Our old home: a series of English sketches

University of California • Berkeley

From the Collection of
EDWARD HELLMAN HELLER

and
ELINOR RAAS HELLER

,
Ifl >**«*'

E. H. PIERCE,,
OLD BOOK SHOP,

2130 Oxford St.,
Berkeley, - Calif.

©ur ©Ur §0nu:

A SEEIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES.

OUR OLD HOME:

A SERIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.

1863.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT H. 0. BOUOHT05.

To
FRANKLIN PIERCE,

AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED

THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY

IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS,

is EnscrtfceU

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

CONTENTS.

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 9

LEAMINGTON SPA • • • 49

ABOUT WARWICK • 77

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 106

LlCHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 141

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 163

NEAR OXFORD 195

SOME OF THE HAUNTS .OF BURNS • • • 225

A LONDON SUBURB 248

UP THE THAMES 282

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 320

Civic BANQUETS 358

TO A FRIEND.

I HAVE not asked your consent, my dear General, to the
foregoing inscription, because it would have been no inconsid-
erable disappointment to me had you withheld it ; for I have
long desired to connect your name with some book of mine, in
commemoration 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 certainly are not of a
kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in retirement,
inasmuch as they meddle with no matters of policy or govern-
ment, and have very little to say about the deeper traits of
national character. In their humble way, they belong entirely
to aesthetic literature, and can achieve no higher success than
to represent to the American reader a few of the external
aspects of English scenery and life, especially those that are
touched with the antique charm to which our countrymen 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 backgrounds and exterior adornment of a work of fic-
tion 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

x TO A FRIEND.

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 imagin
composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a thousand
peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane that is sweeping us all
along with it, possibly, into a Limbo where our nation and its
polity may be as literally the fragments of a shattered dream as
my unwritten Romance. But I have far better hopes for our
dear country ; and for my individual 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 re-
jxMtiid many other shadowy volumes of mine, more in num-
ber, and very much superior in quality, to those which I have
succeeded in rendering actual.

To return to these poor Sketches ; some of my friends have
told me that they evince an asperity of sentiment towards the
English people which I ought not to feel, and which it is
highly inexpedient to express. The charge surprises me, be-
cause, if it be true, I have written from a shallower mood than
1 supposed. I seldom came into personal relations with an
Englishman without beginning to like him, and feeling my
favorable impression wax stronger with the progress of the
acquaintance. I never stood in an English crowd without
being conscious of hereditary sympathies. Nevertheless, it
is undeniable that an American is continually thrown upon
his national antagonism by some acrid quality in the moral
atmosphere of England. These people think so loftily of
themselves, and so contemptuously of everybody else, that it
requires more generosity than I possess to keep always in per-
fectly good humor with them. Jotting down the little acrimo-
nies of the moment in my journal, and transferring 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 national character would hesitate
to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that had not

TO A FRIEND. Xl

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 kind-
ness ; nor, in my opinion, would it contribute in the least to
our mutual advantage and comfort if we were to besmear one
another all over with butter "and honey. At any rate, we
must not judge of an Englishman'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
assert 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 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 consciousness 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 earli-
est 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.

OUR OLD HOME.

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

THE Consulate of the United States, in my day, was
located in Washington Buildings, (a shabby and smoke-
stained edifice of four stories high, thus illustriously named
in honor of our national establishment,) at the lower cor-
ner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the Goree Ar-
cade, 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 apart-
ments of the American official so splendid as to indicate
the assumption of much consular pomp .on his part. A
narrow and ill-lighted staircase gave access to an equally
narrow and ill-lighted passage-way on the first floor, at
the extremity of which, surmounting a door-frame, ap-
peared an exceedingly stiff pictorial representation of the
Goose and Gridiron, according to the English idea of
those ever-to-be-honored symbols. The staircase and
passage-way were often thronged, of a morning, with a
set of beggarly and piratical-looking scoundrels, (I do no
wrong to our own countrymen in styling them so, for not
one in twenty was a genuine American,) purporting to

10 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

belong to our mercantile marine, and chiefly composed of
Liverpool Blackballers and the scum of every marit inn-
nation on earth ; such being the seamen by whose assist-
ance 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, perplexingly intermingled with an uncertain pro-
portion 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 VON
and all required consular assistance in one form or
another.

Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his mind
to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters, was admit-
ted 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
awaited their turn outside the door. Passing through
this exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an in-
ner privacy, where sat the Consul himself, ready to give
personal attention to such peculiarly difficult and more
important cases as might demand the exercise of (what
we will courteously suppose to be) his own higher judi-
cial or administrative sagacity.

It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in
imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two windows
looking across a by-street at the rough brick-side of an
immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier structure

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 11

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 territory so provokingly compact, that we may
expect it to sink sooner than sunder. Farther adornments
were some rude engravings 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 aspect, occupying the place of honor above the mantel-
piece. On the top of a bookcase stood a fierce and ter-
rible bust of General Jackson, pilloried in a military
collar which rose above his ears, and frowning forth im-
mitigably 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 represented,
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 charac-
teristics) this excellent method of keeping the national
glory intact by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean
out of their memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism for-
bade me to take down either the bust or the pictures,
both because it seemed no more than right that an Amer-
ican Consulate (being a little patch of our nationality im-
bedded into the soil and institutions of England) should

12 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

fairly represent the American taste in the fine arts, and
IM -cause these decorations reminded me so delightfully of
an old-fashioned American barber's shop.

One truly English object was a barometer hanging on
the wall, generally indicating 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 bitu-
minous coal, was Knirlish too, as was also the chill tem-
perature that sometimes called for a fire at mid-summer,
and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which often, between
November and March, compelled me to set the gas
alia me at noonday. I am not aware of omitting any-
thing important in the above descriptive inventory, un-
less it be some bookshelves filled with octavo volumes
of the American Statutes, and a good many pigeon-hoh--
stulled with dusty communications from former Secreta-
ries of State, and other ollicial documents of similar value,
constituting part of the archives of the Consulate, which
I midit have done my successor a favor by flinging into
the coal-Lrrate. Ye- : there was one other article demand-
ing prominent notice: the consular copy of the New
'IV- tament, 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 between two breaths, to all sorts of people and on
all manner of worldly business, were reckoned by the
.-wearer as if taken at his soul's peril.

Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in
which I .-pent wearily a cmi-iderable portion of more
than four good years of my e\i.-tence. At first, to be
quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as not alto-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 13

getlier 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 my own per-
sonal expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished pred-
ecessors, 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, there-
fore, by an individual so little ambitious of external mag-
nificence 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 singular kind of re-
luctance 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), pro-
scribed conspirators from Old Spain, Spanish Ameri-
cans, Cubans 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 pre-
tended ones, in the cause of Liberty, all people homeless
in the widest sense, those whew never had a 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,

14 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

sought the American Consulate, in hopes of at least
u bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage to the
blessed shores of Freedom. In most cases there was
nothing, and in any ea.-e distressingly little, to be done
for them ; neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor
desired to make my Consulate a nucleus lor the vagrant
discontents of other lands. And yet it was a proud
thought, a forcible appeal to the -ym pat hies of an Amer-
ican, that these unfortunates claimed the privileges of
eiti/enship in our Republic on the strength of the very
same noble misdemeanors that had rendered them out-
laws to their native despotisms. So I gave tin m what
small help I could. Rethinks the true patriots and mar-
tvr-spirits of the whole world should have been conscious
of a panjr 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 acquainted with
many of our national characteristics during those four
years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought
moiv strikingly out by the contrast with English man-
ners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra pecu-
liarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that
their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures
and cast of countenance, all seemed chiselled 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 person, 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 whatever, but merely to
subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 15

see how lie was getting on with his duties. These inter-
views 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, generally
halted outside of the door to elect a speaker, chairman,
or moderator, and thus approached me with all the for-
malities of a deputation from the American people. After
salutations on both sides, — abrupt, awful, and severe on
their part, and deprecatory on mine, — and the national
ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone through
with, the interview proceeded by a series of calm and
well-considered questions or remarks from the spokes-
man, (no other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a
word,) and diplomatic responses from the Consul, who
sometimes found the investigation 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 common-
places 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 your-
self to your interlocutor's individuality, — I have not
learned it.

Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the old
world and the new, where the steamers and packets
landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen,
and received them again when their wanderings were

16 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

done, I saw that no people on earth have such vagabond
habits as ourselves. 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 sj
or proposes 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 Eu-
rope, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin the
world in earnest. It happened, indeed, much oftener
than \VMS 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 undeninhle
right to its shelter and protection, and required at my
hands to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, —
finding them gentlemanly in manners, passably educated,
and only tempted a little beyond their means by a land-
able desire of improving and refining themselves, or,
perhaps, for the sake of getting better artistic instruction
in. music, painting or soulpture, than our country could
supply, — I sometimes took charge of them on my pri-
vate responsibility, since our Government gives itself no
trouble about its stray children, except the seafaring
class. But, after a few such experiments, discovering
that none of these estimable and ingenuous young men,
however 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 understanding that they were to
make themselves serviceable on shipboard ; and I re-
member several very pathetic appeals from painters and

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 17

musicians, touching the damage which their artistic fin-
gers 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 poor-house, 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 conclusion, 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 sim-
ilar to this. The individual now in question was a mild
and patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow,
shabby beyond description, lean and hungry-looking, but
with a large and somewhat red nose. He made no com-
plaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice,
with a pathos of which he was himself evidently uncon-
scious, — "I want to get home to Ninety-second Street,
Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by
trade, and said that he had come over when he was a
younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for
2

18 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

lir 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
ailinned, — "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 u.-cd to U- familiar, adding, with a simplicity that
touched me very closely, "Sir, I had rather be then
than here!" Though I still manifested a lin-erini:
doubt, he took no offence, replying with the same mild
depression as at first, and iusi>ting again and airain on
Ninety-second Street. Up to the time when I saw him,
lie -till not a little occasional job- work at his trade, but
suh>i>ied mainly on such charity as he met with in his
wanderings, shitting from place to place continually,
and asking assistance to convey him to his native land.
1'ossihly he was an impostor, one of the multitudinous
shapes of Kn^lish vagabondism, and told his falsehood
with such powerful simplicity, because, by many repeti-
tions, he had con\inced himself of its truth. But if, as
I believe, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad
ffia this old man's fate! Homeless on a foreign shore,
looking always towards his country, coming again and
aLiain 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 < lying and surrendering his clay to be a portion of
the soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime.

He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did
not attempt to press his advantage with any new argu-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 19

ment, 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 monotonous burden of his appeal, — " If
I could only find myself in Ninety-second Street, Phila-
delphia ! " But even his desire of getting home had
ceased to be an ardent one, (if, indeed, it had not al-
ways partaken of the dreamy sluggishness of his char-
acter,) although it remained his only locomotive impulse,
and perhaps the sole 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 con-
sideration, 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 irretriev-
ably vanished, and the whole country become more truly
a foreign land to him than England was now, — and even
Ninety-second Street, in tKe weedlike decay and growth
of our localities, made over anew and grown unrecogniz-
able 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, mean-
while, with the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English
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-remembered beggar"
now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting ready
for him at many a farm-house door, and his choice of
lodging under a score of haystacks. In America, noth-

20 CONSULAR KM'KKI KXCES.

ing awaited him but that worst form of <li .-appointment
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 stran-
gers at last, where he had imagined a circle of familiar
faces. So I contented m\>elf with giving him alms,
which lie thank fully accepted, and went away with bent
shoulders and an aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning
upon his 01 hit, 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 w hid i time he had
been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as
ever, to find his way home to Ninety-second Street,
Philadelphia.

I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order,
but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it,
which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at tin
moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, fat-
tared individual came into my private room, dressed in
a -ky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trousers, both gar-
ments worn and shabby, and rather too small for his
overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary talk, he
turned out to be a country shopkeeper, (from Connect i-
cut, 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 photographs
of the little people, as well as of his wife and himself, to
the illustrious godmother. The Queen had gratefully
acknowledged the favor in a letter under the hand of
her private secretary. Now, the shopkeeper, like a great

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21

many other Americans, 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 pretence of
getting it favorably exchanged, and had disappeared im-
mediately on the ship's arrival ; so that the poor fellow
was compelled to pawn all his clothes except the remark-
ably shabby ones in which I beheld him, 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 marvellous 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 suitable 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 possibly 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 shaking his resolu-
tion. " 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

22 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

to end as I see it ! " To confess the truth, I have since
felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, :md
that there was more weight in his remon>t ranee 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. Ami even absurdity has its rights, when, as in thi-
case, it has absorbed a human being's entire nature and
purposes. I ought to have transmitted him to Mr.
liuchanan, in London, who, being a good-natured old
gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify the univer-
sal Yankee nation, mi^ht. for the joke's sake, have got
him admittance to the nneen, who had fairly laid herself
open to his visit, and has received hundreds of our coun-
trymen on infinitely slighter grounds. But I was inex-
orable, behiL' turned to Hint by the insufferable proximity
of a fool, and refused to interfere with his business in
any way except to procure him a passage home. I can
see his face of mild, ridiculous despair, at this moment,
and appreciate, better than I could then, how awfully
cruel he must have felt my obduracy to be. For years
and years, the idea of an interview with Queen Victoria
had haunted his poor foolish mind ; and now, when he
really stood on English ground, and the palace-door
haii'iinjr ajar for him, he was expected to turn back, a
pennyless and bamboozled simpleton, merely becan-e an
iron-hearted consul refused to lend him thirty shilling
(so low had his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a second-
class ticket on the rail tor London!

He visited the Consulate several times afterwards,
subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 23

of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assailing
me with the old petition at every opportunity, looking
shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tem-
pered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears,
not without a perception of the ludicrousness of his own
position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, 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 him to Her Majesty. I submit to Mr. Sec-
retary Seward that he ought to make diplomatic remon-
strances to the British Ministry, and require them to take
such order that the Queen shall not any longer bewilder
the wits of our poor compatriots by responding to their
epistles and thanking them for their photographs.

One circumstance in the foregoing incident — I mean
the unhappy storekeeper's notion of establishing his claim
to an English estate — was common to a great many
other applications, personal or by letter, with which I
was favored by my countrymen. The cause of this pe-
culiar 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, bu>t 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 orig-
inal soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor sev-
ered by the edge of the sword. Even so late as these

24 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

day.-, tin v ivm:iin entangled with our heart-strings, and
illicit often have influenced our national cause like the
tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of Kn^land had
been capable of managing so sensitive a kind of machin-
ery. It has required nothing less than the boorishness,
the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the contemptuous jeal-
ousy, the half-sagacity, insariaMy blind of one eye and
often distorted of the Other, that rharactn-i/e this strange
people, to compel us to be a great nation in our own
riirht, instead of continuing virtually, if not in name, a
province of their small island. What pains did they take
to shake us olf, and have ever since taken to keep us
wide apart from them! It might seem their folly, but
W8& really their fate. or. rather, the Providence of God,
\\ ho has doubtlett a work for us to do, in which the mas-
.-i\e materiality of the Knirlish character would have
been too ponderous a d»-ad-weight upon our progress.
And. besides, if Knirland had heen wise enough to twine
our new vigor round about her ancient strength, her
power would ha\e been too liriuly established ever to
\ield. in its due season, to the otherwise immutable law
of imperial vicissitude. The earth might then have
beheld the intolerable spectacle of a so\ « -n -i-nty and
institutions, imperfect, but indestructible.

Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so in
picious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation.
But as an individual, the Am- -rican is often conscious of
the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times
i:oiie bv, and feels a blind, pathetic tendency to wander
back airain. which makes itself evident in such wild
dreams as I have alluded to ab<>\c, about English inher-
itances. A mere coincidence of names, (the Yankee

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 25

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 bet-
ter, — rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected drawer,
has been potent enough to turn the brain of many an
honest Republican, especially if assisted by an advertise-
ment for lost heirs, cut out of a British newspaper.
There is no estimating or believing, till we come into a
position to know it, what foolery lurks latent in the
breasts of very sensible people. Remembering such
sober extravagances, I should not be at all surprised
to find that I am myself guilty of some unsuspected
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-look-
ing woman, well advanced in life, of sour aspect, exceed-
ingly homely, but decidedly New Englandish 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 Ex-
change, and all the principal business- part of Liverpool,
have long been situated ; and with considerable peremp-
toriness, the good lady signified her expectation that I
should take charge of her suit, and prosecute it to judg-
ment ; not, however, on the equitable condition of receiv-
ing half the value of the property recovered, (which, in
case of complete success, would have made both of us ten

26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

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 introduction from his Kxcellcncy the
Governor of their native State, who testified in most
-ati.-factnry terms to their social respectability. They
were claimants of a great estate in Che.-hire. and
announced them.-rlves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic-
toria,— a point, ho\\e\er. which they deemed it expe-
dient to keep in the background until their territorial
rights should be established, apprehending that the Lord
High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely to <
to a fair decision in respect to them, from a probable dis-
inclination 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 l>oth of
them to the crown of Great Uritain through superi«»r-
ity of title o\er the lirunswick line: although, l>eing
maiden ladies, like their predecessor Kli/aheth, they
could hardly have Imped to establish a lasting dyna-tv
upon the throne. It pro\cs. I trust, a certain disinter-
estedness on my part, that, encountering them l\i\\< in tin-
dawn of their fortunes, I forbore to put in a *plea for a
future dukedom.

Another visitor of the same class was a g< nth man of
refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably intel-
lectual aspect. Like many men of an adventurous ca-t.
he had so quiet a deportment, and such an apparent di<-
inclination to general sociability, that yu \\nuld ha\e
fancied him moving always al«»ng -nine peaceful and
secluded walk of life. Vet, literally from his tirM hour,
he had been tossed upon the surges of a most \aried and

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 27

•

tumultuous existence, having been born at sea, of Amer-
ican parentage, but on board pf a. Spanish vessel, and
spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, trav-
els, 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 adven-
tures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descrip-
tive sketches with such intuitive perception of the
picturesque points that the whole was thrown forward
with a positively 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-
"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 fpr deeds of
that character, which are the rule and habit of their life,
and matter of religion and conscience with them,) they
are a geritle-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,

28 CONSULAR EXTI KII.XCES.

•

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 communieation
among themselves. They lacked. both memory and fore-
sight, and were wholly destitute of government, .-
institutions, or law or rulerehip of any description, except
tin- immediate tyranny of the strongest; radically un-
tamable, moreover, save that the people of the country
managed to subject a few of the less ferocious and stupid
ones to out-door servitude amoni: 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 disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And y. t.
at times, comparing what were the lowest general tr.tit-
in his own race, with what was highest in these abomi-
nable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude that half
compelled him to recognize them as human brethren.

After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac-
quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov-
ernment, and had suffered (thi-. 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. Meanwhile,
Mnce arriving in England on his way to the I'nited
States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the
circmuMances of his birth on shipboard, and had di-
ered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29

into the world during the same voyage of the prolific ves-
sel, and that there were almost irrefragable 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 returned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a
striking resemblance to himself. As soon as he should
have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch gov-
ernment to President Pierce and the Secretary of State,
and recovered the confiscated property, he purposed to
return to England and establish his claim to the noble-
man's title and estate.

I had accepted his Oriental fantasies, (which, indeed, to
do him justice, have been recorded by scientific societies
among the genuine phenomena of natural history,) not
as matters of indubitable credence, but as allowable
specimens of an imaginative traveller'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 intrusted to my private
ear ; and as soon as I heard the first chapter, — so won-
derfully akin to what I might have wrought out of my
own head, not unpractised in such figments, — I began to
repent having made myself responsible for the future
nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins
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 gov-

80 CONSULAR EX I'i;i;i KXCES.

ernment, 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 thai his Dutch riches turned
out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and hi- Knirlish coun-
try-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 responsibility,
the general adviser and helper, sometimes finds himself
compelled to assume the guardianship of personages who,
in their own sphere, are supposed capable of superintend -
in- the highest interests of whole communities. An
elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once put the
desire and expectation of all our penniless vagabonds
into a very suitable phrase, by pathetically entreating
me to be a " father to him ; " and, simple as I sit scrib-
bling 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 j.n-i« -n-inns. It may be well for
persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in
their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propen-
sity, any unhallowed impulse, 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 strictest
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, lightened of
that wearisome burden, an immaculate name, and bliss-
fully obscure after years of local prominence, — it may
be well for such individuals to know that when they set

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31

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 bar-
riers with gigantic turbulence, and if there be an infirm
joint anywhere in the framework, it breaks madly forth,
compressing the mischief of a lifetime into a little space.

A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the Con-
sulate 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 Doctor 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 student, though overspread
with the graceful sanctity of a popular metropolitan
divine, a part of whose duty it might be to exemplify the
natural accordance between Christianity and good-breed-
ing. 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, making himself so
agreeable that his visit stood out in considerable relief
from the monotony of my daily commonplace. As I
learned from authentic sources, he was somewhat distin-
guished in his own region for fervor and eloquence in the
pulpit, but was now compelled to relinquish it temporarily
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 con-

32 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

tinental 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 arrival. He
was in some alarm about his passenger, whose luggage
remained on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been
heard or seen since the moment of his departure from tin-
Consulate. We conferred together, the Captain and I,
about the expediency of setting the police on the traces
(it any were to be found) of our vanished friend; but it
Struck me that the good Captain was singularly reticent,
and that tin-re was something a little mysterious in a few
points that he hint»-d at, rather than expressed ; so that,
scrutinizing the utVair carefully, I surmised that the inti-
macy of life on shipboard might have taught him more
about the reverend gentleman 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 per-
sonal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself,
knowing that the good fame of a thousand saintly clergy-
men would amply da/xle out any lamentable spot on a
single brother's* character. But in scornful and invidious
England, 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
generally, that this particular Doctor should cut an
ignoble figure in the police reports of the English news-
papers, except at the last necessity. The clerical body, I
tlatter 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 which it requires the better part of a week to per-
petrate; and to sum up the entire matter, I felt certain,

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 33

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 person's disappear-
ance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged gentle-
man 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 throughout 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 moustache 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 polish on a sword-
blade that has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took
him to be some American marine officer, of dissipated
habits, or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling
into the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilder-
ment of last 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 naturally do, whether from strangers or former
friends, when too evidently at odds with fortune) and re-
quested to know who my visitor might be, and what was
his business 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 contrived a more effectual one than by this simple

34 CONSULAR KXI'Klill .NCES.

and genuine difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine
must have felt that In- ha<l lost his personal identity
throuiLrh tin- mi-adventures of one little week. And. to
say the truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of
his especial ,-anctity. he had been delivered over to the
dire.-t tenij)tations of Satan. an<l proving weaker than the
of Uz, the Arch Knemy had been empowered in
him through Tophet. transforming him. in the pro-
cess, from the most decorous of metropolitan clergymen
into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded 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 hahit of a
sinner; nor can I tell prcci.-ely into what pitfall, not more
of vice than terrihle calamity, he had precipitated him-
self,— being more than satisfied to know that the out-
casts of society can sink no lower than this poor, de-
nied 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 lindinj: the occasion thrust
upon me, and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in
my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not to let
it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was un-
speakably shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I
was then to Uarn 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 to do. But I remembered

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35

the innocent faith of my boyhood, and the good old
silver-theaded 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 re-
tain a devout, though not intact nor unwavering respect
for the entire fraternity. What a hideous wrong, there-
fore, had the backslider 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 pul-
pits 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 war-
ranted 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 receive such a fulmination as the
clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive right of
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 mor-
bidly 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,

86 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

as well as the external movement and expression of tin-in
Tby voice, countenance, and gesture, were terribly exag-
gerated by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting
from the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I e\er wit-
nessed. 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 sinners, I
mean to operate upon them through sympathy, and not
rebuke. What had I to do with rebuking him? The
di-ease, long latent in his heart, had shown it>elf in a
frightful eruption on the surface of his life. That was
all ! Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for ?

To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of
Divinity, havinir 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 con-
scious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring elo-
quence, without suspecting the awful depths into whieh
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 un-
spotted. m:ikin«r the first discovery of his latent evil at
tin- judgment-seat. It has occurred to me tLat his dire
calamity, as both he and I regarded it, mi<:ht have been
the- only method by which precisely such a man as him-
self, and so situated, could be redeemed. 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

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 37

more congenial 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 generally 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
therefore 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. Neverthe-
less, 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 concerns them that they go stumbling
towards it over a hundred insurmountable obstacles, and
achieve a magnificent triumph without 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. Meanwhile, I have strayed
far away from the Consulate, where, as I was about to
say, I was compelled, in spite of my disinclination, to im-
part both advice and assistance in multifarious affairs
that did not personally 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, coroner's

38 < •< INSULAR KM'l.l;! i:\CES.

inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me in eont:i'-t
with insane people, criminals, ruined speculators, wild
adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner
of simpletons and unfortunates, in greater number and
variety than I had ever dreamed of as pertainii
America: in addition to whom there was an equivalent
multitude of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting
the ._r« •nnine Yankee article. It required great discrim-
ination not to be taken in by these last-mentioned scoun-
drels; for they knew how to imitate our national t
had been at great pains to instruct themselves as regarded
American localities, and were not readily to be caught
by a cross-examination as to the topographical features,
public institutions, or prominent inhabitants, of the p!
where they pretend'-d to belong. The best shibboleth I
ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word
"been," which the English invariably make to rhyme
with "green," and we Northerners, at least, (in accord-
ance, T think, with the custom of Shakspeare's time,) uni-
versally pronounce "bin."

All the matters that I have been treating of, howc
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 American 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 testifying 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

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39

steel-knuckles, a rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by the
captain, in the twinkling of an eye, with a 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 defence, 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 them-
selves slain their comrade in the drunken riot and confu-
sion 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 pro-
faned anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances
of murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an Eng-
lish magistrate, who generally decided that the evidence
was too contradictory 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 Parlia-
ment took up the matter, (for nobody is so humane as
John Bull, when his benevolent 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
American Secretary of State, old General Cass, responded,
with perfectly astounding ignorance of the subject, to the
effect that the statements of outrages had probably been
exaggerated, that the present laws of the United States

40 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

were quite adequate to deal with them, and that the in-
terference 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 lime (or I
presume now) in existence. I once thought of writing a

pamphlet on the suhjeet, hut quitted the ( 'onnilate h
midini: time to cllivt my purpose ; and all that phase of
my life immediately assumed 8O dreamlike a ouj-Mem-y
that I despaired of making it seem solid or tangible to
the public. And now it looks distant and dim, like
trouble -s of a century ago. The origin of the evil lay in
the character of the seamen, scarcely any of whom •»
American,, but the offscourings and refuse of all the
sci ports of the world, such stuff as piracy is made of,
together with a considerable intermixture of returning
emiir rants, and a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped
American eiti/ens. Kven with Mich material, the ships
were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found
himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of prop-
erty and human life upon his hands, and no means of
salvation except by compelling his inefficient and demor-
alized crew to hea\ier exertions than could reasonably
be required of the same number of able seamen. By
law he had been intrusted with no di-cn tion of judicious
punishment ; he therefore habitually left the whole mat-
ter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, men often of
scarcely a superior quality to the crew. Hence ensued a
in cat mass of petty outrages, unjustifiable assaults, shame-
ful indignities, and nameless cruelty, demoralizing alike
to the perpetrators and the sufferers; these enormities
fell into the ocean between the two countries, and could
be punished in neither. Many miserable stories come

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 41

back upon my memory as I write ; wrongs that were
immense, but for which nobody could be held responsible,
and which, indeed, the closer you looked into them, the
more they lost the aspect of wilful misdoing and assumed
that of an inevitable calamity. It was the fault of a sys-
tem, the misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may,
1 however, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually
with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent
with our national dignity or interests to allow the Eng-
lish courts, under such restrictions as may seem fit, a
jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board our ves-
sels in mid-ocean.

In such a life as this, the American shipmaster devel-
ops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless cour-
age, and inexhaustible resource, at the expense, it must
be acknowledged, of some of the higher and gentler
traits which might do him excellent service in maintain-
ing his authority. The class has deteriorated of late
years on account of the narrower field of selection, owing
chiefly to the diminution of that excellent body of respect-
ably 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 theories, delighting in square
and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with preju-
dices that stuck to their brains .like barnacles to a ship's
bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was a gen-
eral 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 es-
pecially disliked the interference of a consul with their

42 CONSULAR EXPfHl) N

management on shipboard; notwithstanding which I
thrust in my very limited authority at every available
opening, and did tin- utmost that lay in my power, though
with lamentably small etl'ect. toward- enforcing a better
kind of discipline. They thought, no doiil.t. (and Qfl
j)laiisihlc grounds enough. l)iit scarcely appreciating jn>l
that one little irrain ot' hard New Kngland sense, oddly
tin-own in amon^r the flimsier composition of the Con-id's
character.) that he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as
people said of him. a faneifnl rediise, could not possibly
understand anything of the ditlicnlties or the necessities
of a shipmaster's position. But tin -ir cold regard- wave
rather acceptal.le than otherwise, for it is e\c< •,-.!'
awkward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning
towards a man with whom you haye been hobnobbing
over ni.nht.

AVith tht technical details of the business of that great
Consulate, (for great it then was, though now, I fear,
wofully fallen oft', and perhaps never to be re\i\ed in
anything like its former extent.) I did not much interfere.
They could safely be left to the treatment of two as faith-
ful, 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, posse-sin;: a happy faculty of know-
ing my own interest and the public's, I quietly kept hold
of them, bein^r little inclined to open the consular doors to
a spy of the State Department or an intriguer for my own
office. The venerable Vice-Consul .Mr. IVaive, had wit-
nessed t In ve arrivals of a score of newly appointed

Consuls, shadowy and short-lived diirnitaries, and carried

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 43

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. Wilding, who has
since succeeded to the Vice- Consulship, was a man of
English integrity — not that the English are more honest
than ourselves, but only there is a certain sturdy reliable-
ness common among them, which we do not quite so
invariably manifest in just these subordinate positions —
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 Statutes, an insight into character, a tact
of management, a general knowledge of the world, and a
reasonable but not too inveterately decided preference for
his own will and judgment over those of interested people,
— these natural attributes and 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 con-
sular service of America, is too often what the English
call a "job"; that is to say, it is made on private and

44 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

personal grounds, without :i paramount eye to the public
good or the gentleman's especial fitness for the portion.
It is not too much to say, (of course allowing for a hrill-
iant exception here and there.) that an American i
is thoroughly qualified for a foreign post, nor has time t<.
make himself so, before the revolution of the political
wheel discards him from his office. Our country wrongs
itself by permitting such a system of unsuitable ap-
pointments, 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 com-
paiati\i ly -mall moment; though it is considered indis-
pensable. I presume, that a man in any private capacity
shall be thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and
operation of his business, and shall not necessarily lose
his position on having attained such knowledge. I Jut
then- are so many more important things to be thought
of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his
technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth men-
tioning.

One great part of a consul's duty, for example, should
e«»usist 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 conjunc-
tures (and one of them is now upon us) where a long-
cMablished. honored, and trusted American citixen, hold-
ing a public position under our Government in such a
town as Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 45

directing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He might
throw his own weight into the balance 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 wilfully give up all
advantages of this kind. The position is totally beyond
the attainment of an American ; there to-day, bristling 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 almost amal-
gamate 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 incumbrance ; the attentions it
drew* upon me (such as invitations to Mayor's banquets
and public celebrations of all kinds, where, to my horror,
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 hospitality — a bore.
The official business was irksome, and often painful.
There was nothing pleasant about the whole affair except
the emoluments; and even those, never too bountifully
reaped, were diminished by more than half in the second
or third year of my incumbency. All this being true, I
was quite prepared, in advance of the inauguration of

46 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES.

Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resignation. When my
successor arrived, I drew tin.- long, delightful breath which
first njade me thoroughly sensible what an unnatural life 1
had Ix-cn leading, and compelled me to admin- mjBefc
baying batded witk it so>turdily. The new-comer pro\ed
to be, a very genial and. agreeable gentleman, an F. 1 . V..
and, as lie pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern 1
Kater. — an announcement to which I n-ponded, with
similar good-humor and self-romplacency, by parading my
descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puritans.
Since our brief acquaintance-hip, my fire-eating friend has
had ample opport unities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot
and hot. in the C 'on fed crate service. For myself, as soon
as I was out of office, the retrospect began to look un
I could scarcely believe that it was I, — that tiirnre whom
they called a Consul — but a sort of Double Gauger, who
had been permitted to assume my aspect, under \\hi«
went through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show
of efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my
pmpcr 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
some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, I find my-
self 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 I ) i v i 1 1 i t y looks
wonderfully lifelike; SO do those of the Oriental adven-
turer with the visionary coronet above his brow, and the
moonstruck \i-itorof the Uiuvn. and the poor old wan-
derer, seeking his native country through English high-

CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 47

ways 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 intrusive 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 entirely
apart from my own concerns, and on which the qualities
personally proper to me could have had no bearing.
Almost the onjy real incidents, as I see them now, were
the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a liter-
ary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an
affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used
.to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking viva-
ciously and eloquently 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 mistakes,
that I understood his countrymen infinitely the better for
him, and was almost prepared to love the intensest Eng-
lishman 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 introduce his name upon my page. Bright was
the illumination of my dusky little apartment, 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 readily manageable things that I took

4'8 CONSULAR KX1T.KI KXCES.

note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my
consular servitude. Liverpool, though not \ery »1« -li^ht-
I'ul as a place of residence, is a most convenient and
admirable, point to get away from. London is only five
hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most curious
town in England, with its encompassing wall, its ancient
rows, nnd 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, in iv !,<• glanced at in a summer day or two.
The hikes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmore-
land maybe reached before dinner-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 ovcr-niirht. and Loch Lomond
betimes in the mornin«_r. Visiting these famous localities
and a irn-at many other.-. I hope that I do not compro-
mise my American patrioti-m hy acknowledirini: that I
MM often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to
the native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our
own Old Home.

LEAMINGTON SPA.

IN the course of several visits and stays of considerable
length we acquired a homelike feeling towards Leaming-
ton, and came back thither again and again, chiefly be-
cause we had been there before. Wandering and wayside
people, such as we had long since become, retain a few
of the instincts that belong to a more settled way of
life, and often prefer familiar and commonplace 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 coziest 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 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 pro-
vided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts of box
trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, and its
4

50 LEAMINGTON SPA.

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 \\ay
hack by any distinguishing individuality of your own
habitation. In the centre of the Circus is a space fenced
in with iron railing, a .-mall play-place and sylvan retreat
tor the children of the precinct, permeated by brief paths
through the fresh English grass, and shadowed by vari-
ous shrubbery; amid which, it you like, you may fancy
yourself in a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of
eye-shot from the windows of all the surroundinir h«
lint, in truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the
world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion :
the ordinary stream of life does not run through thi> little,
quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem to be
troubled with any business or outside activities I u-» d
to set them d<»wn as half-pay officers, dowagers of narrow
income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of re-
spectability, but small account, such as hang on tin;
world's skills 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 liverv-steed which
the retired captain some-times bestrode for a morning ride,
or by the red-coated postman who went his rounds twice
a day to de-liver letters, and again in the evening, ringing
a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In merely men-
tioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish still
I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of
quiet that brooded over the spot; whereas its impression

LEAMINGTON SPA. 51

upon me was, that the world had never found the way
hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhab-
itants- were the only ones who possessed the spell-word
of admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at
the time ; for I had been holding a position of public ser-
vitude, which imposed upon me (among a great many
lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being univer-
sally 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 Sara-
toga bloom only for the summer season, and offer a thou-
sand 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, mansions, 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 up all pretensions to the remedial
virtues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether its
waters are ever tasted nowadays ; but not the less does
Leamington — in pleasant Warwickshire, at the very
midmost point of England, in a good hunting neighbor-
hood, and surrounded by country-seats and castles — con-
tinue to be a resort of transient visitors, and the more
permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied, well-

52 LEAMINGTON Si \.

to-do, but not very wealthy people, such as are hardly
known among ourselves. Persons who have no country-
houses, and whose fortunes arc inadequate to a London
expenditure, find here, I suppose, 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 in-iirh-
borhood. it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to
smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn.
Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old,
it' we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it
existed as a small village of that< -bed houses, clustered
round a priory; and it would still have been precisely
such a rural village, but for a certain Doctor Jepl
who lived within the memory of man, and who found out
the mairic well, and foresaw what fairy wealth miirht be
made to flow from it. A public garden has been laid out
aloni: the margin of the Learn, and called the Jephson
Garden, in honor of him who created the prosperity of
his native spot A little way within the garden-gate
there is a circular temple of Grecian architecture, be-
neath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the
good Doctor, very well executed, and representing him
with a face of fussy activity and benevolence: just the
kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the for-
tunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to bliirht
his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation.

Tin- Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most other
English pleasure-grounds; for, aided by their moist cli-
mate and not too fervid sun, the laiid.M-ape-iran!'
excel in converting: flat or tamo surfaces into attr.i
scenery, chiefly through the skilful arrangement of trees

LEAMINGTON SPA. 53

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, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense
entanglements, pervaded by woodland paths ; and emerg-
ing from these pleasant glooms, we come upon a breadth
of sunshine, where the green sward — so vividly green
that it has a kind of lustre in it — is spotted with beds
of gemlike flowers. Rustic chairs and benches' are scat-
tered 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
practise 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
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 labyrinthine maze, formed of an intri-
cacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself in which,

54 LEAMINGTON SPA.

a man might wander for hours inextricil.lv within a circuit
of only a few yards. It seemed to me a sad emblem of
the mental and moral perplexities in which we someti
go astray, petty in scope, yet large enough to entangle a
lifetime, and In-wilder us with a weary movement, hut no
genuine progress.

The Leam — the; »• hijrh complectioned Learn," as
Drayton calls it — after drowsing across the principal
street of the town In -neath a handsome bridge, skirts
along the margin of the Garden without any percept il.lt;
How. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the laziest
riv.-r in the world, but now assign that amiable distinc-
tion 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
characteristics of ii .-.ml is disagreeable ncitl,

sight nor smell. Certainly, this river is a perfect feature
uf that gentle pictures<rueness 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
dure than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly
over iu On the Garden-side it is bordered by a shad
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
tomlistones.

The business portion of the town clusters about the
banks of the Learn, and is naturally densest around the
well to which the modern settlement owes its exist.
Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, the furni-
ture dealers, the ironmongers, and all the heavy and

LEAMINGTON SPA. 55

homely establishments 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 physiog-
nomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid as
those of London, 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 spacious 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 sumptuousness of arrangement. Then, on
the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, en-
closed within that separate domain of high stone fence
and embowered shrubbery which an Englishman so loves
to build and plant around his abode, presenting to the
public only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive
winding away towards the half-hidden mansion. Wheth-
er 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
finery : it is pretentious, though not glaringly so ; it has
been built, with malice aforethought, as a place of gentil-
ity and enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses
look, and comfortable as they often are, there is a name-
less something about them, betokening that they have not

56 LEAMINGTON SPA.

grown out of 1m man li carts, but are the creations of a
skilfully applied human intellect: no man has reared any
one of them, whether stately or humble, to be his life-
long residence, wherein to brini: up his children, who are
to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived lodjrinir-
houses, one and all, — the best as well as the shabbiest
of them, — and therefore inevitably lack some nameless
property that ;i home should have. This was the case
with our own little snuggery in Lansdownc ( "irni.s, as
with all the rest; it had not grown out of anybody's in-
dividual need, hut was built to let or sell, and was there-
fore like a ready-made garment, — a tolerable fit, but
only tolerable.

All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are
adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names that
I have found anywhere in Knirland. except, perhaps, in
Hath, wh'u-h is the great metropolis of that second-class
gentility with which watering-places are chiefly popu-
lated. Lansdowne Crest-nit. Lansdowne Circus, Lans-
downe Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street, Claren-
don Street, the Upper and Lower Parade: such are a
few of the designations. Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen
name for the principal street, alonii which the population
of the idle town draws itself out for daily review and dis-
play. 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 ali«rhtin<r from their carriages at the
principal shop-doors; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian
oilicers drawn alon«r in l>ath-chairs ; the comely, rather
than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom,
which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milk-

LEAMINGTON SPA. 57

maid than for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with
frogged surtouts and a military air ; the nursemaids and
chubby children, 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 authenticity 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 Leamington,
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 dowager, 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.

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which
English ladies retain their personal 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 development 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.

58 LEAMI.ViTON SPA.

When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When ^!n
sits down, it is on a great round space of her Maker's
footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever mo\<-
her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of
her personality, to such a degree that yon 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 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 dan-
gers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe.
"Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive,
or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has
the effect of a seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ;
for, while you a — un yourself that there is no real dan-
ger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be
her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the
effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks
tenfold — 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 courage, fortitude,
and strength of character than our women of similar age,
or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Mor-
ally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society, and in the
common routine of social affairs, and would be found
powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might
call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid
which she has JJTOWII up.

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and
even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a

LEAMINGTON SPA. 59

ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably
displays there, and all the other corresponding develop-
ment, 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 maidenly
reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American
girls often fail to adorn themselves 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 much more than he ever bargained for ! Is it not a
sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial bond can-
not 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 celebra-
tion of a Silver Wedding at the end of twenty-five years,
in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that cor-
poreal growth of which both parties have individually
come into possession since they were pronounced one
flesh?

The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Learning-

60 LEAMINGTON SPA.

ton lay in rural walks about the iH'iirhhorhood. and in
jaunts to places of note and interest, which are particu-
larly almmlant in that region. The hiirh-road- are made
pleasant to the traveller by a border of tree*. an<l d
afford him the hospitality of a way-ide hench hcneath a
comfortable shade. lint a fre>h»-r delight is to he found
in the foot-paths, which «:o wandering away from style t<.
si vie. alon;i hedges, and across broad fields, and through
wooded park-, leading you to little hamlets of thatched
cottages, ancient, solitary farm-houses, picturesque old
mills, streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unex-
pected, yet strangely familiar features of English scenery
tha't Tennyson -hows us in his idyls and eclogues. These
bypaths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural
life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusive-
ness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead him;
for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much tin-
property of the public as the dusty high-road itself, and
even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably ex-
ceeds 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
fanner would plough across any such path, and obliter-
ate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn ; but
here it is protected by law, and still more by the sacred-
ness that inevitably springs up, in this soil, alonjr 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 ftC00M to which is from
Lovers' Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on a

LEAMINGTON SPA. 61

high hill-top, whence there is a view of Warwick Castle,
and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, though be-
dimmed with English mist. This particular foot-path,
however, is not a remarkably 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 con-
tiguous 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 an-
tiquity 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 framework 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 earth-
ern tiles ;. others (more decayed and poverty-stricken)
with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation
of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What es-
pecially 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 honey-comb.

Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by

62 LKAMINGTON SPA.

a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, as
we should call it) of small nld <•<>: linst

another, with their thatched roofs forming a single con-
tiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of the
poorest order of rustic laborers: and the narrow precincts
of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of
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 se!
amon^r individuals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity between
families, where human life was crowded and massed into
such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, not
to look beyond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural
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 gardens were chockfull, not of esculent vegetables,
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 representa-
tion of Warwick Castle, made of oyster- hells. 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 efforts with its verdure, flow-
ers, moss, lichens, and the green tilings that grew out of
the thatch. Through some of the open doom-ays 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

LEAMINGTON SPA. 63

these domestic matters, an old woman rushed wildly out
of one of the gates, upholding a shovel, on which she
clanged and 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.

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 of the church was of very modest dimensions,
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 let-
ters, — 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

64 LEAMINGTON SI A.

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-* -hun-h. It is probably the
worshipping-place of no more di.-tin^uished a congrega-
tion than the farmers and j eas mtrv \\ho inhabit the
houses and cottages which I have just descrilx-d. Had
the lord of the manor heen one of tin- parishioners, ti
would have been an eminent pew near the < -ham •<•!, walled
hiirh about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed by a
fireplace of its own, and distinguished by hereditary tab-
lets and escutcheons on the enclosed 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 head-stones, none of which were very old, so far
as was discoverable by the dates; some, indeed, in so
ancient a cemetery, 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 grave-
stones, that flourish 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. 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 atmos-
phere,— so soon do the drizzly rains and constant mois-
ture corrode the surface of marble or freestone. Sculp-
tured edges lose their sharpness in a year or two : Yellow

LEAMINGTON SPA. 65

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 legible inscriptions on them,
than in any English churchyard.

And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it gen-
erally is to the long remembrance of departed people, has
sometimes 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
has scarcely time to be dried away before another 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 ger-
minate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of
the English sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two years,
or many years, behold the complete inscription —

aj>eti) tljr

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 church-
5

66 LEAMINGTON SPA.

yard, in Cheshire, and thought that Nature must needs
have had M 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." Perhaps the proverbial
phrase just quoted may have had its origin in the natural
phenomenon 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 tin-
eaves would fall u]K>n it. It seemed as if the inmate of
that «rrave 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 1 i
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, per-
haps because we had to re-create the inscription 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 head-stone 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

LEAMINGTON SPA. 67

Treeo, I think, — and he died in 1810, at the age of sev-
enty-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 question-
able whether anybody will ever be at the trouble of de-
ciphering 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 cen-
tury 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 in all the
neighboring country, at the distance of every two or three
miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, but be-
cause they are so common and characteristic. The vil-
lage of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk of Leam-
ington, 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

68 LI;A.MIX<;TOX SPA.

an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surround! i it:
the village-green, on one side of which stands the church,
with its square Norman town- and hattlements, while
close adjoining is tin- \ ir.-irajn-, made picturesque 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 roots, which Lri\e them tin- 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 irregular, through which
a hygone age is peeping 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 encompassed by a gray stone fence
that looks as ancient as the church itself. In front of the
tower, on the villaire-irrecn, is a yew-tree of incalculable
age, with avast circumference of trunk, but a very scanty
head of tbliatre ; though its boughs still keep some of the
vitality which perhaps was in its early prime w hen 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 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 opening 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

LEAMINGTON SPA. 69

made it out to be the village-stocks : a public institution
that, in its day, had doubtless hampered mjany a pair of
shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent churchyard.
It is not to be supposed, however, that this old-fashioned
mode of punishment is still in vogue among the good
people of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has anti-
quarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks
out of some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on their
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 residence in England.
But while you are still 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-
cliffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in Bloody
Mary's time, and that CromwelFs troopers broke off the
stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning
in your face. So, too, with the immemorial 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

70 LEAMINGTON SPA.

centuries, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty
generations of the Whitnash people can supply such
knowledge!

And. Mftcr all, what a weary life it must have been for
th<- old tree! Tedious beyond imagination! Such. I
think, is the final impression on the mind of an American
vi-itnr. when his delight at finding something permanent
lupins to yield to his Western love of change, and he
becomes 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 ye.-terday or ever so long ago walks the
villas—tree! to-day, and chooses the same wile that he
married a hundred years since, and must be buried aLrain
to-morrow under the same kindred dust that has already
cM\eml him half a score of times. The stone threshold
of his cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed fooi>
BhuiHin.Lr over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to
that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our r< M-
less countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend
always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." Bather
than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a vil-
latre-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the
parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray
Norman church, let us welcome whatever chanire may
come, — ehanire of place, social customs, political institu-
tions, modes of worship, — trusting, that, if all present
things shall vanish, they will but make room for better
systems, and W a higher type of man to clothe his life
in them, and to fling them off in turn.

LEAMINGTON SPA. 71

Nevertheless, while an American willingly 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 recognizes the tendency of these
hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles,
in the race and rivalry of improvement. 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 subsequent 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 loner

o

time, although the thatch, the quaint gables, and the old
oaken framework of the others diffused an air of antiquity
over the whole assemblage. The church itself was un-
dergoing repair and restoration, which is but another
name for change. Masons were making patch-work on
the front of the tower, and wTere sawing a slab of stone
and piling up bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or pos-
sibly to enlarge the ancient edifice by an additional aisle.
Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the church-
yard, long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two thirds of
which profundity were discolored by human decay, and
mixed up with crumbly bones. What this excavation
was intended 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.

72 LEAMINGTON SPA.

The article which I am writing has taken its own
course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country
churches; whereas I had purposed to att< -mj.t a descrip-
tion of some of the many old towns — Warwick. COT
try, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon — which lie within
an easy scope of Leamington. And still another church
presents itself to my remembrance. It is that of llatton,
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 con-
tiguity of roofs, (as in most English villages, however
small,) but is merely an ancient neighborhood of farm-
houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within its
own precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of
orchards. harvest-fields, barns, Stacks, and all manner of
rural plenty. It seemed to be a community of old set-
tlers, 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-
irate. hospitably open, but still impressing m«- with a sense
of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some
shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes there
may have heen a denser and more populous settlement,
styled Hatton, which I never reached.

Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one
that crossed it at riirht, 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

LEAMINGTON SPA. 73

at the same measurement, and have even a greater
family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I approached,
the bell of the tower (a remarkably deep-toned bell, con-
sidering 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 desti-
tute of ivy. The body of the edifice, unfortunately, (and
it is an outrage which the English churchwardens are
fond of perpetrating,) has been newly covered with a
yellowish plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the
aspect of antiquity, excepf upon the tower, which wears
the dark gray hue of many centuries. The chancel- win-
dow is painted with a representation of Christ upon the
Cross, and all the other windows are full of painted or
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
inheritance of this branch of Art, revived from med-
iaeval 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 churchyard round about, and can
scarcely have drawn much spiritual benefit from any

74 LEAMINGTON SPA.

truths that he contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It
struck me as a rare example (even where examples are
numerous) of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormous
scholar, great in the classic tongues, and in<- vital >ly con-
verting his own simplest vernacular into a learned lan-
guage, should have been set up in this homely pulpit,
and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to
whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have
spoken one available 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, th£ 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 child-
hood. This was a bewildering, yet very delightful emo-
tion, fluttering about me like a faint summer-wind, ami
lilling my imagination with a thousand half-remembran-
ces, which looked as vivid as sunshine, 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 precon-
ceptions 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 recollec-
tion in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and
fainter impress through several descents, to my own. I

LEAMINGTON SPA. 75

felt, indeed, like the stalwart progenitor in person, return-
ing to the hereditary haunts after more than two hundred
years, and finding the church, the hall, the farm-house,
the cottage, hardly changed during his long absence, —
the same shady by-paths and hedge-lanes, the same veiled
sky, and green lustre of the lawns and fields, — while his
own affinities for these things, a little obscured by disuse,
were reviving at every step.

An American is not very apt to love the English peo-
ple, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. I
fancy that they would value our regard, and even recip-
rocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to
them in spite of all rebuffs- ; but they are beset by a curi-
ous and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it
were, to keep up what they seem to consider a whole-
some bitterness of feeling between themselves and all
other nationalities, especially that of America. They
will never confess it; nevertheless, it is as essential a
tonic to them as their bitter ale. Therefore — and pos-
sibly, too, from a similar 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. But it requires no long residence to
make him love their island, and appreciate it as thor-
oughly as they themselves do. For my part, I used to
i wish that we could annex 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 bene-
ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are
getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated, un-
substantial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John

76 LEAMINGTON SPA.

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 l>e
tin- earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. Hereto-
fore Providence has obviated such a result by timely
intermixtures of alien races with the old English stock ;
M» that each successive conquest of England has proved a
victory by the revivification and improvement of its native
manhood. Cannot America and England hit upon some
st IM me to secure even greater advantages to both nations?

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 sober-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 way-side ale-houses, and
through a hamlet of modern aspect, — and runs straight
into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. The battle-
mented turrets of the castle, embowered 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 stands St. John's School-House, a
picturesque old edifice of stone, with four peaked 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

78 ABOUT WARWICK.

expect to meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of
past generations, peeping forth from their infantile an-
tiquity into the strangeness of our present life. I find a
peculiar charm in these long-established 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,
:m<l often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved «li-
tion of the same old grammar or arithim tic. The new-
tin i.Lr led notions of a Yankee school-committee would
madden many a pedagogue, and shake down the roof of
many a time-honored seat of learning, in the motln-r-
country.

At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to
follow up the other road from Leamington, which was the
one that 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 wooded 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 para-
pet is a balustrade carved out of freestone, into the soft-
substance of which a multitude of persons have engraved
thi'ir names or initials, many of them now illegible, while
others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh green
moss. These tokens indicate 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
AVar.vick Castle, uplifting itself among stately trees, and
n-aring its turrets high above their loftiest branches. We
can scarcely think the scene real, so completely do those
machicolated towers, the long line of battlements, the

ABOUT WARWICK. 79

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 Shakspeare's Avon,
and often, no doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions)
were dreaming 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 distinctness 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, mirac-
ulously 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, ap-
proaching 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 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 neces-
sarily gathers about itself, in its hereditary abode, and in

80 ABOUT WARWICK.

the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten i
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. rej»» atinj a
guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall
of itfe poetic glamor and witchcraft by the mere tone in
which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discov-
ery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It
is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, ga/ii..
Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower in the dim Knirlish
sunshine above, and in the placid Avon below, and .-till
keep them as thoughts in your own mind, than climh to
their summits, or touch even a stone of their actual sub-
stance. They will have all the more reality for you, as
stalwart relics of immemorial time, if you are reverent
enough t«» 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. Che-ter itself, most anti-in*
of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural
shapes than many of the building* that border this str< « t.
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
door-ways open upon a sunken floor; their piojcctini:
stories peep, as it were, over one another's shoulders, and
ri.-e into a multiplicity of peaked gables: they have curi-
ous windows, breaking nut irregularly all over the house,
some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, open-
ing lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes

ABOUT WARWICK. 81

o/ lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edi-
fices (a visible oaken framework, showing 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 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 over-
grown baby-houses, in which nobody should be expected
to encounter the serious realities of either birth or death.
Besides, originating nothing, we leave no fashions for
another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have grown
antique.

Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick 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 vener-
able structure above it, and admits us into the heart of
the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a mili-
tary display. A regiment of Warwickshire militia, prob-
ably 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 cognizance of the Warwick earldom
from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy young
men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly, faces of English
rustics, looking 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 everywhere about the streets, and sentinels
were posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant,
6

82 ABOUT WAIiV.

with a great key in his hand, (big enough to ha\e bee<n
the key of the castle's main entrance when the gate was
thickest and heaviest,) apparently setting a jinard. Thus,
centuries alter feudal times are past, we lind warriors
still jrathcrin^ under the old castle-walls, and commanded
by a feudal lord. juM as in the days of the Kinir-Maker,
who, no douM. often mustered his retainers in tjie same
market-place where I heheld this modern regiment.

Tin- interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned
aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it ;
and the Ili^h Street has shops with modern plate-glass,
and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few pro-
jections to hanir a thought or sentiment upon as it' an
architect of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so
far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough
to stand unabashed in an American street; but behind
these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack <>;
pression, 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 Kn^land itself. What seems
new in it is chiefly a skilful 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 -treii«:th from their deep and im-
memorial 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 hack ;
and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has
taken root in his being, and has irrown 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 suiliciently comfortable

ABOUT WARWICK. 83

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 disinter-
ested and unincumbered-' observer.

When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or in-
stitution, appears in its pristine form, without any attempt
at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an American
cannot but admire the picturesque effect produced by the
sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried
state of society into the actual present, of which he is
himself a part. We need not go far in Warwick without
encountering an instance of the kind. Proceeding west-
ward 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 speci-
men of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in
which some of the finest old houses in England are
constructed ; the front projects into porticos and vesti-
bules, and rises into many gables, some in a row,
and others crowning semi-detached portions of the struc-
ture ; the windows mostly open on hinges, but show a
delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a multi-
plicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own
will, or, at least, without any settled purpose of the archi-
tect. The whole affair looks very old, — so old, indeed,

84 ABOUT WARWICK.

tint the front bulges forth, as if t lie timber framework
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 sys-
tem of this aged house, that you feel confident that there
may be safe shelter yet, arid 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 whi< -h
you may detect the glistening of a silver badge represent-
ing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated worthies
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 older period than
the charitable institution of 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 unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant
abodes. In many in-tances, the old monks had chosen
the sites of their domiciles so well, and built them on
such a broad system 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 per-
haps intended, like other men, to establish his household

ABOUT WARWICK. 85

gods in the niches whence he had thrown down the im-
ages 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 religion. At all
events, there is still a superstitious 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 Elizabeth, was a nervous man, and
subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell ; but
it is certain that he speedily rid himself 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 religious precinct to a charitable use,
endowing 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
Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, or
others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish

B6 ABOUT WARWICK.

dormitories and haunt the tune-darkened corridors and

galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fa-hioned
comfort, wearing the old-fa-i.ioncd cloaks, ami himii.-hin;:
tin- identical silver badges which the Karl of Leicester
;ja\etothe original twelve. He is said to have been a
had man in his da v ; hut he has succeeded in prolonging
one good deed into what was to him a distant future.

On the projecting siory, over the arched entrance, there
is the date. K,71, and several coats-of-arms, either the
Earl's or those of his kindred, and immediately above the
door-way a stone sculpture of the Bear and Ragged Staff.

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quad-
rangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed the
tral part of a great family residence in Queen Elizabeth's
time, and earlier. There can hardly be a more perfect
specimen of such an establishment than Leicester's Hos-
pital. 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 hiirh, steep
roofs and sharp Cables, look into it from antique windows,
and through open corridors and galleries 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, coinpr
such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essen-
tial for the dailv observance of the community: " £2)011-

or all i«rn" — "jFrar CJoft" — "Jfjonor tJjc

liillfl " — " ILOUC t!)C ErOtljtrJjOOu' " ; and airain.
as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repeti-
tion among a household of aged people soured with the

ABOUT WARWICK. 87

hard fortune of their previous lives, — " JJc fetlttllg
affCCttOUCtt Olte tO anottytr." One sentence, over a
door communicating with the Master's side of the house,
is addressed to that dignitary, — " fjfyt tfjtlt tlllftlj
OtoCU mm must ftC JUSt" All these are charac-
tered in old English letters, and form part of the elabo-
rate ornamentation 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
colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle 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 cognizance of the
Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over
again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full-
length 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 benefi-
cence 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 be-
tween our age and Queen Elizabeth's. So I passed into
the quadrangle, and found it quite solitary, except that a
plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it,

88 ABOUT WARWICK.

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 tin hain't 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 Warwick, as is commemorated
by an inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It
is a very spacious and barn-like apart in rut, with a brick
floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which are oaken
beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in the duski-
ness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splen-
did appearance, when it was decorated 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-room, and as
a cellar for the brethren's separate allotments of coal.

The old lady here left me to myself, and 1 returned
into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very handsome,
in its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly
comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, win n
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

ABOUT WARWICK. 89

of the Master; and looking into the window, (as the old
woman, at no request of mine, had specially informed 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 modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the
midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to
me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing
himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking
out their imperfection with the results of modern ingenu-
ity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On
the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark
oak panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a
curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within,
and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something —
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, comfortable, 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 agreeable 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 buried that

90 ABOUT WARWI- K.

very day, so that the whole establishment could not con-
veniently be shown me. She kindly invited me, how-
ever, to visit the apartment occupied by IK T Inisband and
IK rself ; so I followed her up tin- Miiti<jiie staircase, along
the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor. \\ IK -re
.-at an old man in a long blur ^annent, who arose and
saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very quirt
person, and yet had -a look of travel and advuitinv. and
gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palm< -r
of ancirnt times, who might likewise have worn a similar
costume. The little room was carpeted and neatly f'ur-
nMied ; 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
Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit
all the particulars of their housekeeping, 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 \\a- a washing and bathing apparatus, — a conven-
ience (judging 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 some-
body 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 elbow 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 before. Her nimble tongue ran

ABOUT WARWICK. 91

over the whole system of life in the hospital. The breth-
ren, 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 to-
gether at a great table, they could manage their little
household matters as they liked, buying their own din-
ners, 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 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, moreover, had plenty of small occu-
pations 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
improvement, 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 establish-
ment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned
magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's gar-
ment, 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 manners 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

92 ABOUT WARWICK.

already capable of talking like a guide-book about the
hi-tory. ;mti<|iiiti< -s, and present condition of the charity.
He informed me that the twelve brethren an- select.-d
from among old soldiers of good character, whose other
resources must not exceed an income of live pounds;
thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose half-pay
would of course be more than that amount They rt-<
from the hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, be-
sides their apartments, a garment of tine him* cloth, an
animal abundance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen-
lire; so that. con.Milerini: the class from which they are
taken, they may well reckon themselves among the for-
tunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested
with political rights, acmiiring a vote for member of Par-
liament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood.
On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or
conduct, they are suhjcrt to a supervision which the Ma-
ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying.
\verr he so inclined ; hut the military restraint under
which they have spent the active portion of their lives
makes it easier tor them to endure the dome.- tic discipline
here imposed upon their aire. The porter bore his te-ti-
mony (whatever were its value) to their heinjy as con-
tented and happy as such a set of old people could
possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time
in hurnishinir 1 1 u ii -si her badges, and were as proud of
them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by-t lie-
by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen
Anne's time, are the very same that decoraud the orig-
inal twelve brethren.

I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend
the porter. He appeared to take a genuine interest in

ABOUT WARWICK. 93

the peculiarities 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 observation were confined to external
things, but, so far, had a sufficiently extensive scope.
He led me up the staircase and exhibited 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 apartments of the twelve
brethren; and pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak,
done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly vis-
ible 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, rep-
resenting — 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
sympathy, 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 half-way up were fox-
glove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of grass, that
had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone

94 ABOUT WARWICK.

foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English
landscape, with many a church-spire and 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-en yrlopini:
the town with its high-shouldering wall, so that all tin-
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 Leb-
anon were there, — a growth of trees in which the War-
wick family take an hereditary pride. The two highest
t<>\\ers 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-cov-
ered, (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 Cymbeline is said to have founded in the year
ONI 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 exploits, and some of those of the
Round Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill.

ABOUT WARWICK. 95

For perhaps it was in the landscape now under our eyes
that Posthumus wandered with the King's daughter, the
sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the ten-
derest and womanliest woman that Shakspeare 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 over-
cast, 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 remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of
the garden-ground is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and
permeated by gravel- walks, 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 appropriated 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

90 ABOUT WARWICK.

the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for
the old gentlemen themsehes. they put me queerly in
mind of flu- Salem Custom-House, and the \enerahle.
personages whom I found so quietly at anchor then-.

The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the
qaadraagle, fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at
once stately and homely. It can hardly have undergone
any perceptible change within three centuries; 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 gar-
dener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his ru-ty
shears and took his departure. The present Master's
name is Harris; he is a descendant of the founder's
family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergy-
man of the Established Church, as the regulations of the
hospital remiiiv him to be. I know not what are his
oilicial emoluments; but, according to all English pre-
cedent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held
directly tor the behoof of those who administer it, and
perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nominal
beneficiaries; and, in the case before us, the tuel\«-
brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master
is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the t\\« l\e
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 charge bear all
po.^ihk- tokens of being tended and cared for as sedu-
lously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his
own. with a daughter hustling 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

ABOUT WARWICK. 97

Master's position, has an opportunity to lead, — linked to
time-honored customs, welded in with an ancient sys-
tem, never dreaming of radical change, and bringing all
the mellowness 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
appreciate 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 kitchen, 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 semicircular oaken screen, or rather,
an arrangement of heavy 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 excellently carved in oak, now
black with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The pon-
derous 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 fireplace
being positively so immense that I could compare it to
nothing but the city gateway. Above its cavernous open-
ing were crossed two ancient halberds, the weapons, pos-
sibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the
Low Countries; and elsewhere on the walls were dis-
played several muskets, which some of the present in-
mates of the hospital may have levelled against the
French. Another ornament of the mantel-piece was a
7

98 ABOUT WARWICK.

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 Kenilwnrth
Castle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countnman
of our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capahlc
of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen-tin •-
light 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 tin- customary
allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that
foam inn 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 Elizabeth's age than those degenerate times.
The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren.
In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be
cooked hero, and eat them in their own parlors; but after
a certain hour, the irreat hearth is cleared and swept, and
the old men assemble 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, me-
tliinks 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 tobacco-pipe
would put him in friendly relations with his venerable
household; and then we can limey him instructing them
by pithy apothegms and religious texts which were iir>t
uttered here by some Catholic priest and have impreg-

ABOUT WARWICK. 99

nated 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 collection, 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 figure-head, 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 them-
selves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if
the shriek of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick
station, should ever so faintly invade their ears ! Move-
ment 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 for an American to find his way
thither, and behold a piece of the sixteenth century set
into our prosaic times, and then to depart, and think of
its arched door-way as a spell-guarded entrance which
will never be accessible or visible to him any more.

Not far from the market-place of Warwick 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 Christopher Wren ; but I thought it very

striking, 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

100 ABOUT WARWICK.

antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazinir
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 the 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 solemn church ; although I have
seen an old-fash imied 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 window of aneient painted glass, as perfectly pre-
served as any that I remember seeing in England, and
remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monu-
ments 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 bene-
factor of the hospital, reclines at full length on the tablet
of one of these tombs, side by side with his Countess, —
not AmyHobsart, 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 poisoning the Earl him-
self. Be that as it may, both figures, and especially the
Earl, look like the very types of ancient Honor and Con-

ABOUT WARWICK. 101

jugal Faith. In consideration of his long-enduring kind-
ness 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 ver-
dicts 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 magnificent memo-
rial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War-
wick 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 life-like 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 the chapel fell down and broke open the stone
coffin in which he was buried ; and among the fragments
appeared the anciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with
the color scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little
sunken, but in other respects looking as natural as if he
had died yesterday. But exposure to the atmosphere
appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed process of
de«ay 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

1

102 ABOUT WARWICK.

adornment; and thus, with a chapel and a ponderous
tomb built on purpose 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 lovt . Tin -re seems to be
a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when
they have been over-careful to render them magnifict nt
and impregnable, — as 'Witness the builders of the Pyra-
mids, .ind Hadrian, Augustus, and the Scipios, and most
other personages whose mausoleums have been conspicu-
ous 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 characters 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 Parliamentary War ;
and they have recently (that is to say, within a century)
built a l»urial-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 ac-
commodation 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
regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as vet
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 made
up, but whether earldoms and all manner of lordships

ABOUT WARWICK. 103

will not have faded out of England long before those
many generations shall have passed from the castle to
the vault. I hope not. A titled and landed aristocracy,
if anywise an evil and an incumbrance, 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 society, ought to be the last man
to quarrel with what affords him so much gratuitous en-
joyment. 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 irrever-
ent effort of violence, 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, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ;
and that immense catastrophe (though I 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 me-
morial of Warwick he had better go to an Old Curi-
osity 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

104 ABOUT WARWICK.

far more exquisite fancy than the present one. in matters
of personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put
upon a drawing-room tahle, a mantel-piece, or a what-
not. The shop in question is near the East Gate, but is
hardly to be found without careful -earch, lu-in<r denoted
only by the name of " REDFI -:i;\." painted not very con-
spicuously in the top-light of the door. Immediately on
entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of old rul>-
bish and valuables, ancient armor, historic portraits. el>ony
cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks hid«-ous old
china, dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi-
cence, — a thousand objects of strange aspect, 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 stfcwn about that we
can scarcely move without overthrowing some great curi-
osity 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 together at
great cost ; but the real treasures of the establishment
lie in secret repositories, 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 dag-
ger that killed the Duke of Buckingham, (all of which
1 have1 seen.) or any other almost incredible thinjr. mijrht
make its appearance. Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems,
jewelled goblets, Venetian wine-Lrlasses. ( which hurst
when poison is poured into them, and therefore must not
be used for modern wine-drinking,) jasper-handled knives,

ABOUT WARWICK. 105

painted Sevres tea-cups, — 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 fantastically shaped, and got
it at all the more reasonable rate because there hap-
pened to be no legend attached to it. I could supply
any deficiency of that kind at much less expense than
regilding the spoon!

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
peculiarities ; for the country, most of the way, is a suc-
ccs^^n of the gentlest swells and subsidences, affording
\vi»U; 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 encoun-
ter almost from mile to mile at home, but of which the
Old Country is utterly destitute ; or it would smile in our
fan's 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 features is often to be found in an English scene.
Tin- 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 American
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,

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 107

transmitted from father to son, trodden often by memora-
ble feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery by old ac-
quaintanceship with civilized eyes. The wildest things
in England are more than half tame. The trees, for
instance, 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 tree ; 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
kindred with the race of man. Somebody or other has
known them from the sapling upward ; and if they en-
dure long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed
and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old fami-
lies, 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 beautiful a shape as those
that overhang our village street ; and as for the redoubta-
ble English oak, there is a certain John Bullism in its
figure, a compact rotundity of foliage, a lack of irregular
and various outline, that make it look wonderfully like a
gigantic cauliflower. Its leaf, too, is much smaller than
that of most varieties of American 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

108 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

a tree at the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee
patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must be
owned that the trees and other objects of an English
landscape take hold of the observer by numl >< H. -s 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, 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 sup-
porting themselves by the old tree's abundant strength.
"We call it a paraMtical vegetation; but, if the phrase
imply any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this
beautiful affection and relationship which exist in Eng-
land between one order of plants and another: the strong
tree being always ready to give support to the trailing
shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own heart,
it it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, repaying
its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of beauty, and
adding Corinthian irnu-e 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 out-
last the longevity of the oak, and, if the woodman per-
mitted, 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 hedges in our own

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 109

soil, but might as well set out figs or pine-apples and ex-
pect 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 Eng-
land, for the sake of their simple beauty and home-like
associations, and which we have ever since been cultivat-
ing 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 neces-
sity of bringing them over sea and making them heredi-
tary 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
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

110 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

of fern grows in another crevice; a deep, soft, verdant
moss spreads itself along the top and over all the availa-
ble inequalities of the fence ; and where nothing else will
grow, lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones and va-
riegate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red.
Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters almijr the base
of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its out-
line ; and in due time, as the upshot of these apparently
aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the benefi-
cent Creator of all things, working through His hand-
maiden whom we call Nature, has deigned to mingle a
eh arm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an in-
stitution as a boundary fence. The clown who wrought
at it little dreamed what fellow-laborer he had.

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. 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 minuteness 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 picturesque-
ness 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 speaking
of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in England, except

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. Ill

among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and the rough and
hilly countries to the north of it. Hedges there were
along my road, however, and broad, level fields, rustic
hamlets, and cottages of ancient date, — from the roof of
one of which the occupant was tearing away the thatch,
and showing what an accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldi-
ness, roots of weeds, families of mice, swallows' nests, and
hordes of insects, had been deposited there since that old
straw was new. Estimating its antiquity from these
tokens, Shakspeare himself, in one of his morning ram-
bles out of his native 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 themselves to be visible from the high-road.
In short, I recollect nothing specially remarkable 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 delightful 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 sum-
mer-day) that he was quite warm enough. And after
all, there was an unconquerable freshness in the atmos-
phere, 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

112 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED* WOMAX.

and temperature. No doubt, I could not have enjoyed it
BO exquisitely, except that there must be still latent in us
Western wanderers (even after an absence of two < •• -n-
t urics 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 it-
more lavish smile-.

The spire of Shakspeare's church — the Church of
the I Inly Trinity — begins to show itself among the trees
at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see the
shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-lookim:
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 Shakspeare's
jrenius were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial
splendors in the town where he was born. Here and
there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed
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, 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 to\\
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 proclaiming a reward for the most vener-
able. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several
theories : as, for example, that our new towns are un-
wholesome for age and kill it off unseasonably ; or that

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 113

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 other
contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not crept
into these antiquated English 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 Shakspeare's birthplace, which is almost a
smaller and humbler house than any description can pre-
pare 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 edi-
fice with which Shakspeare had anything to do is hardly
large enough, in the basement, to contain the butcher's
stall that one of his descendants kept, and that still re-
mains 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 rap-
ping 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
pavement 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 usage, for

114 RECOLLECTIONS OF A Ul-TKD WuMAN.

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 l>een imperfectly
trodden down a-jain. The room is whitewashed and very
clean, but wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and
such as the most poetical imagination would find it diili-
cult to idealize, la 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 im-
mense passage-way for the smoke, through which Shak-
speare 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 lonLr-extinguished embers used to be. A
glowing fire, even if it covered only a quarter part of
the hearth, niiirht .-till 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
at -cope, no good retirement, but old and young, huddling
together (heck l»y j<>ul. What a hardy plant was Sliak-
speare's genius, how fatal its development, since it could
not be blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought
human nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous
earth alxnit his' roots.

Thence I was ushered up-stairs to the room in which
Shakspeare is supposed to have been born; though, it
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-

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 115

taining a great many small, irregular panes of glass.
The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fit-
ting together with little neatness ; .the naked beams and
rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the
original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no evi-
dence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we
have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space
enclosed 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 of it. So low it is, that I could easily touch the
ceiling, and might have done so without 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. Me-
thinks it is strange that people do not strive to forget
their forlorn little identities, in such situations, 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 exceedingly clean; nor is there the
aged, musty smell with which old Chester first made
me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an Ameri-
can of his excessive predilection for antique residences.

116 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

An old lady, who took charge of me up-stairs, had the
manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked with
somewhat formidable knowledge and appreciative in-
telligence about Shakspeare. Arranged on a table and
in chairs were various prints, views of houses and scenes
connected with Shakspeare's memory, together with edi-
tions of his works and local publications about his home
and haunts, f'nun the sale of which this respectable lady
perhaps reali/es a handsome profit. At any rate. I
bought a good many of them, conceiving that it in'
he the civillest way of requiting her for her inMnn -ti\e
conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the
he. use. 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 swallowed my
delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she di-
gested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty
at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a
cr«»\vn to any person with whom he has occasion to speak
a word in England.

I should consider it unfair to quit Shakspeare's house
without the think acknowledgment 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 vistls to memorable places. Whatever
pretty and apposite reflections I may have made upon
the subject had either occurred to me before I ever saw
Stratford, or have been elaborated since. It is pleasant,
nevertheless, to think that I have seen the place ; and I
believe that I can form a more sensible and vivid idea
of Shakspeare as a flesh-and-blood individual now that
I have stood on the kitchen-hearth and in the birth-

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 117

chamber ; but I am not quite certain that this power of
realization is altogether desirable in reference to a great
poet. The Shakspeare whom I met there took various
guises, but had not his laurel on. He was successively
the roguish boy, — the youthful deer-stealer — the com-
rade of players, — the too familiar friend of Davenant's
mother, — 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 im-
piety 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 mem-
ory, 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 reminiscences and
this embodiment of the poet, as suggested by some of
the grimy actualities of his life. It is for the high in-
terests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its
greatest men are, in a certain lower sense, very much the
same kind of men as the rest of us, and often a little
worse ; because a common mind cannot 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 bewilderment, and even intellectual
loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakspeare

118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he
perhaps meant the larger share of it for lu'm or them who
should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or
even the merits of the character that he won- in Strat-
ford, 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 sentences above written !

From Shakspeare's house, the next step, of course, is
to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the church
is most venerable and beautiful, standing a mill a irn -at
green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises the spin-,
while the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast
arched windows are obscurely seen through the boughs.
The Avon loiters past the churchyard, an exceedingly
sluggish riser, which might seem to have been consider-
ing which way it should flow ever since Shakspeare left
off paddling in it and gathering the large forget-me-nots
that «rro\v 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 peo-
ple of the neighborhood haunt about the churchyard, in
spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the sexton, who
grudges them the half-eleemosynary sixpence which they
sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the
church by a respectable-looking and intelligent man in
black, the parish-clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a
richer incumbency than his vicar, if all the fees which
he handles remain in his own pocket He was already
exhibiting the Shakspeare monuments to two or three

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 119

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 af-
fords. They lie in a row, right across the breadth of the
chancel, the foot of each gravestone being close to the ele-
vated floor on which the alter stands. Nearest to the side-
wall, beneath Shakspeare's bust, is a slab bearing a Latin
inscription addressed to his wife, and covering her re-
mains ; then his own slab, with the old anathematizing
stanza upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who married
his grand-daughter ; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband
of his daughter Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah's own.
Shakspeare'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 inscription 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
determined to be Shakspeare's ; although, being 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 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 Shakspeare's dust ; so I forbear to meddle
further with the grave, (though the prohibition makes it

120 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN".

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 Shakspeare'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 fea-
tures of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike any
portrait of Shakspeare 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 <-lut< -h< •<
firmly hold of one's sense of reality and insists upon your
accepting it, if not as Shakspeare the poet, yet a* the
wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a*
Combe, who lies yonder in the corner. I know not \\liat
tin- phrenologists say to the bust. The forehead is but
moderately developed, and retreats somewhat, the uppej-
part of the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prom-
inent almost beyond the penthouse of the brow; the
upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a
deformity, unless the sculptor arti-tirally exaggerated it-
length, in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be
foreshortened by being looked at from below. On the
whole, Shakspeare must have had a singular nit her than
a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, with this
bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintain-
ing an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing paint-
ers and sculptors to foist their ideali/ed nonsense on us
all. instead of the genuine man. For my part, the Shak-
speare of my mind's eye is henceforth to be a personage

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 121

of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably capa-
cious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose
curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper-lip, with
the mouth a little unclosed beneath it, and cheeks con-
siderably developed in the lower part and beneath the
chin. But when Shakspeare was himself, (for 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 Shakspeare
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 Eng-
lish figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man
whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque
material 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 Shakspeare's squib foreboded for him. By-the-by,
till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pro-
nunciation, I never understood that the point of those
ill-natured lines was a pun. " ' Oho ! ' quoth the Devil,
< 't is my John a' Combe ! ' " — that is, " My John has
come ! "

Close to the poet's bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic
tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the
fourteenth century. The church has other mural monu-
ments and altar tombs, one or two of the latter uphold-
ing the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their

122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their
day, no doubt, but doomed to appear forever intru-i vi-
and impertinent within the precincts which Shakspeare
has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers
nothing else to be recognized within the scope of fa
material presence, unless illuminated 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 methinka a person of delicate individu-
ality, curious about his burial-place, and desirous of six
feet of earth for himself alone, could never endure to lie
buried near Shakspeare, 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 innu-
merable descriptions of Stratford-on-Avon, if it had not
seemed- to me that this would form a fitting framework
to some reminiscences of a very remarkable woman.
Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature and purpose
outwardly irreverent to the name of Shakspeare, yet, by
its actual tendency, entitling her to the distinction of being
that one of all his worshippers 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 afford to foriret* her hinh
and conscientious exercise of noble faculties, which, in-
deed, if you look at the matter in one way, evolved only
a miserable error, but, more fairly considered, 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 sub-

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 123

stance among the waste material from which it can read-
ily be sifted.

The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in London,
where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex Gar-
dens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged,
civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, appeared
to feel a personal kindness towards their lodger. I was
ushered up two (and I rather believe three) pair of stairs
into 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 immediate,
to her Shakspearian theory, — a volume of Raleigh's
" History of the World," a volume of Montaigne, a
volume of Lord Bacon's letters, a volume of Shak-
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 des-
potic idea that had got possession 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 connec-
tions 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 Haz-
litt'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 of such expectation than that she was a
literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly
personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by her
aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and had a

124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which
shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak,
and hy-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 heen handsome and exceedingly attractive once.
Though wholly estranged from society, there was little
or no restraint or einha na^ment 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 ourscl\»-s
takinir Ji friendly and familiar tone together, and began
to talk as if we had known one another a very long while.
A little preliminary 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 had I desired it ; but,
being conscious within 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 overmastering ideas about the au-
thorship of Shakspeare's plays, and the deep political
philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had
completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the >am<
time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and
made her what she could not otherwise have become. It
was a very singular phenomenon : a system of philosophy
growing up in this woman's mind without her volition, —

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN". 125

contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her voli-
tion, — and substituting itself in the place of everything
that originally grew there. To have based such a sys-
tem on fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself,
was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in the
plays. But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it
there. Shakspeare 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 contemplative
mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely dis-
cover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting
the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a thousand
years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole
library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these vol-
umes old already. I had half a mind to suggest to Miss
Bacon this explanation of her theory, but forbore, be-
cause (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 that the ma-
terial evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, to-
gether with the key of the new philosophy, would be
found buried in Shakspeare'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 clue 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 con-

126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

cealed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a
hollow space in the under surface of Shaken -arc's irravt-
stone. Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone
was accounted for. The directions, sin- intimat< -<1. went
completely and precisely to the point, obviating all diffi-
culties in the way of coming at the treasure, and c\» n,
if I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off
any troublesome consequences likely to ensue from
tin- interference of tin- pansh-ollieers. 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 authen-
ticity of her theory.

She communicated all this strange matter in a low,
quiet tone ; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, and
without any expression 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 intangible nature, I ap-
prehend that there would have been nothing left for the
poor enthusiast save to collapse and die. She frankly
confessed that she could no longer 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 sym-
pathy or none, she had now entirely 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, although he had
received her kindly; Air. Buchanan, while minister in
England, had once called on her, and General Campbell,

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 127

our Consul in London, had met her two or three times on
business. With the^e exceptions 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 solitude. 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 insufficient, she had faith
that special interpositions of Providence were forwarding
her human efforts. This idea was continually 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
grocer 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 Prov-
idence had brought me forward — a man somewhat con-
nected with literature — at the critical juncture when
she needed a negotiator with the booksellers ; and, on
my part, though little accustomed 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 pub-
lic, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, would be

128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

thankful for what was good in it and merciful t-
faults. It was founded on a prodigious emir, hut
liiiilt up from that foundation with a good many prodig-
ious truths. And, at all events, whether I could aid her
literary views or no, it would have been both rash and
impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon
out of her delusions, which were the condition on which
she li\ed in comfort and joy. and in the exercise of great
intellectual power. So I left her to dream as she j.h
about the treasures of Shakspeare's tombstone, and to
form whatever deigns might seem good to herself tor
obtaining possession of them. I was sensible of a lady-
like feeling of propriety 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 operate 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, during which she
flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable of any
degree of intelligent 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, 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 under-current of earnestness, which did not fail
to produce in the listener's mind something like a tem-
porary faith in what she herself believed so fervently.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 129

But the streets of London are not favorable to enthusi-
asms of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish
anywhere in the English atmosphere ; so that, long be-
fore reaching Paternoster Kow, I felt that it would be a
difficult and doubtful 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 J
know not whom, in Shakspeare'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 condescend to any stratagem or underhand at-
tempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable
of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been ac-
complished by the aid of a resurrection-man. As her
first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and be-
gan to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise
and his own willingness to engage in it. The clerk ap-
parently 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 reverend gentle-
man, 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 interview had been under the seal
9

130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, who, as
Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was a prac-
titioner of the la w. What the leiral friend ad\i~ed >he
did not learn; but the negotiation continue], and cer-
tainly was never broken oil' by an absolute ivfnsal on the
vicar's part. lie. perhaps, was kindly tempori/inir with
our poor countrywoman, whom an En^li-hman ot' ordi-
nary mould would have sent to a lunatic asylum at
once. I cannot help fancying, however, that her fa-
miliarity with the events of Shakspeare's life, and ot his
dpath and burial, (of which she would speak as if she
had been present at the cd^e of the grave,) and all tin*
hi.Mory. literature, and personalities 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 con-
vert of the good clergyman. If so, I honor him above
all the hierarchy of England.

The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However
erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the vicar
that no ob-tades would be interposed to the investiga-
tion, and that he himself would sanction it with his pres-
ence. It was to take place after night tall : and all pre-
liminary arrangements IK ing 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 en-
tirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her per-
ception or accurate remembrance of external things, I
see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of ab-
surdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous
state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131

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 gravestone, 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 enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she
had discovered in Bacon's letters and elsewhere, and
now was frightened to perceive that they did not point
so definitely to Shakspeare's tomb as she had hereto-
fore supposed. There was an unmistakably distinct ref-
erence 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 dis-
turb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute mind
may always have had a lurking and deeply latent dis-
trust 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 day-
time, 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 obscurity that filled the great
dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle and tow-
ards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of

132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTMD \VnMAX.

the pavement above Shakspeare's grave. If the divine
poet really wrote the in-eription there, and cared as nuu-h
al|put the quiet of his bones as its d< -pn •< -atory eurne.-t-
ness would imply, it was time for those crumbling K lie-
to bestir themselves under her sacrilegious feet. But
they were safe. She made no attempt to disturb them ;
though, I believe, she looked narrowly into the devices
between Shakspeare's and the two adjacent stones, and in
some way satisfied herself that her single strength would
suffice to lift the former, in 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 she been subject to superstitious terrors, it is
impossible to conceive of a situation that could better
entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakspeare's ghost would
rise at any provocation, it must have shown itself then ;
but it is my sincere belief, that, if his figure had ap-
peared 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 bu.-t,
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 Leicester's
groom" (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the
world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his
disembodied spirit wrould 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 movement in the aisles : a stealthy, dubious
foot-fall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now
there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, as if some

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133

restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep
at the intruder. By-and-by the clerk made his appear-
ance, 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 regret that so stu-
pendous 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 re-
sponsibility and renown. 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 her-
self free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She
liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only
praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakspeare, the
individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a resi-
dence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suit-
able retirement for a person of shy, but genial tempera-
ment. And at this point, I cease to possess the means
of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any farther. 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

134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WoMAX.

passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in t lu-
lu inkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her
friends were always particularly liable ; hut I think that
none of them ever loved, or even respected. IK -r mo-t
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. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all
had heen written under so deep a conviction of truth as
to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A prac-
tised book-maker, with entire control of her materials,
would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of elo-
quent and ingenious dissertation, — criticisms which quite
take the color and pungency out of other people's critical
remarks on Shakspeare, — philosophic truths which she
imagined herself to have found at the roots of his conn -j>-
tions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable
depth somewhere. There was a great amount of rubbish,
which any competent editor would have shovelled out of
the way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of in-
spiration 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 vol-
ume 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

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135

no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in
a book, or less likely to recognize 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 apprecia-
tion, because many of the best of them have higher culti-
vation, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all
but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen.
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 L Our journalists at once repub-
lished some of the most brutal vituperations of the Eng-
lish press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with
stolen mud, without even waiting 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 Bacon was
by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He
was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and
professional character, telling me that an American lady,
who had recently published what the mayor called a
" Shakspeare book," was afflicted with insanity. In a
lucid interval she had referred to me, as a person who
had some knowledge of her family and affairs. What
she may have suffered before her intellect gave way,
we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever

136 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

hoped so confidently as she ; none ever failed more ut-
terly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that tin*
anathema on Shakspeare's tombstone had fallen heavily
on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished pur-
pose of disturbing the dust beneath, 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 re-
quited the injustice that she sought to do him — the high
justice that she K ally did — by a tenderness of love and
pity of which' only he <?ould be capable. What matters
it. though she called him by some other name ? He had
wrought a greater miracle on her than on all the world
besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a
depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars,
crities, and learned societies, devoted to the elucidation
of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist
there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these
ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his
memory. And when, not many months after the out-
ward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the
better world, I know not why we should hesitate to be-
lieve 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 speculations) for having interpreted him to
mankind 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 acquainted with it only in insulated chapters

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 137

and scattered pages and paragraphs. But, since my re-
turn to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm
has assured me that he has positively read the book from
beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doc-
trines. It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me, —
whom, in almost 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 justice 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 recol-
lection 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 a lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoy-
ment which these trees must have in their existence.
Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need not be keen
nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary
delights of short-lived human beings. They were civil-
ized 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 luxuriant) 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

138 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

had been taught to make themselves tributary to the
scenic effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanish-
ing from light into ,-hadow and glancing forth again, "with
here :m<l there a li.tle fawn careering at its ni<»: h< -i-'.-
heels. These deer are almost in the same relation to
the wild, natural state of their kind that tin- trees of an
English park hold to the rugged growth of an American
forest. They have held a certain intercourse with man
for immemorial years; and, most probably, the Mag that
Shakspeare killed was one of the progenitors of this very
herd, and may himself have been a partly < -i\ ili/ed and
liimiani/ed deer, though in a less degree than these re-
mote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, but
they do not snuff the air at the approach of human
beings, nor Qvince 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
ha\ ing come of a wild stock. They have so long been
fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many
of their native instinrts, and, I suppose, could not live
comfortably through even an English winter wit IK nit
human help. One is sensible of a gentle scorn at them
for such dependency, but feels none the less kindly dis-
posed towards the half-domesticated race; and it may
have been his observation of these tamer rhararteri-tie>
in the Charlecote herd that suggested to Shakspeare the
tender and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in *» As
You Like It."

At a distance of some hundreds of yards from Charle-
cote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 139

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
embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within 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 Elizabeth, and probably looked very much the same
as now when Shakspeare was brought before Sir Thomas
Lucy for outrages among his deer. The impression is
not that of gray antiquity, but of stable and time-honored
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 improvement to the home where years gone by
and years to come give a sort of permanence to the in-
tangible present. An American is sometimes tempted
to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be
produced. One man's lifetime is not enough for the ac-
complishment 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

140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

his house warm and deli fitful for a miscellaneous race
of successors, of whom the one thin*: certain is that his
own grandchildren will not be among them. Such re-
pinings as are here suggested, however, come only from
the fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, as most
of us are, we hate not yet modified our instincts to the
necessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a uiir-
wam or under a tent has really as many advantages,
when we 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.

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

AFTER my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by
an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black
Stran. 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
?arquhar's time. The Black Swan is an old-fashioned
tel, 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
large stones of its pavement, all vehicles and horse-
men rumble and clatter into an enclosed court-yard with
a thunderous uproar among the contiguous rooms and
I appeared to be the only guest of the spa-
aous establishment, but may have had a few fellow-lodgers
dden in their separate parlors, and utterly eschewing
that community of interests which is the characteristic
feature of life in an American hotel. At any rate I had
the great, dull, dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its
ieavy old mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and
>t a soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter,
Who hke most of his class in England, had evident^
left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former
practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor
well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and

142 LICHFIELD AND UTTtfXETER.

amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, 4o dissipate
the ponderous gloom of an Knjjish coffee-room und< T
such circumstances as the-e, with no book at hand
tin- county-directory, nor any new-paper but a torn lu.-al
journal of live days ago. So I buried myself, betimes, in
a hiinv heap of ancient feathers, (there is DO other kind of
l»ed in these old inns,) let my head sink into an unsub-
stantial pillow, ami .-lept a stifled sleep, infe-ted with
such a fragmentary confusion of dream> 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
wa- in my nostrils — a faint, elusive smell, of which I
i ie\er had any conception before crossing the Atlantic.
In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chic-
cory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and bewildered
my -elf a little while among the crooked streets, in quest
of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted 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
apply well, in the-e days and forever henceforward, to
many an unhappy locality in our native land. Lichtield
signifies "The Field of the Dead Bodies" — an epithet,
however, which the town did not assume in remembrance
of a battle, but which probably 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 kinir
of Me re i a, who were converted by Saint Chad, and after-
wards 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

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 143

it was the- birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy
English character I became acquainted, at a very early
period of my life, through the good offices of Mr. Boswell.
In truth, he seems as familiar to my recollection, 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 cul-
ture 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 himself 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 inti-
macy which I am now thinking of, with a literary per-
sonage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much
about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent produc-
tions, except his two stern and masculine poems, " Lon-
don," 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 awful dread of death showed how much
muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out of him,
before he could be capable of spiritual existence ; he
meddled only with the surface of life, and never cared
to penetrate farther than to ploughshare depth ; his very
sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed clear-sighted-
ness. I laughed at him, sometimes, standing beside his

144 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

knee. And yet, considering that my native proper^
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 traveller and feed on the gross diet that he
carried in hi- 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
th.it so readily amalgamated themselves with the Amer-
ican ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may 1,
lieen derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the
Liivat Knirlish moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet
more nicely appropriate than that! Dr. Johnson's mor-
ality was as Knirlish an article as a beefsteak.

The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are
< -ailed cities, in England) stands on an ascending Rte.
It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, t« »r
example, but still enough to gratify an American appetite
for the antiquities of dome-tic 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 ac-
customed them to the novelty of strange faces mo\
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
reaped as a modest method of a-king for sixpence; so .
that 1 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

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 145

a general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from
such humble sources, I took it all the more as a welcome
on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have ex-
changed it for an invitation from the mayor and magis-
trates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for the
experiment's sake, that I could have emboldened myselt
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 Minster Pool. It fills the im-
mense 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 creation, 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 reflected some of the bat-
tlements of the majestic structure that once lay here in
unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge
of the Pool, angling with pin-kooks ; and the scene re-
minded me (though really to be quite fair with the
reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me,)
of that myterious lake in the Arabian Nightsy which had
once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman
used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of
enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful associa-
tions to make the spot interesting. It was in the porch
of one of the houses, in the street that runs beside the
Minster Pool, that Lord Brooke was slain, in the time
of the Parliamentary war, by a shot from the battle-
ments of the cathedral, which was then held by the

Royalists as a fortress. The incident is commemorated
10

146 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

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 architecture. Except that of Chester, (the
grim and simple nave of which stands yet unrivalled in
my memory,) and one or two small ones in North Wales,
hardly wmthy 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 beholding a great many more, I remember it
with less prodigal admiration only because others are
as magnificent as itself. The traces remaining in my
memory represent it as airy rather than massive. A
multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be comj.iv-
hended within its single outline ; it was a kind of kalei-
doscopic 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 rearrange mcnt
of its peaks and pinnacles and the three hattleinented
towers, with the spires that shot heavenward from all
three, but one loftier than its fellows. Thus it im-
pressed you, at every change, as a newly created MIIK-
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 inde-
structible existence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A
Gothic cathedral is surely the most wonderful work
which mortal man has yet achieve!. 90 \ast. so intricate.
and so profoundly simple, with such Strange, delightful
recesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend
within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti-

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 147

mately draws the beholder and his universe into its har-
mony. 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 pin-
nacles. 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 upon me,
of which I could appropriate only the minutest portion.
After a hundred years, incalculably as my higher sympa-
thies might be invigorated by so divine an employment,
I should still be a gazer from below and at an awful
distance, as yet remotely 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 probably 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 advan-
tage of it to examine the intricate and multitudinous adorn-
ment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this great
church. Everywhere, there were empty niches where
statues had been thrown down, and here and there a

148 LICIIFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

statue still lingered in its niche : and over the chief en-
trance, and extending across the whole breadth of Un-
building, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs,
and khi'-r<- sculptured in reddish stone. Being much cor-
roded 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 n
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 audacity of my ignorance, as
I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I criticised this
great interior as too much broken into compartments, and
shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the interposi-
tion 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 worshippers might have
knelt down 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 exclu-
siveness 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 included
too much of the twilight of that monkish gloom out of
which they grew. It is no matter whether I ever came

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETEK. 149

to a more satisfactory appreciation of this kind of archi-
tecture ; the only value of my strictures 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 sur-
rendering himself to the old builder's influence with
childlike simplicity.

A great deal of white marble decorates the old stone-
work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sar-
cophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are com-
memorative of people locally distinguished, especially the
deans and canons of the cathedral, with their relatives
and families ; and I found but two monuments of per-
sonages whom I had ever heard of, — one being Gilbert
Walmesley, and the other Lady Mary Wortley Mon-
tague, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It was
really pleasant to meet her there ; for after a friend has
lain in the grave far into the second century, she would
be unreasonable to require 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 remains have turned to dust beneath the pave-
ment, and the quaint devices and inscriptions 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 per-
son, the man whose features were familiar in the streets
of Lichfield only yesterday, seemed precisely as much at
home here as his mediaeval predecessors. Henceforward

150 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

he belonged to the cathedral like one of its original pillars.
Methought this impression in my fancy might be the
shadow of a spiritual fact. The dying melt into tin-
great multitude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of
water into the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no
nn familiarity with their new circumstances, but immedi-
ately become aware of an insufferable strangeness in the
world which they have quitted. Death has not taken
t IK in away, but brought them home.

The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary affairs,
however, have not ceased to attend upon these marl.h-
inhabitants; for I saw the upper fragment of a sculp-
tured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half
of whom had doubtless been demolished 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 centuries 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 disturb. Another
'piece of sculpture (apparently a favorite subject in the
middle ages, for I have seen several like it in other Ca-
thedrals), was a recb'ning skeleton, as faithfully repre-
senting an open-work of bones as could well be ex-
pected in a solid block of marble, and at a period, more-
over, when the mysteries of the human frame were
rather to be guessed at than revealed. Whatever the
anatomical detects of his production, the old sculptor had
succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure. How
much mischief has been wrought upon us by this in-
variable gloom of the Gothic imagination ; llin^in.ir itself
like a death-scented pall over our conceptions of the

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 151

future state, smothering our hopes, hiding our sky, and
inducing dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immor-
tality 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 chan-
cel 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, 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 transforming
himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth
of the day, in modern frock-coat and trousers of a de-
cidedly provincial cut. This absurd little incident, I
verily believe, had a sinister effect in putting me at odds
with the proper influences 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 neighborhood of the
Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beautifully
kept lawns and a shadowy walk, bordered by the dwell-
ings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese. All
this row of episcopal, canonical, and clerical residences,

152 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, and well-pro-
tected, though not inaccessible seclusion. They seemed
capable of including everything that a saint could desire,
and a great many more things than most of us sinners
generally succeed in acquiring. Their most marked fea-
ture is a dignified comfort, looking as if no disturbance
or vulgar intrusiveness could over cros- 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
palace 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 aext 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 over-
arched by a minster-aisle of venerable trees. This path
is haunted by the shades of famous personages who have
formerly trodden it. Johnson must have been familiar
with it, both as a boy, and in his subsequent visits to Lich-
field, an illustrious old .man. Miss Seward, connec u <1
with so many literary reminiscences, lived in one of the
adjacent houses. Tradition says that it was a favorite
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 en-
counter his dismal doom from an American court-martial.

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 153

David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the path in his
boyish days, and, if he was an early student of the
drama, must often have thought of those two airy char-
acters of the " Beaux' Stratagem," Archer and Aimwell,
who, on this very ground, after attending service at the
Cathedral, contrive to make acquaintance with the ladies
of the comedy. These creatures of mere fiction have as
positive a substance now as the sturdy old figure of John-
son himself. They live, while realities have died. The
shadowy walk still glistens with their gold-embroidered
memories.

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 street. The house is tall and thin,
of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising
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, accord-
ing 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 mortify-

154 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

ing to be so balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but look-
ing round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, I
was a good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. Johnson
himself, who happened, just at that moment, to he 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 substance, 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 chancel-
lor 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 John-
son, 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 ha&d, thus blinking forth
at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet
benevolent at heart. The statue is immensely massive,
a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor,
indeed, fully humanized, but rather resembling a great
stone-boulder than a man. You must look with the eyes
of faith and sympathy, or possibly, you might lose the
human heing altogether, and find only a big stone within
your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three bas-reliefs.
In the first, Johnson is represented as hardly more than

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 155

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 rid-
ing to school on the shoulders of two of his comrades,
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 alive, because I have always been profoundly
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 Uttoxeter, doing
penance for an act of disobedience to his father, com-
mitted fifty years before. He stands bare-headed, a
venerable figure, and a countenance extremely 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 praying for him. These latter personages (whose
introduction by the artist is none the less effective, be-
cause, in queer proximity, there are some commodities
of market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead
poultry,) I interpreted to represent the spirits of John-
son'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.
For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could, un-
der the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan

156 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETKK.

Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the
sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshen in<_r
my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic ten-
derness 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 undertook, to
see the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswell, I
think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yute-
oxeter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but
the county-map would indicate a greater distance; :m«l
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 merchandise by
carrier's wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter a-foot on mar-
ket-day morning, selling books through the busy hours,
and returning to Lichfield at night. This could not pos-
sibly 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
amnn.ir red-tiled roofs and a few scattered 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 roundabout
the church; and, if I remember the narrative ariirht.
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 performed. But the church

LICHFIELD AND TJTTOXETER. 157

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. But the pic-
turesque arrangement and fuirimpressiveness of the story
absolutely require 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
Eemorse, contrasting with and overpowering 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 resolved, 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 pretence of newness, but probably as old in
their inner substance as the rest. The people of Uttox-
eter 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

158 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self;
insomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for tin-
illustrious 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 redoubt-
able starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no light
one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to the
little town, except 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 multitude of
inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scandalized
to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the only impor-
tant affair that I attended to, after coming so far to indulge
a solemn and high emotion, and standing now on the
very spot where my pious errand should have been
consummated. I stepped into one of the rustic hostle-
ries 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 pud-
ding : 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 eighteenpence !

Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 159

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 lofti-
est and profoundest part of their power over his sym-
pathies. Facts, as we really find them,. whatever poetry
they may involve, are covered with a .stony excrescence
of prose, resembling the crust on a beautiful sea-shell,
and they never show their most delicate and divinest
colors until we shall have dissolved away their grosser
actualities by steeping them long in a powerful men-
struum of thought. And seeking to actualize them
again, we do but- renew the crust. If this were other-
wise — if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended
in any degree on its garb of external circumstances,
things which change and decay — it could not itself be
immortal and ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time
and a little neighborhood would be spiritually 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 my-
self still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out
of my visit to Uttoxeter. The hospitable inn was called
the Nag's Head, and standing beside the market-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

160 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked his pij>e, in
the very room where I now sat, which was a low, ancient
room, certainly much older than Queen Anne's time,
with a red-brick floor, and a white- washed < •» -il 111,11, trav-
ersed by bare, rough beams, the whole in the rudest
fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it lack orna-
ment, the walls being hung with colored engravings of
pri/e oxen and other pretty prints, and the mantel-piece
adorned with earthenware figures of shepherdesses in the
An, 1. 11 an taste of long ago. Michael Johnson's eyes
miirht have rested on that self-same earthen image, to ex-
amine 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 tradition should not
have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How
shameful (nothing less than that) that there should be no
local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and touehiiiLT
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 veneraMe
and illustrious penitent 'in the 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, iniglif almost have been ex-

LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 161

pected 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 re-
morseful 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 inter-
est was felt in the subject to have induced certain local
discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial.
With all deference to my polite informant, I surmise that
there is a mistake, and decline, without further and pre-
cise evidence, giving credit to either of the above state-
ments. The inhabitants know nothing, as a matter of
general interest, about the penance, and care nothing for
the scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, for ex-
ample, had ever heard of it, would he not have used the
theme, time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and
profoundly on the souls committed 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 unavailing regrets as Johnson bore upon his heart
for fifty years ? If the site were ascertained, would not
the pavement thereabouts be worn with reverential foot-
steps ? Would not every town-born child be able to
direct the pilgrim thither? While waiting at the sta-
tion, before my departure, I asked a boy who stood near
me, — an intelligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or thir-
teen 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
11

162 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER.

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
\\ithin its boundaries since the old Britons built it, this
sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot (for I
found it holy to my contemplation, again, as soon as it lay
behind me) in the heart of a stranger from three thou-
sand 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.

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 distempered 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 with-
out 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, Bol-
ton, 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 factory villages,
too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their
pennons of black smoke, their ugliness of brick-work,
and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, 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 iron-
mongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity,
are hardly made decent with a little grass.

164 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef-
field 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 Derby-
shire) English scenery is not particularly well worth
looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. 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 Man-
chester and Sheffield was not tlirough a rich tract of
country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills
extending straight as a rampart, and across black moor-
lands 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 farm-houses, 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, because 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 highways and footpaths were as
natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves
by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the
country ; and, furthermore, every object within view of
them had some subtile reference to their curves and un-
dulations : but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial,

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 165

and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At
any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom any-
thing worth seeing within the scope of a railway travel-
ler's eye ; and if there were, it requires an alert marks-
man to take a flying shot at the picturesque.

At one of the stations (it was near a village 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 atten-
tion 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 terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in.
Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or ner-
vous affection ; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in
some unspeakable 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 compose 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 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 dis-
mal 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

166 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffu
My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty, —
or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me sniokit -r
than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham, — smokier
than all England besides, unless Newcastle U- the ex-
ception. 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 became softer,
gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw
what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sher-
wood Forest, — -'not consisting, however, of thousand-
year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young
and thriving plantations, which will require a century or
two of slow English growth to give them much breadth
of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neigh-
borhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some
M>tt depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the
country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged
that we n\u>( now be in Lincolnshire ; 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 begjan to assert itself, making us ac-
knowledge 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 be-
longing to the Saracen's Head, which the driver recom-
mended as the best hotel in the city, and took u.s thither

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 167

accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked com-
fortable enough ; though, like the hotels of most old Eng-
lish towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, 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 an arch, in the side of which is
the door of the hotel. There are long corridors, an in-
tricate arrangement of passages, and 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 generation 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 distance 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, ponderous, shadowy struc-
ture, through the dark vista of which you look into
the Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains
many antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, Eng-
lish domestic architecture has lost its most impressive
features, in the course of the last century. In this re-
spect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester,
for instance, and Shrewsbury, — which last is unusually
rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry
of the shire used to make their winter-abodes, in a pro-
vincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowadays, there
is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hid-

1C8 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

ing houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the
picturesque antiquity of the street.

Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still broad
daylight in these long English 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 nar-
rower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest
street I ever climbed, — so steep that any carriage, if left
to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could
possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lin-
colnshire, the inhabitants seem disposed to make the most
of it. The houses on each side had no very remark; i Mr
aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved orna-
ments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty stri< -k< -n
people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the
days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architec-
ture dates back. This is called the Jewess's House, hav-
ing been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was
hanged six hundred years ago.

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer-
tainly, 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 ecclesiastical duty
to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, and was prob-
ably 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

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 169

an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic
gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. The
latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences
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 remem-
ber no more comfortably picturesque precincts round any
other cathedral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral
close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, cosiest,
safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most en-
joyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of
mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, to
combine all this with the service of the temple !

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone,
which appears either to have been largely restored, or
else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that
gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient
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 that
variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no

170 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

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 lamental.le rem-
nants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what
a native animosity lives in the human heart a*:;
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, however, the effect of t lo-
west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, be-
ing covered from massive base to airy summit with the
minutest details of sculpture and carving: at hast, 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 obliterated. I have seen
a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely
that it must have cost him half a litetime of labor ; an<l
this cathedral front seems to have been elaborate*! in
a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the re-
sult is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all
the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest de-
tails.

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front,
came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to in-
quire 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 de-
clined 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 in
tic and mighty as that It is vain to attempt a descrip-

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 171

tion, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice
inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inani-
mate 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 con-
nected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short,
I fall straightway 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 eastern end of the
Minster, the clock chimed the quarters -; and then Great
Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight
o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I
ever heard from any bell, — slow, and solemn, and allow-
ing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die
away before the next one fell. It was still broad day-
light 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 descended the
steep street, — our younger companion running before us,
and gathering 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 Min-
ster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one
we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west
front, and sent our charioteer 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 Cathedral, especially beneath the great central
tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a profess-
edly architectural description, there is but one set of

172 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

phrases in which to talk of all tho cathedrals in England,
and elsewhere. They are alike in their <rre:it {eat;
an acre or two of stone flags for a payment ; rows of
vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dn-k\ IK i
great windows, sometimes richly bediimned with ancient
or modern stained glass; and an elaborately carved MS
between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that
might else be of such glorious length, and which is fur-
ther choked up by a massive organ, — in spite of which
obstructions, you catch the broad, variegated glimmer of
the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear
their robes of transfiguration. Behind the screen an- the
carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebend a i i« •-. the
Bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else
in: iv furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we for-
get the range of chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic
saints, but which have now lost their individual consecra-
tion.) nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prel-
ates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close conti-
guity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-
House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is sup-
ported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and
putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof.
Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extend-
ing round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tomb-
stones, the more antique of which have had their inscrip-
tions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking their
noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, live hundred
years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, although*
with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been
made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent
date.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 173

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops
and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purporting
to be the monument of Catherine Swineferd, 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 monunients ; 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, and the ancestral me-
morials of great families, quite at their wicked and ple-
beian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most ex-
quisite and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and
grape-vines, and miracles of stone-work 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 grotesque faces which al-
ways grin at you from the projections of monkish archi-
tecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own
deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless per-
mitted 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.

174 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is
smeared over with :i yelluwish wash, the very meanest
hue imaginable, and lor which somebody's soul has a
bitter reckoning to nn<;

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, hut 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
larirc square ol' dim, worri, and faded oil-carpeting, which
miirht originally 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 med-
dled with, further than by removing the superincumbent
earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded
about the interior of the Cathedral, 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 Minster, we now went along a street of
more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen,
bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of which
were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Ro-
man 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 be-
fore. The arch is about four hundred yards from the
Cathedral ; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 175

remains 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 origi-
nal 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 sum-
mit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow
flowers on the projections up and down the sides.

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 part
of the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled
about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the
Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some stately and
queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I sus-
pect that all or most of the life of the present day has
subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor
people, and prisoners 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 portion built of old stones which once
made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures
that existed before the Conqueror's castle was ever
dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up
from the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are,

176 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

they add wonderfully to the pirturesqueness of the scene,
being quite as valual.lt-. in that re-pect. as the gn-at.
hroad, ponderous ruin of tin- ca-tle-keep. which rose high
above our heads, lira\in;_r it- huge gray mass out of a
bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as
lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its found a
were completely hidden.

After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex-
cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant
and level road bordered with duellings of various char-
acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with de-
lightful and shadowy lawns before them; many had those
liiii'h. 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 n.ttages, very sylvan and rural, with
hedges so dense and hiirh. 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 toinh.-tones. disposed by way of ornament.

We now went home to the Saracen's Head ; and as
the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a
little now and then, I woujd gladly have felt myself re-
leased from further thraldom to the Cat lit dial. But it
had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at
rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the
hill airain. hetween 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

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 177

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 imposing majesty than ever.
The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior
is certainly far more beautiful than that of York Min-
ster ; 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 Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in
its general effect ; 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 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
undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of marvel-
lous writing in black-letter, — so many sculptured orna-
ments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and
gray statues that have grown there since you looked last,
and empty niches, and a hundred 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 pre-
cincts 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 wiifdow was enlivened with a great
12

178 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because it
was Saturday niglit, ;m<l they had accomplished their
week's toil, received their wages, and were making their
MUM 11 purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves
as well as they knew how. A hand of mii-ie j»as>ed t«»
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
occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold
water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth <»i
the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across
the \Vithaiu. 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 in-
quired of the waiter, and learned that sjie was to start on
Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an inter-
esting 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 Saracen'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 masonwork on
each side, and provided with one or two' locks. The
steamer proved to be small, dirty, and altogether incon-
venient. The early morning had been bright ; but the
sky now lowered 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 riirht in our teeth.
There were a number of passe%ers on board, country-

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 179

people, such as travel by third class on the railway ; for,
I suppose, nobody but ourselves 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 getting through a
preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did we
ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant
delays 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
identical with that of the railway, because the latter runs
along by the riverside 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 ob-
jects along the shore. Unfortunately, there was nothing,
or next to 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 soli-
tary one on the summit of which we had left Lincoln
Cathedral. And the Cathedral was our landmark for
four hours or more, and at last rather faded out than was
hidden by any intervening 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

180 PILGRIMAGE TO OLB BOSTON.

Ki inland sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and
is villanous.

The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an
English character that was abundantly worth our look-
ing at. A green luxuriance of early grass; old, hi^li-
roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and
ricks of hay and grain; ancient villages, with tin- square,
gray tower of a church seen afar <>\» r the level country,
amid the cluster of red roofs ; here and there a shadowy
grove of venerable trees, surrounding what was perhaps
an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode
of some rich yeoman. Onee, too. we >aw the tower of a
mediaeval castle, that of Tattershall. built by a Crom-
well, but whether of the Protector's family I cannot tell.
But the gentry do not appear to have settled mult it u-
dinously in this tract of country; nor is it to be won-
dered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon
think of settling in Holland. The river retains its canal-
like aspect all alonjr ; 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 voyage happened
when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five
ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went
Mvairirering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves
that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the immi-
nence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the
boat to witness its consummation, since I could not pos-
sibly avert it. The poor ducklings had uttered their
baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny miirht to
escape : four of them, I believe, were washed aside and

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 181

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)
looming 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 pro-
nunciation, 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 English Boston, and quite as sour
as those who people the daughter-city in New England.
Our parlor had the one recommendation of looking into
the market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the
tall spire and noble old church.

In my first ramble about the town, chance led me to
the riverside, at that quarter where the port is situated.
Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned aspect,
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 margin ; another large and handsome
schooner was evidently just finished, rigged and equipped
for her first voyage ; the rudiments of another were on

182 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

the stocks, in a shipyard bordering on the river. Still
another, while I was looking on, came up the Mi-rum, and
lowered her mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old
man on the hank hailed her and inquired about her
cargo; but the Lincolnshire people have such a qin •< -r
way of talking English that I could not understand tin
reply. Farther down thr ii\ « r, I saw a brig, approach-
ing rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd
impression of hnMlr, and sluggishness, and decay, and a
remnant of wholr-omr lit'r ; and I could not hut contrast
it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Bos-
ton, which was once the feeble infant of this old Engli-h
town ; — the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since
that day. as it' thr hirth of such an offspring had taken
awav it> own principle of growth. I thought of Long
Wharf, and Fanruil 1 lull, and Washington Street, and the
Great Elm, and the State House, and exulted 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 hi the early sunshine,
(the sun must have been shining nearly four hours, how-
ever, 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
towns-people seems to lie to and fro across it. It is
paved, according to English custom, with flat tomb-
stones ; and there are also raised or altar tombs, some
of which have armorial bearings on them. One clergy-
man has caused himself and his wife to be buried right

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183

in the middle of the stone-bordered path that traverses
the churchyard; so that not an individual of the thou-
sands 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 ; school-boys play-
ing leap-frog with the altar-tombs ; the simple old town
preparing itself for the day, which would be like myriads
of other days that had passed over it, but yet would be
worth living through. And down on the churchyard,
where were buried many generations whom it remem-
bered in their time, looked the stately tower of Saint
Botolph ; and it was good to see and think of such an
age-long giant, intermarrying the present epoch with a
distant past, and getting quite imbued with human nature
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 their
hereditary nests among its topmost windows, and live de-
lightful 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 tumble over flat on its face, its top-stone might per-
haps reach to the middle of the channel. On the farther

184 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

shore there is a line of antique-looking houses, with
roofs of red tile, and \vindo\\s opening out of them, —
some of these dwellings being so ancient, that the Rev-
erend Mr. Cotton, subsequently our first Boston minister,
must have seen them with his own bodily eyes, when he
IIH .I to issue from tke front-portal after service. Indeed.
there must be very many houses hqpe, and even some
streets, tint hear niueh the aspect that they did when the
Puritan divine paced solemnly among them.

In our rambles about town, we went into a booksel-
ler's shop to inquire it he had any description of Boston
for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced for in-
spection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto his-
tory of the town, published by subscription, nearly forty
years ago. The bookseller showed himself a well-in-
formed and affable man. and a local antiquary, to whom a
party of inquisitive strangers were a godsend. He had met
with several Americans, who, at various times, had come
on pilgrimages to this place, and he had been in corres-
pondence with others. Happening 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 interest us to see. So we went with him
through the shop, up-stairs, into the private part of his
establishment ; and, really, it was one of the rarest ad-
ventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this tre:i
of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and curio.Mtie-,
veiled behind the unostentatious front of a bookseller's
shop, in a very moderate line of village business. The
two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us were so
crowded with inestimable articles, that we were almost

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 185

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. Pre-
mising that he was going to show us something very,
curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and re-
turned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately em-
broidered 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 repeated, was the
cipher, M. 8., — being the initials of one of the most un-
happy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was
embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots, dur-
ing her imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle ; and having
evidently been a work of years, she had doubtless shed
many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts
and abortive schemes into its texture, along with the
birds ana flowers. As a counterpart to this most pre-
cious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork
of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap-
tain Cook : it was a bag, cunningly made of some deli-
cate 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

186 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

moderate girth in the chest and wai.-t ; for the irarnn -nt
wa.- hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of
ele\eii, the smallest American of our party, who tried on
tin gorgeous waiM eoat. Then. Mr. Porte -r produced some
curiously engraved «lri liking-glasses, with a view of Saint
Botolph's steeple on one of them, and other Boston cdi-
fices, public or domestic, on the remaining two, very ad-
mirably done. These crystal goblets had been a present,
long ago, to an old master of the Free School from his
pupils; and rt is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired
schoolmaster can exhibit such trophic.- of platitude and
affection, won from the victims of hi- birch rod.

Our kind friend kept bringing' out one unexpected and
wholly unexpectahle thinir 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
nlir we mitrht choose to ask for. He was especially rich
in drawings by the Old Masters, producing two or ti
of exquisite delicacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head
by Rembrandt, and others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by
Giordano, Benvenuto (Vllini. and hands almost a-
mous ; and besides what were shown us, there seemed to
be an endless supply of these art-treasures in rescne.
On the wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never en-
ir raved, representing him as a rather young man, bloom-
in LI. and not uncomely : it was the worldly face of a man
fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic,
odd expression that we sec in his only engraved portrait.
The picture is an original, and must needs be very valu-
able; and we wish it miirht be prefixed to some ne.w and
worthier biography of a writer whose character the world
has always treated with singular harshness, considering

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 187

how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon-
portrait of Sterne's wife, looking so haughty and un-
nmiable, 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
than 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, Victoria 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
bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illuminated mis-
sals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may seem of es-
pecial interest to the historian) a Secret-Book of Queen
Elizabeth, 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 house-
wifery, the toilet, and domestic quackery, among which
we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums,
" How to kill a Fellow quickly " ! We never doubted

188 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

that bloody Queen Bess miirht often have had occasion
for such a recipe, hut wondered 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 Oiieen had spelt amiss : the word was " Fellon," — a
sort of whitlow, — not u Fellow."

Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of
wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet :
and while sipping it. we ungratefully tried to excite his
envy, by telling of various things, interesting to an an-
tiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen in the course of
our travels about England. We spoke, for instance, of a
missal bound in solid gold and set around with jewels,
but of such intrinsic value as no setting could enhance,
for it was exquisitely illuminated, throughout, by the
hand of Raphael himself. We mentioned a little silver
case which onee contained a portion of the heart of Louis
X I V. 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 Kini: 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 yellowish 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 vicaraire had stood till a very short time n
According to our friend's description, it was a humble
habitation, of the cottage order, built of brick, with a
thatched roof. The site is now rudely fenced in, and

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 189

cultivated as a vegetable garden. In the right-hand aisle
of the church there is 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 peo-
ple consider as the founder of our American Boston. It
would contain a painted memorial-window, in honor of
the old Puritan minister. A festival 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 incurred by an invited
guest at public festivals 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 hun-
dred pounds had been contributed by persons in the
United States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of
the memorial-window, and the repair and restoration of
the chapel.

After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap-
proached 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 pleasant 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 have an omnivorous
appetite for everything 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 position, (as clergymen of the
Established Church invariably are,) comfortable and

190 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

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 accommodated with an
old English church. He kindly and courteously did t he-
honors, showing us quite round the interior. Driving us
all the information that we required, and then lea\i;
to the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see.

The interior of Saint Botolph's is very fine and satis-
factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been
repaired — so far as repairs were necessary — in ad;
and noble style. The great eastern window is of modern
painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, and tenderest
modern window that I have ever seen : the art of paint-
ing these glowing transparencies in pristine perfection
being one that the world has lost. The vast, clear space
of the interior 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 melodious
mar. 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
larire a- life, and in perfect preservation, 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 ap-
propriated to the monks, which were so^contrived as to
tumble down with a tremendous crash, if the occupant
happened to fall asleep.

\Ve. now essayed to climb into the upper regions. Up
we went, winding and still winding round the circular

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 191

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 about as big as a pocket-handkerchief. Then
up again, up, up, up, through a yet smaller staircase, till
we emerged into another stone gallery, above the jack-
daws, and far above the roof beneath which we had be-
fore made a halt. Then up another flight, which led us
into a pinnacle of the temple, but not the highest ; so, re-
tracing 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 congrega-
tion of red-tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pigmy
people creeping about its narrow streets. We were three
hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle 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 still re-
maining, and the pedestals being about a yard from the
ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's Puritan parishioners are
probably 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

192 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

tower. On most of the projections, whether on the
tower or about the body of the church, there are ^.u-
iroyles of genuine Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts,
:» i iir<- Is. and combinations of all three; and where por-
tions of the edifice are restored, the modem sculptors
have tried to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very
poor success. Extravagance and absurdity have -till
their law. and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the
primmest tilings 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 reminded me much
of Hanover Street, Ann Street, and other portions of the
North End of our American Boston, as I remember that
picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not un-
reasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollec-
tions of the first settlers may have had some influence on
tli< physical character of the streets and houses in the
New Knidand metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar
intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked
and project ing-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 T
was, after chill years of banishment, to leave this hos-
pitahle place, on that account. Moreover, it recalled
some of the features of another American town, my own
dear native place, when I saw the seafaring people lean-
inir ; i -a i nst posts, and sitting on planks, under the It
warehouses, — or lolling on long-boats, drawn up high

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 193

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 to-
gether at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with
young men ; children chase one another in the summer
twilight ; school-boys sail little boats on the river, or
play at marbles across the flat tombstones in the church-
yard ; and ancient men, in breeches and long waistcoats,
wander slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity
of deportment, as if each one were everybody's grand-
father. I have frequently 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 preponderant, 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 soli-
tude. 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 Peacock into the market-place,
and beheld its irregular square already well covered with
booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretch-
ing 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
13

194 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic
attire; all sorts of things, in short, that air commonly
sold at a rural fair. I IK aid 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 nt' tin-
town. A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeo-
men elbowed one another in the square ; Mr. Punch was
M[ ueaking 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 im-
pression 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
\enerahle height, and the town beneath it, to the people
of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to tin-
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
\ieinity of their town; and (what could hardly IK
pected of an English eommunity) seem proud to think
that their neighborhood has given name to our first and
most widely celebrated and best remembered battle-
field.

NEAR OXFOED.

ON a fine morning in September, we set out on an
excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor #nd 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 attracted, 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.

The country betAveen Oxford and Blenheim is not par-
ticularly 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 espe-
cially remember a picturesque old gabled house at a
turnpike-gate, and, altogether, tlje wayside scenery had
a-n 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 appearance of an American

196 NEAR OXFORD.

town, being a large village of stone houses, most of them
pretty well time-worn and weather-stained. The Black
Hear is an ancient inn, large anurespertahle. with balu —
traded staircases, and intricate passages and corridors,
and queer old pictures and engravings han^in^ in the
entries and apartments. We ordered a luneh (the most
delightful of Kii'_di-h institution-, next t<> dinner) to be
ready a<_rain-t our return, and then returned our dri\
lileidieini.

The park-irate of Blenheim stand* close to the end of
the village-Street of Woodstock. Immediately on pass-
in- through its portals, we saw the stately palace in the
di-tance, hut made a wide circuit of the park before ap-
proachinir it. .This noble park contain* three thousand
Boree of land, and is fourteen miles in circumference.
Having been, in part, a royal domain before it was
^ranted to the Marlborough family, it contains many
tfreefl ot' miMirpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been
the haunt ot' game and deer lor centuries. We saw
pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and
-lades ; and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded
away, not affrighted, hut only shy and gamesome, as we
dro\e hy. 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 land-. -ape-gardeners of Queen Anne's
time botowed on it. when the domain of Blenheim
>cientitically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting
trunks of the old oak- do not now look as if man hftd
much intermeddled with their growth and pn-tur«-<. The
\n-c< of later date, that were set out in the (ireat Puke's
time, are arranged on the plan of the order of baUh- in

NEAR OXFORD. 197

which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at
Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, and
the trees now so luxuriant, thai the spectator is not dis-
agreeably conscious of their standing 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 fidelity than Marlborough'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 compared 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 Nature had poured these
broad waters into one of her own valleys. It is a most
beautiful object at a distance, and not less so on its imme-
diate 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 Blenheim owes
not merely this water-scenery, but almost all its other
beauties, to the contrivance of man. Its natural features
are not striking ; but Art has effected such wonderful
things that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that
nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of
a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for his
blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the
planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monoto-
nous surface of Blenheim, — making the most of every
undulation, — flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth

198 NEAR OXFORD.

out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed, — putting
in heauty 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
he hidden; — and then, to be sure, the lapse of a cen-
tury has softened the harsh outline of man's labors, and
ha- irivcn the plan- back to Nature aj:ain with the addi-
tion of what consummate science could achieve.

Alter dm ing a good way, we came to a battlement ed
lourr and adjoining house, which used to he the residence
of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge of
the property for the King before the Duke of Wail-
borough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for
us, and in the entrance-hall we found various things that
had to do with the chase and woodland 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 farther off, — very indis-
tinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the
ini>ty di.Mances of KiiLrland. KetiirniiiLr to the jrround-
Hoor. we were inhered into the room in which died AVil-
mot, 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 contiguous entrance-room there are the
mains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which,
perl laps, 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

NEAR OXFORD. 199

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.

Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish
man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, with
the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the se-
clusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble in. There
being no such possibility, we drove on, catching glimpses
of the palace in new points of view, and by and by came
to Rosamond's Well. The particular tradition that con-
nects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my memory ;
but if Rosamond ever lived and loved, and ever had her
abode in the maze of Woodstock, 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 legen-
dary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to possess medicinal
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.

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 ordinary man might
hold a bird. The column is I know not how many feet
high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to elevate Marlbor-
ough far above the rest of the world, and to be visible a

200 NEAR OXFORD.

long way off ; and it is so placed in reference to other ob-
jects, that, wherever the hero wandered about his grounds,
and especially as he issued from his mansion, he must in-
evitably have been reminded of his glory. In truth, until
I came to Blenheim, I never had so positive and material
an idea of what Fame really is — of what the admiral inn
of his country can do for a successful warrior — as I carry
away with me and shall always retain. Unless he had
the moral font1 of a thousand m> - r. hi- ei:oti-m

(beholding himself e\ery \\heri-, imbuing the entire .-nil,
growing in tin- wood*, rippling and* gleaming in the v
and pervading the very air with his greatness) must i
been swollen within him like the liver of a Strasbourg
goose. On the huge* tablets inlaid into the pedestal of
the column, the entire Act of Parliament, bestowing
Blenheim on the Duke of Maryborough, and his posterity,
is engraved in deep letters, painted black on the marble
ground. The pillar stands exactly a mile from the prin-
cipal front of the palace, in a straight line with the pre-
cise centre of its entrance-hall ; so that, as already said,
it was the Duke's principal object of contemplation.

We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a great
pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, irivin^
admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly,
and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the en-
trance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas
and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim
pence on our departure. This had a somewhat hidicmus
effect There is much public outcry against the mean-
ness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the
admission of visitors (chiefly, of course, his native country-
men) to view the magnificent palace which their fore-

NEAR OXFORD. 201

fathers bestowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems
hard that a private abode should be exposed to the in-
trusion of the public merely because the proprietor has
inherited or created a splendor which attracts general
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 Blenheim, the public
have certainly an equitable .claim to admission, both be-
cause the fame of its first inhabitant is a national pos-
session, 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 inconveniences himself, and entail them on*his pos-
terity. Nevertheless, his present Grace of Marlborough
absolutely ignores the public claim above suggested, and
(with a thrift of which even the hero of Blenheim him-
self did not set the example) sells tickets admitting six
persons at ten shillings : if only one person enters the
gate, he must pay for six ; and if there are seven in com-
pany, two tickets are required to admit them. The at-
tendants, 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 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.*

* 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 criticize or complain of, as regards the
facility of obtaining admission to interesting private houses in Eng-
land.

202 NEAR OXFORD.

Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the
quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic front of
the palace, 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 les- than seventy feet, be in <j the entire ele\ation
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 commemoratn
Marlborough's victories,) the purport of which I did not
take the trouble to make out, — contenting myself with
the general effect, which was most splendidly and effec-
tively ornamental.

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 head.-
of England or the Continent. One room was all aglow
with pictures by Rubens ; and there were works of
phael, and many other famous painters, any one of which
would be sufficient to illustrate the meanest house that
miirht contain it. I remember none of them, however,
(not heinir in a picture-seeing mood,) so well as Van-
dyck's large and familiar picture of Charles I. on horse-
back, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity such
as never by any other hand was put on canvas. \ .
i-oiiMderinir this fuce of Charles (which I find often re-
peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal
into literalism, I doubt whetlu T the unfortunate king was

NEAR OXFORD. . 203

really a handsome or impressive-looking man : a high,
thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hair
and beard, — these are the literal facts. It is the paint-
er's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy grace
around him.

On our passage through this beautiful suite of apart-
ments, 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 re-washed 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 children 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 Marlborough, and of the title and estate.

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

204 NEAR OXFORD.

command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the
most prominent figure. In tin- way of upholstery, there
<-:m never li;i\c hcen anything more magnificent than
these tapestries; and, considered as works of Art. they
have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of t< -n.

One whole \\inir of the palace js occupied by the
lihrary, a most nohle room, with a \a-t perspective length
from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter ami more
cheerful than that of most libraries: a wonderful contract
to the old college-libraries of Oxford, and perliap- ton
sombre and suggestive of thoughtfulness than any large
lihrary ou^ht to be ; inasmuch as so many studious brain-
as have left their deposit on the shelves cannot have om-
spired without producing a very serjous and ponderous
result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there are
elaborate doorways ami lireplaces 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 concep-
tion of her royal dignity ; while the face of the statue,
fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of her
personal character. 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
visitor, 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

NEAR OXFORD. 205

chapel, to which we were conducted 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 design includes the statues of the
deceased dignitaries, and various allegorical flourishes,
fantasies, and confusions; and beneath 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 an-
cestors still inhabit, after their fashionj the house where
their successors spend the passing day ; but the adulation
lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been
consummated, unless the palace of his lifetime had be-
come 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 respectable Scotch-
man made his appearance and took us in, charge, proving
to be the head-gardener in person. He was extremely
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 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 skilfully interposed clumps of trees,
is made to appear 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

206 NEAR OXFORD.

is not the same weary and dusty world with which
outside mortals are conversant ; it is a finer, lo \elier,
more harmonious Nature; and the Great Mother lends
herself kindly to the gardener'.- will, knowing that he
will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pris-
tine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit
and praise to herself. I douht whether there is ever any
winter within that precinct, — any clouds, except tin-
fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw then-
rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal.
The lawns and Blades are like the memory of places
where one has wandered when first in love.

What a good and happy life might be spent in a para-
di-e like this! And yet, at that very moment, the be-
sotted Duke (ah ! I have let out a secret which I meant
to keep to myself; but the ten shillings must pay for all)
WM in that very garden, (for the guide told us so, and
cautioned our young people not to be uproarious,) and.
it' in a condition for arithmetic, was thinking of nothing
nobler than how. many ten-shillinjr tickets had that day
IK *n sold. Republican as I am, I should still love to think
that noblemen lead noble lives, and that all this stately
and beautiful environment may serve to elevate them a
little way above the rest of us. If it fail to do so, the
disgrace falls equally ujKm 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, eatiiur the acorns under those magnificent oaks of
r>h nheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits than
ordinary swine-.

Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a

NEAR OXFORD. 207

description of Blenheim ; and I hate to leave it without
some more adequate expression of the noble edifice, with
its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful sun-
shine ; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred
years, it could not 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 likewise 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 varieties of hop and malt liquor
than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort
of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very
vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and
bottled 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

208 NEAR OXFORD.

I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has
<•<•!(• I >nit rd in immortal verse,) commend me to the An h-
drncon, as the Oxford scholars call it. in honor of the
jovial dignitary who first taught these erudite worthies
how to brew their favorite nectar. John Barleycorn ha<
Ln\en his very heart to this admirable liquor: it
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 Blenheim, the same
party set forth, in two flies, on a tour to some other places
of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. It was a^ain
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 such perfect weather ; and yet the long suc-
« — ion had given us confidence in as many more to come.
The climate of England has been shamefully maligned ;
its sulkiness and asperities are not nearly so offensive as
Englishmen tell us (tin -ir climate being the only attribute
of their country 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 wliich are said to have once formed a portion of
Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle's ballad and Scott's
romance. 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.

NEAR OXFORD. 209

and tried to peep over the 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 before, 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 par-
son's cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, of which
I remember only some upright memorials of slate to in-
dividuals 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 lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars
and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of an
English country church. One or two pews, probably
those of the gentlefolk 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 in-
laid into a church pavement. On these brasses are en-
graved 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 inscription likewise
cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulo-
gies 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 Wal-
ter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even
14

210 NEAR OXFORD.

UK ;it< i- than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to
venture on depicting Anthony Forster in nidi lines as
l»Ia*ken him in the romance. For my part. I read the
inscription in full faith, ami lielieve 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, tin- anxiety, which
so worries us, about our good fame, or our bad fame, alter
death! If it were of the slightest real moment. «>m-
reputations would have been placed by Providence more
in our own power, and less in other people's, than we now
find tin -HI to be. If poor Anthony Forster happens to
ha\e met Sir Walter in the other world, I doubt whether
he has ever thought it worth while to complain of the
la tier's misrepresentations.

We did not remain long in the church, as it contains
nothing else of interest; and driving through the \illage,
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, however, by at least a hundred years, as
Giles Gosling's time; nor is there any other object to
remind the visitor of the Elizabethan age, unless it be
a few ancient cottages, that are perhaps of still earlier
date. Cumnor is not nearly so large a village, nor a
place of such mark, as one anticipates from its romantic
and legendary fame ; but, being still inaccessible by rail-
way, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we
often lind in English country town-. In this retired
neighborhood the road is narrow and bordered with grass,
and sometimes interrupted by gates ; the hedges grow in

NEAR OXFORD. 211

unpruned luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven neat-
ness and trimness that characterize the ordinary English
landscape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclu-
sion and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether
on foot or otherwise.

I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's peregrina-
tions ; but, after leaving 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 re-
sumed our drive, — first glancing, 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 private 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 threshold. Their mag-
netism 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, that I heard
a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he was the
author of " The Eed Letter A " ; and, after some con-
sideration, (for he did not seem to recognize his own
book, at first, under this improved title,) our countryman

212 NKAi: OX10HD.

n '-ponded, doubtfully, that he believed so. The gentle-
man proceeded to inquire whether our 1'riend had .-pent
much time in America. — evidently thinking that In-
must have been caught young, and have had a tincture
of English breeding, at Iea.-t. it' not hirth, to speak the
language so tolerably, and appear so much like other
people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly queer.
and of very frequent oemi-rence, and is quite as much
a characteristic of men of education and culture as of
clowns

Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It was
formerly the .-eat of the ancient family of Harcourt, which
now has its prmcipal abode at Nuneham Courtney, a few
miles off. The parsonage is a relic of the family man-
sion, or castle, other portions 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 capa-
city, from height to depth, con.-tituted the kitchen of the
ancient castle, and is still used for domestic purposes,
although it has not, nor ever had. a chimney; or we
illicit rather say, it is itself one vast chimney, 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 blaekeued 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 se\enty feet above.
These lofty openings were capable of being so arranged.
with reference to the wind, that ihe 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

NEAR OXFORD. 213

•

fuss and ado as a modern cook would roast a fowl. The
inside of the tower is very dim and sombre, (being noth-
ing 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 gen-
erations that have passed away. Methinks the extremest
range of domestic economy lies between an American
cooking-stove and the ancient 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 beyond the experience of an
American — it is somewhat remarkable, that, while we
stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted and perplexed
by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen just this
strange spectacle 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
unaccountable 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 per-
tinacious an attack, as I could not but suppose it, of that
odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly re-
member some previous scene or incident, of which the
one now passing appears to be but the echo and redupli-
cation. 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,)
where he resided while translating a part of the " Iliad."
It is one of the most admirable pieces of description
in the language, — playful and picturesque, with fine

214 NEAR OXFORD.

•

touches of humorous pathos, — and conveys as pert'. •< -t a
picture a> ever was drawn of a decayed Kn^li.-h rountrv
hoii>e ; an<l among otlier rooms, most of which have .-ince
crumbled down and disappeared. IK- dashes off' the Lri im
aspect of this kitchen, — which, moreover. IM- peoples with
witche^ en -i /ing Satan himself as head-cook, win. stirs
the internal caldrons that .-eethe and huhhle over the
fires. This letter, and others relative to his abode here,
were very familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining
still fre>h at the bottom of my memory, caused the %\eird
and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding the
real >j»ectacle that had formerly been made so \i\id to
my imagination.

Our next \isitwas to the church, which stands close
by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the caMle.
In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Harcourts, are
found some very interesting family monuments, — and
among them, recumbent on a tombstone; the figure of an
armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in
tin Wars of the Roses. Hi- t'catn res, dress, and armor
are painted in colors, still wonderfully fresh, and then
still blushes the symbol of the Red Rose, denoting the
faction tor which he fought and died. His head reM
a marble or alabaster helmet ; and on the tomb lies the
veritable helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore in
battle, — a ponderous iron case, \vith the visor complete.
and remnants of the pffing that once covered it. The
crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood.
Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn-
ment of his tomb: and, indeed, it seems strange that it
ha- not been stolen before now, especially in Cromwell'-
time, when kninhtly tombs were little respected, and

NEAR OXFORD. 215

when armor was in request. However, it is needless 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 lifetime.
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 beneath
which he marshalled his followers in the field. As it
was absolutely falling to pieces, I tore off one little bit,
no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my waistcoat-
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 another 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 JBosworth Field ; and a banner, sup-
posed 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
throughout its neighborhood by the influence of the

216 NEAR OXFORD.

University, during the great Civil War ami the rule of
the Parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and
kindly character of this old family, that the peasant rv,
among whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate
their tombs, when it might have been done with im-
punity.

There are other and more recent memorials of the
Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord,
who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like
tho>e of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad,
not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The titl« i-
now extinct, but the family survives in a younger branch,
and still holds i\n> patrimonial estate, though they have
IOIIL: -iix-e (jnitted it as a residence.

We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds appertain-
ing to the man-ion, and which used to be of vast dietary
importance to the family in Catholic times, and when
\\<\\ was not otherwise attainable. There are two or
three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of which is of
\.M-V n-peetable >i/e. — '. .:i'_rli, indeed, to be really

a picturesque object, with its grass-green borders, and the
trees drooping n\erit, and 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
lnved abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet
water- : but I saw only some minnows, and one or two
snakes, which were lyinir amoni_r the weeds on the top of
the water, sunning and hathinir themselves at 0006,

1 mentioned that there \\ere t\\o towm remaining of

NEAR OXFORD. 217

the old castle : the one containing 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 basement 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 stair-
case, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round as
it climbs upward, giving access to a chamber on each
floor, and finally emerging on the battlemented roof.
Ascending this turret-stair, and arriving at the third
story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupy-
ing the whole area of the tower, and lighted by a win-
dow on each side. It was wainscoted from floor to ceil-
ing 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 resi-
dence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part
of the translation of Homer, and likewise, 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 safekeeping 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 con-

218 NEAR OXFORD.

sciousof the presence of that decrepit little figure of <^n
Anne's time, although he was merely a casual guest in
the old tower, during .one or two summer month-. I I ow-
es IT brief the time and slight the connection, his sphu
cannot be exorcised so long as the tower stands. In my
mind, moreover, Pope, or any other person with an avail-
able claim, is right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive :
for I never saw a chamber that I should like better to
inhabit, — so comfortably small, in such a safe and inac-
cessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from ca«-h
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, aljout a dozen more
steps of the tunvt-.-tair 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 Stan ton 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 con-
fess my ignorance of the precise geographical wherea-
bout. 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 extended oars, to pass, — shal-
low, too, and bordered with bulrushes and water- v
which, in some places, quite overgrew the Mirface of the
river from bank to bank. The shores were Hat and
meadow-like, and sometimes, the boatman told ns, are

NEAR OXFORD. 219

overflowed by the rise of the stream. The water looked
clean and pure, but not particularly 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 Hudson, — not to speak of the St. Lawrence or
the Mississippi !

It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, com-
fortably accommodating our party ; the day continued
sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boatman, well
trained to his business, managed the oars skilfully and
vigorously ; and we went down the stream quite as swiftly
as it was desirable to go, the scene being so pleasant, 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 pal-
aces 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 I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its tur-
bid 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 boat-
man 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, mean-
while, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old

220 NEAR OXFORD.

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# shattered tower at
one of the angles; the whole much ivy-grown, — brim-
ming 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 Oxford, 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 possession of a
spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable
dining-room or drawing-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
MTV splendid ones being owned by the students, of the
different colleges, or by clubs. They are drawn by
horses, like canal-boats ; and a horse being attached to
our own liaise. In- 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 vici — i-
tude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. It
was lite without the trouble of living; nothing was
more quietly agreeable. In this happy state of mind
and body we gazed at Christ-Church meadows, as we
passed, and at tin receding spires and towers of Oxford,
and on a good deal of pleasant variety along the banks :
young men rowing or fishing; troops of naked boys
bathing, as if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity of the

NEAR OXFORD. 221

Golden Age ; country houses, cottages, water-side inns,
all with something fresh about them, as not being sprin-
kled with the dust of the highway. We were a large
party now ; for a number of additional guests had joined
us at Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, novelists,
scholars, sculptors, painters, architects, men and women
of renown, dear friends, genial, outspoken, open-hearted
Englishmen, — all voyaging onward together, like the
wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a sin-
gle 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 po-
matum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He
was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little
flaw in our 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 provision 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
attended to, we had arrived at that part of the Thames
which passes by Nuneham Courtney, a fine estate be-
longing to the Harcourts, and the present residence of
the family. Here we landed, and, climbing a steep slope
from the riverside, paused a moment or two to look at
an architectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of
which I do not well understand. Thence we proceeded

222 NEAB OXFORD.

onward, through the loveliest ]»;irk and woodland scenery
I ever saw, and under as beautiful a declining sunshine
as heaven ever shed over earth, to the -lately mansion-
house.

A^ w<- hen- cross a private- threshold, it is not allow-
able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful ,i:»y
with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, I may
as well brim: 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 Hareourts. The house itself 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
pieturesqueness 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 Transatlantic
praise, but be bold to say that it appeared to me as per-
fect as anything earthly can be, — utterly and entirely
finished, as it the years and generations had done all that
the hearts and minds of the successive owners could con-
trive for a spot they dearly loved. Such homes as Kune-
ham Courtney are amoivir the splendid results of long
hereditary possession ; and we Republicans, whose house-
holds melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring morn-
iiiLT. must content ourselves with our many counterbalan-
cing advantages, — for this one, so apparently desirable to
the far-projecting selfishness of our nature, we are certain
never to attain.

NEAR OXFORD. 223

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 country-
seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many superiors, in
the features of beauty, and expansive, manifold, redun-
dant comfort, which most impressed me. A moderate
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 being no literary faculty,
attainable or conceivable 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 for-
tune 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 stand-
ing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks
have echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty generations,
— lawns and gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with
canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses
through archways of great boughs, — spires, towers, and
turrets, each with its history and legend, — dimly mag-
nificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and
brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of
richest gloom, — vast college-halls, high- windowed, oaken-
panelled, and hung round with portraits of the men, in
every age, whom the University has nurtured to be
illustrious, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the
wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved, — kitch-
ens, (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

224 NEAR OXFORD.

rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that
mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Ma-
ter : make all' these things vivid in your dream, and you
will never know nor believe how inadequate is the result
to represent even the merest outside of Oxford.

We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article
without making our grateful acknowledgments, by name,
to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main
condition of nil our sight-seeings and enjoyments. De-
lightful as will always be our recollection of Oxford and
its neighborhood, we partly suspect that it owes mucli ot
its happy coloring to the genial medium through which
the objects were presented to us, — to the kindly n
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 insep-
arably mingled his image with our remembrance of the
Spires of Oxford.

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 prob-
ably 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 burn-
ing sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to the
residence of Burns. The street leading from the station
is called Shakspeare Street ; and at its farther extremity
we read " Burns Street " on a corner-house, — 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, joining one to an-
other along the whole length of the street. With not a
tree, of course, or a blade of glass between the paving-
stones, the narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, and reeked
15

226 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

with a genuine Scotch odor, he i HIT infested with unwashed
children, and a It «•;••< -thcr in a state of chronic filth; al-
though some 'women seemed to be hopelessly scrubbing
the thresholds of their wretched d\\< -llin^.-*. I never saw
an outskirt 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
whitewashed, 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 struct i in .
but under the same continuous roof with the next.
There was an inscription on the door, bearing no refer-
ence to Burns, but indicating that the 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 errand, 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 appeared, 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 bed-
el laniber 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 Shakspeare's house, which
has a certain homely picturesqueness that contrasts favor-

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 227

ably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us.
The narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity
of wretched hovels are depressing to remember ; and the
steam of them (such is our human weakness) might
almost make the poet's memory less fragrant.

As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day.
After leaving the house, we found our way into the prin-
cipal 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 assured 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 dig-
ging a grave , and, scrambling out of the hole, he let us'
into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monu-
ments. Their general shape and construction are pecu-
liar 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 sepulchral memorials rise
to the height of ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, forming quite
an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with
names of small general significance. It was easy, indeed,
to ascertain the rank of those who slept below ; for in
Scotland it is the custom to put the occupation of the
buried personage (as " Skinner," " Shoemaker," " Flesh-
er") on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives
are buried under their maiden names, instead of those
of their husbands ; thus giving a disagreeable impression
•that the married pair have bidden each other an eternal
farewell on the edge of the grave.

228 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF IU

There was a footpath through this crowds! church-
vard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the <rrave of
Hums; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap-
peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privi-
1 to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort
of Grecian temple, witli pilasters and a dome, covering a
space, of about twenty feet square. It was formerly open
t<> all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is
nmv protected and shut in by large squares of rough
glass, each pane l>cin;r of the size of one whole -ide of
the structure. The woman unlocked the door, and ad-
mitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of
mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns, — the very Bf
that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this
monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding
wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the
Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn
poet. Methonjjht it was not a very successful piece of
work ; tor the plough was better sculptured 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
Maine 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 brimniinu Droer
with powerful thought and bright and tender fant.
was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dum

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 229

doctor. It has since been deposited in a new leaden
coffin, and restored to the vault. We learned that there
is a surviving daughter of Burns's eldest son, and daugh-
ters 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 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 effect
as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visit-
ing just previously. Beholding 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 immortal in a dis-
reputable, drunken, shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed
man, consorting 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 actual man comes
staggering before you, besmeared 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 im-

230 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

mediate presence, some strangely impressive characteris-
tic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem
like u demigod so soon.

As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a
spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dumfries
were buried during the cholera year ; and also some «
ous old monuments, with raised letters, tin- inscriptions on
which were not sufficiently 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 Claver-
house 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 little
statue ; and the woman told us that it represented a ciiUd
of the sculptor, and that the baby (here still in its marble
infancy) 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
representation 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 him-

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 231

dred guineas, and sculptored this mere copy to replace it.
The first figure was entirely naked in its earthly and
spiritual 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.

We went into the church, and found it very plain and
naked, without altar-decorations, 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 observant of profane things — brought him before
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 unmentionable
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 refused some money which my
companion offered her, because I had already paid her
what she deemed sufficient.

At the railway station we spent more 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 vil-

232 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

laire, 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 ,
more redolent of Burns than almost any other, consi>:
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 iraMc-eud 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 Mauchline. 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."

Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village
street, stands Posie Nansie's inn, where the "Jolly i
gars " congregated. The latter is a two-story, i
thatched house, looking old, but by no means veneraMe,
like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned
windows, and may well have stood for centuries, —
though, seventy or eighty years ago, when Bums
conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been
something better than a beggars' alehouse. The whole
town of oManchline looks rusty and time-worn. — »
the newer houses, of which there are several, being shad-
owed and darkened by the general aspect of the place.

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 233

When we arrived, all the wretcTied little dwellings seemed
to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm
summer evening ; everybody was chatting with every-
body, on the most familiar terms ; the bare-legged chil-
dren gambolled or quarrelled uproariously, and came
freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our par-
lor. When we ventured out, we were followed by the
gaze of the old town : people standing, in their doorways,
old women popping their heads from the chamber-win-
dows, and stalwart men — idle on Saturday at e'en, after
their week's hard labor — clustering at the street-corners,
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 be-
ing wedged into the farther end of a closely filled pew,
he was forced to stay through the preaching of four sev-
eral sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted and des-
perate. 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 conformance 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

234 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

view of far hills and grden slopes on either side. Just
before we reached the flmn, the driver .-topped to point
out a hawthorn, urowinir hy 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 celebrated. We then
turned into a rude gateway, 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 considerably overshadowed by trees.
'I' he house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands
of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof,
on which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque,
thonirh alien growth. There is a door and one window
in front, besides another little window that peeps out
amonir the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extending
back at riirlit angles from it, so as to inclose the farm-
yard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and
•reneral appearance as the house: any one of the three
looks just as tit 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
on three sides by these three hovels, a large dog b<
to bark at us ; and some women and children made their
appearance, but seemed to demur about admitting us,
because the1 master and mistress were very reli
people, and had not yet come back from the Sacrament
at M:\uchline.

However, it would not do to be turned back from the
very threshold of Robert Burns; and as the women
seemed to be merely strati ing visitors, and nobody, at
all events, had a riirlit to send us away, we went into the

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235

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 daughter 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 a noticeably poor one,
and, besides being all that the cottage had to show for a
parlor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds,
which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young
man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go up-
stairs. Uj3 we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps
brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen,
where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-chamber
in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, and
two beds spread upon «the bare floor. This, most prob-
ably, was Burns's chamber ; or, perhaps, it may have
been that of his mother'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 oppo-
site side of the passage was the door of another attic
chamber, opening which, I saw a considerable number
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

236 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BUI;

physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe
about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with eoarse-
na tu red rustics into this narrowness ami tilth. Such a
habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and women ;
and it indicates a degree of barbarism whi< •!» I did not
imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad field-,
like tin- farmer of Maiu-hline, should have his abode in a
pigsty. It is sad t<> think of anybody — not to KM
poet, but any human being — sleeping, eating, thinking
praying, and spending all his home-life in this mi-Ar-
able hovel; but, nn think-, 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 developed
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 boim:
damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, outside
of the cottage walls, it should possess so evil a reputation.
It occupies a high, broad ridge, "enjoying, surely, what-
ever 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 beside the cottage, give
it a pleasant aspect 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 ti]> the
mouse's nest It is the inclosure nearest to the cottage,
and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather remark-

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237

ably 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 immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a
whole handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped
flowers," which will be precious to many friends in our
own country as " coming from Burns'& farm, and being
of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he
turned into an amaranthine flower while seeming to de-
stroy it.

From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleas-
ant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by their
connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along a portion
of the estate of Auchinleck, which still belongs to the
Boswell family, — the present possessor being Sir James
Boswell,* 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 large number of acres, is the income very consider-
able.

By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw Miss
* Sir James Boswell is now dead.

238 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

Alexander, the Lass of Bailor! nn\ U -. It was on a bridge,
which (or, more probably, a bridge that has succeeded to
the old one, and is made of iron) crosses from bank to
hank, hiirh in air, over a deep gorire of tin; road; so that
the younir lady may have appeared to Burns like a c
tun- between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of
celestial elements. But, in honeM truth, the great charm
of a woman, in Burns's eyes, was^always her womanhood,
and not the angelic mixture which other poets lind
in her.

Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass

of lialloclnnyle, 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 implies no such inter-
view. Lovers, of whatever condition, high or low, could
drHiv IK. lovelier scene in which to breathe their vows:
the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes gleaming
into the sunshine, sometimes hidden deep in verdure, and
here and there eddying at the foot of high and precipitous
rl ill's. This beautiful estate of Ballochmyle is still held
by the family of Alexanders, to%hom Burns's song has
given renown on cheaper terms than any other set of
people ever attained it. I low slight the tenure seems!
A youiiLr lady happened to walk out, one summer after-
noon, 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 cent
that maiden has free admittance into the dream-land of
Beautiful Women, and she and all her race are famou> !
I should like to know the present head of the family, and

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 239

ascertain what value, if any, the members of it put upon
the celebrity thus won.

We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as " the
clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards the
point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of Mauch-
line, whither we now returned without seeing anything
eke worth writing about.

There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in the
morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauchline was
glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spatter-
ing down. The intense heat of many days past was .ex-
changed 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 by, 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, including
those licensed to sell only tea and tobacco ; the best of
them have the characteristics of village stores in the United
States, dealing in a small way with an extensive 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 acquaintance are doubtless there,
and the Armours among them, except Bonny Jean, who
sleeps by her poet's side. The family of Armour is now
extinct in Mauchline.

Arriving at the railway station, we found a tall, elderly,

240 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

comely gentleman walking to and fro and waiting for the
t inin. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, — it may fairly
be presumed the Alexander of Ballochmyle, a blood rela-
tion 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 Alexanders, by the by,
an- not an old family on the Ballochmyle estate; tin
father of the lass having made a fortune in trade, and
established himself as the first landed proprietor 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 wofiil 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 mafly
modern or modern-fmnu •<! edifices; although there are
likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking houses in
the by-streets, here and there, 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 vener-
able structure of four gray arches, \\ hicli must have be-
M ridden tlir stream ever since the early days of Scottish
history. These are the "Two Briggs of Ayr," whose
midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 241

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
defended 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 im-
pressed me hereabouts, 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 aspect, as if it felt
itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of
storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh
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 cot-
tage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert
Burns was bom 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 improvement 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 inscrip-
tions, form really curious and interesting articles of fur-
niture. 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
16 •

242 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

a portrait of Burns, copied from the • original picture by
Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards,
which are probably a recent >iil»titntc for the 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 Shak-
speare's house, — though, perhaps, not so strangely cracked
and broken 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, con-
taining a bed. which can be hidden by curtains. In that
humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was
pleased in depu-it the jicrm of the 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 sitting-room, the
height of which was that of the whole house. The cot-
tage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same
size and description, as these little habitations often are ;
and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it,
since the poet's renown began to draw visitors to the way-
side ale-house. The old woman of the house led us
through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast
dimensions, to be sure, but marvellously large and splen-
did as compared with what might be anticipated from the

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 243

outward aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust of
Burns, and was hung round with pictures and engravings,
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 monument, and gave the old
woman a fee besides, 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 enclosed.
We rang the bell at the gate of the enclosure, but were
forced to wait a considerable time ; because the old man,
the regular superintendent 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 enclosure around the monument is beautifully laid
out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided
with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving
care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and
consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above
which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple, — a mere
dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the
winds. The edifice 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, en-
tering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking keener,

244 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his
pictures usually do. I think tin- likeness cannot be good.
Jn t lie centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were
reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket Bible that
Hums gave to Highland Mar}', 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 written 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 monument, by which
we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Bi
of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O'Shanter's misadventure
being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through
tlu- enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a.
corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of
Tarn and Sutor Wat, — ponderous stone-work enough.
yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth
and jovial hilarity. From this part of the garden, too,
we a-ain beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tarn
galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a
beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, gnu-etui
arch, ivv-nrown, and shad<>\\ed all over and around with
foliage.

When we had waited a good while, the old gardener
came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer
at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk. He now
gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from
his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to Kirk

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 245

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 evidently modern restorations.
Never was there a plainer little church, or one with
smaller architectural pretension ; no New England meet-
ing-house has more simplicity 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 actu-
ally exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan
and an assembly 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. Possibly,
some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and
hidden infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the
holy edifice by his pretence of prayer, and thus made
it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers 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 goodt
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

246 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.

us out from our own precincts, too, — from that inalien-
able possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon
mankind, by takinir it from the actual earth an<l annexing
it t<> 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 an iron grate !
May their rest be troubled, till they rise and let us in !

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, con>iderin;_r how
large a space it tills in our imagination before we see it
1 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 dev-
ilish liirht, 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 hamrinu 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, 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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 247

the beautiful Boon, flowing 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 pic-
ture of the river and the green banks beyond, was abso-
lutely the most picturesque object, 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 crossing 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 from that
sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as might
be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa
Craig rising like a pryamid 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 mountain ; and we had been
holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with
the stalwart ghost of one of Earth's memorable 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 necessary light upon what-
ever he has produced. 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.

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 be-
lieve that it may be only a moral effect, — a "light that
never was on sea nor 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 impossihility which I so far accomplished as to vanish,
at frequent intervals, out of men's sight and knowledge
on one side of England, 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 intangible a character to be let even with the
most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had
given us his suburban residence, with all its conven-
iences, elegances, and snuggeries, — its drawing-rooms
and library, still warm and bright with the- recollection
of the genial presences that we had known there, — its
closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if we
could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a

A LONDON SUBURB. 249

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 shiv-
ering by hearths which, heap the bituminous 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 unamiable personage in
his lifetime) scowled inhospitably from above the mantel-
piece, 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 opportunities so seldom permit him
to enjoy.

Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all
the world, (which, as Americans have at present no cen-
tre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere in the
vicinity, 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 uncon-
genial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven

250 A LONDON SUBURB.

more attractive 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 sail —
faction) that mysterious yearning — the magnetism of
millions of hearts operating upon one — which impels
every man's individuality to mingle itself with the im-
mensest 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 labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens
and enclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and
Mlent amid the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy streets
along the riverside, the bridges, — I had sought all parts
of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariahle and in-
discriminating curiosity; until few of the native inhab-
itants, 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 I i ud it the more surely) had brought me, at one time
or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all
the objeets 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 noth-
ing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment,
I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight
which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether
to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of Lon-
don. The result was, that 1 acquired a home-feeling
there, as nowhere else in the world, — though afterwards
I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard
to Rome ; and as long as ekher of those two great cities
shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present, a

A LONDON SUBURB. 251

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, liv-
ing 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 pre-
cincts. 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, yet had al-
ways 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 ex-
uberance of English verdure had a greater charm than
any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger
for natural beauty might be satisfied 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 English gardeners are fain to throw away in pro-
ducing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples, —
as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of un-
happy 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

252 A LONDON SUBURB.

rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an Eng-
lish fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in
flavor with a Yankee turnip.

The garden included that prime feature of English do-
mestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, carefully
shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which we
sometimes essayed to practise the time-honored game of
howls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that
it involves 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 softened by shrubbery and
the impaled fruit-trees already mentioned. Overall the
outer region, beyopd 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 seclusion ; 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, moder-
ated 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 summon-
ing me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained
or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neigh-
borhood of London ; for, on the one hand, my conscience
stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with chil-
dren in the grass, when there were so many better things
for an enlightened traveller to do, — while, at the same
time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness,

A LONDON SUBURB. 253

to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the
whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour,
arid 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 requital 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 in-
comparable 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 atmos-
pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombre-
ness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such
high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, 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, per-
spiring faces, in a state of combustion and deliquescence ;
and I have observed that even their cattle have similar
susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or standing
mid-leg 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 it4 was that

254 A LONDON srurkii.

modest and inestimable superabundance whirl) constitute-
a bounty of Providence, instead of just a ni^ardlv
enough. During my first year in England, rending in
perhaps the most nnirenial part of the kingdom, I could
never be quite comfortable without a fire on tin hearth :
in the second tweh •••month, beginning to get acclimati/ed.
I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy, but some-
t imes almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smil-
in- summer; and in the succeeding years — whether
that I had renewed my fibre with English beef and re-
plenished my blood with En-lMi ale, or whatever were
the cause — I grew content with winter and especiallv in
ln\, 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 al-
:her tolerable ; so that I was fain to shift my position
with the shadow of the shrubbery, making myself the
movable index 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
summer-day has positively no beginning and no end.
When you awake, at any reasonable 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 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, it there be any such season, hangs down a trans-
parent veil through which the by-gone day beholds its

A LONDON SUBURB. 255

successor ; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London,
it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern 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 omi-
nous infant ; and you, though a mere mortal, may simul-
taneously 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 perturba-
tion, 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 transitory, flitting, and irrespon-
sible character of my life there was perhaps the most
enjoyable 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 ad-
vantages, if we can find tents ready pitched for us at
every st#ge.

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 comparatively recent years, I be-
lieve) on the wide waste of Blackheath, 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

256 A LONDON SUBUKU.

and nobody; but exclusive rights have been obtained.
hen- and there, chiefly by men whose daily concerns link
them with London, 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 \\ h. •» -1-
t r.-u-ks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of
difference from those of an American village, bearing
tokens of architectural design, though seldom of indi-
vidual 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. lilack-
heath Park. — ami con-titute 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 inspirations, with a strange and
unexpected sense of desert freedom. The misty atmos-
phere helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does

A LONDON SUBURB. 257

not quite exist. During the little time that it lasts, the
solitude is as impressive 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 distance some landmark that you may
have known, — an insulated villa, perhaps, with its gar-
den wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new
settlement which is sprouting 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 Western prairie may still compare
favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. When
I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingenious device
of garroting had recently come into fashion ; and I can
remember, while crossing those waste places at midnight,
and hearing footsteps behind me, to have been sensibly
encouraged by also 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 somewhat desolate peculiarity of the
heath seemed to me to put on its utmost impressiveness.
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 thinner 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 irresistibly attractive, like a young man's dream
17

258 A LONDON SUBUUB.

of the great world, foretelling at that di-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
lilarkheath. and matches were goingp^bnrard that seemed
to involve the honor and credit of communities or coun-
ties, exciting an interest in everybody but myself, who
cared not what part of Kngland might glorify it.-elf at
the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an
Knirli.-hman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great na-
tional -jaiiH ; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside
observer, 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 witnessed 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
patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our n.-
dainty,) and ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor
ainoni: the booth-keeper's hidden stores. The frequent
railway trains, as well as the numerous steamers to Green-
wich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath a play-
ground and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and

A LONDON SUBURB. 259

very cheaply accessible ; so that, in view of this broader
use and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have
been filched away, so to speak, arid individualized by
thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested
me : they were schools of little boys or girls, under the
guardianship of their instructors, — charity schools, as I
often surmised from their aspect, collected among dark
alleys and squalid courts ; and hither they were brought
to spend a summer afternoon, 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 shel-
terless and lost because grimy London, their slatternly
and disreputable mother, had suffered them to stray out
of her arms.

Passing among these holiday people, we come to one
of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening through
an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath
into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland orna-
ment, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees,
many of which bear tokens 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 surface of the Park. The loftiest
and most abrupt of them (though but of very moderate
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

260 A LONDON SUBURB.

consent to say so, the longitude of our great globe
begins. I used to regulate my watch l>y the l.mad 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 cultivate!
1*668; an«l KcnMn-tnn. especially, in a summer after-
noon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or
ought to be, in a world which. sonic time or other, we
must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beautiful, — a sp«»t
where the art of man has conspired with Nature, as if lie
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 aristocratic resorts
in closer vicinity to the metropolis. 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 pre-
tends 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 whate\<r
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 \\a-
too good to see how sturdily the plebeians trod under their
own oaks, and what fulness of simple enjoyment they
evidently found there. They were the people, — not the

A LONDON SUBURB. 261

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 investigate what man-
ner 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 betters. 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 Parliament.

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
dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual English-
man is sometimes preternaturally disagreeable, an ob-
server standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness
towards them in the lump. They adhere 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 Cockneys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow-
Bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on
the broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or "by sin-
gle pairs of lovemaking youths and maidens, along the

262 A LONDON SUBURB.

sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent police-men
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 tin- I'ark. and
were readily prevailed upon to nibMe n hit of bread out
of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever been
done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed at
tin- heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors, for
centuries pa>t, tin-re was still an apprehensiveness linger-
ing in their hearts; so that a slight movement of the
hand or a step too near would send a whole squad mn
of them scampering away, just as a breath scatt<-i> the
winded seeds of .a dandelion.

The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those fes-
tal 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 I'liritanic strictness
might be liiipriiiLf in the sombre depths of a New Eng-
land heart, among severe and sunless remembrances 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 ser-
mons. 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 congre-
gation, ^us zeal for whose religious welfare impels the
good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome ges-

A LONDON SUBURB. 263

ture that his 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 cor-
poreal 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 acceptably than many a prelate. These way-
side 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 con-
temporary of Admiral Benbow, — 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 always noticed, moreover, that a
considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers,
who came hither with a day's leave from Woolwich, —
hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many
as four or five medals, Crimean or East-Indian, on the
breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous congre-
gation 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 cathedrals, the sermon is an
exceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the relig-

264 A LONDON SUBURB.

ious 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 tin- Sahhath exercises.

Tin- Methodists are probably the first and only English-
men who have worshipped in the open air since the an-
cient Britons listened to the preaching of the Druids ;
and it reminded me of that old priesthood, to .gee certain
memorials of their dusky epoch — not religious, however,
but warlike — 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 remembered
battle, fimirlit on the site of Greenwich Park as long ago
as two or three centuries after the birth of Christ. What-
ever 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 monu-
ments retain* 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 dep re-
in their summits. When one of them was opened, not
long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were dis-
covered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft of hair,
— perhaps from the head of a valiant general, who, dyinir
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

A LONDON SUBURB. 265

potsherds and rubbish of innumerable generations make
the visitor wish^that each passing century could carry off
all its fragments and relics along with it, instead of add-
ing them to the continually accumulating burden which
human knowledge is compelled to lug upon its back. As
for the fame, I know not what has become of it.

After traversing the Park, we come into the neighbor-
hood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through one
of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing at an
establishment which does more honor to the heart of Eng-
land 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
Government, I should conceive, is too much an abstraction
ever to feel any sympathy for its maimed sailors and sol-
diers, 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 chil-
dren of the nation, and that the Government is their dry-
nurse, and that the old men themselves have a childlike
consciousness of their position. Very likely, a better sort
of life might have been arranged, and a wiser care be-
stowed on them ; but, such as it is, it enables them to
spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable old age, grumbling,
growling, gruff, as if all the foul weather of their past
years were pent up within them, yet not much more dis-
contented than such weather-beaten and battle-battered
fragments 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 beauti-

266 A LONDON SUBURB.

fill than any English palace that I have seen, consNtin;_:
of several quadrangles of stately architecture, united by
colonnades and gravel walks, ami endnsini: jrrassy square •-.
with Statues in the centre, the whole extending alon«r the
frhaines. It is built of marble, or \< iv li-ht-colnred
stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porticos, which
(to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sailors)
produce but a cold and shivery effect in the English cli-
mate. Had I been the architect, I would have studied
the characters, habits, and predilections of nautical people
in Wapping, Hot he rh it he. and the neighborhood of the
Tower, (places which I visited in affectionate remem-
hrance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or
mythological navigators,) and would have built the hospi-
tal in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark,
ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and cozy homeliness of
the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no ques-
tion that all the ahove attributes, or enough of them to
satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with
architectural beauty and the wholesome contrivances of
modem 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 ancient royal site where Elizabeth held
her court and Charles II. began to build his palace. So far
as the locality went, it was treat inn them like so many
kini:s ; and, with a discreet abundance of grog, beer, and
tohacco, there was perhaps little more to be accomplished
in hehalf of men whose whole previous liver* ha\e tended
to unfit them for old age. Their chief discomfort is prob-
ably for lack of something to do or think about. But,
judging by the few whom I saw, a listless habit seems to

A LONDON SUBURB. 267

have 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 slum-
ber, or nearly so, and start at the approach of footsteps
echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to be caught nap-
ping, and rousing themselves in a hurry, as formerly on
the midnight watch at sea. In their brightest mo-
ments, they gather in groups and bore 'one another with
endless sea-yarns about their voyages under famous ad-
mirals, 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 interior of a ship, where their world
has exclusively 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, criticizing
the rig of passing ships, and firing off volleys of male-
diction at the steamers, which have made the sea another
element than that they used to be acquainted with. All
this is but cold comfort for the evening of life, yet may
compare rather favorably with the preceding portions of
it, comprising little save imprisonment 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 spectre
which they took for her. A country owes much to human
beings whose bodies she has worn out and whose immor-
tal part she has left undeveloped or debased, as we find

268 A LONDON SUBURB.

them here ; and having wasted an idle paragraph upon
them, let me now suggest that old men have a kind of
susceptibility to moral impressions, and even (up to an
advanced period) a receptivity of truth, which often ap-
pears 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 school-boy days ; hut
then where is the Normal School that could educate in-
structors for such a class ?

There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners, in the
classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture by
West. I never could look at it long enough to make out
its design ; for this artist (though it pains me to say it of
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
>l iie of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportu-
nity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blame-
l'-s 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 tire hum it. I wonder ?

The principal thinir 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 lonjr and half
M-J hiirh, with a ceiling painted in fresco by Sir Janu-
Thornhill. As a work of art, I pre.-ume, this f n -
canopy lias little merit, though it produces an exceedingly
rich etVect by its brilliant coloring and as a specimen of
magnificent upholstery. The walls of the grand apart-
ment are entirely covered with pictures, many of them
representing battles and other na\al incidents that

A LONDON SUBURB. 269

once fresher in the world's memory than now, but chiefly
portraits of old admirals, comprising the whole line of
heroes who have trod the quarter-decks of British ships
for more than two hundred years back. Next to a tomb
in Westminster Abbey, which was Nelson's most elevated
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 interesting one, so far as- regards the char-
acter of the faces here depicted. They are generally
commonplace, and often singularly stolid ; and I have
observed (both in the Painted Hall and elsewhere, and
not only in portraits, but ^n the actual presence of such
renowned people as I have caught glimpses of) that the
countenances of heroes are not nearly so impressive as
those of statesmen, — except, of course, in the rare in-
stances 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 admi-
rals, for instance, if their faces tell truth, must needs
have been blockheads, 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 quarter-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 estimate of
warlike qualities. In the next naval war, as between

270 A LONDON SUBURB.

England .UK! France, I would bet, methinks, upon the
Frenchman's head.

It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero of
England — the greatest, therefore, in the world, and <>t'
all time — had none of the stolid characteristics tha;
lonir to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as tln-ir
representative man. Foremost in the roughest of pro-
fessions, he was as delicately or^nnixed as a woinai,.
as painfully senntive as a poet More than any o
Ki irishman he won the love and admiration of his coun-
try, but won them through the efficacy of qualities that
are not English, or, at all events, were intensified in his
case and made poignant and powerful by something mor-
bid in the man, which put hftn otherwise at cross-pur-
poses with lit i'. He was a man of genius ; and genius in
an Englishman (not to cite the good old simile of a pearl
in the 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 beings ; an extraor-
dinary one is almost always, in one way or another, a >i< k
man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The wonderful con-
trast or relation between his personal qualities, the posi-
tion which hi' held, and the life that he lived, makes him
as interesting a personage as all history has to show ;
and it is a pity that Sou they 's biography — so good in its
superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real
delineation of the man — should have taken the sul
out of the hands of some writer endowed with more deli-

A LONDON SUBURB. 271

cate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine
Englishman possessed. But Southey accomplished his
own purpose, which, apparently, was to present his hero
as a pattern for England's young midshipmen.

But the English capacity for hero-worship 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 ex-
clusively 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, how-
ever stolid his brain, however tough his heart, however
unexcitable his ordinary mood. To confess the truth, I
myself, though belonging to another parish, have been
deeply sensible to the sublime recollections there aroused,
acknowledging that Nelson expressed his life in a kind
of symbolic poetry which I had as much right to under-
stand as these burly islanders. Cool and critical observer
as I sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indigna-
tion 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 sa-
cred objects of all are two of Nelson's coats, under sepa-
rate glass cases. One is that which he wore at the Battle

272 A LONDON SUBURB.

of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, which
will (juite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians
pn-servc it as we do Washington's milit.nv -nit. l>v o
sionally 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 knight-
hood, now much dimmed by time and damp, but which
glittered brightly enough on the battle-day to draw the
fatal 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 redness 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 I

The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of Green-
wich, which will always retain 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 •
in this old town, during which the idle and disreputable
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
flowing with its grimy pollution whatever rural innoc.
it' 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.

If I had bethought myself of going through the fair
with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the promi-

A LONDON SUBURB. 273

nent objects, I doubt not that the result might have been
a sketch of English life quite as characteristic and worthy
of historical preservation 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
Shakspeare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to
its attribute of evil odor. The common people of Eng-
land, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even so
necessary a thing as a wash-bowl, not to mention a bath-
ing-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 squalid
habits clings forever to the individual, and gets to be a
part of his personal substance. These are broad facts,
involving great corollaries and dependencies. There are
really, if you stop to think about it, few sadder spectacles
in the world than a ragged 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 oys-
ter-stands, stalls of oranges, (a very prevalent fruit in
England, where they give the withered 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 envel-
oped in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize an
18

274 A LONDON SUBURB.

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 ami
worthless articles for children of a larger growth : though
it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a mob, could
have the innocent taste to desire playthings, or the money
to pay for them. Not that I have a riirht to accuse tin-
mob, on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent
than a set of cleaner and better dressed people might
have been ; for, though one of them stole my pocket-
handkerchief, I could not but consider it fair game, under
the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for spar-
ing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and remark-
ably good-humored, making due allowance for the national
gruffness ; 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 hack, \\here it sounded as if
the stout fabric of my English surtout had been ruth-
lessly rent in twain ; and everybody's clothes, all over
the fair, were evidently 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 procjuce a rasping sound when drawn Mnartly
a 11 a i nst a person's back. The ladies draw their rattles

A LONDON SUBURB. 275

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 ac-
count 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 representations 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 personce, who ranged themselves on a
wooden platform in front of the theatre. They were
dressed in character, but wofully shabby, with very dingy
and 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 daylight and after a long series of perform-
ances. They sang a song together, and withdrew into
the theatre, whither the public were invited to follow
them at the inconsiderable 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 outlandish beasts,
most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration,
unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his sub-
ject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they
were prepared to work ; and posture-makers dislocated

276 A LONDON SUBUKII.

every joint of theip bodies and tied their limbs into inex-
tricable knots, wherever they could find space to flpread
a little square of carpet on the ground. In the mid-t
of tin1 confusion, while everybody was treading on his
neighbor's toes, some little boys were very solicitous to
brush your boots. These lads, 1 believe, are a product
of modern society, — at least, no older than the time of
Gay, who celebrates their origin in his "Trivia" ; but in
most other respects the scene reminded me of Bunyan's
description of Vanity Fair, — nor is 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 imme-
diately classified it as an English characteristic — to see
a great many portable weighing-machines, the owners 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 vocifera-
tion to sit down in the machines. I know not whether
they valued themselves on their beef, and estimated their
standing as members of society at so much a pound ; but
I shall set it down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol
of the prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual ele-
ment, 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 Greenwich pensioner, who. for-
getful of the sailor-frolics of his young days, stood look-
ing with grim disapproval at all these vanities. Thus

A LONDON SUBURB. 277

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 cannonade 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 persons were running races, hand in
hand, down the declivities, especially that steepest one
on the summit of which stands the world-central Obser-
vatory, 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. Here-
abouts we were pestered and haunted by two young girls,
the eldest 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 hill
on which we stood. Then, scrambling up the acclivity,
the topsy-turvy trollop offered us her matches again, as
demurely as if she had never flung aside her equilibrium ;
so that, dreading a repetition of the feat, we gave her
sixpence and an admonition, 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 describe
the sport exactly as I saw it, although an English friend
assures me that there are certain ceremonies with a hand-

278 A LONDON SUBURB.

kerchief, which make it much more decorous and grace-
ful. A handkerchief indeed! There was no such tiling
in the crowd, except it were the one which they had ju.-t
filched out of my pocket It is one of the simple.-! kinds
of gam/68, needing little or no practice t«» make the phm-i-
altogether perfect ; and the manner of it is this. A ring
is formed, (in the present case, it was of large circum-
ference 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 delight his eye. He pre-
sents 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 prettiest and plumpest among the many
mouths that are primming themselves in anticipation.
And thus the thing goes on, till all the festive throng are
inwreathed and intertwined into an endless and inex-
tricable 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 lair chance to display it by kissing the homeliest
damsel in the circle.

To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my
American eye, they looked all homely alike, and the

A LONDON SUBURB. 279

chivalry that I suggest is more than I could have been
capable 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 cour-
teous ; but, since the plain truth must be told, the soil
and climate of England produce feminine beauty as rarely
as they do delicate fruit, and though admirable specimens
of both are to be met with, they are the hot-house ameli-
orations of refined society, and apt, moreover, to relapse
into the coarseness of the original stock. The men are
man-like, but the women are not beautiful, though the
female Bull be well enough adapted to the male. To
return to the lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms
were few, and their behavior, perhaps, 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 simplicity did they keep up
their part of the game. It put the spectator in good-
humor to look at them, because there was still something
of the old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the an-
tique 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 speci-
mens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often shab-
bily 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.
Gathering their character from these tokens, I wondered

R51

280 A LONDON SUBURB.

whether there were any reasonable prospect of their fair
]>M rtners returning to their rustic homes with as much in-
nocence (whatever were its amount or quality) as they
brought to Greenwich Fair, in spite of the perilous fa-
miliarity established by Kissing in the King.

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
suppression ; 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 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 respecta-
bility, unless of a peculiarly philanthropic turn, have
n< -it her any faith in the feminine purity of the lower
orders of their countrywomen, nor the slightest value for
it, allowing its possible 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 detri-
ment to the moral condition of those men themsel\< •-.
who forget that the humblest woman 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 conviction, from what I have been
able to observe, that the England of to-day is the nn-

A LONDON SUBURB. 281

scrupulous old England of Tom Jones and Joseph An-
drews, Humphrey Clinker and Roderick Random ; and
in our refined era, just the same as at that more free-
spoken epoch, this singular people has a certain con-
tempt for any fine-strained purity, any special squeamish-
ness, 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 regards the phase here alluded
to, is really at a lower point than our own. Assuredly,
I hope so, because, making a higher pretension, 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 rec-
ognition 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, in-
stead of turning its poison back among the inner vitali-
ties of the character, at the imminent risk of corrupting
them all. Be that as it may, these Englishmen are cer-
tainly a franker and 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
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 un-
susceptible, I believe that this may be the truth.

UP THE THAMES.

THE upper portion of Greenwich (where my last arti-
cle left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old-fashioned
town, the peculiarities of which, it' there be any, have
passe.l (.ut of my remembrance. As you descend towards
the Thames, the streets get meaner, and the shabby ami
sunken houses, elbowing one another for frontage, bear the
sign-boards of beer-shops and eating-rooms, with especial
promises of whitebait and other delicacies in the fishing
line. You observe, also, a frequent announcement of
" Ten ( ianlens " in the rear ; although, estimating the ca-
pacity of the premises hy their external compass, the en-
tire sylvan charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful
resorts must be limited within a small back-yard. These
plans of (heap 'sustenance and recreation depend for
Mipport upon the innumerable pleasure parties who come
from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a few pence,
and who get as enjoyable 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 agm-ahle
mode of getting to London. At least, it might be exceed-
ingly 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

UP THE THAMES. 283

showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at any
moment, whatever the promise of the sky ; besides which
there is some slight inconvenience from the inexhaustible
throng of passengers, who scarcely allow you standing-
room, nor so much as a breath of unappropriated 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 mem-
orable 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 every soul on board our steamer in the tremen-
dous 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 myself for so immediately catching ah 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 be*st, putting forth all there is in him, and
staking his very soul (as these rowers appeared 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 con-

284 UP THE THAM1-S.

queror, and some small amounts of money to the inferior
competitors.

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
tli< display of grand and stately architecture by the pas-
sage of a river through the midst of a great city. It
seems, indeed, as if the heart of London had been ch It
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 un-
clean secrets within its breast, — a sort of guilty con-
science, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin
that constantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to
glide by such a city. The surface, to be sure, display-
no lack of activity. U ing fretted by the passage of a hun-
dred steamers and covered with a good deal of shipping,
but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been accus-
tomed to see in the Mersey : a fact which I complacently
attributed to the smaller number of American clippers in
the Thames, and the less prevalent influence of American
example in refining away the broad-bottomed capacity 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

UP THE THAMES. 285

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 sup-
ply John Bull with a topic of inexhaustible 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 employment. 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 commences. Descending a wearisome succession of
staircases, we at last find ourselves, still in the broad
noon, standing before a 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 abor-
tive 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 intervals 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 paral-
lel corridors, with a wall between, for the separate accom-
modation of the double throng of foot-passengers, eques-
trians, and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected to
roll and reverberate continually through the Tunnel.

286 UP Tin: THAMB0,

Only one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes
are hut feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls.

Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives here,
mid who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice ;i
year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the sunshine.
All along the corridor, which I believe to be a mile in
extent, we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept prin-
cipally by women ; they were of a ripe age, I was dad
to observe, and certainly robbed England of none of its
very moderate supply of feminine 1 oveliness by their d<
than tomb-like interment. As you approach, (and they
are so accustomed to the dusky gaslight that they rend
all your characteristics afar off,) they assail you with hun-
gry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding
forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire
spar, with a magnify ing-glass at one end to make the
vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jew-
elry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence.
and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much
heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery which
has died out of the upper world to reappear in this Tar-
tarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still in the
realms of the living, they urge you to partake of CM
candy, ginger-beer, and such small refreshment, more
suitable, however, for the shadowy appetite of ghosts than
for the sturdy stomachs of Englishmen. The most capa-
cious of the shops contains a dioramic exhibition of cities
and scenes in the daylight world, with a dreary i_d i miner
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 pa-t lives.
mixing them up with the jrhastlim-s of their unsubstan-

UP THE THAMES. 287

tial state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do
my best to give them a mockery of importance, 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 failure, swallowing an immensity of
toil and money, with annual returns hardly sufficient to
keep the pavement free from the ooze of subterranean
springs, yet it needs, I presume, only an expenditure three
or four (or, for aught I know, twenty) times 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 river'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 bethink
himself that somewhere thereabout was the marvellous
Tunnel, the very existence of which will seem to him as
incredible as that of the hanging gardens of Babylon. But
the Thames will long ago have broken through the mas-
sive 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
iron-work of sunken vessels, and the great many such

288 UP Tin; JIIAMI.-.

precious and curious things as a river always contrives to
hide in its bosom ; the entrance will have been obliterated,
and its vary site forgotten beyond the memory of twenty
generations of men, and the whole neighborhood be held
a dangerous spot on account of the malaria; insomuch
that the traveller will make but a brief and careless in-
quisition for the traces of the old wonder, and will -
his credit before the public, in some Pacific Monthly of
that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though en-
riched with a spiritual profundity which he will pro
to unfold.

Yri it is impossible (for a Yankee, at hast) to see
so much magnificent ingenuity throun away, without try-
ing to endow the unfortunate result with some kind of
i IM -fulness, though perhaps widely different from the pur-
po>e of its original conception. In former ages, the mile-
long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, might have
l.cen uiili/ed as a series of dungeons, the fittest of all
pnssihle receptacles tor prisoners of state. Dethroned
monarch- and fallen statesmen would not have needed to
remunerate against a domicile so spacious, so deeply
.-(•eluded from the world's scorn, and so admirably in ac-
cordance with their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An
alcove here might ha\e suited Sir Walter Kaleigh better
than that darksome hiding-place communicating with the
great chamher in the Tower, pacing from end to end of
which he meditated upon his "History of the World."
Hi- track would here have heen straight and narrow, in-
deed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the
freedom that his intellect demanded; and yet the length
to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and
retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his

UP THE THAMES. 289

physical movement with the grand curves and planetary
returns of his thought, through cycles of majestic peri-
ods. Having it in his mind to compose the world's his-
tory, methinks he could have asked no better retirement
than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the seduc-
tions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath their
mysteries and motives, down into the heart of things, full
of personal reminiscences 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 profounder
abodes and joined him in the dim corridor, treading be-
side him with an antique stateliness of mien, telling him
in melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of
the greater ideas and purposes which their most renowned
performances so imperfectly carried out, that, magnificent
successes in the view of all posterity, they were but. fail-
ures to those who planned them. As Raleigh was a
navigator, Noah would have explained to him the pecu-
liarities of construction that made the ark so seaworthy ;
as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed
with hii% the principles of laws and government ; 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, arid made manifest all the true
significance of the past by means of song and the subtle
intelligences of music.
19

290 UP THE THAMES.

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Raleigh's
century knew nothing of gaslight, and that it would re-
quire a prodigious and wasteful expenditure of t allow -
candles to illuminate the Tunnel sufficiently to discern
even a ghost. On this account, however, it would be all
the more suitable place of confinement for a metaphysi-
cian, 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 rirh
discoveries in those cavernous regions and mysterious
by-paths of the intellect, which he had so long accus-
tomed 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 pretence 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 character, 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 Poto-
mac, for the convenience of our National Government in
times hardly yet gone by. It would be delightful t<>
clap up all the enemies of our peace and Union in the
dark together, and there let them abide, listening to the
monotonous roll of the river above their heads, or per-
haps in a state of miraculously suspended animation,

UP THE THAMES. 291

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 redeemed 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 re-
crossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open
boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with
the 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 pas-
senger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. " Never
fear, mother ! " grumbled one of them, " we'll make the
river as smooth as we caa for you. We'll 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

292 UP THE THAM1 -.

cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpic-
turcsque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants: tin-
latter comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a
single unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land-sharks,
who get a half dishonest Ihelihood by business conn*
with the sea. Ale and spirit \aults (as petty driiikinti
establishments are styled in England, pretending to Ob-
tain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten
feet square above ground) were particularly abundant,
together with apples, 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-per-
vading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack
courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as
the gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake
a descriptive stroll through London streets ; more espe-
cially as there would be a volume ready for the printer
before we could reach a midway (Ming-pint at Char-
ing 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 assembla
ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst
of which rises prominently one great square tower, of a
•L: ravish hue, bordered with white stone, and having a
small turret at each corner of the roof. This central

UP THE THAMES. 293

structure is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of
ramparts and enclosed 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 ram-
part, we may catch a glimpse of an arched water-
entrance, 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 personages 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 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 almost 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 excel-
lent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. E. James, (whose
mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nour-
ish itself by devouring every old stone of such a struct-
ure,) once assured me that he had never in his life

294 UP THE THA\

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 ourselve^ reached London Hi

and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther
passage up the river. But here the memorable objects
eed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a
.-iii;rle sentence even lor the great Dome, though I deem
it more pietnre><|iie. in that dusky atmosphere, than St.
Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must mention, however,
(since everything connected with royalty is especially in-
teresting to my dear countrymen,) that I once saw a 1
and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented,
and overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier
ne: i rest to St. Paul's Cathedral ; it had the royal banner
of Great Britain displayed, besides being decorated with
a number of other flags ; and many footmen (who are
universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen
in England at this day, and these were regal ones, in a
bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold lace, and white
silk stockings) were in attendance. I know not what
t'e.-tive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this
pageant; after all, it mi.irht have been merely a city-
spectacle, appertaining 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 accu>tmne<l
to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis
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

UP THE THAMES. 295

have crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus
life gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and
appears 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 Lon-
don ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick squares of
the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon the
riverside, 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 battlefields. 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 hiding its imperfect summit in
the smoky canopy, — the whole vast and cumbrous edifice
a specimen of the best that modern architecture can
effect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those
simple ages when men " builded better than they Tmew."
Close by it, we have a glimpse 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 turrets, chiefly built of
brick, but with at least one large tower of stone. 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 inno-
cence. And now we look back upon the mass of innu-
merable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, columns,
and the great crowning Dome, — look back, in short,

296 UP THE THAMI.S.

upon that mystery of the world's proudest city, ami I
which a man so longs and loves to be : not, perhaps, 1>< -
cause it contains much that is positively admiral >le and
enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world has noth-
ing better. The cream of external life is there; and
whatever merely intellectual or material good we fail to
find perfect in London, we may as well content ourselves
to seek that unattainable thing no farther <>n this earth.

The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old
town endowed with a prodigious number of pot-houses,
and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for pnUic
amusement. The most notieeaMe thing, howeve
Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was
founded, I believe, by Charles H., (whose bronze statue,
in the guise of an old Roman, stands in the centre of the
quadrangle,) and appropriated as a home for aged and
infirm soldiers of tin- liritish army. The edifices are of
three stories with windows in the high roofs, and are
built of dark, sombre brirk, with stone edgings and fac-
ings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur, (which
is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich Hos-
pital,) but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each ex-
tremity 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 t'a-hi«»n,
and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally A
modern foraging-cap. Almost all of them moved with a
rheumatic irait, 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 cordi-
ally, " O yes, Sir, — anywhere ! Walk in and go where

UP THE THAMES. 297

you please, — up-stairs, or anywhere ! " 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 con-
tiguity of edifices next the street. Here another pen-
sioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peaceable and Chris-
tian demeanor, touched his three-cornered hat and 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 fought and won in every quarter of
the world, comprising the captured flags of all the nations
with whonj 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 discord upon earth, but drooping over the aisle
in sullen, though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said
" American " among the rest ; for the good old pensioner
mistook me for an Englishman, and failed not to point
out (and, methought, with an especial emphasis of tri-
umph) 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 disgrace. It is a comfort, however, that
their proud devices are already indistinguishable, or nearly
so, owing to dust and tatters and the kind offices of the

298 UP THE THAMI S.

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 occupy-
ing a 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 ac-
count of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting
among the nations, and because it operates as an accumu-
lative inducement to future generations to aim at a kind
of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more
ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy
of victory might crumble away, and that every reminis-
cence 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 illumniated 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 hav-
ing unintentionally stirred up my patriotic 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 soldiers, I know not why,
seem to be more accostable than old sailors. One is apt
to hear a growl beneath the smoothest courtesy 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

UP THE THAMES. 299

years, and was married, but necessarily underwent a sepa-
ration 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, " O yes,
Sir ! " qualifying his evidence, after a moment's considera-
tion, by saying, in an undertone, " There are some people,
your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable any-
where." I did know it, and fear that the system of Chel-
sea 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 uncom-
fortable 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 Waterloo.

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of
Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the Crys-
tal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like
an imaginary structure, — an air-castle by chance de-
scended 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 visi-
bility 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. Shall
I attempt a picture of this exhalation of modern inge-
nuity, or what else shall I try to paint ? Everything in
London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable
times, but never once translated into intelligible images ;
it is an " old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told.
While writing these reminiscences, I am continually im-

300 UP THE THAMES.

pressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative
truth to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures
in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes
to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor In
other writers often been more successful in n -j.n •-< ntin^
definite objects prophetically to my own mind. In truth,
I believe that the chief delight and advantage of this
kind of literature is not for any real information that it
supplies to untravelled people, l»ut tor reviving the recol-
lections and reawakening the emotions of persons already
acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an
exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tucker-
man's " Month in England," — a fine example of tin- 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 re-
markable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly recorded,
may work a genuine effect, and, though but the result of
what we see, go farther towards representing the aetu:il
scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emo-
tions that cluster about it, and, without being able to ana-
lyze 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 inference, 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-en-
trance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship,

UP THE THAMES. 301

and found myself among a congregation assembled in one
of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion
of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious enough,
within the extent covered by its pillared roof and over-
spread by its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole
of church-going London, 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 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 pre-
served 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 venturing — 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 —

302 UP THE THAMLS.

appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where
decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with
iron, or otherwise carefully protected ; and beinir tlms
watched over, — whether as a place of ancient sanrti
noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national
interest and pride, — it may reasonably be expected 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 cheer-
fully it received the sunshine 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 affec-
tionate, 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 entrance, 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 envel-
oped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south
transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the
minster, there were painted glass windows, of which the
uppermost appeared to 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 bril-
liancy 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

UP THE THAMES. 303

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 forgotten 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 mountains 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 lilted all such absurdities into
the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself
by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks
it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridic-
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 conceptions.

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 in-
vestigate 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 spacious tab-
let 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, tradition-
ally 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 ;

304 UP THE THAMI'.S.

and near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir
Peter Warren. The round visage of this old Briti-h
admiral has a certain interest for a New Englander, be-
cause it was by no merit of his <>\\n, (though he took
care to assume it as such.) hut hy 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 Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a
huge mass of marble done into the guise of a judirial
gown and wig, with a stern fctre in the midst of the lat-
ter, sat on the other side of the transept; and on tin-
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 instru-
ment, undoubtedly ; 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 distinguished
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 lifetimo.
Perhaps the evanescent majesty of the stage is incom-
patible with the long endurance of marble and the sol-
emn reality of the tomb ; though, on the other hand,
almost every illustrious personage here represented 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 ordinary life
as may be possible without sacrificing every trace of re-
semblance. The absurd effect of the contrary course is

UP THE THAMES. 305

very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, 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, twin-
kles at you with the shrewdest complacency, 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 pertinaciously that you feel it to be
insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what com-
mon 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 an-
other, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary mo-
ment, 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, characteristic
individualities, such as might come within the province
of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give perma-
nence 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 assum-
ing the guise, it seems questionable whether he could
20

306 UP THE THAMKS.

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.

It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this
mood of half-jocose criticism in describing my first vi-it
to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed
about more reverentially, from my childhood upward,
than any other in the world, and which I then beheld,
and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to tin-
men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, in the
humblest, personage that has contributed his little all to
its impressiveness, 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 in-
clined, 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 pro-
prieties 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 a\\ fulness
will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the
general impression, when you come to be sensible that
many of the monuments are ridiculous, 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 Ab-
bey, 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 interior

UP THE THAMES. 307

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 inevitable mistakes, and none the less
solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you en-
tered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the
illustrious, you are content at last to read many names,
both in literature and history, that have now lost the
reverence of mankind, if indeed they ever really pos-
sessed 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 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 inscriptions
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 in-
dividual epitaph-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 mysterious 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 marvellous
window, but were debarred from entrance into that more

308 UP THE THA.V

sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These
vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more strenu-
ously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday
visitors) flourished their staves, and drove 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,
"0 rare Ben Jonson!" and remembered the story of
stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright, —
not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance
on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but
because standing-room was all that could reasonably be
demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities
of his age. It made me weary to think of it ! — such a
prodigious 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-
churehyard. To this day, however, I fancy that there i-
a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration
which the higher classes of English society profess for
their literary men.

Another day — in tryth, 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 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 aivh,
but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and push-
ing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceed-
ingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the
Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the

UP THE THAMES. 309

otherwise bare stonework of the walls. Great poets,
too ; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spen-
ser'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-
'medallion 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 delight-
ful to be among them. There was a genial awe, mingled
with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me ;
and I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them
there together, in fit companionship, mutually recognized
and duly, honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant
generations, whatever personal hostility or other miser-
able 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 people.
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 aspiring 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

310 UP THE THAMES.

poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our
comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no sub-
stance ; they flit ineffectually about tin- darkened
where they performed their momentary parts, save when
the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and
imparted a more vivid life than ever they were able to
manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. Ami
therefore — though he cunningly disguises himself in their
armor, their robes of state, or kinirly purple — it is not
the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives,
but the despised poet, whom they may have fed \\ith
their crumbs, and t«» whom they owe all that they now
are or have, — a name !

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been be-
trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary h\ . 1
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 mn-t
have been inconceivably so when the marble slahs 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 tin-
sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet
this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memo-
rials 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 at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb,

UP THE THAMES. 311

are memorable objects, but more for Shakspeare'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 pavement. I am glad to recollect,
indeed, (and it is too characteristic of the right. English
spirit not to be mentioned,) one or two gigantic statues of
great mechanicians, who contributed largely to the mate-
rial 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 Tickell 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 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 Campbell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey
is dedicated to poets, literary men, musical composers,
and others of the gentle artist breed, and even into that
small nook of sanctity men of other pursuits have thought
it decent to intrude thenlselves. Methinks the tuneful
throng, being at home here, should recollect how they
were treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder,

312 UP THE THAMI S.

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 heretofore been awarded to literary emi-
nence in comparison with other modes of greatness, —
this dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to them-
selves) 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 very truth, their own little nook con-
tains more than one poet whose memory is kept alive by
his monument, instead of imbuing the senseless stone
with a spiritual immortality, — men of whom you do not
ask, « Where is he ?" but " Why is he here ? " I c Mi-
mate 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 tin ir «lraiiirlits of Cas-
taly round Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These
divinest poets consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected
glory over the humblest of their companions. And as
for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long
outgrown the characteristic jealousies and morbid s«
bilitics of their craft, and have found out the little value
(probably not amounting to sixpence in immortal cur-
rency) of the posthumous renown which they once as-
pired to win. It would be a poor compliment to a <lr:nl
poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and snuffing up
the impure breath of earthly rV:

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that
those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of an nn-

UP THE THAMES. 313

dying song would fain be conscious of its endless reverbe-
rations in the hearts of mankind, and would delight,
among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names emblaz-
oned in such a treasure-place of great memories as West-
minster 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 fortune of their lifetime did
but scantily supply ; 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 admired and loved ; though
there is hardly a man among the authors of to-day and
yesterday 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 his delightful
prose, his unmeasured poetry, 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 affecta-
tion, 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 liberties with living

314 UP THE .THAMES.

men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching
my first interview with Leigh Hunt.

He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain
and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of others
like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village st
and certainlv nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful
environment, inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant
opened the door for us, and he iiimself stood in the entry,
a beautiful and venerable old num. buttoned to the chin
in a black dress-coat, tall and slender, with a count* MI
quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally
courteous manner. He ushered us into his little study,
or parlor, or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor paper-
hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remem-
ber, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch di.Minctly
upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adorn-
ment, 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 beautiful
things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much
wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a suti;-
ciency 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 nakedness as the better robe.

I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth.
I never saw a finer countenance, 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

UP THE THAMES. 315

his wrinkles many ; it was an aged visage, in short, such
as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, be-
cause 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 diffused
about his face, but then another flash of youth came out
of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never
witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, be-
fore or since ; and, to this day, trusting only to my recol-
lection, 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 unconven-
tional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive dis-
position without any reference 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 visible language like music. He
appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of whatever was
passing among those who surrounded him, and especially
of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to
whom he happened to be addressing himself at the mo-
ment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he
uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, es-
caped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance
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

316 UP THE THAI

inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to
extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters
of feeling, and within a certain depth, yon miirht span-
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
u« ntle 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 imme-
diate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though
scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate expe-
rience in either direction. There was not an English
trait in him from head to foot, morally, intellectually, or
physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy, or port-wine, en-
tered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life,
he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy
principle, and of a tendency to Ilinjr himself into the
rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side •. It would
be taking too much upon myself to affirm that thi
merely a projection of his fancy world into the actual,
and that he never could have hit a downright blow, and
was altogether an unsuitable person to receive one. I
beheld him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest robes.
Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what
I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main defi-
ciency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid
man, the combative and defensive elements were not prom-
inently 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 deli-

UP THE THAMES. 317

cate 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 amiability or his peaceful incli-
nations ; at least, I do not see how we can reasonably
claim the former quality as a national characteristic,
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 develop in
the happier examples of American genius, and which
(though I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our
future intellectual advancement may make general
among us. His person, at all events, was thoroughly
American, and of the best type, as were likewise his man-
ners ; 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
coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In 'response 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 were with me,) his face
shone, and he manifested 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 appre-
ciation 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 —

318 UP THE THAMES.

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, nm
vulgar praise,) that the only difficulty was to keep tin
enthusiasm of the moment within tin.* limit of permanent
opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were
talking; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and tin
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 favora-
bly inclined his ear, but to those of my companions.
Women are the fit ministers at such a shrine. »

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 temperament, happiness
had probably the upperhand. His was a light, mildly
joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attaining 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 re-
joiced to hear him say that he was favored with most
confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future
life ; and there were abundant proofs, throughout our in-

UP THE THAMES. 319

terview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relin-
quishment 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 reverential 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 din-
ner-party, looking sadly broken down by infirmities ; and
my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents
him arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not, partly em-
braced 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 introduction had first made
me known to Leigh Hunt.

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH
POVERTY.

BECOMING an inhabitant of a great English town. T
often turned aside from the prosperous thoroughfares,
(where the edifices, the shops, and the "bustling crowd
differed not so much from scenes with which I was fam-
iliar in my own country,) and went designedly astray
among precincts that reminded me of some of Dickens'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, exceed-
ingly undelightful to behold, 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 accompaniment of the foul
incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all
earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ;
since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly
been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to
get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English
street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlan-
tic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is incon-
ceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great
advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our atmos-
phere keep everything clean that the sun shim -s upon,
converting the larger portion of our impurities into tran-

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 321

sitory dust which the next wind can sweep away, in con-
trast with the damp, adhesive grime that incorporates
itself with all surfaces (unless continually and painfully
cleansed) in the chill moisture of the English air. Then
the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly inter-
mingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal,
hovering overhead, descending, and alighting on pave-
ments 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. Along with disastrous cir-
cumstances, pinching 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 acknowl-
edge that nothing less than such a general washing-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, tarnished
by contact with the unclean customers who haunt there.
Ragged children 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 engen-
dered them. Inconceivably sluttish women enter at noon-
21

322 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVEKTV.

day and stand at the counter ;mion_r boon-companions of
both sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper
together, and quaffing oil' tin- mixture with a relish. As
for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking till
they are drunken, — drinking as long as they have a halt-
penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for a
sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets, so as to
enable them to be drunken a^iin. Mo>t of these estul>-
lishments have a si.L'nitieunt 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 revellers, and should certainly wait till I hud
some better consolation to offer before depriving them of
their dram of gin, though death itself were in the glass ;
for met bought their poor souls needed such fiery stimu-
lant 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 bewildering ones, of
a spiritual existence that limited their present misery.
The tempt • ranee-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.

Pawn-brokers' establishments, distinguished by the
mystic symbol of the three golden balls, were conven-
iently accessible ; 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, like-
wise, dwelt hard by, and hung out ancient garments to
dangle in the wind. There were butchers' shops, too, of

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 323

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
morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by the
cleaver, tripe, liver, bullocks' feet, or whatever else was
cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I am afraid
that even such delicacies 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
imagination 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, spending 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 vegetables, and departing with a return
cargo of what looked like rubbish and street-sweepings.
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 wonder-
fully cheap cigars. And yet I remember seeing female
hucksters in those regions, with their wares on the edge
of the sideValk and their own seats right in the carriage-

324 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH. POVERTY.

way, pretending to sell half-decayed oranges and apples,
toffy, Ormskirk cakes, combs and cheap jewelry, tin-
coarsest kind of crockery, and little plates of oysters, —
knitting patiently all day long, ami n-iu«>\in^ their un-
(limiuished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable
importations from other quarters of the town were on a
remarkably diminutive scale: for example, tin- wealthier
inhabitants purchased 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 halt 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 and murder, family
difficulties or agreements, — 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

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 325

stifled and squalid rooms where they lie down at night,
whole families 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 (without 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 house-
wife, before the shower is ended, letting the raindrops
gutter down her visage ; while her children (an impish
progeny of cavernous recesses below the common sphere
of humanity) swarm into the daylight and attain all that
they know of personal purification in the nearest mud-
puddle. It might almost make a man doubt the existence
of his own soul, to 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 acquiesce 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 believe that anything so precious as a germ of immor-
tal 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 resembling, 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 beneath it. Without an infinite faith, there seemed
as much prospect of a blessed futurity for those hideous

326 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

bugs and many-footed worms as for tin -se 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 i
Straggles Upward to the >urface. h«-arin<r the half-dn.\\ ned
body of a child alon^ with it. and liea\ in<_r it aloft lor \\<
life, and my own life, and all our lives. Unless the-e
slime-clogged nostrils can be made capable of inhnlinir
celestial air, I know not how the purest and most intel-
lectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a brent h
of it. The whole question of eternity is staked there.
If a single one of those helpless little ones be lost, the
world is lost !

The women and children greatly preponderate in such
places ; the men probably wandering abroad in quest of
that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or perhaps slum-
bering in the dayliirht that they may the better follow out
their cat-like rambles through the dark. Here are women
with young figures, but old, wrinkled, yellow 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 door-steps, nursing their unwashed babies at
bosoms which we will irlance aside from, for the sake of
our mothers and all womanhood, because the fairest spec-
tat le is here the foulest. Yet motherhood, in these dark
abodes, is strangely identical with what we have all
known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I re-
member, smote me with more grief and pity (all the more
poignant because perplexingly entangled with an inclina-
tion to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother
priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327

skinny infant, 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 character-
istic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor
souls. It was the very same creature whose tender tor-
ments 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
masquerading 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 intangible
trifles, laughing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost
the same instant with one neighbor's sunshine and an-
other's shadow, wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet 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 propriety by dint of a well-
bred habit. Not that there was an absolute deficiency of
good breeding, even here. It often surprised me to wit-
ness a courtesy and deference 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 violated, — a code of the cellar, the garret, the
common staircase, the door-step, 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 utter-
ing folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect how

328 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF "ENGLISH POVERTY.

rude and rough these specimens of feminine character
generally were. They had a readme-.- with their hands
that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other heroines
in Fielding's novels. For example. 1 ha\e s« -en a woman
meet a man in the street, and, for no reason perceptible
to me, suddenly clutch him by tin- hair and cull' 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 incar-
nate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a re-
sounding 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
spiritualixe their large physical endowments. Such being
the case with the delicate ornaments of the drawing-
room, it is the less to be wondered at that women who
live mostly in the open air, amid tfoe coarsest kind of
companionship and occupation, should carry on the inter-
course of lite with a freedom unknown to any class of
American females, though still, I am resolved to think,
compatible with a generous breadth of natural propriety.
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,

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 329

with petticoats high uplifted above bare, reel 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 con-
venience 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 country with great bundles of
green twigs upon their backs, so that they resemble loco-
motive masses of verdure and fragrance. But these poor
English women seemed to be laden with rubbish, incon-
gruous and indescribable, such as bones and rags, the
sweepings of the house and of the street, a merchandise
gathered up from what poverty itself had thrown away,
a heap of filthy stuff analogous to Christian's bundle of
sin.

Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain
gracefulness among the younger women that was alto-
gether 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 her-
self 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. Nothing was affected, nothing

330 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

imitative ; no proper gracfc was vulgarized by an effort
to assume the manners or adornments of another -pheiv.
This kind of beauty, arrayed in a fitness of its ov\
probably vanishing out of tin- world, and will ccrtainlv
never be found in America, where all the girls, whether
daughters of the upper-tendum, the mediocrity, the cot-
tage,-or the kcnnd. aim at one standard of dress and
deportment, seldom accompli>hin;i a perfectly triumphant
hit or an utterly a I .surd failure. Those words, At <jeir
and " ladylike." are terrible ones and do US infinite mis-
chief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are in a
transition state, and shall emerge into a higher m«*.;.
simplicity than lias ever been known to past ages.

In such disastrous circumstances as I have been at-
tempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what a
mysterious ellicacy still asserted itself in character. A
woman, evidently \xx>r as the poorest of her neighbors,
would be knitting or sewing on the door-step, just a* fifty
other women were ; but round about her skirts (though
wofully patched) you would l»e st-nsihle of a certain sphere
of decency, which, it seemed to me, could not have been
kept more impregnable in the cosiest little sitting-room,
where the tea-kettle 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 percept'
and yet I have seen girls in these wretched streets, on
wlniM- \ iririn purity, judging merely from their impression
on my instincts as they passed 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 unclean-
surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 331

spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the miracle
was within the scope of Providence, which is equally wise
and equally beneficent, (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 wretchedness ; and,
thinking over the line of Milton 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 foreshadowings of what so many of their
descendants were to be. God help them, and us likewise,
their brethren and sisters ! Let me add, that, forlorn,
ragged, care-worn, hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as
they 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 characteristic in
as perfect development as their grandmothers.

The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms
from which another harvest 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

332 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

were playing and squabbliitg together in the mud. turned
ii]) its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its poor
little tenderest part, and let it go Hiram with a shake. It'
the child knew what the punishment was for. it vrafl \\ i-t-r
than 1 pretend to be. It yelled, and went hack to its
playmates in the mud. Yet let me bear testimony to
what was beautiful, and more touching than any t him: that
I e\er witnessed 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 t he-re been any other nursury for them) exer-
cised 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 deportment, the anxious fidelity
with which they discharged their unfit office, the tender
patience with which they linked their less pliable impulses
to the wayward tootsteps of an infant, and let it guide
them whithersoever 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 mar\el
at it. She had merely come a little earlier than usual to
the perception of what was to be her business in lite.
But I admired the sickly-looking little boy, who did vio-
lence to his boyish nature by makinir himself the servant
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 an-
other. Beholding such works of love and duty, I took
heart airain. 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.

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 333

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 ex-
pression through the dirt t)iat incrusted its skin, like sun-?
shine struggling through a very dusty window-pane.

In these streets the belted and blue-coated policeman
appears seldom in comparison with the frequency of
his occurrence 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 violate the filthy sanctities of the place, before the
law could bring up its lumbering assistance. Neverthe-
less, there is a supervision ; nor does the watchfulness of
authority permit the populace to be tempted to any out-
break. 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 watch-
ful 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 pa-
tiently, die patiently, not through resignation, but a dis-
eased flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief
to those above them, it will probably be by the communi-
cation of some destructive pestilence ; for, so the medical

334 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH I'f.VF.kTV.

men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases with a
degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among
themselves traditionary plague- that ha\e long ceased to
afflict more fortunate societies. Charity IK i>< It gath< -rs
her robe about her to avoid their contact. It would be a
dire revenge, indeed, it' they were to prove their claim-
to be reckoned of one blood and nature with the nol.h M
and wealthiest by compelling them to inhale death through
the diffusion of their own po\erty-poi-um-d atmo-ph

A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an
unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. BCL
have hen-tutor* been so strange to an America n that he
is apt to become their prey, being recognized through his
national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets.
The Kngli.-h smile at him, and say that there are ample
public arrangements tor every pauper's possible need,
that street charity promotes idleness and vice, and that
yonder personification of misery on the paxement will
lay up a good day's profit, besides supping more luxuri-
ously than the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and
by the stranger adopts their theory and begins to prac-
tise upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from
annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment <>r
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 an the east wind, whose right arm
was paralyzed and his left leg shrivelled into a m en-
nerveless stick, but whom he passed by remorselessly be-
cause an Englishman chose to say that the fellow's misery
looked too perfect, was too artistically got up, to be
nine. Even allowing this to be true, (as, a hundred

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 335

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. To own the truth,
I provided myself with several such imaginary persecu-
tors in England, and recruited their number with at least
one sickly-looking wretch whose acquaintance I first made
at Assisi, in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sin-
ister 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 Italian
beggar would, but by taking an expression so grief-
stricken, want- wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, that
I could paint his life-like portrait at this moment. Were
I to go over the same ground again, I would listen to no
man's theories, but buy the little luxury of beneficence
at a cheap rate, instead of doing myself a moral mischief
by exuding a stony incrustation over whatever 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 deficiency of locomotive members,
had some supernatural method of transporting himself
(simultaneously, I believe) to all quarters of the city.
He wore a sailor's jacket, (possibly, because skirts would
have been a superfluity to his figure,) and had a remark-
ably broad-shouldered and muscular frame, surmounted
by a large, fresh-colored face, which was full of power
and intelligence. His dress and linen were the perfec-

336 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

tion of neatness. Once a day, at least, wherever I went.
I suddenly became aware of this trunk of a man on the
path hefore me, resting on hi.- ha-e. and looking as it' he
had just sprouted Out of the pavement, and would .-ink
into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant
you left him behind. The expression of his eye was
perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own
MS I iy fascination, never once winking neu-r wavering
from its point-blank ga/e right into your face, till \<»u
\\.-re comj.letely beyond the ran ire ot' hi- hattery of
immense rilled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting
alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who ap-
pealed so tonchingly to the charitable sympathies of < -il
l>!as. taking aim at him from the roadside with a long-
harrellcd musket. The intcntness and directness of his
silent appeal, his close and unrelenting attack upon your
individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower
of insolence; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpre-
tation, it \\a- the tyrannical effort of a man endowed
with great natural force of character to con-train your
reluctant will to his purpose. Apparently, he had Maked
his salvation upon the ultimate success of a daily strug-
gle bet \\een himself and me. the triumph of which would
compel me to become a tributary to the hat that 1.
the pavement beside him. Man or fiend, however, there
was a stubbornness in his intended victim which this mas-
sive fragment of a mighty personality had not alt. Aether
reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled to pass him
at my customary pace hundreds of times over, quietly
meet inn his terribly respectful eye. and allowing him the
fair chance which I felt to be his due, t<> ,-ubjugate me. it'
he really had the strength for it. He never succeeded,

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337

but, on the other hand, never gave up the contest ; and
should I ever walk those streets again, I am certain that
the truncated tyrant will sprout up through the pave-
ment and look me fixedly in the eye, and perhaps get the
victory.

I should think all the more highly of myself, if I had
.shown equal heroism in resisting another class of beg-
garly depredators, 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 respectable and
ruined tradesman, going from door to door, shy and silent
in his own person, but accompanied by a sympathizing
friend, who bore testimony to his integrity, and stated the
unavoidable misfortunes that had crushed him down ; —
or the delicate 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 indul-
gent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial
catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of hus-
bands ; — or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appeal-
ing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in
some small prosperities which he wa,s kind enough to
term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claim-
ing to have largely contributed to them by his unbought
notices in the public journals. England is full of such
people, and a hundred other varieties of peripatetic trick-
sters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts
tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely illusive
effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they
were humbugs, almost without an exception, — rats that
22

338 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

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 restrains you (un-
less 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 beneath it.

After making myself as familiar as I decently could
with the poor streets, I became 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 miser-
able a life outside was truly difficult to account for. Ac-
cordingly, I visited a great almshouse, and was glad to
observe how unexceptionably all the parts of the establish-
ment were carried on, and what an orderly life, full-fed,
sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary
exercise of authority, seemed to be led there. Possibly,
indeed, it was that very orderliness, and the cruel neces-
sity of being neat and clean, and even the comfort result-
ing from these and other Christian-like restraints and
regulations, that constituted the principal grievance on
the part of the poor, shiftless inmau •-, accustomed to
a life-long luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The
wild life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a
charm, to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as
the life of the forest or the prairie. •15ut I conceive
rather that there must be insuperable difficulties, lor the
majority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to
the almshouse, than that a merely ivMhetie preference
for the street would incline the pauper-class to fare

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 339

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 ex-
hibit anything to people of rank that might too painfully
shock their sensibilities.

The women's ward was the portion of the establish-
ment which we especially examined. It could not be
questioned that they were treated with kindness as well
as care. No doubt, as has been already suggested, some
of them felt the irksomeness of submission to general
rules of orderly behavior, after being accustomed to that
perfect freedom from the minor proprieties, at least, which
is one of the compensations of absolutely hopeless pov-
erty, 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 difficulty in keeping peace and
order among his inmates ; and he informed me that his
troubles among the women were incomparably 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 in-
evitable necessity of letting the women throw dust into
his eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and sisterly
enough, as I saw them, though still it might be faintly

340 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH I'nvr.IlTY.

)x n-eptible that some of them w< l<>ii-lv playing

their parts l&ore the governor and his distinguished
\ -isitors.

This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit for
his position. An American, in an office of similar re-
sponsibility, would doubtless be a much superior person,
Letter educated, possessing a far v. || of thought.

more naturally acute, with a quicker tact of external ob-
servation and a readier faculty ol% dealing with difficult
cases. The women would not succeed in throwing halt'
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 approximate
to those of a gentleman. But I cannot help question-
inn, whether, on the whole, these higher endowments
would produce decidedly better results. The English-
man was thoroughly plebeian both in aspect and be-
havior, a blulf, ruddy-l'need, hearty, kindly, yeoman-like
per<onag<\ with no refinement whatever, nor any super-
ilnous sensibility, but gifted with a native wholcsomeness
of character which mu>t 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 tnatcd them with a healthy freedom that
probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they
were free and healthy likewise. If he had understood
them a little better, he would not have treated them half
BO wisely. AYe are apt to make sickly people, more mor-
bid, and unfortunate people more miserable, by endeavor-
ing to adapt our deportment to their especial and indi-
vidual needs. They eagerly accept our well-meant
efforts; but it is like returning their own sick breath

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 341

back upon themselves, to be breathed over and over
again, intensifying the inward mischief at every repe-
tition. The sympathy 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 poison-
ous 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 whole-
some 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 imperfec-
tion in their state, however comfortable otherwise. They
were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to
follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves ;
all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked
gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English ser-
vants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy Eng-
lish aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike
that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood.
We have few of these absolutely unilluminated 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 English almshouse.

342 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGI4SH POVERTY.

however, there was at least one person who claimed to be
intimately connected with rank and wealth. The
emor, after suggesting that this person would prohahlybe
gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small parlor,
which was furnished a little more like a room in a pri\ .in-
dwelling than others that we entered, and had a row of
religious books and fashionable novels on the mantel-
piece. An old lady sat at a bright coal fire, read;
romance, and rose to receive us with a certain pomp of
manner -and elaborate display of ceremonious courtesy,
which, in spite of nnx If. made me inwardly question the
genuineness of her aristocratic pretensions. But. at any
rate, she looked like a respectable old soul, and wa-
de ntly gladdened to' the very core of her frost-bitten
heart by the awful punctiliousness with which we re-
sponded to her gracious and hospitable, though unfa-
miliar welcome. After a little polite conversation, we
retired ; 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 expectation that
some of her rich relatives would drive up in their ear-
riaires to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was
treated with ureat respect by her fellow-paupers. I could
not help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in
her talk and manner, that there inii_rht have been a mis-
take on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exag-
geration on the old lady's, concerning her former position
in society ; but what struck me was the forcible instance
of that most prevalent of Engb'sh vanities, the preten-
sion to aristocratic connection, on one side, and the sub-
mission and reverence with which it was accepted by the

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 343

governor and his household, on the other. Among our-
selves, 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 volu-
bility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female in-
habitants 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 gover-
nor, 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 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 imme-
diately began to talk to us, in a thin, little, spirited
quaver, claiming 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 jauntiness and cackling merriment were really won-
derful. It was as if she had got through with all her
actual business in life two or three generations ago, and

344 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

now, freed from every responsibility lor 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 ;ij>|
not to care whether it were long or short,) before De.n h,
who had misplaced her name in his list, might remember
to take her away. She had gone quite round the ei !•<•]»•
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 lanjrhed with her
as if she were a child, finding great delight in her way-
\\anl and strangely playful responses, into some of which
she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused their cars to
tinirle a little. She had done getting out of bed in thn
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 repute, but was compelled to give
up her profession by a softening of the brain. The dis-
easfc seemed to have stolen the continuity 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 wringing her hands for some inscru-
table sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of
actual calamity in her past life, or, quite as probably, it
was but a dramatic woe, beneath which she had -
gered and shrieked and wrung her hands with hundreds
of repetitions in the sight of crowded theatres, and been

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 345

as often comforted by thunders of applause. But my
idea of the mystery was, that she had a sense of wrong
in seeing the aged woman (whose empty vivacity was
like the rattling of dry peas in a bladder) chosen as the
central object of interest to the visitors, while she her-
self, 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, sculp-
tors, 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 oc-
cupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases that
resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense
of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the arrange-
ments of the alrnshouse ; 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 neat-
ness 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 great washing and drying were
in process, the whole atmosphere being hot and vaporous
with the steam of wet garments and bedclothes. This
atmosphere was the pauper-life of the past week or fort-
night resolved into a gaseous state, and breathing it, how-
ever 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

346 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

between the high creature and the low one ! A poor
man's breath, borne on the vehicle <>t t<>l>a< -co-smoke,
floats into a palace-window and reaches tin im.-trils «»f a
monarch. It is but an example, obvious t<> the MB*
tin- innumerable and secret channels l»y \\hirh.
moment of our lives, the flow and reflux of a common
Immunity pervade us alL How superficial are the nie» -
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 la/ily
playing together in a courtyard. 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 yision, so that it toddled about grop-
ingly, 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 generations of guilty progenitors to
render so pitiable an object as we beheld it — imme-
diately 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 inir nil
the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly
before him and held forth its arras, mutely insisting on
being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps under-

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 347

witted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his
face, — a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the
sickly blotches that covered its features, — and found
means to express such a perfect confidence that it was
going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no
possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation.
It was as if God had promised the poor child this favor
on behalf of that individual, and he was bound to fulfil
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 what-
ever was ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit
of observation from an insulated stand-point which is said
(but, I hope, erroneously) to have the tendency of put-
ting ice into the blood.

So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good deal
of interest, and am seriously of opinion that he did an
heroic act, and effected more than he dreamed of towards
his final salvation, when he took up the loathsome child
and caressed it as tenderly as if he had been its father.
To be sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but doubt-
less would have acted pretty much the same in a similar
stress of circumstances. 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 company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till
we reached the confines of the place. And on our return
through the courtyard, after visiting another part of the
establishment, here again was this same little Wretched-
ness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joyful, and yet

348 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

dull recognition about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy
eyes. No doubt, the child's mission in reference to our
friend\ras to remind him that he was responsible, in his
degree, for all the sufferings and misdemeanors of tin-
world in which In- li\ed, and uas 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 I
his own blood-relation, and the guilt, likewise, a burden
on him, unless he expiated it by better deeds.

All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids,
and, going up-stairs, we found more of them in the
or a worse condition than the little creature just described,
A\ ith their mothers (or more probably 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 chamber — on that weary journey in
which careful mothers and nurses travel so continually
and so far, and gain never a step of progress — with an
unquiet baby in her arms. She assured u? that -lie en-
joyed her occupation, being exceedingly fond of children :
and. in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little peo-
ple was a, sufficient 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 in-
dividual more than another. In this point they differed
\\idely from the poor child below-stairs. They seemed
to recognize a universal motherhood in womankind, and
cared not which individual might be the mother of the
moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did
Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else
solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, a

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 349

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, incapa-
ble 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, and their being therefore destitute of the
sweet homebred 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 grow-
ing up without the especial guardianship of a matron-
hen: both the chicken and the child, methinks, must
needs want something that is essential to their respec-
tive 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
directly 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
afterwards — nay, even now, when I bring it up vividly
before my mind's eye — it seemed to lie upon the floor
of my heart, polluting my moral being with the sense of
something grievously amiss in the entire conditions of hu-
manity. The holiest man could not be otherwise than
full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, in
a world where such a babe was possible. The governor
whispered me, apart, that, like nearly all the rest of them,
it was the child of unhealthy parents. Ah, yes ! There
was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous mock-
ery of the visible link which Love creates between man
and woman, was born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin

350 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

was its father, and Sinful Disease its mother, ami their off-
spring lay in the woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence,
which, could it live and grow up, would make tin- wm-ld
a more accursed abode than ever h< K totnn-. Thank
Heaven, it could not live ! This baby, if we must
it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months
<>ld, but, being such an unthrifty change lin;_r. nii'jlit :
been considerably older. It was all covered with blotch.-,
and preternatu rally dark and discolored ; it was withered
;t\\ay, quite shrunken and fleshless; it breathed only
amid pantings and gaspinirs. and moaned painfully at
every jrasp. The only comfort in reference to it was tin-
evident iinpossil)ility of its surviving to draw many more
of those miserable, moaning breaths ; and it would have
been infinitely U-ss heart -depressing to see it die, right
before my eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in my
remembrance, still suffering the incalculable torture of
its little life. I can by no 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 witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At least,
I so interpreted its look, when it positively met and re-
sponded 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 tin- x-hool-rooms, which were un-
derneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children whom

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 351

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 dis-
agreeably suggestive way, as if they had inherited the
evil habits of their parents as an innermost 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 work-house child, being born of respectable
parentage, and his father one of -the officers of the insti-
tution. As for the remainder, — the hundred pale abor-
tions 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 remedies 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 enervate and corrupt, — a greater
blessing to themselves, who inherit no patrimony but dis-
ease and vice, and in whose souls if there be a spark of
God's life, this seems 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,

352 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

moral and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man's
discretionary rights, and probably \vill not be'adopted by
Divine l'ro\ idence until the opportunity of milder refor-
mation shall ha\e been ottered u~. :i;_rain and airain,
through a series of future :

It may !»<• fair to acknowledge that the humane and
llent governor, as well as other persons better ac-
quainted 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, sonn -tii ues 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 un fitness to fill satisfactorily even the
meanest situations 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 pre-
carious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil,
through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their
slimy way on stepping-stones.

From the schools we went to the bake-house, and the
Invw-house, (for such cruelty is not harbored in the heart
ot'a true Englishman as to deny a pauper his daily allow-
ance of beer,) and through the kitchens, where we be-
held an immense pot over the fire, surging and walloping
with some kind of a savory stew that tilled it up to its

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 353

brim. We also visited a tailor's shop, and a shoemaker's
shop, in both of which a number of men, and pale, dimin-
utive apprentices, 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
American growth, not very nicely smoothed by 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 re-
sume 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
familiar simpleton, who shuffled across the courtyard,
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
estimate its value by a miraculous instinct, which is one
of the earliest gleams of human 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 individual appropriation of gold
and broad acres, fine houses, and such good and beautiful
things as are equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a
23

354 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

trait of imperfectly developed intelligence, like tin- sim-
pleton'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 <>i' almshouses.

I was once j.ivM-nt at the weddinir of some poor Eng-
lish people, and was deeply impressed by the spectacle,
though by no means with such proud and delightful emo-
tions as seem to h.-i hind on the recent
occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in the
Cathedral at IManche.Mer. a particularly Mack 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 .-mile, (which
always Dimmers forth on the feminine visage. 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
parson and his clerk appeared at the altar, and a con-
siderable crowd of people made their entrance at a side-
door, and ranged themselves 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, defaced with grimy toil ; the women drawing
their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to hide
the raggedness beneath ; all of them unbrushed, un-
shaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury
and care ; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 355

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 miscalculation of
supposing that they could lessen the sum of it by multi-
plying it into the misery of another person. All the
couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, to
compute exactly their number) stood up at once, and had
execution done upon them in the lump, the clergyman
addressing only small parts of the service to each indi-
vidual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to in-
clude the whole company without the trouble of repe-
tition. By this compendious contrivance, one would
apprehend, he came dangerously near making every
man and woman the husband or wife of every other ;
nor, perhaps, would he have perpetrated much additional
mischief by the mistake ; but, after receiving a benedic-
tion 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 al-
most aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see
•something 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, and heard a clang of joyful

356 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.

bells, and beheld a bridal party cominir down the steps
towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly coach-
man and two postilions, that waited at the gate. One
parson and one service had amalgamated tin* wn-tched-
ness of a score of paupers ; a Uishop and three or four
clergymen had combined their spiritual migbt to forge
the golden links of this other marriage-bond. The bride-
groom's mien had a sort of careless and kindly Eng-
lish pride ; the bride floated along in her white drapery,
a creature so -nice and delicate that it wiis 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 clus-
ter 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
ejaculations (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 created or inherited, a hall set far and
safe within its own private grounds, and surrounded with
venerable trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trim-
mest 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 exclusively 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

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 357

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 themselves, and safe as the hereditary
temper of the people really tends to make them, the
gentlemen of England will be compelled to face this
question.

CIVIC BANQUETS.

IT has often perplexed me to imagine how an English-
man will be able to reconcile' himself to any future
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 com-
position,) the immortal day must still admit an interim
of two or three hours during which he will be conscious
of a slight distaste, 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 characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect
and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart,
so linked itself with Church and State, and grown so
majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies,
that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
the final touch to his perfection, would leave him in-
finitely less complete than we have already known him.
lie could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its
enjoyments, woulcl lack one daily felicity which his som-
bre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not inwen-nt
to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in
this particular, for the Knuli-hmanV exception*] n«
shies. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here

CIVIC BANQUETS. 359

suggested, and may have intended to throw out a delight-
ful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he
represents the genial archangel as playing his part with
such excellent appetite at Adam's dinner-table, and con-
fining 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 refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which
he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the
refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though still
elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to " Lau-
rence, of virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice
little dinners in midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in that
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 sanctity 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 devourers 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 digestive powers and indulging a vigorous ap-
petite ; whereas an American has generally lost the one
and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
earliest decline 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 affirm, that,
on this side of the water, people never dine. At any

3 GO CIVIC BANQUETS.

rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of
the material requisites, the highest possible dinner has
never yet been eaten in America. It is the consummate
flower of civilization 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 cul-
tivated 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 present at good men's feasts, I remember
only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious
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, because, out of the very per-
fcctiun of that lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like
development of spiritual happiness. As in the master-
pieees of painting and poetry, there was a something in-
tangible, a final delieiousness that only fluttered about
your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to
drtain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith
rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of
senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for
the special fruition of this banquet, and that the «r
a i omul the table (only eight in number) were becomini:
so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate influ-
ences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little
more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that
gentle, delicious sadiic— . to.,, \\hich we find in the

CIVIC BANQUETS. 361

summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, 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 achieve-
ment, — the production of so much art, skill, fancy, in-
vention, 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, unless
the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready
to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a
harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments,
and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, that
nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thoroughly
awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially 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 pur-
posed to give a slight idea of those public, or partially
public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly pre-
vails among the English people, that nothing is ever
decided upon, in matters of peace or war, until they
have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-beef, and
talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these fes-
tivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all
considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The
most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with

362 CIVIC BANQUETS.

them as the Englishmen of to-day. In many of the old
English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or
<•! i;unber in which the Mayor and other authorities of tin
place have long held their sessions ; and always, in con-
venient contiguitv, tin-re is a dusky kitchen, with an im-
mense fireplace where an ox might lie roasting at his
ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern 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 Michael's Chuivh.
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 intersect ing arches, like the crypt of a
cathedral. 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 constituting a
genuine historical piece, in which are represented some
of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic
hla/.nnries. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown
into the hall, and though it was noonday when I last saw
it, the panelling 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

CIVIC BANQUETS. 363

illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is
wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s time,
(which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded by anti-
quaries 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, how-
ever, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their
substance when you try to make them out. Coats-of-
arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but
have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their
overcoats against them or by women with dishclouts
and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in
their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-
length portraits of several English kings, Charles IT.
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 traditional1}'
said to have occupied while feasting here with their
loyal subjects of Coventry. 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, with-
out the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of
oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with
all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the re-
mote 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 brood-
ing there. Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the
great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which

3G4 CIVIC BANQUETS.

glimmers faintly through the inter\al. is a gallery for
minstrels : and a row of ancient suits of armor is sus-
pended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too,
having gone so far. 1 would fain leave nothing un-
touched upon.) that 1 remember, .-omew here aliout ;
\enerable precinct.-, a picture oi' tin- C'onnte.-s ( iodiva on
horseback, in which the arti.-t has been so nig-jardly of
that illustrious lady's hair, that, it' .-he had no ampler
garniture, there was certainly much need for the good
people of Coventry to -hut their eyes. After all my
pains. 1 tear that I have made hut a poor hand at the
de.-eript ion, as regards a tra 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 >teel-clad knights had
come clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and
! Tutfed old figure had handed in a -lately dame, rustling
in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, umeiling a
face nf beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb,
yet Stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol
from the minstrel.-.' gallery, while the rusty armor re-
sponded with a hollow ringing sound beneath. — why. 1
should have felt that these shadow >. once so familiar with
the >pot, 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 tena-
ciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for
dinner a- a -acred in>titution. has caught hold of the 1
lish character; >ince. from the earlieM ivn.imi/able P6'
nod, we find them building their ci\ ic banqueting-halls as
magniticently as their palaees or cathedral-.

I know not whether the hall jn-t described i> im\\

CIVIC BANQUETS. 365

for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and
splendor still are. For example, there is Barber Sur-
geons' 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 sur-
geons, all portraits, (with such extensive beards that
methinks one half of the company might have been
profitably occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling be-
fore King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have
offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out
one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to
have a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many
other pictures of distinguished members of the company
in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and
statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but dark-
ened into such ripe magnificence as only age could be-
stow. 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 dignity and
solemn pomp by respectable citizens 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 crimson velvet. In
a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great
deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, com-
prising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-
bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a

3G6 CIVIC BANQUETS.

multitude of less noticeable vessels, two loving-cups,
very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by
Henry VIII.. the other l»y Charles II. These cups, in-
cluding the covers and pedestals, are very large and
weighty, although the howl-part would hardly contain
more than half a pint of \\ine. \\hieh. when tlie custom
was first established, each guest was probably exj><
to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand
to hand adown a long table of compotators, there is a
peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion
to describe. Meanwhile, it I miirht assume such a lib-
erty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official
dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large 1
ligh 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 Worship probably assembles at his board most
of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of
tlu town and neighborhood more than once during his
year's incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the pro-
motion of good feeling among individuals of opposite
parties and diverse pursuits in life. A miscellaneous
party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable
ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their dif-
ferences of opinion being incomparably less radical than
oui*s, 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 dis-
solved in a glass or two of wine, without making the
good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with
English taste.

CIVIC BANQUETS. 367

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 members
of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall at seven o'clock, I
communicated my name to one of several splendidly
dressed footmen, 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, los-
ing 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 a stranger, not
only to the whole company, but to myself as well. His
Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on
speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, 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 in-
dividual American, without ever bating a jot of his preju-
dice 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 correctness 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

3 68 CIVIC BANQUETS.

continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There
was one old gentleman, whose character I never i
out, with powdered liair. cla<l in black hm-che- and .-ilk
Stockings, and wearing a rapier at }\\^ >ide : othei
with the exception of the military uniforms, there was
little or no pretence <.f official coMuine. It heinir the
first considerable a— emblaze of Kii'jli.-hnien that I had

seen, my honest impression about them was, that they
were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remark-
able 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 ^ood breeding of a gentleman. P»eini_r generally mid-
dle-air<'d, or still farther advanced, they were by no mean-
graceful in ligure ; for the comeliness of the youthful
Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body ap-
pearini: to JJTOW longer, his legs to abbreviate them.-<
and his stomach to assume the dignified 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-diires ted, abundance of succu-
lent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one
additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally,
a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most super-
ficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis-
cover 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 a-st'
point of view. It seemed to me, moreover, that the KiiLr-
lish tailor had not done so much as he might and ought
for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exag-
gerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their gar-

CIVIC BANQUETS. 369

ments ; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and
smartness 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 customers
with such individual propriety that they look as if they
were born in their clothes, the fit being to the charac-
ter rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
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 impressions, I fancied
that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any in-
land county in New England, might show a set of thin-
visaged men, looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply
wrinkled across tlje forehead, and grimly furrowed about
the mouth, with whom these heavy-cheeked English
lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must needs
be, would stand very little chance in a professional con-
test. 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 admirable 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
24

370 civic iiANni

third generation. The trade-men, too. and all other
clas.sc.-. have their own proprieties. The only \aluc of
my criticisms, then-Inn-. lay in their e.\< •mplifying the
proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the
distinctive characteri.-tics ot'an<»ther. — as Kngli.-h writers
invariably measure US, and take upon thcm-el\cs to be
disgusted accordingly. inMead of tr\ing to find out some
principle of beauty with which we may be in conformity.
In due time we were Mimniohrd to tin table, and \\ent
thither in no solemn procession, but with a good d<
jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places when
we reached our destination. Th ih UK n. I sus-

pect, were rc.-poiiMhle 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 bril-
liantly illuminated. There was a splendid table-sen in-.
and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain
clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, riehly deco-
rated with gold lace, and themselves excellent specimens
of the blooming young manhood of Britain. When we
were fairly seated, it was certainly an agreeable spec
to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and
behold them so resolute, so conscious 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
table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decora-
tion, bright silver, 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 ban-
quet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the

CIVIC BANQUETS. 371

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 com-
monplace and identicalness in the composition of exten-
sive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying
a hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or
rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gen-
tlemen had a private understanding what to call for, and
that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in
their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so,
however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Cama-
cho's caldron, any sort of potluck 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 be-
times, 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 Cham-
pagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, solacing
themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before
bestowing their final confidence. 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 vin-
tages 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 con-

372 CIVIC BANQUETS.

Btancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout
as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well
the measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass
too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate hal.it-
ual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opinion. tin-
Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their
three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as an
their Ion-fathers. It is not so very long since the tlm-t-
hottle heroes sank finally under the tahle. It may be (at
least, I should be glad it it were true) that there was an
occult sympathy between our temperance reform, now
somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous dis-
appearance of hard-drinking anioni: the respectnble classes
in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman tell-
ing me (in illustration of the very slight importance
attached to breaches of temperance within the memory
of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magis-
trate, Sir John Linkwater, or Drinkwater, — but I think
the jolly old kniirht could hardly have staggered under so
perverse a misnomer as this last, — while sit ting 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."

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant con-
versation with the gentlemen on either side of 'me. One
of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction on the
social standing of the judges. Representing the dignity
and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during
assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom,
of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops,
of the royal Dukes, and even of the Prince of Wales.

CIVIC BANQUETS. 373

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 subsequent 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. Bishops, if
it be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a
similar characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to
an Englishman, that he needs to be born in it, and to feel
it thoroughly incorporated with his nature from its orig-
inal germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it obtru-
sively in the faces of innocent bys'tanders.

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-
aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none were
handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that looked
grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the ma-
chinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute
appetite, and let slip few opportunities of imbibing what-
ever liquids happened to be passing by. I was meditat-
ing 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

374 CIVIC BANQl :

seemed to have all the resources of education and train* <1
intellectual power at command. My fiv.-h Americani.-m,
and watchful observation of Kn;jli-h ri. sties, ap-

peared cither to interest or ainuse him. or perhaps both.
Under lite mollifying influences of abundance of meat and
drink, he grew \ » TV -jracions, (not that I oujrht to use
such a phrase to describe hi- 81 idently genuine good- will.)
and by and by expressed a wi.-h i'nr 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 IJettcsworth on a similar
announcement, — " ( )f what regiment, pray, Sir? " — and
fancied that the same question iniirht not base been q
amiss, if ap])licd to the rugged individual at my side. But
I heard of him subsequently as one of the prominent men
at the Knglish 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
qnaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death
announced in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qual-
ities, he possessed, I think, the most attractive one of
all, — thorough manhood.

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decan-
ters were set before the Mayor, who sent them forth on
their outward voyage, full freighted with Port, Sherry,
Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors, me-
thouglit. the latter found least acceptance among the
guests. "NY hen every man had tilled his glas>. his Wor-
ship 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

CIVIC BANQUETS. 375

toolings 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 na-
* tional 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 influence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for, though
we call ourselves loyal to our country 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 sys-
tem, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated
by the warm throbbings of human hearts. He clothes
our bare abstraction in flesh and blood, — at present, in
the flesh and blood of a woman, — and manages to com-
bine love, awe, and intellectual reverence, all in one emo-
tion, and to embody his mother, his wife, his children, 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 consequence of our proud prerogative of
caring no more about our President than for a man of
straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield.

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather
ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle-aged and
elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat and drink, their
ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, perspiration,
and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas
from the 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 rud-

376 CIVIC BANQUETS.

est old ditty in the world ; but I could not wonder at its
universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, con-
sidering how inimitably it expresses the national faith
and feeling as regards tin- inevitable righteousness- ofl
England, the Almighty's consequent respect and partial-
ity for that redoubtable little island, and His presumed
readiness to strengthen its defence against the contuma-
cious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or
republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English
to the very last prejudice, could not write half so good a
song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner-
table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling
thunder 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 determined to lend my own assistance
in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper
courtesy to the first Ladv in the land, whose guest, in the
larp-st 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
tin- restoration of the Union) were poured freely forth in
honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like the
carved head of a Swiss nut-cracker, and the other gen-
tlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinc-
ed grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English
superiority; and we finished our stave and sat down in
an extremely happy frame of mind.

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions
and interests of the country, and speeches in response to
each were made by individuals whom the Mayor desig-
nated or the company called for. None of them im-
pressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial

CIVIC BANQUETS. 377

oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and
shapeless utterances most Englishmen are satisfied to
give vent to, without attempting anything like artistic
shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there,
and ultimately getting out what they want to say, and
generally with a result of sufficiently good sense, but in
some such disorganized 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 distrust him. They dislike smart-
ness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better,
provided there be an element of commonplace running
through them ; and any rough, yet newt vulgar force of
expression, 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 sentiments have
a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this
apparent naturalness is as much an art as what we ex-
pend in rounding a sentence or elaborating a peroration.
* It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that no-

378 CIVIC BANQUETS.

body in England seems to feel any shyness about shovel-
ling the in i trimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his
mind for the benefit of an audience. At I«-a-t, iinhndy
did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little
Major of Artillery, who responded for the Army in a
thin. ((Havering voice, with a terriMy hesitating trickle of
fragmentary idea-, and, I question nut. would rather ha\c
been bayoneted in front of hi.- batteries than to have said
a word. Not his own mouth. l»it 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 sen-
tence or two, l4fcon became sensible of a drift in his
Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively
towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff
personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, " it is
your turn next"; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the
consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly
added, — "It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will
answer the pn The less you say, the better they

will like it." That being the case, I suggested that per-
haps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But
the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving
the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me
that I might possibly be brought into my present predica-
ment ; 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 misfortune in store for me. If nothing
else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would
certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here

CIVIC BANQUETS 379

was the Mayor getting on inexorably, — and, indeed, I
heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and
of his wordy wanderings find no end;

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest con-
fidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own
experience as ar 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 moment, then, if the
choice had been offered me whether the Mayor should let
off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesitat-
ingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really
nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a
great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sen-
tences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and give
it a cunning aspect 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 disagree-
able 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-expected moment

380 < i\ i' I;.\NMI

when one golden word was to be spoken: and in that
imminent crisis, I can-lit a glimpse of a little l>it of an
effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and
must, and should do to utter.

Well ; it was nothing as the Sergeant had said. What
surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which
I had DOTtr before heard at a declamatory pitch, and
which impressed me as belonging to some other person,
who, and not niv-elf. would be responsible for the speech:
a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the cir-
cumstances ! I went on without the slightest embarrass-
ment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly und« -
served by anything that I had spoken, but well won from
1 •'. i irishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck
that alone had enabled me to speak at all. "It
handsomely done !" quoth Sergeant Wilkins ; and I felt
like a recruit who had been for the first time under fire.

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 mi^rlit :
for this was one of the necessities of an office which 4
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 cowardice and
si i a me. My subsequent fortune was various. (
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 syllable at the moment of need,
and had to improvise 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
Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The

CIVIC BANQUETS. 381

presence of any considerable proportion of personal
friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have
talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I
was much embarrassed by a small audience, and suc-
ceeded better with a large one, — the sympathy of a
multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the
speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses
him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his
private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently,
with an expectation of going 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 de-
spair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horri-
ble, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency
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 suc-
cess may have been, I apfrehend 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 ora-
tors, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory to
their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a re-
markably true man who can keep his own elevated con-
ception 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 adulterat-
ing it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may make
it ten times as acceptable to the audience.

382 CIVIC BANQUETS.

THIS slight article on tin- ci\i<- banquets of England
would be too wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted
description of a Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion
House in London. I should have preferred the annual
feast at (iuildhall, hut never had the «i<>od fortune to \\it-
ness it. Once, how CM r, I was honored with an invita-
tion to one of the regular dinners, and gladly am -pt» -d it.
— taking the precaution, nevertheless, 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 lor the
reception of his Lord.-hip's bountiful hospitality. The
n-pty was gracious and acquiescent ; so that I presented
myself in the irreat entrance-hall of the Mansion House,
at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable free-
dom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tor-
mented me at such times. The Mansion House was built
in Queen Anne's days, in t^very heart of old London,
and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really
as irreat a man as his traditionary state and pomp would
seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since tin-
days of Whittinjrton, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of
lite-long integrity was a seat in the Lord Mayor's chair.
People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance
have perished out of the office, as they do, sooner or
later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
and irilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it i-
only second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend
to be ambitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved
at this ; for the original emigrants of New Knuland had

CIVIC BANQUETS. 383

strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in poli-
tics, in the early days of our country ; so that the Lord
Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estima-
tion 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 greatness,
connecting themselves with national politics, and seeking
J:o be identified with the aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of foot-
men dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff breeches,
in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolu-
tionary 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 im-
posing figures, whom I should have taken to be military
men of rank, being 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 oc-
cupy 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 door-
way of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the
advantage of a presentation to the Lady Mayoress. As
this distinguished couple retired into private life at the
termination of their year of office, it is inadmissible to
make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners
and bearing 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

384 r CIVIC BANQUETS.

their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on

tin- latent aptitude of on li nary people for grandeur, we
have an exemplification in our own country, ami on a scale
incomparably greater than that of tin- .Mayoralty, though
invested with nothing like the outward in;. that

jiilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been correctly
informed, the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double that
of the President of the I'nited States, and yet is found
very inadequate to hi- naeeOMrj 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 re-
markably handsome apartments, lofty as well as spacious,
with carved ceiling and walls, and at either end a splen-
did fireplace of \vhite marble, ornamented with sculp-
tured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were
about three hundred, many of them celebrities in politics,
war. literature, and science, though I recollect none pre-
eminently distinguished in cither department. J>ul
certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of litera-
ture, for example, who deserve well of the public, yet do
not often meet it face to face, thus to brinir them toirether.
under Denial au-pices, in connection with j>ersons of note
in other lines. 1 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 line, whether his Lord-hip'- invitation
is much sought for or valued : but it .-eemed to me that
this periodical feast is one of the many sagac ion- methods
which the Knirlish have contrived for keeping up a good
understanding amonir different sorts of people. Like

CIVIC BANQUETS. 385

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 satiri-
cal poems, the city of London has always been famous
for the beauty of its women and the reciprocal 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 newness and rawness, as regarded the deli-
cate character and frequent occurrence of English 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 acquaintance with other
models of feminine loveliness 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
meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call it scrawni-
ness !) 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-acknowl-
edgment, that the English ladies, looked at from a lower
25

386 CIVIC BANQUETS.

point of view, were perhaps a little finer animals than
they. The advantages of the latter, it' any they could
really be said to have, were all comprised in a few addi-
tional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts
of their figures. It would he a pitiful bargain to give up
the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for
halt' a hundred-weight of human clay!

At a given HLnial we all found our way into an im-
mense room, called tin- Kiryptian 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 hand 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 between them, occupying nearly its en-
tire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an
acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out
all the accompaniments 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 English never omit, at a great dinner or a
small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much 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 platefids. in spite of the otherwise im-
mitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from
the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I sunni-ed
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, al-

CIVIC BANQUETS. 387

ways to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its
indigenous site ; and the very 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 excellently 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 and French names of the numerous
dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes them-
selves, 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 effu-
sion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed 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 fulfilment as
a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual
plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of look-
ing at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher's-meat, do not
generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of de-
vouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before pro-
ceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which,
after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic
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

388 CIVIC BANQUETS.

of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmi-
gan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding
hijrh up towards the summit of the Scotch mount
whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to
that of the artificially nurtured Knuli.-h irame-fowl. All
the other dainties have \ani.-hcd from my memory as
completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had
clapped his wiuirs over it. The hand played at interval.-,
in.-piritmg us to new efforts, as did likewise the spark linir
wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaustible
cellar, and which the guests quaffed with little apparent
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 youn.ir lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted to
describe, but dare not, because not only the superemi-
ence 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 1 had ever met with her resem-
blance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an
apparition, 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. At her side, and
familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I
remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead,

CIVIC BANQUETS. 389

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 shrubbery. There could be no
doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child
would have recognized them at a glance. It was Blue-
beard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with
already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young
brow) travelling in their honey -moon, and dining, among
other distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor's table.

After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife
and fork came the dessert ; and at the point of the festi-
val 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, 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 purport 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-din-
ner wine was placed on the table, still another official per-
sonage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make
a solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enu-
merated the principal guests, comprising three or four
noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of generals, mem-
bers of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the il-
lustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my

390 CIVIC BANQUETS.

ears,) ending in some such style as this : " and other gen-
tliiiKii and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks
to you all in a loving-en p." — iriving a sort of sentimental
twang to the two words, — " and sends it round among
you! " And forthwith the loving-cup — several of them,
indeed, on each side of the tables — came 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 removes
the cover for his Lordship to drink, which being success-
fully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and re-
ceives 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 per-
son goes throuirh a Miuilar luaim-uvre with a fourth, and
he with a filth, until the whole company find themsche-
inextricably intertwisted and en tangled in one complicated
chain of love. When the nip came to my hands, I ex-
amined it critically, both inside and out, and percei\<d
it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver goblet,
capable of holding about a quart of wine. Considering
how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to
our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with
wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite
the original quart of wine l>ein«: still in the irol.lct, it
seemed doubtful whether any of the company had more
than barely toucl led the silver rim hefon it to

their neighbors, — a degree of abstinence that iniirht be
accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many com-
potators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the
liquor. Being curious to know all about these important

CIVIC BANQUETS. 391

matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen
whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest
sip from the loving-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 specimens of table-eloquence which had hereto-
fore 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 delivered thereof, together with some accompany-
ing remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and
the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that
such or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified
clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the
Right Honorable the Lord Mayor's toast ; then, if I mis-
take not, there was another prodigious flourish of trum-
pets and twanging of stringed instruments ; and finally
the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be de-
capitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of him-
self. 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 man-
aged it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the
moment,) he really spoke like a book, and made incom-
parably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England.

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on

392 CIVIC BANQUETS.

this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed me
as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why >hould
people eat a good dinner, and put th«-ir spirits into festi\r
trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves
into a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious lil.a-
tinns of Sherry and old Port, and then disturb the whole
excellent result by liMening 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 effusions, or if the generous Port had shone
their substance with a ruddy glow of the old
humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen
prattling in their cups, and should undoubtedly have been
glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor im-
pulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent
expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audi-
ence. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best plr.-i~.-d
when the speaker embodied hi.- ideas in the ligurati\e
language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter
of business or statistics, as a hea\ \-ladeu bark bumps
upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too ear-
nest utilitarianism, of modern life, have 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 pour-
ing-sober wisdom into their wine by way of wonm\
bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine
and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments ha\e taken a -pice
of acridity from a ciivumMance that happened about this
Mage, of the feast, and very much interrupted my own

CIVIC BANQUETS. 393

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 prox-
imity 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 ; an-
other, 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 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 anybody's fireside, even my
own, than at the dinner-table of the Lord Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lord-
ship 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 mar-
ried by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would
not live together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord
— " the literary and commercial attainments of an emi-
nent 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 assured that that
whole honorable company would join him in the expres-

394 CIVIC BANQUETS.

si'on of a fervent wish that they ini'_rlit be held inviolably
sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic, now and fon
Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry ami hard
to chew upon as a musty M-a-his»Miit. which had been the
text of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The
herald so'norously announced that Mr. So-and--o would
now re-pond to his Right Honorable LonNhipV toa.-t and
speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish for
the onset, there was a thunderous nimble of anticipatory
applause, and finally a deep silence sank upon ti
hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord
Mayor's part, after beiruilini: me within his lines on a
pledp of safe-conduct; and it seemed very strange that
he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner
in peaee. drink a small sample of the Mansion House
wine, and no away grateful at heart for the old English
hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of
ratsbane in the lo\ inn-cup. I -hould have taken it much
more kindly at hi- hands, lint I suppose the secret of
the matter to have been somewhat as folio

All Knirland, just then, was in one of those singular
fits of panic excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive
and tremulous as that emotion.) which, in consequence
of the homogeneous character of the people, their ini
patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public
affairs on other sources than their own examination and
individual thought, are more sudden, per\a-i\ e. and un-
rea-nninir than any similar mood of our own public. In
truth, I have never seen the American public in a -
at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it.
Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right

CIVIC BANQUETS. 395

or wrong, are moral and intellectual. For example, the
grand rising of the North, at the commencement of this
war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because
it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment,
just as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thou-
sand 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 characteristic. They imagine us,
in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose
normal condition is savage fury, and are 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 themselves at the
head, to combine for the purpose 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
swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate stalk
tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad com-
panions. At such periods all Englishmen talk with a ter-
rible identity of sentiment and expression. 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 reason-
able 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 sensi-
tiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful of their
country's honor, most anxious for the preservation of the

396 CIVIC BANQUETS.

cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have .
l)C(-ii so long in consolidating, and incompetent (owing to
the national half-sightedness. and their haliit of tru-ting
to a few leading minds tor their public opinion) to j
when that prosperity is really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look at the forciirn
side of any international dispute, they might easily ha\e
>ati-lied themselves that there was very little dan-j'-r «»t'
a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circum-
stance that their own Government had po-iti\ely not an
inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not tail
to be aware of the fact Neither could they ha\e met
Parliament with any show of a justification for incur-
ring war. It was no auch perilous juncture as exists
now, when law and right are really controverted on sus-
tainahle or plausible grounds, and a naval commander
may at any moment lire off ihe first cannon of a terrible
contest. If I remember it correctly, it \\a- a mere diplo-
matic squabble, in which tin- l»riti.-h ministers, with tin-
politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing
towards their otlicial subordinate's, had fried to browbeat
us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an in-
defensible proceeding: and the American (iovermmnt
(for God had not denied us an administration of St
men then) had retaliated with stanch courage and ex-
quisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon
their opponents, but indulging them with no pretence
whatever for active resentment.

Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman,
probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and
uas glad t<> lay hold <>K even so insignificant an Ameri-
can a- m \.-elt'. \\lio mi-ht be made to harp on the ruMy

CIVIC BANQUETS. 397

old strings of national sympathies, 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 possibly his Lordship thought,
in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to be
expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his
august and far-famed dinner-table, might have an appre-
ciable 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 right-honorable hands, in the hope of closing
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 de-
sired nothing better than such an heroic opportunity, —
his own country, which would continue to get cotton and
breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything 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
absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought
of listening to the speech, because I knew it all before-
hand in twenty repetitions 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 gentle-
man 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 to my guardian-angel

398 CIVIC BANQUETS.

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 which his ofliee was In -Id — 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 deseendants of the Puritan forefathers.
Thence, if I liked, -( ttinir flexible with the oil of my
own eloquence, I might easily slide off into the momen-
tous subject of the relations between England and Amer-
ica, to which his Lordship had made such weighty al-
lusion.

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 attempt.
The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly
were silent airain. 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.

THE END.

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