LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Chap._ Copyright W ShelL__A_l. . a . 1 \fr°\ I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Uiter^i&e €tiition THE COMPLETE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP AND ILLUSTRATED WITH Etchings by Blum, Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw> and Turner IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES VOLUME VII. 9 , ' OUR OLD HOME, AND ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE « y VOL. I. if 5 1891 BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY €I)e fttbertfttJ* pro&J, Camfcrtfcfle 1891 Copyright, 1863, By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Copyright, 1870, BY SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. Copyright, 1883, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Copyright, 1891, By ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. CONTENTS. ♦— OUR OLD HOME. PAGE Introductory Note 9 Dedication 13 To a Friend 15 Consular Experiences 19 Leamington Spa . 58 About Warwick 85 Recollections op a Gifted Woman . . . . 113 Lichfield and Uttoxeter 148 Pilgrimage to Old Boston 169 Near Oxford 201 Some of the Haunts of Burns ..... 231 A London Suburb 254 Up the Thames 288 Outside Glimpses of English Poverty .... 326 } Civic Banquets 363 PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 405 !. OUR OLD HOME: A SERIES OF ENGUSH SKETCHE& INTRODUCTORY NOTE. OUR OLD HOME. The years which Hawthorne passed in England were outwardly the most successful, in worldly prosperity the most abundant, and in other respects among the happiest of his life ; forming in the autumn of his ca- reer a sort of counterpoise to the idyllic period spent at the Old Manse. Of these years, — from the spring of 1853 to June of 1860, excepting a part of 1858 and 1859, which interval was chiefly spent in Italy, — " Our Old Home " was the literary outcome. Much of the material composing the sketches in this volume occurs in embryonic form in the "English Note- Books," which were then still veiled from publicity ; but various elements and touches of fancy were sup- plied by the author's mood or memory at the instant of writing. His impressions of England, outlined in the " Note-Books " and scattered at random through many pages, here assume a connected and artistic shape. The articles embraced in " Our Old Home " were begun at The Wayside, Concord, in 1862, and were first published in the " Atlantic Monthly," which was then edited by Mr. James T. Fields. Mr. Fields has placed on record, in his " Yesterdays with Authors," the fullest memoranda now to be had relative to the production of these sketches. Hawthorne, in speaking 10 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. of them, said to him : " We must remember that there is a good deal of intellectual ice mingled with this wine of memory.' ' Indeed, he took a discouraged tone regarding the work, and wrote, on forwarding one of the manuscripts : " I hope you will like it, for the subject seemed interesting to me when I was on the spot, but I always feel a singular despondency and heaviness of heart in reopening these old journals now." At another time : " Heaven sees fit to visit me with an unshakable conviction that all this series of articles is good for nothing ; but that is none of my business, provided the public and you are of a differ- ent opinion." It is probable that this down-hearted mood was a part of the general depression which weighed heavily upon Hawthorne from the beginning of the civil war until his death, and was caused by the unhappy state of the country. He looked back, also, to his English sojourn as a pleasant experience never likely to be repeated, and often longed to return to the mother-country, which had entertained him so hos- pitably and where he had made warm friends. Some of these friends were startled, and perhaps a little hurt, by the frankness of the characterizations and criticisms which the book bestowed on the Eng- lish. Hawthorne, however, remarks in a letter to Mr. Fields : " I really think Americans have more cause than they to complain of me. Looking over the vol- ume, I am rather surprised to find that whenever I draw a comparison between the two peoples, I almost invariably cast the balance against ourselves." And it was from Americans, in fact, that Hawthorne re- ceived the severest censure on the publication of " Our Old Home," though for quite another cause than his remarks on their national character. He had dedi- INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 11 cated the book to his old college-friend, Ex-President Franklin Pierce, against whom popular opinion at the North was then very bitter, on account of the attitude of compromise taken by him towards the South while he was Chief Magistrate of the Union, and his opposi- tion to the war and to emancipation. When remon- strated with on his purpose of linking the volume with Pierce's name, Hawthorne replied to Mr. Fields: " I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence without his kindness ; and if he is so exceedingly un- popular that his name is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him. I cannot, merely on account of pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go back from what I have deliberately thought and felt it right to do ; and if I were to tear out the dedication, I should never look at the volume again without remorse and shame." The collection was accordingly published, in the autumn of 1863, with the dedicatory note as it now stands. As a literary performance "Our Old Home " was received cordially, but the political and personal indignation roused by the dedication was deep. " My friends have dropped off from me like autumn leaves," Hawthorne wrote to his old comrade, Bridge, who, although in the ranks of the political party opposed to Hawthorne's views, remained loyal to him. Of the story told about an erring doctor of divinity, in the "Consular Experiences," the author wrote to Mr. Fields : "It is every bit true (like the other an- 12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. ecdotes^, only not told so darkly as it might have been for the reverend gentleman." Among some cor- respondence the editor, a few years since, came upon a letter addressed to Hawthorne respecting this very point. The writer, who was a stranger, explained that he had had a controversy with some friends, who insisted that the circumstances narrated must have been invented by the author for effect. On the en- velope Hawthorne made a memorandum to the effect that the letter had been answered by an assurance that the incident was an actual one. That this answer was received and the question settled the editor recently learned from the correspondent himself, who, curiously enough, had removed from Illinois, where his letter was written, and was occupying a house next to the Wayside, where the " Consular Experiences " was penned. G. P. L. TO FRANKLIN PIERCE, AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, Ww Volume IS INSCRIBED BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. TO A FRIEND. I have not asked your consent, my dear General, to the foregoing inscription, because it would have been no inconsiderable disappointment to me had you withheld it ; for I have long desired to connect your name with some book of mine, in 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 re- tirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters of policy or government, and have very little to say about the deeper traits of national character. In their humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic litera- ture, and can achieve no higher success than to repre- sent to the American reader a few of the external as- pects of English scenery and life, especially those that are touched with the antique charm to which our coun- trymen are more susceptible than are the people among whom it is of native growth. I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would not be all that I might write. These and other sketches, with which in a somewhat rougher form than I have given them here, my journal was copiously filled, were intended for the side -scenes and back- grounds and exterior adornment of a work of fiction 16 TO A FRIEND. of which the plan had imperfectly developed itself in my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to convey more of various modes of truth than I could have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I should not mention this abortive project, only that it has been utterly thrown aside and will never now be ac- complished. The Present, the Immediate, the Actual, has proved too potent for me. It takes away not only my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imaginative composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a 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 Ro- mance. But I have far better hopes for our dear country; and for my individual share of the catas- trophe, I afflict myself little, or not at all, and shall easily find room for the abortive work on a certain ideal shelf, where are reposited many other shadowy volumes of mine, more in number, and very much su- perior 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 ex- press. The charge surprises me, because, if it be true, I have written from a shallower mood than I 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 TO A FRIEND. 17 American is continually thrown upon his national an- tagonism by some acrid quality in the moral atmos- phere 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 perfectly good-humor with them. Jotting down the little acrimonies of the moment in my jour- nal, and transferring them thence (when they hap- pened 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 more or less of truth. If they be true, there is no reason in the world why they should not be said. Not an Englishman of them all ever spared America for courtesy's sake or kindness ; nor, in my opinion, would it contribute in the least to our mutual advan- tage 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 sen- sitive 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 sun- nier 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 VOL. VII. 2 18 TO A FRIEND. grand idea of an irrevocable Union, which, as you once told me, was the earliest that your brave father taught you. For other men there may be a choice of paths, — for you, but one ; and it rests among my cer- tainties that no man's loyalty is more steadfast, no man's hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our na- tional existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined with his possibilities of personal happi- ness, 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 corner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the Goree Arcade, and in the neighborhood of some of the oldest docks. This was by no means a polite or ele- gant portion of England's great commercial city, nor were the apartments of the American official so splen- did 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 pas- sageway on the first floor, at the extremity of which, surmounting a door-frame, appeared an exceedingly stiff pictorial representation of the Goose and Grid- iron, according to the English idea of those ever-to-be- honored symbols. The staircase and passageway were often thronged, of a morning, with a set of beggarly and piratical-looking scoundrels (I do no wrong to our own countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty was a genuine American), purporting to be- long to our mercantile marine, and chiefly composed of Liverpool Black-ballers and the scum of every mari- time nation on earth ; such being the seamen by whose 20 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. assistance we then disputed the navigation of the world with England. These specimens of a most unfortu- nate class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest of bed, board, and clothing ; invalids asking permits for the hospital ; bruised and bloody wretches com- plaining of ill-treatment by their officers ; drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly in- termingled with an uncertain proportion of reasona- bly 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 swel- tered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all re- quired 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 admitted into an outer office, where he found more of the same species, explaining their respective wants or grievances to the Vice-Consul and clerks, while their shipmates awaited their turn outside the door. Passing through this exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an inner privacy, where sat the Consul himself, ready to give personal attention to such pecul- iarly difficult and more important cases as might de- mand the exercise of (what we will courteously sup- pose to be) his own higher judicial or administrative sagacity. It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two win- dows looking across a by-street at the rough brick- side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier structure than ever was built in America. On the walls of the room hung a large map of the United States (as they were, twenty years ago, but seem little likely to be, twenty years hence), and a similar one of CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21 Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly com- pact, 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 terrible bust of General Jackson, pilloried in a military collar which rose above his ears, and frowning forth immitigably at any Eng- lishman 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 occa- sionally 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 misremember, and twist it wrong end foremost into something like an English victory. They have caught from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so many other characteristics) this excellent method of keeping the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism forbade me to take down either the bust or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than right that an American Consulate (being a little patch of our nationality imbedded into the soil and institu- tions of England) should fairly represent the Ameri- can taste in the fine arts, and because these decora- tions reminded me so delightfully of an old-fashioned American barber's shop. One truly English object was a barometer hanging 22 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 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 bituminous coal, was English too, as was also the chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire at midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which often, between November and March, compelled me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware of omitting anything important in the above descrip- tive inventory, unless it be some book-shelves filled with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and a good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communi- cations from former Secretaries of State, and other official documents of similar value, constituting part of the archives of the Consulate, which I might have done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal- grate. Yes ; there was one other article demanding prominent notice : the consular copy of the New Tes- 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, ad- ministered by me between two breaths, to all sorts of people and on all manner of worldly business, were reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul's peril. Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in which I spent wearily a considerable portion of more than four good years of my existence. At first, to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as not altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representative of so great and prosperous a country as the United States then were ; and I should speedily have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier apartments, except for the prudent consideration that CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 23 my government would have left me thus to support its dignity at my own personal expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished predecessors, of whom the latest is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had found the locality good enough for them ; it might certainly be tolerated, therefore, by an individual so little ambitious of external magnificence as myself. So I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into such soil as I could find, adapting myself to circum- stances, 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 reluctance in changing it for a better. Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but in- cluding almost every other nationality on earth, espe- cially the distressed and downfallen ones, like those of Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits (for so they looked), proscribed conspirators from Old Spain, Span- ish-Americans, Cubans who professed to have stood by Lopez, and narrowly escaped his fate, scarred French soldiers of the Second Republic, — in a word, all suf- ferers, or pretended ones, in the cause of Liberty, all people homeless in the widest sense, those who 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, sought the American Consulate, in hopes of at least a bit of bread, and, per- haps, to beg a passage to the blessed shores of Free- dom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little, to be done for them ; neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make 24 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies of an American, that these unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship in our Republic on the strength of the very same no- ble misdemeanors that had rendered them outlaws to their native despotisms. So I gave them what small help I could. Methinks the true patriots and martyr- spirits of the whole world should have been conscious of a pang near the heart, when a deadly blow was aimed at the vitality of a country which they have felt to be their own in the last resort. As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted with many of our national characteristics during those four years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought more strikingly out by the contrast with Eng- lish manners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra peculiarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chis- elled 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 see how he was getting on with his duties. These interviews were rather formid- able, 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 na- tive tendency to organization, generally halted outside CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 25 of the door, to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, and thus approached me with all the formalities of a deputation from the American people. After saluta- tions 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 search- ing 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 com- monplaces for new and valuable truths, and talking trash and emptiness in such a way that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for something solid. If there be any better method of dealing with such junctures, — when talk is to be created out of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at once, so that you cannot apply yourself to your 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 done, I saw that no people on earth have such vaga- bond habits as ourselves. The Continental races never travel at all if they can help it ; nor does an English- man ever think of stirring abroad, unless he has the money to spare, 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 26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. peregrination about Europe, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It hap- pened, indeed, much oftener than was at all agreeable to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to bring them to the door of my Consulate, where they en- tered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and protection, and required at my hands to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, — finding them gentle manly in manners, passably educated, and only tempted a little beyond their means by a laudable desire of im- proving and refining themselves, or perhaps for the sake of getting better artistic instruction in music, painting, or sculpture than our country could supply, — I sometimes took charge of them on my private re- sponsibility, since our government gives itself no trou- ble about its stray children, except the sea-faring 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 pas- sages on their behalf, with the understanding that they were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard ; and I remember several very pathetic appeals from paint- ers and musicians, touching the damage which their artistic fingers were likely to incur from handling the ropes. But my observation of so many heavier trou- bles left me very little tenderness for their finger-ends. In time I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he in- variably averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ulti- CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 27 mate 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 similar to this. The individual now in question was a mild and patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond descrip- tion, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and somewhat red nose. He made no complaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious, " I want to get home to Ninety-Second Street, Phila- delphia." 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 the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His man- ner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so ; but he stead- fastly affirmed, "Sir, I was born and have lived in Ninety-Second Street, Philadelphia," and then went on to describe some public edifices and other local ob- jects with which he used to be familiar, adding, with a simplicity that touched me very closely, " Sir, I had 28 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. rather be there than here ! " Though I still mani- fested a lingering doubt, he took no offence, replying with the same mild depression as at first, and insist- ing again and again on Ninety-Second Street. Up to the time when I saw him, he still got a little occa- sional job-work at his trade, but subsisted mainly on such charity as he met with in his wanderings, shift- ing from place to place continually, and asking assist- ance to convey him to his native land. Possibly he was an impostor, one of the multitudinous shapes of English vagabondism, and told his falsehood with such powerful simplicity, because, by many repetitions, he had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I be- lieve, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad was this old man's fate! Homeless on a foreign shore, looking always towards his country, coming again and again to the point whence so many were setting sail for it, — so many who would soon tread in Ninety-Second Street, — losing, in this long series of years, some of the distinctive characteristics of an American, and at last dying and 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 ar- gument, 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, Philadelphia ! " But even his desire of getting home had ceased to be an ardent one (if, indeed, it had not always partaken of- the dreamy sluggishness of his character), although it remained his only locomotive impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of life that kept his blood from actual torpor. CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29 The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost as worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep consideration, but dared not incur the moral responsi- bility 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, 3r irretrievably vanished, and the whole country be- come more truly a foreign land to him than England was now, — and even Ninety - Second Street, in the weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made over anew and grown unrecognizable by his old eyes. That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred itself to the New Jerusalem, and he must seek it there, contenting his slow heart, meanwhile, with the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of 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, nothing awaited him but that worst form of disappointment which comes under the guise of a long- cherished and late - accomplished purpose, and then a year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an almshouse, and death among strangers at last, where he had imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I con- tented myself with giving him alms, which he thank- fully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders and an aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning upon his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the same sad and quiet story of his abode in England for more than twenty- seven years, in all which time he had 30 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 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 the moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, fat - faced individual came into my private room, dressed in a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trou- sers, both garments worn and shabby, and rather too small for his overgrown bulk. After a little prelimi- nary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper (from Connecticut, I think), who had left a flourish- ing 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 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 inheri- tance. On the voyage, a German fellow-passenger had relieved him of his money on pretence of getting it favorably exchanged, and had disappeared immedi- ately 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* CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31 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 ap- pearance at Windsor Castle. I never had so satisfactory a perception of a com- plete booby before in my life ; and it caused me to feel kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exasper- ated on behalf of common-sense, which could not pos- sibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey should exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the very plainest terms, but without either exciting his anger or shaking his resolution. " Oh my dear man," quoth he, with good-natured, placid, simple, and tearful stub- bornness, " if you could but enter into my feelings and see the matter from beginning to end as I see it! " To confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard- hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was more weight in his remonstrance than I chose to be sensible of, at the time ; for, like many men who have been in the habit of making playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real life. And even absurdity has its rights, when, as in this case, it has absorbed a human being's entire na- ture and purposes. I ought to have transmitted him to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good-na- tured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify 32 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. the universal Yankee nation, might, for the joke's sake, have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly laid herself open to his visit, and has received hun- dreds of our countrymen on infinitely slighter grounds. But 1 was inexorable, being turned to flint by the in- sufferable 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 Eng- lish ground, and the palace-door was hanging ajar for him, he was expected to turn back, a penniless and bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted Consul refused to lend him thirty shillings (so low had his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a second-class ticket on the rail for London ! He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assail- ing me with the old petition at every opportunity, look- ing shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good- tempered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears, not without a perception of the ludicrousness of his own position. Finally, he disappeared 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 ac- count of a ragged Yankee's attempt to steal into Buck- ingham Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his captors, and besought them to introduce him to her CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 33 Majesty. I submit to Mr. Secretary Seward that lie ought to make diplomatic remonstrances to the Brit- ish 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 establish- ing 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 peculiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo- American heart. After all these bloody wars and vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable yearning towards England. When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed along with them others, which were never snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening dis- tance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by the edge of the sword. Even so late as these days, they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and might often have influenced our national cause like the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of Eng- land had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind of machinery. It has required nothing less than the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the con- temptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind of one eye and often distorted of the other, that char- acterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great nation in our own right, instead of continuing vir- tually, if not in name, a province of their small island. What pains did they take to shake us off, and have ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them ! 34 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, rather, the Providence of God, who has doubtless a work for us to do, in which the massive materiality of the English character would have been too ponderous a dead -weight upon our progress. And, besides, if England had been wise enough to twine our new vigor round about her ancient strength, her power would have been too firmly established ever to yield, in its due season, to the otherwise immutable law of im- perial vicissitude. The earth might then have beheld the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and institu- tions, imperfect, but indestructible. Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalga- mation. But as an individual, the American is often conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind pathetic tendency to wander back again, which makes itself evident in such wild dreams as I have alluded to above, about English inheritances. A mere coinci- dence of names (the Yankee one, perhaps, having been assumed by legislative permission), a suppositi- tious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently en- graved coat of arms has been half scrubbed out, a seal with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or docu- ment 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 advertisement 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. Re- membering such sober extravagances, I should not be CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35 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 dis- eased American appetite for English soil. A respect- able-looking woman, well advanced in life, of sour aspect, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New-Eng- landish in figure and manners, came to my office with a great bundle of documents, at the very first glimpse of which I apprehended something terrible. Nor was I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, the Town Hall, the Exchange, and all the principal business part of Liverpool have long been situated ; and, with considerable peremptoriness, the good lady signified her expectation that I should take charge of her suit, and prosecute it to judgment ; not, however, on the equitable condition of receiving half the value of the property recovered (which, in case of complete success, would have made both of us ten or twenty fold millionnaires), but without recompense or reim- bursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident of my official duty. Another time came two ladies, bear- ing a letter of emphatic introduction from his Excel- lency the Governor of their native State, who testified in most satisfactory terms to their social respectability. They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and announced themselves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic- toria, — a point, however, 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 come to a fair decision in respect to them, from a probable disinclination to admit new members into the 36 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. royal kin. Upon my honor, I imagine that they had an eye to the possibility of the eventual succession of one or both of them to the crown of Great Britain through superiority of title over the Brunswick line ; although, being maiden ladies, like their predecessor Elizabeth, they could hardly have hoped to establish a lasting dynasty upon the throne. It proves, I trust, a certain disinterestedness on my part, that, encounter- ing them thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore to put in a plea for a future dukedom. Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably intellectual aspect. Like many men of an adventur- ous cast, he had so quiet a deportment, and such an apparent disinclination to general sociability, that you would have fancied him moving always along some peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of a most varied and tumultuous existence, having been born at sea, of American parentage, but on board of a Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, travels, and outlandish incidents and vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly been par- alleled since the days of Gulliver or De Foe. When his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty of narrating these adventures with wonderful elo- quence, working up his descriptive 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 af- fairs of life are not apt to transact themselves so artis- tically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 37 among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of the In- dian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fragrance breathing through his talk, and an odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in his garments. He had much to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay pirates, who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian throat among their prisoners ; but (except for deeds of that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, and matter of religion and conscience with them) they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive inno- cence and integrity. But his best story was about a race of men (if men they were) who seemed so fully to realize Swift's wicked fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much exercised with psychological speculations whether or no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of Ceylon, like other savage beasts, hairy, and spotted with tufts of fur, filthy, shameless, weaponless (though warlike in their individual bent), tool-less, houseless, language-less, except for a few guttural sounds, hid- eously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind of communication among themselves. They lacked both memory and foresight, and were wholly destitute of government, social institutions, or law or rulership of any description, except the immediate tyranny of the strongest ; radically untamable, moreover, save that the people of the country managed to subject a few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to outdoor servitude among their other cattle. They were beastly in almost all their attributes, and that to such a de- gree that the observer, losing sight of any link be- twixt them and manhood, could generally witness their brutalities without greater horror than at those 38 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest general traits in his own race with what was highest in these abominable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude that half compelled him to recognize them as human brethren. After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac- quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov- ernment, and had suffered (this, at least, being matter of fact) nearly two years' imprisonment, with confisca- tion of a large amount of property, for which Mr. Bel- mont, our minister at the Hague, had just made a peremptory demand of reimbursement and damages. Meanwhile, since arriving in England on his way to the United States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on ship- board, and had discovered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come into the world during the same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early flays confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman, in the picture-gallery of whose country-seat (whence, if I mistake not, our adventurous friend had just re- turned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a strik- ing 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 pur- posed to return to England and establish his claim to the nobleman's title and estate, CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39 I had accepted his Oriental fantasies (which, in- deed, to do him justice, have been recorded by scien- tific societies among the genuine phenomena of nat- ural history), not as matters of indubitable credence, but as allowable specimens of an imaginative travel- ler'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 wonderfully akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, not unprac- tised in such figments, — I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Never- theless, should his English rent-roll fall a little be- hindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his English country-seat a mere castle in the air, — which I ex- ceedingly 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 him- self compelled to assume the guardianship of person- ages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable of superintending the highest interests of whole com- munities. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once put the desire and expectation of all our penni- less vagabonds into a very suitable phrase, by pathet- ically entreating me to be a " father to him " ; and, simple as I sit scribbling here, I have acted a father's 40 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed 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 free- dom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes of neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that weari- some burden, an immaculate name, and blissfully ob- scure after years of local prominence, — it may be well for such individuals to know that when they set foot on a foreign shore, the long - imprisoned Evil, scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmos- phere, is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rat- tles the rusty barriers with gigantic turbulence, and if there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework, it breaks madly forth, compressing the mischief of a life- time into a little space. A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the Consulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain Doctor of Divinity, who had left America by a sail- ing-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 stu- dent, 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 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 41 Christianity and good-breeding. He seemed a little excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriving in England, but conversed with intelligence as well as animation, 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 distinguished 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 ex- tensive 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 ab- sence ; and in the course of a day or two more, I for- got all about him, concluding that he must have set forth on his Continental travels, the plan of which he had sketched out at our interview. But, by and by, I received a call from the master of the vessel in which he had arrived. He was in some alarm about his pas- senger, whose luggage remained on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since the mo- ment of his departure from the Consulate. We con- ferred together, the captain and I, about the expe- diency of setting the police on the traces (if any were to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck me that the good captain was singularly reticent, and that there was something a little mysterious in a few points that he hinted at rather than expressed ; so that, scru- tinizing the affair 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 Doc- 42 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. tor's personal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thou- sand saintly clergymen would amply dazzle 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 par- ticular Doctor should cut an ignoble figure in the po- lice reports of the English newspapers, except at the last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter myself, will acknowledge that I acted on their own principle. Be- sides, 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 perpetrate ; and to sum up the entire matter, I felt certain, from a good deal of somewhat similar experience, that, if the missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, he would turn up at the Consulate as soon as his money should be stolen or spent. Precisely a week after this reverend person's disap- pearance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged gentleman in a blue military surtout, braided at the seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Cri- mean 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 il- luminating the rusty black cravat. A grisly mustache was just beginning to roughen the stranger's upper lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but still had a ruined air of good society glimmering 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 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 43 some American marine officer, of dissipated habits, or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilderment of the last night's debauch. He greeted me, however, with polite familiarity, as though we had been previ- ously 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 requested to know who my visitor might be, and what was his business at the Consulate. u Am I then so changed ? " he exclaimed with a vast depth of tragic intonation ; and after a little blind and be- wildered talk, behold ! the truth flashed upon me. It was the Doctor of Divinity? If I had meditated a scene or a coup de thedtre, I could not have contrived a more effectual one than by this simple and genuine difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine must have felt that he had lost his personal identity through the misadventures of one little week. And, to say the truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of his especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than the man of Uz, the Arch Enemy had been empow- ered to drag him through Tophet, transforming him, in the process, from the most decorous clergyman 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 habit of a sinner ; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated himself, — being more than satisfied to know that the outcasts of society can sink no lower than this poor, desecrated wretch had sunk. 44 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen to a layman, of administering moral and religious re- proof to a Doctor of Divinity ; but finding the occa- sion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan wax- ing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of con- science not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was unspeakably shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen are made of the same flesh and blood as other people, and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest of us possess, because they are aware of their own pec- cability, 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 the innocent faith of my boyhood, and the good old silver - headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly for whose sake, through all these darkening years, I retain a devout, though not intact nor unwavering respect for the entire fra- ternity. What a hideous wrong, therefore, 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 pulpits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it ? So I spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought myself warranted in speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vul- nerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. And not without more effect than I had dreamed Qfj or desired ! CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 45 No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor's reversed posi- tion, 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 morbidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that I administered. The unfortunate man had come to me, laboring under one of the consequences of his riotous outbreak, in the shape of delirium tremens ; he bore a hell within the compass of his own breast, all the tor- ments of which blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when I thus took upon myself the Devil's office of stirring up the red-hot embers. His emotions, as well as the external movement and expression of them by voice, countenance, and gesture, were terribly exaggerated by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting from the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I ever 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 sin- ners, I mean to operate upon them through sympathy and not rebuke. What had I to do with rebuking him ? The disease, long latent in his heart, had shown itself in a frightful eruption on the surface of his life. That was all ! Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for ? To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was easily persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to his bereaved flock, who, very probably, were thereafter conscious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring eloquence, without suspecting the awful depths into #6 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. which their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice is now silent. I leave it to members of his own pro- fession to decide whether it was better for him thus to sin outright, and so to be let into the miserable secret what manner of man he was, or to have, gone through life outwardly unspotted, making the first discovery of his latent evil at the judgment-seat. It has occurred to me that his dire calamity, as both he and I regarded it, might have been the only method by which pre- cisely such a man as himself, 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 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, es- pecially 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 con. duct, and also to remain quiet as regards his especial affairs till necessity shall prick him onward. Never- theless, the world and individuals flourish upon a con- stant succession of blunders. The secret of English practical success lies in their characteristic faculty of shutting one eye, whereby they get so distinct and de- CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 47 cided a view of what immediately concerns them that they go stumbling towards it over a hundred insur- mountable obstacles, and achieve a magnificent tri- umph 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 impart 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 con- tingencies. The duties of the office carried me to prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coro- ner's inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me in contact with insane people, criminals, ruined specu- lators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates, in greater number and variety than I had ever dreamed of as pertaining to America ; in addition to whom there was an equivalent multitude of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting the genuine Yankee article. It required great discrimination not to be taken in by these last-mentioned scoundrels ; for they knew how to imitate our national traits, had been at great pains to instruct themselves as regarded American localities, and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examina- tion as to the topographical features, public institu- tions, or prominent inhabitants of the places where they pretended 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 accordance, I think, with the custom of Shakespeare's time), uni- versally pronounce " bin." 48 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. All the matters that I have been treating of, how- ever, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from the real business of the office. A great part of the wear and tear of mind and temper resulted from the bad relations between the seamen and officers of Amer- ican ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that some sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage on ship- board. 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 dur- ing the voyage ; or, it might be, they laid an accusa- tion of actual murder, perpetrated by the first or sec- ond officers, with many blows of steel - knuckles, a rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by the captain, in the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his pistol. Taking the seamen's view of the case, you would sup- pose 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 themselves slain their comrade in the drunken riot and confusion of the first day or two after they were shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared to be no right side to the matter, nor any right side possi- ble in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the American mercantile marine. The Consul could do little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy Testament to be profaned anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an English magistrate, who gen- erally decided that the evidence was too contradictory to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial in America. The newspapers all over England con* CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 49 tained paragraphs, inveighing against the cruelties of American shipmasters. The British Parliament took up the matter (for nobody is so humane as John Bull, when his 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, re- sponded, 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 were quite adequate to deal with them, and that the interference of the British Minis- ter was uncalled for. The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very horrible, and could be met by no laws at that time (or I presume now) in existence. I once thought of writ- ing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Consu- late before finding time to effect my purpose ; and all that phase of my life immediately assumed so dream- like a consistency that I despaired of making it seem solid or tangible to the public. And now it looks dis- tant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. The ori- gin of the evil lay in the character of the seamen, scarcely any of whom were American, but the off- scourings and refuse of all the seaports of the world, such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a con- siderable intermixture of returning emigrants, and a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citi- zens. Even with such material the ships were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of property and human life upon his hands, and no means of sal- 50 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. vation except by compelling his inefficient and demor- alized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judi- cious punishment; he therefore habitually left the whole matter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew, Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjusti fiable assaults, shameful indignities, and nameless cru- elty, 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 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 in- evitable calamity. It was the fault of a system, the misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, how- ever, 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 English courts, under such restrictions as may seem fit, a jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board our vessels in mid-ocean. In such a life as this, the American shipmaster de- velops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless courage, 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 maintaining his authority. The class has deteriorated of late years on account of the narrower field of selec- tion, owing chiefly to the diminution of that excellent body of respectably educated New England seamen, CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 51 from the flower of whom the officers used to be re- cruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, with less non- sense about them than landsmen usually have, eschew- ers 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 general favorite with them. One or two, perhaps, even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms. Endowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, they especially disliked the interference of a consul with their management on shipboard ; notwithstand- ing which I thrust in my very limited authority at every available opening, and did the utmost that lay in my power, though with lamentably small effect, towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. They thought, no doubt (and on plausible grounds enough* but scarcely appreciating just that one little grain of hard New England sense, oddly thrown in among the flimsier composition of the Consul's character), that he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as people said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly understand anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a ship- master's position. But their cold regards were rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceedingly awk- ward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning towards a man with whom you have been hobnobbing over night. With the technical details of the business of that great Consulate (for great it then was, though now, I fear, wof ully fallen off, and perhaps never to be re- vived in anything like its former extent), I did not much interfere. They could safely be left to the 52 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. treatment of two as faithful, upright, and competent subordinates, both Englishmen, as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life alto- gether new and strange to him. I had come over with instructions to supply both their places with Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know- ing my own interest and the public's, I quietly kept hold of them, being little inclined to open the consu- lar doors to a spy of the State Department or an in- triguer for my own office. The venerable Vice-Con- sul, Mr. Pearce, had witnessed the successive arrivals of a score of newly-appointed Consuls, shadowy and short-lived dignitaries, and carried his reminiscences back to the epoch of Consul Maury, who was ap- pointed 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 Yice-Consulship, was a man of English integrity, — not that the English are more honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain sturdy reliableness common among them, which we do not quite so invariably manifest in just these subordi- nate 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 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 53 with the United States Statutes, an insight into char- acter, 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 consular service of America, is too often what the English call a " job " ; that is to say, it is made on private and per- sonal grounds, without a paramount eye to the public good or the gentleman's especial fitness for the posi- tion. It is not too much to say (of course allowing for a brilliant exception here and there), that an American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign post, nor has time to make himself so, before the rev- olution of the political wheel discards him from his office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting such a system of unsuitable appointments, and, still more, of removals for no cause, just when the incumbent might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere ignorance of official detail is of comparatively small moment ; though it is considered indispensable, I pre- sume, that a man in any private capacity shall be thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and opera- tion of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having attained such knowledge. But there are so many more important things to be thought of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth men- tioning. 54 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. One great part of a consul's duty, for example, should consist in building up for himself a recognized position in the society where he resides, so that his local influence might be felt in behalf of his own coun- try, and, so far as they are compatible (as they gener- ally are to the utmost extent), for the interests of both nations. The foreign city should know that it has a permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him. There are many conjunctures (and one of them is now upon us) where a long-established, honored, and trusted American citizen, holding a public position under our government in such a town as Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and 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 sug- gested. I never in my life desired to be burdened with public influence. I disliked my oflice from the first, and never came into any good accordance with CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 55 it. Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an encum- brance ; the attentions it drew upon me (such as in- vitations to Mayors' banquets and public celebrations of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself ex- pected to stand up and speak) were — as I may say without incivility or ingratitude, because there is noth- ing 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 bounti- fully reaped, were diminished by more than half in the second or third year of my incumbency. All this be- ing true, I was quite prepared, in advance of the in- auguration of Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resigna- tion. When my successor arrived, I drew the long, delightful breath which first made me thoroughly sen- sible what an unnatural life I had been leading, and compelled me to admire myself for having battled with it so sturdily. The new - comer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire-Eater, — an announcement to which I responded, with similar good -humor and self-complacency, by parading my descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puri- tans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eat- ing friend has had ample opportunities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate ser- vice. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the retrospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely be- lieve that it was I, — that figure whom they called a Consul, — but a sort of Double Ganger, who had been permitted to assume my aspect, under which he went through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my 56 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. proper mode of being and acting, in a state of sus- pended 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 myself intimately acquainted, but in which I cannot possibly have had a personal interest. Is it not a dream altogether ? The figure of that poor Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so do those of the Oriental adventurer with the visionary coronet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor of the Queen, and the poor old wanderer, seeking his native country through English highways and byways for almost thirty years ; and so would a hundred others that I might summon up with similar distinct- ness. But were they more than shadows ? Surely, I think not. Nor are these present pages a bit of in- trusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong me by supposing it. I never should have written with half such unreserve, had it been a portion of this life congenial with my nature, which I am living now, in- stead of a series of incidents and characters entirely apart from my own concerns, and on which the qual- ities personally proper to me could have had no bear- ing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and elo- quently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics and mine, with such kindly en- durance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 57 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 Englishman of them all, for his sake. It would gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend, if I could manage, without offending him, or letting the public know it, to 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 note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very de- lightful 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, and its venerable cathedral, is close at hand. North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, its noble sea-scenery, its multitude of gray castles and strange old villages, may be glanced at in a summer day or two. The lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland may be reached before dinner-time. The haunted and legendary Isle of Man, a little king- dom by itself, lies within the scope of an afternoon's voyage. Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable over night, and Loch Lomond betimes in the morning. Vis- iting these famous localities, and a great many others, I hope that I do not compromise my American patriot- ism by acknowledging that I was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our own Old Home. LEAMINGTON SPA. In the course of several visits and stays of consid- erable length we acquired a homelike feeling towards Leamington, and came back thither again and again, chiefly because 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 set- tled way of life, and often prefer familiar and com- monplace objects (for the very reason that they are so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better worth the seeing. There is a small nest of a place in Leamington — at No. 10 Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this day, my remi- niscences are apt to settle as one of the cosiest nooks in England or in the world ; not that it had any spe- cial 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 provided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts of box trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, and its verdant hedges shutting the house in from the common drive, and dividing it from its equally cosey neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking a turn LEAMINGTON SPA. 59 round the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to find your way back by any distinguishing individual- ity of your own habitation. In the centre of the Cir- cus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small play- place and sylvan retreat for the children of the pre- cinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh Eng- lish grass, and shadowed by various shrubbery ; amid which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from the windows of all the surrounding houses. But, in truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion ; for the ordinary stream of life does not run through this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabi- tants seem to be troubled with any business or outside activities. I used to set them down as half-pay offi- cers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of respectability, but small account, such as hang on the world's skirts, rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the place was seldom dis- turbed, 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 air- ing ; or the livery-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 deliver letters, and again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In merely mentioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that brooded over the spot ; whereas its impres- sion upon me was, that the world had never found the way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the spell- 60 LEAMINGTON SPA, word of admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at the time ; for I had been holding a position of public servitude, which imposed upon me (among a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being universally civil and sociable. Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of society, he might find it more readily in Leamington than in most other English towns. It is a permanent watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not know any close parallel in American life : for such places as Saratoga bloom only for the summer-season, and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even then ; while Leamington seems to be always in flower, and serves as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, 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 ap- pears 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 neighborhood, and surrounded by country-seats and castles — continue to be a resort of transient visitors s and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied, well - to - do, but not very wealthy people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I sup pose, a sort of town and country life in one. LEAMINGTON SPA. 61 In its present aspect the town is of no great age. Tn contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems al- most to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of thatched houses, clustered round a priory ; and it would still have been precisely such a rural village, but for a cer- tain Dr. Jephson, who lived within the memory of man, and who found out the magic well, and foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it. A public garden has been laid out along the margin of the 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, beneath 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 fortunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most other English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their moist climate and not too fervid sun, the landscape- gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful ar- rangement of trees and shrubbery. An Englishman aims at this effect even in the little patches under the windows of a suburban villa and achieves it on a larger scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded 62 LEAMINGTON SPA. by woodland paths ; and emerging from these plea* ant glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, where the greensward — so vividly green that it has a kind of lustre in it — is spotted with beds of gem- like flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scattered about, some of them ponderously fashioned out of the stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imi- tation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laugh- ing 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 pre- cincts, 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 judg- ment 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 intricacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself in which, a man might wander for hours inextricably within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities in which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder ua with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. LEAMINGTON SPA. 63 The Learn, — the " high eomplexioned Learn," as Drayton calls it, — after drowsing across the principal street of the town, beneath a handsome bridge, skirts along the margin of the Garden without any percepti- ble flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the laziest river in the world, but now assign that amiable distinction to the little English stream. Its water is by no means transparent, but has a greenish, goose- puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the other coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. Certainly, this river is a perfect feature of that gentle pictur- esqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, as it does, beneath a margin of willows that droop into its bosom, and other trees, of deeper verdure than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly over it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, secluded grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, afford- ing 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 tombstones. 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- ence. Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, the furniture - dealers, the iron - mongers, and all the heavy and homely establishments that connect them- selves even with the airiest modes of human life ; while upward from the river, by a long and gentle as- cent, rises the principal street, which is very bright and cheerful in its physiognomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of London, though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise 04 LEAMINGTON SPA. side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bor- dered 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, enclosed within that sepa- rate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrub- bery 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. Whether in street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a some- what unreal finery : it is pretentious, though not glar- ingly so ; it has been built with malice aforethought, as a place of gentility and enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as they often are, there is a nameless something about them, betokening that they have not grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a skilfully applied hu- man intellect: no man has reared any one of them, whether stately or humble, to be his life-long resi- dence, wherein to bring up his children, who are to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived lodging-houses, one and all, — the best as well as the LEAMINGTON SPA. 65 shabbiest of them, — and therefore inevitably lack some nameless property that a home should have. This was the case with our own little snuggery in Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest; it had not grown out of anybody's individual need, but was built to let or sell, and was therefore like a ready-made gar- ment, — 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 England, except per- haps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that second-class gentility with which watering - places are chiefly populated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne Circus, Lansdowne Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street, Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower Par- ade : such are a few of the designations. Parade, in- deed, is a well-chosen name for the principal street, along which the population of the idle town draws itself out for daily review and display. I only wish that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individ- ualizing each character with a touch ; the great peo- ple alighting from their carriages at the principal shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian offi- cers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the comely, rather than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milkmaid than for a lady ; the mustached gentle- men 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. 66 LEAMINGTON SPA. 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 represen- tative 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 ap- preciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to be- come 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 devel- opment of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits down, it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and LEAMINGTON SPA. 67 stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terri- ble, 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 dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything posi= tively 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 assure yourself that there is no real danger, you can- not help thinking how tremendous would be her onset if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter- injury. She certainly looks ten- fold — nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard wo- mankind; 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 en- durance than they. Morally, 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 out- side of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up. You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other cor- responding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose as this. Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest;, slender, violet-nature of a girl, 68 LEAMINGTON SPA. whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly over- grown ; 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 them selves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an out- rageously developed peony as I have attempted to de- scribe. 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 cannot be held to include the three fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed ? And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver- wedding at the end of twenty -five years, in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that corporeal growth of which both par- ties have individually come into possession since they were pronounced one flesh ? The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leam- ington lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and in jaunts to places of note and interest, which are par- ticularly abundant in that region. The high-roads are made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, and often afford him the hospitality of a wayside bench beneath a comfortable shade. But a fresher delight is to be found in the foot-paths, which go wan- dering away from stile to stile, along hedges, and LEAMINGTON SPA. 69 across broad fields, and through wooded parks, lead- ing you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, ancient, solitary farm - houses, picturesque old mills, stream- lets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unexpected, yet strangely familiar features of English scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idyls and eclogues. These by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusiveness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead him ; for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much the property of the public as the dusty high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways ; the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between village and village has kept the track bare ever since. An American farmer would plough across any such path, and obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn ; but here it is protected by law, and still more by the sacredness that inevitably springs up, in this soil, along the well-defined footprints of centuries. Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in Eng- lish nostrils , we pull them up as weeds. I remember such a path, the access to which is from Lovers' Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on a high hill-top, whence there is a view of Warwick Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, though bedimmed with English mist. This particular foot-path, however, is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind, since it leads into no hollows and seclu- sions, and soon terminates in a high-road. It con- nects Leamington by a short cut with the small neigh- boring village of Lillington, a place which impresses an American observer with its many points of contrast 70 LEAMINGTON SPA. to the rural aspects of his own country. The village consists chiefly of one row of contiguous dwellings, separated only by party-walls, but ill-matched among themselves, being of different heights, and apparently of various ages, though all are of an antiquity which we should call venerable. Some of the windows are leaden - framed lattices opening on hinges. These houses are mostly built of gray stone ; but others, in the same range, are of brick, and one or two are in a very old fashion, — Elizabethan, or still older, — hav- ing a ponderous frame-work of oak, painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with earthen tiles ; others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What especially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass - plots, orchards, broad - spreading shade - trees, which occur between our own village-houses. These English dwellings have no such separate surroundings ; they all grow together, like the cells of a honeycomb. Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one against another, with their thatched roofs forming a single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habita- tions of the poorest order of rustic laborers ; and the narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression of a stifled, unhealthy atmosphere among the occupants. It seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly reserve, a proper self-respect among individuals, or a LEAMINGTON SPA. 71 wholesome unfamiliarity between families where hu- man life was crowded and massed into such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look be- yond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural scene than was presented by this range of contiguous huts. For in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and well- trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cot- tage 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 vegeta- bles, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-col- ored, and shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed into artistic shapes ; and I remember, before one door, a representation of Warwick Castle, made of oyster- shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests in which they dwelt, and did their best to make them beautiful, and succeeded more than tolerably well, — so kindly did nature help their humble efforts with its verdure, flowers, moss, lichens, and the green things that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the open doorways we saw plump children rolling about on the stone floors, and their mothers, by no means very pretty, but as happy-looking as mothers generally are ; and while we gazed at these domestic matters an old woman rushed wildly out of one of the gates, up- holding a shovel, on which she clanged and 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, 72 LEAMINGTON SPA. 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 sanc- tity 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 pil- lars : it was good to see how solemnly they held them- selves to their age-long task of supporting that lowly roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted hollow, which it weekly filled with religious sound. On the opposite wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with an inscription in black letters, — the only such me- morial that I could discern, although many dead peo- ple doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, as is customary in old English churches. There were no modern painted win- dows, flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adorn- ments, such as the present taste for mediaeval restora- tion often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the gray village-church. It is probably the worshipping- place of no more distinguished a congregation than the farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cot- tages which I have just described. Had the lord of the manor been one of the parishioners, there would have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled LEAMINGTON SPA. 73 high about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by hered- itary tablets 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 inscriptions 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 suc- cessive crops of gravestones, that flourish their allotted time, and disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their briefer period. The English climate is very unfavor- able 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 atmosphere, — so soon do the drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the sur- face of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges lose their sharpness in a year or two ; yellow lichens over- spread 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 Ips- wich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legi- 74 LEAMINGTON SPA. ble inscriptions on them, than in any English church- yard. And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it generally is to the long remembrance of departed peo- ple, 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 be- fore another shower sprinkles the flat stone again, and replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, myste- rious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two years, or many years, be- hold the complete inscription — Jfew fLgetfj tfje Botjg, and all the rest of the tender falsehood — beautifully embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on the marble slab ! It becomes more legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. It outlives the grief of friends. I first saw an example of this in Bebbington churchyard, in Cheshire, and thought, that Nature must needs have had a special tenderness for the per- son (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 de- scribed. While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monu- ment, which was elevated just high enough to be a LEAMINGTON SPA. 75 convenient seat, I observed that one of the grave- stones lay very close to the church, — so close that the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under the church- wall. On closer inspection, we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty made out this forlorn verse : — ** Poorly lived, And poorly died, Poorly buried, And no one cried." It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones ; at least, we found them im- pressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the in- scription 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 Treeo, I think, — and he died in 1810, at the age of seventy-four. The gravestone is so overgrown with grass and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, and so crumbly with time and foul weather, that it is questionable whether anybody will ever be at the trouble of deciphering it again. But there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoy- ment in defeating (to such slight degree as my pen may do it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a century after his death, and making him better and 76 LEAMINGTON SPA. more widely known, at least, than any other slura- berer in Lillington 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 because they are so common and characteristic. The village of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk of Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as lit- tle disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jeph- son had never developed all those Parades and Cres- cents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate of progress, had even reached the epoch of stage-coaches. As you approach the village, while it is yet unseen, you observe a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm-tree tops, beneath which you almost hesitate to follow the public road, on account of the remoteness that seems to exist between the precincts of this old-world community and the thronged modern street out of which you have so recently emerged. Venturing onward, however, you soon find yourself in the heart of Whitnash, and see an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village-green, on one side of which stands the church, with its square Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining is the vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gables. At first glimpse, none of the houses appear to be less than two or three centuries old, and they are of the ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, which give them the air of birds' nests, thereby assim- ilating 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 LEAMINGTON SPA. 77 and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregu- lar, through which a by-gone age is peeping out into the day-light. Some of those old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are seen on the projections of the architect- ure. The churchyard is very small, and is encom- passed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as the church itself. In front of the tower, on the village- green, is a yew-tree of incalculable age, with a vast cir- cumference of trunk, but a very scanty head of foli- age ; though its boughs still keep some of the vitality which, perhaps, was in its early prime when the Saxon invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew. We were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an exuberance of 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 made it out to be the village-stocks ; a public institu- tion that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many 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 antiquarian propensities, and had prob- ably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding- place and set them up on the former site as a curi- osity. 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 78 LEAMINGTON SPA. 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- liffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning in your face. So, too, with the im- memorial yew-tree ; you see its great roots grasping hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so stur- dily 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 m the neigh- boring church and churchyard, through so many cen- turies, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty generations of the Whitnash people can supply such knowledge. And, after all, what a weary life it must have been for the old tree ! Tedious beyond imagination ! Such, I think, is the final impression on the mind of an American visitor, when his delight at finding some- thing permanent begins to yield to his Western love of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and forem others have grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a long succession of lives, without any intermixture of LEAMINGTON SPA. 79 new elements, till family features and character are all run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there fos- silized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yester- day or ever so long ago walks the village-street to-day, and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cot- tage is worn away with his hobnailed footsteps, shuf- fling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." Eather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listen- ing to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever change may come, — change of place, social customs, political institutions, modes of worship, — trusting that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but make room for better systems, and for a higher type of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them off in turn. Nevertheless, while an American 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 gener- ous 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 80 LEAMINGTON SPA. visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the church, I perceived that some of the houses must have been built within no long time, although the thatch, the quaint gables, and the old oaken framework of the others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole as- semblage. The church itself was undergoing repair and restoration, which is but another name for change. Masons were making patch-work on the front of the tower, and were sawing a slab of stone and piling up bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or possibly to en- large the ancient edifice by an additional aisle. More- over, they had dug an immense pit in the churchyard, long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two thirds of which profundity were discolored by human decay, and mixed up with crumbly bones. What this exca- vation 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. The article which I am writing has taken its own course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country churches; whereas I had purposed to attempt a de- scription of some of the many old towns — Warwick, Coventry, Kenilworth, Stratford -on -Avon — which lie within an easy scope of Leamington. And still an- other church presents itself to my remembrance. It is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course of a forenoon's ramble, and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no LEAMINGTON SPA. 81 public-house, no shop, no contiguity 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 settlers, among whom everything had been going on prosperously since an epoch beyond the memory of man ; and they kept a certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a cross-road, at the entrance of which was a barred gate, hospitably open, but still impressing me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes, there may have been a denser and more populous settlement styled Hatton, which I never reached. Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, and battlemented at its summit : for all these little churches seem to have been built on the same model, and nearly at the same measurement, and have even a greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I ap- proached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably deep- toned bell, considering how small it was) flung its voice abroad, and told me that it was noon. The church stands among its graves, a little removed from the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, and with no signs of a vicarage ; it is a good deal shadowed by trees, and not wholly destitute of ivy. The body of the edifice, unfortunately (and it is an outrage which the English churchwardens are fond of perpetrating), has been newly covered with a yellowish VOL. VII. 6 82 LEAMINGTON SPA. plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of antiquity, except upon the tower, which wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The chancel-window is painted with a 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) pos- sessing any of the tender glory that should be the in- heritance of this branch of Art, revived from mediaeval times. I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering through the many-colored panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the fantastic influence of a dream : for the floor was cov- ered with modern pews, very like what we may see in a New England meeting-house, though, I think, a lit- tle 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 pro- long their nap, I suppose, in the churchyard round about, and can scarcely have drawn much spiritual benefit from any truths that he contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It struck me as a rare example (even where examples are numerous) of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormous scholar, great in the classic tongues, and inevitably converting his own simplest vernacular into a learned language, should have been set up in this homely pulpit, 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 LEAMINGTON SPA. 83 churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen pur- gatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, yet very delightful emotion fluttering about me like a faint summer wind, and filling my imagination with a thousand half-remembrances, which looked as vivid as sunshine at a side-glance, but faded quite away when- ever I attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poe- try, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tour- ists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the common objects of English sceneiy, and these, be- ing long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insen- sibly taken their places among the images of things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a rec- ollection in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and fainter impress through several descents, to my own. I felt, indeed, like the stalwart progeni- tor in person, returning 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 people, as a whole, on whatever length of acquain- tance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and even reciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could 84 LEAMINGTON SPA. give it to them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America. They will never confess it ; nevertheless, it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. Therefore, — and possibly, too, from a similar narrow- ness 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 thoroughly as they themselves do. For my part, I used to wish that we could annex it, transferring their thirty millions of in- habitants to some convenient wilderness in the great West, and putting half or a quarter as many of our- selves into their places. The change wOuld be bene- ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenu- ated, unsubstantial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John Bull, on the other hand, has grown bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, ma- terial, and, in a word, too intensely English. In a few more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. Heretofore Providence has ob- viated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien races with the old English stock ; so that each succes- sive conquest of England has proved a victory by the revivification and improvement of its native manhood. Cannot America and England hit upon some scheme 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 pe- destrian in less than half an hour. One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the smart parades and crescents of the former town, — along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside alehouses, and through a hamlet of modern aspect, — and runs straight into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. The battlemented 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 expect to meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past generations, peeping forth from their infantile antiquity into the strangeness of our present life. I find a peculiar 86 ABOUT WARWICK. charm m 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, and often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved edi- tion of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The new-fangled 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 mother-country. At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to follow up the other road from Leamington, which was the one that I loved best to take. It pursues a straight and level course, bordered by wide gravel- walks and overhung by the frequent elm, with here a cottage and there a villa ; on one side a wooden plan- tation, and on the other a rich field of grass or grain ; until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon. Its parapet is a balus- trade carved out of freestone, into the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have engraved their 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 Warwick Castle, uplifting itself among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the scene real, so completely do those machicolated towers, the long line of battlements, the massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct ideas of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the sleepy river (being Shakespeare's Avon, and often, no ABOUT WARWICK. 87 doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions) were dream- ing now of a lordly residence that stood here many centuries ago ; and this fantasy is strengthened, when you observe that the image in the tranquil water has all the 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 feu- dalism, miraculously kept from decay in an enchanted river. A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has the effect of making the scene appear more entirely apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in the middle of the stream, — so that, if a cavalcade of the knights and ladies of romance should issue from the old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground any more than we, approaching from the side of mod- ern 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 pil- grims who choose to disburse half a crown or so to- ward the support of the earl's domestics. The sight of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splen- dors and rarities as a great English family necessarily gathers about itself in its hereditary abode, and in the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten times as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant 88 ABOUT WARWICK. has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeat- ing a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each succes- sive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower, in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in your own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch even a stone of their actual substance. They will have all the more reality for you, as stalwart relics of imme- morial time, if you are reverent enough to leave them in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision. From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little beyond St. John's School- House, already described. Chester itself, most antique of English towns, can hardly show quainter architec- tural shapes than many of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of the timber-and-plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls ; their low-browed doorways open upon a sunken floor ; their projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked ga- bles ; they have curious windows, breaking out irreg- ularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, opening lattice-wise, and fur- nished with twenty small panes of lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices (a visible oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house, — as if a man's bones should be arranged on his out- side, and his flesh seen through the interstices) is ABOUT WARWICK. 89 often imitated by modern builders, and with suffi- ciently 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 overgrown baby- houses, in which nobody should be expected to encoun- ter the serious realities of either birth or death. Be- sides, 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 venerable structure above it, and admits us into the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a military display. A regiment of War- wickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, was going through its drill in the market-place ; and on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cogni- zance of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy young men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly, faces of English rustics, looking ex- ceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman- like carriage and appearance the moment they were dismissed from drill. Squads of them were distrib- uted everywhere about the streets, and sentinels were posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, with a great key in his hand (big enough to have been the key of the castle's main entrance when the gate was thickest and heaviest) apparently setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and 90 ABOUT WARWICK. commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this modern regiment. The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it ; and the High Street has shops with modern plate- glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an Ameri- can street ; but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of expression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a peo- ple as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a massive strength from their deep and immemorial foundations, though with such limitations and impedi- ments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently com- fortable 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 disinterested and unencumbered observer. When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom 01 ABOUT WARWICK. 91 institution, 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 pres- ent, of which he is himself a part. We need not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind. Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like architectural shape, and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of King Cymbeline's original gate- ways ; and on the top of the rock, over the archway, sits a small old church, communicating with an an- cient 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 ves- tibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, and others crowning semi-detached portions of the structure ; the windows mostly open on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own will, or, at least, without any settled pur- pose of the architect. The whole affair looks very old, — so old indeed that the front bulges forth, as if the timber frame-work were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so long ; but the state of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within the system of this aged house, that you feel confident that there may be safe 92 ABOUT WARWICK. shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, under its time-honored roof. And on a bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of Warwick as from a life apart, a few old men are gen- erally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge repre- senting 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 every- where 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 instances, 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 perhaps intended, like other men, to establish his household gods in the niches whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and to lay his hearth where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have re- tained an influence over all but the most obdurate ABOUT WARWICK. 93 characters) to bring one's hopes of domestic prosper- ity 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-property 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 fam- ilies, 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 speed- ily 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, endow- ing it with an ample revenue, and making it the per- petual 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 dormitories, and haunt the time - darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester gave to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man in his day ; but he 94 ABOUT WARWICK. has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what was to him a distant future. On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date, 1571, and several coats - of - arms, either the Earl's or those of his kindred, and imme- diately above the doorway a stone sculpture of the Bear and Ragged Staff. Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed the central 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 Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky- roofed hall, to which there is convenient access from all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, 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, comprising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essential for the daily observance of the community : " ^attflt all fflzn " — " tfear (goto " — " potter tjje Ittng " — " 3Lobe tfje Brotfjerfjooo " ; and again, as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition among a household of aged people soured with the hard fortune of their pre- vious lives, — - " i3e fcmolg affectioneo one to atuitfjer." One sentence, over a door communicating with the Mas- ter's side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary, — . "%z tfjat ruletfj fiber men must be just." All these are charactered in old English letters, and form part of ABOUT WARWICK. 95 the elaborate ornamentation of the house. Every- where — on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them — ap- pear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, em- blazoned 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 es- pecially 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 beneficence 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 envel- oped in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them would have been like shout- ing across the gulf between our age and Queen Eliz- abeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it, with an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Ask- ing 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 96 ABOUT WARWICK. visitors were in the habit of doing. Under her guid* ance, 1 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 apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visi- ble in the duskiness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splendid appearance, when it was deco- rated with rich tapestry, and illuminated with chande- liers, 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 breth- ren's separate allotments of coal. The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very hand- some, in its own obsolete style, and must be an ex- ceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpe- dient 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 bal- ustraded staircase. In the portion of the edifice oppo- site the entrance-arch are the apartments of the Mas- ter ; 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 luxuri- ous place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from ABOUT WARWICK. 97 wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way, that the modern coal-grate looked very dimin- utive in the midst. Grazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable sur- roundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ingenuity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the 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 love- liest 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 very day, so that the whole establishment could not conveniently be shown me. She kindly invited me, however, to visit the apartment occupied by her husband and herself ; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and VOL. VII. 7 98 ABOUT WARWICK. saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adven- ture, and gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have worn a similar costume. The little room was car- peted and neatly furnished ; a portrait of its occu- pant 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 par- ticulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bed- room, which was in the nicest order, with a snow-white quilt upon the bed ; and in a little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus ; a convenience (judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler ranks of British life. The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of somebody to talk with ; but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously than the veteran himself, 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 over the whole system of life in the hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend (the amount of which she did not mention), and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free ; and, instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they could manage their little household matters as they ABOUT WARWICK. 99 liked, buying their own dinners, and having them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in their own parlors. " And," added she, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, " with the Mas- ter'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 occupations to keep her from getting rusty and dull ; but the veteran impressed me as deriving far less en- joyment 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 mor- bid about the matter, the establishment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's garment with a silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, though quite in accordance with the 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 already capable of talking like a guide-book about the history, antiquities, and present condition of the charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from among old soldiers of good char- acter, whose other resources must not exceed an in- come of five pounds ; thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose half-pay would of course be more than 100 ABOUT WARWICK. that amount. They receive from the hospital an an- nuity of eighty pounds each, besides their apartments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen-fire ; so that, con- sidering the class from which they are taken, they may well reckon themselves among the fortunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political rights, acquiring a vote for member of Parliament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood. On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or con- duct, they are subject to a supervision which the Mas- ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying, were he so inclined ; but the military restraint under which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the domestic disci- pline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore his testimony (whatever were its value) to their being as contented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by the by, except one that was stolen and re- placed in Queen Anne's time, are the very same that decorated the original twelve brethren. I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine interest in the 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 exten- sive 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, ABOUT WARWICK. 101 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 visible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to the chapel — the Gothic church which 1 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 pa- per, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window, represent- ing, — no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases, — but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his hu- man 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 hun- dred feet below us ; while clambering half-way up were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of grass, that had rooted themselves into the rough- nesses of the stone foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a church-spire and noble country-seat, and several ob- jects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles I., is in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. Right under our eyes, and half enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely 102 ABOUT WARWICK. compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a wide ex- tent of sunny lawns, interspersed with broad contigui- ties of forest-shade. Some of the cedars of Lebanon were there, — a growth of trees in which the Warwick family take an hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are slate- covered (these are the modern houses), and a part are coated with old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of the town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote antiquity ; at least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the year ONE of the Christian era ! And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality than anything else that has occurred within the pres- ent 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. For perhaps it was in the landscape now under our Gyes that Posthumus wandered with the King's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and cour- ageous Imogen, the tenderest and womanliest woman that Shakespeare ever made immortal in the world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray castle, may have held their images in its bosom. The day, though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful ABOUT WARWICK. 103 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 formerly 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 the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen them- selves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Cus- tom House, and the venerable personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there. The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at once stately and homely. It can hardly have undergone any perceptible change within three centuries ; but the garden, into which its old windows 104 ABOUT WARWICK. look has probably put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his rusty shears and took his de- parture. The present Master's name is Harris ; he is a descendant of the founder's family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Estab- lished Church, as the regulations of the hospital re- quire him to be. I know not what are his official emoluments ; but, according to all English precedent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held di- rectly for the behoof of those who administer it, and perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nom- inal beneficiaries ; and, in the case before us, the twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a dis- tant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge and his titbits. It is delightful to think of the good life which a suitable man, in the Master's position, has an opportunity to lead, — linked to time-honored cus- toms, welded in with an ancient system, never dream- ing 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 appreci- ate 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. ABOUT WARWICK. 105 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, par- titioned off round the fireplace, by a sort of semicir- cular 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 omni- present 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 opening were crossed two ancient hal- berds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the Low Countries; and elsewhere on the walls were displayed several muskets, which some of the present inmates of the hospital may have levelled against the French. Another ornament of the mantel-piece was a square of silken needlework or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly repre- senting that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Cas- tle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen- firelight glistens on a splendid display of copper flag- 106 ABOUT WARWICK. ons, all of generous capacity, and one of them about as big as a half-barrel ; the smaller vessels contain the customary allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occa- sions 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 these degenerate times. The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors ; but after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each with his tankard and his pipe, and hold high converse through the evening. If the Master be a fit man for his office, methinks he will sometimes sit down socia- bly 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 fes- tival 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 fancy him instructing them by pithy apothegms and religious texts, which were first uttered here by some Catholic priest and have impregnated the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as old as Lord Bacon's 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 frag- ment of one of the great galleons of the Spanish Ar- mada. What a tremor would pass through the an- ABOUT WARWICK. 107 t tique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire ! They would feel as if either that printed sheet or they themselves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick sta- tion, should ever so faintly invade their ears I 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 cen- tury set into our prosaic times, and then to depart, and think of its arched doorway as a spell-guarded en- trance 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 pre- tend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, ex- tensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren ; but I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elab- orate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, and (for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately some chimes began to play, and kept up their resound- ing music for five minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecom- ing freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, and solemn church ; although I have seen an old-fash- 108 ABOUT WARWICK. t ioned 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 ancient painted glass, as perfectly preserved as any that I remember seeing in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monuments with marble figures recumbent upon them, representing 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 em- broidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the hospital, re- clines at full length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side by side with his Countess, — not Amy Robsart, but a lady who (unless I have confused the story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have avenged poor Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl himself. Be that as it may, both figures, and espe- cially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient Honor and Conjugal Faith. In consideration of his long-enduring kindness to the twelve brethren, I can- not consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually depicted; and it seems a marvel, now that so many well-established historical verdicts have been reversed, why some enterprising writer does not make out Leices- ter to have been the pattern nobleman of his age. In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent me- morial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of ABOUT WARWICK. 109 Warwick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly or- namented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight in gilded armor, most admirably ex- ecuted : 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 ex- pect 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 en- tombed 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 yester- day. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to be- gin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble ; so that, almost before there had been time to wonder at him, there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own adornment ; and thus, with a chapel and a pon- derous tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, this great nobleman could not help being brought un- timely to the light of da)% nor even keep his lovelocks on his skull after he had so long done with love. There seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to render them magnificent and impregnable, — as wit- ness the builders of the Pyramids, and Hadrian, Au- gustus, and the Scipios, and most other personages £10 ABOUT WARWICK. whose mausoleums have been conspicuous enough to attract the violator; and as for dead men's hair, I have seen a lock of King Edward the Fourth's, of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. The direct lineage of the renowned 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 Parliamen- tary War; and they have recently (that is to say, within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, calculated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford suitable and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them " caskets " ! — a vile modern phrase, which com- pels 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 yet been contributed ; and it may be a question with some minds, not merely whether the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until the full number shall be made up, but whether earl- doms and all manner of lordships 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 encumbrance, is so only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ; and an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last man to quarrel with what affords him so much gratu- itous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as Eng. land is, and though I scarce ever found an English- ABOUT WARWICK. Ill man who seemed really to desire change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old foun- dations of things were crumbling away. Some time or other, — by no irreverent effort of violence, but, rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a heter- ogeneous 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 memorial of Warwick, he had better go to an Old Cu- riosity 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 won- der how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but does not improve ; it appears to me, indeed, that there have been epochs of far more exquisite fancy than the present one, in matters of personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table, a mantel-piece, or a what-not. The shop in question is near the East Gate, but is hardly to be found without careful search, being denoted only by the name of " Redfern," painted not very conspicuously in the top- light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of old rubbish and valua- bles, ancient armor, historic portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, hideous old china, 112 ABOUT WARWICK. dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi- cence, — a thousand objects of strange aspect, and oth- ers that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlike- ness to things now in use. It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn about that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some great curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away some small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are crowded in like manner. The collec- tion 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 sum- mons ; though, if a gentleman with a competently long purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet- ring of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's leading staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of Buckingham (all of which I have seen), or any other almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Ve- netian wine-glasses (which burst when poison is poured into them, and therefore must not be used for modern wine-drinking), jasper-handled knives, painted Sevres teacups, — in short, there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. Redfern's shop than to keep the money in one's pocket ; but, for my part, I contented myself with buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantasti- cally shaped, and got it at all the more reasonable rate because there happened to be no legend attached to it. I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much Less expense than regilding the spoon ! RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. From Leamington to Stratford - on- A von the dis* tance 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 succession of the gentlest swells and sub- sidences, affording wide and far glimpses of cham paign scenery here and there, and sinking almost to a dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape in New England, even the tamest, has a more striking outline, and, besides, would have its blue eyes open in those lakelets that we encounter almost from mile to mile at home, but of which the Old Country is utterly destitute ; or it would smile in our faces through the medium of the wayside brooks that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the road, and sparkle out again on the other. Neither of these pretty fea- tures is often to be found in an English scene. The charm of the latter consists in the rich verdure of the fields, in the stately wayside trees and carefully kept plantations of ,wood, and in the old and high cultiva- tion 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 Eng- lish turnip-field, when he thinks how long that small square of ground has been known and recognized as a possession, transmitted from father to son, trodden often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. 114 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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 endure long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old families, till, like Tennyson's Talking Oak, they bab- ble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can un- derstand 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 redoubtable English oak, there is a certain John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foli- age, 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 cul- tivation, and immunity from the axe, would live out its centuries as sturdily as its English brother, and prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of a tree at the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must bo owned that the trees and other objects of an Eng- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 115 lish landscape take hold of the observer by numberless minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find in an American scene. The parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage ; a verdant mossiness coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as green as the leaves; and often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistle- toe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting them- selves by the old tree's abundant strength. We call it a parasitical vegetation ; but, if the phrase imply any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beauti- ful affection and relationship which exist in England between one order of plants and another : the strong tree being always ready to give support to the trailing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own heart, if it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's lofty strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them; and therefore they outlast the longevity of the oak, and, if the woodman permitted, would bury it in a green grave, when all is over. Should there be nothing else along the road to look at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart of an American. We often set out hedges in our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pine- apples and expect to gather fruit of them. Something grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; 116 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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 hedgemaker never thought of planting there. Among them, growing wild, are many of the kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pil- grim fathers brought from England, for the sake of their simple beauty and homelike associations, and which we have ever since been cultivating in gardens. There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stern men than that they should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the necessity of bringing them over sea and making them hereditary in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and unsympathizing till the end of time) is sure to be covered with the small handiwork of Nature; that careful mother lets nothing go naked there, and if she ca*inot 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, un- comely construction as if it had all along been a fa- vorite idea of her own. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging fast with its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into nutritious soil for it ; a small bunch of fern grows in another crevice; a deep, soft, verdant moss spreads itself along the top, and over all the available inequal- ities of the fence ; and where nothing else will grow, RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 117 lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones, and varie- gate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its outline ; and in due time, as the upshot of these apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the beneficent Creator of all things, working through his hand-maiden whom we call Nature, has designed to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an institution 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 prod- ucts 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 stiifen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed bet- ter, 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 art- fully impels them : for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show; but, for the picturesqueness 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 Eng- land, except 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, 118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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, mouldiness, 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, Shake- speare himself^ in one of his morning rambles 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 re- markable along the way, nor in the ^immediate ap- proach 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 attem- pered 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 at- mosphere, which every little movement of a breeze shook over me like a dash of the ocean-spray. Such days need bring us no other happiness than their own light and temperature. No doubt, I could not have enjoyed it so exquisitely, except that there must be still latent in us, Western wanderers (even after an ab- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 119 sence of two centuries and more), an adaptation to the English climate which makes us sensible of a motherly kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us with delight at its more lavish smiles. The spire of Shakespeare's church — the Church of the Holy Trinity — begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-look- ing houses of modern date ; and the streets being quite level, you are struck and surprised by nothing so much as the tameness of the general scene, as if Shake- speare's genius were vivid enough to have wrought pic- torial splendors in the town where he was born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, en- dowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by ; the house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded from within by the character of its inmate ; and having been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists are apt to do. Here, too (as so often impressed me in decayed English towns), there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small- clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories : as, for example, that our new towns are unwholesome for age and kill it off unseasonably ; or that our old men have a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own accord rather than live in an unseemly contrast with youth and novelty : but the secret may be, after all, that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and 120 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not crept into these antiquated English towns, and so peo- ple grow old without the weary necessity of seeming younger than they are. After wandering through two or three streets, I found my way to Shakespeare's birthplace, which is almost a smaller and humbler house than any descrip- tion can prepare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably does an august inhabitant make his abode palatial to our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a castle in the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth. The portion of the edifice with which Shakespeare had anything to do is hardly large enough, in the basement, to contain the butcher's stall that one of his descendants kept, and that still remains there, windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its hacked coun- ter, which projects into the street under a little pent- house-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. The upper half of the door was open, and, on my rapping at it, a young person in black made her ap- pearance 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 disar- ranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones ; it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 121 wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family under the blackened opening of the chimney, and an immense passageway for the smoke, through which Shakespeare may have seen the blue sky by day and the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is now a dreary spot where the long-extinguished embers used to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quar- ter part of the hearth, might still do much towards making the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a de- pressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where this room seems to have been the gathering-place of the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retire- ment, but old and young huddling together cheek by jowl. What a hardy plant was Shakespeare's gen- ius, how fatal its development, since it could not be blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought hu- man nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous earth about his roots. Thence I was ushered up stairs to the room in which Shakespeare is supposed to have been born : though, if you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber over the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one broad window containing a great many small, irregular panes of glass. The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fitting together with little neatness ; the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's 122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustri- ous walls, — a circumstance more difficult to accept, as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about, than any other disenchant- ing 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 cor- ners, is covered with a similar record ; all the window- panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond signa- tures, among which is said to be that of Walter Scott ; but so many persons have sought to immortalize them- selves in close vicinity to his name, that I really could not trace him out. Methinks it is strange that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, in such 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 American of his excessive predilection for antique residences. 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 intelligence about Shakespeare. Ar- ranged on a table and in chairs were various prints RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 123 views of houses and scenes connected with Shake- speare's memory, together with editions of his works and local publications about his home and haunts, from the sale of which this respectable lady perhaps realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive con- versation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady- like girl who had admitted me ; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no diffi- culty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person with whom he has occa- sion to speak a word in England. I should consider it unfair to quit Shakespeare's house without the frank 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 visits 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 elabo- rated 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 Shakespeare as a flesh-and-blood individual now that I have stood on the kitchen-hearth and in the birth-chamber ; but I am not quite certain that this power of realization is altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The Shakespeare whom I met there took various guises, but had not his laurel on. He was successively the roguish boy, — the youthful deer-stealer, — the com- 124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. rade of players, — the too familiar friend of Dave- n ant'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 impiety it is to remember these things, be they true or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of sight on the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a pure, white memory, even as a sail, though perhaps darkened with many stains, looks snowy white on the far horizon. But I draw a moral from these unwor- thy reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as suggested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. It is for the high interests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its greatest men are, in a 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 be- wilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakespeare invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he per- haps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 125 upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in re- quital for the irreverent sentences above written ! From Shakespeare's house, the next step, of course, is to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid a great green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through the boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to have been considering which way it should flow ever since Shakespeare left off paddling in it and gather- ing the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags and water-weeds. An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the gate ; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he pre- ceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could have done it quite as effectually for myself ; but it seems the old people of the neighborhood haunt about the churchyard, in spite of the frowns and remon- strances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-elee- mosynary sixpence which they sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respect- able-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish- clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer incum- bency than his vicar, if all the fees which he handles remain in his own pocket. He was already exhibiting the Shakespeare monuments to two or three visitors, and several other parties came in while I was there. The poet and his family are in possession of what may be considered the very best burial-places that the church affords. They lie in a row, right across the breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone 126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. being close to the elevated floor on which the altar stands. Nearest to the side - wall, beneath Shake- speare's bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription ad- dressed to his wife, and covering her remains ; then his own slab, with the old anathematizing stanza upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who married his granddaughter ; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah's own. Shakespeare's is the commonest -looking slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the 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 Shakespeare'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 grandson-in-law ? Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakespeare's dust ; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave (though the prohibition makes it tempting), and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that Shakespeare's grave was directly under- neath it. The poet's bust is affixed to the northern wall of the church, the base of it being about a man's height, RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 127 or rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The features of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike any portrait of Shakespeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty- browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait-gallery. The bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head ; but it clutches firmly hold of one's sense of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakespeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a' Combe, who lies yon- der in the corner. I know not what the phrenologists say to the bust. The forehead is but moderately de- veloped, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prominent al- most beyond the penthouse of the brow ; the upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be fore- shortened by being looked at from below. On the whole, Shakespeare must have had a singular rather than a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense on us all, instead of the genuine man. For my part, the Shakespeare of my mind's eye is hence- forth to be a personage of a ruddy English complex- ion, with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly out- ward, a long, queer upper lip, with the mouth a little unclosed beneath it, and cheeks considerably developed in the lower part and beneath the chin. But when Shakespeare was himself (for nine tenths of the time, 128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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 Shake- speare 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 de- voutly clasped. It is a sturdy English figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque mate- rial of poets and heroes ; but the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with War- wickshire pronunciation, 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 monuments and altar-tombs, one or two of the latter upholding the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their dames, very eminent and worshipful person- ages in their day, no doubt, but doomed to appear for- ever intrusive and impertinent within the precincts which Shakespeare has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers nothing else to be recognized within the scope of its material presence, unless illu- minated by some side-ray from himself. The clerk RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 129 informed me that interments no longer take place in any part of the church. And it is better so ; for methinks a person of delicate individuality, curious about his burial-place, and desirous of six feet of earth for himself alone, could never endure to lie buried near Shakespeare, but would rise up at midnight and grope his way out of the church-door, rather than sleep in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. I should hardly have dared to add another to the innumerable descriptions of 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 Shake- speare, 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 rich- est and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We Amer- icans, at least, in the scanty annals of our literature, cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious ex- ercise of noble faculties, which, indeed, 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 trans- muted them to gold, or, at all events, interfused a large proportion of that precious and indestructible substance among the waste material from which it can readily be sifted. The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in Lon- don, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex Gardens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle- aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their VOL. VII. 9 130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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, look- ing into them, I found that every one had some ref- erence, more or less immediate, to her Shakespearian theory, — a volume of Raleigh's " History of the World," a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord Bacon's Letters, a volume of Shakespeare's Plays ; and on another table lay a large roll of manuscript, which I presume to have been a portion of her work. To be sure, there was a pocket-Bible among the books, but everything else referred to the one despotic idea that had got possession of her mind ; and as it had en- grossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I have no doubt that she had established subtile connections between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon probably read late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne (it was Hazlitt's translation) and had been reading his journey to Italy a good while before she appeared. I had expected (the more shame for me, having no other ground 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 striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak, and by and by a color came into her cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that she really was so ; she must have been beyond middle age : and there was no unkindness in coining to that conclusion, because, making allowance for years and ill-health, I could suppose her to have been handsome RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly es- tranged from society, there was little or no restraint or embarrassment in her manner : lonely people are generally glad to give utterance to their pent-up ideas, and often bubble over with them as freely as children with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it came about, but we immediately found ourselves tak- ing a 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 Shakespeare's Plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intel- lect, and made her what she could not otherwise have become. It was a very singular phenomenon : a sys- tem of philosophy growing up in this woman's mind without her volition, — contrary, in fact, to the deter- mined resistance of her volition, — and substituting itself in the place of everything that originally grew there. To have based such a system 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. Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an im- measurable depth, adapted to the plummet - line of 132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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 exhaust- ing the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a thousand years hence a world of new readers will pos- sess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old already. I had half a mind to suggest to Miss Bacon this explanation of her theory, but forbore, because (as I could readily perceive) she had as princely a spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once have motioned me from the room. I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the material evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, together with the key of the new philosophy, would be found buried in Shakespeare's grave. Recently, as I understood her, this notion had been somewhat modi- fied, and was now accurately defined and fully devel- oped in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord Bacon's Letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clew to the whole mystery. There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were concealed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of Shakespeare's gravestone. Thus the terrible prohibi- tion to remove the stone was accounted for. The di- rections, she intimated, went completely and precisely to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way of coming at the treasure, and even, if I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off any troublesome con- sequences likely to ensue from the interference of the parish-officers. All that Miss Bacon now remained in RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133 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 mate- rial and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity 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 in- tangible nature, I apprehend that there would have been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to col- lapse 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 sympathy 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; Mr. Buchanan, while Minister in England, had once called on her ; and General Campbell, our Consul in London, had met her two or three times on business. With these 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 134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 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 contin- ually coming to the surface, during our interview. She believed, for example, that she had been provi- dentially 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 ap- peared to have been little less than miraculous. Evi- dently, too, she thought that Providence had brought me forward — a man somewhat connected with litera- ture — at the critical juncture when she needed a ne- gotiator with the booksellers ; and, on my part, though little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minis- ter, and though I might even have preferred that Providence should select some other instrument, I had no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a very remarkable one, and worthy of being offered, to the public, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, would be thankful for what was good iu it and merci- ful to its faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, but was built up from that foundation with a good many prodigious truths. And, at all events, whether I could aid her 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 lived in comfort and joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power. So I left her to dream as she pleased about the treas* ures of Shakespeare's tombstone, and to form what- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135 ever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining possession of them. I was sensible of a lady-like feel- ing of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her be- wilderment, 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, consider- ing how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener, — pleasant, sunny, and shadowy, often piq- uant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's various and readily changeable moods and humors ; and be- neath 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 temporary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. But the streets of London are not favorable to enthusiasms of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish any- where in the English atmosphere; so that, long be- fore reaching Paternoster Row, I felt that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publi- cation of Miss Bacon's book. Nevertheless, it did finally get published. Months before that happened, however, Miss Ba- con 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, 136 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shakespeare'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 attempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been accomplished by the aid of a resurrection-man. As her first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and began to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise and his own will- ingness to engage in it. The clerk apparently listened with not unfavorable ears; but as his situation (which the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Cath- olic shrine, render lucrative) would have been for- feited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated for liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested to tell her own story to the reverend gentleman, and seems to have been received by him with the utmost kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a cer- tain impression on his mind as to the desirability of the search. As their interview had been under the seal of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, who, as Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was a practitioner of the law. What the legal friend ad- vised she did not learn ; but the negotiation contin- ued, and certainly was never broken off by an abso- lute refusal on the vicar's part. He, perhaps, was kindly temporizing with our poor countrywoman, whom an Englishman of ordinary mould would have sent to a lunatic asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, however, that her familiarity with the events of Shake- speare's life, and of his death and burial (of which she would speak as if she had been present at the RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 137 edge of the grave), and all the history, 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 convert 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 obstacles would be interposed to the in- vestigation, and that he himself would sanction it with his presence. It was to take place after nightfall; and all preliminary arrangements being made, the vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word in or- der to set about lifting the awful stone from the sepul- chre. So, at least, Miss Bacon believed ; and as her bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her perception or accurate remem- brance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depos- itory and mode of concealment of those historic treas- ures; 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 esti- mate whether it were of such thickness as to be capa- ble of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club. She went over anew the proofs, the clews, 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 188 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. Shakespeare's tomb as she had heretofore supposed. There was an unmistakably distinct reference to a tomb, but it might be Bacon's, or Raleigh's, or Spen- ser's ; and instead of the " Old Player," as she pro- fanely 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 disturb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute mind may always have had a lurking and deeply latent distrust of its own fantasies, and that this now became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive step. But she continued to hover around the church, and seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the 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 to- wards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of the pavement above Shakespeare's grave. If the divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its dep- recatory earnestness would imply, it was time for those crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her sacri- legious feet. But they were safe. She made no at- tempt to disturb them ; though, I believe, she looked narrowly into the crevices between Shakespeare'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 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 139 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 Shakespeare's ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have shown itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if his figure had appeared within the scope of her dark- lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly, and controverted his claims to the author- ship 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 incom- parable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment 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 footfall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, as if some restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep at the intruder. By and by the clerk made his appearance, and confessed that he had been watching her ever since she entered the church. About this time it was that a strange sort of weari- ness seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the very point of accomplishment, when she began to re- gret that so stupendous a mission had been imposed on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her con- fidence in her own adequate development of it, now about to be given to the world ; yet she wished, or fan* 140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. cied so, that it might never have been her duty to achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly forward under her immense burden of responsibility and renown. So far as her personal conceru in the matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the re- ward 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 Shakespeare, the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suitable retirement for a person of shy, but genial temperament. And at this point, I cease to possess the means of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any further. In consequence of some advice which I fan- cied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Ba- con's most severe and passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were always particu- larly liable ; but I think that none of them ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character, the less for it. At that time her book was passing through the press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, lor all had been written under so deep a con- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 141 viction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire con- trol of her materials, would have shaped out a duodec- imo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation, — criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remarks on Shakespeare, — philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth some- where. 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 volume deeper into the mud ; for they were the hack critics of the minor periodical press in Lon- don, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to rec- ognize an author's heart in it, or more utterly careless about bruising, if they do recognize it. It is their trade. They could not do otherwise. I never thought of blaming them. It was not for such an Englishman as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault was meditated on England's greatest poet. From the scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier appreciation, because many of the best of them have higher cultiva- tion, 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 142 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once republished some of the most brutal vituperations of the English press, thus pelting their poor country- woman 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 " Shakespeare book," was afflicted with insan- ity. 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 in- tellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever hoped so confidently as she ; none ever failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that the anathema on Shakespeare's tombstone had fallen heavily on her head, in requital of even the unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust be- neath, and that the " Old Player " had kept so quietly in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he fore- saw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely requited the injustice that she sought to do him — the high justice that she really did — by a tenderness of love and pity of which only he could he 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. RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 143 This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his un- rivalled 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 chap- ters and scattered pages and paragraphs. But, since my return to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doctrines. 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 indi- vidual, who has done her so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due posi- tion before the public and posterity. This has been too sad a story. To lighten the rec- ollection 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 144 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. could not but believe in lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoyment which these trees must have in their ex- istence. 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 civilized trees, known to man, and be- friended by him for ages past. There is an indescrib- able difference — as I believe I have heretofore en- deavored 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 companion- ship in America. No less a change has been wrought among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the English call their forests. By and by, among those refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer, mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, as if they had been taught to make themselves tribu- tary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanishing from light into shadow and glancing forth again, with here and there a little fawn career- ing at its mother's heels. These deer are almost in the same relation to the wild, natural state of their kind that the trees of an English park hold to the rugged growth of an American forest. They have held a certain intercourse with man for immemorial years ; and, most probably, the stag that Shakespeare killed was one of the progenitors of this very herd, and may himself have been a partly civilized and hu- manized 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 hu- man beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 145 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 skit- tishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their having come of a wild stock. They have so long been fed and protected by man, that they must have, lost many of their native instincts, and, I suppose, could not live comfortably through even an English winter without human help. One is sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such depen- dency, but feels none the less kindly disposed towards the half -domesticated race ; and it may have been his observation of these tamer characteristics in the Char- lecote herd that suggested to Shakespeare the tender and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in " As You Like It." At a distance of some hundreds of yards from Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees be- tween it and the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an 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 bal- conies, 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 Shakespeare was brought be- VOL. VII. 10 146 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. fore 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 do- mestic 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 per- manence to the intangible present. An American is sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be produced. One man's life- time is not enough for the accomplishment of such a work of art and nature, almost the greatest merely temporary one that is confided to him ; too little, at any rate, — yet perhaps too long when he is discour- aged by the idea that he must make his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grand- children will not be among them. Such repinings as are here suggested, however, come only from the fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the necessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a wigwam or under a tent has really as many advan- tages, when we come to know them, as a home beneath the roof-tree of Cliarlecote Hall. But, alas ! our phi- losophers 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 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 147 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 Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would much rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in Farquhar's time. The Black Swan is an old- fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an arched passage, in either side of which is an entrance- door to the different parts of the house, and through which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all vehicles and horsemen rumble and clatter into an en- closed court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the contiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the only guest of the spacious establishment, but may have had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate parlors, and utterly eschewing that community of in- terests 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 heavy old ma- hogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter, who, like most of his class in England, had evidently left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissi- pate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room imder such circumstances as these, with no book at LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 149 hand save the county-directory, nor any newspaper but a torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers (there is no other kind of bed in these old inns), let my head sink into an unsubstantial pillow, and slept a stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmentary con- fusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley, compounded of the night-troubles of all my prede- cessors in that same unrestful couch. And when I awoke, the musty odor of a by-gone century was in my nostrils, — a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any conception before crossing the Atlantic. In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chiccory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and bewildered myself a little while among the crooked streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue has a dis- mal import that would apply well, in these days and forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality in our native land. Lichfield signifies " The Field of the Dead Bodies," — an epithet, however, which the town did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but which 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 king of Mercia, who were converted by St. Chad, and afterwards mar- tyred for their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was but little interested in the legends of the remote an- tiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, be- cause 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 150 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal as- pect to my mind's eye, as the kindly figure of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary child, — left much to such wild modes of culture as he chooses for him- self 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 sensibil- ities and affections than his intellect, — that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," and " The Vanity of Human Wishes ; " it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put my instinctive perception of his character into language. Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he breathed was dense ; his awful dread of death showed how much muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out of him, before he could be capable of spiritual exist- ence; he meddled only with the surface of life, and never cared to penetrate further than to ploughshare depth ; his very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed clear-sightedness. I laughed at him, sometimes, stand- ing beside his knee. And yet, considering that my na- tive propensities were towards Fairy Land, and also how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1.51 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 his knapsack. It is wholesome food even now. And, then, how English ! Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to en- joy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amal- gamated themselves with the American ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the great English moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely appropriate than that! Dr. Johnson's morality was as English an article as a beefsteak. The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are called cities in England) stands on an ascending site. It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, for example, but still enough to gratify an American appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, and stare at the passing visitor, as if the railway had not yet quite accustomed them to the novelty of strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. The old women whom I met, in several instances, dropt me a courtesy ; and as they were of decent and comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way without pause or further greeting, it certainly was not allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a modest method of asking for sixpence ; so that I had the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the rev- erential and hospitable manners of elder times, when the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth a general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from such humble sources, I took it all the more as a wel- come on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have 152 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. exchanged it for an invitation from the mayor and magistrates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for the experiment's sake, that I could have embold- ened myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at least one of the old ladies. In my wanderings about town, I came to an artifi- cial piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills the immense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the building-materials of the cathedral were quarried out a great many centuries ago. I should never have guessed the little lake to be of man's 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 battlements of the majestic structure that once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; and the scene reminded me (though really, to be quite fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabi- tants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful associations to make the spot interest- ing. 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 battlements of the cathedral, which was then held by the Royalists as a fortress. The incident is commemorated by an inscription on a stone, inlaid into the wall of the house. I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield holds among its sister edifices in England, as a piece of magnificent architecture. Except that of Chester LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 153 (the grim and simple nave of which stands yet unri- valled in my memory), and one or two small ones in North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathe- drals, it was the first that I had seen. To my unin- structed vision, it seemed the object best worth gaz- ing 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 beau- tiful shapes appeared to be comprehended within its single outline ; it was a kind of kaleidoscopic mys- tery so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point of view, through the presentation of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers, with the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier than its fellows. Thus it impressed you, at every change, as a newly created structure of the passing moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized the half-vanished structure of the instant before, and felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the indestructible ex- istence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A Gothic ca- thedral is surely the most wonderful work which mor- tal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful re- cesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti- mately draws the beholder and his universe into its harmony. It is the only thing in the world that is vast enough and rich enough. Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not ele- vate myself to its spiritual height, any more than I 154 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. could have climbed from the ground to the summit of one of its pinnacles. Ascending but a little way, I continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate only the minutest portion. After a hundred years s incalculably as my higher sympathies might be invig- orated by so divine an employment, I should still be a gazer from below and at an awful distance, as yet re- motely excluded from the interior mystery. But it was something gained, even to have that painful sense of my own limitations, and that half -smothered yearn- ing to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of im- mortality. After all, this was probably the best les- son that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be con- tent. If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthu- siasm 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. When- ever that is the case, it is most reverential to look another way ; but the mood disposes one to minute investigation, and I took advantage of it to examine the intricate and multitudinous adornment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues bad been thrown down, and here and there a statue still lingered in its niche ; and over the chief entrance, and extending across the whole breadth of the build- ing, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much corroded by the moist English atmosphere, during four or five hundred winters that they had stood there, LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 155 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 vener- able infant Time has evidently found them sweet morsels. Inside of the Minster there is a long and lofty nave, transepts of the same height, and side-aisles and chap- els, dim nooks of holiness, where in Catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly dec- orated shrines of saints. In the audacity of my igno- rance, 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 impres- siveness by the interposition of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth, but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. One large body of 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 exclusiveness of sects, rather than the world-wide hospitality of gen- uine 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 to a more satisfactory appreciation of this kind of architecture ; 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 sub- jects, instead of surrendering himself to the old build- er's influence with childlike simplicity. 156 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 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 rel- atives and families ; and I found but two monuments of personages whom I had ever heard of, — one being Gilbert Walmesley and the other Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 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 emo- tions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds a rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored cus- tom of burial in churches, after a few years, at least, when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath the pavement, 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 person, the man whose features were familiar in the streets of Lichfield only yesterday, seemed precisely as much at home here as his mediae- val predecessors. Henceforward 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 the great multi- tude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no un- 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 them away, but brought them home. LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 157 The vicissitudes and riiischances of sublunary af- fairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these marble inhabitants ; for I saw the upper fragment of a sculptured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half of whom had doubtless been 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 relig- ious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb. Another piece of sculpture (apparently a fa- vorite subject in the Middle Ages, for I have seen sev- eral like it in other cathedrals) was a reclining skele- ton, as faithfully representing an open-work of bones as could well be expected in a solid block of marble, and at a period, moreover, when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be guessed at than re- vealed. Whatever the anatomical defects of his pro- duction, the old sculptor had succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure. How much mischief has been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom of the Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death-scented pall over our conceptions of the future state, smother- ing our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal ef- forts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what is most opposite to it, — the grave ! The cathedral service is performed twice every day : at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh as bird-notes) were just winding up their harmonious labors, and soon came thronging through a side-door from the chancel into the nave. They were all dressed 158 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. in long white robes, and lodked like a peculiar order of beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and il- luminate 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 decidedly 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 beauti- fully kept lawns and a shadowy walk bordered by the dwellings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the dio- cese. All this row of episcopal, canonical, and cler- ical residences has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, and well-protected 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 feature is a dignified comfort, looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness could ever cross their thresholds, encroach upon their ornamented lawns, or straggle into- the beautiful gar- dens that surround them with flower-beds and rich clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace is a stately LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 159 mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, and bearing on its front the figures 1687, as the date of its erection. A large edifice of brick, which, if I remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the residence of the second dignitary of the Cathedral ; and, in that case, it must have been the youthful home of Addison, whose father was Dean of Lich- field. 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 shrub- bery, and overarched 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 Lichfield, an illustrious old man. Miss Seward, connected with so many literary reminiscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. Tradition says that it was a favorite spot of Major Andre, who used to pace to and fro under these trees, waiting, perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Ho- noria Sneyd, before he crossed the ocean to encoun- ter his dismal doom from an American court-martial. David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the path in his boyish days, and, if he was an early student of the drama, must often have thought of those two airy characters of the " Beaux' Stratagem," Archer and Aimwtll, who, on this very ground, after attending service at the Cathedral, contrive to make acquaint- ance with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures of mere fiction have as positive a substance now as the sturdy old figure of Johnson himself. They live, while realities have died. The shadowy walk still glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. 160 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 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, according to the English phrase, a mercer's and haberdasher's shop. The house has a private en- trance 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 balustrade, 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, 1 tried to open it, but found it as fast bolted as the gate of Paradise. It is mortifying to be so balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but looking round in quest of some- body to make inquiries of, I was a good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself, who happened, just at that moment, to be sitting at his ease nearly in the middle of St. Mary's Square, with his face turned towards his father's house. Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the Doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed him down, the intelligent reader will at once comprehend that he was marble in his substance, and seated in a marble chair, on an elevated stone pedes* LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 161 tal. In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and placed here in 1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, the reverend chancellor of the diocese. The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Rey- nolds's portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet 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-bowl- der than a man. You must look with the eyes of faith and sympathy, or, possibly, you might lose the human being altogether, and find only a big stone within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as hardly more than a baby, bestriding an old man's shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head, which he embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly to the High-Church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell. In the second tablet, he is seen riding to school on the shoulders of two of his 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 commemo- rated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of childish readers. It shows Johnson in the market- VOL. VII. 11 162 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of diso bedience to his father, committed fifty years before. He stands bareheaded, a venerable figure, and a coun- tenance 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 hand, seem to be praying for him. These latter personages (whose introduc- tion by the artist is none the less effective, because, 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, under the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my in- terest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance. So, the next day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yuteoxeter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would indicate a greater distance ; and by rail, passing from one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 163 sending his literary merchandise by carrier's wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morning, selling books through the busy hours, and returning to Lichfield at night. This could not possibly have been the case. Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that I saw, with a green field or two between them and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A very short walk takes you from the station up into the town. It had been my previous impression that the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round- about the church ; and, if I remember the narrative aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father's book-stall as standing in the market-place, close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred in the to- pography of the town, during almost a century and a half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least, since his son's penance was per- formed. But the church has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around it, while the market- place, though near at hand, neither forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge against the churchyard and the old gray tower. Never- theless, 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 picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not 164 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. have done his penance in a corner, ever so little re- tired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd, — the midmost man of the market-place, — a central image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting with and 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 ab- surd 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 prob- ably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The people of Uttoxeter seemed very idle in the warm summer-day, and were scattered in little groups along the sidewalks, leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self ; insomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him, must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grand- fathers were such redoubtable starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity in- dicates 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 accom. LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 165 modation of the farmers and peasantry of the neigh- borhood 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 por- tion of patronage to distribute among such a multitude of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scan- dalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the only important affair that I attended to, after coming so far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and standing now on the very spot where my pious errand should have been consummated. I stepped into one of the rustic hostleries and got my dinner, — bacon and greens, some mutton-chops, juicier and more delec- table than all America could serve up at the President's table, and a gooseberry pudding ; a sufficient meal for six yeomen, and good enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful small charge of eighteen-pence ! Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. And as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner, — it was the wisest thing I had done that day. A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed into these attempts to realize the things which he has dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of their truth, the loftiest and profoundest part of their power over his sympathies. 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 166 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. them long in a powerful menstruum of thought. And seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew the crust. If this were otherwise, — if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of external 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 myself 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 mar- ket-place, was as likely as any other to have enter- tained old Michael Johnson in the days when he used to come hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined on bacon and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked his pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was a low, ancient room, certainly much older than Queen Anne's time, with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed ceiling, traversed by bare, rough beams, the whole in the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it lack ornament, the walls being hung with colored en- gravings of prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the mantel-piece adorned with earthen-ware figures of shep- herdesses in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael Johnson's eyes might have rested on that self-same earthen image, to examine which more closely I had just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And, sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced through the open window into the sunny market-place^ LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 167 and wished that I could honestly 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 touching a passage as can be cited out of any human life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse of Scripture on the wall of the church ! No statue of the venerable and illustrious penitent in the 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 neigh- bor, its traffic of soul - substance for a little worldly gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of the people did not raise it, might almost have been expected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot that had been watered by the rain that dripped from Johnson's garments, mingJed with his remorseful tears. Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that there were individuals in the town who could have shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have in- duced 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 de- cline, without further and precise evidence, giving credit to either of the above statements. The inhab- itants 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 example, had 168 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. ever heard of it, would he not have used the theme time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and pro- foundly 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 rev- erence to their own gray hairs, and to protect the chil- dren from such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore upon his heart for fifty years ? If the site were ascer- tained, would not the pavement thereabouts be worn with reverential footsteps? Would not every town- born child be able to direct the pilgrim thither ? While waiting at the station, before my departure, I asked a boy who stood near me, — an intelligent and gentle- manly lad twelve or thirteeen years old, whom I should take to be a clergyman's son, — I asked him if he had ever heard the story of Dr. Johnson, how he stood an hour doing penance near that church, the spire of which rose before us. The boy stared and answered, — "No!" " Were you born in Uttoxeter ? " « Yes." I inquired if no circumstance such as I had men- tioned was known or talked about among the inhab- itants. " No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of." Just think of the absurd little town, knowing noth- ing of the only memorable incident which ever hap- pened within 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 thousand miles over the sea ! It but con- firms what I have been saying, that sublime and beau tiful facts are best understood 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 suf- ficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one ; although the May sunshine was min- gled 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 without wishing myself anywhere but in that particu- lar spot where I then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting ; as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remark- able 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 fea- tures 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 mat- ter 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 al- ways disfigure the neighborhood of iron - mongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass. At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef- 170 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 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 Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a pic- ture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt ; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes 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 nov- els, 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 land- scape. On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never in- tended 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 foot-paths 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 undulations ; but the line of a rail- way is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 171 things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing within the scope of a railway traveller's eye ; and if there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a flying shot at the picturesque. At one of the stations (it was near a village of an cient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide York- shire moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my attention by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular in- tervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn pro- test 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 nervous affection ; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gen- tlewoman's presence, either against herself or some- body 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 para- lytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion — her look of force and self- control, which had the appearance of rendering it vol- untary, 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 re- produce herself in a dismal romance. The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of 172 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty, — or rather, smoky : for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham, — smokier than all England besides, un- less Newcastle be the exception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor ; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill. After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sherwood Forest, — not consisting, however, of thou- sand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lin- colnshire ; and shortly after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edi- fice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in. At the railway-station we found no cab (it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln), but only an omnibus belonging to the Saracen's Head, which the driver rec- ommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked comfortable enough ; though, like the hotels of PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 173 most old English 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 intricate arrangement of passages, an up - and - down meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while the rest of his 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, English domestic architecture has lost its most impressive fea- tures, 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 unusu- ally rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of the shire used to make their winter abodes, in a provincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowa- days, there is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hiding houses that are older than ever, but ob- literating the picturesque antiquity of the street. Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still 174 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. broad daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathe- dral. Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city- gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the 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 Lincolnshire, the inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved ornaments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architecture dates back. This is called the Jewess's House, having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago. And still the street grew steeper and steeper. 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 ecclesias- tical duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, and was probably performed as such, and groaned over accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invig- orated 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 ca- thedral towers ; and, finally, attaining an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. The latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences of PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 175 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 our- selves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, look- ing 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 oc- cupied 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 resi- dences that belong to it), I remember no more com- fortably picturesque precincts round any other cathe- dral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, cosiest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most enjoyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, to com- bine all this with the service of the temple ! Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown- stone, which appears either to have been largely re- stored, 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 gar- goyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls : most of them empty, but a few con- 176 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. taining the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe op- portunity to knock off their heads ! In spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving: at least, it was so once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so mi- nutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of labor; and this cathedral - front seems to have been elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the result is in the least petty, but miracu- lously grand, and all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest details. An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathe- dral ; but as there would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we declined for the present. So we merely walked round the exterior, and thought it more beautiful than that of York ; though, on recol- lection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own, — a creation which man did not build, PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 177 though in some way or other it is connected 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 allowing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It was still broad daylight in that upper region of the town, and would be so for some time longer ; but the evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We therefore 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 Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted be- fore 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, es- pecially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural description, there is but one set of phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in England and elsewhere. They are alike in their great features : an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great VOL.. VII. 12 178 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient or modern stained glass ; and an elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and which is further choked up by a massive organ, — in spite of which obstructions you catch the broad, va- riegated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of chapels (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecration), nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is supported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adja- cent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extending round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tomb- stones, the more antique of which have had their in- scriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent date. In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bish- ops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone pur- porting to be the monument of Catherine Swynford, wife of John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 179 to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments ; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ancestral memorials of great families, quite at their wicked and plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exqui- site and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and grapevines, 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 rep- resented with all their veins, so that you would al- most think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those gro- tesque faces which always grin at you from the pro- jections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in some- thing ineffably absurd. Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in working out their conceptions to the extremest point. But, at present, the whole interior of the Ca- thedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest hue imaginable, and for which some- body's soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which 180 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean brick build- ing, with a locked door. Our guide, — 1 forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, — our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil- carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessel- lated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and has not been meddled with, further than by re- moving 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 Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English street ever since the latter was a faint village - path, and for centuries before. The arch is about four hun- dred yards from the Cathedral, and it is to be noticed that there are Roman remains in all this neighbor- hood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an in- undation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that earlier da} r . The gate- way which I am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Ro* PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 181 man pavement (if sought for at the original 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 bro- ken summit 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 suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and 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 Nor- man 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, they add wonder- fully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, pon- derous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge, gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs, and other flowering plants, in which its founda- tions were completely hidden. 182 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex- cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of various char- acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with de- lightful and shadowy lawns before them ; many had those high, red -tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed gables, which seem to belong to the same epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old Catholic tombstones, 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 would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. 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 again between daylight and dusk. A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view that I had had. The whole lower part of the structure was seen with perfect distinctness ; but at the very sum- mit 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. PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183 The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exte- rior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York Minster ; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in its general effect ; but in this at Lin- coln there is a continual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware of a change, and a disclos- ure 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 marvellous writ- ing in black-letter, — so many sculptured ornaments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since you looked last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies be- neath 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 Cathe- dral. We spent the rest of the day within the sombre precincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's " Times," " The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and " The Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the weather was, the street beneath our window was en- livened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they had accomplished their week's toil, received their wa- ges, and were making their small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the bra- 184 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. zen 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 of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and hum- ming 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 she was to start on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an interesting trip, and a pleasant variation of our cus- tomary mode of travel, we determined to make the voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic con- struction, 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 mason-work on each side, and provided with one or two locks. The steamer proved to be small, dirty, and altogether inconvenient. 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 right in our teeth. There were a number of passengers on board, country-people, such as travel by third-class on the railway ; for, I suppose, nobody but 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 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 185 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 river -side through the whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut across some sinuosity ; so that our only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like sloth - fulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough and to spare for the objects along the shore. Unfor- tunately, 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 solitary one on the sum- mit 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 sun- shine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. These English east-winds, which prevail from Febru- ary till June, are greater nuisances than the east-wind of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring mist and storm, as with us, but some of the sunniest weather that England sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and is villanous. The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an English character that was abundantly worth our looking at. A green luxuriance of early grass ; old, high -roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, with the square, gray tower of a church seen afar over 186 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs ; here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, sur- rounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode of some rich yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Cromwell, but whether of the Protector's family I cantiot tell. But the gentry do not appear to have settled multitudi- nously 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 along ; and only in the latter part of its course does it become more than wide enough for the little steamer to turn itself round, — at broadest, not more than twice that width. The only memorable incident of our voyage hap- pened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, since I could not possibly avert it. The poor duck- lings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to escape ; four of them, I believe, were washed aside and thrown off unhurt from the steamer's prow ; but the fifth must have gone under the whole length of the keel, and never could have come up alive. At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower of Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Ca- thedral) looming in the distance. At about half past four we reached Boston (which name has been short- PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 187 ened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pronunciation, from Botolph's town), and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market- place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough ; and we were shown into a small, stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco- smoke, — tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, ap- parently 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 par- lor 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 river-side, at that quarter where the port is sit- uated. 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 fin- ished, rigged and equipped for her first voyage ; the rudiments of another were on the stocks, in a ship-yard bordering on the river. Still another, while I was looking on, came up the stream, and lowered her mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo ; but the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of talking English that I could not understand the reply. Farther down the river, I saw a brig, approaching rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd 188 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but con- trast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town, — the latter, perhaps, almost sta- tionary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and Washington Street, and the Great Elm, and the State House, and 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 in the early sun- shine (the sun must have been shining nearly four hours, however, for it was after eight o'clock), and strolled about the streets, like people who had a right to be there. The market-place of Boston is an irreg- ular square, into one end of which the chancel of the church slightly projects. The gates of the church- yard 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 tombstones ; and there are also raised or altar tombs, some of which have armorial bearings on them. One clergyman has caused himself and his wife to be buried right in the middle of the stone-bor- dered path that traverses the churchyard ; so that not an individual of the thousands who pass along this public way can help trampling over him or her. The scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in the morning sun : people going about their business in the day's primal freshness, which was just as fresh here as in younger villages ; children with milk - pails loitering over the burial-stones ; school-boys playing leap-frog PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 189 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 pleas- ant homes in their hereditary nests among its top- most windows, and live delightful lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying buttresses. I should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the sake of living up there. In front of the church, not more than twenty yards off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the river Witham. On the hither bank a fisherman was wash- ing 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 perhaps reach to the middle of the chan- nel. On the farther shore there is a line of antique- looking houses, with roofs of red tile, and windows opening out of them, — some of these dwellings be- ing so ancient, that the Reverend Mr. Cotton, subse- quently our first Boston minister, must have seen them with his own bodily eyes when he used to issue from the front -portal after service. Indeed, there must be very many houses here, and even some streets, that bear much the aspect that they did when the Pu- ritan divine paced solemnly among them. 190 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. In our rambles about town, we went into a book- seller's shop to inquire if he had any description of Boston for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced for inspection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto history of the town, published by subscription, nearly forty years ago. The bookseller showed him- self a well-informed and affable man, and a local anti- quary, 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 correspondence 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 rar> est adventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and curiosities, 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 intro- duced us were so crowded with inestimable articles, that we were almost afraid to stir for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating value for unknown centuries. The apartment was hung round with pictures and old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. Premising that he was going to show us something very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and returned with a counterpane of fine linen, elabo- rately embroidered with silk, which so profusely cov- ered the linen that the general effect was as if the PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 191 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. S., — being the ini- tials of one of the most unhappy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots, during her imprison- ment 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 and flowers. As a counterpart to this most precious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap- tain Cook ; it was a bag, cunningly made of some delicate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh ; but that great statesman must have been a person of very moderate girth in the chest and waist ; for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drink- ing-glasses, with a view of Saint Botolph's steeple on one of them, and other Boston edifices, public or do- mestic, on the remaining two, very admirably done. These crystal goblets had been a present, long ago, to an old master of the Free School from his pupils ; and 192 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. it is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired schoolmas- ter can exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affec- tion, won from the victims of his birch rod. Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he were a magician, and had only to fling a private sig- nal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand forth any strange relic he might choose to ask for. He was especially rich in drawings by the Old Mas- ters, producing two or three, of exquisite delicacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Giordano, Benve- nuto Cellini, and hands almost as famous ; and besides what were shown us, there seemed to be an endless supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never engraved, rep- resenting him as a rather young man, blooming, and not uncomely ; it was the worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression that we see in his only engraved por- trait. The picture is an original, and must needs be very valuable ; and we wish it might be prefixed to some new and worthier biography of a writer whose character the world has always treated with singular harshness, considering how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon-portrait of Sterne's wife, look- ing so haughty and unamiable, that the wonder is, not that he ultimately left her, but how he ever contrived to live a week with such an awful woman. After looking at these, and a great many more things 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- PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 193 knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to pos- sess 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, Victo- ria 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, brace- lets, 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 illumi- nated missals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may seem of especial 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 housewifery, 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 that bloody Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, but won- dered at her frankness, and at her attending to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical way. The truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen had spelt amiss: the word was "Fellon," — a sort of whitlow, — not "Fellow." Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet ; and, while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to excite his envy, by telling him various things, VOL. VII. 13 194 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. interesting to an antiquary and virtuoso, which wo 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 exqui- sitely illuminated, throughout, by the hand of Raphael himself. We mentioned a little silver case which once contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV. nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about the black - letter prayer - book of King Charles the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Com- munion Service; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yel- lowish or brownish hue : a drop of the king's blood had fallen there. Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short time since. According to our friend's 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 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 people consider as the founder of our American Boston. It would contain a painted memorial-window, in honor of the old Puritan minis- ter. 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 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD SOSTON. 195 and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be re- corded (and it seems to have made a very kindly impression on our kinsfolk here) that five hundred pounds had been contributed by persons in the United States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the memorial - window, and the repair and restoration of the chapel. After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap- proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly intro' duced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's benediction 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 gentle- man, evidently assured of his position (as clergymen of the Established Church invariably are), comfortable and well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life with- out 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 courte- ously did the honors, showing us quite round the inte- rior, giving us all the information that we required, and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see. The interior of St. Botolph's is very fine and satis- 196 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been repaired — so far as repairs were necessary — in a chaste and noble style. The great eastern window is of modern painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, and tenderest modern window that I have ever seen : the art of painting these glowing transparencies in pristine perfection being one that the world has lost. The vast, clear space of the interior church delighted me. There was no screen, — nothing between the ves- tibule 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 roar. Around the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in perfect preservation, except for a slight modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chan- cel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly appropriated to the monks, which were so contrived as to tumble down with a tremendous crash if the occu- pant happened to fall asleep. We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. Up we went, winding and still winding round the cir- cular 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 jackdaws, and far above the roof beneath which we had before made a halt. Then up another flight, which led us into a pinnacle of the temple, but not the highest ; so, retracing our steps, PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 197 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 hori- zon. There were dusty roads, a river, and canals, con- verging towards Boston, which — a congregation of red -tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pygmy people creeping about its narrow streets. We were three hundred feet aloft, and the 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 ob- ject 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 can- opies still remaining and the pedestals being about a yard from the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's Puri- tan parishioners are probably responsible for the dis- appearance 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 fash- ion. It opens its arch through a great square tablet of stone, reared against the front of the tower. On most of the projections, whether on the tower or about the body of the church, there are gargoyles of genu- ine Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts, angels, and combinations of all three ; and where portions of the edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very poor suc- cess. Extravagance and absurdity have still their law, and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the prim- mest things on earth. In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed 198 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. the river by a bridge, and observed that the largei part of the town seems to lie on that side of its navi- gable 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 unreasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollections of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical char- acter of the streets and houses in the New England metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and pro- jecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kin- dred I derived from this hereditary connection and fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant I was, after chill years of banishment, to leave this hospitable place, on that account. Moreover, it re- called some of the features of another American town, my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring people leaning against posts, and sitting on planks, under the lee of warehouses, — or lolling on long- boats, drawn up high and dry, as sailors and old wharf- rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little busi- ness. In other respects, the English town is more village-like than either of the American ones. The women and budding girls chat together at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with young men ; chil- dren 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 churchyard ; and an- cient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander glowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 199 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 solitude. Speaking of old men, I am reminded of the scholars of the Boston Charity School, who walk about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee- breeches, and with bands at their necks, — perfect and grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries ago. On the morning of our departure, I looked from the parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, and beheld its irregular square already well covered with booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market- day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much greater variety of merchandise : basket- work, both for fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the town. A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeomen elbowed one another in the square ; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibi- tion in another : so that my final glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my 200 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph's looked benignantly down ; and I fancied it was bid- ding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its ven- erable height, and the town beneath it, to the people of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard. One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the vicinity of their town ; and (what could hardly be ex- pected of an English community) seem proud to think that their neighborhood has given name to our first and most widely celebrated and best remembered bat- tle-field. NEAR OXFORD. On a fine morning in September we set out on an excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor and myself being seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, two more of the party in the dicky, and the others less agreeably accommodated inside. We had no coachman, but two postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches with top-boots, each astride of a horse ; so that, all the way along, when not otherwise 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 en- joyable. The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not particularly interesting, being almost level, or undulat- ing very slightly ; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, a rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, and I especially remember a picturesque old gabled house at a turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; but there was nothing very memorable till we reached Woodstock, and stopped to water our horses at the Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Wood- stock, but has by no means the brand-new appearance of an American town, being a large village of stone houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and 202 NEAR OXFORD. weather-stained. The Black Bear is an ancient inn, large and respectable, with balustraded staircases, and intricate passages and corridors, and queer old pic- tures and engravings hanging in the entries and apart- ments. We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of English institutions, next to dinner) to be ready against our return, and then resumed our drive to Blenheim. The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end of the village street of Woodstock. Immediately on passing through its portals we saw the stately palace in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park before approaching it. This noble park contains three thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in cir- cumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it contains many" trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for cen- turies. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and glades ; and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnif- icent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed back into nature again, after all the pains that the landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne's time bestowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much inter- meddled with their growth and postures. The trees of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke's time, are arranged on the plan of the order of battle in which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, NEAR OXFORD. 203 and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is not disagreeably 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. Oue of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode be- side our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the do- main. There is a very large artificial lake (to say the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being com- pared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those of Westmoreland), which was created by Capability Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just as if 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 immediate banks ; for the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river, of the choicest transparency, which was turned thither- ward 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-gar- dener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monotonous surface of Blenheim, — making the most of every undulation, — flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed, — putting in beauty as often as there 204 NEAR OXFORD. was a niche for it, — opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of im- penetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden ; — and then, to be sure, the lapse of a century has soft- ened the harsh outline of man's labors, and has given the place back to Nature again with the addition of what consummate science could achieve. After driving a good way, we came to a battle- mented tower and adjoining house, which used to be the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge of the property for the King before the Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we found va- rious things that had to do with the chase and wood- land sports. We mounted the staircase, through sev- eral 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 indistinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. Returning to the ground-floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wilmot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles II. 's time. It is a low and bare little room, with a window in front, and a smaller one behind ; and in the contiguous entrance-room there are the remains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what it is, in this poor fellow's character, which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he had a human heart which never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which is still faintly percep tible amid the dissolute trash which he left behind. NEAR OXFORD. 205 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 seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ram- ble 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 par- ticular tradition that connects 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 re- moved. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure as the legendary 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 tum- blers, which they present to visitors, full of the con- secrated 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 sum- mit 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 Marlborough far above the rest of the world, and to be visible a long way off ; and it is so placed in reference to other objects, that, wherever the hero wandered about his grounds, and especially as he is- 206 NEAR OXFORD. sued from his mansion, he must inevitably 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 admiration of his country can do for a successful warrior — as I carry away with me and shall always retain. Unless' he had the moral force of a thousand men together, his egotism (beholding himself everywhere, imbuing the entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and gleaming in the water, and pervading the very air with his greatness) must have been swollen within him like the liver of a Strasburg goose. On the huge tab- lets inlaid into the pedestal of the column, the entire Act of Parliament, bestowing Blenheim on the Duke of Marlborough and his posterity, is engraved in deep letters, painted black on the marble ground. The pil- lar stands exactly a mile from the principal front of the palace, in a straight line with the precise centre of its entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it was the Duke's principal object of contemplation. We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the entrance, and took possession of what- ever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim sixpence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much pub- lic outcry against the meanness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the admission of visitors (chiefly, of course, his native countrymen) to view the magnificent palace which their forefathers be- stowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems hard that a private abode should be exposed to the intra- NEAR OXFORD. 207 sion 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 admis- sion, both because the fame of its first inhabitant is a national possession, and because the mansion was a national gift, one of the purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude and glory to the English people themselves. If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is very likely to incur some little inconveniences himself, and entail them on his posterity. Nevertheless, his present Grace of Marlborough absolutely ignores the public claim above suggested, and (with a thrift of which even the hero of Blenheim himself did not set the example) sells tickets admitting six persons at ten shillings ; if only one person enters the gate, he must pay for six ; and if there are seven in company, two tickets are required to admit them. The attendants, who meet you everywhere in the park and palace, ex- pect 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 Marl- borough as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne Gardens. 1 Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic 1 The above was written two or three years ago, or more ; and the Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to his successor, who, we understand, has adopted much more liberal arrangements. There is seldom anything to criticise or complain of, as regards the facility of obtaining admissiou to interesting private houses in Eng- land. 208 NEAR OXFORD. 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 less than seventy feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it being a clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thorn- hill in some allegorical design (doubtless commemora- tive of 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 splen- didly and effectively 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 exceedingly valuable, — many of these works of Art having been presented to the Great Duke by the crowned heads of England or the Continent. One room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens; and there were works of Raphael, and many other famous painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illus- trate the meanest house that might contain it. I re- member none of them, however (not being in a pic- ture-seeing mood), so well as Yandyck's large and familiar picture of Charles I. on horseback, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on con- sidering this face of Charles (which I find often re- peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal into literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate king was really a handsome or impressive - looking man : a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, NEAR OXFORD. 209 and reddish hair and beard, — these are the literal facts. It is the painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy grace around him. On our passage through this beautiful suite of apartments, we saw, through the vista of open door- ways, 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 Eng- glish children are apt to be, quite as often as our own), but he had pleasant eyes, an intelligent 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 presented to the first Duke by a sister- hood 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 extend- ing his leading - staff in the attitude of command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there vol. vii. H 210 NEAR OXFORD. can never have been anything more magnificent than these tapestries ; and, considered as works of Art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective length from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter and more cheerful than that of most libraries : a won- derful contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, and perhaps less sombre and suggestive of thoughtful- ness than any large library ought to be ; inasmuch as so many studious brains as have left their deposit on the shelves cannot have conspired without producing a very serious and ponderous result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there are elaborate doorways and fireplaces 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 exqui- sitely wrought that the spectator certainly gets a strong conception of her royal dignity ; while the face of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of her personal character. 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 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 NEAR OXFORD. 211 said, of forty thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of the deceased dignitaries, and various al- legorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions ; and be- neath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones and dust, and probably all the Marl- boroughs that have since died. It is not quite a com- fortable idea, that these mouldy ancestors still inhabit, after their fashion, the house where their successors spend the passing day; but the adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been con- summated, 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 earn- ing the fee all by himself ; but by and by another re- spectable Scotchman made his appearance and took us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener in per- son. 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 de- lights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the con- coction of an ounce of precious attar. The world within that garden-fence is not the same weary and dusty world with which we outside mortals are conver- 212 NEAR OXFORD. sant ; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature •, and the Great Mother lends herself kindly to the gar- dener's will, knowing that he will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit and praise to her- self. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within that precinct, — any clouds, except the fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal. The lawns and glades are like the memory of places where one has wandered when first in love. What a good and happy life might be spent in a paradise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, the besotted Duke (ah I I have let out a secret which I meant to keep to myself ; but the ten shillings must pay for all) was in that very garden (for the guide told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be too uproarious), and, if in a condition for arithmetic, was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten- shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican as I am, 1 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 upon the whole race of mortals as on themselves ; because it proves that no more favorable conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a herd of swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits than ordinary swine. Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a description of Blenheim ; and I hate to leave it with- out some more adequate expression of the noble edi- NEAR OXFORD. 213 fice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful sunshine ; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred years, it could not have been a finer one. But I must give up the attempt ; only further remark- ing that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I saw one — and there may have been many such — im- mense 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 pro- portion 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 singu- lar vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things ever brewed from malt (unless it be the Trinity Ale of Cambridge, which I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse), commend me to the Archdeacon, as the Oxford schol- 214 NEAR OXFORD. ars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favor- ite nectar. John Barleycorn has given his very heart to this admirable liquor ; it is a superior kind of ale, the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor and a mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world. Much have we been strengthened and encouraged by the potent blood of the Archdeacon ! • A few days after our excursion to 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 again a delightful day ; and, in truth, every day, of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if each must be the very last of such perfect weather ; and yet the long succession 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 (their 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, which are said to have once formed a portion of Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle's bal- lad 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, 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 NEAR OXFORD. 215 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 parson'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, prob- ably 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 inlaid into a church pavement. On these brasses are engraved the figures of a gentleman in armor, and a lady in an antique garb, each about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer ; and there is a long Latin inscription likewise cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulogies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly figure that kneels above ; and if Sir Walter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription 216 NEAR OXFORD. in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, with good grounds for bringing an action of slander in the courts above. But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which so worries us about our good fame, or our bad fame, after death ! If it were of the slightest real moment, our reputations would have been placed by Providence more in our own power, and less in other people's, than we now find them to be. If poor Anthony Fors- ter happens to have met Sir Walter in the other world, I doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while to complain of the latter' s misrepresentations. We did not remain long in the church, as it con- tains nothing else of interest ; and, driving through the village, we passed a pretty large and rather antique- looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a hundred years, as Giles Gosling's time ; nor is there any other object to remind the visitor of the Eliza- bethan 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 an- ticipates from its romantic and legendary fame ; but, being still inaccessible by railway, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we often find in English country towns. In this retired neighborhood the road is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes in- terrupted by gates; the hedges grow in unpruned luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven neatness and trimness that characterize the ordinary English land- scape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclusion and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether on foot or otherwise. NEAR OXFORD. 217 I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's pere- grinations ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles be- hind us, I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on the other side, we resumed our drive, — first glancing, however, at the old woman's antique cottage, with its stone floor, and the circular settle round the kitchen fireplace, which was quite in the mediaeval English style. We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we were received at the parsonage with a hospitality which we should take delight in describing, if it were allowable to make public acknowledgment of the pri- vate and personal kindnesses which we never failed to find ready for our needs. An American in an Eng- lish 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 magnetism is of a kind that repels strongly while you keep beyond a certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the magic line. It was at this place, if I remember right, that I heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he was the author of " The Red Letter A " ; and, after some consideration (for he did not seem to recognize his own book, at first, under this improved title), our countryman responded, doubtfully, that he believed so. The gentleman proceeded to inquire whether our friend had spent much time in America, — evidently thinking that he must have been caught young, and have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if 218 NEAR OXFORD. not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and ap- pear so much like other people. This insular narrow- ness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occur- 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 seat of the ancient family of Har- court, which now has its principal abode at Nuneham Courtney, a few miles oif. The parsonage is a relic of the family mansion, 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 capacity, from height to depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, and is still used for domestic purposes, although it has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or, we might rather say, it is itself one vast 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 blackened with the smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from them, and climb upward, seeking an exit through some wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy feet above. These lofty openings were capable of be- ing so arranged, with reference to the wind, that the cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the smoke ; and here, no doubt, they were accustomed to roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a mod- ern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower is very dim and sombre (being nothing but rough stone walls, lighted only from the apertures above mentioned), and has still a pungent odor of smoke and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and feasts oi NEAR OXFORD. 219 generations that have passed away. Methinks the ex- fcremest range of domestic economy lies between an American cooking-stove and the ancient kitchen, sev- enty dizzy feet in height and all one fireplace, of Stan- ton Harcourt. Now — the place being without a parallel in Eng- land, 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 mem- ory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of the tower. I had never before had so pertinacious an at- tack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember some previous scene or incident, of which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication. Though the explanation of the mystery did not for some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the mat- ter here. In a letter of Pope's, addressed to the Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Har- court (as I now find, although the name is not men- tioned), 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 pictur- esque, with fine touches of humorous pathos, — and conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a de- cayed English country-house ; and among other rooms, most of which have since crumbled down and disap- peared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, 220 NEAR OXFORD. — which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging Satan himself as head-cook, who stirs the infernal cal- drons that seethe and bubble over the fires. This let- ter, and others relative to his abode here, were very- familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining still fresh at the bottom of my memory, caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding the real spectacle that had formerly been made so vivid to my imagination. Our next visit was to the church, which stands close by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the cas- tle. In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Har- courts, are found some very interesting family monu- ments, — and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure of an armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in the Wars of the Roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes the symbol of the Red Rose, denoting the faction for which he fought and died. His head rests on a marble or ala- baster helmet ; and on the tomb lies the veritable helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore in battle, — a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, and remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn- ment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now, especially in Crom- well's time, when knightly tombs were little respected, and when armor was in request. However, it is need- less to dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the headache in his lifetime. Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the NEAR OXFORD. 221 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, 1 tore off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my waistcoat-pocket ; but seeking it subse- quently, 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 Bosworth Field ; and a banner, supposed to be the same that he carried, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm, — an odd place enough for a garter ; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be dec- orously visible. The complete preservation and good condition of these statues, even to the minutest adorn- ment of the sculpture, and their very noses, — the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living one, — are miraculous. Except in Westminster Ab- bey, 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 University, during the great Civil War and the rule of the Parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and kindly character of this old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs, when it might have been done with impunity. There are other and more recent memorials of the 222 NEAR OXFORD. Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title is now extinct, but the family survives in a younger branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, though they have long since quitted it as a residence. We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds apper- taining to the mansion, and which used to be of vast dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There are two or three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of which is of very respectable size, — large enough, in- deed, to be really a picturesque object, with its grass- green borders, and the trees drooping over it, 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 bright- ness. These ponds are said still to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet waters ; but I saw only some minnows, and one or two snakes, which were lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sun- ning and bathing themselves at once. I mentioned that there were two towers remaining of 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 NEAR OXFORD. 223 which a narrow staircase, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round as it climbs upward, giving access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerg- ing on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret- stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupying the whole area of the tower, and lighted by a window on each side. It was wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. The window-panes were small and set in lead. The curiosity of this room is, that it was once the residence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of the translation of Homer, and 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 re- moved for safe-keeping to Nuneham Courtney, where it was shown me), purporting that he had here fin- ished 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 for evermore to everything that he has touched. I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was created for him ; but here, after a century and a half, we are still conscious of the presence of that decrepit little figure of Queen Anne's time, although he was merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or two summer months. However brief the time and slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, Pope, or any other person with an available claim, is right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive ; for I never saw a chamber that I should like better to in- 224 NEAR OXFORD. habit, — so comfortably small, in such a safe and in- accessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from each window. One of them looks upon the church, close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, extending almost to the foot of the tower ; the others have views wide and far, over a gently undulating tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring the occupant to the summit of the tower, — where Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, and peep — poor little shrimp that he was ! — through the embrasures of the battlement. From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I forget how far — to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon the Thames, or some other stream ; for I am ashamed to confess my ignorance of the precise geographical whereabout. We were, at any rate, some miles above Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the sources of England's mighty river. It was little more than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to pass, — shallow, too, and bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew the surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boat- man told us, are 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 bot- tom is very much weed - grown ; and I was told that the weed is an American production, brought to Eng- land 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 ! NEAR OXFORD. 225 It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, comfortably accommodating our party; the day con- tinued sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boat- man, 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 thor- oughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an in- considerable stream : for it had a good deal more than a hundred miles to meander through before it should bear fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and tow- ers 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 turbid breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now, is swollen into the Thames at 'London. Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the boatman and some other persons drew our skiff round some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed ; another time, the boat went through a lock. We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond se- cluded 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, — brimming over, indeed, with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery is now, I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, which has converted its precincts into a barn-yard. The gate was under lock and key, so that we could merely look at the outside, and soon resumed our places in the boat. VOL. VII. 15 226 NEAR OXFORD. At three o'clock or thereabouts (or sooner or later, — for I took little heed of time, and only wished that these delightful wanderings might last forever) we reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took pos- session of a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable dining-room or 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 very 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 be- ing attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a rea- sonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble of living; nothing was ever more quietly agreeable. In this happy state of -mind and body we gazed at Christ Church meadows, as we passed, and at the re- ceding 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 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 to- gether, like the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I re- member not a single annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the NEAR OXFORD. 227 head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our 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 cham- pagne, 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 belonging to the Harcourts, and the present residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climb- ing a steep slope from the river-side, paused a moment or two to look at an architectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of which I do not well understand. Thence we proceeded onward, through the loveliest park and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth, to the stately mansion-house. As we here cross a private threshold, it is not allow- able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, 1 may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apart- ment, hung round with portraits of eminent literary men, principally of the last century, most of whom were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house it- self is about eighty years old, and is built in the clas- 228 NEAR OXFORD. sic style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the Gothic picturesqueness of their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed to me even more beautiful than those of Blenheim, Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave the design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I will not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but be bold to say that it appeared to me as perfect as anything earthly can be, — utterly and entirely fin- ished, as if the years and generations had done all that the hearts and minds of the successive owners could contrive for a spot they dearly loved. Such homes as Nuneham Courtney are among the splendid results of long hereditary possession ; and we Republi- cans, whose households melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring morning, must content ourselves with our many counterbalancing advantages, — for this one, so apparently desirable to the far-projecting selfishness of our nature, we are certain never to attain. It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nune- ham Courtney is one of the great show-places of Eng- land. 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, redundant 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 at- tempt 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 fortune it may be never to behold it have no bet- NEAR OXFORD. 229 ter resource than to dream about gray, weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic orna- ment, and standing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty generations, — lawns and gardens of luxuri- ous 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 magnificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diver- sified 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 illustri- ous, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wis- dom 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 roast- ing a hundred joints at once, — and cavernous cellars, where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Mater : make all these things vivid in your dream, and you will never know nor believe how in- adequate is the result to represent even the merest outside of Oxford. We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this ar- ticle without making our grateful acknowledgments, by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and enjoyments. Delightful as will always be our recol- lection of Oxford and its neighborhood, we partly sus- pect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the genial medium through which the objects were pre- 230 WEAR OXFORD. sented to us, — to the kindly magic of a hospitality unsurpassed, within our experience, in the quality of making the guest contented with his host, with him- self, and everything about him. He has inseparably 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 probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occa- sionally attaining a height which might almost be called mountainous. In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than the day before ; but we sturdily adventured through the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to the residence of Burns. The street leading from the station is called Shakespeare 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 another along the whole length of the street. With not a tree, of course, or a blade of grass between the paving - stones, the narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, and reeked with a genuine Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed children, and altogether in a state of chronic filth; although some women seemed to be hopelessly scrub- 232 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. bing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. 1 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 per- haps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them, though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but under the same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the door, bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the 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 bedchamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which Burns used as a study ; and the bedchamber itself was the one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at last. Altogether, it is an exceed- ingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to live or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than Shake- speare's house, which has a certain homely pictur- esqueness that contrasts favorably 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 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 233 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 principal street of the town, which, it may be fair to say, is of very different aspect from the wretched out skirt 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 re- freshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the mausoleum of Burns. Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man digging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monuments. Their general shape and construction are peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other stone, within a framework of the same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a looking-glass ; and, all over the churchyard, these se- pulchral 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 person- age (as " Skinner/' " Shoemaker," " Flesher ") 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. There was a foot-path through this crowded church yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap- 234 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was priv- ileged to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked the door, and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns, — the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of Cal- edonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. Me- thought it was not a very successful piece of work ; for 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 statue to be very like the original. The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of some of their children, lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own plain way. and very agreeable to talk withal) said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The poet's bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so brimming over with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dumfries doctor. It has since been depos- ited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault. We learned that there is a surviving daughter of Burns's eldest son, and daughters likewise of the two SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 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 inher- ited 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 dwell- ing 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 disreputable, drunken, shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occu- pation, 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 rec- ognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive charac- teristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon. As we went back through the churchyard, wc saw a 236 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dum- fries were buried during the cholera year ; and also some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the 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 Claverhouse and his fellow-ruf- fians. 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 child 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 de- lighted with it that he -bought it of the father-artist, after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image that came out of the father's heart ; he had sold that truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptured this mere copy to replace it. The first figure was en- tirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237 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 ob- servant of profane things — brought him before us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right be- fore 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 wo 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 village, where we established ourselves at the Lou- doun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauch- line, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any 238 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cot- tages, mostly white-washed, and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate vil- lage, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could con- trive to make, or to render uglier through a succes- sion of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns' s time, and long before, than this of 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 Beggars " congregated. The latter is a two-story, red- stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old- fashioned windows, and may well have stood for cen- turies, — though, seventy or eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been something better than a beggars' alehouse. The whole town of Mauchline looks rusty and time- worn, — even the newer houses, of which there are several, being shadowed and darkened by the general aspect of the place. When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings seemed to have belched forth their in- habitants into the warm summer evening : everybody was chatting with everybody, on the most familiar terms ; the bare-legged children gambolled or quar- SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BUBNS. 239 relied uproariously, and came freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our parlor. When we ven- tured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town: people standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the chamber- windows, 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 beg- gary), I have never been honored with nearly such an amount of public notice. The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do the like ; and it being Sacrament Sunday, and my poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching of four several sermons, and came back per- fectly exhausted and desperate. He was somewhat con- soled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spec- tacle 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 con- formance to the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and did penance accord- ingly ; and at five o'clock we took a fly, and set out for Burns's farm of Moss Giel. Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said was Burns's u Lousie Thorn " ; and I devoutly plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten 240 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. where or how this illustrious shrub has been cele- brated. 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 consider- ably overshadowed by trees. The house is a white washed stone cottage, like thousands of others in Eng- land and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though alien growth. There is a door and one window in front, besides another little window that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extend- ing back at right angles from it, so as to enclose the farm-yard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the house : any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as the two others, and all three look still more suitable for donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove into the farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these three hov- els, a large dog began to bark at us ; and some women and children made their appearance, but seemed to de- mur about admitting us, because the master and mis- tress were very religious people, and had not yet come back from the Sacrament at Mauchline. However, it would not do to be turned back from the very threshold of Robert Burns ; and as the women seemed to be merely straggling visitors, 'and nobody? at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the back door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there were three or four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the people of the house, and gave us what leave sbe SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 241 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. Up 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-cham- ber in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most probably, was Burns's chamber ; or, perhaps, it may have been that of his 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 opposite side of the passage was the door of another attic-chamber, opening which, I saw a consid- erable 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 under- stand how the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be any more agreeable or salubrious morally than it ap- peared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse-natured rustics into this narrowness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and women ; and it indicates a degree of bar- barism which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields, like the farmer of Mauch- VOL. vii- 16 242 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. line, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody — not to say a poet, but any human being — sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spend- ing all his home-life in this miserable hovel ; but, me- thinks, I never in the least knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, nor his heroic merit for be- ing 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 being 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, enjoy- ing, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the inte- rior ; and the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene with a great deal of sunshine over it. Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up the mouse's nest. It is the enclosure nearest to the cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground was whitened with an immense number of daisies, — daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 243 " wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be precious to many friends in our own country as com- ing from Burns's farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an am- aranthine flower while seeming to destroy it. From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleasant 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 be- longs to the Boswell family, — the present possessor being Sir James Boswell, 1 a grandson of Johnson's friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, free-hearted man, but addicted to horse-races and similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with the wine-cup ; so that poor Bozzy's booziness would appear to have become hereditary in his ancient line. There is no male heir to the estate of Auchinleck. The por- tion 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 considerable. By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw Miss Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses from bank to bank, high in air over a deep gorge of the road ; so that the young lady may have appeared to Burns like a creature between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of celestial elements. But, in honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns's eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic mixture which other poets find in her. 1 Sir James Boswell is now dead. 244 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tra- dition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no such interview. Lovers, of whatever condition, high or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to breathe their vows : the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beau- tiful estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the family of Alexanders, to whom Burns's song has given renown on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever attained it. How slight the tenure seems ! A young lady happened to walk out, one summer afternoon, and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, rude, — at least, not refined, though rather ambitious, — and somewhat ploughman-like verses. Burns has written hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, for centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the dream-land of Beautiful Women, and she and all her race are famous. I should like to know the present head of the family, and ascertain what value, if any, the members of it put upon the celebrity thus won. We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as " the clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of Mauchline, whither we now returned without seeing anything else worth writing about. There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauch- line was glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spattering down. The intense heat of many SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 245 days past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, much more suitable to a stranger's idea of what Scotch temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, that the first train northward had already gone by, and that we must wait till nearly two o'clock for the next. I merely ventured out once, during the fore- noon, 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 ab- solutely 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, el- derly, comely gentleman walking to and fro and wait- ing for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, — it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of Bal- lochmyle, a blood relation of the lovely lass. Wonder- ful 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, are not an old family on the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the lass having made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the first landed proprietor of his name in these parts. The original family was named Whitefoord. Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; 246 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted edifices ; although there are 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 win- dows directly down into the passing tide. I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a venerable structure of four gray arches, which must have bestridden the stream ever since the early days of Scottish history. These are the "Two Briggs of Ayr," whose midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while other auditors were aware only of the rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and paved like a street, and 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 impressed me hereabouts, un- less 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 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 247 a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. It is now a public house ; and, of course, we alighted and entered its little sitting - room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much over- scribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I have seldom (though I do not personally adopt this mode of illustrating my humble name) felt inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes. On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture by Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent substitute for the ordi- nary flag-stones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns: it is the kitchen, into which we now went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of Shakespeare's house, — though, perhaps, not so strangely cracked and 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 window, of only four small panes, through which came the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, op- 248 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. posite the fireplace, is a recess, containing a bed, which can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was pleased to de- posit the germ of richest human life which mankind then had within its circumference. These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole sum and substance of Burns's birthplace : for there were no chambers, nor even attics ; and the thatched roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting- room, the height of which was that of the whole house. The cottage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same size and description, as these little habita- tions often are ; and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it, since the poet's renown began to draw visitors to the wayside alehouse. The old wo- man of the house led us through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be sure, but marvellously large and splendid as compared with what might be anticipated from the 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 monu- ment, 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 enclos- ure, but were forced to wait a considerable time ; be. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 249 cause 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 admit- ted 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 pro- vided 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 pil- lars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beauti- ful in itself ; though I know not what peculiar appro- priateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural poet. The door of the basement-story stood open ; and, entering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness can- not be good. In the centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is 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 Briggs 250 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BUBNS. of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O'Shanter's misadventure being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through the 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 again 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, graceful arch, ivy -grown, and shadowed all over and around with foliage. When we had waited a good while, the old gardens* 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 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 pretensions ; no New England meeting-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 actually exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan and an assembly of witches should hold their revels within a consecrated pre- cinct ; 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 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 251 to the contrary. Possibly, some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dis- pelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pre- tence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of un- happy 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 com- partment has been converted into a family burial-place. The name on one of the monuments is Crawf urd ; the other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to feel that these good people, whoever they may be, had no business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither. They shut us out from our own precincts, too, — from that inalienable possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the domain of imagination. And here these wretched squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after bar- ring 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, considering now large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it. I paced its length, outside of the wall, and found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tarn 252 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. O'Shanter, blazing with devilish light, as he ap- proached 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 hfc sat on horse- back. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in it. And this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular. The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerv- ing 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 to- wards the river. The new bridge is within a minute's walk of the monument ; and we went thither, and leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful Doon, 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 picture of the river and the green banks beyond, was absolutely 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 mem- ory 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 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 253 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 be- held Ailsa Craig rising like a pyramid out of the sea. Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoul- der on each side. But a man is better than a moun- tain ; and we had been holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost of one of Earth's 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 whatever he has produced. Henceforth, there will be a personal 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 retro- spect, as if it had been patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords ; but I believe that it may be only a moral effect, — a " light that never was on sea nor land," — caused by our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, how- ever, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once, — an impossibility which I so far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of Eng- land, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence, because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home, but had also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is of too 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 con- veniences, elegances, and snuggeries, — its drawing- rooms and library, still warm and bright with the rec- ollection 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 trust, — its lawn and cosey garden- nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home, — he had transferred it all A LONDON SUBURB. 255 to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our ease during his summer's absence on the Continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally shivering by hearths which, heap the 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 ; wjiile 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 him- self 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 ri- pened 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 centre 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 uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven 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 satisfaction) that mysterious yearn- 256 A LONDON SUBURB. ing — the magnetism of millions of hearts operating upon one — which impels every man's individuality to mingle itself with the immensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrin- thine courts, the parks, the gardens and enclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid the city uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along the river-side, the bridges, — I had sought all parts of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and in- discriminating curiosity ; until few of the native in- habitants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners as myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way, and so to find it the more surely) had brought me, at one time or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had made London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than my dream ; for there is nothing else in life compar- able (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 I acquired a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in the world, — though after- wards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard to Rome ; and as long as either of those two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present, a man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon earth. Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I A LONDON SUBURB. 257 was in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it hap- pened, that, living within a quarter of an hour's rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to spend a whole summer-day in our garden than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or com- monplace, beyond its precincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as ar- bors and garden - seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose- bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, gerani- ums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had always a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same texture; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the exuberance of English verdure had a greater charm than any 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 anx- ious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains the English gar- deners are fain to throw away in producing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples, — as, for ex- ample, in this very garden, where a row of unhappy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an English fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip. VOL. VII. 17 258 A LONDON SUBURB. The garden included that prime feature of English domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, care- fully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which we sometimes essayed to practise the time-hon- ored game of bowls, 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. Oar 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. Over all the outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there was. an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the near or distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The ef- fect 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 pass- ing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summoning me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of Lon- don ; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with children in the grass, when there were so many better things for an enlightened traveller to do, — while, at the same time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idle- ness, to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent A LONDON SUBURB. 259 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 Oc- tober and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few weeks of incomparable sum- mer, scattered through July and August, and the ear- lier portion of September, small in quantity, but ex- quisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmos- pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent som- breness 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 English, however, do not seem to know Kow en- joyable the momentary gleams of their summer are ; they call it broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside with red, perspiring 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 midleg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which our own cows would deem little more than barely comfort- able. To myself, after the summer heats of my na- tive land had somewhat effervesced out of my blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm ; but it was that mod- est and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During my first year in England, residing 260 A LONDON SUBURB. in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, 1 could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth ; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendli- ness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling summer ; and in the succeed- ing years, — whether that I had renewed my fibre with English beef and replenished my blood with English ale, or whatever were the cause, — I grew content with winter and especially in love with sum- mer, 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 noon- tide sun came down more fervently than I found al- together 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 weari- some. 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 quie- tude, 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, if there be any such season, hangs down a transparent veil through which the by-gone day beholds its successor ; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly af- firmed of the more northern parts of the island, that To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They A LONDON SUBURB. 261 exist together in the golden twilight, where the de- crepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simul- taneously touch them both with one finger of recollec- tion and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturbation, and could have been content never to stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was the feeling of the moment ; although the transitory, flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as al- lowing me much of the comfort of house and home, without any sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find tents ready pitched for us at every stage. So much for the interior of our abode, — a spot of deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we were not shocked with any immediate presence of the great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I believe) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which other- wise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in sin- gular proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in every- body and nobody ; but exclusive rights have been ob- tained, here and there, chiefly by men whose daily con- cerns 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 262 A LONDON SUBURB. English settlements. The scene is semi-rural. Orna- mental trees overshadow the sidewalks, and grassy mar- gins border the wheel-tracks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of difference from those of an American village, bearing tokens of architectural de- sign, though seldom of individual taste ; and, as far as possible, they stand aloof from the street, and sepa- rated each from its neighbor by hedge or fence, in ac- cordance with the careful exclusiveness of the English character, which impels the occupant, moreover, to cover the front of his dwelling with as much conceal- ment 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 in- stance, Blackheath Park, — and constitute a kind of community of residents, with gateways, kept by a policeman, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which, you find yourself on the breezy heath. On this great, bare, dreary common I often went astray, as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, and drew the air (tainted with London smoke though it might be) into my lungs by deep inspirations, with a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom. The misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does 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 in* A LONDON SUBURB. 263 sulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a cen- tury 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 foot- pads, 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 ingen- ious device of garroting had recently come into fash- ion ; 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 some- what 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 can- opy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects that were most distinctly visible, — a glorious and sombre pic- ture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never to be fully realized. While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of two or three sets of cricket-players were constantly pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going for- ward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of 264 A LONDON SUBURB. communities or counties, exciting an interest in every- body but myself, who cared not what part of England might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great national game ; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial ef- fects. 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 hav- ing 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 native dainty), and ginger -beer, and probably stancher liquor among the booth - keeper's hidden stores. The frequent railway - trains, as well as the numerous steamers to Greenwich, have made the va- cant portions of Blackheath a play-ground and breath- ing-place for the Londoners, readily and 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, and individualized by thriv- ing 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 A LONDON SUBURB. 265 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 shelterless and lost because grimy London, their slatternly and disreput- able 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 mod- erate height) is one of the earth's noted summits, and may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chim- borazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations will consent to say so, the longi- tude of our great globe begins. I used to regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate against the Observatory wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very centre of Time and Space. There are lovelier parks than this in the neighbor- hood of London, richer scenes of greensward and cul- 266 A LONDON SUBURB. tivated trees ; and Kensington, especially, in a sum- mer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or ought to be, in a world which, some time or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beau- tiful, — a spot where the art of man has conspired with Nature, as if he and the great mother had taken counsel together how to make a pleasant scene, and the longest liver of the two had faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has, likewise, an additional charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the people's property and play-ground in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer vi- cinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the in- stances in which the monarch's property is actually the people's, and shows how much more natural is their relation to the sovereign than ' to the nobility, which pretends to hold the intervening space between the two: for a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride ; whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when the sun shone, and even on those grim and sombre days when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in calling it fine weather, it was too good to see how stur- dily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what fulness of simple enjoyment they evidently found there. They were the people, — not the populace, — speci- mens 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 ac- quainted with them, in order to investigate what man- ner of folks they were, what sort of households they A LONDON SUBURB. 267 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 quarrel- some people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual Englishman is sometimes preternatu- rally disagreeable, an observer 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 sat- isfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cock- neys 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 love-making youths and maidens, along the sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent po- licemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and were readily prevailed upon to nib- ble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no 268 A LONDON SUBURB. wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors for centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts ; so that a slight movement of the hand or a step too near would send a whole squadron of them scamper- ing away, just as a breath scatters the winged 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 Sun- day or Saint's day ; but, I am not ashamed to say, it a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New England heart, among severe and sunless re- membrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-hoarded sting out of these compunctious smarts by attending divine service in the open air. On a cart outside of the Park-wall (and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within the Park itself) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice and speedily gathers a congregation, his zeal for whose religious welfare impels the good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome gesture 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 corporeal solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at A LONDON SUBURB. 269 him, be it understood, it is not in scorn ; he performs his sacred office more acceptably than many a prelate. These wayside services attract numbers who would not otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one year's end to another, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors most likely to be moved by the preacher's eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner, too, — in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old- fashioned, brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like a contemporary of Admi- ral Benbow, — that tough old mariner may hear a word or two which will go nearer his heart than any- thing that the chaplain of the Hospital can be ex- pected 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 congregation listen with every appearance of heartfelt interest; and, for my own part, I must frankly ac- knowledge 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 diminu- tive and unimportant part of the religious services, — if, indeed, it be considered a part, — among the pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resound- ing 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 Dissen- ters in England and America, who gave the sermon its present prominence in the Sabbath exercises. 270 A LONDON SUBURB. The Methodists are probably the first and only Englishmen who have worshipped in the open air since the ancient Britons listened to the preaching of the Druids ; and it reminded me of that old priest- hood, to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch — not religious, however, but warlike — in the neigh- borhood 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, fought on the site of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or three centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever may once have been their height and magnitude, they have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene than the battle of which they are the sole monuments retains in history, — being only a few mounds side by side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depres- sion in their summits. When one of them was opened, not long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were discovered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft of hair, — perhaps from the head of a valiant general, who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together with his indestructible fame, to after ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the Brit- ish Museum, where the potsherds and rubbish of in- numerable generations make the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off all its fragments and relics along with it, instead of adding them to the con- tinually accumulating burden which human knowledge is compelled to lug upon its back. As for the fame, I know not what has become of it. After traversing the Park, we come into the neigh- borhood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through A LONDON SUBURB. 271 one of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing at an establishment which does more honor to the heart of England than anything else that I am ac- quainted 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 soldiers, though it will doubtless do them a severe kind of justice, as chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed to me that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted children of the nation, and that the government is their dry- nurse, and that the old men themselves have a child- like consciousness of their position. Very likely, a better sort of life might have been arranged, and a wiser care bestowed on them ; but, such as it is, it en- ables 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 discontented 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 beautiful than any English palace that I have seen, consisting of several quadrangles of stately architecture, united by colon- nades and gravel-walks, and enclosing grassy squares, with statues in the centre, the whole extending along the Thames. It is built of marble, or very light-col- ored stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porti- cos, which (to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sailors) produce but a cold and shivery effect 272 A LONDON SUBURB. in the English climate. Had I been the architect, I would have studied the characters, habits, and predi- lections of nautical people in Wapping, Eotherhithe, and the neighborhood of the Tower (places which I visited in affectionate remembrance of Captain Lem- uel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological naviga- tors), and would have built the hospital in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and in- convenient, but snug and cosey homeliness of the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no ques- tion that all the above attributes, or enough of them to satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with architectural beauty and the wholesome contriv- ances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and gen- uine «tyle of building be given to the world. But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fel- lows 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 treating them like so many kings ; and, with a discreet abundance of grog, beer, and tobacco, there was per- haps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them for old age. Their chief discomfort is probably for lack of something to do or think about. But, judging by the few whom I saw, a listless habit seems to have crept over them, a dim dreaminess of mood, in which they sit between asleep and awake> and find the long day wearing towards bedtime without its having made any distinct record of itself upon their consciousness. Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, they subside into slumber, or nearly so, and start at the approach of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to be caught napping, and rousing themselves in a hurry t A LONDON SUBURB. 273 as formerly on the midnight watch at sea. In their brightest moments, they gather in groups and bore one another with endless sea - yarns about their voy- ages under famous admirals, and about gale and calm ? battle and chase, and all that class of incident that has its sphere on the deck and in the hollow interior of a ship, where their world has exclusively been. For other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, com- rade 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 espla- nade that borders by the Thames, criticising the rig of passing ships, and firing off volleys of malediction at the steamers, which have made the sea another element than that they used to be 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 ship- board, 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 immortal part she has left undeveloped or debased, as we find them here ; and having wasted an idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impres- sions, and even (up to an advanced period) a recep- tivity of truth, which often appears to come to them after the active time of life is past. The Greenwich pensioners might prove better subjects for true educa- tion now than in their school-boy days ; but then where VOL. VII. 18 274 A LONDON SUBURB. is the Normal School that could educate instructors 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 so respectable a countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions and quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of con- science, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athe- naeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, I wonder ? The principal thing that they have to show you, at Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco by Sir James Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it pro- duces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant color- ing and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. The walls of the grand apartment are entirely covered with pictures, many of them representing battles and other naval incidents that were 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 hun- dred years back. Next to a tomb in Westminster Ab- bey, which was Nelson's most elevated object of ambi- tion, it would seem to be the highest meed of a naval warrior to have his portrait hung up in the Painted A LONDON SUBURB. 275 Hall ; but, by dint of victory upon victory, these illus- trious personages have grown to be a mob, and by no means a very interesting one, so far as regards the character of the faces here depicted. They are gen- erally commonplace, and often singularly stolid ; and I have observed (both in the Painted Hall and else- where, and not only in portraits, but in the actual pres- ence 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 instances where warlike ability has been but the one-sided manifestation of a profound genius for managing the world's affairs. Nine tenths of these distinguished admirals, for instance, if their faces tell truth, must needs have been blockheads, and might have served better, one would imagine, as wooden fig- ure-heads for their own ships than to direct any diffi- cult 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 Eng- lish 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 England and France, I would bet, me- thinks, upon the Frenchman's head. It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero of England — the greatest, therefore, in the world, and of all time — had none of the stolid characteristics that belong to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as their representative man. Foremost in the rough- est of professions, he was as delicately organized as a 276 A LONDON SUBURB. woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More than any other Englishman he won the love and ad- miration of his country, 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 morbid in the man, which put him otherwise at cross-purposes with life. He was a man of genius ; and genius in an Englishman (not to cite the good old simile of a pearl in the oyster) is usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general making-up of the character ; as we may satisfy our- selves by running over the list of their poets, for ex- ample, 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 extraordinary one is almost always, in one way or an- other, a sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The wonderful contrast or relation between his personal qualities, the position which he 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 Southey's biography — so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man . — should have taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman pos- sessed. 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 Hal] is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely A LONDON SUBURB. 277 and exclusively adorned with pictures of the great Ad- miral's exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in all the most noted events of his career, from his encoun- ter with a Polar Bear to his death at Trafalgar, quiv- ering here and there about the room like a blue, lam- bent flame. No Briton ever enters that apartment with- out feeling the beef and ale of his composition stirred to its depths, and finding himself changed into a hero for the nonce, however stolid his brain, however tough his heart, however unexcitable his ordinary mood. To confess the truth, I myself, though belonging to an- other 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 understand as these burly isl- anders. Cool and critical observer as I sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a vis- itor (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 by- standers immediately glowed like so many hot coals, and would probably have consumed the offender in their wrath, had he not effected his retreat. But the most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson's coats, under separate glass cases. One is that which he wore at the Battle of the -Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, which will quite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we do Washington's military suit by occasionally baking it in an oven. The other is the coat in which he received his death- wound at Trafalgar. On its breast are sewed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, now much dimmed by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the battle-day to draw the fatal aim of a French 278 A LONDON SUBURB. 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, leav- ing it of a dingy yellow hue, in the threescore years since that blood gushed out. Yet it was once the red- dest blood in England, — Nelson's blood ! The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of Greenwich, 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 season 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 overflowing with its grimy pollu- tion whatever rural innocence, if any, might be found in the suburban neighborhood. This festivity was called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in an immemorial succession, it was my fortune to behold. If I had bethought myself of going through the fair with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the prominent objects, I doubt not that the result might have been a sketch of English life quite as character- istic and worthy of historical preservation as an ac- count of the Roman Carnival. Having neglected to do so, I remember little more than a confusion of un- washed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with some smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a mobbish appearance such as we never see in our own country. It taught me to understand why Shake- speare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its A LONDON SUBURB. 279 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 bathing-tub. And, furthermore, it is one mighty dif- ference 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 in- dividual, and gets to be a part of his personal sub- stance. These are broad facts, involving great corol- laries 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, be- ing welded together, as it were, in the street through which we strove to make our way. On either side were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges (a very prevalent fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a guise of freshness by boiling them), and booths cov- ered with old sail-cloth, in which the commodity that most attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread. It was so completely enveloped in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize an old acquaintance, but won- dered what those golden crowns and images could be. There were likewise drums and other toys for small children, and a variety of showy and worthless articles for children of a larger growth ; though it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a mob, could have the in- nocent taste to desire playthings, or the money to pay for them. Not that I have a right to accuse the mob, on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent than a set of cleaner and better dressed people might have 280 A LONDON SUBURB. been ; for, though one of them stole my pocket-hand- kerchief, I could not but consider it fair game, under the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for sparing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and re- markably good-humored, making due allowance for the national gruffness ; there was no riot, no tumul- tuous 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 per- plexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my English surtout had been ruthlessly rent in twain; and 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 produce a rasping sound when drawn smartly against a person's back. The ladies draw their rattles against the backs of their male friends (and everybody passes for a friend at Greenwich Fair), and the young men return the compliment on the broad British backs of the ladies ; and all are bound by immemorial custom to take it in good part and be merry at the joke. As it was one of my pre- scribed official duties to give an account of such me- chanical contrivances as might be unknown in my own country, I have thought it right to be thus particulai in describing the Fun of the Fair. A LONDON SUBURB. 281 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 them- selves 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 at- tire, seen thus in the broad daylight and after a long series of performances. 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. Before another booth stood a pair of brawny fighting-men, displaying their muscle, and so- liciting patronage for an exhibition of the noble Brit- ish 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 subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were pre- pared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextri- cable knots, wherever they could find space to spread a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his neighbor's toes, some little boys were very solicitous to brush your boots. These lads, I believe, are a prod- uct of modern society, — at least, no older than the time of Gay, who celebrates their origin in his " Tri- via " ; but in most other respects the scene reminded me of Bunyan's description of Vanity Fair, — nor is 282 A LONDON SUBURB. 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 im- mediately 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 vociferation to sit down in the ma- chines. I know not whether they valued themselves on their beef, and estimated their standing as mem- bers 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 element, that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing how solid and physically ponderous they are. On the whole, having an appetite for the brown bread and the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for its nicer cates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and was amused at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich pen- sioner, who, forgetful of the sailor-frolics of his young days, stood looking with grim disapproval at all these vanities. Thus we squeezed our way through the mob-jammed town, and emerged into the Park, where, likewise, we met a great many merry-makers, but with freer space for their gambols than in the streets. We soon found ourselves the targets for a 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 per. A LONDON SUBURB. 283 sons were running races, hand in hand, down the de- clivities, especially that steepest one on the summit of which stands the world-central Observatory, and (as in the race of life) the partners were usually male and female, and often caught a tumble together before reaching the bottom of the hill. Hereabouts 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 accliv- ity, 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 handkerchief, which make it much more decorous and graceful. A handkerchief, indeed ! There was no such thing in the crowd, except it were the one which they had just filched out of my pocket. It is one of the simplest kinds of games, needing little or no practice to make the player altogether perfect; and the manner of it is this. A ring is formed (in the present case, it was of large circumference and thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on the broad grin), into the centre of which steps an adven- turous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects whatever maiden may most delight his eye. He pre- 284 A LONDON SUBURB. 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 in- tertwined into an endless and inextricable chain of kisses ; though, indeed, it smote me with compassion to reflect that some forlorn pair of lips might be left out, and never know the triumph of a salute, after throwing aside so many delicate reserves for the sake of winning it. If the young men had any chivalry, there was a fair chance to display it by kissing the 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 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 courteous ; but, since the plain truth must be told, the soil and climate of England produce fem- inine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit ; and though admirable specimens of both are to be met A LONDON SUBURB. 285 with, they are the hot-house ameliorations of refined society, and apt, moreover, to relapse into the coarse- ness of the original stock. The men are manlike, but the women are not beautiful, though the female Bull be well enough adapted to the male. To 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 antique age, in their way of surrendering their lips to stran- gers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the world. As for the young men, they were chiefly specimens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often shabbily gen- teel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, un- shifted 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 won- dered whether there were any reasonable prospect of their fair partners returning to their rustic homes with as much innocence (whatever were its amount or qual- ity) as they brought to Greenwich Fair, in spite of the perilous familiarity established by Kissing in the Ring. The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at which a vast city was brought into intimate relations with a comparatively rural district, have at length led to its suppression ; this was the very last celebration of it, and brought to a close the broad-mouthed merri- ment of many hundred years. Thus my poor sketch, faint as its colors are, may acquire some little value in 286 A LONDON SUBURB. the reader's eyes from the consideration that no obser- ver 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 Green- wich Fair ; for it has often seemed to me that Eng- lishmen of station and respectability, unless of a pe- culiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any faith in the feminine purity of the lower orders of their coun- trywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing its possible existence. The distinction of ranks is so marked, that the English cottage damsel holds a posi- tion somewhat analogous to that of the negro girl in our Southern States. Hence comes inevitable .detri- ment to the moral condition of those men themselves, who forget that the humblest woman has a right and a duty to hold herself in the same sanctity as the high- est. 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 unscrupulous old England of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, Humphrey Clinker and Roder- ick Random ; and in our refined era, just the same as at that more free-spoken epoch, this singular people has a certain contempt for any fine-strained purity, any special squeamishness, as they consider it, on the part of an ingenuous youth. They appear to look upon it as a suspicious phenomenon in the masculine character. Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm that English morality, as regards the phase here al- luded to, is really at a lower point than our own. As- suredly, I hope so, because, making a higher preten- .4 LONDON SUBURB. 287 sion, or, at all events, more carefully hiding whatever may be amiss, we are either better than they, or neces- sarily a great deal worse. It impressed me that their open avowal and recognition of immoralities served to throw the disease to the surface, where it might be more effectually dealt with, and leave a sacred interior not utterly profaned, instead of turning its poison back among the inner vitalities of the character, at the im- minent risk of corrupting them all. Be that as it may, these Englishmen are certainly 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 ul- timately acquire a marble polish of which they are un susceptible, 1 believe that this may be the truth. UP THE THAMES. The upper portion of Greenwich (where my last article left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old- fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you descend towards the Thames the streets get meaner, and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing one an- other for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer-shops and eating-rooms, with especial promises of white-bait and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, also, a frequent announcement of " Tea Gardens " in the rear ; although, estimating the capacity of the premises by their external compass, the entire sylvan charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts must be limited within a small back-yard. These places of cheap sustenance and recreation depend for support upon the innumerable pleasure-parties who come from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a few pence, and who get as enjoyable a meal for a shil- ling a head as the Ship Hotel would afford a gentle- man for a guinea. The steamers, which are constantly smoking their pipes up and down the Thames, offer much the most agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air-draught of a cloudy day, and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter UP THE THAMES. 289 down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky ; besides which there is some slight incon- venience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, who scarcely allow you 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 memorable river, and the incidents and shows of passing life upon its bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief yet tiresome shoot along the railway track. On one such voyage, a regatta of wherries raced past us, and at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the tremendous 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 an interest in the affair, which seemed to contain no very exalted rivalship of man- hood ; 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 thor- oughly in earnest, doing his best, 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 Greenwich, and announced it- self as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and other distinguished individuals, at whose expense, I suppose, a prize -boat was offered to the conqueror, VOL. VII. 19 290 UP THE THAMES. and some small amounts of money to the inferior com- petitors. The aspect of London along the Thames, below Bridge, as it is called, is by no means so impressive as it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately archi- tecture by the passage of a river through the midst of a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the heart of Lon- don had been cleft open for the mere purpose of show- ing 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, re- flecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean se- crets within its breast, — ■ a sort of guilty conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that con- stantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to glide by such a city. The surface, to be sure, displays no lack of activity, being fretted by the passage of a hun- dred steamers and covered with a good deal of ship- ping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been accustomed to see in the Mersey : a fact which I com- placently attributed to the smaller number of Ameri- can clippers in the Thames, and the less prevalent in- fluence 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 UP THE THAMES. 291 the river, the steamer rings its bell and makes a mo- mentary pause in front of a large circular structure, where it may be worth our while to scramble ashore. It indicates the locality of one of those prodigious practical blunders that would supply John Bull with a topic of inexhaustible ridicule, if his cousin Jona- than 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 pas- sage 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 corri- dor that extends into everlasting midnight. In these days, when glass has been applied to so many new purposes,, it is a pity that the architect had not thought of arching portions of his abortive tunnel with im- mense 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 parallel corridors, with a wall between, for the separate accommodation of the double throng of foot-passengers, equestrians, and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected to roll and reverberate continually through the Tunnel. Only 292 UP THE THAMES. one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes are but feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls. Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives here, and who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice a 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 principally by women ; they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed England of none of its very moderate supply of femi- nine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like inter- ment. As you approach (and they are so accustomed to the dusky gaslight that they read all your charac- teristics afar off), they assail you with hungry entrea- ties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a magnifying-glass at one end to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewelry, 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 re- appear in this Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still in the realms of the living, they urge you to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small refreshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops con- tains a dioramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the daylight world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among them all ; so that they serve well enough to represent the dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that dead people might be supposed to retain from their past lives, mix- ing them up with the ghastliness of their unsubstantial UP THE THAMES. 293 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 immen- sity of toil and money, with auual returns hardly suf- ficient 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 brill- iantly 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 ap- proaches on either side must commence a long way off, in order to render the entrance accessible to horse- men 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 there- about 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 massive arch, and choked up the corridors with mud and sand and with the large stones of the structure itself, intermixed with skeletons of drowned people, the rusty ironwork of sunken vessels, and the great many such precious and 294 UP THE THAMES. curious things as a river always contrives to hide in its bosom ; the entrance will have been obliterated, and its very site forgotten beyond the memory of twenty generations of men, and the whole neighbor- hood be held a dangerous spot on account of the mala- ria ; insomuch that the traveller will make but a brief and careless inquisition for the traces of the old won- der, and will stake his credit before the public, in some Pacific Monthly of that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though enriched with a spiritual pro- fundity which he will proceed to unfold. Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least) to see so much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without trying to endow the unfortunate result with some kind of usefulness, though perhaps widely different from the purpose of its original conception. In former ages, the mile-long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, might have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the fittest of all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. Dethroned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not have needed to remonstrate against a domicile so spa- cious, so deeply secluded from the world's scorn, and so admirably in accordance with their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding- place communicating with the great chamber in the Tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated upon his " History of the World." His track would here have been straight and narrow, indeed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded ; and yet the length to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his physical movement with the grand curves and planetary return? UP THE THAMES. 295 of his thought, through cycles of majestic periods. Having it in his mind to compose the world's history, methinks he could have asked no better retirement than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the seductions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath their mysteries and motives, down into the heart of things, full of personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensive measurement and verification of his- toric 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 beside 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 re- nowned performances so imperfectly carried out, that, magnificent successes in the view of all posterity, they were but failures to those who planned them. As Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have explained to him the peculiarities of construction that made the ark so seaworthy ; as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed with him the principles of laws and government ; as Raleigh was a soldier, Csesar and Hannibal would have held debate in his presence, with this martial student for their umpire ; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or whatever most illustrious bard he might call up, would have touched his harp, and made manifest all the true significance of the past by means of song and the subtle intelligences of music. Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Ra- leigh's century knew nothing of gaslight, and that it 296 UP THE THAMES, would require a prodigious and wasteful expenditure of tallow-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 metaphysician, to keep him from bewildering mankind with his shadowy speculations ; and, being shut off from external converse, the dark corridor would help him to make rich discoveries in those cav- ernous regions and mysterious by-paths of the intel- lect, which he had so long accustomed himself to ex- plore. But how would every successive 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 so- ciety, 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 Potomac, for the convenience of our National Gov- ernment in times hardly yet gone by. It would be delightful to 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 perhaps in a state of miraculously sus- pended animation, until, — be it after months, years, or centuries, — when the turmoil shall be all over, the Wrong washed away in blood (since that must needs UP THE THAMES. 297 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 Kotherhithe, a neighbor- hood not unfamiliar to the readers of old books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the 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 passenger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. " Never fear, mother ! " grumbled one of them, " we '11 make the riyer as smooth as we can for you. We '11 get a plane, and plane down the waves ! " The joke may not read very brilliantly ; but I make bold to record it as the only specimen that reached my ears of the old, rough water -wit for which the Thames used to be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken Tunnel, we landed in Wappmg, which I should have presupposed to be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cold and tor- pid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants : the latter 298 UP THE THAMES. comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a single unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land - sharks, who get a half-dishonest livelihood by business con- nected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty drinking -establishments are styled in England, pre- tending to contain 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 es- pecially as there would be a volume ready for the printer before we could reach a midway resting-place at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course to step aboard another passing steamer, and continue our trip up the Thames. The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst of which rises prominently one great square tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, and having a small turret at each corner of the roof. This central structure is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of ramparts and enclosed edifices consti- tutes what is known in English history, and still more UP THE THAMES. 299 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 mo- ment under the base of the rampart, 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 pas- sageway (now supposed to be shut up and barred for- ever), through which a multitude of noble and illus- trious personages have entered the Tower and found it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Pass- ing 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 af- fected 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 excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. James (whose mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nourish itself by devouring every old stone of such a structure), once assured me that he had never in his life set eyes upon the Tower, though for years an historic novelist in London. Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voy- 300 UP THE THAMES. age, we will suppose ourselves to have reached London Bridge, and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther passage up the river. But here the memorable objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a single sentence even for the great Dome, though I deem it more picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, than St. Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must mention, however (since everything connected with royalty is especially interesting to my dear countrymen), that I once saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, and overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul's Cathedral; it had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, be- sides 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 be- dizened with gold-lace, and white silk stockings) were in attendance. I know not what festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this pageant ; after all, it might have been merely a city-spectacle, appertain- ing to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight had its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old times when the sovereign and nobles were accustomed to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis, and join in pompous processions upon it ; whereas, the desue- tude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the whole show of river-life to consist in a multitude of smoke- begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus life gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and 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. UP THE THAMES, 301 Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of London ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon the river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where the partisans of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale and bloody petals over so many English battle-fields. Hard by, we see the long white front or rear of Som- erset 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 knew." Close by it, we have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on the op- posite 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 in- nocence. And now we look back upon the mass of in- numerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, columns, and the great crowning Dome, — look back, in short, upon that mystery of the world's proudest city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be ; not, perhaps, because it contains much that is positively ad- mirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world has nothing better. The cream of external life \s there ; and whatever merely intellectual or material 302 UP THE THAMES. good we fail to find perfect in London, we may as well content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no farther on this earth. The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old town endowed with a prodigious number of pothouses, and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for public amusement. The most noticeable thing, how- ever, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Green- wich, was founded, I believe, by Charles II. (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 the British army. The edifices are of three stories, with windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre brick, with stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur (which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich Hospital), but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each extremity of the street- front there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, lounging about which I saw some gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern forag- ing-cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic gait, two or three stumped on wooden legs, and here and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of one of these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cor- dially, " Oh yes, sir, — anywhere ! Walk in and go where you please, — up stairs, or anywhere ! " So I entered, and, passing along the inner side of the quad- rangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a part of the contiguity of edifices next the street. Here another pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peace- able and Christian demeanor, touched his three-cor- UP THE THAMES. 303 nered 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, dedi- cated as well to martial reminiscences as religious wor- ship, are the long ranges of dusty and tattered ban- ners, 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 cap- tured flags of all the nations with whom the British lion has waged war since James II. 's time, — French, Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and American, — collected together in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize that there shall be no more dis- cord upon earth, but drooping over the aisle in sullen, though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said "Ameri- can " among the rest ; for the good old pensioner mis- took 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, how ever, that their proud devices are already indistinguish- able, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the kind offices of the moths, and that they will soon rot from the banner-staves and be swept out in unrecog- nized fragments from .the chapel-door. It is a good method of teaching a man how imper- fectly cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country's flag occupying a position of dishonor in a foreign 304 UP THE THAMES. land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over its military triumphs had far better be dispensed with, both on account of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and be- cause it operates as an accumulative inducement to fu- ture 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 reminiscence or tradition of a hero, from the beginning of the world to this day, could pass out of all men's memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure, if we Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading of those illuminated names. I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guer- don of all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite him for having 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 sol- diers, 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 years, and was married, but necessarily underwent a separation from his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my in- quiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, " Oh yes, sir ! " qualifying his evidence, after a moment's con- UP THE THAMES. 305 sideration, by saying in an undertone, " There are some people, your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable anywhere." I did know it, and fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that wholesome care and regulation of their own occupa- tions and interests which might assuage the sting of life to those naturally uncomfortable 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 Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sun- shine like an imaginary structure, — an air-castle by chance descended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap- bubble touch unharmed on the carpet, — a thing of only momentary visibility and no substance, destined to be overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt a picture of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall I try to paint? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images ; it is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of 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 be- held. Nor have other writers often been more suc- VOL. VII. 20 306 UP THE THAMES. cessful in representing 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, but for reviving the recollections and reawak- ening the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tuckerman's " Month in England," — a fine example of the way in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling and reflection which they excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of coloring maybe somewhat more efficacious. Impressions, however, states of mind produced by in- teresting and remarkable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, though but the result of what we see, go further to- wards representing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emotions that cluster about it, and, without being able to analyze the spell by which it is summoned up, you get something 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- entrance in the time - blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a congregation as- sembled 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 overspread by its stone pavement, UP THE THAMES. 307 to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier concave than any hu- man 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 for- ward. 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 preserved in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem- strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by ; and being so grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who was 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 — 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 being thus watched over, — whether as a place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an 308 UP THE THAMES. object of national interest and pride, — it may reason- ably be expected to survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to feel its ven- erable quietude, its long-enduring pnace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of to-day, which fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside some- what 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 ac- cords 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 enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were painted glass windows, of which the uppermost ap- peared 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 ema- nating from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brill- iancy 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 yel- low with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memori- als of such men as their respective generations deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemo- rated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten, generals or admirals, these) by ponder- UP THE THAMES. 309 ous 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 sis- terhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs ; but it was strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to over- power the ridiculous without deigning to hide it ; and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their most solemn con- ceptions. From these distant wanderings (it was my first visit to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it all in at a glance) my eyes came back and began to investigate what was immediately about me in the transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning's statue. Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed the full- length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, — the historic Duke of Charles I.'s time, and the fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her tomb proudly informed us, of which all the brothers had been valiant and all the sisters vir- tuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new marble as white as snow, held the next place ; and near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it was by no merit of his own (though he took care to 310 UP THE THAMES. assume it as such), but by the valor and warlike enter- prise 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 judi- cial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of the latter, sat on the other side of the transept ; and on the pedestal beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, instead of the customary grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is an ancient and classic instrument, undoubtedly ; but I had sup- posed 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 Kem- ble, in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long en- durance of marble and the solemn 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 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 him- self in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over UP THE THAMES. 311 his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his nose, or to some equally familiar purpose ; while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest compla- cency, as if he were looking right into your eyes, and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertina- ciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what common ground there may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble, — not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the age-long duration of marble upon small, charac- teristic individualities, such as might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which would ob- literate all mean peculiarities ; for, if the original were unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, the English face and form are seldom statuesque, however illustri- ous the individual. It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this mood of half -jocose criticism in describing my first -312 UP THE THAMES. visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed about more reverentially, from my child- hood upward, than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly in- terest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by de- positing his dust or his memory there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel inclined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an ordinary church you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the place ; but you need leave no honest and decorous por- tion of your human nature outside of these benign and truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general im- pression, 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 Abbey, because " they do bury fools there ! " Never- theless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break out in dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of the interior 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 bio- graphical record of each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mis- takes, and none the less solemn for the occasional UP THE THAMES. 313 absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are con- tent at last to read many names, both in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of man- kind, if indeed they ever really possessed it. Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It matters little a few more or less, or whether West- minster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of per- sonages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves down under its pavement. The inscriptions and de- vices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluc- tuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any individual 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 en- trance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more strenuously because no fees could be ex- acted 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 hap- 314 UP THE THAMES. pened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, " O 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 nota- bilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it I — such a prodigious length of time to keep one's feet! — apart from the honor of the thing, it would cer- tainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country churchyard. To this day, how- ever, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of English society profess for their literary men. Another day — in truth, many other days — I sought out Poets' Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed finger directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to the building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stone-work of the walls. Great poets, too ; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that) is close by, and a profile-medallion UP THE THAMES. 315 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. En- joying a humble intimacy — and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude ! — with many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. It was delightful to be 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 compan- ionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other miserable impediment, had divided them far asunder while they lived. I have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous dead 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 poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no substance ; they flit ineffectually about the dark- ened stage 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 316 UP THE THAMES. dwelt in the body. And therefore — though he cun- ningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of state, or kingly purple — it is not the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or have, — a name! In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been be- trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me ; but it represents fairly enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets ? Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memorials of personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Con- fessor 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 Agin- court, and now suspended above his tomb, are memo- rable objects, but more for Shakespeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank has been the general passport 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 Eng- lish spirit not to be mentioned), one or two gigantic statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely UP THE THAMES. 317 to the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly in theii* marble chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of the earlier mon- uments, 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 con- nected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Sec- retary 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 remem- bered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of some- what 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 por- tion 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 themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being at home here, should recollect how they were treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking askance at nobles and official personages, however worthy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's re- gard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness, — this dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to themselves) in the vast minster, the walls of which 318 UP THE THAMES. 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 contains 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 estimate that all the literary people who really make an essential part of one's inner life, in- cluding the period since English literature first ex- isted, might have ample elbow-room to sit down and quaff their draughts of Castaly round Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected glory over the humblest of their companions. And as for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long out- grown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensi- bilities of their craft, and have found out the little value (probably not amounting to sixpence in immor- tal currency) of the posthumous renown which they once aspired to win. It would be a poor compliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise. Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of an undying song would fain be conscious of its endless reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names emblazoned in such a treasure-place of great memories as Westminster Abbey. There are some men, at all events, — true and tender poets, moreover, and fully deserving of the honor, — whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets' UP THE THAMES. 319 Corner, for the sake of witnessing their own apotheo- sis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympa- thy, 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 au- thors 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 affectation, but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living 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 vil- lage street, and certainly nothing to gratify his crav- ing for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slat- ternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable 320 UP THE THAMES. old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into his little study, or par- lor, or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor paper- hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I re- member, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become him well ; but he had not the grim dignity that assumes naked- ness as the better robe. I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a finer 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 his wrinkles many ; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew more ear- nest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts dif- fused about his face, but then another flash of youth UP THE THAMES. 321 came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive trans- formation, before or since ; and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to de- cide which was his genuine and stable predicament, — youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose man- ners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than pol- ished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition 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 delight- ful voice accompanied their visible language like mu- sic. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the conscious- ness of the person to whom he happened to be address- ing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and deli- cate ; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner re- servoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare yourself the trouble of utterance, because he already knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little more than you would have spoken. His figure was full of gentle movement, though, somehow, without disturbing its quietude ; and as he talked, he kept VOL. VII. 21 B22 UP THE THAMES. folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many ways a fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should im- agine, of a passionate experience 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, entered 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 fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was merely a projection of his fancy world into the 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 peace- fulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and defen- sive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fine- ness of his nature generally, that the English appre- ciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels, in his declining age. It was not, I think, from his American blood that Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peace- ful inclinations ; 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 UP THE THAMES. 323 side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But the kind of excellence that distinguished him — his fineness, subtilty, and grace — was that which the richest cul- tivation has heretofore tended to develop in the hap- pier 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 manners ; for we are the best as well as the worst mannered people in the world. Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth of 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 de- light, with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness, for which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the happiness that such appreciation gave him ; it always took him by surprise, he remarked, for — perhaps be- cause he cleaned his own boots, and performed other little ordinary offices for himself — he never had been conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usu- ally the hardest thing in the world to praise a man to his face ; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with such gracious satisfaction (feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar praise), that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of 324 UP THE THAMES. permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were talking ; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he most favorably 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 temper- ament, 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 repre- sentative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its con- summate 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 ear- lier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future life ; and there were abundant proofs, through- out our interview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk, — all of which gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could have had one full draught of prosperity be- fore he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it UP THE THAMES. 325 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 wo- men 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, neverthe- less. Several years afterwards I met him for the last time at a London dinner-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 embraced and supported by, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel- name, since he has a week-day one for his personal oc- casions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Corn- wall, whose kind introduction had first made me known to Leigh Hunt. OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVEPTY. Becoming an inhabitant of a great English town, I often turned aside from the prosperous thorough- fares (where the edifices, the shops, and the bustling crowd differed not so much from scenes with which I was familiar in my own country), and went design- edly 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 observation, a sort of sombre phantasma- goric spectacle, exceedingly 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 ; ever 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 Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the bright- ness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into transitory dust which the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with the damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itself with al] GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327 surfaces (unless continually and painfully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the all- pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, hover- ing overhead, descending, and alighting on pavements and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin of the ladies, and the gentlemen's starched collars and shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half- mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of Wealth to keep the smut away from its premises or its own fingers' ends ; and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself to the dark influence without a struggle. Along with disastrous circumstances, 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 acknowledge that noth- ing less than such a general washing-day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly old world of its moral and ma- terial dirt. Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets, and are set off with the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tar- nished by contact with the unclean customers who haunt there. Ragged children come thither with old shaving-mugs, or broken-nosed teapots, or any such makeshift receptacle, to get a little poison or madness for their parents, who deserve no better requital at their hands for having engendered them. Inconceiv- ably sluttish women enter at noonday and stand at the counter among boon-companions of both sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaff- 328 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. ing off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking till they are drunken, — drinking as long as they have a half- 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 again. Most of these establishments have a significant advertisement of "Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their customers in the interval between one intoxication and the next. I never could find it in my heart, however, utterly to condemn these sad revellers, and should cer- tainly wait till I had some better consolation to offer before depriving them of their dram of gin, though death itself were in the glass; for methought their poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual ex- istence that limited their present misery. The temper- ance-reformers unquestionably derive their commission from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been taken fully into its counsels. All may not be lost, though those good men fail. Pawnbrokers' establishments, 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 esti- mated in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for a loan, was a problem that still perplexes me. Old clothesmen, likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out an- cient garments to dangle in the wind. There were butchers' shops, too, of a class adapted to the neigh- borhood, presenting no such generously fattened car- casses as Englishmen love to gaze at in the market, GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 329 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 of tener than Christmas. In the windows of other little shops you saw half a dozen wizened her- rings ; some eggs in a basket, looking so dingily an- tique 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 pastur- ing 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 won- derfully cheap cigars. And yet I remember seeing female hucksters in those regions, with their wares on the edge of the sidewalk and their own seats right in the carriage-way, pretending to sell half-decayed oranges and apples, toffy, Ormskirk cakes, combs, and cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery, and little 330 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. plates of oysters, — knitting patiently all day long, and removing their undiminished stock in trade at night- fall. All indispensable importations from other quar- ters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale : for example, the wealthier inhabitants pur- chased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through the street and drop a hand- ful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling for the treasure-trove, like a flock of hens and chickens gobbling up some spilt corn. In this connection I may as well mention a commodity of boiled snails (for such they appeared to me, though probably a marine production) which used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot, as an article of cheap nutriment. The population of these dismal abodes appeared to consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as their common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity of place might be arranged rigidly according to the classic rule, and the street be the one locality in which every scene and incident should occur. Courtship, quarrels, plot and counterplot, conspiracies for rob- bery 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 com- fortable or wholesome part of life, for the city poor, must be spent in the open air. The stifled and squalid rooms where they lie down at night, whole families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily elbow one another in the daytime, when a settled rain drives GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 331 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 housewife, before the shower is ended, letting the raindrops gutter down her visage ; while her chil- dren (an impish progeny of cavernous recesses below the common sphere of humanity) swarm into the day- light and attain all that they know of personal purifi- cation in the nearest mud-puddle. It might almost make a man doubt the existence of his own soul, to observe how Nature has flimg these little wretches into the street and left them there, so evidently re- garding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind acquiesce in the great mother's estimate of her off- spring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what superior claim can I assert for mine ? And how diffi- cult to believe that anything so precious as a germ of immortal growth can have been buried under this dirt- heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice ! As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me with sur- prise 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 viva- cious multitude of unclean and devilish - looking in- sects scampering to and fro beneath it. Without an infinite faith, there seemed as much * prospect of a blessed futurity for those hideous bugs and many- footed worms as for these brethren of our humanity and co-heirs of all our heavenly inheritance. Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after groping at 332 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half- drowned body of a child along with it, and heaving it aloft for its life, and my own life, and all our lives. Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made capa- ble of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest and most intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath of it. The whole question of 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 slumbering in the daylight 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 doorsteps, nursing their unwashed babies at bosoms which we will glance aside from, for the sake of our mothers and all womanhood, because the fairest spectacle is here the foulest. Yet motherhood, in these dark abodes, is strangely identical with what we have all known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I remember, smote me with more grief and pity (all the more poign ant 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 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 characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 333 of these poor souls. It was the very same creature whose tender torments make the rapture of our young days, whom we love, cherish, and protect, and rely upon in life and death, and whom we delight to see beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I rec- ognized her, over and over again, in the groups round a doorstep or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laugh- ing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same instant with one neighbor's sunshine and another's shadow ; wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily per- turbed, 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 de- ficiency of good-breeding, even here. It often sur- prised me to witness 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 stair- case, the doorstep, and the pavement, which perhaps had as deep a foundation in natural fitness as the code of the drawing-room. Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been ut- tering folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect how rude and rough these specimens of feminine char- acter generally were. They had a readiness with their hands that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other heroines in Fielding's novels. For example, I have 334 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears, — an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the very ear- liest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater de- gree than ourselves by this simple and honest ten- dency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another's persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies (for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigor on the part of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their large physical endow- ments. Such being the case with the delicate orna- ments of the drawing-room, it is less to be wondered at that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest kind of companionship and occupation, should carry on the intercourse of life with a freedom un- known 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 in- fants that could just toddle across the street alone) go- ing about in the mud and mire, or through the dusky snow and slosh of a severe week in winter, with petti- coats high uplifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but I was comforted by observing that both shoes and stockings generally reappeared with better weather, having been thriftily kept out of the damp for the con- GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 335 yenience of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood was wonderful, and their strength greater than could have been expected from such spare diet as they prob- ably 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 locomotive masses of verdure and fra- grance. But these poor English women seemed to be laden with rubbish, incongruous 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 remem- ber, in a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, and herself exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet endowed with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a robe of simple beauty and suitable behavior that she was born in and had never been tempted to throw off, because she had really nothing else to put on. Eve herself could not have been more natural. Nothing was affected, nothing imitated ; no proper grace was vulgarized by an effort to assume the manners or adornments of another sphere. This kind of beauty, arrayed in a fitness of its own, is probably vanishing out of the world, and will certainly never be found in America, where all the girls, whether daughters of the 336 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. upper-tendom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the ken- nel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, sel- dom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or an utterly absurd failure. Those words, " genteel " 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 mode of simplicity than has 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 efficacy still asserted itself in character. A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neigh- bors, would be knitting or sewing on the doorstep, just as fifty other women were ; but round about her skirts (though wofully patched) you would be sensible of a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, could not have been kept more impregnable in the cosiest little sitting-room, where the teakettle on the hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless to my own better perceptions ; and yet I have seen girls in these wretched streets, on whose virgin purity, judging merely from their impression on my instincts as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at the moment, to stake my life. The next moment, how- ever, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is equally wise and equally beneficent (even to those poor girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the re- motest comprehension of the mode of it), whether they were pure or what we fellow-sinners call vile. Unless GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337 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 Mil- ton here quoted, I come to the conclusion that those ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as they looked backward to the closed gate of Paradise, were no fiends from the pit, but the more terrible foreshad^ owings 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 pa- tience 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 pro- duced. 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 sin- cerely hope) snatched her own imp out of a group of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that were playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned up its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its poor little tenderest part, and let it go again with a shake. If the child knew what the punishment was for, it was wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled and went back to its playmates in the mud. Yet let me bear testi- vol. vii. 22 338 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. mony to what was beautiful, and more touching than anything that I ever witnessed before in the inter- course of happier children. I allude to the superin- tendence which some of these small people (too small, one would think, to be sent into the street alone, had there been any other nursery for them) exercised over still smaller ones. Whence they derived such a sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot tell ; but it was wonderful to observe the expression of responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidel- ity with which they discharged their unfit office, the tender patience with which they linked their less pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the hol- low-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving a cheerless oversight to her baby - brother, I did not so much marvel at it. She had merely come a little earlier than usual to the perception of what was to be her business in life. But I admired the sickly- looking little boy, who did violence to his boyish na- ture by making 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 mir- acle to transport her from one dirt-heap to another. Beholding such works of love and duty, I took heart again, and deemed it not so impossible, after all, for these neglected children to find a path through the squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate of heaven. Perhaps there was this latent good in all of them, though generally they looked brutish, and dull even in their sports; there was little mirth among them, nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguard ism. Yet sometimes, again, I saw, with surprise and a sense as if I had been asleep and dreaming, the GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 339 bright, intelligent, merry face of a child whose dark eyes gleamed with vivacious expression through the dirt that incrusted its skin, like sunshine struggling through a very dusty window-pane. In these streets the belted and blue-coated police- man 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 my- self, who might violate the filthy sanctities of the place, before the law could bring up its lumbering as- sistance. Nevertheless, there is a supervision ; nor does the watchfulness of authority permit the populace to be tempted to any outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth, I noticed a ballad - singer going through the street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a provincial dialect, of which I could only make out that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the score of starvation ; but by his side stalked the police- man, offering no interference, but watchful to hear what this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, if his effusion threatened to prove too soul-stirring. In my judgment, however, there is little or no danger of that kind : they starve patiently, sicken patiently, die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to those above them, it will probably be by the communi- cation of some destructive pestilence ; for, so the med- ical men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases with a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Char- ity herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their contact. It weuld be a dire revenge, indeed, if they 340 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. were to prove their claims to be reckoned of one blood and nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compel- ling them to inhale death through the diffusion of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an Ameri- can that he is apt to become their prey, being recog- nized through his national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets. The English smile at him, and say that there are ample public arrangements for every pauper's possible need, that street charity pro- motes idleness and vice, and that yonder personifica- tion of misery on the pavement will lay up a good day's profit, besides supping more luxuriously than the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by the stranger adopts their theQry and begins to practise upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment or sometimes a too late contrition. Years afterwards, it may be, his memory is still haunted by some vin- dictive wretch whose cheeks were pale and hunger- pinched, whose rags fluttered in the east-wind, whose right arm was paralyzed and his left leg shrivelled into a mere nerveless stick, but whom he passed by re- morselessly because an Englishman chose to say that the fellow's misery looked too perfect, was too artist- ically got up, to be genuine. Even allowing this to be true (as, a hundred chances to one, it was), it would still have been a clear case of economy to buy him off with a little loose silver, so that his lamentable figure should not limp at the heels of your conscience all over the world. To own the truth, I provided myself with several such imaginary persecutors in England, GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 341 and recruited their number with at least one sickly- looking wretch whose acquaintance I first made at As- sisi, in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sinis- ter in his aspect, permitted him to beg early and late, and ail 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 lifelike portrait at this moment. Were I to go over the same ground again, I would lis- ten 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 transport- ing himself (simultaneously, I believe) to all quarters of the city. He wore a sailor's jacket (possibly, be- cause skirts would have been a superfluity to his fig- ure), and had a remarkably broad-shouldered and mus- cular frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored face, which was full of power and intelligence. His dress and linen were the perfection of neatness. Once a day, at least, wherever I went, I suddenly became aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me, resting on his base, and looking as if he had just sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant you left him behind. The expression of his eye was per- 342 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. fectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding jyar own as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms ; and he reminded me of the old beg- gar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sym- pathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him from the road^ side with a long - barrelled musket. The intentness and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unre- lenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower of insolence ; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpretation, it was the ty- rannical effort of a man endowed with great natural force of character to constrain your reluctant will to his purpose. Apparently, he had staked his salva- tion upon the ultimate success of a daily struggle be- tween himself and me, the triumph of which would compel me to become a tributary to the hat that lay on the pavement beside him. Man or fiend, however, there was a stubbornness in his intended victim which this massive fragment of a mighty personality had not altogether reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled to pass him at my customary pace hundreds of times over, quietly meeting his terribly respectful eye, and allowing him the fair chance which I felt to be his due, to subjugate me, if he really had the strength for it. He never succeeded, but, on the other hand, never gave up the contest ; and should I ever walk those streets again, I am certain that the truncated tyrant will sprout up through the pavement and look me fix- edly 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 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 343 beggarly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker side and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimo- nious 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 accompa- nied 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 indulgent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands : — of the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appealing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some small prosperities which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming to have largely contributed to them by his unbought notices in the public journals. England is full of such people, and a hundred other varieties of peripa- tetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an abso- lutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an ex- ception, — rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings, — yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (unless you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability, even when you are certain that there is a knave beneath it. 344 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 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 miserable a life outside was truly difficult to account for. Accordingly, I visited a great alms- house, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably all the parts of the establishment were carried on, and what an orderly life, full - fed, sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of author- ity, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was that very orderliness, and the cruel necessity of being neat and clean, and even the comfort resulting from these and other Christian-like restraints and regula- tions, that constituted the principal grievance on the part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a life- long luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a charm, to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as the life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the ma- jority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic preference for the street would incline the pauper class to fare scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable door stood wide open for their entrance. It might be that the roughest and darkest side of the matter was not shown me, there being persons of eminent station and of both sexes in the party which I accompanied ; and, of course, a properly trained public functionary would have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as well as a great shame, to exhibit anything to people of rank that might too painfully shock their sensibilities. GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 345 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 sug- gested, some of them felt the irksomeness of submis- sion 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 poverty, or of any circumstances that set us fairly below the decencies of life. I asked the governor of the house whether he met with any difficulty in keeping peace and order among his in- mates ; 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 perceptible that some of them were consciously playing their parts before the governor and his distin- guished visitors. This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit for his position. An American, in an office of similar responsibility, would doubtless be a much superior person, better educated, possessing a far wider range of thought, more naturally acute, with a quicker tact of external observation and a readier faculty of deal- ing with difficult cases. The women would not suc- ceed in throwing half so much dust into his eyes. 346 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 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 gentle- man. But I cannot help questioning whether, on the whole, these higher endowments would produce de- cidedly better results. The Englishman wass thor- oughly plebeian both in aspect and behavior, a bluff, ruddy -faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman -like personage, with no refinement whatever, nor any superfluous sen- sibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness of character which must have been a very beneficial ele- ment in the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke to his pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful tones, and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free and healthy likewise. If he had under- stood them a little better, he would not have treated them half so wisely. We are apt to make sickly peo- ple more morbid, and unfortunate people more miser- able, by endeavoring to adapt our deportment to their especial and individual needs. They eagerly accept our well-meant efforts ; but it is like returning their own sick breath back upon themselves, to be breathed over and over again, intensifying the inward mischief at every reception. The 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 poisonous weed in the sunshine. My good friend the governor had no tendencies in the lat- ter direction, and abundance of them in the former, and was consequently as wholesome and invigorating as the west-wind with a little spice of the north in it, brightening the dreary visages that encountered us as GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 347 if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand. He ex- pressed himself by his whole being and personality, and by works more than words, and had the not un- usual English merit of knowing what to do much bet- ter than how to talk about it. The women, I imagine, must have felt one imper fection 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 well dressed in one homely uni- form of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these abso- lutely 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, how- ever, there was at least one person who claimed to be intimately connected with rank and wealth. The gov- ernor, after suggesting that this person would probably be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small par- lor, which was furnished a little more like a room in a private dwelling than others that we entered, and had a row of religious books and fashionable novels on the mantel - piece. An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, reading a romance, and rose to receive us with a cer- tain pomp of manner and elaborate display of cere- monious courtesy, which, in spite of myself, made me inwardly question the genuineness of her aristocratic 348 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. pretensions. But, at any rate, she looked like a re- spectable old soul, and was evidently gladdened to the very core of her frost-bitten heart by the awful punc- tiliousness with which we responded to her gracious and hospitable, though unfamiliar 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 carriages to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated with great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and manner, that there might have been a mistake on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exaggera- tion on the old lady's, concerning her former position in society; but what struck me was the forcible in- stance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side, and the submission and reverence with which it was ac- cepted by the governor and his household, on the other. Among ourselves, I think, when wealth and eminent position have taken their departure, they sel- dom 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 vol- ubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and peace when we stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 349 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 cheer- ful air, though it often stirred them up to a momen- tary vivacity to be accosted by the governor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, by the visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there (and running hastily through my experiences, I hardly rec- ollect 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 cog- nizant of the fact) confirmed her age to be a hundred and four. Her jauntiness and cackling merriment were really wonderful. It was as if she had got through with all her actual business in life two or three generations ago, and now, freed from every re- sponsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up a mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long time (and, happy as she was, she appeared not to care whether it were long or short), before Death, who had misplaced her name in his list, might remember to take her away. She had gone quite round the circle "of human existence, and come back to the play-ground again. And so she had grown to be a kind of mi- raculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy or eighty years younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful re- sponses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed 350 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. a gibe that caused their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby. In the same room sat a pauper who had once been an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the brain. The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her life, and disturbed all healthy relationship be- tween 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 inscrutable sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her past life, or, quite as probably, it was but a dramatic woe, be- neath which she had staggered and shrieked and wrung her hands with hundreds of repetitions in the sight of crowded theatres, and been 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 herself, who had agi- tated thousands of hearts with a breath, sat starving for the admiration that was her natural food. I ap- peal to the whole society of artists of the Beautiful and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers, painters, sculptors, actors, — whether or no this is a grief that may be felt even amid the torpor of a dissolving brain ! We looked into a good many sleeping-chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two oc- GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 351 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 arrangements of the almshouse ; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a sub- stantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty of perfect neatness and orderliness, which, being here- tofore 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 atmos- phere being hot and vaporous with the steam of wet garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere was the pauper-life of the past week or fortnight resolved into a gaseous state, and breathing it, however fastidiously, we were forced to inhale the strange element into our inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I know not how she could have escaped the necessity. What an intimate brotherhood is this in which we dwell, do what we may to put an artificial remoteness between the high creature and the low one ! A poor man's breath, borne on the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, floats into a palace-window and reaches the nostrils of a monarch. It is but an example, obvious to the sense, of the innumerable and secret channels by which, at every moment of our lives, the flow and reflux of a common humanity pervade us all. How superficial are the niceties of such as pretend to keep aloof ! Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us all can be clean. By and by we came to the ward where the children were kept, on entering which, we saw, in the first place, several unlovely and unwholesome little people lazily playing together in a court-yard. And here a 352 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. singular incommodity befell one member of our party. Among the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid little thing (about six years old, perhaps, but I know not whether a girl or a boy), with a humor in its eyes and face, which the governor said was the scurvy, and which appeared to bedim its powers of vision, so that it toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it did not precisely know what. This child — this sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant, the offspring of un- speakable sin and sorrow, whom it must have required several generations of guilty progenitors to render so pitiable an object as we beheld it — immediately 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, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps under-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 confi- dence 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 prom- ised the poor child this favor on behalf of that individ- ual, 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 Englishman's cus- tomary reserve, shy of actual contact with human be* ings, afflicted with a peculiar distaste for whatever was ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit of GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 353 observation from an insulated stand-point which is said (but, I hope, erroneously) to have the tendency of putting ice into the blood. So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good deal of interest, and am 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 doubtless 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 court-yard, after visiting another part of the establishment, here again was this same little Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joyful, and yet dull recognition about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the child's mission in reference to our friend was to remind him that he was responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings and misdemeanors of the world in which he lived, and was not entitled to look upon a particle of its dark ca- lamity as if it were none of his concern : the offspring of a brother's iniquity being his own blood-relation, and the guilt, likewise, a burden on him, unless he ex- piated 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 same or a worse condition than the little creature just described, with their mothers (or more probably other women, for the infants were mostly foundlings) in at- vol. vii. 23 354 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. tendance as nurses. The matron of the ward, a mid- dle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly in as- pect, 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 us that she enjoyed her occupa- tion, being exceedingly fond of children ; and, in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little people 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 individual more than another. In this point they differed widely from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to rec- ognize 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 perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapable of the quick thrills of delight and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child's nature, and partly by their wof ul lack of acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore desti- tute of the sweet home-bred shyness, which is like the sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted child. Their condition was like that of chickens hatched in an oven, and growing up without the especial guardianship of a matron hen : both the chicken and the child, me- thinks, must needs want something that is essential to their respective characters. In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 355 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 viv= idly 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 con- ditions of humanity. The holiest man could not be otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, in a world where such a babe was pos- sible. The governor whispered me, apart, that, like nearly all the rest of them, it was the child of un- healthy parents. Ah, yes ! There was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous mockery of the visible link which Love creates between man and woman, was born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, and Sinful Disease its mother, and their offspring lay in the woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence, which, could it live and grow up, would make the world a more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it could not live ! This baby, if we must give it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored ; it was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless ; it breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in refer- ence to it was the evident impossibility of its surviv- ing to draw many more of those miserable, moaning 6reaths ; and it would have been infinitely less heart- depressing to see it die, right before my eyes, than to 356 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still suf- fering 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 pre- mature 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 responded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before mankind, on whom God has imposed the necessity to suffer in soul and body till this dark and dreadful wrong be righted. Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were un- derneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children whom we had just seen, were, in large proportion, foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish faces, and a general tendency to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be un- easy within their skins, and screwed themselves about on the benches in a disagreeably suggestive way, as if they had inherited the evil habits of their parents as an innermost garment of the same texture and mate- rial as the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with un- speakable discomfort as long as they lived. I saw only a single child that looked healthy ; and on my point- ing 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, GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 357 and his father one of the officers of the institution. As for the remainder, - — the hundred pale abortions to be counted against one rosy-cheeked boy, — what shall we say or do? Depressed by the sight of so much misery, and uninventive of 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 neces- sity 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 disease 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, moral and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man's discretionary rights, and probably will not be adopted by Divine Providence until the opportunity of milder reformation shall have been offered us again and again, through a series of future ages. It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and excellent governor, as well as other persons better ac- quainted with the subject than myself, took a less gloomy view of it, though still so dark a one as to in- volve scanty consolation. They remarked that indi- viduals of the male sex, picked up in the streets and nurtured in the work-house, sometimes succeed toler- ably well in life, because they are taught trades before being turned into the world, and, by dint of immacu- late behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get employment and earn a livelihood. The case is differ- 358 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. ent with the girls. They can only go to service, and are invariably rejected by families of respectability on account of their origin, and for the better reason , of their unfitness 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 scan- tily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and preca- rious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their slimy way on stepping-stones. From the schools we went to the bake-house, and the brew-house (for such cruelty is not harbored in the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper his daily allowance of beer), and through the kitchens, where we beheld an immense pot over the fire, surg- ing and walloping with some kind of a savory stew that filled it up to its brim. We also visited a tailor's shop, and a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a num- ber of men, and pale, diminutive 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 im- mense 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 pro- vided with a loop of rope at either end for the conven- ience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the cart that shall carry them to the burial-ground. There, in holes ten feet deep, the paupers are buried one above another, mingling their relics indistinguishably. In another world may they resume their individuality and find it a happier one than here ! GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 359 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 court yard, clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us with a howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when it was given him. All under-witted persons, so far as my experience goes, have this craving for copper coin, and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous in- stinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abey- ance. 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 trait of im- perfectly developed intelligence, like the simpleton's cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns, — and probably not till then, — I imagine that there will be no more poor streets nor need of almshouses. I was once present at the wedding of some poor English people, and was deeply impressed by the spec- tacle, though by no means with such proud and de- lightful emotions as seem to have affected all Eng- land on the recent occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in the Cathedral at Manchester, a particularly black and grim old structure, into which I had stepped to examine some ancient and curious wood-carvings within the choir. The woman in attend- ance greeted me with a smile (which always glimmers 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, 360 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 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 loafer's 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, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and care ; nothing virgin- like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms ; — they were, in short, . the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to sweep together into an unf ragrant heap. Each and all of them, conscious of his or her individual misery, had blundered into the strange miscalculation of sup- posing 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 individual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to include the whole company without the trouble of repetition. By this compendious contrivance, one would apprehend, he came dangerously near mak- ing every man and woman the husband or wife of GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 361 every other ; nor, perhaps, would he have perpetrated much additional mischief by the mistake ; but, after re- ceiving a benediction in common, they assorted them- selves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the un- sheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly* the female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something exceed- ingly 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 bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly coachman and two postilions, that waited at the gate. One parson and one service had amalgamated the wretchedness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual might to forge the golden links of this other marriage- bond. The bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless and kindly English pride ; the bride floated along in her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything so grimy as the old stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged people, who always cluster to witness what they may of an aristocratic wedding, broke into audible admira- tion of the bride's beauty and the bridegroom's man- liness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the 362 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. most favorable of earthly conditions could make them happy, they had every prospect of it. They were go- ing 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 vener- able trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trimmest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended that summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ; and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and inalienably their own, because of its descent through many fore- fathers, each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title- deeds ? Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any home whatever ? One day or another, safe as they deem 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 Eng- lishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his appetite along with him (which it seems to me hardly possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition), 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 repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated it- self 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 cus- toms and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his per- fection, would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this partic- ular, for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here sug- gested, 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 864 CIVIC BANQUETS. with such excellent appetite at Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only be- cause, 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 pleas- ures 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 " Laurence, of virtuous fa- ther 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 genera- tion, 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 rev- erence, 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 appetite ; 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 din- ner, 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 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 con- CIVIC BANQUETS. 365 summate flower of civilization and refinement ; and our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admi- rable beauty if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we have attained. It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this ele- vated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that particular line where they are best qual- ified 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 excel- lences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without un- pardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the masterpieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intan- gible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoy- ments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In 366 CIVIC BANQUETS. the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh to reflect that such a festal achievement ■ — the production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste, — the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with wine — must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, 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 thor- oughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and espe- cially our part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted, and tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner. The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those public, or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace and war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all considerable municipalities and as- sociated bodies. The most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place have long CIVIC BANQUETS. 367 held their sessions ; and always, in convenient conti- guity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fire- place 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 profita- bly devote a page or two to the description of it. In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval edifice, in the basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone pillars and intersecting 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 blazonries. Notwithstand- ing the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panel- ling of black-oak, and some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tap- estry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI. 's time (which is the date of the hall), and is re- garded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the act- 368 CIVIC BANQUETS. ual portraiture of men known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance when you try to make them out. Coats of arms were formerly 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 por- traits of several English kings, Charles II. being the earliest, hang on the walls ; and on the dais, or ele- vated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which several royal characters are traditionally 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, without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceil- ing of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubt- less many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, oppo- site the great arched window, the party-colored radi- ance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels ; and a row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It im- presses me, too (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon), that I remember, CIVIC BANQUETS. 369 somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description, as re- gards a transference of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid idea of an- tiquity that had been very little tampered with ; inso- much that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery, while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound beneath, — why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing description is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the English character; since, from the earliest recognizable period, we find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnifi- cently as their palaces or cathedrals. I know not whether the hall just described is now used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiq- uity and splendor still are. For example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls. It is also enriched with Hol- vol. vii. 24 370 CIVIC BANQUETS. bein's masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits (with such exten- sive beards that methinks one half of the company might have been profitably occupied in trimming the other), kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Rob- ert 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 facsimile painted in. The room has many other pictures of dis- tinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of Eng- land, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader ; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still sur- vive 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, comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude cf less noticeable vessels, two loving-cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups, including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, al- though the bowl-part would hardly contain more than CIVIC BANQUETS. 371 half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected 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 de- scribe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty. I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English 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 person- ages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among indi- viduals 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 differences of opinion being incom- parably less radical than ours, and it being the sincer- est wish of all their hearts, whether they call them- selves Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with English taste. The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present took place during assize-time, and included among the guests the judges and the promi- nent members of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall at seven o'clock, I communicated my name to one of 372 CIVIC BANQUETS. 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, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the course of these transmissions ; so that 1 had the advantage of making my entrance in the char- acter 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 Eng- lishman will almost invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease ; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon be- gan to look round at the general company in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and draw- ing 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 law- yers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the mercan- tile 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 continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose char- acter I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a ra- pier at his side ; otherwise, with the exception of the military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of CIVIC BANQUETS. 373 official costume. It being the first considerable as- semblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remarkable rough- ness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally mid- dle-aged, or still further advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure ; for the comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbre- viate themselves, and his stomach to assume the digni- fied prominence which justly belongs to that metrop- olis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin, with a promise of more ; so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis- cover the intellectual. Comparing him with an Amer- ican, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, more- over, that the English tailor had not done so much as he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments ; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out jf his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think tnat this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individ- 374 CIVIC BANQUETS. ual propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit being to the character rather than the form. If you make an 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 inland county in New England, might show a set of thin-visaged men looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly fur- rowed 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 contest. How that matter might turn out, I am unqualified 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 man- ners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a separate endowment, — that is to say, if the individual himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo- Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own proprieties. The only value of my crit- icisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the prone- ness of a traveller to measure one people by the dis- tinctive characteristics of another, — as English writ- ers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves CIVIC BANQUETS. 375 to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may be in conformity. In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indeco- rous zeal, which I never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid table-service, and a noble array of foot- men, some of them in plain clothes, and others wear- ing the town-livery, richly decorated with gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming young manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and be- hold 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, decan- ters of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of ar- tificial 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 ta- ble until called for in separate plates. I have entirely 876 CIVIC BANQUETS. forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a hun- dred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gentle- men had a private understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Camaeho'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 betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen toil onward to the end. They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that they seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and cer- tainly was not so various, as that to which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate ac- quaintance with rare vintages does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his lifelong friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a mo- ment, and reaping the reward of his constancy 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 ha- bitual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opin- ion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry CIVIC BANQUETS. 377 off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our tem- perance reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remem- ber a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustra- tion of the very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Link- water, or Drinkwater, — but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last, — while sitting on the magis- terial 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 conversation 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 pre- cedence, 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. For the nonce, they are the greatest men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to enthusi- asm, 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 her- self to the table. Happening to be in company with 378 CIVIC BANQUETS. some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occa- sions, it appeared to me that the judges are fully con- scious 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. Dig- nified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incor- porated with his nature from its original germ, in or- der to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers. My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn vis- age, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few oppor- tunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly featured table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then be- gan a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and, somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training ; and yet he seemed to have all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influ- ences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very CIVIC BANQUETS. 379 gracious (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe his evidently genuine good- will), and by and by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and inquire for Sergeant Wilkins, — throwing out the name forcibly, as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. 1 remembered Dean Swift's retort to Sergeant Bet- tesworth on a similar announcement, — " Of what regiment, pray, sir ? " — and fancied that the same question might not have been quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases ; and it caused me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I think, the most attractive one of all, — thorough manhood. After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of de- canters 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, methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of course, " Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary tootings and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up " God save the Queen ! " and the whole company rose with one im- pulse to assist in singing that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active 380 CIVIC BANQUETS. 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 sac- rifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood, — at present, in the flesh and blood of a woman, — and manages to combine love, awe, and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, 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 Amer- icans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titilla- tions of the heart in consequence of our proud prerog- ative 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 rudest old ditty in the world ; but I could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith and feel- ing as regards the inevitable righteousness of Eng. CIVIC BANQUETS. 381 land, the Almighty's consequent respect and partial- ity for that redoubtable little island, and his presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the con- tumacious wickedness and knavery of all other princi- palities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evi- dently 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 deli- cacy 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 Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to sing any more, unless it be " Hail Columbia " on the restoration of the Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority ; and we finished oar stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind. Other toasts followed in honor of the great institu- tions and interests of the country, and speeches in re- sponse to each were made by individuals whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of them impressed me with a very high idea of Eng- lish postprandial oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most English- men are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch 382 CIVIC BANQUETS. 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 smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of common- place running through them ; and any rough, yet never 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 hered- itary 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 Eng- lish speaker sits down, you feel that you have been listening to a real man, and not to an actor ; his senti- ments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or elab- orating a peroration. It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, CIVIC BANQUETS. 383 nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of Artillery, who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesi- tating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper organ of utterance. While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehen- sively towards Sergeant Wilkins. " Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port to- wards me, " it is your turn next " ; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unprac- tised orator, he kindly added, " It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invita- tion to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might pos- sibly be brought into my present predicament ; but 1 had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagree- able 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 noth- ing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before 1 need rise to speak. Yet here 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. 384 CIVIC BANQUETS. _ If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indiffer- ently 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 unhesitatingly have taken the lat- ter 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 sentences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor va- cuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed ; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogis- tic 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 disagreeable 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 when one golden word was to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of inter- national sentiment, which it might, and must, and should do to utter. CIVIC BANQUETS. 385 Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at declamatory- pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsi- ble for the speech : a prodigious consolation and en- couragement under the circumstances I I went on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, me- thought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. " It was handsomely done ! " quoth Sergeant Wilkins ; and I felt like a re- cruit 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 might ; for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delin- quency on my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was va- rious. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of impos- ture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every sylla- ble at the moment of need, and had to improvise an- other as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Provi- dence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much embarrassed by a small audience, and VOL. VII. 25 386 CIVIC BANQUETS. succeeded better with a large one, — the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality, and tosses him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and con- fidently, with an expectation of going through the busi ness entirely at my ease, I often found that I had lit tie or nothing to say ; whereas, if I came to the charge in perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expres- sion to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far off as the clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical pow- er, 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 remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth when the lower feeling of a multi- tude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the au- dience. This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too wretchedly imperfect without an at- tempted description of a Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion House in London. I should have preferred CIVIC BANQUETS. 387 the annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune to witness it. Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular dinners, and gladly accepted it, — taking the precaution, neverthe- less, 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 hum- bly make it a condition that I should not be expected to open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The reply was gra- cious and acquiescent ; so that I presented myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half- past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tor- mented me at such times. The Mansion House was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, to whom the high- est imaginable reward of lifelong 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 gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second- rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be am- bitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this ; for the original emigrants of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the early days of our country ; so that the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions 888 CIVIC BANQUETS. in the estimation 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 to be identified with the aristocracy of the country. In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff breeches, in which they looked wonderfully like Amer- ican Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were like- wise two very imposing 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 occupy at the dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced ; and as- cending 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 inad- missible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners and bearing of two personages sud- denly emerging from a position of respectable medioc- rity into one of preeminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exempli- fication in our own country, and on a scale incompara* CIVIC BANQUETS. 389 bly greater than that of the Mayoralty, though in- vested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been cor- rectly informed, the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expen- diture. There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide folding-doors ; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them ce- lebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I recollect none preeminently distinguished in either department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for example, who de- serve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring them together under genial au- spices, in connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be the Lord Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued ; but it seemed to me that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society, however, I pre- sume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek out modest merit, but comes at last when the recip- 890 CIVIC BANQUETS. ient 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 prin- cipally the wives and daughters of city magnates ; and if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical poems, the city of London has al- ways 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 delicate 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 scrawniness !) a deficiency of physical development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their ma- terial make, a paleness 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 some- times driven to a half-acknowledgment that the Eng- lish ladies, looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advan- tages of the latter, if any they could really be said to CIVIC BANQUETS. 391 have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for half a hun- dred-weight of human clay ! At a given signal we all found our way into an im- mense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic, and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Mem- phis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played in- spiringly 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 entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accom- paniments of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the Lord Mayor's chap- lain 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 platefuls, in spite of the other- wise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judg- ing from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup- tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I par- took of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim, always 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 392 CIVIC BANQUETS. Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox cus- toms 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 numer- ous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet ac- tually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as a sin- gle guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher' s-meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight^ before proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest 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 re- member, that the reader may not go away wholly un- satisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden him, — a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up CIVIC BANQUETS. 393 towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with little 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 young lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar char- acter, would cause the sketch to be recognized, how- ever rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a picture- frame, or the covers of a romance : not that I had ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed like- lier 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 famil- iarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I re- member only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. 394 CIVIC BANQUETS. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrub- bery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with already a myste- rious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) trav- elling in their honeymoon, 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 festival where finger - glasses are usually intro- duced, 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 de- lightful 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 con- fined to the Lord Mayor's table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar. During all the feast, in accordance with another an- cient 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-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous proclamation (in which he enumerated the principal guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several bar- onets, and plenty of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending in some such style as this : " and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all CIVIC BANQUETS. 395 in a loving-cup," — giving 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, stand- ing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, pre- sents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves inextricably inter- twisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it crit- ically, both inside and out, and perceived 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 being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the com- pany had more than barely touched the silver rim be- fore passing it to their neighbors, — a degree of ab- stinence that might be accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor. Being cu- rious to know all about these important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from 396 CIVIC BANQUETS. 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, at- tended with speeches neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table eloquence which had heretofore 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 accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and the herald again is- sued proclamation to the effect that such or such a no- bleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the Right Honor- able the Lord Mayor's toast ; then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments ; and, finally, the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapi- tated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and, having evidently got every word by heart (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment), he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England. The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why CIVIC BANQUETS. 397 should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mel- low themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so refreshing ? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the au- dience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad se- verity, the too earnest 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 hun- dred years ago, for the sake of being jolly ; they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom recipro- cally spoil one another. Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much inter- rupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, 398 CIVIC BANQUETS. both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and be« cause I was in close proximity with three very pleas- ant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored name my readers would recognize as a house- hold word, if I dared write it ; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me 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 Lordship got up and proceeded to make some very eu- logistic remarks upon " the literary and commercial " — I question whether those two adjectives were ever before married 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 eminent gentleman there present," and then went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed be- tween two great nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both CIVIC BANQUETS. 399 sides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flour- ish for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall. All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe - conduct ; and it seemed very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion House wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat as follows. All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic excitement (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that emotion), which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the people, their in- tense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public affairs on other sources than their own ex- amination and individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral $md intellectual. For example, the grand rising of 400 CIVIC BANQUETS. 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 thousand people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as this 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 w r orld, 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 pas- sage 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 companions. At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole coun- try in each man ; and not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the world — our own country and France — that can put England into this singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful of their country's honor, most anxious for the preser- vation of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and in- CIVIC BANQUETS. 401 competent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is really threatened. If the English were accustomed to look at the for- eign side of any international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or plausi- ble grounds, and a naval commander may at any mo- ment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, in which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of show- ing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambas- sador in an indefensible proceeding ; and the Ameri- ican Government (for God had not denied us an ad- ministration of statesmen then) had retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulg- ing them with no pretence whatever for active resent- ment. Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity vol. vii. 26 402 CIVIC BANQUETS, 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 appreciable influence on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord Mayor in- vited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser Cur- tius, 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 desired nothing better than such an he- roic 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, 1 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 beforehand 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 gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and ob- tested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust my guardian-angel for ena> CIVIC BANQUETS. 403 bling me to flounder ashore again. He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary rev- erence in which his office was held, — at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or no, — was held by the descendants of the Pu- ritan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide off into the momentous subject of the relations be- tween England and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion. Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly were silent again. But, as -I have never happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to close these Sketches, leaving myself still erect in so heroic an attitude. PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS OP NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. To FRANCIS BENNOCH, Esq., The dear and valued friend, who, by his generous and genial hospitality and unfailing sympathy, contributed so largely (as is attested by the book itself) to render Mr. Hawthorne's residence in England agreeable and homelike, these English Notes are dedicated, with sincere respect and regard, by THE EDITOR. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. Little comment is needed in reference to the u English Note-Books," besides that which Mrs. Haw- thorne made on first introducing them to the public. They were the result of Hawthorne's residence abroad, on being appointed Consul at Liverpool, by President Pierce. In 1857, just before leaving England for the Continent, Hawthorne, in writing to Mr. Fields, spoke of them as follows : — " I made up a huge package the other day, consist- ing of seven closely written volumes of journal, kept by me since my arrival in England, and filled with sketches of places and men and manners, many of which would doubtless be very delightful to the pub- lic. I think I shall seal them up, with directions in my will to have them opened and published a century hence ; and your firm shall have the refusal of them then." The jesting tone of these sentences shows clearly enough that he really had no intention of arranging for the publication of the Notes after his death ; and, in fact, he left no instructions concerning them. But Mrs. Hawthorne, in the Preface which follows the present editor's brief paragraphs, has explained the motives which led her to place her husband's journals 408 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. before the reading public. His object in writing them was to preserve for his own use, and the freshening of his recollection, those keen but fleeting impressions which are caused by the first contact with new scenes and persons, and never can be set forth with their original vividness unless promptly embodied in writ- ing. Portions of the current record which Hawthorne so carefully preserved were afterwards recast and util- ized in the chapters of " Our Old Home " ; and, had he lived longer, further material from them would very likely have been introduced into his finished work. Among the papers left by him bearing on " Septimius Felton," was a list of references, with the dates, to passages in his English journals, containing matter which he probably thought would prove suggestive and useful when he should come to that part of the contemplated romance which was to enact itself amid English surroundings. Although the " English Note-Books " are not so abundant in imaginative hints as the American, their range of topic and observation is wider, and they show how readily the author, who had lived as a recluse at home, adapted himself to society, to the obligations which his public position and his fame brought upon him. The larger intercourse with the world which he enjoyed in England was, indeed, much to his taste, notwithstanding the resolute devotion to solitude that he maintained in America, where the conditions seem to have been less well suited for bringing him into association with others, and left him to follow the dictates of an inborn reserve and shyness. Mrs. Hawthorne has expressed the hope that her husband's Note-Books might dispel the often- expressed opinion that he was gloomy or morbid ; and INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 409 doubtless they have had, in a measure, this effect. The cheerful tone, blending with or rising above his natural pensiveness, is very noticeable in the pres- ent volumes ; and Mrs. Hawthorne, observing how it gained in strength instead of diminishing with age, once expressed to the writer of these lines the belief that, had Hawthorne survived in full health to a riper age, he would have written more than he did in the genial strain of " Our Old Home," which had long before voiced itself in the Introduction to the " Mosses." G. P. L. PREFACE. It seems justly due to Mr. Hawthorne that the oc* casion of any portion of his private journals being brought before the Public should be made known, since they were originally designed for his own refer- ence only. There had beeu a constant and an urgent demand for a life or memoir of Mr. Hawthorne ; yet, from the extreme delicacy and difficulty of the subject, the Editor felt obliged to refuse compliance with this de- mand. Moreover, Mr. Hawthorne had frequently and emphatically expressed the hope that no one would at- tempt to write his Biography; and the Editor per- ceived that it would be impossible for any person, out- side of his own domestic circle, to succeed in doing it, on account of his extreme reserve. But it was ungra- cious to do nothing, and therefore the Editor, believ- ing that Mr. Hawthorne himself was alone capable of satisfactorily answering the affectionate call for some sketch of his life, concluded to publish as much as possible of his private records, and even extracts from his private letters, in order to gratify the desire of his friends and of literary artists to become more in- timately acquainted with him. The Editor has been severely blamed and wondered at, in some instances, for allowing many things now published to see the 412 PREFACE. light ; but it has been a matter both of conscience and courtesy to withhold nothing that could be given up. Many of the journals were doubtless destroyed ; for the earliest date found in his American papers was that of 1835. The Editor has transcribed the manuscripts just as they were left, without making any new arrangement or altering any sequence, — merely omitting some pas- sages, and being especially careful to preserve what- ever could throw any light upon his character. To persons on a quest for characteristics, however, each of his books reveals a great many, and it is believed that with the aid of the Notes (both American and English) the Tales and Romances will make out a very complete and true picture of his individuality ; and the Notes are often an open sesame to the artistic works. Several thickly written pages of observations — fine and accurate etchings — have been omitted, sometimes because too personal with regard to himself or others, and sometimes because they were afterwards absorbed into one or another of the Romances or papers in " Our Old Home." It seemed a pity not to give these original cartoons fresh from his mind, because they are so carefully finished at the first stroke. Yet, as Mr. Hawthorne chose his own way of presenting them to the public, it was thought better not to exhibit what he himself withheld. Besides, to any other than a fellow-artist, they might seem mere repetitions. It is very earnestly hoped that these volumes of Notes — American, English, and presently Italian — will dispel an often-expressed opinion that Mr. Haw- thorne was gloomy and morbid. He had the inevita- ble pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed PREFACE. 413 what a friend of his called " the awful power of in- sight " ; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splen- dor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sym- pathies and shaping imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumina- tion of his own steady cheer ; and he had the plastic power of putting himself into each person's situation, and of looking from every point of view, which made his charity most comprehensive. From this cause he necessarily attracted confidences, and became con- fessor to very many sinning and suffering souls, to whom he gave tender sympathy and help, while re- signing judgment to the Omniscient and All-wise. Throughout his journals it will be seen that Mr. Hawthorne is entertaining, and not asserting, opin- ions and ideas. He questions, doubts, and reflects with his pen, and, as it were, instructs himself. So that these Note-Books should be read, not as definitive conclusions of his mind, but merely as passing impres- sions often. Whatever conclusions he arrived at are condensed in the works given to the world by his own hand, in which will never be found a careless word. He was so extremely scrupulous about the value and effect of every expression, that the Editor has felt great compunction in allowing a single sentence to be printed unrevised by himself ; but, with the con- sideration of the above remarks always kept in mind, these volumes are intrusted to the generous interpret tation of the reader. If any one must be harshly criti* cised, it ought certainly to be the Editor. 414 PREFACE. When a person breaks in, unannounced, upon the morning hours of an artist, and finds him not in full dress, the intruder, and not the surprised artist, is doubtless at fault. S.H. Dresden, April, 1870. PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS Liverpool, August 4th, 1853. — A month lacking two days since we left America, — a fortnight and some odd days since we arrived in England. I began my services, such as they are, on Monday last, August 1st, and here I sit in my private room at the Consu- late, while the Vice-Consul and clerk are carrying on affairs in the outer office. The pleasantest incident of the morning is when Mr. Pearce (the Vice-Consul) makes his appearance with the account-books, containing the receipts and expenditures of the preceding day, and deposits on my desk a little rouleau of the Queen's coin, wrapped up in a piece of paper. This morning there were eight sovereigns, four half-crowns, and a shilling, — a pretty fair day's work, though not more than the average ought to be. This forenoon, thus far, I have had two calls, not of business, — one from an American cap- tain and his son, another from Mr. H B , whom I met in America, and who has showed us great attention here. He has arranged for us to go to the theatre with some of his family this evening. Since I have been in Liverpool we have hardly had 416 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. a day, until yesterday, without more or less of rain, and so cold and shivery that life was miserable. I am not warm enough even now, but am gradually getting acclimated in that respect. Just now I have been fooled out of half a crown by a young woman, who represents herself as an Ameri- can and destitute, having come over to see an uncle whom she found dead, and she has no means of get- ting back again. Her accent is not that of an Ameri- can, and her appearance is not particularly preposses- sing, though not decidedly otherwise. She is decently dressed and modest in deportment, but I do not quite trust her face. She has been separated from her hus- band, as I understand her, by course of law ; has had two children, both now dead. What she wants is to get back to America, and perhaps arrangements may be made with some shipmaster to take her as steward- ess, or in some subordinate capacity. My judgment, on the whole, is that she is an English woman, married to and separated from an American husband, — of no very decided virtue. I might as well have kept my half-crown, and yet I might have bestowed it worse. She is very decent in manner, cheerful, at least not despondent. At two o'clock I went over to the Royal Rock Hotel, about fifteen or twenty minutes' steaming from this side of the river. We are going there on Satur- day to reside for a while. Returning I found that Mr. B., from the American Chamber of Commerce, had called to arrange the time and place of a visit to the Consul from a delegation of that body. Settled for to-morrow at quarter past one at Mr. Blodgett's. August 5th. — An invitation this morning from 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 417 the Mayor to dine at the Town Hall on Friday next. Heaven knows I had rather dine at the humblest inn in the city, inasmuch as a speech will doubtless be ex- pected from me. However, things must be as they may. At quarter past one I was duly on hand at Mr. Blodgett's to receive the deputation from the Chamber of Commerce. They arrived pretty seasonably, in two or three carriages, and were ushered into the drawing- room, — seven or eight gentlemen, some of whom I had met before. Hereupon ensued a speech from Mr. B., the Chairman of the delegation, short and sweet, alluding to my literary reputation and other laudatory matters, and occupying only a minute or two. The speaker was rather embarrassed, which encouraged me a little, and yet I felt more diffidence on this occasion than in my effort at Mr. Crittenden's lunch, where, in- deed, I was perfectly self-possessed. But here, there being less formality, and more of a conversational character in what was said, my usual diffidence could not so well be kept in abeyance. However, I did not break down to an intolerable extent, and, winding up my eloquence as briefly as possible, we had a social talk. Their whole stay could not have been much more than a quarter of an hour. A call, this morning, at the Consulate, from Dr. Bowring, who is British minister, or something of the kind, in China, and now absent on a twelvemonth's leave. The Doctor is a brisk person, with the address of a man of the world, — free, quick to smile, and of agreeable manners. He has a good face, rather Amer- ican than English in aspect, and does not look much above fifty, though he says he is between sixty and vol. vii. 27 418 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. seventy. I should take him rather for an active law- yer or a man of business than for a scholar and a lit- erary man. He talked in a lively way for ten or fif- teen minutes, and then took his leave, offering me any service in his power in London, — as, for instance, to introduce me to the Athenaeum Club. August 8th. — Day before yesterday I escorted my family to Rock Ferry, two miles either up or down the Mersey (and I really don't know which) by steamer, which runs every half-hour. There are steamers go- ing continually to Birkenhead and other landings, and almost always a great many passengers on the transit. At this time the boat was crowded so as to afford scanty standing-room ; it being Saturday, and there- fore a kind of gala-day. I think I have never seen a populace before coming to England; but this crowd afforded a specimen of one, both male and female. The women were the most remarkable ; though they seemed not disreputable, there was in them a coarse- ness, a freedom, an — I don't know what, that was purely English. In fact, men and women here do things that would at least make them ridiculous in America. They are not afraid to enjoy themselves in their own way, and have no pseudo-gentility to support. Some girls danced upon the crowded deck, to the miserable music of a little fragment of a band which goes up and down the river on each trip of the boat. Just before the termination of the voy- age a man goes round with a bugle turned upwards to receive the eleemosynary pence and half-pence of the passengers. I gave one of them, the other day, a sil- ver fourpence, which fell into the vitals of the instru- ment, and compelled the man to take it to pieces. 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 419 At Rock Ferry there was a great throng, forming a scene not unlike one of our muster-days or a Fourth of July, and there were bands of music and banners, and small processions after them, and a school of char- ity children, I believe, enjoying a festival. And there was a club of respectable persons, playing at bowls on the bowling-green of the hotel, and there were chil- dren, infants, riding on donkeys at a penny a ride, while their mothers walked alongside to prevent a fall. Yesterday, while we were at dinner, Mr. B. came in his carriage to take us to his residence, Poulton Hall. He had invited us to dine ; but I misunderstood him, and thought he only intended to give us a drive. Poulton Hall is about three miles from Rock Ferry, the road passing through some pleasant rural scenery, and one or two villages, with houses standing close to- gether, and old stone or brick cottages, with thatched roofs, and now and then a better mansion, apart among trees. We passed an old church, with a tower and spire, and, half-way up, a patch of ivy, dark green, and some yellow wall-flowers, in full bloom, growing out of the crevices of the stone. Mr. B. told us that the tower was formerly quite clothed with ivy from bottom to top, but that it had fallen away for lack of the nourishment that it used to find in the lime between the stones. This old church answered to my Transatlantic fancies of England better than anything I have yet seen. Not far from it was the Rectory, behind a deep grove of ancient trees ; and there lives the Rector, enjoying a thousand pounds a year and his nothing-to-do, while a curate performs the real duty on a stipend of eighty pounds. We passed through a considerable extent of private road, and finally drove over a lawn, studded with trees 420 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. and closely shaven, till we reached the door of Poulton Hall. Part of the mansion is three or four hundred years old ; another portion is about a hundred and fifty, and still another has been built during the pres- ent generation. The house is two stories high, with a sort of beetle-browed roof in front. It is not very striking, and does not look older than many wooden houses which I have seen in America. There is a curious stately staircase, with a twisted balustrade, much like that of the old Province House in Boston. The drawing-room is a handsome modern apartment, being beautifully painted and gilded and paper-hung, with a white marble fireplace and rich furniture, so that the impression is that of newness, not of age. It is the same with the dining-room, and all the rest of the interior so far as I saw it. Mr. B. did not inherit this old hall, nor, indeed, is he the owner, but only the tenant of it. He is a mer- chant of Liverpool, a bachelor, with two sisters resid- ing with him. In the entrance-hall, there was a stuffed fox with glass eyes, which I never should have doubted to be an actual live fox except for his keeping so quiet ; also some grouse and other game. Mr. B. seems to be a sportsman, and is setting out this week on an excursion to Scotland, moor-fowl shooting. While the family and two or three guests went to dinner, we walked out to see the place. The gardener, an Irishman, showed us through the garden v which is large and well cared for. They certainly get every- thing from Nature which she can possibly be per- suaded to give them, here in England. There were peaches and pears growing against the high brick southern walls, — the trunk and branches of the trees being spread out perfectly flat against the wall, verv 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 421 much like the skin of a dead animal nailed up to dry, and not a single branch protruding. Figs were grow- ing in the same way. The brick wall, very probably, was heated within, by means of pipes, in order to re- enforce the insufficient heat of the sun. It seems as if there must be something unreal and unsatisfactory in fruit that owes its existence to such artificial meth- ods. Squashes were growing under glass, poor things ! There were immensely large gooseberries in the gar- den ; and in this particular berry, the English, I be- lieve, have decidedly the advantage over ourselves. The raspberries, too, were large and good. I espied one gigantic hog-weed in the garden ; and, really, my heart warmed to it, being strongly reminded of the principal product of my own garden at Concord. Af- ter viewing the garden sufficiently, the gardener led us to other parts of the estate, and we had glimpses of a delightful valley, its sides shady with beautiful trees, and a rich, grassy meadow at the bottom. By means of a steam - engine and subterranean pipes and hy- drants, the liquid manure from the barn-yard is dis- tributed wherever it is wanted over the estate, being spouted in rich showers from the hydrants. Under this influence, the meadow at the bottom of the val- ley had already been made to produce three crops of grass during the present season, and would produce another. The lawn around Poulton Hall, like thousands of other lawns in England, is very beautiful, but requires great care to keep it so, being shorn every three or four days. No other country will ever have this charm, nor the charm of lovely verdure, which almost makes up for the absence of sunshine. Without the 422 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. constant rain and shadow which strikes us as so dis- mal, these lawns would be as brown as an autumn leaf. I have not, thus far, found any such magnifi- cent trees as I expected. Mr. B. told me that three oaks, standing in a row on his lawn, were the largest in the county. They were very good trees, to be sure, and perhaps four feet in diameter near the ground, but with no very noble spread of foliage. In Concord there are, if not oaks, yet certainly elms, a great deal more stately and beautiful. But, on the whole, this lawn, and the old Hall in the midst of it, went a good way towards realizing some of my fancies of English life. By and by a footman, looking very quaint and queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, and one bottle of claret, all very good ; but they take here much heavier wines than we drink now in Amer- ica. After a tolerably long session we went to the tea- room, where I drank some coffee, and at about the edge of dusk the carriage drew up to the door to take us home. Mr. B. and his sisters have shown us genu- ine kindness, and they gave us a hearty invitation to come and ramble over the house whenever we pleased, during their absence in Scotland. They say that there are many legends and ghost-stories connected with the house ; and there is an attic chamber, with a skylight, which is called the Martyr's chamber, from the fact of its having, in old times, been tenanted by a lady, who was imprisoned there, and persecuted to death for her religion. There is an old black letter library, but the room containing it is shut, barred, and 1853] LIVERPOOL. 423 padlocked, — the owner of the house refusing to let it be opened, lest some of the books should be stolen. Meanwhile the rats are devouring them, and the damps destroying them. August 9th. — A pretty comfortable day, as to warmth, and I believe there is sunshine overhead ; but a sea-cloud, composed of fog and coal-smoke, envelops Liverpool. At Rock Ferry, when I left it at half past nine, there was promise of a cheerful day. A good many gentlemen (or, rather, respectable business peo- ple) came in the boat, and it is not unpleasant, on these fine mornings, to take the breezy atmosphere of the river. The huge steamer, Great Britain, bound for Australia, lies right off the Rock Ferry landing ; and at a little distance are two old hulks of ships of war, dismantled, roofed over, and anchored in the river, formerly for quarantine purposes, but now used chiefly or solely as homes for old seamen, whose light labor it is to take care of these condemned ships. There are a great many steamers plying up and down the river to various landings in the vicinity ; and a good many steam-tugs ; also, many boats, most of which have dark-red or tan-colored sails, being oiled to resist the wet ; also, here and there, a yacht, or pleasure-boat, and a few ships riding stately at their anchors, prob- ably on the point of sailing. The river, however, is by no means crowded ; because the immense multitude of ships are ensconced in the docks, where their masts make an intricate forest for miles up and down the Liverpool shore. The small, black steamers, whizzing industriously along, many of them crowded with pas- sengers, make up the chief life of the scene. The Mer- sey has the color of a mud-puddle, and no atmospheric 424 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. effect, as far as I have seen, ever gives it a more agree* able tinge. Visitors to-day, thus far, have been H. A. B., with whom I have arranged to dine with us at Rock Ferry, and then he is to take us on board the Great Britain, of which his father is owner (in great part). Sec- ondly, Monsieur H., the French Consul, who can speak hardly any English, and who was more powerfully scented with cigar-smoke than any man I ever encoun- tered ; a polite, gray-haired, red-nosed gentleman, very courteous and formal. Heaven keep him from me ! At one o'clock, or thereabouts, I walked into the city, down through Lord Street, Church Street, and back to the Consulate, through various untraceable crookednesses. Coming to Chapel Street, I crossed the graveyard of the old Church of St. Nicholas. This is, I suppose, the oldest sacred site in Liverpool, a church having stood here ever since the Conquest, though, probably, there is little or nothing of the old edifice in the present one, either the whole of the edi- fice or else the steeple, being thereto shaken by a chime of bells, — or perhaps both, at different times, — has tumbled down ; but the present church is what we Americans should call venerable. When the first church was built, and long afterwards, it must have stood on the grassy verge of the Mersey ; but now there are pavements and warehouses, and the thronged Prince's and George's Docks, between it and the river; and all around it is the very busiest bustle of com- merce, rumbling wheels, hurrying men, porter-shops, everything that pertains to the grossest and most prac- tical life. And, notwithstanding, there is the broad churchyard extending on three sides of it, just as it used to be a thousand years ago, It is absolutely 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 425 paved from border to border with flat tombstones, on a level with the soil and with each other, so that it is one floor of stone over the whole space, with grass here and there sprouting between the crevices. All these stones, no doubt, formerly had inscriptions ; but, as many people continually pass, in various directions, across the churchyard, and as the tombstones are not of a very hard material, the records on many of them are effaced. I saw none very old. A quarter of a century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is merely cut " The burial-place of " so and so ; on oth- ers there is a long list of half -readable names ; on some few a laudatory epitaph, out of which, however, it were far too tedious to pick the meaning. But it really is interesting and suggestive to think of this old church, first built when Liverpool was a small village, and remaining, with its successive dead of ten centuries around it, now that the greatest commercial city in the world has its busiest centre there. I suppose people still continue to be buried in the cemetery. The great- est upholders of burials in cities are those whose pro- genitors have been deposited around or within the city churches. If this spacious churchyard stood in a sim- ilar position in one of our American cities, I rather suspect that long ere now it would have run the risk of being laid out in building-lots, and covered with warehouses ; even if the church itself escaped, — but it would not escape longer than till its disrepair afforded excuse for tearing it down. And why should it, when its purposes might be better served in another spot ? 426 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. We went on board the Great Britain before dinner, between five and six o'clock, — a great structure, as to convenient arrangement and adaptation, but giving me a strong impression of the tedium and misery of the long voyage to Australia. By way of amusement, she takes over fifty pounds' worth of playing-cards, at two shillings per pack, for the use of passengers ; also, a small, well - selected library. After a considerable time spent on board, we returned to the hotel and dined, and Mr. B. took his leave at nine o'clock. August IQtJi. — I left Rock Ferry for the city at half past nine. In the boat which arrived thence, there were several men and women with baskets on their heads, for this is a favorite way of carrying burdens ; and they trudge onward beneath them, without any apparent fear of an overturn, and seldom putting up a hand to steady them. One woman, this morning, had a heavy load of crockery ; another, an immense basket of turnips, freshly gathered, that seemed to me as much as a man could well carry on his back. These must be a stiff-necked people. The women step stur- dily and freely, and with not ungraceful strength. The trip over to town was pleasant, it being a fair morn- ing, only with a low-hanging fog. Had it been in America, I should have anticipated a day of burning heat. Visitors this morning. Mr. Ogden, of Chicago, or somewhere in the Western States, who arrived in Eng- land a fortnight ago, and who called on me at that time. He has since been in Scotland, and is now going to London and the Continent ; secondly, the Captain of the Collins's steamer Pacific, which sails to-day ; thirdly, an American shipmaster, who complained that 1858.] LIVERPOOL. 427 he had never, in his heretofore voyages, been able to get sight of the American Consul. Mr. Pearce's customary matutinal visit was unusu- ally agreeable to-day, inasmuch as he laid on my desk nineteen golden sovereigns and thirteen shillings. It being the day of the steamer's departure, an unusual number of invoice certificates had been required, — my signature to each of which brings me two dollars. The autograph of a living author has seldom been so much in request at so respectable a price. Colonel Crittenden told me that he had received as much as fifty pounds on a single day. Heaven prosper the trade between America and Liverpool ! August 15th. — Many scenes which I should have liked to record have occurred ; but the pressure of business has prevented me from recording them from day to day. On Thursday I went, on invitation from Mr. B., to the prodigious steamer Great Britain, down the har- bor, and some miles into the sea, to escort her off a little way on her voyage to Australia. There is an immense enthusiasm among the English people about this ship, on account of its being the largest in the world. The shores were lined with people to see her sail, and there were innumerable small steamers, crowded with men, all the way out into the ocean. Nothing seems to touch the English nearer than this question of nautical superiority ; and if we wish to hit them to the quick, we must hit them there. On Friday, at 7 P. M., I went to dine with the Mayor. It was a dinner given to the Judges and the Grand Jury. The Judges of England, during the time of holding an Assize, are the persons first in 428 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. rank in the kingdom. They take precedence of every- body else, — of the highest military officers, of the Lord Lieutenants, of the Archbishops, — of the Prince of Wales, — of all except the Sovereign, whose author- ity and dignity they represent. In case of a royal dinner, the Judge would lead the Queen to the table. The dinner was at the Town Hall, and the rooms and the whole affair were all in the most splendid style. Nothing struck me more than the footmen in the city livery. They really looked more magnificent in their gold-lace and breeches and white silk stock- ings than any officers of state. The rooms were beau- tiful ; gorgeously painted and gilded, gorgeously lighted, gorgeously hung with paintings, — the plate was gorgeous, and the dinner gorgeous in the English fashion. After the removal of the cloth the Mayor gave vari- ous toasts, prefacing each with some remarks, — the first, of course, the Sovereign, after which " God save the Queen " was sung, the company standing up and joining in the chorus, their ample faces glowing with wine, enthusiasm, and loyalty. Afterwards the Bar, and various other dignities and institutions, were toasted ; and by and by came the toast to the United States, and to me, as their Representative. Here- upon either " Hail Columbia," or " Yankee Doodle," or some other of our national tunes (but Heaven knows which), was played ; and at the conclusion, being at bay, and with no alternative, I got upon my legs, and made a response. They received me and listened to my nonsense with a good deal of rapping, and my speech seemed to give great satisfaction ; my chief difficulty being in not knowing how to pitch my voice to the size of the room. As for the matter, it is *853.] LIVERPOOL. 429 not of the slightest consequence. Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will be content to talk on- ward without saying anything. My speech was not more than two or three inches long ; and, considering that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor himself, and that I am wholly unpractised in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to say, it was quite successful. I hardly thought it was in me, but, be- ing once started, I felt no embarrassment, and went through it as coolly as if I were going to be hanged. Yesterday, after dinner, I took a walk with my family. We went through by-ways and private roads, and saw more of rural England, with' its hedge-rows, its grassy fields, and its whitewashed old stone cot- tages, than we have before seen since our arrival. August 20^A. — This being Saturday, there early commenced a throng of visitants to Rock Ferry. The boat in which I came over brought from the city a multitude of factory - people. They had bands of music, and banners inscribed with the names of the mills they belong to, and other devices : pale-looking people, but not looking exactly as if they were under- fed. They are brought on reduced terms by the rail- ways and steamers, and come from great distances in the interior. These, I believe, were from Preston. I have not yet had an opportunity of observing how they amuse themselves during these excursions. At the dock, the other day, the steamer arrived from Rock Ferry with a countless multitude of little girls, in coarse blue gowns, who, as they landed, formed in procession, and walked up the dock. These girls had been taken from the workhouses and edu- cated at a charity-school, and would by and by be ap- 430 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1851 prenticed as servants. I should not have conceived it possible that so many children could have been col- lected together, without a single trace of beauty or scarcely of intelligence in so much as one individual ; such mean, coarse, vulgar features and figures betray- ing unmistakably a low origin, and ignorant and bru- tal parents. They did not appear wicked, but only stupid, animal, and soulless. It must require many generations of better life to wake the soul in them. All America could not show the like. August 22c?. — A Captain Auld, an American, hav- ing died here yesterday, I went with my clerk and an American shipmaster to take the inventory of his ef- fects. His boarding-house was in a mean street, an old dingy house, with narrow entrance, — the class of boarding-house frequented by mates of vessels, and in- ferior to those generally patronized by masters. A fat elderly landlady, of respectable and honest aspect, and her daughter, a pleasing young woman enough, re- ceived us, and ushered us into the deceased's bed- chamber. It was a dusky backroom, plastered and painted yellow ; its one window looking into the very narrowest of backyards or courts, and out on a con- fused multitude of back buildings, appertaining to other houses, most of them old, with rude chimneys of wash-rooms and kitchens, the bricks of which seemed half loose. The chattels of the dead man were contained in two trunks, a chest, a sail-cloth bag, and a barrel, and con' sisted of clothing, suggesting a thickset, middle-sized man ; papers relative to ships and business, a spyglass, a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some charts, several great pieces of tobacco, and a few 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 431 cigars \ some little plaster images, that he had prob- ably bought for his children, a cotton umbrella, and other trumpery of no great value. In one of the trunks we found about twenty pounds' worth of Eng- lish and American gold and silver, and some notes of hand, due in America. Of all these things the clerk made an inventory ; after which we took possession of the money, and affixed the consular seal to the trunks, bag, and chest. While this was going on, we heard a great noise of men quarrelling in an adjoining court ; and, alto- gether, it seemed a squalid and ugly place to live in, and a most undesirable one to die in. At the conclu- sion of our labors, the young woman asked us if we would not go into another chamber, and look at the corpse, and appeared to think that we should be rather glad than otherwise of the privilege. But, never hav- ing seen the man during his lifetime, I declined to commence his acquaintance now. His bills for board and nursing amount to about the sum which we found in his trunk ; his funeral ex- penses will be ten pounds more ; the surgeon has sent in a bill of eight pounds, odd shillings ; and the ac- count of another medical man is still to be rendered. As his executor, I shall pay his landlady and nurse ; and for the rest of the expenses, a subscription must be made (according to the custom in such cases) among the shipmasters, headed by myself. The fu- neral pomp will consist of a hearse, one coach, four men, with crape hatbands, and a few other items, to- gether with a grave at five pounds, over which his friends will be entitled to place a stone, if they choose to do so, within twelve months. As we left the house, we looked into the dark and 432 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. squalid dining-room, where a lunch of cold meat was set out ; but having no associations with the house ex- cept through this one dead man, it seemed as if his presence and attributes pervaded it wholly. He ap- pears to have been a man of reprehensible habits, though well advanced in years. 1 ought not to forget a brandy-flask (empty) among his other effects. The landlady and daughter made a good impression on me, as honest and respectable persons. August 24:th. — Yesterday, in the forenoon, I re- ceived a note, and shortly afterwards a call at the Consulate, from Miss H , whom I apprehend to be a lady of literary tendencies. She said that Miss L. had promised her an introduction, but that, hap- pening to pass through Liverpool, she had snatched the opportunity to make my acquaintance. She seems to be a mature lady, rather plain, but with an honest and intelligent face. It was rather a singular freedom, me- thinks, to come down upon a perfect stranger in this way, — to sit with him in his private office an hour or two, and then walk about the streets with him as she did ; for I did the honors of Liverpool, and showed her the public buildings. Her talk was sensible, but not particularly brilliant nor interesting ; a good, solid personage, physically and intellectually. She is an English woman. In the afternoon, at three o'clock, I attended the fu- neral of Captain Auld. Being ushered into the din- ing-room of his boarding-house, I found brandy, gin, and wine set out on a tray, together with some little spice-cakes. By and by came in a woman, who asked if I were going to the funeral ; and then proceeded to put a mourning-band on my hat, — a black-silk band, 1853] LIVERPOOL. 433 covering the whole hat, and streaming nearly a yard behind. After waiting the better part of an hour, no- body else appeared, although several shipmasters had promised to attend. Hereupon, the undertaker was anxious to set forth ; but the landlady, who was ar- rayed in shining black silk, thought it a shame that the poor man should be buried with such small at- tendance. So we waited a little longer, during which interval I heard the landlady's daughter sobbing and wailing in the entry ; and but for this tender-hearted- ness there would have been no tears at all. Finally we set forth, — the undertaker, a friend of his, and a young man, perhaps the landlady's son, and my- self, in the black-plumed coach, and the landlady, her daughter, and a female friend, in the coach behind. Previous to this, however, everybody had taken some wine or spirits ; for it seemed to be considered disre- spectful not to do so. Before us went the plumed hearse, a stately affair, with a bas-relief of funereal figures upon its sides. We proceeded quite across the city to the Necropolis, where the coffin was carried into a chapel, in which we found already another coffin, and another set of mourners, awaiting the clergyman. Anon he appeared, — a stern, broad-framed, large, and bald-headed man, in a black- silk gown. He mounted his desk, and read the service in quite a feeble and unimpressive way, though with no lack of solemnity. This done, our four bearers took up the coffin, and carried it out of the chapel ; but de- scending the steps, and, perhaps, having taken a little too much brandy, one of them stumbled, and down came the coffin, — not quite to the ground, however ; for they grappled with it, and contrived, with a great struggle, to prevent the misadventure. But I really vol. vii. 28 434 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853- expected to see poor Captain Auld burst forth among us in his grave-clothes. The Necropolis is quite a handsome burial-place, shut in by high walls, so overrun with shrubbery that no part of the brick or stone is visible. Part of the space within is an ornamental garden, with flowers and green turf ; the rest is strewn with flat grave- stones, and a few raised monuments; and straight avenues run to and fro between. Captain Auld's grave was dug nine feet deep. It is his own for twelve months ; but, if his friends do not choose to give him a stone, it will become a common grave at the end of that time ; and four or five more bodies may then be piled upon his. Every one seemed greatly to admire the grave ; the undertaker praised it, and also the dry- ness of its site, which he took credit to himself for having chosen. The grave-digger, too, was very proud of its depth, and the neatness of his handiwork. The clergyman, who had marched in advance of us from the chapel, now took his stand at the head of the grave, and, lifting his hat, proceeded with what re- mained of the service, while we stood bareheaded around. When he came to a particular part, " ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the undertaker lifted a hand- ful of earth, and threw it rattling on the coffin, — so did the landlady's son, and so did I. After the fu- neral the undertaker's friend, an elderly, coarse-look- ing man, looked round him, and remarked that " the grass had never grown on the parties who died in the cholera year " ; but at this the undertaker laughed in scorn. As we returned to the gate of the cemetery, the sex- ton met us, and pointed to a small office, on entering which we found the clergyman, who was waiting for 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 435 his burial-fees. There was now a dispute between the clergyman and the undertaker ; the former wishing to receive the whole amount for the gravestone, which the undertaker, of course, refused to pay. I explained how the matter stood ; on which the clergyman ac- quiesced, civilly enough ; but it was very strange to see the worldly, business-like way in which he entered into this squabble, so soon after burying poor Captain Auld. During our drive back in the mourning-coach, the undertaker, his friend, and the landlady's son still kept descanting on the excellence of the grave, — " Such a fine grave," — " Such a nice grave," — " Such a splendid grave," — and, really, they seemed almost to think it worth while to die, for the sake of being buried there. They deemed it an especial pity that such a grave should ever become a common grave. " Why," said they to me, " by paying the ex- tra price you may have it for your own grave, or for your family ! " meaning that we should have a right to pile ourselves over the defunct Captain. I wonder how the English ever attain to any conception of a future existence, since they so overburden themselves with earth and mortality in their ideas of funerals. A drive with an undertaker, in a sable-plumed coach ! — talking about graves ! — and yet he was a jolly old fellow, wonderfully corpulent, with a smile breaking out easily all over his face, — although, once in a while, he looked professionally lugubrious. All the time the scent of that horrible mourning- coach is in my nostrils, and I breathe nothing but a funeral atmosphere. 436 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. Saturday, August 21th. — This being the gala-day of the manufacturing people about Liverpool, the steamboats to Rock Ferry were seasonably crowded with large parties, of both sexes. They were accom- panied with two bands of music, in uniform ; and these bands, before I left the hotel, were playing, in competition and rivalry with each other in the coach- yard, loud martial strains from shining brass instru- ments. A prize is to be assigned to one or to the other of these bands, and I suppose this was a part of the competition. Meanwhile the merry-making people who thronged the court-yard were quaffing coffee from blue earthen mugs, which they brought with them, — as likewise they brought the coffee, and had it made in the hotel. It had poured with rain about the time of their ar- rival, notwithstanding which they did not seem dis- heartened ; for, of course, in this climate, it enters into all their calculations to be drenched through and through. By and by the sun shone out, and it has continued to shine and shade every ten minutes ever since. All these people were decently dressed ; the men generally in dark clothes, not so smartly as Amer- icans on a festal day, but so as not to be greatly dif- ferent as regards dress. They were paler, smaller, less wholesome -looking and less intelligent, and, I think, less noisy, than so many Yankees would have been. The women and girls differed much more from what American girls and women would be on a pleasure- excursion, being so shabbily dressed, with no kind of smartness, no silks, nothing but cotton gowns, I be- lieve, and ill-looking bonnets, — which, however, was the only part of their attire that they seemed to care about guarding from the rain. As to their persons, 1853.] A WALK TO BEBBINGTOK 437 they generally looked better developed and healthier than the men ; but there was a woful lack of beauty and grace, not a pretty girl among them, all coarse and vulgar. Their bodies, it seems to me, are apt to be very long in proportion to their limbs, — in truth, this kind of make is rather characteristic of both sexes in England. The speech of these folks, in some in- stances, was so broad Lancashire that I could not well understand it. A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. Hock Ferry, August 29th. — Yesterday we all took a walk into the country. It was a fine afternoon, with clouds, of course, in different parts of the sky, but a clear atmosphere, bright sunshine, and altogether a Septembrish feeling. The ramble was very pleasant along the hedge-lined roads, in which there were flow- ers blooming, and the varnished holly, certainly one of the most beautiful shrubs in the world, so far as foli- age goes. We saw one cottage which I suppose was several hundred years old. It was of stone, filled into a wooden frame, the black-oak of which was visible like an external skeleton ; it had a thatched roof, and was whitewashed. We passed though a village, — Higher Bebbington, I believe, — with narrow streets and mean houses, all of brick or stone, and not stand- ing wide apart from each other as in American coun- try villages, but conjoined. There was an immense almshouse in the midst ; at least, I took it to be so. In the centre of the village, too, we saw a moderate- sized brick house, built in imitation of a castle with a tower and turret, in which an upper and an under row of small cannon were mounted, — now green with moss. There were also battlements along the roof of 438 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. the house, which looked as if it might have been built eighty or a hundred years ago. In the centre of it there was the dial of a clock, but the inner machinery had been removed, and the hands, hanging listlessly, moved to and fro in the wind. It was quite a novel symbol of decay and neglect. On the wall, close to the street, there were certain eccentric inscriptions cut into slabs of stone, but I could make no sense of them. At the end of the house opposite the turret, we peeped through the bars of an iron gate and beheld a little paved court-yard, and at the farther side of it a small piazza, beneath which seemed to stand the figure of a man. He appeared well advanced in years, and was dressed in a blue coat and buff breeches, with a white or straw hat on his head. Behold, too, in a kennel be- side the porch, a large dog sitting on his hind legs, chained ! Also, close beside the gateway, another man, seated in a kind of arbor ! All these were wooden images ; and the whole castellated, small, village dwelling, with the inscriptions and the queer statuary, was probably the whim of some half -crazy person, who has now, no doubt, been long asleep in Bebbington churchyard. The bell of the old church was ringing as we went along, and many respectable-looking people and cleanly dressed children were moving towards the sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen nothing yet in England that so completely answered my idea of what such a thing was, as this old village church of Bebbington. It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a cross, a low peaked porch in the side, over which, rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and something. The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old ; so 1853.] A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. 439 does the whole church, though portions of it have been renewed, but not so as to impair the aspect of heavy, substantial endurance, and long, long decay, which may go on hundreds of years longer before the church is a ruin. There it stands, among the surrounding- graves, looking just the same as it did in Bloody Mary's days ; just as it did in Cromwell's time. A bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the steeple, and flew in and out of the loopholes that were opened into it. The stone framework of the windows looked particularly old. There were monuments about the church, some lying flat on the ground, others elevated on low pillars, or on cross slabs of stone, and almost all looking dark, moss- grown, and very antique. But on reading some of the inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent ; for, in fact, twenty years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our own, — so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon does it blacken, so soon do the edges lose their sharp- ness, so soon does Time gnaw away the records. The only really old monuments (and those not very old) were two, standing close together, and raised on low rude arches, the dates on which were 1684 and 1686. On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone. But there may have been hundreds older than this, the records on which had been quite obliterated, and the stones removed, and the graves dug over anew. None of the monuments commemorate people of rank ; on only one the buried person was recorded as " Gent." While we sat on the flat slabs resting ourselves, several little girls, healthy-looking and prettily dressed enough, came into the churchyard, and began to talk 440 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. and laugh, and to skip merrily from one tombstone to another. They stared very broadly at us, and one of them, by and by, ran up to U. and J., and gave each of them a green apple, then they skipped upon the tombstones again, while, within the church, we heard the singing, — sounding pretty much as I have heard it in our pine-built New England meeting-houses. Meantime the rector had detected the voices of these naughty little girls, and perhaps had caught glimpses of them through the windows ; for, anon, out came the sexton, and, addressing himself to us, asked whether there had been any noise or disturbance in the church- yard. I should not have borne testimony against these little villagers, but S. was so anxious to exoner- ate our own children that she pointed out these poor little sinners to the sexton, who forthwith turned them out. He would have done the same to us, no doubt, had my coat been worse than it was ; but, as the mat- ter stood, his demeanor was rather apologetic than menacing, when he informed us that the rector had sent him. We stayed a little longer, looking at the graves, some of which were between the buttresses of the church and quite close to the wall, as if the sleepers anticipated greater comfort and security the nearer they could get to the sacred edifice. As we went out of the churchyard, we passed the aforesaid little girls, who were sitting behind the mound of a tomb, and busily babbling together. They called after us, expressing their discontent that we had betrayed them to the sexton, and saying that it was not they who made the noise. Going homeward, we went astray in a green lane, that terminated in the 1853.] THE MERSEY. 441 midst of a field, without outlet, so that we had to re- trace a good many of our footsteps. Close to the wall of the church, beside the door, there was an ancient baptismal font of stone. In fact, it was a pile of roughly hewn stone steps, five or six feet high, with a block of stone at the summit, in which was a hollow about as big as a wash-bowl. It was full of rain-water. The church seems to be St. Andrew's Church, Lower Bebbington, built in 1100. September 1st — To-day we leave the Rock Ferry Hotel, where we have spent nearly four weeks. It is a comfortable place, and we have had a good table and have been kindly treated. We occupied a large par- lor, extending through the whole breadth of the house, with a bow-window, looking towards Liverpool, and adown the intervening river, and to Birkenhead, on the hither side. The river would be a pleasanter ob- ject, if it were blue and transparent, instead of such a mud - puddly hue ; also, if it were always full to its brim ; whereas it generally presents a margin, and sometimes a very broad one, of glistening mud, with here and there a small vessel aground on it. Nevertheless, the parlor-window has given us a pretty good idea of the nautical business of Liverpool ; the constant objects being the little black steamers puff- ing unquietly along, sometimes to our own ferry, some- times beyond it to Eastham, and sometimes towing a long string of boats from Runcorn or otherwhere up the river, laden with goods, and sometimes gallanting a tall ship in or out. Some of these ships lie for days together in the river, very majestic and stately ob- jects, often with the flag of the Stars and Stripes 442 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. waving over them. Now and then, after a gale at sea, a vessel comes in with her masts broken short off in the midst, and with marks of rough handling about the hull. Once a week comes a Cunard steamer, with its red funnel pipe whitened by the salt spray ; and, firing off cannon to announce her arrival, she moors to a large iron buoy in the middle of the river, and a few hundred yards from the stone pier of our ferry. Immediately comes puffing towards her a little mail- steamer, to take away her mail-bags and such of the passengers as choose to land ; and for several hours afterwards the Cunard lies with the smoke and steam coming out of her, as if she were smoking her pipe after her toilsome passage across the Atlantic. Once a fortnight comes an American steamer of the Collins line ; and then the Cunard salutes her with cannon, to which the Collins responds, and moors herself to another iron buoy, not far from the Cunard. When they go to sea, it is with similar salutes ; the two ves- sels paying each other the more ceremonious respect, because they are inimical and jealous of each other. Besides these, there are other steamers of all sorts and sizes, for pleasure-excursions, for regular trips to Dublin, the Isle of Man, and elsewhither ; and ves- sels which are stationary, as floating lights, but which seem to relieve one another at intervals ; and small vessels, with sails looking as if made of tanned leather ; and schooners, and yachts, and all manner of odd- looking craft, but none so odd as the Chinese junk. This junk lies by our own pier, and looks as if it were copied from some picture on an old teacup. Beyond all these objects we see the other side of the Mersey, with the delectably green fields opposite to us, while e shore becomes more and more thickly populated, 1853.] ROCK PARK. 443 until about two miles off we see the dense centre of the city, with the dome of the Custom House, and steeples and towers ; and, close to the water, the spire of St. Nicholas ; and above, and intermingled with the whole city scene, the duskiness of the coal-smoke gushing up- ward. Along the bank we perceive the warehouses of the Albert Dock, and the Queen's tobacco warehouses, and other docks, and, nigher to us, a shipyard or two. In the evening all this sombre picture gradually dark- ens out of sight, and in its place appear only the lights of the city, kindling into a galaxy of earthly stars, for a long distance, up and down the shore ; and, in one or two spots, the bright red gleam of a furnace, like the " red planet Mars " ; and once in a while a bright, wandering beam gliding along the river, as a steamer comes or goes between us and Liverpool. ROCK PARK. September 2d. — We got into our new house in Rock Park yesterday. It is quite a good house, with three apartments, beside kitchen and pantry on the lower floor ; and it is three stories high, with four good chambers in each story. It is a stone edifice, like almost all the English houses, and handsome in its design. The rent, without furniture, would prob- ably have been one hundred pounds ; furnished, it is one hundred and sixty pounds. Rock Park, as the locality is called, is private property, and is now nearly covered with residences for professional people, merchants, and others of the upper middling class; the houses being mostly built, I suppose, on specula- tion, and let to those who occupy them. It is the quietest place imaginable, there being a police station at the entrance, and the officer on duty allows no 444 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. ragged or ill-looking person to pass. There being a toll, it precludes all unnecessary passage of carriages ; and never were there more noiseless streets than those that give access to these pretty residences. On either side there is thick shrubbery, with glimpses through it of the ornamented portals, or into the trim gardens with smooth-shaven lawns, of no large extent, but still affording reasonable breathing-space. They are really an improvement on anything, save what the very rich can enjoy, in America. The former occu- pants of our house (Mrs. Campbell and family) hav- ing been fond of flowers, there are many rare varie- ties in the garden, and we are told that there is scarcely a month in the year when a flower will not be found there. The house is respectably, though not very elegantly, furnished. It was a dismal, rainy day yesterday, and we had a coal-fire in the sitting-room, beside which I sat last evening as twilight came on, and thought, rather sadly, how many times we have changed our home since we were married. In the first place, our three years at the Old Manse ; then a brief residence at Salem, then at Boston, then two or three years at Salem again ; then at Lenox, then at West Newton, and then again at Concord, where we imagined that we were fixed for life, but spent only a year. Then this farther flight to England, where we expect to spend four years, and afterwards another year or two in Italy, during all which time we shall have no real home. For, as I sat in this English house, with the chill, rainy English twilight brooding over the lawn, and a coal-fire to keep me comfortable on the first evening of September, and the picture of a stranger • — the dead husband of Mrs. Campbell — gazing down 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 445 at me from above the mantel-piece, — I felt that 1 never should be quite at home here. Nevertheless, the fire was very comfortable to look at, and the shape of the fireplace — an arch, with a deep cavity — was an improvement on the square, shallow open- ing of an American coal-grate. September 1th. — It appears by the annals of Liver- pool, contained in Gore's Directory, that in 1076 there was a baronial castle built by Roger de Poictiers on the site of the present St. George's Church. It was taken down in 1721. The church now stands at one of the busiest points of the principal street of the city. The old Church of St. Nicholas, founded about the time of the Conquest, and more recently rebuilt, stood within a quarter of a mile of the castle. In 1150, Birkenhead Priory was founded on the Cheshire side of the Mersey. The monks used to ferry passengers across to Liverpool until 1282, when Woodside Ferry was established, — twopence for a horseman, and a farthing for a foot-passenger. Steam ferry-boats now cross to Birkenhead, Monk's Ferry, and Woodside every ten minutes ; and I believe there are large hotels at all these places, and many of the business men of Liverpool have residences in them. In 1252 a tower was built by Sir John Stanley, which continued to be a castle of defence to the Stan- ley family for many hundred years, and was not finally taken down till 1820, when its site had become the present Water Street, in the densest commercial cen- tre of the city. There appear to have been other baronial castles and residences in different parts of the city, as a hall in old Hall Street, built by Sir John de la More, on 446 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. the site of which a counting-house now stands. This knightly family of De la More sometimes supplied mayors to the city, as did the family of the Earls of Derby. About 1582, Edward, Earl of Derby, maintained two hundred and fifty citizens of Liverpool, fed sixty aged persons twice a day, and provided twenty-seven hundred persons with meat, drink, and money every Good Friday. In 1644, Prince Rupert besieged the town for twenty-four days, and finally took it by storm. This was June 26th, and the Parliamentarians, under Sir John Meldrum, repossessed it the following October. In 1669, the Mayor of Liverpool kept an inn. In 1730, there was only one carriage in town, and no stage-coach came nearer than Warrington, the roads being impassable. In 1734, the Earl of Derby gave a great entertain- ment in the tower. In 1737, the Mayor was George Norton, a saddler, who frequently took the chair with his leather apron on. His immediate predecessor seems to have been the Earl of Derby, who gave the above-mentioned entertainment during his mayoralty. Where George's Dock now is, there used to be a battery of fourteen eighteen-pounders for the defence of the town, and the old sport of bull-baiting was carried on in that vicin- ity, close to the Church of St. Nicholas. September 12th. — On Saturday a young man was found wandering about in West Derby, a suburb of Liverpool, in a state of insanity, and, being taken be- fore a magistrate, he proved to be an American. As he seemed to be in a respectable station of life, the 1853] LIVERPOOL. 447 magistrate sent the master of the workhouse to me in order to find out whether I would take the responsi- bility of his expenses, rather than have him put in the workhouse. My clerk went to investigate the mat- ter, and brought me his papers. His name proves to be -, belonging to , twenty-five years of age. One of the papers was a passport from our legation in Naples ; likewise there was a power of at- torney from his mother (who seems to have been mar- ried a second time) to dispose of some property of hers abroad ; a hotel bill, also, of some length, in which were various charges for wine ; and, among other evidences of low funds, a pawnbroker's receipt for a watch, which he had pledged at five pounds. There was also a ticket for his passage to America, by the screw steamer Andes, which sailed on Wednesday last. The clerk found him to the last degree incom- municative ; and nothing coidd be discovered from him but what the papers disclosed. There were about a dozen utterly unintelligible notes among the papers, written by himself since his derangement. I decided to put him into the insane hospital, where he now accordingly is, and to-morrow (by which time he may be in a more conversable mood) I mean to pay him a visit. The clerk tells me that there is now, and has been for three years, an American lady in the Liverpool ahnshouse, in a state of insanity. She is very accom- plished, especially in music ; but in all this time it has been impossible to find out who she is, or anything about her connections or previous life. She calls her- self Jenny Lind, and as for any other name or iden- tity she keeps her own secret. 448 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. /Se])tember 14:th. — It appears that Mr. (the insane young gentleman) being unable to pay his bill at the inn where he was latterly staying, the landlord had taken possession of his luggage, and satisfied him- self in that way. My clerk, at my request, has taken his watch out of pawn. It proves to be not a very good one, though doubtless worth more than five pounds, for which it was pledged. The Governor of the Lunatic Asylum wrote me yesterday, stating that the patient was in want of a change of clothes, and that, according to his own account, he had left his lug- gage at the American Hotel. After office -hours, I took a cab, and set out, with my clerk, to pay a visit to the Asylum, taking the American Hotel in our way. The American Hotel is a small house, not at all such a one as American travellers of any pretension would think of stopping at, but still very respectable, cleanly, and with a neat sitting-room, where the guests might assemble after the American fashion. We asked for the landlady, and anon down she came, a round, rosy, comfortable-looking English dame of fifty or thereabouts. On being asked whether she knew a Mr. , she readily responded that he had been there, but had left no luggage, having taken it away before paying his bill; and that she had suspected him of meaning to take his departure without paying her at all. Hereupon she had traced him to the hotel before mentioned, where she had found that he had stayed two nights, — but was then, I think, gone from thence. Afterwards she encountered him again, and, demanding her due, went with him to a pawnbroker's, where he pledged his watch and paid her. This was about the extent of the landlady's knowledge of the matter. I liked the woman very well, with her shrewd, good-humored, worldly, kindly disposition. 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 449 Then we proceeded to the Lunatic Asylum, to which we were admitted by a porter at the gate. Within doors we found some neat and comely servant-women, one of whom showed us into a handsome parlor, and took my card to the Governor. There was a large bookcase, with a glass front, containing handsomely bound books, many of which, I observed, were of a religious character. In a few minutes the Governor came in, a middle-aged man, tall, and thin for an Englishman, kindly and agreeable enough in aspect, but not with the marked look of a man of force and ability. I should not judge from his conversation that he was an educated man, or that he had any scientific acquaintance with the subject of insanity. He said that Mr. — — was still quite incommuni- cative, and not in a very promising state ; that I had perhaps better defer seeing him for a few days ; that it would not be safe, at present, to send him home to America without an attendant, and this was about all. But on returning home I learned from my wife, who had had a call from Mrs. Blodgett, that Mrs. Blodgett knew Mr. and his mother, who has recently been remarried to a young husband, and is now somewhere in Italy. They seemed to have boarded at Mrs. Blodgett's house on their way to the Continent, and within a week or two, an acquaintance and pastor of Mr. - , the Rev. Dr. -, had sailed for America. If I could only have caught him, I could have trans- ferred the care, expense, and responsibility of the pa- tient to him. The Governor of the Asylum men- tioned, by the way, that Mr. describes himself as having been formerly a midshipman in the navy. I walked through the St. James's cemetery yester^ VOL. VII. 29 450 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [185S. day. It is a very pretty place, dug out of the rock, having formerly, I believe, been a stone - quarry. It is now a deep and spacious valley, with graves and monuments on its level and grassy floor, through which run gravel-paths, and where grows luxuriant shrubbery. On one of the steep sides of the valley, hewn out of the rock, are tombs, rising in tiers, to the height of fifty feet or more ; some of them cut di- rectly into the rock with arched portals, and others built with stone. On the other side the bank is of earth, and rises abruptly, quite covered with trees, and looking very pleasant with their green shades. It was a warm and sunny day, and the cemetery really had a most agreeable aspect. I saw several gravestones of Americans ; but what struck me most was one line of an epitaph on an English woman, " Here rests in pease a virtuous wife." The statue of Huskisson stands in the midst of the valley, in a kind of mau- soleum, with a door of plate-glass, through which you look at the dead statesman's effigy. September 22c?. — ... Some days ago an Ameri- can captain came to the office, and said he had shot one of his men, shortly after sailing from New Or- leans, and while the ship was still in the river. As he described the event, he was in peril of his life from this man, who was an Irishman ; and he fired his pis- tol only when the man was coming upon him, with a knife in one hand, and some other weapon of offence in the other, while he himself was struggling with one or two more of the crew. He was weak at the time, having just recovered from the yellow fever. The shots struck the man in the pit of the stomach, and he lived only about a quarter of an hour. No magis- 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 451 trate in England has a right to arrest or examine the captain, unless by a warrant from the Secretary of State, on the charge of murder. After his statement to me, the mother of the slain man went to the police officer, and accused him of killing her son. Two or three days since, morever, two of the sailors came be- fore me, and gave their account of the matter ; and it looked very differently from that of the captain. Ac- cording to them, the man had no idea of attacking the captain, and was so drunk that he could not keep him- self upright without assistance. One of these two men was actually holding him up when the captain fired two barrels of his pistol, one immediately after the other, and lodged two balls in the pit of his stomach. The man sank down at once, saying, " Jack, I am killed,'' — and died very shortly. Meanwhile the cap- tain drove this man away, under threats of shooting him likewise. Both the seamen described the cap- tain's conduct, both then and during the whole voy- age, as outrageous, and I do not much doubt that it was so. They gave their evidence like men who wished to tell the truth, and were moved by no more than a natural indignation at the captain's wrong. I did not much like the captain from the first, — a hard, rough man, with little education, and nothing of the gentleman about him, a red face and a loud voice. He seemed a good deal excited, and talked fast and much about the event, but yet not as if it had sunk deeply into him. He observed that he " would not have had it happen for a thousand dollars," that be- ing the amount of detriment which he conceives him- self to suffer by the ineffaceable blood-stain on his hand. In my opinion it is little short of murder, if at all ; but what would be murder on shore is almost 452 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. a natural occurrence when done in such a hell on earth as one of these ships, in the first hours of the voyage. The men are then all drunk, — some of them often in delirium tremens ; and the captain feels no safety for his life except in making himself as terri- ble as a fiend. It is the universal testimony that there is a worse set of sailors in these short voyages between Liverpool and America than in any other trade whatever. There is no probability that the captain will ever be called to account for this deed. He gave, at the time, his own version of the affair in his log-book ; and this was signed by the entire crew, with the exception of one man, who had hidden himself in the hold in ter- ror of the captain. His mates will sustain his side of the question ; and none of the sailors would be within reach of the American courts, even should they be sought for. October 1st — On Thursday I went with Mr. Tick- nor to Chester by railway. It is quite an indescrib- able old town, and I feel at last as if I had had a glimpse of old England. The wall encloses a large space within the town, but there are numerous houses and streets not included within its precincts. Some of the principal streets pass under the ancient gate- ways ; and at the side there are flights of steps, giving access to the summit. Around the top of the whole wall, a circuit of about two miles, there runs a walk, well paved with flagstones, and broad enough for three persons to walk abreast. On one side — that towards the country — there is a parapet of red freestone three or four feet high. On the other side there are houses, rising up immediately from the wall, so that they seem 1853.] CHESTER. 453 a part of it. The height of it, I suppose, may be thirty or forty feet, and, in some parts, you look down from the parapet into orchards, where there are tall apple-trees, and men on the branches, gathering fruit, and women and children among the grass, filling bags or baskets. There are prospects of the surrounding country among the buildings outside the wall ; at one point, a view of the river Dee, with an old bridge of arches. It is all very strange, very quaint, very curi- ous to see how the town has overflowed its barrier, and how, like many institutions here, the ancient wall still exists, but is turned to quite another purpose than what it was meant for, — so far as it serves any pur- pose at all. There are three or four towers in the course of the circuit ; the most interesting being one from the top of which King Charles the First is said to have seen the rout of his army by the Parliamenta- rians. We ascended the short flight of steps that led up into the tower, where an old man pointed out the site of the battle-field, now thickly studded with build- ings, and told us what we had already learned from the guide-book. After this we went into the cathedral, which I will perhaps describe on some other occasion, when I shall have seen more of it, and to better advan- tage. The cloisters gave us the strongest impression of antiquity ; the stone arches being so worn and black- ened by time. Still an American must always have imagined a better cathedral than this. There were some immense windows of painted glass, but all mod- ern. In the chapter-house we found a coal-fire burn- ing in a grate, and a large heap of old books — the li- brary of the cathedral — in a discreditable state of ilecay, — mildewed, rotten, neglected for years. The sexton told us that they were to be arranged and bet- 454 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. ter ordered. Over the door, inside, hung two faded and tattered banners, being those of the Cheshire regi- ment. The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is the Rows, which every traveller has attempted to de- scribe. At the height of several feet above some of the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of the houses, which project over it. Back of the walk there are shops ; on the outer side is a space of two or three yards, where the shopmen place their tables, and stands, and show-cases ; overhead, just high enough for persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent in- tervals little narrow passages go winding in among the houses, which all along are closely conjoined, and seem to have no access or exit, except through the shops, or into these narrow passages, where you can touch each side with your elbows, and the top with your hand. We penetrated into one or two of them, and they smelt anciently and disagreeably. At one of the doors stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and good-natured woman, who told us that she had come to that house when first married, twenty-one years be- fore, and had lived there ever since ; and that she felt as if she had been buried through the best years of her life. She allowed us to peep into her kitchen and parlor, — small, dingy, dismal, but yet not wholly des- titute of a home look. She said that she had seen two or three coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and,. for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer. When a house 1853.] CHESTER. 455 becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and the new one is fashioned like the old, so far as regards the walk running through its front. Many of the shops are very good, and even elegant, and these Rows are the favorite places of business in Chester. Indeed, they have many advantages, the passengers being sheltered from the rain, and there being within the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like to exhibit their wares. A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must be comparatively modern ; but there are some very an- cient ones, with oaken frames visible on the exterior. The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be as hard as stone, which it might be mistaken for, if one did not see where names and initials have been cut into it with knives at some by-gone period. Over- head, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low as almost to hit the head. On the front of one of these buildings was the inscription, " GOD'S Provi- dence is mine Inheritance," said to have been put there by the occupant of the house two hundred years ago, when the plague spared this one house only in the whole city. Not improbably the inscription has operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of the house hitherto ; but a shopman of an adjacent dwelling told us that it was soon to be taken down. Here and there, about some of the streets through which the Rows do not run, we saw houses of very aged aspect, with steep, peaked gables. The front gable-end was supported on stone pillars, and the side- walk passed beneath. Most of these old houses seemed to be taverns, — the Black Bear, the Green Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at 456 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. one of them, but, on inspection, they looked rather too dingy and close, and of questionable neatness. So we went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just as badly at much more expense, and where there was a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose there is not a more curious place in the world. Mr. Ticknor, who has been staying at Rock Park with us since Tuesday, has steamed away in the Can- ada this morning. His departure seems to make me feel more abroad, more dissevered from my native country, than before. October 2>d. — Saturday evening, at six, I went to dine with Mr. Aiken, a wealthy merchant here, to meet two of the sons of Burns. There was a party of ten or twelve, Mr. Aiken and his two daughters in- cluded. The two sons of Burns have both been in the Indian army, and have attained the ranks of Colonel and Major; one having spent thirty, and the other twenty-seven years, in India. They are now old gen- tlemen of sixty and upwards, the elder with a gray head, the younger with a perfectly white one, — rather under than above the middle stature, and with a Brit- ish roundness of figure, — plain, respectable, intelli- gent-looking persons, with quiet manners. I saw no resemblance in either of them to any portrait of their father. After the ladies left the table, I sat next to the Major, the younger of the two, and had a good deal of talk with him. He seemed a very kindly and social man, and was quite ready to speak about his 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 457 father, nor was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how much he valued the glory of being descended from the poet. By and by, at Mr. Aiken's instance, he sang one of Burns's songs, — the one about " Annie " and the " rigs of barley." He sings in a perfectly simple style, so that it is little more than a recitative, and yet the effect is very good as to humor, sense, and pathos. After rejoining the ladies, he sang another, " A posie for my ain dear May," and likewise " A man 's a man for a' that." My admiration of his father, and partly, perhaps, my being an American, gained me some favor with him, and he promised to give me what he considered the best engraving of Burns, and some other remembrance of him. The Major is that son of Burns who spent an evening at Abbotsford with Sir Walter Scott, when, as Lockhart writes, " the children sang the ballads of their sires." He spoke with vast indignation of a recent edition of his fa- ther's works by Robert Chambers, in which the latter appears to have wronged the poet by some misstate- ments. ... I liked them both and they liked me, and asked me to go and see them at Cheltenham, where they reside. We broke up at about midnight. The members of this dinner-party were of the more liberal tone of thinking here in Liverpool. The Col- onel and Major seemed to be of similar principles; and the eyes of the latter glowed when he sang his fa- ther's noble verse, " The rank is but the guinea's stamp," etc. It would have been too pitiable if Burns had left a son who could not feel the spirit of that verse. October Sth. — Coming to my office, two or three mornings ago, I found Mrs. . the mother of Mr. 458 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853, -, the insane young man of whom I had taken charge. She is a lady of fifty or thereabouts, and not very remarkable anyway, nor particularly lady-like. However, she was just come off a rapid journey, hav- ing travelled from Naples, with three small children, without taking rest, since my letter reached her. A son 1 of about twenty had come with her to the Con- sulate. She was, of course, infinitely grieved about the young man's insanity, and had two or three bursts of tears while we talked the matter over. She said he was the hope of her life, — the best, purest, most innocent child that ever was, and wholly free from every kind of vice. . . . But it appears that he had a previous attack of insanity, lasting three months, about three years ago. After I had told her all I knew about him, includ- ing my personal observations at a visit a week or two since, we drove in a cab to the Asylum. It must have been a dismal moment to the poor lady, as we entered the gateway through a tall, prison-like wall. Being ushered into the parlor, the Governor soon appeared, and informed us that Mr. had had a relapse within a few days, and was not so well as when I saw him. He complains of unjust confinement, and seems to consider himself, if I rightly understand, under per- secution for political reasons. The Governor, how- ever, proposed to call him down, and I took my leave, feeling that it would be indelicate to be present at his first interview with his mother. So here ended my guardianship of the poor young fellow. In the afternoon I called at the Waterloo Hotel, where Mrs. was staying, and found her in the coffee-room with the children. She had determined 1 This proved to be her new husband. 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 459 to take a lodging in the vicinity of the Asylum, and was going to remove thither as soon as the children had had something to eat. They seemed to be pleas- ant and well-behaved children, and impressed me more favorably than the mother, whom I suspect to be rather a foolish woman, although her present grief makes her appear in a more respectable light than at other times. She seemed anxious to impress me with the respectability and distinction of her connections in America, and I had observed the same tendency in the insane patient, at my interview with him. However, she has undoubtedly a mother's love for this poor shat- terbrain, and this may weigh against the folly of her marrying an incongruously youthful second husband, and many other follies. This was day before yesterday, and I have heard nothing of her since. The same day I had applica- tions for assistance in two other domestic affairs ; one from an Irishman, naturalized in America, who wished me to get him a passage thither, and to take charge of his wife and family here, at my own private expense, until he could remit funds to carry them across. An- other was from an Irishman, who had a power of at- torney from a countrywoman of his in America, to find and take charge of an infant whom she had left in the Liverpool workhouse, two years ago. I have a great mind to keep a list of all the business I am consulted about and employed in. It would be very curious. Among other things, all penniless Americans, or pre- tenders to Americanism, look upon me as their banker ; and I could ruin myself any week, if I had not laid down a rule to consider every applicant for assistance an impostor until he prove himself a true and respon- sible man, — which it is very difficult to do. Yester- 460 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. day there limped in a very respectable-looking old man, who described himself as a citizen of Baltimore, who had been on a trip to England and elsewhere, and, being detained longer than he expected, and having had an attack of rheumatism, was now short of funds to pay his passage home, and hoped that I would sup- ply the deficiency. He had quite a plain, homely, though respectable manner, and, for aught I know, was the very honestest man alive ; but as he could pro- duce no kind of proof of his character and responsi- bility, I very quietly explained the impossibility of my helping him. I advised him to try to obtain a passage on board of some Baltimore ship, the master of which might be acquainted with him, or, at all events, take his word for payment, after arrival. This he seemed inclined to do, and took his leave. There was a de- cided aspect of simplicity about this old man, and yet I rather judge him to be an impostor. It is easy enough to refuse money to strangers and unknown people, or whenever there may be any ques- tion about identity ; but it will not be so easy when I am asked for money by persons whom I know, but do not like to trust. They shall meet the eternal "No," however. October V&th. — In Ormerod's history of Chester it is mentioned that Randal, Earl of Chester, having made an inroad into Wales about 1225, the Welsh- men gathered in mass against him, and drove him into the castle of Nothelert in Flintshire. The Earl sent for succor to the Constable of Chester, Roger Lacy, surnamed " Hell," on account of his fierceness. It was then fair-time at Chester, and the constable col- lected a miscellaneous rabble of fiddlers, players, cob 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 461 biers, tailors, and all manner of debauched people, and led them to the relief of the Earl. At sight of this strange army the Welshmen fled ; and forever after the Earl assigned to the constable of Chester power over all fiddlers, shoemakers, etc., within the bounds of Cheshire. The constable retained for himself and his heirs the control of the shoemakers; and made over to his own steward, Dutton, that of the fiddlers and players, and for many hundreds of years after- wards the Duttons of Dutton retained the power. On midsummer-day, they used to ride through Chester, attended by all the minstrels playing on their several instruments, to the Church of St. John, and there re- new their licenses. It is a good theme for a legend. Sir Peter Leycester, 'writing in Charles the Second's time, copies the Latin deed from the constable to Dut- ton ; rightly translated, it seems to mean "the mag- isterial power over all the lewd people ... in the whole of Cheshire," but the custom grew into what is above stated. In the time of Henry VII., the Dut- tons claimed, by prescriptive right, that the Cheshire minstrels should deliver them, at the feast of St. John, four bottles of wine and a lance, and that each sepa- rate minstrel should pay fourpence halfpenny. . . . Another account says Ralph Dutton was the consta- ble's son-in-law, and " a lusty youth." October l§th. — Coming to the ferry this morning a few minutes before the boat arrived from town, I went into the ferry-house, a small stone edifice, and found there an Irishman, his wife and three children, the oldest eight or nine years old, and all girls. There was a good fire burning in the room, and the family was clustered round it, apparently enjoying the warmth 462 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. very much ; but when I went in both husband and wife very hospitably asked me to come to the fire, al- though there was not more than room at it for their own party. I declined, on the plea that I was warm enough, and then the woman said that they were very cold, having been long on the road. The man was gray-haired and gray-bearded, clad in an old drab overcoat, and laden with a huge bag, which seemed to contain bedclothing or something of the kind. The woman was pale, with a thin, anxious, wrinkled face, but with a good and kind expression. The children were quite pretty, with delicate faces, and a look of patience and endurance in them, but yet as if they had suffered as little as they possibly could. The two elder were cuddled up close to the father, the youngest, about four years old, sat in its mother's lap, and she had taken off its small shoes and stockings, and was warming its feet at the fire. Their little voices had a sweet and kindly sound as they talked in low tones to their parents and one another. They all looked very shabby, and yet had a decency about them ; and it was touching to see how they made themselves at home at this casual fireside, and got all the comfort they could out of the circumstances. By and by two or three market-women came in and looked pleasantly at them, and said a word or two to the children. They did not beg of me, as I supposed they would ; but after looking at them awhile, I pulled out a piece of silver, and handed it to one of the little girls. She took it very readily, as if she partly expected it, and then the father and mother thanked me, and said they had been travelling a long distance, and had nothing to subsist upon, except what they picked up on the road. They found it impossible to live in England, 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 463 and were now on their way to Liverpool, hoping to get a passage back to Ireland, where, I suppose, extreme poverty is rather better off than here. I heard the little girl say that she should buy bread with the money. There is not much that can be caught in the description of this scene ; but it made me under- stand, better than before, how poor people feel, wan- dering about in such destitute circumstances, and how they suffer, and yet how they have a life not quite miserable, after all, and how family love goes along with them. Soon the boat arrived at the pier, and we all went on board ; and as I sat in the cabin, looking up through a broken pane in the skylight, I saw the woman's thin face, with its anxious, motherly aspect ; and the youngest child in her arms, shrinking from the chill wind, but yet not impatiently ; and the eldest of the girls standing close by with her expression of childish endurance, but yet so bright and intelligent that it would evidently take but a few days to make a happy and playful child of her. I got into the inte- rior of this poor family, and understand, through sym- pathy, more of them than I can tell. I am getting to possess some of the English indifference as to beggars and poor people ; but still, whenever I come face to face with them, and have any intercourse, it seems as if they ought to be the better for me. I wish, instead of sixpence, I had given the poor family ten shillings, and denied it to a begging subscriptionist, who has just fleeced me to that amount. How silly a man feels in this latter predicament ! I have had a good many visitors at the Consulate from the United States within a short time, — among others, Mr. D. D. Barnard, our late minister to Ber- lin, returning homeward to-day by the Arctic ; and 464 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. Mr. Sickles, Secretary of Legation to London, a fine-looking, intelligent, gentlemanly young man. . . . With him came Judge Douglas, the chosen man of Young America. He is very short, extremely short, but has an uncommonly good head, and uncommon dignity without seeming to aim at it, being free and simple in manners. I judge him to be a very able man, with the Western sociability and free-fellowship. Generally I see no reason to be ashamed of my coun- trymen who come out here in public position, or other- wise assuming the rank of gentlemen. October 20th. — One sees incidents in the streets here, occasionally, which could not be seen in an Amer- ican city. For instance, a week or two since, I was passing a quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, when, all of a sudden, without any apparent provocation, he up- lifted his stick, and struck a black-gowned boy a smart blow on the shoulders. The boy looked at him wof ully and resentfully, but said nothing, nor can I imagine why the thing was done. In Tythebarne Street to-day I saw a woman suddenly assault a man, clutch at his hair, and cuff him about the ears. The man, who was of decent aspect enough, immediately took to his heels, full speed, and the woman ran after him, and, as far as I could discern the pair, the chase continued. October 22d. — At a dinner-party at Mr. Holland's last evening, a gentleman, in instance of Charles Dick- ens's unweariability, said that during some theatrical performances in Liverpool he acted in play and farce, spent the rest of the night making speeches, feasting, and drinking at table, and ended at seven o'clock in the morning by jumping leap-frog over the backs of the whole company. 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 465 In Moore's diary he mentions a beautiful Guernsey lily having been given to his wife, and says that the flower was originally from Guernsey. A ship from there had been wrecked on the coast of Japan, having many of the lilies on board, and the next year the flowers appeared, — springing up, I suppose, on the wave-beaten strand. Wishing to send a letter to a dead man, who may be supposed to have gone to Tophet, — throw it into the fire. Sir Arthur Aston had his brains beaten out with his own wooden leg, at the storming of Tredagh, in Ireland, by Cromwell. In the county of Cheshire, many centuries ago, there lived a half-idiot, named Nixon, who had the gift of prophecy, and made many predictions about places, families, and important public events, since fulfilled. He seems to have fallen into fits of insensi^ bility previous to uttering his prophecies. The family of Mainwaring (pronounced Manner- ing), of Bromborough, had an ass's head for a crest. " Richard Dawson, being sick of the plague, and perceiving he must die, rose out of his bed and made his grave, and caused his nephew to cast straw into the grave, which was not far from the house, and went and laid him down in the said grave, and caused clothes to be laid upon him, and so departed out of this world. This he did because he was a strong man, and heavier than his said nephew and a serving- wench were 466 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. able to bury. He died about the 24th of August. Thus was I credibly told he did, 1625." This was in the township of Malpas, recorded in the parish register. At Bickley Hall, taken down a few years ago, used to be shown the room where the body of the Earl of Leicester was laid for a whole twelvemonth, — 1659 to 1660, — he having been kept unburied all that time, owing to a dispute which of his heirs should pay his funeral expenses. November 5th. — We all, together with Mr. Squa- rey, went to Chester last Sunday, and attended the cathedral service. A great deal of ceremony, and not unimposing, but rather tedious before it was finished, — occupying two hours or more. The Bishop was present, but did nothing except to pronounce the ben- ediction. In America the sermon is the principal thing ; but here all this magnificent ceremonial of prayer and chanted responses and psalms and anthems was the setting to a short, meagre discourse, which would not have been considered of any account among the elaborate intellectual efforts of New England min- isters. While this was going on, the light came through the stained glass windows and fell upon the congregation, tingeiug them with crimson. After ser- vice we wandered about the aisles, and looked at the tombs and monuments, — the oldest of which was that of some nameless abbot, with a staff and mitre half obliterated from his tomb, which was under a shallow arch on one side of the cathedral. There were also marbles on the walls, and lettered stones in the pave- ment under our feet ; but chiefly, if not entirely, of modern date. We lunched at the Royal Hotel, and 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 467 then walked round the city walls, also crossing the bridge of one great arch over the Dee, and penetrating as far into Wales as the entrance of the Marquis of Westminster's Park at Eaton. It was, I think, the most lovely day as regards weather that I have seen in England. I passed, to-day, a man chanting a ballad in a street about a recent murder, in a voice that had innumer- able cracks in it, and was most lugubrious. The other day I saw a man who was reading in a loud voice what seemed to be an account of the late riots and loss of life in Wigan. He walked slowly along the street as he read, surrounded by a small crowd of men, women, and children ; and close by his elbow stalked a police- man, as if guarding against a disturbance. November 14:th. — There is a heavy dun fog on the river and over the city to-day, the very gloomiest at- mosphere that ever I was acquainted with. On the river the steamboats strike gongs or ring bells to give warning of their approach. There are lamps burning in the counting-rooms and lobbies of the warehouses, and they gleam distinctly through the windows. The other day, at the entrance of the market-house, I saw a woman sitting in a small hand-wagon, appar- ently for the purpose of receiving alms. There was no attendant at hand ; but I noticed that one or two persons who passed by seemed to inquire whether she wished her wagon to be moved. Perhaps this is her mode of making progress about the city, by the volun- tary aid of boys and other people who help to drag her. There is something in this — I don't yet well know what — that has impressed me, as if I could 468 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [lgflb. make a romance out of the idea of a woman living in this manner a public life, and moving about by such means. November 29th. — Mr. H. A. B — — told me of his friend Mr. (who was formerly attache to the British Legation at Washington, and whom I saw at Concord), that his father, a clergyman, married a second wife. After the marriage, the noise of a cof- fin being nightly carried down the stairs was heard in the parsonage. It could be distinguished when the coffin reached a certain broad landing and rested on it. Finally, his father had to remove to another residence. Besides this, Mr. had had another ghostly experience, — having seen a dim apparition of an uncle at the precise instant when the latter died in a distant place. The attache is a credible and honor- able fellow, and talks of these matters as if he posi- tively believed them. But Ghostland lies beyond the jurisdiction of veracity. In a garden near Chester, in taking down a sum- mer-house, a tomb was discovered beneath it, with a Latin inscription to the memory of an old doctor of medicine, William Bentley, who had owned the place long ago, and died in 1680. And his dust and bones had lain beneath all the merry times in the summer- house. December 1st. — It is curious to observe how many methods people put in practice here to pick up a half- penny. Yesterday I saw a man standing bareheaded and barelegged in the mud and misty weather, playing on a fife, in hopes to get a circle of auditors. Nobody, 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 469 however, seemed to take any notice. Very often a whole band of musicians will strike up, — passing a hat round after playing a tune or two. On board the ferry, until the coldest weather began, there were al- ways some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle, per- forming during the passage, and, as the boat neared the shore, sending round one of their number to gather contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, and must have made a very scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with an accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a timbrel, — which, being so shattered that she could not play on it, she used only to collect halfpence in. Ballad - singers, or rather chanters or croakers, are often to be met with in the streets, but hand-organ players are not more frequent than in our cities. I still observe little girls and other children bare- legged and barefooted on the wet sidewalks. There certainly never was anything so dismal as the Novem- ber weather has been ; never any real sunshine; al- most always a mist ; sometimes a dense fog, like slightly rarefied wool, pervading the atmosphere. An epitaph on a person buried on a hill -side in Cheshire, together with some others, supposed to have died of the plague, and therefore not admitted into the churchyards : — " Think it not strange our bones ly here, Thine may ly thou knowst not where." Elizabeth Hampson. These graves were near the remains of two rude stone crosses, the purpose of which was not certainly known, although they were supposed to be boundary marks. 470 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. Probably, as the plague-corpses were debarred from sanctified ground, the vicinity of these crosses was chosen as having a sort of sanctity. " Bang beggar," — an old Cheshire term for a parish beadle. Hawthorne Hal], Cheshire, Macclesfield Hundred, Parish of Wilmslow, and within the hamlet of Morley. It was vested at an early period in the Lathoms of Irlam, Lancaster County, and passed through the Leighs to the Pages of Earlshaw. Thomas Leigh Page sold it to Mr. Ralph Bower of Wilmslow, whose children owned it in 1817. The Leighs built a chan- cel in the church of Wilmslow, where some of them are buried, their arms painted in the windows. The hall is an " ancient, respectable mansion of brick." December 2d. — Yesterday, a chill, misty December day, yet I saw a woman barefooted in the street, not to speak of children. Cold and uncertain as the weather is, there is still a great deal of small trade carried on in the open air. Women and men sit in the streets with a stock of combs and such small things to sell, the women knit- ting as if they sat by a fireside. Cheap crockery is laid out in the street, so far out that without any great deviation from the regular carriage - track a wheel might pass straight through it. Stalls of apples are innumerable, but the apples are not fit for a pig. In some streets herrings are very abundant, laid out on boards. Coals seem to be for sale by the wheelbar- rowful. Here and there you see children with some small article for sale, — as, for instance, a girl with 1853.] LIVERPOOL, 471 two linen caps. A somewhat overladen cart of coal was passing along and some small quantity of the coal fell off ; no sooner had the wheels passed than several women and children gathered to the spot, like hens and chickens round a handful of corn, and picked it up in their aprons. We have nothing similar to these street- women in our country. December 10th. — I don't know any place that brings all classes into contiguity on equal ground so completely as the waiting-room at Eock Ferry on these frosty days. The room is not more than eight feet square, with walls of stone, and wooden benches ranged round them, and an open stove in one corner, generally well furnished with coal. It is almost al- ways crowded, and I rather suspect that many per- sons who have no fireside elsewhere creep in here and spend the most comfortable part of their day. This morning, when I looked into the room, there were one or two gentlemen and other respectable per- sons ; but in the best place, close to the fire, and crouching almost into it, was an elderly beggar, with the raggedest of overcoats, two great rents in the shoulders of it disclosing the dingy lining, all be- patched with various stuff covered with dirt, and on his shoes and trousers the mud of an interminable pil- grimage. Owing to the posture in which he sat, I could not see his face, but only the battered crown and rim of the very shabbiest hat that ever was worn. Regardless of the presence of women (which, indeed, Englishmen seldom do regard when they wish to smoke), he was smoking a pipe of vile tobacco ; but, after all, this was fortunate, because the man himself was not personally fragrant. He was terribly squalid, 472 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. — terribly ; and when I had a glimpse of his face, it well befitted the rest of his development, — grizzled, wrinkled, weather-beaten, yet sallow, and down-look- ing, with a watchful kind of eye turning upon every- body and everything, meeting the glances of other peo- ple rather boldly, yet soon shrinking away ; a long thin nose, a gray beard of a week's growth ; hair not much mixed with gray, but rusty and lifeless; — a miserable object ; but it was curious to see how he was not ashamed of himself, but seemed to feel that he was one of the estates of the kingdom, and had as much right to live as other men. He did just as he pleased, took the best place by the fire, nor would have cared though a nobleman were forced to stand aside for him. When the steamer's bell rang, he shouldered a large and heavy pack, like a pilgrim with his burden of sin, but certainly journeying to hell instead of heaven. On board he looked round for the best position, at first stationing himself near the boiler-pipe; but, finding the deck damp underfoot, he went to the cabin-door, and took his stand on the stairs, protected from the wind, but very incommodiously placed for those who wished to pass. All this was done without any bra- vado or forced impudence, but in the most quiet way, inerely because he was seeking his own comfort, and considered that he had a right to seek it. It was an Englishman's spirit ; but in our country, I imagine, a beggar considers himself a kind of outlaw, and would hardly assume the privileges of a man in any place of public resort. Here beggary is a system, and beg- gars are a numerous class, and make themselves, in a certain way, respected as such. Nobody evinced the slightest disapprobation of the man's proceedings. In America, I think, we should see many aristocratic airs 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 473 on such provocation, and probably the ferry people would there have rudely thrust the beggar aside ; giv- ing him a shilling, however, which no Englishman would ever think of doing. There would also have been a great deal of fun made of his squalid and rag- ged figure ; whereas nobody smiled at him this morn- ing, nor in any way showed the slightest disrespect. This is good ; but it is the result of a state of things by no means good. For many days there has been a great deal of fog on the river, and the boats have groped then* way along, continually striking their bells, while, on all sides, there are responses of bell and gong ; and the vessels at anchor look shadow-like as we glide past them, and the master of one steamer shouts a warning to the master of another which he meets. The Englishmen, who hate to run any risk without an equivalent object, show a good deal of cau- tion and timidity on these foggy days. December lStJi. — Chill, frosty weather ; such an at- mosphere as forebodes snow in New England, and there has been a little here. Yet I saw a barefooted young woman yesterday. The feet of these poor crea- tures have exactly the red complexion of their hands, acquired by constant exposure to the cold air. At the ferry-room, this morning, was a small, thin, anxious-looking woman, with a bundle, seeming in rather poor circumstances, but decently dressed, and eying other women, I thought, with an expression of slight ill-will and distrust ; also an elderly, stout, gray- haired woman, of respectable aspect, and two young lady-like persons, quite pretty, one of whom was read- ing a shilling volume of James's " Arabella Stuart." They talked to one another with that up-and-down in- 474 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. tonation which English ladies practise, and which strikes an unaccustomed ear as rather affected, espe- cially in women of size and mass. It is very differ- ent from an American lady's mode of talking : there is the difference between color and no color ; the tone variegates it. One of these young ladies spoke to me, making some remark about the weather, — the first in- stance I have met with of a gentlewoman's speaking to an unintroduced gentleman. Besides these, a mid- dle-aged man of the lower class, and also a gentleman's out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the knee to the ankle. He complained to the other man of the cold weather ; said that a glass of whiskey, every half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, acci- dentally hitting his coarse foot against one of the young lady's feet, said, " Beg pardon, ma'am," — which she acknowledged with a slight movement of the head. Somehow or other, different classes seem to encounter one another in an easier manner than with us; the shock is less palpable. I suppose the reason is that the distinctions are real, and therefore need not be continually asserted. Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam. On board the Rock Ferry steamer, a gentleman com- ing into the cabin, a voice addresses him from a dark corner, " How do you do, sir ? " — " Speak again ! " says the gentleman. No answer from the dark corner ; and the gentleman repeats, " Speak again ! " The speaker now comes out of the dark corner, and sits down in a place where he can be seen. " Ah ! " cries the gentle- 1853] LIVERPOOL. 475 man, " very well, I thank you. How do you do ? 1 did not recognize your voice." Observable, the Eng- lish caution, shown in the gentleman's not vouchsafing to say, "Very well, thank you!" till he knew his man. What was the after life of the young man, whon Jesus, looking on, " loved," and bade him sell all that he had, and give to the poor, and take up his cross and follow him? Something very deep and beautiful might be made out of this. December 31s£. — Among the beggars of Liverpool, the hardest to encounter is a man without any legs, and, if I mistake not, likewise deficient in arms. You see him before you all at once, as if he had sprouted half-way out of the earth, and would sink down and reappear in some other place the moment he has done with you. His countenance is large, fresh, and very intelligent ; but his great power lies in his fixed gaze, which is inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once removes his eye from you till you are quite past his range ; and you feel it all the same, although you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful ; but the intentness and directness of his silent appeal is far worse than any impudence. In fact, it is the very flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile about than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by him, and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great force ill the man to produce such an effect. There is nothing of the customary squalidness of beggary about him, but remarkable trimness and cleanliness. A girl of twenty or thereabouts, who vagabondizes about the city on her hands and knees, possesses, to a consider- able degree, the same characteristics. I think they hit 476 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. their victims the more effectually from being below the common level of vision. January 3c?, 1854. — Night before last there was a fall of snow, about three or four inches, and, following it, a pretty hard frost. On the river, the vessels at anchor showed the snow along their yards, and on every ledge where it could lie. A blue sky and sun- shine overhead, and apparently a clear atmosphere close at hand ; but in the distance a mistiness became perceptible, obscuring the shores of the river, and mak- ing the vessels look dim and uncertain. The steamers were ploughing along, smoking their pipes through the frosty air. On the landing stage and in the streets, hard-trodden snow, looking more like my New Eng- land home than anything I have yet seen. Last night the thermometer fell as low as 13°, nor probably is it above 20° to-day. No such frost has been known in England these forty years ! and Mr. Wilding tells me that he never saw so much snow before. January 6th. — I saw, yesterday, stopping at a cab- inet-maker's shop in Church Street, a coach with four beautiful white horses, and a postilion on each near- horse ; behind, in the dicky, a footman ; and on the box a coachman, all dressed in livery. The coach-panel bore a coat of arms with a coronet, and I presume it must have been the equipage of the Earl of Derby. A crowd of people stood round, gazing at the coach and horses ; and when any of them spoke, it was in a lower tone than usual. I doubt not they all had a kind of enjoyment of the spectacle, for these English are strangely proud of having a class above them. 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 477 Every Englishman runs to " The Times " with his little grievance, as a child runs to his mother. I was sent for to the police court the other morning, in the case of an American sailor accused of robbing a shipmate at sea. A large room, with a great coal- fire burning on one side, and above it, the portrait of Mr. Rushton, deceased, a magistrate of many years' continuance. A long table, with chairs, and a wit- ness-box. One of the borough magistrates, a merchant of the city, sat at the head of the table, with paper and pen and ink before him ; but the real judge was the clerk of the court, whose professional knowledge and experience governed all the proceedings. In the short time while I was waiting, two cases were tried, in the first of which the prisoner was discharged. The sec- ond case was of a woman, — a thin, sallow, hard-look- ing, careworn, rather young woman, — for stealing a pair of slippers out of a shop. The trial occupied five minutes or less, and she was sentenced to twenty-one days' imprisonment, — whereupon, without speaking, she looked up wildly first into one policeman's face, then into another's, at the same time wringing her hands with no theatric gesture, but because her tor- ment took this outward shape, — and was led away. The Yankee sailor was then brought up, — an intelli- gent, but ruffian-like fellow, — and as the case was out of the jurisdiction of the English magistrates, and as it was not worth while to get him sent over to Amer- ica for trial, he was forthwith discharged. He stole a comforter. If mankind were all intellect, they would be con- tinually changing, so that one age would be entirely 478 ENGDSH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages ; so that common- places of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever. Monday, February 20£A. — At the police court on Saturday, I attended the case of the second mate and four seamen of the John and Albert, for assaulting, beating, and stabbing the chief mate. The chief mate has been in the hospital ever since the assault, and was brought into the court to-day to give evidence, — a man of thirty, black hair, black eyes, a dark com- plexion, disagreeable expression ; sallow, emaciated, feeble, apparently in pain, one arm disabled. He sat bent and drawn upward, and had evidently been se- verely hurt, and was not yet fit to be out of bed. He had some brandy-and-water to enable him to sustain himself. He gave his evidence very clearly, beginning (sailor-like) with telling in what quarter the wind was at the time of the assault, and which sail was taken in. His testimony bore on one man only, at whom he cast a vindictive look ; but I think he told the truth as far as he knew and remembered it. Of the prison- ers the second mate was a mere youth, with long, sandy hair, and an intelligent and not unprepossessing face, dressed as neatly as a three or four weeks' cap- ture, with small or no means, could well allow, in a frock-coat, and with clean linen, — the only linen or cotton shirt in the company. The other four were rude, brutish sailors, in flannel or red-baize shirts. Three of them appeared to give themselves little con- cern; but the fourth, a red-haired and red-bearded man, — Paraman, by name, — evidently felt the press* ure of the case upon himself. He was the one whom 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 479 the mate swore to have given him the first blow ; and there was other evidence of his having been stabbed with a knife. The captain of the ship, the pilot, the cook, and the steward, all gave their evidence ; and the general bearing of it was, that the chief mate had a devilish temper, and had misused the second mate and crew, — that the four seamen had attacked him, and that Par am an had stabbed him ; while all but the stew- ard concurred in saying that the second mate had taken no part in the affray. The steward, however, swore to having seen him strike the chief mate with a wooden marline-spike, which was broken by the blow. The magistrate dismissed all but Paraman, whom I am to send to America for trial. In my opinion the chief mate got pretty nearly what he deserved, under the code of natural justice. While business was going for- ward, the magistrate, Mr. Mansfield, talked about a fancy ball at which he had been present the evening before, and of other matters grave and gay. It was very informal ; we sat at the table, or stood with our backs to the fire ; policemen came and went ; wit- nesses were sworn on the greasiest copy of the Gos- pels I ever saw, polluted by hundreds and thousands of perjured kisses ; and for hours the prisoners were kept standing at the foot of the table, interested to the full extent of their capacity, while all others were in- different. At the close of the case, the police officers and witnesses applied to me about their expenses. Yesterday I took a walk with my wife and two chil- dren to Bebbington Church. A beautifully sunny morning. My wife and U. attended church, J. and I continued our walk. When we were at a little dis- tance from the church, the bells suddenly chimed out with a most cheerful sound, and sunny as the morning. 480 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. It is a pity we have no chimes of bells, to give the churchward summons, at home. People were stand- ing about the ancient church-porch and among the tombstones. In the course of our walk, we passed many old thatched cottages, built of stone, and with what looked like a cow-house or pigsty at one end, making part of the cottage ; also an old stone farm- house, which may have been a residence of gentility in its day. We passed, too, a small Methodist chapel, making one of a row of low brick edifices. There was a sound of prayer within. I never saw a more unbeau- tiful place of worship ; and it had not even a separate existence for itself, the adjoining tenement being an alehouse. The grass along the wayside was green, with a few daisies. There was green holly in the hedges, and we passed through a wood, up some of the tree-trunks of which ran clustering ivy. February 23d. — There came to see me the other day a young gentleman with a mustache and a blue cloak, who announced himself as William Allingham, and handed me a copy of his poems, a thin volume, with paper covers, published by Koutledge. I thought I remembered hearing his name, but had never seen any of his works. His face was intelligent, dark, pleasing, and not at all John-Bullish. He said that he had been employed in the Customs in Ireland, and was now going to London to live by literature, — to be connected with some newspaper, I imagine. He had been in London before, and was acquainted with some of the principal literary people, — among others, Tennyson and Carlyle. He seemed to have been on rather intimate terms with Tennyson. . . . We talked 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 481 awhile in my dingy and dusky Consulate, and he then took leave. His manners are good, and he appears to possess independence of mind. . . . Yesterday I saw a British regiment march down to George's Pier, to embark in the Niagara for Malta. The troops had nothing very remarkable about them ; but the thousands of ragged and squalid wretches, who thronged the pier and streets to gaze on them, were what I had not seen before in such masses. This was the first populace I ever beheld ; for even the Irish, on the other side of the water, acquire a respectability of aspect. John Bull is going with his whole heart into the Turkish war. He is very foolish. Whatever the Czar may propose to himself, it is for the interest of democracy that he should not be easily put down. The regiment, on its way to embark, carried the Queen's colors, and, side by side with them, the banner of the 28th, — yellow, with the names of the Peninsular and other battles in which it had been engaged inscribed on it in a double column. It is a very distinguished regiment ; and Mr. Henry Bright mentioned, as one of its distinctions, that Washington had formerly been an officer in it. I never heard of this. February 21th. — We walked to Woodside in the pleasant forenoon, and thence crossed to Liverpool. On our way to Woodside, we saw the remains of the old Birkenhead Priory, built of the common red free- stone, much time-worn, with ivy creeping over it, and birds evidently at home in its old crevices. These ruins are pretty extensive, and seem to be the remains of a quadrangle. A handsome modern church, like- wise of the same red freestone, has been built on part VOL. VII. 81 482 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. of the site occupied by the Priory ; and the organ was sounding within while we walked about the premises. On some of the ancient arches, there were grotesquely carved stone faces. The old walls have been suffi- ciently restored to make them secure, without destroy- ing their venerable aspect. It is a very interesting spot ; and so much the more so because a modern town, with its brick and stone houses, its flags and pavements, has sprung up about the ruins, which were new a thousand years ago. The station of the Ches- ter railway is within a hundred yards. Formerly the Monks of this Priory kept the only ferry that then existed on the Mersey. At a dinner at Mr. Bramley Moore's a little while ago, we had a prairie-hen from the West of America. It was a very delicate bird, and a gentleman carved it most skilfully to a dozen guests, and had still a second slice to offer to them. Aboard the ferry-boat, yesterday, there was a labor- ing man eating oysters. He took them one by one from his pocket in interminable succession, opened them with his jack-knife, swallowed each one, threw the shell overboard, and then sought for another. Hav- ing concluded his meal, he took out a clay tobacco- pipe, filled it, lighted it with a match, and smoked it, — all this while the other passengers were looking at him, and with a perfect coolness and independence, such as no single man can ever feel in America. Here a man does not seem to consider what other people will think of his conduct, but only whether it suits his own convenience to do so and so. It may be the bettez way. i854.] LIVERPOOL, 483 A French military man, a veteran of all Napoleon's wars, is now living, with a false leg and arm, both movable by springs, false teeth, a false eye, a silver nose with a flesh-colored covering, and a silver plate replacing part of the skull. He has the cross of the Legion of Honor. March lSth. — On Saturday I went with Mr. B to the Dingle, a pleasant domain on the banks of the Mersey almost opposite to Rock Ferry. Walking home, we looked into Mr. Thorn's Unitarian Chapel, Mr. B 's family's place of worship. There is a little graveyard connected with the chapel, a most un- inviting and unpicturesque square of ground, perhaps thirty or forty yards across, in the midst of back fronts of city buildings. About half the space was occupied by flat tombstones, level with the ground, the remainder being yet vacant. Nevertheless, there were perhaps more names of men generally known to the world on these few tombstones than in any other churchyard in Liverpool, — Roscoe, Blanco White, and the Rev. William Enfield, whose name has a classical sound in my ears, because, when a little boy, I used to read his "Speaker" at school. In the vestry of the chapel there were many books, chiefly old theo- logical works, in ancient print and binding, much mil- dewed and injured by the damp. The body of the chapel is neat, but plain, and, being not very large, has a kind of social and family aspect, as if the cler- gyman and his people must needs have intimate rela- tions among themselves. The Unitarian sect in Liver- pool have, as a body, great wealth and respectability. Yesterday I walked with my wife and children to the brow of a hill, overlooking Birkenhead and Tran- 484 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. mere, and commanding a fine view of the river, and Liverpool beyond. All round about new and neat res- idences for city people are springing up, with fine names, — Eldon Terrace, Rose Cottage, Belvoir Villa, etc., etc., with little patches of ornamented garden or lawn in front, and heaps of curious rock-work, with which the English are ridiculously fond of adorning their front yards. I rather think the middling classes — meaning shopkeepers, and other respectabilities of that level — are better lodged here than in America; and, what I did not expect, the houses are a great deal newer than in our new country. Of course, this can only be the case in places circumstanced like Liv- erpool and its suburbs. But, scattered among these modern villas, there are old stone cottages of the rud- est structure, and doubtless hundreds of years old, with thatched roofs, into which the grass has rooted itself, and now looks verdant. These cottages are in themselves as ugly as possible, resembling a large kind of pigsty; but often, by dint of the verdure on their thatch and the shrubbery clustering about them, they look picturesque. The old - fashioned flowers in the gardens of New England — blue - bells, crocuses, primroses, foxglove, and many others — appear to be wild flowers here on English soil. There is something very touching and pretty in this fact, that the Puritans should have carried their field and hedge flowers, and nurtured them in their gardens, until, to us, they seem entirely the product of cultivation. March 16th. — Yesterday, at the coroner's court, at- tending the inquest on a black sailor who died on board an American vessel, after her arrival at this 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 485 port. The court -room is capable of accommodating perhaps fifty people, dingy, with a pyramidal skylight above, and a single window on one side, opening into a gloomy back court. A private room, also lighted with a pyramidal skylight, is behind the court-room, into which I was asked, and found the coroner, a gray- headed, grave, intelligent, broad, red-faced man, with an air of some authority, well mannered and dignified, but not exactly a gentleman, — dressed in a blue coat, with a black cravat, showing a shirt-collar above it. Considering how many and what a varietjr of cases of the ugliest death are constantly coining before him, he was much more cheerful than could be expected, and had a kind of formality and orderliness which I sup- pose balances the exceptionalities with which he has to deal. In the private room with him was likewise the surgeon, who professionally attends the court. We chatted about suicide and such matters, — the surgeon, the coroner, and I, — until the American case was ready, when we adjourned to the court-room, and the coroner began the examination. The American captain was a rude, uncouth Down-Easter, about thirty years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent into an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally straightened himself, all the time toying with a ruler, or some such article. The case was one of no inter- est ; the man had been frost-bitten, and died from nat- ural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed upon the captain. The jury, who had been examining the body, were at first inclined to think that the man had not been frost-bitten, but that his feet had been immersed in boiling water ; but, on explanation by the surgeon, readily yielded their opinion, and gave the verdict which the coroner put into their mouths, ex- 486 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. culpating the captain from all blame. In fact, it is utterly impossible that a jury of chance individuals should not be entirely governed by the judgment of so experienced and weighty a man as the coroner. In the court -room were two or three police officers in uniform, and some other officials, a very few idle spec- tators, and a few witnesses waiting to be examined. And while the case was going forward, a poor-looking woman came in, and I heard her, in an undertone, telling an attendant of a death that had just occurred. The attendant received the communication in a very quiet and matter-of-course way, said that it should be attended to, and the woman retired. The Diary of a Coroner would be a work likely to meet with large popular acceptance. A dark pas- sageway, only a few yards in extent, leads from the liveliest street in Liverpool to this coroner's court- room, where all the discussion is about murder and suicide. It seems, that, after a verdict of suicide the corpse can only be buried at midnight, without relig- ious rites. " His lines are cast in pleasant places," — applied to a successful angler. A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expecta- tion of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final ons 1854] LIVERPOOL. 487 which you supposed would introduce you to the hid- den pearl. March 23c?. — Mr. B. and I took a cab Saturday afternoon, and drove out of the city in the direction of Knowsley. On our way we saw many gentlemen's or rich people's places, some of them dignified with the title of Halls, — with lodges at their gates, and standing considerably removed from the road. The greater part of them were built of brick, — a material with which I have not been accustomed to associate ideas of grandeur; but it was much in use here in Lancashire, in the Elizabethan age, — more, I think, than now. These suburban residences, however, are of much later date than Elizabeth's time. Among other places, Mr. B. called at the Hazels, the residence of Sir Thomas Birch, a kinsman of his. It is a large brick mansion, and has old trees and shrubbery about it, the latter very fine and verdant, — hazels, holly, rhododendron, etc. Mr. B. went in, and shortly after- wards Sir Thomas Birch came out, — a very frank and hospitable gentleman, — and pressed me to enter and take luncheon, which latter hospitality I declined. His house is in very nice order. He had a good many pictures, and, amongst them, a small portrait of his mother, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, when a youth. It is unfinished, and when the painter was at the height of his fame, he was asked to finish it. But Lawrence, after looking at the picture, refused to re- touch it, saying that there was a merit in this early sketch which he could no longer attain. It was really a very beautiful picture of a lovely woman. Sir Thomas Birch proposed to go with us and get 488 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. us admittance into Knowsley Park, where we could not possibly find entrance without his aid. So we went to the stables, where the old groom had already shown hospitality to our cabman, by giving his horse some provender, and himself some beer. There seemed to be a kindly and familiar sort of intercourse between the old servant and the Baronet, — each of them, I presume, looking on their connection as indissoluble. The gate-warden of Knowsley Park was an old wo- man, who readily gave us admittance at Sir Thomas Birch's request. The family of the Earl of Derby is not now at the Park. ... It was a very bad time of year to see it ; the trees just showing the earliest symptoms of vitality, while whole acres of ground were covered with large, dry, brown ferns, —which I suppose are very beautiful when green. Two or three hares scampered out of these ferns, and sat on their hind legs looking about them, as we drove by. A sheet of water had been drawn off, in order to deepen its bed. The oaks did not seem to me so magnificent as they should be in an ancient noble property like this. A century does not accomplish so much for a tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours. I think, however, that they were more individual and pictur- esque, with more character in their contorted trunks ; therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our forest- trees have a great sameness of character, like our people, — because one and the other grow too closely. In one part of the Park we came to a small tower, for what purpose I know not, unless as an observa- tory; and near it was a marble statue on a high pedes- tal. The statue had been long exposed to the weather, and was overgrown and ingrained with moss and li- chens, so that its classic beauty was in some sort goth 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 489 icized, A half-mile or so from this point, we saw the mansion of Knowsley, in the midst of a very fine pros- pect, with a tolerably high ridge of hills in the dis- tance. The house itself is exceedingly vast, a front and two wings, with suites of rooms, I suppose, inter- minable. The oldest part, Sir Thomas Birch told us, is a tower of the time of Henry VII. Nevertheless, the effect is not overwhelming, because the edifice looks low in proportion to its great extent over the ground ; and, besides, a good deal of it is built of brick, with white window-frames, so that, looking at separate parts, I might think them American structures, with- out the smart addition of green Venetian blinds, so uni- versal with us. Portions, however, were built of red freestone ; and if I had looked at it longer, no doubt I should have admired it more. We merely drove round it from the rear to the front. It stands in my memory rather like a college or a hospital, than as the ancestral residence of a great English noble. We left the Park in another direction, and passed through a part of Lord Sefton's property, by a private road. By the by, we saw half a dozen policemen, in their blue coats and embroidered collars, after entering Knowsley Park; but the Earl's own servants would probably have supplied their place, had the family been at home. The mansion of Croxteth, the seat of Lord Sefton, stands near the public road, and, though large, looked of rather narrow compass after Knows- ley. The rooks were talking together very loquaciously b the high tops of the trees near Sir Thomas Birch's house, it being now their building-time. It was a very 490 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854 pleasant sound, the noise being comfortably softened by the remote height. Sir Thomas said that more than half a century ago the rooks used to inhabit another grove of lofty trees, close in front of the house ; but being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their hab- its, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was driven away, and made their present settlement in a grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a rook has built in the ancient grove ; every year, how- ever, one or another pair of young rooks attempt to build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old rooks tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is put to- gether. Thus, either the memory of aged individual rooks or an authenticated tradition in their society has preserved the idea that the old grove is forbidden and inauspicious to them. A son of General Arnold, named William Fitch Arnold, and born in 1794, now possesses the estate of Little Messenden Abbey, Bucks County, and is a magistrate for that county. He was formerly Captain of the 19th Lancers. He has now two sons and four daughters. The other three sons of General Arnold, all older than this one, and all military men, do not appear to have left children ; but a daughter married to Colonel Phipps, of the Mulgrave family, has a son and two daughters. I question whether any of our true-hearted Revolutionary heroes have left a more prosperous progeny than this arch-traitor. I should like to know their feelings with respect to their an« cestor. April 3d. — I walked with J , two days ago, t* 1854. J LIVERPOOL. 491 Eastham, a village on the road to Chester, and five or six miles from Rock Ferry. On our way we passed through a village, in the centre of which was a small stone pillar, standing on a pedestal of several steps, on which children were sitting and playing. I take it to have been an old Catholic cross ; at least, I know not what else it is. It seemed very ancient. Eastham is the finest old English village I have seen, with many antique houses, and with altogether a rural and pic- turesque aspect, unlike anything in America, and yet possessing a familiar look, as if it were something I had dreamed about. There were thatched stone cot- tages intermixed with houses of a better kind, and likewise a gateway and gravelled walk, that perhaps gave admittance to the Squire's mansion. It was not merely one long, wide street, as in most New England villages, but there were several crooked ways, gathering the whole settlement into a pretty small compass. In the midst of it stood a venerable church of the com- mon red freestone, with a most reverend air, consider- ably smaller than that of Bebbington, but more beau- tiful and looking quite as old. There was ivy on its spire and elsewhere. It looked very quiet and peace- ful, and as if it had received the people into its low arched door every Sabbath for many centuries. There were many tombstones about it, some level with the ground, some raised on blocks of stone, on low pillars, nioss - grown and weather-worn ; and probably these were but the successors of other stones that had quite crumbled away, or been buried by the accumulation of dead men's dust above them. In the centre of the churchyard stood an old yew-tree, with immense trunk, which was all decayed within, sc that it is a wonder how the tree retains any life, — which, nevertheless, it 492 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. does. It was called " the old Yew of Eastham," six hundred years ago ! After passing through the churchyard, we saw the village inn on the other side. The doors were fastened, but a girl peeped out of the window at us, and let us in, ushering us into a very neat parlor. There was a cheerful fire in the grate, a straw carpet on the floor, a mahogany sideboard, and a mahogany table in the middle of the room ; and, on the walls, the portraits of mine host (no doubt) and of his wife and daughters, — a very nice parlor, and looking like what I might have found in a country tavern at home, only this was an ancient house, and there is nothing at home like the glimpse, from the window, of the church, and its red, ivy-grown tower. I ordered some lunch, being waited on by the girl, who was very neat, intelligent, and comely, — and more respectful than a New Eng- land maid. As we came out of the inn, some village urchins left their play, and ran to me begging, calling me " Master ! " They turned at once from play to begging, and, as I gave them nothing, they turned to their play again. This village is too far from Liverpool to have been much injured as yet by the novelty of cockney resi- dences, which have grown up almost everywhere else, so far as I have visited. About a mile from it, how- ever, is the landing-place of a steamer (which runs regularly, except in the winter months), where a large, new hotel is built. The grounds about it are extensive and well wooded. We got some biscuits at the hotel, and I gave the waiter (a splendid gentleman in black) four halfpence, being the surplus of a shilling. He bowed and thanked me very humbly. An American does not easily bring his mind to the small measure 1854,] LIVERPOOL. 493 of English liberality to servants ; if anything is to be given, we are ashamed not to give more, especially to clerical-looking persons, in black suits and white neck- cloths. I stood on the Exchange at noon, to-day, to see the 88th Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, marching down to embark for the East. They were a body of young, healthy, and cheerful-looking men, and looked greatly better than the dirty crowd that thronged to gaze at them. The royal banner of England, quarter- ing the lion, the leopard, and the harp, waved on the town-house, and looked gorgeous and venerable. Here and there a woman exchanged greetings with an in- dividual soldier, as he marched along, and gentlemen shook hands with officers with whom they happened to be acquainted. Being a stranger in the land, it seemed as if I could see the future in the present bet- ter than if I had been an Englishman ; so I questioned with myself how many of these ruddy-cheeked young fellows, marching so stoutly away, would ever tread English ground again. The populace did not evince any enthusiasm, yet there could not possibly be a war to which the country could assent more fully than to this. I somewhat doubt whether the English popu- lace really feels a vital interest in the nation. Some years ago, a piece of rude marble sculpture, representing St. George and the Dragon, was found over the fireplace of a cottage near Rock Ferry, on the road to Chester. It was plastered over with pipe- clay, and its existence was unknown to the cottagers, until a lady noticed the projection and asked what it was. It was supposed to have originally adorned the 494 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. walls of the Priory at Birkenhead. It measured four- teen and a half by nine inches, in which space were the heads of a king and queen, with uplifted hands, in prayer ; their daughters also in prayer, and looking very grim ; a lamb, the slain dragon, and St. George, proudly prancing on what looks like a donkey, bran- dishing a sword over his head. The following is a legend inscribed on the inner margin of a curious old box : — " From Birkenhead into Hilbree A squirrel might leap from tree to tree." I do not know where Hilbree is ; but all round Bir- kenhead a squirrel would scarcely find a single tree to climb upon. All is pavement and brick buildings now. Good Friday. — The English and Irish think it good to plant on this day, because it was the day when our Saviour's body was laid in the grave. Seeds, therefore, are certain to rise again. At dinner the other day, Mrs. mentioned the origin of Franklin's adoption of the customary civil dress, when going to court as a diplomatist. It was simply that his tailor had disappointed him of his court suit, and he wore his plain one with great reluc- tance, because he had no other. Afterwards, gaining great success and praise by his mishap, he continued to wear it from policy. The grandmother of Mrs. died fifty years ago, at the age of twenty-eight. She had great personal charms, and among them a head of beautiful chestnut hair. After her burial in a family tomb, the coffin of 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 495 one of her children was laid on her own, so that the lid seems to have decayed, or been broken from this cause ; at any rate, this was the case when the tomb was opened about a year ago. The grandmother's coffin was then found to be filled with beautiful, glossy, living chestnut ringlets, into which her whole substance seems to have been transformed, for there wac nothing else but these shining curls, the growth of half a century in the tomb. An old man, with a ringlet of his youthful mistress treasured on his heart, might be supposed to witness this wonderful thing. Madam , who is now at my house, and very infirm, though not old, was once carried to the grave, and on the point of being buried. It was in Barbary, where her husband was Consul » General. He was greatly attached to her, and told the pall-bearers at the grave that he must see her once more. When her face was uncovered, he thought he discerned signs of life, and felt a warmth. Finally she revived, and for many years afterwards supposed the funeral proces- sion to have been a dream ; she having been partially conscious throughout, and having felt the wind blow- ing on her, and lifting the shroud from her feet, — for I presume she was to be buried in Oriental style, without a coffin. Long after, in London, when she was speaking of this dream, her husband told her the facts, and she fainted away. Whenever it is now mentioned, her face turns white. Mr. , her son, was born on shipboard, on the coast of Spain, and claims four nationalities, — those of Spain, England, Ireland, and the United States ; his father being Irish, his mother a native of England, himself a naturalized Utizen of the United States, and his father having 496 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. registered his birth and baptism in a Catholic church of Gibraltar, which gives him Spanish privileges. He has hereditary claims to a Spanish countship. His infancy was spent in Barbary, and his lips first lisped in Arabic. There has been an unsettled and wander- ing character in his whole life. The grandfather of Madam , who was a British officer, once horsewhipped Paul Jones, — Jones being a poltroon. How singular it is that the personal cour- age of famous warriors should be so often called in question ! May 20th. — I went yesterday to a hospital to take the oath of a mate to a protest. He had met with a severe accident by a fall on shipboard. The hospital is a large edifice of red freestone, with wide airy pas- sages, resounding with footsteps passing through them. A porter was waiting in the vestibule. Mr. Wilding and myself were shown to the parlor, in the first in- stance, — a neat, plainly furnished room, with news- papers and pamphlets lying on the table and sofas. Soon the surgeon of the house came, — a brisk, alac- ritous, civil, cheerful young man, by whom we were shown to the apartment where the mate was lying. As we went through the principal passage, a man was borne along in a chair looking very pale, rather wild, and altogether as if he had just been through great tribulation, and hardly knew as yet whereabouts he was. I noticed that his left arm was but a stump, and seemed done up in red baize, — at all events it was of a scarlet hue. The surgeon shook his right hand cheerily, and he was carried on. This was a patienA who had just had his arm cut off. He had been a rough person apparently, but now there was a kind of tenderness about him, through pain and helplessness. 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 49? In the chamber where the mate lay, there were seven beds, all of them occupied by persons who had met with accidents. In the centre of the room was a stationary pine table, about the length of a man, in- tended, I suppose, to stretch patients upon for nec- essary operations. The furniture of the beds was plain and homely. I thought that the faces of the patients all looked remarkably intelligent, though they were evidently men of the lower classes. Suffering had educated them morally and intellectually. They gazed curiously at Mr. Wilding and me, but nobody said a word. In the bed next to the mate lay a little boy with a broken thigh. The surgeon observed that chil- dren generally did well with accidents ; and this boy certainly looked very bright and cheerful. There was nothing particularly interesting about the mate. After finishing our business, the surgeon showed us into another room of the surgical ward, likewise de- voted to cases of accident and injury. All the beds were occupied, and in two of them lay two American sailors who had recently been stabbed. They had been severely hurt, but were doing very well. The surgeon thought that it was a good arrangement to have sev- eral cases together, and that the patients kept up one another's spirits, — being often merry together. Smiles and laughter may operate favorably enough from bed to bed ; but dying groans, I should think, must be somewhat of a discouragement. Neverthe- less, the previous habits and modes of life of such people as compose the more numerous class of patients in a hospital must be considered before deciding this matter. It is very possible that their misery likes such bedfellows as it here finds. As we were taking our leave, the surgeon asked us VOL. VII 32 498 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. if we should not like to see the operating-room ; and before we could reply he threw open the door, and behold, there was a roll of linen " garments rolled in blood," — and a bloody fragment of a human arm ! The surgeon glanced at me, and smiled kindly, but as if pitying my discomposure. Gervase Elwes, son of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet, of Stoke, Suffolk, married Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hervey, Knight, and sister of the first Earl of Bristol. This Gervase died before his father, but left a son, Henry, who succeeded to the Baronetcy. Sir Henry died without issue, and was succeeded by his sister's son, John Maggott Twining, who assumed the name of Elwes. He was the famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him, through his grandfather, Gervase, whose mother was a Hawthorne. It was to this Gervase that my ancestor, William Haw- thorne, devised some land in Massachusetts, " if he would come over, and enjoy it." My ancestor calls him his nephew. June 12th. — Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter, called on me a week or more ago, but I happened not to be in the office. Saturday last he called again, and as I had crossed to Rock Park he followed me thither. A plain, middle - sized, English - looking gentleman, el- derly, with short white hair, and particularly quiet in his manners. He talks in a somewhat low tone with- out emphasis, scarcely distinct. . . . His head has a good outline, and would look well in marble. I liked him very well. He talked unaffectedly, showing an author's regard to his reputation, and was evidently pleased to hear of his American celebrity. He said 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 499 that in his younger days he was a scientific pugilist, and once took a journey to have a sparring encounter with the Game-Chicken. Certainly, no one would have looked for a pugilist in this subdued old gentleman. He is now Commissioner of Lunacy, and makes pe- riodical circuits through the country, attending to the business of his office. He is slightly deaf, and this may be the cause of his unaccented utterance, — ow- ing to his not being able to regulate his voice exactly by his own ear. . . . He is a good man, and much better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by his poetical one, Barry Cornwall. . . . He took my hand in both of his at parting. . . . June 11th. — At eleven, at this season (and how much longer I know not), there is still a twilight. If we could only have such dry, deliciously warm even- ings as we used to have in our own land, what enjoy- ment there might be in these interminable twilights ! But here we close the window-shutters, and make our- selves cosey by a coal-fire. All three of the children, and, I think, my wife and myself, are going through the hooping-cough. The east-wind of this season and region is most horrible. There have been no really warm days ; for though the sunshine is sometimes hot, there is never any diffused heat throughout the air. On passing from the sun- shine into the shade, we immediately feel too cool. June 20fA. — The vagabond musicians about town are very numerous. On board the steam ferry-boats, I have heretofore spoken of them. They infest them from May to November, for very little gain appar- ently. A shilling a day per man must be the utmost 500 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. of their emolument. It is rather sad to see somewhat respectable old men engaged in this way, with two or three younger associates. Their instruments look much the worse for wear, and even my unmusical ear can distinguish more discord than harmony. They appear to be a very quiet and harmless people. Some- times there is a woman playing on a fiddle, while her husband blows a wind instrument. In the streets it is not unusual to find a band of half a dozen perform- ers, who, without any provocation or reason whatever, sound their brazen instruments till the houses reecho. Sometimes one passes a man who stands whistling a tune most unweariably, though I never saw any- body give him anything. The ballad-singers are the strangest, from the total lack of any music in their cracked voices. Sometimes you see a space cleared in the street, and a foreigner playing, while a girl — weather-beaten, tanned, and wholly uncomely in face and shabby in attire — - dances ballets. The common people look on, and never criticise or treat any of these poor devils unkindly or uncivilly ; but I do not observe that they give them anything. A crowd — or, at all events, a moderate-sized group — is much more easily drawn together here than with us. The people have a good deal of idle and momen- tary curiosity, and are always ready to stop when an- other person has stopped, so as to see what has at- tracted his attention. I hardly ever pause to look at a shop - window without being immediately incommoded by boys and men, who stop likewise, and would forth- with throng the pavement if I did not move on. June 30th. — If it is not known how and when a man dies, it makes a ghost of him for many years 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 501 thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an example ; also the Emperor Frederick, and other fa- mous men, who were thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons whose description answered to his. Some people actually affirmed that they had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her belief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day I never see his name, which is no very un- common one, without thinking that this may be the lost uncle. Thus, too, the French Dauphin still exists, or a kind of ghost of him ; the three Tells, too, in the cavern of Uri. July 6th. — Mr. Cecil, the other day, was saying that England could produce as fine peaches as any other country. I asked what was the particular ex- cellence of a peach, and he answered, " Its cooling and refreshing quality, like that of a melon ! " Just think of this idea of the richest, most luscious, of all fruits ! But the untra veiled Englishman has no more idea of what fruit is than of what sunshine is; he thinks he has tasted the first and felt the last, but they are both alike watery. I heard a lady in Lord Street talking about the " broiling sun," when I was almost in a shiver. They keep up their animal heat by means of wine and ale, else they could not bear this climate. 502 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. July 19th. — A week ago I made a little tour in North Wales with Mr. Bright. We left Birkenhead by railway for Chester at two o'clock; thence for Bangor ; thence by carriage over the Menai Bridge to Beaumaris. At Beaumaris, a fine old castle, — quite coming up to my idea of what an old castle should be. A gray, ivy-hung exterior wall, with large round towers at intervals; within this another wall, the place of the portcullis between ; and again, within the second wall the castle itself, with a spacious green court-yard in front. The outer wall is so thick that a passage runs in it all round the castle, which covers a space of three acres. This passage gives access to a chapel, still very perfect, and to various apartments in the towers, — all exceedingly dismal, and giving very unpleasant impressions of the way in which the garri- son of the castle lived. The main castle is entirely roofless, but the hall and other rooms are pointed out by the guide, and the whole is tapestried with abun- dant ivy, so that my impression is of gray walls, with here and there a vast green curtain ; a carpet of green over the floors of halls and apartments ; and festoons around all the outer battlement, with an uneven and rather perilous foot-path running along the top. There is a fine vista through the castle itself, and the two gateways of the two encompassing walls. The pas- sage within the wall is very rude, both underfoot and on each side, with various ascents and descents of rough steps, — sometimes so low that your head is in danger; and dark, except where a little light comes through a loophole or window in the thickness of the wall. In front of the castle a tennis-court was fitted up, by laying a smooth pavement on the ground, and casing the walls with tin or zinc, if I recollect aright 1854. j NORTH WALES. 503 All this was open to the sky ; and when we were there, some young men of the town were playing at the game. There are but very few of these tennis- courts in England; and this old castle was a very strange place for one. The castle is the property of Sir Richard Bulkely, whose seat is in the vicinity, and who owns a great part of the island of Anglesea, on which Beaumaris lies. The hotel where we stopped was the Bulkely Arms, and Sir Richard has a kind of feudal influence in the town. In the morning we walked along a delightful road, bordering on the Menai Straits, to Bangor Ferry. It was really a very pleasant road, overhung by a growth of young wood, exceedingly green and fresh. English trees are green all about their stems, owing to the creeping plants that overrun them. There were some flowers in the hedges, such as we cultivate in gardens. At the ferry, there was a whitewashed cottage; a woman or two, some children, and a fisherman-like personage, walking to and fro before the door. The scenery of the strait is very beautiful and picturesque, and directly opposite to us lay Bangor, — the strait being here almost a mile across. An American ship from Boston lay in the middle of it. The ferry-boat was just putting off from the Bangor side, and, by the aid of a sail, soon neared the shore. At Bangor we went to a handsome hotel, and hired a carriage and two horses for some Welsh place, the name of which I forget; neither can I remember a single name of the places through which we posted that day, nor could I spell them if I heard them pro- nounced, nor pronounce them if I saw them spelt. It was a circuit of about forty miles, bringing us to Con- 504 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854, way at last. I remember a great slate-quarry; and also that many of the cottages, in the first part of our drive, were built of blocks of slate. The moun- tains were very bold, thrusting themselves up abruptly in peaks, — not of the dumpling formation, which is somewhat too prevalent among the New England mountains. At one point we saw Snowdon, with its bifold summit. We also visited the smaller waterfall (this is a translation of an unpronounceable Welsh name), which is the largest in Wales. It was a very beautiful rapid, and the guide-book considers it equal in sublimity to Niagara. Likewise there were one or two lakes which the guide-book greatly admired, but which to me, who remembered a hundred sheets of blue water in New England, seemed nothing more than sullen and dreary puddles, with bare banks, and wholly destitute of beauty. I think they were no- where more than a hundred yards across. But the hills were certainly very good, and, though generally bare of trees, their outlines thereby were rendered the stronger and more striking. Many of the Welsh women, particularly the elder T)nes, wear black beaver hats, high-crowned, and al- most precisely like men's. It makes them look ugly and witch-like. Welsh is still the prevalent language, and the only one spoken by a great many of the in- habitants. I have had Welsh people in my office, on official business, with whom I could not communicate except through an interpreter. At some unutterable village we went into a little church, where we saw an old stone image of a warrior, lying on his back, with his hands clasped. It was the natural son (if I remember rightly) of David, Prince of Wales, and was doubtless the better part of a thou- 1854.3 LIVERPOOL. 505 sand years old. There was likewise a stone coffin of still greater age ; some person of rank and renown had mouldered to dust within it, but it was now open and empty. Also, there were monumental brasses on the walls, engraved with portraits of a gentleman and lady in the costumes of Elizabeth's time. Also, on one of the pews, a brass record of some persons who slept in the vault beneath ; so that, every Sunday, the survivors and descendants kneel and worship directly over their dead ancestors. In the churchyard, on a flat tombstone, there was the representation of a harp. I supposed that it must be the resting-place of a bard ; but the inscription was in memory of a merchant, and a skilful manufacturer of harps. This was a very delightful town. We saw a great many things which it is now too late to describe, the sharpness of the first impression being gone ; but I think I can produce something of the sentiment of it hereafter. We arrived at Conway late in the afternoon, to take the rail for Chester. I must see Conway, with its old gray wall and its unrivalled castle, again. It was bet- ter than Beaumaris, and I never saw anything more picturesque than the prospect from the castle-wall to- wards the sea. We reached Chester at 10 p. M. The next morning, Mr. Bright left for Liverpool before I was awake. I visited the Cathedral, where the organ was sounding, sauntered through the Rows, bought some playthings for the children, and left for home soon after twelve. . Liverpool, August 8th. — Visiting the Zoological Gardens the other day with J , it occurred to me ivhat a fantastic kind of life a person connected with 506 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. them might be depicted as leading, — a child, for in- stance. The grounds are very extensive, and include arrangements for all kinds of exhibitions calculated to attract the idle people of a great city. In one enclos- ure is a bear, who climbs a pole to get cake and gin- gerbread from the spectators. Elsewhere, a circular building, with compartments for lions, wolves, and tigers. In another part of the garden is a colony of monkeys, the skeleton of an elephant, birds of all kinds. Swans and various rare water-fowl were swim- ming on a piece of water, which was green, by the by, and when the fowls dived they stirred up black mud. A stork was parading along the margin, with melan- choly strides of its long legs, and came slowly towards us, as if for companionship. In one apartment was an obstreperously noisy society of parrots and macaws, most gorgeous and diversified of hue. These different colonies of birds and beasts were scattered about in various parts of the grounds, so that you came upon them unexpectedly. Also, there were archery and shooting-grounds, and a swing. A theatre, also, at which a rehearsal was going on, — we standing at one of the doors, and looking in towards the dusky stage where the company in their ordinary dresses were re- hearsing something that had a good deal of dance and action in it. In the open air there was an arrange- ment of painted scenery representing a wide expanse of mountains, with a city at their feet, and before it the sea, with actual water, and large vessels upon it, the vessels having only the side that would be pre- sented to the spectator. But the scenery was so good that at a first casual glance I almost mistook it for reality. There was a refreshment-room, with drinks and cakes and pastry, but, so far as I saw, no substan- 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 507 tial victual. About in the centre of the garden there was an actual, homely-looking, small dwelling-house, where perhaps the overlookers of the place live. Now this might be wrought, in an imaginative description, into a pleasant sort of a fool's paradise, where all sorts of unreal delights should cluster round some suitable personage ; and it would relieve, in a very odd and ef- fective way, the stern realities of life on the outside of the garden-walls. I saw a little girl, simply dressed, who seemed to have her habitat within the grounds. There was also a daguerreotypist, with his wife and family, carrying on his business in a shanty, and per- haps having his home in its inner room. He seemed to be an honest, intelligent, pleasant young man, and his wife a pleasant woman ; and I had J 's da- guerreotype taken for three shillings, in a little gilded frame. In the description of the garden, the velvet turf, of a charming verdure, and the shrubbery and shadowy walks and large trees, and the slopes and in- equalities of ground, must not be forgotten. In one place there was a maze and labyrinth, where a person might wander a long while in the vain endeavor to get out, although all the time looking at the exterior gar- den, over the low hedges that border the walks of the maze. And this is like the inappreciable difficulties that often beset us in life. I will see it again before long, and get some addi- tional record of it. August 10th. — We went to the Isle of Man, a few weeks ago, where S and the children spent a fort- night. I spent two Sundays with them. I never saw anything prettier than the little church of Kirk Madden there. It stands in a perfect seclu- 508 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. sion of shadowy trees, — a plain little church, that would not be at all remarkable in another situation, but is most picturesque in its solitude and bowery en- vironment. The churchyard is quite full and overflow- ing with graves, and extends down the gentle slope of a hill, with a dark mass of shadow above it. Some of the tombstones are flat on the ground, some erect, or laid horizontally on low pillars or masonry. There were no very old dates on any of these stones ; for the climate soon effaces inscriptions, and makes a stone of fifty years look as old as one of five hundred, — unless it be slate, or something harder than the usual red freestone. There was an old Runic monument, how- ever, near the centre of the churchyard, that had some strange sculpture on it, and an inscription still legible by persons learned in such matters. Against the tower of the church, too, there is a circular stone, with carv- ing on it, said to be of immemorial antiquity. There is likewise a tall marble monument, as much as fifty feet high, erected some years ago to the memory of one of the Athol family by his brother-officers of a local regiment of which he was colonel. At one of the side- entrances of the church, and forming the threshold within the thickness of the wall, so that the feet of all who enter must tread on it, is a flat tombstone of some- body who felt himself a sinner, no doubt, and desired to be thus trampled upon. The stone is much worn. The structure is extremely plain inside and very small. On the walls, over the pews, are several monu- mental sculptures, — a quite elaborate one to a Colonel Murray, of the Coldstream Guards ; his military pro- fession being designated by banners and swords in marble. Another was to a farmer. On one side of the church-tower there was a little 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 509 penthouse, or lean-to, — merely a stone roof, about three or four feet high, and supported by a single pillar, — beneath which was once deposited the bier. I have let too much time pass before attempting to record my impressions of the Isle of Man ; but, as re- gards this church, no description can come up to its quiet beauty, its seclusion, and its every requisite for an English country church. Last Sunday I went to Eastham, and, entering the churchyard, sat down on a tombstone under the yew- tree which has been known for centuries as the Great Tree of Eastham. Some of the village people were sitting on the graves near the door ; and an old wo- man came towards me, and said, in a low, kindly, ad- monishing tone, that I must not let the sexton see me, because he would not allow any one to be there in sacrament-time. I inquired why she and her compan- ions were there, and she said they were waiting for the sacrament. So I thanked her, gave her a six- pence, and departed. Close under the eaves, I saw two upright stones, in memory of two old servants of the Stanley family, — one over ninety, and the other over eighty years of age. August 12th. — J and I went to Birkenhead Park yesterday. There is a large ornamental gate- way to the Park, and the grounds within are neatly laid out, with borders of shrubbery. There is a sheet of water, with swans and other aquatic fowl, which swim about, and are fed with dainties by the visitors. Nothing can be more beautiful than a swan. It is the ideal of a goose, — a goose beautified and beatified. There were not a great many visitors, but some chil- 510 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. dren were dancing on the green, and a few lover-like people straying about. I think the English behave better than the Americans at similar places. There was a earner a-obscur a, very wretchedly indis- tinct. At the refreshment-room were ginger-beer and British wines. August 2\st. — I was in the Crown Court on Satur- day, sitting in the sheriff's seat. The judge was Baron , an old gentleman of sixty, with very large, long features. His wig helped him to look like some strange kind of animal, — very queer, but yet with a sagacious, and, on the whole, beneficent aspect. Dur- ing the session some mischievous young barrister oc- cupied himself with sketching the judge in pencil ; and, being handed about, it found its way to me. It was very like and very laughable, but hardly caricatured. The judicial wig is an exceedingly odd affair ; and as it covers both ears, it would seem intended to prevent his Lordship, and justice in his person, from hearing any of the case on either side, that thereby he may decide the better. It is like the old idea of blindfold- ing the statue of Justice. It seems to me there is less formality, less distance between the judge, jury, witnesses, and bar, in the English courts than in our own. The judge takes a very active part in the trial, constantly asking a ques- tion of the witness on the stand, making remarks on the conduct of the trial, putting in his word on all occasions, and allowing his own sense of the matter in hand to be pretty plainly seen ; so that, before the trial is over, and long before his own charge is deliv- ered, he must have exercised a very powerful influence over the minds of the jury. All this is done, not with- 1854] EATON HALL. 511 out dignity, yet in a familiar kind of way. It is a sort of paternal supervision of the whole matter, quite unlike the cold awfulness of an American judge. But all this may be owing partly to the personal charac- teristics of Baron . It appeared to me, however, that, from the closer relations of all parties, truth was likely to be arrived at and justice to be done. As an innocent man, I should not be afraid to be tried by Baron . EATON HALL. August 24:th. — I went to Eaton Hall yesterday with my wife and Mr. Gr. P. Bradford, via Chester. On our way, at the latter place, we visited St. John's Church. It is built of the same red freestone as the cathedral, and looked exceedingly antique, and vener- able ; this kind of stone, from its softness, and its lia- bility to be acted upon by the weather, being liable to an early decay. Nevertheless, I believe the church was built above a thousand years ago, — some parts of it, at least, — and the surface of the tower and walls is worn away and hollowed in shallow sweeps by the hand of Time. There were broken niches in sev- eral places, where statues had formerly stood. All, except two or three, had fallen or crumbled away, and those which remained were much damaged. The face and details of the figure were almost obliterated. There were many gravestones round the church, but none of them of any antiquity. Probably, as the names become indistinguishable on the older stones, the graves are dug over again, and filled with new occupants and covered with new stones, or perhaps with the old ones newly inscribed. Closely connected with the church was the clergy- 512 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1851. man's house, a comfortable-looking residence ; and likewise in the churchyard, with tombstones all about it, even almost at the threshold, so that the doorstep itself might have been a tombstone, was another house, of respectable size and aspect. We surmised that this might be the sexton's dwelling, but it proved not to be so ; and a woman, answering our knock, directed us to the place where he might be found. So Mr. Bradford and I went in search of him, leaving S seated on a tombstone. The sexton was a jolly-look- ing, ruddy-faced man, a mechanic of some sort, appar- ently, and he followed us to the churchyard with much alacrity. We found S standing at a gateway, which opened into the most ancient, and now quite ruinous, part of the church, the present edifice cover- ing much less ground than it did some centuries ago. We went through this gateway, and found ourselves in an enclosure of venerable walls, open to the sky, with old Norman arches standing about, beneath the loftiest of which the sexton told us the high altar used to stand. Of course, there were weeds and ivy grow- ing in the crevices, but not so abundantly as I have seen them elsewhere. The sexton pointed out a piece of a statue that had once stood in one of the niches, and which he himself, I think, had dug up from sev- eral feet below the earth ; also, in a niche of the walls, high above our heads, he showed us an ancient wooden coffin, hewn out of a solid log of oak, the hollow be- ing made rudely in the shape of a human figure. This too had been dug up, and nobody knew how old it was. While we looked at all this solemn old trum- pery, the curate, quite a young man, stood at the back door of his house, elevated considerably above the ruins, with his young wife (I presume) and a friend 1854.] EATON HALL. 513 or two, chatting cheerfully among themselves. It was pleasant to see them there. After examining the ruins, we went inside of the church, and found it a dim and dusky old place, quite paved over with tombstones, not an inch of space being left in the aisles or near the altar, or in any nook or corner, uncovered by a tombstone. There were also mural monuments and escutcheons, and close against the wall lay the muti- lated statue of a Crusader, with his legs crossed, in the style which one has so often read about. The old fellow seemed to have been represented in chain armor ; but he had been more battered and bruised since death than even during his pugnacious life, and his nose was almost knocked away. This figure had been dug up many years ago, and nobody knows whom it was meant to commemorate. The nave of the church is supported by two rows of Saxon pillars, not very lofty, but six feet six inches (so the sexton says) in diameter. They are covered with plaster, which was laid on ages ago, and is now so hard and smooth that I took the pillars to be really composed of solid shafts of gray stone. But, at one end of the church, the plaster had been removed from two of the pillars, in order to discover whether they were still sound enough to support the building ; and they prove to be made of blocks of red freestone, just as sound as when it came from the quarry ; for though this stone soon crumbles in the open air, it is as good as indestructible when sheltered from the weather. It looked very strange to see the fresh hue of these two pillars amidst the dingy antiquity of the rest of the structure. The body of the church is covered with pews, the wooden enclosures of which seemed of antique fashion. vol. vii. 33 514 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. There were also modern stoves ; but the sexton said it was very cold there in spite of the stoves. It had, I must say, a disagreeable odor pervading it, in which the dead people of long ago had doubtless some share, — a musty odor, by no means amounting to a stench, but unpleasant, and, I should think, unwholesome. Old wood-work, and old stones, and antiquity of all kinds, moral and physical, go to make up this smell. I observed it in the cathedral, and Chester generally has it, especially under the Rows, After all, the nec- essary damp and lack of sunshine, in such a shadowy old church as this, have probably more to do with it than the dead people have ; although I did think the odor was particularly strong over some of the tomb- stones. Not having shillings to give the sexton, we were forced to give him half a crown. The Church of St. John is outside of the city walls. Entering the East gate, we walked awhile under the Rows, bought our tickets for Eaton Hall and its gar- dens, and likewise some playthings for the children ; for this old city of Chester seems to me to possess an unusual number of toy-shops. Finally we took a cab, and drove to the Hall, about four miles distant, nearly the whole of the way lying through the wooded Park. There are many sorts of trees, making up a wilderness, which looked not unlike the woods of our own Con- cord, only less wild. The English oak is not a hand- some tree, being short and sturdy, with a round, thick mass of foliage, lying all within its own bounds. It was a showery day. Had there been any sunshine, there might doubtless have been many beautiful effects of light and shadow in these woods. We saw one or two herds of deer, quietly feeding, a hundred yards or so distant. They appeared to be somewhat wilder 1854.] EATON HALL. 515 than cattle, but, I think, not much wilder than sheep. Their ancestors have probably been in a half -domes- ticated state, receiving food at the hands of man, in winter, for centuries. There is a kind of poetry in this, quite as much as if they were really wild deer, such as their forefathers were, when Hugh Lupus used to hunt them. Our miserable cab drew up at the steps of Eaton Hall, and, ascending under the portico, the door swung silently open, and we were received very civilly by two old men, — one, a tall footman in livery ; the other, of higher grade, in plain clothes. The entrance-hall is very spacious, and the floor is tessellated or somehow inlaid with marble. There was statuary in marble on the floor, and in niches stood several figures in antique armor, of various dates ; some with lances, and others with battle-axes and swords. There was a two-handed sword, as much as six feet long ; but not nearly so pon- derous as I have supposed this kind of weapon to be, from reading of it. I could easily have brandished it. I don't think I am a good sight-seer ; at least, I soon get satisfied with looking at set sights, and wish to go on to the next. The plainly dressed old man now led us into a long- corridor, which goes, I think, the whole length of the house, about five hundred feet, arched all the way, and lengthened interminably by a looking-glass at the end, in which I saw our own party approaching like a party of strangers. But I have so often seen this effect produced in dry-goods stores and elsewhere that I was not much impressed. There were family portraits and other pictures, and likewise pieces of statuary, along this arched corridor ; and it communicated with a chapel with a scriptural altar-piece, copied from Ku- 516 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. bens, and a picture of St. Michael and the Dragon, and two, or perhaps three, richly painted windows. Every- thing here is entirely new and fresh, this part having been repaired, and never yet inhabited by the family. This brand-newness makes it much less effective than if it had been lived in ; and I felt pretty much as if I were strolling through any other renewed house. Af- ter all, the utmost force of man can do positively very little towards making grand things or beautiful things. The imagination can do so much more, merely on shut- ting one's eyes, that the actual effect seems meagre ; so that a new house, unassociated with the past, is ex- ceedingly unsatisfactory, especially when you have heard that the wealth and skill of man has here done its best. Besides, the rooms, as we saw them, did not look by any means their best, the carpets not being down, and the furniture being covered with protective envelopes. However, rooms cannot be seen to advan- tage by daylight ; it being altogether essential to the effect, that they should be illuminated by artificial light, which takes them somewhat out of the region of bare reality. Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly great splendor, — for the details of which I refer to the guide-book. Among the family portraits, there was one of a lady famous for her beautiful hand ; and she was holding it up to notice in the funniest way, - — and very beautiful it certainly was. The private apartments of the family were not shown us. I should think it impossible for the owner of this house to im- bue it with his personality to such a degree as to feel it to be his home. It must be like a small lobster in a shell much too large for him. After seeing what was to be seen of the rooms, we visited the gardens, in which are noble conservatories 1854.] EATON HALL. 517 and hot-houses, containing all manner of rare and beautiful flowers, and tropical fruits. I noticed some large pines, looking as if they were really made of gold. The gardener (under-gardener I suppose he was) who showed this part of the spectacle was very intelligent as well as kindly, and seemed to take an in- terest in his business. He gave S a purple ever- lasting flower, which will endure a great many years, as a memento of our visit to Eaton Hall. Finally, we took a view of the front of the edifice, which is very fine, and much more satisfactory than the interior, — and returned to Chester. We strolled about under the unsavory Rows, some- times scudding from side to side of the street, through the shower ; took lunch in a confectioner's shop, and drove to the railway station in time for the three-o'clock train. It looked picturesque to see two little girls, hand in hand, racing along the ancient passages of the Rows ; but Chester has a very evil smell. At the railroad station, S saw a small edition of " Twice-Told Tales," forming a volume of the Cot- tage Library ; and, opening it, there was the queerest imaginable portrait of myself, — so very queer that we could not but buy it. The shilling edition of " The Scarlet Letter " and " Seven Gables " are at all the book-stalls and shop-windows ; but so is " The Lamp- lighter," and still more trashy books. August 26th. — All past affairs, all home conclu- sions, all people whom I have known in America and meet again here, are strangely compelled to undergo a new trial. It is not that they suffer by comparison with circumstances of English life and forms of Eng- 518 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. lish manhood or womanhood; but, being free from my old surroundings, and the inevitable prejudices of home, I decide upon them absolutely. I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Mar- tineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, el- derly woman, and plainly dressed ; but withal she has so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from call- ing herself old. She is the most continual talker I ever heard ; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible too ; and all the while she talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and your- self. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennae of some insects. If you have any lit- tle remark to make, you drop it in ; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you ; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you. All her talk was about herself and her affairs ; but it did not seem like ego- tism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbid- ness. And this woman is an Atheist, and thinks that the principle of life will become extinct when her body is laid in the grave ! I will not think so, were it only for her sake. What ! only a few weeds to spring out of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympa- thies flowering and fruiting forever ! September ISth. — My family went to Rhyl last Thursday, and on Saturday I joined them there, in 1854.] RHYL. 519 company with O' Sullivan, who arrived in the Behama from Lisbon that morning. We went by way of Chester, and found S waiting for us at the Rhyl station. Rhyl is a most uninteresting place, — a col- lection of new lodging-houses and hotels, on a long sand-beach, which the tide leaves bare almost to the horizon. The sand is by no means a marble pavement, but sinks under the foot, and makes very heavy walk- ing ; but there is a promenade in front of the principal range of houses, looking on the sea, whereon we have rather better footing. Almost all the houses were full, and S had taken a parlor and two bedrooms, and is living after the English fashion, providing her own table, lights, fuel, and everything. It is very awkward to our American notions ; but there is an independence about it, which I think must make it' agreeable on bet- ter acquaintance. But the place is certainly destitute of attraction, and life seems to pass very heavily. The English do not appear to have a turn for amus- ing themselves. Sunday was a bright and hot day, and in the fore- noon I set out on a walk, not well knowing whither, over a very dusty road, with not a particle of shade along its dead level. The Welsh mountains were be- fore me, at the distance of three or four miles, — long ridgy hills, descending pretty abruptly upon the plain ; on either side of the road, here and there, an old white- washed, thatched stone cottage, or a stone farm-house, with an aspect of some antiquity. I never suffered so much before, on this side of the water, from heat and dust, and should probably have turned back had I not espied the round towers and walls of an old castle at some distance before me. Having looked at a guide- book, previously to setting out, I knew that this must 520 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. be Rhyddlan Castle, about three miles from Rhyl ; so I plodded on, and by and by entered an antiquated village, on one side of which the castle stood. This Welsh village is very much like the English villages, with narrow streets and mean houses or cottages, built in blocks, and here and there a larger house standing alone ; everything far more compact than in our rural villages, and with no grassy street- margin nor trees ; aged and dirty also, with dirty children staring at the passenger, and an undue supply of mean inns ; most, or many of the men in breeches, and some of the women, especially the elder ones, in black beaver hats. The streets were paved with round pebbles, and looked squalid and ugly. The children and grown people stared lazily at me as I passed, but showed no such alert and vivacious curiosity as a community of Yankees would have done. I turned up a street that led me to the castle, which looked very picturesque close at hand, ■ — more so than at a distance, because the towers and walls have not a sufficiently broken outline against the sky. There are several round towers at the angles of the wall very large in their circles, built of gray stone, crumbling, ivy-grown, everything that one thinks of in an old ruin. I could not get into the inner space of the castle with- out climbing over a fence, or clambering down into the moat ; so I contented myself with walking round it, and viewing it from the outside. Through the gate- way I saw a cow feeding on the green grass in the inner court of the castle. In one of the walls there was a large triangular gap, where perhaps the assail- ants had made a breach. Of course there were weeds on the ruinous top of the towers, and along the sum. mit of the wall. This was the first castle built by Ed 1854.] RHYL. 521 ward I. in Wales, and he resided here during the erec- tion of Conway Castle, and here Queen Eleanor gave birth to a princess. Some few years since a meeting of Welsh bards was held within it. After viewing it awhile, and listening to the babble of some children who lay on the grass near by, I re- sumed my walk, and, meeting a Welshman in the vil- lage street, I asked him my nearest way back to Rhyl. " Dim Sassenach," said he, after a pause. How odd that an hour or two on the railway should have brought me amongst a people who speak no English ! Just below the castle, there is an arched stone bridge over the river Clwyd, and the best view of the edifice is from hence. It stands on a gentle eminence, com- manding the passage of the river, and two twin round towers rise close beside one another, whence, I sup- pose, archers have often drawn their bows against the wild Welshmen, on the river-banks. Behind was the line of mountains ; and this was the point of defence between the hill country and the lowlands. On the bridge stood a good many idle Welshmen, leaning over the parapet, and looking at some small vessels that had come up the river from the sea. There was the frame of a new vessel on the stocks near by. As I returned, on my way home, I again inquired my way of a man in breeches, who, I found, could speak English very well. He was kind, and took pains to direct me, giving me the choice of three ways, viz. the one by which I came, another across the fields, and a third by the embankment along the river-side. I chose the latter, and so followed the course of the Clwyd, which is very ugly, with a tidal flow and wide marshy banks. On its farther side was Rhyddlan marsh, where a battle was fought between the Welsh 522 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. and Saxons a thousand years ago. I have forgotten to mention that the castle and its vicinity was the scene of the famous battle of the fiddlers, between De Blandeville, Earl of Chester, and the Welsh, about the time of the Conqueror. CONWAY CASTLE. September 13th. — On Monday we went with O' Sullivan to Conway by rail. Certainly this must be the most perfect specimen of a ruinous old castle in the whole world ; it quite fills up one's idea. We first walked round the exterior of the wall, at the base of which are hovels, with dirty children playing about them, and pigs rambling along, and squalid women visible in the doorways ; but all these things melt into the picturesqueness of the scene, and do not harm it. The whole town of Conway is built in what was once the castle-yard, and the whole circuit of the wall is still standing in a delightful state of decay. At the angles, and at regular intervals, there are round tow- ers, having half their circle on the outside of the walls and half within. Most of these towers have a great crack pervading them irregularly from top to bottom ; the ivy hangs upon them, — the weeds grow on the tops. Gateways, three or four of them, open through the walls, and streets proceed from them into the town. At some points, very old cottages or small houses are close against the sides, and, old as they are, they must have been built after the whole structure was a ruin. In one place I saw the sign of an ale- house painted on the gray stones of one of the old round towers. As we entered one of the gates, after making the entire circuit, we saw an omnibus coming down the street towards us, with its horn sounding. 1854.] CONWAY CASTLE. 523 Llandudno was its place of destination ; and, knowing no more about it than that it was four miles off, we took our seats. Llandudno is a watering-village at the base of the Great Orme's Head, at the mouth of the Conway River. In this omnibus there were two pleas ant - looking girls, who talked Welsh together, — r c guttural, childish kind of a babble. Afterwards we got into conversation with them, and found them very agreeable. One of them was reading Tupper's " Pro- verbial Philosophy." On reaching Llandudno, S waited atr the hotel, while O'Sullivan, U , and I ascended the Great Orme's Head. There are copper- mines here, and we heard of a large cave, with stalac- tites, but did not go so far as that. We found the old shaft of a mine, however, and threw stones down it, and counted twenty before we heard them strike the bottom. At the base of the Head, on the side oppo- site the village, we saw a small church with a broken roof, and horizontal gravestones of slate within the stone enclosure around it. The view from the hill was most beautiful, — a blue summer sea, with the distant trail of smoke from a steamer, and many snowy sails ; in another direction the mountains, near and distant, some of them with clouds below their peaks. We went to one of the mines which are still worked, and boys came running to meet us with specimens of the copper ore for sale. The miners were not now hoisting ore from the shaft, but were washing and selecting the valuable fragments from great heaps of crumbled stone and earth. All about this spot there are shafts and well-holes, looking fearfully deep and black, and without the slightest protection, so that we might just as easily have walked into them as not. 524 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. Having examined these matters sufficiently, we de- scended the hill towards the village, meeting parties of visitors, mounted on donkeys, which is a much more sensible way of ascending in a hot day than to walk. On the sides and summit of the hill we found yellow gorse, — heath of two colors, I think, and very beauti- ful, — and here and there a harebell. Owing to the long-continued dry weather, the grass was getting with- ered and brown, though not so much so as on Amer- ican hill-pastures at this season. Returning to the village, we all went into a confectioner's shop, and made a good luncheon. The two prettiest young ladies whom I have seen in England came into the shop and ate cakes while we were there. They appeared to be living together in a lodging-house, and ordered some of their housekeeping articles from the confectioner. Next we went into the village bazaar, — a sort of tent or open shop, full of knick-knacks and gewgaws, and bought some playthings for the children. At half past one we took our seats in the omnibus, to return to Conway. We had as yet only seen the castle wall and the exterior of the castle ; now we were to see the inside. Right at the foot of it an old woman has her stand for the sale of lithographic views of Conway and other places ; but these views are ridiculously inadequate, so that we did not buy any of them. The admittance into the castle is by a wooden door of modern con- struction, and the present seneschal is, I believe, the sexton of a church. He remembered me as having been there a month or two ago ; and probably, con- sidering that I was already initiated, or else because he had many other visitors, he left us to wander about the castle at will. It is altogether impossible to de« 1854.] CONWAY CASTLE. 525 scribe Conway Castle. Nothing ever can have been so perfect in its own style, and for its own purposes, when it was first built ; and now nothing else can be so perfect as a picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin. The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky, and with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful. The hearthstones of the great old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to be favorite spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round towers, and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller towers, ascending to a much greater height, and once containing winding staircases, all of which are now broken, and inaccessible from below, though, in at least one of the towers, the stairs seemed perfect, high aloft. It must have been the rudest violence that broke down these stairs ; for each step was a thick and heavy slab of stone, built into the wall of the tower. There is no such thing as a roof in any part ; towers, hall, kitchen, all are open to the sky. One round tower, directly overhanging the railway, is so shattered by the falling away of the lower part, that you can look quite up into it and through it, while sitting in the cars ; and yet it has stood thus, without falling into complete ruin, for more than two hundred years. I think that it was in this tower that we found the castle oven, an immense cavern, big enough to bake bread for an army. The railway passes exactly at the base of the high rock, on which this part of the castle is situated, and goes into the town through a great arch that has been opened in the castle wall. The tubular bridge across the Conway has been built in a style that accords with the old architecture, and I ob- served that one little sprig of ivy had rooted itself in the new structure. 526 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. There are numberless intricate passages in the thick- ness of the castle walls, forming communications be- tween tower and tower, — damp, chill passages, with rough stone on either hand, darksome, and very likely leading to dark pitfalls. The thickness of the walls is amazing ; and the people of those days must have been content with very scanty light, so small were the apertures, — sometimes merely slits and loopholes, glimmering through many feet of thickness of stone. One of the towers was said to have been the residence of Queen Eleanor ; and this was better lighted than the others, containing an oriel-window, looking out of a little oratory, as it seemed to be, with groined arches and traces of ornamental sculpture, so that we could dress up some imperfect image of a queenly chamber, though the tower was roofless and floorless. There was another pleasant little windowed nook, close .be- side the oratory, where the Queen might have sat sew- ing or looking down the river Conway at the pictur- esque headlands towards the sea. We imagined her stately figure in antique robes, standing beneath the groined arches of the oratory. There seem to have been three chambers, one above another, in these tow- ers, and the one in which was the embowed window was the middle one. I suppose the diameter of each of these circular rooms could not have been more than twenty feet on the inside. All traces of wood-work and iron- work are quite gone from the whole castle. These are said to have been taken away by a Lord Conway in the reign of Charles II. There is a grassy space under the windows of Queen Eleanor's tower, — a sort of outwork of the castle, where probably, when no enemy was near, the Queen used to take the open air in summer afternoons like this. Here we sat down 1854.] CONWAY CASTLE. 527 on the grass of the ruined wall, and agreed that noth- ing in the world could be so beautiful and picturesque as Conway Castle, and that never could there have been so fit a time to see it as this sunny, quiet, lovely afternoon. Sunshine adapts itself to the character of a ruin in a wonderful way ; it does not " flout the ruins gray," as Scott says, but sympathizes with their decay, and saddens itself for their sake. It beautifies the ivy too. We saw, at the corner of this grass-plot around Queen Eleanor's tower, a real trunk of a tree of ivy, with so stalwart a stem, and such a vigorous grasp of its strong branches, that it would be a very efficient support to the wall, were it otherwise inclined to fall. Oh that we could have ivy in America ! What is there to beautify us when our time of ruin comes ? Before departing, we made the entire circuit of the castle on its walls, and O* Sullivan and I climbed by a ladder to the top of one of the towers. While there, we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, and calling out to some little girl in some niche or on some pinnacle of the walls to stand still that he might catch her figure and face. I think it added to the impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and the kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that had grown up within the precincts of this feudal for- tress, and the people of to-day following their little businesses about it. This does not destroy the charm ; but tourists and idle visitors do impair it. The ear- nest life of to-day, however, petty and homely as it may be, has a right to its place alongside of what is left of the life of other days ; and if it be vulgar it- self, it does not vulgarize the scene. But tourists do vulgarize it ; and I suppose we did so, just like others. 528 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. We took the train back to Rhyl, where we arrived at about four o'clock, and, having dined, we again took the rail for Chester, and thence to Rock Park (that is, O'Sullivan and I), and reached home at about eleven o'clock. Yesterday, September 13th, I began to wear a watch from Bennet's, 65 Cheapside, London. W. C. Bennet warrants it as the best watch which they can produce. If it prove as good and as durable as he prophesies, J — — will find it a perfect time-keeper long after his father has done with Time. If I had not thought of his wearing it hereafter, I should have been content with a much inferior one. No. 39,620. September 20th. — I went back to Rhyl last Friday in the steamer. We arrived at the landing-place at nearly four o'clock, having started at twelve, and I walked thence to our lodgings, 18 West Parade. The children and their mother were all gone out, and I sat some time in our parlor before anybody came. The next morning I made an excursion in the omnibus as far as Ruthin, passing through Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, Denbigh, and reaching Ruthin at one o'clock. All these are very ancient places. St. Asaph has a cathe- dral which is not quite worthy of that name, but is a very large and stately church in excellent repair. Its square battlemented tower has a very line appearance, crowning the clump of village houses on the hill-top, as you approach from Rhyddlan. The ascent of the hill is very steep ; so it is at Denbigh and at Ruthin, — the steepest streets, indeed, that I ever climbed. Denbigh is a place of still more antique aspect than St. Asaph ; it looks, I think, even older than Chester, 1854.] RUTHIN. 529 witH its gabled houses, many of their windows open- ing on hinges, and their fronts resting on pillars, with an open porch beneath. The castle makes an admira- bly ruinous figure on the hill, higher than the village. I had come hither with the purpose of inspecting it, but as it began to rain just then, I concluded to get into the omnibus and go to Ruthin. There was an- other steep ascent from the commencement of the long street of Ruthin, till I reached the market-place, which is of nearly triangular shape, and an exceedingly old- looking place. Houses of stone or plastered brick ; one or two with timber frames ; the roofs of an uneven line, and bulging out or sinking in ; the slates moss- grown. Some of them have two peaks and even three in a row, fronting on the streets, and there is a stone market -house with a table of regulations. In this market-place there is said to be a stone on which King Arthur beheaded one of his enemies ; but this I did not see. All these villages were very lively, as the omnibus drove in; and I rather imagine it was market-day in each of them, — there being quite a bustle of Welsh people. The old women came round the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willing- ness to receive alms, — witch-like women, such as one sees in pictures or reads of in romances, and very un- like anything feminine in America. Their style of dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally and familiarly spoken. Everybody spoke it. The omni- bus-driver could speak but imperfect English ; there was a jabber of Welsh all through the streets and market-places ; and it flowed out with a freedom quite different from the way in which they expressed them- selves in English. I had had an idea that Welsh was TOL. VII. 84 530 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. spoken rather as a freak and in fun than as a native language ; it was so strange to find another language the people's actual and earnest medium of thought within so short a distance of England. But English is scarcely more known to the body of the Welsh people than to the peasantry of France. Moreover, they sometimes pretend to ignorance, when they might speak it fairly enough. I took luncheon at the hotel where the omnibus stopped, and then went to search out the castle. It appears to have been once extensive, but the remains of it are now very few, except a part of the external wall. Whatever other portion may still exist, has been built into a modern castellated mansion, which has risen within the wide circuit of the fortress, — a handsome and spacious edifice of red freestone, with a high tower, on which a flag was flying. The grounds were well laid out in walks, and really I think the site of the castle could not have been turned to better account. I am getting tired of antiquity. It is cer- tainly less interesting in the long run than novelty ; and so I was well content with the fresh, warm, red hue of the modern house, and the unworn outline of its walls, and its cheerful, large windows; and was willing that the old ivy-grown ruins should exist now only to contrast with the modernisms. These ancient walls, by the by, are of immense thickness. There is a passage through the interior of a portion of them, the width from this interior passage to the outer one being fifteen feet on one side, and I know not how much on the other. It continued showery all day ; and the omnibus was crowded. I had chosen the outside from Rhyl to Den- bigh, but, all the rest of the journey, imprisoned my- 1854.] RHYDDLAN. 531 self within. On our way home, an old lady got into the omnibus, — a lady of tremendous rotundity ; and as she tumbled from the door to the farthest part of the carriage, she kept advising all the rest of the pas- sengers to get out. " I don't think there will be much rain, gentlemen," quoth she ; " you '11 be much more comfortable on the outside." As none of us complied, she glanced along the seats. " What ! are you all Saas'nach ? " she inquired. As we drove along, she talked Welsh with great fluency to one of the passen- gers, a young woman with a baby, and to as many others as could understand her. It has a strange, wild sound, like a language half blown away by the wind. The lady's English was very good ; but she probably prided herself on her proficiency in Welsh. My ex- cursion to-day had been along the valley of the Clwyd, a very rich and fertile tract of country. The next day we all took a long walk on the beach, picking up shells. On Monday we took an open carriage and drove to Rhyddlan ; whence we sent back the carriage, mean- ing to walk home along the embankment of the river Clwyd, after inspecting the castle. The fortress is very ruinous, having been dismantled by the Parlia- mentarians. There are great gaps, — two, at least, in the walls that connect the round towers, of which there were six, one on each side of a gateway in front, and the same at a gateway towards the river, where there is a steep descent to a wall and square tower, at the water- side. Great pains and a great deal of gunpowder must have been used in converting this castle into a ruin. There were one or two frag:- ments lying where they had fallen more than two hun- dred years ago, which, though merely a conglomera- 532 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. tion of small stones and mortar, were just as hard as if they had been solid masses of granite. The sub- stantial thickness of the walls is composed of these agglomerated small stones and mortar, the casing be- ing hewn blocks of red freestone. This is much worn away by the weather, wherever it has been exposed to the air ; but, under shelter, it looks as if it might have been hewn only a year or two ago. Each of the round towers had formerly a small staircase turret rising beside and ascending above it, in which a warder might be posted, but they have all been so battered and shattered that it is impossible for an uninstructed observer to make out a satisfactory plan of them. The interior of each tower was a small room, not more than twelve or fifteen feet across ; and of these there seem to have been three stories, with loop-holes for archery, and not much other light than what came through them. Then there are various passages and nooks and corners and square recesses in the stone, some of which must have been intended for dungeons, and the ugliest and gloomiest dungeons imaginable, for they could not have had any light or air. There is not the least splinter of wood-work remaining in any part of the castle, — nothing but bare stone, and a little plaster, in one or two places, on the wall. In the front gateway we looked at the groove on each side, in which the portcullis used to rise and fall ; and in each of the contiguous round towers there was a loop-hole, whence an enemy on the outer side of the portcullis might be shot through with an arrow. The inner court-yard is a parallelogram, nearly a square, and is about forty-five of my paces across. It is entirely grass-grown, and vacant, except for two or three trees that have been recently set out, and which 1854.] RHYDDLAN. 533 are surrounded with palings to keep away the cows that pasture in and about the place. No window looks from the walls or towers into this court-yard ; nor are there any traces of buildings having stood within the enclosure, unless it be what looks some- thing like the flue of a chimney within one of the walls. I should suppose, however, that there must have been, when the castle was in its perfect state, a hall, a kitchen, and other commodious apartments and offices for the King and his train, such as there were at Conway and Beaumaris. But if so, all fragments have been carried away, and all hollows of the old foundations scrupulously filled up. The round tow- ers could not have comprised all the accommodation of the castle. There is nothing more striking in these ruins than to look upward from the crumbling base, and see flights of stairs, still comparatively perfect, by which you might securely ascend to the upper heights of the tower, although all traces of a staircase have disappeared below, and the upper portion cannot be attained. On three sides of the fortress is a moat, about sixty feet wide, and cased with stone. It was probably of great depth in its day, but it is now partly filled up with earth, and is quite dry and grassy throughout its whole extent. On the inner side of the moat was the outer wall of the castle, portions of which still remain. Between the outer wall and the castle itself the space is also about sixty feet. The day was cloudy and lowering, and there were several little spatterings of rain, while we rambled about. The two children ran shouting hither and thither, and were continually clambering into danger- ous places, racing along ledges of broken wall. At last they altogether disappeared for a good while ; 534 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. their voices, which had heretofore been plainly audi- ble, were hushed, nor was there any answer when we began to call them, while making ready for our de- parture. But they finally appeared, coming out of the moat, where they had been picking and eating black- berries, — which, they said, grew very plentifully there, and which they were very reluctant to leave. Before quitting the castle, I must not forget the ivy, which makes a perfect tapestry over a large portion of the walls. We walked about the village, which is old and ugly ; small, irregular streets, contriving to be intricate, though there are few of them ; mean houses, joining to each other. We saw, in the principal one, the par- liament house in which Edward I. gave a Charter, or allowed rights of some kind to his Welsh subjects. The ancient part of its wall is entirely distinguishable from what has since been built upon it. Thence we set out to walk along the embankment, although the sky looked very threatening. The wind, however, was so strong, and had such a full sweep at us, on the top of the bank, that we decided on taking a path that led from it across the moor. But we soon had cause to repent of this ; for, which way soever we turned, we found ourselves cut off by a ditch or a little stream ; so that here we were fairly astray on Rhyddlan moor, the old battle-field of the Saxons and Britons, and across which, I suppose, the fiddlers and mountebanks had marched to the relief of the Earl of Chester. Anon, too, it began to shower ; and it was only after various leaps and scramblings that we made our way to a large farm-house, and took shelter under a cart -shed. The back of the house to which we gained access was very dirty and ill-kept ; some dirty 1854.] RHYDDLAN. 535 children peeped at us as we approached, and nobody had the civility to ask us in ; so we took advantage of the first cessation of the shower to resume our way. We were shortly overtaken by a very intelligent-look- ing and civil man, who seemed to have come from Rhyddlan, and said he was going to Ehyl. We fol- lowed his guidance over stiles and along hedge-row paths which we never could have threaded rightly by ourselves. By and by our kind guide had to stop at an inter- mediate farm ; but he gave us full directions how to proceed, and we went on till it began to shower again pretty briskly, and we took refuge in a little bit of old stone cottage, which, small as it was, had a greater an- tiquity than any mansion in America. The door was open, and as we approached, we saw several children gazing at us ; and their mother, a pleasant-looking woman, who seemed rather astounded at the visit that was about to befall her, tried to draw a tattered cur- tain over a part of her interior, which she fancied even less fit to be seen than the rest. To say the truth, the house was not at all better than a pigsty ; and while we sat there, a pig came familiarly to the door, thrust in his snout, and seemed surprised that he should be driven away, instead of being admitted as one of the family. The floor was of brick ; there was no ceiling, but only the peaked gable overhead. The room was kitchen, parlor, and, I suppose, bedroom for the whole family ; at all events, there was only the tattered cur* tain between us and the sleeping accommodations. The good woman either could not or would not speak a word of English, only laughing when S said, 44 Dim Sassenach ? " but she was kind and hospitable, and found a chair for each of us. She had been mak- 536 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. ing some bread, and the dough was on the dresser. Life with these people is reduced to its simplest ele- ments. It is only a pity that they cannot or do not choose to keep themselves cleaner. Poverty, except in cities, need not be squalid. When the shower abated a little, we gave all the pennies we had to the children, and set forth again. By the by, there were several colored prints stuck up against the walls, and there was a clock ticking in a corner, and some paper- hangings pinned upon the slanting roof. It began to rain again before we arrived at Rhyl, and we were driven into a small tavern. After stay- ing there awhile, we set forth between the drops; but the rain fell still heavier, so that we were pretty well damped before we got to our lodgings. After dinner, I took the rail for Chester and Rock Park, and S and the children and maid followed the next day. September 22d. — I dined on Wednesday evening at Mr. John Hey wood's, Norris Green. Mr. Monck- ton Milnes and lady were of the company. Mr. Milnes is a very agreeable, kindly man, resembling Longfellow a good deal in personal appearance ; and he promotes, by his genial manners, the same pleasant intercourse which is so easily established with Long- fellow. He is said to be a very kind patron of lit- erary men, and to do a great deal of good among young and neglected people of that class. He is con- sidered one of the best conversationists at present in society : it may very well be so ; his style of talking being very simple and natural, anything but obtru- sive, so that you might enjoy its agreeableness without suspecting it. He introduced me to his wife (a daugh- 1854.] LIVERPOOL. \ 537 ter of Lord Crewe), with whom and \imself I had a good deal of talk. . . . Mr. Milnes tolsl me that he owns the land in Yorkshire, whence som& of the pil- grims of the Mayflower emigrated to Plymouth, and that Elder Brewster was the Postmaster of the village. ... He also said that in the next voyage of the May* flower, after she carried the Pilgrims, she wa§ em- ployed in transporting a cargo of slaves from Africa, — to the West Indies, I suppose. This is a queer fact, and would be nuts for the Southerners. Mem. — An American would never understand the passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along a by-path into the grounds of Giant De- spair, — from there being no stiles and by-paths in our country. September 26th. — On Saturday evening my wife and I went to a soiree given by the Mayor and Mrs. Lloyd at the Town Hall to receive the Earl of Har- rowby. It was quite brilliant, the public rooms being really magnificent, and adorned for the occasion with a large collection of pictures, belonging to Mr. Naylor. They were mostly, if not entirely, of modern artists, — of Turner, Wilkie, Landseer, and others of the best English painters. Turner's seemed too ethereal to have been done by mortal hands. The British Scientific Association being now in ses- sion here, many distinguished strangers were present. September 29th. — Mr. Monckton Milnes called on me at the Consulate day before yesterday. He is pleasant and sensible. . . . Speaking of American pol- 538 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. iticians, I remarked that they were seldom anything but politicians, and had no literary or other culture beyond their own calling. He said the case was the same in England, and instanced Sir , who once called on him for information when an appeal had been made to him respecting two literary gentle- men. Sir had never heard the names of either of these gentlemen, and applied to Mr. Milnes, as being somewhat conversant with the literary class, to know whether they were distinguished and what were their claims. The names of the two literary men were James Sheridan Knowles and Alfred Tennyson. October 5th. — Yesterday I was present at a dejeu- ner on board the James Barnes, on occasion of her coming under the British flag, having been built for the Messrs. Barnes by Donald McKay of Boston. She is a splendid vessel, and magnificently fitted up, though not with consummate taste. It would be worth while that ornamental architects and upholsterers should study this branch of art, since the ship-builders seem willing to expend a good deal of money on it. In fact, I do not see that there is anywhere else so much encouragement to the exercise of ornamental art. I saw nothing to criticise in the solid and useful details of the ship ; the ventilation, in particular, being free and abundant, so that the hundreds of passengers who will have their berths between decks, and at a still lower depth, will have good air and enough of it. There were four or five hundred persons, princi- pally Liverpool merchants and their wives, invited to the dejeuner; and the tables were spread between decks, the berths for passengers not being yet put in. There was not quite light enough to make the scene 1853.] LIVERPOOL. 539 cheerful, it being an overcast day ; and, indeed, there was an English plainness in the arrangement of the festal room, which might have been better exchanged for the flowery American taste, which I have just been criticising. With flowers, and the arrangement of flags, we should have made something very pretty of the space between decks ; but there was nothing to hide the fact, that in a few days hence there would be crowded berths and sea-sick steerage passengers where we were now feasting. The cheer was very good, — cold fowl and meats ; cold pies of foreign manufacture, very rich, and of mysterious composition ; and cham- pagne in plenty, with other wines for those who liked them. I sat between two ladies, one of them Mrs. , a pleasant young woman, who, I believe, is of American provincial nativity, and whom I therefore regarded as half a countrywoman. We talked a good deal to- gether, and I confided to her my annoyance at the prospect of being called up to answer a toast ; but she did not pity me at all, though she felt much alarm about her husband, Captain — , who was in the same predicament. Seriously, it is the most awful part of my official duty, — this necessity of making dinner-speeches at the Mayor's, and other public or semi-public tables. However, my neighborhood to Mrs. was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing over the matter with her I came to regard it in a light and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. The chairman toasted the President immediately after the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself in a most flattering manner, something like this: M Great by his position under the Republic, — greater 540 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. still, I am bold to say, in the Republic of letters! " I made no reply at all to this ; in truth, I forgot all about it when I began to speak, and merely thanked the company in behalf of the President and my coun- trymen, and made a few remarks with no very de- cided point to them. However, they cheered and ap- plauded* and I took advantage of the applause to sit down, and Mrs. informed me that I had suc- ceeded admirably. It was no success at all, to be sure ; neither was it a failure, for I had aimed at noth- ing, and I had exactly hit it. But after sitting down, I was conscious of an enjoyment in speaking to a pub- lic assembly, and felt as if I should like to rise again. It is something like being under fire, — a sort of ex- citement, not exactly pleasure, but more piquant than most pleasures. I have felt this before, in the same circumstances ; but, while on my legs, my impulse is to get through with my remarks and sit down again as quickly as possible. The next speech, I think, was by Rev. Dr. , the celebrated Arctic gentleman, in re- ply to a toast complimentary to the clergy. He turned aside from the matter in hand to express his kind feel- ings towards America, where he said he had been most hospitably received, especially at Cambridge Univer- sity. He also made allusions to me, and I suppose it would have been no more than civil in me to have an- swered with a speech in acknowledgment, but I did not choose to make another venture, so merely thanked him across the corner of the table, for he sat near me. He is a venerable - looking, white-haired gentleman, tall and slender, with a pale, intelligent, kindly face. Other speeches were made ; but from beginning to end there was not one breath of eloquence, nor even one neat sentence ; and I rather think that English. 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 541 men would purposely avoid eloquence or neatness in after-dinner speeches. It seems to be no part of their object. Yet any Englishman almost, much more gen- erally than Americans, will stand up and talk on in a plain way, uttering one rough, ragged, and shapeless sentence after another, and will have expressed him- self sensibly, though in a very rude manner, before he sits down. And this is quite satisfactory to his audi- ence, who, indeed, are rathev prejudiced against the man who speaks too glibly. The guests began to depart shortly after three o'clock. This morning I have seen two reports of my little speech, — one exceedingly incorrect ; another pretty exact, but not much to my taste, for I seem to have left out everything that would have been fittest to say. October 6th. — The people, for several days, have been in the utmost anxiety, and latterly, in the highest exultation, about Sebastopol, — and all England, and Europe to boot, have been fooled by the belief that it had fallen. This, however, now turns out to be incor- rect ; and the public visage is somewhat grim in con- sequence* I am glad of it. In spite of his actual sym- pathies, it is impossible for a true American to be otherwise than glad. Success makes an Englishman intolerable; and, already, on the mistaken idea that the way was open to the prosperous conclusion of the war, The "Times" had begun to throw out menaces against America. I shall never love England till she sues to us for help, and, in the mean time, the fewer triumphs she obtains, the better for all parties. An English- man in adversity is a very respectable character ; he does not lose his dignity, but merely comes to a proper 542 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. conception of himself. It is rather touching to an ob- server, to see how much the universal heart is in this matter, — to see the merchants gathering round the telegraphic messages, posted on the pillars of the Ex- change news-room, — the people in the street who can- not afford to buy a paper clustering round the win- dows of the news-offices, where a copy is pinned up, — the groups of corporals and sergeants at the recruiting rendezvous, with a newspaper in the midst of them, — and all earnest and sombre, and feeling like one man together, whatever their rank. I seem to myself like a spy or a traitor, when I meet their eyes, and am con- scious that I neither hope nor fear in sympathy with them, although they look at me in full confidence of sympathy. Their heart " knoweth its own bitterness," and as for me, being a stranger and an alien, I " inter- meddle not with their joy." October 9th. — My ancestor left England in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on the verge of republican- ism. It brings the two far-separated points of time very closely together to view the matter thus. October 16th. — A day or two ago arrived the sad news of the loss of the Arctic by collision with a French steamer off Newfoundland, and the loss also of three or four hundred people. I have seldom been more affected by anything quite alien from my per- sonal and friendly concerns, than by the death of Cap- tain Luce and his son. The boy was a delicate lad, 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 543 and it is said that he had never been absent from his mother till this time, when his father had taken him to England to consult a physician about a complaint in his hip. So his father, while the ship was sinking, was obliged to decide whether he would put the poor, weakly, timorous child on board the boat, to take his hard chance of life there, or keep him to go down with himself and the ship. He chose the latter; and within half an hour, I suppose, the boy was among the child- angels. Captain Luce could not do less than die, for his own part, with the responsibility of all those lost lives upon him. He may not have been in the least to blame for the calamity, but it was certainly too heavy a one for him to survive. He was a sensible man, and a gentleman, courteous, quiet, with some- thing almost melancholy in his address and aspect. Oftentimes he has come into my inner office to say good-by before his departures, but I cannot precisely remember whether or no he took leave of me before this latest voyage. I never exchanged a great many words with him ; but those were kind ones. October l§th. — It appears to be customary for peo- ple of decent station, but in distressed circumstances, to go round among their neighbors and the public, accompanied by a friend, who explains the case. I have been accosted in the street in regard to one of these matters ; and to-day there came to my office a grocer, who had become security for a friend, and who was threatened with an execution, — with another gro- cer for supporter and advocate. The beneficiary takes very little active part in the affair, merely looking careworn, distressed, and pitiable, and throwing in a 544 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. word of corroboration, or a sigh, or an acknowledg- ment, as the case may demand. In the present in- stance, the friend, a young, respectable-looking trades- man, with a Lancashire accent, spoke freely and sim- ply of his client's misfortunes, not pressing the case unduly, but doing it full justice, and saying, at the close of the interview, that it was no pleasant business for himself. The broken grocer was an elderly man, of somewhat sickly aspect. The whole matter is very foreign to American habits. No respectable American would think of retrieving his affairs by such means, but would prefer ruin ten times over ; no friend would take up his cause ; no public would think it worth while to prevent the small catastrophe. And yet the custom is not without its good side, as indicating a closer feeling of brotherhood, a more efficient sense of neighborhood, than exists among ourselves, although, perhaps, we are more careless of a fellow -creature's ruin, because ruin with us is by no means the fatal and irretrievable event that it is in England. I am impressed with the ponderous and imposing look of an English legal document, — an assignment of real estate in England, for instance, — engrossed on an immense sheet of thickest paper, in a formal hand, beginning with " This Indenture " in German text, and with occasional phrases of form, breaking out into large script, — very long and repetitious, fortified with the Mayor of Manchester's seal, two or three inches in diameter, which is certified by a notary-public, whose signature, again, is to have my consular certificate and official seal. November 2d, — A young Frenchman enters, of gen. 1854.] LIVERPOOL. - 545 tlemanly aspect, with a grayish cloak or paletot over- spreading his upper person, and a handsome and well- made pair of black trousers and well-fitting boots be- low. On sitting down, he does not throw off nor at all disturb the cloak. Eying him more closely, one discerns that he has no shirt-collar, and that what little is visible of his shirt-bosom seems not to be of to-day nor of yesterday, — perhaps not even of the day before. His manners are very good ; nevertheless, he is a cox- comb and a jackanapes. He avers himself a natural- ized citizen of America, where he has been tutor in several families of distinction, and has been treated like a son. He left America on account of his health, and came near being tutor in the Duke of Norfolk's family, but failed for lack of testimonials ; he is ex- ceedingly capable and accomplished, but reduced in funds, and wants employment here, or the means of returning to America, where he intends to take a situ- ation under government, which he is sure of obtaining. He mentioned a quarrel which he had recently had with an Englishman in behalf of America, and would have fought a duel had such been the custom of the country. He made the Englishman foam at the mouth, and told him that he had been twelve years at a mili- tary school, and could easily kill him. I say to him that I see little or no prospect of his getting employ- ment here, but offer to inquire whether any situation, as clerk or otherwise, can be obtained for him in a vessel returning to America, and ask his address. He has no address. Much to my surprise, he takes his leave without requesting pecuniary aid, but hints that he shall call again. He is a very disagreeable young fellow, like scores of others who call on me in the like situation. His vol. vii. 35 546 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. English is very good for a Frenchman, and he says he speaks it the least well of five languages. He has been three years in America, and obtained his natu- ralization papers, he says, as a special favor, and by means of strong interest. Nothing is so absolutely odious as the sense of freedom and equality pertain- ing to an American grafted on the mind of a native of any other country in the world. A naturalized citizen is hateful. Nobody has a right to our ideas, unless born to them. November 9th. — I lent the above Frenchman a small sum ; he advertised for employment as a teach- er ; and he called this morning to thank me for my aid, and says Mr. C— has engaged him for his chil- dren, at a guinea a week, and that he has also another engagement. The poor fellow seems to have been brought to a very low ebb. He has pawned every- thing, even to his last shirt, save the one he had on, and had been living at the rate of twopence a day. I had procured him a chance to return to America, but he was ashamed to go back in such poor circum- stances, and so determined to seek better fortune here. I like him better than I did, — partly, I suppose, be- cause I have helped him. November 14tfA. — The other day I saw an elderly gentleman walking in Dale Street, apparently in a state of mania ; for as he limped along (being afflicted with lameness) he kept talking to himself, and some- times breaking out into a threat against some casual passenger. He was a very respectable-looking man ; and I remember to have seen him last summer, in the steamer, returning from the Isle of Man, where he 1854.] LIVERPOOL. 547 had been staying at Castle Mona. What a strange and ngly predicament it would be for a person of quiet habits to be suddenly smitten with lunacy at noonday in a crowded street, and to walk along through a dim maze of extravagances, — partly con- scious of them, but unable to resist the impulse to give way to them ! A long- suppressed nature might be rep- resented as bursting out in this way, for want of any other safety-valve. In America, people seem to consider the govern- ment merely as a political administration ; and they care nothing for the credit of it, unless it be the ad- ministration of their own political party. In Eng- land, all people, of whatever party, are anxious for the credit of their rulers. Our government, as a knot of persons, changes so entirely every four years, that the institution has come to be considered a temporary thing. Looking at the moon the other evening, little R said, " It blooms out in the morning I " taking the moon to be the bud of the sun. The English are a most intolerant people. Nobody is permitted, nowadays, to have any opinion but the prevalent one. There seems to be very little differ- ence between their educated and ignorant classes in this respect; if any, it is to the credit of the latter, who do not show tokens of such extreme interest in the war. It is agreeable, however, to observe how all Englishmen pull together, — how each man comes for- ward with his little scheme for helping on the war, — how they feel themselves members of one family, talk- 548 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. ing together about their common interest, as if they were gathered around one fireside ; and then what a hearty meed of honor they award to their soldiers ! It is worth facing death for. Whereas, in America, when our soldiers fought as good battles, with as great proportionate loss, and far more valuable triumphs, the country seemed rather ashamed than proud of them. Mrs. Heywood tells me that there are many Catho- lics among the lower classes in Lancashire and Chesh- ire, — probably the descendants of retainers of the old Catholic nobility and gentry, who are more numerous in the shires than in other parts of England. The present Lord Sef ton's grandfather was the first of that race who became Protestant. December 25th. — Commodore P — — called to see me this morning, — a brisk, gentlemanly, offhand, but not rough, unaffected, and sensible man, looking not so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well made wig. He is now on his return from a cruise in the East Indian seas, and goes home by the Baltic, with a prospect of being very well received on account of his treaty with Japan. I seldom meet with a man who puts himself more immediately on conversable terms than the Commodore. He soon introduced his partic- ular business with me, — it being to inquire whether I would recommend some suitable person to prepare his notes and materials for the publication of an ac- count of his voyage. He was good enough to say that he had fixed upon me, in his own mind, for this office ; but that my public duties would of course prevent me from engaging in it. I spoke of Herman Melville, 1854] LIVERPOOL. 549 and one cr two others ; but lie seems to have some ac- quaintance with the literature of the day, and did not grasp very cordially at any name that I could think of ; nor, indeed, could I recommend any one with full confidence. It would be a very desirable task for a young literary man, or, for that matter, for an old one ; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less hackneyed theme than Japan. This is a most beautiful day of English winter ; clear and bright, with the ground a little frozen, and the green grass along the waysides at Rock Ferry sprouting up through the frozen pools of yesterday's rain. England is forever green. On Christmas Day, the children found wall-flowers, pansies, and pinks in the garden ; and we had a beautiful rose from the gar- den of the hotel grown in the open air. Yet one is sensible of the cold here, as much as in the zero at- mosphere of America. The chief advantage of the English climate is that we are not tempted to heat our rooms to so unhealthy a degree as in New Eng- land. I think I have been happier this Christmas than ever before, — by my own fireside, and with my wife and children about me, — more content to enjoy what I have, — less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life was perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life ; it having been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. For a long, long while, I have occasionally been visited with a singular dream ; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have been in England. It is, that I am still at college, — or, sometimes, even at school, — and there is a sense that I have been there unconscionably long, and have 550 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. quite failed to make such progress as my contempo- raries have done ; and I seem to meet some of them with a feeling of shame and depression that broods over me as I think of it, even when awake. This dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must be one of the effects of that heavy se- clusion in which I shut myself up for twelve years after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, and left me behind. How strange that it should come now, when I may call myself famous and prosperous ! — when I am happy, too ! January 3d, 1855. — The progress of the age is trampling over the aristocratic institutions of Eng- land, and they crumble beneath it. This war has given the country a vast impulse towards democracy. The nobility will never hereafter, I think, assume or be permitted to rule the nation in peace, or command armies in war, on any ground except the individual ability which may appertain to one of their number, as well as to a commoner. And yet the nobles were never positively more noble than now ; never, perhaps, so chivalrous, so honorable, so highly cultivated : but, relatively to the rest of the world, they do not main- tain their old place. The pressure of the war has tested and proved this fact, at home and abroad. At this moment it would be an absurdity in the nobles to pretend to the position which was quietly conceded to them a year ago. This one year has done the work of fifty ordinary ones ; or, more accurately, it has made apparent what has long been preparing itself. January 6th. — The American ambassador called Dn me to-day and stayed a good while, — an hour oi 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 551 two. He is visiting at Mr. William Browne's, at Richmond Hill, having come to this region to bring his niece, who is to be bride' s-maid at the wedding of an American girl. I like Mr. . He cannot ex- actly be called gentlemanly in his manners, there be- ing a sort of rusticity about him ; moreover, he has a habit of squinting one eye, and an awkward carriage of his head ; but, withal, a dignity in his large person, and a consciousness of high position and importance, which gives him ease and freedom. Very simple and frank in his address, he may be as crafty as other diplomatists are said to be ; but I see only good sense and plainness of speech, — appreciative, too, and genial enough to make himself conversable. He talked very freely of himself and of other public peo- ple, and of American and English affairs. He re- turns to America, he says, next October, and then retires forever from public life, being sixty-four years of age, and having now no desire except to write memoirs of his times, and especially of the adminis- tration of Mr. Polk. I suggested a doubt whether the people would permit him to retire ; and he im- mediately responded to my hint as regards his pros- pects for the Presidency. He said that his mind was fully made up, and that he would never be a candi- date, and that he had expressed this decision to his friends in such a way as to put it out of his own power to change it. He acknowledged that he should have been glad of the nomination for the Presidency in 1852, but that it was now too late, and that he was too old, — and, in short, he seemed to be quite sincere in his nolo episcojxiri ; although, really, he is the only Democrat, at this moment, whom it would not be absurd to talk of for the office. As he talked, his 552 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. face flushed, and he seemed to feel inwardly excited. Doubtless, it was the high vision of half his lifetime which he here relinquished. I cannot question that he is sincere ; but, of course, should the people insist upon having him for President, he is too good a pa- triot to refuse. I wonder whether he can have had any object in saying all this to me. He might see that it would be perfectly natural for me to tell it to General Pierce. But it is a very vulgar idea, — this of seeing craft and subtlety, when there is a plain and honest aspect. January 9th. — I dined at Mr. William Browne's (M. P.) last evening with a large party. The whole table and dessert service was of silver. Speaking of Shakespeare, Mr. said that the Duke of Somer- set, who is now nearly fourscore, told him that the father of John and Charles Kemble had made all possible research into the events of Shakespeare's life, and that he had found reason to believe that Shake- speare attended a certain revel at Stratford, and, in- dulging too much in the conviviality of the occasion, he tumbled into a ditch on his way home, and died there ! The Kemble patriarch was an aged man when he communicated this to the Duke ; and their ages, linked to each other, would extend back a good way ; scarcely to the beginning of the last century, however. If I mistake not, it was from the traditions of Strat- ford that Kemble had learned the above. I do not remember ever to have seen it in print, — which is most singular. Miss L has an English rather than an Amer- ican aspect, — being of stronger outline than most of our young ladies, although handsomer than English 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 553 women generally, extremely self-possessed and well poised, without affectation or assumption, but quietly conscious of rank, as much so as if she were an Earl's daughter. In truth, she felt pretty much as an Earl's daughter would do towards the merchants' wives and daughters who made up the feminine portion of the party. I talked with her a little, and found her sensible, vivacious, and firm-textured, rather than soft and sen- timental. She paid me some compliments ; but I do not remember paying her any. Mr. J 's daughters, two pale, handsome girls, were present. One of them is to be married to a grandson of Mr. , who was also at the dinner. He is a small young man, with a thin and fair mus- tache, . . . and a lady who sat next me whispered that his expectations are £6,000 per annum. It struck me, that, being a country gentleman's son, he kept himself silent and reserved, as feeling himself too good for this commercial dinner-party; but per- haps, and I rather think so, he was really shy and had nothing to say, being only twenty-one, and therefore quite a boy among Englishmen. The only man of cognizable rank present, except Mr. and the Mayor of Liverpool, was a Baronet, Sir Thomas Birch. January 11th. — S and I were invited to be present at the wedding of Mr. J 's daughter this morning, but we were also bidden to the funeral ser- vices of Mrs. G , a young American lady ; and we went to the " house of mourning," rather than to the " house of feasting." Her death was very sudden. I 554 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. crossed to Rock Ferry on Saturday, and met her hus- band in the boat. He said that his wife was rather un- well, and that he had just been sent for to see her ; but he did not seem at all alarmed. And yet, on reaching home, he found her dead ! The body is to be con- veyed to America, and the funeral service was read over her in her house, only a few neighbors and friends being present. We were shown into a darkened room, where there was a dim gas-light burning, and a fire glimmering, and here and there a streak of sunshine struggling through the drawn curtains. Mr. G — looked pale, and quite overcome with grief, — this, I suppose, being his first sorrow, — and he has a young baby on his hands, and no doubt feels altogether for- lorn in this foreign land. The clergyman entered in his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession into another room, where the coffin was placed. Mr. G sat down and rested his head on the coffin : the clergyman read the service ; then knelt down, as did most of the company, and prayed with great propriety of manner, but with no earnestness, — and we sepa- rated. Mr. G is a small, smooth, and pretty young man, not emphasized in any way ; but grief threw its awf ulness about him to-day in a degree which I should not have expected. January 20th. — Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock Ferry, showed me this morning a pencil-case formerly belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or seven inches long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured of iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now quite bare. Indeed, it looks as rough as an article of kitchen furniture. The intaglio on the end is a lion rampant. On the whole, it well became Dr. Johnsop 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 555 to have used such a stalwart pencil-case. It had a six-inch measure on a part of it, so that it must have been at least eight inches long. Mr. Steele says he has seen a cracked earthen teapot, of large size, in which Miss Williams used to make tea for Dr. John- son. God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short of eternity. All the misery en- dured here constitutes a claim for another life, and, still more, all the happiness ; because all true happi- ness involves something more than the earth owns, and needs something more than a mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it. After receiving an injury on the head, a person fan- cied all the rest of his life that he heard voices flout- ing, jeering, and upbraiding him. February 19^A. — I dined with the Mayor at the Town Hall last Friday evening. I sat next to Mr. W. J , an Irish-American merchant, who is in very good standing here. He told me that he used to be very well acquainted with General Jackson, and that he was present at the street fight between him and the Bentons, and helped to take General Jackson off the ground. Colonel Benton shot at him from behind ; but it was Jesse Benton's ball that hit him and broke his arm. I did not understand him to infer any treachery or cowardice from the circumstance of Colo- nel Benton's shooting at Jackson from behind, but suppose it occurred in the confusion and excitement of the street fight. Mr. W. J seems to think that, after all, the reconciliation between the old General 556 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. and Benton was merely external, and that they really hated one another as before. I do not think so. These dinners of the Mayors are rather agreeable than otherwise, except for the annoyance, in my case, of being called up to speak to a toast, and that is less disagreeable than at first. The suite of rooms at the Town House is stately and splendid, and all the May- ors, as far as I have seen, exercise hospitality in a manner worthy of the chief magistrates of a great city. They are supposed always to spend much more than their salary (which is X2,000) in these entertainments. The town provides the wines, I am told, and it might be expected that they should be particularly good, — at least, those which improve by age, for a quarter of a century should be only a moderate age for wine from the cellars of centuries-long institutions, like a corporate borough. Each Mayor might lay in a sup- ply of the best vintage he could find, and trust his good name to posterity to the credit of that wine; and so he would be kindly and warmly remembered long after his own nose had lost its rubicundity. In point of fact, the wines seem to be good, but not re- markable. The dinner was good, and very handsomely served, with attendance enough, both in the hall be- low — where the door was wide open at the appointed hour, notwithstanding the cold — and at table ; some being in the rich livery of the borough, and some in plain clothes. Servants, too, were stationed at various points from the hall to the reception-room ; and the last one shouted forth the name of the entering guest. There were, I should think, about fifty guests at this dinner. . . . Two bishops were present. The Bish- ops of Chester and New South Wales, dressed in a kind of long tunics, with black breeches and silk 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 557 stockings, insomuch that I first fancied they were Catholics. Also Dr. McNeil, in a stiff-collared coat, looking more like a general than a divine. There were two officers in blue uniforms ; and all the rest of us were in black, with only two white waistcoats, — my own being one, — and a rare sprinkling of white cravats. How hideously a man looks in them ! I should like to have seen such assemblages as must have gathered in that reception-room, and walked with stately tread to the dining-hall, in times past, — the Mayor and other civic dignities in their robes, noblemen in their state dresses, the Consul in his olive- leaf embroidery, everybody in some sort of bedizen- ment, — and then the dinner would have been a mag- nificent spectacle, worthy of the gilded hall, the rich table-service, and the powdered and gold-laced servi- tors. At a former dinner I remember seeing a gentle- man in small-clothes, with a dress-sword ; but all for- malities of the kind are passing away. The Mayor's dinners, too, will no doubt be extinct before many years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry in a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. The Bishop is nearly seven feet high. After writing the foregoing account of a civic ban- quet, where I ate turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oys- ter patties, and I know not what else, I have been to the News - Room and found the Exchange pavement densely thronged with people of all ages and of all manner of dirt and rags. They were waiting for soup- tickets, and waiting very patiently too, without outcry or disturbance, or even sour looks, — only patience and meekness in their faces. Well, I don't know that they have a right to be impatient of starvation ; but still there does seem to be an insolence of riches and 558 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. prosperity, which one day or another will have a downfall. And this will be a pity, too. On Saturday I went with my friend Mr. Bright to Otterpool and to Larkhill to see the skaters on the private waters of those two seats of gentlemen ; and it is a wonder to behold — and it is always a new wonder to me — how comfortable Englishmen know how to make themselves ; locating their dwellings far within private grounds, with secure gateways and por- ters' lodges, and the smoothest roads, and trimmest paths, and shaven lawns, and clumps of trees, and every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made the most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept that even winter cannot cause disarray ; and all this appropriated to the same family for generations, so that I suppose they come to believe it created exclu- sively and on purpose for them. And, really, the re- sult is good and beautiful. It is a home, — an insti- tution which we Americans have not ; but then I doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home in this world, in so fulJ a sense. The day was very cold, and the skaters seemed to enjoy themselves exceedingly. They were, I suppose, friends of the owners of the grounds, and Mr. Bright said they were treated in a jolly way, with hot lunch- eons. The skaters practise skating more as an art, and can perform finer manoeuvres on the ice, than our New England skaters usually can, though the English have so much less opportunity for practice. A beg- gar-woman was haunting the grounds at Otterpool, but I saw nobody give her anything. I wonder how she got inside of the gate. Mr. W. J spoke of General Jackson as having 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 559 come from the same part of Ireland as himself, and perhaps of the same family. I wonder whether he meant to say that the General was born in Ireland, — that having been suspected in America. February 21st — Yesterday two companies of work- people came to our house in Rock Park, asking as- sistance, being out of work and with no resource other than charity. There were a dozen or more in each party. Their deportment was quiet and altogether un- exceptionable, — no rudeness, no gruff ness, nothing of menace. Indeed, such demonstrations would not have been safe, as they were followed about by two police- men ; but they really seem to take their distress as their own misfortune and God's will, and impute it to nobody as a fault. This meekness is very touching, and makes one question the more whether they have all their rights. There have been disturbances, within a day or two, in Liverpool, and shops have been broken open and robbed of bread and money ; but this is said to have been done by idle vagabonds, and not by the really hungry work-people. These last submit to starvation gently and patiently, as if it were an every-day matter with them, or, at least, nothing but what lay fairly within their horoscope. I suppose, in fact, their stomachs have the physical habit that makes hunger not intolerable, because customary. If they had been used to a full meat diet, their hunger would be fierce, like that of ravenous beasts ; but now they are trained to it. I think that the feeling of an American, divided, as L am, by the ocean from his country, has a continual and immediate correspondence with the national feel- 560 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. ing at home ; and it seems to be independent of any external communication. Thus, my ideas about tha Russian war vary in accordance with the state of the public mind at home, so that I am conscious where- abouts public sympathy is. March 1th. — J and I walked to Tranmere, and passed an old house which I suppose to be Tran- mere Hall. Our way to it was up a hollow lane, with a bank and hedge on each side, and with a few thatched stone cottages, centuries old, their ridge-poles crooked and the stones time-worn, scattered along. At one point there was a wide, deep well, hewn out of the solid red freestone, and with steps, also hewn in solid rock, leading down to it. These steps were much hol- lowed by the feet of those who had come to the well ; and' they reach beneath the water, which is very high. The well probably supplied water to the old cotters and retainers of Tranmere Hall five hundred years ago. The Hall stands on the verge of a long hill which stretches behind Tranmere and as far as Birkenhead. It is an old gray stone edifice, with a good many gables, and windows with mullions, and some of them extending the whole breadth of the gable. In some parts of the house, the windows seem to have been built up ; probably in the days when daylight was taxed. The form of the Hall is multiplex, the roofs sloping down and intersecting one another, so as to make the general result indescribable. There were two sundials on different sides of the house, both the dial-plates of which were of stone ; and on one the fig- ures, so far as I could see, were quite worn off, but the gnomon still cast a shadow over it in such a way that I could judge that it was about noon. The other dial 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 561 had some half-worn hour-marks, but no gnomon. The chinks of the stones of the house were very weedy, and the building looked quaint and venerable ; but it is now converted into a farm-house, with the farm-yard and outbuildings closely appended. A village, too, has grown up about it, so that it seems out of place among modern stuccoed dwellings, such as are erected for tradesmen and other moderate people who have their residences in the neighborhood of a great city. Among these there are a few thatched cottages, the homeliest domiciles that ever mortals lived in, belong- ing to the old estate. Directly across the street is a Wayside Inn, " licensed to sell wine, spirits, ale, and tobacco." The street itself has been laid out since the land grew valuable by the increase of Liverpool and Birkenhead ; for the old Hall would never have been built on the verge of a public way. March 21th. — I attended court to - day, at St. George's Hall, with my wife, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Channing, sitting in the High Sheriff's seat. It was the civil side, and Mr. Justice Cresswell presided. The lawyers, as far as aspect goes, seemed to me inferior to an American bar, judging from their countenances, whether as intellectual men or gentlemen. Their wigs and gowns do not impose on the spectator, though they strike him as an imposition. Their date is past. Mr. Warren, of the " Ten Thousand a Year," was in court, — a pale, thin, intelligent face, evidently a ner- vous man, more unquiet than anybody else in court, — always restless in his seat, whispering to his neighbors, settling his wig, perhaps with an idea that people sin- gle him out. St. George's Hall — the interior hall it- self, I mean — is a spacious, lofty, and most rich and vol. vii. 36 562 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. noble apartment, and very satisfactory. The pave- ment is made of mosaic tiles, and has a beautiful effect. April Itho — I dined at Mr. J. P. Heywood's on Thursday, and met there Mr. and Mrs. of Smith- ell's Hall. The Hall is an old edifice of some five hundred years, and Mrs. says there is a bloody footstep at the foot of the great staircase. The tradi- tion is that a certain martyr, in Bloody Mary's time, being examined before the occupant of the Hall, and committed to prison, stamped his foot, in earnest pro- test against the injustice with which he was treated. Blood issued from his foot, which slid along the stone pavement, leaving a long footmark, printed in blood. And there it has remained ever since, in spite of the scrubbings of all succeeding generations. Mrs. spoke of it with much solemnity, real or affected. She says that they now cover the bloody impress with a carpet, being unable to remove it. In the History of Lancashire, which I looked at last night, there is quite a different account, — according to which the foot- step is not a bloody one, but is a slight cavity or ine- quality in the surface of the stone, somewhat in the shape of a man's foot with a peaked shoe. The mar- tyr's name was George Marsh. He was a curate, and was afterwards burnt. Mrs. asked me to go and see the Hall and the footmark ; and as it is in Lanca- shire, and not a great way off, and a curious old place, perhaps I may. April 12th. — The Earl of , whom I saw the other day at St. George's Hall, has a somewhat elderly look, — a pale and rather thin face, which strikes one 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 563 as remarkably short, or compressed from top to bot- tom. Nevertheless, it has great intelligence, and sen- sitiveness too, I should think, but a cold, disagreeable expression. I should take him to be a man of not very pleasant temper, — not genial. He has no phys- ical presence nor dignity, yet one sees him to be a per- son of rank and consequence. But, after all, there is nothing about him which it need have taken centu- ries of illustrious nobility to produce, especially in a man of remarkable ability, as Lord certainly is. S , who attended court all through the Hapgood trial, and saw Lord for hours together every day, has come to conclusions quite different from mine. She thinks him a perfectly natural person, without any assumption, any self-consciousness, any scorn of the lower world. She was delighted with his ready appreciation and feeling of what was passing around him, — his quick enjoyment of a joke, — the simplicity and unaffectedness of his emotion at whatever inci- dents excited his interest, — the genial acknowledg- ment of sympathy, causing him to look round and ex- change glances with those near him, who were not his individual friends, but barristers and other casual per- sons. He seemed to her all that a nobleman ought to be, entirely simple and free from pretence and self-as- sertion, which persons of lower rank can hardly help bedevilling themselves with. I saw him only a very few moments, so cannot put my observation against hers, especially as I was influenced by what I had heard the Liverpool people say of him. I do not know whether I have mentioned that the handsomest man I have seen in England was a young footman of Mr. Heywood's. In his rich livery, he was a perfect Joseph Andrews. 564 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have carried away with him a family secret, whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he transmits to his American progeny, by whom it is in- herited throughout all the intervening generations. At last, the hero of the Romance comes to England, and finds, that, by means of this secret, he still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. It would be something similar to the story of Mele- ager, whose fate depended on the firebrand that his mother had snatched from the flames. April 24:th. — On Saturday I was present at a de- jeuner on board the Donald McKay; the principal guest being Mr. Layard, M. P. There were several hundred people, quite filling the between decks of the ship, which was converted into a saloon for the occa- sion. I sat next to Mr. Layard, at the head of the table, and so had a good opportunity of seeing and getting acquainted with him. He is a man in early middle age, — of middle stature, with an open, frank, intelligent, kindly face. His forehead is not expan- sive, but is prominent in the perceptive regions, and retreats a good deal. His mouth is full, — I liked him from the first. He was very kind and compli- mentary to me, and made me promise to go and see him in London. It would have been a very pleasant entertainment, only that my pleasure in it was much marred by hav- ing to acknowledge a toast in honor of the President. However, such things do not trouble me nearly so much as they used to do, and I came through it toler- ably enough. Mr. Layard' s speech was the great a£ 1855] LIVERPOOL. 565 fair of the day. He speaks with much fluency (though he assured me that he had to put great force upon himself to speak publicly), and, as he warms up, seems to engage with his whole moral and physical man, — quite possessed with what he has to say. His evident earnestness and good faith make him eloquent, and stand him instead of oratorical graces. His views of the position of England and the prospects of the war were as dark as well could be ; and his speech was ex- ceedingly to the purpose, full of common - sense, and with not one word of clap-trap. Judging from its effect upon the audience, he spoke the voice of the whole English people, — although an English Baronet, who sat next below me, seemed to dissent, or at least to think that it was not exactly the thing for a stranger to hear. It concluded amidst great cheering. Mr. Layard appears to be a true Englishman, with a moral force and strength of character, and earnestness of purpose, and fulness of common-sense, such as have always served England's turn in her past successes ; but rather fit for resistance than progress. No doubt, he is a good and very able man ; but I question whether he could get England out of the difficulties which he sees so clearly, or could do much better than Lord Palmerston, whom he so decries. April 25th. — Taking the deposition of sailors yes- terday, in a case of alleged ill-usage by the officers of a vessel, one of the witnesses was an old seaman of sixty. In reply to some testimony of his, the captain said, " You were the oldest man in the ship, and we honored you as such." The mate also said that he never could have thought of striking an old man like 566 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. that. Indeed, the poor old fellow had a kind of dig- nity and venerableness about him, though he confessed to having been drunk, and seems to have been a mis- chief-maker, — what they call a sea-preacher, — pro- moting discontent and grumbling. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, having regu- lar features of a noble and beautiful cast. His beard was gray ; but his dark hair had hardly a streak of white, and was abundant all over his head. He was deaf, and seemed to sit in a kind of seclusion, unless when loudly questioned or appealed to. Once he broke forth from a deep silence thus, " I defy any man ! " and then was silent again. It had a strange effect, this general defiance, which he meant, I sup- pose, in answer to some accusation that he thought was made against him. His general behavior through- out the examination was very decorous and proper ; and he said he had never but once hitherto been be- fore a consul, and that was in 1819, when a mate had ill-used him, and, " being a young man then, I gave him a beating," — whereupon his face gleamed with a quiet smile, like faint sunshine on an old ruin. " By many a tempest has his beard been shook " ; and I suppose he must soon go into a workhouse, and thence, shortly, to his grave. He is now in a hospital, having, as the surgeon certifies, some ribs fractured ; but there does not appear to have been any violence used upon him aboard the ship of such a nature as to cause this injury, though he swears it was a blow from a rope, and nothing else. What struck me in the case was the respect and rank that his age seemed to give him, in the view of the officers ; and how, as the cap- tain's expression signified, it lifted him out of his low position, and made him a person to be honored. The 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 567 dignity of his manner is perhaps partly owing to the ancient mariner, with his long experience, being an oracle among the forecastle men. May 3 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 573 and agreeable in the drawing-room, though not amen- able altogether to its rules. Being so perfectly nat- ural, he is more of a gentleman for those little viola- tions of rule, which most men, with his opportunities, might escape. The men whose appeals to the Consul's charity are the hardest to be denied are those who have no coun- try, — Hungarians, Poles, Cubans, Spanish - Ameri- cans, and French republicans. All exiles for liberty come to me, as if the representative of America were their representative. Yesterday, came an old French soldier, and showed his wounds ; to-day, a Spaniard, a friend of Lopez, — bringing his little daughter with him. He said he was starving, and looked so. The little girl was in good condition enough, and decently dressed. — May 2M. May 30th. — The two past days have been Whit- suntide holidays ; and they have been celebrated at Tranmere in a manner very similar to that of the old " Election " in Massachusetts, as I remember it a good many years ago, though the festival has now almost or quite died out. Whitsuntide was kept up on our side of the water, I am convinced, under pretence of rejoic- ings at the election of Governor. It occurred at pre- cisely the same period of the year, — the same week ; the only difference being, that Monday and Tuesday are the Whitsun festival days, whereas, in Massachu- setts, Wednesday was " Election Day," and the acme of the merrymaking. I passed through Tranmere yesterday forenoon, and lingered awhile to see the sports. The greatest pecul- 574 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. iarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that they seemed not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on no holiday suits, — a grimy people, as at all times, heavy, obtuse, with thick beer in their blood. Coarse, rough-complexioned women and girls were intermin- gled, — the girls with no maiden trimness in their at- tire, large and blowsy. Nobody seemed to have been washed that day. All the enjoyment was of an ex ceedingly sombre character, so far as I saw it, though there was a richer variety of sports than at similar festivals in America. There were wooden horses, re- volving in circles, to be ridden a certain number of rounds for a penny ; also swinging cars gorgeously painted, and the newest named after Lord Raglan ; and four cars balancing one another, and turned by a winch ; and people with targets and rifles, — the prin- cipal aim being to hit an apple bobbing on a string before the target ; other guns for shooting at the dis- tance of a foot or two, for a prize of filberts ; and a game much in fashion, of throwing heavy sticks at earthen mugs suspended on lines, three throws for a penny. Also, there was a posture-master, showing his art in the centre of a ring of miscellaneous spectators, and handing round his hat after going through all his attitudes. The collection amounted to only one half- penny, and, to eke it out, I threw in three more. There were some large booths with tables placed the whole length, at which sat men and women drinking and smoking pipes ; orange-girls, a great many, sell- ing the worst possible oranges, which had evidently been boiled to give them a show of freshness. There were likewise two very large structures, the walls made of boards roughly patched together, and roofed with canvas, which seemed to have withstood a thousand 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 575 storms. Theatres were there, and in front there were pictures of scenes which were to be represented with- in; the price of admission being two -pence to one theatre, and a penny to the other. But, small as the price of tickets was, I could not see that anybody bought them. Behind the theatres, close to the board wall, and perhaps serving as the general dressing- room, was a large windowed wagon, in which I sup- pose the company travel and live together. Never, to my imagination, was the mysterious glory that has surrounded theatrical representation ever since my childhood brought down into such dingy reality as this. The tragedy queens were the same coarse and homely women and girls that surrounded me on the green. Some of the people had evidently been drink- ing more than was good for them ; but their drunken- ness was silent and stolid, with no madness in it. No ebullition of any sort was apparent. May Slst. — Last Sunday week, for the first time, I heard the note of the cuckoo. " Cuck-oo — cuck-oo" it says, repeating the word twice, not in a brilliant me- tallic tone, but low and flute-like, without the excessive sweetness of the flute, — without an excess of saccha- rine juice in the sound. There are said to be always two cuckoos seen together. The note is very soft and pleasant. The larks I have not yet heard in the sky ; though it is not infrequent to hear one singing in a cage, in the streets of Liverpool. Brewers' draymen are allowed to drink as much of .their master's beverage as they like, and they grow very brawny and corpulent, resembling their own horses in size, and presenting, one would suppose, 576 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. perfect pictures of physical comfort and well-being. But the least bruise, or even the hurt of a ringer, is liable to turn to gangrene or erysipelas, and become fatal. When the wind blows violently, however clear the sky, the English say, "It is a stormy day." And, on the other hand, when the air is still, and it does not actually rain, however dark and lowering the sky may be, they say, " The weather is fine ! " June 2d. — The English women of the lower classes have a grace of their own, not seen in each individual, but nevertheless belonging to their order, which is not to be found in American women of the corresponding class. The other day, in the police court, a girl was put into the witness-box, whose native graces of this sort impressed me a good deal. She was coarse, and her dress was none of the cleanest, and nowise smart. She appeared to have been up all night, too, drinking at the Tranmere wake, and had since ridden in a cart, covered up with a rug. She described herself as a servant-girl, out of place; and her charm lay in all her manifestations, — her tones, her gestures, her look l her way of speaking and what she said, being so ap- propriate and natural in a girl of that class ; nothing affected ; no proper grace thrown away by attempting to appear lady-like, — which an American girl would have attempted, — and she would also have succeeded in a certain degree. If each class would but keep within itself, and show its respect for itself by aiming at nothing beyond, they would all be more respectable.. But this kind of fitness is evidently not to be expected in the future ; and something else must be substituted for it. 1855.] LIVERPOOL, , 577 These scenes at the police court are often well worth witnessing. The controlling genius of the court, ex- cept when the stipendiary magistrate presides, is the clerk, who is a man learned in the law. Nominally the cases are decided by the aldermen, who sit in rote tion, but at every important point there comes a nod or a whisper from the clerk ; and it is that whisper which sets the defendant free or sends nim to prison. Nevertheless, I suppose the alderman's common-sense and native shrewdness are not without their efficacy in producing a general tendency towards the right ; and, no doubt, the decisions of the police court are quite as often just as those of any other court whatever. June 11th. — I walked with J — — yesterday to Bebbington Church. When I first saw this church, nearly two years since, it seemed to me the fulfilment of my ideal of an old English country church. It is not so satisfactory now, although certainly a venerable edifice. There used some time ago to be ivy all over the tower ; and at my first view of it, there was still a little remaining on the upper parts of the spire. But the main roots, I believe, were destroyed, and pains were taken to clear away the whole of the ivy, so that now it is quite bare, — nothing but homely gray stone, with marks of age, but no beauty. The most curious thing about the church is the font. It is a massive pile, composed of five or six layers of freestone in an octagon shape, placed in the angle formed by the pro- jecting side porch and the wall of the church, and standing under a stained-glass window. The base is six or seven feet across, and it is built solidly up in successive steps, to the height of about six feet, — an VOL. VII. 37 578 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. octagonal pyramid, with the basin of the font crown- ing the pile hewn out of the solid stone, and about a foot in diameter and the same in depth. There was water in it from the recent rains, — water just from heaven, and therefore as holy as any water it ever held in old Romish times. The aspect of this aged font is extremely venerable, with moss in the basin and all over the stones; grass, and weeds of various kinds, and little shrubs, rooted in the chinks of the stones and between the successive steps. At each entrance of Rock Park, where we live, there is a small Gothic structure of stone, each inhabited by a policeman and his family ; very small dwellings in- deed, with the main apartment opening directly out-of- doors ; and when the door is open, one can see the household fire, the good wife at work, perhaps the table set, and a throng of children clustering round, and generally overflowing the threshold. The police- man walks about the Park in stately fashion, with his silver-laced blue uniform and snow-white gloves touch- ing his hat to gentlemen who reside in the Park. In his public capacity he has rather an awful aspect, but privately he is a humble man enough, glad of any lit- tle job, and of old clothes for his many children, or, I believe, for himself. One of the two policemen is a shoemaker and cobbler. His pay, officially, is some- where about a guinea a week. The Park, just now, is very agreeable to look at, shadowy with trees and shrubs, and with glimpses of green leaves and flower-gardens through the branches and twigs that line the iron fences. After p. shower the hawthorn blossoms are delightfully fi^rant. Golden tassels of the laburnum are abundant- 1855.] LIVERPOOL. 579 I may have mentioned elsewhere the traditional prophecy, that, when the ivy should reach the top of Bebbington spire, the tower was doomed to fall. It has still, therefore, a chance of standing for centuries. Mr. Turner tells me that the font now used is inside of the church, but the one outside is of unknown an- tiquity, and that it was customary, in papistical times, to have the font without the church. There is a little boy often on board the Rock Ferry steamer with an accordion, — an instrument I detest ; but nevertheless it becomes tolerable in his hands, not so much for its music, as for the earnestness and inter- est with which he plays it. His body and the accor- dion together become one musical instrument on which his soul plays tunes, for he sways and vibrates with the music from head to foot and throughout his frame, half closing his eyes and uplifting his face, as painters represent St. Cecilia and other famous musicians ; and sometimes he swings his accordion in the air, as if in a perfect rapture. After all, my ears, though not very nice, are somewhat tortured by his melodies, especially when confined within the cabin. The boy is ten years old, perhaps, and rather pretty ; clean, too, and neatly dressed, very unlike all other street and vagabond chil- dren whom I have seen in Liverpool. People give him their halfpence more readily than to any other musicians who infest the boat. J , the other day, was describing a soldier-crab to his mother, he being much interested in natural his- tory, and endeavoring to give as strong an idea as pos- sible of its warlike characteristics, and power to harm those who molest it. Little R sat by, quietly lis- tening and sewing, and at last, lifting her head, she 580 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. remarked, " I hope God did not hurt hisself, when he was making him I " LEAMINGTON. June 21st — We left Rock Ferry and Liverpool on Monday, the 18th, by the rail for this place ; a very dim and rainy day, so that we had no pleasant prospects of the country ; neither would the scenery along the Great Western Railway have been in any case very striking, though sunshine would have made the abundant verdure and foliage warm and genial. But a railway naturally finds its way through all the common places of a country, and is certainly a most unsatisfactory mode of travelling, the only object be- ing to arrive. However, we had a whole carriage to ourselves, and the children enjoyed the earlier part of the journey very much* We skirted Shrewsbury, and I think I saw the old tower of a church near the sta- tion, perhaps the same that struck FalstafFs " long hour.'* As we left the town, I saw the Wrekin, a round, pointed hill of regular shape, and remembered the old toast, "To all friends round the Wrekin ! " As we approached Birmingham, the country began to look somewhat Brummagemish, with its manufacturing chimneys, and pennons of flame quivering out of their tops ; its forges, and great heaps of mineral refuse ; its smokiness, and other ugly symptoms. Of Birming- ham itself we saw little or nothing, except the mean and new brick lodging-houses, on the outskirts of the town. Passing through Warwick, we had a glimpse of the castle, — an ivied wall and two turrets, rising out of imbosoming foliage ; one's very idea of an old cas- tle. We reached Leamington at a little past six, and drove to the Clarendon Hotel, — a very spacious and 1855.] LEAMINGTON. 581 stately house, by far the most splendid hotel I have yet seen in England. The landlady, a courteous old lady in black, showed my wife our rooms, and we es- tablished ourselves in an immensely large and lofty parlor, with red curtains and ponderous furniture, per- haps a very little out of date. The waiter brought me the book of arrivals, containing the names of all visitors for from three to five years back. During two years I estimated that there had been about three hun- dred and fifty persons only, and while we were there, I saw nobody but ourselves to support the great hotel. Among the names were those of princes, earls, coun- tesses, and baronets ; and when the people of the house heard from R 's nurse that I too was a man of office, and held the title of Honorable in my own country, they greatly regretted that I entered myself as plain " Mister " in the book. We found this hotel very comfortable, and might doubtless have made it luxurious, had we chosen to go to five times the ex- pense of similar luxuries in America ; but we merely ordered comfortable things, and so came off at no very extravagant rate, — and with great honor, at all events, in the estimation of the waiter. During the afternoon we found lodgings, and estab- lished ourselves in them before dark. This English custom of lodgings, of which we had some experience at Rhyl last year, has its advantages ; but is rather uncomfortable for strangers, who, in first settling themselves down, find that they must under- take all the responsibility of housekeeping at an in- stant's warning, and cannot get even a cup of tea till they have made arrangements with the grocer. Soon, however, there comes a sense of being at home, and 582 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. by our exclusive selves, which never can be attained at hotels nor boarding-houses. Our house is well sit- uated and respectably furnished, with the dinginess, however, which is inseparable from lodging-houses, — • as if others had used these things before and would use them again after we had gone, — a well-enough adaptation, but a lack of peculiar appropriateness ; and I think one puts off real enjoyment from a sense of not being truly fitted. July 1st. — On Friday I took the rail with J for Coventry. It was a bright and very warm day, oppressively so, indeed ; though I think that there is never in this English climate the pervading warmth of an American summer day. The sunshine may be excessively hot, but an overshadowing cloud, or the shade of a tree or of a building, at once affords relief ; and if the slightest breeze stirs, you feel the latent freshness of the air. Coventry is some nine or ten miles from Leaming- ton. The approach to it from the railway presents nothing very striking, — a few church-towers, and one or two tall steeples ; and the houses first seen are of modern and unnoticeable aspect. Getting into the in- terior of the town, however, you find the streets very crooked, and some of them very narrow. I saw one place where it seemed possible to shake hands from one jutting storied old house to another. There were whole streets of the same kind of houses, one story im- pending over another, such as used to be familiar to me in Salem, and in some streets of Boston. In fact, the whole aspect of the town — its irregularity and continual indirectness — reminded me very much of 1855] COVENTRY. 583 Boston, as I used to see it, in rare visits thither, when a child. These Coventry houses, however, many of them, are much larger than any of similar style that I have seen elsewhere, and they spread into greater bulk as the} r ascend, by means of one story jutting over the other. Probably the New-Englanders continued to follow this fashion of architecture after it had been abandoned in the mother country. The old house built by Philip English, in Salem, dated about 1692 ; and it was in this style, — many-gabled, and impending. Here the edifices of such architecture seem to be Elizabethan, and of earlier date. A woman in Stratford told us that the rooms, very low on the ground-floor, grew lof- tier from story to story to the attic. The fashion of windows, in Coventry, is such as I have not hitherto seen. In the highest story, a window of the ordinary height extends along the whole breadth of the house, ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty feet, just like any other window of a commonplace house, except for this inor- dinate width. One does not easily see what the inhab- itants want of so much window-light ; but the fashion is very general, and in modern houses, or houses that have been modernized, this style of window is retained. Thus young people who grow up amidst old people contract quaint and old-fashioned manners and aspect. I imagine that these ancient towns — such as Ches- ter and Stratford, Warwick and Coventry — contain even a great deal more antiquity than meets the eye. You see many modern fronts ; but if you peep or pen- etrate inside, you find an antique arrangement, — old rafters, intricate passages, and ancient staircases, which have put on merely a new outside, and are likely still to prove good for the usual date of a new house. 584 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. They put such an immense and stalwart ponderosity into their frameworks, that I suppose a house of Eliz- abeth's time, if renewed, has at least an equal chance of durability with one that is new in every part. All the hotels in Coventry, so far as I noticed them, are old, with new fronts ; and they have an archway for the admission of vehicles into the court - yard, and doors opening into the rooms of the building on each side of the arch. Maids and waiters are seen darting across the arched passage from door to door, and it re- quires a guide (in my case, at least) to show you the way to the coffee-room or the bar. I have never been up stairs in any of them, but can conceive of infinite bewilderment of zigzag corridors between staircase and chamber. It was fair-day in Coventry, and this gave what no doubt is an unusual bustle to the streets. In fact, I have not seen such crowded and busy streets in any English town ; various kinds of merchandise being for sale in the open air, and auctioneers disposing of mis- cellaneous wares, pretty much as they do at musters and other gatherings in the United States. The ora- tory of the American auctioneer, however, greatly sur- passes that of the Englishman in vivacity and fun. But this movement and throng, together with the white glow of the sun on the pavements, make the scene, in my recollection, assume an American aspect, and this is strange in so antique and quaint a town as Coventry. We rambled about without any definite aim, but found our way, I believe, to most of the objects that are worth seeing. St. Michael's Church was most magnificent, — so old, yet enduring ; so huge, so rich j with such intricate minuteness in its finish, that, look as long as you will at it, you can always discover 1855.] COVENTRY. 585 something new directly before your eyes. I admire this in Gothic architecture, — that you cannot mas- ter it all at once, that it is not a naked outline ; but, as deep and rich as human nature itself, always revealing new ideas. It is as if the builder had built himself and his age up into it, and as if the edifice had life. Grecian temples are less interesting to me^ being so cold and crystalline. I think this is the only church I have seen where there are any statues still left standing in the niches of the exterior walls. We did not go inside. The steeple of St. Michael's is three hundred and three feet high, and no doubt the clouds often envelop the tip of the spire. Trinity, another church with a tall spire, stands near St. Mi- chael's, but did not attract me so much; though I, perhaps, might have admired it equally, had I seen it first or alone. We certainly know nothing of church- building in America, and of all English things that I have seen, methinks the churches disappoint me least. I feel, too, that there is something much more wonder- ful in them than I have yet had time to know and ex- perience. In the course of the forenoon, searching about everywhere in quest of Gothic architecture, we found our way into St. Mary's Hall. The doors were wide open ; it seemed to be public, — there was a notice on the wall desiring visitors to give nothing to attendants for showing it, and so we walked in. I observed, in the guide-books, that we should bave obtained an order for admission from some member of the town council ; but we had none, and found no need of it. An old woman, and afterwards an old man, both of whom seemed to be at home on the premises, told us that we might enter, and troubled neither themselves nor us any further. 586 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. St. Mary's Hall is now the property of the Corpora- tion of Coventry, and seems to be the place where the Mayor and Council hold their meetings. It was built by one of the old guilds or fraternities of merchants and tradesmen. . . . The woman shut the kitchen door when I approached, so that I did not see the great fireplaces and huge cooking-utensils which are said to be there. Whether these are ever used nowa- days, and whether the Mayor of Coventry gives such hospitable banquets as the Mayor of Liverpool, I do not know. We went to the Red Lion, and had a luncheon of cold lamb and cold pigeon-pie. This is the best way of dining at English hotels, — to call the meal a luncheon, in which case you will get as good or bet- ter a variety than if it were a dinner, and at less than half the cost. Having lunched, we again wandered about town, and entered a quadrangle of gabled houses, with a church, and its churchyard on one side. This proved to be St. John's Church, and a part of the houses were the locality of Bond's Hospital, for the reception of ten poor men, and the remainder was devoted to the Bablake School. Into this latter I peered, with a real American intrusiveness, which I never found in myself before, but which I must now assume, or miss a great many things which I am anx- ious to see. Running along the front of the house, under the jut of the impending story, there was a cloistered walk, with windows opening on the quad- rangle. An arched oaken door, with long iron hinges s admitted us into a school -room about twenty feet square, paved with brick tiles, blue and red. Adjoin- ing this there is a larger school-room which we did not 1855.] COVENTRY. 587 enter, but peeped at, through one of the inner win- dows, from the cloistered walk. In the room which we entered, there were seven scholars' desks, and an immense arched fireplace, with seats on each side, under the chimney, on a stone slab resting on a brick pedestal. The opening of the fireplace was at least twelve feet in width. On one side of the room were pegs for fifty-two boys' hats and clothes, and there was a boy's coat, of peculiar cut, hanging on a peg, with the number " 50 " in brass upon it. The coat looked ragged and shabby. An old school-book was lying on one of the desks, much tattered, and without a title ; but it seemed to treat wholly of Saints' days and festivals of the Church. A flight of stairs, with a heavy balustrade of carved oak, ascended to a gal- lery, about eight or nine feet from the lower floor, which runs along two sides of the room, looking down upon it. The room is without a ceiling, and rises into a peaked gable, about twenty feet high. There is a large clock in it, and it is lighted by two windows, each about ten feet wide, — one in the gallery, and the other beneath it. Two benches or settles, with backs, stood one on each side of the fireplace. An old woman in black passed through the room while I was making my observations, and looked at me, but said nothing. The school was founded in 1563, by Thomas Whealby, Mayor of Coventry ; the revenue is about <£900, and admits children of the working- classes at eleven years old, clothes and provides for them, and finally apprentices them for seven years. We saw some of the boys playing in the quadrangle, dressed in long blue coats or gowns, with cloth caps on their heads. I know not how the atmosphere of antiquity, and massive continuance from age to age ? 588 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. which was the charm to me in this scene of a charity- school-room, can be thrown over it in description. After noting down these matters, I looked into the quiet precincts of Bond's Hospital, which, no doubt, was more than equally interesting ; but the old men were lounging about or lolling at length, looking very drowsy, and I had not the heart nor the face to in- trude among them. There is something altogether strange to an American in these charitable institu- tions, — in the preservation of antique modes and customs which is effected by them, insomuch that, doubtless, without at all intending it, the founders have succeeded in preserving a model of their own long-past age down into the midst of ours, and how much later nobody can know. We were now rather tired, and went to the railroad, intending to go home ; but we got into the wrong train, and were carried by express, with hurricane speed, to Bradon, where we alighted, and waited a good while for the return train to Coventry. At Coventry again we had more than an hour to wait, and therefore wandered wearily up into the city, and took another look at its bustling streets, in which there seems to be a good emblem of what England itself really is, — with a great deal of antiquity in it, and which is now chiefly a modification of the old. The new things are based and supported on the sturdy old things, and often limited and impeded by them ; but this antiquity is so massive that there seems to be no means of getting rid of it without tearing society to pieces. July 2d, — To-day I shall set out on my return to Liverpool, leaving my family here* ■OH LIBRARY OF CONGRESS -•'■->•■■ ii i M HI I II Ml lUI . 016 117 480 4 **