arch of
another window at the farther end of the
room, its rich and ancient panes consti
tuting a genuine historical piece, in which
are represented some of the kingly person
ages of old times, with their heraldic bla
zonries. Notwithstanding the colored light

534 OUR OLD HOME

thus thrown into the hall, and though it
was noonday when I last saw it, the panel
ing of black-oak, and some faded tapestry
that hung round the walls, together with
the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a
gloom, which the richness only illuminated
into more appreciable effect. The tapes
try is wrought with figures in the dress
of Henry VI. 's time (which is the date of
the hall), and is regarded by antiquaries as
authentic evidence both for the costume
of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual
portraiture of men known in history. They
are as colorless as ghosts, however, and
vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of
their substance when you try to make them
out. Coats of arms were formerly embla
zoned all round the hall, but have been al
most rubbed out by people hanging their
overcoats against them, or by women with
dishclouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliter
ating hereditary glories in their blind hos
tility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length
portraits of several English kings, Charles
II. being the earliest, hang on the walls ;
and on the dais, or elevated part of the
floor, stands an antique chair of state,
which several royal characters are tradi
tionally said to have occupied while feast-

CIVIC BANQUETS 535

ing here with their loyal subjects of Cov
entry. It is roomy enough for a person of
kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular
and uncomfortable, reminding me of the
oaken settles which used to be seen in old-
fashioned New England kitchens.

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining
power, without the aid of a single pillar, is
the original ceiling of oak, precisely simi
lar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all
the beams and rafters plainly to be seen.
At the remote height of sixty feet, you
hardly discern that they are carved with
figures of angels, and doubtless many other
devices, of which the admirable Gothic art
is wasted in the duskiness that has so long
been brooding there. Over the entrance
of the hall, opposite the great arched win
dow, the party-colored radiance of which
glimmers faintly through the interval, is a
gallery for minstrels ; and a rowr of ancient
suits of armor is suspended from its balus
trade. It impresses me, too (for, having
gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
untouched upon), that I remember, some
where about these venerable precincts, a
picture of the Countess Godiva on horse
back, in which the artist has been so nig
gardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that,

536 OUR OLD HOME

if she had no ampler garniture, there was
certainly much need for the good people
of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all
my pains, I fear that I have made but a
poor hand at the description, as regards a
transference of the scene from my own
mind to the reader's. It gave me a most
vivid idea of antiquity that had been very
little tampered with ; insomuch that, if a
group of steel-clad knights had come clank
ing through the doorway, and a bearded and
beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-
forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty
somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb,
yet stepping majestically to the trill of
harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
while the rusty armor responded with a
hollow ringing sound beneath, — why, I
should have felt that these shadows, once
so familiar with the spot, had a better right
in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from
a far country which has no Past. But the
moral of the foregoing description is to
show how tenaciously this love of pompous
dinners, this reverence for dinner as a
sacred institution, has caught hold of the
English character ; since, from the earliest
recognizable period, we find them building

CIVIC BANQUETS 537

their civic banqueting - halls as magnifi
cently as their palaces or cathedrals.

I know not whether the hall just de
scribed is now used for festive purposes,
but others of similar antiquity and splen
dor still are. For example, there is Bar
ber Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine
old room, adorned with admirably carved
wood-work on the ceiling and walls. It is
also enriched with Holbein's masterpiece,
representing a grave assemblage of barbers
and surgeons, all portraits (with such ex
tensive beards that methinks one half of
the company might have been profitably
occupied in trimming the other), kneeling
before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel
is said to hr.ve offered a thousand pounds
for the liberty of cutting out one of the
heads from this picture, he conditioning to
have a perfect facsimile painted in.1 The

1 In this room hangs the most valuable picture by
Holbein now in existence, representing the company of
Barber Surgeons kneeling before Henry VIII., and re
ceiving their charter from his hands. The picture is
about six feet square. The king is dressed in scarlet,
and quite fulfills one's idea of his aspect. The Barber-
Surgeons, all portraits, are an assemblage of grave-look
ing personages, in dark costumes. The company has
refused five thousand pounds for this unique picture;
and the keeper of the Hall told me that Sir Robert Peel
had offered a thousand pounds for liberty to take out

538 OUR OLD HOME

room has many other pictures of distin
guished members of the company in long-
past times, and of some of the monarchs
and statesmen of England, all darkened with
age, but darkened into such ripe magnifi
cence as only age could bestow. It is not
my design to inflict any more specimens of
ancient hall-painting on the reader ; but it
may be worth while to touch upon other
modes of stateliness that still survive in
these time-honored civic feasts, where there
appears to be a singular assumption of dig
nity and solemn pomp by respectable citi
zens who would never dream of claiming
any privilege of rank outside of their own
sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state
for the warden and junior warden of the
company, caps of silver (real coronets or
crowns, indeed, for these city - grandees)
wrought in open-work and lined with crim
son velvet. In a strong- closet, opening
from the hall, there was a great deal of
rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-
table, comprising hundreds of forks and
spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift

only one of the heads, that of a person named Penn, he
Conditioning to have a perfect facsimile painted in. I
did not see any merit in this head over the others. —

II. 200.

CIVIC BANQUETS 539

of some jolly king or other, and, besides
a multitude of less noticeable vessels, two
loving - cups, very elaborately wrought in
silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII.,
the other by Charles II. These cups, in
cluding the covers and pedestals, are very
large and weighty, although the bowl -part
would hardly contain more than half a pint
of wine, which, when the custom was first
established, each guest was probably ex
pected to drink off at a draught. In pass
ing them from hand to hand adown a long
table of compotators, there is a peculiar
ceremony which I may hereafter have oc
casion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might
assume such a liberty, I should be glad to
invite the reader to the official dinner-table
of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large Eng
lish seaport where I spent several years.

The Mayor's dinner - parties occur as
often as once a fortnight, and, inviting his
guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Wor
ship probably assembles at his board most
of the eminent citizens and distinguished
personages of the town and neighborhood
more than once during his year's incum
bency, and very much, no doubt, to the
promotion of good feeling among individ
uals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits

540 OUR OLD HOME

in life. A miscellaneous party of English
men can always find more comfortable
ground to meet upon than as many Ameri
cans, their differences of opinion being
incomparably less radical than ours, and it
being the sincerest wish of all their hearts,
whether they call themselves Liberals or
what not, that nothing in this world shall
ever be greatly altered from what it has
been and is. Thus there is seldom such a
virulence of political hostility that it may
not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
without making the good liquor any more
dry or bitter than accords with English
taste.

The first dinner of this kind at which I
had the honor to be present took place
during assize-time, and included among the
guests the judges and the prominent mem
bers of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall
at seven o'clock, I communicated my name
to one of several splendidly dressed foot
men, and he repeated it to another on the
first staircase, by whom it was passed to a
third, and thence to a fourth at the door of
the reception-room, losing all resemblance
to the original sound in the course of these
transmissions ; so that I had the advantage
of making my entrance in the character of

CIVIC BANQUETS 541

a stranger, not only to the whole company,
but to myself as well. His Worship, how
ever, kindly recognized me, and put me on
speaking- terms with two or three gentle
men, whom I found very affable, and all
the more hospitably attentive on the score
of my nationality. It is very singular how
kind an Englishman will almost invariably
be to an individual American, without ever
bating a jot of his prejudice against the
American character in the lump. My new
acquaintances took evident pains to put me
at my ease ; and, in requital of their good
nature, I soon began to look round at
the general company in a critical spirit,
making my crude observations apart, and
drawing silent inferences, of the correct
ness of which I should not have been half
so well satisfied a year afterwards as at
that moment.

There were two judges present, a good
many lawyers, and a few officers of the
army in uniform. The other guests seemed
to be principally of the mercantile class,
and among them was a ship-owner from
Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little,
inasmuch as we were born with the same
sky over our heads, and an unbroken con
tinuity of soil between his abode and mine.

542 OUR OLD HOME

There was one old gentleman, whose char
acter I never made out, with powdered hair,
clad in black breeches and silk stockings,
and wearing a rapier at his side ; otherwise,
with the exception of the military uniforms,
there was little or no pretense of official
costume. It being the first considerable
assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen,
my honest impression about them was that
they were a heavy and homely set of people,
with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which
it required more familiarity with the na
tional character than I then possessed
always to detect the good breeding of a
gentleman. Being generally middle - aged,
or still further advanced, they were by no
means graceful in figure ; for the comeli
ness of the youthful Englishman rapidly
diminishes with years, his body appearing
to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate them
selves, and his stomach to assume the dig
nified prominence which justly belongs to
that metropolis of his system. His face
(what with the acridity of the atmosphere,
ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-
digested abundance of succulent food) gets
red and mottled, and develops at least one
additional chin, with a promise of more ;

CIVIC BANQUETS 543

so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his
animal part at the most superficial glance,
but must take time and a little pains to
discover the intellectual. Comparing him
with an American, I really thought that
our national paleness and lean habit of
flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an
aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me,
moreover, that the English tailor had not
done so much as he might and ought for
these heavy figures, but had gone on will
fully exaggerating their uncouthness by the
roominess of their garments ; he had evi
dently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smart
ness was entirely out of his line. But, to
be quite open with the reader, I afterwards
learned to think that this aforesaid tailor
has a deeper art than his brethren among
ourselves, knowing how to dress his cus
tomers with such individual propriety that
they look as if they were born in their
clothes, the fit being to the character rather
than the form. If you make an English
man smart (unless he be a very exceptional
one, of whom I have seen a few), you make
him a monster; his best aspect is that of
ponderous respectability.

To make an end of these first impres
sions, I fancied that not merely the Suffolk

544 OUR OLD HOME

bar, but the bar of any inland county in
New England, might show a set of thin-
visaged men looking wretchedly worn, sal
low, deeply wrinkled across the forehead,
and grimly furrowed about the mouth, with
whom these heavy - cheeked English law
yers, slow -paced and fat-witted as they
must needs be, would stand very little
chance in a professional contest. How
that matter might turn out, I am unquali
fied to decide. But I state these results
of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not
for what they, are worth, but because I
ultimately gave them up as worth little or
nothing. In course of time, I came to the
conclusion that Englishmen of all ages are
a rather good-looking people, dress in ad
mirable taste from their own point of view,
and, under a surface never silken to the
touch, have a refinement of manners too
thorough and genuine to be thought of as
a separate endowment, — that is to say, if
the individual himself be a man of station,
and has had gentlemen for his father and
grandfather. The sturdy Anglo - Saxon
nature does not refine itself short of the
third generation. The tradesmen, too, and
all other classes, have their own proprieties.
The only value of my criticisms, there-

CIVIC BANQUETS 545

fore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness
of a traveler to measure one people by the
distinctive characteristics of another, — as
English writers invariably measure us, and
take upon themselves to be disgusted ac
cordingly, instead of trying to find out some
principle of beauty with which we may be
in conformity.

In due time we were summoned to the
table, and went thither in no solemn pro
cession, but with a good deal of jostling,
thrusting behind, and scrambling for places
when we reached our destination. The
legal gentlemen, I suspect, were responsi
ble for this indecorous zeal, which I never
afterwards remarked in a similar party.
The dining-hall was of noble size, and, like
the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously
painted and gilded and brilliantly illumi
nated. There was a splendid table-service,
and a noble array of footmen, some of
them in plain clothes, and others wearing
the town-livery, richly decorated with gold-
lace, and themselves excellent specimens of
the blooming young manhood of Britain.
When we were fairly seated, it was cer
tainly an agreeable spectacle to look up
and down the long vista of earnest faces,
and behold them so resolute, so conscious

546 OUR OLD HOME

that there was an important business in
hand, and so determined to be equal to
the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not,
I hardly know what can be prettier than
a snow-white tablecloth, a huge heap of
flowers as a central decoration, bright sil
ver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters
of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll
and an artistically folded napkin at each
plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in
short, that comes before the first mouth
ful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of
artificial light, without which a dinner of
made-dishes looks spectral, and the simplest
viands are the best. Printed bills - of - fare
were distributed, representing an abundant
feast, no part of which appeared on the
table until called for in separate plates. I
have entirely forgotten what it was, but
deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there
is a pervading commonplace and identical-
ness in the composition of extensive din
ners, on account of the impossibility of
supplying a hundred guests with anything
particularly delicate or rare. It was sug
gested to me that certain juicy old gentle
men had a private understanding what to
call for, and that it would be good policy
in a stranger to follow in their footsteps

CIVIC BANQUETS 547

through the feast. I did not care to do so,
however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip
out of Camacho's caldron, any sort of pot-
luck at such a table would be sure to suit
my purpose ; so I chose a dish or two on
my own judgment, and, getting through
my labors betimes, had great pleasure in
seeing the Englishmen toil onward to the
end.

They drank rather copiously, too, though
wisely ; for I observed that they seldom
took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble
slowly away out of the goblet, solacing
themselves with Sherry, but tasting it
warily before bestowing their final confi
dence. Their taste in wines, however, did
not seem so exquisite, and certainly was
not so various, as that to which many
Americans pretend. This foppery of an
intimate acquaintance with rare vintages
does not suit a sensible Englishman, as
he is very much in earnest about his
wines, and adopts one or two as his life
long friends, seldom exchanging them for
any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the
reward of his constancy in an unimpaired
stomach, and only so much gout as he
deems wholesome and desirable. Know
ing well the measure of his powers, he is

548 OUR OLD HOME

not apt to fill his glass too often. Society,
indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual im
prudences of that kind, though, in my opin
ion, the Englishmen now upon the stage
could carry off their three bottles, at need,
with as steady a gait as any of their fore
fathers. It is not so very long since the
three - bottle heroes sank finally under the
table. It may be (at least, I should be
glad if it were true) that there was an oc
cult sympathy between our temperance
reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and
the almost simultaneous disappearance of
hard - drinking among the respectable
classes in England. I remember a middle-
aged gentleman telling me (in illustration
of the very slight importance attached to
breaches of temperance within the mem
ory of men not yet old) that he 'had seen
a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater,
or Drinkwater, — but I think the jolly old
knight could hardly have staggered under
so perverse a misnomer as this last, —
while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull
out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk.
" Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were
the most indifferent fact in the world, " I
was drunk last night. There are my five
shillings.'*

CIVIC BANQUETS 549

During the dinner, I had a good deal of
pleasant conversation with the gentlemen
on either side of me. One of them, a law
yer, expatiated with great unction on the
social standing of the judges. Represent
ing the dignity and authority of the Crown,
they take precedence, during assize-time,
of the highest military men in the king
dom, of the Lord Lieutenant of the coun
ty, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
and even of the Prince of Wales. For
the nonce, they are the greatest men in
England. With a glow of professional
complacency that amounted to enthusiasm,
my friend assured me, that, in case of a
royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding
an assize, would be expected to offer his
arm and take the Queen herself to the
table. Happening to be in company with
some of these elevated personages, on sub
sequent occasions, it appeared to me that
the judges are fully conscious of their
paramount claims to respect, and take
rather more pains to impress them on
their ceremonial inferiors than men of
high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bish
ops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are
sometimes marked by a similar character
istic. Dignified position is so sweet to an

550

OUR OLD HOME

Englishman, that he needs to be born in it,
and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with
his nature from its original germ, in order
to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively
in the faces of innocent by-standers.

My companion on the other side was a
thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth in man
ners, and ugly where none were handsome,
with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that
looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold
within itself the machinery of a very ter
rific frown. He ate with resolute appetite,
and let slip few opportunities of imbibing
whatever liquids happened to be passing
by. I was meditating in what way this
grisly featured table-fellow might most
safely be accosted, when he turned to me
with a surly sort of kindness, and invited
me to take a glass of wine. We then
began a conversation that abounded, on his
part, with sturdy sense, and, somehow or
other, brought me closer to him than I
had yet stood to an Englishman. I should
hardly have taken him to be an educated
man, certainly not a scholar of accurate
training; and yet he seemed to have all
the resources of education and trained in
tellectual power at command. My fresh
Americanism, and watchful observation of

CIVIC BANQUETS 551

English characteristics, appeared either to
interest or amuse him, or perhaps both.
Under the mollifying influences of abun
dance of meat and drink, he grew very
gracious (not that I ought to use such a
phrase to describe his evidently genuine
good-will), and by and by expressed a wish
for further acquaintance, asking me to call
at his rooms in London and inquire for
Sergeant Wilkins, — throwing out the name
forcibly, as if he had no occasion to be
ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's
retort to Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar
announcement, — "Of what regiment, pray,
sir?" — and fancied that the same question
might not have been quite amiss, if applied
to the rugged individual at my side. But
I heard of him subsequently as one of the
prominent men at the English bar, a rough
customer, and a terribly strong champion in
criminal cases ; and it caused me more re
gret than might have been expected, on so
slight an acquaintanceship, when, not long
afterwards, I saw his death announced in
the newspapers. Not rich in attractive
qualities, he possessed, I think, the most
attractive one of all, — thorough manhood.
After the cloth was removed, a goodly
group of decanters were set before the

552 OUR OLD HOME

Mayor, who sent them forth on their out
ward voyage, full freighted with Port,
Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which ex
cellent liquors, methought, the latter found
least acceptance among the guests. When
every man had filled his glass, his Worship
stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of
course, " Our gracious Sovereign," or words
to that effect ; and immediately a band of
musicians, whose preliminary tootings and
thrummings I had already heard behind
me, struck up " God save the Queen ! " and
the whole company rose with one impulse
to assist in singing that famous national
anthem. It was the first time in my life
that I had ever seen a body of men, or
even a single man, under the active influ
ence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for,
though we call ourselves loyal to our coun
try and institutions, and prove it by our
readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in
their behalf, still the principle is as cold
and hard, in an American bosom, as the
steel spring that puts in motion a powerful
machinery. In the Englishman's system,
a force similar to that of our steel spring
is generated by the warm throbbings of
human hearts. He clothes our bare ab
straction in flesh and blood, — at present,

CIVIC BANQUETS 553

in the flesh and blood of a woman, — and
manages to combine love, awe, and intel
lectual reverence, all in one emotion, and
to embody his mother, his wife, his chil
dren, the whole idea of kindred, in a single
person, and make her the representative of
his country and its laws. We Americans
smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's
table ; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very
agreeable titillations of the heart in conse
quence of our proud prerogative of caring
no more about our President than for a
man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow strad
dling in a cornfield.

But, to say the truth, the spectacle
struck me rather ludicrously, to see this
party of stout middle-aged and elderly gen
tlemen, in the fullness of meat and drink,
their ample and ruddy faces glistening with
wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rum
bling out those strange old stanzas from tht
very bottom of their hearts and stomachs,
which two organs, in the English interior
arrangement, lie closer together than in
ours. The song seemed to me the rudest
old ditty in the world ; but I could not won
der at its universal acceptance and indestruc
tible popularity, considering how inimitably
it expresses the national faith and feeling

554 OUR OLD HOME

as regards the inevitable righteousness of
England, the Almighty's consequent re
spect and partiality for that redoubtable
little island, and his presumed readiness to
strengthen its defense against the contu
macious wickedness and knavery of all
other principalities or republics. Tenny
son himself, though evidently English to
the very last prejudice, could riot write half
so good a song for the purpose. Finding
that the entire dinner-table struck in, with
voices of every pitch between rolling thun
der and the squeak of a cart-wheel, and that
the strain was not of such delicacy as to be
much hurt by the harshest of them, I de
termined to lend my own assistance in
swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed
but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in
the land, whose guest, in the largest sense,
I might consider myself. Accordingly, my
first tuneful efforts (and probably my last,
for I purpose not to sing any more, unless
it be " Hail Columbia " on the restoration
of the Union) were poured freely forth in
honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant
smiled like the carved head of a Swiss
nutcracker, and the other gentlemen in
my neighborhood, by nods and gestures,
evinced grave approbation of so suitable a

CIVIC BANQUETS 555

tribute to English superiority ; and we fin
ished our stave and sat down in an ex
tremely happy frame of mind.

Other toasts followed in honor of the
great institutions and interests of the coun
try, and speeches in response to each were
made by individuals whom the Mayor des
ignated or the company called for. None
of them impressed me with a very high
idea of English postprandial oratory. It
is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and
shapeless utterances most Englishmen are
satisfied to give vent to, without attempt
ing anything like artistic shape, but clap
ping on a patch here and another there,
and ultimately getting out what they want
to say, and generally with a result of suffi
ciently good sense, but in some such dis
organized mass as if they had thrown it up
rather than spoken it. It seemed to me
that this was almost as much by choice
as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious
of public favor, should not be too smooth.
If an orator is glib, his countrymen dis-
trust him. They dislike smartness. The
stronger and heavier his thoughts, the
better, provided there be an element of
commonplace running through them ; and
any rough, yet never vulgar, force of ex-

556 OUR OLD HOME

pression, such as would knock an opponent
down if it hit him, only it must not be too
personal, is altogether to their taste ; but a
studied neatness of language, or other such
superficial graces, they cannot abide. They
do not often permit a man to make himself
a fine orator of malice aforethought, that is,
unless he be a nobleman (as, for example,
Lord Stanley, of the Derby family), who,
as an hereditary legislator and necessarily
a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor
natural delivery in the best way he can.
On the whole, I partly agree with them,
and, if I cared for any oratory whatever,
should be as likely to applaud theirs as our
own. When an English speaker sits down,
you feel that you have been listening to
a real man, and not to an actor ; his senti
ments have a wholesome earth -smell in
them, though, very likely, this apparent
naturalness is as much an art as what we
expend in rounding a sentence or elabora
ting a peroration.

It is one good effect of this inartificial
style, that nobody in England seems to
feel any shyness about shoveling the un-
trimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his
mind for the benefit of an audience. At
least, nobody did on the occasion now in

CIVIC BANQUETS 557

hand, except a poor little Major of Artil
lery, who responded for the Army in a
thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesi
tating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I
question not, would rather have been bayo
neted in front of his batteries than to have
said a word. Not his own mouth, but
the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper
organ of utterance.

While I was thus amiably occupied in
criticising my fellow - guests, the Mayor
had got up to propose another toast ; and
listening rather inattentively to the first
sentence or two, I soon became sensible of
a drift in his Worship's remarks that made
me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant
Wilkins. "Yes, " grumbled that gruff per
sonage, shoving a decanter of Port towards
me, " it is your turn next ; " and seeing in
my face, I suppose, the consternation of a
wholly un practiced orator, he kindly added,
" It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment
will answer the purpose. The less you
say, the better they will like it." That
being the case, I suggested that perhaps
they would like it best if I said nothing
at all. But the Sergeant shook his head.
Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invita
tion to dinner, it had occurred to me that

558 OUR OLD HOME

I might possibly be brought into my pres
ent predicament ; but I had dismissed the
idea from my mind as too disagreeable to
be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien
from my disposition and character that
Fate surely could not keep such a misfor
tune in store for me. If nothing else pre
vented, an earthquake or the crack of doom
would certainly interfere before I need rise
to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting
on inexorably, — and, indeed, I heartily
wished that he might get on and on for
ever, and of his wordy wanderings find no
end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend
and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I
can impart to him my own experience as
a public speaker quite as indifferently as
if it concerned another person. Indeed, it
does concern another, or a mere spectral
phenomenon, for it was not I, in my proper
and natural self, that sat there at table or
subsequently rose to speak. At the mo
ment, then, if the choice had been offered
me whether the Mayor should let off a
speech at my head or a pistol, I should
unhesitatingly have taken the latter alter
native. I had really nothing to say, not an
idea in my head, nor, which was a great

CIVIC BANQUETS 559

deal worse, any flowing words or embroi
dered sentences in which to dress out that
empty Nothing, and give it a cunning as
pect of intelligence, such as might last the
poor vacuity the little time it had to live.
But time pressed ; the Mayor brought his
remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the
United States and highly complimentary
to their distinguished representative at
that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of
cheering ; and the band struck up " Hail
Columbia, " I believe, though it might have
been " Old Hundred, " or " God save the
Queen " over .again, for anything that I
should have known or cared. When the
music ceased, there was an intensely dis
agreeable instant, during which I seemed
to rend away and fling off the habit of a
lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but
with preternatural composure, to make a
speech. The guests rattled on the table,
and cried, " Hear ! " most vociferously, as
if now, at length, in this foolish and idly
garrulous world, had come the long-ex
pected moment when one golden word was
to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis,
I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an ef
fusion of international sentiment, which it
might, and must, and should do to utter.

560 OUR OLD HOME

Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant
had said. What surprised me most was
the sound of my own voice, which I had
never before heard at declamatory pitch,
and which impressed me as belonging to
some other person, who, and not myself,
would be responsible for the speech : a
prodigious consolation and encouragement
under the circumstances ! I went on with
out the slightest embarrassment, and sat
down amid great applause, wholly unde
served by anything that I had spoken, but
well won from Englishmen, methought, by
the new development of pluck that alone
had enabled me to speak at all. " It was
handsomely done ! " quoth Sergeant Wil-
kins ; and I felt like a recruit who had
been for the first time under fire.1

I would gladly have ended my oratorical
career then and there forever, but was
often placed in a similar or worse position,
and compelled to meet it as I best might ;

1 Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will
be content to talk onward without saying anything. My
speech was not more than two or three inches long ;
and, considering that I did not know a soul there, ex
cept the Mayor himself, and that I am wholly unprac-
ticed in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to
say, it was quite successful. I hardly thought it was in
me, but, being once started, I felt no embarrassment,
and went through it as coolly as if I were going to be
hanged. — I. 429.

CIVIC BANQUETS 561

for this was one of the necessities of an
office which I had voluntarily taken on my
shoulders, and beneath which I might be
crushed by no moral delinquency on my
own part, but could not shirk without cow
ardice and shame. My subsequent for
tune was various. Once, though I felt it
to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech
by heart, and doubtless it might have -been
a very pretty one, only I forgot every sylla
ble at the moment of need, and had to im
provise another as well as I could. I found
it a better method to prearrange a few
points in my mind, and trust to the spur
of the occasion, and the kind aid of Provi
dence, for enabling me to bring them to
bear. The presence of any considerable
proportion of personal friends generally
dumfounded me. I would rather have
talked with an enemy in the gate. Invari
ably, too, I was much embarrassed by a
small audience, and succeeded better with
a large one, — the sympathy of a multitude
possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the
speaker a little way out of his individ
uality, and tosses him towards a perhaps
better range of sentiment than his pri
vate one. Again, if I rose carelessly and
confidently, with an expectation of going

562 OUR OLD HOME

through the business entirely at my ease,
I often found that I had little or nothing
to say ; whereas, if I came to the charge
in perfect despair, and at a crisis when
failure would have been horrible, it once
or twice happened that the frightful emer
gency concentrated my poor faculties, and
enabled me to give definite and vigorous
expression to sentiments which an instant
before looked as vague and far off as the
clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole,
poor as my own success may have been, I
apprehend that any intelligent man with a
tongue possesses the chief requisite of ora
torical power, and may develop many of
the others, if he deems it worth while to
bestow a great amount of labor and pains
on an object which the most accomplished
orators, I suspect, have not found alto
gether satisfactory to their highest im
pulses. At any rate, it must be a re
markably true man who can keep his own
elevated conception of truth when the
lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his
natural sympathies, and who can speak out
frankly the best that there is in him, when
by adulterating it a little, or a good deal,
he knows that he may make it ten times
as acceptable to the audience.

CIVIC BANQUETS 563

This slight article on the civic banquets
of England would be too wretchedly imper
fect without an attempted description of a
Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion House
in London. I should have preferred the
annual feast at Guildhall, but never had
the good fortune to witness it. Once, how
ever, I was honored with an invitation to
one of the regular dinners, and gladly ac
cepted it, — taking the precaution, never
theless, though it hardly seemed necessary,
to inform the City-King, through a mutual
friend, that I was no fit representative
of American eloquence, and must humbly
make it a condition that I should not be
expected to open my mouth, except for the
reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospi
tality. The reply was gracious and acqui
escent ; so that I presented myself in the
great entrance-hall of the Mansion House,
at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most
enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
apprehensions that often tormented me
at such times. The Mansion House was
built in Queen Anne's days, in the very
heart of old London, and is a palace wor
thy of its inhabitant, were he really as great
a man as his traditionary state and pomp
would seem to indicate. Times are changed,

564 OUR OLD HOME

however, since the days of Whittington, or
even of Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice,
to whom the highest imaginable reward of
lifelong integrity was a seat in the Lord
Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that
the real dignity and importance have per
ished out of the office, as they do, sooner or
later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving
only a painted and gilded shell like that of
an Easter egg, and that it is only second-
rate and third-rate men who now conde
scend to be ambitious of the Mayoralty.
I felt a little grieved at this ; for the orig
inal emigrants of New England had strong
sympathies with the people of London, who
were mostly Puritans in religion and Par
liamentarians in politics, in the early days
of our country ; so that the Lord Mayor was
a potentate of huge dimensions in the esti
mation of our forefathers, and held to be
hardly second to the prime minister of the
throne. The true great men of the city
now appear to have aims beyond city great
ness, connecting themselves with national
politics, and seeking to be identified with
the aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by
a body of footmen dressed in a livery of
blue coats and buff breeches, in which

CIVIC BANQUETS 56$

they looked wonderfully like American
Revolutionary generals, only bedizened
with far more lace and embroidery than
those simple and grand old heroes ever
dreamed of wearing. There were likewise
two very imposing figures, whom I should
have taken to be military men of rank, be
ing arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver
epaulets; but they turned out to be officers
of the Lord Mayor's household, and were
now employed in assigning to the guests
the places which they were respectively to
occupy at the dinner-table. Our names
(for I had included myself in a little group
of friends) were announced ; and ascending
the staircase, we met his Lordship in the
doorway of the first reception-room, where,
also, we had the advantage of a presenta
tion to the Lady Mayoress. As this dis
tinguished couple retired into private life
at the termination of their year of office, it
is inadmissible to make any remarks, criti
cal or laudatory, on the manners and bear
ing of two personages suddenly emerging
from a position of respectable mediocrity
into one of preeminent dignity within
their own sphere. Such individuals almost
always seem to grow nearly or quite to
the full size of their office. If it were

566 OUR OLD HOME

desirable to write an essay on the latent
aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur,
we have an exemplification in our own
country, and on a scale incomparably
greater than that of the Mayoralty, though
invested with nothing like the outward
magnificence that gilds and embroiders the
latter. If I have been correctly informed,
the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double
that of the President of the United States,
and yet is found very inadequate to his ne
cessary expenditure.

There were two reception-rooms, thrown
into one by the opening of wide folding-
doors ; and though in an old style, and not
yet so old as to be venerable, they are
remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as
well as spacious, with carved ceilings and
walls, and at either end a splendid fireplace
of white marble, ornamented with sculp
tured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The
company were about three hundred, many
of them celebrities in politics, war, litera
ture, and science, though I recollect none
preeminently distinguished in either de
partment. But it is certainly a pleasant
mode of doing honor to men of literature,
for example, who deserve well of the public,
yet do not often meet it face to face, thus

CIVIC BANQUETS $6?

to bring them together under genial au
spices, in connection with persons of note
in other lines. I know not what may be
the Lord Mayor's mode or principle of
selecting his guests, nor whether, during
his official term, he can proffer his hospi
tality to every man of noticeable talent
in the wide world of London, nor, in fine,
whether his Lordship's invitation is much
sought for or valued ; but it seemed to me
that this periodical feast is one of the many
sagacious methods which the English have
contrived for keeping up a good under
standing among different sorts of people.
Like most other distinctions of society,
however, I presume that the Lord Mayor's
card does not often seek out modest merit,
but comes at last when the recipient is
conscious of the bore, and doubtful about
the honor.

One very pleasant characteristic, which
I never met with at any other public or
partially public dinner, was the presence
of ladies. No doubt, they were principally
the wives and daughters of city magnates ;
and if we may judge from the many sly
allusions in old plays and satirical poems,
the city of London has always been famous
for the beauty of its women and the re-

568 OUR OLD HOME

ciprocal attractions between them and the
men of quality. Be that as it might, while
straying hither and thither through those
crowded apartments, I saw much reason for
modifying certain heterodox opinions which
I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic new
ness and rawness, as regarded the delicate
character and frequent occurrence of Eng
lish beauty. To state the entire truth
(being, at this period, some years old in
English life), my taste, I fear, had long
since begun to be deteriorated by acquain
tance with other models of feminine loveli
ness than it was my happiness to know
in America. I often found, or seemed to
find, if I may dare to confess it, in the
persons of such of my dear countrywomen
as I now occasionally met, a certain mea-
greness (Heaven forbid that I should call
it scrawniness !), a deficiency of physical
development, a scantiness, so to speak, in
the pattern of their material make, a pale
ness of complexion, a thinness of voice, —
all of which characteristics, nevertheless,
only made me resolve so much the more
sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as
angels, because I was sometimes driven to
a half - acknowledgment that the English
ladies, looked at from a lower point of

CIVIC BANQUETS 569

view, were perhaps a little finer animals
than they. The advantages of the latter,
if any they could really be said to have,
were all comprised in a few additional
lumps of clay on their shoulders and other
parts of their figures. It would be a piti
ful bargain to give up the ethereal charm
of American beauty in exchange for half a
hundred-weight of human clay !

At a given signal we all found our way
into an immense room, called the Egyptian
Hall, I know not why, except that the
architecture was classic, and as different
as possible from the ponderous style of
Memphis and the Pyramids. A powerful
band played inspiringly as we entered, and
a brilliant profusion of light shone down
on two long tables, extending the whole
length of the hall, and a cross -table be
tween them, occupying nearly its entire
breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glis
tened on an acre or two of snowy damask,
over which were set out all the accompani
ments of a stately feast. We found our
places without much difficulty, and the
Lord Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing
on the food, — a ceremony which the Eng
lish never omit, at a great dinner or a
small one, yet consider, I fear not so much

570 OUR OLD HOME

a religious rite as a sort of preliminary
relish before the soup.

The soup, of course, on this occasion,
was turtle, of which, in accordance with
immemorial custom, each guest was allowed
two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise im
mitigable law of table - decorum. Indeed,
judging from the proceedings of the
gentlemen near me, I surmised that there
was no practical limit, except the appetite
of the guests and the capacity of the soup-
tureens. Not being fond of this civic
dainty, I partook of it but once, and then
only in accordance with the wise maxim,
always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a cele
brated dish, at its indigenous site ; and the
fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is
in the Lord Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one
of those orthodox customs which people
follow for half a century without knowing
why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very
small tumbler, after the soup. It was ex
cellently well -brewed, and it seemed to me
almost worth while to sup the soup for the
sake of sipping the punch. The rest of
the dinner was catalogued in a bill -of -fare
printed on delicate white paper within an
arabesque border of green and gold. It
looked very good, not only in the English

CIVIC BANQUETS 5/1

and French names of the numerous dishes,
but also in the positive reality of the dishes
themselves, which were all set on the table
to be carved and distributed by the guests.
This ancient and honest method is attended
with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish
effusion of gravy, yet by no means be
stowed or dispensed in vain, because you
have thereby the absolute assurance of a
banquet actually before your eyes, instead
of a shadowy promise in the bill - of - fare,
and such meagre fulfillment as a single
guest can contrive to get upon his individ
ual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who
are fond of looking at prize -oxen in the
shape of butcher's meat, do not generally
better estimate the aesthetic gormandism
of devouring the whole dinner with their
eyesight, before proceeding to nibble the
comparatively few morsels which, after all,
the most heroic appetite and widest stom
achic capacity of mere mortals can enable
even an alderman really to eat. There fell
to my lot three delectable things enough,
which I take pains to remember, that the
reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied
from the Barmecide feast to which I have
bidden him, — a red mullet, a plate of
mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of

572 OUR OLD HOME

a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as
the grouse, but feeding high up towards
the summit of the Scotch mountains,
whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor
very superior to that of the artificially nur
tured English game -fowl. All the other
dainties have vanished from my memory
as completely as those of Prospero's ban
quet after Ariel had clapped his wings
over it. The band played at intervals in
spiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise
the sparkling wines which the footmen
supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and
which the guests quaffed with little appar
ent reference to the disagreeable fact that
there comes a to - morrow morning after
every feast. As long as that shall be the
case, a prudent man can never have full
enjoyment of his dinner.

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side
of the table, sat a young lady in white,
whom I am sorely tempted to describe,
but dare not, because not only the super-
eminence of her beauty, but its peculiar
character, would cause the sketch to be
recognized, however rudely it might be
drawn. I hardly thought that there existed
such a woman outside of a picture - frame,
or the covers of a romance : not that I had

CIVIC BANQUETS 573

ever met with her resemblance even there,
but, being so distinct and singular an ap
parition, she seemed likelier to find her
sisterhood in poetry and picture than in
real life. Let us turn away from her, lest
a touch too apt should compel her stately
and cold and soft and womanly grace to
gleam out upon my page with a strange
repulsion and unattainableness in the very
spell that made her beautiful.1 At her

1 My eyes were mostly drawn to a young lady, who
sat nearly opposite me, across the table. She was, I
suppose, dark, and yet not dark, but rather seemed to
be of pure white marble, yet not white ; but the purest
and finest complexion, without a shade of color in it, yet
anything but sallow or sickly. Her hair was a wonder
ful deep raven-black, black as night, black as death ; not
raven -black, for that has a shiny gloss, and hers had
not, but it was hair never to be painted nor described,
— wonderful hair, Jewish hair. Her nose had a beauti
ful outline, though I could see that it was Jewish too;
and that, and all her features, were so fine that sculpture
seemed a despicable art beside her, and certainly my pen
is good for nothing. If any likeness could be given,
however, h must be by sculpture, not painting. She
was slender and youthful, and yet had a stately and
cold, though soft and womanly grace ; and, looking at
her, I saw what were the wives of the old patriarchs in
their maiden or early - married days, — what Judith was,
for, womanly as she looked, I doubt not she could have
slain a man in a just cause, — what Bathsheba was, only
she seemed to have no sin in her, — perhaps what Eve
was, though one could hardly think her weak enough to
eat the apple. . . . Whether owing to distinctness of

574 OUR OLD HOME

side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat
a gentleman of whom I remember only a
hard outline of the nose and forehead, and
such a monstrous portent of a beard that
you could discover no symptom of a mouth,
except when he opened it to speak, or to
put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you
suddenly became aware of a cave hidden
behind the impervious and darksome shrub
bery. There could be no doubt who this
gentleman and lady were. Any child would
have recognized them at a glance. It was
Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of
the series, but with already a mysterious
gloom overshadowing her fair young brow)
traveling in their honeymoon, and dining,
among other distinguished strangers, at the
Lord Mayor's table.

After an hour or two of valiant achieve
ment with knife and fork came the dessert ;
and at the point of the festival where
finger-glasses are usually introduced, a
large silver basin was carried round to the
guests, containing rose-water, into which
we dipped the ends of our napkins and
were conscious of a delightful fragrance,

race, my sense that she was a Jewess, or whatever else,
I felt a sort of repugnance, simultaneously with my per
ception that she was an admirable creature. — II. 238.

CIVIC BANQUETS 575

instead of that heavy and weary odor, the
hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This
seems to be an ancient custom of the
city, not confined to the Lord Mayor's
table, but never met with westward of
Temple Bar.

During all the feast, in accordance with
another ancient custom, the origin or pur
port of which I do not remember to have
heard, there stood a man in armor, with a
helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's
chair. When the after-dinner wine was
placed on the table, still another official
personage appeared behind the chair, and
proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous
proclamation (in which he enumerated the
principal guests, comprising three or four
noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of
generals, members of Parliament, aldermen,
and other names of the illustrious, one of
which sounded strangely familiar to my
ears), ending in some such style as this :
" and other gentlemen and ladies, here
present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all
in a loving-cup, " — giving a sort of senti
mental twang to the two words, — " and
sends it round among you ! " And forth
with the loving-cup — several of them,
indeed, on each side of the tables — came

576 OUR OLD HOME

slowly down with all the antique ceremony.
The fashion of it is thus. The Lord
Mayor, standing up and taking the covered
cup in both hands, presents it to the guest
at his elbow, who likewise rises, and re
moves the cover for his Lordship to drink,
which being successfully accomplished, the
guest replaces the cover and receives the
cup into his own hands. He then presents
it to his next neighbor, that the cover may
be again removed for himself to take a
draught, after which the third person goes
through a similar manoeuvre with a fourth,
and he with a fifth, until the whole com
pany find themselves inextricably inter
twisted and entangled in one complicated
chain of love. When the cup came to my
hands, I examined it critically, both inside
and out, and perceived it to be an antique
and richly ornamented silver goblet, capa
ble of holding about a quart of wine. Con
sidering how much trouble we all expended
in getting the cup to our lips, the guests
appeared to content themselves with won
derfully moderate potations. In truth,
nearly or quite the original quart of wine
being still in the goblet, it seemed doubt
ful whether any of the company had more
than barely touched the silver rim before

CIVIC BANQUETS 5/7

passing it to their neighbors, — a degree of
abstinence that might be accounted for by
a fastidious repugnance to so many com-
potators in one cup, or possibly by a disap
probation of the liquor. Being curious to
know all about these important matters,
with a view of recommending to my
countrymen whatever they might usefully
adopt, I drank an honest sip from the lov
ing-cup, and had no occasion for another,
— ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor
original quality, largely mingled with water,
and spiced and sweetened. It was good
enough, however, for a merely spectral or
ceremonial drink, and could never have
been intended for any better purpose.

The toasts now began in the customary
order, attended with speeches neither more
nor less witty and ingenious than the spec
imens of table eloquence which had here
tofore delighted me. As preparatory to
each new display, the herald, or whatever
he was, behind the chair of state, gave
awful notice that the Right Honorable
the Lord Mayor was about to propose
a toast. His Lordship being happily de
livered thereof, together with some ac
companying remarks, the band played an
appropriate tune, and the herald again

578 OUR OLD HOME

issued proclamation to the effect that such
or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general,
dignified clergyman, or what not, was go
ing to respond to the Right Honorable the
Lord Mayor's toast ; then, if I mistake not,
there was another prodigious flourish of
trumpets and twanging of stringed instru
ments ; and, finally, the doomed individual,
waiting all this while to be decapitated,
got up and proceeded to make a fool of
himself. A bashful young earl tried his
maiden oratory on the good citizens of
London, and, having evidently got every
word by heart (even including, however
he managed it, the most seemingly casual
improvisations of the moment), he really
spoke like a book, and made incomparably
the smoothest speech I ever heard in Eng
land.

The weight and gravity of the speakers,
not only on this occasion, but all similar
ones, was what impressed me as most
extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why
should people eat a good dinner, and put
their spirits into festive trim with Cham
pagne, and afterwards mellow themselves
into a most enjoyable state of quietude
with copious libations of Sherry and old
Port, and then disturb the whole excellent

CIVIC BANQUETS 579

result by listening to speeches as heavy as
an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown
its sparkle over the surface of these effu
sions, or if the generous Port had shone
through their substance with a ruddy glow
of the old English humor, I might have
seen a reason for honest gentlemen prat
tling in their cups, and should undoubtedly
have been glad to be a listener. But there
was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on
the part of the orators, nor apparent expec
tation of such a phenomenon on that of
the audience. In fact, I imagine that the
latter were best pleased when the speaker
embodied his ideas in the figurative lan
guage of arithmetic, or struck upon any
hard matter of business or statistics, as
a heavy - laden bark bumps upon a rock
in mid-ocean.1 The sad severity, the too
earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have

1 I rather think that Englishmen would purposely
avoid eloquence or neatness in after-dinner speeches. It
seems to be no part of their object. Yet any English
man almost, much more generally than Americans, will
stand up and talk on in a plain way, uttering one rough,
ragged, and shapeless sentence after another, and will
have expressed himself sensibly, though in a very rude
manner, before he sits down. And this is quite satis
factory to his audience, who, indeed, are rather preju
diced agains^ the man who speaks too glibly. — I. 540.

580 OUR OLD HOME

wrought a radical and lamentable change,
I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly
institution of civic banquets. People used
to come to them, a few hundred years ago,
for the sake of being jolly ; they come now
with an odd notion of pouring sober wis
dom into their wine by way of wormwood-
bitters, and thus make such a mess of it
that the wine and wisdom reciprocally
spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have
taken a spice of acridity from a circum
stance that happened about this stage of
the feast, and very much interrupted my
own further enjoyment of it. Up to this
time, my condition had been exceedingly
felicitous, both on account of the brilliancy
of the scene, and because I was in close
proximity with three very pleasant English
friends. One of them was a lady, whose
honored name my readers would recognize
as a household word, if I dared write it ;
another, a gentleman, likewise well known
to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and
genial cultivation are qualities seldom
mixed in such happy proportion as in him.
The third was the man to whom I owed
most in England, the warm benignity of
whose nature was never weary of doing me

CIVIC BANQUETS 581

good, who led me to many scenes of life,
in town, camp, and country, which I never
could have found out for myself, who knew
precisely the kind of help a stranger needs,
and gave it as freely as if he had not had a
thousand more important things to live for.
Thus I never felt safer or cosier at any
body's fireside, even my own, than at the
dinner-table of the Lord Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunder
bolt. His Lordship got up and proceeded
to make some very eulogistic remarks upon
" the literary and commercial " — I ques
tion whether those two adjectives were
ever before married by a copulative con
junction, and they certainly would not live
together in illicit intercourse, of their own
accord — " the literary and commercial at
tainments of an eminent gentleman there
present," and then went on to speak of
the relations of blood and interest between
Great Britain and the aforesaid eminent
gentleman's native country. Those bonds
were more intimate than had ever before
existed between two great nations, through
out all history, and his Lordship felt as
sured that that whole honorable company
would join him in the expression of a fer
vent wish that they might be held inviola-

582 OUR OLD HOME

bly sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic,
now and forever. Then came the same
wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew
upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been
the text of nearly all the oratory of my
public career. The herald sonorously an
nounced that Mr. So-and-so would now re
spond to his Right Honorable Lordship's
toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the
customary flourish for the onset, there was
a thunderous rumble of anticipatory ap
plause, and finally a deep silence sank upon
the festive hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery
on the Lord Mayor's part, after beguiling
me within his lines on a pledge of safe-con
duct ; and it seemed very strange that he
could not let an unobtrusive individual eat
his dinner in peace, drink a small sample
of the Mansion House wine, and go away
grateful at heart for the old English hos
pitality. If his Lordship had sent me an
infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I
should have taken it much more kindly at
his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
matter to have been somewhat as follows.

All England, just then, was in one of
those singular fits of panic excitement (not
fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as

CIVIC BANQUETS 583

that emotion), which, in consequence of
the homogeneous character of the people,
their intense patriotism, and their depen
dence for their ideas in public affairs on
other sources than their own examination
and individual thought, are more sudden,
pervasive, and unreasoning than any sim
ilar mood of our own public. In truth, I
have never seen the American public in a
state at all similar, and believe that we are
incapable of it. Our excitements are not
impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,
are moral and intellectual. For example,
the grand rising of the North, at the com
mencement of this war, bore the aspect
of impulse and passion only because it was
so universal, and necessarily done in a mo*
ment, just as the quiet and simultaneous
getting-up of a thousand people out of
their chairs would cause a tumult that
might be mistaken for a storm. We were
cool then, and have been cool ever since,
and shall remain cool to the end, which
we shall take coolly, whatever it may be.
There is nothing which the English find it
so difficult to understand in us as this char
acteristic. They imagine us, in our collec
tive capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose
normal condition is savage fury, and are

584 OUR OLD HOME

always looking for the moment when we
shall break through the slender barriers of
international law and comity, and compel
the reasonable part of the world, with them
selves at the head, to combine for the pur
pose of putting us into a stronger cage.
At times this apprehension becomes so
powerful (and when one man feels it, a
million do) that it resembles the passage of
the wind over a broad field of grain, where
you see the whole crop bending and sway
ing beneath one impulse, and each sep
arate stalk tossing with the self-same dis
turbance as its myriad companions. At
such periods all Englishmen talk with a
terrible identity of sentiment and expres
sion. You have the whole country in
each man ; and not one of them all, if you
put him strictly to the question, can give a
reasonable ground for his alarm. There
are but two nations in the world — our
own country and France — that can put
England into this singular state. It is the
united sensitiveness of a people extremely
v jll-to-do, careful of their country's honor,
'lost anxious for the preservation of the
jumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which
they have been so long in consolidating,
and incompetent (owing to the national

CIVIC BANQUETS 585

half-sightedness, and their habit of trust
ing to a few leading minds for their public
opinion) to judge when that prosperity is
really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look
at the foreign side of any international
dispute, they might easily have satisfied
themselves that there was very little
danger of a war at that particular crisis,
from the simple circumstance that their
own Government had positively not an
inch of honest ground to stand upon, and
could not fail to be aware of the fact.
Neither could they have met Parliament
with any show of a justification for incur
ring war. It was no such perilous juncture
as exists now, when law and right are
really controverted on sustainable or plau
sible grounds, and a naval commander may
at any moment fire off the first cannon of
a terrible contest. If I remember it cor
rectly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble,
in which the British ministers, with the
politic generosity which they are in the
habit of showing towards their official sub
ordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the
purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an
indefensible proceeding ; and the American
Government (for God had not denied us an

586 OUR OLD HOME

administration of statesmen then) had re
taliated with stanch courage and exquisite
skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortifica
tion upon their opponents, but indulging
them with no pretense whatever for active
resentment.

Now the Lord Mayor, like any other
Englishman, probably fancied that War
was on the western gale, and was glad to
lay hold of even so insignificant an Ameri
can as myself, who might be made to harp
on the rusty old strings of national sympa
thies, identity of blood and interest, and
community of language and literature, and
whisper peace where there was no peace,
in however weak an utterance. And pos
sibly his Lordship thought, in his wisdom,
that the good feeling which was sure to be
expressed by a company of well-bred Eng
lishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner-
table, might have an appreciable influence
on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord
Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a
piece of strategy. He wanted to induce
me to fling myself, like a lesser Curtius,
with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into
the chasm of discord between England and
America, and, on my ignominious demur,
had resolved to shove me in with his own

CIVIC BANQUETS 587

right -honorable hands, in the hope of clos
ing up the horrible pit forever. On the
whole, I forgive his Lordship. He meant
well by all parties, — himself, who would
share the glory, and me, who ought to have
desired nothing better than such an he
roic opportunity, — his own country, which
would continue to get cotton and bread-
stuffs, and mine, which would get every
thing that men work with and wear.

As soon as the Lord Mayor began to
speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
gave forth a hollow sound, being abso
lutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never
thought of listening to the speech, because
I knew it all beforehand in twenty repeti
tions from other lips, and was aware that it
would not offer a single suggestive point.
In this dilemma, I turned to one of my
three friends, a gentleman whom I knew
to possess an enviable flow of silver speech,
and obtested him, by whatever he deemed
holiest, to give me at least an available
thought or two to start with, and, once
afloat, I would trust my guardian-angel for
enabling me to flounder ashore again. He
advised me to begin with some remarks
complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and
expressive of the hereditary reverence in

588 OUR OLD HOME

which his office was held, — at least, my
friend thought that there would be no
harm in giving his Lordship this little
sugar -plum, whether quite the fact or no,
— was held by the descendants of the Puri
tan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting
flexible with the oil ot my own eloquence,
I might easily slide off into the momentous
subject of the relations between England
and America, to which his Lordship had
made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a
death -grip, and bidding my three friends
bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to
save both countries, or perish in the at
tempt. The tables roared and thundered
at me, and suddenly were silent again.
But, as I have never happened to stand in
a position of .greater dignity and peril, I
deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to
close these Sketches, leaving myself still
erect in so heroic an attitude.

INDEX

ACTRESS, an, in an almshouse,

ean theory, 172, 173, 176-178;

507 ; starving for admiration,

her personal appearance, 174;

508.

her book, 179, 189, 192 ; an ad

Adclison, early home of, 215;

mirable talker, 180; at Strat

buried among the men of rank,

ford, 181-191 ; her plans for

456.

searching Shakespeare's grave,

Advice, as to giving, 42.

182-184 ; Hawthorne incurs

Ailsa Craig, 358.
Alexander, Miss, the Lass of

her displeasure, 188; her in
sanity, 191 ; her death, 192.

Ballochmyle, 344.

Ballochmyle, the Lass of, 344.

Almshouse, a great English, 498-

Banquets, civic, 527-588.

522.

Barber Surgeons' Hall, in Lon

American flags, captured, dis

don, 537-539-

played in Chelsea Hospital,

435;

Bear and Ragged Staff, the, cog
nizance of the Warwick Earl

American mercantile marine, mis

dom, 109 ; silver badge of, 113 ;

represented at Liverpool, 2, 3,

representations of, at Leices

46 ; its vicious system, 45, 48.
American shipmasters, cruelties

ter's Hospital, 116, 118, 133.
Beauchamp, Richard, Earl of

of, 44-49.

Warwick, memorial of, 138 ;

Americans, national characteris

strange accident to, 139.

tics of, as seen by a consul, 9,

Beauchamp Chapel, at Warwick,

10 ; vagabond habits of, 11,12;

137-140.

as claimants of English estates,
18, 22-31 ; growth and change

Bebbington, monuments at, 85,
note ; old village church of, 98,

the law of their existence, 93 ;

note.

their scholars and critics, 190 ;
their light regard for the Pres

Beggar, a true Englishman's dis
like of a, 491 ; hardening the

ident, 553.
Andre, Major, at Lichfield, 216.

heart against, 492 ; a phenom
enal, 493-495.

Anne, Queen, statue of, at Blen

Belmont, August, minister at the

heim, 295.

Hague, 29.

Antiquity, hoar, in English
scenes, 90.

Ben Lomond, 358.
Black Swan inn, Lichfield, 199.

Archdeacon ale, 300.

Blackheath, the wide waste of,

Armour, Jean, 329, 330, 346.

370-373 5 amusements at, 373-

Auchinleck, estate of, 343.

375-

Avon, the, arched bridge at War

Blenheim, excursion to, 281, 282;

wick, 105 ; a sluggish river,

its park, 283-289 ; Marlbor.

166.

ough's Triumphal Pillar at

Ayr, ride to, 347 ; its two bridges,

289; its palace, 289-296; its

34S.

gardens, 296-298.

Bolton, 231.

Bacon, Lord, his Letters, 176.

Boston, old, trip to, by steameif

Bacon, Miss, a very remarkable

from Lincoln, 255-259; the

woman, 172; her Shakespear

river side of, 260 ; antique-look-

590

INDEX

ing houses at, 263 ; a booksell

Cockneys, in Greenwich Park

er's shop at, 264, 265; its

^379-

crooked and narrow streets,

Coffee-room, English, ponderous

275 ; its Charity School schol

gloom of, 200.

ars, 277 ; market-day in, 278.
Boswell, Sir James, grandson of
Johnson's friend, 343.

Combe, John a', boon-companion
of Shakespeare, 164; buried
near Shakespeare, 168; marble

Brooke, Lord, shot near the

figure of, 170; Shakespeare's

Minster Pool, 206.

squib on, 170.

Brown, Capability, his lake at

Concord River, compared with

Blenheim, 284 ; grounds at

the Learn, 67.

Nuneham Courtney, 321.

Connecticut shopkeeper, a, seek

Buchanan, James, in London,

ing interview with the Queen,

20; receives Hawthorne's res

17-21.

ignation, 55 ; calls on Miss Ba

Conner, Mr., an American patron

con, 178.

of Leicester's Hospital, 133.

Buckland, Dean, swallows part

Consul, as general adviser and

of Louis XlV.'s'heart, 270.

helper, 31, 32, 42, 43 ; as ar

Bull, John, too intensely English,

biter between seamen and their

101.

officers, 44-49; not a favorite

Bunker Hill, England, 279.

with shipmasters, 49 ; neces

Burleigh, Lord, waistcoat of, 266.

sary qualifications, 51, 52;

Burns, Robert, his house at Dum

wrong system of appointment

fries, 325-327 ; his mausoleum,

and removal, 52 ; important

329» 33°) marble statue of,

duties, 53 ; emoluments, 55,

329; his outward life, 331 ; his

note.

family pew in St. Michael's

Consulate, American, in Liver

Church, 334; his farm of Moss

pool, its location, i ; its ap

Giel, 337-342 ; his birthplace,
349-351 ; his monument, 351-

proaches, i, 2 ; its furnishings,
3-6; visitors at, 7-21; faithful

353-

English subordinates, 50, 51 ;

Butchers' shops, in poor streets

Hawthorne's successor at, 56.

of London, 474.

Cook, Captain, present from

Queen of Otaheite to, 266.

Carfax, the, 320.

Cornwall, Barry, 469.

Caskets, burial, " a vile modern

Cottages, rustic laborers', 79-81.

phrase," 140.

Cotton, Rev. John, in Old Bos

Cass, Lewis, responds to inter

ton, 263, 270, 271.

ference of British Minister, 46.

Crystal Palace, the, 438.

Catrine, " the clean village of

Cumnor, village of, 301 ; its

Scotland," 345.

church, 302, 303.

Ceylon, wild men of, 28.

Cymbeline, King, founder of

Charlecote Hall, 195-198.

Warwick, 103, 129 ; one of his

Charlecote Park, 193 ; deer in,

original gateways, 112.

194) 195-
Charles, the Martyr, king, 270.
Charles I., Vandyck's picture of,

Deluge, necessity of a new, 472,
518-

292.

Dinner, the English idea of, 527 ;

Chelsea, 433.

Milton on, 528 ; a perfect work

Chelsea Hospital, 433~437-

of art, 530, 531 ; an English

Chester, most curious town in

mayor's, 539-560 : Lord May

England, 59.

or's, at the Mansion House,

Children in an English alms-

563-

house, 509-519.

Doctor of Divinity, an erring,

Children, poor, in London streets,

33-41-

487-489.

Doon, the bridge of, 357.

Church of the Holy Trinity,

Dowager, an English, 73-75.

Stratford, 155.

Dudley, Earl of Leicester, estab

Climate, English, unfavorable to

lishes Leicester's Hospital,

open-air memorials, 83, 84.

115; a grim sinner, 127; his

INDEX

59*

monument in Beauchamp

Chapel, 137 ; his long-enduring

kindness, 138.

Dumfries, excursion to, 325-334.
Dutch government, an American

under the ban of, 29.

East winds, English, 257.
Edward IV., King, a lock of his

hair, 140.
Edward the Confessor, shrine of,

Elizabeth, Queen, Secret-Book
of, 269.

Elm, the beautiful Warwickshire,
69.

England, conservative, 141 ; yet
the foundations of its aristo
cracy crumbling, 141.

English, the, forgetful of defeats,
4; their character, massive ma
teriality of, 23; secret of their
practical success, 42 ; impos
tors betrayed by pronunci
ation of "been, "44; their in
tegrity, 51; their love of high
stone fences and shrubbery, 69,
371; curious infelicity of, 100 ;
like to feel the weight of the
past, in ; the very kindest peo
ple on earth, 305 ; their insular
narrowness, 306; their ina
bility to enjoy summer, 367;
original simplicity of, 379; ea
ger to know their weight, 402 ;
women not beautiful , 406 ; their
contempt for fine-strained
purity, 408, 409 ; their tendency
to batter one another's persons,
482.

English crowds, unfragrant, 397,
398.

English post-prandial oratory,

English village, fossilized life of
an, 93.

English weather, 5, 366-368.

Englishman, a middle-aged, per
sonal appearance of, 542.

Epitaphs : illegible, on English
gravestones, 84 ; moss-em
bossed, 85 ; forlorn one on
John Treeo, 86, 87.

Eugene, Prince, tapestry portraits
of, 294.

Feeing, in England, 161, 162,

note.
Feminine character among the

London poor, 481-487.

Fences, English stone, adorned
by Nature, 151, 152, note.

Forster, Anthony, buried in
Cumnor Church, 303.

Fruit, English, poor flavor of,
364.

Fun of the Fair, the, 399.

Garrick, David, boyish days at

Lichfield, 216.
Gin-shops, London, 472.
Girls, English and American,

contrasted, 72, 75, 406.
Godiva, Countess, picture of,

Godstowe, old nunnery of, 317.

Gravestones, English, successive
crops of, 83 ; illegible inscrip
tions on, 84; moss-embossed
inscriptions on, 85.

Greenwich, its park, 376, 377,
379, 380, 383 ; its observatory,
the centre of Time and Space,
376; its hospital, 385-396; its
fair, 396-408.

Hatton, a community of old set
tlers, 95 ; its church, 96, 97.

Hawthorne responds to toasts at
civic banquets, 558-560, 582-
588.

Hedges, English, 149.

Henry V., his helmet and war-
saddle displayed in Westmin
ster Abbey, 455.

Highland Mary, the pocket Bible
that Burns gave her, 353.

Holbein, masterpiece of, in Bar
ber Surgeons' Hall, 537.

Home, a genuine British, 359-
364.

Hotels and hotel bills, English,
162, note.

Houses of Parliament, the, 431.

Hunt, Leigh, interview with,
459-468 ; final recollection of,
468.

Imogen, Shakespeare's woman-
liest woman, 129.

Jackson, General, bust of, 4.

James, G. P. R., never saw Lon
don Tower, 428.

James I., King, feasted by an
Earl of Warwick, 119, 134.

Jephson, Dr., discoverer of cha
lybeate well at Leamington, 63.

Jephson Garden, on the Leamt
65-67.

592

INDEX

Johnson, Dr., born at Lichfield,
201 ; as a man, a talker, and a
humorist, 202; the great Eng
lish moralist, 203 ; his birth
place, 216, 217; his statue, by
Lucas, 218; statue in St. Paul's
Cathedral, 219, note; doing
penance in the market-place,
220, 223, 228, 229, 230; his faith
in beef and mutton, 225.

Johnson, Michael, selling books
on market-day, 221 ; his book
stall, 222; at the Nag's Head
inn, 226, 227.

Jolly Beggars, the, at Posie Nan-
sie's inn, 336.

Jonson, Ben, buried standing up
right, 451.

Judges, social standing of, 549.

Kemble, John, statue of, in West
minster Abbey, 445.

Kirk Alloway, 354-356.

" Kissing in the Ring," 404.

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, his objec
tion to being buried in West
minster Abbey, 449.

Lambeth Palace, 432.

Lancashire, a dreary county, 231.

Lansdowne Circus, 60 ; its houses,
61 ; its inhabitants, 62.

Learn, the river, 63, 65 ; the lazi
est in the world, 67.

Leamington Spa, 60; a perma
nent watering-place, 63, 64;
the business portion of the
town, 68 ; beautiful in street
and suburb, 69; but preten
tious, 70 ; its aristocratic
names, 71 ; the throng on its
principal Parade, 71, 72.

Lear, West's dreary picture of,
390.

Leicester's Hospital at War
wick : an assemblage of edi
fices, 112; the twelve brethren
of, 113, 115, 116, 118, 125, 131,
i34> I35'i a perfect specimen,
116; a jolly old domicile, 121;
system of life in, 123; the por
ter at, 124-126.

Lestrange, Sir Nicholas, first
proprietor of Leicester's Hos
pital buildings, 114, 115.

Lichfield, 199; origin of the
name, 201 ; birthplace of Dr.
Johnson, 201, 216; its people
old-fashioned, 204 ; its cathe
dral, 206-214.

Lillington, the village, 78 ; its
church, 81, 82 ; its churchyard,
83-87.

Lincoln, cabs unknown there,
236 ; its narrow principal street,
237 ; its cathedral, 236, 239-
249, 253, 254; Roman remains
at, 250 ; Norman ruins at, 251.

Linkwater, Sir John, fines him
self for drunkenness, 548.

Liquor, varieties of hop and
malt, in England, 299, 300.

Liverpool, a convenient starting-
point for excursions, 58.

Lodgings, English custom of, 70,
note.

London, suburb, a, 359; a distant
view of, 373 ; grimy, 375.

Lord Mayor's dinner, at the
Mansion House, 563-588.

Lovers' Grove, at Leamington,

Loving-cup, the Lord Mayor's,

Lucy, Sir Thomas, and Shake
speare, 196.

Malay pirates, delightful quali
ties of, 28.

Mansfield, Lord, statue of, in
Westminster Abbey, 445.

Mansion House, the, in London,
563.

Marlborough, Duke of, Tri
umphal Pillar of, 288.

Mary Queen of Scots, quilt em
broidered by, 265, 271.

Mauchline, redolent of Burns,
335 ; rusty and time-worn, 336 ;
its chief business, 346.

Maury, Mr., appointed consul at
Liverpool by Washington, 50.

McClellan, General, before Rich
mond, 43.

Melville, Herman, his " Israel
Potter " referred to, 13.

" Memory green, keep his," pos
sible origin of the phrase, 86.

Methodist open-air preaching in
Greenwich Park, 380-383.

Minster Pool, the, at Lichfield,
205.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley,
monument to, in Lichfield Ca
thedral, 211.

Moss Giel, Burns's farm of, 337-
342.

Museum, the British, too manj
materials for knowledge in, 384,
note.

INDEX

593

Nag's Head inn, the, at Uttox-

P.egatta of the Free Watermen of

eter, 226.

Greenwich, a, 413.

Nelson, Admiral, his highest am

Remorse, tragedy of, 40.

bition, 391 ; not a representa

Robsart, Amy, embroidery by,

tive man, 392-394; Southey's

at Leicester's Hospital, 133 ;

biography of, 393; pictures of

monument of her avenger, 137.

his exploits, 394; two of his

Rosamond, Fair, at the nunnery

coats preserved at Greenwich of Godstowe, 317.

Hospital, 395.

Rosamond's Well, Blenheim, 287.

Newcastle, Duke and Duchess

Russell, Lord John, remonstrates

of, 444.

against outrages on American

New Orleans, battle of, forgotten

sailors, 46.

by Englishmen, 4.

Nuneham Courtney, 314, 320-322.

Sacheverell, Dr., 219.

Sacrament Sunday at Mauch-

Old age, cheerful and genial in

line, 337.

England, 277.

Sailors, American, ill-usage of,

Open-air life of the London poor,

44-

476-481.

St. Botolph's Church, Old Bos

Otaheite, Queen of, her present
to Captain Cook, 266, 271.
Oxford, barges at, 318; indescrib

ton, 259, 262, 272-275.
St. Chad, 201.
St. Hugh, shrine of, in Lincoln

able, 322, 323.

Cathedral, 247.

St. John's School-House, at War

Painted Hall, the, at Greenwich

wick, 104.

Hospital, 390, 391.

St. Mary's Church, at Warwick,

Parliament, British, and Amer

136.

ican sailors, 45, 46.

St. Mary's Hall, at Coventry,

Parr, Dr., once vicar of Hatton,

533-536.

95 ; a misplaced man, 97 ; a

St. Mary's Square, at Lichfield,

guest at Leicester's Hospital,

216,218.

130.

St. Michael's Church, at Dum

Peacock hotel, Old Boston, 259.

fries, 328, 332-334.

Pearce, Mr., vice-consul at Liv

St. Paul's Cathedral, 429.

erpool, 50.

Saracen's Head hotel, Lincoln,

Peel, Sir Robert, and Holbein's

236.

masterpiece in Barber Sur

Scenery, English, 146, 232.

geons' Hall, 537.

Schools, English, long-estab

Philadelphia printer, a, wander

lished, 104.

ing about England, 13-17.

Scott, Sir Walter, attractiveness

Poets' Corner, in Westminster

of his name, 160; and Anthony

Abbey, 451-459.

Forster, 303.

Pope, Alexander, his account of

Seward, Miss, at Lichfield, 216.

Stanton Harcourt, 308 ; trans

Shakespeare : his church, 155 ;

lation of Homer, 314.
Porter, Mr., bookseller at Old

his birthplace, 157-163 ; his vari
ous guises, 164 ; his curse on the

Boston, 265-271.

man who should stir his bones,

Posie Nansie's inn at Mauch-

165; his burial-place, 165-171;

line, 336.

family monuments, 167; his

Posthumus and Imogen, 129.

bust, in the church at Strat

Poverty, glimpses of English,

ford, 168, 169; Miss Bacon's

470-524.

theory, 175; immeasurable

Procter, Bryan Waller, 469.

depth of his plays, 175.

Sheffield, the town of razors and

Raleigh, Sir Walter, and the

smoke, 235.

Thames Tunnel, 420-422.

Sherwood Forest, 235.

" Red Letter A," author of,

Shrewsbury, pleasant walks in,

306.

238, note.

Redfern's Old Curiosity Shop, at

Southey, Robert, his Life of Nel

Warwick, 142, 143.

son, 393.

594

INDEX

Stanton Harcourt, its hospitable
parsonage, 305 ; its old castle,
306, 307, 313, 314; Pope's con
nection with, 308, 309, 3 14, 3 1 5 ;
its church, 309-312.

Sterne, Laurence, crayon-por
trait of, 267.

Stocks, village, at Whitnash, go.

Stratford-on-Avon, scenery near,
145; approach to, 153, 154;
queer edifices in, 155.

Swans, aspect and movement of,
66.

Swynford, Catherine, monument
of, in Lincoln Cathedral, 247.

Tam O'Shanter, statue of, 353.
Taylor, General, portrait of, 4.
Temple, the, 431.
Tennyson, and English scenery,

Testament, New, consular copy
of, 6, 45.

Thames, ferry near Cumnor, 305 ;
steamers on, 412; its muddy
tide, 414; a summer day's voy
age on, 412-435-

Thames lunnel, the, 415-423.

Thornhill, Sir James, 291, 390.

Tickell, Thomas, his lines on
Addison, 456.

Tower of London, the, 427, 428.

Traitor's Gate, the, 427.

Treeo, John, forlorn epitaph on,
86.

Trees, English and American,
compared, 147-149.

Tuckerman, H. T., his " Month
in England," 439.

Uttoxeter, 221; its idle people,
223 ; its abundance of public
houses, 224.

Vagabonds, Yankee, abroad,

1 1-22.

Vandyck, his picture of Charles

I., 292.
Victoria, Queen, a Connecticut

shopkeeper goes to England to

see her, 18-21 ; some American

blood-relatives, 26.

Walmesley, Gilbert, monument
to, in Lichfield Cathedral, 211.
Wapping, cold and torpid, 425.

Warren, Sir Peter, bust of, in
Westminster Abbey, 444.

Warwick, founded by Cymbeline,
103, 129; its castle, 105, 107;
its principal street, 108, 109 ;
military display at, 109; the
High Street, no; Leicester's
Hospital, 112-127; the home
of Posthumus and Imogen,
129; church of St. Mary's,
136-140 ; Redfern's Old Curi
osity Shop, 142, 143.

Warwickshire Elm, the beauti
ful, 69.

Wasps, attracted by pomatum,

319-

Wedding, of some poor English
people, 522-524 ; an aristo
cratic, in the same cathedral,

Wedd

eding, silver, as a matter of
conscience, 76.

West, Benjamin, picture by, at
Greenwich, 389.

Westminster Abbey, a Sunday
afternoon service in, 440; its
interior, 441 ; statues and tombs
in, 444-447; "they do bury
fools there," 4495 Poets'
Corner, 451-459-

Whitefriars, the old rowdy Al-
satia, 430.

Whitnash, secluded village of,
88 ; yew-tree of incalculable
age at, 89 ; village stocks of,
90 ; change at work in, 93, 94.

Wilberforce, William, statue of,
in Westminster Abbey, 446,
447'

Wilding, Mr., vice-consul at,
Liverpool, 51.

Wilkins, Sergeant, 550, 551,

Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 286.
Witham, the river, 255, 263.
Women, in the poorer streets of

London, 479, 484; in an Eng

lish almshouse, 499; at public

dinners, 567.
Woodstock, 282.
Wren, Sir Christopher, restorer

of St. Mary's Church, War

wick, 136.

Yew-tree, extraordinary age of,
89.

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