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'PUBLIC I- .-.y.

Lord Nelson

OUR OLD HOME

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
ANNOTATED WITH PASSAGES
FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTE-
BOOK, AND ILLUSTRATED
WITH PHOTOGRAVURES

IjflssaESSF;

itm^msm

VOLUME
II

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

MDCCCXCI

^yjb

PU&LIC LIBRARY

977874A

4^1, Umff AND

fOJMN FOrNOAHONB

£ 19»» I*

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

CONTENTS AND LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pfudogravures execuUdby A, JV. Elson &• Co., BoitffH,]

PAGB

Lord Nelson Frontispiece.

NEAR OXFORD 281

Blenheim 292

The Thames at Oxford from Folly Bridge 318
Magdalen College, Oxford, from the Cher.

WELL 322

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS . . .325

Robert Burns 334

Burns's Birthplace, Alloway Parish, near

Ayr 350

The Auld Brig o* Doon, Ayr . . . .354
Alloway Kirk 356

A LONDON SUBURB . . . . . . -359

A Country House 364

The Houses of Parliament .... 374

UP THE THAMES 4"

London Bridge 412

Tower of London, showing Traitors* Gate 428

St. Paul's Cathedral 430

Pqets* Corner, Westminster Abbey . . 452

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 470
An English Almshouse 500

CIVIC BANQUETS 527

00
00

OUR OLD HOME

VII.

NEAR OXFORD

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

282 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 283

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

284 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 285

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

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

286 OUR OLD HOME

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

NEAR OXFORD 28/

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

288 OUR OLD HOME

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

NEAR OXFORD 289

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

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

290 OUR OLD HOME

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

NEAR OXFORD 29 1

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

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

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

292 OUR OLD HOME

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

BlinhetM

NEAR OXFORD 293

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

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

294 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 295

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

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

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

296 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 297

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

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

298 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 299

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

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

97J'874A

300 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 301

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

302 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 303

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

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

304 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 305

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

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

It was at this place, if I remember right,

306 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 307

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

308 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 309

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

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

3IO OUR OLD HOME

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

NEAR OXFORD 311

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

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

312 OUR OLD HOME

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

There are other and more recent memo-
rials of the Harcourts, one of which is the
tomb of the last lord, who died about a
hundred years ago. His figure, like those
of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb,
clad, hot in armor, but in his robes as a
peer. The title is now extinct, but the
family survives in a younger branch, and •
still holds this patrimonial estate, though
they have long since quitted it as a resi-
dence.

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

NEAR OXFORD 3 13

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

I mentioned that there were two towers
remaining of the old castle : the one con-
taining the kitchen we have already visited ;
the other, still more interesting, is next to
be described. It is some seventy feet high,
gray and reverend, but in excellent repair,
though I could not perceive that anything
had been d9ne to renovate it. The base-
ment story was once the family chapel, and
is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At
one comer of the tower is a circular turret,
within which a narrow staircase, with worn
steps of stone, winds round and round as
it climbs upward, giving access to a cham-
ber on each floor, and finally emerging on
the battlemented roof. Ascending this

314 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 3 15

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

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

3l6 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 317

well trained to his business, managed the
oars skillfully and vigorously : and we went
down the stream quite as swiftly as it was
desirable to go, the scene being so pleas-
ant, and the passing hours §0 thoroughly
agreeable. The river grew a little wider
and deeper, perhaps, as we glided ©n, but
was still an inconsiderable stream : for it
had a good deal more than a hundred miles
to meander through before it should bear
fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and
towers and Parliament houses and dingy
and sordid piles of various structure, as it
rolled to and fro with the tide, dividing
London asunder. Not, in truth, that 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 ; an-
other time, the boat went through a lock.
We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine
the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe,
where Fair Rosamond secluded herself,
after being separated from her royal lover.
There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a

3l8 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

NEAR OXFORD 319

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

320 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

As we here cross a private threshold,

NEAR OXFORD 32 1

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

322 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

j^ " — .rr — -—.^ *^3^iwJ

NEAR OXFORD 323

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

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

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

We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude

324 OUR OLD HOME

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

VIII.
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS

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

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

326 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 327

house was now occupied by a ragged or
industrial school. On knocking, we were
instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who
smiled intelligently when we told our er-
rand, and showed us into a low and very
plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen
feet square. A young woman, who seemed
to be a teacher in the school, soon ap-
peared, and told us that this had been
Bums'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 Bums
used as a study ; and the bedchamber itself
was the one where he slept in his later
lifetime, and in which he died at last.
Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable
place for a pastoral and rural poet to live
or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than
Shakespeare's house, which has a certain
homely picturesqueness that contrasts fa-
vorably with the suburban sordidness of
the abode before us. The narrow lane,
the paving-stones, and the contiguity of
wretched hovels are depressing to remem-
ber; and the steam of them (such is our
human weakness) might almost make the
poet's memory less fragrant.

328 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 329

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

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

330 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 33 1

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

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

332 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 333

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

334 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

We went into the church, and found it
very plain and naked, without altar deco-
rations, and having its floor quite covered
with unsightly wooden pews. The woman
led us to a pew, cornering on one of the
side aisles, and, telling us that it used to be
Bums*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 Bums himself
nodding in sermon-time, or keenly obser-
vant of profane things — brought him be-
fore us to the life. In the comer-seat of
the next pew, right before Bums, and not
more than two feet off, sat the young lady
on whom the poet saw that unmention-
able parasite, which he has immortalized
in song. We were ungenerous enough to
ask the lady's name, but the good woman
could not tell it. This was the last thing
which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record;
and it ought to be noted that our guide re-
fused some money which my companion
offered her, because I had already paid her
what she deemed sufficient.

At the railway-station we spent more

Robert Bums

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 335

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

336 OUR OLD HOME

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 337

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

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

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

338 OUR OLD HOME

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 339

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

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

340 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 341

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

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

342 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 343

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

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

^ Sir James Boswell is now dead.

344 <^^^ ^^^ HOME

large number of acres, is the income very
considerable.

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 345

estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the
family of Alexanders, to whom Bums'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. Bums has written hundreds
of better things ; but henceforth, for cen-
turies, that maiden has free admittance
into the dream-land of Beautiful Women,
and she and all her race are famous. I
should like to know the present head of
the family, and ascertain what value, if any,
the members of it put upon the celebrity
thus won.

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

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

346 OUR OLD HOME

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 347

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

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

348 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 349

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

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

350 OUR OLD HOME

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

Bums^s Birthplace

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 351

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

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

352 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 353

Pocket Bible that Bums 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 awf ulness of vows is writ-
ten within the cover of each volume, in the
poet's own hand ; and fastened to one of
the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's
golden hair. This Bible had been carried
to America by one of her relatives, but was
sent back to be fitly treasured here.

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

354 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

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

The Auld Brig o' Boon

SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 35$

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

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

3S6 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

Alloway Kirk

35 8 OUR OLD HOME

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

IX.

A LONDON SUBURB

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

360 OUR OLD HOME

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

A LONDON SUBURB 36 1

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

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

362 OUR OLD HOME

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

A LONDON SUBURB 363

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

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

364 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A Country House

A LONDON SUBURB 36$

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

366 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 36/

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

368 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 369

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

370 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 371

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

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

372 OUR OLD HOME

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

A LONDON SUBURB 373

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

374 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

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

The Houses of Parliament

A LONDON SUBURB 375

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

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

376 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 377

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

378 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 379

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

38o OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 38 1

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

382 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 383

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

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

384 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 385

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

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

386 OUR OLD HOME

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

A LONDON SUBURB 387

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

But their countrymen meant kindly by
the old fellows in assigning them the an-
cient royal site where Elizabeth held her
court and Charles 11. began to build his
palace. So far as the locality went, it was
treating them like so many kings; and,
with a discreet abundance of grog, beer,
and tobacco, there was perhaps little more
to be accomplished in behalf of men whose
whole previous lives have tended to unfit
them for old age. Their chief discomfort
is probably for lack of something to do or
think about. But, judging by the few
whom I saw, a listless habit seems to have

388 OUR OLD HOME

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

A LONDON SUBURB 589

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

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

390 OUR OLD HOME

never could look at it long enough to make
out its design; for this artist (though it
pains . me to say it of so respectable a
countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack
of grinding ice into his paint, a power of
stupefying the spectator's perceptions and
quelling his sympathy, beyond any other
limner that ever handled a brush. In spite
of many pangs of conscience, I seize this
opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence
upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake
of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion
of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to
me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would
fire bum 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 Thomhill. As a work of art, I
presume, this frescoed canopy has little
merit, though it produces an exceedingly
rich effect by its brilliant coloring and as a
specimen of magnificent upholstery. The
walls of the grand apartment are entirely
covered with pictures, many of them repre-
senting battles and other naval incidents
that were once fresher in the world's mem-

A LONDON SUBURB 391

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

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

392 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 393

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

394 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 395

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

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

396 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 397

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

398 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 399

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

400 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 40I

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

402 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 403

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

404 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

A LONDON SUBURB 405

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

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

406 OUR OLD HOME

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

A LONDON SUBURB 407

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

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

4d8 our old home

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

A LONDON SUBURB 409

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

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

4IO

OUR OLD HOME

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

UP THE THAMES

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

412 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

London Bridge

UP THE THAMES 413

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

414 OUR OLD HOME

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

UP THE THAMES 415

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

4l6 OUR OLD HOME

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

Yet there seem to be people who spend

UP THE THAMES 417

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

41 8 OUR OLD HOME

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

UP THE THAMES 419

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

420 OITR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 42 1

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

422 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 423

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

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

424 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 425

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

426 OUR OLD HOME

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

The next notable gproup of objects is an

UP THE THAMES 427

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

428 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

Tower of London

UP THE THAMES 429

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

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

430

OUR OLD HOME

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

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

St PauTs Cathedral

UP THE THAMES 43 1

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

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

432 OUR OLD HOME

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

1 It stands immediately on the bank of the river, not
far above the bridge. V^e merely walked round it, and
saw only an old stone tower or two. partially renewed
with brick, and a high connecting wall, within which ap-
peared gables and other portions of the palace, all of an
mn^n r^\ ^'''^ venerable aspect, though evidently
rj^ sinl -r /^ ^"^ '^^^^^-d in the course of the many
ages since Its foundation. ^11 ,93.

UP THE THAMES 433

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

The steamer terminates its trip at Chel-
sea, an old town endowed with a prodigious
number of pothouses, and some famous
gardens, called the Cremome, for public
amusement. The most noticeable thing,
however, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like
that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe,
by Charles 11. (whose bronze statue, in the
guise of an old Roman, stands in the cen-
tre of the quadrangle), and appropriated
as a home for aged and infirm soldiers of
the British army. The edifices are of three
stories, with windows in the high roofs,
and are built of dark, sombre brick, with
stone edgings and facings. The effect
is by no means that of grandeur (which
is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of
Greenwich Hospital), but a quiet and ven-
erable neatness. At each extremity of the
street-front there is a spacious and hospi-
tably open gateway, lounging about which
I saw some gray veterans in long scarlet
coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked
hats of a century ago, or occasionally, a

434 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 435

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

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

436 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 437

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

438 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 439

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

440 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 441

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

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

442 OUR OLD HOME

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

UP THE THAMES 443

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

444 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 445

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

446 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 447

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

448 OUR OLD HOME

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

UP THE THAMES 449

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

450 OUR OLD HOME

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

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

UP THE THAMES 45 1

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

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

452 OUR OLD HOME

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

UP THE THAMES 453

among them. There was a genial awe,
mingled with a sense of kind and friendly
presences about me ; and I was glad, more-
over, at finding so many of them there
together, in fit companionship, mutually
recognized and duly honored, all reconciled
now, whatever distant generations, what-
ever personal hostility or other miserable
impediment, had divided them far asunder
while they lived. I have never felt a
similar interest in any other tombstones,
nor have I ever been deeply moved by the
imaginary presence of other famous dead
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 aspir-
ing for } Or, let me speak it more boldly,
what other long-enduring fame can exist }
We neither remember nor care anything
for the past, except as the poet has made
it intelligibly noble and sublime to our
comprehension. The shades of the mighty
have no substance; they flit ineffectually
about the darkened stage where they per-
formed their momentary parts, save when
the poet has thrown his own creative soul

454 OUR OLD HOME

into them, and imparted a more vivid life
than ever they were able to manifest to
mankind while they dwelt in the body.
And therefore — though he cunningly dis-
guises himself in their armor, their robes
of state, or kingly purple — it is not the
statesman, the warrior, or the monarch
that survives, but the despised poet, whom
they may have fed with their crumbs, and
to whom they owe all that they now are or
have, — a name ! ^

^ September 30, 1 8 $ 5. Poets* C orner has never seemed
like a strange place to me ; it has been familiar from the
very first ; at all events, I cannot now recollect the pre-
vious conception, of which the reality has taken the place.
I seem always to have known that somewhat dim
comer, with the bare brown stone-work of the old edi-
fice aloft, and a window shedding down its light on the
marble busts and tablets, yellow with time, that cover
the three walls of the nook up to a height of about
twenty feet. Prior's is the largest and richest monu-
ment. It is observable that the bust and monument of
Congreve are in a distant part of the Abbey. His
duchess probably thought it a degradation to bring a
gentleman among the beggarly poets. — II. 153.

November 12, 1857. We found our way to Poets' Cor-
ner, however, and entered those holy precincts, which
looked very dusky and grim in the smoky light. ... I
was strongly impressed with the perception that very
commonplace people compose the great bulk of society
in the home of the illustrious dead. It is wonderful
how few names there are that one cares anything about
a hundred years after their departure ; but perhaps each

UP THE THAMES 455

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to
have been betrayed into a flight above
or beyond the customary level that best
agrees with me ; but it represents fairly
enough the emotions with which I passed
from Poets* Corner into the chapels, which
contain the sepulchres of kings and great
people. They are magnificent even now,
and must have been inconceivably so when
the marble slabs and pillars wore their new
polish, and the statues retained the brilliant
colors with which they were originally
painted, and the shrines their rich gilding,
of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer
or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks
tarnished with antique dust. Yet this rec-
ondite portion of the Abbey presents few
memorials of personages whom we care
to remember. The shrine of Edward the
Confessor has a certain interest, because
it was so long held in religious reverence,
and because the very dust that settled
upon it was formerly worth gold. The
helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn

generation acts in good faith in canonizing its own
men. . . . But the fame of the buried person does not
make the marble live, — the marble keeps merely a cold
and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten.
No man who needs a monument ever ought to have
one. — II. 565.

456 OUR OLD HOME

at Agincourt, and now suspended above
his tomb, are memorable objects, but more
for Shakespeare's sake than the victor's
own. Rank has been the general pass-
port to admission here. Noble and regal
dust is as cheap as dirt under the pave-
ment. I am glad to recollect, indeed (and
it is too characteristic of the right Eng-
lish spirit not to be mentioned), one or
two gigantic statues of great mechanicians,
who contributed largely to the material
welfare of England, sitting familiarly in
their marble chairs among forgotten kings
and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of
the earlier monuments, and the antique
beauty of some of them, are what chiefly
gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison
is buried among the men of rank ; not on
the plea of his literary fame, however, but
because he was connected with nobility by
marriage, and had been a Secretary of
State. His gravestone is inscribed with a
resounding verse from Tickell's lines to
his memory, the only lines by which Tick-
ell himself is now remembered, and which
(as I discovered a little while ago) he
mainly filched from an obscure versifier of
somewhat earlier date.

Returning to Poets' Comer, I looked

UP THE THAMES 457

again at the walls, and wondered how the
requisite hospitality can be shown to poets
of our own and the succeeding ages. There
is hardly a foot of space left, although
room has lately been found for a bust of
Southey and a full-length statue of Camp-
bell. At best, only a little portion of the
Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men,
musical composers, and others of the gen-
tle artist breed, and even into that small
nook of sanctity men of other pursuits have
thought it decent to intrude themselves.
Methinks the tuneful throng, being at
home here, should recollect how they were
treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold
shoulder, looking askance at nobles and
official personages, however worthy of
honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it
shows aptly and truly enough what portion
of the world's regard and honor has hereto-
fore been awarded to literary eminence in
comparison with other modes of greatness,
— this dimly lighted corner (nor even that
quietly to themselves) in the vast minster
the walls of which are sheathed and hidden
under marble that has been wasted upon
the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it
may not be worth while to quarrel with the
world on this account ; for, to confess the

458 OUR OLD HOME

very truth, their own little nook contains
more than one poet whose memory is kept
alive by his monument, instead of imbuing
the senseless stone with a spiritual immor-
tality, — men of whom you do not ask,
" Where is he ? " but, " Why is he here ? "
I estimate that all the literary people who
really make an essential part of one's inner
life, including the period since English
literature first existed, might have ample
elbow-room to sit down and quaff their
draughts of Castaly round Chaucer's broad,
horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets
consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected
glory over the humblest of their com-
panions. And as for the latter, it is to be
hoped that they may have long outgrown
the characteristic jealousies and morbid
sensibilities of their craft, and have found
out the little value (probably not amount-
ing to sixpence in immortal currency) of
the posthumous renown which they once
aspired to win. It would be a poor com-
pliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning
out of the sky and snuffing up the impure
breath of earthly praise.

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of
the notion that those who have bequeathed
us the inheritance erf an undying song

UP THE THAMES 459

would fain be conscious of its endless
reverberations in the hearts of mankind,
and would delight, among sublimer enjoy-
ments, to see their names emblazoned in
such a treasure -place of great memories
as Westminster Abbey. There are some
men, at all events, — true and tender poets,
moreover, and fully deserving of the honor,
— whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger
a little while about Poets' Comer, for the
sake of witnessing their own apotheosis
among their kindred. They have had a
strong natural yearning, not so much for
applause as sympathy, which the cold for-
tune of their lifetime did but scantily sup-
ply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may
make itself felt upon sensibilities at once
so delicate and retentive, even a step or
two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for
example, would be pleased, even now, if he
could learn that his bust had been reposited
in the midst of the old poets whom he ad-
mired and loved ; though there is hardly a
man among the authors of to-day and yes-
terday whom the judgment of Englishmen
would be less likely to place there. He
deserves it, however, if not for his verse
(the value of which I do not estimate,
never having been able to read ft), yet for

460 OUR OLD HOME

his delightful prose, his unmeasured po-
etry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch,
working soft miracles by a life-process like
the growth of grass and flowers. As with
all such gentle writers, his page sometimes
betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the
next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance
overgrew and buried it out of sight. I
knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be
praised, few English celebrities whom I
chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen
by their decease, and as I assume no liber-
ties with living men) I will conclude this
rambling article by sketching my first m-
terview with Leigh Hunt.

He was then at Hammersmith, occupy-
ing a very plain and shabby little house, in
a contiguous range of others like it, with
no prospect but that of an ugly village
street, and certainly nothing to gratify his
craving for a tasteful environment, inside
or out. A slatternly maid-servant opened
the door for us, and he himself stood in
the entry, a beautiful and -venerable old
man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-
coat, tall and slender, with a countenance
quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and
most naturally courteous manner. He
ushered us into his little study, or parlor,

UP THE THAMES 46 1

or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor
paper-hangings and carpet, few books, no
pictures that I remember, and an awful
lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon
these external blemishes and this nudity of
adornment, not that they would be worth
mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable
persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born
with such a faculty of enjoying all beauti-
ful things that it seemed as if Fortune did
him as much wrong in not supplying them
as in withholding a sufficiency of vital
breath from ordinary men. All kinds of
mild magnificence, tempered by his taste,
would have become him well ; but he had
not the grim dignity that assumes naked-
ness as the better robe.

I have said that he was a beautiful old
man. In truth, I never saw a finer coun-
tenance, either as to the mould of features
or the expression, nor any that showed the
play of feeling so perfectly without the
slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like
a child's face in this respect. At my first
glimpse of him, when he met us in the
entry, I discerned that he was old, his long
hair being white and his wrinkles many;
it was an aged visage, in short, such as I
had not at all expected to see, in spite of

462 OUR OLD HOME

dates, because his books talk to the reader
with the tender vivacity of youth. But
when he began to speak, and as he grew
more earnest in conversation, I ceased to
be sensible of his age ; sometimes, indeed,
its dusky shadow darkened through the
gleam which his sprightly thoughts dif-
fused about his face, but then another
flash of youth came out of his eyes and
made an illumination again. I never wit-
nessed such a wonderfully illusive trans-
formation, before or since ; and, to this
day, trusting only to my recollection, I
should find it difficult to decide which was
his genuine and stable predicament, —
youth or age. I have met no Englishman
whose manners seemed to me so agreeable,
soft, rather than polished, wholly uncon-
ventional, the natural growth of a kindly
and sensitive disposition without any refer-
ence to rule, or else obedient to some rule
so subtile that the nicest observer could
not detect the application of it.

His eyes were dark and very fine, and
his delightful voice accompanied their vis-
ible language like music. He appeared to
be exceedingly appreciative of whatever
was passing among those who surrounded
him, and especially of the vicissitudes in

UP THE THAMES 463

the consciousness of the person to whom
he happened to be addressing himself at
the moment. I felt that no effect upon
my mind of what he uttered, no emotion,
however transitory, in myself, escaped his
notice, though not from any positive vigi-
lance on his part, but because his faculty of
observation was so penetrative and delicate ;
and to say the truth, it a little confused me
to discern always a ripple on his mobile
face, responsive to any slightest breeze that
passed over the inner reservoir of my senti-
ments, and seemed thence to extend to a
similar reservoir within himself. On mat-
ters of feeling, and within a certain depth,
you might spare yourself the trouble of
utterance, because he already knew what
you wanted to say, and perhaps a little
more than you would have spoken. His
figure was full of gentle movement, though,
somehow, without disturbing its quietude ;
and as he talked, he kept folding his hands
nervously, and betokened in many ways a
fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel
pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable,
I should imagine, of a passionate experi-
ence in either direction. There was not
an English trait in him from head to foot,
morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef,

464 OUR OLD HOME

ale, or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered
not at all into his composition. In his
earlier life, he appears to have g^ven evi-
dences of courage and sturdy principle, and
of a tendency to fling himself into the
rough struggle of humanity on the liberal
side. It would be taking too much upon
myself to affirm that this was merely a
projection of his fancy world into the ac-
tual, and that he never could have hit a
downright blow, and was altogether an un-
suitable person to receive one. I beheld
him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest
robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclu-
sion merely from what I saw, it would have
occurred to me that his main deficiency
was a lack of grit. Though anything but
a timid man, the combative and defensive
elements were not prominently developed
in his character, and could have been made
available only when he put an unnatural
force upon his instincts. It was on this
account, and also because of the fineness
of his nature generally, that the English
appreciated him no better, and left this
sweet and delicate poet poor, and with
scanty laurels, in his declining age.

It was not, I think, from his American
blood that Leigh Hunt derived either his

UP THE THAMES 465

amiability or his peaceful inclinations ; at
least, I do not see how we can reasonably
claim the former quality as a national char-
acteristic, though the latter might have
been fairly inherited from his ancestors on
the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania
Quakers. But the kind of excellence that
distinguished him — his fineness, subtilty,
and grace — was that which the richest
cultivation has heretofore tended to de-
velop in the happier examples of American
genius, and which (though I say it a little
reluctantly) is perhaps what our future in-
tellectual advancement may make general
among us. His person, at all events, was
thoroughly American, and of the best type,
as were likewise his manners ; for we are
the best as well as the worst * mannered
people in the world.

Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised.
That is to say, he desired sympathy as a
flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited
by it as much in the richer depth of color-
ing that it imparted to his ideas. In re-
sponse to all that we ventured to express
about his writings (and, for my part, I went
quite to the extent of my conscience, which
was a long way, and there left the matter
to a lady and a young girl, who happily

466 OUR OLD HOME

were with me), his face shone, and he man-
ifested great delight, with a perfect, and
yet delicate, frankness, for which I loved
him. He could not tell us, he said, the
happiness that such appreciation gave him ;
it always took him by surprise, he re-
marked, for — perhaps because he cleaned
his own boots, and performed other little
ordinary offices for himself — he never had
been conscious of anything wonderful in
his own person. And then he smiled,
making himself and all the poor little parlor
about him beautiful thereby. It is usually
the hardest thing in the world to praise a
man to his face ; but Leigh Hunt received
the incense with such gracious satisfaction
(feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar
praise), that the only difficulty was to keep
the enthusiasm of the moment within the
limit of permanent opinion. A storm had
suddenly come up while we were talking ;
the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and
the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have
great pleasure in believing, that it was a
sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless,
it was not to my voice that he most favor-
ably inclined his ear, but to those of my
companipns. Women are the fit ministers
at such a shrine.

UP THE THAMES 467

He must have suffered keenly in his
lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping his
emotions so much upon the surface as he
seemed to do, and convenient for everybody
to play upon. Being of a cheerful temper-
ament, happiness had probably the upper-
hand. His was a light, mildly joyous
nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attain-
ing to that deepest grace which results
from power ; for beauty, like woman, its
human representative, dallies with the
gentle, but yields its consummate favor
only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh
Hunt may have been more beautiful when
I met him, both in person and character,
than in his earlier days. As a young man,
I could conceive of his being finical in
certain moods, but not now, when the
gravity of age shed a venerable grace about
him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he
was favored with most confident and cheer-
ing anticipations in respect to a future life ;
and there were abundant proofs, through-
out our interview, of an unrepining spirit,
resignation, quiet relinquishment of the
worldly benefits that were denied- him,
thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to
enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward
into the dusk, — all of which gave a rever-

468 OUR OLD HOME

ential cast to the feeling with which we
parted from him. I wish that he could
have had one full draught of prosperity
before he died. As a matter of artistic
propriety, it would have been delightful to
see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his
own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of
elaborate upholstery and minute elegances
about him, and a succession of tender and
lovely women to praise his sweet poetry
from morning to night. I hardly know
whether it is my fault, or the effect of a
weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that
I should be sensible of a regret of this
nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely
believe that he has found an infinity of
better things in the world whither he has
gone.

At our leave-taking he grasped me
warmly by both hands, and seemed as much
interested in our whole party as if he had
known us for years. All this was genuine
feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of
his heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds
of rich and rare varieties, not acorns, but
a true heart, nevertheless. Several years
afterwards I met him for the last time at a
London dinner-party, looking sadly broken
down by infirmities ; and my final recoUec-

UP THE THAMES 469

tion of the beautiful old man presents him
arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not,
partly embraced and supported by, another
beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-
name, since he has a week-day one for his
personal occasions, I will venture to speak.
It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind intro-
duction had first made me known to Leigh
Hunt.i

1 Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter, called on me a week
or more ago, but I happened not to be in the office.
Saturday last he called again, and as I had crossed to
Rock Park he followed me thither. A plain, middle-
sized, English-looking gentleman, elderly, with short
white hair, and particularly quiet in his manners. He
talks in a somewhat low tone without emphasis, scarcely
distinct. . . . His head has a good outline, and would
look well in marble. I liked him very well. He talked
unaffectedly, showing an author's regard to his reputa-
tion, and was evidently pleased to hear of his American
celebrity. He said that in his younger days he was a sci-
entific pugilist, and once took a journey to have a spar-
ring encounter with the Game-Chicken. Certainly no
one would have looked for a pugilist in this subdued
old gentleman. He is now Commissioner of Lunacy,
and makes periodical circuits through the country, at-
tending to the business of his office. He is slightly deaf,
and this may be the cause of his unaccented utterance,
— owing to his not being able to regulate his voice ex-
actly by his own ear. . . . He is a good man, and much
better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by his
poetical one, Barry Cornwall. ... He took my hand in
both of his at parting. . . . — 1. 498.

OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH
POVERTY

Becoming an inhabitant of a great Eng-
lish town, I often turned aside from the
prosperous thoroughfares (where the edi^
fices, the shops, and the bustling crowd
differed not so much from scenes with
which I was familiar in my own country),
and went designedly astray among pre-
cincts that reminded me of some of Dick-
ens's grimiest pages. There I caught
glimpses of a people and a mode of life
that were comparatively new to my obser-
vation, a sort of sombre phantasmagoric
spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to be-
hold, yet involving a singular interest and
even fascination in its ugliness.

Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough
all over the world, being the symbolic ac-
companiment of the foul incrustation which
began to settle over and bedim all earthly
things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ;
ever since which hapless epoch, her daugh-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 47 1

ters have chiefly been engaged in a des-
perate and unavailing struggle to get rid of
it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken Eng-
lish street is a monstrosity unknown on
our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme
within its own limits, and is inconceivable
everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the
great *advantage, that the brightness and
dryness of our atmosphere keep every-
thing clean that the sun shines upon, con-
verting the larger portion of our impurities
into transitory dust which the next wind
can sweep away, in contrast with the damp,
adhesive grime that incorporates itself with
all surfaces (unless continually and pain-
fully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the
English air. Then the all-pervading smoke
of the city, abundantly intermingled with
the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal,
hovering overhead, descending, and alight-
ing on pavements and rich architectural
fronts, on the snowy muslin of the ladies,
and the gentlemen's starched collars and
shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets
in a half-mourning garb. It is beyond the
resources of Wealth to keep the smut away
from its premises or its own fingers* ends ;
and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself to
the dark influence without a struggle.

472 OUR OLD HOME

Along with disastrous circumstances, pinch-
ing need, adversity so lengthened out as
to constitute the rule of life, there comes
a certain chill depression of the spirits
which seems especially to shudder at cold
water. In view of so wretched a state of
things, we accept the ancient Deluge not
merely as an insulated phenomenon, but
as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge
that nothing less than such a general wash-
ing-day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly
old world of its moral and material dirt.

Gin-shops, or what the English call
spirit-vaults, are numerous in the vicinity
of these poor streets, and are set off with
the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tar-
nished by contact with the unclean cus-
tomers who haunt there. Ragged chil-
dren come thither with old shaving-mugs,
or broken-nosed teapots, or any such make-
shift receptacle, to get a little poison or
madness for their parents, who deserve no
better requital at their hands for having
engendered them. Inconceivably sluttish
women enter at noonday and stand at the
counter among boon -companions of both
sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a
bumper together, and quaffing off the mix-
ture with a relish. As for the men, they

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 473

lounge there continually, drinking till they
are drunken, — drinking as long as they
have a halfpenny left, — and then, as it
seemed to me, waiting for a sixpenny mir-
acle to be wrought m their pockets so as
to enable them to be drunken again. Most
of these establishments have a significant
advertisement of " Beds," doubtless for
the accommodation of their customers in
the interval between one intoxication and
the next. I never could find it in my
heart, however, utterly to condemn these
sad revelers, and should certainly wait till
I had some better consolation to offer
before depriving them of their dram of
gin, though death itself were in the glass ;
for methought their poor souls needed
such fiery stimulant to lift them a little
way out of the smothering squalor of both
their outward and interior life, giving them
glimpses and suggestions, even if bewil-
dering ones, of a spiritual existence that
limited their present misery. The temper-
ance-reformers unquestionably derive their
commission from the Divine Beneficence,
but have never been taken fully into its
counsels. All may not be lost, though
those good men fail.

Pawnbrokers* establishments — distin-

474 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

guished by the mystic symbol of the three
golden balls, — were conveniently accessi-
ble ; though what personal property these
wretched people could possess, capable of
being estimated in silver or copper, so as
to aflford a basis for a loan, was a problem
that still perplexes me. Old clothesmen,
likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out an-
cient garments to dangle in the wind.
There were butchers* shops, too, of a class
adapted to the neighborhood, presenting
no such generously fattened carcasses as
Englishmen love to gaze at in the market,
no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no
dead hogs, or muttons ornamented with
carved bas-reliefs of fat on their ribs and
shoulders, in a peculiarly British style of
art, — not these, but bits and gobbets of
lean meat, selvages snipt off from steaks,
tough and stringy morsels, bare bones
smitten away from joints by the cleaver ;
tripe, liver, bullocks' feet, or whatever else
was cheapest and divisible into the small-
est lots. I am afraid that even such deli-
cacies came to many of their tables hardly
oftener than Christmas. In the windows
of other little shops you saw half a dozen
wizened herrings ; some eggs in a .basket,
looking so dingily antique that your imagi-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 475

nation smelt them; fly-speckled biscuits,
segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and
papers of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy
milk-woman passed by with a wooden yoke
over her shoulders, supporting a pail on
either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the
composition of which was water and chalk
and the milk of a sickly cow, who gave
the best she had, poor thing! but could
scarcely make it rich or wholesome, spend-
ing her life in some close city-nook and
pasturing on strange food. I have seen,
once or twice, a donkey coming into one
of these streets with panniers full of vege-
tables, and departing with a return cargo of
what looked like rubbish and street-sweep-
ings. No other commerce seemed to exist,
except, possibly, a girl might offer you a
pair of stockings or a worked collar, or a
man whisper something mysterious about
wonderfully cheap cigars. And yet I re-
member seeing female hucksters in those
regions, with their wares on the edge of
the sidewalk and their own seats right in
the carriage-way, pretending to sell half-
decayed oranges and apples, toffy, Orms-
kirk cakes, combs, and cheap jewelry, the
coarsest kind of crockery, and little plates
of oysters, — knitting patiently all day long.

476 OUR OLD HOME

and removing their undiminished stock in
trade at nightfall. All indispensable im-
portations from other quarters of the town
were on a remarkably diminutive scale : for
example, the wealthier inhabitants pur-
chased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load,
and the poorer ones by the peck-measure.
It was a curious and melancholy spectacle,
when an overladen coal-cart happened to
pass through the street and drop a handful
or two of its burden in the mud, to see half
a dozen women and children scrambling
for the treasure-trove, like a flock of hens
and chickens gobbling up some spilt com.
In this connection I may as well mention
a commodity of boiled snails (for such they
appeared to me, though probably a marine
production) which used to be peddled from
door to door, piping hot, as an article of
cheap nutriment.

The population of these dismal abodes
appeared to consider the sidewalks and
middle of the street as their common hall.
In a drama of low life, the unity of place
might be arranged rigidly according to the
classic rule, and the street be the one
locality in which every scene and incident
should occur. Courtship, quarrels, plot
and counterplot, conspiracies for robbery

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 477

and murder, family difficulties or agp-ee-
ments, — all such matters, I doubt not, are
constantly discussed or transacted in this
sky-roofed saloon, so regally hung with its
sombre canopy of coal-smoke. Whatever
the disadvantages of the English climate,
the only comfortable or wholesome part of
life, for the city poor, must be spent in the
open air. The stifled and squalid rooms
where they lie down at night, whole fam-
ilies and neighborhoods together, or sulkily
elbow one another in the daytime, when a
settled rain drives them within doors, are
worse horrors than it is worth while (with-
out a practical object in view) to admit into
one's imagination. No wonder that they
creep forth from the foul mystery of their
interiors, stumble down from their garrets,
or scramble up out of their cellars, on the
upper step of which you may see the grimy
housewife, before the shower is ended,
letting the raindrops gutter down her vis-
age; while her children (an impish progeny
of cavernous recesses below the common
sphere of humanity) swarm into the day-
light and attain all that they know of per-
sonal purification in the nearest mud-
puddle. It might almost make a man
doubt the existence of his own soul, to

478 OUR OLD HOME

observe how Nature has flung these little
wretches into the street and left them
there, so evidently regarding them as
nothing worth, and how all mankind acqui-
esce in the great mother's estimate of her
offspring. For, if they are to have no
immortality, what superior claim can I
assert for mine ? And how difficult to be-
lieve that anything so precious as a germ
of immortal growth can have been buried
under this dirt -heap, plunged into this
cesspool of misery and vice ! As often as
I beheld the scene, it affected me with
surprise and loathsome interest, much re-
sembling, though in a far intenser degree,
the feeling with which, when a boy, I used
to turn over a plank or an old log that had
long lain on the damp ground, and found a
vivacious multitude of unclean and devilish-
looking insects scampering to and fro be-
neath it. Without an infinite faith, there
seemed as much prospect of a blessed
futurity for those hideous bugs and many-
footed worms as for these brethren of our
humanity and co-heirs of all our heavenly
inheritance. Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly,
slowly, as after groping at the bottom of a
deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope
struggles upward to the surface, bearing

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 479

the half- drowned body of a child along
with it, and heaving it aloft for its life, and
my own life, and all our lives. Unless
these slime - clogged nostrils can be made
capable of inhaling celestial air, I know
not how the purest and most intellectual
of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a
breath of it. The whole question of eter-
nity is staked there. If a single one of
those helpless little ones be lost, the world
is lost !

The women and children greatly prepon-
derate in such places; the men probably
wandering abroad in quest of that daily
miracle, a dinner and a drink, or perhaps
slumbering in the daylight that they may
the better follow out their cat-like ram-
bles through the dark. Here are women
with young figures, but old, wrinkled, yel-
low faces, tanned and blear-eyed with the
smoke which they cannot spare from their
scanty fires, — it being too precious for its
warmth to be swallowed by the chimney.
Some of them sit on the doorsteps, nursing
their unwashed babies at bosoms which we
will glance aside from, for the sake of our
mothers and all womanhood, because the
fairest spectacle is here the foulest. Yet
motherhood, in these dark abodes, is

480 OUR OLD HOME

Strangely identical with what we have
all known it to be in the happiest homes.
Nothing, as I remember, smote me with
more grief and pity (all the more poignant
because perplexingly entangled with an
inclination to smile) than to hear a gaunt
and ragged mother priding herself on the
pretty ways of her ragged and skinny in-
fant, just as a young matron might, when
she invites her lady friends to admire her
plump, white-robed darling in the nursery.
Indeed, no womanly characteristic seemed
to have altogether perished out of these
poor souls. It was the very same creature
whose tender torments make the rapture
of our young days, whom we love, cherish,
and protect, and rely upon in life and
death, and whom we delight to see beautify
her beauty with rich robes and set it off
with jewels, though now fantastically mas-
querading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit
for her to handle. I recognized her, over
and over again, in the groups round a door-
step or in the descent of a cellar, chatting
with prodigious earnestness about intangi-
ble trifles, laughing for a little jest, sym-
pathizing at almost the same instant with
one neighbor's sunshine and another's
shadow ; wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 48 1

easily perturbed, and breaking into small
feminine ebullitions of spite, wrath, and
jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, such as
vary the social atmosphere of her silken-
skirted sisters, though smothered into pro-
priety by dint of a well-bred habit. Not
that there was an absolute deficiency of
good-breeding, even here. It often sur-
prised me to witness a courtesy and def-
erence among these ragged folks, which,
having seen it, I did not thoroughly believe
in, wondering whence it should have come.
I am persuaded, however, that there were
laws of intercourse which they never vio-
lated, — a code of the cellar, the garret, the
common staircase, the doorstep, and the
pavement, which, perhaps, had as deep a
foundation in natural fitness as the code of
the drawing-room.

Yet again I doubt whether I may not
have been uttering folly in the last two
sentences, when I reflect how rude and
rough these specimens of feminine char-
acter generally were. They had a readi-
ness with their hands that reminded me of
Molly Seagrim and other heroines in Field-
ing's novels. For example, I have seen
a woman meet a man in the street, and,
for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly

482 OUR OLD HOME

clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears, —
an infliction which he bore with exemplary
patience, only snatching the very earliest
opportunity to take to his heels. Where a
sharp tongue will not serve the purpose,
they trust to the sharpness of their finger-
nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of
vituperative words in a resounding slap, or
the downright blow of a doubled fist. All
English people, I imagine, are influenced
in a far greater degree than ourselves by
this simple and honest tendency, in cases
of disagreement, to batter one another's
persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of
English ladies (for instance, at the door of
the Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be
satisfied that their belligerent propensities
are kept in abeyance only by a merciless
rigor on the part of society. It requires a
vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their
large physical endowments. Such being
the case with the delicate ornaments of
the drawing-room, it is less to be wondered
at that women who live mostly in the open
air, amid the coarsest kind of companion-
ship and occupation, should carry on the
intercourse of life with a freedom unknown
to any class of American females, though
still, I am resolved to think, compatible

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 483

with a generous breadth of natural propri-
ety. It shocked me, at first, to see them
(of all ages, even elderly, as well as infants
that could just toddle across the street
alone) going about in the mud and mire, or
through the dusky snow and slosh of a
severe week in winter, with petticoats high
uplifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but
I was comforted by observing that both
shoes and stockings generally reappeared
with better weather, having been thriftily
kept out of the damp for the convenience
of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood
was wonderful, and their strength greater
than could have been expected from such
spare diet as they probably lived upon. I
have seen them carrying on their heads
great burdens under which they walked as
freely as if they were fashionable bonnets ;
or sometimes the burden was huge enough
almost to cover the whole person, looked
at from behind, — as in Tuscan villages you
may see the girls coming in from the coun-
try with great bundles of green twigs upon
their backs, so that they resemble locomo-
tive masses of verdure and fragrance. But
these poor English women seemed to be
laden with rubbish, incongruous and inde-
scribable, such as bones and rags, the

484 OUR OLD HOME

sweepings of the house and of the street,
a merchandise gathered up from what pov-
erty itself had thrown away, a heap of
filthy stuflf analogous to Christian's bundle
of sin.

Sometimes, though very seldom, I de-
tected a certain gracefulness among the
younger women that was altogether new
to my observation. It was a charm proper
to the lowest class. One girl I particularly
remember, m 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 bom in and had never been
tempted to throw off, because she had
really nothing else to. put on. Eve herself
could not have been more natural Noth-
ing was afEected, nothing imitated; no
proper grace was vulgarized by an effort
to assume the manners or adornments of
another sphere. This kind of beauty, ar-
rayed in a fitness of its own, is probably
vanishing out of the world, and will cer-
tainly never be found in America, where all
the girls, whether daughters of the upper-
tendom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the
kennel, aim at one standard of dress and

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 485

deportment, seldom accomplishing a per-
fectly triumphant hit or an utterly absurd
failure. Those words, " genteel '* and " lady-
like, " are terrible ones, and do us infinite
mischief, but it is because (at least, I hope
so) we are in a transition state, and shall
emerge into a higher mode of simplicity
than has ever been known to past ages.

In such disastrous circumstances as I
have been attempting to describe, it was
beautiful to observe what a mysterious ef-
ficacy still asserted itself in character. A
woman, evidently poor as the poorest of
her neighbors, would be knitting or sewing
on the doorstep, just as fifty other women
were ; but round about her skirts (though
wofully patched) you would be sensible of
a certain sphere of decency, which, it
seemed to me, could not have been kept
more impregnable in the cosiest little sit-
ting-room, where the teakettle on the hob
was humming its good old song of domestic
peace. Maidenhood had a similar power.
The evil habit that grows upon us in this
harsh world makes me faithless to my own
better perceptions ; and yet I have seen
girls in these wretched streets, on whose
virgin purity, judging merely from their
impression on my instincts as they passed

486 OUR OLD HOME

by, I should have deemed it safe, at the
moment, to stake my life. The next mo-
ment, however, as the surrounding flood of
moral uncleanness surged over their foot-
steps, I would not have staked a spike of
thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the
miracle was within the scope of Providence,
which is equally wise and equally benefi-
cent (even to those poor girls, though I
acknowledge the fact without the remotest
comprehension of the mode of it), whether
they were pure or what we fellow-sinners
call vile. Unless your faith be deep-rooted
and of most vigorous growth, it is the
safer way not to turn aside into this region
so suggestive of miserable doubt. It was
a place "with dreadful faces thronged,"
wrinkled and grim with vice and wretched-
ness ; and, thinking over the line of Mil-
ton here quoted, I come to the conclusion
that those ugly lineaments which startled
Adam and Eve, as they looked backward to
the closed gate of Paradise, were no fiends
from the pit, but the more terrible fore-
shadowings of what so many of their de-
scendants were to be. God help them, and
us likewise, their brethren and sisters !
Let me add, that, forlorn, ragged, careworn,
hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as they

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 487

were, the most pitiful thing of all was to
see the sort of patience with which they
accepted their lot, as if they had been born
into the world for that and nothing else.
Even the little children had this character-
istic in as perfect development as their
grandmothers.

The children, in truth, were the ill-
omened blossoms from which another har-
vest of precisely such dark fruitage as I
saw ripened around me was to be produced.
Of course you would imagine these to be
lumps of crude iniquity, tiny vessels as full
as they could hold of naughtiness ; nor can
I say a great deal to the contrary. Small
proof of parental discipline could I discern,
save when a mother (drunken, I sincerely
hope) snatched her own imp out of a group
of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions
that were playing and squabbling together
in the mud, turned up its tatters, brought
down her heavy hand on its poor little
tenderest part, and let it go again with a
shake. If the child knew what the punish-
ment was for, it was wiser than I pretend
to be; It yelled and went back to its play-
mates in the mud. Yet let me bear tes-
timony to what was beautiful, and more
touching than anything that I ever wit-

488 OUR OLD HOME

nessed before in the intercourse of happier
children. I allude to the superintendence
which some of these small people (too small,
one would think, to be sent into the street
alone, had there been any other nursery
for them) exercised over still smaller ones.
Whence they derived such a sense of duty,
unless immediately from God, I cannot
tell; but it was wonderful to observe the
expression of responsibility in their deport-
ment, the anxious fidelity with which they
discharged their unfit office, the tender pa-
tience with which they linked their less
pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps
of an infant, and let it guide them whith-
ersoever it liked. In the hollow-cheeked,
large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving
a cheerless oversight to her baby-brother,
I did not so much marvel at it. She had
merely come a little earlier than usual to
the perception of what was to be her busi-
ness in life. But I admired the sickly-
looking little boy, who did violence to his
boyish nature by making himself the ser-
vant of his little sister, — she too small to
walk, and he too small to take her in his
arms, — and therefore working a kind of
miracle to transport her from one dirt-heap
to another. Beholding such works of love

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 489

and duty, I took heart again, and deemed
it not so impossible, after all, for these
neglected children to find a path through
the squalor and evil of their circumstances
up to the gate of heaven. Perhaps there
was this latent good in all of them, though
generally they looked brutish, and dull even
in their sports; there was little mirth
among them, nor even a fully awakened
spirit of blackguardism. Yet sometimes,
again, I saw, with surprise and a sense as
if I had been asleep and dreaming, the
bright, intelligent, merry face of a child
whose dark eyes gleamed with vivacious
expression through the dirt that incrusted
its skin, like sunshine struggling through
a very dusty window-pane.

In these streets the belted and blue-
coated policeman appears seldom in com-
parison with the frequency of his occur-
rence in more reputable thoroughfares. I
used to think that the inhabitants would
have ample time to murder one another, or
any stranger, like myself, who might vio-
late the filthy sanctities of the place, be-
fore the law could bring up its lumbering
assistance. Nevertheless, there is a super-
vision ; nor does the watchfulness of author-
ity permit the populace to be tempted to

490 OUR OLD HOME

any outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth,
I noticed a ballad-singer going through the
street hoarsely chanting some discordant
strain in a provincial dialect, of which I
could only make out that it addressed the
sensibilities of the auditors on the score
of starvation ; but by his side stalked the
policeman, offering no interference, but
watchful to hear what this rough minstrel
said or sang, and silence him, if his effusion
threatened to prove too soul-stirring. In
my judgment, however, there is little or no
danger of that kind : they starve patiently,
sicken patiently, die patiently, not through
resignation, but a diseased flaccid ity of
hope. If ever they should do mischief to
those above them, it will probably be by
the communication of some destructive
pestilence ; for, so the medical men affirm,
they suffer all the ordinary diseases with
a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown,
and keep among themselves traditionary
plagues that have long ceased to afflict
more fortunate societies. Charity herself
gathers her robe about her to avoid their
contact. It would be. a dire revenge, in-
deed, if they were to prove their claims to
be reckoned of one blood and nature with
the noblest and wealthiest, by compelling

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 49 1

them to inhale death through the diffusion
of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere.
A true Englishman is a. kind man at
heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to
poverty and beggary. Beggars have here-
tofore been so strange to an American that
he is apt to become their prey, being recog-
nized through his national peculiarities,
and beset by them in the streets. The
English smile at him, and say that there
are ample public arrangements for every
pauper's possible need, that street charity
promotes idleness and vice, and that yon-
der personification of misery on the pave-
ment will lay up a good day's profit, be-
sides supping more luxuriously thaii the
dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by
the stranger adopts their theory and be-
gins to practice upon it, much to his own
temporary freedom from annoyance, but
not entirely without moral detriment or
sometimes a too late contrition. Years
afterwards, it may be, his memory is still
haunted by some vindictive wretch whose
cheeks were pale and hunger -pinched,
whose rags fluttered in the east -wind,
whose right arm was paralyzed and his left
leg shriveled into a mere nerveless stick,
but whom he passed by remorselessly be-

492 OUR OLD HOME

cause an Englishman chose to say that the
fellow's misery looked too perfect, was too
artistically got up, to be genuine. Even
allowing this to be true (as, a hundred
chances to one, it was), it would still have
been a clear case of economy to buy him
off with a little loose silver, so that his
lamentable figure should not limp at the
heels of your conscience all over the world. ^
To own the truth, I provided myself with
several such imaginary persecutors in Eng-
land, and recruited their number with at
least one sickly-looking wretch whose ac-
quaintance I first made at Assisi, in Italy,
and, taking a dislike to something sinister
in his aspect, permitted him to beg early
and late, and all day long, without getting
a single baiocco. At my latest glimpse of
him, the villain avenged himself, not by a
volley of horrible curses as any other Ital-
ian beggar would, but by taking an expres-
sion so grief- stricken, want -wrung, hope-
less, and withal resigned, that I could paint
his lifelike portrait at this moment. Were
I to go over the same ground again, I would

^ The natural man cries out against the philosophy
that rejects beggars. It is a thousand to one that they
are impostors, but yet we do ourselves a wrong by hard-
ening our hearts against them. — II. 152.

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 493

listen to no man's theories, but buy the lit-
tle luxury of beneficence at a cheap rate,
instead of doing myself a moral mischief
by exuding a stony incrustation over what-
ever natural sensibility I might possess.

On the other hand, there were some
mendicants whose utmost efforts I even
now felicitate myself on having withstood.
Such was a phenomenon abridged of his
lower half, who beset me for two or three
years together, and, in spite of his defi-
ciency of locomotive members, had some
supernatural method of transporting him-
self (simultaneously, I believe) to all quar-
ters of the city. He wore a sailor's jacket
(possibly, because skirts would have been
a superfluity to his figure), and had a re-
markably broad-shouldered and muscular
frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored
face, which was full of power and intelli-
gence. His dress and linen were the per-
fection of neatness. Once a day, at least,
wherever I went, I suddenly became aware
of this trunk of a man on the path before
me, resting on his base, and looking as if
he had just sprouted out of the pavement,
and would sink into it again and reappear
at some other spot the instant you left him
behind. The expression of his eye was

494 ^^^ OLD HOME

perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed,
holding your own as by fascination, never
once winking, never wavering from its
point-blank gaze right into your face, till
you were completely beyond the range of
his battery of one immense rifled cannon.
This was his mode of soliciting alms ; and
he reminded me of the old beggar who ap-
pealed so touchingly to the charitable sym-
pathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him
from the roadside with a long - barreled
musket. The intentness and directness of
his silent appeal, his close and unrelenting
attack upon your individuality, resj^ectful
as it seemed, was the very flower c(jf inso-
lence; or, if you give it a possibl^jjr truer
interpretation, it was the tyrannical! effort
of a man endowed with great natural force
of character to constrain your re^Buctant
will to his purpose. Apparently, like had
staked his salvation upon the ultimatte suc-
cess of a daily struggle between h amself
and me, the triumph of which would i com-
pel me to become a tributary to tt ^le hat
that lay on the pavement beside him.|^ Man
or fiend, however, there was a stubbol ^nness
in his intended victim which this mf^^assive
fragment of a mighty personality hsj^yjid not
altogether reckoned upon, and by its! ; aid I

GLIMPSED OF ENGLISH POVERTY 495

was enabled to pass him at my customary
pace hundreds of times over, quietly meet-
ing his terribly respectful eye, and allowing
him the fair chance which I felt to be his
due, to subjugate me, if he really had the
strength for it. He never succeeded, but,
on the other hand, never gave up the con-
test ; and should I ever walk those streets
again, I am certain that the truncated ty-
rant will sprout up through the pavement
and look me fixedly in the eye, and perhaps
get the victory. 1

I should think all the more highly of
myself, if I had shown equal heroism in

^ Among the beggars of Liverpool, the hardest to en-
counter is a man without any legs, and if I mistake not,
likewise deficient in arms. You see him before you all
at once, as if he had sprouted half-way out of the earth,
and would sink down and reappear in some other place
the moment he has done with you. His countenance is
large, fresh, and very intelligent ; but his great power
lies in his fixed gaze, which is inconceivably difficult to
bear. He never once removes his eye from you till you
are quite past his range ; and you feel it all the same,
although you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly
respectful ; but the intentness and directness of his silent
appeal is far worse than any impudence. In fact, it is
the very flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile
about than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by
him, and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great
force in the man to produce such an effect. There is
nothing of the customary squalidness of beggary about
him, but remarkable trimness and cleanliness. — 1.47$.

496 OUR OLD HOME^

resisting another class of beggarly depre-
dators, who assailed me on my weaker side
and won an easy spoil. Such was the
sanctimonious clergyman, with his white
cravat, who visited me with a subscription-
paper, which he himself had drawn up, in a
case of heart-rending distress; — the re-
spectable and ruined tradesman, going from
door to door, shy and silent in his own per-
son, but accompanied by a sympathizing
friend, who bore testimony to his integrity,
and stated the unavoidable misfortunes that
had crushed him down ; ^ — or the delicate

1 It appears to be customary for people of decent
station, but in distressed circumstances, to go round
among their neighbors and the public, accompanied by a
friend, who explains the case. I have been accosted in
the street in regard to one of these matters ; and to-day
there came to my office a grocer, who had become secur-
ity for a friend, and who was threatened with an execu-
tion, — with another grocer for supporter and advocate.
The beneficiary takes very little active part in the affair,
merely looking careworn, distressed, and pitiable, and
throwing in a word of corroboration, or a sigh, or an ac-
knowledgment, as the case may demand. . . . The whole
matter is very foreign to American habits. No respect-
able American would think of retrieving his affairs by
such means, but would prefer ruin ten times over ; no
friend would take up his cause ; no public would think
it worth while to prevent the small catastrophe. And
yet the custom is not without its good side, as indicating
a closer feeling of brotherhood, a more efficient sense of
neighborhood, than exists among ourselves, although.

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 497

and prettily dressed lady, who had been
bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown
upon the perilous charities of the world
by the death of an indulgent, but secretly
insolvent father, or the commercial catas-
trophe and simultaneous suicide of the best
of husbands ; — or the gifted, but unsuc-
cessful author, appealing to my fraternal
sympathies, generously rejoicing in some
small prosperities which he was kind
enough to term my own triumphs in the
field of letters, and claiming to have largely
contributed to them by his unbought no-
tices in the public journals. England is
full of such people, and a hundred other
varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher
than these, and lower, who act their parts
tolerably well, but seldom with an abso-
lutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw
Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs,
almost without an exception, — rats that
nibble at the honest bread and cheese of
the community, and grow fat by their petty
pilferings, — yet often gave them what
they asked, and privately owned myself a
simpleton. There is a decorum which re-

perhaps, we are more careless of a fellow-creature*s ruin,
because ruin with us is by no means the fatal and irre-
trievable event that it is in England. — I. 543.

498 OUR OLD HOME

strains you (unless you happen to be a
police-constable) from breaking through a
crust of plausible respectability, even when
you are certain that there is a knave be-
neath it.

After making myself as familiar as I
decently could with the poor streets, I be-
came curious to see what kind of a home
was provided for the inhabitants at the
public expense, fearing that it must needs
be a most comfortless one, or else their
choice (if choice it were) of so miserable a
life outside was truly difficult to account
for. Accordingly, I visited a great alms-
house, and was glad to observe how unex-
ceptionably all the parts of the establish-
ment were carried on, and what an orderly
life, full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, and un-
disturbed by the arbitrary exercise of au-
thority, seemed to be led there. Possibly,
indeed, it was that very orderliness, and
the cruel necessity of being neat and clean,
and even the comfort resxilting from these
and other Christian-like restraints and reg-
ulations, that constituted the principal
grievance on the part of the poor, shiftless
inmates, accustomed to a life-long luxury
of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild
life of the streets has perhaps as unforget-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 499

able a charm, to those who have once
thoroughly imbibed it, as the life of the
forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather
that there must be insuperable difficulties,
for the majority of the poor, in the way of
getting admittance to the almshouse, than
that a merely aesthetic preference for the
street would incline the pauper class to fare
scantily and precariously, and expose their
raggedness to the rain and snow, when
such a hospitable door stood wide open for
their entrance. It might be that the rough-
est and darkest side of the matter was not
shown me, there being persons of eminent
station and of both sexes in the party
which I accompanied; and, of course, a
properly trained public functionary would
have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as
well as a great shame, to exhibit anything
to people of rank that might too painfully
shock their sensibilities.

The women's ward was the portion of
the establishment which we especially ex-
amined. It could not be questioned that
they were treated with kindness as well as
care. No doubt, as has been already sug-
gested, some of them felt the irksomeness
of submission to general rules of orderly
behavior, after being accustomed to that

500 OUR OLD HOME

perfect freedom from the minor proprieties,
at least, which is one of the compensations
of absolutely hopeless poverty, or of any
circumstances that set us fairly below the
decencies of life. I asked the governor of
the house whether he met with any diffi-
culty in keeping peace and order among
his inmates ; and he informed me that his
troubles among the women were incompa-
rably greater than with the men. They
were freakish, and apt to be quarrelsome,
inclined to plague and pester one another
in ways that it was impossible to lay hold
of, and to thwart his own authority by the
like intangible methods. He said this with
the utmost good-nature, and quite won my
regard by so placidly resigning himself to
the inevitable necessity of letting the wo-
men throw dust into his eyes. They cer-
tainly looked peaceable and sisterly enough
as I saw them, though still it might be
faintly perceptible that some of them were
consciously playing their parts before the
governor and his distinguished visitors.

This governor seemed to me a man thor-
oughly fit for his position. An American,
in an office of similar responsibility, would
doubtless be a much superior person, better
educated, possessing a far wider range of

An English Almshouse

'! r

1 1

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 50I

thought, more naturally acute, with a
quicker tact of external observation and
a readier faculty of dealing with difficult
cases. The women would not succeed in
throwing half so much dust into his eyes.
Moreover, his black coat, and thin, sallow
visage, would make him look like a scholar,
and his manners would indefinitely approx-
imate to those of a gentleman. But I
cannot help questioning whether, on the
whole, these higher endowments would
produce decidedly better results. The
Englishman was thoroughly plebeian both
in aspect and behavior, a blufif, ruddy-faced,
hearty, kindly, yeoman-like personage, with
no refinement whatever, nor any super-
fluous sensibility, but gifted with a native
wholesomeness of character which must
have been a very beneficial element in the
atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke
to his pauper family in loud, good-humored,
cheerful tones, and treated them with a
healthy freedom that probably caused the
forlorn wretches to feel as if they were
free and healthy likewise. If he had under-
stood them a little better, he would not
have treated them half so wisely. We are
apt to make sickly people more morbid,
and unfortunate people more miserable, by

502 OUR OLD HOME

endeavoring to adapt our deportment to
their especial and individual needs. They
eagerly accept our well-meant efforts ; but
it is like returning their own sick breath
back upon themselves, to be breathed over
and over again, intensifying the inward
mischief at every reception. The sympa-
thy that would really do them good is of
a kind that recognizes their sound and
healthy parts, and ignores the part affected
by disease, which will thrive under the eye
of a too close observer like a poisonous
weed in the sunshine. My good friend the
governor had no tendencies in the latter
direction, and abundance of them in the
former, and was consequently as wholesome
and invigorating as the west-wind with a
little spice of the north in it, brightening
the dreary visages that encountered us as
if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand.
He expressed himself by his whole being
and personality, and by works more than
words, and had the not unusual English
merit of knowing what to do much better
than how to talk about it.

The women, I imagine, must have felt
one imperfection in their state, however
comfortable otherwise. They were forbid-
den, or at all events lacked the means, to

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 503

follow out their natural instinct of adorn-
ing themselves ; all were well dressed in
one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns,
with such caps upon their heads as English
servants wear. Generally, too, they had
one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar
type of features so nearly alike that they
seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood.
We have few of these absolutely unillumi-
nated faces among our native American
population, individuals of whom must be
singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we
do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed
to refine the turbid element, no gleam of
hereditary intelligence has lighted up the
stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought
from the Old Country. Even in this Eng-
lish almshouse, however, there was at least
one person who claimed to be intimately
connected with rank and wealth. The
governor, after suggesting that this per-
son would probably be gratified by our
visit, ushered us into a small parlor, which
was furnished a little more like a room
in a private dwelling than others that we
entered, and had a row of religious books
and fashionable novels on the mantelpiece.
An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, reading
a romance, and rose to receive us with a

504 OUR OLD HOME

certain pomp of manner and elaborate dis-
play of ceremonious courtesy, which, in
spite of myself, made me inwardly question
the genuineness of her aristocratic preten-
sions. But, at any rate, she looked like
a respectable old soul, and was evidently
gladdened to the very core of her frost-
bitten heart by the awful punctiliousness
with which we responded to her gracious
and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome.
After a little polite conversation, we re-
tired ; and the governor, with a lowered
voice and an air of deference, told us that
she had been a lady of quality, and had
ridden in her own equipage, not many years
before, and now lived in continual expecta-
tion that some of her rich relatives would
drive up in their carriages to take her
away. Meanwhile, he added, she was
treated with great respect by her fellow-
paupers. I could not help thinking, from a
few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and
manner, that there might have been a mis-
take on the governor's part, and perhaps
a venial exaggeration on the old lady's,
concerning her former position in society ;
but what struck me was the forcible in-
stance of that most prevalent of English
vanities, the pretension to aristocratic con-

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 505

nection, on one side, and the submission
and reverence with which it was accepted
by the governor and his household, on the
other. Among ourselves, I think, when
wealth and eminent position have taken
their departure, they seldom leave a pallid
ghos( behind them, — or, if it sometimes
stalks abroad, few recognize it.

We went into several other rooms, at the
doors of which, pausing on the outside, we
could hear the volubility, and sometimes
the wrangling, of the female inhabitants
within, but invariably found silence and
peace when we stepped over the threshold.
The women were grouped together in their
sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four,
sometimes a larger number, classified by
their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and
all busied, so far as I can remember, with
the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn
stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry
to say, had a brisk or cheerful air, though
it often stirred them up to a momentary
vivacity to be accosted by the governor,
and they seemed to like being noticed,
however slightly, by the visitors. The
happiest person whom I saw there (and
running hastily through my experiences, I
hardly recollect to have seen a happier one

So6 OUR OLD HOME

in my life, if you take a careless flow of
spirits as happiness) was an old woman
that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy-
looking females, who plied their knitting-
work round about her. She laughed, when
we entered, and immediately began to talk
to us, in a thin, little, spirited quaver, claim-
ing to be more than a century old ; and
the governor (in whatever way he happened
to be cognizant of the fact) confirmed her
age to be a hundred and four. Her jaun-
tiness and cackling merriment were really
wonderful. It was as if she had got
through with all her actual business in life
two or three generations ago, and now,
freed from every responsibility for herself
or others, had only to keep up a mirthful
state of mind till the short time, or long
time (and, happy as she was, she appeared
not to care whether it were long or short),
before Death, who had misplaced her name
in his list, might remember to take her
away. She had gone quite round the circle
of human existence, and come back to the
play-ground again. And so she had grown
to be a kind of miraculous old pet, the
plaything of people seventy or eighty years
younger than herself, who talked and
laughed with her as if she were a child,

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 50/

finding great delight in her wayward and
strangely playful responses, into some of
which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that
caused their ears to tingle a little. She
had done getting out of bed in this world,
and lay there to be waited upon like a
queen or a baby.

In the same room sat a pauper who had
once been an actress of considerable re-
pute, but was compelled to give up her
profession by a softening of the brain.
The disease seemed to have stolen the con-
tinuity out of her life, and disturbed all
healthy relationship between the thoughts
within her and the world without. On our
first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us,
and showed herself ready to engage in
conversation ; but suddenly, while we were
talking with the century-old crone, the poor
actress began to weep, contorting her face
with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wring-
ing her hands for some inscrutable sorrow.
It might have been a reminiscence of ac-
tual calamity in her past life, or, quite as
probably, it was but a dramatic woe, be-
neath which she had staggered and shrieked
and wrung her hands with hundreds of
repetitions in the sight of crowded thea-
tres, and been as often comforted by thun-

508 OUR OLD HOME

ders of applause. But my idea of the mys-
tery was, that she had a sense of wrong in
seeing the aged woman (whose empty vivac-
ity was like the rattling of dry peas in a
bladder) chosen as the central object of
interest to the visitors, while she herself,
who had agitated thousands of hearts with
a breath, sat starving for the admiration
that was her natural food. I appeal to the
whole society of artists of the Beautiful
and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers,
painters, sculptors, actors, — whether or no
this is a grief that may be felt even amid
the torpor of a dissolving brain !

We looked into a good many sleeping-
chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly
calculated for two occupants, and provided
with sheets and pillow-cases that resem-
bled sackcloth. It appeared to me that
the sense of beauty was insufficiently re-
garded in all the arrangements of the alms-
house ; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at
least, might do the poor folks a substantial
good. But, at all events, there was the
beauty of perfect neatness and orderliness,
which, being heretofore known to few of
them, was perhaps as much as they could
well digest in the remnant of their lives.
We were invited into the laundry, where a

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 509

great washing and drying were in process,
the whole atmosphere being hot and vapor-
ous with the steam of wet garments and
bedclothes. This atmosphere was the pau-
per-life of the past week or fortnight re-
solved into a gaseous state, and breathing
it, however fastidiously, we were forced to
inhale the strange element into our inmost
being. Had the Queen been there, I know
not how she could have escaped the neces-
sity. What an intimate brotherhood is
this in which we dwell, do what we may to
put an artificial remoteness between the
high creature and the low one! A poor
man's breath, borne on the vehicle of to-
bacco-smoke, floats into a palace - window
and reaches the nostrils of a monarch. It
is but an example, obvious to the sense, of
the innumerable and secret channels by
which, at every moment of our lives, the
flow and reflux of a common humanity per-
vade us all How su{fbrficial are the nice-
ties of such as pretend to keep aloof! Let
• the whole world be cleansed, or not a man
or woman of us all can be clean.

By and by we came to the ward where
the children were kept, on entering which,
we saw, in the first place, several unlovely
and unwholesome little people lazily play-

5IO OUR OLD HOME

ing together in a court-yard. And here a
singular incommodity befell one member
of our party. Among the children was a
wretched, pale, half -torpid little thing
(about six years old, perhaps, but I know
not whether a girl or a boy), with a humor
in its eyes and face, which the governor
said was the scurvy, and which appeared
to bedim its powers of vision, so that it
toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it
did not precisely know what. This child
— this sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant,
the offspring of unspeakable sin and sorrow,
whom it must liave required several gener-
ations of guilty progenitors to render so
pitiable an object as we beheld it — im-
mediately took an unaccountable fancy to
the gentleman just hinted at. It prowled
about him like a pet kitten, rubbing against
his legs, following everywhere at his heels,
pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exert-
ing all the speed that its poor limbs were
capable of, got directly before him and
held forth its arms, mutely insisting on
being taken up. It said not a word, being
perhaps underwitted and incapable of prat-
tle. But it smiled up in his face, — a sort
of woful gleam was that smile, through the
sickly blotches that covered its features, —

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 511

and found means to express such a perfect
confidence that it was going to be fondled
and made much of, that there was no pos-
sibility in a human heart of balking its ex-
pectation. It was as if God had promised
the poor child this favor on behalf of that
individual, and he was bound to fulfill the
contract, or else no longer call himself a
man among men. Nevertheless, it could
be no easy thing for him to do, he being a
person burdened with more than an Eng-
lishman's customary reserve, shy of actual
contact with human beings, afflicted with
a peculiar distaste for whatever was ugly,
and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit
of observation from an insulated stand-
point which is said (but, I hope, errone-
ously) to have the tendency of putting ice
into the blood.

So I watched the struggle in his mind
with a good deal of interest, and am seri-
ously of opinion that he did an heroic act,
and effected more than he dreamed of to-
wards his final salvation, when he took up
the loathsome child and caressed it as ten-
derly as if he had been its father. To be
sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but
doubtless would have acted pretty much
the same in a similar stress of circum-

512 OUR OLD HOME

Stances. The child, at any rate, appeared
to be satisfied with his behavior ; for when
he had held it a considerable time, and set
it down, it still favored him with its com-
pany, keeping fa,st hold of his forefinger
till we reached the confines of the place.
And on our return through the court-yard,
after visiting another part of the establish-
ment, here again was this same little
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with
a smile of joyful, and yet dull recognition
about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy
eyes. No doubt, the child's mission in
reference to our friend was to remind him
that he was responsible, in his degree, for
all the sufferings and misdemeanors of
the world in which he lived, and was not
entitled to look upon a particle of its dark
calamity as if it were none of his concern :
the offspring of a brother's iniquity being
his own blood-relation, and the guilt, like-
wise, a burden on him, unless he expiated
it by better deeds.^

1 February 28, 1856. " After this, we went to the ward
[West Derby Workhouse] where the children were kept,
and, on entering this, we saw, in the first place, two or
three unlovely and unwholesome little imps, who were
lazily playing together. One of them (a child about si^
years old, but I know not whether girl or boy) immedi-
ately took the strangest fancy for me. It was a wretched.

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 513

All the children in this ward seemed to
be invalids, and, going upstairs, we found
more of them in the same or a worse con-
dition than the little creature just de-
scribed, with their mothers (or more prob-
ably other women, for the infants were
mostly foundlings) in attendance as nurses.
The matron of the ward, a middle-aged
woman, remarkably kind and motherly in
aspect, was walking to and fro across the

pale, half-torpid little thing, with a humor in its eyes
which the governor said was the scurvy. I never saw,
till a few moments afterwards, a child that I should feel
less inclined to fondle. But this little, sickly, humor-
eaten fright prowled around me, taking hold of my skirts,
following at my heels, and at last held up its hands,
smiled in my face, and, standing directly before me, in-
sisted on my taking it up 1 Not that it said a word, for
I rather think it was undeiwitted, and could not talk;
but its face expressed such perfect confidence that it
was going to be taken up and made much of, that it
was impossible not to do it It was as if God had
promised the child this favor on my behalf, and that I
must needs fulfill the contract. I held my undesirable
burden a little while ; and, after setting the child down,
it still followed me, holding two of my fingers and play-
ing with them, just as if it were a child of my own. It
was a foundling, and out of all human kind it chose me
to be its father ! We went up stairs into another ward;
and, on coming down again, there was this same child
waiting for me, with a sickly smile round its defaced
mouth, and in its dim red eyes. ... I never should
have forgiven myself if I had repelled its advances." <—
IL 184.

514 OUR OLD HOME

chamber — on that weary journey in which
careful mothers and nurses travel so con-
tinually and so far, and gain never a step
of progress — with an unquiet baby in her
arms. She assured us that she enjoyed
her occupation, being exceedingly fond of
children; and, in fact, the absence of ti-
midity in all the little people was a suffi-
cient proof that they could have had no
experience of harsh treatment, though, on
the other hand, none of them appeared to
be attracted to one individual more than
another. In this point they differed widely
from the poor child below stairs. They
seemed to recognize a universal mother-
hood in womankind, and cared not which
individual might be the mother of the mo-
ment. I found their tameness as shock-
ing as did Alexander Selkirk that of the
brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom.
It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect
indifference to the approach of strangers,
such as I never noticed in other children.
I accounted for it partly by their nerveless,
unstrung state of body, incapable of the
quick thrills of delight and fear which play
upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy
child's nature, and partly by their woful
lack of acquaintance with a private home,

GLIAtPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY $1$

and their being therefore destitute of the
sweet home-bred shyness, which is like the
sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted
child. Their condition was like that of
chickens hatched in an oven, and growing
up without the especial guardianship of a
matron hen : both the chicken and the
child, methinks, must needs want some-
thing that is essential to their respective
characters.

In this chamber (w^ich was spacious,
containing a large number of beds) there
was a clear fire burning on the hearth, as
in all the other occupied rooms ; and di-
rectly in front of the blaze sat a woman
holding a baby, which, beyond all reach of
comparison, was the most horrible object
that ever afflicted my sight. Days after-
wards — nay, even now, when I bring it up
vividly before my mind's eye — it seemed
to lie upon the floor of my heart, pollut-
ing my moral being with the sense of
something grievously amiss in the entire
conditions of humanity. The holiest man
could not be otherwise than full of wick-
edness, the chastest virgin seemed impure,
in a world where such a babe was possi-
ble. The governor whispered me, apart,
that, .like nearly all the rest of them, it was

5l6 OUR OLD HOME

the child of unhealthy parents. Ah, yes f
There was the mischief. This spectral in-
fant, a hideous mockery of the visible link
which Love creates between man and wo-
man, was bom of disease and sin. Dis-
eased Sin was its father, and Sinful Disease
its mother, and their offspring lay in the
woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence,
which, could it live and grow up, would
make the world a more accursed abode
than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it
could not live ! This baby, if we must
give it that sweet name, seemed to be
three or four months old, but, being such
an unthrifty changeling, might have been
considerably older. It was all covered
with blotches, and pretematurally dark and
discolored ; it was withered away, quite
shrunken and fleshless ; it breathed only
amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned
painfully at every gasp. The only comfort
in reference to it was the evident impossi-
bility of its surviving to draw many more
of those miserable, moaning breaths ; and
it would have been infinitely less heart-
depressing to see it die, right before my
eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in
my remembrance, still suffering the incal-
culable torture of its little life. I can by

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 5 1/

no means express how horrible this infant
was, neither ought I to attempt it. And
yet I must add one final touch. Young as
the poor little creature was, its pain and
misery had endowed it with a premature
intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed
to stare at the by-standers out of their
sunken sockets knowingly and appealingly,
as if summoning us one and all to wit-
ness the deadly wrong of its existence.
At least, I so interpreted its look, when it
positively met and responded to my own
awe-stricken gaze, and therefore I lay the
case, as far as I am able, before mankind,
on whom God has imposed the necessity
to suffer in soul and body till this dark and
dreadful wrong be righted.

Thence we went to the school - rooms,
which were underneath the chapel. The
pupils, like the children whom we had just
seen, were, in large proportion, foundlings.
Almost without exception, they looked
sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in
their doltish faces, and a general tendency
to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the
poor little wretches appeared to be uneasy
within their skins, and screwed themselves
about on the benches in a disagreeably
suggestive way, as if they had inherited

5l8 OUR OLD HOME

the evil habits of their parents as an in-
nermost garment of the same texture and
material as the shirt of Nessus, and must
wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long
as they lived I saw only a single child
that looked healthy; and on my pointing
him out, the governor informed me that
this little boy, the sole exception to the
miserable aspect of his school-fellows, was
not a foundling, nor properly a workhouse
child, being bom of respectable parent-
age, and his father one of the officers of
the institution. As for the remainder, —
the hundred pale abortions to be counted
against one rosy-cheeked boy, — what shall
we say or do ? Depressed by the sight of
so much misery, and uninventive of reme-
dies for the evils that force themselves on
my perception, I can do little more than
recur to the idea already hinted at in the
early part of this article, regarding the
speedy necessity of a new deluge. So far
as these children are concerned, at any
rate, it would be a blessing to the human
race, which they will contribute to ener-
vate and corrupt, — a greater blessing to
themselves, who inherit no patrimony but
disease and vice, and in whose souls, if
there be a spark of God's life, this seems

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 519

the only possible mode of keeping it aglow,
— if every one of them could be drowned
to-night, by their best friends, instead of
being put tenderly to bed. This heroic
method of treating human maladies, moral
and material, is certainly beyond the scope
of man's discretionary rights, and probably
will not be adopted by Divine Providence
until the opportunity of milder reformation
shall have been offered us again and again,
through a series of future ages.

It may be fair to acknowledge that the
humane and excellent governor, as well as
other persons better acquainted . with the
subject than myself, took a less gloomy
view of it, though still so dark a one as to
involve scanty consolation. They remarked
that individuals of the male sex, picked up
in the streets and nurtured in the work-
house, sometimes succeed tolerably weH in
life, because they are taught trades before
being turned into the world, and, by dint
of immaculate behavior and good luck, are
not unlikely to get employment and earn a
livelihood. The case is different with the
girls. They can only go to service, and
are invariably rejected by families of re-
spectability on account of their origin, and
for the better reason of their unfitness to

520 OUR OLD HOME

fill satisfactorily even the meanest situa-
tions in a well-ordered English household.
Their resource is to take service with
people only a step or two above the poorest
class, with whom they fare scantily, endure
harsh treatment, lead shifting and preca-
rious lives, and finally drop into the slough
of evil, through which, in their best estate,
they do but pick their slimy way on step-
ping-stones.

From the schools we went to the bake-
house, and the brew-house (for such cruelty
is not harbored in the heart of a true Eng-
lishman as to deny a pauper his daily
allowance of beer), and through the kitch-
ens, where we beheld an immense pot over
the fire, surging and walloping with some
kind of a savory stew that filled it up to its
brim. We also visited a tailor's shop, and
a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a
number of men, and pale, diminutive ap-
prentices, were at work, diligently enough,
though seemingly with small heart in the
business. Finally, the governor ushered
us into a shed, inside of which was piled
up an immense quantity of new coffins.
They were of the plainest description,
made of pine boards, probably of Ameri-
can growth, not very nicely smoothed by

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 52!

the plane, neither painted nor stained with
black, but provided with a loop of rope at
either end for the convenience of lifting
the rude box and its inmate into the cart
that shall carry them to the burial-groimA
There, in holes ten feet deep, the paupers
are buried one above another, mingling
their relics indistinguishably. In another
world may they resume their individuality,
and find it a happier one than here !

As we departed, a character came under
our notice which I have met with in all
almshouses, whether of the city or village,
or in England or America. It was the fa-
miliar simpleton, who shuffled across the
court -yard, clattering his wooden -soled
shoes, to greet us with a howl or a laugh,
I hafdly know which, holding out his hand
for a penny, and chuckling grossly when it
was given him. All underwitted persons,
so far as my experience goes, have this
craving for copper coin, and appear to es-
timate its value by a miraculous instinct,
which is one of the earliest gleams of hu-
man intelligence while the nobler faculties
are yet in abeyance. There may come a
time, even in this world, when we shall all
understand that our tendency to the indi-
vidual appropriation of gold and broad

522 OUR OLD HOME

acres, fine houses, and such good and beau-
tiful things as are equally enjoyable by a
multitude, is but a trait of imperfectly de-
veloped intelligence, like the simpleton's
cupidity of a penny. When that day
dawns, — and probably not till then, — I
imagine that there will be no more poor
streets nor need of almshouses.

I was once present at the wedding of
some poor English people, and was deeply
impressed by the spectacle, though by no
means with such proud and delightful emo-
tions as seem to have affected all England
on the recent occasion of the marriage of
its Prince. It was in the Cathedral at
Manchester, a particularly black and grim
old structure, into which I had stepped to
examine some ancient and curious wood-
carvings within the choir. The woman in
attendance greeted me with a smile (which
always glimmers forth on the feminine vis-
age, I know not why, when a wedding is
in question), and asked me to take a seat
in the nave till some poor parties were
married, it being the Easter holidays, and
a good time for them to marry, because no
fees would be demanded by the clergyman.
I sat down accordingly, and soon the par-
son and his clerk appeared at the altar, and

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 523

a considerable crowd of people made their
entrance at a side-door, and ranged them-
selves in a long, huddled line across the
chancel. They were my acquaintances of
the poor streets, or persons in a precisely
similar condition of life, and were pow
come to their marriage-ceremony in just
such garbs as I had always seen them
wear : the men in their loafers' coats, out
at elbows, or their laborers' jackets, de-
faced with grimy toil ; the women drawing
their shabby shawls tighter about their
shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath ;
all of them un brushed, unshaven, unwashed,
uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and
care ; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor
hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms ;
— they were, in short, the mere rags and
tatters of the human race, whom some
east-wind of evil omen, howling along the
streets, had chanced to sweep together into
an unfragrant heap. Each and all of them,
conscious of his or her individual misery,
had blundered into the strange miscalcu-
lation of supposing that they could lessen
the sum of it by multiplying it into the
misery of another person. All the couples
(and it was difficult, in such a confused
crowd, to compute exactly their number)

524 OUR OLD HOME

Stood up at once, and had execution done
upon them in the lump, the clergyman ad-
dressing only small parts of the service to
each individual pair, but so managing the
larger portion as to include the whole com-
pany without the trouble of repetition. By
this compendious contrivance, one would
apprehend, he came dangerously near mak-
ing every man and woman the husband or
wife of every other; nor, perhaps, would
he have perpetrated much additional mis-
chief by the mistake ; but, after receiving
a benediction in common, they assorted
themselves in their own fashion, as they
only knew how, and departed to the gar-
rets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered
street-corners, where their honeymoon and
subsequent lives were to be spent. The
parson smiled decorously, the clerk and
the sexton grinned broadly, the female
attendant tittered almost aloud, and even
the married parties seemed to see some-
thing exceedingly funny in the affair ; but
for my part, though generally apt enough
to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in
my memory as one of the saddest sights I
ever looked upon.

Not very long afterwards, I happened to
be passing the same venerable cathedral.

GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY $2$

and heard a clang of joyful bells, and be-
held a bridal party coming down the steps
towards a carriage and four horses, with a
portly coachman and two postilions, that
waited at the gate. One parson and one
service had amalgamated the wretched-
ness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and
three or four clergymen had combined
their spiritual might to forge the golden
links of this other marriage -bond. The
bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless
and kindly English pride ; the bride floated
along in her white drapery, a creature so
nice and delicate that it was a luxury to
see her, and a pity that her silk slippers
should touch anything so grimy as the
old stones of the churchyard avenue. The
crowd of ragged people, who always cluster
to witness what they may of an aristocratic
wedding, broke into audible admiration of
the bride's beauty and the bridegroom's
manliness, and uttered prayers and ejacu-
lations (possibly paid for in alms) for the
happiness of both. If the most favorable
of earthly conditions could make them
happy, they had every prospect of it. They
were going to live on their abundance in
one of those stately and delightful English
homes, such as no other people ever ere-

526 OUR OLD HOaME

ated or inherited, a hall set far and safe
within its own private grounds, and sur-
rounded with venerable trees, shaven lawns,
rich shrubbery, and trimmest pathways, the
whole so artfully contrived and tended that
summer rendered it a paradise, and even
winter would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ;
and all this fair property seemed more ex-
clusively and inalienably their own, because
of its descent through many forefathers,
each of whom had added an improvement
or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a
stronger stamp of rightful possession to his
heir. And is it possible, after all, that
there may be a flaw in the title-deeds ? Is,
or is not, the system wrong that gives one
married pair so immense a superfluity of
luxurious home, and shuts out a million
others from any home whatever? One
day or another, safe as they deem them-
selves, and safe as the hereditary temper
of the people really tends to make them,
the gentlemen of England will be com-
pelled to face this question.

XII.

CIVIC BANQUETS

It has often perplexed me to imagine
how an Englishman will be able to recon-
cile himself to any future state of existence
from which the earthly institution of dinner
shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
his appetite along with him (which it seems
to me hardly possible to believe, since this
endowment is so essential to his compo-
sition), the immortal day must still admit
an interim of two or three hours during
which he will be conscious of a slight dis-
taste, at all events, if not an absolute re-
pugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment.
The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself
among his highest and deepest character-
istics, so illuminated itself with intellect
and softened itself with the kindest emo-
tions of his heart, so linked itself with
Church and State, and grown so majestic
with long hereditary customs and cere-
monies, that, by taking it utterly away,
Death, instead of putting the final touch

528 OUR OLD HOME

to his perfection, would leave him infinitely
less complete than we have already known
him. He could not be roundly happy.
Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would
lack one daily felicity which his sombre
little island possessed. Perhaps it is not
irreverent to conjecture that a provision
may have been made, in this particular, for
the Englishman's exceptional necessities.
It strikes me that Milton was of the opin-
ion here suggested, and may have intended
to throw out a delightful and consolatory
hope for his countrymen, when he repre-
sents the genial archangel as playing his
part with such excellent appetite at Adam's
dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit
and vegetables only, because, in those early
days of her housekeeping, Eve had no
more acceptable viands to set before him.
Milton, indeed, had a true English taste
for the pleasures of the table, though re-
fined by the lofty and poetic discipline to
which he had subjected himself. It is
delicately implied in the refection in Para-
dise, and more substantially, though still
elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing
to " Laurence, of virtuous father virtuous
son," a series of nice little dinners in
midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in that

CIVIC BANQUETS 529

untasted banquet, which, elaborate as it
was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the
kitchen-ranges of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in
their generation, dinner has a kind of sanc-
tity quite independent of the dishes that
may be set upon the table ; so that, if it be
only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree
of enjoyment which such reckless devour-
ers as ourselves do not often find in our
richest abundance. It is good to see how
stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of
heroic eating, still relying upon their di-
gestive powers and indulging a vigorous
appetite ; whereas an American has gener-
ally lost the one and learned to distrust the
other long before reaching the earliest de-
cline of life ; and thenceforward he makes
little account of his dinner, and dines at
his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
countrymen will allow me to tell them,
though I think it scarcely too much to af-
firm, that on this side of the water people
never dine. At any rate, abundantly as
Nature has provided us with most of the
material requisites, the highest possible
dinner has never yet been eaten in Amer-
ica. It is the consummate flower of civil-

530 OUR OLD HOME

ization and refinement ; and our inability
to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable
beauty if a happy inspiration should bring
it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that
the mob of cultivated Englishmen know
how to dine in this elevated sense. The
unpolishable ruggedness of the national
character is still an impediment to them,
even in that particular line where they are
best qualified to excel. Though often pres-
ent at good men's feasts, I remember only a
single dinner, which, while lamentably con-
scious that many of its higher excellences
were thrown away upon me, I yet could
feel to be a^perfect work of art. It could
not, without unpardonable coarseness, be
styled a matter of animal enjoyment, be-
cause, out of the very perfection of that
lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like
development of spiritual happiness. As in
the masterpieces of painting and poetry,
there was a something intangible, a final
deliciousness that only fluttered about your
comprehension, vanishing whenever you
tried to detain it, and compelling you to
recognize it by faith rather than sense. It
seemed as if a diviner set of senses were

CIVIC BANQUETS 53 1

requisite, and had been partly supplied, for
the special fruition of this banquet, and
that the guests around the table (only eight
in number) were becoming so educated,
polished, and softened, by the delicate in-
fluences of what they ate and drank, as to
be now a little more than mortal for the
nonce. And there was that gentle, deli-
cious sadness, too, which we find in the
very summit of our most exquisite enjoy-
ments, and feel it a charm beyond all the
gayety through which it keeps breathing
its undertone. In the present case, it was
worth a heavier sigh to reflect that such a
festal achievement — the production of so
much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
taste — the growth of all the ages, which
appeared to have been ripening for this
hour, since man first began to eat and to
moisten his food with wine — must lavish
its happiness upon so brief a moment
when other beautiful things can be made a
joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
better than we can get, any day, at the
rejuvenescent Comhill Coffee-house, un-
less the whole man, with soul, intellect,
and stomach, is ready to appreciate it, and
unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
in all the circumstances and accompani-

532 OUR OLD HOME

ments, and especially such a pitch of well-
according minds, that nothing shall jar
rudely against the guest's thoroughly awak-
ened sensibilities. The world, and espe-
cially our part of it, being the rough, ill-
assorted, and tumultuous place we find it,
a beefsteak is about as good as any other
dinner.

The foregoing reminiscence, however,
has drawn me aside from the main object
of my sketch, in which I purposed to give
a slight idea of those public, or partially
public banquets, the custom of which so
thoroughly prevails among the English
people, that nothing is ever decided upon,
in matters of peace and war, until they
have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-
beef, and talked it fully over in their cups.
Nor are these festivities merely occasional,
but of stated recurrence in all considerable
municipalities and associated bodies. The
most ancient times appear to have been as
familiar with them as the Englishmen of
to-day. In many of the old English towns,
you find some stately Gothic hall or cham-
ber in which the Mayor and other authorities
of the place have long held their sessions ;
and always, in convenient contiguity, there
is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fire-

CIVIC BANQUETS 533

place where an ox might lie roasting at his
ease, though the less gigantic scale of mod-
em cookery may now have permitted the
cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.
Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a
specimen of an ancient banqueting-room,
that perhaps I may profitably devote a page
or two to the description of it.

In a narrow street opposite to St. Mi-
chael's Church, one of the three famous
spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval
edifice, in the basement of which is such a
venerable and now deserted kitchen as I
have above alluded to, and, on the same
level, a cellar, with low stone pillars and in-
tersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathe-
dral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the
oaken balustrade of which is as black as
ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some
sixty feet in length, and broad and lofty in
proportion. It is lighted by six windows
of modern stained glass, on one side, and
by the immense and magnificent arch of
another window at the farther end of the
room, its rich and ancient panes consti-
tuting a genuine historical piece, in which
are represented some of the kingly person-
ages of old times, with their heraldic bla-
zonries. Notwithstanding the colored light

534 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

thus thrown into the hall, and though it
was noonday when I last saw it, the panel-
ing of black-oak, and some faded tapestry
that hung round the walls, together with
the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a
gloom, which the richness only illuminated
into more appreciable efifect. The tapes-
try is wrought with figures in the dress
of Henry VI/s time (which is the date of
the hall), and is regarded by antiquaries as
authentic evidence both for the costume
of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual
portraiture of men known in history. They
are as colorless as ghosts, however, and
vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of
their substance when you try to make them
out. Coats of arms were formerly embla-
zoned all round the hall, but have been al-
most rubbed out by people hanging their
overcoats against them, or by women with
dishclouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliter-
ating hereditary glories in their blind hos-
tility to dust and spiders* webs. Full-length
portraits of several English kings, Charles
II. being the earliest^ hang on the walls ;
and on the dats, or elevated part of the
floor, stands an antique chair of state,
which several royal characters are tradi-
tionally said to have occupied while feast-

CIVIC BANQUETS 535-

ing here with their loyal subjects of Cov-
entry. It is roomy enough for a person of
kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular
and uncomfortable, reminding me of the
oaken settles which used to be seen in old-
fashioned New England kitchens.

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining
power, without the aid of a single pillar, is
the original ceiling of oak, precisely simi-
lar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all
the beams and rafters plainly to be seen.
At the remote height of sixty feet, you
hardly discern that they are carved with
figures of angels, and doubtless many other
devices, of which the admirable Gothic art
is wasted in the duskiness that has so long
been brooding there. Over the entrance
of the hall, opposite the great arched win-
dow, the party-colored radiance of which
glimmers faintly through the interval, is a
gallery for minstrels ; and a row of ancient
suits of armor is suspended from its balus-
trade. It impresses me, too (for, having
gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
untouched upon), that I remember, some-
where about these venerable precincts, a
picture of the Countess Godiva on horse-
back, in which the artist has been so nig-
gardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that,

536 OUR OLD HOME

if she had no ampler garniture, there was
certainly much need for the good people
of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all
my pains, I fear that I have made but a
poor hand at the description, as regards a
transference of the scene from my own
mind to the reader's. It gave me a most
vivid idea of antiquity that had been very
little tampered with ; insomuch that, if a
group of steel-clad knights had come clank-
ing through the doorway, and a bearded and
beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-
forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty
somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb,
yet stepping majestically to the trill of
harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
while the rusty armor responded with a
hollow ringing sound beneath, — why, I
should have felt that these shadows, once
so familiar with the spot, had a better right
in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from
a far country which has no Past. But the
moral of the foregoing description is to
show how tenaciously this love of pompous
dinners, this reverence for dinner as a
sacred institution, has caught hold of the
English character ; since, from the earliest
recognizable period, we find them building

CIVIC BANQUETS 537

their civic banqueting - halls as magnifi-
cently as their palaces or cathedrals.

I know not whether the hall just de-
scribed is now used for festive purposes,
but others of similar antiquity and splen-
dor still are. For example, there is Bar-
ber Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine
old room, adorned with admirably carved
wood-work on the ceiling and walls. It is
also enriched with Holbein's masterpiece,
representing a grave assemblage of barbers
and surgeons, all portraits (with such ex-
tensive beards that methinks one half of
the company might have been profitably
occupied in trimming the other), kneeling
before King Henry VHI. Sir Robert Peel
is said to hr.ve offered a thousand pounds
for the liberty of cutting out one of the
heads from this picture, he conditioning to
have a perfect facsimile painted in.* The

1 In this room hangs the most valuable picture by
Holbein now in existence, representing the company of
Barber Surgeons kneeling before Henry VIII., and re-
ceiving their charter from his hands. The picture is
about six feet square. The king is dressed in scarlet,
and quite fulfills one's idea of his aspect. The Barber-
Surgeons, all portraits, are an assemblage of grave-look-
ing personages, in dark costumes. The company has
refused five thousand pounds for this unique picture;
and the keeper of the Hall told me that Sir Robert Peel
had offered a thousand pounds for liberty to take out

538 OUR OLD HOME

room has many other pictures of distin-
guished members of the company in long-
past times, and of some of the monarchs
and statesmen of England, all darkened with
age, but darkened into such ripe magnifi-
cence as only age could bestow. It is not
my design to inflict any more specimens of
ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it
may be worth while to touch upon other
modes of stateliness that still survive in
these time-honored civic feasts, where there
appears to be a singular assumption of dig-
nity and solemn pomp by respectable citi-
zens who would never dream of claiming
any privilege of rank outside of their own
sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state
for the warden and junior warden of the
company, caps of silver (real coronets or
crowns, indeed, for these city - grandees)
wrought in open-work and lined with crim-
son velvet. In a strong - closet, opening
from the hall, there was a great deal of
rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-
table, comprising hundreds of forks and
spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift

only one of the heads, that of a person named Penn, he
conditioning to have a perfect facsimile painted in. I
did not see any merit in this head over the others. —
II. 200.

CIVIC BANQUETS 539

of some jolly king or other, and, besides
a multitude of less noticeable vessels, two
loving-cups, very elaborately wrought in
silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII.,
the other by Charles II. These cups, in-
cluding the covers and pedestals, are very
large and weighty, although the bowl - part
would hardly contain more than half a pint
of wine, which, when the custom was first
established, each guest was probably ex-
pected to drink ofiF at a draught. In pass-
ing them from hand to hand adown a long
table of compotators, there is a peculiar
ceremony which I may hereafter have oc-
casion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might
assume such a liberty, I should be glad to
invite the reader to the official dinner-table
of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large Eng-
lish seaport where I spent several years.

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as
often as once a fortnight, and, inviting his
guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Wor-
ship probably assembles at his board most
of the eminent citizens and distinguished
personages of the town and neighborhood
more than once during his year's incum-
bency, and very much, no doubt, to the
promotion of good feeling among individ-
uals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits

540 OUR OLD HOME

in life. A miscellaneous party of English-
men can always find more comfortable
groimd to meet upon than as many Ameri-
cans, their diflFerences of opinion being
incomparably less radical than ours, and it
being the sincerest wish of all their hearts,
whether they call themselves Liberals or
what not, that nothing in this world shall
ever be greatly altered from what it has
been and is. Thus there is seldom such a
virulence of political hostility that it may
not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
without making the good liquor any more
dry or bitter than accords with English
taste.

The first dinner of this kind at which I
had the honor to be present took place
during assizc-time, and included among the
guests the judges and the prominent mem-
bers of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall
at seven o'clock, I communicated my name
to one of several splendidly dressed foot-
men, and he repeated it to another on the
first staircase, by whom it was passed to a
third, and thence to a fourth at the door of
the reception-room, losing all resemblance
to the original sound in the course of these
transmissions ; so that I had the advantage^
of making my entrance in the character of

CIVIC BANQUETS 541

a stranger, not only to the whole company,
but to myself as well. His Worship, how-
ever, kindly recognized me, and put me on
speaking -terms with two or three gentle-
men, whom I found very affable, and all
the more hospitably attentive on the score
of my nationality. It is very singular how
kind an Englishman will almost invariably
be to an individual American, without ever
bating a jot of his prejudice against the
American character in the lump. My new
acquaintances took evident pains to put me
at my ease ; and, in requital of their good-
nature, I soon began to look round at
the general company in a critical spirit,
making my crude observations apart, and
drawing silent inferences, of the correct-
ness of which I should not have been half
so well satisfied a year afterwards as at
that moment.

There were two judges present, a good
many lawyers, and a few officers of the
army in uniform. The other guests seemed
to be principally of the mercantile class,
and among them was a ship-owner from
Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little,
inasmuch as we were born with the same
sky over our heads, and an unbroken con-
tinuity of soil between his abode and mine.

542 OUR OLD HOME

There was one old gentleman, whose char-
acter I never made out, with powdered hair,
clad in black breeches and silk stockings,
and wearing a rapier at his side ; otherwise,
with the exception of the military unifontis,
there was little or no pretense of official
costume. It being the first considerable
assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen,
my honest impression about them was that
they were a heavy and homely set of people,
with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which
it required more familiarity with the na-
tional character than I then possessed
always to detect the good breeding of a
gentleman. Being generally middle-aged,
or still further advanced, they were by no
means graceful in figure ; for the comeli-
ness of the youthful Englishman rapidly
diminishes with years, his body appearing
to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate them-
selves, and his stomach to assume the dig-
nified prominence which justly belongs to
that metropolis of his system. His face
(what with the- acridity of the atmosphere,
ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-
digested abundance of succulent food) gets
red and mottled, and develops at least one
additional chin, with a promise of more ;

CIVIC BANQUETS 543

SO that, finally, a stranger recognizes his
animal part at the most superficial glance,
but must take time and a little pains to
discover the intellectual. Comparing him
with an American, I really thought that
our national paleness and lean habit of
flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an
aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me,
moreover, that the English tailor had not
done so much as he might and ought for
these heavy figures, but had gone on will-
fully exaggerating their uncouthness by the
roominess of their garments ; he had evi-
dently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smart-
ness was entirely out of his line. But, to
be quite open with the reader, I afterwards
learned to think thqf this aforesaid tailor
has a deeper art^han his brethren among
ourselves, knowing how to dress his cus-
tomers with such individual propriety that
they look as if they were bom in their
clothes, the fit being to the character rather
than the form. If you make an English-
man smart (unless he be a very exceptional
one, of whom I have seen a few), you make
him a monster; his best aspect is that of
ponderous respectability.

To make an end of these first impres-
sions, I fancied that not merely the Suffolk

544 ^^^ O^^ HOME

bar, but the bar of any inland county in
New England, might show a set of thin-
visaged men looking wretchedly worn, sal-
low, deeply wrinkled across the forehead,
and grimly furrowed about the mouth, with
whom these heavy - cheeked English law-
yers, slow -paced and fat-witted as they
must needs be, would stand very little
chance in a professional contest. How
that matter might turn out, I am unquali-
fied to decide. But I state these results
of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not
for what they are worth, but because I
ultimately gave them up as worth little or
nothing. In course of time, I came to the
conclusion that Englishmen of all ages are
a rather good-looking; people, dress in ad-
mirable taste from their wm point of view,
and, under a surface never silken to the
touch, have a refinement of manners too
thorough and genuine to be thought of as
a separate endowment, — that is to say, if
the individual himself be a man of station,
and has had gentlemen for his father and
grandfather. The sturdy Anglo-Saxon
nature does not refine itself short of the
third generation. The tradesmen, too, and
all other classes, have their own proprieties.
The only value of my criticisms, there-

CJVIC BANQUETS 545

fore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness
of a traveler to measure one people by the
distinctive characteristics of another, — as
English writers invariably measure us, and
take upon themselves to be disgusted ac-
cordingly, instead of trying to find out some
principle of beauty with which we may be
in conformity.

In due time we were summoned to the
table, and went thither in no solemn pro-
cession, but with a good deal of jostling,
thrusting behind, and scrambling for places
when we reached our destination. The
legal gentlemen, I suspect, were responsi-
ble for this indecorous zeal, which I never
afterwards remarked in a similar party.
The dining-hall was of noble size, and, like
the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously
painted and gilded and brilliantly illumi-
nated. There was a splendid table-service,
and a noble array of footmen, some of
them in plain clothes, and others wearing
the town-livery, richly decorated with gold-
lace, and themselves excellent specimens of
the blooming young manhood of Britain.
When we were fairly seated, it was cer-
tainly an agreeable spectacle to look up
and down the long vista of earnest faces,
and behold them so resolute, so conscious

546 OUR OLD HOME

that there was an important business in
hand, and so determined to be equal to
the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not,
I hardly know what can be prettier than
a snow-white tablecloth, a huge heap of
flowers as a central decoration, bright sil-
ver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters
of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll
and an artistically folded napkin at each
plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in
short, that comes before the first mouth-
ful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of
artificial light, without which a dinner of
made-dishes looks spectral, and the simplest
viands are the best. Printed bills -of -fare
were distributed, representing an abundant
feast, no part of which appeared on the
table Until called for in separate plates. I
have entirely forgotten what it was, but
deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there
is a pervading commonplace and identical-
ness in the composition of extensive din-
ners, on account of the impossibility of
supplying a hundred guests with anything
particularly delicate or rare. It was sug-
gested to me that certain juicy old gentle-
men had a private understanding what to
call for, and that it would be good policy
in a stranger to follow in their footsteps

CIVIC BANQUETS 547

through the feast. I did not care to do so,
however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip
out of Camacho's caldron, any sort of pot-
luck at such a table would be sure to suit
my purpose ; so I chose a dish or two on
my own judgment, and, getting through
my labors betimes, had great pleasure in
seeing the Englishmen toil onward to the
end.

They drank rather copiously, too, though
wisely; for I observed that they seldom
took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble
slowly away out of the goblet, solacing
themselves with Sherry, but tasting it
warily before bestowing their final confi-
dence. Their taste in wines, however, did
not seem so exquisite, and certainly was
not so various, as that to which many
Americans pretend. This foppery of an
intimate acquaintance with rare vintages
does not suit a sensible Englishman, as
he is very much in earnest about his
wines, and adopts one or two as his life-
long friends, seldom exchanging them for
any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the
reward of his constancy in an unimpaired
stomach, and only so much gout as he
deems wholesome and desirable. Know-
ing well the measure of his powers, he is

548 OUR OLD HOME

not apt to fill his glass too often. Society,
indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual im-
prudences of that kind, though, in my opin-
ion, the Englishmen now upon the stage
could carry oflF their three bottles, at need,
with as steady a gait as any of their fore-
fathers. It is not so very long since the
three -bottle heroes sank finally under the
table. It may be (at least, I should be
glad if it were true) that there was an oc-
cult sympathy between our temperance
reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and
the almost simultaneous disappearance of
hard-drinking among the respectable
classes in England. I remember a middle-
aged gentleman telling me (in illustration
of the very slight importance attached to
breaches of temperance within the mem-
ory of men not yet old) that he had seen
a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater,
or Drinkwater, — but I think the jolly old
knight could hardly have staggered under
so perverse a misnomer as this last, —
while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull
out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk.
** Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were
the most indifferent fact in the world, " I
was drunk last night. There are my five
shillings."

CIVIC BANQUETS 549

During the dinner, I had a good deal of
pleasant conversation with the gentlemen
on either side of me. One of them, a law-
yer, expatiated with great unction on the
social standing of the judges. Represent-
ing the dignity and authority of the Crown,
they take precedence, during assize-time,
of the highest military men in the king-
dom, of the Lord Lieutenant of the coun-
ty, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
and even of the Prince of Wales. For
the nonce, they are the greatest men in
England. With a glow of professional
complacency that amounted to enthusiasm,
my friend assured me, that, in case of a
royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding
an assize, would be expected to offer his
arm and take the Queen herself to the
table. Happening to be in company with
some of these elevated personages, on sub-
sequent occasions, it appeared to me that
the judges are fully conscious of their
paramount claims to respect, and take
rather more pains to impress them on
their ceremonial inferiors than men of
high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bish-
ops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are
sometimes marked by a similar character-
istic. Dignified position is so sweet to an

550 OUR OLD HOME

Englishman, that he needs to be bom in it,
and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with
his nature from its original germ, in order
to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively
in the faces of innocent by-standers.

My companion on the other side was a
thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth in man-
ners, and ugly where none were handsome,
with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that
looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold
within itself the machinery of a very ter-
rific frown. He ate with resolute appetite,
and let slip few opportunities of imbibing
whatever liquids happened to be passing
by. I was meditating in what way this
grisly featured table-fellow might most
safely be accosted, when he turned to me
with a surly sort of kindness, and invited
me to take a glass of wine. We then
began a conversation that abounded, on his
part, with sturdy sense, and, somehow or
other, brought me closer to him than I
had yet stood to an Englishman. I should
hardly have taken him to be an educated
man, certainly not a scholar of accurate
training; and yet he seemed to have all
the resources of education and trained in-
tellectual power at command. My fresh
Americanism, and watchful observation of

CIVIC BANQUETS 55 1

English characteristics, appeared either to
interest or amuse him, or perhaps both.
Under the mollifying influences of abun-
dance of meat and drink, he grew very
gracious (not that I ought to use such a
phrase to describe his evidently genuine
good-will), and by and by expressed a wish
for further acquaintance, asking me to call
at his rooms in London and inquire for
Sergeant Wilkins, — throwing out the name
forcibly, as if he had no occasion to be
ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's
retort to Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar
announcement, — "Of what regiment, pray,
sir?" — and fancied that the same question
might not have been quite amiss, if applied
to the rugged individual at my side. But
I heard of him subsequently as one of the
prominent men at the English bar, a rough
customer, and a terribly strong champion in
criminal cases ; and it caused me more re-
gret than might have been expected, on so
slight an acquaintanceship, when, not long
afterwards, I saw his death announced in
the newspapers. Not rich in attractive
qualities, he possessed, I think, the most
attractive one of all, — thorough manhood.
After the cloth was removed, a goodly
group of decanters were set before the

552 OUR OLD HOME

Mayor, who sent them forth on their out-
ward voyage, full freighted with Port,
Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which ex-
cellent liquors, methought, the latter found
least acceptance among the guests. When
every man had filled his glass, his Worship
stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of
course, "Our gracious Sovereign," or words
to that effect ; and immediately a band of
musicians, whose preliminary tootings and
thrummings I had already heard behind
me, struck up " God save the Queen ! " and
the whole company rose with one impulse
to assist in singing that famous national
anthem. It was the first time in my life
that I had ever seen a body of men, or
even a single man, under the active influ-
ence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for,
though we call ourselves loyal to our coun-
try and institutions, and prove it by our
readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in
their behalf, still the principle is as cold
and hard, in an American bosom, as the
steel spring that puts in motion a powerful
machinery. In the Englishman's system,
a force similar to that of our steel spring
is generated by the warm throbbings of
human hearts. He clothes our bare ab-
straction in flesh and blood, — at present.

CIVIC BANQUETS 553

in the flesh and blood of a woman, — and
manages to combine love, awe, and intel-
lectual reverence, all in one emotion, and
to embody his mother, his wife, his chil-
dren, the whole idea of kindred, in a single
person, and make her the representative of
his country and its laws. We Americans
smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's
table ; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very
agreeable titillations of the heart in conse-
quence of our proud prerogative of caring
no more about our President than for a
man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow strad-
dling in a cornfield.

•But, to say the truth, the spectacle
struck me rather ludicrously, to see this
party of stout middle-aged and elderly gen-
tlemen, in the fullness of meat and drink,
their ample and ruddy faces glistening with
wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rum-
bling out those strange old stanzas from 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 won-
der at its universal acceptance and indestruc-
tible popularity, considering how inimitably
it expresses the national faith and feeling

554 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

as regards the inevitable righteousness of
England, the Almighty's consequent re-
spect and partiality for that redoubtable
little island, and his presumed readiness to
strengthen its defense against the contu-
macious wickedness and knavery of all
other principalities or republics. Tenny-
son himself, though evidently English to
the very last prejudice, could 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 thun-
der and the squeak of a cart-wheel, and that
the strain was not of such delicacy as to be
much hurt by the harshest of them, I de-
termined to lend my own assistance in
swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed
but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in
the land, whose guest, in the largest sense,
I might consider myself. Accordingly, my
first tuneful efforts (and probably my last,
for I purpose not to sing any more, unless
it be "Hail Columbia'* on the restoration
of the Union) were poured freely forth in
honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant
smiled like the carved head of a Swiss
nutcracker, and the other gentlemen in
my neighborhood, by nods and gestures,
evinced grave approbation of so suitable a

CIVIC BANQUETS 555

tribute to English superiority ; and we fin-
ished our stave and sat down in an ex-
tremely happy frame of mind

Other toasts followed in honor of the
great institutions and interests of the coun-
try, and speeches in response to each were
made by individuals whom the Mayor des-
ignated or the company called for. None
of them impressed me with a very high
idea of English postprandial oratory. It
is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and
shapeless utterances most Englishmen are
satisfied to give vent to, without attempt-
ing anything like artistic shape, but clap-
ping on a patch here and another there,
and ultimately getting out what they want
to say, and generally with a result of suffi-
ciently good sense, but in some such dis-
organized mass as if they had thrown it up
rather than spoken it. It seemed to me
that this was almost as much by choice
as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious
of public favor, should not be too smooth.
If an orator is glib, his countrymen dis-
trust him. They dislike smartness. The
stronger and heavier his thoughts, the
better, provided there be an element of
commonplace running through them ; and
any rough, yet never vulgar, force of ex-

556 OUR OLD HOME

pression, such as would knock an opponent
down if it hit him, only it must not be too
personal, is altogether to their taste ; but a
studied neatness of language, or other such
superficial graces, they cannot abide. They
do not often permit a man to make himself
a fine orator of malice aforethought, that is,
unless he be a nobleman (as, for example.
Lord Stanley, of the Derby family), who,
as an hereditary legislator and necessarily
a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor
natural delivery in the best way he can.
On the whole, I partly agree with them,
and, if I cared for any oratory whatever,
should be as likely to applaud theirs as our
own. When an English speaker sits down,
you feel that you have been listening to
a real man, and not to an actor ; his senti-
ments have a wholesome earth -smell in
them, though, very likely, this apparent
naturalness is as much an art as what we
expend in rounding a sentence or elabora-
ting a peroration.

It is one good effect of this inartificial
style, that nobody in England seems to
feel any shyness about shoveling the un-
trimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his
mind for the benefit of an audience. At
least, nobody did on the occasion now in

Ciy^IC BANQUETS 557

hand, except a poor little Major of Artil-
lery, who responded for the Army in a
thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesi-
tating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I
question not, would rather have been bayo-
neted in front of his batteries than to have
said a word. Not his own mouth, but
the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper
organ of utterance.

While I was thus amiably occupied in
criticising my fellow - guests, the Mayor
had got up to propose another toast ; and
listening rather inattentively to the first
sentence or two, I soon became sensible of
a drift in his Worship's remarks that made
me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant
Wilkins. "Yes, " grumbled that gruff per-
sonage, shoving a decanter of Port towards
me, "it is your turn next ; " and seeing in
my face, I suppose, the consternation of a
wholly unpracticed orator, he kindly added,
" It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment
will answer the purpose. The less you
say, the better they will like it." That
being the case, I suggested that perhaps
they would like it best if I said nothing
at all. But the Sergeant shook his head.
Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invita-
tion to dinner, it had occurred to me that

558 OUR OLD HOME

I might possibly be brought into my pres-
ent predicament ; but I had dismissed the
idea from my mind as too disagreeable to
be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien
from my disposition and character that
Fate surely could not keep such a misfor-
tune in store for me. If nothing else pre-
vented, an earthquake or the crack of doom
would certainly interfere before I need rise
to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting
on inexorably, — and, indeed, I heartily
wished that he might get on and on for-
ever, and of his wordy wanderings find no
end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend
and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I
can impart to him my own experience as
a public speaker quite as indifferently as
if it concerned another person. Indeed, it
does concern another, or a mere spectral
phenomenon, for it was not I, in my proper
and natural self, that sat there at table or
subsequently rose to speak. At the mo-
ment, then, if the choice had been offered
me whether the Mayor should let off a
speech at my head or a pistol, I should
unhesitatingly have taken the latter alter-
native. I had really nothing to say, not an
idea in my head, nor, which was a great

CIVIC BANQUETS 559

deal worse, any flowing words or embroi-
dered sentences in which to dress out that
empty Nothing, and give it a cunning as-
pect of intelligence, such as might last the
poor vacuity the little time it had to live.
But time pressed; the Mayor brought his
remarks, afEectionately eulogistic of the
United States and highly complimentary
to their distinguished representative at
that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of
cheering; and the band struck up "Hail
Columbia, " I believe, though it might have
been " Old Hundred, " or " God save the
Queen'* over again, for anything that I
should have known or cared. When the
music ceased, there was an intensely dis-
agreeable instant, during which I seemed
to rend away and fling off the habit of a
lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but
with preternatural composure, to make a
speech. The guests rattled on the table,
and cried, " Hear ! " most vociferously, as
if now, at length, in this foolish and idly
garrulous world, had come the long-ex-
pected moment when one golden word was
to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis,
I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an ef-
fusion of international sentiment, which it
might, and must, and should do to utter.

560 OUR OLD HOME

Well I it was nothing, as the Sergeant
had said* What surprised me most was
the sound of my own voice, which I had
never before heard at declamatory pitch,
and which impressed me as belonging to
some other person, who, and not myself,
would be responsible for the speech : a
I prodigious consolation and encouragement

i under the circumstances ! I went on with-

out the slightest embarrassment, and sat
down amid great applause, wholly unde-
served by anything that I had spoken, but
well won from Englishmen, methought, by
the new development of pluck that alone
bad enabled me to speak at all. "It was
handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant Wil-
kins ; and I felt like a recruit who had
been for the first time under fire.^

I would gladly have ended my oratorical

_ career then and there forever, but was

often placed in a similar or worse position,

/ w.^ -ompelled to meet it as I best might ;

>ody may make an after-dinner speech who will

It tu talk onward without saying anything. My

pas tiDt more than two or three inches long;

iidermg that I did not know a soul there, ex-

1 Mayor himself, and that I am wholly imprac-

a all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to

it was quite successful. I hardly thought it was in

^t but, being once started, I felt no embarrassment,

■I'ld went through it as coolly as if I were going to be

liattged. — L 429.

CIVIC BANQUETS Xfol

for this was one of the necessities of an
office which I had voluntarily taken on my
shoulders, and beneath which I might be
crushed by no moral delinquency on my
own part, but could not shirk without cow-
ardice and shame. My subsequent for-
tune was various. Once, though I felt it
to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech
by heart, and doubtless it might have been
a very pretty one, only I forgot every sylla-
ble at the moment of need, and had to im-
provise another as well as I could. I found
it a better method to prearrange a few
points in my mind, and trust to the spur
of the occasion, and the kind aid of Provi*
dence, for enabling me to bring them to
bear. The presence of any considerable
proportion of personal friends generally
dumfounded me. I would rather have
talked with an enemy in the gate. Invari-
ably, too, I was much embarrassed by a
small audience, and succeeded better with
a large one, — the sympathy of a multitude
possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the
speaker a little way out of his individ-
uality, and tosses him towards a perhaps
better range of sentiment than his pri-
vate one. Again, if I rose carelessly and
confidently, with an expectation of going

562 OUR OLD HOME

through the business entirely at my ease,
I often found that I had little or nothing
to say; whereas, if I came to the charge
in perfect despair, and at a crisis when
failure would have been horrible, it once
or twice happened that the frightful emer-
gency concentrated my poor faculties, and
enabled me to give definite and vigorous
expression to sentiments which an instant
before looked as vague and far off as the
clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole,
poor as my own success may have been, I
apprehend that any intelligent man with a
tongue possesses the chief requisite of ora-
torical power, and may develop many of
the others, if he deems it worth while to
bestow a great amount of labor and pains
on an object which the most accomplished
orators, I suspect, have not found alto-
gether satisfactory to their highest im-
pulses. At any rate, it must be a re-
markably true man who can keep his own
elevated conception of truth when the
lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his
natural sympathies, and who can speak out
frankly the best that there is in him, when
by adulterating it a little, or a good deal,
he knows that he may make it ten times
as acceptable to the audience.

CIVIC BANQUETS 563

This slight article on the civic banquets
of England would be too wretchedly imper-
fect without an attempted description of a
Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion House
in London. I should have preferred the
annual feast at Guildhall, but never had
the good fortune to witness it. Once, how-
ever, I was honored with an invitation to
one of the regular dinners, and gladly ac-
cepted it, — taking the precaution, never-
theless, though it hardly seemed necessary,
to inform the City-King, through a mutual
friend, that I was no fit representative
of American eloquence, and must humbly
make it a condition that I should not be
expected to open my mouth, except for the
reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospi-
tality. The reply was gracious and acqui-
escent ; so that I presented myself in the
great entrance-hall of the Mansion House,
at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most
enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
apprehensions that often tormented me
at such times. The Mansion House was
built in Queen Anne's days, in the very
heart of old London, and is a palace wor-
thy of its inhabitant, were he really as great
a man as his traditionary state and pomp
would seem to indicate. Times are changed,

564 OUR OLD ffOMJS

however, since the days of Whittington, or
even of Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice,
to whom the highest imaginable reward of
lifelong integrity was a seat in the Lord
Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that
the real dignity and importance have per-
ished out of the office, as they do, sooner or
later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving
only a painted and gilded shell like that of
an Easter egg, and that it is only second-
rate and third-rate men who now conde-
scend to be ambitious of the Mayoralty.
I felt a little grieved at this ; for the orig-
inal emigrants of New England had strong
sympathies with the people of London, who
were mostly Puritans in religion and Par-
liamentarians in politics, in the early days
of our country ; so that the Lord Mayor was
a potentate of huge dimensions in the esti-
mation of our forefathers, and held to be
hardly second to the prime minister of the
throne. The true great men of the city
now appear to have aims beyond city great-
ness, connecting themselves with national
politics, and seeking to be identified with
the aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by
a body of footmen dressed in a livery of
blue coats and buff breeches, in which

CIVIC BANQUETS 565

they looked wonderfully like American
Revolutionary generals, only bedizened
with far -more lace and embroidery than
those simple and grand old heroes ever
dreamed of wearing. There were likewise
two very imposing figures, whom I should
have taken to be military men of rank, be-
ing arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver
epaulets; but they turned out to be officers
of the Lord Mayor's household, and were
now employed in assigning to the guests
the places which they were respectively to
occupy at the dinner-table. Our names
(for I had included myself in a little group
of friends) were announced ; and ascending
the staircase, we met his Lordship in the
doorway of the first reception-room, where,
also, we had the advantage of a presenta-
tion to the Lady Mayoress. As this dis-
tinguished couple retired into private life
at the termination of their year of office, it
is inadmissible to make any remarks, criti-
cal or laudatory, on the manners and bear-
ing of two personages suddenly emerging
from a position of respectable mediocrity
into one of preeminent dignity within
their own sphere. Such individuals almost
always seem to grow nearly or quite to
the full size of their office. If it were

566 OUR OLD HOME

desirable to write an essay on the latent
aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur,
we have an exemplification in our own
country, and on a scale incomparably
greater than that of the Mayoralty, though
invested with nothing like the outward
magnificence that gilds and embroiders the
latter. If I have been correctly informed,
the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double
that of the President of the United States,
and yet is found very inadequate to his ne-
cessary expenditure.

There were two reception-rooms, thrown
into one by the opening of wide folding-
doors ; and though in an old style, and not
yet so old as to be venerable, they are
remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as
well as spacious, with carved ceilings and
walls, and at either end a splendid fireplace
of white marble, ornamented with sculp-
tured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The
company were about three hundred, many
of them celebrities in politics, war, litera-
ture, and science, though I recollect none
preeminently distinguished in either de-
partment. But it is certainly a pleasant
mode of doing honor to men of literature,
for example, who deserve well of the public,
yet do not often meet it face to face, thus

CIVIC BANQUETS $67

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 profifer his hospi-
tality to every man of noticeable talent
in the wide world of London, nor, in fine,
whether his Lordship's invitation is much
sought for or valued ; but it seemed to me
that this periodical feast is one of the many
sagacious methods which the English have
contrived for keeping up a good under-
standing among different sorts of people.
Like most other distinctions of society,
however, I presume that the Lord Mayor's
card does not often seek out modest merit,
but comes at last when the recipient is
conscious of the bore, and doubtful about
the honor.

One very pleasant characteristic, which
I never met with at any other public or
partially public dinner, was the presence
of ladies. No doubt, they were principally
the wives and daughters of city magnates ;
and if we may judge from the many sly
allusions in old plays and satirical poems,
the city of London has always been famous
for the beauty of its women and the re-

568 OUR OLD HOME

ciprocal attractions between them and the
men of quality. Be that as it might, while
straying hither and thither through those
crowded apartments, I saw much reason for
modifying certain heterodox opinions which
I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic new-
ness and rawness, as regarded the delicate
character and frequent occurrence of Eng-
lish beauty. To state the entire truth
(being, at this period, some years old in
English life), my taste, I fear, had long
since begun to be deteriorated by acquain-
tance with other models of feminine loveli-
ness than it was my happiness to know
in America I often found, or seemed to
find, if I may dare to confess it, in the
persons of such of my dear countrywomen
as I now occasionally met, a certain mea-
greness (Heaven forbid that I should call
it scrawniness !), a deficiency of physical
development, a scantiness, so to speak, in
the pattern of their material make, a pale-
ness of complexion, a thinness of voice, —
all of which characteristics, nevertheless,
only made me resolve so much the more
sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as
angels, because I was sometimes driven to
a half -acknowledgment that the English
ladies, looked at from a lower point of

CIVIC BANQUETS 569

view, were perhaps a little finer animals
than they. The advantages of the latter,
if any they could really be said to have,
wero all comprised in a few additional
lumps of clay on their shoulders and other
parts of their figures. It would be a piti-
ful bargain to give up the ethereal charm
of American beauty in exchange for half a
hundred-weight of human clay !

At a given signal we all found our way
into an immense room, called the Egyptian
Hall, I know not why, •except that the
architecture was classic, and as different
as possible from the ponderous style of
Memphis and the Pyramids. A powerful
band played inspiringly as we entered, and
a brilliant profusion of light shone down
on two long tables, extending the whole
length of the hall, and a cross -table be-
tween them, occupying nearly its entire
breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glis-
tened on an acre or two of snowy damask,
over which were set out all the accompani-
ments of a stately feast. We found our
places without much difficulty, and the
Lord Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing
on the food, — a ceremony which the Eng-
lish never omit, at a great dinner or a
small one, yet consider, I fear not so much

570 OUR OLD HOME

a religious rite as a sort of preliminary
relish before the soup.

The soup, of course, on this occasion,
was turtle, of which, in accordance with
immemorial custom, each guest was allowed
two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise im-
mitigable law of table - decorum. Indeed,
judging from the proceedings of the
gentlemen near me, I surmised that there
was no practical limit, except the appetite
of the guests and the capacity of the soup-
tureens. Not being fond of this civic
dainty, I partook of it but once, and then
only in accordance with the wise maxim,
always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a cele-
brated dish, at its indigenous site ; and the
fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is
in the Lord Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one
of those orthodox customs which people
follow for half a century without knowing
why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very
small tumbler, after the soup. It was ex-
cellently well -brewed, and it seemed to*me
almost worth while to sup the soup for the
sake of sipping the punch. The rest of
the dinner was catalogued in a bill -of -fare
printed on delicate white paper within an
arabesque border of green and gold. It
looked very good, not only in the English

CIVIC BANQUETS 57 1

and French names of the numerous dishes,
but also in the positive reality of the dishes
themselves, which were all set on the table
to be carved and distributed by the guests.
This ancient and honest method is attended
with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish
effusion of gravy, yet by no means be-
stowed or dispensed in vain, because you
have thereby the absolute assurance of a
banquet actually before your eyes, instead
of a shadowy promise in the bill -of -fare,
and such meagre fulfillment as a single
guest can contrive to get upon his individ-
ual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who
are fond of looking at prize -oxen in the
shape of butcher's meat, do not generally
better estimate the aesthetic gormandism
of devouring the whole dinner with their
eyesight, before proceeding to nibble the
comparatively few morsels which, after all,
the most heroic appetite and widest stom-
achic capacity of mere mortals can enable
even an alderman really to eat. There fell
to my lot three delectable things enough,
which I take pains to remember, that the
reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied
from the Barmecide feast to which I have
bidden him, — a red mullet, a plate of
mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of

572 OUR OLD HOME

a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as
the grouse, but feeding high up towards
the summit of the Scotch mountains,
whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor
very superior to that of the artificially nur-
tured English game -fowl. All the other
dainties have vanished from my memory
as completely as those of Prosperous ban-
quet after Ariel had clapped his wings
over it. The band played at intervals in-
spiriting us to new efiforts, as did likewise
the sparkling wines which the footmen
'supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and
which the guests quaffed with little appar-
ent reference to the disagreeable fact that
there comes a to-morrow morning after
every feast. As long as that shall be the
case, a prudent man can never have full
enjoyment of his dinner.

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side
of the table, sat a young lady in white,
whom I am sorely tempted to describe,
but dare not, because not only the super-
eminence of her beauty, but its peculiar
character, would cause the sketch to be
recognized, however rudely it might be
drawn. I hardly thought that there existed
such a woman outside of a picture - frame,
or the covers of a romance : not that I had

CIVIC BANQUETS 573

ever met with her resemblance even there,
but, being so distinct and singular an ap-
parition, she seemed likelier to find her
sisterhood in poetry and picture than in
real life. Let us turn away from her, lest
a touch too apt should compel her stately
and cold and soft and womanly grace to
gleam out upon my page with a strange
repulsion and unattainableness in the very
spell that made her beautiful.^ At her

* My eyes were mostly drawn to a young lady, who
sat nearly opposite me, across the table. She was, I
suppose, dark, and yet not dark, but rather seemed to
be of pure white marble, yet not white ; but the purest
and finest complexion, without a shade of color in it, yet
anything but sallow or sickly. Her hair was a wonder-
ful deep raven-black, black as night, black as death ; not
raven -black, for that has a shiny gloss, and hers had
not, but it was hair never to be painted nor described,
— wonderful hair, Jewish hair. Her nose had a beauti-
ful outline, though I could see that it was Jewish too ;
and that, and all her features, were so fine that sculpture
seemed a despicable art beside her, and certainly my pen
is good for nothing. If any likeness could be given,
however, it must be by sculpture, not painting. She
was slender and youthful, and yet had a stately and
cold, though soft and womanly grace ; and, looking at
her, I saw what were the wives of the old patriarchs in
their maiden or early • married days, — what Judith was,
for, womanly as she looked, I doubt not she could have
slain a man in a just cause, — what Bathsheba was, only
she seemed to have no sin in her, — perhaps what Eve
was, though one could hardly think her weak enough to
eat the apple. . . . Whether owing to distinctness of

574 ^^^ ^^^ HOME

side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat
a gentleman of whom I remember only a
bard outline of tbe nose and forehead, and
such a monstrous portent of a beard that
you could discover no symptom of a mouth,
except when he opened it to speak, or to
put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you
suddenly became aware of a cave hidden
behind the impervious and darksome shrub-
bery. There could be no doubt who this
gentleman and lady were. Any child would
have recognized them at a glance. It was
Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of
the series, but with already a mysterious
gloom overshadowing her fair young brow)
traveling in their honeymoon, and dining,
among other distinguished strangers, at the
Lord Mayor's table.

After an hour or two of valiant achieve-
ment with knife and fork came the dessert ;
and at the point of the festival where
finger-glasses are usually introduced, a
large silver basin was carried round to the
guests, containing rose-water, into which
we dipped the ends of our napkins and
were conscious of a delightful fragrance,

race, my sense that she was a Jewess, or whatever else,
I felt a sort of repugnance, simultaneously with my per-
ception that she was an admirable creature. — II. 238.

CIVIC BANQUETS 575

instead of that heavy and weary odor, the
hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This
seems to be an ancient custom of the
city, not confined to the Lord Mayor's
table, but never met with westward of
Temple Bar.

During all the feast, in accordance with
another ancient custom, the origin or pur-
port of which I do not remember to have
heard, there stood a man in armor, with a
helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's
chair. When the after-dinner wine was
placed on the table, still another official
personage appeared behind the chair, and
proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous
proclamation (in which he enumerated the
principal guests, comprising three or four
noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of
generals, members of Parliament, aldermen,
and other names of the illustrious, one of
which sounded strangely familiar to my
ears), ending in some such style as this :
"and other gentlemen and ladies, here
present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all
in a loving-cup, " — giving a sort of senti-
mental twang to the two words, — " and
sends it round among you ! " And forth-
with the loving-cup — several of them,
indeed, on each side of the tables — came

576 OUR OLD HOME

slowly down with all the antique ceremony.
The fashion of it is thus. The Lord
Mayor, standing up and taking the covered
cup in both hands, presents it to the guest
at his elbow, who likewise rises, and re-
moves the cover for his Lordship to drink,
which being successfully accomplished, the
guest replaces the cover and receives the
cup into his own hands. He then presents
it to his next neighbor, that the cover may
be again removed for himself to take a
draught, after which the third person goes
through a 'Similar manoeuvre with a fourth,
and he with a fifth, until the whole com-
pany find themselves inextricably inter-
twisted and entangled in one complicated
chain of love. When the cup came to my
hands, I examined it critically, both inside
and out, and perceived it to be an antique
and richly ornamented silver goblet, capa-
ble of holding about a quart of wine. Con-
sidering how much trouble we all expended
in getting the cup to our lips, the guests
appeared to content themselves with won-
derfully moderate potations. In truth,
nearly or quite the original quart of wine
being still in the goblet, it seemed doubt-
ful whether any of the company had more
than barely touched the silver rim before

CIVIC BANQUETS 577

passing it to their neighbors, — a degree of
abstinence that might be accounted for by
a fastidious repugnance to so many com-
potators in one cup, or possibly by a disap-
probation of the liquor. Being curious to
know all about these important matters,
with a view of recommending to my
countrymen whatever they might usefully
adopt, I drank an honest sip from the lov-
ing-cup, and had no occasion for another,
— ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor
original quality, largely mingled with water,
and spiced and sweetened. It was good
enough, however, for a merely spectral or
ceremonial drink, and could never have
been intended for any better purpose.

The toasts now began in the customary
order, attended with speeches neither more
nor less witty and ingenious than the spec-
imens of table eloquence which had here-
tofore delighted me. As preparatory to
each new display, the herald, or whatever
he was, behind the chair of state, gave
awful notice that the Right Honorable
the Lord Mayor was about to propose
a toast. His Lordship being happily de-
livered thereof, together with some ac-
companying remarks, the band played an
appropriate tune, and the herald again

5/8 OUR OLD HOME

issued proclamation to the eflFect that such
or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general,
dignified clergyman, or what not, was go-
ing to respond to the Right Honorable the
Lord Mayor's toast ; then, if I mistake not,
there was another prodigious flourish of
trumpets and twanging of stringed instru-
ments ; and, finally, the doomed individual,
waiting all this while to be decapitated,
got up and proceeded to make a fool of
himself. A bashful young earl tried his
maiden oratory on the good citizens of
London, and, having evidently got every
word by heart (even including, however
he managed it, the most seemingly casual
improvisations of the moment), he really
spoke like a book, and made incomparably
the smoothest speech I ever heard in Eng-
land.

The weight and gravity of the speakers,
not only on this occasion, but all similar
ones, was what impressed me as most
extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why
should people eat a good dinner, and put
their spirits into festive trim with Cham-
pagne, and afterwards mellow themselves
into a most enjoyable state of quietude
with copious libations of Sherry and old
Port, and then disturb the whole excellent

CIVIC BANQUETS 579

result by listening to speeches as heavy as
an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown
its sparkle over the surface of these effu-
sions, or if the generous Port had shone
through their substance with a ruddy glow
of the old English humor, I might have
seen a reason for honest gentlemen prat-
tling in their cups, and should undoubtedly
have been glad to be a listener. But there
was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on
the part of the orators, nor apparent expec-
tation of such a phenomenon on that of
the audience. In fact, I imagine that the
latter were best pleased when the speaker
embodied his ideas in the figurative lan-
guage of arithmetic, or struck upon any
hard matter of business or statistics, as
a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock
in mid-ocean.^ The sad severity, the too
earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have

^ I rather think that Englishmen would purposely
avoid eloquence or neatness in after-dinner speeches. It
seems to be no part of their object. Yet any English-
man almost, much more generally than Americans, will
stand up and talk on in a plain way, uttering one rough,
ragged, and shapeless sentence after another, and will
have expressed himself sensibly, though in a very rude
manner, before he sits down. And this is quite satis-
factory to his audience, who, indeed, are rather preju-
diced agains* the man who speaks too glibly. — I. 54a

58o OUR OLD HOME

wrought a radical and lamentable change,
I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly
institution of civic banquets. People used
to come to them, a few hundred years ago,
for the sake of being jolly ; they come now
with an odd notion of pouring sober wis-
dom into their wine by way of wormwood-
bitters, and thus make such a mess of it
that the wine and wisdom reciprocally
spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have
taken a spice of acridity from a circum-
stance that happened about this stage of
the feast, and very much interrupted my
own further enjoyment of it. Up to this
time, my condition had been exceedingly
felicitous, both on account of the brilliancy
of the scene, and because I was in close
proximity with three very pleasant English
friends. One of them was a lady, whose
honored name my readers would recognize
as a household word, if I dared write it;
another, a gentleman, likewise well known
to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and
genial cultivation are qualities seldom
mixed in such happy proportion as in him.
The third was the man to whom I owed
most in England, the warm benignity of
whose nature was never weary of doing me

CIVIC BANQUETS 58 1

good, who led me to many scenes of life,
in town, camp, and country, which I never
could have found out for myself, who knew
precisely the kind of help a stranger needs,
and gave it as freely as if he had not had a
thousand more important things to live for.
Thus I never felt safer or cosier at any-
body's fireside, even my own, than at the
dinner-table of the Lord Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunder-
bolt. His Lordship got up and proceeded
to make some very eulogistic remarks upon
" the literary and commercial " — I ques-
tion whether those two adjectives were
ever before married by a copulative con-
junction, and they certainly would not live
together in illicit intercourse, of their own
accord — "the literary and commercial at-
tainments of an eminent gentleman there
present," and then went on to speak of
the relations of blood and interest between
Great Britain and the aforesaid eminent
gentleman's native country. Those bonds
were more intimate than had ever before
existed between two great nations, through-
out all history, and his Lordship felt as-
sured that that whole honorable company
would join him in the expression of a fer-
vent wish that they might be held in viola-

582 OUR OLD HOME

bly sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic,
now and forever. Then came the same
wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew
upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been
the text of nearly all the oratory of my
public career. The herald sonorously an-
nounced that Mr. So-and-so would now re-
spond to his Right Honorable Lordship's
toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the
customary flourish for the onset, there was
a thunderous rumble of anticipatory ap-
plause, and finally a deep silence sank upon
the festive hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery
on the Lord Mayor's part, after beguiling
me within his lines on a pledge of safe-con-
duct ; and it seemed very strange that he
could not let an unobtrusive individual eat
his dinner in peace, drink a small sample
of the Mansion House wine, and go away
grateful at heart for the old English hos-
pitality. If his Lordship had sent me an
infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I
should have taken it much more kindly at
his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
matter to have been somewhat as follows.

All England, just then, was in one of
those singular fits of panic excitement (not
fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as

CIVIC BANQUETS 583

that emotion), which, in consequence of
the homogeneous character of the people,
their intense patriotism, and their depen-
dence for their ideas in public afifairs on
other sources than their own examination
and individual thought, are more sudden,
pervasive, and unreasoning than any sim-
ilar mood of our own public. In truth, I
have never seen the American public in a
state at all similar, and believe that we are
incapable of it. Our excitements are not
impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,
are moral and intellectual. For example,
the grand rising of the North, at the com-
mencement of this war, bore the aspect
of impulse and passion only because it was
so universal, and necessarily done in a mo-
ment, just as the quiet and simultaneous
getting-up of a thousand people out of
their chairs would cause a tumult that
might be mistaken for a storm. We were
cool then, and have been cool ever since,
and shall remain cool to. the end, which
we shall take coolly, whatever it may be.
There is nothing which the English find it
so difficult to understand in us as this char-
acteristic. They imagine us, in our collec-
tive capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose
normal condition is savage fury, and are

584 OUR OLD HOME

always looking for the moment when we
shall break through the slender barriers of
international law and comity, and compel
the reasonable part of the world, with them-
selves at the head, to combine for the pur-
pose of putting us into a stronger cage.
At times this apprehension becomes so
powerful (and when one man feels it, a
million do) that it resembles the passage of
the wind over a broad field of grain, where
you see the whole crop bending and sway-
ing beneath one impulse, and each sep-
arate stalk tossing with the self-same dis-
turbance as its myriad companions. At
such periods all Englishmen talk with a
terrible identity of sentiment and expres-
sion. You have the whole country in
each man ; and not one of them all, if you
put him strictly to the question, can give a
reasonable ground for his alarm. There
are but two nations in the world — our
own country and France — that can put
England into this singular state. It is the
united sensitiveness of a people extremely
well-to-do, careful of their country's honor,
most anxious for the preservation of the
cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which
they have been so long in consolidating,
and incompetent (owing to the national

CIVIC BANQUETS 585

half-sightedness, and their habit of trust-
ing to a few leading minds for their public
opinion) to judge when that prosperity is
really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look
at the foreign side of any international
dispute, they might easily have satisfied
themselves that there was very little
danger of a war at that particular crisis,
from the simple circumstance that their
own Government had positively not an
inch of honest ground to stand upon, and
could not fail to be aware of the fact.
Neither could they have met Parliament
with any show of a justification for incur-
ring war. It was no such perilous juncture
as exists now, when law and right are
really controverted on sustainable or plau-
sible grounds, and a naval commander may
at any moment fire off the first cannon of
a terrible contest. If I remember it cor-
rectly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble,
in which the British ministers, with the
politic generosity which they are in the
habit of showing towards their official sub-
ordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the
purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an
indefensible proceeding ; and the American
Grovemment (for God had not denied us an

586 OUR OLD HOME

administration of statesmen then) had re-
taliated with stanch courage and exquisite
skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortifica-
tion upon their opponents, but indulging
them with no pretense whatever for active
resentment.

Now the Lord Mayor, like any other
Englishman, probably fancied that War
was on the western gale, and was glad to
lay hold of even so insignificant an Ameri-
can as myself, who might be made to harp
on the rusty old strings of national sympa-
thies, identity of blood and interest, and
community of language and literature, and
whisper peace where there was no peace,
in however weak an utterance. And pos-
sibly his Lordship thought, in his wisdom,
that the good feeling which was sure to be
expressed by a company of well-bred Eng-
lishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner-
table, might have an appreciable influence
on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord
Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a
piece of strategy. He wanted to induce
me to fling myself, like a lesser Curtius,
with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into
the chasm of discord between England and
America, and, on my ignominious demur,
had resolved to shove me in with his own

CIVJC BANQUETS Xfij

right -honorable hands, in the hope of clos*
ing up the horrible pit forever. On the
whole, I forgive his Lordship. He meant
well by all parties, — himself, who would
share the glory, and me, who ought to have
desired nothing better than such an he-
roic opportunity^ — his own country, which
would continue to get cotton and bread-
stuffs, and mine, which would get every-
thing that men work with and wear.

As soon as the Lord Mayor began to
speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
gave forth a hollow sound, being abso-
lutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never
thought of listening to the speech, because
I knew it all beforehand in twenty repeti-
tions from other lips, and was aware that it
would not oflfer a single suggestive point.
In this dilemma, I turned to one of my
three friends, a gentleman whom I knew
to possess an enviable flow of silver speech,
and obtested him, by whatever he deemed
holiest, to give me at least an available
thought or two to start with, and, once
afloat, I would trust my guardian-angel for
enabling me to flounder ashore again. He
advised me to begin with some remarks
complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and
expressive of the hereditary reverence in

$88 OUR OLD HOME

which his office was held, — at least, my
friend thought that there would be no
harm in giving his Lordship this little
sugar- plum, whether quite the fact or no,
— was held by the descendants of the Puri-
tan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting
flexible with the oil of ny own eloquence,
I might easily slide off into the momentous
subject of the relations between England
and America, to which his Lordship had
made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a
death -grip, and bidding my three friends
bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to
save both countries, or perish in the at-
tempt. The tables roared and thundered
at me, and suddenly were silent again.
But, as I have never happened to stand in
a position of greater dignity and peril, I
deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to
close these Sketches, leaving myself still
erect in so heroic an attitude.

INDEX

AcTRBSS, an. in an almshoase,
507; starving for admiration,
508.

Addison, early home of. 21 k;
buried among the men of rank,

Advice, as to giving, 4a.

Ailsa Craig, 158.

Alexander, Miss, the Lass of

Ballochmyle, 344.
Almshouse, a great English, 498-

American flags, captured, dis-
played in Chelsea Hospital,

American mercantile marine, mis-
represented at Liverpool, a, 3,
46 ; its vicious system, 45, 48.

American shipmasters, cruelties
of, 44-49. . , ^

Amencans, national characteris-
tics of, as seen by a consul, 9,
10; vagabond habits of, 11, 12 ;
as claimants of English estates,
18, 22-31 ; erowth and change
the law of their existence, 9) ;
their scholars and critics, 190 ;
their light regard for the Pres-
ident, 553.

Andr^, Major, at Lichfield, 216.

Anne, Queen, statue of, at Blen-
heim, 995.

Antiquity, hoar, in English
scenes, 90.

Archdeacon ale, 300.

Armour, Jean, 329, 330, 346.

Auchinleck, estate of, 343.

Avon, the, arched brid.ite at War-
wick, 105; a sluggish river,
166.

Ayr, ride to, 347 ; its two bridges,
348.

Bacon, Lord, his Letters, 176.
Bacon, Miss a very remarkable
w<»nan, 17a ; her Shakespear-

ean theory, 173, 173, 176-178;
her personal appearance, 174;
her book, 179, 189, 19a ; an ad-
mirable talker, 180; at Strat*
ford, 181-191; her plans for
searching Shakespeare^s ^ve,
182-184 ; Hawthorne incurs
her displeasure, 188; her in-
sanity, 1 01 ; her death, 192.

Ballochmyle, the I<ass of, 344.

Banquets, dvic, U7-588.

Barber Surgeons' Hall, in Lon-
don, 537-539'

Bear and Ragged Staff, the, cog-
nizance of^e Warwick Earl-
dom, 109 ; silver badge of, 113 ;
representations of, at Leices-
ter's Hospital, 116, 118, 133.

Beauchamp, Richard, Earl of
Warwick, memorial of, 138;
strange accident to, 139.

Beauchamp Chapel, at Warwick,
»37-i40-

Bebbington, monuments at. 85,
nate; old village church 01, ^,
naie.

Beggar, a true Englishman's dis-
like of a, 491 ; hardening the
heart against, 492 ; a phenom-
enal. 493-495.

Belmont, August, minister at the
Hague, 29.

Ben Lomond, 358.

Black Swan inn, Lichfield, 299.

Blackheath, the wide waste of,
370-373 ; amusements at, 373-
375- .

Blenheim, excursion to, 281, 282;
its park, 283-289 ; Marlbor-
ough's Triumphal Pillar at,
289; its palace, 389-296; its
gardens, 296-298.

Bolton, 231.

Boston, old, trip to, by steamef
from Lincoln, 255-259; the
riv^ aid^ of» 260 ; antique-look-

590

INDEX

wg hooaes at, 263 ; a booksell-
ers shop at, 264, 265; its
crooked and narrow streets,
275 ; iu Charity Sdiool schol-
ars, 277 < market-day in, 278.

Boswell, Sir Tames, grandson of
Johnson's niend, 343.

Brooke, Lord, shot near the
Minster Poo', 206.

Brown, Capability, his lake at
Blenheim, 284 ; grounds at
Nuneham Courtney, 321.

Buchanan, James, in London,
ao; receires Hawthorne's res-
ignation, 55 ; calls on Miss Ba-
con, 178.

Buckland, Dean, swallows part
of Louis XlV.'s'heart, 27a

Bull, John, too intensely English,
lot.

Bunker Hill, England, 279.

Btirleigh, Lord, waistcoat of, 266.

Burns, Robert, his house at Dimi-
fries, 335-327 ; his mausoleum,
329, 3^; marble statue of,
xi^\ his outward Hfe, 331; his
faunily pew in St. Michael's
Church, 334 ; his farm of Moss
^^1> 337~343t bis birthplace,
340-35J ; ni» monument, 351-

Butchers' shops, in poor streets
of London, 474.

Carfax, the, ^30.

Caskets, bunai, ** a vile modem
phrase," 140.

Cass, Lewis, responds to inter-
ference of British Minister, 46.

Catrine, " the clean village of
Scotland,*' 345.

Ceylon, wild men of, 28.

Charlecote Hall, 195-198.

Charlecote Park, 193; deer in,
i94i <95-

Charles, the Martyr, kinp;, 270.

Charles L, Vandyck's picture of,
292.

Chelsea, 433-

Chelsea Hospital, 433-437.

Chester, most curious town in
England, 59.

Children in an English alms-
house, 509-519.

Children, poor, in London streets,

487-489-
Church of the Holy Trinity,

Stratford, 1^5.
C'imate, English, unfavorable to

op^n-air memorials, 83, 84.

Cockneys, in Greenwich Paric,

CofiFee-room, English, ponderous
gloom of, 200.

Combe, John a', boon-companion
of Shakespeare, i6.(; buried
near Shakespeare, 168 ; marble
figure of, 170; Shakespeare's
squib on, 170.

Concord River, omipared with
the Leam, 67.

Connecticut^ shopkeeper, a, seek-
ing interview with the Queen,
17-21.

Conner, Mr., an American patron
of Leicester's Hospital, 133.

Consul, as general adviser and
helper, 31, 32, 42, 43 ; as ar-
biter between seamen and their
ofiicers, 44~49; not a favorite
with shipmasters, 49; nece»>
sary qualifications, 51, 52;
wrong system of appointment
and removal, 52; important
duties, 53 ; emoluments, 55,

Consulate, American, in Liver-
pool, its location, i ; its ap-
proaches, 1,2; its furnishings.
3^; visitors at^ 7-21; faithful
English subordinates, 50, 51 ;
Hawthorne's successor at, 56.

Cook, Captain, present uom
Queen of Otaheite to, 266.

Cornwall, Barry, 469.

Cottages, rustic laborers', 79-81.

Cotton, Rev. John, in Old Bos-
ton, 263, 270, 271.

Crystal Palace, the, 438.

Cumnor, village of, 301; its
church, 302, 303.

Cymbeline, King, founder of
Warwick, 103, 129 ; one of his
original gateways, 112.

Deluge, necessity of a new, 472,
518.

Dinner, the English idea of, 527 ;
Milton on, 528; a perfect work
of art, 530, 531; an English
mayor's, 539-560: Lord May-
or's, at the "
563.

Mandon House,

Doctor of Divinity, an erring,

33-4»-

Doon, the bridge of, 357.

Dowager, an English, 73-75.

Dudley, Earl of Leicester, estal>
lishes Leicester's Ho^tal,
1(5; a grim sinner, la/i his

INDEX

591

monument in Beauchamp

Chapel, 137 ; his long-enduring

kindness, 138.
Dumfries, excursion to, 325-334.
Dutch government, an American

under the ban of, 29.

East winds, English, 257.
Edward IV., Kmg, a lock of his

hair, 140.
Edward the Confessor, shrine of,

Elizabeth, Queen, Secret-Book
of, 269.

Elm, the beautiful Warwickshire,
69.

England, conservative, 141 ; yet
the foundations of its aristo-
cracy crumbling, 141.

English, the, forgetful of defeats,
4; their character, massive ma-
teriality of, 23; secret of their
practical success, 42 ; impos-
tors betrayed by pronunci-
ation of '* Deen," 44 ; their in-
t^n^ty* 51 1 their love of high
stone fences and shrubbery, 69,
371 ; curious infelicity of, 100 ;
uke to feel the weight of the
past, I II ; the very kindest peo-
ple on earth, 305 ; their insular
narrowness, 306; their ina-
bility to enjoy summer, 367;
original simplicity of, 379; ea-
ger to know their weight, ^02 ;
women not beautiful, 406 ; their
contempt for fine-strained
purity, 408, 409 ; their tendency
to batter one another's persons,
482.

English crowds, unfragrant, 397,
398.

English post-prandial oratory,

English village, fossilized life of
an. 93. •

English weather, ^, 366-368.

Englishman, a middle-aged,
sonal appearance of, 542.

Epiuphs: illegible, on English
gravestones, 84 ; moss-em-
bossed, 85; forlorn one on
John Treeo, 86, 87.

Eugene, Prince, tapestry portraits
01,294.

feeing, in England, 161, 163,
^' noU.
'emii^ne character among the
London poor, 481-487.

per-

Fences, English stone, adorned
by Nature, 151, 15a, mo/^.

Forster, Anthony, buried in
Cumnor Church, 303.

Fruit, English, poor flavor of,
364-

Fun of the Fair, the, 399.

Garrick, David, boyish days at

Lichfield, 216.
Gin-shops, London, 473.
Girls, English and American,

contrasted, 72, 75, 406.
Godiva, Countess, picture of,

Godstowe, old nunnery of, 317.

Gravestones, Enelish. successive
crops of, 83 ; illegible inscrip-
tions on, 84; moss-embossed
inscriptions on, 85.

Greenwich, its park, 376, 377,
379» 380, 383 ; Its observatory,
the centre of Time and Space,
376; its hospital, 385-396; its
fair, 396-408.

Hatton, a communitv of old set-
tlers, 95 ; its church, 96, 97.

Hawthorne responds to toasts at
civi<;. banquets, 558-560, 582-
588.

Hedges, English, 149.

Henry v., his helmet and war*
saddle displayed in Westmin-
ster Abbey, 455.

Highland Mary, the pocket Bible
that Bums gave her, 355.

Holbein, masterpiece of, in Bar-
ber Surgeons' Hall, ^^7.

Home, a genuine British, 359-
364.

Hotels and hotel bilb, English,
162, note.

Houses of Parliament, the, 431.

Hunt, Leigh, interview with,
459-468 ; final recollection of,

Imogen, Shakespeare's woman-
liest woman, 129.

Jackson, General, bust of, 4.

James, G. P. R., never saw Lon-
don Tower, 428.

James L, King^ feasted by an
Earl of Warwick, 119, 13^.

Jephson, Dr., discoverer of cha-
lybeate well at Leamington, 63.

Jephson Garden, 00 the Learn,
65-67.

592

INDEX

Johnson, Dr., bora at Lichfield,
aoi ; as a nun, a talker, and a
humorist, aoa; the rareat Eng-
lish moralist, 303; nis birth-
place, 216, a 17; his statue, by
Lucas, 318 ; statue in St Paul^
Cathedral^ 219, noU; doing
penance m the market-place,
220^ 223, 228, 229, 230; his faith
in beef and mutton, 225.

Johnson, Michael, selling books
on market-day. 221 ; his book-
stall, 22a; at the Nag's Head
inn, 226, 227.

Jolly Beggars, the, at Pode Nan-
sie's inn, 336.

Jonson, Ben, buried standing up-
right, 451.

Judges, social standing of, 549.

Kemble, John, statue of, in West-
minster Abbey, 445.

Kirk AUoway, 354-356.

*' Kissing in the Ring,** 404.

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, his olqec-
tion to being buned in West-
minster Abbey, 449.

Lambeth Palace, 432.

Lancashire, a dreary county, 231.

Lansdowne Circus, 60 ; its houses,
61 ; its inhabitants, 62.

Leam^ the river, 63, 65 ; the lazi-
est m the world, 67.

Leamington Spa, 60; a perma-
nent watering-place, 63. 64;
the business portion oz the
town, 68; beautiful in street
and suburb, 69; but preten-
tious, 70 ; its aristocratic
names, 71 ; the throng on its
principal Parade, 71, 72.

Lear, West's dreary picture of,
390-

Leicester's Hospital at War-
wick: an assemblage of edi-
fices, X12 ; the twelve brethren
of, 1x3, 115, X16, n8, 125, 131,
i34> 135.; a perfect si>ecimen,
X16; a jolly old domicile, xai;
system of life in, 123; the por-
ter at, 124-126.

Lestran^, Sir Nicholas, first
propnetor of Leicester's Hos-
pital buildings, iiji, 115.

Lichfield, 199: origin of the
name, aot; birthj^oe of Dr.
Johnson, aoi, ai6; its people
old-fashioned, 204; its cathe-
dral, 206-214.

Lillington, the villan, 78; its
churdi, 81, 82 ; its churchyard,
83-87.

Lincoln, cabs unknown there,
236 ; its narrow principal street,
237; its cathedra], 236, 2^9-
249, 253, 254; Roman remains
at, 250 ; Norman ruins at, 251.

Linkwater, Sir John, fines him-
self for drunkenness, 548.

Liquor, varieties of hop and
malt, in England, 299, 30a

Liverpool, a convenient starting-
point for excursions, 58.

Lodgings, English custom (rf, 70,
note.

London, suburb, a, 359 ; a distant
view of, 373 ; gnmy, 375- ^

Lord Mayor's dinner, at the
Mansion House, 563-588.

Lovers' Grove, at Lesunington,
77-

Loving-cup, the Lord Mayor-s,

Lucy, Sir Thomas, and Shake-
speare, 196.

Malay pirates, delightful quali-
ties ot, 28.

Mansfield, Lord, statue of, in
Westminster Abbey^ 445.

Mansion House, the, in London,

563.

Marlborough. Duke of, Tri-
umphal Pillar of, 288.

Mary Queen of Scots, quilt em-
broidered by, 265, 271.

Mauchline, redolent of Bums,
335 ; rusty and time-worn, 336 ;
Its chief business, 346.

Maury, Mr., appointed consul at
Liverpool by Washineton, 50.

McClellan, General, before Rich-
mond, 43.

Melville, Herman, his " Israel
Potter " referred to, 13.

" Memory ^een, keep his," pos-
sible ongin of the pnrase,^ 86.

Methodist open-air preaching in
Greenwich Park, 380-383.

Minster Pool, the, at Lichfield,
205.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley,
monument to, in Lichfield Ca-
thedral, 211.

Moss Giel, Bums's farm of, 337-
343.

Museum, the British, too many
materials for knowledge it», 384,
note.

INDEX

593

Nag's Head inn, the, at Uttox-
eter, 226.

Nelson, Admiral, his highest am-
bition, 391 ; not a representa-
tivc man, 392-394; Southey's
biography 01, 393; pictures of
his exploits, 304; two of his
coats pr:servea at Greenwich
Hospital, 395.

Newcastle, Duke and Duchess

New Orleans, battle of, forgotten

by Englishmen, 4.
Nuneham Courtney^ 314, 320-322.

Old ase, cheerful and genial in
England, 277.

Open-air life of the London poor,
476-481.

Otaheite, Queen of, her present
to Captain Cook, 266^ 271.

Oxford, barges at, 318; indescrib-
able, 322, 323.

Painted Hall, the, at Greenwich
Hospital, 390, 591.

Parliament, British, and Amer-
ican sailors, 45, 46.

Parr, Dr , once vicar of Hatton,
95 ; a misplaced man, 97 ; a
guest at Leicester's Hospital,
130.

Peacock hotel, Old Boston, 259.

Pearce, Mr., vice^x>nsul at Liv-
erpool, 50.

Peel, Sir Robert, and Holbein*s
masterpiece in Barber Sur-
geons^ Hall, 537.

Philadelphia printer, a, wander-
ing about England, 13-17.

Poets* Corner, in Westminster
Abbey, 451-459-

Pope, Alexander, his account of
Stanton Harcourt, 308 ; trans-
lation of Homer, 314.

Porter, Mr., bookseller at Old
Boston, 265-271.

Posie Nansie's inn at Mauch-
line, 336.

Posthumus and Imogen, 129.

Poverty, glimpses of English,
470-524-

Procter, Bryan Waller, 469.

Raleigh, Sir Walter, and the
Thames Tunnel, 420-422.

"Red Letter A," author of,
306.

Redfem's Old Curiosity Shop, at
Warwick, 143, 143.

Regatta of the Free Watennen of

Greenwich, a, 413.
Remorse, tragedy of, 40.
Robsart, Amy. embroidery by,

at Leicester's Hospital, 133;

monument of her avenger, 137.
Rosamond, Fair, at the nunnery

of Godstowe, 317.
Rosamond's Weu, Blenheim, 287.
Russell, Lord John, remonstrates

against outrages on American

sailors, 46.

Sacheverell, Dr., 319.

Sacrament Sunday at Mauch-
line, 337.

Sailors, American, ill-usage of,
44.

St. Botolph's Church, Old Bos-
ton. 259, 26a, 272-275.

St. Chad, 2ot.

St. Hugh, shrine of, in Lincoln
Cathedral, 247.

St John's School- House, at War-
wick, 104.

St. Mary's Church, at Warwick,
136.

St. Mary's Hall, at Coventry,
533-536.

St. Mary's Square, at Lichfield,
216,218.

St. Michael's Church, at Dum-
fries, 328, 332-334-

St. Paul's Cathedral, 429.

Saracen's Head hotel, Lincohi,
236.

Scenery, English, 146, 232.

Schools, English, long-estab-
lished, 104.

Scott, Sir Walter, attractiveness
of his name, 160 ; and Anthony
Forster, 503.

Seward, Miss, at Lichfield, a 16.

Shakespeare : his church, 155 ;
his birthplace, 157^163 ; his vari-
ous guises, 164 ;' his curse on the
man who should stir his bones,
165; his burial-place, 165-171;
family monuments, 167; his
bust, in the church at Strat-
ford, 168, 169; Miss Bacon's
theory, 175; immeasurable
depth of his plays, 175.

Sheffield, the town of razors and
smoke, 235.

Sherwood Forest, 235.

Shrewsbury, pleasant walks in,
338, note.

Southey, Robert, his Life of Net
son, 393.

594

INDEX

Stanton Harcourt, its hospitable
parsonage, 305 ; its old castle,
306, 307, JIB, 314 ; Pope's con-
nection with, 308, 309, 314, 315 ;
its church, 309-312.

Sterne, Laurence, crayon-por-
trait of, 267.

Stocks, village, at Whitnash, 90.

Stratford-on-ATon, scenery near,
14s; approach to, 153, 154;
queer edifices in, 155.

Swans, aspect and movement of,
66.

Swynfordj Catherine, monument
ol, in Lancoln Cathedral, 347.

Tarn O^Shanter, statue of, 153.
Taylor, General, portrait 01, 4.
Temple, the, 431.
Tennyson, and English scenery,

77*
Testament, New, consular copy

„^^» ^» ^f •

Thames, ferry near Cumnor, 305 ;

steamers on, 412; its muddy
tide, 414; a summer day's voy-
age on, 412-435-

Thames Tunnel, the, 415-423.

Thomhill, Sir James, 291, 390.

Tickell, Thomas, his lines on
Addison, 456.

Tower of London, the, 427, 428.

Traitor's Gate, the, 427.

Treeo, John, forlorn epitaph on,
86.

Trees, finelish and American,
compared, 147-149.

Tttckerman, H. T., his " Month
in England," 439.

Uttoxeter, 221; its idle people,
223 ; its abundance of public
houses, 224.

Vagabonds, Yankee, abroad,

1 1-22.
Vandyck, his picture of Charles

L, 292.
Victoria, Queen, a Connecticut

shopkeeper goes to England to

see her, 18-21 ; some American

blood-relatives, 26.

Walmesley, Gilbert, monument
to, in Lichfield Cathedral, 211.
Wapping, cold and torpid, 425.

Warren, Sir Peter, bust of* in

Westminster Abbejr, 444.

Warwick, founded by Cjrmbeline,
103, 129; its castle, 105, 107;
its principal street, 108, 100;
military display at, 109; the
High Street, no; Leicester's
Hospital, ri2-z27 ; the home
of Posthumus and Imogen,
129; church of St. Mary's,
136-140; Redfem's Old Curi-
G&Wy Shop, 142, 143.

Warwickshire Elm, the beauti-
ful, 69.

Wasps, attracted by pomatum,
3>9-.

Wedding, of some poor English
people, 522-524; an aristo-
cratic, in the same cathedral.

Wedding, silver, as a matter of
conscience, 76.

West, Benjamin, picture by, at
Greenwich, 389.

Westminster Abbey, a Sunday
afternoon service in, 440; its
interior, 441 ; statues and tombs
in, 444-447; "they do bury
fools there," 449; Poets'
Comer, 451-459.

Whitefriars, the old rowdy Al-
satia, 430.

Whitnash, secluded village <^
88; yew-tree of incalcmlable
age at, 89 ; village stocks of,
90 ; change at work in, 93, 94.

Wilberforce, William, statue of,
in Westminster Abbey, 446,

Wilmng, Mr., vice<onsul at

Liverpool, 51.
Wilkins, Sergeant, 550, 551,

Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a86.

Witham, the river, 255, 263.

Women, in the poorer streets of
London, 479, 484; in an Eng-
lish almshouse, 499; at pubhc
dinners. 567.

Woodstock, 282.

Wren, Sir Christopher, restorer
of St. Mary's Church, War-
wick, 136. .

Yew-tree, extraordinary age o^
89.

l5^

rt3 laSii

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